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20 Dec 2011 22:47

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Politics: Supervillain? Or Newt Gingrich?

  • “Celebrating our next president’s best ideas:” This wonderful little website presents you with a proposal, and then asks you to guess whether it came from Newt Gingrich, or a supervillain from a movie/comic book/etc. It’s harder than it looks; we follow Gingrich pretty well, and we only scored 50%. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 22:16

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U.S.: Unemployment fell in majority of states last month

  • 43 states have seen a decrease in unemployment since October source
  • » As goes the country, so go the states: Or maybe it’s the other way around? Well, either way, figures released today by the Department of Labor show that unemployment, in addition to falling to its lowest level in two and a half years at the national level, also decreased on a state-by-state basis in all but seven states. This is promising, as it suggests that the uptick in employment is a nationwide trend, and not the result of, say, five or ten states doing abnormally well for one reason or another. Note: The usual disclaimers about the problems with how unemployment is calculated apply.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 21:37

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Culture: Happy would’ve-been 50th birthday, Bill Hicks. Here’s your finest moment.

  • Alright, this makes up for the last post. Bill Hicks, an fearlessly acerbic comedian famous for his brave commentary, would have turned 50 last Friday — had he not died of liver cancer in 1994, at the peak of his popularity. Slate did us a favor and posted his greatest moment, this 1993 “Late Show With David Letterman” routine, which stayed in the vault for 16 years after (according to Hicks himself) CBS balked at his jokes about Christianity. (Which, mind you, are nowhere near as bad as the action made them out to be.) We couldn’t even imagine what sort of brutal jokes he’d make about the current state of reality television, based on his super-dark Billy Ray Cyrus bit at the beginning. Letterman, regretting what happened, aired the performance in 2009, with Hicks’ mother at his side. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 21:05

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Culture: More thoughts on Wesley Durden, TLC and ethics in reality television

  • I understand that a lot goes into putting these shows together, but there has to be a better way to deal with actual reality when it creeps into our reality programs.
  • Tucson Weekly’s Dan Gibson • Offering up a good point on last night’s news that a reality show contestant, Wesley Durden, committed suicide, but the TLC show, “Next Great Baker,” hid it from the audience until he had been eliminated from the program. “They did throw a card up at the end,” Gibson points out, “but this still seems like a series of bad decisions to me and wildly insensitive to the guy’s family and friends, but maybe we’re still all supposed to be upset that the same network runs a show about Muslims or something.” And that, friends, is a great point. Here’s a network that’s getting criticized for the wrong thing: Instead of getting wrongly criticized for airing reality shows about Muslims, they should be getting rightly criticized for their intense focus on ratings in the face of the ethical treatment of the people it puts on its shows. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 20:23

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Politics: Gary Johnson: Exclude me GOP?!? I’m gonna run as a Libertarian, jerks!

After showing up in a grand total of one major debate (in which he made a dog poo joke), the former New Mexico governor will take a stab at running on a third-party ticket. Think he might have a shot? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 19:43

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U.S.: U.S. Government: Don’t let homemade version of bird flu get beyond lab

  • It’s very important research. As this virus evolves in nature, we want to be able to rapidly detect … mutations that may indicate that the virus is getting closer to a form that could cross species lines more readily.
  • National Institute of Health science policy director Dr. Amy Patterson • Discussing a lab-produced version of bird flu that NIH officials have warned should not get out of said labs. The reason? It apparently can spread very easily among mammals — leading to fears that terror groups could get a hold of the virus and use it for biological warfare. Which of course is exactly the kind of thing non-sciencey folks love hearing. The NIH, however, says that releasing reports in scientific journals on the disease could ultimately help us understand more about the disease in the long term. We’re seeing flashbacks of this Dustin Hoffman movie in our heads right now. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 15:18

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U.S.: Philly sports columnist Bill Conlin resigns amid child molestation claims

  • Allegations send Conlin into retirement: Nancy Phillips, an investigative reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has reportedly authored an article alleging that Bill Conlin, longtime sports columnist for the Inquirer’s rival paper, the Daily News, was involved in sexual molestation of children. This continues a grim surge in sports personalities being accused of these heinous sorts of crimes — following the horrific allegations leveled at Jerry Sandusky, and the subsequent accusations made of Syracuse’s Bernie Fine, it’s beginning to appear that people claiming these sorts of abuse are feeling more liberty to come forward and speak out. Conlin resigned almost immediately after this news broke, and has yet issued no comment. (Above: Conlin with his late wife Irma, who died in 2009. Photo by chickiespetes) source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

20 Dec 2011 14:56

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Biz: Apple scores court victory against HTC, Android in patent case

  • A bad day for HTC smartphones: While it didn’t represent everything Apple had sought to secure through the legal process, today’s court ruling against HTC struck a blow, and moved along Apple’s bid to prove Google’s Android operating system copied the iPhone. This was, you may remember, a rather intense preoccupation on the part of the late Steve Jobs — the ruling held that some of Android’s data collection software was, in fact, an infringement of Apple’s patent rights, and will cause some HTC phone models to be blocked from sale in the United States starting next year. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 14:34

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World: Foreign journalists given limited access in Syria

  • The Syrian government decided to let some journalists visit Homs, the city which has been most ravaged by violence throughout the nation’s recent series of political protests. It would appear they got the full Syrian government treatment, which is to say their access was restricted to specific events and people, presumably telling one side of the story. As far as meeting with the protest leaders and victims of months upon months of lethal violence, the media had no such access; they were closely followed by the state and were given access to wounded members of the Syrian military. The UN estimates 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since March. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2011 14:18

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Politics: House turns down Senate’s payroll tax cut extension

  • 229-193 payroll tax cut voted down source
  • » Shot down, softly: The House voted today on the Senate’s bill to extend (temporarily, by two months) the payroll tax cut President Obama has been calling for; the bill also would have extended unemployment insurance. The bill failed, though not on an up-or-down vote — the House instead voted affirmatively (with 229 “yeas”) to disapprove of the bill, calling for the two houses of Congress to hold conference to hammer out changes. Problem is, the Senate is out of session for the year, and Majority Leader Harry Reid has no intention of reconvening: “My House colleagues should be clear on what their vote means today… in ten days, 160 million middle class Americans will see a tax increase, over two million Americans will begin losing their unemployment benefits, and millions of senior citizens on Medicare could find it harder to receive treatment from physicians.” Seven Republicans joined Democrats in opposition.
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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