Slow decision

It’s 2012, and since the world hasn’t ended (yet) it is time once again to head to San Diego Comic-Con armed with the all-new and improved Click Communications Comic-Con Survival Guide!  

Going behind the scenes of a true mystery investigaton intrigued me from the moment I received this book in the mail. Being a fan of the Hollywood gossip scene and a good mystery story was the perfect combination to strike my interest when I dove right into this novel.

With the recent focus on reviving the economy by nurturing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students, one might conclude there’s little economic value in honing a basic skill like writing.Not true, say Stephanie Roberson Barnard and Deborah St James, authors of Listen. Write. Present.:The Elements for Communicating Science and Technology (Yale University Press; 2012), www.ListenWritePresent.com. They cite the American Society for Engineering Education in which researchers ranked technical writing No. 2 in a list of 38 necessary skills for engineers.

If you have your head plugged in at all to the tech-connected world we live in you might have come across something called ‘planking’ in the last few days.  This has become the latest pastime of a nation and the world.  The glitterati have taken to it and social media is abuzz with planking, but what is it?  All you need to do is lie down on your stomach, keep your limbs straight to your body to resemble a plank, and snap a picture.  Planking cred is awarded for completing the activity in unusual places. 

  According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, approximately 75 percent of all employees steal from work in some way. What’s worse is that about 30 percent of all corporate bankruptcies are a direct result of employee theft. The National Retail Security Survey in 2009 said you can also subtract a whopping $15.9 billion each year just from retailers who suffer from employee theft. With the problem so widespread, many companies simply factor those losses into their yearly projections,…

  Companies pursue patents for a wide variety of reasons -- competitive advantage, company valuation, tax credits and others -- but in chasing patent claims, did you know that it actually benefits companies to look at patent applications filed by competitors, too? That’s what one patent expert, attorney Roger Maxwell, believes. In his experience, searching competitors’ published patent applications and existing patents has actually helped his clients maximize their commercial advantages and follow the law. “We can take a…

LA’s Laurel Canyon music scene has been well documented through a variety books and movies. Laurel Canyon was where Miss Pamala found her super-groupie training wheels trying to shag Byrd Chris Hillman. Every LA music history has a chapter (or more) devoted to the goings on in this ’Eden above Sunset." This now almost-mythic place was where Frank Zappa was regualarly providing a place to crash and David Geffen was getting knotted up with business before becoming a Free…

According to the latest U.S. Census figures from November of 2009, 84 percent of the custodial parents in the 13.7 million single-parent households in the U.S. are mothers. Only 16 percent of custodial parents are dads. Many fathers blame the court systems, which they believe favors the mothers in most cases, but one expert believes that men have more control over that paradigm than they might think. “When it comes to deciding who gets the kids, it’s natural for…

At the start of her career, Rosie O’Donnell probably never dreamed she’d have her own TV talk show, but she did. And with Oprah Winfrey’s landmark show ending next year, a new Rosie show is being positioned to take over from Oprah as the preeminent daytime talk show. Rosie’s success in the entertainment industry is a lesson to everyone with aspirations to become a celebrity themselves. Celebrity expert Marsha Friedman, a 20-year media veteran and author of the book…

Dear Margo: Here's a new one for you -- I'm assuming, as it's a pretty ridiculous situation. Two years ago, my husband begged for a tarantula, and after too many cocktails, I bought him one for his birthday. I am scared to death of spiders and have had buyer's remorse ever since. I have nightmares about it getting loose, and even had a panic attack when I saw it molting. My husband won't get rid of the thing, and…

  In the original film version of Inherit the Wind, the fictionalization of the "Scopes monkey trial" that pitted Darwin’s Theory of Evolution against The Bible, the final scene was the payoff for James Strickling. In that scene, Spencer Tracy, who played the attorney who defended the teacher jailed for teaching evolution to his students, picked up Darwin’s book in one hand as if he were weighing it on a scale. He then picked up The Bible in the other…

The progression of Ilana Haley’s life from soldier to dancer to designer to teacher is no more unlikely than the simple fact that she survived her youth to live through it all. Haley uses her memories of living on a Kibbutz in Israel to tell stories of love and war in her book     About Ilana HaleyIlana Haley takes her literary inspiration from an Israeli childhood — as a child of early Kibbutz pioneers. She left her Kibbutz…

In the hours before his death, Michael Jackson was treated to a buffet of tranquilizers, prescription drugs and a drug that is rarely administered outside the parameters of hospital and clinic-based medical procedures -- propofol. It’s the use of that final drug, and the rumors of Jackson’s love for the sleep inducer, which he called his “milk,” that makes one anesthesiologist believe that the pop star’s death was imminently preventable and unnecessary. “To say that Michael Jackson’s death was preventable is…