Tampa, FL (AHN) - Florida-based deep-sea explorers have reportedly found remains from the wreck of the most famous ship in British naval history that sank in the English Channel 264 years ago. Odyssey Marine Exploration, a company that found millions worth sunken treasure in 2007, is expected to announce on February 2 that it has located the HMS Victory, a warship known as the finest ship in the world. The mightiest Royal Navy warship of its time, which was considered to be unsinkable, went down in 1744 off the Channel Islands and since then its exact location has remained a mystery. Its brass cannon are considered to be worth up to 20,000 pounds ($29,000) each. It was also reportedly carrying four tons or around 100,000 gold coins. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7013913040

The Financial Times, reports Elizabeth Holmes at the WSJ’s Digits blog, is suing the Blackstone Group for multiple use of a single online subscription, alleging the private equity firm shared a user name and password to avoid paying for multiple accounts.
The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan (click here for the complaint), says that a senior Blackstone employee distributed login information to other employees. That account accessed thousands of individual articles between February 2006 and June 2008. The suit describes the use as massive and far more than an individual would normally access. Online subscriptions to the FT cost $179 to $299 a year.
For years, companies in many industries—automotive, cell phones, computers—have required customers to agree to arbitrate their disputes and to waive their right to pursue claims on a class-wide basis. On January 30, the Second Circuit struck down an arbitration clause drafted by American Express that banned any type of class litigation. The ban, according to the court, would have made it impossible for plaintiffs to pursue their antitrust claims against AmEx. Here’s a copy of the ruling and here’s a report on the decision from Public Citizens Consumer Law & Policy Blog.
Other courts, though, have gone the other way. Here is a January 29 posting from the ADR prof blog about a federal judge in New Jersey who upheld a Verizon Wireless class-action waiver, all the while acknowledging that the holding would kill the Verizon customers claim. WSJ Law Blog January 30, 2009

Energy in Brief — Who are the major players supplying the world oil market?
January 29th, 2009 Source: Energy Information Administration
From the Brief:
Governments of oil-rich countries have a major influence on the world supply of oil through ownership of national oil companies and, for some governments, their membership in OPEC.
See Also: Other Energy in Brief Articles

CBO: The State of the Economy and Issues in Developing an Effective Policy Response
Testimony, CBO, Statement of Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, The State of the Economy and Issues in Developing an Effective Policy Response before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, January 27, 2009.
"The economy is currently enduring a recession that started more than a year ago. CBO projects that, in the absence of any changes in fiscal policy, economic activity will contract more sharply in 2009 than it did in 2008 and the economy will grow at only a moderate pace in 2010. Under that projection, the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to its potential would be the largest—in terms of both length and depth—since the Depression of the 1930s. Lost output would represent nearly 7 percent of the estimated potential output in both 2009 and 2010—amounting to about $1 trillion in each year—and almost 5 percent of the potential in 2011. Payroll employment declined by 2-1/2 million jobs last year, and CBO projects that, without further policy actions, even more jobs will be lost this year. The unemployment rate increased by more than 2 percentage points last year, reaching 7.2 percent, and is projected to peak at above 9 percent early next year."

The Washington Post is dropping Book World as a separate Sunday section and moving its coverage of books and publishing elsewhere in the paper. In dropping one of the few remaining stand-alone book sections in American newspapers, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said that the coverage will be shifted to the Style section and a revamped Outlook section. Editor Rachel Shea said that The Post would publish about three-quarters of the roughly 900 reviews it has carried each year. The change will take effect February 22 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/28/AR2009012802208.html

As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs. In 2008, Author Solutions, which is based in Bloomington, Ind., and operates iUniverse as well as other print-on-demand imprints including AuthorHouse and Wordclay, published 13,000 titles, up 12 percent from the previous year. In 2008, nearly 480,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from close to 375,000 in 2007, according to the industry tracker Bowker. The company attributed a significant proportion of that rise to an increase in the number of print-on-demand books. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28selfpub.html?_r=3&em

Cool pictures of rare clouds shared by a muse reader
http://www.collthings.co.uk/2008/06/10-very-rare-clouds.html

January 31 is the birthday of the man who holds the European record for reciting pi from memory, Daniel Paul Tammet. (books by this author) It took him five hours and nine minutes to recite 22,514 digits of pi (the number that begins 3.14).
He was born in London in 1979, and he grew up autistic, epileptic, and with synesthesia, a rare condition in which a person has unique sensory experiences. He wrote a memoir called Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (2007). It begins, "I was born on January 31, 1979—a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing." Tammet describes synesthesia as "a visual, emotional experience of numbers, a neurological mixing of the senses, which most commonly results in the ability to see alphabetical letters and/or numbers in color." Vladimir Nabokov was also a synesthete, and documented his perspectives and experiences in the memoir Speak, Memory. Daniel Tammet said, "Numbers are my friends, and they are always around me. Each one is unique and has its own personality."
February 2nd is a "cross-quarter" day in the solar calendar, which means that it falls exactly between a solstice and an equinox. It's the ancient Celtic celebration of Imbolc, in honor of Brigit, the goddess of fire, poetry, healing, and childbirth. Brigit brings the healing power of the sun back to the world on Imbolc, a day that carries the first promise of spring. Imbolc comes from the Old Irish i mbolg, meaning "in the belly," because this is the time when ewes became pregnant to deliver spring lambs. The Christians took over the Celtic celebration and made February 2nd into a Christian holiday, Candlemas Day. Candlemas Day celebrates the presentation of Jesus at the Temple exactly 40 days after Christmas.
There are many old sayings about February 2—about the emergence of animals from their winter dens and omens that predict the season ahead. One English saying goes:
If Candlemas day be fair and bright,
Winter will have another flight.
But if Candlemas day bring clouds and rain,
Winter is gone and won't come again.
There was a tradition in many European countries of watching animals—especially badger—to see how they acted on this day. If they returned to their dens, it meant that there was still a long winter ahead. German immigrants in Pennsylvania found that there weren't a lot of badgers in America, but there were a lot of groundhogs, so the holiday evolved into Groundhog Day. The first reference to Groundhog Day is from 1841, in the diary of a storekeeper in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. He wrote: "Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks' nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate."
The Writer’s Almanac