Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

24 Mar 2010 23:57

tags

Biz: A blockbuster level of debt for a Blockbuster video-rental firm

  • $1 billion in debt keeping it from
    taking on Netflix source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 23:52

tags

Politics: Senate Republicans play dirty with reconciliation bill amendments

  • 32 the number of amendments being offered up by Republicans to the reconciliation bill
  • one insane amendment removes access to
    Viagra for sex
    offenders; it’s there to
    shame the Dems
  • zero the number of amendments that will pass; if any do, the entire bill goes back to the House source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 22:37

tags

Tech: Wikipedia went down today, and the world somehow survived

  • And so we remember Thursday, March 25, 2010 as the day every English speaking student failed their research papers.
  • Wikipedia commenter “Jimmy” • Regarding the server meltdown that the site had earlier today. The meltdown, which knocked out the site’s European data center, caused the server not to load for many users. It was due to overheating probably caused by someone looking up this article. “This problem was quickly resolved, but unfortunately it may take up to an hour before access is restored for everyone, due to caching effects,” a blog post on the downtime said. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 22:26

tags

U.S.: California: The state that brought you Prop 8 could legalize pot

Thanks to a hard-fought ballot initiative, stoners who couldn’t marry their same-sex partners could soon legally purchase pot straight-up. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 22:16

tags

U.S., World: Russia and the U.S. decide it’s a good idea to give nukes a break

  • 90% of all nuclear weapons are owned by the U.S. or Russia
  • eight months of ongoing negotiations between the countries
  • yes they finally came to a deal to stash away their nuclear weapons source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 11:18

tags

Tech: Facebook gets crap for allowing people to upload stranger photos

  • It’s apparently a huge privacy thing. Facebook – and Google, for that matter – allow you to upload photos and videos of people not on the site, without their consent. Now the Swiss and German governments are all up in arms about this, apparently missing the fact that you can do this on any other site on the Internet. Just to prove this point, we grabbed this photo from Flickr of some dudes at a party. We don’t know them, but they seem like they’re having fun. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 3 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 11:01

tags

Politics: Polling drama: One pollster calls out another, calls for a duel

  • Using all negative statements, rather than a mix of negative and positive ones, reflects another non-standard approach, one that can further bias responses.
  • ABC Director of Polling Gary Langer • Regarding the problems he found with a Harris Interactive survey on “wingnuts” who dislike President Obama. The survey, which suggests as many as 40 percent of people think Obama is a socialist (among other things), also uses the leading phrase “here are some things people have said about President Obama,” with Langer finds particularly troublesome. He calls it “a highly manipulative approach to questionnaire design,” the kind of thing that persuades many respondents into biases. Harris Interactive must be smartin’ about this. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

24 Mar 2010 10:47

tags

Biz: Must’ve been the snow: New home sales unexpectedly fall

  • 2.2% dip in new home sales in February source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 10:42

tags

U.S.: No Child Left Behind doesn’t mean their reading scores get ahead

  • fourth After a modest increase in 2007, reading scores for fourth graders stalled in 2009 on a national level; some local schools did better, others did worse.
  • eighth While reading scores increased
    for eighth graders in 2009, there’s been no change in score since the “No Child Left Behind” law was enacted in 2002. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 10:34

tags

U.S.: Get yo popcorn ready! Obama nominates liberal to appeals court

Goodwin Liu could be an appeals court judge. One Repbulican Senator calls the Berkeley professor a liberal “beyond the mainstream.” A huge fight is coming. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
 
top tags
older >>