But what if the stethoscope were issued to you personally? In offices every so often they give out promotional things like coffee mugs, say. You’re not expected to pass the mug around.

But why wouldn’t they issue you your own personal stethoscope? I’m thinking of the military, they issue uniforms that aren’t passed around for communal use.

No, but I was thinking you take the job and part of it is “here is your stethescope, welcome to ‘General Hospital’.”

Oh God, is this another “upgrade”? Off to get lunch and roam the streets. The joy of working (or not working, as is my case now) from home.

What would your cousin’s motive be to ask you to help her track down her own mother? That is a pathology, it sounds like. Is she garnering pity or sympathy or something? I have a couple of younger relatives who shade the truth a little bit but it’s really tough to lie to your own (distant) family members if they, the…

Are you really Nick Denton? Fess up.

Guilt might have been a motive. Imagine giving interviews and writing (fictional) memoirs about surviving a concentration camp. I’m not sure that right after the war and for decades thereafter there was any kind of compensation. There must have been some kind of psychological motive behind all of this.

I don’t know how nurses do it. I’d last about an hour in an ER before I’d have to be admitted myself, for the stroke brought on by the stress and the trauma.

I read once, I think it was Matt Taibbi when he was at the late, lamented New York Press, that stay-at-home Moms think their anthem should be Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing.” It was insanely funny the way he put it; I’m not doing it justice. (I should talk; I work from home and my sister is a SAHM.)

You have to buy your own stethescopes? It’s not part of the workplace-provided equipment you need to do your job? That’s interesting. When I’ve had office jobs I’ve never been asked to buy my own computer or chair or anything.

In his defense, I was a pretty youthful 41-year-old! At least I was living like a college sophomre…

There is a strange, small subset of people who do things like this, for seemingly no reason. I was at a party once and some acquaintance was mouthing off about his narrow escape from the North Tower. He was working in Stamford, so not even in the same state as the WTC. I made a new friend in high school who told me…

If you go to the site they have education, business, and finance sections. You really should read the linked article. It has garnered one comment, from “Elijah Wilson”, who wrote, “Great tips, thanks.”

Ben Carson gets his economic platform from the Bible:

Oh no, your jpeg of the Canine Donald is even better, because I can forward it to friends in workplaces without explanation.

Maybe the video of Susan Hayward’s star turn as Helen Lawson in 1967’s “Valley of the Dolls” exorcised him/her/it!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no one on earth produces better kitsch and clutter than the English.

You’re right, they would have landed at Liverpool, probably, which is pretty close to Yorkshire, where Downton Abbey is set. The Lusitania was bound for Liverpool before it was sunk. On the other hand the Titanic left England from Southampton, and if their ship had docked there they would have made their way to London…

That is excellent.

When I used to have a life my fellow undiagnosed alcoholics devised this “oh shit, have to go into work today” regimen: