The U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule on whether or not current federal regulations protect automakers from being sued under state product liability laws. According to The Wall Street Journal, justices will examine a California lawsuit that claims that Mazda should be held responsible for the death of a passenger in a 1993 MPV minivan. The passenger was riding in the middle seat, wearing a lap belt, when an accident occurred. The belt caused serious internal injuries that eventually led to death. The plaintiff’s argument is that by not installing three-point seatbelts in the center row of the vehicle, Mazda failed to do everything in its power to protect the occupants of the vehicle.
It’s important to note that three-point seatbelts didn’t become a legal requirement in all seating positions until 2007. Before that time, regulations established in 1989 said that three-point belts were only required in outboard seats, so Mazda built the MPV to conform to the laws in place when the vehicle was built and sold.
The lawsuit was originally rejected after Mazda pointed to a 2000 Supreme Court case in which Honda was unsuccessfully sued after injuries occurred in a 1987 Honda Accord. In that case, the plaintiff said that Honda was responsible because it did not install airbags in the vehicle.
The Supreme Court will hear the case in the 2010-2011 term starting in October.
I received an email that appalled me: the Royal Ontario Museum, an otherwise excellent establishment, has invited new age nonsense guru Deepak Chopra to speak there!
World renowned teacher, author and philosopher Deepak Chopra presents his latest concepts in the field of mind-body medicine bridging the technological miracles of the West with the wisdom of the East. He will show you how your highest vision of yourself can be turned into physical reality and discuss how you can become a living cell within the body of a living universe. You don’t join the cosmic dance – you become the dance.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, there’s a good reason for it: it doesn’t make sense.
Chopra is perhaps the largest purveyor of pseudoscientific piffling pablum on the planet, and here is a museum — a science museum — paying him to speak. Non-ironically! Worse, check out how much they’re charging: $25 to $175! You can guess how much they’re lining Chopra’s pockets.
<gag>
The Center for Inquiry (Canada) has written an open letter to the museum, and I think they have handled the situation well. I hope they can distribute a lot of flyers at the event. Of course, people who pay that kind of money to hear such nonsense are unlikely to want to hear arguments against it, but we’ll see.
Maybe moving $300 fans is harder than Dyson expected, or perhaps Dyson’s engineers are just flat out of things to do. Either way, this Rube Goldberg-ian balloon course, made from God knows how many Air Multiplier bladeless fans, is mesmerizing. More »
Solar power plant developer SunEdison and energy-focused private equity fund First Reserve have formed a venture that will finance solar projects developed by SunEdison.
The two companies will first invest an initial $165 million in the venture. However, eventually the fund could hold up to $1.5 billion in investment capital.
As part of the venture SunEdison, a unit of MEMC Electronic Materials, will identify and develop projects and First Reserve will handle all financing efforts.
Regarding the venture SunEdison CEO Carlos Domenech said:
The industry needs efficient and scalable financing models to meet demand. We expect the joint venture to help facilitate the development of our existing backlog of project opportunities and prospective projects that meet our development criteria.
The venture is a catalyst that will help ensure that SunEdison’s project-pipeline gets funded.
This is not First Reserve first cleantech investment. Spanish solar developer 9ren Group, formerly Gamesa Solar, is a portfolio company.
Only connected IEA members can Save Our Schools, Save Our State Between now and May 31st, and perhaps more than once, IEA members will be asked to drop everything they’re doing, contact their legislators, and urge those officials to either pass or oppose key legislation.
It is crucial that, when the “Call to Action” is announced, as many of IEA’s 133,000 members statewide as possible receive and answer it. Here are some suggestions to help members stay informed:
Visit the IEA website. It will be updated regularly.
Become a fan of the IEA facebook page to see news updates, event announcements and chances to win prizes.
Follow IEA on Twitter for news updates and breaking news when we “Tweet” legislative debate or important meetings.
…and that’s not all As many as 300,000 school employee jobs nationally could be lost next school year unless Congress steps in. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are considering proposals that would provide dollars to states and eliminate the need for many of the pink slips across the country.
Politicians do care what’s important to their constituents, especially constituents who call them. So, NEA is asking all friends of education to call 866/608-6355 on Wednesday, May 26.Read more about this initiative on the NEA Today website.
Plan to make the call Wednesday. It’s important.
SLA offers a smorgasbord of training
Back by popular demand, the Summer Leadership Academy will be held July 27-30 at Illinois State University. Online registration as available at the IEA website. Choose the training you want and come for one, two or all four days!
Recognize your students’ achievements and receive 250,000 points free!
Make your students feel good about their accomplishments with uBoost! Recognize positive behavior by awarding students with points redeemable online for prizes they want. Backed by behavioral research, the program is designed to engage students and ultimately drive learning outcomes.
Looking for something different to give your dad this year? Check out the savings available when you use your membership card! You can save on electronics, sporting goods, magazines, apparel and more! Click here to save! Just enter your 10-digit member ID number on the membership card and click “go.”
Website of the Week
Passports provides educational travel tours for high school and college students, their teachers and professors, and adults. Travel trips are scheduled year-round to Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Australia at low, guaranteed prices, and are normally accompanied by local teacher-organizers, who enjoy special benefits. Find out more on our Website of the Week.
Attention, toy instrument connoisseurs! Make room in your pretend studio for a new addition: the piano. Yes, Rock Band 3 is bringing the ivories to the video game world. More »
Pork Tenderloin with cherry-Rioja reduction, spiced walnuts, piquillo peppers and crispy shallots (AJC Staff)
Have you been to the Iberian Pig in Decatur? Do you love it? Or is it not for you? I’m beginning to think the answer to this question says a lot about what you look for in a dining experience.
Three times this week people have told me how much they love this restaurant. When I ask them what they enjoy about it, they tend to respond globally. “The vibe is great,” or “It’s such a nice surprise.”
Do they love the food? Absolutely, even though one fan failed to recall a single dish from the place. Another loved the meatballs stuffed with dates and peppers. A third mentioned the pork tenderloin (above) in cherry sauce.
Then these people ask me if I’ve been to the Iberian Pig. Yes, I respond noncommittally. But only once, so I don’t know it well at all.
In fact, my wife and I live around the corner from the Iberian Pig. We walked over once for some wine and a few small …
On April 24, I put aside my Google Nexus One and purchased a white 32GB iPhone 3GS from AT&T. Two days ago, I returned the Apple smartphone and cancelled the service. My reasons should interest anyone considering AT&T and iPhone between now and June 1st, especially, and after June 7th. The first date is when AT&T jacks up early termination fees; the second, when Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 4G.
Let me start by saying that I won’t pull a Dan Lyons. The Newsweek columnist and Steve Jobs wannabe also is switching from iPhone to Nexus One. But he unleashed one helluva venomous diatribe explaining why. I’ve got no venom to spew. I really enjoyed the iPhone 3GS and will miss using the device. My reasons are more pragmatic.
First some background: In October 2009, I moved my family from AT&T to T-Mobile, putting aside iPhone in the process. I had been an AT&T customer for about six years. My simple reason: Too many dropped calls. Six or more a day was a common number, with about as many failed outgoing calls. By comparison, I used T-Mobile for nearly five months before dropping a call.
But following Apple’s April 8th iPhone OS 4 announcement, I reconsidered the switch. My major gripe with iPhone is multitasking, something Apple should fix well enough with iPhone OS 4. I hadn’t tested iPhone apps for many months and wanted to prep for Apple’s newest mobile operating system. Also, I didn’t having a portable music player or good stereo digital recorder for doing interviews. Apple’s smartphone could fill in for both.
So I finally decided to buy a new iPhone 3GS and start fresh with AT&T. In California, the buyer’s remorse period is 30 days; I would have plenty of time to evaluate AT&T and iPhone 3GS. I also would be coming off the Nexus One, which would be a great comparison to the iPhone 3GS. To be clear: I planned on the switch being permanent; I ported my number to AT&T. But it was not to be. Here are my 10 reasons for dumping iPhone 3GS and AT&T (again), in no order of importance:
1. Dropped calls. During my first two weeks back with AT&T, I experienced fewer dropped or failed calls than before my departure in October 2009. Then the experience deteriorated. Last week, dropped and failed calls returned with a vengeance. For example, in conversations with my father-in-law and The Loops’s Jim Dalrymple over one 15 minute period, calls dropped six times. I simply gave up talking to both men.
By the way, when I returned the iPhone, the AT&T rep asked where I live. She laughed and said that everybody at the store knows that my zipcode has some of the worst AT&T service in San Diego. “Oh?” I asked. “Then why when I asked about reception before, AT&T reps said it was strong in my area?” She didn’t answer that question, but instead offered me an AT&T MicroCell. “We normally charge $150, but it’s free to people in your area,” she said. Basically, MicroCell acts as a local 3G hub connected to the home’s broadband. Ah, no thanks.
2. Google is leapfrogging Apple. That’s the story headline from Gizmodo on May 20, and I so totally agree. Apple’s yearly iPhone release cycle simply isn’t fast enough to stay competitive. Google has taken Android from version 1 to 2.2 since the T-Mobile G1 shipped in autumn 2008; Google is rapidly innovating by iteration. The pace reminds me of the browser wars, where Netscape lumbered along while Microsoft lept ahead.
The numbers tell part of the story. According to Gartner, Android handset sales rose to 5.2 million units during first quarter from 575,300 a year earlier. Last week, Google revealed 100,000 Android phone activations a day, which over one quarter puts units at 9 million — or more than the number of iPhones sold during first quarter.
3. Android 2.2. The new operating system is chock full of exciting features, many of which either close the gap on iPhone OS or push ahead of it. Installation of apps onto memory card, Web-based app store, better suport for multiple e-mail accounts and faster Chrome browser are among the new features that turned me away from iPhone, even when anticipating v4. Then there is support for Adobe Flash, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs disses. He can keep iPhone. The real Web runs Flash.
4. Android notifications bar. Sometimes the simplest user interface feature can change everything. Good example is TiVo’s program guide grid, which opened up the digital video recording market. Time-shifting wasn’t a new concept. People could record shows on VHS tapes long before TiVo. But the program guide proved to be a simpler and much better motif. I say the same about Android’s notifications bar, which by its placement, pull-down access and audible zing leaps way ahead of iPhone notifications. It’s one of Android’s killer features.
5. Desktop widgets. Returning to using the iPhone 3GS at first felt like returning to something old after using something new. The Nokia N900 and Nexus One spoiled me with their widgetized home screens. For example, while iPhone forced me to use various news apps, Nexus One provides a Google News widget accessing thousands of news sites. Nexus One kept me more informed than iPhone. Widgets make what is important readily available and updated in real time.
6. AT&T termination fees. On June 1st, AT&T will raise early termination fees from $175 to $325. I simply didn’t want to be locked in to AT&T. I got to wondering why the increase, too. What is it that we don’t know yet about iPhone 4G? Is Apple charging AT&T more for the new device? Is AT&T concerned about churn to other services, like Verizon and its two-for-one Android smartphone deal? Could AT&T and Apple be planning to lower iPhone’s purchase price, increasing the carrier’s subsidy while paying same price for the phone? Or perhaps could lower monthly subscription fees be coming? Is iPhone coming to other carriers and AT&T proactively acting to keep customers? As a journalist, I’m interested in the answers. As a consumer, with the number of dropped calls, I wasn’t willing to be locked in for $325.
7. My wife loves the Nexus One. My beloved is an artist and non-geek. She simply doesn’t like gadgets — but she loves her Nexus One. After switching to iPhone 3GS, I offered her the Nexus One, not really expecting her to take to it; for starters, I find the Google phone to be kind of ugly compared to iPhone. What got her: The aspect of the user interface I also found appealing — the notifications bar (see #4). Now she does e-mail and Facebook on her phone, because of the notifications. My wife had used an iPhone 3G in autumn 2008 and asked me to return it, which I did within the 30-day buyer’s remorse period. She’s keeping the Nexus One. I had to buy another, and it arrived while I was writing this post. By the way, nearly two weeks ago there was big noise about Google stopping Nexus One direct sales. Oh, yeah? When? I ordered my phone from Google on Sunday (May 23rd).
8. Blue Mikey. Like iPod Classic, when I had one, iPhone 3GS was to be my digital recorder with attached microphone. I purchased the Blue Mikey, which records in stereo on iPhone 3GS in airplane mode. I also purchased from the iTunes App Store $9.99 “FiRe – Field Recorder.” But when I connected the iPhone to my computer, the recorded audio files wouldn’t transfer. According to the FiRe’s support site: “You cannot transfer your recordings using ‘Sync’ because it is proprietary to Apple.” Say what? I was presented with ridiculous options like browser access over same WiFi network (which I couldn’t make work) or uploading to FTP site. Frak that. When I’m recording interviews at events, there’s no time to muck around with FTP sites. If sync isn’t good enough, the product isn’t good enough.
9. Service costs. I have five lines on T-Mobile, four of them with unlimited phone, Web and text. These five lines cost me less per month than four did on the AT&T 2,100-minute family plan. I paid more for Nexus One ($529) versus iPhone 3GS ($299), but Nexus One is unlocked and the extra AT&T monthly fees would close the price difference in less than two months of service.
10. I prefer the real Web to apps. With iPhone, there are too many disparate applications. Nexus One presents the real Web, which will be more real with Android 2.2. Google also presents the real Web in a really useful way, in the browser and with supporting app services. The emphasis is search and location — what people need where they are. During the iPhone OS launch in April, Jobs asserted: “Search is not happening on phones.” What alternate universe is he living? Search is one of the principle benefits of smartphones.
By the way, of course I do use apps. Amazon’s release of Kindle for Android also factored into my decision, which leads to something else. Nexus One is all the tablet I need — better because it’s always with me. So also with the switch back to Nexus One came something else: Yesterday I sold my iPad to a good friend. As asserted last week, iPad isn’t for everyone, and that includes me.
The AP is reporting that the house made famous by the 1979 film “The Amityville Horror” is up for sale. It’s a 5 bedroom Dutch colonial built in 1927, according to the listing. It’s 3600 square feet, with 3.5 baths and a detached two car garage. The boat house is especially nice, in our opinion.
The downside is that six members of the DeFeo family were murdered in the house as they slept. The eldest son was eventually convicted of the murders. The movie was based on the alleged experiences of subsequent residents.
Complaints depicted in the book and the series of movies include: “walls oozing slime, moving furniture and a visit from a demonic pig named Jodie.”
No mention of any of that in the listing however, and more recent owners have not had similar problems.
Also of note: the iconic windows have been replaced, and the property looks much different these days. Anyone want to buy it and restore it to its original creepy glory?
It’s in human nature to try and measure everything around us, to better understand us. However, some are not happy with meters, kilograms or liters. Instead, they create new ways of analyzing nature. Some are just bored, and create funny units. Others create new scales to look at data in new and exciting ways. But all of them make you scratch your head and think “why can’t we just use the metric system on this problem?”
14. Big Mac Index
The Big Mac Index only sounds crazy, until you realize what it’s there for. Created by the magazine The Economist, it provides an independent way of judging the purchasing power parity nations. There are McDonalds everywhere, right? And they all serve Big Macs (or a local equivalent). So you take how much it costs to buy one in a country, and compare that to the cost of the burger in another. If the difference in cost is substantially different from the actual exchange rate, it shows there’s a disparity between the stated value of a currency, and what it’s actually worth. You can also look at how long it takes someone to earn a Big Mac, based on their salary, as a way of analyzing pay in different cities.
13. Football Fields
For some reason, whenever a distance or area has to be used on the news, it’s always measured in “football fields”. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in, or what variant of football they play (soccer, handegg, or rugby), the same measurement is always used. “It’s 75 football fields long!” “That’s the same area as 17 football fields!”. For some reason, we’re all meant to have this perfect idea of how big a field is, and just how large a cluster of them would be. Ever heard of standard units? What exactly is so wrong with yards or meters, that we need to compare to the equivalent sports field?
12. Tons of TNT
When it comes to explosives, it all links back to one thing: trinitrotoluene. TNT. You know how nukes are measured in megatons or gigatons? Yeah, that’s how many tons of TNT it’s the equivalent of. It’s a handy way to compare, assuming you know the destructive capabilities of a ton of TNT. The thing is, do you? I have never worked with explosives. No one I know has (except for one guy who spent a bit of time working on fireworks, which don’t quite count). What exactly does a ton of TNT do? Is it a metric tonne or an imperial ton? How big of a boom is it? Could it knock down a building? A city block? A football field? Sometimes it’s good that people use an appreciable standard measure, but it only works if there’s a frame of reference for most people.
11. Tanner Scale of Sexual Maturity
The Tanner Scale isn’t weird in itself, but the way it’s used is a bit disturbing. It’s a method of judging the physical sexual maturity of a child or teenager based on physical characteristics. Size of the secondary sexual characteristics, development of pubic hair, that sort of stuff. However, it fails to take into account something very important — namely that people can vary mammothly. And due to the Tanner Scale, a guy almost spent 20 years in jail. See, there’s this porn star Little Lupe, who is absolutely tiny and used to have tiny breasts. She’s since had implants, but her old videos are still around. So this guy buys one of her DVDs, completely legally, and then gets busted for child porn. A pediatrician testified that due to the Tanner Scale, there was no physical way the star of the film was over 18. The judge even refused to admit evidence from the porn company’s records showing Lupe was of age. Eventually, the porn star actually showed up in the courtroom to prove she was legal, and so was the DVD. It’s terrifying that a rough guide is now being used as an absolute scale, with enough certainty to doom someone to jail for most of their life.
10. Smoot
Following the finest tradition of the US system of measurements, a Smoot is a very specific length as defined by the human body. In this case, a very specific human body, that of Oliver R. Smoot. As a freshman at MIT, his frat elders decided that Smoot’s stature made him an excellent height for measuring. Laid across the Harvard Bridge over the River Charles in Boston, a line was painted at Smoot’s head, some 5′7″. Again and again, they lay him down, crossing the bridge, and measuring it’s length at an official 364.4 Smoots. To this day, every year those lines are re-painted on the bridge, memorializing the Smoot. Smoot went on to chair the American National Standards Institute and become president for the International Organization for Standardization.
9. FFF System
Lets face it, the imperial system the US uses for measuring is pretty stupid. The rest of the world uses metric, and it makes a lot more sense. The FFF system was devised as a way of measuring using intentionally outdated units, just to poke fun at the impractical nature of the imperial system. FFF stands for furlong/firkin/fortnight, used for length, mass, and time respectively. A furlong is 220 yards/201.168m; a firkin 90 lbs/40.823kg; and a fortnight 14 days/1,209,600 seconds. Fortnight is still used pretty frequently in Commonwealth countries, but a firkin? That’s pretty obscure. The system is most famous for a “microfortnight” or 1.2096 seconds, and a “furlong per fortnight” which is around 1cm per minute.
8. The Galactic Year
Using the scale of an Earth year when talking geological or astronomical events is a problem, the unit of this time period dwarfs when compared to the length of time referenced. Hell, a million years is too small for some of it, but a billion years is too long. Enter the Galactic Year. This is a measure of the time it takes the solar system to orbit around the center of the Milky Way — somewhere around 250 million years. It provides a handy yardstick for great lengths of time, as well as providing a conceptually clear origin for the time period. Following this way of counting, the Earth is around 20 galactic years old, and the galaxy itself is around 80. Man, I can’t wait for Earth’s 21GY birthday! It’s going to be such a tight party! By the way, humans have been around for 0.001GY.
7. The Dol
How do you measure pain? It’s incredibly personal and variable. What you might think stings a little, someone else might find agonizing enough to cause tears. Or, you might start wailing at what others would scoff at. There’s no absolute way to measure pain, and asking the person to say how much something hurts on a scale of 1 to 10 is flawed. After all, I really have no idea what a 10 is. Broken limb? Three weeks of torture in a dungeon in the Middle East? Passing a kidney stone? James D. Hardy, Herbert G. Wolff, and Helen Goodell attempted to create something a bit more scientific than saying “it hurts”. They created a unit of measure called the dol — equivalent to a just noticeable difference in the level of pain. Unfortunately, this falls in the trap of relying on self reporting, and requires that patients be able to correctly gauge these differences. Unsurprisingly, it never took off. Full points for trying, though.
6. Attoparsec
A parsec is a really, really large unit of measurement. It’s used in astronomy, and is around 3.25 light years, or 3.085×10^16 m (around 31 trillion km). Atto- is the SI prefix denoting 10^-18 or 0.000000000000000001. So an attoparsec a really small version of a very large measure. So what does that end up being? About 3.085cm. A nice, small length, gathered by combining to ludicrous measures. So why do it? Shits and giggles, more or less. It does create a humorous oxymoron sort of measure. Though utterly impractical. Frankly, I blame physicists. Coincidently, 1 attoparsec/microfortnight is nearly 1 inch/second.
5. Beard-Seconds
Remember what I just said about physicists? Well, this one is definitely their fault. Everyone knows what a light-year is. It’s the distance light travels in a year, in a vacuum, around 10 trillion km. It’s very handy for things far, far away. So what happens when you want something similar, but on a small scale? You take the average length that a beard grows in a single second. Light-year = fast moving thing over long time period. Beard-second = slow moving thing over short time period. Haha, very funny, bearded physics guys. In case you care, it’s 5 nanometers.
4. Bristol Stool Scale
As Scrubs once so eloquently put it, “Everything Comes Down To Poo”. And they’re right, you can learn a lot about someone’s health by their feces. So, how do you go about describing crap on an equivalent level? Enter the Bristol Stool Scale. Your poop gets rated on a scale from 1-7, constipated to diarrhea. And, for some unknown reason, four of the seven are described in relation to food. That’s right, nuts and sausages are used frequently when describing the consistency of the feces. You should apparently be able to differentiate between sausage and italian sausage when it’s coming out of your ass. Remember, try for types 3 and 4, they’re ideal!
3. The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale
Life can be pretty bad sometimes. Finances, relationships, stress — it can all take a toll on your health. But how much of one? Ah, now we get into the science! The eponymous Holmes and Rahe put together a list of stressful events that happen in your life, and assigned each a point score. You look at how many have hit you in the last 12 months, total the score, and if it’s above 300, you’re at a pretty bad risk for illness — ideally you want to keep it below 150. The worst possible occurrence is the death of a spouse, which clocks in at 100 points. Then divorce (73), marital separation (65), imprisonment (63), and death of a close family member (63). At the lower end of the scale are little things: Christmas, breaking a minor law, changing your eating habits. But they all add up. They also made a similar list for “non-adults”, which pretty much boils down to teen pregnancy and school sucks.
2. Scoville Scale
The Scoville Scale is pretty well known — a way of measuring the heat of chili peppers, but when you think about, it’s kinda crazy. Someone’s legacy is a way of figuring out how spicy little red fruits are. While today the measuring of a pepper’s heat is a thoroughly scientific endeavor, using high-performance liquid chromatography, the original test was far less precise. The first method involved making an alcohol extract of the capsaicin oil from a measured amount of dried pepper, which was then incrementally added to a sugar/water solution until the heat is just detectable. In other words, it relied on someone being able to feel when something gets spicy. Since spicy food binds to receptors in your mouth, the more hot food you eat, the less spiciness you would feel, making the original scale more or less bunk. But these days? It’s the gold standard of spice!
1. Schmidt Sting Pain index
Justin O. Schmidt deserves a medal for the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Personally stung by 78 species of insect, he compiled a a scale of the pain they caused. From 1-4, he classified and described the pain they caused — with vivid detail. In fact, reading his descriptions might cause you to question Schmidt’s sanity, but hey, being stung by all those critters might drive anyone up the wall. Rather than wax lyrical about the index, I’ll let the WTFery speak for itself: •1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm. •1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch. •1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek. •2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door. •2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue. •2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin. •3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail. •3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic and burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut. •4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath. •4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel
In a recent press releaseannouncingits HSPA+ expansions, T-Mobile referred to their upgrades as “4G speeds” several times, which may lead many to believe that what T-Mobile is rolling out is actual 4G rather than upgraded 3G. AT&T has spoken out against T-Mobile’s announcement, responding by saying that T-Mobile needs to “be careful that they’re not misleading customers by labeling HSPA+ as a 4G technology.” AT&T, who is planning to upgrade their own network to similar HSPA+ speeds before making the jump to LTE/4G, said that they are not labeling the upgrade as 4G, so T-Mobile shouldn’t either. While T-Mobile isn’t technically saying that their network expansion is 4G, their wording could lead many to believe that it is since most people probably don’t really know what 4G actually is. What are your thoughts on this situation? Share them with us!
Day 36: Scenes from the BP oil spill disaster. Embattled CEO walks oil-stained beach. Embattled president caught in Rand Paul/Sarah Palin firestorm. Oily, pink people turn angry and naked in Houston. Rachel Maddow, Steven Chu, Sylvia Earle, and so much more …
Last night, Rachel Maddow devoted most of her show to the oil spill, including an interview with seemingly distraught BP CEO Tony Hayward:
And here’s Maddow’s with Energy Secretary Steven Chu:
Watchdog group, Media Matters, says Palin’s claims are untrue. BP as a corporation did not give Obama more funding than other politicians. Their employees did.
On “Face the Nation,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reponds to Sarah Palin and answers questions about the oil spill and the administration’s response. Aren’t you glad you don’t have his job?
Man of the hour Rand
Paul rags on Obama for ragging on BP. That kind of talk is just “un-American,” said Paul. But, wait. Wasn’t America founded by people criticizing Brits?
Codepink activitists in Houston take off their clothes and put on some oil—lots of it—to protest BP. Then they sing, “The eyes of Texas are upon you.”
Sarah Palin keeps signing autographs and keeps shilling for drilling. “We need to keep drilling because if we don’t drill for a year, we’re going
to be more and more reliant on foreign countries that have even less stringent
environmental standards,” Palin told ABC News.
Finally. Someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Oceanographer Sylvia Earle talks about the disastrous oil spell adding “insult to injury.”
While nothing was confirmed at the time of the announcement, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk recently said that “hiring former NUMMI workers is a priority” for the company. Musk, who answered the question during the taping of a Southern California public radio program, said that “It is always easier to hire from the neighborhood” than to recruit workers from out of the area.
Musk said that Tesla has already hired a number of people who had previously worked at the factory when it was jointly owned by General Motors and Toyota.
He said that the company anticipates 1,000 people to come back to work when it starts building the Tesla Model S sedan in 2012. When everything is up and pumping, employment at the plant should increase to nearly 5,000 workers, who will build both Tesla and Toyota’s smaller, more affordable electric-vehicles.
Toyota will purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock issued in a private placement.
Central banks will never tighten monetary policy again, merely print, print, print
Bubbles used to be concentrated in 1 sector or region in the 19th century, but off of the gold standard this concentration has ended
“The lifetime achievement of Greenspan and Bernanke is really that they created a bubble in everything…everywhere.”
“You have to ask what they were smoking at the Federal Reserve,” during the housing bubble, as prices were increasing by 18% annually when interest rates started to steadily rise in 2004
As for the top one, it seems extreme, but we’re beginning to believe that, as both the ECB and the Fed are probably both in loosening mode, and markets are predicting rate cuts in Australia. Maybe “never” is strong, but we’re certainly inclined to think rate hikes won’t be coming for a long long time.
Quick heads up, people. ModNation Racers has now been released into retail for both the PSP and PS3, so now you can start playing, creating, and sharing, plus all the other stuff you can do in the
“Who blinks in the sunlight / that peeks through the Himalayas?” … thus begins a year in the life of a moon bear – named for their distinctive crescent-shaped mark on their chest – otherwise known as an Asiatic black bear. An endangered species that is fast disappearing from the wild, too many are found trapped on ‘bear farms,’ where they “spend their entire lives in tiny cages … unable to stand up or move around,” writes author Brenda Z. Guiberson in the “Author’s Note.”
The moon bear in the story thankfully roams the Himalayas, feeding on birch tree sap, new bamboo shoots, and raspberries. In her vast wanderings, she is careful to avoid the poachers and loggers in the lowlands, and prepares for her next hibernation.
While the story is heartfelt and adventurous, especially for the youngest readers, the highlight of this title is, no surprise, the visual splendor of master illustrator Ed Young‘s multimedia collage illustrations of the moon bear’s journey. That cover alone with the almost-prayerful moon bear gazing upward, with such trusting eyes … have to hold the book in your own hands to behold the glory and depth of Ed Young’s always memorable, gorgeous art.
Just three months after the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a call for a redesigned hot dog that would be safer for small children to eat, Eugene D. Gagliardi, Jr. — the food designer who invented Steak-umms and popcorn chicken — has come forward with a solution. His patented hot dog has eight slits that open during cooking, which cause it to break up into smaller pieces, potentially reducing the likelihood that a child could choke on it.
The patent, for a “food product having reduced likelihood of choking,” is all about breaking up the “elongated food product” into smaller pieces:
Briefly stated, the present invention comprises an elongated food product having a central axis extending along its length and two portions, a segmented portion comprised of at least two segments that are separable from each other, and an unsegmented portion which is substantially contiguous to the segmented portion. A consumer’s biting into the food product generally perpendicular to the central axis results in the separation of the segments, creating in the mouth of the consumer small food pieces relative to the size of the bitten-off section to reduce the likelihood of choking on the food product.
In one preferred construction the invention comprises an elongated food product having a generally cylindrical outer surface, a length and a longitudinal centerline traversing the length of the food product. The food product further comprises an array of at least two generally radial lengthwise cuts, each cut residing in a plane containing the centerline, with each cut extending from the outer surface of the food product inwardly to a predetermined, substantially uniform distance from the centerline, thereby providing an unsegmented generally cylindrical inner portion and a segmented outer portion having at least two separable segments, each segment having as a cross-sectional shape a sector of a circle truncated at its apex, each segment further being contiguous with and connected to the unsegmented inner portion.
Gagliardi received his patent in 1991. According to reports, he’ll soon begin marketing his elongated food product on the East Coast. No word on why it’s taken nearly 20 years for it to go from concept to product.
Let the giggling begin! Mother/daughter writing team of hundreds-and-hundreds-of-titles-between-the-two-of-them present girl power with a pink-less crown on top! And what an absolutely delightful collaboration indeed. Not to disparage the color pink – I admit it! I loathe the color! – but really, pink is just not the only color of choice for girls! Here’s why …
Today’s real girls prefer stinky red socks, not-quite-fitting blue team jerseys, unfancy soccer cleats, and muddy tattered wrestling gear. And while they might have a thing for jewelry, they also enjoy power tools, greasy meals, dump trucks, and fighting in chain mail. Believe you me, these girls need no one but themselves to rescue them from stony towers!
With sparkly crowns jauntily in place, nothing is going to stop these princesses from enjoying all their boundless, limitless “princess power”! We should all be that uncolor-uncoordinated … and gleefully STRONG. Here’s to girl power for ALL ages!
We anticipated that the HTC DROID incredible was going to sell out pretty quickly, and there have been shortages of the device ever since a few days after it launched. Verizon’s CEO, Lowell McAdam, mentioned a few weeks ago that the shortage was due to components that were not being manufactured quick enough to meet the demands of VZW customers. BGR is now reporting that it has just become even more difficult to purchase the device. If you intended to order one via the VZW website you will be sadly disappointed to find out that, at least for now, you cannot. Instead you will receive an error message that says “the selection you made is unavailable at this time.“ I’m not sure what’s going on or why that screen is appearing, but I’ll agree with BGR when saying, it’s just plain strange!
