Validate Your Life

I had not idea earthquakes were still wreaking such havoc.

It’s the latest of numerous of aftershocks from the 7.9 quake that struck Sichuan on May 12 and killed almost 70,000 people and left 5 million homeless.

(more…)

Meteorology: Cool that twitter proved to be the main method of communication after the earthquake today.

Celebrity: This site was shocking. It’s old news. Many of those people died years ago, but how in the hell was Jimi Hendrix (for example, on the shock list) only 27? He looks like he’s 50 in some pictures! Another shock was James Dean’s early death. I had no idea some of those

Politics: I just saw Nancy Pelosi on the Dailey Show. Thank goodness someone started pouring in some intelligent people into the White house.

Health: Apparently, watch out for dirty pool water. Stay near the clean fluids.

Finances:Turns out when the FDIC seized the mortgage company IndyMac on July 11, the inevitable cascade of financial repercussions has started to appear.

The chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday more banks are in danger of failing, and that the government agency expects to raise premiums to restore its reserve fund after paying out billions of dollars to depositors at IndyMac Bank.

Sure, Sheila Blair affirmed that it won’t happen again:

“Based on the supervisory data and financial data I have, I would be very surprised if we had failures of that size institution or larger…”

but the instability of certain banks remains.
Blair affirms $100k consumers have in a bank (or $250k in some retirement accounts) is covered by a protection program if the bank fails…great, but what about those holding a 250k+ margin in a bank that fails?!

(more…)

• Tour de France: Cadel Evans leads from Australia. Way to go getting the “down under” guys showing up for a change from all the Italian, French, and European spin vets.

• Latest iPhone App: via iPhone’s amazing (and free) AOL Radio App , I’ve been dialing into KFWB. While they may not be the largest radio station out there, for local SoCal news, they present a very solid rap and have their act together in covering local events. I encourage you to check them out.
• Joke of the Day: This poor bloke has seen E.T. just one too many times.
  The most hilarious article of his “eloquent” and “comprehensive” coverage of extra-terrestrials was this sound bite: “You know…they could made of water. I don’t even know.” I almost did a spit-take drinking my morning tea hearing that one. No more slime, goo, nor multiple heads — aliens are now “made of water”. The nerd comment of the day would be that “Humans — being, like the Earth itself, about 70% water –are all alien, then! “They’re out there, man. They got them little graves and stuff.”

  (more…)

This is pretty big news. I’m familiar with Vivendi (owned some stock traded over the european market for awhile) and know the Activision and Blizzard game brands, this merger is about as big as Macromedia and Adobe fusing to one killer web development app.

Big news!  Bill Gates Retired roughly a week ago.  Clinton’s democratic VP and Obama as Presidential nominee.  How did I miss this news?!!  Well, okay I learned about Gates’s retirement before July, but Why wasn’t there more coverage of this?  Especially the Bill Gates news?  That’s one of the biggest computer news items of the 21st century!   I think I have to get into a system of instead of trying to catch “all” big news, merely follow a few major themes (like ’08 race, ’08 olympics, occasional celebrity, and Apple news).