Staying with your husband and ex-husband

After the bitterness of a divorce, it has been known to happen that the couple make up in many cases, in some cases going to the extent of getting back together, or in other cases, becoming friends who can depend on each other for many items. However, the situation described below can be pretty rare, after all, how often do you know of a wife re-marrying, and then moving in with her new husband into the home of her ex-husband. The divorced husband initiated the move, partly to get to meet his children more often (link to article):

Struggling to make ends meet, trying to dig themselves out of debt, Nicole Thompson-Arce and her husband have moved in with her ex-husband. Together, the unlikely threesome of Omaha, Nebraska, is raising two young daughters from the first marriage. When she and Craig Thompson, 42, were going through a divorce in 2005, this was not a deal either of them could have imagined striking. It was a messy divorce, the kind involving a custody dispute. But once they ironed out that battle, agreeing to joint custody, Thompson-Arce said they were able to move on and forward.
Soon after the Florida wedding, the new lovebirds flew into a financial mess. She had left a job, and as soon as she found another (a temp position), her 22-year-old husband was fired from his higher-paying gig. They fell behind in rent. The bills stacked up. The credit card debt grew. In walked the ex with an offer, just in time for Christmas. Thompson, an 18-year bakery employee at Wal-Mart, lives in a three-bedroom, one-bath home. "I knew they were having money problems, so I just asked them to move in," he said. "I figured I'd get to see my girls, my daughters, more often. And Nicole said yes right away."

Sounds surprising, right ? After all, it might be a bit embarrassing as well to move in with your ex-husband, but in this bad economy, many decisions get made that would not seem possible earlier.

Letting people know when you are dead and gone

If you are going to depart from this world, what would think about ? You would worry about the impact this would have on your family in terms of emotional and financial considerations, you would worry about whether you are going to leave with getting all the things done that you would have liked. However, would you worry about informing people on your online communities (including gaming worlds and social networks) that you are not going to be coming back, and they should not expect to see you there again. To some people, this is important as well, and hence an online service is coming up in this regard (link to article):

When Robert Bryant's father died, he left his son a little black USB flash drive in a drawer in his home office. The drive contained a list of contacts for his son to notify, including the administrator of an online group he had been in.
David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has set up a site called Deathswitch, where people can set up emails that will be sent out automatically if they don't check in at intervals they specify.
There's another site: Slightly Morbid. It also sends email when a member dies, but doesn't rely on them logging in periodically while alive. Instead, members have to give trusted friends or family the information needed to log in to the site and start notification process if something should happen.

Political correctness gone mad in the EU Parliament

From time to time, you hear of political correctness gaining ground. Removing sex based discrimination is a noble quest, such as when jobs are reserved for either only males and females. However, in recent years, there has been a push to remove all traces of traditional male dominance in the nomenclature of professions, so a profession such as 'sportsmen' should now be re-designated 'athletes' since 'sportsmen' has the term men in the name. Read more about this in the following link:

The European Parliament has prohibited the use of the terms 'Miss' and 'Mrs' in case they upset female MEPs. According to a new "Gender-Neutral Language" guidance, the politicians are required to address female members by their full name only. It has also revealed that 'sportsmen' should be called 'athletes', 'statesmen' should be referred to as 'political leaders' , and terms like 'synthetic' or 'artificial' should be used in place of 'man-made'.
The guidance lists has also banned terms for describing professions, including fireman, airhostess,headmaster, policeman, salesman, manageress, cinema usherette and male nurse. However, according to the booklet, "no gender-neutral term has been successfully proposed" to replace 'waiter' and 'waitress', allowing parliamentarians to use these words in a restaurant or cafe.

Many MP's are not taking kindly to these changes, since they seem to be a case of political correctedness gone wild, totally out of control. At such times, these proposed changes either seem funny, or make people very irritated at having to change their language to accommodate such changes. The funny thing is, for many of these changes, there are not many such requests; but you give a free rein to some person desperate to correct historical imbalances, and you can end up in such a situation.

Going topless a way to make a coffee shop a hit

The economy is real bad, businesses are not getting enough customers. You want to find a way to attract repeat customers to a coffee shop, so what should you do ? Why not play to the temptation of every human being for the human flesh, and if you can get the local authorities to agree to it, there would not be anything wrong. And so did Donald Crabtree, who visualized having a new coffee shop with plenty of customers, and who went ahead and opened Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, Maine, where the waiters and waitresses serve their customers topless. You can just imagine, you go inside and a waiter or waitress comes and serves you, with their upper body totally bare (link):

In a town with fewer than 4,500 residents, the topless coffee shop is booming with business. Paul Crabtree, the owner's brother, describes business so far as "fantastic." "It's just been crowds mobbing in," he said. Donald Crabtree faced initial opposition to his plan, but he won the right to go ahead in a planning board hearing last week. Many local residents were irate over the idea of combining coffee and nudity. Crabtree, however, saw a profitable business venture.
The flood of job applications -- more than 150 -- for Grand View Topless Coffee Shop reflected the rough job market. Crabtree hired 10 women and five men under stringent requirements, including friendliness and, what he considered most important, that the wait staff "treat everyone equally." Of the 15 selected, most had been laid off from other jobs in the past few months.

Interesting, but there is a very high chance that people will copy this idea all over (subject to the local council approving such a special coffee shop).