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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (qjnet/news/vga-2009-star-wars-the-force-unleashed-2-announcedmore-announcements-are-coming-your-way-thanks-to-the-ongoing-video-game-awards-after-the-batman-arkham-asylum-2-reveal-we-have-another-hot-sequel-in-the-form-of-star-wars-force-unleashed-2.html) brings up a number of of questions. Why is Starkiller still alive? Will whirling dervish frog Yoda be in

Verdun, France | Ossuaries

In 1916, this nine-month battle of Verdun claimed over 300,000 lives, and left about 300,000 more wounded. (By comparison, the total current death toll for American soldiers of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is currently 6,227.)

The field of battle is today marked by the Verdun Memorial. The most chilling place in this eerie landscape is by far the so-called “Trench of Bayonets.”

In June 1916, this entrenched position was a part a salient west of Fort Douaumont, which the Germans desperately wanted to take. On June 12, Germans unleashed a hailstorm of iron and lead upon French positions. The attack caught the French by surprise.

The 137th Regiment of French infantry was annihilated almost to the last man. Years after the war, French teams exploring the battle field uncovered the clues of the horrific fate of this regiment. One of the trenches was discovered completely filled in, with only a neat line of bayonets sticking out of the ground. The bayonets were still fixed to their rifles. A body was found next to each one. The 3rd company of 137th regiment had been buried alive, almost instantaneously, having died where they stood.

Marking the third straight year for a sophomore winning the Heisman Trophy, Alabama’s Mark Ingram takes CFB’s top honor in the closest balloting ever, beating out the 1985 race between Auburn’s Bo Jackson and Iowa’s Chuck Long. Ingram received 227 first place votes, barely edging Stanford’s Tony Gerhart’s 222. Ingram’s point total was 1304, and Gehart’s 1276. Third place went to Texas’ Colt McCoy, 4th to Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh and 5th to former Heisman winner, Florida’s Tim Tebow.

Ingram’s win marks the first time ever for a player from the university of Alabama to win the prestigious award, which is very strange considering Alabama’s storied past and the number of great players to come through that program. “The legacy of Alabama football certainly had a void filled,” Tide coach Nick Saban said.

Showing a predilection for winners, this year’s award marks the sixth time out of the last seven that the trophy winner has gone on to play in the BCS championship game. Both Ingram and Tony Gerhart enjoyed a late surge of support, catching perrenial favorite Colt McCoy, who would have definitely been a candidate in the ‘body of work’ category. Ingram, in spite of not winning the SEC rushing crown, ultimately was deemed to be more of a MVP for the undefeated Tide, which may have been enough to push him past the candidate from 8-4 Stanford.

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It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas here at Fanblogs–very little CFB news. So time to come up with your own!

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Here’s more from this year’s Spike Video Game Awards. This time we get to see the debut trailer for EA’s Medal of Honor reboot. It’s short, but pretty damn sweet, really. EA says all of the footage

With the holiday shipping time frame running down and your budget probably crunched as well, you may be looking for some last minute green gifts that won’t cost too much (all $25 or under) AND that will still arrive in time for a green Christmas. Following are some excellent choices…

Five Great Green Gifts for Kids

1. $9.35 – The New 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth: This is an excellent book for kids with few cons. Part of the book was written with help from actual kids and the book is printed on recycled paper with soy inks too! Read my full review.
2. $20.00 – Eco Playdough: All natural art medium for crafty kids made with plant, fruit and veggie extracts. No chemicals, artificial dyes or metals and the containers are made from cornstarch and are 100% compostable. I saw this dough recently at the PDX green fair and it comes in totally brilliant and lovely colors of orange, yellow, green, and pink plus the containers are adorable. Note – the Bamboo Rolling Pin is sold separately.
3. $24.99 – idbids:  These soft toys come in three different styles – Scout the Cloud, Lola the Flower or Waverly the bright blue water drop. Each is handcrafted with 100% organic Egyptian cotton and colored with natural organic dyes. With the purchase of each kit, a child can enter an online code that will help protect the habitats of animal friends through The Nature Conservancy’s Plant A Billion Trees campaign, Adopt an Acre, or Rescue the Reef programs. Each kit comes with an organic cinch sack for the child to wear, a storybook printed on recycled paper with eco-friendly inks and a field guide.
4. $25.00 Wooden Giraffe Block Set: Adorable 16 piece block set in a giraffe drawn wagon. This toy is eco-cute, made with sustainably harvested wood, and finished with non-toxic linseed oil.
5. About $25 or less – Green Toys are made of eco-friendly recycled milk cartons, packaged in recycled cardboard, and provide hours of fun for both boys and girls. Most come in at under $25 a pop too, such as the Eco-Friendly Tea Set (shown above), Tool Kit, Dish Set, Chef Set and Recycling Truck.

Five Lovely Green Gifts for the Ladies

1. $16.00 – Lavender Caramel (6-piece)! Chocolate and lavender; way too girly and neat. Pretty little gift box of organic lavender infused caramels with Fleur du Sel salt.
2. $16.95 – My most favorite lovely reusable water bottles – Earthlust Water Bottles – oh so pretty 20 oz stainless steel bottles that won’t leach chemicals into water and cut down on plastic waste.
3. $24.00 – I’m totally obsessed with the Recycled Glass Pendants by Fanisong. In fact I blog about these often because they’re not only pretty but so unique and eco-friendly. Each handcrafted piece is made from 100% RECYCLED glass and a nature photo. The original photo is fused into the glass, then finished with sterling silver plated bail & ribbon cord. Amazing. The piece shown above is Look up to the Sky but there are many other cool designs available; another good one is Infinite Sphere.
4. $24.99 – Mini-Blossom Hummingbird Feeders: Pretty little feeder made with recycled blown-glass vessels with Flower Feeding Tubes in red glass. These look great in the garden and attract adorable hummingbirds with 4 oz of space for hummingbird nectar. Stakes included for mounting. Plus this purchase helps to support the National Wildlife Federation.
5. $12.21 –Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World: Great book covering lots of juicy green topics that matter to women. Teaches women how their actions, and how they spend their cash can make an eco-difference. Printed on recycled paper. I like this book a lot, but haven’t written a full review. My friend Peggy however has – read her review.

Five Handy Green Gifts for Guys

1. $20.00 – Vintage Record Coasters for the hipster guy in your life. Made with real recycled vinyl records but sealed so moisture won’t seep through to the surface. Comes in a set of six.
2. $19.79 – Whole Green Catalog: 1000 Best Things for You and the Earth: One of the best green living guides I’ve read in a LONG time. Packed with facts for everyone, but especially cool is the focus on green living for both genders. Many of the green books I read are geared toward women. Women will like this book too, but this one has facts for the guys as well. Read my full review.
3. $20.00 – Stonees All Natural Building Blocks: These rocks are meant to be a child’s building toy, but they’re also fun stress relief for adults when placed in a workspace. Build peaceful structures with these rock blocks made from crushed North American rocks and all-natural non-toxic pigments. Stonees are organic and smooth, and come in fun stacking shapes – square, triangular and cylindrical. Great for a workday break and good conversation starter too.
4. $14.99 – Wilson Rebound Fade-Green Basketball: This ball is Wilson’s first “green” product made from 40% Recycled Rubber and comes in a box made with 80% pre and post consumer board. Not bad on the eco scale and gets your guy outside and keeps him in shape.
5. $12.50 each – Green Family Kitchen Tools: A fun set of kitchen tools for a guy who loves to cook. All of these green family tools are made with a recycled plastic and wood blend for an attractive, functional, and eco-friendly design. At the end of a tool’s life-cycle, it can be recycled too. Way more fun than typical kitchen tools.

Five Cool Green Gifts for Co-Workers, Pals, or Family

1. $5.72 – NRDC: Simple Steps Deck: A Healthy Home. A Healthy Planet. 50 Easy Actions:  This handy little deck of green living cards fits perfectly into a stocking and is printed on recycled paper. Great for folks new to green living. Read my full review.
2. $8.75 – Down To Earth Cookie Cutter Set – Celestial: Great hostess gift or last minute gift for a baker. BPA-free set of ten cute planetary-inspired foodgrade stainless steel cookie cutters that can be used for kid’s playdough or for real cookie dough. Sturdy and log-lasting plus comes in a compact storage tin.
3. $18.95 – “I Am Not A Paper Cup” – Thermal Porcelain Mug: Funny  and the perfect green gift for a co-worker or pal who loves organic coffee.
4. $24.00 – Beeswax Holiday Glass Gift Set: Pretty little candles made with natural beeswax and essential oils. three 3 oz votive glass candles included in the set (each burns for 24 hours) in holiday scents of Spice (Sweet Orange, Cinnamon & Clove Bud), Pine (Rosewood, Spruce & Fir) and Mint (Peppermint & Birch).
5. $25.00 – Plantable Seed Calendar 2010: This is the perfect green co-worker gift; handmade pages embedded with wildflower seeds so after each month the recipient can plant away with no paper waste. Comes in a reusable tin as well.

Post from: Blisstree

20 Last Minute Green Gifts Under $25!

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Europe, Mercedes-Benz, Luxury

Germans are generally so conservative that we sometimes wonder if their aftermarket scene exists only to provide for the anomalies that every society needs. Not many of you fell for MEC Design’s first attempt at visually tuning the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, and we would have thought it was something from Tron Legacy if not for the fact of it being yellow. It appears that boys from Berlin returned to their easels and now present the MEC SLS, take two.

It’s called a “style study” and to its credit, MEC has deleted the most obscene gestures from the previous rendering: the mommy-make-it-stop nose and horrendous wheels. Nevertheless, MEC’s Erector-Set-and-Laffy-Taffy design ethos has only been barely restrained, and the result is still quite troubling. If you have suggestions, you can leave them in the comments section below. We think MEC is reading…

[Source: Caradisiac]

MEC Design takes another (eyeball) stab at the SLS AMG originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s more fitting for a Sunday than a post about brunch?

There has been a trend in recent months for state corrections departments to cut back on the number of meals they serve to prisoners in a given week, by replacing breakfast and lunch with brunch on weekends. On its face, this sounds absurd. It seems like a sure violation of prisoner rights and a terrible move by the system to cut costs while letting prisoners go hungry. But many prisons already skimp on food, and brunches are the least of the problem.

Ohio recently started serving a single brunch meal on all weekends and holidays, and the meal contains the same number of calories as the previous breakfast and lunch. State officials claim they made the switch because prisoners were choosing to skip weekend breakfasts anyway — less than one-third normally ate the early meal on weekends. I’m not able to verify this, but Ohio’s DOC claims that the switch will mean that more prisoners eat more food on weekends.

In November, Indiana also started experimenting with brunch on Fridays and weekends in one facility, planning to expand the project if it worked. Indiana officials said eliminating a meal allowed for more classroom and recreation time. Some critics saw that claim as a thin veneer on a dangerous cost-cutting move.

“We should treat our inmate population like human beings,” State Sen. Mike Delph told the Indianapolis Star. “Denying food or cutting back on meals is beneath the dignity of the state of Indiana and is not in sync with our Hoosier values. It is my hope that the corrections officials will come before us and reassure us that they are treating the prisoners in a humane way.”

After the jump, check out Ohio’s prison brunch menu.

(more…)

If you thought Visceral Games’ Dante’s Inferno couldn’t stray any further from Dante Alighieri’s original, well, you thought wrong. They’re throwing a frickin’ space miner in there just to spice things up for gamers in Europe.

As I was viewing the demo of the latest WebTrends 9 release, I started to experience those familiar conflicted feelings. I liked some of what I was seeing: a further improvement to report presentation, real time alerts for rule-based changes in traffic. But at the same time, I was thinking, "where’s the beef, where are the improvements I thought I was going to see on the OnDemand analyst tool which is still pretty much 8.5"the core part of the product? Isn’t this what WebTrends said they were going to present in the Fall 09 release?"

So, I asked.  The answer I got from WebTrends: There are 3 audiences they’re trying to address: the senior manager, the business user, and the analyst. Who’s the main target with this release? The senior manager and business user.  WebTrends’ rationale is that this is the base that they must win over…and they must give tools to their core customers (analysts and hybrid marketers/analysts) to do a better job of pushing WebTrends out to the greater enterprise. 

There’s a certain logic to this argument that I understand. One of the biggest issues that larger organizations have with analytics is getting reports out to people in a timely and coherent manner so that they can use the data to make decisions. You’d think that after this many years, it would be pretty straightforward.  It’s a gap that Google Analytics has done a wonderful job at exploiting. But getting reports out to lots of people still doesn’t address the gap of being able to understand how to use the data. Once your managers, marketers and content writers understand the basic “out of the box” reports, they want analysis that guides their decision making. So, by following Google’s lead, WebTrends is solving only half the problem.

If you’re an experienced WebTrends analyst or have one on your staff, there’s a decent argument for staying the course with WebTrends and seeing what they come up with in February at their user conference. Based on the improvements already made in the product, using the new interface and alert system will help you with report distribution and doing very basic traffic analysis.

On the other hand, if you’re managing a WebTrends installation and folks aren’t using it, I’m not sure Analytics 9 will address the issue enough for you to justify a business case for continued use of the product. Of course, the same could be said of any fee-based solution, but WebTrends is making a much stronger pitch to this level of user than the other fee based vendors.

As I described in a recent post, there are a few interesting new offerings that address business questions based on analytics data. I anticipate that there will be growth in point solutions that focus on automating the extraction of actionable information out of web analytics data.  These solutions don’t ask you to analyze data; they tell you what you need to know. As this level of automation becomes "smarter", the need for web analytics reporting, could quickly lose currency.

Talk of a dollar ‘bottom’ keeps building, this time from Trader’s Narrative. Don’t forget that even the commodity bull Jim Rogers has been buying dollars.

Any hardcore contrarian has to be tempted at this point. It’s just too easy to trash the dollar.

For what it’s worth, here are a few technical reasons why sentiment might be turning:

Traders Narrative: While US dollar sentiment has been extremely bearish for a few months, the US dollar index has just now managed to move above its 50 day moving average. The last time we saw such a tiny gleam of positivity from the dollar was back in April (and that didn’t work too well):

…

At best, the US dollar has taken the first tentative steps in the bottoming process. In which case, this simply deserves monitoring. At worst, this is not a signal but more ‘noise’ similar to the myriad counter trend mini-rallies we’ve seen. The reason the distinction is important is that all risky assets are correlated now thanks to the carry trade.

Read more here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Desmond Lachman: The Dollar Is A Mess, But Here’s Why The World Can’t Ditch It
• Jim Rogers: I’m Loading Up On Dollars, But Long-Term Treasury Rates Heading Back To 80s Levels
• Trading The Dollar/Stocks Correlation Is Complete Bunk

> Did you see yesterday’s spat between the US and China: US negotiator Todd Stern “says no way US public money is going to go to China”- an expected domestic political position, eyes averted from the fact that once the US has a cap and trade scheme millions of private money will be buying carbon credits from Chinese clean energy projects. China then says it’s “shocked” at the comments, and that developed countries had a legal and moral obligation to deliver, based on their history of high emissions. Worth remembering that two days ago China was wrongfooted by Tuvalu, leading to headlines about a split in the G77. Nothing like pushing attention back on a common enemy to try and get the troops back in line.

> HSBC’s Nick Robins at last night’s Carbon Disclosure Project panel: “The market for low carbon services is now around $530 billion a year. By 2020 it will be $2 trillion a year. This is a big, exciting opportunity for people to get into, now.”

> Wandered around the main, vast, negotiating hall yesterday with two friends, taking pictures of the hallowed ground where an agreement to avert disaster (we hope) is being worked out. Countries sit in strictly alphabetical order; the US is way up the back, very noticeable because its sign is in white, while every other one you can see is in black. They’re the odd ones out because they haven’t ratified the Kyoto Protocol; nice.

> Even the tiny hilltop cafe town of San Marino has a seat, albeit observer. Look it up on Wikipedia. But of course Taiwan was nowhere to be seen.

> Bonds gossip:
– Last week’s green bond issue by SEB for the World Bank sold very quickly; it was their third. Expect a fourth tranche in quick time.
– RE manager for a major London-based bank told me, in the corridor, that they were working on a green bonds issue for renewable energy, which would make it asset-backed. Couldn’t provide issuer details – yet. Perhaps we’re seeing the beginning of a green debt capital market?

> Stockholm Environment Institute briefing: a 2°C target only gives us a 50/50 chance of avoiding runaway climate change; target needs to be 1.5°C and no more than 350ppm. Tough stuff in the context of what the negotiators are looking at, and supports Tuvalu’s proposal a few days ago. What was especially interesting about this was that the session was presented by Sweden in its capacity as EU president. Hopefully this is getting through to the EU negotiating team. See research article at http://tinyurl.com/msapes

> Interesting aside about their (SEI’s) improved understanding of biodiversity inter-connectedeness: if Amazon basin forests dry out to savannah, as many models forecast for 3°+, it triggers an extra 3° warming in northern China to Mongolia, and a 2° cooling in North Africa. Buy real estate in Algiers as a hedge?

> At an meeting today of Public Finance agencies around the world working on climate, the UK Carbon Trust presented a great story about technology transfer. I’d heard the bones before, but it was pointed when explained in the milieu of slow-moving public finance agencies. Last year they were approached by China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation, who wanted to set up a joint venture. They’ve set up a £10 million pound venture capital fund. One of the first investments was in a small UK company that had developed a low-energy, money and emission saving air-conditioning solution for mobile phone towers. These typically rely on high-emission diesel-fuel generated air-conditioners. The company was selling into the UK market, which has 20,000 mobile phone towers. China is building 600,000 in the coming year; they now have contracts to roll out a good chunk of those. That’s technology transfer!

> At that same session the Mexico Energy Ministry person told of research they’d done into how to encourage bicycle use. It showed that the main driver for Mexican men using bicycles was the number of women using bicycles. They’re still trying to figure out what to do with the results.

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about strategic default – American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent – By MARK WHITEHOUSE – summary …  step 1 suck equity out of your house and take a cruise vacation … step 2  strategic default, rent, and use the extra money you would have paid for your mortgage to take a cruise vacation = double dip – hattip V – read the article at Wall Street Journal

and
Cheryl Lang On Strategic Defaulters, Borrower Incentives – BY JOHN CLAPP – This week, MortgageOrb caught up with Cheryl Lang, president of Integrated Mortgage Solutions, to get her thoughts on HAMP, strategic defaulters and borrower motivation. – MortgageOrb

and

Great Response to WSJ article: Spitting Into The Housing – Tom Lindmark – … Get a clue! The reason they aren’t sending back their docs is that they’ve moved around the corner and found a better house to rent. The people you want to save don’t want your ministrations, they knew how to game the system to buy into the housing market and now that it hasn’t worked out, they are smart enough to game you and the futile efforts being made to keep them in a property they want no part of. … – But Then What

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Will The New ABX Prime Index Be The Reason For The Next RMBS (And Thus, FHA/GSE) Collapse? – Submitted by Tyler Durden – … And MarkIt is more than happy to provide them with the tool to do it. So what will this new index do – well, in addition to making trillionaires out of Paolo Pellegrini and Kyle Bass (in the same way ABX Subprime made them billionaires), the new index may just be the tipping point that finally collapses the trillions in sham GSE holdings at mark-to-myth. … – Zero Hedge  – good primer

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Wells Fargo Cuts as Much as 30 Percent in Principal From Loans – By Dakin Campbell – … Wells Fargo has forgiven an average of $46,000 in principal, or 15 percent, for the 43,500 option-ARM loans it has modified this year through September, said Franklin Codel, chief financial officer at the bank’s home-lending unit. … – Bloomberg
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worth reading – Fitch predicts another tough year for most US structured finance sectors – Though the U.S. economy is on a slow path to recovery, collateral performance will continue to be weak for all U.S. structured finance sectors next year,  Fitch Ratings says  in its 2010 outlook report. – has their assumptions for ABS, CMBS, RMBS, CDO’s – Research Recap

Annaly Capital Management Announces Monthly Commentary for November

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Pimco’s Gross: No Fed move before 2011 – U.S. economic growth is likely to remain weak in 2010, forcing the Federal Reserve to keep short-term interest rates at current ultra-low levels throughout the year and even in early 2011, influential bond fund manager Bill Gross said on Wednesday. – Reuters

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Paul Kasriel video: What happens after the stimulus spending wears off? –  Paul Kasriel, Northern Trust’s Chief Economist, shares his prognosis on inflation, the U.S. dollar and the year ahead.- Northern Trust

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Jim Rogers: Lessons from a Legend – Matthew Bradbard – Last night I took a trip down to Miami to visit with Jim Rogers at a book signing for his most recent book … he spoke a little about the aforementioned book and took questions from the audience. These are the general themes I took away, in no particular order .. – interesting – read on – Seeking Alpha
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4 page report – U.S. Macro Outlook: Less Than Graceful – By Mark Zandi –
• A recovery has begun, but the transition to a self-sustaining expansion will be less than graceful.
• Without more hiring, household income will not support spending growth.
• After the trauma of last year’s financial panic, businesses need time to grow confident about expanding.
• Policymakers must remain aggressive to keep the economy from falling back into recession.
Moody’s – Economy.com

Patton Oswalt can be a funny dude…

It was another eventful week for the PS3 faithful. Hardware-side, we heard a lot about the Sony motion controller. Is it gonna be called Gem? Sony says that’s just a prototype name. What we do know is

Well, it’s that time of year: feverish shopping and fevered worrying about retail sales (will they?  won’t they?).  So we thought we’d look at some stocking stuffers — that is, companies that might be in your cross-hairs anyway as you ponder how to be Santa’s helper.  Clearly it’s been a challenging retail season, but we found several that may be low on the radar, and doing pretty well.

It turns out that the worries that this might be what Elvis called a “Blue Christmas” might already be slacking off: retail sales were up 1.3% in November, compared to economists’ expectations of 0.6%.  Look at this report filed on Friday by CNNMoney’s Aaron Smith: http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/11/news/economy/retail_sales/index.htm  Interestingly, according to Smith’s report, the gain owes little to auto sales, which had led the numbers earlier in the fall based on government incentive programs.  It seems that the Great American Shopper is putting his/her toe back in the water.  We suspect that may offer some opportunities for the Great American Stockbuyer as well.

Please note that we do not recommend stocks; we only write on companies that we find interesting.  Do your own diligence.

We all know that a part of Christmas is handmade.  For me that is usually just a matter of baking, but there are many folks handier than I who make all kinds of clever things.  One company that might interest the Martha wannabes is Berlin NJ-based AC Moore Arts & Crafts (Nasdaq: ACMR; http://www.acmoore.com/).  They sell all the things you need for those things you wish you could make: scrapbooks, quilts, sweaters, cookies, wreaths, potpourri, sculptures, macrame and lots more.  They sell in their own branded stores and online.  ACMR sales are not up year-over-year, and they are making losses this year, but their current ratio is about 2:1 and they seem to have a cash warchest.  In addition they have been aggressively marketing this fall, which may stand them in good stead.  ACMR shares closed Friday at $2.60,  less than half their 52-week high of $5.63, on average daily volume of about 90,000 shares.  Market cap is about $65 million, which is a small fraction of yearly sales.

G-III's chic leather outergarments with Calvin Klein labels

But if you’re not the loving-hands-at-home type, you are probably looking for gifts to buy that can just be wrapped and given, and you may already be looking at merchandise that’s made by companies most of us have never heard of.  One is NYC-based G-III Apparel Group Inc (Nasdaq: GIII; http://www.g-iii.com/), which busily stitches leather outerwear garments under a dizzying number of labels, some their own (Andrew Marc, Jessica Howard, et al), but more held under license from Calvin Klein, Sean John, Kenneth Cole, Cole-Haan, Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi Strauss or Ellen Tracy.  Analysts seem unanimous in recommending this stock, and GIII closed Friday at $21.11, near its year-high of $22.25 with average volume of 185,000 shares.  Last week GIII raised its profit guidance for 2010 a hefty amount, and announced that its Q3 sales were up 3.4% when the government was cheering an overall rise of a lot less than that.  Market cap is about $355 million, which looks to be about 25% of 2009 sales — and the company is growing at a pretty good clip.

You may not know Iconix, but you probably have seen this little smiley guy

Likewise NYC-based Iconix Brand Group (Nasdaq: ICON; http://www.iconixbrand.com/), whose merchandise is available in a store near you under brands like Joe Boxer, Mossimo, OP, London Fog, Bongo and Artful Dodger.  Overall a fairly hip image, but a very solid record of performance, with sales up 8% in the difficult third quarter, very healthy EBITDA, and strong  earnings.  ICON closed Friday at $11.78, down a good bit from its year-high of $18.30 on average volume of over 1.3 million shares, and a market cap of about $840 million.

Birks & Mayors watches in 67 stores in Canada & US

But good things come in little boxes, or so I hear.  If you subscribe to that theory, have a look at Montreal-based Birks & Mayors (NYSE Amex: BMJ; http://www.birks.com/), which operates jewelry stores in Canada and the southeastern US under the two monikers of Birks (Canada) and Mayors (US).  Sales are down year-to-year, and losses are up, but BMJ shares closed Friday at $1.26, vs a year-high of $1.80, and a market cap of about $14 million (sales for the 6 months ended September were over $100 million with Xmas season ahead).  Average volume on the stock is low.

Or have a look at Bermuda-based Signet Jewelers (NYSE: SIG: http://www.signetjewelers.com/), which says it is the “world’s largest specialty retail jeweler.”  In the US Signet brands are the highly promoted Kay Jewelers and a relative newcomer: Jared (the man on TV whose GPS threatens to hold him hostage if he doesn’t show her the necklace he bought).  Marketing is where it’s at, and Signet seems to have that down to a tee.  They are also working on the basics, lowering debt, increasing store efficiency, in order to reduce losses and return to growth.  Worth a look.  SIG closed Friday at $25.41, about 20% off its year high of $29.07, with a market cap of $217 million and good volume over 280,000 shares.  Like other jewelers, a huge discount to sales.

Zale Corp is partnered with DeBeers on projects like Shared Heart

But I’d be kidding you if I didn’t say that in some weird way, Zale Corp is also interesting, in spite of widespread doubts about survivability, like this comment on Motley Fool: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/12/11/5-deathbed-stocks.aspx.   Irving TX-based Zale (NYSE: ZLC; http://www.zalecorp.com/ operates nearly 2,000 stores and shows nearly $1.8 billion in sales with gynormous losses.  Their current market cap of $104 million reflects the sentiment, and the shares closed Friday at $3.25, vs a year-high of $8.51 — good volume though.  They sold Bailey Banks & Biddle, and have linked arms with DeBeers on some new “Big Ideas,” including the “Shared Heart” collection.

And if none of these works for you — there’s always eggnogg and fruitcake.