Brides Gone Wild

Brides Gone Wild
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I am going to come right out and admit something. I'm a sucker for the Wall Street Journal. A lot of people think this is a boring paper. The reason for that is they've never read it. Others think it is a right-wing, boring paper.

And yes, it is right wing, but in the old fashioned sense. It puts the right-wing stuff on its editorial page and sticks with the news. In fact, it does such a good job at sticking with the news that Skilling and Lay, infamous executives of Enron, blamed the WSJ for the company's demise. And the WSJ has also done a fantastic exposé this spring of cheating execs who backdate their stock options.

So the WSJ supports old-fashioned Republican values, like free competition and a free market.

That makes them very different from the current administration's support of crony capitalism and modern robber barons.

And, of course, the WSJ also supports brides. In fact, today they had an article titled "Brides Gone Wild." They also included some sensual black and white photos of brides who had, indeed, gone wild.

And I figured what's good enough for the WSJ is good enough for my blog. The article described how brides today opt for somewhat racier pictures than they did in past years.

You can watch the pictures and read the article here. You really should. This is one paragraph from the WSJ article:

"Hours before her son's wedding in New York City two years ago, Lisa Brettschneider was a little taken aback by the scene in the suite of her daughter-in-law-to-be at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. A twentysomething male photographer was snapping photos of the bride, Alison, and her 12 bridesmaids in their underwear. At one point, the bride-to-be posed on the bed in a silky robe. "It was like a Playboy shoot," says Mrs. Brettschneider, who lives in Larchmont, N.Y."

"When the family got the proofs, Mrs. Brettschneider deemed a few images inappropriate for public consumption, including one of Alison's favorite shots, which showed her G-string and back tattoo. "My in-laws weren't too happy about that," says the bride, now 29, who owns a women's clothing showroom in Manhattan. "But it was such a cool shot." Adds her mother-in-law: "I kept saying, 'You're going to have to show them to your kids one day. She didn't put any of those pictures in my album."

And if this article wasn't enough, the editors at the WSJ really had some fun today.

They placed "Brides Gone Wild" on the opposite page of a "Review and Outlook" article aptly named "Making Babies."

The Wall Street Journal today: Not your father's Wall Street Journal. So that's the reason I subscribe not just to the paper version, but also to the online edition, although I really hate that they charge for that access. If you want to try it out free for 8 weeks, click here. I'm not getting a commission. I simply think good newspapers should be supported.

Link to my daily blog with more information and more posts.

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IMPORTANT LEGAL DISCLAIMER HERE

According to Reuters, a new study finds that companies snooping on employee e-mail is very common.

The study reveals that close to half of big companies in the United States read and analyze employee e-mail.

In another survey of 840 U.S. companies by the American Management Association, 60% said they use some type of software to monitor their employees' incoming and outgoing e-mail.

An increasing number of companies are employing staff to read outgoing e-mails of employees, some of whom get a tiny warning message when they sign on to their computer that messages may be monitored, but most don't realize this is actually taking place.

When I worked for Pfizer, I couldn't boot up my computer if I didn't click OK on a button which stated among other things, "The Company regularly monitors the system for maintenance and to investigate the activities of individuals suspected of improper usage. Anyone using the system consents to such monitoring."

And of course I discovered that the company didn't just monitor e-mails, they also hired private detectives. You can read my corporate security report here, and also documents on phone monitoring.

"It is not something that is broadcast," Steele said. "There are organizations where employees think they can say whatever they want to say and nobody is going to read it."

In most states companies don't have to tell their employees that their e-mail is being monitored. Only Connecticut and Delaware have laws requiring companies to notify employees, says Jeremy Gruber, legal director at the National Workrights Institute, a Princeton, N.J., workplace privacy advocacy organization. As an employee, "you have no rights whatsoever," he says, according to the Wall Stree Journal.

"In the United States, 44 percent of companies with more than 20,000 employees said they hire workers to snoop on workers' e-mail."

"Nearly one in three U.S. companies also said they had fired an employee for violating e-mail policies in the past 12 months and estimated that about 20 percent of outgoing e-mails contain content that poses a legal, financial or regulatory risk."

According to the WSJ, "E-mail-scanning software has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. In the past, the software would typically check e-mail messages against a list of keywords, such as profanity. Now, such programs can be customized for each company, and often look out for the name of a company CEO, competitors or product code names, in addition to inappropriate language, including profanity and sexual terms. The systems can also track if an employee is copying or deleting files -- or not doing much at all."

"Companies can also customize monitoring systems to flag industry-specific words or phrases that might pose ethical problems: Financial-services firms might search for words like "promise," "guarantee," or "high yield," while a health-care company would watch for terms like "patient info" or "client file," says Richard Eaton, chief of TrueActive Software Inc., of Kennewick, Wash."

What do you think about this?

Here's your chance to make your voice heard:

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