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03 Aug 2011 14:25

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World: Hosni Mubarak trial begins on not exactly the best of terms

  • You’re seeing correctly. That is former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, in a cage. He’s actually standing trial from a cage, and he’s in a hospital bed. His trial started today, and it’s surprising a lot of Egyptians, who figured he’d use health problems as an excuse to not show up. Mubarak has denied all of the charges against him. We’ll be careful not to drop a reference to The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” in here. source
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02 Aug 2011 18:33

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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

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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
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02 Aug 2011 16:04

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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

28 Jul 2011 14:45

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Politics: Firebrand Rep. Joe Walsh has a pretty big financial problem

  • $117,000 owed in child support source
  • » That’s a lot of money: Walsh, a member of the Tea Party who calls for the country to cut spending and pay its bills, is having trouble paying some of his own, according to a recently filed lawsuit. He’s had other financial troubles, too — he lost a condo in a Chicago suburb to foreclosure, but he eventually got that cleared up. Our question: Should Walsh’s own issues be on the table, considering the way he goes after the government’s fiscal issues?
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Jul 2011 14:30

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Tech: Twitter revamps ad offerings to entice more advertisers

  • “Promoted tweets” will now show up directly in Twitter users’ feeds. But they won’t be like ordinary tweets — they’ll appear near or at the top of users feeds, with a little promoted thing nearby (see above). Before, promoted tweets would only show up if a user searched for something relevant — now they’ll show up if you follow a company’s account. “When we decide to follow a favorite brand, business or charitable organization, we expect to be among the first to get a special announcement, access to exclusive content or a great offer,” Twitter stated in a blog post. “That’s why starting today, we’re introducing a way to ensure that the most important tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly.” Essentially, advertisers pay to ensure visibility. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Jul 2011 14:13

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World: if you think Breivik was alone in his thinking, you’re wrong

  • Mr. Breivik managed to commit two terrorist attacks in a single afternoon. But the hatred and contempt from which he drew his deranged determination were shared with many others throughout the international right-wing blogosphere.
  • Joshua Gaarder, author of “Sophie’s World,” and Thomas Hyland Erickson, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo • In a New York Times opinion piece emphasizing the right-wing blogosphere’s influential nature — especially in terms of the Norway terror attacks, perpetrated by a man with ties to the right-wing in Norway. Plenty of people on the Internet are bigots in an extreme sense, extreme enough to encourage behavior like Breivik’s. It’s a sad and scary truth, but it’s one that needs to be taken seriously — no man works alone. He may have been a lone wolf in his actions, but he certainly wasn’t alone in his thinking. source
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27 Jul 2011 14:43

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U.S.: Pew study: There’s a massive wealth gap along racial lines

  • $113,149 average net worth of a white household in 2009
  • $5,677 average net worth of a black household in 2009 source
  • » That is a stark difference. In their latest study, Pew compared the net wealth of families in various racial groups and found that blacks and Latinos in particular did very poorly compared to whites. (Asians, on the other hand, were somewhat within shouting distance. EDIT: Please see explanation.) This is a historic trend which has lasted decades, but has become all the more apparent with the Great Recession. “The bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites,” Pew writes in its study. While net wealth among whites fell roughly 16 percent, blacks families lost about 53 percent, and Latino families lost the most — losing 66 percent of their wealth on average.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Jul 2011 14:08

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Tech: Important LulzSec member reportedly goes down

  • Topiary, LulzSec’s most public member and second-in-command has reportedly been arrested. He’s the one that ran LulzSec’s Twitter and wrote all of their eloquent messages — and he was only 19. Topiary deleted every tweet from his personal twitter and left only one: “You can’t arrest an idea,” pointing more to the fact that he was arrested and even knew it was coming. LulzSec will undoubtedly confirm or deny all of this soon enough, but this all comes on the heels of a sting which nailed 14 members of Anonymous, which reportedly has ties to the more-low-key group. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Jul 2011 14:13

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Politics: Stylin’: Michele Bachmann spends a lot on hair and makeup

  • $4,700 the amount she spent on a stylist source
  • » Most people don’t make that in a month: For a candidate that is championing lower spending to conserve taxpayer dollars, that seems quite a lot of money to spend on herself. It’s also far more than she spent on stylists than during her Congressional campaign. Appearances may be important when running for president — don’t get us wrong, anything to help her prevent a Nixon moment — but this seems a tad excessive. And it’s an excess not uncommon to Democrats, either — John Edwards famously got $200 haircuts in his pre-scandal days.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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