"Work" conditions, Snakes on a Plane's Essence Captured, Bird Flu, and a Dirty Manhattan, Please

Why you must always agree with your boss...

1. NY State Senator Ada Smith is being accused by her former aide for a month, Jennifer Jackson, for throwing scalding coffee at the aide's face and pulling her hair after she questioned Smith's dieting ability. Smith says that Jackson is disgruntled and lying. Past "Anger Management"-like "incidents" of Smith includes nearly mowing down a trooper who asked her for ID in '03, biting a cop in '98, and threatening an aide with a meat cleaver in '96. (Daily News)

2. Samuel L. Jackson's Snakes on a Plane, which finished shooting last September, is adding five days of shooting in L.A. to take the PG-13 movie to Rated R status. The movie generated publicity, some good times, and a load of internet fans when Jackson signed onto the movie and New Line wanted to change the title to Pacific Air Flight 121. Upon hearing this, Jackson freaked because "that's the only reason I took the job. I read the title... You either want to see that or you don't." (Reuters)

Apparently this is the logo for the movie.

Redundant much?

3. In today's New York Times, an article called "Adopted in China, Seeking Identity in America" perhaps seeks to be cutting edge in their report about a "growing population" in this country but as a mainstream newspaper, it fails to capture that the immaturely articulated feelings of these Chinese adoptees are perhaps what any minority group already is and has been experiencing in America.

4. Bernard Lacoste, 74, of the French crocodile-logo'ed clothing empire, died this Tuesday.

5. In Thursday's issue of Nature, scientists reveal that the bird flu does not spread from human to human currently because the avian flu virus, H5N1, tends to nest deep in the lung, whereas the human flu virus sits in the mucus lining of our nose, throat, and bronchi. More importantly, this means that H5N1 does not instigate coughing and sneezing, which is how the [human] flu virus becomes contagious amongst us. The 100 human deaths so far resulted from direct transmissions from birds to humans and not between humans. For H5N1 to become pandemic, it will need to undergo several mutations so that it can bind to the upper respiratory tract. (AFP)

6. Here is the breakdown of a worker productivity survey conducted by staffing co. Hudson Highland Group:
25% US workers, who believe their internet use is monitored by bosses, spend company time and computer to job-hunt.
33% who don't think their internet use is monitored job-hunt on the job.
24% of managers admit to job-hunting on their work computer
66% of workers say they spend "hardly any" time on blogs, personal e-mails, chat rooms, or surfing the web.
1% of workers admitted to spending more than two hours a day on what the 66% rarely do.

...I am nowhere near as normal as I thought. (Reuters)

7. New York, particularly the city itself (isn't that what you thought anyway?) and especially Manhattan (" "?), has the dirtiest air in the nation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While the national average for developing cancer from air toxins is 41.5 residents per million, the NY state average is 68 "rpm" and Manhattan's is 136. So not an Aguilera-like dirty, huh? (News Wire Service)

8. Britney Spears might not be pregnant after all as she was seen drinking cocktails and cosmos for K-Fed's 28th birthday party in Vegas. Maybe she took the tagline of "What happens here, stays here" too literally? (Daily News)