Everybody slow down! Is what Anne writes in Slate:

Here is what happened: I was driving home from a friend's house in a Warsaw suburb Saturday night when my engine died. I tried to restart it, pumped the accelerator, heard a small explosion, and saw a flame. Smoke started coming out of the hood, which I didn't want to open. (This was a bad move, in retrospect, but I've seen what happens to smoking cars in the movies.) Someone called the fire department, which clearly didn't take my car problems very seriously.

When they finally arrived, around 20 minutes later, the scene did admittedly look rather spectacular. Columns of billowing white smoke, flames, the works. Still, it was only the engine burning, not the entire car, and the policeman who showed up agreed that the cause was probably some weird mechanical malfunction.

Then the cops heard her husband was a big politician, and they called in the Secret Service, and then the tabloids arrived, and the photographers, and the story spread, and next thing you know she was reading about herself on this very blog, which she calls "the high point of the entire day."

Honored! Whether it is Washington Post columnist car explosions or Washington Post newsroom fistfights, we stand ready to sensationalize!

Maclaren, the stroller of choice for parents who insist upon spending too much money on a stroller, has just issued a recall notice for all of its "umbrella strollers." The easiest way to determine whether your Maclaren is one of the affected models is to count your child's remaining fingers.

All Maclaren strollers sold since 1999 are included in the recall, according to a source briefed on the recall.

The step comes after 12 kids allegedly had their fingertips amputated by Maclaren strollers.

Loss of fingertips could impact your child's ability to fill out the little bubbles on the SAT, and should therefore be taken seriously. Please send us pics of the panicked mobs of sexually marginalized Mr. Moms in the streets of Cobble Hill.

[Pic: Pardon Me For Asking]

"ALM needs to be shamed," writes a desperate media employee drowning in the stank hellhole that is his office. Read and marvel at the depths to which what was once Steven Brill's prize jewel has sunk

OK. I got over, sort of, our furlough week (the unpaid vacation we all had
to take). The ever changing company name unnerves, but I'm a peon. As long
as the paycheck clears my money could come from the South Carolina GOP and
I wouldn't care. But this company has pushed me over the edge today. For
some reason I work with men who think it's cool to leave their reading
material in the bathroom. As the day moves on the bathroom is filled with
printed articles from ESPN and a few newspapers. Occasionally the stuff
left is work related. Only occasionally. All of this is left on the floor
as if the restroom is the private world of these media giants. And don't
get me started about seeing the number of people who walk out without
washing their hands!

Now I know you probably think I'm some neat freak who counts his paper
clips. I'm not (394 in case in you are wondering), but come on! Are we such
bottom media feeders we can't respect our co-workers, wash our hands AND
throw out our bathroom readings? Are we so ashamed of writing about lawyers
(shudder) that we forget courtesy to the person in the next pod?

Shame us Gawker. Tell us what slobs we are and to pick up our game. Point
to other media companies where this behavior is frowned upon. Remind ALM
employees that washing your hands is probably a good thing. Tell us the
restroom is not our home bathroom and to stop treating it as such! Please.
You are my last hope.

The restroom is not your home bathroom, ALM employees. Shame on you.


Irresponsible members of the liberal media at the Boston Globe published and disseminated to the public a suggestion for a Halloween pumpkin design that "called for decorators to create a pumpkin with a three-foot flame." After a stern warning from the fire marshal, the paper has removed the suggestion from its website. Score one for law and order.


Nifty: The Toledo Blade is offering $1 subscriptions to the unemployed. Since the unemployment rate in Toledo is one million percent, this should just make the Toledo Blade fold faster than ever. But, nice gesture.


A tipster sends more info on yesterday's layoffs at Glamour:

they let go two of the most beloved, smartest and most hard-working deputy editors, both of whom had been there around a decade. people left behind wonder how the magazine will even get printed without these two women.
also lost:
an accessories associate
fashion credits editor
articles editor
what most would agree were the best photo editor and the best graphic designer
a production director
and others
yikes
layoffs seemed very political...though the word was "reorganizing"...

[Bathroom pic: Flickr]

ITEM: More than 50 members of The Pagans motorcycle gang were arrested in a nationwide sweep yesterday. The crime that crippled the gang's Philly chapter: "a 'raffle' in which members of the Pagans collected cash for raffle tickets for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle." Hey, that's illegal guys.


ITEM: After some false starts, Brooklyn mobsters finally succeed in burning down a Dunkin Donuts using fireworks. They then have to wait nine years for the insurance payout. Which is $15,000. Crime pays, big time.


ITEM: A Pennsylvania woman forges a $50 check and puts it in a church offering plate. Then she steals the wallet of a lady sitting in a nearby church pew. She is later arrested.


What is next, American criminals being jailed for throwing a dog named 'Flash' at a police officer? Let's hope not

[via Adrants]

At one time, airline safety generally meant one thing: avoiding a crash. But safety regulators are increasingly focusing on surviving one.

I'll still opt for the "avoiding one" route, thanks! But researchers say that by putting in air bags and stronger seats, you'll have a better chance of surviving a minor accident, like, say, missing the runway.

In some airline crashes, the strength of the seats is irrelevant because the crash is not what the engineers call "survivable."

Technical! But tell me, New York Times, how do these so-called "engineers" know that having an airplane seat thrown at you at a high rate of speed is such a bad thing?

Safety regulators decided to impose the new rules after they found that passengers might survive a crash were they not crushed to death when the seats tore loose from the floor.

An interesting theory.
[NYT. Pic via]

You don't see us reporting live from North Korea. That's not just because we are lazy internet hacks inferior in all ways to grizzled "real" journalists; it's also because "real" journalists work for big organizations like, say, the New York Times, which bristle with lawyers and diplomatic connections to get you out of trouble in a perilous foreign environment, whereas we just have one lawyer here who is way too busy defending our right to make slanderous jokes to help us out if we get arrested in North Korea, or kidnapped in Colombia, or whatnot.

In this way you see that the internet makes foreign reporting unsafe! Because all those big "real" news organization are actually going broke, thanks to the internet, and all the reporting is migrating over to shoestring-budgeted online operations like, for example, Current (which is actually bigger than most!), which are fine when it comes to getting news out over the internet, but are not so well prepared to trot out teams of lawyers and private security guards to keep its correspondents safe, cost be damned.

So here we are: the old outlets that used to sponsor all these daring foreign correspondents are increasingly unable to, because their businesses have been totally gutted by clever little lithe internet operations, which are clever and lithe precisely because they're far too stripped-down to ever spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars sponsoring dangerous foreign reporting, which is really an extremely high cost-per-word proposition, and not that widely read, besides. So foolish brave reporters take it upon themselves to do this exciting reporting anyhow, with little safety net, and then we get a situation like the North Korean one today.

Sure, it's tempting to "blame the internet." But if you people clicked more on stories about North Korea than stories about, say, Megan Fox, then maybe foreign reporting would still be profitable enough for even tiny news outlets to hire good foreign handlers.

That's not to say big papers get to be holier-than-thou on this issue—reporters for the biggest media outlets in the world are just as likely as anyone to have their people kidnapped or arrested. More likely, at the moment! But that's changing. Which means the need for a Journalism-Saving Delta Force is now greater than ever. If they put Megan Fox on it, it'll pay for itself.
[NYT. Pic: AP]

Think about it: A lone nut was able to effectively seal off the entire New York Times building—and get an entire floor evacuated—by filling up an envelope with some fish tank pebbles or something. The same thing happened to the Times a month after 9/11, and they evacuated the entire newsroom. Also, "since then, there have been several other cases of suspicious materials being sent to The Times. None turned out to be harmful."

It doesn't take much extrapolation to figure out that you could cost the NYT millions of dollars over the course of a year with just a box of safety envelopes and two scoops of baking soda. (And the Times can't afford it!) And really, is anthrax still a thing? It takes an incredibly sophisticated scientist to produce weapons-grade anthrax, and we haven't had any real anthrax attacks since that one rash we had several years back. It's basically the skyscraper equivalent of being made to remove your shoes when you go on planes. One single dude ruined it for everyone.

So our suggestion: If you receive some powder in the mail, calmly call the cops. Don't shut down the building. Don't evacuate everyone. A decent actuary will tell you that, hey, in the long run your odds are extremely good. And that's what the New York Times stands for: facts, statistics, and a life chained to a desk. Back to work!

[We reserve the right to change our minds when we receive anthrax here.]

[via Adrants; photo via Peter Kreder]

Finally, into the machine popped TSA project manager Kyle Keyser, 27. And I immediately understood the reluctance to use a guy.

Keyser's image was yanked off the screen so quickly, I had yet to determine definitively if he was born Jewish. It was instantaneously clear, however, that the young man is not one to wield a razor near sensitive parts.

Andrea Peyser, if you oppose this technology then the terrorists have already won.

Tria and Silk'n have their limitations. They are slower than professional treatments, so they work best in small areas like lower legs, underarms and bikini lines rather than big areas like hairy men's backs. The Food and Drug Administration hasn't cleared them for use on the face, though consumers could end up using the devices there. And African-Americans and other dark-skinned people can't use them because of a risk of burns. Lasers and light-based technologies work by targeting pigment in the hair and can mistake dark or tanned skin for the enemy.

Carnegie deli just exploded
15 mins ago
yeah
in the basement

UPDATE: Apparently, just a big fire, courtesy of an exploding ConEd cable. Everyone got out fine. Return to your homes.

Carnegie Deli fire evacuates 35 diners [WABC]

Praise for her hero [NYDN]
Blast beauty kin thank city [NYDN]
Beauty's Blown Away [NYP]

Because You Demanded It — deranged man attacks subway rider with industrial tools, then absconds with teddy bear on continued crimewave. The Today Show has the goods above. Shocking, as even with the trials and tribulations of a normal New York subway commute, one rarely expects an assault from a pair of cordless reciprocating saws. And there's some question about whether or not MTA workers at the scene fled and/or observed the carnage with bored disinterest. See zone-flooding repetitive linkfest after the jump for full details, but the upshot is that the alleged saw-wielding maniac has been apprehended, and the victim is recovering from his wounds in the hospital. Plus, as Newsday notes, subway officials don't think this will make customers feel unsafe, and they're right — an interviewed straphanger says of the saw attack, "It doesn't happen that often." [emph. added]

UPDATE: New York City Transit maintains that the "transit authority people" who didn't come to the sawing victim's rescue were not MTA employees but actually electrical contractors from Ozone Park. That's what you get for importing cheap Queens labor.

Saw Maniac in Subway Horror [NYP]
Man Slices Through Postal Worker at Subway Station [Gothamist]
'Positive I was a dead man ... I was bleeding everyplace' [NYDN]
Postal Worker Sliced by Saw-Wielding Attacker [NYT]
Saw-attack victim: Workers didn't help me [AMNY]
Slashed at a subway station [Newsday]
Attack With Electric Saw In Subway [NY Sun]
Arrest In Subway Power Saw Rampage [CBS]
Official: Subways safe [Newsday]

Don Hill, the owner of the club, insisted it's not a violent place and that he hasn't had problems in the past.

"Everybody seems to have a fun time here, everybody enjoys themselves," Hill said. "I didn't see it but anything can happen."

Soho Clubgoer Stabbed in Back [NYP]
Benji Madden fights at MisShapes [NYP via ohnotheydidn't]

[Photo: Getty Images]

And old college pal currently living in San Francisco and mom to a tinyish infant, writes to tell us the real story:

Only because I am worried that my baby, who has inherited my smallness genes, will be one year before she weighs 20 pounds, I can tell you that Britney IS wrong. The kid has to be both one year and 20 pounds.

Tiny mom to tiny infant helpfully sends along a link to the car-seat guidelines, and, well, Sean Preston, born on September 14, certainly isn't a year old yet. Good try, Sony BMG.

Car Safety Seats: A Guide for Families [AAP]
Earlier:
Breaking: Teen-Pop Sensation Deficient in Auto-Safety Provisions
Remainders: In Reluctant Defense of Britney Spears