Category: News

Gran Turismo 5 is still quite a while away, good thing Polyphony Digital managed to work up something good as a reprieve. On December 17th, the Gran Turismo 5 Time Trial Challenge will be available for download

Filed under: LA Auto Show, Hatchback, Mitsubishi, Specialty, Electric

While Mitsubishi didn’t unveil any new vehicles at the LA Auto Show today, company president Osamu Masuko did announce the latest step in his company’s plan to bring plug-in vehicles to North America. The vehicle – well, one of them – is an all-electric i-MiEV plastered with Best Buy’s Geek Squad logo. The electronics giant will start using them in January (after they’re shown off at CES) at some Geek Squad locations in California. Details have not yet been totally worked out, but the Geek EVs will start with a fleet of four vehicles and then expand and rotate to other stores over the course of three years. Most likely, the i-MiEVs will be doled out in pairs and the probable early cities where these vehicles will make house calls include Chicago, New York, Portland and San Francisco.

Best Buy plans to use the i-MiEVs just like any other fleet car, with the exception that they will be right-hand drive. Best Buy’s Senior Vice President of emerging business, Rick Rommel, told AutoblogGreen that the idea is to learn “how these will fit into a Geek’s daily life.” The plug-in vehicle tests with Geek Squad are unrelated to how select West Coast Best Buy stores are selling electric bikes. That said, Rommel admits that the key thing is that Best Buy likes to conduct new experiments, and these EVs fit into that general concept.

Live photos copyright (C)2009 Sebastian Blanco / Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Best Buy Geek Squads to start testing Mitsubishi i-MiEV

Best Buy Geek Squads to start testing Mitsubishi i-MiEV originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If one were to read Engadget or Gizmodo, one would get the impression using a Windows Mobile phones was a form of cruel and  unusual torture which left every device carrying the OS at a disadvantage.

The latest release of Consumer Report’s Wireless survey, which polled more than 50 000 users in many US cities, seems to put a lie to this belief.  While the ubiquitous iPhone scored first with 74/100, the Windows Mobile powered HTC Touch Pro 2 scored a very respectable 71/100, while the HTC Imagio and  Samsung Omnia took up a strong third place with 70/100.

The Palm Pre, often held up a  model of what Windows Mobile should be, failed to score very well at all, and the very successful Blackberry scored the lowest amongst smartphone, with the BlackBerry 8830 for Verizon, the BlackBerry Curve 8330 and BlackBerry Pearl 8130 for Sprint all pretty much leaving their owners unsatisfied.

Now all of this does not mean Windows Mobile does not have room to improve, but often the OS does not get credit for the great strengths it does have, especially compared to its competitors. Examples include the UI, which is often called dated, but is miles ahead of the awful imitation of DOS which is the Blackberry OS or the breath of applications, which while not 100 000, have more diversity than the iPhone, and certainly far exceeds that on the Pre. Examples abound, but as this survey clearly shows, Windows Mobile does not deserve to be bashed to the degree it is currently.

Do you feel Windows Mobile is getting a bad rap unfairly?  Let us know in the comments.

I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO TEST THE NEW PRODUCT FROM BETANCOURT – THEIR PREWORKOUT ANDRORUSH CHEWIES.

HERE IS THE LINK

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=120738531

 

I ALSO HAVE RECEIVE A GREAT WEALTH OF PRODUCTS FROM DR. DENNIS SANDLER M.D MYHERBALSUPPLEMENT.COM (NOT THROUGH THE FORUMS, THIS WAS A PERSONAL CONTACT) WHICH I WILL BE TESTING UPON COMPLETION AND WILL LET YOU KNOW HOW THAT GOES. THESE PRODUCTS LOOK AMAZING!! AND CANT WAIT TO GIVE YOU THE GREAT INSIGHT ON THEM. AS FOR NOW BETANCOURT IS MY MAIN FOCUS! KEEP ON THE LOOKOUT GREAT THINGS COMING. DOUBLE T SPORTS GLUTACENE REVIEW AS WELL SINCE I WON A FREE BOTTLE THEY DID A GIVEAWAY OF 250. AND I WONT PALO ALTO LABS ANABOLIC EDGE BOTTLE GIVEAWAY (THESE ARE NOT LOGGED THINGS BUT I WILL PROVIDE REVIEWS AFTER COMPLETING OTHERS AS TO NOT AFFECT ANY PRODUCT RESULTS.)  NEW VIDEO TONIGHT, SORRY I HAVE BEEN SICK SO ITS BEEN HARD TO DO EVERYTHING I ALSO HAVE QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED ALONG WITH PICTURES. LOOKING TONIGHT AROUND 10 EASTERN TIME

The article reviewed here is ‘Patterns and Changes in Prescriber Attitudes Toward PDA Prescription-Assistive Technology’ by Arun Vishwanath and colleagues. The authors look at the characteristics of ‘early’ and ‘late’ adopters of PDA prescription-assistive technology. Their interest in attitudes is explained in the introduction when they cite research suggesting that attitudes towards new technology is correlated with adoption of this same technology.

They selected 244 clinicians  from an American academic tertiary care children’s hospital representing different professions but accounting for 90% of prescribers in the inpatient service. This high percentage suggests that the sample is likely to be representative of the inpatient prescribers. The prescribers had recently undergone training in the use of the PDA software. Commercial software was used and supplied by the company producing the software. Hospital and staff-owned PDA’s were used with the software and all PDA’s used in the course of the study were inspected to ensure that they met specific hardware standards. These standards in turn would ensure that the software was appropriately ‘responsive. Details of the training were given.

Assessments of clinician’s attitudes towards the technology before and after implementation were assessed using a Likert-scale questionnaire. The authors then state that the questionnaire design and administration was conducted by an external company that had previous experience with this type of research. Regarding the various tools that were used pre and post-implementation, the authors write that

‘All the measures used in the study were valid measures drawn from prior technology acceptance research and modified to suit the clinical context‘

I wasn’t sure of the type of validity that was being referred to and how the previous research tools were modified.  They also wrote that

‘All multi-item measures were reliable and achieved an acceptable alpha level‘ (alpha greater than 0.85).

A number of questionnaires were used and most used closed-questions but one gave the option for open-ended responses. Although I might have missed this I couldn’t find a clear definition of early and late adopters but the authors state that these groups can be distinguished on the basis of the results of a ‘five-item measure of the clinician’s attitude twoards PDAs, and a measure of the clinician’s likelihood to adopt the PDA within the next year’. Under the statistical analysis the authors write that

‘The data were analy(s)ed using the combination of multivariate techniques…..Segments were derived by applying a two-step clustering algorithm. The resulting segments were validated statistically using t-tests (Boneferroni adjustments) and theoretically compared to the EA and LA profiles suggested by diffusion theory‘

This excerpt is quite information dense and contains lots of different and complex statistical processes which would involve judgments as to their suitability. I would be interested to learn more about the analysis that took place at this stage. The use of the Boneferroni adjustments reflects that multiple comparisons were taking place on the dataset and that relationships were being explored rather than primary hypotheses tested. Another question I asked on reading this section is what was diffusion theory and why was it being used in this analysis?

The difficulty that I had with this analysis was that it led to the stratification of the sample into early and late adopters of the technology. I  would argue therefore that it is difficult to know how to apply this term in an intuitive way. For instance if I were to ask if a person were a late or early adopter I would need to refer to their exploratory statistical analysis of this group – I would argue that it becomes difficult to translate into other populations. If this is the case, then I would add that it means I don’t really know how meaningful this is to me. While intuitively we might know what early and late adopters of the technology might be this statistical meaning is very specific and defined by several layers of abstraction. If as a result I just say that early adopters are people that adopt the technology soon after its advent and late adopters otherwise, I will perhaps be able to apply this knowledge to other scenarios but as a result of the above arguments my conclusions may be markedly inaccurate.

Taking into account the previous arguments there are a number of observations that the authors have made about their groups of LA and EA’s. They identified the EA group as significantly younger than the LA group and tending to be residents rather than attending. On a number of measures the researchers found that after the intervention there were still significant differences between the EA’s and LA’s in their attitudes towards PDA’s. Essentially even after training early adopters generally had more positive attitudes towards PDA’s than late adopters.

In conclusion, I found it difficult to conceptualise the constructs of EA and LA’s. Even so, I could see that here was a method to create potentially useful categories on the basis of the statistical analysis and to identify significant associations which could then be used qualitatively. What I found interesting and to some extent predictable is that with interventions, people within one category tended to remain in that category. Perhaps this suggests that to have any impact particularly with attitudes there should be a sustained intervention, that such impact should be intended and that the systems have some advantage over contemporary systems. It is difficult for me to extrapolate further other than to say that attitudes do not necessarily have a direct translation into behaviours and triangulation can be helpful. As for the clinical utility of the PDA’s, this is a topic in itself and will be dependent on the hardware and software as well as the setting. Rapid changes in technology can also have an impact on the application of such studies.

References

Vishwanath A, Brodsky L, Shaha S et al. Patterns and changes in prescriber attitudes toward PDA prescription-assistive technology. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 78. 2009. 330-339.

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Filed under: Safety, Technology

We’ve got the stoplights in our neighborhood timed pretty well, but it’s pretty painful when you’re at a foreign intersection and have absolutely no idea when the light will turn green. We shift our vehicle into Neutral and give our left foot a break at a stoplight that we know is long, but at uncharted lights, we occasionally keep our clutch foot to the floor.

One designer by the name of Damjan Stankovic decided we should wait no longer, so he designed an innovative-looking “Eko” stoplight that offers an easy to read indicator that shows how much time the light has until it turns green. The idea has some merit. If you want to conserve fuel and reduce CO2 emissions, you could turn off your engine during truly long lights. (We wouldn’t, but you could). If drivers were able to see the light from far away, they could also let off the accelerator early and save a little strain on the brakes. We can think of one big issue, though: drivers trying to time the turn from red to green.

What do you think? Would a red light timer be a good thing, or would it be a recipe for disaster? Give us your take in ‘Comments.’ Thanks for the tips, Spyros and Jared!

[Source: Yanko Design]

Ready, Set, Go! Clever stoplight concept counts down to green originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In September, before Sony officially launched its PSP Minis line of games, Sony Europe’s Zeno Colaco hinted at the possibility of popular Minis titles making

 

The Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor Are Getting Richer; The Good Old Days Are Now –
Chart 1 … shows the percentage of all U.S. households owning various household appliances in 1971 and 2005, and the percentage of poor households (below the official poverty line) owning those appliances in 2005. The data show a significant improvement in living standards between 1971 and 2005 

Chart 2 … In other words, to purchase those 11 basic household appliances in 1973 would have taken … 3.4 months working full-time at the average hourly wage in 1973. To purchase those same eleven appliances in 2009 would have only taken … 1.1 months.   Mark Perry’s Carpe Diem Blog

————

Get Ready for Half a Recovery – by GRETCHEN MORGENSON – … Mr. Shepherdson’s 2 percent estimate for gross domestic product growth next year is roughly half what he would normally expect for a solid economic recovery. And a crucial reason is the fact that bad assets on personal and institutional balance sheets are the equivalent of a ball and chain strapped to the economy, he says. … – NY Times

————

A treatise on inflation – Consumer-driven Deflation? Not Even Close – Paco Ahlgren – Ahlgren Multiverse Blog 
…
So this brings us to four final questions (as well as their answers, which I am thrilled to provide at no extra charge):
1.     If the Fed is going to (attempt to) hold down long-term rates by using printed money to buy Treasuries, isn’t that going to cause downward pressure on the value of the currency? (Yes!)
2.     And as the dollar loses value, won’t U.S. creditors be reluctant to loan us more money – or even to hold existing American debt? (Yes!)
3.     And won’t that necessarily mean rising interest rates? (Yes!)
4.     So how, exactly, is that going to keep long-term Treasury rates lower? (It won’t!)
————

Japan facing harsh realities of deflation – It may sound like a wonderful concept – you wake up every morning and things are a bit cheaper than before. Your money is worth just a bit more. And that is (sort of) the situation in Japan currently. The chart below shows Japan’s negative inflation rate. – Sober Look Blog

I figured out that parenting is how I chose to fill my time between high school graduation and retirement. People have different hobbies, mine just happens to be giving birth.

My name is Marye Audet and I have blogged for b5media for almost three years now. You may know me from Baking Delights or Kettle and Cup because that is usually where I am. However, I have been given the opportunity to write for the parenting channel, I think someone thinks I have a little experience in this area… I am not quite 50,  newly single after a 30 year marriage, and the very proud mom to eight of the most incredible kids on the planet…perhaps in the entire universe. But wait! That’s not all! I  also have a fantabulous son in law who I like to keep around for comic relief and three of the most adorable grandkids ever.  I think that my life is a reality show in the making but so far we have not been discovered.

I homeschool, and have homeschooled since 1989.  We live in a large and rambling historic home in need of restoration, have been raising dairy goats but I think that part of my life is about to be history, and we have chickens. I like to grow my own food when I can, and pretend to be independent.

So, what am I going to blog about? Do you really have to ask? I have experienced everything from new baby diaper spontaneous explosion  to adult children moving back home. Parenting-R-Us.  So the first thing on the agenda is to introduce you to the cast of characters:

Cast:

• Erin- 27, married, creative  (husband Jon, kids Amanda, Gabe, and Bella), her life reminds me that there is hope for the rest of them…
• Chris – 24, Air Force, Middle East, very missed
• Matthew – 17, 3rd semester of college, serious and focused
• Ethan – 16, about to start college, plays 6 instruments or so and has a band
• Shiloh – 13, wants to be a medical examiner, she is tres drole
• Sean – 11, every family needs a quiet genius, Sean is ours. Pocket protectors anyone?
• Nick – 9, artistic, free spirit… hair to the middle of his back. Samson is his Bible hero.
• Kyrie – 6, Princess, diva,call it what you will this little girl has a unique blend of  moxie-chutzpah  (non-conformist but gutsy audacity).
• Me – I am trying to navigate mid-life with as much humor and optimism as my medications will allow…(o.k.. not really. I am only on one medication but it was too good of a line to not use.)

Add a mentally challenged dog (he had major brain damage when we found him, no lie), two cats (Chipotle and Snowball; Snowball is black and brown tortise-shell calico. Kyrie named her) and a fairly odd bunch of friends and you really do have the makings for some pretty unique blog posts.

You aren’t going to want to miss a minute..I promise.

image: Marye Audet

Post from: Blisstree

And What’s your Hobby??

Filed under: Concept Cars, LA Auto Show, Coupe, Hybrid, Sedan, Performance, Crossover, BMW, Luxury

BMW took advantage of California’s proclivity for greenwashing to give its ActiveHybrid models their North American debuts at the LA Auto Show. Just for good measure they also brought along the incredible Vision Efficient Dynamics sustainable supercar concept. While we know a great deal about BMW’s first true hybrid, the X6 ActiveHybrid, from our first drive, we still had to admire its incredible combination of horsepower and technology, even if the mileage isn’t really spectacular enough to warrant a truly green halo.

The BMW 7 Series ActiveHybrid is a mild hybrid with the electric motor filling one of three roles while in motion. It alternates between being a motivator, a generator and a booster depending on load and demand. It can go 37 mph on the motor alone, it gets 20% better overall mileage than the straight gas engine, and it does the 0-60 trot in just 4.7 seconds thanks to its 455 horsepower and 515 lb-ft of torque. BMW’s Peter Miles did add one bit of information to the Active 7 equation when he announced pricing. The regular wheelbase model will start at $103,125 while the long-wheelbase “L” model will start at $107,025.

The last car in the BMW eco show was the Vision concept. And never before has the phrase, “last but not least,” been more appropriate. This thing looks like it could have come out of Minority Report, yet it has so much real world promise. We’ll never see this car in production, of course, but don’t be surprised to see many of its elements in future BMW models. We’re still trying to decide whether we’d take this or the swoopy e-tron concept next door at Audi’s stand, but why not have both?

Check out our gallery of live shots from LA by clicking below, or the official 7 Series pricing press release after the jump.

[Source: BMW]

Continue reading LA 2009: BMW ActiveHybrids get North American debut; 7 Series model priced from $103,125

LA 2009: BMW ActiveHybrids get North American debut; 7 Series model priced from $103,125 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even China — which is obviously embarking on a long term plan to dump dollars, and move its reserves into hard assets — is unnerved by the surge in gold.

Telegraph: Hu Xiaolian, the vice-governor of the central bank, said Beijing would not buy gold indiscriminately.

“We must keep in mind the long-term effects when considering what to use as our reserves,” she said. “We must watch out for bubbles forming on certain assets and be careful in those areas.”

China announced this year that it had quietly doubled its gold reserves to 1,054 tonnes, the world’s fifth largest holding. India has also joined the rush, gobbling up half the IMF’s gold sale.

Gold dipped modestly today, though it remains above $1200.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Goldman: Gold’s Headed To $1450
• Here’s The Real Peak In Gold
• Amazing: John Paulson Makes $50 Million In Five Weeks On A Gold Trade (DGC)

 

 

Because of a snafu at our email vendor, 5 posts were not included in yesterday’s email digest.  Here they are if you wish to check them out:

Market Related: Paolo Pelligrini MUST READ, Krugman on Taxing Speculators, Another Lost Decade?

Political Influence and Government: Foodstamps Interactive Chart, Geithner Yields, Bernanke, AEI on GSEs, Triparty Reverse Repos, PPIP Private Label MBS, Jim Rogers on Geithner

Pick of the Day – 2 incredible charts – For Subprime, is it Deja Vu all over again? – By Paul Jackson 

RESPA sites; Lend America gone; Conjecture on Fed commercial mortgage program

The Garrett, Watts Report (The party, after you left, Dec. 2009)

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As always you can read everything at http://mortgagenewsclips.com/  plus the site’s Google search makes a great research tool for the thousands of mortgage related posts and articles there.

I’ll make this as my first Alias model… (i hope.. 😛 )

Seems.. kind of easy…. :S

With the clock counting down the last few weeks before the holidays, there is no time like the present to start picking up some holiday presents! The best thing about baking gifts, or food gifts, is that they’re usually a little bit more useful than another sweater with a reindeer on it, so there is no harm in picking out something for yourself while shopping for others.

• The Baking Bites Cookbook is at the top of my gift-giving list this year. It’s great for bakers of all ages, foodies and fans of this site. It also makes a great hostess gift for parties.
• When you already have your copy of my cookbook,  other good reads include The Ungarnished Truth and The Sweet Life in Paris, both very entertaining foodie nonfiction. As for cookbooks, try to take a peek at your recipient’s book case, then browse through some of the books I’ve mentioned throughout the year to find one that seems like a good fit. There are so many to choose from!
• A kitchen scale is a great gift if you don’t already have one. The EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Scale is lightweight, easy to use and measures from a single gram to 11-lbs, making it extremely versatile.
• When it comes to baking pans, I always recommend the Baker’s Edge pan as a great gift. A really nice bundt pan will always be well-received, too, but novelty pans like mini donut pans and cakesicle pans are fun to work with, as well.
• A copy of Julie and Julia on DVD should make any foodie happy. Add a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in case they’re inspired to try some of the recipes themselves!

(more…)

How many EA Sports titles are there on your holiday wishlist? For those, the publisher launches its own EA Sports DebitSmart Visa Prepaid Card (my, that’s a long name) designed specifically for use with all EA Sports

Filed under: LA Auto Show, Sedan, Crossover, Ford, Volvo

Hold onto your hats folks, because while magazine award ceremonies appear to be just about finished, the auto show trophies are just starting to be handed out. This time, it’s the International Car of the Year at the LA Auto Show, and we’ve got two winners from within the Ford empire. The Ford Taurus took top car honors while the Volvo XC60 won as the best truck. Both vehicles have been well received by the press and early returns from customers appear to be positive, too. While the Taurus is outselling its bland and unexciting predecessor, the XC60 has helped Volvo achieve six consecutive months of year-over-year sales increases.

ICOTY creator and executive producer Courtney Caldwell claims that the winners aren’t chosen based on performance, but instead on how the vehicles “reflect our personalities, lifestyles and self-image and how well the automaker achieves that goal through the design and marketing of the vehicle.” Uh-huh. And while the ICoTY award isn’t exactly one of the big-name trophies for the mantle, a win is a win, and both Ford and Volvo are proud recipients of the accolades. Hit the jump to read over the press releases from Ford and Volvo.

[Sources: Ford, Volvo]

Continue reading LA 2009: Ford Taurus and Volvo XC60 named International Car and Truck of the Year

LA 2009: Ford Taurus and Volvo XC60 named International Car and Truck of the Year originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Misrepresentations of truth

Editor, The Times:

Regarding the editorial “President Obama asks a war-weary nation for time, resources,” [Seattletimes.com, Editorials/Opinion, Dec. 1] why does it state we are war weary?

What about them?

Ending our occupation isn’t about the American people and our stamina, it’s about the Afghans placing their trust in democracy and participating in its success, something they cannot be expected to do while our president misrepresents the truth about our shared history and current methods of occupation.

During his West Point speech, President Obama made two specific and glaring misrepresentations. First, he described the Taliban as having seized control of Afghanistan after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere.

While the Taliban, specifically, may not be as old as the fundamentalists’ grip in Afghanistan, the condition of repressive fundamentalism was indeed catalyzed by the U.S. before the Soviet invasion. All parties are in the know here. To suggest that we are blameless in the current balance of power is indulgent and disrespectful.

Secondly, Obama decried the practice of torture and touted the closing of Guantánamo, but he didn’t mention the Bagram facility, where prisoners are unable to bring evidence and witnesses to rebut allegations in their own defense. To brag about one while failing to mention the other is an obvious misrepresentation of the truth.

The Afghans already live with the prospect of being arbitrarily apprehended and maimed by armed militias roving the countryside. If neither group is bound by laws grounded in the protection of the people, they have no reason to risk their lives investing in the permanence of our models of governance.

— Mary Gross, Seattle

Family put all law-abiding citizens in danger

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s disdain for the separation of church and state has come back to bite him, as well it should [“Political death blow for Huckabee?,” News, Dec. 1].

I wish Huckabee would stop exhibiting his capacity for forgiveness and Christian charity by inflicting vicious criminals on the rest of society.

The friends and family of Maurice Clemmons were doing everything they could to keep a person who had just murdered four police officers in cold blood back out on the streets to potentially kill again.

If prosecutors can prove these people in fact lent assistance to this killer, they deserve serious punishment for their crimes. I have no idea how these people can justify their actions. They put every law-abiding citizen in danger, and should be called to account.

— Steve Alberts, Vashon

Lone officer a hero, could have been another victim

As a former police officer, I and many others insist that every single individual who assisted Maurice Clemmons after he gunned down four officers in Lakewood be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law [“Those who aided cop killer deserve full weight of the law,” Opinion, Lynne K. Varner editorial column, Dec. 2].

I understand three or more people who helped Clemmons have been arrested for rendering criminal assistance in Pierce County. I believe that charge is insufficient on its face.

Everyone involved should be charged as an accomplice in this case with appropriate sentences varying from the death penalty to life in prison, as an example to everyone.

There is no excuse whatsoever for anyone helping Clemmons after what he did was plastered all over every TV screen in Puget Sound.

What about the Seattle police officer who single-handedly took on Clemmons? He was working alone without backup and could have met the same fate as the officers in Lakewood. If he had been killed, his murder would have also been on the backs of the friends and neighbors of Clemmons who helped him escape after the shooting.

— Bob Clark, Monroe

Released prisoners should shack up with the parole board

The tragic death of four Lakewood police officers is exacerbated by the early release of the alleged murderer [“Persuasive appeal helped Clemmons win clemency,” News, Dec. 1].

Doubtless some prisoners truly rue their crimes, and are ready to rejoin society.

But let’s envision a system where parole board members take direct responsibility for any person to whom they give early release. Let’s have the released prisoner live in a parole board member’s home for the first month.

Would a parole board member with children be willing to have a released pedophile or rapist living in their home? Let them visibly demonstrate their belief in the reformation of a prisoner. If not, then why are these boards releasing such people early to prey on society again?

And let’s not forget defense lawyers through a similar program. If their client gets off on a serious charge, let the client live in the lawyer’s house for a while. We might see the conviction rate of dangerous people increase, instead of them getting off on legal technicalities dredged up by the defense.

— Roel Hurkens, Victoria, B.C.

Voters should hold local judge accountable

While I think former Gov. Mike Huckabee should be held accountable, what about the local judge who overruled another judge’s determination not to grant bail and granted Maurice Clemmons the ability to go out and murder [“Person of interest let out of Pierce County Jail one week ago,” page one, Nov. 30]?

The state judiciary is allowed to hide behind sentencing guidelines instead of them determining the sentencing, thus making them accountable to no one. Here is a perfect example of why they should be held accountable. The decision this judge made had serious consequences to the detriment of four officers, their families and their community.

Who will hold them accountable? The voters. The voters should know who this judge is so if the electorate chooses, he can be fired.

There was every reason to deny bail to Clemmons: He was a three-striker, he demonstrated violence toward police and family members (i.e. sexual assault) and he had violent and unpredictable outbursts.

Arkansas blew it and the Washington state judiciary system blew it.

— Sam Granato, Yakima

Blame resides right here, in Washington state

Let’s talk about the Washington criminal-justice system, or the lack of it.

I am shocked The Seattle Times is talking more about the Arkansas parole granted to Maurice Clemmons than it is about Washington state’s failures. He was released from custody here just days ago.

He was released from custody here despite an outstanding fugitive felony warrant from Arkansas. He was released from custody here despite seven additional felony charges in Washington state. He was facing a child-rape charge committed against a 12-year-old relative. He was facing a life sentence in this state’s three-strikes law if convicted of the child-rape charge.

Why is our state granting bail to a person charged with child rape? Who was the judge who granted this bail after it was previously denied by another judge?

The ultimate blame here is not with Arkansas or former Gov. Mike Huckabee. It is with our own Washington state judicial system. Let’s place the blame where it belongs. Clemmons was being held in our system on eight felony charges.

— Ronald Czarnecki, Everett

John Obeidin points us to the news that The Dallas News has basically wiped away the standard “church” and “state” separation of journalists and ad sales and has reorganized such that editorial and journalism positions now report to ad sales managers (nicely renamed “general managers”). Of course, historically, newspapers have always been clear to separate the two. There’s no reason why this needs to be the case, but it can certainly raise questions about the objectivity of the reporting.

Of course, it’s interesting that this is happening just days after those new FTC guidelines on making it clear if content is somehow sponsored. So, will the Dallas News now need to be more clear about its advertising partners, since the paper is now admitting that its editorial content will now be closely tied to its advertising relationships?

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