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BlackRock Vice Chairman Bob Doll was on CNBC this morning talking about the power of this recovery. While he sees a correction coming, he doesn’t think its going to hit markets too hard, with the way fundamentals look right now.

• 0:20 We are due for some sort of correction, but with numbers looking good, we will continue to be up
• 1:04 Energy and industrial growth is where to be; look for materials stocks
• 1:50 Concerned about Greece credit, China tightening, and U.S. government, but fundamentals still too strong

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The big story of the day in the world of financial stocks is that they’re all getting hammered, and the idea is that it might have something to do with the fact that strong derivatives reform seems to be coming down the pike.

Now there was a report earlier in the day that perhaps Berkshire Hathaway might somehow get a fat exemption, but now according to WSJ that’s not the case. The Democrats have killed that provision.

So you’d think that Berkshire might be getting pelted, but it’s not.

It’s actually up about 0.4%.

That’s not a huge move, except in comparison to other financials, in which case it’s significant?

So what’s going on?

The markets are probably figuring that the hit to Berkshire will be one-timey in nature — basically that it will cause the company to post collateral, but that derivatives aren’t central to how it makes money.

With the financial firms getting whacked, strong regulations may go at the heart of what they do, and actually hurt future profitability, thus the falling shares and blowout in CDS.

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Google set out to revolutionize or at least disrupt the mobile phone market with its Nexus One smartphone which it only made available online. The idea was to create an online marketplace for mobile devices to be sold contract-free, something that doesn’t happen in the US. Several months later and after disappointing sales, Google seems to be sweetenin… (read more)

Royal Bank of Canada was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at BMO Capital Markets. Analyst John Reucassel also hiked his price target on shares of Canada’s largest bank to $67 from $63 after strong results from U.S. banks suggest credit conditions and the business environment are improving faster than expected.

In a note to clients, Mr. Reucassel pointed out that when bank stocks are upgraded in between quarters this often suggests some particular insight into the next set of earnings. But that isn’t the case this time around. In fact, Royal Bank came up shy of the Street’s expectations in the past two quarters, which might explain why the stock has
underperformed the Canadian bank index in 2010.

Instead, the analyst’s conviction comes from a belief that Royal Bank has a number of franchises that should benefit from an improving business environment beyond the cyclical recovery in provisions for credit losses. He said its wealth management, insurance and domestic retail banking businesses will provide good earnings leverage beyond this year.

“In 2010, a better environment should lower losses in U.S. retail banking,” Mr. Reucassel said, adding that strong trading results from the large U.S. banks could increase expectations for Royal Bank’s second quarter 2010 trading revenue. However, the analyst left his trading estimate for the quarter unchanged at $1-billion.

“Looking past the recovery in loan losses, we believe that Royal has amongst the most attractive potential earnings growth rates in the group due to large asset management and insurance operations as well as consistent results from domestic banking,” Mr. Reucassel said. “Regulatory and government actions (in response to the recent crisis) should be the biggest risk to Royal investors, particularly vis-a-vis wholesale banking.”

While the timing of acquisitions is unknown given the uncertainty surrounding new capital rules, regulatory rules should become more clear by fall 2010. Given that economic conditions continue to improve, the analyst expects the regulator to provide banks with more flexibility in decisions on how to fund acquisitions. “This could be a major catalyst for Royal Bank.”

Jonathan Ratner

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

Engineering has an image problem. Sure, it’s the technical backbone of many things people use every day, from airplanes, cars, and buildings to new medicines, mobile devices, and the Internet. But it doesn’t always attract the best and brightest young people interested in solving society’s biggest problems or changing the world. That’s because people often have a narrow view of what engineering entails, or think it’s too boring, geeky, or technically difficult to pursue.

Enter the “grand challenges summit” organized by the National Academy of Engineering, which is coming to Seattle next week on May 2-3. This is part of an ongoing series of six NAE events around the U.S. this year that are meant to inspire students and rally faculty, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors around some of society’s most important problems. The plan is to concentrate on big ideas like improving healthcare, producing clean energy, providing access to clean water, restoring urban infrastructure, preventing nuclear terror, and making computer systems secure.

The Seattle event features an all-star cast of speakers, including Bruce Montgomery from Gilead Sciences, Larry Smarr from Calit2 and UC San Diego, Ed Crawley from MIT, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin (now at the University of Alabama), and former NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar (now CEO of the Museum of Flight). They will be joined by engineers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and General Electric, as well as prominent scholars from the UW, including Matt O’Donnell, dean of engineering, Ed Lazowska from computer science & engineering, and Suzie Pun from bioengineering. The sessions will focus on how engineers can make better medicines, as well as better tools for scientific discovery in computing and aerospace.

O’Donnell, who helped bring the summit to Seattle, says the number of students interested in engineering has been declining for the past couple of decades—in particular, the percentage of U.S. students (compared with international students) enrolled in the nation’s graduate programs. “Engineering ain’t too sexy in society,” says O’Donnell, a biomedical engineer with expertise in ultrasound and other diagnostic imaging technologies. “A lot of folks in engineering are worried.”

He says the idea behind the grand challenges is, “Let’s excite people about what engineering can do for society. It’s not just about having your startup and making money—which is cool, and we all love that. But it’s not just the next PDA or iPhone app.” The goal, he says, is to “sexify” engineering and show that “it’s a way of thinking and analyzing systems, integrating quantitative [methods] with real-world concerns. You can build a bridge or PDA, but you can also think about sustainable systems, urban development, or how you put markets together.” (The NAE summits strike me as an adult complement to the FIRST Robotics competitions for middle-school and high-school kids, which are also about inspiring a new generation of engineers and changing the popular culture around engineering.)

The first grand challenges summit took place in early 2009 and was the brainchild of Tom Katsouleas, the dean of engineering at Duke University. O’Donnell was invited to moderate a panel on engineering new medicines. “It was absolutely a blast,” he says. “But then the kids and professionals in …Next Page »

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Looking more Fisher Price than Nintendo, the guts of an N64 have been squeezed into the bright red handheld case by modder Bacteria, who spent four months slaving away on it devotedly. There’s a 5-inch screen, built-in speakers…and rumble pak! More »

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly approve of financial regulatory reform, with two-thirds of respondents supporting the measures. Half approved of how President Barack Obama has handled the issue, with an equal number disapproving. Additionally, and not surprisingly, respondents approved of easier-to-understand measures, regardless of the partisan politicking surrounding them. For instance, the people polled approved of creating a bank-funded liquidation pool — derided by Republicans as a “permanent bailout” fund — more so than derivatives reform, a complicated measure with bipartisan support.

Introduction:

Under the Geometry section of the SOL’s for kindergarten there is a focus on plan figures. Within this category students k.11) should be able to identify, describe, and trace plan geometric figures (circle, triangle, square and circle).  Being able to identify these shapes is an important aspect when students begin to learn more advanced geometric terms. Students need to be able to identify theses shapes when they begin to learn about area and perimeter. In addition, having the knowledge of the shapes characteristics will help students in their everyday lives. Shapes is an important aspect that begins at an early age.

These literature connections will help children improve their shapes knowledge:

Mouse Shapes: a very first bookby Jim Arnosky is  a great reference tool for students to have. The book demonstrates what all of the shapes that kindergartens must know look like. In addition, there are various other shapes that students can begin to look at. Even though these shapes are not part of the core four, it provides an opportunity for students to expand their knowledge. In addition, this book could be used as an extension for those students who are surpassing grade level expectations.

There’s a Square: A Book About Shapes by Mary Serfozo, illustrated by David A. Carter takes children are an adventure of what the different shapes look like. First they are introduced to a description of the shape then they several forms of a the shape; they see what the shapes looks like in different sizes. Finally the readers are asked to find the shape in a picture. This would be a great way to introduce shapes to students or could even be used as a review. With the picture look, student are given an opportunity to practice their skills. At the end, students are given time to review what the shapes look like. They are shown again what the shapes look like with the shapes name underneath the shape. This is a book that could be read to the class and be available to students if they would like to learn about other shapes other than a circle, square, triangle, and rectangle.

Shape Capersby Cathryn Falwell is kind of laid like a game. Each shapes begins with a “shake, shake, shake” then the shape is introduced. Following the introduction of the shape there is a brief description of what the shape looks like, with various examples of the shapes in different colors and sizes. After all shapes have been described the reader is introduced to the shapes again with various forms of the shapes appearing near the name. After that, the readers are taken on a tour of various things that can be made by the shapes such as a car, spaceship, dinosaur, and ship. This allows the reader to see that shapes are in our everyday lives. At the end of the book, students can look at the pictures they provide and see if they can identify the triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles. This is a great book to introduce the concept of shapes and can also be used as a review with the ending of the book. In addition, it allows those students who are excelling at the concept to explore other shapes, furthering along their knowledge. The last page provides a brief explanation of an activity that can be completed using shapes.

Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stohl Walsh takes students on a journey through the world of shapes.There are mice that are being chased by a big cat. When running from the cat, the mice come into contact with a cluster of different looking shapes. They are now learning what these shapes look like. In order to fool the cat, the mice begin to make objects with the various shapes.
Students see how the shapes can be used in real life while also seeing what the shapes look like.

A Circle Here, A Square there: My Shapes Books  by David Diehl is a beginning book for students to use. Students see what the shapes name look likes in big letters then they see what the shapes look like in various forms. These various forms based upon what children would see in their real lives, such as a present for a square and a scoop of ice cream for a circle. This book would best used as a reference for students if they need a reminder on what the shapes look like. Also, it provides a spelling opportunity for students by having the name of the shapes in big print.

Web Annotations for Students:

In I Spy Shapes students are shown various pictures and asked to find all the triangles, etc in that picture. There is a number counter at the top of the page to help students keep track of how many of the shape they have found.  Students are allowed to keep going until they have found all the shapes.

Fun with Shapes is a webquest that studnets can complete after learning about shapes. In this webquest students are first review what each of the shapes look like. With this story, there is a desciption of what the shape looks like with a picture following. In addition, the story allows the students to review the colors. After reading the story, they have various activities that they are to complete relating to the shapes they read about in the story. With this webquest, the teacher can read the story aloud with the student then pair students up to complete the webquest.

Story of Shapes is an online story of shapes that students can either read or listen to. The storyteller describes the shape and sometimes provides an example of what it may look like. This a visual and oral story for the students. They are seeing the description as it is being said. It provides an opportunity for students to see other ways that the shape can be formed and other descriptions that might make it easier for them to remember the shapes.

Buzzing with Shapes is a two player game that has studnents pick the shape that matches the description that is given to them. If they chose the wrong shape they are given an explanation of why that shape is wrong ( a desciption of what their shape looks like). This could be used as a review game and can even be used as an expanding on the knowladge allowing studnents to explore other shapes besides the circle, square, triangle, and rectangle.

Identify Shapes I students are given a description or picture and asked to choose the correct answer.

Additional Resources for Teachers:

ABC Teach provides various coloring pages for the different shapes that will be taught to our studnets. Other shapes are included but these can be used as an extra thing for students when they are all done with their work.

DLTK’s Growing Together provides different activities that teachers can used during shapes lesson. to help enhance students knowladge.  There are different games, a poem and various worksheets to help children understand the topic.

 Hummingbird Educational Resources is a great tool to find different lesson plans and activities that can be used in the classroom. In addition, there songs that can be recorded that teachers play to their students or place at listening stations. All of the activities are grade appropriate and it is a great tool to use if having trouble coming with a cute way to introduce or teach the concept of shapes.

Shapes is a great site for various worksheets, ranging from extra practice to assessments. These sheets are great tools to have available in the classroom if students are done with an assigment and would a little extra practice. In addition, there are tracing pages that can be used to help students grasp one part of the SOL which is being able to trace the shapes.

The University of Connecticut police, along with the state police, arrested 100 people over three nights in the annual Spring Weekend.

In addition to the arrests, 20 people were cited by the state police on Saturday night for violations of liquor laws.

http://www.courant.com/community/storrs/hc-spring-weekend-0426.artapr26,0,4217584.story

Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green’s take is at http://blogs.courant.com/rick_green/2010/04/who-pays-for-uconn-spring-week.html

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that debt collectors can’t use a “bona fide error” defense to avoid being sued for misinterpreting the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA). In other words, if a debt collection agency makes a demand that’s in violation of the Act, it can’t say it didn’t know any better. Well, it can, but you can go right ahead and sue.

Collection agencies don’t like this ruling because they say the FDCPA contains vague language that can easily be misinterpreted. In a New York Times article about the ruling, debt collectors say websites like debtorboards.com just show people how to abuse the fuzzy language of the FDCPA to avoid paying debt they legitimately owe. But the founder of the site, former bill collector Steven Katz (who was not involved in the Supreme Court case), says he started the site after a collection agency damaged his credit history with a “bogus bill,” and that he’s only teaching consumers that they can use the law “as both a shield and a sword” against sketchy collectors.

[Highlands Today]
“Learning How to Fight the Collector” [NYTimes]

For those who are interested in a syncretism of competing sex ratio theories (an elite audience, I’m sure), Jason Malloy sent me an email responding to my ‘Sausage Fest‘ post, and responding indirectly to Peter Frost whose quote I used in that post:

Roissy,

Hey, I just came across your sex ratio post from several weeks ago. I’m surprised I missed it at the time, because I read fairly often.

Just to clarify a few issues:

A common misunderstanding which I kept addressing on Dr. Frost’s blog was that I was claiming that women have some absolute preference for Dads over Cads. This was not my argument. My argument was that: “Females are never as promiscuous as men (as a group) prefer, therefore when male scarcity puts females at a sexual market disadvantage, females give in to male sexual pressures more easily.” And this innate differential preference is the ultimate basis for sex ratio dynamics.

Peter Frost’s claim that I “ignored”  some crucial wisdom from Guttentag & Secord isn’t true. I left numerous comments on his blog explaining to him why Guttentag & Secord’s social constructivist understandings about sex differences were wrong. Frost is suggesting that, sans social pressures, women are just as oriented towards low investment mating as men. This is wrong. Sex ratio dynamics are based on biological differences between men and women, not on gender politics. The wider society will likely never be as libertarian towards women’s sexuality as a college campus, but even there we see that more women = more male “misbehavior”; because even on college campuses men want lower investment sex than women: ”Think of it as a game of chicken that men will always win. In an environment where women are ok with one night stands, men will push for the glory hole.”

I realize your primary interest is in how gender dynamics shift with male quality, but on this issue I don’t think I’m missing much. e.g. The number of top quality males increases on a male-biased campus, but female promiscuity still decreases. There are, no doubt, many hidden dynamics to sex ratio, but they don’t seem to monkey wrench the general predictions.

Jason

Sounds intuitively correct to me. What I’ve witnessed in social venues where the sex ratio is skewed in favor of women: when men outnumber women, the women set the terms of the courtship, and this is true regardless of the number of alpha males in attendance. They flit about soaking in the attention of all the male suitors, act bitchier, and play harder to get. Shit tests are locked at maximum deflection. The men are more animated and become agitated toward the end of the night, which sometimes spills over into (literally) pushing and shoving the male competition aside, and getting blotto once they realize the odds will not work in their favor.

Of course, more alpha males is always better than fewer alpha males from a women’s perspective, because alpha male attention is almost as good as alpha male sex (though not as good as alpha male love). In fact, for most women, alpha male attention is better than beta male sex and love. So while women may be less promiscuous in male-skewed environments, they are going home happier in their chasteness if the male attention they lapped up came from higher quality men.

In contrast, those heavenly times when the women outnumbered the men, pickup up could not not have been easier. I sometimes had women approach me.

It’s like shopping for a TV in a store that has an abundance of TV choice. You might very well walk out of there empty-handed because you figure you can afford to take your time deciding which brand best suits you, and that there are so many brands there’s bound to be an even better value in there next week.

The part where sex ratio dynamics gets interesting is what influence it has on rates of male violence. As I mentioned in my previous post on this subject, when I’ve been in bars that skewed male the drunkenness and rowdiness hit a fever pitch. Male friendships temporarily sundered when a target was in sight: hos before bros. It’s sad watching a bunch of angry dudes squabble over the few remaining fat chicks at garbage hour. I suppose it helps in sex ratio discussions to define what we mean by male “misbehavior”. Maybe it should be divided into two categories: male violence and male caddishness. They overlap, but they aren’t synonymous. This accounts for the observation in some contexts that more men = more male agitation but not more male caddishness, whereas more women = more male caddishness but less silverback posturing and fighting over the abundance of women.

A lot of what I write about on this diaryetic outpost is based on personal experience, and only second-hand do the forces of science get summoned when I feel like putting in the extra work to buttress my steely-eyed observations of reality. If you want (mostly) hard science and bursts of numerical flavor, GNXP is a good place to go.

In general, I find that about 80% of what I observe in real life is eventually corroborated by scientific evidence. The remaining 20% left with question marks can be explained either by experiences peculiar to some subset of my life circumstances, or idiosyncratic personal observations insufficiently examined by science. My belief is that most people go through life lying to others, and to a lesser extent to themselves, about 90% of the nature of reality. Everything from the finality of death, to the horrors of aging, to the pitiless churning of the sexual market, to the true costs and benefits of human diversity is sheathed in a velvet scabbard of pretty lies. Pessimists would argue the excalibur of truth-examination is best left sheathed, for some truths bring nothing but distress. Optimists would argue the sword is a figment of negative minds, a weapon of the haves to dispirit the have-nots. Chaotics such as yours truly revel in the paroxysms the unsheathing of the sword causes those who stumble into the id monster’s lair.

It is possible to make it to the endgame having avoided the worst travails while refusing to acknowledge 90% of reality, as long as you don’t act in accordance with your stated beliefs. For example, a fat woman looking for love may console herself without consequence that it’s what’s on the inside that counts as long as she pays the lie to her beliefs by dieting and exercising. Her hypocrisy, from her point of view, is win-win — her psyche is soothed by her lies while her love life is invigorated by her sexier body. Similarly, a single mom anxious for love can tell herself she is choosier than her single female counterparts without bastard baggage, but when the quality of suitors willing to commit to her and her child by another man predictably degrades she will ignore her little lies and act like a woman with fewer options, smartly offering more concessions in the zero-sum race to settle for Mr. Better Than Nothing. If, however, she insists on living by her lies she will likely spend the rest of her dreary years half-nourished by a child’s love instead of fully nourished by the added romantic love of a male partner.

Despite evidence of hypocrites acting in ways contrary to their lies and in accordance with the reality of the mating market, in the double helical arena of all against all, it is those who acknowledge more of reality who will win out over those who acknowledge less of reality. Hypocrisy costs mental energy, and when incentivized enough and fully internalized can lead to bad decisions. The few who can look the chaos in the eye and not flinch will best those whose ego-assuaging lies act to divert them from the path of personal happiness. A downwardly spiraling feedback loop can result when hypocrisy is allowed to run rampant, as one bad decision after another coaxes ever more contorted pretty lies to stave off the chilling self-realization that creeps up in the deep black of night when solitude enshrouds.

There is one truth that will always be heard. The shiver down the back of your neck late at night never lies.

Filed under: Biomechanics is God, Pretty Lies, Ugly Truths

Brendan Nyhan has a great post about Charles Krauthammer and his claims about the mental illness of some of his political opponents. This is notable, and somewhat more than standard political misbehavior, in that Krauthammer is actually a psychiatrist. Some examples:
-“Now, I cannot testify to Howard Dean’s sanity before this campaign, but five terms as governor by a man with no visible tics and no history of involuntary confinement is pretty good evidence of a normal mental status. When he avers, however, that ‘the most interesting’ theory as to why the president is ‘suppressing’ the Sept. 11 report is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance, it’s time to check on thorazine supplies.” (Washington Post, 12/5/03)
-“Well, it looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again.” (Fox Special Report, 5/25/04) And yet at other times, Krauthammer has disavowed precisely this sort of stuff, writing:
As a former psychiatrist, I know how difficult it is to try to understand the soul of even someone you have spent hundreds of hours alone with in therapy. To think that one can decipher the inner life of some distant public figure is folly. Even the experts haven’t a clue. Remember that group of psychiatrists, …

Marc Jacobs has reportedly split from hubby Lorenzo Martone less than four months after the lovers tied the knot in a ceremony in St. Barts.

The Louis Vuitton creative director and brain behind the Marc Jacobs By Marc Jacobs line married the Brazilian PR executive on New Year’s Eve, but the couple have reportedly decided to separate, according to whispers heating up their NYC social circle.

“They’ve both been telling people that they broke up,” one friend told The New York Post this week.

Lorenzo is rumored to have moved out of the couple’s Manhattan apartment, and he didn’t accompany Jacobs to the wedding of the fashionisto’s business partner Robert Duffy last week.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The most successful brands share several attributes in common. One of the most important: Ownership of a single word that defines the brand. Last week, Facebook made the word “like” its own, in one of the biggest branding coups in decades.

“Like” is seemingly everywhere this week and associated with Facebook. The social network didn’t just extend the mechanism beyond its territorial borders, but claimed ownership over the word, too. Backed by the social network’s reach and popularity — approaching 500 million subscribers — and Open Graph protocol, the “Like” thumbs-up icon already appears on hundreds of thousands of Web pages outside Facebook. Perhaps then, Facebook’s branding coup is double — not just ‘like’ but the thumbs-up symbol, too.

I use Tumblr for my Odd Together blog, where the service’s subscribers can like something by clicking a heart. The point: Facebook wasn’t the only social service using a “like” mechanism. By the way, Tumblr rivals Posterous and TypePad have built-in easy support for Facebook Like. Hehe, they like Like.

Big brands do big business by claiming ownership over a single word. For Volvo it’s “safety.” For, Nike it’s “performance.” For Apple, it’s increasingly “magic.” Barack Obama claimed “change” during his presidential campaign.

In 2002, Rajendra Srivastava, Emory University Goizueta Business School professor, explained the importance of word ownership. “A brand really lies between the two ears of the consumer. The company owns the physical brand, of course, but the value of the brand really is what it means to the consumer.” What could be more meaningful than like? The word is loaded with positive and personal connotations. “I like you” or “I like this,” with the important emphasis on “I,” which is me (or is that you). Good branding also is about generating good feelings. What could be more good feeling than like, other than perhaps love?

From a broader branding perspective, word ownership is most potent when it is a verb, meaning there is action behind it. For some brands, like Google or Xerox, the word is the company name replacing a verb. People “Google” instead of “search” or they “Xerox” instead of “copy.” Facebook is never going to be a successful verb, but like already is one.

Facebook’s Like branding is atypical from a larger marketing perspective. Generally, companies take ownership over a word because they want people to buy something. Facebook wants people to vote for something by Liking it. Around those Likes — and the associated subscriber identities — Facebook is looking to profit from advertising and marketing intelligence services. As good as cookies and other tracking mechanisms are, an identity is much better. Facebook can build demographic profiles around those Likes, which are marketing gold.

Perhaps the closest atypical word branding campaign to Facebook is Barack Obama’s run for the presidency. How strange, he sought people’s votes, too — wanted more Americans to like him than rival John McCain. The Obama political campaign ran one of the most effective marketing campaigns in US history. Advertising Age named Barack Obama marketer of the year in 2008. In Nov. 5, 2008, AdAge story “What Marketers Can Learn From Obama’s Campaign,” Al Ries explains how Obama came to own “change”. He writes:

Mr. Obama’s objective was not to communicate the fact that he was an agent of change. In today’s environment, every politician running for the country’s highest office was presenting him or herself as an agent of change. What Mr. Obama actually did was to repeat the ‘change’ message over and over again, so that potential voters identified Mr. Obama with the concept. In other words, he owns the ‘change’ idea in voters’ minds.

“Change” didn’t come easy. The Obama campaign effectively used social media tools to engage and marshall supporters. In Janaury 2009, PR agency Edelman released report “The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit.” The report explains, and to my reading surprisingly effectively, how the Obama campaign converted “everyday people into engaged and empowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online video.” Change was Barack Obama’s message, but social media tools were the means for marshaling volunteers and voters.

Social media is the other connection to Facebook. An April 1, 2009 FastCompany story explains “How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign.” Hughes created the social networking tools vital to the campaign’s eventual success. Hughes’ now defunct blog offers insight into how volunteers used My.BarackObama.com to establish “35,000 local organizing groups” in all 50 states. Hughes also is one of Facebook’s cofounders.

Facebook and Barack Obama share somewhat intertwined fates. A Facebook founder created the social networking infrastructure that helped a presidential campaign own the word “change,” and to pull off one of the most successful branding campaigns in American political history. Now Facebook is claiming ownership over “like,” using social networking tools to drive the brand ownership/association. Did Facebook marketers learn something from Hugh’s work on the Obama campaign, or is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg just lucky? He would be the first geek to demonstrate accidental branding brilliance.

Regardless, Facebook has taken ownership over the word like. Brand marketers around the world wish they could have done something similar. They’ll cash in by association. Facebook Like is going to big marketing.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Some aspects of modern life can harm health and the environment. Environmental justice means that these effects should be shared fairly and that everyone should have the opportunity to participate in making decisions about environmental issues, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income.. Examples include:
Many inner cities still have sewer systems that are not designed to handle storm overflow, so raw sewage can flow into rivers and streams.

Farm workers, 90% of whom are people of color, may face serious health risks from pesticides.
Low income, and quite often culturally diverse populations, are more likely than other groups to live near landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste treatment facilities.

What should environmental justice look like in your community?

Each week we ask a question related to the environment. Please let us know your thoughts as comments. Feel free to respond to earlier comments or post new ideas. Previous questions.

There are certainly concerns from many people about the fact that it’s difficult to get certain information to go away online. Hell, there’s an entire industry built around the idea of trying to either remove or hide any “bad info” about you online. However, it looks like there’s a new bill in Congress that would be a disaster for free speech and would have incredible unintended consequences. It’s an attempt to extend DMCA-style takedowns for any “personal info” posted online. This comes just as more people are recognizing that such takedowns have a high likelihood of being unconstitutional. In this case, the so-called “Cyber Privacy Act” would require any website that allows open posting of content to provide “a means for individuals whose personal information it contains to request the removal of such information” and would then be required to “promptly remove the personal information of any individual who requests its removal.”

Notice that there is no other option. You can’t respond as to why that content is reasonable and should be left available. You can’t defend basic freedom of speech. In fact, this is even worse than a DMCA-style notice-and-takedown regime, which at least has a process of counternotices and the allowance that content can be put back up under certain conditions. That does not exist in this case. And what constitutes “personal information”? According to the bill:

As used in this Act, the term ‘personal information’ means any information about an individual that includes, at minimum, the individual’s name together with either a telephone number of such individual or an address of such individual.

The bill was introduced by Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, and it seems like one of those bills that someone rushed out after hearing some moral panic about people’s information being online. But it looks like Rep. McCotter never bothered to think through the unintended consequences of making it easy to demand content be taken offline with no recourse. In many cases, things like your name, address or telephone number are, in fact, public information — and even if you don’t like that such content is out there, it doesn’t mean that it should be illegal. It’s not hard to see how this would be massively abused, just like the DMCA takedown process and create a pretty big burden for all sorts of websites. About the only “good” thing I could see if this bill passed is perhaps we’d get a precedent that could be used to invalidate the DMCA’s takedown process as unconstitutional as well.

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So you couldn’t pay your taxes and you opted not to file them, or an extension, at all. Don’t sit around worrying about when the IRS will catch on and come after you; file them as soon as possible, writes consumer reporter Iris Taylor, so that you can set up a repayment plan and move on with your life. The sooner you do this, the sooner you can pay them off (you can take up to 5 years to pay them), and the less you’ll end up paying in penalties and fees over the long run.

If you can pay off the bill in the next 120 days, you can call the IRS at 800-829-1040 to let them know. (You can make free electronic payments online at www.irs.gov.) If you need more time than that, fill out Form 9465 (“Installation Agreement Request”) and send that in with your tax return, along with the set-up fee–between $105 and $43, depending on your income level and payment method. And if you owe so much money that you’ll never be able to pay it off and you can prove it, send in Form 656 (“Offer in Compromise”), which will cost $150.

Finally, consider getting a loan to repay the taxes you owe. Obviously you’ll have to compare the total cost to see which method is better, but a tax manager tells Taylore that it could be “cheaper than paying penalties, interest and fees to the IRS,” and that “you’ll get more consumer protection… and you also might be able to deduct the interest that you borrow.”

“Consumer Watch: What to do if you’re a tax delinquent” [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

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The U.S. Treasury could see a substantial windfall as it begins to sell its shares of Citigroup, which were obtained as a condition of its bailout. Officials announced this morning that they would begin sales of the government’s 7.7 billion shares of the banking behemoth as early as today, with a 1.5 billion initial offering. The total shares offered amount to around 27% of Citi’s shares outstanding. If sold at current share prices, then the Treasury will do quite well on its investment.

How well? It paid $3.25 per share, which accounted for $25 billion of Citi’s bailout. If it sold all its shares at the stock’s price of $4.70 as of noon, it would produce $36.2 billion — a profit of $11.2 billion, which is about a 45% return. Who knew the government was such a savvy investor?

Of course, it’s a little unclear whether the Treasury will manage to secure that price or not. The government appears to be at least as concerned with who will be purchasing these shares as for how much. The press release takes time to note that the Treasury told its broker “to provide opportunities for participation by small broker-dealers, including minority- or women-owned broker-dealers.” If this wasn’t the government we were talking about, all parties would be forced to pay the prevailing market price, but since the Treasury isn’t a profit-seeking entity, politics could be put ahead of price.

Finally, it’s also worth noting that the government chose Morgan Stanley as its broker to sell the shares. One can only imagine the populist anger that would have erupted if the Treasury had instead chosen Goldman Sachs, given the SEC inquiry announced earlier this month. Morgan Stanley is one of Goldman’s biggest competitors. According to the stock sale prospectus, the bank stands to make between $0.003 and $0.0175 per share on commission. For the 7.7 billion shares, that will amount to between $23 million and $135 million.