I’ve known that The Onion has been interested in franchising the paper to other cities for quite some time, but this is the first public request for inquiries that I have seen. You know I love freesheets, but it may be a little late, especially if the franchisees don’t get a cut of the web income. The Onion, Inc. already run company-owned weekly papers in Austin, Madison, Chicago, Denver, the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, and New York.

Bloomberg Businessweek

When a company in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa purchases a search ad through Google, it sends the money to Google Ireland. The Irish government taxes corporate profits at 12.5 percent, but Google mostly escapes that tax because its earnings don’t stay in the Dublin office, which reported a pretax profit of less than 1 percent of revenues in 2008.

Irish law makes it difficult for Google to send the money…

Andrew Cusack

This morning, one country disappeared, two more were born, a fourth was expanded, and all are part of a single kingdom. The Netherlands Antilles, the collective islands of the Dutch West Indies which since 1954 has formed a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was dissolved. Two of the islands in the archipelago, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, have become full constituent countries of the Kingdom (alongside Aruba, which was…

Still in the 70s. I recall very clearly being driven down the I-5 from the Canadian border to somewhere south – Bellingham, probably, but possibly the seaside oasis of Birch Bay or the Emerald City. As we entered the farmland outside of the border town, Blaine, there was what appeared to be a wooden control tower, maybe five stories high. Sitting in a field. No planes, no runway. Blackberries taking over. Then it was gone….

As a kid in the 70s, I loved Mad Magazine. By the late 70s, early 80s, I had switched my loyalty to the National Lampoon. But I had never heard of this brutally dead-on 1971 National Lampoon parody of Mad. So much hate. It can only be a love affair gone wrong.

Beautiful.

Every time I happen to come across a 21st century Mad, I’m horrified that they are peddling this stuff to kids. They still have it.

Michael Klarman

The (US) Supreme Court for much of its history has approved of racial segregation and disenfranchisement, the subordination of women and gays and lesbians, the criminalization of dissident speech, and a very narrow conception of the separation of church and state and of the rights of criminal defendants.

In the end, we, the American people, determine what sort of country we live in–the Constitution and the courts play a…

Use only space after a period. Hallelujah.

Part of a new lecture series that clothing company Frietag is curating in Zuruch Next up – tomorrow – is Wired UK editor David Rowan.

I don’t know anything about the Other Guys. It doesn’t even seem worth sticking on my LoveFilm queue. But there is something great about its end credits.