When I hear of executives or board members of organizations get the facts about their organizations incorrect, like this gentleman citing a parody article claiming that a wrong-year World Cup has been awarded, it makes me wonder how much of a contribution they really make to the organization internally, versus how much they're just schmoozing third parties externally, if even that. To me such a person looks like an incompetent boob that has managed to land a cushy position that provides well for them, without any real game besides helping themselves.

It's not necessarily fair to expect a highly senior member of an organization to literally know the nuts and bolts of everything that their subordinates know and do, but it's reasonable to expect that they have a handle on the big picture. If they don't have such a handle on the big picture then it looks like they're even more corrupt, simply living the high-life without providing.

I learned this by watching people get especially butthurt while watching The Big Bang Theory. Lots of people find it hilarious until something they hold dear is lampooned. The biggest complaints came from fans of Babylon 5; the Church of Joe apparently still has its strong adherents...

I doubt it. The Onion reacts to actual news. It doesn't specifically try to make the news, nor has it ever been particularly self-referential through other reporting. Frankly it doesn't need to, there's enough to parody that navel-gazing would be a hindrance.

Yet, the vice president came to the party wearing fishnet stockings under his pants, and the director in question came with enough small bills to make throwing money at the PR women look like something to the point that you remember it. Sounds like everyone had a bit of a plan for what they ultimately did.

It's along the lines of not betting in sports matches in favor of a team that you're a passionate fan of. You're not likely to bet in a fashion that's reasonable and well thought-out; your love of your team won't let you objectively rate their weaknesses and you stand a worse chance of losing the bet.

The worst for this are new managers that are young and think they know everything. We had to deal with this, the guy who took pride in not learning how/why for the exsting infrastructure has left us with a mess that'll probably take a couple of years to sort out.

If the company drunks run the company, then it's their opinion that matters. As bad a person as Stalin was, his quote, "to the strong, it is the weak who are wrong," applies.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like the statements met the criteria for general "terroristic threats", but wasn't targeted enough to apply as direct intimidation either.

No, the enemy of my enemy on this particular subject has something in common with me right now. The enemy right now might be my friend against my "friend" on another subject. Don't be a dick to any of them unless you want them to go out of their way to be your enemy as often as possible.

And go out drinking with them. It's stupid but patronage, not merit, runs the workplace. Don't get so chummy that you can't bring yourself to throw them under the bus if you actually need to.

The lessons from Machiavelli's The Prince ring true. You can cooperate, you can be confrontational. If you are confrontational you have to expect others to be confrontational back to you in the future, so the benefit in being confrontational better outweigh the negatives that one can reasonably foresee down the road. The people above you have gotten to where they are by stepping on others; you will be stepped on and if you want to succeed beyond simply being the best worker, you will step on others too.

I interpreted the summary's description to mean that the law as-written seems to imply, "preponderance of the evidence," which is how civil law findings can be determined, as opposed to require a significantly higher burden of proof in the form of, "beyond a reasonable doubt," that criminal proceedings require. The defendant wasn't quoting those on a terrorist list or writing his own content, he was quoting or paraphrasing a work that is considered art, without there being any specific or credible intent to actually cause bodily harm to those whom his rants were directed toward.

I expect that had there been a credible threat (ie, action of his that demonstrated planning or intent to cause harm), or had the words been either been his own original words or had been quoted from a source considered to be sometihng other than artistic expression there would have been less doubt about his intentions.

Maybe they all came to Phoenix ComiCon last week and this weekend and were too busy staring at attractive women in their costumes to care about what happens in the digital world...

You bastard!

Aaargh! you made me do it too!

You will never see laws forcing stronger emissions on noncommercial vehicles pass in this country, or if one did, people would simply skirt it through various exemptions for classic car insurance and out-of-emissions-area registrations. I've known people to register cars at rural family members' homes that weren't in the metro areas that need to be tested. Besides, the number of garaged classic cars that need to be tested is quite small compared to the cars between five and twenty years old that have enough volume on the road to where they matter.

I actually think that once a car is 20 or 25 years old, so long as there aren't obvious holes in the tailpipe that let emissions out without passing through the machine, a visual shouldn't matter anymore. My car from the seventies still has a lot of emissions controls on it that just don't function anymore due to age and mileage, but still have to be on there to pass the test. I've seen people actively disable components (blockout plate between the EGR valve and the intake, or a crimped-off smog pump air injection tube) and it still passes. If these cars can pass without these cobbled-on controls, then maybe it's time to let them pass if the actual output is clean, regardless of how that's achieved.

The expensive luxury cars prove that there's something of a market, and the relative scarcity drives up demand relative to supply. On top of that since they're having to deal with direct-sale bans in many states, until that's overcome by rich people with connections that want their cars, there's no easy path to mid-market cars. Once the institutional issues are largely overcome then it'll be a lot easier to do direct sales to the average car buyer.

On top of that, they're driving an interest in the other car makers to themselves give electrics a-go again.