Category: News

America’s obesity epidemic now poses an equal or greater threat to health-related quality of life than smoking, according to a new study.

Researchers say that as obesity in America has risen dramatically in recent years — and smoking rates have declined — the contribution of obesity to the burden of disease and shortening of life has increased while smoking’s role has decreased.

The study showed that from 1993 to 2008, the proportion of smokers among U.S. adults declined by 18.5% while the proportion of obese adults increased 85%.

Using information from nationwide annual health-related quality-of-life surveys conducted during the same time period, researchers calculated the Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) lost due to these two major health risk factors.

The results, published in the American Journal of Preventive Health, show that smoking-related QALYs lost remained relatively stable during this time period at 0.0438, or 16 days of healthy life lost per adult population.

Meanwhile, as the obesity epidemic increased the quality-of-life problems caused by obesity increased and accounted for 0.0464 QALYs lost.

Researchers say smoking had a bigger impact on deaths while obesity had a bigger effect on illness. Read more…

One of our New Year’s resolutions is to find more ways to use kitchen scraps, and with all the Cara Cara oranges, Kishu mandarins, and other citrus fruits we’ve been eating, we now have plenty of dried peels saved. Here are some of the ways we use them. Let us know if you have any tips, too.

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Being foreclosed on is stressful.  In today’s economy, banks are foreclosing on large numbers of homes every day.  It’s important to remember that you’re not alone.  More than that, the banks don’t like doing it.  If they (or you) can come up with a profitable (or loss-mitigating) alternative to foreclosure, they’ll jump at it.  But what you may think is a good alternative may not be the same as what they think.

Anytime you’re facing foreclosure, you should contact an attorney immediately.  There’s enough stress in your life without trying to handle the bank, and the law, alone.  If you can’t afford an attorney, there are programs out there to assist you.  If you can, or if you know someone who can pay for you, you can find an attorney dedicated to your interests, willing and able to represent you.

In Connecticut, the security instrument usually used to secure a loan is called a mortgage (or “mortgage deed”).  This mortgage is recorded in the land records of your town, unlike in many states, where the mortgage or alternative security instrument may be recorded at the county level.  Recording this document alerts others that your home is not owned only by you, but also by the bank – and that the bank has certain interests in it.  The mortgage spells out these rights, and allows the bank to take the home (foreclose) if the requirements of the loan are not met.

All foreclosures in Connecticut go through a judicial process.  This is not necessarily true in all states in which Penner Law Firm does business, but in Connecticut, there is no alternative process.  This is both a benefit and a burden.  It tends to slow the process down, as the banks are forced into overcrowded courts and face clients with attorneys able to delay the process further.  But it also means additional cost to you, in order to appropriately protect your interests.

The process in Connecticut can be carried out through either a strict foreclosure, or a decree of sale.  “[T]he determination of value is a major factor in the decision whether to allow a foreclosure by sale rather than a strict foreclosure.” Farmers & Mechanics Bank v. Arbucci, 24 Conn.App. 486, 487, 589 A.2d 14, cert. denied, 219 Conn. 907, 593 A.2d 133 (1991).  In the case of strict foreclosure, the process does not actually end in an immediate foreclosure auction or sale.  Rather, title to the property is transferred directly from you to the lender.  The court will give you a certain amount of time to make payments on the loan current, in order to protect your interest in the home.  If you fail to do so, the lender will (and must) record a certificate of foreclosure listing certain information.  If a decree of sale is used instead, the court will establish certain guidelines for holding a foreclosure sale.

Throughout this process, the borrower may usually pay off the loan and retain title to the property – right up until the process is completed in full.  This is also known as a borrowers equity of redemption.  There are also many opportunities a skilled attorney can take advantage of to delay the process.

Due to the fact that most lenders lose money in the foreclosure process, a lender is often open to alternative processes to avoid foreclosure.  Talk to an attorney immediately upon receiving notice of foreclosure to learn about short sales, deeds-in-lieu of foreclosures, and other alternatives.  In fact, do not wait until you receive notice.  The moment you start to fall behind on your mortgage, contact an attorney.  The earlier you start, the more you can be helped.  Attorneys’ fees can be more reasonable than you think.  More importantly, the earlier you contact an attorney, the more money they can save you in the long run.

Three makes a trend right?

• Angela Merkel almost dared traders to go short the euro, telling a newspaper that Greece would threaten to buckle the currency.
• ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet said today that interest rates will remain super-cheap.
• Nicolas Sarkozy said this past weekend that he wanted the government to take a more active role in currency manipulation (i.e. make the euro cheaper).

Gee, what gives? Maybe they all saw ugly December numbers — like the production data out of Germany — showing a return to recession. They’re freaked out about jobs going to low-cost United States.

Either that, or it’s just a total coinicidence that the three most influential players in the EU are all talking about this right now.

Your pick.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• German President Angela Merkel Just Dropkicked The Euro
• Uh-Oh: Now Germany Looks Like It’s Double-Dipping
• Thomas Friedman Tries To Give Short-Selling Advice To Jim Chanos

George Clooney is joining the list of stars — including Brad and Angie, Lance Armstrong, and Wyclef Jean — using their international starpower to help Haiti after a devastating earthquake rocked the impoverished nation on Tuesday.

George will be hosting a telethon for Haiti that is set to air on MTV and VH1 Jan. 22, the Up In The Air actor The Hollywood Reporter’s Roger Friedman Thursday. According to Friedman’s scoop, George has been in touch with celebrity pals — including Sting — who have agreed to participate in the fundraising event.

Nearly 500,000 Haitians are feared dead after the earthquake that struck just outside Port-au-Prince.

Mercedes is once again conjuring up thoughts of summer come early with two special editions available on the SL and SLK. The SL Night Edition is finished in matte black paint, and rests on 19-inch AMG five-spoke alloys in a two-tone gloss. The head and tail-lights are also given the dark treatment, rounding out the look. The SL also receives some interior touchups and has been draped in black nappa leather; silver accents in the cockpit and seats contrast nicely with the dark decor. The smaller SLK is treated to a graphite paint job and rolls on unique 18-inch five-triple-spoke wheels. Color-coded headlamps and silver-treated hood fins complete the exterior look of the Grand Edition, and as with its SL counterpart the interior is not neglected. On the inside, basalt grey nappa leather maintains the color theme and is counterbalanced by red topstitching on the seats and door armrests. The packages are available in Germany only and cost between €2,300 and €3,500 for the SLK Grand Edition and €3,700 and €5,200 for the SL Night Edition, depending on which iteration of the car is being modified.

Continue reading for more images.

Source: WCF

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When I first came to town, the big issue was forced busing under court order intended to integrate the schools.

Roberta Weintraub and Bobbi Fiedler on one side hollering about preserving neighborhood schools. Jackie Goldberg and Rita Walters on the other yelling about racial equity.

It was the start of “white flight” from the schools — and the city — that now, 30 years later, has become “middle class flight from the schools and the city.

We’ve spent billions and billions of our money to build new schools and fix old ones. We’ve ended forced busing and brought back neighborhood schools and pretty much ended year-round calendars.

Yet, most schools are racially impacted and outcomes in terms of test scores and dropout rates are abysmal and many parents are choosing to transport their kids to schools outside their neighborhoods in hopes of getting them a better education and keeping them safe.

We’ve gone through close to a dozen superintendents. We’ve tried school-based management and LEARN and gone back to top-down management. We’ve created mini-districts and dissolved them. We resisted independent charter schools and then embraced them as a means of breaking up the mammoth and dysfunctional district school by school.

And now we’re giving parents the rights to close down failing schools and rebuild them the way the want and opening the door to teachers, non-profits and everywhere else with an educational theory to start their own public schools.

Maybe the problem isn’t governance, as a friend of mine who’s closely followed the devolution of LAUSD has long argued. Maybe it’s a teaching and learning problem and somethiing more.

The something more was visible in Howard Blume’s story in the Times today about how LAUSD laid off thousands of teachers and other employees and still overspent its budget for salaries by an astonishing $200 million.

What’s even more incredible is that the army of bureaucrats in LAUSD don’t know how they did that and apparently didn’t want us to know since the internal audit was completed a month ago and probably wouldn’t have come out at all without the efforts of a good reporter.

Superintendent Ramon.Cortines offers little insight beyond “we’re cleaning it up.”

Inspector General Jerry Thornton is somewhat more helpful.

“The system is broken,” he said. “We really don’t have adequate position control and we don’t know
where our funding comes from for all these positions.

“There’s no suggestion of impropriety or fraud. We didn’t see people being paid who aren’t working or who aren’t there.”

There it is, the smoking gun. Incompetence is the problem and all the experiments, all the money haven’t fixed it.

That’s why parents rights, charters, anything that frees parents, teachers and principals from the reign of incompetence seems like a step in the right direction.

I spoke with a principal recently whose grade school test performance has soared from the mid-400s to over 800 in the last 10 years and heard how creating a shared vision and empowering teachers and supporting them was responsible for the improvement.

That’s the heart of the matter as far as I’m concerned. It’s what makes any enterprise successful: Shared beliefs, individual empowerment, strong leadership.

I call it democracy and I don’t see why those with power in LA are so afraid of it, so resistant to embrace what makes America what it is — or at least what it was.

The Doomsday Clock, a metaphoric measure of the threat posed by nuclear weapons, biotechnology, and climate change, has been moved back one minute, to six minutes before midnight, signaling a more “hopeful state of world affairs.”

The Bulletin of Atomic Sciences cited the increased discourse on climate change and further developments towards a nuclear weapons-free future as the cause for dialing back the clock.

It is 6 minutes to midnight. We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons. For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable. These unprecedented steps are signs of a growing political will to tackle the two gravest threats to civilization — the terror of nuclear weapons and runaway climate change.

This is the nineteenth time the clock has been changed since it was originally set at seven minutes to midnight in 1947. It has been as close to two minutes to midnight—in 1953, at the height of the Cold War—and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight, in 1991. [TurnBackTheClock.org]

Panasonic may be aggressively pushing their $21,000 3D camera for broadcasters and indie film types, but already, smaller players are applying the laws of cheap manufacturing to 3D cams.

By DXG (if you’ve never heard of them, we don’t blame you), this pistol-grip pocket cam shoots in dual-lens 3D. Its 3-inch display has been said to look “almost holographic,” plus it comes with an extra 7-inch display for watching 3D content (I believe the screens use glassesless parallax barrier tech).

The video itself is recorded to motion JPEG, which while an accepted standard in 2D, probably won’t be compatible with 3D systems into the future—plus there’s no word on resolution. But hey, 3D, just like Avatar! Look for the 3D DXG camera this June. [DVICE via OhGizmo!]

Right-wing firebrand Rush Limbaugh thinks the planet would be better with former New York Times climate reporter Andrew Revkin dead and Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm wants him to get something (anything) right. Being the target of these two flamethrowers, in addition to writing Page One stories for The Times from the Copenhagen climate summit, running the Dot Earth blog and writing books would wear anyone down. On Dec. 21, Revkin packed it in and left The Times, where he had been a staff writer since 1995. Not, mind you, to run and hide, but to begin the next phase of his career as a senior fellow at Pace University’s new interdiscplinary program for applied environmental studies. We caught up with Revkin to talk about Copenhagen and the future of the climate for our Cornerstone Conservations series with leading executives and thinkers in clean tech and green energy.

GER: What was the Copenhagen climate summit like to cover?

Andrew Revkin: I’m sure everyone over there had a different perspective based on their experience.  I was seeing some really bad signs early on; it was kind of like watching a truck you know is going too fast miss the intersection. There was just no way you were going to get any substantive breakthroughs coming out of something like that.

There was also the chaos factor. The manager of the treaty process admitted they had 45,000 people registered and they figured at any particular hour they’d only have 15,000 people in the hall. Also, having so many heads of state come, you’re superimposing all of those protocols and priorities over a process normally run by functionaries. Which led to some of the fun stuff towards the end.

GER: You’re referring to President Barack Obama barging in on a meeting between negotiators from China and Brazil, among other countries. Did that really happen?

AR: From what I understand, it really did happen There were some private consultations China had arranged with other countries and there was this pattern of China sending some low level functionaries to bilateral talks.

There were hazards here for the president here, since he committed so early on to showing up on the final day. What the outcome illustrated was that there were gambles there. The Obama administration did not have everything in control.

GER: What did you think of the outcome?

AR: The bigger accomplishment of this conference was the things that happened in the months leading up to it. A bunch of countries that had never come close to setting firm targets did so. Brazil, for example, just turned into law their reductions plan. I think we’ll look back 10-20 years from now and see the curve of emissions will have moved away from business as usual. It wouldn’t have happened without the conference.

No venture capital group is going to finance the first gigawatt carbon capture plant because that’s something only governments do.

GER: Did you get a new sense of hope from Copenhagen?

AR: I don’t think, in the end, that’s where you’re going to find it. The thing that will change our energy norms won’t come out of a diplomatic process so much as out of innovations in technology and social innovations. There’s those who still think the business world will still be that place. But from the stories that The Times and I have done on these things – there aren’t really the Bell Labs out there.

I just don’t see Copenhagen as being the game changer. Maybe we need a framework conference on technology change as much as we need a framework on climate change.We need new ways to get energy and the services it provides to people.

GER: Have you seen the discussion on climate shift, over the years, from the scientific to the economic aspects of combating climate change?

AR: Once Kyoto took effect, from 1997 until the mid 2000s, there was an expectation that there would be a grand and ever-growing market for carbon and technology. But with 190 countries – the money flows to the easiest things. My guess is where that’s going to end up is much more like the voluntary carbon market that we see now. I may be cynical but I don’t see the signs of progress toward that.

The whole philosophy, from early on was, let’s build a global scheme and drive the change. The IEA came out with a report that said until even if you get the carbon markets, it wouldn’t make a dent until 2025. You have to go direct at the basic R and D and the large-scale demonstration. No venture capital group is going to finance the first gigawatt carbon capture plant because that’s something only governments do.

GER: Do you think California’s venture capitalists can drive the change as they did for the Web in the 1990s?

AR: I interviewed Vinod Khosla when I was doing a piece on declining R and D (story here), and I quoted him saying that, in the end, the solar push will not save the climate. It just doesn’t come anywhere near matching the scale of supplanting coal that you would need to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

I have yet to see anyone prove to me that the emperor has any clothes and this has been part of the dynamic tension between me and Joseph Romm. His big thing is deployment of technology. Frankly, I just don’t see the solid case for that, looking at energy trends. It’s not like Moore’s Law – it’s getting harder and harder to push gains in photovoltaic cells.

As for the idea of a grand buildout, I see scant evidence that can happen even with the stimulus money. I’m still kind of in show-me mode. I saw [Energy Secretary] Steven Chu give a presentation and he said we’re up to the levels of R and D that had been the norm back in the oil crisis days, but what he didn’t say was that’s a one-time thing. If you talk to historians, you need a sustained priming of the pump.

GER: Why did you leave The Times?

AR: I’m now 53. You get to the point in your career where you say, ‘I’ve got a good 30-35 years left.’  I did a thought experiment – I got in a lot of trouble with Rush Limbaugh for doing public thought experiments – what if I do this for the rest of my career, will I look back and be happy. A lot of newspaper coverage isn’t going to change things if people’s attitudes are ingrained. Already as of 2007 I was fishing around for a possibility. It just all came together Pace University was very excited about what I was doing. The sense of the grind also is there.

GER: Can conventional media hold onto multimedia brands like you and New York Times scribes David Pogue and Andrew Ross Sorkin?

AR: That’s not really the way that I framed my thinking at all. I’m part of a family of driven people; my grandparents are driven people. They always instilled in us this drive. Its about efficacy. I just want to do things that matter and not just do things because I’m good at them. I’m going to keep writing for print, that’s part of my personal culture. Whether I keep blogging for The Times after the next month or so that’s not clear. We’re still discussing what the long term plan would be.

GER: Did you consider going to industry?

AR: In trying to figure out the next platform I explored everything from Google to Pace University. I had very low key conversastion with people I’ve known for a very long time who ended up at Google. But there wasn’t an offer on the table.

Interview conducted and condensed by Matthew Van Dusen.

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WooThemes, a maker of premium themes for WordPress, is moving its focus from just WordPres to other platforms with todays launch of ExpressionEngine themes.

With support for ExpressionEngine blogs, WooThemes is currently launching two paid themes, Coffee Break and Fresh News, and one free theme, Bueno. All three are compatible with ExpressionEngine 2.0, as well.

According to WooThemes Co-Founder, Adii Pienaar, the company is working over the next few months to port all of their most popular WordPress themes over to ExpressionEngine.

The Standard Package (Single Site License) costs US$90, while the Developer Package (Multi-site License) is priced at US$180 for the themes, much like the WordPress theme pricing.

In addition to the new ExpressionEngine themes, WooThemes also has Drupal, Joomla and Textpattern themes in various stages of development right now.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Bookshare (www.bookshare.org) is a project of Benetech, a non-profit technology company that looks for ways in which technology can benefit humanity. Bookshare is one of its biggest projects — and is currently the largest digital library of accessible books for people who are blind or have other print disabilities. But the collection is far from complete. Our members have a deep passion for reading. Given that less than 5% of the world’s books are available in accessible formats, the need for Bookshare is great. Through an amazing virtual system our community of volunteers helps bridge the gap, book by book.

This exciting internship involves a combination of crucial tasks with Bookshare’s Collection Development department which is responsible for growing our online library of accessible books for people with print disabilities. Responsibilities include:

• Running quality checks on books that have been scanned and submitted to the collection
• Proofreading high priority scanned books for the collection
• Assisting with the creation of a proofreading manual for partner organizations
• Running inventory checks on books ordered for processing

We are looking for people with the following qualities:

• Attention to detail
• Excellent written communication skills
• Ability to work independently
• A passion for reading, and an interest in working with a non-profit at the intersection of books, technology and disability service

ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded international oil and gas company, announced a project in northeast Texas on Wednesday to recover the equivalent of an additional 40 million barrels of oil, or enough to meet the annual energy needs of over one million Texas households.

Enhanced Online News: The project will reportedly extend the life of the Hawkins field, discovered in 1940, for an additional 25 years.

Construction is expected to begin in the first quarter 2010. At its peak, the ExxonMobil project will employ a construction workforce of about 300 people. Project start-up is anticipated in late 2011.

The Hawkins Field is located in Wood County, Texas, about 100 miles east of Dallas. Over the past 70 years, it has produced more than 800 million barrels of oil. The field is one of the largest ever discovered in the state and provided significant energy supplies to support America’s effort during World War II.

Read the whole thing here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Natural Gas Companies Fleeing Back To Oil After Exxon Dives Into Their Turf
• Exxon: Here’s Why We Just Spent $41 Billlion On Natural Gas
• Texas Goes After Exxon For Sabotaging Oil Wells

Youtube
Wednesday , January 13th, 2010

The underwear bomber’s Christmas Day attack has
prompted calls for the increased use of full-body scanners at airports
that would strip-search passengers down to their naked bodies.

So to protest the use of the so-called Nacktscanner (naked scanner),
members of the Pirate Party in Germany organized a
“fleshmob” of people who stripped down to their skivvies
last Sunday and converged on the Berlin-Tegel airport.

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America’s children are facing a health crisis. Few meet recommended dietary guidelines and many eat poorly and don’t exercise at all. In the last 20 years, the percentage of overweight children has tripled, resulting in earlier onset and increased prevalence of disease. In response, the USDA has established nutrition standards for its school meals programs and is now working to help increase physical activity and nutrition education in schools. Find out how your child’s school can get involved in the USDA’s Team Nutrition project. Graphic logo from: USDA Food and Nutrition Service