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The second day of the Google I/O 2010 developer conference just kicked off with two major announcements, Android 2.2 and Google TV, neither of which were exactly surprises. The first part of the morning’s keynote was dedicated to Android. The latest and greatest version is here, Android 2.2 codenamed Froyo, and the entire platform is loo… (read more)

The Hulu icon shined so brightly in the Google TV demo. Hulu, on our TVs, finally? Well, maybe. More »

Many people admit to being animal lovers, but a small number take the term to extremes – and fewer still of these go shouting from the barn rooftops about their exploits. We just wouldn’t understand. That said, for zoophiles it’s not always about sex or even erotic attraction; the love for that dog, horse or dolphin may be of a purely emotional kind. And yet for every person who professes to have a ‘genuinely loving relationship’ with an animal, there are others who’ve misinterpreted the expression heavy petting or simply decided bestiality’s best. Here are seven people who came shamelessly out of the stable – or were forced out barking and screaming. Bambi lovers beware.

Horse Riding Mr Hands, Washington

In 2005, Kenneth Pinyan came to ignominious fame at the last when he died shortly after being anonymously dropped at an emergency room in rural Washington. The cause of death: a perforated colon. Police investigating the case followed clues like hoof prints to a nearby horse farm, where they found bucket loads of videos of the 45-year old Boeing engineer and others being ridden by Arabian stallions. Pinyan had been distributing the home made horse porn under the name Mr Hands. Because bestiality wasn’t illegal in Washington State at the time, no charges were filed, but the scandal soon changed that with a bill passed banning sex with animals and its videotaping. There were few naysayers.

Stimulating Dolphin Story, UK

Flipper fans take note. In 1991, animal rights activist Alan Cooper was acquitted after being accused of outraging public decency by masturbating a well known tame dolphin off Britain’s northeast coast following complaints from onlookers. After five days of evidence, including descriptions of how Freddie was known to tow bathers through the water by hooking his large penis around them – thus finding a social rather than sexual use for his erect member – the jury cleared the 39-year-old man of the lewd act with which he was charged. In summing up the £30,000 cost of the sensational trial, the judge said this had been “the most expensive lesson in dolphin sociology” he had ever heard of. Stimulating.

Do You Take this Goat? Sudan

A man in Sudan caught with his pants down having sex with a neighbour’s goat in 2006 was ordered by a council of elders to pay the owner-cum-in-law a dowry of 15,000 dinars ($50) and marry the beast. After hearing a loud noise at midnight, the neighbour rushed outside to find the amorous Mr Tombe with his caprine conquest. Asked what he was doing, Tombe fell off the goat’s back and was quickly tied up. But instead of sirens, the incident prompted the sound of wedding bells: the council decided against the police in favour of making Tombe take the goat, Rose, for his wife. Tragically, Rose died just months later after choking on a plastic bag, though she did leave a kid – thankfully not half human – behind.

Doing it Doggy Style, Cambodia

In 2005, a newlywed husband caught by his wife in the midst of a “passionate embrace” with the family dog proclaimed he loved his canine companion more. After being busted in bed with the two year old mongrel bitch, the 24-year old man compounded matters by asking for a divorce, and he and his 20-year old wife soon separated. “We cannot solve the problem of his relationship with his dog, because under Cambodian law it is not strictly illegal,” commented the frank yet sensitive district police chief. “It is amazing, but this husband is not crazy. It seems he is a passionate human being who looked at a dog, and the more he looked, the more passionate he became.” Told like true romance.

Man Weds Dog, India

In southern India, 2007 saw another union between man and man’s best friend, this time inside the sanctity of wedlock. A man, one P. Selvakumar, married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony in an attempt to atone for stoning two other dogs to death – an act he believed cursed him. The 33-year-old Selvakumar tied the knot with the sari-draped former stray, named Selvi, who was chosen by family members, then bathed and clothed for the wedding at a temple in Tamil Nadu. But while the bride may have looked bonny, some have questioned whether a man who hung the bodies of the dogs he killed from a tree 15 years earlier is fit to be a kind and caring husband, let alone a pooch’s pal or chum.

Till Death Deer, Wisconsin

Wisconsin set the sordid stage when, in 2007, Bryan James Hathaway was convicted for having sex with a dead deer. The 20-year old was sentenced to probation and evaluation as a sex offender, the least some had hoped for. The case brought up some interesting legal issues because the statute prohibits sex with animals, but fails to mention carcasses, which in turn raised the issue of at what point a dead animal ceases to be an animal. Such philosophical interpretations cut little ice with the court, however, and Hathaway pleaded no contest to a charge of “mistreatment of an animal”. In 2005, he was also convicted after shooting a 26-year-old horse dead in order to have sex with it. Steady on chap!

Real Snake Charmer, India

A woman from India was allegedly so charmed by a cobra that she was married to it at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests. Bimbala Das claimed a bond of understanding existed between them, saying, “we communicate in a peculiar way”. Maybe so, but during the union the hesitant groom failed to emerge from his nearby ant hill abode, a brass replica standing in instead. Having previously been ill, Das recovered when she offered milk to the snake and soon fell in love. After converting to the animal-loving Vaishnav sect, she gained permission to marry the cobra, but a recent investigation suggests the incident may have been staged as part of a local religious power struggle.

On wensday night . Millions of dollars worth of Paintings were stolen, some of these paintings belonged to the famous Picasso, and others to the also very known Matisse.  The total ammount of the photos were valued around $ 75 to $125 million. The authorities at the museum discoverd the theft just around 7 a.m on Thursday. They said that they had video images of the hooded man while he was breaking in to a very famous museums art decoration building. Which is not far from the Eiffel Tower. This raised questions about the museums security in the french capital.  While the picasso museum was undergoing renovations the last summer it was under renovation. 

The stolen works, part of the museum’s permanent collection, were “Dove With Green Peas” by Picasso, “La Pastorale” by Matisse, “Olive Tree Near Estaque” by Georges Braque, “Woman With a Fan” by Amedeo Modigliani and “Still Life With Chandeliers” by Fernand Leger.

People are still wondering how the security got breached and why they could not catch the buglar fast enough. The deputy mayor of culture for paris said that the museums were equipped with security alarms and armed guards on wendsay night and that they had not seen any thing happen. 

“We must leave it to the police to determine how the security system was evaded,” Mr. Girard said.

The mayor of paris has orderd the museum to be closed while the investigation continues.

Related posts:

1. Nudity That Costs A Hundred Million Dollar
2. Luke Air Force Base Shooting – 1 Dead
3. Robbery in an International Poker Tournament

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Etc., Porsche, Canada

We’ll admit it – one of the best parts about being an auto journalist is the ability to spend time with many different cars, most of which are in our possession for a week at a time. And while the automakers trust us to be extremely careful and avoid damage at all costs, sometimes the unavoidable happens. Usually it’s a chipped windshield or a bit of curb rash, and even that’s enough to make us wince and break out the apology pen. Peter Cheney, a writer for Canada’s The Globe and Mail, had one such experience lately, but he wasn’t behind the wheel. In fact, he wasn’t even in the car.

We’re very accustomed to the idea of friends and family members wanting to take a closer look at the cars we’re testing, and when Cheney’s 16-year-old son wanted to snag a closer look inside the Porsche 911 Turbo his dad was driving that night, Cheney thought nothing of it. That is, until his son came tearing back into the house, a look of panic in his eyes. When Cheney went to investigate what was up, he saw the unthinkable – the big-buck sports car had rocketed through his garage door, causing an reported $11,000 in damage to the car and an additional $2,700 in garage repairs. “Yikes” doesn’t quite cover it.

Be sure to head over to The Globe and Mail to read the full account of what happened. It’s an incident that we hope never happens to any of us, but most importantly, we’re glad no one was hurt. Thanks to everyone for the tips!

[Source: The Globe and Mail]

Auto journalist’s 16-year old son crashes Porsche 911 Turbo – in his garage originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 20 May 2010 13:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After the information about Android 2.2 was released today at Google I/O and then release details came out about the MyTouch Slide 3G, the Android train keeps on rolling.  Today HTC stated to Android Central that if your device was released in 2010, it will most likely be upgraded to Froyo.  When asked if and when HTC’s phones will get the 2.2 upgrade, the company had this to say:

“…if your phone was launched this year, we will most likely offer an upgrade for it to the Froyo version. This includes popular models like the Desire and Droid Incredible as well as hotly anticipated phones like the Evo 4G, MyTouch slide and upcoming models. We will announce a full list of phones and dates once we are closer to launching the upgrades. We are working closely with Google and our other partners to ensure we have the earliest access to everything we need to provide a complete and solid Sense experience on Froyo. We expect to release all updates in the second half of this year but can’t be more specific yet.“

Even though HTC couldn’t give any sort of definite release date, this is certainly better than sitting and hoping that your shiny new DROID Incredible will be updated.

Via Android Central

“We’ve been waiting a long time for today,” says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is presiding over a power panel of CEOs helping to make Google TV possible. The panel, at Google I/O, includes the CEOs of Sony, Best Buy, Echostar, Adobe, Logitech, and, of course, Google. He needs all of them, as well as developers, to make his new Google TV a hit.

Google TV will be built into a new Sony TV coming out this fall in time for the holiday shopping season, as well a Logitech TV companion box which can be hooked up to existing TVs with an HDMI port. It is Google’s attempt to bring together the 50-year-old TV-watching experience with the Web. It does that in a variety of ways,from a universal search box which searches both TV and the Web to opening up the TV as an application platform for developers and media companies to enhance their video offerings. Its ambition is to bring the Web into the TV in a new way.

In the past as we and every other user of the current Android Market has experienced major [Fail] in the experience. However in Google’s preview of Android 2.2, there is a new Android Market coming to offer more than the iTunes-like experience we have been begging for. Why do we even want an iTunes-like app store experience, why not go beyond that for a Web experience? The new Android Market will allow you to sign in, search all 50,000+ Android Apps and actually download them wirelessly not only to your phone, tablet, TV… let’s just say device as the list will go on!

In the demo today at Google I/O 2010 we saw apps being downloaded from the Web as well as music from iTunes library able to be streamed to the phone irrelevant of DRM-protection. The Android Market on the phone will have a few enhancements as well with ability to update all applications versus individually, automatic updates so you don’t have to bother at all, apps can be installed to SD card obviating one of the largest pains many Android users have experienced with low internal memory storage. This comes with Android 2.2 software update.

Screenshots of the New Android Market:

We cannot wait until this launches as it will ease many consumer frustrations and give us Google fanboys and gals something else to say, “take that Apple”!

Today at Google I/O, the company made the announcement that everyone was waiting for — Google TV. While some glitches in the demo (with the Bluetooth keyboard) prevented it from being a “wow” moment, the implications are pretty clear what Google is going for. That is, the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Or rather, advertising to the 4 billion TV users worldwide.

Google noted that while computer usage is huge with 1 billion users, and mobile is even bigger with 2 billion users, TV is the real massive medium with 4 billion users around the world. Further, Google notes that people spend 5 hours a day on average in the U.S. watching TV — and that’s more than ever before. Then the real stat came out. 70 billion dollars. that’s the annual ad spend on television in U.S. alone.

Read more…

ViewSonic has announced U.S. availability for its new handy VOT125 mini-PC. Coming with a quartet of ultra-low-voltage processor options from Intel to help cut down on power draw and benefiting from Windows 7 Home Premium, its petite dimensions may well see the unit being squeezed into the tightest nook of limited home and office space…
Continue Reading Viewsonic’s new energy efficient, space-saving mini-PC

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PeHUB, today released a Top 10 ranking of this year’s largest venture capital deals, so far. And, not surprisingly, half of the 10 deals listed involved cleantech companies. Better Place, the battery service provider, leads the ranking with $150 million raised. Electric automobile maker Codax Automotive takes third place with $158 million raised in equity funding. Solar developer BrightSource Energy took in $150 million, enough to put the California solar developer in fourth place (we reported on the raise this morning). Number five is PV panel maker Amonix raised $129.4 million in a second round of funding. In eighth position is electric car maker Fisker Automotive with $115.3 million in new VC funding this year — see here for the full ranking.

Will VC continue to be as generous if Congress passes legislation that would effectively double the taxes on the profits from their investments  — also known as carried interests. In a press statement The National Venture Capital Association said the House legislation could  push VCs to take fewer risks and curtail “incentive for venture investors to work with entrepreneurs.”  Despite hard lobbying by the venture and private equity industry, which obviously wants to be to be excluded from the tax increase, the House could vote on the bill as early as tomorrow, reports DealBreaker.

Over at RealClearPolitics, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin further fleshes out the emerging “free-market populism” meme beginning to emerge in the GOP:

From an ideological perspective, big government can combine with big business to advance a more progressivist society. For self-described “progressives,” the agenda is straightforward: expand government; co-opt big business; direct the capital markets from Washington to pursue “social justice.” Think Fannie and Freddie by much higher orders of magnitude.

Over the past decade, the thinking has been much less clear for conservatives. Being “pro-market” has been fundamentally confused with “pro-business.” Conservatives who came to Congress to defend and promote free enterprise have often been led to believe that pathway lies in bolstering established firms as they navigate the maze of government regulations and taxes. These instincts are correct, but the implementation is often flawed. All too often, the results of these efforts have been to exacerbate crony capitalism – erecting barriers to entry against potential competitors to firms that are currently on top.

For their part, companies seeking such protection have a right to pursue their narrow self-interest; but when these actions involve reducing open competition and transparency for short term gain, they do so to the detriment of the very free enterprise system that made their success possible.

Me: I can see this manifesting in a number of ways, from attacks on corporate welfare to more explicit calls to diffuse financial power. And it would seem to be in the sweet spot of folks like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Pat Toomey. This is also a group that would be willing to call for radical change in the U.S. entitlement system.

Not altogether surprising, but the TED spread, a major of bank confidence (technically LIBOR over risk-free) continues to widen.

It’s up about 4.3% today to 33.

Join the conversation about this story »

General Motors Co. is feeling the impact of scrapping incentives in Germany, with sales of Opel suffering in its home market while its overall car sales in Europe dwindle as well.

New-car sales for Opel fell 55% to 17,207 units in April, a 36% drop to 68,301 registrations during the past four months, Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reveals. Meanwhile, the overall market fell 32% in April and dropped 26% for the first four months of the year. Another factor that led to the 19% drop in April for European new-car sales at Opel and Vauxhall was the trouble in Germany. From January to April 2010, Opel/Vauxhall’s European sales dropped by 4% to 340,888 registrations, according to industry association ACEA. If the drop in sales of GM unit Chevrolet is included, the total European volume at GM’s three-brand group decreased by 19% to 95,706 registrations last month. And for the first four months of the year, there was a 5% drop to 403,953 units. Opel’s sales in Germany fell due to the uncertainty on whether it will be able to receive German state aid to help fund its recovery.

[via autonews – sub. required]

Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots

This week, with the arrival of the Palm Pre Plus at AT&T, webOS is now an option at all three of the major US mobile carriers (joining Sprint and Verizon Wireless).  Topics of discussion since the last edition include reviews of the AT&T Pre Plus, the mystery outage that hit the Palm App Catalog on Saturday, HP’s earnings, the pending arrival of the Pre Plus/Pixi Plus at O2 in the UK and the Pixi Plus at AT&T. Also, there was a Pre sighting… on Survivor (!?). So let’s talk Palm!

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Two professional celeb-gawkers and want to make Perez Hilton $20 million richer.

The acid-tongued celebrity snitch has been offered the astounding eight-figure deal to part ways with the website that made him more famous than some of the Hollywood notables he regularly torments.

Perez, who also manages a style-centered website and record label, received the offer from Canadian blogger Zack Taylor and TheDirty.com’s head editor Nik Richie earlier this month. The blogging duo has joined forces with Avid Life Media, which owns websites such as HotorNot.com and AshleyMadison.com — the world’s leading cheater’s dating service, in hopes of taking over at PerezHilton.com, Gawker reported Thursday.

According to the May 14 offer letter, the buyers would keep PerezHilton.com going with Zack and Nik taking over daily operations. He would be paid $18 million up front and another $2 million to be put into escrow.

Perez — who reportedly charges advertisers $4,000 per week to run ads on his famous blog — has yet to respond to the offer. A year ago, 24/7 Wall Street estimated PerezHilton.com’s value at $32 million.

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) have been touted as a low-cost way to quickly electrify much of the daily driving that people do. They typically don’t go faster than 35 mph and are increasingly showing up in cities as a way to make short commutes and run errands in a fuel-less and environmentally beneficial way.

But after a series of crash tests that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted on a few popular models of them, including Chrysler’s GEM brand, the consumer watchdog group is making stern warnings that NEVs have very few safety features and could easily lead to fatalities in even moderate accidents at medium speeds.

(more…)

In addition to serious revelations that Richard Blumenthal misrepresented his military service, there is also the matter of his role on the Harvard University swim team.

Two profiles of Blumenthal, one that appeared in Slate magazine in 2000 and a second in the Courant’s Northeast magazine in 2004, both state — incorrectly — that Blumenthal was captain of the team. The inaccuracies were mentioned in this week’s New York Times article on Blumenthal’s misleading and false statements about his military service.

Blumenthal told the Times that he “did not provide the information to reporters, was unsure how it got into circulation and was ‘astonished’ when he saw it in print.”

The Times story says that “[r]ecords at the college show that he was never on the team.” 

But Waterbury native Peter Alter, who was the captain of the Harvard swim team in 1968, the year after Blumenthal graduated, told the Courant this morning that Blumenthal was on the team.

He was a freestyler and “was actually a pretty good one,” said Alter, now a lawyer in Glastonbury who still on occasion talks to Blumenthal.

The Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think-tank based in Hartford, unearthed a trove of photographs from Harvard that show Blumenthal was at least associated with the team.

A photo from the 1964 Harvard College yearbook, posted on the Yankee Institute’s Facebook page, shows Blumenthal participating in a Harvard swim meet his freshman year. “However, if Blumenthal was on the Harvard swim team, he is not included in the team’s group yearbook photo that year,” Yankee’s executive director Fergus Cullen noted in an email.

Blumenthal campaign manager Mindy Myers said it is her understanding that Blumenthal was a member of the freshman swim team at Harvard.

The captain of the swim team in 1967, Blumenthal’s senior year, was James Seubold, who is now a doctor in the Chicago area. He could not be reached for comment.

Alter, who was a diver and only the second diver in school history to be named captain, said it is a “big deal to be named captain” of any Harvard sports team.

Alter said he talked to Blumenthal a few years ago, when both of them were at a function. The two men joked about the inaccurate references to Blumenthal being the team captain. The attorney general told Alter “he had no idea where it came from.”

“He said he had tried to figure out where it had started and that he had never claimed to have been the captain,” Alter said.

 

1967 Harvard yearbook entry, via Yankee Institute for Public Policy        

 

 

 

One possible source: A March, 1980 profile in the Courant, written when Blumenthal was U.S. Attorney.

“Blumenthal, a bachelor, now usually does Connecticut work during nights in Washington and on Saturday and Sunday trips to his office in Bridgeport,” the article states. “A one-time marathon runner and former captain of the Harvard swimming team, he still tries to run or swim daily.”

A July, 1978 article in the Courant describes Blumenthal as “the blond, blue-eyed, sun-tanned 6-footer, a former captain of the Harvard swimming team.”

And 1969 Life magazine profile of Blumenthal begins like this: “Dick Blumenthal is 23 and at the center of the world. He lives there hungrily, bearing that special guilt of affluent postwar youth, a Harvard magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 100-yard freestyler in 51.0, square jaw, burning eyes, mannered and muted.”

From there, the swim team detail found its way into both the Slate piece and the Courant magazine story. David Plotz, the author of the Slate article, told NPR media critic David Folkenflik that he never spoke to Blumenthal.

“It’s definitely not from him telling me that he was captain of the swim team, nor his people,” Plotz told Folkenflik. Plotz added that he relied on earlier media coverage.

Former Courant staff writer Beth Hamilton, author of the Courant magazine story, said that, without looking at her notes or the tapes of the extensive interviews she conducted with Blumenthal in 2003, she has no way of knowing for sure whether Blumenthal gave her the information, or whether he confirmed it.

“I looked in the Courant files and read the Slate article,” Hamilton said. “If it was in our paper, I probably I would have felt comfortable with it.”

 

So says Mr. Lawrence Kudlow:

A new tea party center is forming in the Republican Senate caucus. It will be the first Reagan nucleus in many years, one that will give the GOP a strong limited-government, cut-spending, low-tax-rate, stop-government-controls, and end-Bailout Nation message that will have clarity and gusto and will reverberate throughout the country.

Here’s how it’s going to work: Rand Paul will grab the Senate seat in Kentucky. Marco Rubio will take Florida. Mike Lee will win in Utah. Pat Toomey will finally prevail in Pennsylvania. And Carly Fiorina will knock off Barbara Boxer in California.

Yup. That’s how I see it. And this new tea-party Senate nucleus will join free-market stalwarts like Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, Jon Kyl, Richard Shelby, Jeff Sessions, and John Thune. I’m probably leaving somebody out in the Senate, and I apologize in advance. But that’s what I’m thinking. It’s a pity Judd Gregg is retiring; he could be part of that group also.

This will be a reformist nucleus, tackling spending, taxes, and even monetary and currency policy. It will unabashedly propose free-market reforms to replace the Obama welfare state and to finally curb the avalanche of debt creation.