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Several prominent members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community  endorsed Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy for governor today.

Malloy is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Malloy supports equality and helped fight for marriage equality, said several people at a press conference, mentioning a law enacted in 2005 that legalized civil unions. A few years later, the state began to recognize same-sex marriages.

“Dan hasn’t just talked equality; he’s worked for it,” said Anne Stanback, the founder and former director of Love Makes a Family.   

Malloy cares about people and recognizes that diversity in communities is the beauty of the state, said state Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford.

“We’ve been in battle with this man, and he is often leading the charge,” he said.

At the very same moment that Malloy was holding his news conference Friday morning, Democratic frontrunner Ned Lamont was across town on Franklin Avenue at a catering business. Lamont was touting his plan to eliminate the business entity tax, which has been pushed by many legislators at the state Capitol. Lamont was joined at the business by former state Rep. Art Feltman, who was elected as an openly gay member of the Hartford city council in the 1990s before being elected to the state legislature. Feltman said that he supported Lamont four years ago in his race against U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, and he is volunteering again to help Lamont now.

 “I started supporting Ned four years ago and never stopped,” Feltman told Capitol Watch. 

Sharing a personal story Friday, McDonald said that in 1998, Malloy asked him to be his corporation counsel. At that time, McDonald said he had not publicly told people he was gay, but Malloy said he didn’t care.

Others shared similar stories Friday, painting Malloy as a compassionate man who is ready to lead Connecticut.

“He is willing to listen to people who have a very real problem,” said state Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven. “Dan Malloy is the guy we need to be governor.”

For his part, Malloy said that equal rights is important and have to be extended to all. If he is governor, he said there would be no retreat on equality. Discrimination against anyone, including transgender individuals, should be illegal, he added.

“This battle is not done,” Malloy said.

Malloy also added that endorsements coming from people who have suffered and who have been subject to discrimination are meaningful.

“It’s an achievement that stands by itself regardless of the governor’s race,” he said.

In the past three Quinnipiac University polls, Lamont has been leading Malloy in the race for the Democratic nomination. They are facing Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman, Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi, and former state Rep. Juan Figueroa of Meriden.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz had been the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination last year, but Lamont moved into first place in the poll when Bysiewicz dropped out to run for attorney general. A recent Rasmussen poll showed that former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley was ahead of both Lamont and Malloy among those polled. 

Aun recuerdo aquel 1996 en el que la marca de los cuatro aros lanzaba al mercado el primer A3. Tardé en ver el primer modelo en la calle, pero a partir de ese día, parecía que los habían sembrado. La motorización de aquel tiempo, si la memoria no me falla, eran 2 motores gasolina (1.8 y 1.8T) y un diésel (1.9 TDI). El Audi A3 ha cambiado mucho desde entonces, incluida la versión 5 puertas, llamada Sportback, que llegaría allá por 2004, que lo pude ver por primera vez en el Autostadt de Wolfsburg.

Mucho ha llovido desde entonces, mejorando motorizaciones, equipamientos y tecnología y seguridad. Es por ello que este modelo no me ha defraudado, se ha mantenido en sus expectativas y ha demostrado que a la marca le gusta cuidar a sus clientes. Además, Audi puede presumir de ser la primera marca en montar luces diurnas tipo LED en sus coches, como imagen de marca y que unos meses más tarde irían introduciendo el resto de marcas.

Motor y prestaciones

Partimos de la motorización más básica de la gama, el motor 1.4 TFSI de 125CV. No es por ello un coche poco potente, pero no está orientado a aquellos que nos gusta acelerar y soltar adrenalina cuando conducimos. Es todo lo contrario, un coche tranquilo, que responde bien pero que no ofrece lo que otros más altos de gama o turbo. Eso también se nota en el consumo. Para descubrir el motor, una maneta en el capó permite hacerlo de una manera realmente sencilla, sin tener que buscar la palanquita.

Alcanza los 100 km/h desde parado en 9,6 segundos y ofrece un par máximo de 200 Nm en el intervalo entre 1.500 y 4.000 rpm aunque a 3.500 ya se nota que pierde fuelle. Emite 134 g. de CO₂ por kilómetro, debiendo pagar únicamente el 4,75% de impuesto de circulación. El motor acelera cuando se le pide, pero de forma constante sin sustos. Alcanza los 203 km/h de velocidad máxima.

El sistema Start&Stop es una delicia, aunque apenas pudimos hacer uso de él. Las bajas temperaturas (por debajo de 5ºC no funciona) lo impidieron, pero cuando ascendía el termómetro, circular por ciudad era una gozada, pudiendo bajar los consumos de 8 litros cada 100 km. Es muy similar al que pudimos probar en el Alfa MiTo MultiAir con las mismas buenas sensaciones. Eso sí, sigo diciendo que hace 5 años se podía haber inventado y ahora lo venden como una revolución.

Como me he referido anteriormente, Audi ofrece al cliente lo que está buscando. La caja de cambios es realmente suave, con un cambio rápido, de poco recorrido y preciso, mostrando el número de marcha en el cuadro, aun con cambio manual. El habitáculo está completamente aislado del ruido del motor y del aire, escuchándose un leve y agradable sonido al acelerar fruto de los dos escapes traseros embellecidos.

Y si de agradable al tacto hemos de hablar, sin duda destaca la suavidad de la dirección. Pocos modelos hemos probado con una dirección tan bien reglada, suave en ciudad y algo más rígida en carretera. Y aunque el volante sea de plástico, es muy agradable, superando incluso a algunos con imitación de cuero. Los amortiguadores son ligeramente blandos, conscientes del perfil que lo va a conducir y con un recorrido algo largo.

Es difícil sacarle una pega al comportamiento del coche. Quizá que los desarrollos de marcha sean algo largos, sobre todo las más altas, pero eso favorece el consumo aunque puede ofrecer inseguridad en ciertas maniobras de adelantamiento. En carretera secundaria, es mejor reducir una marcha y asegurar el adelantamiento que evitar un consumo excesivo.

Eso sí, cuando nos proponemos consumir poco, con este motor podemos conseguirlo de forma realmente sorprendente gracias a la sexta marcha. En un tramo de más de 60 kilómetros conseguimos bajar de los 4 litros, aunque en las mediciones oficiales que hicimos conseguimos dos décimas por debajo del de la ficha técnica: 4,7 litros nuestra medición a casi 120 km/h. Si vamos algo más sueltos, podemos subirle hasta superar los 7 litros por autopista.

Dejamos para mañana el diseño interior y exterior, con unas líneas y un colorido que no pasan desapercibidos.

Fotos | Javi Vicente

I

It doesn’t matter what country you live in, drivers will always fail to notice motorcycle riders. No matter what tactics you use (high beam in day time, making eye contact with the driver, 300 decibel freight-train air horn, waving an AK-47) you can always plan on at least one car cutting you off per ride. Drivers simply don’t think to look for motorcycles, or can’t mentally process the approach of a motorcycle the same way they process the approach of say, a cement truck. Cell phones and other distractions only make this phenomenon worse.

In America, neither the NHTSA nor state governments do much to promote rider safety and visibility. The American Motorcyclist Association has launched a few campaigns, but they lack any emotional appeal and don’t get the exposure they need. Make people laugh, on the other hand, and maybe they’ll remember to look for motorcycle riders. At least that’s what Devon, UK has done with this of video promoting safe riding in the county.

Ricky Martin is getting naked to symbolize his rebirth as an artist….or something like that.

(Shrugs Shoulders…)

The former Menudo star — who sashay shanted out of the closet to the surprise of absolutely no one earlier this month — sent out a link to this risque promo video for his upcoming “Black & White Tour” to his followers on Twitter this week.

The two-minute video is titled “My Skin Talks” and “aims to act as a metaphor for Ricky’s reawakening,” according to London’s Daily Mail.

The Puerto Rican star, now 38, admits “fear and insecurity” made him keep quiet about his sexuality for much of his nearly 25 year career. In the vid, digital tattoos emerge on Ricky’s skin, baring inspirational messages in Espanol such as “Find Yourself,” “Forgive,” and “Change Your life.”

Financials are taking a huge hit thanks to Goldman Sachs.

Here’s a breakdown of how things are looking right now:

• Goldman Sachs (GS): $161.33 / -12.35%
• JP Morgan (JPM): $45.76 / -4.29%
• Wells Fargo (WFC): $32.25 / -3.73%
• Bank of America (BAC): $18.37 / -5.70%
• Citigroup (C): $4.55 / -5.41%
• American International Group (AIG): $40.65 / +1.68%
• UBS: $16.87 / -3.32%
• Bank of NY Mellon (BK): $31.19 / -2.75%

Follow Our Full Goldman Sachs SEC Charges Coverage Here >

Join the conversation about this story »

Cpedia, an attempt to create automated encyclopedia-style articles from search results, was recently launched to less-than-enthusiastic reviews (including one from me). The encyclopedia was created by Cuil, a search engine that also got a less-than-positive response from users and reviewers when it launched in 2008. You might think that after the rhetorical beating Cuil (pronounced “cool”) took when it emerged into the world, founder Tom Costello might have developed a thick skin when it comes to criticism. But you would be wrong. In a long blog post responding to the bad reviews for Cpedia, the Cuil CEO — who created the search engine with his wife, former Google executive Anna Patterson — lashed out at his critics, calling them “vituperative” and “haters.”

Costello suggested that most of the criticisms came from writers who searched for their own names, but just aren’t that noteworthy, saying:

“Cpedia does very badly with people who write much more on the web than people write about them. Given the 1 billion people on the web one might think this unlikely, but it happens. When we try to summarize the information mentioning these people, we run into a problem. Almost none of it is about them. It’s about random things they have opined on. Dave Parrack, Farhad Manjoo, Louis Gray, I’m talking about you.”

The other complaint (which was the central point of my post) was that the entries simply didn’t make any sense, even when they were about someone well-known enough that there was plenty of information to pull together. In response, the Cpedia founder launched into a bizarre description of how the Christian Brothers who taught him Irish when he was a child used to beat him with straps until he got his vocabulary right, and how his Irish was technically correct but had no “blas.” That’s apparently an Irish term for the polish that players of the Irish sport of hurling get on their sticks after playing for a long time (I’m not sure that’s correct though — Wikipedia says the top of the hurling stick is called the “bas,” and an Irish dictionary says the word “blas” means “taste”).

Costello also says that what Cpedia is doing is not trying to pull together all the information about a topic and make sense of it — he says it’s trying to find the undiscovered, unique pieces of information, such as the fact that a VC he was meeting with apparently “has a tendency to over-imbibe.” Because the encyclopedia’s engine removes duplication, “unique ideas have more chance of coming to the top,” he says. And finally, Costello says that Cpedia “has errors” and that this is “intentional,” because “we have tried to be inclusive, and dredge to the bottom of the web.”

So if what you’re looking for is an automated encyclopedia entry that doesn’t make sense of things, intentionally has errors, and dredges the bottom of the web, then Cpedia has got what you need.

Some commenters on our post and on Twitter said that criticizing Cpedia was unfair, and that, as Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon put it, the company was trying to solve an interesting problem. And there’s no question that trying to turn search results into automated, encyclopedia-style articles is a hard problem. Will Cpedia get better and eventually solve that problem? Perhaps. But it’s a long way away from that right now.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user acordova

Yesterday Google had its quarterly earnings call, announcing the company’s financial results for the quarter ending March 31, 2010.  According to the press release, Google’s revenues for Q1 2010 were $6.77 billion, which was a 23% increase over the same quarter in 2009.   Patrick Pichette, Google CFO said, “Google performed very well in the first quarter, with 23% year over year revenue growth driven by strength across all major verticals and geographies.  Going forward, we remain committed to heavy investment in innovation – both to spur future growth in our core and emerging businesses as well as to help build the future of the open web.”

Aside from specific financial achievements, a few notable successes on the Android front were also mentioned.  First, apps in the Android Market are continuously on the rise.  In March, Google made 30,000 the official number of apps in the market.  At yesterday’s call, Google tacked on an additionally 8,000 apps for a total of 38,000 apps in the market; not bad for a month’s time.

In addition to the success with Android apps, Google also reported that the Nexus One has reached profitability.  This came as a surprise due to earlier reports (from sources other than Google) suggesting that the N1 was off to a slow start and had not reached the level of success analysts had originally forecast.  But Google is maintaining that they are pleased with the level of success that the N1 has had, stating that they are “happy with device uptake and [the] impact it has had raising the bar showing what a smartphone can do.”

For the full press release, go here.  Man, if only I had purchased Google stock a few years ago.  Any thoughts or insights?  Feel free to leave them below!

Via TechCrunch

I’m going on a series of field trips over the next week, including “Case for Pluto” book signings in the Boston area and New York (plus a little opera indulgence). That means postings to the log will be more sporadic. To tide you over, here are a few virtual field trips you can take on the Web:  

Seed: Where are the aliens? Maybe playing video games
Popular Science: How your brain tweaks time’s flow
Technology Review: Electronic paper … in color! 
Starry Critters:…(read more)

Here is the new Washington Consensus: American taxes must be raised dramatically to deal with exploding federal debt since spending can’t/shouldn’t be cut. Only the rubes and radicals of the Tea Party and their Contract from America movement think otherwise. And don’t worry, the economy will be just fine.

Don’t believe it. While you will never hear this in the MSM, there is plenty of academic research supporting the idea that cutting taxes and spending is the ideal economic recipe for growth, jobs incomes and fiscal soundness. (This all assumes that America’s amazing turnaround since 1980 isn’t proof enough.)  Just take a look:

1) Tax cuts boost economic growth more than increased government spending. Cutting spending is a better way to reduce budget deficits than raising taxes. “Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending” — Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, October 2009:

We examine the evidence on episodes of large stances in fiscal policy, both in cases of fiscal stimuli and in that of fiscal adjustments in OECD countries from 1970 to 2007. Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. As for fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions.

2) Tax cuts boost growth. Tax increases hurt growth, especially if used to finance increased government spending. “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks” — Christina Romer and David H. Romer, July 2007:

In short, tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output. Since most of our exogenous tax changes are in fact reductions, the more intuitive way to express this result is that tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects. … The resulting estimates indicate that tax increases are highly contractionary. The effects are strongly significant, highly robust, and much larger than those obtained using broader measures of tax changes. The large effect stems in considerable part from a powerful negative effect of tax increases on investment. We also find that legislated tax increases designed to reduce a persistent budget deficit appear to have much smaller output costs than other tax increases.

3) Cutting corporate taxes boosts growth. “The Effect of Corporate Taxes on Investment and Entrepreneurship” — Simeon Djankov, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, Andrei Shleifer, January 2008:

We present new data on effective corporate income tax rates in 85 countries in 2004. The data come from a survey, conducted jointly with PricewaterhouseCoopers, of all taxes imposed on “the same” standardized mid-size domestic firm. In a cross-section of countries, our estimates of the effective corporate tax rate have a large adverse impact on aggregate investment, FDI, and entrepreneurial activity. For example, a 10 percent increase in the effective corporate tax rate reduces aggregate investment to GDP ratio by 2 percentage points. Corporate tax rates are also negatively correlated with growth, and positively correlated with the size of the informal economy.

4) Tax rates are reaching dangerous levels where higher rates bring in less money. “The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates” — Emmanuel Saez, Joel Slemrod and Seth Giertz, May 2009:

Following the supply-side debates of the early 1980s, much attention has been focused on the revenue-maximizing tax rate. A top tax rate above [X] is inefficient because decreasing the tax rate would both increase the utility of the affected taxpayers with income above [Y] and increase government revenue, which can in principle be used to benefit other taxpayers. Using our previous example … the revenue maximizing tax rate would be 55.6%, not much higher than the combined maximum federal, state, Medicare, and typical sales tax rate in the United States of 2008.

5) Cutting corporate taxes boosts wages. “Taxes and Wages” — Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur, June 2006:

Corporate taxes are significantly related to wage rates across countries. Our coefficient estimates are large, ranging from 0.83 to almost 1-thus a 1 percent increase in corporate tax rates leads to an almost equivalent decrease in wage rates (in percentage terms). … Higher corporate taxes lead to lower wages. A 1 percent increase in corporate tax rates is associated with nearly a 1 percent drop in wage rates.

There are plenty more, of course. The Tax Foundation lists a dozen recent studies how harmful business taxes are to growth, jobs and wages. Economist Greg Mankiw has determined America is far from a low tax nation. More like in the middle. And let me add this from economist Scott Sumner:

When I started studying economics the US was much richer than Western Europe and Japan, but was also growing more slowly than other developed countries. They were still in the catch-up growth phase from the ravages of WWII. But since Reagan took office the US has been growing faster than most other big developed economies, and at least as fast in per capita terms. They’ve plateaued at about 25% below US levels, when you adjust for PPP. This is the steady state.  …   Why is per capita GDP in Western Europe so much lower than in the US? Mankiw seems to imply that high tax rates may be one of the reasons. … So I think Mankiw is saying that if we adopt the European model, there really isn’t a lot of evidence that we’d end up with any more revenue than we have right now. … Of course the progressives’ great hope is that we’ll end up like France. But Brazil also has high tax rates, how do they know we won’t end up like Brazil?

A reminder to Bostonites: I’ll be speaking tomorrow at 4 at the Museum of Science as part of an all-day bash put on by the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences. The weather outside is going to be frightful, or at least dreadful, so why not enjoy some indoor entertainment? More information and registration here.

Wired covers a new article in Nature, investigating massive failures in linked networks. The interesting thing is that feedback between the connected networks destabilizes the whole:

“When networks are interdependent, you might think they’re more stable. It might seem like we’re building in redundancy. But it can do the opposite,” said Eugene Stanley, a Boston University physicist and co-author of the study, published April 14 in Nature.

…

The interconnections fueled a cascading effect, with the failures coursing back and forth. A damaged node in the first network would pull down nodes in the second, which crashed nodes in the first, which brought down more in the second, and so on. And when they looked at data from a 2003 Italian power blackout, in which the electrical grid was linked to the computer network that controlled it, the patterns matched their models’ math.

Wired

Interestingly, the interconnection alters the relationship between network structure (degree distribution) and robustness:

Surprisingly, a broader degree distribution increases the vulnerability of interdependent networks to random failure, which is opposite to how a single network behaves.

Nature

Chalk one up for counter-intuitive behavior of complex systems.

What looks like last year’s version of the paper is on arXiv.

Brooke Mueller has left the building. The wife of troubled actor Charlie Sheen has reportedly moved out of the L.A. home she once shared with the Two And A Half Men star after tabloid reports surfaced this week linking her knife-wielding spouse to a paid escort named Angelina Tracy.

There are even rumors claiming Charlie — who allegedly snuck out rehab for a tryst with Tracy — slept with the sex worker in the bed he shares with Brooke. It’s all become too much for Brooke, who is battling an addiction to crack cocaine.

Star Magazine wrote on Friday: “Brooke had been determined to try and keep their marriage together, if for nothing else than the sake of their children — even after their terrible fight in Colorado last Christmas,” a close friend says of their blow-up in Aspen, when Charlie allegedly held a knife to Brooke’s throat and threatened to kill her. But now Brooke, 32, has had a change of heart after Charlie, 44, was recently caught having a romantic rendezvous with a sexy paid escort in L.A. “Both Brooke and Charlie were continuing the rehab they began after the Colorado blow-up, but it’s clear that Brooke has been the only one taking it seriously,” says the friend. “She’s still on the road to recovery as an outpatient — but she’s decided that she’ll make that journey without Charlie.”

The Goldman/SEC debacle has really hurt the markets. Financials in the S&P 500 are bleeding red while the Dow is down triple digits. The NASDAQ is down 30 points and the S&P puked 20 points or 1.7%.

Goldman Sachs’ stock is down nearly 15% at the moment at $158.79.

Follow Our Full Goldman Sachs SEC Charges Coverage Here >

Join the conversation about this story »

Ning, the social network platform which enables anyone to create their own interest-based networks, has hit some rough times, or at least, that’s what the latest moves at the company would indicate. In one fell swoop, the company’s newly appointed CEO is shutting down the site’s free offering and is laying off 40 percent of its… (read more)

So Herrman thinks Microsoft needs to cool it with marketing to hipsters. OK! Let’s help them out by creating some marketing materials that aim at some underrepresented demographics. More »

I’ve been away visiting relatives who somehow survive without WiFi. So now I’ll be catching up with a series of quick posts over the course of the day.

Posted by Hal Dardick and John Byrne at 10:17 a.m.; last updated at 11:18 a.m. with Mayor Daley quotes

Rank-and-file Chicago police officers will get a raise that is significantly less than the one Mayor Richard Daley pulled off the negotiating table last year under an arbitrator’s decision released this morning, a source familiar with the decision said.

The raises average 2 percent a year
for five years. That’s less than the 3.2 percent a year for five years that Mayor Richard Daley pulled off the negotiating table in March 2009. That offer had been on the table for a year, but the
Fraternal Order of Police was trying to get more. FOP President Mark Donahue declined to comment, saying he would speak at a 3 p.m. news conference.

Paying police less will save city taxpayers money during a recession-driven budget crunch, so the arbitrator’s ruling represents a win for City Hall.

Today, Daley told police officers to blame their union representatives.

"I ask all the police officials, all their families, ‘Don’t blame me,’ " Daley said, turning toward the police on duty at O’Hare International Airport, where the mayor spoke at an unrelated event. "It was not me. It was your union officials that decided that. Because like anything else, I have to be the whipping boy on a lot of issues. But I stood tall, 16 percent, and if I agreed I would have to pay 16 percent. I would have to find that. I would have to find that. That’s my responsibility. That’s not them."



Police
have been working without a contract since the end of June 2007. The
matter went to an independent arbitrator last year after negotiations
broke down.

Under the new deal, officers will get retroactive raises of 6.5 percent, and the rest will be paid going forward.