HR Pro’s are getting a heart attack about now… you can’t! At least not in the US.

Well, CBS may have found a way to hint at it, without actually saying so: they took a photo of Katie Couric and published a version showing some Photoshop wizardry: she lost a good 20 pounds.

“Couric, who was made aware of the picture’s alteration yesterday, joked that she liked the original better.

“There’s more of me to love,” she quipped. ”

(full story at the New York Post)

Tags: HR, HR+Policy, weight+loss, CBS, Katie+Couric, Couric

As I reported before, Qantas airlines restricts the use of Dell computers on board their aircraft; other airlines may follow suit, and with Apple joining the battery-recall, perhaps Mac’s get on the restricted list, too.

But this is minor inconvenience compared to the trouble carrying a … penis pump (*blush*) can get you into, reports the Chicago Sun Times:

“The female airport security guard held the small, black, squeezable rubber object she’d just plucked out of Mardin Amin’s backpack, and eyed it suspiciously.

Standing next to his mother, an embarrassed Amin whispered out of one corner of his mouth that it was a “pump” — as in a penis pump. The guard misunderstood the Iraqi man and thought she heard the word “bomb,” Amin’s attorney told a Cook County judge Wednesday.

“He told her it’s a pump,” attorney Eileen O’Neill-Burke said as a cluster of burly, snickering police officers watched the court proceedings. “He’s standing with his mother. Of course he’s not going to shout this out.”

But after listening to the female guard testify she heard Amin “clearly” say the word bomb during the Aug. 16 incident at O’Hare Airport, Judge Gerald Winiecki decided there was enough evidence for the case to move forward. Amin, 29, is charged with felony disorderly conduct and faces up to three years in prison if convicted.”

Oh, well, judges have their way with penis pumps:  in unrelated news, former Oklahoma Judge Donald Thompson was sentenced to 4 years in prison for repeatedly using a penis pump – during trials he presided over in his courtroom.

I’m starting to think these pumps are really not worth all the trouble. After all,  Small is the New Big. 

Perhaps it’s time to update the list of things to avoid during air travel:

• sex toys
• your mother
• thick accent

or any combination of the above.

Tags: air+travel, airline+security, airport+security, humor, courtroom, justice

Katy Tanner was fired from her sales job at Blue Banana, a chain body-piercing studio in Cardiff, Wales, by SMS to his cellphone, on her day off.

“We are a youth business and our staff are all part of the youth culture that uses (text) messaging as a major means of communication,” says the company

Tanner said the text firing was unfair and it should have been done face-to-face.

“It was totally out of the blue,” she said..

Of course out of the Blue. Banana.  (full story on SFGate)

Technorati : SMS, humor