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Sydney discusses rumors surrounding the Apple tablet and what it could possibly look like, do, and cost. It’s all speculation for now, but there’s some pretty interesting ideas out there!

The 2010 blue print was laid out this morning for Brock Lesnar and the UFC heavyweight belt. Lesnar will keep an eye on UFC 110 in Australia and UFC 111 in New Jersey. At 110, Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera and Cain Velasquez fight with a possibility of getting the next shot at Lesnar. But the first option is the winner between Frank Mir and Shane Carwin at 111. If there were an injury to the Mir/Carwin victor then the Big Nog or Velasquez would get the shot.

If it is Mir, that’ll be the third time Lesnar would face the Las Vegan. Lesnar was asked if he can get motivated for another fight after smashing Mir at UFC 100.

"I don’t think I beat him as bad as I could," said Lesnar. "For me to get my hands on that stalker again … Frank Mir has made it a mission of his life [to get a rematch]. It’s been a while since I’ve had a stalker but we’ll take care of that."

Lesnar also said his return should have every heavyweight [expletive] himself. He’s already back working out and said that he was throwing around 285-pound Cole Konrad and 255-pound Chris Tuchsherer like sacks of potatoes.  

Rare Soul Tapas has reopened after a fire closed it more than a year ago. Lorenzo Wyche’s atmospheric restaurant/lounge serves creative takes on Southern dishes in a small plates format. Think Cajun-fried Cornish hen, Buffalo-style chicken livers and “forever braised” baby back ribs.

Wyche has put his popular Westside breakfast joint – Social House — up for sale. According to a report from the Shumacher Group, a restaurant real estate broker, the “absentee owner does not run shifts while growing late night life management, consulting firm and new hotel venture.”

In other restaurant news:

• Crazy Cuban is slated to open at 290 14th St. in February. This should be of particular interest to fans of the late, lamented Kool Korners a block away in Home Park. No word on whether this restaurant is any relation to Crazy Cuban in Marietta, but I’ve got a call out to the contact listed on the report.
• Yoforia will open a new location of its fro-yo franchise at 1410 Dresden Drive in …

Filed under: Car Buying, Coupe, Performance, Auctions, Hyundai

File this one under the dangers of mixing traditional Brick & Mortar business practices with the immediacy and transparency of the internet. Glenn Hyundai of Lexington, Kentucky placed a slightly used Hyundai Genesis Coupe 2.0T on eBay Motors. There was no reserve, and a gencoupe.com forum member named McFly made a bid of $16,125 and won the auction (here’s a PDF of the auction in case the eBay link goes dead).

Not a bad price, especially as the Gen Coupe in question had less than 5,000 miles on it and costs over $22,000 when new. McFly then secures financing from his bank to pay for the Coupe, makes the necessary travel arrangements to go pick up his car (he doesn’t live in Kentucky) and calls the dealer to put down a deposit with his credit card. This is when things begin to go bad. We’ll let McFly take it from here:

I talk to the front desk secretary, ask her how to make my deposit for an Internet Sales deal I have, and she immediately transfers me to Eric Manley. I talk to Eric briefly and he laughs at me over the phone, “Sorry buddy but you’re not getting it for that price, he says.” I tell him it’s a deal that I have worked out with the Internet Sales guy, and I’m ready to make the deposit. He laughs at me again, and says, “sorry buddy, not for that price.” It’s obvious that this guy knows nothing about it, but it’s odd that he won’t let me make my deposit. He’s clearly either confused or not the right guy.

Make the jump for the rest.

Continue reading Hyundai dealer auctions Genesis Coupe for $16k, doesn’t want to honor deal *UPDATE

Hyundai dealer auctions Genesis Coupe for $16k, doesn’t want to honor deal *UPDATE originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Focus on Grades 1 through 4 Date: February 23 or March 9, 2010 Location: Pennsylvania Department of Education Honors Suite, 1st Floor 333 Market Street, 8th Floor, Harrisburg, PA 17126 Registration 7:30-8:00 Starting/End Times: 8:00 AM — 4:00 PM BOTH WORKSHOPS ARE FILLED  PLEASE CHECK BACK OVER THE SUMMER FOR A FALL WORKSHOP

A new professional development workshop for teachers of grades 1^st through 4^th is being offered through the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office of Environment and Ecology.  The workshop will cover living and nonliving systems (habitat, simple ecosystems, soil, etc.) adaptation, change over time, and real vs. make-believe.  The workshop will connect non-fiction reading books, manipulatives, integration techniques, and hands-on inquiry based activities written for this program to address the environment and ecology standards and the Science, Technology and Environment and Ecology Assessment Anchors.  Teachers will receive up to thirty non-fiction and 10 fiction reading books, puppets, two reading mats representing either the forest, pond or farm, a newly developed standards-based unit with lesson plans and activities.  Participants will also receive the newly developed national early childhood activity guides for Project Learning Tree and Project Wild. In total each teacher will take back to his/her classroom over $600 worth of materials for their students.

PLEASE NOTE: WORKSHOPS ARE LIMITED TO TEACHERS, GRADES FIRST THROUGH FOURTH, IN IU15.

A new website dedicated to making non-personal data held by the U.K. government available for software developers has launched today with the help of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Data.gov.uk is being slammed with traffic but six months after the U.S. government opened its Data.gov site the U.K. site already has more than three times as much data than the U.S. site offers today.

At launch, Data.gov.uk has nearly 3,000 data sets available for developers to build mashups with. The U.S. site, Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets today.

Sponsor

The UK government has been a big supporter of innovation built on top of public data. It sponsored a contest called Show Us a Better Way, giving cash prizes to people who came up with the best ideas for mashups they would like to create if they had access to the right government data. Charles Arthur at the Guardian has good coverage of the U.K.’s open data work (the Guardian has been working hard to open public data as well).

The U.S. government, on the other hand, has been lackluster in its move to open data to facilitate outside innovation. If Twitter is the poster child for building a thriving ecosystem around a streaming set of data, then the Obama administration has earned about 140 characters worth of praise for its fledgling efforts so far. The U.S. government’s efforts to advance agencies’ use of cloud computing may work in conjunction with opening data to the public and thus may improve the state of things, but time will tell.

Congress didn’t even ask U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra any questions about President Obama’s Open Government initiative during his confirmation hearings. When the U.S. government’s Data.gov site launched, critics pointed out that it was filled with relatively non-controversial data sets; plenty of USGS data but no DOJ or military data, for example. The U.K.’s data site, in contrast, includes 22 military data sets at launch, including one called Suicide and Open Verdict Deaths in the U.K. Regular Armed Forces.

One request that users of both sites still have is for data to be made available in standardized formats. The U.K. site does include a prominent promotion of the Semantic Web, no doubt a tribute to Berners-Lee’s focus on the paradigm as the next step for the future of the web. More standardized, structured data is expected to be the direction that the program tries to get government agencies to move toward in the future.

Discuss

Jennifer Lyon, a contestant on the tenth season of CBS’ long-running reality drama Survivor, has passed away after lengthy battle against breast cancer. She was 37.

The reality star passed away at her home in Oregon on Tuesday night, according to her rep. Lyon, who finished fourth on Survivor: Palau in 2005, was diagnosed with the disease in 2005, and later underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy.

“I was completely shocked and overwhelmed,” Lyon told Us Weekly at the time. “I felt fine that day; in fact, I’ve been healthy my entire life.”

Austin Carty, an ex-Survivor: Panama star, dated Jennifer in 2006. He recalled her fondly when speaking to Us on Wednesday : “Jen was a genuinely selfless, sweet-natured person. She always had a smile. She cared about every person.”

Two-time contestant Eliza Orlins said via Twitter: “Jenn Lyon brought more good to this world in her almost 38 years than most will in a lifetime. Jenn, I’ll miss you. R.I.P.”

Last week, actress Helen Mirren and her husband, director Taylor Hackford, participated in General Motors’ Project Driveway by field testing a fuel cell-powered Chevrolet Equinox, reports AutoBlogGreen.

Both husband and wife were very impressed by the zero-emission, petroleum-free hydrogen electric vehicle, and for different reasons.

Check it out!

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Chevy And Hummer’s Surprising Green Vehicle Sales In Japan
• Electric Cars Have A Huge Hill To Climb

Small by Choice, Whether Clients Like It or Not

Neat profile of Great Lake, a small Chicago pizza shop that is very opinionated. The couple that runs it wanted to start a business that reflected their values: a neighborhood shop that purchases top-quality ingredients directly from farmers, makes every pizza by hand and serves great food at affordable prices. No substitutions allowed either. “When we put options together, they’re put together for a reason. We have such an edited menu, and it’s shocking how much people still want to manipulate it,” says co-owner Lydia Esparza. [thx MG]

Dr. Yuri Gorokhovich

Even in densely populated New York City and its surrounding area, there are thousands of acres of vacant land that could be saved for conservation, according to a new study authored by Lehman College’s Dr. Yuri Gorokhovich.

Dr. Gorokhovich, whose findings were published in the December 2009 issue of The Journal of Coastal Conservation, studied the counties bordering Long Island Sound for the last two years after receiving a $74,000 grant from the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission.

He identified 744 individual parcels of vacant land at least five acres in size that could be set aside for conservation. In addition, he mapped out 122 contiguous clusters of vacant land—some 14,661 acres in total—in five counties: Westchester (246 acres), the Bronx (247 acres), Queens (1,246 acres), Nassau (2,036 acres) and Suffolk (10,885). Each land cluster, he says, could be used to make New York City and Long Island greener.

According to Dr. Gorokhovich, the report has been submitted to both the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Long Island Sound Study (LISS), and “it’s up to them to put these recommendations into action.” LISS is a cooperative effort created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the states of Connecticut and New York to protect and improve the health of the Sound. It involves researchers, regulators, user groups and other concerned organizations and individuals.

For Dr. Gorokhovich, the study was an outgrowth of his interest in New York City waters. For nine years, he worked for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, managing the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) group in charge of mapping the metropolitan area’s water supply.

A member of Lehman’s Department of Environmental, Geographic and Geological Sciences, he earned a master’s in engineering and marine geology from Odessa State University (Ukraine) and his doctorate in earth and environmental sciences from the CUNY Graduate Center. He also was an associate research scientist for the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University.

A senior college of the City University of New York, Lehman enrolls more than 12,000 students and offers over 100 undergraduate and graduate programs in the arts and sciences, business, education and other professional areas, including a new interdisciplinary major in environmental sciences.

Contact: Joseph Tirella / 718-960-5746

From TheStreet.com:

I fully recognize that the crowd usually outsmarts the remnants and that the momentum in health care stocks and in the overall market has been strong.

The conventional view is that the Massachusetts election result will kill health reform and, thus, is bullish for health care stocks and for the market as a whole, but, for several reasons, I think that the crowd could prove mistaken on this one. I would not be surprised to see both health care stocks and the major market indices sell off over the short term.

A Scott Brown Senate win was growing more likely over the course of the past week.

Read the whole story at TheStreet.com >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Scott Brown’s Victory Means Obama Is About To Rain Hellfire Down On Wall Street
• The Scott Brown Selloff Gets Worse, Dow Down Nearly 160 Points
• Surprise! S&P Futures Heading South After Scott Brown Victory

A l’occasion du salon de Genève, la compacte de Toyota se refait une beauté, intérieure comme extérieure. Et surtout, l’hybride arrive à grands pas…

–> Toyota vient de communiquer les 5 photos ci-dessous, ainsi que quelques détails concernant cette Auris phase 2. Le géant japonais promet, sans les montrer, des matériaux intérieurs de meilleure qualité et une gamme de moteurs plus respectueux de l’environnement. Pour la qualité intérieure, pas plus d’infos pour l’instant, mais Toyota sait faire, il serait donc dommage de continuer à priver l’Auris d’une finition à la hauteur des standards de la catégorie, comme jusqu’à présent.

-L’Auris restylée sera en vente dès le printemps avec deux motorisations diesel et deux essence, toutes les 4 bénéficiant du label Toyota Optimal Drive,c’est à dire à consommations et rejets de CO² réduits.

-Dès l’été prochain, Toyota commercialisera également une version hybride HSD reprenant la technologie de la Prius III. Grâce ces motorisations renouvelées, Toyota annonce que l’Auris restylée offrira « la gamme de moteurs la plus innovante et écologique du segment C (compactes) « . Et ce sera manifestement la cas. Voilà qui devrait permettre à l’Auris, jusqu’alors peu côtée dans le segment des compactes en Europe, de repartir de l’avant, en marquant de sérieux points sur la concurrence.

Nouveau: pour profiter facilement et rapidement des notifications de nouveautés sur le site, pensez à vous abonner via Twitter. Chaque modification, nouvel article ou nouvelle vidéo sur notre chaîne Youtube, fait l’objet d’un Tweet immédiat!

While heading for the checkout counter at the grocery store, Dad used to blaze right past the express lane. When asked about it, he’d respond, “Would you rather wait for twelve people with one item or one person with twelve items?” Presumably, there was a lesson in there about not letting a gimmick cloud one’s vision of the overall deal. From there, a corollary might reasonably be drawn that certain things, if not delivered satisfactorily, will never justify having chosen a lower price.

Dr. Francis Palmer, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, makes a similar point with regard to choosing a cosmetic surgeon. Whether you undergo breast augmentation, liposuction, a tummy tuck, a face lift, whatever; it’s generally best to get it right the first time. Don’t be afraid to ask pointed questions, get a feeling for a doctor’s aesthetic sense, or get a second opinion if you’re not sure the doc is up to the job. After you’ve found a surgeon who can do the job right, you can then worry about lesser matters.

Read the rest of Dr. Palmer’s recommendations on drfpalmer.com

By Gary Howard

Washington, D.C., January 20, 2010 – Last night, voters in Massachusetts continued a growing trend by sending the message to Washington that the unpopular health care legislation may be a serious liability for its supporters in Congress. 

Over the past few months, citizens nationwide have voiced their displeasure with the proposed government takeover of medicine through rallies, town hall disruptions, and recent elections. According to national polls and polls of Massachusetts voters, much of the public recognizes the need for reform but disagrees with the measures offered by the current health care bill.

Alternatives to the current bill, like the ones offered by Campaign for Liberty’s project Operation Health Freedom (http://www.OperationHealthFreedom.com), may have a better chance of giving the public the solutions they seek.  

“Campaign for Liberty is proposing that Congress try passing legislation that promotes true health freedom,” said John Tate, President of Campaign for Liberty. “The same government that has given us trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is not going to fix our health care system with this latest bureaucratic scheme. It’s time to vote health freedom.”

The Operation Health Freedom package includes legislation introduced by Congressman Ron Paul. The cornerstone of the package is H.R. 1495, the Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act of 2009, which provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses, a tax credit for premiums for high-deductible insurance policies connected with a Health Savings Account (HSA), and allows seniors to use funds in an HSA to pay for a medigap policy.  In addition, it makes all medical expenses tax deductible.

Also included are H.R. 2629, a bill that prevents the government from requiring people to purchase health insurance, and H.R. 3217, introduced by Congressman John Shadegg, which permits the purchase of health insurance across state lines and will ultimately lower costs due to the resulting competition.

One of ToMoCo’s sister companies secured a supply deal in Argentina today whereby the world’s largest automaker would have access to a supply of lithium that could help them keep their lead in gasoline-electric hybrid cars. Lithium is expected to show an increase in demand as its costly but more efficient nature makes it the leading choice of metal to power hybrid and electric vehicles.

Toyota currently uses nickel-metal-hydride batteries for the Prius hybrid, but plans on using lithium-ion for their future models. Battery supply has long been the main hurdle that comes along with hybrid production, and Toyota is securing its future and position in the hybrid game by securing the materials it is going to need for its future battery production.

The new batteries are to be jointly developed by Toyota subsidiary Toyota Tsusho Corp., and Australian based Orocobre Ltd. Subject to final approval, Toyota Tsusho will acquire a 25 percent equity interest in the joint venture while Orocobre will retain the other 75% and continue to operate the venture.

As part of their efforts to secure stable sources of rare metals, the Japanese government-affiliated firm Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. seeks to take a part of Toyota Tsuho’s stake in the project. “With other countries, such as China, investing in mines around the world, we want to be more aggressive to support the private sector in securing stable supplies.” said Hiroshi Kuwayama, a deputy director at Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

Bolivia holds around one half of the world’s lithium reserves, but does not yet mine the metal. China, Chile, and Brazil also hold large reserves.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

Introduction and Summary:

 Springs by David Glover is an easy to read book that explains of functions of many different types of springs. The book is filled with many pictures and illustrations and every other page provides a “fact file” about springs. This book offers clear definitions for compression and tension. It highlights the use of springs in doors, beds, chairs, locks, umbrellas, pens, scales, bicycles and even staplers.

 Curriculum Connections:

 This book can be used as a starting point to a lesson on simple machines and how they function. Perhaps by first asking students how many springs they think might be in their classroom. It is a good resource in reference to SOL 3.2(b) types of simple machines and 3.2(d) examples of simple and compound machines found in the the school, home, and work environments. It is appropriate for demonstrating how simple machines are everywhere and that people use them every day. The book also provides a glossary of terms on the last page.

Additional Resources:

How Springs Work: website that explains how springs work, what they are made from and what they are used for.

Simple Machines Lesson Plan: lesson plan that briefly discusses Leonardo da Vinci and his use of simple machines.

Simple Machines Activity: in this activity students have to decide which simple machines to use to try to repair a house.

General Information:
Book: Springs
Author: David Glover
Publisher: Rigby Interactive Library
Publication Date: 1997
Pages: 24
Grade Range: 3-4
ISBN: 1-4034-0060-1

To be fair, it may have been Bono who first made the connection explicit, but others are beginning to notice that there are some worrisome parallels between what is being pushed via ACTA and other methods and ongoing internet censorship in China. The latest, as pointed out by the EFF, is writer Rebecca MacKinnon, who walks you through the way in which Chinese censorship is based on the same faulty principle as ACTA’s push for secondary liability for ISPs.

Let’s take a step back to explain this. We’ve discussed, in the past, that the way China operates its “Great Firewall” is not by explicitly banning anything. Instead, it simply puts liability on third parties such as ISPs and says they’ll take the blame and face the consequences for any “bad stuff” that is allowed through to Chinese users. As MacKinnon notes, this is really “intermediary liability,” or (obviously enough) putting the liability for actions on an intermediary to force them to try to curb the behavior of end users. In this way, the Chinese government can claim that it doesn’t censor the internet and there’s no such thing as a “Great Firewall,” because it doesn’t exist as a single thing. It’s just that the government will punish ISPs who don’t block “bad stuff.”

But this “intermediary liability” is a big deal, because under any common sense approach to things, you should never blame an third party/intermediary for the actions of end users. And yet, that’s exactly what the entertainment industry has been pushing. One of the key components being pushed for the internet section of ACTA is the idea of expanding “secondary liability” or “contributory copyright infringement” or whatever they want to call it. In reality, it’s the same intermediary liability that China uses to have ISPs censor content. The idea is that if you put the liability for file sharing on ISPs, then they will be forced to figure out ways to stop it — just like ISPs in China are forced to create their own censorship campaigns.

And, of course, this isn’t even hypothetical. We’ve got some real world examples. That’s because much of the early language in ACTA was modeled on the “free trade” agreement that the US pressured South Korea into signing. That included such intermediary liability for ISPs when it came to copyright infringement, and guess what happened? First, the country felt it needed to start kicking people off the internet based on a “three strikes” plan, just to satisfy the treaty. Then service providers quickly started banning all sorts of activities, including any music uploads and many video uploads. After all, it’s not worth it for the service providers to be liable, so they block the ability to upload all sorts of content. And, of course, with such liability there, others went even further, with some service providers even banning advertisements for any kind of website that could allow copyright infringement, because of the fear that, via such intermediary liability, they may get blamed just for allowing an advertisement that pointed to a site that could be used for copyright infringement.

When you look at the details, it’s incredibly similar to the way in which China crafted its Great Firewall. Impose such secondary liability that puts the responsibility on a third party, and and watch those third parties basically lock down all sorts of additional things, just to be safe. Of course, the old school entertainment industry doesn’t mind, because preventing you from communicating isn’t their problem. They don’t see the internet as a communications platform anyway. They’re hoping it’s the next broadcast medium, and clearing the decks via a Great Firewall an intermediary liability system works right into those plans. The more you look at the details, the more it looks like the entertainment industry is doing everything possible to encircle the internet to make it appear more like a broadcast entertainment medium, rather than a communications medium.

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