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

02 Aug 2011 20:47

tags

About: New staff writer said hello, then waved

  • I promise to keep this short. It’s tradition to do so around here, since it’s our name. I’m Sami Main, a spunky writer that is way too excited to be joining the SFB team. I’m a journalism junior at the University of Florida; when I’m not having an opinion about the Oxford comma, I can be found on Tumblr and Twitter. I’d rather be raising the roof than the debt ceiling.
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2011 18:33

tags

Offbeat: Shocker: Tooth Fairy investing less in kids’ teeth due to the recession

  • $2.60 average amount the tooth fairy gives a kid for a lost tooth
  • 40¢ dip from the last survey; that’s $3, for the math-challenged source
  • » We’ve been really worried about the whole debt-ceiling mess for the past few days, but it really says something about the economy when the tooth fairy isn’t even giving as much for kids’ pearly whites. Perhaps, like Glenn Beck, she’s chosen to invest in gold instead of teeth. We hear gold’s doing pretty well nowadays.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2011 16:37

tags

Culture: DreamWorks CEO speaks out about why movies suck

  • Let’s have a semi-realistic rat in a kitchen cooking shit to eat. No one in their right mind is going to say, ‘Well, that’s a good idea.’ It’s a bad idea, but it’s so beautiful in its execution and such a great piece of storytelling. And actually, I think it’s one of the great pieces of animation of our time.
  • Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation • In a really good speech about why movies today suck. Here he’s saying that “Ratatouille” was a bad idea that was executed perfectly, but most movies today are focused too much on marketability. That is, producers don’t care so much about the story, they only care about how much money they can make out of it. Katzenberg goes on to say that movies should get better, based on consumer response to the crap that’s come out lately.  source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2011 16:04

tags

World: U.S. makes it legal for aid groups to help Somalians

  • before Aid groups couldn’t get food to starving people in al-Shabaab-controlled areas in Somalia. That’s because the U.S. has sanctions against the al-Qaeda affiliated group who is doing everything in their power to ensure aid doesn’t reach civilians — including diverting aid and killing aid workers.
  • now The U.S. now says it won’t prosecute aid groups whose aid falls into the wrong hands — which is a good thing. It’ll make it at least a little easier to get aid to people in Somalia, but it’ll still be dangerous. 14 World Food Programme workers have been killed in the region since 2008 alone. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2011 11:11

tags

Politics: So, how did Newt Gingrich get all of his followers, anyway?

  • This crazy story’s been floating around the ether over the past day or so suggesting that Newt Gingrich’s campaign staff used a service to pay for most of his million-plus Twitter followers — a number which is ahead of every other presidential candidate besides Obama. But did he? A conflicting story’s been floating around suggesting that Newt has all those followers because he was one of the first Republican politicians on Twitter’s suggested user list, which to us sounds more realistic. No matter the case, the evidence is clear that Newt Gingrich is a social-media trailblazer who was one of the first politicians to use Google+. We’ll keep an eye on this one. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2011 10:32

tags

Politics: Timothy Geithner: Debt ceiling vote process might affect our credit rating

  • I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I think this is a good result but a terrible process. And again, again, as the world watched Congress step up to the edge of the abyss it made them really wonder whether this place can work.
  • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner • Offering his take on whether the U.S. might get a credit rating downgrade despite the fact that the debt ceiling increase will likely pass the Senate today. Many of Geithner’s recent statements regarding the debt ceiling seem to indicate that consumer and investor confidence was shaken by the long, roundabout process it took to get a debt ceiling increase. We’ll see if he’s right. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2011 10:18

tags

World: Fukushima radiation: What deadly radiation “hot spots” look like

  • See the red spots? You know, the ones surrounded by blue and green? Those represent 10 sieverts per hour of radiation. That is extremely high and could lead to death within seconds. And at the Fukushima site, that’s what they’re apparently still dealing with … mind you, five months after the fact. “Radiation leakage at the plant may have been contained or slowed but it has not been sealed off completely,” noted Osaka University professor and nuclear engineering expert Kenji Sumita. “The utility is likely to continue finding these spots of high radiation.” To put this in perspective, add three zeros to the number 10, to make it 10,000 millisieverts per hour (mSv). Then, take a look at this graphic. Yeah. Scary as hell, right? We’ll say. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

01 Aug 2011 21:07

tags

Politics: Lone wolf amongst GOP 2012 crowd praises debt ceiling deal

Most of the 2012 candidates have come out against the debt ceiling deals, except for one guy, who called it “a positive step toward cutting our nation’s crippling debt.” We can’t figure out whom. Can you guys? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Aug 2011 11:18

tags

World: Cold case: New evidence in 40-year-old “DB Cooper” plane hijacking

  • 1971 A dude named “Dan Cooper” (more commonly known as “DB Cooper”) hijacked a plane heading between Portland and Seattle. He allowed the passengers to get off in Seattle, received a briefcase with $200,000 in cash inside, had the pilot keep flying, then jumped out of the plane with a parachute over the Cascade Mountains. Crazy, right?
  • 2011 Years later, nobody knows who the suspect is — and little in the way of conclusive evidence has shown up. Over 1,000 people have been pinpointed in the still-open cold case, but surprisingly there is new evidence that authorities are pursuing. Do you guys think they’ll ever catch this dude? Or did their chance pass 40 years ago? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Aug 2011 10:57

tags

Biz: Why July’s manufacturing results singlehandedly deflated stocks today

  • 50.9% activity level; not really a good number source
  • » The worst result since July 2009: To explain what you’re looking at, this number represents manufacturing activity in July. Any number above 50 percent is growth. Good right? Well, in this case, not really, because the previous month was 55.3 percent. And earlier this year, it was above 60 percent for a few solid months. This number is another sign that the economy is starting to slow down again. This result was so bad that it deflated optimism about the debt deal on the stock market this morning.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>