Author: Serkadis

I clearly remember the moment I knew I would never buy another physical CD and would buy all my music online. Since then, I’ve been waiting for the moment when I would know that I could buy all my movies online. In November, Apple announced that it was adding Disney movies in high definition to the iTunes Store. I’ve spent the last few months debating with myself if this heralded the end of buying physical media for movies.

In a word: No

In two words: Not Yet

Why I Buy Music from iTunes (and Amazon MP3)

For music, once iTunes Plus was the standard on the iTunes Store, I knew that I didn’t need to buy physical CD’s any more. All I was doing was ripping my music to 256kbps AAC or MP3 anyways, so why not just buy them that way? And album prices on iTunes were the same or lower than brick-and-mortar prices on CD’s. Take Amazon MP3 into account, and it was an easy decision to switch to digital purchases.

Why I Have Not Been Buying Movies from iTunes

Basically, it comes down to the stereo sound. I can’t stand the idea of not using my surround sound setup and massive subwoofer (it literally shakes my whole house…I love it). With lower picture quality and lame stereo sound, I was not tempted at all to get movies from iTunes. I did try a few 99 cent rentals and found that to be just fine, but my $9 Netflix membership gives me access to tons of streaming movies at the same quality.

Now that HD movies sport surround sound, I was anxious to compare some familiar titles where I could spot the difference in picture quality and audio.

Disney/Pixar Makes Great HD Material

I have kids at home and we are therefore obligated to pay our annual Disney tax to stock our home with family-friendly, candy-coated entertainment from our media overlords in Burbank, CA.  Some of the Pixar movies make great reference material to show off your home theater and I focused on these titles to compare the difference between iTunes SD & HD, DVD, Handbrake encodes, and Blu-ray.

Picture Quality

Let me say up front that the difference in picture quality between the various formats is clearly visible on a big screen. Blu-ray has the best picture quality and was correctly identified by all the members of my family in a simple visual test. The surprise for me is how close iTunes HD is to Blu-ray. I watched several scenes in Wall-E over and over again looking at the differences between the iTunes HD file and the Blu-ray Disc (BRD), particularly the first 10 minutes and the interior shots of the ship. The iTunes HD file was quite a bit better than what I expected and makes a serious case for choosing to buy content on iTunes.

For SD content, I watched Monsters, Inc. and compared the iTunes file (what Disney calls a Digital Copy) with a Handbrake 0.9.3 rip I made using the Apple TV preset (0.9.4, the current version, should produce similar quality output). The quality is almost identical although the Handbrake rip was slightly brighter. The quality is slightly below DVD, but so close that most people probably won’t notice.

For my money, the image quality is close enough on the iTunes HD files that I could be tempted to just buy them on iTunes. If you’re watching on a 42″ screen or smaller, the quality is probably indistinguishable.

Audio Quality

My Blu-ray player is configured to decode all the lossless audio formats and send 7.1 analog sound to my receiver. It works great. I was really concerned about the audio here because I would not buy anything with only a stereo track.

The audio on the iTunes HD movies is good enough to consider buying them. The difference between Dolby Digital and the lossless audio tracks is noticeable, but 5.1 surround sound is enough to get me over the bulk of my previous objections.

Convenience

Convenience is a big deal for me. I actually prefer having movies on my Apple TV because I don’t have to endure any forced advertising or trailers. I can just start the movie. I also like that my kids don’t have to handle the discs, avoiding the possibility of scratching them. Combined with the amazing Apple Remote iPhone app, the Apple TV is a great movie jukebox — even better than the 301 slot DVD changer I used to have.

Now that Extras are available with iTunes HD files, I think iTunes movies actually win on convenience, with one big caveat — you really need an Apple TV or a Mac mini media center connected to your big screen TV to appreciate them. A 27″ iMac would get pretty close on its own though.

Why Movies are Different than Music

I was a weekend musician for a large part of the 80’s and 90’s and I love music. I owned a SACD player because I loved hearing the subtle details in Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and the sound of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s fingers sliding across the strings in Texas Flood. But I only really enjoyed the difference when I was sitting in the “sweet spot” of my two-channel system with perfect stereo imaging. I couldn’t really appreciate the difference in the quality of the recordings between SACD and CD when I had music on in the background as I was working around the house. Music downloads are successful for the simple reason that convenience and quality are sufficient. The difference in quality does not bother people because you typically are not giving your full attention to the sound quality while jogging, working, eating, etc. and the convenience is king because no one is willing to get up and change a CD anymore.

Movies are different because you are planted in front of the screen for about two hours and typically devote your full attention to the film while watching it. This makes all the difference in comparing incremental differences in the quality of Blu-ray and iTunes HD. If I’m going to give my full attention to something for two hours, I want the best quality. I would be tempted by the convenience of iTunes downloads, but at the same price point, I just want the best quality.

What Would It Take for Me to Buy iTunes Movies?

Lower prices. The quality is fine for the movies that I watched. But at the same price point, I’ll take the Blu-ray and deal with putting the disc in the changer and the possibility that my kids might scratch them. If I really want the movie to be easy to get to for my kids, I’ll make my own encode and put it on my Apple TV anyways.

I would say 1080p or higher bitrate to bring the video quality closer to Blu-ray, but 10GB (or higher) downloads seem unrealistic at this point. Maybe someday that comment will seem shortsighted when we all have fiber to the home, but for now I think the best compromise is to get $5 and $10 movies from iTunes and $15-25 discs in the store.

What about you? Is iTunes HD enough for you in terms of quality/convenience? If not, what would it take?

Equipment Used: I compared the files using an Apple TV (3.0) and a Pioneer BDP-51FD connected to a calibrated 57″ Sony KP-57HW40 with a Denon surround receiver with 5.1 speakers (Infinity L+R powered full-range towers, 3-way center, bookshelf surrounds + SVS 20-39PC subwoofer).

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Who Wins When Movies Are Available Everywhere?

SPRINGFIELD – Former Gov. George Ryan will get no state pension the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in an opinion released this morning, a decision that strips him of a nearly $70,000 annual state retirement a lower court had said was unrelated to his corruption conviction.

Following Ryan’s federal conviction, for which he’s now serving a prison term, a state pension board stripped Ryan of any pension benefits but an appeals court overturned part of that decision and said Ryan is entitled to a pension for the years not tied to his conviction.

The state appealed and the moved to the Illinois Supreme Court justices, who issued their opinion today.

Former Gov. Jim Thompson, Ryan’s attorney, argued that each time someone is elected to office, it’s a new membership in the pension system. Therefore Ryan’s early years of service are still valid grounds for granting a pension, which would now amount to roughly $5,700 a month, $68,400 annually. Had he not run afoul of the law, Ryan, who is 75, would now be collecting nearly $197,000 annually.

Thompson said Ryan’s been stripped of his reputation, his pension and will sit in prison until the age of 80 while his aging wife sits at home in Kankakee with no income.

But Jan Hughes, an attorney representing the pension system, countered that Ryan betrayed the public at large regardless of what specific office he held and should be held accountable. She argued that the pension laws refer to when a “member” has committed felonies and should not be divided down to which office which member held when.

She noted that the contributions to that pension system do not come from the General Assembly budget or the lieutenant governor’s budget. They come from the state and as such, Ryan’s entire service is at issue, not a segment of it.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Those who enjoyed watching Voltron as a kid can now take another go at the animated series throught the Video Store. The batch also smells a bit like teen spirit, and I’m not talking about the Nirvana

 

 

To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

• We have an Orange County commercial bank client looking for someone to run their  Warehouse Lending operations.  If you or someone you know is interested and has experience working for a warehouse lender, please send resumes to us at [email protected].  For all you snow-bound people, Orange County has the best weather in the world. It was 71 degrees when we there a few weeks ago.  
• You baseball fanatics will remember the name Rabbit Maranville, the Braves Hall of Fame infielder.
  

Look at his baseball cap.  He played in a time when caps didn’t have team logos on them, so it looks like he had his customized to show a swastika.  You might have to enlarge the picture to see it, but it’s there.  There’s also a picture of Tinkers, Evers and Chance we’ve seen, and one of them also had a swastika on his cap.

• We stopped at Valley Forge last week when it was covered with snow and around 20 degrees, and it made us appreciate what the winter of 1777 must have been like for George Washington and his troops. Despite disease, lack of food, and bitter cold, he held the Continental Army together and showed a perseverance which is a hallmark of Americans today. The more you read about him, the more you realize he was not just our greatest President but one of our greatest Americans as well.
• We were walking through a campus bookstore recently, and we saw about 15-20 required books we really wanted to read.  Then we saw something by Jean Paul Sartre. Yuck. It’s hard to know which was the worst part of college, reading Sartre or reading Marx?
• Sometimes the easiest part of succeeding is to simply do what successful competitors do. Probably 90% of highly successful companies who use a hedging advisory service are using MCM, CMC, Compass, SI, MIAC or Flatirons.  (We’re writing this at 2:00 am, so maybe we missed one.)  These are who the top performing mortgage companies use. If you’re using Bill & Ted’s Excellent Hedging Service, and if no one else has ever heard of them, you might have a problem.  If you are using Bill & Ted, you should still contact one of the companies named above and start to learn how they operate.   We’re 99% certain you’ll find out how much better you could be doing.
• Last week we told the joke about Bank of New York, but we accidentally combined it with some other item that made it look not-so-funny.  So here it is again:
  Bank of New York was founded by Alexander Hamilton, and as you remember from American History, he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.  If you’ve done business with this bank, you also know that it can be stodgy and slow moving.  The joke is that as he got ready for his duel, Hamilton told the bank staff “Don’t do a thing till I get back.”  We find this hilarious,
• Spring training is starting, and isn’t there something exciting about that? We once read a book with a title something like Why Life Begins on Opening Day, and doesn’t that say it all?
• WSJ reporter Bob Hagerty does some of the best investigative journalism we’ve seen, and we noticed yesterday a WSJ article written by James E. Hagerty.   Who’s this other guy?  He also writes beautifully.
• PMI reported a tough quarter with paid claims of $518 million, but the good news is that delinquency growth slowed and new delinquent notices were down.  All M.I. companies have had some tough times lately, but PMI is definitely a survivor.
• Think big or think small:  When we’re in a shop that is under leveraged, we like to run 3-4 scenarios showing what greater loan volume would to earnings.  When we see high volume shops, we like to run 3-4 scenarios showing loan volume shrinking by various percentages and margins doing the same. You can do these scenarios on your own with a basic spread sheet, and we think you should be running these every month.  When things change in this business, they change quicker and to a greater extent than anyone could have imagined, so knowing in advance what the impact might be can be good preparation for when the market turns.
• The management at PHH noted in an earnings release that their mortgage production breakeven level is currently $28 billion annually or $2.3 billion a month.  If a big public mortgage company thinks it’s important to know their break-even number, every mortgage company should know theirs.
• Is your Succession Plan current.  Think of your top 3-4 people.  If one of them got hit by a truck tomorrow or gave you two weeks notice, do you know exactly how you’d handle their absence? Do you already have 2-3 names of possible replacements? Well-run companies plan ahead. Top employees come and go, and maybe some will get hit by that proverbial bus, but you just don’t want to get caught flat-footed.
• We made reference to CMG Mortgage Insurance Co. being out of business, and boy were we wrong!  They’re still in business and quite actively insuring new loans.  They’re among the highest-rated private mortgage insurers in the country and an eligible mortgage insurer for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They’re meeting all existing loan obligations and have sufficient capital and reserves to pay all claims for new and existing business. The company continues to be an approved mortgage insurer with both Government-Sponsored Enterprises.
• College endowments got clobbered last year, but some did worse than others. We saw one study that lusted the ten worst:

-33%	Syracuse	-27%	Grinnell
-30%	Harvard	-27%	Brown
-29%	Yale	-27%	Cornell
-28%	Duke	-26%	USC
-27%	U. of Minnesota	-26%	Caltech

The study looked at bad performance in a number of ways, but they weighted the amount loss along with the percentage lost, and they rated Harvard worst in the nation.  Not only did they school lose 30% of their endowment funds, the amount lost was a shocking $10.9 billion!  The top performer was Pepperdine which lost only 4% and Washington State which lost only 9%.  Go Cougars!

• It’s well into February.  Do you have a 2010 budget which allows you to compare actual performance versus budget performance?  We’ll flat out tell you that top performing companies almost all have budgets, and poor performing companies rarely do.
• We find it frustrating and maddening when companies don’t realize the healthy margins they build into their rate sheet.  This is typically due to a variety of operational problems, poor pipeline data management, and so on, but the one that’s most frustrating is when a company uses one of the nationally known hedging advisory services and still doesn’t get the margins they thought they’d get.   We know these services – MCM, Compass, CMC, SI, Flatirons etc. – and their models work.  If you follow their model, you’ll get that margin!   What is so frustrating for us is to see companies retain one of these advisors and not stick to the model.  It’s a prescription for failure.  If you don’t want to use a hedging advisor, that’s your choice.  But if you do use one of these advisors, don’t try to think you’re smarter than them, and don’t try to rebuild the model.  It flat out won’t work.

We periodically send out the attached list of Ten Keys to Survival and are always pleased to see people print it out and stick it on their wall.  We like it too!  Anyway, here’s hoping for better weather!  See you when we get back to sunny California .

Garrett, Watts & Co.

“Helping lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.

• Mike McAuley   ([email protected])
• Corky Watts      ([email protected]) 
• Joe Garrett      ([email protected])

Google’s Maps is one of Google’s oldest products and certainly one of the most known. It’s been around for years and in some places, the information it provides is extensive. But the world is, well, a big place and there are plenty or countries and regions where mapping data in Google Maps is lacking, to say the least. Generally, these are places where it… (read more)

Filed under: Budget, Geneva Motor Show, Europe, Hatchback, Volkswagen

Volkswagen will be using the stage at this year’s Geneva Motor Show to flesh out its new Polo range, which includes the base Polo, a high-efficiency Bluemotion model, the GTI version unveiled earlier this week and the CrossPolo revealed today. The latest generation CrossPolo takes the hatchback’s sharp new styling and beefs it up with black plastic molding around the wheel arches, across the sills and bottom of each door, as well as on the front and rear bumpers. The front bumper gets a honeycomb treatment for the lower air intake and light silver trim at the bottom that suggests underbody protection (there isn’t any, though). Also included are the CrossPolo’s trademark silver anodized roof rails and handsome 17-inch two-tone wheels.

With the rear seat down, the little CrossPolo will swallow about 37 cubic feet of cargo, and Volkswagen offers no less than six (!) engines to haul all that stuff. There are three gas-powered engines that include a 1.2- and 1.4-liter four-cylinder, as well as a 1.2-liter TSI engine that features direct injection and turbocharging. There are also three diesel engines available and your choice of a six-speed manual transmission or 7-speed DSG automatic. That is, if you live in Europe.

The Polo remains off limits to U.S buyers for now, but VW has confirmed it will eventually be sold in the U.S. We drove a new Polo with the most powerful 1.2-liter TSI engine recently and came away eager for the day it goes on sale in the States. With the unveiling of the GTI and CrossPolo, we’re now anxious.

[Source: Volkswagen]

Continue reading New Volkswagen CrossPolo to join GTI in Geneva

New Volkswagen CrossPolo to join GTI in Geneva originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The previous Mercenaries Reunion videos emphasized more on the aesthetic presentation of the new playables. This vid, however, takes a more practical angle, showing us the all-important melee attacks that make or break a high-score run. For

URBANA – With the acceptance of a check Thursday night for $84,446, the Champaign County Board closed out the nearly 10-year effort to rebuild the county courthouse clock and bell tower.

Board member Steve Beckett, also a member of a citizens bell tower committee, presented the check from James and Leslie Liautaud of Champaign. The Liautauds had pledged to match recent contributions from county citizens.

Since the project was announced, Beckett said, the citizens group has raised $1.154 million in private funds to rebuild the tower to its original 1901 height.

“I hope you all think the effort was worthwhile. We certainly do,” said retired Judge Harold Jensen, an honorary co-chairman of the citizens committee.

Also Thursday, the board:

– Awarded a contract to Trane U.S. Inc. for installation of a replacement chiller at the downtown Urbana correctional center.

– Learned that Beckett and other board members have introduced a resolution to create an independent, 11-member commission that would be responsible for drawing county board districts following completion of the 2010 census. Under past practice, the majority party on the board has redrawn county board districts.

Already the Champaign County Farm Bureau and Champaign County Chamber of Commerce have lined up behind the plan. Several county board Democrats, however, have said they are opposed to the idea.

Beckett asked policy committee chairman Tom Betz to include the proposal on the committee’s agenda next month.

Betz said he would. “I have never excluded an item from the agenda,” he said.

The committee also will discuss at the March 9 meeting separate questions on reducing the size of the 27-member board and moving from districts with three members to districts with either one or two members.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Families in New Lenox School District 122 will see slightly lower fees next year if they pay their fees on time, but only if their children are not involved in sports, band or orchestra.

The school board Wednesday approved keeping fees the same but having an incentive of a $10 discount if fees are paid before July 29.

The board also approved a $25 fee for students in fourth through eighth grades who participate in sports.

The board previously approved a $100 fee for students participating in band or orchestra.

While the registration fees will be unchanged, they may look different as the district is going to one registration fee as opposed to charging registration, materials and activity fees.

Fees are $160 for early childhood classes, $275 for kindergarten, $280 for first and second grades and $285 for third through eighth grades.

Additionally, there is a $6 fee for PTO class parties for children in kindergarten through sixth grade and a $5 fee for third-graders for a recorder for music class.

In October, the board’s finance committee considered waiving the $40 activity fee for kindergarten through third-grade students or reducing the registration fee for all grades by $50 or $100.

But district business manager Harold Huang said that in the current economic times, the district could not afford a reduction that “would not have a dramatic effect” on the bottom line.

If the same number of parents pay the fees on time for the next school year, the district will see a decrease in revenue of $27,090.

Parents paying late still will be charged a $15 fee per student with a maximum family fee of $30, Huang said. Parents can opt for a payment plan to spread the fee over three payments without being penalized with a late fee.

The athletic, band and orchestra fees will pay for approximately 8 percent of the cost to run the programs, officials said.

A total of 674 students participated in sports in the 2009-2009 school year with a total cost of $181,561 to run the program, including teacher stipends, supplies, equipment, dues, fees and transportation costs, Supt. Michael Sass said.

There were about 65 students who would have qualified for waived fees, Sass said.

The addition of a $25 athletic fee likely will generate about $15,225, assuming it is paid by 609 students who do not qualify for free or reduced lunches, he said.

Huang said the district surveyed neighboring districts and found that most charged fees between $25 and $35.

The $100 fee for band and orchestra likely will generate $36,200 in revenue. The district’s total cost is $418,542, he said.

There were 400 students who participated in band or orchestra in the 2008-2009 school year, with about 38 students who would have qualified for waived fees, Sass said.

Karen Brennan, president of the New Lenox Band Boosters and parent of a seventh-grader in the program, said the boosters organization is concerned the fees will reduce participation.

“We already pay for these classes with our registration fees. No other fees are mentioned for any other electives,” Brennan said. In addition, parents have to either buy instruments or rent them, she said.

Sass said he would schedule a meeting with the band boosters.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Chicago police shot an armed man who fled tactical officers and led police on a chase through yards and alleys Thursday night in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, police said.

Deering District tactical officers saw an armed man in the 5100 block of South Honore about 9 p.m. Thursday, got out of their car and announced they were officers, police said.

The suspect fled and officers pursued on foot through yards and alleys. Responding uniformed officers ordered the suspect to stop, but instead he turned suddenly in the direction of the officers. As a result, officers shot him in the lower leg, according to a police News Affairs statement.

The suspect was taken to a local hospital, the statement said.

A weapon was recovered on the scene, police said.

The incident started near the south end of Cornell Square Park, 1809 W. 50th St., about a block from Richard J. Daley School.

Wentworth Area detectives and the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates all police-involved shootings, are investigating.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

The knock on the hotel room door wasn’t housekeeping, but they were there to clean up.

Police were tipped off Wednesday about “possible drug activity” in a room on the fourth floor of Townplace Suites, 1515 Riverboat Center Drive in Joliet.

Narcotics Sgt. Patrick Cardwell knocked on the hotel room door about 4 p.m. and was met by Derek Burdette, 28, of Cambria, Calif.

“Sgt. Cardwell immediately noticed a strong odor of cannabis when the door was opened and asked Burdette if there was any in the room,” Deputy Chief Mike Trafton said.

Burdette and another man in the room reportedly told Cardwell there was a small baggie in a backpack on a table and allowed him to retrieve it.

“He asked if there was any other drugs or weapons in the room and was given permission to look around,” Trafton said.

Cardwell and officers Aaron Bandy and Jeff German called in a canine officer, which alerted police to another backpack.

“Inside were shrink-wrapped bundles of currency totaling $121,962,” Trafton said.

Burdette refused to claim the funds in the bag, which were seized. He was charged with possession of cannabis and released on $1,000 bond. The other occupant of the room was not charged.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Facebook is huge, there’s no getting around that, there’s no other social network even remotely close to in terms of users and there are few sites or online services, which can boast a similar audience. That being said, revenue-wise, it’s still a small player in part because it hasn’t focused so much on monetizing its huge user base. 2010 looks like the year when this ch… (read more)

A Monee man was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the fatal beating of his 5-month-old son in a Northwest Indiana apartment.

With relatives of the victim sobbing in court, Ryne Anthony Le Val White, 25, was sentenced in Lake County Superior Court. He had pleaded guilty on Dec. 16 to neglect of a dependent.

The Lake County Prosecutor’s office said White was watching his son, Ryne Anthony White Jr. while the child’s mother went on a job interview on Aug. 21, 2008.

White’s 9-month-old daughter from another relationship was also present at the Oak Knoll Renaissance apartment in Gary.

The boy died of blunt force trauma, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Deputy Prosecutor Judith Massa had argued for a 40-year sentence because of White’s criminal history — two felony drug convictions in Illinois — and because, “this was his own son, his own baby.”

“This was a tragic and violent death,” Massa said. “Nothing can bring this little baby back to his family but there has to be consequences.

The victim’s grandmother, Quintella Logan, told the court through tears she dearly loved the grandson she would never see again.

The child’s mother, Le’Neka Logan, sobbed as she said, “Nothing I can say can make it any better. Words can only go so far. I hurt every day. There is nothing I can do to get him back.”

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

CHICAGO (AP) — A nationwide recession helped make debt problems the No. 1 consumer complaint in a list compiled by the Illinois attorney general’s office.

Things were so bad last year there was a 65 percent jump in residential mortgage-related complaints.

Lisa Madigan’s office says it received more than 7,800 complaints about mortgage lending, collections and credit cards.

In a top 10 list, the No. 2 complaint was about identity theft and coming in third were complaints about construction and home remodeling.

Madigan’s office says consumers filed a total of 31,264 complaints with their consumer protection division.

The other complaints in the top 10 were about telecommunication services, promotions, car sales, mail orders, attempts to defraud businesses, utility services and car repairs.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

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BENTON, Ill. (AP) — A southern Illinois judge will decide how much visitation, if any, a mother should get with the 7-year-old son she hid from his father for nearly two years, often in a crawl space behind a wall.

The ruling expected Friday by Franklin County Circuit Judge Melissa Drew follows months of hearings over the boy found last September at his grandmother’s house.

That’s where authorities say Shannon Wilfong often hid her boy from Michael Chekevdia (cheh-KEHV’-duh).

Since being found last fall, the boy has been in a relative’s temporary custody while Chekevdia seeks custody.

Wilfong is charged with felony abduction and has pleaded not guilty.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

CHICAGO (AP) — A sweeping overhaul of the state’s long-term care system is needed to address violence stemming from a “toxic” mix of frail elderly and younger mentally ill residents in Illinois nursing homes, a government task force said Friday.

Gov. Pat Quinn’s task force on nursing home safety released its final report with 37 recommendations, including increased staffing levels and higher fines, fees and taxes on facilities to pay for more government oversight and discourage violations – requirements that the nursing home industry opposes.

Quinn said he’d evaluate the report and work with others to “make these reforms a reality.” The recommendations “point the way to a system of long-term care that respects the needs and rights of all residents,” Quinn said in a written statement.

The recommendations would add more teeth to laws governing the state’s 1,200 nursing homes and expand other types of housing. Task force chairman Michael Gelder, Quinn’s senior health policy adviser, said “plenty of legislators” are interested in co-sponsoring needed legislation and he anticipates bipartisan support.

More than any other state, Illinois has relied on nursing homes to house younger adults with serious mental illnesses, an Associated Press analysis found. Elderly residents have been victimized by stronger, younger residents living next door – or sometimes in the same room. A Chicago Tribune series of articles spurred Quinn to form the task force.

The violence ranges from fist fights that leave bruises to rapes and murders. In May 2008, Chicago nursing home resident Ivory Jackson was beaten into a coma by his much younger roommate; Jackson later died.

The assailant, after a psychiatric review, was ruled unfit to stand trial and now lives in a state mental hospital. In January 2009, a 69-year-old woman living in an Elgin nursing home was allegedly raped by a 21-year-old mentally ill resident.

“The mix of vulnerable and potentially aggressive residents in close quarters is toxic, as the tragic reports of violence highlighted,” according to the report.

The report blames the problems on the state’s “over-reliance on nursing homes” to house the mentally ill after closures of state mental institutions in the 1960s and 1970s.

“Through a series of incremental decisions over the past several decades Illinois has inadvertently exposed vulnerable residents of nursing homes to potential violence,” the report states.

The report repeatedly calls for expansion of community-based services and supportive housing for the mentally ill. Nursing homes caring for people with serious mental illness would be required to get special certification.

“Too many residents with mental illness languish in nursing homes without appropriate therapy or intervention,” according to the report.

The report is clear that people with mental illness aren’t assumed to be more violent than others and are often the victims of violence. But it states: “the relatively few mentally ill nursing home residents who exhibit violent behavior, most of them younger adults, have caused significant harm to other residents.”

The report sets April 30 and June 30 deadlines for 11 workgroups charged with ironing out the details – including amounts of fees, fines and taxes.

Among the recommendations in the 52-page report:

-Increase the number of state regulators, long-term care ombudsmen, Illinois State Police staff and guardianship advocates.

-Require hospitals to start criminal background checks on patients they plan to discharge to nursing homes.

-Improve training for the private vendors who now screen potential nursing home residents.

-Allow the Department of Public Health to yank the licenses of nursing homes that repeatedly violate regulations, without having to prove residents suffered harm.

-Make it tougher for nursing home owners with troubled facilities to buy and operate other homes.

-Raise minimum staffing requirements in a way consistent with a 2001 federal study. Experts have said that would raise the state’s staffing minimums by 42 percent to 64 percent.

-Give whistle-blower protection to nursing home staff who report alleged misconduct.

The report, to be posted Friday on the task force Web site, comes after the task force gathered information during seven public meetings.

“We’re not done,” Gelder said. “This is a midway point and certainly not an end.”

On the Web: illinois.gov/nursinghomesafety

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

HUNTLEY, Ill. (AP) — When Frank Kajikawa was 15, the official notices of removal appeared on the telephone poles in his town.

Kajikawa, an American-born citizen of Japanese heritage, lived with his parents and five sisters in a small farming community in the suburbs of Tacoma, Wash., an area with a significant Japanese-American community. His parents were first-generation Japanese immigrants who made their living working on a friends farm.

“Like everybody else, they came here in hopes of finding a better life,” Kajikawa said.

Now 84, Kajikawa was a high school freshman when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. While he and his family mourned the tragedy like other Americans, they also feared the repercussions that people of Japanese descent in the country would face, Kajikawa said.

Their fears were realized when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. The order authorized the Secretary of War and U.S. armed forces commanders to declare military areas in which any or all persons they deemed necessary could be excluded. Many Germans and Italians also were held in camps under the Alien Enemy Act.

Although the order did not name a particular ethnic group, it largely was used to evacuate about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the Western Defense Command area, which included states near the Pacific Coast such as California, Oregon and Washington.

“They figured if we were traitors, we could help Japan by sabotaging ships on the West Coast,” Kajikawa said.

After the removal notices went out, most people were given two weeks to pack up their belongings and report to an assembly center to await placement. Others who lived in places the government considered critical areas had only 48 hours. People who defied the order were thrown into jail.

Although he and his family could bring with them only what they could carry, Kajikawa said he knew of other people who were worse off. Shop owners with lucrative businesses had no choice but to abandon them. Because of time constraints, people who owned boats or other valuable property were forced to sell at rock-bottom prices.

“The Japanese living on the western coast suffered a great economic loss during this period,” Kajikawa said.

Kajikawa and his family were sent to a camp in Idaho called Minidoka after weeks of anxiety and uncertainty about their situation. The camp consisted of 44 blocks of barracks that could hold about 10,000 people. Although families were allowed to live together, Kajikawa said, family unity suffered overall because children and adults did not often mingle during the day. The presence of guards also was a daily reality for the inhabitants.

“I was green behind the ears; I didn’t know what was going on,” Kajikawa said. “It wasn’t until we arrived at the camp that I understood we were prisoners of war.”

Kajikawa said that people in the camp for the most part did not try to resist their situation despite harboring resentment over being deprived of their civil rights as citizens.

“It was wartime; the government threw the Constitution out of the window,” Kajikawa said. “The Japanese have a saying `shikata ga nai.’ It cannot be helped. I think people on the whole accepted what had happened to us. We were not exactly kicked around in there.”

The atmosphere of hostility toward Japanese-Americans at the time was so pervasive that even newspapers and celebrities openly made derogatory comments about them, Kajikawa said.

“I knew that we were in a very dire predicament because we looked like the enemy, but we were not the enemy. We were American citizens, too,” Kajikawa said.

After living in Minidoka for nearly a year and a half, Kajikawa headed off with one of his sisters to Salt Lake City, where he had a job lined up doing housework for a family while going back to high school.

The government previously had announced that people interned in the camps could relocate anywhere outside the Western Defense Command area as long as they could find a sponsor or work. The rest of Kajikawa’s family ended up finding jobs with churches and hospitals in Peoria.

Kajikawa eventually was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the 442nd Infantry Regiment, which was an Asian-American unit made up of mostly people of Japanese heritage. Although Kajikawa joined because he was sent a draft notice, other young Japanese Americans volunteered for service, causing a rift in family relationships.

“Some fathers threw their sons out of the house over it,” Kajikawa said. “They said: You’re fighting my country. How can you volunteer to join the American Army when they were the ones who put us in the camps?”

After two years in the Army in which he spent time guarding German prisoners in Italy, Kajikawa enrolled in college. He finally settled in the Chicago area near the rest of his family and worked in VA hospitals for nearly 31 years before retiring in 1994.

As he got older, Kajikawa said he begin to realize the need for his story to be told. Although there are volumes of books dedicated to World War II, Kajikawa said he felt that the history of Japanese internment camps was a rarely covered subject.

“This is a part of American history, and it should not be forgotten,” Kajikawa said. “As long as I’m alive, it will be told. We need to let young people know that what happened to us should not have happened to anybody under our Constitution.”

As part of his campaign to educate people about these internment camps, Kajikawa gives talks about his experiences growing up during the war and living in Minidoka. He already has presented his story at an AARP meeting but plans to ask the superintendent of the local school district and the director of the Huntley Area Public Library for permission to share his history with even more people.

“I may forgive my government for what it’s done to me, but I will never forget,” Kajikawa said. “I want to remind people that they should not let hysteria rule them. I hope that what’s happened to us will never happen to anyone else.”

In 1983 the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians issued its findings in “Personal Justice Denied,” which concluded that the incarceration of Japanese-Americans had not been justified by military necessity. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed H.R. 2991 issuing a formal apology to the 82,000 living survivors of the internment camps. He also granted each one $20,000 in monetary redress and allocated additional money toward educating the public about the camps.

“I know they’re embarrassed, but that should not stop them from telling our story,” Kajikawa said. “They should be proud that they are trying to right a wrong.”

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WordPress.com is one of the largest blog hosting services in the world and, while no online service is perfect, it has a pretty solid track record when it comes to outages, or rather lack of outages. That all ended yesterday, unfortunately, when the entire service went down for almost two hours taking with it 10.2 million blogs hosted on WordPr… (read more)

The International Olympics Committee’s abuse of intellectual property law continues to go to ridiculous lengths. Slashdot points out that apparently UVEX, makers of popular skiing gear such as goggles and helmets (I own a pair of their goggles, actually) had happily mentioned somewhere that gold medal winner Lindsey Vonn had worn some of their gear on their website… and the IOC sent them some sort of nastygram. Amusingly, UVEX responded in verse, with a blog post entitled Blonde we like wins Downhill (Last name rhymes with “Bonn”). Here’s a snippet:

There once was a lawyer from the IOC,
who called us to protect “intellectual property.”

“During the Olympics”, she said with a sneer
“your site can’t use an Olympian’s name even if they use your gear.”

“No pictures, no video, no blog posts can be used…”
Even if they are old? “No!”, she enthused.

While Olympians chase gold the IOC pursues green.
Cough up millions, or your logo cannot be seen.

I can’t see how such a claim could stand up in court. Accurately reporting that an Olympian wore your gear seems like it would fall under a perfectly legitimate fair use claim. But who has time to battle the IOC? In the meantime, did you know that Lindsey Vonn wore UVEX gear even though (*gasp*!) UVEX didn’t sponsor the Olympics?

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