Bob Herbert of The New York Times writes about facing the truth about the structural flaws in our economy:

“Time Is Running Out.” The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly, but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the US and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.

We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good.

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The search giant is upgrading its Gmail program to add social-media tools similar to those found on Facebook. Google will incorporate photo and video sharing within the Gmail application, along with a new tool for status updates.

Google is still far and away the No. 1 most-visited website, with 173 million U.S. visitors in December, according to measurement service ComScore Media Metrix, up 16% from the previous December. But Facebook is close behind.

Facebook was the fourth-most-visited site in December, with 111.8 million visitors, up 105% from the prior year.

The new features, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, could be announced this week. Google has called a press conference for 10 a.m. PST today when it says it’ll be unveiling some product “innovations” in two of its most popular products.

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If you downed one too many while watching the Super Bowl, here’s at least one reason to hold your head high: Drinking beer can be good for your health.

But seriously, a new analysis of 100 commercial beers shows the beverage is a significant source of dietary silicon, a key ingredient for bone health.

Though past research has suggested beer is chock-full of silicon, little was known about how silicon levels varied with the type of beer and malting process used. So a pair of researchers took one for the team and ran chemical analyses on beer’s raw ingredients. They also picked up 100 commercial beers from the grocery store and measured the silicon content.

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An Alaska dentist has given a bald eagle a unique beak — using a temporary crown, sticky poster putty and yellow highlighter.

The bird was found in December with severe damage to its beak, apparently from fishing line that wrapped around it and started cutting into it.

Cindy Palmatier at the Bird Treatment and Learning Center says staff there decided to turn to dentist Kirk Johnson, who thought of patching up the beak with the same material used to make temporary crowns for people.

The “crown” is being held on with poster putty, and Johnson colored it in using highlighter to give it a yellow tint.

The bird center says the eagle is doing just fine but won’t be able to return to the wild.

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Folks in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland are bracing for the worst snowstorm of the winter so far.

The same storm will deliver a blizzard by Wednesday to the I-95 Northeast hit and missed by the monster storm this past weekend.

This new blizzard as well as a southern snowstorm late in the week will impact over half the population of the country with travel-stopping and school closing snow, health risks and other hardships.

To add insult to injury, California will also be hit with flooding rain and pass-clogging snow into midweek.

AccuWeather

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