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The numbers are in and it’s official: No one cares about Idol.

Last night’s Season 9 finale drew its lowest audience since the talent show’s first season finale in the summer of 2002; only 22.8 million viewers tuned in that year. An estimated 24.2 million viewers tuned in to watch dark horse paint salesman Lee DeWyze beat projected winner Crystal Bowersox to victory, according to preliminary ratings figures issued Thursday. Despite a grand finale that served as Simon Cowell’s swan song as the bitter voice of reason on the judge’s panel, the Idol audience shrank from 28.8 million last year and 31.6 million in 2008.

We prognosticate on six new cars that take their family trees in new directions.

It’s got to be that automotive brand shepherds get bored from time to time. How else to explain out-of-left-field cars such as these? Pumping out car after car all pulled from the same basic mold gets tiresome, so someone decides to move in a different direction with a particular product.

To predict the success (or failure) of six of the latest brand-benders, we looked at them in the context of automotive history’s best and worst precedents.

Keep Reading: WTF Cars: Six New Brand-Benders – Feature

No related posts.

Ford’s incendiary pony car loses a whole lot of weight underhood and gets the performance and handling it has always deserved.

No matter how good the Shelby GT500 has looked on paper, the car has always fallen short in reality, not unlike LeBron and the Cavs. Part of the reason could be its live rear axle, a component junked by virtually every carmaker decades ago, and rightly so—it’s awfully hard to get a car to handle and ride optimally without an independent rear suspension.

Keep Reading: 2011 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 – Road Test

No related posts.

Filed under: Car Buying, Etc., Government/Legal, Videos, Humor

Click above to watch the video after the jump

Kelley Blue Book ace and Autoblog pal James Bell and his team brought a slew of vehicles to Santa Monica, California for some analysis on KTLA channel five’s morning show. The aim was to showcase 10 great road trip vehicles, but instead, one of the nation’s largest local TV audiences received a lesson in parking law from a particularly dedicated meter maid.

While Bell and KTLA reported Gayle Anderson were live on the air, the Santa Monica parking enforcement began rifling off $50 tickets for each vehicle on display. In the footage, Anderson asserts live on air that the parking spots have been paid for, adding that she has receipts, but that’s apparently not enough to stop Santa Monica’s finest from making with the carbon copies. Bell’s comment? “If we can afford the Porsche (Panamera), you can afford the ticket.” Unless, of course, that Porsche is a press car. Pretty funny stuff. Hit the jump to watch first-hand video of KBB and KTLA’s amusing $500 parking faux pas.

[Source: KTLA via YouTube]

Continue reading Video: KBB, KTLA get amusing parking tickets on live broadcast

Video: KBB, KTLA get amusing parking tickets on live broadcast originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 May 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via UFO Casebook News Feed

During a five-year period in the 1960s, dozens of students and a handful of educators contributed to an appreciation of Hungarian culture and life.

Almost 50 years later, Case Western Reserve was honored for its role with an Abraham Lincoln Award, presented by the American Hungarian Foundation.

Attendees at the recognition ceremony included August J. Molnar, president of the American Hungarian Foundation; special guests from the Hungarian American community; and the family of Ferenc Somogyi, the professor who taught the university’s Cultural History of the Hungarian People course for five years.

President Barbara R. Snyder hosted the special event. “I often say that the mission of a research university is to advance knowledge and understanding. When we study the history and culture of other places, we inevitably gain new appreciation for what is unique and admirable about them. More, we discover ways in which that heritage helps shape the culture of our own country,” she said at the event, which was held in late spring.

According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, at one time the city’s Hungarian population was the second-largest in the world.

From 1962 to 1967, almost 100 students enrolled in the course, which also had teaching support from John Palasics, a well-known member of the Hungarian community, and Freda B. Kovacs, a writer and teacher who focused on Hungarian life and culture.

The American Hungarian Foundation sponsors grants, special events, lectures, educational scholarships and exhibits portraying the unique cultural and historical heritage of American Hungarians.

According to the foundation, “The Abraham Lincoln Award honors Case Western Reserve University for having enhanced the appreciation and understanding of Hungarian culture and heritage in America.”

The award is inspired by the sixteenth president of the United States, who often spoke of the important role immigrants and their descendents played in American Life.

Additional resources: The Cleveland Hungarian Heritage Society.

Posted by Ray Long at 4:45 p.m.

Gov. Pat Quinn accepted $75,000 in campaign donation last month from the Teamsters union that would have benefited from changes he proposed when he vetoed legislation to overhaul the McCormick Place convention center.

The Quinn campaign confirmed the Teamsters gave two donations-—one for $25,000 and one for $50,000—-to the Quinn campaign on April 23. That was two weeks before the House and Senate passed legislation to re-organize the operations of the convention venue, following months of arduous negotiations.



But Quinn spokeswoman Mica Matsoff declared the timing of the contributions played no role in Quinn’s amendatory veto Wednesday, saying the “assertion is completely offensive.”

“Pat Quinn has spent 35 years as a reformer and fighting against political game playing,” Matsoff said.



Quinn included a change that would have helped the Teamsters broaden its jurisdiction at McPier, the authority that oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier.



Both the House and Senate rejected Quinn’s changes, overriding him with bipartisan votes at the Capitol today. The recent donations were reported online today by Crain’s Chicago Business.



Matsoff said the Teamsters were the first to endorse Quinn and that the union has given donations to him on a cycle of about every three months since Labor Day.



“This is not a secret,” Matsoff said. “Everyone knows the unions support the governor.”



Quinn has previously reported receiving more than $127,000 from various Teamsters locals since 1994, state records show, with $100,000 of the total coming since he embarked on his election campaign last September.



Quinn received two $50,000 checks from the Teamsters Volunteers in Politics, the political action committee of Teamsters Joint Council 25, which represents 22 union locals.

SlingPlayer is coming to Android later this summer and we know their private beta is currently underway. It looks like a public release could be nearing after Sling employee Dave uploaded a quick YouTube video of the latest version of SlingPlayer Mobile for Android.

In the quick demo, Dave shares that SlingPlayer on Android is their quickest loading mobile app. We can see a live TV stream playing only ten seconds after the application is launched.  The Android version also has a few exclusive features including a keypad that easily launches your favorite channels.

Sling Media charges $29.99 for their iPhone version so expect similar pricing for Android.

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PRESS RELEASE
May 27, 2010                                                              Contact: Frank Murray, 542-4835

Rolando Garcia is the new Columbia Basin College men’s basketball coach. Garcia has been the women’s team assistant head coach for seven years, but his CBC basketball history dates back even further.

A high school standout at Grandview when the Greyhounds won a state championship, Garcia was the point guard for former CBC coach Ed Weidenbach when the Hawk men last won an NWAACC championship in 1990. Garcia went on to star at Northwest Nazarene College where he was named Honorable Mention All American.

Garcia inherits a team that graduated only one sophomore.

“I’m really excited, humbled, and grateful for the opportunity to coach in a program that I also played for. I am also eager to take on this challenge and to begin working with these young men in preparing them for the upcoming season in an extremely competitive region of the NWAACC. I have been extremely fortunate in being an assistant for CBC’s women’s program under Cheryl Holden. She has been a tremendous teacher, friend, and mentor. Replicating the success we shared in the women’s program will be the tough task I will try to incorporate into the men’s program,” he says.

Garcia works at CBC as the Director of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Hispanic Serving Institutions Assisting Communities (HSIAC) grant. As head coach, he replaces Lane Schumacher who resigned earlier this month.

“The number of errors Chris Monckton makes is so enormous it would take a thesis to go through every single one of them.”

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) is a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see links below).

Nonetheless, you rarely sees such a thorough debunking of an anti-science disinformer as this astonishing point-by-point evisceration put together by John Abraham, an engineering professor at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN.

One of the two reasons you rarely see this is because few people are willing to put in the time and effort that Prof. Abraham has — not merely looking up just about every reference TVMOB uses but actually e-mailing the authors of those scientific papers and asking them if TVMOB has accurately represented their work.

The second reason you rarely see this kind of thorough dismantlement is that few people make stuff up with the relentlessness of TVMOB or push the kind of hate speech that make people want to debunk them entirely:

• Lord Monckton meltdown: “I’m not going to shake the hands of Hitler youth.”
• TVMOB hate speech shocker: Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists.
• TVMOB shocker: Activists decried as “Hitler Youth” for crashing Americans For Prosperity’s global warming event in Copenhagen
• How to diss-a-peer: Real Climate Scientists take on TVMOB
• Deltoid at ScienceBlogs: Monckton’s triple counting and here.
• Irony-gate 2: Modern day Tea Partiers outsource denial to Lord Monckton — a British peer!
• Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton aka TVMOB
• Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton, Part 2

from left Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Vice President Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, President Obama, Dodgers Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, Singer, Actor Theodore Bikel (Photo by Lynn Sweet)

Below, background on the Jewish American event

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_______________________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 27, 2010

BACKGROUND ON THE JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH RECEPTION

Approximately 200 guests are expected, including a range of community leaders and prominent Jewish Americans from professional athletes to Members of Congress, business leaders, authors and military veterans, among others.

Members of Congress Expected to Attend

U.S. Senate

· Benjamin Cardin (D-MD)

· Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

· Al Franken (D-MN)

· Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

· Carl Levin (D-MI)

· Arlen Specter (D-PA)

U.S. House of Representatives

· Gary Ackerman (D-NY)

· Shelley Berkley (D-NV)

· Howard Berman (D-CA)

· Stephen Cohen (D-TN)

· Susan Davis (D-CA)

· Ted Deutch (D-FL)

· Eliot Engel (D-NY)

· Bob Filner (D-CA)

· Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)

· Jane Harman (D-CA)

· Steve Israel (D-NY)

· Steve Kagen (D-WI)

· Ron Klein (D-FL)

· Sander Levin (D-MI)

· Nita Lowey (D-NY)

· Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

· Jared Polis (D-CO)

· Steve Rothman (D-NJ)

· Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

· Adam Schiff (D-CA)

· Allyson Schwartz (D-PA)

· Brad Sherman (D-CA)

· Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

· Henry Waxman (D-CA)

· Anthony Weiner (D-NY)

· John Yarmuth (D-KY)

Other notable attendees include:

· Justice Stephen Breyer

· Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

· Ambassador Michael Oren

· Solicitor General Elena Kagan

· Retired MLB star Sandy Koufax

PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

President Obama will deliver remarks

Rabbi Alyssa Stanton,who leads Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, NC, will read Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus”

Regina Spektor will perform

WHITE HOUSE DISPLAY

The following items of significance to Jewish American history are on loan from the Library of Congress and National Archives. The items will be on display in the entrance hall for guests to view during the reception:

Deed of Gift for the Statue of Liberty and Invitation to the Inauguration of the Statue of Liberty by President Cleveland

Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus composed “The New Colossus” in 1883 as part of a fundraising campaign for the construction of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. The words of the sonnet remind us of our Nation’s promise as a beacon to all who are denied freedom and opportunity in their native lands.

Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”

Considered by some as an unofficial anthem for America, “God Bless America” was written by the son of a cantor, a Jewish immigrant, who left his home in Siberia for America when he was a child. It was originally written by Irving Berlin (1888-1989) during the summer of 1918 at Camp Upton, located in Yaphank, Long Island. In the fall of 1938, as war was again threatening Europe, Berlin decided to write a “peace” song. He recalled his “God Bless America” from twenty years earlier and made some alterations to reflect the different state of the world. Singer Kate Smith introduced the revised “God Bless America” during her radio broadcast on Armistice Day, 1938, and the song was an immediate sensation.

Baseball Cards

A set of Jewish baseball player cards produced for the American Jewish Historical Society.

Letter from Moses Seixas to George Washington, August 17, 1790

Moses Seixas, the warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, penned a letter to George Washington, welcoming the newly elected first president of the United States on his visit to that city. Newport had historically been a good home to its Jewish residents, who numbered around 300 at the time of Washington’s visit. The Jews of Newport looked to the new national government to remove the last of the barriers to religious liberty confronting American Jewry. Seixas expressed his vision of an American government in words that have become a part of the national lexicon. He beheld in the United States “a Government which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

Statement by President Harry Truman, May 14, 1948

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, reads a “Declaration of Independence,” which proclaims the existence of a Jewish state beginning on May 15, 1948, at 12:00 midnight Palestine time (6:00PM EST May 14, 1948). At 6:11PM EST, America becomes the first nation to recognize Israel on a de facto basis. The White House issues this statement: “This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the State of Israel.”

###

A Libel Reform Bill has been tabled in the House of Lords
(From www.libelreform.org)

Lord Lester QC has published a Private Members’ Defamation Bill to reform England’s outdated and unjust libel laws. This is the first attempt in over a century to put forward a wholesale redraft of our libel laws to address many of the issues our campaign has highlighted.
Lord Lester’s Bill covers a great deal of the recommendations of the Libel Reform Campaign including a statutory defence for responsible publication on a matter of public interest; clarifying the defences of justification and fair comment, which will be renamed as ‘truth’ and ‘honest opinion’.

The Bill will also:

require claimants to provide evidence their reputation was damaged by an alleged libel before they can bring a case forward (they don’t have to do this at present) and make corporations prove financial damage before they can sue.
Address the problems introduced by the rise of the internet and the culture of online publication including the multiple publication rule that makes each download a fresh instance of libel, and alter the responsibility of forum hosts for what is posted on their sites.
Encourage the speedy settlement of disputes without parties having to bring in costly lawyers.
Promote the speedy settlement of disputes without recourse to the courts.
There is a great piece by Lord Lester on why he is doing this now here.
And Simon Singh has written his thoughts on the bill here.

Thanks to your support we’ve made the case that libel law reform is an issue politicians know they have to act on.

There is widespread Parliamentary support for reform … the majority of eligible MPs signed up to an EDM supporting libel law reform in the last Parliament.
There were general election manifesto commitments to reform from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, and Labour.
Now, there is a coalition Government promise to reform the libel laws in the Queen’s Speech …

…But we need new libel laws!
In light of Lord Lester’s Bill, the Libel Reform Campaign is asking: will the Government now make clear its plans for reform? Will it support, adopt or develop this Bill?
Help us keep the pressure on. Write to your MP asking them what the Government intends to do.
Best,

Mike and Síle
PS – for more details of the bill and complete coverage see www.libelreform.org

See for example

Dr Ernesto Bustamante’s predicament

Two-way video calling is now possible on Android, and the chances are damned good that they’re coming to the iPhone next month. But really, do you care? More »










iPhone – Handhelds – Smartphones – Android – Wallpapers and Themes

Nearly 7 million people tuned in to watch the “Most Hated Man In America” explain what he was thinking when he stepped out on one of Hollywood’s most gorgeous women with a tattooed chick who calls herself Bombshell.

According to TVByTheNumbers.com, Jesse James’ Tuesday night interview with Nightline ABC’s Vicki Mabrey — filled with tales of alleged child abuse — attracted 6.817 million total viewers, the show’s highest ratings since the newsmagazine returned to the tube in 2005.

An “irate” AT&T customer went into an AT&T store and shot one of the employees. The employee is in surgery now, but the suspect was shot by an off duty police officer that was already at the scene. More »










Police – United States – Law – Law Enforcement – Business

Rather than wait for the blogosphere to come up with its own rumors with varying degrees of accuracy, ASUS has opted to start its own pre-Computex 2010 rumor mill. The company’s online technology magazine has hinted at the event release of a couple of notebooks, a pair of gaming motherboards and a new all-in-one. Details are almost non-existent, though…
Continue Reading ASUS gives Computex product release sneak preview

Tags: All-in-one,
Asus,
Computers,
Motherboard,
Notebook

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In a program designed to reduce California’s peak afternoon grid demand, the CPUC this month moved about 2,000 PG&E customers – large commercial power users with a demand over 200 KW – to a new pricing structure that charges more in summer afternoon hours, and less in off-peak hours.

The state’s peak summer demand forecast is expected to be 47,139 megawatts, lower than the 50,270 megawatts of four years ago. Rooftop solar already produces over 2.5% of California’s sunny afternoon electrons for the grid, which has reduced the peak summer afternoon demand over the last few years.

The change will provide an incentive for hotel chains, large manufacturers, school districts, hospitals and some office buildings to consider the many available alternatives that would move their power demand to off peak times.

Some examples include using night power to supply daytime air conditioning or adding solar that typically produces the most power during peak times, thus offsetting their peak load.

This policy greatly improves the already good economics now for solar for commercial users, whether investing in their own solar system, or simply contracting for the solar power itself, using a power purchase agreement (PPA) with a company that builds a solar system for them. Most companies that have added renewable energy have saved money.

(more…)

Driving in a Daihatsu Mira equipped with a huge 74 kWh lithium-ion battery and a brushless DC motor, the Japan EV Club has achieved a new world record for an electric car: 1003.184 kilometers (623 miles) without recharging.

Although the team didn’t exceed 25 mph and was on a racing oval at a constant speed, the 8.4 miles traveled per kWh (mpkWh) statistic is an amazing achievement in-and-of-itself.

(more…)