No Christmas Paycheck for Hundreds of Workers -- Small Donors Beware! -- Facebook is a Blabbermouth -- Barcoding Fish Eggs.

The partial government shutdown most powerfully impacts the lives of low-wage workers, particularly those who clean and secure museums and other mammoth Washington buildings frequently seen in movies or on postcards. 
by Seung Min Kim, Ian Shapira, and Rachel Weiner for the Washington Post

Olympic gods may argue and explode with righteous ire,

but why is it the little guy whose feet are to the fire?

Cossetted and insulated from financial woe,

the Trumpster and the Congress do not care and do not know

that hundreds, maybe thousands, of the Capitol's mum staff

have nothing left for Christmas and don't hear their children laugh.

I wish those mighty humbugs dining on organic greens

might someday be reduced to living on just pork and beans.

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WASHINGTON—Republicans dominated small-donor fundraising in the era of direct mail and telemarketing, partly because a bumper crop of companies saw an easy way to cash in on the lucrative political industry. But that capitalist ethos has backfired as small contributions have moved online.

by Julie Bykowicz for the WSJ

I used to get so many pleas
for money in the mail, like fleas.
But now they put the bite on me
with online begging constantly.
Some charity or politicking
gives my wallet quite a licking --
Republicans and Democrats
want me to save their habitats
with just five dollars, s'il vous plait;
I wish they all would go away.
The internet is one big scam.
I'm moving to the Moon, I am! 

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■ Facebook shared users’ personal details with advertisers even though the company had promised not to do so, the agency said.

by Natasha Singer for the NYT

If you want the world to know

what you buy and where you go,

how you brush your teeth at night,

what sets off your appetite,

why you never bite your nails

and a billion more details,

post on Facebook and you'll find

you life story has been mined.

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Barton and his team have pulled fish eggs from Scripps Pier with a plankton net every week for six years, doing DNA barcoding, egg by egg, to find out which fish are breeding.   by Deborah Sullivan Brennan for the LATimes

Some scientists so zealous be

that they know not hyperbole.

Their all consuming dedication

leads them to much cogitation.

But counting fish eggs in a jar

would make me long for caviar.

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