Huzzah: Friday. The weekend looks warm and wet, but it's perfect out there now; office workers all over buzzland are looking out the window and feeling the shackles of duty slowly loosen. I think 6 PM on Friday is the best time of the week; the work is behind you, the entirety of the weekend stretches ahead, and for the moment you can pretend that Saturday and Sunday aren't packed solid with their own unique obligations. Unless you work weekends, of course. As someone who'll probably be spending part of tonight pitchforking out spam, I understand. 

Comparative Justice: you really can’t compare the two cases. But.

Woman fined $222,000 for file sharing.

School Bus driver fined $482 for drinking on the job.

The last time I got to the bottom of my email box was 1998, which is why I am interested in ideas like this: E-mail Free Fridays. As much as I enjoy reading emails, the obligation to respond has given me a big dense of knot of guilt the size of those world’s-largest-string-balls you see in Guinness book. Of course, this works one way;  the only thing worse than getting ten tons of email is waiting for someone to respond to your email. C’mon!  It’s been six minutes! What are you doing over there? 

Would you want to swear off email for a day? I’d rather text, since it’s more immediate and concise. On the other hand, I refuse to use text abbreviations, because they make me feel like Koko, the Talking Ape, so I spell everything out. Which is really fun if you’re correcting a radio host about his use of the term antidisestablishmentarianism. You can actually hear your thumb start to cry.

Another condo canceled. Perhaps we're entering a new phase in the condo bust when they start demolishing the ones they've already built; in six years, everything will be back to its natural state as a weedy parking lot. This one would have filled out an empty corner, and provided, er, closure to the intersection. On the other hand, the entire blook seemed a bit confused, and  I don’t think those indented asymmetrical metal boxes will date well. Right now, though,  they’re a guarantee of architectural hipness. Worried your structure looks too much like a traditional row of brownstones? Jam a dented asymmetrical box in the middle! There’s something about the front entrance that looks like a giant guillotine blade, too.  

I still hope we get this one, because otherwise the era of skyscraper building downtown seems over for good. I’m not hopeful.

I’m truly surprised we made it through the last boom without a big new skyscraper downtown.  Given the state of modern skyscraper design – either clownishly “different” or sober and dull -  I should be relieved, but we could use another Norwest Center. (I know, I know, it’s Wells Fargo. And Dayton’s is Macy’s. And Minnegasco is ReliaPointeCentre, or something. Whatever.) It makes more sense to build new office space in the burbs, but a low-slung suburban office park will never instill the same emotions as a fifty-store tower glowing in the fog at night. A city is known by its downtown, not its interchangeable blue-glass blocks sitting in the middle of an asphalt sea.

Another day, another half-million lead-soaked Chinese toy recall. Somehow they got lead into plastic cups and Baby Enstein blocks. It as if there’s a special lead-infusion machine at the end of every Chinese assembly line, and they keep forgetting to turn it off. Rest assured that buzz.mn has been lead-free its entirely life. Except for the lead in the monitor you use to read it, of course. But that’s why we use background colors; they’re specially calibrated to block the lead. Just be sure to move back a few feet when you reload the page, and the Color-Shield™ is temporarily disabled.