Want someone who has some insightful stuff and actually posts more often than every two months?

Check out The Carpetbagger Report. Some of the stuff in his archives is really excellent.

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And in today’s major news headline, there was a plane crash at Heathrow airport in which eight people were “slightly injured” according to NPR news. How would I get by if the major news outlets didn’t update me on this breaking story about eight people being slightly injured eight time zones away. That’s almost one injury per time zone!

More news on this breaking story. According to the Telegraph, the injury toll has now risen to 13 persons with “minor injuries.”

And in other news, according to The Hunger Project’s best estimates, 24,000 children died today of hunger and malnutrition, which is a significant decline from the 41,000/day in 1977 when The Hunger Project started.

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According to a recent study, social drinker earn more — lots more. That’s all interesting enough, though it should be noted that drinking alone at home doesn’t count. What’s more interesting, though, is that barhopping without drinking apparently doesn’t count either. What’s interesting here is that, having been alerted by Paul Graham to listen to and read the news looking for the public relations firm behind the story, my first instinct is to do an internet search on the story. Sure enough, the study is all over the news with same press release cited. (more…)

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I often find Paul Graham, author of Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, interesting to read. I just came across an older article of his on the breaking news that suits are back in corporate America, as reported in April 2005 in the New York Times. And as previously reported in February, March, June and September 2004 and September 2003 and February, April and November 2002. So who cares? Here at Taken For Ranted World Headquarters, our staff of one has shown up to work in a suit, let’s see, zero times in his life. He has shown up to work in a tee-shirt or bathrobe approximately… 2783 times. So who cares about suits? Well, PR firms for the garment industry, and that’s what Graham’s article is about. He runs down how it is that the PR firms drive mainstream media reporting and how that explains why there is so much inexplicable crap in most mainstream reporting, the New York Times included. (more…)

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