Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Edition
Obama: The Next Great Dictator?
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 1:00:00 AM
Filed under: Republicans, Barack Obama,
John McCain, Featured Stories, Scandal If
you're a die-hard Republican--the kind
who John McCain, in the final throes of
the campaign, implored to fight, fight fight
--then you may have perked up a bit at
recent news. You see, though your party
has just suffered an historic defeat to a
very progressive Democrat, a new line of
Barack-Obama-attack has suddenly
emerged. This rallying cry, dreamed up in
the bunkers of Republican thought as the
blue state bombs rained down, is startling
in its simplicity. It is based, yet again, on a
guilt-by-association premise, and is a
natural evolution, of sorts. You see,
Obama's detractors tried "Obama is a
terrorist." Didn't work. Then they tried
"Obama is a communist." Again, this
stirred nobody except the dead-end base.
So, why not try the ultimate scare tactic:
"Obama is a fascist." Well, to the cheers of
right wing websites, that's exactly what
Georgia congressman Paul Broun did
yesterday. To hear him tell it, Obama very
well might turn out to be the next Adolf
Hitler.
For Broun (not to be confused with Eva
Braun), the sure sign that our president-
elect is secretly hellbent on exterminating
6 million Jews and annexing Mexico and
Canada (for starters), is that Obama, like
George W. Bush before him, advocates the
creation of a civilian defense force. That
suggestion can be traced to two lines in a
Republican gains in three states overshadowed by Obama's November 4 success
By Daniel Nasaw (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
single Obama speech. How's that for
feasting on crumbs? So, are you ready?
Here's the unforgivable, goose-stepping,
spine-chilling proof that Hitler and Obama
are peas in a pod:
"We cannot continue to rely on our
military in order to achieve the national
security objectives that we've set. We've to
have a civilian national security force that's
just as powerful, just as strong, just as well
-funded."
Apparently, after scouring YouTube for
any whiff of Hitler-esque material, Broun
Lurking quietly on the electoral college
map that Barack Obama splashed with
Democratic blue are a small handful of
27/10/08 - 11/11/08
and his ilk have decided to run with this:
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi
Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet
Union did," Broun said. "When he's
proposing to have a national security force
that's answering to him, that is as strong as
the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of
being a Marxist."
Strange that Broun can't seem to keep his
-ists straight. You met one -ist you've met
them all, I guess.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with
being vigilant against the oppressive rise of
states seemingly oblivious to the tide that
swept the nation's first African American
into the White House last week
LibertyNewsprint.com U.S.
government, per se. But Broun's line of
argument is really less about safe-guarding
the public against tyranny than tearing
down a political opponent. He gives it
away all too easily when protesting he's
doing exactly the thing he's doing:
"We can't be lulled into complacency,"
Broun said. "You have to remember that
Hitler was elected in a democratic
Germany. I'm not comparing him [Obama]
to Adolf HItler. What I'm saying is there is
the potential of going down that road."
By that same logic, Obama might turn
out to embrace Ronald Reagan-style
deregulation capitalism seeing as he spoke
kindly about the Gipper during the
campaign.
Let's face it, when, by way of
comparison, you bring up Hitler and the
Nazis, you're sinking pretty low. But let's
suppose for a moment that Obama will
prevail in establishing a civilian defense
force. Does that mean he'll terrorize Jews,
burn books, execute homosexuals and
communists (warring -ists, no less)? Hell,
maybe Obama, who so many backwater
Republicans claim to be the " real racist",
would ban those of impure bloodlines from
attaining higher office.
And then again, maybe, just maybe
Broun should get out of the bunker,
breathe some fresh air and feel the warmth
of the sun on his skin. It's going to be a
long four years, otherwise.
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Analyst calls: OPTR, JEC,
KFN, CAR, DISH, TSN,
VMW, INFY, URBN, DKS
By Eric Buscemi (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 12:12:00 PM
Filed under: Analyst upgrades and
downgrades, Tyson Foods'A' (TSN),
Analyst initiations, Urban Outfitters
(URBN), KKR Financial (KFN) Analyst
upgrades:
• Baird upgraded Optimer
Pharm(NASDAQ: OPTR) to Outperform
from Neutral and raised its target to $13
from $8 citing the decidedly positive data
from the OPT-80 trial.
• Banc of America upgraded Quest
Diagnostic s (NYSE: DGX) to Buy from
Neutral on valuation and believes
management has set expectations well.
• Credit Suisse views Jacobs
Engineering(NYSE: JEC) as a high quality
name given the quality of management,
execution track record, and relationship
business model. Shares were upgraded to
Outperform from Neutral.
• Horizon Lines(NYSE: HRZ) was
upgraded to Overweight from Equal
Weight at Stephens.
• Bancolombia SA(NYSE: CIB) was
raised to Buy from Neutral.
• Great Lakes Dredge(NASDAQ: GLDD)
was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Morgan
Joseph.
Analyst downgrades:
Continue reading Analyst calls: OPTR,
JEC, KFN, CAR, DISH, TSN, VMW,
INFY, URBN, DKS
Analyst calls: OPTR, JEC, KFN, CAR,
DISH, TSN, VMW, INFY, URBN, DKS
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2 Politico* Business*
Palin on the Offensive
By Liza Porteus Viana (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 2:29:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Republicans,
John McCain, 2008 President, Sarah Palin
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began her
national media blitz last night, telling FOX
News' Greta Van Susteren that she's
looking for a sign from heaven as to what
to do in 2012.
"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open
door for me somewhere, this is what I
always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the
open door," Palin said. "And if there is an
open door in '12 or four years later, and if
it is something that is going to be good for
my family, for my state, for my nation, an
opportunity for me, then I'll plow through
that door."
Palin blamed Bush administration
policies for the defeat last week of the
GOP ticket. She told the Anchorage Daily
News that, "it's amazing that we did as
well as we did."
"I think the Republican ticket represented
too much of the status quo, too much of
what had gone on in these last eight years,
that Americans were kind of shaking their
heads like going, wait a minute, how did
we run up a $10 trillion debt in a
Republican administration? How have
Conservative Stars Vie for RNC Chair
By Mark Impomeni (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 2:30:00 AM
Filed under: Senate, House, Republicans
With the election behind it and much work
to be done to restore the Republican Party
to power, the Chairmanship of the
Republican National Committee has
suddenly become a much sought ofter job
in Washington. The next chairman of the
RNC will inherit a party divided between
its moderate and conservative wings and in
need of a core message. Candidates for the
RNC's top slot are making their interest
known to party insiders and decision
makers. And judging from the list of
hopefuls, conservatives appear poised to
there been blunders with war strategy
under a Republican administration? If
we're talking change, we want to get far
away from what it was that the present
administration represented and that is to a
great degree what the Republican Party at
the time had been representing."
She also said she neither wanted nor
asked for the $150,000-plus wardrobe paid
for by the Republican Party, and said there
was too much information about her out
there the media left unchecked - including
whether she or her 17-year-old daughter
Bristol was the mom of her newborn, Trig.
"I'm Trig's mom (raises her hand) and do
you want to see my medical records to
prove that? ... And banning books. That
was a ridiculous thing also that could have
so easily been corrected just by a reporter
taking an extra step and not basing a report
on gossip or speculation. But just looking
into the record. It was reported that I tried
to ban Harry Potter when it hadn't even
been written when I was the mayor. So,
gosh, we have so many examples, I mean
every day, especially the first few weeks,
every day something that was thrown out
there."
Palin also spoke to Matt Lauer of "The
Today Show," and even cooked him dinner
at her home in Alaska.
Here's Part I of Palin's interview with
win the struggle for the future direction of
the party.
Former Maryland Lieutenant Governor
Michael Steel and former Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich are said to be
competing privately for the RNC
Chairmanship. Gingrich denies interest in
the job publicly, but close confidants of his
are lobbying members behind the scenes
for his cause. Steele isn't talking on the
record about the job either, but party
insiders say that he very much wants the
post. Former Senator and presidential
candidate Fred Thompson has also been
rumored to be interested in a "general
chairman" position, leaving day-to-day
operations of the party to an executive
chairman. All three men are solid
FOX.
Although Palin could conceivably be in
Washington, D.C. within a year if the
Senate expels Alaska's senior U.S. Sen.
Ted Stevens and she chooses to try to
replace him, she told Lauer: "I'm not
planning on it, because I think the people
of Alaska will best be served with me as
their governor."
She added: "You know, when you talk
about that white-hot spotlight - that's not
really attractive to me," Palin said. "Look
what that white-hot spotlight does to one's
family, and does to one's credibility and
record and word. So that's not the
attraction to me."
But she could just change her mind.
"If I can be part of a solution to help this
nation ... certainly I want to be a part of a
solution in those terms," she said. "But in
the meantime, [I'm] going to be making
sure that Alaska develops our resources so
we can contribute more to the U.S. and
allow our nation to be energy independent
and secure and prosperous. I can do that as
the governor of Alaska."
Here's part of her interview with Lauer,
which includes a chat with Alaska "First
Dude" Todd Palin:
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conservatives and claim devoted
followings among rank-and file
Republicans.
Steele is a telegenic, erudite, and
eloquent conservative who was elected
statewide as Maryland's Lieutenant
Governor in 2002, the first Republican to
hold that position in the traditionally
Democratic stronghold. Steele ran for U.S.
Senate in 2006, losing to Ben Cardin in a
closely followed race. Gingrich is the
architect of the Republican takeover of
Congress in 1994. He served as Speaker of
the House for four years between 1995 and
1999. Gingrich is widely considered a
policy wonk. He is a gifted orator, with a
great talent for explaining conservative
principles. His American Solutions project
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Lions Gate misses in Q2,
but is the stock a trade?
By Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 10:54:00 AM
Filed under: Earnings reports, General
Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt
Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Sony Corp
ADR (SNE), Media World, Film
Lions Gate Entertainment(NYSE: LGF),
whose bigger colleagues include
Disney(NYSE: DIS), General Electric's
(NYSE: GE) Universal, Time
Warner(NYSE: TWX), Viacom(NYSE:
VIA), and Sony(NYSE: SNE), publicized
its Q2 earnings after the bell on Monday.
There was good news and bad news.
The good news was that the company
narrowed its loss compared to last year's
results. Lions Gate booked a net loss of
$0.41 per share this year versus a net loss
of $0.49 per share in the year-ago period.
The bad news, however, is that the results
did not meet expectations. I mean, they
really didn't meet expectations, as the call
was for a loss of $0.15 per share. That's
just how the movie business goes
has attracted a large following, mobilizing
conservatives on issues like offshore
drilling. Thompson was thought to be the
conservative standard-bearer during his
brief run for the White House. His eventual
entrance into the race was much
anticipated by conservatives unhappy with
the field of Republican candidates.
Thompson never caught fire on the
campaign trail, but he remains an
enthusiastic advocate for conservative
ideals.
The current Chairman of the RNC, Mike
Duncan, is also considering a run for
reelection. Duncan is a dedicated party
operative and prodigious fundraiser. But
with so many heavyweights expressing
interest in taking the reigns of the party, it
sometimes.
However, let's look at the cash flow,
because we can find some comfort there.
Operational cash flow for the quarter was
positive this year instead of being negative,
and free cash flow, which is the ultimate
goal of any business, increased over three
times to nearly $74 million.
And I'll steer you to another positive
statistic -- filmed entertainment backlog
increased to what management is calling a
record $456.5 million. I know, I also tend
to dismiss terms like "record" when I see
them in a press release, but at least in this
case it refers to revenues that will
ultimately be recognized down the line.
Continue reading Lions Gate misses in
Q2, but is the stock a trade?
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a trade? originally appeared on
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seems unlikely that Duncan will retain the
post come election time in January. If
Republicans choose Steele, Gingrich, or
Thompson to lead the party for the next
four years, it will signal that Republicans
have no intention of caving in to the
agenda that President-elect Obama and
Congressional Democrats will be trying to
implement. Rather, Republicans will focus
on developing and advocating for
conservative alternatives, in hopes of
rebuilding the party's brand image for the
2010 elections.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Isn't It Great How All Americans Love
Obama?
By Ken Layne (Political Machine)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 3:41:00 PM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
Featured Stories, 2008 President, Gay
Rights, Ken Layne's Outrage, LOLection
Like everybody in America -- each and
every person in America!-- I have been
extremely hopeful and ecstatic since my
man, Barack Obama, won the presidency.
Have you seen all those People and US
Weekly magazine covers down at the
Circle K? Could it be more clear that all of
America voted with total love and
confidence for Barack Obama, the best
new president of any country in World
History? (I am sorry about endorsing John
McCain last week. He is a dumb loser and
I've always known that, in my heart.
Sorry.)
It has been a busy week, what with the
birth of my new biracial children, Obama
#1 and Obama #2.
They aren't really my children, but the
gay marriage of my pregnant sister and her
pregnant lady friend was suddenly voided
by Mormons from Utah who were so
concerned about what gay people did in
San Francisco that they were compelled to
launch this Propositon 8 thing in California
... $70 million in "Yes to 8" teevee
commercials later, and suddenly these
lesbian babies have no mommies and just
one daddy. Me. It is tragic magic.
We are all facing tough times, during this
Great Big Depression, and it's pretty clear
life will be miserable from now on, at least
until Obama takes office in January and
begins sending the $10,000 checks to each
American household, every month. Did
How much more hedge fund selling will slash stocks?
By Peter Cohan (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 12:32:00 PM
Hedge funds are a big shadowy world
that has dominated the market. Since
stocks have lost $30 trillion in value over
the last year, much of that financial
horsepower has been from hedge fund
selling. But how much? And how much
more? The answer to both questions is
you not know about this?
Obama's new Chief of Staff, Hugo
Chavez, faxed the details to all of us
Obama supporters this morning. (If you
didn't get the fax, well ... let's just say a lot
of things aren't really going to "go your
way" for the next 12 years.)
Have you ever seen those "IF YOU'RE
NOT MAKING $10,000 A MONTH,
CALL 555-1212" cheap xeroxed signs
pasted up in the poor foreclosed housing
tract strip mall death hubs of America? Of
course you've seen them! But you never
called. Always thought it was a "scam,"
didn't you?
It wasn't a scam. It was Obama's staffing
office in Chicago. I called. And it turns out
nobody knows because hedge funds are
lightly regulated. But Barton Biggs has
some ideas.
Biggs -- who runs a hedge fund --
estimates that the hedge fund industry will
sell $250 billion more worth of stocks to
meet investors demand for redemptions.
He thinks that recently 7,000 hedge funds
managed $1.9 trillion. But he guesses that
the amount has declined to $1.4 trillion
they've just been writing checks, day and
night. That's why I'm not really worried
about raising my new children, these bi-
racial infants from a lesbian marriage torn
apart by religious zealots from two states
away. I'm basically rich now.
I have been "hoping" for this kind
of"change," and here it is. Truly, it is
morning in America.
Ken Layne is the managing editor of
Wonkette, but now he's so rich, because of
Obama, that he really doesn't have to work
ever again.
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thanks to 25% worth of losses. He guesses
that between $350 billion and $420 billion
will be withdrawn by the middle of 2009
and that $150 billion has already gone. (He
arrives at the $250 billion by subtracting
the $150 billion from $420 billion and
rounding up.)
Biggs is betting that stocks are bottoming
out and that hedge funds will be eager to
get back into the market so they can make
Politico* Business* World*
We Know Who The Leaker
Is
By Liza Porteus Viana (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 1:36:00 PM
Filed under: John McCain, 2008
President, Sarah Palin Actually, we don't.
I'm referring to those inside John
McCain's presidential campaign who have
been providing the media with endless
amounts of anti-Sarah Palin fodder in these
post-election days - the stuff Palin has
dismissed as vitriole espoused "sexist,
unprofessional jerks."
Well, one of those "jerks" has come
forward and identified himself. The
problem is he's a big phony.
Former alleged foreign policy adviser
"Martin Eisenstadt," who says he worked
with Palin on debate prep ahead of her
verbal showdown with Joe Biden, says he's
the one responsible for some of the leaks to
FOX News' Carl Cameron and he's proud
of it.
"For those of us on the McCain campaign
who thought that she acted like a rogue
diva and lost John the election, maybe we
DO have a responsibility to come out in
public. But Sarah... careful what you ask
for: some of us may have more to reveal,"
the self-proclaimed founder of the
Eisenstadt Group wrote on his blog
today."Did we outright give her a
Poll: What type of school should the Obama kids attend?
(World news | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:52:25 AM
Michelle Obama is visiting Washington
up their losses and resume making profits
which will get them back into a position to
earn performance fees. He appears to be
investing his money in the notion that all
the bad news is already reflected in the
market. Since he knows much more than
the average person, he could be right. But I
wouldn't bet on it.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S.
Cohan & Associates. He also teaches
3
geography quiz when we started the prep?
No, of course not. But yes, in the context
of the prep, it slowly became apparent that
her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge
had major gaps."
(His Web site, by the way, for both
himself and the "Eisenstadt Group" looks
like any old WordPress blog I - or anyone
else with a modicum of skills - could throw
together.)
This guy's not a McCain adviser. He's an
Internet prankster who has also been tied
to rumors that Joe the Plumber had ties to
The Keating 5, and something to do with
The Hiltons- as in Paris Hilton's family.
Let this be a lesson that anyone in the
media or blogosphere should be highly
skeptical of anything that presents itself on
a silver platter like that. In case I had any
doubt about whether journalistic standards
were going down the toilet in this country,
the fact that this story was picked up by
several places just reassured me that I was
not, in fact, wrong. And that makes me
very, very sad.
In case you have any doubt about
whether "Marty" is real, check this out.
This is him ...
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DC schools this week. Should the Obamas
choose a DC public school for their
daughters, or a private school?
management at Babson College and edits
The Cohan Letter.
How much more hedge fund selling will
slash stocks? originally appeared on
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4 Politico* Business* World*
Who Had the Most
Accurate Polling?
By Dave (Political Machine)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 1:26:00 PM
Filed under: 2008 President, Polls Hotline
slices and dices the state by state results:
Pollster AvgMargin StatesSurveyed
Quinnipiac Univ. 1.14 7
Reuters/Zogby 2.00 9
FD/National Journal 2.13 8
Marist College 2.17 6
Associated Press/GfK 2.25 8
American Research Group (R) 2.27 11
Strategic Vision (R) 2.29 7
CNN/Time/ORC 2.40 10
Selzer & Co. 2.67 3
Suffolk Univ. 3.17 6
Mason-Dixon 3.27 15
Research 2000 3.38 13
Big 10/Univ. of WI 5.43 7
The Big 10 poll at the bottom, was off by
a large factor toward Obama, showing
results way out of whack to most other
pollsters. Also it looks like a black eye for
R2000 and Mason-Dixon, and Suffolk.
Suffolk leaned heavy on the Dem side, MD
leaned to the Republican side. Any thing
near two or below is pretty good this cycle.
And unfortunately for the GOP,
Quinnipiac was completely accurate,
State Street (STT) should
benefit from bailout plan
By Brent Archer (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 1:04:00 PM
Filed under: Options, Technical Analysis
State Street(NYSE: STT- option chain)
shares are moving higher today despite the
markets being in the toilet again. This
could be because STT is one of the
companies that are getting cash from the
government. STT will receive a $2 billion
cash injection from the federal government
in return for non-voting senior preferred
stock. If you think that the stock won't fall
by too much in the coming months, then
now could be a good time to look at a
bullish hedged trade on STT.
STT opened this morning at $40.88. So
far today the stock has hit a low of $40.63
and a high of $44.93. As of 12:20, STT is
followed by Zogby of all things. Zogby!
Yes the one that predicted Kerry's 311 vote
electoral victory in 2004 actually had a
good night as well.
But the real winners are
fivethirtyeight.com and the RCP averages.
Both used algorithms: RCP a simple
average, and fivethirtyeight a very
complex one. Using all the polling data
came within a point of predicting each
state, even the ones that were clearly
within the margin of error. Fivethirtyeight
looks like they only missed IN and RCP
missed IN and NC, but since those were on
the ragged edge either way, I think we can
let that slide.
There are times when pollsters can miss
things and be completely surprised. If for
example the turnout had been the record
shatterer predicted, things may have turned
out differently. But the turnout seemed to
be somewhat conventional, with a boost
for minority voting, and the pollsters
turned out to be accurate, just like 2004
and 2006.
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trading at $41.61, up 0.38 (0.9%). The
chart for STT looks neutral and S&P gives
STT a 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.
For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I
would consider a January bull-put credit
spread below the $25 range.
Continue reading State Street (STT)
should benefit from bailout plan
State Street (STT) should benefit from
bailout plan originally appeared on
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Obama Team Preps Gitmo
Trials in US
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 12:45:00 PM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
Breaking News, 2008 President, Terror,
Obama Administration The Associated
Press reports that plans are underway,
within the still-forming Obama
administration, to finally close the prison
at Guantanamo Bay, and bring the 250 or
so Gitmo detainees to justice. Under the
plan being crafted inside Obama's camp,
some detainees would be released and
others would be charged in U.S. courts,
where they would receive constitutional
rights and open trials. But, underscoring
the difficult decisions Obama must make
to fulfill his pledge of shutting down
Guantanamo, the plan could require the
creation of a new legal system to handle
the classified information inherent in some
of the most sensitive cases.
Many of the about 250 Guantanamo
detainees are cleared for release, but the
Bush administration has not able been to
find a country willing to take them. The
report goes on to say that the plan "drew
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
criticism from Democrats who oppose
creating a new legal system and from
Republicans who oppose bringing
terrorism suspects to the U.S. mainland."
OK, we can have the trials on one of
those casino barges.
The relatively low temperature of the
debate on this indicates, to me, that
everyone is willing to close this chapter in
American history with minimal noise. A
few guys on either side get their licks in
for the folks back home, and the country
moves on.
What of the detainees who were
wrongfully held, many picked up and
turned over to US forces for reward
money? The country seems in no mood to
cry for them, but rather, to avert their eyes
and look to the future.
Tommy Christopher co-hosts " Unusable
Signal",on BlogTalkRadio, Tues through
Thurs at 10pm, and Fri, and Sat at 11pm.
(Eastern) Click here for the Unusable
Signal homepage.
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Portfolio Recovery
(PRAA): Hard times
helps debt collector
By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 11:11:00 AM
Filed under: Newsletters, Stocks to Buy,
Recession, Financial Crisis
"One stock that is holding up well and is
poised to do well during hard times is
Portfolio Recovery Associates(NASDAQ:
PRAA), which is America's most effcient
debt recovery company," says Jim Po well
in Global Changes & Opportunities
Report.
"The company -- which has been on our
buy list -- has become especially attractive
for the economic conditions I expect to see
over the next few months, and probably
much longer.
"Portfolio Recovery -- which is America's
most efficient debt recovery company --
buys packages of non-performing debts
from major credit card companies, and
typically pays only 2.6% of the total
amount owed. With such a low initial cost,
it doesn't take a large collection rate to turn
a tidy proft.
"As more consumers default on the
colossal debts they ran up during the
housing boom, the company should see a
great deal of new business.
Continue reading Portfolio Recovery
(PRAA): Hard times helps debt collector
Portfolio Recovery (PRAA): Hard times
helps debt collector originally appeared on
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11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
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US election: Minnesota
officials prepare for recount
in Senate race
By McClatchy newspapers (World
news | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 8:11:41 AM
Unofficial results showed Republican
senator Norm Coleman leading
Democratic challenger Al Franken by just
206 votes
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Rahm Facts Take Page
From Chuck Norris
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 4:33:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
2008 President, Obama Administration
There's a new website, patterned after the
viral and quirky ChuckNorrisFacts.com("If
you have $5 and Chuck Norris has $5,
Chuck Norris has more money than you."),
called Rahm Emanuel Facts. A sampling:
(h/t Ben Smith) AFTER THE 2006
MIDTERM ELECTIONS, RAHM
EMANUEL JUMPED ON A TABLE
AND SAID THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
"CAN GO F--- THEMSELVES"
RAHM EMANUEL ASSUMES YOU
KNOW IT'S HIM CALLING. You get the
picture. I can't take the ALL CAPS
anymore. They must be hiring some of our
commenters there. Each fact is sourced to a
published report.
Although the site purports to be an
organic creation, I think the idea is to make
people dislike Rahm. If so, it didn't work
on me.
I was actually a little reticent about
Emanuel, due to his staunch membership
in the Republican-Lite DLC. The Rahm
facts I've seen so far make me like him
more. He sounds kinda like me, only older
and with less fingers.
It has been amusing, if not at all
surprising, to see the right wing try to paint
Emanuel as a polarizing pick. While it is
true that Emanuel's style is partisan and
ruthlessly pragmatic, his polical positions
Your $150 billion pays for another AIG executive junket
By Peter Cohan (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 11:51:00 AM
Filed under: Amer Intl Group (AIG),
Financial Crisis
After getting the U.S. Treasury to cough
up another$6.3 billion worth of our money
to keep American International
Group(NYSE: AIG) going, its executives
are getting smarter about how to use our
money to pay for their plush retreats.
Rather than advertise those junkets, AIG
are decidedly centrist. Given Barack
Obama's stated intent to find common
ground, it makes sense that he would
choose a Chief of Staff capable of holding
it. Tommy Christopher co-hosts "
Unusable Signal" , on BlogTalkRadio Tues
- Thur at 10pm, and Fri, & Sat at 11pm.
Click here for the Unusable Signal
homepage.
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Comments
executives are carefully hiding their
presence as they enjoy our money. Some
might think it's wrong for AIG to do this,
but let's not forget that Treasury has
already invested$159 billion of our money
in 24 banks and $26.6 billion of that could
go to paying bankers' bonuses.
What is AIG's latest executive vacation?
Its top executives held a secret gathering at
a luxury resort in Phoenix -- Pointe Hilton
Squaw Peak Resort -- last week. But the
AIG executives tried to disguise their
AIG should fire CEO over
junket mess
By Jonathan Berr (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 12:48:00 PM
Filed under: Employees, Amer Intl Group
(AIG), Financial Crisis Another day,
another American International Group
Inc.(NYSE: AIG) junket caught on video.
Chief Executive Edward Liddy has
promised members of Congress that it
would not happen again. But since Liddy's
credibility has been destroyed on Capitol
Hill, AIG has no choice but to replace him.
AIG is going to get an avalanche of bad
publicity over the$343,000 meeting it held
at a posh resort near Phoenix. After getting
burned by revelations over past junkets,
AIG decided to cover its tracks by
removing all mention of AIG from the
Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort,
according to ABC News.
This certainly does not sound like the
behavior of a company that got a second
bailout deal just Monday to the tune of
$150 billion because the original $85
billion was too low. What about a
company that had to freeze $600 million in
payments to former executives? You
would think that a company in such dire
circumstances would be holding its
Agnes Poirier: There are too many remembrance events in
France
By Agnes Poirier (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:00:00 AM
involvement. there were no AIG logos or
signs anywhere on the property and resort
employees were told not to discuss AIG.
The retreat cost taxpayers $343,000--
much of which went to the president of
AIG unit Royal Alliance Associates, Art
Tambaro, who stayed in a two-story Casita
suite and worked out at the spa while
others participated in seminars.
AIG still thinks this behavior is fine -- as
long as it doesn't get caught. But this is
chump change. Don't be too surprised to
Politico* Business* World* Movies*
gatherings at the local Holiday Inn instead
of the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak.
The resort, judging from its Web site, is
gorgeous. It brags about "nine acres of
water fun, including a half-mile lazy river
for tubing and a 130-foot slide known as
Slippery Rock Slide. A beautiful lagoon
pool with a 10-foot waterfall offers a
relaxing ambiance while a sports pool
entertains the more active."
Though this sure sounds like fun, I don't
doubt that members of Congress will be
mad. In fact, I bet that Rep. Henry
Waxman (D-Calif) is probably preparing a
letter to AIG's senior management as we
speak. The management of companies
need to learn that in politics, perception is
reality. Companies such as AIG better get
used to having their moves second-guessed
and third-guessed.
Given the company's new realities,
perhaps AIG might want to look into
webinars.
AIG should fire CEO over junket mess
originally appeared on BloggingStocks on
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:48:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds. Read|
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Agnes Poirier: Remembrance day in
France is losing its impact among a dozen
annual commemorations
see the banks that got our bailout money
using it to pay themselves multimillion
dollar bonuses. There does not seem to be
anything or anyone who can stop this
blatant waste of hard-earned taxpayer
money to keep executives in clover while
the rest of the country's economy is frozen
by the financial crisis they caused. I may
be the only one, but this does not seem
right.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S.
Cohan & Associates. He also teaches
5
Rescue operations over for
collapsed school in Haiti
By McClatchy newspapers (World
news | guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 8:21:32 AM
Authorities said 89 people died while 150
were rescued in the collapse of Port-au-
Prince suburb school
US election: Sarah Palin
contemplates presidential run
in 2012
By Daniel Nasaw (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:31:13 AM
Recent interviews fuel speculation that
the Alaska governor is preparing White
House bid only a week after ticket's defeat
Lovely Ladies Of
'Twilight'
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 7:00:00 PM
Want to see the gorgeous gals of
'Twilight' who will be heating up the big
screen on November 21? Then click
through our gallery! Keep clicking back
with us all week for all your gotta have
'Twilight' coverage!
management at Babson College and edits
The Cohan Letter. He owns AIG securities
Your $150 billion pays for another AIG
executive junket originally appeared on
BloggingStocks on Tue, 11 Nov 2008
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Comments
6 Business* Biz Buzz*
Level 3 Communications'
price target slashed to 50
cents at Citi
By Elizabeth Harrow
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 11:31:00 AM
Filed under: Analyst reports, Analyst
upgrades and downgrades, General Motors
(GM), Level 3 Communications (LVLT),
Stocks to Sell
The shares of Level 3
Communications(NASDAQ: LVLT) are
sinking deeper into penny-stock territory
this morning following a damaging price-
target cut from analysts at Citigroup. The
brokerage firm slashed its price target on
LVLT from $2.00 to 50 cents, and
reiterated its Sell rating on the stock.
After closing Monday at 94 cents, LVLT
is slipping ever closer this morning to that
hypothetical "support at zero." In fact,
following yesterday's all-out bearish note
on General Motors(NYSE: GM), one has
to wonder if Deutsche Bank will soon be
slapping another of its famous goose-egg
targets on Level 3. The stock has closed
seven out of the past 13 sessions south of
the $1 level, and its descending 10-day and
20-day moving averages have provided
stubborn resistance in recent months.
Recession? What Recession?
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/6/2008 9:00:00 PM
N ovember and December are usually the
months when baseball teams lavish free
agents with enormous contracts and fans
debate endlessly as to whether the new
players will help their team the following
spring.
But commissioner Bud Selig warned
owners at a recent meeting that their sport
is not immune to wider economic problems
and that owners should resist "getting too
cocky" with their offers to star players like
Manny Ramirez and C.C. Sabathia.
Players and owners, however, didn't
In fact, while many analysts have already
denounced LVLT, there's still room for
potential downgrades or price-target cuts.
Zacks reports two Buy or better ratings
from brokerage firms, and these bulls may
soon be shamed into lowering their
opinions (if so, they would join six
analysts who consider the stock a Hold,
and six who deem it a Sell or Strong Sell).
Meanwhile, Thomson Financial pegs the
average 12-month price target at $1.68, a
premium of 87% to the equity's closing
price on Monday. While more negative
notes could drag the shares lower, there is
a bright side -- from their current level, the
shares could only lose about 85 cents.
Elizabeth Harrow is an analyst and
financial writer in the research department
at Schaeffer's Investment Research. She is
featured in the video series Schaeffer's
Daily Q&A on SchaeffersResearch.com.
Level 3 Communications' price target
slashed to 50 cents at Citi originally
appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 11
Nov 2008 11:31:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email
this| Comments
seem to take his advice to heart.
First the Milwaukee Brewers offered
Sabathia five-year, $100 million contract
to stay with the team, but there's little
chance he will even consider it. In fact, the
deal was viewed basically as a public-
relations move by the Milwaukee team to
show fans that they made an effort to re-
sign the star pitcher.
Meanwhile, the deep-pocketed Yankees
have made it clear that their sights are set
on Sabathia, and are reportedly willing to
offer him more than the $137.5 million that
the New York Mets paid last year for left-
handed starting pitcher Johan Santana.
Perhaps that's not the fiscal responsibility
Reinsuring A.I.G.
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 5:30:00 AM
T hings change so quickly in this
financial crisis that a bailout created in mid
-September is already getting a complete
overhaul.
The U.S. government is essentially
throwing out the old $85 billion rescue
(later raised to $123 billion) of American
International Group for a new $150 billion
rescue. At a time when automakers and
others are looking in vain for federal help,
the revised A.I.G. bailout raises many
questions about how Washington is
choosing winners and losers in the
economy.
The Treasury is buying a $40 billion
stake in A.I.G., allowing the Federal
Reserve to cut its now five-year credit line
to the insurance company to $60 billion
from $85 billion. And that lending will be
less punitive than before, with the interest
rate on the borrowed money being reduced
to the three-month Libor rate plus 300
basis points, down from 850 basis points
previously.
More important, the new deal creates two
vehicles to buy troubled assets. One will
buy residential mortgage-backed securities
from A.I.G., backed by a loan of $22.5
Selig had in mind.
Then there's the case of the enigmatic
dreadlocked slugger Manny Ramirez, who
almost single-handedly took the Los
Angeles Dodgers into the second round of
the playoffs after arriving from the Boston
Red Sox in a highly publicized multiteam
trade.
The aging slugger—he'll turn 37 next
season—told reporters after the Dodgers
were eliminated from the playoffs that he
was in no rush to re-sign with that team
until he could test the market. "I want to
see who is the highest bidder," he said.
"Gas is up, and so am I."
The Dodgers have supposedly made an
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York. The company is lending $1
billion and will bear the risk for the first $1
billion in losses.
The second vehicle will involve buying
collateralized debt obligations on which
A.I.G. has written credit default swap
contracts. The New York Fed will lend as
much as $30 billion to this effort, while
A.I.G. will kick in $5 billion. A.I.G. is also
on the hook for the first $5 billion in
losses.
"These new measures establish a more
durable capital structure, resolve liquidity
issues, facilitate A.I.G.'s execution of its
plan to sell certain of its businesses in an
orderly manner, promote market stability,
and protect the interests of the U.S.
government and taxpayers," the Federal
Reserve said in a statement.
The revised deal is an admission that the
original bailout was not working. And
while the recent focus of Treasury has
been on pumping equity into financial
institutions, the new bailout shows that that
the original intent of the $700 billion
TARP—buying troubled assets—may be
just as important.
Even with the $85 billion infusion in
September, A.I.G. still had to scramble to
come up with collateral to counterparties
offer to retain Ramirez that would make
him the second-highest-paid baseball
player after Alex Rodriguez of the
Yankees. But Ramirez is holding out for
more years on his contract and has yet to
sign on the dotted line.
Even a player like A.J. Burnett, a 31-year
-old pitcher with a history of arm troubles,
opted out of a contract with the Toronto
Blue Jays that guaranteed him $12 million
per season, thinking he could easily get
more on the open market.
It makes sense that teams like the
Yankees and Dodgers would be anxious to
open their wallets. After all, the Yankees
are opening an expensive new ballpark
on its credit default swaps. The new
government-funded company to buy the
underlying C.D.O.'s should go a long way
toward propping up A.I.G. and steadying
the financial system.
As the Financial Times’ Alphaville blog
notes, A.I.G. is no longer an insurance
company, but "a slightly more
sophisticated TARP."
"Taxpayers' capital will continue to go
towards meeting collateral calls on C.D.S.
contracts: These calls will be direct
liquidity-like cash infusions into the
banking system. Meeting such calls will
also allow the C.D.S. contracts to remain
in place, which will allow banks to pretend
they don't own any risky assets, as far as
regulatory risk-weighting and capital
requirements are concerned."
No longer an insurance company? One is
tempted to say that after the company
reported an ugly loss of $24.5 billion for
its third quarter.
Related Links
Hit the Panic Button
Firing Blanks on Banks
The Man Who Saved (or Got Suckered
by) Wall Street
next year, and Ramirez brought a level of
excitement—and jersey sales—to the
Dodgers that they hadn't seen in years.
Then again, if the recession continues,
there might be no one there to watch these
players perform. Baseball attendance
already dropped 1 percent last season, the
first such drop in four years.
Perhaps it's time for general managers to
start paying attention to Selig after all.
Related Links
Dodgers Officially Introduce Manager
Joe Torre
Yankees at a Crossroads
Torre Could Be Headed to Hollywood
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Picking Winners in a Grim Help Us or We Die
Holiday Season
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 11:00:00 AM
T he writing has long been on the wall
that holiday sales figures this year will be
grim, but as December draws nearer, more
surveys and studies continue to emerge
predicting where some of the bright spots
may be for retailers.
Even in the worst of years, there are
certain items that sell briskly despite a
challenging economy.
According to the Deloitte Holiday
Survey, out today, Nintendo's Wii gaming
system, Apple's iPod, Sony's PlayStation,
and the Microsoft Xbox will be this
season's best sellers.
When it comes to generic categories,
televisions (HD, plasma, and flat-screen),
computers, GPS systems, and digital
cameras top the list.
Despite Circuit City's fate, the recession-
proof nature of consumer electronics
would be consistent with what happened in
the downturn of 2001, when the
PlayStation, Xbox, and DVD players were
the biggest holiday gift items.
In terms of which retail channels will
win out this season, it's not surprising that
online retail is expected to be second only
to discounters like Wal-Mart, Costco, and
Target as consumers' favorite places to
shop.
Deloitte estimates that more than one in
Short-Circuited City
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 6:00:00 AM
A week after trying a Hail Mary pass of
closing stores and seeking to renegotiate
leases, Circuit City has succumbed to the
inevitable and filed for bankruptcy
protection.
The electronics chain, battered by a drop-
off in consumer spending and fierce
competition from Wal-Mart and Best Buy,
is the latest big retailer to file for
bankruptcy. Mervyns, Linens 'n Things,
Levitz, Sharper Image, and Lillian Vernon
five consumers plan to shop primarily or
entirely online this holiday season, and that
about one-fourth of all holiday sales will
occur on the internet—an incremental gain
of 2 percent from last year.
Somewhat more surprising is the
continued interest professed by the almost
14,000 consumers surveyed by Deloitte in
"eco-friendly" holiday giving.
That runs contrary to the findings of a
study led by Duke University business
professor Christine Moorman (as reported
in Advertising Age), which suggest that as
economic concerns have mounted,
consumers have become less attuned to
"greening" their lifestyles.
The fact that 21 percent of respondents in
Deloitte's survey said they would consider
not wrapping holiday gifts to conserve
paper could be explained by the added
benefit of saving money; but consumers
also claimed that they would be willing to
pay a premium for environmentally
friendly items.
Of the consumers surveyed, 44 percent
said they would be willing to pay extra for
green gifts this holiday season—half said
they are willing to pay from 10 percent to
25 percent more.Related Links
Questionable Sale? Xbox Marks the Spot
Microsoft Pays for Xbox Defects
Sony Wants Back in the Game
have all filed for Chapter 11 this year.
What is unusual about the wave of filings
is how many retailers decided that they
could not survive through the holiday
shopping season—the busiest and, for
many retailers, the only profitable time of
the year. January is typically the time when
troubled retailers filed for bankruptcy.
The woes of Circuit City underscore how
bleak the picture is for retailers. The
October employment report on Friday
showed that more than 38,000 jobs in retail
were lost last month.
Circuit City, founded in Richmond,
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/7/2008 9:00:00 AM
F ifteen billion dollars is the amount of
money Iraq has earmarked for
reconstruction, it's the total profits earned
by Exxon Mobil in the third quarter, and
it's the gross domestic product of Ghana.
It's also the amount of cash that Ford and
General Motors burned through during the
three months that ended in September.
The country's two largest automakers
reported dismal losses for the third quarter,
but it was their cash burn rates that were
especially alarming. General Motors,
which spent $6.9 billion during the period,
disclosed that its cash levels may hit the
minimum needed this quarter. Even with
its planned cuts, it said it will likely fall
below the amount needed during the first
two quarters of 2009.
General Motors also issued another plea
for help from the federal government,
which has so far declined to provide
assistance to the automakers as part of its
$700 billion bailout package. G.M. sought
assistance to finance a merger with
Chrysler.
The carmaker doesn't mince words in its
release:
"Looking into the first two quarters of
2009, even with its planned actions, the
company's estimated liquidity will fall
Virginia, in 1949, listed $3.4 billion in
assets and $2.32 billion in liabilities in its
Chapter 11 petition in the federal
bankruptcy court in Richmond.
Last week, the chain announced it would
close 155 stores in the United States and
"aggressively" renegotiate leases on some
of the remaining 566 stores with the aim of
lowering rents.
Those steps were not enough.
"Despite aggressive efforts to secure
vendor support, vendor concerns about the
company's liquidity and ability to pay for
its purchases in this difficult economic
significantly short of that amount unless
economic and automotive industry
conditions significantly improve, it
receives substantial proceeds from asset
sales, takes more aggressive working
capital initiatives, gains access to capital
markets and other private sources of
funding, receives government funding
under one or more current or future
programs, or some combination of the
foregoing."
In other words, help us or we die.
Ford's cash burn rate was also
significant, but its situation isn't quite as
dire yet. It lost $3 billion during the quarter
and burned through $7.7 billion of its cash,
but it also disclosed additional cuts that
should improve its liquidity by $17 billion
through 2010.
General Motors can't even see that far
ahead.
Shares of G.M., after being halted before
the release, traded down sharply on the
news. They fell more than 12 percent, to
$4.17.
Ford shares fell by more than 3 percent.
Related Links
Detroit Needs a Miracle
Then There Were None
Why the Detroit Bailout Should Include
Bankruptcy
climate have escalated considerably," the
company said in a statement. "Faced with
the need to secure ongoing vendor support
and to ensure adequate merchandise flow
to stores during the important holiday
season, the company has determined that it
would be in the best interest of its
stakeholders to file for reorganization
relief under Chapter 11."
Related Links
The Way the Cookie Crumbles
The Case for Chapter 11
Retailers Hurt by Locked Pocketbooks
Biz Buzz* 7
Jobs
Wasteland
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/7/2008 5:00:00 AM
T he most telling measure yet of the depth
of this recession came in a very ugly
October employment report.
American employers slashed 240,000
jobs last month, and the unemployment
rate jumped from 6.1 percent to 6.5
percent, its highest level in 14 years. The
data were far worse than economists'
estimates.
Nearly 1.2 million jobs have been lost
this year. More than half of the losses
came in just the last three months. The
October slump followed revised declines
of 284,000 in September and 127,000 in
August.
There are now 2.8 million unemployed
Americans—more than the population of
Kuwait, which is 2.6 million.
Manufacturing headed the loss leaders in
October, with 90,000 jobs eliminated, the
Labor Department reported. Construction
cut 49,000, retailers ditched 38,000, while
professional and business services lost
45,000 jobs. Health care added 26,000
jobs, while the government accounted for
23,000 new jobs.
There will be more job cuts to come until
at least the new year as the economy
contracts. Consumers and businesses are
furiously ratcheting back spending and
trimming costs. Banks are still not lending.
The impact of the steps taken by the
Federal Reserve has not yet been fully felt.
The Treasury's $700 billion rescue
program has just gotten under way, with
hundreds of billions still to be spent.
The bleak data increase the pressure on
President-elect Barack Obama to move
quickly when he takes office in January.
Today, Obama is holding a meeting in
Chicago with his economic advisers,
including Warren Buffett, Robert Rubin,
Dick Parsons, Eric Schmidt of Google,
Paul Volcker, and Larry Summers,
considered to be a leading candidate to be
the next Treasury secretary.
Related Links
What a Recession Looks Like
Looking Down
Big Job Losses Early -- Good or Bad?
8 Biz Buzz* World* Tech*
Yahoo for Sale: Ballmer
Says No
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/7/2008 6:30:00 AM
Y ahoo is going to have to twist in the
wind a little longer.
Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer offered
no refuge for embattled Yahoo boss Jerry
Yang on Friday morning, ignoring Yang's
open invitation for Microsoft to rebid on
the company.
"We have moved on," Ballmer said at a
conference in Sydney, Australia, one day
after Yang said he was open to a Microsoft
buyout. "We're not interested in going back
and relooking at an acquisition."
But he couldn't resist mocking Yahoo's
failed search-ad partnership with Google,
which collapsed this week.
"I'm sure there are still opportunities for
some kind of partnership around search,"
Ballmer said, according to Bloomberg
News. Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo's
search business but doesn't want to pay for
the rest of the company, even at this
reduced valuation.
Yang's newfound openness to a
What can the UN do in Congo?
By Mark Tran (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:37:03 AM
Human Rights Watch has called on the
UN to send 3,000 more troops to eastern
Congo to protect civilians caught up in the
fighting between forces led by Laurent
Nkunda, the renegade Tutsi general, and
government troops.
The UN already has 17,000 peacekeepers
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo –
the world's largest UN peacekeeping force.
It sounds a lot but it is thinly-stretched in a
country the size of western Europe.
The UN's reluctance to send in more
troops is understandable. Its troops do not
have much peace to keep and they have
been sucked into the fighting, sending
helicopter gunships to fight on the side of
the government against Nkunda, who once
again has threatened to take over the whole
Microsoft deal is a direct consequence of
the collapse of Yahoo's closely watched
search deal with Google.
The Yahoo-Google search deal
represented Yahoo's escape hatch from
Microsoft's hostile-buyout attempt. But
now that the Yahoo-Google deal has fallen
apart, Yahoo is defenseless.
Yang said so much when he put the
company up for sale this week. "The best
for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang
said at the Web 2.0 conference in San
Francisco. "I don't think that is a bad idea
at all."
It was a shocking admission from
Yahoo's founder, who had plegded that
Yahoo wound remain independent. But
Ballmer wasn't buying. And if there's one
thing we know about Ballmer, Microsoft's
pugnacious C.E.O., it's that he never
forgets.Related Links
Google Extends Web Search Lead
Yang's Remorse
Yahoo Shareholders Steaming As Share
Price Hits 5-Year Low
country. Civilians have turned against the
UN, stoning UN offices because they are
frustrated by the inability of peacekeepers
to protect them from the fighting.
The UN does not have a happy history in
the country. The UN's first mission in
Congo, from 1960 to 1964, was a disaster,
Tim Butcher declares in his fine book
Blood River, an account of his recreation
of Stanley's expedition on the Congo river.
Peacekeepers, then as now, were drawn
into the conflict, fighting against white
mercenaries and Congolese rebels backed
by Belgium.
At its peak strength, the UN deployed
almost 20,000 troops in Congo, lost more
peacekeepers in combat there than on any
other peacekeeping mission before or
since. The mission also cost the life of the
UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarkjold,
who was killed in a plane crash in 1961 on
his way to Ndola in what is now Zambia
Obama's Plan of Attack
(Portfolio.com: Top 5)
Submitted at 11/7/2008 12:30:00 PM
In his first press conference since
Tuesday's historic election, President-elect
Barack Obama promised swift action to
address the economic crisis and to
ameliorate the growing anxiety within the
middle class but offered few specifics of
what he would do.
Flanked by his team of economic
advisers, Obama pledged to take "all
necessary steps to ease the credit crisis," as
well as to extend jobless benefits for
unemployed Americans and to press for a
fiscal stimulus package to rekindle
economic growth.
He said he hoped that Congress would
pass some stimulus plan before President
Bush leaves office on January 20, but
added that he would make it his top
priority as president if that didn't happen.
His stimulus plan would include tax cuts,
infrastructure spending, and help for state
and local governments in balancing their
where talks were to be held in a bid to
bring about the cessation of hostilities.
The present UN force has been plagued
by complaints common with any UN
mission: lack of adequate equipment or a
clear chain of command. Substitute Darfur
– where helicopters are lacking – for
Congo and the complaints sound
depressingly familiar.
The UN secretary, Ban Ki-moon, has
said he will travel to the region to press for
an end to the catastrophic conflict. The
world will wish him well, but Nkunda
seems in truculent mood and in no hurry to
end the fighting that has strengthened his
position against a weak central
government.
The UN has little choice but to continue
with its thankless task and Ban's best hope
seems to be to persuade the big powers to
lean on Congo and Rwanda into ensuring
that existing peace agreements are upheld.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
budgets and avoiding layoffs.
In any case, he cautioned patience. "It's
not going to be quick and it's not going to
be easy to dig ourselves out of the hole we
are in," he said, calling the current
situation the "greatest economic challenge
of a lifetime." He also took pains to note
on several occasions that he is not yet
president and will defer to Bush until his
term expires.
He sidestepped a question about whether
he plans to follow through on his oft-
repeated campaign pledge to raise taxes on
people making more than $250,000 a year.
Instead, he again spoke of a "net tax cut"
designed primarily to benefit the middle
class.
"My priority is: How do we grow the
economy and how do we create more
jobs?" he said.Related Links
Incentives for Inflation
Will Obama Really Raise Taxes?
It's (Really) the Economy, Stupid
In the meantime, Human Rights Watch
believes more UN peacekeepers are
needed urgently on the ground to prevent
further civilian deaths.
"Progress on the political front has not
been matched by progress to meet the
urgent need to protect civilians now at
risk," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a
senior researcher on the Congo for Human
Rights Watch. "Negotiations offer promise
of a solution in the Congo in the long run,
but civilians need protection now from the
killing and raping."
• Congo
• United Nations
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As Expected, Prostitutes
Move Elsewhere After
Craigslist Change
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 12:48:00 PM
We pointed out how little sense it made
for various state attorneys general to force
Craigslist to charge for the "erotic
services" group. It would appear that at
least 40 states' attorneys general are not
chess players, because they only were
thinking one move out. That is, they
thought: "Well, there's prostitution
happening via Craigslist. Let's stop
Craigslist from allowing that." But, of
course, they didn't bother to think of what
would happen next: which is that the
prostitutes would scatter to numerous other
sites, meaning that the amount of
prostitution would continue pretty much
unabated, but it would be more scattered
and much more difficult for police to track
down and stop. You would think that the
folks in charge of such things would
recognize that the way you stop crime is by
going after the actual criminals, rather than
the tools they use.
So, what happened after Craigslist
implemented the change? Exactly what
you'd expect. Ed Kohler checked it out and
noticed (as you'd expect) that the number
of ads on Craigslist's erotic services
dropped significantly, but the number of
ads elsewhere jumped up somewhat
(including some on Craigslist's
"Therapeutic Services" -- suggesting that
some are trying to skirt the new charging
system). Kohler only looked at one other
site, so it may look like the increase in ads
isn't that big -- but if you add up a variety
of similar sites, you can bet that it's quite
likely that in total it added up to quite a lot.
It's just that, now, it's a lot more work for
police to actually monitor.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Chinese police chief arrests 48 relatives
By Tania Branigan (World news |
guardian.co.uk)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 8:39:26 AM
Police chief Laobu Laluo prides himself
on dispensing justice unflinchingly —
whoever the criminal may be.
Alas, his commitment to upholding the
law seems matched only by his relatives'
dedication to breaking it. In a decade-long
career he has arrested no fewer than 48 of
them, for crimes ranging from assault and
theft to blackmail.
Twenty five of those, including his own
brother, have been jailed, sentenced to re-
education through labour or penalised in
other ways.
Other offenders include cousins and
numerous members of his wife's family.
Furious relatives have accused him of
making them lose face, threatened his
parents and even attacked the family cattle,
cutting off their tails and slashing their
legs. But the director of the Heizhugou
town police station in Leishan city,
Sichuan province, is unbowed by the
What Obama Should Do To Get The Entrepreneurial
Viewpoint
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 10:01:00 AM
Two contrasting articles crossed my
desktop this weekend, both about how
President-Elect Barack Obama is likely to
govern. The first, by Mark Cuban,
criticizes Obama for the list of economic
advisers that Obama chose to consult
concerning his plans to take on the
economic downturn. Cuban, correctly,
worries about who is missing from that
list: Notice anything missing?
Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren
Buffett started a business, but he will be
the first to tell you that he "doesn't do start
ups". Which means there isn't a single
person advising PE Obama that we know
of that knows that its like to start and run a
business in this or any economic climate.
pressure.
"I am a person who cares about
relationships and cherishes friends and
relatives, but when there is conflict
between the law and friends and relatives, I
would choose law and justice," he told the
Chengdu Economic Daily.
"As a police officer, if you can't manage
your relatives well, you don't have the
right to manage others."
While his diligence may not have
endeared him to his family, the newspaper
says it has made him something of a hero
in his area. Chinese citizens frequently
bemoan corruption within officialdom.
Laobu, who is in his 30s and a member
of China's Yi ethnic minority, said trouble
began in 2000, when he learned that his
younger brother and two cousins had
beaten teachers at a primary school while
drunk.
Despite his mother's tears and the pleas
of his uncle and aunt, he personally
arrested all three. His brother Laqu was
sentenced to 18 months in prison, while
one cousin got three years and the other six
That's a huge problem. I absolutely agree.
It is the entrepreneurial spirit that is needed
right now. But, at the same time, it makes
you wonder just how Obama would have
accomplished this. Any one or two
entrepreneurs are unlikely to do a really
good job representing all entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs, for the most part, don't all
view things the same way, and there's no
real organization of entrepreneurs. The
reason entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs
is often that they see their own way of
doing things and don't want to be locked
up by convention. So, while it is
worrisome that there aren't any
entrepreneur-types on the list, I'm not sure
I'd be that much more comfortable with a
few entrepreneurs representing the
interests of all entrepreneurs either.
That brings us to the second article. It's
months.
Another cousin was sent for re-education
after blackmailing a motorcyclist for 5,000
yuan (£475) by falsely claiming the man
had knocked him down.
"In the first few years, I did not dare go
back home for the new year holiday, but
now it's all right," Laobu said. "Everyone
understands and supports what I was doing
at the time."
His brother has pledged not to cause
further trouble and the blackmailer is now
a reformed character, elected as leader of
his village on account of his upstanding
morals.
But other relatives appear remarkably
slow to recognise Laobu's zeal. Only this
year, Laobu found his cousin Labulida had
been involved in snatching a handbag from
a woman on a bus.
• China
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by David Carr in the NY Times, and looks
at how Obama's campaign ran like an
entrepreneurial startup itself, leveraging
the internet and new technologies to do a
complete end-run around much bigger and
more well-known "corporate brands" in the
political space. And it wonders if Obama
will continue to use those tools to govern
as well.
So, at the very least, one could argue that
Obama, himself, is something of an
entrepreneur, but more importantly, one
would hope that Obama does, in fact,
continue to leverage the internet to hear
from folks -- and is actually willing to
listen and take suggestions seriously. Why
not create an economic roundtable of sorts
online that lets more people weigh in? Let
ideas in the mix bubble up to the top using
ratings systems (and maybe some White
Microsoft Steps Up
Program To Bribe
Users To Search
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 8:39:00 PM
Apparently Microsoft's ongoing program
to bribe users to use its search engine
wasn't getting enough attention, and the
company seems to be upping the ante. At
least for a little while, it's now giving 25%
cash back on eBay purchases(limited to
$200). At some point, you really have to
wonder how well this program really
works. Sure, some folks may use
Microsoft's search to get the cashback (or
to game the system), but will they keep it
up when Microsoft isn't paying? That's not
at all clear, and it seems likely that
Microsoft could be paying out a lot more
than it gets back in benefits.
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House moderators) and contribute them to
the mix. If someone has a particularly good
suggestion, why not invite them to a
meeting with those "big shot" economic
advisers as well? It doesn't mean that every
hare-brained scheme needs to be listened
to, but if there's a good way to allow the
best ideas to bubble up and get recognition,
it could be quite a powerful new way to
govern. To some extent, there's already
some indication that this is where things
are headed with the transition website
Change.gov, but it remains to be seen if
that's just a Presidential suggestion box...
or something a lot more powerful.
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World* Tech* 9
Whitehouse Accused Of
Trying To Push Through
Anti-Gambling Regulation
No One Wants
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 4:55:00 PM
Even as some of our elected
representatives are trying to re-legalize
poker, the White House appears to be
trying to shove through the regulations put
in place a couple years ago to stop online
gambling. The Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 put
the responsibility on financial institutions
to stop any financial transactions used in
online gambling. As we see all too often,
it's a situation where the government is
putting the liability on a third party to stop
an undesirable activity, rather than on
those actually involved in the activity. Not
surprisingly, financial institutions have
been protesting any regulations enforcing
this law -- and with the current financial
collapse going on, they're pushing back
hard on any effort to enforce the law. So,
what happens? Apparently, the White
House has assigned a former NFL lobbyist
working for the White House to try to
force the regulations through, apparently
putting tremendous pressure to get things
moving. Congress is now asking the White
House to explain why they're trying to rush
this through, just as financial institutions
are having so much trouble. It certainly
does raise questions. Considering the push
to reverse the law in the first place,
combined with the protests from financial
institutions that it shouldn't be their
problem to stop online gambling, why is
the White House putting excess pressure to
try to make it happen?
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10 Tech* Gadgets*
A History Lesson For Those Advocating Network
Neutrality Laws
By Timothy Lee (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 2:04:00 PM
Over at News.com, Declan McCullagh
writes that Barack Obama's election as the
next president of the United States has
bolstered the hopes of those hoping to
impose network neutrality regulations on
the Internet. While Obama's key advisors
have been cagey about precisely what the
new administration's stance on the issue
will be, it's a safe bet that we'll be hearing
a lot about the issue in the coming months.
This seems like a good time for a long-
overdue conclusion to my ongoing series
on network neutrality regulation.
One of the things that has been missing
from the network neutrality debate has
been a sense of how it fits into the broader
history of government regulations of
network industries. It's easy to imagine that
the Internet is so new and different that
historical comparisons just aren't relevant.
But as we've seen with copyright and
patent debates, we can learn a lot from
historical experiences that may not seem
immediately relevant.
I think this is equally true in the network
neutrality debate. While the specifics of
network neutrality are unlike anything that
has come before, the general principles
involved—non-discrimination,
competition, monopoly power, and so
forth—have actually been with us for more
than a century. Indeed, today's network
neutrality debate bears a striking
resemblance to the debate that led to the
very first American regulatory agency: the
Interstate Commerce Commission, which
was created to regulate the railroad
industry.
The railroad industry was the high-tech
industry of its day, and it had many of the
same kinds of transformative effects on the
19th Century American economy that the
Mitsubishi's $6,999 65-inch LaserVue HDTV now hitting retailers
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 12:46:00 PM
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home
Entertainment
Just in time for your holiday wish list,
Internet is having today. As with today's
Internet, some parts of the railroad market
were highly competitive, while other
markets were served by only one or two
firms. And people had concerns about the
behavior of the largest railroad firms that
echoed those that people have about large
Internet providers today: that they restrict
competition, discriminate among
customers.
In 1887, Congress passed legislation
(you can read an abridged version here)
that is strikingly similar to the proposed
network neutrality legislation that we're
debating today. The Interstate Commerce
Act declared it illegal to charge different
prices to different customers for "the
transportation of a like kind of traffic
under substantially similar circumstances
and conditions." It also said that railroads
may not "make or give any undue or
unreasonable preference or advantage to
any particular person, company, firm,
corporation, or locality, or any particular
description of traffic." Compare that to the
leading network neutrality proposal during
the last Congress, which would have
required network providers to deliver
content on a "reasonable and
nondiscriminatory" basis without imposing
"a charge on the basis of the type of
content, applications, or services made
available."
Unfortunately, the story of the Interstate
Commerce Commission does not have a
happy ending. Grover Cleveland appointed
a railroad ally named Thomas M Cooley as
the first chairman of the ICC. The ICC was
widely regarded as toothless for its first
couple of decades, largely rubber-stamping
railroad industry decisions. Things got
even worse after the turn of the century,
when the ICC began actively discouraging
competition in the railroad industry. The
ICC had the power to decide when new
Mitsubishi has announced that its stunning
65-inch LaserVue HDTV is now on sale at
select specialty retailers nationwide. From
what we've personally seen and from what
we've gathered from those lucky enough to
critique it in detail, this here set is a real
firms were allowed to enter the railroad
industry, and by the 1920s, the FCC was
actively working to discourage competition
and push up railroad rates. In the 1930s,
the ICC gained authority over the infant
trucking industry, and used its authority to
slow the growth of the trucking industry to
protect the railroads from competition. By
1970, things had gotten so bad that a Ralph
Nader report described the ICC as
"predominantly a forum at which
transportation interests divide up the
national transportation market."
What went wrong? The story is too long
and complicated to fully describe in a blog
post, but I think there are two key lessons.
First, the authors of the ICA dramatically
underestimated the complexity of the
railroad industry and the difficulty of
government oversight. One of the reasons
the ICC was relatively toothless in its early
years is that it was completely
overwhelmed with paperwork, as dozens
of railroads sent it information about
thousands of routes. The railroad industry
was simply too complex and dynamic for a
few Washington bureaucrats to even
understand, to say nothing of regulating
them effectively.
Second, the ICC's failure is a classic
example of what economists call
"regulatory capture": the ability of special
interests to gain control of the regulatory
process and use it to their advantage.
Because the railroads cared more about
railroad regulation than anyone else, they
were adept at getting their allies appointed
to key positions at the commission. Over
time, the ICC not only ceased to be an
effective watchdog of consumer interests,
but actually began actively defending the
interests of the railroads at consumers'
expense. For about six decades—from
about 1920 to 1980—the ICC pursued
policies that reduced competition and
winner. Of course, coming up with
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raised prices in the railroad industry. And
when trucking emerged as a potentially
disruptive innovation, the ICC helped to
limit its growth and slow the
corresponding decline of the railroad
industry.
The story of the ICC is not an isolated
case. Similar stories can be told of the
Civil Aeronautics board, which limited
competition in the airline industry until the
1970s. And, of course, there's the example
of that the FCC actively promoted AT&T's
monopoly in the telecommunications
market until it was broken up in 1984.
We can certainly hope that Congress has
learned from the experiences of the 20th
century and will avoid the most egregious
mistakes it made in the 20th century. But
it's worth remembering that many of the
conditions that led to the ICC's problems
are still with us. Today's FCC, like the ICC
of the 20th Century, has a revolving door
between the commission and the firms they
regulate. And the Internet, like the railroad
industry of the 19th century, is
extraordinarily dynamic and complex. As a
result, there's a real danger that if Congress
gives the FCC the power to regulate the
Internet, it will make things worse, either
because it cannot keep up with the
Internet's rapid evolution, or because
industry incumbents will succeed in
getting their own allies in key positions
within the commission. Either way, the
results could be very different from what
network neutrality proponents are hoping
for.
Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight
Community. To get insight and analysis
from Timothy Lee and other experts on
challenges your company faces, click here.
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the$6,999 in order to bring one home is
another matter entirely, but those who feel
like stimulating the economy and their
retinas can absolutely do so starting today.
Mitsubishi's $6,999 65-inch LaserVue
HDTV now hitting retailers originally
In Some Relatively Rare
Cases, iPod Headphones
May Have Some Impact On
Pacemakers
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 6:35:27 PM
There have been numerous studies done
over the impact various portable
electronics devices have on pacemakers,
and they often make headlines blown way
out of proportion compared to the actual
issue. A year and a half ago, for example,
we wrote about a report that found that
iPods could interfere with pacemakers
under some very specific (and somewhat
unlikely) circumstances. And now there's a
new study making the rounds about how
iPod headphones could, maybe interfere
with pacemakers, again in some very
specific circumstances. As the folks behind
the report note, it's so minor that it's not
worth causing a big stir about it, but when
the headphones are very close to the
device, the magnets in them may impact
how the device runs. It was a pretty small
sample size, but in experiments it
happened in 4 out of 27 tests with
pacemakers. Slightly more troubling is in
cases with defibrillators, where the
headphones got in the way 10 out of 33
times. Though, with the pacemakers, it
didn't sound as if the interference was all
that serious in most cases, and with
defibrillators, it seems likely that
technicians are likely to notice and remove
iPod headphones from getting in the way.
While it's good to be aware of the potential
for interference, but the actual risk of
danger seems pretty minor.
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appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008
12:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Online Movie Distribution
Should Be Widespread, Not
Focused On Specific Sites
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 3:27:00 PM
There's a lot of buzz over the fact that
MGM has apparently worked out an
agreement to put some complete movies
and TV shows on YouTube, in an attempt
for both YouTube and MGM to build
alternatives to things like Hulu. The
content selections look pretty weak so far,
as if MGM decided to test this program out
with its least desirable content (which
hardly seems like a fair test). Either way,
the point seems a bit silly. Working out
specific deals with specific sites misses the
point.
You don't see movie studios today
looking to do exclusive deals with one
chain of movie theater to distribute their
Dell goes industrial with new OptiPlex desktops
By Donald Melanson (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 2:27:00 PM
Filed under: Desktops
Dell didn't exactly have a high design bar
to hurdle in order to top its existing
OptiPlex desktops, but it's done a pretty
admirable job with its new OptiPlex 960
model, which is available in the usual mini
tower, slimline desktop (pictured above),
and small form factor versions. Those each
sport base configurations that include a
Microsoft details pre-beta release of Windows 7
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 12:15:00 PM
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
We knew good and well Microsoft was
gearing up to drop a pre-beta release of
Windows 7 in developers' laps at its
Professional Developers Conference, but
now we're being treated to a host of details
from Redmond itself. For starters, it's
showing off (for the first time, mind you)
its new Web applications for Office. As
you'd expect, said apps are "lightweight
movies. No, the idea is to get the movie
seen in as many places as possible to make
it as convenient as possible for whoever to
watch it. The same should be true of
studios who realize that they want their
movies available for free online. They
shouldn't just focus on doing a deal with
one site, like YouTube, but in setting up
the parameters where any site can
distribute the movie for them. Otherwise,
you end up with a patchwork of different
deals, and different sites, and no one really
knows where to go to get anything. Why
not just set up the parameters, and let any
qualifying site serve up the content
instead?
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3.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of
RAM, and an 80GB hard drive, and they'll
run you $902, $892, and $912 for the
tower, slim desktop and small form factor
PC, respectively -- or considerably more if
you opt for some of the higher end options
like a Core 2 Quad processor or a discrete
graphics card. For less demanding folks,
Dell has also rolled out the $399 OptiPlex
FX160 thin client PC, and updated
versions of its OptiPlex 760 and OptiPlex
360 desktops, which now pack a 2.0GHz
versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and OneNote that are used
from within standard web browsers."
According to Ray Ozzie, chief software
architect at Microsoft, it's aiming to bring
Students Dropping Out Of School
To Pay RIAA Settlement Fees?
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 11:29:00 AM
You may recall a couple years ago that an
RIAA representative suggested that an
MIT student should drop out of school and
get a job in order to pay the fine it was
demanding she pay for sharing some
music. Now, according to the associate
dean of student development at the
University of Wisconsin, some students are
doing exactly that: "Some students have
had to drop out of school in order to pay
for their legal fees." No examples or proof
is given, so I'm wondering if this is just a
Celeron processor in their base
configurations to help keep prices down to
$630 and $478. Head on past the break for
"the best of the web to Windows, and the
best of Windows to the web." 'Course,
we're also told about improved navigation,
a new taskbar (preview shown), support
for multi-touch gestures, Device Stage and
throw-away line.
However, if it is true, it would be
interesting to hear from some of those
students, and to see how the RIAA
responds to the situation. No matter how
much you might think the RIAA is right to
enforce copyright law against students, I'm
curious to see if anyone can reasonably
defend encouraging a student to drop out
of college just to pay off such a fine. The
punishment seems way out of line with the
"crime."
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a glimpse at the complete line-up.
[Via Electronista]
Continue reading Dell goes industrial
with new OptiPlex desktops
Dell goes industrial with new OptiPlex
desktops originally appeared on Engadget
on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:27:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
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enhanced AV integration -- all things that
have our interest decidedly piqued. Hit the
read link for the full spill direct from the
horse's mouth.
Microsoft details pre-beta release of
Windows 7 originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:15:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tech* Gadgets* 11
Open source "Game
Boy" has five awesome
parts, zero games
By Laura June (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:43:00 PM
Filed under: Gaming
The Arduino-based, DIY GamePack is
sort of like the Mignon Game Kit we saw
in 2005, but it definitely looks much, much
radder. For a mere $249.93, all the
necessary parts -- CPU, "Inputshield"
customizable, vibrating controller / button
component (say, for right or left-handed
configurations), "TouchShield Stealth"
OLED display unit, and "MeCap" lithium
battery pack -- can be yours. Once you've
cobbled it together, of course, the real fun
begins -- it's pretty much a blank slate with
little more than code for a color-changing
dot to start with, so if you want to play any
"games" on that new "Game Boy" of
yours, you're going to have to write them
yourself. See a video of the device in
action after the break.
[Via technabob]
Continue reading Open source "Game
Boy" has five awesome parts, zero games
Open source "Game Boy" has five
awesome parts, zero games originally
appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008
13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
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12 Gadgets* Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper

Windows 7 details galore: interface tweaks, netbook

builds, Media Center enhancements
By Nilay Patel (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:58:00 PM
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
Microsoft's Windows 7 announcement
earlier today was followed up by an
extensive demo of the new features during
the PDC keynote, and since then even
more info about the new OS has flooded
out, so we thought we'd try to wrap up
some of the more important bits here for
you. Microsoft seems to have done an
impressive job at this early pre-beta stage,
folding in next-gen interface ideas like
multitouch into the same OS that
apparently runs fine on a 1GHz netbook
with 1GB of RAM, but we'll see how
development goes -- there's still a ways to
go. Some notes:
• Obviously, the big news is the new
taskbar, which forgoes text for icons and
has new "jump lists" of app controls and
options you can access with a right-click.
You can select playlists in Media Player,
for example. Super cool: when you scrub
over the icons, all the other app windows
go transparent so you can "peek" at the
windows you're pointing at.
• Gadgets now appear on the desktop --
the sidebar has been killed. That makes
more sense for all those laptop owners out
there with limited screen space, and you
can still see gadgets anytime by peeking at
the desktop, rendering all other windows
transparent.
• Window resizing and management now
happens semi-automatically: dragging a
window to the top of the screen maximizes
it, pulling it down restores; dragging a
window to the edges auto-resizes it to 50%
for quick tiling. Nifty.
• The system tray now only displays what
you explicitly say it should -- everything
else is hidden, and the controls have been
streamlined.
• User Account Control settings are now
much more fine-grained -- you can set
them by app and by level of access.
• They demoed multitouch features on an
HP TouchSmart PC -- it was pretty cool,
although the usual nagging "what is this
good for / that'll get old fast" concerns
weren't really addressed. The Start menu
gets 25 percent bigger when using touch to
make it easier to handle, and apps will all
get scroll support automatically. There's
also a giant on-screen predictive keyboard.
Again -- could be amazing, but we won't
know until it's out in the wild.
• We've always known Microsoft intends
Windows 7 to run on netbooks, and we got
a small taste during the PDC keynote:
Windows SVP Steve Sinofsky held up his
"personal" laptop running Windows 7, an
unnamed 1GHz netbook with 1GB of
RAM that looked a lot like an Eee PC, and
said that it still had about half its memory
free after boot. (We're guessing it was
running a VIA Nano, since most Atoms
run at 1.6GHz.)
• At the other end of the scale, Windows
7 supports machines with up to 256 CPUs.
• Multiple-monitor management is much-
improved, as is setting up projectors -- it's
a hotkey away. Remote Desktop now
works with multiple monitors as well.
• Media Center has been tweaked as well
-- it looks a lot more like the Zune
interface. There's also a new Mini Guide
when watching video, and a new Music
Wall album artwork screensaver that kicks
in when you're playing music.
• Devs got a pre-beta today; a "pretty
good" feature complete beta is due early
next year. No word at all on when it'll be
released to market apart from that"three
years from Vista" date we've known
forever.
That's just the good bits -- hit the read
links for piles of more info and
screenshots, and we'll keep our eyes out
for anything else interesting. Exciting
times!
Read- Keynote videos on the PDC site
Read- Technologizer Windows 7 hands-
on
Read- Ars Technica Windows 7 interface
walkthrough
Read- Laptop Windows 7 hands-on
Read- Windows 7 Media Center revealed
Windows 7 details galore: interface
tweaks, netbook builds, Media Center
enhancements originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:58:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Greatest projector / iPhone
clone combo handset in
the world now up for sale
By Paul Miller (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 11:44:00 AM
Filed under: Cellphones
Look, here's what you need to do: reach
into the appropriate pocket on your
personage, take out your phone, and throw
it into the nearest wall. It sucks. The N70
from Lanye (or ChinaKing, or... somebody
from China), which we've drooled over
previously, is a candybar phone with a 2.4-
inch screen, Bluetooth 2.0, and a little bit
of dual-band GSM. Oh, and a built-in
projector. And an interface that almost
perfectly mirrors that of the iPhone with
the addition of voice recording and MMS.
It's awesome, and it's now available for
import for a mere $345. A bargain at any
price.
[Thanks, Andrew]
Greatest projector / iPhone clone combo
handset in the world now up for sale
originally appeared on Engadget on Tue,
28 Oct 2008 11:44:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

T-Mobile G1 coming to Walmart for $148.88

By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 11:58:00 AM
Filed under: Cellphones
Well, now isn't this something? Best Buy
has its fancy little iPhone 3G, but it'll be
Wally World offering up the G1 outside of
official T-Mobile outlets. As we'd heard
yesterday, 550 Walmart stores across the
country will begin selling the Android-
powered handset beginning tomorrow, and
folks who opt to pick one up here versus a
traditional T-Mob store will save $31.11.
Yep -- according to company
spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien, the new /
upgrade-eligible customer price for a
Walmart-sourced G1 will be just $148.88
with a 2-year agreement. Wait, what? You
the premium... or something along those
lines.
T-Mobile G1 coming to Walmart for
$148.88 originally appeared on Engadget
on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:58:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
already purchased your G1 at the full
price? They always said the early bird pays
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
E Ink's AM300 developer's kit gets
shown off on video
By Donald Melanson (Engadget)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:15:00 PM
Filed under: Displays
E Ink's AM300 developer's kit(made
with the help of Epson) certainly seemed
impressive enough when it was first
announced, but there's nothing quite like a
video to bring our newspapers of the future
to life, and one courtesy of E Ink itself has
now thankfully turned up on YouTube.
While the display's 16 levels of gray and
pen-based input capabilities aren't entirely
unique to E Ink, its ability to display
Gettin' The 'Gossip' with Blake Lively
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 6:13:00 PM
In the latest issue of W magazine,"Gossip
Girl"'s Blake Lively is letting her famous
tousled hair down to dish on all things
"Gossip Girl."
The blonde beauty, who has become a
media sensation, gets candid with the mag
about her new on-screen romance with a
speedy animation does seem to be a step
above most other similar displays and,
naturally, it's being touted as ideal for
advertisements. Head on past the break to
check it out for yourself.
Continue reading E Ink's AM300
developer's kit gets shown off on video
E Ink's AM300 developer's kit gets
shown off on video originally appeared on
Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:15:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
hunky artist, as well as recent media
rumors swirling about a "feud" between
her co-star Leighton Meester.
"The media is always trying to pit us
against each other," Lively says. "I guess
because it's just not interesting to say,
'Everyone gets along, everybody just
works 18-hour days and goes home to
sleep.' That's not fun to read I guess."
Web 2.0 Summit videos: Huffington,
Musk, Gore
By Zoë Slocum (Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/9/2008 12:49:00 PM
The Web 2.0 Summit wrapped up Friday
with conversations about the Internet,
politics, renewable energy, and space.
Below are videos of on-stage talks,
courtesy of TechWeb.
In a panel discussion in which The
Huffington Post founder Arianna
Huffington is joined by San Francisco
Mayor Gavin Newsom and Democratic
campaign organizer Joe Trippi, Huffington
argues that " were it not for the Internet,
Barack Obama would not be president," in
part because the blogosphere has "an
obsessive-compulsive disorder." Trippi
agrees that "the (Internet) medium
demands authenticity."
In response to Huffington's remark that
"politicians definitely need to adjust how
they behave," never assuming that they are
having a private conversation with anyone
in public, New York magazine's John
Heilemann says to Newsom, "So Gavin,
there's no off-the-record ever again now."
Newsom, who says he is "obsessed with
Facebook," agrees: Politicians need to "get
over it," he says. "You're on the record. If
you get into public life, you should expect
nothing short of it."
Continuing their discussion, the quartet
focus on how the political spectrum is
changing, largely because of the vast
exposure to information that the Internet
affords. But not everyone can afford to
access the Internet regularly, Newsom
says.
"We have a huge digital-divide problem,"
argues the San Francisco mayor, who has
been working hard to bring his city
municipal wireless broadband. "We are
slipping; we are not making any real
advancements." Hundreds of thousands of
people still rely on network television to
gather their political insights, he says.
Meanwhile, Huffington says citizen
journalism on the Internet is playing a
major role in transforming the lingo and
polarization of American politics.
Gadgets* Web Apps* Movies*
"We are so completely used to talking
about right versus left," she says. "It's a
lazy way to talk...If you really want to
transform politics, you have to transcend
these divisions and really define the new
center, and I can't really think of anything
more important."
For The Huffington Post, at least, "right"
and "left" are now "the forbidden words."
Newsom, a Democrat, chimes in: "If you
don't want to be part of the Democratic
Party or the Republican Party, you better
be part of the get-it-done party, and the
peril of all of this is that you've got to
deliver."
Next up: Web 2.0 Summit moderator
John Battelle, head of Federated Media
Publishing and longtime journalist, invites
serial entrepreneur Elon Musk up to the
stage to talk about the three areas Musk
identified in college in which he wanted to
get involved: the Internet, renewable
energy, and space exploration.
Musk acknowledges somewhat smugly
that he wasn't confident during college that
he'd be able to innovate in the latter two
areas; the Web provided the easiest (read:
least expensive) endeavor. "I'm more of an
engineer than anything else, I guess."
But once the PayPal co-founder could
afford to buy himself anything he wants,
he says, he started investing in cutting-
edge technologies such as solar energy
(SolarCity), electric vehicles (Tesla
Motors), and space travel (SpaceX).
"The point of Tesla is to get to mass-
market electric cars, but to get there, you
need to start with something. And if you
look at any technology developments, in
almost any sphere, you start with
something which is expensive," Musk
says, referring to the Roadster's current
$109,000 price tag. "The first thing is
about making the technology work, and
then you go from there to optimizing the
technology."
Musk points out that, like cell phones
and laptops, in their early days, "internal
combustion engine cars were considered
toys for rich people, because everyone then
13
was riding a horse."
In discussing recent Tesla news
regarding fund-raising and layoffs, Musk
compares running a successful start-up to
running a highly trained military unit. He
says taking a "special-forces approach" is
necessary to becoming large and
successful.
"The minimum passing grade is
excellent," he says. It's "the difference
between special forces and Army."
Closing the summit is former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore, who famously went
from losing the 2000 presidential election
to winning an Academy Award for the
global-warming documentary An
Inconvenient Truth and a Nobel Peace
Prize. He came to the Web 2.0 Summit to
talk, at least in part, about Current Media,
a Web video company he co-founded that
partnered up with Web darlings Digg and
Twitter to cover the election last week.
"The Internet democratizes information,"
Gore says, arguing that Sen. Barack
Obama's win had much to do with how his
campaign made use of the Web.
Gore also focuses on the motivations
behind Web innovation, and he uses a
lesson he'd learned from a dog trainer to
illustrate his point.
"A puppy has to have a purpose," he says.
Likewise, "Web 2.0 has to have a purpose.
We have to have a purpose."
As the conversation turns to the
collective human purpose of cutting down
on pollution and its devastating effects,
Gore notes that people generally need a
sense of urgency to act.
"The urgency center of the brain is geared
to snakes and spiders and fire," Gore says,
explaining that people generally require a
bit more processing and analyzing, as well
as conscious decision making, to react to
many other potential dangers. "It needs to
be stored in the cloud. It's the aggregate
bandwidth that counts...so that we can
respond to it collectively."
14 Web Apps*
Gore: Electrifying redemption, thanks to the Web
By Caroline McCarthy
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/7/2008 5:48:00 PM
Former Vice President Al Gore onstage at
the Web 2.0 Summit.(Credit: Dan
Farber/CNET News)
SAN FRANCISCO--The central theme
of former Vice President Al Gore's speech,
concluding the Web 2.0 Summit on Friday
afternoon, was electricity.
He spoke of "the electrifying redemption
of America's revolutionary declaration that
all human beings are created equal," as
emphasized through Barack Obama's
election victory on Tuesday, and how it
"would not have been possible without the
additional empowerment of individuals to
use knowledge as a source of power that
has come with the Internet."
Gore reiterated what so many people
have said before--that the Obama
campaign was a vindication for how the
new tools of the Internet can be used
toward legitimate change.
"What happened in the election opens up
a full new range of possibilities, and now
is the time to really move swiftly to use
these new possibilities," he said. "I made a
talk earlier today about how the early uses
of electricity 100 years ago were aimed at
sort of specialized applications and
gimmicks and do-dads and whiz-bangs that
demonstrated the special qualities of this
new conveyor of power."
He meant, essentially, throwing an
electric sheep. (Apologies to Philip K.
Dick.)
"Now we just take electricity for granted
as everywhere, and it has empowered a
whole civilization," he said. Gore said the
analogy stands for Web 2.0 as well. "When
people are displaying interactivity or user-
generated content or social networking,
that's kind of the gee-whiz stuff...We need
to move past that."
Electricity, too, is key to Gore's urgent
call to action, which he detailed with an
immediacy that was needed at a conference
where some panels drifted a little too far
into the speculative future. America needs
a "unified national smart grid" distributing
renewable solar energy across the country,
something he estimates would cost $400
billion in a decade. But it would create
thousands of jobs, Gore said, and it would
pay for itself within three years.
When Obama takes office in January,
Gore said the new president ought to set "a
national goal of getting 100 percent of
America's electricity from renewable and
noncarbon sources within 10 years. We
can do that."
He continued: "The declaration from
President Kennedy that we would land a
man on the moon and bring him back
safely was thought by many to be
impossible."
Gore had come onstage at the conference
to a standing ovation and so much
applause that he had to tell the audience to
quiet down. His story is familiar: he
famously won the popular vote for the
presidency in 2000 but lost the electoral
vote to George W. Bush, and he went on to
win both an Academy Award for his
environmental-awareness documentary An
Inconvenient Truth and the Nobel Peace
Prize last year.
In 2005, Gore founded Current TV, a
cable news network that he created with
Joel Hyatt in response to his dissatisfaction
with the television industry. "One of the
main reasons why our political system has
not been operating very well until this
election is the deadening influence of the
television medium as it has been operated,"
he said.
Gore encouraged the digerati in the
audience to keep pushing forward as they
face what he says is the most pressing
struggle of our time, climate change--the
subject matter of An Inconvenient Truth.
The fact that the Web's candidate of choice
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
won this time is no reason to rest easy, he
said. Media democratization needs to
continue evolving.
"Just as Barack Obama's election
would've been impossible without the new
dialogue and new ways of interacting--the
Web--the only way (climate change) is
going to be solved is by addressing the
democracy crisis, and the country hit a
great blow for victory this week, but we
have to take this issue and raise it in the
awareness of everyone," Gore said. "I
think that it is very much in its infancy,
barely beginning, and I think that we are
not many years away from television sort
of sinking into the digital world and
becoming a part of it."
Cynics might say Gore, who calls
himself a "recovering politician," is still
bitter at a sterilized news media that didn't
sufficiently back his calling in the 2000
presidential election. Needless to say, his
views remain controversial. But onstage,
Gore seemed plenty comfortable in his
new role as a thought leader rather than an
elected official.
"Who knew that you were the guru of
Web 2.0, as well as global warming?"
conference organizer Tim O'Reilly asked
Gore jokingly after the former vice
president had illustrated an analogy
involving "crowdsourced" information and
cloud computing, two of the decade's most
buzzworthy digital talking points.
If the audience was any indication, Gore
has gained resounding acceptance as an
information-age guru, a bit of an irony,
considering that 10 years ago, erroneous
reports circulated that he had once claimed
to have invented the Internet.
"When we have really had these great
leaps forward has been when new
information ecoystems have made it
possible for individuals who are thinking
and processing information, and who have
aspirations and hopes...to connect easily
with lots of voters around core ideas,"
Gore explained. His preferred analogy was
the invention of the printing press five
centuries ago, in which he connected
general historical events to the rise of
literacy and eventually the creation of
democratic governments.
"The installation of a new sovereign, the
rule of reason, and the emergence of a
marketplace of ideas that was accessible to
individuals--that really empowered this
kind of collective intelligence," Gore said.
"And the American constitution could be,
by analogy, a brilliant piece of software
that regularly harvested the results of that."
An audience member asked Gore how
much he thought governments should
regulate Internet use, and Gore fired back,
"As little as possible." There was more
applause, and as he left the stage, there was
yet another standing ovation.
Gore might not have invented the
Internet (or even claimed to do so). But if
the Web 2.0 Summit was any indication,
plenty of Silicon Valley's most loyal are
more than happy to have him help reinvent
it.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Dapper builds dynamic,
contextual ads
By Rafe Needleman
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 2:10:00 PM
Advertising technology company Dapper
is releasing a new tool, MashupAds, for
creating banner ads that combine context
from the site they are running on with
specific content from the site of the
advertiser. For example, a travel site
advertisement running on a travel review
site (like PlanetEye) about Berlin could list
either current airfares to the city or hotel
deals.
Context-aware advertising is nothing
new. It's what Google AdWords is all
about. Dapper executives told me that what
they do is different, though, especially in
ad creation: The advertiser points the
system to their site, and then at runtime,
the Dapper ad gets the relevant information
from the site and puts it into the ad. It's all
dynamic.
A site's content drives dynamic ad
messaging.(Credit: Dapper)
These ads could be useful for products or
services that have changing availability
(like travel services) or prices (interest
rates). Or for any company that sells a
large number of products. Previously
contextual ads running against a large
catalog would be time-consuming to code.
The Dapper pitch is that once you set up
your ad-to-service mapping, you're done.
The service can also incorporate other
data into the equation, like geographic
region or any demographic data the site on
which the ad is running can pass back to
Lookpicking adds keystroke shortcuts to Firefox searches
By Josh Lowensohn
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 2:54:00 PM
The in-browser search box is now
ubiquitous. It can be found in every major
browser, and some--like Firefox and IE,
allow you to both change which engine
you want to search with (from a drop down
list), and add more engines from a large
directory.
the Dapper engine.
MashupAds is not an advertising
network, so advertisers still need to buy
and place their ads the old-fashioned way.
But now instead of submitting your own
hand-coded ad files, generally in SWF
format, you build the file with Dapper and
send that instead.
A lightweight version of the service will
be available for free. The full paid version
will have more features and control.
Coming later, the service will track users'
interaction with ads so it can fine-tune the
items offered (if there are multiple possible
selections). Also, if and when Dapper ads
start running on social networks, the
company will start working on ways to get
data from the social graph into the
recommendation engine.
Advertising is a tough business to be in
right now; as spending slows, ad revenues
will as well. But Dapper makes advertising
more effective, and for either a zero or low
cost. It's a smart pitch for the times.
Here's Dapper's own MashupAds pitch
video:
How Dapper MashupAds Can Save
Display Advertising from Paul Knegten on
Vimeo.
See also: Yahoo Smart Ads, Google
Gadget Ads, Tumri.
It's fast and easy, but a new Firefox
extension called Lookpicking goes one
step further, essentially giving you little
packs of search engines that you can call
up like bookmarks and share with others.
More importantly, it lets you swap back
and forth between your entire collection by
typing in just the first letter or two of the
engine you want. If you've ever used
Launchy, QuickSilver or any other desktop
application launcher, the idea is similar.
BrowserPlus escapes
Yahoo walled garden
By Stephen Shankland
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 1:54:00 PM
Yahoo has improved its BrowserPlus
technology for more sophisticated Web
applications and now lets other Web sites
besides its own use it, the company said.
BrowserPlus, like Google's Gears, is
software that can be plugged into a
person's Web browser to make Web-based
applications work more like native desktop
programs.
One key feature, for example, is a better
upload interface that gets around the
tedious requirement at most Web sites that
people individually select each photo,
video, or other file to be uploaded. Another
is desktop notifications, letting a Web-
based e-mail, calendar, or instant
messaging application notify a person of a
new message or event reminder, for
example.
Yahoo debuted BrowserPlus in May, but
it released a new version quietly on Friday.
New features include some ability to store
data on the user's computer, which also is
one of Gears' big selling points, and
"playful support for motion sensors...on
specific laptops," Lloyd Hilaiel of Yahoo's
BrowserPlus team said in a blog posting
Monday.
Yahoo apparently is hoping the features
will increase adoption of the software. "It
makes it possible for anyone to use
BrowserPlus on their own Web site to
implement better in-browser uploading and
This has many potential uses, with the
single most one being a shared home
computer. If you're on a machine with
desktop notifications," Hilaiel said.
Previously, BrowserPlus only would work
with sites such as Yahoo's Flickr.
The company also bills BrowserPlus as a
desirable plug-in framework: once users
have it installed, people can let Web sites
add new abilities to their browsers without
having to restart their browsers. Right now,
though, only Yahoo may supply the plug-
ins.
Current BrowserPlus plug-ins include
features to enable image editing, drag-and-
drop operations, PStore for storing data,
and an interface for an operating system's
text-to-speech engine.
Because BrowserPlus, like Gears, is a
narrowly used project, Web site designers
can't count on it being installed, but they
can offer some new features to people who
do have it running.
Those who want to try it out can check
Yahoo's BrowserPlus developer site, also
newly launched.
several people sharing one user account
you can have multiple sets of search
engine packs loaded up, and whoever is
using the browser can simply use their
selections.
It's also useful in academic
environments. If you're doing Web
research in several different disciplines
you can swap back and forth between a
huge list of search engines. Lookpicking
lets you pick from any of the ones you've
Web Apps* 15
Tech layoffs: The
scorecard
By Rafe Needleman
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 10:00:00 AM
With the overall economy slumping, the
tech industry is taking its fair share of hits.
We'll keep updating the chart below as
news of company changes comes in. See
our complete coverage of how the tech
sector is faring here: Tracking the tech
downturn.
See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine:
Who's hiring.
(Editor's note: Links in the spreadsheet
below will open in the spreadsheet frame
by default. We recommend right- or
command-clicking to open links in a new
window or tab. Sorry about that.)
Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us
know on this form or e-mail us.
If you want a real-time view into the
world of layoffs, use this Twitter search.
But we recommend having a stiff drink
first.
added once you start typing in the query.
Then, once you're on that page you can
continue to search from its index before
switching off to another site's search.
One thing to note is that this has been
classified as an "experimental" Firefox add
-on, so if you want to skip the Mozilla user
registration to download it, you can grab it
here(firefox 2 users click here).
[via Ehub]
16 Web Apps* TV* Tech Tips* Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper

i.TV's iPhone app gets AT&T debuts video search site

By Caroline McCarthy sites, but Google's YouTube is one of
(Webware.com) them.
deep Netflix integration Submitted at 11/10/2008 6:35:00 AM

AT&T isn't the brand that comes to mind

By Josh Lowensohn
(Webware.com)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 5:13:00 PM
On Monday i.TV, the movie and TV
show listing service for the iPhone, pushed
out a really neat update that marries the
idea of its live content guide with services
that can take advantage of it as a platform.
The first service to be introduced into the
mix is Netflix. I.TV users who are also
Netflix subscribers can manage their queue
right from the application, as well as start
Netflix searches from i.TV's own listings.
If you find a movie in theaters, or
recently aired TV show that you'd like to
add to your Netflix queue, you can now do
it from i.TV.(Credit: CNET Networks)
An example of how this might work is if
you're perusing the latest movie listings. If
you see a film that you'd like to watch
when it's released on DVD, you can simply
cross-reference it with Netflix's library. If
it shows up (which I found to work with all
the latest releases at my local theater), you
simply hit the "add to queue" option and it
will go into your saved items. This is also
helpful for wannabe movie aficionados,
since if the film you're looking at is a
remake, you can see and rent the older
versions from the same interface.
More importantly, with the outcropping
Get Around Academic Paper Restrictions [Google]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 6:00:00 AM
The Google Operating System blog
points out that Google's integration of
Scholar results means that students and
Dancing With The Stars: Week 6
By Brett Love (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 12:10:00 AM
Filed under: Celebrities, Dancing With
The Stars, Episode Reviews, Episode
Recaps
( S07E12) It's time to head back to the
ballroom, and week 6 brought with it
of Netflix streaming-capable devices like
Apple computers, and soon the Xbox 360--
there's going to be a need to help pick out
streaming TV content, too. Assuming the
makers of i.TV can get deeper access to
Netflix's library, we might see the options
to add shows that have Watch Instantly
streams instead of just adding on DVDs
that have not yet been released.
As a Netflix manager it's not as
competent as an app like Dashbuster,
which is currently unavailable from the
app store while it works out some bugs.
There are no Netflix RSS feeds(which can
be a source of rental inspiration), and it
doesn't save box art in a local cache, which
can give the app a slight speed gain. There
is one big plus though--i.TV is free,
whereas Dashbuster and several other
iPhone-based Netflix queue managers are
not.
researchers have to settle for "subscription
required" firewalls when trying to pull up a
paper. Hit the "All (x) versions" link, and
you'll often find a readable copy on
Google's servers.
another change to the format. In addition to
one regular performance from each couple,
they all got together for a big group
number as well. Shotyme stopped by to
choreograph what was billed as the "Old
School Hip Hop" performance. As you
might expect, that went better for some
than it did for others. We also had a special
when you think of online video search, but
let's get past that point: the
telecommunications company has
announced a beta version of a site called
VideoCrawler, which can search more than
1,600 online video outlets. AT&T hasn't
released a full list of compatible video
Chuck: Chuck Versus Tom
Sawyer
By Richard Keller (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 8:14:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews,
Chuck, Reality-Free
(S02E05) I knew it! Others have thought
video games were nothing but mind-
numbing entertainment that produced a
generation of nerds, dweebs, and creators
of Red Bull. But they were more...much
more. They were keys to, pardon the
phrase, weapons of mass destruction. What
dual roles have other video games had
during their history? Space Invaders as the
guide map for the invasion of Iraq? Pac-
Man the secret plan to solve America's
energy crisis? And...and...what about
Grand Theft Auto? Okay, that's really
mind-numbing entertainment. But, that's
beside the point!
This is just further proof that you need to
take your children's video game consoles
and toss them into the deepest pit in the
farthest land. Well, except for the Wii,
because you can exercise and play games
at the same time. Brilliant! And, hey, if
your kids ask you where they should put
their missile launch codes, tell them to
guest judge this week. Michael Flatley,
VideoCrawler was developed in
conjunction with start-up Divvio, a search
company that constructed the
VideoCrawler platform.
VideoCrawler doesn't host any videos,
but members can still compile playlists and
share them through embeddable widgets.
Other players in this space include
Blinkx and the AOL-owned Truveo.
place them in a shoe box under their beds.
Just the way you did when you were their
age.
Now you know, and knowing is half the
battle. Let's get on with this week's review.
Continue reading Chuck: Chuck Versus
Tom Sawyer
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
best known for Lord of the Dance, filled in
for Len Goodman. He got the full DWTS
experience, witnessing some fantastic
performances... and Cloris. A look at all of
the performances, is after the jump.
Continue reading Dancing With The
Stars: Week 6
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Hey, whatever
happened to Demetri
Martin's show?
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 2:09:00 PM
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows,
Programming, Celebrities, Reality-Free
Remember way back when the news came
that comic Demetri Martin was going to
get his own weekly show on Comedy
Central, one that would be produced by
Jon Stewart and his Busboy Productions?
It was supposed to debut sometime this
year, presumably months ago, but here we
are nearing the end of October and still no
word on when the show is going to debut.
There's a listing on the IMDb for
Important Things with Demetri Martin,
and even titles for two episodes, but no
dates for when those episodes will be
shown (just question marks, and when
even the IMDb is confused, we're all in
trouble). The Comedy Central site doesn't
have any word on the show at all. It's not
even listed on the show page, and a search
only brings up Martin's specials. Not sure
if he's been on The Daily Show lately.
Continue reading Hey, whatever
happened to Demetri Martin's show?
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Heroes: Eris Quod Sum
By Jason Hughes (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 8:48:00 AM
Filed under: Heroes, Episode Reviews,
Reality-Free(S03E07) Have you noticed
how quickly an episode of Heroes goes
by? It's not a bad thing, but it just goes to
show you how much they pack into each
episode. It helps that they're juggling forty
to fifty storylines at any given time. It's
one of those things where when you're
looking at writing up a review of the show
there's just so much that happens. Again, I
liked this episode but there weren't any
major developments as far as the bigger
events.
We did have another de-powering as
well as another death. Kristen Bell
returned to the show as the troubled Elle,
and Claire's mom again showed us what
her power was by holding her palm up and
having fire dance on it. Hey lady, we're
sooo over it! Does Peter get his powers
DVR conflict: Chuck's improved... Was Sarah Connor saved by the bad
does HIMYM go? economy?
By Joel Keller (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:03:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, TV Squad Polls, How
I Met Your Mother, Chuck, Reality-Free I
usually hate reruns. Hate 'em. You've built
some momentum watching a show,
especially when the season starts, then
suddenly you're faced with an episode
from last year that you already saw. That
can be especially incongruous when you're
a fan of a show like How I Met Your
Mother, which ended last week's episode
with a number of monumental character
developments.
However, reruns allow you to explore
shows that you've wanted to watch but
never get a chance to, even in this day and
age of DVRs and online viewing. Take
Chuck, for instance. I DVR HIMYM just
in case I miss something when I watched it
New Bond Girl Spills 'Quantum of Solace' Secrets
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 8:00:00 PM
ET has the details...
With her killer looks, Olga Kurylenko is
back? Does Sylar really just need a hug?
Did Hayden Panattiere finally get any
acting lessons so she can show more than
"earnest" on her face?
Continue reading Heroes: Eris Quod
Sum
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
live and want to include it in my review.
So I don't even record Chuck, a show I
enjoyed last year and I've heard has gotten
even better in its second season.
Continue reading DVR conflict: Chuck's
improved... does HIMYM go?
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
one Bond girl who's set to rock 007's world
in 'Quantum of Solace.' Now, Maxim’s
December cover girl is spilling secrets to
the mag about her 'Quantum' character,
Camille; her combat training for the role --
Gossip Girl: Preet a Poor Jenny
By Isabelle Carreau (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/27/2008 10:07:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews,
Reality-Free, Gossip Girl(S02E08) "I have
an itch only Chuck can scratch." - Blair
Are we to assume the cat and mouse
game between Blair and Chuck is finally
over now that they both agreed it wasn't
time to say the three words to one another?
Somehow, I find it hard to believe that,
after months and months of circling one
another, Blair and Chuck will agree to be
just that and stop their games. They'll need
to find new preys to play with or they'll get
bored soon enough and so will we.
This week's episode was not my favorite
mainly because the writers wrecked my
perfect Little Miss J. Every show needs a
good girl that tries to make sense of life
while making some mistakes and Jenny
was it. Now Jenny is almost a bad seed
who still has somewhat of a conscience
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 11:58:00 AM
Filed under: Industry, Programming,
Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free You
never heard John McCain or Barack
Obama talking about this on the campaign
trail.
A lot of people were surprised that The
Sarah Connor Chronicles was renewed.
Not because it's a bad show or doesn't
deserve to grow and all that, but just
because it wasn't getting the best ratings
(plus it's on FOX). Now The Hollywood
Reporter has a theory: the bad economy is
helping these borderline shows.
The theory is that because of the bad
economy, combined with the writers strike
earlier this year and advertising dollars are
down across the board, networks are
renewing shows that wouldn't ordinarily be
and disrobing in the film!
“Camille is a real personality, a real
character,” Olga says. “The thing is, it’s [a]
major, integral role; it’s not just hanging
out in the back while the action is going
hidden somewhere but mostly does stupid
and stupider things. I get she's going
through puberty but still... can we get our
good girl back?
Continue reading Gossip Girl: Preet a
Poor Jenny
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
renewed. Besides The Sarah Connor
Chronicles, shows like Knight Rider have
gotten orders for more episodes.
Continue reading Was Sarah Connor
saved by the bad economy?
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
on. I think she’s really interesting,
especially for a Bond girl.”
In addition to her body flight training --
simulated sky-dives -- the Ukrainian-born
beauty tells Maxim she proved a quick
TV* Movies* 17
It's official: CBS
dumps The Ex
List
By Allison Waldman (TV Squad)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 9:29:00 AM
Filed under: Other Drama Shows,
Cancellations, Reality-Free That was fast.
If this were a newspaper, the ink would
barely be dry on my previous post about
the dismal ratings for The Ex List. Now,
the die has been cast: CBS has canceled
The Ex List.
This Friday's show will be the end of the
run. The four remaining shows in the can
may be run off some time in the future, but
more than likely they won't. For the
immediate future, reruns of NCIS will fill
the Friday 9 p.m. slot.
The Ex List is the first hour-long drama
to be dumped this season. It's a sad
commentary on CBS that they are so
challenged when it comes to developing
TV dramas that don't involve criminal
activities.
Continue reading It's official: CBS
dumps The Ex List
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
study with firearms, learning how to “strip
a gun and put it back together. I’m proud
to say I can now take a gun apart in eight
seconds.”
18 Movies* Tech Tips*
'DWTS' Monday: Foxtrot
Fever!
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 7:08:00 PM
The heat is on with only five couples left
on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."
Performing a grueling two new dances this
evening -- including a 15-second solo
dance – the competition was fierce on the
dance floor once again. Get your recap
here!
"Hannah Montana" star Cody Lindley
and his substitute partner Edyta Sliwinska
were the first out of the gate with a fun
Foxtrot which caught the judges by
surprise. "Sophisticated, elegant -- your
most grown-up performance yet," said
Bruno Tonioli, who delivered a score of 8.
"I was pleasantly surprised," agreed Len
'Defiance' Star on Daniel Craig:
'Downright Goofy'
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 4:30:00 PM
James Bond hunk Daniel Craig stars in
‘Defiance' and ET was on the red carpet
for the film's AFI Fest premiere Sunday
night to get the behind-the-scenes details
from his co-stars Liev Schreiber and Jamie
Bell!
Liev tells ET that despite the film’s
serious subject matter, the cast had a great
time working together. "We had a lot of
fun, which was important because what we
were doing was really quite somber." He
Parallels 4 Released, 50% Faster than Parallels 3 [Featured Mac Download]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:30:00 AM
Mac OS X only: The original Windows-
on-Mac virtualization software
Parallels—which we've used to run
Windows and Mac apps side-by-side, set
Windows programs as defaults on a Mac,
and boot our Boot Camp partition from
inside OS X—has just updated to Parallels
Goodman, who also gave an 8. "I thought
you came out and did a really top-notch
job." Carrie Anne Inaba was also pleased,
but deducted a technical point from their
score because Edyta's foot came up off the
floor. Tough! With another 8, the couple
had a total of 24.
In their second dance, Cody and Edyta
took on the Mambo to slightly less
enthusiasm. "You definitely have the
mambo fever -- it was a little spasmodic at
times," said Bruno. Carrie Anne agreed,
saying, "A for effort, A for energy, but it
was a little erratic," while Len supportively
offered, "I thought you've done two good
dances tonight. Well done." The couple
received three 8 scores for a total of 24.
goes on to reveal that co-star Craig has a
playful side most people aren’t aware of:
"Daniel Craig is far more entertaining and
just downright goofy than I think most
people think he is, and that's a result of that
Bond thing he's doing"
Based on the book Defiance: The Bielski
Partisans by Nechama TecCast, the film
finds the trio as Jewish brothers who band
together for survival but end up avenging
the deaths of their loved ones and saving
countless others during World War II.
4. The good news: Parallels 4 boasts 50%
faster performance than Parallels 3, while
promising to use 15-30% fewer resources.
Other new features include:
• SmartMount: Access removable storage
devices from both Windows and Mac at
the same time.
• SmartConnect: Instantly connect USB
devices to Windows or Mac based on your
set preferences
'HIMYM' Gets Guest Brooke Shields On
Stars from 'The Hills' Adoption Rumors
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 4:42:00 PM
"How I Met Your Mother" continues its
policy of great stunt casting when two stars
from "The Hills" join the cast.
HEIDI MONTAG and SPENCER
PRATT have been set to play magazine
cover versions of themselves in an episode
scheduled to air in January 2009.
"We can confirm that Heidi and Spencer
will appear on the show, but we can't give
away anything specific about the episode.
All we can say is that they play
themselves, and one of them is 'The
Mother,'" says co-creator and executive
producer Craig Thomas.
Britney's Son Health
Update: Out of the
Hospital
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 5:56:00 PM
Britney Spears' young son Jayden James
was taken to the Southwest Mississippi
Regional Medical Center on Sunday after
reportedly having a reaction to something
he ingested, and now Britney's Web site
has an update on his health and
whereabouts.
A statement on the site says, "UPDATE:
A source close to the Spears family has
told us that Britney and family have left
the Southwest Mississippi Regional
Medical Center and Jayden is fine."
• iPhone Remote Control App: Start up
and shut down Windows, Linux or any
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
(ETonline - Breaking News)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 9:01:00 PM
Brooke Shields is in the "Lipstick Jungle"
of New York City, where she accepted her
honor as a "Woman Who Gets It Right"
Monday night! She also took time to dish
on her hit NBC show -- and address those
adoption rumors!
"We moved to Friday nights so that
seems to be a better move -- they're pretty
excited about that," she says of "Lipstick
Jungle. "It's heating up even more ... and
some exciting things happen."
Watch the video to find out what Brooke
has to say about rumors that she might
adopt!
BeatMyPrice Finds Deals,
Integrates RetailMeNot
[Price Comparison]
Just-launched price comparison engine
BeatMyPrice comes from the folks who
other VM directly from your iPhone.
• Modality View Mode: View Windows
in a scaled view on your desktop for
transparent viewing.
• Clips Tool: Share several Windows or
Mac screen captures to the Mac’s
clipboard to paste into Apple Mail, iChat
or Pages.
The only downside: Parallels 3 users will
need to pony up $40 for an upgrade. If
Rescue a Word
Document from Multiple
Editors [How To]
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 7:00:00 AM
If you share a nicely-formatted Word
document with one or more folks and ask
them to make "just a few edits," you're
more than likely to get back a document
w i t h i n c o n s i s t e n t
italics/bolding/underlines, crazy font
differences, and whatever size looked best
on each person's screen. The Microsoft
Word Team explains in a blog post how to
use the Styles pane and a few (not-so-
obvious) options to get everything back
into alignment, rather than highlighting,
clicking, and slowly building a grudge
against Sally in Accounts Receivable.
Helpful stuff, and there's also a quick
lesson in creating a consistent style in the
first place. How to Make the Formatting in
Your Document Consistent[The Microsoft
Office Word Team's Blog via Lifehacker
Australia]
you're totally new to Parallels, a full
license will set you back $80. We haven't
been able to compare the latest Parallels
with its biggest competition, VMware
Fusion, yet, but if you've tried both, let's
hear if you've noticed performance
differences in the comments. Parallels
4[Parallels via Gizmodo]
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
BEATMYPRICE
continued from page 18
brought you BugMeNot and RetailMeNot,
and puts those two services' "people-
powered" ethics to good use. Here's how it
works: you see an item you want to buy
online at a certain price, but want to know
if there are better deals out there. You
enter the item name, URL, and price into
BeatMyPrice.com, and hit the "Beat that!"
button. BeatMyPrice lists results from
various sources (including other users'
searches), and includes better, the same,
and higher-priced items than your
entry—and it integrates coupon codes and
promotions (like free shipping) from its
sister site, RetailMeNot.
You can narrow down the results to only
Treesize Free is a Simple Disk Space Magic Number Machine Graphs
Visualizer [Featured Windows Calculations [Featured Mac Download]
Download] By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker) numbers in each, complex numbers, array
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 8:00:00 AM
Windows only: We've previously
highlighted some disk space visualization
tools with all kinds of neat graphics, but
Treesize Free shoots for just the
opposite—a clean, simple interface
showing how much of your hard drive is
filled by which folders. As you might
guess, it stacks up the root folders by size,
then lets you collapse them in nesting trees
to see which sub-folders are eating up that
160GB drive you thought you'd never fill.
You can adjust for KB/MB/GB viewing,
scan CDs and removable drives, and
switch to percentages instead of data bits,
but one of Treesize's really cool features is
simply giving you all the same tools you
EchoPic is a Dead Simple Picture Sharing Site [Photo Sharing]
By Jason Fitzpatrick (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 6:30:00 AM
Webapp EchoPic is a no-frills online
photo storage service, which has no
albums or advanced features, but offers a
fast way to get pictures on the web
painlessly. Registration isn't necessary to
use the basic features; unregistered users
the sellers and target price you want to see.
Check out a video clip from the founder
which shows you BeatMyPrice in action.
As I'm on the hunt for a widescreen
monitor, I plugged in a couple of listings
from NewEgg into BeatMyPrice, and it did
find me a cheaper (albeit smaller screen)
price, but the result listing was a lot sparser
than the one shown in the video. As more
people use BeatMyPrice, the more results
it will have to offer. Right now it
desperately needs a BugMeNot-style
bookmarklet for use while you shop for
holiday gifts online. BeatMyPrice.com
functions, and a whole menu of scientific
have in Windows Explorer's right-click
menu on its tree view pane—delete, copy,
cut, etc. Treesize Free is a free download
for Windows systems only. Treesize
Free[JAM Software via Red Ferret
Journal]
have unlimited storage and a file size
limitation of 1MB. Registered users have
Submitted at 11/11/2008 8:30:23 AM
Mac OS X only: Mac users envious of
Windows 7's new souped-up built-in
calculator can take solace in Magic
Number Machine, a free, advanced graphic
calculator for OS X. Features include 25
digits of precision, hexadecimal, binary,
decimal and octal display including
fractional, scientific notation and negative
the same generous storage plus an increase
in file size limit to 4 MB. One minor
caveat: there is no resizing feature, so
make sure to resize or crop your photos
before uploading them. If my test picture
piqued your interest check out how to
make your own stealthy keyboard.
EchoPic[via About:Photography]
Tech Tips* Web Tech* 19
Keep Your Headphones
Tangle-Free with a Toy
Capsule [Video
Demonstration]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:00:00 AM
We've all struggled with tangled
headphones at one point or another—we've
dedicated several posts to different
headphone wrapping techniques—but the
Berkeley Innovation student group offers
their own clever and cheap solution to the
common problem. Rather than requiring
you to adopt a complicated wrapping
technique, they use a plastic toy capsule
(the kind you get for $.25 with a toy
inside) to help the cord maintain its shape.
The capsule-encased headphones don't
tangle regardless of your wrapping
method, since nothing can disturb the
wrapped cord. Handy! Solution to tangled
headphone cords[Berkeley Innovation]
constants. It's been a long time since I've
needed a calculator this advanced and
complex, so mathletes and scientists, let us
know how it is. The Magic Number
Machine is a free download for Mac only.
Thanks, enderwiggin7! Magic Number
Machine
Exclusive: First Look at Blue
Spruce, IBM's Next
Generation Browser Platform
By Richard MacManus
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 6:56:17 PM
IBM is about to commit itself heavily to
browser-based applications. The giant IT
company is quietly working on a project
called Blue Spruce, which aims to create a
fully browser-based application
development platform. ReadWriteWeb was
given an exclusive first look at Blue
Spruce. Last week at Web 2.0 Summit we
sat down with IBM's CTO of Emerging
Internet Technologies, David Boloker, for be the next evolution of the browser.
a "show and tell" of what IBM claims will EXCLUSIVE: page 20
20 Web Tech*
EXCLUSIVE:
continued from page 19
What's more, it's fully open standards
based - so it is squarely aimed at
challenging the proprietary rich internet
platforms of Microsoft's Silverlight and
Adobe's Flash.
Sponsor
Blue Spruce is a project within IBM that
is only about 5 months old. Up till now it
hasn't been shown publicly. Blue Spruce
isn't yet complete, but conceptually it is
two different things:
• Project Blue Spruce Client Toolkit
• Project Blue Spruce Co-Web Server
Here's a summary of what we know so
far about the Blue Spruce platform:
- Uses the WebKit Open Source Browser
Engine (in the demo we saw, Safari was
the browser being used)
- Uses the following Open standards:
HTML, JavaScript, CSS, (All Ajax),
XMPP, H.264
- Server runs on Linux, MacOS X
- Utilized OpenAjax Metadata
Specification, so it can utilize any widgets
- It's being ported to IE 6+ and Firefox
NOT a Web Browser, But is a Platform
To be clear, IBM is not developing
another browser. The client part of this
project is based on a set of browser-based
open standards technologies. They will in
time (2010 timeframe) be integrated into
existing browsers such as Safari, Firefox
and IE.
The grand plan for IBM, we think, is that
it wants the browser to become the
Google, If Built By Librarians
By Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 6:20:34 AM
What would Google look like if it was
built by librarians? We're about to find out.
A project called " Reference Extract," has
a goal of building a web search engine
where the weight of the search results
aren't determined by any sort of algorithm
like PageRank, but rather by the expertise
and creditability judgments from librarians
around the world. In other words, it's smart
people-powered search.
platform for applications - thus putting
pressure on companies like Microsoft and
Adobe, which still rely heavily on desktop
applications (albeit these days connected to
the Web).
It's also worth noting that this isn't (yet)
an open source project. David Boloker
described it to us as a "community-
sourced" project, meaning that it's built on
open standards and so others in the
developer community can contribute.
Boloker said it "may" become an open
source project in future, but it's too early to
say. Why is IBM Heading to the Browser?
We asked IBM CTO of Emerging
Internet Technologies David Boloker why
IBM is moving to browser-based
applications. He replied that customers
have been consistently telling them for 1-
1.5 years now that they don't want to do
installs anymore. Their customers want the
rich experience that desktop apps have
traditionally provided, but they want to
have it in the browser. Collaboration and
sharing data is also a trend that IBM is
tapping into with Blue Spruce.
Proof of Concept Applications
At this time, Blue Spruce is in a closed
beta period. IBM is creating applications
for a number of customers, including
Reuters and hospitals in Boston and New
Zealand. They're focusing on 3 main areas
right now: finance, health and "heavy
industry" (defined as utilities, rail, steel,
etc). As the project matures, we can expect
Sponsor
The Reference Extract project is being
developed by the Online Computer Library
Center and the information schools of
Syracuse University and the University of
Washington. According to Wired Campus,
OCLC is an international cooperative that
shares resources among more than 69,000
libraries in 112 countries and territories. A
$100,000 grant from the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is
covering planning costs.
In response to one of the questions posed
to see IBM stepping up its application
development efforts - services is after all a
key part of IBM's business.
ReadWriteWeb was shown a number of
'proof of concept' demos. The functionality
included Ajax-based mashups being used
simultaneously by users in different
locations (one in San Francisco, the other
in Boston), audio and live streaming video
(VGA currently, but HD is on the way)
integrated with mashups, IM and feeds on
the one browser page, and more rich
functionality.
In other words, there were many
different components (mashups, video,
audio, etc) all happening on the same
browser page. Multiple users can interact
with these components in real-time and see
each others changes. As IBM explained it,
all of the components are live and all
participants can cause change that will be
propagated. This will enable customers to
have 'live meetings' and collaborate on
applications - all within the browser.
It's unusual to see this level of
functionality in a browser currently, so we
think Blue Spruce could potentially be a
big deal. It certainly will make big Internet
companies like Microsoft, Adobe and
probably even Google sit up and take
notice of Big Blue. Discuss
on the homepage, project partner R. David
Lankes explained the difference between
this and an online directory like
DMOZ.org. Instead of building out a
directory of sites, the Reference Extract
project will instead focus on answering
"real questions around the world." By
answering a lot of questions, the service
scales up and generates a lot of "semantic
richness" with which a search engine and
other services can be built, says Lankes.
He also notes that the engine isn't really
trying to compete directly with Google,
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
DeepDyve: Indexing the
Deep Web
By Frederic Lardinois
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:41:17 AM
DeepDyve is a new search engine that is
aimed at students, academics, and
knowledge workers. DeepDyve's mission
is to index the ' deep web' that is hidden
behind pay walls and subscription fees. We
first looked at DeepDyve in September,
when it was still called Infovell and hidden
behind a pay wall itself. Starting today,
Infovell has not only changed its name, but
is also available in a free version.
Sponsor
Since the launch of its first version in
September, DeepDyve has slightly
improved its user interface, but if you have
used a subscription database before,
DeepDyve's feature set, with the ability to
narrow your results by subject areas and
save your searches, will look quite
familiar. Paid Version
DeepDyve also released a paid version of
its service for $45 a year, which will also
allow you to refine your searches by
content type. Other features of the paid
version include dynamic clustering, visual
clustering, and advanced search. Verticals
DeepDyve is slowly expanding into more
search verticals, but for now, its focus is on
life sciences, physical scienes, and patents,
though it also indexes a few humanities
journals. The service also indexes
newspaper and lets you search for
Wikipedia articles as well. Overall,
DeepDyve's index consists of about 500
Microsoft, or Yahoo as an everyday search
tool. Although some people might begin
searches directly from the Reference
Extract homepage, the other search engines
will end up returning results from the
project and thus leading new users to click
through for the answers they need.
That last bit sounds a lot like the model
Wikipedia uses. Sure, you can search
Wikipedia from its homepage, but you're
more likely to Google something and end
up on a Wikipedia page that appeared at
the top of the search results.
million pages.
What's New?
DeepDyve launched with a good amount
of hype this morning, but after our initial
tests, we have come away somewhat
disillusioned. Most users who need to
search academic sources can already do so
through databases like Academic Search
Premier, Lexis-Nexis, PubMed, or Science
Direct. These services also typically
feature more advanced search functions
and often give you direct access to the full
text of your sources as well. Information is
Still Behind a Pay Wall
As useful as it can be to be able to search
the deep web, most of the articles retrieved
by DeepDyve still sit behind paywalls
anyway, and you either need to have
access to an institutional subscription to
those sources or pay a hefty fee per article.
DeepDyve markets itself as being the
first search engine that allows its users to
"access a wealth of untapped information
that resides on the "Deep Web" - and if
you forget about Google Scholar and the
myriad of subscription databases, then that
is surely true. In its current incarnation,
however, DeepDyve is mostly an
interesting technical experiment.
Discuss
However, unlike Wikipedia, Reference
Extract won't simply focus on basic facts
about people, places, or things, but will
answer questions on a wide range of
topics, just as librarians do today. In the
end, the project may not out-Google
Google, but it will lend something to
search results that we've never had before:
credibility. Discuss
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Google Maps Now Availalble RWW Live: Online Tools
For Blackberry Enterprise for Career Discovery & Job
Server Distribution Searching
By Sarah Perez (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 7:22:49 AM
The iPhone may have outsold RIM's
Blackberry devices here in the U.S., but
Google knows that getting their software in
the hands of business execs still means
building Blackberry apps. The company's
recent offering in this arena is a new,
deployable package of Google Maps for
Mobile which IT admins can distribute
using Blackberry Enterprise Server.
Sponsor
Although an end user may not
understand why their IT admin won't let
them use their iPhone at work, what they
don't understand are the complexities
behind the need for standardization of
equipment. Once an IT shop standardizes
on one platform, like the Blackberry for
example, making the decision to support
other devices is not something made
lightly. Standardization means less training
is required for IT support personnel, fewer
problems due to less variables in play, cost
savings by buying in bulk (equipment
and/or licenses), as well as numerous other
advantages, too.
In addition to the benefits provided by
standardization, IT departments also have
Facebook Mobile Sees 3X Growth to 15 Million Users This Year
By Marshall Kirkpatrick
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 9:09:20 AM
Facebook announced last night that the
company has seen users of its mobile site,
m.facebook.com, jump from 5 million to
15 million this year. The most recent
change made to the site, allowing
comments to be posted on status messages
from your phone, resulted in more than 1
million mobile posts in the first 24 hours.
to take into account the investment in their
current infrastructure technology. To date,
that investment often includes BES, or
Blackberry Enterprise Server, which
supports the needs of email-on-the-go for
millions of corporate users.
Now, BES admins can deploy Google
Maps for Mobile to those millions of users
with ease, thanks to Google's new
packages designed specifically for this
server technology.
IT admins can select one of the following
methods to deploy the software:
• Download the ALX package for
BlackBerry Enterprise Server to give
employees Google Maps for mobile.
• Download the JAD/COD package if you
would like to host the files internally and
have your employees individually install
Google Maps.
• If you use access control policies to
restrict installation of applications on
corporate BlackBerry phones, download
the workaround ALX package for
BlackBerry Enterprise Server versions
prior to 4.1.5 MR1. (More information is
available in our discussion group.)
ALX packages for Google Web Search
and GOOG-411 are also available. Discuss
While these numbers are still relatively
small compared to the total number of
Facebook users (under 10%), it's huge for
mobile social networking. Facebook has a
really good mobile site and it looks like it's
only getting better.
Sponsor
Context
Facebook Mobile is now probably bigger
than the entire userbase of Mixi, Japan's
leading social network and a site that is
very frequently accessed by mobile. Last
By Richard MacManus
(ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 2:55:42 PM
We recently launched a new product,
Jobwire, to track who has been hired for
new jobs in tech and new media. In this
week's episode of RWW Live, to be
broadcast live at 3.30pm PST Monday
(6.30pm EST), we will discuss the state of
online tools for career discovery and job
searching. We have executives from Path
101, Indeed and Simply Hired joining us.
You can tune into the show, and interact
with us via the chat, by clicking here. You
can also use the Calliflower Facebook app
to tune in and participate.
Sponsor
This edition of RWW Live is sponsored
by our main Jobwire sponsor VisualCV:
Join the regulars from RWW Live, plus:
• Charlie O'Donnell, co-founder and CEO
of Path 101, a "Community Powered
Career Discovery" service.
• Paul Forster, co-founder and CEO of
Indeed, a search engine for jobs.
• Dion Lim, President & Chief Operating
Officer (COO) of Simply Hired, also a job
search engine.
RWW Live is hosted as always by Sean
Ammirati, with Marshall Kirkpatrick and
Bernard Lunn from ReadWriteWeb on the
call.
week 6 leading Japanese social networks,
including Mixi, MySpace Japan, Yahoo
and others, announced that the companies
are forming a mysterious alliance that
could include content and widget sharing
across their mobile sites.
We're curious how that kind of strategy
will work compared to Facebook's strategy
of building up a huge siloed web based
social network and then creating a simple
but extremely usable mobile version.
Commenting
Before the show starts, we're interested
in what questions you have for the
panelists. Please leave a comment on this
post and one of the RWW crew on the call
(Sean, Marshall and Bernard) will do our
best to ask your question.
We will post the audio from the show at
the end, but we hope you join us LIVE on
Calliflower or Facebook.
Example questions:
• How has the current economic
environment effected each of their
businesses?
• What career needs of individuals are not
currently supported by online tools but
should be?
• What do the panelists think is the most
common misunderstanding among people
using online career tools?
• If someone is listening to this podcast
and looking for a new job, what advice
would the panelists give them?
UPDATE: the show is now finished, here
is the audio:
Download MP3 Discuss
It's interesting to see Facebook highlight
the addition of commenting to its mobile
interface. Non-users might not recognize
what a big deal this is, but anyone who
regularly uses mobile social networks (this
authors' favorite is FriendFeedToGo)
knows how frustrating it is to view but not
interact with friends' content on your
mobile. It's hugely liberating to be able to
comment from your phone; it's a game
changer, a feature that helps the
technology move from not being worth
Web Tech* Food* 21
Curried Pork
Empanadas
(Simply Recipes)
Submitted at 11/5/2008 2:37:39 PM
Planning a holiday party? Consider
putting these empanadas on your to-do list
for appetizers. If you are not familiar with
empanadas, they are basically turnovers,
usually stuffed with a savory minced meat
filling, and popular throughout the Spanish
and Portuguese speaking world. In this
recipe, the pastry dough is made with
cream cheese, butter, and flour, resulting in
a particularly scrumptious pastry. The
filling is a delicious curried ground pork
picadillo. Feel free to improvise with the
filling ingredients; you can use practically
any stew with finely minced meat,
simmered down to the point of barely any
liquid, with a little cornstarch added to
help soak up extra liquid.
Do you have a favorite empanada recipe?
Please let us know about it in the
comments.
Continue reading "Curried Pork
Empanadas" »
using to being a pleasure to use.
It's early days for mobile social
networking, but it's great to see market
leader Facebook making great moves in
feature development and user growth.
Thanks to the always-fabulous mobile
blog Textually for bringing this
announcement to our attention. Discuss
22 Web Tech* Google*
Say What? Google Reader Opera Mini 4.2 Beta
Translates Any Feed into Promises Faster Mobile
Your Native Tongue Browsing
By Rick Turoczy (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/10/2008 3:46:21 PM
If you're like most folks interested in
technology, you likely have a feed reader
full of hundreds of RSS feeds on your
favorite topics. No doubt, they all have one
thing in common: they're in a language that
you're capable of reading.
But what about all of that interesting
news and information that's written in
languages you don't speak? Get ready to
have access to even more information
about your favorite topics, because now
Google Reader leverages Google Translate
technology to convert any feed to your
preferred language.
Sponsor
To use the new offering, subscribe to any
feed. Once subscribed, select "Translate
into my language" from "Feed settings..."
and the feed will be automatically
translated to the best of Google's ability,
based on your default language preference.
I tested the service against Cybozu Labs-
a feed that comes through RSS in Japanese
- and was pleasantly surprised. While a
few of the characters remained, the
majority of the content came through. Not
only that, but the content was translated in
A vote for broadband in the "white spaces"
By A Googler
Submitted at 11/4/2008 2:55:05 PM
All eyes are on the presidential election
today, but another important vote just took
place at the Federal Communications
Commission. By a vote of 5-0, the FCC
formally agreed to open up the " white
spaces" spectrum -- the unused airwaves
between broadcast TV channels -- for
wireless broadband service for the public.
This is a clear victory for Internet users
and anyone who wants good wireless
communications.
The FCC has been looking at this issue
carefully for the last six years. Google has
worked hard on this matter with other tech
a way that was legible and coherent.
While at first blush, this may seem to be
a minor feature, it actually holds the
potential to change the way people read
feeds - and the feeds they choose to read. It
will be incredibly interesting to see what
non-English blogs start growing in
popularity now that they're no longer
hindered by limited linguistics.
But how will people find these blogs?
That's the other thing that makes the
translation feature so interesting: it appears
to work on shared items, as well. Now, you
can start reading and sharing information
in any language with all of your Google
Reader contacts - regardless of the
languages they speak.
And once we start breaking down those
language barriers and sharing ideas with
more people, that may be a real step
toward a truly World Wide Web. Discuss
companies and public interest groups
because we think that this spectrum will
help put better and faster Internet
connections in the hands of the public. We
also look forward to working with the FCC
to finalize the method used to compute
power levels of empty channels adjacent to
TV channels (we have a number of public
filings before the commission in this area
and it is a vital issue in urban areas).
I've always thought that there are a lot of
really incredible things that engineers and
entrepreneurs can do with this spectrum.
We will soon have " Wi-Fi on steroids,"
since these spectrum signals have much
longer range than today's Wi-Fi technology
and broadband access can be spread using
By Rick Turoczy (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 11/11/2008 1:44:43 AM
With the release of Google Chrome and
the continued popularity of Mozilla
Firefox, the browser wars are seeing a bit
of a renaissance. But as interesting as the
renewed battle for the desktop may be, it's
important to remember that a similar battle
for browser dominance - one that may
affect even more people - is taking place
on mobile handsets the world over.
Last month, we saw more news of the yet
-to-be-released Firefox Mobile broswer -
code named "Fennec" - surface with the
release of Windows Mobile screenshots.
Not to be outdone, Opera - the current
mobile browser leader - has unveiled a
beta of Opera Mini 4.2- and it's promising
a faster browsing experience.
Sponsor
The latest version of Opera Mini offers
improved video support for YouTube and
other mobile video services, new skins,
and improvements to Opera Link, its
desktop synchronization feature. The most
interesting feature, however, may not be
what's on the phone. It may be what's on
fewer base stations resulting in better
coverage at lower cost. And it is wonderful
that the FCC has adopted the same
successful unlicensed model used for Wi-
Fi, which has resulted in a projected 1
billion Wi-Fi chips being produced this
year. Now that the FCC has set the rules,
I'm sure that we'll see similar growth in
products to take advantage of this
spectrum.
As an engineer, I was also really
gratified to see that the FCC decided to put
science over politics. For years the
broadcasting lobby and others have tried to
spread fear and confusion about this
technology, rather than allow the FCC's
engineers to simply do their work.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
the ground: a new server park in the United
States designed to improve Opera Mini
performance worldwide."Opera Mini 4.2
can use our newly established server park
in the US. This means significantly faster
page downloads for our users in the
Americas and Asia-Pacific region. Users in
the rest of the world will also experience
faster page downloads since we've reduced
the load on our other servers."
Just as intriguing are Opera Mini's
numbers. Opera is claiming 20 million
users on the browser, which is up nearly 3
million users from the number they were
reporting a quarter ago. That's impressive
growth by any standard.
Users interested in test-driving the new
version can install Opera Mini 4.2 without
overwriting the current version of Opera
Mini on their handset. To download the
beta preview, visit Opera Mini. Discuss
Finally, I want to applaud and thank FCC
Chairman Kevin Martin, the other
commissioners, and the FCC Office of
Engineering and Technology for their
leadership in advancing this important
issue. And, thanks to the more than 20,000
of you who took a stand on this issue
through our Free the Airwaves campaign,
the FCC heard a clear message from
consumers: these airwaves can bring
wireless Internet to everyone everywhere.
Posted by Larry Page, Co-Founder and
President of Products
Top searches
on Election
Day (part 3)
By Karen
Submitted at 11/4/2008 10:04:43 PM
The long, long election campaign season
culminated today as people made their
choices on hundreds of statewide and local
contests as well as the race for the next
U.S. president. We've kept an eye on
Google Hot Trends to decipher what may
be meaningful, as well as searches that are
"business as usual" on Google. This is the
third and final update for today. - Ed.
As of 12 am EST:
If we count the search queries relating to
the commercial breaks on election night
TV coverage, the entire list of the 100
fastest-rising terms on Google Hot Trends
reflect a passion about today's events. As
polls closed and the presidential race was
called after 11 pm EST for [ president
obama], people searched for outcomes on
state races of interest, such as [ al franken
senate race], [ massachusetts question 2],
and [ proposition 8] in California.
Obsessive viewers noted that cameras
captured a sign in Times Square that
seemed to say "[ cassoulet forever]"
(which is odd; it's a classic French country
dish), and they were intrigued by CNN's
use of [ hologram technology] to show non
-local notables like musician [ will i am]
appear on the set with Anderson Cooper.
Even when looking ahead to
entertainment after a marathon post-
election season, Americans can't stop
pondering politics just yet. Two of the top
100 at this hour are for upcoming films [
valkyrie] (the true story of an attempt to
assassinate Adolf Hitler), and [ frost
nixon], a dramatic re-telling of Richard
Nixon's 1977 TV interview with David
Frost. Both films were promoted during
commercial breaks in wall-to-wall
coverage tonight.
Finally, eager voters (presumably of all
persuasions) seem to be looking forward to
a new era of [ obama jokes].
Posted by Karen Wickre, Google
Elections team
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
New chapter for Google Book Search
By Karen
Submitted at 11/8/2008 2:27:21 PM
Google was built on the principle of
making the world's information more
accessible and useful. Before the company
was even founded, Larry and Sergey
imagined a way to make it easier for
anyone, anywhere, to access the
information held within the world's books.
Search simply isn't complete without that
content, and providing more access to
more books is a vision Google has never
lost sight of.
Four years ago, almost to the date, we
first announced Google Book Search.
Since we launched the service, we've heard
countless stories about Book Search
helping readers all over the world find
books in over 100 languages on topics as
diverse as The Physics of Star Trek and the
history of Wood Carvings in English
Churches. We've seen millions of people
click to buy books or find them in a
library, and more than 20,000 publishers
have joined our Partner Program to allow
readers to preview the books they find
before buying them.
While we've made tremendous progress
with Book Search, today we've announced
an agreement with a broad class of authors
and publishers and with our library
partners that advances Larry's and Sergey's
original dream in ways Google never could
have done alone.
This agreement is truly groundbreaking
in three ways. First, it will give readers
digital access to millions of in-copyright
books; second, it will create a new market
for authors and publishers to sell their
works; and third, it will further the efforts
of our library partners to preserve and
maintain their collections while making
books more accessible to students, readers
and academic researchers.
The agreement also resolves lawsuits that
were brought against Google in 2005 by a
group of authors and publishers, along
with the Authors Guild and Association of
American Publishers (AAP). While
Google, the Authors Guild and the AAP
have disagreed on copyright law, we have
always agreed about the importance of
creating new ways for users to find books
and for authors and publishers to get paid
for their works.
To date, Google has worked with
libraries all over the world to make more
than 7 million books searchable through
Google Book Search, and we're just getting
started. We believe that ultimately we'll
provide access to many times that number,
and if approved, this agreement will
unlock access to millions of these texts and
make the Google search experience even
more comprehensive.
With this agreement, in-copyright, out-of
-print books will now be available for
readers in the U.S. to search, preview and
buy online -- something that was simply
unavailable to date. Most of these books
are difficult, if not impossible, to find.
They are not sold through bookstores or
held on most library shelves, yet they make
up the vast majority of books in existence.
Today, Google only shows snippets of text
from the books where we don't have
copyright holder permission. This
agreement enables people to preview up to
20% of the book.
What makes this settlement so powerful
is that in addition to being able to find and
preview books more easily, users will also
be able to read them. And when people
read them, authors and publishers of in-
copyright works will be compensated. If a
reader in the U.S. finds an in-copyright
book through Google Book Search, he or
she will be able to pay to see the entire
book online. Also, academic, library,
corporate and government organizations
will be able to purchase institutional
subscriptions to make these books
available to their members. For out-of-
print books that in most cases do not have
a commercial market, this opens a new
revenue opportunity that didn't exist
before.
It's important to note this agreement
doesn't change our Partner Program, which
currently includes more than 20,000
publishers around the world, but it does
add a new way for those publishers to sell
access to their works. For in-print books
not in our Partner Program, we'll continue
to scan these books through our Library
Project and make them full-text searchable,
but we won't show any portion of the book.
As for books in the public domain, this
agreement doesn't change how we display
them: We'll make out-of-copyright works
freely available on Google Book Search
for people to read and download.
As part of the agreement, Google is also
funding the establishment of a Book Rights
Registry, managed by authors and
publishers, that will work to locate and
represent copyright holders. We think the
Registry will help address the "orphan"
works problem for books in the U.S.,
making it easier for people who want to
use older books. Since the Book Rights
Registry will also be responsible for
distributing the money Google collects to
authors and publishers, there will be a
strong incentive for rightsholders to come
forward and claim their works.
In addition to expanding the commercial
market for these books, Google, the
authors and the publishers have worked
hard with our library partners at Stanford,
the University of Michigan, the University
of California and the University of
Wisconsin-Madison to ensure this
agreement advances libraries' efforts to
preserve, maintain and provide access to
books for students, researchers and
readers. The agreement gives public and
university libraries across the U.S. free,
full-text viewing of books at a designated
computer in each of their facilities. That
means local libraries across the U.S. will
be able to offer their patrons access to the
incredible collections of our library
partners -- a huge benefit to the public.
The agreement also authorizes Google
and the libraries to create new services that
will help people with disabilities such as
visual impairment better experience these
books. We are grateful to our library
partners for investing so much painstaking
effort over so many years to maintain their
book collections, and we are excited at the
prospect of their participation in this
landmark project.
Because the agreement is the result of a
U.S. lawsuit, all of these services will be
available to readers who access Google
Book Search in the United States. Outside
the U.S., the user experience with Google
Book Search will be the same as it is
today. In other words, people will be able
to search the full text of books and may see
snippets of in-copyright works, but they
will not be able to preview or purchase
access to books online, unless these
services are authorized by the rightsholder
of a book. It is important to note that the
agreement does not affect users outside the
U.S., but it will affect copyright holders
worldwide because they can register their
works and receive compensation for them.
While this agreement only concerns books
scanned in the U.S., Google is committed
to working with rightsholders,
governments, and relevant institutions to
bring the same opportunities to users,
authors, and publishers in other countries.
As you can imagine, we're all ready to
get moving, but this project will take some
time. First and foremost, the settlement
administrator will be reaching out to
educate authors and publishers worldwide
about the agreement and their rights under
it. The agreement also must be approved
by the court. Once it's approved, we'll be
ready to begin delivering these services. In
the meantime, if you own or think you may
own a U.S. copyright interest, there is
more information about the agreement at
this website. And Google Book Search
users can find more information here.
Update@ 7:55 AM: Updated the press
release link in the 3rd paragraph.
Posted by David Drummond, Senior
Vice President, Corporate Development,
and Chief Legal Officer
Google* 23
Top searches
on Election
Day (part 2)
By Karen
Submitted at 11/4/2008 3:20:17 PM
The long, long election campaign season
culminates today as people make their
choices on hundreds of statewide and local
contests as well as the race for the next
U.S. president. Throughout the day, we're
keeping an eye on Google Hot Trends to
decipher what may be meaningful, as well
as what's "business as usual" in Google
searches. We'll post updates as interesting
trends turn up. - Ed.
As of 6 pm EST:
The election is still top of mind (by a
long shot) for most Google searchers at
this hour: 87 out of 100 of the fastest-rising
terms on Google Hot Trends are still
election-related. Since polls are now
winding down in the Eastern time zone,
people are seeking more info on [ voter
turnout], [ who is ahead in the polls], and
other outcomes. And that includes news
outlets: fully 25% of the top 100 are
seeking the latest[election news]. Searches
for news sources run the gamut from [
hannity.com] or [ slate]; and people are
seeking broader coverage, too, on
everything from [ foxnews.com] to [ cnn
newsroom] and [ msnbc politics]). Of
course, a big player in election
commentary this season, (Comedy
Central's [ indecision 2008]) now seems to
be a staple. In the far west, California
voters are seeking out [ prop 8 results], the
heavily-funded (on both sides) initiative
regarding gay marriage.
And in the Midwest, Chicago-area
searchers are keen to get [ metra schedule]
information, which should help them get to
polls -- or maybe to Grant Park for this
evening's massive event planned for
Senator Obama.
Posted by Karen Wickre, Google
Elections Team
24 Google*
The art of the field study
By A Googler
Submitted at 11/6/2008 3:31:36 PM
I'm Dan Russell, a member of the Search
Quality team doing user experience
research. This post is part of our ongoing
series to talk about the Search Quality
team at Google, showing a bit of what we
do in the day-to-day course of improving
the quality of the user experience.
The role of "user experience" research is
to try and get the inside story on what
people do when they search. We're
constantly asking: What's the user's
experience of search? What works and
doesn't work for them? What are they
looking for? What DO they want?
To understand the full richness and
variety of what people do when they are
using Google, we spend many hours in the
field, watching people search and listening
to what they say as they do this. We hear it
when they're happy, and when they're
terribly frustrated. And perhaps most
importantly, we also pay attention to the
things they don't say -- the inexpressible
"gotchas" that slow users down or get in
the way of their search.
It turns out that people are masters of
saying one thing and doing another,
particularly when it comes to nearly
automatic behavior. We find that searchers
often turn so quickly to Google that they
don't really think too much about what
they're actually searching for. It's
surprising, but often we'll see people trying
to find out something about a topic, but
then never actually mention the topic itself.
That is, there's often a big discrepancy
between what they'll tell me (the human
observer) they're trying to do, and the
search terms they enter into Google. One
person I shadowed for the day spent ten
minutes trying to find the schedule of the
ferry that runs between San Francisco and
Larkspur, but somehow only thought of
adding the word "ferry" much later in their
search.
We also study eye tracking. The eye
makes a complex scan path over the search
results, building up a composite picture of
what is presented on the page. It's clear
that what actually happens is a very rapid
scan and assessment of each result as they
are seen. In those milliseconds between the
eye landing on the first fixation and seeing
a few results, all kinds of decisions and
choices are made--nearly all of them
subconsciously.
In this short video, you can see three
different searchers all looking for the same
thing (in this case, a child's backpack). The
red dot is the searcher's gaze moving
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
around on the search results page. Notice
how methodically the gaze moves from
result title to title, occasionally inspecting
the snippet text to gain more detail about
the result.
(Video courtesy of Kerry Rodden)
So the job of figuring out what people
actually do when they search isn't as
simple as asking someone what they search
for during the day. It's basically impossible
to give an accurate telling of what you saw
(or didn't see) on the results page while
actively searching for a high quality
results.
Memories of your own behavior are also
notoriously unreliable. People's search
behavior in the lab is often different than
when they're at home or at work. This is a
natural (and expected) side effect of lab
studies: people will work especially hard to
please a researcher. If we ask them to
search for a pair of brown shoes they'd like
to buy for themselves, in the lab they'll
find the first pair that seems reasonable
and then stop, satisfied. If it was real, they
would go on and spend more time. We still
do lab studies, but we know what to watch
for, and what to ignore.
Data from field studies gives us insight
into how people respond to the Google
experience in ways that we can't otherwise
measure.
For instance, in several field studies we
discovered that many of the people who
went to the previous version of the
Advanced Search page had a strong,
almost visceral negative reaction when the
page appeared. The text of the original
page had language that many people saw
as intimidating--words like "Domain,"
ART page 25
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Accessible View: An ARIA for web
search
By A Googler
Submitted at 11/5/2008 5:35:08 PM
From time to time, our own T.V. Raman
shares his tips on how to use Google from
his perspective as a technologist who
cannot see -- tips that sighted people,
among others, may also find useful.
In the spirit of a recent post discussing
some of our search experiments, last week
we launched an opt-in search experiment
we're calling Accessible View, which
makes it easy to navigate search results
using only the keyboard. Like many of our
recent accessibility-related enhancements,
this experiment is built using the basic
functionality provided by W3C ARIA and
Google-AxsJAX, an evolving set of
HTML DOM properties that enable
adaptive technologies to work better with
AJAX-style applications.
The Accessible View experiment is
another step toward making our search
results more accessible for everyone. In
July 2006, we launched Accessible Search
on Google Labs, where the goal was to
help visually impaired users find content
that worked well with adaptive
technologies. We continue to refine and
ART
continued from page 24
"Usage Rights" and "Safe Search" can be a
bit much if you're not sure what they mean.
The old Advanced Search page was a
little off-putting (click on the image to see
a larger version):
Based on our field studies, we dug more
deeply into how people were actually using
our Advanced Search page, and quickly
discovered that, indeed, a large number of
users were going to the page, and then
leaving it without ever filling in any of the
slots.
Armed with this insight from field
studies, we redesigned the page,
simplifying it by removing terms that were
unclear to the average user (the word
"occurrences," for example, just didn't
mean anything to many of the Advanced
Search page users), moving rarely used
features (numeric range searches, date
searches, etc.) into a part of the page that
tune the ranking on Accessible Search.
And with Accessible View, users can
easily toggle between regular Google
search results and Accessible Search
results by using the 'A' and 'W' keys.
When we designed the Accessible View
interface, we first looked at how people
used screen readers and other adaptive
technologies when performing standard
search-related tasks. We then asked how
many of these actions we could eliminate
to speed up the search process. The result:
a set of keyboard shortcuts for effectively
navigating the results page, and to arrange
for the user's adaptive technology to speak
the right information during navigation.
We've also added a magnification lens
that highlights the user's selected search
result. Since launching Accessible Search,
one of the most requested features has
been support for low-vision users. While
implementing the keyboard navigation
described here, we incorporated the
magnification lens first introduced by
Google Reader.
Bringing it all together, we implemented
keyboard shortcuts that extend what was
originally pioneered by the keyboard
shortcuts experiment. These shortcuts help
was expandable with a single click. That
made them easy to get to for people who
knew they wanted to search with those
restrictions, but out of the way in a non-
threatening way.
One of the other things we noted in the
field study was that people often didn't
understand how the Advanced Search page
worked. So we added a "visible query
builder" region at the top of the page. As
you fill in the blanks, the box at the top of
the page fills in with the query that you
could type into Google. It was our way of
making visible the effects of advanced
search operators.
The Advanced Search page post-redesign
(click on the image to see a larger version):
The good effect of these changes quickly
became clear. The number of users that
bounced out of the Advanced Search page
dropped significantly. Interestingly, the
users navigate through different parts of
the results page with a minimal number of
keystrokes. The left and right arrows cycle
through the various categories of items on
the page (e.g., results, ads, or search
refinements), and the up and down arrow
keys move through the current category.
Power users can leave their hands on the
home row by using the h, j, k, and l keys.
In addition, we enable an infinite stream of
results viewed through the n and p keys —
so you can move through the results
without getting disoriented by a page
refresh after the first 10 results.
Key Behavior j/k next/previous result n/p
next/previous result, scroll if necessary
enter open current result up/down
next/previous result left/right switch
categories (results, ads, refinements) a
jump to ads A switch to Accessible Search
results W switch to default Google results r
jump to related searches
Try out the experiment and give us your
feedback.
Posted by T.V. Raman, Research
Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software
Engineer
total number of Advanced Search page
users didn't increase significantly... at least
not yet. By improving the UI on the page,
we hope to attract even more searchers to
the large range of search options available
on Google.
In the end, this example shows the kind
of insights that field studies can bring. As
with the eye-tracking example, asking
someone about their emotional response to
a web page just isn't a useful way to get
that data. But watching them in situ, as
they actually use Google to go about their
daily search lives can reveal all kinds of
remarkable, otherwise undiscoverable, and
actionable insights into searcher behavior.
Posted by Daniel Russell, Uber Tech
Lead, Search Quality
New Google Help Forums
By A Googler
Submitted at 11/6/2008 3:41:11 PM
For the last few years, the Google Help
Forums have been a great gathering place
for users, developers, and anyone else who
has an opinion about Google or its
products. We've been taking stock of what
you have to say, and we've been impressed
by the hundreds of thousands of people
who really understand our products and are
willing to share their knowledge. It's
because of experts like the orkuteers,
Google Apps Power Posters, Webmaster
Help Bionic Posters and many others that
the forums are a great place for getting
quality answers, reporting bugs, offering
product suggestions and sharing tips and
tricks.
To make it even easier to get you the
right answers to your questions as quickly
as possible and to spot the most helpful
commenters, we are converting our forums
to a new system designed to help,
encourage and reward everyone who visits.
Some of the features include:
• improved search results, including posts
from current and new forums
• the ability to designate especially
Ending our agreement with
Yahoo!
By A Googler
Submitted at 11/5/2008 7:00:18 AM
In June we announced an advertising
agreement with Yahoo! that gave Yahoo!
the option of using Google to provide ads
on its websites (and its publisher partners'
sites) in the U.S. and Canada. At the same
time, both companies agreed to delay
implementation of the agreement to give
regulators the chance to review it. While
this wasn't legally necessary, we thought it
was the right thing to do because Google
and Yahoo! have been successful in online
advertising and we realized that any
cooperation between us would attract
attention.
We feel that the agreement would have
been good for publishers, advertisers, and
users -- as well, of course, for Yahoo! and
Google. Why? Because it would have
Google* 25
helpful forum members as "Top
Contributors"
• a reputation and ranking system
• the ability for users, Top Contributors
and Googlers to mark questions as
answered
• easier access to Help Center content
• expanded user profiles that highlight
your forum activity
This video gives you a few more details
on our latest changes:
A few products -- AdWords, AdSense,
Android Market, Google Apps, Google
Chrome and most of our Polish products--
have already switched to this system. Over
the next several months, we'll convert
more product Help Forums, initially in
English and then in other languages.
If you have a question, bug report,
suggestion, or just want to mix and mingle,
we welcome you to "stop by" our forums.
Googlers will check in from time to time to
answer questions, listen to feedback, and
highlight great responses and the people
who provided them.
Posted by Katina Johnson, Google Help
Team
allowed Yahoo! (and its existing publisher
partners) to show more relevant ads for
queries that currently generate few or no
advertisements. Better ads are more useful
for users, more efficient for advertisers,
and more valuable for publishers.
However, after four months of review,
including discussions of various possible
changes to the agreement, it's clear that
government regulators and some
advertisers continue to have concerns
about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked
not only a protracted legal battle but also
damage to relationships with valued
partners. That wouldn't have been in the
long-term interests of Google or our users,
so we have decided to end the agreement.
We're of course disappointed that this
deal won't be moving ahead. But we're not
ENDING page 26
26 Auto*
ENDING
continued from page 25
going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal
battle distract us from our core mission.
That would be like trying to drive down
the road of innovation with the parking
brake on. Google's continued success
depends on staying focused on what we do
best: creating useful products for our users
and partners.
Posted by David Drummond, Senior
Vice President, Corporate Development
and Chief Legal Officer
F430 Replacement:
lightweight with
turbo V8
Filed under: Green, Supercars, Ferrari,
Rumormill
Ford Venezuela website publishes boob (with nipple)
for a good cause
By John Neff (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 12:30:00 PM
Filed under: Marketing/Advertising, Ford
Be forewarned, this post does have
nudity. But because the bare chest in
question is being used to promote breast
cancer awareness in a nation less stuffy
about the naked female form than our own,
we don't feel creepy for posting about it.
Everybody wins! The image you see above
can be found on Ford's Venezuelan
website where it's being used to promote a
joint breast cancer awareness and
prevention campaign between the
automaker and coincidentally named Ford
Models. The two have teamed up to get
their message out to both women and men,
Chrysler/Nissan partnership bears fruit in
South America: the Dodge Trazo C1.8
By John Neff (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 11:57:00 AM
Filed under: Economy, Sedans/Saloons,
Chrysler, LLC., Dodge, Nissan, Misc.
Auto Shows
Click above for high-res gallery of the
Dodge Trazo C1.8
Early this year Chrysler and Nissan
formed a partnership to share products.
The big news at the time was that Nissan
would be replacing its Titan pickup with a
version of the Dodge Ram. But before that
deal went down, the two automakers from
different continents had already agreed on
a partnership that would see the Nissan
Versa sold in some South American
markets as a Dodge. Today Dodge
unveiled that vehicle at the Sao Paulo Auto
Show in Brazil as the Trazo C1.8 sedan. It
is a direct port of the Nissan Versa we
know in the U.S. and the Tiida sold in
Japan, though will only be offered as a
sedan in South America and not as a five-
door hatchback. As far as we can tell, not a
body panel or interior appointment has
been changed, save for new Trazo badging
and slightly different black plastic grille.
We couldn't even find a Dodge logo on the
hence the vivacious Venezuelan model in
her birthday suit to get and keep the latter's
attention.
Together the two companies have offered
free mammograms to all female Ford
employees and any working within the
car's exterior. The Trazo's engine also
appears to be the same 1.8L four-cylinder
used in the Versa that's been made E100
ethanol-capable for South American
markets. Reading the press release from
Dodge after the jump is a bit trippy, as
we've never heard one automaker speak so
flowery about another automaker's
product. If Chrysler thinks the Trazo is so
good, should we buy the Versa instead of
the Caliber in the U.S.?
Gallery: Dodge Trazo C1.8
automaker's dealer network in Venezuela.
They're also holding a sweepstakes in
which people can enter via texting to win a
Ford Explorer and other prizes. Money
earned from the texting charges will go to
charities associated with breast cancer
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
[Source: Dodge]
Continue reading Chrysler/Nissan
partnership bears fruit in South America:
the Dodge Trazo C1.8
Chrysler/Nissan partnership bears fruit in
South America: the Dodge Trazo C1.8
originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue,
28 Oct 2008 11:57:00 EST. Please see our
terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
awareness and research. We of course
support raising money and awareness for
this great cause (in the U.S. we like Susan
G. Komen for the Cure and the National
Breast Cancer Foundation, and you can
also find a list of rated breast cancer-
related charities here), but we find it
Twilight Zone strange to see that much
bare skin on one of Ford's official
websites. Thanks for the tip, catgirlshyla!
[Source: Ford]
Ford Venezuela website publishes boob
(with nipple) for a good cause originally
appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 28 Oct 2008
12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
SEMA Preview: GM
Performance Parts 638
-hp LS9 Crate engine
By Damon Lavrinc (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 2:33:00 PM
Filed under: Aftermarket, Tuners,
Coupes, Chevrolet, GM
Click above for a high-res gallery of the
LS9
General Motors has announced that the
blown beastie that lives under the hood of
the Corvette ZR1 will be available as a
crate motor next fall and our head is
spinning with the swap possibilities.
With 639 hp and 604 lb.-ft. of twist
available from the 6.2-liter supercharged
V8, and dimensions shared by the LS3,
any number of vehicles could make a
happy home for the LS9. According to
GM, the engine comes fully dressed, with
an ignition system, exhaust manifolds and
supercharger, and only needs an external
oil tank and coolant tank (for the charge
cooler), an ECU and wiring harness.
So, the question is: what would you fit
the LS9 into? We've put together a poll
after the jump, but feel free to add your
own suggestions in the comments.
Gallery: The Chevrolet LS9 V-8
[Source: GM via MotiveMag]
Continue reading SEMA Preview: GM
Performance Parts 638-hp LS9 Crate
engine
SEMA Preview: GM Performance Parts
638-hp LS9 Crate engine originally
appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 28 Oct 2008
14:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
F430
continued from page 26
Ferrari has promised to make its future
products lighter and more mindful of the
environment, and the first example of the
Italian automaker's new direction will
likely be the F430 replacement. This new
Ferrari, code-named F142, is rumored to
arrive towards the end of 2009 or early
2010. The vehicle will start out by
weighing less than the F430, even the extra
lightweight Scuderia model that tips the
scales at 1250 kg. The Italian exotic could
share technology and styling cues with the
eco-friendly Mille Chili
concept(above)from a year ago, which
utilized lightweight and active
aerodynamics to help reduce its CO2
emissions.
The F430's venerable 4.3L V8 is also
rumored to be shrinking, but since it will
still don the prancing horse, we're pretty
sure it won't lose much in the way of
power. CAR Magazine believes that
Mrs. Paxton's Raw
Apple Cake
(Simply Recipes)
Submitted at 10/29/2008 1:53:00 AM
From the archives. One of our favorite
cakes for the season that I first posted here
over five years ago! ~Elise
When it's apple season here in Northern
California, we are picking and processing
daily from our trees (3 trees, 15 varieties).
Of the many apple recipes we have on the
site, this is one of my favorites. You
simply cannot go wrong with this raw
apple cake. The ingredients of coconut and
the apples ensure that the cake will be
moist and flavorful.
Continue reading "Mrs. Paxton's Raw
Apple Cake" »
Ferrari has turned to direct injection and
turbocharging to make up for any loss in
the new engine's displacement. The F142
also won't have a soft-top Spyder option,
instead for a psuedo-convertible setup with
hard panels. New Ferrari models don't
typically decrease in price, and with all this
added technology the price of the F142 is
expected to easily exceed that of the F430.
Ferrari wants to reduce emissions by 40%
by 2012, and with lighter materials and a
smaller engine, the F142 could be the
Italian supercar the Sierra Club has been
waiting for.
[Source: CAR Magazine]
F430 Replacement: lightweight with
turbo V8 originally appeared on Autoblog
on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:28:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
New round of
Aston Martin
One-77 shots
By Damon Lavrinc (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:02:00 PM
Filed under: Supercars, Aston Martin
Click above for a gallery of the Aston
Martin One-77
Despite Aston Martin's efforts to keep
the One-77 supercar under wraps, four
images have leaked out and we expect
more to follow in the coming days.
Viewed in profile, the One-77's
silhouette is pure Aston, taking all the right
cues from its predecessors and forming
NEW page 28
Officially Official: GM
debuts Chevy GPiX
Concept in Sao Paulo
By John Neff (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:29:00 PM
Filed under: Concept Cars,
Crossovers/CUVs, Chevrolet, Misc. Auto
Shows
Click above for high-res gallery of the
Chevy GPiX Concept
General Motors officially debuted the
GPiX Concept, which we previewed for
you last week, at the Sao Paulo Auto Show
in Brazil yesterday. It was designed
entirely by GM Design in Brazil but
retains those corporate styling cues that
make it instantly recognizable as a modern
Chevy around the world. This two-door
crossover has a bit of ground clearance for
what GM calls "the types of roads and
conditions found in emerging markets."
We think that means no roads and poor
conditions. There's no mention of what
powers the GPiX concept, though we
assume it's either A) not a runner, B) has a
fictional super efficient prototype
powertrain underhood or C) uses a four-
cylinder gas motor capable of running on
E100 ethanol. GM also says that the GPiX
could be a potential new segment for the
automaker in South America, but in these
tough times we doubt it's really interested
in developing a solo vehicle for a single
market. You can check out more high-res
pics of the GPiX concept in the gallery
below and read GM's official press release
after the jump.
Gallery: Chevy GPiX Concept
[Source: GM]
Continue reading Officially Official: GM
debuts Chevy GPiX Concept in Sao Paulo
Officially Official: GM debuts Chevy
GPiX Concept in Sao Paulo originally
appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 28 Oct 2008
13:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use
of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Auto* Food* 27
Corvette ZR-1
knocks four seconds
off 'Ring time
By Michael Harley (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 1:57:00 PM
Filed under: Coupes, Sports/GTs,
Supercars, Chevrolet
Click above for our high-res ZR-1
burnout gallery
Back at the Nürburgring, the hot
Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 has just ripped
four seconds off its claimed 7:26 lap. The
new time, with Jan Magnussen at the
wheel, is a claimed 7:22.4 for the full
12.93-mile loop. While the number is
pretty bloody fast, it is still .3 seconds off
the time earned by the Dodge Viper
ACR(ouch, those three tenths really have
to hurt!). We take these lap times with a
grain of salt, as we've yet to see everyone
on the 73-turn course under the same
conditions, and with officially certified
timing equipment. Again, so you don't
have to Google the competition's best-
claimed Ring times yourself, here they are:
Porsche GT2 - 7:32, Nissan GT-R - 7:29,
Corvette ZR1 - 7:22.4 and the Dodge
Viper ACR - 7:22.1. Thanks for the tip,
Xeyad!
Gallery: Covette ZR1 burnouts
[Source: Motor Gears]
Corvette ZR-1 knocks four seconds off
'Ring time originally appeared on
Autoblog on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:57:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
28 Auto* Food*
6,000 Camaros ordered so far,
84% with V8
By Dan Roth (Autoblog)
Submitted at 10/28/2008 10:56:00 AM
Filed under: Car Buying, Coupes,
Sports/GTs, Plants/Manufacturing,
Chevrolet
Click above for high-res gallery of the
2010 Chevy Camaro
Chevrolet has reportedly taken more than
6,000 orders for its new Camaro so far, and
why not? The car is great looking,
excitement is high, and fuel prices have
eased up a bit. You'd think that the prior
spike in the cost of fuel would still be fresh
on everyone's mind, thus making the V6 a
popular choice. Wrongo. While the V6 has
similar lip-smackingly great styling, and
won't be a slowpoke, it seems that
everyone wants that small block rhythm
thumping away under the hood of their neo
-ponycar. 84% of orders have been for V8-
powered SS models so far, which may
mean a longer wait for delivery since GM
is likely building a very different ratio of
V8 to V6 models. Thanks for the tip,
Doug!
Gallery: 2010 Chevrolet Camaro
[Source: Camaro5]
6,000 Camaros ordered so far, 84% with
V8 originally appeared on Autoblog on
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:56:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
NEW
continued from page 27
them into a slightly elongated and
exaggerated form. The massive grille is an
obvious nod to the Astons of yore, but the
hood delves deeper than its DB9 and
Vantage counterparts and benefits from
four contoured strakes terminating into a
set of air extractors. The creases that bisect
the blacked-out headlamps and front
fenders are pure aggression, and the vents
aft of the front wheels ensure that the 700
hp V12 is kept cool at speed.
Out back, Aston's signature rump is
present and accounted for, but a new
taillight design that evolves the
automaker's current offerings, a rear
Broccoli Beef
(Simply Recipes)
Submitted at 11/2/2008 1:57:09 PM
Please welcome guest author Jaden Hair
of Steamy Kitchen who brings us this
Chinese-American classic, Broccoli Beef.
~Elise
After moving out of the dorms in
college, I found an apartment to share with
3 others. My job was to cook, and as long
as what I put out on the dinner table was
better than instant ramen, I didnt have to
clean the kitchen or vacuum. A mighty fine
trade of labor, if you ask me! But then
pretty soon, friends of roommates
discovered my cooking talent and would
conveniently drop by at around 7pm. I
knew cooking was my calling back then,
because each new friend would try to find
a suitable trade to be able to snag a coveted
spot at our dinner table. No more grocery
bill, laundry, ironing, washing the car or
studying!
Broccoli Beef was one of my specialties,
mainly because broccoli was cheap and
beef could be sliced thinly to stretch and
feed unexpected guests.
So, how do you get the broccoli crisp-
tender and the beef juicy, succulent? Well,
the secret is to blanch the broccoli first,
before stir frying the beef. This helps you
control the cooking times for the broccoli,
instead of praying that the broccoli and
beef finish cooking at the same time. Youll
add the broccoli back into the pan as the
beef finishes cooking.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
diffuser and a center-exit exhaust are all
elements that we expect to see on future
models.
Check the gallery below for all the
details. Thanks for the tip, Alexander!
Gallery: Aston Martin One-77 Leakage
[Source: 925.nl]
New round of Aston Martin One-77
shots originally appeared on Autoblog on
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:02:00 EST. Please
see our terms for use of feeds.
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
And how do you prevent the garlic from
burning? Most recipes will have you add
the garlic in the pan or wok before you add
the beef. If you do this, youll surely burn
your garlic, as the beef takes about 1
minute to 1 ½ minutes to cook through on
high heat. In this recipe, youll add the
garlic after you add the beef. There should
be plenty of oil in the wok to fry the garlic
(if you use a large frying pan or wok) and
the timing will be perfect.
Continue reading "Broccoli Beef" »
Sautéed Kale
with Smoked
Paprika
(Simply Recipes)
Submitted at 11/6/2008 8:29:58 PM
We have a thing for greens in our family.
Beet greens, collard greens, mustard
greens, Swiss chard, kale. My mother even
picks dandelion greens to add to soups, and
mix in with other greens. The thing about
most greens is that they tend to be bitter,
and some, like collard and kale, a little
tough as well. Blanching before sautéing
can help take the edge off the bitterness,
and soften the greens. Greens are often
prepared with garlic, vinegar, sesame oil,
bacon, chili pepper, or barbecue sauce,
strong flavors that can balance the inherent
bitterness of the greens. In this recipe, the
kale is first boiled, then sautéed with
onions, chili flakes, and smoked paprika.
We've used smoked paprika in a few other
recipes here; it sort of has the flavor of
barbecued potato chips. It takes just a little
more than a pinch to bring a little smokey
kick to these kale greens.
My father made this kale for us last
night, from a recipe in an old issue of Bon
Appetit. It was so good (truly, the best kale
I've ever eaten, ever), not only did I take
more than my fair share, I insisted that he
make them again today, for lunch, so I
could eat even more and try to take a good
photo. (Thanks dad!)
Continue reading "Sautéed Kale with
Smoked Paprika" »
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Proposition 8 protests heat up
By Mollie
Submitted at 11/10/2008 4:46:01 PM
So the protests against the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because
of its support for Proposition 8 are
continuing and receiving quite a bit of
mainstream media coverage. Proposition 8
passed a constitutional amendment
defining marriage as an institution
involving one man and one woman. Stories
involve everything from Mormon churches
being vandalized to large-scale protests in
urban areas.
The story is so big that it has even
crossed the pond. Here’s the Independent’s
lede:
Daniel Ginnes carried a banner
declaring: “No More Mr Nice Gay.” Brian
Lindsey held up a sign billing Joseph
Smith, founder of the Church of the Latter
Day Saints, as a “prophet, polygamist,
paedophile.” Hundreds of others simply
chanted: “Mormon scum.”
The story is fairly balanced for a British
paper but fails to articulate why Mormons
are being singled out from all the many
religious and other groups that supported
Proposition 8. (Although it looks like
evangelicals are being targeted as well —
here’s an Associated Press report on large-
scale marching on Saddleback Community
Church. Mosques, Roman Catholic
churches, Orthodox churches, Orthodox
synagogues and most Protestant churches
are as yet untouched, interestingly.)
CNN mentioned a religious angle in its
write-up of the protests:
In Palm Springs, a crowd of several
hundred gathered in front of the city hall,
chanting “Civil rights” and “Tax the
Church.” One sign read: “We will not give
up.”
Several protesters surrounded an elderly
looking woman, an apparent Proposition 8
supporter, and shouted at her. No arrests
were reported at any of the demonstrations.
In Salt Lake City, Utah, about 2,000
demonstrators gathered at Temple Square
to protest against the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon
church strongly supported Proposition 8,
which amends California’s constitution to
define marriage as legal only between one
man and one woman.
Proposition 8 opponents say the Salt
Lake City-based church donated a majority
of the money raised in support of the
measure.
The LDS Church believes it should not
be singled out when other groups also
supported the proposition.
“It is disturbing that The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints is being singled
out for speaking up as part of its
democratic right in a free election,” the
church said in a statement Friday.
It’s great that this story mentions that the
LDS weren’t the only ones to support the
proposition, but this needs to be fleshed
out much more. And this tidbit about a
majority of the money being raised in
support of the measure coming from
Mormons? How would anyone —
supporters or opponents — know whether
that’s true? Do you now have to list your
religious affiliation before contributing
funds to be engaged in the democratic
process? And, since you don’t, how is this
figure being calculated? And if the
opponents of Proposition 8 were spending
their time investigating the religious
affiliation of donors to the proposition, did
they just seek out information on Mormons
or did they investigate other groups as
well?
Even when talking about funding, it’s
important to provide some context. How
many stories mention that the opponents of
Proposition 8 out raised the supporters? Or
that the California branch of the National
Education Association donated $1.25
million to fight the proposition? The LDS,
while encouraging members to support the
proposition with votes and donations,
didn’t give any money to the cause.
At the same time that Mormons are being
targeted for their support of Proposition 8,
black voters are as well. They
overwhelmingly supported traditional
marriage. As in 70 percent supported it.
The Los Angeles Times devoted a story to
the matter:
Los Angeles resident Christopher Hill,
50, said he was motivated by religion in
supporting Proposition 8. Civil rights, he
said, “are about getting a job,
employment.”
Gay marriage, he said, is not: “It’s an
abomination against God.”
One complicating factor was that both
sides in the campaign had plausible reason
to claim Obama’s support. The president-
elect strongly stated his opposition to the
proposition, calling it “divisive and
discriminatory.”
But he has also said in public speeches
Religion* 29
that he opposes same-sex marriage.
Certainly Obama’s coattails helped pass
this proposition. The Washington Times
had a really thorough piece about how it
passed:
Blacks voted 70 percent in favor of
Proposition 8, and slightly more than half
the Hispanic voters backed the measure,
according to exit polls released by the
National Election Pool.
And those voters were adamant.
“We shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize
the future of our family and our children,”
said Frederick K.C. Rice, an elder with the
Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles,
which joined a thousand other black and
Hispanic congregations with about 3
million followers in public support of
Proposition 8.
The article also notes that Prop 8
opponents are hoping to litigate away the
people’s vote. There’s an interesting
discussion there.
But these article about whether to
credit/blame minority voters or religious
voters for the passage could also explain
why we’re not seeing protests in Arizona,
Florida or any of the 30 states that now
have passed amendments or propositions
defining marriage traditionally. And for
people looking for the most insane entry
into the blame game, you could do worse
than check out the reliably offensive Mark
“ Obama is a lightworker” Morford in the
San Francisco Chronicle: he blames God
and voters in the area where I grew up —
the San Joaquin Valley:
Or maybe it’s all those sad, white, central
portions of the state, the huge chunks of
voters who live in places without much
culture or perspective or major
universities, who only hear certain strains
of spiteful rhetoric and thin fearmongering,
whose general lack of education means
they apparently still believe certain flavors
of love will poison everyone’s soup and
ruin the sanctity of the time-honored 50-
percent heterosexual missionary position
Christian divorce rate.
Ah, feel the love. One thing that
mainstream media does fail to indicate in
these reports is that not all gay-marriage
advocates are calling on the IRS to revoke
churches’ tax-exempt status or to
otherwise attack religious groups. Some
PROPOSITION page 30
30 Religion*
Of interest to God-beat pros
By tmatt
Submitted at 11/10/2008 10:55:33 PM
When I started thinking about a career on
the religion-beat, the first professional that
I met was another Baylor University
graduate who was on the rise at the
Houston Chronicle.
Before he was done, Louis Moore had
served as president of the Religion
Newswriters Association and survived an
up close and very, very personal encounter
with one of the most important Godbeat
stories of the late 20th Century — the high
-stakes, ultra-bitter battle for control of the
Southern Baptist Convention. Ask Jimmy
Carter and Ronald Reagan if that civil war
had an impact on American religious and
political life.
Religion-beat pros and the ecclesiastical
bureaucrats who deal with them will,
especially if they work in the Bible Belt,
want to know that Moore has written a
semi-memoir of his years on the beat and
beyond. It’s important to know that, after
nearly two decades in mainstream, daily
journalism, the Southern Baptist seminary
graduate went on to work at the national
level as an SBC media advisor at the
national and international level. He has
been on both sides of the notebook.
The book is called “ Witness to the
Truth” and here is a punchy chunk of what
Moore had to say, as included in my “
Hiding Behind Pulpits” Scripps Howard
News Service column:
Moore said that in the “best of times” he
saw believers in many flocks who were so
“servant-hearted and so demonstrative of
Godlike virtues” that the memory of their
faithful acts — in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, for example — still
inspires tears. But in the worst of times?
“I have seen church people. . . violate
every one of the Ten Commandments, act
boorish and selfish, be prejudiced,
broadcast secular value systems and in
general behave worse than the heathen
people they tried to reach,” noted Moore.
In fact, just “name some sin or some act
the Bible eschews, and I could pair that
vice up with some church leader or
member I have known.”
Duck and cover. What would Moore like
to see the religion professionals do?
Moore said his career affirmed basic
values that he learned as a young
journalist, values he saw vindicated time
after time in the trenches. Wise religious
leaders, he said, would dare to:
* Adopt “sunshine laws” so that as many
as possible of their meetings are open to
coverage by journalists from the
mainstream and religious press.
“When you’re dealing with money your
people have put in the offering plate, you
should be as open as possible,” he said.
“The things that belong on the table need
to stay on the table.”
* Acknowledge that “politics is a way of
life and they need to make it clear to the
people in the pews how the game is
played,” he said. “I truly admire the people
who let the covert be overt.”
* Come right out and admit what they
believe, when it comes to divisive issues of
theology and public life. “Say what you
mean and mean what you say,” he said.
“Way too many religious leaders take one
position in public and say something
completely different somewhere else.”
Now keep that last point in mind,
because it is going to come up again big
time in my column this coming week —
Hiding Behind Altars.
It focuses on an interview with Catholic
media professional Russell Shaw about the
lessons learned during his years as
gatekeeper for the U.S. Catholic bishops.
His book is called “ Nothing to Hide:
Secrecy, Communication and Communion
in the Catholic Church.” I will update this
post with a link to that column when it is
done.
And there’s one more thing.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
PROPOSITION
continued from page 29
see this is as fulfilling the claims of
If you care about life and death on the traditional marriage advocates that same-
religion-news beat, you’ll want to read sex marriage is an attack on religion or
Andrew Walsh’s “ Twilight of the Religion otherwise harming the cause of gay
Writers” over at the site for the Religion In marriage.
The News journal published by Trinity Another angle that’s been untouched is a
College. comparison of the fallout on the
The piece covers many topics featured Proposition 8 vote with that of other
here at GetReligion. The setting for the propositions. Social conservatives lost
drama was the annual convention of the Proposition 4, for instance, which would
Religion Newswriters Association, held have required that parents of underage
recently in Washington, D.C. There was, children be notified before said teen aborts
of course, talk about the death of the beat her child. It lost by the same margin that
at some major papers, while others saw Prop 8 passed. It’s interesting to note the
signs of hope. different reactions of the pro-life
But one thing everyone agreed on, as I community from the same-sex marriage
mentioned a few weeks ago, was that advocates as well as the different coverage
blogging is here to stay — for better and of same by the mainstream media.
for worse. Walsh notes: Photo of protests on defaced Mormon
At the moment, the conventional wisdom temple grounds via Beetle Blogger.
is that blogging will be part of any solution Bookmark to:
to the crisis. “How many of you think the
future of the media is online?” Andrea
Useem asked the audience during her
presentation at a panel called, “Boggled by
Blogging.” Virtually every hand in the
room went up. As an aspiring freelance
writer, Useem said she realized a couple of
years ago that the career she dreamed of,
“a series of jobs covering religion at ever
bigger newspapers,” wasn’t going to
happen.
So she founded her own blog,
www.ReligionWriter.com, because she
believed that she needed to master web
skills in order to be in the game for
whatever happens next. She had to hire a
web consultant to help her. After two
years, her blog still makes her no money;
indeed, she’s still paying the consultant.
But there is good news on two fronts, she
told her colleagues.
First, she can put whatever she wants on
“Evangelical”
her blog — she’s her own editor. In her
case, that means the blog often features
transcripts of lengthy interviews with
— Here we
interesting people. She’s also able to put
some limit on her blogging, adding a new
post only once a week. Most important for
go again
someone who needs to make a living, the By tmatt
blog has become her calling card. It Submitted at 11/9/2008 10:14:18 PM
attracts clients who hire her for the writing, Sorry to bring this up again, but I have to.
editing, and consulting projects by which Did you see this headline in that Boston
she makes her daily bread.
Globe essay by Andrew J. Bacevich of
Wait a minute. She sounds familiar, too. Boston University?
Bookmark to:
“EVANGELICAL” page 31
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
“EVANGELICAL”
continued from page 30
This wasn’t a news story, but it’s still
worth mentioning.
So what, pray tell, would an
“evangelical” foreign policy be? If the
word is given it’s traditional meaning, it
would be a foreign policy that is pro-free
speech and religious liberty, the kind of
foreign policy that is, well, pro-evangelism
or, to use the word Catholics prefer,
evangelization. You wouldn’t have to be
an evangelical Protestant to back this
policy, you’d only need to back the U.N.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But wait, that isn’t what this article is all
about. Here’s the top of the essay:
WITH Barack Obama’s election to the
presidency, the evangelical moment in US
foreign policy has come to an end. The
United States remains a nation of
believers, with Christianity the tradition to
which most Americans adhere. Yet the
religious sensibility informing American
statecraft will no longer find expression in
an urge to launch crusades against evil-
doers.
Like our current president, Obama is a
professed Christian. Yet whereas George
W. Bush once identified Jesus Christ
himself as his favorite philosopher, the
president-elect is an admirer of Reinhold
Niebuhr, the renowned Protestant
theologian.
Faced with difficult problems,
conservative evangelicals ask WWJD:
What would Jesus do? We are now
entering an era in which the occupant of
the Oval Office will consider a different
question: What would Reinhold do?
So this foreign policy flows out of what
this professor believes are the doctrines of
evangelicalism? Would evangelicals in
Africa, Asia or Latin America agree with
that?
And while we are at it, there were many
evangelicals (ditto for Catholics, like
Peggy Noonan) who grew more and more
disturbed that George W. Bush’s foreign
policy was based on the belief that the
actions of America could somehow
eliminate the presence of evil in our world.
Say what? That’s a conservative Christian
view of what mankind can accomplish in
this fallen, sinful world?
No way. In fact, the adjective that critics
— including many evangelicals — began
to attach to Bush’s view was “Wilsonian.”
What conservatives began to say was
that Bush seemed to have an overly lofty
view of his own mission, that he was
pursuing the kind of logic that seemed
rooted in a belief in relentless human
progress, that the world was getting better
and better and better. Might Bush say that
there would be a “Christian Century”
ahead? In other words,“Wilsonian” is not a
conservative word.
Bacevich goes on to make a number of
interesting and valid points, none of which
require the use of the word “evangelical.”
There is even this:
At the root of Niebuhr’s thinking lies an
appreciation of original sin, which he
views as indelible and omnipresent. In a
fallen world, power is necessary, otherwise
we lie open to the assaults of the predatory.
Yet since we too number among the fallen,
our own professions of innocence and
altruism are necessarily suspect. Power,
wrote Niebuhr, “cannot be wielded without
guilt, since it is never transcendent over
interest.” Therefore, any nation wielding
great power but lacking self-awareness —
never an American strong suit — poses an
imminent risk not only to others but to
itself.
Here lies the statesman’s dilemma:
You’re damned if you do and damned if
you don’t. To refrain from resisting evil for
fear of violating God’s laws is
irresponsible. Yet for the powerful to
pretend to interpret God’s will qualifies as
presumptuous. To avert evil, action is
Food* 31
imperative; so too is self-restraint. Even
worthy causes pursued blindly yield
morally problematic results.
So an “evangelical” foreign policy is one
that ignores the reality of “original sin”
and its impact on the actions of people
trying to do good in a fallen world?
Wait, there’s more.
We’ve tried having a born-again
president intent on eliminating evil. It
didn’t work. May our next president
acknowledge the possibility that, as
Niebuhr put it, “the evils against which we
contend are frequently the fruits of
illusions which are similar to our own.”
Facing our present predicament requires
that we shed illusions about America that
would have offended Jesus himself.
Up is down and down is up.
No evangelical or traditional Christian
would argue that humanity can eliminate
evil in the world. That’s a viewpoint
traditionally linked to philosophies
advocating a very high view of man and
human progress. It’s the kind of
philosophy that makes statements like:
Boiled Peanuts
“We will heal our world.” It’s the kind of (Simply Recipes) this one is my very Alabama BFF Steve-
perspective attached to liberal, not Submitted at 11/8/2008 8:12:07 PM
Anna Stephens:
conservative, Christianity — like the I can't even hear the words "hot boiled
progressive faith of President Woodrow Before there was edamame in this peanuts" without hearing 'em doled out in a
Wilson. country, there were hot boiled peanuts, thick Southern drawl. When Elise told me
By the way, I should stress that I am in which according to my Southern friends, she was experimenting with a boiled
near-total agreement with Bacevich’s are a staple of the South. Boiled peanuts peanut recipe, I immediately conjured up
criticism of this aspect of foreign policy in are just raw peanuts that have been boiled an image of a 50 gallon drum, situated
the Bush era. So I say “amen” to much of in salted water for hours. Great with beer over a fire pit in the dirt on the side of the
what is in this essay. or a cold soda, these salty soft peanuts are road in Alabama - filled with steaming
But what in hellfire does any of this have totally addictive. A little messy too, given saltwater, and peanuts in the shell.
to do with the word “evangelical”? Again. that the shells absorb some of the water You used to could get (yes, I meant to
It’s like the Globe wanted to say, “The which can squirt out at you when you bite write that) a bag of peanuts for about fifty
Bush foreign policy was simplistic and into them to get the nut out. People usually cents. I like to crack the boiled shell
dumb. Therefore, it was ‘evangelical.’” eat them outside where you can toss the between my teeth and slurp the peanuts
MAP: From Global Mapping shells and not worry about the salt water into my mouth. There's usually a little
International. dribbles. The season for raw peanuts is saltwater left in the shell, so, believe it or
Bookmark to: May through November; my pal Garrett not slurping is the more polite option over
picked these up for me this week at the squirting saltwater on an innocent
local farmer's market. bystander.
Now every time I post a traditional Now I can't decide which is better, Elise
Southern recipe I get a little pit in my posting a grits recipe or a recipe for hot
stomach because I'm not Southern and I'm boiled peanuts!
sure I'm going to mess up how I write Continue reading "Boiled Peanuts" »
about the recipe. So here to help me with
32 Religion* Food*
Second-hand news on Obama
By tmatt
Submitted at 11/8/2008 12:39:41 AM
As every journalist knows, second-hand
quotes can be dynamite.
After all, one highly biased person can
totally twist what another person said.
They can even make up quotes out of
whole cloth.
How do you know what was really said?
You try to find out if there is other
evidence to back them up. You look for
patterns in encounters with other people.
You ask the person in question to verify
the quotes, or the person’s press aide. You
try to do the right thing.
But, sometimes, all of this fails. So, you
bite your lip and try to signal to the reader,
“Look. This story does not claim to tell
you what the following newsworthy person
said. I am telling you what this other
clearly labeled person SAYS that they said
in their one-on-one conversation. Is that
clear?”
We have a classic example of this
problem unfolding right now over in
London at The Times and it is a deusy.
So check this out, from veteran reporter
Ruth Gledhill. The lede is that Barack
Obama has held several meetings with the
controversial gay Bishop Gene Robinson
of New Hampshire. Oh my, is it time to
talk about the next primary there? No,
Robinson says they have been talking
about what it means to be “the first” at
something important and symbolic.
Bishop Robinson, who received death
threats after his election as Bishop of New
Hampshire and was advised by police to
wear a bullet-proof vest at his
consecration, also discussed with Mr
Obama the risks incumbent upon being a
high-profile leader in a country such as the
US.
Bishop Robinson said: “At the end of the
day you have to decide whether or not you
are going to be paralysed by threats and by
violent possibilities or whether you just
move on and do what you feel called to do
despite the risks.”
Bishop Robinson, in London as a guest
of the gay rights group Stonewall for its
annual “Hero of the Year” awards dinner
at the Victoria and Albert Museum tonight,
said that Mr Obama’s campaign team had
sought him last year and he had the
“honour” of three private conversations
with the future president of the United
States last May and June.
“The first words out of his mouth were:
‘Well you’re certainly causing a lot of
trouble,’ My response to him was: ‘Well
that makes two of us.’ ” He said that Mr
Obama had indicated his support for equal
civil rights for gay and lesbian people and
described the election as a “religious
experience.”
Writing to the British audience, Gledhill
explains that Obama is not an
Episcopalian, but active in the United
Church of Christ. She does not explain
that, when it comes to advocacy of gay
rights, the Church of Christ has been much
more open and candid than the
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Episcopalians.
Robinson said that they talked more
about economics than social issues. Then
he adds this, drawing on his memories of
the meetings:
“. . . He and I would agree about the
rightful place of religion vis-a-vis the
secular state. That is to say, we don’t
impose our religious values on the secular
state because God said so. Our faith
informs our own values and then we take
those values into the civil market place, the
civil discourse, and then you argue for
them based on the Constitution. You don’t
say to someone, you must believe this
because this is what God believes.
“I think God gives us our values and then
we argue for those on the basis of the
Constitution and care of our neighbour.
And I think the Bush administration got
very very close to the line if not going over
the line in terms of offering support to
religious-based groups who were using
their social service arms to proselytise and
Quince Jam
evangelise which I would say is (Simply Recipes) culinary delights available in these hard
inappropriate.” Submitted at 11/9/2008 9:44:32 PM
yellow fruit. (I had a quince tree in the
yard of my rented home in San Francisco
This is all well and good, but it is
interesting that the meetings did not draw Years ago, backyard quince trees were for 4 years and never once cooked a
common. People would cultivate them to quince. Now that I know better, just to
coverage on this side of the Atlantic before
the election. Was this at the request of the harvest the fruit for cooking in pies or think of it makes me want to bang my head
preserves. Inedible raw, and looking like a on the wall.)
bishop or the Obama campaign? There are
plenty of questions about these highly cross between a pear and a golden apple, Here is an easy recipe for a simple
quince cook up sweet, with a vibrant rose quince jam. Feel free to spice it up a little
symbolic meetings on the Christian left.
Now, since this is the WWW age, color and a floral aroma and flavor. These with nutmeg, cardamom, or vanilla.
days you can still find an odd tree here and Continue reading "Quince Jam" »
Gledhill adds many more details to the
coverage — including the actual chat with there in backyards of older houses, though
chances are the owners don't know the
Robinson — in a follow-up post at her
“Articles of Faith” weblog. All well and
good.
Still, you can’t help but as the question
that I ask myself whenever I am put into
this second-hand quote scenario. How do
we know that Obama said what the bishop
says that he said? Could this information
have been verified by the staff of the now
president-elect?
Bookmark to:
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper Religion* Food* 33

Do they believe in magic?

By Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans
Submitted at 11/8/2008 4:43:08 PM

Whatever would the world of religious

journalism do without noted British
evolutionary biologist — and even more
famous atheist — Richard Dawkins?
One might say the Oxford professor is
God’s gift to the British press.
Dawkins has made news again, both in
the U.K. and over here, by announcing that
he’s got a new project: taking a look at
“anti-scientific fairytales” like Harry Potter
— and the “Judeo-Christian myth.”
Including the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures as targets is no shock —
Dawkins is a well-known foe of
established religion in general. But going
after the legions of Harry Potter fans?
Now that’s something potentially
newsworthy.
“Atheist Richard Dawkins warns Harry
Potter could have ‘negative effect on
children’” is the headline of the (Daily)
Mail Online story.
The anonymous “reporter” begins with
this sassy lede.
Outspoken atheist Professor Richard
Dawkins is to warn children of the dangers
in believing “anti-scientific” fairytales
such as Harry Potter. “science thinking contrasted with mythical A few paragraphs later, the writers quote
Prof Dawkins will write a book aimed at thinking” and will talk about the Judeo- Dawkins as saying that he wishes to
youngsters where he will discuss whether Christian myth.’ “ examine the effects of “bringing children
stories like the successful JK Rowling
series have a “pernicious” effect on
children. The 67-year-old, who recently
If the professor hasn’t decided what he
thinks about ‘magic and fairy tales,” why
up to believe in spells and wizards.”
“I think it is anti-scientific — whether Simply Recipes for iPhone
should the press? To attract a few more that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know,”
resigned from his position at Oxford readers? he told More4 News. (Simply Recipes) in GPS that shows you exactly where you
University, says he intends to look at the are on a map, and gives you directions to
The Dawkins fairy-tale is also the subject Now there’s a bit of real controversy, Submitted at 11/1/2008 2:56:58 PM
where you want to go. I've also loved
effects of “bringing children up to believe of an article by Martin Beckford and buried deep within the article — how
in spells and wizards.” Do you have an iPhone? Or a web- having the Internet so available. If I'm in a
Urmee Khan on the Telegraph website. many parents bring up their children to enabled cell phone? If so, you can now grocery store and can't remember the
But hold on — aren’t we really talking “Harry Potter fails to cast spell over believe in spells and wizards?
about a slight tempest in a tea-pot here? As browse Simply Recipes with your phone, specific ingredients needed for a recipe, I
Professor Richard Dawkins” is the come- For a wonderfully thoughtful opinion on in a custom-built site, designed specifically can look it up on the phone. With this new
would most scientists, Dawkins has a hither headline on the Telegraph’s website. what happens if we follow Dawkins to his
hypothesis about these stories — he for the itsy bitsy screens on mobile phones. Simply Recipes iPhone app, looking up
Beckford and Khan also seem to know potential conclusion, read Scott Galupo’s When Apple came out a few months ago ingredients just got a whole lot easier.
doesn’t yet have a conclusion. the professor’s mind — even before he paean to imagination in the Washington
‘Looking back to my own childhood, the with their latest "3G" iPhone, I finally bit Continue reading "Simply Recipes for
does. Times. And stay tuned — the collaboration the bullet and bought one. I love this iPhone" »
fact that so many of the stories I read The prominent atheist is stepping down between the highly press-savvy scientist
allowed the possibility of frogs turning into phone. If I could marry a phone, it would
from his post at Oxford University to write and his apparently news-starved media be the iPhone. Favorite feature? The built-
princes, whether that has a sort of insidious a book aimed at youngsters in which he friends will surely provide us with more
affect on rationality, I’m not sure. Perhaps will warn them against believing in “anti- fodder.
it’s something for research.’ scientific” fairytales. Bookmark to:
However, the outspoken atheist said he Prof Hawkins said: “The book I write
hadn’t even read Harry Potter and admitted next year will be a children’s book on how
he “didn’t know what to think about magic to think about the world, science thinking
and fairytales”. He said the book will be contrasted with mythical thinking.”
34 Religion*
Obama narrows “Pew gap”
By dpulliam
Submitted at 11/10/2008 10:04:04 PM
The Chicago Tribune’s version of the
pew gap story that permeated news outlets
last week focuses heavily on the slight
percentage shifts in party preference
among Catholics, white evangelicals, and
“worshipers who attend church
frequently.” The article’s focus on these
three statistical categories emphasizes that
a factor in President-elect Barack Obama’s
victory was his slight improvement in the
pews over the failed 2004 Democratic
Nominee John Kerry. This runs contrary to
the notion that Obama failed to close the
pew gap.
Unfortunately, the article only takes a
surface-level approach to the data. A short
survey of the data amassed at Steve
Waldman’s blog shows that support for
Obama actually declined among
evangelicals older than 65. Waldman also
points out that evangelical voters made up
a bigger percentage of McCain’s voters
than they did Bush’s voters. So much for
writing cover stories about the declining
influence of evangelicals in the GOP.
The only portion of the article not
focused exclusively on the numbers dealt
with Obama’s support among Catholic
voters and the issue of abortion:
Obama’s win among Catholics came
despite an aggressive push by some of the
nation’s bishops to encourage the faithful
to make abortion their main issue. The
abortion debate intensified when Catholic
legal scholars Douglas Kmiec and
Nicholas Cafardi announced their support
of Obama, who supports keeping abortion
legal, and urged Catholics to consider the
full agenda of Catholic social teaching.
Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, who
is also president of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, wrote a letter of
congratulations to Obama and offered
prayers for strength and wisdom to meet
the nation’s challenges.
“Our country is confronting many
uncertainties,” George wrote. “We pray
that you will use the powers of your office
to meet them with a special concern to
defend the most vulnerable among us and
heal the divisions in our country and our
world. We stand ready to work with you in
defense and support of the life and dignity
of every human person.”
The article’s quotation of George’s letter
is cryptically interesting since it follows a
paragraph-long description of the abortion
debate with the Catholic community.
While the article notes that a couple of
legal scholars endorsed Obama, the article
fails to note that abortion remains a rather
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
important and controversial issue for
Catholics. See here a recent account by the
Associated Press’s Rachel Zoll on
George’s statement regarding abortion:
BALTIMORE (AP) — The head of the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,
opening a national church meeting
Monday, said that continued support for
abortion rights will undermine any
advances in social justice that come from a
new president and Congress.
Chicago Cardinal Francis George said
“we must all rejoice” that an African-
American will be in the White House for
the first time in a country that “once
enshrined slavery” in law.
But he said the nation still violates what
he called universal human rights by
keeping abortion legal. “The common
good can never be adequately incarnated in
any society when those waiting to be born
can be legally killed at choice,” George
said.
Here is an idea for a follow-up story:
What happens to the Catholic vote if some
of Obama’s first actions as president are to
widen the availability of abortions through
executive order as appears to be the case?
Overall, the Tribune article strikes a
reasonable tone that shows that Obama’s
gains amongst religious communities
contributed to putting him over the top last
week.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
With this hot cash register, I thee wed
By Mollie
Submitted at 11/9/2008 8:11:39 PM
Three of the major festivals of the church
year are Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.
In America, we celebrate Christmas with
abandon, Easter with a minor uptick in
chocolate sales, and Pentecost hardly at all.
If you’ve ever wondered why, Leigh Eric
Scmidt’s Consumer Rites: The Buying and
Selling of American Holidays is a must
read. It shows how the holidays that are
celebrated most in America are those that
have been most commercialized. Those
holidays that lend themselves to a heady
mixture of faith and merchandising
become humongous celebrations while
others are forgotten and celebrated by only
the most devout. Merchants and advertisers
have been crucial, Schmidt argues, to
promoting holidays in a grand,
carnivalesque manner.
I thought of this when reading a
wonderful piece in the New York Times
that says that California merchants are
worried about the economic impact of
Proposition 8, which amends the state
constitution to define marriage as an
institution involving one man and one
woman:
Arturo Cobos, a manager at Kard Zone
in the city’s traditionally gay Castro
neighborhood, said he had done “big sales”
of same-sex wedding cards and other
trinkets since marriages began in June, but
had recently stopped stocking new goods.
“We were afraid that they would pass
Proposition 8,” Mr. Cobos said, “and that’s
exactly what happened.”
In Palm Springs, another gay-friendly
city, Mayor Steve Pougnet said he had
performed 115 same-sex weddings since
June, when such ceremonies began, some
of which had as many as 180 guests. By
contrast, this week the city has canceled
eight planned ceremonies.
“That’s a huge economic impact, which is
gone in these difficult economic times,”
said Mr. Pougnet, who is openly gay and
married his partner in September.
The article suggests that California can’t
afford this economic blow considering the
state’s budget deficit has swelled to $11.2
billion for the coming year. Frank
Schubert, Proposition 8’s campaign
manager, suggests that any impact is
overstated:
“This is an issue of restoring the
institution of marriage as it always
existed,” said Mr. Schubert, noting that
Religion* 35
same-sex marriage had only briefly been
legal. “I can’t imagine that returning to the
history of 4,000 years before that is going
to cause an economic upheaval.”
It’s just a great idea for an article but I
wish that there had been some discussion
of how businesses affect the entire
wedding-industrial complex. A few years
ago I reviewed Rebecca Mead’s One
Perfect Day: The Selling of the American
Wedding for the Wall Street Journal. The
book does a fantastic job of looking at the
excesses of the wedding industry and how
they have helped turn weddings into
today’s insane and ridiculous suck of
money, time and energy. From my review:
In Ms. Mead’s mind, the wedding as a
rite of passage no longer signals a couple’s
transition to adulthood. Instead, she says,
the contemporary wedding marks the move
from one type of consumer to another. It is
an event “shaped as much by commerce or
marketing as it is by those influences
couples might prefer to think of as
affecting their nuptial choices, such as
social propriety, religious observance, or
familial expectation.”
As we look at Proposition 8 and it’s
fallout, it’s good to keep in mind all of the
groups who have a vested interest in one
side or the other. And as we spend so much
time on social propriety, religious
observation and family expectation, let’s
not neglect American consumerism.
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36 Religion* Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper

Letting Billy Graham remain . . . Billy

By tmatt
Submitted at 11/9/2008 3:11:31 AM

Billy Graham turned 90 at the end of this

past week, a landmark event that received
very little press, all things considered.
There were other things going on in the
nation, of course.
But over at USA Today, veteran Godbeat
reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman weighed in
on the story. How would you like to try to
write something about the life and times of
Graham in a short news feature?
I’ll be honest. The top of this story
covers an amazing amount of territory.
Evangelist Billy Graham. . . is frail from
multiple falls and ailments, far from the
strapping revivalist who roamed the globe
for six decades.
Yet before Graham retired in 2005 to his
mountainside log cabin in Montreat, N.C.,
he preached to 215 million people — and
changed the course of American
Protestantism.
“Today’s generation thinks his
significance is his popularity, not his role
as the architect of moderate
evangelicalism,” says Susan Harding, an
anthropologist of religion at the University
of California-Santa Cruz. “He created a
new way to be a conservative Christian, baptism and, to some degree, images of place. The final chapter is a quiet one, but
not fundamentalist, not a judgmental salvation. But, no, he did not compromise still significant. Grossman weaves in very
separatist. A Billy Graham Christian could on the basics. Grossman leaves Graham high percentage of the big themes and then
be more educated, more worldly and take intact. He is still a John 14:6 Christian. — this is my main point — leaves the man
for granted that Christians have work to do Then, there is this: intact.
in this world.” In modern times, Graham became known I have had many people ask what it’s like
Now, you hear that word “moderate” and as much for what he did not do as for what to interview Graham, something I have had
you think anti-fundamentalist and you he did. He was the evangelist who did not the please and challenge and pleasure of
immediately think that Grossman is going rip off millions (Jim Bakker) or run with doing a few times. Here’s the main thing
to serve up another one of those Graham prostitutes (Jimmy Swaggart) or build a that that I kept walking away with each
revisionism pieces — like the infamous megachurch (Joel Osteen) or run for time.
theological treatise on the cover of president (Pat Robertson) or run a Yes, he knows how to handle the press.
Newsweek not that long ago. Christian political lobby (Jerry Falwell). Yes, he knows he is a celebrity. Yet there
Yes, Billy rejected fundamentalism. Yes, And this, too: is still a real man inside that persona and,
especially post-Watergate, he dealt with a Reinhold Niebuhr,. . . the nation’s most almost all his biographers stress this, that
wider range of cultural and social issues. prominent theologian, called Graham man has not changed all that much.
Yes, he worked with a growing spectrum simplistic, and evangelist Bob Jones There’s a Baptist preacher in there who is
of denominations (a great book that needs denounced him as “doing more harm to the still trying to do his job.
to be written would focus on Graham and cause of Jesus Christ than any living man.” Bookmark to:
Rome) and blurred lines on issues such as It’s a big, big story that goes all over the