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19 Jul 2009 23:26

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U.S.: Docs still a little fuzzy on what the 5-Hour Energy drink will do to you

  • 350 millon number of 5-Hour Energy drinks expected to be sold this year source

19 Jul 2009 22:48

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World: More arrests (and bad stuff in general) going down in China

In response to the riots in China, hundreds more have been detained by police. The two men in these photos were seized while entering their family’s public bathhouse. source

19 Jul 2009 22:33

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Music: Twitter urges American Idol bigwigs to #KeepPaula. Or not.

  • Alert! Alert! There is a chance that Paula Abdul might not return to American Idol, and Twitter is *not* happy about that. Since rumors began swirling that her contract negotiations could go bust, “#keeppaula” has been hovering on and off the trending list. At one point it sat at No. 2, right behind “#indonesiaunite.” Err, is that a good thing or a bad thing? source

19 Jul 2009 22:09

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World: Apparently some terrorists had it in for Mousavi, but not anymore

  • 1 foiled attempt to assassinate Iran’s
    Mir Hossein Mousavi source

19 Jul 2009 21:39

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U.S.: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt dies at 78

The former school teacher and author of ‘Angela’s Ashes’ died in New York City from metastatic melanoma today. He was 78 and left behind a lot of very, very good work. source

19 Jul 2009 18:30

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Politics: A lefty says that Sarah Palin is an example of the rise of idiocy

  • She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity.
  • The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan • Describing why Sarah Palin often didn’t know what the heck she was talking about on TV. Noonan’s quote (Noonan is a conservative, BTW) is something of a centerpiece of Salon columnist Gene Lyons’ thrashing of not only Palin herself but her quote-unquote idiotic fans, calling her a product of TV celebrity culture. Lyons goes further: “President? Get real. Sarah Palin couldn’t manage a Wal-Mart.” Ouch. Those claws sure dig deep, don’t they? • source

19 Jul 2009 17:45

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Politics: Max Headroom: Trashing on Canada, remembering Cronkite

  • A friend in Canada … On “Meet the Press,” top-ranking Sen. Mitch McConnell discounts the idea of health care for all Americans using an argument involving both Ford Motor Co. and a friend of a friend who died because Canada wouldn’t allow him to get a medical procedure. Hm.

  • A friend in Canada … On “Meet the Press,” top-ranking Sen. Mitch McConnell discounts the idea of health care for all Americans using an argument involving both Ford Motor Co. and a friend of a friend who died because Canada wouldn’t allow him to get a medical procedure. Hm.

  • “It was about news” CBS’ Bob Schieffer, who’s had a full weekend of comments about Walter Cronkite to make, makes yet another one on CNN about what made Cronkite stand out – he cared about the news above all else. “He loved no scoop better than HIS scoop,” Schieffer said.

  • A friend in Canada … On “Meet the Press,” top-ranking Sen. Mitch McConnell discounts the idea of health care for all Americans using an argument involving both Ford Motor Co. and a friend of a friend who died because Canada wouldn’t allow him to get a medical procedure. Hm.

  • “It was about news” CBS’ Bob Schieffer, who’s had a full weekend of comments about Walter Cronkite to make, makes yet another one on CNN about what made Cronkite stand out – he cared about the news above all else. “He loved no scoop better than HIS scoop,” Schieffer said.

  • From bad to worse Fox News had a friendly chat this morning with Obama budget wizard Peter Orszag, who says that the economy is worse than anyone thought – backed by unemployment figures. “You can’t go from job losses of 700,000 a month … to job growth like that,” he said.

 

19 Jul 2009 16:29

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Politics, Tech: Digg’s DiggBar gets kinda shady in its linking style

  • The more disturbing part is that they’re expecting us to use their diggbar urls to deceptively push their site to our followers. If I broadcast a link to the New York Times, people expect to see the New York Times when they click that link. They do not expect to land on Digg.
  • End of Web blogger Matthew Rogers • On a recent change of functionality in the DiggBar, a service we admittedly initially liked. However, the functionality has changed in such a way that the links no longer lead to the source of the content for logged-out users but to the Digg page for that article. Granted, we’ve read some of Rogers’ other posts and feel that he generally comes off a bit hard-line on things, but in this case, we feel that he’s right. • source

19 Jul 2009 16:08

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World: Iran’s vice president, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, resigns amid criticism

  • He apparently wasn’t hard-line enough for leadership. Just days after getting into office, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei has decided to step down from his post. Mashaei, a top aide to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, found himself under a lot of political pressure due to his moderate stance on Israel. When Ahmadinejad named him as his vice president, the furor could be heard from miles away. Now we could be wrong about this – and let us know if we are – but is someone who isn’t hard-line enough really the problem that Iran has right now? (Oh, FYI, expect more protests this week.) source

19 Jul 2009 15:34

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Biz: Why Exxon is an evil, unbelievably greedy company

  • Over the years, Exxon Mobil has been making major profits at levels larger than most of the countries in the world. They’re No. 2 on Fortune’s Global 500. source
  • Over the last 17 years, after a deal that went sour, they’ve actively sabotaged oil fields in Texas, filling them with junk and plugging up wells with explosives. source
  • In response to all of this, the company could have to pay some $1 billion in fines to the state – which, considering, seems a bit like a slap on the wrist. source