Category: News

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About this time every year, news outlets like ours wax nostalgic over the past year, compiling the highlights, lowlights, bloopers, and everything in between that happened in the last 365 days. Notes are compared, calendars dates are circled, lists are conjured. Understandably, other than leaving you with 100 of our greatest automotive photographs this year, we’d largely prefer to forget this year in automotive history altogether, soaked as it is with red ink and spattered with the blood of fallen brands.

So instead of rehashing the past, we’d like to hear what your automotive-themed New Year’s resolutions are for 2010. Do you plan on buying a new car? Finally taking up autocrossing? Mastering the art of the Scandanavian Flick? Take the fam on a road trip that follows the route in National Lampoon’s Vacation? Perhaps you have more modest goals – learning how change out your spark plugs, say, or finishing that Testors model kit gathering dust on that shelf in the basement. Maybe it’s just scraping out that crud that has mysteriously congealed in your cupholders or finally beating your nephew at Mario Kart. No matter how big or how small, we want to hear about your automotive plans for 2010. Drop us a line or two in Comments… and have a safe and happy New Year’s!

[Image: Warner Bros.]

AB Asks: What are your New Year’s automotive resolutions for 2010? originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Asus Eee Stick might be dead, folks. According to a Digitimes report, the company has slashed the development department down to only 20 team members from the original 100 and more cuts might be coming. Long story short, the department isn’t delivering the goods. I mean, have we ever seen a good use of the Eee Stick? It’s not like the Eee netbooks were ever that great at gaming.

The original idea of turning a PC into a Wii was solid, but Asus never really marketed the products outside of an novelty Eee accessory. Off-the-wall accessories like the Eee Stick rarely stick around anyway. Chances are if we don’t hear anything about the product next week at CES, the Eee Stick will be put out to the pasture to quietly fade away like the rumor suggests.

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Best Buy has a pretty good deal on Logitech’s G13 game controller at $50. It’s backordered for a couple weeks, but patience is a wondrous virtue.

Normally selling for around $80, the G13 features a built-in status LCD, 25 programmable keys and mini joystick, built-in memory for game profiles, and compatibility with PC and Mac.

Logitech – G13 Gamepad [Best Buy via dealspl.us]

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Soldiers in Iraq fly dozens of donated U.S. flags each day outside of Multinational
Division South’s headquarters here as part of the “Fly the Flag”
program…

I don’t usually love ready to grow garden seed kits – such as when companies sell 10 top seeds or such, because it’s more fun to choose your own favorite plants. However, Burpee has the most adorable seed kit right now, and it’s actually fun, and has some great plants included so it won me over.

I wish the kit had organic seeds, but otherwise the New Year’s Resolution Garden is a really fun idea and meant to inspire positive changes in nearly every area of one’s life.

The Resolution Garden is just $10 ($29.50 value) and contains seven easy-to-grow varieties for cultivating a 200 square foot kitchen garden. The punchline is that the New Year’s Resolution Garden provides solutions for all of your resolutions:

✓LOSE WEIGHT – Lettuce Heatwave

✓EXERCISE – Pole Bean Blue Lake

✓SAVE MONEY – Tomato Supersteak

✓REDUCE STRESS – Mixed Cutting Flowers

✓STEWARD OF THE ENVIRONMENT – Monarda Bergamo

✓SPEND TIME WITH FAMILY – Sun Forest Sunflowers

✓BETTER FOOD CHOICES – Carrot Burpee A#1

Neat. All of these are easy to grow plants so this pack is a good inexpensive gift idea for new gardeners or a good way to introduce kids to gardening. The only downside is I’m not sure which cut flowers are included. See a gallery below of what’s included in the New Year’s Resolution Garden.

[images via Burpee]

Post from: Blisstree

Grow A New Year’s Resolution Garden

The placebo effect occurs when you get better because you think you’re being given a certain drug. It’s in your head, but it’s good!

Researchers recently used the placebo effect to successfully treat psoriasis in some patients with one quarter to one half of their usual dose of steroid medication. The early study results were published online in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

The research team picked psoriasis for their first human experiments since it’s chronic, involves the immune system and gets worse with stress. Psoriasis (red, scaly patches of dead skin caused by the immune system’s overproduction of skin cells) causes pain and disability for four million Americans.

“Our study provides evidence that the placebo effect can make possible the treatment of psoriasis with an amount of drug that should be too small to work,” said Robert Ader, Ph.D., M.D.(hc), distinguished university professor in the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. However, Ader added that the placebo effect can’t help unconscious patients, or replace substances that the body can’t produce. For example, the placebo effect, wouldn’t work for treatment of Type l diabetes.

The encouraging early results show that new placebo technique may improve treatment for chronic diseases involving the immune system or mental state, such as chronic pain, asthma and multiple sclerosis.

According to the authors at the University of Rochester Medical Center, potential benefits of the placebo effect treatment (mixing active drug and placebo) include:

• Maximizing drug benefits
• Reducing side effects
• Increasing the number of patients who take their medicine
• Extending the use of drugs limited by addiction risk or toxicity
• Reduction in healthcare costs since less active ingredient is used

How do you feel about doctors using the placebo effect?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Should Docs Prescribe Placebo Effect?

As a bittersweet farewell to one of the most tumultuous years in automotive history, RideLust presents to you a re-cap of all the biggest industry events in 2009…and a few that slipped in under editorial bias.

Rick Wagoner, Bob Nardelli, and Alan Mulally spent weeks feigning humility and destitution in three piece Brooks Brothers suits in an attempt to wrangle a billion-dollar loan from an apparently benevolent Uncle Sam. Eventually, the government acquiesced and agreed to bail out both General Motors and Chrysler so as not to interrupt their steady production of poorly built, aesthetically unappealing vehicles.

Stunt double Ben Collins outed himself as Top Gear’s infamous masked driver, The Stig, potentially blowing the sweetest gig on planet Earth. Rather than kill him off, Top Gear attempted to counter the rumors by fingering (::snicker::) legendary racer Michael Schumacher as The Stig. Gearheads in America with an Internet connection that’s too slow to cope with downloading the weekly BBC broadcast still don’t give a rat’s ass.

There was some sort of F1 scandal involving Renault intentionally throwing the Singapore Gran Prix, but we were too immersed in our rally obsession to care. Just Google it or something.

As per their plan to cut costs and pretend to pay back taxpayers, GM made the logical decision to axe one of the only remaining brands that consumers still cared about, Pontiac. Shortly after the announcement, rumors began to circulate that the late John DeLorean’s company was interested in purchasing the rights to produce the Pontiac Solstice. The idea, much like the DMC-12, was short lived.

Drawing heavily from the blatantly phallic styling of the Ambiguously Gay Duo’s car, Porsche released it’s first 4-door sedan, the Panamera.

For what feels like the 10th year in a row, GM failed to launch the all-electric Chevy Volt. Reports indicate all 3 enthusiastic fans are coping well.

In an attempt to steal the allegedly sizable fan base the ever-elusive Volt has garnered, Nissan unveiled their equally unready-for-production EV, the Nissan LEAF. As quickly became the case with the Volt, no one really cares.

After muscling a disgraced Rick Wagoner from his position, GM CEO Fritz Henderson found himself on the receiving end of a nasty blow from karma when he was unexpectedly forced to resign after less than a year of service. Immediately following the announcement, his 20-something daughter Sarah Henderson took to Facebook, providing days of gossip fodder with her caps-locked, obscenity-filled defense of her father’s unremarkable stint with The General.

Although arguably destined to be a success in the long run, Cash For Clunkers proved treacherous to September car sales and dealer temperaments everywhere. In truly bureaucratic fashion, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dealer rebates were caught up in red tape for much longer than expected and, thanks to a gross ignorance of performance and quality, at least one 300ZX was clunked in favor of a 2010 Chrysler Sebring. It was a very dark time for the automotive community.

Citing the worsening global economy and the need for budget cutbacks, Toyota withdrew participation from F1, cruelly crushing the vain hope of fanboys everywhere that Toyota’s race-bred technology would eventually find its way into their excruciatingly boring production vehicles.

In a stark break with the Detroit Three’s storied business philosophy, Ford began producing cars that people actually enjoy driving. In one of the biggest upsets of the year, the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid all but completely usurped the Prius as the public’s favorite hybrid.

After failing to resolve some sort of vague disagreement with Penske, GM opted to wind down the Saturn brand, finally putting an end to what was basically a 19-year identity crisis.

Unseating Ford as the reigning king of the recall, Toyota found itself in hot water in the latter half of the year when a grisly accident exposed serious engineering flaws. After feebly attempting to pin the problem of sudden, accidental acceleration on loose floor mats and receiving a class action lawsuit by way of response, Toyota demonstrated a rare act of responsibility for their subpar product by recalling 3.8 million vehicles for faulty accelerators. Of course, although this was certainly a serious problem in urgent need of an immediate resolution, some might reasonably argue that anyone who purchased a Toyota sort of deserved it anyway.

Ford went to great lengths to keep its month-long negotiations with Geely a secret, ultimately culminating in the quiet sale of Volvo in mid-December. Fortunately, traditional Volvo enthusiasts renounced their brand loyalty when the company was purchased by Ford in 1999, so few tears were shed.

Finally, just a few days before Christmas GM delivered a heartfelt gift to Sweden, announcing that purchase negotiations with Koenigsegg had fallen through and Saab would be killed off. The failure trifecta is now complete.

In conclusion, on behalf of the staff that I no longer employ, I’d like to wish the RideLust readership a very Happy New Year. Thank you sincerely for reading and please keep up the snarling hate mail, my therapist loves the business.

Do women become bald? Yes, they do but the problem is not as severe as in men.

Female-pattern baldness, which affects about 50 percent of women, is characterized by thinning hair all over the head with moderate hair loss on the crown. Like male-pattern baldness, it follows the aging process and is inherited.

“Both men and women suffer from pattern balding. In men, it tends to be hereditary and involves the metabolism of male hormones (androgens) in the hair. Male hair loss can begin at age 20 or earlier. In women, pattern balding is also related to a hormonal mechanism, but usually doesn’t begin until after menopause,” explained the editors of “The Women’s Book of Home Remedies” published by Consumer Guide.

“In men, hair loss begins at the forehead or either side of the front and continues to the top of the head. In contrast, pattern balding in women is more diffuse, usually less extensive and starts on the back of the crown. Some women experience hair loss at times of hormonal fluctuation such as during pregnancy, menstruation, or during post-menopausal hormone therapy,” they added.

In male- and female-pattern baldness, the problem is due to dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, which is derived from androgen, a male hormone. Circulating through the bloodstream, androgen is converted to DHT by the enzyme 5-alpha reductase.

“Those with greater enzyme activity have more DHT binding to hair-follicle receptors. If flooded by DHT, the follicles sprout thinner and thinner hairs until nothing regrows, and the follicles eventually wither away,” explained Larry Hanover in FDA Consumer magazine.

If baldness is in your “blood”, is there a way out? What can be done about the problem? Do so-called hair growers work or are they just a waste of money? Find out in my next article. (Next: Quack cures for baldness.)

Even if you don’t have hair, you can still look good with Lumnaderm, a whitening cream that eliminates freckles, unsightly age spots, sun spots, blemishes and hyperpigmentation. When used as directed, Lumnaderm will balance uneven skin tones and illuminate your skin. For more information, visit http://www.lumnaderm.com.

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We’re pleased to announce that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown was the champion of the 2009 Yahoo! Mayoral Face-Off. The Mayor was playing on behalf of the Police Athletic League of Buffalo, which now receives a $15,000 donation. Congratulations to all.

Mayor Brown’s team, "Buffalo’s Best," earned the top seed in the playoffs with a record of 9-4-1, then it steamrolled "Pittsburgh Proud" in the finals. That’s a snapshot of the winning roster over on the right. The Mayor smartly avoided Bills. Well played, sir.

The fan-voting portion of the ’09 Face-Off was absolutely dominated by Green Bay, resulting in a $15,000 donation to the Children’s Museum of Green Bay.

Unfortunately, "Green Machine" finished dead-last in the mayoral league standings at 3-10-1. The City of Green Bay shall now be annexed by Buffalo and its citizens forced to dwell underground will have to settle for a real-life playoff run by the Packers, in lieu of an imaginary playoff run by Mayor Jim Schmitt.

—

Photo via Getty Images

It is Thursday and that means it’s time for another Palm Press. Palm Press is our weekly look at the world of Palm. The webOS App Catalog is closing in on 1,000 apps. While this falls a little short of the number of apps in the iPhone App Store, it took so long that it’s good to see this milestone approach. The lack of apps has been a major shortcoming of webOS, and while there is still a huge shortage of them it is good to see the number of apps steadily climb.

Palm is expected to update both the Pre and the Pixi next year, and it is looking like they will both be going to Verizon. The new models are being referred to as the Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus, showing a lack of imagination on someone’s part. Verizon has long contended they will be carrying a webOS device, and the CDMA network is the perfect fit for the existing handsets too. It will be interesting to see if Big Red puts up a big ad campaign for the Palm phones, as they did for the Droid.

Sales of the Pixi may not be as good as Palm was predicting, if a Chinese supplier is correct. Compal Communications has told Chinese news outlets that their fourth quarter shipments of Pixis to Palm have been reduced to 600,000 units from the forecast 800,000. That’s a healthy cut-back, so the Pixi must not be flying off the shelves.

Some recent research findings may sour your attitude toward the ubiquitous sweetener

The fructose manufacturing industry, when it hasn’t been coming up with new food items that it can incorporate its product into, has lately been downplaying the notion that fructose is not exactly the finest thing a human being can shovel into his or her body.

About the best defense they’ve come up with so far is that hey, fructose comes from fruit, after all, and it’s certainly no worse than any other form of sugar.

Well, it turns out that they are, as the phrase goes, dead wrong. First, a little factual background. Fructose indeed does occur naturally in fruit, but in small amounts, comprising just 5 to 10 percent of the weight of the fruit in question.

By contrast, commercial fructose, the version the industry produces, occurs precisely nowhere in nature. In fact, it is a synthesized form of corn syrup that is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose, which was concocted in a lab in 1971 and was immediately seized upon by packaged food companies because it was both cheaper and fully six times sweeter than the cane sugar you spoon into your coffee.

Next stop: Warning labels on yogurt and catsup?

And now, given the results of a study done by the University of California, we know it is more hazardous as well. The UC researchers found that persons placed on a controlled diet involving high levels of fructose wound up with newly produced fat cells around their hearts, livers and other vital organs, and with digestive abnormalities that are associated with early heart disease and diabetes.

As to whether fructose is any worse than alternative sugars, very simply: it is.

Fructose is not broken down during the digestive process the way other sugars are, and it slams into the liver like an express train, disrupting a number of metabolic processes, including those that determine whether the body burns fat or stores it. A control group in the study, fed glucose instead of fructose, was free of any negative effects.

Of course, we’ve known for years that fructose is a major dietary contributor to the current obesity epidemic, but now we’ve got serious evidence that it’s not just bad for your weight, but sets you on a path to possible heart disease and/or diabetes. One study does not make scientific fact, of course, and the UC research will have to be replicated, but if future results are the same, the FDA may have to take a hard look at fructose’s extensive and often excessive use by the processed food industry.

At the very least, it could become the trans fat of the 2010s. Don’t be surprised if, a few years down the road, Kellogg’s and Post and General Mills cereal boxes begin displaying such headline-sized claims as, “Now with 50% less fructose!!”

Sweet.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

Time to freak out about fructose?

Back in September, the Congressional Budget Office raised its estimate of how much money the feds would save if tort law were changed to reduce liability for doctors and hospitals.

Even the new, higher estimates don’t suggest that tort changes (such as capping noneconomic damages) would be a silver bullet for health costs; CBO says the changes would lower the nation’s health-care bill by about 0.5%, and reduce the feds’ burden by $54 billion over 10 years.

Still, a few lawmakers have asked CBO to elaborate on its new estimates. Earlier CBO letters answered questions from Sens. Rockefeller and Hatch. The latest response came earlier this week, in a letter to Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa who, NPR’s Shots blog notes, once headed Iowa’s association of trial lawyers.

This week’s letter touches on links between tort changes and several subjects, including:

Malpractice premiums. CBO cites several studies that found that, over the long run, premiums decline when changes to tort law lower medical liability.

Patient health. Does changing tort law to reduce medical liability lead to worse outcomes for patients? The evidence on that question is mixed, and the answer isn’t clear, CBO says.

Defensive medicine. Recent studies have solidified the evidence that tort changes can alter patterns of medical practice and “slightly reduce the use of health care,” CBO says. The authors don’t use the term “defensive medicine,” but that’s what they’re talking about.

Image: iStockphoto

OfficeMax Survey Uncovers How Consumers Really Feel About Past and Future Decades

With one decade concluding and another on the horizon, Americans are gearing up for 2010 by learning from the past and making plans for a better decade ahead.

According to a nationwide survey from OfficeMax® Incorporated (NYSE: OMX), a leader in office products and services, Americans have high hopes for the approaching decade with clear plans for their personal lives and heightened focus on family and personal wellbeing while embracing change and opportunity.

When referring to the 2010 decade, nearly four in ten (38%) Americans prefer to use the phrase “the twenty-tens” over other popular terms that include “the oh-tens” (16%), “the tens” (14%) and “the teens” (11%).

Moving forward, Americans predict that family, personal development and self-discovery will define the next ten years. Many believe they will spend more time with family (64%) and reconnect with old friends (42%).

Others plan to nurture themselves by grabbing the reins on their health (62%) and finally creating a work-life balance (38%). Over half (57%) of Americans believe the next decade will be about discovering what’s most important in life, while others think they’ll laugh more than ever before (47%).

As Americans consider the advancements and transformations they hope to achieve during the next decade, it’s fitting that nearly three in ten people think “Changes” by David Bowie (28%) is the song title that best represents their outlook on the approaching decade.

Others selected “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash (13%) to demonstrate their optimism while some shared their apprehension choosing “Help!” by the Beatles (16%) and “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (12%) to illustrate their future outlook.

Gearing up for the next decade, Americans plan to learn from the past and incorporate these lessons into the future. Demonstrating the importance of action in 2010, a large number of Americans selected the expressions – “action speaks louder than words” (73%) and “talk is cheap” (67%) – to illustrate what they learned over the past decade.

Nearly seven in ten people selected “knowledge is power” (69%) and “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” (67%) to describe their hopes for smarter, more calculated decisions in the future.

With the touch economic times, personal finances were also top-of-mind for most Americans, which is perhaps why phrases like “a penny saved is a penny earned” (66%) and “money makes the world go round” (50%) are what many will use as a springboard for the new decade.

“Everyone has the chance to start fresh in 2010 with a new decade ahead of them, and we’re excited to learn through this national survey that consumers are ready to take the express train to a brighter, more prosperous future,” said Bob Thacker, SVP of Marketing & Advertising for OfficeMax.

“At OfficeMax, we’re kicking off the year by celebrating positive achievements and helping people do their best work at home, the office, or on-the-go. It’s going to be a delightful decade as we focus more on what’s important and improve on the past ten years.”

About the Survey

The national survey of 1,000 consumers was conducted by Kelton Research in December 2009 using Random Digit Dialing of listed and unlisted phone numbers. Quotas were set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the total U.S. population ages 18 and over.

To view complete research data, questions, and graphics, please visit OfficeMax’s Media Room.

About OfficeMax

OfficeMax Incorporated (NYSE: OMX) is a leader in both business-to-business office products solutions and retail office equipment. The OfficeMax mission is simple. We help our customers do their best work.

The company provides office supplies and paper, in-store print and document services through OfficeMax ImPress®, technology products and solutions, and office furniture to consumers and to large, medium and small businesses.

OfficeMax customers are served by more than 30,000 associates through direct sales, catalogs, e-commerce and more than 1,000 stores.

For more information, visit OfficeMax.com.

About Kelton Research

Kelton Research is a full service market research consultancy with offices in Los Angeles and New York.

Kelton serves as a strategic partner to both Fortune 500 corporations and smaller companies, utilizing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to drive tactical recommendations for clients.

For more information about Kelton’s services, please call 888-8-KELTON or visit keltonresearch.com

Chances are that you are getting at least a few emails and IMs with links to YouTube videos every day. While watching these alone can be fun, Synchtube turns this into a far more social experience. Synchtube allows you to share and discuss a video in real time with up to four of your friends. The first person to enter the room controls the playback and also has the ability to change videos.

Sponsor

Features

To get started, just head over to Synchtube.com and copy and paste a link to a YouTube video into the box in the lower right corner. Then send out the link to the room to your friends and start the video once they have arrived.

In our tests, the service worked just as advertised. The chat room itself is basic, but it fulfills its purpose without getting in the way. The video sync sometimes lagged behind a bit by up to 4 seconds. This is definitely within an acceptable range, however.

Just like these commenters on Reddit, we would love to see a few additional features in the app, including the ability to create playlists, search for videos within the app or give control over the room to another user. The developers have promised to continue to work on this app and plan to add more advanced features in the near future.

Verdict

For now, if you are looking for an easy way to watch YouTube videos with your friends without having to install a desktop app like DeskTube, Synchtube is one of the easiest apps to use. The app has some limitations, but for the vast majority of users, the current version should work just fine and most of the current issues will surely be fixed in the near future.

Discuss

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year 2010. JFI was the first food blog event I ever participated after starting this blog. Now I’m a proud host of the same. Thank you very much Indira for giving me this opportunity.

JFI means Jhiva for Ingredients and every month a natural ingredient relating to India or Indian cuisine is featured. I couldn’t think of any ingredient other than Ragi (Finger Millet). I feel that this grain is being neglected by us (or at least by me) like many other healthy Indian food ingredients. We are generous enough to embrace ingredients from other parts of the world, not that its wrong, but I feel that we should do justice to cereals and grains grown in our home country too.

From this year onwards I’m going to take a resolution to try at least one Indian ingredient every month, which I have been neglecting all these days, starting with Ragi in Jan 2010. Are you with me on this? Thanks to the Internet and food blogs, I’m seeing a lot of ragi recipes off late. So it should not be a problem to prepare at least one healthy meal, if not more using whole ragi or ragi flour.

Send in your entries (old and new) and let us create a hub for ragi recipes to benefit everybody. Please note that the ragi flour we get in Indian grocery stores is devoid of the bran which is rich in fiber. So its not a whole grain flour, but this should not stop us from using this quite often, because something is better than nothing. If possible try to use the whole ragi by soaking and sprouting it.

Now for the rules of the event.