Tis the season for muggers to return crucial pieces of identification to their victims. Take, for example, a Telegraph Hill mugging victim who has his wallet returned to him after sobbing during a mugging. SF Examiner reports, "The 29-year-old victim was robbed around 10:30 p.m. [Thursday night] as he was walking upstairs in his apartment building on Grant Avenue in Telegraph Hill. The crook, who had snuck inside, crept up behind him and demanded his stuff."

After breaking out the waterworks, the suspect then returned the victim's wallet. But only after stealing the cash out of it. Still, a nice gesture from the robber, who we hope gets captured and tossed in the clink.

[SFEx]

1. "A truly great breakup song should be filled with so much rage that the subject could include it as Exhibit A in his or her restraining order." Hartlaub cites "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morisette as an example, which -- try as we might -- we couldn't beat. We'd be lying if we said we haven't sung this song once or twice in our car, at the top of our lungs, with the windows rolled up.

2. "A good breakup song should also cycle wildly between moments of false sincerity, emotional instability and self-pity." Hartlaub goes with "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon. Well, if Hartlaub is going to start off with pop musician Alanis Morisette, then we'll keep going with that and pull out Lily Allen's "Smile" as an example of this. Allen cycles between self-pity, crazy "...you messed up my mental health" and some serious, serious schadenfreude.

3. "Groveling is another hallmark of great breakup music." Phil Collins' "Against All Odds" is the clear winner here. We cry on the inside when we hear this song.

Altogether, we thought Hartlaub's five picks were great. Personally, we used to cry ourselves to sleep with anything Coldplay, especially "Warning Sign" before we moved onto "Angry Breakup Music." Like listening to Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory while running furiously on a treadmill at the gym, post-breakup. Err. But we digress.

Picture from pawpaw67.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos threw down some serious shade today. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," he cried, shaming two senior Yahoo officials. Why? Because the Sunnyvale company named names, handing over private information about Chinese journalist Shi Tao's online pro-democracy action to country officials. (Or, as the New York Times so eloquently put it, their "complicity with an oppressive communist regime." Oh snap.) This landed the journalist 10 years in the slammer.

Lantos then demanded Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan to fork over a mea culpa to journalist Tao's mother, sitting directly behind them. Which they did. Both of them turning around and bowing to face Shi's mother, Gao Qinsheng, who then immediately (and understandably) broke out the water-works. Awk. Ward.

But Yahoo isn't the only company to get smacked in the rear like this for such behavior. Google and Microsoft have both been at the receiving end of criticism for "helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country's rapidly growing Internet market." But they've never had to apologize to someone's bereft mother for having him thrown in the clink. At least not yet, anyway.


image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images, via NYT