Environmental Working Group Safety Guide to Cosmetics and Personal Care Products
"Skin Deep is a safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products brought to you by researchers at the Environmental Working Group. Skin Deep pairs ingredients in more than 25,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it the largest integrated data resource of its kind. Why did a small nonprofit take on such a big project? Because the FDA doesn't require companies to test their own products for safety."
Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database contains information and online safety assessments for: 29,086 products - 7,281 ingredients - 1,762 brands - 1,106 companies

Orphan Works Act of 2008 Introduced in House and Senate
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889 and S 2913) "attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted." [Link]

Oil Industry Profit Review 2007Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)
Increases in the price of crude oil that began in 2004 pushed the spot price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), a key oil in determining market prices, to nearly $100 per barrel in the third quarter of 2007. Tight market conditions persisted through the remainder of 2007, with demand growth in China, India, and other parts of the developing world continuing. Uncertain supply related to political unrest in Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, and other places continued to threaten the market and contribute to a psychology that pushed up prices. The decline of the value of the U.S. dollar on world currency markets, as well as the investment strategies of financial firms on the oil futures markets, has also been identified by some as factors in the high price of oil.
The profits of the five major integrated oil companies remained high in 2007, as they generally accounted for approximately 75% of both revenues and net incomes. For this group of firms, oil production led the way as the most profitable segment of the market, even though oil and gas production growth was not strong. + Full Report (PDF; 96 KB) Permalink

About 70% of the time you use a verb, it is an irregular one.
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html

List of English irregular verbs
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/irregular-verbs/

One of the hardest verbs to understand: be

Infinitive
be
Past
was, were
Present Participle
being
Past Participle
been
Present:
I
am
You
are
He, She, It
is
We
are
You
are
They
are
http://www.scientificpsychic.com/cgi-bin/verbconj2.pl

argus (AHR-guhs) noun
An alert and observant person; a watchful guardian.
[After Argus, a giant in Greek mythology who had 100 eyes and was sent to watch over Zeus's lover Io. He was killed by Hermes and after his death his eyes transformed into spots on the peacock's tail. Greek argos (bright).]
A.Word.A.Day

Aftermath of a donation
We gave money to a well-known charity in November, but continued getting requests once a week. Shortly, mailings asking for money increased to twice a week. Then, mailings increased to three times a week. We still get sporadic mailings—and yesterday, received a phone call asking for money. It is a nightmare. Responding with a donation to a telephone solicitation triggers more calls, just as responding with a donation to a mailing triggers more mailings.

The problems of Ave Maria School of Law just won’t go away. The school — which has been sued by some of its professors, undergone student defections, and was compelled to change deans this month after U.S. News ranked it in the lowest tier — has now found itself unable to sell the naming rights to its planned new building in Ave Maria, Florida. Instead, Ave Maria law school will move to an older building in nearby Naples — the former Ave Maria University temporary campus. Here’s the report from the NLJ.
WSJ Law Blog April 28, 2008