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RNC drops $1,946 at risque night club but says Steele wasn’t the big spender David Morgan (Front Row Washington)

file with the Federal Election Commission include the Voyeur expense in a monthly report that Submitted at 3/29/2010 12:18:23 PM also shows the committee Politics and money can lead to spending $9,099 at the Beverly some naughty things. Take RNC Hills Hotel and $6,596 at the Chairman Michael Steele, for nearby Four Seasons Beverly example. He was forced to Wilshire. deny a claim that he spent The Daily Caller, a Web site co megabucks at a risque West - f o u n d e d b y c o n s e r v a t i v e Hollywood night club last commentator Tucker Carlson, month. The only trouble is that s a y s t h o s e g i a n t a n d even if he didn’t, the Republican controversial expenditures were National Committee did. incurred during Steele’s travel Official documents show the in California. It alleges that the RNC forked over $1,946 for spending is part of the RNC meals at Voyeur, a high-end chairman’s lavish style and adds nightclub in West Hollywood that the committee also spent where guests can enjoy drinks, $17,514 on private aircraft cucumber tea sandwiches and and $12,691 on limousines live female performances that during February. will“titillate the senses while The Democratic National still remaining classy and Committee was positively giddy tasteful.” about the report, gleefully RNC disclosure documents on describing its political rival as

find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable,” said a statement attributed to RNC spokesman Doug Heye.

Meanwhile, memos that were supposed to accompany the FEC disclosure filing might have shed light on how so much money got spent at Voyeur and at those two ritzy hotels. t h e “ R i s q u e N a t i o n a l But spaces reserved for the Committee” in media releases. explanatory notes were left B u t t h e R N C h a d s o m e blank, prompting an internal accusations (and denials) of its FEC search to see if any written own, saying the Daily Caller e x p l a n a t i o n s a p p e a r e d had “willfully and erroneously” e l s e w h e r e . t i e d t h e V o y e u r e x p e n s e Click here for more political t o S t e e l e . ” T h i s w a s a coverage from Reuters reimbursement made to a non- Photo Credit: Reuters/Molly committee staffer. The chairman Riley (Michael Steele) was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he

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Winter weather comes to UK (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:00:02 AM

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Rumor: Google's Chrome to bundle Adobe's Flash Larry Dignan (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/29/2010 12:56:14 PM

Google and Adobe are developing a deeper partnership to build Flash natively into the Chrome browser or OS, according to ZDNet sources.

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Lead "Burrito" Sarcophagus Found Near Rome (National Geographic News)

examine the remains inside.

"It's exciting as well as frustrating, because there are no A 1,700-year-old sarcophagus known matches in the record," found in an abandoned city near said Becker, managing director Rome could contain the body of of the University of Michigan's a gladiator or a Christian Gabii Project. dignitary, say archaeologists Unlocking the lead coffin's who are preparing to examine secrets could ultimately offer the coffin in the lab. new insights into a powerful Found in a cement-capped pit c i v i l i z a t i o n t h a t h a s l a i n in the ancient metropolis of forgotten for centuries, he said.

Gabii, the coffin is unusual Roman Ally's Mysterious because it's made of lead—only Decline a few hundred such Roman The newfound sarcophagus was burials are known. the "most surprising" discovery Even odder, the 800 pounds made in 2009 during the largest (362 kilograms) of lead fold ever archaeological dig in Gabii. over the corpse like a burrito, Becker and colleague Nicola s a i d R o m a n a r c h a e o l o g i s t Terrenato received funding for Jeffrey Becker. Most lead the ongoing project from the sarcophagi look like "old- National Geographic Society's fashioned cracker boxes," Committee for Research and molded into a rectangular shape Exploration. (The National with a lid, he said.

Geographic Society owns The coffin, which has been in National Geographic News.) storage since last year, is about Just 11 miles (18 kilometers) to be moved to the American from Rome, Gabii was founded Academy in Rome for further in the tenth century B.C., and it testing. flourished for centuries But uncovering details about alongside its growing neighbor, the person inside the lead coffin with which it shared a unique will be tricky. For starters, the treaty of political friendship. undisturbed tomb contained no Walking through Gabii may grave goods, offering few clues have been a bit like a stroll about the owner. (See more through Rome, where the dense temple and tomb pictures.) p o p u l a c e m a d e t h e c i t y What's more, x-ray and CT crowded, noisy, and smoky in scans—the preferred methods of t h e d a y t i m e , a n d o v e r a l l c o f f i n a n a l y s i s — c a n n o t "unpleasant" to live in, Becker penetrate the thick lead, leaving said. researchers pondering other, However, by the second or third potentially dangerous ways to centuries A.D., Gabii had Submitted at 3/29/2010 11:48:14 AM

contracted dramatically, and by the ninth century it was no more.

The cause of the city's demise is unclear, but the "most obvious guess is that Rome's expanding power and territorial ambitions eventually eclipsed" Gabii, Becker said.

Lead Sarcophagus Holds "Somebody of Substance" Mysteries about Gabii society make the newfound lead coffin especially intriguing.

Lead was a high-value metal at the time, so a full sarcophagus made out of the stuff "is a sure marker of somebody of some kind of substance," Becker said.

Past lead burials found throughout Europe have housed soldiers, elite members of the Christian church, and even female gladiators.

In fact, many lead coffins contain high-ranking women or adolescents instead of men, said Jenny Hall, a senior curator of Roman archaeology at the Museum of London, who was not involved in the new study.

However, the newfound sarcophagus' tentative age may make the gladiator scenario unlikely, said Bruce Hitchner, a visiting professor in classical archaeology at All Souls College at the U.K.'s University of Oxford.

The coffin dates back to the fourth or fifth centuries A.D., while the gladiator heyday was centuries earlier, said Hitchner,

who was not part of the excavation team.

(Related:"Ancient Gladiator Mosaic Found in Roman Villa.")

Coffin Had Unusual Downtown Location What intrigues team leader Becker the most is the s a r c o p h a g u s ' s placement—"smack dab" in the middle of a city block. A taboo against burying the dead inside city limits was deeply ingrained in the Roman religious mindset of the time, he said.

"I don't think it's, We're feeling lazy today, we're going to bury Uncle Joe in the tomato garden," Becker said. There may have been some major event that made people bury the body downtown—a possibility he intends to investigate during the next dig.

"As we seek to understand the life of the city, it's important for us to consider its end," Becker pointed out.

"To see someone who is at first glance a person of high social standing associated with later layers of the city ... opens a potentially new conversation about this urban twilight in central Italy."

Foot Bone Hints at "Extraordinary Preservation" First, however, Becker's team hopes to find out more about the person inside the lead sarcophagus. The researchers' only hint so far is a small foot

bone protruding through a hole in one end of the coffin.

Some lead burials have allowed for "extraordinary preservation" of human tissue and hair, Becker said, though the opening in the sarcophagus may mean that air has sped up decomposition of the body.

Still, early examinations reveal that the foot bone is "exceedingly" intact, Becker said: "Worst case, there's an exceptionally well-preserved human skeleton inside the wrapping."

Bones alone can tell scientists a lot about the person and his or her culture, said Bruno Frohlich, a forensic anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. "We put some kind of face to the bones—we make them alive in a way."

For instance, if the bones show evidence of diseases contracted long before death, that could mean the person survived an illness, and that Gabii society had the resources and knowledge to care for the sick, Frohlich said.

Lead Coffin too Dangerous to Open?

But Becker and his colleagues may not even get bones to work with, because the coffin may be too dangerous to open for both the living and the dead.

If the researchers decide to cut LEAD page 7

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US oil company donated millions to climate sceptic groups, says Greenpeace John Vidal (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:35:13 AM

Report identifies Koch Industries giving $73m to climate sceptic groups 'spreading inaccurate and misleading information' A Greenpeace investigation has identified a little-known, privately owned US oil company as the paymaster of global warming sceptics in the US and Europe.

The environmental campaign group accuses Kansas-based Koch Industries, which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines, of funding 35 conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators.

Between them, Greenpeace says, these groups and individuals have spread misinformation about climate science and led a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels.

Greenpeace says that Koch Industries donated nearly $48m (ÂŁ31.8m) to climate opposition groups between 1997-2008.

From 2005-2008, it donated $25m to groups opposed to climate change, nearly three times as much as higher-profile funders that time such as oil company ExxonMobil. Koch

also spent $5.7m on political campaigns and $37m on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.

In a hard-hitting report, which appears to confirm environmentalists' suspicions that there is a well-funded opposition to the science of climate change, Greenpeace accuses the funded groups of "spreading inaccurate and misleading information" about climate science and clean energy companies.

"The company's network of lobbyists, former executives and organisations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Kochfunded entities produce and disseminate. The propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and thinktanks," said Greenpeace.

"Koch industries is playing a quiet but dominant role in the global warming debate. This private, out-of-sight corporation has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. On repeated occasions organisations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, 'green jobs', renewable energy and climate policy progress," it says.

The groups include many of the

best-known conservative thinktanks in the US, like Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Foundation for research on economics and the environment. All have been involved in "spinning" the"climategate" story or are at the forefront of the anti-global warming debate, says Greenpeace.

Koch Industries is a $100bn-ayear conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical interests, with operations in nearly 60 countries and 70,000 employees. It owns refineries which process more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day in the US, as well as a refinery in Holland. It has held leases on the heavily polluting tar-sand fields of Alberta, Canada and has interests in coal, oil exploration, chemicals, forestry, and pipelines.

The majority of the group's assets are owned and controlled

by Charles and David Koch, two of the four sons of the company's founder. They have been identified by Forbes magazine as the joint ninth richest Americans and the 19th richest men in the world, each worth between $14-16bn.

Koch has also contributed money to politicians, the report

said, listing 17 Republicans and four Democrats whose campaign funds got more than $10,000from the company.

Greenpeace accuses the Koch companies of having a notorious environmental record. In 2000 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fined Koch industries $30m for its role in 300 oil spills that resulted in more than 3m gallons of crude oil leaking intro ponds, lakes and coastal waters.

"The combination of foundation -funded front groups, big lobbying budgets, political action campaign donations and direct campaign contributions makes Koch Industries and the Koch brothers among the most formidable obstacles to advancing clean energy and climate policy in the US," Greenpeace said.

A spokeswoman for Koch Industries today defended the group's track record on environmental issues. "Koch companies have consistently found innovative and costeffective ways to ensure sound environmental stewardship and further reduce waste and emissions of greenhouse gases associated with their operations and products," said a statement sent to AFP by Melissa Cohlmia, director of communication. She added:

"Based on this experience, we support open, science-based dialogue about climate change and the likely effects of proposed energy policies on the global economy."

Top 10 Koch beneficiaries 2005 -2008 Mercatus center: ($9.2m received from Koch grants 2005 -2008) Conservative thinktank at George Mason University.

This group suggested in 2001 that global warming would be beneficial in winter and at the poles. In 2009 they recommended that nothing be done to cut emissions.

Americans for prosperity. ($5.17m). Have built opposition to clean energy and climate legislation with events across US. Institute for humane studies($1.96m). Several prominent climate sceptics have positions here, including Fred Singer and Robert Bradley.

Heritage foundation($1.62m).

Conservative thinktank leads US opposition to climate change science.

Cato Insitute($1.02m).

Thinktank disputes science behind climate change and questions the rationale for taking action.

Manhattan Institute($800,000).

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Large Hadron Collider achieves success with high energy particle collisions (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

13.7billion years ago, will allow researchers to examine the nature of matter and the origin of stars and planets.

Scientists at a control room Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:08:22 AM

By Richard Alleyne near Geneva broke into Published: 2:08PM BST 30 a p p l a u s e w h e n t h e f i r s t Mar 2010 successful collisions were After years of setbacks, the recorded. £5bn machine finally achieved Dubbed the world's largest high energy collisions of two scientific experiment, the giant protons at 12.06pm British time, atom smasher holds the at a total energy of seven promise of revealing details trillion electron volts - more about theoretical particles and than three times more force than microforces, scientists say. ever before.

But initial attempts on Tuesday All four detectors around the were unsuccessful because 17mile underground track problems developed with the p i c k e d u p e v i d e n c e o f beams, said scientists working collision "events" which could on the massive machine. when analysed completely re- That meant that the protons had write the rules of physics. to be "dumped" from the Dr Lyn Evans, the Welsh collider and new beams had to s c i e n t i s t w h o l e d t h e be injected. construction of the machine, Two beams of protons began 10 said: "It is quite emotional. We days ago to speed at high energy had a few problems but we have in opposite directions around resolved them and the beams the 27-kilometer (17-mile) came into collision beautifully. tunnel under the Swiss-French "Today is the end of a very long border at Geneva. road. There has been some The beams were pushed to 3.5 bumps along the way. It is trillion electron volts in recent absolutely fantastic to see this days, the highest energy today. achieved by any physics "It is a new era of science." accelerator — some three times The experiment at the European greater than the previous record.

Centre for Nuclear Research The European Organization for (CERN), which aims to Nuclear Research, or CERN, is recreate the Big Bang at the trying to use the powerful beginning of the Universe superconducting magnets to

force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.

They could have been successful immediately, but such huge machines can be so tricky to run that it could take days.

When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.

The problems on Tuesday started with a power supply that tripped and had to be reset.

The second time, the system designed to protect the machine shut it down.

That was likely to have been a misreading by the system rather than any basic problem, said researchers.

The collisions quash fears that the machine would imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

The Large Hadron Collider was launched with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008, but it was sidetracked nine days later when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100

meters) below the ground.

It cost £30 million to repair and improve the machine so that it could be used again at the end of November. Since then the collider has performed almost flawlessly, giving scientists valuable data in the four-week run before Christmas.

It soon eclipsed the next largest accelerator — the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.

Scientists hope also to approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the directorgeneral of CERN, has said it is likely to take months before any scientific discoveries are made, partly because computers will have to sort through massive amounts of data produced by the collisions.

Heuer said researchers hope by the end of this year to make

discoveries into the dark matter that scientists believe comprises 26 percent of the universe. The better understood visible matter makes up only 4 percent of the universe.

Dark matter has been theorized by scientists to account for missing mass and bent light in faraway galaxies. Scientists believe it makes galaxies spin faster.

A separate entity called "dark energy," making up the remaining 70 percent of the universe, is believed linked to the vacuum that is evenly distributed in space and time.

It is believed to accelerate the expansion of the universe.

Other possible candidates for discovery are hidden dimensions of space and time.

Physicists have used smaller colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.

It's a great day to be a particle physicist," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. "A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their LARGE page 5

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Russian security services hunt 21-strong 'Black Widow' cell (Top stories from Times Online)

herself up at Park Kultury, was severed from her body.

The women were described as Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:07:24 AM aged between 18 and 25, with Russia’s security services dark hair and features similar to believe that the women who people from the Caucasus blew themselves up in two region. Images taken from M o s c o w M e t r o s t a t i o n s Metro security cameras were yesterday were part of a group also distributed of two women of up to 30 suicide bombers aged 25 to 40 and a man trained by a Chechen terrorist suspected of being accomplices leader. in the attacks.

Agents from the Federal Buryatsky, a Muslim convert Security Service (FSB) are w h o w a s b o r n A l e x a n d e r investigating the theory that the Tikhomirov, was among six “Black Widows” were sent to militants killed in an FSB a v e n g e t h e d e a t h o f S a i d operation in Ingushetia on Buryatsky, the leading March 2. The Kremlin ideologue of the Islamist rebels described him then as the in Russia’s North Caucasus. mastermind behind a bomb I n v e s t i g a t o r s a r e n o w attack on the Nevsky Express desperately trying to establish train between Moscow and St whether the attack was a simple Petersburg that killed 26 and response to Buryatsky’s death, wounded 100 in November. or whether it signalled the start Buryatsky was also blamed for of a suicide bombing campaign the suicide bombing that almost that he had already prepared succeeded in assassinating before the FSB tracked him Ingushetia’s President Yunusdown.

Bek Yevkurov last June, and an The first pictures of the Black attack in August that devastated Widows emerged when grisly the main police station in the photographs of their facial Ingush capital Nazran, killing remains were circulated to 20 officers and wounding 138. police in a bid to help Kommersant newspaper i n v e s t i g a t o r s i d e n t i f y t h e reported today that the FSB bombers. The head of the believed that nine of the 30 younger woman, who blew trainees had already blown

themselves up on suicide missions. The rest were still at large, raising fears that more could already be in Moscow and preparing to carry out attacks.

Mr Yevkurov today ordered security services in Ingushetia to check on relatives of militants killed in recent police operations in the republic, to establish if any were linked to the Metro attacks. The FSB was also reportedly checking lists of relatives of those killed alongside Buryatsky, paying particular attention to women.

Buryatsky was the right-hand man to terrorist leader Doku Umarov, the self-styled “Emir” of an Islamist state that he dreams of establishing across the North Caucasus. Umarov threatened last month that he would soon take the war to Russia, saying: “Blood will no longer be limited to our cities and towns. The war is coming to their cities.”

Dozens of contributors to three websites affiliated with alQaeda left messages praising the attacks in Moscow, which killed 39 people. One site opened a special page to “receive congratulations” for the Black Widows, who it said had

LARGE continued from page 4

patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends," he added.

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“started the dark tunnel attacks in the apostate countries”.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, vowed to redouble Moscow’s efforts to hunt down the orchestrators of the plot today. “We know that they [the organisers] are lying low,” he said. “But it is now a matter of honour for the security forces to scrape them out from the bottom of the sewers and bring them out into the light of day. This will be done,” he added.

Mr Putin’s language was strikingly reminiscent of his famous promise in 1999 to strike at rebels even in the “outhouse” which heralded the adoption of tougher tactics by the authorities against Chechen militants.

The flags at government buildings flew at half mast and television channels cancelled entertainment programmes on an official day of mourning. The death toll rose to 39 overnight, not including the two bombers, after a woman died in hospital.

Officials said that 83 people had been wounded in the attacks, including an Israeli, a Filipino and two Malaysians.

Additional security officers, some with police dogs, were

seen in and around Moscow metro stations on Tuesday morning.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President, called for tougher laws to allow the security services to combat the threat of terrorism. “We need to focus our attention on certain aspects of improving legislation aimed at preventing terrorist acts,” he said.

He said that he would consider measures to make lawenforcement agencies work more efficiently, to increase the safety of transport systems and public places and to improve the implementation of Russia’s anti-terrorism statutes.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlinbacked leader of the troubled North Caucasus region of Chechnya, also joined the call for a crackdown on extremists.

“Terrorists must be hunted down and found in their lairs, they must be poisoned like rats, they must be crushed and destroyed,” he wrote in the Izvestia newspaper.

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Is Hollywood finally over 9/11?

(World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:30:56 AM

From the angry Fahrenheit 9/11 to the depressing Hamburg Cell, films about September 11 have journeyed through the five stages of grief. Now with weepies Dear John and Remember Me, the movies have come to terms with the defining event of our age Everything is peachy at the beginning of Dear John, Lasse Hallstrom's new weepie about a soldier's star-crossed romance with a college student. That's because it's spring 2001, a time when the idea of hijacked planes slamming into the twin towers was as far-fetched as a black president or airport body scans.

Midway through the film, of course, the planes finally hit, forcing Channing Tatum to leave Amanda Seyfried and do his bit for God and country.

That's right, people. In just nine years, the defining event of our age has become the reason why the guy from Step Up can't be with the girl from Mamma Mia! According to Elisabeth KublerRoss's book On Death and Dying, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining,

depression and acceptance. By and large Hollywood seems to have gone through something similar with regards to 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy nobody dared address the event itself; it was too raw, too seismic, too hard to grasp in its entirety. The best the movies could do was to acknowledge its impact, in films like The Guys (in which journalist Sigourney Weaver helped fire captain Anthony LaPaglia pen eulogies for his fallen comrades) or The 25th Hour(which opened with shots of the towers of light that marked the half-year anniversary in 2002).

If that was Tinseltown in denial, it took Michael Moore to provide the anger in his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which saw the portly film-maker accusing Bush and his cronies of turning the tragedy to their own advantage. In time, however, thoughts turned to how that same tragedy could be dramatised successfully – the bargaining stage, if you will. No film could hope to convey its full enormity, and any that attempted to were sure to be accused of naivety or crassness.

It was reasoned, though, that individual displays of heroism

and sacrifice could act as metaphors for the larger whole, be it the passengers of the fourth plane who fought back against the hijackers – commemorated in United 93 by Paul Greengrass – or the police officers trapped in the rubble whose ordeal Oliver Stone recreated in World Trade Center.

Dramatic reconstruction – also used in Antonia Bird's Hamburg Cell, a film about the hijackers themselves – served a purpose, but it could also be a gruelling depressant. So were the slew of Iraq and Afghanistan films which surfaced in 9/11's aftermath (Stop-Loss, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah) – downbeat affairs with serious agendas which left both critics and audiences cold. Why pay to watch movies about the war on terror when you could see Jack Bauer win it at home for nothing? More importantly, what could the likes of Lions for Lambs and The Kingdom tell us we didn't already know?

Perhaps this explains why Hollywood has jumped forward to acceptance, greenlighting films which use 9/11 as a dramatic device in fictional narratives capable of having the happy ending real life can't

continued from page 3

always provide.

Reign Over Me, a buddy picture from 2007 in which Don Cheadle nursed Adam Sandler's bereaved husband through his loss, was criticised by some for making the September 11 attacks a mere plot point. If Dear John is anything to go by, though, we should probably get used to it. Last week came news that Richard Gere and Keira Knightley are to play father and daughter in The Emperor's Children, adapted from Claire Messud's novel about New Yorkers before and after 9/11.

This week, meanwhile, sees the release of Remember Me, in which Robert Pattinson shows love means never having to say you're sorry for an exploitative ending.

• Michael Moore • Robert Pattinson • Paul Greengrass • Oliver Stone • Adam Sandler • September 11 2001 • United States guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Yahoo adds Facebook status updates to Mail Tom Krazit (Webware.com) Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:14:03 PM

Facebook users will be able to update their status from their Yahoo Mail in-box, another

small improvement from Yahoo in hopes of improving its socialmedia standing.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

This institute regularly publishes climate science denials.

Washington legal foundation($655,000) Published articles on the business threats posed by regulation of climate change.

Federalist society for law($542,000) advocates inaction on global warming National center for policy analysis($130,000) NCPA disseminates climate science scepticism.

American council on science and health($113,800) Has published papers claiming that cutting greenhouse emissions would be detrimental to public health.

• Climate change scepticism • Climate change • Climate change • Oil • Oil and gas companies • Oil spills • Greenpeace • Exxon Mobil • US politics • United States John Vidal guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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Tories plan Saturday school for poorer children (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

But he was met with laughter from delegates when he said this would only work if it had the ''enthusiastic support of teachers.''

Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:07:02 AM Published: 2:53PM BST 30 Mr Gove said some schools Mar 2010 already hold Saturday classes, G i v i n g y o u n g s t e r s f r o m citing Mossbourne Academy disadvantaged backgrounds in Hackney, east London, as an more time in the classroom example. d u r i n g t h e w e e k a n d a t He also held up the so-called weekends would help close the ''KIPP (Knowledge is Power) achievement gap with their schools in the United States, richer peers, he suggested. which are often based in the Mr Gove said he had a ''hunch'' poorest communities, that open that parents would support the f r o m 7 . 3 0 a m t o 5 p m o n proposals, and insisted it weekdays, plus Saturdays. would be up to individual He said: ''I believe that having schools to decide to open children in school for longer, longer, or at weekends. particularly if they come from But parents said Saturday disadvantaged backgrounds can classes could become a ''badge be a real help in closing the of dishonour'' if pupils were attainment gap. forced to go, while teachers ''But, it's something that has to raised concerns about their be negotiated; you need the workload. willing and enthusiastic Mr Gove told the Association support of the teachers because of Teachers and Lecturers if children are going to benefit (ATL) annual conference in then you want them to be in an Manchester: ''Children who environment where the people come from homes where parents who are teaching them are don't have the resources to relishing this opportunity.'' provide additional stretch and It was ''critical'' that plans to cultural experiences, there are o p e n l o n g e r w e r e l e d b y benefits in having those children schools, not by Government, in the learning environment, in Mr Gove said. school, for longer.'' ''My hunch is that families

would prefer there to be longer hours, it would be quite popular with working parents," he added. ''My view is parents would love to have schools start earlier in some circumstances and to be going on later in the afternoon, given the working lives of many parents.''

Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of Netmums, said many middle class children received private tuition. ''In principle there's nothing wrong with offering the same opportunity to those who can't afford it. In principle if it's a bit extra to bridge the inequality gap, it's a good thing.''

But she added: ''If it's that a child achieved below this level so they are forced to go to Saturday school it becomes a badge of dishonour or going to the ''thicko's class'', then it would be more detrimental.''

She added: ''I think it needs to be optional and provide activities rather than be a punishment, that would be detrimental.''

Margaret Morrissey of lobby group Parents Outloud said: ''I think the suggestion the Government made about one to one teaching for these kids

would be a more preferable way of improving these children's performance. ''I am just not sure whether taking away a child at weekends is actually going to make them cleverer in the week. What we should be doing is supporting these children within the school week. ''It has incredible implications for schools in terms of heating and lighting and opening up the school buildings. Making this kind of suggestion when we're teetering on the edge of a recession is terribly unrealistic.''

Dr Mary Bousted, the ATL general secretary, said: ''The last thing we need to be doing at the present time is increasing teachers' working hours.

Teachers already work the most unpaid overtime of any public sector profession. ''If we want Saturday schools then we need more teachers doing the extra hours not the same teachers working longer and becoming exhausted.''

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Earth's Coolest Concept Albums, Decided By You Scott Thill (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:23:00 AM

We recently celebrated the 37th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon by

calling it the greatest concept album ever. Readers also had several scintillating sonic

choices of their own. Read 'em and freak.

7

LEAD continued from page 2

into the lead, cancer-causing lead dust could harm scientists, while exposure to bacteria could easily damage the corpse.

At the academy, a team will perform preliminary experiments on the sarcophagus, including an endoscopic exam that would feed a small fiber optic camera into the hole at the foot end.

If the experiments show that lead dust from cutting can be easily contained, the next step would be to find a "clean room"—similar to those NASA uses for experiments—in which to open the coffin, Becker said.

(Related:"NASA 'Clean Rooms' Brimming With Bacteria.")

No matter who turns out to be inside the lead coffin, Becker is hopeful that the person wrapped in metal will turn out to be a window into history.

"To anybody with a passing interest in the human past, it's an exciting opportunity right there—to be able to say more about someone who lived and died at least 1,700 years ago."

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8

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Levi Bellfield to be charged with Milly Dowler murder

Options Update: Citigroup Volatility Low; Treasury Intends to Sell 7.7B Shares

(Top stories from Times Online)

Paul Foster (BloggingStocks)

Bellfield would be told he faces three charges.

The suspect is accused of Submitted at 3/30/2010 4:17:29 AM kidnapping and murdering A convicted killer who is M i l l y , w h o w a s 1 3 , a n d serving life sentences for attempting to kidnap another bludgeoning two girls to death young girl, Rachel Cowles, the will be charged today with the previous day. murder of Milly Dowler.

Mr Pilkington said a summons The decision brings to an end had been obtained from Staines the years of anguish Bob and Magistrates’ Court and would Sally Dowler have endured be served on Bellfield. He while waiting for the Crown would meet the Dowlers to Prosecution Service to bring a explain his decision later today. case against Bellfield, the prime The former doorman and wheel suspect in one of the most -clamper is serving a full-life notorious unsolved child tariff after being convicted two murders in the past decade. years ago of battering Marsha The charge comes eight years McDonnell, a 19-year-old gap and one week after Amanda student, and Amelie Delagrange, Dowler, known as Milly, went a 22-year-old French shop missing. assistant, to death.

CPS lawyers kept the decision a He also tried to kill Kate closely guarded secret and not Sheedy, 18, a convent school even the victim’s parents or head girl, by driving into her detectives, who led the case, and then reversing his car over were told until shortly before her. the announcement at 11am Milly went missing in March today.

2002 after getting off a train in Speaking in Guildford, Surrey, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, to N i g e l P i l k i n g t o n , C P S walk home after school. She r e v i e w i n g s o l i c i t o r , s a i d was last seen 100 yards from a

flat where Bellfield had been living occasionally with his then girlfriend.

Her skeletal remains were discovered six months later in woods 30 miles away by mushroom pickers at Yateley Heath, Hampshire. It is believed that Bellfield knew the area well.

Emma Mills, his former girlfriend, had claimed that on the night the girl went missing Bellfield, now 41, burnt bed clothes.

After his arrest in November 2004 in connection with the two murders and attempted murder, he was questioned about the death of Milly. The CPS received a file but decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

Last year, Bellfield admitted that he had once driven a Daewoo Nexia car similar to the one caught on CCTV near where the young girl disappeared.

Since August, officials at the CPS complex casework unit began considering a dossier of

police evidence. The five files of material, drawn together by Surrey Police’s Operation Ruby team, include new evidence against Bellfield obtained in December 2008.

Officers believe they have compelling circumstantial evidence which links him to the crime. The red Daewoo Nexia they believe was used to transport Milly’s body is still being sought.

Bellfield, 6ft tall and weighing 18st was an imposing character in West London. Born in Isleworth in 1968, he is the son of a mechanic who died when he was young. He became close to an uncle in the Surrey Gypsy community.

He ran a wheel-clamping company that became notorious for its unscrupulous methods.

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Scarface: The elementary school play [video] (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:20:52 PM

Remember when school plays starred gumdrop fairies and the

itsy-bitsy spider? Well, erase all those Pleasantville-esque notions and enter the world of elementary school aged children hamming it up on stage as a

p o p c o r n - s n o r t i n g T o n y it’s 99% likely not a real school Montana. A group of young kids production.) reenacted the famous final, All sorts of movie news. shoot ‘em up scene of the Al Permalink| Leave a comment » Pacino flick. (Before you ask,

Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:00:00 AM

Filed under: Citigroup Inc. (C), Options Citigroup( C) is recently down 11 cents to $4.20. The U.S. Treasury Department announced it plans to sell approximately 7.7 billion C common shares this year. Citi is expected to report Q1 EPS on April 14. April put option implied volatility of 42.

May is at 44; June is at 41; below its 26-week average of 53, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

IBN( IBN), India's second largest bank, closed at $41.44.

IBN April option implied volatility is at 40, May is at 42, June is at 43; below its 26-week average of 52, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

Options Update is by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Options Update: Citigroup Volatility Low; Treasury Intends to Sell 7.7B Shares originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tony Blair returns to domestic politics with attack on Tories

Michael Tomasky: The really crazy right wing

(Top stories from Times Online)

Michael Tomasky (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

said. "The way we are coming through the crisis instead reinforces it. We are not out of Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:51:08 AM the woods yet; but we are on the Tony Blair made an electrifying path out. return to UK domestic politics "This did not happen by chance, today, s k e w e r i n g t h e but by choice."

Conservative leadership for Mr Blair's basic analysis was inconsistency and indecision entirely in accord with Labour's while praising Gordon Brown central argument to voters: that for his "experience, judgement G o r d o n B r o w n a n d h i s and boldness".

Chancellor, Alistair Darling, I n t h e f i r s t o f s e v e r a l had made the right decisions interventions planned for the during the financial crisis and forthcoming election campaign, should now be trusted to lead the former prime minister the recovery. r e t u r n e d t o h i s f o r m e r "At the moment of peril the constituency in Sedgefield, Co world acted. Britain acted," he Durham, where he used a said. "The decision to act, speech at Trimdon Labour Club required experience, judgement to target the marginal voters of a n d b o l d n e s s . I t r e q u i r e d Middle England. leadership. Gordon Brown Mr Blair, now a Middle East supplied it." peace envoy and sought-after But the challenges ahead were p u b l i c s p e a k e r , t o l d h i s "not just about policy, but about audience that during his decade mindset", Mr Blair said. "Who in Downing Street he had 'gets' the future? That’s always always been known as an the political question. Who optimist - and he remained understands the way the world is optimistic about Britain and the c h a n g i n g a n d c a n b e opportunities ahead of it. comfortable in it? Who sees the "Strange as it might seem, the excitement where others see the f i n a n c i a l c r i s i s d o e s n o t fear?" diminish this optimism," he He continued: "On some issues

like racial equality the Conservatives have left behind the prejudices of the past. I welcome that.

"But when it comes to the big policy issues, there is a puzzle, that has turned into a problem that has now become a long hard pause for thought: where are they centred?

"Is there a core? Think of all the phrases you associate with their leadership and the phrase 'you know where you are with them' is about the last description you would think of. They seem like they haven’t made up their mind about where they stand; and so the British public finds it hard to make up its mind about where it stands. In uncertain times, there is a lot to be said for certain leadership."

Without mentioning David Cameron, the Conservative leader, by name, Mr Blair attacked his "Time for a Change" slogan as "the most vacuous slogan in politics".

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

And yet, the SPLC counts just 75 domestic terrorism plots in the 15 years from 1995 through 2009 inclusive. That's five a Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:08:02 AM Republicans and conservatives year. For all those groups, that's get crazy sometimes, but I guess a rather small number of plots, if you want really really crazy, suggesting to me that maybe you look at people like the nonet most of these people don't a r r e s t e d y e s t e r d a y o u t o f actually want to go out and Michigan. commit violence but mostly just I t ' s a w f u l l y s c a r y a n d want to vent and rage and hang despicable, what they had in out with other people who share mind. Kill a cop. Then, at that their ignorant and hateful views. cop's funeral, attended by I think our law-enforcement dozens of other cops, set off agencies are pretty good at bombs that would kill them. monitoring and stopping things They don't seem to be anti- like this. The existence of these Obama per se, although they groups is depressing, and the undoubtedly are. But they've thought of what this one wanted been planning this since 2008, to do is horrifying. But I sense so their, um, grievances, shall that overall these people are we say, are likely aimed more watched pretty closely. generally at the whole power elite.

• United States According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, probably Michael Tomasky our main outfit over here that guardian.co.uk© Guardian tracks these matters, there were News & Media Limited 2010 | 512 anti-government "patriot" Use of this content is subject to groups in operation across the our Terms & Conditions| More US by the end of 2009. That's Feeds kind of a lot -- 10 per state on average.

Man fleeing Ohio police jumps fence into prison (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:07:39 AM

9

John M., American buzzed up: 2 m i n u t e s a g o 2 0 1 0 - 0 3 - Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Obama: Tea Party features 'core 3 0 T 0 7 : 2 9 : 2 2 - 0 7 : 0 0 PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, group' against him (AP) Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction.

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Rip Torn in court for breaking into bank 'he thought was his home' Mark Tran (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

start treatment immediately.

Torn was released on $100,000 (£66,230) bail and was told by the judge to undergo an Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:25:15 AM Film and TV actor found asleep evaluation for substance abuse. and intoxicated in bank branch Waterfall has said that Torn and asked police what they were was confused and thought the doing in his house bank was his home, which is a The veteran Hollywood actor mile and a half down the street.

Rip Torn is due in court today According to reports, Torn went on charges of breaking into a to sleep in the bank and asked bank with a loaded gun. police what they were doing in The 79-year-old, who appeared his house when they arrived. in films such as Men in Black Last year, Torn was given and Dodgeball, was arrested in probation in a Connecticut drink January, in Connecticut, when -driving case and entered an police found him inside the alcohol education programme. branch of Litchfield BanCorp He also has two previous after the alarm went off. drunken driving arrests in New According to the police report, York. the Oscar-nominated actor was In January 2004, Torn was almost three times over the arrested in New York after his drink-drive limit. car collided with a taxi. A video He was charged with carrying a of his arrest in which he swears pistol without a permit, carrying a t o f f i c e r s a n d r e f u s e s a a firearm while intoxicated, first breathalyser test was aired on -degree burglary, first-degree T V . A j u r y s u b s e q u e n t l y criminal trespass and third- a c q u i t t e d T o r n o f a n y degree criminal mischief. wrongdoing.

In a court appearance last In December 2006, Torn was month, his attorney, Thomas again arrested for drunk driving Waterfall, told the judge that his in North Salem, New York, after client needed help with his colliding with a tractor trailer. alcohol abuse and that he could He pleaded guilty and had his

driving licence suspended for 90 days, and was required to pay a $380 fine. He was convicted and sentenced to probation in May 2009 after another drink-driving offence.

Torn received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor for his role in the 1983 film Cross Creek. He earned a reputation for volatility when he brawled with Norman Mailer during the filming of Maidstone, when he hit Mailer – the film's director – on the head.

As the cameras rolled, Mailer bit Torn's ear and they wrestled to the ground. The fight was broken up by cast and crew members as Mailer's children cried and screamed in the background. The fight is featured in the film.

• United States Mark Tran guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Goliath Tiger Fish: "Evolution on Steroids" in Congo (National Geographic News)

depths and currents help explain why it's such a hotbed of fish diversity.

Goliath Tiger Fish "What we're seeing here is kind Photograph courtesy Todd of evolution on steroids," said Wendel/National Geographic team leader Melanie Stiassny, a Television fish biologist at the American February 13, 2009--Goliath Museum of Natural History. tiger fish, such as the one seen Stiassny, a member of the above, are among the uniquely National Geographic Society's adapted "monster fish" of the Conservation Trust, was among Congo River, which winds the marine and evolutionary t h r o u g h s e v e r a l A f r i c a n biologists, hydrologists, and countries ( goliath tiger fish kayakers who conducted the video). exhaustive research in summer A recent, unprecedented river 2008. (The National Geographic run on the Congo yielded a raft S o c i e t y o w n s N a t i o n a l of new discoveries, including G e o g r a p h i c N e w s . ) d i f f e r e n t s p e c i e s - - s o m e --Tasha Eichenseher potentially new--in nearly every February 13, 2009 nook and cranny, scientists Five Filters featured article: announced this week.

Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: The river was also found to be PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, possibly the world's deepest, Term Extraction. and its extraordinary changes in Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:33:48 AM

Leno Loves His 1909 Electric Jay Leno (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:00:00 AM

Webs taps Facebook Connect for log-ins, sharing Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com)

Site builder Webs has just added Facebook Connect, which will let its site creators and

visitors share content back to Facebook.

Originally posted at Web

Crawler

Jay Leno drives a 1909 Baker electric car and finds it isn't much different than the Ford Focus electric we'll see next year.

World/ Business/ Tech/ Entertainment/

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11

'Lough Ness Monster' devours ducks Optimism? at popular lake

nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad)

(Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

quite frantic and was going up and down. Next thing I knew she was gone.

“I went over to have a closer look. The male was still there Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:56:45 AM

By Matthew Moore and I was about 30 feet away Published: 1:56PM BST 30 watching him intently. I stood Mar 2010 there for two or three minutes The creature is believed to have and then in a flash all that was killed at least three fully-grown left on the water was a few birds at the lake, leaving only feathers.” a smattering of feathers as The number of ducks on the evidence of the crimes. lake have dwindled since the Witnesses have so far been k i l l e r c r e a t u r e started u n a b l e t o i d e n t i f y t h e terrorising the area. perpetrator, although pike, Now users of the lagoons are catfish and even mink have been being warned not to go into the suggested as possible culprits. water and local schoolchildren Local councillors are now have been told not to go pondwarning schoolchildren not to dipping at the site. Dog owners go paddling at the site, and are also being asked not to let dog owners have been being smaller animals swim in the asked not to let smaller animals waters. swim in the waters.

Rachel Lee, 39, of nearby One dog walker described her Woodhouse, said: “Whatever is horror at seeing a mallard in there must be pretty big if it disappear into the water at is having ducks for lunch though S t o n e b o w W a s h l a n d s i n – it’s got to be one hell of a Loughborough, Leicestershire, beast. never to be seen again.

“Its like something out of Lake She said: “I saw two mallards Placid, or Jaws or something and the female was flapping her like that. Its exciting but wings. I thought she may be joking aside, it's a little bit cleaning herself, but she was concerning too. If its big

enough to take out ducks, then a child could get hurt too.”

Roy Campsall, chairman of the Charnwood Wildlife Protection Group and a local borough councillor, said: “The number of ducks at Stonebow Washlands has been going down, and now we know why.

“It’s pretty scary actually.

Whatever it is, it’s got to be a monster to take a fully grown duck."

Mark Graham, wildlife development officer at Charnwood Borough Council, said there were no plans to hunt down the mystery predator.

He suggested that someone may recently have dumped a large pike in the lake, which is popular with anglers.

He said: “Pike are a natural part of the ecology of our lakes. a native fish that have lived alongside wildfowl for thousands of years."

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

University of Maryland is pretty upbeat: Finally, it is happening!

The economy needs to create Submitted at 3/29/2010 11:42:22 AM This could be a big week for about 140,000 jobs each month g a u g i n g t h e e c o n o m y ’ s to keep pace with labor force turnaround prospects. Friday’s growth, and it is a long way jobs report could be the most from getting back the 8.4 positive in many months. And a million jobs lost during the report out today suggests Great Recession. consumer spending is picking If Americans can manage down for real. their trade deficit with China The Commerce Department and cut gasoline consumption, reported that personal spending gradually, the economy can get rose 0.3 percent in February, the back those lost jobs. fifth straight month of increases. Increased consumer spending is Christian Science Monitor has usually a leading indicator of this analysis: employment.

The more “ O v e r a l l , r e a l c o n s u m e r consumers spend, the more spending is on track to rise just likely companies are to start above 3 percent [annualized] in hiring. the first quarter, which would be One troubling statistic is that the strongest increase in three inflation-adjusted incomes have years and much better than the remained flat for about six fourth quarter’s 1.6 percent,” months or so, continuing a economist Nigel Gault of IHS decade-long trend of incomes Global Insight says in a written not growing. analysis of the numbers.

But overall, are you finally Economists are predicting the starting to feel a bit more possibility of a net gain of jobs optimistic? for March, perhaps plus 200,000 or even 300,000 jobs.

Economist Peter Morici at the

File transfers come to iGoogle, Orkut; Gmail's next Josh Lowensohn (Webware.com)

Google Talk is finally getting a feature it's been missing since launch: file transfers. The

feature could even be making it to Gmail soon.

Originally posted at Web

Crawler

New Movies on DVD & BluRay: March 30 (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:04:00 AM

12

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First high-energy collisions carried out in Geneva (Top stories from Times Online)

moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists hope that the LHC will eventually find evidence for Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:26:18 AM the existence of the Higgs The first high-energy collisions b o s o n , a p a r t i c l e t h a t between particle beams have theoretically gives matter mass, taken place at the Large Hadron but which has never been Collider, ending more than a detected experimentally. year of frustration for scientists "With these record-shattering in Geneva. collision energies, the LHC Collisions occurred just after experiments are propelled into a noon BST, five hours after vast region to explore, and the scheduled, but well within the hunt begins for dark matter, t i m e f r a m e e x p e c t e d b y new forces, new dimensions and scientists at the European Centre the Higgs boson," said Fabiola for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Gianotti, a spokesperson for "This is a major breakthrough. Atlas, one of the four particle We are going where nobody has detector projects running in been before. We have opened a conjunction with the colider. new territory for physics,” said Success brought an outpouring Oliver Buchmueller, one of the of relief from scientists who key figures on the project. have guided the project.

The atomic particles smashed "It's a great day to be a particle together in head-on collisions, physicist," said Professor Rolf with each beam having an Heuer, the director-general of energy of 3.5 trillion electron CERN. "A lot of people have volts, three times the previous waited a long time for this record. By creating ultra-high moment, but their patience and energy collisions, scientists are dedication is starting to pay mimicking the conditions dividends."

"This is the moment we have been waiting and preparing for," said Jürgen Schukraft, spokesperson for the Alice detector team.

"We're very much looking forward to the results from proton collisions, and later this year from lead-ion collisions, to give us new insights into the nature of the strong interaction and the evolution of matter in the early Universe."

Guido Tonelli, spokesman for the CMS detector team, said that data were already flowing in.

"We've all been impressed with the way the LHC has performed so far, and it's particularly gratifying to see how well our particle detectors are working while our physics teams worldwide are already analysing data," Mr Tonelli said.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

AstraZeneca and Abbott Labs Receive FDA Response Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:00:00 AM

Filed under: Abbott Laboratories (ABT) AstraZeneca ( AZN) and Abbott Laboratories ( ABT) announced this morning they received a complete response letter from the Food and Drug Administration regarding their new drug application for Certriad capsules. The FDA requested more information.

The companies stated that they are currently evaluating the FDA's letter and will continue discussions with the agency to see what the next step will be with the drug. AZN and ABT will then respond to the FDA's request for further information.

Certriad is for the treatment of mixed dyslipidemia, a combination of two or more

Verizon iPhone coming this fall?

(Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:48:00 PM

Could the iPhone’s days of dropping calls and crappy reception be numbered? The chatter, via the Wall Street

Journal, says a Verizon iPhone model could hit shelves as soon as the third quarter of 2010.

Don’t get your hopes too high though, as Verizon WirelessiPhone rumors have swirled very first call on the Apple ever since AT&T dropped its gadget.

Full story at The Wall Street Journal.

A slew of iPhone news.

Permalink| Leave a comment »

lipid abnormalities including the "bad" cholesterol (LDL), high triglycerides, and low "good" cholesterol (HDL). The active ingredients in Certirad are Crestor and Trilipix from ABT and AZN. Continue reading AstraZeneca and Abbott Labs Receive FDA Response AstraZeneca and Abbott Labs Receive FDA Response originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Accessories File Shops eBay ELLE.com (ELLE Fashion Blogs) Submitted at 3/29/2010 3:45:08 PM

Vintage Rolex

World/ Business/

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The Art of Giving LWI Editor (LWI News Center) Submitted at 3/29/2010 12:03:33 PM

The Art of Giving is an online art auction and fundraiser hosted through a dedicated eBay store.

100% of the proceeds of the event will be equally divided among three organizations: Living Water International, Doctors Without Borders, and Habitat for Humanity. All proceeds will be used for these organizations’ ongoing relief efforts in Haiti.

“I have witnessed the incredible work Living Water does. I’ve heard first-hand accounts of how entire villages were changed after the installation of a well,” explains Gina Cestaro, event organizer for The Art of Giving. “And I know Living Water’s work in Haiti is doing the same thing.” When Cestaro learned that her friend James Amerson successfully sold one of his paintings on eBay to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti, they put their heads together and

and spreading the word—are equally important to the fundraiser’s success,” comments Cestaro. “And the best part is that two of them don’t require spending any money!”

The Art of Giving auction will go live on April 12 and run for one month. The auction will include original works of art, high-quality craft objects and decorative items, antiques, vintage collectibles, and jewelry. You can preview a selection of auction items before the auction goes live at The Art of Giving’s Facebook page. came up with the idea for the Anyone who wants to donate an auction—a way that people item for the auction should could participate in charitable contact Gina Cestaro, event work beyond just giving money. organizer and faculty member in Of course, raising funds for the art department at the Haiti through the purchase of University of West Florida auction items is the goal, but (theartofgiving.haiti@gmail.co there are two other ways to m or 774.722.1600). equally participate in The Art of Five Filters featured article: Giving: you can donate an item, Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: or you can tell your friends PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, about the event. “All Term Extraction. three—donating, purchasing,

13

Airlines Spanked with $4.6 Billion Loss Last Year Tom Johansmeyer (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:30:00 AM

Filed under: Bad News, Industry, Recession The fact that 769.6 million passengers stepped onto planes in the U.S. last year sounds pretty impressive, right? Well, it's 5.3% less impressive than the year before, when 812.3 million boarded flights ... not to mention the 838.2 million in 2007.

The airline industry has spent the past two years getting brutalized by the global recession, which finally pushed it below the 800 million passenger threshold for the first time since 2004, when 763.7 million passengers took to the

skies.

Continue reading Airlines Spanked with $4.6 Billion Loss Last Year Airlines Spanked with $4.6 Billion Loss Last Year originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Citi Spinoff Primerica IPO This Week Tom Johansmeyer (BloggingStocks)

independent life insurance and sales reps. Primerica is going on the block so Citigroup can lower Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:30:00 AM its debt and simplify its Filed under: Citigroup Inc. (C), o p e r a t i o n s .

Initial Public Offerings Previous sales by the bank Citigroup's ( C) spinoff of include its commodities trading Primerica is set for this week. group, some credit card business Primerica hopes to raise $234 T h e c o m p a n y c o n s i s t s and its Japanese brokerage. million in the initial public

offering, with 18 million shares being sent out to the world with a hopeful price of $12 to $14 each.

Continue reading Citi Spinoff Primerica IPO This Week Citi Spinoff Primerica IPO This Week originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 30 Mar

2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Test Driving the Chevy Volt [Video] Cliff Kuang (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:39:41 AM

First impressions of GM's much -ballyhooed electric car of the future.

Today on the westernmost fringe of Manhattan, in a nasty rainstorm, FastCompany.com got to test drive the Chevy's allelectric, plug-in Volt. [twistage 0309b6c43d014] Having cost GM billions in R&D, it's a technical marvel well ahead of it's time. And it won't be making money anytime soon: When the Volt finally hits market after a whirlwind, moonshot development process, it'll be limited to just 10,000 units in California, Washington, D.C., and Michigan. (A profitable product run would likely be 40 times that.) With a price tag somewhere in the low $30,000 range (after a $7,500 government tax credit) each one will be sold at a loss. For GM, this is the quintessential halo product, meant to catapult it to the forefront of consumer consciousness.

All of which places a huge burden on its design and technology: When people see the first ones on the street, will they coo and stare? Will they text their friends? Will the allure of its curves and tech be enough to demand a $3,000-$5,000 premium over a Toyota Prius or a Ford Fusion Hybrid?

Our test drive was admittedly

short--comprising just a mile or so around a very short circuit, at low speeds--but we came away with some firm impressions.

Impressive as the Volt is techwise, that message is lost in the design. It's not a bad looking car. But you'd be hard pressed to tell what's so special about it, if it was driving next to you.

A big proviso: What we drove was the pre pre-production car, one of the first run of 80, handassembled in Michigan, and one of only two being made available for press runs. But according to the engineers and designers on hand, it represents about 95% of the finished model. From here on out, the

tweaks will be very minor.

The Drive At the press of a button, the engine whirs softly and immediately delivers crisp, firm acceleration--the hallmark of an electric engine. (Gas engines have little torque at low RPM's; electric motors have nearly maximum torque out of the

gate.) The ride feels rock solid, presumably aided by the massive, 400-pound battery that runs through the middle floor of the cabin, ending a "T" right below the rear seats. The car handles nimbly--it's not a sports car by any means, but it feels TEST page 19

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How Investors Are Already Making A Killing Off The New Chinese Consumer Gus Lubin and Vincent Fernando, CFA (The Money Game)

subscriber base in the world -China Mobile China Mobile is the world's largest mobile phone operator, Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:02:00 AM In 2007, the emerging market w i t h o v e r 5 0 0 m i l l i o n c o n s u m e r b l e w p a s t t h e customers. It is also a stateAmerica's to become the largest owned company. s o u r c e o f b u y i n g p o w e r Ticker: CHL (US) globally.

1-Yr Return: 11.731% Since then, they've extended Youth culture -- Metersbonwe their lead and the change is Metersbonwe is China's leading likely irreversible given higher casual-apparel company. It growth rates possible from targets a young demographic emerging markets and the w i t h t h e i r s l o g a n , " B e impetus for America to correct D i f f e r e n t . " past imbalances in savings and Ticker: 002269.CH trade.

1-Yr Return: 30.163% Moreover, within emerging Alcohol consumption -markets China is the largest K w e i c h o w M o u t a i consumer story there is by far, Kweichow Moutai is a stateand has tons of listed companies owned company that specializes which traders have made a in the production and sale of killing from over the last year. China's most popular liquor, Thing is, despite all the hype moutai. about China, many of us really Ticker: 600519.CH don't know many of the new 1-Yr Return: 42.911% consumer names. Even though Retail focused in Beijing -as investors we'd be smart to Beijing Wangfujing have a clue. So we put this list Image: www.panoramio.com together. Feel free to suggest Wangfujing is a Beijing-based even better names. How Traders department store, named for the Are Making A Killing Off Of capital's popular shopping street.

The New Chinese Consumer > Ticker: 600859.CH Note that many of these stocks 1-Yr Return: 63.738% have enjoyed enormous rallies Booming education demand -and require substantial due New Oriental Education and diligence, thus everyone should Technology Group do their own homework and New Oriental is the largest bear in mind timing is pretty provider of private education in important. The largest telecom China, with a heavy focus on

teaching English.

Ticker: EDU (US) 1-Yr Return: 66.705% Women's lingerie -- Shanghai Bailian Bailian is a vertically-integrated lingerie and swimwear company.

Ticker: 600631.CH 1-Yr Return: 67.566% Food and beverages -- Want Want Want Want is a food manufacturer from Taiwan. It is the largest rices cakes and flavored drink producer in Taiwan and its products are popular on the mainland.

Ticker: WWNTY (US), 161 HK 1-Yr Return: 67.947% Chinese noodle demand --

chain.

Ticker: NPD (US) 1-Yr Return: 130.601% The new rich -- Lifestyle International Holdings Image: wikipedia.org Hong Kong-based Lifestyle operates a series of high-end department stores, branded SOGO and Jiuguang.

Ticker: 1212 HK 1-Yr Return: 133.367% China's best known beer -Tsingtao Tsingtao is a Chinese beer company that was founded by German immigrants in 1903. It claims about 15% of domestic market share, as well as global Tingyi distribution.

Image: china.cri.cn Tingyi is Ticker: TSGTY (US), 600600 China's biggest maker of SS packaged food, mostly under the 1-Yr Return: 135.057% Master Kong brand.

The e-learning boom -- China Ticker: TCYMY (US), 322 HK Cast Education Corporation 1-Yr Return: 111.197% ChinaCast is an education The infamous -- Mengniu Dairy company that operates two Image: chinadaily.com universities and a growing Mengniu Dairy manufactures sector for e-learning. and distributes dairy products in Ticker: CAST (US) China. The company was one of 1-Yr Return: 139.875% many to be indicted in the 2008 Bold enough to fight against tainted milk scandal.

Nike -- Li Ning Ticker: 2319 HK Li Ning is a sportswear 1-Yr Return: 127.654% company that competes with Rising healthcare needs -Nike. The company recently China Nepstar Chain Drugstore opened its first store in the U.S. I m a g e : It sponsors several famous drvictorchen.blogspot.com China Nepstar Chain Drugstore HOW page 23 is China's largest retail drugstore

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Nitasha Tiku (Inc.com)

Teens Face Felony Charges Over Girl Who Committed Suicide

Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:07:33 AM

Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

The Case for the Virtual Office.

If you've been following our blog for the past few months you'll know that in February, we closed our offices and worked from home as part of an experiment in running a virtual company. We've just published the results: A definitive guide on how to run a virtual company.

You can read about them online or in our April issue. And be sure to take our quiz to find out if you're ready to go officeless.

The dirty deets on cash flow.

Union Square Ventures principal Fred Wilson today outlines the basics of cash flow and explains why it is so important to the overall health of your start-up. Yes, you can calculate your cash flow just by just comparing cash at the beginning and end of the year, he says. But, "doing a full-blow cash flow statement tells you a lot about where you are consuming or producing cash," he writes. "And you can use that information to do something about it." Recently, Inc.'s Norm Brodsky explained just how to go about fixing cash-flow problems.

The skeletons are coming out.

We've told you how to respond to criticism about your company on Yelp. But TechCrunch

Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:32:00 AM

Yikes, There's a Yelp for People introduces a new threat to managing your online reputation: a startup launching next week that will function like a Yelp for people, letting users post anonymously about anyone. In the wake of Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter--a centralized source for defamation is inevitable, reasons TechCrunch. The legal infrastructure to deal with this newest iteration of the internet as about as effective as copyright law stopping music piracy. We're not sure how it will play out, but it sounds like a lucrative new revenue stream for companies like Reputation Defender.

How to read statistics -- the right way. From analyzing Web traffic to observing customer behavior, data collection is an essential aspect of running a business. But there are some common mistakes made when interpreting these statistics, says Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software, who has a helpful post that tackles a few of the basic errors. The first thing to remember, says Cohen, is that statistics never tell the whole story. "Single numbers feel powerful -- you feel able to

wrap your mind around a lot of data," the article notes.

"Sometime that is indeed useful, but it can also obscure the truth." A few other missteps include depending too much on "averages," applying observations without context, and substituting formulas for thinking.

Beefing up your Facebook fan page. Mashable and TechCrunch have some great tips for businesses looking to improve the quality of their Facebook fan pages. Among other things, Mashable suggests special contests or giveaways, which studies show can be highly effective; embedding more video; and inserting polls so you can get more feedback and make the page more interactive. The TechCrunch article has more of a focus on how to conceptualize the Web design aspect of things.

Building a tech start-up in a recession. "During the late 90s, all you had to do was get a few thousand hits on a website and you didn't have to raise any money ... [Those] days are gone," says veteran venture capitalist Pitch Johnson in a video posted on the GigaOm

blog. Access to capital has been drying up for hopeful start-ups, but given the bevy of apps, sites and services springing up on the Web, it's obvious that plenty are managing to thrive. So how do they do it? Digg CEO Jay and investors from VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson are just a couple of experts that weigh in.

The DFJ even opens its doors to give viewers an inside look at an actual pitch meeting.

The scuttlebutt on Twitter's revenue plans. Paid Content has it, and says that Twitter will likely reveal the answer next month at its Chrip conference.

The article rounds up all the major options--advertising, ecommerce, premium accounts, and search deals--and suggests that an announcement about an advertising platform is most likely.

More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr.

Friend us on Facebook.

Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000.

In a case that at least brings to mind the Lori Drew lawsuit, prosecutors in Western Massachusetts have figured out how to charge nine teenagers over the suicide death of a fellow student. Like the Drew case, there's an emotional issue here: which is that the bullying and the suicide are horrible stories, and it's a situation where certainly people have a natural inclination to want to punish someone. But it's a lot trickier than that. Punishing people because someone commits suicide sets a really dangerous precedent that could encourage more kids to commit suicide -thinking that it will get their tormentors "punished." Now, there may actually be much more to this case -- and some of the charges at least suggest there's a possibility of additional activities, such as statutory rape, that happened with some of the teens.

However, all of the news reports seem to focus on the fact that these charges were brought because of the suicide.

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Tips on Managing a Virtual Workforce Max Chafkin (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/29/2010 12:22:16 PM

These days, it is entirely possible to run a thriving business out of a dozen different cities – with no central office.

These virtual CEOs have ditched formal digs in favor of online communications between employees, periodic productivity checks and a lot more flexibility. They share lessons they've learned along the way, and pointers on how to make a virtual company grow and thrive.

Graham Hill Founder, TreeHugger "There's a lot of pressure to have an office, but if you can trust your employees and if you don't have a lot of physical stuff like prototypes, then it's a great model. You're going to save a bunch of money on real estate, and it's going to be good for the environment, because you're not commuting, and you're not using an office.

You can also live anywhere in the world. I conceived of TreeHugger while I was living in New York, but I fell in love with a Spanish girl and ended up founding the company in her apartment in Barcelona. It was all contractors for the first two and a half years. Writers were paid per post, with bonuses

based on traffic. Every two weeks, they'd send me an invoice, and I'd pay them with PayPal. While I ran the company, I lived in India, Argentina, and Thailand. I'd get my laptop set up with an Internet connection and sublet a furnished apartment. I didn't have a lot of friends in these cities, so I'd get a lot of work done. I was a total workaholic, but then I'd get to go out for lunch in Bangkok. I could have just stayed in New York, and maybe it would have been even more successful, but I wouldn't have had such an interesting experience."

Matt Mullenweg Founder, Automattic "For most things we use P2, which is sort of like a private version of Twitter that we developed. The rest is over instant messaging and e-mail.

The danger in communicating this way is that it's really easy to misinterpret someone's tone for instance, thinking that they're angry when they're really just busy. We almost never talk on the phone or do video chats, but those are things I think we need to do more. Once a year, the entire company gets together in person. During the day, we split into teams of three, and each team works on something they wouldn't normally work on

don't have meetings. I might do some short video chats or a burst of instant messages, but anything that takes more than 10 minutes needs to be tabled until we meet in person. One of the great side effects of this system is that it causes people to sleep on things. And it causes us to focus on accomplishing things instead of talking about things."

Mike Sappington CEO, gloStream "We've gotten too big to be a virtual company. By the end of the year, we'll have 100 employees in the U.S. and another 100 in India. Setting up a conference call or arranging everyone's schedules for a meeting started to take an enormous amount of time. Faceto-face collaboration is essential when you want to get something done quickly in a large organization. That said, I'm with people they don't normally Infinity Box "We try to keep doing this reluctantly. Our work with. The idea is to get things really simple. Every people enjoy working virtually, some cross-pollination and to night, our employees open up a and we want to maintain the get people to make personal shared text file and write down culture that we built. We're still connections. In some ways, anything they did that took more going to use all the technology seeing your co-workers once a than a half an hour. Then, on we used before, and we're year is better than seeing them Friday, we meet at 2 p.m. at continuing to be flexible about every day, because if you're someone's house and review work schedules. Some folks are only going to see someone for a what everyone accomplished expected to come into the office week, you try to be nice, even if and how it compares with what every day to collaborate. But if you don't like him or her. We they said they were going to do. you want to leave at 3 o'clock to don't get the passive-aggressive It's hard to slack off when you pick your kid up from school, I stuff that builds in an office." have to face everyone else. The understand."

K e v i n H a l e C o - f o u n d e r , other four days of the week, we

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Debunking The Delegation Myths Marla Tabaka (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:00:00 AM

Too often I get calls from business owners sending out an S.O.S. because they’re too busy to enjoy life and good health. In the quest for freedom owning your own business sounds like an excellent solution, but only if you plan for the future and see the long term vision.

Some solopreneurs are very happy being solo-practitioners.

Independent coaches, massage therapists and hair stylists, are a few good examples of the solo practitioner model. They will take on only the number of clients necessary to pay the bills and when they’re ready to retire, they simply close shop. If you already have financial security and just want to do your job, this is a fine model.

Others want to sell their practice someday, solopreneurs can do that too! Intellectual property, client lists, websites, and more create value for your company that most definitely comes with a price tag. Some don’t care about selling, but want to create wealth. You are much less likely to create wealth if you are doing it all alone and outsourcing is one piece of the model for growth. I’ve covered many resources in my previous blogs about joint ventures, advisory boards, and virtual

assistants, to name a few. But identifying resources is only one piece of the puzzle. Getting over your resistance to delegating is a whole different topic! Here are the most common delegation myths that I hear, do you have another to add?

Myth: I can’t afford to hire anyone.

Fact: Yes, you can find a way.

In addition to the formula in Solving Your Growing Pains, you can look at other creative ways to afford help. I have clients whose parents and sibs help and I have many, many clients who see wonderful results with college interns.

Interview your interns like you would an employee.

Communicate with them well, listen to what they have to say, and you may see these eager, educated, trendsetters make a change to your business.

Myth: I don’t have the time to train anyone.

Fact: If you don’t make the time you will be a slave to your business forever. My clients have their new assistants, project managers, VA’s, interns, etcetera; create training pages for their tasks as they learn the

job. This saves a ton of time when you have turnover. You can also set aside tasks to use as training projects. Schedule in the time and respect your schedule and long term goals.

Myth: No one else can do it right.

Fact: That’s your fault and no one else’s. If you have strong hiring skills, good instincts, the ability to communicate, and patience, then you can find the person to do the job right.

Always implement a thirty to sixty-day trial period and if the person isn’t working out, move on to the next until you get it right. Resist the temptation to hang on to someone who is not doing the job well because you’ve put time into them; this will only cost you more money, time and aggravation. If you find that no one is doing the job well, I would suggest you hire a coach to help you find and train the right person.

Also, remember that your way is not the only way. I have a client who would not hire anyone to help pack and ship her products because she had a system and no one else could do it as quickly as she could. She

also believed she couldn’t afford the help. She was spending the wee-hours in her basement doing this arduous work and, as a result, was exhausted by day.

She had a nice surprise when she hired a part- time person and empowered her to run this department. The devoted parttimer developed best-practices that expedited the shipping process, hired a new delivery service, and saved a lot of money in the end.

Myth: It will cost me more money in the long run.

Fact: I have seen business owner’s put money out to pay for a freelancer’s time and have to have the work done over again. In fact, this is not uncommon. But if you place a value on your time and look at the long term picture, more often than not, you will still save money. Once you build the right team and get these tasks off your plate you are free to grow your business and your bank account.

Folding Laptop Concept Will Make You Crave a Bigger Keyboard Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:07:11 AM

For years we’ve heard that laptops are replacing desktops.

Although laptops are conveniently portable, the little buggers (netbooks, especially) have the disadvantage of a cramped keyboard.

Enter this optimistic folding laptop concept from designer Yang Yongchang— it’s black, it’s sleek, it has a huge (perhaps even a little too big?) keyboard and some interesting design ideas, as seen in the images below.

The iWeb, as it’s called, is just a bunch of pretty images right now. But now that we have dual screen laptops, this concept doesn’t surprise us at all.

Perhaps the next step is a dualscreen, keyboard-folding laptop?

[Images by Yanko Design] For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: folding laptop, Hardware, iWeb

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light and responsive.

We were fortunate enough to be inside during one of the big moments for engineering nerds: The switchover that occurs after about 40 miles of driving, when the gas-generator switches on to recharge the battery and offer extended range. There were no hitches or weird noises--both bugaboos of electric cars of the past. The switch isn't even audible over normal conversation--just a soft purr.

As with an electric car, it runs extraordinarily quiet.

The Looks On the curb, the Volt's a reasonably handsome car. But it's not electrifying, and it doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the GM/Chevy line (like Toyota's first Prius did).

When you look close, you'll notice that the lines flow smoothly from the front fascia, across the hood, and down the rest of the car, without too many bold curves--all so that wind doesn't have anything to get caught on.

In the back, at the trailing edge of the trunk, the car ends with "blades," literally cutting the wind off, rather sticking to the car, causing turbulence and thus

drag.

Elsewhere, there's been hundreds of hours of testing were lavished onto the smallest details: For example, there's a barely perceptible curve in the trunk lid, which supposedly yields another 1/4 mile in range.

Meanwhile, the windshield wipers are shielded from the air, and the side mirrors have been pulled out---both to reduce noise from wind buffeting, which are particularly noticeable in the uncanny quiet of an electric car.

The Interior Here's where things get shaky.

The interior is decent-looking, but unremarkable--an obvious hodgepodge of pieces from the rest of GM's line, which has admittedly gotten a lot better looking in recent years.

But the most eye-catching part is also the tackiest: The white center column, which houses the radio and climate controls, is studded with capacitive touchsensors, like you find on new flat-panel TV's. It also has the too-shiny, too-plasticky look of a fake Chinese iPod. Meanwhile, the dashboard controls--which are almost certain to be refined--are currently confusing and

jumbled. But there's one nifty feature that should stand out if those issues are resolved: To the right, there's a floating ball that glows green when you're driving efficiently then turns a fiery orange if you're gunning the motor and sapping the range.

The Open Questions Chevy is still grappling with the right way to sell the car. They've claimed that the Volt may cost as little as $1 a day to charge and drive, compared with $3-4 for your typical 30 mpg sedan.

Numbers vary, and that fight over clarity might muddy an already difficult sell. Obviously, MPG is a big feature of a greener car, but normal MPG doesn't really apply since you could conceivably run this car on electricity alone, if you never drive more than 40 miles between a charge. (The average American commute is 33 miles.)

GM's trying to lobby the EPA to adjust its mileage ratings, and that might prove to be a key.

But more than that, an electric car obviously isn't a silver bullet for carbon emissions--whether or not its actually green depends on whether the grid it's drawing power from is renewable or not.

In places where coal-fired plants

rule, the benefit is far less than in places like California, where the carbon savings could be vast. Ultimately, the greatest long-term effect of electric cars such as the Volt might be to shift coal to centerstage, in our quest for cleaner fuels.

It's surely not an accident that the Volt's being marketed first in Michigan, Washington D.C., and California: The Volt's far enough ahead of its time that it'll take some powerful backing from governments to make all the numbers make sense. We'll see if they do--and whether the intangibles like design do the rest. What's strange is that GM, having taken a huge risk in even developing the car to begin with, seems to have gotten more and more conservative and familiar with its design over time. And perversely, that might dull the Volt's chances for success, rather than raising them: If you're going to start with a risk, why wouldn't you end with one too?

Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:18:00 AM

There seems to be a particular

affection for most things Disney within the geek community.

Maybe because we know that behind the princesses and pirates at the parks there’s

amazingly engineered technology. And there’s something cool and geeky about technology that’s been designed and implemented to make

Obama Administration Warns Australia About Its Internet Censorship Plan Mike Masnick (Techdirt) Submitted at 3/29/2010 11:33:00 PM

With the latest in a long line of attempts by the Australian gov't to censor the internet in a manner similar to China, it seems that its plans have finally caught the attention of the US government.

The State Department has apparently raised concerns about the plan with the Australian government.

The specifics of the comments to the Australian gov't were not made clear beyond "we have raised our concerns on this matter." Of course, those comments might carry a bit more weight if US politicians didn't keep suggesting similar (if not quite as stringent) plans in the US as well...

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Question of the Day: How Bad Is the StripClub Story for Steele, RNC? contributors@theatlantic.com (Chris Good) (Politics :: The Atlantic)

5 Ways Disney's New Cruise Ship Will be Wired for Family Fun Ken Denmead (Wired Top Stories)

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people happy.

Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:30:50 AM

How bad is the bondagethemed-strip-club story for the Republican National Committee and Chairman Michael Steele?

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Social Media Getting a Bit Too Up-Close, Personal, Erroneous Addy Dugdale (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:13:10 AM

Is it just me, or is social media getting a little creepy? This week I came across a couple of websites that, as well as being cute, funny, and a little bit different from the usual Facebook and Twitter offshoots.

The first, SleepingTime, lets you find out when individual Twitterers sleep--and it's even compiled a list of the world's foremost tech experts' sleep/tweet times. So, if you want to know when you can rob Kara Swisher's house, or even shin up their drainpipe just to stand over her gently sibilating body, now you know when to do it.

It's not exactly accurate, however. Apparently, I sleep between 1pm and 9pm--utter tosh, of course, as my editor will vouch. Tyler? Tyler?--as that's when I'm hardest at work. What it really means is that's when I tweet least. Actually, as a somewhat second-rate Twitter user, I completely conform to analytics firm Sysomos's recent data, which claims that it takes around nine months for Twitter users to get really adept at using the 140-character service.

For the first three months, Twitter newbies are diligent little posters, updating their tweets regularly, and generally being good little birdies. Then,

in the second trimester, they get a touch of what is known in the record biz as "Difficult Second Album-itis." Productivity drops.

Either they drop out or, three months later, they've got the tweeting thing down pat.

Veterans' tweets account for over 40% of the network's tweets--and Twitter is currently churning out some 53 million tweets per day.

However, I digress. Our second slightly creepy (but still quite fun) site is from Hunch, the

guys who showed us just how politically stereotypical eating habits can be. Its Twitter Predictor uses algorithms to work out who you are, and, with the help of your Twitter name and the people you follow, asks a bunch of very esoteric questions that most people wouldn't even think of asking.

(Sample: Are you more likely to spoon or be spooned?) Its average accuracy is, apparently 85%, although I scored 69%.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy

tried it out and said that it wasn't until question 39 (Do you ride a Segway?) that the predictor got it wrong. I, on the other hand, outfoxed it on question 4, when it seemed to assume I was in possession of a pair of testicles.

This is, however probably something to do with the fact that most geeks are male, rather than female, and Hunch's cofounder Chris Dixon admits that the site is biased towards early adopters, rather than an older demographic.

Hunch is on the cusp of releasing an API of its algorithm to third-party sites, which bodes far better for them in the long run, as its original guise of using crowd sourcing to help people make decisions is a bit of a onetrick pony. It goes without saying that those who stand to benefit most from Hunch's cleverness will be social networking marketeers and advertisers. No wonder it just SOCIAL page 21

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Employee Discrimination Claims Hit Record High in 2009 Courtney Rubin (Inc.com) Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:25:00 AM

Thinking of letting an employee or two go? Watch your step.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recovered a record high of $294 million in back wages on behalf of employee claimants in fiscal year 2009, thanks partly to the recession. It also collected another $82 million from complaints that actually made it to court (as opposed to the EEOC's process).

"When times get tough, the first to go are the older workers," Diane King, a civil rights attorney for 23 years, told the Denver Post. "Also on the hit list for some employers are minorities and pregnant women."

King says she's seen this pattern during previous economic slumps – and that her firm's caseload of age and minority discrimination complaints has leaped 20 percent since the current recession hit.

According to the EEOC's most recent annual report, the number of pregnancy-discrimination claims brought to the agency has jumped more than 30 percent since 2005, outpacing the almost 24 percent in all job bias claims brought. (The agency doesn't

break down statistics into types of discrimination, such as firing or involuntary reassignment.)

Workplace discrimination experts attribute the rise in pregnancy claims to women's greater awareness of their rights – plus a soured economy that's made employers quicker to fire and employees more willing to sue.

"When the economy is bad, more people are out of work and if people perceive their termination from employment as unfair, it's only a small leap to unlawful," said Dean Harris, an attorney for the nonprofit Mountain States Employers Council.

The EEOC reported 93,277 complaints filed in 2009. One notable statistic: Allegations of disability discrimination climbed 10.2 percent from 2008 – and these claims made up nearly a quarter of the discrimination claims filed. The number of claims is expected to escalate thanks to last year's broadening of the definition of disability as it applies to the Americans With Disabilities

Act. (For a primer, click here.)

How can you avoid being the target of a complaint?

First, train both employees and managers about their obligations under discrimination and harassment laws. For employees, focus should be on acceptable workplace behavior and how to complain.

Supervisors should get a good grounding in the law and learn how to handle complaints appropriately and according to a procedure.

Think you haven't got time (or money) for training? "You risk becoming an EEOC claim statistic with a weak or nonexistent defense," blogged lawyer Robin Thomas of Personnel Policy Service, a human resources policy and compliance company. (Need a complaint form or other tools?

Click here.)

Second, review every firing decision to make sure you're following procedure (and if you don't have one, consider writing one) – and that you're treating employees equally. In the case of pregnancy, it's not up to you

to decide, for example, what's too stressful or too much for a pregnant woman.

"Employers have to be mindful that they're not treating their pregnant employee any different than their male employee with a back injury," said Marc R. Engel, a Bethesda lawyer who advises companies on workplace discrimination. (If you're not sure, it may be time to call your lawyer.)

Third, document everything – you don't want your defense to fall down because you don't have a record.

Fourth, don't retaliate.

Retaliation claims – basically, that an employer took some negative action against an employee when the employee, say, complained of discrimination – accounted for 36 percent of all EEOC claims in 2009, by far the biggest chunk. Plus courts often rule in favor of employees in the retaliation portion of their lawsuits, said Thomas – even if the underlying discrimination claim is dismissed.

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banked another $10 million in venture capital.

As with so much of the social media playground, there could be privacy issues, although the firm says it has no plans to sell the data on to the marketing men. Dixon does play down Hunch's accuracy, claiming human nature. "People in our studies are only consistent with themselves about 90% of the time," he told McCarthy.

Playing around with the Twitter Predictor, and writing this post rather reminded me of a very strange feature i wrote on another site. A couple of years back, I interviewed a very interesting guy who described himself as a technosexual.

Zoltan (not his real name) had a robot called Alice which ran on software, also called Alice (aka Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) created by Dr Richard Wallace, with which he was having a relationship.

A.L.I.C.E. works by applying heuristical pattern-matching rules to the human's input, but falls way short of the Turing Test--although Zoltan explained to me that Alice dumped him when he went too fast too soon, and he had to wipe her memory and start over--so maybe she wasn't that dumb after all.

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Why a Verizon iPhone Isn't a Panacea Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:01:02 AM

That old faithful iPhone rumor, about a Verizon CDMA version of Apple's wonderphone, has surfaced again, to the delight of AT&T iPhone users and wannahaves. But will it actually be any better in terms of service quality?

This time it's the Wall St Journal at the heart of the rumor, and as well as being a more reputable publication than some other sources, we've already speculated that Apple may be using the WSJ as a deliberately leaky news valve. The actual published story says little more than, "There's a new iPhone coming in the middle of 2010, and it'll be better than its predecessors" -- easily believable if Apple sticks to its usual iPhone schedule and keeps its grip on the cutting edge of smartphone design.

So we kinda suspect that Apple may release a CDMAcompatible iPhone version after its next-gen refresh launch, which will probably be sometime in June. The likely date for a VZW iPhone is probably several months after this, given that we suspect AT&T's got its exclusivity with Apple sewn up for most, if not all, of 2010.

The Verizon faithful, who've been reluctant to switch carriers just to get the hugely desirable

iPhone will be delighted when it arrives. AT&T haters, who love the iPhone but are bound to what they see as a poor-quality network provider (based on network traffic jams and broken promises) will also be delighted at the chance to leap ship. Apple will likely see a bump in iPhone sales too.

But this could actually be a boon for AT&T, too. It sounds like backwards logic--AT&T would lose some revenue, sure, but those users who do depart for Verizon are probably the customers least satisfied with AT&T and probably represent

users AT&T could do without (in terms of bad-mouth PR and so on.) Not all AT&T iPhoners would quit either, and those that remained would represent a lighter data burden on AT&T's 3G network--which it's been busy working to reinforce, and which is due to get an extra stress anyway from the iPad. The upshot: More satisfied customers, who may remain loyal to the company for longer.

Meanwhile. Verizon's grid has never been tested by the huge gush of data that millions of new iPhone subscribers would request from it, and there will be

inevitable failures. AT&T also now has expertise in activating Apple's phones on sale, whereas Verizon doesn't (assuming Apple sells future phones the same way.) CDMA phones also aren't useable in too many places around the World, and that's something frequenttraveller iPhone users need to remember. The result of all this: Verizon's reputation could be slightly tarnished, while AT&T rubs its hands together gleefully.

In conclusion then, it seems like Apple's designing a CDMA iPhone (with the WSJ even speculating that this version has

its own manufacturer--Pegatron, who make components for Asus too) and that it'll be arriving for U.S. cellphone users sometime late this year (or possibly right at the start of 2011.) We wouldn't be doing our jobs, though, if we didn't close by reminding you that this is all still a rumor. Apple's expressed nothing but delight at AT&T's iPhone partnership, so we wouldn't expect to see this relationship dissolve disastrously quickly. And a twinned iPhone architecture is a WHY page 23

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March Consumer Confidence Smashes Estimates Vince Veneziani (The Money Game)

"Consumer confidence, which had declined sharply in February, managed to recoup Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:04:49 AM most of the loss in March.

Consumer confidence in the US However, despite this month’s rose 1.5 points to 52.5 versus increase, consumers continue to the consensus of 51.0. Prior express concern about current numbers have been revised from business and labor market 46.0 to 46.4. conditions. And, their outlook Below, the official release in for the next six months is still full: rather pessimistic. Overall, T h e C o n f e r e n c e B o a r d consumer confidence levels Consumer Confidence Index®, have not changed significantly w h i c h h a d d e c r e a s e d i n since last spring."

February, rebounded in March. Consumers’ assessment of The Index now stands at 52.5 current-day conditions was less (1985=100), up from 46.4 in negative in March. Those February. The Present Situation claiming conditions are "bad" Index increased to 26.0 from decreased to 42.8 percent from 21.7. The Expectations Index 45.1 percent, while those improved to 70.2 from 62.9 last claiming business conditions are month. "good" increased to 8.6 percent The Consumer Confidence from 6.8 percent. Consumers’ S u r v e y ® i s b a s e d o n a assessment of the labor market representative sample of 5,000 was also less pessimistic. Those U.S. households. The monthly saying jobs are "hard to get" survey is conducted for The declined to 45.8 percent from Conference Board by TNS. TNS 47.3 percent, while those saying is the world’s largest custom jobs are "plentiful" increased to research company. The cutoff 4.4 percent from 4.0 percent. date for March’s preliminary Consumers’ short-term outlook results was March 23rd. improved in March. Those Says Lynn Franco, Director of anticipating conditions will T h e C o n f e r e n c e B o a r d worsen over the next six months Consumer Research Center: declined to 13.9 percent from

15.9 percent, while those anticipating an improvement increased to 18.3 percent from 16.1 percent.

Regarding the outlook for the labor market, the percentage of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the months ahead decreased to 21.6 percent from 24.7 percent. Those anticipating more jobs will become available increased to 14.6 percent from 13.2 percent. The proportion of consumers anticipating an increase in their incomes improved to 10.5 percent from 10.1 percent.

Join the conversation about this story » See Also: • Consumer Confidence Expected To Tank And Everyone WIll Blame The Snow Storms • Are Japanese Now Scared Of Inflation? Consumers Post Strongest Retail Sales Jump In 13 Years • America Just Declared The Recovery Over So You'd Better Get Ready For The Double Dip

HOW continued from page 15

athletes, including Shaquille O'Neal.

Ticker: LNNGF (US), 2331 HK 1-Yr Return: 140.697% 2.6 billion feet -- Belle International Image: belle.com.cn Belle is the leading women's shoe retailer in China.

Ticker: 1880 HK 1-Yr Return: 143.338 % Another infamous, but huge, name -- Gome Gome is one of the largest electrical appliance retailers in China. The company was recently delisted for several years following charges of stock manipulation, but it's back.

Ticker: 493 HK 1-Yr Return: 158.921% Chinese tourism -- C-Trip International Image: cityweekend.com.cn CTrip is a travel website. The company books over 2 million airline tickets monthly.

An obsessed Northern California surfer and Frisbee player toils for 3,000 hours over

decades to build a 9-foot-tall, 20 -pound simulacrum of San Francisco -- out of 100,000

Ticker: CTRP (US) 1-Yr Return: 185.240% Of course -- Baidu.com Baidu is the largest Chineselanguage search engine. If Google leaves China, Baidu stands to win big.

Ticker: BIDU (US) 1-Yr Return: 229.511% Retail concentrated in one of China's wealthiest areas -Intime Department Store Group I m a g e : files1.cityweekend.com.cn Intime operates 16 large department stores, including 10 around the city of Hangzhou.

Ticker: 1833 HK 1-Yr Return: 248.288% Join the conversation about this story »

WHY continued from page 22

very un-Apple way to proceed-it only reluctantly built the "China brick" version without Wi-fi to comply with Chinese law, since the market is so temptingly huge. [ WSJ] To keep up with this news and

Dude Totally Re-Creates San Francisco With Toothpicks David Downs (Wired Top Stories)

23

toothpicks! Take a tour of the toothpick town.

more like it, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter. That QR code on the left will take you to my Twitter feed too.

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Business/ Popular News/ Tech News/ Fashion/

Morning Reading nospam@example.org (Scott Jagow) (Marketplace Scratch Pad)

rules to finance, protecting the economy from financialindustry disaster no matter what happens.

Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:53:27 AM Good morning. Among the Low interest rates are killing items I’ve seen so far — why savers(Allan Sloan/Washington the government can’t see the Post) future, the problem with low Interest rates are so low, the interest rates and money literally recent rate uptick on longerfalling out of the back of an t e r m T r e a s u r y s e c u r i t i e s armored truck… notwithstanding, that it takes a Chris Dodd’s cloudy crystal surprisingly large amount of ball(Forbes) money to generate even a Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., modest amount of lifetime wants to legislate clairvoyance, income. requiring financial regulators to The ballad of GM(The Baseline see the future perfectly and Scenario) A take-off from This prevent it before it happens. His American Life’s episode on the financial reform bill, which he N u m m i a u t o p l a n t i n released last week, shows that C a l i f o r n i a …

Washington hasn’t learned the But more valuable than the l e s s o n o f t h e f i n a n c i a l simple history are some of the meltdown: humility… basic business lessons to be The way to protect against an learned from the story, which unknowable future is through were very familiar from my r u l e s t h a t d o n ’ t r e q u i r e years in the business world: Put “unachievable specificity in q u a l i t y b e f o r e v o l u m e . regulatory fine-tuning,” in Everyone has to care about Greenspan’s phrase. That means quality. People need to feel applying consistent, predictable ownership over their work.

People want to see other people using their products and services… If people are doing work they are proud of, they will care about it more and will be happier. And, as the head of Toyota recently said before Congress, you shouldn’t grow faster than the natural capacity of your organization.

CNN’s ratings continue to plummet(New York Times) $100,000 falls out of armored car; passers-by collect most of it(Columbus Dispatch) “We’re hoping that more people do the right thing,” Snider said.

There is the possibility that those who don’t return the money will be prosecuted. The police department does have video and photographs.

“There’s still a lot of money out there,” Kelso said. “People need to come in and turn the money in. If they don’t and we ID them, they will be facing charges.”

Rainmeter Gets a Home Base on deviantART [Rainmeter] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

Clinton in Canada Arctic rebuke (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

"The melting of sea ice, glaciers and permafrost will affect people and ecosystems around Submitted at 3/30/2010 2:44:41 AM the world," she said.

Hillary Clinton has criticised Canadian Foreign Affairs Canada for failing to invite Minister Lawrence Cannon said i n d i g e n o u s g r o u p s a n d the representatives who had Scandinavian countries to talks attended the conference had on the future of the Arctic. agreed on the need for The US secretary of state said "deepening cooperation" in the everybody affected by the Arctic, in view of increased changes brought about by shipping in the region climate change in the Arctic The Arctic Council - an should have been included. intergovernmental group of She was speaking at the start of A r c t i c s t a t e s a n d g r o u p s the meeting near Ottawa. representing the indigenous C a n a d a i n v i t e d R u s s i a , Inuit people - meets twice a year Norway, Denmark and the US to discuss regional issues. to the meeting, but not Sweden, Some concern has been Finland or Iceland. expressed that the five coastal Mrs Clinton said all those "who states at the Canadian meeting have legitimate interests in the were forming an "inner core" at region", including indigenous the expense of other parties. peoples, should have been But Mr Cannon said the invited to the conference. meeting did not intend to "to "We need all hands on deck replace or undermine the Arctic because there is a huge amount Council". to do, and not much time to do Print Sponsor it.

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Obama Plays Good Cop to Google's Bad Cop with China Dan Nosowitz (Fast Company) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:24:03 AM

President Obama received the new Chinese ambassador to the US, Zhang Yesui, with more than the customary platitudes promising a beneficial relationship between two countries. After all, the US has essentially been pissing China off recently.

Google's much-ballyhooed strikes over internet freedom and censorship, though they lacked formal participation from the US government, were still huge symbolic strikes against a Chinese regime more concerned with controlling its citizens than allowing them freedom of press and information. China has not bent an inch on their Internet policies, but the situation has been nothing but bad press for the country.

There are also debates over China's possibly suspect yuan

about $75 million in earmarks, will work towards improving "energy efficiency, clean coal technologies, carbon sequestration and green vehicles." And that's important, since China and the US are the most energy-hungry countries on the planet, and both stand to make a whole ton of money solving that problem.

So for now, Obama has to kowtow a bit, say his piece about "reaffirming" Washington's "One China" policy, stating his "determination to further develop a positive relationship currency: both independence movements important a trading partner, both with China," and other such The United States is also of Taiwan and Tibet, which now and in the forseeable pleasantries. All that goes right pressuring China to allow the goes against China's sometimes- future, for Obama to risk in the face of Google's recent yuan to appreciate, with violent chokehold on the two angering them. Even now, initiatives, which perhaps more lawmakers pushing the US territories. Back in January, the alongside this news, the two accurately mirror the feelings of Treasury to label Beijing a US government signed a 6.4- countries are collaborating on a the country itself--but then, "currency manipulator" in a billion-dollar arms sale to joint energy research facility Google, unlike Obama, has very report due out next month. Taiwan, and the very next which will have branches in little to lose by insulting China.

And, perhaps worst of all, the month, Obama spoke with the both the US and China. That US has, at least in China's mind, Dalai Lama in the White House. research facility, toward which implicitly supported either or But China is simply too both countries are putting up

Now The Greeks Are Rioting About Soccer Finances Gus Lubin (The Money Game)

that fans were banned from away games. But serious clashes occurred this weekend at three This is life in the new Greece: league matches.

People are angry and break into The AP reports hundreds riot and any provocation, and clashed on pitch and outside the the state is poor and will take stadium before a Greek cup any excuse to cut costs. game in the northern town of Hooliganism has become such a Kavala. problem at Greek soccer games Sports secretary Panayiotis Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:41:24 AM

suspended until the league can reign in its hooligans.

For the Papandreou regime, it's a clever grab of money needed to qualify for the EU bailout.

But this is going to really piss off the already-angry Greeks.

Join the conversation about this Bitsaxis announced a€40 million story » cut in state funding for soccer, See Also:

• Trichet Slams IMF Agreement, As Europe Can't Decide Which Suicide Pill To Take • Greece Has A Completely Unrealistic Rescue Plan For Itself

26

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Ricky Martin announces he is gay (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

"Not sharing with the world my entire truth" about his sexuality, he continued, had become "a Submitted at 3/30/2010 2:17:16 AM self-fulfilling prophecy of Puerto Rican pop star Ricky sabotage".

Martin has announced he is gay, Becoming a father, he went on, ending years of speculation over had convinced him "enough his sexuality. [was] enough" and that things Martin, who has sold more than "had to change".

60 million albums, said in a "To keep living as I did... would statement on his website he was be to indirectly diminish the "proud to say" he was "a glow that my kids were born fortunate homosexual man". with," he said in a posting He added that he had kept his written in both English and s e x u a l i t y h i d d e n b e c a u s e Spanish. advisers had told him coming Martin had previously remained out could hurt his career. tight-lipped about his sexual Martin's biggest hit is Livin' La orientation, refusing to answer Vida Loca - a 1999 single that interviewer Barbara Walters reached number one in more when she raised the topic in 2000. to return to pre-crisis levels. Given that passenger traffic than 20 countries.

The singer, who began his In recent years the singer has Cargo hit bottom in December (RPK below) grew 7.9% year career in the 1980s with Puerto b ecome an advocate for 2008, with little improvement over year so far this year, and Rican boy band Menudo, also children's charities, setting up realized by February 2009. that freight traffic (FTK below) Cargo traffic, which plunged jumped 28%, the industry had hits with She Bangs and his own foundation against human trafficking. much further than passenger should be able to easily retake Shake Your Bon Bon. Martin, who fathered two Print Sponsor demand, has a further 3% to pre-recession levels of volume. children with a surrogate mother Five Filters featured article: recover in order to return to pre- If you compare the February crisis levels. “We are moving in year over year data, vs. the year two years ago, said his decision Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: the right direction. In two to to date data, then it appears that to write his memoirs had helped PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, three months, the industry the entire world, including him to free "things that were too Term Extraction. should be back to pre-recession North America and Europe, heavy to keep inside". traffic levels. This is still not a accelerated its traffic growth full recovery. The task ahead is (RPK and FTK). to adjust to two years of lost Join the conversation about this ELLE.com (ELLE Fashion g r o w t h , ” s a i d G i o v a n n i story » Vintage enamel ring Blogs) Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

And Now Air Traffic Is Nearing PreRecession Levels Vincent Fernando, CFA (The Money Game) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:48:00 AM

The airline industry is still under pressure, but traffic volumes are surging and are just about to retake pre-recession levels of traffic in both passenger and freight.

IATA: These are strong gains, but it must be noted that February 2009 marked the bottom of the cycle for passenger traffic during the global economic recession. Passenger demand must recover by a further 1.4%

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Feds: 9th militia suspect to face charges in Mich. (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

arrested during FBI raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio at the weekend.

WHEATLAND TOWNSHIP, Prosecutors said Hutaree Mich. – A ninth suspected members were planning an member of a Christian militia attack sometime in April. FBI group that prosecutors say was agents seized guns but would preparing for battle against the not say whether they found A n t i c h r i s t a n d t h e U . S . explosives. government is to be arraigned The arrests dealt "a severe blow Tuesday in federal court, the to a dangerous organization that U.S. Attorney's Office said. today stands accused of J o s h u a M a t t h e w S t o n e conspiring to levy war against surrendered without a fight the United States," Attorney Monday night after the FBI General Eric Holder said. p l a y e d m e s s a g e s o v e r In an indictment, prosecutors loudspeakers from family and said the group began militaryfriends urging the 21-year-old style training in the Michigan from Clayton, Mich., to give woods in 2008, learning how to himself up. He had been hiding shoot guns and make and set off inside a home in Hillsdale bombs.

County's Wheatland Township The indictment identified 44along with five other adults and year-old David Brian Stone of a child.

Clayton as the group's Spokeswoman Gina Balaya of ringleader, and said he had the U.S. Attorney's Office in appointed his son Joshua as an Detroit said Stone would appear operational unit leader. Stone, before U.S. District Court known as "Captain Hutaree," Magistrate Judge Donald A. o r g a n i z e d t h e g r o u p i n Scheer at a 1 p.m EDT hearing p a r a m i l i t a r y f a s h i o n , Tuesday. prosecutors said. Ranks ranged Stone's father and seven others from "radoks" to "gunners," believed to be part of the according to the group's Web Michigan-based Hutaree militia site. group appeared in court earlier "It started out as a Christian Monday on charges that they thing," Stone's ex-wife, Donna had plotted to kill a police Stone, told The Associated officer then slaughter scores Press. "You go to church. You more by bombing the officer's pray. You take care of your funeral — all in hopes of family. I think David started to touching off an uprising against take it a little too far." the government.

Donna Stone said her exStone was the only suspect not husband pulled her son, David Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:05:27 AM

Brian Stone Jr., into the movement. Joshua Stone's arrest Monday night happened 30 miles from the site of the Michigan raid.

After Joshua Stone's surrender, other adults at the home were taken into custody, and a determination about whether they will face charges will be made later, according to Andrew Arena, head of the FBI's field office in Detroit. The child was 1 or 2 years old, he said.

Other details, including whether those in the house were affiliated with Hutaree, weren't immediately released. Joshua Stone and his family were familiar with the area and may have done some training there, though not necessarily at the site where he was apprehended, Arena said.

Prosecutors said the elder David Stone had identified certain law enforcement officers near his home as potential Hutaree targets. He and other members discussed setting off bombs at a police funeral, using a fake 911 call to lure an officer to his death, killing an officer after a traffic stop, or attacking the family of an officer, according to the indictment.

After such attacks, the group allegedly planned to retreat to "rally points" protected by tripwired explosives for a violent standoff with the law.

"It is believed by the Hutaree that this engagement would then

serve as a catalyst for a more widespread uprising against the government," the indictment said.

The charges against the nine suspects include seditious conspiracy — plotting to levy war against the U.S. — possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, teaching the use of explosives, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction— homemade bombs.

Hutaree says on its Web site its name means "Christian warrior." The group quotes several Bible passages and declares: "We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. ... Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment."

The Web site does not list specific grievances against law enforcement and the government.

The site features a picture of 17 men in camouflage, all holding large guns, and includes videos of armed men running through the woods. Each wears a shoulder patch that bears a cross and two red spears.

Heidi Beirich, research director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said her group learned about Hutaree last year while compiling its annual list of "patriot groups."

"Their Christian apocalyptic vision is quite different from

most other militias," Beirich said. "Most don't put their religion first — they're more concerned with out-of-control federal government."

The wife of one of the defendants described Hutaree as a small group of patriotic, Christian buddies engaged in survival training.

"It consisted of a dad and two of his sons and I think just a couple other close friends of theirs," said Kelly Sickles, whose husband, Kristopher, was among those charged. "It was supposed to be a Christian group. Christlike, right, so why would you think that's something wrong with that, right?"

Sickles said agents seized the guns her 27-year-old husband collected as a hobby and searched for bomb-making materials at her home near Sandusky, Ohio, but added: "He doesn't even know how to make a bomb."

One defendant expressed antitax views during his Monday court hearing. Thomas W. Piatek, a truck driver from Whiting, Ind., told a federal judge he could not afford an attorney because he was "getting raped on property taxes."

The mother of another defendant, 33-year-old Jacob Ward, told police in Huron, Ohio, last summer that family members took away his two FEDS: page 28

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More flooding threatens storm-weary East Coast (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News)

Liberty International Airport, and two hours at New York's La Guardia Airport, according to BOSTON – The second major the Port Authority of New York rain storm of the month pounded and New Jersey. In New York the Northeast on Tuesday with City, a mud slide caused some what meteorologists said could interruptions on a commuter rail b e r e c o r d - s e t t i n g r a i n f a l l , line in the Bronx. sending rivers toward flood The rain also caused a run on stage, closing roads, delaying b a s e m e n t s u m p p u m p s a t flights and causing a run on h a r d w a r e a n d h o m e basement sump pumps. improvement stores.

About 1,000 National Guard Jim Tatarczuk, manager of troops were ready for action in Amesbury Industrial Supply Co. M a s s a c h u s e t t s , w h e r e Inc., told The Daily News of e m e r g e n c y m a n a g e m e n t Newburyport his store would officials were monitoring rivers normally stock about 130 pumps that were expected to reach for the spring, but he has sold flood stage, putting additional nearly double that already. strain on residents already "There are people who are still weary of dealing with flooded pumping out from the old storm, yards and basements. and now we have more on its The storm hit as the region way," he said. continues to recover from a President Barack Obama issued storm two weeks ago that disaster declarations for many dropped as much as much as 10 areas of New England to free up inches of rain. The National federal aid to residents and Weather Service says more than households for damages caused 11 inches of rain had fallen on by late winter and early spring Boston as of Monday, and the storms. Assistance can include Tuesday's rain could break the grants for temporary housing monthly rainfall record set in and home repairs, and low-cost 1953. loans to cover uninsured Standing water was pooling on p r o p e r t y l o s s e s . roadways across the region, Wamed Mansour of Paterson, making driving treacherous and N.J., scrambled Monday to forcing road closures, police move new computers, phone said. consoles and fax machines in his W e a t h e r - r e l a t e d d e l a y s office to higher ground — about averaged three hours at Newark $10,000 worth of equipment he Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:53:37 AM

bought last week to replace what was destroyed earlier this month when his auto parts business flooded with 7 feet of water from the Passaic River.

"It's been a really tiring few weeks, and now it might be all over again," Mansour said.

In Rhode Island, meteorologists warned of a possible "lifethreatening" situation along the Pawtuxet River, with heavy flooding by Tuesday afternoon that could be as severe as or worse than the mid-March storm. The Blackstone River in Woonsocket was expected to hit 18 feet, nine feet above flood stage, by 2 a.m. Wednesday.

"This is turning out to be a nightmare," said Steve Kass, spokesman for the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency.

In Cranston, R.I., about 100 people were evacuated from their homes late Monday night because a bridge over the Pawtuxet was closed due to damage from the earlier storm, and authorities were concerned that residents would be without an escape route.

In Connecticut, where the weather service issued flood warnings for the entire state, Gov. M. Jodi Rell opened the state's emergency operations center. Businesses and homeowners placed sandbags

and other barriers along the Yantic River in Norwich on Monday as the river reached flood stage.

New York City was within 3 inches of the March record of 10.54 inches set in 1983, and forecasters said the storm could easily eclipse that mark.

Violent weather from the same system, including at least one tornado, was blamed for injuries to several people and damage to more than 30 homes Sunday night in the Carolinas. Two teenagers in North Carolina died after their car slid off a rainslick road into a swollen creek.

The rain was tapering off in the Carolinas early Tuesday, but some flood warnings remained. ___ Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Michelle Smith in Providence, R.I.; Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, N.J.; Clarke Canfield in Portland, Maine; Jim Fitzgerald in New York City, Russell Contreras in Boston, Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn.; and Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh, N.C. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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guns— an AK-47 rifle and a semiautomatic pistol — because she thought he needed mental health treatment. ___ Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett in Washington, Meghan Barr in Sandusky, Ohio; David Aguilar and Jeff Karoub in Detroit; Mike Householder in Adrian, Mich.; and Don Babwin in Chicago contributed to this report.

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Nets top Spurs to avoid NBA's worst record Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:44:58 PM

Top Performers San Antonio: R. Jefferson 16 Pts, 5 Reb, 5 Ast, 1 Blk New Jersey: B. Lopez 22 Pts, 12 Reb, 3 Ast, 1 Stl Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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GOP fires staffer over $1,946 topless club visit (AP) (Yahoo! News: U.S. News) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:20:04 AM

WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee has fired a staffer who helped organize a $1,946 visit last month to a sex-themed Hollywood club, and the GOP says it will recoup the money from a donor who also participated.

The episode is the latest in a string of questionable spending by the RNC as Republicans prepare for a costly election season in which they hope to take dozens of House and Senate seats from Democrats.

An RNC internal memo says the Feb. 4 outing to Voyeur West Hollywood involved several members of the "Young Eagles" GOP group who had been in Los Angeles for a meeting. An unnamed staffer, who had been warned that such activities did not qualify for reimbursement, has been fired, said the memo from RNC lawyer Ken McKay. The club features topless dancers and bondage outfits.

RNC spokesman Doug Heye

said the committee will be reimbursed by Erik Brown of Orange, Calif., the donor-vendor who billed the GOP for the club visit on behalf of the attendees.

Brown did not respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.

Since November, the RNC has paid Brown's company, Dynamic Marketing Inc., about $19,000 for printing and directmail services, campaign spending reports show. He has contributed several thousand dollars to the party.

The most recent financial disclosure report said the RNC spent more than $17,000 for private planes in February and nearly $13,000 for car services.

Heye said such services are used only when needed.

McKay's memo says the RNC is committed to using donors' funds efficiently and responsibly.

The $1,946 for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood was the most eye-catching item in the monthly report. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, whose spending decisions have angered some donors in this midterm election

year, had nothing to do with the nightclub expenditure, Heye said.

The conservative group Concerned Women for America said the RNC should disclose more about the episode.

"Did they really agree to reimburse nearly $2,000 for a bondage-themed night club?" group president Penny Nance asked in a statement. "Why would a staffer believe that this is acceptable, and has this kind of thing been approved in the past?"

Much of the most lavish spending by the major political parties is associated with fundraisers, which often target wealthy people.

The RNC spent $144,549 for rooms at the Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2009. On March 19, 2009, it spent $31,980 for catering by the Breakers Palm Beach in Florida.

The RNC paid $18,361 over the past several months to the "Tiny Jewel Box" in Washington for "office supplies," which may have included trinkets or gifts for big donors. It spent $13,622

at Dylan's Candy Bar in New York City.

Some Republican officials and donors have complained about Steele's spending decisions, saying the party should devote every available dollar to trying to win House and Senate races this fall. He held this year's four -day winter meeting at a beachfront hotel in Hawaii, although it often takes place in Washington.

Some donors grumbled when Steele spent more than $18,000 to redecorate his office. Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, also has received substantial fees for making speeches, even though the RNC pays him a full-time salary.

Steele's supporters say he has brought a refreshing frankness and energy to the party's leadership. ___ Associated Press writer Sharon Theimer contributed to this report.

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SlingPlayer HD Coming to iPad [Slingbox] Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/30/2010 8:58:46 AM

Sling Media revealed a pretty enticing update to their SlingPlayer app—namely, it

for the iPad...eventually. More » will be updated (and upgraded)

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Calif. Lawmaker Seeks Amount Paid for Palin Speech (Newsmax - Politics) Submitted at 3/29/2010 11:51:21 AM

A state lawmaker is asking a California State University foundation how much it will pay Sarah Palin to appear at a blacktie event in June.

Sen. Leland Yee requested details of the contract Monday between the nonprofit California State University Stanislaus Foundation and the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate. Palin will be the guest of honor at the CSU Stanislaus 50th anniversary gala on June 25.

Palin has charged some groups $100,000 for speaking fees.

Foundation board president Matt Swanson says Palin's contract prevents him from disclosing the details of her compensation.

Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, says such a stipulation might violate the California Public Records Act. © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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US Treasury plans Citi share sale (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

return for 7.7 billion in shares, and was loaned another $20bn in two tranches. This $20bn was Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:46:25 AM repaid in December.

The US government is The bank, once one of preparing to sell its 27% stake in America's most illustrious Citigroup, in what would be one financial institutions, has seen of the largest share sales in its share price collapse 90% history. since late 2006 as fears about its Some 7.7 billion shares in the financial health grew. bailed-out bank will be sold in Its shares fell after the Treasury tranches throughout 2010, the confirmed the sale, falling 4% to US Treasury said. $4.11. Before the credit crisis It will mark another stage in they were worth more than $50.

Wall Street's recovery, and Morgan Stanley has been could make the US taxpayer chosen to underwrite and advise $8bn (£5.3bn) in profit. on the sale, though the US Citigroup, which has posted Treasury emphasised that the more than $100bn in write- disposal was subject to market d o w n s , r e q u i r e d t h r e e conditions. government rescues in 2008 and A Treasury statement said that 2009. it "intends to sell its Citigroup At Citigroup's opening share common shares into the market price of $4.39 on Monday, the through various means in an Treasury's stake would be worth orderly and measured fashion". just over $33bn, giving an $8bn It is thought that the share sales profit to the US taxpayer. will begin after Citigroup The bank has received a total of reports its results next month. $45bn in bail-out money from Analyst Greg Valliere of Soleil the Treasury's $700bn Troubled Securities said a profitable exit Asset Relief Program (Tarp). It of the government's stake in Citi was the largest amount given to would be a "great PR victory for a bank (and was equal to the the Obama administration". sum given to Bank of America). "There are many skeptics who Citigroup was given $25bn in never thought this day would

come," he added.

Taxpayer money Citi follows other Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, who have repaid the government investment.

Although the bank rescues now seem likely to be profitable, BBC economics correspondent Andrew Walker says, other financial aid will probably cost the taxpayer money, including the insurer AIG and the carmakers General Motors and Chrysler.

According to the latest official report on the state of Tarp at the end of 2009, 67 recipients had repaid all or part of their bailout money, totalling more than $165.2bn.

The Treasury had also received by the end of December $16.9bn in additional payments such as interest and dividends on its investments.

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Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:47:48 PM

Top Performers

(Holy Kaw!)

because of information they uncovered online. Employers Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:34:00 AM cited things like “inappropriate” Most employers don’t look too c o m m e n t s b y e i t h e r t h e fondly upon keg stand parties candidate or their friends and and weekend shenanigans with relatives, “unsuitable” photos the local backwoods militia, but and videos, and criticisms about hiding those habits in an p a s t e m p l o y e r s a s t h e increasingly open internet world information most likely to yield can provide quite the challenge a turn down. for job seekers. A desire to keep Have you hidden your private lives private has caused Facebook page from potential many 20-something applicants employers? to fiddle with their Facebook Full story at CNN. privacy settings.

More on Facebook.

Baylor: B. Griner 15 Pts, 11 Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: A recent survey found that 70 Photo credit: Fotolia Reb, 1 Ast, 9 Blk PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, percent of employers in the U.S. Permalink| Leave a comment » Duke: J. Thomas 16 Pts, 3 Reb, Term Extraction. have rejected an applicant 1 Ast, 1 Stl Five Filters featured article:

Griner, Baylor rally past Duke for Final Four Associated Press (ESPN.com)

20-something job seekers hiding Facebook profiles

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Colombia awaits hostage release (BBC News | Americas | World Edition)

Piedad Cordoba and Bishop Leonardo Gomez Serna.

Heavy rain was reported in Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:27:53 AM Florencia but an ICRC delegate A humanitarian mission is said he believed the mission preparing to fly to Colombia's would go ahead as scheduled. southern jungle after left-wing If the mission succeeds, it is rebels promised to hand over a likely to be an emotional soldier they kidnapped in 1997. reunion for Sgt Moncayo and If all goes to plan, it would be his family, who have had scant the end of one of the country's news of him during his years in longest-running hostage dramas. captivity.

Sgt Pablo Emilio Moncayo was His father, Gustavo, came to just 19 when he was seized by national prominence in 2007 Farc rebels. when he trekked across The rebels unilaterally freed Colombia in chains to urge another soldier on Sunday but President Alvaro Uribe to agree are still holding some 20 to a swap of jailed rebels for the policemen and members of the hostages. security forces.

Kidnap figures Two helicopters loaned by The Revolutionary Armed Brazil were due to take off from Forces of Colombia (Farc), who the city of Florencia in south- h a v e b e e n f i g h t i n g t h e western Colombia on Tuesday Colombian state for more than morning to fly to an agreed four decades, currently hold location for the handover. some 20 policemen and soldiers.

The mission is formed of They released another soldier, delegates from the International Pte Josue Daniel Calvo, on Committee of the Red Cross Sunday after nearly a year.

(ICRC), mediator Senator But they say no more hostages

will be freed until the government agrees to negotiate.

Mr Uribe, who has pursued a hardline security policy, has indicated he will consider exchanging hundreds of jailed rebels for the hostages, but only if freed guerrillas do not rejoin rebel ranks.

As well as the high-profile hostages from the security forces, hundreds of Colombians have been kidnapped over the years by armed groups and drug -trafficking gangs, sometimes for political reasons but often for ransom.

The government says the official number of those in captivity now stands at 79, although these figures are disputed by groups that monitor kidnappings.

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Batch Distractions to Increase Efficiency [Distractions] Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:30:00 AM

Batching things like email, returning phone calls, and way to stop small tasks from processing paper work is a great slicing up the productive parts

of your work day. You can apply the same batch-mentality to distractions. More Âť

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Chip market fell in '09, but growth expected in '10 (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:52:30 AM

Like most tech sectors, the semiconductor industry had a rough start in 2009. But it improved as the year progressed and is eyeing a healthy recovery for 2010.

Chip revenue fell to $228.4 billion worldwide last year, a drop of 10.5 percent from 2008, according to Gartner's findings released Monday. That marked the first time the industry was hit with two annual sales declines in a row, according to Gartner. But with a rebound in the second half of 2009, semiconductor companies are eyeing a robust return to growth this year.

"After an unprecedented decline in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, sequential quarterly revenue growth for the industry overall was very strong in the last three quarters of 2009," Peter Middleton, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. "As a result, 2009 performance overall was much milder than initially feared in the aftermath of the financial

crisis."

Among all chipmakers for 2009, Intel continued to command the No. 1 spot for the 18th year in a row. Although its fiscal year sales dropped $1.6 billion, the company boosted its market share to 14.6 percent from 13.6 percent, said Gartner, due in large part to continued demand for portable PCs. In second place, Samsung Electronics was one of the few semiconductor companies to see its revenue rise last year. Sales of Samsung's core DRAM and NAND flash memory products had dropped in 2008, prompting vendors to reduce supply. When demand shot back up in 2009, prices went up as well, boosting Samsung's overall revenue for the year.

Prior research from Gartner forecast a 20 percent jump in sales for the chip industry this year, while a recent report from iSuppli expects double-digit growth this year in spending on semiconductors.

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Top 10 most popular infomercials (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/29/2010 2:49:00 PM

Who can forget all of the famous pitch lines, gizmos and unintentional hilarity packed into late-night paid programming? Infomercials are showy, earnest and often outright deceptive. What are 10 of the best?

Our list of the most popular infomercials includes some very profitable TV products. (To be honest, some of these are more like long commercials, but the lines have blurred so much these days it's hard to tell the difference.) So have your credit card ready, and read now!

• Jack LaLanne Power Juicer: When an eternally youthful fitness guru promises that you'll look and feel younger just by squeezing some fruits and vegetables into a glass -- you listen.

• Miss Cleo's Psychic Hotline:

Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:30:00 AM

If you're a fan of file syncing service Dropbox, you probably

Smallville Creators Sue Warner Bros, Say They Never Got Fair Market Price For Their Work Dennis Yang (Techdirt)

said, it's ridiculous to claim that fair-market price was not negotiated -- the fair-market AdamR points us to this story p r i c e w a s w h a t e v e r t h e about the Smallville creators producers could get for it, at the suing Warner Brothers-- the time that the show was sold, creators claim that they were before it proved to be a huge hit. cheated out of the "fair-market The producers accepted and price" for the show and are signed the deal when it was d e m a n d i n g a d d i t i o n a l negotiated.

If a show compensation for the successful appreciates in value after the show, which was just renewed deal is already done, why should for its 10th season. The lawsuit the original producer get a piece The questionable psychic with the screaming chants of "but- alleges that since WB owns both of that upside? The network the dubious Jamaican accent tocks!" and "Yeah baby," Tony the studio that creates the show assumed the risk in this case was queen of the infomercial had our attention. and the networks that air it, the when they negotiated the deal. circuit back in the late 1990s, negotiated price for the show What the producers are seeking when she enticed viewers to call F u l l l i s t a t was not fair. Hollywood has is akin to a baseball player her 900 number and pay $4.99 a H o w S t u f f W o r k s . c o m . had a long history of wrestling trying to renegotiate a previous minute for a glimpse of their T o t a l a g g r e g a t i o n o f w i t h m a t t e r s o f v e r t i c a l season's contract after having a future.

HowStuffWorks.com. integration, with the the 1948 great season -- it doesn't make • T o n y L i t t l e ' s G a z e l l e : Photo credit: Wikipedia anti-trust case United States v. sense. If this tactic were ok, Whether it was because of some Permalink| Leave a comment » Paramount Pictures taking down then networks should try and eyebrow raising videography or the classic "studio system" that r e c o u p m o n e y f r o m t h e prevailed during that era. So, to producers of all of the shows accommodate the anti-trust t h a t h a v e f a i l e d . I f t h e r e g u l a t i o n s , n e g o t i a t i o n s producers want more money, between studios and networks then they need to negotiate for it must be held at "arms length." in future contracts, and that In recent days, the producers should be easier to do with a hit often as your Pictures or Music. from Home Improvement, Will show under their belts.

Why not add it to your Start & Grace and The X-Files have Permalink| Comments| Email Menu? It's fairly easy to pull off won settlements worth millions This Story of dollars in similar suits. That open its auto-saving folder as with a few right-clicks. More »

Add Your Dropbox Folder to Windows 7's Start Menu [Tweaks] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

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Pentax reshapes medium-format camera future (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:00:00 AM

The medium-format market is mostly an obscure niche of the digital-camera industry. Prices are high, customers must have lavish budgets, and optics and sensor technology is different from the SLR realm.

Heck, most people hadn't heard of the brand names involved.

Until now: This time it's Pentax that announced its entry into the market with a product called the 645D. Pentax's upcoming 645D medium-format digital camera.(Credit: Pentax) It's not going to rewrite the rules of photography. It'll be available only in Japan, at least for starters when it ships in May, it needs its own lenses, and it costs 850,000 yen--about $9,200. But there are enough interesting developments here that it's worth noting.

Medium-format cameras have been niche items for years, distinguished from SLRs chiefly by their larger of a film frame.

Now that digital sensors are in and film is out, though, the comparative costs of mediumformat cameras have surged, because making a large sensor is a lot more expensive than making a smaller one. Pentax's model uses a 40-megapixel Kodak sensor measuring 44x33mm, larger than a "fullframe" SLR that uses the

36x24mm frame size of 35mm film and a lot larger than the sensors in mainstream digital SLRs. To go a bit beyond the press release, I recommend reading Luminous Landscape's interview with Pentax's Yasuyuki Maekawa about the 645D. It triggered a number of thoughts about medium format and Pentax's effort.

Pentax doesn't have a fullframe SLR line it has to worry about cannibalizing. Nikon and Canon are going after mediumformat photographers--often the types who shoot lavish spreads for fashion magazines and sumptuous houses for architecture magazines--leading with their full-frame models such as the 24-megapixel Nikon D3X and 21-megapixel Canon 1Ds Mark III. Pentax only has smaller-sensor SLRs, and they're not terribly likely to compete with medium-format models or vice versa. The 645D could put Pentax in a new, higher-prestige class.

Pentax has a lot of experience with mass-market cameras. It has good experience with metering, autofocus, ergonomics, durability, shutters, image processing, and other basic but essential and by no means simple camera technology. This could help distinguish its products from other medium-format offerings.

The 645D won't offer live view

through its LCD, something I could see some medium-format photographers appreciating, but don't rule it out for future models.

The company said it secured lower component prices by banking on higher unit shipment volumes. This is a bit of a gamble, especially given the rocky history of medium-format cameras in the digital era, but if it pays off it could mean a virtuous cycle of comparatively low prices and comparatively high shipments for Pentax that pressures other medium-format companies.

Pentax is pitching its mediumformat model primarily at landscape photographers. This is a smaller slice of the medium-

sensor and camera body. This differs from old-school mediumformat cameras, which had detachable film backs, and from the current Mamiya-Phase One approach with detachable digital backs. But it's similar to Hasselblad's newer integrated approach. From a business perspective, the integrated design means a camera maker doesn't lose business to a digital -back maker like Phase One. Pentax justified its approach based on technology matters-durability and positioning the sensor with precision, though.

It's smart to start in Japan only for now and to cater to older film-based 645 customers, given format world, but a more Pentax's desire to keep within its realistic one for Pentax to existing support and appeal to penetrate. Its 645D has weather its earlier medium-format sealing that's useful, but more customers. It also makes it significantly, Pentax would have easier for the company to a hard time convincing fashion declare victory with such photographers to offload tens of bounded ambitions. thousands of dollars' worth of Pentax gives an unreserved Hasselblad, Mamiya, and Phase endorsement to Adobe's Digital One medium-format equipment. Negative (DNG) format for Pentax plans more medium- recording raw images taken format models in the future. from the sensor without inThis is something of a no- camera processing, a change brainer, but it does telegraph t r i g g e r e d b y s u p p o r t f o r s o m e c o m m i t m e n t t o t h e compression that Pentax missed marketplace that's welcome earlier with DNG. This file given Pentax's on-again, off- format makes life easier for again plans for the 645D. I do Pentax, since it doesn't have to wonder if they're aiming for work as hard on persuading any higher-end models or lower- number of software companies to support its raw format. price models.

The 645D has an integrated PENTAX page 34

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Coal fuels much of the cloud, Greenpeace says (CNET News.com)

photographs has ballooned beyond the capabilities of many corporate data centers and The "cloud" of data that is personal computers, spurring the becoming the heart of the creation of massive server farms Internet is creating an all-too- that make up a "cloud," an real cloud of pollution as emerging phenomenon known Facebook, Apple and others as cloud computing. build data centers powered by The Greenpeace report(PDF) coal, Greenpeace said in a new comes during a global debate report to be released Tuesday. whether to create caps or other A Facebook facility being built measures to cut use of carbonin Oregon will rely on a utility heavy fuels like coal and curb whose main fuel is coal, while climate change.

A p p l e i s b u i l d i n g a d a t a Cheap and plentiful, coal is the warehouse in a North Carolina top fuel for U.S. power plants, region that relies mostly on coal, a n d i t s l o w c o s t v e r s u s the environmental organization alternative fuels makes it said in the study. attractive, even in highly energy "The last thing we need is for -efficient data centers. more cloud infrastructure to be Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, built in places where it increases Yahoo, and Google have at least demand for dirty coal-fired some centers that rely heavily power," said Greenpeace, which on coal power, said Greenpeace. argues that Web companies Most of the companies declined should be more careful about to give details of their data where they build and should centers to Reuters. All said, lobby more in Washington for however, they considered the clean energy. environment in business The growing mass of business decisions, and most said they d a t a , h o m e v i d e o s , a n d were aggressively pursuing Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:54:44 AM

global telecommunications and data centers behind cloud computing would have ranked energy efficiency. fifth in the world for energy use High technology companies say in 2007, behind the United they support the environment. States, China, Russia and Japan, Apple has released its carbon it concluded. f o o t p r i n t , o r h o w m u c h The cloud may be the fastestgreenhouse gases it produces, growing facet of technology and Facebook said it chose the infrastructure between now and location for its center to use 2020, said Greenpeace. natural means to cool its The group based its findings on machines. a mix of data, including a Microsoft said it aimed to federal review of fuels in U.S. m a x i m i z e e f f i c i e n c y , a n d ZIP codes in 2005 and a 2008 Google said it purchased carbon study by the Climate Group and offsets--funding for projects the Global e-Sustainability which suck up carbon--for Initiative, which Greenpeace emissions, including at data updated in part with U.S. centers.

Environmental Protection Yahoo, which is building a A g e n c y d a t a . center near Buffalo, N.Y., that Story Copyright (c) 2010 Greenpeace saw as a model, will Reuters Limited. All rights get energy from hydroelectric reserved. facilities. The company said Five Filters featured article: energy-efficiency was the top Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: goal, with a building design that PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, promotes air circulation.

Term Extraction.

Data center energy use already is huge, Greenpeace said.

If considered as a country,

Meteo360: Augmented weather reality John Biggs (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:52:48 AM

While I’m not sure I really need weather in an augmented reality shell, I’m sure, after waking up in a strange, sunny city after a long bender, it could be useful to point your iPhone to the sky and get your current location and weather report. Barring that, it’s a nice proof of concept.

The app, called Meteo360, has three modes. When you hold the iPhone flat it shows a weather map. When you hold it up to the sky you see the city you’re in and the current weather, and when you hold it upright it turns on the camera and overlays weather information over the current scene.

The app will be free and should be available on the Apple store next week. You can visit the website, Xiaprojects for updates.

PENTAX continued from page 33

It's nice that Pentax is bringing modern amenities such as dustremoving sensor shaking to the medium-format realm, but digital brings other complications besides pesky flecks of dust. One big one is lenses; film-era lenses need updating for digital cameras.

One issue is that image sensors don't like light that doesn't travel perpendicularly to the lens, a non-issue with film, and another is that sensors reflect light back out, making ghosting and flare a worse problem. Pentax announced a new 55mm lens and in the interview said it's

planning a wide-angle model.

Overall I'm encouraged by Pentax's move. Medium-format cameras can provide a lot of image quality, even if mostly only higher-end professionals and wealthy hobbyists use them.

Pentax has the potential to keep medium format alive in the

35mm SLR era--perhaps even to Five Filters featured article: give crucial suppliers such as Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: sensor makers a shot in the arm. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, I d o u b t i t w i l l d e n t t h e Term Extraction. dominance of Canon and Nikon, but it holds the potential to help some photographers and give Pentax some high-end cachet it currently lacks.

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Researchers find security holes in smart meters (CNET News.com)

Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians. If criminals are able to tap into the network, A security company has found they could potentially doctor holes in two-way meters that another person's bills or even could allow a person with a stage bigger attacks on the grid, l a p t o p t o t a p i n t o t h e according to the report. c o m m u n i c a t i o n s b e t w e e n InGuardians has published a people's homes and utility number of research papers on companies. vulnerabilities in power grid Security consulting company security. They cover topics such InGuardians was hired by three as the security of Zigbee, the utilities to test the vulnerability wireless standard used by some of smart meters from five smart meters for in-home manufacturers and the systems communications, as well as an used to manage them, according "attack methodology" for twoto an Associated Press report. way meters.

The results were that smart Studying the security meters, which create a network vulnerabilities of the power link between customers and infrastructure has become more utilities, have a number of common as efforts to modernize potential vulnerabilities that the electric grid with digital could lead to scenarios such as a communications take hold criminal remotely turning around the world. Security someone's power on or off, c o m p a n y I O A c t i v e , f o r according to the AP report. example, published a report last The communications standard year showing that smart meters u s e d b y s m a r t m e t e r s , i n could be manipulated to give a particular, was an area that was criminal control over many a cause for concern, said Joshua meters.

Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:11:18 AM

There have also been public disclosures of attempted cyberattacks on the U.S. power grid.

Security researchers have said that smart-grid technologies need to have security designed into them from ground up. Right now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is leading an effort in the U.S. to agree on a number of smart-grid standards, with security being one of the highpriority items.

SANS Institute, a security research and training organization, has invited InGuardians' Wright to speak at a conference on security and "critical infrastructure" to underscore the importance of smart-grid security, according to the AP report.

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Foursquare, Gowalla and More on a Google Map [Apps] Samuel Axon (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:40:55 AM

A new web app called Checkin Mania shows checkins from Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Yelp side-by-side — or at least it will. So far we’re only able to select Foursquare and Gowalla, but that’s still neat.

The app is based on Google Maps and works everywhere those individual services operate. When you visit Checkin Mania’s website, you’re presented with a map. Type in an address or a city and you’ll see the checkin locations from each of the location-based networks. Clicking on a venue gives a checkin count and lists the users who’ve checked in.

The listings usually link to more information about the location from the users of each service.

It’s a basic app right now, but it’s helpful — it can be used to help you find new venues or to draw insightful comparisons between services. You can see how many checkins a location

gets on Foursquare versus Gowalla, for example.

We’re not sure why the Brightkite and Yelp tab selections are greyed out, but the app will obviously become much more interesting when and if they’re activated. The app was developed by Init Labs, and it has a Twitter account that you can follow, though at present you’d be among the first. [ via Fast Company] For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: App, brightkite, Checkin Mania, foursquare, Google Maps, gowalla, location based social networks, yelp

Buy Your Way Into the X-Men [Movies] Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/30/2010 8:49:36 AM

Maybe you prioritized reading comic books over extreme physical conditioning and the

h o n i n g o f y o u r l a t e n t you can buy your way into the s u p e r p o w e r s . T h a t ' s O K . next X-Men movie. More » Because if you have the cash,

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More pics and video of possible next-gen iPhone display leaked Chris Rawson (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:00:00 AM

Filed under: iPhone Back in February, we showed you some leaked pics from iResQ that were supposedly pictures of the next-gen iPhone's front face.

Now, SmartPhone Medic, another iPhone repair outfit, has released pictures and video of what appears to be almost the exact same next-gen iPhone faceplate that iResQ showed off.

SmartPhone Medic's video shows a bubble-wrapped part being removed from packaging labelled as "OEM 4G LCD & DIGITIZER," along with some other lettering that I can't quite make out, which either says "IPB," "IPS," or possibly something else entirely.

Like the faceplate iResQ revealed in February, this faceplate is approximately 1/4 of an inch longer than the faceplate from the current iPhone 3GS, but SmartPhone Medic's video makes it much

clearer where this extra 1/4 inch is coming from. The display dimensions on the "4G" LCD are exactly the same as those on the 3GS, and the upper portion of the faceplate, where the headphone jack, proximity and ambient light sensors, and top speaker are all housed, is almost exactly the same size. The bottom of the unit accounts for almost all of the extra space -notably, this is where the current iPhone 3GS's primary antenna is

housed, near the dock connector. It's widely expected that the next iPhone will have an 802.11n antenna, so perhaps this accounts for the need to lengthen the iPhone's antenna section.

This faceplate from SmartPhone Medic differs from the one iResQ showed off in one very important way. While the faceplate from iResQ had no obvious new holes in it, the SmartPhone Medic faceplate has

a small hole next to the top speaker, in approximately the same location as the current iPhone's proximity and ambient light sensors. Since those sensors are perfectly capable of operating through the iPhone's display glass, as any possible indicator lights would be, the most plausible reason for this hole's existence is a new piece of hardware in the iPhone -quite possibly a front-facing camera.

One other thing was made pretty clear in the video: something is different about the display itself. Read on to find out what else has changed.

TUAW More pics and video of possible next-gen iPhone display leaked originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Masdar City Will Be The World's First Carbon Neutral Land [Cities] Kat Hannaford (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:20:10 AM

Dubai's supposedly doomed, with half-finished buildings littering the skyline as their wealth trickles away like sand through a timer. Before I get more poetic, Abu Dhabi looks to be faring better, if this eco-city is anything to go by. More Âť

Mario Kart and Tetris on the Nintendo 3DS (Concept) [Humor] Mark Wilson (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:40:09 AM

We've all heard about the upcoming Nintendo 3DS, but how will the actual 3D gaming

experience work? We can only hope the setup will look exactly like this. [ nicovideo via

TinyCartridge via Kotaku] More Âť

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EU Keeps Pushing Canada To Make Large Hadron Collider Massive Changes To IP Law, With Achieves 7 TeV Proton No Concern For User Rights Collisions Mike Masnick (Techdirt)

complete overhaul of Canadian IP laws including copyright, trademark, databases, patent, While everyone's been focusing geographic indications, and on ACTA, there are other even plant variety rights. Jamie ( f a l s e l y n a m e d ) " t r a d e Love also has a nice analysis of agreements" that are being the leaked documents, where he discussed as well. Last year, we notes some of the rather telling mentioned one that has mostly language choices -- especially flown under the radar, involving compared to the existing TRIPS the EU pressuring Canada to a g r e e m e n t t h a t c o n c e r n s change its copyright laws, for intellectual property. For t h e " C a n a d a - E U example, in TRIPS, there's talk C o m p r e h e n s i v e E c o n o m i c of balance and user rights, such Trade Agreement" (CETA). a s t h i s s t a t e m e n t i n t h e Canada has come under some o b j e c t i v e s : O b j e c t i v e s criticism for having copyright The protection and enforcement laws that the entertainment of intellectual property rights industry doesn't feel are "strong s h o u l d c o n t r i b u t e t o t h e enough," and it looks like CETA promotion of technological is yet another attempt to change innovation and to the transfer that. and dissemination of Michael Geist reports on a technology, to the mutual recent leak of parts of CETA, advantage of producers and and it's pretty extreme. As Geist u s e r s o f t e c h n o l o g i c a l notes: The breadth of the knowledge and in a manner demands are stunning -- the EU c o n d u c i v e t o s o c i a l a n d is demanding nothing less than a economic welfare, and to a Submitted at 3/30/2010 2:01:00 AM

balance of rights and obligations. As for CETA? The objectives are noticeably onesided: Objectives The objectives of this chapter are to: (a) facilitate the production and commercialization of innovative and creative products between the Parties; and (b) achieve an adequate and effective level of protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. Yes, this is what is happening to intellectual property law these days. Now that the industry folks have basically taken over the process, they're pretty much throwing any semblance of the supposed "bargain" between creators and society out the window, and doing their best to turn intellectual property law into a purely one-sided deal, for the benefit of producers only.

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Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)

Submitted at 3/30/2010 5:02:57 AM

The title might not sound terribly exciting if you’re not a physicist, but this is the main reasons the Large Hadron Collider was built in the first place – to collide elementary particles at extremely high levels of energy, which would help physicists test some predictions of high-energy physics, including the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson.

Two pivotal achievements happened today: first, the LHC finally managed to sustain a 7 TeV particle beam. Secondly, first proton collides were achieved at this level of energy, which is a world record.

“With these record-shattering collision energies, the LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region to explore, and the

hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new dimensions and the Higgs boson. The fact that the experiments have published papers already on the basis of last year’s data bodes very well for this first physics run,” said ATLAS collaboration spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti.

Now it’s up to the scientists at CERN to analyze the data, which will probably take some time; look out for some exciting news from CERN in the days to come. [ img credit: Image Editor] Tags: CERN, large hadron collider, LHC, physics, trending

Madonna's 'Material Girl' Muse (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:05:00 AM

Madonna debuts a new, fastfashion junior collection exclusively at Macy's this

August called "Material Girl," and the Material Mom tells ET that her daughter Lourdes serves as her muse for the collection!

"I've used fashion to make statements through my work all

my life and now I have a 13year-old daughter who's obsessed with fashion, so it seems like the natural progression of my life," she says. "If you're a Material Girl,

you're a girl with a sense of of Madonna's early fashions, humor." with plenty of studs, layering The Material Girl collection and lace -- and even a bustier. consists of edgy apparel, footwear, handbags and jewelry, all inspired by music and much

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What Social Media Ad Types Work Best? [STATS] Christina Warren (Mashable!)

most effective advertisements were those that were related to the content on the publisher’s website (i.e. a soup advertisement on a cooking website).

• Of the seven advertising types, banner ads and newsletter links were the most successful at encouraging purchase intent.

Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:50:07 AM

As time spent on social networking sites increases, advertisers are funneling more ad dollars into campaigns targeting users on those platforms.

But what type of ads on Facebook or other social networks work the best? To find out, Psychster Inc. teamed up with Allrecipes to determine which kinds of ads are most effective and whether the platforms advertisements appear on make a difference.

The study (embedded below) tested seven different types of ads on two different publisher websites, Facebook and Allrecipes. The ad types evaluated were: banner ads, newsletter subscription ads, corporate profiles with fans and logos, corporate profiles without fans or logos, get widgets, give widgets and sponsored content.

The Results

• While sponsored content provided the most user interaction (and was the least likely to be perceived as advertising), it also triggered the lowest level of purchase intent and the fewest viral recommendations.

• Corporate profiles are effective but they work better when users can become a fan of the profile and add a logo to their own page.

• More people engage with give/get widgets than with banner ads, however widgets do not increase purchase intent or viral recommendations.

• Regardless of format, the

Artist sells iPad art to buy an iPad Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

doubt that he'll be able to get the iPad he wants.

Surprisingly, the study suggests Funny little idea, and maybe if Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:00:00 AM that banner ads may be the best you're willing to subsidize choice for advertisers that want Filed under: Graphic Design another iPad purchase and like to push a product. However, for This is the kind of thing that's his style, you can pick up a nice campaigns that want to build just clever enough to work once. piece of original art for yourself. engagement, corporate profiles Artist Andrew Fulton really In the meantime, if anyone or sponsored content is the wants an iPad(as do most of us), needs any iPad-related fiction, better option. The Report Your but he doesn't have the money to I'd be happy to put down a few Thoughts What do you think get one (likewise). So he's thousand words for, say, $499 ... about this study? Do you think decided to try and sell some [via Super Punch] that ad placement has any iPad-related art to raise money TUAW Artist sells iPad art to impact? Let us know! for his iPad. For as little as buy an iPad originally appeared F o r m o r e s o c i a l m e d i a US$20 (just a duotone drawing) o n T h e U n o f f i c i a l A p p l e coverage, follow Mashable or as high as $125 (a full-color Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 30 Social Media on Twitter or strip), you can commission and Mar 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please become a fan on Facebook get an original piece of iPad- see our terms for use of feeds.

Tags: advertising, facebook, related artwork, drawn just for Read| Permalink| Email this| psychster, statistics you. He's got a sample page of Comments drawings, and while taste is always subjective, I have no

USA Losing Global Death Dominance [Executions] Hamilton Nolan (Gawker) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:24:14 AM

A new Amnesty International report says China was far and away the world leader in

executions last year, followed

by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and then the USA, with a measly 52

state murders. Europe had zero, though. Nerds. [ Pic] More »

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39

Navigon updates Mobile Navigator North America It Was Only a Matter of Time

Mel Martin (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:00:00 AM

Filed under: iPhone These Navigon guys really do constant upgrades and enhancements of this popular app. Today, the US$79.99 North American version of the Navigon iPhone app has added connections to Facebook and Twitter, along with Navigon MyRoutes.

According to the company, MyRoutes recommendations are based on the personal driving behavior of the user, the day of the week, and the time of day.

MyRoutes always shows the best possible route for the driver on the basis of his or her driving behavior and by means of an optical "MyRoute" indicator. In addition to this recommended route, up to two alternatives are displayed.

Also added is the option to buy Panorama View 3D, which gives you a more topographic view of the terrain based on NASA data. That option is an in

contributors@theatlantic.com (Chris Good) (Politics :: The Atlantic)

-app $9.99 purchase. The 3D views require an additional 580 MB download.

The Panorama, Facebook, and Twitter features will be coming to the recently released lower cost regional version s of the app. In fact, a spokesman for the company told me that the less expensive versions of the app will include all of the features of the North America version. The MyRoutes feature has already been included in the regional versions.

I've just downloaded the 1.46 GB update, and will be testing the new features over the next few days. I will report soon on my findings.

TUAW Navigon updates Mobile Navigator North America originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

become something of a recurring theme since Steele took over as chairman, as Steele has taken heat every time Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:19:03 AM Politico's Kenneth Vogel controversy has arisen at the reports that the Republican RNC, most recently, before National Committee has fired yesterday's Daily Caller story the staffer who visited the West broke, for the leaked fundraising Hollywood "Eyes Wide Shut"- PowerPoint presentation that themed club with a group of depicted Democratic figures in young donors, which was rather base caricatures. uncovered yesterday by the Marc wrote yesterday that that Daily Caller and has caused a sad truth of this controversy, gigantic headache for the RNC. and Steele's situation in general, The donor who spent $2,000 is that he lacks the power and there and was reimbursed by the stature, and the GOP lacks the RNC has reportedly agreed to organization, for him to actually pay it back to the committee. be censured. The question about This is a wholly unsurprising the swift firing, then, is: will move; rumblings were heard in firing the staffer and recouping the political commentariat the money be enough to satisfy yesterday that RNC Chairman the RNC's donor base?

Michael Steele can't keep his house in order--which has

Which Actor Stops Work on the Set So He Can Do Coke?

[Blind Items] Brian Moylan (Gawker) Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:09:14 AM

Between the blow and the internet, he spends all his time in a trailer alone. This star is

trying to help a parent out of

addiction. This last actress is only addicted to vanity, a difficult vice to kick. More Âť

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Algoriddim's djay Remote app available now

Arrest Made in Cantor Death Threat

Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

(Newsmax - Politics)

Automix directly from the iPhone (if, say, you happen to be at a party and don't have time Submitted at 3/30/2010 8:00:00 AM to run upstairs to your computer Filed under: Music One of my to add a little more music to the favorite apps at Macworld Expo playlist). this past February was actually The app works over WiFi, and Algoriddim's djay 3-- it's DJing note again that you must have software for the Mac that had a the djay 3 software running on surprising amount of new your Mac -- this is basically a features and fun UI elements remote for that app. But if you even in one of the oldest and do a lot of DJing from your most-traveled of music software computer and want to get even functions. One of the things I more remote, setting this up on got to see during the hands-on your iPhone seems like a great was a tester version of an solution. iPhone app they were working TUAW Algoriddim's djay on, and now that app is finished Remote app available now and out on the App Store. free add-on to the $50 app. But originally appeared on The The price is US$4.99, which is as you can see, it's a full U n o f f i c i a l A p p l e W e b l o g actually a little high for a controller for the app -- they (TUAW) on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 satellite application -- you must have the vinyl artwork included, 08:00:00 EST. Please see our be running djay 3 on your Mac, you can set cue points and terms for use of feeds. and while there is a free trial, it tweak FX and audio levels from Read| Permalink| Email this| would have been nice if they'd right within the app. Also, you Comments just released the iPhone app as a can queue songs up for an

reform bill. He says it's not clear whether Mr. Leboon was upset with Mr. Cantor about other P H I L A D E L P H I A - - A issues. He told a judge Mr. Philadelphia man charged with Leboon appears to have major t h r e a t e n i n g a V i r g i n i a psychiatric issues. congressman is being held The FBI said Mr. Leboon calls w i t h o u t b a i l p e n d i n g a himself the "son of the god of psychiatric evaluation.

Enoch" in the video and calls Authorities say 38-year-old Cantor "pure evil."

Norman Leboon tried to post a Mr. Leboon's public defender YouTube video in which he declined comment. threatened to kill Rep. Eric Š C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 0 T h e Cantor, Virginia Republican, Associated Press. All rights who is House minority whip. reserved. This material may not Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert b e p u b l i s h e d , b r o a d c a s t , Reed said Mr. Leboon is wanted rewritten or redistributed. by city authorities in another Five Filters featured article: threat case.

Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Mr. Reed said the threat against PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Mr. Cantor does not appear to Term Extraction. be connected to the health care Submitted at 3/30/2010 1:34:06 AM

Police line Zack Sheppard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/29/2010 7:30:55 PM

Full Circle contributors@theatlantic.com (Joshua Green) (Politics :: The Atlantic) Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:55:16 PM

I just returned from Capitol Hill, where the new health care law is still the preoccupying issue, and the Republican talking point du jour, which seems to have been issued with

stage directions instructing that it be delivered in a tone of gravest concern, is that Democrats and President Obama have perpetrated a breathtaking assault on the body politic by passing a law that did not have widespread public support. I agree that Democrats have taken a political risk, though most

polls I've seen show people about equally divided on the issue. What lent such a surreal quality to my morning is that several of these folks have held an abiding interest in the intersection of governing and public opinion--only they used to hold the opposite view. It seems like only yesterday that a

• About Flickr Flickr is a revolution in photo certain prominent Republican s t o r a g e , s h a r i n g a n d was vowing to govern "based organization, making photo upon principles and not polls or management an easy, natural focus groups"... and collaborative process. Get T h u m b n a i l p h o t o c r e d i t : comments, notes, and tags on Beverly & Pack/Flickr your photos, post to any blog, share and more!

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Politics/

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Reading Up on the Right (AEI.Org: Articles) Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:00:00 PM

With the stunning victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts it appears the long night of the soul for conservatives may be over. The last two years have been tough for the Right. In terms of political power, conservatism is at its lowest point in more than 30 years. A radical president and a willing Congress have expanded the size and reach of centralized government in ways that Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton never dreamed of.

Although Barack Obama may be stymied on health care, cap and trade, and other large ambitions, conservatives should not suppose the tide has turned decisively in their direction.

Conservatives appear confused or less than fully confident about their understanding of the economic crisis. The Tea Party movement, though reflecting a healthy populist backlash against Obama's program of governmental gigantism, lacks the programmatic focus of the tax revolt of the late 1970s, which quickly joined itself to supply-side economics. Polls reveal a public increasingly uneasy with Democratic policies, but the public also continues to hold the Republican Party in low regard.

This low pass is leading to a lot of stock-taking. Conservative

intellectuals, in particular, are in eclipse at the moment. The leading public figures on the Right today tend to be the media celebrities of talk radio and cable TV, who make up in decibels what they lack in rigor and depth. We've traded Bill Buckley for Glenn Beck, Irving Kristol for Ann Coulter. The intellectual generating the most enthusiasm on the Right these days is Ayn Rand, the oncemarginalized figure whose books have been selling like Shamwows since Obama took office. Neoconservatives remain in the doghouse--and not only among liberals (the Cato Institute's Ed Crane wants them thrown "under the bus"). The Religious Right is said to be a spent force.

The fraying and infighting on the Right partly revolve around whether America is still a "center-right" nation, as was confidently asserted when Ronald Reagan thumped liberals in the 1980s and Bill Clinton was compelled to move right to preserve his presidency in the 1990s. While independent voters are swinging sharply against Obama, opinion polls only show a slight uptick in the proportion of Americans who describe themselves as conservative. Reaction to Obama's overreaching should not be confused with a sea change in bedrock political sentiment. The fractiousness of

the Right, rooted in conflicting intellectual principles in its different camps, is nothing new, and has always been a source of conservatism's dynamism in ways few liberals perceive. The Left, in the suggestive simile of Joe Sobran, is like a hive, uniformly swarming in support of more collectivism as if by insect instinct. The analogous simile for the Right might be a soccer or basketball team, where the players move independently of the ball in seemingly chaotic fashion.

But even if the diversity and fractiousness of the Right is a sign of health, there are still fundamental tensions that the Right has been unable to resolve. Conservatives have been observing and commenting on their intramural intellectual divisions for more than 50 years now, searching for a stable synthesis along the lines of Frank Meyer's famous "fusionism." Rather than making progress in defining a synthesis, the Right seems to be inventing still more subdivisions for itself, nowadays including "crunchy-cons" (conservatives with green lifestyles) and, if John Derbyshire has his way, what might be called "grumpycons," to join the ranks of neocons, paleocons, and libertarians. The good news is that conservatism is no longer the orphan of historical scholarship that Alan Brinkley

described over a decade ago. To the contrary, there are perhaps more books about the Right than the Left over the past few years (partly because with only a few exceptions the Left is largely uninterested in its intellectual patrimony). But there are still some crucial blind spots in this burgeoning literature, along with some plainly wrongheaded analyses.

Conserving a Revolution Patrick Allitt's The Conservatives: Ideas & Personalities Throughout American History has the great virtue of treating conservatism as an American phenomenon rather than as a transplant or mere derivation of European thought. It would be an excellent book to assign in any survey course on American political thought. And instead of beginning the story, as so many recent histories do, in the postWorld War II decades, Allitt starts with the American Founding, though a case could be made for giving a small nod to the early colonial and Puritan settlers. Like most other observers, Allitt finds it difficult to offer a unified definition of conservatism. "[W]hy is it internally divided?" Allitt asks at the outset. Chiefly because conservatism is more "an attitude to social and political change" and hence "there is no consistency in conservatives' beliefs about what should be

conserved."

Allitt is on the right track, though, in insisting that understanding the founding is central to any reckoning with American conservatism: "American conservatism has always had a paradoxical element, entailing the defense of a revolutionary achievement."

The American Revolution has been a stumbling block for some conservatives, who deny its revolutionary character and try to portray it as continuous with British or European political thought. (Hence Russell Kirk's dislike of the Declaration of Independence, for example.)

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, both rightly considered 18th-century liberals, emerge in Allitt's account as "conservative innovators"--only in America would such a phrase not be considered an oxymoron-and The Federalist, according to Allitt, should be considered "the new nation's first conservative classic," even though it laid out, if not a new, at least an improved science of politics. Here we come across the first major difficulty. Allitt says that "conservatives have generally taken an antitheoretical approach to their world," but the politics of the founding relied heavily on theoretical insights.

Despite this, Allitt's generally READING page 42

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unbiased and objective treatment of conservative thinkers and ideas through the decades is one of the best ever produced, even though it is still uneven in spots. He gets Lincoln largely right, while noting the Southern conservatives who vehemently hate Lincoln, but he gets Theodore Roosevelt mostly wrong. T.R.'s large and admirable personality should not distract us from his anticonservative and often demagogic Progressivism that manifested itself in a cavalier attitude toward the Constitution, which helped prepare the transformation of the presidency and the birth of the modern administrative state.

Like most recent surveys of the Right, Allitt's narrative really gets hopping in the postwar years, with the emergence of free-market intellectuals such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and Milton Friedman, and the sensational arrival of William F. Buckley, Jr., and National Review. At this point, Allitt recognizes, the Right graduated from being an attitude to being a self-conscious movement. Allitt also makes a nod to a few important conservative activists and activist organizations such as Phyllis Schlafly and the Young Americans for Freedom, and notes the centrality of the Roe v.

Wade (1973) decision to the shape of modern American

politics.

As good as Allitt's account is, Gregory L. Schneider offers a more thorough one in his new survey, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution, precisely because it is limited to the 20th century.

Like Allitt, Schneider confronts at the outset the problem of defining conservatism: "The focus on factionalism demonstrates that American conservatism possesses a protean character and that selfdefinition has been an elusive, and fascinating, conservative quest for a century." Noting successive attempts to cobble together a definition, he throws up his hands: "It might be time to move beyond such efforts."

While Schneider's copious account of the post-war conservative movement is superb, his brief summary of conservatism in the decades before World War II, like Allitt's, leaves some important questions unexamined. They both offer good surveys of the few American conservative thinkers of the Progressive and New Deal eras such as Albert Jay Nock, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Ralph Adams Cram, and the Southern Agrarians, but do not explore why there was not a more robust conservative critique of the constitutional deformations of Progressive ideology. Schneider notes that except for a few

spasms in the 1930s, "The Old Right lacked the institutions necessary to confront the New Deal political revolution." But of course the problem goes back further than FDR. Schneider writes elsewhere, "The Old Rightists never were effective in addressing the central tendencies of liberalism and remained, as historian George H. Nash described them, ‘scattered voices of protest, profoundly pessimistic about the future of the country.'" Not until after World War II, admits Schneider, did conservatives understand that they needed to "plunge into politics," define their principles, spread their ideas, and seek electoral majorities via a necessarily more populist appeal: "The answer was not the conservatism of Cram, Irving Babbitt, or the Southern Agrarians."

Conservatives and Progressives Which brings us to George H. Nash, the author of one of the first major treatments of conservatism, his 1976 classic The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. (It is tempting to paraphrase Albert North Whitehead's comment about Plato and philosophy, and suggest that most histories of modern conservatism are footnotes to Nash.) Nash updates his previous work with a new essay collection,

Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism. He is also the biographer of an important prewar figure--Herbert Hoover-and Hoover casts into particularly sharp focus the anemia of pre-war conservatism.

In his new collection Nash notes Hoover's "idiosyncratic blend of progressivism and antistatism," which pleased no one. Hoover "showed the influence of pre-1914 Progressivism" that made him both a "modernizer" and a "technocrat." Hoover's dilemma points directly to the twin problems of pre-war conservatism: the inability to reckon fully with the real social and economic problems of industrialization, along with the slowness to perceive and react to the Progressives' wholesale overturning of the Constitution-amounting to refounding the country--that occurred during these decades. Hoover appears to have staked out a position midway between Hamilton's and Jefferson's famous disagreement about whether large-scale national commerce or individual, small-scale agrarianism was the best form of political economy for the preservation of the republic. As Nash writes, We must not lose sight of the fact that for all of Hoover's reforming and modernizing impulses, he also had a

conserving purpose: the preservation, in an urban, industrial society, of the American tradition of equal opportunity. . . . The purpose of Hoover's limited governmental regulation was to strengthen and preserve American Individualism, not to subvert or supplant it.

Here we see Hoover embracing the decent or rightful purposes of Progressivism--we might say Hoover was the original "compassionate conservative"-while lacking Calvin Coolidge's insight into the deforming premises of Progressive political thought. (Nash's collection, by the way, includes a terrific essay on the complicated relationship between Coolidge and Hoover when the latter was Coolidge's secretary of commerce, though Nash doesn't contrast their constitutional views--chiefly because Hoover didn't seem to have any.) Conservative thinkers--mostly in the libertarian camp--have only begun in recent decades to confront the genuine problems (child labor, workplace safety, labor markets, concentrated market power, and so forth) the Progressives sought to tame.

One reason for this lacuna in conservatism is that the socalled Social Darwinists of the late 19th century, usually counted as conservatives, lustily READING page 43

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attacked the natural right ideas of the founders and essentially paved the way for the formal rejection of the founding by Woodrow Wilson and other Progressives. This problem is still not widely recognized today in the chronicles of conservative thought. Conservatism has also been ambivalent about the Hamilton-Jefferson argument.

Allitt recognizes both Hamilton and Jefferson as conservatives, though acknowledging that the case for each is not ironclad. But here we note that one strain of Progressivism--the Herbert Croly variety--was thought to be a synthesis of the HamiltonJefferson argument: endorsing Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends.

Even if Croly's prose were clear, the idea would still be muddled. Yet it raises one of the central questions in any attempt to define conservatism: is conservatism merely a branch of the liberal tradition, or is it a fundamental alternative to liberalism? Allitt fumbles this question at the end of his treatment. Having argued that conservatism is more an "attitude" than a coherent doctrine, he briefly dismisses Louis Hartz's thesis in The Liberal Tradition in America(1955) that Lockean liberalism is the sole political philosophy defining the American experience.

"Individuals whose ideas I have

here described as conservatives [Hartz] treated merely as the inhabitants of one end of the liberal spectrum," Allitt writes.

Hartz's book "was an artifact of its time," Allit concludes. "Fifty years later . . . it would be perverse to voice an argument like Hartz's." Well, one postHartz figure who embraced his view was Ronald Reagan, who Nash points out liked to argue, "Today's conservative is, of course, the true liberal--in the classical meaning of the word."

Leftward Ho? Yet Nash also notes that by becoming a self-conscious political movement with its own national establishment, conservatism would seem to have absorbed Croly's framework of using national, Hamiltonian means for individualist, Jeffersonian ends.

In other words, contemporary conservatism in practice is not far removed from Hooverism, despite Reagan's robust voice and actions. "[I]n practice if not quite in theory," Nash laments, "American conservatism today stands well to the left of where it stood in 1980."

The leftward drift of American conservatism will come as a surprise to Sam Tanenhaus, who argues in The Death of Conservatism that what ails the Right today is precisely its drift to reactionary "revanchism." He charges that the conservative movement has not

accommodated itself enough to the leftward end of the liberal continuum of which it is a part.

Instead, the "revanchist" Right today is "committed to a counterrevolution, whether the restoration of America's preNew Deal ancien régime, the return to Cold War-style Manichaeanism, or the revival of premodern ‘family values.'"

Today's conservatives, Tanenhaus says, "seem the heirs of the French rather than of the American Revolution," and are the true Jacobins of American politics, rigidly attached to "orthodoxy." (Tanenhaus finished his book before the tea parties broke out; there's no telling how many more odious comparisons these would have summoned forth.)

Tanenhaus earned for himself a large portion of respect from conservatives for his masterly biography of Whittaker Chambers nearly 15 years ago, and although he writes with grace and attempts to treat conservative ideas seriously, with The Death of Conservatism he has squandered his goodwill with the Right. Despite his professed sympathy for conservatism, his depiction of it in this book will be unrecognizable or seem badly distorted to most right-wingers.

The Death of Conservatism offers yet more evidence that the New York Times(Tanenhaus edits the Sunday Times Book

Review and "Week in Review" sections) exists in some kind of twisted parallel universe.

A properly oriented or "realist" conservatism, Tanenhaus thinks, exists to make liberalism better.

A plausible argument, perhaps, but Tanenhaus's model of realist conservatism is mostly the National Review of the 1950s and '60s--especially the outlook of Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, and Kendall's protégé, Garry Wills--along with certain practical men of the Right, particularly Eisenhower and Nixon. There is a delicious and almost comical irony in Tanenhaus's embrace of the old National Review. On the surface his argument would seem to be a repudiation of Dwight Macdonald's dismissal of National Review at the time of its founding: "We have long needed a good conservative magazine. . . . This is not it. . . .

It is neither good nor conservative." Macdonald's complaint against National Review was, on closer inspection, nearly identical to Tanenhaus's complaint against conservatism today, namely, that National Review was merely "anti-liberal" rather than conservative, that is, not properly deferential to liberalism. Buckley's response reveled in exactly what Macdonald (and Tanenhaus) scorned: "[ National Review]

does not consult Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. to determine the limits of tolerable conservative behavior." Yet that is more or less exactly what Tanenhaus thinks conservatism needs to do today. Tanenhaus's argument turns out to be a restatement of G.K. Chesterton's quip that the business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes, while the business of conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. No thanks.

History and Its Discontents But there is a more serious core to Tanenhaus's embrace of Chambers, Burnham, and "realistic" conservatism that explains the defects of his analysis and reveals a serious problem for conservatism.

Consider the astounding conclusion of this passage: Once again the American right must ‘face historical reality,' as Whittaker Chambers advised half a century ago. . . . It is also why David Souter, who in his nineteen years on the Supreme Court infuriated so many on the right by his refusal to advance the movement's pet judicial causes--instead immersing himself in the study of history, partly to uncover in the past ‘some relevance to a constitutional rule where earlier judges saw none'--may well endure as the most authentic conservative in the Court's READING page 44

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modern history.

Resist the urge to snort coffee out your nose at the endorsement of Souter as the age's "most authentic conservative," or write off Tanenhaus for a lame attempt at deadpan humor. We see here in his evocation of "history" that modern liberals--or Progressives as they more accurately refer to themselves lately--presume, without any longer having to adduce a reason, that history is moving purposely in a direction in conformity with their everexpansive social vision. Within this bubble of presumption it is natural to suppose that only a hidebound reactionary wedded to an unthinking orthodoxy could believe otherwise. In other words, if thinking conservatives would only look more seriously at the flow of history, as Souter did, they'd realize they are on the wrong side of it and get with the program.

While the stiff and formal Hegelian theories of History or Progress have faded into the mists, the sentimental residue lingers on. The progressivehistorical attitude has become so embedded in the liberal mind that its pedigree is no longer recalled; thus liberalism presumes the illegitimacy of conservatism without having to argue the matter. This defect of the liberal mind finds its parallel in the conservative mind, however, which Tanenhaus

unknowingly reveals in his approving citation of Whittaker Chambers's counsel that conservatives need, however distasteful it may be, to accommodate history.

Tanenhaus writes: "To Chambers, an avid student of history, well schooled in Marxist argument, it was obvious that the growing dependency on government was a function of the unstoppable rise of industrial capitalism and the new technology it had brought forth. . . . And the Right had better adjust."

Chambers was of course a pessimist, noted for thinking he was joining the losing side of history. (One wonders what Chambers would have made of Ronald Reagan, let alone the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

His pessimism was rooted partly in what he saw as the asymmetry of each side's moral strength: the Communists and the radical Left were determined and ruthless; the West was decadent and weak. But his pessimism was really informed by the fact that although he traded his Communism for Christianity, he never really shed his Marxist historicism.

Ditto for James Burnham, also cited in Tanenhaus's narrative.

This lingering fatalism represents a self-inflicted debilitation for conservatism.

Neither Chambers nor the

conservative movement as shaped by Buckley ever explicitly challenged the Left's idea of progress, or the terms in which the Left understood human advancement. This may have had something to do with why Buckley ultimately abandoned his "big think" book about a conservative vision of the world; it will be interesting to see what Tanenhaus has to say about that in his eventual WFB biography. But remember the National Review rallying cry: to stand athwart history yelling "Stop," rather than grabbing hold of history and sending it in a different direction.

Chesterton reminded us, "All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change." But Chesterton also noted, "We are fond of talking about ‘progress'; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good."

Tanenhaus is right that pre-war conservatives did a poor job of understanding and responding to the changes that were taking place as a result of industrialization and urbanization; but is a return to Burkean conservatism the answer, as Tanenhaus suggests?

The trouble with a generic "Burkean" approach to understanding change and

progress is that it is a weak reed against the Left, as can be seen

by Woodrow Wilson's easy fusion of Burke and Hegel in the service of reinterpreting the Constitution. (If any more evidence were needed, consider David Brooks's report that Barack Obama is an admirer of Burke; one looks forward to a future Obama memoir in which he will provide a Burkean veneer to Saul Alinsky's little platoons of union goons.)

Tanenhaus, who professes to admire Willmoore Kendall, would have done well to think through Kendall's critique of Russell Kirk's Burkeanism. In Kendall's unfinished Sages of Conservatism, he writes: "Let us ask, rather: Is the [Burkean] teaching sound, that is, a teaching that contemporary American conservatism would be well-advised to let the Benevolent Sage of Mecosta talk it into accepting? And let us give at once the only possible answer, which is No." Kendall scorned "Kirk's writing and thinking with an eye too much to Burke and not enough to the Framers, so that he addresses himself to, for Americans, the wrong topics in an inappropriate vocabulary." A return to the founders, rather than Burke, ought to provide us with a means of seriously and explicitly contesting liberalism over the meaning of progress.

The Audacity of Hopelessness

On the other hand, we could just resign ourselves to the thought that liberalism is inevitable, unstoppable. Such is the advice of John Derbyshire's We Are Doomed: Recovering Conservative Pessimism. Derb, as his friends and fans on National Review Online know him, might seem to be the Dr. House of the conservative movement--acerbic, abrasive, sarcastic, but usually right; but a better comparison is to Albert Jay Nock. Seldom has doom and gloom been expressed with so much style and laugh-out-loud prose. In fact, Derb appears in places to offer a more plainspoken version of Nock's famous essay on the "remnant": "We pessimists, you see, are not only wiser than the smiley-face crowd; we are better people" (original emphasis). For all of his acerbic grumpiness, one can imagine Derb going down on the Titanic with a relentless stream of mordant wit about the whole thing. We Are Doomed is simply a great read, and will have an oddly cheering effect on some readers.

Conservatives of all types will find much to agree with, and much to be troubled by, in Derb's tour of the horizon. Most will be in emphatic agreement with his critique of the diversity mongers and money-grubbing educrats. "Education," he writes, READING page 49

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Glorious Misfits Jed Perl (The New Republic All Feed)

holds true even though each artist was intimately involved with the definition of a style. It Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:00:00 PM is the many ways in which these J o a q u í n T o r r e s - G a r c í a : artists fail to fit in that finally Constructing Abstraction with command our attention. Their Wood art confounds what many in the San Diego Museum of Art twentieth century came to Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective regard, at first for better and as Tate Modern time went on often for worse, as Anne Truitt: Perception and the impersonal forces of history.

Reflection I have always been uneasy with Hirshhorn Museum biological explanations of Formal values are personal human behavior. It is at the very values. What holds us in a least disquieting to find the painting or a sculpture is not art a c t i o n s o f h u m a n b e i n g s history but an individual’s explained by analogies with the history, some inner necessity or behavior of ants or bees or i m p e r a t i v e t h a t h a s b e e n wolves. And yet I cannot doubt expressed through the forms that some kind of herd instinct available at a particular time. o r g r o u p t h i n k g o e s a There are classicists and there c o n s i d e r a b l e w a y t o w a r d are expressionists in every age, explaining the persistent vision and the twentieth century was of art history, and especially of no exception. Joaquín Torres- modern art history, as a race García, Arshile Gorky, and from one style to another, from Anne Truitt--the subjects of Post-Impressionism to Fauvism t h r e e i m p o r t a n t m u s e u m and Cubism, and then onward to retrospectives in recent months-- F u t u r i s m , S u p r e m a t i s m , stamp the modern century with Neoplasticism, and Surrealism. t h e i r p a r t i c u l a r , e v e n Fitting Torres-García, Gorky, idiosyncratic views of the a n d T r u i t t i n t o s u c h modern condition. To speak of diagrammatic schemes is not T o r r e s - G a r c í a a s a easy. Those who take an interest Constructivist, or Gorky as an i n t h e i r w o r k o f t e n f o r m Abstract Expressionist, or Truitt opposing camps (which itself as a Minimalist, is not so much suggests a kind of herd instinct), inaccurate as it is grievously arguing for wildly different inadequate. The power of their ways of locking them into the art cannot be separated from the historical scheme. t r o u b l e s o m e n e s s o f t h e i r With Gorky, there is an old relationship to any label, any argument between historians fixed definition of style; and this who see him as a central

member of the founding Abstract Expressionist generation and historians who see him as a late-blooming Surrealist. With Torres-García, there are those who see him as essentially a member of the European avant-garde in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a friend of Mondrian, Van Doesburg, and Arp, while others see him as a South American artist, absorbed in indigenous themes, motifs, and attitudes. As for Truitt, the critical writing has located the blunt foursquare shapes of her painted wood constructions among the works of the Formalists and Minimalists of the 1960s, while the three volumes of journals that she published over the years, with their sharply etched reflections on the life of an artist who also happens to be a woman, made her at least for a time something of a figure in feminist circles--and thus, according to some observers, part of an entirely different historical continuum.

If none of the categories into which curators, critics, historians, dealers, and collectors have wanted to put these artists exactly fit, it is not because Torres-García, Gorky, and Truitt are outside of history.

In the end, each of them has a relationship with the history of his or her time that is entirely his or her own. It was perhaps in response to such confounding

questions that Torres-García, living in Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the great age of “isms,” argued that art ought to be understood as an “eternal present.” “Man believes,” he wrote, “that he evolves advancing toward intelligence. I believe the opposite. Man finds his place by moving toward consciousness.” While TorresGarcía’s metaphysics is not always easy to parse, he seems to suggest a movement that is not forward so much as inward, not historical so much as psychological or spiritual.

Modernity for Torres-García-and I suspect also for Gorky and Truitt--is not a matter of ideas or ideals, but of a realization of the self through a process of carpentering together a coherent vision. Mari Carmen Ramírez-who organized the TorresGarcía exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston--writes that for Torres-García “‘concrete’ was not the contrary of ‘abstract.’” To conceive an abstract art was to make one’s imaginings real. For TorresGarcía, Gorky, and Truitt, abstraction may finally be the least abstract thing in the world.

Joaquín Torres-García, who was born in 1874 in Montevideo and died there in 1949, was the son of a shopkeeper, originally from Catalonia, who also ran a carpentry business. TorresGarcía grew up in Uruguay and then near Barcelona, where the

family moved when he was young. The works in “Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood,” which is now at the San Diego Museum of Art, might be described as inscrutable products of the carpenter’s workshop: shop signs, game boards, weathervanes, toys, and implements designed not for use by an actual community but for the needs of a dream community, a parallel world of the artist’s invention.

For Torres-García, whose primary allegiance was to painting, these simply crafted works suggest the re-imagining, in three dimensions, of the twodimensional world of his canvases, in which houses, figures, animals, and everyday objects are arrayed in compartmentalized spaces that play on the rectilinear universe of his friend Mondrian. The Torres-García exhibition--which I saw at the Menil in Houston, where the austere installation was as beautiful as any I have ever encountered--reflects an urge not unusual among painters to embrace the literal possibilities suggested by their imaginary volumes. Degas, Picasso, and Matisse are some of the painters who found sculpture irresistible. Going through this show, it is easy to imagine that one is witnessing GLORIOUS page 50

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Data Dredging for Dollars, EPA Style (AEI.Org: Articles)

look like: For example, while air pollution associations with As a person who likes to stay respiratory and cardiovascular abreast of our ever-expanding disease have been studied most government in my areas of e x t e n s i v e l y , e v i d e n c e i s specialization (energy and beginning to emerge of possible environment), I periodically a i r p o l l u t i o n i m p a c t s o n survey the website of the U.S. additional health conditions E n v i r o n m e n t a l P r o t e c t i o n including diabetes, neurological Agency (EPA) to see what they disorders, and reproductive and are funding with my taxpayer d e v e l o p m e n t a l o u t c o m e s . dollars.

Studies also might evaluate Imagine my surprise when I factors that confer increased encountered a novel Request for sensitivity to air pollution Proposals at their National effects such as compromised C e n t e r f o r E n v i r o n m e n t a l health status, genetic variants, Research seeking to recruit s o c i a l a n d n e i g h b o r h o o d people at non-profit institutions conditions, higher exposure and to dredge through EPA's others. In addition, some databases in order to gin up new research groups have developed new things for the agency to innovative methods and models worry about and possibly to characterize exposure that regulate. might be applied to health Specifically, effects analyses in other cohorts T h e U . S . E n v i r o n m e n t a l to understand whether certain Protection Agency (EPA), as s o u r c e s o r a t m o s p h e r i c part of its Science to Achieve c o m p o n e n t s c o n t r i b u t e t o Results (STAR) program, is o b s e r v e d g e o g r a p h i c seeking applications proposing heterogeneity in health-exposure to use existing datasets from associations. health studies to analyze health Further, EPA has specific outcomes for which the link to outcomes in mind. This is not a i r p o l l u t i o n i s n o t w e l l random data dredging, which established, or to evaluate would be bad enough. This underlying heterogeneity in p r o g r a m s e e k s t o f u n d h e a l t h r e s p o n s e s a m o n g directional data dredging that s u b g r o u p s d e f i n e d b y looks only for relationships susceptibility or extent and/or suggesting that exposures to composition of exposure. various air pollutants causes And, ever helpful, EPA gives harm to human health. In EPA's some examples of what such words: data-dredging exercises might EPA is interested in research to Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:00:00 PM

explain heterogeneity in health responses to air pollutants.

Heterogeneity might be explained by: 1) Individual characteristics and other environmental/social conditions that increase the likelihood of an adverse health outcome among a subset of the population. [emphasis mine] To pay for this innovative regulatory fishing expedition, EPA proposes to give away $1.4 million dollars in portions up to $300,000, for projects that could last up to three years.

Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to ensure that people's health is protected from dangerous air pollutants (in fact, I'd argue that it's a very legitimate function of government), but there is something wrong with organizing taxpayer funded fishing expeditions to probe for new regulatory potential by seeking out obscure relationships in large databases.

And those problems are intrinsic to data dredging, an frequently abused form of data mining.

Data dredging, according to Wikipedia, is "the inappropriate (sometimes deliberately so) use of data mining to uncover misleading relationships in data.

These relationships may be valid within the test set but have no statistical significance in the wider population." Wikipedia gives a particularly relevant example: "Suppose that

observers note that a particular town appears to be a cancer cluster, but lack a firm hypothesis of why this is so.

However, they have access to a large amount of demographic data about the town and surrounding area, containing measurements for the area of hundreds or thousands of different variables, mostly uncorrelated. Even if all these variables are independent of the cancer incidence rate, it is highly likely that at least one variable will be significantly correlated with the cancer rate across the area."

Or, as the Congressional Research Office explains (in the context of fishing for terrorists in air-travel databases): Although data mining can help reveal patterns and relationships, it does not tell the user the value or significance of these patterns. These types of determinations must be made by the user. Similarly, the validity of the patterns discovered is dependent on how they compare to "real world" circumstances.

For example, to assess the validity of a data mining application designed to identify potential terrorist suspects in a large pool of individuals, the user may test the model using data that includes information about known terrorists.

However, while possibly reaffirming a particular profile, it does not necessarily mean that

the application will identify a suspect whose behavior significantly deviates from the original model.

Another limitation of data mining is that while it can identify connections between behaviors and/or variables, it does not necessarily identify a causal relationship. For example, an application may identify that a pattern of behavior, such as the propensity to purchase airline tickets just shortly before the flight is scheduled to depart, is related to characteristics such as income, level of education, and Internet use. However, that does not necessarily indicate that the ticket purchasing behavior is caused by one or more of these variables. In fact, the individual's behavior could be affected by some additional variable(s) such as occupation (the need to make trips on short notice), family status (a sick relative needing care), or a hobby (taking advantage of last minute discounts to visit new destinations).

In other words, with data dredging, it really is a situation of "Seek and ye shall find."

It is one thing for scientists to identify sick populations, and to investigate what it is that might be making them sick. It is another thing entirely to sift through large data bases in order DATA page 48

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The Essence of Anarchy Sean Wilentz (The New Republic - All Feed)

wound in the name of resisting federal legislation on issues ranging from gun control to Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:00:00 PM health care reform. Proclaiming H i s t o r i c a l a m n e s i a i s a s themselves heralds of liberty dangerously disorienting for a and freedom, the new nullifiers nation as for an individual. So it would have us repudiate the is with the current wave of s a c r i f i c e s o f A m e r i c a n enthusiasm for “states’ rights,” h i s t o r y — a n d s u b v e r t t h e “ i n t e r p o s i t i o n , ” a n d constitutional pillars of “nullification”—the claim that A m e r i c a n n a t i o n h o o d . state legislatures or special state The origins of nullification date conventions or referendums back to the stormy early decades have the legitimate power to of the republic. In 1798, a declare federal laws null and c o n s e r v a t i v e F e d e r a l i s t void within their own state Congress, fearing the rise of a borders. The idea was broached political opposition headed by most vociferously in defense of Thomas Jefferson, passed the the slave South by John C. A l i e n a n d S e d i t i o n A c t s Calhoun in the 1820s and 1830s, outlawing criticism of the extended by the Confederate federal government. Coming secessionists in the 1850s and before the Supreme Court had 1860s, then forcefully reclaimed assumed powers of judicial by militant segregationists in the review, the laws, signed by 1950s and 1960s. Each time it President John Adams, were reared its head, it was crushed as s t e p s t o w a r d e r a d i c a t i n g a n a s s a u l t o n d e m o c r a t i c political dissent. In a panic, government and the nation Jefferson and his ally James itself—in Abraham Lincoln’s M a d i s o n w r o t e s e t s o f words, “the essence of anarchy.” resolutions duly passed by the The issue has been decided time legislatures of Virginia and and again—not least by the Kentucky, which called upon deaths of more than 618,000 the state governments to resist Americans on Civil War and, as Madison put it, battlefields. Yet there are those “interpose” themselves between who now seek to reopen this the federal government and the

citizenry. But the other state legislatures either ignored or repudiated the resolutions as affronts to the Constitution, and the crisis was ended by the democratic means of an election when Jefferson won the presidency two years later—the wholly peaceable and constitutional “revolution of 1800.”

The concept was revived by John C. Calhoun, who expanded it into a theory of nullification and Southern states’ rights in 1828. The specific issue at stake was a protective tariff that Southerners believed unfair to their section, but behind it lay a growing fear that the federal government might interfere with the institution of slavery.

Calhoun declared that as “irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty,” individual states had the right to nullify laws they deemed unconstitutional. He asserted further that should the federal government try to suppress nullification, individual states had the right to secede from the Union. In 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed a formal ordinance nullifying the tariff. But President Andrew

Jackson proclaimed nullification pernicious nonsense. The nation, Jackson proclaimed, was not created by sovereign state governments—then, as now, a basic misunderstanding propagated by pro-nullifiers.

Ratified in order “to form a more perfect union,” the Constitution was a new framework for a nation that already existed under the Articles of Confederation. “The Constitution of the United States,” Jackson declared, created “a government, not a league.”

Although state governments had certain powers reserved to them, these did not include voiding laws duly enacted by the people’s representatives in Congress and the president.

Calhoun and South Carolina were isolated by Jackson’s firm stand. The aging James Madison sided with the president, deploring “the strange doctrines and misconceptions” of the South Carolinians, charging that they were a perversion of the Virginia Resolutions, and insisting that the “Constitution & laws of the U. S. should be the supreme law of the Land.”

(Madison also wrote of

One Week Later, Americans Divided on Healthcare (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:00:00 AM

[ fivefilters.org: unable to

retrieve full-text content] Americans are once again about evenly divided on the healthcare reform bill, with 47% saying it

is a good thing the bill passed and 50% a bad thing. This marks a change from the uptick in support Gallup found

immediately after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill.

nullification that “[n]o man’s creed was more opposed to such an inversion of the Repubn. order of things” than Thomas Jefferson’s.) Other southern states refused to join in the nullification movement, and the Congress approved a compromise tariff bill.

Calhoun’s radical ideas about states’ rights resurfaced during the sectional crisis over slavery in the 1850s. The Civil War began as a struggle over democracy and American government, focused on a key question: could the slave power in individual states, dissatisfied with the outcome of a presidential election, declare that election null and void and secede from the Union? Lincoln, like Jackson before him, declared such extreme views of state sovereignty a direct attack on democratic republican government.

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DATA continued from page 46

to come up with correlations that may have no causal relationship, but that might, contributors@theatlantic.com influence future probabilities. distorting public perception.

Democratic Party'a primary nonetheless, cause EPA to spend (Marc Ambinder) (Politics :: On this reason alone, we should 2. It's ungrounded to assume system has been amended over s c a r c e t a x p a y e r m o n e y The Atlantic) be wary of assuming that the that health care will be the Big the years to allow insurgents to r e s e a r c h i n g t h e p o t e n t i a l f o r m e r M a s s a c h u s e t t s I s s u e a m o n g R e p u b l i c a n do well; the GOP 's primaries linkage, or worse, to endlessly Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:52:17 PM In politics, it's very easy to governor's political over is over. primary voters two years from r e m a i n h i e r a r c h i c a l a n d dredge through databases in predict the future. Doing it Here are four more: now. If it's not the biggest issue, controlled by long-standing and search of ever lower, ever more accurately is near impossible. 1. There are two reasons why or the second biggest issue, then e n t r e n c h e d i n t e r e s t s . I f obscure health impacts to justify T h e e n t i r e p o l i t i c a l the success of Romneycare is i t ' s n o t r e a l l y R o m n e y ' s Romney's the candidate of the expanded regulation and EPA establishment suffers from disputed. First, it's Romney's problem. It's true that the war in hierarchy, then he'll get the intrusion into the economy. This anchor-bias illness: we place fault: he and the legislature Iraq influenced the way the b e t t e r o f t h e s y s t e m i c is one EPA funding proposal way too much importance on the decided to punt on the stronger Democratic primary began, but advantages. Tea partiers haven't that should be scrapped. If EPA last major event in a series when cost-controlling measures at the any number of factors having had much success, as of yet, in has more money than it knows trying to figure out whether it t i m e o f t h e b i l l ' s nothing to do with the war winning elections and building what to do with, there's always will bear on the future. Health implementation. Second, the influenced how it ended. sustaining institutions. Don't the crazy idea of giving it back reform that looks like Mitt economy collapsed, leaving the 3. It's probably true that assume they'll control the to the taxpayer.

R o m n e y ' s v e r s i o n i n state scrambling for the funds it Republican candidates will Republican nominating process, Kenneth P. Green is a resident Massachusetts passes Congress? assumed it would have. But on stumble over themselves trying even if it seems as if they'll scholar at AEI. P h o t o C r e d i t : Romney's political career is over t h e d e l i v e r a b l e s : g e t t i n g t o t o u t t h e i r e c o n o m i c dominate the tone today. because Republicans are united c o v e r a g e t o m o r e p e o p l e , libertarian credentials on the 4. Romney is a serious, sober H y p e r g u r l / F l i c k r / C r e a t i v e in opposition to that health care i n c r e a s i n g c h o i c e a n d assumption that the Tea Party guy. Just read his book. It's half C o m m o n s legislation. That's anchor bias -- competition, and keeping up a movement represents or is of a cliche campaign book, and Five Filters featured article: the same type of bias that level of care: the Massachusetts one mind with the Republican half a really learned and well- Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: consigned the Democratic system is doing pretty well. If primary electorate. We don't thought out disquisition on the PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, majority to history the day after Obamacare remains unpopular, have enough data to know problems facing American Term Extraction.

S c o t t B r o w n w o n T e d and the economic recovery w h e t h e r t h e m o v e m e n t today. If the fundamental divide K e n n e d y ' s S e n a t e s e a t i n helps Massachusetts fix its represents a re-engagement of in the party is between the Massachusetts -- the same type budget issues, Romneycare d o r m a n t b u t p r e - e x i s t i n g lambs being led to slaughter of cognitive error that Barney might stand out as an undeniable conservative voters, or whether wing -- the bleating, noisy wing Frank made on the night of success: a state chose the route their adherents are additive -- and the wing that seeks a Brown's victory when he said, that best fit its profile and it elements to the GOP. We have s o l u t i o n s - o r i e n t e d l e a d e r , well, maybe we ought to slow worked. It's harder for Romney no way of knowing how the Ron Romney has a case to make. down again. Human beings are to create a contrast today Paul-wing of the right (the broad very bad at figuring out how because the basic outlines of right) will interact with the older long an effect will last, and very Obamacare look just like basic Tea Partiers, with whom they bad at predicting how events outline of Romneycare, and s h a r e e c o n o m i c b u t n o t they cannot anticipate will p a r t i s a n a l l e g i a n c e s a r e necessarily cultural values. The

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"is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist logrolling," for which there is little or no chance of serious reform. More problematic is his chapter on culture and human nature, where he dilates on recent findings on genetic and biological determinism that undermine a central tenet of conservatism, that culture shapes human character. He may well be right or partly right about this, and he is certainly right that "culturism" (as he calls it) is the premise for leftist social engineering. He recognizes that the implications of his speculations in this area would require "a new conservatism."

Derb also thinks the U.S. is fated to follow the example of Europe by becoming even more secular: "America's religious exceptionalism is doomed, and American conservatism with it."

He is against "the damn fool Iraq war" (though he initially supported it as a punitive raid, akin to gunboat diplomacy), along with the "conservative utopianism" that thinks we can

implant democracy in the Arab world. It is the foreign policy cousin, he argues, of "compassionate conservatism" at home. He refreshingly omits the usual animadversions against the dreaded neocons, but wishes the George W. Bush who spoke against "nation-building" in the 2000 campaign had stuck to this position.

In advocating that conservatives embrace "the audacity of hopelessness," Derbyshire does not offer political prescriptions or strategies for the conservative movement. To the contrary, he says near the end, "I fully expect to pass the rest of my life as an American without ever seeing any major conservative legislation passed by Congress, or any major executive action drawn from conservative principles, or any Supreme Court ruling that will do more than slow the advance of state power by a percentage point or two." In his last chapter he attempts to conform to convention by offering some hope, though this might be

subtle parody on his part (note the juxtaposition of Samuel Beckett's stage play Happy Days with the television sitcom Happy Days). His "hope" is pretty forlorn and antipolitical: through pessimism "we can still transmit something of value to the future, while seeking for private contentment in the present while the earth-pile rises."

Here one arrives at the odd, unintended convergence between Tanenhaus and Derbyshire. Tanenhaus thinks the conservative movement would be better off if it ceased to think of itself as the selfconscious political movement it has been since the 1950s.

Implicitly Derbyshire's privatization of conservatism would have us do the same thing. While the prospects for conservative "revanchism" may still seem daunting in the Age of Obama, it is nonetheless surprising that Derbyshire never raises the obvious question: without the conservative movement of the past 50 years, how much worse would things

be? The revival of conservatism, drawing upon the richness of American exceptionalism, probably explains most of the political variance between the United States and Europe in the postwar era--explains, in particular, why America has refused to make peace with the modern welfare state, why we remain a military superpower, and why Americans remain a religious people. With Obama faltering and a resurgence of conservative energy evident, even Derb might want to don his armor, draw his sword, and enter the fray once more.

Steven F. Hayward is the F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at AEI. P h o t o C r e d i t : iStockphoto/Anant Dummai Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Ousted 'American Idol' Paige Miles: I'm Really Proud of Myself (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:02:00 AM

Paige Miles was voted off "American Idol" last week possibly due to throat problems, but tells ET that she's grateful to have been one of the top 12 remaining contestants.

"I'm really proud of myself," she says. Miles calls the experience an "incredible journey" and "a journey that I never would've expected."

She says of her time on the FOX show, "The greatest part of 'American Idol' has definitely been performing on stage. ...

There's nothing like it."

'United States of Tara' - 'Trouble Junction' Recap Allison Waldman (TV Squad)

her shattered persona was not the result of what happened at school when she was a teenager, (S02E02) There's nothing united the reality emerging is that about Tara's states right now. something is askew in her After all the time away in psyche that cannot be fixed... ready to explode. More on that therapy and the realization that The lid on the pot is shaking and and Marshall's gay-size shorts Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:28:00 AM

after the jump.

Permalink| Email this| | Continue reading'United States C o m m e n t s of Tara' - 'Trouble Junction' Recap Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Episode Reviews, Emmys, Reality-Free

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GLORIOUS continued from page 45

the birth of sculpture, as TorresGarcía moves between the most rudimentary incision of a groove in a piece of wood, the cutting of planks into shapes, the nailing of shapes on planks to create shallow reliefs, and the development of freestanding constructions.

In everything Torres-García did I feel the force of a sensibility so strong that it becomes a structural imperative. He worked with Gaudí on drawings for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona in the first decade of the twentieth century. He was a significant figure in the drive toward a new Mediterranean

neoclassicism, known in Catalonia as Noucentisme, painting murals of robed muses and muscled workers and publishing aesthetic theory as well. These works are already stamped with the feeling for earthy colors and somber contours that he brings to his abstraction in the 1930s and to a later series of portraits of artist heroes--Goya, Raphael, Titian-in which he milked caricature for psychological truth. He lived briefly in New York in 1920 and 1921, getting to know Duchamp and many members of the American avant-garde. In Paris he was swept up in the

experiments of Mondrian and Van Doesburg. And in his later years, in Montevideo, he became an immensely significant force for the acceptance of abstract art in South America, with an influence that was felt long after his death.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Google May Solve Android Fragmentation Problems with Next Release [Rumors] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:00:00 AM

Four different versions of Android are running on smartphones right now, leaving some hot new applications available only for top-tier phones, and potential buyers wondering whether their devices will seem obsolete in less than a year. Google must feel this pain because, according to Engadget, they're working to make Android phones more updatefriendly with their next two

platform releases, dubbed "Froyo" and "Gingerbread." By detaching Google's own apps—Gmail, the Camera and photo Gallery, Googles, etc.—from the main Android operating system, Google can

make the new features that users want available in the Market as updates, rather than waiting on HTC, Motorola, T-Mobile, AT&T, and various stars and signs to all align and get moving. Doing so would answer our main gripe with Android, and would certainly make those willing to shell out $530 for a Google-provided phone feel a bit more secure in their purchase. [ Engadget] More »

AT&T's 24Mbps U-verse broadband hits 22 new states, 120 new markets Tim Stevens (Engadget) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:36:00 AM

Maybe you're sick of waiting for FiOS, maybe Time Warner or Comcast have rubbed you the wrong way, or maybe you just really want in on that mobile DVR action AT&T announced last week. Whatever the reason, if you're interested in U-verse the Max Turbo broadband service now available in 120 new markets across 22 states.

That entails maximum download speeds of 24Mbps with 3Mbps upstream -- less than half the maximum speed offered by Verizon or most cable companies, but its cost of $65 per month actually makes it quite competitive against midtier broadband plans. What

AT&T hasn't said is exactly which new states and markets can now join in the fun, but there's an availability checker on the site that will quickly tell you the good or bad news.

AT&T's 24Mbps U-verse broadband hits 22 new states, 120 new markets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Cnet| AT&T| Email this| Comments

Bounty Hunter Stars Temporarily Fazed When Asked Their Favorite Part of the Script [Open Caption] Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:26:36 AM

[ That is indeed a solemn looking Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler at that movie's premiere in Berlin; image via

Splash] More »

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Boom! Tweets & Maps Swarm to Pinpoint a Mysterious Explosion Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:30:08 PM

What would you do if you heard a giant boom and you didn't know where it came from? If you're like thousands of people in Portland, Oregon, you might hit Twitter and Google Maps to participate in the city-wide exploration of a slightly frightening mystery.

Last night at about 8 p.m., people in a big part of the city felt their windows shake and no one could tell them what caused it.

Was it a sonic boom? An angry deity? Even the mayor himself tweeted this morning that he was looking into the sound. In the meantime, thousands of people were using the hashtag#pdxboom and adding themselves to a hastily configured Google Map showing where they lived and how loud the boom had been there. In just a few hours, a pattern emerged, with reports clustering around one city park.

This morning the police found a detonated pipe bomb there and cited the Google Map in their announcement.

Sponsor Pausing the Stream Reid Beels is a designer, geodeveloper and one of the community organizers of Portland's forthcoming conference Open Source Bridge("The conference for open source citizens").

Beels says he was sitting in a restaurant in southeast Portland when he heard the boom, and saw tweets streaming in about it within minutes. He searched Twitter for "boom" and "explosion," limiting the results by location. Within five minutes, he says, a hashtag had emerged: #pdxboom.

What was the #pdxboom, people wanted to know? Some people said it sounded like thunder. Lots of people said it sounded like an empty trash Dumpster crashing on the ground. They mentioned their locations in their Tweets and Beels quickly grew frustrated that all this data was just streaming into the ether, lost from analysis.

So he threw up a Google Map with instructions to put a pin in your location and describe how the boom sounded to you.

Within an hour 100 people had

how loud the boom had sounded to them.

It became clear that the boom originated near the Sellwood Bridge; a big cluster of red markers surrounded the area, especially to the east.

Thousands of people are still placed pins on the map. Beels streaming in to look at the map; and developer Audrey Eschright at the end of the day it's now came up with a color coded approaching 70,000 views, even system to describe the intensity if the mystery, if not the crime, o f t h e s o u n d , a n d b e g a n is solved. retroactively coloring in pins Some people thought it was a based on any comments people precursor Earthquake Boom. (I left. woke up convinced my house Then they found out that was in an earthquake.) But the Google Maps will only display Portland police went to a park in the 200 most recent pins placed the area most filled with red in a public map. Beels' friend flags on the map and found a Aaron Parecki wrote a script to large detonated pipe bomb. A download the map's data every Portland police spokesperson fifteen minutes. That came in said the maps and tweets were handy when a few hours later very helpful. someone vandalized the map by A topographic view of the map dragging a large number of made some inclined to believe markers outside the town. It was that cliffs across the river and trivial to roll back to the last low-hanging clouds combined to valid data. make the sound travel as far The local TV news and the across the city and in the newspaper ran stories about the direction that it did. That Was a b o o m , a n d p o i n t e d t h e i r Practice Run audiences to the Google Map. Beels says two big lessons Thousands of people visited it, came out of the experience for and just under 1,000 added a pin him. First, the tools they used marking where they where and were easy and fast, but they

were also quite limited. Google Maps in particular was capable of multi-user collaboration but did poorly when it came to displaying a large amount of data. As Eschright wrote after the action, "It's not the best platform for a couple hundred people, many without prior experience editing maps, to be using all at once."

Inspired by campaigns like CrisisCampPDX and the CrisisWiki, Beels says the community is interested in setting up an installation of open -source, crisis support software Ushahidi on standby in case a real crisis has to be dealt with.

Beels says he's inspired not just by what was done in this situation, but by what it revealed about the future.

"The community of people who will search for things online and go out of their way to try to figure out what's going on," he says, "is larger than you might think."

Marshall Kirkpatrick is leading a webinar for Poynter's News University on Thursday about how location services are changing the news. Discuss

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David Siegel: From Killer Web Sites to Semantic Web Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:33:43 AM

One of the first web design books I bought was Creating Killer Web Sites, a 90s classic

by David Siegel. That book was known for pushing visual style over HTML standards. It also encouraged the use of HTML hacks, for example using tables to create layouts. Siegel's techniques were basically workarounds, but they just worked in an era when building web pages was painful due to browser incompatibilities.

In Siegel's latest book, Pull, he tackles the Semantic Web. Once again, Siegel plays loosely with existing web standards.

Sponsor Siegel's definition of 'Semantic Web' is much broader than that of many technologists. So, just as many Web standards advocates derided Siegel's version of web design back in the 90s, will they also cry foul of his version of the Semantic Web? Pull is being positioned as a business guide to the emerging Semantic Web. It has similarities to Creating Killer

Web Sites, which caught the wave of an emerging big trend of the mid-90s (web site design) and became a bestseller. Siegel is attempting to catch a second big online wave, with the Semantic Web in 2010.

Siegel explains the title in the introduction: "This book describes the pull era, where customers pull everything to them on demand products, services, information, knowledge, and advice. Much of the foundation for pulling is called the semantic web, a new way of packaging information to make it much more useful and reusable. Over the next ten to twenty years, it will change business from a lead-push model to a pull-follow model of interacting with customers."

It's hard to argue against the vision that the book outlines.

However for many Semantic Web proponents, the foundational technologies are Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). These standards allow web publishers to encode meaning - semantics - into their sites.

how we do business. Frankly, the use of the term 'Semantic Web' in this book feels forced.

Even so, I think it's a very useful book and offers detailed scenarios of how structured data will improve business. For example, chapter 4 is about retailers and outlines the benefits of RFID tags in retail including describing a visit Siegel made to forward-thinking German retailer Metro Group.

Overall Pull is a solid and wellresearched book. It's a good introduction for business people to structured data and the David Siegel's definition of Semantic Web. Semantic Web is far broader. My one issue with the book is On the book's accompanying that Siegel's appropriation of the website, The Power of Pull, term 'Semantic Web' leaves me there is a " Semantic Web Acid feeling a little uneasy. On the Test." It defines a semantic web home page of his personal business as one that has an website is a blog post (entitled "unambiguous" structure for its 'Why I Should be Apple's Next data. The book states that "some CEO'), in which Siegel claims technologists feel that semantic that he "started talking about the web data must be expressed Semantic Web in 1998, before using a language called RDF," Tim Berners-Lee coined the but Siegel disagrees. Instead, he term." Whether that's true or b e l i e v e s t h a t " s i m p l e , not, it does beg the question: is unambiguous formats are part of S i e g e l ' s d e f i n i t i o n o f t h e Semantic Web the same as Tim the semantic web."

The book is ultimately about Berners-Lee's? Discuss how structured data will change

Dell is now taking orders for powerhouse Precision M4500 15.6inch notebook Matt Burns (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:00:12 AM

The Dell Precision M450 0 is serious. Seriously powerful and expensive that is with the Core i7-920XM Extreme CPU and an Nvidia Quadro FX 1800m GPU along with a max of 16GB of RAM and dual SSD hard drives.

But even the base $1,549 model still offers enough power to get most any task done with CPU cycles to spare.

But it’s up to you (and your company’s accounting department) whether you get the extreme power or an affordable workhorse. Either way, Dell is now taking orders and will start shipping out M4500’s on April 20, 2010.

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FourSquare for the Enterprise: Give it 2 Years, Max Alex Williams (ReadWriteWeb)

enterprise by 2012. For reference, Spigit is an idea management platform. It is referenced by Dennis Howlett">Dennis Howlett in the comments of Mark Fidelman's CloudAve post as a company that could potentially enable this capability."If i've understood you correctly what you are suggesting sounds fine in theory but i'd prefer solutions like Spigit which do a very good job of surfacing peer reviewed ideas but using algorithms that avoid the inevitable gaming problem."

Using Carpenter's theory, here are some additional possibilities we can think of:

Admin is becoming a basic requirement for cloud-based, collaborative applications that Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:52:31 PM serve the enterprise. We could In the past few weeks we've name everyone here but just seen more references to look at the latest crop of new FourSquare as a potential arrivals. Both Novell's Pulse and enterprise tool. The discussion Status.net make this requirement represents an emerging law of standard in its microblogging Enterprise 2.0 Inevitably, a applications. consumer trend in the social How location based networks technology space will start to affects the way we view seep into the business world. employees will become one of Hutch Carpenter of Spigit says environments will provide live the most important issues in this it is a two-year lag before the updates for managers to get an brave, new world. enterprise adopts a social immediate view of their team Enterprise data, bound together computing trend. He writes that with updates that are filtered to by data analysis, may become wikis emerged in 2002 as a different communities based on such a tightly woven fabric that consumer tool and by 2004 recommendations can be made the employee's work role. came into the enterprise. Social • Foursquare and Gowalla will at each check-in. Suggestions networking emerged in 2006 • IT Admins may have control be important for adoption but about work habits may become and by 2008 had made its way over who is able to post to their the first dominant player will part of the network. How we i n t o a b u s i n e s s c o n t e x t . location and in what context. probably be a new company or a view our basic civil liberties will Microblogging hit in 2007 and • Location-based systems will company with an understanding be challenged. But in the end, by 2009 it became a central part be required for some jobs. of the importance of location- we'll keep looking out two of the Enteprise 2.0 suite.

Permissions will be controlled based systems. years, waiting for the next Sponsor by a business manager or IT consumer wave while managing And so as the social concept of administrator.

These outcomes do seem the reality of working in a l o c a t i o n b a s e d n e t w o r k s • A new generation of location- p l a u s i b l e . I n t h e c u r r e n t transparent universe. Discuss emerges in 2010, Carpenter's bet based applications will integrate generation of Enterprise 2.0 is that we will see location with microblogging platforms. applications, we see the based networks arrive into the • Web-oriented dashboard emergence of similar trends. IT

Street Chic: New York ELLE.com (ELLE Fashion Blogs) Submitted at 3/30/2010 4:00:00 AM

A cropped top offsets

voluminous pants.

Photo: Kelly Stuart Think you are Street Chic? Email us your photo and you could appear in ELLE.com's

Follow ELLE on Twitter.

Become our Facebook fan!

Street Chic Daily.

'Nurse Jackie' - 'Twitter' Recap Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:02:00 AM

(S02E02) When it comes to Jackie and her reliance on meds, what came first -- the stress or the drugs? You have to wonder.

For those who think that Jackie is like House, there's one difference which is House had a serious injury that was the gateway to his Vicodin addiction. Jackie did allude to back problems last season, but now she just swipes pills and pops them like they're a crutch.

Anyway, this thought occurred as Jackie continues to be a mass of contradictions, especially to herself. This week was no different. More on that and the smoke alarms after the jump.

Continue reading'Nurse Jackie' - 'Twitter' Recap Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Nurse Jackie Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Do You Like Us Or Like Like Us? "Become A Fan" Changing To "Like" On Facebook

WD intros standardheight 2.5-inch 750GB Scorpio Blue HDD

Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb)

Darren Murph (Engadget)

Submitted at 3/30/2010 8:28:11 AM

In a memo to its advertisers, Facebook quietly announced that it would change the phrase "Become A Fan" to "Like" in what, at times, seems like an ongoing effort to confuse and enrage its users. "Like" has had a very specific, while malleable, usage for Facebook users and changing it to gear towards advertisers and Fan Page subscriptions is deceptive.

Not only does the move seem like a confusing one for users, but it opens up their actions to the public, as becoming a fan of something is completely public to all who view your profile.

Sponsor While the memo says that "users will understand the distinction through explicit social context, messaging and aesthetic differences", we expect that the majority of users will only find out the difference between liking now and liking then when they "Like" something that suddenly

Facebook Page.

Changing what Facebook has identified as a "lighter-weight action" into an action that bombards their feed with stories deeper implications is at the core of what we find deceptive and advertisements.

The memo offers an example of here. Was there anything wrong how an ad for a page will look with the language of "Become A Fan"? with the "language change".

According to an article in Clikz With that language, it was clear on the change, the memo also that there was a separation from points out that "Facebook users a n y t i m e I m i g h t " L i k e " have been clicking the current s o m e t h i n g . I w o u l d b e 'Like' feature nearly twice as connected to that Page and often as the 'Become A Fan' would receive updates in my button". The reason, it seems to News Feed. It would show up, us, is apparent - clicking "Like" p u b l i c l y , t o a n y o n e a n d was a quick and easy way to everyone that viewed my page convey approval, support or on the Internet, as a result of the other simple sentiment, not a privacy changes to the site last way to commit to being a fan December.

Were users clicking on and subscribing to news updates "Become A Fan" less for a in their News Feed for reason?

Likely so - they didn't perpetuity."Like" offers a lightweight, consistent way for users want to subscribe to that to connect with the things they particular content in their news are passionate about. This feed and, if they understood the l i g h t e r - w e i g h t a c t i o n f o r privacy implications, because c o n n e c t i o n t o a P a g e o n they didn't want to broadcast to Facebook means that users will the world what they saw as be making more connections private thoughts and opinions. across the site, including your Discuss

Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:21:00 AM

Western Digital already shipped the industry's first 2.5inch 1TB hard drive last summer, but unfortunately for most, it couldn't be used as a drop-in solution for upgrading one's laptop drive. The reason?

It relies on an unorthodox 12.5mm height form factor, while the vast majority of laptops only support 9.5mm height drives. Now, the outfit has pushed out a 750GB Scorpio Blue, a 2.5-incher that does indeed utilize the standard height form factor, and while this here unit includes Advanced Format and WhisperDrive, the 5,400RPM spindle speed is admittedly disappointing. It's

tough to argue with the $149 price, though, and it's available now if you've been hankering for more space within your mobile workhorse.

WD intros standard-height 2.5inch 750GB Scorpio Blue HDD originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Western Digital| Email this| Comments

Amazon Kindle Hits China's Gray Market (PC World via Yahoo! News) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers)

24 seconds ago 2010-0330T07:26:53-07:00 Five Filters featured article: Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:10:11 PM Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Shawn buzzed up: Obama: Tea PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Party features 'core group' Term Extraction. against him (AP)

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Western Digital is now shipping the Scorpio Blue 750GB 2.5inch hard drive directly to our hearts Matt Burns (CrunchGear)

capacity in a standard-height 2.5 -inch notebook hard drive — the industry’s highest capacity to Western Digital here, date in this form factor.

While other companies are just D e s i g n e d f o r m a i n s t r e a m announcing their large 2.5-inch notebook computers, the WD drives, we’ve started shipping Scorpio® Blue™ 750 GB hard ours and wanted to thank drives utilize WD’s leading 375 everyone involved with the GB-per-platter areal density and industry-leading Scorpio Blue Advanced Format technology.

750GB 2.5-inch hard drive: the An ideal solution for notebook engineers for crafting the drive, computers and other portable the bean counters for pricing it devices whose users require w e l l a t $ 1 4 9 , b u t m o s t extreme capacities in a small importantly, you, the consumer. package, extended battery life It was you that pushed us to and cool, reliable operation, the stuff even more storage capacity WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB hard in the small 2.5-inch form factor drive is also one of the quietest and demanded a quiet and 2.5-inch drives on the market. battery-efficient drive. Thank “WD continues to lead the you. market with capacity points that WD(R) Leads in 2.5-Inch Areal enable consumers and business Density With New 750 GB professionals to store large Notebook Hard Drives quantities of data and rich media WD Mobile Hard Drives with content,” said Jim Morris, WD’s Advanced Format Technology s e n i o r v i c e p r e s i d e n t a n d Offer Highest Capacity For general manager of Storage M a i n s t r e a m N o t e b o o k Products. “Our leading power Computers efficiency, achieved without LAKE FOREST, Calif., March compromise to performance, is 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — another example of the added WD® (NYSE: WDC) today features and value that our a n n o u n c e d t h a t i t i s n o w customers have come to expect shipping 750 GB of storage from WD.” Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:30:39 AM

gigabits per second (Gb/s) SATA interface speed yields performance fit for demanding mobile applications.

Tested for compatibility – WD performs extensive tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in its FIT Lab™ and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.

Price and Availability WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB (model WD7500BPVT) hard drives are shipping now through select distributors and resellers.

Features of the WD Scorpio power consumption.

Blue include: ShockGuard™ – Leading-edge M a n u f a c t u r e r ’ s S u g g e s t e d Advanced Format technology – ShockGuard technology protects Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Technology being pioneered by the drive mechanics and platter Scorpio Blue 750 is $149.00 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard WD and adopted by other drive surfaces from shocks. manufacturers to increase media S e c u r e P a r k ™ – W D ’ s drives are covered by a threef o r m a t e f f i c i e n c i e s , t h u s SecurePark technology parks the year limited warranty. More enabling larger drive capacities. recording heads off the disk information about WD Scorpio W h i s p e r D r i v e ™ – W D ’ s surface during spin up, spin Blue mobile hard drives may be e x c l u s i v e W h i s p e r D r i v e down, and when the drive is off. found on the company’s Web i t e technology combines state-of- This ensures the recording head s the-art seeking algorithms to never touches the disk surface athttp://www.wdc.com/en/produ yield one of the quietest 2.5- resulting in improved long term cts/Products.asp?DriveID=815. inch hard drives on the market. reliability due to less head wear, These algorithms also optimize and improved non-operational the way a drive seeks for data, shock tolerance. which significantly improves Fast and efficient – Ultra-fast 3

Americans Remain Concerned About Costs of Healthcare Bill (All Gallup Headlines) Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:00:00 PM

[ fivefilters.org: unable to

retrieve full-text content] A majority of Americans say healthcare costs in the U.S. and the federal budget deficit will

get worse as a result of the and their families will get newly passed healthcare bill. worse.

Half of Americans believe that healthcare costs for themselves

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UK braces itself for Best Buy invasion this spring Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:30:33 AM

Best Buy’s move to the UK has been known for a little while now, but, to quote Jim Ross, business has just picked up.

Other stores in the UK are planning how to best confront the store when it makes its debut this spring. (The first one opens in May.) Luckily for the local guys, Best Buy doesn’t exactly have the best reputation out there. Fair or not, that’s the way things are.

Right, so Best Buy will (at first) open four big stores all over the UK: one in Essex; in Southampton; near Birmingham; and near Liverpool. Finally, Fernando Torres will know what it’s like to have the Geek Squad “ optimize” his laptop.

That’s the initial plan. Should the stores end up being a hit, Best Buy would be willing to

open more stores in more locations. Imagine: that big yellow logo somewhere on Oxford Street.

Best Buy will try to differentiate itself from other UK stores by focusing on a few things. One, its sales staff won’t work on commission, so that should help eliminate the scourge of the Pushy Employee.

Two, Best Buy will offer to set up your purchase (computer, speaker system, etc.) the day you walk out the door. Three, the Geek Squad will be available 24 hours per day.

It’s 3am, and your Internet doesn’t work? Don’t worry, the Geek Squad will plug in the modem that you didn’t notice your cat knocked over.

Best Buy will be going up against the likes of Currys, a local electronics store. In response to the Best Buy invasion, Currys will open 33 brand new “megastores” in the UK. Some of these stores will be as large as a football pitch—that means “soccer field,” my fellow Americans.

Big, yes.

I sorta feel talking about retail and customer service is not exactly my strength—or, really, anyone who knows how to order something from Newegg or Amazon. People like us don’t need the Geek Squad to set up our laptop, or to string speaker across our living room. We can do all of this (and more!) completely on our own, and we enjoy doing so. So the value of all this customer service from the likes of Best Buy (or otherwise for that matter) is sorta lost on us. Best Buy can say, “We’re emphasizing customer service!” and we’re like, “Whatever, dude, you violated my civil rights. I can install Firefox on my own, thank you very much.”

Good luck to all parties involved, though. Nothing wrong with trying to make a few dollars, or quid in this case.

'Chuck' - 'Chuck Versus the American Hero' Recap Brad Trechak (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:28:00 AM

(S03E12) Tonight we got to see the progression of Chuck's character. Would first-season Chuck have tried to take down an enemy stronghold (armed, no less) while rescuing the man

who was the romantic interest of the woman he loved? Well, probably, but not with such confidence.

Since he got the Intersect 2.0, it seems like every other time Chuck has flashed has been to learn a form of self-defense. He doesn't become corrupted and he better pray that the Intersect

loses that piece of the program (although that would make future seasons more interesting as he couldn't fight anyone without it).

While Chuck is as brave as they come, it's still tough to believe he wants to be a spy. He simply wants Sarah, and if he has to

become a spy to be with her, then that's what he'll do.

Continue reading'Chuck' 'Chuck Versus the American Hero' Recap Filed under: Episode Reviews, Chuck, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Bi Sheng 600TW really is bi – features eReader and Smartphone Tablet (BestTabletReview.com) Submitted at 3/29/2010 11:15:09 AM

The Bi Sheng 600TW E-Ink Smartphone As the blogger in us constantly feels the need to boil down products to manageable consumption for readers, let’s just call this one a “Kindle Phone.”

In truth, the Bi Sheng 600TW is a 6-inch E-Ink screened smartphone with WiFi, B l u e t o o t h a n d GSM/GPRS/EDGE 3G. Instead of a QWERTY keyboard it has a numeric one with additional selection controls to help you navigate the eReader menu options. It uses a lithium-ion 3000mAh battery which is rate for 60,000 pageturns according to Bi Sheng although phone use will diminish the battery life by

2 to 3 times (and if you have an equation where you can figure out pageturn to time ratios we’d love to hear it).

The 600TW will support TXT, DOC, XLS, PPT, HTML, PDF and CHM eBook formats (ePub seems to be absent). It measures 4.7 x 7.4 x 0.38 inches and costs 2880 yuan ($422 U.S.). More information about it can be

found on their website — Gorld.com— and with the help of Google translation.

Source: The Digital Reader Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Napoleon Dynamite Has Eaten His Last Tater Tot [Trade Roundup] Richard Lawson (Gawker) Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:20:57 AM

Well, at least Jon Heder will no longer be on a TV show. Also

today: new pilot roles from an

old friend in the military and that stoner guy, a zombie series gets our hearts aflutter, and theater news. More »

'24' - '5:00 AM - 6:00 AM' Recap Mike Moody (TV Squad)

year.

Jack Bauer is long overdue for Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:02:00 AM a trip to the big screen.

(S08E14) Judging by tonight's Hopefully, the tired real-time ep, it looks like we can expect d r a m a t i c d e v i c e t h a t h a s more lunacy and lazy story outworn its welcome on TV developments as '24' heads into won't shackle the character once its final hours. It's probably best he jumps to the movies. I'd for the show end its run after much rather see Kiefer battling this season. At this point, '24' is the baddies in a dense, smartly merely recycling its once paced thriller than sit through startling twists and turns, and another ridiculous real-time the real-time gimmick has setup. gotten stale. We have a new Continue reading'24' - '5:00 locale and a few new names and AM - 6:00 AM' Recap faces, but the tricks are all the Filed under: 24, Episode same, and the suspense feels Reviews, Reality-Free, Episode manufactured, cheap and forced. Recaps Fans can see the twists coming Permalink| Email this| | from hours away, even when C o m m e n t s they're as unbelievable and over the top as they have been this

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McNabb-to-Raiders Rumblings Heat Up R.J. White (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:23:00 PM

Filed under: Eagles, Raiders, NFL Draft, NFL Rumors Going to Minnesota may be Donovan McNabb's second choice for next season (with his first, obviously, being to stay in Philadelphia), but he could very well be on his way to Oakland instead. On Monday, ESPN's Adam Schefter confirmed last Friday's report from Yahoo's Charles Robinson that the Raiders are the front-runner to Paul Miller (Engadget) savings." Well, it looks like and no WiFi just aren't going to something that's standard even land the franchise quarterback.

After first setting the price on we're getting off (relatively) cut it -- but with tempting on the Vostro line these days.

Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:58:00 AM easy with the M4500, with a options like a secondary 64GB Dell Precision M4500 now McNabb at two first-round picks With specs and prices easily Core i5-520M 2.5GHz model SSD minicard drive and the ever shipping with $1,549 starting and a third-round pick, the reaching into the stratosphere, running for $1,549 and still -frivilous Precision ON, it's not price originally appeared on Eagles have now said that it we weren't quite sure where managing to pack in those like we were sticking near that Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 would take a pick in the top 42 Dell's new 15-inch Precision NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M base price anyway. Expect to 09:58:00 EST. Please see our selections of this year's draft.

M4500 workstation would land G r a p h i c s . O f c o u r s e , w e s p e c o u t s o m e t h i n g t r u l y t e r m s f o r u s e o f f e e d s . Conveniently, the Raiders hold -- the 17-inch M6500 has a imagine you'll quickly be delicious in the $2,500+ range. Permalink| Dell| Email this| the 39th selection in the 2010 starting price of $1,799, but running up that bill -- 2GB of Our biggest disappointment? Comments NFL Draft. that's only after $310 of "instant slow RAM, a 1366 x 768 LCD, Backlit keyboard is optional,

Dell Precision M4500 now shipping with $1,549 starting price

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Celsius X VI II LEDIX, the $300k tourbillon dumbphone, gets handled Tim Stevens (Engadget) Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:12:00 AM

out of 1998 and functionality not much more advanced -- a simple browser, text messaging, and tri-band GSM. 3G isn't even on offer here folks, but when you're this rich you can pay other people to download highres lolcat pictures for you.

Celsius X VI II LEDIX, the $300k tourbillon dumbphone, gets handled originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Boston College parts with Al Skinner, school's all-time winningest basketball coach ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com)

DeFilippo said. "We agreed to split to part ways before he Yes, folks, what you are talked to St. John's. And we kept Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:14:04 AM looking at is perhaps the world's it out of the public so that he most overly complex cellphone, could gain employment.'' and it has been given an overly • Email Skinner has been unavailable complex name to match: the • Print for comment.

Celsius X VI II LEDIX. All • Comments DeFilippo said St. John's was those roman numerals don't • Share aware of the agreement that convey the sense of power you'll • Skinner would not be back at feel in holding this to the side of Boston College. your face while yelling at your By Andy Katz DeFilippo spent the weekend assistant in a futile attempt at m e c h a n i s m i s p u r e l y ESPN.com contacting other schools like gaining the respect of your mechanical, given another three Archive Richmond and Cornell seeking peers. Despite the phone quite hours of life each time you open Boston College's Al Skinner permission to speak with their naturally having a battery inside, and close this clamshell. Inside mutually agreed to leave his job head coaches. He said he hadn't the (soon to be broken) watch you can gaze at a design straight as men's basketball coach after a spoken to any of them yet. meeting with athletic director Harvard's Tommy Amaker is G e n e D e F i l i p p o l a s t also expected to be on a short Wednesday, two days before he list of potential candidates. interviewed for the vacant St. The Boston Globe first reported J o h n ' s j o b , a c c o r d i n g t o that Skinner was out as coach.

DeFilippo.

Andy Katz is a senior writer for BC called a news conference ESPN.com.

Five Filters featured article: (ETonline - Breaking News) Dovolani had an emotionally went to the hospital on the day for noon ET Tuesday.

"We agreed to separate before Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: brutal week in their partnership, of competition after a slip-up in Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:06:00 AM with Tony at one point walking rehearsal. Shannen Doherty he interviewed for the best PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, The "Dancing with the Stars" out of a rehearsal, proclaiming, explained, "On the end move, interests of both parties,'' Term Extraction. pros are put on a pedestal of "I quit." He honed up to his poor which we had to change, Mark Personal Economic Problems Top Pakistanis' perfection. It's the celebs who choice of words, saying, "I don't went down on his knee and are put under the microscope, like speaking when I'm upset injured himself." Thankfully, Concerns with everyone waiting for them because I don't ever want to they did not have to resort to an (All Gallup Headlines) high costs, financial problems, to succumb to the pressure of bring back words that I don't alternate plan for the evening's Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:00:00 PM and poverty as their single most performing. The disco ball mean and 'I quit' I guess was performance, but, "I had Derek[ important problem, far more turned on Monday's show when one of them."

Hough] learn the routine just in [ fivefilters.org: unable to than unemployment (16%) or couples bopped to the beat and The first sirens to sound of the case I wasn't able to go on," retrieve full-text content] A suicide attacks (10%). got bopped in the face. season were for Mark Ballas. Mark said. majority of Pakistanis (51%) Kate Gosselin and Tony The former "Dancing" champ surveyed in late 2009 identified

Backstage at ‘Dancing With The Stars’: Kate Gosselin’s Partner Tony Dovolani Expresses Regret Over Threats to Quit

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iPad Weekend Rumor Roundup: Apps, Books and Accessories Liam Cassidy (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:45:15 AM

This is it, we’re in the final stretch. In a mere five days the iPad arrives. Now that we’re counting down the remaining days in single digits, all manner of ‘leaked’ information is pouring out of the tech blog rumor mill.

This weekend, a flood of iPad application sneak-peeks and previews choked my RSS reader. There’s also a curious update on e-book pricing in the iBookstore, and finally some news on the iPad’s Camera Connection accessory. So let’s get started! Sneak Peaks I can’t do this from here in the UK, but if you’re across the pond you might want to spend some time exploring iTunes Preview. Some applications have started to appear multiple times with the suffix HD or XL in their titles. According to iPhone Alley, these iPadoptimised versions do not appear in the iTunes app store… yet. But since it is thought developers are using the initials to denote iPad-versions of their software, it’s a great indicator of what’s in store this weekend.

App store analytics website AppAnnie reported on Saturday that it had discovered the iPad feed for the app store. A series of shared screenshots suggest we can expect iPad launch day availability of popular apps such

if you do head on over there, be patient! Here’s a clue as to what to expect; cover flow, large, finger-friendly icons, horizontally scrolling preview screenshots and, overall, very much the same experience you have come to expect from the app store application on the iPhone. More on iBooks • iPad to Offer 30,000 Free eBooks at Launch Mac Love • iBookstore Pricing Leaked: Cheaper Than Expected Mac Love • Gatekeeping the iPad: Apple Being Shrewd About What Will Appear at Launch Mac Love • Penguin Plans to Make Books Shinier with iPad Mac Love Book Prices Just how much will books cost on the iBookstore? Nobody really knows for sure. There has been talk of an upcoming ebook price war; publishers Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon a s A w e s o m e N o t e , F l i g h t Bento 3 for the Mac. The App sneak peek, but the design is & Schuster, McMillan and Control, Cro-Mag Rally and the comes with dozens of ready to compelling, and, as Gizmodo’s Hachette Book Group have all much-anticipated versions of use database templates that can Jack Loftus writes, is “…much put pressure on Amazon to OmniGraffle a n d be customized for your own sexier than anything Yahoo’s change its pricing policies in the Apple’s iPad OmniGraphSketcher from Mac usage. The iPad version of e v e r m a n a g e d o n t h e i r w a k e o f stalwarts The Omni Group.

Bento is priced at $4.99, the homepage over the last decade announcement. The standard price for a new Kindle e-book is A l s o o n S a t u r d a y , same as the current price for the or so.”

MacRumors.com reported that iPhone version.

One final sneak peek for you; $9.99 — and that’s too low as FileMaker’s personal database Oh, while we’re on the subject Vimeo user Federico Viticci far as these publishers are s o f t w a r e B e n t o w i l l b e o f s n e a k p e e k s , G i z m o d o posted a video of the iPad app concerned; they want to charge appearing in an iPad friendly shared screenshots over the store itself… running in the up to $15 for bestsellers. form. Mac rumours Arnold weekend of what they claim to iPad simulator. At the time of Back in February the New York Kim writes; Bento for iPad can be Yahoo’s upcoming iPad- writing, the video has been Times reported that, while be used as a standalone app or centric website redesign. Okay, viewed more than 73,000 times, IPAD page 62 will wirelessly synchronize with so that’s not exactly an app and is taking a while to load, so

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How Will iPad Change the Apple Stores?

Om Malik (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:36:35 AM

A few weeks ago, Apple decided to start taking preorders for its widely anticipated iPad. It’s one of those devices that, if successful, will redefine the computing landscape — much like its lil’ cousin, the iPhone. But there is an equal chance that the world may not be impressed with its brilliance.

Given how excited I’ve been about the device, many of my friends (and colleagues) are wondering why I didn’t order one. The answer is pretty simple: I want to write about the iPad launch from the point of view of a retail buyer. I plan to head over to the Apple store in San Francisco’s Union Square area on Saturday, stand in a line and see if I can actually get my hands on one that way.

Though what I really want to see is how Apple re-organizes its retail experience to fit the iPad. Right now, when you walk into a typical Apple store in the U.S., you get a pretty binary

experience: Macs on one side of the store and iPhone/iPods on the other. Apple has used this clear demarcation of its two major product lines — computers and entertainment devices — to create a brilliant retail experience.

And soon it will add to the mix the iPad — which is not quite an iPhone and, well, definitely not a computer. So on which side of

the aisle will Apple put this device? I think the retail display will pretty much define into which category the iPad falls.

I’m hoping that it redesigns the stores entirely, carving out a whole new space for the iPad. If it were up to me, I’d line up a single row of iPads, with their front and backs alternating.

They’d be mounted on a transparent stand, so that from a

distance it would look as though they (iPads) were floating in the air. Wishful thinking on my part, I know!

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty expects Apple to ship more than 6 million iPads this year, much higher than the consensus expectation of 3-4 million. She expects 2.5 million iPads to ship between March and May and about 750,000

more during the June quarter.

Huberty points out that iPad suppliers are estimating that Apple will make between 8 and 10 million of these devices. She believes that a million iPads would mean about 25 extra cents a share in earnings for Apple.

I think Huberty might be underestimating the moneymaking potential of the iPad. Having played around with it for a whole 20 minutes, I can tell you that this device will make you spend money on content — apps or books or music or whatever — much more often than the iPhone, even though there will be a fewer iPads on the market. Given that Apple takes roughly 30 percent cut of sales, it could be another bonanza in the making for Apple.

Now back to waiting for the weekend!

Photos of Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, New York Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Impressions: Two Worlds II Justin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:33:00 AM

I rush back to the PAX East press room, locked in that strange place between disbelief and acceptance, nigh

incapacitated by the surreal certainty that my worldview is in the process of being fundamentally shifted.

"Guys," I say to the collected Joystiq staffers fully expecting my verbal evisceration of

Two Worlds II actually looks kind of cool."

They don't believe me.

Gallery: Two Worlds II Continue reading Impressions: Two Worlds II TopWare's follow-up. "Guys ...

Impressions: Two Worlds II

originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Hiring Staff for New Data Center Liam Cassidy (TheAppleBlog)

large data centers with more than a thousand servers.

Here’s the complete list of job Remember that data center roles, just in case you fancy Apple is building in North applying; Carolina? You know the one; Data Center Site Services valued at $1 billion and widely Technician(x2), Data Center expected to play a major part in Site Services Manager, Data Apple’s future cloud computing Center Site Coordinator, Data initiative?

Center Mechanical Technician, Yeah, that one. Well, it’s nearly D a t a C e n t e r E l e c t r i c a l finished. At least, finished T e c h n i c i a n , D a t a C e n t e r enough that Apple can start Maintenance Technician(x4) h i r i n g k e y s t a f f f o r t h e Notice anything? That’s right, installation. AppleInsider.com not one clue as to the primary reported on Friday that Apple purpose for Apple’s shiny new has posted 10 new job listings data center. Guesswork for the data center in Maiden, When plans for the data center NC; The company seeks to hire were officially confirmed last site managers, coordinators, and summer, Gov. Beverly Perdue service, mechanical and electric welcomed Apple to North technicians. The listings seek Carolina and described the people who have worked in p r o j e c t a s a “ s i g n i f i c a n t Submitted at 3/29/2010 11:00:12 AM

economic boost to local communities and the state.”

The data center is expected to create and sustain over 50 fulltime positions, and it’s clear from this initial list of 10 that Apple is beginning to look for

key first-wave personnel.

Did I mention how nobody knows what the data center is for? It’s not hard to guess that iTunes, MobileMe and iWork.com will benefit from this major new installation, but

online store on Saturday.

Essentially a couple of little plastic dongles, the camera connection Kit allows iPad users to directly connect an SD card or camera (via USB cable) directly to the iPad and import photos into the iPad’s Photo app. The Camera Connection Kit costs $29 and can be preordered from Apple’s online store here.

So that’s the weekend’s juiciest iPad rumors. If you’re expecting an iPad to arrive with you on the weekend, I envy you more than

you can know. We still can’t pre -order iPads in the UK, so I shall have to enjoy these final days to ‘first launch’ vicariously, through you. So hit the comments with detailed descriptions of your excitement and anticipation — leave nothing out. Oh, and be sure to mention how you also think $30 is way too much for a couple of plastic dongles.

that’s sheer conjecture. And this is Apple we’re talking about.

Perhaps this is exactly what we think it is, and nothing more. Or maybe it’s the next major step forward for Apple in its new role as a mobile computing company?

Personally, I’m holding-out for the possibility that this is the site of Steve Jobs’ new (not so) Secret Lair, from where he will command his Empire from a throne chair with impracticallyhigh armrests. You know, just like any respectable Imperious Leader would.

Image courtesy Universal Studios

IPAD continued from page 60

publishers would be able to set higher prices for new titles on the iBookstore, Apple had;…inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99.

Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists.

Last week the website App Advice published what it claims

to be screenshots of the iBookstore; they revealed that most bestsellers in the iBookstore were listed at $9.99.

It made perfect sense, given the New York Times quote above.

So it’s interesting that the latest leak indicates that prices are slowly climbing from $9.99 to $12.99. Make of it what you will, Gizmodo offers several possible explanations. Camera Connection Kit The Mac Observer reports that the iPad Camera Connection Kit finally appeared on Apple’s

3 Reasons Why the Verizon iPhone Rumor is True Charles Jade (TheAppleBlog) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:24:50 AM

REASONS page 63

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REASONS continued from page 62

The Wall Street Journal is just barely reporting that a CDMA iPhone will be introduced this fall, possibly September, and that Apple’s exclusive relationship with AT&T “appears set to end.” According to “people briefed by the company” (presumably Apple), the CDMA iPhone will be one of two released, with the GSM model “likely to be thinner and have a faster processor.”

While the rumor itself appears thin, looking at it in a larger context gives good reason to believe your next iPhone might not be chained to AT&T. Chris Foresman at Ars Technica distills the biggest of those reasons into its graphical essence.

According to AdMob, Android is on the verge of passing the iPhone OS, at least on smartphones. Adding in traffic to Mobile Internet Devices like

the iPod touch, which Apple dominates, probably puts Apple up by double digits. Still, Android is the biggest threat to the iPhone right now. Apple needs new markets, and what market is bigger than Big Red? Verizon had 87 million subscribers at the end of 2009, compared to some 85 million for AT&T. Nielsen estimated the number of U.S. iPhone users at 6.4 million last April, up from 2.1 million in 2008, meaning the current number of AT&T iPhones easily exceeds 10 million. Add Verizon as a iPhone carrier, and it’s a zerosum game in the millions with the iPhone taking from Android.

Finally, the source of the rumor lends credence to it: not the “people briefed,” but the Wall Street Journal. As John Martellaro, former Senior Marketing Manager at Apple, writing for the Mac Observer

notes, sometimes “Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially.” In his essay on controlled leaks, Martellaro cites the iPad leak in early January, which turned out to be true. That rumor was published in the Wall Street Journal and one of the authors was Yukari Iwatani, the author of the Verizon iPhone rumor today.

A Verizon iPhone makes sense for Verizon, Apple, longsuffering AT&T iPhone users, and even AT&T. Nothing reduces network strain like millions of customers taking their business elsewhere.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Why Apple Should Choose Sprint Before Verizon Wireless

(Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:15:50 AM

Global miners and key Asian steelmakers have agreed to a record increase in iron ore prices after they signed deals to replace

the 40-year-old pricing system based on annual contracts with new short-term deals linked to the spot market.

The landmark move by Vale of Brazil and Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton ends the so-called benchmark system which has

Baylor Women Punch Ticket to Final Four Milton Kent (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/29/2010 4:38:00 PM

Filed under: NCAA Tournament, Women's Basketball MEMPHIS -- In a month, when the crawfish pot at her postseason party stops boiling and the glow of reaching the Final Four has subsided a bit, Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey might take a look at the film of how the Lady Bears got there.

It's an improbable story, to be sure. Trailing Duke, the No. 2 seed in the Memphis regional, by as much as 10 in the second half, Baylor scratched and clawed its way back to a 51-48 win Monday at FedEx Forum.

"Whew. I don't know how we did what we did today," said Mulkey.

It surely wasn't pretty, but the Lady Bears (27-9) held the Blue Devils scoreless for the final been in place since the early 3:47 of the contest, with a 1960s. Rio Tinto has yet to sign s m a l l e r l i n e u p o f m a i n l y any new contract, but executives f r e s h m e n . expect it to follow soon.

Smaller, save for 6-foot-8 Five Filters featured article: f r e s h m a n c e n t e r B r i t t n e y Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Griner(pictured right), who PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Steelmakers agree new iron ore contracts

63

scored the game-winner on a tough leaner in the lane with 44.2 seconds to go. Griner, the regional's Most Outstanding Player, finished with 15 points, 11 rebounds and nine blocks -one blocked shot short of a triple double.

Griner was held largely ineffective for most of the middle of the game, so much so that Mulkey yanked her for about 30 seconds early in the second half and delivered a stern talking-to about the virtues of being more assertive.

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Duke Useful as Final Four Villain (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

had Baylor upset Duke on Sunday, the Bears’ road to redemption would have forced a I f y o u ’ r e t r y i n g t o f i n d Jim Nantz schmaltz assault. In something good coming out of 2003, forward Carl Dotson shot Duke’s presence in the Final and killed his teammate, Patrick Four, there is this: Every Dennehy. Then coach Dave Cinderella story needs that evil Bliss was caught on tape urging stepmother. Duke’s presence in h i s p l a y e r s t o l i e t o Indianapolis at least gives most investigators. After narrowly of America a team to root avoiding the NCAA’s death against as the Blue Devils face a penalty and starting over, likable West Virginia team B a y l o r ’ s p r e s e n c e i n t h e Saturday, and then possibly tournament — the program’s Michigan State or Butler next second appearance since the Monday. Getty Images Mike murder — would have made Krzyzewski makes a valiant stab Baylor easy to root for. at smiling in Houston on The Kansas City Star’s Kent Sunday.

Babb catches up with Dave Butler probably would have had Bliss, who — although he still a lot of otherwise unattached hasn’t found that elusive headfans on its side just because its coaching job that lists “willing the darling underdog. But its t o a s k p l a y e r s t o l i e t o campus’s proximity to the site i n v e s t i g a t o r s w h e n o n e of the Final Four — 5.7 miles teammate has killed another” in from Lucas Oil Stadium— the requirements section — has increases the chances of a rowdy found God. pro-Butler crowd. Fanhouse’s Sports Illustrated’s Andy John Walters says Indianapolis Staples called the Bears the is already going crazy for its tournament’s“real Cinderella Bulldogs. USA Today’s David story.” So thanks, Duke, for Leon Moore has a piece on ruining that one.

Butler that is required reading The Michigan State Spartans, for those ready to jump on the another Final Four team, barely bandwagon this week. finished celebrating their Elite If you need one more reason to Eight win over Northern Iowa root for Butler, how about this Friday when reports surfaced photo of the school president, that Oregon is prepared to break Bobby Fong, reveling with the the bank in hopes of hiring away students after the win against coach Tom Izzo with the largest Kansas State? contract in college coaching As awesome as Butler’s history, backed by Nike improbable homecoming tale is, c h a i r m a n P h i l K n i g h t , a n Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:09:08 AM

court images from tournaments past.

We can’t tell you what happens to all of these floors after the tournament, but Mark Belko of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says that the Consol Energy Center (formerly Steve Perry Arena) Oregon Alum. Michigan Live’s has bought one of them for its Bill Simonson sees good reason Duquesne games.* * * for this, as Izzo keeps taking For Fixers out there still all Spartans fans on “these magical warm and fuzzy from the tales March basketball rides that we of Baylor and Butler, there’s never want to get off of.”* * * a n o t h e r u n d e r d o g s t o r y It’s easy to hate the Blue happening in the NCAA men’s D e v i l s , b u t g i v e M i k e ice-hockey tournament. The Krzyzewski credit for speaking R o c h e s t e r I n s t i t u t e o f out against the court setup at Technology has made it to the Houston’s Reliant Stadium. school’s first Frozen Four after ESPN’s Eamonn Brennan says entering the fray as the 15th that Coach K hated the little seed out of 16. ESPN.com’s stool thrust upon him because of David Albright suggests “RIP” the elevated court. is a more appropriate way of Speaking of the courts, part of putting it, because of “the the charm of seasons past came carnage that has been created in from watching a random first- the first two days” by RIT in the round game on an insanely tournament against Denver and designed court, and wondering New Hampshire. aloud something like, “Iona The locals seem pretty excited plays their home games on a about the games, too. You may floor with a giant flaming not see school presidents on any eyeball?” Now the games are shoulders in Rochester just yet, played out with a backdrop of but Kevin Oklobzija of the boring, homogeneous designs R o c h e s t e r D e m o c r a t a n d made especially for the NCAA Chronicle says that “never in the tournament with little variation history of Rochester area between host cities outside of collegiate sports has there been the names on the baselines. Alan a bigger victory.”* * * Reifman’s Basketball Court On the other end of the feelDesigns blog bemoaned the good spectrum, the Yankees courts at the start of the won another title over the tournament. For consolation, weekend, being named the “best here’s last year’s collection of -paid team in global sport” by

B r i t i s h s i t e sportingintelligence.com. Its Annual Review of Global Sports Salaries revealed that the Yankees averaged $7,001,284.58 per player in 2009. The Yankees were followed by Spanish soccer teams Barcelona and Real Madrid, Chelsea of the English Premier League and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

In the Telegraph, Nick Harris — the author of the review — inadvertently gives the NFL Players Association a boost in its upcoming negotiations next year, expressing his surprise that the NFL finished so low in the rankings, “given that it has the biggest average crowds in world sport by far (67,509 people per game) and annual revenues of” over $7 billion.* * * Unless you’re reading this from a tent on the side of a mountain you’re climbing, or while running your 11th mile on a treadmill, you will feel incredibly lazy and worthless when learning of Lyle Langolais, a 79 year-old who ESPN.com’s Lynn DeBruin writes “has run a marathon in every state, completed an Ironman, bicycled across the country four times, and in midMarch attained yet another goal — finishing 100 races between ages 70 and 80, including about 30 triathlons.”

DUKE page 65

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Sports/ Economy/

The Count: West Virginia Shrugs Off Another Slow Start

DUKE

(WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

to Morgan State, failing to score in the first five minutes and 23 seconds. And they were behind Once again Saturday, West by two to Washington after five Virginia compensated for a slow minutes in the Sweet 16, scoring start with a fast finish. The just 10 points in the first 12 and Mountaineers’ patented Div. II- a half minutes. And these lame quality offense came out of the early efforts followed similar gate with nine points in the first ones late in the season. They 13 minutes against Kentucky, scored just 13 points in the first going nearly seven minutes 11:58 against UConn in late without a point during that February; trailed Cincinnati 37stretch, and fell behind by seven 24 in the next game; trailed early. But then they went on a Villanova 10-0 two days later; 15-5 run and didn’t trail again. and fell behind early in the last West Virginia didn’t allow to three games they played in the close within a basket in the final Big East tournament, averaging 19 minutes of the game, and less than two points over the clinched a Final Four matchup first four and a half minutes of against Duke on Saturday. Getty each of those games.

Images John Flowers and his In other words, the W e s t V i r g i n i a t e a m m a t e s Mountaineers have trailed after weren’t worried about their slow five minutes in nine of their last start after advancing to the Final dozen games. Yet they’ve Four on Saturday. managed to win 11 of them, Slow starts hardly doom losing only to UConn. And tournament teams, as noted here since 2010 began, West Virginia last week. But even among has trailed at the five-minute dozens of comeback efforts, m a r k i n 1 5 o f 2 6 g a m e s , West Virginia’s recent record outscored over all 26 games by stands out. In the first round the 14 points in that period — even Mountaineers fell behind 10-0 as they managed to outscore Submitted at 3/29/2010 3:26:01 PM

because it’s one of four left in the tournament. But if the Mountaineers had been merely unlucky, we might expect to see opponents start with hot shooting from the field. Instead the typical pattern is a very slow shooting start. It’s often taken opponents by 219 points in the about 10 minutes of game time rest of the minutes in those 26 for West Virginia to reach games, and win 20 of them. double digits in scoring.

There were exceptions — big There is hope for West early leads over Louisville, Virginia. In their first 12 games DePaul and Rutgers — but also of the season, in 2009, the other bafflingly slow starts, Mountaineers were behind after including falling behind 25-4 to f i v e m i n u t e s j u s t o n c e , Notre Dame and 8-0 to Ohio outscored opponents by an State. And the slow starts often average of four points per game extended past the first five during that period, and ran up minutes. West Virginia has bigger scoring margins in the outscored opponents by just 27 first half than in the second half. points — a point per game — in It helps that they were playing the first half of games during several weak nonconference that span but outscored them by teams, but they also started 178 points in the second half strong against Texas A&M, and overtime.

Mississippi, Seton Hall and This effect could certainly be a Marquette. So the players might fluke. Random variation would want to use their week off to ensure that some teams are watch tape of those early games slower starters than others, and — and get in more shooting perhaps we’re just noticing a practice before the Duke game. team that does start slowly

Greece returns to markets with €5bn bond (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:46:55 AM

Greece made a successful return to capital markets on

Monday as it raised €5bn in a new syndicated bond issue. But the high price it had to pay signalled that markets were unconvinced by last week’s European Union-led rescue

package.

However, the euro rose against a clutch of currencies, including the dollar, yen and sterling, after the Greeks achieved the amount targeted for the seven-year

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continued from page 64

Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at dailyfix@wsj.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email N a n d o a t nandodifino@yahoo.com.

US home prices remain under pressure (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:06:38 AM

Home prices in the largest US cities fell in January, underscoring how fragile one of the economy’s most crucial sectors remains.

The closely watched S&P/Case -Shiller home price index showed house prices had fallen by 0.7 per cent in January from the same month a year ago.

However, that was in line with economists’ expectations and it was the smallest year-on-year decline in three years.

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No Stimulus Can Help Obama’s Bracket (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix)

Kansas even got past the second round.

Let this be a lesson to President Barack Obama’s Democrats and Republicans NCAA men’s basketball bracket alike: Don’t fixate on the first looks a lot like yours and mine. round. Starting stronger seemed Tons of mistakes. No Final Four t o b e M r . O b a m a ’ s m a i n t e a m s r i g h t . N o r e a s o n focus this year. As he filled out whatsoever to pay attention his bracket, he spoke about how anymore. Zuma Press President he got “killed” in the early Obama may have decent range s t a g e s l a s t s e a s o n . H e from outside, but his faith in the succeeded, hitting a solid 25 of Georgetown Hoyas did him no his 32 first-round selections this favors. time after getting just 19 right Now here’s a president who last year. truly feels our pain.

But brackets are made or After getting off to a good start, broken in the later rounds, since M r . O b a m a ’ s b r a c k e t h a s that’s where the point totals are collapsed amid the avalanche of usually highest. A commanderupsets that have marked this in-chief should know not to y e a r ’ s t o u r n a m e n t . T h e sweat the small stuff. presidential bracket is in the Mr. Obama’s bracket came 55th percentile of the nearly 4.8 apart in the second round, when million entries in ESPN.com’s seven of his Sweet 16 picks Tournament Challenge. His went home, including Villanova rank: 2,111,104th. Only two and Kansas. The Jayhawks’ members of his Final Four early exit was one thing we’d V i l l a n o v a , K a n s a s S t a t e , like to see one bracket outside Kentucky and would-be winner of Cedar Falls, Iowa, that saw Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:24:36 AM

that coming but Villanova in the Final Four? It was clear the Wildcats were a mess at the end of the regular season. Someone in the intelligence community should’ve intervened and let the president know.

Mr. Obama did predict a handful of this year’s first-round toss-ups St. Mary’s over Richmond, Cornell over Temple but he pretty much stopped picking low seeds there. While six of this year’s Sweet 16 were seeded sixth or worse, just one of Mr. Obama’s picks (Marquette oops) were. He did get two of his Final Four picks, Kentucky and Kansas State, to the Elite Eight, but their upset losses to West

Virginia and Butler, respectively, finished him off.

The president’s women’s tournament bracket is actually doing even worse, ranking in just the 26.8th percentile. As with the men’s tournament, the reason is his overreliance on favorites. Although he still has two of his women’s Final Four remaining Stanford and overwhelming favorite Connecticut (his champion) he misfired with his other two Final Four picks, No. 1 seeds Nebraska and Tennessee, which both exited in the third round.

It appears that this president is always going to be vulnerable to an upset-laden tournament. His fondness for favorites works well when things go as expected, like last season, when he correctly picked favored North Carolina to win it all. In a year like this, though, an addiction to chalk is the worst possible pre-existing condition.

The Real Reason Buy and Hold Is Dead Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:30:57 AM

~~~ Source: More “Boom and Bust” Cycles Coming: The Real Reason Buy and Hold Is Dead Aaron Task Yahoo Tech Ticker, March 29, 2010 http://finance.yahoo.com/techticker/more-%22boom-andbust%22-cycles-coming-the-real -reason-buy-and-hold-is-dead453648.html Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Pohlen's Coast-to-Coast Saves Stanford Michelle Smith (FanHouse Main)

introduced because Pohlen, a Southern California native no less, has never heard of you.

Submitted at 3/29/2010 6:50:00 PM "Coast-to-coast, at the buzzer, Filed under: Stanford, Xavier, really?" Pohlen said in the A - 1 0 , P a c - 1 0 , W o m e n ' s Stanford locker room, as the Basketball SACRAMENTO, Cardinal celebrated the fruits of Calif. -- Tyus Edney meet her heroics.

Jeanette Pohlen.

With the score tied at 53-53 and the Stanford junior guard -- the The two of you will need to be with 4.4 seconds on the clock, p l a y e r t h a t c o a c h T a r a

VanDerveer says has "the motor of all motors" -- turned it into overdrive.

She blazed up-court past two Xavier defenders and put up the game-winning lay-up just in front of the buzzer to send the top-seeded Cardinal to their third straight Final Four, in San Antonio.

Edney needed 4.8 seconds to convert his legendary buzzerbeater against Missouri in the 1995 NCAA tournament.

Pohlen rescued her team in marginally less time.

And man, did Stanford (35-1) need the rescue.

Sports/ Economy/

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67

Sources: Oakland Raiders emerge as Atlanta Lets Another top Donovan McNabb suitor Opportunity Slip Away ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com)

$11.2 million left on it, has scared off other teams. But, the sources say, Oakland is not Submitted at 3/29/2010 6:25:03 PM concerned that McNabb is due a $6.2 million roster bonus on • Email May 5 nor that the quarterback • Print is scheduled to become a free • Comments agent after the 2010 season.

• Share Mosley: Best Deal • Donovan McNabb can't be too happy that he might leave the ESPN.com news services Eagles for the hapless Raiders, The Oakland Raiders have writes ESPN's Matt Mosley. e m e r g e d a s t h e l e a d i n g Blog candidate to land quarterback There also are connections Donovan McNabb in a trade b e t w e e n t h e R a i d e r s a n d with the Philadelphia Eagles, McNabb. Raiders owner Al league sources tell ESPN NFL Davis and McNabb each went to Insider Adam Schefter.

Syracuse, and Oakland's new T h e s o u r c e s s a y a l l t h e offensive coordinator, Hue ingredients for a trade are in Jackson, is a distant cousin of place. Of all the teams the McNabb's.

Eagles have spoken with, the Should Oakland trade for Raiders have been the most McNabb, it would be the most willing to meet the Eagles' stark admission by the Raiders asking price. Last week, The that former No. 1 overall pick Associated Press reported that JaMarcus Russell has not been the Eagles want a pick in the top the player the team had hoped.

4 2 o f t h e 2 0 1 0 d r a f t f o r Oakland selected Russell with McNabb. Oakland has a second- the No. 1 overall pick in the round pick that is the 39th 2007 draft and awarded him a overall selection. six-year, $68 million contract Also, the sources say McNabb's that included $31.5 million in contract, which has one year and guaranteed money.

One source familiar with trade discussions said no deal was done with Oakland. But other league sources predicted it soon would be done in a trade that would be the NFL's biggest offseason move.

And although McNabb has informed coach Andy Reid that he wants to stay with the Eagles and, if he has to be traded, would prefer to go to a winning team such as the Minnesota Vikings, the sources say the Eagles will do what they believe is best for team even if it means trading McNabb to the Raiders, a team with a recent history of losing.

McNabb and four others, including cornerbacks Asante Samuel and Sheldon Brown and punter Sav Rocca were noshows at the Eagles' nonmandatory workouts on Monday, ESPN's Sal Paolantonio reports.

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Adam Gretz (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/29/2010 3:35:00 PM

Filed under: Bruins, Flyers, Hurricanes, Thrashers When the Atlanta Thrashers traded Ilya Kovalchuk to the New Jersey Devils back in February, there weren't many people outside of the team's front office (they were still buying at the deadline) and locker room expecting them to hang around in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Amazingly, they entered play on Monday night just two points back of the No. 8 seed Boston Bruins, and with a win, as well as a little help, could have found themselves in a tie for that final playoff spot.

They ended up getting the help (Buffalo beat Boston, 3-2), but did little to help themselves, dropping a 4-1 decision at home to Carolina. If they end up missing the postseason, this is a game, along with last week's loss to Boston, that you can put a circle around.

Risk rally continues as shares challenge 18-month peak (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:26:13 AM

15:15 BST: Investors continued to discount a global economic recovery on Tuesday, pushing many riskier assets higher as the end of the quarter approached.

The FTSE All-World index climbed 0.4 per cent to sit just

shy of a fresh 18-month peak, but the euro again withered as the market had second thoughts about the latest debt auction by Greece.

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'Breach' game code theft at PAX East ends in arrest Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq)

on his computer.

"The suspect did admit to us several times, including as he [ P h o t o : K e v i n K e l l y ] A n was doing it, that he was attempted theft of Atomic stealing the code. He said to Games' Breach code on the myself and several other team PAX East show floor on the last members, after being caught, day of the event was thwarted that it was not a big deal, he just by vigilant members of the really liked the game and s t u d i o . A c c o r d i n g t o a wanted to play it with his representative for the company, friends," David Tractenberg, a the suspected thief managed to s p o k e s p e r s o n f o r A t o m i c , download some of the code and e x p l a i n e d . then run into the crowd after he "This guy had only succeeded in was spotted. He was eventually copying about 14MB to his apprehended in the large crowd laptop before our staff caught and the game's code was found him," Atomic Games President Submitted at 3/30/2010 8:42:00 AM

Peter Tamte told Joystiq.

"Because of the work we do for military and intelligence organizations, we take security issues like this very seriously ...

It is fortunate for him that we caught him before any of this ended up on the internet. Many of the hackers who stole Valve's Half-Life 2 code were tracked

down by the FBI's Cybercrime Task Force."

Gallery: Breach Continue reading'Breach' game code theft at PAX East ends in arrest 'Breach' game code theft at PAX East ends in arrest originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink| Email this| Comments

PSA: Modern Warfare 2 'Stimulus Package' is live on XBLM, title update coming soon Griffin McElroy (Joystiq)

prescription for your blues, but it might just be the only option you've got. Curse you, Your crippling case of pharmaceutical empire! " m a p a t h y " c a n f i n a l l y b e Unfortunately, it seems the treated, dear Modern Warfare 2 launch of the new maps was player. Just a few minutes ago, botched -- we've received a the " Stimulus Package" DLC number of tips claiming the bundle, which includes three maps aren't loading in-game. new multiplayer maps and two Major Nelson recently Tweeted is coming soon. We'll let you tarted-up arenas from Call of that the game needs a title know when everything's in Duty 4, went live on Xbox 360. update in order to incorporate working order.

At $15, it's a pretty pricey the new content, which he says Gallery: Call of Duty: Modern Submitted at 3/30/2010 10:03:00 AM

Warfare 2 -- Stimulus Package Maps [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

PSA: Modern Warfare 2 'Stimulus Package' is live on XBLM, title update coming soon originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Home Price Index in line but real test lies ahead Peter Boockvar (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:32:42 AM

505 Games to publish MorphX in June JC Fletcher (Joystiq)

yourself abilities like regeneration and improved vision, while slowly turning Click to morph your browser yourself into a monster in the tab into the gallery process. You'll have to decide The Swarm, Buka Studios' sci- whether all the totally awesome fi third-person shooter for Xbox p o w e r s a r e w o r t h t u r n i n g 3 6 0 , h a s r e - e m e r g e d a s yourself into the thing you're MorphX, to be released in North fighting. Decisions, decisions.

America on June 1, published Gallery: MorphX by 505 Games. In MorphX, 505 Games to publish MorphX players leave an underground in June originally appeared on shelter beneath Moscow (yes, Joystiq on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 again) to enter a world that has 09:33:00 EST. Please see our b e e n c o n q u e r e d b y a l i e n terms for use of feeds. invaders.

Read| Permalink| Email this| In order to fight them, you must Comments absorb alien DNA to give Submitted at 3/30/2010 9:33:00 AM

The Jan S&P/Case-Shiller 20 city home price index fell .7% y/o/y, right in line with expectations. 9 of the 20 cities saw y/o/y gains, led by San Francisco, San Diego and Dallas. The decline was again led by Las Vegas which had a 17.4% y/o/y fall. Miami fell by 6.7% and Phoenix was down by 4.6%, to name 2 other hard hit areas. On a non seasonally adjusted basis, prices fell .4% m/o/m but rose .3% seasonally adjusted. While still a very

important indicator since homes are the biggest collateral backing trillions of $’s of debt, the real test for the housing industry and its pricing remains ahead in the next few months as the Fed completes its MBS purchases and the home buying tax credit expires. This headwind will be met by the seasonally strongest time of the year in terms of demand, the spring, where about half of all the year’s transactions take place.

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Around the Net In Media: ESPN Lands More NFL (MediaPost | Media News)

platforms.

The digital deal will appeal to the NFL's other network ESPN and the NFL are close to partners, who could be looking an agreement to give the media to further their digital and company a much larger bundle mobile rights with NFL content. of the league's broadband, The pending deal developed as mobile and international rights, the league opened ESPN's $1.1 including the ability to stream billion annual contract to insert "Monday Night Football" games language that outlined payment on broadband and wireless terms in the event of a lockout.

Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:50:45 PM

The contract already called for ESPN to make such payments, but the NFL wanted its language to mirror previously agreed to contracts with CBS, Fox and NBC. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Around the Net In Media: Senate Passes Stand-Alone STELA Bill (MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:48:11 PM

Case Shiller Index Unchanged Year Over Year Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture)

experienced some of the largest gains and declines in this cycle, while Charlotte and Seattle had Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:11:45 AM more modest price swings.

Case Shiller data through The peak-to-current declines January 2010 was down only for Charlotte, Las Vegas, Seattle 0.7% versus January 2009. and Tampa are -13.8%, -55.8%, The report was mixed. There - 2 4 . 6 % a n d - 4 2 . 0 % , were improvements in the year- r e s p e c t i v e l y . over-year data for all 20 cities, In a pique of understatement, but the Fall 09 rebound in Case Shiller/S&P noted that housing prices is fading. Fewer “Home sales suggest the market cities experienced month-to- remains difficult.” month gains in January than in Source: S&P/Case Shiller December 2009.

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Tampa and Las Vegas

The Senate Thursday passed a stand-alone version of the STELA, the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act, that changes what has been a five-year renewal of the satellite license to 10 years. The bill reauthorizes the license that allows satellite subscribers who cannot get a viewable signal from their in-market affiliate to get an out-of-market version. It will also get local signals to the remaining 28 or so smaller markets where it has been uneconomical to deliver them.

The change to a 10-year window was so the bill would "score" in terms of being revenue neutral, which it is not at five years. The 10-year version would actually be — too big to post here. revenue positive to the tune of > $270-$280 million.

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The Coke Bottle Redesigned Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/30/2010 7:00:27 AM

A design student’s eco-friendly and edgy reworking of the Coke bottle.

This is only the first quarter of it — the full piece was 3 megs

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Around the Net In Media: Around the Net In Media: 'Adweek' Tweaks 'Hot List' Disney Gets 'Desperate' Actress 'Hatched' Criteria (MediaPost | Media News) Hatcher will oversee the (MediaPost | Media News) Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:50:54 PM

The annual "Hot List" and "10 Under 60 Hot List" usually recognized magazines with a track record of standout ad revenue and page growth. But in light of last year's industry declines and magazines' efforts to grow their business via other platforms, ad-page growth alone no longer does justice to magazines' relevance.

This year, the "Hot List" paid greater attention to circulation

quality, with particular focus on newsstand sales, strength of engagement, smart brand extensions, and ability to find new ways to engage consumers and charge them for content.

However, the pub still needs at least $60 million in annual revenue; "under 60" are below that threshold. No. 1 on the "Hot List" was People.

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Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:51:06 PM

Disney is adding "Desperate Housewives" co-star Teri Hatcher to its lineup of online experts, launching GetHatched.com. Branded as "A Chick's Guide to Life," site will have the actress giving advice to women through articles, blogs and Webisodes.

creative and editorial content, while DisneyFamily.com will produce the site, part of Disney Online's mom and family portfolio.

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Gorld 600TW adds a cellphone to your e-reader (Geek.com) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 3/30/2010 3:14:51 AM

At this point, there aren’t a lot of reasons to go with a traditional e-reader over an iPad unless you care passionately about a few, minor advantages of the former genus of gadgetdom. E-readers like the Kindle are much easier on the eyes thanks to their e-ink screens, and they also don’t

draw nearly as much power. If you plan on reading for more than ten hours at a time, and your eyes get easily tired looking at traditional LCD displays, the iPad just isn’t for you.

But perhaps there’s further ways that traditional e-readers can differentiate themselves from the iPad. Consider this ereader by Chinese manufacturer Beijing Gorld, weirdly christened the Gorld 600TW

ebook reader. You’re not looking at anything special e-

reading spec wise: it’s a six inch e-ink display e-book reader which features WiFi and BlueTooth connectivity, as well as a 3,000 mAh battery that will last up to 6,000 page turns.

But do you notice anything special about the image? That’s right: physical keys, perfect for T9 input. The Gorld 600TW ereader is the first device of its class to double as a cellphone: you can use it to make and receive calls, as well as answer

and send text messages.

In truth, it’s hard to imagine anyone making a call on something this big, but it does make the iPad’s inability to operate as a mobile phone all the more puzzling, given its 3G slot.

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Booklike Edge e-reader falls off fast (Tulsa World) (Yahoo! News Search Results for e-readers) Submitted at 3/30/2010 12:30:48 AM

NEW YORK — E-book readers are a fun category of gadgets, because their shape is not yet set in stone. Although one laptop is much like the other, manufacturers are still experimenting with e-readers, trying to figure out how best to take the book into the digital age.

So how about an e-book reader that actually opens like a book?

That seems like a good idea, given that the book in its current form has about 2,000 years of popularity behind it, after supplanting scrolls. But appearances can be deceiving.

The $499 Entourage Edge, which came out last week, looks like a small laptop when folded.

Hold it by the spine like a book and it opens to reveal two screens. On one side is an "electronic ink" screen for reading. On the other is a fullcolor touch screen that can be used not just to buy books, but to surf the Web, play music and write e-mail.

Unfortunately, this is less of a review and more of a word of

warning: The Edge doesn't do its job. It has a couple of flaws that are enough to make it a failure. Then it has one huge flaw that is enough to make it a failure with no help from other flaws.

The big flaw is atrocious battery life. The Edge doesn't go into a proper standby mode when closed, so its battery is drained after about 10 hours of inactivity. The only way to make it last longer is to turn it off completely. But when you turn it back on, it takes a minute and a half to boot up. That's way too long, considering that you can flip open a paper book and start reading in a few seconds.

Other e-readers, such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle, last longer on standby and turn on faster.

Entourage Systems Inc., the startup behind the product, says it's working on getting the Edge to consume less power when closed and hopes to be able to send a software update out in June.

The other problems with the Edge include its weight, about 3 pounds. The Kindle weighs twothirds of a pound. For $499, you'd expect the Edge to have

cellular wireless access for book and newspaper downloads, as the $259 Kindle and the $400 Sony Reader Daily Edition do.

Instead, it has only Wi-Fi access.

The flaws aside, the Edge is an interesting device. It's the most capable e-reader yet, but it's not likely to hold that honor for long — the iPad from Apple Inc. is set to come out soon.

The Edge's color touch screen is powered by Android, Google Inc.'s software for cell phones. It can play music and movies in addition to surfing the Web. You can tap out e-mails or notes on the screen. You can plug in USB "thumb drives" and SD cards to load files. The Edge comes with its own online book store, but it can also show books from other stores, if they're in the right format (ePub with Adobe DRM). However, to read books from other stores you have to download them to a computer, then transfer them to the Edge through a USB cable or a memory card.

It's tough to design a good user interface that stretches over two screens with very different characteristics. Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook is a prime example.

Like the Edge, it pairs an e-ink screen with a color touch screen, albeit a much smaller one.

That's a confusing setup. It constantly forces users to switch their gaze between the screens to figure out what to do. The Edge does better in this regard, because more functions are manipulated from the large touch screen.

Then there's the limitation of eink: Although it supposedly is a more natural display for reading, it is very slow to update from image to image, making typing and navigation awkward.

However, I find a high-quality backlit LCD color screen to be more legible than e-ink, not less.

And a device with one responsive screen is much easier to use and lighter than one with two. We'll see. Maybe the iPad will show people that reading on LCDs isn't so bad, after all.

Need help with a technology question? Ask us at gadgetgurus@ap.org.

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Imagining an Apple Tablet in 1989 John Mahoney (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/29/2010 2:30:29 PM

Fast Company has a great post today from Tom Dair, cofounder of Smart Design, on the occasion Apple called for his company to produce concepts for a futuristic tablet computer.

But this was no iPad. As Dair puts it, when he and his colleagues responded to an Apple call for design proposals, top-of-the-line Macs (the SE/30!) were boxy and beige.

The Macintosh "Portable" weighed 16 pounds and cost $6,000. And the Web? Still but a glimmer in the eyes of those dialed into the era's primitive Telnet and BBS services, their 1200 baud modems screeching.

Needless to say, sleek portables of aluminum and glass with touchscreen displays were beyond even the most fanciful pie-in-the-sky visions. But Dair IMAGINING page 74

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Human Bones Successfully Grown in Lab from Stem Cells Jeremy Hsu (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/29/2010 1:51:56 PM

Scientists could use the technique to reconstruct almost any intricate bone shape in the lab, using digital images as a model Figuring out a good bone replacement for limbs has proved a problem since the days of the wooden peg leg. Yet scientists have now grown two small bones based on digital images and a 3-D scaffolding, the New York Times reports.

The recent bone work comes from Columbia University, where biomedical researchers led by Gordana VunjakNovakovic first created their replica scaffolding based on digital images of an intact jaw bone. Such work has helped solve the problem of how to create lab-grown bones in the exact shape of the originals.

Vunjak-Novakovic's group

converted the bone material scaffolding into living tissue by placing it in a similar-shaped chamber, and added human stem cells extracted from bone marrow or liposuctioned fat.

The bioreactor chamber then fed oxygen, growth hormones, and nutrients to the bone.

Another team at the University of Michigan plans to recreate jaw bones within the human body itself. It will create its

bone scaffolding based on a printer laser system and CT scan, and then fill the scaffolding with cells taken from the patient who requires the bone replacement. Once implanted, the scaffolding would get absorbed by the body.

Developments such as these could do away with the need for painful bone grafts or using materials such as titanium that aren't completely biocompatible

with host bones. It's almost a shame, really -- wooden synthetic bones better than anything 18th-century pirates had were just making a comeback as artificial bone material substitutes. [via New York Times]

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For the First Time, Simulation Predicts Precisely How Materials Fracture Jeremy Hsu (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:55:10 AM

Taking the "what the frack" out of materials engineering Puzzlement over how to predict fractures in real-world materials has finally given way before a new mathematical model that describes exactly how materials crack under pressure.

The simulation can predict crack patterns in materials that include glass, polymers, concrete, ceramics, metals and rocks. It replicates all stages in the fracture process from beginning to end, ranging from the microscopic scale to huge geological faults in the Earth that are responsible for earthquakes.

journal Nature, could help solve "natural problems that have technological implications," according to Antonio Pons, a physicist at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)Barcelona Tech in Spain.

That might lead to better understanding of how seismological stress caused by enhanced geothermal power might trigger earthquakes, or knowing just how osteoporosis patients might be vulnerable to breaking their bones. We can also think of some new ceramics and other materials that could use the advance failure analysis. [via ScienceDaily]

Such modeling found that materials can break in three different ways: top to bottom, horizontally like a cut, or as a tear, such as when a cable gets pulled and twisted simultaneously. Polymer materials crack like rocks, and

glass breaks along the same crack lines as the Earth's geological faults.

Scientists previously struggled with just modeling how 2-D objects such as paper would rip or tear. The new model, detailed in the first March issue of the

times over.

That said, even when reaching big, it was still 1989: Smart Design's two concepts are both exceptionally bulky by today's standards. And one thing we can all be thankful for is the death of the stylus--I'd be on my 7th or 8th $20 replacement stylus by now, or significantly fatter from eating all those Korean

sausages.

Check out more from Dair's In the end, Smart didn't hear interesting insider perspective back from Cupertino. And four over at FC: years later, out popped the [ Fast Company] Newton, which was hampered by a number of infamous problems, but in hindsight, serves as a pretty viable stepping stone from 16 pounds of Mac Portable to the iPhone and iPad today.

IMAGINING continued from page 72

and co.'s Smart Design prototypes are interestingly prescient.

They both envision touchscreens as the primary interaction point. The more rugged prototype even includes a guitar app where strings are plucked on screen--something we'd see reproduced faithfully in the iPhone App Store many

Time to Cross the Beams! LHC to Commence First Proton Smashing Tomorrow Clay Dillow (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now) Submitted at 3/29/2010 1:21:20 PM

Although some of us feel like we've heard this story before The Large Hadron Collider has been coming along in fits and starts, but the European Organization for Nuclear Research plans to begin colliding the highest energy proton beams ever conjured tomorrow, heralding a new era of science and discovery. If it works, that is.

The LHC has been set back by mechanical failure and even breakdown-by-baguette after a bird dropped a bread crust into an exterior piece of machinery.

But the world's largest and most expensive science experiment has been revving up to 3.5 trillion electron volts with no problems over the last ten days with no real problems, hurtling hundreds of billions of protons around the 17-mile underground TIME page 75

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tunnel at unprecedented speeds.

If the first beam collisions at that energy don't happen tomorrow, it will likely be a matter of finesse rather than failure; it could take up to a few days for the researchers to coax the massive machine into precision cooperation.

Of course, the real question is: will researchers at the LHC find the Higgs boson -- the hypothetical "god particle" that researchers hope will shed light on some of the universe's greatest mysteries. The short answer is: Not tomorrow. Or the

next day. It will likely be months before the huge amounts of data can be analyzed and solid scientific discoveries can be made. But researchers hope to have a better grasp on dark matter, dark energy and some of astrophysics's other unknowns by the end of the year. [ AP]

Solar Thermal: The Next Generation info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines)

are still in the experimental stage, but they bear watching.

Like last year, solar thermal will Submitted at 3/29/2010 1:00:26 PM be one of the primary topics at Last year we wrote an article our 2010 Solar Summit taking comparing the four main solar place March 30 and 31 in thermal technologies: towers, Phoenix. troughs, Stirling dishes and flat The 1,000 Degree Wind. plate reflectors.

HelioFocus, which grew out of Those four concepts still lead research at Israel's Weizmann the industry and it has evolved Institute, has created a six-storypretty much as most have high parabolic dish that will predicted. Companies with concentrate the sun's energy towers and heliostats such as onto an optical receiver at its BrightSource Energy and eSolar center. The proprietary receiver lined up a number of deals in the in turn converts the light into a past year although they've had stream of hot air that can reach t o f a c e q u e s t i o n s a b o u t 1,000 degrees Celsius. The hot environmental impact and air then gets funneled through a financing. gas turbine rejiggered for solar Stirling system advocates have power. signed fewer deals in the past "We take a gas generator and info@greentechmedia.com U.S. are expected to come to year, but have continued to solarize it," said Sass Somekh, (Greentech Media: Headlines) around 800 to 1,000 megawatts. make progress. Stirling Solar one of the founders and a "We're forecasting the Suntech recently planted 60 of its partner at Musea Ventures.

Submitted at 3/29/2010 10:03:32 AM b u s i n e s s t o g o f r o m 6 5 systems on a 1.5 megawatt Musea and Israel Green Corp 2010 is shaping up to be megawatts last year to about 200 power plant. Meanwhile, Ausra, invested$20 million in the another strong year for Suntech, this year, which would be a one of the flat plate leaders, company in 2008.

Pro: The hotter the says Steve Chan. huge jump if we can accomplish e x p e r i e n c e d a s o m e w h a t moribund 2009.

Then early this temperatures, the better. Con: Chan, the chief strategy officer that," he said. and president of global sales and The 2010 total would include year it got bought recently by One can imagine there will be questions about material fatigue marketing for Suntech Power sales to Ontario, Canada, one of Areva.

Since then, a whole host of new at those levels.

Holdings, said that the Chinese the more rapidly developing ideas for converting the heat The Hot Ground. Researchers solar manufacturer could sell markets right now. Samsung last close to 200 megawatts of solar year committed to invest $1.6 from the sun have begun to at the Masdar Institute, the panels into the North American billion in renewable projects and percolate up and in part it's a Tokyo Institute of Technology market in 2010 during a recent factory capacity the province. result of the way solar thermal and Cosmo Oil have begun to i n t e r v i e w w i t h G r e e n t e c h Thus, it's not a completely even functions. Photovoltaic panels test ground-based heliostats -Media. comparison, but most of the are semiconductors: progress i . e . , f l a t m i r r o r s - - t h a t That would potentially give it shipments will go to the U.S. thus is controlled by device concentrate heat from the sun physics. Solar thermal systems and aim it at a tower. So far, close to 20 to 25 percent of the are inherently mechanical. The that's similar to the heliostat U.S. market. PV panels to the SUNTECH page 76 variety is endless. Most of these architectures promoted by

Suntech Aims To Triple American Sales

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BrightSource Energy and eSolar. But a tank sits atop the towers from BrightSource and eSolar. In Masdar's system, the tower holds another set of mirrors. These mirrors then take the heat from the heliostats and reflect it to a liquid-filled tank on the ground directly under the tower. Operating temperatures for the prototype come to around 500 Celsius, which is lower than BrightSource, but higher than others.

Appropriately, it's called the beam-down project.

The extra set of mirrors reduces the efficiency to around 15 to 19 percent. Classic solar thermal systems are 20 plus percent efficient. But with the extra set of mirrors, fluids don't have to be pumped up into a tower, thereby reducing energy and cost requirements, according to Mateo Chiesa, a professor at the Masdar Institute.

Pro: It does get rid of one part of the process. Con: The gains may be offset by the loss in efficiency.

Flowers and Calcium. Solar Fusion Power wants to build heliostats that are shaped somewhat like flowers. The heat from the collectors is then beamed to a quartz lens that in turn focuses the heat on a mirror right above it. The small mirror then directs heat to a mirrored hemisphere on a tower that SOLAR page 76

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beams it toward a collector on the ground. That heat can then be directed to a steam tank.

"The down beam is about a megawatt," said Wayne Bliesner, the inventor.

But wait! There's more. The heat passes into a chamber of liquid calcium simmering at 800 degrees Celsius. Hydrogen is mixed in and a self-sustaining chemical reaction ensues. Heat from the reaction is then used to run a Stirling engine. It can also be stored. The company will try to show off a prototype later this year.

If the system can be proven to work, it could raise the bar for efficiency for solar thermal systems. Most advanced solar thermal systems can convert 20percent-plus of the energy they harvest into electricity. Solar Fusion claims it can approach the 50-percent mark.

Pro: Interesting. Con: This ornate architecture is about as complex as they come.

The Pragmatic Approach. Raw Solar, a startup created by MIT students, says it can make thermal collectors from easily obtainable, off-the-shelf sorts of parts. The collectors could be deployed individually to provide hot water to homes or could be erected in arrays and linked to a generator for electricity. A target market could be the emerging world and those communities that may not have the spare land for massive solar

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thermal parks. (Promethean Power, also out of MIT, is working on PV systems that produce heat for the emerging world.).

Pro: It's a big market. Con: The details are still being hammered out.

Aluminum. Alcoa has devised a reflector for parabolic systems out of aluminum instead of glass. SkyFuel has been touting a thin reflective material to replace mirrors that it says could take 35 percent out of the cost of reflectors. While SkyFuel's might be cheaper, aluminum has an advantage in durability.

Alcoa has also been around longer than many utilities, which will give banks sense of security. Skyline Solar makes similar metal reflectors for the PV industry. Skyline stamps them out at an auto body plant in Mexico.

Pro: Not a lot to dislike considering that it works. Con: reflectivity tests will be crucial.

Salt in the Veins. Thermal companies now use large tanks of molten salt to store heat at night but use different liquids to take the heat from the concentrators to create steam during the day. Tyco Flow Control has come up with a way to replace therminol, the oil in the tubes in parabolic solar thermal for transferring heat now, with molten salt.

By deploying salt as the heat transfer mechanism inside the

pipes of parabolic solar thermal parks, the efficiency of solar thermal power plants could inch up incrementally, because molten salt retains heat longer than therminol. This approach may also help parabolic solar technology, the reigning but aging standard in solar thermal, better compete against heliostats and some of the other new solar thermal architectures.

Iberdrola is already experimenting with this and Tyco is receiving orders from other developers, says Frank Gilhooly, Director of Global Sales and Marketing for the Power Business Unit of Tyco Flow Control.

Pro: A novel, simple idea that extends trough. Con: Have heliostats and Stirlings already won?

Hot Rock. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is looking at snaking pipes filled with heated liquid through concrete to store heat for exploitation after sundown.

Others, such as Elcal Research, are tinkering with phase change materials, i.e., materials that can go from solid to liquid easily by adding or removing heat.

Pro: Everyone loves new storage ideas. Con: Testing data needed.

Solar Air Conditioning. The concept is tough to wrap your head around, but accept that it works. Heat is collected on a rooftop and injected into a heat

exchanger. The heat gets used to boil a refrigerant and the liquid, now chilled with the refrigerant gone, cools buildings. Air conditioning accounts for fifty percent of the demand for power during peak periods in California, according to Peter Le Lievre, founder of Chromasun, one of the leading startups in this space. Also look out for Linum Systems out of Israel.

Pro: It's a great way to knock back peak power. Con: Building owners may not have the money to upgrade. Utilities may have to fund.

Fast Glass. SHEC Energy started out trying to exploit the sun to make hydrogen. Now, it has a reflector dish that can withstand 800 Celsius temperatures. It also has a process that it says is 30 times faster than conventional glass forming technologies. In other words: reflectors in an instant.

Pro: It hits all of the pain points, and achieves high temperatures. Con: the company seems to be biting off a lot for a 15-employee outfit. Similar in some regards to Solar Fusion.

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In 2008, it sold 35 megawatts worth of panels in the U.S. "We grew the market share from 10 to 15 percent during a time that was kind of choppy," he said.

The U.S. dealer network has also grown from 40 installer/dealers to around 200 in a year. And, although Suntech has largely sold into the residential market in the states, the company is expanding its utility portfolio.

"We're on the short list of five plus projects of 1.5 gigawatts (in total) for installation from 2011 to 2015," he said. "We're on the short list where maybe there are one to three other module companies on the list. That is something we are hoping to lock in the next six months."

Not all is wonderful in Suntechland, of course. Competition remains fierce. First Solar and SunPower have landed a number of large contracts with utilities as well and General Electric said recently that it would sell cadmium telluride solar panels next year to developers bidding on utilityscale projects.

Some of Suntech's new business efforts haven't exactly zoomed to success either.

Gemini Solar, a Suntech joint venture that develops solar power plants, has landed a comparatively small 30megawatt plant announced a SUNTECH page 78

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Huge Numbers for Enphase Microinverters info@greentechmedia.com (Greentech Media: Headlines) Submitted at 3/29/2010 8:59:01 PM

In a solar universe of more than 250 early-stage startups, many of them shipping powerpoints in volume (See Solar Bloodbath 2010), microinverter builder Enphase has essentially created a new market sector and run with it. It's won them more funding and strong market acceptance.

We've reported on the many aspirants in microinverters and DC-boost architectures in detail here and here. And we've reported on developments at Enphase here.

Today Enphase announced that it has won $40 million in funding in an oversubscribed round, with new investor Bay Partners leading the equity financing. This round of financing also includes Horizon Technology Finance (that's debt finance, not VC), more debt from Bridge Bank (NASDAQ:BBNK) and VC from existing investors Third

Point Ventures, RockPort Capital Partners, Madrone Capital Partners and Applied Ventures.

I have to admit that I was initially one of the skeptics of the microinverter concept, citing the conservative nature of the solar installer trade and the multiple failure points. I had bumped heads with an anonymous gentleman at one of Enphase's venture investors (Abe Yokell of Rockport) on this topic. But nothing proves the skeptics wrong more than purchase orders, backlog, improving sales numbers, and millions of hours of real-world field testing at residential and commercial installations.

Enphase's recent spate of announcements continues to prove the microinverter skeptics (See PV Powered on microinverters and SolarBridge on electrolytic capacitors in microinverters) wrong and has transformed Enphase from early -stage startup to young company shipping in volume.

Enphase, with the help of its

manufacturing partner, Flextronics, has managed to ship more than 250,000 microinverters since beginning shipments about two years ago.

The wholesale price of the unit is in the $150 range so that's $40 million dollars in revenue so far and growing fast.

Enphase also announced a microinverter design specifically for the Ontario, Canada market which will fulfill Ontario's Domestic Content requirement, allowing installers to participate in the Ontario Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) program.

Enphase's Canadian production line will have a capacity of 100 megawatts (500,000 microinverters) in the first year.

The company plans to double this capacity to one million microinverters in 2011.

Microinverters individuate and convert the energy output of each solar PV module into gridcompliant AC power, offering some potential advantages over traditional centralized inverters in energy harvest, system reliability, and ease of

installation and design.

Additionally, powerline communications enable continuous, remote, per-module monitoring.

So what's next for this fast growing startup? A focus on growth and expansion, sure.

The firm has to make sure the reliability story holds. And in a climate where companies like Tesla, Solyndra, Fallbrook and Codexis can seriously consider an Initial Public Offering - an Enphase IPO would not be out of the question.

And one more thing to consider - if the microinverter (or centralized inverter for that matter) already has a communications link and already monitors energy production - how much of a stretch would it be for the inverter and internet gateway to be the consumer's portal to the utility smart grid?

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little over a year ago but that's about it. The CSG Solar acquisition, which made Suntech a manufacturer of crystalline silicon-on-glass modules, is being retooled.

Suntech bought a controlling interest in the company -- which had raised $35 million in VC funds-- last year. After the acquisition, solar prices plummeted.

"It [CSG] had made product and shipped it commercially, but it is no longer produced because the ASPs (average selling prices) have fallen so low," he said. "They are retooling the product to make it more costeffective."

The CSG Solar acquisition was somewhat soft-pedaled. It was listed in Suntech's SEC forms.

In November, it mentioned that CSG founder David Hogg (not to be confused with Sir Denis Eton-Hogg) would head up Suntech Europe.

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Other things on Suntech's mind: --The company likes the U.S. better than Europe in some ways. Europe collectively remains a larger market but the frenzy preceding and following feed-in tariff adjustments can wreak havoc with panel prices and the stocks of solar companies.

"The good thing about the U.S. market is that you can really plan for the long term," Chan said. "The incentives aren't as generous but it is much more long term."

--For most of last year, Suntech has had spare factory capacity, but that disappeared during the summer. That's a reversal from a year ago, when the company was implementing layoffs and left 50 percent of its factory capacity idle.

"We've basically been operating at maximum capacity since August of last year," he said.

Suntech has approximately 1.2

gigawatts of module capacity.

"Now we're having problems juggling the orders."

--Pricing in the solar market has calmed down and roughly stabilized in February, he said.

--Other entrants like Samsung and Panasonic will hit the ground running in solar and come in with lots of money.

How well they do is another matter.

"The question is can they be differentiated above and beyond what is already in the market."

Solar, though, will likely remain attractive to these companies because it could provide some stability to companies used to even the often wilder price swings in semiconductors and televisions.

--Suntech has three thin film efforts: an amorphous crystalline silicon arm based around the SunFab equipment line from Applied Materials, the currently-in-limbo CSG Solar

effort and an unnamed in-house thin film project. Chan would say what the third one involves but noted that the company's expertise lay in silicon.

--Capacity in Suntech's plant for its high-efficiency Pluto modules will rise to 450 megawatts by the end of the year. Actual production will be lower. Suntech will produce around 30 megawatts by the end of the first half and 120 to 150 megawatts in the second half.

The average efficiency for Pluto cells cells now tops 19 percent, up from 18.9 percent a little while ago. However, module efficiency is lower.

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the Barnett Shale, a 5,000square-mile area that covers Fort Worth and at least 17 counties in Texas.

The advantages of natural gas are clear. It's relatively clean, cheap and doesn't have to be imported. When it's burned for energy, it produces two-thirds of the carbon that oil emits and about half that of coal.

But for an investor in naturalgas stocks, the growing supply would seem more likely to be a detriment than a benefit. After all, when the supply of something rises, the price falls.

That's certainly been the case with natural gas, which in mid February sold for about $5.50 per million Btu after peaking at more than twice that level in the summer of 2008. Part of the decline in price is simply a result of the global recession, but much of it can be attributed BET page 80

electricity, heating homes, running factories, and powering trucks and buses -- has become all the rage in the energy business. The main reason is a technology called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which blows water and sand down into rock at high pressure to create cracks that liberate gas, especially from heavy, dense black rock called shale.

In less than 20 years, such "unconventional gas" -- that is, gas gathered using means other than plain old drilling -- has risen from 10% to 40% of U.S. production, with gas extracted from shale formations through fracking by far the largest part.

But the big jump has come only recently.

The new abundance has set off the gaseous equivalent of a gold

rush. In December, ExxonMobil (symbol XOM) struck a deal to buy XTO Energy(XTO), a leader in drawing natural gas from shale, for $41 billion. In January, France's Total (TOT), the fifth-largest energy company in the world, bought a 25% interest in the holdings of Chesapeake Energy( CHK) in

Bet on Clean Energy (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

-- which had been flat for 20 years -- shot Last June, the Colorado School up 64%. A short time later, of Mines issued an earth- Tony Hayward, chief executive s h a k i n g r e p o r t a b o u t a of London-based BP, the largest development that could have a oil-and-gas producer in the U.S., major impact on the economy, estimated that America "now the environment, national has 50 to 100 years' supply of security and your own portfolio. natural gas."

Researchers found that between Technology breakthrough.

2004 and 2008, the potential Suddenly, natural gas -- a fossil supply of natural gas in the U.S. f u e l u s e d f o r g e n e r a t i n g

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Good Year for Trade Won’t Help the Economy (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

Rising trade won’t boost growth. U.S. exports will expand by 14% this year, a welcome increase after last year’s drop of 15%. But as the economy in the U.S. picks up, imports will also bounce back more strongly -- up 14% after plunging 23% in 2009.

While exports and imports will grow at the same rate, the latter is growing from a much larger base. The result will be a net negative impact. Increased demand for imports of oil, machinery, consumer goods and more will outweigh rising U.S. sales made to other countries.

For the first time since 2006, the trade gap will widen, to $430 billion, or 2.9% of gross domestic product.

Franklin Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers, notes that the U.S. is primarily a capital goods exporter and a consumer goods importer. At this point in the recovery, that specialization puts the U.S. at a structural disadvantage.

“Consumer goods have a shorter production and delivery time than capital goods do,” says Vargo. “We’ll begin to see [demand for] consumer goods perk up, perhaps not robustly, but [it] will pick up. Capital goods depend on improving productivity or expanding

capacity of factories overseas.”

Overall foreign demand for U.S. exports will be a major factor. Gains in sales to emerging markets will exceed losses from developed markets, but just by a bit. Collectively, the euro zone, Japan and the United Kingdom absorb just below one quarter of U.S. goods exports. All three economies are expected to remain mired in subpar growth. Indeed, the U.K. and parts of the euro zone will be lucky if they avoid tipping back into recession. By contrast, the U.S.’ top emerging markets in Asia and in Latin America -China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Korea, which also absorb a combined total of roughly a quarter of U.S. goods exports -will all enjoy modest to strong recoveries.

Intrafirm trade will also play a big role in limiting any lift exports might provide the overall economy. In the 16 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, many U.S. manufacturers have integrated their North American supply chains. This has helped firms reduce the cost of doing business, which in turn benefits U.S. consumers through lower prices. But it also means that assembly work that used to be performed in the U.S. is now done in Canada or Mexico.

The auto industry is perhaps the most emblematic of both the positives and the negatives of

such integration. Charles W. McMillion, president and chief economist of MBG Information Services, cites the example of Los Angeles. Auto plants in and around L.A. used to assemble entire cars and trucks, installing all key components from engines to transaxles. Those factories that sent vehicles elsewhere for final assembly would ship them to destinations within the U.S., such as Ohio.

But the units themselves would be exported as finished products. Now, such L.A. plants send the frames to maquiladoras in Mexico for finishing, then reimport the completed vehicles to sell in the U.S. market.

“It’s especially important to count the value of it when you ship it across [the border] as an export but also when you ship it back as an import,” says McMillion. Because the value of the finished imports exceeds that of the unassembled exports, “this is a case where exports are an indication of lost jobs, rather than adding jobs.”

Protectionism will get a lot of attention but have little real effect on trade. Edward Alden, trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says, “The surprising thing so far is how little protectionism there’s been,” despite widespread fears that that the recession might unravel the world trading system. According to a recent study by the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development, trade restrictions imposed from October 2008 to October 2009 affected less than 1% of the value of global imports, and the early indications are that new trade curbs are on the decline.

The one potential area of concern is a brewing fight over China’s currency. The Treasury Department is due to make its semiannual report to Congress on currency manipulation on April 1. If the Obama administration declares that China is deliberately keeping the value of its currency low in order to subsidize its exports, Congress will demand it take action -- ranging from imposing antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese imports to filing a dispute with the World Trade Organization. If it decides not to call China out in this fashion, support will build on the Hill for legislation that would effectively force the White House to take such action. And while many in Beijing recognize that the country will eventually need to allow the yuan to strengthen, China will resist any outside pressure to do so.

Sales of capital goods and supporting services will provide the biggest lifts. Companies that will benefit most include manufacturers of information technology, electronics, chemicals, heavy equipment and

medical technology, along with providers of business services, engineering, wholesale trade and transportation. Exports of food and beverages will also show improvement as living standards in developing countries rise further.

Regionally, the Northwest will gain most. California may rank highest in the nation in terms of the total value of its exports, but measuring exports as a share of state GDP, Washington state wins the crown at 20% compared with the Golden State’s 6%. And unlike California, Washington runs a trade surplus. Civil aircraft and aircraft parts, courtesy of Boeing’s plants in Everett and Renton, will make up half the state’s foreign sales, with Chinese carriers its top customers. Oregon will also do well, thanks largely to its semiconductor and wheat exports. Elsewhere, demand for oil products and drilling gear will benefit Texas, while coal will lift West Virginia’s prospects. And Farm Belt states will do well exporting soybeans and corn.

The states most vulnerable to weak sales abroad will be South Carolina, Alabama and Utah. A fall in European demand for luxury cars will hurt South Carolina and Alabama, which house BMW and MercedesGOOD page 81

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to the increased supply.

Low prices -- for both gas and the shares of gas producers -were what attracted major energy companies such as ExxonMobil and Total. After trading for as much as $74 a share in 2008, XTO had dropped to about $41 by the time ExxonMobil made its offer.

Devon Energy( DVN) , the Barnett Shale pioneer, traded at $127 in 2008; the stock fell to one-third of that price last year before bouncing back -- but it was still only $67 in mid February, even though Devon is rumored to be a takeover candidate.

The question for investors, then, centers not on supply but demand. Will the U.S. significantly increase its use of natural gas in the years ahead?

With the obvious attractions of natural gas, logic says yes. But in the highly politicized world of energy, logic doesn't always win. For natural gas to succeed in the short term, it may need a boost from federal and local governments.

Recently I had breakfast in Dallas with energy-industry legend T. Boone Pickens, whose "Pickens Plan" calls for government to encourage heavyduty vehicles to shift to compressed or liquefied natural gas. (Pickens is the chairman of Clean Energy Fuels [CLNE], a

publicly traded company that builds fueling stations and supplies natural gas for 320 customers, including trash haulers, that collectively operate 15,000 vehicles.)

Currently, 8.5 million large trucks and buses travel U.S. roads, and nearly all are powered by diesel fuel. Pickens says that if only 3.2% of these vehicles transitioned to natural gas by 2015, demand would rise by 600 billion cubic feet a year and dependence on oil imports would decrease by 18%. Yet, in his State of the Union message the day before my breakfast with Pickens, President Obama did not mention natural gas at all. Rather, he emphasized the importance of nuclear and solar power -- and coal. Coal? Yes, it's a critical product in many key electoral states.

Natural gas may be forced to succeed on its own merits, which are considerable.

Currently, gas accounts for 24% of all U.S. energy use, compared with 37% for oil, 23% for coal, 9% for nuclear, and less than 1% for wind, solar and geothermal combined. We import nearly three-fourths of our oil; the other energy sources are almost entirely homegrown.

Pickens is right that the key to energy security -- and economic growth -- is transportation, which accounts for 28% of U.S.

energy use. But putting compressed natural gas into your fuel tank is not the only way to use gas to power vehicles. Natural gas also offers advantages in electricity generation, and with the right infrastructure, electricity may eventually become the primary means of powering cars.

Companies to buy. So a bet on natural-gas stocks is a bet on two events: an economic recovery and an energy policy built on economic and environmental rationality. Let's assume we get some of both.

What are the best companies to buy? Among the gas exploration -and-production companies, one standout is Devon, for its expertise in fracking, its presence in the Barnett Shale and its takeover potential. "We expect further consolidation in the shale gas market, and I expect it to be led by the wellfinanced international oil companies," says Chris Sheehan, of IHS Herold, an energy-research firm in Norwalk, Conn. It will take a buyer with deep pockets to acquire Devon. Its market capitalization is $30 billion, but it still trades at just five times estimated 2010 cash flow. (Price to cash flow -- earnings plus depreciation and other noncash charges -- is the preferred measure of value among energy-

production companies.)

John Freeman and John Fitzgerald, highly regarded energy analysts at Raymond James, praise Chesapeake. They say that the deal with Total in the Barnett Shale could lead to similar joint ventures in other areas. Chesapeake also has major holdings in the Marcellus Shale, a vast area of Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio that could have even greater potential than Barnett. Chesapeake's stock trades at four times Raymond James's estimate of cash flow per share for 2010.

Royal Dutch Shell and other major oil companies want to expand their Marcellus drilling, and a possible takeover candidate is Range Resources( RRC) , which has leased 1.4 million acres in the area.

Standard & Poor's lists one natural-gas stock, EOG Resources( EOG) , which is expanding its drilling in the Barnett Shale, among the 15 stocks in its "high-quality capital appreciation portfolio."

And consider Natural Gas Services( NGS) and BJ Services( BJS) , which provide drilling services to natural-gas explorers. Both are trading far below their record-high share prices.

The easiest way to invest in the sector is through Fidelity Select

Natural Gas( FSNGX) , an actively managed mutual fund that holds 86 stocks. It's topheavy, with the ten largest holdings -- led by one of my favorites, Anadarko Petroleum( APC) -- representing more than half of assets. The fund, which carries an expense ratio of 0.85%, returned 11.8% annualized over the past ten years as of February 15. An exchange-traded fund that focuses on this group is First Trust ISE-Revere Natural Gas( FCG) . Launched in 2007, the ETF charges 0.60% a year.

Gas is a game changer, but politicians have a lot to say about how we use energy, so the game probably won't change overnight. An investment in natural gas based on rising demand will likely require a long-term commitment, but that's what stocks are for.

James K. Glassman is executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas. His next investing book appears later this year.

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Make the Most of Health Care Reform (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

the policy. If they’re healthy, they may get a better deal on Who will benefit from the new their own. In most states, people health-care-reform law over the in their early twenties can buy next few months, and how can health insurance for $150 per those people make the most of month. It will be easy to shop it? for a policy starting in 2014, Two key groups will benefit w h e n t h e l a w e s t a b l i s h e s from the new law within the insurance exchanges to help next six months. Here’s what people buy coverage. But until they need to know. then, a good place to shop is at Recent grads and young adults. eHealthInsurance.com, or find a The law requires insurers to let local agent at www.nahu.org. dependent children stay on their And even after the law starts parents’ policies until age 26, requiring insurers to cover w h i c h w i l l h e l p c o l l e g e dependents until age 26, it may graduates who don’t have a job n o t h e l p e v e r y o n e . “ T h e with benefits. However, the new legislation did not specify rule won’t take effect until exactly who will be eligible for September 23. coverage through the extension About half the states currently through age 26,” says Tanya have laws permitting grown kids Schwartz, policy analyst at the to stay on their parents’ policies Kaiser Family Foundation. Most until at least age 25 or 26 (see states that let grown kids stay on the National Conference of State parents’ policies do not require Legislatures table for a list of the kids to be claimed as each state’s rules). But new dependents on their parents’ tax grads in other states may still returns. But the new law could need to find coverage for a few impose that requirement. The months before the law kicks in. Secretary of Health and Human Until then, they could remain Services will be creating the on their parents’ policies under regulations over the next few COBRA, but the price can be months to spell out those details. steep -- often $200 to $300 per Some states may continue to month or more, depending on offer more-generous rules.

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Benz plants, respectively.

Utah’s top customer is the ailing U.K., which buys gold, computers, electronics and aircraft parts from the Beehive

State.

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It will also be important to see how the extended coverage will be priced. Under many state laws now, you do not have to pay extra to keep an adult child on your policy if you would have kept a family policy to insure younger siblings. But if the insurer bases premiums on the number of children, or if you’re insuring only one child and could otherwise switch from family coverage to coverage for a single person or couple, compare that extra cost with the price of buying an individual policy for your young adult. Use the same strategy to determine whether it's a better deal to keep your kids on your policy under the new law or to have them get their own policy.

If your child does buy his or her own coverage, a great way to lower the cost is to raise the deductible -- especially if he or she rarely visits the doctor and needs insurance primarily for catastrophic coverage.

If the deductible is at least $1,200 for self-only coverage, the child can qualify for a health savings account and make taxdeductible contributions that can be used tax-free for medical

expenses in any year. People with self-only coverage can contribute up to $3,050 to an HSA in 2010. HSAs still exist under the new law but with a higher penalty (rising from a 10% tax to 20%) on any amount withdrawn for nonmedical expenses before age 65.

People with health issues. The new law appropriates $5 billion to establish a temporary highrisk pool to provide coverage for people with health issues, starting 90 days after the law was signed (June 23) and remaining in effect until 2014, when insurers will be prohibited from rejecting anyone because of preexisting conditions.

The new national high-risk pool will be particularly helpful for people who have trouble finding coverage in states that don’t have open high-risk pools now, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

But there is a big catch: You need to be uninsured for at least six months to qualify for the new national high-risk pool.

Many state high-risk pools, on the other hand, currently let you in if you’ve been rejected by an

insurer and don’t require you to be uninsured.

It’s dangerous to be uninsured, especially if you have medical issues, so exploring your options now is a good idea. See the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans for a list of states with high-risk pools and contact information to see whether you can qualify for coverage as soon as possible.

Some of the states with highrisk pools that work well may be able to continue running their own pools, but new plans (or one national plan) will still need to be set up to cover the states that don't have a working highrisk plan now. The new plans must follow the provisions of the law, which includes consumer protections such as limiting the maximum out-ofpocket spending to $5,950 for individual coverage or $11,900 for families.

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Travel Stocks Set to Go (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

everything that floats or flies is a worthy investment. We prefer The nation’s long staycation is large companies with the money over. Business travelers and and capacity to defend their families are grabbing their businesses from the industry’s s u i t c a s e s a s t h e e c o n o m y notorious price competition and recovers. The rush will buoy the travelers’ fickle tastes. And as hard-hit travel industry. people try to avoid taking on More than half of corporate- any more debt, we also like travel managers expect their companies that cater to value total travel spending to increase travelers. Here are four picks: in 2010, according to a survey Carnival Corporation(symbol by the National Business Travel CCL), the world’s largest cruise Association. An airline industry operator, expects bookings to trade group, the International grow by 8% this year with Air Transport Association, actual prices (in an industry recently raised its forecast for known for deals and discounts) 2010 passenger traffic growth rising by 17%. The company, from 4.5% to 5.6%. That with headquarters in Miami and compares with a 2.9% drop in London, boosted its own full2009. And the Cruise Lines year earnings “guidance,” or Industry Association estimates a estimate, from $2.10 to $2.30 rise of nearly 7% in passenger per share to $2.25 to $2.35 per traffic for 2010. share. At their March 25 close Anticipating this, the Dow of $38.54, Carnival shares were Jones Travel & Leisure Index is up 127% since the stock market u p 1 1 % s o f a r t h i s y e a r , bottomed in March 2009. That compared with a 2% gain for puts the price-earnings ratio at Standard & Poor’s 500-stock 17 times the $2.34 per share index. The travel index has also analysts call for the company to outpaced the S&P since stocks earn in the year ending in in general began to rebound in November 2010.

March 2009. More than a As more people go cruising, handful of travel stocks have they’ll spend more aboard ship. already more than doubled from Steiner Leisure( STNR) operates their lows. spas on 13 cruise lines, at 50 For that reason, and because the resorts and at 11 luxury hotels. industry is full of firms with Oppenheimer analyst David debt problems -- we can’t say Katz points out that by buying

shares of Steiner, you invest in cruises without worrying about a spike in fuel prices, which savages the shipowners’ profits.

Steiner is poised to grow its hotel spa business with the January acquisition of Bliss World Holdings from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Katz says. He thinks Steiner could beat the average 2010 earnings estimate of $2.46 per share and that the shares are worth $51. The stock, at $44.45, trades at 18 times 2010 earnings estimates and has gained 81% over the past year.

Shares of online travel agent Expedia( EXPE) are stuck so far this year, down 10.8%. But look past the slump and you’ll find that the world’s largest online travel agency is expanding its international business. Plus, Expedia just initiated a cash dividend that, based on the stock’s current price, would yield 1.2%. As travelers continue to look for the best values, more business will be funneled through Expedia’s network of travel sites. At $22.88, Expedia shares trade for 14 times the $1.59 per share analysts forecast the company will earn in 2010. Priceline, Expedia’s rival, is a great company as well, but it trades for 23 times estimated 2010

earnings.

Southwest Airlines( LUV) is the standout company in a bad business for shareholders. Since 1947, the U.S. airline industry as a whole has racked up some $34 billion in net losses. But Southwest has been profitable for 37 years in a row -- notably in 2008, a brutal year for airlines. Expect the trend to continue as more budgetconscious fliers, turned off by baggage fees and other annoying charges levied by rival airlines, choose Southwest.

The major risk to Southwest, as with any airline, is fuel costs.

Southwest has previously been smart at hedging oil costs and is hedging about 50% of its estimated 2010 fuel consumption against oil going as high as $100 a barrel. The stock, at $13.07, is up 161% from its March 2009 low of $5.

It trades for 23 times the 57 cents per share analysts estimate the company will earn in 2010.

Raymond James analyst Duane Pfennigwerth thinks Southwest shares are worth $15, and as recently as 2006, Southwest flew above $20.

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Going Rogue: America's Underground Chefs contributors@theatlantic.com (Paul Wachter) (Food :: The Atlantic) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:18:44 AM

cyclonebill/flickr An early sign that dining at Whisk & Ladle would not be a traditional restaurant experience came in the email confirming my reservation and providing directions: "The entrance is across from a small motorboat."

And so it was. Tucked into an alley in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn in a factory-cum-apartment building is an underground supper club operated by four roommates (plus the former one who started it all), who cook 5-course meals for paying guests twice each month.

There are now so many "secret" dining clubs in the country (and far beyond) that most don't merit to be called underground anymore. The Whisk & Ladle has a Web site, a 8,000-member listserv, and is incorporated as a partnership. It remains GOING page 84

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Meatball Inferno contributors@theatlantic.com (Hank Shaw) (Food :: The Atlantic) Submitted at 3/30/2010 6:24:58 AM

Holly A. Heyser Click here to read Hank's recipe for wild duck meatballs, or click here for his Swedish grandmother's more traditional recipe—adapted to use moose, although you can substitute any red meat.

Yeah, I am still on my meatball bender. A few days after gorging on my Italian duck meatballs, my mum sent me her mother's recipe for Swedish meatballs, also known as köttbullar. Also known as crack.

I had made Swedish meatballs all of once before this experiment, and while they were good, they weren't great; the IKEA ones were better. I never knew my grandmother so I can't remember her ever making Swedish meatballs, but I do have several strong memories of Mum making these little balls of yum long ago, in the ... ... Seventies! Of course we ate Swedish meatballs in the 1970s—everyone did. They were right next to the fondue.

But even this was simply withdrawal symptoms of the Swede Ball's heyday a decade earlier. Can't you just see the chafing dish, the Sterno, and the meatballs nestled in that slowlycongealing-yet-somehowirresistible gravy? Groovy, baby, yeah!

Yet of all the crazy throwback foods of that much-maligned decade, Swedish meatballs are high on the list for preservation.

If you've eaten well-made ones, can any among you honestly say you have not stuffed yourself on them? What the hell is it about these meatballs? I've eaten several dozen at a sitting before, only to feel later like an anaconda that swallowed a cow—made of butter.

Butter. Maybe that's it? Every decent recipe calls for obscene amounts of butter. The gravy is part drippings from frying the meatballs in butter, flour, stock

and, in some cases, lingonberry syrup or jelly. Still, I've eaten lots of rich things before without succumbing to gluttony.

Maybe it is a Swedish meatball's size. Small. Bitesized, to be exact. Dangerous.

My Italian meatballs are big, honking brontosaurus balls; you need at least three bites to get one down. These little Swedish meatballs are just a tablespoon.

That's not so much. Maybe I'll have just one more ...

At any rate, after reading Gramma's recipe I just had to make these meatballs again. But I decided to make my own

version an homage to the epicenter of Scandihoovia in North America: Minnesota. The idea started with my friend Elise, who has another hunting friend who had shot a moose this season, although probably not in Minnesota. Elise gave me a big slab of the moose meat, a slab I had designs on.

OK, I have something of a sick sense of humor, so I was waiting to cook the moose until I got a chance to hunt squirrels this year. I wanted to combine the two in one dish. Maybe a Russian-inspired dish, which would of course be called "

Rocky & Bullwinkle." Don't get it? You're too young.

But my torn Achilles tendon put the kibosh on that. So I still had this moose, and when the Swedish meatball urge hit me, it was only natural that I use it for them. It was my first time with moose, and I found it a lot like beef—lean beef, to be sure, but it had a fairly coarse grain and was very light-colored compared to venison. I fried up a piece and it was mild, almost sweet. Note to self: save money for a moose hunt someday.

I mixed the moose meat with some pork fat and ground it fine.

My mother says Swedish meatballs absolutely need to be ground fine; she's the daughter of a Swede, so I trust her. The dominant flavoring is allspice, but I diverged from the recipe by adding some caraway seeds, too. I happen to like the combination of allspice, caraway, and black pepper.

Even I am not so crazy as to fry these meatballs in pure butter, however. To do so would have required several pounds, and frankly I am on a budget. So I used mostly canola oil, with two tablespoons of butter added for flavor. It worked well enough.

I ate one meatball before I made the sauce. It was a soft, luscious morsel, meltingly tender, with a crisp coating of flour and a real hit of allspice MEATBALL page 87

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"underground" only in the sense that it's technically illegal, outside the purview of city health officials, who from what I gathered in a recent conversation take a laissez-faire approach to this particular species of rogue culinarian.

Late to the supper club game, I nonetheless thought it was worth checking out the experience, which is why I volunteered to help the Whisk & Ladle crew prepare a midMarch meal, and showed up at just after one in the afternoon. I was late. Already, Mark Losinger was tending to a cannellini bisque and supervising the day's other volunteer, Brit Kleinman, who designs bags for Jack Spade and travels the world searching out street markets. Mark's two female roommates, Danielle Florio and Jessie Carter, soon returned from a coffee run with Norah Van Dusen, a former roommate who founded the club but later moved to Park Slope.

None have gone to culinary school or cooked in restaurants, and they look to their main jobs—lawyering, tutoring—to pay the bills. (Jessica will soon begin culinary school to specialize in the pastry arts, however.)

We crowded into the

kitchen—spacious by New York City standards, but no larger than a suburbanite's "chef's kitchen"—and worked off a prep list. I cored cherry tomatoes, while Danielle thought out loud about what to stuff inside. "I'm thinking of quinoa, feta, and parsley."

Saturday's dinner was an all vegetarian meal featuring sweatpea gnocchi and other comfort food; it was less ambitious than the previous night's, which was heavy on meat and had a historic theme, pairing old recipes with contemporaneous cocktails.

As with the tomatoes, there was a lot of improvisation in the preparation of other courses.

Mark threw some chopped mushrooms into a pot of olive oil and asked no one in particular, "I wonder what Thomas Keller would do with this?" Keller's French Laundry Cookbook, on a nearby shelf, had no ready answers, and Mark ended up using the flavored oil to cook the gnocchi. Later, he left for a short run, something a line cook at Per Se is unlikely to do.

"I admire professional restaurants, and it's extremely difficult to cook the same dish at a high level of quality day after day," said Michael Cirino, who

runs a globetrotting supper club called A Razor, A Shiny Knife, and dropped by later that evening. "But that's not what supper clubs are about. We're about improvisation and experimentation." That doesn't mean amateur cooks are not ambitious. Last year, Cirino orchestrated a home cook's version of the 21-course meal Thomas Keller and Food Channel contributor Grant Achatz co-produced to launch their respective books. (After hearing about it, Achatz invited Cirino for a guest stint at his Chicago restaurant, Alinea.)

When guests arrived at eight, I packed away my knives and moved to the bar area, where drinks were being prepared by the apartment's fourth roommate, Nick Bennett, who bartends at The Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights. Gawker once noted derisively (as if the site had another tone) that the Whisk & Ladle "has all the ingredients of an unbearable hipster disaster inferno implosion." And sure enough, there were a few urban lumberjack types and one unapproachably pretty waif. But there were also a FrenchAmerican financier who rarely strayed from Manhattan, a lesbian lawyer couple, a Norwegian visual artist and his

freelance curator wife—not to mention Mark's parents, who drove down from Lake George in upstate New York. A couple of guys who worked for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz dropped by and had earlier presented the crew with an official certificate declaring February 19, 2010 "Whisk & Ladle Day." The meal itself, served in a dining room with three long tables, was very good, though there were some long waits between courses. "The gnocchi got stuck," Norah later apologized. But no one seemed to mind. Throughout the dinner, people kept wandering in and settling by the bar—friends of the Whisk & Ladle, including fellow amateurs like Michael.

What was their relation to professional chefs, I asked. "We hang out more with bartenders," Mark said. "Professional kitchens keep such late hours, and we have to wake up for our jobs."

But there are a few professional chefs that also participate in supper clubs. Deborah Gorman, a private chef who has worked at Blue Hill and Café Gray, collaborates with the Whisk & Ladle—here's video footage of a recent meal—and other clubs.

And on Saturday, Amelia

Coulter, of Brooklyn's Sugarbuilt Cookies, made the dessert course. "These clubs are a creative outlet that I don't get as often cooking for a private family," Gorman says.

The paying customers I spoke with said they'd do it again.

Karen, one of the attorneys, wrote me an email on Monday that read like a promotional blurb: "A welcoming and friendly atmosphere with great drink options and phenomenal food served in a professional manner. The other guests had varied and interesting backgrounds and it was absolutely worth the price of admission."

But it's my time in the kitchen that had stuck with me. I can't imagine living with three roommates, let alone operating a business together to boot. And yet on Saturday I saw none of the shouting and contretemps that propel realty cooking shows and bedevil professional kitchens. Bonhomie may be amateurism's greatest virtue.

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Bet You Can't Eat Just One contributors@theatlantic.com (Marc Ambinder) (Food :: The Atlantic) Submitted at 3/29/2010 3:05:56 PM

soleiletoile/flickr In his book, "The End of Overeating," former FDA commissioner David Kessler charges food companies with deliberately manipulating the chemical composition of their products to make them addictive to people with vulnerable brain chemistries— i.e., children.

Kessler participated in subsequent research that found similarities in how rat's brains experienced withdrawal symptoms similar to drug withdrawal then, after being fed by a high fat, high sugar mix, they were suddenly put on a diet. The food industry dismissed Kessler's claims by ignoring them, and one of their top lobbyists admitted that the strategy was deliberate: to respond would call attention to the claims and force the good companies into a tit-for-tat debate about neuroscience.

Kessler believes that many food companies ought to be publicly shamed for constructing and marketing addictive, unhealthy food to kids.

More ammunition comes today in a new article from Nature Neuroscience, which found that rat brains tend to crave higher and higher levels of fat and sugar over time in order to make the reward centers send out the

"satiety!" signal. The article provides evidence for a conclusion that many overeaters intuit: food can be addictive.

More precisely, in rats, certain types of food can mimic the mechanism by which the rats (poor rats!) also become addicted to drugs. The authors conclude that the "development of obesity was coupled with emergence of a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses." Specifically, a specific type of Dopaminergic neuroreceptor called the D2 Striatal appears to be "downregulated" in rats who

become obese. The same receptors show down-regulation in humans who have become addicted to drugs. (It is very difficult, incidentally, to study in vivo changes to human chemical receptors, which is why analog studies conducted on rats are still the norm." In humans, the compulsion to overeat could be chemically tied to a brain region (the dorsal striatum) that, over time, is harder and harder to trigger. It turns out that the dorsal striatum is implicated in what scientists like to call the "hedonic" response—the feeling of

something else, people tend to believe that the two are linked, and that a common mechanism is responsible for both things.

We assume this because we assume that the media is telling us something new and relevant.

This is unfortunate; we need be very careful in how we consume scientific studies, lest our brains become inured to the scientific method, which is provisional and careful and always open to revision. Headlines like " Fatty Foods May Be Just As Addictive As Cocaine and Heroin" or " Twinkies As Addictive As Crack Or Smoke" are misleading. Slightly better is the National Institute of Health's own description: "Research suggests food availability could prompt addiction," which is at least faithful to the science, although not quite to what the pleasure and fulfillment one gets authors found. (The headline for performing a certain activity. implies causation; the authors There are a few things to note. find correlation.)

At the same time, strong One is that the authors do not know whether these brain correlations are often as good as dysfunctions ("the deficits in scientists are going to get, and a reward processing") are a result series of strong correlations of overeating, a result of the b e t w e e n m e c h a n i s m s , type of food itself, whether repeatedly and regularly tested some unknown factor causes over time, and with other factors this type of response, or whether being ruled out one by one, t h e b r a i n i s p r e - w i r e d come close enough to causation ("constitutive ") to respond this that a reasonable person—let's w a y t o a n y t y p e o f say a policy-maker can conclude overconsumption. Also, the that certain interventions might media has already up-regulated be necessary. And there is a the story. When the press writes BET page 87 that something "may" be like

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Confessions of a Picky Eater contributors@theatlantic.com (Amy Sullivan) (Food :: The Atlantic) Submitted at 3/29/2010 9:13:16 AM

Allerina & Glen MacLarty/flickr I have a split food personality. I love poring over cookbooks and have three cooking magazine subscriptions, but I just started eating tomatoes last year. The sight of a perfectly cooked scallop on Top Chef makes me drool, but I've only voluntarily eaten shellfish once and am not above inventing a shellfish allergy at dinner parties. If the world is divided into those who eat to live and those who live to eat, I am firmly in the latter camp—provided that what I'm eating doesn't have a beet anywhere near it.

The sad truth is that I am a foodie and a picky eater. Which is kind of like being a travel buff who is afraid to fly.

The world of adult picky eaters is not well understood, in part because so many of us use coping mechanisms to hide our limited tastes and are ashamed to admit our complicated food preferences. Everyone knows children who eat only foods of a certain color or insist on diets of pasta and butter. Even Michael Voltaggio, the most recent winner of Top Chef, says that as a child he was an incredibly picky eater who refused to touch broccoli. He grew up to become a chef who thinks nothing of

recognition. Most of you—the true epicurean readership of a food site, after all—are horrified and wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

I can't say I blame you. For most of my adult life, I have labored to broaden my palate in order to become a full-fledged foodie. Each year I try to acquire a taste for foods I previously considered inedible—black beans one year, avocado the next. Considering that I ate virtually no vegetables and had never tried any seafood other than fish sticks before I moved to Washington, D.C., from the Midwest after college, I'm proud of my steadily expanding tastes. And I'm constantly discovering new recipes in the cooking magazines I've been lugging from house to house for 15 serving banana polenta. But restaurant—not because you thirty-something woman to years. The steamed black cod I flipped past last year might turn what about the adults who never can't choose among all of the admit.) acquire a broader palate? delectable options but because You might be a picky eater if out to be a dish I soon eat.

A few years ago, researchers at you're looking for just one you consider a meal at an ethnic But the pace is still ridiculously the University of Pennsylvania entrée that doesn't involve restaurant less an opportunity slow. And now I have an added conducted a study on food turnips or bleu cheese or for culinary experimentation motivation to accelerate the preferences and found that mayonnaise lurking under its than a social ordeal to be process. Pregnant with our first nearly 20 percent of their trendier moniker aioli. endured. You probably also child, I am more than a little respondents limited their normal You might be a picky eater if have not mastered chopsticks. worried about creating a minidiets to just 10 or fewer foods. you've ever feigned a food You might be a picky eater if me whose tastes run towards Even allowing for those who allergy to get out of eating you loathe cocktail parties, with applesauce and cinnamon toast. suffer from food allergies and something. (This is where I their hard-to-identify circulated I want this kid to have a fighting other taste disorders, that's a lot should apologize to several very appetizers, and if you decline chance of liking shrimp, of of finicky eaters. How do you accommodating dinner hosts. I every hors d'oeuvre rather than eating cherry tomatoes from the know if you're one of them? am not, so far as I am aware, risk biting into a puff pastry garden, and understanding that it You might be a picky eater if allergic to shellfish. I just find shell to find a mushroom lying is never okay to eat fish with you often find yourself the last the idea of them gross, and that's in wait.

CONFESSIONS page 87 t o o r d e r a t a n i c e not socially acceptable for a Some of you are nodding in

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flavor; the caraway and pepper wave hello as you swallow the nugget. Yeah, baby, yeah ...

Yes, I actually said that out loud to myself.

As good as the meatballs themselves were, it was the sauce that put the dish over the edge. Most Swedish meatball recipes I've eaten have a nice, thick sauce not unlike Thanksgiving gravy. Nothing special. But mum said köttbullar sometimes has lingonberry in the sauce.

Didn't have lingonberry. Would have to go to a store for that.

But thanks to my Minnesota friend Chris, I did have highbush cranberry jelly! I first encountered this northern berry

continued from page 86

while grouse hunting; Chris told me what they were and I loved their tart, slightly sweet, slightly funky taste. They're not a real cranberry—they are a member of the viburnum family—but highbush cranberries are an excellent alternative to lingonberries.

So I added a bunch to the gravy, then a little cream. I tasted it. Holy crap! The cranberries added a sweet-tart background to the sauce that absolutely transformed it. It went from gravy to something ethereal—if a sauce with probably 1,000 calories per serving can be ethereal. You know what it was? It was, as my friend Jennifer would say, sex

on a plate.

I fed Holly some of these meatballs, doused in the Magic Sauce. She closed her eyes, swooned a bit, and said. "I see them." What? "Sky rockets."

Huh? "Sky rockets in flight!"

OK, maybe that didn't happen.

But she did say eating Swedish meatballs made her feel like a Dancing Queen. Don't get it?

You're too young.

Recipe: Wild Duck Meatballs Recipe: Grandmother's Swedish Moose Meatballs

allocate blame? What is the "bliss point," as Kessler calls it, where food transits the boundary between enjoyable and addictive? Do food companies deliberately manipulate this point in order to draw in consumers who are bombarded by advertisements, who live in an environment where access to good food is spare and access to junk food is plentiful, and who lack adequate parental supervision to compensate?

The Center for Consumer Freedom, which is run by lobbyist Rick Berman and which gets paid by some food

manufacturers, put out the only response I've seen yet from the industry, and it is weak: "Common use of the term 'addiction' has changed from describing a physical dependence on a substance (like hard drugs), to a psychological dependence."

Yeah. And the article discusses a physical addiction.

BET continued from page 85

mountain of evidence that the food we eat, whether it's trashy empty junk food or sizzling, perfectly cooked steak, is specifically engineered for our pleasure. We wouldn't really have it any other way, and it's hard to blame the food industry for trying to make their food taste better. The same foods that are addicting or addictive are also not, when consumed in reasonable quantities.

At the same time, given how quickly obesity sets in among young kids who begin to consume high sugar, high-fat, high-salt diets, you've got to wonder where else can one can

ketchup.

So I am launching a project to force myself through the remaining foods on my do-noteat list. For a food like cauliflower, it might be a matter of finding the right preparation.

For others, like pears, I'd like to seek out the freshest products and try a number of varieties.

For shellfish, I may have to start out with the meat sans shell and conquer my fear in stages. And I'm prepared for the possibility that I may never like mushrooms, no matter how many times my mother-in-law prepares her famous mushroom soup.

It also means understanding why people have different food preferences and how to overcome them. Does a mother's

diet during pregnancy impact a child's tolerance for salty foods?

What role does smell play in our sense of taste? Why does half the population like cilantro when it tastes like soap to the rest of us?

In the process, maybe I can inspire some of my fellow picky eaters to venture outside their chicken breast and potato safety zones. And maybe even foster some understanding from those of you who have never had to ask "Um ... what's in this?" before taking a bite.