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Book Review: Bonk

I'd written before that science and mathematics were never my forte in school. Which is unfortunate, because I love learning the facts and figures behind our amazing world. This is precisely why I get overly excited when I watch a program (hello, Discovery, History, and the National Geographic channels!) or read a book that can explain things to me in straight, matter-of-fact, and entertaining ways that do not make me want to gouge out my eyes. A few years ago I picked up a book called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Roach takes a macabre and often shushed topic to investigate the science and industry surrounding death...

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Confessions of a Former Best Buy Employee

The Consumerist is currently deep into the 2008 Worst Company in America contest, with 16 companies left in the round 3 bracket. They just posted the third installment of its "Sweet 16" matchup: Best Buy vs Diebold. Personally, I think Diebold is worse than Best Buy. Not only due to the voting machine fiasco, but to the fact that I've dealt with them many times in my prior job and I've found that the company couldn't be more poorly run. That being said, Best Buy is pretty terrible too. I should know, because I worked there. My tenure at Best Buy was short, from 2000-2001, and things may have changed since then. (But from reading comments on sites such as the Consumerist, things do...

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