Category: News

Budgets Are Sexy sifts through the mysterious black magic that goes into establishing your credit score and reveals 10 myths to note when you’re making financial decisions that may affect the score.

From the post:

Things You Expect that Don’t Happen:

* When I get married, we get a joint credit score: Not so. Each person has their own credit score ’til death do you part. However, when you open accounts jointly, that information will be reflected on each of your credit reports, for better or for worse.

* My job/income impacts my credit score: Sorry, but making six figures, winning the lottery, or inheriting a fortune will not give you a good credit score. Your net worth and income are not factored into your score.

* Paying off credit card debt will boost my credit score 50 points: Depending on how much credit card debt you had, you may see some increase. However, credit card utilization is an important component of your credit score and those with the highest credit scores have about 10% utilization.

Click on the link below for the rest of the myths. And note that acrificing eyes of newt in to the credit god Chargebakka does less good than you’d think.

Top 10 Credit Score Misconceptions [Budgets Are Sexy]

Back in August 2009, Shufflegazine featured an article talking about what makes a good iPhone app. The article has a good discussion about what apps are popular and why, and ultimately concludes that a good app has to be simple, intuitive, responsive, and give users a compelling reason to use it.

Unfortunately, there’s no recipe for how to write a simple, intuitive and compelling app. Our best bet for getting our hands on that recipe is probably this guy, but until he makes that announcement, handling these points is left as an exercise for the reader.

Writing a responsive app, however, is much easier.

A good working definition for a “responsive” app is one that responds to user input quickly and doesn’t hang without telling the user what’s going on. The rule of thumb here is that GUIs should respond to input in no more than 1 second, so the bar is set pretty high, especially for web-enabled apps. This article describes the most common reason GUIs get unresponsive and what to do about it.

How Do These Newfangled GUIs Work, Again?

Cocoa Touch’s GUI (like most GUIs) is built on an “event + event loop” architecture. User interactions like taps and keypresses are translated to events, and these events are then processed one-by-one in the imaginatively named event loop:

As long as each event gets processed quickly, the GUI stays nice and zippy. But because events are processed serially, one event can back up the whole gravy train. If one event takes five second to process, then the GUI will be completely unresponsive for those five seconds until the event loop can start processing new events again.

But what if you have some GUI resources that take five seconds to load? We can’t load them all at app initialization time because we don’t always know what resources we’ll need when the app is starting up, especially for things like profile pictures. Also, the iPhone is an embedded platform, so memory for preloading is in short supply, anyway. How, then, can we appease the event loop tiki gods? The answer, young grasshopper, is to load such resources asynchronously, and then update the GUI when they’re done loading.

Responsiveness Test Bench

To illustrate these ideas, I’ve made a simple iPhone app that loads an image resource for display in an iPhone app GUI three different ways.

Each method loads and displays the same image, but does the loading differently to demonstrate the effect each approach has on GUI responsiveness. The source code for this app is attached to this article if you’d like to play along at home.

When the user chooses a loading technique by tapping its table row, a corresponding method is called to illustrate that loading technique. These methods are called directly from the UITableViewDelegate tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath: method, which runs in the event loop, so all this code runs directly in the GUI thread.

First, let’s have a look at the code from the load-from-file example:

- (void)showSynchFileDemoWithTitle:(NSString *)title {
    UIImage *image;
    image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"apple-logo.png"];
    EagerViewController *view=[[EagerViewController alloc]
        initWithNibName:@"EagerViewController" bundle:nil title:title image:image];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:view animated:YES];
    [view release];
}

The code looks like it sounds, right? We load the image from disk, use it to create a new UIViewController, push that UIViewController onto our UINavigationController, and then release the UIViewController back into the wild. This is exactly why synchronous loading is so popular: it’s ridiculously simple. And since we’re just loading a small image from a file, the GUI is still zippy, so synchronous loading is actually fine here.

Now let’s look at loading that same image from a synchronous web request instead of a file:

- (void)showSynchWebDemoWithTitle:(NSString *)title {
    UIImage *image;

    NSURLRequest  *request=[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL
        URLWithString:IMAGEURL]];
    NSURLResponse *response=nil;
    NSError *error=nil;
    NSData *content=[NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request
        returningResponse:&response error:&error];
    if(content == nil)
        image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"big-red-x.png"];
    else
        image = [UIImage imageWithData:content];

    EagerViewController *view=[[EagerViewController alloc]
        initWithNibName:@"EagerViewController" bundle:nil title:title image:image];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:view animated:YES];
    [view release];
}

The code is slightly more complicated, but still not too bad. We set up a web request for the image, wait for it to download, build an image with the contents of that request if it succeeded or load a default image if it failed, and then build our UIViewController from that image. Still nice and easy, but how does it perform?

Turns out, not so well. After the user taps “Synchronous from Web,” the app just kind of sits there for a few seconds before it shows the next view. Why? The synchronous web request loading the image in the event loop takes a while to complete, which blocks the event loop and hangs the GUI. This kind of code is surprisingly common despite the hangs it causes. Unless you’re willing to tick off your customers, which is usually considered harmful, synchronous web loading in the event loop is right out.

So what’s the asynchronous web loading equivalent look like? Behold, ye mortals, and despair…

From RootViewController.m:

- (void)showAsynchWebDemoWithTitle:(NSString *)title {
    LazyViewController *view=[[LazyViewController alloc]
        initWithNibNamed:@"LazyViewController" bundle:nil title:title
        imageURL:[NSURL URLWithString:IMAGEURL]];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:view animated:YES];
    [view release];
}

From LazyViewController.m:

- (id)initWithNibNamed:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil title:(NSString *)title imageURL:(NSURL *)imageURL {
    if(self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil]) {
        self.navigationItem.title = title;
        if(imageURL != nil) {
            self.getlogo = [AtomicAsynchronousWebRequest requestWithURL:imageURL
                andDelegate:self];
        }
    }
    return self;
}

- (void)updateLogoWithImage:(UIImage *)image {
    [self.logo stopLoadingWithActiveView:[[[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image]
        autorelease]];
}

- (void) atomicAsynchronousWebRequest:(AtomicAsynchronousWebRequest *)request didFailWithError:(NSError *)error {
    if(request == self.getlogo) {
        [self updateLogoWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"big-red-x.png"]];
        self.getlogo = nil;
    }
    else {
        // We have no idea which request this is. Just log it and move on.
        NSLog(@"Failed unrecognized HTTP request: %@", request);
    }
}

- (void)atomicAsynchronousWebRequest:(AtomicAsynchronousWebRequest *)request didSucceedWithResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response andContent:(NSData *)content {
    if(request == self.getlogo) {
        [self updateLogoWithImage:[UIImage imageWithData:content]];
        self.getlogo = nil;
    }
    else {
        // We have no idea which request this is. Just log it and move on.
        NSLog(@"Succeeded unrecognized HTTP request: %@", request);
    }
}

Oh… that’s all? Well, I guess that’s not so bad. We pass the URL for our image to the UIViewController initializer, and the UIViewController then starts an asynchronous web request for the image and updates the logo view with an image when the web request either succeeds or fails. (Observant readers will notice some custom methods above. Hang tight, we’ll talk about those in a minute.) What does all this trouble buy us?

A wonderfully responsive app, that’s what. The transition from the first view to the second view is instantaneous; the second view shows its spinner until the web request completes or fails, and then the logo is updated with a new image. Why is this UI so snappy? Because all long-running operations are performed outside the message loop, so nothing hangs the GUI thread. Lazy loading for slow resources is clearly the way to go.

And if you think about it, this approach is good not only because it runs faster, but also because it’s more modular. The UIViewController being created knows what it’s displaying; it should probably be loading its resources too, especially if that loading is complex, in case that UIViewController needs to be reused elsewhere in the app.

So… sweet. A twofer.

Being Lazy About Being Lazy

If asynchronous loading is what we need to be doing — and it is – then how can we make it easy? It turns out that asynchronous loading is easier in Objective-C than it is in many other languages.

In Java, for example, asynchronous loading requires you to mess with callbacks and Threads, SwingWorkers, or ExecutorServices, which feels like jumping through a bunch of flaming hoops while wearing a newspaper tutu. In Objective-C, though, web requests are baked into the API and already have asynchronous callback functionality, which means that asynchronous loading can be had essentially for free, especially if we do a little customization of our own.

The app uses two custom classes. I’ll discuss them here just in case the classes themselves or what they do is useful to other developers. Both classes are in the attached source if you want to put your eyes on them, or use them for your own nefarious purpose.

AtomicAsynchronousWebRequest

The iPhone SDK’s generalized web request API is NSURLConnection, and you can find a good primer on how to use it here. The NSURLConnection exposes way more features than most apps need, though, like hooks for reacting to redirects and chunked input, which makes it more difficult to use than it needs to be. AtomicAsynchronousWebRequest is a thin wrapper around NSURLConnection that lets developers perform the most common web tasks (namely atomic GETs and POSTs) asynchronously by implementing a dead-simple 2-method protocol.

DelayedLoadView

While the iPhone has a nice “spinner” GUI element (UIActivityIndicatorView) that’s handy for telling the user something is loading, it has no explicit API for populating GUI views lazily. DelayedLoadView is essentially a “container” view that shows a spinner until it’s updated with its “real” content view, which makes handling activity indicators and lazy content really easy, especially for GUIs built-in Interface Builder.

Gotchas

A couple gotchas have been glossed over in the interest of keeping things at least a little brief. Now that we’re past the good stuff, I’ll mention a few of them here, just in case you want to get creative on your own:

1. All GUI updates must happen on the GUI thread. Cocoa Touch GUI elements, like GUI elements in most toolkits, are not thread-safe. So, if you need to interact with a GUI element, you need to do it from the main thread. If you’re not making your own threads, you probably don’t need to worry about this. If you are, you may need to make use of NSObject’s performSelectorOnMainThread:withObject:waitUntilDone: or similar.
2. Remember that UIViewController IBOutlets are not initialized after super’s initializer completes. Instead, the UIViewController must be set to appear before IBOutlets are properly connected. This means that failure conditions can’t really be handled inside a UIViewController initializer, so any custom load code you write needs to take that into account. If you want an example of how to work around this issue, check how AtomicAsynchronousWebRequest calls its failure method from its initializer roundabouts using a performSelector call.
3. UIActivityIndicatorViews are kind of confusing. You probably want to set hidesWhenStopped to YES. That way, startAnimating and stopAnimating will do what you expect them to. If you don’t see a spinner and you expect to, make sure your UIActivityIndicatorView isn’t hidden. If you see a spinner but it’s not spinning, you need to call startAnimating.
4. Not all long-running operations have asynchronous callbacks baked in. Web requests do, which is very handy, but if you need to do some other kind of loading you’ll have to get creative. If you’re only going to load things now and then, using performSelectorInBackground:withObject: is probably just fine. If you’re going to be doing a lot of loading, though, you won’t want to create a new background thread each time you load something, so you’ll probably want to create a custom NSRunLoop and kick off your loading with performSelector:onThread:withObject:waitUntilDone:. You can synch up the GUI when loading’s done with a simple performSelectorOnMainThread:withObject:waitUntilDone:.

Conclusion

You’re now an expert on how to build responsive network-enabled GUIs! Or at least you know more than you did.

It’s worth mentioning that even though the article focused on loading images, the very same principles can be applied to executing web service calls, loading web pages, or any other task that requires time to complete.

I now expect all apps to have responsive GUIs, even if they’re loading resources from the web. You’ve been warned. I’ve got my eye on you, iPhone developers.

Stay QWERTY, my friends.

---

I’ve written an article for the magazine fotografya about how photography was initially used by doctors to document ‘hysteria’ in the 19th century but quickly became a vector through which the condition was spread.

The most influential photos came from the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where, under the direction of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, hysteria was redefined to mean the appearance of apparently neurological symptoms, like paralysis or epileptic-like movements, without any clear damage to the nervous system.

Harnessed due to its presumed ability to objectively record the symptoms of patients, the camera became a vector for the condition, causing doctors to diagnose it in far greater numbers and for patients to express their distress through ‘hysterical’ symptoms in increasing numbers. We tend to think of media fashions as transient and frivolous but we forget that popular culture is as much an influence on illness and its treatment as science itself. For many, Charcot’s iconic pictures became the public expression of their private anguish and their documentary potential extended beyond the hospital walls to capture the broken spirit of the times.

These conditions are now known diagnosed as ‘conversion disorder‘ or considered to be ‘psychogenic’ in nature because psychological factors are thought to be behind the symptoms rather than what they appear to be – namely brain damage.

This means that the conditions are more likely to appear in people who already have experience of them, so early depictions of them were part of the process that led to an explosion in their appearance and diagnosis.

fotografya is a Turkish magazine and it has my original in English but I recommend checking out the Turkish translation as it is wonderfully illustrated by some of the striking photos of the time.

The article traces the history of ‘photographing madness’ from its clinical origins to its place in 19th century pop culture.

Link to article ‘Studio Charcot’ in English.
Link to Turkish translation with awesome illustrations.

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

One rarely gets to use the words “elegant” and “Federal Register notice” in the same sentence. But that’s the best way to describe the notice EPA published yesterday. The notice states EPA will now review all confidentiality claims for chemical identity in health and safety studies, and announces to companies making such claims that they should expect soon thereafter to get a letter from EPA denying the claim.

In a concise and clearly reasoned notice, EPA sweeps away decades of poor policy and practice at the agency that was at odds with the clear intent of Congress under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Yesterday’s notice is the latest in a series of actions the new leadership at EPA has taken to make good on much-neglected aspect of its mission: “to promote public understanding of potential risks by providing understandable, accessible, and complete information on potential chemical risks to the broadest audience possible.”

In an earlier post, I described EPA’s first step to address this problem: denying CBI protection for the identities of chemicals that are the subject of substantial risk notices submitted under section 8(e) of TSCA, where that chemical is already listed on the public part of the TSCA inventory. I welcomed that step but said EPA needed to go much further to address the problem. Yesterday they did.

Here's what EPA's notice outlines as the new policy and practice, to take effect August 25 (at the end of a 90-day comment period):

If, in submitting health and safety studies and associated data, a company claims the identity of the chemical in question to be confidential business information (CBI), EPA will:

• review the claim at the time of submission;
• deny the claim unless revealing the chemical identity would expressly reveal the process by which the chemical is made or the portion of a mixture the chemical comprises (these exceptions are the only ones provided under section 14(b) of TSCA from the general proscription against withholding health and safety data); and
• inform the submitter of that decision in a manner that constitutes a final EPA action and hence is not challengeable except via judicial review.

 The latest action is notable on a number of counts:

• For the first time in a long time, EPA will systematically review all confidentiality claims pertaining to chemical identity in any industry submissions of health and safety studies and associated data. Such claims are routinely asserted in submissions of health and safety data under TSCA section 4 (for test rules), section 5 (for new chemicals and new uses of existing chemicals), section 8(d) (for call-ins of health and safety studies), and section 8(e) (for mandatory reporting of substantial risk information). 

Arguably the most egregious assertions come in with section 8(e) submissions. EPA statistics indicate that, over the last 3 years, more than 40% of such 8(e) notices claim the chemical identity to be confidential. As EPA’s FR notice points out, this yields the perverse result that “the public is able to see that some unidentified chemical substance might present a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment” (emphasis added).

EPA’s notice goes on to note: “EPA believes that Congress generally intended for the public to be able to know the identities of chemical substances for which health and safety studies have been submitted.”

In my earlier post, I has put it more bluntly: “Why would Congress, when drafting TSCA, have gone out of its way to carve out an exemption from CBI eligibility for data from health and safety studies – effectively establishing the public's right to know such information – only to render impotent that right by denying the public the right to know to which chemical the data apply? That makes no sense.”

• EPA will review not only new claims, but also existing claims. This will erase decades of unwarranted claims that have been allowed to stand solely because of EPA’s passive approach of simply not reviewing the claims as they poured in.
• EPA flatly rejects a common industry argument, swallowed too readily by EPA in the past, that it must protect information asserted to be confidential that is not itself entitled to protection if revealing it might, however indirectly or convolutedly, help a competitor to figure out something that is confidential. In the current context, industry has claimed EPA must withhold the identity of a chemical even in the context of health and safety data, if knowing that identity might indirectly motivate or assist a competitor in figuring out how the chemical is made.

EPA rightly discards that argument:

EPA, however, questions the assertion that when disclosing a chemical identity of a chemical substance inspires a competitor to ascertain a process for manufacturing the chemical substance, such disclosure is equivalent to disclosing the process itself. Disclosing the end product of a process (i.e., a chemical identity) is not the same thing as disclosing the process to make that end product. The process information would come from the competitor’s expertise, research, or publicly available sources, not from EPA. Although some companies might find such use of a chemical identity undesirable, EPA does not believe that TSCA section 14(b) was intended to limit the uses of information from a health and safety study. (emphasis added)

EPA notes that this latest move is one more step in a systematic effort to identify and make public “information [that] may have been claimed and treated as confidential in the past but is not in fact entitled to confidentiality under TSCA.”

It’s about time.

Beware the new looks of the famous rapper, Curtis Jackson, more known as 50 Cent. On my first look, I couldn’t recognize the guy. Had he fallen sick or was going through some sort of treatment which resulted to major weight loss? The internet was buzzing all over with the news of 50 Cent in a new look. The picture more seemed like a homeless guy begging for food or money to survive. Later on, when reading the complete story, I was amazed to see my very own favorite rapper, 50 Cent. The multi-millionaire rapper has lost almost 54Lbs in just nine weeks and that too just for a film role. Wonder what he was getting in return…

It has been told that the hip-hop star went on a strict liquid-only diet while also exercising for three hours daily to achieve the amazing weight loss abilities. I may say, this guy has got talent. The fully toned body, full of muscles which one would twice think before talking to the guy has all gone in a matter of weeks. Mr. Rapper, be ready, as the Hollywood celebrities are just a second away to approach you for tips.

The musician is due to play a role in the movie which shows him as a cancer-stricken American football player. He has surely achieved that and won’t miss on anyone saying, this guy has got the real disease. The weight loss is amazing for the strong guy.

The guy has been told of staring and co-producing in Things Fall Apart which also features Ray Liotta. The film is directed by Mario van Peebles.

Jackson wrote on his site:

“I was starving. I’ve been eating. I’ll be back in shape in no time!”

Related posts:

1. 50 Cent Massive Weight Loss Pictures
2. 50 Cent Liquid Diet Weight Loss, Curtis Jackson 50 Cent Prepairing for Things Fall Apart Movie
3. 50 Cent weight loss for “Things Fall Apart” movie

-VH1’s new series Dad Camp premieres on Monday, May 31. Here’s a sneak peek….

-Homer Simpson has topped a new list of the Best TV and Movie Characters of the last 20 years. Entertainment Weekly celebrates its 20th birthday with the 100 Greatest Characters, including Carrie Bradshaw, Homer, and The Joker….

–The Klumps of The Joy Behar Show!

-The Bra’s 100th Birthday Bash….

-Meet The Lovely Ladies of The Fashion Institute of Technology….

–SATC 2 off to a good start raking in $3 million in midnight shows, already surpassing the original’s 2008 midnight debut of $2.5 million….

–Prince of Persia star Jake Gyllenhaal on The Early Show…

-A Texas woman has been banned from Six Flags after employees at the theme park branded her multiple tattoos “offensive….”

-Here’s a trailer for the new comedy Love Ranch, starring Joe Pesci and Helen Mirren….

-Have you seen the list of candidates shortlisted to replace Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man franchise?

–Alice in Wonderland is the first spring release to ever hit $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office…..

–Sherlock Holmes 2 due out in Dec. 2011….

-Heather Locklear escapes DUI charges…

-It’s no wonder The TODAY Show’s Matt Lauer is putting the kibosh on his rumored affair with singer Alexis Houston. Chick used to be a dude!

-Lil Mama is a big thief!

-Brandy covers Etta James’ “At Last…”

-There are two Project Runway spinoffs in the works…

-Eminem Recovery Album Tracklisting….

– Diane Keaton and Ellen Page have signed on for HBO’s new show about a celebrity blogger….

-Brides Take On VH1’s Bridal Bootcamp! The weight-loss reality series premieres June 9…..

-In Jesse James news: The sister of the biker enthusiast backs his abuse claims, while his stepmother insists he is a racist….

–American Idol bandleader Rickey Minor is leaving the hit show to head up The Tonight Show band. Unfortunately for him, no one really cares….

-Katy Perry slapped Russell Brand for offering up their new kitten Krusty for sale on YouTube….

Happy Friday, all! We hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

A German design firm, Jjoo, has created a set of doors-within-a-door, which caters to hobbit-sized people, kids—even pets. More »










Business – Materials and Supplies – Doors and Windows – Construction and Maintenance – Hobbit

Materials: Dave laptop table

Description: This is my second luggage project. I love to upcycle old luggage into tables, so it seems. This guy was given to me in his original pre-loved state by a wonderful man I work with during the holidays when he heard I was into ‘the luggage’. He had used it and found it in the garage, unloved, and lovingly gave him to me to upcycle and make useful. Perfection.

Blue Footed Bobby, as it also turns out, is an Ikea Hack. Once I completed cleaning, priming, painting and finishing up his stripes with some magic shiny tape I was on the hunt for legs. He’s not a large suitcase, just the right size, medium. He needed legs that matched his style and size. I hunted and hunted for something inexpensive and suitable. What did I end up using? The base from my very own best friend of a laptop table from Ikea, Dave. Height adjustable, tiltable and so so birdlike, I loved the idea in my mind. With a little cleaning, some paint and a simple transplant of hardware he was born. Without any further explanation, let me introduce Blue Footed Bobby.

See more of the Blue Footed Bobby.

~ keeley d., ontario, canada

Gary Coleman, Shannon Price’s husband who became famous with the series “Arnold” has been hospitalized in Utah and is in critical condition, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

The former child star, now 42, who lives in Utah, was taken from his home because of a surgical block and was operated immediately. The actor was in critical condition after suffering a head injury from a fall.

Coleman is in the hospital for the third time this year, after a seizure in January and February. Coleman, whose growth was stunted by a congenital defect of his kidney, has also had two kidney transplants.

After the series “Arnold” ended, Coleman has been in the press for his scandals. In 2007 he was arrested after assaulting his wife, Shannon Price, who is nearly half of his age and almost twice its height.

Two years later, in July 2009, was arrested again for a domestic dispute and earlier this year, got arrested again for charges of domestic violence and he spent a night in jail.

Coleman lost most of his fortune in a protracted legal battle with his adoptive parents, who had control of his wealth, until he was 18. In the end, he was left with just $ 200,000.

After menial jobs, including working as a security guard, was forced to sell his personal items. In 1999 he declared bankruptcy.

Related posts:

1. Shannon Price’s Husband in Critical Condition
2. Gary Coleman Was Admitted to Hospital Because of a Serious Medical Condition
3. Rocker Bret Michaels Hopes Are Kept High

Earlier this week, we presented an update on the MIRC project for TISP Forum. (As you may recall we spoke optimistically about the plan for TISP last October when we were still at “applicant” status.) This time around “we” included me, Bill Coleman and several MIRC partners: Dick Senese and Joyce Hoelting from Extension, Casey Sorenson from PCs for People, Gary Langer from Minnesota Learning Commons, and Jeannie Spaulding from Kandiyohi County.

We’ve posted our slides below – but as is often the case, we seemed to learn as much as the attendees, both during and after the session. I was so pleased with everyone’s generosity in sharing their stories and expertise.

I’ll try to share some of their stories below too.

Notes from After the Session

After the Forum, a group of us headed for a post presentation pint and conversation to further explore opportunities for collaboration with MIRC communities. Steven Renderos of Main Street Project joined us. We originally met during our late March “MIRC Intro Tour,” and Steven was gracious enough to meet us to talk again.

Main Street Project describes itself as a “grassroots cultural organizing, media justice and economic development initiative working to help rural and urban communities face today’s realities with hope.” The project “provides creative and practical tools to give people of all ages, cultures, economic and immigration status the opportunity to more fully participate in all aspects of community life.”

Steven said that Main Street Project’s tools to work with communities, in both Spanish and English, include:

• digital story telling
• media justice
• using social media tools to organize
• internet education – policy and practice

Check out Main Street Project’s website for more information.

We also met with Nghi Huynh from Minnesota Multicultural Media Consortium (MMMC). Nhgi works with AHANA communities. (AHANA was a new term for me; Nghi explained that is stands for Afro-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American.)

Nghi’s MMMC colleague, Al McFarlane (also Editor-in-Chief of the Afro-American journal Insight News), talked about his interest in helping immigrant communities claim a “respect” for their culture as bringing value and an enhanced quality of life to their adopted communities. Al, who grew up in Worthington, said he wants to connect with Afro-Americans living in rural places. “We want to create a public mind,” he said, “that celebrates our culture.” In addition to editing the journal, Al also hosts a weekly radio show at KFAI, an independent community radio station that offices at Cedar-Riverside.

We learned that one MMMC partner, the Asian Community Technology Center, offers media literacy training and on-line resources for the AHANA community. Nhgi said that if invited, MMMC would welcome opportunities to bring their work to MIRC communities. MMMC is also the public awareness and outreach partner for the University of Minnesota ‘s BTOP grant in support of sustained broadband adoption in 11 public computer centers in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul. They will be translating and adapting into AHANA languages online curriculum on digital literacy and other internet use topics.

So you can see why we left more energized after talking with folks. It’s been so great to see the opportunities that have arisen even at the early stages. We’ll try to keep you updated as the project progresses.

Late Late Night FDL: Don’t Wait Too Long
Madeleine Peyroux — Don’t Wait Too Long, Los Angeles, 2009.

Madeleine Peyroux — Don’t Wait Too Long, Los Angeles, 2009.

What’s on your mind?

?

The Texas Textbook Massacre
Our friends at Brave New Films sent us this update on the Texas Board of Education’s partisan rewriting of American history. If you haven’t been angry enough today, hop past the jump and give it a gander.

Our friends at Brave New Films sent us this update on the Texas Board of Education’s partisan rewriting of American history. If you haven’t been angry enough today, hop past the jump and give it a gander.

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Hannity again falsely suggested Obama ignored oil spill, TN flooding

Sean Hannity again falsely suggested that President Obama ignored the floods in Tennessee and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In fact, Obama responded quickly to both disasters.

From the May 27 edition of Fox News’ Hannity:

HANNITY: But this president never mentioned the largest flood in Nashville in 500 years. To this day he’s not mentioned this. He didn’t speak publicly about [the oil spill] for eight long days. Now, there is a political aspect to this, especially in light of the massive criticism that George W. Bush received in light of a two-day-slow response to Katrina.

Fact: Tennessee’s governor praised the administration’s flood response

Declaration provides federal aid. In a May 4 release, the White House stated that Obama “declared a major disaster exists in the State of Tennessee and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area” affected by “severe storms, flooding, straight-line winds, and tornadoes beginning on April 30, 2010, and continuing.” The statement said that aid includes “grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster.” [Whitehouse.gov, 5/4/10]

Fox News.com: Tennessee governor said he has “never seen this kind of response.” Hannity’s own network reported that Gov. Phil Bredesen stated: “I’ve never seen this kind of response … and we’ve had our share of tornadoes and so forth.” Bredesen reportedly further stated, “FEMA and the White House could not have been more helpful in this thing.” Fox also reported that Obama spoke with Bredesen on Monday, May 3, and that FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate had been to the state twice since the storms. [FoxNews.com, 5/6/10]

Bredesen: “The President was on the phone to me before the sun came up practically on Monday morning.” In another White House statement, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs posted Bredesen’s description of the federal response:

I have to say that FEMA and the White House have been absolutely supportive. Very quickly FEMA was on the ground here before the raindrops started falling. … The President was on the phone to me before the sun came up practically on Monday morning. Slightly after it came up, other people from the White House had called and checked in with us and helped. … I’ve never seen this kind of a response to things that have happened. We’ve had our share of tornadoes and those kinds of things. … I’m very, very pleased with the response we’ve gotten from the administration. [5/6/10]

Fact: Administration responded immediately to rig explosion, oil spill

White House immediately dispatched officials, Coast Guard to work on response. As Media Matters detailed, the same day the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 21, the White House held a briefing with top administration officials, and Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes was dispatched to the region. The same day, the Coast Guard announced that four units were responding to the fire, with additional units en route.

Coast Guard began containment efforts on April 23. On April 23, the Coast Guard stated:

The Department of the Interior, MMS [the U.S. Minerals Management Service], and the Coast Guard continue to support the efforts of the responsible parties to secure all potential sources of pollution. Both federal agencies have technical teams in place overseeing the proposals by BP and Transocean to completely secure the well. Until that has occurred and all parties are confident the risk of additional spill is removed, a high readiness posture to respond will remain in place. 

Although the oil appears to have stopped flowing from the well head, Coast Guard, BP, Transocean, and MMS remain focused on mitigating the impact of the product currently in the water and preparing for a worst-case scenario in the event the seal does not hold. Visual feed from deployed remotely operated vehicles with sonar capability is continually monitored in an effort to look for any crude oil which still has the potential to emanate from the subsurface well.

“From what we have observed yesterday and through the night, we are not seeing any signs of release of crude in the subsurface area. However we remain in a ‘ready to respond’ mode and are working in a collaborative effort with BP, the responsible party, to prepare for a worst-case scenario,” Landry stated early Friday morning.

April 26: Oil recovery and cleanup were to resume after adverse weather passed. On April 25, the unified command team responding to the spill stated:

The unified command is implementing intervention efforts in an attempt to contain the source of oil emanating from the wellhead at the Deepwater Horizon incident site Sunday.

The unified command has approved a plan that utilizes submersible remote operated vehicles in an effort to activate the blowout preventer on the sea floor and to stop the flow of oil that has been estimated at leaking up to 1,000 barrels/42,000 gallons a day.

Also, BP is mobilizing the DD3, a drilling rig that is expected to arrive Monday to prepare for relief well-drilling operations.

Additionally, the oil recovery and clean-up operations are expected to resume once adverse weather has passed. These efforts are part of the federally approved oil spill contingency plan that is in place to respond to environmental incidents.

April 28: Federal officials realize spill was far more severe than BP led them to believe. An April 28 New York Times article reported, “Government officials said late Wednesday night that oil might be leaking from a well in the Gulf of Mexico at a rate five times that suggested by initial estimates.” The Times further reported:

In a hastily called news conference, Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard said a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had concluded that oil is leaking at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, not 1,000 as had been estimated. While emphasizing that the estimates are rough given that the leak is at 5,000 feet below the surface, Admiral Landry said the new estimate came from observations made in flights over the slick, studying the trajectory of the spill and other variables.

An April 30 Associated Press article reported, “For days, as an oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the government the plume was manageable, not catastrophic. Federal authorities were content to let the company handle the mess while keeping an eye on the operation.”

Hannity made these false claims before

Hannity previously suggested Obama did nothing on flooding, oil spill. On May 6, Hannity claimed that “[w]e have a massive flood in Nashville, the president, as of now, has yet to comment on it.” Hannity asserted on April 30 that the Obama administration “sat back for 9 days and they did absolutely nothing” about the oil spill”; on May 25, he said of the administration’s oil spill response, “they did nothing from day one … they haven’t done a thing.”

As BMW moves forward to bring the Megacity electric city vehicle to the market by 2013, sub-brand Mini is also looking to grab piece of the city car pie. Sources say that Mini is considering an affordable city car that will compete with the Smart ForTwo and will eventually help the brand increase its sales.

“Nothing is decided just yet,” a source told AutoCar. “It is all at an early stage of conception. But there is a lot of momentum behind it right now. We may be ready to show a concept within the next 12 months or perhaps a little longer.”

Mini has long struggled with the idea of making money on its small Cooper models that lack the profitability to be sustainable in the long term.

However, with BMW no looking at 3-cylinder engine and heavy cost cuts, Mini is feeling confident it can build a solid business case for a city car that will be profitable for the brand.

Note: The picture above is of the Mini Spiritual concept developed by the Rover Group.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: AutoCar

BP top kill halted due to “snag,” another giant underwater plume of oil discovered
Author’s note: This is three-part piece, but what is most noteworthy is that all of the information was obtained through corporate media. Are they finally waking up, or this is so bad there is no hiding it anymore? Excerpt: The New York Times reported today that BP’s “top kill” effort has been halted due to a snag. A […]

Voters Still Angry Despite Brighter Outlook
“Americans are increasingly optimistic about the economy, but that brightening outlook hasn’t softened their outrage over the country’s direction and its political leadership,” a USA Today/Gallup Poll finds.

Two-thirds of those surveyed say they are “angry” about the way things are going, the highest percentage in the decade the question has been asked. By nearly 2-1, they would rather vote for a candidate who has never served in Congress than one with experience.

The poll also finds a huge intensity gap between the parties: 50% of Republicans are “extremely motivated” to vote this year; 30% of Democrats are.

House Votes to Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
The House of Representatives voted to let the Pentagon “repeal the ban on gay and bisexual people from serving openly in the military, a major step toward dismantling the 1993 law widely known as ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” the New York Times reports.

“The House vote was 234 to 194, with 229 Democrats and 5 Republicans in favor, after an emotionally charged debate. Opposed were 168 Republicans and 26 Democrats.”

The Washington Post notes Democrats pushed ahead on the issue over the objections of some key military leaders, who said Congress should have waited to vote until a study is complete.

Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg Times reports Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I) — in an apparent nod to Democratic voters — switched his position on the issue and said he would support the repeal if he were in the Senate.

Political Advice From BP?s Handmaiden, Sen. Mary Landrieu

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo. Has there ever been a more loathsome hypocrite than Mary Landrieu? I don’t think so: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) says President Barack Obama will pay a political price his lack of visibility in the Gulf region during the catastrophic BP oil spill. “The president has not been as visible as […]

Why Do Christians Try to Impose Their Beliefs on Our Politics?
Author Ian Buruma Discusses "the political excesses of religion" he’s observed over three continents.

Author Ian Buruma Discusses "the political excesses of religion" he's observed over three continents.

BP’s Latest Effort Temporarily Blocks the Oil Gush – But Is It Stable?
"This will be felt for generations to come," warns oceans expert.

"This will be felt for generations to come," warns oceans expert.

Obama’s Crazy Plan To Cut Social Security
Is Obama’s new "debt commission" about to savage Social Security for no reason? Sure looks like it.

Is Obama's new "debt commission" about to savage Social Security for no reason? Sure looks like it.

We Are Living in a Screenworld — Reality Isn’t in the Real World Anymore
Has our new definition of "life experience" rendered tangible interactions irrelevant?

Has our new definition of "life experience" rendered tangible interactions irrelevant?

Fox News Anchors: ?We Can?t Trust BP?
Five weeks into the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States, even the right-wing Fox networks are turning on BP, the foreign oil behemoth responsible for the hundred-million-gallon oil gusher now fouling the shores of Louisiana. On Monday, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith challenged top White House adviser David Axelrod why the […]

Five weeks into the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States, even the right-wing Fox networks are turning on BP, the foreign oil behemoth responsible for the hundred-million-gallon oil gusher now fouling the shores of Louisiana. On Monday, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith challenged top White House adviser David Axelrod why the administration continues to trust BP, whose CEO Tony Hayward bet the disaster will have a “very very modest” impact on the Gulf of Mexico, claimed BP had “contained” the spill, and complained that Americans are too litigious:

And this is the chief executive of the company that’s in charge of cleaning up this disaster now? Who calls us litigious? Who makes comments about the comparative volume of oil and then says the environmental impact is very minimal? And this is the guy we as Americans are supposed to entrust with the largest ecological disaster in American history? Tony Hayward?

On Wednesday, Fox Business Network anchor Liz Claman interviewed John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimper Alliance, whose industry is threatened with extinction by the millions of gallons of dispersed oil contaminating the Gulf Coast. Claman noted that “we can’t trust BP”:

I think one thing we do know is that we can’t trust BP with information at this point. They were the ones, absolutely, you’re correct, who said, “Oh, don’t worry, the oil will not reach the beaches.” Oh, come on!

Watch a compilation:

This righteous anger at big oil is a remarkable turnaround for the networks that lied about the oil spills caused by Hurricane Katrina, deny the threat of oil pollution to the planet, and shilled for offshore drilling during the “Drill, Baby, Drill” summer of 2008.

Charlie Crist flip-flops to support ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell? repeal.
When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I) announced that he would leave the Republican party to run for the Senate as an independent, he indicated that he would be more free to support “ideas that I believe are good ideas for the people,” instead of just following “one club’s decision.” Indeed, after long supporting “Don’t Ask, […]

When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I) announced that he would leave the Republican party to run for the Senate as an independent, he indicated that he would be more free to support “ideas that I believe are good ideas for the people,” instead of just following “one club’s decision.” Indeed, after long supporting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Crist has announced that he is now in favor of the new comprise legislation, which would repeal the policy but allow the Pentagon to complete its study before the repeal is implemented. In a statement, Crist said the compromise will ensure that the new policy is “what is best for our military“:

“Ultimately, as in all military matters I defer to the Pentagon and to the Generals and what the Senate is doing today is giving them the ultimate authority to do what is best for our military. So, I would be inclined to support the Senate’s action on this.“

Crist has maintained a traditionally conservative record on LGBT issues, though there is some evidence to suggest he may adopt a more progressive stance now that he has been liberated from the Republican Party. He has said he is “fine” with civil unions, and in 2007, he asked the GOP to stop spending money promoting “a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Florida” in 2007.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk seems to have it all. The electric-car entrepreneur is the toast of Silicon Valley, Sacramento, and Tokyo after unveiling a plan to revive Toyota’s shuttered NUMMI plant last week. And deal-hungry Wall Street bankers are angling to take his company public. He’s even a Hollywood star, with a cameo in the hit Iron Man 2 movie, said to be based on his life story.

The one thing he doesn’t have, by his own admission, is money.

“About four months ago, I ran out of cash,” he wrote in a court filing dated Feb. 23, reviewed by VentureBeat. That’s a problem not just for him but for Tesla, where he is the lead investor and chief product architect, as well as CEO. Musk’s willingness to funnel his own cash into Tesla has for years sustained the faith of fellow investors and reassured would-be car buyers in 2008 when the company’s finances were in perilous shape.

According to the filing — part of his pending divorce case from sci-fi novelist Justine Musk — Elon Musk has been living off personal loans from friends since October 2009 and spending $200,000 a month while making far less. Musk confirmed this in an interview with VentureBeat.

Tesla, likewise, is dealing with its cash flow problems by borrowing money from a friendly source — the United States government, which has eagerly backed cleantech startups through a Department of Energy loan program. Tesla burned through $37 million in cash in the last three months of 2009, according to amended S-1 documents, filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission in preparation for its IPO. Tesla slowed this burn rate in the first quarter of 2010 to $8.4 million, but only by drawing down part of a $465 million loan from the DOE, while reporting a net loss of $29.5 million. Tesla’s sales were flat year-over-year in the first quarter, but declined precipitously in the U.S., according to a former Tesla executive.

Now, Toyota has agreed to buy $50 million in shares at the time of Tesla’s initial public offering — if it manages to go public before Dec. 31. But for now, the company doesn’t have access to that promised cash, and must pay $42 million to buy the NUMMI plant in Fremont, Calif., from a Toyota-General Motors joint venture.

Only one thing is certain: Tesla’s not getting more money from Musk.

Divorced from his fortune

Musk was Tesla’s first investor, and he kept the company afloat until recently through round after round of funding. After a Tesla employee leaked word in October 2008 to a reporter that the company was down to its last $9 million in cash, Musk promised to personally refund car buyers’ deposits if Tesla couldn’t deliver the vehicles — a promise he made in the pages of Car & Driver. At that time, those deposits — which Tesla calls “reservation payments” — were an important source of cash for the company.

And throughout Tesla’s history, Musk has used his entrepreneurial legend — Zip2, sold for $305 million to Compaq; PayPal, sold to eBay for $1.5 billion — to bolster his credibility as a technology executive. Musk’s personal take from Zip2 was a reported $22 million, much of which he invested in his next startup, PayPal, netting $160 million when eBay bought the online-payments startup. According to filings in his divorce trial, he had roughly $48 million in income from his investments between 2005 and 2008. But he sunk much of that money back into Tesla, as well as his other enterprises, the space-exploration concern SpaceX and solar panel finance startup SolarCity.

His finances were not always so strained. In other documents filed in the divorce case, Musk reportedly made $9,551,753 in 2008 and an average of $17.2 million a year from 2005 to 2008. As of Dec. 31, 2008, he also had extensive holdings in venture capital and private equity partnerships, ranging from Softbank Technology Ventures to Charles River Ventures to Clarium Capital. These partnerships, however, tend to be highly illiquid investments: It can take months to get out of them because you have to find a sophisticated buyer willing to bear the risks of a private sale.

As he ran low on cash, a contentious divorce — in which his ex-wife, Justine Musk, is seeking a sizable chunk of Musk’s holdings — caused him more financial problems. Justine Musk is asking a court to rip up a post-nuptial agreement she and Elon Musk signed in March 2000, which could in theory lead to much of his holdings being deemed community property. While there’s no telling how the case will turn out — it has already gone to appeal — more important is the protective order the court has slapped on Musk’s holdings in Tesla and his other illiquid assets. These include his stakes in private equity funds. He won’t be able to sell significant holdings without first getting permission from his ex-wife. And he has also been ordered by a court to continue paying her legal fees for the duration of the lengthy appeal process.

Refueling Tesla’s cash

Musk still owns roughly a third of Tesla — some 81 million shares out of approximately 250 million outstanding, according to the company’s filings. But keeping his ownership stake that high has come at a cost. In November 2007, in order to wield enough voting power to oust Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard as CEO, he converted 8 million of his preferred shares into common shares. Two months later, Musk participated in a bridge loan to rebuff a separate effort by VantagePoint Venture Partners, a significant investor, to lead a deal that would have seriously diluted Musk’s control. VantagePoint partner Jim Marver left Tesla’s board as a result. From the perspective of Musk’s board allies, the move steadied the company at a time of significant employee turnover and potential loss of morale. (A VantagePoint spokesman declined to comment on Tesla board matters.)

The moves kept Musk in control of Tesla, but it also meant that his stake kept getting diluted in subsequent financing rounds. (Preferred shares often hold anti-dilution rights, but common shares typically do not.) And there were many subsequent rounds, including a highly dilutive convertible debt round in 2008. The first sign of trouble came last fall, when Musk, for the first time, did not participate in a financing round for Tesla.

The company has not disclosed Musk’s lack of financial liquidity or the potential implications of his divorce case in its filings — only that it is highly dependent on Musk’s services. Tesla has also begun reimbursing Musk for his private-jet flights, an expense he previously paid out of pocket. And while Tesla pays Musk only a minimal salary, its board awarded him 6.7 million stock options in December 2009 — the first time he has taken this kind of equity as compensation. It seems that Musk’s compensation from Tesla has increased since his personal finances became an issue.

A matter of disclosure

Should Tesla have mentioned all these facts in its S-1 filings? Eric Talley, a professor of law at Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and the Economy, notes that  Section 11 of the 1933 Securities Act requires that companies registering to go public not make materially misleading statements or omissions. But it’s far from clear what’s material in these cases, he said: “It’s not a black and white rule.”

A longtime observer of the company thinks the state of Musk’s finances is worth disclosing. “It’s up to the courts to decide, but this feels like material information,” said Dallas Kachan, managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech research and analysis consultancy which follows Tesla.

The easiest way for Musk to get out of debt to his friends and settle accounts with his ex-wife would be for Tesla to go public and for Musk to unload much of his stake. After an IPO, his shares of Tesla would become a readily sold asset — except for the protective orders in his divorce case and a requirement of the DOE loan that Musk hold onto a certain percentage of his shareholdings until some time after units of Tesla’s forthcoming Model S start rolling off the NUMMI assembly line.

Asked to comment on whether Tesla’s disclosures so far have been adequate, John Heine, deputy director of the Security & Exchange Commission’s Office of Public Affairs, said his agency does not comment on companies with pending registrations to the press. Ricardo Reyes, a spokesman for Tesla Motors, has previously said the company had no plans to revise its filings with the SEC to reflect the possible impact of Musk’s divorce as a risk factor.

Should the company have said more? Perhaps, argues one observer.

“Transparency is thought to be a good thing for the operation of capital markets,” said Talley, the Berkeley law professor. “Bare compliance with SEC rules isn’t enough.”

Here are the documents detailing Musk’s finances:

Elon Musk’s Finances –

 

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See Also:

• Tesla Paid $175,000 For CEO Elon Musk’s Jet Last Year
• Elon Musk Calls Times Writer "A Huge Douchebag" And "An Idiot" (VIDEO)
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