Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie took their children — Maddox, Pax, Zahara, and Shiloh — to a Broadway performance of Mary Poppins on Sunday.
The Golden Couple took their four oldest children to a matinee performance of the musical at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City yesterday afternoon. Brad and Angie’s 17-month-old twins, Knox and Vivienne, missed out on the musical.
The Brangelina Brat Pack has been spotted all over the Big Apple over the past few weeks as the 34-year-old actress finishes shooting scenes for her espionage thriller, Salt.
James Suroweicki’s interesting new column seescommunity rating — the new law that will require health insurers to cover all comers at the same price regardless of their health risk — as the downfall of the private health insurance industry. Kevin Drum agrees. I don’t.
Congress’s support for community rating and universal access doesn’t
fit well with its insistence that health-care reform must rely on
private insurance companies. After all, measuring risk, and setting
prices accordingly,
is the raison d’être of a health-insurance company….Congress is
effectively making private insurers unnecessary, yet continuing to
insist that we can’t do without them.
The truth is that we could do just fine without them: an insurance
system with community rating and universal access has no need of
private insurers.
OK, it’s true that community rating makes large-scale risk evaluation
— or underwriting — unnecessary, but the universal mandate to buy
health care quite obviously strengthens private insurers by adding
millions of subsidized customers. Even as health care reform makes these
companies “unnecessary” it’s also making them stronger. Here’s Kevin:
I agree [with James], and it’s one of the reasons that, warts and all, I support the
current healthcare reform legislation so strongly. My take is that
community rating at the national level can eventually lead to only two
outcomes: (a) the end of private health insurance completely1 or (b) the transformation of private insurers into regulated public utilities … It’s too bad we’ll have to wait so long for this to happen, but today’s
healthcare legislation puts it on the road to inevitability.
I’m not so sure. On the one hand, I similarly see this bill as first
step rather than a final edit of the health care system. On the other
hand, the private insurance industry is very clearly strengthened by
this health care bill. After all, the universal mandate gives them
millions of additional mandatory customers. The absence of any
guaranteed cost control provisions means that premiums aren’t going to
stop growing really really fast — even though the government will be
paying for much of the increase with subsidies to poorer families.
There is nothing in the Senate bill that guarantees a move away from
fee-for-service (although there are some limited efforts to find more
affordable means of providing care), which is the main driver of our
medical inflation.
One of the interesting things about the health care debate last year was
that the Right rallied against the bill on the grounds of radicalism
and socialism when in fact the bill’s principle weakness was its lack of
radicalism. The truly radical ideas where policy wonks on left and
right could get even close to holding hands — e.g.: moving away from employer coverage and
the soaring costs of fee-for-service toward a combination of health
savings accounts, public insurance and all-government coverage for the
poor, the old, and catastrophic care — is light-years away from where
Congress was willing to go.
A while back, I wrote that calling
socialism on this bill was like watching a construction company add a
fourth bedroom to your house and accusing them of arson. I still think that way. I support this
bill, this metaphorical room addition, but eventually we’re going to
have to revisit the fact that the home’s foundation remains flawed.
Both Time Warner Cable and DirecTV are jacking their prices up, passing along higher channel rates to the customer. My, what a nice reminder this is that you really don’t need to be paying for cable!
Yes, a late deal was struck between Fox and Time Warner Cable, but that deal involves Time Warner paying Fox more for the right to carry its stations. And guess who’s paying for those rates? You are, sucker.
Meanwhile, the Food Network and HGTV are currently being blacked out for Cablevision customers while a similar dispute is going on. It will probably be resolved the same way: with higher costs for consumers.
Oh, and did I mention that DirecTV is increasing both its costs for basic service as well as for DVRs?
Yes, it’s getting ugly out there, folks. Or more ugly, I should say. Networks are threatened by cable, so they want more money to run on cable. Meanwhile, cable networks are getting more and more viewers and clout, so they want more money too. And in the middle are cable and satellite companies, who have no plans of giving up any of their profits to these bitchy networks. So that leaves you, the customer, holding the bill.
Two large tombs have been discovered at the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara – one of which is the largest ever found at the site. The 26th Dynasty tombs, likely robbed during the Roman era, are nonetheless filled with important arefacts including coffins, skeletons, pottery and mummified eagles.
The tombs, discovered by an Egyptian archaeological mission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, are at the Ras El Gisr area of Saqqara, near the landmark’s entrance. Both tombs are cut into the hills of the region: the larger first tomb is hewn from limestone while the other is mud-brick.
The larger tomb is comprised of a rock-hewn hallway followed by several small chambers and corridors. During excavation the team discovered two dust-filled rooms which led to another hall decked with skeletons, coffins and pots. A further corridor ran down to a seven metre-deep burial shaft. A sealed room in the second tomb contained Saite pots and coffins.
Archaeologists have unearthed a 2500-year-old tomb in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, Egypt’s Culture Ministry announced on Monday.
The tomb is the largest and oldest yet discovered in Saqqara, the main cemetery for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, 30 kilometres south of modern Cairo, Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities said in a statement.
The discovery “shows that Saqqara still harbours secrets,” said chief Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass.
Two tombs dating back to 26th dynasty (500 B.C.) were found in Saqqara area, 30 km south of Cairo, said Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Secretary GeneralZahi Hawwas Monday.
The two tombs were built in stone, said Hawwas, adding one of them was the largest found in the archeological area of Saqqara.
The tomb was robbed in late Roman rule of Egypt, he said.
Ambos mausoleos, situados en la zona de Ras al Gesr, se encuentran enterrados y tienen grabados en varios de sus muros, según explica una nota del Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades (CSA) difundida hoy.
Una de las dos construcciones funerarias es la de mayores dimensiones hallada en la zona hasta el momento e incluye numerosos pasillos, habitaciones y salas, explicó Zahi Hawas, secretario general del CSA.
Esta tumba está precedida por dos grandes fachadas, una de piedra caliza y otra de ladrillo, según el comunicado.
Dos de sus habitaciones, que se encontraban llenas de material de construcción y de tierra, conducen a una sala en cuyo interior han sido hallados varios esqueletos y vasijas de cerámica.
En otra sala pequeña fue descubierto un pozo con una profundidad de siete metros.
En la parte norte de la tumba también han sido encontradas varias momias de halcones que se encuentran en un buen estado de conservación.
Though the tomb had been opened several times over the millennia, and apparently had been looted in the 5th Century AD, the complex still contains human remains, mummified hawks and shards of ancient pottery.
Last Thursday I visited the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) to view the progress of the construction of this important new museum for Egyptian antiquities.
The amazing thing about this building is how modern the design is, and its location next to the Giza plateau, with the pyramids in the background; the museum will be facing the light with an incredible view. The GEM will be a beautiful space in which visitors can experience the art and artifacts of ancient Egypt in the shadow of the pyramids.
Phase 1 of the construction was finished some time ago, and the recently completed Phase 2 includes the building of the conservation labs, energy center, and fire station. This museum now boasts perhaps the largest museum conservation labs anywhere in the world. There is nothing comparable to the size of the storage areas and the laboratories. The storage rooms have tall, movable shelves designed for secure storage and easy access of artifacts. Storage facilities will also have carefully regulated environmental controls with different sections for different types of material, for example organic or non-organic material, or low temperature storage.
The conservation labs contain state of the art equipment for the preservation and restoration of artifacts, to make this one of the best conservation labs in the world. The Conservation Center is built 10 meters below street level so that it will blend into the natural environment as well as improve security. We are planning now to move some objects chosen from the Cairo Museum to the new lab for conservation and restoration. This way, the objects will be ready to be installed in the museum when it is completed.
Karl Lorenz, professor of sociology and anthropology at Shippensburg University, is spending almost a year doing archaeological work in Cairo, thanks to a Fulbright Scholars Grant.
Seven faculty members have received Fulbright grants during the last 11 years, according to Robert Stephens, SU’s director of international studies and associate professor of management and marketing, and the Fulbright representative on campus. Some received Fulbright grants while working at other universities.
According to Lorenz, the nearly year-long project is the realization of a personal goal.
“The thing that made me want to tackle the study in the first place is (that) I’m an archaeologist and teach a class on Egypt,” Lorenz said by phone from Cairo.
He’s sharing the experience with his wife, Kathleen Cain, and teen-aged triplets. Cain is a professor of developmental psychology at Gettysburg College and is in Cairo on a Fulbright grant of her own, working on a project that involves Egyptian children.
It is a return trip for Lorenz, who last year accompanied his wife to Cairo. Lorenz, who is on sabbatical from SU, said that his research involves applying the same “pottery chronology study” he used during five years of research on Native American mound builders in the Southwest.
Exactly one month ago, UberTwitter pre-released their Beta-6 version. That’s something we don’t often see, especially with BlackBerry software. Beta already denotes a premature build, so a pre-released beta means the potential for even more bugs. No worries, though. UberTwitter Beta-6 is now officially released, so you only have to deal with the normal beta bugs. Details after the jump, though they closely resemble those of the pre-release.
Deutsche Bank: The severe snow storm that blanketed the East Coast with a significant amount of snow on Super Saturday, the Saturday before Christmas, led investors to believe that December retail sales would be crippled. However, the snow storm was widely advertised in the areas that were to be affected, allowing consumers to plan their shopping around the storm. Many shoppers showed up early on Saturday at stores, despite the threat of the oncoming storm as most areas on the East Coast are usually prepared for and accustomed to these typical winter storms; others purchased items online.
Weather Trends International noted that the holiday season total of 537 inches of snow was well below the 1,210 inches recorded last year. Further, a massive snow storm impacted much of the country during the weekend before Christmas last year, making for an easy compare. The snow storm caused much concern among investors, leading many to moderate their expectations for holiday sales this year, which we believe is a good thing for stocks.
However, to address procrastinating consumers concerns, some of our retailers, including Wal-Mart (and Sam’s Club), Target, Kohl’s, and Macy’s extended store hours after the storm had passed and in some cases kept select stores open for 24 hours the days leading up to Christmas. The last minute shoppers showed up in the days after the storm to finish their Christmas shopping and to make sure the Grinch didn’t steal Christmas. Though it is worth noting that some sales related to pent-up demand were likely forgone given the disruption of the snow storm, we don’t believe this will have a significant impact on the month, and will instead spread some sales into January.
Cleopatra and Rome is essentially a “life and times” of the last Ptolemid ruler of Egypt, inter-woven with an exploration of her long-term influence on the art, politics, and culture of her times and the ages that followed, with a look at the Cleopatra of tradition, legend, and literature.
The author, a professor of Classics at Yale, argues that the Egyptian queen’s conqueror, Octavian, and the Romans of his times consciously copied many political, cultural, and social practices that had characterized her reign, putting an “indelible mark” on imperial Rome.
I have some questions about the roads in rural africa.
As I have gathered, a big hindrance in the way of economic development is the inability to transport goods to your cities, ports, etc.
Africa is a BIG place so building asfalted roads would take alot of time.
What I wonder is how much effort is spent on other types of roads, like gravel roads. Is the government only fixating on paved roads or are they thinking about the alternatives also?
And how much does the rural populace themselves do? This seems to bee an imortant question aswell. What I can take from my limited experience of such maters here in Sweden; a country with little population density in the rural areas. The famers seem to create alot of their own infrastructure that they link to Swedens main roads.
Thanks as usual to Jane Akshar for providing us with her notes from the most recent Mummification Museum on her blog.
Forensic Egyptology – Janet Davey
Although in English this week, this lecture was one of those that was difficult to take notes from as it was very visual but I will do my best.
Firstly a plug for my course Certificate in Continuing Education in Egyptology at Manchester University. This is a totally online course and Janet was one of the early tutors on the course now we have Joyce Tyldesley and the course director is Rosalie David. I am in my second year now and not only is the course great but being friends with the many people that have been involved as students or as tutors is a privilege.
Janet talked about her ongoing project, child mummies. She is based in a working forensic laboratory and they did in fact do a mock inquest on one of the mummies. She is using modern medical techniques such as forensic odontology, entomology and sculpture to investigate the past. She is focussing on 2 methods Microscopy and Radiology.
Mummy research is very much a worldwide group activity
The age of a child can be estimated by the eruption of the teeth HOWEVER the comparison is done against tables that have been drawn up using modern children so you must always be aware there may be inaccuracies.
On the scalp investigations under an electron microscope show a thread of linen and one of cotton. IF this is ancient cotton and not contamination then this indicates a much earlier use of cotton.
Yahoo (YHOO) may be losing search market share and blowing money on a terrible ad campaign (It’s why-loo!?!), but there’s still plenty of reason to be optimistic about big purple’s chances in 2010.
That is, if you’re keen to follow cheerful JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan’s advice.
In his 2010 Internet Sector Outlook, Imran set a $21/share price target for Yahoo — up from today’s $17 price.
Here are his bulletpoints:
Contrary to many investors’ beliefs, Yahoo! top properties are outgrowing the industry growth
Overall macro growth in Display Advertising should help Yahoo!
Search revenue share losses are less pronounced that market share declines
Margin improvement should drive EPS growth
We estimate that the value of the public Asian assets and cash balance is approximately $8 per share. (This does not include the value of Taobaoor Alipay)
A group of men branded soldiers at a homecoming parade murderers and baby killers, a court has heard.
Slogans were chanted as the Second Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, marched through Luton, Bedfordshire.
People supporting troops in March last year were visibly upset by the protest, Luton Magistrates’ Court was told.
The seven men, from Luton, have denied using threatening, abusive or insulting words and behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress.
Those accused are Jalal Ahmed, 21, Yousaf Bashir, 29, Ibrahim Anderson, 32, Jubair Ahmed, 19, Ziaur Rahman, 32, Shajjadar Choudhury, 31, and Munim Abdul, 29.
Refused to stand
Prosecutor Avirup Chaudhuri said: "The procession took place to celebrate the return of the local army regiment from duties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"As they marched towards Upper George Street a group of protestors at an unofficial demonstration started to shout and chant."
Mr Chaudhuri said: "A number of spectators were clearly upset."
He added the case was brought against the men on the basis of what was said rather than on the words on placards they carried.
The offending words spoken by the seven men included: "British soldiers, murderers", "British solders, baby killers", "British solders go to hell" and "British solders, you will pay".
"It is contended all those slogans go beyond legitimate protests," the prosecutor said.
As copyright-watchers are well aware, recently there was an important case that went through the US court system over whether or not cable company Cablevision could provide a remote DVR service. Effectively, Cablevision was setting up a bank of TiVo-like devices at its own datacenter, and allowing users to record and playback shows as if they were recording them on a DVR settop box sitting under their television. The only real difference is where the box is (or, you might say, how long the wire is between the TV and the DVR). Since it’s already well established that time-shifting is perfectly legal it was difficult to see how anyone could make the argument that Cablevision’s setup was infringing. The only difference was the length of the wire. But, of course, the TV guys objected strenuously with bizarre analogies that didn’t make much sense.
The appeals court sided with Cablevision, saying that such a service doesn’t infringe, and the Supreme Court chose not to hear the appeal, so this ruling stands, at least in the Second Circuit, for the time being. But what was most telling about the actual appeals court ruling was how the judges had to contort themselves into all sorts of odd ways to make such a ruling make sense under the law. The conclusion clearly made sense. Copyright law wouldn’t make any sense at all if the length of a wire could change something from infringing to non-infringing. And yet, there were ways to read copyright law that would have found in favor of the networks. The issue is really twofold. First, technology advances faster than copyright law, and the conditions that were in place when the law was written aren’t the same as what happens later. Second, to deal with this our esteemed elected officials simply apply duct tape-like patches to copyright law, adding new definitions and categories, that didn’t exist before. But, then when new technologies come along, the question is what categories do the resulting outputs fall into, and the arguments are often about who gets to categorize the output to their benefit.
It appears that the US is not the only country going through this sort of debate. I’ve been alerted to a recent ruling in Singapore that actually comes to a different conclusion and finds infringing behavior on the part of the service provider. The story here is slightly different. In this case, the company is RecordTV — a separate service, rather than provided by the cable company itself. Also, it’s a web-based service, rather than a TV-based one. Users log in and can designate which shows (only from Singaporean channels that broadcast over-the-air) they want to record, and the service will record those shows and make them accessible to that user only for a limited amount of time. There is one
other complicating factor, in that the way RecordTV works has shifted over time. Initially it would record a show once and allow anyone who requested that recording to access the single file. But later it switched to keeping a separate recording of each show that someone requested, which seems massively inefficient in terms of storage.
What’s stunning again, however, as you read through the ruling is how conflicted the judge appears to be. There’s a ridiculous amount of “on the one hand, on the other hand, but on the other other hand”-type reasoning found throughout the ruling, which you can see below:
It’s also interesting to see that, despite this ruling being in Singapore, under Singaporean rule, the discussion spends a lot of time looking at the Cablevision case in the US (and some other US and UK cases as well).
So, why does the judge come to a different conclusion? Well, it almost feels like it depended on which eventual flip of the coin came up which way. The judge agrees with the basic ruling in Cablevision that it is not the service provider who is liable for direct infringement. As in the Cablevision case, it’s the end users who “pushes the button” and thus is actually responsible for the action. All good. But, the lawsuit also focused on a secondary level of infringement, and here the court found that RecordTV, while not liable for the actual recording, could be found liable of secondary infringement in the later transmission of the content.
This seems like a total headscratcher. So a user is responsible for recording the file, but not responsible for then accessing it (recognize that the user accessing the file is the same as the service provider transmitting it)? How does that make sense?
There is a second issue also, which is that the court had trouble with the fact that RecordTV meant to be a commercial enterprise in which it would make money by having ads. It used this issue as one of a few factors that removed a “fair dealing/fair use” defense by the company. Again, though, there’s a lot of “on the one hand, on the other hand” type debates in the ruling until the judge basically says that under the law, as it stands, the site is guilty of infringement. But even it seems really troubled by what this means from a practical perspective:
I leave open the possibility that such a DVR or VCR product or service, operating remotely or locally, digitally or via analog means, could amount to fair dealing under our Copyright Act only for the non-commercial facilitation of end-users’ time shifting. As we have seen earlier… it is inconsistent that the VCR is permitted to be sold at a price (in stores) but the [remote] DVR (through advertising revenue) is not, but until the occasion requires, I shall not make any pronouncements on this anomaly.
And there you are. Even the judge seems to recognize that it’s silly to find one service infringing and the other not, but basically says that with the way copyright law is set up, that’s the ruling that makes sense.
Finally, this should be worrisome on all sorts of levels for a variety of online services that seek to replicate perfectly legal analog equivalents. The fact that where a storage device is stored or how long a wire is could totally change the legality of a product should suggest that something is seriously wrong with copyright law.
Of course, as you can see from the Asus dual screen eReader pictured here, the concept of a dual screen eReader is nothing new. But I have to wonder how devices like this will compete or blend with more functional tablet computers. As for the 3D laptop, there isn’t any further detail. Hopefully we will learn more when CES kicks off. [Digitimes]
A few months ago, I walked into a Paradise Bakery & Café in Phoenix — a place known for its excellent food and free Wi-Fi. Like a lot of places with free Internet access, there were plenty of laptop users. What stood out to me was that all but one of the computers was either a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
It’s not just me looking through at the world with an Apple-tinged bias. The more places I go, the more I see people using Macs, or at least considering them. The Apple stores in Phoenix are still nearly elbow to elbow with people every time I visit, however the lone Microsoft store in Scottsdale was pretty empty the one time I visited.
There’s now data to back up these observations. Macsimum News reports that iMacs were the top-selling desktop for the month of October 2009 according to the NPD Group. After the proverbial jaw-dropping moment, there was quickly speculation as to why Macs finally outpaced PCs when it came to desktops. According to The Daily Gleaner, the NPD Group stated that PC sales were down as a result of the impending launch of Windows 7.
Or, it could also be indicative that Windows users are finally getting fed up.
“If Microsoft Windows is seen as a buggier, less-secure product that is slower, harder to use and ultimately raises costs for everybody, that opens up the market for Apple to gain that high-end segment. . . ,” Harvard Business School’s David Yoffie said in The Daily Gleaner. “If Windows 7 is not seen as more of an improvement (over Vista) then I think you’ll see more erosion at the high end.”
ComScore, a leading Web statistics provider, has joined with Flurry Analytics to provide a more complete picture on the who, what, when, where and how of our use of mobile media. Founded just over a year ago, Flurry has grown immensely and this move will only serve to boost its popularity.
Flurry announced the partnership on the heels of its merger with Pinch Media last month. The service boasts a nearly ubiquitous presence in the mobile market and will add a host of real-time data to comScore’s reports.
Sponsor
Flurry collects mobile application data from approximately two out of every three iPhone and Android devices. Each month, the company aggregates application usage data from over 1 billion end-user sessions across more than 50 million unique handsets from more than 200 countries. Over 10,000 developers have chosen to integrate Flurry Analytics within their applications.
That’s 9,700 developers more than the company started with just a year ago.
Using Flurry’s data, comScore will add “real-time consumption data, including frequency of use, length of use, user geographic location, new vs. repeat usage and Wi-Fi vs. carrier network usage” to its mobile application data.
Seesmic has acquired Ping.fm, a status update service that allows users to update posts on over 50 social networks through SMS, mobile apps, IM services and 3rd party apps that support the service. Seesmic plans to integrate Ping.fm into all of its applications in the near future. In addition, Seesmic’s users will be able to send updates to their favorite social networks through Ping.fm’s email, SMS and IM gateways. Ping.fm’s founders Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough will join Seesmic as full-time employees and continue to work on Ping.fm.
Sponsor
Neither Seesmic nor Ping.fm disclosed the terms of the acquisition. It’s worth noting, however, that both Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invested in Ping.fm in December 2008.
Seesmic’s founder Loic Le Meur notes that he hopes that this acquisition will allow the company to speed up “its vision of becoming your default application to stay in touch with your friends and constantly managing your online social presence.” Through Ping.fm, Seesmic’s users will soon be able to easily update their status on a wide variety of social networks like Ning, Yahoo Meme, Yammer and Status.net. Seesmic already offered built-in support for Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace.
According to Le Meur, Ping.fm currently has over 500,000 registered users, though the number of active users is likely far smaller. In total, Ping.fm posts about 200,000 updates per day. Seesmic’s own Twhirl has offered support for Ping.fm since early 2009.
Seesmic Wants to be a Lot More Than Just a Twitter Client
Given Seesmic’s vision, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the company is interested in broadening its scope beyond Twitter. The acquisition of Ping.fm gives Seesmic all the necessary infrastructure like SMS and IM gateways to execute this vision. Ping.fm offers it’s own URL shortener and gives users access to detailed statistics about how these links were used.
One of the most interesting aspects of the company’s recently announced native Windows client, for example, is that it includes support for a plugin architecture. This will allow developers to integrate support for virtually any social network into Seesmic. In the near future, Seesmic plans to expand this feature to all of its clients.
Rumor has it that the 
A few months ago, I walked into a 
Seesmic’s founder Loic Le Meur notes that he hopes that this acquisition will allow the company to speed up “its vision of becoming your default application to stay in touch with your friends and constantly managing your online social presence.” Through Ping.fm, Seesmic’s users will soon be able to easily update their status on a wide variety of 
