January 17, 2004

At what point does it become dangerous? The New York Times reports on a bizarre practice by Wal-Mart, locking in its workers in the store during the nightshift resulting in them doing unable to leave the store until the morning. The company claims that this practice is only done in high crime areas and in addition to a fire escape being available there is always someone with the key in the store. The Times states that a key is not always available and workers are repeatedly told they will be fired if they use the fire escape for anything other than a fire – leaving the store to go to a hospital after breaking your ankle does not qualify. In other cases the fire doors were chained shut, in 1988 an overnight stocker collapsed and died and nobody could get him out of the store. In addition to being dangerous this practice tramples on workers rights. The Times says: Mr. Cobb [an overnight supervisor in Florida] said the Wal-Mart rule that generally prohibits employees from working more than 40 hours a week to avoid paying overtime played out in strange ways for night-shift employees. Mr. Cobb said that on many workers' fifth work day of the week, they would approach the 40-hour mark and then clock out, usually around 1 a.m. They would then have to sit around, napping, playing cards or watching television, until a manager arrived at 6 a.m. A interesting thing in reading about Wal-Mart is that if anything bad happens in their stores – sexual discrimination, short paying on overtime, missing keys to exits, etc. the company says that it was the fault of some store managers and the issue is being looked. At some point the company has to deal with things proactively, train the managers to follow the rules and take responsibly for what they do. 11:47:13 PM

Frank Sietzen Jr. of UPI Science News and Keith L. Cowing, the editor of NASAWatch.com and SpaceRef.com have posted their three part series on US President George W. Bush's newly announced space plan on SpaceRef.com. Read parts 1,2,3. 6:56:58 PM

The Washington Post examines the problems facing the National Hockey League (NHL) including a possible season ending striking next September. Having expanded throughout the United States during the 1990’s the NHL is now coming to terms with the fact that hockey is a northern sport and ranks behind football, baseball, basketball, college football, NASCAR and even other sports in much of the United States. With rising salaries and a small television contract leading to massive losses the leagues’ owners and players must reach an agreement to avoid a strike or the loss of some teams. Much of the previous paragraph does not apply to the Toronto Maple Leafs whose main concern is finding a truck big enough to carry all their gate receipts away. But some does, they do need somebody to play against. 6:25:51 PM

The Jerusalem Post’s Bret Stephens examines the biased writing of The Guardian’s Middle East editor Brian Whitaker, a man that Stephens says is: In his writing, he is every bit the bigot he claims Kilroy-Silk to be. Or, to put it another way: Whitaker will happily write and say things about Israelis that he would not dream of saying about blacks or Arabs – and he usually gets away with it. 6:25:33 PM