Category: News

The newly unveiled Kerry-Lieberman energy and climate bill has evoked strong emotions, with both supporters and opponents racing to issue statements explaining their positions.

The bill has the backing of the White House and of nuclear and alternative energy groups. For example, the Nuclear Energy Institute commended the proposed legislation for what it says are the provisions designed to strengthen the role that nuclear energy has in expanding domestic energy sources, reducing the emission of air pollutants and creating jobs.

Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) expressed a similar sentiment, but its representatives stated that they were still concerned about the bill’s ideas for oil savings.

"How effective is this or any bill in stemming our nation’s dangerous dependence on oil?" asked SAFE President and CEO Robbie Diamond, adding that the only way to end America’s dependence on oil is to sever the relationship between oil and transportation.

"The best way to do so is by utilizing electricity, which represents a stable, domestic, clean source of power that is generated from a diverse portfolio of fuels," he stated.

In a sign of how difficult this may be politically, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) said it cannot support the American Power Act because they believe it will raise the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel without significantly reducing the output of carbon dioxide. As such, it will act as a "hidden tax" on transportation, ATA said.

Simply adding carrots to your diet can help your eyes stay clear and focused. The bright orange vegetable provides plenty of beta-carotene to help your body use vitamin A. This vitamin helps with cell maintenance, inflammation and infection. Try adding carrots to your salad, sandwich or stir fry. Not only will it provide health benefits, but a burst of color, too!

The Obama administration’s newly passed healthcare reform bill could potentially cost $115 billion more than originally anticipated in its first 10 years of implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said last week.

Officials with the organization indicated that the modifications to the bill’s price tag are due to previously uncounted discretionary spending, including $34 billion for community health centers and $39 billion for Indian healthcare, The Associated Press (AP) reports. The revised figure also takes into account $10 billion to $20 billion in administrative costs for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Health and Human Services.

If Congress approves the discretionary spending in the bill, nearly all of the cost savings touted by the CBO in March would be eliminated.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the new analysis of the bill "provides ample cause for alarm."

"The American people wanted one thing above all from health care reform: lower costs, which Washington Democrats promised, but they did not deliver," he added. "These revelations widen the serious credibility gap President Obama is facing."

Meanwhile, Kenneth Baer, spokesman for the White House budget agency, said that the president would make sure to offset any additional discretionary spending with cuts to other domestic programs to keep costs stable.

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said last week that he is disappointed with the "false" information that President Obama is spreading about Arizona’s new immigration law.

While being interviewed by Fox News, McCain criticized a statement recently made by the president, and indicated that Obama is partially responsible for creating the cloud of negativity that is surrounding the state of Arizona, Politico.com reports.

"We all know what happens in Arizona when you don’t have ID," the president said earlier in the week. "Adios, amigos!"

McCain, who strongly supports the new law that grants authorities the right to question anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, told the news source that Obama’s comments were "outrageous."

"That is totally falsifying the law passed in Arizona, which calls for reasonable suspicion… as to whether [someone is] in the country illegally, and it specifically outlaws racial profiling," McCain said.

"I know it’s outrageous for the President of the United States to portray a law passed in a state and falsifying exactly what that law says, especially when it has to do with a racial issue which obviously ignites things," he added.

The senator also said that the Los Angeles City Council, which recently passed sanctions to bar the city from conducting business with Arizona, should redirect their frustration toward the Federal government, which has yet to effectively secure California’s borders.

Filed under: Morning Scoop

Each morning, we dish out a few links we love.

Are you a master of multitasking? Slow down — doing too many things is bad for your health, so here are some tips for taking it easy and reducing stress.

We all know that brides like to have it … Read more

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Japan’s looming population crisis combines lots of old people with not many workers. Many of the potential nurses to tend to said old people happen to be from neighboring Asian countries. Not so fast! What about robots?! More »










Robotics – Japan – Robot – Companies – History

Attention Android fans: LG’s first Android handset, the Ally is now available for pre-order from Verizon. It will hit stores May 20th. This phone can be yours for $99.99 with a new 2 year contract. Not a bad price at all.

Movie buffs may be interested to know that this phone comes with the ability to download a special Iron Man 2 app. The app features augmented reality and never before seen movie clips. Pretty neat.

Engadget had a really good review of the handset, so anyone interested, might want to check that out.  I believe it was posted today.  To pre-order the device click here!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Go Android!

Source: CNET

Might We Suggest…

• Droid Incredible Pre-Order: April 19th!
  The gang over at Phandroid just broke that the Droid (HTC) Incredible will be available for pre-order in just a few days! Over the last week or so there have been brief glimpses of the Incredible bein…

Are you fond of listening to Jazz? Or may be you have heard of “Bop Redux”, “I Remember You” or even “Steal Away”? These were some of the great music of the legendary Jazz pianist, Hank Jones.

However, the legend died only this Sunday, at the age of 91. Jones, the eldest and sole surviving brother of the three Jones boys of Pontiac died in a New York hospital after a short illness. Jones, who was admired by most his peers was truly a perfect pianist.

Hank Jones truly is a Legend. He has contributed to music a lot especially to Jazz. According to Hank, “when you listen to a pianist, each note should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.” We can see here that he gives meaning to music because he gives meaning to every note. He takes his music in to his heart thus he played all his compositions by heart. He has a unique style in playing as you can hear his music.

Let’s have short biography of Hank Jones. He was born on July 31, 1918 in Vicksburg, Miss., and he grew up in Pontiac, Michigan in a family rich with musical talent. His parents were the one that encouraged him and his brothers to play music. Do you know who Hank’s earliest influence is? It was pianist Fats Waller who played in the bouncy ragtime stride piano style. Jones used to listen to Fats Waller records on the radio before he left for school during high school. Jones also idolized Earl “Fatha” Hines and the great Teddy Wilson, spinning their sides as a teenager, emulating their styles. How ever, Jones’ greatest influence was the legendary Art Tatum. Hank was in awe of Tatum’s energy, creativity, and flawless technique.

Hank Jones was a very big influence in the music for many decades. He has also won only last year the Lifetime Achievement Grammy and had many nominated music through out the century.

No related posts.

An Afghan plane operated by Pamir Airways, vanished with its 44 passengers as it was somewhere in the Hindu Kush mountains, northern Afghanistan. The plane was on its way to Kabul, its capital. Myar Rasooli, the head of the Kabul airport, stated that there was no distress call. The missing plane is a 37-year old Soviet-made Antonov 24 twin turboprop that Pamir Airways had bought about three months ago. Zemari Bashary, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry had sought the help of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force (NATO ISAF) for a search and rescue mission.

There were six foreigners reported aboard the plane, one of which was an American and three were British nationals. The rest that were aboard including the crew were Afghans, said the Deputy Transportation Minister Raz Mohammad Alami.

Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman stated the US and international involvement where he said, “ISAF is providing some search and rescue (capability) now for that, in terms of helicopter support, rotary aircraft, as well as, early on, some help in identifying the location that it went down.”

The search for survivors was suspended after dark but is to resume Tuesday. The western military stated that it had dispatched a fixed-wing aircraft and two helicopters to the area but had to call off the search after darkness and fog closed in.

No related posts.

Google today has released on their developer site an updated chart showing the percentages of which flavor of Android are making up what is out in the wild on Android handsets.  This is for devs to be able to develop appropriately for the percentages of users out there.

One has to feel for the Android devs out there.  I know I do.  With this kind of fragmentation it is almost as bad as developing for the web with the many different browsers out there.  Notice in the chart below that most of Android users out there are still running 1.5 or 1.6.  An interesting fact considering that we are starting to see many apps come out that are 2.1 only.  Checkout the chart below to see the breakdown.

The breakdown is as follows:

Android Platform	Percent of Devices
Android 1.1	0.1%
Android 1.5	34.1%
Android 1.6	28.0%
Android 2.0	0.2%
Android 2.0.1	0.4%
Android 2.1	37.2%

Might We Suggest…

• Google adds Universal Search to Suggest to Mobile Platforms
  On their official blog, Google is announcing that they have rolled out Universal Search to their Suggest functionality for mobile platforms.  This feature has been enabled for users on the Google home…

For years, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has attended events for veterans and has often talked about his service in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.

Those ceremonies have occurred at the state Capitol, where Blumenthal is a constant attendee, and at events around the state. Blumenthal pointedly mentions that he served in the military and often praises the older veterans in the audience by noting that they had attained a higher rank than he had in his service. 

But a story in The New York Times is now raising questions about Blumenthal’s military record and his service during the Vietnam War.

In a detailed story, reporter Raymond Hernandez mentions that Blumenthal spoke to a group in Norwalk in March 2008 at a ceremony that praised both veterans and senior citizens.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Blumenthal was quoted as saying. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

The Times story then stated, “There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.”

Read the NYTimes.com story here.

Late last year, we wrote about the latest in an unfortunately long line of overreaching trademark lawsuits filed by Intel. Intel tends to act as if no one else can use the word Intel at all, leading it to get involved in legal disputes with companies in industries about as far away from Intel’s business as can be — including a travel agency and a maker of jeans. The dispute last year, was focused on the small producer of a newsletter about Latin America, which used the domain name LatinIntel.com. There was no way anyone would be confused by this site or think that it was somehow associated with Intel, even using my favorite “moron in a hurry” test.

So, we were happy, earlier this year, to get a report that Intel had dropped the lawsuit. Except… that turned out to not be exactly true. Intel got in touch quickly to insist that they had only dropped it because they planned to refile the lawsuit with much more detail to make their case. What Intel left out was the pretty serious skepticism the judge had expressed concerning their original filing:

It really is lacking in enough specificity which
would demonstrate that there was confusion or that you’re even
addressing the same markets. I mean, my understanding is that
there may be no customer overlap at all in connection with
this.

Intel, of course, shot back with the claim that this has nothing to do with likelihood of confusion, but it was really about dilution. Dilution is a more recent element of trademark law, which was not considered applicable for quite some time, but today has become more widely accepted, and keeps expanding in dangerous ways. It simply goes against the basic concept of trademark law — which is supposed to be about protecting consumers from buying a product that is falsely labeled. That’s why trademark law is limited to the areas where your trademark is actually being used in commerce. The judge’s point that there is no customer overlap should be all that matters here. At that point there is no trademark issue. At all.

But Intel has, in fact, now refiled the lawsuit, and tries to get around this claim by pointing out that both Intel and this newsletter have customers that are Fortune 500 companies. Seriously. And then it still claims there is customer confusion, despite the judge making it pretty clear that he didn’t believe there was any customer confusion at all:

I asked the spokesperson from Intel who had contacted us about the last post if he could offer an explanation of why it made sense for Intel to continue to pursue this lawsuit, and I got back the basic explanation for why dilution is considered trademark infringement — which didn’t answer the question I was asking. But it appears that Intel’s definition of dilution goes way beyond even the current (already troubling) concept of dilution in trademark law. The way Intel sets it up, no one can use the word “intel” even if it’s already a widely generic term in a totally different industry (as is the case with the newsletter). That makes no sense.

While I’m sure Intel’s lawyers would claim that they have to defend their trademark to avoid it being declared generic, that’s also a misrepresentation of trademark law. You do have to defend, but only in cases where there’s actual confusion or actual risk of dilution. Someone doing business with a term that is generic in that industry, which is about as far away from Intel’s industry as is possible, is not doing any harm, whatsoever, to Intel’s mark. Intel should have just dropped the case and left it alone.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Yikes. While the amounts are only tiny fractions of their revenues, major tech companies are spending quite a bit of money on lobbying. Hell, apparently “Google’s lobbying is half what it spends on advertising.” [BI] More »










Google – Searching – Search Engines – Lobbying – Business

“The Blumenthal Bombshell comes at the end of more than 2 months of deep, persistent research by Republican Linda McMahon’s Senate campaign,” Rennie writes. “It gave the explosive Norwalk video recording to The Times.”

Didn’t spend enough time on the internet today for a Daily Data Dump. But,

1) ResearchBlogCast #6, sans Kevin Zelnio.

2) Noah Millman is on Bloggingheads.tv.

Filed under: Happiness, Health, Healthy Eating, How to Be Happy

In Naomi Wolf’s 1991 controversial and international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, the author argued that “beauty” is a socially-constructed idea and standard that no woman can actually live up to.

I would like to posit an offshoot to this theory – … Read more

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

An interesting new report has been posted by Engadget giving a plethora of hints as to the drama leading up to last month’s Palm acquisition news courtesy of the recent SEC filing. HP is the only company named but anyone with a bit of imagination and familiarity with recent Palm history can likely surmise most of the other suitors.

Some of the highlights from the story include a rather abrupt timeframe leading up to the close of the deal. Likely spurred on by the upcoming grim earnings announcement and the dismal Verizon webOS launch, Palm commenced efforts in early February to investigate strategic partnerships, webOS licensing, and an outright sale of the company. By early March, the ironic 10-year anniversary of Palm’s hotly-anticipated IPO a decade ago, Palm’s board determined that a sale of the company was the most favorable move, despite CEO Jon Rubinstein’s proclamations otherwise as recently as less than a week prior to the HP acquisition.