Odd Line

Burgled in Philly

2012-01-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

Hanging the machine guns on the wall was a bad idea, but the burglary wouldn’t have happened if we’d just covered up the little decorative window over the front door. If you stood on your toes in the hallway and looked in through the little window, the guns were in plain sight. Almost everything was in plain sight because most of our third-story apartment was a single large room — a shoddy retrofit of a massive early twentieth-century industrial building on Philadelphia’s north side, in Fishtown, where those kind of buildings are common.

The building owner, a tattoo artist we’ll call Daryl, also lived somewhere on the third floor and ran a printing business on the first floor that employed a half-dozen people, most of whom were heavily tattooed tenants. There was plenty of activity around the building during the day and everyone made sure the main doors were always locked, so we had good reason to believe a burglar wouldn’t be able to break into the building in broad daylight, climb the stairs to the third floor, peek into our apartment, force his way in and carry off our machine guns without being caught. That was naïve. We should have covered up the little window.

The burglary happened on a weird day. I had agreed on very short notice to fill in on lead vocals for a friend’s band that night, a string group that played mostly old covers like “Nancy Jane” and “Wreck of the Old ‘97”. My roommate, Matt, had just started playing percussion with them a few weeks earlier and they were opening for Slim Cessna’s Auto Club at Johnny Brenda’s, a popular venue near our place. I was driving back from my soul-crushing job in the suburbs and trying to prepare mentally for the show when Matt called and asked if, by any chance, did I take the machine guns down off the wall before I left for work that morning. My stomach rolled over.
A word about the machine guns: one of them is mine, the other one is Matt’s, and they were for decoration. They were functional and we had ammunition, but they weren’t really for home defense or hunting. We thought they looked badass hanging on the wall — and they did.

My machine gun isn’t technically even a machine gun; it’s a 1944 Russian M44 infantry rifle, bolt-action, with a spike bayonet and a canvas shoulder strap. I bought it for $95 at a gun show outside Philly from a retired Air Force guy who buys them wholesale from a guy in Russia. They made about 11 million M4s for the war, and there’s a small industry of people who refurbish and ship them in wooden crates to sellers in the U.S. At the gun show, my rifle was sitting in a wooden crate with a bunch of others exactly like it, oiled and fully restored. I asked the Air Force guy if the rifles worked and he said he hadn’t fired any from that particular crate but that he’d fired a couple of other M4s he’d gotten from the same contact in Russia and they worked just fine. He also explained that the rifles are sighted in with the bayonet fixed out, in it the “battle ready” position, meaning that if you fired with the bayonet folded in your shot would stray to the left. I asked him if there was any way to get ammo for it and he pointed to a nearby table.

All I know about Matt’s rifle is that it’s a fully-automatic Czech-made AK-47 with a folding stock and two banana clips. It belonged to his father and Matt has no idea where his father got it, or why. I don’t think he’s ever fired it but it looks like it works just fine.

I told Matt I didn’t move the rifles and then he asked me if I took my laptop — a MacBook Pro I’d just bought the week before — to work with me that morning. I said no and he said, “Ah, shit.”
When I got to the warehouse the cops were already talking to Matt out on the stoop. The metal doorknob on the building’s front door was dented on either side, like it had been pinched, and the cops said certain kinds of doorknobs and locks can be broken just by grabbing them with channel locks and twisting. Apparently we had that kind of doorknob. The same thing had been done to our apartment door. On the way up, I noticed that the second floor apartment didn’t have a little decorative window.
The cops told us not to touch anything but to tell them everything that had been taken. One cop wrote stuff down in a little notebook and the other one got out the fingerprinting kit. As we looked around it became obvious that the burglar must have been interrupted mid-burglary — either that or he was insane because something wasn’t right. A digital video camera on the desk where my laptop had been was unmoved, as were the TV and stereo. But a small jar of change that had been sitting on an end table next to the couch was missing. My cheap cotton H&M blazer that had been hanging in the bathroom was gone, as was my black cowboy hat from the bedroom and, incredibly, a bag of dirty clothes. Matt’s thimbles, which he wears on his fingertips when he plays the washboard (Matt plays the washboard), were gone. His laptop, however, was sitting in plain sight on his desk in the corner.

While the cops were dusting for fingerprints, the “building manager,” an ex-con who we’ll call Billy, slipped into the apartment through the back door and quietly told me he needed to speak to me in the hallway. Billy is a wiry white guy from the Midwest who spent five years in federal prison for selling large amounts of cocaine and when he got out he came to Philly to start over, renovating apartments by day and eventually selling weed and other things by night. He wore a red bandana on his head and had a large a tattoo on his back of hand flipping the bird with the words “fuck you” written over it. He said whenever the prison guards told him to shut up he would take his shirt off and turn his back to them.

Billy was connected to the neighborhood but he wasn’t really part of it. He lived in a small apartment in the back of the building and spent a lot of time hanging out on the stoop and playing pool in the tavern across the street. He knew everybody. The way Billy saw it, someone breaking into the building was an attack on all of us and it could not go unpunished. Something had to be done. The neighborhood had to understand that the building — his building, where he once told me he had $20,000 cash hidden away somewhere in case he ever needed to leave town for good — was off limits. Billy explained all this to me out in the hallway. He said he had a pretty good idea who robbed us but he had to go talk to some people.

Back in the apartment we deduced that the burglary must have happened in broad daylight. I had left that morning just after ten and Matt came home around four in the afternoon. A few of the print shop employees said they saw a guy hanging around outside the building around eleven. The cops told us we would have to come down to the station and talk to some detectives because firearms had been taken from our apartment. They were angry with us for even owning firearms and appeared to have very little sympathy for our plight, despite our explanation that the rifles were legal and only for decoration, which they thought was stupid.

A minute later Billy poked his head through the back door of the apartment where the cops couldn’t see him and motioned for me to follow him into the rear hallway. Once outside, he leaned close and whispered: “A guy is on his way here with all your stuff but you gotta get those cops out of here right now. Like, right now. He’ll be here in five minutes but if he sees cop cars out front he ain’t comin’ in. That’s the deal. Cops stay out of it, you get your stuff back, and that’s it. You cool with that?” I was cool with that.

The timing was perfect because the cops were just closing up their fingerprinting kit, which had yielded no fingerprints, and repeating that we had to follow them to the station and that we might somehow be in trouble for being robbed of our machine guns, although they couldn’t say why. I said okay, fine, let’s go now, right now, we’ll follow you there, let’s go, and I ushered everyone out.
On the way to the station I explained the plan to Matt, how we were getting everything back but we had to keep the cops out of it. The important thing about talking to the detectives, I said, would be to keep our stories straight and not volunteer unnecessary information. It wasn’t the same as lying.

They called us in separately, Matt first, and while I was waiting Daryl the building owner called me and asked if Billy had told me what was going on. I said yes, and Daryl said that Billy knew who did it and that Billy and “his boys” had “sent a pretty strong message” to the neighborhood, to which I rolled my eyes and said just make sure you get the doors fixed. It was pretty clear that Daryl had no idea what was going on.

When it was my turn with the detective (Philadelphia detectives, by the way, are walking stereotypes of detectives — lean, early 50s, close-cropped hair, weathered face, shabby suit and tie, trench coat, revolver, 1930s-era typing skills) I gave him the whole story except the ending. He mainly wanted to know about the rifles, and I felt bad because I wanted to tell him it was okay, they won’t be out on the streets because we’re getting them back right now, you don’t even have to work on this. But I kept my mouth shut. He thought I was an idiot.

By the time we left the station we were late for our sound check at Johnny Brenda’s and drove straight there. The rest of the band was already set up on stage waiting for us and it was then that Matt realized the burglar had for some reason taken his thimbles, without which he couldn’t play the washboard. He raced back to the apartment hoping everything had been returned while I explained everything to the band. This was about ten minutes before we were supposed to go on.
When Matt got to the apartment, Billy and one of Daryl’s employees were hauling black garbage bags of our stuff in through the back door — rifles, laptop, cowboy hat, everything except the jar of change. Matt found his thimbles somewhere in there and got back to the venue with just enough time to slam a celebratory shot of whiskey before we took the stage. It was one of the best shows we’ve ever played.

Later, Billy told me how it had gone down. After he left my apartment he went to the tavern across the street where this guy Big Mike always hung out. Big Mike was the fattest crack dealer/user I’ve ever seen. Being a crack dealer and also a big guy, he was an influential member of Fishtown’s shitty criminal underworld. Billy told him that someone had hit Daryl’s building and took a bunch of stuff and Big Mike got real quiet and said oh yeah? — like he didn’t know, and Billy said yeah but it’s okay because Daryl’s got the entire building all wired up with cameras (which was a lie) and the cops are over there right now going over the tapes so it’ll just be an hour or so before they know who did it. Big Mike just stared at Billy and Billy leaned in and said, “but I bet I know who did it — I saw him, this morning,” and right away Big Mike said hold on and got up to make a phone call.

I guess Big Mike knew the guy who robbed us, a neighborhood meth-head just out of prison, but didn’t realize it was Daryl’s building, which was considered off-limits because of Billy’s standing in the neighborhood. Big Mike was pissed and called the guy and said he was coming over to get all the stuff and bring it back right now and if anyone there argued or if the stuff wasn’t all still there he was going to “crack some skulls.” (Big Mike’s threats of violence were credible; a few weeks after all this he got into a fight outside the tavern and punched a guy so hard the guy died right there on the sidewalk and Big Mike went into hiding somewhere in the depths of North Philly.)

When we got home after the show all our stuff was sitting in a pile of black garbage bags in the middle of the floor. The first thing we did was take some old newspapers and cover the little decorative window over the door. Then we hid the machine guns.

[Via Bygone Bureau]

Even Legitimate Researchers Cut Corners

2012-01-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

The discovery that the Dutch researcher Diederik A. Stapel made up the data for dozens of research papers has shaken up the field of social psychology, fueling a discussion not just about outright fraud, but also about subtler ways of misusing research data. Such misuse can happen even unintentionally, as researchers try to make a splash with their peers—and a splash, maybe, with the news media, too.

Mr. Stapel's conduct certainly makes him an outlier, but there's no doubt he was a talented mainstream player of one part of the academic-psychology game: The now-suspended professor at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, served up a diet of snappy, contrarian results that reporters lapped up.

[Via The Chronicle]

Why Feds Smashed Megaupload

2012-01-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

The US government dropped a nuclear bomb on "cyberlocker" site Megaupload today, seizing its domain names, grabbing $50 million in assets, and getting New Zealand police to arrest four of the site's key employees, including enigmatic founder Kim Dotcom. In a 72-page indictment unsealed in a Virginia federal court, prosecutors charged that the site earned more than $175 million since its founding in 2005, most of it based on copyright infringement.

As for the site's employees, they were paid lavishly and they spent lavishly. Even the graphic designer, 35-year-old Slovakian resident Julius Bencko, made more than $1 million in 2010 alone.

The indictment goes after six individuals, who between them owned 14 Mercedes-Benz automobiles with license plates such as "POLICE," "MAFIA," "V," "STONED," "CEO," "HACKER," GOOD," "EVIL," and—perhaps presciently—"GUILTY." The group also had a 2010 Maserati, a 2008 Rolls-Royce, and a 1989 Lamborghini. They had not one but three Samsung 83" TVs, and two Sharp 108" TVs. Someone owned a "Predator statue." Motor bikes, jet skis, artwork, and even 60 Dell servers could all be forfeit to the government if it can prove its case against the members of the "Mega Conspiracy."

The case is a major one, involving international cooperation between the US, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Philippines. In addition to the arrests, 20 search warrants were executed today in multiple countries.

No safe harbor for you

Going after Megaupload, one of the most popular sites in the world and one that uses a surprising amount of corporate bandwidth, might seem a strange choice. (As an example of its scale, Megaupload controlled 525 servers in Virginia alone and had another 630 in the Netherlands—and many more around the world.) For years, the site has claimed to take down unauthorized content when notified by rightsholders. It has registered a DMCA agent with the US government. It has created an “abuse tool” and given rightsholders access. It has negotiated with companies like Universal Music Group about licensing content. And CEO Kim Dotcom sent this curious e-mail to PayPal in late 2011:

Our legal team in the US is currently preparing to sue some of our competitors and expose their criminal activity. We like to give you a heads up and advice [sic] you not to work with sites that are known to pay up loaders for pirated content. They are damaging the image and the existence of the file hosting industry (see what's happening with the Protect IP Act). Look at Fileserve.com, Videobb.com, Filesonic.com, Wupload.com, Uploadstation.com. These sites pay everyone (no matter if the files are pirated or not) and have NO repeat infringer policy. And they are using PayPal to pay infringers.

But the government asserts that Megaupload merely wanted the veneer of legitimacy, while its employees knew full well that the site's main use was to distribute infringing content. Indeed, the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other. Because of this, the government says that the site does not qualify for a “safe harbor” of the kind that protected YouTube from Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit.

For instance, the “abuse tool” allegedly does not remove the actual file being complained about by a rightsholder. Instead, it only removes a specific Web address linked to that file—but there might be hundreds of such addresses for popular content.

In addition, the government contends that everything about the site has been doctored to make it look more legitimate than it is. The “Top 100” download list does not “actually portray the most popular downloads,” say prosecutors, and they claim that Megaupload purposely offers no site-wide search engine as a way of concealing what people are storing and sharing through the site.

Megaupload employees apparently knew how the site was being used. When making payments through its “uploader rewards” program, employees sometimes looked through the material in those accounts first. "10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)," said one of these notes. (The DMCA does not provide a "safe harbor" to sites who have actual knowledge of infringing material and do nothing about it.)

In a 2008 chat, one employee noted that "we have a funny business... modern days [sic] pirates :)," to which the reply was, "we're not pirates, we're just providing shipping servies [sic] to pirates :)."

Employees send each other e-mails saying things like, “can u pls get me some links to the series called ‘Seinfeld’ from MU [Megaupload]," since some employees did have access to a private internal search engine.

Employees even allegedly uploaded content themselves, such as a BBC Earth episode uploaded in 2008.

Other messages appear to indicate that employees knew how important copyrighted content was to their business. Content owners had a specific number of takedown requests they could make each day; in 2009, for instance, Time Warner was allowed to use the abuse tool to remove 2,500 links per day. When the company requested an increase, one employee suggested that "we can afford to be cooperative at current growth levels"— implying that if growth had not been so robust, takedowns should be limited. Kim Dotcom approved an increase to 5,000 takedowns a day.

Employees also had access to analytics. One report showed that a specific linking site had “produce[d] 164,214 visits to Megaupload for a download of the copyrighted CD/DVD burning software package Nero Suite 10. The software package had the suggested retail price of $99.” The government's conclusion: Megaupload knew what was happening and did little to stop it.

The need for care

Yet the indictment seems odd in some ways. When Viacom made many of the same charges against YouTube, it didn't go to the government and try to get Eric Schmidt or Chad Hurley arrested.

It's also full of strange non-sequiturs, such as the charge that "on or about November 10, 2011, a member of the Mega Conspiracy made a transfer of $185,000 to further an advertising campaign for Megaupload.com involved a musical recording and a video." So?

The money probably paid for a video that infuriated the RIAA by including major artists who support Megaupload. Megaupload later filed claims in US courts, trying to save the video, which it says was entirely legal, from takedown requests. (The RIAA has long said the site operators "thumb their noses at international laws, all while pocketing significant advertising revenues from trafficking in free, unlicensed copyrighted materials.")

Given that the site was already using US courts to file actions; given that the government had Megaupload e-mails talking about using US lawyers to file cases against other "pirate" sites; given that the site did at least take down content and built an abuse tool; and given that big-name artists support the site, the severity of the government's reaction is surprising.

There's no doubt that the indictment makes Megaupload look bad, though, and we're quite curious to see what comes of the case—especially once the site has a chance to respond.

Law professor James Grimmelmann of New York Law School tells Ars, "If proven at trial, there's easily enough in the indictment to prove criminal copyright infringement many times over. But much of what the indictment details are legitimate business strategies many websites use to increase their traffic and revenues: offering premium subscriptions, running ads, rewarding active users.

"I hope that if this case goes to trial and results in convictions, that the court will be careful in sorting out just what Megaupload did that crossed the line of criminality."

The MPAA doesn't have any doubts, though. "By all estimates, Megaupload.com is the largest and most active criminally operated website targeting creative content in the world," it said in a statement. "This criminal case, more than two years in development, shows that law enforcement can take strong action to protect American intellectual property stolen through sites housed in the United States."

[Via Ars Technica]

Rise of New Groupthink

2012-01-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck observed, introversion fosters creativity by “concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand, and preventing the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, a person sitting quietly under a tree in the backyard, while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, is more likely to have an apple land on his head. (Newton was one of the world’s great introverts: William Wordsworth described him as “A mind for ever/ Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.”)

Solitude has long been associated with creativity and transcendence. “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” Picasso said. A central narrative of many religions is the seeker — Moses, Jesus, Buddha — who goes off by himself and brings profound insights back to the community.

Culturally, we’re often so dazzled by charisma that we overlook the quiet part of the creative process. Consider Apple. In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, we’ve seen a profusion of myths about the company’s success. Most focus on Mr. Jobs’s supernatural magnetism and tend to ignore the other crucial figure in Apple’s creation: a kindly, introverted engineering wizard, Steve Wozniak, who toiled alone on a beloved invention, the personal computer.

Rewind to March 1975: Mr. Wozniak believes the world would be a better place if everyone had a user-friendly computer. This seems a distant dream — most computers are still the size of minivans, and many times as pricey. But Mr. Wozniak meets a simpatico band of engineers that call themselves the Homebrew Computer Club. The Homebrewers are excited about a primitive new machine called the Altair 8800. Mr. Wozniak is inspired, and immediately begins work on his own magical version of a computer. Three months later, he unveils his amazing creation for his friend, Steve Jobs. Mr. Wozniak wants to give his invention away free, but Mr. Jobs persuades him to co-found Apple Computer.

The story of Apple’s origin speaks to the power of collaboration. Mr. Wozniak wouldn’t have been catalyzed by the Altair but for the kindred spirits of Homebrew. And he’d never have started Apple without Mr. Jobs.

But it’s also a story of solo spirit. If you look at how Mr. Wozniak got the work done — the sheer hard work of creating something from nothing — he did it alone. Late at night, all by himself.

Intentionally so. In his memoir, Mr. Wozniak offers this guidance to aspiring inventors:

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me ... they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone .... I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone... Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

And yet. The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I’m talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open-plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

Our schools have also been transformed by the New Groupthink. Today, elementary school classrooms are commonly arranged in pods of desks, the better to foster group learning. Even subjects like math and creative writing are often taught as committee projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.

The New Groupthink also shapes some of our most influential religious institutions. Many mega-churches feature extracurricular groups organized around every conceivable activity, from parenting to skateboarding to real estate, and expect worshipers to join in. They also emphasize a theatrical style of worship — loving Jesus out loud, for all the congregation to see. “Often the role of a pastor seems closer to that of church cruise director than to the traditional roles of spiritual friend and counselor,” said Adam McHugh, an evangelical pastor and author of “Introverts in the Church.”

Some teamwork is fine and offers a fun, stimulating, useful way to exchange ideas, manage information and build trust.

But it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

Many introverts seem to know this instinctively, and resist being herded together. Backbone Entertainment, a video game development company in Emeryville, Calif., initially used an open-plan office, but found that its game developers, many of whom were introverts, were unhappy. “It was one big warehouse space, with just tables, no walls, and everyone could see each other,” recalled Mike Mika, the former creative director. “We switched over to cubicles and were worried about it — you’d think in a creative environment that people would hate that. But it turns out they prefer having nooks and crannies they can hide away in and just be away from everybody.”

Privacy also makes us productive. In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers. Seventy-six percent of the worst programmers but only 38 percent of the best said that they were often interrupted needlessly.

Solitude can even help us learn. According to research on expert performance by the psychologist Anders Ericsson, the best way to master a field is to work on the task that’s most demanding for you personally. And often the best way to do this is alone. Only then, Mr. Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class — you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.”

Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity. The brainchild of a charismatic advertising executive named Alex Osborn who believed that groups produced better ideas than individuals, workplace brainstorming sessions came into vogue in the 1950s. “The quantitative results of group brainstorming are beyond question,” Mr. Osborn wrote. “One group produced 45 suggestions for a home-appliance promotion, 56 ideas for a money-raising campaign, 124 ideas on how to sell more blankets.”

But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group work, too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”

The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals; and the larger the group the better. The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work. This is why the Internet has yielded such wondrous collective creations. Marcel Proust called reading a “miracle of communication in the midst of solitude,” and that’s what the Internet is, too. It’s a place where we can be alone together — and this is precisely what gives it power.

MY point is not that man is an island. Life is meaningless without love, trust and friendship.

And I’m not suggesting that we abolish teamwork. Indeed, recent studies suggest that influential academic work is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individuals. (Although teams whose members collaborate remotely, from separate universities, appear to be the most influential of all.) The problems we face in science, economics and many other fields are more complex than ever before, and we’ll need to stand on one another’s shoulders if we can possibly hope to solve them.

But even if the problems are different, human nature remains the same. And most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy.

To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts like Steve Wozniak need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work.

Before Mr. Wozniak started Apple, he designed calculators at Hewlett-Packard, a job he loved partly because HP made it easy to chat with his colleagues. Every day at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., management wheeled in doughnuts and coffee, and people could socialize and swap ideas. What distinguished these interactions was how low-key they were. For Mr. Wozniak, collaboration meant the ability to share a doughnut and a brainwave with his laid-back, poorly dressed colleagues — who minded not a whit when he disappeared into his cubicle to get the real work done.

[Via NY Times ]

10 Things You Do to Save Money That End Up Costing You More

2012-01-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

1. Avoiding regular check-ups with the doctor, dentist or optician.

2. Taking store credit card offers for discounts, but paying the minimum.

3. Doing your own taxes.

4. Building an emergency fund, but not contributing to a retirement plan.

5. Buying the cheapest products to save money.

6. Putting no money in the parking meter because “I’ll be back quick!”.

7. Getting suckered into BOGO deals and other sales.

8. Driving miles and miles for cheaper gas or other bargains.

9. Avoiding routine car maintenance.

10. Buying food in bulk and then throwing half of it away.

[Via Wise Bread]

What It Is Like to Have an Understanding of Very Advanced Mathematics

2011-12-25T02:49:00.000-08:00

1. You can answer many seemingly difficult questions quickly.

2. You are often confident that something is true long before you have an airtight proof for it.

3. You are comfortable with feeling like you have no deep understanding of the problem you are studying.

4. Your intuitive thinking about a problem is productive and usefully structured, wasting little time on being aimlessly puzzled.

5. When trying to understand a new thing, you automatically focus on very simple examples that are easy to think about, and then you leverage intuition about the examples into more impressive insights.

6. You go up in abstraction, "higher and higher". The main object of study yesterday becomes just an example or a tiny part of what you are considering today.

7. The particularly "abstract" or "technical" parts of many other subjects seem quite accessible because they boil down to maths you already know. You generally feel confident about your ability to learn most quantitative ideas and techniques.

8. The particularly "abstract" or "technical" parts of many other subjects seem quite accessible because they boil down to maths you already know. You generally feel confident about your ability to learn most quantitative ideas and techniques.

9. Spoiled by the power of your best tools, you tend to shy away from messy calculations or long, case-by-case arguments unless they are absolutely unavoidable.

10. You develop a strong aesthetic preference for powerful and general ideas that connect hundreds of difficult questions, as opposed to resolutions of particular puzzles.

11. Understanding something abstract or proving that something is true becomes a task a lot like building something.

12. You are good at generating your own questions and your own clues in thinking about some new kind of abstraction.

13. You are easily annoyed by imprecision in talking about the quantitative or logical.

14. On the other hand, you are very comfortable with intentional imprecision or "hand waving" in areas you know, because you know how to fill in the details.

15. You are humble about your knowledge because you are aware of how weak maths is, and you are comfortable with the fact that you can say nothing intelligent about most problems.

More Solar Firms Set to Burn up as Prices Sink

2011-12-24T04:27:00.000-08:00

(Reuters) - Only four years ago, hundreds of start-ups optimistically built factories and churned out solar panels to meet rising demand. Now, closures and failure loom for many.

The brutal shakeout is a dramatic reversal for an industry that has seen overall global growth of more than 30 percent annually over the past decade and this year will reach new records for solar panel sales.

Only a handful of manufacturers are now profitable in the face of too much capacity, which has contributed to a plunge in prices, and as government subsidies have been curbed. European banks that lent billions for solar installation have also pulled back as they struggle in the euro zone credit crisis, and debt-laden Chinese solar companies are in danger of burning up.

Solar profit margins that often approached 50 percent in 2007 have in many cases disappeared altogether. The pain - namely bankruptcy for some key players in the sector - may get much worse before it begins to ease.

"When you look at some of those balance sheets and how levered those companies are, and you look at how thin their profit margins are, it can really make your hair stand on end," said Kevin Landis, portfolio manager of the Firsthand Alternative Energy Fund, whose top holdings include Swiss solar equipment maker Meyer Burger Technology AG and U.S. equipment maker GT Advanced Technologies Inc.

And while sliding prices are making solar more competitive, the prospect of new cheap supplies of natural gas around the world is undermining those gains.

The continuing shakeout is seeing many of the early entrants to the solar industry either fail or sell out. A whole new breed of big investors, such as Warren Buffett and Google Inc, or oil industry companies such as TransCanada Corp, are moving into solar power production. Some, including oil giant Total, have even entered the tumultuous panel manufacturing market. Its rival BP Plc, however, said this week it was exiting the solar business entirely.

Asian conglomerates that already have solar panel manufacturing operations, such as Japan's Sharp Corp or South Korea's LG Corp, could scoop up their smaller, struggling rivals, or simply allow them to fold and benefit from reduced capacity.

The rapid march down in prices and the Darwinian survival of only the fittest - without the aid of large government subsidies - is making solar power more competitive against conventional energy sources, such as oil, coal and nuclear power. That means that for homeowners, businesses and utilities, the choice to go solar is more attractive and attainable than ever.

GLOBAL GLUT

Still, even the most efficient manufacturers are troubled. First Solar, the U.S.-based low-cost leader, last week announced job cuts, saying 2012 profits would be up to 50 percent below Wall Street forecasts. A week earlier, another big U.S. solar company, MEMC Electronic Materials Inc, said it would cut a fifth of its staff and idle some facilities.

At the heart of the downturn is a massive global glut of panels and huge excess production capacity that has driven prices down more than 40 percent in 2011.

"The prices that we're seeing today are likely not covering manufacturing costs in many cases," said Ralph Romero, director in management consulting for Black & Veatch, which provides engineering and due diligence consulting services to solar manufacturers.

The pain for the solar manufacturers has been acute, with most shares in the sector dropping more than 60 percent. First Solar, a one-time Wall Street darling, is the worst-performing stock in the Standard & Poor's 500 index this year, down more than 73 percent.

A number of companies have already lost their fight for survival, such as Germany's Solon SE and Solar Millennium, which both sank into insolvency this month. That follows U.S. companies Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt and Solyndra, the last of which shut down operations in September despite its controversial gobbling up of more than $500 million of U.S. government support.

Even China's notoriously aggressive small, private manufacturers are closing factories. In fact, experts predict much of an estimated 49.8 gigawatts of global solar cell production will have to be shuttered so that companies can profitably meet expectations of far lower global demand.

A GLOOMY OUTLOOK

Prices for solar panels started 2011 near $1.60 per watt, but a buildup of inventory forced manufacturers into a fire sale toward the end of the second quarter that has pushed prices to near $1 per watt now. Romero said prices for polysilicon panels, the dominant technology, may stabilize around that level, though others see declines continuing well into next year.

SolarCity, one of the largest U.S. solar installers, is anticipating a further slide early in 2012. "I do think 85 cents is probably close to the floor," said Lyndon Rive, its CEO.

That price could spell difficulties for some major names, including U.S.-listed Chinese companies Suntech Power Holdings , which has the biggest capacity for making panels in the world, and LDK Solar Co , one of the largest makers of polysilicon wafers used to make panels, industry analysts and investors say.

LDK did not respond to questions about its financial health. A spokesman for Suntech emphasized the company had cemented its position as the largest supplier of panels globally, and that it is increasing its market share.

Like other China-based companies, Suntech and LDK won massive credit lines from state-backed banks. Two years ago, that was seen by many in the industry as an unfair handout that allowed them to outflank rivals in Germany or the U.S.

But now that debt, about $2.2 billion for Suntech and $3.6 billion for LDK, is proving a huge burden.
"Maybe because (LDK) are so big they get some kind of sweetheart debt deal that prevents the company from going under, but I would find it really hard to believe that the current equity holders are going to be spared," said Morningstar solar industry analyst Stephen Simko, who added that Suntech also looks particularly vulnerable.

LDK's debt has swelled $800 million in the past 12 months to almost three times its net asset value, and analysts see it showing negative free cash flow of about $1.1 billion this year and $375 million in 2012, Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data show.

On the same basis, Suntech negative free cash flow is likely to approach $800 million this year, and $200 million in 2012.

Concerns are also swirling in the debt markets, where LDK's 4.75-percent bonds due in April of 2013 are priced at around 68 cents on the dollar, according to Thomson Reuters data. Markit data, however, shows that issue priced at 47 cents to 51 cents on the dollar. Suntech's debt that matures in March of 2013 is priced at 41 to 42 cents on the dollar, according to Thomson Reuters and Markit.

"We exceeded both our shipment and gross margin guidance for the third quarter and ended the quarter with over $560 million of cash and restricted cash," Rory Macpherson, Suntech's director of investor relations, said in an email.

"We are also implementing a range of initiatives that will strengthen our financial position over the next 12 months. These include accelerating cost-down programs, improving working capital by $200 million by the end of the year, reducing operating expenses by 20 percent in 2012, limiting capital expenditures to maintenance only, and monetizing non-core assets."

THE GAS THREAT

First Solar's projects have drawn the interest of large corporate partners such as U.S. utilities MidAmerican and NRG in part because the company's panels are the cheapest - making them ideal for large projects. First Solar makes panels from cadmium telluride rather than pricey polysilicon, the key component for more than 80 percent of global supply.

First Solar has said its costs are expected to drop more than 10 percent to 65 cents per watt by the end of next year, excluding the costs of running production below capacity.
That might be just enough to allow it to sell its panels at a discount to its polysilicon-based rivals - a discount it needs because its panels are not typically as efficient at turning sunlight into electricity, a fact acknowledged by both the company and industry experts alike.

Only three others, China's Yingli Green Energy Holding, Trina Solar Ltd and Jinko Solar Holding Co, are expected to get costs low enough to sell profitably at 85 cents per watt next year.

Recognizing the darkening market economics, First Solar's CEO Mike Ahearn has said the company will shift sales away from Europe, a market that had been supported by subsidies.

Germany, the world's top solar market, has gradually been ratcheting down its solar subsidy, while other large markets such as Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic dramatically cut back subsidies that had led to a boom in demand.
First Solar plans to get more power out of each panel and cut building costs for solar power plants to get the cost of electricity production down to $100 to $140 per megawatt hour in the next three years. That would be less than half the price a year ago and near the $90 per megawatt hour cost of a new nuclear plant.

However, it has a long way to go still to be competitive against other energy sources - it would still be nearly double the cost of a coal-fired power plant and triple that of natural gas plants, according to U.S. Department of Energy data.

And those natural gas plants represent one of the biggest threats to solar power in the United States, since the advent of hydraulic fracturing drilling technology has opened up decades' worth of gas supply. Utilities are rushing to build new gas-fired plants that can produce electricity cheaply.

Even with an 85-cent per watt price in sight for some, the industry will still need government support. And that backing will be available in fewer places and often under less generous terms.

"Without subsidies solar PV is still not in a position to be competitive across the board," Romero said.
Solar is competitive today in some places where power prices are very high, Romero said, such as California. That, as well as the state's mandate that it source one third of its electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020, has led to a boom in the building of solar projects there.

But the trend is "on the down slope" now as the state has fulfilled much of its requirement, said Ahearn. That's another reason First Solar and others are looking at new markets.

EMERGING MARKETS

First Solar is betting that its 2015 cost will be low enough to drive business in India, and some other markets, to win new contracts that need no government subsidy.

It is not alone in trying to break into such markets. Suntech, Yingli and Trina have all said they would target places like India. The only problem is that it will take several years at least to develop enough business to be profitable in those markets and competition could be intense.

"Over 95 percent of historical demand for PV has come from subsidy-driven markets, principally in Europe. The strategy of shifting focus to frontier markets makes sense in the long run but demand there is quite limited for the time being," Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov said.

The new, promising solar markets most often cited by manufacturers include India, Southeast Asia and South Africa. Such markets not only enjoy abundant sunlight, which makes the economics of solar more attractive, they also have strong appetites for new sources of power and in many locations lack the grid infrastructure needed to build large power plants. That's another advantage for solar, which can be deployed on a small scale without the need for new transmission.

Also, in many emerging markets such as India, the use of diesel generators keeps electricity prices high - making solar more competitive.

"The economics in a lot of emerging markets makes solar very attractive without needing the incentives we have in the U.S. because of the cost of power in those countries and because solar eliminates the need for transmission," said Marty Klepper, co-head of the energy and infrastructure projects practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

The Indian government has a goal of generating 20 GW of electricity from grid-connected solar energy and 2 GW of off-grid solar by 2022 against just 54 MW installed at the end of 2010. India recently lowered its forecast for when solar would be competitive with grid electricity by five years to 2017.

In the U.S. though, conditions are worsening - and not just because of the threat of a cheap gas supply.
The industry is decrying the expiration at the end of this month of a program that allows solar project owners to recover 30 percent of the cost of construction in the form of a cash grant. The program will revert to a tax credit next year, making it useful only to those seeking to reduce their tax bill.

"Projects that have yet to commence construction are all at risk," said Darren Van't Hof, director of renewable energy investments for U.S. Bank, a unit of U.S. Bancorp. "Investors without a tax appetite are going to be challenged to stay in the market."

The chances that Congress will renew the cash grant program have dimmed, and that could hit demand immediately.

"We're projecting a big upswing in our business next year and I don't know if we'll get that if this goes away," said Tony Clifford, CEO of U.S. project developer Standard Solar.

NEW INVESTORS

One of the few bright spots is that despite the headwinds, there is new investment coming into solar power production.

Most recently, Warren Buffett offered the industry a major vote of confidence when his MidAmerican Energy Holdings bought First Solar's $2 billion Topaz Solar Farm, which at 550-megawatts is one of the two largest being built in the world. MidAmerican bought 49 percent of another First Solar project a week later, a move it said was part of a strategy to "aggressively" pursue opportunities in renewable energy.

Other big names, such as Bank of America and utility giants Exelon and NextEra, have also been investing in solar power projects. Bank of America has put its heft behind a plan to build more than $1 billion in solar projects on military housing with SolarCity, while Exelon and NextEra have each bought major First Solar projects.

Google has been an investor for several years and on Tuesday made its latest move, saying it would team up with private equity firm KKR to buy four California plants.

Winners are expected eventually to emerge but the question is how much more carnage there will be before that happens. "There is going to continue to be this natural rate of attrition where smaller companies sort of die off and the big companies who have been looking at the market and moving in will continue to make a bigger impact," said Firsthand's Landis.

Watching Football to Death

2011-12-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Watching your favorite football team trying to hang on to a precarious lead in the dying minutes of a match is enough to frazzle anyone's nerves, but for one Manchester United fan the stress was nearly too much.

The 58-year-old woman gets so anxious she has to take treatment for a life-threatening condition brought on by watching knife-edge games at the Old Trafford stadium.

The condition, known as an Addisonian crisis, comes about when the adrenal glands do not produce enough of the stress-reducing hormone cortisol, a lack of which can lead to low blood pressure and even a coma.

"We believe that our patient was having difficulty mounting an appropriate physiological cortisol response during the big games and therefore we present this as the first description of Manchester United-induced Addisonian crisis," said Dr Akbar Choudhry who treated the patient.

Doctors suspected the condition when the woman started getting bouts of anxiety, palpitations, panic, light headedness, and a sense of impending doom towards the end of matches.

The symptoms were less serious when the home side was playing a lower-rated team.

An Addisonian crisis, which is a manifestation of Addison's disease, is difficult to diagnose because the main symptoms include fatigue, lethargy and low mood -- often experienced by otherwise healthy people and frequently reported in many other chronic conditions.

"Luckily, the patient was on holiday for United's 6-1 defeat by local rivals Manchester City in October," Choudhry said in a report on BMJ.com.

"But, by this time, doctors had fine-tuned her therapy and she has remained symptom-free during recent tense contests against Sunderland and FC Basel," he added.

Treatment coincided with the start of the 2011/12 football season and the patient has managed to attend all games at Old Trafford without any adverse effects.

Inflated Home Sales Figures from 2007-10 to Be Lowered

2011-12-17T04:08:00.000-08:00

National home sales figures will be lowered dating back to 2007 after the private trade group that collects them said the numbers were too high.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday it will release the downward revisions for previously occupied homes on Dec. 21.

The Realtors consulted with several government and private housing market experts, including the Federal Reserve, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and CoreLogic, the California-based data firm that first raised doubts about the annual numbers earlier this year.

CoreLogic estimated that the Realtors group overstated sales in 2010 by at least 15%.

Among the reasons for the inflated figures, the Realtors group says: changes in the way the Census Bureau collects data, population shifts and some sales being counted twice. Last year's total sales figure of 4.91 million was the worst in 13 years.

The changing numbers could impact how economists view data from the trade group. It could also affect companies who use the figures for hiring and expansion plans.

[Via Usa Today]

How to Lose Money with Groupon

2011-12-01T09:04:00.000-08:00

A London bakery recently experienced the worst-case scenario of offering a Groupon for a small business, and it cost the owner thousands.

Need a Cake bakery owner Rachel Brown decided to put up a 75% discount on a dozen cupcakes on the site, which dropped the price down to $10 from $40.

Apparently, people really love getting cupcakes cheap, because she was rushed by throngs of customers in a cupcake frenzy. 8,500 people signed up, and her crew of eight had to make 102,000 cupcakes to meet the orders.

Brown lost $3 per batch because she had to hire 25 extra workers to help, and she ended up losing $20,000 because of it, which is a ton for a small biz. It wiped out her profits for the year, reports the Daily Mail.

"Without doubt, it was my worst ever business decision," she told the BBC. "We had thousands of orders pouring in that really we hadn't expected to have. A much larger company would have difficulty coping."

This is just the latest in Groupon small business horror stories. A story popped up in September about a Portland cafe losing $8,000 because of a Groupon, which prompted a personal letter from founder and CEO Andrew Mason.

It brings up the always-present question about the daily deals site: does Groupon suck for small businesses?

Well, it looks like most small businesses think so. An overwhelming majority of 70% hate Groupon, if the latest survey from iContact is to be believed.

As for Brown and her bakery, the experience may have cost her 20 grand, but what about all the exposure she's getting for her store? Great, right? It doesn't hurt, but it probably wasn't worth the cost.

Small businesses like this bakery thrive on relationships with their local customers, not crowds of outsiders coming in to snatch up a free lunch.

Getting new customers is great, but in this case, the bakery rewarded the wrong customers. Those 8,500 people that rushed for the Groupon probably won't be coming back to pay for the same cupcakes at quadruple the price.

Only those the store has nurtured relationships with for a long time (in Brown's case, 25 years), should be the ones rewarded. They're the ones that keep coming back for more.

[Via Business Insider]

U.S. Alcohol Consumption Hits 25-Year High

2011-11-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

The booze business is recession proof, just ask your neighborhood bartender. They know the following to be true: When times are good, people enjoy a cocktail. When times are rough, people enjoy two cocktails. A recent Gallup poll shows alcohol consumption hit a 25-year high in 2010, with 67 percent of Americans reporting drinking alcoholic beverages. This number approaches the all-time booze benchmark of 71 percent set in the 1970s.

Many believe the economy can contribute to the rise in alcohol consumption, but perhaps not in the obvious way. A poor economy may not drive the masses to drink, but it sure gives people the extra time to have an adult beverage or two – especially if they have lost their job or are staying at home on weekends to save cash.
Social drinking is a relative term, and it has myriad meanings from coast to coast. Location, culture and upbringing influence alcohol intake just as much as age, sex and weight.
U.S. citizens in the far West and the Upper Plains states drink the most, reports the Washington-based Beer Institute.

The deep south and Mid-Atlantic are among the driest parts of the country.

What state came out on top of the tap? New Hampshire had the most widespread booze consumption in the poll. The average adult in that state doubled the national per capita average, gulping an average of 6.7 gallons of wine each and 3.8 gallons of liquor in 2010. Some in the health industry attribute this to the state’s popularity for both winter and summer vacations.

Americans drank the most wine on record last year, roughly 2.3 gallons apiece. Spirits climbed 18 percent to 1.5 gallons per person, while beer intake dropped 7 percent to 20.7 gallons, reports the Beer Institute.

[Via Fox 9 News]

More Homes Heat with Wood, Raising Pollution Risks

2011-11-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

Mostly to save money, Matthew Walton switched a few years ago from heating his home with natural gas to wood, becoming a modern-day Paul Bunyan.

"The access to cheap wood made a difference," says Walton, a carpenter who lives on heavily forested land in Keene, N.H., where he chops his own fallen or dead trees.

"It saves us a bundle," he says, adding his wood stove can manage all winter with just two cords because he added insulation and good windows to his tidy, 1,300-square-foot home.

As energy prices rise, and winter approaches, more Americans are turning to wood to heat their homes, some hurrying to cash in on tax credits for efficient stoves that expire next month.

This upswing is prompting federal officials, concerned about the health and environmental impact of burning wood, to update 23-year-old certification criteria for stoves and set the first requirements for outdoor wood boilers, which heat water that's piped into homes.

"We are not in the business of telling people how to heat their homes," says Alison Davis of the Environmental Protection Agency, which plans to propose the new rules next year. But if they want to burn wood, Davis urges them to buy an EPA-certified stove and operate it properly so no smoke gets inside the house.

She says boilers are "significantly more polluting" than wood or pellet stoves because they have short stacks and use 10 times as much wood. Even so, she says those meeting the EPA's 2007 voluntary standards are 90% cleaner than older ones. "The technology has improved for wood stoves," Davis says, as has the research on the dangers of wood burning.

Wood heating's upswing

The number of U.S. households heating with wood rose 34% nationwide from 1.8 million in 2000 to 2.4 million in 2010 — faster than any other heating fuel, according to Census data.

"We're seeing a rise mainly in states with high oil and gas prices," most notably in Michigan and Connecticut, says John Ackerly of the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit group that promotes wood stoves.

"It's a combination of rising energy prices and the economic downturn," he says, adding low- and middle-income households are much more likely than others to use wood for primary heating. In rural areas, he says many cut their own wood and in the suburbs, they get it free when trees fall.

He expects wood will become more popular this winter, citing the projected rise in household heating costs. Compared to last winter, heating will cost 3% more with natural gas and 8% more with oil this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Retailers are gearing up. U.S. shipments of pellet stoves, considered the most efficient way to burn wood, jumped 59% in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same time last year, and pellet fireplace inserts rose 72%, according to Leslie Wheeler of the the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, an industry group.

"We're expecting those numbers to continue to increase," Wheeler says, because of high fuel prices. She says the tax credits expiring this year — up to $300 for EPA-certified stoves — are not as generous as in 2009 and 2010 when they covered 30% of the cost, up to $1,500. She says many cost $3,000 to $4,000 with installation.

Wood's dirty downside

The problem is that most Americans burn wood in old, dirty devices. Traditional fireplaces are so inefficient they don't heat a room unless they've been retrofitted with a wood or pellet insert.

Of the 10 million wood stoves being used in the U.S., 70% to 80% are not EPA-certified and emit 70% more pollution than those that are, says Lisa Rector of the nonprofit NESCAUM (Northeast

States for Coordinated Air Use Management.) She says most of the 500,000 outdoor wood boilers don't meet EPA's voluntary standards.

Several Northeast and Western states have "burn bans" and other rules to limit wood burning, particularly when air quality is bad.

"People don't realize burning wood is a source of pollution, indoors and outdoors, especially when you're using an older stove," says Janice Nolan of the American Lung Association. She says it can emit tiny particulate matter — soot and ash — that gets lodged in the lungs and toxic substances such as benzene, carbon monoxide and methane.

Walton says he bought an EPA-certified stove that does not emit smoke inside his home. He sees a health benefit in chopping wood and an aesthetic one in burning it, adding: "The stove has a certain ambience."

[Via USA Today]

South Korea's Wasted Youth

2011-11-11T04:44:00.000-08:00

There are not many excuses for turning up late to South Korea's national college entrance exam.

The most important day in a student's life, it determines which university - if any - each of them will go to and, by extension, what their future salary and status is likely to be.

And to ensure its students have the best possible chance, for one day every year Korea changes its aircraft flight schedules, holds up the morning rush-hour, and even discourages the military from moving outside its bases.

South Korea's education system is held up as a model around the world.

Some 80% of its high-school students now go on to further education.

But according to South Korea's president, that academic success is creating its own "social problem" - a youth unemployment rate of 6.7% in October, more than twice the national average, even as parts of the labour market are hungry for workers.

"Because there are so many people graduating from university at the moment, and looking only for high-end jobs, there's a mismatch between the job-hunters, and the positions available," explains Kim Hwan Sik, director of vocational training at the Education Ministry.

The problem began with mass lay-offs after the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, he says.

When companies began hiring again, they found a glut of graduates willing to fill entry-level positions, putting pressure on all school-leavers to get a degree.

So these days, applicants' skills often fail to match employers' needs, according to Mr Kim. In addition, Korea loses years of much-needed earnings while they study.

Recipe for success?

Koo Woonmo, 17, is doing things differently. He has already decided he wants to become a chef.
So rather than spend his school years cramming for the university entrance exam, he is learning practical skills at a specialist culinary high school.

Today's lesson: red bean noodles.

"My mum and dad didn't want me to go to this school, because in Korean culture men aren't supposed to cook in the kitchen," he says.

"People said 'Don't go', but I wanted to. I don't want to be a normal student. I don't want to work that hard."
It is quite normal for school children in South Korea to spend 14 hours a day studying for the college entrance exam - sometimes for years on end.

Parents often spend up to half the family's income on private tuition to help their off-spring beat the competition.

Equal worth?

These days, the government would rather have more students who think like Woonmo and opt for vocational training.

But even at Woonmo's vocational high school, half the students currently go on to higher education.
The head teacher here, Min-oo Sohn, says the school is coming under pressure from the government to reduce that number. But it is a policy he fears will create a two-tier system.

"I personally feel this is going to increase polarisation between those who go to university and those who go to vocational schools," he said.

"And by trying to draw a line - when these students are just teenagers - over whether they want to go to university or not, it's making those decisions more rigid."

The government says it is well aware of the problems facing students who skip university.

"If someone straight out of high school is treated with less respect or financial return than a graduate, who on earth would want to take that route?" the education ministry's Kim Hwan Sik says.

"There needs to be a recognition that four years of experience on the job is equal to a degree.

"First the government needs to set a model example for employers, so that public institutions don't discriminate against high-school leavers. If the government takes the lead, changes will eventually trickle down to the private sector as well."

Two-tier system

To hammer the message home, the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, has been touring vocational schools recently, highlighting the career choices of what he calls Korea's new pioneers.

But he is up against some stiff opposition - not so much from students, perhaps, as from their older relatives.
In South Korea, parents will do almost anything to get their children into university.

At Seoul's main Buddhist temple, the price of an undergraduate in the family is two hours of prayer - every day - since July.

Hundreds of parents and grandparents have been turning up at these special examination-prayer sessions each afternoon to bow 108 times to the huge golden Buddhas staring down from the temple rafters.

Among them is Ju-sung Eun. Her granddaughter is sitting the college entrance exam this year, and Ms Ju-sung has been coming every day to pray for her success.

The government's plan to wean people away from university does not go down well with her.

"I don't agree with it," she says. "I think going to university is important for a person and I hope my granddaughter will achieve that."

It is a route that was not open for Ms Ju-sung in her day.

"I'm over 70," she cackles.

"In those days we didn't go to university. And because I didn't go, that makes my hope for my grandchildren even stronger."

Ms Ju-sung is old enough to remember the days before democracy, when a small group of elites ran this country.

The problems South Korea faces now are different - the results of its academic and financial success.

But for Ms Ju-sung - and many others here - fear of ending up on the wrong side of a two-tier system still runs deep.

[Via BBC News]

10 Best Words for Indicating Excessive Drunkenness

2011-11-10T01:43:00.000-08:00

1 Trashed
2 Smashed
3 Blitzed
4 Lightheaded
5 Blotto
6 Blacked out
7 Slizzard
8 Shitfaced
9 Rat-arsed
10 Plastered

Southern Europe's Lost Generation Stuck in Junk Jobs

2011-10-24T04:01:00.000-07:00

SYLVIA KNEW THINGS WOULD BE TOUGH, BUT NEVER LIKE THIS

With a masters' degree in publicity, the 24-year-old has been working for more than two years, full-time, in an internship that is starting to feel like it will never end.

Paid 300 euros a month for the same work as the salaried public relations professionals who sit next to her, she doesn't earn enough to move out of her parents' house and her bus pass and lunch expenses eat up most of her pay.

But despite feeling her multinational employer is flouting rules that limit the use of worker contracts with no benefits, she's not about to complain to the labor office since she considers herself blessed to have a job at all.

"Since I was little my parents urged me to get a university degree to find good work. But I'm lucky to have any work at all. There were 30 of us in my graduating class and I'm one of the ones who is doing the best with their career," Silvia said. She did not want her last name used in case of repercussions at work.

With Spain's youth unemployment higher than 40 percent and its overall joblessness the highest in the European Union at one in five, young professionals accept any conditions as they try to start their careers.

The story is much the same in neighboring Portugal and Italy where more and more people have so-called junk jobs: temporary contracts that used to be common in tourism, farming and construction but are now used by all kinds of companies.

With the economy sluggish and the euro zone debt crisis strangling credit, businesses are keener than ever to avoid open-ended contracts with expensive severance pay.

A quarter of Spain's workforce is on temporary contracts, as is 23 percent of Portugal's, compared with a European Union average of 14 percent.

In Spain, Portugal and Italy, a rigid dual system has emerged. Middle-aged people have stable jobs with benefits. They are expensive to fire and protected by masses of legislation. Meanwhile, younger workers are stuck in a revolving door of temporary contracts that are easy to abuse.

The two-track job market is stunting economic growth, studies show. Temporary workers get trapped for longer and longer periods without benefits, which affects output and makes southern Europe less competitive.

"You cannot just leave one segment of the labor market fully untouched and not motivate people to go to the job where they fit best... you might create employment in the short term but in the end it's a dead-end road," said Ton Wilthagen, a labor expert at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

1000 EUROS A MONTH AIN'T SO BAD AFTER ALL

The curse of the mileurista -- the Spanish-language term for a temporary worker who earns a thousand euros a month without benefits -- is not new. Young professionals in southern Europe have found a permanent position elusive for some time.

But the lost generation has wandered deeper into a maze as the euro zone debt crisis intensifies. Economic growth is slowing again and public sector jobs are disappearing as governments try to bring huge public deficits under control.

"We used to talk about mileuristas like it was a bad thing. Now it's good. A 1000-euro a month temporary contract is decent," said Jose Maria Marin, labor expert and contemporary history professor at Spain's National University of Distance Education.

In Rome, 27-year-old Federico has moved from one temporary job to another since he graduated in history in 2009. A 1000-euros-a-month is starting to look like an unobtainable dream.

"I was interviewed today for a one-year job but I didn't like it because they were offering me 500 euros a month to work 10 hours a day," said Federico, who did not want his last name used since prospective employers could search for him on the Internet.

So far he has held out for a job in his chosen field of media or marketing. He wants to move out of his parents' house but he needs a permanent job contract in order to sign a rental agreement. With more than a quarter of Italians from 15-24 years old out of work he's starting to get desperate.

"Sometimes I feel frustrated, and I start to send off lots of CVs, even to companies I don't like, just so I have more chance of finding something," he said.

The phenomenon of young people living with their parents is another thing holding back economic growth, creating a vicious cycle for job creation. If they were setting up new households they would be stimulating the housing market as well as consumer spending.

Another risk for economies with high percentages of temporary workers, notes Wilthagen, is that banks are shy of lending to people without permanent employment, further holding back consumption.

FOOT IN THE DOOR

Theoretically, a temporary contract is a foot in the door to prove yourself as a good hire.

But in southern Europe many supposedly temporary hires renew contracts year after year and do the same jobs as the permanent hires around them, just without the job security or benefits. This creates an enduring second-class job tier similar to the phenomenon of "permatemps" in the United States in the 1990s.

In Spain only 20 percent of temporary contracts led to permanent positions in 2008, one of the lowest rates in the European Union, according to a study by Ruud Muffels, a labor market expert at Tilburg University. His analysis of Eurostat data showed that mobility was better in Italy and Portugal.

Pedro Portugal, a labor market expert at Nova University in Lisbon, said conversion rates of temporary contracts to permanent ones have decreased in Portugal to under 20 percent from 50 percent in the late 1990s.

Many Portuguese companies abuse a freelance contract called the "green receipt," using it to hire full-time, in-house workers, said Joao Labrincha, an organizer of marches earlier this year against state austerity measures.

He said that "green receipt" workers often have fixed schedules like any other employee, but have no right to holidays, social security, health insurance or severance pay.

Even the government misuses the contracts.

"I've worked for the state under green receipts for more than five years. The system is rather perverse. Many of my colleagues are also under these precarious conditions, some of them have been temporary workers for the last 10 years," said a middle manager at the Portuguese Institute of Museums, who asked not to be named.

It's difficult to transition into a permanent job when no such posts are being created. In Spain, 80 percent of new job contracts signed in the last decade were temporary contracts -- businesses just aren't creating permanent positions.

"Firms tend to link temporary contracts, to chain one after the other, with the effect that very few young people get transformed from temporary to permanent. This has a very negative impact on young people starting their careers," said Anita Woelfl, economist with the OECD.

ANY JOB IS BETTER THAN NO JOB

In 2010, under pressure from the European Union to reform its labor market and make it easier for companies to hire and fire, Spain's Socialist government passed reforms meant to phase out temporary contracts and make permanent contracts cheaper for employers.

But less than a year later the government did a U-turn after the 2010 reform failed to put a dent into the country's unemployment rate, which continued to rise.

"We'd rather have people on a temporary job than without a job," said Labor Minister Valeriano Gomez when the government rolled back the reforms, introducing new rules that allow companies to extend some temporary contracts for up to three years.

Spain is becoming a country of people who are "apprentices until 33 and can't retire until 75," said union leader Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, criticizing the new rules, which included a new type of contract that gives companies more leeway to hire trainees for extensive periods with no benefits.

The extended trainee contract was designed to retrain jobless men now in their late twenties or early thirties who dropped out of school as teenagers during Spain's housing boom to work in well-paid construction jobs until the building sector collapsed in a pile of bad debt.

In Portugal, where the jobless rate is 12 percent, significantly lower than Spain's, the government has stuck to reforms that reduce and cap severance pay.

Juan Jose Dolado, an economist at Madrid's Universidad Carlos III, said Spain should have kept its eye on the long-term goal and moved the country toward a one-contract system with phased-in severance pay benefits.

"It was like crossing the river and being in the middle. They got scared in the middle, they didn't move forward to reach the other side, they went back," Dolado said.

The Socialists, expected to lose November 20 general elections after eight years in power, are now campaigning on pledges to crack down on abuse of temporary contracts.

The center-right opposition People's Party, or PP, poised to win the November vote, says it wants to revive the original labor reform and move Spain toward one type of job contract, such as the one Dolado envisions.

But analysts say the PP may also flinch when it comes to cracking down on temporary contracts because they worry the short-term effect will be to put people out of work at a time when joblessness is the top concern of Spanish voters.

Meanwhile, workers like Juan Francisco Seller, will continue to give their labor away, hoping a "real" job materializes. Seller is 27 and has a pharmaceutical degree. He's been working for free in a hospital in Valencia for a year, doing research with a laboratory team.

He has turned down paid work outside of his field, in order to keep his C.V. professional.

"I'm one of those who have patience and I'm really clear that other options don't appeal to me and I really like this field," he said. But "in the end it drives you crazy."

[Via Reuters]

Rich-Poor Gap Growing

2011-10-22T01:02:00.000-07:00

The gap between the United States’ rich and poor continued to grow last year, according to new government wage data.

With pay down and fewer jobs available, the Social Security Administration’s figures highlight one of the major issues of the Occupy Wall Street movement - widening income disparity.

The SSA said 50 percent of workers made less than $26,364 last year — and most Americans have fewer job opportunities available to them. But the wealthiest Americans are relatively unscathed, with those earning $1 million or more jumping 18 percent from 2009.

Total employment fell again last year, dropping from 150.9 million in 2009 to 150.4 million in 2010. And in 2007, at the height of the recession, there were still 5.2 million more jobs than in 2010, the AP wrote.

The average income for Americans was $39,959 last year, but the median wage was just $26,364. The SSA wrote that this shows “the distribution of workers by wage level is highly skewed,” the AP reported.

Occupy Wall Street protesters have demonstrated across the country in recent weeks against what they deem the unfair income disparity between the U.S.’s top wage earners and average Americans.

[Via Politico]

Nearly Half of U.S. Lives in Household Receiving Government Benefit

2011-10-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year.

Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.

The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years.

Means-tested programs, designed to help the needy, accounted for the largest share of recipients last year. Some 34.2% of Americans lived in a household that received benefits such as food stamps, subsidized housing, cash welfare or Medicaid (the federal-state health care program for the poor).

Another 14.5% lived in homes where someone was on Medicare (the health care program for the elderly). Nearly 16% lived in households receiving Social Security.

High unemployment and increased reliance on government programs has also shrunk the nation’s share of taxpayers. Some 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That’s up from 39.9% in 2007, the year the recession began.

Most of those households will still be hit by payroll taxes. Just 18.1% of households pay neither payroll nor federal income taxes and they are predominantly the nation’s elderly and poorest families.

The tandem rise in government-benefits recipients and fall in taxpayers has been cause for alarm among some policymakers and presidential hopefuls.

Benefits programs have come under closer scrutiny as policymakers attempt to tame the federal government’s budget deficit. President Barack Obama and members of Congress considered changes to Social Security and Medicare as part of a grand bargain (that ultimately fell apart) to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year. Cuts to such programs could emerge again from the so-called “super committee,” tasked with releasing a plan to rein in the deficit.

Republican presidential hopefuls, meanwhile, have latched onto the fact that nearly half of households pay no federal income tax, saying too many Americans aren’t paying their fair share.

[Via The Wall Street Journal]

Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in Fuel Tank

2011-10-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.

Wood gasification is a proces whereby organic material is converted into a combustible gas under the influence of heat - the process reaches a temperature of 1,400 °C (2,550 °F). The first use of wood gasification dates back to 1870s, when it was used as a forerunner of natural gas for street lighting and cooking.

In the 1920s, German engineer Georges Imbert developed a wood gas generator for mobile use. The gases were cleaned and dried and then fed into the vehicle's combustion engine, which barely needs to be adapted. The Imbert generator was mass produced from 1931 on. At the end of the 1930s, about 9,000 wood gas vehicles were in use, almost exclusively in Europe.

The technology became commonplace in many European countries during the Second World War, as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 producer gas vehicles were in operation by the end of the war.

A network of some 3,000 "petrol stations" was set up, where drivers could stock up on firewood. Not only private cars but also trucks, buses, tractors, motorcycles, ships and trains were equipped with a wood gasification unit. Some tanks were driven on wood gas, too, but for military use the Germans preferred the production of liquid synthetic fuels (made out of wood or coal).

In 1942 (when the technology had not yet reached the height of its popularity), there were about 73,000 producer gas vehicles in Sweden, 65,000 in France, 10,000 in Denmark, 9,000 in both Austria and Norway, and almost 8,000 in Switzerland. Finland had 43,000 "woodmobiles" in 1944, of which 30,000 were buses and trucks, 7,000 private vehicles, 4,000 tractors and 600 boats.

Woodmobiles also appeared in the US, Asia and, particularly, Australia, which had 72,000 vehicles running on woodgas. Altogether, more than one million producer gas vehicles were used during World War Two.

After the war, with gasoline once again available, the technology fell into oblivion almost instantaneously. At the beginning of the 1950s, the then West-Germany only had some 20,000 woodmobiles left.

[Via Low-tech Magazine]

To Outfox the Chicken Tax, Ford Strips Its Own Vans

2011-10-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

Several times a month, Transit Connect vans from a Ford Motor Co. factory in Turkey roll off a ship here shiny and new, rear side windows gleaming, back seats firmly bolted to the floor.

Their first stop in America is a low-slung, brick warehouse where those same windows, never squeegeed at a gas station, and seats, never touched by human backsides, are promptly ripped out.

The fabric is shredded, the steel parts are broken down, and everything is sent off along with the glass to be recycled.

Why all the fuss and feathers? Blame the "chicken tax."

The seats and windows are but dressing to help Ford navigate the wreckage of a 46-year-old trade spat. In the early 1960s, Europe put high tariffs on imported chicken, taking aim at rising U.S. sales to West Germany. President Johnson retaliated in 1963, in part by targeting German-made Volkswagens with a tax on imports of foreign-made trucks and commercial vans.

The 1960s went the way of love beads and sitar records, but the chicken tax never died. Europe still has a tariff on imports of U.S. chicken, and the U.S. still hits delivery vans imported from overseas with a 25% tariff. American companies have to pay, too, which puts Ford in the weird position of circumventing U.S. trade rules that for years have protected U.S. auto makers' market for trucks.

The company's wiggle room comes from the process of defining a delivery van. Customs officials check a bunch of features to determine whether a vehicle's primary purpose might be to move people instead. Since cargo doesn't need seats with seat belts or to look out the window, those items are on the list. So Ford ships all its Transit Connects with both, calls them "wagons" instead of "commercial vans." Installing and removing unneeded seats and windows costs the company hundreds of dollars per van, but the import tax falls dramatically, to 2.5 percent, saving thousands.

Customs officials won't discuss individual company's strategies, but Stephen Biegun, Ford's vice president for international governmental affairs, says the practice complies with the letter of the law. "We are free-traders, full stop," he says.

Foreign auto makers have long crossed swords with the chicken tax. Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. took the straightforward route and built plants in the U.S.

Subaru, owned by Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan, imported a small pickup in the 1980s called the Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter, or BRAT. But it wasn't a taxable truck, because it had two lawn-chair-like seats bolted to the open bed. (President Reagan owned a red one, according to Subaru.)

With the globalization of the auto industry, American companies have joined the game. Until recently, Chrysler Group LLC imported Dodge Sprinter vans made in Düsseldorf, Germany, by former owner Daimler AG. The engine, transmission, axles and wheels were removed, allowing the truck bodies to cross the border as auto components, which aren't subject to the tax. Daimler then reassembled the vehicles at a factory in Ladson, S.C.

Ford launched the Transit Connect in 2002. The compact commercial van with a distinctive raised roof was designed to haul goods through urban areas with tight streets. Since then, more than 600,000 of the vehicles have been sold.

When gas prices spiked, Ford saw a market among small-business owners in the U.S. Prices start at $20,780, much lower than would have been possible if Ford had to cover the chicken tax. Sales are off to a fast start. In August, Ford sold more than 2,200 in the U.S.

"It's great for city driving," said Duff Goldman, owner of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore and star of Ace of Cakes on the Food Network. "It's shorter, smaller and has really good fuel economy." He bought a black Transit Connect last month. Since he doesn't carry passengers, his van has no windows or seats in the back.

The vans leave Turkey on cargo ships owned by Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics. Once they arrive in Baltimore, they are driven into a warehouse, where 65 workers from the shipping company's WWL Vehicle Services Americas Inc. convert them into commercial vehicles amid the blare of rock music and the whirring of industrial fans.

On a recent afternoon, a handful of vans passed through the warehouse unmolested as passenger wagons. But the vast majority were lined up to have windows pulled out, and they all had their rear seats removed.

In one lane, supervisor Robert Dowdy watched as two workers removed the rear side windows. They cut out the rubber seal with a special knife and popped out the glass using suction cups. The space is plugged with a metal panel that cures for 15 minutes before being tested outside for waterproofing.

At the start of that same lane, Mayso Lawrence unhooked a rear seat belt as easily as he would pop the top off a soda bottle. Using a drill, he quickly unscrewed six bolts to free the seats. Workers at the other end dump the seats into cardboard boxes, which are hoisted onto an open tractor-trailer and shipped to Ohio. Ford says the shredded seat fabric and foam become landfill cover, while the steel is processed for other uses.

"I never thought about why we take out the seats, but if that's what the customer wants, that's what we'll give them," Mr. Lawrence said.

With the seat removed, Mr. Lawrence puts in a new floor panel to cover the holes, toots the horn to signal he's finished, then gets to work on another van. The whole process takes him less than five minutes.

Rob Stevens, chief engineer for Ford's commercial vehicles, says the auto maker decided against shipping the seats back to Turkey for use in the next wave of vans for the U.S.

"We thought going through the recycling process was best," he said. "The steel is valuable."

[Via The Wall Street Journal]

Cross-country Quest on Foot Leads Traveler Through Bucks

2011-09-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

Before she even opens her mouth, Catherine Li’s story begins to reveal itself.

The tale, in short, describes the seven-month, 3,000-mile journey of a young woman walking alone across the country for no particular reason other than to welcome the unknown.
Her story is written all over her feet. The cuts, scrapes and mosquito bites say more than any cluster of words ever could.

It can be seen within the tattered 52-page direction guide printed off Google Maps, hand-bound with string.

But mostly, it can be seen in her eyes, which still seem to be trying to process everything she’s witnessed during her trek.

And her relentless smile indicates that most of the memories are good ones.

Li, 24, began her epic excursion in Daly City, just outside San Francisco. She’s survived on her humble savings account and the kindness of strangers as she makes her way toward New York City.
She was taken in Tuesday night by James “Mac” MacDade of Langhorne, after one of his neighbors suggested Li knock on his door to ask permission to set up her tent in his yard.

Mac said he was taken aback by her polite nature and amazing tale and offered her a couch in his house. Li left the area Thursday morning, eager to embark on the last leg of the walk.

“Mac has been extremely kind in letting me stay here,” Li said Wednesday. She came to America from China 10 years ago and speaks with a slight accent.

Aside from the sheer magnitude of the trip, what makes her story so hard to believe is that she has, for the most part, chosen to stay under the radar.

There is no blog or Facebook page chronicling her moves. She isn’t tweeting. She has no official sponsor.

So, while she gets asked a million questions by most people she encounters — many of whom are concerned for her safety — the one she hears most is simply, “Why?”

“People always ask me that,” she said with a laugh. “At first, I was so urgent (to respond) so I just started to tell them all the feelings I was having but I realized that was tough to do. So I just boil it down to the short version: I just felt like walking. I just decided to click over to living in the actual moment instead of inventing all these fantastic fantasies for the future.”

Though she tries her best to avoid attention, the sight of a young woman walking along a desolate road with a shopping cart — filled with a tent, a sleeping bag and other essentials — is not one often seen.

She said she’s been stopped countless times by police officers who are curious about her intentions and worried about her well-being. One still insists she check in on her cell phone to let him know she’s safe.

“A homeless person with a cell phone; that’s a new one, right?” Li said jokingly from Mac’s front porch.

And yes, Li said she hears it all. Some call her a bum, others label her as crazy and some just flat-out don’t believe her story.

“It’s all right,” she added. “People are different and sometimes, it’s hard to comprehend when you first encounter something out of the norm.”

According to Li, most people are surprisingly giving.

“People have given me a lot of support,” she said. “They give me McDonald’s gift cards and insist I take them. One time I went into a store and found $20 just sitting in my cart outside. I have no idea who left it.”

Li said she began with just a wheeled suitcase, but soon found that pushing a shopping cart was the way to go. The one she uses now came from a Sears department store in Flagstaff, Ariz.

“Just for the record, I did not steal it,” she said. “I actually went to the mall security guard and asked him for it. I left him my phone number and said if Sears had any problems, I would be willing to pay.”

Li said she plans to return the cart on her way home which, she added, will be done by more conventional modes of travel.

But on the way to NYC, she’s strictly walking.

“To be honest, I did take a few rides,” she admitted. “One time, a policeman escorted me out of a certain area at night, but the next day I asked him to take me back to the same spot. I don’t want to cheat.”

Li estimates she walks 15 miles a day; at sunset, she begins to look for shelter or a place to pitch her tent.

“I always make sure to ask permission before I set up my tent on someone’s property. It’s only right,” she added.

Along the way, she said, the little things have given her the most pleasure.

“The clouds in Ohio, were just so perfectly shaped,” she said, “like the most innocent drawings from a child.”

She said she realizes the dangers of such an undertaking and that she’s been fortunate so far.
“When you’re on a trip like this, you get so much closer to the truth about yourself,” Li added.

And while she understands that walking across the country might not be for everyone, she said that even the tiniest of adventures can lead to that same inner truth.

“A quest is different for everyone,” she said, “but the courage is the same.”

[Via MSN]

Arkansas Town Searching for Toe-sucking Assailant

2011-09-18T04:05:00.000-07:00

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - There's nothing illegal about a foot fetish but police in Conway, Arkansas, are looking for a toe-sucking man they said has crossed the line into assault.

Police have received two complaints in the past week about a man who seems desperate to suck women's toes -- whether they want him to or not.

"We want him off the streets," said Conway police spokeswoman LaTresha Woodruff.

Last Saturday, Ruth Harris, 83, told police she was sitting in a chair in front of her apartment when a man approached and said he liked her feet. According to a police report, the man took off one of her shoes and began sucking on her toe.

"The man then asked if he could kiss her and she had told him no and told him he was crazy," the report stated.

The man left quickly after people walked into the apartment complex's courtyard.

On Tuesday, police received another call from a woman who said that on Saturday she was shopping when she noticed a man staring at her.

The man then told the woman that he had a foot fetish and that "her toes are so long and succulent" and he wanted to suck them. When the woman's cell phone rang, the man retreated.

She told police the man had "messed up toes."

It is not the first time that Conway has dealt with this sort of complaint. In the 1990s, a man who was known as the "Toe Suck Fairy" kept Arkansans captivated with his foot fondling antics in Conway and Little Rock.

That assailant, Michael Robert Wyatt, pretended to be a podiatrist in order to fondle and suck a Conway woman's toes at a clothing store. He received probation, a fine and court-ordered therapy but his probation was revoked after he was arrested in another town on similar charges.

In 1991, he was convicted of making threats for telling a convenience store clerk that he wanted to cut off her feet and suck her toes while she bled to death.

Wyatt was sentenced to four years in state prison. He served just more than one year in prison, according to Conway police.

Some two decades later, police have not ruled out the possibility that the current toe-sucker could be the same man.

US to Slash Marcellus Shale Gas Estimate 80%

2011-09-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

The US will slash its estimate of undiscovered Marcellus Shale natural gas by as much as 80 percent after a updated assessment by government geologists.

The formation, which stretches from New York to Tennessee, contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of gas, the US Geological Survey said in its first update in nine years. That supersedes an Energy Department projection of 410 trillion cubic feet, said Philip Budzik, an operations research analyst with the Energy Information Administration.

“We consider the USGS to be the experts in this matter,” Budzik said in an interview. “They’re geologists, we’re not. We’re going to be taking this number and using it in our model.”

The revised estimates, posted on the agency’s website, are likely to spur a debate over industry projections of the potential value of shale gas.

Range Resources Corp. (RRC), Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (COG) and Goodrich Petroleum Corp. (GDP) were subpoenaed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over whether they accurately represented the profitability of their natural-gas wells in the region, according to a person familiar with the matter. The subpoenas, sent Aug. 8, requested documents on formulas used to project how long the wells can produce gas without additional drilling using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The previous Geological Survey estimate in 2002 said the Marcellus Shale contained about 2 trillion cubic feet of gas. The 42-fold increase is the result of “new geologic information and engineering data,” the agency said. The Marcellus formation may hold from 43 to 144.1 trillion cubic feet, the agency said.

Technology Advances

Advances in the technology used to recover shale gas led the Energy Department to more than double its estimate of recoverable shale resources, to 827 trillion cubic feet, in an April report and to project that the nation has enough natural gas to heat homes and run power stations for 110 years. Shale gas is recovered by fracturing, a technique in which millions of gallons of chemically treated water are forced underground to break up rock and allow gas to flow.

“One fifth of a big number is still a big number,” Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, a Washington-based policy analysis firm, said today in an interview. “It shouldn’t tell you anything about your conclusions. It should tell you what you need to know about estimates. They get revised.”

Budzik said much remains unknown about the Marcellus. Most drilling by companies such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) and Range Resources Corp. has occurred in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, Budzik said. New York has banned drilling until the state completes environmental regulations.

‘Sense Of Proportion’

“There hasn’t been a lot of drilling elsewhere yet,” Budzik said. “Layer on that the fact that over the next 30 years, the technology is going to evolve. It will have an impact on our projections. We all need to keep a sense of proportion here.”

The Energy Information Administration, the data-gathering arm of the Energy Department, will incorporate the USGS estimates in its annual energy outlook, which should be issued by the end of the year, Budzik said.

The Marcellus Shale assessment covered areas in Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

[Via Bloomberg]

Median Male Worker Makes Less Now Than 43 Years Ago

2011-09-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to the Census report of Income, the median male is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in 1968.

While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since declined to $32,137 as of 2010. And there is your lesson in inflation 101 (which we assume is driven by the CPI, which likely means that the actual inflation adjusted income decline is far worse than what is even reported). The only winner: women, whose median inflation adjusted income over the same period has increased by 188%. That said, it is still at 65% of what the median male makes. So injustice all around. And now, it is time to be patriotic again and buy a Pontiac Aztek.

[Via Zero Hedge]

Ikea's US Factory Churns Out Unhappy Workers

2011-09-11T03:42:00.000-07:00

A union-organizing battle hangs over the Ikea plant in Virginia. Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace, mandatory overtime and racial discrimination.

When home furnishing giant Ikea selected this fraying blue-collar city to build its first U.S. factory, residents couldn't believe their good fortune.

Beloved by consumers worldwide for its stylish and affordable furniture, the Swedish firm had also constructed a reputation as a good employer and solid corporate citizen. State and local officials offered $12 million in incentives. Residents thrilled at the prospect of a respected foreign company bringing jobs to this former textile region after watching so many flee overseas.

But three years after the massive facility opened here, excitement has waned. Ikea is the target of racial discrimination complaints, a heated union-organizing battle and turnover from disgruntled employees.

Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it's common to find out on Friday evening that they'll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can't or don't show up.

Kylette Duncan, among the plant's first hires, quit after six months to take a lower-paying retail job. "I need money as bad as anybody, but I also need a life," said Duncan, 52. She recalled having to cancel medical appointments for her ailing husband because she had to work overtime at the last minute.

Some of the Virginia plant's 335 workers are trying to form a union. The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said a majority of eligible employees had signed cards expressing interest.

In response, the factory — part of Ikea's manufacturing subsidiary, Swedwood — hired the law firm Jackson Lewis, which has made its reputation keeping unions out of companies. Workers said Swedwood officials required employees to attend meetings at which management discouraged union membership.

Plant officials didn't return calls and declined to meet with a Times reporter who visited the Virginia facility. Swedwood spokeswoman Ingrid Steen in Sweden called the situation in Danville "sad" but said she could not discuss the complaints of specific employees. She said she had heard "rumors" about anti-union meetings at the plant but added that "this wouldn't be anything that would be approved by the group management in Sweden."

The dust-up has garnered little attention in the U.S. But it's front-page news in Sweden, where much of the labor force is unionized and Ikea is a cherished institution. Per-Olaf Sjoo, the head of the Swedish union in Swedwood factories, said he was baffled by the friction in Danville. Ikea's code of conduct, known as IWAY, guarantees workers the right to organize and stipulates that all overtime be voluntary.

"Ikea is a very strong brand and they lean on some kind of good Swedishness in their business profile. That becomes a complication when they act like they do in the United States," said Sjoo. "For us, it's a huge problem."

Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation. Full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days — eight of them on dates determined by the company.

What's more, as many as one-third of the workers at the Danville plant have been drawn from local temporary-staffing agencies. These workers receive even lower wages and no benefits, employees said.

Swedwood's Steen said the company is reducing the number of temps, but she acknowledged the pay gap between factories in Europe and the U.S. "That is related to the standard of living and general conditions in the different countries," Steen said.

Bill Street, who has tried to organize the Danville workers for the machinists union, said Ikea was taking advantage of the weaker protections afforded to U.S. workers.

"It's ironic that Ikea looks on the U.S. and Danville the way that most people in the U.S. look at Mexico," Street said.

The Swedwood factory is situated on the outskirts of Danville, in the midst of rolling tobacco country, just north of the North Carolina border.

For most of the last century the town of 45,000 relied on textiles and tobacco for jobs. Today the riverfront is lined with empty red brick warehouses and crumbling mills. With the unemployment rate high — currently at 10.1% — the city has put muscle behind attracting new companies, including Ikea.

"They've definitely given jobs to people that desperately needed them here," city manager Joe King said.

Swedwood says it chose Danville to cut shipping costs to its U.S. stores. The plant has been run mostly by American managers, along with some from Sweden.

The facility looks like a series of interlocking, windowless white boxes — as neat as an Ikea store — with a blue-and-yellow Swedish flag flying out front. Employees inside produce Expedit bookshelves, which start at $69.99 in Ikea stores, and Lack coffee tables, which retail for as little as $19.99.

Low prices have helped Ikea weather the economic downturn. The company made 2.7 billion euros in profit last year, up 6.1% from 2009, according to its most recent financial statements.

Still, last fall, Swedwood eliminated regularly scheduled raises and made cuts to some pay packages in Danville. Starting pay in the packing department, for example, was reduced to $8 an hour from $9.75. Steen said the changes were made to free up more money to pay incentive bonuses to top performers.

The median hourly wage in the Danville area is $15.48, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.

Current and former plant employees said they resented the unpredictable work hours and high-pressure atmosphere. The plant assesses penalty points for violations of work rules; workers who accumulate nine of them can be fired.

"It's the most strict place I have ever worked," said Janis Wilborne, 63, who worked at the plant for two years and quit last year.

Six African American employees have filed discrimination complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that black workers at Swedwood's U.S. factory are assigned to the lowest-paying departments and to the least desirable third shift, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

"If we put in for a better job, we wouldn't get it — it would always go to a white person," said Jackie Maubin, who worked the night shift in the packing department until last year, when she was fired on her birthday.

Swedwood has been trying to settle four of the discrimination complaints through mediation. The company initially offered Maubin $1,000. She settled for $2,000. She said she needed the money to keep her car from being repossessed.

Global competition has motivated all manner of companies to seek out low-cost sources of production, said Ellen Ruppel Shell, the author of the book "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture." Ikea is no exception. What's different, she said, is that the company has done such a good job of burnishing its own corporate image.

"There's a mythology around the company," Shell said. "That's why these kinds of revelations surprise a lot of folks."

[Via LA Times]

Why Adolf Hitler Hated Jews

2011-09-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

Let's first start by saying that anti-semitism existed in Western Europe prior to the birth of Hitler, with pogroms against Jews occurring long before Kristallnacht. Jews, as well as other minorities, had long been the established scapegoats. Since the Middle Ages, Jews were forced by European Christians to work & reside in ghettos, preventing assimilation. Only certain occupations were open to Jews, such as banking & moneylending; trades which made some Jews, like the Rothschilds, wealthy but also the targets of envy and hate.

The scapegoating of European Jews was often politically and religiously expedient to those in power, such as the Catholic Church, and those seeking power. Martin Luther, the German founder of Protestantism, was a vehement anti-semite who wrote vicious rhetoric about the Jews and worked toward their expulsion from many German towns as early as 1536.

Adolf Stoecker had formed the Christian Social Workers' party in 1879 and by 1883 riots, as well as the burning of a synagogue in Neustettin, were stoked by Stoecker's call for a "final victory" against the Jews. He was followed by Professor Eugen Euhring, speaking at Berlin University, of the "obligation to drive an inferior race from public honor", and Gottingen University's Paul de Legarde's (aka Boetticher) suggestion of a three-fold program: the Germanizing of Austria, the conquest of Russia, and the expulsion of Jews to Palestine.

This would have been the zeitgeist in which Hitler was born.

During his youth, Hitler found himself in Vienna struggling to become an artist and attempted to pass the entrance examinations at the Academy of Fine Arts. He failed. At this point, Hitler became a drifter and struggled to survive from time to time as a day laborer. In Vienna, Hitler would have encountered a thriving Jewish community, where Jews held distinguished positions in universities, such as the one that just rejected him, and private financial institutions. He also would've encountered open anti-semitism in print and on the street. It is speculated that Hitler blamed all of his personal failures on the Jews, despite the fact that it was a Hungarian Jew by the name of Josef Neumann who once saved him from starvation.

Hitler's personal anti-semitism grew as his public political power and megalomania grew. One of his greatest political enemies were the Communists. Although Jews made up the ranks of every political group, Jewish participation in contemporary left wing politics of the early 20th century was established and formidable, going back to Karl Marx. Hitler's sad theories of a "master race" conveniently tied into the annihilation of his political opponents as well.

And yet, Hitler wasn't unaware of the absurdity of his "master race theory". He admits as much when he was quoted as saying "I know perfectly well that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race. But you, as a farmer, cannot get your breeding right without a conception of race. And I, as a politician, need a conception which permits the order than has formerly existed on a historic footing to be abolished."

Again, these are just speculations about why - or how - it was possible that Hitler hated the Jews. It's also likely that he was a certifiable sociopath, in which case no explanation is necessary.

6 Questions Start-up CEO Should Ask of Angel Investor

2011-09-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

1. Are you a check-writer?

2. Did you bring your checkbook with you?

3. Would you like to use my pen?

4. Do you know how to spell $250,000?

5. Do you know today's date?

6. Do you mind signing your name on that line?

What Percent of Women Who Get Married Take Their Husband's Last Name?

2011-09-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Sometime while Hillary Clinton was switching her name from Hillary Rodham to Hillary Clinton and back again and back back again, an important threshold was crossed — people stopped caring. When Hillary initially kept her surname after marrying Bill, it was a blow against the patriarchy and for women’s liberation, but today such surname-keeping has lost its cachet.

In the 1990s the number of women keeping their maiden name upon marriage began to dip, according to a fascinating study published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. This snapback to taking a husband’s surname is mostly an elite phenomenon, since among most people it never went out of style. Roughly 90 percent of women take their husband’s surname. It is among college-educated women that surname-keeping flowed and is now ebbing.

Surname-keeping took hold in the 1970s. Legal restrictions that forced women to take their husbands’ surnames began to be overturned or ignored. Women began to marry later and get more professional degrees, both of which made them more attached to their surnames. Ms. became popularized as a way to avoid the repression of Mrs. Keeping a surname was considered a way for a woman to keep her identity.

The number of women in The New York Times’ wedding announcements keeping their surnames was 2 percent in 1975 and had reached 20 percent by the mid-1980s, according to the Journal study. Then the trend stalled. Among women in the Harvard class of 1980, 44 percent retained their surname, but in the class of 1990, only 32 percent did. According to Massachusetts records, the percentage of surname-keepers among college graduates in that state was 23 percent in 1990, 20 percent in 1995 and 17 percent in 2000.

Why? The study’s authors write: “Perhaps some women who ‘kept’ their surnames in the 1980s, during the rapid increase in ‘keeping,’ did so because of peer pressure, and their counterparts today are freer to make their own choices. Perhaps surname-keeping seems less salient as a way of publicly supporting equality for women than it did in the late 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps a general drift to more conservative social values has made surname-keeping less attractive.”

Indeed, the decline in sur- name-keeping might mean that marriage is being taken slightly more seriously. “I think it will strengthen marriage,” says University of Virginia professor Steven Rhoads, author of “Taking Sex Differences Seriously.” “It’s a sign that someone intends it to be a unit, that this is a marriage, and it is for the duration.”

It certainly shows that, for whatever reason, younger women are moving beyond old feminist obsessions. Writing in the online magazine Slate, Katie Roiphe argues that “the maiden name is no longer a fraught political issue. These days, no one is shocked when an independent-minded woman takes her husband’s name, any more than one is shocked when she announces that she is staying at home with her kids.”

In the waning of a certain kind of self-conscious feminism, women are freer to make their own choices — including traditional ones.

Finally, there is simply the hassle factor. It can be difficult for a mother who doesn’t share her child’s last name to pick him up from school or travel with him. Hyphenation has its own perils. Writer Frederica Mathewes-Green reports receiving mail for people named Mathwas-Green, Mathers-Crein, Vatherwes-Green and Mebhews-Creen, among others. Her hyphenation won’t be carried on by any of her children, and she doesn’t regret it.

In an essay on the decline of feminism in the City Journal, Kay Hymowitz notes that feminist pioneer Patricia Ireland wrote that a woman taking her husband’s name “signifies the loss of her very existence as a person under the law.” Women who want to get on with their lives and with their marriages greet that kind of old-school feminist call-to-arms with a decidedly 21st century “ho-hum.”

Married Rich in San Diego

2011-08-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

Money and politics have long been married to each other in San Diego, where four of the city's most powerful women made their way to the top after marrying local captains of commerce and industry. Union-Tribune publisher Helen Copley, ex-mayors Maureen O'Connor and Susan Golding, and McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc all started their lives with humble means, only to find fortune and power in the arms of wealthy husbands.

The women married their money in the '70s and '80s. In the '90s, it was the men's turn. Three of the city's most prominent civic players, UCSD chancellor Robert Dynes, San Diego Unified School District superintendent Alan Bersin, and San Diego city councilman Scott Peters, are married to rich wives. Each spouse is probably worth millions of dollars, according to the personal financial disclosure statements the men are required to file.

But having money has proved a mixed blessing for these San Diegans. Along their path to wealth and influence, two of the women, Copley and Golding, and one of the men, Dynes, reinvented part of themselves, sanitizing their biographies by erasing marriages, divorces, and the recriminations that followed. And the surnames of the children of Copley and Golding were later changed. For Bersin, Dynes, and Peters, spousal wealth has raised questions about conflicts between their official roles and the financial holdings of their wives.

Fifty years ago this spring, Copley was a secretary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when, according to court documents, she became pregnant after a tryst with a fellow worker at a dairy company. At 29, she married the child's father, John Hunt, in one county, divorced him two weeks later in another, and, accompanied by her mother, headed west to San Diego, where she gave birth to a son on January 31, 1952. Years later, asked about the father of her child, Copley would say, "I never talk about him. I don't know where he is, and I don't want to know."

Not long after arriving in San Diego, Helen Hunt got a job at the San Diego Union and its sister paper, the Tribune, where she met publisher James S. Copley, who had inherited his newspaper empire from his adoptive father, Colonel Ira Copley, a one-time Illinois congressman. Smitten by the svelte brunette, Jim Copley made Helen his personal secretary. In August 1965, he divorced his wife and the mother of his two adopted children and married Helen. At the time of their marriage, Jim adopted Helen's 13-year-old son David Hunt, whose birth certificate was altered to eliminate any reference to the boy's birth father.

Seven years later on his deathbed, the publisher drew up trust agreements leaving his wife complete control of his newspaper empire. After Jim died of lung cancer in 1973 at the age of 57, Helen, then 48, consolidated her hold on the company, allegedly locking out Jim's two children by his first marriage, and triggering a lawsuit charging that Helen had looted the children's trusts for the benefit of herself and her son David. After years of litigation, Helen agreed to settle the case in 1982 for a sizable, undisclosed sum.

By the time she named David publisher of the Union-Tribune this April, Helen Copley had spent almost 28 years at the helm of the newspaper company. She had provided political and editorial support to Pete Wilson as mayor, then United States senator, then governor, only to see him blamed for the decimation of the state's Republican Party because of his backing of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187.

Copley used her newspapers to stimulate the city's explosive growth, pushing for North City residential sprawl, convincing voters to approve encroachment of the Naval Hospital expansion into Balboa Park's Florida Canyon, advocating giving away city-owned land for industrial projects, and promoting the Chargers' ticket-guarantee. Few candidates for local office dared challenge the Union-Tribune's dominance, and when they did, they found themselves dispatched to political oblivion.

And yet, though her editorial defeats were few, Copley as publisher never seemed to find her personal bearings. She rarely spoke in public. Her friendship with financier Richard Silberman in the late 1970s became an embarrassment when a reporter at the Evening Tribune accused the paper of spiking a story about Silberman's conflicts of interest stemming from his ownership of the Bazaar del Mundo. When Silberman began dating a young Union reporter, his relationship with Copley cooled. She retreated to her mansion, known as Fox Hill, overlooking the fairways of the La Jolla Country Club, and was seldom again seen by anyone other than close friends.

A few years after his split with Copley, Silberman married Susan Golding on July 22, 1984. Golding arrived for the wedding at Temple Beth Israel in a red Jaguar; Silberman pulled up in a Lamborghini Spada. It was the city's money marriage of the decade. Everyone knew Silberman as the millionaire wonderboy who, along with fellow San Diego State grad Bob Peterson, made a fortune when they sold the Jack In The Box hamburger chain to Ralston Purina more than a decade earlier.

At the time of the wedding, Democrat Silberman -- a self-proclaimed influence-peddler and confidant of former governor Jerry Brown -- was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get his new wife elected to the county board of supervisors. Golding, a Republican, had arrived in San Diego in the late 1970s with her husband, attorney Stanley Prowse.

Though she was the daughter of San Diego State president Brage Golding, she and her husband had modest assets. They were soon divorced, and Golding began her political career after striking up a close friendship with political consultant George Gorton, a key advisor to thenSan Diego mayor Pete Wilson.

With Gorton's assistance, Golding won an appointment to the San Diego City Council in January 1981. Two years later, in February 1983, Golding quit her council job to accept an appointment as a functionary in the administration of Governor George Deukmejian. Her council salary had been $35,000. The new job paid $50,784. She and Silberman were soon considering marriage.

"Susan talked to me on the phone about marrying Dick shortly after she had moved to Sacramento in the spring of 1983," her ex-husband Stanley Prowse recalled in a declaration filed in a child-support case Golding brought against him. "She told me that she thought she loved him, and that they were talking about getting married, but that she was nervous about it, particularly in light of their age difference and the fact that she was building her political career as a Republican while he was a prominent Democrat. I told her that I felt her fears were justified and that she should ask him to settle a substantial sum on her when and if they were married, so that she would feel secure and not dependent on him. She told me she thought my advice was sound. I did not doubt that she had followed it when she and Dick were wed the following year."

Golding went on to win her county-board seat, easily defeating a former Silberman protégée, Democratic lawyer Lynn Schenk. For most of her two terms on the board, Golding and Silberman were inseparable, personally and politically. Wiretaps, recorded during an FBI sting that resulted in Silberman's conviction on felony money-laundering charges, showed that Silberman was frequently in contact with Golding's office about arranging government contacts for Silberman's business friends.

Golding's ex-husband Stanley Prowse complained that Silberman was being overly generous to his two children, Vanessa and Sam. "They have both been showered with material things and have had so little interest in birthday and Christmas gifts we have given them that they have often ignored our invitations to visit and claim them." He added, "As I recall, Christmas of 1986 brought a bush plane tour of Alaska, while last Christmas brought a tour of the Far East, complete with surfing in Bali and bar-hopping in Bangkok -- heady stuff for impressionable teenagers."

Prowse was angered by what he charged were Golding's attempts to change the children's surnames. "Several years after our separation, I discovered that she had enrolled them in school as 'Sam Golding' and 'Vanessa Golding' without saying a word to me on the subject. By the time I found out, it was too late to do anything about it without embroiling them in a painful dispute. The sight of 'Golding' in bold letters on the back of Sam's high school letterman's jacket is painful to me, and for years I have received little or no acknowledgement from the children on Father's Day or my birthday. They do not treat [my wife] Joy or me respectfully. Susan has done her best to wipe the slate clean." Both Sam and Vanessa later went to court to make their name-change legal and permanent.

By the time Silberman was convicted on the money-laundering charges in June 1990, his business empire had been shown to be a massive fraud, based more on local myth of his financial infallibility than his balance sheet. A year later, Golding filed for divorce, and Silberman issued a statement from federal prison saying he had lied to his wife. "Unfortunately, I was not always truthful with her regarding critical and vital aspects of my life, and I know I am responsible for the changes in our relationship."

In November 1992, Golding was elected mayor of San Diego, narrowly beating Peter Navarro, the UC Irvine economics professor who was the bête noir of San Diego's establishment. Golding did not remarry, and, to outward appearances, lived a hermetic social life until leaving the public spotlight last year.

In contrast to Copley and Golding, Maureen O'Connor and Joan Kroc seemed to find post-spousal happiness. Kroc, a buxom blonde who at age 27 had met 53-year-old McDonald's founder Ray Kroc while playing piano at a bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1957. For the next six years, they carried on a secret relationship. Ray Kroc divorced his wife, but Joan refused to divorce her first husband, who had become a McDonald's franchisee, and they didn't see each other at all for another six years. Meeting up with Kroc again at a 1969 McDonald's convention in San Diego, Joan finally ditched her husband and married the feisty billionaire.

After Ray Kroc died in January 1984, leaving Joan not only his fortune, but ownership of the San Diego Padres, she styled herself as a grand philanthropist, backing every cause from nuclear disarmament and world peace to the San Diego Zoo and Midwest flood victims. She tried to donate the Padres to the City of San Diego, a plan thwarted by her fellow Major League Baseball owners, who banned public ownership of teams.

Kroc's personal life, too, was more colorful than Copley's. She commissioned a sprawling house in Fairbanks Ranch and purchased a 300-foot yacht (the Impromptu), a helicopter (the Luvduv), a private Gulfstream jet, and a fleet of gold Cadillac Sevilles to provide transportation. She stopped driving the Cadillacs in October 1997 after she rolled one of the Sevilles on Interstate 5 near Clairemont Drive, suffering what were reported to be minor facial lacerations.

Like Kroc and Golding, former mayor Maureen O'Connor has not remarried. As a physical education teacher at a Catholic school, O'Connor, then 25, met Robert O. Peterson while running for the San Diego City Council in 1971. He was 55. Peterson, founder of the Jack In The Box hamburger chain, provided financial backing to O'Connor's subsequent campaigns and married her in 1977 in a European wedding.

Peterson lavished more than $500,000 on O'Connor's first mayoral race against Roger Hedgecock in the 1983 special election to replace Pete Wilson. During his victorious campaign against her, Hedgecock allies accused O'Connor and Peterson of conflicts of interest arising from Peterson's partial ownership interest in the Grant Hotel. A year later, Hedgecock found himself embroiled in the J. David political contribution scandal, but O'Connor declined to run in the June 1984 regular election, saying neither she nor Peterson were ready for another vitriolic go-around with Hedgecock.

Then, in September 1985, with Hedgecock on trial for political corruption and a likelihood that he would be forced from office, Peterson filed for divorce against O'Connor after eight years of marriage. Union-Tribune columnist Tom Blair reported that "the settlement isn't public, but an O'Connor friend says it's sizable. O'Connor, whose maiden name was restored, according to court documents, reportedly was in New York City when the dissolution was filed." Others claimed that the rift was caused by Peterson's opposition to O'Connor's ambition to run for mayor again.

The couple eventually reconciled, and by the spring of 1986, O'Connor was campaigning to replace Hedgecock, who had departed city hall after his conviction on the corruption charges. Vowing to spend no more than $170,000 on the campaign, she won the election that June. When she filed her first financial disclosure statement as mayor, it revealed an array of holdings from Gustaf Anders restaurant -- owned jointly with Union-Tribune publisher Helen Copley, an O'Connor intimate -- to 20 pieces of property in the county, valued well in excess of $2.5 million.

The couple's assets outside San Diego were not disclosed. "We listed anything that could even remotely be construed as doing business with the city," her attorney, David Bain, told the Los Angeles Times. "But it's safe to say that Maureen and Bob have interests outside San Diego that have nothing at all to do with San Diego." Though Bain didn't mention it, it was common knowledge that Peterson owned much of the Northern California resort town of Mendocino, as well as a hotel in Orange County.

"I don't see how anything that she and her husband hold could cause a significant conflict," Bain added. "Her policy has always been not to vote on anything that even remotely could be seen as a conflict, and she'll continue to follow that guideline. But I don't think there are going to be many cases where she might disqualify herself, and if there are, they'll be minor ones."

In December 1989, downtown-hotel magnate Douglas Manchester accused O'Connor of holding up the construction of the city's bay-front convention center while failing to reveal that she and her husband had a financial interest in the 249-room Grand Hotel, across the street from Disneyland. Oscar Irwin, an attorney for the Port of San Diego, defended the mayor, saying she had disclosed the interest earlier, while serving on the Port Commission. "Why are they crying to the press...unless it has to do with Manchester's vindictiveness?" Irwin told the Los Angeles Times.

"I came in as a maverick," O'Connor was quoted as saying, "and I will go out as a maverick." She served only one term as mayor. Peterson died of leukemia at the age of 78 in April 1994, less than two years after she left office. The former mayor, who is seen around town driving a silver Mercedes Benz, now manages much of her late husband's real estate empire, including the properties in Mendocino. On occasion, she has returned to the San Diego political fray, most notably to oppose the Chargers' ticket-guarantee and to speak out against Sempra Energy. She is said to remain friendly with Joan Kroc and Helen and David Copley, political allies and confidants of years past.

As the last decade of the century dawned, three men emerged to inherit San Diego's wealthy-spouse legacy. Alan Bersin was a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles when he married Lisa Foster in 1991. He had met her while working pro bono at a homeless legal clinic. It was her first marriage, his second. Foster was the daughter of Stanley E. Foster, who himself had married into San Diego's wealthy Ratner family almost 50 years earlier.

San Diego's legendary Ratner dynasty had begun in 1921 when Isaac Ratner arrived in town from New York and established United Cap Works on the east side of downtown. From the Depression through World War II, the factory made Navy uniforms and caps. After the war, Isaac's sons Abe and Nathaniel, along with Abe's son-in-law Stan Foster, switched to making menswear and casual clothing, eventually becoming one of the county's biggest employers.

A flood of cheap imports eventually doomed their clothing factory, but the Ratners, led by Foster, sold off that end of the business and switched to licensing their brand name, Hang Ten. Foster also became one of the county's biggest developers of so-called "maquiladora" sites in the South Bay and along Otay Mesa. He snapped up large tracts of cheap agricultural land near the border and developed them into trucking depots and warehouses supporting the burgeoning "twin plant" movement in Tijuana, where low-wage workers toiled making goods for low-duty import into the U.S. By 1991, when he was 64, Foster boasted to a magazine writer that he owned 17 industrial projects with more than two million square feet.

With Silberman's imprisonment and the death of his one-time partner, liberal Republican Robert Peterson, Foster had become one of the few remaining pillars of the city's left-of-center establishment. He backed stiff handgun controls and gave generously to Planned Parenthood and the Democratic party. Bersin had graduated from Yale Law School in 1974, one class behind Bill Clinton, and, like Clinton, had attended Oxford's Balliol College on a Rhodes scholarship. He spoke of his personal relationship with the Arkansas governor and told the Union-Tribune that Hillary Clinton had introduced him to his first wife.

Newly married Bersin and Lisa Foster arrived in San Diego in the spring of 1992, in time for presidential primary season. He took a job as "visiting professor" at the University of San Diego's law school and became a key operative of San Diegans for Clinton. With Clinton's election, Bersin, who had been in town for less than a year, was named United States Attorney. Attorney General Janet Reno designated him U.S. "border czar," a position he used to advocate tough restrictions on immigrants while championing Otay Mesa development and the maquiladora movement.

As it happened, Bersin, Foster, and their wives had a personal interest along the border. County records showed that in January 1992 they had formed a general partnership called Otay Terminal, which snapped up four industrial parcels worth more than $12 million. One of the sites, subsequently leased to a freight-forwarding service, was located less than a quarter-mile from the frontier.

"It's a partnership in which my wife and I have an interest," Bersin explained in a 1998 interview. "I don't know when we made it, but it's something my father-in-law organized. It's a truck -- Consolidated Freight -- transfer point." He pointed out that the Otay Mesa property was purchased in 1992, "before I was U.S. Attorney." Bersin defended himself against allegations that the border-area property holdings of he and his family represented at least an appearance of conflict of interest by saying, "No, because first of all, it's fully disclosed, and it had no bearing on,you know, the requirement is to disclose it. Frankly, none of the decisions I made as a prosecutor were affected by that." He added, "the notion that my role was driven by a desire to feather my own nest, I think, is a little bit far-fetched."

Still, there were skeptics who pointed to Bersin's role in the development of the so-called International Gateway of the Americas project, a shopping and office complex next to the San Ysidro border crossing. "When the proposed International Gateway of the Americas Project was going nowhere," said a San Diego Union-Tribune editorial praising him in March 1998, "it was Bersin who stepped in and cut through the red tape to get the border development project on track." In a later interview, Bersin downplayed his role, saying he was just trying to get better circulation through the notoriously congested border.

In March 1998, the San Diego Unified School District board voted to name Bersin superintendent of schools. Backed by his father-in-law Foster, the Union-Tribune, and other members of the city's old guard, he launched a controversial overhaul of the district.

Last year, when Frances O'Neill Zimmerman -- an opponent of Bersin's restructuring moves, who was the lone hold-out against hiring him -- was up for re-election, Foster and his business and real estate allies spent almost $1 million in a losing bid to unseat her.

Another high-ranking member of San Diego's educational establishment to come to power here after meeting a wealthy wife-to-be is UCSD chancellor Robert Carr Dynes. A physicist who grew up poor in a small Canadian city, Dynes was a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey from 1968 until late 1990, when he became a UCSD professor. His wife-to-be, Frances Hellman, had worked with Dynes at Bell Labs from 1985 to 1987, when she moved to UCSD, also to become a physics professor.

Dynes was named UCSD chancellor in April 1996. Hellman was seated at the chancellor's inaugural dinner table. In May 1998, the couple was wed in San Francisco, where the marriage on Stinson Beach in Marin County was big news. The father of the bride was Warren Hellman, a multi-millionaire investment banker and venture capitalist with close connections to the University of California. Hellman's company, Hellman and Friedman, claims to have raised more than $4.5 billion in investment capital from investors, including the California Public Employees Retirement System, known as CALPERS. A well-known Bay Area philanthropist and political power broker, Hellman is a close ally of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Business Week magazine recently referred to the financier as the Warren Buffett of the West Coast.

News of Dynes's wealthy father-in-law did not make it into the Union-Tribune, however. Nor did word of Dynes's bitter split-up from his first wife Christel, still living in New Jersey. Dynes had sued for divorce in July 1996, shortly after he became chancellor. Christel had responded by claiming that Dynes had "deserted" her "on or about January 1, 1991, ever since which time and for more than 12 months last past, [Dynes] has willfully and continuously deserted [Christel Dynes]."

A final divorce decree was issued in January 1998 after a caustic series of court filings. Dynes agreed to give his ex-wife their house in New Jersey, pay her $6000 a month alimony -- about a third of his UCSD salary -- and split all patent royalties with her 50-50.

As chancellor, Dynes had become a friend of Padres owner and venture capitalist John Moores. Named in 1997 by Mayor Susan Golding to a committee exploring whether taxpayers should subsidize a new ballpark, Dynes wholeheartedly endorsed the idea. He and Moores also joined the board of Leap Wireless, a corporate spin-off of Qualcomm, the cell-phone pioneer closely tied to the university. Moores had kind words for his friend. "I would not expect a physicist to have the interpersonal skills and the energy level this guy does," he told the Union-Tribune in November 1998.

As it turned out, Dynes and Moores had something else in common. In October 1999, Moores and Warren Hellman paid an undisclosed sum to take over Blackbaud, Inc., a South Carolina accounting and business-management software company. As part of the deal, Hellman's son, Mick, became Blackbaud's chairman of the board. In a February 2000 interview, Dynes said he had no knowledge of his in-laws' arrangement, and it would not have mattered if he had. (Moores, it also happens, is a member of the University of California board of regents.)

In January 2000, a reporter's inquiries caused Dynes to amend his financial disclosure statement to disclose his wife's assets, which he had not previously reported, as required by state law. It revealed 16 separate interests, each valued at more than $100,000, the maximum reporting category, including holdings in Bank of America, First Capital Corp, and Avon Products, in addition to the Hellman & Friedman Management Fund.

San Diego's latest wealthy wifeambitious husband relationship came to light after last November's election, when attorney Scott Peters beat Linda Davis for the city's District 1 city-council seat. Peters, a self-styled "environmental attorney" and former deputy county counsel, loaned his campaign more than $200,000. The job pays just $60,715. In an interview published in early November, he told the Union-Tribune that he had to put his own money into the campaign because Davis, his opponent, had been endorsed by the building industry. "That's generally where money comes from in San Diego politics, so we've had to make up for that by kicking in our own funds."

Peters, 41, is married to Lynn Gorguze, who, along with her father, Vince, the former president and chief operating officer of Emerson Electric Company, operate a privately owned conglomerate called Cameron Holdings. It is named for Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University, the alma mater of both Lynn Gorguze and Peters.

In February 2000, the St. Louis Business Journal reported that Cameron had gross revenues of $350 million. According to that account, Vince Gorguze, originally of St. Louis, began buying small- and middle-sized industrial businesses in 1978 by purchasing Sinclair & Rush, a plastic-molding venture in St. Louis.

His daughter was a senior partner in a Minneapolis investment firm, First Bank Systems, in 1988 when she first joined her father to help raise capital for his purchase of a million-dollar stake in San Diego's Aldila, Inc., a golf-club maker. By November 1990, according to a report in the San Diego Business Journal, Gorguze, then vice president of corporate development for Aldila, was working on a 30,000-square-foot Tijuana maquiladora for the company.

Today, Cameron's biggest single holding is reported to be PlayPower Inc., the largest manufacturer of commercial playground equipment in the country. The firm grossed $143.8 million in 2000, $27 million more than the year before, the St. Louis Business Journal reported this March. "Through its family of companies," the company website says, "PlayPower can satisfy your entire commercial playground, floating dock and boat or personal water craft (PWC) lift requirements. Our product offering includes traditional play systems (both wood and steel), soft contained play systems, water slide, pool slides, free standing slides and swings, benches, tables, floating docks, boat lifts, PWC lifts...the list goes on and on." The company also owns SpectraTurf of Corona, maker of rubberized surfacing for playgrounds and businesses.

Owning a conglomerate has clearly been lucrative for Lynn and Vince Gorguze. But it has presented a raft of complex legal questions for her husband Scott Peters. Because the city is a likely future customer of PlayPower and its subsidiaries, including Miracle Recreation, Peters recently asked the city attorney's office for an official opinion regarding possible conflicts. After researching the issue, the attorneys concluded that Peters would have to be especially vigilant.

"The City has used Miracle Recreation equipment in some of its facilities, and has acquired products from the company both directly, in the case of replacement parts, and indirectly, through a general contractor, in the case of construction and renovation projects," the attorney wrote. "Miracle Recreation does not install playground equipment, and does not have a general contractor's license, therefore, it does not directly bid on City playground construction renovation projects, and does not have any contractual relationship with the City when it provides materials for such projects.

"The February 20, 2001, Council Docket includes an item seeking to add four Park and Recreation Department projects in Council District 6 to the Fiscal Year 2001 Capital Improvement Program budget. Of the four projects, two are 'tot lot' renovations. Additionally, the City Council docket of February 26, 2001, includes a similar item involving five park projects in Council Districts 2, 6, 7, and 8. Two of the five projects are tot lot renovation projects. The two Council items are for the purpose of approving funding for the projects only, neither item involves the award of any contracts.

"Because these Council decisions to fund park projects are preliminary funding items, with no known connection at this time to Miracle Recreation, you do not have a conflict of interest that would disqualify you from participating in these decisions under the Act or Section 1090.

"Future Council actions related to tot lot renovations may involve different facts, and should be analyzed on a case by case basis. Please feel free to call me if you have any further questions about this matter."

The opinion also pointed out that the city council has adopted a broad conflict-of-interest policy, not enforceable by law, more stringent than the state's conflict code: "No elected official...of the City of San Diego shall engage in any business or transaction or shall have a financial or other personal interest, direct or indirect, which is incompatible with the proper discharge of his official duties or would tend to impair his independence or judgment or action in the performance of such duties."

"Under this policy," the attorney explained, "it is each official's responsibility to determine whether he or she has any interest, financial or not, which is 'incompatible with the proper discharge of official duties'

"If an official determines that he or she cannot be objective about a decision because of a financial or personal interest, the official may choose to abstain from participating in discussions or discussions and votes on a particular project.

"You may wish to consider this policy in determining whether or not to participate in these Council decisions on funding projects, which could potentially use Miracle Recreation equipment, even though a determination has been made that there is no legal conflict of interest. It should be emphasized, however, that this is a policy, not a law, and does not have the force and effect of law."

Peters has vowed to avoid any conflicts of interest scrupulously. As a frequently mentioned candidate for Democrat Howard Wayne's seat in the state assembly, his opponents will be watching every move. The legacy left by San Diego's other weddings of wealth and power suggests that the path to success for the ambitious young politician married to money is fraught with peril.

[Via San Diego Reader]

Teddy Bear Was Invented in Honor of President Theodore Roosevelt

2011-08-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

So did you know that the Teddy Bear was invented in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt? According to historians, it all began when Roosevelt went on a four-day bear hunting trip in Mississippi in November of 1902. Although Roosevelt was known as an experienced big game hunter, he had not come across a single bear on that particular trip.

Roosevelt’s assistants, led by Holt Collier, a born slave and former Confederate cavalryman, cornered and tied a black bear to a willow tree. They summoned Roosevelt and suggested that he shoot it. Viewing this as extremely unsportsmanlike, Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear. The news of this event spread quickly through newspaper articles across the country. The articles recounted the story of the president who refused to shoot a bear. However, it was not just any president, it was Theodore Roosevelt the big game hunter!

When a political cartoonist named Clifford Berryman read the reports he decided to “lightheartedly lampoon” the incident. Then, when a Brooklyn candy shop owner by the name of Morris Michton saw Berryman’s cartoon in the Washington Post on November 16, 1902, he came up with a brilliant marketing idea. You see, Michtom's wife Rose was a seamstress and made stuffed animals at their shop, and so he asked her to make a stuffed toy bear that resembled Berryman's drawing. He then showcased his wife's creation in the front window of their shop along with a sign that read "Teddy's Bear."

After receiving Roosevelt’s permission to use his name, Michtom began mass producing the toy bears which became so popular that he launched the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, and, by 1907, more than a million of the cuddly bears had been sold in the United States. And so NOW you know how one of Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting trips led to the "invention" of the Teddy Bear!

[Via Lincoln's Lunch]

7 Spelling and Grammar Errors that Make You Look Dumb

2011-08-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

1. You're / Your

The apostrophe means it's a contraction of two words; "you're" is the short version of "you are" (the "a" is dropped), so if your sentence makes sense if you say "you are," then you're good to use you're. "Your" means it belongs to you, it's yours.

You're = if you mean "you are" then use the apostrophe
Your = belonging to you

You're going to love your new job!

2. It's / Its

This one is confusing, because generally, in addition to being used in contractions, an apostrophe indicates ownership, as in "Dad's new car." But, "it's" is actually the short version of "it is" or "it has." "Its" with no apostrophe means belonging to it.

It's = it is
Its = belonging to it

It's important to remember to bring your telephone and its extra battery.

3. They're / Their / There

"They're" is a contraction of "they are." "Their" means belonging to them. "There" refers to a place (notice that the word "here" is part of it, which is also a place – so if it says here and there, it's a place). There = a place

They're = they are
Their = belonging to them

They're going to miss their teachers when they leave there.

4. Loose / Lose

These spellings really don't make much sense, so you just have to remember them. "Loose" is the opposite of tight, and rhymes with goose. "Lose" is the opposite of win, and rhymes with booze. (To show how unpredictable English is, compare another pair of words, "choose" and "chose," which are spelled the same except the initial sound, but pronounced differently. No wonder so many people get it wrong!)

Loose = it's not tight, it's loosey goosey
Lose= "don't lose the hose for the rose" is a way to remember the same spelling but a different pronunciation

I never thought I could lose so much weight; now my pants are all loose!

5. Lead / Led

Another common but glaring error. "Lead" means you're doing it in the present, and rhymes with deed. "Led" is the past tense of lead, and rhymes with sled. So you can "lead" your current organization, but you "led" the people in your previous job.

Lead = present tense, rhymes with deed
Led = past tense, rhymes with sled

My goal is to lead this team to success, just as I led my past teams into winning award after award.

6. A lot / Alot / Allot

First the bad news: there is no such word as "alot." "A lot" refers to quantity, and "allot" means to distribute or parcel out.

There is a lot of confusion about this one, so I'm going to allot ten minutes to review these rules of grammar.

7. Between you and I

This one is widely misused, even by TV news anchors who should know better.

In English, we use a different pronoun depending on whether it's the subject or the object of the sentence: I/me, she/her, he/him, they/them. This becomes second nature for us and we rarely make mistakes with the glaring exception of when we have to choose between "you and I" or "you and me."

"Between you and I" is never correct, and although it is becoming more common, it's kind of like saying "him did a great job." It is glaringly incorrect.

The easy rule of thumb is to replace the "you and I" or "you and me" with either "we" or "us" and you'll quickly see which form is right. If "us" works, then use "you and me" and if "we" works, then use "you and I."

Between you and me (us), here are the secrets to how you and I (we) can learn to write better.

[Via Life Goes Strong]

Sanitary District Looking to Get More Locking Trash Cans

2011-07-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

COSTA MESA — Trash containers with built-in locks were so popular that residents snapped up the first 120 available in two days, city officials said.

The Costa Mesa Sanitary District distributed the bins to residents earlier this month. Now, because of the demand, the district's board of directors will weigh a request for $10,000 to supply residents with more of the scavenger-proof bins.

After the initial 120 locking bins were made available to residents July 18, the district received 128 applicants requesting a locking container in two days, according to a news release from the district.

The $10,000 would pay for an additional 120 containers, which the city is limiting to one per household, according to the sanitary district.

"To have these available is a great idea," said Jeff R. Mathews, chairman of the Homeless Task Force and a parks commissioner.

"To have these near Lions Park, I think the residents near that area would appreciate the option," he added, referring to the park at 570 W. 18th Street, which is known for attracting the homeless. "If I lived across the street from the park, yeah, I'd want one."

Residents can lock the bins with keys issued to them by the district. The weight of the trash pops the lid open when an automated arm lifts the bin over the garbage truck.

Nearby Newport Beach has criminalized scavenging; five people have been arrested for it since the law was enacted against the practice in January.

Both cities' residents have cited concerns about identity theft as a factor in urging that action be taken.

"Scavenging in this general area has been an issue," said Jim Fitzpatrick, the vice secretary of the sanitary district, adding that Costa Mesa hasn't seen any area saturated with requests for locking trash cans.

Costa Mesa's Eastside, southwest and Westside and South Coast Plaza areas have seen the most applicants for locking bins, although other areas that have requested locking trash cans include Mesa Verde and the area around the Orange County Fairgrounds, according to A.J. Cully, a management analyst in the sanitary district in charge of receiving the requests.

The district's board is set to consider the request for $10,000 in extra funds at its next meeting July 28.

[Via Daily Pilot]

How to Earn $4 Billion on Coupons

2011-07-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

The man who could make more than $4 billion from the initial public offering of Groupon Inc. is an 41-year-old, unassuming Midwesterner who got his start selling carpets on the street.

Eric Lefkofsky, who seeded Groupon with its first $1 million in 2008, shot to business fame this week when the e-commerce company filed for one of the most hotly-anticipated IPOs of the year. Mr. Lefkofsky was listed as Groupon's largest shareholder, with 21% of the shares—three times as much as Andrew Mason, the CEO and public face of the company.

If Groupon, which offers daily deals on goods and services to consumers in partnership with local merchants, is valued at the expected $20 billion or more, Mr. Lefkofsky's $1 million investment will be worth about $4 billion.

Yet for Mr. Lefkofsky, Groupon wasn't a one-off in the lottery of high-tech wealth. It was an extension of a lifetime of starting and selling companies — sometimes with mixed results. The process has led him to a set of guiding business principles: Enter big, fast-growing markets, change course when things aren't working and use data as your guide.

"In our current environment, business and customers are changing so much faster than in the old days," he said in an interview. "You need access to information to figure out what to do next."

Mr. Lefkofsky, executive chairman of Groupon's board, is a rare mix of Midwestern modesty and Silicon Valley obsessiveness. He lives just outside Chicago with his wife and kids, staying close to his roots in suburban Michigan. He hates flying and travels for business only four to six times a year. He doesn't own a vacation home. His sartorial signature is a sweater vest, which he wears every day for precisely seven months a year to shield him from the harsh Chicago winters. Between April 1 and November 1, he switches to button-downs.

Unlike Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs with his famous black mock turtlenecks, Mr. Lefkofsky varies the colors of his vests.

He and his wife collect contemporary art, including works by Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. He arrives at work every day at 6 a.m. and is home at around 6 p.m., rarely if ever, working on weekends or evenings. His office, in a former Montgomery Ward warehouse with exposed concrete walls, is one flight up from Groupon's.

Friends say Mr. Lefkofsky analyzes and de-constructs everything —s ometimes to a comical degree.

"When you sit down with Eric, you know that within 10 minutes, he'll stand up, grab a magic marker and start writing on the white board," said Ted Leonsis, the former AOL executive, who is a Groupon board member and friend of Mr. Lefkofsky's. "It doesn't matter what the subject is. He could be talking about what we're going to have for dessert, he'd say 'Well, we could have cake, or we could have pie, and here are the issues,' and he'd write it on the board."

Mr. Lefkofsky grew up in what he calls a "Brady Bunch" world, in a harmonious, middle-class family in Southfield, Mich. His father was an engineer, his mother was a school teacher. He was a unremarkable student in high-school and showed little interest in technology or business, he said.

"I was your typical confused high-school student, lost and insecure," he said.

In his freshman year at the University of Michigan, where he majored in history, he was dumped by his girlfriend. Searching for a distraction, he started selling carpet discarded by a company owned by a friend's father. The buyers were mostly students looking for cheap furnishing for their dorm rooms. He discovered his "fascination with money" and business, he said. He expanded to other universities, making $100,000 a year while still in college.

"I realized I had this propensity and knack for business," he said.

After college, he and a friend, Brad Keywell, took advantage of the booming leveraged buyout business to borrow millions and buy Brandon Apparel Group, which made licensed children's clothing. The company eventually shut down under heavy debt and poor sales. Their second venture, an Internet firm called StarBelly, a promotional products company, was sold to a company that later went bankrupt.

Mr. Lefkofsky and Mr. Keywell went on to three companies after 2001: InnerWorkings, a print outsourcing company, Echo Global Logistics, which manages transportation systems for companies, and MediaBank, which helps buyers manage ad spending.

Mr. Lefkofsky can't talk about Groupon, given regulatory restrictions during the IPO process. His role in the company started when Mr. Mason, the founder, was a young tech whiz working at InnerWorkings. Mr. Lefkofsky became Mr. Mason's mentor and friend.

When Mr. Mason had an idea for a company that could organize group actions around social or political causes, Mr. Lefkofsky and Mr. Keywell invested $1 million to launch the company, which morphed into Groupon.

Mr. Lefkofsky made millions when Innerworkings and Echo went public, and he has already cashed out more than $300 million of Groupon stock as the company sold shares to outside investors. Because of his existing wealth, he said, the Groupon IPO windfall won't bring big changes to his life.

"Once you've reached a level where you're able to do the things you want to do, you stop focusing on the number," he said. "At some point, you just stop counting."

He says his focus is on Groupon and the more than 20 companies he and Mr. Keywell have funded through their $100 million fund, called Lightbank. While he's hopeful about their prospects, he said the chances of scoring another Groupon are slim.

"For that to happen, I would have to find another Andrew Mason," he said. "I've needed the magic of Andrew to create this kind of value."

[Via Wall Street Journal]

10 Most and 10 Least Stressful Jobs

2011-07-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Most Stressful:
1. Commercial Pilot
2. Public Relations Officer
3. Corporate Executive
4. Photojournalist
5. Newscaster
6. Advertising Account Executive
7. Architect
8. Stockbroker
9. Emergency Medical Technician
10. Real Estate Agent

The least stressful:
1. Audiologist
2. Dietitian
3. Software Engineer
4. Computer Programmer
5. Dental Hygienist
6. Speech Pathologist
7. Philosopher
8. Mathematician
9. Occupational Therapist
10. Chiropracto

Computer and Internet Celebrities Who Were High School or College Dropouts

2011-07-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. Dropped out of the University of Washington to work for Honeywell. A year later he convinced Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard and move to Albuquerque, New Mexico to start up Microsoft.

Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, software programmer. Studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne but dropped out because other students were doing research for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Steve Ballmer, billionaire chief of Microsoft. Graduated from college, but dropped out of the Stanford MBA program to join Microsoft.

Sergey Brin, billionaire co-founder of Google. Dropped out of Stanford Ph.D. program in computer science to start Google in 1998 working out of a friend's garage.

John Carmack, founder of Armadillo Aerospace, cofounder of Id Software (sold 10 million copies of Dome and Quake games). Quit college early to become a game programmer.

Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com. Founded the blog website when he was 19. Retired from active blogging three years later.

Gurbaksh Chahal, multimillionaire founder of online ad networks Click Again and BlueLithium. Dropped out of school at the age of 16 to found Click Again.

James H. Clark, billionaire founder of Silicon Graphics and co-founder of Netscape. Dropped out of high school at the age of 17 and entered the Navy. Later took night classes and attended the University of New Orleans, where he earned a Master's degree in physics. He eventually earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah.

Bram Cohen, software programmer, developer of BitTorrent. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo for one year and then left.

Patrick Collison, software wizard. Dropped out of MIT during his freshman year to help two friends develop and eventually sell Auctomatic for millions of dollars.

Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, billionaire. Founded his company out of his college dorm room. Dropped out of the University of Texas to run the company.

Barry Diller, billionaire, Hollywood mogul, Internet maven, chairman of IAC/InterActive Corp (owner of Ask.com, Ticketmaster, CitySearch, Evite, LendingTree.com, etc.). He attended Beverly Hills High School but dropped out of UCLA to work in the mail room of William Morris.

Larry Ellison, billionaire co-founder of Oracle software company. Dropped out of the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois.

Philip Emeagwali, supercomputer scientist. High school dropout: left school in native Nigeria due to war but later earned an equivalency degree. Won a scholarship to Oregon College of Education but transferred after one year to Oregon State University.

Shawn Fanning, developer of Napster. Dropped out of Northeastern University when 19 to move to Silicon Valley to further develop Napster.

Arash Ferdowsi, cofounder, DropBox.com. Dropped out of MIT to start up DropBox.com.

David Filo, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo. Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo.

Justin Frankel, multimillionaire software programmer, developer of WinAmp and Gnutella, founder of Cockos Inc. Attended the University of Utah for two quarters, but then dropped out. A few months later, he released the first version of WinAmp.

Markus Frind, software programmer, multimillionaire founder of Plenty of Fish dating website. Graduated from technical school with a two-year degree in computer programming. Did not attend any further higher education.

Bill Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. Dropped out of Harvard after his second year to work with Paul Allen on the venture that became Microsoft.

Aviv Hadar, CEO of Think Brilliant web-development studio and the tech brains behind SoulPanckage. Dropped out of college.

Josh James, multimillionaire co-founder of Omniture. Dropped out of Brigham Young University during his final semester to co-found MyComputer.com, which became Omniture.

Steve Jobs, billionaire co-founder of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation. Dropped out of Reed College after six months and went to India before returning to Silicon Valley.

Jon Lech Johansen, software programmer, developer of DoubleTwist. At the age of 15, he wrote a program to decrypt commercial DVDs. He dropped out of high school to continue working on additional anti-DRM software programs.

Rob Kalin, founder of Esty. Flunked out of high school, briefly enrolled in an art school, and then faked an MIT student ID so he could take classes on the sly. His professors were so impressed that they helped him get into NYU where he learned out to build a website. Founded Esty with two classmates.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff, cofounder and chief creative officer of Treadless.com. Never graduated from college.

David Karp, founder of Tumblr. Dropped out of Bronx Science at the age of 15 to be homeschooled and work for his Davidville company. Did not attend college. At the age of 17, he moved to Japan and worked remotely for an American Internet company.

Ben Kaufman, serial entrepreneur, founder of Kluster. Dropped out of college in his freshman year.

Jared Kim, founder of WeGame. Dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley halfway through the spring semester of his freshman year to devote himself full-time to starting the online gaming site WeGame.

Chris Morrison, co-founder of PLP Digital Systems. Dropped out of high school.

Dustin Moskovitz, billionaire co-founder of Facebook social network. Dropped out of Harvard.

Jake Nickell, cofounder and CEO of Treadless.com. Never graduated from college.

Larry Page, billionaire co-founder of Google. Dropped out of Stanford Ph.D. program in computer science to start Google in 1998 working out of a friend's garage.

Sean Parker, billionaire co-creator of Napster, founding president of Facebook.com. He barely finished high school.

Ashley Qualls, founder of Whateverlife.com, left high school at the age of 15 to devote full time to her website business where she made more than a million dollars by the age of 17.

Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com. Dropped out of the University of Las Vegas during his sophomore year to code software.

Theodore Waitt, billionaire founder of Gateway Computers. Dropped out of the University of Iowa one semester short of a degree to start Gateway with his older brother in 1985.

Steve Wozniak, billionaire co-founder of Apple. Dropped out of college.

Jerry Yang, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo. Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo.

Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook. Dropped out of Harvard.

10 Journalists Who Changed Careers and Become Very Successful

2011-07-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

1. Li Yu: a broadcaster for CCTV in Beijing; Chinese filmmaker.
2. David Simon: a journalist for the Baltimore Sun; the creator of the HBO television series The Wire.
3. Rem Koolhaas: a journalist for Haagse Post; a world-renowned architect.
4. Strobe Talbott: the senior editor for the Time Magazine; Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration.
5. Steve Rattner: a journalist at the New York Times; Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury (2008-2009).
6. Michael Moritz: a reporter for the Time; uber-successful venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital.
7. Joao Saldanha: a sport journalist; coach of the Brazil national football team (1969-1970).
8. Nick Denton: a journalist for the Financial Times; the owner of Gawker Media.
9. Leticia Ortiz: the chief newscaster for TVE, the Spanish national TV station; Princess of Asturias and future Queen of Spain.
10. Winston Churchil: famous war correspondent for the Morning Post at the Second Boer War (1899-1900); Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945, 1951-1955).

Zoos Offer Overnight Stays

2011-06-25T09:59:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) – For wild animal lovers not content with watching tigers and gorillas during the day, a growing number of zoos are offering a more thrilling after-dark experience -- overnight stays.

From Philadelphia to Denver nocturnal visitors are learning what happens when the gates slam shut, the sun goes down and the moon rises over some of America's most well-known zoos.

"You get the zoo to yourself," said Jennifer Labows of the Philadelphia Zoo, which is America's first zoo and home to more than 1,300 animals.

"It is a unique experience for guests to see the animals at night."

The Philadelphia Zoo has been running its Roars and Snores Overnight Programs for about 20 years. The most popular theme program is the Night Flight Overnight Program where children aged five to 12 sleep in the zoo's tree house.

The overnight stays are not only popular with young children. Teen programs are offered at many zoos for those young adults interested in the zoo industry. They are also a favorite venue for birthday sleepovers, family trips and with scout troops.

"We customize the overnight to whatever badge the scouts are trying to complete that night," Labows said.

Most overnight stays include a night tour during which youngsters experience the mysterious sights and unusual sounds of the zoo without the usual distractions. A midnight snack and breakfast are also served.

"It is a unique experience to be at the zoo without the crowds and additional noise," explained Tracey Patterson, of the Denver Zoo, which has been running its Bunk with the Beasts program since 1998.

With nearly 4,000 animals and 700 species the zoo attracts more than 1.8 million visitors a year.

"The things you hear and see in the zoo are completely different," said Patterson.

On Denver's two-hour tours, night vision scopes are provided so guests can see nocturnal animals such as owls, and indoor educational games enhance the learning experience.

Guests at the new overnight program at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Queens Zoo in New York make breakfast treats for parrots, bears, pigs, pumas and coyotes, and watch the keepers feed them to the animals the next morning, said Education Curator Tom Hurtubise.

With visitors at the Denver Zoo coming from as far away as Wyoming and Montana, Patterson said parents tend to be more worried about leaving their children than the children themselves. They have rarely had to call up a parent in the middle of the night.

"They love it," Patterson said about the children. "For many, it's their first overnight away from home. They are so excited that by the end of the day they are so tired that they have no opportunity to worry."

The growing popularity of overnights has prompted zoos that only cater to day-time visitors to think again. The Queens Zoo, which started their program this year, is so pleased with its success they want to continue it next year.

The profits from the overnight programs are used to improve other parts of the facility. At the Philadelphia Zoo their programs cost up to $60 per person. Any profits go into their overall operating budget.

Patterson said prices for the Denver Zoo overnight program range from $45 to $65 per person depending on the group and program.

The newer programs, such as the one at the Queens Zoo, tend to be smaller and suited for families more interested in a more intimate experience. With only 36 people at their last weekend, the price tag came to $75 per person for Wildlife Conservative Society members and an additional $10 for non-members.

"The only problem was that the parents didn't realize the parrots could be so loud at 3:30 in the morning," Hurtubise said.

Police Broke Cellphone Conversation Record

2011-06-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

A 39-year old woman, Lakeysha Beard, talked for more than half a day while on an Amtrak train going from Oakland, California to Portland, Oregon. The loud cellphone conversation lasted sixteen hours last Monday, after which police stopped the train for twenty minutes at Salem, Oregon to arrest the woman.

Amtrak has no policy forbidding passengers from talking on the phone on a moving train. In the train's car, a few passengers asked the woman to put the phone away or to stop a few times during the conversation prior to notifying the train staff. Staff members were unable to convince the woman to end the conversation and stopped the train to arrest the woman and halt the disruption.

This cellphone conversation doesn't beat the record 51-hour phone call by Sunil Prabhakar of New Delhi in 2009.

10 Best Charlie Sheen Quotes

2011-05-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

1. “I have a disease? Bullshit. I cured it with my brain.”

2. "I’m tired of pretending I’m not a total bitchin’ rock star from Mars."

3. "You can’t process me with a normal brain."

4. "Can't is the cancer of happening."

5. “Look what I’m dealing with, man, I’m dealing with fools and trolls.”

6. “I’m not Thomas Jefferson. He was a pussy.”

7. "There’s a new sheriff in town. And he has an army of assassins.”

8. "The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them look like droopy-eyed armless children."

9. "The only thing I’m addicted to right now is winning.”

10. "If you’re a part of my family, I will love you violently."

Charlie Sheen Venn Diagram

Charlie Sheen Quotes Mens Shirt

Charlie Sheen Winning Movie Poster

Grumpy Bridesmaid Not Amused by Royal Kiss

2011-05-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

LONDON (AFP) – The crowds outside Buckingham Palace were all begging for Prince William and Kate Middleton to kiss -- but one young bridesmaid's expression showed just what she thought of the whole business.

Three-year-old Grace van Cutsem, the new Duke of Cambridge's goddaughter, covered her ears, leaned on the ledge and stared balefully at the crowd as the royal couple locked lips behind her.

Kate tried to comfort the little girl, whose comedy moment apparently came after she became overwhelmed by the noise of the event as some 500,000 people massed in The Mall outside the palace.

Grace and the other five children who made up Middleton's troupe of bridesmaids and pageboys had otherwise behaved impeccably throughout the wedding service in London's Westminster Abbey.

The only other hiccup was when Eliza Lopes, the three-year-old granddaughter of William's stepmother Camilla, repeatedly fiddled with her floral headdress apparently fearing it would slip off.

"Their quality was superb. Everything was perfection," said one of the well-wishers below, Doris Narty, 74, from Ghana.

Royal Wedding Venn Diagram

Albert Einstein's School Grades

10 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School

Alabama Senate Seek to Kick Racist Language from Constitution

2011-05-01T04:16:00.001-07:00

Birmingham, Ala (Reuters) – The Alabama Senate approved a measure on Wednesday that would eliminate references to "Jim Crow" or segregationist laws as well as all mentions of race from the state constitution.

The legislation passed in a 22-9 vote, with all Republicans voting in favor after an all-night session, said Republican Senator Jabo Waggoner.

The proposed amendment would eliminate language that calls for separate schools for black and white students and poll taxes, the latter generally viewed as instituted to keep black residents from voting.

"Even though federal laws nullify these old wordings, it remains a black eye on the state," said Cam Ward, another Republican senator.

Some lawmakers have tried for years to rewrite the entire state constitution, which they criticize as outdated and cumbersome.

Written in 1901, the document has 827 amendments and 340,000 words, making it 40 times longer than the U.S. Constitution.

The proposed amendment will now move to the House of Representatives for consideration. If signed by the governor, it must go to voters for approval.

A similar bill passed by the Legislature in 2004 was defeated in a statewide vote.

Weight Loss Improves Memory?

2011-04-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

John Gunstad, an associate professor in Kent State University's Department of Psychology, and a team of researchers have discovered a link between weight loss and improved memory and concentration. The study shows that bariatric surgery patients exhibited improved memory function 12 weeks after their operations.

"The initial idea came from our clinical work," Gunstad said. "I was working at Brown Medical School in Rhode Island at the time and had the chance to work with a large number of people who were looking to lose weight through either behavioral means or weight loss surgery."

Gunstad said he kept noticing that these patients would make similar mistakes. "As a neuropsychologist who is focused on how the brain functions, I look for these little mental errors all the time," Gunstad explained.

The researchers discovered that bariatric surgery patients demonstrated improved memory and concentration 12 weeks after surgery, improving from the slightly impaired range to the normal range.

"The primary motivation for looking at surgery patients is that we know they lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, so it was a good group to study," Gunstad said. "This is the first evidence to show that by going through this surgery, individuals might improve their memory, concentration and problem solving."

Gunstad thinks the study is reason for optimism. "One of the things about obesity, relative to other medical conditions, is that something can be done to fix it," Gunstad said. "Our thought was, if some of these effects are reversible, then we're really on to something -- that it might be an opportunity for individuals who have memory or concentration problems to make those things better in a short amount of time. And that's what we found."

Gunstad wasn't surprised by the study's findings. "A lot of the factors that come with obesity -- things such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea -- that might damage the brain are somewhat reversible," Gunstad said. "As those problems go away, memory function gets better."

10 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School

2011-04-03T05:51:00.000-07:00

1. Life is not fair.

2. The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as much
as your school does.

3. You won't make $200,000 a year right out of high school, and you won't be a vice president.

4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you feel about it.

5. Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are
now.

6. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life
hasn't.

7. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all
could.

8. Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic.

9. You are not immortal.

10. How wonderful it was to be a kid.

Porn Sites Trick Advertisers

2011-03-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

Dozens of big-name marketers and Internet companies have fallen victim to a scam orchestrated by a series of pornography sites.

In a new type of online-advertising fraud, these porn sites are trying to generate revenue by setting up junk pages and faking Web traffic. The porn sites include names such as hqtubevideos.com and pornoxo.com. It's unclear who owns the sites or how many visitors they have.

When a user visits one of these porn sites, the Web page launches dozens of pages that are hidden from the computer user. These hidden sites are filled with paid links to legitimate websites. Unbeknownst to the user, software built into the porn sites forces the user's computer to click on these links, sometimes hundreds of times, sending a flood of computer-generated traffic to legitimate websites.

No person is actually seeing or clicking on the ads, yet the operator of the scam collects commissions for directing traffic to sites like Web portal Lycos, video sites Mevio and Current TV, and others. And big advertisers, including Verizon Communications Inc. and TD Ameritrade Inc., are paying for ads that were never displayed to users. The websites say they weren't aware they were collecting money for ads that weren't shown.

"The criminal enterprise is very sophisticated," said Matthew Scott, an executive at AdSafe Media Ltd., a digital-ad protection company that says it discovered the scam, which ensnared some of its clients. "There has been explosive growth in the online advertising space, and at the same time, fraud and scams are evolving."

AdSafe said it has notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Google Inc. said its systems blocked the scam and it has contacted authorities to share the details of its investigation.

An FBI spokesman said the bureau doesn't comment on specific investigations but "is generally aware of these types of scams and is actively investigating a wide range of fraudulent cyber crime."

Several websites targeted by the scam said there weren't aware of the fraud until being contacted by the Journal.

"We have a 100% zero tolerance policy for that," said Ron Bloom, co-founder and chairman of Mevio.com. Current TV, which operates a cable TV channel, said it has filters in place to block traffic to its website from porn sites, and the traffic it received wasn't authorized. Lycos, whose yellowpages.lycos.com site received traffic from the porn sites, said it was investigating the matter.

Marketers and the companies involved in delivering the online ads said they take measures to combat such fraud.

"We are aware of these scams and aggressively fighting such advertising fraud with robust monitoring systems and investigative procedures," a Verizon spokesman said. "When we discover a scam we take immediate action."

Fraud has plagued the online-advertising business nearly since its beginning. Marketers constantly are on the watch for so-called click fraud. And this isn't the first time hoax websites have been a problem. But the problem has evolved to a new level of complexity.

"Occasionally a bad actor will circumvent even the best systems," said Google spokesman Rob Shilkin.

While it is hard to determine the actual scope of this fraud, advertising companies and websites say that such scams represent a small portion of their traffic.

AdSafe, the online-ad security firm, said its preliminary research found more than one thousand websites with possible links to the scam. In some instances it found more than 5,000 "invisible ads" being shown to an individual consumer after one visit to a porn site. AdSafe said the scheme likely has been running for at least several months.

Other experts said it is hard to measure the impact of online-ad fraud because it occurs in small scales across a broad network of websites. "It is death by a thousand paper cuts," said Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies Internet advertising and says that he comes across an average of 50 such scams a month.

A Journal analysis of the computer code transmitted during visits to one of the porn sites, hqtubevideos.com/play.html, revealed the site opens dozens of invisible pages—invisible to the user—with innocuous-sounding names such as relaxhealth.com and baldnesshealth.com.

Those sites are filled with paid links and have minimal content. In some cases they are hidden in tiny windows on the porn site that are no bigger than a single screen pixel. But they appear as normal pages in communications with other websites.

"We want to make sure we get the maximum value for our advertising dollars, and we always seek to stay ahead of the latest technique for abuse," said Robert Haverback, vice president of advertising at TD Ameritrade. "We and other advertisers need to stay on top of this." AT&T declined to comment.

Online-ad fraud prevention firm Double Verify says about 31% of the $100 million of online ad spending that it monitors each month is wasted for instances ranging from fraud to ads that are targeted to the wrong location.

"These guys pop up like mushrooms, they change their names and location and sites and come up with a new fraud and a new site with a different name," says Oren Netzer, chief executive of Double Verify. "It is a cycle where we always have to chase them down."

[Via Wall Street Journal]

Easy Scams: 10 Easy Ways to Make Money by Pulling Scams

Albert Einstein's School Grades

2011-03-20T01:55:00.000-07:00

The education council of the Canton Aargau certifies Albert Einstein final secondary-school examinations at 3rd of Oct., 1896 as follows:

German language and literature - 5
French - 3
Italian - 5
History - 6
Geography - 4
Algebra - 6
Geometry - 6
Descriptive geometry - 6
Physics - 6
Chemistry - 5
Natural history - 5
Artistic drawing - 4
Technical drawing - 4

(6 - best grade, 1 - poorest)

[Via scienceblogs.de]

50% of US Workers Don't Turn off PCs at Night, Burning up $2.8 Bln per Year

2011-03-07T02:58:00.000-08:00

Nearly half of US employees who use a PC at work don’t shut down their computers at the end of the day, wasting $2.8 billion every year powering 108 million unused PCs.

By shutting down computers each night, for example, a company with 10,000 PCs can save more than $165,000 a year in energy costs.

6 Money Habits That Are Illegal

2011-03-06T02:10:00.000-08:00

1. Signing someone else's name on a check
Signing someone else's name on a check is generally considered forgery and would be illegal in most states. But suppose an adult child signs an elderly parent's name because the parent is incapacitated, or a parent signs a child's name because the child is away at college. Guess what? Those signatures are still forgeries, unless a power of attorney is in effect.

2. Using someone else's identity to obtain credit
The use of someone else's name and identity to obtain credit is an obvious no-no. But suppose a parent whose credit has been ruined uses a child's name and identity to open new credit accounts. Illegal? You bet.

3. Lying on a home loan application
Homebuyers and homeowners who want to refinance may be tempted to inflate their income or hide some of their debts to better their chances of receiving a "yes" from the lender. But lying on a loan application is fraud, and lenders do check up on applicants' information.

4. Writing 'bad' checks
Many banks offer overdraft protection that kicks in if you write a check for more than the balance of your account. But writing a check that you know is no good is illegal. The risk isn't negligible: some people do get prosecuted for writing bad checks.

5. Copying U.S. currency
Color printers, scanners and copiers make it surprisingly easy for just about anyone to replicate U.S. or foreign currency. But it is, in fact, illegal to print your own money and try to spend it to buy goods or services.

6. Defacing U.S. currency
U.S. currency isn't designed to be run through the clothes washer, written on or masticated by pets. Yet while accidental damage to currency normally isn't illegal, deliberate defacement is. Federal law prohibits any action that mutilates, cuts, defaces, perforates or glues together U.S. currency or otherwise renders bills unusable.

Popular Opposition to the Theory of Relativity in the 1920s

2011-03-05T04:02:00.000-08:00

Shortly after the confirmation of his theory of general relativity in 1919, Albert Einstein was transformed into a media star of Weimar Germany. The overwhelming public response to the theory of relativity was not always positive; numerous accounts published during the 1920s claimed to refute his new theory. Einstein’s opponents were not limited to physicists and philosophers. Engineers, doctors, businessmen, and writers also raised strong objections to one of the most important scientific theories of the twentieth century. What were the motives of Einstein’s opponents? On what basis was his theory of relativity attacked so vociferously?

Although they had previously played no role in German academic life, during the 1920s scores of self-proclaimed researchers alleged to have proved the theory of relativity to be scientifically incorrect. Because the arguments set out in hundreds of ensuing publications frequently rested on fundamental misunderstandings of Einstein’s new theory, their accounts have largely been ignored by traditional history of science. Instead, attention has focused on the criticisms of Einstein’s work put forward by physicists who clung to classical physics, and philosophers who saw central elements of their ways of understanding the world threatened by Einstein’s fundamental restructuring of the basic principles of physics. Moreover, “scientific” arguments leveled against the theory of relativity were separated from “unscientific” accounts, many of which were political attacks on the person of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and outspoken defender of Germany’s post-WWI democracy.

A fresh perspective emerges when popular criticism of the theory of relativity is investigated beyond the frame of physical or philosophical plausibility. By exploring criticisms of Einstein’s work from the perspective of a history of knowledge broadly conceived to investigate bodies of knowledge beyond scientific disciplines, we are in a better position not only to understand the various arguments advanced by Einstein’s opponents, but also the bodies of knowledge that provided the basis for these arguments and the social contexts in which their various objections arose.

This new scholarly approach to Einstein’s opponents reveals that criticism of the theory of relativity outside of academic circles began much earlier than the 1920s. The roots of this opposition can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when popularization of the natural sciences led many citizens to devote their leisure to the pursuit of scientific understanding. This leisure-time study of science led some individuals to create universal theories of their own; in some cases these simple, often mechanical explanations of the world enabled them to assemble a cadre of adherents drawn from a shared popular-scientific milieu.

One such self-proclaimed researcher and Einstein opponent is Arthur Patschke (1865–1934). Employed by Siemens Schuckert, a German electrical engineering company, Patschke saw himself as more than a design engineer of steam engines. Patschke was convinced that all phenomena – from the movement of the heavens to human thought itself – could be traced to the collisions of tiny ether particles. On this mechanical basis, Patschke went on to develop a scientific worldview in which ether attained a quasi-religious status as the key to the mysteries of the world.

It was by and large scholars outside academia such as Patschke who claimed, in numerous pamphlets published during the 1920s, to have refuted Einstein’s theory of relativity. Their accounts were situated in the context of worldviews such as monism, the naturalist-inspired Lebensreform movement, and occultism. Encompassing not only social forms of organization, these worldviews also covered specific bodies of knowledge. Against this background it becomes clear why popular criticism of the theory of relativity was often put forward by individuals with little or no understanding of Einstein’s theory, individuals who nonetheless approached the work of refutation with a particular vengeance. Shaped as they were by their worldviews, these individuals regarded Einstein’s theory of relativity as unwelcome competition to their own attempts to interpret the universe.

A non-academic researcher such as Patschke could not help but react defensively to the replacement of classical physics with one that has more abstract foundations. Patschke, for his part, sought to determine which elements of the theory of relativity could be reconciled with his ether theory. He also attempted to show which parts of the theory of relativity were demonstrably false by reference to his own abstractions.

The controversy surrounding the theory of relativity was exceptionally heated. In many pamphlets one finds what might be described as a martial rhetoric of damnation; his opponents also staged acts of protest that sought to inflame public opinion against Einstein’s work. A complex process of marginalization and protest helps to account for the heated responses to Einstein’s theory.

Non-academic researchers like Patschke announced public lectures, submitted essays, and tried to establish contact with Einstein and other leading scholars in order to warn them – as well-intentioned colleagues – of the falsehood of the theory of relativity and to convince them of the veracity of their own scientific worldviews. Patschke and others like him were often simply ignored; in other instances, it was patiently explained how their criticisms of the theory of relativity had completely missed the mark. But because their observations were anchored in specific worldviews, Patschke and his associates were immune to this type of criticism. Einstein’s opponents were simply not prepared to question their own worldviews and instead sought alternative explanations for why their objections were disregarded by the academics. With time, many turned to conspiracy to account for their marginal status: plots favoring Einstein, so they imagined, explained his success and their marginalization. Having reached this point, any sort of resolution of the controversy had become impossible.

Mexican Government Will No Longer Allow Any Businesses to Accept US Dollars

2011-02-12T01:11:00.000-08:00

Mexico has always considered the US dollar almost a secondary currency to their Peso as the fact that billions of US dollars spent their way through the Mexican economy in 2009 and 2010 which speaks for itself, but sometimes even the best of friendships come to an end.

The Mexican government in September 2010 enacted a new law which basically restricts the use of US Dollars for almost all purchases inside of Mexico.

In early 2010 travelers and visitors could shop at many of the large US corporations inside of Mexico such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot or even one of the hundreds of American food establishments such as McDonalds or Dominoes Pizza and pay for their meal using US Dollars but under the new law using US Dollars is no longer an option.

Just image the surprise of many Americans being told by Wal-Mart that US Dollars are no longer accepted at their store especially since Wal-Mart is one of the most iconic ?American? businesses in the world with such buying power that they set the prices which manufactures must sell them their items for.

Wal-Mart´s buying power is so well known in fact that most people would normally be able to safely assume that with such buying power that Wal-Mart could also force almost any country into allowing them to accept the US Dollar to further their in store sales, but apparently not even Wal-Mart is that powerful.

Therefore it was no surprise that when this story broke in late September of 2010 that Mexico was no longer accepting US Dollars the internet was abuzz with conspiracy theories claiming a banking holiday was in short order or the crash of the US dollar was intimate while others were raising the ?BS? flag and claiming Mexico would never stop accepting US Dollars because those dollars were its economic life support but as the year closed out and those ?end of the world? predictions didn?t come to pass and the fact Mexico did stop accepting the dollar, well that only left many people wondering what really was going on south of the border.

The Mexican government had made it clear that they will no longer allow ANY businesses to accept US dollars including American companies regardless of the operation or who is paying in American dollars. That?s right, this means if you?re a US citizen and fly into Mexico for vacation or business your hotel is no longer allowed to exchange cash dollars into pesos at the front desk which was customary up until 2011.

Also in Mexico if you travel to a local bank regardless of the bank name or national origin including HSBC from China which is the fastest growing bank in Mexico you are no longer able to exchange US Dollars for pesos. Only account holders at banks have the option of depositing US Dollars into their bank accounts but this is for deposits only and not exchange and then you have to have a special type of account set up that is more costly. Of course even if you do have a special account that allows you to deposit US dollars your bank will charge you a service free for depositing foreign currency into your account and then probably another service fee for a withdrawal but that?s another issue all together.

Ok so many readers are probably asking if the banks no longer exchange money or business are no longer allowed to accept US Dollars then what is a person who has US dollars suppose to do.

For those who have traveled to Mexico there is a good chance you are familiar with Casa de Cambios which are small exchange centers for US dollars and often littered on every corner of any large tourist city or the closer to the border you are, however these Casa de Cambios themselves have come under strict new regulation as well as have been greatly reduced in numbers as more are closing every day faster than ?one hour? Kodak film processing centers or Blockbuster video locations.

Part of the new regulations is that anyone exchanging money for any reason must now present a valid government ID which is copied and placed on file with a copy of the transaction and amount of money being exchanged. This additional paperwork and hassles now mean higher operational costs for these businesses which in turn mean those costs will be passed onto the consumers who are often the one that end up paying for everything anyway.

Another drawback is that since there are now fewer Casa de Cambios this means less competition and so the exchange rate doesn?t have to be as competitive or even what the banks posted exchange rate is, after all you really have no other option in exchanging your US dollars. Gone are the days of such advantageous exchange rates that allowed anyone exchanging US Dollars into Pesos additional purchasing power by walking away with more for your money south of the border.

The Mexican government wants everyone to believe that these new laws were enacted because the war on drugs and the inability to track all these US Dollars floating around their economy which they claim the drug cartels are using in a black market way but a closer look indicates something completely different.

As the dollar continues to lose purchasing power so does the ever enjoyed exchange rate the US Dollar held for so long. This is a way to actually help devalue the US Dollar while protecting the Mexican economy from going down with the US financial Titanic that has been taking on way too much water in the form of overspending and red ink.

With the value of the dollar sliding lower each day there are some experts who are predicting the US Dollar to reach a point that it will either collapse or need to be reevaluated but either way the Peso is expected to be worth more than the US Dollar and this looks like it will happen sometime very soon at the rate of how things are changing for the Dollar around the world.

This is why it looks as if the Mexican government is doing everything it can to remove as many US Dollars from their economy so there are fewer US Dollars in circulation inside of Mexico so that when the US Dollar does finally go by the wayside there will be less of a direct affect on the Mexican Economy as a whole.

It has now been almost 5 full months since this law took effect and Mexico has been successful in eliminating millions of US fiat Dollars out of its economy and taking steps to vamp up the removal of all remaining dollars by recently instigating even stricter rules at the Casa de Cambios preventing them from exchanging more than $300.00 dollars per transactions. This means it will be much more difficult for Mexicans to send US Dollars home to their families without enriching the pockets of the bankers and the money transfer companies. These caps on exchanging Dollars will also cause the people to want to get away from the dollar faster as it?s more difficult and costly to do business with dollars.

On a side note it´s also important to note that the Mexican economy grew at a rate of just over 5% in 2010 and by the year?s end many large companies in Mexico were reporting stronger than ever revenue and sales at rates not seen in many years. Many large companies are actually in hiring frenzies and some companies are desperate to fill slots with qualified workers.

Now while some will argue that any cash regardless if it is drug money or laundered is actually good for an economy but most people can also understand it?s not good if that cash you have is losing its value so fast that it isn?t going to be worth the paper it?s printed on so it´s best to get rid of that money as fast as you can.

There has been a rush to sell off US Dollars inside Mexico because the people are sensing a coming financial storm with the US Dollar and they too don?t want to be stuck with worthless paper or allowing that worthless paper to drag down their economy especially while their overall economy is going through a growth trend but until that time does come you will still be able to use your credit and debit cards as those funds are simply automatically converted at the time of a transaction but are not physically in the economic system as fiat paper money but rather electronic funds.

A good conspiracy theorist will argue the point that the removal of paper money and forcing people into electronic transactions and requiring those who do use cash to provide ID to be Orwellian and that the bankers come out winning might have a point to some degree but in Mexico the fiat currency in the form of Peso bills can still be used for most transactions. The irony is that many Americans for so long often use to complain about how so many Mexicans living in the United States were sending US Dollars back to Mexico and how it hurt the US economy. The irony is now those Americans are getting their wish that little if any US dollars are being sent to Mexico and in turn this is actually greatly helping the Mexican economy while drastically hurting and aiding in the devaluation of the US dollar.

So for those planning to travel to Mexico be sure to take your Kevlar and your American Express card (don?t leave home without it) and remember Visa is everywhere you want it to be, even in Mexico where the Dollar is no longer accepted.

The Smell of Space

2011-02-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

Few people have experienced traveling into space. Even fewer have experienced the smell of space. Now this sounds strange, that a vacuum could have a smell and that a human being could live to smell that smell.

It seems about as improbable as listening to sounds in space, yet space has a definite smell. Being creatures of an atmosphere, we can only smell space indirectly.

Sort of like the way a pit viper smells by waving its tongue in the air and thenpressing it to the roof of its mouth where sensors process the molecules that have been adsorbed onto the waggling appendage.

It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as "tastes like chicken." The best description is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation.

10 Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions

2011-01-30T02:19:00.000-08:00

1. William Nelson (1879−1903), a General Electric employee, invented a new way to motorize bicycles. He then fell off his prototype bike during a test run.

2. Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896) died the day after crashing one of his hang gliders.

3. Franz Reichelt (1879–1912), a tailor, fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he had told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.

4. Aurel Vlaicu (1882–1913) died when his self-constructed airplane, Vlaicu II, failed him during an attempt to cross the Carpathian Mountains by air.

5. Michael Dacre (1956–2009) died after testing his flying taxi device designed to accommodate fast and affordable travel among nearby cities.

6. Horace Lawson Hunley (1823–1863), confederate marine engineer and inventor of the first combat submarine, CSS Hunley, died during a trial of his vessel. During a routine exercise of the submarine, which had already sunk twice previously, Hunley took command. After failing to resurface, Hunley and the seven other crew members drowned.

7. Thomas Midgley, Jr. (1889–1944) was an American engineer and chemist who contracted polio at age 51, leaving him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. This system was the eventual cause of his death when he was accidentally entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55.

8. Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1867–1934) invented the process to isolate radium after co-discovering the radioactive elements radium and polonium. She died of aplastic anemia as a result of prolonged exposure to ionizing radiation emanating from her research materials. The dangers of radiation were not well understood at the time.

9. Valerian Abakovsky (1895–1921) constructed the Aerowagon, an experimental high-speed railcar fitted with an aircraft engine and propeller traction; it was intended to carry Soviet officials. On July 24, 1921, a group led by Fyodor Sergeyev took the Aerowagon from Moscow to the Tula collieries to test it, with Abakovsky also on board. They successfully arrived in Tula, but on the return route to Moscow the Aerowagon derailed at high speed, killing everyone on board, including Abakovsky.

10. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814) invented the guillotine, his name became an eponym for it. He died by the machine.

10 Amazon Items with Extraordinarily Odd Names

10 Ways to Destroy Earth

10 Shopping Tricks That Stores Hate

10 Amazon Items with Extraordinarily Odd Names

2011-01-29T10:33:00.000-08:00

1. Simone Chickenbone Chicken Poop Lip Junk 0.15 oz lip balm

2. Balsam Barometer Weather Stick , All Natural9single Pack

3. Deer Fence: Stanley Hog Ringer

4. Tick Nipper (Removes Ticks)

5. Coyote Urine Lure-32 oz

6. Classic Nipple Pals Breast Enhancers

7. PETaPOTTY Original Synthetic Grass

8. Monogram Toilet Paper - H - 1 roll

9. Liquid ass

10. Party Pooper Fake Human Poop

10 Ways to Destroy the Earth

2011-01-29T03:31:00.000-08:00

1.Total existence failure.

You will need: nothing

Method: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle your thumbs as, completely by chance, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly, simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note: the odds against this actually ever occurring are considerably greater than a googolplex to one. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read: scientifically laughable) probability-manipulation device may be employed.

Utter, utter rubbish.

2. Gobbled up by strangelets.

You will need: a stable strangelet

Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible.

A while back, there was some media hoo-hah about the possibility of this actually happening at the RHIC, but in actuality the chances of a stable strangelet forming are pretty much zero.

Earth’s final resting place: a huge glob of strange matter.

3. Sucked into a microscopic black hole.

You will need: a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For your average black hole this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for really small ones it could happen almost instantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent on mass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must have greater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equal to the mass of Mount Everest. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader.

Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the center of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it’ll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come to rest at the core, having absorbed enough matter to slow it down. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.

Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.

Earth’s final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.

Source: “The Dark Side Of The Sun,” by Terry Pratchett.

4. Blown up by matter/antimatter reaction.

You will need: 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter

Antimatter - the most explosive substance possible - can be manufactured in small quantities using any large particle accelerator, but this will take some considerable time to produce the required amounts. If you can create the appropriate machinery, it may be possible - and much easier - simply to “flip” 2.5 trillion tons of matter through a fourth dimension, turning it all to antimatter at once.

Method: This method involves detonating a bomb so big that it blasts the Earth to pieces.

How hard is that?

The gravitational binding energy of a planet of mass M and radius R is - if you do the lengthy calculations - given by the formula E=(3/5)GM^2/R. For Earth, that works out to roughly 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. The Sun takes nearly a WEEK to output that much energy. Think about THAT.

To liberate that much energy requires the complete annihilation of around 2,500,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter. That’s assuming zero energy loss to heat and radiation, which is unlikely to be the case in reality: You’ll probably need to up the dose by at least a factor of ten. Once you’ve generated your antimatter, probably in space, just launch it en masse towards Earth. The resulting release of energy (obeying Einstein’s famous mass-energy equation, E=mc^2) should be sufficient to split the Earth into a thousand pieces.

Earth’s final resting place: A second asteroid belt around the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500. Of course, if it does prove possible to manufacture antimatter in the sufficiently large quantities you require - which is not necessarily the case - then smaller antimatter bombs will be around long before then.

5. Destroyed by vacuum energy detonation.

You will need: a light bulb

Method: This is a fun one. Contemporary scientific theories tell us that what we may see as vacuum is only vacuum on average, and actually thriving with vast amounts of particles and antiparticles constantly appearing and then annihilating each other. It also suggests that the volume of space enclosed by a light bulb contains enough vacuum energy to boil every ocean in the world. Therefore, vacuum energy could prove to be the most abundant energy source of any kind. Which is where you come in. All you need to do is figure out how to extract this energy and harness it in some kind of power plant - this can easily be done without arousing too much suspicion - then surreptitiously allow the reaction to run out of control. The resulting release of energy would easily be enough to annihilate all of planet Earth and probably the Sun too.

Slightly possible.

Earth’s final resting place: a rapidly expanding cloud of particles of varying size.

Earliest feasible completion date: 2060 or so.

Source: “3001: The Final Odyssey,” by Arthur C. Clarke.

6. Sucked into a giant black hole.

You will need: a black hole, extremely powerful rocket engines, and, optionally, a large rocky planetary body. The nearest black hole to our planet is 1600 light years from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius, orbiting V4641.

Method: after locating your black hole, you need get it and the Earth together. This is likely to be the most time-consuming part of this plan. There are two methods, moving Earth or moving the black hole, though for best results you’d most likely move both at once.

Very difficult, but definitely possible.

Earth’s final resting place: part of the mass of the black hole.

Earliest feasible completion date: I do not expect the necessary technology to be available until AD 3000, and add at least 800 years for travel time. (That’s in an external observer’s frame of reference and assuming you move both the Earth and the black hole at the same time.)

Source: “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,” by Douglas Adams.

7. Meticulously and systematically deconstructed.

You will need: a powerful mass driver, or ideally lots of them; ready access to roughly 2*10^32J

Method: Basically, what we’re going to do here is dig up the Earth, a big chunk at a time, and boost the whole lot of it into orbit. Yes. All six sextillion tons of it. A mass driver is a sort of oversized electromagnetic railgun, which was once proposed as a way of getting mined materials back from the Moon to Earth - basically, you just load it into the driver and fire it upwards in roughly the right direction. We’d use a particularly powerful model - big enough to hit escape velocity of 11 kilometers per second even after atmospheric considerations - and launch it all into the Sun or randomly into space.

Alternate methods for boosting the material into space include loading the extracted material into space shuttles or taking it up via space elevator. All these methods, however, require a - let me emphasize this - titanic quantity of energy to carry out. Building a Dyson sphere ain’t gonna cut it here. (Note: Actually, it would. But if you have the technology to build a Dyson sphere, why are you reading this?) See No. 6 for a possible solution.

If we wanted to and were willing to devote resources to it, we could start this process RIGHT NOW. Indeed, what with all the gunk left in orbit, on the Moon and heading out into space, we already have done.

Earth’s final resting place: Many tiny pieces, some dropped into the Sun, the remainder scattered across the rest of the Solar System.

Earliest feasible completion date: Ah. Yes. At a billion tons of mass driven out of the Earth’s gravity well per second: 189,000,000 years.

Source: this method arose when Joe Baldwin and I knocked our heads together by accident.

8. Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument.

You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it… perhaps Mars

Method: Essentially, anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. ANYTHING. The concept is simple: find a really, really big asteroid or planet, accelerate it up to some dazzling speed, and smash it into Earth, preferably head-on but whatever you can manage. The result: an absolutely spectacular collision, resulting hopefully in Earth (and, most likely, our “cue ball” too) being pulverized out of existence - smashed into any number of large pieces which if the collision is hard enough should have enough energy to overcome their mutual gravity and drift away forever, never to coagulate back into a planet again.

A brief analysis of the size of the object required can be found here. Falling at the minimal impact velocity of 11 kilometers per second and assuming zero energy loss to heat and other energy forms, the cue ball would have to have roughly 60% of the mass of the Earth. Mars, the next planet out, “weighs” in at about 11% of Earth’s mass, while Venus, the next planet in and also the nearest to Earth, has about 81%. Assuming that we would fire our cue ball into Earth at much greater than 11km/s (I’m thinking more like 50km/s), either of these would make great possibilities.

Obviously a smaller rock would do the job, you just need to fire it faster. A 10,000,000,000,000-tonne asteroid at 90% of light speed would do just as well. See the Guide to moving Earth for useful information on maneuvering big hunks of rock across interplanetary distances.

Pretty plausible.

Earth’s final resting place: a variety of roughly Moon-sized chunks of rock, scattered haphazardly across the greater Solar System.

Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500, maybe?

9. Eaten by von Neumann machines.

You will need: a single von Neumann machine

Method: A von Neumann machine is any device that is capable of creating an exact copy of itself given nothing but the necessary raw materials. Create one of these that subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon, the major elements found in Earth’s mantle and core. It doesn’t matter how big it is as long as it can reproduce itself exactly in any period of time. Release it into the ground under the Earth’s crust and allow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as it creates a second von Neumann machine, then they create two more, then they create four more. As the population of machines doubles repeatedly, the planet Earth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten up and turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions of machines. Technically your objective would now be complete - no more Earth - but if you want to be thorough then you can command your VNMs to hurl themselves, along with any remaining trace elements, into the Sun. This hurling would have to be achieved using rocket propulsion of some sort, so be sure to include this in your design.

So crazy it might just work.

Earth’s final resting place: the bodies of the VNMs themselves, then a small lump of iron sinking into the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Potentially 2045-2050, or even earlier.

Source: “2010: Odyssey Two,” by Arthur C. Clarke

10. Hurled into the Sun.

You will need: Earthmoving equipment

Method: Hurl the Earth into the Sun. Sending Earth on a collision course with the Sun is not as easy as one might think; even though you don’t actually have to literally hit the Sun (send the Earth near enough to the Sun (within the Roche limit), and tidal forces will tear it apart), it’s surprisingly easy to end up with Earth in a loopy elliptical orbit which merely roasts it for four months in every eight. But careful planning can avoid this.

This is impossible at our current technological level, but will be possible one day, I’m certain. In the meantime, may happen by freak accident if something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocks Earth in precisely the right direction. Earth’s final resting place: a small globule of vaporized iron sinking slowly into the heart of the Sun.

Earliest feasible completion date: Via act of God: 25 years’ time. Any earlier and we’d have already spotted the asteroid in question. Via human intervention: given the current level of expansion of space technology, 2250 at best.

80 and Still Jealous

2010-12-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

An 80-year-old man launched a hammer attack on his wife's 63-year-old lover after catching the couple kissing, a court heard.
Stuart Pask, a retired production engineer, battered John Hanson over the head repeatedly in front of horrified commuters at Waterloo Station.

Mr Hanson crouched under a 'rain of blows' as Pask's wife Teresa, 61, looked on.

After being restrained by two off-duty policemen Pask said: 'He's been f***ing my wife.'

Turning to Mrs Hanson, a software project manager, the husband said: 'You kissed him four times.

'He asked for it and he got it. I've spent the last year doing up our house. They've probably been in my bed and in the whirlpool which I fitted.'
However, Mrs Pask was horrified when her husband was jailed. She said: 'This isn't justice - this is a total waste of everybody's money.'

Blackfriars Crown Court heard Mrs Pask and Mr Hanson had an affair but they claimed they ended it off when her husband found out.
The married couple stayed together, living at their home in Surrey, and had recently enjoyed a holiday in America when their lives unravelled for a second time.
Philip Jones, prosecuting, said the former lovers met through a mutual interest in genealogy.
He said:'Mr Pask is a gentleman aged 80 and his wife Teresa who is some 19 years his junior, have been married for 33 years

'Mr Pask is a man of previous good character. Quite a few years ago he and his wife both developed an interest in genealogy.
'It was through that mutual interest that they came to know the complainant in this case, Mr Hanson.

'It came about towards the beginning of last year that Mrs Pask and Mr Hanson began an affair and it lasted for some months.

'It concluded in October 2009 after it was discovered by Mr Pask. Mr Pask was very angry about it but he was assured it was to end.'
The Pasks stayed together, living at their home in Surrey, and had recently had a 'very successful' holiday in America.
However, their lives unravelled for a second time, as Mr Jones continued: 'On 7th August this year they encountered Mr Hanson at a reception and it somehow started up in the defendant's mind his feelings about this affair and that Mr Hanson had got away with having an affair with his wife.

'Then on 10th August Mrs Pask, having maintained her interest in genealogy, was to attend a committee meeting at the premises of the Society of Genealogists in Clerkenwell.

'She assured her husband that she would not spend any time alone with Mr Hanson.
'Mr Pask knew the time she would be getting her train home from Waterloo Station.

'He had reservations but she assured him she would not see him alone.

'It was a meeting that went on until the early evening, but after the meeting had finished she did spend some time with Mr Hanson.'
The court head Mrs Pask shared a bottle of wine with Mr Hanson at the Royal Festival Hall before walking back to Waterloo, where they kissed goodbye on the concourse.

'The time arrived at which Mrs Pask had to catch her train back, having spent a pleasant time together.

Mr Jones continued: 'Mr Hanson made his way towards Marks and Spencer for some water and suddenly he saw coming towards him somebody he recognised to be the defendant.

'He saw the defendant had something in his right hand. It was in fact a hammer, concealed with a white plastic carrier bag.

'The defendant ran up to Mr Hanson and took hold of his shoulder. With the hammer in his right hand he struck Mr Hanson a number of times on the head and two blows landed on his arm and shoulder.

'Mr Hanson crouched and raised his arms and tried to protect himself. The blows rained upon him.

'He did not recall being kicked though other witnesses spoke of this happening.'

Pask, of Byfleet Road, New Haw, Addlestone, Surrey, admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

His wife was stunned and in tears as he was led away. She said as the judge left the room: 'I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused. Has he just sentenced my husband to two years imprisonment?
'He's just sent an 80-year-old to prison for two years?.' Outside court she said: 'You see in the papers people getting away with much more serious things. I'm overwhelmed with disbelief.
'He didn't think of the consequences - he had that flash of anger.'

Mrs Pask said she was worried about her husband's safety in prison, and did not even know where he was being taken.

She added: 'He's never even been in a court in his life. The people that should have been in court today is John and me, not Stuart.
'This isn't justice - this is a total waste of everybody's money.'

Tim Brown, defending, said she felt partly responsible for the attack even though her husband 'makes it clear he takes responsibility for his behaviour'.

Mr Brown pleaded for any jail sentence to be suspended, his lawyer added: 'He and his wife are together.
'There is no contact with Mr Hanson. There are no social matters. Had they taken this view six months ago they know Mr Pask wouldn't have been here today.

'They take the view that if they are to make anything of their marriage this has to be the case. They are having counselling. It is clear there's a lot of work to be done.
'There is a lot of resentment from Mr Pask and a lot of guilt on the part of Mrs Pask.' Jailing Pask, Judge David Martineau said he had taken into account that a 'red mist' descended.
He accepted his behaviour was completely out of character - provoked by a feeling of having been 'greatly wronged'.

But he added: 'This was a thoroughly pre-meditated attack with a hammer, aimed at the head, motivated by revenge which could very easily have resulted in serious harm.

'It is very surprising that it didn't so result. It was committed in full view of a great many people at Waterloo Station.

'If you had any previous convictions and if you were 10 or more years younger it seems to me it would inevitably have been a substantial custodial sentence.'

6 Ways Plants Are Used as Weapons

2010-11-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

Sure they may look harmless, but in the hands of the right people, a plant can be just as deadly as a shotgun. Plants have been an integral part in weapons manufacturing and advancements for thousands of years.

1. Arrows and Darts

First of all, it is worth noting that these weapons all originate from plants:
• Bows
• Arrows
• Spears
• Darts

All of the above are all derived from the ash, elm and other species of tree. However, assuming that bats, clubs and other wooden objects are too easy, let’s examine how these plant-weapons are enhanced using other plants.

Arrows found dating back to thousands of years ago were found to have grooves cut in the tips with trace elements of such poisons as tubocurarine and curare. These poisons derived from plants act as a paralytic, adding asphyxiation to the arrow or dart wound. Though it sounds dangerous to be used in hunting, cooking the meat renders the poison ineffective, and therefore there are no chances of second hand exposure.

2. Poisons

Not only do we have the Egyptians to thank for paper, sandals and Brendan Fraser’s career, but we also can thank them for much of the knowledge of poisons we have today.

It is widely believed that the Egyptians were responsible for discovering the poisonous properties of arsenic, henbane and strychnine long before modern medicine existed. Their experimentation with distillation, fermentation, and eating things that might have been poison single-handedly gave us most of the information we have today about naturally occurring poisons.Whether they were using the seeds, leaves or roots of plants, the Egyptians discovered many a way to weaponize flowers.

3. Barbed Wire

Although stronger, more flexible versions have been created and implemented since, the first roll of barbed wire was actually a plant.

The Scottish Thistle is a thorny little cactus flower that possesses hundreds of sharp edges and barbs. This plant is responsible for saving Scotland from a sneak attack by Norsemen during the 13th century. Because the Norse were barefoot, their cries of pain from stepping on the thistle alerted the Scottish of their invasion and thereby thwarted their plan. The Scottish thistle is still honored and held in high regard by the people and government of Scotland.

4. Biological Weapons

Biological weapons are perhaps the most disturbing and least ethical of all instruments of war, but what many people don’t know is that not all toxins are created in laboratories.

Cytotoxons and mycotoxins, like ricin from the castor bean and various types of fungi, all have serious nerve disrupting properties. Although much more damaging chemical weapons such as Anthrax has been developed, the amount of raw “mess-you-up” power that occurs in nature is still astonishing. While most often these sorts of biological weapons are used in crop dusting and pesticide application, they are still capable of bringing about damage in a war.

5. Curry bomb

It was only a matter of time before Indian food was utilized for its destructive power, and that is precisely what the curry bomb does. An 88-mm grenade filled with phosphorous, red hot chilies and pepper, this bomb can bring victims to their knees in seconds.

Designed specifically for smoking terrorists out of caves and other hiding places, the curry bomb creates a smoke screen of intense, eye watering, debilitating chili powder in as little as 5 seconds. This technology can be tank-mounted or hand-held, and is sure to be the single most contributing factor to a decrease in terrorism and an increase in awful action movie lines.

6. Gunpowder

Stick with me here. Although it is mostly a product of chemistry, gunpowder (and therefore every firearm, rocket launch and nuclear bomb since) can be attributed directly to plants.

Created by the Chinese over a thousand years ago, gunpowder’s active and most powerful ingredient is potassium nitrate. By mixing straw (plant), wood ashes (burned plant), and manure (used to be a plant) into a hole and letting the mixture sit and get all scientific on itself for a year, the remaining by product is the incredibly flammable potassium nitrate. Although the involvement of the plant in the average gun battle seems inconsequential, it is in fact rather vital.

Summary

Plants have been used for evil since the dawn of time. While they are pretty to look at, lovely to smell, and an excellent get-out-jail-free card for married men around the globe, never underestimate the raw stopping power that lurks just beneath the surface of the average plant.

Bah? The Internet!

2010-11-14T04:10:00.000-08:00

In 1995 Newsweek said that nobody would ever buy books or airline tickets on the Internet:

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connections, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

Can Vitamin C Prevent or Treat Cold Symptoms?

2010-11-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

Vitamin C has been studied for many years as a possible treatment for colds, or as a way to prevent colds. But findings have been somewhat inconsistent. Overall, experts have found little to no benefit for vitamin C preventing or treating the common cold.

In a July 2007 study, researchers wanted to discover whether taking 200 milligrams or more of vitamin C daily could reduce the frequency, duration, or severity of a cold. After reviewing 60 years of clinical research, they found that when taken after a cold starts, vitamin C supplements do not make a cold shorter or less severe. When taken daily, vitamin C very slightly shorted cold duration -- by 8% in adults and by 14% in children.

But researchers found the most effect on people who were in extreme conditions, such as marathon runners. In this group, taking vitamin C cut their risk of catching a cold in half.

So what does all this mean?

The average adult who suffers with a cold for 12 days a year would still suffer for 11 days a year if that person took a high dose of vitamin C every day during that year.

For the average child who suffers about 28 days of cold illness a year, taking daily high-dose vitamin C would still mean 24 days of cold illness.

When vitamin C was tested for treatment of colds in 7 separate studies, vitamin C was no more effective than placebo at shortening the duration of cold symptoms.

It Would Be Far Easier for Americans to Elect Black President Than Unmarried President

2010-11-07T01:25:00.000-07:00

Marriage has a Darwinian ability to endure. It alters itself however necessary to continue to be relevant and useful in people's lives. It is a shape shifter. It is like cockroaches and alligators. Marriage will be here long after humans are gone.

People will always want intimacy with one chosen person and you cannot have intimacy without privacy, which is why couples draw circles of privacy around themselves. They demand that family, neighbors and the law respect their union, and that is why we have marriage.

As for the idea of creating such a thing as secular civil unions that would offer couples every legal advantage of marriage without using the language of marriage—as they now do in Europe—this makes perfect sense...or rather, it would if we Americans did not happen to hold the concept of "marriage" in such rapturous reverence. The problem is, in this country, a civil union will always be seen as a badge of second-class citizenship.

The Europeans do not share our innate cultural reverence for marriage, at least not the northern Europeans. The Portuguese still do. Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family. This is also why homosexuals in Europe have no comprehension of why homosexuals in America are fighting for the right to marry: They are perfectly happy to simply have equal civil rights, without the language of marriage. But here in America, marriage still has a mystical, intangible power: It is a passport to adulthood and respectability and to a certain extent citizenship. Any relationship less than "married" is considered temporary and not worthy of honor.

It's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy, and that is marriage. For instance, that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president. That would truly feel like cause for suspicion. Which means—of course—there is a massive pressure to apply this particular shape to one's relationship. Which might explain why Americans marry more—and, sadly, divorce more—than anyone else in the industrialized world. So the downside is that there is a rush to the altar—couples want to earn that badge of instant respect—when they perhaps are unready, or not mature enough, to actually take on that commitment.

In the ancient world, marriage was a tribal bond—a means of legitimizing heirs and building family dynasties. In the medieval world, marriage was an economic bond—a means of safely passing wealth from one generation to the next. During the height of the Catholic church's power, marriage was a religious bond—a lifelong, unbreakable contract to God, sealed by a priest. During the Industrial Revolution, with the rise of prosperity across the Western world, marriage finally gained the luxury of becoming a bond of love, an expression of individualistic choice.

Today, marriage is a curious amalgam of all those things. Modern marriage is first and foremost a romantic and private union, but the tax laws and inheritance laws and religious implications that still surround this institution indicate that marriage has evolved without casting away its earlier purposes or assumptions. It's like we just keep building on this thing, piling new advancements on the old model.

Modern marriage as a car strangely fashioned out of an old abandoned horse carriage, built upon the framework of a mule cart. All the original engineering is still there, underneath it all.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we carry into our modern marriages the expectations and social memory of thousands of years of history, as well as our own set of newfangled tools that we use to tinker daily with the old machine. We alter and customize the thing every century, every generation, every day—both in the courts and in our own homes. And marriage accepts our modifications gracefully. Marriage adapts, evolves and somehow keeps chugging along.

Can Your Microwave Oven Really Measure Speed of Light?

2010-11-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Can your microwave oven really measure the speed of light? Yes, it can be done. And since many of the suggested experiments also involve chocolate, it will be done. Oh yes, it will be done.

First, a brief summary of the facts:

Fact One:

Microwaves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum includes radio waves, infrared waves, visible light, and ultraviolet, and can best be described as a bunch of things that behave the way visible light does, even though we can't see them, which is a shame, since that would eliminate the need for recreational drugs. Microwaves move at the same speed that light does.

Fact Two:

Microwave ovens produce microwaves in a special configuration, called a standing wave. A standing wave. A standing wave is a wave that so perfectly fits its container that it looks like it looks like it's standing still. Most people have created standing waves as children playing with jump ropes. If you lift and push at just the right times, the jump rope will have one place that moves into peaks and valleys, while staying still at the two ends. If you put a little more effort into it, you can make the jump rope have two places that form peaks and valleys, and three points where it seems to be holding still.

This s-like curve is one wave, and the length of it is one wavelength.

Inside the microwave, the peaks and valleys of a standing wave translate to big time oscillation, and that oscillation cooks the food. The nodes, or places where the jump rope seems to stand still, translate to no oscillation.

That's why the microwave tray rotates. It has to move the food in order to make sure that every part of your frozen dinner is exposed to the places of highest oscillation. If it just stayed still, the peas would be roughly at the temperature of the center of the sun, and be little green time bombs waiting to nuke your tongue, while the tater tots would be frozen, ready to break your teeth when you bite into it. Because frozen foods hate us as much as we hate them. It's inarguable. That's why I put it in the ‘facts' section.

Fact three:

The number of waves that blow by a certain point per second is said to be the frequency of the waves. The frequency, the wavelengths, and the speed of waves have been established as having a set relationship with one another.

(Frequency) x (Wavelength) = Speed

This makes sense both logically and experimentally. For example, if you were sitting on the side of a one mile loop trail, and a runner ran past you once every ten minutes, you could determine their speed like this:

(6 loops per hour) X (1 mile per loop) = A speed of six miles per hour.

If six full waves cycled past you in one hour, the speed would be the same.

And so, we are armed with all the theoretical knowledge we need. Into the fray!

Every site I've been to agrees that you'll need a metric ruler and a microwave with the product label still attached, but the rotating tray brutally ripped out. They disagree, however, on the proper experimental material to nuke. Some sites say you'll need whipped egg whites on a plate. Others favor marshmallows in a dish. I'm going to recommend you go with the ones that recommend either wide chocolate bars or a layer of chocolate chips over a tray. Unless you can find chocolate marshmallows.

The brandy snifter is optional.

Whatever sacrificial material you use – put it in the microwave and nuke it. Keep an eye on it as it cooks, and take it out just as you see spots on it start to melt.

Since the tray isn't moving, it won't melt evenly. Certain points will have begun to bubble and smoke while leaving the rest of the food unharmed and undeservedly smug. Use the ruler to measure the distance between those two points. That is half the wavelength of the microwaves that the oven produces.

Double that distance, and you'll have the wavelength of the waves emitted by the microwave.

This is the tough part. I kept it from you until now because I didn't want you to bail on your education. The information of label on most microwaves is on the back. Yes, I know that's where the spiders and rotting pieces of tuna are, but you have only yourself to blame. You should have cleaned more regularly.

On the label, there will be information as to what frequency the microwave emits waves at. After that, it's simple.

(Frequency) x (Wavelength) = Speed of Light.

And then you get to eat the chocolate.

Michael Jackson Had a Patent

2010-11-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Patent number 5255452, filed in 1992, shows how Michael Jackson and his dancers could lean at 45-degree angles during live performances of the song "Smooth Criminal".

A system for engaging shoes with a hitch mans to permit a person standing on a stage surface to lean forwardly beyond his or her center of gravity, comprising:
at least one shoe having a heel with a first engagement means, said first engagement means comprising a recess formed in a heel of said shoe covered with a heel slot plane located at a bottom region of said heel, said heel slot plate having a slot formed therein with a relatively wide opening at a leading edge of said heel and a narrower terminal end rearward of said leading edge, said recess being larger in size above said terminal end of said slot than is said terminal end of said slot; and
a second engagement means, detachably engageable with said first engagement means, comprising a hitch member having an enlarged head portion connected by a narrower shank portion to a means for raising and lowering said head of said hitch member above and substantially level with or below said stage surface, said head portion being larger in size than said terminal end of said slot and said shank portion being narrower than said terminal end of said slot, wherein said hitch member can be moved through apertures in said stage surface between a projecting position raised above said stage surface and a retracted position at or below the stage surface, and when said head portion of said hitch member is raised above said stage surface, said first engagement means can be detachably engaged with said projecting hitch member, thereby allowing a person wearing the shoes to lean forwardly with his or her normal center of gravity beyond a front region of said shoes, and maintain said forward lean.

I Never Said She Stole My Money: 7 Different Meanings

2010-10-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

"I never said she stole my money" has 7 different meanings depending on the stressed word.

I didn't say she stole my money - someone else said it.

I didn't say she stole my money - I didn't say it.

I didn't say she stole my money - I only implied it.

I didn't say she stole my money - I said someone did, not necessarily her.

I didn't say she stole my money - I considered it borrowed, even though she didn't ask.

I didn't say she stole my money - only that she stole money.

I didn't say she stole my money - she stole stuff which cost me money to replace.

Practical Advise for Living in a Car Long-Term: Locations, Hygiene, Socializing

2010-10-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

Locations:
1. Most Wal-Marts let you park overnight for free.
2. Rest stops can be good, especially if there is security provided.
3. Most National Forests (grasslands, etc.) and Bureau of Land Management properties allow free camping for up to 2 weeks (but no one actually checks).
4. Church parking lots are usually good.
5. Some hotels, especially along the interstate, won't notice if you park overnight. However, some will kick you out at 3 am so it's a craps shoot.
6. Find a place at least an hour before sundown so you're not driving around at night.
7. Sleeping in nicer residential neighborhoods will get the cops called on you. Sleeping in bad residential neighborhoods will get you robbed.
7. Bum a place from friends. Join Couchsurfing.org and set your status to "Traveling at the moment."

Hygiene:
1. Staying clean is very important. Trust me on this. People trust you more when you're clean and you'll have an easier time spinning yourself as "adventurous" rather than "destitute."
2. If you can find a restroom with a lock, you can take a fairly complete bath with a washcloth and a sink.
3. If you can't actually bathe, do a whore's bath once a day. Get some hand sanitizer, the gel with high alcohol content, and rub yourself down, especially in the stinky areas. It won't get you clean per se and the alcohol will dry out your skin, but it'll disinfect you and kill all the smell-causing microorganisms. Follow this with deodorant and baby powder.
4. The easiest way to look clean and safe is to keep your hair and beard trimmed. The simplest and cheapest way to do this is to get some inexpensive hair clippers and clip it short once or twice a week.
5. Dark clothes hide stains. If you can't wash clothes regularly, turn them inside out and place them in direct sunlight to inhibit funk and get that nice outdoorsy smell.
6. Avoid cologne! Masking odors is the enemy. You want to have as neutral a smell as possible.
7. Unkept hair and powerful body odor make it much more difficult to get help from people.
Baby wipes are awesome.

Socializing:
1. Libraries! Internet! Search for a job and read books! Keep your mind occupied and hone your intelligence.
2. Parks, especially dog parks, are great places for meeting people
3. If you find yourself in a hobo camp, like the ones that crop up in national forests and BLM camp sites, if you can make a hot cup of coffee you will have both friends and (more importantly) people to watch your back. It's as simple as Wal-Mart-->camp stove-->stovetop coffee maker. Take creamers and sugar from gas stations and the like. Oh yeah, it doesn't hurt to have 5-10 gallons of water in your car, especially if you're away from a city.
4. If you maintain yourself, and you look clean and safe, you'll have an easy time convincing people that you're adventurous rather than destitute. Adventurous gets you much farther than destitute, because secretly (or not so secretly) a lot of people our age want exactly what you have--The freedom of the road, no responsibility, time to write and reflect, no obligations, nothing but days and weeks to focus on yourself. Being destitute might get you a dollar or a cup of coffee. Being adventurous might get you in a pretty girl's bed, or better yet, a hot shower..
5. Go to where the young people are and mix it up once in a while. You'll fit right in as long as you stay clean and pretty. The easiest way back into the game is through a social network, so work on building a strong one.
6. Always, always be on the bounce. Keep an eye peeled for opportunities. Don't let the massive chasm of unencumbered time overwhelm you. Have a project for every single day. Make a plan and stay clean, because as fun as it is to tramp around for a while, you don't want to do this forever.

26 Year Old Female with a (Slightly Used) Vagina Seeks Arranged Marriage

2010-08-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

TO ALL AVAILABLE MEN

So I'm single, tired of mingling, and looking to get hitched. Thing is, I�m pretty frustrated with the legwork and my solution is to pass the buck on to my parents and let them go ahead and choose for me, the way it was (is) done in the good old days (South Asia). So if you're a single guy, hoping for marriage and kids (not more than two) in the future, and willing to roll with the punches, let's get your folks in on this too.

Here's what I'm thinking. You respond to this with your parental contact info, which I will pass along to mine. Then, I figure we can just butt out until the wedding. Let's let them hammer out the details, investigate compatibility, and argue about a dowry.

Me: 26 year old female with a generally positive outlook on life, one salary, three piercings, zero tattoos, one car, one hamster, and one (slightly used) vagina. I'd be willing to consider getting re-virginized if this is a deal-breaker for your family.

I'd prefer not to convert to your religion, but I would consider relocation if my travel expenses were covered.

Looking forward to the big day. Maybe we'll meet once or twice before then. I'm leaving that up to my mom.

Location: Seattle
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID at Craigslist: 1007286964

9 Top Resolutions

2010-08-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

1. Spend more time with family and friends
A lot of us feel we don’t spend enough quality time with those we love. So pick up the phone and start arranging experiences that you can do together.
Handy hint: Like this idea? Send an e-mail invite to a picnic in a centrally located park. Everyone brings food and drink – and a smorgasbord of catch-up relaxation results.

2. Get fit
Visualise yourself the way you want to be and promise yourself rewards along the way. Get into the mindset of “No excuses!”
Handy hint: Make a date today with a good pal to walk once a week for 50 minutes – and take your first baby steps to better health.

3. Lose weight
With about 60% of adults overweight or obese, weight loss remains a popular resolution.
Handy hint: Don’t stop eating the things you love, just eat them less. Watch your portion sizes with resolve, daily, and the weight will drop!

4. Quit smoking
This is a hard habit to break because nicotine is extremely addictive.
Handy hint: Don’t determine to give up smoking when other aspects of your life are stressful. Wait until you’re in a good space – and get plenty of emotional support to keep you on track.

5. Smell the roses
Lost your mojo? The easiest way to kick-start your joie de vivre is to do something outside the square.
Handy hint: Remember too that small is beautiful and focus on life’s minutiae, like a great song on the radio, a tasty peach, a pet’s licks, your friends’ thoughtfulness, an unexpected invitation.

6. Quit drinking
If drinking is doing you more harm than good, stop altogether, learn to moderate your tipples or call Alcoholics Anonymous for the support you need. Those living with alcoholics will also find friends at AA.
Handy hint: Resolve to drink two non-alcoholic drinks of your choice for every alcoholic drink. That’s a brilliant start!

7. Learn something new
There’s nothing more esteem-building than getting an additional qualification under your belt. Your career options widen, you meet new people and you exercise your brain.
Handy hint: Community colleges offer a plethora of inexpensive courses. Remember: nothing ventured, nothing gained!

8. I want to help people
Daily the world shrinks into a smaller global village with catastrophes reaching us daily via the media, so it’s no surprise that “volunteering holidays” are booming worldwide.
Handy hint: If time is an issue, donate furniture, clothing and other household items for those less fortunate in life than you.

9. I want to get organised
Whether it’s your home, office, clothes cupboard or garden shed, almost everyone wishes they had better systems and processes in place.
Handy hint: Take one untidy aspect of your life and draw up a plan to get on top of it. Give yourself three months to achieve a sense of improvement, and once successful, apply the same principles to more and bigger things.

10 Old-School Ways to Remember Stuff

2010-08-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

1. Count to 20
Here's a fun way for the kids to learn:
One, Two, buckle my shoe, Three, Four, knock at the door, Five, Six, pick up sticks, Seven, Eight, lay them straight, Nine, Ten, a big fat hen, Eleven, Twelve, dig and delve, Thirteen, Fourteen, maids a-courting, Fifteen, Sixteen, maids in the kitchen, Nineteen, Twenty, my plate's empty.

2. The Four Main Compass Directions
Simply remember the acronym NEWS: North at the top; East on the right; West on the left; South at the bottom.

3. Months of the Year
A physical mnemonic trick will help you remember how many days are in each month. Hold your clenched fists together, side by side. Begin with your left hand, naming the knuckle of your little finger as January. Next, the valley or dip between the first two knuckles is February, and the next knuckle is March, and so on. All the knuckles represent months with 31 days, and the valleys the shorter months.

4. The Order of the Planets
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Try these phrases to help you memorize the order: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos OR My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nowhere

5. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
1. Statue of Zeus at Olympia
2. Lighthouse (Pharos) of Alexandria
3. Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
4. Pyramids of Egypt
5. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
6. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
7. Colossus of Rhodes
Use this mnemonic phrase to recall them: Seems Like Mata Hari Picked Her Targets Carefully.

6. Musical Notes
In the 1965 film The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews's character Maria teaches the children music. Her song may help you.
Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti
Do=doe, a female deer
Re=ray, a drop of golden sun
Mi=me, a name I call myself
Fa=far, a long, long way to run
So=sew, a needle pulling thread
La=la, a note to follow "so"
Ti=tea, a drink with jam and bread
Which will bring us back to "Do"

7. Counting to Six in French
un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq & six
Here's a phrase to help you count.
Un, deux, trois, cat sank—cease, please!

8. The 12 Apostles
List the dedicated followers of Jesus with this well-known Sunday school rhyme:
This is the way the disciples run Peter, Andrew, James and John, Phillip and Bartholomew, Thomas next and Matthew, too. James the less and Judas the greater, Simon the zealot and Judas the traitor.

9. The Four Gospels
The first four books of the New Testament are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Try this to help you recite them, and you'll impress your Sunday School teacher: "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John went to bed with their trousers on."

10. Basic DIY Techniques
Don't waste time, do things the right way the first time. Just think this: Righty-tighty, Lefty-loosey.

21 Odd and Fun Facts about Music

2010-08-17T04:45:00.000-07:00

1. The only guy in ZZ Top who doesn’t have a beard is Frank Beard.
2. None of Elvis’s films got nominated for Oscar, but he did win three Grammy Awards – for his gospel recordings.
3. John Lennon wrote Good morning, good morning after hearing a Corn Flakes commercial.
4. Marilyn Monroe got a white poodle named Mafia from Frank Sinatra.
5. The airplane that Buddy Holly died in was called American Pie. Don McLean wrote a song with the same name about the accident.
6. Duran Duran was named after a mad scientist from the Jane Fonda movie Barbarella.
7. The first CD that was pressed in the U.S. was Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.
8. Before composing Beethoven dipped his head in cold water.
9. Like humans, birds can learn music while they are still in the egg stage.
10. Mozart was five years old when he wrote his first piece.
11. The first pop video was released in 1975. It was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.
12. In 1976 Barry Manilow sang a chart topping song named I write the songs. The song wasn’t written by him.
13. Termites will eat wood two times faster when listening to heavy metal.
14. When Madonna was 15 years old, she got grounded for the whole summer, for sneaking out to see David Bowie in concert.
15. In the year 1988 tenor Luciano Pavarotti received a record 165 curtain calls at a Berlin opera house.
16. Make music not war : Monaco’s national orchestra is bigger that its army.
17. Wham !’s hit single Wake me up before you go go was written by George Michael who was inspired by the note that was left to his hotel room by another band member Andrew Ridgeley. The note was mistakenly written as “Don’t forget to wake me up up before you go go, George”.
18. House of the rising sun by The Animals was recorded with only 15 minutes because the band was on a tight budget. In spite of that the song went all the way to number one in 1964.
19. The longest song title is 305 characters (including spaces) : The Sad But True Story Of Ray Mingus, The Lumberjack Of Bulk Rock City, And His Never Slacking Stribe In Exploiting The So Far Undiscovered Areas Of The Intention To Bodily Intercourse From The Opposite Species Of His Kind, During Intake Of All The Mental Condition That Could Be Derived From Fermentation by Rednex.
20. When Billy Crystal was a child, his babysitter was the legendary Billie Holiday.
21. Suzanne Vega is considered the “mother” of the mp3 format. The creators of the mp3 used her voice from the song Tom’s Diner for analyzing the different sound spectrums when creating the compression algorithm.

Stupid Shit People Actually Put On Their Resumes

2010-08-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

None of this is made up. People really did put this stupid crazy shit on their resumes or job applications.
1. I am very detail-oreinted.
2. My intensity and focus are at inordinately high levels, and my ability to complete projects on time is unspeakable.
3. Thank you for your consideration. Hope to hear from you shorty!
4. Enclosed is a ruff draft of my resume.
5. It’s best for employers that I not work with people.
6. Here are my qualifications for you to overlook.
7. I am a quick leaner, dependable, and motivated.
8. If this resume doesn’t blow your hat off, then please return it in the enclosed envelope.
9. My fortune cookie said, “Your next interview will result in a job.” And I like your company in particular.
10. I saw your ad on the information highway, and I came to a screeching halt.
11. Insufficient writing skills, thought processes have slowed down some. If I am not one of the best, I will look for another opportunity.
12. Please disregard the attached resume-it is terribly out of date.
13. Seek challenges that test my mind and body, since the two are usually inseparable.
14. Graduated in the top 66% of my class.
15. Reason for leaving last job: The owner gave new meaning to the word paranoia. I prefer to elaborate privately.
16. Previous experience: Self-employed-a fiasco.
17. Exposure to German for two years, but many words are inappropriate for business.
18. Experience: Watered, groomed, and fed the family dog for years.
19. I am a rabid typist.
20. I have a bachelorette degree in computers.
21. Excellent memory; strong math aptitude; excellent memory; effective management skills; and very good at math.
22. Strengths: Ability to meet deadlines while maintaining composer.
23. I worked as a Corporate Lesion.
24. Reason for leaving last job: Pushed aside so the vice president’s girlfriend could steal my job.
25. Married, eight children. Prefer frequent travel.
26. Objective: To have my skills and ethics challenged on a daily basis.
27. Special skills: Thyping.
28. My ruthlessness terrorized the competition and can sometimes offend.
29. I can play well with others.
30. Personal Goal: To hand-build a classic cottage from the ground up using my father-in-law.
31. Objective: I want a base salary of $50-$60,000 dollars, not including bonus. And some decent benefits. Like a retirement plan, health insurance, personal or sick days.
32. Experience: Provided correct answers to customers’ questions.
33. Education: Graduated from predatory school with honors.
34. Never been fired, although it could happen anytime now.
35. I have happily been a “kept man” for the past 10 years.
36. Have extensive experience in turkey manufactures as well as new product development and implementation.
37. I am accustomed to speaking in front of all kinds of audiences. I make points as well as I can.
38. Personal: Five children. Dog: Jasper. Cat: Morris. Gerbil: Binky.
39. While in military, was instrumental in creation of a treat detection system.
40. My compensation package at my last job included a base salary of $64,500 with excellent benefits including flextime. I am looking for a position in which I can work a more flexible schedule.
41. Hire me and you won’t regret it - I am funny, cute, smart and creative… really.
42. Referees available upon request.
43. Previous rank: Senior instigator.
44. I have recently sold my home and I now live in a large RV so I will be able to relocate quickly.
45. Reason for leaving: They stopped paying me.
46. Cover letter: Desire the chance to showcase my delightful personality, intelligence and superior judgment, which are so hard to find these days.
47. Personal achievements: Successfully played “Chop Sticks” on a toy piano with my big toes.
48. Objective: To obtain a position where I can make a difference, infecting others with my professionalism, enthusiasm and dedication.
49. Strengths: Impersonal skills.
50. Special interests: I like any projects that are fun.
51. Please explain any breaks in your employment career: 15 minute coffee break while working at a home improvement store.
52. Vocational plans: Sea World.

Why God Never Received a PhD

2010-08-14T04:55:00.000-07:00

1. He had only one major publication.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
4. It wasn't published in a refereed journal.
5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
9. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.
11. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. Some say he had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
17. No record of working well with colleagues.

20 Things You Didn't Know About Light

2010-07-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

1. God commanded, “Let there be light,” but it didn’t happen for nearly half a million years. That’s how long after the Big Bang the universe took to expand enough to allow photons (light particles) to travel freely.

2. Those photons are still running loose, detectable as the cosmic microwave background, a microwave glow from all parts of the sky.

3. Light moves along at full “light speed”—186,282.4 miles per second—only in a vacuum. In the dense matrix of a diamond, it slows to just 77,500 miles per second.

4. Diamonds are the Afghanistan of gemstones: Any entering photon quickly gets bogged down. It takes a lot of pinging back and forth in a thicket of carbon atoms to find an exit. This action is what gives diamonds their dazzling sparkle.

5. Eyeglasses can correct vision because light changes speed when it passes from air to a glass or plastic lens; this causes the rays to bend.

6. Plato fancied that we see by shooting light rays from our eyes.

7. The Greek philosopher was not completely wrong. Like all living things, humans are bioluminescent: We glow. We are brightest during the afternoon, around our lips and cheeks. The cause may be chemical reactions involving molecular fragments known as free radicals.

8. Bioluminescence is the largest source of light in the oceans; 90 percent of all creatures who live below about 1,500 feet are luminous.

9. World War II aviators used to spot ships by the bioluminescence in their wakes. In 1954 Jim Lovell (later the pilot of Apollo 13) used this trick to find his darkened aircraft carrier.

10. Incandescent bulbs convert only 10 percent of the energy they draw into light, which is why Europe will outlaw them by 2012. Most of the electricity turns into unwanted heat.

11. In the confined space of an Easy-Bake oven, a 100-watt bulb can create a temperature of 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

12. Light has no mass, but it does have momentum. Later this year the Planetary Society will launch LightSail-1, attempting to capture the pressure of sunlight the way a boat’s sail gathers the wind.

13. Laser beams bounced off mirrors left behind by Apollo astronauts show that the moon is moving 1.5 inches farther from Earth each year.

14. Visible light makes up less than one ten-billionth of the electromagnetic spectrum, which stretches from radio waves to gamma rays.

15. Goldfish can see infrared radiation that is invisible to us. Bees, birds, and lizards have eyes that pick up ultraviolet.

16. Photography means “writing with light.” English astronomer John Herschel, whose father discovered infrared, coined the term.

17. Shoot now: The “golden hour,” just after sunrise and before sunset, produces the prettiest shadows and colors for photographs.

18. Day and night are everywhere the same length on the vernal equinox, which occurs this year on March 20.

19. Auroras light up the night sky when solar wind particles excite atoms in the upper atmosphere. Oxygen mostly shines green; nitrogen contributes blue and red.

20. But to the Inuits, auroras are spirits of the dead kicking around the head of a walrus.

[Via Discover Magazine]

Why Does Texas Rank Last in High School Diplomas?

2010-07-27T03:51:00.000-07:00

How can Texas rank last in the nation — 51st — in the percentage of adults with high school diplomas, and simultaneously rank 22nd in the percentage attending at least some college?

The complicated answer involves more than the quality of the K-12 education system. The figures, based on the percentage of adults over 25 years old with various levels of education, come from a review of 2008 census bureau data by the Brookings Institution, which put data on education attainment from every state into this nifty web widget. It came as part of a larger study called the State of Metropolitan America, released in May (which includes some other interesting data on Texas cities).

In a ranking of the 50 states plus Washington, D.C. in educational attainment, Texas was all over the map: 51st in high school (79.6 percent); 22nd in some college (22.6 percent); 44th in associate’s degrees (6.3 percent); 31st in bachelor’s degrees (25.3 percent); and 36th in graduate degrees (8.3 percent). The leading factor driving down the state’s rankings has little to do with the quality of public schools and everything to do with the rapid rate of immigration, said Alan Berube, senior fellow and research director at Brookings, a left-leaning policy think-tank.

Many Mexican and Latin American immigrants “came to Texas as adults. They didn’t come there to finish high school. They came there to work. So that depresses the indicator,” Berube says. Further, the wide gap between high school and college attainment indicates a relatively large percentage of Texans who do complete high school go on to college, with many graduating, he says.

The same trends can be seen in California — the other huge state with rapid growth in immigration — with an even more severe spread between high school and college attainment. The sunshine state ranked 49th in high school attainment, yet 15th and 16th, respectively, in the percentage of adults with bachelor’s and graduate degrees.

In addition, the rankings can be deceiving because almost every state in the nation is clustered between 80 and 90 percent, so the state ranking last isn’t necessarily so far behind others ranking much higher. “But somebody’s got to be 51st,” Berube said, “and it turns out that’s Texas.”

At the same time, Houston, Austin and Dallas are three among only nine cities in America with the rare combination of fast growth, high levels of ethnic diversity and high educational attainment, Berube said. San Antonio, El Paso and McAllen, unfortunately, have the fast growth and diversity — but low educational attainment.

While some of the data should give policymakers concerns, none of it should be interpreted as solely a failure of the Texas education system, Berube said. Many Texas adults grew up elsewhere, and fast growth in Texas cities speaks for itself — people who live elsewhere want to move here. As for education levels, the real demographic shift will come when today’s second- and third-graders — who are Hispanic and low-income in higher percentages than today’s Texas teenagers — get into high school. In 2008, the Hispanic population represented 36 percent of all Texans, but 46 percent of births, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The latest enrollment report from the Texas Education Agency, from the 2008-09 school year, shows that Hispanic students now account for 48 percent of public school enrollment — and 65 percent of pre-kindergarten enrollment.

How Texas public schools perform in educating these students — many from Spanish-speaking families without a history of high school and college graduation — largely will determine the future prosperity of the state. The current levels of educational attainment are “certainly something to be concerned about,” Berube said. “But the focus should be more properly on how the schools are doing with the children of these immigrants.”

[Via Texas Tribune]

Brewery's Nanny State Beer Swipe

2010-07-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

A brewery has launched a low alcohol beer called Nanny State after being branded irresponsible for creating the UK's "strongest beer".

Scottish brewer BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, was criticised for Tokyo* which has an alcohol content of 18.2%.

Campaigners welcomed the 1.1% alcohol Nanny State but said the name showed a lack of appreciation of the problem

The 3,000 limited edition bottles of Tokyo* contained six units of alcohol - twice the recommended daily limit.

The company had insisted the £9.99 high strength beer would help tackle the country's binge-drinking culture, because customers would drink it in smaller quantities.

But Alcohol Focus Scotland had branded that argument "deluded".

BrewDog founder James Watt explained on his blog: "Anyone who knows BrewDog, knows beer, or anyone has more common sense than a common (or garden) gnome will know that the scathing and unrelenting criticism we faced was pretty unjustified.

"If logic serves the same people who witch-hunted and publicly slated us should now offer us heartfelt support and public congratulations.

"However I fear that this, unfortunately, is an arena devoid of logic and reason."

Nanny State is described as a "mild imperial ale containing more hops per barrel than any other beer ever brewed in the UK".

It is being made available in limited quantities online for £2.49.

Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said of the new Nanny State beer: "This is a positive move which proves that low strength doesn't compromise quality.

"However the name of the beer proves that once again this company is failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the alcohol problem facing Scotland."

BrewDog previously ran into controversy when drinks industry watchdog the Portman Group said its Speedball drink should be withdrawn from sale until its marketing was changed.

Speedballing is the name given to combining heroin and cocaine.

[Via BBC News]

Professional Vodka Tasters Keep Polish Tipple Pure

2010-07-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – For Poland's army of vodka tasters, the rules are strict: no smoking, no coffee, and no perfume, not to mention to the 6 am starts.

While in France cellar masters ensure the quality of fine wines, in Poland professional vodka tasters keep the potent tipple, first distilled in the region in mediaeval times, smooth and pure.

Krystyna Gbiorczyk, in charge of quality and taste control at a distillery in Poznan, western Poland, has for many years used her keen sense of taste and smell to safeguard the reputation of a top-selling brand name.

Samples of crystal clear vodka made using rye are heated and poured into covered glasses to capture all their aroma, she says.

The vodka is then closely observed, shaken, tasted and then evaluated on the basis of its strength, taste and smell.

"The regular tastings allow us to detect any significant differences between different batches of vodka and correct them to the standard we seek," adds Danuta Maranda, a quality control expert.

Last year the distillery launched an internal recruitment drive to find talented new tasters. Candidates had to discern between sweet, salty, acid or metallic-tasting vodkas and classify them according to the degree of alcohol content.

Among the new recruits was Malgorzata Novak, who landed a spot on the quality control team. Now she samples more than 20 bottles over an eight hour shift with her first sip of vodka at 6 am.

"I check for clarity, consistency and taste, of course. I do similar checks about every hour," she explains. If her taste buds give the all clear, bottling goes ahead.

When they're not tasting, the distillery's experts concoct the vodkas of tomorrow. Recently, Maranda received an order to create a vodka using red fruit.

Just as if she were creating a new perfume, she lines up a dozen vials of various natural fruity syrups and aromas ranging from the sweet flavour of cherry pits to the acidic smell of plums.

Pondering caramel-based colouring, like a modern-day alchemist, she seeks perfection over a period of three months.

"Its a difficult task to find harmony between the different elements, to get the right amounts and marry them well in the vodka we produce, like making a fine wine," she explains.

The unique sensibilities of the distillery's tasters are sometimes also solicited by the police to distinguish between authentic brands and black market counterfeit vodka.

"Counterfeit alcohol is often composed of products which give a similar taste to the original vodka, but large doses can be very dangerous," says Katarzyna Gbiorczyk. "The problem is that people who want to save money are risking their health."

In 2009, around 250 million litres (66 million US gallons) of vodka were sold in Poland, making the spirit second only in popularity to beer.

Texas man found asleep with corpse inside closet

2009-10-13T12:12:00.001-07:00

A Houston man found asleep with a corpse inside a closet of a vacant home has been charged with misdemeanor drug offenses, authorities said Monday. Cody Jean Plant, 21, was discovered Sunday after the owner of the house reported hearing voices and seeing signs of forced entry at the home in Cypress, about 25 miles northwest of Houston, according to a Harris County Precinct 4 Constable official. Authorities did not immediately release the dead man's identity.

"There were two guys in the closet. They appeared to be sleeping, one was snoring and the other was deceased," said Assistant Chief Deputy Mark Herman. "It appeared that they were doing some sort of narcotics, at least the one that they woke up."

Plant was charged with one count of possession of a dangerous drug and two counts of possession of a controlled substance of more than three grams and less than 28 grams. All are punishable by up to a year in jail. It was not immediately clear what kind of drugs Plant allegedly had in his possession.

Plant also had been charged with abuse of a corpse after prosecutors alleged he treated the body "in an offensive manner," but that charge was dropped Monday during a probable cause hearing.

Plant remained in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $15,000 bail Monday. Jail officials did not know Monday night whether Plant had an attorney.

A big hunk o' hair -- Elvis locks go under the hammer

2009-10-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Elvis Presley fans keen to own a chunk of their idol now can: locks of what is claimed to be The King's hair are up for auction next week.

The large quantity of hair is one of about 200 items of Elvis memorabilia collected by the late Gary Pepper, who was the president of the Tankers Fan Club set up for Elvis fans.

Chicago-based Leslie Hindman Auctioneers said the hair, which is expected to sell for between $8,000 and $12,000 at the October 18 auction, was given to Pepper to mail to Presley fans and was believed to be from when the singer had his hair cut to join the U.S. Army.

"In 1958, the nation's newspapers announced that Elvis Presley, having been newly recruited into the U.S. Army, had received two haircuts trimming his famous locks and sideburns down to a greatly modified crew cut," said a statement by the auction house.

"Individual strands of Elvis Presley's shaved locks have since been treasured by his fans who wish to own a piece of The King himself."

The auction house has not had a DNA test carried out on the hair but quoted "an expert in celebrity hair authentication," John Reznikoff, saying it matched the Elvis hair he has in his collection.

Presley died in 1977 at the age of 42.

Other items up for sale include signed photos, albums, publicity shots, souvenirs, and clothing.

The Mystery of the Declaration of Independence

2009-04-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

This story started in June 2004, when Artemy Lebedev was engaged in researching some documents in the sheet materials section of the Central State Archive of Foreign History of Ukraine based in Kiev. Much agitated Nikolay Kislenko, the head of the archive, approached him and said, “Now come, there’s something I want to show you. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

On one of the storage shelves in the vaults lay a thick lincrusta-bound folder with Nor[th] Am[erica]. [War 17]75–83 written on it in correction fluid. Among the letters, etchings, a variety of billboards and fly-sheets lay a moldering sheet folded three times—the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776.

The text of the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776 and signed by two officials: John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, and Charles Thomson, Secretary. On the same date the printer John Dunlap printed the endorsed document (of which there are 24 copies left as of today) that were dispatched to different assemblies, conventions, and committees of safety the next day.

The handlettering of the engrossed Declaration of Independence as it is known today began on July 19, and it was physically signed by the representatives of the Continental Congress on August 2, 1776.

The questions that still remained unresolved were how one of the pillars of the US national pride happened to wind up in the Kiev archives, and why the document of historical importance was entitled “United States of Жmerinca” (russian letter “Ж” corresponds to "Zh").

On July 19, Congress ordered that the Declaration be “fairly engrossed on parchment with the title and stile (sic!) of ‘The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America’ and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.”

Timothy Matlack, Assistant to Charles Thomson, was assigned with engrossing the document. At this point the tone of the official records of the Declaration history shifts, and the rest of the data is provided in an extremely piecemeal manner. It is only known that the delegates of Congress affixed their signatures to the Declaration on August 2.

After that an obscure period in the life of the 24¼ × 29¾ inch sheet of paper sets in. The Declaration was rolled and stashed away in an archive. Throughout this time, the document is never exhibited in public: instead, a fly-sheet with its text is distributed. In the meantime, the original document travels from one archive to another, until its arrival in Washington in 1814.

The fact is the real name of Timothy Matlack who penned the Declaration of Independence is Tomislav Matlakowski. Several years before the revolutionary events began to unfold in the New World, he left the voivodship of Bratslav and sailed for America, where he at first worked as a brewer, then took some interest in the Quaker movement and finally went for politics. Sometimes he was given calligraphic work: he penned some landmark official documents, including George Washington’s commission as commanding general of the Continental Army.

According to the State Archive of the Ukraine Health Ministry, Matlakowski was born in the place named Zhmerinca (a city since 1903).

In all likelihood, the nostalgic Matlakowski wrote the title in mixed alphabets, while Congress members didn’t notice anything wrong on the day when the Declaration was signed. But it was apparently discovered the next day by Charles Thomson, the discovery leading him to order immediately that the original be hidden from the public eye, and Matlack be demoted from the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the Congress Delegate from the same state.

There were two attempts to make a facsimile of the Declaration: in 1818 and 1819. But these facsimile printings were declared unsuitable for public display, since the copyists commissioned to produce the facsimiles decorated the document with ornamental designs and patterns. But Congress needed to have an exact copy that would be exhibited for public display. So William J. Stone was commissioned to do the job in 1820. It took Stone three years to complete the facsimile, and the Department of State purchased the plate from the engraver.

On June 5, 1823 the (Washington) National Intelligencer observed: “The facility of multiplying copies of it, now possessed by the Department of State will render furthur (sic!) exposure of the original unnecessary.”

The outcome of the engraver’s painstaking work was the image that’s printed on posters and sold these days.

Stone failed to solve two problems: the one with the letter “Ж” and the one with the dissymmetry of the heading against the text body.

Under the canons of the time, the heading was supposed to be as broad as the text body, or centered, but a special Congress commission decided that the error was insignificant. Stone convinced the commission members that the unknowing public would have no doubt that what they see is the letter “A”.

Ever since the original document hasn’t been shown to anyone and the data on its destiny has been missing. An aged copy that’s exposed under a bulletproof glass among the three Charters of Freedom in the National Archives Rotunda in Washington was placed on display in the middle of the 19th century.

The story of the film “National Treasure” starring Nicolas Cage hinges on this copy. A curious thing is that the film producers saw to it that the heading is never shot in a close-up, while all posters were made as collages where the letter “Ж” is concealed one way or another.

[Via Artlebedev.com]

Playboy's Bare Market

2008-10-25T02:07:00.000-07:00

Investors looking for a boom should first check out Playboy's busts.

The company, whose stock is trading at a five-year-low of less than $2 a share, announced last week that it's closing its DVD business. Late last month, it was reported by the British tabloid The Daily Star that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is laying off some of his bunnies because of the souring economy.

And more trouble may await the Playboy empire and its shareholders. According to a study published last week by econometricians Terry Pettijohn II and Brian Jungeberg, men tend to look for bigger, more robust, women during a lean economy. The report -- titled Playboy Playmate Curves: Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences Across Social and Economic Conditions -- also noted that when times are prosperous, men prefer less grown-up, shorter women with narrower waists.

In a move that has rendered quaint the once risqué miniskirt index, the pair of academics achieved this breakthrough by comparing the measurements from 40 years of Playmates to the economic data of the times.

"When social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected," says the study. "These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features."

Boiled down to plain English, the paper posits that men are less interested in viewing women purely for sex when the chips are down, preferring to focus on more mature women with the ability to care for them. In short, Playboy's sales may be headed for an even steeper decline.

Whether the good professors are onto something big is debatable. But Playboy's shareholders should heed the good professors' sage barometer as a centerfold for sell.

[Via The Street]

Economy Rocks China Factories

2008-10-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

SHAOXING, China — In the good old days — oh, three months ago — Tao Shoulong would prowl the streets of this ancient city in his Mercedes-Benz. His wife and partner, Yan Qi, would cruise around in her Toyota Land Cruiser. Together, they would drink into the night with clients, suppliers and creditors, hatching plans to expand their Zhejiang River Dragon Textile Printing & Dyeing Co.
Tao built River Dragon from a start-up with four employees into one of China's biggest textile printing firms in just five years. He had even grander dreams: He wanted to see his company's stock trade on Nasdaq alongside the likes of Microsoft and Intel.

The dreams are dead. River Dragon shut down on Oct. 7. Tao and Yan have vanished, leaving behind more than $290 million in debt and a lot of anger in this city 140 miles south of Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta. The company's demise put 4,000 workers on the street and jilted hundreds of suppliers and creditors.

The speedy rise — and speedier fall — of River Dragon is a depressingly familiar story in China these days. Thousands of Chinese factories have shuttered in the past year, done in by:

•An export-killing global slowdown that began with the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the ensuing financial crisis. Local textile merchant Fang Xingquan, a River Dragon creditor, is among many who believe a sharp drop-off in exports was a key factor in the company's demise.

•Rising materials costs that have squeezed profit margins.

•A deliberate Chinese government campaign to regulate sweatshop factories out of business.

China's National Bureau of Statistics this week said the nation's economy grew at an annual rate of 9% in the quarter ended Sept. 30, the lowest since 2003. The state-run Xinhua news agency said the government is considering a series of actions to boost exports and stimulate home sales.

Many economists, including Yu Yongding of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believe that China needs to keep annual economic growth of 8% or 9% to absorb the 24 million people entering the labor force every year or risk social instability.

Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund predicted that Chinese economic growth would cool from 2007's sizzling 11.9% to 9.7% this year and 9.3% in 2009. Private forecasters are even more pessimistic. UBS Investment Research, for instance, forecasts 8% growth in 2009.

"China is being hit over the head by both the global crisis and the domestic slowdown," says Stephen Green, economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai.

Exports account for nearly 38% of China's economic output. JPMorgan Chase calculates that Chinese exports fall 5.7 percentage points every time global economic growth shrinks by a percentage point. And the IMF is predicting that global growth will drop 2 percentage points — from 5% last year to 3% in 2009. Chinese appliance maker Haier has already seen export growth drop to 10% the first three quarters of this year from 30% a year earlier, the official English-language China Daily newspaper reported.

What happens to China has big implications globally: China contributed 17% of world economic growth last year, the same as the United States, according to the United Nations.

Home prices collapsing

The Chinese economy is absorbing another blow beyond crumbling exports: collapsing home prices. Nicholas Lardy, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., reckons a slowdown in construction could shave another 1 to 2 percentage points off China's economic growth.

"The property bubble is already starting to burst," says Yan Yu, a business management scholar at Peking University, researching the export center of Dongguan in southern Guangdong province. "House prices here in Dongguan have fallen by up to 50% this year," leaving many homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

"People have worked all their lives and believed the hype and bought overvalued properties, then saw their savings vanish," says independent economist Andy Xie in Shanghai. "That carries more political risk" than rising joblessness.

The good news: The forecast growth rates are still pretty impressive by any other economy's standards; Chinese exports have proved surprisingly resilient, growing nearly 22% in September from a year earlier; and the government in Beijing is sitting on enough cash — $1.8 trillion in foreign exchange reserves — to go on a spending spree if needed to rescue the Chinese economy from catastrophe.

"Chinese authorities appear to be well aware of the global economic situation," JPMorgan Chase reported this month. The bank expects government to turn the spigot on spending, quadrupling the budget deficit to the equivalent of 2% of economic output from 0.5% this year.

The authorities aren't going to save everyone. The Chinese government has put pressure on small firms that foul the environment, pay miserly wages and turn out cheap products. "Beijing no longer wants to be the world's sweatshop for junk," CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets says in a recent report.

First, China cut tax breaks for exporters and imposed new export taxes on polluters, even targeting producers of disposable chopsticks. Then it introduced a labor law in January, requiring companies to give workers written contracts and making it harder for them to lay off employees or to hire informal part-time help.

The combination of tougher regulations, weakening exports, rising costs and a stronger Chinese currency has hammered thousands of small factories. The pain has been especially agonizing in Guangdong, a low-cost manufacturing center across the border from Hong Kong in southern China.

Guangdong's exports rose just 14% the first seven months of 2008 after growing 27% a year earlier. Industrial profits were up just 4% this year through May, compared with 49% a year earlier and puny compared with 21% growth nationwide. "Guangdong's weak performance is a signal of the government's determination to restructure the low-value-added export process sector and to force out of business firms that abuse labor and the environment," CLSA concluded.

Trouble in toyland

Firms that were already struggling with narrow profit margins have been squeezed. More than half of all China's toy exporters — 3,631 firms — shut their doors the first half of the year, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "Many toy factories have gone bankrupt this year," says Luo Yunzhang, founder of toy exporter Guangzhou Sixiren Toy, which makes playground equipment for Ohio-based Little Tikes, among other products.

"We saw exports start to dip in May, when the government began restricting businessmen's visits ahead of the (August) Olympic Games. … Now the global crisis is causing problems. When people are in difficulties, they spend less on things like toys," Luo says. Luo predicts that Sixiren's export revenue will drop by half this year, to $500,000.

China's textile industry is also enduring a deep slump. Textile exports have been tumbling since March. More than 10,000 small textile manufacturers went out of business the first half of this year alone, the government says. "The global crisis is seriously affecting the local textile industry," says Yu Xin of the China Chemical Fibers and Textile Consultancy in Hangzhou.

China's 30-year economic boom has produced towns that specialize in one product. There are shoe towns, zipper towns, air conditioner towns and sock towns. Shaoxing — a city of 4.3 million long known in China for opera, rice wine and scenic river vistas — has sold itself as China's Textile City.

The textile sector has been "an easy market, as it is not complicated, has low entry barriers and is a big employer," says Standard Chartered's Green. The local government gives tax breaks, and the industry has benefited from having a large number of suppliers and trained workers close by.

For a while, River Dragon looked like one of the winners. After working as a clerk at another firm, Tao started the company in 2003 with his wife, Yan, and four colleagues. River Dragon went public in Singapore two years ago, and Tao bought another textile firm last year, hoping the acquisition would give River Dragon the heft to list on Nasdaq. In July, Yan, the company CEO, announced that River Dragon had landed a $10 million contract to supply apparel to 76 U.S. universities. But the deal proved a mirage. The end came quickly. A day after the factory stopped production, River Dragon stock was dropped from the Singapore exchange. Corporate documents are missing, and Tao and Yan are long gone.

"I think they are still on the run in China," says Fang, the supplier. He says he was stiffed for more than $860,000 when River Dragon went under.

Keeping society 'stable'

About 300 suppliers and creditors descended on the River Dragon complex, looting warehouses in the hopes of salvaging something. Hundreds of workers demonstrated in the streets, demanding back pay for August and September. Worried about the unrest, the local government coughed up cash. "The government paid the workers to keep society stable," textile analyst Yu says.

As their export orders dry up, Chinese manufacturers are likely to look for customers at home in China or in other emerging markets such as the Middle East and Africa. "Soon we will see vicious price competition between companies who have lost exports," Green says.

In Guangdong, toymaker Luo hopes to push domestic sales up to $1.5 million this year from $1 million in 2007.

"The situation in the U.S. and other countries will not turn around quickly," he says. "We must rely more on the domestic market, as Chinese consumers increasingly have money to spend on toys. Profits are very thin in the toy business, both in export and domestic sales. I prefer exports. … Domestic sales involve more work. There are more customers. But their orders are small."

Independent economist Xie says China became overly dependent on demand from the U.S. and Europe that was stoked by too much borrowed money and inflated asset values. "It's all coming to an end," he says. "You need to look elsewhere for livelihood. Americans cannot spend money anymore."

[Via USA Today]

How Howard Hughes Avoided Taxes

2008-10-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

As his empire grew, Hughes used every trick conceivable to avoid paying taxes to the government. In the early years of Hughes Aircraft, Hughes attempted to move his company from Southern California to Nevada in an effort to take advantage of Nevada's low tax rates. Ultimately, Hughes donated all his stock in Hughes Aircraft to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, thereby turning the military contractor into a tax-exempt charity. In addition to avoiding income taxes, this had the effect of silencing the upper management in Hughes Aircraft, who for many years had clamored for stock in the company as part of their compensation.

Hughes was able to keep and maintain highly qualified managers in his companies by promising them large sums of money at the end of their careers. In order to be able to give them the most money without taxation, Hughes would make an arrangement whereby he would publicly criticize a certain manager that had recently left his company. Then, the manager would sue Hughes in court for public defamation. A settlement was given to this manager in court which was not subject to taxes. This happened with Noah Dietrich, Robert Maheu, and others. For example, Robert Maheu was awarded US$2.2 million in a defamation lawsuit shortly after leaving Hughes' employ.

Although Hughes lived in his own home in California for many years, he later came up with the idea of living in hotels as this enabled him not to have a legally declared residence in any state which would require him to pay personal income taxes. Shortly after Hughes began living in hotels with no state as his official residence, legislation was passed that any person living in a state 180 days or longer was subject to personal income tax during that time period in that state. Then, Hughes would live in a given hotel for just under 180 days, before moving to another hotel for just under 180 days, and so on. His extremely creative efforts to avoid taxes were successful; even after his death, the states of California and Texas were unable to collect inheritance taxes since it could not be proven that he was a legal resident of either state.

[Via Wikipedia]

How to Replace Expensive Software Packages

2008-09-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

If you’ve downloaded and installed all of these, you’ve got access to all the productivity software you’ll likely need, clean and open and best of all free.

1. Firefox
http://www.getfirefox.com/
Replaces Internet Explorer
If you haven’t switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better.

2. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it’s free, it’s full featured, it’s lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If you’re not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

3. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring functions
Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation’s calendaring program. It’s extremely easy to use and easy to share your calendar with others.

4. Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
Replaces Microsoft Word
Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is excellent replacement for Word. It’s lightweight and includes pretty much every feature that everyone uses regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

5. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint
If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements).

6. ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/
Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee
ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software that’s quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses.

7. Gaim
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc.
This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

8. GIMPShop
http://www.gimpshop.net/
Replaces Adobe Photoshop
This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop - a regular user of Photoshop can adapt to it quite quickly. It’s very richly featured and runs quite well.

9. VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.
If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type you’ll run across without breaking a sweat.

10. Filezilla
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Replaces WinFTP
Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

11. MusikCube
http://www.musikcube.com/
Replaces iTunes
If you’re not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

12. X-Chat 2
http://www.silverex.org/
Replaces mIRC
X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, it’s a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

13. PDFCreator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Replaces Adobe Acrobat
PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

14. Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Replaces Notepad
Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags.

15. GanttPV
http://www.pureviolet.net/ganttpv/
Replaces Microsoft Project
If you do any project management, GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, you’ll likely have no reason to use Project.

16. GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken
GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages. The interfaces are incredibly simple - it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer - but there’s a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

17. True Combat: Elite
http://www.truecombatelite.net/
Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc.
After all this downloading, you’re going to need to blow off a little steam. It’s basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

9 Mental Math Tricks

2008-09-22T01:15:00.000-07:00

Math can be terrifying for many people. This list will hopefully improve your general knowledge of mathematical tricks and your speed when you need to do math in your head.

1. Multiplying by 9, or 99, or 999

Multiplying by 9 is really multiplying by 10-1.

So, 9×9 is just 9x(10-1) which is 9×10-9 which is 90-9 or 81.

Let’s try a harder example: 46×9 = 46×10-46 = 460-46 = 414.

One more example: 68×9 = 680-68 = 612.

To multiply by 99, you multiply by 100-1.

So, 46×99 = 46x(100-1) = 4600-46 = 4554.

Multiplying by 999 is similar to multiplying by 9 and by 99.

38×999 = 38x(1000-1) = 38000-38 = 37962.

2. Multiplying by 11

To multiply a number by 11 you add pairs of numbers next to each other, except for the numbers on the edges.

Let me illustrate:

To multiply 436 by 11 go from right to left.

First write down the 6 then add 6 to its neighbor on the left, 3, to get 9.

Write down 9 to the left of 6.

Then add 4 to 3 to get 7. Write down 7.

Then, write down the leftmost digit, 4.

So, 436×11 = is 4796.

Let’s do another example: 3254×11.

The answer comes from these sums and edge numbers: (3)(3+2)(2+5)(5+4)(4) = 35794.

One more example, this one involving carrying: 4657×11.

Write down the sums and edge numbers: (4)(4+6)(6+5)(5+7)(7).

Going from right to left we write down 7.

Then we notice that 5+7=12.

So we write down 2 and carry the 1.

6+5 = 11, plus the 1 we carried = 12.

So, we write down the 2 and carry the 1.

4+6 = 10, plus the 1 we carried = 11.

So, we write down the 1 and carry the 1.

To the leftmost digit, 4, we add the 1 we carried.

So, 4657×11 = 51227 .

3. Multiplying by 5, 25, or 125

Multiplying by 5 is just multiplying by 10 and then dividing by 2. Note: To multiply by 10 just add a 0 to the end of the number.

12×5 = (12×10)/2 = 120/2 = 60.

Another example: 64×5 = 640/2 = 320.

And, 4286×5 = 42860/2 = 21430.

To multiply by 25 you multiply by 100 (just add two 0’s to the end of the number) then divide by 4, since 100 = 25×4. Note: to divide by 4 your can just divide by 2 twice, since 2×2 = 4.

64×25 = 6400/4 = 3200/2 = 1600.

58×25 = 5800/4 = 2900/2 = 1450.

To multiply by 125, you multipy by 1000 then divide by 8 since 8×125 = 1000. Notice that 8 = 2×2x2. So, to divide by 1000 add three 0’s to the number and divide by 2 three times.

32×125 = 32000/8 = 16000/4 = 8000/2 = 4000.

48×125 = 48000/8 = 24000/4 = 12000/2 = 6000.

4. Multiplying together two numbers that differ by a small even number

This trick only works if you’ve memorized or can quickly calculate the squares of numbers. If you’re able to memorize some squares and use the tricks described later for some kinds of numbers you’ll be able to quickly multiply together many pairs of numbers that differ by 2, or 4, or 6.

Let’s say you want to calculate 12×14.

When two numbers differ by two their product is always the square of the number in between them minus 1.

12×14 = (13×13)-1 = 168.

16×18 = (17×17)-1 = 288.

99×101 = (100×100)-1 = 10000-1 = 9999

If two numbers differ by 4 then their product is the square of the number in the middle (the average of the two numbers) minus 4.

11×15 = (13×13)-4 = 169-4 = 165.

13×17 = (15×15)-4 = 225-4 = 221.

If the two numbers differ by 6 then their product is the square of their average minus 9.

12×18 = (15×15)-9 = 216.

17×23 = (20×20)-9 = 391.

5. Squaring 2-digit numbers that end in 5

If a number ends in 5 then its square always ends in 25. To get the rest of the product take the left digit and multiply it by one more than itself.

35×35 ends in 25. We get the rest of the product by multiplying 3 by one more than 3. So, 3×4 = 12 and that’s the rest of the product. Thus, 35×35 = 1225.

To calculate 65×65, notice that 6×7 = 42 and write down 4225 as the answer.

85×85: Calculate 8×9 = 72 and write down 7225.

6. Multiplying together 2-digit numbers where the first digits are the same and the last digits sum to 10

Let’s say you want to multiply 42 by 48. You notice that the first digit is 4 in both cases. You also notice that the other digits, 2 and 8, sum to 10. You can then use this trick: multiply the first digit by one more than itself to get the first part of the answer and multiply the last digits together to get the second (right) part of the answer.

An illustration is in order:

To calculate 42×48: Multiply 4 by 4+1. So, 4×5 = 20. Write down 20.

Multiply together the last digits: 2×8 = 16. Write down 16.

The product of 42 and 48 is thus 2016.

Notice that for this particular example you could also have noticed that 42 and 48 differ by 6 and have applied technique number 4.

Another example: 64×66. 6×7 = 42. 4×6 = 24. The product is 4224.

A final example: 86×84. 8×9 = 72. 6×4 = 24. The product is 7224

7. Squaring other 2-digit numbers

Let’s say you want to square 58. Square each digit and write a partial answer. 5×5 = 25. 8×8 = 64. Write down 2564 to start. Then, multiply the two digits of the number you’re squaring together, 5×8=40.

Double this product: 40×2=80, then add a 0 to it, getting 800.

Add 800 to 2564 to get 3364.

This is pretty complicated so let’s do more examples.

32×32. The first part of the answer comes from squaring 3 and 2.

3×3=9. 2×2 = 4. Write down 0904. Notice the extra zeros. It’s important that every square in the partial product have two digits.

Multiply the digits, 2 and 3, together and double the whole thing. 2×3x2 = 12.

Add a zero to get 120. Add 120 to the partial product, 0904, and we get 1024.

56×56. The partial product comes from 5×5 and 6×6. Write down 2536.

5×6x2 = 60. Add a zero to get 600.

56×56 = 2536+600 = 3136.

One more example: 67×67. Write down 3649 as the partial product.

6×7x2 = 42×2 = 84. Add a zero to get 840.

67×67=3649+840 = 4489.

8. Multiplying by doubling and halving

There are cases when you’re multiplying two numbers together and one of the numbers is even. In this case you can divide that number by two and multiply the other number by 2. You can do this over and over until you get to multiplication this is easy for you to do.

Let’s say you want to multiply 14 by 16. You can do this:

14×16 = 28×8 = 56×4 = 112×2 = 224.

Another example: 12×15 = 6×30 = 6×3 with a 0 at the end so it’s 180.

48×17 = 24×34 = 12×68 = 6×136 = 3×272 = 816. (Being able to calculate that 3×27 = 81 in your head is very helpful for this problem.)

9. Multiplying by a power of 2

To multiply a number by 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or some other power of 2 just keep doubling the product as many times as necessary. If you want to multiply by 16 then double the number 4 times since 16 = 2×2x2×2.

15×16: 15×2 = 30. 30×2 = 60. 60×2 = 120. 120×2 = 240.
23×8: 23×2 = 46. 46×2 = 92. 92×2 = 184.
54×8: 54×2 = 108. 108×2 = 216. 216×2 = 432.

Ten Things You Don’t Know About the Earth

2008-09-14T03:39:00.000-07:00

1) The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.

Maybe you’ve heard this statement: if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, it would actually be smoother than one. When I was in third grade, my teacher said basketball, but it’s the same concept. But is it true? Let’s see. Strap in, there’s a wee bit of math (like, a really wee bit).

OK, first, how smooth is a billiard ball? According to the World Pool-Billiard Association, a pool ball is 2.25 inches in diameter, and has a tolerance of +/- 0.005 inches. In other words, it must have no pits or bumps more than 0.005 inches in height. That’s pretty smooth. The ratio of the size of an allowable bump to the size of the ball is 0.005/2.25 = about 0.002.

The Earth has a diameter of about 12,735 kilometers (on average, see below for more on this). Using the smoothness ratio from above, the Earth would be an acceptable pool ball if it had no bumps (mountains) or pits (trenches) more than 12,735 km x 0.00222 = about 28 km in size.

The highest point on Earth is the top of Mt. Everest, at 8.85 km. The deepest point on Earth is the Marianas Trench, at about 11 km deep.

Hey, those are within the tolerances! So for once, an urban legend is correct. If you shrank the Earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be smoother.

But would it be round enough to qualify?

2) The Earth is an oblate spheroid

The Earth is round! Despite common knowledge, people knew that the Earth was spherical thousands of years ago. Eratosthenes even calculated the circumference to very good accuracy!

But it’s not a perfect sphere. It spins, and because it spins, it bulges due to centrifugal force (yes, dagnappit, I said centrifugal). That is an outwards-directed force, the same thing that makes you lean to the right when turning left in a car. Since the Earth spins, there is a force outward that is a maximum at the Earth’s equator, making our Blue Marble bulge out, like a basketball with a guy sitting on it. This type of shape is called an oblate spheroid.

If you measure between the north and south poles, the Earth’s diameter is 12,713.6 km. If you measure across the Equator it’s 12,756.2 km, a difference of about 42.6 kilometers. Uh-oh! That’s more than our tolerance for a billiard ball. So the Earth is smooth enough, but not round enough, to qualify as a billiard ball.

Bummer. Of course, that’s assuming the tolerance for being out-of-round for a billiard ball is the same as it is for pits and bumps. The WPA site doesn’t say. I guess some things remain a mystery.

3) The Earth isn’t an oblate spheroid.

But we’re not done. The Earth is more complicated than an oblate spheroid. The Moon is out there too, and the Sun. They have gravity, and pull on us. The details are complicated (sate yourself here), but gravity (in the form of tides) raises bulges in the Earth’s surface as well. The tides from the Moon have an amplitude (height) of roughly a meter in the water, and maybe 30 cm in the solid Earth. The Sun is more massive than the Moon, but much farther away, and so its tides are only about half as high.

This is much smaller than the distortion due to the Earth’s spin, but it’s still there.

Other forces are at work as well, including pressure caused by the weight of the continents, upheaval due to tectonic forces, and so on. The Earth is actually a bit of a lumpy mess, but if you were to say it’s a sphere, you’d be pretty close. If you held the billiard-ball-sized Earth in your hand, I doubt you’d notice it isn’t a perfect sphere.

A professional pool player sure would though. I won’t tell Allison Fisher if you won’t.

4) OK, one more surfacey thing: the Earth is not exactly aligned with its geoid

If the Earth were infinitely elastic, then it would respond freely to all these different forces, and take on a weird, distorted shape called a geoid. For example, if the Earth’s surface were completely deluged with water (give it a few decades) then the surface shape would be a geoid. But the continents are not infinitely ductile, so the Earth’s surface is only approximately a geoid. It’s pretty close, though.

Precise measurements of the Earth’s surface are calibrated against this geoid, but the geoid itself is hard to measure. The best we can do right now is to model it using complicated mathematical functions. That’s why ESA is launching a satellite called GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) in the next few months, to directly determine the geoid’s shape.

Who knew just getting the shape of the Earth would be such a pain?

5) Jumping into hole through the Earth is like orbiting it.

I grew up thinking that if you dug a hole through the Earth (for those in the US) you’d wind up in China. Turns out that’s not true; in fact note that the US and China are both entirely in the northern hemisphere which makes it impossible, so as a kid I guess I was pretty stupid.

You can prove it to yourself with this cool but otherwise worthless mapping tool.

But what if you did dig a hole through the Earth and jump in? What would happen?

Where my own hole through the Earth ends up.
Well, you’d die (see below). But if you had some magic material coating the walls of your 13,000 km deep well, you’d have quite a trip. You’d accelerate all the way down to the center, taking about 20 minutes to get there. Then, when you passed the center, you’d start falling up for another 20 minutes, slowing the whole way. You’d just reach the surface, then you’d fall again. Assuming you evacuated the air and compensated for Coriolis forces, you’d repeat the trip over and over again, much to your enjoyment and/or terror. Actually, this would go on forever, with you bouncing up and down. I hope you remember to pack a lunch.

Note that as you fell, you accelerate all the way down, but the acceleration itself would decrease as you fell: there is less mass between you and the center of the Earth as you head down, so the acceleration due to gravity decreases as you approach the center. However, the speed with which you pass the center is considerable: about 7.7 km/sec (5 miles/second).

In fact, the math driving your motion is the same as for an orbiting object. It takes the same amount of time to fall all the way through the Earth and back as it does to orbit it, if your orbit were right at the Earth’s surface (orbits slow down as the orbital radius increases). Even weirder, it doesn’t matter where your hole goes: a straight line through the Earth from any point to any other (shallow chord, through the diameter, or whatever) gives you the same travel time of 42 or so minutes.

Gravity is bizarre. But there you go. And if you do go take the long jump, well, your trip may be a wee bit unpleasant.

6) The Earth’s interior is hot due to impacts, shrinkage, sinkage, and radioactive decay.

A long time ago, you, me, and everything else on Earth was scattered in a disk around the Sun several billion kilometers across. Over time, this aggregated into tiny bodies called planetesimals, like dinky asteroids. These would smack together, and some would stick, forming a larger body. Eventually, this object got massive enough that its gravity actively drew in more bodies. As these impacted, they released their energy of motion (kinetic energy) as heat, and the young Earth became a molten ball. Ding! One source of heat.

As the gravity increased, its force tried to crush the Earth into a more compact ball. When you squeeze an object it heats up. Ding ding! The second heat source.

Since the Earth was mostly liquid, heavy stuff fell to the center and lighter stuff rose to the top. So the core of the Earth has lots of iron, nickel, osmium, and the like. As this stuff falls, heat is generated (ding ding ding!) because the potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, which in turn is converted to thermal energy due to friction.

And hey, some of those heavy elements are radioactive, like uranium. As they decay, they release heat (ding ding ding ding!). This accounts for probably more than half of the heat inside the planet.

So the Earth is hot in the inside due to at least four sources. But it’s still hot after all this time because the crust is a decent insulator. It prevents the heat from escaping efficiently, so even after 4.55 billion years, the Earth’s interior is still an unpleasantly warm place to be.

Incidentally, the amount of heat flowing out from the Earth’s surface due to internal sources is about 45 trillion Watts. That’s about three times the total global human energy consumption. If we could capture all that heat and convert it with 100% efficiency into electricity, it would literally power all of humanity. Too bad that’s an insurmountable if.

7) The Earth has at least five natural moons. But not really.

Most people think the Earth has one natural moon, which is why we call it the Moon. These people are right. But there are four other objects — at least — that stick near the Earth in the solar system. They’re not really moons, but they’re cool.

The biggest is called Cruithne (pronounced MRPH-mmmph-glug, or something similar). It’s about 5 kilometers across, and has an elliptical orbit that takes it inside and outside Earth’s solar orbit. The orbital period of Cruithne is about the same as the Earth’s, and due to the peculiarities of orbits, this means it is always on the same side of the Sun we are. From our perspective, it makes a weird bean-shaped orbit, sometimes closer, sometimes farther from the Earth, but never really far away.

That’s why some people say it’s a moon of the Earth. But it actually orbits the Sun, so it’s not a moon of ours. Same goes for the other three objects discovered, too.

Oh– these guys can’t hit the Earth. Although they stick near us, more or less, their orbits don’t physically cross ours. So we’re safe. From them.

8) The Earth is getting more massive.

Sure, we’re safe from Cruithne. But space is littered with detritus, and the Earth cuts a wide path (125 million square km in area, actually). As we plow through this material, we accumulate on average 20-40 tons of it per day! [Note: your mileage may vary; this number is difficult to determine, but it’s probably good within a factor of 2 or so.] Most of it is in the form of teeny dust particles which burn up in our atmosphere, what we call meteors (or shooting stars, but doesn’t "meteor" sound more sciencey?). These eventually fall to the ground (generally transported by rain drops) and pile up. They probably mostly wash down streams and rivers and then go into the oceans.

40 tons per day may sound like a lot, but it’s only 0.0000000000000000006% the mass of the Earth (in case I miscounted zeroes, that’s 2×10-26 6×10-21 times the Earth’s mass). It would take 140,000 million 450,000 trillion years to double the mass of the Earth this way, so again, you might want to pack a lunch. In a year, it’s enough cosmic junk to fill a six-story office building, if that’s a more palatable analogy.

I’ll note the Earth is losing mass, too: the atmosphere is leaking away due to a number of different processes. But this is far slower than the rate of mass accumulation, so the net affect is a gain of mass.

9) Mt. Everest isn’t the biggest mountain.

The height of a mountain may have an actual definition, but I think it’s fair to say that it should be measured from the base to the apex. Mt. Everest stretches 8850 meters above sea level, but it has a head start due to the general uplift from the Himalayas. The Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea is 10,314 meters from stem to stern (um, OK, bad word usagement, but you get my point), so even though it only reaches to 4205 meters above sea level, it’s a bigger mountain than Everest.

Plus, Mauna Kea has telescopes on top of it, so that makes it cooler.

10) Destroying the Earth is hard.

Considering I wrote a book about destroying the Earth a dozen different ways (available for pre-order on amazon.com!), it turns out the phrase "destroying the Earth" is a bit misleading. I actually write about wiping out life, which is easy. Physically destroying the Earth is hard.

What would it take to vaporize the planet? Let’s define vaporization as blowing it up so hard that it disperses and cannot recollect due to gravity. How much energy would that take?

Think of it this way: take a rock. Throw it up so hard it escapes from the Earth. That takes quite a bit of energy! Now do it again. And again. Lather, rinse, repeat… a quadrillion times, until the Earth is gone. That’s a lot of energy! But we have one advantage: every rock we get rid of decreases the gravity of the Earth a little bit (because the mass of the Earth is smaller by the mass of the rock). As gravity decreases, it gets easier to remove rocks.

You can use math to calculate this; how much energy it takes to remove a rock and simultaneously account for the lowering of gravity. If you make some basic assumptions, it takes roughly 2 x 1032 Joules, or 200 million trillion trillion Joules. That’s a lot. For comparison, that’s the total amount of energy the Sun emits in a week. It’s also about a trillion times the destructive energy yield of detonating every nuclear weapon on Earth.

If you want to vaporize the Earth by nuking it, you’d better have quite an arsenal, and time on your hands. If you blew up every nuclear weapon on the planet once every second, it would take 160,000 years to turn the Earth into a cloud of expanding gas.

And this is only if you account for gravity! There are chemical bonds holding the Earth’s matter together as well, so it takes even more energy.

This is why Star Wars is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. The Death Star wouldn’t be able to have a weapon that powerful. The energy storage alone is a bit much, even for the power of the Dark Side.

Even giant collisions can’t vaporize the planet. An object roughly the size of Mars impacted the Earth more than 4.5 billion years ago, and the ejected debris formed the Moon (the rest of the collider merged with the Earth). But the Earth wasn’t vaporized. Even smacking a whole planet into another one doesn’t destroy them!

Of course, the collision melted the Earth all the way down to the core, so the damage is, um, considerable. But the Earth is still around.

The Sun will eventually become a red giant (Chapter 7!), and while it probably won’t consume the Earth, it’ll put the hurt on us for sure. But even then, total vaporization is unlikely (though Mercury is doomed).

Planets tend to be sturdy. Good thing, too. We live on one.

[Via Discover Magazine]

Ten Lies About Microprocessors

2008-09-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

Processor selection too often turns into a religious war. Debunking the dominant myths is the first step towards making a rational choice.

Talk about sports teams, politics, religion, or your favorite boy band and most bartenders won't raise an eyebrow. But get a group of engineers and programmers arguing over which microprocessor is best and you're liable to get eighty-sixed for trash-talking x86.

People get passionate about processors in a way they don't over DRAMs or decoders. Everyone has favorites, as well as horror stories about the one they'll never use again. Legend and lore surround microprocessors. Some is useful, but a lot is superstition ingrained by tradition.

Myth #1: Few processor choices
This is the most insidious misconception. If you're designing an embedded system, how many 32-bit processors can you choose from? 10? 20? In reality, there are more than 100 different 32-bit embedded processors for sale right now. (And that's not counting different packaging options or speed grades.) Dozens of companies make 32-bit processors, representing more than 15 different CPU architectures and instruction sets. Add in a few hundred more 16-bit processors and a few hundred 8-bit processors and you've got an embarrassment of riches.

#2: Intel rules the world
If you say "microprocessor," a lot of people think, "Pentium." The mainstream press is partly to blame. Newspapers proclaim that Intel has a 95% share of the microprocessor market. That's off by almost two orders of magnitude.

As we saw in the January issue, only about 2% of all microprocessors made drive PCs ("The Two Percent Solution," p. 29). Intel's Pentium has a dominant share of the PC business (the Federal Trade Commission stopped just short of declaring it a monopoly), but PCs are a tiny slice of the microprocessor pie. The other 98% is embedded CPUs; Intel's not even in the top five of that group.

Even if we weed out the enormous volume of 8-bit and 16-bit chips and focus on 32-bitters, Intel's name still appears well down the list. ARM vendors alone sell about three times more processors than Intel sells Pentiums.

#3: Instruction sets don't matter
Whether you program in C/C++, BASIC, Ada, or Java, your code ultimately boils down into the hardware instruction set of the processor it's running on. You may not need to know all the machine instructions your CPU provides, but the instruction set does affect your code. A few elegant lines of C may produce a hideous tangle of assembly instructions and vice versa.

Performance, predictability, and even power consumption all depend heavily on the underlying instruction set of the processor, and there's nothing a high-level language can do to change that.

Let's take a simple example of multiplying two numbers together. This is trivial in any language and hardly something programmers will worry over. Yet different chips handle multiplication in different ways. For a while, many RISC chips couldn't even do multiplication—it was considered "impure" and not part of the RISC canon. Many viewed multiplication as glorified adding and shifting, so early RISC compilers had to synthesize their own integer multiply functions. It worked, but it wasn't fast.

Now most (but not all) processors have a built-in multiply instruction. But not all multipliers are the same. Some chips can multiply two numbers much faster than other chips, and it has nothing to do with clock frequencies. As the chart in Figure 1 shows, some chips (such as Hitachi's SH7604 and SH7708) can multiply any two 32-bit numbers in four cycles or less. Other chips (notably Motorola's 68020 and '030) take more than 40 cycles to do the same math.

Stranger still, most chips are unpredictable. The minimum time for a multiplication might be less than half of the maximum time. What's the difference? Bigger numbers require longer calculations, and that takes more time.

Finally, the order of the numbers matters. In grade school we were taught that multiplication is commutative, that the order of the two numbers doesn't affect the answer. That's still true, but the order does affect the time required to do the math. On many chips, multiply time is determined by one of the two operands. Swap their order and you may cut your multiply time in half. Good luck guessing which way is better, though.

None of this is visible to high-level source code. Few C compilers are even aware of these differences because most customers—developers of embedded systems—never ask. Many processor users just don't know what's going on under the hood.

#4: RISC is better than CISC
We covered this one in March, so let's just say that RISC is different from CISC ("RISCy Business," p. 37); neither is necessarily better all the time, and both have their strengths. CISC chips provide better code density (smaller memory footprint) and more mature software tools, but RISC chips have higher clock rates and more glamorous marketing. Take your pick, but make it an informed one.

#5: Java chips are coming
So's Christmas. Actually, Christmas is a lot closer because it's going to be here this year. Java chips have more in common with Santa Claus than Christmas: a nice fable for nave young engineers who aren't yet old enough to know better.

Java is remarkable in a number of ways, most of them having to do with marketing. But it's also remarkably resistant to hardware implementation. A number of companies have tried to produce an all-Java microprocessor and every one has failed to some degree. This trend is likely to continue.

Apart from being hilariously ironic—wasn't the whole point of Java to be hardware independent?—Java processors run headfirst into the low doorway of logic. The Java language was never meant to be handled in hardware, and it shows. Garbage collection, threads, stack orientation, and object management take about a megabyte worth of Java virtual machine to translate into something that even today's fastest microprocessors struggle to execute. Decades of computer evolution and research at companies and universities around the world have failed to produce anything that looks like a Java machine. This is not a coincidence.

Today Java "accelerator" chips are available from Nazomi, Zucotto, inSilicon, Octera, and many others. Most execute 30% to 60% of Java's bytecodes in hardware. The rest they punt and handle in software because it's simply too awkward to do otherwise. Following the standard 80/20 rule, these chips accelerate the most used Java instructions to produce a noticeable speedup in overall Java performance. But they're a far cry from a 100% Java implementation.

After a few years of rapid improvement, Java chips seem to have plateaued at that 60% level. Sun itself canceled its Java chip development. We've reached the point of diminishing returns, where implementing the remaining Java instructions in hardware doesn't produce worthwhile benefits. If you're in the market for Java chips, this is about as good as it's going to get.

#6: Dhrystone MIPS is a useful benchmark
The term MIPS is bandied about more than any other in the microprocessor business. It's become utterly hollow, unless you interpret it as Meaningless Indicator of Performance for Salesmen.

As I explained earlier, instructions aren't the same from processor to processor, so counting and comparing them isn't useful. It's like saying the German word for windshield wipers (Windschutzscheibewischerbltter) is longer than the English equivalent. Duh.

MIPS is commonly derived from something called the Dhrystone benchmark, which is more than 30 years old, was written in PL/I, and was meant to compare the VAX 11/780 to other mainframes. It's also only about 4KB of code, fits easily into cache, and doesn't do any useful work. Because of its diminutive size but exaggerated importance, Dhrystone is subject to some, shall we say, creative optimization. There are C compilers with a -dhrystone switch that drastically improves reported results. Today's MIPS ratings are achieved by dividing Dhrystone scores by 1,757 because that's what the first VAX scored back in the 1970s. We're measuring VAX-equivalents using a 4KB snippet of PL/I code that's been translated to C and tweaked who-knows-how-many times to produce a score that Marketing "accidentally" misprints with an extra zero behind it. Now how useful is that?

#7: Price is proportional to performance
Microprocessors are now sold like perfume: the price on the label has no connection to the cost of the ingredients. It's tempting to assume some meaningful relationship between cost and price. Save your time—there isn't one. Cost is what it takes to build a chip; price is whatever the marketing department wants it to be. Happily, we work in an industry where market pressures drive up value and drive down price all the time. As chip consumers, we benefit from the cutthroat cost cutting and market-share horse trading.

The cost to make a silicon chip has little to do with the amount of silicon in it. Cost is mostly determined by overhead amortization and the depreciation of the fab. Price, however, is determined by market forces—good ol' supply and demand. If your chip runs Windows XP, you can charge an arm and a leg for it. If it doesn't, the same amount of silicon will command a much lower price.

Even within the embedded world, there are $15 processors that outperform $150 processors. Price is negotiable, malleable, and wholly unpredictable. Shop around.

#8: ARM is lowest power
There aren't many strong brand reputations in the microprocessor business but ARM enjoys one of the best. According to their reputation, ARM's chips are endowed with an almost magical ability to run on bright sunlight or the energy released by rubbing a cat. An ARM processor, two lemons, and some copper wire are all that's needed to build the latest PDA, it seems.

Like many myths, this one is rooted in reality, but that reality has changed and the myth has expanded. In the early '90s, ARM was one of the first 32-bit processors to be embedded into ASICs, rather than soldered alongside as a separate chip. Compared to the big 68030, 29000, and 486DX chips of the day, the wee ARM6 consumed less total energy than the others gave off as heat. That's because the ARM had no floating-point unit, no cache, no outside bus, no drivers, and not much of an instruction set.

Today there are plenty of 32-bit processors available as ASIC cores. Many are smaller than the ARM7, to say nothing of the newer ARM10 or ARM11. Many use less power, both in standby mode and when they're active. If power consumption is your primary consideration, by all means give ARM a call. But ten years of progress and competition have moved ARM to the middle of the pack when it comes to power efficiency.

#9: Second sourcing micros
Second sourcing used to be the watchword of purchasing departments everywhere. Hardware engineers often aren't allowed to specify any component unless it's available from two or more sources. That's fine for resistors—it reduces risk and dependency on any one supplier—but it's now impossible for microprocessors.

Sure, you can get MIPS chips from a dozen different sources, such as NEC, PMC-Sierra, IDT, and Intrinsity, but they aren't interchangeable each other. They all execute the same instruction set, but their buses, pin-outs, peripherals, speeds, and packages are all different. At best, the programmers can keep most of their code, but the hardware engineers will have to design an all-new system.

There was a time when Motorola and Hitachi provided identical 68k processors, DMA controllers, and other chips. Intel and AMD used to second-source each other's processors as well (remember when AMD and Intel were friends?). Many low-end parts in the 8051 or 6805 family also used to be double- or even triple-sourced. Alas, competition has brought an end to those days. Now every processor chip is unique, even if its instruction set isn't.

#10: The great processor shakeout
With more than 100 different embedded 32-bit processors for sale, there must be too many choices for the market to support, right? Who's going to win and who's going to lose? Come the revolution, who will be first against the wall?

Probably none of them. In fact, the number of embedded processors is likely to grow, not shrink. Those hundred-odd chips are all in volume production with dozens of happy customers who wouldn't use anything else. Those chips are around for a reason, and the number of reasons keeps growing. MP3 players, digital-video cameras, automotive electronics, and other new toys are popping up all the time, and they each need a new and different kind of processor. There's no such thing as a typical embedded system and there's no such thing as a typical embedded processor. As long as embedded developers invent new devices, new embedded processors will be there to make them tick.

[Via Embedded.com]