Category: News

In a blog post this afternoon, Kevin Rennie writes about the curious triangle that has developed bteween Rob Simmons, Linda McMahon and former U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor.

O’Connor gave a $250 campaign contribution to Simmons but three weeks later, he endorsed McMahon.

“Mahon’s acceptance of the endorsement of a former law enforcement official suggests she thinks she still hasn’t provided convincing responses to persistent stories about the steroid-infested professional wrestling division of show business,” Rennie writes.

In the past, O’Connor has taken a hard-line on steroids. In 2007, he busted a state man and five others who were peddling the drugs on MySpace.

“The dangers associated with the improper use of steroids and human growth hormone are well documented,” O’Connor said in a press release trumpeting the charges.

 

And in 2006, O’Connor’s office brought a case against a California man who was charged with selling anabolic steroids on the internet.

“The illegal distribution of anabolic steroids and other pharmaceuticals on the Internet poses a grave and increasing public health risk, and the federal government will vigorously prosecute this offense,” O’Connor said at the time.

McMahon spokesman Ed Patru said the candidates was “very pleased to have Kevin O’Connor’s endorsement. 

As for the steroid issue, Patru said McMahon has addressed it. “Delegates understand that individuals in the entertainment industry don’t always make the best personal choices…That said, they’re comfortable with the policies Linda put in place at the WWE and convinced that her real world business experience and her ability to create jobs is what’s needed in Washington.”

  

It’s worth noting that O’Connor’s wife, Kathleen O’Connor, served with McMahon on the state board of education. Both were appointed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell in January, 2009. McMahon stepped down from the post earlier this spring.

 

Until this year, California homeowners have usually arranged to have their solar installations slightly undersized, because it didn’t pay to get stuck with excess “roll-over” kilowatt hours at the true-up period at the end of each year. But that will change in six months.

If voters are not tricked by Big Oil into repealing California’s AB32 climate bill; starting in 2011,  Californians will be paid for excess renewable power they make at the end of each year – or they can choose to roll-over extra kilowatt hours and use them later.

As part of meeting the renewable energy requirements to reduce greenhouse gases, the CPUC is scheduled to decide by January 2011 what exact amount will be paid – per kilowatt hour – to individual homeowners and businesses that produce an annual excess of solar or wind power for the grid.

To help policy makers with fine-tuning this decision – to a Goldilocks-like just-right fairness to both sides – Bernard Chabot, the French expert in Feed-in Tariff policy design is offering an advanced Feed-In Tariff workshop in San Francisco  on July 13th. Investors and other interested parties are welcome, and it is free. (more…)

Aunque por aquí no le hemos prestado demasiada atención, HTC Desire es uno de los terminales de esta primera mitad del año. Junto con Nexus One y Motorola Milestone forma el triplete de terminales que ha confirmado – en mi opinión – la tendencia hacia la nivelación de la experiencia de usuario de iPhone y otros fabricantes, aunque a costa de que media industria esté fabricando el mismo terminal móvil.

A quien más se parece HTC Desire es a Nexus One, con la ventaja / inconveniente del interfaz HTC Sense: un añadido interesante, pero que con el efecto añadido de mayores retrasos en las actualizaciones del sistema operativo. En España ya está disponible con Vodafone y con Orange.

Filed under: Etc., Tesla

It’s not all that often that a messy divorce pops up with a billionaire on one side and somebody who wants part of the money on the other, right? Actually, this occurs far too often and a divorce involving wealthy individuals can be downright messy and ultimately destructive to those involved. It appears as though the divorce between Tesla’s chief executive officer Elon Musk and soon-to-be ex-wife Justine Musk is playing out as one of those mega-litigious affairs, and the impact may be extend well beyond just the two involved.

In case you haven’t followed the Musk soap opera, here’s what’s going on. The divorce saga has been going on seemingly forever, as these things take lots of time. Justine Musk recently began blogging about the whole fiasco a couple of weeks ago on her Livejournal site. Justine is fighting the court battle to secure a few things that she feels entitled to. What does Justine want? Not much, just the house, alimony and child support, $6 million in cash, 10 percent of Elon’s stock in Tesla, 5 percent of his stock in SpaceX, and throw in a Tesla Roadster as well.

Naturally, Elon is none too thrilled about the demands and has decided to fight this one in court. As the battle ensues, Elon stands a chance of losing much more than just the things listed above. If the divorce goes awry, Tesla could lose the $465 million in government funding that could delay its initial public offering. How does the divorce play into government funding? A stipulation in the paperwork states that government funds will be withdrawn if Musk doesn’t hold enough stock in the company.

So is Justine being fair? Are her demands legit? As she said on her blog:

Is that what I deserve? I don’t know. Who exactly deserves that kind of wealth? But based on our life and history together, is that reasonable? I think so.

One more thing to think about: by not agreeing to a settlement, Elon Musk risks losing even more as the post-marital agreement could be ruled illegal or fraudulent, and California law would then grant 50 percent of all communal property to Justine.

[Source: Livejournal, Reuters, Inside Line]

Wife of Tesla CEO demands 10-percent of his company stock and a Roadster in divorce originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 17 May 2010 15:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I heard about this a little while back when they had just wrapped. The director was excited to have shot an episode (the season finale) on the 5D mk II and was answering questions about it, a bit inexpertly I think, no doubt to the chagrin of the DP who actually shot the episode. The episode is airing tonight at 8PM tonight on FOX — watch it with your friends and then say “oh yeah they shot that on… this!” And then you pull out your 5D mk II. It’ll be glorious… in a minor way.

The Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention program appears to be running out of steam. Its April progress report (.pdf) shows that it started just 37,021 new trial mortgage modifications — the fewest in a month since at least last June. In fact, its cancelled trials during the month far outweighed those new ones, with 162,467 122,467* failures in April, more than the total 115,173 cancelled through March. The number of permanent modifications rose, though slowly, by 68,291, now sitting at 295,348 active permanent modifications since the program was announced in March 2009. That’s still well short of its goal of helping several million homeowners avoid foreclosure.

New Trials and Permanents

First, here’s a chart showing its progress starting new trial modifications and bringing trials permanent:

It seems pretty clear that the program has run its course in terms of acquiring new applicants. Up to now it has offered about 1.5 million trials, of which about 20% have been made permanent. Considering the report says that only 1.7 million mortgages are eligible, it’s easy to see why new trials are slowing. Unless the program finds a way to widen its net, it won’t have many more borrowers left who can qualify to participate.

The program’s progress bringing these trials permanent continues to be slow. It’s approaching 300,000, but it’s taken over a year to get there.

Cancellations Ramp Up

Perhaps the most shocking results from this report are the number of cancellations for both trial and permanent modifications. This trend was noted last month for March’s data. A whopping 162,467 122,467* trial modifications were cancelled in April. This brought the number of failed trials up to 277,640. That’s nearly as many as have been made permanent. To put these cancellations into context, in the first four months of 2009, only 274,090 trials have been started — fewer than have been cancelled.

Additionally, 865 permanent modifications were cancelled in April. That might not sound like much, but it’s a 30% increase in the number of total cancelled permanents, to 3,663. These modified mortgages shouldn’t be experiencing problems so soon. Remember: they already had to go through a trial period. All of these permanent modifications are less than a year old. Indeed, there were fewer than 5,000 permanent modifications made through September. The fact that these borrowers are already running into problems is very worrying.

Modification Strategy

The April report contains an interesting correction. Servicers appear to be using term extension as a means for modifying mortgages more than we thought. In March, it said 38.9% of mortgages utilized that method, but in April that number jumped to 53.4%. The report notes that this is a correction. That’s a pretty big mistake. The correction also shows than more than half of loans are increasing their terms to lower the payments borrowers face.

Principal reduction is still rarely being used. In April the percentage rose by 1% to 28.6% of mortgage modifications including principal forbearance. Recent efforts by the Treasury indicated that principal reduction would be used more often as a method, but it still appears to be mostly disregarded by servicers.

Report Continues to Evolve

Finally, the program’s report continues to evolve. It now includes a page showing its call center volume and outreach measures — in case you were worried the Treasury and servicers weren’t working hard enough. This is likely an attempt to shift the focus of program evaluation from actual results to effort exerted.

Moreover, the main performance chart continues to change its format, as it has most months. For April it looks like this:

For March, it looked like this:

Perhaps at some point the Treasury will finally settle on a format it likes. Or perhaps not.

*Typo — sorry about that. The analysis remains the same.

Commenter Dave Walser makes a good point:

What Professor Brown and others fail to understand is any measures that would increase the pay of adjunct professors would only increase the imbalance in the job market. If it were easier for an English PhD to make a living, more of us would have gotten that degree rather than pursuing a different field. I know I would have rather spent my days in college reading and discussing quality (and usually interesting) literature rather than parsing the tax code. I suspect, even today, I’d rather spend my days discussing Hamlet than accelerated depreciation. In making my choice between English and accounting, I listened to the price signal sent by starting salaries and earning potential. Dilute that price signal and many more will opt for a career in the humanities — which makes sense since the humanities is more intrinsically interesting as a field.

In other words, fixing the misery would only distribute the misery to PhDs who couldn’t get jobs as adjuncts.

Materials: 2 Stefan chairs

Description: The chair is made from two Stefans, one cut in half and a 85mm slice of the other inserted into the middle of the first one. This makes the chair wider and more suitable for a rocking chair with arms. The front legs and rails of the second chair are used as the arms; the back legs of the second chair are used as the rockers. The resulting chair is comfortable and rocks surprisingly well.

~ Laura Mays, Connemara, Ireland

Taylor Swift is getting the comic book treatment: The bulked-up 18-year-old hunk joins his Twilight co-stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as the latest celeb having his life story reincarnated on the pages of a graphic novel from Bluewater Productions’ Fame Comics series.

Due in stores this August, Fame: Taylor Lautner is a 32-page comic that details Taylor’s rise from child stardom in the comedy Sharkboy & Lavagirl to status as an official teen heartthrob after he packed on the pounds to play Jacob Black in the The Twilight Saga. He studied martial arts and packed on 30 pounds of muscle for his role as the lovelorn werewolf.

“The Twilight series has become a pop culture phenomenon,” Darren Davis, president and founder of Bluewater Productions, said Monday. “It’s transformed previously unknown actors into superstars. It seems that the same thing is happening with Taylor Lautner. We at Bluewater are happy to bring Taylor’s story to his fans, and hope that his comic helps introduce these readers to the joys of graphic storytelling.”

Kimberly Sherman — who penned the biography comics for Pattinson and Stewart — also wrote the new Lautner comic. Warren Martineck, an artist for DC Comics’ WildStorm studio, provided the interior art, while JuanMar Studios drew the cover.

Spotted@

Washington D.C. — The Department of the Army said Monday that some of the 44,000 defective helmets it recalled last Thursday are being used right now in combat operations. The only way to determine who is wearing one, Army officials say, is for troops to check the helmet labels themselves.

“We don’t know where they are,” said Brigadier General Pete Fuller, who overseas equipment contracts for the Army. “So they could be on some soldiers’ head in either Iraq or Afghanistan. They could also be anywhere else in the world.” The Army has already received some returns from soldiers in Afghanistan.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon Fuller said the Army learned that in January of 2010 the Justice Department began an investigation into the advanced combat helmet made by ArmorSource. Testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland concluded the helmets did not meet Army ballistics standards and that certain parts of the helmet failed to protect against multiple rounds of ammunition. Brigadier General Fuller said the helmets failed a “worst case scenario” test, but nevertheless the helmets were not up to Army regulations.

Even though the helmets failed the tests by a small margin, “standards are absolute and if you don’t need them, you don’t need them,” Fuller said. “So that’s why we’re going to pull them.”

Officials said the recall applies to all the military services, not just Army. That’s because 24 thousand of the helmets were distributed across every service from a supply center in Philadelphia. According to the Army, once those helmets left Philadelphia, they were impossible to track.

The Army notified its soldiers of the recall last Thursday and it’s asking all service members to check their helmets by pulling back the cover and reading the label on the the left-hand side near the ear. Officials say if a soldier identifies the helmet as an ArmorSource advanced combat helmet he should stop wearing it immediately and exchange it. According to Brigadier General Fuller there are plenty of alternate helmets available to those serving in theater.

In a statement on its website the Ohio-based manufacturer, ArmorSource, claims it was given no warning of the recall before the Army made the news public in a press release last Friday. Part of the statement reads: “All Advanced Combat Helmets distributed to the field were accepted by the government after they passed independent, government-approved quality and lot testing. ArmorSource will cooperate fully with any governmental inquiries regarding its Advanced Combat Helmet and is seeking to obtain additional information to allow ArmorSource to address the government’s concerns.”

No injuries or deaths have been reported in association with the helmet, but Army officials want them off the battlefield as soon as possible.

Coincidentally the Army put a halt to the ArmorSource contract in November of 2008 after receiving reports that the green paint was peeling off the helmets.

by Peter Spiro

Justice Kennedy has returned to foreign sources in his Eighth Amendment jurisprudence with today’s decision in Graham v. Florida, striking down state statutes sentencing juveniles to life without parole for crimes other than homicide:

[A]s petitioner contends and respondent does not contest, the United States is the only Nation that imposes life without parole sentences on juvenile nonhomicide offenders. We also note, as petitioner and his amici emphasize, that Article 37(a) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every nation except the United States and Somalia, prohibits the imposition of “life imprisonment without possibility of release . . . for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age.” Brief for Petitioner 66; Brief for Amnesty International et al. as Amici Curiae 15–17. As we concluded in Roper with respect to the juvenile death penalty, “the United States now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against” life without parole for juvenile nonhomicide offenders.

Why here and not in the 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, which made not so much as a nod to international practice on the way to halting the death penalty as punishment for rape.  I had been telling my students that Louisiana evidenced a retreat in the wake of Roper’s storm, giving in to the rabblerousers across the street.  Do we now have a rule under which international practice is relevant only where the US all by itself?

Bearish money manager John Hussman is not tempted to nibble on stocks after the recent swoon.

He writes in his latest note:

My impression is that the market remains in a tenuous state in that we have not meaningfully cleared the overextended syndrome that has been with us in recent months. Even so, we’ll respond fractionally to any clearing that we do observe (with a growing responsiveness as we move through the year). We’re certainly not inclined to “buy the dip” to a material extent, and I continue to anticipate a second wave of credit difficulties in the months immediately ahead. But I also believe that if we can move through 2010 without a second “crisis-level” wave of credit strains, we’ll be more able to rely on post-1940 criteria in setting our investment positions, with less concern about the more hostile “post-crash” dataset.

Suffice it to say that we’re not about to lift a significant portion of our hedges early in a selloff provoked by fresh credit strains, but that I also don’t intend to specifically factor in concerns about a second-wave for an extended period if we don’t observe them.

He also slams ECB boss Jean-Claude Trichet’s claim that he’s not engaged in quantitative easing because debt purchases will be sterilized:

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has been quick to deny concerns that the move by the ECB will be inflationary, emphasizing that the intervention will be “sterilized” in order to prevent a major increase in the amount of euros outstanding. This is “totally different,” he argued last week, from the massive increase in monetary base that has occurred as the U.S. Federal Reserve has bought up over $1.25 trillion in debt obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A “sterilized intervention” is one where the euros created through the purchase of distressed Euro-area debt will also be absorbed by selling other assets from the ECB’s balance sheet, in order to take those euros back in.

In order to evaluate the arguments being made, it’s helpful to understand the balance sheet of a typical central bank. Whether in the U.S., Europe, or elsewhere, the basic structure is the same. On the asset side, the central bank has government debt that it has purchased over time. A small proportion of total assets might be held in “hard” assets such as gold, but primarily, the assets of each central bank has traditionally represented government debt – mostly of its own nation (or in the case of the ECB, euro-area governments). As a central bank purchases these securities, it creates an equal amount of liabilities, in the form of “monetary base” (currency and bank reserves).

Notice, for example, that the pieces of paper in your wallet have the words “Federal Reserve Note” inscribed at the top. Currency is a liability of the Federal Reserve, against which it has traditionally held assets such as Treasury securities, and prior to 1971, at least fractional backing in gold.

In this context, consider the ECB’s proposed 750 billion euro line of defense. Essentially the ECB is saying “We stand ready to buy as much as 750 billion euros of distressed Euro-area debt in order to defend the euro.” Simultaneously, despite the fact that Euro area countries are running large fiscal deficits, the worst being in Greece, Portugal and Spain, the ECB is saying “However, we intend to sterilize this intervention, which will ultimately require that we sell Euro-area debt into the market in order to absorb the euros we create.” The only way that both statements can be true is for the ECB to admit “Therefore, we are fundamentally promising to debase the quality of our balance sheet, by exchanging higher quality Euro-area debt with lower-quality debt of countries that are ultimately likely to default.”

Read his whole letter here.

Join the conversation about this story »

For those of you who don’t follow various internetty things, Foursquare is a location-sharing social media service where you can compete with others to be declared “mayor” of various locations. In an effort to make this actually have a point, Foursquare has teamed up with Starbucks to offer discounts to the Mayors of individual Starbucks locations.

The deal is $1 off a Frappuccino, any size, any flavor.

Says Mashable:

Tristan Walker, who heads up business development at Foursquare (Foursquare), tells us that the Starbucks special is a one-time mayor deal that runs through June 28, but he’s optimistic that Starbucks will continue to experiment with mayor rewards on an ongoing basis. “Starbucks is particularly innovative as it relates loyalty and social media,” Walker noted, “so we continue to be super excited to explore this intersection with them.”

Mayors of Starbucks Now Get Discounts Nationwide with Foursquare [Mashable]

Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig confirmed rumors that the company will be releasing a monster 3TB drive later this year. That’s a lot of disk space! But sorry XP users, the drive will require a 64-bit OS. More »

Sony has been putting various industry notables on the ModNation Racers Artist Spotlight, so it was only a matter of time before they unleashed Kevin Butler into the campaign. Check it out it’s Sony’s fictional VP

Jon of Tehkseven rounds up all of the big cellular news PhoneDog highlighted the week of May 9th – May 15th, 2010.  This week Jon talks about how our very own Aaron Baker’s got his hands on the Sprint Evo 4G at a NYC party.  As well as reminding everyone to take a look at Noah’s LG Ally unboxing video.  Enjoy those stories and much more in this episode of the Weekly Bone.

Dot 2 Finally it arrives ..™ “The Sequel” – a game of skill and survival! ..™ game play manifests itself in 3D. Fly through a world of amazing sound, stunning graphics and highly addictive game play. Be part of the experience. Become one of a few select individuals who can own them all. NOW WITH TWITTER AND FACEBOOK.

Price: Free

AndroidTapp.com Android Game Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• Cool, fun, challenging and addictive accelerometer game
• Great time time-waster

Cons

• Glitchy on sound and game play at times (even on Nexus One)

Features:

Dot 2 Android Game is a simple accelerometer game where you try to make the white dot last as long as possible by hitting the blue dots and dodging the red triangles. Blue dots increase the size of the white plus extend game play while the red triangle shrinks the white dot. Shrink too much and the game is over. Match your high score online with others, plus broadcast your Best Time on Facebook and Twitter.

Video: Dot 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp0Vk4Owd_g

Fun Factor & Addictive:

The game can be fun, challenging & addictive to see how long you can last and boast the best time via social networks.

Graphics:

Features a simple yet futuristic 3D playing field in which you tilt the white dot in.

Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:

The core of the game is based on the accelerometer and uses vibration for crashes into the red triangle along with cool background music (you cannot toggle the music so lower it with volume buttons).

Today’s young people are more involved than ever in environmental issues, and are making a huge difference. This week, we celebrate their efforts to protect tomorrow’s environment during the President’s Environmental Youth Award Ceremony in Washington, D.C.

What will define the environmental issues for today’s young people?