Author: Serkadis

There’s not much chance you’re giving a duplicate gift with the fun finds below. Who doesn’t want to wake up to moonbeams or have a desk graced with a red Swingline?

1. Add some fun with dining table ping pong. The set from Restoration Hardware includes what you need for a fun game.

2. Offer up something classy and unexpected – the lace pedestal jewelry stand from Urban Outfitters.

3. Surprise with the 8 ball bean bag chair from The Bean Bag Boys. It would be a conversation piece or hit with kids. Available at amazon and made in the US.

4. Make it earth-friendly with the recycled cardboard wreaths from Uncommon Goods. They’re available in brown or white, and they’re made in the US.

5. Give something handy. A good (not plastic) pill box is difficult to find. Pottery Barn has a new antique-silver pill box inscribed with the phrase: “my cure for everything.” At two inches square, it’s perfect for pursing. It comes with a patina, so no need to worry over scratches.

6. Gently illuminate mornings with the retro-looking moonbeam clock, available at L.L. Bean.

7. Give an elegant thinksport bottle for keeping beverages cold or hot on the go.

8. Put together your own organic herb garden kit with certified organic seeds, plus recycled pots and gloves too.

9. Pretty up the home office with a red Swingline stapler from Think Geek! It’s perfect for fans of “Office Space.”

10. Cool whiskey without diluting it. Whiskey stones, dreamed up by soapstone workers in Vermont, keep your drink cool without melting.

(Images via Urban Outfitters and L.L. Bean)

Post from: Blisstree

10 Unexpected Home Gifts

The Chinese government has come out to remind the market that it will keep buying dollats as its core currency reserve holding, even though it believes the dollar will depreciate in the long term.

 

WSJ: "The composition remains as it was before. There is no major change" in the reserves, said Wang Xiaoyi, vice director of SAFE, which oversees the reserves. "We are not making any big adjustments in direction. Our operations are still as usual, meaning they follow the existing forex reserves management goal," he said on the sidelines of an economic forum in Beijing.

...

Mr. Wang said the "depreciation of the U.S. dollar is a long-term trend." In the near term, however, the dollar's key role as the global reserve currency won't change, SAFE said in the book.

This reminds us of the poin that China doesn't buy dollars in order to make money off them as an investment. They buy them in order to maintain the current global imbalance whereby the yuan's value is held down, over-stimulating U.S. consumer demand. Thus even if the dollar is a depreciatiing asset for them to hold, it's fine since China earns its return on investment in other ways, mainly via the export stimulus a weak yuan creates.

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See Also:

• Dollar Surges Ahead Of Lunch
• Did Today's Jobs Report Kill The Dollar-Stocks Correlation?
• IMF: Rising Asset Correlations Prove Roubini's Dollar Carry Trade Warning

Homebrew coder FluBBa is back to release a new version of S8DS, a port of the SEGA 8-bit emulator SMSAdvance for the NIntendo DS. The latest update has added some new features and some other bug fixes.
 
Download:

A new version of the highly addictictive homebrew game Super Smash Bros. Rumble DS has recently been released courtesy of homebrew coders Neeher, Diddy and PS991. The latest demo update has added s ton of features like

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I’ve discussed in the past why I’m not thrilled about the use of the word “piracy,” even as it has become rather standard for describing unauthorized file sharing. It’s inaccurate, and is used by the entertainment industry to paint a picture of pure evil, where a more nuanced and accurate view might help. At the same time, with the rise of “The Pirate Party” in various countries, a group of folks have tried to take the word back — but I still wonder if the name limits the party’s upside, even as it may have enabled some of the initial attention (and vote-getting ability).

That said, Nancy Baym points us to an interesting analysis of piracy in the context of “language of spectacle”, by Gabriella Coleman, and how that can help drive political messages and involvement:

But what keeps me interested in the politics of piracy is how it can speak the language of spectacle, which can be a powerful tactic and technique for broadcasting a political message. Here I’m just paraphrasing and cribbing the work of Stephen Duncombe, who has argued, I think quite persuasively, that we cannot rely solely on reasoned debate for building political programs. Duncombe does not argue that we must toss out rationality and truth seeking (these are absolutely necessary) but notes how on their own or if not clothed in some other cloak, they may not be enough to convey and compel, especially in this day of total media saturation. Or to put a but more poetically by him “Reality needs fantasy to render it desirable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable.”

Much (though not all) of contemporary digital piracy follows the logic of spectacle. It builds and conveys a fantastical drama of right and wrong, of new possibilities, of freedom from the noose of the law; it signals and speaks to the thrill and fun in twisting, even breaking, existing structures and constraints; and provides a window into another way of acting/behaving. In many cases what it provides is a commons (and I will be exploring it in depth in my class next semester on the commons) and many folks, I imagine, turn to piracy simply for the free stuff, and a number of them come out of the other side transformed into copy fighters willing to engage in a politics beyond sharing stuff and waving the pirate flag.

It’s an interesting thought, and it gets me thinking. Folks like Bill Patry make compelling arguments that the use of moral panics and folk devils with words like “piracy” distort the debate in negative ways, but Coleman suggests that by embracing that term, people may be able to build a stronger case on this particular issue. Which seems more compelling? Or is it a combination of both?

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Shocklee points us to an awesome little app that lets you type in whatever lyrics (or, well, words) you want, hit play, and whatever you type will be sung for you, using clips from various famous songs. It’s a really fun little app (though, I was amused that they have no clip for the word “lyrics” despite the service being all about lyrics) and can get pretty addictive. In fact, if you want to hear this entire post sung outloud via this system, just click here (please note, this will take a really long time to load, but it’s totally worth it). However, like with many other cool music projects, I’m left wondering whether or not some would consider this to be copyright infringement. All of the clips are tiny — one word, or in many cases, less than a full word, but they do seem to come from various popular and well-known songs. It’s not hard to identify some of them. I have no idea if the company behind this service cleared all the licenses (it’s possible), but if that’s the case, you’d have to imagine that this service would get ridiculously expensive very quickly. If a simple lyric of, say, 8 words, involves a dozen clips, with royalties needing to be paid for each, such a service would quickly become impossible. Doesn’t it say something when copyright law would effectively outlaw an awesome and fun app like this one?

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Just about a year ago, ABC TV exec Anne Sweeney was telling people at CES that they were in the providing good content business, and she wanted to see it delivered however people wanted to watch it, on whatever device they wanted. But, it’s a little more difficult to apply that message to her own family, apparently. In the opening to an article about the whole “web vs. TV” debate (as if there really is one) in light of the Comcast/NBC deal, the piece opens with a story about Sweeney forcing her daughter to bring a television to college, despite the younger Sweeney’s protests that she had no need for a TV:

“Mom, you don’t understand. I don’t need it,” her 19-year-old responded, saying she could watch whatever she wanted on her computer, at no charge….

“You’re going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall,” she told her daughter, according to comments she made at a Reuters event this week. “You have to have one.”

Perhaps it’s time to recognize that more and more people don’t need a TV?

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Heads up, Madden fanatics! EA Sports has just released the second patch of Madden NFL 10. The patch is now available on the PlayStation 3 with the Xbox version sceduled to arive late next week. It includes

On November 26th (Thanksgiving), the Washington Post put up an article about the group Public Enemy and its efforts to help the homeless in DC. Nice enough. However, there was one oddity in the article. It claimed that the band’s famous song 911 is a Joke was about the attacks of September 11th. Yes, this is a song that was released in 1990. And if you’ve ever heard it, you know that it’s about the phone number you call for emergencies. I mean the first line of the song is “I dialed 911 a long time ago….”.

Now, I guess this is a mistake that anyone could make if they were totally unfamiliar with Public Enemy or its music — but you would think that someone writing an article about the band would at least learn a little about the music it released. Furthermore, we’re constantly told about how the mainstream press is important because they have fact checkers. Apparently, they took Thanksgiving off.

But, a bigger point is brought forth by Mathew Ingram who points out that people in the comments of the article pointed out the mistake really quickly and it took an entire week for the Washington Post to get around to making a correction.

Now, everyone makes mistakes now and again, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does demonstrate a few things. Just claiming you have fact checkers doesn’t make you significantly more accurate at times. Separately, we’ve pointed out in the past how bad newspapers seem to be with actually engaging with commenters on their site, and this highlights why they’re making a big mistake. Yes, it’s work. Yes, sometimes there can be a lot of junk in the comments, but you can also learn a lot — such as when you’ve made a huge mistake.

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Filed under: LA Auto Show

Did you miss our coverage of the 2009 LA Auto Show? Don’t know where to look to find it? No worries. We’ve assembled the best parts for you below, and you can visit our LA Auto Show page to view every last piece of coverage we did.

THE CARS

THE NEWS

	LA 2009: Maximum Bob, Maximum Live Blog We’re here in the City of Angels to watch Fritz Henderson deliver GM’s keynote address to all us media types here at LA Auto Show. Only thing is, Fritz resigned yesterday, and for some reason interim CEO Ed Whitacre will not be delivering the keynote. Which can only mean one thing — GM’s Vice Chairman of Marketing and Communications Bob Lutz will be delivering the opening address.
	LA 2009: Ford Taurus and Volvo XC60 named International Car and Truck of the Year Hold onto your hats folks, because while magazine award ceremonies appear to be just about finished, the auto show trophies are just starting to be handed out. This time, it’s the International Car of the Year at the LA Auto Show, and we’ve got two winners from within the Ford empire. The Ford …
	LA 2009: Audi A3 TDI named 2010 Green Car of the Year in diesel repeat At the LA Auto Show this morning, the Audi A3 TDI was crowned the 2010 Green Car of the Year, wresting the title away from last year’s winner, the Volkswagen Jetta TDI. Even though three hybrids made this year’s list of finalists, the A3’s win marks the second year in a row that a TDI diesel car …
	LA 2009: Lexus LFA wireframe cutaway wows us Wow. Lexus brought their new LFA supercar to the LA Auto Show this year. That might not seem particularly wow-worthy, but it definitely becomes more surprising when you hear that they actually brought an LFA and a half. While a white LFA was happily humming along, spinning slowly on a rotating …
	“Viridian Joule” picked as winner of Chevy Volt Paint Color Contest The votes have been cast, the tallies tallied and the winner determined: Viridian Joule will be the official name of the silvery-green hue as seen on a slew of Chevrolet Volt marketing material for what seems like the last decade or so. So, um, what does Viridian Joule mean? We’ll let the winner …

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…

2009 LA Auto Show Wrap Up originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reader mick alerts us to a legal fight in Australia with Apple working hard to stop computer firm Macpro from being able to keep its name. The company has been in business since 1983, prior to Apple introducing the Macintosh (which happened in early 1984). In other words, Macpro should have priority on the name. When Apple tried to register a trademark on Mac Pro, Macpro opposed it and won, but Apple keeps fighting, and Macrpo’s boss thinks the company is just trying to force them into bankruptcy with legal bills (he’s already spent $200,000). He says he’s offered reasonable settlements to Apple, but gets no response. Again, given Apple’s early trademark fight with the Beatle’s Apple Corp., you might think that it would be sensitive to bullying other companies over trademark issues… but apparently Apple thinks different(ly).

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Filed under: LA Auto Show, Etc.

With the state of the economy, it didn’t come as much of a surprise that manufacturer presence was down at the LA Auto Show this year. The carmakers that did show up, however, brought their “A Game” – mostly. As much as that was true for new vehicle introductions, it also applied to the deployment of booth professionals as well.

Many booths didn’t hire models this year, unfortunately, and companies that have traditionally been reliable sources of model employment weren’t even here in 2009. We’re looking at you, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati. Still, it was nice to see even a few smiling faces while we scoured the darkened halls of the LA Convention Center trying in our obsessive search for postworthy material.

While we didn’t encounter many spokesmodels, we did find a lot of beauty in the City of Angels. We’ve assembled a small gallery of random shots and artsy-fartsy images to give all of you a taste of this year’s show from LA. Click below to see our small but satisfying high-res gallery.

Photos copyright (C)2009 Frank Filipponio/Weblogs, Inc.

LA 2009: Random beauty in the City of Angels originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 12.4.09 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Europe, Crossover, Nissan

The Nissan Qashqai has a silly name. Though not as silly as the Qashqai+2, the seven-seat version of the British built small CUV. But silly name not withstanding, the slightly smaller than a Nissan Rogue compact crossover has been something of a sales phenom for Nissan, selling more than 500,000 copies around the world since 2007 despite not being offered in the North American market.

For the 2010 model year, some things are changing, and some aren’t. The biggest and most obvious difference is the front end, which is all-new and quite handsome looking. We especially like the sculpted lower fascia and intake. And while it is slightly smaller than the Rogue we do have in America, the Qashqai (named after a nomadic Iranian tribe) looks tougher. In the rear, the song remains largely the same, though the taillights have been slightly revised. The colors you see here are both new — Magnetic Red and Mineral Gray.

Inside, functionality is up with a new dash computer, gauges, lighting and “oddments” storage. Refinement is also up, with more baffling in place to reduce NVH, along with a revised windscreen and A-pillars to cut wind noise. The suspension has also been redesigned to improve both ride comfort and handling. All in all, the Qashqai looks to be a pretty tasty package. But you can almost set your watch to the fact that Nissan will not be bringing it to our red, white and blue shores, and while we like the Rogue just fine, we’d just assume that Nissan give us this one instead. What do you think? Check out the ress release after the jump and the high-res gallery below, and then let us know which one you’d prefer to see on sale in America.

[Source: Nissan]

Continue reading Nissan updates Qashqai crossover – and no, we’re still not gonna get it

Nissan updates Qashqai crossover – and no, we’re still not gonna get it originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft has been a big believer in patents lately, even though Bill Gates once classically noted that the computer industry would have been at a “standstill” if people had aggressively patented ideas back in the early days of personal computing. Since then, however, Microsoft has massively ramped up its patenting machine. But, of course, if you live by the patent, you should expect to get sued by the patent as well. Brian writes in to let us know that a patent holding firm, with a long history of suing a bunch of big name tech firms is now suing Microsoft as well, claiming that every copy of Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 violate its patent 6629163 on “Demultiplexing a First Sequence of Packet Components to Identify Specific Components Wherein Subsequent Components are Processed without Re-Identifying Components.” I have no idea if the patent is valid or not, but I always find it amusing when big patent system supporters find themselves sued for patent infringement as well.

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If your kitty is experiencing weight loss even with a big appetite, it’s time to visit the veterinarian. Your cat may have hyperthyroidism, a common hormonal imbalance in older cats.

Most cats are diagnosed with hyperthyroidism via a blood panel around age 13. Besides weight loss, affected cats may also experience chronic vomiting and diarrhea, plus muscle deterioration.

Even if cats aren’t exhibiting symptoms, it’s important to treat the condition to prevent heart failure or sudden blindness or death.

A cat with hyperthyroidism is producing too much T4, and the feline probably has a growth the thyroid gland. These growths are usually benign, but cancer may rarely be present.

Benign thyroid growths are a form of goiter instead of cancer. Radiotherapy, a way to cure hyperthyroidism, may be used to distinguish between goiters and cancer.

Treatment Options for Cats with Hyperthyroidism

• Oral drug – methimazole (brand names: Tapazole or Felimazole)
• Surgery – to remove abnormal thyroid tissue
• Radiotherapy – usually just a one-time procedure. View a list of facilities offering radiotherapy.

To learn more about hyperthyroidism in cats, visit the online Hyperthyroidism Center for Cats at Veterinary Partner.

(Source: VeterinaryPartner.com; Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Most Common Hormone Imbalance in Cats

Filed under: Classics, Convertible, Performance, Celebrities

It’s not like we need another reason to be sickeningly jealous of Jay Leno, but along comes this video. In it Jay drives perhaps our favorite car from the 2009 LA Auto Show, the hugely lovely and impressive Allard J2X MkII. Only unlike the 500-ish horsepower 5.7-liter Hemi powered J2X MkII we got to look at, Jay blasts around the streets of Burbank, CA in a 600-hp 6.1-liter Hemi version. Grrr. Still, the Allard is such a desirable beast – and to see it in motion such a treat – that we’ll tuck our Jay-based jealously back into its hole. This time… Watch the video, after the jump.

Continue reading VIDEO: Jay Leno drives the Allard J2X MkII

VIDEO: Jay Leno drives the Allard J2X MkII originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BPI and IFPI, lobbying groups that represent record labels, have been major supporters of Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill, that will grant him powers to change copyright law at will, and to kick people off the internet based on accusations (not convictions) of file sharing. However, it appears that at least some record labels are realizing what an incredibly bad idea this is. EFF points us to the news that the boss of indie label Pure Mint Recordings has resigned from both the BPI and IFPI committee’s he was a part of, citing his opposition to the Digital Economy Bill, and both organizations support of the bill:

Hall believes the proposed legislation has been rushed in a bid to get it through parliament before the next General Election, that it is in danger of disregarding some sacred legal principles (regarding process, presumption of innocence and burden of proof) and that it won’t solve the record industry’s piracy problems anyway.

In his resignation letter to the BPI, Hall writes: “I have enjoyed contributing to both [the BPI’s] Rights [Committee] and the [IFPI’s] ILC, but increasingly feel that my contributions are falling on deaf ears as an agenda has already been reached that I now consider is unmovable. As you know, I do not think the Digital Economy Bill is a sensible or well thought out piece of legislation. In my view it is being rushed through the last months of a parliament of an unpopular government and it is not legislation that I support”.

Referencing clause 17 – the one that gives senior ministers the right to change copyright laws on whim – he continued: “I am particularly surprised that the record industry has chosen to endorse s.17 of the DEB, which I consider is wholly undemocratic and contrary to centuries of good practice regarding the forming of our copyright legislation. I also believe it may set a dangerous precedent going forwards (and could come back to haunt the industry)”.

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