Crude Oil Rises as Israeli Attacks on Gaza Roil Middle East

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose for a second day after Israeli air strikes in the Gaza strip raised concerns that supply from the Middle East, the world’s largest producing region, may be disrupted.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel is fighting a “war to the death” with Hamas, the group that controls Gaza. Prices also advanced as China, the world’s second-biggest energy consumer, said it will supplement its emergency oil stockpiles while prices are low, and the United Arab Emirates announced compliance with OPEC production cuts agreed on this month.

“The instability in the Middle East may well push oil prices higher,” said Rob Laughlin, a senior broker with MF Global Ltd. in London. “China’s plans to stockpile crude may take up some slack from the demand destruction from the economic slowdown.”

Crude oil for February delivery rose as much as $4.49, or 12 percent, to $42.20 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $40.11 at 10:16 a.m. in London. Today’s gain pares oil’s plunge from its $147.27 a barrel record on July 11 to 72 percent.

Futures prices fell 11 percent last week, reaching a four- year low of $32.40 on Dec. 19.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., the United Arab Emirates state- owned producer, will reduce crude-oil exports in January and February after OPEC agreed to lower output as of Jan. 1. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, supplier of more than 40 percent of the world’s oil, agreed on Dec. 17 to trim daily production targets by 2.46 million barrels next month.

China’s Stockpiles

Chinese companies will be encouraged to utilize spare oil- storage capacity while state and commercial reserves of other “strategic resources” will be set up, Zhang Guobao, also the vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, wrote in an article in the official People’s Daily today.

Brent crude oil for February settlement climbed as much as $4.81, or 13 percent, to $43.18 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange.

The Israeli air strikes, launched to halt rocket attacks by Islamic militants after a six-month truce with Hamas ended Dec. 19, killed more than 285 people, prompting protests across the region from Saudi Arabia to Syria.

Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers began taking up positions outside the perimeter fence of the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio said. The army refused to comment on the report.

Oil prices soared to a then-record $78.40 a barrel in July 2006 after Israel attacked Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. At the time, Iran, the fourth-largest oil producer, was facing international sanctions over its nuclear program, while pipeline attacks had also cut output in Nigeria.

Gold may also benefit if any escalation of the tension in the Middle East drives investors toward a “safe haven,” said Toby Hassall, a research analyst at Commodity Warrants Australia Pty in Sydney. Bullion for immediate delivery rose 1.7 percent to $884.42 an ounce, having gained as much as 3.1 percent on Dec. 26.

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Singers Who Can't Sing

Everyone is still having a fit about Kanye West's SNL performance of "Heartless" the other week. Did he lip-synch? Didn't he? The debate misses the bigger issue: Kanye can't sing.

Truth be told, ability is not always the most important thing when it comes to singing. The proper amount of attitude, charm, and self-deprecation go a long way to replace actual vocal chops. Ask David Lee Roth and Bob Dylan, two dudes who can't sing a note but make up for it with sheer chutzpah (and in Dylan's case, an ungodly amount of lyrical prowess). Singers who know they can't sing are always forgiven.

Kanye, however, broke the cardinal rule of bad singing. He stepped outside of his preapproved vocal zone.

No one expects Kanye to sing. In fact, no one wants Kanye to sing, because we know he can't. Write an insanely catchy melody? Yes. Continue to be the biggest ego on the planet? Yes. These are the things we want from our Kanye. But when he begins to think he can pull off a ballad by actually singing it? That's when he's gone too far.

There are two kinds of bad singers in the world: the ones who kid themselves into thinking they're good (Kanye) and the ones who try too hard — all the time. These are the Mariahs, Beyonces, and Christinas (although Ms. Aguilera is learning; her Nina Simone tribute on the Grammy nomination show this month was remarkably restrained). These performers wring the last bit of life out of every note. Just because you can sing every octave perceptible to the human ear doesn't mean you have to. These singers don't know when to hold back. They are perpetual vocal grandstanders, sucking all of the oxygen out of the room.

Here are some other legendary bad singers. I'll avoid easy targets, like Yoko Ono and Michael Bolton. Yes, she inspired the B-52s. Who cares? And Bolton has received his punishment for butchering so many songs by being relegated to "Where are they now?" status. Time has passed him by, and we won't be hearing from him again.

These folks are ones who won't go away and, worse yet, won't learn to sing. Know your enemy, my friends. Protect yourselves. And check out the complete list here.

CELINE DION

She's the grande dame of song killers, insisting on suffocating every song with sincerity. Oh, Celine is so sincere. She demands that you love her and her songs. She forces herself on a song like a bad date.

MADONNA
The problem with Madonna (or, I should say, one of the many problems) is that she’s built a career on being a diva, and divas need to sing. No amount of line dancing, costume changes, or bodybuilding can hide the fact that she can't sing.

ANTHONY KIEDIS
The Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of the most musical bands around. Flea, Frusciante, and Chad are the some of the most talented dudes to ever groove together. If only they had a better singer. I could deal with Anthony until "Under the Bridge.” A great tune but way outside of his approved vocal zone. He’s much better when he's doing his "Give It Away" mumble-rap thing.

FRED DURST
Here's another one of these "I think I'll sing a ballad 'cause I can rap" dudes. And to add insult to injury, he tried out his vocal chops on the Who's epic "Behind Blue Eyes.” Aside from the fact that he has no inherent sensitivity to the song, HE CAN'T SING! It makes me mad to this day.

CHRIS BROWN

There was a time when a certain type of entertainer was called a "song-and-dance man.” The description assumed that the entertainer actually knew how to sing and how to dance. Michael Jackson, Cab Calloway, Jackie Wilson, James Brown? All song-and-dance men. I'll even give you Justin Timberlake. Chris Brown? Dance man. Definitely a dance man. Keep dancing, Chris.

See more in our Worst Singers Hall of Fame FlipBook.

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'Smallest' Christmas tree

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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Snow

1 Snow is a mineral, just like diamonds and salt.

2 Lies your teacher told you: Most snowflakes don’t look like the lacy decorations that kids cut from folded paper. Flakes are generally bunches of those perfectly symmetrical crystals stuck together.

3 No two alike? More lies! Many crystals are almost identical in their early stages of growth, and some of the fully formed ones are pretty darned similar.

4 A snow crystal can be 50 times as wide as it is thick, so even though crystals can be lab grown to more than two inches across, they’re generally far thinner than a piece of paper.


5 At the center of almost every snow crystal is a tiny mote of dust, which can be anything from volcanic ash to a particle from outer space.

6 As the crystal grows around that speck, its shape is altered by humidity, temperature, and wind; the history of a flake’s descent to Earth is recorded in its intricate design.

7 Freshly fallen snow is typically 90 to 95 percent air, which is what makes it such a good thermal insulator.

8 Thundersnow—a blizzard with visible lightning—is rare. But some scientists hypothesize that all lightning is born of snow that’s just out of sight: Ice crystals in clouds collide and generate electricity.

9 According to Guinness World Records, the largest snowflake ever recorded was a 15-incher that besieged Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887.

10 There are occasional reports of red, yellow, or black snow falling from the sky, probably due to pollen, windblown dust, or ash and soot.

11 Don’t eat the red snow, either: “Watermelon snow,” ruddy-tinted drifts that smell like fresh watermelon, gets its color from a species of pigmented algae that grows in ice. The snow tastes great, but eating it will give you the runs.

12 Due to our increasing passion for skiing and snowmobiling, avalanche fatalities in the United States have risen sharply in the last 50 years. About 270 people have died that way in the past decade, roughly a fifth of them in Colorado.

13 No need to whisper: Shouting, yodeling, and most other loud sounds cannot trigger an avalanche.

14 The whitest place in the United States is Valdez, Alaska—near the site of the infamous oil spill—which receives 326 inches of snow a year, on average.

15 But it doesn’t snow very much at the poles. Most blizzards there are made up of old snow that is blowing around.

16 In Antarctica, the hard, flat snow reflects sound waves with incredible efficiency. Some researchers say they have heard human voices a mile away.

17 Don’t buy the urban legend that Inuit cultures have hundreds of words for snow. Many linguists say there are so many Inuit dialects and so many ways to parse a word that it’s like counting how many words Europeans have for love.

18 “Snowflake” Bentley took the first photographs of snow crystals in 1885 by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope and manipulating his frozen subjects with a severed turkey wing. After capturing over 5,000 stunning crystals, he died of pneumonia.

19 Too much snow can drive a person crazy. Pibloktoq, a little-understood hysteria seen in people living in the Arctic, can cause a wide range of symptoms, including echolalia (senseless repetition of overheard words) and running around naked in the snow.

20 The big freeze: According to the “snowball Earth” theory, roughly 600 million years ago our planet was entirely covered in snow and ice. Others argue that no complex life could have survived that wintry a wonderland. Except maybe Bing Crosby.
Source

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Meet The iBar

Springwise: We wrote recently about the interactive wine bar at Adour in New York City's St. Regis Hotel, and since then we've spotted several mentions of iBar, a related innovation by UK-based Mindstorm.

Unveiled in 2006, the iBar is a customisable surface technology that turns any bar into a giant version of an interactive, touch-sensitive screen. Integrated video projectors can display any content on the bar's milky surface, while built-in intelligent tracking software continually maps the position of every object touching its surface. That input is then used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter, allowing coloured lights, for example, to illuminate, link and follow every movement of hands, bottles and glasses. Multiple people can interact with the iBar at once, and virtual objects can be "touched" with the fingers, enabling a game of pinball where players shoot with their thumbs, for example. Content that can be displayed on the iBar includes internet content, interactive games and advertising; bars can also be fitted with Bluetooth technology to allow consumers to download their own content. The iBar is a stand-alone system comprising modules 2m long, and it can be networked wirelessly to allow interaction between two or more separate units.

Interactive touch-bar [Springwise]

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