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Filed under: Motorsports, Videos

This is what we mean when we say Travis Pastrana is insane. Generally, whenever the world sees a ridiculous freestyle dirtbike or automobile trick, it goes off without a hitch. It almost seems like a foregone conclusion that the rider is going to execute a perfect jump or flip, wave to the cameras and hug his significant others. There’s a reason for that…

That reason? In a word: Practice. Yes, just like your first grade teacher drilled into you decades ago, practice makes perfect. Usually. As you’ll see in the video after the break, practice sessions are just as dangerous and death-defying as the actual stunts themselves. In fact, sometimes even more so.

For this particular feat of craziness, Pastrana is actually planning to jump off a ramp at the end of a pier over 250 feet of water to a waiting barge as part of a New Year’s celebration. Assuming practice sessions indicate that it’s possible… which, well, just hit the jump to watch the video.

[Source: YouTube via Auto-Focus.us]

Continue reading VIDEO: Pastrana practice for record New Year’s Eve jump goes awry

VIDEO: Pastrana practice for record New Year’s Eve jump goes awry originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Brookings' latest December Metro Monitor makes it clear why Americans may be extremely divided on the strength of the economic recovery -- America is a large, diverse country and not every metropolitan area is recovering at the same rate.

There is a huge disparity in terms of economic performance by region. Check out the table below, it shows one measure of local economic activity, Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP). This is basically a city's GDP.

We can see that while for some metropolitan areas, such as Baltimore, Houston, Austin, and Ogden, the economy is growing. In fact, their growth is pretty robust, given that the percentage changes shown is for just a three month period. Annualized, these top four regions are growing their economies at roughly a 6.8% to 8.4% clip!

Yet it's a completely different picture for many other regions. At the bottom of the list, metropolitan areas such as Allentown, Pittsburg, and Cape Coral are still experiencing a GMP recession. They are shrinking their economies at rates ranging from about -2 to -2.8%, annualized.

Thus when someone from Austin proclaims the recession is over, it's understandable why someone in Pittburgh might think they're full of it. Our local experience may not be representative of what's actually happening to the nation as a whole.

Check out Brookings' full December report here.

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See Also:

• If You Thought The Economy Was Being Inflated By The Stimulus, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
• Latham Partner Hopeful About Economy, Not Holding Back At Barney's
• Financial Bubble Spreads To The Philipines, Where Markets Are Soaring Despite Terrible Economy

Three years ago, video hosting site Vimeo got a lot of attention for itself with a “recruiting” video of sorts that was one of the first popular “lip dub” videos, which are now quite popular. In it, pretty much the entire Vimeo staff is seen singing and dancing to the song Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger. However, it looks like that particular lip dub may now get Vimeo, and parent firm InterActive Corp. in a bit of trouble. Copycense points us to a new lawsuit filed against Vimeo by Capitol Records (really, EMI) alleging copyright infringement. The way they’re getting around the DMCA safe harbors and the Veoh ruling is pointing to Vimeo’s own lip dubs and its apparent encouragement that others should make lip dubs as well. Of course, it’s difficult to argue that lip dubs damage the labels in any way. The popular lip dubs seem to do a lot to expand the recognition of a song and an artist, and some musicians have been known to encourage such things. But, of course, that’s not how the major record labels tend to view things…

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Russia, Europe | Anomalous Islands

Solovki, or Solovetsky Islands as they are officially known are a tiny archipelago hidden in the most remote corner of Europe, in the far north of the continent, in Onega Bay of White Sea. Despite its isolated location this small group of islands has a grim yet remarkable history.

Solovki have been inhabited since the earliest of times. In the middle ages they were one of the furthest outposts of the Russian Orthodox Church. Over time, despite being at the edges of the empire, the Solovetsky Monastery become one of the wealthiest landowners and most influential religious centers in Russia, a role which set the stage for the first bloody phase in the history of archipelago.

In the mid 1600s the Russian Orthodox Church descended into schism, or so called Raskol, a dispute fueled by political reasons as much as religious. Solovetsky Monastery become the refuge to the Raskolniks, or the Old Believers, as they were called. The Raskolniks, or Raskols (though misleadingly, not the entomology of the word rascal) were opposed to the unification of church practices between the Greek and Russian churches, imposed by Patriarch Nikon.

In an age when religious tolerance was virtually unknown on the continent of Europe, religious dissidence was suppressed by brutal force. The monastery endured an 8 year long siege by the forces of Emperor Alexei and Patriarch Nikon. The siege ended by a betrayal and imperial troops managed to sneak in through an unprotected passage. Only 60 out of 500 rebels survived the ensuing massacre. Large supplies of food were discovered in the monastery. Sufficient enough to withstand the siege for several more years.

From then on the monastery served as a place of exile of political opponents of Tsarist Regime.

The monastery also served as a strategic bastion of the empire in ensuing wars, repelling foreign attacks during the Livonian War (16th century), the well named Time of Troubles (17th century), the Crimean War (19th century), and the Russian Civil War (20th century).

The next and perhaps most infamous chapter of the archipelago’s history begun immediately after the October Revolution. In 1921 at a time when Lenin was still firmly in power in Moscow the islands were selected as a site for the first Soviet Prison Camp, the first of the infamous Gulags, and a place of detention of many prominent intellectuals deemed enemies of the Revolution by Bolsheviks.

The gulags notoriety is noted in Master and Margarita, novel by Bulgakov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spends a great deal of Part III of The Gulag Archipelago discussing the development of Solovki and the conditions there during the early Soviet regime.

The prison camp was dismantled in 1939 on the eve of World War II when Solovki islands once again become an important military outpost.

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked a federal judge in San Francisco to quash a baseless subpoena aimed at outing an anonymous online critic of a Pennsylvania company called USA Technologies. A hearing in the case is set for Friday.

Earlier this year, EFF’s client — Yahoo! user “stokklerk” — posted to the Yahoo! message board dedicated to the company, criticizing USA Technologies and its CEO George Jensen, Jr., for plummeting stock prices, high compensation rates for executives, and consistent lack of profitability. Another anonymous poster had similar complaints. In response, USA Technologies filed suit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that the statements violated federal securities regulations because they were part of a “scheme” for the authors to “enrich themselves through undisclosed manipulative trading tactics.” USA Technologies also alleged that the online posts were defamatory. As part of that lawsuit, USA Technologies issued a subpoena out of the Northern District of California to Yahoo! asking for the critics’ identities.

“The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously so people can express their views without fear of retribution or reprisal,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “USA Technologies might not appreciate the glare of such public criticism, but Internet users like ‘stokklerk’ have a right to post such criticism in a public forum.”

The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, especially about matters of public concern such as the performance of management of publicly traded companies. In addition, several state legislatures — including California — have passed laws to further protect individuals against lawsuits targeting them for exercising First Amendment rights. In its reply brief filed Friday, EFF underscores the problems with the USA Technologies lawsuit and asks the court to block attempts to enforce the Yahoo! subpoena.

For more information on attending Friday’s hearing, contact [email protected].

For the full brief in support of the motion to quash the subpoena:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/usatechnologies/USAT-motiontoquashrepl…

For more on this case:
http://www.eff.org/cases/usa-technologies-v-stokklerk

Contact:

Matt Zimmerman
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[email protected]

Big 10 commissioner Jim Delaney has consistently said that conference expansion was a “back-burner issue”. Now it appears that the conference will get more aggressive about finding a 12th member in order to qualify for a conference championship game. A conference official said this week that there is quite a “growing groundswell” of support for the idea now, an idea that has grown since the Big 10 meetings back in May.

Why the sudden push? Naturally, money comes into play, as a Big 10(12) CG could be worth as much a $5 million or more to the conference in additional revenues. Plus, some conference members are starting to feel a little left out, what with all three major conference CGs having been played December 5th. “We’re irrelevant for the last three weeks of the football season because we’re not playing,” said Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez. Back during the meetings in May, Joe Paterno said of a championship game, “Everybody else is playing playoffs on television. You never see a Big Ten team mentioned. So I think that’s a handicap.” But not everyone is for an immediate switch. Northwestern’s coach, Pat Fitzgerald, appears to be a traditionalist and is dead set against it.

So where does Delaney stand? Although he was not interviewed for the above-referenced article, he was on the record in May with this: “I’m agnostic. I could live with two divisions and a championship game, but I think that has a tendency to devalue the season-ending game and have a negative impact (in terms of at-large BCS selection) on your losing team in season-ending games.I don’t want us to tear ourselves apart over the structure of football for the sake of expansion.” Delaney also wants to add an “institution”, not a team. That could mean a school which has a substantial athletic tradition and not a johnny-come-lately.

So who do they grab? That’s not entirely easy to decipher. The logical choice is Notre Dame, but after being rebuffed by the Irish in 1999, the polictics of the matter seem too strong to warrant a revisitation of that scenario. JoPa summed it up quite nicely earlier this year: “There’s some pressure, I would suppose, to maybe go back to Notre Dame and ask again, which I would not be happy with,” Paterno said in May. “I think they’ve had their chance.”

So who else? Other than adding a service academy (which might be the best shot for the Big East) it’s going to involve a poaching from another BCS conference, with the Big East being the most likley target. But not any conference is above being looted. Indiana blog The Crimson Quarry gives a breakdown of teams in the geographic area that may fit the bill.

Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Rutgers
Louisville
Syracuse
West Virginia
Maryland
Kentucky
Iowa State
Nebraska
Missouri

Although it’s hard to imagine Kentucky walking away from SEC gold and Maryland leaving the frying pan for the fire, Iowa State and Nebraska provide interesting choices. Lest you forgot, the Big 12 is sewn together from remnants of the old Southwestern and Big 8 conferences, with the Huskers and the Cyclones being from the latter. With the exception of Nebraska–Oklahoma, there’s not a lot of history there that couldn’t be worth losing. Either team could merge easily into a Big 10(12) schedule, but there’s no doubt that Nebraska would be quite the coup d’etat.

As far as the usual suspects from the Big East, Pitt seems to be the most natural fit and we could finally see them and Penn State pick up their recently hibernated series again. But with yet another possible poaching in the works, the Big East would be wise to strongly consider expansion and attempt to lock in their existing members in an attempt to stave off a pick-pocketing attempt from their western neighbor.

h/t: Regan

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This graph really speaks volumes. From November of ’08 to last month, both import and export prices were continually down. Now, in November, prices have flipped and are now up a few percentage points:

BLS: The price index for U.S. imports advanced 3.7 percent for the year ended in November, the first time the index increased over a 12-month period since a 4.9 percent advance for the October 2007-2008 period. Prices for overall exports rose 0.6 percent over the past year, the first time the index increased over a 12-month period since a 4.0 percent advance for the October 2007-2008 period.

Over the past 12 months, import fuel prices increased 27.0 percent. A 35.5 percent rise in petroleum prices more than offset declining natural gas prices, which fell 31.3 percent despite the advance in November. The index for nonfuel import prices declined 1.0 percent over the past 12 months as decreases from November 2008 to March 2009 more than offset the recent increases.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Chinese Commodity Imports Hit Sudden Stop
• Markets Completely Ignore Brazil’s Sudden Iron Export Slow-Down
• Gartman: Want To "Fix" The Trade Deficit? Bring On A Full-Fledged Depression

It wasn’t long ago that we thought Ben Bernanke and ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet were playing a high-stakes game of chicken.

Who would blink first? Who would raise rates, and send the other’s currency tanking?

The market — obviously — figured Trichet had the upper hand.

Wrong.

With Ireland, Greece, and Spain all the subject of serious sovereign default concerns, and with Austria now nationalizing banks, the idea of a rate-hike seems utterly laughable. Add in the fact that the continent’s manufacturing base was screaming bloody murder over all the jobs moving to the US, and you’ve got a recipe for a long, long period of low itnerest rates.

And that explains why the dollar is on such a tear.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Can Bernanke Quit The Money Pump Before Trichet?
• Germans Complain That All The Good Manufacturing Jobs Are Going To America
• Lemmings And Manufacturers Crushed As Dollar Surge Continues

Filed under: Etc.

Now that the 2000s are officially drawing to a close, it’s time for us to look back at the decade-that-was and reflect on the hits and misses in the automotive industry. Naturally, we expect that some models will hit the target square in the bulls-eye while others will fall just short of becoming a marketplace success. For every few near-misses, though, there seems to be a new model launch that just completely goes down in flames, Hindenburg-style.

We put our heads together to see if we could all agree on at least ten major automotive busts that whiffed on both critical success and in sales volume, and somewhat surprisingly, we managed to come up with a dozen. These may not be the last word in failure – and not every choice was made unanimously – meaning that you may be surprised by some of our inclusions, but we stand by our list. That said, grab some popcorn, a candy bar and a super-sized Coke, then click here to see our list of the Twelve of the Auto Industry’s Biggest Busts of the Last Decade.

[Source Image: MGM]

Dirty Dozen: Twelve of the auto industry’s biggest busts of the last decade originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has covertly released a significant update to the built in Google Maps application on webOS devices. While there has been no public announcement of yet, the new version number is reported as v6.7 and features a number of useful refinements.

Findings so far include: improved map loading, rendering and scrolling speed, more granular map details with sliceable location listings, more street level traffic detail, a new help menu and better support for selected mass transit systems. These new features are baked into your device right now, as the program pulls a majority of its content and interface from the web.

In a rather succinct press release, ZeniMax Media today announced that EA is no longer part of the Rage equation. The id Software title will instead be published by Bethesda Softworks.

Our holiday guests today:

• Salted Pistachio Brittle (Better Than Christmas Cookies!) by Kristin Silverman of The Kitchen Sink

• How To Make Gingerbread Christmas Tree Ornaments by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings

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A loyal reader* suggested we launch a new feature: Ask Henry!

And so we have!

Instead of waiting around for a video-based You Ask, We Answer to come along, you are now hereby invited to bombard me with questions anytime via email. 

Please put “ASK HENRY!” in the subject line (goofy, I know, but much easier to find in the inbox) and send them to:

[email protected]

I’ll do my best to answer as many questions as I can on the site every few days.  I won’t be able to get to all of them, obviously, but I’ll do my best.

Thanks in advance.  Look forward to hearing from you!

Here’s one to begin, from Jason Calacanis:

Henry, Ben Bernanke has presided over the worst financial crisis of our lifetime, and the second worst in our history. Since he has obviously failed epically, what exactly would he have to do in order to be fired in your estimation?

I’m not sure I agree that he “failed epically”–I think it’s fairer to say he ‘made some major mistakes’–but there would be one super-quick route to getting fired: Threaten the re-election campaigns of Congress-people.  He can do this by stating clearly that unemployment is not his concern and that he is only focused on protecting the value of our money.  If he does that, he’ll be fired immediately.

Of course the irony is that unemployment should NOT be his concern.  The Fed has an impossible “dual mandate” right now–protect the value of the currency AND make sure the economy is humming along at full employment.  Sometimes, these two mandates are mutually exclusive.  And because Congress only cares about the latter (inflation is a long-term problem that will only wreck the economy during someone else’s re-election campaign), the Fed inevitably gets pressured into running at a higher level of inflation than it should.

* Jason Calacanis, Founder and CEO of Mahalo.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Amazing Life And Career Of Jamie Dimon (JPM)
• The Biggest Losers Of The Decade
• How To Make The World’s Easiest $1 Billion

In stark contrast to the European money pits traditionally featured, today’s FOTD is a 1991 GMC Syclone. Despite the fact that it’s probably older than your first born child and manufactured by a company not exactly renowned for its longevity (which I expect will be directly refuted by a barrage of GM forum trolls), both the Syclone and the Typhoon have left such an indelible legacy that they are granted a reprieve from my domestic scorn.

As a matter of fact, so enamored am I with arguably one of the best examples of superior engineering to ever leave Michigan, I’m even willing to overlook the ominously rebuilt title. According to the seller (and confirmed by Carfax), the truck was stolen in 2001 and recovered with damage severe enough to warrant a “salvage” branding, which still only resulted in a $2k price decrease. The slightly blurry photos paint a promising picture, though, and as long as you’re adept at maintaining a vehicle constructed almost entirely out of Bondo, this is definitely a piece worth investing in.

Source: eBay Motors

Montréal, Canada | Watery Wonders

When someone mentions surfing, the image that comes to mind is one of hot sun, sandy beaches, and palm trees swaying in the breeze. That’s the archetype, but it’s not the only environment where an adventure junkie can hang ten. What, for example, is a Canadian to do?

The standing wave adjacent to Mosche Safdie’s well-known Habitat ’67 housing complex has sprung up as a new location for urban surfing in recent years. The result of fast-flowing water making its way over and around large underwater boulders, the wave generated allows for a surfer to maintain a endless ride… that is, until the next surfer drops in. There’s no fast-approaching shore, only water. For those unsure of themselves on a surfboard, the wave can also be ridden in a kayak.

Habitat 67, the backdrop to the wave is quite curious in and of itself. Built by Safdie as part of the 1967 Montreal Expo, it was meant to be affordable housing with an distinct eye towards the future. Although originally intended to have 1,000 units, only 354 of the prefabricated concrete apartment modules were completed creating a total of only 158 apartments.

Part of the architectural vision of the future in which housing could be made more affordable by using prefab models, construction costs proved to be prohibitive. As a result of the limited number of units and the architectural uniqueness of the building, units in the ‘affordable’ tenant owned building are today, quite expensive.

The Spike TV Video Game Awards show happened this weekend. I would have watched it, but I frankly have enough women, cars, and Mountain Dew here at my fortress, and if that’s not good enough to get Jack Black over here, then so be it. Either way, a bunch of games got announced, including Green Day: Rock Band, from Harmonix and MTV Games.

Anyway, details about the game are scarce, but design director and notorious lothario Chris Foster of Harmonix posted on his twitter account that the game’s songs will be exportable for use in your other Rock Band games, unlike those found in The Beatles: Rock Band. He also says the game will be fun, and I’m going to agree with him, and totally not because I want a whole bunch of free crap from Harmonix. And, by the way, if you’re from Harmonix, you can ask my editor for my shipping address. I have no dignity and you can set my price.

Tags:
exportable tracks,
green day rock band,
harmonix,
rock band,

Over the last few weeks we’ve published several recipes for hot, frothy, foamy espresso drinks that give you that cheery taste of holiday coffee without the hefty coffee shop bills. Here’s a quick recap!

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Our holiday guests today:

• Merry & Modern Chocolate Peppermint Molten Cakes by Sara Morris of Sprouted Kitchen

• Memories of Christmas Breakfast Strata (and a Recipe) by Anne Zimmerman of Poetic Appetite

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