Jessica Simpson is daring to go nude — the singer/actress appears on the May cover of fashion mag Marie Claire without the help of cosmetics or digital airbrushing.
Simpson, 29, appears on the cover as she researches what women’s looks mean around the world in her VH1 reality show, The Price of Beauty. For Marie Claire’s May issue, Simpson ventured to the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles with her best friend and hairdresser Ken Paves to interview women on what feature of their body they loved most.
The issue hits newsstands April 13 — but we’d love to hear your thoughts on Jessica’s bold decision to go “nude?”
Since General Motors declared bankruptcy last July — and received over $50 billion in federal aid to stay afloat — the company has really managed to turn things around, only losing $4.3 billion in the months since. And some people wondered how GM beat out Toyota in their Worst Company In America match-up.
And yet, the car maker thinks they’ll not only be able to turn a profit in 2010, but also be able to pay back the investment cash from both the U.S. and Canadian governments… in just a few months.
says GM CFO Chris Liddell:
As the results for 2009 show there is still significant work to be done. However, I continue to believe we have a chance of achieving profitability in 2010… We are also dedicated to delivering on our commitments to our stakeholders. For example we remain committed to repaying the outstanding balance of the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada loans by June 2010 at the latest.
They plan on doing this by going public some time this year, though GM has not set a date for when the IPO might occur.
Reads GM’s official statement:
Going public will enable the company to invest in designing, building and selling the world’s best vehicles, attract the best people and access the capital markets. One of the most important measures in establishing the foundation for going public is the company’s ability to return to sustainable profitability.
Some Newport Beach fishermen claim the city’s efforts to keep the beach clean are killing off the grunion.
Verna Fath
and other anglers said the small, silvery fish aren’t plentiful as in year’s last. During the grunion spawning season in
spring and summer, they’ve seen the city’s tractor-like beach
cleaners plow through low-tide areas near Balboa Pier, churning up
fish eggs.
“I can understand wanting to make the beach look nice, but not at this cost,” Fath told the Daily Pilot.
City officials deny these claims and say they never
use the city’s heavy-duty beach-cleaning equipment in the wet sand,
where grunion wash up on the beach and lay their eggs at night during high tides.
Although it’s illegal for anglers to catch the
grunion with a line, it doesn’t stop the fish from nibbling on Fath’s
snag line, she said. She’s become adept over the years in knowing when
the grunion are biting and when they’re not.
Newport’s
General Services Director Mark Harmon said Tuesday that the city
consults with a marine biologist from Pepperdine University on when
grunion are spawning in the area. City workers are instructed never to use the
city’s beach cleaners in wet sand, where grunion might lay their eggs.
The
city uses large tractors that each have a plow-like device attached to
them that sifts and churns the sand to scoop up things such as cigarette
butts and shards of broken glass.
The shoulder pain pump lawsuit settlements were reached between I-Flow and plaintiffs on March 16, the same day that U.S. Judge S. Arthur Spiegel denied a motion for summary judgment in the cases, which had been consolidated for a trial scheduled to begin March 23. In the cases, all of the plaintiffs alleged that the use of small pumps manufactured by I-Flow to infuse pain medication following arthroscopic surgery destroyed their shoulder cartilage, causing a condition known as chondrolysis of the shoulder.
I-Flow Corp. had tried to get the plaintiffs’ general causation experts excluded and tried to prevent evidence from being included in the trial that would have been used to form the basis of punitive damages claims. The evidence allegedly included information that the company’s chief executive officer was advised to issue a warning that the pumps should not be used for shoulder surgery before the plaintiffs were injured by the devices.
The details of the settlements have not been released.
According to federal court documents issued in February, there are currently at least 150 shoulder pump lawsuits filed pending against I-Flow and other manufacturers of similar devices that have been linked to the shoulder problems. All of the suits involve allegations that the device makers failed to warn about the risk of shoulder chondrolysis and promoted use of the pain pumps as an alternative to oral medication, even though the FDA never approved the pumps for this purpose.
In November 2009, the FDA required manufacturers of the pumps and the local anesthetics used with the devices to add new warnings about the risk of chondrolysis from should pain pumps. The recent warnings were designed to alert healthcare professionals that the use of pain pumps following shoulder surgery to infuse medication directly into the joint increases the risk of chondrolysis, particularly involving the shoulder.
Last month, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation heard oral arguments about whether all federal shoulder pain pump lawsuits should be consolidated into an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, where all of the cases would be centralized for pretrial proceedings before one judge. The Panel previously rejected a similar request in August 2008, indicating that the number of different manufacturers of pain pumps and different medications used int he devices made coordination for pretrial litigation inappropriate.
Currently all of the cases involved in the shoulder pump litigation are proceeding as individual cases, but some courts have consolidated small groups of cases, as was done in the Ohio cases.
What is purported to be a new GT version of the Buick Excelle has been spotted out and about in China. The Excelle, you may recall, is a four door version of the Opel Astra. Buick has already said that the car will be coming to North America at some point, although we don’t know exactly when or what badge it will wear. The current top engine in the Excelle XT is a turbocharged 1.6-liter inline-four that pumps out 184 horsepower.
The new Excelle GT may be getting the 2.0-liter direct-injected turbo from the mid-sized Regal in 220-hp trim which would make the compact sedan quite the little stormer. Now, if Buick sell this one here and Ford puts the 2.0-liter EcoBoost in the upcoming Mercury compact, we could have quite the battle of lower-premium small cars in America.
The Excelle GT make get a public announcement at the Beijing Motor Show later this month. A tip of the hat to Hanif!
Segundo uma declaração que o presidente da General Motors do Brasil, Jaime Ardila, fez há um tempo atrás para o portal G1, seriam investidos R$5 bilhões de 2008 até 2012 para fazer uma renovação completa no portfólio de produtos da empresa. E por outras vezes a renovação foi comentada pela imprensa.
Mas pelo que parece, a renovação já está acontecendo com a estréia do Classic 2011, assim como alguns leitores temiam. E o que é pior: Não se sabe quais serão os outros modelos a serem lançados, mas com base no início da “renovação”, o que será do restante da linha a ser anunciada? Realmente é algo a se pensar, e a se preocupar.
O novo Classic 2011 sairá com preço de R$ 28.294, um aumento de mais de 6%, já que antes ele custaria R$ 26.623. Vamos agora aguardar as futuras novidades, e mais do que isso, torcer para que sejam realmente “novidades” para o consumidor brasileiro.
All of us who have apps on the Android Market have also experienced down-voting, spam and ugly comments. I think I just about nailed the worst case scenario. Here’s the scoop.
I have a fairly new app on the market “Credit Cards.” It’s basically a wrapper for an XML API provided, let me assure you, by a reputable company. The app is new so every comment and every vote really counts. The last comment from user Scott in big-bold-all-capital letters accuses my app of being a “PHISHING SCAM!!!” For the app that lets user research and apply for a credit card this is a serious problem – it will definitely spook away some potential users.
Unfortunately, there’s no one to complain to. Yes, I marked the comment as spam as a last resort. It may not be spam, maybe Scott just hates credit cards. I really have no other choice though. Now – this action only removes the comment from my view and I really doubt that Google will ever pay attention. And I think this really, really sucks given amount of effort and creativity that goes into these apps.
So do you guys have any suggestions? Yes, I’ve posted complaints to the Android market help forums, but I’m not very hopeful. What is your experience with Android Market comments and votes? Can we, as community, influence or change anything? Or should we?
We’ve talked about trashcans several times here and we think we hit the jackpot when we purchased our current trashcan. We’ll never go back to our old ways, and we think we need to share the wealth.
It’s kinda geoengineering week here at the Intersection, as I continue to prepare for Friday’s Point of Inquiry episode with Eli Kintisch to discuss his new book, Hack the Planet. So I’ve been doing my reading, and I came across this article by Kintisch’s rival Jeff Goodell, who also has a geoengineering book coming out, entitled How to Cool the Planet. (So far Goodell’s seems to be selling a bit better, but I like Kintisch’s title!) I’m certainly not surprised, but I had not yet seen the relevant data showing that when it comes to this subject, the public is basically a blank slate. Goodell provides said data in his piece:
Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, who presented the results of a long-running study on the public perception of global warming. In his most recent survey, he had thrown in a few questions about geoengineering. When asked, “How much, if anything, have you heard about geoengineering as a possible response to climate change,” 74 percent of respondents said “nothing.” The 26 percent that had heard about geoengineering turned out to be wildly misinformed — more than half thought it referred to geothermal energy. Only 3 percent of …
There is considerable evidence that the economy is steadily recovering and that the odds of a double-dip recession have shrunk to practically zilch. Unfortunately there is also considerable evidence that the recovery will not have the firepower to dramatically shrink unemployment to its pre-recession levels for years. Besides the sheer size of our unemployed ranks (27 million Americans are considered un- or under-employed today) there are at least three underlying reasons to believe in a jobless recovery:
1) Job openings are still in the doldrums — February 2010 job openings were practically equivalent to their February 2009 levels of 2.7 million.
2) Part-timers grew in the latest jobs report (although discouraged workers fell, meaning more Americans are feeling confident at least about entering the job market) and the work week at 33.9 hours/per is still near its all-time low of 33.0. That means that when demand starts coming back, employers will have a lot of slack to extend the work week and hire part-timers rather than dip into the ranks of the officially unemployed — that 9.7% figure the media focuses on.
3) The ratio of unemployed-to-new hires, a good indicator for strife in the job market, ticked up in February and is hovering around its April 2009 levels. Its three-month moving average is heading in a positive direction, but slowly.
And then this. According to the Business Roundtable’s CEO Survey, 75% of executives expect sales to rise in the next six months, but hiring is a different story. In the coming months, half of employers expect no change in employment, 29% expect to hire and 21% expect to shrink payrolls. Employment is a lagging indicator of the economy’s strength, because employers won’t hire en masse until they actually experience (as opposed to project) sustained sales increases that grow capital they can invest in compensating new workers. But this survey suggests that while employers can spot glimmers of demand’s recovery, they aren’t any more ready to expand payrolls than they were some months ago.
Some graphs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics help tell this two-part story:
The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.
Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax “was not as toxic an idea” as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary.
Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,” he said.
Me: It would be tough to find a think-tank economist or policymaker who doesn’t believe a VAT is on its way as part of a strategy to raise taxes. (As I wrote earlier this week.) And not just on the rich. On the broad middle class. But it is no magic bullet. A VAT can be tricky to implement and could merely fuel more government spending. This will be a major political battle. I don’t see how it happens without a financial crisis as a spur. At the very least, a VAT would have to replace much of the current tax system and accompany major entitlement reform. Where to begin!?
Seattle-based Frazier Healthcare Ventures is leading a $65 million Series C venture investment in San Francisco-based Achaogen, a developer of new antibiotics that fight multi-drug resistant infections. Alta Partners also participated in the financing, along with existing investors Arch Venture Partners, 5AM Ventures, Domain Associates, Venrock Associates, Versant Ventures, and the Wellcome Trust. Bob More, a general partner with Frazier, will join Achaogen’s board in connection with the deal.
The election has finally been called and it’s time to start asking the climate question. If you live in the Hereford area, you can do just that in person! Come on down and grill your candidates for the upcoming General Election and put the spotlight on climate action.
Whether you want to know the parties’ plans for the future of the UK’s energy supply, you are concerned about your local environment or you care passionately about the impact that climate change is already having on the world’s poorest people, this is a golden opportunity for you to put your questions directly to your candidates.
Ask the Climate Question is a coalition of organisations including Christian Aid, RSPB, WWF, Cafod, Greenpeace and Oxfam that has come together to raise climate change as an issue during the upcoming General Election.
When: Wednesday, 28th April 2010
Time: 7pm for refreshments, 7.30pm start
Where: The Royal National College for the Blind, 1 College Road, Hereford, HR1 1EE
For more questions about the Hereford hustings or to submit a question in advance, feel free to get in touch with Maya at: [email protected]
RSVP for the event on Facebook. Once you’ve done that, help spread the word in Hereford by downloading this flyer: Hereford ACQ flyer.
Having trouble thinking of a what to ask? Check out these questions for inspiration. You can even email your local candidates beforehand and ask them a climate question directly by taking this quick and easy action.
If you want to take further action in the Hereford and Herefordshire South constituency during the election period, take this action and get inspired with this Oxfam election toolkit.
Aunque hace casi dos meses que GM anunció el cierre definitivo de la marca Hummer, se había dado un plazo perentorio para recibir ofertas de última hora. El único oferente ha sido Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, de China, pero la oferta de compra ha fallado porque el gobierno chino no aprobó la operación.
El día de hoy, GM comunicó a los concesionarios Hummer que todavía sobrevivían, que la marca comienza (ahora sí, verdaderamente) todo el proceso de cierre y liquidación. Los 2.200 Hummer que todavía quedan sin vender, serán puestos prácticamente a precio de subasta con importantes descuentos de hasta 6.000 dólares por modelos del 2009 que no se habían vendido.
Mientras tanto los integrantes de la red de concesionarios Hummer, tendrán que buscarse otra franquicia para sobrevivir, aunque la mayoría tiene franquicias compartidas con otras marcas.
¿Qué decir de la corta trayectoria de Hummer? Un vehículo que pudo haber sido algo mejor dentro del mercado de los todoterreno, pero que se quedó estancado en una marca elitista y que se desvirtuó hacia un mercado muy alejado del todoterrenismo, un símbolo más de poder, que de otra cosa. No creo que mucha gente los vaya a extrañar.
An elderly woman died early Wednesday morning after her Torrance condominium caught fire.
Firefighters from the Torrance Fire Department responded to the 2:30 a.m. fire at a three-story condominium complex on Paseo de la Playa, said Torrance Fire Capt. Bob Millea.
Flames were shooting out a second-floor window, and the hallways of the second and third floors were filled with smoke.
The department deployed 45 firefighters, who were able to contain the fire to one unit on the second floor within 20 minutes, Millea said.
They found an elderly female occupant dead in the condominium, Millea said. She was the only person found inside. Arson investigators were called to the scene.
The blaze caused about $500,000 in damages. About 40 residents were evacuated, he said.
“What should we do with UI elements we don’t want users to click on? Like, say, the ‘delete all my work’ button?”
The possible answers given: Make the button hard to click, offer an undo, and/or show a confirmation alert dialog before proceeding.
The piece also highlights Alan Cooper’s interesting “ejector seat lever” analogy:
Certainly gets the point across.
Here’s an example of separating a dangerous element from a harmless one in Backpack: The recently added add/edit an event box that pops up in your features a trash can icon that deletes a post. It’s located far away from the Save/Close actions.
In Basecamp, the Delete/Edit message links are close to each other. But if you do click on Delete accidentally, you have to confirm it:
We go the dialog route when the action does irreversible damage to something you might care about a lot. Loss of a calendar event is unfortunate but easily reparable. But loss of a message with comments can cause significant pain.
It might not be the best day to trumpet the rule of law over U.S. counterterrorism efforts, but Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department has reached a deal with Algeria for mutual criminal justice assistance. The deal will allow the the U.S. and Algeria to “obtain testimonies and statements; retrieve evidence, including bank and business records; provide information and records from governmental departments or agencies; and provide a means of inviting individuals to testify in a requesting country.” As Algeria hosts its own very unwelcome al-Qaeda affiliate, the additional tools aid the Justice Department’s monitoring and pursuit of individuals and money in Algeria that might threaten U.S. interests.
They also allow Holder an additional opportunity to entrench the Justice Department’s role in counterterrorism ahead of a potential presidential decision to abandon a criminal trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and move the 9/11 architect back into the military commissions system for trial. Holder:
“The proliferation of both terrorism and traditional criminal acts across national borders makes international cooperation essential to bringing to justice those who threaten our safety and security,” said Attorney General Holder. “Algeria is an important partner in the fight against terrorism and transnational crime. This treaty will help us ensure that terrorists and other criminals are not able to avoid justice by simply hiding evidence beyond our borders.”
Is your StarTAC looking run down? Does it not draw the attention that it once did? Clearly, it’s time for an upgrade. Don’t let the technology of recent decades cloud your judgement when choosing your new phone. Think–and I mean seriously think–about the time when talking on a mobile phone was at its most impressive. That’s right, I mean all the way back to 1983. What better way to truly impress your board-room buddies than with a literal homage to the golden era of telecommunication?
Do not be fooled by the exterior: while clearly based on the Motorola DynaTAC8000X of yore, the 22ct gold, diamond-encrusted exterior houses all the modern marvels you would expect from a phone released in 2010. That’s right, according to the website, it supports not only WAP and Text SMS, but also a COLOR SCREEN. My how the last 27 years of progress have just flown by!
Only 10 of these “Privé” phones will be created by designer Stuart Hughes, and at £139,995 ($212,400), I guess that kinda makes sense.
UPDATE: Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller shot down the mayor’s plan to close most city government agencies two days a week starting Monday, saying he does not have the “unilateral” authority to carry out his threat. Council members said they would “never” approve such a plan.
.
There are enough laughs and tears, pathos and bathos, fear and loathing for every taste — Channel 35’s hot new soap opera, City Hall.
Tuesday’s episode was one of the best with the apostle of clean energy left muttering in his cowboy hat he must have “misspoke” after being exposed as a liar with even the see-no-evil Janice Hahn calling out, “I think we need some honest answers here.” The mayor, with the mysterious Austin Beutner as his side, perhaps pulling his strings, declared the government would shut down completely for two days except for the cops and others but it was unclear whether that was to protect him or the public from growing unrest and lawlessness in the streets.
The obedient DWP Board then provided a ray of hope in the gloom by pulling back millions of dollars in new spending that could keep LA from going broke until late May.
But the unions put a damper on that slim hope by saying the mayor was playing games with fire and was going to get burned.
By day’s end, they all looked like kids playing in a lockbox filled with dynamite.. The mayor accused the Council of using “the politics of ‘no’…the kind of demagoguery you see in the Congress…the kind of scare tactics you saw around the healthcare
debate.”
Paul Koretz responded that the mayor’s behavior was “bizarre” and worried that “a crazier and crazier game of chicken” would lead to somebody actually getting hurt, maybe everybody.
The overnight reviews were devastating — for the mayor. LA Times Editorial: L.A.’s financial quagmire: The city is in deep trouble, and the mayor and the Department of Water and Power are to blame
What heartache and heartbreak will unfold today as the Council goes back to its snail-like efforts to micro-manage the budget crisis.
Will they finally make some decisions? Will they denounce the mayor or cuddle up to him? Will the unions make love or war? Tune in at 10 a.m. for today’s episode of City Hall, the LA soap opera.
Peter Rojas and Ryan Block, who used to rule the world of gadget blogs at Gizmodo and Engadget, have raised $3.2 million in financing for what they see as the future of gadget reviews online: a site simply called gdgt — so hip and futuristic it apparently needs no vowels whatsoever — where users talk about and review gadgets they either want to buy or have already bought. The financing round, which closed last month, was led by Spark Capital and True Ventures (see disclosure below) and also included funding from Betaworks, AOL Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures and a number of private individuals, including Betaworks partner Ron Conway, John Josephson and Gillian Munson of Allen & Co., Jason Calacanis and SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff.
Unlike traditional review sites, such as the ones that the founders used to work for, gdgt has no paid reviewers who hold forth on the benefits or flaws of new devices or leak product photos before they are launched. Instead, it has what Rojas and Block say are hundreds of thousands of registered users who come to the site to talk about and learn about the devices they want to buy, and to comment on products that others are interested in buying. When you set up a profile at the site, you are presented with three options: 1) say something, 2) ask a question and 3) get support. You can also set up a list of products you want to buy or have recently bought, so you can track conversations about them.
In many ways, gdgt feels like a more modern version of a site like Epinions (now owned by eBay), where buyers talk about and rate things they have purchased, or like an updated and enhanced version of Amazon user reviews. According to recent posts there by Block and Rojas, the site is trying to come up with ways to give users “reputation capital” in return for providing good content, and to highlight their contributions based on how much capital they have within the system. Rojas also told the Wall Street Journal that the company is looking at forming relationships with marketers and distributors of the kinds of products its members are looking to buy, so that they can be shown relevant content while they are browsing or using the site.
Disclosure: gdgt is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.
Is your StarTAC looking run down? Does it not draw the attention that it once did? Clearly, it’s time for an upgrade. Don’t let the technology of recent decades cloud your judgement when choosing your new phone. Think–and I mean seriously think–about the time when talking on a mobile phone was at its most impressive. That’s right, I mean all the way back to 1983. What better way to truly impress your board-room buddies than with a literal homage to the golden era of telecommunication?
