2004

Salon.com is still putting out quality articles, but I personally don’t think it’s worth $30/year. (I put up with their daily clickthrough advertising instead.) But my friend Dave e-mailed me about a much better deal…

Apparently, if you sign up for Salon Premium, you get 1 year subscriptions to Wired and US News & World Report. But if you don’t want the subscriptions, Wired will send you a $12 refund and US News will send you $25. So take both refunds, and earn $7 plus a free year of Salon. Or keep the Wired subscription, scoring you a year of Salon and Wired for only $5.

The original e-mail is below.

So, I’m back from a week in Sydney. The suggestions from the Ask Metafilter community were fantastic, and we kept ourselves very busy. In brief:

Five Neat Things About Sydney

1. Tim-Tams – addictive chocolate-covered cookies.
2. The Currency – bills are colorful and nicely-designed, and made of an un-rippable polymer; plus, no pennies or one-dollar bills!
3. Mandatory voting – vote or be fined. This makes so much sense.
4. The butterscotch souffle at Wildfire – the best dessert I’ve ever had, period.
5. Optional Tipping – like the encore, some gestures are meaningless when they’re mandatory

Five Not-So-Neat About Sydney:

1. Vegemite – I tried it and it’s about exactly what I expected. Blecch.
2. Stupid copyright laws – plus, the Kazaa offices were raided while we were there
3. Australian Cockroach & Huntsmen Spiders (tie) – giant roaches in the streets and giant spiders inside. Eek.
4. Television – lots of American TV, six months (or more) behind the States
5. Kylie Minogue – she’s some sort of a national treasure and completely unavoidable