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21 Aug 2009 20:06

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Biz, Sports: The Cubs can’t win the World Series, but they can lose Sam Zell

  • $845 million to lose a tiny bit of Tribune’s debt source

21 Aug 2009 18:52

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U.S.: The federal government’s 10-year deficit estimate balloons in size

  • $9
    trillion
    the new ten-year estimate for the federal budget deficit; get ready to freak, conservatives source

21 Aug 2009 14:45

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Tech: Twitter finally has a plan to make money. Good for them!

  • Twitter will still be free for everybody and we’ll still tell them to go crazy with it. But we’ve identified a selection of things that businesses say are helping to make them more profit.
  • Twitter co-founder Biz Stone • Discussing how the company plans to actually make money with their overhyped, heavily-used service. The two ideas being presented: First, they plan to roll out premium accounts with analytics for corporate users. Secondly, they plan to create a commercial API for business-class interfaces. Note that the word “advertising” wasn’t used. • source

21 Aug 2009 14:18

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Culture: SyFy’s “Eureka” is a great show destined to be discovered



Why, SyFy? What is it with the channel formerly known as Sci-Fi? First they re-brand to that silly new new name, and now they fail at properly advertising a show.

  • Tonight’s show We love Eureka with a passion that is a little inappropriate (and probably illegal in a few states), and are really looking forward to tonight’s episode-where the very-preggers-yet-still-hot Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) has her baby shower and-as the channel’s website states-the “Eureka-fied baby gifts push the envelope of eco-friendly design.” No, we don’t know what the hell that means. source
  • Tonight’s show We love Eureka with a passion that is a little inappropriate (and probably illegal in a few states), and are really looking forward to tonight’s episode-where the very-preggers-yet-still-hot Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) has her baby shower and-as the channel’s website states-the “Eureka-fied baby gifts push the envelope of eco-friendly design.” No, we don’t know what the hell that means.
  • A confusing preview The preview they sent out has absolutely NOTHING to do with tonight’s episode. Sheriff Carter (Colin Ferguson) and his fruitless attempts at relationships in this town are always great fun, but don’t you think they’d, oh you know, show us a tease of the actual story? Eureka airs at 9 pm EST on the channel formerly known as Sci-Fi. (Thanks to our friend Micah Pearson for the spiffy preview. – Ed.) source

21 Aug 2009 12:12

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Sports: Three examples of awkward Caster Semenya press coverage

  • From this NYT article: “Medical experts said assigning sex was hardly as easy as sizing someone up visually. Even rigorous examinations can result in ambiguous findings.”
  • From an L.A. Times article: “An Italian rival, Elisa Cusma Piccione, called her a man. Russian runner Mariya Savinova agreed. ‘Just look at her,’ she told journalists in Berlin.”
  • The BBC notes that what’s down there isn’t enough for the judges: “They will look at her external genitalia, but they will also look at hormone levels and her chromosomal make-up.”

21 Aug 2009 11:59

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World: Now that the Afghan election is over, time to count the votes

This guy has the worst job ever. He has to carry the weight of heavily-contested election on his back. Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah both say they won. source

21 Aug 2009 11:53

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Culture: “Inglourious Basterds” has good, not glourious reviews. Basterds.

  • 70 its current rating on Metacritic; some adore it, some hate it source
 

21 Aug 2009 11:39

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Sports: John Madden says his namesake video game succeeds at its goal

  • I wanted it as a teaching tool to teach people about football and then not make it simple. This is kind of the way the game has gone. The game is easy to start, but hard to be the best at. It is hard to perfect.
  • Retired NFL coach and announcer John Madden • Discussing his still-popular video game franchise, one of the most popular video game series in history. And it has an effect on the players, too – they watch more football, go to more games and have more football knowledge than us normal people. To give you an idea, 43% of “Madden” players watch 16 or more hours of NFL programming weekly. Holy crap. Get off the couch, you bum. • source

21 Aug 2009 11:30

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Music: We can find no faults in Pitchfork’s song of the decade

  • Pitchfork just spent a week going through the list of the top 500 songs of the decade, and its winner was a song which came out in late 2000, didn’t crack the Bilboard 100 (despite the fact that the act had multiple number one hits), and topped the site’s mid-decade list, too. But, as the site argues, Outkast’s “B.O.B.” is a killer song loaded with prophecy of what was to come in the ensuing decade. Other songs in the top ten include some of the decade’s best and brightest (though we say that Animal Collective’s “Fireworks,” which still ranked high, was better than “My Girls”) and LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” would’ve made a killer best-song-of-the-decade if Outkast hadn’t gotten there first.source

21 Aug 2009 11:09

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Biz: Existing homes sold astonishingly well last month, guys.

  • 7.2% increase in existing home sales in July; nice leap source