Bart's Morning Thoughts (None of them stolen from other posts!)

Walgreens
Gains in efficiency are always impressive, but not this impressive. Walgreens has created a warehouse that is twenty percent more efficient than any of its other plants. Their secret? Disabilities. The warehouse is designed to use the disabilities of workers for gain. For example, a lot of their IT work is done by those with Asperger syndrome because many with the disease become fascinated by technology and can understand it very well. Walgreens was inspired by one of its executives who feared the permanent dependence of his son on caretakers. Now it seems as if the son may be able to not only find work but to excel in it. I hope to see this scaled up soon, because this seems to be the employment equivalent of price discrimination: get the most benefit (read: production) out of each and every person by considering their individual circumstances, desires, and needs. Bravo, Walgreens.

Pakistan
To bring you down from the high provided by that new-age feel-goodery Walgreens I bring you “The Gunmarkets of Pakistan.” (So far as I can tell the guys who made the video consider gunmarkets to be an actual word. Whatever.) The host of the video had his Pakistani mother make a few phone calls to her friends, who were able to arrange for the host to enter the most dangerous regions of Pakistan to buy weapons. The video catalogues the trip to visit the weapons producers of the region (read: villagers making Kalashnikovs by hand).

Dr. Death
Let’s finish off with a slightly less depressing story: Dr. Death has been found, but he is already dead. After escaping Germany in the 1960s (yes, the 1960s, not the 1940s) Dr. Aribert Heim was able to make it to Cairo, where he lived out his life under an adopted name and converted to Islam (Assumedly he converted from Nazism?). The NYT found this out by recovering a briefcase full of Heim’s personal documents and correspondence. It seems this may herald the end of Nazi-hunting, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center considered Heim to be their top target and was about to up the reward for Heim’s capture to $1.3M. It kind of creeps me out when Dr. Death is referred to fondly as “Uncle Tarek.” Let me know if it does the same for you.