Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/178489568?client_source=feed&format=rss
earthquake in texas official time news 9 tuscaloosa tuscaloosa earthquake california earthquake california
Sunday, December 25, 2011
smx: Calling all search Search Geeks! Test your skills for a chance to win a trip for 2 to SMX West, iPad's & more! http://t.co/eYqewevd
- Passer la navigation
- Twitter sur votre mobile ? Cliquez ici m.twitter.com!
- Passer cette ?tape
- Connexion
Calling all search Search Geeks! Test your skills for a chance to win a trip for 2 to SMX West, iPad's & more! smxpo.com/sxYgux 
smx SearchMarketingExpo
Pied de page
Source: http://twitter.com/smx/statuses/150640884088713216
ashton kutcher twitter sandusky barbados raiders chargers latin grammys latin grammys ogopogo
Video: Christmas horror spoof shows the dark side of Siri (Digital Trends)
The folks behind Austin-based Rooster Teeth Productions decided to take things a step further and imagine a spooky scenario where Siri turns bad and, rather than trying to be helpful, tries to kill you instead.
The result is an entertaining two-minute spoof movie trailer called Siri: The Holiday Horror Movie. It begins light-heartedly enough with a family gathered around a Christmas tree, opening gifts with much gaiety and joy. And whaddya know, everyone receives a brand new iPhone 4S, pre-loaded with Siri!
One recipient asks Siri, ?What?s the meaning of life??
?Life has no meaning,? Siri replies.
And from there things turn sinister. There are plenty of amusingly dark skits within the trailer, such as when one guy driving his car asks Siri if he should turn left or right at a junction. ?Continue driving straight,? Siri tells him. So the man does ? straight into a brick wall.
If you?d prefer to watch a more family-oriented video about Siri than one where the virtual personal assistant turns into a serial killer, check out Apple?s new TV ad here.
For those who want to know what happens when an iPhone app turns bad, watch Siri: The Holiday Horror Movie below.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
More from Digital Trends
Speaktoit: The Android answer to Siri
Apple iCloud may get streaming movies
Rumor: Fully integrated voice control coming to iPhone 5
Samsung suing Apple over emoticons
rocksmith blackbeard widespread panic widespread panic richard stallman richard stallman williston north dakota
Saturday, December 24, 2011
IDOT Employees Contribute Nearly 1,200 Pounds of Food and Supplies to Troops Serving Overseas
Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) workers donated nearly 1,200 pounds of food and supplies to be sent to military personnel serving overseas through the holidays.? IDOT staff participated in a collection drive for the Operation Support Our Troops - America organization, which also resulted in more than 170 Christmas cards and personal letters going to armed services members.
?We should always remember the sacrifice our men and women serving overseas make each day and do what we can to express our gratitude and support,? said Transportation Secretary Ann L. Schneider. ?I am very proud of the diligence and compassion shown by the employees at IDOT. They made a commitment to contribute their time and money to show our troops how much we appreciate them for all they do.?
After Governor Pat Quinn announced the ?America has NOT Forgotten? campaign encouraging Illinoisans to support Veterans and Military families, IDOT took the challenge to get involved.
All nine IDOT districts participated in the collection drive and served as drop off locations. The items collected included crackers, canned pasta and soup, granola bars, foot powder, beef jerky, microwave popcorn, canned nuts, individually-wrapped hot chocolate and coffee packets of ground coffee and Starbucks? coffee cups. The statewide collection period was approximately two weeks.
Operation Support Our Troops - America is a not-for-profit, volunteer-based organization that supports the morale and wellbeing of American forces by providing comfort, resources and education to them and their families while they are deployed and after their return. Since its inception, the organization has shipped approximately 900,000 pounds of goods to troops around the world. Operation Support Our Troops - America also provides financial support to military and veteran support organizations such as Fisher House and Hines VA Hospital.
For more information about Operation Support Our Troops - America and other programs for our Veterans and servicemembers, visit www.OSOTAmerica.org and www.OperationHomefront.org.
teresa giudice red ribbon week much ado about nothing sean hayes caroline manzo caroline manzo the haunting in connecticut
Economy ends tough 2011 on a surprising upswing (AP)
WASHINGTON ? WASHINGTON (AP) ? The economy is ending 2011 on a roll.
The job market is healthier. Americans are spending lustily on holiday gifts. A long-awaited turnaround for the depressed housing industry may be under way. Gas is cheaper. Factories are busier. Stocks are higher.
Not bad for an economy faced with a debt crisis in Europe and, as recently as last summer, scattered predictions of a second recession at home. Instead, the economy has grown faster each quarter this year, and the last three months should be the best.
"Things are looking up," says Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
When The Associated Press surveyed 43 economists in August, they pegged the likelihood of another recession at roughly one in four. The Dow Jones industrial average was lurching up or down by 400 points or more some days.
There was plenty of reason for gloom. A political standoff over the federal borrowing limit brought the United States to the brink of default and cost the nation its top-drawer credit rating.
Most analysts now rule out another recession. They think the economy will grow at an annual rate of more than 3 percent from October through December, the fastest pace since a 3.8 percent performance in the spring of last year.
Many economists still worry that the year-end surge isn't sustainable, in part because the average worker's pay is barely rising. And Europe may already be sliding into a recession that will infect the United States.
The outlook could darken further if Congress can't break the impasse blocking an extension of a Social Security tax cut for 160 million Americans and emergency unemployment benefits.
Yet for now, the economy is on an upswing that few had predicted:
? JOBS: The number of people applying for unemployment benefits came in at 366,000 last week, down from a peak of 659,000 in March 2009. Even in good economic times, the figure would be between 280,000 and 350,000.
Employers have added at least 100,000 jobs five months in a row, the longest streak since 2006. And the unemployment rate fell from 9 percent in October to 8.6 percent last month, the lowest since March 2009.
Small businesses are hiring again, too, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.
Business is up at AG Salesworks in Norwood, Mass., which helps technology companies like Motorola find new customers. The firm has hired 26 workers to restore its staff to 56, erasing the job cuts from the recession. CEO Paul Alves plans to add an employee or two a month as long as growth continues.
"I do see more confidence than I saw 12 months ago," Alves says. "But it's good, not great. Robust isn't the word I'd use."
? SPENDING: The holiday shopping season has turned out better than anyone expected. Sales from November through Saturday were up 2.5 percent from last year. Americans have spent $32 billion online, 15 percent more than a year ago. Retails sales were up in November for the sixth month in a row. People are spending, in particular, on clothes, cars, electronics and furniture.
? CONSUMER CONFIDENCE: Americans felt better about the economy in November than they had since July, according to the Conference Board, a business group that tracks the mood of consumers.
The board's consumer confidence index climbed 15 points to 56 in November, the biggest one-month jump since April 2003. During the Great Recession, the index fell as low as 25.
"It seems like the confidence of the traditional American consumer is higher right now," says Jim Newman, executive vice president of operations at the digital marketing company Acquity Group, which has added 100 jobs since summer.
? GAS: Falling prices at the pump have freed more money for consumers to spend on appliances, furniture, vacations and other things that help drive the economy. The national average for regular unleaded has sunk to $3.21 a gallon since peaking at $3.98 in May, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge.
? INVENTORIES: Businesses are restocking shelves and warehouses, more confident that customers will buy their products. In October, their inventories were up 8.7 percent from a year earlier. An increase in inventories is expected to account for perhaps a third of growth this quarter.
The battered housing market might be showing signs of recovery. Home construction rose more than 9 percent in November from October, driven by apartment building. And the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that sales of previously occupied homes rose 4 percent in November.
But housing is climbing out of a deep hole: The existing homes sold at an annual rate of 4.4 million ? well below the 6 million that would signal a healthy housing market. And the real-estate agents' trade group revealed Wednesday that it overstated sales by 3.5 million during and after the Great Recession.
Once they peer into 2012, economists turn cautious. Bernard Baumohl, chief economist with the Economic Outlook Group, says that stronger consumer spending "is absolutely unsustainable. .... Wages have not kept pace with inflation all year."
The government says that once you adjust for inflation, weekly earnings dropped 1.8 percent from November 2010 to last month. Consumers have used savings or credit cards to finance their purchases. Once bills come due in early 2012, Baumohl foresees a cutback in spending.
Baumohl is so pessimistic that he expects the economy to shrink at a 0.2 percent annual rate in the first three months of 2012 and to end the year with no more than 1.8 percent growth.
Europe is almost sure to slide into recession, even if its policymakers find a solution to the continent's debt crisis. In the worst case, a chaotic breakup of the euro currency could ignite a worldwide financial panic.
Joe Echevarria, CEO of the accounting and consulting firm Deloitte LLP, says his company's clients are delaying hiring or expansion decisions to see if Europe's crisis will be resolved.
Another worry ? again ? is Washington. President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress still had not broken their impasse Wednesday on how to extend a Social Security tax cut. Without an extension, taxes will go up $1,000 in 2012 for someone making $50,000. A couple making $100,000 each would pay $4,000 more.
Failing to extend the tax cut, combined with the end of long-term unemployment benefits and other federal budget cuts, could shave 1.7 percentage points from growth in 2012, warns Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.
Forecasters are also chastened by the past two years. Since the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, the economy has stalled twice just when it appeared to be gaining momentum.
In mid-2010, businesses slowed spending sharply. This year, the damage came from protests in the Middle East that drove oil prices higher at the start of the year, the earthquake in Japan in March, budget cuts by state and local governments and the stalemate in Washington.
But Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors says he thinks the fears about next year are overblown and the economy will grow 3 percent in 2012. Next year will be all about jobs. If job growth keeps accelerating, the economy is much more likely to meet Naroff's predictions than the pessimists'.
In addition, Naroff says, that's because consumers and businesses have grown more confident. If Europe averts disaster ? a crackup of the eurozone ? and endures only a mild recession, as Naroff expects, the impact on the United States will be minimal, he says.
"If you stopped the average person on the street and asked, `Are you slowing your spending because of what's happening in Europe?' they'd ask, `What planet are you from?'"
___
AP Business Writer Christopher Leonard in St. Louis contributed to this report.
google x lisfranc injury lisfranc injury ronan ronan diane sawyer clay matthews
Earth, life's only home
Valerie Jamieson, features editor
AS BIG questions go, it's hard to get much bigger: Are we alone in the universe? Instinctively, it feels that there must be another intelligent civilisation out there peering through their telescopes at our pale blue dot. Modern astronomy reinforces this hunch. The Milky Way is just one of a trillion galaxies in the observable universe and contains just as many stars. As the haul of planets we discover around those stars grows, so does the feeling that it's only a matter of time before we find someone else sharing our cosmic patch.
In Alone in the Universe, John Gribbin dares to shatter that myth. Chapter by chapter, he describes how we are anything but an ordinary intelligence, living on an ordinary planet around an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy. Instead, our existence relies on a series of remarkable cosmic coincidences.
Our solar system, for example, formed at a very fortuitous time and place within the Milky Way. Had it formed earlier or farther away from the galactic centre, it would not have had the supply of elements needed to build our rocky planets, or the reserves of metals our technological civilisation needs. Had it formed closer to the galactic centre, where the density of stars is greatest, our planet would likely have been sterilised - by a gamma ray burst, perhaps, or a star exploding as a supernova, or even a blast from the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the galaxy.
Then there's the arrangement of our solar system and its debris. Earth has the rare privilege of being in a family of planets with more or less stable orbits. Our home is just the right distance from the sun for liquid water, while asteroids of the kind that killed off the dinosaurs are today mostly sequestered safely away in the asteroid and Kuiper belt. Without the right sort of collisions at the right time, Earth would have been a waterless world with a toxic atmosphere, constantly bombarded by cosmic rays.
Gribbin's argument proves compelling as he ranges over issues of astrophysics, geology, atmospheric chemistry and evolution. Although he cannot quantify exactly how the potential for life around those trillion trillion other suns whittles down to zero, you can feel any optimism that ET is out there ebb away with each turn of the page.
Alone in the Universe is thought-provoking and sobering. Gribbin makes any ideas of decamping to another Earth-like planet in the future seem absurd. Our telescopes might find seemingly similar planets around other stars, but these worlds will inevitably be nothing like ours. He concludes that we must look after the extraordinary planet we have. It has survived far worse catastrophe than climate change and will go on, but we won't.
Book Information
Alone in the Universe: Why our planet is unique
by John Gribbin
Published by: Wiley
$25.95
Follow @CultureLabNS on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
snow white and the huntsman philip rivers 11 11 11 meaning miracle berry billy crystal veterans day thank you veterans day thank you
Activists say Syrian troops surrounded residents of restive village in a valley, killed 100
BEIRUT (AP) ? Government forces surrounded residents of a restive Syrian village in a valley and killed all those trapped inside ? more than 100 people ? in a barrage of rockets, tank shells, bombs and gunfire that lasted for hours, a witness and two activist groups said Wednesday.
The attack on Tuesday pushed the death toll for two days of violence across Syria to more than 200, and was one of the deadliest single events of the entire nine-month uprising against President Bashar Assad?s authoritarian rule.
The White House reacted by renewing its call for Assad to step down, saying his regime does not deserve to rule.
The offensive targeted the village of Kfar Owaid, about 30 miles from the northern border with Turkey. It is part of the rugged mountainous region of Jabal al-Zawiyah, which has been the scene of clashes between troops and army defectors and intense anti-government protests for weeks. Syrian troops began attacking the region on Saturday, residents said.
?It was an organized massacre,? said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ?The troops surrounded people then killed them.?
Syrian officials have not commented on the allegations.
The White House said Assad?s regime has no credibility and has ?flagrantly violated? its commitment to end violence. The statement said the Obama administration is deeply disturbed by continued reports of government-backed violence against the Syrian people.
One villager who is an anti-government activist told The Associated Press by telephone that scores of residents and activists fled Tuesday morning to the nearby Budnaya Valley, where they were completely surrounded by troops. The forces bombarded them with tank shells, rockets and heavy machine-gun fire. The man, who identified himself only as Abu Rabih for fear of government reprisal, said troops also used bombs filled with nails to increase the number of casualties.
?What happened yesterday was a crime against humanity,? Abu Rabih said. He said 110 people were killed in the attack and 56 of the dead were buried in Kfar Owaid on Wednesday. Others were buried in villages nearby.
Abu Rabih said the Jabal al-Zawiyah region has been under intense attack by government forces since Saturday.
Assad agreed Monday to allow foreign monitors under an Arab League plan aimed at stopping the bloodshed. But the huge toll from the crackdown on Monday and Tuesday has reinforced opposition suspicions that Assad is just playing for time to stall a new round of international condemnation and sanctions. The crackdown has already left Assad internationally isolated and under tremendous pressure from the Arab world as well as the west.
The Arab League plan calls for Syria to halt its crackdown, open talks with the opposition, withdraw military forces from city streets and allow in human rights workers and journalists
Despite intensified violence, the Arab League appeared to be going ahead with its plans to send the monitors.
In Cairo, Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby appealed to the Syrian government to shoulder its responsibilities to protect civilians in compliance with its pledges to abide by the League?s plan. He expressed deep concern about reports of an escalation of violence, especially in the provinces of Idlib, Homs, Daraa and Deir el-Zour.
The 22-member Arab League has also suspended Syria?s membership and levelled economic and diplomatic sanctions.
The White House warned Damascus that additional steps will be taken to pressure Assad?s regime if the Arab League initiative is not fully implemented.
al mvp ama awards 2011 ama awards 2011 uekman uekman music awards music awards
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)