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Soem longer form reads on my Instapaper:

• Normal Recovery? No Way (Comstock)
• Why Egypt’s popular rebellion is the greatest historical event in a decade (Canonical.org)
• Want an MBA? Don’t bother (Economist)
• Demand Media’s Planet of the Algorithms (BusinessWeek)
• The shocking truth about the electric Volt (Washington Post)
• Sabermetrician In Exile (Yahoo Sports)
• The art of good writing (FT.com)
• How Egypt Switched Off the Internet (GigaOm)

What are you reading?

The move higher today in Brent crude above $100 has it at the highest level since Sept ’08.

Human Planet is an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping landmark series that marvels at mankind’s incredible relationship with nature in the world today.

Uniquely in the animal kingdom, humans have managed to adapt and thrive in every environment on Earth. Each episode takes you to the extremes of our planet: the arctic, mountains, oceans, jungles, grasslands, deserts, rivers and even the urban jungle. Here you will meet people who survive by building complex, exciting and often mutually beneficial relationships with their animal neighbours and the hostile elements of the natural world.

Human Planet crews have filmed in around 80 locations, bringing you many stories that have never been told on television before. The team has trekked with HD cameras and state of the art gear to film from the air, from the ground and underwater. The result: a “cinematic experience” created by world-class natural history and documentary camera crews and programme makers.

Be sure to see out Fusion IQ Technical Overview in the video section, here:

Fusion IQ Technical Overview

This is fun: Enter the year if your Birth, and see what various items cost vs today:

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click for interactive graphic

Here’s mine:

WTF?

Huff Po:

Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can’t do is watch the network directly.

Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. – including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. – cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.

The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet’s website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.

I would love someone to explain this to me . . .

FYI, and a key thing to watch now of course, the Egypt etf has reopened, EGPT, and is up almost 5% after last week’s 13.7% drop and 7.9% in the week prior.

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. is pretty slick . . .

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg)