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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Bloom County now available in iBooks

Birkley Breathed's Bloom County was my two favorite comic strips growing up, and now it's starting to become available in iBooks. From Bill the Cat's run for president to Milo's skewering of Senator Bedfellow to Oliver's landing the space shuttle to Opus'... everything, it delighted me on a daily basis.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/tldxY-D7CGM/story01.htm

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Monday, January 23, 2012

Video: Watch highlights of US rout of Guatemala

Source: http://www.universalsports.com/video/assetid=c0c4e9bf-7705-44d3-a9fa-82f93b26cab8.html#highlights+us+routs+guatemala

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With crude around $100 US gas prices stay high

NEW YORK (AP) ? The price of oil lingered around $100 a barrel this week, helping to keep retail gasoline prices at their highest levels ever for this time of year.

Crude has ranged from about $98 per barrel to around $102 per barrel this week. On Friday benchmark oil fell $2.21 to end at $98.33 per barrel in New York. The national average for gasoline was $3.38 per gallon Friday. Pump prices peaked at about $4 a gallon in May as crude oil approached $114 a barrel.

Oil and gasoline prices are staying high now because of tension in the Middle East and worries about Europe sliding into a recession.

Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, if the U.S. and other countries impose more sanctions on it because of its nuclear program. Many analysts doubt that Iran could set up a blockade for long, but any supply shortages would cause supplies to tighten.

Gas prices are likely to move up or down based on the outcome, PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said. If the situation calms down, retail gas prices could fall from 25 cents to 50 cents a gallon. If the situation intensifies, prices could increase by that much.

"It's that much of a wild card," Flynn said. "I think it's a very volatile situation and I think we could go either way."

Europe is still struggling with massive debt problems that threaten to drive the region into recession. The uncertainty about how the crisis will play out is helping to keep oil prices up as well.

Retail gasoline consumption in the U.S. has been falling steadily for the past 10 months, according to surveys by MasterCard SpendingPulse. Although recent data points to the U.S. economy slowly improving, many drivers appear to be sticking with habits they picked up during the recession ? watching how much they spend on expensive gas and combining trips to save on fuel.

Those habits may continue. Flynn and other analysts think that the national average for gas could reach $4 per gallon again by spring, as refiners switch to more expensive anti-smog blends ahead of the summer driving season.

In other energy trading, natural gas fell 2 cents to finish at $2.34 per 1,000 cubic feet. The price remains near a 10-year low because a mild winter has cut demand and supplies remain plentiful. Heating oil fell 5 cents to end at $2.99 per gallon and gasoline futures fell 3 cents to $2.78 per gallon.

Brent crude fell $1.69 to finish at $109.86 per barrel in London.

___

AP Energy Writer Chris Kahn contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-20-Oil%20Prices/id-89eb523af7b24dc6a929b6d71ae63592

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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Storm blankets Northeast with a few inches of snow

A JetBlue plane is deiced, as seen through the window of the plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in New York. A weekend snowstorm is blanketing the Northeast, creating treacherous travel conditions and some delays at airports. (AP Photo/Aaron Jackson)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? A weekend snowstorm is blanketing the Northeast, creating treacherous travel conditions and some delays at airports.

The National Weather Service was predicting 4 to 6 inches in New York City before the snow stops in the afternoon. Early Saturday morning flurries and freezing rain showers were expected for the Washington area. Philadelphia is under a winter weather advisory and could receive up to 4 inches of snow.

A Philadelphia International Airport spokeswoman says arriving flights are experiencing delays of less than two hours because of snow and ice accumulation, but most departing flights are leaving on time.

The storm marked the first significant snowfall for some East Coast residents, including in Philadelphia. A rare October snowstorm knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses in the Northeast.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-21-Winter%20Weather/id-49b0bf5f8531402f835641495345a8cd

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'Thor' Star Chris Hemsworth, Wife Elsa Pataky Expecting Baby

'We don't care if it's a boy or girl, our only wish is that it's healthy,' Pataky says.
By Jocelyn Vena

Chris Hemsworth
Photo: WireImage

"Thor" star Chris Hemsworth and his actress wife, Elsa Pataky, have announced that they are expecting their first child together.

A rep for the actor confirmed the news to People.com, and the "Fast Five" actress is opening up about the baby in a new interview in Hola! magazine, revealing that their bundle of joy will join them this spring.

"Since it's our first child, we don't care if it's a boy or girl, our only wish is that it's healthy," Pataky said. "I'm only going to speak to the baby in Spanish. I already told my husband, 'Get ready fast with Spanish because, if not, you're not going to be able to understand what we say.' "

The news comes the same week the twosome was spotted on vacation in St. Barts with Pataky sporting a baby bump. "Having the person that you love by your side and starting a family with them is the best thing that can happen to you in this life," Pataky said. "You can't ask for more."

Hemsworth and Pataky were married in December 2010. In addition to impending fatherhood, Hemsworth has a busy 2012 slated for the big screen, with a number of highly anticipated flicks set for release, including "Snow White and the Huntsman" (along with "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart) and "The Avengers," in which he'll once again play the hammer-swinging Thor. Pataky also has a few films coming out, including "The Wine of Summer" and "All Things to All Men."

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MTV Rough Cut: Chris Hemsworth

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677521/chris-hemsworth-baby.jhtml

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Tom Engelhardt: Washington's Crocodile Tears: On Checkpoints, War Porn, and Wedding Parties

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called it ?utterly deplorable.?? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed ?total dismay.?? General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was ?deeply disturbed? that the actions in question would ?erode the reputation of our joint force.?? Marine Corps Commandant General James Amos declared them to be ?wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history,? and Senator John McCain claimed they made him ?so sad.?

Seldom have so many high officials in Washington lined up to denounce an event so quickly or emphatically.? I?m talking, of course, about the video of four wisecracking U.S. Marines in Afghanistan pissing on what might be three dead Taliban or simply -- since we may never know whose bodies those are -- the corpses of three dead Afghans.? (?Have a good day, buddy... Golden -- like a shower, ? you hear them say, seemingly addressing the bodies.) The video went viral in the Muslim world, and the Obama administration moved fast to contain the damage.? After all, no one wanted another Abu Ghraib.

On this subject Washington has been remarkably united (with the exception of Rick Perry, who offered a half-hearted defense of the Marines -- ?to call it a criminal act, I think, is over the top?). Pardon me, though, if I find this chorus of condemnation to be too little, too late.? It feels like a malign version of one of Casablanca?s famous final lines: ?Round up the usual suspects.?

After all, these last years in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan have been utterly deplorable, totally dismaying, and deeply disturbing from start to finish.? On occasion after occasion, U.S. troops, aka ?America?s heroes,? as well as private contractors and others in Washington?s employ have run riot.? There is no way to catalogue what?s been deplorable, dismaying, and deeply disturbing, but if you wanted to start, it really wouldn't be that hard.

In fact, you wouldn't have to go farther than the website I run, TomDispatch.com.? If, for instance, it was deeply disturbing pictures taken by our troops you were curious about, you could have read David Swanson?s 2006 piece "The Iraq War as a Trophy Photo," which focused on the ?war porn? photos U.S. soldiers were already taking (or even setting up) and then proudly submitting to an actual porn website for posting (something, by the way, that?s still going on).

Or if checkpoint killings by U.S. soldiers in Iraq were what you were interested in, all you had to do was read Chris Hedges at TomDispatch in 2008, based on interviews he did with American soldiers for the book Collateral Damage: ?Iraqi families,? he wrote, ?were routinely fired upon for getting too close to checkpoints, including an incident where an unarmed father driving a car was decapitated by a .50-caliber machine gun in front of his small son.?? ("'It's fun to shoot sh-t up,' a soldier said.") And if his word wasn?t enough, you could turn to U.S. Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal who, in a moment of bluntness in April 2010, commented: ?We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.?

Or consider something no one has yet denounced as deplorable, dismaying, or deeply disturbing: the obliteration of wedding parties.? Over the years, TomDispatch has counted up at least six weddings in Iraq and Afghanistan that were wiped out in part or full by the U.S. Air Force.? All of these, including the first in December 2001 in which a B-52 and two B-1B bombers, armed with precision weapons, killed 110 of 112 Afghan revelers, were reported individually.? But next to no one in our world thought them dismaying or disturbing enough to write about them collectively or, for that matter, to deplore them.? (Of a wedding in Western Iraq in which U.S. planes killed 40 people, including wedding musicians and children, Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, asked: "How many people go to the middle of the desert... to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?")

The troves of documents leaked to the website WikiLeaks, for which Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has been charged, certainly caused a stir, but the carnage in them was, in truth, easily available without access to a single secret document.? Washington?s crocodile tears can?t wash away the stain of all this on American honor, as Chase Madar, author of the upcoming book The Passion of Bradley Manning, makes all too clear in a new piece "Blood on Whose Hands?."?

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush?s Wars Became Obama?s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published.?

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/washingtons-crocodile-tea_b_1216790.html

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Chegg Launches Mobile Reader For Online Textbooks

Having built, bought and partnered its way into the textbook distribution business, Chegg is launching a long-promised mobile web version today that lets readers easily read and mark up their textbooks. Of course the move is timed with Apple's forthcoming announcement event, which based on everything everyone is hearing, has something to do with offering and/or creating digital textbooks. But regardless of Apple's or anyone else's plans, Chegg's eTextbook Reader has been in the works since August, back when Rip wrote a preview of it.?Built in HTML5 by the team from acquiree 3D3R, it provides all sorts of features that I wish I had available when I was in college last decade (at least as I saw them over a screencast).

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/z2bt2eybsos/

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