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Possibly the most dangerous question since “Does this make my butt look big?”

Is fatness ugly? This is a question that seems destined to become increasingly significant, controversial and touchy in the future, as more and more Americans cross the threshold from lean and trim to not even close. Indeed, it has already generated some heat for an international dating site which in all seriousness calls itself BeautifulPeople.com, and which recently booted some five thousand of its members out into the virtual street for having “let themselves go” weight-wise over the holidays.

The bootees had evidently posted updated photos showing their current, newly expanded selves, and had been voted off the BeatifulPeople island (whether by ballot or committee or other mechanism is not clear). In any case, the founder of the organization, Robert Hintze, minced no words.

“(O)ur members demand that the high standard of beauty be upheld,” he said. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Evidently, the concept he’s promoting is that “beauty” is properly defined by those who consider themselves singularly attractive and belong to a club made of people more or less like them. Think “sorority,” but with even more vanity and snottiness. BeautifulPeople.com claims to have around 550,000 members in some 16 nations worldwide, and the rest of us can probably be deeply thankful that they have found each other.

Frankly, we’re surprised nobody’s given him a fat lip

On the one hand, at a time when various “fat acceptance” organizations are becoming increasingly active and vocal, it’s surprising that Hintze’s comment have sparked little, if any, expression of outrage from the defenders of girth. On the other hand, they may simply regard BeautifulPeople.com as too preposterous and irrelevant to take seriously.

Nevertheless, and just in case you’re curious, it may be worth noting that the United States led all pudgy evictees with 1,520, followed by runners-up the UK at 832, and Canada at 533.

For some reason, the entire inane affair calls to mind Groucho Marx’s timelessly sage observation, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News (REF3076322B7)

“Beautiful People” club turns ugly, expels thousands of members for gaining weight

Considering the amount of hype and buzz that came about when Dean Kamen’s Segway was first introduced, it seems like the company is going for the exact opposite in discussing its recent merger with a UK company. The company didn’t even mention it for nearly a month, and only said something once rumors started spreading, and then the blog post they put up about it gives very little in the way of detail. They don’t even mention the company’s name:

Segway Inc. is pleased to announce that in connection with a merger that occurred on December 24, 2009, Segway was acquired by a company that is based in the United Kingdom. The acquiring company is backed by Jimi Heselden, a prominent U.K. businessman and the Chairman of Hesco Bastion. Mr. Heselden is also an investor in the independently owned Segway U.K. distributorship.

The company also got some funding (and lost its latest in a long, long, long line of CEOs), but in an interview with the local paper, Dean Kamen admits that he doesn’t even know who the new investor is.

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Google Hackers Targeted Source Code of More Than 30 Companies

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Just prior to the projected sale of Swedish brand Volvo to a Chinese company Geely, Volvo’s chairman of the board, Finn Johnsson, decided to resign and pursue his own interests. He will be replaced by Louis Schweitzer, member of the board since 2001.

I have worked on various Volvo Boards since 1989, in particular the Board of AB Volvo, of which I have been a member since 1998 and Chairman since 2004, but I need to free up time for a growing number of increasingly comprehensive assignments, w… (read more)

Article Tags: ClimateGate, Headline Story, Joe Daleo

(This is a preliminary introduction – final much more complete report will be posted here and on SPPI, which has supported the study shortly)

The global data bases have serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long term temperature trends. Especially since most of the issues produce a warm bias in the data.

The Climategate whistleblower proved what those of us dealing with data for decades already knew. The data was degrading and was being manipulated. The IPCC and their supported scientists have worked to remove the pesky Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the period emailer Tom Wigley referred to as the “warm 1940s blip.” They have also worked to pump up the recent warm cycle that ended in 2001.

Click source to read FULL report by Joe D’Aleo

Source: icecap.us

Read in full with comments »   

Capcom has released a new triler for Desperate Escape, the second downloadable mission for Resident Evil 5: Alternative Edition. Don’t worry about the Japanese text at the beginning. The audio’s in English.

If you really are a fanatic about Super Mario Brothers, then how about placing some pine boxes that resemble the Question Mark boxes from the game in your home? Each question box features an accompanying power or coin. It’s too bad these don’t actually work in real life, because I would hit my head into the question mark box till it bled if it actually did spit out coins.  The sizes of the boxes are roughly 5×5 and the smaller box on top is 3×3. They are available at Etsy for $25.

Someone has put The Tonight Show up for sale on Craigslist — and they’re willing to trade for Coldplay tickets! Irishman Conan will likely lose his gig as host of NBC’s flagship late night show to predecessor Jay Leno just seven months after taking the reigns — and fans are having a Field Day sticking it to Leno and NBC bosses.

The ad, obtained by Zap2It, reads:

“4 SALE: BARELY-USED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW – MAKE ME AN OFFER!!! (Universal Studios). This is a chance of a lifetime to own your very own late night talk show–guaranteed to last for up to seven months!! Really must see to appreciate…..”

Here’s a bit of additional info for those you who may be interested:

– Measures 100′ x 100′ x 32′ – plenty of room for a futon!

– Buyer must honor Barry Manilow booking next Thursday

The new issue of “O Magazine” has a cover article entitled “100 Things That Are (Actually) Getting Better.” I was thinking ‘getting better’ as in despite a rotten economy, etc. But now that I’ve read it, I’m thinking it means getting better since the other O! took office…

This was the first one that caught my eye:

“The CDC’s National Center for Health says that American divorce has dropped every year since 2006, bringing it down to the lowest point since 1970.”

That is good and I was hoping the rest of the list would be as uplifting. There were silly additions like M&Ms in more colors and better girdles, but there were also these three gems buried in the list:

#29 “Our reputation around the world. Looks like the Ugly American has gotten a makeover. According to the Pew Research Center, the nation’s standings on the rise in Latin America, Africa, much of Asia and Western Europe (a certain Norwegian prize committee comes to mind…).”

The there was #67 -which I thought was just a bit strange:

“Beirut. With chic hotels popping up, a thriving gay scene taking hold, the thrumming bars and clubs of the trendy Gemmayzeh district becoming international hot spots Beirut is rebuilding itself in high style.”

And, of course, #89:

“The EPA. A shot of much-needed vitality and resolve has come to the Environmental protection Agency courtesy of Lisa Jackson, its first ever African American chief and in her cross hairs: greenhouse gasses, hazardous waste sites, climate change, tailpipe emissions, protection of our waterways and clean air standards.”

(Source for all bolded quotes: O Magazine, February 2010, Volume 11, Number 2)

Maybe I’m just jealous. Oprah has this huge platform and I’d be lying to say that if I had it, I wouldn’t use it the same way. I guess it just really bothers me that her political views don’t reflect her life struggle. She came from nothing -she is the American dream. Proof that Capitalism and the free market system is alive and well… Proof that anyone (poor, female, minority, etc.) CAN make it with hard work, a strong work ethic and perseverance.

January is half over, the news from Haiti is heartbreaking, and right now it seems that the snow will never melt.  In all, it’s been a tough few weeks. Fortunately, the 8-K that Red Robin (RRGB) recently filed lets us focus for a moment on something positive and bestow footnoted’s first Gold Star of 2010.

Red Robins are bright, colorful restaurants that keep kids happy with balloons, coloring pages, and visits from the company’s mascot.  Adults get to enjoy the unlimited seasoned fries and the ubiquitous sports-channelling tv’s until the food (which is, happily, several notches above fast food fare) arrives. Of course, just because a restaurant’s popular with customers like me doesn’t mean that its corporate filings are equally appealing to its investors.  But in this case, they may be.

Under the August 15, 2008 restated employment agreement that governed Chairman/CEO Dennis Mullen’s employment until this past Monday, he was “eligible to receive a cash bonus for each of the years ended December 31, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 of not less than fifty-percent (50%) of his annual base salary if certain performance metrics determined by the Compensation Committee for the year ended December 31, 2009 were met.”

The company said that even though the metrics were met for 2009, the Compensation Committee requested that Mullen waive his cash bonus for 2010, 2011, and 2012.  Mullen agreed to do so.  Since he made $725,000 in base salary during 2009, the cash bonus would have been at least $362,500 this year and at least $400,000 in 2011 and 2012.

Instead, the new employment agreement states that Mullen’s bonus eligibility through 2012 “will be based solely on his participation in the Company’s annual incentive plan.” In a trade-off, the Compensation Committee increased Mullen’s annual incentive bonus target to 100% of his base salary, rather than the 90% target he had in 2009.  And it increased Mullen’s base salary from $725,000 to $800,000, although it should be noted that Mullen’s salary did not change in 2008 or 2009.

But there’s more!  It continues:

…the Amendment terminates Mr. Mullen’s right to be paid or reimbursed for personal travel expenses incurred by Mr. Mullen in commuting between Arizona and Colorado, as well as the tax gross-up related to such payments.  The Amendment also deletes the 280G tax gross-up provision…In connection with the Amendment, the Compensation Committee also determined that, when granted, 50% of the annual equity grants for 2010 to Mr. Mullen will be performance-based instead of 100% time-based.

We don’t read a lot of filings that document an executive’s willingness to waive a bonus, give up the right to be reimbursed for personal travel costs and gross-ups, and adopt a performance-based system to determine whether he will receive half of his potential equity grants. But clearly it’s worth a rare footnoted Gold Star.

…a dog instead of buying a puppy. This is a big step for me. Trusting a dog I didn’t raise from a pup around my kids…

So I’ve been looking for the perfect fit for our family. A breed that I know and trust. A dog that is proven to be above reproach around children. A dog that had the “right” story.

First, let me just say that the application process (and competition) is insane! I felt like telling them to leave my pages on file in case I ever wanted to forward it to a human adoption agency. It was seriously that intense. I even had to send pics of our yard, every room of our house and one of each of us…

But, last week I finally found her. Lola, L. O. L. A. Lola. A three year old French Bulldog. She’s currently in upstate NY and I am going to get her on Sunday.

There are so many dogs out there being surrendered because of the economy. Most breeds have their own rescue groups –so choosing to adopt doesn’t mean you have to end up with a dog/breed/mix that you aren’t crazy about…

Lola is already spayed, housebroken and obedience trained…wish I could have gotten my kids that way! 😉

Il y a quelques jours, le 10, nous vous donnions déjà les caractéristiques essentielles de la future M5 dans le Fil News BMW. Quelques menus détails ayant encore filtré, c’est l’occasion de faire un nouveau point.

–> Retrouvez toutes les infos du groupe BMW et de ses marques sur le Fil News BMW/Mini.

–> La nouvelle mouture serait donc équipée du V8 biturbo des X5 et X6 M, mais avec une puissance qui passerait à 578cv. et surtout un couple phénoménal de 725 Nm. Quant-au 0/100, il serait abattu en 4,4 secondes, contre 4,7 pour la génération actuelle.

-Le tour de force de BMW consiste à baisser de 30% en une génération les émssions de CO² de la sportive. Selon BM, la M5 doit également passer par le downsizing (tout est relatif avec un V8 !…), et bénéficier des bienfaits du programme Efficient Dynamics. La M5 recevra donc un récupérateur d’énergie au freinage, aucune précision par contre quant-au stop&start, mais il n’y a pas de raison qu’il ne soit pas du voyage.

-Sur cette nouvelle génération, la M5 ne serait plus disponible qu’en berline, la version Touring étant abandonnée. La voiture sera présentée en fin d’année 2010, pour une commercialisation dans la foulée du salon de Genève en mars 2011.

-Enfin, puisqu’on est dans les rendus, en voici 2 nouveaux de la Série 5 Touring, qui viendra renforcer la gamme F10 contre un supplément de 2500€ par rapport à la berline (+ le spyshot déjà publié), puis plus bas les galleries des Séries 5 F10 berline et GT:

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Retrouvez toutes les vidéos concernant BMW & Mini, et bien d’autres, sur notre Chaîne Youtube.

A few weeks ago a company I work with lost an amazing opportunity. We gave them the idea to create one of the best brand blogs I’ve ever seen.

They said no. Instead, they decided to create a social media strategy that was boring and dictated by legalities. Just imagine a blog that doesn’t allow customer comments. The campaign not only offered zero value to customers, but in the end it ignored them by turning the blog into a press release platform. Ultimately, the brand decided to trash the project and walk away from social media.

Sponsor

This is guest post was written by Samir Balwani, an emerging technologies strategist at Morpheus Media. You can follow him on Twitter

The biggest reason most social media marketing campaigns fail is fear – fear of jumping into something new and trying a social media marketing strategy.

Social media marketing doesn’t always guarantee short-term results, could be risky and doesn’t always work. But what most brands don’t realize is that doing nothing may be even riskier.

Engaging consumers online requires a brand to stop worrying and become personable. The scenario where a brand image is forever ruined is such an anomaly that brands need not worry. The act of interacting with a customer inherently humanizes the brand, which protects it from potentially brand-shattering backlashes. Consumers are more likely to support and champion a brand that they feel connected to.

Remember Motrin? Didn’t Thinks So

Even the most well-known social gaffes are quickly forgotten. For example, Motrin’s controversial YouTube ad caused little long-term brand damage.

The Motrin story starts with the release of what many mothers considered a controversial ad. When a number of mothers on Twitter found it offensive, Motrin responded quickly, removed the ad, and posted an apology. Shortly after an apology was posted, Motrin consumers stopped caring about the marketing mistake. They recognized that someone made a mistake, and the story blew over.

Although mistakes occur, the effects can be controlled with an understanding of online PR and proper online reputation management. The average consumers won’t find a marketing failure unless they specifically search for it. A Google search for Motrin on Jan. 11, 2010 returned only Motrin product information for the first eight results. The 9th position is the actual commercial. However, even that can be remedied with online reputation management. Realizing that smart brands can engage in social media marketing with minimal risk can help overcome the fear of backlash.

In a digital world where consumers have a low attention span and news moves quickly, the fear of permanently ruining a brand by engaging online need not be entertained. At most, a brand will experience short-lived obstacles and minor backlashes as it grows to understand how to engage online.

The fear of error is a natural one, but it’s not the only one that can cause a brand’s social media marketing campaign to fail. Most brands tend to also be afraid of losing control over their image.

It’s ironic that most companies are afraid to trust their consumers but expect their customers to trust them.

Next page: Define a Brand With the Push of a Button

Hot red dust, roads that make you feel your bones might bounce out and children everywhere shouting ‘mzungu, mzungu how are you?’ A bit different to battling the ice of Manchester to get to work.

Rwenzori Region

I am so lucky to have been given the chance to go and visit some of the work Oxfam and its partners are doing in the Bundibugyo region in western Uganda. It is a stunningly beautiful mountainous area, but that comes at a cost. The area is already suffering hugely from climate change – The ice caps of the mountains has receded by almost 40 % from 1955. This results in flooding rivers at some times of the year and droughts at others. The area is also prone to land slides, increased cases of diseases like cholera and malaria, and crop failure due to the increasing temperatures.

Oxfam’s partner Norracol

Oxfam works with partner organisations in its programmes in its attempts to overcome poverty and suffering. Norracol is one of the partners working in the Bundibugyo region trying to help local communities adapt to the affects of climate change they are already facing.

Bulirehe (an old refugee camp from the recently ended civil conflict)

After a warm welcome I was amazed to see the effect that simple climate adaptation methods are having on this village already. Employing a system of model farmers the community is being given some more drought/disease resistant forms of crops to be able to grow since the more variable weather meant the old varieties could no longer feed them.

‘ The difference now is food security. We have food to eat and even some little to sell. Now I have more money for school fees for my children.’ Scholar Mughasoki

The village has even been able to use some of the profits from the better yielding crops to buy some community beehives. And friends and neighbours come to them for seedlings so that they too can grow the better variety of crops.

Kakuka 3 in the mountains

After a rather steep climb to the remote village of Kakuka 3 I was taught about the harsh day-to-day reality of living with climate change up a mountain. They fear land slides caused by too much rain that might sweep all their hard work and crops away. People here rely on subsistence farming to get food to eat and now fear whenever they hear the rain pounding on their roofs.

Working with Oxfam, model farmers in the community have been given materials and training in digging contour trenches to help stop the land slides and to trap water in the dry periods. They are hard work to dig (can take several days to create) and need to keep being dug out every few days when the rains come but they are worth it to protect the land. Many people locally have started to copy the techniques – a simple idea that can make a huge difference.

Sliding back down the steep mountain path where the nearest medical clinic is several hours walk away it brings it home to you just how important it is to promote this kind of work. Training people with new skills and giving them the tools and seeds needed to get started will naturally spread across the community and really change lives. Climate adaptation is necessary now for these community’s survival and I can’t wait to get back and to keep campaigning to get more funding to help to extend work like this into more vulnerable communities. Maybe if they have held the international climate talks in Bundibugyo instead of Copenhagen they would have realised the urgency of reaching a global deal that is commited to funding climate adaptation…

For many of us, the ability to search through emails is critical. When we’re on the go we need a quick, reliable way to find messages, whether we search by subject, sender, or a bit of text in the message. BlackBerry does take care of this, but they’re not search experts like Google. The latest addition to Google’s suite of mobile apps: email and contact search. It comes as part of the regular Google Mobile App, so it can also search the web. This is a plus for Verizon users who prefer Google over Bing. A few weeks back, Verizon took Google off the Go To screen in the browser, replacing it with Bing (though mine has yet to change). The app is the best replacement for that feature.

(more…)

Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, Lotus

Continue reading Lotus announces Dr Robert Hentschel and Paul Newsome as engineering directors

Lotus announces Dr Robert Hentschel and Paul Newsome as engineering directors originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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H1N1 and seasonal influenza beware – new heroes have arrived, ready to defend the population and fight a viral battle, via Facebook, in the form of ‘Flu Fighters!’

Developed by researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a new Facebook application called “I’m a Flu Fighter!” gives you the opportunity to mobilize and take action against the threat of influenza – by telling your friends that you got the H1N1/seasonal flu vaccine and encouraging them to do the same. Launching as part of National Influenza Vaccination Week, the app also provides information on influenza – including a flu vaccine locator – courtesy of HHS’s Flu.gov.

The app is garnering high profile attention and was even plugged on the White House blog on Saturday by Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius.

The application is part of the HealthySocial project, founded two years ago by Ben Reis, PhD, of the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP). CHIP has been instrumental in connecting the public with health care issues through technology. Reis and his team are working on a range of free social apps that allow users to collaborate with their friends to encourage better health.

“Social networks have tremendous potential to do good in the world,” says Reis. “By leveraging existing social connections, people can spread positive health behaviors and attitudes amongst their friends and loved ones.”

This isn’t the first social media tool that tracks flu to come out of CHIP. In September, they released a free iPhone app called “Outbreaks Near Me,” which tracks disease outbreaks in real time. The app got a lot of press coverage, including articles in the Wall Street Journal, Time, ABC News, USA Today and Scientific American.