Coffee Talk

Ten things your IT guy wants you to know:

Yes, I can read your e-mail, yes, I can see what web pages you look at while you're at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and yes, I can tell if you are chatting with people on instant messenger (and can read what you're typing, as well). But no, we don't do it. It's highly unethical and, perhaps more importantly, you really aren't that interesting. Unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don't do it. There really are much more interesting things on the Internet than you.

However, speaking as a former IT person, well, if you were wondering whether the IT guys found that stash of porn you hid in the fonts folder?  Yes, yes they did.

One benefit of civil service protections: memos like this:

O, you turkey! You pious turkey! You sanctimonious turkey!

Having belatedly discovered that the Music and Arts High School had something to do with Lincoln Center, having belatedly intervened in the planning process, having delayed construction for a year and added $3.3 million to costs - now, you worry about the Bureau of the Budget " hacking around for six months on the cost issue."

You'll forgive me I see some kinship with George Bernard Shaw's father whom GBS described as "a teetotaler by conviction and a drunkard in practice." But at least Shaw, Sr. had the redeeming characteristic of limiting both preachment and practice to his own liquor.

Greek bondholders actually being pretty reasonable, says Felix Salmon:

Of the three, the bondholders are the least of anybody's problems. In fact, almost everything they've done in recent months can be viewed as a way of showing that if and when everything goes pear-shaped, it's not their fault. They will talk to anybody, agree to pretty much anything, and be perfectly reasonable all along; it's the various governments, here, which are finding it impossible to come to terms.

You can buy caskets at Costco.