Author: Serkadis

Information to be Distributed at Bus Stops and Rail Stations to Prepare Riders

Chicago Transit Authority President Richard L. Rodriguez today reminded customers that CTA bus and rail service reductions and layoffs will go into effect in two weeks and outlined steps the CTA is taking to inform riders.

Beginning Sunday, Feb. 7, service will run less frequently on 119 bus routes and seven of CTA’s eight rail lines, and hours of service will be reduced on 41 bus routes.

These routes either will start service later, end service earlier or both.  In addition, nine express bus routes that have corresponding local service will be eliminated.

Although the reductions were designed to minimize the impact on rush hour service, riders should expect to experience longer wait times, particularly in off peak hours, and more crowded buses and trains.

Under current operation there are already numerous rail and bus routes that are at capacity during rush periods.  When service is reduced on Feb. 7, crowding on these routes will increase so, in addition to longer wait times, riders who travel on the agency’s highest volume routes may have to wait for multiple buses or trains before boarding.

The CTA is advising riders to allow for additional travel time.

“There are several avenues for customers to obtain information about the upcoming service changes,” said CTA President Richard L. Rodriguez.

“Over the last few weeks, we have posted information on our vehicles, at our stations, and on our website.  Starting today and continuing through February 7, CTA representatives will be deployed at key locations to pass out informational brochures to customers. Our primary focus is to have riders prepared – I want to avoid having riders waiting for a bus that has had its service hours shortened.”

More than 630 CTA representatives will be manning 100+ locations across the bus and rail system over the next three weeks, with special emphasis placed on reaching riders who will be most impacted by reduced service hours for the 41 bus routes with shortened spans of service.

Information specialists will provide customers with a brochure that contains information on changes to service hours and frequency.  Detailed route-by-route information is also available on the CTA’s Web site: transitchicago.com.

Brochures will be available to customers at rail stations, on CTA’s Web site at transitchicago.com and through CTA’s Customer Service Center via email at [email protected] or by calling 1-888-YOUR CTA (1-888-968-7282).  Brochures are available in English, Spanish, Polish and Chinese.

Information has also been provided to offices of local elected officials to share with their constituents and help them prepare for the impact of service reductions and to Chambers of Commerce, municipalities, city agencies and faith-based organizations to have on hand for residents who may contact them for information.

Customer alerts have been posted across the system listing routes that will be impacted.  Information has also been programmed on digital displays and electronic signage at rail stations and affected bus routes have been playing announcements outlining specific changes since early January.

Signs are currently being posted at all CTA bus stops notifying customers of the changes to service.

“These reductions will make traveling during rush hour more difficult for the majority of our riders and we regret having to take these actions, however, by law we are required to operate under a balanced budget,” said Rodriguez. He said efforts to avert the reductions by reducing labor costs have been unsuccessful.

“Because nearly 90 percent of CTA’s workforce is unionized, we have tried to work with the labor unions to implement cost-saving measures such as furlough days, deferred wage increases, and changes in health benefits to help scale back service reductions,” he added.

“Although it is extremely difficult to ask dedicated employees to sacrifice, the aim was to preserve service and thereby keep people employed.  Unfortunately, CTA has been unable to reach an agreement with the unions so service reductions and the corresponding layoffs of more than 1000 employees will go forward on Feb. 7.”

The service reductions are designed to retain as much service as possible while reducing costs and maximizing efficiency.  Service will be scheduled so that vehicles are carrying as many people as possible.  As a result, both buses and trains will be crowded at all hours.

As a general guideline, riders can expect an additional two to five minutes between buses during weekday rush periods.  Rail customers can expect an additional one to two minutes for a train during rush hour, and generally two to five minutes longer during off-peak hours.

Although that may not seem significant, both buses and trains will fill up faster as a result of the service decrease, particularly during peak service hours, and riders may be forced to wait for multiple vehicles to pass before being able to board.

During off peak service hours, generally riders can expect an additional two to eight minutes between buses – during very late evening hours, there may be an additional 10 to 15 minutes between buses.

Customers are strongly encouraged to check the CTA Web site for specific information regarding their routes.

All rail routes and all bus routes will be maintained except for nine express routes that have a matching local route. Owl service on both bus and rail remain unchanged, preserving service for those third-shift workers who have few options other than public transit.

Tiger Woods’ wife has apparently decided not to divorce the philandering sportsman.

The golfing ace is reportedly receiving treatment for sex addicting at a rehabiliation clinic in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. A new report claims Elin Nordegren — who reportedly visited Tiger at the facility last week — has changed her mind about the divorce — despite the wide-reaching sex scandal that linked the athlete to more than a dozen mistress

“She was happy when she came home, things went well,” a tipster divulged to RadarOnline.com. “Elin has not filed divorce paper but has explored her options. Tiger sought treatment to save his marriage and so far it’s working. The stress has taken a big toll on her. But she’s a strong woman.”

In a survey of 218 US businesses, Boston-based Aberdeen group has found more than twice as many businesses intended to implement Windows Mobile solutions than Blackberry-based solutions in 2010.

While RIM’s Blackberry was more widely implemented in 2009, with 74% of businesses using the devices vs 63% using Windows Mobile, only 3% of the companies surveyed intended to introduce the platform to their business, vs 7% new wins for Windows Mobile.

That would bring Windows Mobile adoption up to 70% of US businesses, compared to 77% for Blackberry.

The Aberdeen group notes that this could be a warning sign to RIM that their enterprise momentum has slowed considerably, likely due to their new focus on consumer rather than enterprise features.

Both iPhone and Android are also growing strongly in business, but with a single mobile incident being able to cost up to $2.1 million in Sarbanes Oxley penalties businesses should be thinking twice about supporting these unproven platforms.

With only 4% of businesses planning to adopt WebOS, Palm has yet to convince the market that WebOS has a future.

Read more at MobileEnterpriseMag here.

Greg Oden in a picture probably wishing he were naked

Greg Oden has never seemed like the nude photo type, but here we are. As an Ohio State fan Oden struck me as being pretty soft spoken, and while pictures over the years have shown the Greg having a good time I’m still shocked to see him put his dick out there for the world to see. Grady Sizemore eat your heart out.

In the series of nude photos Oden can be seen at first mostly clothed before completely disrobing. Check out the VERY NSFW photos here.

Are you shocked Greg Oden would leak nude photos?

The iPhone seriously lags other smartphones in areas other than market share. As a man armed with both an iPhone and a BlackBerry, I’m acutely aware of the iPhone’s limitations, as well as the Blackberry’s. The weaknesses of the Blackberry are well-known: lack of a great App store and all that entails, lack of a great browser, and some may say lack of multitouch. Despite that, I still use the BlackBerry, and it got me thinking: what does iPhone OS 4.0, which could be debuted as early as tomorrow (but likely not until Spring or WWDC even), need to get me to finally make the iPhone my go-to device for both fun and business? And before you ask, we’ll be ruminating on this for Android in another installment. 

What follows is a list of the 12 most useful and, dare I say it, necessary features the next major update to iPhone OS should address. These are all features that are the same or similar to features that already exist in Windows Mobile, Android, and/or the Blackberry.

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Deep linking MP3s—legal or not—does not violate copyright law in China, a court has found. The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court has cleared popular search engine Baidu of copyright charges brought by the music industry, saying that merely providing search results doesn’t qualify as infringement. Although China has never been known for its respect for intellectual property, the decision in this case seems to mirror others being made around the world.

The case was brought by the international sibling of the RIAA, the IFPI, back in February 2008 when it accused Baidu and a handful of other Chinese companies of supporting piracy. The charge was that Baidu’s results provided links to file sharing sites and, in many cases, direct links to illegally shared MP3s on various servers around the world. The IFPI said it unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a resolution with Baidu, leaving it with no other choice but to sue over the deep linking practice. The labels being represented by the IFPI were seeking maximum damages totaling up to at least US$9 million, but could have gone into the billions if more songs were discovered.

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Tyra Banks is holding what’s being toted as the world’s first “Plus-Size Teen Model Search.” Teens between the ages of 13 and 19 are invited to “Smile With Their Eyes” as the daytime diva and host of America’s Next Top Model goes on the hunt for curvy wannabe catwalk mavens.

Teen must wear between sizes 12-20 and be between 5-feet 9-inches tall and 6-feet 1-inch.

“I’ve always felt it was my mission to expand the narrow perceptions of beauty; through ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ ‘True Beauty’ and ‘The Tyra Show,’ I challenge industry and universal standards by featuring and celebrating non-traditional beauty, and stressing that true beauty is both INSIDE & OUT,” Tyra said on her daytime gabfest this week. “Today, I’m announcing my FIRST EVER plus-size teen model competition, which I’m calling the ‘Fiercely Real Teen Model Search’; plus-size tends to have a negative connotation and I want young girls to realize that what’s considered plus-size is the average American woman. That woman is healthy, fit and beautiful. Adolescence is such an impressionable time in a young woman’s life, and I hope this contest helps teen girls discover their own beauty from the inside out.”

Finalists will be announced on The Tyra Show Tuesday, March 2. The winning lady will be crowned March 3. The grand prize package includes a one-year modeling contract with Wilhelmina, a fashion spread on Tyra’s Magaline (shot by Tyra), a cover photo with Tyra on Tyra’s Magaline, and a spread in a major fashion magazine.

Visit TyraShow.com for more information.

Most of you know at least a little bit about Fertile Ground, Portland’s festival of new performance works, which has been playing on stages big and small around the city and continues to do so through Feb. 2. Marty Hughley and friends have covered a lot of the action, including Marty’s middle-of-the-action roundup, for The Oregonian. In its second year, the festival has expanded from its theater roots to include other sorts of performance, too, especially dance.

I’ve seen a bit of it, including White Bird’s premiere of dances by Tere Mathern and Minh Tran, and Polaris Dance Theatre’s iChange. Third Angle New Music Ensemble’s Hearing Voices wasn’t officially part of the festival but dovetailed nicely with it: Two of its four compositions were premieres, another had a fresh arrangement, and all four were story-pieces with narration — musical dramas.

On Sunday I saw The Hillsboro Story, Susan Banyas’s memory piece about a little-known but fascinating piece of American civil rights history that was not so long ago and not so far away, although life has barreled ahead so much in the past 55 years that for an astonishing number of Americans the civil rights years might as well be hung forgotten in the cloakroom alongside the colonial era’s three-corner hats.

For that reason alone — the short communal memory of a culture that consistently shortchanges its own past and often misinterprets it even when it does pay attention — The Hillsboro Story is worth telling, and seeing. I hope the play has a healthy future in schools and youth theaters — not that it isn’t a good piece of theater for adults (it is), but because still-developing hearts and minds in particular need to understand this vital part of their heritage.

Structurally, The Hillsboro Story is a little like The Laramie Project, the story of the Wyoming torture/murder of gay student Matthew Shepard and its aftermath. The difference is that Banyas, the teller of this tale, was there: She was a third-grader in the southern Ohio town of Hillsboro when, on the night of July 5, 1954, someone scattered gasoline around the ramshackle public elementary school in the black part of town and lit a match to it.

As it turns out, the firebug was Philip Partridge, the county engineer, who was fed up with fighting the town’s white power structure over school segregation and the rundown quality of the school for black kids. He figured, if the school burned down, the town would have to integrate its schools: After all, the Supreme Court had just ruled against school segregation in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

There are heroes aplenty in this story besides Partridge, whose act of civil disobedience might well be branded terrorism today (the play doesn’t delve deeply into the ethical issues of this sort of protest; but then, Partridge acted at a time when black men were still being lynched in America and nobody much did anything about it).

None are more heroic than the group of African American mothers who pressed their case unceasingly against the town fathers who patted them on the back and assured them that something would be done “later.” Nor is any image in the show quite so startling as black performer LaVerne Green’s fervid delivery of Mississippi Senator James Eastland’s fervid, vile speech asserting the right of white Southerners to kill their black neighbors.

What makes The Hillsboro Story more than just another formulaic tale of triumph over adversity is that we see it consistently through the eyes of Banyas as a third-grader, only dimly aware of the titanic social struggle playing out around her. Banyas’s memory pieces have always been personal, and they’ve always been fractured: not straight narratives but interweavings of thought and reminiscence, small intimate moments insisting on their place alongside the big things.

That helps emphasize that this isn’t strictly a story of good guys versus bad guys, a tale that makes it easy to point a finger and say, “Weren’t they awful.” By inserting herself as an unformed observer, trying to figure out why her world is changing, Banyas puts us all in the center of the thing, and reminds us that things that seem crystal clear now could seem cloudy then. This is a story of a time when things were different, when people thought in different ways, when an entire culture was just beginning to take a deep look at itself and think about what words like “freedom” and “equality” truly mean.

The Hillsboro school battle was the first case in the North to test the teeth in Brown v. Board of Education. The Hillsboro school board thought it could slide through despite the court ruling and just do what it wanted. It was wrong. And if this story has been largely forgotten, it’s because Hillsboro pretty much preferred to keep it buried. Banyas’s determination to disinter the tale does the town an honor: She tells the story with grace, and humility, and understanding, and love.

With Banyas’s fine interwoven script, choreography and direction by Gregg Bielemeier, music by David Ornette Cherry and good performances by Green, Banyas, Paige Jones and Jennifer Lanier in multiple roles, The Hillsboro Story shows why Fertile Ground is such an exciting development for Portland. Good stories are out there, just waiting for a chance to be told.

*

Pictured: LaVern Green, Paige Jones and Susan Banyas in “The Hillsboro Story.” Photo: Julie Keefe

A University of Chicago team of three physicians, two nurses and 1,100 pounds of medical, surgical and pharmaceutical supplies arrived in the Dominican Republic on Monday, Jan. 25, on its way to the small mountain town of Jimani, on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

There the team will help staff a hospital that has been overrun with refugees and displaced persons from the earthquake that devastated Haiti.

Jimani’s hospital, now surrounded by a city of tents, has 10 operating rooms and hundreds of post-operative cases, mostly amputations and complex fractures with external fixations.

These require extensive follow-up care, much of which will be delivered in makeshift quarters, including tents.

The University of Chicago team will serve for two weeks and then be supplemented and gradually replaced by a backup team, also based out of the University.

After that, teams of five to eight members will alternate every two weeks, at least through the end of February. Members of the next teams to deploy are being selected and vaccinated.

More than 100 volunteers stepped up for the opportunity to help, said team leaders Christian Theodosis and Chrissy Babcock, emergency medicine physicians at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

But the relief agencies in Haiti and the Dominican Republic had very specific requests for personnel and medical supplies.

“Surgical and post-operative care providers and those, especially Haitians, fluent in Haitian Creole, were on the top of the list,” said Theodosis.

“These immediate needs, for trauma and orthopedic teams, will shift as the initial flurry of crush injuries and broken bones evolves into wound complications, infections and other public health issues,” he added.

“We will tailor our follow-up teams to match the medical needs in the field,” said Babcock, who plans to join her colleagues next week in Jimani.

Members of the initial Jimani team are: team leader, emergency medicine specialist Christian Theodosis; chief medical officer, anesthesiologist Richard Cook; orthopedic surgeon Rex Haydon; Nichole Muse, neonatal intensive care nurse at the Medical Center; and Elvire LaPlanche, an intensive care unit nurse from South Shore Hospital. Both nurses are from Haiti and speak fluent French and Haitian Creole.

Theodosis and Babcock worked with non-governmental agencies on the ground in Haiti and the Dominican Republic to make the connections, assess their needs, and select and equip the first team.

Carolyn Wilson, Hospital Chief Operating Officer, and Funmi Olopade, Associate Dean for Global Health, allocated the resources.

Information technology specialist Michael Sorensen helped with supplies and, perhaps most important, connected the team with the Holt family of Kenilworth, who offered to fly the team down in their private jet.

This enabled the medical team to carry far more supplies than a commercial flight would allow.

The University of Chicago also is helping other hospitals in the Chicago area connect with relief agencies in the field and pulling together teams from multiple sites.

They arranged for a second team of three emergency medicine physicians from North Shore University Health System, Northwestern University and Johns Hopkins University, to be deployed to a hospital in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. That team also left on Jan. 25.

A separate team of plastic and reconstructive surgeons from the Medical Center will follow Feb. 6 with a pre-arranged annual humanitarian visit to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.

Although it typically focuses on children with birth defects, the team this year expects to provide care for patients flown in from border clinics.

“We are making a major commitment to this recovery effort,” said Olopade, Director of the University’s Global Health Initiative and an expert on global patterns of cancer risk.

“This isn’t just one medical team for a week or two. We plan on making a lasting contribution in responding to the development needs of our poorest neighbor in the Western Hemisphere.”

iPhone use has doubled in the enterprise since last summer when Apple released the 3GS. The big bump in sales helped Apple post $3.38 billion in profits this past quarter. More than 70% of Fortune 100 companies are now testing the iPhone as their smartphone of choice. A big driver is iPhone’s support for Microsoft Exchange.

The news highlights why Google is planning to launch its next Nexus One as an enterprise device: The corporate market has smartphone fever.

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The news also points to the inherent weakness of the RIM Blackberry in comparison to the iPhone and the Nexus One. Touch devices such as the iPhone and the Nexus One are designed for applications and accessing the Web. The Blackberry is designed as a messaging device.

But the enterprise is going through a shift that affects not just what device is used but how the overall organization functions.

That shift is embodied in the deeper commitment to collaboration technologies in the enterprise. As mobile technologies become more robust, the affects across the organization will be seen in a number of ways.

Operations and other non-customer facing tasks will be done more often outside the walls of the corporate office. People will increasingly work at home. Mobile devices will be pretty much required by knowledge workers.

Telepresence will become more predominant. Corporations are investing in unified communications technologies to allow for better video conferencing over any type of device, including smartphones.

Technology providers will need technologies to work across any device. You see this trend beginning to evolve. RIM and IBM announced an integration at Lotusphere last week. Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections will be loaded onto Blackberry devices. Big Blue is also developing applications for the Android OS to allow for encrypted email, using Lotus NotesTraveler, the IBM technology. Traveler is now available on the iPhone as well.

The Blackberry still has a significant lead over the iPhone, and the Nexus One is but a baby. But Apple and Google’s intentions are pretty clear, and RIM is not blind to the shift, as exemplified with its IBM partnership.

Discuss

The din of rumor and the clamor of speculation inspired by Apple’s expected announcement is about to peak. We’re all convinced this tomorrow’s “one other thing” will be some kind of magical tablet device. We all expect it will be a big deal. And in these past weeks we’ve witnessed a parade of writers, analysts, and consumers who have all published their “wish” or even “guess” (or, in some cases, “fantasy”) lists. But we have yet to see what we think really matters: an Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) “should” list that identifies the things Apple needs to do to ensure that its device is successful.

Let’s put this on the record: Apple has to create a new category here—that’s something it has not done in more than two decades. Apple’s genius is its ability to consumerize a device category through great design, software and marketing. It did it with the PC, the digital music player, and the [shudder] smartphone. The coming tablet is an oddity. It is flawed in meaningful ways: It’s a computer without a keyboard, it’s a digital reader with poor battery life and a high price tag, and it’s a portable media player that can’t fit in a pocket.

As a result, Apple has to tap the 6 million people who will buy e-readers this year and/or the 7% of adults interested in buying a netbook and help them see that this new tablet is a new version of all of those things and more, where its value comes from their elegant integration into a single, awesome user experience. This is something we think Apple can do, but only if it puts the right objectives on its to-do list. We’re not rooting for Apple per se, except to the extent that Apple: 1) improves consumers’ lives, and 2) cleverly exploits market opportunities or gaps to force everyone else to elevate their game. (Note that #2 will lead to more of #1; this is a fruit of free-market economics, and we are eager to taste it.)

So into the vast cacophony of opinion that is about to get turned up past 11 (apologies to Spinal Tap), we offer the following three things we think Apple should do with its announcement tomorrow. Accompanying this recommendation is a warning: if Apple doesn’t do these things, or do them well, the long-lauded tablet form factor will remain a peculiarity.

1. Create a new device category around personal media. Today, people spend as much as five or six hours a day with media (most of it video, next with audio, then with text—younger consumers spend as much as seven hours a day on media, including social media, much of it overlapping with other media). Nowhere do they have an integrated experience that ties it all together. Of course, Apple knows it is well positioned to offer music, video, and, soon, books, magazines, newspapers and web-based opinion and commentary. However, the critical link that would make Apple’s tablet really soar is the inclusion of personal media: photos and home videos. Viewing photos is a top-five online activity, digital photography has created a whole new set of behaviors that Flickr, Picasa and others have tried to serve.

Now with the rise of Flip cameras, video is about to achieve the same prominence, but no one has a handle on it yet because it’s harder to edit, manage and share. Putting all of these personal and professional media into the device and synchronizing them intelligently across other devices with the help of the dreaded “cloud,” that’s where Apple can take it all to the next level. Importantly, personal media are by definition social media because they have to be shared to be valued. Apple needs some to do work here—social media has not been a strength. Nail this combination of professional, personal and social media, and a new device category is born.

2. Work its user-experience magic on connectivity. Among the most hotly debated questions about the tablet is what flavor of connectivity it will possess, which mobile operator(s) may play a role, and what that role may be. Today’s 3G networks simply cannot support a Kindle-like pricing model (that wraps the delivery cost into the content price) for video, nor for a concept like the rich magazine that Time Inc. (NYSE: TWX) has demonstrated. To accommodate the full panoply of media offerings, Apple will need to rely on a combination of home broadband, WiFi, and cellular networks to seamlessly deliver and synchronize content using a complex model that optimizes based on cost, urgency and price.

This network dance is already visible to iPhone owners who know they can only retrieve certain content over WiFi or when physically connected to their iTunes library, but it’s a clumsy dance and Apple can—and should—do better. Here’s an idea: become a Virtual Network Operator (VNO, providing connectivity services without physically operating a network)…a smart VNO. Put a multimode radio into the tablet, negotiate wholesale rates with AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (and others in the future), and do arbitrage pricing across networks to reduce pricing using market efficiencies. Sure, the carriers don’t want this but if anyone can do it, Apple can. After all, you’ll already have all the other retail and service components in place.

3. Break open the meaning of the word “device.” All along, we’ve talked about this device as if it were a single form factor that would define a new era in media use and connectivity. But the future of selling devices is not in selling single devices; instead, it lies in selling device-based experiences, where families of devices work together to give consumers what they really want. That means the tablet must be introduced with a family of co-devices (not accessories, please don’t marginalize them by calling them that) that will make the device itself more flexible and therefore valuable. We’re talking Bluetooth keyboards, sure, but also a family of docks that position the tablet to be a bedside alarm clock, a bedroom Pandora radio player, a kitchen recipe stand, a family-room photo frame, and a home remote control. We’re talking about TVs that tablets can “publish to” wirelessly and HD cameras that can function in attached mode or work wirelessly from across the room—the same camera that will speak to your Mac, your iPhone, and anything else Apple makes.

There’s a lot more detail behind it, but this is our short “should” list for Apple. A list that, conveniently, applies to everyone who wants to take on or draft off of Apple as well. Amazon’s next generation Kindle should do the same (we’ve codenamed it “Kindle Flame” around here). We’ll be publishing a much more detailed analysis of the tablet market in the coming weeks once we have the full detail of Apple’s offering and can scour our consumer data for evidence of who wants—and can pay for—this kind of experience.

Charles Golvin and James McQuivey are analysts at Forrester Research, where they serve, and contribute to the Forrester blog for Consumer Product Strategy professionals.

A Guidette at the Grammys!

Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi — breakout star of MTV’s breakout smash Jersey Shore – may have landed herself a gig as a red carpet correspondent at this weekend’s 2010 Grammy Awards.

The pint-sized potty-mouth is in discussions to report live from the red carpet in Los Angeles just before the 52nd annual music ceremony on Sunday

“It isn’t 100% confirmed because we are working on the details. MTV brought it to us and all the logistics still need to be worked out, but it looks like she will be on the red carpet at the Grammys,” Snook’s agent, Scott Talarico, tattled to RadarOnline.com Tuesday.

Scott adds that despite tense salary negotiations between the cast of Jersey Shore and the network that made them stars, Snooki has been flooded with offers for promotional appearances following the success of the show.

“She will have a lot of upcoming appearances.”

The Grammy Awards will air live from The Staples Center in Los Angeles this Sunday, Jan. 31 on CBS.

graphic by twolf

Joe the Plumber, February 2009.

I mean, I cut cable when I realize that I’m not making enough money to cover my bills, I use coupons. Shouldn’t we expect the government to cut some programs?

Today’s New York Times.

The freeze that Mr. Obama will propose for the fiscal years 2011 through 2013 actually means a cut in real terms, since the affected spending would not keep pace with inflation.

Sigh.

I really have no idea what Obama is thinking. Leaving the economic analysis to my betters, he is validating decades of right-wing complaints about “wasteful spending”, that “big government” is really the problem, that defense spending is sacrosanct while programs for the stray animals are expendable, and most recently, that government spending somehow caused the Great Recession — all in an era in which Americans brought Democrats to power to do more, not less.

Do they think this will appease Republicans? Hell no. Do they think this will win teabagger votes? Please. This is truly a policy without a constituency.

It’s unforgivable.

	NASA
	Click for slide show: See how NASA’s Mars rover missions began.

Nine months after the Spirit rover sank into a Martian sand trap, NASA says the troubled traveler will have to remain stationary in order to survive the Red Planet’s winter. Now the challenge is to improve Spirit’s tilt so that it soaks up as much solar energy as it can.

Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said Spirit ran up against “a golfer’s worst nightmare: the sand trap that no matter how many strokes you take you can’t get out of it.”

The rover team has been trying to free Spirit for months, but McCuistion declared that the golf cart-sized robot’s “driving days are likely over.”

“Right now our plan is to worry about getting through the winter,” he told journalists today during a teleconference. …(read more)

After what seemed like a really long month and a half, General Motors and Spyker Cars NV confirmed today that they have reached a binding agreement on the sale of Saab Automobile AB.

“Today’s announcement is great news for Saab employees, dealers and suppliers, great news for millions of Saab customers and fans worldwide, and great news for GM,” said John Smith, GM vice president for corporate planning and alliances. “General Motors, Spyker Cars, and the Swedish government worked very hard and creatively for a deal that would secure a sustainable future for this unique and iconic brand, and we’re all happy for the positive outcome.”

Under the agreement, Spyker will form a new company, Saab Spyker Automobiles, which will carry the Saab brand forward.

GM said that the sale will be subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of applicable regulatory, governmental and court approvals. Other terms and conditions specific to the sale will be disclosed at a later date.

The agreement is currently under review by the Swedish government. Officials are also reviewing a request for guarantees of a Saab Automobile loan that has been requested from the European Investment Bank.

The full transaction is expected to be finalized by mid-February. GM will immediately stop the previously announced wind down activities at Saab.

– By: Omar Rana

Regardless of how annoying he might be, David Blaine’s TEDMED talk on how he set the world record for holding his breath underwater for 17 minutes is pretty phenomenal. Definitely interesting to see the different ways he thought of to do it as an illusion, using various technological methods and DIY gadgets, before finally deciding that he would do it for real. This one is definitely worth watching, and also worth not trying at home. It’s kind of ridiculous.

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British actor James McAvoy and his wife of 4 years, actress Anne Marie Duff — best known for her role on the UK TV drama Shameless – are expecting their first child together.

“We are happy to confirm that James McAvoy and Anne Marie Duff are expecting their first child. We have no further comment or information at this time,” the couple’s rep confirmed to PEOPLE this morning.

McAvoy has appeared in box office hits like Atonement and Wanted.