Question

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question -- but hell, I need to ask somebody and I might as well ask it here.

I suddenly started receiving weekly issues of Time Out New York -- turns out someone had deemed me eligible for a free subscription. But the issue wasn't addressed to me. Sure - it had my correct address on it but the name was a mixture, let's just say that the first name wasn't mine.

But anyway. I moved 3 weeks ago and like a good citizen updated my address at the post office, which then immediately started delivering my magazines to my new place. Today I finally looked at the 3 issues of Time Out that had piled up and decided to take pity on the PO; I would update my address at Time Out. So I went to the website and clicked on "Subscriber Services", put in my subscriber number -- and what do I see? My new address was right there! Where do these guys get the data from? (I have updated my address at the few essential services I do need: my banks, amazon.com, etc so clearly its from one of those sources.)

But still -- isn't it strange that a magazine I didn't even subscribe to, that I started receiving out of the blue and which even spells my name wrongly, has a perfect information repository in place wherein they even update my address automatically? Whereas the magazine(s) I do subscribe to -- ha, now that's a whole new story.

Still - any guesses? What's Time Out's secret? Conspiracy theories welcome.

Headline-construction is an art

As an example, check out this one from the NYT, about the financial services company (student loans) Sallie Mae, which is in talks for a merger:

Sallie Mae Said to Talk to Suitors