I can think of at least one EiNY reader who might like this.

• Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics :: NYTimes.com
  An economist’s take on love: “The returns on your investment should at least equal the cost of the investment. If you are getting less back than you put in over a considerable period of time, back off.”

Ben Smith is gathering a small, but growing, compilation of Obama jokes:

A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, “This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat.”

Obama Jokes (Politico)

While I was at Coney Island this weekend, I got off a couple of lucky shots of an NYPD chopper sweeping low along the beach. At first I thought this was the best photo.

Until I looked back at this one and, even with my lousy eyesight, noticed someone hanging out the door.

What better way to spend a hot summer Sunday at work?

How Ta-Nehisi Coates could think that infamous New Yorker cover is not overstated enough to qualify as a piece of satire is beyond me.

Everyone knows Obama would have a portrait of Sayyid Qutb over the fireplace before he even thought of bin Laden.

Michelle Obama with a Kalashnikov? Puh-lease. According to the last completely true anonymous viral email I read, Michelle packs an Uzi under her clothes. (Besides, D.C. gun laws, while moving in the right direction, have not not yet matured enough to allow the carrying of automatic weapons in the home or office.)

And an American flag in the fireplace when it could be put to much better and more eco-friendly use in the bathroom?

Come on, that cover is a complete caricature.

Maybe white folks shouldn’t draw pictures of Michelle Obama… (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

• Why the family dinner is good for parents :: Slate Magazine
  My sister and I could have happily eaten every meal in front of the TV, but our parents were sticklers for family dinner time. According to this article, they were doing it as much for their own wellbeing as ours.
  (tags: Family)

It appears my googleganger has come up with an unintentionally offensive learning aide for kids, Paki the Hippo:

Let’s face it, we all care about the environment but managing energy, water, and waste is a challenge in itself. The key is instilling eco-behavior as a part of our everyday routine. That’s where Paki the Hippo comes in.

Designer Paul Berger created Paki as a edutainment way for school kids to learn about energy consumption. With teeth, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth all articulated, Paki aims to teach in an uber cute way instead of staring at boring graphs and topographic charts…

I can see it now: a bunch of school kids at the zoo, pointing at the hippo and shouting “Paki.” Perhaps a name change is in order?

Paki The Hippo Is Eco-Edutainment (Yanko Design)

Looks like little has changed in UK journalism since I started out at the Western Morning News in 2001. This from a correspondent to the excellent Churner Prize blog:

Two years ago my first interview after completing my NCTJ [National Council for the Training of Journalists] prelims was at a news agency. I turned down the job because they offered me £10k and expected me to run my own car. The office was in one of the most expensive parts of the country and living on £10k would have been utterly impossible. I often wonder if they found anyone to fill the role.

The good news is that it made my first job at [well-known publishing group] seem like I’d won the lottery. I was getting paid a whopping £13,838 a year and was still expected to run my own car. I was 32 years old.

In an effort to earn some extra cash I enquired about handing out the publisher’s free commuter paper at my local train station and was not entirely surprised to learn that the hourly rate was more than mine as a trainee reporter.

My starting salary at the WMN was £10,700. I was expected to have my own car, work every other Sunday and often late into the night with no overtime. I remember I used to rejoice at getting sent out on stories, just so I could earn a bit of petrol money.*

If I did manage to earn an additional £40 or £50 a month, I had very little time to enjoy my windfall. I was too busy churning out a couple of leads a day, plus a pic story, a couple of fillers and a column of nibs (news in briefs). On a good day, I probably filed about 1,000 words. On an average day about 1,500. And on a bad day 2,000 words or more.

In a stroke of genius, our uber bosses at Northcliffe Newspapers worked out a way of saving even more money by cutting down on sub editors and getting page designers to send templates directly to reporters. That way we could write our own headlines and picture captions, and sub our stories to make sure they precisely fit the page. Often we were reduced to padding stories with facts and quotes from press releases and the Internet just so we could fill the template.

We weren’t journalist, we were page fillers in a word factory. It’s a wonder that anything original makes it into local and regional newspapers nowadays when you consider how few people are filling those pages every day.

*I admit, we did earn time and half on bank holidays. And about a year after I joined the WMN, Northcliffe increased its starting salary for trainees to a colossal £12,000.