On Vacation and Sick? A Court Says Take Another

This type of vacation sickness prolly doesn’t count. (img by Redrif)

tl;dr in Europe you can’t use vacation days for sick days, that’s illegal.

@NYT:

For most Europeans, almost nothing is more prized than their four to six weeks of guaranteed annual vacation leave. But it was not clear just how sacrosanct that time off was until Thursday, when Europe’s highest court ruled that workers who happened to get sick on vacation were legally entitled to take another vacation.

“The purpose of entitlement to paid annual leave is to enable the worker to rest and enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure,” the Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg, ruled in a case involving department store workers in Spain. “The purpose of entitlement to sick leave is different, since it enables a worker to recover from an illness that has caused him to be unfit for work.”

With much of Europe mired in recession, governments struggling to reduce budget deficits and officials trying to combat high unemployment, the ruling is a reminder of just how hard it is to shake up long-established and legally protected labor practices that make it hard to put more people to work and revive sinking economies. (more…)

Wildfire Tees

You don’t actually have to care about wildfire people these tees are that sexy.

All of our time, designs, and efforts are donated so that 100% of our proceeds go to support victims of Colorado wildfires through the following charitable organizations (50% to each):

Care and Share Food Bank (50%)

Colorado Red Cross (50%)

Both organizations have recently requested monetary support so they can prioritize and address the most pressing needs.  We’d like to help in a big way.

Ah, wildfire season. When sunsets are all gorgeous and asthmatics go all hypoxic and blue in the lips… Remember this year’s wildfires by donning these stylish tees the profits of which go help people who are getting boned by wildfires, ($20).

Learn more. Owe less.

So, uh… educate yourself. And don’t go into debt. (img by hardtopeel)

College is seeming more and more like a racket, and people are finding out too late to do much more than letter up some cardboard signs, march around the neighborhood beating on cookware, or post on tumblr about how the system did them wrong.

On the one hand, I don’t blame them. They didn’t know what they were getting into when they borrowed a couple of hundred thousand dollars to get a degree. They believed viewbooks and college marketing, which said that people with degrees are guaranteed to make good money fresh out of school.

Circumstances have changed. College education costs have more than doubled in the last 15 years, and people with degrees are worth less than ever due to the collapsed job market and to degree inflation.

What can you do about it? (more…)

Intermission: Watercolor Blade Runner

More on the technique used to make this at Wired.

In the name of Jesus, I fuck you the fuck up!

That was a mistranslation. The original says to punch people in the other cheek. (img by Ricardo Hurtubia)

Despite the realism of the Flying Spaghetti Monster officiating the fight between the Almighty and his Divine Progeny in the image above, I’m pretty sure it’s not real. There’s no way Christ would have done that kind of damage to Yahweh. We’re talking about the guy who’s famous for being nice, telling everyone else to be nice, and then letting people kill him so that his Father doesn’t send them all to Hell for eternity for doing things like wearing polyester blends or eating tasty tasty pigs.

I’ve probably pissed of some Christians now. And yesterday, I would have scoffed about them, since everyone knows that Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek and just love and pray for people instead of beating the shit out of them in His name (everyone but the crusaders, anyway… and Westboro Baptist Church… and all these guys). But today, I’m worried. Because there’s a new set of evangelicals in the US… evangelicals that train to fuck people the fuck up.

Yes. There are evangelical church pastors who love mixed martial arts fighting and promote it in their congregations. What does that even look like? In the words of one dude: “The hope is that through the fight, I can create a relationship with the person I’m fighting and extend Christ to him.”

Yes. This is real. And there’s a documentary coming to prove it: Fight Church. You have to see it to believe it.

“Can you love your neighbor as yourself and at the same time knee him in the face as hard as you can?” I guess we’ll find out…

Cows are always in season. What about fruit?

What the hell is this and why can I only get them in Juneuary? (img by Leonora Enking)

Your grocery store has probably lulled you into the belief that you can get any kind of fruit, vegetal, or herb any time of year… simply walk in, plunk down your debit card, and bam. You’re on your way to a tasty basil and breadfruit reduction.

Now’s when you expect me to go into the huge impact on the environment this sort of arrangement is. But I really think there are more compelling, more immediate reasons to know what’s in season: fruits/veggies that are in season usually cost less, and they’re usually far tastier than, say breadfruit that’s been hydroponically coaxed out of a test tube in the middle of Augtober.

Also, Chasing Delicious has made these really great poster/infographics laying out what’s in season when:

I can’t wait for the seasonal meat chart… (img by Chasing Delicious)

So now you have no excuse. Go to Chasing Delicious, get a poster, then get some papaws, okra, and mace and see what you can come up with. But not if you’re reading this in the Fall.