flickering pictures

For a while now, I’ve been convinced that the secret behind Wired’s success is that its editors know their audience: a generation of ADHD technophiles that love cool new things but don’t want to read more than 50 words about them. The mag is chock full of charts, tables and pithy rapid-fire bursts of […]

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A neat new U.S.-based news service called the Global Post has started covering events around the world, with an emphasis on regions that traditionally fly under the mainstream radar and a novel insistence that its reporters must live full-time in the countries they cover. It’s too early to say if it’ll live up to […]

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Born on January 8, 1935, Elvis Presley would have been 74 years old today. Other notable events on this day:

1835: For the only time in U.S. history, the national debt is exactly zero dollars. Today’s debt is just over $10.6 trillion, or about $35,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

1867: […]

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When I first saw this little story on the Consumerist, I thought it had to be a joke. But out of curiosity, I googled it — and came up with 113,000 hits, a flag-waving liberty dollar nutbar website, and a too-strange-to-be-true article in the Washington Post:

Once upon a time, a “monetary architect” named Bernard […]

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CNN reports:

Exxon Mobil, the leading U.S. oil company, said its third-quarter net profit was $14.83 billion, [or] $1,865.69 per second, nearly $400 a second more than the prior mark.

No U.S. company has ever earned more profit in a single quarter.
To put things into perspective, $14.83 billion is enough to wipe out the crippling external debts […]

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According to the U.K., that there is a map of the world’s newest terrorist state.
As stock markets continue to dry-heave at the toilet of the world economy — and as financial-sector CEOs continue to dry-hump the American taxpayer — we’re discovering that British municipalities, police forces and other investors had a lot of money in […]

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A comment on America’s financial woes, as reported in the latest edition of Harper’s Weekly:

“The private market has screwed itself up,” said Representative Barney Frank (D., Mass.), “and they need the government to come help them unscrew it.”

A close second, also from Harper’s Weekly:

“My first instinct,” said President George W. Bush, “was to let the […]

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Eight people have paid $1,000 each for an iPhone application called “I Am Rich” that does absolutely nothing except put a shining red ruby on your screen, signalling to people that you’ve got far more money and obnoxiousness than you know what to do with.
From the Times:

Cheaper than a Porsche, and arguably as tasteless, the […]

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Okay, maybe unofficially.
On June 6, the National Post reported that “It’s a sad day when those that can afford to buy a loaf of bread need to cart 600-million Zimbabwean dollars to the store.” Less than two months later, a sad day has turned downright miserable: you could trudge to that same store with […]

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