Author: Serkadis

Being a carnivore is philosophically untenable

From a philosophical perspective, Washington University in St. Louis graduate student Adam Shriver says we humans need to do all we can to eliminate the suffering of animals we eat. He thinks the solution ought to be that we all become vegetarians so we have no more need for the feedlot, but that’s not exactly realistic.

He suggests it might be possible to genetically alter animals so that they don’t feel the pain caused by factory farming conditions and our current methods of slaughter, but of course the pain animals feel isn’t the only problem caused by large-scale meat production, and knocking out animals’ ability to feel pain would probably set them up for even greater horrors than they now experience.

Factory farming of animals is very resource intensive, using a lot of water and feed, producing a lot of waste and greenhouse gasses. The working conditions aren’t great for the people who take part in the system, and food-borne illness is more rampant now than ever because of the close quarters animals share and the way meat is produced.

Could meat from a test tube save the planet?

For all those reasons, it’s not too surprising that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is offering a million dollar prize to the first person or company that develops a way to make meat in a test tube that doesn’t harm any animals in the process.

That goal is at least 10 years away, experts say, but the science behind it — the same ideas that go into the study of tissue regeneration — is already out there. Oxford University has estimated that lab-grown meat would result in 80 percent fewer greenhouse gasses being emitted compared to the current factory farming system, would use 90 percent less land and water and ultimately cost about the same amount (though development of the process will be expensive, of course).

But there’s still a bit of an ick factor that will have to be overcome (though arguably less than with cloned meat), and some argue that people don’t need to eat as much meat as they currently do, and if everyone enjoyed meat more sensibly it could be sustainably produced by small farmers.

What’s more, it turns meat into a highly processed food and takes people one step further away from an understanding of where their food comes from.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

Eating meat isn’t sweet, could meat from a tube save the world?

Analyst Dave Rosenberg is going into hibernation for a few weeks as the holidays approach, but before doing so, he took one last moment to address two growing concerns: The growing amount of U.S. debt and sovereign risk:

Breakfast With Dave: We are not sure if this is a well known “fact”, but the U.S. government has a record$2.5 trillion of its debt, including bills, bonds and notes, rolling over in 2010. That,my friends, is 35% of the outstanding level of Uncle Sam’s marketable obligations having to be refinanced in one single year. One has to wonder how the Fed is going to be able to raise interest rates in such a backdrop of massive rollovers;and if it doesn’t and the economy manages to exceed expectations or we get some inflation, how it is that the near-record steepness in the yield curve doesn’t continue in the coming year.

But very clearly, sovereign risk globally has taken over as the major potential flare-up for the coming year. Looking at the official projections for 2010, we have Japan’s government debt-to-GDP ratio hitting 227%; Italy at 120%; the U.S. and the U.K. both at 94%; Germany and France at 83%, and Canada at 79% (all levels of government). Rarely, if ever, has Canada been the one-eyed man to this extent in the land of the blind.

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See Also:

• Rosenberg: If The Banks Don’t Extend Credit Soon, The Market Is Toast
• Rosenberg: We’ve Barely Begun The Deleveraging Process
• Look How Quickly The U.K.’s Deficit Exploded

Capcom has scratched that “TBA” off of the second new episode in Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition. A recent feature in Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu has confirmed it to be

Filed under: Marketing/Advertising, Videos, Ford

There have been rallies and skateboards and drag races and tattoos, among other things. Now, the tenth and final film of the 2010 pony car festival that is Mustang Unleashed has gone out in smoky style, with a big Las Vegas number filmed on the strip. This time Vaughn Gittin, Jr. plays a support role to Hard Rock’s illusionist Steve Wyrick, who pulls off a little sleight-of-car-and-body that channels Houdini and almost any Nicholas Cage stunt scene that has a car in it.

Like the best tricks, it isn’t long but will have you wondering how it was done. If you get any ideas, the video warns you not to try this at home – not even driving – without the use of magic. Follow the jump to see it for yourself.

[Source: Mustang Unleashed]

Continue reading VIDEO: Last Mustang Unleashed short combines magic and Las Vegas strip

VIDEO: Last Mustang Unleashed short combines magic and Las Vegas strip originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I always did like the Grinch a lot better before those meddling Whoville residents swelled up his heart.

In tribute to that (ig)noble creature, I offer Bad Investment Ideas for 2010. Unlike all those sappy happy Best Investment Ideas pieces from my fellow Morningstar analysts that congest your inbox and befoul your spirits, this article delivers recommendations that would warm the Grinch’s soul, if he had one. Ideas that, if implemented, would lead to wonderfully empty space under next year’s Christmas trees.

Opening the Bad Investment Ideas menu are the highly leveraged exchange-traded funds–the funds that carry 100% leverage or greater. When it comes to causing misery, these funds are irreplaceable. Heads you lose, tails you might lose. Who could wish for more? These funds lose pots of money when the market moves against them, and they can also lose money when the market moves with them. Beautiful! Bull fund, bear fund, no matter what the animal fund, if you hold a highly leveraged ETF for a prolonged period, there’s a high probability that you’ll bleed red. The Grinch is giggling.

The bulk of our meal, however, will not come from bioengineered food, but instead from a distinctly old-fashioned source: hot money. My hunting ground consists of the fund categories that attracted the most new investor assets in 2009. These choices are nowhere near as reliable as the highly leveraged ETFs for faring poorly. Some of these categories will perform well in 2010, perhaps even spectacularly well. But as a general rule, loading up on one year’s most popular fund types is a fine way to shed tears the next year.

No need to be pedantic; matching up the exact categories is less important than seeing the overall trend. For 2009, the sales trend was quite simple: bond funds were a big yes. A Very Big Yes. Nine of the top 10 selling U.S. mutual fund categories during 2009 have been bond funds, with the lone exception being diversified emerging-markets stocks. At $120 billion in net new cash flow, intermediate-term bond funds alone have gobbled up as much cash as all ETFs and target-date mutual funds–combined.

Some of these purchases, to be sure, have proven savvy. The bond market produced some extraordinarily awful performances in 2008, with many lower-quality and less-liquid securities ending the year trading at deep discounts and sporting abnormally high yields relative to Treasuries. Those who got in early, and many did, enjoyed a terrific rebound. But that party is largely over.

And what’s left, I believe, is an unduly large preference for bonds. A decade ago, the everyday investor expected that stocks would return about 15% annually over the long term (there were a host of polls to prove it). Today, that same investor is locking into a bond market that pays 2% per year on Treasuries over the next five years, and 4.5% per annum for the next 30 years. Were investors too cheery about stocks in 1999? You betcha. However, the pendulum has most definitely swung in the other direction.

So the main course of Bad Investment Ideas for 2010 consists largely of bond funds. Treasuries are a natural. The astute folks at FPA New Income (FPNIX) wrote flatly in September that “Treasury yields” were “devoid of investment merit.” (As bad ideas go, ones that are devoid of merit tend to rate highly.) As part of this analysis, they pointed out that if Treasury yields revert to the normal level that they’ve held over the past half century, then the holders of a 30-year Treasury would be in the red for the next six years. Now, I don’t see 30-year yields hitting 6.3% anytime soon, but the point remains that low yields + a long time horizon = sharp pain from a modest rise in prevailing interest rates. When it comes to bad, pain is good.

Treasuries are not alone in their potential to cause suffering. In some ways, GNMA mortgages are worse. The Federal Reserve has done a terrific job of boosting Ginnie Mae securities prices through its massive agency mortgage purchase program. So terrific that at times this year, after adjusting for the optionality of mortgages (i.e., mentally adjusting the yield of Ginnies to account for the unfortunate fact that mortgage securities get longer when interest rates rise, and shorten when they decline), Ginnies have sometimes traded at higher prices than Treasuries. Low underlying yields made even lower by an artificial and temporary market stimulus … just the prescription for bad fun.

Finally, there are five-year TIPS. A while back, these securities got so hot that they boasted a negative real yield, meaning that investors agreed to own them in exchange for getting a yield that was absolutely, positively guaranteed to be less than the inflation rate. Such a deal. Today, real yields have risen to 36 basis points. The particularly rotten aspect of these securities is unlike 20-year TIPS (which are a better deal), these securities won’t be around if and when CPI truly spikes, because whatever inflationary pressures are currently building won’t appear in earnest over the next few years. So holding five-year TIPS is like buying fire insurance for the monsoon season.

Although bonds have dominated the hot funds list, they’ve been supplemented by two additional sectors. One is diversified emerging-markets funds, the only non-bond category to crack the Top 10 mutual fund sales list in 2009; meanwhile, several emerging-markets categories have made the ETF best sellers’ chart. Of course, U.S. investors are hardly alone in gobbling on the emerging markets. It’s a global phenomenon, fueled by dinky interest rates and greed. Yes, it’s a bubble.

And when it comes to Bad Investment Ideas, there’s nothing quite like a bubble. The trouble with bubbles as bad ideas, of course, is that they can continue to expand for a long time after being identified. As Mr. Keynes stated, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. (Or I.) So emerging-markets stocks are a trifle dangerous as a Bad Idea for 2010. But I sure wouldn’t label them a good idea.

In the same spirit should be mentioned that other hot sector, gold. Earlier this year, Morningstar created not one, not two, but six–yes, six!–new fund categories to accommodate all the new commodity funds that have been launched. Chief among the commodities, of course, has been gold, that staple of 1 a.m. infomercials. If my father were still alive, he would be buying gold. When investors like him get in, you should get out. (The man remains the only perfect contrarian indicator I have ever known.)

Speaking of enticements, this investment is so seductively bad that it almost snared me: currency funds. Just last month, I was nosing around the list of short-term currency funds, seeking protection against the declining dollar because I knew that the dollar would continue to fall. Then I realized that what I actually know about the dollar’s future wouldn’t flood a very small thimble. About the dollar, Jim Rogers recently said, “When everybody’s on one side of the boat, it’s time to go to the other side.” Diversification into other currencies is a good idea. Rushing to shed dollars today is a Bad Investment Idea for 2010.

Finally I must, for once, side with the crowd. Nobody is rushing to buy regional bank sector funds, for the simple if not always useful reason that those funds always seem to be going down. They got whacked in 2008 along with everything else, and then got whacked again in ’09. Predictably, this unrelievedly bad news had me scouting for a bargain. Not this time. If I am to buy into an industry with unrelievedly bad news, including being early in the cycle of writing off ever-worsening commercial mortgages, then I want to do so with prices at rock bottom. Yet many of these banks sell at a substantial premium to book value and with price/earnings ratios in the teens. So count me in the majority on this item, and count regional bank stocks as my concluding Bad Idea.

Here’s a truly Grinchlike idea: cut and paste this column, replace all the uses of “bad” with the word “good,” and send along to a mortal enemy, along with your best wishes for 2010. But please leave my name off that effort, OK? Even those of us with itty-bitty hearts have some pride.

John Rekenthaler is Vice President of Research for Morningstar.

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See Also:

• Wanna Hedge? Think Silver Not Gold
• How To Bet On Emerging Market Banks
• Soaring I-Bank Profits Are About To Come To An End

There’s been plenty of buzz over the past few days about Google’s alleged plans to offer a phone of its own design (built by HTC, potentially sold both directly and by T-Mobile, if not others), which has been dubbed the “Nexus One.” I didn’t write anything about it, because there didn’t seem much to write about at this point. I’m always happy to see more competition in the market, though, and if the phone is really good, that’s obviously a good thing. But one thing did catch my eye. The NY Times is noting that the name “Nexus One” appears to be a play on how Philip K. Dick named the replicants in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was subsequently turned into the still popular movie Blade Runner. In both stories, the replicants are “Nexus-6” devices, being the sixth generation of that type of robots. It’s a fun little homage by Google and an obvious play on the fact that its operating system is called Android.

And yet… the estate of Philip K. Dick is not pleased. The article notes (surprisingly) that Motorola paid George Lucas for the rights to use “Droid” for its Android phone, but no one spoke to the Dick estate, who now claim they are “shocked and dismayed.” Really? Shocked? Isa Dick Hackett, Philip’s daughter is claiming:

“We were never consulted, no requests were made, and we didn’t grant any sort of permissions.”

Perhaps that’s because Google doesn’t need permission from you to do such a thing. Of course, since Google hasn’t made any official announcement on this, there’s still a good chance they could change the name, just to avoid having to deal with an angry and misguided family member who doesn’t like the idea of anyone paying tribute to her father without first paying up. You have to imagine there must be some other science fiction author out there who would be thrilled to have Google promoting his or her work, rather than whining about getting permission (i.e., “payment”) for the use of a name.

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Fred Anderson is providing an inside look at COP-15 in Copenhagen to The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) World Climate Change Report. 

Today, Anderson’s Notebook (12/16/09), titled Copenhagen Stormed by the States, Provinces, Cities, and Regions, discusses how state, provincial, municipal, county, and regional governments are taking the lead to meet climate challenges. 

To read the full entry, please click here.

Jeff Rubin, the former chief economist for CIBC World Markets, has an insightful piece on why the U.S. can’t rely on OPEC: Its member states that are guzzling down their own oil.

TheGlobeAndMail.com: OPEC, together with two non-cartel oil producers, Russia and Mexico, consumes 14.5 million barrels of oil per day. That’s nearly twice as much as China, in case anybody is keeping track. Oil demand among OPEC members has been growing at well over double the world average. And the more these countries consume their own oil, the less they have to export to you.

Continue reading here.

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See Also:

• Oil’s Going To $225 By 2012, Says Analyst
• The Myth Of An “OPEC For News”
• OPEC Official: There’s Plenty Of Supply, And Oil Prices Are Just Fine

When news of Tiger Woods’ accident first broke what seems like eons ago, every automotive blog desperate to cash in on what was destined to remain in Google Trends for weeks to come threw up a post about Tiger’s ill-fated Escalade. RideLust, of course, refrained.

Today, however, we’ve opted to take the road more heavily traveled thanks to a game forwarded to us by a certain staff member’s father. Introduced by Break.com, “Tiger Hunting” is a relatively simple game whose primary focus is successfully avoiding various obstacles while fleeing an enraged Elin Nordegren.

It sounds almost too basic to be enjoyable, but it’s addicting. Of course, at the risk of sounding like Lavar Burton à la Reading Rainbow, don’t take our word for it – hit the link to do a little “Tiger Hunting” of your own.

Source: a dad with way too much time on his hands via Break.com

You have to be able to count on your systems 100%! Under no circumstances is a connector allowed to be responsible for a system’s malfunction. And this is why you should make no compromises here when it comes to the functionality, quality and contact stability.

Various contact technologies are available on the market, such as hyperbolic, lamella, coil spring, etc. All of these systems can transfer current and voltage, but the springwire contact technology from ODU in Mühldorf, Germany offers the greatest contact stability. A multitude of individually cushioning contact springs ensure constant power transmission, even under difficult conditions such as vibrations. Even at a contact diameter of 0.76 mm, 16 individual contact springs are built in, meaning 16 contact points for the power transmission.

The most important data at a glance
– Proven technology, with more than 60 years of experience
– Far more than 100,000 mating cycles, long product service life
– High current-carrying capacity up to 2,000 A
– Lowest contact resistances
– Large number of independently cushioning contact springs,
e.g., 40 pieces with Ø 5
– Low insertion and withdrawal forces
– Extremely certain contacting
– Constant power transmission, even under difficult
conditions such as vibrations or temperature fluctuations
– Simple fabrication– screw or crimp connection
– Both round and flat versions are available as “single contacts”

Contact stability is important no matter what the branch, and so ODU’s springwire contacts are used in all markets of the future, such as medical technology, renewable energies, industrial electronics, automation, etc.

A lot of rumored info (qjnet/wii/mega-man-10-rumors-third-character-two-player-gameplay-ps3-xbox-360-release.html) on Mega Man 10 hit the interwebs last week, one of them being the likelihood of the game to hit the PS3 and Xbox 360, apart from

Wow!

Howard Dean, who knows a thing or two about medicine, and has long been an advocate for reform, just said on CNBC that “you may want to buy health insurance stocks if this thing passes.”

Basically, “reform” has turned into a big ol’ gravy train for private industry (not surprisingly, but surprising for a politician, even an ex-politician, to be so blunt).

Video when we get it.

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See Also:

• Lieberman Threatens To Go GOP In 2012, Torpedoing All Hopes Of Getting To 60 On Healthcare
• Senators Forced To Fly Blind To Beat The Christmas Healthcare Deadline
• The Poll That Shows Why Healthcare Reform Has No Chance Of Passing

Filed under: Concept Cars, Geneva Motor Show, Hatchback, Electric

When we get to Geneva next March, eccentric Swiss design house Rinspeed will be showing off a design for a new electric commuter vehicle called the “UC?” The design of the car itself doesn’t appear to be particularly novel with styling that looks like a cross between the Smart ForTwo and Fiat 500 (not to mention the Aston Martin Cygnet from earlier today).

However, Rinspeed is proposing an interesting approach to extending the range of the EV. Because the UC? is only 2.5 meters long, it could theoretically take advantage of the same kind of perpendicular parking that many Smart drivers use. With that in mind, Rinspeed is proposing that railroads build special train cars that would allow the UC? to be driven straight on and off for travel between cities where the 75 mile nominal plug range would make travel impractical. Since most European trains are electric, it’s even conceivable that drivers could plug in their UC? models during the train trip. Rinspeed hopes to offer up the UC? to outside manufacturers who may want to build it.

[Source: Rinspeed]

Continue reading Geneva Preview: Rinspeed to unveil the UC? electric city car

Geneva Preview: Rinspeed to unveil the UC? electric city car originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s suggestion box, aptly named Suggest, is a great tool, one that has been quickly adopted by other search engines and even browsers. It analyzes the typed query in real time and suggests similar ones before you’re done typing. Now, it’s gotten even smarter, it detects when you’re modifying an existing search term and adjusts the suggestion accordingly, as Google Operating System points out.

For example, start typing “google chrome” and the feature suggests things like “google chrome os” or “google chrome mac,” to be expected considering the upcoming operating system and the recent mac beta launch of the browser. Go back and add a “b” in front of chrome and the suggestions immediately change to things like “google bookmarks chrome” or “google beta chrome.”

It doesn’t matter if the letter is right next to another word, Google detects the change and starts to match queries to the one being typed. The position of the new word is also irrelevant, it works wherever it’s placed.

In itself it may not look like much of a new feature, but it’s a big step forward for the tool and for the overall search experience. Refining a search is something we do very, very often, especially since we get to see in the suggestion box if our query is likely to wield the wanted results, w… (read more)