In five states, for instance, so-called Ag Gag laws are now on the books. Iowa just passed legislation that "criminalizes investigative journalists and animal protection advocates who take entry-level jobs at factory farms in order to document the rampant food safety and animal welfare abuses within," according to the Atlantic's Cody Carlson.

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Three years ago, I hired what I thought to be a talented, kind and honest second in command at the magazine where I work. It turns out, I was only one-third right. While "Sally" was great at many parts of her job, she wasn't honest and she wasn't nice. She began sleeping with another person in my department (my work equal), and was dishonest about it, and would often say, "The art department feels this would work better this way," when our entire organization knew these people were a couple. She'd undermine me at meetings with higher-ups, criticizing my ideas and interrupting me, and in meetings with me one-on-one, she'd burst into tears at the slightest disagreement or say, with a stern little look, "We'll just agree to disagree." It made any sort of discussion darn near impossible.

She also puffed herself up constantly -- "I was mistaken for a model yesterday!" and made digs at me and other people at work, "Well, that's not MY taste. But, interesting!"

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CNBC averages 263,000 viewers during the workday, according to Nielsen. Fox Business tops off at 85,000 from 4:30 to 8 p.m., and that period includes daily shows hosted by Fox stars Lou Dobbs and Neil Cavuto. Fox Business executive vice president Kevin Magee had a great idea to finally turn things around, according to a memo Reuters obtained: Maybe focus more on business news?

"I've been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves," Magee said in the memo dated October 5, carrying the subject line "Fox News and Fox Business."

"I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot," Magee went on to say in the memo. "If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time. Earnings, taxes, jobs etc give us PLENTY to chew on."

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I'm writing to you because you're very nice and have a great deal of empathy, and I'm hoping you can tell me how to respond with empathy in a situation that's causing me distress.

I write about books for a living. I have been working with, around and in books for over a decade. Hooray for my job; I feel very lucky. In the last six months, four people I know have approached me and asked for help with books they are writing. They want me to read and evaluate and edit their manuscripts. They want me to tell them where to send their manuscripts after I have made them publishable.

To which I say: No way! First of all, I have two jobs and am often so busy I feel breathless. Second, I write about books; I'm not a literary agent or an acquisitions editor at a major publishing house. I haven't even published a book of my own (though I hope to, someday).

But, even if I had the knowledge they seek, why should I use it to benefit them? Reading and editing a manuscript would take a helluva long time. What's more, it's work, work that other people get paid for.

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Now we are told that the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile would create a monopoly. I am tempted to favor any monopoly that allows all phones to work everywhere in the U.S. But I don’t want to talk about the details of that proposed merger.  My subject is American antitrust law, which I have studied for years, in the hope of making sense of it. I finally gave up.

Most Americans think that antitrust is among the founding principles of the American republic. And many people assume that there is widespread consensus among economists behind antitrust policy. Neither assumption is correct.

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Which on the surface makes it hard to understand why U.S. and foreign firms continue to seek the services of Neil Bush. The son of one president and brother of another, Neil's political clout has declined since Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush in 2009, and neither brains nor wiles is Neil's strong suit. Two decades ago, the Washington Post observed that his business ventures had "a history of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion," and time, alas, seems not to have improved his record.

Neil claims to have 30 years in the energy industry, though at least 10 people from the Texas oil patch I spoke with said they had never heard of him playing any notable role in the energy business. Of the former first sibling, one international oil executive and consultant said, "I can't imagine anything he could bring to the table."

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Seems a TV news cameraman caught a county inspector in an affluent Washington suburb trying to shut down a kid's lemonade stand just outside the Congressional Country Club during the recent US Open. And if that wasn't bad enough, he slapped the enterprising tikes – who were raising money to fight pediatric cancer -- with a $500 fine.

As the June 18 Washington Post reported, for a while it seemed "the all-American rite of passage might instead become a master class in government overreach," yet public anger was so immediate and vociferous the fine was quickly revoked and the youngsters permitted to reopen down a side street a few yards away.

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No single client should account for more than 25 percent of a studio's business. When it happens -- and it will! -- immediately draw up a list of new potential clients to call.

Here's a brief personal story that explains why.

In the late '90s, I worked at a design studio that had a major telecommunications client. More than 50 percent of our monthly billings were derived from creating logos and names for new product launches, helping to brainstorm print ads and direct mailers, and otherwise serving as a creative sounding board. There was no retainer agreement, only new projects that were opened with a rough time estimate and hourly rate.

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Dutch owner Swedish Automobile, previously known as Spyker Cars, has courted Chinese and Russian investors and put the Saab factory up for sale in its attempts to revive the brand it took over from General Motors Co. last year.

But after months of production stoppages and problems with paying suppliers, Saab said the situation is so dire that it won't be able to pay its 3,700 employees, adding to doubts over how long the brand can survive.

"I do not see a future for the car maker in the current position," said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, an auto analyst at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Analysts have sounded the death knell for Saab several times since Spyker, a small luxury sports car maker, bought it from GM last year for $74 million in cash plus $326 million worth of preferred shares. Skeptics questioned how Spyker and its smooth-talking CEO Victor Muller could turn around a car maker that posted loss after loss during GM's ownership.

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"In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation [GLAAD] and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal," Politico's Eliza Krigman wrote, noting that all these groups had received considerable sums from AT&T (the NAACP, for example received $1 million from the telecom giant in 2009).

A few questions certainly need addressing here: First, why would the opinions of advocacy groups matter in a large corporate merger? And second, do these advocacy groups have any credibility when the merger involves a company that has provided them with financial support?

In terms of the first question, Politico suggests that AT&T wants the groups involved because the merger approval process is inherently political:

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LinkedIn Corp. priced its initial public offering at $45 per share, about a third above the initial range of $32 to $35 per share.

The Mountain View, Calif., company is the first major U.S. social networking company to go public. It had raised $353 million Wednesday night in an initial public offering that valued it at $4.3 billion. That's the largest valuation for a U.S. Internet company since Google went public in 2004.

The company's service helps businesses find new employees and promotes networking among the more than 102 million people that have set up profiles.

(This version corrects opening price.)

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The film, of course, was lamenting more the ennui of homogenization than Ikea's particular business model, because Ikea's market saturation was always considered somewhat laudable thanks to the company's seemingly special ethos. Based in Sweden, the blue-and-yellow behemoth was known to consumers as one of the few courageous anti-Walmarts in the big-box world -- a firm whose Scandinavian-socialist flavor appeared to assure us that it was probably treating its workers better than most multinationals, thus giving America a rare haven of guilt-free shopping.

Or so it seemed, until the Los Angeles Times this week published a damning story about Ikea's manufacturing plant in Danville, Va.

The piece looks at racial discrimination charges against the company, airs employees' complaints of workplace mistreatment, and examines Ikea's Walton-like efforts to bust union-organizing drives. Taken together, the allegations undermine one of Ikea's unique selling propositions and, in the process, lay bare a disturbing new economic dynamic -- one that now ensnares even the companies we think are the most socially conscious of all.

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Let’s be clear. If the Obama administration fails to block this deal, it will be setting the lowest possible bar in approving mergers and buyouts. This buyout could not be more obviously bad for competition -- and therefore bad for customers -- and antitrust enforcement is designed precisely for protecting competition.

When I said there would be two major winners in this deal, I was referring to Verizon, the largest mobile carrier in the nation, as the other one. AT&T is currently second largest, with Sprint and T-Mobile trailing. A combined AT&T and T-Mobile would be a bit larger than Verizon, with Sprint in a very distant third place.

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The deal would reduce the number of wireless carriers with national coverage from four to three, and is sure to face close regulatory scrutiny. It also removes a potential partner for Sprint Nextel Corp., the struggling No. 3 carrier, which had been in talks to combine with T-Mobile USA, according to Wall Street Journal reports.

AT&T is now the country's second-largest wireless carrier and T-Mobile USA is the fourth largest. The acquisition would give AT&T 129 million subscribers, vaulting it past Verizon Wireless' 102 million. The combined company would serve about 43 percent of U.S. cellphones.

For T-Mobile USA's 33.7 million subscribers, the news doesn't immediately change anything. Because of the long regulatory process, AT&T expects the acquisition to take a year to close. But when and if it closes, T-Mobile USA customers would get access to AT&T's phone line-up, including the iPhone.

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Developments elsewhere were more muted -- an indication that investors think the costs facing Japan may not spill over significantly. In Europe, sentiment was partly supported by the weekend agreement of a broad package of measures to ease the government debt crisis that has already forced Greece and Ireland into seeking bailouts.

However, most attention was centered on Japan, and how the world's third-largest economy is dealing with the catastrophic events of last Friday. Financially, the situation is made even more difficult by the fact that Japan's debt stands at around 200 percent of its national income and its economic recovery came to a grinding halt in the last three months of 2010.

The Bank of Japan was quick off the mark Monday, injecting a record 15 trillion yen ($183.8 billion) into money markets to try to defend the already fragile economy. By flooding the banking system with cash, the central bank hopes banks will continue lending money and meet the likely surge in demand for post-earthquake funds.

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Slim's fortune was estimated to have risen to $74 billion well ahead of Bill Gates' $56 billion and investor Warren Buffett's $50 billion. French luxury-goods magnate Bernard Arnault was fourth with $41 billion.

Slim gained the most in the past year. His wealth increased $20.5 billion from last year's estimate of $53.5 billion by Forbes, which attributed the increase to a rise in Mexican stock prices as well as successful mining and real estate projects carried out through his Grupo Carso conglomerate.

A total of 332 Asians made the list, surpassing Europe's 300 for the first time. Moscow, with 79 billionaires, racked up more berths on the list than any other city in the world. The United States still has the lead in total number of billionaires, with 413 of the 1,210 on the list.

Despite Slim's wealth, his flagship company, Telmex, alleged Wednesday that he is a victim. Telmex filed a complaint with Mexico's regulatory agency alleging that two Mexican TV networks allied with his competitors in the cell phone business squeezed his company out of television advertising.

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I was using hyperbole to make a point, but this isn't quite the exaggeration it might seem. Those who've traveled know what I'm talking about, and have seen the ways in which technology -- the mobile phone being the most ubiquitous example -- has crept into every corner of the planet. It has cut across every class line, into the tiniest rural village and the most fetid urban slum.

There are those who mark this as progress, but I am not seeing it that way. Not when the most elementary human needs -- water, healthcare, education and basic sanitation -- go ignored at every level. What exactly is the benefit -- to society or to the individual -- of owning a cellular telephone when you're illiterate and knee-deep in sewage? I understand the benefits of electronic connectivity -- the values of the Internet and wireless communications. But in certain contexts they are somewhere between overrated and irrelevant, and I fail to see the upward mobilization, the "empowerment," that is either the symptom or the cause of a growing addiction to phones and computers.

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Item No. 7: "Pilots who decide it is more convenient (for them) to utilize the full capacity of the airplane to slow to taxi speed after landing just so they can turn off at an intersection which is closer to the gate." 

He's talking about those times when a plane decelerates with unusual vigor in order to make a certain taxiway turnoff. You've probably experienced this: the reversers roar, the brakes groan, and you and your belongings are pitched forward. Jack believes this is more apt to occur when the pilots are in a hurry to get home -- "on their last flight of the day," as he puts it. 

Just in case anybody thinks this is really what happens ... it's not.

Sure, we sometimes slow down abruptly in the interest of shorter taxi time. And why not? Who wants to taxi for 20 minutes when you can taxi for five minutes instead? This is particularly common at airports with criss-crossing runways. When practical, pilots will attempt to turn clear prior to the point where runways intersect. Once beyond that point, waiting for clearance to recross an active runway can take several minutes. 

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Worldwide last year, approximately 2.4 billion people flew safely on 36.8 million flights. There was one accident for every 1.6 million flights. That's a 42 percent improvement compared to what it was 10 years ago.

Mind you, even "accident" doesn't mean a fatality. IATA is talking about so-called hull losses -- an incident in which the aircraft is substantially damaged and is not subsequently repaired. Globally, among what we'd consider major airlines in 2010, there was not a single fatality.

And, sure, this is only a single-year snapshot, but the trend over the past quarter-century has been one of consistent improvement. This is especially notable when you consider the exponential growth of air travel in places like India, China, Brazil and elsewhere in the developing world.

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The Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into the development of tiny drones inspired by biology, each equipped with video and audio equipment that can record sights and sounds.

They could be used to spy, but also to locate people inside earthquake-crumpled buildings and detect hazardous chemical leaks.

The smaller, the better.

Besides the hummingbird, engineers in the growing unmanned aircraft industry are working on drones that look like insects and the helicopter-like maple leaf seed.

Researchers are even exploring ways to implant surveillance and other equipment into an insect as it is undergoing metamorphosis. They want to be able to control the creature.

The devices could end up being used by police officers and firefighters.

Their potential use outside of battle zones, however, is raising questions about privacy and the dangers of the winged creatures buzzing around in the same skies as aircraft.

For now, most of these devices are just inspiring awe.

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