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Laboratory automation in the fast lane: With Metrohm’s new 889 IC Sample Center, less than 10 seconds elapse between start of determination and sample injection. This new and robust x-y-z autosampler has been designed for small sample volumes (1 µL… 10 mL) in particular. Moreover, it is available with a cooling function making it ideal for critical samples from the biochemical and clinical field that need to be kept stable over extended periods of time.

The 889 IC Sample Center is highly versatile. Various injection methods can be selected: full-loop, partial-loop and pick-up. For all three modes, users can select injection with Pressure-Assisted Sample Aspiration (PASA™), a great advantage especially when viscous samples need to be analyzed.

Standard accessories of the 889 IC Sample Center include two 48-position-sample-racks for 300 and 700 µL vessels. Injection volumes from 1 to 100 µL (with 1 µL increments) can be selected. Other sample racks that are common in liquid chromatography or SBS standard microtiter plates can also be used on the 889 IC Sample Center. The system supports sample racks with 12 to 384 positions.

The 889 IC Sample Center is also available with a cooling function. In this version a Peltier element ensures that samples are cooled to a stable minimum of 4 °C. Because of the sophisticated cooling system no temperature gradient can develop; a constant temperature is guaranteed.

What’s Your Application?

Here at FUTEK, we’re big fans of visuals and charts as seen in the concept diagrams in our application page. Most of the images were provided by loyal customers wanting to give us a better understanding of how they use our sensors while other applications came from: reconnaissance missions, area 51 and figments of our imagination. We love learning more about your application and came up with some nifty prizes to help you spill the beans (share your application with us). Rules & Entry From March 31 to May 31 send us a picture or diagram with an explanation on how you use a Load Cell or Torque Sensor for a chance to win:

A complete USB Sensor System including a Mini HP Laptop.
1st Prize: Our LSB200 S Beam Jr. Load Cell (1 lb capacity), USB Output Kit, Extended USB Software along with an HP Mini Laptop.
2nd Prize: A LSB200 S Beam Jr Load Cell (1 lb capacity) with USB Output and Extended USB Software.
Digital Multi Meters for all entries (applies only to US Residents).

Visit our Application Contest page on our website for complete rules and complete details!

The BCP 1K-27CB Series rugged industrial quality battery charger specifically designed to assist vehicle warm-up during extremely cold weather. Typically permanently installed on a vehicle, this charger is activated on days when the ambient temperature drops below 0ºC. It is suitable for operation on Buses, Trucks and other Vehicles.

This charger accepts 115Vac nominal input (100V – 132Vac range) and delivers 27.5Vdc at 36A for float charging the 24Vdc battery – custom input and output options are available on request. In addition to maintaining the battery condition, it provides sufficient power to keep essential on-board equipment and heater fans operational during the vehicle warm-up period.

The BCP 1K-27CB operates at full specification over a -40°C to +50°C cold plate temperature range Cooling is by conduction via baseplate to chassis wall and by additional convection. This charger is fully ruggedized and conformal coated and meets SAE International J1455 and IEC61373 Cat 1 A&B shock and vibration standards as a minimum. The enclosure measures (5.5” x 6.5” x 14”) and weighs approximately 10 pounds.

This battery charger is based on field proven technology with a track record in transportation environments including railway, trucking and aviation. The absence of fans, large design headroom, and the use of components with established reliability result in a high MTBF. Protection includes inrush current limiting, over-voltage protection, short circuit protection, and self-resetting thermostat for thermal protection.

I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial. We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial.

It’s a conundrum.

I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination.

I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd.

My brother Kevin is conservative and devout – his hobby is collecting crèches – and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things.

This is what he wrote:

“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’ “

My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.

The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.

When I was in the seventh grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of “pink belly” on the way back; we pulled up a boy’s shirt and slapped his belly until it was pink. When the new priest joined in, it seemed like more groping than slapping. But we thought it was inadvertent. And my parents never would have believed a priest did anything inappropriate anyway. A boy in my class told me much later that the same priest climbed into bed with him in 1958 at a rectory sleepover, but my friend threw him to the floor. The priest protested that he was sleepwalking. Three days later, the archbishop sent the priest to a rehab place in New Mexico; he ended up as a Notre Dame professor.

Vatican II made me wince. The church declared casual Friday. All the once-rigid rules left to the whim of the flock. The Mass was said in English (rendering useless my carefully learned Latin prayers). Holy days of obligation were optional. There were laypeople on the heretofore sacred ground of the altar – performing the sacraments and worse, handling the Host. The powerful symbolism of the priest turning the Host into the body of Christ cracked like an egg.

In his book, “Goodbye! Good Men,” author Michael Rose writes that the liberalized rules set up a takeover of seminaries by homosexuals.

Vatican II liberalized rules but left the most outdated one: celibacy. That vow was put in place originally because the church did not want heirs making claims on money and land. But it ended up shrinking the priest pool and producing the wrong kind of candidates – drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way.

The church is dying from a thousand cuts. Its cover-up has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas. The money spent came from social programs, Catholic schools and the poor. This should be a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. I asked a friend of mine recently what he would do if his child was molested after the church knew.

“I would probably kill someone,” he replied.

We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain. It is time to go back to the disciplines that the church was founded on and remind our seminaries and universities what they are. (Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols onstage to get President Barack Obama to speak was not exactly fierce.)

The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?

By any human standard, Pope Benedict XVI and the American Catholic Church are getting a bad rap in the current outbreak of outrage over clerical sexual abuse.

Far from being indifferent or complicit, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was among the first in Rome to take the scandal seriously.

During much of his service as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the future pope had no responsibility for investigating most cases of sexual abuse. Local bishops were in charge – and some failed spectacularly in their moral duties. It was not until 2001 that Pope John Paul II charged Ratzinger with reviewing every credible case of sexual abuse. While poring through these documents, Ratzinger’s eyes were opened. The church became more active in removing abusive priests – whom Ratzinger described rightly as “filth” – both through canonical trials and administrative action.

“Benedict,” says the Rev. Thomas Reese of Georgetown University, “grew in his understanding of the crisis. Like many other bishops at the beginning, he didn’t understand it. … But he grew in his understanding because he listened to what the U.S. bishops had to say. He in fact got it quicker than other people in the Vatican.”

And the American Catholic Church – once in destructive denial – has confronted the problem directly. It is difficult to contend that justice was done in the cases of some prominent offenders and the bishops who protected and reassigned them. But it is also difficult to deny that the church has made progress with a zero-tolerance policy.

The vast majority of abuse cases took place decades ago. In 2009, six credible allegations of abuse concerning people who are currently minors were reported to the U.S. bishops – in a church with 65 million members.

Some will allow none of these facts to get in the way of a good clerical scandal. Editorial cartoons engage in gleeful anti-clericalism. The implicit charge is that the Catholic Church is somehow discredited by the existence of human depravity – a doctrine it has taught for more than two millennia.

Most of the current accusations, as I said, are not fair by human standards. But the Christian church, in its varied expressions, is not merely accountable to human standards because it is supposed to be more than a human institution. Apart from the mental, emotional and spiritual harm done to children, this has been the most disturbing aspect of the initial Catholic reaction to the abuse scandal over the last few decades: the reduction of the church to one more self-interested organization. In case after case, church leaders have attempted (and failed) to protect the church from scandal – like a White House trying to contain a bad news story, or an oil company avoiding responsibility for a spill.

From one perspective, this is understandable. A church exists in a real world of donor relations and legal exposure. But the normal process of crisis management can involve a theological error – often repeated in the history of the religion.

It is the consistent temptation of faith leaders – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Hindu – to practice the religion of the tribe.

The goal is to seek the public recognition of their own theological convictions and the health of their own religious institutions. For many centuries of Western history, the Christian church vied and jostled for influence along with other interests, pursuing a tribal agenda at the expense of Jews, heretics, “infidels” and ambitious princes. The mind-set can still be detected, in milder forms, whenever Christian leaders talk of “taking back America for Christ” or pay hush money to avoid scandal for the church. The tribe must be defended.

But the religion of the tribe is inherently exclusive, sorting “us” from “them.” So it undermines a foundational teaching of Christianity – a radical human equality in need and in grace.

The story of modern Christian history has been the partial, hopeful movement away from the religion of the tribe and toward a religion of humanity – a theology that defends a universal ideal of human rights and dignity, whose triumph benefits everyone. And the Catholic Church has led this transition. Once a reactionary opponent of individualism and modernity, it is now one of the leading global advocates for universal human rights and dignity.

The Catholic Church’s initial reaction to the abuse scandal was often indefensible. Now, through its honesty and transparency, it can demonstrate a commitment to universal dignity – which includes every victim of abuse.

Judging by its editorials, The Bee seems to think that Curtis Park Village is primarily a test of the city’s ability to do an infill project.

It’s not that simple.

The Curtis Park railyard is a state Superfund site. Its soil is laced with lead, arsenic and other cancer-causing pollutants. The central issue that’s haunted this piece of property for 23 years is that every time someone sticks a shovel into the ground, more hazardous waste turns up. That’s because this property was more than a “railyard.” For decades, it was a large, very dirty, locomotive repair shop and unlicensed, unlined industrial landfill.

So what should be done with the mountain of hazardous waste that has been dug up and left piled up in recent years?

The developer Paul Petrovich and Union Pacific want to renege on the railroad’s 1995 cleanup agreement to ship the hazardous waste to a licensed landfill in Utah owned by the railroad. They prefer to bury the waste on site beneath a planned 7 acre “park.” Petrovich told the City Council the other night that he would “try” to bury it under other on-site locations, but he makes no enforceable promise. In fact, he issued a not-so-thinly-veiled threat: Prohibit use of the park as a disposal site, he told the council, and I will walk away from this project.

Many Curtis Park residents and city officials fear Petrovich will do exactly that and leave the hazardous waste stacked high on the site. But it’s an empty threat. First, it’s illegal. The soil he has dug up is a public nuisance, and he and the railroad can be prosecuted for leaving it in its current condition.

Even more significant, more than 10 years ago, Mayor Joe Serna and the City Council sponsored Senate Bill 120 (Deborah Ortiz-Darrell Steinberg) that gives the city the authority to use its zoning powers to force the promised cleanup. This law requires the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to order a cleanup based on the city’s land-use plan for the site. Councilwoman Lauren Hammond erroneously stated: “DTSC, not the City Council, determines the final cleanup.” That’s flat wrong.

The city attorney read from SB 120: DTSC can’t give final approval on cleanup until “all response actions necessary to conform to the approved land-use plan are complete.”

When Gov. Gray Davis signed the measure into law, he stated: “SB 120 provides additional assurance that Union Pacific will clean up the Union Pacific Railroad site to allow land uses consistent with a final land use plan.”

Ignoring the authority granted under SB 120, the council voted 9-0 to approve an inadequate environmental impact report and kicked the cleanup decision back to DTSC. Instead of exercising its SB 120 authority and rezoning the 7-acre “park” to prohibit the “toxic park,” the council passed a “compromise” resolution asking DTSC to tell them where the disposal site should be placed.

The developer persuaded the council to ask DTSC what it should do about allowing a hazardous waste facility to be placed beneath a city park. The developer hopes DTSC will bless this mess so a judge might be persuaded to certify the massive development on top of a Superfund site without adequate cleanup legal. It isn’t.

It’s time for the city to get tough with Petrovich and Union Pacific Railroad. The city should:

• Rezone the 7-acre “park” to prohibit its use as a hazardous waste disposal facility.

• Require Petrovich to make public the contract between him and Union Pacific Railroad that he claims ties his hands and makes off-site disposal impossible.

• Request a state audit of Union Pacific’s compliance with its DTSC cleanup plan and SB 120.

The protection contained in the Ortiz-Steinberg law terminates at the point the city approves the final land-use plan. That’s why flatly prohibiting the toxic park must be made a part of any rezoning of the property. After the compliance audit is complete, then and only then, should the city consider other disposal alternatives.

As for the threat to “walk away,” it’s important to realize that the railroad is under a legally enforceable DTSC cleanup order. SB 120 specifically forbids DTSC from releasing Union Pacific from any liability for cleanup until the city approves the final land-use plan. If either the railroad or Petrovich attempts to walk away from the mess they’ve created at the Curtis Park railyard, the city attorney can and should prosecute.

Why is it so hard?

With the city of Davis facing a $1.2 million deficit, why can’t Davis City Council member Don Saylor step down early for the good of the city, specifically to save money and to give voters a chance to elect their city leaders?

Saylor is running unopposed for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors. When he assumes that seat in January, his seat on the Davis City council will be open. Yolo County’s election officials say it will cost the city as much as $300,000 to hold a stand-alone special election to replace him.

That’s money Davis can’t afford to waste.

There’s a much cheaper alternative. If Saylor resigns in July, as the Davis Enterprise has urged him to do, his fellow council members can appoint a replacement to serve in his seat until the November general election, when his successor would be elected. The Enterprise and others have suggested that Davis council members appoint Saylor himself to the seat, a good idea, one that would clearly comport with the wishes of Davis voters who have twice elected Saylor to the council.

Rather than pursue that sensible and cost-effective option, Saylor says he’s determined to remain in his council seat until he is sworn in as a Yolo supervisor in January. He points to important unfinished business – the city’s financial struggles, its wastewater treatment program and an effort to improve civility among council members – that he wants to be a part of.

If Saylor stands by his pledge to hold unto his City Council seat until January, the council does not have to call a stand-alone special election. It could appoint a replacement to serve out the balance of Saylor’s term, until 2012. But that denies voters a chance to choose their city leaders.

Two goals ought to guide Davis officials as they consider this issue – saving money in these tough economic times and giving voters an opportunity to elect their leaders. By resigning in July and having fellow council members appoint his replacement – preferably Saylor himself – Saylor and the Davis City Council could achieve both goals.

UC President Mark Yudof wasn’t aware of the ad, his office said.

Over the last year, UC President Mark Yudof and other higher education leaders have been crisscrossing the state, making the case for Californians to reinvest in their public universities and community colleges.

Speaking to the UCLA Daily Bruin in October, Yudof noted that extra tax revenue may be needed. “I wish they’d pay a little bit more in taxes and support us, but we’ve been unwilling to do that,” he said.

Why are taxpayers reluctant? One reason is the rhetoric and aggressive campaign tactics of anti-tax groups, who relentlessly claim that new taxes and fees – whether on oil extraction, alcohol sales or other vices – are disastrous to the state economy.

One of these groups is the California Chamber of Commerce, which, as it turns out, has a large board of directors that includes Yudof, CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed and Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott.

This week, the Cal Chamber fired off its latest cannonball of dishonesty, by claiming that the state’s current economic troubles have something to do with Jerry Brown’s past support for tax increases.

“California’s lost 1 million jobs,” says a female narrator in an attack ad financed by the Cal Chamber. “We’re $200 billion in debt. And Jerry Brown has a 35-year record of higher spending and taxes.”

We have no problems with the chamber taking shots at Jerry Brown. He has an extensive track record, and all of it is fair game for groups that want California to be more business friendly.

Yet on the issue of taxes, the chamber’s television ad is both misleading and hypocritical. While Brown supported tax increases as governor, so did Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson (another chamber board member) during their terms in office.

The ad also hits Brown for initially opposing Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limited property taxes. Apparently the chamber has forgotten its own opposition to Proposition 13, with its president at the time calling the initiative “a can of worms, horribly flawed, poorly written and researched.”

Soon after the chamber launched this week’s hit on Brown, we contacted Yudof to see if he had reviewed the advertisement beforehand or supported its message.

“President Yudof was not aware of this ad and did not participate in its approval,” Yudof’s office said in a statement. “As a leader of a public university, he is nonpartisan. He is looking into the circumstances surrounding the advertisement.”

We hope he does.

But he shouldn’t stop there. Yudof, Reed and Scott need to send a clear message to the chamber’s executive team that its attack ads are unacceptable. They stamp out debate on how California can rebuild itself, and undermine the credibility of higher education leaders who are trying to spark this debate.

A couple of weeks back, IO Interactive regaled us with the announcement of release date for the Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and with a trailer to boot. Today, you’re gonna see that “Welcome to Shanghai”

Following a series of runway tests late last year the Solar Impulse HB-SIA has taken to the air for the first time in the skies over Payerne, Switzerland. Piloted by Markus Scherdel, the completely solar powered craft reached an altitude of 1,200 meters and executed various maneuvers designed to test control systems and verify behavior against flight simulator calculations. The aircraft was in the air for 87-minutes before landing safely to the cheers of the Solar Impulse team. ..

Tags: Aviation,
Solar Impulse,
Solar Powered

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Last month the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab ran an event at the Stanford Business School, called The Internet of Things: Sensors Everywhere. The video of the event was recently put up on YouTube. We’ve embedded the entire hour-long video below, along with a 2-minute video snippet which we think budding entrepreneurs should take note of.

If you have time, the entire event is worth viewing. It delves into current successful use cases for Internet of Things. Panelists include representatives from HP’s sensor networks division, a medical software company, and a company which provides sensor-enabled products for vending machines.

Sponsor

The first speaker was Michael Chui, a Senior Fellow at McKinsey Global Institute. He explained that the Internet of Things is about incorporating sensors and actuators into physical objects, which "make the physical world part of an information system."

Chui noted that the Internet of Things is ramping up for 3 main reasons: 1) sensors are getting better, faster, smaller, cheaper, more plentiful; 2) networks are everywhere (pervasive, if not quite ubiquitous yet); 3) our new ability to analyze data that these network sensors generate and being able to control the actuators. Chui then went over the report that McKinsey released last month (our summary and analysis).

We’ve excerpted a couple of minutes from the end of Chui’s presentation, when he talked about potential applications for Internet of Things. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, this is well worth watching.

The rest of the event focused on commercial solutions using Internet of Things. An example is vending machine software company Cantaloupe Systems. Co-founder Anant Agrawal said that for his company, "the Internet of Things eliminates the guesswork." Cataloupe Systems provides sensor-enabled software for vending machines, which gives vending machine companies hard data with which to run their businesses more efficiently.

Here’s the full video of the forum:

Hat-tip Ethan Bauley from HP Communications, who pointed to the video in a RWW comment.

Discuss

Eco Factor: Outdoor gallery space harvests solar energy for sustainable power.

The Solar Blossom by DeMarco Architecture is a proposal for a sustainable temporary outdoor gallery space. Inspired by the Bluebonnet flower, the Solar Blossom harnesses the power of the sun to provide energy and also educate patrons on the potential of solar power.

(more…)

“The last time that [America] had no government debt, you had a Scottish president. His name was Andrew Jackson. Not only did he pay off the national debt, he also abolished the central bank and tried to close down all the commercial banks.”

– CLSA Strategist (and Scotsman) Russell Napier, March 24 CFA Society speech

I had the good fortune to attend a speech by Russell Napier last week. Napier is a stock market historian. But he’s not just an ivory-tower academic; he operates on the front lines of the investment management business as an analyst for the brokerage firm CLSA. Napier’s been in the trenches of the global financial markets for several decades.

Napier’s speech, which echoed themes from his excellent book, Anatomy of the Bear, stressed the need for investors to understand the long- term trends in stock valuations.

Secular, or long-term, bull markets are best defined as a period of rising valuations, he explained, while bear markets are the opposite. Near bull market peaks, investors become so optimistic that they pay silly earnings multiples for stocks. A simple way to view a P/E multiple is the “payback period” for the return of the capital you part with in order to buy a stock. The higher the starting PE ratio, the longer the payback period.

Napier’s discussion of cycles in stock market valuation is based on the work of Yale Professor Robert Shiller, and his now-famous “Shiller P/E ratio.” The Shiller P/E ratio is calculated as follows: divide the S&P 500 by the average inflation-adjusted earnings from the previous 10 years. Here is a chart of the Shiller P/E going all the way back to 1880:

It’s the best P/E ratio to use over long stretches of history, because it smoothes out the extreme peaks and valleys in earnings, giving a better framework for thinking about future S&P earnings power. The mean and median Shiller P/E since 1880 are both about 16. Today, it’s about 22. At the last four major bear market bottoms, in 1921, 1932, 1949, and 1982, the Shiller P/E fell below 10. This is a far cry from bouncing sharply off of 15 – which is what happened at the March 2009 bottom.

Valuation is the main reason why I expect the bear market to last several more years into the future – probably somewhere in the 2015- 2020 timeframe. I think we’ll get there through some combination of falling stock prices and modest earnings growth.

Rapid earnings growth – along with rising valuations – drove the great 1982-2000 bull market. The sprint up to the 2000 peak was, in hindsight, the biggest stock market bubble in history. History shows that bubbles are nearly always corrected over very long periods. The next decade will surely be especially turbulent, because that’s when markets and politics will sort out what the inevitable train wreck in the US entitlement programs will look like.

How much will entitlement promises be financed by currency debasement? How much are Baby Boomers willing to sacrifice in terms of medical rationing? Or higher retirement ages for Social Security? These are the big questions of our time. The one thing that’s certain is that it won’t be painless. Most entitlement recipients expect a standard of living that the welfare state can simply not afford.

In his speech, Napier’s dry humor nailed the situation: “For 120 years, the US borrowed money to kill people [in wars]. Now, it’s borrowing money to keep them alive.”

As it turns out, demographic trends are a crucial driver of both politics and markets. Napier cited a study that Professor Shiller and a few of his graduate students conducted to discover a data series that fits closely with the Shiller P/E ratio. The study revealed that demographics heavily determine stock market valuations. It compared the number of 40-year-olds with the number of 20-year-olds through time. If the number of 40-year-olds grows faster than the number of 20-year- olds, valuations rise. If the number of 20-year-old grows faster than the number of 40-year-olds, valuations fall.

In statistics jargon, the “r-squared” of this variable, in explaining valuations, was 0.79. That’s very high, meaning the demographic trends are important in determining long-term stock market returns. Over the next several years, the number of 40-year-olds will decline, due to the lower birth rates between the Baby Boomers and the Boomers’ kids. So the Shiller P/E ratio is very likely to fall.

Napier’s talk concluded with his outlook for stock valuations. He said, “I fully expect to be here in five or six years telling you to buy US stocks at 6 times earnings – at a time when the geopolitical decline of America is on the front page of every newspaper; at a time when you have capital controls; at a time when the government is manipulating the debt market.”

Dan Amoss
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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Is the iPad really just a glorified iPod Touch? Adriana pits 3 iPhone apps against their iPad counterparts, to find out. 

Eco Factor: Zero-emission aircraft designed to run on an electric engine.

The Puffin is what you might be having in your garage a couple of decades from now. Designed by NASA aerospace engineer, the Puffin is an airplane concept that utilizes an electric engine for a zero-emission and a silent flight. The 3.7m long aircraft with a 4.4m wingspan can take off and land from a vertical position.

(more…)

In what is clearly an attempt to make it easier for us to think of stuff to write about for the Worst Company In America contest, the two remaining airlines, United and US Airways, have begun merger talks.

There is some speculation that United is just toying with US Airways in an attempt to make its real love, Continental, jealous.

“United has been standing at the altar waiting for the bride to show up and just got tired of waiting,” Mo Garfinkle, a longtime airline industry consultant, told the New York Times. “Maybe by flirting with another girl, it can get Continental’s attention again.”

A merger between US Airways and United Airlines, besides sucking for the obvious reasons, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, says the NYT. The combined airlines would have too many hubs, and are not a natural fit.

Analysts would be much happier with a merger between United and Continental. We plan to ask a Continental customer for their thoughts as soon as we can find one who isn’t screaming.

The NYT says:

United and US Airways have come close to merging several times over the last decade. In 2000, they announced a $4.3 billion deal, only to withdraw after antitrust concerns from the Justice Department and fierce opposition from their unions. They tried again in 2008 but ended talks after several months of negotiations, that time in the face of opposition from United’s board as well as the pilots’ union.

We thought about contacting US Airways for comment, but there is probably a fee for that, and we’re cheap and brought our own comment from home to eat later.

United Is in Talks About a Merger With US Airways [NYT]

Joe Mullin has an excellent and detailed blog post about how Scott Harris — no stranger to patent-related controversy — got some bad news in his patent lawsuit against FedEx over its barcode scanning system, as the court’s claim construction greatly limited the patent. The patent is no longer technically held by Harris, but he may still have some economic interest in it. However, the shell company that holds the patent, BarTex, is still pushing forward and appealing the claim construction, and saying that every FedEx package that ships violates its patent on a two-part barcode. The big problem? It appears that similar technology had been in use long before Harris ever filed his patent — including by FedEx. In fact, there’s prior art in a national standard setting group.

Where the post gets interesting is that Mullin went on to explore just how Harris was able to get such a patent with so much prior art. The story highlights how so many terrible patents get granted:

Unfortunately for Harris, the two-part bar code had already been
invented, according to the Patent and Trademark Office examiner who
rejected all of the lawyer-inventor’s claims. The inspector based his
decision mainly on the existence of an earlier patent, No. 5,920,062.
That patent–filed in 1997 and describing a bar code with multiple
“modules”–belongs to Uniform Code Council, Inc. (also known as the
folks who actually invented standardized bar codes; in case you’re curious, such codes have been in use since since 1974.) See Harris’ rejected original application [PDF].

Harris’ bar-code inventing process didn’t stop there. Like all patent
applicants, he was allowed an unlimited number of chances to get it
right. He modified his idea so that the bar code’s second part would
include its own unique information, but would also contain data
embedded in the first part of the code. It was an idea, Harris
explained in a four-page letter to the patent examiner dated April 15,
2003, that nobody had ever thought of  before: “Why would two bar codes
be provided that included the same information? This is quite simply
not obvious based on the prior art. In fact, it is the present
inventors [sic] recognition that using two bar codes with overlapping
information may produce a significant advantage…” See Harris’ amended
application [PDF].

Though the examiner found many examples of multiple-part bar codes, he
didn’t find any examples of ones that had multiple portions with
redundant information similar to what Harris described. As a result,
Harris was notified in July 2003 that his patent would be issued.

In a nutshell, Harris tried to get a patent on a certain type of bar
code, and was turned down. Then he added what was essentially redundant
information to his original invention, and, voila, the nation was
blessed with a new invention.

Mullin goes on to explain how this sorta thing happens all the time, and the inevitable dangerous impact on companies that actually do innovate and do produce products. The “cost” to “invent” is incredibly low — but the cost to “uninvent” is quite high:

The prosecution history of ‘377 patent is an object lesson in why defendants in infringement suits often express frustration over having to fend off patents that they consider vague, unreasonably broad, or just plain senseless given the state of the art in their industries. But the rules of acquiring patents strongly favor a determined and clever prosecutor.

Consider the examiner’s position: He or she is faced with limited time and resources–and an applicant free to ask for as many “do-overs” as he can afford. The examiner can’t say “no” without a reason to do so, and if that reason is prior art, it has to be more or less spot-on. It’s also worth noting that examiners work in a system that rewards the granting of patents, but not endless arguments with an applicant.

Because Harris prosecuted the patent himself, it has only cost him about $2,000, according to PTO documents–$861 when he filed the application, $690 upon issuance, and a $450 maintenance fee paid in 2007. Contrast that with the hundreds of thousands of dollars–at going rates for IP litigation FedEx’s costs–that FedEx has probably spent in legal fees to “uninvent” the ‘377 patent. Had the company not won at the Markman stage, and been forced to go to trial, its costs could have soared into the millions, even to secure a clean victory.

It’s a story we’ve heard many times before, but the point is made pretty clearly here. As per usual, we will ask our regular patent system defenders to explain how the system “worked” in this case, and how a random lawyer with no intention of ever producing any product helped “promote the progress” by getting a patent on something that was already in widespread use, and then suing a large company for doing what it had already been doing all along?

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“Bill, you should come down here…this Saturday, they’re auctioning off Tulip Hill. It’s probably the nicest house in the county. And it’s gorgeous… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a pretty place…”

Our cousin was calling to tell us about a house owned by another remote cousin. It’s a beautiful place. Built in the early 18th century by a rich planter…it is an authentic Georgian brick colonial, with a park that reaches down to the river. They didn’t build many houses of that quality in America. Of those, few have survived. This is one of them.

One friend bought the place for $1.2 million (if we recall correctly) back in the mid-’90s. Then, another friend bought it for over $4 million in the bubble years. When he went to sell it, however, he found that he couldn’t get anywhere near his money back. So, it’s up for auction, with a $1.6 million minimum.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Elizabeth. “We’ve got more than enough problems already.”

So, we called our cousin back…

“I’m not even going to look at it. Because if I look at it, I might start thinking about ways to get it. The next thing you know, I’d have another roof to fix and another pile of bills to pay. A man has to know his limitations…”

And finally, this from Bloomberg:

Los Angeles will run out of cash on May 5, city Controller Wendy Greuel said today in a release in which she requested a $90 million transfer of reserve funds to pay bills.

The controller said she received a letter from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power today indicating the utility wouldn’t send an anticipated $73 million payment to the city’s general fund. That money is part of an annual contribution of 8 percent of power revenue that the utility makes in lieu of paying taxes to the city, according to Ben Golombek, a spokesman for the controller.

“The question I have been asked most often during the budget crisis is, ‘When will the city run out of money?’ Greuel said in the e-mailed release. “Unfortunately, we finally have the answer.”

Regards,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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Scripture: 1 Peter 3:7 – 12

A well-known television actress and her husband are back together again, after a world-wide blaze of publicity. Now they are reconciled, at least for the moment. We wish them well.

“I have been a classic and abused wife,” she said. “Throughout our marriage he has hit me, struck me, thrown objects at me, punched me, abused me, pushed me against walls while he screams and shouts at me drowning out pleas for him to stop.” She threatened divorce, came back together again, was abused, sought divorce, and is now back with him again.

She is tired of being abused, but afraid of being apart. Her abuse has been real. She told the world press that in five stormy years, she has been battered, pulled around the house by the hair, bashed and bruised, stomped upon, and degraded. No person should take that violence.

I remember when Pauline Grace Hughes, age 48 at the time, claimed her husband bashed her, bit her, and chose to watch a State of Origin football match on television instead of going with her to a marriage counsellor, was acquitted of his murder. She had pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the murder of her husband on the basis of self-defence.

She told police that during an argument while drinking he had pushed her to the ground, bit her on the arm and said, “I’m going to bash you stupid” before she stabbed him. As she crouched on the floor, she had thought: “You’re not going to beat me senseless again.” “He has hurt me badly in the past. I’ve had broken ribs, I’ve had heaps of black eyes and hair pulled out and … when he said that, I thought, I don’t want to go to work with make-up on black eyes trying to make up excuses.”

She told the jury that at different times her husband pushed her into a plate-glass door, urinated over her, poured coffee over her head and tipped a pot plant on her. “He put a garden slug on a spoon and forced it into my mouth and made my dentures cut my mouth.” (SMH, Friday April 15, 1994.)

I have no time for such a brutal man, and her acquittal was justified. She was the first of several Australian women since who have been acquitted of the murder of her husband after domestic violence.

1. What do we mean by violence in the home?

I do not like the term “domestic” violence. The use of the word “domestic” somehow makes the action seem more respectable, and traditional men like police, doctors and clergymen have been reluctant to invade the privacy of the home and the intimacy of another man’s relationship. But in fact, what we have is simply violence in the home and that must be confronted.

Two women are killed every week following a domestic argument that ends violently. And what is generally not recognised is that violence in the home has a devastating effect upon the children involved. Remember that 43% of homicide victims were killed by someone in their own family, and 20% were killed by friends. One in four of all homicides are spousal homicides; and one in ten is a child under ten years.

In the study entitled Homicide between Intimate Partners in Australia, 1998, Carach and James from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) found that domestic violence plays a significant role in the lead up to lethal violence, accounting for 27 per cent of all homicides in Australia between 1989 and 1996.

Another study by the AIC in 2002, Homicides Resulting from Domestic Altercations, found that the majority of female homicide victims were killed during domestic altercations.

In a follow-up Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) study, Family Homicide in Australia, investigators Jenny Mouzos and Catherine Rushforth found that on average there were 129 family homicides each year, 77 related to domestic disputes. Killings between partners or spouses accounted for 60% of all family homicides in Australia, with women accounting for 75 % of the victims. A full quarter of these intimate homicides occurred after the partners had separated or divorced.

Family violence occurs in a context of unequal power relationships within the family, ideas about male authority over the family, women’s unequal access to economic security, and the treatment of family violence as a private concern rather than a public issue. Violence is all but invisible to the outside world yet it touches one in five marriages in Australia and that includes many inside the Church as well.

Violence falls broadly into four categories of abuse:

Physical abuse includes pushing, kicking, punching, use of a weapon to inflict injury, strangulation, cigarette burns and so on. All acts and threats to assault are criminal offences.

Psychological/emotional/verbal abuse is the use of words, language and other strategies to issue orders, threaten, insult, abuse, denigrate and degrade the female partner to destroy self-esteem.

Financial abuse means controlling and withholding access to the family’s resources, including money, the car, purchase and ownership of goods and property, or not allowing them to seek employment outside the home.

Social abuse refers to the social isolation inflicted upon a female partner through conduct that causes contact with family and friends to be curtailed or to cease, including forbidding participation in church-related social activities.

Domestic violence occurs in all geographic areas of Australia and in all socio-economic and cultural groups, although domestic violence is a more significant problem for certain groups, such as regional and rural Australia and Indigenous communities. All these behaviours are used to obtain power and control, and usually escalate in intensity and frequency over time.

2. What are the facts about home violence?

It was only in 1974 that ‘Elsie Women’s Refuge’, the first women’s refuge in Australia, was opened to care for women who had been bashed and their children. But by 1981, there were 33 refuges giving shelter to 11,000 women and children during the year – with 3,000 more of them turned away because of the lack of accommodation. During this time, I used the resources of Wesley Mission to open such refuges. Yet, each year, over 20,000 women were still turned away and sent back to their violent homes because all of our refuges were fully occupied.

The New South Wales 1981 Task Force on Domestic Violence investigated the range of services available to assist women suffering domestic violence and this is what they found:

· 27% of women said they went initially to the police, but fewer than one-third found the police to be helpful.
· 22% went initially to a doctor for help, but fewer than one-third found the doctor helpful.
· 5.5% of women went first to a women’s refuge for help. Three quarters of the women found this helpful.
· 5.5% went first to a clergyman for help, but only one quarter found this contact helpful.

Domestic violence is the single biggest cause of homelessness for Australian women.

As it is believed most incidences of domestic violence go unreported, it is difficult to measure the true extent of the problem. According to a study conducted in 1998 by Carlos Carcach from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), Reporting Crime to the Police, most assaults against women where the victim knows the offender go unreported.

The 2005 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Personal Safety Survey, estimated that 36 per cent of women who experienced physical assault by a male perpetrator reported it to the police that year compared to only 19% a decade before, which shows some progress in women’s willingness to report it.

The survey also showed that of those women who were physically assaulted in the 12 months prior to the survey, 38% were victimised by their current or previous male partner. Of the women who had experienced violence by a current partner, 10 per cent had had an AVO issued against their current partner but the violence against her had still occurred.

3. What are the causes of family violence?

There are a number of theories about the causes of domestic violence:

· The Pathological Theory: the violent person is ill and he needs to be treated.
· The Psychological theory: the offender is jealous, dependent, possessive and needs counselling. The victim is depressed, insecure, and over-dependent.
· The Cycles of Violence theory: the violence is a learned pattern of behaviour from childhood in a home where violence characterised his family relationships.
· The Structural Theory: Pressures from society cause family violence due to frustration from unemployment, financial debt, and cultural differences.
· The Alcohol as a Contributing Factor theory: alcohol is almost always involved, not as the sole cause but as the trigger of the violence.
· The Feminist Theory: in a male-dominated society the patriarchal family structure is the cause of domestic violence due to men trying every way possible to preserve their authority and dominance.

Family violence is a complex problem with complex causes. We live in a violent society with an entertainment culture full of violence. We sanction violence as a way of life. Our mass media provide endless examples of violence and aggression on television, at the movies, on electronic gizmos, and in pornographic video games, websites and magazines. We are immersed in it. But that is no excuse for men not taking responsibility for their violent and abusive behaviour. They must learn to relate respectfully and equally to women despite the misleading and ugly messages they get from society.

5. The affect of home violence upon children

Children are the forgotten victims of the violence that occurs between their parents. While a great deal of attention has been directed to women as the primary victims of domestic violence – and quite rightly so – the effects on children have been generally overlooked. Society continues to perpetuate the myth that children are untouched by the violence in their family home.

In fact children are profoundly affected by domestic violence. Living in a home where domestic violence occurs frequently has been equated with living in a war zone or being involved in natural disasters such as fire, earthquakes or cyclones. Children from violent homes can exhibit the same sort of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms as child refugees from war zones.

Family violence not only psychologically and sometimes physically harms the child victims, but also is likely to establish patterns of violent behaviour. Women’s refuges, at any one time, cater for more children than women. Next to infants and toddlers, teenagers are most affected by family violence. Having lived with violence for a number of years, adolescents see their increasing independence as a means of escape from family conflicts.

Family conflict is a frequent cause of teenagers leaving home and, in some cases, leading a life on the streets, according to the Burdekin Report (1989). Not all children are doomed to repeat their parents’ violence so it is crucial that we do not create self-fulfilling prophecies telling children that if they grow up in a violent home they will become violent. Children have choices. Our job is to make these choices available to them and help support them through very difficult times.

During my 27 years of leadership to Wesley Mission, I saw our children’s’ homes expand from taking in children whose parents were unable to care for them, from 104 per year to over 4,000 per year. One of our Centres was open all night with staff prepared for police to arrive with crying children. Frequently the police had been called to a home to find the mother murdered, the children crying, and the father handcuffed and being taken away. In that one never forgotten hour the children lost forever their mother, their father, their home, and all of their security.

Wesley Mission then had the task of finding a stable, loving home that could take in up to six children at once, for we were committed to keeping the children together so they could support each other. Having lost both mother and father in one night, we would never countenance separating the siblings.

6. The failure of much church counselling

After years of beatings an abused woman finally did something for herself: she told her pastor and left her husband. But two months later she was back. She had succumbed to pressure from her pastor. He persuaded her to return to a man who had bashed her for 20 years. He told her marriage is too precious to be terminated if it can be saved. Since her husband had changed in the two months she was gone, shouldn’t she give him another chance, he said? She quickly succumbed. She went back to her husband. For the pastor, it was an easy victory. He had saved the marriage. But she bore the price.

Why did the pastor send her back? He had two correct ideas but not much common sense. The pastor’s sole objective in counselling the woman was reconciliation with her husband. That was his first mistake. Reconciliation is the ultimate goal in marital counselling, but it’s not always the immediate goal. When a wife leaves her husband because of physical abuse, the immediate goal should be the woman’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

The pastor should have believed her when she told him her husband had beaten her hundreds of times, and he should not have believed her husband when he said he was a changed man.

Believing the husband was the pastor’s second mistake. Jesus told us we should see (Matt 3:8) “fruit in keeping with repentance.” A chronic wife-beater must prove he is a changed man, and to prove it takes time. Chronic wife-beaters turn to the church and say “I’ve changed!” and the church, which believes in conversion, believes him. Then the wife is urged to go back to him. Jobless and broke, perhaps she has no alternative even though she does not believe her husband is a changed man. The scars are too deep. She finds it impossible to forgive immediately and forget his infidelities or the unnumbered beatings. She needs time. Quick solutions are no solutions.

“But what if she did it for publicity?” asks a sceptic. The first thing you must do with a beaten wife is to believe her. I’d rather be wrong on one publicity seeker than sceptical about a thousand abused women. Believe and assist. It is important for the church to have available immediate and safe accommodation, emergency financial assistance and access to interpreters if needed.

But immediate intervention and safety is not enough. Safe, secure and affordable housing; access to training or retraining; employment; child care; counselling and support groups; income security; protection from deportation; ongoing protection from violence, and recognition of additional needs are also required.

I interviewed a remarkable woman who had written her experiences as “Roslyn’s Story”; it is one woman’s moving account of her violent marriage. She requests that people stop saying what they usually say and learn a better response. Roslyn wants:

· The police to stop saying: ‘Calm down and charge him in the morning if you want to.’ But instead to say: ‘What can we do about making you feel safe?’
· The doctors to stop saying: ‘I’ll prescribe you a tranquilliser.’ But instead to say: ‘Would you like me to refer you to someone who is better qualified to help you than me?’
· The lawyers to stop saying: ‘We haven’t enough evidence.’ But instead to say: ‘We’ll get a restraining order.’
· The social workers to stop saying: ‘It happens to a lot of women.’ But instead to say: ‘Do you know your rights?’
· Health clinic sisters to stop saying: ‘It’s a difficult time for a husband when you have young children.’ But instead to say: ‘Can I make you aware of programs available on parenting and relationships.’
· Family Law counsellors to stop saying: ‘He has the right to access.’ But instead to say: ‘Let’s set a period of no access until he begins to work out his problems.’
· Your friends to stop saying: ‘I told you so.’ But instead to say: ‘I’ll give you any support I can.’
· Clergy to stop saying: ‘Forgive him.’ But instead to say: ‘The situation is intolerable for you and your children. Let us help you do something about it.’

6. What the Church is doing about family violence

The Synod of the Uniting Church adopted in 1991 a major program against family violence. The Church said “Physical, sexual and/or emotional violence occurs in many families, including families within the church community. We condemn all forms of violence in the family as sin, and commit ourselves to support the victims of family violence and to work for an end to such violence.” These words were then matched by a strong program to assist abused women and their children who needed shelter, counselling, support and love.

At Wesley Mission when I was Superintendent, we had special training programs for some 400 staff and volunteer counsellors. We had a 24-hour telephone service. We had built four houses for emergency family accommodation and appointed social workers to aid those women and children. We had family therapists and opened four centres with clinicians, psychologists and family counsellors to work with hundreds of families at risk. We had provided alternative accommodation for victims in some forty flats and units. We were advocates for women facing financial and legal problems. We had psychiatrists and a hospital on hand for severe emergencies. We had ministers who were trained and aware of family violence issues. I wanted our program of help to be all encompassing.

The Bible is clear: violent husbands are wicked men. Peter writes: (1 Peter 3:7-12) “Husbands, be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Sources:
Donna Bowen and Prof. Michael Horsburgh’s report
The NSW Domestic Violence Committee 1991
National Committee on Violence Against Women 1991
The SAAP Review, ‘Homes Away From Home’ 1987
“Family Matters” AIFS May 1993, Issue No. 34
“A Woman And Domestic Violence”. Anglican Synod, 1987
The National Domestic Violence Education Campaign 1989
The National Domestic Violence Training Forum 1990
“Roslyn’s Story” – a Survivor’s Perspective
Cass, Bettina. The Housing Needs of Women and Children Canberra: [Australian Govt. Pub. Service], 1991. Discussion paper (Australia. National Housing Strategy)
“Family Violence” Federation Press, Sydney, 1991

Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC