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Tech: Slashdot discusses various efforts to transform the Internet and the Web into common nouns. This is one of those things that information systems instructors have to monitor, silly as it seems. See Wired, two entries at Wikipedia, The Chicago Manual and this article on Joseph Turow.

USA: The New York Times > National > Treading Carefully, Wal-Mart Enters Labor’s Turf: “‘In Chicago, you have to be willing to step out of your so-called comfort zone and what you’re used to doing,’ said John Bisio, a spokesman for Wal-Mart. ‘We recognize that there are experiences there that are different from other places. Organized labor is very strong there. We know we’re going to be subject to great scrutiny, and we really want to adhere or conform to the spirit of how things are done in Chicago.’ Mr. Bisio said that in Chicago, Wal-Mart would work with local leaders in choosing some of its employees and buy products and services from local and minority-owned businesses. He said he doubted the company would soften its opposition to labor unions, ‘but that’s not to say there won’t be times when criticism or scrutiny might make you better focus on what you really need to do for your own people.’”

World: Yahoo! News - My, how the Dutch have grown: “He became interested in height as an economic barometer after a lecture by Robert Fogel, the University of Chicago Nobel laureate who published a landmark study on the slave economy in the American South. African-American slaves, it seems, were significantly taller than their African ancestors but shorter than their owners for reasons that defied conventional wisdom. ‘People with better incomes and higher educations are taller. Everywhere and always,’ Komlos said. ‘Even in communist countries that were supposed to be classless. It’s one of the basic laws of heights.’ ”

USA: Yahoo! News - Response to 9/11 chaotic: “Neither did the FAA alert the military to the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 — until just minutes before the plane slammed into the Pentagon, according to the report. Likewise, the headquarters staff failed to act on a suggestion from the Boston regional control center for an immediate national alert to aircraft to secure their cockpits against intruders. Twelve minutes later, hijackers took over United Flight 93, the final plane captured by terrorists.
‘It just seems to me that those 12 critical minutes were a real opportunity to potentially do something about that fourth flight,’ said commission member Timothy Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana. Another commissioner, former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, declared that the FAA ‘blew it.’ As Sept. 11 unfolded, it often was lower-level FAA employees who bypassed the chain of command and took the initiative to respond, according to the report. Immediately after the Pentagon was struck, a manager at the national air traffic command center ordered all commercial aircraft grounded on his own authority while higher-ups were still debating such a move, the report said. ”

USA: CNN.com - Four drown at Fort Worth water park - Jun 17, 2004: Stupid Baptists can’t read signs. “A little girl either jumped or fell into the pool at the Fort Worth Water Gardens, across the street from the Fort Worth Convention Center, and the others apparently died trying to save her. Officials said that suction from a pump that pulls water to a waterfall at the park made rescues difficult.
All four were members of a Chicago church in town for a National Baptist Sunday School convention, said the Rev. Gerald M. Dew, the church’s pastor.”