...and it is discrimination, plain and simple. I get why some managements are compelled to favor new, young employees over older, experienced employees. It's an ego thing. They want to create a culture that reflects their goals and values, and if you were around before they showed up, you represent the old culture that they are trying to wipe out. Especially in blue/gray collar professions where you may have a guy who has been on the job 10 years but has no degree, but the guy with a BS that has been there for only two years gets promoted because the new management values education over experience. I am in a similar situation where I work. Look guys, we all turn 40. Not everyone is going to be the guy running things. It's discrimination, and if it happens to you go do your homework and fight it if they are violating internal policy or law.

Certainly the noble napkin deserves its own entry. I refuse to submit to the ungrateful "some other kind of paper" treatment!

Honestly, the internet is no different than any other public domain. Too many people sit behind their keyboards and feel they are entitled to do things that would constitute criminal activity in the real world, or just display what cowardly, anti-social jackasses they really are behind the veil of anonymity. If you don't want the rest of the internet scrutinizing what kind of citizen you are, maybe you aren't such a good citizen in the first place. The problem I have with the EFF and their ilk is that what they want benefits thieves and pedophiles as much as it does the paranoid individuals who prize their privacy so much. Tell you what, go start a family, have children, and then tell me you don't think every pedophile deserves a bullet in the back of the head. What you do and say on the internet should be subject to the same inhibitions and legality that what you do and say in the real world is. If you are that afraid of what someone might do with some info on you, disconnect your phone and internet and don't leave your home.

The omission of Stephen Maturin is unforgivable.