Herding Cats: Oxford Comma, New Dollar Coins and NFL and NBA Lockout News

^{Image courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger}

This week we have NBA and NFL lockout news, the debt ceiling debate, ways to make money by walking, the Oxford comma, dollar coins and jumping penguins.

Quickish: NBA Lockout Starts Today? (And Your Point Is...?)  - The latest on the NBA lockout.  First, what's a lockout?  From NBA.com: "During the lockout, players will not receive their salaries; teams will not negotiate, sign or trade player contracts; players will not be able to use team facilities for any purpose..."  It's hard to side with either party in this case.  Players want to continue their obscene salaries, owners want more money.  In other words: millionaires vs. billionaires: they're both doing fine.  It's the reason that people sour on sports.  This is especially true in a recession, where a 12% pay cut for the NBA still amounts to more money than most people make in a lifetime.  This blogger seems to think that the players will cave rather than see the season go wasted.  It's at a very tentative moment in the proceedings, so time will tell....

Washington Post: NFL talks break for the weekend after negotiators repair rift - Meanwhile, the NFL is doing slightly better--but, as is always the case, negotiations can turn on a dime.  The NFL has been locked out since March and they're still figuring out how to divvy up the 9 billion in revenue for the NFL.  Difference here is that the NBA owners are claiming financial losses--though NBA revenue might not be as bad as the owners are making it out to be.  Basically, there's more money floating around for the NFL so the negotiations are less contentious. And though salaries are just as obscene as the NBA, fans will probably forgive this so long as the games still go on.

Wisebread: Gigwalk: Get Paid While You Walk! - Wisebread has a review of an intriguing new app called Gigwalk.  How it works:  Someone asks the app, "Is there a long line for (opening night of a movie)? and you can take a picture of the line to make some money.  What's good about this is you don't have to meet the person making a request, which could open it up for abuse.  But an app like this is only as good as the number of requests and $5 for a picture is pretty steep--seems like it would only be used by an ultra-rich clientele.  So it could be a while for this to take hold, but it's an innovative use of social media.  Another cool place to get cheap things (or do them) is fiverr.com.

Rortybomb: Republicans Reject the Republican Offer on Deficit Cutting - One of the more mystifying criticisms from the Tea Party is that Obama's some radical socialist, which is pretty far from the case.  Indeed, with the debt limit deal, the Democrats are offering the Republican's own plan and it's still being rejected: "Obama and the Democrats are fighting to get what the Republicans and the right-wing economic think tanks originally proposed they should do, and the GOP just keeps walking the goalposts to the right."  Likewise, Mitt Romney is criticized for being left-wing because of RomneyCare, when mandated health insurance was the Republicans' own plan from the early nineties.  If anything, Obama's being conservative, not being too far on the left, but somehow that message doesn't get through.

The Inquistr: Oxford Comma Debate: To Use or Not to Use - So this week Oxford said you can't use x, x, and x anymore; you must use x, x and x.   This changes everything.  Actually it changes nothing - as if a change in the Oxford style guide means that using a serial comma is always wrong.  Even Oxford says that context matters and rules can be bent.  Furthermore the uproar over the new rules were misguided, given that the new Oxford comma rules were only for press releases and internal communications.  Which is odd in itself: why that and not other communiques?  Overall, this news makes me happy, sad, and some other thing.

Bargaineering: Your Take: Presidential $1 Dollar Coins - Consider this something that could be cut from the budget: the production of dollar coins.  They're sort of like the soccer of money: for some reason Americans just aren't going to take to it in great numbers, even if in Europe dollar change is more common.  The weird thing is the idea that you can save money by using coins, which seems to be the opposite of the case.  Spending a paper dollar takes more deliberation than a coin currency that's the same size and shape of a quarter.  Personally, the reason I don't use dollar coins is because they're so rare.  If they were around more, I'd adapt.

No cats this week: here are some penguins.  They kind of mess with each other, don't they?



So how about you: any interest in using dollar coins more regularly?