Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan and President Barack Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on Monday (Xinhua/ZUMApress.com)

Later today, the Washington Nuclear Security Summit will conclude by issuing a communique pledging to concentrate the international mind around President Obama’s goal of securing all separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium within four years, in order to prevent nuclear terrorism. It won’t be released until it’s released, of course. But it’s going to promise dedicated national action by 47 countries participating in the summit, rather than empowering international agencies to take control of each nation’s plutonium or uranium supplies. So what comes after this week’s summit for nuclear security?

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Enforcement, principally. “The summit is a forcing mechanism,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuke expert at the New America Foundation who blogs at Arms Control Wonk. “It causes states to do things for a while.” The communique will make those “things” clearer, but the contours are already taking shape: States will take increasing steps to shore up their legal and regulatory frameworks to keep track of civilian or military nuclear stockpiles. And, especially, they’ll shore up their export controls to ensure government officials keep track of what nuclear materials or components travel across their borders — or, in the case of Malaysia, which didn’t have any before yesterday (though perhaps not because of the summit), they’ll put those controls in place.  That’s crucial for tracking international proliferation: A.Q. Khan, the world’s most notorious proliferator, used Malaysia as a hub for shipping centrifuges to nations like Libya, since they’d drop off the grid once shipped.

In other words, what Lewis calls the “house gifts” that states showed up to the summit presenting are less important to nuclear security than the consistent enforcement of the rules in place for monitoring and controlling the establishment and movement of nuclear material. It’s a bit ironic. The administration is understandably touting the commitments of Chile and Ukraine and Canada at the summit to get rid of thousands of kilograms of highly enriched uranium. (The Canadian government, right now, is trying a group suspects known as the “Toronto 18″ for plotting terror attacks on Canadian nuclear facilities, among other targets.) But after the summit ends and countries won’t show up to Washington bearing pledges, the measure of the summit’s success will be in the actions that governments take to safeguard and reduce the weapons-grade material under their control.

And it will be governments that take those steps, with international entities in supporting roles at best. Gary Samore, the National Security Council director with the portfolio for nuclear weapons and proliferation policy, clarified during a Friday conference call that the urgency of the timeline for securing nuclear materials meant working within the “sovereign responsibility” that governments continue to insist holds for all matters nuclear. “If we were to spend a lot of time trying to construct a new international architecture, I think it might actually have the unintended effect of really diverting us from taking the practical measures that we want to take in the near term,” Samore said.

That raised the question of whether steps governments take would really stop the next A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani national hero whom the Pakistanis placed under house arrest after his proliferation network was disclosed, allowing no international access to him. Lewis said strengthening nations’ export controls would probably represent the most important step against international proliferation. “Until we really clamp down, and get, first of all, universal national establishment of export controls and then, second, get countries to actually enforce the export controls they,” he said, “we’re not really going to know how much of a problem we have here.”

Then there’s the task of getting nations to broach subjects the summit neglected for fear of bursting the consensus. “Missing from this discussion is the importance of further production of separated plutonium or highly enriched uranium,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “The French were particularly unhelpful in getting that idea or that principle into the discussion, because they believe that reprocessing of nuclear fuel is important for their energy strategy. But it is also a major proliferation problem.”

Not that Kimball believes that the first-ever nuclear security summit needed to address every crucial proliferation or security issue all at once. “What we’re talking about here is a summit that is attempting to focus international attention on this aspect of the nuclear problem in a way that hasn’t ever been done before,” he said. “The United States has reminded other countries that there are other fora to discuss these issues [like] Iran’s safeguards violations, Israel’s non-[Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] status, nuclear disarmament progress.”

There will be another nuclear security summit in 2012, both to measure nations’ progress in enforcement and, administration officials hope, to expand the aperture of what’s possible in the nuclear-security field. But immediately after the summit concludes, the nuclear issue will remain the subject of high-level international attention. The Obama administration, now equipped with the acquiescence of the Chinese, will present a sanctions package to the United Nations Security Council to raise the cost of illicit Iranian nuclear enrichment within weeks. In May, nations will reconvene to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of international security. Ben Rhodes, the National Security Council’s director of strategic communications, told reporters Friday that among the summit’s goals was to “provide momentum going forward” for a nuclear-security agenda.

For Lewis, the fact that the terms of the debate are about nuclear security and no longer about military applications of nuclear weapons is vaguely surreal. “It used to be about deterrence, deterrence and then, as a distant third, deterrence,” he said. “All this other stuff was the province of people who wanted to mess around with our beautiful deterrent.”

Foi anunciado hoje pela divisão brasileira da Citroën, o recall dos modelos C4 Hatch e Pallas ano 2009/2010. A razão pela qual o recall foi anunciado foi um possível defeito no sistema de direção assistida.

Os modelos com esse problema são os de chassi de número 9G533889 a AG518279, só que é importante lembrar que nem todos os veículos estão envolvidos com esse defeito. Para tirar suas dúvidas, pode entrar em contato no número 0800 011 8088.

A Citroën pode fazer uma atualização no módulo de controle da direção, uma vez que esse defeito pode fazer com que a direção do carro fique mais rígida em curvas rápidas e isso pode provocar acidentes. Para quem possui um dos veículos citados acima, aproveite para agendar a sua manutenção!

Via | Motorpasion

Enabling the Ecosystem is a series of interviews with those people and firms that are helping to build the overall Android ecosystem.

This week’s interview is with Andreas Schobel, CTO of Snaptic, makers of the 3banana note-taking application. 3banana, unlike an ordinary note-taker, offers integration hooks to allow third-party apps to add and manipulate notes.

AG: So, what is 3banana Notes, and why is it important to Android developers?

AS: 3banana helps users capture information in a note-taking application wherever they are, and helps them make the most of that content. Users can save text, photos, location and keep notes organized by easily adding a #tag. Notes are securely backed-up to https://snaptic.com.

What is really nice for developers is that they can add the ability to capture notes in their apps with only a few lines of code. You can find out about more integrations at: https://snaptic.com/gallery/.

AG: How does an Android developer tie their app into 3banana Notes?

AS: The easiest way is to use our Intents. With a few lines of code a developer can quickly save text, photos, and location and then be able to get back a list of their notes. You can find out more at http://github.com/snaptic.

AG: What restrictions does this integration place on the developer’s own application? For example, does 3banana Notes require an Internet connection and will cause problems if the developer’s app tries to create a note when no Internet connection is available?

AS: Being able to access your notes offline with 3banana is something we are really proud of. Offline access means your notes are always available, and if the user decides to turn on sync, everything gets securely backed up when you are online again.

More generally, besides needing 3banana installed on the phone, the only restriction would be the scenario of needing 3banana online to save and edit notes. However, because we offer offline usage, this restriction doesn’t exist. The next time the phone is online, everything will sync and resolve.

AG: What sorts of notes can a developer create? Plain text? HTML? Images? Sounds? Other file formats?

AS: We support text with some HTML, photos, and locations.

Part two of this interview comes tomorrow!

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• Fatal Assumptions: Touch
  The Fatal Assumptions blog post series will review some assumptions Android application developers may make, and why those assumptions may harm their app’s acceptance, immediately or in the near futur…

In February, the International Monetary Fund, which had long opposed controls on capital inflows, published a surprising paper that reversed course.

For countries facing a big inflow of capital — with the attendant risks of asset bubbles — the use of capital controls “is justified as part of the policy toolkit to manage inflows,” the IMF paper wrote. Even if investors figure out ways around the controls, the restrictions still can be useful, the IMF said because “the cost of circumvention acts as ‘sands in the wheels’” and slows down investment.

The change in advice won applause from IMF critics, especially on the left, who have long believed that the Fund was too wedded to free flow of capital even if unhindered flows could inflate asset bubbles.

Today, the IMF came close to changing its mind again. “Even if capital controls prove useful for individual countries in dealing with capital inflow surges,” the IMF wrote its semi-annual Global Financial Stability Report, “they may lead to adverse multilateral effects… A widespread reliance on capital controls may delay necessary macroeconomic adjustments in individual countries and, in the current environment, prevent the global rebalancing of demand and thus hinder the recovery of global growth.”

So, should a country use restrictions on capital — which can be in the form of a tax or increased reserve requirements — or not?

The IMF isn’t clear. It seems to back them as a short-term measure, but not a long-term one, but doesn’t give specific advice how to tell one situation from another. Here’s the IMF’s best shot: “Since the use of capital controls is advisable only to deal with temporary inflows… they can be useful even if their effectiveness diminishes over time,” the GFS report suggests. “However the decision to implement capital controls should consider their distortionary effects” too.

Effie Psalida, an IMF economist, says the two papers on capital control “complement” each other.

Maybe. Or maybe they confuse each other. For policy makers in developing countries: Good luck making the call.

Comedy fans won’t want to miss this week’s South Park: The legions of celebs who have been raked over the coals over the course of the show’s fourteen seasons — including Tom Cruise, Tiger Woods, and Kanye West — join forces to file a class action lawsuit against Kenny and the gang.

It’s all apart of South Park’s 200th episode, airing this Wed., April 14 @ 10 PM on Comedy Central.

Martha Stewart, The Kardashians, Oprah, Mel Gibson, and Britney Spears are among the 200 previously-ridiculed celebs with a bone to pick with the town of South Park. The only way this could get any funnier is if they have Gloria Allred representing the pissed-off celebs!

Filed under: SUV, Safety, Lexus, Toyota, Luxury

Consumer Reports has officially given the Lexus GX the automotive equivalent of a black eye. The publication has deemed the high-riding luxury SUV a “safety risk” for its likelihood to go shiny side down during emergency maneuvers, and as such, has put it on the publication’s infamous “Do Not Buy” list. During testing, the Consumer Reports crew found that the traction control on the GX would allow the vehicle to slide nearly completely sideways before getting everything in line.

Interestingly enough, while Consumer Reports tested the nearly-identical Toyota 4Runner, that SUV wasn’t found to suffer the same problem with the traction control. Is it possible that all of the luxury goodies you’ll find aboard the Lexus add enough pounds to overwhelm the vehicle’s stability control, or that the Lexus has significantly different programming? It’s possible.

So far, Toyota hasn’t said much other than that it’s concerned with the Consumer Reports findings. Considering that the Japanese manufacturer has had more than its fair share of bad publicity recently, being blacklisted by CR is just another log on the fire.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]

Consumer Reports puts Lexus GX on “Do Not Buy” list due to rollover fears originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto died in a hospital after being shot in a Bangkok protest Saturday. His legacy, beyond his two children, will most likely be the seven minutes of footage found in his camera, turned in by protesters. More »

The National Federation of Independent Business — the small-business lobbying organization — reports that small-business optimism declined in February. Small businesses reported smaller workforces and continued price cutting, among other sluggish stats. This chart encapsulates the continued bad times:

The yawning gap on the right side of the chart shows that while small businesses continue to expect improved sales, actual sales remain at historical lows.

The report comes just months after another, more comprehensive dismal report, “Small Business Credit in a Deep Recession.” It shows that, despite the lifting of the recession, as of February, small businesses have less access to credit than they did a year ago. The percentage of small businesses holding a loan has fallen 20 percent year-on-year. More than half of small businesses cite “slow or declining” sales as a major issue, up eight percent from one year ago. And only 40 percent of small businesses attempting to borrow had all of their needs met.

Small businesses — which over the past 15 years have generated nearly two-thirds of new jobs — continue to show low optimism and sustained difficulty accessing credit, despite the Obama administration’s efforts: more than $15 billion in loan guarantees through the Small Business Administration, $33 billion in tax breaks for new hiring and increased loans to small businesses through the multi-billion-dollar Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF. The administration has made a concerted effort to ensure the flow of credit to small businesses for more than a year now — but many programs remain in plenary stages, and thus far, they have evidently had little effect. For months, the NFIB has advocated a payroll tax holiday to gin up hiring. But that measure remains controversial and unmentioned by the White House and Congress.

Relationships generally follow the same trajectory, despite men and women having contradictory mating goals. The optimal trajectory for each sex differs as such:

For men:

– Meet
– If alpha, seduce. If beta, butter up.
– Sex
– If nothing in common, date for a few weeks
– If something in common, date for a few months
– If falling in love, date for a year
– If willfully ignorant, marry
– Divorce
– Start over, poorer but happily still in demand

For women:

– Be introduced through social circle
– If man alpha, relinquish. If man beta, puppeteer.
– If nothing in common, one date and done
– If something in common, date for a few weeks
– Sex
– If falling in love, dream of marriage
– If smart, marry
– Divorce
– Start over, richer but regrettably older

For every long term relationship, sometime between the six month to one year mark, the woman will angle to get you to marry her. Dumb women will attempt to accomplish this through the injudicious use of ultimatums. Devious women will apply the more sophisticated tools of a covert operation. But nearly all women will want marriage sooner rather than later, and their men will be left wondering why, if the relationship is going so well, such a superfluous notarization as marriage is necessary. Usually, the women win out, because most men are weak when confronting possible loss of reliable pussy access.

If you are a man who can face the marital abyss and not flinch, then at the one year mark you may be put into relationship limbo. This is what it implies — a relationship in a holding pattern with a woman who is slowly withdrawing her affection. She will go to bed without sexytime, make breakfast for herself instead of the both of you like she used to, start complaining that you hog the bed, happily recite a list of her friends who are getting hitched, ceaselessly mutter about your “incompatibility”, bitch that you don’t take the “initiative” (read: “propose”), and generally become a sourpuss around you. This is because women get very, VERY, pissed and bewildered when their prime directive (to get married) is thwarted.

Now, there is a catch. The problem for men is determining whether relegation to relationship limbo is the result of the girlfriend’s infidelity or her marriage denial blues. Unfortunately, the symptoms of either are remarkably similar. A woman who is cheating on you will withdraw sexually, stop being considerate, and bitch you out a lot. A woman who is worried and anxious that you have no intention of marrying her will lash out likewise. Your job, as a man, is to figure out which succubus has possessed her, for the solution to handling either demoness is quite different. A cheating woman will need more alpha from you. A despondent woman will need more signs of commitment from you.

Deciding which dark path she is on is no easy task. Women are evolutionarily optimized to be fantastic, nearly undetectable, liars of things both great and small. And what is the greatest lie of all than the lie to hide the pedigree of a man’s child from him so that he may raise it as his own? Women who were bad at lying about cuckoldry were quickly weeded from the population, either by violence, avoidance, or expulsion. And so Darwinian selection ensured that those women who successfully duped beta mates into raising alpha progeny would need be liars of an exemplary sort.

Thankfully, Darwinian selection also ensured that a humanitarian saint like me would come along one day to give you the tools to help you discover if your woman is a sneak cheat. Namely, if she’s branded with identifiable markings of sluttitude, she is more likely to be a future faithless whore.

If you have convinced yourself beyond a reasonable doubt that your girlfriend is not cheating on you, then you are left with finding a way out of relationship limbo. You could take the path of least resistance and propose marriage. But that is lopping off one’s left nut to spite one’s cock. For a woman who has proven capable of withdrawing affection from her man is a woman who can — and will — do it again, to get what she wants, wedding band or no.

Relationship limbo is a dangerous place to be for men. It can drive the male mind crazy with thoughts of abandonment, or worse. His mind swirls with the concoction of nightmares, and his confidence betrays him at the moment he needs it most. In order to defeat it, you must know yourself first. Do you eventually want to marry? Then decide if she is the one for you, and take the leap into or out of her arms. The purpose of limbo is to incite resentment in you, thus making it a simpler endeavor for the woman to conclude that you are worth leaving. If she is not the one you want to marry, prolonging your time in limbo will only feed your resentment, no matter how mastered your art of aloofness, until it boils over into a dramatic breakup.

If, like me, you fully grasp that marriage serves none of your interests, but you like the girl you are dating and want out of limbo, you have two choices. Either stoically accept that every relationship has an inborn lifecycle, and that marriage is simply a delay tactic to push the lifecycle beyond its natural limits, and allow her to leave to find the man who would give her what she wants. She has already poisoned the well, so what further benefit from the relationship can you realistically extract? Limbo more often than not delivers you to hell than to paradise.

Or, have her fall so deeply in love with you that she betrays her own female edict. A woman truly in love won’t be able to contemplate leaving you without pain shooting through her sternum. She may be sad at times that you haven’t proposed, but her sadness is short-lived as it surrenders continually to her joy.

A woman who has put you in limbo does not love you with abandon. She instead loves you like most women do; with an eye toward the pragmatic. She is attempting to manipulate you, consciously or not, to reach her own ends. A man has two noble goals in life — the pursuit of sexual pleasure, and the winning of a woman’s heart in toto. A man has not lived until a woman has loved him without proviso.

Filed under: Love, Relationships, Sluts

We’ve seen a lot of grim disclosures about the health-care reform bill, including big charges from AT&T, Caterpillar, AK Steel and others. (Footnoted Pro subscribers can download our report on the topic from early April.)

Yet, if anyone would be excited about the new law, you’d think it would be healthcare-IT firms and electronic medical-records companies. After all, scattered throughout the bill’s 900-plus pages are numerous provisions encouraging electronic health records and related technology.

And yet, judging from language in the 10-Q it filed Thursday, Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions (MDRX), the Chicago-based healthcare-IT company, isn’t so sure. True, it notes almost grudgingly that some of the law’s provisions “may have a positive impact, by expanding the use of electronic health records in certain federal programs, for example.” But others, it warns,

“may have a negative impact due to fewer available resources. Increases in fraud and abuse penalties may also adversely affect participants in the health care sector, including the Company.”

No doubt, the risks laid out in SEC filings are generally written by lawyers who try to cover every eventuality short of alien invasion. But is Allscripts really trying to tell its shareholders that it’s worried that stiffer fraud and abuse penalties may have a negative impact on the company?

Image source: mandiberg via Flickr.

In recent months, the attacks have involved booby traps set at the headquarters of the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force, officials said. In December, a gas utility line was redirected to fill the offices with gas. Officials said a spark could have triggered a devastating explosion.



In February, a modified handgun was hidden by the gate to the task force office and rigged to fire. When a gang officer opened the gate, the weapon went off, narrowly missing him.

In early March, police said, a "dangerous" device was found near the unmarked car of a task force member. That was followed by an arson attack on several city trucks on March 23.

Now authorities are investigating whether an early morning fire Monday at a Hemet police shooting range was another attack on the department.



The fire at the remote training facility off Warren Road broke out shortly after 2 a.m. Much of the building was destroyed in the blaze.



"In light [of] the incidents involving our department over the past three months, we are investigating the possibility that this is related, but we will not speculate at this point until the investigators are able to complete their work," Brown said.

— Robert J. Lopez

Photo: Investigators at the scene where several Hemet city trucks were set ablaze last month. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Japan is imploding! Run!

Just joking. For some reason, pontificators appear to have embarked on a Japan-bashing spree and it’s always fun to join in with the mob.

The thrust of recent opinion pieces on the Naked Capitalism and Money Game blogs is that Japan is facing disaster as a result of its aging population, massive government debt and persistent deflation. According to the blogs, investors should steer well clear of the world’s second-largest economy.

But let’s spend a moment thinking this through. In a perfectly rational world, what should Japan’s large number of middle-aged citizens be doing right now? Presumably saving for their old ages. Saving means cutting back on current expenditures and dragging prices downward. It also means accumulating financial assets that be cashed in during the decades to come.

All of this is exactly what is happening. And it’s entirely sensible.
 
True, most of the financial assets that ordinary Japanese are accumulating tend to be government bonds, but it’s hard to see how this practice could lead to a crisis in the nation’s finances. Since most of its massive debt is held by its own citizens, Tokyo can always impose a levy, directly through taxes or indirectly through inflation, to pay the debt it has run up.

From the perspective of an average Japanese citizen, the real test is whether Tokyo is spending its money wisely to create a more productive economy that can afford to sustain a rising percentage of elderly citizens.  On that score, Japan looks better than the prognosticators would have you believe. Its economy is ferociously competitive—in fact, it has a sizable trade surplus, unlike the United States or the United Kingdon. Japanese GDP is growing (albeit slowly) and the unemployment rate is about half the level in the United States or Europe.

The Japanese model has its weaknesses. For one thing, its internal economy is more about creating jobs than doing things efficiently. (Mind you, the inefficiency creates jobs and is one reason for the country’s low unemployment rate.) But it’s difficult to see how any of this leads to economic disaster. In fact, as more Japanese retire and the national economic emphasis shifts from creating jobs to creating profits, investors in Japanese companies could receive some very nice surprises.

Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post

(This is a guest post from The Economic Collapse.)

We have reached a very interesting turning point in American history.  More than at any other point in modern times, Americans are deeply angry about the state of the economy.  In fact, it is no stretch to say that millions of U.S. citizens are hopping mad about the economic situation.  Most of them don’t know exactly what is wrong, and even fewer of them have any idea about how to go about fixing things, but they do know one thing.  They know that they are mad.

As Americans, we were raised with the belief that our overwhelmingly powerful economic machine would always provide good jobs and prosperity for all of us as long as we worked hard.  But we have come to learn that is not true.  We have come to learn that our politicians and our leaders have squandered the great inheritance that our forefathers left for us.  We have come to learn that the financial future of our nation is beyond bleak.  We have come to learn that our government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  Now the foolish decisions of the past several decades are catching up with us.

The U.S. economy is experiencing structural failure, and the American people are angry.  They want answers.  They want someone to fix things.  They want things to go back to the way they used to be.

But that isn’t going to happen.  Once the American people truly start realizing that, the anger that will erupt will dwarf what we are seeing now (Not that they aren’t already incredibly steamed).

Here’s 12 Reasons Americans Are Furious About The State Of The Economy >

There aren’t enough jobs

There simply are not enough jobs for everyone.  The number of unemployed Americans per job opening has started to increase again, hitting 5.5 in February.  Even many of those who are able to get some work find themselves only able to obtain part-time employment.  Gallup’s underemployment measure hit 20.0% on March 15th.  This was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year.

More and more people are living on handouts

More Americans than ever find themselves having to rely on the U.S. government just to survive.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 39.4 million Americans, a new all-time record, received food stamps in January.  This was up 22% from a year earlier.  In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps has hit all-time records for 14 consecutive months.

Foreclosures are setting records across the country

Image: AP

Foreclosures continue to set records across the United States.  RealtyTrac, the California-based authority on property trends and valuations, projects that there will be 4.5 million home foreclosures before the end of this year.  If you figure 4 people per household, that is another 18 million people that will be forced out of their homes.

The homeless and unemployed are moving to “tent slums”

As unemployment and foreclosures continue to soar, “tent slums” have started popping up all over the United States.  Is this why our founding fathers fought and died?  So we could all live in “tent slums” as the big fat cats on Wall Street roll around in their bailout cash?

Food prices are going up

Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org

But even with all of these economic problems, the price of food is going up.  Rising demand and reduced supply drove supermarket prices for 16 basic foods up 6.2% in the first quarter of 2010.

Debt will cripple the government’s ability to help

Due to the exploding government debt, the American people are going to be confronted with some tough choices.  According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the United States will soon have to make difficult choices between higher taxes and reduced social spending.  Either alternative will slow down the U.S. economy.

Wall Street fat cats are getting away with the loot

AIG exec Joe Cassano

Meanwhile, corruption in the financial system is running rampant.  The CEOs of bailed-out regional banks are actually getting big raises.  The guy who helped bring down AIG is going to get off scott-free and will be able to keep the millions in profits that he made in the process.

There is evidence of rampant price manipulation

But the biggest fraud is being committed by the boys at the top of the food chain.  A whistle blower has come forward with “smoking gun” evidence of price manipulation by major financial institutions in the precious metals markets.  The scope of this fraud is in the trillions of dollars.  The American people can’t stomach much more of this type of thing.

Now interest rates are going to rise

Almost all financial experts agree that the era of super cheap money is over and that interest rates are about to rise significantly.  This is going to make it much more expensive for most Americans to borrow money to buy a home, to buy a car, to buy things with their credit cards or to borrow money for education.  Those who already have adjustable loans are going to find a much larger portion of their income going to pay interest.  Needless to say, this is going to cause the U.S. economy to experience a significant slowdown.

Disguised in health care reform is the biggest tax increase in history

One of the biggest things that the American people are upset about is the “health care reform” bill that was just rammed down their throats.  It turns out that “health care reform” is actually going to be the biggest tax increase in American history.  Not only that, but because of taxes and mandates imposed upon health insurance companies by the legislation, health insurance premiums are also about to increase substantially.  So where will the average American family get the money to pay for these increases?

Obamacare will force at least 60 hospitals to close

In addition, the new health care law that was supposed to give all of us much better health care is actually going to force the cancellation of at least 60 doctor-owned hospitals that were scheduled to be opened according to the executive director of Physician Hospitals of America.  Why?  Well, it turns out that the new law singles out physician-owned hospitals, making new physician-owned projects ineligible to receive payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Americans are angry at BOTH parties

The reality is that Americans are increasingly becoming disenchanted with the lack of leadership in both political parties.  Approval ratings for leaders in both parties are extremely low, and anger at politicians is at an all-time high.  The Tea Party movement is just one symptom of the seething anger many Americans are feeling.  While many Americans are gathering together at large protest rallies to demonstrate against the policies of the government, others are expressing their displeasure on blogs and websites.  There has never been a moment in modern times when Americans have been so disenchanted with their political leadership.

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Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/83897557@N00/12367798

15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America

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Last week, Lee Berger unveiled for the world the stunningly intact fossils (that his 9-year-old son actually made while with his dad in South Africa) from what he is calling a new hominid species, Australopithecus sediba. Yesterday, he announced another surprise: Berger says that brain scans just finished in France show that insects that might have feasted on the person after death, and even possibly a piece of the hominid’s brain, may be preserved inside the recovered skull.

Experts at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France have been analyzing the find. The ESRF uses a technique known as micro-tomography to assemble its images. This involves taking a series of a high-contrast, high-resolution X-ray radiographs of the target fossil in rotation to build up a 3D representation [BBC News]. The scientists were trying to study the teeth; the skull comes from a young boy, Berger says, and they hoped tooth analysis could help them pin down his exact age at death. But the 3-D representation revealed these other unexpected finds, including a low-density cavity in the skull that could—could—represent a brain remnant.

Soft tissue like the brain, of course, does not usually fossilize. But in this unusual case, ESRF examiner Paul Tafforeau suggests that perhaps the brain shrank after being decayed by bacteria, leaving the odd cavity that his scanners picked up. “One way to explain that cavity is that when this individual died, it was mummified, and the mummification made the brain shrink by losing water, leading to an odd shape,” Tafforeau said. “Later you had water with sediment come up, fossilizing the individual and filling the brain case, but you still had that brain remnant inside” [LiveScience]. If it’s true, the brain remnant is only one-twentieth the size of the original brain, and wouldn’t prove particularly helpful in reconstructing the structure, and unfortunately it’s unlikely DNA would be preserved.

And then there are the insects. Three fossilized insect eggs, each about a tenth of an inch (two or three millimeters) large, were seen within the skull, potentially hatching larvae that fed on the flesh of the hominid after death, researchers added. Two eggs belonged to wasps and apparently had already hatched, while the third, a fly egg, remained unopened [LiveScience]. While Tafforeau says the density would suggest fossil insects, he can’t rule out that they are modern insects that sneaked in until all the data comes in. Both he and Berger are giving few details as their work continues to go through the peer-review process.

Berger also found some fossils from a female Australopithecus sediba he’d like to study in the same way. But for now, the two are traveling separately for security reasons.

Related Content:
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Image: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Nearly a year after the last MacBook Pro update, and months after Intel launched its latest mobile CPU, Apple has added Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs to the MacBook Pro…or at least most of them. The 13″ MacBook Pro will continue to use the Core 2 brand of CPU technology first introduced in 2006. Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller carefully avoided that point in an ebullient press release.

“The new MacBook Pro is as advanced on the inside as it is stunning on the outside. With faster processors, amazing graphics and up to three more hours of battery life, the new MacBook Pro delivers both performance and efficiency.”

Those amazing graphics would be the NVIDIA GeForce 320M for the 13″ MacBook Pro and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M for the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros. Regarding battery life, Apple now claims a jaw-dropping 10 hours of battery life for the 13″ MacBook Pro, and between eight and nine hours for the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros.

Besides CPU speed increases, larger hard drives were added across the lineup, and the base configuration for RAM was increased from 2GB to 4GB. Pricing remained largely static, except for the 15″ MacBook Pro, which saw an increase from $1,699 to $1,799. While there aren’t really any big surprises, like USB3, there are a few small ones in the specs.

The 13″ MacBook Pro has two models: a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 250GB hard drive at $1,199; a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 320GB hard drive priced at $1,499.

The 15″ MacBook Pro has three models: a 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 320GB hard drive at $1,799; a 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 500GB hard drive at $1,999; and one with a 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 500GB hard drive at $2,199.

The new 17-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M and 500GB hard drive for $2,299.

Beyond the specs, the focus is on the 13″ MacBook Pro, which got an insignificant speed bump instead of the Intel Core i5. However, it could be argued that by staying with the Core 2 Duo for the 13″ MacBook Pro, Apple kept the price down and the battery life up…way up. In contrast, the 15″ MacBook Pro, which in certain circumstances could be as much as 50 percent faster than the previous model, costs $100 more and lags behind the 13″ MacBook Pro in battery life.

While it’s no surprise that the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros got advanced NVIDIA GPUs, there was reason to be concerned about the 13″ MacBook Pro. Because of the legal battle between NVIDIA and Intel over chipsets, it was a distinct possibility that the 13″ MacBook Pro would be stuck with whatever poor-performing Intel HD graphics. Instead, the 13″ MacBook Pro got the NVIDIA GeForce 320M, integrated graphics, but without the Intel suck.

Interestingly, the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro did get stuck with Intel HD graphics, but only when it doesn’t matter. When a real GPU is needed, the high-end MacBook Pros have the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, and the ability to “seamlessly” switch between integrated and discrete GPUs. Optionally the high-end MacBook Pros can be upgraded to the Core i7 for another $200, as well as higher resolution and anti-glare displays,

If there’s anything missing from these updates, besides the Core i5 in the 13″ MacBook Pro, it’s USB 3. While it might not matter now, in a year or two when many people are still using their Core i5 MacBook Pros it definitely will. A USB 3 update, along with Core i5 for the 13″ MacBook Pro will likely be seen in the fall, so perspective buyers might want to consider how long they intend on owning their next MacBook Pro before buying today.

As the Senate moves this week to pass a very short-term extension of unemployment benefits, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert notes what few voices on Capitol Hill are willing to: That the string of temporary fixes to the nation’s safety net programs are doing nothing to address the highest long-term unemployment rate since the Second World War.

Blue-collar workers are suffering through a crisis characterized as a “depression” by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. Blue-collar job losses during the so-called Great Recession surpassed 5.5 million, and many of those jobs will never be seen again. This disastrous situation will not be corrected, as analysts at the center have noted, “by a modest recovery of the U.S. economy over the next few years.”

On top of that, the politics of an election year have prevented lawmakers from even proposing another stimulus plan large enough to tackle the problem.

More than eight million jobs vanished during the recession, a period during which three million new jobs would have been needed to keep up with the growth of the population. …

Right now there is no plan that can even remotely be expected to result in job creation strong enough to rescue the hard-core groups being left behind. These include: long-term unemployed workers who are older; blue-collar workers of all ages; and younger people in the big cities, in the rust belt and in rural areas who are jobless and not well educated.

The media’s infatuation with the trivial, Herbert adds, hasn’t helped.

We need to pay less attention to the Tea Party yahoos and more attention to the very real suffering of individuals and families trapped in an employment crisis that is unprecedented in the post-Depression era.

If only.

The Dow is down 50!?

But this is supposed to be a melt-up.

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Tea partiers are gearing up for Tax Day protests this Thursday, which marks just over a year since the new conservative movement exploded on the scene.

For tea party leaders, one goal this week is to distance themselves from unpleasant scandals involving tea-linked candidates and reassure the public they’re not a fringe cause, but just engaged citizens like you and me.

The idea that the tea party is “going mainstream” has been the headline message (at least for Fox News) coming out of two recent polls of the tea party movement, one by Rasmussen and the other by Gallup. But based on these and other polls, what do we really know about the tea partiers who will be congregating this week?

First, it’s clear the tea party movement has grown. The Rasmussen survey found 24 percent in the U.S. as identifying with the tea party cause, up from 16 percent a month ago. This jibes with the Gallup poll, which finds 28 percent calling themselves a “supporter” of tea partyism.

Now, it’s clear that any movement which can garner support from one out of four Americans can’t be simply written off as “fringe.” And it’s also true that, despite being a bit older, more male, wealthier and whiter than the rest of the country, the demographic differences aren’t as big as you might think.

But drilling deeper into the data, the limitations of the tea party’s appeal become a bit clearer, which suggests they may be hitting the ceiling of their political influence.

THE COLOR OF TEA

The most obvious limitation is race. Gallup finds that 79 percent of tea party supporters are white, compared to 75 percent of U.S. adult population and 62 percent of the country overall. (Interestingly, six percent of “non-Hispanic blacks” and 11 percent who identify as “other” also put themselves in the tea party camp.)

But it’s not just the racial makeup of the movement, it’s also their racial attitudes. While racist antics among tea party protesters have made this an article of faith for many on the left already, the racial character of the tea party got some scholarly backing from a multi-state survey released this week by Christopher Parker at the University of Washington.

In Parker’s survey of 1,015 residents in seven states, he found that “those who are racially resentful, who believe the U.S. government has
done too much to support blacks, are 36 percent more likely to support
the tea party than those who are not.”

Tom Schaller at 538.com put these findings into helpful graphs, which show how the racial views of white tea party sympathizers vary from those who oppose the tea party:

The views of white tea partiers is also deeply at odds with white opponents of the movement on the subject of immigration: