Category: News

Jakarta GlobeLocal Biofuel Output Dives In 2009 as CPO Price RisesJakarta GlobeTotal biofuel production was just 104100 kiloliters in 2009, a 96 percent fall from the 2.56 million kiloliters produced in the previous year, …

To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends, 

· Last week we mentioned the cost of a year at Stanford in 1955 as being $705, so if we take that and run it out to today’s cost of about $55,000, it means that the cost of attending Stanford has been climbing about 8% a year over the past 50 years. Stanford, by the way, is referred to as Stanfurd by people at Cal . For some reason, Cal students think this is hilarious.

• A large percentage of what we do is to help companies not doing too well,  but we also get to see many companies doing extraordinarily well.  If we look at Mountain West, Academy Mortgage, and New American Mortgage, all three are extremely profitable. Mountain West is traditional wholesale, Academy is traditional retail, and New American is a Call Center operation, but all three share a few things in common: (1) Owners who look at the big picture but pay attention to the slightest detail that might hurt profits, (2) tight control over costs, and (3)  very tightly run secondary marketing operations.  The last one means that they price in decent margins, and they realize those margins.  There is almost no leakage.  If they build in 125 bps profit on a loan, they get 125 bps.
• We got lots of nominations for movies about friendships. Brian’s Song was the runaway winner, with the following getting at least two votes. Midnight Cowboy and Shawshank each got eight votes.  Here they are, not listed in any particular order.

In Her Shoes is really about sisters, but the people who nominated it were right.  It’s about the friendship between two sisters.  We saw it, and it may be Cameron Diaz’s second best role (Something abut Mary will always be #1), with her atypically playing a loser.  

• Another excellent compliance consultant is Theresa Ballard .  You can reach her at [email protected].  We frequently run into people who have used her, and they speak highly of her.  
• Some famous people died this year, and is there ever a year in which famous people don’t die?  The names that come to mind are Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Walter Cronkite, and Farrah Fawcett.  Farah Fawcett’s poster was in every college boy’s dorm room at one time. Only a very few college students had Walter Cronkite posters in their dorm rooms.
• At midnight Thursday in Moscow , it was the 18^th anniversary of the last minutes of the Soviet Union .  Their Politburo, a phony Parliament,  had voted earlier in the month to dissolve the USSR , and at midnight, December 31, 1991, the Hammer and Sickle flag of the Soviet Union was flown over the Kremlin for the last time.  Gorbachev officially resigned, the flag was hauled down, and one of the most evil regimes in the history of man ceased to exist, relegated, as Ronald Reagan had once predicted, to the ashbin of history.
• Why isn’t this man smiling?
  
  Jamie Dimon was probably the most successful banker of the past several years, with JPMorgan Chase dodging most of the catastrophes that hit banks so hard. Our sense is that he’s very good at not chasing trends that generate great returns but which entail too much risk when you look at them carefully.  If we could make one suggestion, though, we’d like to see him choose either JP Morgan or Chase, but not have both in the name.
  There was a great Far Side cartoon about Lewis & Clark, with Clark ’s wife yapping at him to get the name to be Clark & Lewis.  So when thinking of bank names, it makes you wonder if William Fargo spent his whole life resenting Henry Wells, wishing they could have called their company Fargo Wells.

• A major Wall Street firm did projections for what the total losses would be over the full credit cycle. They were losses of $82 billion for JPMorgan Chase, $106 billion for the Bank of America, $117 billion for Wells Fargo, and $122 billion for Citigroup.  That’s a heckuva lot of red ink.
• It’s estimated that over 10 million borrowers owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.  Economists estimate that it would take over $800 billion to extinguish borrowers’ negative equity and give them a 95% loan-to-value ratio. Crazy, sad times for a lot of people.
• We always like reading about newer, entrepreneurial companies that validate our optimism in America ’s economy ability to constantly reinvent itself.   A perfect example that Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction theory of capitalism is still alive and well is Netflix, a company that didn’t exist 12 years ago. Movie theaters are closing or struggling everywhere, but Netflix is about to report $111 million in profits on $1.67 billion in revenue. They may not sell any popcorn, but they have 11 million customers who pay a subscription fee month after month.
• All the newspapers are filled with Top Ten lists, for the past year and the just completed decade.  Top books, top movies, and so on. If we had a Top Ten list for sporting events of the past decade, for us, it’s a hands-down no-brainer.  It was the Oakland A’s 20 game winning streak in 2002.  Think of how exciting even a 5 game win streak is, or 8 games or 10 games. But 20 games in a row?  It was a magical three weeks and a fan’s ultimate dream.
• We just saw about 30 seconds of TV show Dance Party.  It’s a kind of like Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, but this was people in their forties or fifties (and older) dressed up like when they were teenagers, dancing to music from the 1950’s.  It made us embarrassed for our entire generation.
• Our 2^nd favorite Pac-10 team is the Oregon Ducks, and did you know that their mascot is the only college mascot ever designed by Walt Disney? Not the company, but good old Walt himself.
• Speaking of mascot trivia, Stanford used to be the Indians, but they became the Cardinals (as in the bird) for a few years, then dropped the plural to become the Cardinal (as in the color). William s College has the Purple Cows, CalTech and Oregon State are the Beavers (always good for a laugh) and 32 schools are Cougars (also good for a laugh).  Cornell is the Big Red, Harvard is the Crimson, and Alabama is the Crimson Tide. Tulane is the Green Wave, Dartmouth is the Big Green, and North Texas is the Mean Green. Pacific University is the Boxers, although it’s hard to know if this means the dog or the underpants.  Finally, UC Irvine has the Anteaters and UC Santa Cruz has the Banana Slugs.  These dumb and dumber names came about because the University gave students the right to choose their own mascots when these schools opened in the 60’s.  What else would you expect from a bunch of 19 year olds sitting around drinking beer and smoking pot?  If you’re thinking of starting a college, do not let the students pick the mascot.
• And you know how people will refer to certain weird, disorienting things as being Kafkaesque?  In the Outback Bowl game Friday, Northwestern quarterback quarterback Mike Kafka completed a staggering 47-of-78 passes for 532 yards and five touchdowns.  For the opposing Auburn Tigers, it must have been downright Kafkaesque
• You know those pesky little penalty fees when you’re late on your credit card payments?  Those little fees generated $23 billion in revenue for card issuers last year.  Unfortunately, credit cards are a scale business, and they just don’t make sense for most community banks.
• We enjoyed The Ninth Wave, but we came across this one bit of writing, describing a college poker game: ”The pot was almost a thousand dollars now.  The room was quiet. Down the hall a door slammed… bare feet sounded on the corridor floor….. a shower hissed somewhere.”  Isn’t that awful writing?  There was some contest for bad writing a few years back where the winning story began with “It was a dark and rainy night.  Somewhere a dog barked.”

Let’s all have a great 2010.Garrett, Watts & Co.  Helping mortgage lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.Joe Garrett         ([email protected])Mike McAuley      ([email protected])Corky Watts         ([email protected])

Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal, Technology, Military, Specialty

The obvious glib commentary here would invoke Optimus Prime, or something. Instead, we’re going to digress momentarily and say that the best kind of transformer involves an LP record and an SL1200. Either way, DARPA has its own transforming going on. The Pentagon’s latest initiative has been dubbed Transformer, and it aims to make the prognostications of 1955 come true – flying cars and all. (Bonus points for DARPA if they can get them to fold up neatly into briefcases.)

Pushing military technology is the purpose; the primary goal is a vehicle capable of both driving on the road and flying. Such abilities would allow the vehicle to cross difficult terrain more efficiently, especially considering the vertical take off and landing capability the design brief calls for. Other bullet points include low cost and maximal military utility.

Flying cars have been developed before, all with some level of compromise. Even now, there’s the Moller SkyCar, and the Terrafugia Transition; both are nearing feasible production, albeit with large, six-figure price tags. If you’ve developed a car to fly over traffic jams like we all wish for, you’ve got less than a week to register with DARPA for the January 14th kickoff.

[Source: Inside Line | Image: Hanna-Barbera]

Report: Washington starting its own “Transformer” program originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some of our readers do not like these comparison videos, but from our search logs we can see there are many people looking for guidance on which handset to choose.

As can be seen from the video above, the HTC HD2 has a more natural interface for call handling than the iPhone 3GS, with HTC’s added features creating a device that is responsive to the user in a surprising but intuitive way, which is one of the pillars of HTC Sense UI.

Features which are particularly welcome are reducing the volume of the ring when you pick the phone up. Straighttalk Lite also works well and very intuitively. 

Smart Dialling is also a great feature that I am really surprised is not yet on the iPhone.  With it one never have to go into the address book, and the iPhone’s search feature is a poor replacement.

Other noted features which make the HTC HD2 superior for phone calls are the louder ring tones, ring tones that become even louder when the phone is in your pocket or bag (Pocket Mode) and the ability to easily make ring tones from the music on your phone.

And of course, of particular note is that there is no “App for that” for these features, unless you want to jailbreak your phone and get into a battle with Apple.

In this, case, and for phone calls, the HTC HD2 is clearly superior.

Mark-Jan Nederhof’s Gardiner font pages

The updated version is available from the above address

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Publishing Archaeology (Michael E. Smith)

I’ve published Michael’s post in full below. Do contact him from his blog at the above address if you are intersted in contributing.

Do you have something interesting to say about issues of publishing in archaeology? I worry that this blog is too heavily dependent upon my own idiosyncratic and limited perspectives and experiences. I’d be happy to publish guest posts if they fit the range of topics covered. Right now I am the only one with permission to post, but you can send me your text in an email (as a Word attachment is probably best).

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Www.PalArch.nl

André J. Veldmeijer. 2009. Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear. Technological Aspects. Part x. Leather Composite Sandals.
PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 6(9) (2009)
Abstract

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

After it’s outstanding million-copy sales at day one (qjnet/playstation-3/final-fantasy-xiii-sells-over-a-million-at-day-one.html) and the success that followed the rest of that week, the mad rush to get Final Fantasy XIII has now waned and the sales have begun to dip.

The mind shift is the switch from normal thinking to saying to yourself something like, “oh no!” or “I’m going to die!”

It’s the dividing line between regular thoughts and panicked thoughts.

It’s easy to recognize this shift in thinking, and once you do it well, it can help you to reduce and shorten your bouts of anxiety and panic.

This mind shift happens fast, and many times it happens so fast that you seem to fall into a panic state without even knowing how it happened.

That’s why you’ll often hear people say that they were doing something mundane when all of a sudden they became overwhelmed with panic.

It’s also why the phrase “It came out of the blue” gets thrown around so much by anxiety sufferers when trying to explain how their panic started.

I was first introduced to the idea of the mind shift by Dr. Claire Weekes .  She correctly pointed out that people tend to talk or think their way into panic without knowing it.

Dr. Weekes never spoke of a “mind shift” per se, but she hammered the idea that anxiety is set off by  phrases or thoughts that signal some kind of disaster.

So then, if you find yourself having anxiety symptoms or even if panic just flashes for no reason, keep your mind clear, listen to yourself.  If you think or say things like, “oh my God,” “get me out of here” or really anything that screams emergency in your mind just before the panic strikes, then you can tell yourself that this is anxiety at work.

You can use this recognition to calm yourself and think your way out of panic.  Usually when panic grips you the ability to think clearly gets tossed out the window.  But this is why it’s important for you to reel in the logical part of your brain as quickly as possible.

This happened to me the other night.  I was roaring down the interstate at a staggering 55 mph because I had noticed that I couldn’t take in a deep breath.  I guess I had slowed down without knowing it, and in what seemed like 2 seconds, figured I was going to die because I couldn’t catch my breath.

And just as I thought that I was about to veer off the road, I just as quickly thought of Dr. Weekes.  I thought about her because just before I began to panic, I thought, “oh no!”  Literally, those were the exact words that ran through my mind.

So I stopped this thought from repeating, and replaced it with information I knew to be true.  I thought, “I can breathe”, “I’m not dying”, “just anxiety”.  After about 2 to 3 minutes I was able to get it back together again.  The “oh no!” thought was my clue that anxiety was working its voodoo.

It happens.  You can not have a panic attack for a long time, or any anxiety for that matter, and have it come back occasionally for no reason.  But it’s important to not dwell on the fact that it comes back.  It’s more important to know that many times you can slow down anxiety so it doesn’t mount and get out of control.

I know that this probably sounds too simple to work,  but trust me on this one.  Knowing that you’re panicking, versus thinking that you’re dying, is not the same thing.  It’s not even the same sport.

At least when you know it’s panic or anxiety you can reason with yourself, and most critically, not feed your fears.

Goal: $200 Donations: $25

Talking about organ donation usually brings to mind donating your heart, kidneys, and other commonly discussed organs, but did you realize that by donating your brain, you could help advance research in many diseases, including Parkinson’s disease?

The Parkinson’s Disease Society has put out an appeal for people to donate their brains after death for research purposes. Although all brains are helpful, younger people with Parkinson’s are particularly encouraged to donate, so researchers may learn more about how the disease may come on early, as it did with actor Michael J. Fox.

The United Kingdom isn’t the only place that can use an increase in organ donations for research; other countries have the same problem of not having enough material with which to work.

Unfortunately, it’s often difficult enough to convince people to donate organs to help others live, it seems to be even more difficult to convince them to donate for research.

While it may seem odd to publish such an appeal, the Society said that it issued a similar one in early 2009 and they succeeded in gaining more than double the number of donors on the Parkinson’s Brain Donor Register.

What do you think? Would you consider such a donation once you no longer need your brain?

~~~

Image: Newscom.com

Post from: Blisstree

UK Appealing for Brain Donors