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19 Apr 2009 21:10

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Biz: The Fortune 500’s top five and how they got to the top

  • ExxonMobil: Making money off of the world’s addiction to oil, their massive profits were up 19% in 2008. source
  • Wal-Mart: Making money off of the world’s addiction to cheap crap, their profits were up 7% in 2008. source
  • Chevron: People like putting gas in their cars, and indirectly, money in Chevron’s cash-lined pockets. source
  • ConocoPhillips: see all the stuff we just said about ExxonMobil and Chevron, then apply it here. source
  • General Electric: Nobody watches NBC, so we’ll assume it’s because of all the other stuff they make. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 20:44

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Tech: The New York Times puts left foot in, out of URL-shortening game

  • An ultra-hip trend It started with TinyURL. Then Twitter came along, making the need for URL shortening services even greater. Between is.gd and Bit.ly and dozens of other URL shorteners, it’s now the cool thing to do. So it only makes sense that the New York Times would get in on that action with NYTurl.com, which some of their developers created. source
  • An ultra-hip trend It started with TinyURL. Then Twitter came along, making the need for URL shortening services even greater. Between is.gd and Bit.ly and dozens of other URL shorteners, it’s now the cool thing to do. So it only makes sense that the New York Times would get in on that action with NYTurl.com, which some of their developers created.
  • Now you see it, now you don’t Unfortunately, the site was getting abused by people using the service for non-NYT-related content, and if you go to the page now, it says, “Taken down for now due to abuse.” When we saw that, we elicited a very loud laugh, because it’s not often the New York Times has egg on their face in a clearly embarrassing way like this. LOL. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 20:22

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Culture: Box-office recap: Fresh-faced kid > ruggedly handsome dude

  • $24.1 million amount that Zac Efron’s new flick, “17 Again,” made at the box office this weekend. It’s a good time to be a “High School Musical” star. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 20:18

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U.S.: If you’re a smoker, you should get a piss test. Trust us.

  • Your urine may predict your lung cancer risk. Sort of like a drug test in reverse, there’s a chance that doctors will be able to predict the onset of lung cancer early thanks to your urine. Two chemicals, NNAL and cotinine, show up in higher levels for people with a high lung-cancer risk, and knowing this early can help doctors treat or prevent lung cancer before it becomes something life-threatening. It’ll take some time for the test to come on the market, but here’s a tip in advance – make sure you haven’t also been smoking pot when you get the test – doctors can tell that, too. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 20:04

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Politics, U.S.: The latest talking points against Obama skew diplomatic

  • “NOOO!!! Now that Obama has let those torture memos out of the bag, the terrorists will WIN! The CIA will have a harder time defeating those evil terrorists and PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN!!”
  • shake
  • torture
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 11:13

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U.S., World: Did Obama break international law on torture? A UN guy says yes.

  • They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very clear. The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility.
  • Manfred Nowak • The UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, on whether, by not prosecuting CIA operatives accused of torture under the Bush administration, Obama is violating an international agreement to do just that. Oh boy. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 11:04

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U.S., World: Hugo Chavez can create a bestseller by handing Obama a book

  • 54,295 Saturday’s sales ranking on Amazon for the paperback edition of “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

19 Apr 2009 10:55

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Tech: The Twitter anti-Oprah backlash is in full effect, guys

#herebeforeoprah puts a line in the sand for Twitter fans afraid that it might jump the shark thanks to Oprah. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 10:51

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Culture: Evidence MTV is attempting to give up its vapid ways

  • “The Buried Life,” with its “100 things I want to do before I die” conceit, will often do charitable things to help deserving people on the path to hijinks. source
  • “T.I.’s Road to Redemption” features everyone’s favorite jailbound rapper trying to help young people not make the same stupid mistakes. source
  • Nick Lachey, star of the extra-vapid “Newlyweds” with ex-wife Jessica Simpson, helps out performing arts kids in his hometown on “Taking the Stage.” source
  • Hold up – why isn’t one of these “MTV plays music videos again”? Because then we’d care. This just feels like another stop on the road to irrelevance. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Apr 2009 10:39

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Politics, Tech: A Slate columnist chooses piracy over legal movie downloads

  • Pirates aren’t popular these days, but let’s give them this—they know how to put together a killer on-demand entertainment system.
  • Farhad Manjoo • On the sad state of affairs for legal movie downloading. All Manjoo wants is the digital equivalent of Netflix, but the restrictions on movie download services are so high – either not enough of a selection or too many limitations – that he ends up just using Bittorrent instead. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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