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What if Charles Barkley had been cast in the upcoming remake of The A-Team instead of UFC champ Quinton "Rampage" Jackson? The former basketball great cuts a fine Mr. T figure, but as many of us know, he’s not big in the acting department. You can see that for yourselves in a cross-promotion airing on TNT during the NBA’s Western Conference Finals. In a deal between the network and Twentieth Century Fox, the studio behind the action adventure, vignettes of "lost auditions" featuring Barkley and fellow TNT commentators Ernie Johnson and Kenny Smith are part of the telecasts. Turns out each of those guys had their heart set on that campy, iconic role in the film, opening June 11, and was willing to don the mohawk and bling to nail it. Actually, it’s another in a long line of Hollywood/pro-sports commercial pacts that weave together on-air personalities, game play and upcoming movies in a way that rarely seems to bother fans. As long as viewers get a laugh out of it (Johnson in a leather vest? Hilarious!), they don’t protest the ever-blurring line between content and ads. Whether they show up on opening weekend for the flick remains to be seen.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Last year, we wrote about an effort by the Australian performance collection society, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) to massively boost royalty rates played by gyms, who often use music in exercise classes. This followed a similar effort with massively boosting rates at clubs and bars, which led those clubs and bars to stop playing covered music. It looks like the same thing is happening in gyms as well. Reader Shadzzy sends over news that the Australian Copyright Tribunal (who knows what they were thinking) has approved the massive boost in royalty rates. Where gyms used to have to pay $0.968 per class, they now have to pay $1 per participant per class. That’s a massive increase, and makes it impossible for many gyms to pay those royalty rates.

What it means, of course, is that the music is being played less. The gyms are looking for alternatives, because it simply doesn’t make sense to pay tens of thousands of dollars to promote music to its members. PPCA is, of course, in denial. It’s claiming that people are complaining about gyms not playing popular music, and that fitness centers who won’t play popular music at such extortionate rates are treating its members “with utter contempt.”

“We’ve seen a groundswell of discontent from gym members and fitness instructors who’ve been ordered to use cover music.”

I would imagine that those members would find having to get a massive increase in their membership bill creates a much bigger “groundswell of discontent,” and would find that it’s actually PPCA that’s treating everyone with “utter contempt,” by making the situation worse for everyone. The musicians PPCA “represents,” now get their music played significantly less. Gyms have to offer a “worse” overall service, and members get a somewhat worse experience. The problem is that PPCA (and the Copyright Tribunal’s) view of what is a reasonable royalty rate is simply out of line with reality. But since the entertainment industry has been able to set up this system where the government sets the price, and the industry influences those setting the price, then it gets to set rates that have no connection to reality.

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Published May 17, 2010
By the Tri-City Herald staff

Columbia Basin College trustee Wayne Martin has been named Trustee of the Year by the state’s Trustees Association of Community and Technical Colleges.

Martin has been on the CBC board since 2000. He’s also on the WSU Tri-Cities Advisory Council and is a founding member of the Tri-Cities Reading Foundation.

Martin, an environmental research engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was a driving force in establishing CBC’s Office of Diversity, leading to millions of dollars in federal grants for the college and its students.

Aired May 17, 2010
By Josh Peterson, KVEW TV

Students at Columbia Basin College get some big money to help them graduate.

The college received a $275,000 grant.

The money will go to under-represented students pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

60 students will receive the financial support each year for the next five years.

The money is coming from the National Science Foundation.

Educators say it will help students go to conferences, get internships and get them excited about education.

“Having the opportunity to give them, so that they’re able to experience these things much sooner in their career will ensure that they are more successful sooner and that they will continue and persist rather than drop out,” said Gabriela Whitemarsh, Columbia Basin College.

Columbia Basin College is one of four community colleges in the state to receive the grant money.

Yakima Valley Community College also received money.

Aired May 17, 2010 12:47 PM
KNDU TV

Pasco, Wash;–The Office of Diversity and Math and Science at Columbia Basin College announced the launch of a $275,000 grant program.

CBC is one of four community colleges in Washington to receive the MESA Community College Program Grant.

MESA stands for math, engineering, science achievement.

The goal of the grant is to better prepare under-represented students for a bachelor’s degree and career in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

And despite recent budget cuts, grants like this keep the college moving forward.

“That’s what grants allow us to do especially in these difficult times,” says Vice President of Diversity and Outreach Martin Valadez. “Grants become much more important because they allow us to continue some of that work that we’ve been wanting to do. So yes it’s really important.”

About 60 students each year will be eligible for the program. That’s nearly 250 students over the duration of the grant.

NEWS RELEASE
May 17, 2010                                                              Contact: Frank Murray, 542-4835

Restaurant gift baskets, $500 in tuition credit for a current and returning student, a $250 voucher to the CBC Bookstore for textbooks, coffee baskets, and more; all paid for with LINKS Bucks. Toss in a live D-J and free lunch, and you’ve got the first annual LINKS Day this Thursday, May 20, in the Gjerde Center on the CBC Pasco campus. The event runs from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. Registration for new LINKS members will be available at the registration table.

LINKS is often referred to as the “Un-alumni association”. LINKS is everyone who has a connection to CBC as a student, former student, graduate, employee, contractor, or relative of someone who attended CBC.

LINKS members earn LINKS Bucks by signing up for LINKS and wearing their LINKS buttons. The LINKS Bucks are then used to bid on the donated items.

Clevelanders have come together to pay musical tribute to Ohio native son LeBron James in the “We Are The World-” inspired viral vid, “We Are LeBron.” The Cavaliers star is expected to depart the team in the coming weeks — becoming the NBA’s biggest free agent — after losing the final three games of the Eastern Conference semifinals to the Boston Celtics last week.

We don’t mean for it to be doom and gloom day, but Richard Russell isn’t the only big name pundit to be calling for a fall.

Raoul Pal, who writes Global Macro Investor newsletter, and whose bio cites stints at GLD and Goldman Sachs, is out with a very specific crash call. In his latest note he calls for a big move down in just two days to two weeks.

That’s refreshingly specific!

So what’s the reason?

It’s all about what he sees as an archetypal crash pattern — a sharp decline followed by a failed rally followed by a collapse.

It looks like this:

That’s an unspecific chart, but here’s a more specific one, based on the current post-flash crash market.

And now, here’s the kicker. It’s the current market vs. 1929, which is what prompts him to see a crash as imminent.

And finally, here’s the flash crash vs. 1987

Get the picture?

Now don’t miss: The 25 financial companies most likely to default >

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Popular online fashion shop Oki-Ni just stocked some new Nonnative accessories in their inventory. New items include Dweller Sunglasses, the Voyager Wristband, Worker Belt in white, the Courier 2-Way Backpack, and an Orange Trooper Stole. The new accessories also arrive in time just after Oki-Ni just stocked some of Nonnative’s newest Spring offerings. Check it all out now at Oki-Ni.

YOUNGSTOWN OHIO- President Obama chose this suffering rust belt community as an example for his speech on jobs and the economy, part of his “Main Street” tour of America.

The President wants to show how stimulus money is helping a dying community turn itself around, to “revitalize and redirect” their plans, “We encouraged the private sector…in order to get the economy moving” Obama says.

Youngstown leaders says they’ve been making drastic changes here, trying to pump life back into the economy, as the city grows from the ashes of what was once a thriving, steel manufacturing community. Now, one of every four people reportedly lives in poverty. The unemployment rate is at a staggering 14%, one of the highest in the country. This city that once had 170,000 residents, is now down to less than an estimated 73,000.

The 1930’s era buildings, with their crumbling art deco facades, stand like gravestones memorializing the abrupt departure of the steel manufacturing heyday that built this city, then went away, taking 50,000 jobs with it. Entire neighborhoods are being strategically downsized, as the families that once gave them life, have gone off in search of a better future.

But, there is good news in the Mahoning Valley, something that hasn’t been seen here in decades; jobs and growth.

The reason President Obama used the V& M Star Plant, a French piping manufacturer, as his backdrop for the Youngstown speech, is because its a steel manufacturing company benefitting from the recovery act. V&M is investing $650 million toward its’ expansion, doubling the size of its’ workforce, with most jobs going locally to those displaced when plants closed. The GM Lordstown plant, nearby, is also apparently adding a 3rd shift, which would mean another 1200 new jobs, The Democratic leadership in the Valley say its all the result of $52 million in stimulus money, but Republicans say its a victory for the private sector.

Youngstown’s leaders are now proudly boasting about the Youngstown Business Incubator, which nurtures start ups, particularly in software. The 300 plus employees of the Incubator have already had success with companies like Turning Technologies, which grossed $33 million last year. Two magazines, INC and Entrepreneur, even listed Youngstown Ohio as one of the top places to do business.

“It’s a couple drops in the bucket. We are just getting started at this… I don’t think it is beyond the realm of possibilities that two or 3 years form now you’re going to have 3 or 4 thousand people working in the software industry downtown Youngstown ohio” says Jim Cossler, who runs the Youngstown Business Incubator. Cossler says its all about planting the seeds that will grow into a new industry and improved economy.

An active downtown Youngstown is one proof of success so far. (When I complained about having trouble finding a parking spot, one businessman said to me “That’s a good sign! In the past, nobody came down here, so parking was too easy”).
“People are going to look back one day and say there was a miracle on the Mahoning Valley” says local Congressman Tim Ryan.

(Fox Correspondent Mike Tobin contributed to this report)

When AT&T announced the availability of the Pre Plus last week, something was missing: its little sister, the Pixi Plus. Gasp! Panic tore across the nation (911 calls were made and subsequently ignored.) Had AT&T abandoned the Pixi Plus? Had a grand wizard, pissed off because his iPhone won’t stop dropping calls, warped them into another dimension? What was going on?

Turns out, AT&T just plans on launching it a few weeks later.

According to this updated landing page, the Pixi Plus will be launching on June 6th. There’s no official price announced yet — however, initial rumors (which had also positively pinned the launch on June 6th) indicated it’d go for $49.99 after a mail-in rebate and a 2 year contract.

It’s the essence of instinct: If you take a lab mouse who has never caught a glimpse of a cat and waft a little eau de feline towards it, the mouse will freeze in fear, and will then back away from the source of the odor. Now researchers have pinned down the chemical signals the mice are reacting to–and have shown in the process a fascinating new form of inter-species communication.

Mice have a specialized organ in their noses that picks up chemical signals, called the vomeronasal organ, which helps them detect pheromones emitted by other mice. These mice pheromones have a direct effect on behavior–most obviously in the realms of mating and fighting. In this new study, published in the journal Cell, neurobiologist Lisa Stowers decided to investigate whether the vomeronasal organ was capable of picking up signals from other species as well.

The reseachers took normal lab mice and mutant mice with inactive vomeronasal organs and presented them with cotton balls laced with predator smells, including cat saliva and rat urine. The normal mice backed into the corners of their cages as if trying to escape a predator’s attention, but the mutant mice showed no signs of concern. The mutants were so relaxed that they didn’t even react when a live but anesthetized rat was placed in their cages.

“In fact, one of our subjects curled up and went to sleep next to the rat,” Dr. Stowers said. “We think he was cold” [The New York Times].

The researchers then identified the precise chemicals that were triggering the fear reaction in mice by dripping one chemical compound at a time on to a cotton ball, and found that compounds called Mups, or major urinary proteins, were the active ingredient. Despite their name, Mups aren’t only present in urine, but also in saliva and other secretions.

Experts say this work is a major step forward for understanding the biology of fear.

“This paper moves the field forward by about a century, because it actually identifies the proteins that are responsible for eliciting fear in mice,” says Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City. It also shows that “Mups can be used not only for chemical conversations of animals in the same species, but they can also send information across species” [ScienceNOW].

Related Content:
80beats: Sniffing Out Sickness: Mouse Noses Respond to the Urine of Diseased Mice
80beats: Mammals Have a Nose for Danger (Literally)
80beats: Do Humans Communicate Via Pheromones? The Jury Is Still Out
DISCOVER: The Brain: The First Yardstick for Measuring Smells
DISCOVER: Top 100 Stories of 2009, #75: Yes, You Really Can Smell Fear

Image: iStockphoto

Coming a few weeks after its webOS sibling, it appears that the Palm Pixi Plus will be arriving on AT&T on June 6th.  The device will launch at a price of $49.95 on a two-year contract and will be similar to Verizon’s Pixi Plus except that the back of AT&T’s version has a slight blue hue.  While some may feel that both Palm devices are starting to get a little stale at this point, I’m sure there are some AT&T users who will love to get their hands on a GSM Pixi Plus.  However, the bad news for the Pixi is that it will be competing with several highly-anticipated phones such as the EVO 4G, being released on June 4th, and the next gen iPhone, which is expected to be released sometime later in June.  Are you planning on picking up a Pixi Plus on AT&T?  Tell us in the comments!

Via SlashPhone

Earlier this morning the Euro failed to retake $1.24, now it’s broken through $1.23.

JP Morgan perhaps took some profits too soon, but they’re still shorting the euro:

JP Morgan’s Sophia Drossos:

We have decided to take partial profit on the core short EUR/USD position in our model portfolio, paring down the position to 15% from a 25% allocation and tightening our trailing stop-loss to 1.34. This trade was initiated originally on December 17, at an average entry level of 1.4085, and we are exiting at 1.2365, locking in a gain of 12.6%. Year-to-date, our model portfolio has generated an unlevered return of 4.81%, with the short EUR/USD position accounting for a large portion of this performance.

While we retain a negative medium-term view on EUR/USD, we believe that short positioning and bearish sentiment have reached extreme levels, raising the potential for a bounce.

That bounce they were worrying about? Looks dead as of this afternoon.

(Via JP Morgan, Take partial profit on EUR/USD short, Sophia Drossos, 18 May 2010)

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If your brand brief for a new purse contains descriptors like "high fashion," "sophisticated," "sleek," "sexy" and "sensuous elegance," you’d surely want to name the thing a "Schitbag." Right? If the fashion world is being duped by this, maybe we’ll all have a good laugh at some point. But press materials went out recently touting The Original Schitbag (pronounced skit-bag?) as a new must-have purse for the fall. Various blogs have picked it up, asking, naturally, what kind of a name is Schitbag? And would you, haute couture maven, be caught dead with one? The product, which just launched from a company called LeSchitte Designs (I am not making this up), is a "hands-free" waist bag, kind of like a fanny pack, that "represents the ultimate combination of beauty, form and function," according to the marketer’s website. It’s suede and comes with an endorsement from celebrity stylist Shari Geffen, who’s worked with celebs like Julia Roberts, Sarah Jessica Parker and Johnny Depp. Geffen wears her Schitbag proudly, or so she says in the company’s PR. Did they market test that name? This could be the best branding move ever or the most boneheaded. Image consultants out there, what’s your read on this?

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Despite a political firestorm about Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s statements about his service during the Vietnam War, national Democrats were still behind him on Tuesday afternoon.

The Washington Post has the details at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/05/national_dems_standing_by_blum.html

Jessica Cabot was born blind, but she’d been on two flights by herself before boarding a United Airlines flight last month, so she figured she knew what to expect. On all three flights, she was told by the flight attendants to remain seated until everyone else was off the plane, and then someone would help her off. That worked the first two times at any rate.

She said she heard the other passengers leave and then the unmistakable sound of the aircraft door being sealed shut.

“And then, just complete silence. And I started calling out with no response.”

That’s when she realized she was alone, she said. She had no idea how to open the plane’s door or whether that would be a safe thing to do.

She said she was stuck for 10 minutes, uncertain what to do, but was found by a maintenance crew that happened to enter the aircraft.

United offered her a $250 travel voucher and told the CBC that they’ve taken steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. I hope that includes a sign on the plane that reads REMEMBER TO CHECK THE PLANE BEFORE LOCKING IT.

“Blind woman abandoned on airplane” [Yahoo! News] (Thanks to William!)

Howard Lovy wrote:

Automation Alley, a Troy, MI-based business association, has opened a defense office at the Macomb-Oakland University INCubator, in Sterling Heights, MI, the group announced today. The office will provide assistance local companies that are looking to work with the military. One  project includes creating an industrial capabilities database to identify new military suppliers. Companies interested in being added to the database can visit www.dmsms-tardec-army.com.

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