Global Fault Line

BLACK SWAN - Official HD trailer

2010-08-17T21:59:00.000-04:00

A psychological thriller set in the world of New York City ballet, BLACK SWAN stars Natalie Portman as Nina, a featured dancer who finds herself locked in a web of competitive intrigue with a new rival at the company (Mila Kunis). A Fox Searchlight Pictures release by visionary director Darren Aronofsky (THE WRESTLER), BLACK SWAN takes a thrilling and at times terrifying journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect.

Lindsay Lohan in "Machete"

2010-07-20T01:49:00.000-04:00

Plot: The movie finds Machete (Danny Trejo), a renegade former Mexican Federale, roaming the streets of Texas after a shakedown from drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal). Reluctantly, Machete takes an offer from spin doctor Benz (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) a corrupt Senator. Double crossed and on the run Machete braves the odds with the help of Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), a saucy taco slinger, Padre (Cheech Marin) his "holy" brother, and April (Lohan) a socialite with a penchant for guns. All while being tracked by Sartana (Jessica Alba), a sexy ICE agent with a special interest in the blade slinger.

"Machete" is written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and is scheduled to hit theaters on September 3rd.

Read more:http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=18356&count=0#ixzz0uCNOeHVl

iPhone comes to Verizon in January 2011

2010-06-29T23:59:00.001-04:00

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Bloomberg says Verizon will get the iPhone... sometime in January. Yep, it's another fuzzy rumor sourced from "two people familiar with the plans," and while we really do believe Big Red will eventually get the iPhone in our lifetimes, at this point we're beyond cynical about pieces like this -- chatter about a Verizon iPhone now regularly reaches deafening levelsbefore crashing down in yet another cloud of AT&T-exclusive dust. However, if you must insist on living this impossible dream, Bloomy's latest rumor does at least line up with the piece from the Wall Street Journal in March claiming that CDMA iPhone would begin production in September, giving Apple plenty of time to ramp up for a January launch.

Of course, we have to wonder if it's the smartest move to announce the hotly-anticipated Verizon iPhone right after the holiday buying season, and we can't imagine all those iPhone 4 buyers who were justenticed into signing new two-year AT&T contracts are going to be happy to discover they could have waited and escaped the Blue, but we'll have to wait and see -- Apple just told us that they "don't comment on rumors and speculation" when we pinged them and asked for comment. Fingers crossed, we suppose.

Bloomberg

5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes

2010-06-29T23:43:00.000-04:00

Even in gun-crazy America, most of us aren't shooting things as part of our day-to-day routine. So most Americans actually know very little about guns. Hollywood writers realized this a long time ago and, being writers, used it as an excuse to never do any fact-checking ever again.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18576_5-ridiculous-gun-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html#ixzz0sIvZrw8f

Movie: Inception

2010-06-24T03:04:00.003-04:00

Games: Madden NFL 2011 for PS3

2010-06-24T02:59:00.000-04:00

Platform: PLAYSTATION 3

Madden NFL 11 is the 22nd version of EA Sports' classic video game football franchise. Featuring cover athlete Drew Brees, Super Bowl XLIV MVP and quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, Madden NFL 11 incorporates a blend of simpler, quicker and deeper new features with time-tested classic features expected from a game in the Madden franchise. Features included in the PlayStation 3 version include Franchise mode, All-new GameFlow playcall system, dual stick control, extensive online functionality and more.

The Madden NFL franchise regenerated for PS3.
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A Simpler, Quicker and Deeper Madden
Madden NFL 11 redefines the way you experience the game of football. Simpler: from 350 plays down to 1, the all-new GameFlow system puts you in the helmet of an NFL quarterback, to execute an authentic, situational game plan, one play at a time. Quicker: with 60-minute game times reduced to 30, spend more time on the field and less in the playbook. Same drama, half the time. Deeper: Madden NFL 11 is feature-rich, with improved animations and control options, enhanced online functionality, and new broadcast and audio presentation that delivers the NFL experience fans have come to expect.

Key Game Features

From 350 Plays Down to 1 – The all-new GameFlow playcall system puts you inside the helmet of an NFL quarterback like never before, allowing you to execute authentic NFL game plans one play at a time. Add a new level of strategy by customizing your own offensive and defensive game plans, or have plays based on your favorite team’s real-life tendencies called for you.
Play Games in Half the Time – With an all-new playcall system, spend less time in the huddle and more time on the field as you experience the drama and excitement of a full game in less than 30 minutes.
Don’t Just Play, Feel It – All-new Dual Stick Control drastically reduces button dependency for the ball carrier by mapping key moves to the right and left sticks. Run through holes, break tackles, and explode in the open field with a more fluid, intuitive, and responsive running system. All-new locomotion provides true acceleration and deceleration, plus natural planting and cutting, while delivering the authentic-feeling Madden NFL to date.
Play, Learn, Win – Rookies can enjoy success quicker than ever before. New Coaching Tips automatically pause the game at critical points to help explain each situation as it unfolds. A revamped playcall system draws player routes on the field as in-game coach’s audio provides helpful hints to better execute the play.
Redefining Madden NFL Online – Last year we gave you Online Franchise and Online Co-op, now Madden NFL 11 delivers an all-new game mode that will change the online experience yet again.
See It. Hear It. Feel It. – Experience a new level of excitement with revamped audio presentation. From the booth to the field, Madden NFL 11 brings gameday to your living room like never before.

Games: Red Dead Redemption

2010-06-24T02:54:00.000-04:00

Red Dead Redemption is an open-world, third-person, action-adventure game set at the tail end of the American West West era. Action takes place in the first few years of the twentieth century and revolves around the choices that the protagonist, former outlaw John Marston, is forced to make due to his blemished past. The game features a morality system assigning honor and fame points generated through the player's choices. It also features Wild West themed mini-games, new targeting and cover systems, extensive horse riding abilities, a wealth of period specific weapons and more than 40 huntable animals.

Story
Red Dead Redemption is a Western epic, set at the turn of the 20th century when the lawless and chaotic badlands began to give way to the expanding reach of government and the spread of the Industrial Age. A follow up to the 2004 hit Red Dead Revolver, this game tells the story of former outlaw John Marston, taking players on a great adventure across the American frontier.

Choose to fight for honor or fame as former outlaw John Marston.
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Gameplay
Red Dead Redemption is a third-person action-adventure game set a fictional open-world American Wild West environment for players to explore. Gameplay area types include frontier towns, rolling prairies teaming with wildlife, and perilous mountain passes - each packed with an endless flow of varied distractions. Along the way, players will experience the heat of gunfights and battles, meet a host of unique characters, struggle against the elements and animals of one of the world’s last remaining wildernesses, and ultimately pick their own precarious path through an epic story about the death of the Wild West and the gunslingers that inhabited it. In their travels throughout the territories of the gameworld players partake in a morality system built on honor and fame, where they gain or lose points in each area based on their actions. The game features an easy to use cover system, a variety of mounts and period specific weapons including a cattleman revolver, a mauser pistol, a repeater rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, a throwing knife, a lasso and more. Western themed mini-games are also available, including showdowns, gambling, hunting bounties, cattle herding and five finger fillet.
Key Game Features

Expansive open-world gameplay set in the final years of the American Wild West.
Massive play area made up 3 unique regions composed of towns and outposts filled with characters with varying looks, accents, etc.
Morality system based on honor and fame generated by the players actions throughout the game.
Loads of unique non-player characters to interact with.
Western themed mini-games including showdowns, gambling, hunting bounties, cattle herding and five finger fillet.
An assortment of period specific weapons including a cattleman revolver, a mauser pistol, a repeater rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, a throwing knife, lasso and more.
The Dead Eye targeting mechanic, allowing the player to slow down time for shot accuracy.
Ridable horses and more than 40 kinds of animals that you can hunt or be hunted by.

Product Description
Red Dead Redemption is a Western epic, set at the turn of the 20th century when the lawless and chaotic badlands began to give way to the expanding reach of government and the spread of the Industrial Age. The story of former outlaw, John Marston, Red Dead Redemption takes players on a great adventure across the American frontier.

Music: Ozzy Osbourne "Scream"

2010-06-24T02:33:00.000-04:00

This will be the SCREAM heard around the world.

OZZY OSBOURNE will release SCREAM—his first album in almost three years and 10th studio album overall—June 22 via Epic Records. Produced by OZZY and Kevin Churko, both of whom did the same honors for OZZY’s 2007 worldwide million-seller Black Rain, the album will feature the first single “Let Me Hear You Scream.”

The multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer recorded most of SCREAM at his Los Angeles home studio, The Bunker, and co-wrote all the songs, primarily with Churko. Notably, the album marks the first appearance of OZZY’s new guitar player, Gus G. OZZY’s band also features bassist Blasko, drummer Tommy Clufetos and keyboardist Adam Wakeman. In addition to “Let Me Hear You Scream,” the album’s confirmed tracks are: “Diggin Me Down,” “Let It Die,” “Soul Sucker,” “Fearless,” “I Want It All,” “Time,” “Crucify” and “I Love You All.”

OZZY will also embark on an 18-month world tour in support of SCREAM including Ozzfest dates in the US this summer.

OZZY recently stormed onto a non-music chart with his autobiography I AM OZZY (Grand Central Publishing)--the rock icon’s unbelievable story told, for the first time, in his hilarious, witty, and inimitable voice--debuting at #2 on the New York Times best-sellers list amid glowing reviews.

Movie Trailer: Splice

2010-06-12T00:40:00.000-04:00

Music: Eminem: Recovery

2010-06-12T00:35:00.000-04:00

Product Description

The much-anticipated new album - EMINEM RECOVERYOn Recovery, his seventh major label studio album, EMINEM has reached out to an exciting list of first-time collaborators, including DJ Khalil, Just Blaze, Jim Jonsin and Boi-1da, among others.
EMINEM releases Recovery just over a year after his last album, 2009's Relapse. Relapse put the cap on an impressive ten years of recorded output, and contributed to EMINEM being the biggest selling artist of 2000-2009. In recognition of this, Neilsen SoundScan named him their Artist of the Decade. Relapse entered the charts at #1 and, at nearly double platinum, was the best selling rap album of last year. It also earned EMINEM his 11th Grammy award, winning in the Best Rap Album category. Relapse's first single, "Crack A Bottle" from EMINEM, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent, soared to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (Eminem's second #1 after 2002's "Lose Yourself") and set a SoundScan record at the time of its release for opening week download sales (418,000). The album also spun off two other hits; the Top 10 "We Made You" and Top 20 "Beautiful."
"I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year," remarked EMINEM. "But as I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album. The music on Recovery came out very different from Relapse, and I think it deserves its own title."
EMINEM has sold more than 78,000,000 albums worldwide. After 1999's quadruple platinum The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002) became two of the Top 5 best selling albums of the 2000s, with approximately 10,000,000 copies of each sold in the U.S. alone. 2004's Grammy-nominated Encore reached #1 and was certified quadruple platinum. The #1, double platinum, 2005 greatest hits collection Curtain Call: The Hits and #2, platinum, 2006 various artists compilation Eminem Presents: The Re-Up followed.

True Blood: The Complete Second Season DVD

2010-06-12T00:30:00.000-04:00

True Blood's second season, with episodes involving a new cast of monsters invading Louisiana swamp town Bon Temps, is notably gorier and more camp than the first season. While thematically the central focus in these 12 exciting episodes still revolves around faith and loyalty, these questions are complicated by displays of pagan ritual and obsession. Though the vampire/human relationship dilemma continues, spearheaded by lovers Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), there is less emphasis on addiction to V, or vampire blood, and more time dedicated to outsiders whose supernatural talents make some episodes feel like superhero battles.Episode 1, "Nothing but the Blood," sets the gory example with a brutal opening scene in which the local shaman has been eviscerated. While gruesome murders continue throughout the season, we become familiar with a new femme fatale, Maryann Forrester (Michelle Forbes), who hosts bacchanalia, such as the one in episode 4 ("Shake and Fingerpop") that gives Bon Temps a collective hangover. Also developing in this season are relationships between Sookie and Bill's vampire colleagues Eric (Alexander Skarsgård), Eric's master Godric, and a vampire queen who plays Yahtzee throughout episode 11 ("Frenzy"). The ever-increasing vampire interest in Sookie leads to her questioning her own supernatural psychic identity, especially in the final episode ("Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"), a semi-ridiculous, over-the-top segment that is more humorous than scary. Also corny but funny are the episodes featuring Fellowship of the Sun zealots Steve and Sarah Newlin (Michael McMillian and Anna Camp), and Jason Stackhouse's evangelical dedication to them (with Ryan Kwanten as Stackhouse). Perhaps the best episodes are those dedicated to the endangered plights of Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), and Tara (Rutina Wesley). New characters, like Tara's lover, Eggs (Mehcad Brooks), and the young, tempestuous vampire Jessica Hamby (Deborah Ann Woll), also add greatly to an already fabulous cast. Though the extras in this DVD set, "The Vampire Report (Special Edition)" and "Fellowship of the Sun: Reflections of Light," offer lighthearted, pseudo-documentary fun, they feel quaint next to the many wonderful episodes of this horror serial. --Trinie Dalton

Avatar out on DVD NOW!!

2010-06-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

RATING: PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking

Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang, and Matt Gerald

Jake Sully is a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Because Pandora's atmosphere is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers" have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora... the Na'vi. Reborn in his avatar form, Jake can walk again. He is given a mission to infiltrate the Na'vi, who have become a major obstacle to mining the precious ore. But a beautiful Na'vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake's life, and this changes everything. Jake is taken in by her clan, and learns to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. As Jake's relationship with his reluctant teacher Neytiri deepens, he learns to respect the Na'vi way and finally takes his place among them. Soon he will face the ultimate test as he leads them in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world. (20th Century Fox)

Movie Trailer: Iron Man 2

2010-03-28T01:27:00.000-04:00

Hot Tub Time Machine

2010-03-26T19:12:00.000-04:00

Source: www.Cinematical.com

Remember what the world was like before Judd Apatow brought back the raunchy, R-rated comedy? Nah, me neither. Oh wait -- I do! Hollywood comedies, for a good long while, were PG-13 at their naughtiest, aimed at as broad a demographic as possible, and they weren't very funny. It was a tough time to be a grown-up with a sense of humor.

But The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up changed all that, and now we're blessed with a wide variety of adult comedies! By "wide variety," I naturally mean "stories about grown men suffering from protracted adolescence." Pineapple Express, Role Models, The Hangover, I Love You, Man ... all very funny. And all, when you think about it, essentially about the same bunch of guys.

Hot Tub Time Machine is rated R, it's very funny, and it once again features the same group of characters, although they're rendered even more sketchily than in any of the above-mentioned films. John Cusack plays Adam, the likable anchor/ostensible main character. He's just broken up with his live-in girlfriend, who we only experience via phone message and Post-Its demanding her share of the household goods. Adam and and his friend Nick (Craig Robinson) reunite at the hospital following a possible suicide attempt involving their loose-cannon pal Lou (Rob Corddry), and they decide to visit the old stomping grounds from their youth, an upstate ski resort called Kodiak Valley. Adam's nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke) comes along, as well.

There is a hot tub. They get in it. And then it's 1986. Advised by a mysterious hot-tub repairman (Chevy Chase) that they must do everything exactly like they did when they were at the resort some 20 years earlier, Adam is charged with breaking up with his girlfriend, Nick needs to perform on stage, and Lou must get the crap knocked out of him by some asshat ski patrol guys. And so, they proceed to do just that, with mixed results.

It would have been prudent, perhaps, to write "spoiler alert" before the above synopsis because, really, that's all there is to the movie. Like The Hangover, which this film seems to admire, what follows is anecdotal, disjointed, and slapdash, more a series of gags inspired by the central premise than a real plot. Yes, it's often very, very funny. Not all of it is, but enough that it makes for an enjoyably stupid experience. Transported without warning to '86 via a hilariously well-crafted time travel sequence, the four understandably freak out. They run down the rules of time travel as learned from the Terminator flicks; Jacob, in danger of disappearing altogether if the boys don't follow the rules, proclaims himself an expert on the subject because "I write 'Stargate' fan fiction; I know what I'm talking about!"

Duke, Corddry and Robinson are reliably funny, no matter what they do, even when a couple of outdated, homophobic scenarios are trotted out. There are jokes about oversized cellphones, leg warmers and Michael Jackson. The soundtrack pulls out some of the most egregious examples of 80's schlock-pop to create a kitsch soundtrack. Through it all, Cusack, working again with director Steve Pink (Pink co-wrote Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity), simply looks tired. It's charitable to say that this is the funniest Cusack comedy in a long time -- but his last comedy was 2005's Must Love Dogs, and he never breaks a sweat in Hot Tub Time Machine, mostly going through the motions and allowing his co-stars to do all the heavy lifting.

Coming very close to stealing the movie is Crispin Glover, as a creepy one-armed bellhop. His surly, antagonistic demeanor when they arrive at the hotel -- followed by his demand for a tip -- is over-the-top and deliriously funny. But it gets even better when he reappears in 1986, chipper, cheerful and possessing all his limbs, then suffers from a series of near-arm-severing accidents.

Women are, of course, mostly set dressing, serving as floozies, bimbos, wives and ex-girlfriends. Lizzy Caplan brings a welcome smart female note to her few scenes as a music journalist who catches Cusack's eye, but otherwise it's a lad's adventure all the way. Given the scattershot nature of the film (and the outtakes/alternate lines that pepper the advertising yet never made it into the movie) there'll probably be a lot of funny extra material on the DVD release. Meanwhile, for those of us old enough to get references to Red Dawn, 80's hip hop, Back to the Future, and Sixteen Candles, there's a fair amount of genuine retro fun to be had here.

Hot Victoria’s Secret Models

2009-11-24T19:13:00.000-05:00

50 Greatest MMA Dominations

2009-11-24T18:49:00.000-05:00

Are they the bloodiest MMA moments? No, but there's definitely some blood. Are they the most gruesome MMA moments? No, but you'll see some limbs get bent in ways that no god intended. Are they the sweetest MMA moments? No, just no. Look, we ain't no MMA experts, but we know domination when we see it, so we've collected (with the help of the dominatingly thorough Ben Goldstein of CagePotato.com) theGreatest Dominations in MMA History. You may disagree with our rankings, or even the list itself, but there's one thing we're sure of: you'll get a kick (and a punch, a headbutt, and a knee or ten to the chin) out of our countdown.

Movie Trailer: Sherlock Holmes

2009-11-24T06:53:00.000-05:00

Movie: Avatar

2009-11-24T06:47:00.000-05:00

Release Date: December 18, 2009 (conventional 3D theaters and IMAX 3D)

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Director: James Cameron

Screenwriter: James Cameron

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang, Matt Gerald

Genre: Action, Adventure

MPAA Rating: Not Available

Official Website: Avatarmovie.com

Plot Summary: "Avatar," a live action film with a new generation of special effects, takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads an epic battle to save a civilization. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of "Titanic," first conceived the film years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist. Now, after four years of actual production work, "Avatar" delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.

The story's hero is Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. Bitter and disillusioned, he's still a warrior at heart. All Jake ever wanted was something worth fighting for, and he finds it in the place he least expected: on a distant world. Jake has been recruited to join an expedition to the moon Pandora, which corporate interests are strip-mining for a mineral worth $20 million per kilogram on Earth. To facilitate their work, the humans use a link system that projects a person's consciousness into a hybrid of humans and Pandora's indigenous humanoids, the Na'vi. This human-Na'vi hybrid – a fully living, breathing body that resembles the Na'vi but possesses the individual human's thoughts, feelings and personality – is known as an "avatar."

In his new avatar form, Jake can once again walk. His mission is to interact with and infiltrate the Na'vi with the hope of enlisting their help – or at least their acquiescence – in mining the ore. A beautiful Na'vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake's life, albeit reluctantly, because even in his avatar body, Jake represents to her the human encroachment on the Na'vi's unspoiled world.

As Jake's relationship with Neytiri deepens, along with his respect for the Na'vi, he faces the ultimate test as he leads an epic conflict that will decide nothing less than the fate of an entire world.

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More stuff HERE

Megan Fox in NY Times Magazine

2009-11-24T06:41:00.000-05:00

More pics and full gallery HERE

Music: Rihanna “Russian Roulette” Video

2009-11-15T19:38:00.000-05:00

Movies: Avatar Trailer

2009-11-15T19:03:00.000-05:00

AVATAR takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of Titanic, first conceived the film 15 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not exist yet. Now, after four years of production, AVATAR, a live action film with a new generation of special effects, delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.

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Movie Review: 2012

2009-11-14T01:14:00.001-05:00

The most common retort one gets when talking negatively of a film clearly intended to be consumed with a tub of popcorn and a brain switch in the off position is "Why can't you just enjoy the movie?" And I get that. I am the kind of viewer who can absolutely just sit back and let sights and sounds wash over them. But what some fail to understand is that even with the brain turned off, even with disbelief firmly suspended, some movies stink so ferociously that the stench wafts off of the screen, snapping even the most resistant critic to full alertness like a slap in the face by a glove spiked with smelling salts.

2012 is not immune to analysis simply because it is an openly absurd movie. Sure, it's about the end of the world taking place three years from now. Sure, it features some astounding special effects. Sure, it is in every way, shape, and form a popcorn tub movie. And sure, you know from the trailer alone whether or not you're game for yet another disaster porn movie from The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. But what the willing don't inherently know, and this is the most crucial piece of information one can be equipped with before hand, is that 2012 is 158 minutes long.

Granted, one would expect the end of the world to take more than 90 minutes, but the biggest failing of 2012 is that it barely has enough story to span half an hour, yet alone two more beyond that. Sign up for all the California-sinking, supervolcano-erupting mayhem you want, but what you're signing up for comes packaged with banal, one-dimensional characters who are only ever allowed to spew groan-inducing dialogue like so many fireballs from a, well, supervolcano. And considering the spectacle is unfortunately a fraction of the length, the audience is given more than enough time to wonder how so much mediocrity came to be from such talented people.

Which is a shame, because 2012 opens well enough. Our proxy to the film's special logic is a scientist named Adrian (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who has come to learn that a new batch of sun flares are causing neutrinos to microwave the core of our planet, which will eventually cause the Earth's crust to crumble like a cookie, turning our pale blue dot into an uninhabitable jumble of sinking rocks and soaring tsunamis. He's an empathetic enough character thanks unquestionably to Ejiofor, an actor who can bring any amount of cardboard to life, and through him we get our first hint that 2012 might not be a typical disaster movie when the scientist barges into a black-tie gala to tell a Presidential science adviser that the planet is about to be turned into a bowl of cookies and cream.

Surprisingly the adviser goes against the formula grain and believes the doomsayer for a change, setting up a meeting directly with the President (Danny Glover). Meanwhile, our proxy to the other side of the story is the presumably heroic failed dad and failed author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), whom Emmerich has decided, unwisely, to saddle with the responsibility of being the comic relief. The problem isn't with Cusack, who has proven himself a great comedic actor, rather with Emmerich assuming that by hiring someone who has been in brilliant comedies he has hired someone with enough Midas touch to turn his written crap into gold. Sadly, that is not the case. Cusack shows none of the enthusiasm he's historically thrown into his roles, which renders our obvious hero character nothing beyond being the guy who keeps narrowly escaping every collapsing road, falling building, and erupting volcano whether he's in a limousine, a prop plane, or a Winnebago.

Despite Cusack's character being the must underwhelming one in the entire production, the first 50 odd minutes of the film are perfectly satisfying. The audience gets to meet and greet with a wide array of ancillary characters in orbit of Ejiofor and Cusack's storylines while also being treated to two outstanding, extended escape-the-apocalypse sequences that are thrilling enough to have you convinced 2012 may not be so bad after all. But then the tension winds down and we get to meet and greet even more ancillary characters, which serves not to provide the extended emotional attachment Emmerich is clearly shooting for. Rather the time spent with them does nothing to propel the core storyline while simultaneously diluting what minimal attachment the audience had with Cusack and his immediate family.

About midway through, 2012 has not only lost its characters but its spectacle trump card to boot. Nothing from that point on comes close enough to even touch toes with the film's first two effects extravaganzas, condemning the remaining hour plus of the film to meandering storylines with wholly predictable resolutions; which is a situation the co-writer/director does not have the skill set to make even remotely interesting. And this is coming from someone who owns and regularly enjoys watching The Day After Tomorrow and The Core, two of the most brainless popcorn disaster movies in existence. Yet even I could not tolerate the droll shenanigans on display.

This is one of those instances I hate in which everyone who saw the trailer for 2012 thought they knew exactly what the movie had in store. Those who thought it looked like CGI garbage are going to cynically cry "Told ya' so!", while those who thought it looked like an unapologetic blast are going to optimistically think "It can't be all bad..." And it isn't all bad, but what little good 2012 has is buried under a pile of cinematic rubble early on, out of sight, and given the length, eventually out of mind, never to be glimpsed again.

Source: Cinematical

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Google Offers Free Wi-Fi at Airports During the Holidays

2009-11-10T18:55:00.000-05:00

Delayed flights and hold-overs won't tempt you with $10-a-day Wi-Fi this holiday season. That's because Google has bought out web service at 47 airports through Jan. 15, 2010, and offers it free, assuming you don't mind a little soft advertising.
As with Google's free Wi-Fi offering on Virgin America flights, those who log in through Google's Wi-Fi largess will likely get a few prompts to change their home page to Google or try out Google Chrome. There will also be chances to donate to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation, or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Other than that, it's free Wi-Fi for laptops and mobile devices, offered through providers like Boingo, Advanced Wireless, and the other usual suspects.
Hit the link to see if your city's on the list. If it's not, there's a good chance your Wi-Fi could be picked up by Microsoft's Bing search engine, which foots the bill if you perform one search on Bing.

Free WiFi - A 2009-2010 Holiday Gift from Google

Lifehacker

Motorola DROID Review

2009-11-09T00:11:00.000-05:00

Motorola DROID review (Verizon Wireless)

By now you've seen Verizon's iDon't/DROID Does campaign on TV or on the streets. The first commercial can be found here. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek and Verizon has admitted this, but it does highlight a handful of things that the iPhone clearly cannot do. It should also serve as a clear indication that any rumor of the iPhone moving to the network is now squashed. Or they're confident enough that Apple won't hold a grudge. The former scenario is more likely. (See the best travel gadgets of 2009.)
Motorola's DROID has a very industrial look and feel to it. Gone are the days of lightweight and dainty devices. You don't have to coddle the DROID or shell out an extra $30 for a case. Wrapped mostly in metal, the DROID is chock-full of features that have become standard on ‘smartphones' or whatever else you want to call these mini computers. Here's a quick rundown on features and specs:

Network: Verizon Wireless (CDMA 1X 800/1900, EVDO rev. A)
Operating System: Android v2.0
Processor: Arm Cortex A8 processor 550mHz
Memory: 256MB built-in, ships with 16GB microSD card (expandable to 32GB)
Display: 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen (480x854)
Camera: 5-megapixel with dual-LED flash, auto-focus and image stabilization
Browser: Webkit HTML5, Flash Player 10.1 ready (coming soon)
GPS: aGPS/sGPS
Bluetooth: v2.1+EDR
Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g
Battery: 1400 mAh battery
Sensors: proximity, ambient light and eCompass
Size/Weight: 2.4 x 4.6 x 0.5 in., 6 oz.
DROID's 3.7-inch display is the best looking capacitive touchscreen we've ever seen on any device. It renders images and text beautifully. Colors appear to pop right off the screen. In other words, you can read e-mail, browse Web pages, read eBooks or comics for hours without suffering major eye fatigue. Touch response is good and most taps are registered with very little lag or issue. But the DROID is the only Android device running version 2.0, so it's difficult to say whether or not it's perfect. There's very little evidence to dispute this claim, though.

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11 WAYS WIRELESS PROVIDERS SCREW YOU OVER

2009-11-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

According to Consumerist, several wireless providers (including Verizon) “mark up the cost of text messages by at least 7,314% when compared to their rates for data transfer services.” Assuming a max text size of 160 characters and a transmission of 7 bits per character, that’s 1120 bits (or 140 bytes). Without a text messaging plan in place, you will find yourself paying 15 cents. Conversely, the very same phone can transmit 1024 bytes for just 1.5 cents via its data plan. As Consumerist puts it, “that’s $.015 per data kilobyte versus $1.09 per text message kilobyte.” Put another way, it equates to an eye-popping 7,314% markup!

READ MORE

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HTC DROID ERIS Phone Review

2009-11-04T17:43:00.000-05:00

If recent leaks are any indication, we should be seeing plenty more HTC DROID Eris unboxings any day now, but right now it looks like the Boy Genius Report has scored one of the first courtesy of one its helpful "connects." Of course, there aren't exactly a ton of surprises with the packaging apart from a bright splash of color upon opening the box, but the unboxer does say that the phone itself is thinner and lighter than the Sprint HTC Hero, and generally "feels much better in the hand." Hit up the link below for a few more shots, and watch this space (well, not literally this space) for what's sure to be more Eris news to come.

Keywords: Verizon, GOOGLE, HTC

Link

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Five Classic Poisons And The People Who Used Them

2009-11-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

Five Classic Poisons And The People Who Used Them

The Top 100 Sports Moments Of The Decade

2009-11-04T17:20:00.000-05:00

WITH VIDEO EVIDENCE!!!

Link to Videos

Mexican Airbrushed Tailgate Mural Girls

2009-11-04T17:11:00.000-05:00

An awesome tribute to the awesomeness that is the Mexican airbrushed tailgate mural:

Living in NYC, it’s a rare spectacle to see a pickup truck, let alone one with an ornamented tailgate. But down in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California it’s become quite the everyday occurrence, a phenomenon even, known simply as the Mexican Airbrushed Tailgate Mural. It’s a visual celebration of values strategically painted on the business end of the working man’s chariot. Not always beautiful, but undeniably awesome.
To qualify as a true mexican tailgate mural, the mural must be airbrushed and include at least one of 6 possible images (often in combination to achieve maximum flare): (1) the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ, (2) a rendition of the owners pickup truck relaxing near a palm tree-laden oasis, (3) a mis-proportioned likeness of the truck owner’s childrens’ faces (4) a busty scantily-clad woman, typically posing on her knees (5) any Looney Tunes character, although usually Yosemite Sam, Tas or Tweety (6) Selina
If only all state could be southern border states… one can only dream.

MORE HERE: http://coedmagazine.com/2009/11/04/mexican-airbrushed-tailgate-awesomeness-50-photos/

Six Historic Villains You Didn't Know Had Incredible Careers

2009-11-04T17:07:00.000-05:00

Read more here:Link

An old Irish proverb says:

You build a dozen roads, but do they call you Connor the road-builder? No. You sire six wonderful sons, but do they call you Connor the child-rearer? No. But you fuck one sheep...

It's true. Some men are remembered for their greatness, some men are remembered for their evil, and some men are just remembered for that one fantastic failure that taints their entire existence. Like...

Movie: Prince of Persia Trailer

2009-11-04T16:53:00.000-05:00

It really looks like Jerry Bruckheimer and Mike Newell have taken the best of Pirates of the Caribbean, and employing it here. The costumes and sets are lush and exotic, the cast is gorgeous, there's plenty of crazy action sequences, and the special effects look as solid as golden sands of time can look. My only issue with it is that we only see a few glimpses of wit and fun. Part of what made Pirates so enjoyable was the chemistry and dialogue, and a cast that seemed to be relishing every moment it spent swashbuckling. There was a healthy sense of the ridiculous inherent in it. Everyone in Persia seems to be taking magical daggers, destines, and demons very, very seriously and such earnestness can be offputting for an audience who wants to be transported. Luckily, there's some promising flickers of humor at the end of the trailer (Do jokes about body searches ever get old? Not if they're delivered with the right twinkle in the eye.), and I hope it's a sign that it's not going to be grim and humorless stuff.

Source

Movie Review: Amelia

2009-10-23T19:57:00.000-04:00

Among Hollywood actresses of a certain echelon, there’s a lot of unscientifically quantified grumbling about the dearth of quality roles. It’s too bad then, that when one of the biggest recent opportunities for cinematic grrl-power arrives, it’s marred by flat storytelling, stilted writing and an overwrought score that drowns out whatever subtlety was left.
Amelia is the much-anticipated biopic ofAmelia Earhart (Hilary Swank), who disappeared in 1937 during her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world. For those of us with just a vague notion of who she was and what her life was like, the film fills in some basic details and fleshes out the contours of her experience, both in the air -- where she explored exquisite landscapes from Africa to Ireland -- and on the ground, where she marriedpublishing mogul George Putnam (Richard Gere) and had a romance with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). Amelia is also committed to reinforcing Earhart’s legacy as a true feminist in every facet of her life -- from insisting on removing the word “obey” from her marriage vows, to reminding us that (in case we missed it) she refuses the shackles of convention.

Read full review:

Radar

Hayden Pannetiere Kiss on HEROES

2009-10-20T01:49:00.002-04:00

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Felix - 2009 World Pole Dance Champion

2009-10-19T00:51:00.000-04:00

Felix performing her winning routing at the World Pole Dance Championships in Jamaica 2009.
Event organisers: www.polepassion.com

Movie Review: Law Abiding Citizen

2009-10-19T00:33:00.000-04:00

As a kid I remember reading in either CRACKED or MAD magazine a parody about movie heroes and villains. The story pointed out how, very often, heroes are much ruder and less well behaved than villains. For example, James Bond will burst into an enemy hideout; the villain will remark, "ah... Mr. Bond. Welcome to my humble abode." And Bond will say, "I'm going to take you down, you snake!" That's a crude example, but you get the drift. The new Law Abiding Citizen is like that, all the way through. The hero is a slick, well-dressed sort who is more concerned with his personal advancement than with the well-being of others. The villain is a highly intelligent, highly trained killer who is trying to rid the world of something broken and corrupt. The villain longs for his dead wife and daughter, while the hero neglects his wife and daughter. Whenever they meet, the villain speaks cordially to the hero, and the hero snaps back with a nasty attitude.

Read the rest:
Source: Cinematical

Real-Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords

2009-10-18T19:02:00.000-04:00

It used to be that business owners often struggled to afford advertising for their products or services. Google AdWords has changed that by offering an inexpensive way to spread the word. But if you don’t do some careful planning, you can easily find yourself spending thousands of dollars with little to show for it.

Here are the basics: Google AdWords are keyword-driven ads that show up along the right-hand side of a Google search page under the rubric “sponsored links.” People who search for terms related to those you select — say, “widgets for sale” — will see your ad alongside the results of their search. How high up your ad appears on the list of sponsored links will depend, in part, on how much you’re willing to spend on your campaign. The more you spend and the more relevant your ad, the higher it will rank. Because AdWords is a pay-per-click service, you pay Google only when someone clicks on your ad.

When you begin your campaign, you create a text-only ad that includes a link to your Web site. Then you select the keywords that will determine which searchers see your ad. You can — and should — specify how much you want to spend, what language(s) your ad will appear in and even the geographical reach of your ad. Google also gives you the opportunity to post ads through its content network, AdSense, which will place your ad on Web sites that offer content that relates to your keywords.

Googling the term AdWords will return dozens of pages of links to experts of all kinds promising to help you construct and optimize an AdWords campaign of your own. What follows are lessons learned the hard way by business owners who’ve actually taken the plunge:

________________________________________________________________

Set a budget, a daily or monthly amount you’re willing to spend.
Begin by casting a narrow net, advertising in your local market and then expanding to additional markets like Google’s AdSense network.
Try to choose keyword terms that your competition has overlooked to keep per-word costs low.
Remember that good campaigns require constant adjustment.

_________________________________________________________________

Read the full article at the link below:

Source: NYTimes

Movie Review: The Stepfather

2009-10-17T00:11:00.001-04:00

Indifference is, perhaps, one of the most frustrating attitudes one can have towards a film. If you love a film, singing its praises is a natural by-product. Hating a film can often times be an even more cathartic experience than loving a film, as vitriol is always easily on tap. But not particularly caring one way or the other? That's oddly frustrating for me.

The Stepfather, the most recent collaboration between producer J.S. Cardone and director Nelson McCormick (the last being their remake of Prom Night, a project I feel safe calling the most annoying horror film of 2008, and even that's being diplomatic), is another entry to a new Hollywood tradition of finding vaguely recognizable films from the 1980s and remaking them on the cheap. Now, I'm not one to bemoan this business model; it's fine if the end result has enough originality to it that there is at least the illusion that the film is something more than a commodity to draw in a big opening weekend.

Read the review HERE

Petra Nemcova Photoshoot

2009-10-09T02:40:00.000-04:00

>>Link to more pics HERE

Top 10 Things Girls Think Are Cute, But Are NOT!

2009-10-09T02:18:00.000-04:00

Knock it off, it's not as cute as you think it is.

Link

Video: Letterman - Top Ten Sarah Palin Tips For Writing a Book

2009-10-01T02:06:00.000-04:00

Find Free Music On The Web

2009-10-01T01:38:00.001-04:00

Find free music on the web

Via Lifehacker

Your digital music collection is crying out for new songs. Sure you could hit up the iTunes Music Store, or rip another CD, or fire up your P2P software and pray the RIAA doesn't eat your firstborn - but the plain ol' web is an untapped goldmine of audio. If you're willing to branch out beyond the Top 40, have a gander at six of my favorite places to find tunes on the web.

Google

Use Google operators to find unprotected directories of audio files or files of type .mp3. As suggested by this Google Tutor & Advisor article, a Google search like this:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Kleptones"

Turns up several directory listings of Kleptones MP3's. Replace "Kleptones" with the artist, genre or keyword of your liking.

Singing Fish

If you don't want to screw around with nutty Google operators, check out Singing Fish, an exclusively audio and video search engine. See most popular searches and easily filter by file type and duration.

Webjay

Webjay is a playlist community. Webjay users create lists of songs that exist all over the Web in different formats. Browse around Webjay playlists and play them in a variety of music players - from Winamp to iTunes to RealPlayer. Not all formats are supported by all players, so it takes some patience to find what works with your software.

Webjay also has the "Play this page" bookmarklet which will generate a playlist from a list of music files on a web page. Snag that bookmarklet to help yourself sample songs from the sources mentioned here.

del.icio.us social bookmarks

Bookmark aggregator del.icio.us filters its bookmarks by filetype - which meanshttp://del.icio.us/tag/system:media:audio will give you a page of audio files,http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3 will give you a page of MP3's, andhttp://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3+mashups will give you a page of MP3's tagged mashup. You can play del.icio.us music directly on the page or subscribe to del.icio.us audio in iTunes and get new songs automatically using iTunes' Podcasting feature.

The good stuff floats to the top, so the most popular del.ici.us MP3's are almost always worth a listen.

Amazon

Amazon's Top Free Music downloads updates every six hours with DRM-free and legal tracks Amazon users like the most. This previously-mentioned Greasemonkey script will make DL'ing the Amazon tunes easier for Firefox users.

MP3 blogs

Tons of music bloggers post MP3's for download almost daily (shout-out to my personal favorite, Stereogum!). To get you started, the Tofu Hut blog has an insanely long list of MP3 blogs, as does this classic Metafilter post. Once you find the MP3 blogs that you like, download songs from them automatically. Command-line lover Jeff Veen has a great method using the wget utility to fetch audio files listed on web sites you specify in a text file. Check out his instructions on how to wget new music every day.

Also, The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator that gathers all the audio links on MP3 blogs into one place.

Movie: Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-10-01T00:43:00.000-04:00

Watch Trailer

Movie Review:

The Pirates of the Caribbean have nothing on the buccaneers of Wall Street, and the banks and insurance companies that merrily loot America with the help of our elected officials. You know this. I know this. So how come Michael Moore has to make a movie about it? Because we're doing fuck-all to change things. The explosive Capitalism: A Love Storyis Moore's call to arms against the robber barons who shamelessly empty our pockets while we do nothing about it. Why? Because we want to get in the pants of the upper one percent and rub up against expensive stuff just like they do. Some love story!

Moore sees our abusive relationship with capitalism as a growing plague. His movie, a genuine and welcome rabble-rouser, lays out the history of how democracy got corrupted. Moore's enemies label him as a fat, fatuous irritant who leans toward the overblown, inflammatory and clownishly silly. What's with those crazy stunts like making a citizen's arrest on the board of AIG or hanging yellow crime-scene tape around the banks? To get our attention, that's what. Moore is a populist, not an academic. He knows how to wield a camera like a blunt instrument. He also knows how to put a human face on statistics as we watch banks foreclose on the homes of families who never read the fine print. Moore's fireball of a movie could change your life. It had me laughing with tears in my eyes.

Source: Rolling Stone Magazine::
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/28418948/review/30235359/capitalism_a_love_story

Music Review: Muse - The Resistance

2009-09-28T17:36:00.000-04:00

From Rolling Stone Nagazine

Free Music here: http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/29924422/review/29951384/the_resistance

Muse: The Resistance

Many art rockers have symphonic pretensions, but it takes gumption to compose a "symphony." Enter Muse: The British trio's fifth album closes with "Exogenesis: Symphony," a three-part suite full of grandiose orchestral swells and lyrical koans like "Why are we? Who are we?" Muse's humongous cresting and tumbling songs have earned them a massive cult following, along with criticism that the band sounds a little too much like its heroes. (Frontman Matthew Bellamy has a serious Thom Yorke fixation.) Songs like the industrial-flavored "Uprising" prove again that Muse know how to whip up an almighty roar. But the lyrics are pompous doggerel ("Coercive notions re-evolve/A universe is trapped inside a tear"), and they borrow shamelessly from Radiohead and Queen without the former's musical invention or the latter's cheeky swagger. Ultimately, The Resistance is a patchwork of expert clichés that leaves a listener wondering just what the point of Muse is. Why are they? Who are they?

Movie Trailer: Zombieland

2009-09-28T17:13:00.003-04:00

Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has made a habit of running from what scares him. Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) doesn't have fears. If he did, he'd kick their ever-living ass.

OPENS IN THEATERS 10/2/2009
___________________________________________________________________

Movie Trailer: The Nine 9 Official Trailer

2009-09-19T23:42:00.002-04:00

OPENS 9-9-09

Movie Trailer: Surrogates HD

2009-09-19T23:28:00.000-04:00

Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others surrogates.

OPENS 9/25/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Co2DHPxlA

Movie Trailer: Jennifer's Body

2009-09-19T23:25:00.002-04:00

Nude Megan Fox
Movie Trailer: Jennifer's Body

Great Movie Moments: Girls Kissing Girls - Inside Movies

2009-09-19T23:16:00.002-04:00

Great Movie Moments: Girls Kissing Girls - Inside Movies

Shared via AddThis

Lots of YouTube Videos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

** Includes movie scenes from the following movies: Basic Instinct, BasicInstinct, Bound, Chasing Amy, ChasingAmy, Cruel Intentions,CruelIntentions, Frida, Jennifers Body, JennifersBody, John Tucker Must Die, JohnTuckerMustDie,Mulholland Drive, MulhollandDrive, Showgirls, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, VickyCristinaBarcelona, Wild Things, WildThings

Warning: Adult Content Ahead.

How To Find Free Wifi

2009-08-20T13:45:00.002-04:00

You're out and about with your laptop and you're in need of some fast internet connectivity. Here are some tried and true ways to find and get free Wi-Fi.

Easy: The Most Likely Places You'll Find Free Wi-Fi

You can find some free Wi-Fi love at the local public library, Barnes and Noble, McDonald's, the airport, university campus, independent coffee shop, or hotel lobby. Not all airports or hotels or even campuses offer free Wi-Fi though, so give the destination a ring before you hoof it over there only to be disappointed. (For example, the San Diego airport offers free Wi-Fi as does JetBlue's T5 in New York's JFK, but many other airports are pay-for access only. On the UCSD campus you used to need a password to log on; now guests can get free access.)

Link: http://lifehacker.com/5340435/the-definitive-guide-to-finding-free-wi+fi?skyline=true&s=x

Go Behind the Scenes of District 9 with Peter Jackson

2009-08-14T21:42:00.000-04:00

"The Legion" Movie Trailer

2009-08-13T22:10:00.002-04:00

After God loses faith in humanity, the archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) is the only one standing between mankind and the apocalypse. He leads a group of strangers who must protect a woman who is pregnant with Christ in his second coming.

District 9

2009-08-13T21:44:00.006-04:00

Do we really need another alien invasion picture? When it's as hellaciously entertaining as District 9, the answer is a resounding "Yes!"

A huge spaceship comes to a sudden halt above Johannesburg, South Africa, stranding all its passengers on Earth. Twenty years later, the alien settlement has become a crime-filled shantytown; the visitors from outer space, derisively called "prawns" because of their resemblance to sea creatures, have worn out their welcome. They have refused to assimilate into human culture and stubbornly insist on speaking their own language instead of learning an Earth-friendly tongue. Local residents have had enough. The government hires MNU, a weapons development corporation with its own private army, to evict the prawns from their walled-off ghetto and relocate to a new tent city, where it is hoped that they will no longer disturb humans.

The premise immediately invites comparisons with Alien Nation, Cloverfield,District 13, Escape From New York, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, and on and on. The initial scenes only add to this impression by unreeling in a mock-documentary style, featuring interviews with human witnesses and excerpts from television broadcasts. But thanks to the ingenuity of director Neill Blomkamp and his co-writer Terri Tatchell (perhaps with a nudge in the right direction by producer Peter Jackson), District 9 swiftly establishes its own tough-minded, smart identity. Think of it as Independence Day for adults.

.......Read the rest here:

[Cinematical]

Hack Your Voicemail to Save Time

2009-04-26T01:04:00.001-04:00

Turn off numeric paging: One of the options you can turn off is numeric paging, making it easier on the poor saps leaving you a voicemail in the first place (removes one hurdle before the beep.) In all my years of mobile phone use, I have never sent or had anyone send me a numeric page, and I don't imagine anyone ever will, really.
Turn off caller information: Another, you can tell the system to not read you caller information, date, time, blood type, and moon phase before it relents and plays back the actual content of the message. The information is generally redundant anyway, since 95% of people who leave me a message leave me their phone number and the time in the message (and unless I'm out of range or being called by a private number, my missed call log gets it too.) They're nice enough to tell you that you can hear caller information at any time by pressing 1 during the message.
Enable Expert Mode: The third valuable tip for Sprint voicemail users is a gem called "Expert Mode." This shortens the voice prompts prompts from something like "To delete this message, press 7" to "Delete, 7."

Basic Formulas are the Basis of Impromptu Cocktails

2009-03-19T19:20:00.001-04:00

Paul Clark, writing for the food blog Serious Eats, points out that nearly all good cocktails follow a basic ratio and that using that ratio can yield pretty tasty results even when using non-standard recipes.
For example, sour-style, liqueur-sweetened cocktails such as margaritas and sidecars usually fall into a 2:1:1 or 3:2:1 ratio of spirits:liqueur:citrus, depending on how sweet or tart you prefer the result. Remember the particular formula that's to your liking and you can start swapping all kinds of things through to make different drinks: rum instead of brandy, apricot liqueur instead of Cointreau; while a little wiggle with the proportions may be required with some substitutions, as long as you follow the basic formula you can be assured that you'll wind up with something balanced.
He goes on to detail other ratios and how his experiment with mixing his own cocktails using the formulas yielded positive results. If you have your own trick for mixing drinks, sound off in the comments and save your fellow readers for another round of rum and coke.

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5175627/basic-formulas-are-the-basis-of-impromptu-cocktails

Malin Akerman Nude in Watchmen

2009-03-10T19:32:00.001-04:00

Includes Videos and Picture Galleries from Sex Scenes in Watchmen

See here: Link

Hayden Panettiere Likes Older Men

2009-02-19T21:53:00.002-05:00

Hayden Panettiere aka "Claire" from Heroes has a thing for older guys. First it was the 39 year old guy and now this 51 year old guy who plays ....her DAD!

See more HERE

George W. Bush's Last Environmental Stand

2008-11-08T14:01:00.001-05:00

The Bush Administration has proposed several last-minute regulatory changes that environmentalists deem anti-green. When Barack Obama takes the oath of office as President on Jan. 20, he'll have an environmental agenda of his own. But before he can push his initiatives, Obama may need to clean up the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

read more | digg story

Bush: A Retrospective in Pictures

2008-11-08T13:11:00.001-05:00

With his days in office coming to an end, we look back at some of Georgie Boy’s finest moments.

read more | digg story

The 10 Least Effective Ways to Pick Up a Girl

2008-11-06T23:02:00.003-05:00

A handy list for all you diggers who long for the warmth of a female against your monitor-tanned skin.

read more | digg story

Which Stocks Will Soar Under an Obama Presidency?

2008-11-06T23:02:00.001-05:00

So which shares would rise the most during a Barack Obama stretch in the White House? It's actually easier than it might seem to pick the right investment themes for a politically charged run. Click through to find three sectors and stock picks that stand to benefit when Obama is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009.

read more | digg story

Want a Free Education? A Guide to Free Online Video Lectures

2008-11-03T19:27:00.001-05:00

The rise this year of a host of new Web video sites targeting high-minded, edifying content suggests that today's marketplace of ideas is rapidly moving online. From interviews with obscure geniuses to splashy marquee names and hoary conference proceedings, an entire back catalog of cerebral Web video is steadily accumulating online.

read more | digg story

Ten Foods We Love Even Though They Taste Wrong

2008-11-03T19:19:00.001-05:00

In the great Venn diagram of foods, there’s a circle of foods we love, and a circle of foods that just don’t taste right—and then there’s the wonderful, sometimes surprising, always guilt-inducing delicious area where the two cross over. Yes, some foods just don’t taste like they’re supposed to. Let the choir sing “Hallelujah.”

read more | digg story

7 Reasons Why Condoms Suck, But Why Getting an STD Is Worse

2008-11-02T20:22:00.001-05:00

Fans of shock jock Howard Stern know that he likes using condoms, but that's not too surprising given his oft-reported small size and easily aroused, hornball reputation. But for many of the rest of us, condoms can be a real hassle, an inconvenience, or even a barrier to a fulfilling night. Yet, they can save your life.. We need to get real.

read more | digg story

The end of TV: Boxee + Apple TV + Hulu

2008-11-02T20:15:00.001-05:00

Boxee is an open source media center, with social networking features, currently in an invite-only alpha stage. It is a fork of XMBC, a media center initially designed for the Xbox, but then ported to run on all major platforms. Let's take a look at it.

read more | digg story

Hacking Google: Turning a Search Engine into an MP3 Download

2008-11-02T20:04:00.001-05:00

Yes, that's right. You can take everyone's favorite all-purpose search engine and turn it into a web-crawling, MP3 ripping demon for you. The procedure itself isn't as hard as you would think, either.

read more | digg story

5 Best Halloween Shots

2008-10-26T16:53:00.001-04:00

Bottoms up...

read more | digg story

Inside The Mind Of A Hacker

2008-10-26T16:52:00.003-04:00

Albert Gonzalez appeared to be a reformed hacker. But the onetime government informant was a central character in what Justice Department officials claim was an international cybercrime syndicate that ripped off tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers from large U.S. retailers.

read more | digg story

19 Ways to Slash Your Utility Bill

2008-10-26T16:52:00.001-04:00

Where George Scott sees red, his clients are bleeding green.

read more | digg story

Energy Storage Discovery Could Lead to Unlimited Solar Power

2008-10-26T16:48:00.001-04:00

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a new way of storing energy from sunlight that could lead to ‘unlimited’ solar power.

read more | digg story

40 Unwritten Rules to Live By

2008-10-26T16:47:00.001-04:00

1. Never ask a woman if she wants to have sex by asking her if she wants to have sex.

read more | digg story

USA Today Releases 2008 Top 25 Preseason Football Poll

2008-08-01T19:32:00.000-04:00

USA Today Releases 2008 Top 25 Preseason Football Poll
College football season is here.
USA Today has released it’s preseason Top 25 poll and surprise, surprise–Notre Dame didn’t make the list.

Check out the full Top 25

Large Gallery of Drunk Girls KIssing

2008-08-01T19:28:00.001-04:00

Check out this SFW gallery after the jump.

You know, “SFW” unless you work someplace lame…

-->http://www.coedmagazine.com/entertainment/12790

Marisa Miller All Oiled Up

2008-08-01T19:23:00.003-04:00

These pictures of Marisa Miller oiled up and in a bikini at the Inca Summer show are from 2007

--Includs some topless pics from Perrfect 10

http://idontlikeyouinthatway.com/2008/08/marisa-miller-is-here-to-help.html

The Top 10 Names That Dick Butkus would approve

2008-08-01T19:08:00.003-04:00

The Top 10 Best NFL Names: Dick Butkus Would Approve

From the Website:

So rather than combing through football rosters for information relevant to a
player's on-field performance, or using said info for any useful purpose
whatsoever, we've instead gone through the ranks to highlight something over
which players had absolutely no control: their names. The NFL has given us
people with nicknames like William "The Refrigerator" Perry, so called because
of his frequent visits to one and also because he looked as close as a human
could to one without being robbed of the ability of forward movement and others
with names like Man Mountain, which also wasn't in any way ironic.
Here, however,
is a list of gridiron athletes whose given names are so stellar that they do not
need nicknames. Compiled from current NFL rolls and barring any exploding
kneecaps or other assorted football injuries over the weekend, here, in no
particular order, are the best damn legal names currently on a National Football
League roster. That's currently, people, so no waxing poetic about Blood Mcnally
tearing up City Stadium in the days before helmets.

Free Game: Micro Olympics

2008-08-01T18:58:00.002-04:00

Micro Olympics is a simple,yet addictive Flash-based game that brings wasting time and shooting things out of a cannon to a whole new level.
There are three varieties of Micro Olympics, the original, Micro Olympics on Mars and Micro Olympics Christmas. All three have the same guiding principal: shoot your plane, flying saucer or Santa's sled further than your competitor.
You control the height of your launch by clicking on the cannon and stopping at your desired angle. The velocity of the launch is then chosen by when you click on the canon as you see the velocity increase and decrease. Match the right angle with high enough velocity and you're golden.
In each round you are given three opportunities to best your competitors average distance. After each launch session, you are awarded points based on distance, bonus points dependent on other features and money that can be used at the end of each round to buy add-ons that will help you obtain higher distances, either through power-ups or bonus points.

Micro Olympics (via Download Squad)

Another "Harold & Kumar" adventure?

2008-07-29T07:18:00.000-04:00

Another "Harold & Kumar" adventure?
Via: Variety
Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the guys who wrote the first two "Harold & Kumar" movies, and who directed the second one, are planning on writing and directing a third installment. No news yet on the what the story will be, but the stars John Cho and Kal Penn have been optioned for the third adventure.
The first film garnered a cult following, earning $18 million domestically in 2004 and generating more than $30 million in DVD coin. The sequel, which cost $12 million, earned $14.9 million its opening weekend before topping out at $38 million. "Guantanamo Bay" is set for release on DVD on Tuesday.

Cuil is a Cool Disaster

2008-07-29T02:32:00.002-04:00

The new search engine Cuil turns out to be a disaster. The new search engine which debuted recently has screwed up everything from names such as Clinton to Windows XP. Not to mention the large amount of page errors which have popped up everywhere.

Try Cuil

Snickers Makes Fun of Pussy Men

2008-07-29T02:27:00.002-04:00

Are you a fucking pussy bitch who speedwalks? Do you know anyone who is? Well, watch out, because Snickers and Mr.T are going to kick your ass if they find you.

From The Consumerist:

Using codes of masculinity to sell products to guys is nothing new, but it's usually about beer, "hard lemonade" or deodorant. It's also usually funny, and pokes fun at male insecurities while celebrating them. A new Snickers commercial, however, seems to just be about beating the crap out of sissies.
It opens on a guy in bright yellow shorts sashaying down a sidewalk. He's speedwalking. Suddenly a truck comes roaring over the houses and smashes onto the street beside the man. Mr. T is in the back of the truck behind a Gatling gun. He yells at the man to stop speedwalking: "You a disgrace to the man race!" he shouts. Then he fires candybars at the man, and the man dances around on the sidewalk in fear and takes off running. The tagline: "Snickers. Get some nuts." (You can watch it here.) Yum! Now when I want to satisfy my hunger and think about shooting down a mincing, nutless homo in suburbia, I'll know what candy bar to buy! Thanks, Snickers!

http://consumerist.com/5029752/snickers-makes-fun-of-effeminate-men-by-shooting-them

Barack Obama Flip Flops on Guns

2008-06-29T20:20:00.001-04:00

Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.
Oh, I'm sorry. He didn't change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.
That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace.
Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn't it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn't change your mind?
Regardless of what you think of the merits of yesterday's Supreme Court ruling overturning the capital's handgun law, it seems to me we're entitled to a clear position by the presumed Democratic nominee. And I'm a bit confused about how the confusion came about.
Here's how the Illinois senator handled the issue with the Chicago Tribune just last November:
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"The campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he ' . . . believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.' "
Kind of a flat statement.
And here's what ABC reported yesterday: " 'That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator's consistent position,' Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News."
Inartful indeed.
But even though the earlier Obama quote and the "inartful" comment have been bouncing around the Net for 24 hours, I'm not seeing any reference to them in the morning papers. Most do what the New York Times did: "Mr. Obama, who like Mr. McCain has been on record as supporting the individual-rights view, said the ruling would 'provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.' "
Supporting the individual-rights view? Not in November.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062701118.html

Obama Just Another Typical Politician

2008-06-29T20:18:00.001-04:00

Is Obama a Typical Politician?
By Taegan Goddard

Noting how Sen. Barack Obama has moved to the center on several issues recently -- gun control, the death penalty for child rapists and domestic wiretapping -- the RNC sends daily blast emails calling these "flip flops" actions of a "typical politician."In one way, Obama certainly is typical. During primaries candidates often curry favor with base voters and then move to the center during the general election. It's the way elections are usually won.However, given the historical nature of Obama's candidacy this attack line often falls flat. Sen. Hillary Clinton tried it in the primaries and failed. That's because there is nothing "typical" about a black man winning his party's nomination and having a good chance to be leader of the free world.However, First Read sees Obama continuing "to fuel this line of attack by making conventional decisions like ducking the town hall idea, flipping on campaign finance, trying to straddle the fence on guns, etc. And unlike McCain, Obama doesn't have years of good will with his brand; he only really has about 18 months. McCain has made a lot of subtle shifts away from his so-called maverick independent streak. But because his brand was cemented over years, he's been given more of a benefit of the doubt with the public. Obama's brand reservoir isn't as deep, and he should be much more sensitive to this collecting narrative that he isn't what he claims."Republicans haven't exactly been consistent on their attempts to define Obama, but he's got to realize that he's not immune to these attacks either. As Gloria Borger notes, the last thing Obama wants is people asking the question, "Is this the man I thought he was? Because once the question is asked, it's already answered."

Source: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/politicalinsider/2008/06/is-obama-a-typical-politician.html

How To Get Health Insurance After College

2008-06-19T18:53:00.000-04:00

How To Get Health Insurance After College
This year, 1.4 million graduates will be receiving their college degrees, but many of them will be losing their parents' health insurance, according to The Wall Street Journal. Many group health plans cover employees' children up to age 19 or 23, forcing many young men and women to find their own health insurance. The WSJ has assembled some ways to find health insurance and talks about how some young people are getting creative in the process. Details, inside...
Most people are unaware that at least 18 states have laws that allow parents to extend their coverage to older dependents, whether or not they are in college, often up to ages 23 or 25. A list of these states and their age limitations can be found here.
One creative student, Phillip Ngo, was dropped from his fathers' employers' insurance once he graduated college. Even though he had a degree, Phillip decided to enroll as an online student at a local college simply to regain his student status. Once he presented proof of enrollment to his fathers' company, he was put back on the plan.
Getting health insurance is usually neither easy nor cheap, but if you familiarize yourself with your states' laws and find out details about your parents' existing plans it could be a little easier than you think. Check out the WSJ's full article to learn about how some other young people found health insurance.
Graduates Get Creative To Find Health Coverage [WSJ] (Thanks to Mary!)Who is Insured and For How long? [NCSL]

Corrupt Senator Viewed Mortgage Treatment as a ‘Courtesy’

2008-06-19T18:06:00.002-04:00

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/washington/18dodd.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1214020800&en=234e439f794d2cf2&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin#

WASHINGTON — Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said Tuesday that he was aware that Countrywide Financial Corporation had assigned him to a V.I.P. program in 2003 when he refinanced mortgages on his homes in Connecticut and Washington but that he and his wife “assumed” that “it was more of a courtesy thing.”

Mr. Dodd insisted that they did not get favorable pricing.

As the Senate prepared to take up legislation intended to rescue homeowners at the brink of foreclosure, Mr. Dodd, a Democrat and chairman of the banking committee, defended himself against suggestions that he had received preferential treatment from Countrywide. At a tense news conference, he flatly denied seeking or receiving any discount from the lender.

But his concession that he never inquired or even wondered whether his special status with Countrywide might be related to his position as a senator prompted a barrage of new questions about the terms of his mortgages and about exactly what he knew and when he knew it.

“Somebody told you you were in a V.I.P. program,” a reporter said, “And you didn’t think you were getting ... ”

Mr. Dodd cut off the reporter and finished the question himself. “A special deal on a loan?” the senator asked. “No.”

Another Democrat, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, has admitted receiving preferential treatment from Countrywide on mortgages for a vacation house in Bethany Beach, Del., and an apartment building in Bismarck, N.D., but he said he was unaware of favoritism until a report last week on Portfolio.com questioned the terms of the loan.

Mr. Conrad announced that he had made a donation of $10,700 to Habitat for Humanity — the amount he saved by getting a one-point discount on fees related to a $1.07 million loan for the beach house.

Mr. Conrad had said he would refinance the apartment building loan and on Tuesday said the loan had been paid off.

Mr. Dodd said he had no intention of taking similar steps. “Well, I don’t know we did anything wrong here,” he said. “I negotiated a mortgage at a prevailing rate, a competitive rate. If anyone had said to me, ‘We’re giving you some special treatment here,’ I would have rejected it. So no, I don’t feel at this point that I have any obligation. I did what I was supposed to do. I did what millions of other people did.”

Portfolio.com cited internal Countrywide e-mail messages indicating that the lender had reduced the interest rate on both of Mr. Dodd’s loans by half a percentage point, a discount that potentially could save him tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loans.

The questions about the mortgages threatened to overshadow the foreclosure rescue legislation and, as some Republicans pressed for a more aggressive inquiry, Senate Democrats delayed consideration of the bill.

(A spokesman for the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said that details were still being worked out on some tax provisions in the bill.)

Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, called for hearings on Monday. “We must ensure that no member is inappropriately benefiting from their position,” Mr. Hensarling wrote in a letter seeking support for hearings.

Mr. Conrad said Tuesday that the Senate ethics committee had begun looking into the loans. “I welcome it,” he said. “My conscience is absolutely clear.”

Mr. Dodd said that he was a longtime customer of Countrywide and refinanced the mortgages on his homes in 2003 after shopping for the best deal. Ultimately, he obtained a five-year adjustable rate loan at 4.25 percent for his house in Washington and a 10-year adjustable rate loan at 4.5 percent for his house in East Haddam, Conn.

Mr. Dodd rented a house in Iowa, where he lived last year while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

He said the interest rates on his refinanced mortgages were slightly lower than he was quoted initially because rates had declined generally before the loans closed.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Conrad said that when he bought his beach house in 2002, he was determined not to be treated unfairly as he believed he had been while getting a loan for a different property years earlier.

He said he called a close friend, James A. Johnson, who had recently stepped down as the chairman and chief executive of Fannie Mae. Mr. Johnson was forced to give up an advisory role with the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama following suggestions that he got special treatment from Countrywide.

When Mr. Conrad called, Mr. Johnson was with Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of Countrywide. Mr. Conrad said Mr. Johnson handed the phone to Mr. Mozilo, who gave him the name of a loan officer. Mr. Conrad said he never talked to Mr. Mozilo again.

He said he did not find it unusual to be talking to a chief executive of a lending company about a mortgage because he did that even before he was in the Senate.

“Ten of the 12 mortgages I got were in North Dakota and in every one of those instances I talked with the No. 1 or No. 2 person,” he said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done differently.”

How To Destroy The World

2008-06-05T17:40:00.002-04:00

Top 5 Ways To Create an Earthquake

In the first Superman movie, supervillain Lex Luthor plans to trigger a massive, California-detaching earthquake by detonating a couple of nuclear weapons in the San Andreas Fault.
Crazy Lex! That scheme never would have worked, geologists will tell you. But, if he'd been serious about creating an earthquake, there are ways he could have actually done it. He would just have to inject some liquid (as some carbon-sequestration schemes propose) deep into the Earth's crust, or bore a few hundred thousand tons of coal out of a mountain.
"In the past, people never thought that human activity could have such a big impact, but it can," said Christian Klose, a geohazards researcher at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
It turns out, actually, that the human production of earthquakes is hardly supervillain-worthy. It's downright commonplace: Klose estimates that 25 percent of Britain's recorded seismic events were caused by people.
Most of these human-caused quakes are tiny, registering less than four on geologist's seismic scales. These window-rattlers don't occur along natural faults, and wouldn't have happened without human activity -- like mining tons of coal or potash. They occur when a mine's roof collapses, for example, as in the Crandall Canyon collapse in Utah that killed a half-dozen miners last year.
But some human actions can trigger much larger quakes along natural fault lines. That's because humans, with the aid of our massive machines, can sling enough mass around to shift the pattern of stresses in the Earth's crust. Faults that might not have caused an earthquake for a million years can suddenly be pushed to failure, as Klose argues occurred during Australia's only fatal earthquake in 1989.
After the jump, we present the top five ways to create an earthquake. With all due respect to Lex, and supervillains like him, you won't find nuclear explosions on the list. It turns out that if you want to make an anthroquake, shifting mass is far more effective than delivering a momentary blast.

1. Build a Dam: Water is heavier than air, so when the valley behind a dam is filled, the crust underneath the water experiences a massive change in stress load. For example, the Hoover Dam area experienced hundreds of quakes as Lake Mead filled. University of Alaska seismologist Larry Gedney explained, "Since [the dam] reached its peak of 475 feet in 1939, the level of seismicity has fluctuated in direct response to water level. None of the shocks has been particularly damaging -- the largest was about magnitude 5 -- but the area had no record of being seismically active." Other examples of dam-caused quakes abound and Klose's research indicates that about one-third of human-caused earthquakes came from reservoir construction. This science has raised fears that the recent earthquake in China was caused by the filling of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir, although no conclusive evidence has been presented.

Inject Liquid Into the Ground: In 1961, the Army decided that the best way to dispose of toxic waste from napalm production (among other things) was to drill a 12,000-foot-deep well in the Rocky Mountains and inject the bad stuff down it into the crust of the Earth. From 1962 to 1966, the Army deposited 165 million gallons of toxic waste into this hole in the Earth. Unfortunately, the injections probably triggered earthquakes in the region, and the Army shut the operation down. As seismologist Dave Wolny explained, "If you are doing deep well injection, you are altering the stress on the underlying rocks and at some point, the stress will be relieved by generating an earthquake."
Columbia's Klose fears that carbon dioxide sequestration, in which compressed CO2 captured from coal plants would be injected into underground deposits, could generate earthquakes too, and worse they'll be near heavily populated regions. "Unfortunately, coal-fired power plants are closer to cities," said Klose.

Mine a Lot of Coal: Coal provides more than half the electricity in the United States and an even greater percentage in China. That means there are a lot of coal mines working overtime to pull the fossilized fuel out of the Earth. In total, miners pulled 6,195 million metric tons of coal out of the Earth in 2006 alone. And coal mines often have to pump water out along with the coal, sometimes extracting dozens of times as much water as coal. Add it up and you have a huge change in the mass of a region, and huge mass changes refigure the earthquake stresses of an area, sometimes increasing the chance of an earthquake and other times lowering it. Klose's work suggests that more than 50 percent of the human-triggered earthquakes recorded came from mining operations.

Drill a Gusher Dry: Three of the largest human-caused quakes occurred near a natural-gas field in Uzbekistan, the Gazli. The combination of liquid extraction and injection changed the tectonic action in the field. The biggest of the trio registered as a 7.3. According to a major analysis (.pdf) by Russian scientists, "Few will deny that there is a relationship between hydrocarbon recovery and seismic activity, but exactly how strong a relationship exists has yet to be determined." They caution that in regions where tectonic activity is already high, extracting oil and natural gas could trigger strong quakes.

Create the World's Biggest Building: Back in 2005, a geologist claimed that the world's then-tallest building, the Taipei 101, which weighs in at more than 700,000 metric tons, was triggering earthquakes in a long-dormant fault in Taiwan. Klose doubts that the building actually did so, but said that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for a building to create an earthquake. The weight of the building, however, would have to be much greater than the Taipei 101's, and even much larger than the Burj Dubai, currently still under construction but already the world's tallest building.
Perhaps, then, this leaves some space for a supervillain to secretly construct the world's heaviest structure in the wilds of San Bernardino, slowly but surely adding strain to California's jumpy fault system in what Geoff Manaugh of the architectural speculation site, Bldgblog, calls "tectonic warfare."
But, thankfully, probably not.

Source: Wired Magazine (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/top-5-ways-that.html)

How To Hedge Against Rising Gas and Oil Prices?

2008-05-12T17:43:00.002-04:00

Everybody’s talking about gas prices… they’ve reached another high, everybody wants a hybrid… so why not explore how an individual can try to limit their exposure to gas prices?
How much more are you really paying?

Yes, $50 for a fill-up hits some sort of mental trigger, but sometimes I wonder if people really have calculated exactly how much more they are paying. According to AAA, the current national average is $3.70/gal, while a year ago it was $3.05. If your car gets 20 miles per gallon, you drive 12,000 miles per year, paying 65 cents more per gallon equates to an extra $390 per year. (If you got a stimulus check, this means a lot of it might have already been spent…)
Now, for many families who are walking a financial tightrope, such a hard-to-avoid increase is just a another step closer to the edge. But for the Wii-playing, Starbucks-drinking crowd, is an extra $32/month really worth making a fuss over? I mean, some of these folks are the same ones whose eyes glaze over when I describe some of the extra things I do for money outside of a regular workday.
Hedging Against Future IncreasesNow, someone could always play with oil futures contracts like the airlines do, but that’s a bit complicated for the average person. However, if we are afraid that gas prices will rise even further but are comfortable paying the current price, it would make sense to try and buy a bunch of gas at today’s prices and lock-in that rate. A while ago there was a company called the FuelBank that tried to make this a reality, but it appears to have gone nowhere.
Buying the Oil ETF USO

Another way that you can effectively buy at today’s prices is to buy shares of the United States Oil ETF, symbol USO, from your favorite online stock broker. This idea was initially explored in this SeekingAlpha article back when it debuted in 2006. Unlike other commodities ETFs or investing in an energy company like Chevron or Exxon, the objective of this ETF is specifically to keep it’s net asset value (NAV) at the price of crude oil. (Specifically, the spot price of West Texas Intermediate light, sweet crude oil delivered to Cushing, Okla., minus expenses.)
Now, USO hasn’t done the best job of tracking crude oil prices exactly on a day-to-day basis, but it seems to get the general trend right if you hold an extended period of time. From 5/7/07 to 5/6/08, crude oil went from $61.48 to $121.82 a barrel, an increase of 98%. (source) For the same date range, USO went from $48.06 to $93.38 a share, up 94%. (source)
In order to counteract the theoretical $390 from the example above back, you could have bought 9 shares of USO for a total upfront cost of $390 a year ago, which would be worth $408 more today. So in theory, the average driver could put aside something like $1,000 and buy 10 shares of USO to hedge against rising gas prices. Even just one share would dampen the effects somewhat.
The Catches

Unleaded gas prices only went up 21% in the same time period that crude oil went up nearly 100%. So the ratio between crude oil price and unleaded gasoline doesn’t seem to be a constant. Also, if gas prices fall then your savings at the pump will likely also be negated by a drop in USO’s share price. Also, you could account for the lost potential of any money put aside for this if you had invested it elsewhere.
I don’t personally plan on doing this, but it is an idea that could work if you were really sensitive to higher gas prices and/or buy a lot of gas. Another alternative is a site like HedgeStreet, though I haven’t looked too deeply into it.

Lindsay Lohan forgot something- her bra!

2008-04-01T00:58:00.002-04:00

http://wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=3983

Supermodel Marisa Miller Talks About Her First Time

2008-04-01T00:48:00.001-04:00

Supermodel Marisa Miller Talks About Her First Time.

Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pq3e72wyuA

Six Ways to Dine for Less

2008-04-01T00:33:00.001-04:00

World Appetites for oil and grain have put higher food prices on the menu — literally.
Wholesale restaurant food prices rose 7.4% in 2007, the largest increase in three decades, according to the National Restaurant Association, an industry group. That's even bigger than the jump consumers are seeing at the supermarket, where grocery prices have gone up 5.3%, per the Consumer Price Index.
Blame a combination of inflation and surging demand for commodities in developing countries, says Nicole Miller Regan, senior research analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. Oil prices hovering above $100 a barrel haven't helped, adding to shipping costs, as well as energy bills for on-site storage and cooking.
The end result might be sticker shock the next time you dine out, from haute cuisine to McDonald's — which has re-branded its Dollar Menu in many locations as the "Dollar Menu & More." Industrywide, average menu prices increased 3.7% in 2007, according to the National Restaurant Association. The group expects similar increases this year. Because consumers are also facing high grocery prices, restaurants have a little more wiggle room to raise prices without losing customers, says Regan.
Still, restaurants must eat other costs to avoid unsettling consumers' appetites, points out Paul Olson, a research analyst in Minneapolis with Restaurant Finance Monitor, an industry publication. They may be reducing portion sizes, finding creative uses for preparation scraps such as meat trimmings, or simply replacing loss-leader items like steaks with profit-heavy pastas and salads. "They're going to do their best to hide these changes," he says. "It's not going to be very noticeable to most consumers."
To counterbalance rising costs, restaurants also are offering more promotions to tempt consumers into a night on the town. Savvy consumers can easily trim their bill by 50% or more — without forgoing the filet mignon in favor of a cheap pasta dish. Try these six tips to spend less:
Reserve a Table
Planning ahead can yield significant savings, if you book the reservation through one of these two free sites:
DinnerBroker.com: Up to 30% will be deducted from your bill, depending on the restaurant and time of your reservation. A 5:30 p.m. table at Boston's highly rated (and pricey) Sel de la Terra, for example, would net you a 15% discount. Each reservation also earns 100 reward points, which can be redeemed for gift certificates at any of the site's more than 1,000 partner restaurants. Redeem 1,000 points for a $10 certificate.
OpenTable.com: Earn 100 to 1,000 points for each reservation. Redeem 2,000 points for a $20 gift check to use at any of the site's 8,000-plus partner restaurants.
Clip Coupons
Scan your local Sunday newspaper, pick up the free penny-saver publication and sort through the coupon packs in your mailbox, says Mary Hunt, founder of Debt-Proof Living, a consumer advocate in Paramount, Calif. Hunt also likes the widespread Entertainment Book, a series of regional coupon compilations. The Denver edition, currently $15, offers 20% off the city's popular Cork House wine restaurant and two-for-one medium pizzas at Domino's, among other deals. "Use it once or twice, and you've recouped the cost," she says.
Join the Club
Sign up for restaurant email lists and reward programs, which come with extra deals and exclusive coupons. Join the birthday club at Cold Stone Creamery for a complimentary ice cream sundae on your big day, plus coupons year-round. Sign up for T.G.I. Friday's e-club, and get a coupon for an appetizer on the house. You can also join its free reward program that nets you 10 points per dollar spent, with 5,750 points worth a $15 gift certificate. (A new loyalty club will debut in April.)
Pay With Plastic
"Credit-card companies are offering more dining rewards as food prices go up," says Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRatings.com in North Little Rock, Ark. "It's another hook they can use to get you interested in a card." Citibank Professional cardholders get 3% back on restaurant spending, as does the Capital One No Hassle Miles for Dining and Travel card. But be sure to read the fine print. The Chase Freedom card offers 3% back each month in three categories where that consumer spent the most. Although restaurants are a category, it only includes fast food and quick service retailers.
No matter which card you carry, consider signing up for the free Rewards Network program to earn airline miles, college savings or points on every dollar spent. Cash rewards are also available for a $49 annual fee. Just use your registered cards when dining out, and rewards will automatically be posted to your account.
Mind the Specials
Take note of when restaurants host promotional discount nights such as "Taco Tuesday," "Early Bird Specials," "Restaurant Week" or "Kids Eat Free," advises Tawra Kellam of Wichita, Kan., founder of Living on a Dime, a frugal living newsletter. These little-advertised specials can easily cut your bill by 50%. Each Tuesday at the Lone Star Steakhouse, for example, the purchase of an adult entree means two kids ages 12 and younger can eat for free. Entrees on the kids' menu generally cost $4 to $6 each. (Tuesday is also the day you'll get the best value for your money when dining out.) For more deals, check out the city-by-city lists at MyKidsEatFree.com and Unthirsty.com.
Give a Gift (Certificate)
Save up to 50% by purchasing discount certificates online. At Restaurant.com, a $25 e-gift certificate goes for just $10, whether you're dining at New York's pricey Luca Restaurant or more humble Big Nick's Pizzeria. The catch: Each has restrictions, such as night of the week or number of diners. Read up before buying. It's also worth checking eBay or swap sites like CardAvenue.com, CertificateSwap.com or Swapagift.com for unwanted items. Prices are closer to face value, says Kellam, but buyers can generally expect to save $5 on a $25 card. Right now, one Swapagift.com user is asking $200 for a $250 certificate to foodie haven The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

Copyrighted, SmartMoney.com. All Rights Reserved.

Obama goes nuts, supports wasting taxpayer dollars

2008-03-28T16:52:00.002-04:00

Excerpt:
At a speech in Manhattan yesterday, Senator Barack Obama blamed lax oversight and deregulation for the housing sector's woes, saying that "Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady sustainable growth, a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street but ends up hurting both."He's right about that -- but his solution is to pump $30 billion into the system, in part to help bailout homeowners who were the beneficiary of overly aggressive mortgage lending.His position makes no sense: If people were able to buy homes because of a distorted market caused by lax oversight, doesn't pumping in money to help them keep "their" homes just prolong the problem?He also lashed out at Senator John McCain's reasonable, consistent argument that we shouldn't be bailing out any of these people. Free markets got us into this mess, and free markets should get us out. Obama said that "While this is consistent with Mr. McCain's determination to run for George Bush's third term,m it won't help families who are suffering."Here's the problem: these families that are suffering with making mortgage payments were the beneficiary of lax lending practices and poor oversight! By bashing the industry/regulators but insisting that people should be given help in keeping their homes, Obama is trying to have it both ways.But in an election year, that might be the best way to approach it. The Republicans are trying to have it both ways too, supporting plans to help financial institutions avoid paying the piper for years of bad decisions.The Democrats want to help out homeowners and the Republicans want to help out banks. The right thing to do is to help no one, and let them fix the mess they started themselves.

Source: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/03/28/obama-gets-it-wrong-on-subprime/

Alessandra Ambrosio Bikini Pictures

2008-03-22T00:27:00.002-04:00

Source: Alessandra Ambrosio Bikini Pictures

My Favorite Rewards Credit Cards

2008-03-21T19:03:00.001-04:00

1) Chase Freedom Cash Visa Card - $50 sign-up bonus after first purchase, up to 3.75% cash back your top 3 Everyday Spending Categories (on the first $600 of purchases each month), and up to a 1.25% rebate on all other purchases. For me, the categories are usually gas, groceries, and cable tv/internet. You can see more information and a list of all 15 possible categories here.
The default cash back rate is 3% for top Everyday purchases and 1% for the rest. Now you can cash out and get a check for $50 when you reach $50 in rewards, or you can get a $250 check (a $50 bonus) once you reach $200 in rewards have been earned. (Confusing, I know.) So if you are patient, that converts th 3%/1% to 3.75%/1.25%. This is a great card if you just want simplicity and one easy rewards card. Currently, they are also giving you a $50 bonus for signing up.

2) Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Card - 1 point per $1 spent. 20,000 Starwood points = 25,000 airline miles (free ticket).
You can get 10,000 points or $100 gift certificate. (to stores like Amazon.com) just for signing up and making a purchase. Right now, you can also get an additional 15,000 points by spending $15,000 on the card within the first 6 months.
This card is great for people who like to travel and make the most of their existing frequent flier miles, and can be very useful for getting miles for many different airlines like Delta, American, and more. Click here for details. If you redeem for hotel rooms, you can get a cashback return of 6% or more. Annual fee is waived for the first year, and is $45 the second year if you keep it.

3) Fidelity Investment Rewards Visa - 1.5% cash back. You can get 1.5% cash back on all your purchases into a Fidelity Brokerage account ($2,500 to open, but then you can take it all out), and then simply transfer it back to your checking account. 1.5% is from converting 5,000 points into a $75 credit. No annual fee. More details here.

Source: MyMoneyBlog

Eating Healthy and Cheap

2008-03-21T18:24:00.004-04:00

Eating Healthy and Cheap

Source: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/07/30/16-ways-to-eat-healthy-while-keeping-it-cheap/

Some good tips on eating healthy. Read more at the link above.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eating healthy is important. Eating healthy:

Lowers disease risks

Increases productivity

Gives you more energy

Makes you stronger

You probably think eating healthy is expensive. I’ll be honest — it is. But there are tricks to keep it low cost. Here are sixteen ways to eat more healthy while keeping it cheap.

What is Healthy Food?

Before we start, let’s define healthy food. It consists of:

Protein. The building blocks of muscles, needed for strength.

Fat. A balanced intake of omega 3, 6 & 9.

Veggies. All kinds, especially green fibrous veggies.

Fruit. Full of vitamins.

Water. 1 liter per 1000 calories you expend.

Whole grain food. Oats, rice, pasta, breads, …

On with the tips.

1. Switch to Water. I drank huge amounts of soda daily for more than 15 years. Then I started Strength Training and switched to water

Quit the soda & drink water. Take a bottle wherever you go.

2. Consume Tap Water. Check the price of water on your tap water bill. Now check the price of bottled water. Quit a difference, isn’t it? So why are you buying bottled water?
Bottled water companies get their supply from the same source you do: municipal water systems. It’s like selling ice to Eskimos. If you don’t trust the quality of tap water, filter it yourself. I use a Brita Pitcher. One $7 filter cleans 40 gallons water.

Ten Ways To Spend $10,000

2008-03-21T18:18:00.001-04:00

Let's say you have an extra $10,000 lying around and aren't sure what to do with it.
Your debts are pretty much paid off, your 401(k) is being fully funded and your mutual funds are doing just fine, thank you.
Sure, you could put the money into the roller-coaster ride called the stock market and set yourself up for an extra dose of market volatility. Or you could do the sensible thing and make extra payments against your mortgage.
But if just this once you'd rather do something off the wall with the money?

Here are 10 suggestions:

Read more....

High Yield Online Savings Accounts

2008-03-21T18:12:00.004-04:00

DISCLAIMER: ALL RATES ARE OUT OF DATE, AS OF JUNE 5, 2008! PLEASE CHECK WEBSITES OF THE BANKS FOR THE MOST UP TO DATE INFO!--> THANKS!

Capital One offers 3.85% APY, no fees, free checks and ATM card, an automatic savings plan. $1 minimum to open. Rate is 3.00% on balances below $10,000. This is a money market account.
WT Direct offers 3.56% APY, no fees. No minimum to open, but your interest rate drops to 0.50% if you don’t have a $10,000 balance after 60 days.
Washington Mutual offers 3.55% APY on a special savings account that requires a $1 minimum to open. This account must be opened in conjunction with a WaMu Free Checking account. The accounts must be linked. If you close the checking account, you lose the 3.55% rate.
E*TRADE Bank offers 3.15% APY, no fees, an automatic savings plan. $1 minimum to open. GRS readers do not like E*Trade, but my cousin loves them.
FNBO Direct offers 3.25% APY, but there’s very little information available about the account without signing up. $1 minimum to open.
Citibank Direct offers 3.25% APY, no fees. No minimum. To earn this rate, you have to meet certain bill-payment requirements, otherwise your rate is 3.25%. GRS readers do not like Citibank Direct.
HSBC Direct offers 3.50% APY, no fees, web interface. $1 minimum to open. Named “best online savings account” by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. GRS readers have mixed experiences with HSBC Direct.
ING Direct offers 3.00% APY, no fees, an automatic savings plan, web interface. No minimum. GRS readers love ING Direct. (Note: I’ve created a new thread where you may swap ING Direct referrals.)
Emigrant Direct offers 3.00% APY, no fees, web interface. No minimum. GRS readers like Emigrant Direct.
AmTrust Direct offers 3.00% APY, “no monthly service fee or minimum balance fees”. $1 minimum. This is a money market account.
Countrywide Bank offers a variable rate, from 3.00% to 4.05% APY. $1,000 minimum to open. Rate is 3.00% on balances below $10,000.

***** There is a $25 bonus for opening a ETRADE Complete Savings Account. Google it and get free money!

Free $25 or $50 BONUS for opening account at Lending Club

2008-03-21T17:41:00.003-04:00

What is Lending Club?
It's a P2P site for lending money.
They have been featured in Business Week, Barron’s, and the Street.

From the website:
When you refer friends to Lending Club and they become borrowers or lenders, we will deposit a bonus into each of your Lending Club accounts. You will each earn:
* $25 when your friend successfully submits a loan application* $25 when your friend opens a lender account with $1-$999* $50 when your friend opens a lender account with $1,000 or more

Here’s what to do:
Go though this Lending Club link
Fill in your name, email, password, and make up a user ID.
Verify your identity
Add your bank account and wait them to withdraw an amount less than $1
Wait for a few days, and verify the amount that has been withdrawn.
Deposit the amount you want. $1000 in order to get a $50 bonus or $1 to get $25 bonus.
Bonus show up 4 days after the initial deposit.

My experience has been a positive one. Since I have $1000 in my account that I don’t need, I went ahead and deposit the $1K in order to get the maximum bonus money. If you don’t have the $1K, then deposit $1 to get your $25 bonus. I’m not worry about depositing $1K because I went ahead and withdraw the $1K from Lending Club back into my bank account. I lost a week of interest, but gain $50 bonus. Not bad of a deal. The best part about Lending Club is you don’t even need to lend out any money to get your bonus money. There is also no hard pull on your credit report. Although I recommend to loan out your $50 bonus just to give them a try. You can’t lose anything since it’s free money and the average return is 12.32% (The Street).

Source: http://www.hustlermoneyblog.com/personal-experience-with-lending-club-50-bonus/

How to hire an illegal immigrant

2008-03-21T17:36:00.002-04:00

No I'm not kidding either.

Dirt Cheap Day Labor - This article is on MSN Money and basically teaches the averages joe how to hire illegal immigrant just like a regular business.

The article tells you where to find them: “In most cities of any size, there’s a ready pool of cheap labor available on short notice, congregating in parking lots near the local Home Depot or a similar store, or at high-traffic intersections.”
It tells you everybody is doing it: “The share of private homes hiring illegals goes up every year,” says Steven Camarota, the director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. About 12 million undocumented workers live in the U.S., 7 million of them working for companies or picking up odd jobs.
It assures you that you won’t get caught: “What are the chances of a homeowner being caught? ‘Virtually none at all,’ says San Diego attorney Jeff Isaac, who calls himself ‘a lawyer in bluejeans’ for his practical approach to the law.” … “Though it is illegal to hire an undocumented worker, the law is seldom enforced. And in the cases where it is, authorities focus on companies that hire many illegal immigrants.”
It warns of a few remote risks: “If you are planning to run for public office or have your eye set on a confirmable position, hiring an undocumented worker may be enough to wreck your career plans.” … “If a day laborer is injured on your property, he could sue you or seek to make a claim on your homeowners insurance policy.”

And you might not be able to locate the worker to complain or get a shoddy job fixed.

Blog Revamped

2008-03-21T02:22:00.000-04:00

I AM BACK!!!!!

Iraq War going GREAT!

2007-08-14T20:13:00.000-04:00

Iraq suicide bombings kill at least 175
Blasts that injured at least 200 targeted small Kurdish religious sect

BAGHDAD - Four suicide bombers struck nearly simultaneously at communities of a small Kurdish sect in northwestern Iraq late Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 more, Iraqi military and local officials said.

The death toll was the highest in a concerted attack since Nov. 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City. And it was most vicious attack yet against the Yazidis, an ancient religious community in the region whose members are considered infidels by some Muslims.

The bombings came as extremists staged other bold attacks: leveling a key bridge outside Baghdad and abducting five officials from an Oil Ministry compound in the capital in a raid using gunmen dressed as security officers. Nine U.S. soldiers also were reported killed, including five in a helicopter crash.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, sought to press its gains against guerrillas. Some 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers began a sweep through the Diyala River valley north of Baghdad in pursuit of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia fighters driven out of strongholds in recent weeks.

In Iraq’s western desert, meanwhile, five soldiers were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter went down Tuesday during a test flight. The cause of the crash was under investigation, said 1st Lt. Shawn Mercer, a Marine spokesman. A total of nine U.S. deaths were announced.

U.S. officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad.

Such a retrenching could increase pressure on small communities such as the Yazidis, a primarily Kurdish group with ancient roots that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians. Yazidis, who don’t believe in hell or evil, deny that.

Leaflets warned attack imminent
The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday’s bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are “anti-Islamic.”

The sect has been under fire since some members stoned a Yazidi teenager to death in April. She had converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend, and police said 18-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad was killed by relatives who disapproved of the match.

A grainy video showing gruesome scenes of the woman’s killing was later posted on Iraqi Web sites. Its authenticity could not be independently verified, but recent attacks on Yazidis have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked Sunni insurgents seeking revenge.

The suicide bombings came just after sundown near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, said Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area, and Iraq army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.

At least one of the trucks was an explosives-laden fuel tanker, police said. Shops were set ablaze and apartment buildings were reported crumbled by the powerful explosions.

“My friend and I were thrown high in the air. I still don’t know what happened to him,” said Khadir Shamu, a 30-year-old Yazidi who was injured in Tal Azir, scene of two blasts.

Witnesses said U.S. helicopters swooped in to evacuate wounded to hospitals in Dahuk, a Kurdish city near the Turkish border about 60 miles north of Qahataniya. Civilian cars and ambulances also rushed injured to hospitals in Dahuk, police said.

“I gave blood. I saw many maimed people with no legs or hands,” said Ghassan Salim, a 40-year-old Yazidi teacher who went to a hospital to donate blood. “Many of the wounded were left in the hospital garage or in the streets because the hospital is small.”

'A terrorist act'
The Bush administration denounced the bombings as “barbaric attacks on innocent civilians.” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino expressed sympathy to the families of those killed or wounded.

There was no claim of responsibility, but the attack bore the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has been regrouping in the north after being driven from safe havens in Anbar and Diyala provinces.

“This is a terrorist act and the people targeted are poor Yazidis who have nothing to do with the armed conflict,” said Dhakil Qassim, mayor in the town of Sinjar near the attacks who blamed al-Qaida in Iraq.

Two weeks after the Yazidi woman was stoned to death, gunmen killed 23 Yazidis execution-style after stopping their bus and separating out followers of other faiths in what was believed to have been retaliation for the woman’s death.

The bodies of two Yazidi men who had been stoned to death turned up in the morgue in the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, six days after they had been kidnapped while en route to Baghdad to sell olives, police said.

“We are still paying the price of a foolish, wrong act conducted by small number of Yazidis who stoned the woman,” said 44-year-old Sami Benda, a relative of one of the slain men.

The center of the Yazidi faith is around Mosul, but smaller communities exist in Turkey, Syria and other places.

Deputy minister abducted
Baghdad was spared major violence in another sign that a six-month-old security crackdown in the capital is disrupting extremists’ firepower. But the brazen daylight raid on the Oil Ministry complex showed that armed gangs can still embarrass authorities.

Dozens of gunmen wearing security force uniforms stormed the compound and abducted a deputy oil minister and four other officials who were spirited away in a convoy of military-style vehicles.

The kidnappings — similar to a commando-like raid on Iraq’s Finance Ministry in May — included Abdel-Jabar al-Wagaa, a senior assistant to Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, said Assem Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman.

Al-Wagaa and four other officials with the State Oil Marketing Organization were taken away by more than 50 gunmen in military-style vehicles, said an Interior Minister official, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to release the information. Five bodyguards were wounded in the raid, the official said.

On May 29, five Britons were seized in a similar raid on Iraq’s Finance Ministry. They were taken by gunmen wearing police uniforms and have not been found.

Both government organizations are near Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The raids were reminiscent of an attack by Mahdi Army fighters, dressed as Interior Ministry commandos, who stormed a Higher Education Ministry office Nov. 14 and carried off as many as 200 people. Dozens of those kidnap victims were never been found.

Just north of the capital, a suicide truck bomber devastated a key bridge on the highway linking Baghdad with Mosul. Police said at least 10 people died. The Thiraa Dijla bridge in Taji — near a U.S. air base 12 miles north of the capital — also was bombed three months ago, leaving only one lane open.

Chopper crash kills 5
The U.S. military said the CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed near its al-Taqaddum air base outside Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, while conducting a “routine post-maintenance check flight.”

There was no indication whether it was shot down. An investigation is under way.

Four other U.S. soldiers were reported killed in combat — three in an explosion near their vehicle Monday in the northwestern Ninevah province. The fourth died of wounds suffered in western Baghdad.

The deaths raised to at least 3,700 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

New operation begins
The violence punctuated a day when 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers began a sweep through the Diyala River valley in a new operation north of Baghdad in pursuit of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen driven out of Baqouba and Anbar province over the past several weeks.

Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a military spokesman in northern Iraq, said the force included 10,000 Americans and 6,000 Iraqis. He said U.S. aircraft used more than 30,000 pounds of munitions to block routes and destroy known and suspected heavy machine gun positions.

The Air Force also dropped 9,000 pounds of bombs to attack an al-Qaida in Iraq training camp, which included bunkers, living quarters, weapons and ammunition caches, Donnelly said.

Three suspected militants had been killed and four booby-trapped houses destroyed, he said, citing preliminary reports.

In Washington, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the new operation was one in a series planned over the next 30 days to try to blunt expected attempts by al-Qaida in Iraq to influence events during “this critical period” as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, plans his assessment for Congress.

“We fully expect that al-Qaida in Iraq would like to increase their attacks during this critical period,” Whitman said Tuesday.

“And this increased intensity in offensive operations ... will take the fight to the enemy with the purpose of improving the overall security situation in Baghdad” as well as increase “pressure on al-Qaida in Iraq countrywide and prevent the enemy from conducting their own operations.”

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20250066/

Use Virtual Credit Cards

2007-07-26T16:31:00.000-04:00

Use Virtual Credit Cards
http://soundmoneytips.com/article/41938?source=feed

Millions of Americans are the victims of credit card fraud every year. A fifth of these people blame the internet. In fact, the top reason people shy away from internet shopping is the fear of theft of personal information.
Virtual credit cards, also known as substitute credit card numbers or controlled payment numbers, have already been around almost seven years but have never caught on despite being a free and effective layer of protection.
Here’s how they work. You sign up for the program (MBNA, Citibank, Discover and PayPal all have them.) and download their software. Enter your credit card info, and generate a new number whenever you want to make an online purchase.
Depending on the program, the new number will be one-time use, have a small spending limit with an imminent expiration date, or will be able to be used multiple times but only with one merchant.
Your actual account number will only be visible to you and your bank. The merchant never sees your number and can’t retain your information in his database. This way, hackers will only be able to see your temporary number, which will be useless to them.
So, why haven’t virtual credit cards caught on? Many consumers find them to be a hassle, particularly when you’ll only be liable for at most $50 if your actual credit card is stolen. However, credit card theft can turn into full-blown identity theft when your credit card information is matched up with other information about you that is floating around on the web.

Free information for the taking

2007-07-23T15:39:00.001-04:00

Free information for the taking

By Candace Lombardi
http://news.com.com/Free+information+for+the+taking/2100-1038_3-6197920.html

Story last modified Mon Jul 23 04:17:04 PDT 2007

There's a wealth of free resources out there--online databases, audiobooks, museum passes, and help so that you can find even more resources. You just need to know where to look:

Databases
Intute is a search site offered by a consortium of universities that covers science and technology, arts and humanities, social sciences, and health and life sciences. You don't have to be a library member to use it.

Associations Unlimited lists international associations, as well as U.S. nation, regional, state, and local associations and IRS data on nonprofit organizations.

ReferenceUSA has phone numbers and detailed information on more than 15 million U.S. and Canadian businesses, 210 million U.S. and 12 million Canadian residential listings.

Related story
Steal this book? Don't bother
Libraries offer quick and legal access to loads of free content, but few people know about such services.The Historical New York Times Project offers everything the paper has published since 1851 to within the last three years. Search results include a plain text file, a PDF of the article or a PDF of the newspaper page containing the article. The PDF newspaper pages are full of live links, so you can jump to another article that catches your eye on the page as you do with a real newspaper. This type of database is available for several leading and local newspapers through the average public library.

Gale Virtual Reference Library from Thompson Gale offers full-text articles from more than 1,000 different encyclopedic sources in e-book format including those from third-party publishers. Libraries pick and choose which sets they want to include so content varies. Titles offered include the Business Plans Handbook, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security and Roaring Twenties Reference Library.

Factiva from Dow Jones offers access to full text articles from more than 10,000 worldwide sources, including newswire stories from Reuters and the Associated Press and transcripts of news broadcasts.

Heritage Quest Online holds U.S. Census data from 1790 to 1930, the African American Freedman's Bank records, 20,000 histories from families, and an index of about 2 million articles on genealogy and local American culture.

InfoTrack offers charts and images, in addition to full text articles from peer-reviewed academic journals, newspapers and general periodicals.

JStor is an archive of scholarly journals from academic libraries ranging as far back as the 1600s to within the last two to five years, depending on the copyright holder's preference. The archive, run by a not-for-profit organization of academic institutions, scans and stores the articles as high-resolution images so people can view them in their original layout and format.

Ebsco Host contains a comprehensive group of databases offering full text articles from newspapers, periodicals and journals on a wide variety of subjects.

Business Source Premier is a business research database of periodicals on all subject areas relating to businesses including economic reports, country and industry reports, company profiles and full text articles going back as far as 1965.

E-books
Many libraries have begun to lend digital versions of their books. The San Francisco Public Library lends out more than 5,000 titles as e-books. The files can be downloaded to your computer or a portable device and are good for seven days.

Ebrary, a California publishing company founded by Chris Warnock, the son of Adobe Systems co-founder and chairman John Warnock, also offers abut 20,000 freely searchable e-books. The database is licensed to several libraries, but if your library does not subscribe you can still use part of the service from the company's main Web site. It's free to read the material online and 25 cents per page to copy or print.

Audiobooks
Before you plunk down $30 at Audible.com for company on those long car drives or daily commutes, consider what your library might have to offer. Libraries, such as the Chicago Public Library, now offer free downloads of digital audibooks after downloading free software and updating your media player from the library's site. The files are DRM-protected, but you can transfer them to portable media players, smart phones or cell phones and in many cases even burn them to a CD. Once the loan period for the file is over, the file is expired and will no longer play. You then just delete the file.

Now on News.com
On antitrust, is Google the next Microsoft? iPhone flaw lets hackers take over, security firm says Want free content? Try the library Extra: LucasArts: New directions in gaming?
There is, however, one major reason audiobook rental has not caught on. Most of the service providers of audiobooks use DRM-protected WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, a file format the Apple's iPods do not currently support.

"We have had a subscription to NetLibrary for about four years. People are using it for downloadable audible books," said Leslie Burger, who served as president of the American Library Association from July 2006 to June 2007 and is the director of the Princeton Public Library in Princeton, N.J. "Of course, the problem with that is that you can't download to an iPod. It frustrates people. You would get more if it were working with the most ubiquitous device. Of course, some people do use it. They bought the kind of MP3 players they need to get them to work."

Free passes to museums
Some libraries, such as the Boston Public Library offer free passes to museums or discounts to local area attractions. Keep in mind, however, that you do need to reserve these ahead of time and pick them up at the library branch in person.

Your own personal librarian
Still too overwhelmed by choice on your library's Web site? You could simply ask for help. Most libraries offer personal librarian service with a two- or three-day e-mail response time. They will either answer your question, or offer suggestions on how to find what you need.

Massachusetts, for example, is part of a librarian service that offers real-time assistance with a librarian 24 hours a day, seven days a week via instant messaging. A list of live links the librarian showed during the chat session will be sent to you via e-mail, as well as a transcript of the chat if you want it. New Jersey offers a similar service called QandANJ.

The U.K. and Australia also offer the same type of service for its citizens at the national level.

Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

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