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We mentioned it in an update farther down the page, but it bears repeating: the latest rumors — from anonymous sources — are pointing to the Verizon HTC Incredible launching the last week of April, possibly on the 25th or 29th. Also, it’s entirely possible that Verizon’s "New Devices Launching Soon" poster could be for the fabled Microsoft "Pink" phones. Either way, stay tuned, ’cause it’s gonna be a busy month. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is seeking applicants for its 2010 summer semester (May – August) internship program. This year, ASLA seeks two full-time interns.

A summer internship with ASLA provides an excellent opportunity for graduate or undergraduate students studying landscape architecture, architecture, urban planning, sustainable development, or environmental studies. Students with an interest in policy, advocacy, and web communications are encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities:

• Research, track, and analyze federal and state legislation focused on transportation, natural resources, environmental, water resource management, and sustainability issues, particularly as they relate to landscape architecture.
• Assist with the Society’s direct advocacy with the Congress, the administration, and the federal agencies.
• Assist with drafting, editing, and compiling government affairs communications, correspondence, and publications.
• Develop original content for The Dirt.
• Contribute to biweekly electronic newsletter, LAND Online
• Support chapter communications and resource development.

Requirements:

• Current enrollment in a Master’s degree or Bachelor’s degree program in landscape architecture, architecture, urban planning, public policy or administration, environmental studies, or related field.
• Passionate interest in policy issues related to design, land use, sustainability, and the environment.
• Experience or familiarity with federal and state government affairs and the federal appropriations process.
• Ability to write congressional correspondence, news stories, reports, and presentations.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Outlook, Powerpoint, Excel) and proven Internet research skills.

The 2009 summer internship is unpaid but can be used to fulfill internship requirements or complete course credits. The summer intern should be present at ASLA offices for at least three full days per week. ASLA offers a flexible schedule. Please send cover letter and résumé to [email protected].

During a conference call earlier today, General Motors’ CFO, Christopher P. Liddell, said that the company lost $4.3 billion in the 6 months after coming out of from bankruptcy protection. Liddell said that the company had a positive cash flow of $1 billion during the period.

Liddell said he expects GM to hit profit in 2010 and that it made progress towards that goal in the first quarter.

“We don’t need to make that much improvement to get to profitability,” Liddell said “It’s getting close to break-even if you get rid of those one-off items that happened in the fourth quarter.”

The report, which covers the period from July 10 to Dec. 31, listed $36.2 billion in cash reserves and marketable securities.

GM reiterated its commitment to pay off its debt to the United States and Canadian governments by June. So far, GM has made payments totaling $2.8 billion towards an initial balance of $8.3 billion. Most of GM’s original loan of $50 billion was converted to a 61 percent equity stake held by the U.S. Treasury.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: NYTimes

Found under: Windows Mobile, Draw, Freeware, Paint, Pictures, Edit,

TouchPaint is very cool drawing app developed by TouchXperience for Windows Phones. It is designed to use with fingers or stylus allowing you to create drawings or edit images. With support for Bitmap JPEG PNG and GIF image formats you can load and edit almost any picture you want. You can use different kinds of toolsshapes pen brush eraser line rectangle triangle… with any color. It may be useful for example to draw a sketch when you dont have a sheet of paper with you to draw a

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Read more in mobile format

Found under: Windows Mobile, Games, 3D, FPS, Action, Counter Strike, CS,

If you like the Anti-terrorist role and action games 3D Anti-terrorist game is a must have for your windows phone. It has 3D graphic engine that creates amazing visual effect and gives you real sensation. You can choose among diverse weapons and combat techniques vivid sound effect detailed maps and 14 action packed levels with different degrees of difficulty create blood-and-thunder battle scenes in a game.If you are a CS fan now you could combat anytime and anywhere with this true mobi

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Read more in mobile format

Those searching for a healthy diet regimen may try Mediterranean cuisine, as Spanish scientists have determined that spices used in that region have powerful antioxidant properties.

Researchers from Miguel Hernandez University (UMH) in Catalonia determined that cloves contain high levels of phenolic compounds, which give them the highest capacity to give off hydrogen and allow them to reduce lipid peroxidation well. In addition, cloves were found to be among the best iron reducers.

"The results show that use of the natural oxidants occurring in spices used in the Mediterranean diet, or their extracts, is a viable option for the food industry, as long as their characteristics of the food product are not affected," Juana Fernandez-Lopez, an author of the study and a researcher at the UMH.

"These substances exhibit high antioxidant capacity, and could have beneficial effects for health," says the researcher," she added.

Essential oils from other spices used in the Mediterranean diet, including oregano, thyme, rosemary and sage, were also evaluated by the team, and found to be valuable natural sources of antioxidants.

For busy individuals who may not be getting enough nutrients from their food, dietary supplements may be a great option.

The following is a guest post by the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, April 2010).

Beware the following don’ts, and you’ll be doing it all night long…

Sin: Courting by car
Why drive for miles to meet up with your lover? Take public transportation to your rendezvous point and go for a long, sensual walk to get your juices flowing.

Or think beyond the steel steering box and turn on your soon-to-be lover with a hike or a bike ride. Way to work up a sweat.

Sin: Poison perfume
Synthetic fragrances are so not sexy, baby. What if your bottle of Poison really were poison for your body and the environment? Most perfumes are derived from petroleum, and some contain potential neurotoxins.

Opt for DIY alternatives made from organic essential oils. Vanilla, rose and cinnamon turn guys on; the ladies dig vetiver and cedarwood.

Sin: Eating unsustainable chocolate
Chocolate, legendary among lovers, is known for its powerful effects on libido. But don’t give your beloved a box of truffles unless they’re organic and fair trade certified.

Conventional cacao farming is notorious for unsafe working conditions, lack of sustainability and below-poverty wages. Not sexy!

Sin: Ditching birth control
Climate change is the last thing you want to think about in the heat of the moment. But if you forget (or choose not to use) birth control, you’re risking more than an itchy, embarrassing STD.

Babies are adorable, but all those gurgling genetic replicas can be major carbon sins. Each one of those “extra” children adds 9,441 metric tons of carbon to the planet.

So wrap it up with a natural latex, fair-trade condom from Sir Richards or French Letter Condoms, and toss it in the garbage post-coitus. Flushing pollutes waterways and kills marine life.

Sin: Aphrodisiacs courtesy of Big Agra
If you’ve seen Food Inc. or read anything by Michael Pollan, you know that our food system is making us all sick and obese. When preparing a meal to ensure a little sumthin’ sumthin’, choose organic, local and fair-trade products.

Whether you’re using artichokes, saffron, or ginger (to seduce a woman), or cinnamon, grapes, or peaches (to seduce a man), you’ll go further if you get it fresh.

Sin: Sleeping with the enemy
You may keep your sheets squeaky clean, but unless your bed is made from sustainable materials, it’s a very, very dirty place to be (and not in a good way). Conventional mattresses are made from polyurethane and dipped in a bath of frightening chemicals that should be nowhere near your body’s mucous membranes.

Luckily, there are natural latex alternatives that will have you sleeping and sexing blissfully. Cuddle up with Savvy Rest, European Sleepworks, or Keetsa mattresses.

Sin: Inviting Big Pharma into your boudoir
Whether it’s for recreation or perceived need, you should probably leave the Viagra in the bathroom cabinet (or even better, behind the pharmacist’s counter). Most “sexual dysfunction” can be traced back to diet, lack of exercise, or toxic environmental conditions.

Try going vegan, eating raw, or starting a yoga regimen before you reach for the little blue pill. If you must use a sexual aide, try horny goat weed, an herb that’s thought to help with erectile dysfunction.

Sin: Toxic sex toys
Do play with toys — just make sure they’re safe and sustainable. Conventional toys, especially those made before 2000, are likely to contain phthalates, chemical plasticizers that are carcinogenic and particularly dangerous when used in warm, moist areas of the body. Do the “smell test” to determine if toys are safe. “New car smell” is a dead giveaway that a vibe or dildo isn’t one that you want in your night table drawer (or anywhere near you, for that matter).

Check out new toys from Jimmyjane, an online purveyor of beautifully designed toys with a small environmental footprint but a huge, ahem, impact.

Sin: Tainted lube
All lube is not created equal. Check labels before getting slippery. Avoid petroleum products, parabens, and even glycerin, a ubiquitous ingredient in conventional personal lubricants.

Yes Yes Yes and Firefly Organics are both excellent alternatives to KY, the old standby. Coming out after Earth Day 2010 is a new brand of lube called Intimate Ecology. This brilliant product from HERBOLOGIE contains yogurt bioferment, so say buh-bye to yeast infections, ladies.

Sin: Talking about toxins instead of talking dirty
There’s a time and a place for everything. Don’t be an environmental schoolmarm when you’re about to do the deed. Your lover doesn’t want to be lectured while naked (unless he or she is into that).

Do all your research, DIY projects, and shopping beforehand so you can be totally spontaneous, like every good little eco-sexual should be.

By Stefanie Iris Weiss, author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, April 2010). Check out her website Eco-Sex.

Also by Stefanie Iris Weiss:

• The Four Questions of Eco-Sex
• Six Tips for a Greener Sex Life
• Lean, Green Sex Machine (and the New York Post!)

More from The Daily Green

• Sexy Organic Lingerie
• 13 Decadent Organic and Fair Trade Chocolates
• 23 Breathtaking Natural Swimming Pools
• Sinfully Delicious Desserts
• Real People Making a Real Difference

Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc

Did you give in and buy yourself an iPad? Go grab it. If you don’t own one, just reach your arms out, conjure up a temporary air of smugness, and play along.

Now take your iPad (or your imaginaryPad, or what have you) and pop into Safari. Hit the bookmarks button, and then tap “iPad User Guide”. Explore a bit. Notice the dual-pane view with independent scrolling; notice the elasticity of the views. Notice that, outside of the URL bar up at the top, it looks and feels just like a native application.

Half of the hacky-type people reading this article have probably already bailed to go tear apart the source code at this point. Why? Because Web Apps don’t really work like this; HTML, CSS, and the standard javascript libraries really just don’t provide any of this functionality. It looks like Apple has something up their sleeves to make iPad Web Apps a bit more.. app-like.

It’s always been one of the primary complaints about Web Apps: no matter how much time developers dump into them, they just can’t make them feel like the stuff that comes out of the App Store. Maybe the tool bar would float out of view, or clicks just wouldn’t register naturally, or scrolling would seem “off”. It would take hours of scripting work just to get something that mostly emulated the feel of a basic native application.

Back in December of last year, John Gruber noticed that the on-handset iPhone user guide exhibited a bunch of behaviors that web apps normally couldn’t. Tool bars locked in place, clicks felt natural, and scrolling elements seem to emulate those found in native apps. He did a bit of tinkering, discovering that this was all made possible by a custom Javascript framework built by Apple called “PastryKit”. This iPad sorcery appears to be an extension of that.

The guys who brought it to our attention, Done21, are tentatively referring to this unannounced, not-quite-public framework as “AdLib”, after the file that contained it all: AdLib-ug-ipad.js. This name is by no means official – it’s just the best thing we’ve got, so far.

Coming in at just shy of 4,500 lines of code, the entire purpose of AdLib appears to be to bring native app-esque functionality to Web Apps, often counteracting the default behaviors that make Safari play nice with the rest of the web.

Alas, it’s entirely unclear if Apple ever plans to make this available to developers for their own use. Given the transparent nature of Javascript, it’s entirely possible that developers could just rip the framework from Apple’s guide and start stabbing away — but they’d be doing it without documentation of any sort. Working with someone else’s code without documentation — especially code that’s been optimized down to the bare minimums, as this has — is a bit like manning a plane’s cockpit sans instruction.

Blindfolded.

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody could tell you that? Because your bad breath is making you miserable. You can feel the unpleasant odour in your mouth, it feels warm and sticky all the time, and you are terribly conscious about going too close to somebody when you speak, because you fear that they can smell your bad breath.

Filed under: Coupe, Budget, Performance, Chevrolet, Ford, GM, By the Numbers

Before your palms get all sweaty, let’s be clear – the boys and girls at Inside Line have put the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro LT and the base 2011 Ford Mustang toe-to-toe. This isn’t the big bad SS vs GT throwdown the world has been clamoring for, but that’s fine by us. Both models dish out over 300 horsepower, and when it comes right down to it, there will be more V6 engines battling it out in high school parking lots that V8s.

So how’d they do? The big-boned Camaro V6, complete with its 3,790-pound curb weight, managed to dish out a 6.1-second 0-60 mph run, a 14.3-second quarter-mile time and .86 g on the skidpad. Coming down from 60 mph, the Bowtie delivered a stopping distance of 111.78 feet. Those are all solid numbers, to be sure, but they don’t quite stack up to what Ford brought to the table with its pony.

The Mustang is a considerably smaller car in nearly every way, and right off the bat, it has 282 fewer pounds to lug around. With a curb weight of 3,508 pounds, the Mustang clicked off a 5.6-second 0-60 mph sprint, a 13.9-second quarter-mile and .91 g on the skidpad. Can you say “smoked?” Throw in 60-0 mph in 103 feet, and it’s clear Ford wanted to ensure that the ‘Stang not only puts the hurt on its arch rival from General Motors, but it’s also clear that the Blue Oval was seeking to build a solid all-around performer.

Before the Chevrolet faithful start clamoring about price, it should be noted that both cars fall within $1,000 of each other. The General clearly has a lot of work to do before the 2011 models roll out, but we have it on good authority that their engineers are hard at work. Fortunately for enthusiasts, this clearly isn’t the end-all, be-all… it’s just the latest volley.

[Source: Inside Line]

Inside Line runs the numbers on 2011 Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro V6 models originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The interwebs are buzzing today with the news that GOP Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia has declared April “Treason in Defense of Slavery” month.

But what’s not getting enough attention is the fact that the group that convinced McDonnell to sign the declaration are a bunch of neo-Confederates.

This year’s proclamation was requested by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A representative of the group said it has known since it interviewed McDonnell when he was running for attorney general in 2005 that he was likely to respond differently than Warner or Kaine.

“We’ve known for quite some time we had a good opportunity should he ascend the governorship,” said Brandon Dorsey of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a dossier on the SCV.

Although the 31,400-member SCV has always billed itself as a “non-political” and “non-racial” heritage organization devoted merely to preserving the legacy of Confederate soldiers, SCV leaders have long been tied to segregation and white supremacy.

See more on the group here.

But you’ve got to see this quote from an article in the May/June, 2008 edition of the SCV’s newsletter, The Southern Mercury.

It is very clear to me that if Barack Obama should be elected President, he would be extremely anti-white and would demand reparations for slavery and press hard for affirmative action to the degree that it would hurt young whites who were seeking jobs or admission to College and Graduate Schools. Even if he were elected, I would think he would be a one term President and the Congressional Republicans with a “corporal’s guard’ of Democrats would stop most of the radical and unjust laws he would propose. However, I believe that his rhetoric and anti-white legislative proposals would stir up racial riots. If he were running for re-election, these riots would turn into an extremely violent nature that would seriously damage race relations in America, and leave entire sections of some of our cities in ruins.

Real nice people you’re keeping company with, Bob.

 

On Monday, we reported an analyst’s contention that energy exploration company InterOil (IOC) had lied to Wall Street in a 2008 investor presentation.

In the presentation, InterOil described reservoir rock at a drilling site as having “proven thickness, porosity and deliverability” that made it “a world-class reservoir…”  The company then went on to describe this reservoir as extending several thousand feet deep.

This characterization was important: Having a reservoir of a certain quality and size was critical to the likelihood of the company actually discovering a significant amount of recoverable gas and oil.

The InterOil skeptic said this claim was bogus.  He cited the company’s own geologists as referring to the same reservoir as “challenging” to classify and having much smaller dimensions.  Thus, the analyst concluded, the company was lying to Wall Street.

Shortly after we published the analyst’s report, several InterOil defenders immediately said that the analyst was comparing apples and oranges.  The company’s geologist had been talking about a drilling site called “Elk,” the defenders said.  The company’s presentation, meanwhile, was describing a much more promising site called “Antelope.”  The company’s presentation had accurately described Antelope, the InterOil defenders said, so the InterOil skeptic was wrong.

We checked the presention, which was not clear on which site the company had been referring to.  The InterOil skeptic soon responded, saying that that there was NO WAY the company could have been describing Antelope, because InterOil had not yet drilled far enough into Antelope to determine the dimensions of the reservoir.  The analyst sent us a drilling report to prove this.

So who’s right?  The InterOil skeptic, who believes that the company misrepresented the size and quality of the Elk rock reservoir?  Or the InterOil bulls, who believe the company was describing the Antelope reservoir?

Neither, says a company defender familiar with InterOil’s take on this issue.

In the investor presentation, the company defender says, Interoil was NOT describing Antelope.  But nor was it describing the smaller “Elk 1” drilling site that its geologist had been referring to in 2007, when he described a site with much smaller dimensions.

In fact, the company defender says, the presentation was referring to “Elk 2“, a second Elk drilling site.  The Elk 2 well, the defender says, was drilled to a depth sufficient to support the company’s claim in the investor presentation.  The Elk 2 well was, in one respect, a failure: It produced water, not oil or gas.  But it also, the company defender says, revealed a rock reservoir of the size that the company described–one that supported the descriptions of “proven thickness, porosity and deliverability” and “world-class reservoir…”

So there you have it.

The InterOil bulls were wrong: The company was not referring to Antelope. 

And how about the InterOil skeptic?  Does the skeptic think the company’s description in the investor presentation accurately describe the reservoir rock at Elk 2? 

Stay tuned…

See Also: Is InterOil Just A Gigantic Fraud?

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• InterOil’s Own Geologists Say It Is Lying To Wall Street, Says Skeptic*
• InterOil (IOC): "Major Momentum" Or Just A Castle In The Air? (A New Investigation)
• What’s The Story Of Shia LaBeouf Pumping InterOil?

Midweek can be such a drag, especially if you’ve got plans for the weekend. Well, apart from games, one other thing that makes time fly is a good round of movies. For the European Video Store, here’s

A website called bringbackalan.com is calling for the return of FoMoCo’s CEO to Boeing Co., where Alan Mulally spend 37 years, or his entire career, before moving to Ford in 2006.

Mulally was CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes before FoMoCo Chairman Bill Ford lured him to come to Dearborn.

The Web site reads: “Now that he’s fixed Ford, let’s get Alan Mulally back to Boeing where he’s REALLY needed!!!”

No one knows who is responsible for the site but it suggests that Mulally is the man to get the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, which has been delayed 5 times, off the ground.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

Bits of the blogosphere are taking note of a recent post by John Sides noting the growth of NPR compared to other news sources:

Sides comments:

Something in their business model is working. And I have a hard time imagining that NPR listeners won’t watch televised news programming as a matter of principle.

So where is the NPR of cable news?

To me, the reason seems dead obvious. Radio is the only delivery mechanism that you can absorb while doing something else. Driving? Check. Cooking? Check. Reading email? Check. Lingering in bed after the alarm goes off? Check.

I don’t have a “principle” against watching televised news. I just don’t have time. You could have Ira Glass and Carl Kassell doing the Hustle surrounded by frolicking puppies and I still wouldn’t make the time to sit down and watch.

Posted by John Chase at 12:24 p.m.



Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mark Kirk raised $2.2 million since the start of the year, his campaign announced today.

It’s the first fundraising totals released since the five-term North Shore congressman won the Republican Senate nomination Feb. 2. Kirk faces Democratic state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias for the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. It’s currently held by appointed Democratic U.S. Sen. Roland Burris, who is not seeking election.

With the infusion of cash, Kirk’s campaign said it has more than $3 million left ahead of the November election. While the campaign made its money announcement today, it did not make available its financial report.

Giannoulias’ campaign declined to release its fundraising totals today, but criticized Kirk for taking campaign contributions from corporate political action committees and federal lobbyists. Giannoulias has pledged not to accept political donations from those sources.

The candidates have until April 15 to file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission.

by Tom Laskawy

The New York Times had a small article and a big graphic recently on America’s love affair with processed, packaged food:

Americans eat 31 percent more packaged food than fresh food, and they consume more packaged food per person than their counterparts in nearly all other countries. A sizable part of the American diet is ready-to-eat meals, like frozen pizzas and microwave dinners, and sweet or salty snack foods.

This probably doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone, especially given our outsized obesity rates compared to other countries. But the accompanying graphic helpfully illustrates a most unfortunate kind of “American exceptionalism.”

It’s worth pointing out, however, that there’s nothing inherently evil about packaged foods. It’s what’s in them that counts.

For example, though we favor processed foods less than the Japanese do, ours tend to be frozen pizzas and microwave dinners while theirs are predominantly minimally-processed frozen seafood or dried seaweed (both of which are very nutritious and neither of which have much in the way of additives).

The Spanish and the French, meanwhile, eat comparable rates of packaged food overall, but more of it is dairy and baked goods. Although American food companies have figured out how to pack our “bread” with HFCS and other corn-based additives and sweeteners, Europeans tend to enjoy more fresh-baked breads that lack industrial byproducts.

In other words, it’s not that we need to abandon packaged food if we’re to address obesity and reform the food system. It’s that we need to recognize that outsourcing our, and more importantly our children’s, nutrition to food industry scientists was a bad idea and isn’t working.

At the end of the day, the food industry’s primary concern—indeed their legal obligation—is to shareholders, public and private. Our nutrition is secondary to them and only a factor in so far as it affects sales. 

That said, this chart also makes clear that broad categories like “processed” or “packaged” food can be misleading. There simply isn’t any excuse for ignoring what’s in what you’re putting in your mouth. At some point in the last few decades, Americans decided to do just that. And now we’re paying for our ignorance not just with our wallets, but with our waistlines and with our health.

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