The Buck Keeps Moving

The FTC conceded at the time that people do not smoke the way machines do, and research later confirmed that smokers tend to compensate for lower nicotine yields by taking more puffs, inhaling more deeply and holding the smoke longer. Yet the FTC waited 42 years, until last July, to propose withdrawing its blessing from the machine-generated numbers, saying they are not good indicators of what smokers absorb.

Even while implicitly admitting its error, the commission disclaimed responsibility for it, saying its endorsement of the FTC method "does not require companies to state the tar and nicotine yields of their cigarettes in their advertisements or on product labels." It neglected to mention that in 1971, it threatened to require the tobacco companies to advertise the yields unless they did so "voluntarily."

-- San Andreas Fault. Take-Two Interactive tentatively settled a class action lawsuit over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, agreeing to pay customers offended by hidden sex scenes in the video game up to $35 each. Under the deal, which a federal judge rejected in July, the lawyers would have received $1.3 million, while payments to the plaintiffs would have totaled less than $30,000, since only 2,676 had filed claims.

It's impressive that even that many people signed up, since only players who deliberately used third-party software to reveal the scenes were able to see them. Theoretically, parents who bought the M-rated game (aimed at players 17 and older) for their children might have objected, assuming they think it's OK to murder fictional prostitutes as long as you don't have sex with them.