Consider this: Instagram has 100 million active users.

And the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service has, at last count, 109 million photos tagged, simply, "#me."

By the numbers, if you're on Instagram and you haven't taken a picture of yourself, you're doing it wrong.

Yet the digital self-portrait—the selfie—is somehow seen as a scourge, a threat to our well-being, a trend that must end.

We talked to psychologist Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, who dismissed these critiques as weak pop science.

"Most of these people who toss around these psychological terms like 'narcissism' or 'addiction' don't understand that those are serious diagnostic criteria," Rutledge says. "We've gotten so we just chuck these things around, and it scares people. People are basically scared of technology because it's new, and we're pathologizing it."

While the mass adoption of smartphones and social networks is new, the urge to record one's own image is as old as humanity, she says, pointing to cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Along with photography came the self-portrait. But where we had to sit still and grim-faced for 19th-century cameras, Rutledge points out, we now can take photos anywhere, at a moment's notice.

"In this environment, the only way to get to know people is to disclose something of yourself," Rutledge says.

And there's nothing more self-revelatory than a photo.

Was this one of the first selfies? Frederick Hollyer was a British photographer who worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In this selfie, the photographer/subject is "trying out" a face. The fluidity of digital media allows for provisional, disposable identities.

When people use the "selfie" tag, as opposed to simply "me" or "myself," it suggests an awareness of the photo's "contrived" nature, Rutledge says.

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The tablet is the Zelig of modern computing: There's no telling where it can turn up or how it will blend into some facet of our life and work.

And it's transforming business everywhere it appears.

Take the iPad: Originally conceived of as a media-consumption and entertainment device—an overgrown iPod—it's become an indispensable work tool, serving as everything from cash register to Rolodex.

Android tablets, too, are making inroads—especially in different form factors, like phone-tablet hybrids.

Square CFO Sarah Friar knows something about the chameleon-like nature of tablets. The payments company's credit-card reader and software turn these devices into modern day cash registers. She's taken to calling them: "general-compute devices."

That's exactly right, in that tablets start out as generalists, and are easily reconfigured from one purpose to the next. But it's in the specifics that things get really interesting.

Ducati sells motorcycles with a custom iPad app

Ducati, the motorcycle maker, has 1,000 dealers in 88 countries. It switched from a hodgepodge of systems to a single app, the Ducati Communication System, which does everything from show customized models to customers to training sales reps on new products.

Blue Bottle rings up lattes

An Oakland, Calif.-based coffee chain beloved by Internet-startup employees from San Francisco to Brooklyn, Blue Bottle was a natural adopter of iPads and Square's Register app. It started in three of the chain's 11 locations in February and it's rolling out to the rest over the next few months.

Like Blue Bottle's old point-of-sale systems, Square Register swipes credit cards and track sales. But it can do tricks the old ones can't—like let customers check in at a store and pay by saying their name, send digital gift certificates, and provide detailed sales analyses.

St. Louis Urgent Cares speeds up medicine

The most obvious use of iPads in medicine is to replace the old patient chart with electronic health records, which this chain of urgent-care facilities does. But the generalist nature of tablet shines through here: Doctors also use 3D anatomy apps to explain complicated medical procedures to patients.

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Though the number of foreclosures nationwide is finally coming down, they still remain a stain on local housing markets and a reminder of the bust that ravaged the country. It's been such a widespread problem that you may wonder:

Is there anywhere that doesn't have any foreclosures? We're glad you asked -- because, yes, there are.

Click here to see where >

We hear a lot about the best cities to buy foreclosures, but these 10 areas aren't among them. That's because in the last year, there hasn't been a single foreclosure in any one of them, according to online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac.

All of these areas are sparsely populated, mostly rural regions. That's the main reason there aren't any foreclosures, said RealtyTrac vice president Daren Blomquist.

"It is rare to have absolutely no foreclosures in a county over the course of a year. Even in a healthy housing market the law of averages dictates that a few homeowners will be struggling," Blomquist said.

"I would say the primary reason that most of these areas had zero foreclosures is simply because they are relatively small, probably largely rural counties with not as much opportunity for foreclosure, and where a higher percentage of homeowners own their homes outright and don't have any mortgage that could be foreclosed on."

Jealous? Don't be. Only one of these areas has a population of more than 10,000.

What would you do with your Saturday night? 

More from AOL Real Estate: 

Foreclosures for Sale in Your Area

Williamsburg City, Va. Population: 13,741. Number of housing units: 5,096.

Calhoun County, W.V. Population: 7,616. Number of housing units: 3,958.

Menominee County, Wis. Population: 4,262. Number of housing units: 2,381.

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A Florida man is presumed dead after his bedroom was swallowed by a sinkhole last night.

This terrifying scenario is more common than you think.

Sinkholes occur when bedrock made of limestone or other carbonate rock is eaten away by acidic groundwater or a surge of pressure caused by heavy rains or burst pipes. They occur, sometimes suddenly, all over the U.S. as well as elsewhere in the world where the bedrock is susceptible — notably in China, Mexico, and Papua New Guinea.

The most dangerous chasms are the ones that cause parts of cities to collapse abruptly, and we've put together some of the best pictures of sinkholes devouring streets, sidewalks, and buildings all over the world.

In May 1981 a gigantic sinkhole developed over the course of a day in Winter Park Florida. The city stabilized and sealed the area, converting it into an urban lake.

In 1995 60-foot-deep sinkhole made a 200 feet by 150 feet hole that swallowed two homes in San Francisco's high-end Sea Cliff neighborhood.

In 1998 this enormous chasm — 800 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 70 feet deep —opened up over two days after heavy rains and a burst drainage pipe in San Diego.

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It's the Instagram account that's taking over the world — literally.

Murad Osmann and his girlfriend Natalia Zakharova have traveled to destinations most people only dream about: They've seen the rice fields in Bali, swam in the Singapore infinity pool, walked the streets of Barcelona, and even toured Disneyland in Hong Kong.

Jump right to the photos >>

But instead of run-of-the-mill tourist shots, Murad snapped pictures of his girlfriend taking his hand and leading him through some of the world's most iconic and recognizable landmarks. There are more down-to-earth pictures too, like those of Natalia on a park swing, or at a bowling alley.

The series is aptly titled, "Follow Me" on Murad's Instagram account, which has since gone viral with almost 50,000 followers at the time of this post.

The first photo happened accidentally in Barcelona when Natalia and Murad were on vacation. "Nataly was a bit annoyed that I was always taking pictures of everything, so she grabbed my hand and tried to pull me forward," he explained to The Daily Mail UK.

"That said it didn't stop me from doing photos while she was pulling me. So that's how it all started."

Murad graduated as a civil engineer from Imperial College London, but later decided to pursue a career in photography and started his own production company Hype Production in 2011. The Daily Mail UK reports that his girlfriend Natalia works as a Russian journalist.

Here, the couple tours the Temple of 1,000 Buddhas in Hong Kong.

Natalia in Indonesia wearing an elaborate conical hat in the Bali rice fields.

The greenery in this other Bali waterfall shot is incredible.

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In the 2011-12 school year, the University of Alabama football team generated $81.9 million in revenue, and the rest of the athletic department brought in another $42.2 million in revenue. When an athletic program is bringing in that much money, they can afford to build a new, state-of-the-art training facility.

The building which was introduced to the media this week, is 37,000 square-feet and cost $9 million to build.

On the next few pages we'll take a closer look at the home of the defending national champions football team...

Scott Cochran, Alabama's director of strength and conditioning described the facility as the 'biggest and baddest' in the country

The weight room opens directly into the indoor football practice field

On the other side, the weight room opens up to the outdoor football practice field

Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook.

After lamenting in a press conference Friday that he could not do more to avert the forced spending cuts known as sequestration, President Barack Obama will sign a sequestration order sometime later in the day. 

Obama and both parties of Congress have been warning about the cuts of the sequester for the past few weeks. Local publications have also started warning about the state-by-state and community-by-community effects. 

On Friday, as the cuts were set to begin kicking in, newspapers from California to New York began bracing their readers for the effects.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch breaks down how the cuts affect the nation and the state. Virginia has created a Federal Action Contingency Trust fund to cushion against the cuts.

Source: The Richmond Times-Dispatch

In Sioux Falls, N.D., hospitals will be hit hard by Medicare cuts. Two hospitals could lose a combined $15 million this year.

Source: The Argus Leader

In South Carolina, The Greenville News rounds up reaction from local citizens fearing the uncertainty that comes with the cuts.

Source: The Greenville News

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Astronauts on the International Space Station will get a fun addition to their space home-away-from-home in 2015. Their new annex is an inflatable balloon to be clamped to the side of the ISS first as a test, then be used as extra storage room.

Earlier this year NASA announced the addition, which they say will help us better understand how humans can explore and live in space. Inflatable houses as the future of space colonization? Yup, that's what we are talking about here.

Bigelow Aerospace got $17.8 million to develop the technology, NASA deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in a press release issued Jan. 16. They've named the inflatable room the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), and it is ultimately intended to be a habitat for astronauts on long-duration stays in space.

Check out some photos of the gear and launch from NASA.  Also, Bigelow shared images of the habitat, and their plan for the future of expandable activity modules, with us.

The BEAM is cheaper to transport than a metal capsule because the fabric is much lighter and can be folded into a smaller space. It will be shipped inside the SpaceX Dragon capsule.

Then the Dragon capsule will be attached to a Falcon 9 rocket, which will ferry it to the International Space Station as part of a resupplying mission in 2015.

Once in space the BEAM will be taken out of the Dragon by a large robotic arm and attached to the ISS, as you see here.

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Groupon's Andrew Mason released a very honest exit letter yesterday after getting fired as CEO, where he talked about weight gain and Battletoads.

He began the letter by saying, "I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding — I was fired today."

It may have been a controversial style of saying "goodbye," but it isn't entirely unique.

Who could forget Greg Smith's op-ed piece in the NYT last year calling Goldman Sachs a "toxic and destructive" workplace? And Smith isn't the first banking executive to quit using the NYT's op-ed page either. We've compiled 14 epic quitting examples of all time.

Former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason caused a media stir when he bid farewell in a very public "goodbye" letter

After nearly five years as Groupon's CEO, Andrew Mason posted his "People of Groupon" farewell memo on Thursday, which begins very similarly to Conan O'Brien's "People of Earth" press release from 2010. Mason's letter is below: 

(This is for Groupon employees, but I'm posting it publicly since it will leak anyway)

People of Groupon,

After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that's hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.

You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I'm getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we've shared over the last few months, and I've never seen you working together more effectively as a global company - it's time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.

For those who are concerned about me, please don't be - I love Groupon, and I'm terribly proud of what we've created. I'm OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I'll now take some time to decompress (FYI I'm looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I'll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.

If there's one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what's best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don't waste the opportunity!

I will miss you terribly.

Love,

Andrew

Former Goldman Sachs exec told the whole world the bank is "toxic and destructive"

Greg Smith started his 12-year stint as an intern from Stanford University and accused Goldman of having a less-than-admirable working culture that places profits ahead of the interests of its clients in a NYT piece titled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs":

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and COO Gary Cohn quickly responded in an internal memo which was posted in the WSJ's Deal Journal.

Top Merck employee posted a YouTube video where he sings and strips revealing the words "Do What You Love" on his bare chest

Inspired by an American Idol contestant singing Mariah Carey's "Treated Me Kind" in 2009, Kevin Nalty decided he could no longer be a consumer product director at Merck Pharmaceuticals and a YouTube comedian at the same time.

When his YouTube channel Nalts gained attention — earning 7.4 million views for a video titled "Farting in Public"— Merck offered Nalty the opportunity to resign. 

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With optimism resurfacing over the global economy and the perception that major tail risks in the United States, the euro zone, and China have been mostly squared away, what's left to worry about?

We posed the question to our favorite analysts, economists, and traders across Wall Street – and we were surprised at the number of people who declined to give an answer, telling us that they just couldn't really think of anything too worrying right now.

However, we still got plenty of responses.

While general developments in the world's largest economies seem encouraging, there may be several reasons to be concerned lurking just beneath the surface.

Let's go to the charts.

Niels Jensen, Absolute Return Partners

Byron Wien, Blackstone Group

Ellen Zentner, Nomura

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Most would agree that Warren Buffett is the greatest investor who ever lived.

And Buffett is frequently sharing the wisdom that earned him his riches.

Thankfully, he has a remarkable ability to communicate complicated topics in plain language and often in a folksy tone.

His annual letters are always-must reads.

But many of his best lines come from TV appearances, newspaper op-eds, magazine interviews, and sometimes even word of mouth.

We compiled a few of the best quotes from the Oracle of Omaha. If we've missed any of your favorites, let us know in the comments.

Master the basics.

"To invest successfully, you need not understand beta, efficient markets, modern portfolio theory, option pricing or emerging markets. You may, in fact, be better off knowing nothing of these. That, of course, is not the prevailing view at most business schools, whose finance curriculum tends to be dominated by such subjects. In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices."

Source: Chairman's Letter, 1996

The best time to buy a company is when it's in trouble.

"The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble...We want to buy them when they're on the operating table."

Source: Businessweek, 1999

Don't buy a stock just because everyone hates it.

"None of this means, however, that a business or stock is an intelligent purchase simply because it is unpopular; a contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: "Most men would rather die than think. Many do."

Source: Chairman's Letter, 1990

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Wall Street is coming back slowly, and that means that competition for a bigger piece of the pie is hotter than ever.

To figure out who's winning that war, Bloomberg Markets Magazine put together a list of the of the best paid investment banks measured by the fees they earn.

This year, JP Morgan Chase made the top of a list. It was the top investment bank in debt and equity fees overall.

The bank's mergers and acquisitions fees fell in 2012, but total fees rose 3.7 percent, to $50.9 billion. According to Bloomberg Markets, that was driven higher "by a surge in the refinancing of corporate debt."

Goldman Sachs, which ranked no. 1 last year, slipped to no. 2 this year, but still led the ranking for mergers and acquisitions fees.

Morgan Stanley, which was no. 2 for 2011, slipped to no. 3 because of the botched Facebook IPO.

Interesting stuff, and the report comes with some good news on 2013 too. M&A deals in the first six weeks of the year totaled $288.2 billion, a significant jump from $246.6 billion in the same period last year.

20. Societe Generale

Total Fees: $ 460 million

Rank in 2011: 19

Source: Bloomberg

19. TD Securities

Total Fees: $ 460 Million

Rank in 2011: 15

Source: Bloomberg

18. Lazard

Total Fees: $ 510 million

Rank in 2011: 17

Source: Bloomberg

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It's 358 days until the 2014 Academy Awards.

Actors have not performed and movies have not been seen.

Obviously it's too early to get a read on what films will be nominated in 2014, but with George Clooney, Cormac McCarthy, the Coen brothers, and Cate Blanchett in the mix, we can make some educated guesses.

Check out the predictions >

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• Stars Who Come From Wealthy Families

• The Best Oscar GIFs
• Great Moments In Lip-Syncing History
  

Best Picture Prediction: 'The Monuments Men'

Predicted nominees:

August: Osage County
The Butler
Captain Phillips
The Counselor
Fruitvale
The Monuments Men
Nebraska
Saving Mr. Banks
Twelve Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall St

As easy as it is to imagine August: Osage County winning Best Picture thanks to its huge cast (Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts), and Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning source material, we're leaning toward George Clooney's The Monuments Men and Tom Hanks' Captain Phillips as Oscar front-runners next year.

Monuments Men, like A:OC, has a star-filled cast (Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Daniel Craig), is a true story set during WWII, and, most importantly, tells an important, political story that's as relevant to foreign audiences as it is to those in the U.S. Captain Phillips, also a true story with an international setting, has Tom Hanks and when Hanks is on, the Academy comes calling.

Also for your consideration:

Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Rush, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, The Place Beyond the Pines, Labor Day, Out of the Furnace, Untitled Terrence Malick Project, The Fifth Estate, Foxcatcher, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Best Actor Prediction: Tom Hanks, 'Captain Phillips'

Predicted nominees:

Leonardo DiCaprio - The Wolf of Wall St.
Benedict Cumberbatch - The Fifth Estate
Tom Hanks - Captain Phillips
Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club
Brad Pitt - The Counselor

Lots of talent here, obviously. Hanks, DiCaprio, and Pitt stand out as three of the biggest stars in the world. Cumberbatch is in for a breakout year with five movies (including Star Trek Into Darkness), and his role as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate may be the icing on the cake.

McConaughey's DBC role has drawn attention for the actor's weightloss, but at this point, we've got Hanks in the lead. His title role in Captain Phillips is just too perfect for the Academy. Directed by Paul Greengrass (United 93), the film tells the real-life story of Captain Richard Phillips, who kept the crew of the Maersk Alabama alive long enough for SEAL Team Six to rescue them from a group of armed Somali pirates in 2009.

Can't you just see Hanks' furrowed brow and worried eyes capturing Academy voters hearts and minds? Us too.

Also for your consideration:

Daniel Bruhl - Rush, Chiwetel Ejiofor - Twelve Years a Slave, Steve Carell - Foxcatcher, Ryan Gosling - The Place Beyond the Pines, Oscar Isaac - Inside Llewyn Davis, George Clooney - The Monuments Men, Christian Bale - Out of the Furnace, Bruce Dern - Nebraska, Michael B. Jordan - Fruitvale, Forest Whitaker - The Butler

Best Actress Prediction: Kate Winslet, 'Labor Day'

Predicted nominees:

Cate Blanchett - Carol
Kate Winslet - Labor Day
Meryl Streep - August: Osage County
Sandra Bullock - Gravity
Shailene Woodley - The Spectacular Now

Streep and Roberts lead the talented cast of August: Osage County, and either could easily claim an Oscar nod. In Gravity, Bullock tackles sci-fi as an astronaut stranded in space, and Woodley has already wowed Sundance audiences as a high schooler who falls in love with a hard-drinking classmate in The Spectacular Now.

Our pick, though, is Kate Winslet who stars in Jason Reitman's adaptation of Joyce Maynard's 2009 novel about a single mom who gives an escaped convict a ride against her better judgment. Academy voters always love Winslet and Labor Day seems like just the kind of perilous journey to elicit Oscar-worthy huzzahs.

Also for your consideration:

Julia Roberts - August: Osage County, Jennifer Lawrence - Serena, Marion Cotillard - Lowlife, Emma Thompson - Saving Mr. Banks, Jessica Chastain - The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Hers, Greta Gerwig - Frances Ha, Naomi Watts - Diana, Emma Watson - The Bling Ring, Rooney Mara - Side Effects

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Lift is a simple app with a humble mission– to help its users cultivate good habits.

Simply maintain a list of tasks that you want to turn into a habit and tell the app when you want to be reminded to carry them out.

For example, I have a reminder to floss that goes off every night at 9 PM. And you know what? After a week or so of using the app, I no longer need the app to remind me.

The flossing reminder goes off and I've already done it.

What kinds of things would you like to make into habits?

Tap the app to start it up.

It immediately displays the habits you've already added. Let's add a new one by tapping on the plus sign.

You can add a brand new habit or pick one from a category. Let's check out "Popular."

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On Friday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyderannounced a state of emergency in deficit-plagued Detroit and would move to appoint a city manager to take control of the city's finances.

It's a bad situation.

But it's not the first time in American history something like this has happened.

We went to look at six infamous moments where major American cities ceded control of their operations to their states.

In most cases, the cities had no recourse to bankruptcy. In one case, there was a war on.

If there is any lesson, it's that cities are incapable of learning from their sisters' mistakes.

So this list will almost certainly need to be updated in the future.

Missouri seizes St. Louis' police department.

When: 1861

What happened: St. Louis was a pro-Union city in a pro-Confederate state. As Missouri's largest law enforcement body, Jefferson City officials decided they wanted to control it. The arrangement persisted until just a few months ago, when voters decided to cede control back to the city.

Source: STLMag 

Florida takes control of Miami.

When: 1997

What happened: The city fell victim to a then-$68 million deficit and its City Manager Cesar Odio, former Finance Director Manohar Surana and former Commissioner Miller Dawkins faced corruption charges. The new city manager, Ed Marquez, is today the city's deputy mayor.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

New Jersey takes command of Newark's school district.

When: July 1995

What happened: The state immediately dismissed the district's top officials and hundreds of school employees. But four years later, it seemed like not much had changed. Mayor Sharpe James criticized the new schools head as merely taking orders from Trenton without taking into account the needs of Newarkers.

Source: New York Times

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Startup Plex Systems has a pinball arcade complete with its own pinball wizard, Michael McDonald.

How cool is that?

McDonald is one of the founding members of the Detroit Pinball League and co-organizer of something called the Michigan Pinball Expo. He's won a few tournaments, too.

When not playing, McDonald is a developer working on the company's cloud-based ERP app.

Michigan-based Plex recently lured Jason Blessing to be its new CEO. Blessing is a former PeopleSoft and Taleo exec who escaped the clutches of Oracle, twice, when each of his employers was acquired.

Blessing jumped at the CEO job back in his home state. But he says his favorite thing about his new company is the pinball arcade.

Michael McDonald shows off the office pinball collection. It's the star of any office tour.

Plex has other games in the room as well, but the pinball machines rule.

Writing code can be similar to playing pinball, McDonald says. The Plex mantra for doing both is: 1. eat a good breakfast, 2. drink lots of coffee, and 3. be in the zone.

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The line between North and South Korea is one of the most nerve-wracking borders on Earth. Although the Korean War is technically over for the U.S., the North and South are still very much at war — maintaining guard towers and thousands of troops facing each other, waiting for the next invasion.

The buffer zone created by the 1953 Armistice between North and South is called the de-militarized zone (DMZ), although there's a huge military presence. This border is filled with fencing, mines, and troops on both sides with itchy trigger fingers. 

This relic of the Cold War has seen plenty of very hot engagements: Over 300 American and South Korean, and almost 400 North Korean soldiers were killed in firefights in 1969, and there are numerous instances of infiltrators from the North being scared back only by the sound of warning shots.

The Korean War may seem like it's over, but the armistice of 1953 only brought on a stalemate and both North and South are still at war.

At the 38th parallel lies the de-militarized zone (DMZ), with troops stationed along both sides in case the other decides to attack.

And attacks have happened many times. North Korean soldiers killed two US Army officers here in 1976 at "The Bridge of No Return"— named because captured NK prisoners hardly ever wished to go back home.

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People have been buzzing about Martin Scorcese's new movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, for almost a year now, but until now, no one was exactly sure when the movie would come out in theaters.

This week, we got an answer to that question. The Hollywood Reporter writes that the movie will hit the silver screen in November, and we can't wait.

That's parly because we've already read a copy The Wolf of Wall Street script, written Terence Winter. It's based on the autobiography of Wall Street castaway, Jordan Belfort, and it is definitely captivating.

Back in the 1990s, Belfort ran Stratton-Oakmont, a Long Island based pump and dump that found itself on top of the Wall Street world. Think: Drugs, hookers, parties with performing midgets.

And then it all came crashing down. Belfort went to jail for 20 months and lost everything.

We think you'll agree that this is a movie worth watching, and so we've compiled some moments from the script that we think will make it really sing.

The movie opens with a very professional commercial about Belfort's firm, and then goes into a scene of he and his brokers having a dwarf throwing contest.

According to the script, classical music plays as "a conservative group of smiling ethnically diverse actors surrounding their young chairman Jordan Belfort" pose through a Gene Hackman voice-over.

Then you head to Stratton-Oakmont headquarters and 700 20-something stockbroker bros are chanting and throwing around dollars bills to see who can throw a cape-clad dwarf into a dollar sign bulls-eye.

Jordan is being played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

More chaos: Jordan's first day in the bullpen L.F. Rothschild in 1980s suspender wearing Wall Street.

Jordan walks in and is immediately berated by his supervisor, Scott Mollen, who tells him he'll be "the connector" calling 500 clients all day. "You are lower than f*cking pond scum," Mollen tells him.

Luckily, Belfort also meets Danny Porush(played by Jonah Hill), Mollen's much more polished superior. "F*ck him," he tells Jordan, "I'm senior broker here and he's just a worthless piker. Let's grab lunch later."

And then then the opening bell rings as Porush yells, "Let's f*ck!" And the race begins — brokers dial like crazy and everyone is screaming — it's the sound of greed, says Jordan's voice-over.

At lunch, Danny and Jordan have a martini drinking contest until one of them passes out.

They're at a high-end restaurant and Danny is doing coke from a spoon when the Maitre'D comes over. He tells him:

"Here's the game plan Luis. Bring us two Absolute martinis straight up. Precisely seven and half minutes later you deliver those you'll deliver two more, then two more after five minutes until one of us passes out."

Jordan says he doesn't drink and tries, and fails, to order a 7-Up.

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An empty Russian ship, the Lyubov Orlova, has been drifting in the North Atlantic for more than a month, after breaking free from its towing line as it was being pulled from Canada to a scrapyard in the Dominican Republic. 

The abandoned ship — now overrun with rats — was last located about 1,300 nautical miles off the Irish coast, but its exact whereabouts aren't known.

The ship's co-owner, Reza Shoeybi, of Toronto, has been frantically trying to track down the vessel (potentially worth up to $800,000 in scrap metal), since it first escaped in January.  

The Orlova hasn't always been a rat-infested ghost ship. 

Rick Derevan and his wife, Kathi, remember the orphaned vessel when it still worked as a polar expedition cruise ship. 

The California couple took a trip to the Arctic in August 2007. At that time the ship was chartered by Cruise North, an Inuit-owned company.

Rick described his experience to Business Insider and was kind enough to share some photos with us. We also recommend checking out his full Arctic album on Flickr.

First, meet Rick and Kathi Derevan from Atacadero, California. Rick is an appellate lawyer and an environmentalist who loves the ocean.

The ship left from Iqaluit, a Canadian port city. To get there, the couple flew from Montreal to the local Airport (shown here).

The cruise lasted eight days, making stops throughout the Canadian Arctic, including Pangnirtung, Kekerten, and Auyuittuq National Park.

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Majoring in Computer Science is a good way to jump start a career in the app developing business.

Attending one of the top universities in the world will certainly help secure a great job with companies that develop some of the hottest apps around.

We combed through U.S. News 2012 Best Computer Science schools in the world and came up with this top 10 list.

10. Princeton University -- Princeton, N.J.

Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science ranks number 10 on the U.S. News list. 

The school believes its ability to combine the best aspects of a liberal arts college with those of a major research university help it to stand out. 

The University is making major investments in engineering to "prepare leaders for an increasingly technological world.

Notable alumni include, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, Former CEO and Google Chairman, CEO of HP, Meg Whitman, and Eric Schmidt also attended Princeton for undergraduate studies.

9. National University of Singapore (NUS) -- Singapore, Singapore

Singapore's oldest University ranks number 9 on the U.S. News list.

NUS' Computer Science major helps students to design computer systems "for a smarter world". The undergraduate program is focused on making students, technical experts, critical thinkers, effective leaders, and life-long learners.

Graduates have gone on to lead successful careers at companies like, Google Mountain View, Google Singapore, Lucas Films, Microsoft Asia, and Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

8. ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) -- Zurich, Canton of Zurich, Switzerland

ETH Zurich is a University with heavy foundations in engineering, science, technology, and math. 21 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to students or professors from the school.

U.S. News ranked ETH Zurich as the number eight best university in computer science.

Albert Einstein is one of the university's more notable alumni.

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