Blog

According to the latest rumors and reports, all signs are pointing to an April 29 launch date for the HTC Droid Incredible.  Actually, pending any sort of confirmation from Verizon, all we really know is that “The next chapter in the Droid saga begins April 29th,” which could mean a variety of things.

Lately, news on the Incredible has been leaking out at warp speed.  So, instead of writing several posts with minimal information, I thought it best to compile several updates in a single article.  Here’s what’s happening on the Incredible front:

Training for HTC Droid Incredible scheduled

Thanks to the AndroidForums we now have images related to training for Verizon store SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on the HTC Droid Incredible.  The first image simply shows that a Webinar is scheduled but that the date and time are to be determined.  The second image, which was posted later on Phandroid, shows that SMEs will begin training next Wednesday and Thursday, April 21 and 22 at various times during the day.  Also noteworthy is the fact that if you look toward the bottom of the second image you’ll see an important message that reads “*Please have your ACTIVATED DROID Incredible by HTC device with you when attending the webinar.”  So, we know for sure that VZW SMEs will have the coveted device in hand no later than this coming Wednesday.

Via Phandroid

HTC Droid Incredible specs now live on VZW site

You may remember the VZW staging site which briefly showed the teaser for the Incredible and just as briefly became unavailable unless you had an appropriate login.  Well, today (as of this post anyway) there’s another live site on the store.verizonwireless.com site that displays more specs for the device.  There’s nothing on this site that we haven’t already seen in previous leaks, but since it’s on the Verizon site, it’s that much more official.  Just in case the site goes down, I’ve included a screenshot for you to see.

Via Engadget

Incredible to be available at Best Buy on April 25?

Remember when the Motorola Devour came out?  It launched at Best Buy before it launched at VZW retail stores.  This may be the case with the Incredible as well.  Once again the AndroidForums have uncovered screenshots of the HTC Incredible, this time residing on Best Buy’s internal systems.  At the top of the image you can clearly see that the supplier and model in question are VZW and Incredible, respectively.  The image is difficult to make out, but if you look toward the bottom under the “General Item Information” section, you’ll see an “In Stock Date” of “04-25-10” which lines up with other rumors from the past.  Oh, and one more thing, it’s even more difficult to make out, but the price is listed as $599.99; just food for thought.

Via Phandroid

Well, that’s it for now.  We have two weeks until the “saga begins” and I have a feeling there will be plenty more leakage to come.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

A wrongful death suit has been filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by an Indiana man who claims that his wife committed suicide after being inappropriately targeted by a raid. 

The suicide lawsuit was filed by James Simon, 57, in U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne in February. On Tuesday the government responded to the lawsuit, saying that it was not responsible for his wife’s death.

According to the complaint, Denise Simon, 50, committed suicide on November 9, 2007. Records from the Allen County Coroner’s Office determined that the suicide was done via intentional carbon monoxide poisoning. Her death came three days after armed and armored IRS agents allegedly raided the Simon home while she was getting their daughter ready for school. James Simon, who maintains a residence in the Ukraine, was out of the country at the time of the raid.

Simon is involved in the telecommunications and satellite industry, and was part of a company known as Rimsat which went bankrupt in the 1990s after a satellite disagreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency. In 2007, his activities came under investigation by the IRS into farm subsidies, leading to a search warrant and raid on his home.

In a suicide note allegedly written by Denise Simon, she wrote that she was innocent of the charges, but had no faith in the legal system. Simon was a former president of the Fort Wayne chapter of the American Red Cross and a former board member of Stop Child Abuse and Neglect.

Simon charges that the IRS misstated facts in order to obtain a search warrant, invaded the family’s privacy, and caused intentional and unnecessary emotional distress resulting in liability for the death of his wife. He is seeking an undisclosed amount of damages.

KNOXVILLE – Putting on a musical at a professional theater on a college campus takes many months of hard work and dedication from students, faculty, staff and professional actors.

The Clarence Brown Theatre (CBT), located next to the Humanities Building and Hess Hall on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus, is finishing up its 2010 season with the hit musical “Man of La Mancha.” The show opens on April 16 with a performance at 7:30 p.m. followed by a reception featuring Spanish-style cuisine for patrons, actors and technical staff.

With 50 costumes, a cast of 34 professional, undergraduate and graduate actors, and a 16-piece orchestra, intense preparation is vital before the curtain goes up.

“It’s a collaborative effort,” director Paul Barnes said. “This is probably the largest production I’ve directed at the Clarence Brown, but this is a very professional organization from top to bottom.”

This is Barnes’ fifth production for CBT. While preparing for the show, a lot of time went toward researching the Spanish Inquisition, which is the backdrop for the five-time Tony Award-winning play.

Cristin Downs, a contract employee stage managing the show, is in charge of coordinating all of the technical aspects. CBT is a rarity because it is a professional theater on a university campus. This allows professionals working in theater to work side by side with students and faculty.

“I make sure everyone has what they need to do their job,” Downs said. “I’m the communication hub. I go to the shops every week to visit one on one to make sure we’re all on the same page. I’m sort of a psychic and a psychologist at the same time.”

All of the various technical elements, which include scenery, sound, lighting and props, must work together for a cohesive end product. The goal of everyone working with the production is to put on a great show that leaves the audience wanting more.

Ted Kitterman, a freshman theater major playing Juan, says working on this show has changed how he views professional theater, and he hopes patrons will feel the same.

“It’s just a good time,” Kitterman said. “You go to the movies and see famous people on TV, but you don’t get that sense of real life happening right before your eyes. It’s just a beautiful story that gets told like nothing else I’ve ever seen.”

The featured video details more behind-the-scenes work on of “Man of La Mancha.” Tickets for the show and 2010-11 season tickets are on sale now in the CBT Box Office. For more information, call the box office at 974-5161 or visit www.clarencebrowntheatre.com.

—

C O N T A C T :

Robin Conklin (865-974-2497, [email protected])

Bridget Hardy (865-974-2225, [email protected])

MEXICO CITY–First Lady Michelle Obama debuted on Wednesday her international “youth engagement” agenda during a speech to college and high school students here. In an interview with six print reporters–counting me–Mrs. Obama said she wasn’t sure how her youth agenda will develop. Read my column on Mrs. Obama’s appeal to Mexico’s youth here.

School improves 5 places in latest magazine rankings; University’s Health Law program ranked No. 3 in the nation

Case Western Reserve University once again ranked as one of the best medical schools in the nation in the annual U.S. News & World Report “America’s Best Graduate Schools” rankings. Of the 146 national programs surveyed by the magazine, Case Western Reserve’s School of Medicine ranked 20th in research—and overall, an improvement of five places over last year’s ranking. This ranking once again placed it highest among Ohio medical schools.

“This ranking reflects the extraordinary efforts of our faculty to continue to pursue medical breakthroughs, as well as the excellence of our student body,” said Pamela B. Davis, dean of the School of Medicine. “I congratulate everyone in our academic community on this well-deserved recognition.”

Other highlights from this year’s rankings include: The School of Law’s health law program ranked third in the nation, up from No. 5 last year; and the university’s programs in biological sciences improved to 34th in the nation, up from No. 42 in 2007, the last time this specialty was surveyed by U.S. News; biomedical engineering ranked 11th, up from No. 12 last year; and the university’s master’s in nonprofit management program ranked 11th.

“We are pleased to see this progress in the standing of some of the university’s most impressive programs,” President Barbara R. Snyder said. “Our task now is to build upon those strengths and also achieve gains in other disciplines.”

Two of Case Western Reserve’s part-time graduate degree programs also received national rankings by the magazine. The Weatherhead School of Management’s part-time MBA program ranked 31st in the nation out of 314 programs surveyed. The School of Law’s part-time program jumped 17 places to No. 43 in the nation.

U.S. News & World Report ranks graduate programs yearly in five major disciplines—engineering, law, medicine, business and education. The rankings are based on two kinds of data: expert opinions about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. These data come from surveys of more than 1,200 programs and some 11,000 academics and professionals conducted in fall 2009.

For more information contact Marv Kropko, 216.368.6890.

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Cell Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CTIC), the Seattle-based biotech company, said it has cut 36 jobs to conserve cash. The move comes less than a week after the company’s application to sell a new drug for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was rejected by the FDA. The company says it now expects to spend about $60 million on operations this year, down 21 percent from its previous forecast.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Buy these headphones, and they’ll last your whole life. Or so Sleek Audio claims—but at $400, you’d hope they’d last longer than your last pair of Sennheisers at least. More »

El mes pasado escribí un blog sobre cómo las compañías están utilizando la tecnología para desarrollar productos favorables al medio ambiente. En ese blog, elogié las virtudes verdes de la “envoltura 100% compostable.” El blog generó interés y comentarios. Sin embargo, una de las personas, Alexa, planteó algunas preguntas interesantes sobre la habilidad de la envoltura de descomponerse si terminaba en un vertedero en lugar de reciclarla como compost. “¿Sin revolver el suelo y el entorno caliente que ofrece el proceso de compostaje, realmente se podrá descomponer?”

Bueno, como no tenía la respuesta a estas preguntas, me comuniqué con mis amistades en la Oficina de Conservación y Recuperación de Recursos de EPA. Para mi sorpresa, aprendí que el mero hecho de que un producto es clasificado como “biodegradable o compostable” no lo hace 100% verde. Esos productos compostables o biodegradables “sólo son buenos para el medio ambiente cuando se hacen en compost” enfatizaron mis colegas. El enviar estos materiales a un vertedero, no significa que se van a descomponer automáticamente. Las condiciones idóneas tienen que existir para descomponerse. De hecho, la naturaleza de los vertederos evita que la mayoría de los productos compostables se descompongan. La realidad es que estos vertederos o rellenos sanitarios son casi como “tumbas secas” y están diseñadas específicamente para proteger los materiales depositados en ellas de entrar en contacto con el aire, agua, aguas subterráneas, y la luz solar. Si a pesar de eso estos productos compostables se descomponen en un vertedero, permanecerán atrapados en ese lugar y posiblemente producirán gas metano y solución lixiviante. Estos productos compostables no desaparecen por arte de magia.

Por lo tanto, para aquellas personas que quieren asegurarse de que los materiales compostables hagan honor de sus cualidades verdes, les recomiendo que visiten los siguientes sitios Web para aprender más acerca de cómo reducir y reciclar los desechos orgánicos [http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/organics/reduce.htm] y hacer compost así como otras prácticas realmente verdes.

Por ende, mientras la envoltura verde tiene sus méritos, lo mejor que se puede hacer para el medio ambiente es no crear desechos desde el principio. A pesar de nuestros mejores esfuerzos, cuando creamos desechos, las siguientes mejores opciones para nuestro bolsillo y el medio ambiente consiste en reutilizar, reciclar o compostar estos productos! Que tengan un buen día protegiendo al medio ambiente.

Sobre la autor: Lina M. F. Younes ha trabajado en la EPA desde el 2002 y está a cargo del Grupo de Trabajo sobre Comunicaciones Multilingües. Como periodista, dirigió la oficina en Washington de dos periódicos puertorriqueños y ha laborado en varias agencias gubernamentales.

Great news today – HUP has a brand new website! It’s the result of many months of hard work on the part of our colleagues, so we congratulate them. In addition to the appealing design sense, new features include improved browsing and search capability, simpler ordering, and a new ease in discovering the many treasures of our backlist.

Here’s what the front page looks like:

But the best way to get a taste is to browse yourself – just click here or point your browser to http://www.hup.harvard.edu.

Microsoft may be testing ARM-based servers in addition to solid-state storage drives for its online services division — which operates sites like Bing — ostensibly in an effort to drive down energy costs without sacrificing performance. Just last week I wrote about a stealthy startup that uses the ARM-based architecture commonly found inside cell phones to deliver lower-power servers, and detailed how ARM plc appears to have plans to make inroads in the data center. Now I see that Microsoft has a job listing on its site for a software development engineer that reads:

To provide sufficient server and networking capacity, the Autopilot Hardware team is involved in Data Center planning, new hardware expirementation [sic] including SSD and ARM, vendor relationships, delivery and installation, network management, and the development of software to automate provisioning and management of all hardware pieces in the dependency chain.

Is this a huge win for ARM in the server business? No, most likely it’s Microsoft doing what any company with a gargantuan number of servers (Microsoft says hundreds of thousands) would do — which is test out all possible ways to cut down on energy usage. Last year, I wrote about the energy savings Microsoft experienced while using Intel’s low-power Atom-based processors inside its servers.

However, its willingness to experiment with servers that use the ARM architecture found inside cell phones rather than the x86 architecture that Intel and AMD chips use is worth noting. Microsoft’s current data center strategy involves a manufacturing-line model where it uses a well-established supply chain and commodity parts that it can source easily and quickly in order to build data centers anywhere in the world as fast as possible. That’s not a data center operations model that’s going to support swapping out x86 servers for a specialized box running cell-phone chips anytime soon.

Perhaps we’ll hear more about putting cell-phone chips in servers to cut back on energy consumption in the data center at our Green Net conference on April 29, when Bill Weihl, Google’s green energy czar, gives a presentation on how Google is innovating around energy use in its data centers (GigaOM Pro sub req’d). We’ll see then if Intel or AMD should be worried about their largest business lines — the sale of server chips — shrinking.

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander is up before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning. (As I type, he’s giving his opening statement.) He’s the head of the National Security Agency and he’s been nominated to become the first-ever head of the military’s new Cyber Command. And he’s giving some indication he’s not going to focus, if confirmed, on attacking enemy cyber-infrastructure. His priority, he testified, will be on “building the capacity, capacity and critical partnerships required to build our operational networks. This command is not about efforts to militarize cyberspace.” He’ll remain, however, at NSA, and it’s unclear how that mix will work in practice.

Over at Danger Room, Nathan Hodge reads through Alexander’s answers to prepared questions and notices that Alexander indicated he doesn’t want to attack enemy civilian infrastructure. Nathan:

[C]yber attacks threatened civilian networks and the financial system. It’s unclear if the military could retaliate in kind. In a series of written answers to questions from senators (.pdf), Alexander said, “It is difficult for me to conceive of an instance where it would be appropriate to attack a bank or a financial institution, unless perhaps it was being used solely to support enemy military operations.”

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, referred to CYBERCOM representing “uncharted territory” for the military and the country. He asked how CYBERCOM would operate in support of a regional combatant commander during a military action. “We have standing rules of engagement of how to defend our networks,” Alexander said. So CYBERCOM operates in a defensive capability, it would seem. “We don’t have the authority to go into a third country to launch an attack,” Alexander continued, should an adversary route a cyberattack from the infrastructure of a country that isn’t party to a hypothetical conflict.

Banks around the world proclaim their eagerness to build a safer, more robust financial structure. But put any specific proposal in front of them and the reaction is likely to be outraged screams.

The screams are particularly loud these days as banks rush to deliver their responses to the latest proposals for a revamped Basel accord to regulate global banks. Why the fuss? Patrick Jenkins and Brooke Masters of the Financial Times say some of the latest Basel proposals are cutting a bit too close to the bone for some financial institutions.

For instance, many banks don’t like proposals that would force them to raise more equity and hold larger amounts of liquid funds. Particularly contentious is a proposal that would ban banks from counting deferred tax assets as capital for regulatory purposes.

A deferred tax asset, as you probably know, is really just a past loss. It can appear on the balance sheet as an asset because most countries allow companies to write off losses in past years against their income in future years. So a deferred tax asset is like a card that allows you to partly offset that loss by paying less tax when you do return to profit.

The problem is that a deferred tax asset is not money in the vault or even something that can be sold. It is only valuable if a bank actually produces a profit. During a financial crisis, when a bank’s survival is in doubt, a deferred tax asset becomes worthless because there’s no assurance there will be future profits. “The planned ban on most deferred tax assets…is particularly sensitive in Tokyo, where in some years [these assets] have accounted for the majority of bank capital,” write Jenkins and Masters.

If all the Basel proposals were put into place, banks say their returns on equity would be cut in half, to as little as 5%. But don’t be too afraid. As Jenkins and Masters point out, many of the dire forecasts are just posturing. “If all banks were burdened with the same additional regulatory overheads, they would simply pass them on to customers in the form of higher fees and charges.”
Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post.

[JURIST] Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski testified Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee that the agency will move ahead with its National Broadband Plan despite a recent court ruling that it lacks the power to enforce net neutrality. Net neutrality, which is unanimously supported by the FCC’s commissioners, was thought essential to the goal of an open flow of information over the Internet regardless of the amount of revenue generated by the information. Genachowski said that the FCC’s actions, as laid out in the 2010 Broadband Action Agenda will, “protect America’s global competitiveness and help deliver the extraordinary benefits of broadband to all Americans.” The roadmap, he continued, falls within the framework of the Communications Act of 1934 as amended in 1996 and will be, “rooted in a sound legal foundation, designed to promote investment, innovation, competition, and consumer interests.”
The FCC announced last week that it would move forward with the plan despite the ruling. The FCC sent the plan to Congress for approval last month, seeking approval to enact regulations to update the communications infrastructure in the US and make broadband service available to millions more Americans. Telecommunications companies Verizon, AT&T and Comcast argue that net neutrality would inhibit their ability to effectively manage Internet traffic. Under the National Broadband plan, the FCC hopes to provide broadband access as broadly as possible, including to at least one public institution in every community and to first responders. Other notable goals of the plan include providing 100 million households with affordable 100 megabits-per-second internet service and ensuring that all children are literate in digital technology by the time they leave high school.

The schedule for the NBA Playoffs is out.  This is the year Cleveland Cavalier fans get their vengeance on all the Michael Jordan memories that were thrust upon them.

Cleveland Cavaliers (1) vs. Chicago Bulls (8)

Game 1 – Saturday, April 17th, 3pm at Cleveland
Game 2 – Monday, April 19th, 8pm at Cleveland
Game 3 – Thursday, April 22nd, 8pm at Chicago
Game 4 – Sunday, April 25th, 330pm at Chicago
Game 5 – Tuesday, April 27th at Cleveland (if needed)
Game 6 – Thursday, April 29th at Chicago (if needed)
Game 7 – Saturday, May 1st at Cleveland (if needed)

Bring it on!

It’s tax day, meaning there will be no end to the rhetorical grandstanding from conservative lawmakers about how the Democrats’ “tax-and-spend” policies are stifling the economy and preventing average folks from achieving the American Dream.

Conveniently, they will ignore these new numbers from the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the nonpartisan Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, which found that, however you slice them, federal taxes on the median middle-class family are just about at five-decade lows. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy group, explains:

This year, the Making Work Pay tax credit, which President Obama and Congress enacted as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is providing a credit of $800 to married joint filers ($400 to single filers). A median-income family with two children thus will receive an $800 tax cut in the return it files this year.

With the new tax cut, the median family’s federal income taxes will equal just 4.6 percent of its income in 2009. That is lower than in any year since 1955 (the first year for which these data are available) except for 2008, when another stimulus-related tax cut was in effect.

You think those numbers would be cheered by the Tea Party crowd. They haven’t been. Instead, you’ve got Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) taking to the chamber floor and condemning Democrats for “a budget with record taxes and spending that will add a trillion dollars to the national debt in the next ten years.”

They passed a national energy tax called cap and trade that will cause utility rates to go up on small businesses and family farms and businesses across this country by hundreds of billions of dollars.  And we just passed ObamaCare with $600 billion of tax increases.

And it isn’t even noon yet.

A $30.3 million verdict returned in an asbestos exposure lawsuit was upheld earlier this month by a New Jersey appeals court. 

The court affirmed the February 2008 decision in favor of Susan Buttitta, who brought a mesothelioma lawsuit after the death of her husband, Mark, an advertising executive from Glen Ridge who used to work at a GM warehouse in the early 1970s. The original verdict, handed down by a Bergen County jury, may be the largest in the state’s history.

Originally filed against a large number of companies, only Borg-Warner Corp. and Asbestos Corp., Ltd. were left as part of the case by the time a verdict was returned. Other companies either reached a settlement with the plaintiff or were dismissed from the trial. Borg-Warner and Asbestos Corp. appealed the verdict on multiple counts, but the appellate court rejected them all.

Mark Buttilla allegedly developed mesothelioma from asbestos exposure both as a child, when his father worked at a GM warehouse and carried the fibers home on his clothing, and in the early 1970s, when he also worked at a GM warehouse in Englewood. The lawsuit alleges that Buttilla handled boxes covered with asbestos dust as part of his job. He died of the fatal asbestos cancer in 2002.

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer found in the lining of the chest and lungs, which is only known to occur as a result of exposure to asbestos. The disease has a very long latency period and is often not discovered until decades after exposure, leading to a limited life expectancy after diagnosis.

Asbestos was widely used in a variety of manufacturing and construction applications throughout the last century, with use peaking in 1973. Most uses of asbestos were banned in the mid-1980s. Despite the ban, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the number of mesothelioma deaths continues to rise each year due to the latency period, with the number expected to peak in 2010.

Asbestos exposure mesothelioma lawsuits are the longest running mass tort in U.S. history, with the first asbestos case filed in 1929. Over 600,000 people have filed lawsuits against 6,000 defendants after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestosis or other asbestos-related diseases.

Harper’s Men’s Track and Field team competed in the Chicagoland Outdoor Championships April 9-10 at the University of Chicago. The team finished 10th out of 20 participating schools. Individual results include:

Decathlon-       Mark Nieman 2^nd place of 20   pr    5373 points

                        Xzavier Kimborugh 5^th place pr   4750 points

 100m   Travis Pruitt                  11.25  pr  NQ

 200m  Garrett Dorsey 22.74 pr NQ

 200m   Travis Pruitt    22.80 pr NQ

 800m   Tom Johnson  2:02.50 pr

 800m  Nate Stadeker  2;04.88 pr

 800m   Josh Coonich  2:10. 97 pr

 1500m  Jesus Escareno 4:14.00  pr NQ

 5k        Tom Busse 16:54.95 pr  24 seconds

 Triple j  Jeff Feaster 12.77 m 41’ 10 ½”  pr

 HJ        Jarrett Austin 1.91  pr 2^nd place

 HJ        Fuad Agoro 1.91  pr 6^th place

 Discus    Trak Myers 43.09  141’2  pr

 Hammer Trak Myers    41.75   137’ pr

 Hammer Keith Ley 37.17  121’11 pr NQ

MEXICO CITY — On her first trip to Mexico, first lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday talked about Chicago’s Mexican-American communities in Pilsen, Little Village and the Southeast Side.

“Growing up in Chicago on the South Side, I lived next to one of the largest Mexican-American communities in the city,” Mrs. Obama said in a session with six print journalists following her in Mexico.

We’re on the campus of Universidad Iberoamericana, and Mrs. Obama just delivered a speech to college and high school students to inspire them to help others. She ended her address with the rousing battle cry of President Obama’s 2008 presidential quest — “Si, se puede — Yes we can” — but the crowd did not light up the way a U.S. audience would because I just don’t think they got the reference to either the campaign or to the phrase, originated by Cesar Chavez, the labor leader.

Mrs. Obama did not mention in her speech the cross-border drug problem that leaders in Mexico and the United States are grappling with. In Mexico, drug violence affects people under 30 the most.

She did discuss programs and strategies to reduce drug use in a morning private meeting with Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala, held in Los Pinos, the Mexican presidential residence.

Asked to comment on the drug war, Mrs. Obama, raised at 7436 S. Euclid, mentioned her South Side roots and seemed to want to throw the spotlight off the explosion of murders on the Mexican side of the border with the United States, blamed on feuding drug cartels.

“Drug violence exists on the South Side of Chicago, in L.A., you name any urban and rural environment,” she said.

Mrs. Obama was asked about her favorite Mexican neighborhood in Chicago, and the question spurred Mrs. Obama — in Mexico at this point less than 24 hours — to compare and contrast her impressions so far.

“Well, Pilsen, Little Village, is one of the favorites because that’s where you feel like you’re in a different neighborhood,” Mrs. Obama said.

Mrs. Obama was referring to two different Chicago communities, Pilsen, along 18th Street on the Near West Side, and Little Village, in South Lawndale.

In any case, a Mexican neighborhood in Chicago is not the same as Mexico City.

“It is very different from being here in Mexico City because this is where … the full culture of Mexico is on display. … The architecture in this city is bold, it’s modern, it’s colorful in ways that can’t be expressed in just a neighborhood; you know, one of, you know, 72 community areas in Chicago,” she said.

FOOTNOTE: I asked Mrs. Obama to clarify where on the Southeast Side of Chicago she was talking about — 91st and Commercial, she said.

“Ninety-first, where Goldblatt’s used to be,” she said, laughing. “We used to shop there.”

Said Mrs. Obama, “That was like the big shopping trip.”

Min opens her latest with guilty sobs recalling her “brainwashed” teenaged self in 1970s China, when she was forced to denounce Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning writer Pearl S. Buck to Madame Mao. That guilt clearly drove Min (Red Azalea) to write this “based on the life of Pearl S. Buck” novel about a fictional friendship between Buck and her Chinese best friend, Willow. Unfortunately, by book’s end readers are left with little more than caricatures of a Chinese Saint Pearl and her long-suffering sidekick, both ultimately victims of the easily vilified Madame Mao. Buck and Willow bond as turn-of-the-century girls, and Min uses their lifelong relationship to chart China’s tumultuous history.

Verdict: A novel about Buck could have been interesting, but this one is marred by insipid dialog (Buck’s husband should be more understanding because of his Cornell degree, her would-be lover wants to know if she “love[s] like a Chinese woman”), jolting gaps (Buck’s adopted daughter, Janice, disappears after one mention), and apocryphal pronouncements (Buck apologizes via “Voice of America” for casting Western actors in Hollywood’s whitewashed version of The Good Earth). Buck’s story deserves better. With two autobiographies and 80-plus titles to choose from, readers can easily access Buck directly.

Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, April 15, 2010

Readers: Adult

Published: 2010

Filed under: ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Chinese, Chinese American Tagged: Coming-of-age, Cultural Revolution in China, Family, Friendship, Historical, Identity, Mother/daughter relationship, Parent/child relationship

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Taligen Therapeutics, the Cambridge, MA-based developer of treatments for inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, said today it has added John Maraganore to its board of directors. Maraganore is the CEO of Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) a leader in developing RNA interference treatments. Separately, Taligen said it added two members to its management team: Sven Ante (Bill) Lundberg as chief medical officer, and Karen Tubridy as vice president of clinical operations and regulatory affairs.

Comments | Reprints | Share: