Category: News

For some reason this morning I thought of this stirring poem by Robert Browning: How They Brought the Good News From Ghent to Aix. It’s an old favorite. I read a lot of Robert Browning in high school, and if that surprises you, it is because you aren’t familiar with Robert Browning, who is way different from his wife. Both are great poets, but Elizabeth Barrett wrote sentimental sonnets (e.g., “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) and Robert wrote tough-nosed narratives poems, stories that were often thrilling and as often grotesque. Poetry for teenaged boys, you might say.

This is one of his most famous poems, and is simply about three men on a furious horseback ride. We never know what the good news is, or why it is so urgent. It doesn’t really matter. There is no historical incident that inspired it, Browning said. It’s just a poem that occurred to him. It’s not about the men and their good news. It’s about the ride, and the heroes are the horses.

The poem is incredible for the way it maintains the same urgent, desperate pace as the horses. It’s a master class on poetics. Enjoy the ride.

Filed under: Geneva Motor Show, Hatchback, Alfa Romeo

The Interwebs have discovered some additional snaps of the Geneva Motor Show-bound Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Although there’s a full-on rear shot, these are more about details and lighting elements than taking the entire car in. The new hatch won’t suffer from any lack of LED’s, with an array of four in the headlights and a basket full of them in the rear taillights and third brake light.

Fiat’s aims to sell around 100,000 units per year, and with five engine choices on offer at launch, the company is doing its best not to leave any potential customer out. If we’re lucky, that pool of potential customers will include Americans that aren’t ex-pats… Have a look at what’s coming in the gallery of high-res images below.

[Source: Blog Motori (translated)]

More pics of the Alfa Romeo Giulietta appear originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although bearish for the U.S. economy, Nourel Roubini can’t get enough of Latin America. To wit, he recently upgraded his growth outlook for Latin America in 2010 from 3.3 to 3.8.

The economist explained this upgrade in an interview with the Americas Society:

AS: What is behind this increasingly positive outlook for Latin America?

Roubini: There are two things. One is that global economic and financial conditions are improving. There is a recovery of growth even if it’s going to be anemic. Commodity prices have been rising. Financial conditions remain easy. Capital is flowing back to emerging markets. So that is the global outlook.

And two, these countries have shown their own resilience. Their economic policies have been sound and they’ve been able to conduct countercyclical policies. They’ve not experienced a financial crisis in these episodes. Their overall fundamentals are sound, so the combination of maintaining sound fundamentals and right economic policies with improvement in the global economic outlook implies a recovery.

The key word in Roubini’s answer is “anemic.” Even anemic global recovery will continue to feed stable emerging economies; whereas it will fail to sustain developed economies like the U.S.

Read the full interview here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Brazil Could Become The Biggest Oil Producer in Latin America
• IMF: Rising Asset Correlations Prove Roubini’s Dollar Carry Trade Warning
• Roubini: 10 Reasons The Recovery Will Be U-Shaped

Dailymotion, the Paris-based video sharing portal that is extremely popular in Europe, just launched its first set of iPhone applications. Dailymotion launched two apps: a free, ad-supported version (iTunes link), and a paid version for $5.99 (iTunes link) that does not feature any ads. The apps allow iPhone users to play videos from Dailymotion’s catalog of roughly 12 million videos. Dailymotion users can also use the apps to upload videos directly to the service.

Sponsor

Until now, the only way to access Dailymotion from the iPhone was through a mobile-optimized web interface. Given YouTube’s position as a default app on the iPhone, this put Dailymotion at a significant disadvantage.

In terms of content, Dailymotion can’t really compete with YouTube, where users now upload more than 24 hours of video per minute, but the app can easily compete with those from other streaming video services.

One feature of the app we especially like is how easy it is to browse through different categories. This is also where Dailymotion’s international focus shines through, as the app also makes it very straightforward to restrict searches to popular videos in a specific country.

Discuss

Content: Divinity II Demo
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Add Divinity II Demo to your Xbox 360 download queue

Children’s diet quality has declined to shocking levels, directly fueling the obesity epidemic. There are, of course, many forces affecting the eating habits of children today, such as the widespread availability of junk food, an under-funded school lunch program, and busy, stressed families. However, TV advertising to children has undoubtedly played a major role. Saturday morning children’s shows have seemingly become little more than a continuous food commercial, with beloved, iconic cartoon figures like SpongeBob peddling junk foods during programming as well as ads.

In response to the threat of governmental regulation and legal action, major food companies like Kellogg, General Mills, ConAgra and PepsiCo banded together in 2006 to create a voluntary advertising code of conduct. Called the “Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative,” this policy aimed to “change the landscape of child-directed advertising” by encouraging “Better-for-You” foods.

After three years of operation, has this voluntary program worked? Are food ads aimed at children now promoting healthful products? The results of a study just released by the advocacy group Children Now suggest not.

The report systematically evaluated ads on children’s programming in 2005, 2007 and 2009. They found that, despite perfect compliance among participating companies, the quality of advertised foods remained atrocious. Indeed, it would require 10 hours of viewing children’s TV shows to see one ad for a healthy product. During that time, a child would see 55 ads for products with the lowest nutritional quality, such as Lucky Charms, Froot Loops and Fruity Pebbles breakfast cereals. So it would seem that the “Better-for-You” program isn’t actually Good for You, especially if you’re a kid.

As I’ve previously argued, these voluntary industry programs better serve the interests of private profit than public health. The food industry cannot fairly regulate advertising to children any more than the wolf can guard the henhouse.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association have considered advertising to young children inherently unethical, because they lack the intellectual and psychological maturity to understand that the purpose of advertisement is to manipulate behavior.

So it’s time to take back control of the airwaves aimed at our children. It’s time to ban ALL advertising to young children, starting with food ads.

Article Tags: Copenhagen Conference, Piers Corbyn

On with the fight for accountable evidence-based science & policy.

This WeatherAction News No101 – as George Orwell would be pleased to note – carries news of the worst fears of the Global Warmers coming to pass. Their CO2 driven Global Warming theory is exposed as failed science based on fraud and their call for a world Climate Treaty is mission failed as Viscount Monckton spells out: Parturient montes: nascetur ridiculus mus.

Carbon trading & all CO2 reduction schemes must be stopped.

Despite the Copenhagen frozen flop the monstrosity of Carbon Trading continues to expand and the intention of most world leaders is to keep it that way. Carbon trading is a new bubble of false value whereby giant multi-nationals move jobs around the world to increase exploitation and get paid by taxpayers of the world to do it!

Click source link to download FULL report from Piers Corbyn

Source: weatheraction.com

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Late last month we heard some bad news about insecticides being linked to autoimmune disorders, and now some far worse news. Insecticide exposure earlier this month resulted in the death of a 10 month old baby and both the baby’s mother, 25-year-old Elizabeth Whitfield, and her 2-year-old son, Kenneth, were hospitalized with severe respiratory distress, also due to insecticide exposure.

Investigators on the case noted that “Whitfield and her children had only lived in the home a short time and she was trying to deal with a serious insect problem.” About half a dozen used insect foggers were found in the home and the contamination was so severe that a hazardous materials team was called out to help get rid of the foggers.

Now hopefully, you’re never in a situation where you use many foggers over a short period of time, but this is an excellent reminder that insecticides are meant to do two thing well; poison and kill. No matter how careful you are with toxic household chemicals, you can’t be safe enough. When you bring deadly chemicals into your home, they leave a trace. Even if you clean. In fact, one report shows that most US kitchen floors have some insecticide residue on them including traces of organochlorine insecticides, such as chlordane, heptachlor and DDT. All of the former mentioned insecticides were withdrawn from the market or banned in the 1970s and 1980s, so time isn’t even on your side.

According to that same report above, about 78 million U.S. households, or 74%, use pesticides in their homes annually. The exposure risks to your family are very real and dangerious. Why use harmful pesticides where your family lives? You don’t have to.

Instead of pesticides, insecticides, and other harmful chemicals you can…

• Use natural bug fighting methods and keep yourself and your kids safe from insecticides.
• Learn 10 ways to get toxins out of your home.
• Avoid unnatural fragrances.
• Use earth and people friendly store bought cleaners or make your own homemade safe cleaners.
• If you do use toxic insecticides use them sparingly, and always vacate your home for a substantial amount of time after use.

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

Baby death due to insecticides

As MobileCrunch reported back in August, three of Japan’s eight top cell phone makers, namely NEC, Casio and Hitachi are going to merge their cell phone businesses next year. Under the agreement, NEC plans to integrate its handset division into a tie-up that already existed between Hitachi and Casio starting April 2010 (the begin of the new fiscal year under the Japanese business calendar).

In the meantime, the companies involved decided on a name for the new venture: NEC Casio Mobile. The company’s capitalization stands at a relatively modest $55 million, with NEC holding a 71% stake, Casio 20% and Hitachi 9%. And as I speculated in my previous article, that new company plans to enter the global market in a (relatively) aggressive way.

NEC Casio Mobile plans to ship a total of five million handsets in markets outside Japan, up more than 200% from the numbers for fiscal 2008 (handset sales of NEC, Casio and Hitachi combined). By the end of 2011, the new company wants to sell handsets, including “smartphones”, in North America. NEC Casio will also enter the Mexican and Australian markets by that time.

In fiscal 2008, the three companies involved in the new venture shipped a combined 8.9 million cell phones, 1.5 million of which found their way outside Japan. NEC Casio follows both Sharp and Panasonic in their plans to bring made-in-Japan cell phones abroad.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

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

In the third quarter of Sunday night’s game between Minnesota and Carolina, Brett Favre(notes) got into a "heated discussion" (Favre’s words) with Vikings head coach Brad Childress. The subject of the discussion was Childress’ attempt to bench his quarterback.

After briefly considering the recommendation, Favre denied the request. These were his postgame comments:

"There was a little heated discussion, I guess you would call it. We were up 7-6 at the time and it’s no secret I was getting hit a little bit." … "I think everyone in the building was like, ‘They’re not moving the ball, they’re not getting points.’ And so Brad wanted to go in a different direction and I wanted to stay in the game. You know, we were up 7-6. Yeah, it’s not 70-6, but we’re up 7-6. I said, ‘I’m staying in the game. I’m playing.’" … "We talked it out."

Minnesota eventually lost, 26-7. Favre’s statements suggest that if he’d been benched, it would have been for performance issues, not for his own protection. There’s really no obvious reason for the Vikings to rest key players right now. Minnesota clinched a division title earlier in the day when Green Bay lost, but the team has not yet locked up a playoff bye and they’re still in the race for homefield advantage in the NFC.

Did Childress actually believe that Tarvaris Jackson(notes) gave the Vikings a better chance to hold a one-point lead? We’ll never know. Childress wasn’t particularly forthcoming with the press following the game, unlike his quarterback.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Sunday night was actually the second time this season that Childress has attempted to lift Favre. The coach apparently wanted to pull Favre against Detroit in Week 10, too, but he was rebuffed. These reports raise legitimate questions about who, exactly, is in charge of the Vikings at the moment.

We know who was in charge of them on Sunday, of course: Panthers defensive end Julius Peppers(notes). Carolina pressured Favre endlessly, sacking him four times. Childress succeeded in removing at least one of his players from the game when he benched tackle Bryant McKinnie(notes) in the fourth quarter. McKinnie had simply been punished by Peppers. 

The Vikings aren’t really peaking at the right time, but they travel to Chicago next Monday. The Bears are going to make everything OK, at least for a week.

• DeAngelo Williams(notes) exited Carolina’s win in the first half due to a left ankle injury. In his absence, Jonathan Stewart(notes) was an absolute terror, rushing for 109 yards on 25 carries and scoring a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns. The Panthers face a tough run defense next week when they face the Giants, but Stewart obviously abused a respectable defense on Sunday night. [Charlotte Observer]

• The Eagles are calling Michael Vick’s(notes) injury a quad contusion. "We’ll see how it goes this week," said Andy Reid, committing to nothing. It’s tough to believe Vick won’t be available for his usual cameo in Week 16. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• Titans linebacker Keith Bulluck(notes) had to be assisted off the field in the second half of Sunday’s overtime win over the Dolphins. He injured his left knee and will undergo tests on Monday to determine the extent of the damage. It didn’t look good. Bulluck is having another excellent season (108 tackles, three INTs) and Sunday’s game was his 127th consecutive NFL start. [The Tennessean]

• The Ravens have lost rookie kick returner/cornerback Lardarius Webb(notes) for the remainder of the season due to a suspected ACL tear. Webb had been starting in place of corner Fabian Washington(notes), who tore an ACL back in November. This is clearly terrible news for a defense that’s about to face a quarterback who’s coming off a 503-yard day. [Baltimore Sun]

• When a guy rushes for 286 yards and three TDs, there’s really a lot to talk about. In our coverage of Jerome Harrison’s(notes) huge day against the Chiefs on Sunday, we neglected to mention the very smart thing he did at the conclusion of his final score. Harrison’s third TD broke a 34-34 tie in the final minute, and he actually took a few seconds off the game clock by deliberately running parallel to the goal line before crossing the plane. It was like the Stokley play, but on a shorter field. Kansas City drove to Cleveland’s 26 yard line on their final possession, so Harrison’s move clearly mattered. [NFL.com] 

• It just wouldn’t be a proper Monday 7-on-7 without the Rams Report Card. Steven Jackson needs to demand a conference with the author. If any player on that team deserves an A, it’s Jackson. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

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Photo via AP Images

Raymond James strategist Jeffrey Saut — a bull who has been on the correct side of the rally for the entire year — lays out some of his big themes for 2010, while also expressing serious concern about the stock market action of the last few weeks.

—

As for the other themes as we enter the new year, our sense is the U.S. will experience 3.5% GDP growth in the first half of the year and then slow to 2.5%.  Consequently, global growth in 2010 should be uneven.  Near term, advanced economies should experience a bounce in activity that will last into the first half of the year.  Following that, monetary policies will vary.  Emerging markets will
need to tighten much sooner than the G7.  We do expect interest rate hikes from the ECB and the Bank of Japan in 2010.  However, we also think participants are wrong in expecting interest rate hikes too early given the fragile economic environment.  Further, in 2010 we think investors should be positioned for:  Sovereign balance sheet risk (potential defaults: Venezuela, Ukraine, Argentina,
Pakistan, Latvia, etc.); increased geopolitical threats; Asian urbanization; a potential commercial real estate crisis; rising taxation/inflation/regulation; the emerging and frontier market consumer; rising global growth, free cash flow beneficiaries; energy and alternative energy; infrastructure plays (electricity, water, etc.); technology (read: volume monetizers); U.S. exports and business spending; dividends; and a return to active portfolio management.  Indeed, stock selection, and active portfolio
management, are likely to be the key drivers of portfolio returns in the year ahead.  As for style, while we always like special situations, from a macro perspective we favor quality growth, dividend yield, positive earnings revisions, and large capitalization stocks.

As for last week’s stock market action, we were manifestly disappointed, having believed the SPX was poised to surmount its 50% retracement level at 1115 (measuring the decline from October 2007 to March 2009), triggering upside targets between 1160 and 1200.  Alas, it was not meant to be as the index tried, and failed, for the fourth time to breach 1115, setting the stage for potentially a fifth downside test of the 1085 level.  While we remain constructive, history shows that the fifth test of a support level typically doesn’t hold.  Therefore, in Friday’s verbal strategy comments we concluded, “We think it’s pretty important that the equity markets build on this morning’s opening strength.”  And while that didn’t happen, the markets did stabilize following the “Thursday Tumble” (-133 DJIA).  Still, with market valuations below their 20-year mean valuation, surging earnings and low interest rates, we remain constructive.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Jeff Saut: The Bad Economic News Is Already Turning Good Again
• Uber-Bull Jeff Saut Turns Nervous On The Rally
• UBS: The Risk-Trade Is Toast In 2010, Buy Emerging Markets, Dump Japan

Don’t worry, it’s not Twitter! For our Best LittleCo of 2009, we’ve chosen a small company whose product launched in 2009 and quickly became a leading example of one of the year’s big trends: the real-time web.

Our pick for Most Promising is something that could change the way people search on the Web.

Last week we announced that Google was our choice for Best BigCo of 2009, due to its product innovation in 2009. Today we’re announcing Best LittleCo and Most Promising Company, as selected by the ReadWriteWeb writers.

Sponsor

This is the 6th year we’ve done this and many of the small companies we choose each year go onto much bigger things. Here’s a quick look back at previous winners:

• In 2008 we chose web office vendor Zoho as Best LittleCo and Brightkite as our Most Promising. Zoho is still competing well above its weight bracket against office software giants like Microsoft and Google. However it’s fair to say that Brightkite hasn’t delivered as much on its promise as we thought it might, due in part to the emergence of Foursquare as ‘the next big thing’ in mobile social networking.
• In 2007 Twitter was Best LittleCo and in a break from tradition we named "the open source movement" as most promising. Twitter, of course, has since gone on to make a huge impact on the Web and media.
• In 2006 YouTube was Best LittleCo and Sharpcast Most Promising. YouTube was acquired by Google in October of that year.
• In 2005 37Signals was Best LittleCo and Memeorandum (now Techmeme) and Digg were joint Most Promising.
• In 2004 Ludicorp, creators of Flickr, was Best LittleCo and Feedburner Most Promising. Both went on to be acquired, by Yahoo! and Google respectively.

Now let’s find out who is ReadWriteWeb’s Best LittleCo of 2009. Then on page 2 we name our Most Promising company for 2010.

Best LittleCo of 2009: Aardvark

Aardvark (our initial review and then a comparison review) is a social search engine that combines artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and presence data to create what the company calls “the real-time Web of people.” The company was founded in 2007, but the product only launched in March 2009 at SXSW. It quickly became one of the companies we point to most when we discuss the Real-Time Web, one of the most significant trends of this year.

In our report on the Real-Time Web released in November, we described how it works:

"You can ask Aardvark any question, and it will try to find a person in your extended social circles who knows about that topic and is available to answer at that moment. Aardvark facilitates these conversations through a very polite IM bot, an iPhone app with push notifications, the company’s website, Twitter or email. Instead of broadcasting your question to every one’s stream of information, Aardvark delivers the question only to people who are relevant and available."

Unlike Yahoo Answers or similar services, Aardvark doesn’t keep a repository of frequently asked questions. The service’s mission is to get you current answers from experts in your own social networks. On most days, over 85% of all questions get answered.

As we noted in our report, Aardvark’s got an all-star team of engineers from Google and Yahoo and high-profile investors. It’s already cutting deals with major tech brands and is rumored to be on Google’s acquisition list. Whatever happens to the company, the use cases for Aardvark are just beginning to be explored.

In short, Aardvark impressed us a lot this year and it made no fewer than 3 of our 2009 best-of lists:

• Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009
• Top 10 Real-Time Technologies of 2009
• Top 10 Startup Products of 2009

Aardvark’s iPhone app was also popular with our writers, two of them putting it in their top 5 mobile web applications of the year.

Next page: ReadWriteWeb’s Most Promising Company for 2010…

Surprise: gaudy, expensive jewelry is coming back:

Marketwatch: As retailers across the board are still struggling to get consumers to spend beyond what they need, affluent consumers are giving a troubled sector — jewelry — a ray of hope.

Average jewelry spending by shoppers with minimum household incomes of $100,000 jumped 31%, to $4,813, in the third quarter from a year earlier, compared against declines of more than 30% each for clothing and for fashion accessories including shoes and handbags, according to Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing. The consultancy surveyed 1,000 luxury shoppers.

Read the whole thing >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Diamond’s Aren’t Forever: Zales Stock Tanks After Weak November Sales
• Madoff Victims Pawning Jewels To Eat, Overwhelming Jewelers
• Hip-Hop Bling Man Jacob the Jeweler Gets 2.5 Years

Filed under: Auctions

Gooding’s regular yearly auction during Barrett-Jackson event in Scottsdale will take place January 23. Next year, though, Gooding will hold an additional auction the day before and it will be moving some delightful machinery.

If you can’t wait for Saturday’s spoils, which include a 1959 Ferrari Series 1 Pininfarina Cabriolet, a Zagato-bodied 1932 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Gran Sport, and a 1956 Maserati A6G/54 Berlinetta, then you might find something you like among the Friday collection: a 1934 Duesenberg Model J with a Disappearing Top, a 1927 6 1/2-Litre Bentley Sports Coupe, and a Stirling Moss-driven 1959 Costin Lister Jaguar Sports Racer.

Complete information on the three special Friday offerings is in the press release after the jump, and you can have a look at them in the high-res gallery below.

[Source: Gooding & Co.]

Continue reading Gooding adds another day to its Scottsdale auction during Barrett-Jackson

Gooding adds another day to its Scottsdale auction during Barrett-Jackson originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook enjoys a massive audience of 350 million users and Twitter, while a lot smaller, commands some pretty impressive sway; yet, it’s still impressive to see the power they have after just a few years of existence. For the last four years, the number one single in the UK for Christmas came from the winner of X-Factor, one of Simon Cowell’s many reality talent shows, which was timed to end just before Christmas. This year, the number one single was Rage Against the Machine’s 15-years-old “Killing in the Name,” thanks to a massively popular Facebook campaign.

Londoners Jon and Tracy Morter were fed up with the status quo and decided to do something to change it by trying to push out this year’s X-Factor winner from the number one spot. So, they did as anyone fighting “the system” does these days, they set up a Facebook Group and started promoting their cause. The big surprise, though, was that it actually worked, apparently the message resonated with a lot of folks and word of the movement began spreading.

Soon enough, the Facebook group “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas no.1” got 1 million members, perhaps spurred by comedian Peter Serafinowicz who urged his over 268,000 Twitter followers to join the campaign. But even with the apparent popularity, half of those people wou… (read more)