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Apple sold 8.75 million iPhones in the last three months. That’s over double what they did a year ago, which is how Apple nearly doubled their profits: Up 90 percent for their best ever non-Christmas quarter. More »

Aaaand the iPhone continues to print money. Fresh out of their earnings report, Apple has just announced that they managed to push roughly 8.75 million iPhones out the door in the second fiscal quarter of 2010 (January to March). In fewer words, it was the iPhone’s best quarter ever.

Combined with the 42.4 million they’d sold at the end of the last quarter, this brings the grand total up to right around 51.15 million. This bumps things up slightly beyond the 50 million number that Jobs revealed at the iPhone OS 4 announcement just weeks ago.

For good ol’ comparisons sake: Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones in the previous quarter, with 3.79 million iPhones sold in the second quarter of last year. That works out to somewhere around 130% growth, in year-over-year unit sales.

If I ever sell 51 million anything, I think I’ll go ahead and call it quits and head for the beach.

Related News:

• iPhone OS 4 Beta 2 released to developers, packs a few new tricks

Retailers around the country may be shuttering branches and going out of business, but New York’s Fifth Avenue is apparently recession-proof. Setting a record for a New York retail lease, Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo will pay $300 million over 15 years for a spot on Fifth Avenue and 53rd street.

Bloomberg points out that the stretch of Fifth Avenue attracts everyone from tourists to Apple fanboys, and is so desirable that landlords are willing to buy out retailers that won’t pay a premium:

“It’s just another reinforcement that retailers have to have a Fifth Avenue presence,” said Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of retail leasing, marketing and sales for Manhattan- based Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “Fifth is going to be their face to the world.”

The deal will be the highest aggregate amount paid to lease retail space in New York City, beating Gucci Group NV’s $16.5 million in annual rent for about 45,000 square feet at Trump Tower three blocks north, [broker Bradley] Mendelson said.

The landlords at 666 Fifth Ave. paid Brooks Brothers Inc. $47 million in 2008 to vacate the space eight years before its lease ran out, [landlord Haim] Chera said.

Uniqlo will pay $20 million a year for its 89,000 square-foot space.

New York’s Fifth Ave. Sets Record with Uniqlo Lease [Bloomberg.com]

The paper reviewed here is ‘Theory of Mind Deficits in Patients with Acquired Brain Injury’ by Martin-Rodriguez and colleagues. As the title suggests, the researchers are looking at how adult acquired brain injury influences ‘Theory of Mind’ (ToM). ToM is an important component in various models of social cognition. For those not familiar with ToM, this concept refers to the model that a person has of another person’s mind. In other words it is about empathy, the insight into either one’s own or another person’s mind. Disorders of ToM have been associated with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, we can say that ToM is a function of mind which in turn is a function of brain. Indeed in the introduction, the researchers refer to three regions associated with ToM

• Prefrontal Cortex

• Posterior Cingulate Cortex

• Bilateral Temporo-Parietal Junction

If this is the case then we can also say that an adult without an autistic spectrum disorder could acquire a disorder of theory of mind after developing a brain injury affecting the relevant brain region(s). This could occur for instance after traumatic brain injury or in the course of a neurodegenerative disease (for instance there is discussion and emerging evidence of altered empathy in frontotemporal dementia e.g see here and here).

In the abstract the authors write that

‘The severity of ToM impairment was influenced by ratio of patients with frontal lobe lesion, ratio of patients with right hemisphere injury, type of belief task, and heterogeneity of the sample’s etiology‘

Method

The researchers used the PsychInfo and Medline databases between the years 1995 and 2008. I didn’t look through all of the returned results but on using the search term “Theory of Mind” in  PubMed for the years 1900-1998, 537 abstracts were retrieved. Although these were not all relevant, there might have been additional useful references if the search period had been extended. The researchers combined ‘Theory of Mind’ as a search term with ‘brain damage’, ‘brain injury’ and ‘head injury’. I looked at some alternative search terms such as trauma and accident but these didn’t seem to produce distinct results although this was only a brief inspection. Studies that used the following tests were included

• ‘FOTOM’ (first order ToM)

• ‘SOTOM’ (second order ToM)

• ‘Understanding IS’ (indirect speech e.g sarcasm)

• Detecting faux pas

Studies needed to compare subjects with demographically matched healthy controls for inclusion. The number of correct responses on the above tasks provided a simple quantitative measure of ToM. The mean difference between controls and subjects was standardised using Cohen’s D. The researchers applied a Hedge’s D correction to produce an unbiased estimator. They coded a number of other variables including other demographic variables as well as subcomponents of the tasks described above. The analysis was performed using ‘Comprehensive Meta-analysis Version 2‘ as well as macros for SPSS. The statistical analysis was more involved than described here and the researchers also calculated the number of unpublished studies that would be needed to nullify the statistically significant published results using Rosenthal’s approach and a specified threshold.

Results

Unbiased effect sizes for the four types of tasks were as follows

• FOTOM – Unbiased d = 0.52

• SOTOM – Unbiased d = 0.60

• Faux pas – Unbiased d = 0.70

• Understanding IS – Unbiased d = 0.87

The results of a meta regression analysis for the subtest components and demographic variables were tabulated. From this table I could identify three results that were statistically significant at below the 5% level

FLP ratio – R-Squared 0.86 slope 0.93 for Faux Pas (p=0.02)

RHP ratio – R-Squared 0.85 slope -0.92 for Faux Pas (p=0.04)

RHP ratio – R-Squared 0.68 slope 0.82 for IS (p<0.01)

Results for additional variables were also included. Sample sizes required to nullify the effects within the different subtest components were all over n=100.

Discussion

From these results the researchers drew a number of conclusions as per the abstract excerpt quoted above. The researchers acknowledge that they could not factor in the effects of other variables that influence outcome after brain injury. Indeed one point I was not clear on was the longitudinal nature of the performance on the ToM tasks. For instance, premorbid performance would have been useful although there are comparator groups for the included studies. There was no mention of whether a period of stability had been achieved for performance on ToM tasks and whether this was cross-sectional data. There were differences in the effect sizes for FOTOM and SOTOM tasks and these effect sizes were increased with the use of the false belief tasks. The moderating effect of frontal lobe lesions on faux pas tasks weren’t too surprising but in their discussion the researchers focus on specific regions within the frontal cortex.

In conclusion, this is a complex paper with more involved results and conclusions than are discussed here although a number of the more interesting findings are described above. The involvement of the frontal cortex in performance on ToM tasks such as the faux pas task are consistent with other parts of the research literature and I found the relationship between the ratio of right hemisphere involvement in participants to Faux pas and IS tasks quite interesting. It would be interesting to take some of these findings and use them to generate hypotheses in a longitudinal assessment of fronto-temporal dementia.

References

Martin-Rodriguez J F and Jose Leon-Carrion.Theory of mind deficits in patients with acquired brain injury: A quantitative review.  Neuropsychologia. Vol 48. Issue 5. April 2010. pp1181-1191.

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The underlying agenda on the Republican side, from the top down, is to frustrate and humiliate the president and the Democratic majority — and to ensure that no legislation passes. They typically begin with a memo from Frank Luntz, outlining rhetorical tricks that will be used to mislead and anger voters, while obscuring the true content of any proposal that Democrats might consider.

Next week, Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman will launch the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill.  Every other Senate Republican but Graham will attempt to kill the bill because their entire strategy is predicated on convincing the public that Obama isn’t a different kind of politician, isn’t a pragmatist who can reach across the aisle.

McConnell told the NY Times last month, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.”

And so the GOP is quite willing to destroy the Republic to advance their extremist agenda, as long as their shamelessly superior messaging (which is to say, disinforming) means they won’t be punished at the polls and indeed will actually make gains.  A (very) few journalists have woken up to this reality (see Joe Klein on the GOP: “How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? … How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?”).

Joe Conason at Salon spells out in detail how this applies to financial reform in his article (quoted above), “Republican senator hints ‘bailout’ charge is false:  The GOP says it opposes ‘perpetual taxpayer bailouts’ in financial reform bill. But then Bob Corker told the truth.”  The analysis is worth reading since it pretty much applies to every major piece of legislation now and for the foreseeable future, including energy and climate.  Conason continues:

Republicans on the relevant committees simulate bargaining over matters of substance with their Democratic counterparts, which is what the civics books tell us they are supposed to do, of course. But when a bill emerges and debate is scheduled to begin, McConnell stalls the process by threatening a filibuster, due to allegedly unacceptable features of the legislation or an alleged refusal by the Democrats to consult with Republicans. His false claims are aimed at a single objective: to justify the filibuster threat.

Now this strategy is easy to implement at almost no political cost, because the public is distracted, confused and distrusting of both political parties as well as the media. The outlines of reality are not as clear-cut as the crisp phrasing of Luntzian propaganda, which relies on tropes of three or four words to crystallize opposition framing.

• Continue reading

And old principles that once governed the behavior of Congress, and especially senators, have been discarded. In the Republican bloc, partisan maneuvering trumps personal independence and honor at the command of the leadership.

The latest example is Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a freshman member of the Senate Banking Committee who took over the task of “negotiating” a financial reform bill from the ranking Republican, Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who grew weary of the game. Corker’s conduct exemplifies the Republican strategy (which, in fairness, he may not have fully understood until last week). Having spent months working on the bill with committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Corker suddenly found himself vowing to support a filibuster over provisions in the bill that he had helped to write.

Observing Corker’s plight, William Theobald, a political columnist for the Tennessean, described the situation with pithy accuracy:

The issue of how to shut down large financial firms without a taxpayer bailout and without damaging the nation’s economy was precisely the issue Corker had spent the most time negotiating with Dodd.

In the wake of McConnell’s withering attacks on the bill, a distressed Corker took to the Senate floor Wednesday to defend his efforts while trying not to offend GOP leaders.

Knowing that his leader’s complaints about perpetual taxpayer bailouts were wrong — and that McConnell knows it too — Corker tried to be careful. But he could not quite bring himself to endorse the leader’s falsehood. The $50 billion fund created by the Dodd bill to wind down failing firms would be drawn from the banks and financial companies, not from the Treasury. “That’s all industry money,” said the Tennessee senator. “To classify that as a bailout fund, in fairness, is not intellectually pure.”

But Corker did not appear terribly embarrassed by his own contortions. He told Gannett News that he feels “energized” and “liberated.” He can help to write a bill and then sign a letter threatening to filibuster that same bill, while acknowledging that the stated reasons for the filibuster are untrue. Nobody in the national press corps will call him to account for that glaring contradiction. And nobody in the press corps will ask McConnell to explain why the Republican senator with the most expertise on this bill has said, as diplomatically as possible, that McConnell is lying.

And so this is how a livable climate ends, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but trampled to death by a herd of elephants.

by Jonathan Hiskes

Courtesy Jasen Miller via FlickrCivic-minded urbanist
types like to experiment with collective projects. Apparently, so do people who don’t
like civic projects, taxes, public parks, pools, police officers, or
firefighters. Famously anti-tax Colorado Springs launched an astounding
experiment this year:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs
will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The
city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat
cops—dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week,
replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to
local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two
weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by
July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a
handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding
to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay
for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet
only about 10 percent of the need.

Call it place-unmaking.
Towns across the nation are watching, as many of them are facing budget
shortfalls as severe as Colorado Springs’.

The Atlantic Wire has
an interesting
roundup of reactions to the project, though most are fairly ideologically
predictable. Conservative blogger and Colorado Springs resident Michelle Malkin
writes,
“Self-reliance. Privatization. Thrift.  Fiscal accountability. The liberals
in Denver and Washington could learn something from our Mountain West spirit if
they could just get over their Colorado Springs Derangement Syndrome.”

Eric Martin writes,
“When one of the two major political parties wages tax jihad and demonizes
government and its appendages … people no longer grasp the extent to which
government services actually ensure a certain standard of living, not to
mention economic opportunity.”

Others note that
Colorado’s second-largest city continues to receive plenty of taxpayer money
through the U.S. Air Force Academy, four other military installations, and
heavyweight defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

It’ll be fascinating (and
disturbing?) to see how this works out in the coming months and years. That will
require Actual Reporting on how the slashed public services affect residents of
all social classes. Here’s hoping there are journalists left to cover it.

Related Links:

Each party has a clean-energy plan in U.K. election

U.S. military shrinking its carbon ‘boot print’

U.S. lowers expectations for climate treaty this year

If you mention Ford’s EcoBoost to a General Motors powertrain engineer, they will probably tell you that the Detroit automaker had the technology first. According to Uwe Grebe, executive director of GM’s global advanced engineering, GM’s mistake with was missing the chance to market and badge the technology.

Ford launched its EcoBoost technology, which combines turbocharging and direct-injection, last summer. Ford says that it promises to offer EcoBoost in 90 percent of its lineup by 2013. GM actually had the technology in 2007 for its Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky.

“But we didn’t have a badge and say, ‘This is the most important thing we will put on all our brochures,’” he says.

Grebe says that GM is now making marketing its new turbo engines a top priority. The technology is standard on the Chevrolet Cobalt SS and HHR SS models. It will be available as an option on the Buick Regal due late this summer.

“It would not be good to say, ‘This is EcoBoost, only better,’” Grebe says. “People need to know what it is,” but “people don’t want to know every detail of the technology.”

– By: Kap Shah

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

Fascinating research on the upper limit of light absorption by solar cells. Utilizing nanophotonic technology and thin-film solar cells, the efficiency is given an impressive boost. I keep hammering on the same point, but cost and efficiency in combination are the key to making solar a commercially viable option. Throw in some short-term government subsidies (I know, I know) and we are getting close to that sweet spot.

From the link:

But things have changed since the 1980s, not least because it is now possible to make layers of silicon much thinner than the wavelength of the light they are expected to absorb and to carve intricate patterns in these layers. How does this nanophotonic technology change the effect of light trapping?

Today, Zongfu Yu and buddies at Stanford University in California, tackle this question and say that nanophotonics dramatically changes the game.

That’s basically because light trapping works in a different way on these scales. Instead of total internal reflection, light becomes trapped on the surface of nanolayers, which act like waveguides. This increases the amount of time the photons spend in the material and so also improves the chances of absorption.

Because of the geometry of the layers, some wavelengths are trapped better than others and this gives rise to resonances at certain frequencies.

What Yu and co show is that by designing the layers in a way that traps light effectively, it is possible to beat the old limit by a substantial margin.

Also from the link:

Physicists have long known that thinner solar cells are better in a number of ways: they use less material and so are cheaper to make and the electrons they produce are easier to collect making them potentially more efficient. Now they know that light trapping is more effective in thinner layers too.

The HTC EVO 4G is the new kid on the block, and as you would expect, it wants to invite all of its friends over for a party.  Complete with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a private screening of Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, it’s going to be a fun night.  If I’m reading the invitation correctly, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse will also be in attendance.

The EVO’s release date is still up in the air, but hey – we’re not the kind of people to turn down a movie party.  On that note, PhoneDog will be there, so stay tuned for live coverage of the event!

Via MobileCrunch

(This is a guest post from the author’s blog.)

Gold fell the most in two months as the SEC’s action against Goldman Sachs (GS) spurred investors rushing out of riskier commodities and into perceived safer assets such as the U.S. dollar. Futures for June delivery slid 2% in one day to $1,136.90 an ounce.

Paulson Linked to Goldman’s Case

Goldman Sachs, the largest U.S. commodity broker, is charged with defrauding investors with a financial product tied to subprime mortgages by the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). In addition, hedge fund Paulson & Co. is also mentioned by the SEC, but not charged, in connection with the Goldman Sachs matter.

Paulson & Co. is the largest institutional holder of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) with about 8.4% stake, whereas Goldman Sachs also holds the 11th largest stake at 0.6% in the fund, according to Bloomberg data. SPDR is world’s biggest exchange- traded fund backed by physical bullion with a record gold holding of 1,141.041 tons as of April 15.

Goldman & Paulson Massive Gold Positions

Paulson’s high-profile bets have partly help drive gold to record-high prices above $1,200 an ounce. Although no charges were brought against the hedge fund, the double whammy news weighed on gold, and prompted some concern in the commodity markets, since Goldman Sachs is a major player with massive positions in all commodities including gold, silver and crude oil.

An Overdue Technical Correction  

Typically, when market confidence is shaken by events such as the SEC Goldman suit, it should spell bullish for gold — an independent store of value. However, even before the Goldman news, gold, which rallied to a four-month high of $1,170.70 on April 12, was poised for a technical correction. So, the Goldman news most likely just triggered an exit opportunity for short-term traders to lock in profits from recent gains.

Gold-Euro Affair by PIIGS

Gold futures have been in an uptrend recently and rallied more than 11% from a multi-month low in February. The metal remains near record highs in euro and pound more on account of the currency weakness, and not due to the performance of the metal itself.

Both the euro and sterling pound had declined around 6% against the dollar in the first quarter of 2010, as the U.K.’s and PIIGS countries fiscal deficit crossed the 12% mark of respective GDPs, much higher than the EU’s prescribed limit of 3%. 

With investors rotating out of the euro and into alternative assets like gold and the U.S. dollar on concerns of the Greece debt crisis, the historically negative correlation between gold prices and the dollar index has been broken since last December.

Instead, gold is now trending more positively with the dollar and inversely with the euro. (Fig. 1)
 
Watch EUR/USD

Over the near term, gold will keep looking to the dollar/euro relationship for direction with the euro dictating gold’s price.

The ongoing Greek debt saga has been a key driver of investors risk appetite. The EU already indicated Portugal may need to enact additional measures if it’s to cut its budget deficit.

Concerns of further fiscal crisis contagion into other members in the European Monetary Union could seal the euro’s fate of a continuous downward spiral against the dollar in the near term.

However, given the mountainous US deficits, it looks likely gold could reach record (nominal) highs in dollars as well in the medium term.

Technical Indicators

The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) report indicated speculative financial investors seem to have become increasingly reserved and have been trimming their net-long positions in recent weeks. Commercial participants, who accounted for 51.3% of open interest, held net short positions at the end of March. 

A further increase in the net short position, coupled with the negative sentiment stemming from Goldman/Paulson could put the gold price under pressure and test the psychologically important $1,100 mark.

For the time being, a dip below the $1,100 should provide investors with a buying opportunity and a rise above $1,150 would serve as a profit-taking signal. (Fig. 2)

Technicals aside, gold’s long term outlook is further solidified by a couple of new “China factors.”

China Gold Demand to Double

Gold demand in China has steadily increased since 1992 accounting for 11% of global gold demand in 2009. The World Gold Council forecasts demand doubling in the next 10 years from $14 billion to $29 billion on rising jewelry and investment demand.

Currently China’s per capita gold consumption level lags most other major gold buying countries. Although China is the world’s largest gold producer, rising domestic demand for gold outstripped domestic supply by 109 metric tons last year. This shortfall creates a “snowball” effect as China’s gold industry has to rely on imports, the World Gold Council said. (Fig. 3)

Boosted By A Stronger Yuan?

Meanwhile, some analysts also think a stronger yuan could be a catalyst to spur China’s gold demand. China might revalue its currency–the yuan or renminbi–after a recent meeting between U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Chinese vice Premier Wang Qishan. Some analysts argue that the yuan is undervalued by as much as 40%.

A stronger yuan could support higher gold prices as the precious metal becomes cheaper to buy. Beijing has been encouraging citizens to buy gold and silver, a rise in yuan would certainly facilitate more buying.

According to the Associated Press, China let the yuan appreciate almost 20% between 2005 and 2008 during which gold prices touched $1,000 an ounce for the first time.

Underpinned By Fear & Uncertainty

Although it would seem that the Goldman-linked SEC case single-handedly killed the price of gold last week, as discussed here, it was only a catalyst to a technical correction that was overdue.

The fact remains that in times of uncertainty, investors historically turn to gold as a hedge against inflation and unforeseen crisis since gold is one of the very few asset classes that is not someone else’s liability.

Many experts argue that gold is not an effective hedge against inflation since the then-record $873 an ounce established in 1980 should appreciate to $2,287 in terms of today’s dollar. 

However, fear of any sort usually does translate into higher gold prices. One hypothesis is that the seemingly slow and steady inflation is not explicitly overt enough to cause an overwhelming fear of inflation yet. Nevertheless, the record government debt levels and monetary printing machines will most certainly heighten investor’s inflation concerns and push gold prices much higher over the long term. (Fig. 4)

Join the conversation about this story »

Here’s a little tale we like to call Chachi Hates Jezebel: After his lame remarks about First Lady Michelle Obama earned him a racist tag and death threats from fellow Tweeters last December, you’d think ’80s star Scott Baio would have the good sense to keep his right-leaning rants to a minimum while cruising the world’s fast-growing social networking giant — but you’d be wrong.

Baio’s gone bonkers on Twitter again, and this time his flippant mouth has landed the former Charles in Charge actor is in the middle of a homophobic-charged feud with liberal women’s gossip and culture blog Jezebel.com. The once-eternal bachelor is fuming at the site for making fun of a conservative (and stupid) Tweet he posted about taxes last week.

“That should feed, house & provide medical for quite a few lazy non working people at my expense,” the star wrote. His response to Jezzie’s jovial prodding over the comment? The ladies at the “web-rag … sound like hypocrites to me” and “the name Jezebel says a lot about the founder.” When Jezebel writer Irin Carmon curtly retorted that Baio should “hang” himself, the actor viciously accused her of sounding “like an ignorant racist.”

Angry much? But the fracas hasn’t ended there. Never one to abandon her man, Scott’s wife Renee also joined the ribbing with a profanity-laced anti-lesbian rant posted to her Facebook blog:

“FuckYOU Jezebel.com web rag!!!!! You bunch of FAR LEFT Lesbian shitasses!!!!!!! No wonder you’re all lesbos because what man in his right mind could put up with your cuntness? Scott Baio has more class in his piss than all of you all!!!” she bellowed.

Well, that’s a new one. How eloquent of her. But wouldn’t one want to keep shit in the ass region? At least she used “you’re” and “your” correctly — bad grammar is usually the last thing on your mind in the middle of a rant and therefore the first sign of a tomfool. We always get a chuckle out of idiots who attempt to mask their ignorance with good grammar and epic excuses like “I have a lot of Black friends!”

Which not surprisingly is exactly the route Renee took when cornered with her bigotry by Web browsers:

An HTC HD Mini with AT&T 3G bands (850 and 1900 Mhz) has passed through the FCC.  At present it is not clear where the device is heading to, as rumours of an AT&T release of the device have not really circulated, although a replacement for the HTC Pure/ Touch Diamond 2 on A&T may be possible.

Another likely destination is one of the Canadian networks, which do often carry HTC devices.

Do any of our readers know more? Let us know below.

Via Engadget.com

After five months of formal requests, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has followed through on its threats and has issued the first-ever Congressional subpoena of the Obama administration. The Committee Chairman, Independent Congressman Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and the ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, wrote a strongly-worded letter to accompany the subpoenas, saying, “It is impossible for us to avoid the conclusion that the departments [of Defense and Justice] simply do not want to cooperate with our investigation.”

The Senators’ letter outlines three official requests for documents or witnesses, and two specific warnings that subpoenas might be issued.

The first communication was in November of 2009 and the latest was on March 23rd of this year. The committee wants military personnel records for the shooting suspect, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan, as well as access to witnesses who had any knowledge of Major Hasan prior to the time he allegedly carried out the November 5th attack in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 people dead. The committee’s goal is to learn whether the Departments of Defense and Justice had information that could have prevented the attack. More specifically, Senators want to learn what the government knew about communications between Hasan and the Yemeni cleric and suspected terrorists Anwar Al-Aulaki.

The Department of Defense has said it has nothing to hide, but does not want to release information that will jeopardize the prosecution of Major Nadal. In their letter, Senators Lieberman and Collins, insist “the matter at issue is not the criminal case.”

“Instead,” they write, “ we want to know whether the government officials responsible for protecting our homeland against terrorism—foreign or domestic—correctly did their jobs. The administration has yet to explain to us how such questions will in any way affect testimony in a trial… “

Some documents have been released, but Senator Collins complained last week that the administration has been “spoon-feeding us selected facts rather than giving us information … that we need.”

The subpoenas “command” Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to appear before the Committee on Tuesday, April 27th, and to bring with them all the materials the Senators have been seeking. However, if the documents and witness access are provided by next Monday, April 26th, the subpoenas say, “a personal appearance will be unnecessary.”

Busted! Who hasn’t been there? Caught mid-stare, barely even aware of what they’re doing. And while it may seem easy for girls to pass judgement, remember it’s them that lay the bait – often putting it on a plate – everyone knows kawangas have a tendency to catch the eye, jahoobies a way of jumping out in your face, and gazongas a habit of beguiling the gaze. That said, being busted in the fleeting flow of real time is one thing; being caught in a photograph, wandering eyes forever frozen in an instant, is quite another. No opportunity to look away or feign ignorance now: the flash bulb has already gone, and so too your cultivated exterior. Just ask these ogling celebs.

1. Bruce Willis ogling Halle Berry

You can almost hear the intake of breath. “Whooo!” exclaims a blown away Bruce Willis, then: “Did I say that or just think it?” You said it Bruce, if not with your mouth then certainly with every other expressive feature of your bald-headed bonce. And who can blame him? He certainly wasn’t the first to be caught admiring the cleavage of Halle Berry, whom he starred with in Perfect Stranger, and neither will he be the last. He might, however, be the first to be so unashamedly caught in the act of so doing. Perfect Stranger may have flopped at the box office, but the Die Hard star shows he’s not going to wilt from the chance to ogle a co-star as spectacularly endowed as Ms Berry. Yippee-ki-yay, motherf*****!

2. Puff Daddy ogling Jessica Biel

This one’s from the Golden Globe Awards, but it seems Puff Daddy misunderstood exactly what kind of golden globes he was meant to be bequeathing with the help of co-presenter Jennifer Beil. The 7th Heaven starlet is happy to smile for the cameras but, lost in his own personal nirvana, Puffy’s clearly got something in his eye – and we just hope he didn’t try and hand them over to whoever it was won the award. The bad ass rapper is better known for his infatuation with ample booties than whacking great bazookas like those bestowed upon Ms Biel, but here he highlights he’s not averse to either, and even the sexy star of The Illusionist can do nothing to conceal his appreciative props.

3. Dusting Hoffman ogling Angelina Jolie

The naysayers will claim this shot, from the 2008 premiere of Kung Fu Panda, merely shows a doting Dustin Hoffman gazing at the wonder of Mother Nature that is Angelina Jolie’s child-bearing belly, she at the time having been pregnant with Brad Pitt’s twins. Others may take the more cynical view that the former Graduate star’s eyes were fixed on another inflated double bump on his co-star’s person, proving that while the beholder may get older, the objects of desire stay the same age. Dustin, we acknowledge you’ve been one of finest actors of your generation, but to be caught so flagrantly lost in awe of the fineries of a fellow professional – well, it isn’t befitting a man of your stature.

4. Woody Allen ogling Scarlett Johansson

Now Scarlett Johansson has a pair of yahoos to make any red-blooded male cry yabadabadoo, but Woody Allen is no Fred Flintstone and the award-winning actress whose chest he’s so absorbed in is no Wilma. In point of fact, she’s young enough to be his granddaughter. Allen was panned by The Guardian for the “inadvertent moment” in which he was caught “admiring his latest muse’s principal talents”, arguing that “every time old Woody juxtaposes himself with the young Scarlett he once again triggers that ick factor.” We agree there is something tragic about the declining director being captured so at the premier of his film, Vicky Christina Barcelona – but if it weren’t Woody, well…

5. Justin Timberlake ogling Janet Jackson

If any of the entries on this list are excusable, it’s this one featuring Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson from that Super Bowl halftime show nobody could forget. When Justin sang, “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song” he, so he says, little realised how much he meant it. Out popped one of Janet’s puppies, and the world said “Woof!” If all eyes weren’t on the performing pair by this point, they were now, and as Justin’s peepers were closest to the action, he of course was the one to get busted. After the show, both performers apologised for what Jackson called an “accident” and Timberlake a “wardrobe malfunction”. Even, so a star was born that night, and Justin had it in his eye.

6. Danny Radcliffe ogling Emma Watson

With or without Freud, it’s clear our infatuation with the female breasts begins at a young age, so who can blame the youthful Danny Radcliffe – better known as Harry Potter – for stealing a gleeful glance at co-star Emma Watson’s budding bosom. Still, someone should have reminded the lead of the fantasy-adventure franchise that no amount of Hogwarts trickery would make his misdemeanour invisible to the paparazzi at a promotional photo shoot. Meanwhile, co-star Watson, aka Hermione Granger, looks either blissfully ignorant or as though she’s growling something along the lines of: “Daniel, touch my butt again and no amount of magic will grow back what I break off” (cheezburger.com).

7. John Kerry ogling prospective voters

The wisdom that it’s better to avoid sneaking a peak at women’s breasts when numerous photographers have their lenses trained on you was clearly lost on US Senator John Kerry. If it weren’t for the tender age of the teenaged ladies being gawped at by the former White House wannabe, this picture would be both funny and instructive to those training in the art of the ogle: everyone knows that the key to covert Godzilla-gazing is not only wearing shades, but looking away from the target in question and moving only the eyes. As it is, Kerry gets busted on camera, and his advisers should have told him that’s definitely no way to convince prospective voters you care about them. Gross.

8. George W Bush ogling attendant

Just so you understand we’re politically neutral about our pick of busty busts, we bring you one from the other side of the political fence, proving that Republicans can ogle with the best of them too. This one presents George W Bush, the man who sent Kerry packing, caught being served up some vintage cleavage – and the ex-president is hardly averting his gaze. Dubya had some classic media moments during his time in office, but what tended to make them sparkle was the supreme ineptness of how he used his mouth as opposed to his eyes. Here he demonstrates no one should have “misunderestimated” his capacity for sizing up two sides of a pressing situation.

9. Jake Gyllenhaal ogling Jennifer Anniston

When Jennifer filmed The Good Girl with then newbie celebrity, Jake Gyllenhaal the Donnie Darko actor had the honour of being the first actor to deflower the former Friends star – in a love scene that is. However, clearly cavorting naked in bed with his hot co-star in front of 40 crew members was not enough for the greedy Gyllenhaal. No, he needed to feast his eyes once more on the norks so neatly concealed beneath that skimpy black dress, watched by hundreds of hungry photographers. Both actors have presented the other with awards, but it seems Jake is more taken by some of Jennifer’s attributes than others – and we’re not going to quibble about his anatomical taste.

10. Garry Marshall ogling Anne Hathaway

Rounding off our list of Goodyears-gawkers is another dirty old director, this time Happy Days creator Garry Marshall, seen here ‘directing’ Anne Hathaway, the actress he fell in love with when she auditioned for her role in Disney flick, The Princess Diaries. Since then, Hathaway’s star has risen almost as far as Marshall’s eyes have fallen in this picture, and it would certainly appear to be to his liking – if not to hers – that the two have again been re-united for the 2010 ensemble comedy, Valentine’s Day. Now we know it’s sometimes difficult to avoid being caught staring, but as we’ve learnt, there’s a time, a place, and an age for it – and it’s not when you’re collecting your pension.

Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, GM

General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz might be set to retire at the end of the month, but don’t expect him to go quietly into that good night – or take up the usual trappings that a man of his age and accomplishment might normally seek out. “I don’t play golf, never have never will. And secondly, I have no desire to go to Hilton Head, or Naples, Florida, or any place like that.”

Fair enough. So what’s in store for the auto industry icon? Well, he’s working on new business book, and there will be a supporting tour to follow its publication. Beyond that, he tells Autoblog that he’s going to be embarking on the lecture circuit with the Leigh Speakers Bureau and he might just be open to helping run another company – automotive or otherwise:

“I have had several approaches for board memberships of various companies and I’m going to be meeting with a headhunter who is a specialist in finding board members. He wants to see me, so we’ll see what comes up there. As far as GM is concerned, I have had numerous requests to continue to be available for advice and counsel and occasionally review design properties and stuff like that, so I’ll find a way to stay engaged.”

What about going to work for another carmaker? “Now, no other automobile company has yet approached me and said ‘Here’s a huge wad of money, come and work for us.’” We couldn’t resist a followup: “Is that an open invitation for that to happen?” Lutz laughed his trademark hoarse laugh and said wryly, “It depends on the size of the wad of money.”

Interested in hearing more Lutz gems? Check out the newest installment of the Autoblog Podcast, where the good chairman sits in with us for an hour-long career retrospective. We’ll have the complete show up for download or online listening available later this afternoon.

Bob Lutz, 78, open to future career opportunities originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In today’s not-shocking news, researchers have determined that teenagers like to text–a lot.

The new study by the Pew Center shows that the mobile phone has become the preferred mode of communication for American teens, with one in three teens sending more than 100 texts a day. Also in the category of not-shocking, the researchers found that older teenage girls are the most enthusiastic texters.

Some of the key findings:

• The study points out that cell phone ownership among 12- to 17-year-olds has spiked, going up from 45 percent in 2004 to 75 percent this year.
• With cell phones at their disposal, the teens were also more likely to text than call, although the majority still turned to an old-fashioned phone call when it came time to communicate with mom and dad.
• Half of the teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three sends more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.
• Older girls who text are the most active, with 14- to 17-year-old girls typically sending 100 or more messages a day or more than 3,000 texts a month.

When the teens aren’t texting, they report using their cell phones to listen to music and to take and share pictures with their friends. A whopping 83 percent used their phones’ cameras, but a relatively small number of teens said they sent and received sexually suggestive images by text (”sexts”). Just 4 percent of teens say they have sent a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude image of themselves via text message, with older teens more like to receive “sexts” than younger ones.

If this study is making your nervous about your teen’s texting behavior–then you’re not alone. The study found that 64 percent of all parents snoop around on their kids’ cell phones and more than half have taken the device away to punish a child.

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Image: Wikipedia

Surely, you didn’t expect Two-Face Harvey Dent to give Batman trouble all by himself, did you? Of course not. If we’re talking about Batman: Arkham Asylum 2, it’s gotta have the villains that didn’t make it to

After Apple formally announces a new version of iPhone OS and gotten it into the hands of developers, they tend to follow up with minor releases every 2 weeks or so. With iPhone OS 4 having been announced 12 days ago, it seemed like a new Beta couldn’t be far off — and sure enough, iPhone OS 4 Beta 2 just shipped.

So what’s new?

We haven’t gotten wind of any exciting new user-facing features yet, but we’re hearing about a few new tricks it’s packing for all the developer folks to fiddle with.

Amongst these is EventKit, an API which lets applications plug events into your Calendars (like Facebook automatically throwing in all of your friend’s birthdays), and Quick Look, which seems to provide apps with a means to allow for users to preview certain file types (iWork, Office docs, RTF, PDF, images, and CSV files) without launching into another app. The latter has to be plugged into apps manually, so don’t expect it to work universally right off the bat.

We’ll let you know if we hear about anything else.

Hey, all you iPhone and iPad developers out there, Apple just released iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 software with the SDK. The software build is 8A248c, and the SDK build is 10M2240, and comes just about two weeks after the initial iPhone OS 4.0 beta was released. Grab it now in the iPhone Dev Center.

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