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18 Feb 2011 12:02

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Biz, Tech: Regulators probe Apple’s new subscription service plans

  • tuesday Apple launches its subscription plan – in which it’ll take a 30 percent cut off of in-app subscriptions. OK for newspapers, awful for online music firms.
  • friday The Department of Justice launches an inquiry into the subscription plan, which suggests that something may be pretty rotten in Denmark. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 11:18

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World: Muammar Gaddafi loyalists: We’ll snuff out any fresh protests

  • The response of the people and the Revolutionary Forces to any adventure by these small groups will be sharp and violent.
  • A message from the Libyan Revolutionary Committees • Suggesting that the Gaddafi loyalists will attack protesters who dare show their face in the country. This message was released after a particularly deadly day in the country – when 24 protesters were reportedly killed, according to Human Rights Watch. Ugh. We hate humanity sometimes and wish it’d take a good look at itself in the mirror. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 09:58

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Music: VIDEO: Radiohead’s awkward-dance-heavy “Lotus Flower”

  • Never have we been so excited to see a middle-aged man dancing like a rockstar. Welcome back, Thom Yorke. Your fans missed you. The song rules, too – a clear continuation of “In Rainbows”-era awesomeness. Oh yeah, the album’s out now, not tomorrow. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 02:03

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Politics: Fleeing Wisconsin Democrat posts amusing update on Facebook

Be right back!
You know how a bunch of Wisconsin Democrats just fled the state in order to thwart the Governor’s anti-union bill? Well, one of them just posted this on her Facebook. We like your style, Lena. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Feb 2011 00:26

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World: Defense Secretary puts the kibosh on closing Gitmo

  • Frankly, the prospects for closing Guantanamo, the best I can tell, are very, very low.
  • Secretary of Defense Robert Gates • At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The problem, Gates says, is that just about nobody in Congress actually wants to close the controversial detainment facility, and Congressional approval would be required to shut it down. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 23:53

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Politics: Obama vulnerable against imaginary candidate

  • good newsConservatives rejoice: The latest Public Policy Poll shows Obama running dead even against a generic Republican candidate in 2012.
  • bad newsRepublicans have to nominate an actual human being, not just a theoretical blank slate, and Obama leads against every one of them by several points. source
  • » Some more odd bits from the poll: PPP took the interesting step of asking respondents to rate the Brothers Bush, Jeb and George W. both, against Obama in a hypothetical 2012 race. The results? Jeb would get trounced by fourteen points (paging Rich Lowry!), while the Constitutionally-ineligible former President would only lose by four, meaning he’s actually a more formidable candidate than Mitt Romney. In addition, the GOP could defeat Obama by two points if they nominated a “moderate Republican candidate,” so all they’ve got to do now is set their time machine to 1952 and they’ll have a slew of strong contenders to choose from.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 22:45

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Offbeat: Scientists inadvertently stumble upon possible baldness cure

Balding Man
Scientists accidentally isolated a compound that seems to cure baldness in mice. Frankly, we’re more impressed that they were able to find bald mice than in the cure itself. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

17 Feb 2011 22:36

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Politics: Haley Barbour refuses to condemn tribute to KKK leader

  • No candidate can successfully run for president if he doesn’t understand you should rebuke efforts to honor the man most identified with the KKK.
  • The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin • On Mississippi governor and likely presidential candidate Haley Barbour’s latest racially-tinged blunder. After praising the racist, pro-segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens last year as “an organization of town leaders,” and insisting that that the civil rights battles of the 60s weren’t “that bad,” he’s now refusing to condemn an effort in Mississippi to make commemorative license plates honoring a leader of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest. For a while, members of the GOP establishment have been urging Barbour not to run for President. We think they’re onto something. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 22:32

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Politics: Is Scott Walker’s budget crusade a MacGuffin to hurt unions?

  • Is this whole Wisconsin budget mess ginned-up? That’s one of the threads flowing around the left end of the media spectrum, which suggests that Wisconsin’s budgetary problems have nothing to do with unions – and everything to do with stuff Scott Walker pushed through. They’ve been pointing to this report from the state’s fiscal bureau with this particular sentence: “More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).” To make it clear, these are all things that Walker pushed through. These have nothing to do with unions. They’re intended as stimulus through tax cuts and incentives, however, not special interest-focused spending as a few have suggested. The overall result still leads one to question Walker’s motives, however – because, based on this evidence, that the union collective bargaining cuts could be at the benefit of his own initiatives, not strictly “balancing the budget.” (thanks mgolladwine) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 20:14

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U.S.: Glenn Beck rips on Google because of Wael Ghonim. WTF?

  • And so it begins: “I’m really not sure I want my search engine involved in government overthrows,” says Glenn Beck, who did exactly what we pointed out might be the side effect of Wael Ghonim’s activism – that people would start ganging up on Google because of its employee’s side projects. “I’m not leading any boycott,” he said eventually. “I hate boycotts: you do with your time, your money, and your information what you want.  For me personally, I’m not feeling real comfortable about the current direction of Google, the more I find out.” He then goes into that kooky conspiracy theorist thing that he does. Shoot us now. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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