If Mars has been covered in a global sand storm as recently as 2001, why is it such a shock that there might be winds strong enough to ripple up some sand dunes?

You do realize that there is still a huge gap between a storm like Irene and Katrina, or even Katrina and the 1970 "Bhola Cyclone" which took the lives of over 300,000 people? I never once said Irene was not a bad storm, just an over-hyped and over-covered one.

This. A million times this. We have serious problems in the way media presents information before, during, and after events such as this.

Yes, it was a Bad Storm. Nobody is going to deny that. However, the media's over-hype and over-coverage of the storm could have a serious "boy who cried wolf" effect. I would hate to see people woefully under-prepared if and when the next "Katrina" arrives, due to lack in confidence in media storm reporting and forecasting. We really don't need to instill a mindset of "it's not going to be as bad as they say it is" in hurricane prone areas. That kind of thinking costs lives, but is none the less engendered by ratings hungry news networks over-hyping relatively weak storms like Irene.

Stupid media hype. In that very same article it is stated that it would take 3 years -at minimum- to verify the existence of an Earth-size exoplanet. So clearly there aren't five of them on the books yet. Kepler went up in March 2009.

The new design shows up as a complete fustercluck in Internet Explorer 6, which is sadly the only browser I can use at work. Had to wait till I got home to post this comment! Oh well.

I believe the X-Ray source may be a foreground or background object not associated with the galaxy, and possibly stationary as well. I would expect a super-massive black hole capable of anchoring an entire galaxy that is so off-center would cause some serious deformation to the host galaxy, which is a feature that clearly is not present in the provided image. I also believe the lack of an X-Ray source at the galactic nucleus is not due to the super-massive black hole being removed, but rather simply that the super-massive black hole that is there is not currently "eating" anything and thus is not producing prodigious amounts of X-Rays.

I'm no astrophysicist but shouldn't a galactic anchor supermassive black hole tearing ass through it's soon-to-be former host galaxy be dragging a fair amount of material with it and creating a bow shock, much as this runaway star is doing?

I can see what they are getting at but it is a real douche thing for them to be all "shame on you!" for downloading and using software that they themselves created, provided, and handed out. I can't see a whole lot of people taking them seriously, as a result.

When it comes to unsecured debt there is little lenders can do to recover their losses on defaults but to raise the interest rates on everybody. If lenders didn't raise these rates, lending would become unprofitable and loans would cease to be available... which is hardly a preferable alternative I should think. As has already been mentioned in another comment, the interest rates aren't anything that weren't in writing when the borrower signed for the loan.

It's plain and simple. The reason interest rates on a certain category of loans is high is because the borrowers in that category present a high risk of default to the lenders. This means that as more and more college grads struggle to land jobs, more and more of them will default on their loans, and interest rates on the whole will rise for everybody as lenders compensate for the increased risk.