Bits Blog: The Origins of 'Big Data' : An Etymological Detective Story

Words and phrases are fundamental building blocks of language and culture, much as genes and cells are to the biology of life. And words are how we express ideas, so tracing their origin, development and spread is not merely an academic pursuit but a window into a society’s intellectual evolution.Digital technology is changing both how words and ideas are created and proliferate, and how they are...

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Senate Democrats huddle on gun measures

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Senate Democrats to brief the caucus about the rationale behind the...

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Amazon.com Goes Down, Takes Break From Retail Biz

Amazon hosted a new kind of online door-crasher sale on Thursday. That is to say, its front door crashed.For about a half-hour, starting just before noon Pacific time on Thursday, the main Amazon.com webpage was inaccessible to web surfers.Visitors were greeted with a white page and the error: “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.”The problem appeared to affect only the front...

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A Minute With: Rapper T.I. dips into comedy in “Identity Thief”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris has seen and done it all – three Grammy Awards, a novel, time in jail, a fashion line, TV reality show, businessman and several movies.Now the Atlanta-based singer is dipping into comedy, appearing in the film “Identity Thief” as an armed enforcer on the trail of a character played by Melissa McCarthy who is on the run from many of those she’s swindled.T.I.,...

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common...

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Anti-Wal-Mart Labor Groups Agree to Stop Picketing the Chain

(Reuters) - Labor groups that have long spoken out against Wal-Mart Stores Inc will stop much of their picketing against the world's largest retailer, though they still plan to continue to push the company to improve working conditions. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, or UFCW, and OUR Walmart reached an agreement with the National Labor Relations Board, the groups...

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Syrian state media report airstrike by Israeli military

JERUSALEM – Amid rising fear that Syrian President Bashar Assad could lose control of his nation’s stockpiles of chemical and...

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<em>Game of Thrones</em> Fans Create Spectacular <em>Minecraft</em> Version of King's Landing

The amazing Minecraft builders at at WesterosCraft are at it again, this time releasing spectacular new renderings of King’s Landing — the capital of the Seven Kingdoms in Game of Thrones — recreated with the distinctive blocks of the popular sandbox game.The WesterosCraft team of Will Blew and Jacob Granberry posted the images of their latest work on reddit… and nearly...

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Lindsay Lohan could face jail after March trial in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actress Lindsay Lohan will stand trial on March 18 on charges she lied to California police about a June car crash and violated probation, raising the possibility she could be sent back to jail.A judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday set the trial date on charges related to the car crash and said the court will hold a hearing at the same time on whether Lohan in the incident violated...

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The Consumer: The Drug-Dose Gender Gap

Most sleeping pills are designed to knock you out for eight hours. When the Food and Drug Administration was evaluating a new short-acting pill for people to take when they wake up in the middle of the night, agency scientists wanted to know how much of the drug would still be in users’ systems come morning.Blood tests uncovered a gender gap: Men metabolized the drug, Intermezzo, faster than women....

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