ATLANTA – They say bad habits from the regular season carry over, and apparently that’s true. For instance, just because it’s the playoffs doesn’t mean the Hawks have stopped mailing in games.

In a season full of baffling home blowouts, the Hawks added another to the list in a 99-82 loss to Chicago in Game 3. It was the eighth time this season Atlanta lost at Philips Arena by 15 points or more, falling behind almost immediately as Derrick Rose eviscerated them for 44 points. The Bulls lead the best-of-seven series 2-1 heading into Game 4 on Sunday.

While Rose’s brilliance meant Atlanta was unlikely to win this game no matter what they did, the Hawks felt the lopsided nature of the defeat was more a result of apathy than execution or Xs and Os. Few in the audience disagreed.

The turning point? How about the 49-second mark. Hawks coach Larry Drew called as early a timeout as you’ll ever see after two easy baskets gave the Bulls a 4-0 lead. What set him off was an easy transition lay-up for Rose after a defensive board, a bucket that opened the floodgates on his career-high performance.

“I saw an energy level that, right away, I knew we were in trouble,” said Drew. “When you play an explosive guard like Derrick Rose, you have to make a commitment to getting back and making sure you try to keep him out of the paint. He’s too fast and too explosive.”

“I saw right then and there my team had not made the commitment we made in Game 1. We know he’s so good and explosive that he can get in there. But when I don’t’ see the effort on getting back in transition, not getting there and allowing them to get to the basket without a contest, I knew that we were not committed like we were in Games 1 and 2.”

The only energy in the arena, in fact, came from the Bulls fans chanting “MVP” after most of Rose’s 16 field goals. For the third time this season, the arena had a heavy sprinkling of Bulls fans, adding insult to injury as Atlanta’s “home” crowed cheered its demise.

And it should be noted that Rose foiled the Hawks even when their efforts were up to snuff. The most crucial instance was coming out of a timeout after the Hawks had cut the Bulls’ lead to 11 points early in the fourth quarter. On Chicago’s possession, Atlanta’s Jamal Crawford played great denial defense to eliminate a play the Bulls had diagrammed for Kyle Korver. No matter; Rose improvised and hit a difficult shot on the other side of the floor to end the Atlanta rally.

“That’s frustrating, for sure,” said Crawford. “Plays like that kind of stick the needle in the balloon, because you’re fighting so hard to get back and then he makes an incredible shot.”

There were subplots for Atlanta that were equally disheartening, however. While Rose was having his way on the perimeter, the Hawks were also getting destroyed on the glass. The Bulls had 18 offensive rebounds, nearly matching the Hawks’ total on the defensive glass (25); the board dominance gave Chicago a nine-possession edge.

“They completely beat us up,” said Drew. “My big guys didn’t show up tonight and I told them that at halftime. You have to play this team with energy, you have to match their physicality, you cannot complain to the officials, and you have to be ready to make it a war for 48 minutes. Tonight we did not do that.”

One option for Atlanta to deal with the board disparity is returning Jason Collins to the starting lineup, something Drew said he will consider based on what he finds when he watches the tape. That lineup has its own issues – scoring immediately becomes a concern, especially against the league’s top-ranked defense – but if it can stem the bleeding on the defensive end it might be worth it.

And obviously, having Kirk Hinrich would have helped. With Rose appearing back at full strength after struggling with ankle problems in the first two games, Teague’s general inexperience and his lack of size to contest Rose’s shot became much more glaring shortcomings.

Nonetheless, to a man the Hawks admitted that the greatest remedy is to simply play harder.

“It’s just disheartening to come out and start the game like that,” said Crawford.

It’s a sight the locals have witnessed far too often this year; as was the case with this game, usually right after they’d been sucked in by a recent burst of success. The glass-half-full approach is to say the Hawks weren’t winning this one anyway with Rose going off as he was, so perhaps it’s best to get it out of their system now.

But based on recent history, there’s little assurance the Philips Arena crowd won’t get an encore performance on Sunday.

I actually don't think the Pivot conference wants you to click on this ad. I mean 5 months out, why would you? Do you really need to get it on your calendar at this point? I don't think so. What I think this ad is doing is showing two known Social Media Mavens and their ad/name for an obscure conference in October, that by the time it rolls around you will have seen the ad so many thousands of times, that you will say, "Oh the Pivot Conference, yeah, I think I've heard about that."

In a little more than two years since making his UFC debut, Stefan Struve has steadily risen through the ranks of the organization’s heaviest division. Although Struve insists that he isn’t feeling the pressure, the fact of the matter is “The Skyscraper” is on the brink of becoming a bonafide contender in the UFC's heavyweight division.

An established star on the European mixed martial arts circuit, before making his UFC debut in February of 2009, Struve has since claimed five wins in seven Octagon appearances—including victories over Paul Buentello, Christian Morecraft and, most recently, Sean McCorkle.

Right now, Struve is preparing for his next bout—a heavyweight tilt on May 28th against Travis Browne at UFC 130.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Stefan Struve about, among other topics, the joys of home-ownership, what he's been able to accomplish in the UFC so far and his upcoming bout against Browne later this month.

How are you doing today?

Good. I just finished training; I had grappling this morning with my training partners and had strength and conditioning in the evening and I just came home from my new house—I bought a new house. So, I’m doing really good.

You’ve got a new house?

Yeah, I just bought a new house a couple days ago—I just got the key yesterday.

How does that feel?

It’s awesome; it’s really nice. I bought my house with the money I’ve made in the UFC so far, so it’s been excellent.

That’s got to feel good.

Yeah, it feels really, really good. That’s another reason why I love my job.

The money?

Well, it’s not only the money that makes you happy, but the things that you can do with it; I bought a home for myself and that’s really nice. I’m really thankful for the way my career has gone so far.

Did you think, in the beginning, that you would be able to buy your own home with your talents as a mixed martial artist?

At first, I didn’t think about that. When I first signed my deal with the UFC, I didn’t think things would go this fast. That’s the truth.

Were you surprised to get that call from the UFC so early in your career?

Well, I was young—I was 20 years old—but to be honest, I was doing really, really good in Europe; I won 14 fights in a row and then I lost one and then I won five straight. For someone that’s 20 years old and fighting in the heavyweight division at 220 pounds, I think that’s pretty good, you know? We heard that Dream was following my fights and we heard that the UFC was following my fights and Affliction was following my fights, but when the offer finally came, of course we were very proud and a little surprised. The UFC is the biggest stage there is.

Was there any hesitation on your behalf to sign the contract?

To be honest, there was. At first we thought, if we signed with the UFC, then we would only be fighting three or four times a year. When I wasn’t fighting in the UFC, I was fighting seven-to-nine times a year. I really liked that rhythm, but to be honest, three or four times a year is good enough for me. With the way that I’m getting paid, it’s better because I can let my injuries heal and I can take more time to work on technical training instead of going back to strength and conditioning right after the fight, you know?

At this point, you prefer the three or four fights a year?

I think I will fight three times this year because this will be my first fight in May. I was supposed to fight in March against [Brendan] Schaub, but it got canceled because I had a small injury that I had to let heal and I needed some more time.

Do you think, looking back, it was a positive thing for your career that you got the opportunity to come to the UFC so early?

Yeah, of course I think it was. I was pretty much done fighting lower-level competition in Europe; there were no more big tests for me, to be honest. I’m getting tested in the UFC and I think Travis is another big test for me.

Did you have a “welcome to the UFC” moment, where it all kind of hit you that you were in the major league?

When it hit me? Yeah; fight-week, with all of the media attention and the attention from the crowd and the fans at the weigh-ins at the stage with all of the people in the audience. When I finally stepped into the Octagon I realized that I had to fight in the UFC for the first time and I thought, “Okay, now we’re here and now it needs to happen.” And it didn’t happen [laughs].

Was that at all overwhelming?

Yeah, everything was a little overwhelming; the media, the audience—everything. And then a guy like Junior Dos Santos is standing in front of you—who didn’t really have a big-name back then, but was coming off a big win over Fabricio Werdum—so he felt really good in there. I think I jammed; I couldn’t move, I didn’t do my thing, but losses happen and it made me stronger.

After a loss, do you ever question why you compete?

No, not really; I love my sport and I couldn’t be more thankful for the way my career has gone so far. Of course, after a loss you’re disappointed, but I never think, “Why am I doing this?” That never happens, no. 

How do you feel about what you’ve been able to accomplish so far in the UFC?

I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished so far; I’ve already got five wins—I’ve won five out of my last six—and my only two losses are against guys that are doing really well right now in the UFC. In the fight with Roy [Nelson], there were some things that were happening fight-week that—and you wish that those things didn’t happen—but they happen. For the future, it will be nice to get a rematch with both guys, but there’s no rush; I’m only 23 and, like I said, I’ve very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far and I plan on winning my sixth fight in the UFC in a couple of weeks.

How much better do you feel you are now than when you first came into the UFC two years ago?

A lot, a lot, a lot better. I’ve worked on everything; my ground-game has improved a lot and especially my stand-up—if you look at my fights, I’ve improved so much. I think I weighed in at 239 pounds, and I’m at 260, 262 right now, so I’ve improved a lot.

You’re at 262, you said?

260, 262 or something like that; around 260.

Do you usually walk around that heavy?

No; I got a little heavier. I had some more time off after the fight, so I did more strength and conditioning to get bigger, you know? That was good. I did a lot of technical training after the fight with [Sean] McCorkle; a lot of BJJ and technical kick-boxing. I’ve improved a lot since my last fight.

Do you feel a lot stronger with that added weight?

Yeah. I’m feeling it a lot—especially when I’m hitting somebody with a punch. In the gym, I’m afraid to hit people with full-force, because I know that if I hit someone it’s good-night—that’s a good feeling. On the ground, as well; I’ve got a lot more strength. It’s really good.

What do you think you will weigh come fight night?

Somewhere around 260—I don’t know. When I started my camp, after my fight with McCorkle, I went to L.A. for two weeks and when I came back I was at 280. It’s pretty big, but I didn’t train a lot and I ate a lot of pizza and shit like that in L. A. Like I said, I think around 260.

What motivated you to put on the extra weight?

Look at who’s running the heavyweight division; Brock [Lesnar], [Shane] Carwin, [Cain] Velasquez and Dos Santos—those are big guys for their frames. I need to put more muscle on my frame. On my frame, I can easily go up to 280 or 290, in my opinion, and cut down, weigh in at 265 and weigh 280, 285 in the cage.

Is that something that you would be interested in doing in the future?

Yeah—in the future. I’m getting bigger every single fight and for my next fight, I may even have to cut a little bit before the fight. That’s for the next fight; I’m under the 265-limit right now.

Did you think, when you started your career, that you would ever be that heavy?

Of course I knew that I would get bigger eventually. Especially with the people in the gym, when I was young, they would say that if I did the right things—if I ate correct and kept on training—it will all come by itself. If I continued to do the right things, they said I’d become a monster. I said that sounded cool, but I was 16 years old when they said that, but they had it right [laughs].

I remember, I think it was in one of your first bouts in the UFC, Joe Rogan said that when you grow into your body and physically mature, then you would be a real force to be reckoned with. Now that that is becoming a reality, how confident are you?

I’m really confident for my next fight. Like I said, I’ve improved a lot. My kick-boxing and my ground-game was already really technical, but because I’m getting bigger and stronger right now, I feel that my technique is really starting to work; when I give someone a push-kick or a jab or something, it has impact and I can feel it. Like I said, when I spar, I’m afraid to hit somebody with all of my power, because I know, if I hit someone on the chin then it will be good-night [laughs]. That’s a really good feeling.

What does that mean to you?

[Laughs] To me, it means that Travis Browne is going to have a bad night at UFC 130, that’s for sure.

What problems does Travis pose to you?

He’s a big test; he’s got solid power in his fists and he’s got some powerful kicks. He’s a tall guy, he’s a good striker, but I feel that my ground-game is far ahead of his. He’s got some good wrestling, but I’m not really afraid of wrestlers because my ground-game is good and my guard is good—they don’t really want to be in my guard, in my opinion. You saw that in my last fight, when McCorkle took me down because he didn’t want to stand up with me, so he decided to take me down and after a couple minutes I reversed him and he didn’t have a chance on the ground against me.

Do you feel Travis has anything to offer that you haven’t already seen?

I’m not underestimating him; he’s a good fighter. He’s four inches smaller than me—that’s a lot—but, he’s still 6’7” and he’s got a lot of power in his hands.  In my opinion, it’s going to be an awesome fight. He always comes to fight and I always come to fight; we both love to throw leather. It’s going to be an awesome fight for the fans, for sure. He puts it all on the line and I put it all on the line...I like to be in a brawl and I just like to fight. It’s been too long; I wish I could just close my eyes and be in there [laughs].

What do you think Travis’ game plan will be going into this fight?

I think he’ll want to put pressure on me and, maybe, take me down to try to ground-and-pound me, but I don’t think he will succeed with that [laughs].

Do you have a prediction for how it’s going to end?

I don’t really do predictions for fights, but I always come to finish my fight—it’s the same thing with this fight at UFC 130; I’ll be coming in to finish the fight and he’ll be coming in to finish the fight. Of course I’m confident and I feel that I’m going to win this fight. Either by submission or knock-out—I don’t care—wherever the fight goes, it’s fine with me. I’m going to be in there to finish.

What would a win at UFC 130 mean to you?

A win at UFC 130 would be my sixth win and my third straight, so that’s a good feeling. I want to put another streak together and maybe go up against the bigger boys—we’ll see. There’s no rush; I’m only 23 years old, so I’m going in there without any sort of pressure—I’m just going to fight my ass off and I’m going to do it with a good feeling, that’s for sure.

Assuming you win, where do you see yourself in the UFC’s heavyweight division?

If I win, I’ll be top 10. I think I’m around top 10 now—maybe in it, but maybe not yet. I think being in the top 10 in the UFC for someone who is only 23 years old and fighting in the heavyweight division isn’t that bad. With the future ahead—like I said, no rush and no pressure—I’m just going to keep on giving awesome fights to the fans. When I get bigger and learn more, I’m going to make a run for the belt, but there’s no rush for that. This fight is the first fight that I’ve had coaches for every single thing, you know? At first, we did almost everything in our own gym, but now I’ve got a BJJ coach, I’ve got a strength and conditioning coach, I’ve got a coach for the stand-up, I’ve got new guys to train with. It’s been an awesome camp and I can’t wait to go show how much I’ve improved.

What inspired you to make that move?

All the guys do it that way, you know? I figured that I should give it a try and see how it works. You need people who are the best in their discipline; for the stand-up, ground-game, wrestling, strength and conditioning, nutrition. You need people who know everything about all of those things and it has been really good. I’ve learned a lot about every aspect. Especially for the mental aspect of the game; I’ve learned so much and I know for myself that that’s good. Like I said, I can’t wait to show all of the technique that I’ve learned.

Do you feel that everything is really coming together at this point?

This is just the start, in my opinion. If I can keep going like this for five or six years, then I see myself being one of the best in the UFC. Also, with the strength and the weight that I added, my wrestling has been going very good, I’ve been throwing people around easier than before. Like you said, it’s coming together a little bit, but for me it’s only the start.

What are your goals in the sport at this point?

At this point? Right now, the only goal is to win my fight at UFC 130. For the future, I still have at least 12 or 13 years of competition in me—and maybe ever more. Of course I want to have the belt around my waist at some time. I’m only 23 and doing really good in the UFC, so I see myself with a belt in a couple years.

Is that what motivates you to train every day?

Every single fight motivates me to work hard. It’s my job—I need money—and I get paid for delivering exciting fights. Another motivation is the appreciation that I get from my fans. I’m not a big contender yet; it’s not like people are talking about me fighting for the belt after my next fight or anything, but I get fan mail. I read things on the Internet and people talk to me on Twitter and Facebook—it’s very motivating. People love my fights and there are a lot of people that really appreciate the way I fight—that motivates me, too.

What do the fans mean to you?

A lot. Of course, without the fans this sport wouldn’t be this big. I always want to deliver a good fight and give the fans what they came to see and what they paid for.

Have you thought about what you might like to do in 12 or 13 years when you’re doing fighting?

Well, I can’t see myself involved in anything but sports, so I think owning a gym or anything related to sports; making people better, making people stronger. Maybe something related to nutrition. I want to learn about everything that has to do with my sport. I want to start studying again so I will learn even more about my body. I want to be the best with everything, you know?

Are you excited to see what the future holds for you as a mixed martial artist?

Like I said, I can’t wait for the future, but right now I love my job, I love my life, I love Holland—things are going very well. The future can wait, and I’ll just do my thing. You never know what will happen—you might get injured—so, I enjoy every second of this and I try my best to improve every day.

Viv Groskop meets Kasey Edwards, who found out at the age of 32 that she only had one year left to conceive

Kasey Edwards had only gone for a routine smear test, but her gynaecologist offered to check her ovaries while she was there. One turned out to be polycystic – it was producing eggs that were faulty. The other was riddled with endometriosis. On top of that, her fallopian tubes were blocked. In terms of fertility, this was bad news: the doctor told Edwards she had only 12 months to conceive.

It was a huge shock. Edwards was 32. She liked her life as it was. "I've never been maternal. I didn't grow up wanting to be a mummy. The whole idea of motherhood seemed like a bad deal. Why would anyone do it?" A management consultant, she had seen what having a baby did to the careers of her colleagues. "And you don't have to Google very long to find out what it does to marriage and mental health."

She had been with her boyfriend, Chris, for less than a year. Only two weeks before seeing the doctor they had agreed not to discuss babies unless they were still together a year later.

But it was now or never. When her boyfriend arrived home from work that evening, she asked, "Can you love a barren woman?" He listened to her "talk in circles for a couple of hours" trying to come to a decision and then announced that he knew what to do: he wanted a baby. "What, just like that?" Yes, he replied. But because of his Catholic upbringing, he had a condition: it must be a natural conception – no IVF.

After trying naturally, Edwards found herself thinking: "Six months of trying and six months of failing. Perhaps I'm already infertile." At her next appointment, the doctor was blunt: "Six months ago you had one and a half ovaries. Now you've only got one. How much longer are you going to wait before you start IVF?" Chris broke and consented to IVF. They had at most a few months left, with poor-quality eggs. Edwards was at her lowest: "I really felt a failure. I cried every time I went to the IVF clinic because it felt like it wasn't the way it was supposed to be. I looked around when I was having the embryo implanted, and I thought, there are five people present for the conception of my child and three of them are wearing surgical masks. It's not the stuff of fairytales."

Violet was born 18 months ago. Chris, 38, is now her husband. They live in Melbourne, Australia but I meet Edwards for coffee in London, where she is promoting a book about her experiences. The book – 30-Something and the Clock is Ticking – has been written to help other women decide whether they want a baby at all and how soon they need to do something about it. But is Edwards really in a position to teach anybody? She only changed her mind about motherhood because her body gave her a sudden, early ultimatum; others, more fortunate with their health, may not feel that her experience holds a lesson for them.

In fact, her story is not unusual. There is a lot of noise around at the moment about giving women a "wake-up call". Earlier this year a study by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) warned couples against waiting. It emphasised that for women aged 35, fertility problems are six times more common than at 25. By the age of 40 a woman is "more likely to have a miscarriage than give birth". Up to 30% of 35-year-olds take a year to get pregnant, compared with 5% of 25-year-olds.

This is brutal news if you're in your 30s – or older – and haven't found a long-term partner. Or if you've just broken up with someone with whom you hoped to have children. But obstetricians and fertility experts can now increasingly be drawn on the optimum age to have a baby. Dr Tony Falconer, president of the RCOG, now says "between 20 and 35." (Dr Miriam Stoppard has said, hilariously, or perhaps not so hilariously, "Physiologically, the best age is 15".)

Of course, there is no such thing as the right age. But the point is, all the statistics point to a conundrum for young women. Despite all the advances in technology and the workplace, that ticking clock is still there and if you don't have its existence at the back of your mind, you may miss the chance to have a family.

The IVF expert Dr Gedis Grudzinskas says it's more difficult after the age of 27: "When women have got used to having a lot of freedom to run their lives as they wish, they do not want to hear that they may not be able to conceive. They perhaps need to compromise, find Mr Good Enough and have a family earlier."

With the benefit of hindsight – and having had the good fortune to have a man in tow at the time – Edwards agrees. "I think it's partly our own fault. We don't start our search soon enough. We get to 35 and think, better start looking around for a father. That will take six months at least. Then maybe 18 months to two years before you can bring up the baby subject. And before you know it you're 40 and have a 5% chance of having a baby."

While accepting that her own condition was unusual, she still feels there's a message for Everywoman. "It was a big hit to how I saw my relationship with the world. A lot of women don't understand how fragile their fertility is because they don't want to hear it. People always say to me, 'I know someone who had a baby at 39.' But I sat in IVF clinics with women who had been trying for years, and many of them were not going to get babies at the end of it."

Unwelcome though it may be, her analysis of the medical picture is broadly accurate. A 30-year-old woman stands a 22% chance of getting pregnant in any given month. By 35, that drops to 18%. By 40, it's 5%. By 45 you're down to 1%. By 25, women have lost 80% of the eggs they were born with. By 35 that has dropped to a 95% loss. (Maybe Miriam Stoppard was right after all.)

One reason women are willing to gamble over their fertility is that many are not even sure they want a baby at all. This is a bigger issue in Edwards's native Australia, where parental leave has only just been introduced. Edwards lost her job when she was pregnant, as did half of her mothers' group.

A lot of mothers she interviewed admitted regretting having children. "They said they preferred their lives before. It is such a huge sacrifice and it changes your life so much. There is a difference between loving your kids and loving the lifestyle that motherhood imposes. How could you possibly love cleaning up poo and vomit 24 hours a day? Can you love just being a mother? Not being promoted at work? Earning less money? I really struggle with the idea of being on duty all the time. I didn't realise that about motherhood."

Edwards has two more embryos in the freezer but is not sure she wants another child. "I noticed that all the women I spoke to who said they wished they didn't have kids had more than one. Is that the tipping point? Is that when it all becomes too hard and it's not worth it?"

Maybe this is a shift, Edwards implies, towards more women choosing to be child-free, or choosing younger motherhood. We often forget that having a first child over the age of 35 is a relatively recent social trend.

The number of mothers giving birth after their 40th birthday has trebled in the last 20 years: 27,000 babies born to mothers over 40 last year compared with 9,336 in 1989. We now think of "older motherhood" as mid- to late-40s, maybe even later.

The "ticking clock" dominated the cultural conversation for a while a decade ago when Sylvia Ann Hewlett's Baby Hunger: The New Battle for Motherhood came out. Baby Hunger carried many of the same messages as Edwards: "Don't delay, you'll regret it." It created a media firestorm in the US, but the book didn't sell. Women didn't want to read about the babies they wouldn't have. In this country, Kate Figes wrote in May 2002 that it was "another polemic, telling what we already know". Figes quoted a local bookshop manager, who said: "If women want to get pregnant in their 30s it's much too scary and depressing to read something that says they might not achieve it. It's a mission for them to get pregnant, so they buy technical, practical books on infertility."

Then the mood moved on. There was a backlash and Hewlett's warnings were seen as scaremongering. Stories about advances in egg freezing and "Bridget Jones babies" became popular, peddling the idea that if you froze your eggs in your 20s you could wait as long as you like. (That technology, if it will ever exist, is still light years away.)

Positive-thinking books such as Elizabeth Gregory's Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood became popular, with chapter titles such as Fifty is the New Thirty.

Now with Edwards's "now or never" mantra we've come full circle. There is even an alarm clock on a woman's stomach on the front cover. The book is cleverly marketed, and it's a fun read. But I can't help wondering if Edwards is asking the impossible: for other women to make themselves face a decision that she only faced because her gynaecologist forced her to. "When I found out, I felt really angry. A bit like a spoilt brat. It was the first time in my life that I couldn't do what I wanted. We grow up thinking our life is full of endless opportunities and possibilities."

Her message is that life isn't. But don't we all have to discover that for ourselves?

Thirtysomething and the Clock is Ticking: What Happens When You Can No Longer Ignore the Baby Issue (Mainstream, £7.99). To order a copy for £6.39 with free UK p&p;, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

“We have accumulated years and years of ignorant people,” Portuguese industrialist Belmiro de Azevedo said.

(HT: dalje.com)

The recent economic problems faced by Portugal brought an incredibly bad statistic to light. Only 25% of Portugal’s adult workforce has completed High School. They are a nation that literally self-sabotages. Their membership in the EU prevents their societal retreat to the stone ages. If they were attached to Asia, South America or Africa, large numbers of their people would already suffer starvation.

It is easy to laugh at Portugal and belittle the bumbling Eurocrats all the more. Until you read up on American success stories like the one in Detroit, MI. Of course, if you were from Detroit, there would be a non-zero probability that someone would have to read those achievements to you. 47% of the adult population of Detroit, MI, cannot read.

The Detroit Regional Workforce Fund attempts to bring struggling adults back into the modern economy. Part and parcel to that effort, they study the current state of that workforce. What they describe below would elicit a sad, and knowing nod from Belmiro de Azevedo.

The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations. We also know that of the 200,000 adults who are functionally illiterate, approximately half have a high school diploma or GED, so this issue cannot be solely addressed by a focus on adult high-school completion. The remaining 100,000 of these functionally illiterate adults (age 25 and older) lack a high school diploma or GED, another prerequisite for employment success.

-Page 2, Addressing Detroit’s Basic Skills Crisis, The Detroit Regional Workforce Fund.

Several things here strike hard.
1. A major US city has a large collection of totally unread people who are unable to meaningfully join the US workforce. On a day that we learn that the US economy generated 244,000 new jobs last month, these people are helpless to get in on this game at all.
2. Half of these illiterates have High School Diplomas. Why?
3. The other half does not. Why should they bother?
4. What does a high school diploma actually mean at this point? Does it indicate learning or merely docile compliance?

I am reminded of an old column by Fred Reed. He used to ride with the DC Metro Police Department and write about it for the Washington Times. Sometimes he went to other cities as well. He described a scene from The Chicago Projects below.

It was strange to see the contrast between the eagerness of the kids to meet a real po-leese man and the contempt of the gang members, the blank-eyed stares they affect. It wasn’t pleasant to know that in a decade the wide-eyed tykes would be the drug dealers. Kids look up to their big brothers, however unwisely, and want to imitate them. The dealers would let the junior crew work first as lookouts, or let them go get drugs from stashes. Step by step they would be swallowed by the drug trade. The girls would end up pregnant and on welfare. This is the pattern. And there is nothing in these sad towns to prevent it. Ten years, twenty years from now the same cycle will play itself out, again and again, unless something happens that no one can imagine.

- (HT: Fredoneverything.net)

Well, Mr. Reed some people did try to do something. They were DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and his Chancellor of DC Schools, Michelle Rhee. Rhee confronted teachers unions and closed failed schools. She dismissed large numbers of incompetent teachers. This enraged the old boy network in US Secondary Education.

As a result of Rhee shaking up a failed bureaucracy, Mayor Fenty was sent packing and Chancellor Rhee followed him out the door. However, Michelle Rhee continued to participate in education reform by founding Studentsfirst.org. This group lobbies for greater teacher accountability and student-based education reform.

The teachers unions and educrats hate Michelle Rhee. They are doing everything they can to destroy her. The Daily Beast has assigned both Diane Ravitch and Dana Goldstein to pour on the vitriol.

A bunch of teachers cheated and tried to improve the test scores of their children. This allowed these disreputable individuals to avoid punishment for poor student performance. This is a bad thing. A lot of these teachers should be fired. So why is this used as a fulcrum to attack Rhee?

Because Rhee expected the teachers to have taught the material and measured the teacher performances against student test performance. By expecting the students to actually pass these tests Rhee created moral hazard. Thus, when teachers erase wrong answers to pop up their scores, Michelle Rhee is obviously to blame.

Getting rid of the standards works much better. The union is happy, the teacher stays employed and two out of three isn’t bad. In Detroit, the kids are too dumb to read anyway. They can’t even read a newspaper, see how badly their schools are performing and get mad about it. Fewer complaints indicate satisfied customers. It’s a darn good thing nobody like Michelle Rhee showed up to upset the applecart.

As I write, Osama Bin Laden feeds crabs in the newly-christened Martyr’s Sea. He is dead and his menace has been blessedly removed. Yet, within our very own borders, a menace exists that has all but destroyed the futures of millions of Americans. They have no life, no hope and perhaps a High School diploma that they are too gob-smacking ignorant to even read. I can’t help but feel that Al Qaeda wouldn’t have even been sadistic enough to have done to any US city what our secondary education profession has successfully done to Detroit and much of the rest of inner city America.

But none of us should worry. The IMF just bailed out Portugal. Nobody needs to worry about standards. Bailing out Detroit, Chicago, DC, Baltimore, New York, Richmond, and 140 other US SMSAs should just be a snap.

I'm a Kansas City Chiefs fan so I've had an up close look at the JaMarcus Russell debacle in the AFC West the last few years. As ESPN's Bill Williamson pointed out, it is the one-year anniversary of the Oakland Raiders releasing Russell after making him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 NFL draft.

So what's JaMarcus been up to the last year? Here's a quick run down:

-After his release, no teams showed interest in him for several months. Offseason workouts were going on throughout the offseason so, if someone was legitimately interested in him, you'd think they'd want to get him in their offseason program. They didn't.

-The New York Jets briefly showed some interest in him before the season began. That ended after he...

-....was arrested on possession of codeine without a prescription. We now know that as "purple drank". A grand jury has since opted not to indict him on those charges. 

-In November, he had workouts with the Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins, both teams who appeared to have a quarterback need. Neither signed him.

-The season ended with no team signing him. If anyone thought he had a future, they would have considered signing him to keep him on their offseason roster. They didn't.

-Last month, his "life coach" fired him. Yes, someone he hired actually fired him.

-He went undrafted in the latest UFL draft. That would be his best chance of playing football again, I think, but even the UFL declined to draft him.

So...JaMarcus Russell back in the NFL at some point?

Doubtful.

It's been a big week of stadium news for the Minnesota Vikings. It was announced that the Dome Will Rise again in July, and it appears that the Vikings have put together a stadium deal with the state and county. Though this is not a done deal.

If the Vikings had moved their franchise to Los Angeles instead of squeezing the state of Minnesota for a new stadium, it would have obviously changed their rivalry with the Green Bay Packers. I don't expect the state of Minnesota is getting a good deal out of this. Other than they get to keep their NFL team, which has a lot of non-monetary value. I expect the Vikings and NFL will pay for about one-third of the cost, while all the extra revenue will flow to the Vikings. The rich get richer.

But the new stadium won't be at the site of the Metrodome, or anywhere near downtown. Tom Pelissero reports that it will be located in Arden Hills, MN, at the site of an old munitions plant. Insert your own bomb joke here. It's about 13 miles from the Metrodome.

While I'm familiar with downtown Minneapolis, I've never been to Arden Hills. Is anyone familiar with this area? Do you think this will be a good location? Or is just any location still in Minnesota a good location at this point?

Should journalists be complicit in the faking of images, even if the situation appears harmless?

And, having been involved in the fakery, should those journalists then dump on the people that staged the pictures on their behalf?

It appears that President Obama, after making his historic speech about the killing of Osama bin Laden, to a single TV camera then repeated the exercise by pretending to speak in order to satisfy the wishes of stills photographers.

This is routine stuff in the media world, but some US journalists clearly think it's inappropriate because it has become the subject of some comment.

For instance, the leading US journalism institute, Poynter, devoted a lengthy piece to it under the headline Reuters, AP photojournalists describe staging of Obama photo.

It centres on a blogged report by Reuters photographer Jason Reed in which he describes the pretence:

"As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room...

Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the president then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us."

That means, says the Poynter writer, Al Tompkins, "the photograph that appeared in many newspapers Monday morning of Obama speaking may have been the staged shot."

And his point? As Tompkins readily concedes "this type of staging has been going on for decades."

He quotes AP's photographer, Pablo Martinez Monsivais, as saying there was nothing unethical about it, adding: "We fully disclose in our captions that this is a re-enactment."

Poynter's "senior faculty for visual journalism", Kenny Irby, explained the technical problems of allowing still photographers to shoot during a live broadcast - noise and the teleprompter being int the way.

There's more before we reach this po-faced paragraph:

"This practice of re-enacting a historic speech flies directly in the face of the National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics, which includes this relevant passage: 'Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.'"

Then he quotes John Harrington, president of the White House News Photographers Association, as saying:

"I know we are splitting hairs here, but the White House photographers covering those re-enactments did not stage, request or direct them. They are covering an event. They photograph what they are presented with."

Splitting hairs indeed. In fact, Reuters and the AP did disclose the re-enactment in their captions - well, sort of - but many newspapers failed to point that out. So what?

Sources: Poynter/NW32.com/Reuters blog

PaperPhone is a flexible cellphone prototype that can store music, e-books and make calls just like any other smartphone - but what's the point?

Date: May 6th 2011 9:59a.m.
Contributed by: shepherd

When the renovated National Museum of China reopened to the public in April, Beijing’s architecture buffs had a flashback to the heady days of 2008, when every other week seemed to bring a new “iconic” venue, each with its own superlatives. The new National Museum, for its part, is now the largest museum in the world.

But only two days after the opening, The New York Times ran an article that roundly criticized the museum for failing to confront the scars of China’s recent historical traumas. The exhibits on modern history, the piece pointed out, sanitized or completely avoided mentioning such sweeping events as the Cultural Revolution.

But do critics who highlight the gaps in the museum’s exhibits risk missing the point? Kirk Denton, Ohio State University professor and authority on Chinese museums, says there’s more to the story.

“I do think it is important to point out that the existence of the exhibit is, in and of itself, a significant step forward,” he told City Weekend. “For the first time in the history of the museum, there is an exhibit dedicated to ‘contemporary history,’” Denton said, referring to the entire period since 1949.

Official museums in many countries present narratives of the past that reflect the preoccupations and political sensitivities of their minders. Both Denton and the Times piece point out that museums in the U.S. have often avoided sensitive issues like slavery and treatment of Native Americans. The difference in China, Denton says, is that “the state/party plays a direct and substantial role in shaping how the past is remembered and narrated.”

The museum’s curators are surely aware of its flaws and omissions. With massive sections of the museum still empty, maybe there’s still room for a full reckoning of ...

There is no doubt who is the underdog heading into the Showtime pay-per-view bout between "Sugar" Shane Mosley and Manny Pacquiao. If the fact that Mosley currently sits at +500 at the sports books (for the uninitiated that means a bet of $100 would win $500) wasn't enough for you, a simple search of predictions for the fight would bring almost nothing but bad news for Shane.

In fact, Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated spent an entire article describing just how pointless it was for fans to hope for a Mosley upset. From the piece:

You will hear he is a former three-division champion with a pair of the fastest hands in the sport.

You will hear he has concussive, two-fisted power and be directed to a YouTube video of Mosley bludgeoning the iron-jawed Antonio Margarito in 2010.

...

You won't hear much about Mosley's fast-fading skills, how Floyd Mayweather wiped the mat with him last May and Sergio Mora -- Sergio Mora? -- pushed him to a draw last September.

You won't hear how Top Rank cherry-picked Mosley from a list of more formidable candidates (headlined by Juan Manuel Marquez) in a less-than-subtle attempt to use Mosley's name to sell a few more pay-per-view buys.

First, let me say that talk of Shane's speed should be forgotten at this point. During his rise through the lightweight division and eventual move to welterweight he did possess rare speed combined with shocking power. His willingness to use that speed in combinations that moved from body to head with lightning speed was amazing to watch.

Shane Mosley in 2011 is not a man in possession of anything beyond slightly above average speed. 

But allow me to address the Juan Manuel Marquez point. Marquez is a lightweight. At featherweight and super featherweight, Marquez gave Manny all he could handle. But this is not 2008 and Manny Pacquiao is not the same fighter he was when he was checking in at under 130 pounds. This is a 147 pound animal. When Marquez attempted to move up to welterweight for a bout with Floyd Mayweather Jr. he claimed he lost too much speed and dropped down to lightweight.

Let us not forget that the build-up to that fight was filled with talk that Mayweather was simply too big for Marquez. If Mayweather was too big for JMM, what does that make Manny at this point? As pointed out by both Mosley and Showtime announcer Al Bernstein, if Marquez and Mosley were to fight tomorrow at welterweight it would be Shane who likely came into the bout as the favorite.

As much as Mannix and others may attempt to dismiss Shane's chances by playing up the poor showings against Mayweather and Sergio Mora, you can't dismiss the stylistic differences between them and Pacquiao. If Manny makes the mistake of bulling forward he can be hurt. Shane stung Mayweather badly in their clash last year and he does possess the kind of power to do it to Pacquiao. For all the talk of his granite chin, Manny was buzzed by Margarito in his last bout. Mosley is not likely to be the kind of man who lets his opponent off the hook if he can finish the bout.

The oddsmakers have a line set that is fair. Shane does not have a tremendously good chance of pulling off a win Saturday night, but he is still a dangerous fighter and one who deserves not only Pacquiao's respect, but that of the fans and media alike.

Now they are asking for a new purchase contract saying 90 day period has expired, Closing date states 30 days after lender approval. We just sent an addendum stating that all parties agree that contract is still binding (per agent and title company, this is what they are requesting). Will this suffice? Will the bank accept such a contract or deem it null at this point? Any advice? This is taking so long and doesnt seem to be going anywhere!

Chuck Bass' outburst at the end of Monday's Gossip Girl was extreme even by his standards, leaving him at rock bottom and close to irredeemable for some fans.

Intentionally or not, Chuck lost control and he hurt Blair. Physically.

The emotional toll this took on B was likely far worse, too. Executive producer Josh Safran tells E! of the shocking ending to "The Princesses and the Frog":

"We feel it's very important to know that she is not scared - if anything, she is scared for Chuck, and what he might do to himself - but she is never afraid of what he might do to her."

"Leighton (Meester) and I were very clear about that."

Moreover, Chuck is due for a "reckoning," just as soon as he comes to his senses, which will take in the midst of the "thrilling" and "uplifting" two-part finale.

Curious as to what that entails? Here's Josh's full Q&A with E! ...

I thought it was interesting that Chuck actually grabbed her and that the consequence of that fight was Blair had the most perfect, beautiful, dainty injury, which are two symbolically significant things. Did this moment verge on abuse? What was going on in this scene?

The way we viewed it, I think it's very clear that Blair is not afraid in those moments, for herself. They have a volatile relationship, they always have, but I do not believe—or I should say we do not believe—that it is abuse when it's the two of them. Chuck does not try to hurt Blair. He punches the glass because he has rage, but he has never, and will never, hurt Blair. He knows it and she knows it, and I feel it's very important to know that she is not scared—if anything, she is scared for Chuck—and what he might do to himself, but she is never afraid of what he might do to her. Leighton and I were very clear about that.

Chuck is usually defined by his cold, emotional distance, but here he's out of control and slobbering drunk. What is he doing?

This whole season has been a struggle for Chuck to understand who he is... He opens the season as Henry Prince, because he did not want to be Chuck Bass anymore. Even when he got surer footing, and he was like, "OK, I can be Chuck Bass again," he was dealt another curve ball, the story with his father and the Thorpes, and looking at, "What am I born from?" The conflict for the year for Chuck has been "Who am I? What am I?" And you have to hit rock bottom before you can rise up again. That is our trajectory for Chuck, right now, and for this season.

Is this rock bottom, or is there further to go?

I would like to say "Wait and see," but I would be hard-pressed to think that there is any more rock bottom than this. And by the way, it was a conscious decision to make the rock bottom episode 20 and not 22, so that there's still room to go.

So at the moment Chuck is sort of a basket case?

He needed to go out of control - sometimes you have to go out of control to take stock and look at yourself and realize who you are.

I have to imagine that the morning after he's also going to look at Blair and see that he caused the world's most picturesque wound and react to that accordingly. Where do you go in the next two episodes in terms of Chuck's emotional arc?

There is definitely a reckoning.

"Reckoning" could mean a lot of things. Is Chuck going to be in a gunfight?

I can't say, but you saw who Raina called at the end of the episode. There's two things that we've shown that can touch Chuck's Achilles' heel, and they are Blair and Jack Bass. And to have both of them in the same episode, what's that gonna be?

Ah, Chuck…He's such a classic romantic hero, like Rhett Butler, sort of strong enough that you can stretch him pretty far.

Sure, we talk about these classic movies all the time, and sometimes the audience just likes it better when it's The Philadelphia Story, or Breakfast at Tiffany's, but you have to talk about these other movies as well. Each character can't just be in romantic comedies all the time.

He's always had that Gothic thing, and those guys are always imbued with a dark side in addition to their vulnerability about their girlfriends. Would you say that the next two episodes are a time of strength for Chuck or a time of weakness?

All I will say is that I'm sure you've seen the picture of Chair on chairs. That's not a dream sequence; they're smiling, and you know…How about that?

Where's Blair, emotionally, at this point? She's with her prince, but Chuck said to her face that we all knew she wasn't going to get with him—plus, he's just a guest star. What is she telling herself at the end of this episode?

Blair's always believed in fairy tales, and she even opens this season talking about fairy tales. It was always our intention to let Blair have a fairy tale, but the rose in a fairy tale still has thorns on it. Chuck may be - in last night's episode - the thorns for that rose; but Blair is moving towards accepting that she can have a fairy tale.

I'm hearing a lot of, "If you go back to the beginning of the season, you'll see that we did some stuff here." Can we assume that as fans that if we went back to the first part of the season, we'd see the seeds planted that are going to come to fruition in the finale?

Absolutely, it is very, very much of a piece, this season. We just made that choice and stuck with it.

As for the finale, do you like to end things on cliffhangers? Do you like to tie things up in bows?

The next episode is actually a two-parter, episodes 21 and 22 [are one story and] take place in a little more than one night. And then there's little bit more jumping ahead like we have in the past. There are definitely cliffhangers. I'm trying to think, do we tie stuff up in bows? Well, every bow has a string that someone can pull, some I'm not entirely sure if we tied up anything, but I feel like this year, more than ever before, the map of the next season will become very clear in the finale. So even when there are cliffhangers in this finale, they very much tell a story of where we are going, as opposed to shooting Chuck and not knowing if he's alive.

In that two-part, what one scene or moment are you most excited for people to see?

There's never one moment. You're asking the wrong person, because I'm proud of and stand by every storylines, even the ones that people don't love and the ones that don't get accepted the way we hope they will. I have to stand by both "the good and the bad." I really love both episode 21 and 22. Coming to the end of the season is always really fun for us, because we really do get to look back and tie things together... the only thing I'm sad about is that I wish they were airing on the same night, because I do think that 21 and 22 - because they're the first time we've ever done a two-parter - are really complementary. At the same time, I would love to just be an audience member watching, because 21 ends on a cliffhanger. Watching and waiting a whole week could be superfun; we don't get that luxury because we know what's going to happen. There's lovely moments and thrilling moments in both parts, and I think it's really going to feel like a ride. Last year's finale felt like a descent into despair, because that's what was happening with Chuck and Jenny; this one feels more like a thrill ride with happy uplifting moments and happy scary moments, but not necessarily despair.

En Route New York, New York   

10:27 A.M. EDT

MR. CARNEY:  Good morning.  I don't have any announcements, so let’s get started.

Q    What does the President want to do today?  What does he want to see?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, the President believes it’s appropriate and fitting to travel to New York this week, in the wake of the successful mission to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, in order to recognize the terrible loss that New York suffered on 9/11, and to acknowledge the burden that the families of the victims, the loved ones of the victims, have been carrying with them since 9/11, almost 10 years, and in an effort to perhaps help New Yorkers and Americans everywhere to achieve a sense of closure with the death of Osama bin Laden.

Q    Can you talk about tomorrow’s troop rally in Kentucky and sort of the tone that the President is looking to strike there versus today?

MR. CARNEY:  What the President almost always says when he’s asked about the toughest decisions he has to make is that it’s sending men and women into battle, into harm’s way.  And the successful mission against Osama bin Laden is a monumental achievement, but the fact remains that we're still at war, that we have 100,000 combat personnel in Afghanistan, we have troops in a support-and-assist role in Iraq, and we have U.S. military men and women in other places around the globe and, in some cases, in difficult situations.

So it’s important to acknowledge that, and for Americans to remember that despite the elimination of bin Laden, we're still extremely dependent upon and grateful to our military men and women for what they do.

Q    Will there be a status update on the efforts in Afghanistan or any sort of policy discussion?

MR. CARNEY:  I don't expect the President to make any policy announcements about Afghanistan or AfPak, as we say.  As I've said, and others, that the President’s policy remains unchanged. In many ways, while the mission against bin Laden was a singular event, it was part of a general intensification of our focus on the AfPak region, on the need to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, which was the primary goal of the President’s policy in the AfPak region, and it was reflective of a general success that we've been having in taking out al Qaeda members and terrorists in the region.

Q    Jay, you used the term, “closure,” there in your first answer.  Does the President think that coming to New York, meeting with first responders, going to Ground Zero, can add to a sense of closure for New Yorkers that they wouldn't have if he simply made his statements from the White House?

MR. CARNEY:  I think that it’s important for the President of the United States, given the traumatic events that New York suffered on September 11, 2001, to return in the wake of the successful mission against bin Laden.  He will be back for the 10-year anniversary.  And this is a significant event this week, and he looks forward to meeting privately with family members, meeting with first responders, in what is a bitter-sweet moment in many ways.

Q    Can you talk about the latest revision to the Sunday narrative that in fact it was not a 40-minute firefight, as White House officials had initially said?

MR. CARNEY:  I don't have any updates on the narrative.  As I said yesterday, we've been extremely forthcoming in trying to provide as many facts as we could to you as we’d gotten them.  The nature of the mission, the nature of what happened Sunday, combined with the effort to get that information quickly resulted in the need to clarify some facts, which I think, honestly, is to our credit that when we discovered that clarification was needed we did put them out.  But the --

Q    But the White House has not clarified this point on the record.

MR. CARNEY:  Again, as I said yesterday, the Defense Department can take questions about -- you have about further details on the mission or clarifications.  We're still in a process of gathering all the facts of that operation.  And the broader point here is that a group of extraordinary U.S. personnel flew into a foreign country at the dead of night and executed a mission and achieved a goal -- executed a mission flawlessly and achieved a goal that had eluded the United States of America for almost 10 years.

Q    Can I ask you about the family members?  If any expressed a desire to see the picture of Osama bin Laden, would you be willing to provide it, and have you brought a picture today in case of that eventuality?

MR. CARNEY:  I'm not aware that anybody brought any pictures and I don't have any updates on that.

Q    Well, on the picture, yesterday in his interview that you shared with us, the President used the phrase, “spike the football,” in discussing his decision not to release the photos. Does the President believe that Americans who want to see the pictures are looking to do a victory dance?

MR. CARNEY:  No, but he believes that there is ample precedent or evidence in the past of pictures like this being used in a way that is not helpful to national security interests of the United States; that is not reflective of who the American people are, as the President said, that we don't trot out photos as trophies.  And since we established beyond any doubt the identity of Osama bin Laden, the fact that he was killed, there is no need to release those photos.  And on balance, as I said, there are certainly arguments for -- and reasonable arguments to be made for release, but on balance, the President feels very strongly that the cons outweigh the pros.

Q    Any updates to the schedule at this point?

MR. CARNEY:  We will provide you updates as we move along throughout the day.  If there are changes to the schedule that you already have we’ll provide you that information as we go along.

Q    Any updates to the search for a Commerce Secretary?

MR. CARNEY:  I do not.

Q    There were reports today about -- on the budget talks, that Republicans were kind of seemingly downsizing some of their ambitions on what they were going to seek from these talks that are beginning today.  Do you have any indication of Republicans backing away from Medicare demands or any reaction to some of the stories that were out there today?

MR. CARNEY:  I read those stories.  All I would say is that the necessity to set aside maximalist positions is paramount if you’re trying to reach common ground and find a consensus around some achievable goal.  So we welcome any efforts, indications, that parties to these negotiations are searching for common ground, and look forward to these talks getting underway and to having them produce a result.

Q    Can you describe how the Vice President has prepared for the talks?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, having worked for him, I know he likes to dive deep and I’m sure he spent a lot of -- in terms of the issues, I’m sure he spent a lot of time with a lot of paper and with his Chief of Staff, Bruce Reed, and with the economic team, just mastering the facts of the situation.  That’s how he approaches these things.  So -- but beyond that, I don’t have any updates.

Q    Thanks.

END
10:37 A.M. EDT

Okay, it's an analogy, you know!

At one point, he compared his opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage to his reluctance to use a new kind of putter.

“It’s like in golf,” he said. “A lot of people — I don’t want this to sound trivial — but a lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive,” said Mr. Trump, a Republican. “It’s weird. You see these great players with these really long putters, because they can’t sink three-footers anymore. And, I hate it. I am a traditionalist. I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.”

He said that, should he run, he would offer himself as a “conservative with a big heart.”

Now, do you understand the analogy, wise guy? Before you get your panties in a twist? Think about it!

What's his main point? He's saying it just looks weird to him — the long putter and the same-sex marriage. It bugs him. He's not saying he hates gay people. It's the casual "I hate it" that means "It drives me nuts." Now, it's not all about him and how things make him feel — not if he means to acquire political power. (Which I'm sure he doesn't, even though he's saying he's decided "in my mind" to run for President. Or is it that he's decided to run for President in his mind?)

Anyway, I think that putter thing is rather self-deprecating. He's confessing that his mind has limits, but he sees and talks openly about the limits of his mind. That's actually refreshing!

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One corps [sic] official said the four floodways along the Mississippi River remind him of Soviet Union-era collectivization, taking individual property for the greater good.

What else can you say, at some point? Last year, the post-Canadiens depression was slightly alleviated by Brooks Laich’s Roosevelt Bridge tire change, but Laich could have single-handedly wrestled the team flight to the ground in an emergency landing while blindfolded and performing CPR on a labrador puppy and people would still be depressed this time around.

I mean, a friend of mine e-mailed me Wednesday night after she was done crying. This team is making people actually weep. Life is hard enough without your sports teams making you cry.

Read full article >>

Did you know that we will be hitting our debt ceiling by May 16?  

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal that the Treasury remains confident that Congress will raise the limit.  

Really?

Let’s put this in perspective....

If I were to run up all my credit cards, take out a second or third mortgage on my house, and continue to spend like I won the lottery, what would you say?

What if I then went ahead and borrowed money from my friends, relatives, and some of my enemies and then continued to spend like crazy. What would you say?

How about I then steal my children’s money and continue to spend what would you say?

Do you think the bank would raise the credit limits on my credit cards at this point? I don’t! I think I would have to file Chapter 11 to eliminate my debt and then get someone who can help me get my spending and savings under control. Otherwise, I would be out on the street.

So my question is, why on earth will the govt raise the debt limit when we are stretched so far already? Instead, how about cutting some programs (pork)? We’ve all be asked to tighten our belts. It’s time our Federal govt does what they are asking us to do. They are not helping us or the country by this irresponsible spending.

We really need people in power that have a good sense of fiscal responsibility.

I believe the very simplistic view is that by going after the oil companies, they are going to relent and lower gas prices. Thus, their profits will return to "normal" levels along with our gas prices. We want a return to the good old days of sub-$2/gallon gasoline. But most of the proposals that are being floated won't do anything to relieve high gas prices, although they may have an impact on oil company profits. If that's the case, then what is the point? I would say that it is simply feeling like justice was served. We want to get even with Big Oil.

read more

The Death of a Terrorist: A Turning Point? [nytimes.com] provides an overview of the wide and varied mix of emotions following Osama bin Laden's recent death.

Gathered from about 10,510 unique comments, the dotplot diagram contrasts the responses with negative (left) versus positive (right) emotions, against whether they consider the death significant (top) or insignificant (bottom) in terms of being a turning point in the current war on terror. Squares with darker shades represent multiple comments on the same emotion versus significance location. Although its seems the commenters were allowed to plot their comments themselves (?), some interesting patterns can be observed, both in terms of outliers are a straightforward correlation between the positive emotions and the expectation that a significant turning point is reached.

Yes, it's true: I have a Twitter feed. I'm not proud of this, mind you. Mostly, I use it to pimp posts here, or for the occasional one-liner. (If you don't follow me, I won't be insulted, and you won't be missing much. Or, um, anything.)

Anyway, I point this out only because I've lately been swamped with zombie followers who appear to be using their Twitter accounts to spam.

And when I say "zombie followers" ... well, here's one, on the left, and the other isn't following me, but is followed by others who are following me. (Got that? There will be a quiz later.):




Is it really easier to Photoshop in glasses and a new background than just steal another head shot for your fake account? Has technology progressed to that point?

It is no secret that consumers are suffering from very high gasoline prices. And as a result of these high prices, ExxonMobil just reported a first-quarter profit of $10.7 billion — 69 percent higher than a year ago. The national level of disgust and anger is approaching record levels as we watch the loss of our hard-earned dollars become Big Oil’s gain. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Before discussing how to deal with this, we should first discuss what it is that we are actually trying to do. I believe the very simplistic view is that by going after the oil companies, they are going to relent and lower gas prices. Thus, their profits will return to ‘normal’ levels along with our gas prices. We want a return to the good old days of sub-$2/gallon gasoline. But most of the proposals that are being floated won’t do anything to relieve high gas prices, although they may have an impact on oil company profits. If that’s the case, then what is the point? I would say that it is simply feeling like justice was served. We want to get even with Big Oil.

Take Their Subsidies
It seems preposterous that an industry as profitable as the oil industry receives subsidies. But does anyone know what they actually are? CNN just did a story breaking them down, and you might be surprised at some of the other companies that benefit from these ‘Big Oil’ subsidies.

But we should also ask “What is the the subsidy supposed to accomplish, and what is the impact of removing it?” It isn’t a question of whether a company making billions in profits “needs” a subsidy. Even companies that make billions of dollars evaluate projects on a case-by case-basis. Some of those projects may have poor economics, and companies won’t use their billions to subsidize projects with poor paybacks. So the question is, “Is the subsidy encouraging the company to do something that we would like them to do, and that they otherwise would not do? Is the net impact to create more jobs and tax revenues?” Those are the questions that should be asked, and if the answer to those questions is “No”, then that subsidy would appear to be a waste of money.

Section 199 – The Biggest Subsidy
The biggest ‘oil company subsidy’ — amounting to $1.7 billion per year for the oil industry — is a manufacturer’s tax deduction that is explained in Section 199 of the IRS code. This is a tax credit designed to keep manufacturing in the U.S., but it isn’t limited to oil companies. It is a tax credit enjoyed by ethanol companies (have you ever heard anyone call it an ethanol subsidy?), computer companies (we are subsidizing Microsoft and Google!) and foreign companies that operate factories in the U.S.

One never hears of proposals to entirely do away with Section 199. Apparently, since this tax credit was designed as an incentive to keep manufacturing in the U.S., many would feel that eliminating it for all companies would provide less incentive for them to keep their factories in the U.S. Some of the same people apparently don’t believe this reasoning will apply with the oil industry.

So, the proposal is to disallow a tax credit to Texas-based ExxonMobil for their U.S.-based refining operations, while leaving it in place for foreign-based firms like Mercedes, BMW, and Toshiba that operate factories in the U.S. After all, as one staffer from the Center for American Progress smugly (and naively) put it in the CNN story, “What are they going to do, move the oil field to the North Sea?” Exactly. They are trapped and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. They can’t move their oil fields, so we can tax them silly. Nor can they move their drilling rigs or refining operations. Wait, I guess they could move those, but will they? Well, this is the same model Hugo Chavez used to mismanage Venezuela’s oil industry into the ground and dry up foreign investment in the oil industry there. He thought that since foreign oil companies were trapped, he could tax them at will. Instead, they just left.

If we make it less profitable for oil companies to operate here than in foreign countries, surely they wouldn’t shift operations out of the U.S. as Halliburton did in 2007. OK, they might, but so what? It’s Big Oil we are talking about here. Who cares if they leave the U.S.? At least if we shift those refining jobs in Texas, Louisiana, and California to the new refineries being built in Saudi Arabia, we will no longer have to listen to reports of windfall profits, since Saudi Aramco doesn’t publicly disclose their profits.

Other Subsidies
Another category of subsidies is a percentage depletion allowance. It is worth about $1 billion a year for U.S. oil companies. Again, it isn’t limited to oil companies; other extractive industries are able to take the percentage depletion allowance. It is similar to a depreciation allowance in other businesses. What will be the net impact of eliminating this subsidy? It will make the costs of operating a well somewhat higher, which will probably mean that wells will stop producing at an earlier stage than before. After all, over time as wells are depleted the oil becomes more expensive to extract. It stands to reason that if the costs are even higher, the wells won’t produce as long. However, much higher oil prices should provide an incentive to continue producing the wells longer than if oil prices are lower. But oil prices rise and fall, and the net impact will be to make an oil well in the U.S. less competitive against an oil well in Saudi Arabia. This will impact small producers more than Big Oil, but at least it will help realize the goal of getting more of our oil from foreign countries where we don’t have to read about windfall profits.

Another category is the foreign tax credit. Again, you may be surprised to find out that this ‘oil subsidy’ isn’t limited to the oil industry. But it is worth $850 million to the oil industry, and is designed to make sure that profits that have been taxed by foreign countries aren’t taxed again when they are returned to the U.S. Eliminating the foreign tax credit will provide an incentive for oil companies to keep the profits out of the U.S. and reinvest them abroad, helping to accomplish the goal of shrinking the U.S. oil industry.

The final category of subsidies covered by the CNN story is intangible drilling costs (IDC). Once more, like all other industries the oil industry is allowed to deduct the cost of things like wages and is worth $780 million per year. The story suggests that most businesses have to take these deductions over the lifetime of an investment, but the oil companies get to take these deductions all in the first year. Someone in the oil business recently explained how the IDC works at The Oil Drum:

“The elimination of the IDC tax credit would have a huge immediate effect. The IDC is a significant incentive to drill. About 40% of the cost to drill a well is IC (intangible costs). The IDC allows a company to deduct that amount from the taxes owed…not the earned income. So if a company owes the feds $100 million in taxes and spends $100 million in IC it can subtract $35 million (IC X 0.35) from its taxes. Defiantly a huge break. So they only pay $65 million in taxes. But take note: the ICD doesn’t increase the company’s revenue or profits: it allows them to spend more money drilling. If they don’t spend it drilling new wells they lose it. That’s the logic behind the IDC tax credit: instead of letting the govt spend the money the oil industry gets to drill more wells. That was once considered a good thing. The effect on drilling activity: the economics of each project is evaluated on its own merits. This evaluation includes utilizing the IDC. Eliminate it and a number of projects become sub-economic and won’t be drilled.”

So the IDC credit clearly provides some extra incentive to drill, but are those extra incentives needed? President Obama says no, except in his recent energy policy speech in which he said the U.S. should be “finding and producing more oil at home” and that his administration would “provide new and better incentives that promote rapid, responsible development” of oil and gas. One might think an incentive that encourages companies to offset taxes owed by drilling more wells might be just such an incentive, but apparently the Obama administration knows better.

Bottom Line – 1.8 Cents Per Gallon
In a nutshell, a large chunk of Big Oil’s ’subsidies’ are the same as those of Big Ethanol (which also has direct per gallon subsidies), Big Computer (Microsoft, Google, etc.), Big Auto, Big Pharmaceutical, and all the other industries large and small. They are not like their subsidies, they are in most cases the exact same tax deductions from the same tax code. The oil industry already pays an estimated $36 billion per year in U.S. taxes, and they have a higher tax rate than that of Microsoft or Google — both companies with higher profit margins than those of the oil industry. But those who argue that we preferentially eliminate, for instance, Section 199 and the foreign tax credit for the oil companies are in effect saying they have no problems subsidizing industries that are more profitable than the oil industry.

But let’s say we follow through and eliminate the $4 billion just for the U.S. oil industry. U.S. refineries currently process about 14 million barrels of crude oil per day, and $4 billion works out to be 1.8 cents per gallon of crude oil processed through those refineries. Is that going to reduce the price you pay at the pump? Of course not. Will it cut into the profits of the oil companies, “punishing” them as we hope to do? Perhaps. Will it treat the oil industry differently than other industries, some of which enjoy higher profit margins? Definitely. Will it provide an incentive for oil companies to shift manufacturing out of the U.S.? Will it shift some competitive advantage to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, both of which we are already highly dependent upon for our oil? Yes and yes.

The Naive and the Hopeful
I get that it doesn’t seem fair that ExxonMobil’s record profits are coming out of our pockets. But the current proposals won’t do anything to combat what is coming out of our pockets. It will ensure that more of that profit — and the jobs that those profits support — are shifted to foreign suppliers. As much as people hate ExxonMobil, would they rather those profits were being reaped by Saudi Aramco? That is the alternative.

I understand that some believe that singling out the U.S. oil industry for punishment would help level the playing field for alternative energy companies. I think the dream of many is that if we make U.S. oil companies uncompetitive, the alternative energy sector will flourish and make up for the lost production from the oil industry. The future can be cleaner and greener and the only losers will be the oil industry. This is an incredibly naive view. In fact, look at the situation in Europe. Gasoline costs $8 to $10 a gallon, and cars are still predominantly fueled by petroleum. And it will be the same in the U.S. if gasoline rises to $10 a gallon.

There are effective ways of making renewable energy more competitive relative to oil. I have written about some of them. What the current proposals will do is to disadvantage U.S. oil companies relative to foreign oil companies. That means a shift alright, but not from U.S. oil to U.S. renewable energy. There will be a shift from U.S. oil to more foreign oil and refined products.

How to Really Get Even
It is nice to think that we can force Big Oil to sell fuel at the prices of a decade ago and limit their profits, but that isn’t the way the world works. Big Oil doesn’t have to sell fuel period if we single them out for punitive tax treatment. And if they don’t, we will get our fuel from Big Foreign Oil. After all, refineries do close and oil companies do go out of business.

The proposals that are currently being floated for singling out the U.S. oil industry for punishment as a result of their profits simply feed on the public’s anger at these companies. They don’t represent good energy policy; indeed they aren’t about energy policy at all. They are about revenge. We want to stick it to ExxonMobil — even though the proposals would if anything increase the price you pay at the pump and ensure that more of our oil comes from overseas.

But there is a way that every individual can stop feeding ExxonMobil’s enormous profits. Stop buying their product. The reason they are so profitable is simply that the public keeps buying their product even as the price has doubled over the past few years. I understand that we are all dependent to one extent or another on oil, but most people use more of that product than we need to. Because of changes I have made in my own life, even though Big Oil is making record profits, they are profiting less from me than they were a decade ago. That is because of personal choices I made that you can make too. You can become more fuel efficient. You can use your car for fewer trips. You can carpool and use public transportation. Those things will have a real impact in reducing your contribution to Big Oil’s profits.

But that would require that we make some actual changes, and our collective laziness is too great for that. We want to keep consuming as we always have, while sticking it to the companies that make that consumption possible. But if you won’t make any changes in your life, then you can expect to continue transferring an ever increasing portion of your budget to Big Oil’s coffers. We might be able to drive the domestic oil companies out of business — which by the way support an estimated 9.2 million jobs — but you are still going to pay more (to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) unless you use less. Of course your other option is to buy ExxonMobil stock. If you can’t help but feed your money to the beast, you could at least invest in them and get some of that money back as their stock value appreciates.

(This post by Robert Rapier appeared at The Oil Drum. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 U.S. License.)

It is no secret that consumers are suffering from very high gasoline prices. And as a result of these high prices, ExxonMobil just reported a first-quarter profit of $10.7 billion — 69 percent higher than a year ago. The national level of disgust and anger is approaching record levels as we watch the loss of our hard-earned dollars become Big Oil’s gain. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Before discussing how to deal with this, we should first discuss what it is that we are actually trying to do. I believe the very simplistic view is that by going after the oil companies, they are going to relent and lower gas prices. Thus, their profits will return to ‘normal’ levels along with our gas prices. We want a return to the good old days of sub-$2/gallon gasoline. But most of the proposals that are being floated won’t do anything to relieve high gas prices, although they may have an impact on oil company profits. If that’s the case, then what is the point? I would say that it is simply feeling like justice was served. We want to get even with Big Oil.

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Join the conversation about this story »

who's shawn hogan?
By the way i left dp after visiting there political/religeon forum where they pointlessly say extremely bad things for our Prophet and Allah. I had over 400 posts on dp. There are alternatives on the internet.

It is no secret that consumers are suffering from very high gasoline prices. And as a result of these high prices, ExxonMobil just reported a first-quarter profit of $10.7 billion — 69 percent higher than a year ago. The national level of disgust and anger is approaching record levels as we watch the loss of our hard-earned dollars become Big Oil’s gain. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Before discussing how to deal with this, we should first discuss what it is that we are actually trying to do. I believe the very simplistic view is that by going after the oil companies, they are going to relent and lower gas prices. Thus, their profits will return to ‘normal’ levels along with our gas prices. We want a return to the good old days of sub-$2/gallon gasoline. But most of the proposals that are being floated won’t do anything to relieve high gas prices, although they may have an impact on oil company profits. If that’s the case, then what is the point? I would say that it is simply feeling like justice was served. We want to get even with Big Oil.

Take Their Subsidies

It seems preposterous that an industry as profitable as the oil industry receives subsidies. But does anyone know what they actually are? CNN just did a story breaking them down, and you might be surprised at some of the other companies that benefit from these ‘Big Oil’ subsidies.

Section 199 – The Biggest Subsidy

The biggest ‘oil company subsidy’ — amounting to $1.7 billion per year for the oil industry — is a manufacturer’s tax deduction that is explained in Section 199 of the IRS code. This is a tax credit designed to keep manufacturing in the U.S., but it isn’t limited to oil companies. It is a tax credit enjoyed by ethanol companies (have you ever heard anyone call it an ethanol subsidy?), computer companies (we are subsidizing Microsoft and Google!) and foreign companies that operate factories in the U.S.

One never hears of proposals to entirely do away with Section 199. Apparently, since this tax credit was designed as an incentive to keep manufacturing in the U.S., many would feel that eliminating it for all companies would provide less incentive for them to keep their factories in the U.S. Some of the same people apparently don’t believe this reasoning will apply with the oil industry.

So, the proposal is to disallow a tax credit to Texas-based ExxonMobil for their U.S.-based refining operations, while leaving it in place for foreign-based firms like Mercedes, BMW, and Toshiba that operate factories in the U.S. After all, as one staffer from the Center for American Progress smugly (and naively) put it in the CNN story, “What are they going to do, move the oil field to the North Sea?” Exactly. They are trapped and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. They can’t move their oil fields, so we can tax them silly. Nor can they move their drilling rigs or refining operations. Wait, I guess they could move those, but will they? Well, this is the same model Hugo Chavez used to mismanage Venezuela’s oil industry into the ground and dry up foreign investment in the oil industry there. He thought that since foreign oil companies were trapped, he could tax them at will. Instead, they just left.

If we make it less profitable for oil companies to operate here than in foreign countries, surely they wouldn’t shift operations out of the U.S. as Halliburton did in 2007. OK, they might, but so what? It’s Big Oil we are talking about here. Who cares if they leave the U.S.? At least if we shift those refining jobs in Texas, Louisiana, and California to the new refineries being built in Saudi Arabia, we will no longer have to listen to reports of windfall profits, since Saudi Aramco doesn’t publicly disclose their profits.

Other Subsidies

Another category of subsidies is a percentage depletion allowance. It is worth about $1 billion a year for U.S. oil companies. Again, it isn’t limited to oil companies; other extractive industries are able to take the percentage depletion allowance. It is similar to a depreciation allowance in other businesses. What will be the net impact of eliminating this subsidy? It will make the costs of operating a well somewhat higher, which will probably mean that wells will stop producing at an earlier stage than before. After all, over time as wells are depleted the oil becomes more expensive to extract. It stands to reason that if the costs are even higher, the wells won’t produce as long. However, much higher oil prices should provide an incentive to continue producing the wells longer than if oil prices are lower. But oil prices rise and fall, and the net impact will be to make an oil well in the U.S. less competitive against an oil well in Saudi Arabia. This will impact small producers more than Big Oil, but at least it will help realize the goal of getting more of our oil from foreign countries where we don’t have to read about windfall profits.

Another category is the foreign tax credit. Again, you may be surprised to find out that this ‘oil subsidy’ isn’t limited to the oil industry. But it is worth $850 million to the oil industry, and is designed to make sure that profits that have been taxed by foreign countries aren’t taxed again when they are returned to the U.S. Eliminating the foreign tax credit will provide an incentive for oil companies to keep the profits out of the U.S. and reinvest them abroad, helping to accomplish the goal of shrinking the U.S. oil industry.

The final category of subsidies covered by the CNN story is intangible drilling costs (IDC). Once more, like all other industries the oil industry is allowed to deduct the cost of things like wages and is worth $780 million per year. The story suggests that most businesses have to take these deductions over the lifetime of an investment, but the oil companies get to take these deductions all in the first year. Someone in the oil business recently explained how the IDC works at The Oil Drum:

“The elimination of the IDC tax credit would have a huge immediate effect. The IDC is a significant incentive to drill. About 40% of the cost to drill a well is IC (intangible costs). The IDC allows a company to deduct that amount from the taxes owed…not the earned income. So if a company owes the feds $100 million in taxes and spends $100 million in IC it can subtract $35 million (IC X 0.35) from its taxes. Defiantly a huge break. So they only pay $65 million in taxes. But take note: the ICD doesn’t increase the company’s revenue or profits: it allows them to spend more money drilling. If they don’t spend it drilling new wells they lose it. That’s the logic behind the IDC tax credit: instead of letting the govt spend the money the oil industry gets to drill more wells. That was once considered a good thing. The effect on drilling activity: the economics of each project is evaluated on its own merits. This evaluation includes utilizing the IDC. Eliminate it and a number of projects become sub-economic and won’t be drilled.”

So the IDC credit clearly provides some extra incentive to drill, but are those extra incentives needed? President Obama says no, except in his recent energy policy speech in which he said the U.S. should be “finding and producing more oil at home” and that his administration would “provide new and better incentives that promote rapid, responsible development” of oil and gas. One might think an incentive that encourages companies to offset taxes owed by drilling more wells might be just such an incentive, but apparently the Obama administration knows better.

Bottom Line – 1.8 Cents Per Gallon

In a nutshell, a large chunk of Big Oil’s ’subsidies’ are the same as those of Big Ethanol (which also has direct per gallon subsidies), Big Computer (Microsoft, Google, etc.), Big Auto, Big Pharmaceutical, and all the other industries large and small. They are not like their subsidies, they are in most cases the exact same tax deductions from the same tax code. The oil industry already pays an estimated $36 billion per year in U.S. taxes, and they have a higher tax rate than that of Microsoft or Google — both companies with higher profit margins than those of the oil industry. But those who argue that we preferentially eliminate, for instance, Section 199 and the foreign tax credit for the oil companies are in effect saying they have no problems subsidizing industries that are more profitable than the oil industry.

But let’s say we follow through and eliminate the $4 billion just for the U.S. oil industry. U.S. refineries currently process about 14 million barrels of crude oil per day, and $4 billion works out to be 1.8 cents per gallon of crude oil processed through those refineries. Is that going to reduce the price you pay at the pump? Of course not. Will it cut into the profits of the oil companies, “punishing” them as we hope to do? Perhaps. Will it treat the oil industry differently than other industries, some of which enjoy higher profit margins? Definitely. Will it provide an incentive for oil companies to shift manufacturing out of the U.S.? Will it shift some competitive advantage to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, both of which we are already highly dependent upon for our oil? Yes and yes.

The Naive and the Hopeful

I get that it doesn’t seem fair that ExxonMobil’s record profits are coming out of our pockets. But the current proposals won’t do anything to combat what is coming out of our pockets. It will ensure that more of that profit — and the jobs that those profits support — are shifted to foreign suppliers. As much as people hate ExxonMobil, would they rather those profits were being reaped by Saudi Aramco? That is the alternative.

I understand that some believe that singling out the U.S. oil industry for punishment would help level the playing field for alternative energy companies. I think the dream of many is that if we make U.S. oil companies uncompetitive, the alternative energy sector will flourish and make up for the lost production from the oil industry. The future can be cleaner and greener and the only losers will be the oil industry. This is an incredibly naive view. In fact, look at the situation in Europe. Gasoline costs $8 to $10 a gallon, and cars are still predominantly fueled by petroleum. And it will be the same in the U.S. if gasoline rises to $10 a gallon.

There are effective ways of making renewable energy more competitive relative to oil. I have written about some of them. What the current proposals will do is to disadvantage U.S. oil companies relative to foreign oil companies. That means a shift alright, but not from U.S. oil to U.S. renewable energy. There will be a shift from U.S. oil to more foreign oil and refined products.

How to Really Get Even

It is nice to think that we can force Big Oil to sell fuel at the prices of a decade ago and limit their profits, but that isn’t the way the world works. Big Oil doesn’t have to sell fuel period if we single them out for punitive tax treatment. And if they don’t, we will get our fuel from Big Foreign Oil. After all, refineries do close and oil companies do go out of business.

The proposals that are currently being floated for singling out the U.S. oil industry for punishment as a result of their profits simply feed on the public’s anger at these companies. They don’t represent good energy policy; indeed they aren’t about energy policy at all. They are about revenge. We want to stick it to ExxonMobil — even though the proposals would if anything increase the price you pay at the pump and ensure that more of our oil comes from overseas.

But there is a way that every individual can stop feeding ExxonMobil’s enormous profits. Stop buying their product. The reason they are so profitable is simply that the public keeps buying their product even as the price has doubled over the past few years. I understand that we are all dependent to one extent or another on oil, but most people use more of that product than we need to. Because of changes I have made in my own life, even though Big Oil is making record profits, they are profiting less from me than they were a decade ago. That is because of personal choices I made that you can make too. You can become more fuel efficient. You can use your car for fewer trips. You can carpool and use public transportation. Those things will have a real impact in reducing your contribution to Big Oil’s profits.

But that would require that we make some actual changes, and our collective laziness is too great for that. We want to keep consuming as we always have, while sticking it to the companies that make that consumption possible. But if you won’t make any changes in your life, then you can expect to continue transferring an ever increasing portion of your budget to Big Oil’s coffers. We might be able to drive the domestic oil companies out of business — which by the way support an estimated 9.2 million jobs — but you are still going to pay more (to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) unless you use less. Of course your other option is to buy ExxonMobil stock. If you can’t help but feed your money to the beast, you could at least invest in them and get some of that money back as their stock value appreciates.

By. Robert Rapier

Source: R Squared Energy Blog

Fashion-focused sewing classes. Get the point?

Hello, I am looking to purchase a new sub for my family room system. The room is 12' 5" wide and 16' 5" long. Is Velodyne the best brand at this price point? Thanks

She gave credit where it was actually due
*
Now the Haterade-swilling PDS ward is attacking Gov. Palin because she didn't praise Obama in her Facebook Note "A Grateful Nation." The vile creatures at a website named "Sarah Palin has a Serpent's Heart" (How middle school!) complained:

"Sarah Palin She can't give credit where credit is due. Yes the Navy Seals went in and killed Bin Laden, but it was PRESIDENT OBAMA who gave the orders"

Wrong, Skippy. As Stacy McCain pointed out, Gov. Palin gave credit where the credit is actually due, i.e., the troops who put their lives on the line to go in and get Bin Laden. President Obama didn't do anything other than the job he was supposed to do to defend the nation from its enemies. And no, former President Bush doesn't deserve special credit either, like some conservative bloggers and politicians are trying to give him.

Regardless of who is in the Oval Office, it would be a crime not to get Bin Laden. That's POTUS' job, one every president takes an oath to perform. Why should any president be lauded for doing what he or she is expected to do? Yes, the Navy Seals on the team that went in there were doing their jobs also, but there's a big difference. They could have been killed or seriously injured carrying out the mission. These heroes are the ones who should get all of the accolades because they earned it.

Now, as for preparing Osama's body following Islamic tradition before burying him at sea, what was the point? Militant Islamists will hate the U.S. for killing OBL anyway, so why try to suck up to them? The man was a monster who is responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people of all nationalities, colors and creeds. He should have been soaked in pig fat to grease his descent into hell. Bin Laden deserves to burn for all eternity.

- JP

Sir Alex Ferguson has complained that Manchester United don't get decisions in big games. Sportsmail looks at some crucial calls - both for and against his side.

Drawing influence from British comedy like "League of Gentlemen" and "Spaced", "Pumpkin Morgue Paranormal Investigators" is a mock ghost hunting web series created by James Branscome and Morgan Rae. The pilot runs in two segments, each roughly 13 minutes long. After that, there is an additional four episodes at approximately 3 minutes apiece. As I sat through the first four episodes of PMPI, I thought I could get more laughs watching Ghost Hunters Steve Gonsalves in a room full of spiders. I am versed in British pop culture (Frost and Pegg of Spaced are on my backup list of baby daddies), but I honestly didnt see much influence from the above. I mean, I guess if I squint I could. The first few episodes are a bit bland. There is overuse of techniques that seem to shout "I went to film school!" and a running joke with one members band playing Thursday nights at a bar. However, episode five is quite phenomenal. I encourage you to check it out and decide for yourself, but my suggestion to the makers is MORE SAUSAGE. I am sure I speak for all women when I say the more crude the sexual masturbatory humor, the better. In conclusion, it's not that this web series isn't any good. It is. It just seems to be trying really hard. Maybe that's the point? I just felt I sat there waiting for something that never came...but then again, that's what paranormal investigating shows do to you right? Perhaps, in that respect, Pumpkin Morgue Paranormal Investigators has a lot of potential. You can check out Pumpkin Morgue at the film's official website.

The Saga of Jon's Mysterious Chest Pain continued last week when I drove him to the hospital so that he could undergo an endoscopy, a fancy term for having a tube shoved down his throat. Yes, all sorts of jokes were made beforehand. Remember, my assistant is a gay man who really enjoys making straight people feel uncomfortable. That's the first skill he lists on his resume.

They were going to inspect his esophagus and stomach for signs of anything peculiar, you know, lesions or ulcers or Osama Bin Laden. Wait. They found him? In Pakistan? PHEW. I was trying to figure out how we were going to tell authorities that Jon picked him up in Mexico and, my God, the heartburn.

The nurse who explained the procedure to Jon beforehand was incredibly thorough and loving in stark contrast to some of the doctors we've seen in the past. I'm not generalizing here, because we've seen some doctors who could rival Jesus in their bedside manner. But some doctors… the part of their brain that made it possible for them to get through medical school is so big that there is no room for the part that would make them think twice before saying, "That spot of skin cancer really isn't that big. I've got better things to do."

Or, "Your daughter sucks her thumb? Make fun of her so she'll stop."

I wasn't allowed to be in the room during the procedure, but I guess it went something like this: they fit him for a mouth guard that would guide the tube into his throat before they gave him a dose of Propofol, a fast acting anesthesia. The drug that killed Michael Jackson. This is important to remember. You'll see why.

Once he was asleep they inserted a scope into his throat and inspected the specific areas, taking biopsies if needed. From start to finish, the entire operation took twelve minutes. Meaning it lasted way longer than a lot of the guys I dated! Hey-ooh!

The nurse brought me back to see him as the Propofol wore off, and here's where I share with you just how adorable Jon is when he's drunk. Like, the most adorable drunk in the history of adorable drunks. When he saw me sit down next to his bed, he squinted at me and said, "You're so pretttttyyyyyy." And then he spent the next two minutes trying to reassure me that he was not kidding, no seriously, TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY, even though I had not said one word.

The nurse handed me a stack of paper, and I read the first page of instructions out loud to Jon. For the next twenty-four hours he was not to drive a car or operate any machinery whatsoever or engage in any important decision making. And PLEASE, refrain from any activity requiring coordination. For an Armstrong that means no walking.

The whole time I read those instructions Jon would interrupt me every two words and say, "Did you know they gave me the drug that killed Michael Jackson?!"

I'd answer, "Yes. You told me that a second ago."

And then after another two words he'd say, "OH MY GOD, I forgot to tell you. They gave me the drug that killed Michael Jackson!"

"Did they really?" I'd say.

"Huh?" he'd spurt out in return. "I don't know what you're talking about. But guess what? They gave me the drug that killed Michael Jackson!"

I continued with the instructions letting him tell me over and over that they gave him the drug that killed Michael Jackson, and then when I was finished the nurse walked over to Jon and said, "Could you please sign here to indicate that you understand the instructions your wife just read to you?"

"WHAT?" he shouted in total confusion. "She hasn't read anything to me! What are you talking about?! Hey, Heather, they gave me the drug that killed Michael Jackson!"

He doesn't remember about ten minutes of his life, but thankfully those ten minutes weren't our wedding vows or the birth of one of our children. They were just one message after another out into the ether that when you get an endoscopy you get the drug that killed Michael Jackson. ARE WE ALL CLEAR ON THAT POINT?

Preliminary diagnosis: nothing is wrong with his esophagus. Test indicated a little irritation in his stomach. So, you know, totally inconclusive. Except for the bill. That was pretty distinct and abrasive.

More tests to come. WHEEE!

by dooce in Daily, Jon

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Matters of the heart, continued. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

I’ll never forget a conversation I had 15 years ago with paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.  He told me and several colleagues that he was basically tired of environmentalists talking about "saving the planet."  He flung his arms wide and told us that "... if the history of the Earth is my wingspan, all of human history would represent a sliver of my fingernail."His point? "The planet will be fine…it will just turn into something not so good for people.”  So, we should stop talking about saving the planet and start talking about saving ourselves.  We’ve enjoyed great progress in recent years toward understanding and accounting for the value nature provides to people--not just the social and emotional values we’re accustomed to hearing about, but also the hard economic values of nature’s services.In Nepal, tiger tourism accounts for 50% of the revenue some local communities bring in each year.  The tiger also features prominently in the stories and teachings of Buddhism. But the tiger’s habitat may be where the greatest value lies. Protecting the forest is good for tigers, but is also a plus for protecting water quality and quantity. During my last trip, I visited a community where recently restored forests brought a long-dead freshwater spring back to life.  A healthy forest also purifies air and provides products like timber and medicines.  Forests also sequester carbon.The destruction of forests ranks as the second leading cause of climate change – after the burning of fossil fuels -- accounting for up to 20 percent of global carbon pollution. Recognizing this connection last December in Cancun, the countries of the world established the ground rules for a mechanism known as REDD -- reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.REDD works by recognizing and quantifying one of the great values of standing forests: removing and storing harmful carbon pollution.  If a country can show that it has reduced its level of deforestation (and the related carbon pollution), then it will receive payments.  These payments could come from other governments or from corporations looking to reach climate goals.  Great idea, but only if you can accurately draw up a balance sheet of carbon-in, carbon-out.  No one in their right mind would put money into a market with a broken ticker. Until recently, measuring carbon has been too complicated, too costly and altogether inaccurate. An unlikely solution: lasers being shot from planes at 200,000 photons per second.  In a nutshell, that’s LiDAR--Light Detection and Ranging.  It’s not impossible to collect forest structure data by measuring trees on the ground.  But anyone who has spent some time on the forest floor in, say, the Peruvian Amazon, can attest to how tough that is.  It’s not the venomous snakes, aggressive insects, and oppressive heat that are necessarily the issue.  Try to put a tape measure around a tree whose diameter doesn’t even come close to a circle, or one with flaring, head-high buttresses that ward off even the most accomplished tree-climbers.  Try and estimate height amidst throngs of choking lianas where each tree disappears into a cacophony of green several hundred feet up in the air.  It’s not impossible, but it certainly isn’t easy, fast or cheap.     With LiDAR, we can calibrate aerial images with a smattering of ground plots administered by scientists.  The results are calculated to create an algorithm that enables you to use satellite imagery not just to count the trees, but also the carbon they contain.  A year and a half ago, we flew with the Stanford University Carnegie Airborne Observatory’s Greg Asner over those very impossible-to-measure forests of the Peruvian Amazon and mapped the structure of 11 million acres in 3 weeks.  That’s a structural analysis of a forest down to one meter for an area the size of Switzerland--and completed for just a few cents an acre.LiDAR, the small number of ground plots, and the algorithms that get you from forest structure to carbon quantities are cheap, accessible, and incredibly accurate.  Those data are also, I think it’s fair to say, empowering: they give developing countries a tool to garner much needed financial resources, reduce global carbon emissions and slow the sickening trend of deforestation.  Working with partners, we’ve already begun using LiDAR to measure the carbon value of the forests of Nepal’s Terai Arc that our recently released tiger calls home.  The second flyover is now over in Nepal and we will be able to use that information to help the country participate in the new REDD mechanism. After Nepal, we’re taking the technology to Thailand. WWF’s ambitious goal for tigers is to double the remaining 3,200 in the wild over the next 12 years; combined with REDD, our efforts can go a long way to preserving the last great forests of Asia--forests that billions of people also depend on for drinking water, sustenance, climate mitigation and their livelihoods.It’s tempting to look at LiDAR and declare you’ve found the Holy Grail.  It’s not.  We still need voluntary financial commitments from governments; we still need regulatory frameworks; we still need the conviction of political leaders not to lose this precious resource.  But I’m quite confident that LiDAR is the most powerful tool we have for quantifying the value of standing forests all over the world and avoiding their ruin in the process.It also produces very cool images.

[youtube wRpjIxQg2vk]

[Image Credit: USGS (ultra high resolution land topography measurement)]

As President and CEO of WWFUS, Carter Roberts leads World Wildlife Fund’s work to save endangered species and their habitats through innovative programs with governments, businesses and local communities throughout the world. WWF, famous for its panda logo, is the world largest conservation network, with over 6 million members and programs across 100 countries.

Many of today's college kids were still in elementary school the day the Twin Towers fell 10 years ago, yet that didn't prevent them from appreciating the significance of the U.S. at last bringing the mastermind of those attacks to justice.

Students on college campuses throughout the nation celebrated the death of Osama Bin Laden on Sunday night with more passion and fervor than they would a Final Four berth or a BCS national championship.

Even though this space is typically devoted entirely to college basketball, it seems worthwhile on a night as historic as this to break from that for one post. As a result, here are a collection of images and videos from prominent U.S. colleges in the immediate aftermath of Bin Laden's death.

1. Penn State: A crowd of about 5,000 Penn State students flooded the Beaver Canyon area of downtown State College, waving American flags, shooting off fireworks and throwing confetti and toilet paper into the air. The above video provides a sense of just how big the celebration was, as does this aerial photo shot by a Penn State student.

2. Ohio State: Normally Ohio State students only jump into Mirror Lake at midnight on the Thursday prior to the annual football game against rival Michigan, but the Buckeyes apparently thought this occasion was worthy of a similar celebration. The photo above offers an artsy view of the gathering. There's also video of the revelry here including a U-S-A chant from dozens of students in the lake.

3. West Virginia: It wouldn't be a celebration in Morgantown without a couch ablaze in the middle of a street. Hundreds of West Virginia students gathered around the makeshift bonfire, waved American flags and pinwheels and delivered a heartfelt rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

4. Boston College: Credit these Boston College students for finding the best possible place to sing the national anthem. According to the person who posted the YouTube clip, the students broke into the lobby of a campus library via an emergency exit about an hour after President Obama delivered his speech.

5. Iowa State: Just because Monday marks the start of Finals week at Iowa State didn't prevent students from blowing off some steam. Thousands attended a mass celebration which concluded at the Gates of Jack Trice Stadium amid U-S-A chants, patriotic songs and shouts of "Na-Na-Na Hey Hey Goodbye."

6. Illinois State: It was a chilly 40 degrees in Central Illinois on Sunday night, but Illinois State students still poured into the quad for a patriotic celebration. The U-S-A chants and patriotic songs are plentiful in this video, but the highlight is definitely the shirtless student wearing the American flag as a cape trying to climb a pole as his peers cheered him on.

7. Maryland: Who says Maryland students only riot for victories over Duke? The Terps were out in full force on Sunday night as well. And just so West Virginia students don't think they're being singled out, yes, Maryland students also have a penchant for burning things in the middle of the street.

8. Army: Is there any other way to end a list like this than with the scene from West Point? Toting American flags and glow sticks, the cadets sing a particularly moving version of the Star Spangled Banner and break into a round of U-S-A chants.

Other images worth checking out: The scene at Missouri's Greek row, part I and part II ... LSU students flood campus ... The U.S. Naval Academy celebrates news of Bin Laden's death ... Maryland students sing God Bless America ... Binghamton students belt out the national anthem ... Delaware students close down an intersection.

Thanks to ESPN's Scott Van Pelt and SI.com's Richard Deitsch for tweeting links to some of the above photos and videos.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Dude was hiding in plain sight the whole time. Talk about playing the counter-intelligence game tight.

The saying used to be that politics stopped at the Atlantic and the Pacific. Since the election of President Obama the Republicans have thrown that rule out of the window. In this moment, I wonder if the Republican Tea Party GOP will revert to that old rubric as we work through just how the CIA, Delta Force, and Seal Team Six operators pulled this mission off.

Smart money says that the Right-wing will further embarrass themselves as they deny the President (and all of us) a collective rally around the flag moment.

Some scenarios and in progress thoughts on what the Tea Party GOP will do in the aftermath of Bin Laden's death.

1. The Tea Party GOP will say that it was actually Bush that set the wheels in motion to get Osama bin Laden--that Osama was killed under Obama's watch is just a coincidence.

2. The Right will suggest that Osama bin Laden was actually a figurehead at this point and his death means nothing.

3. Osama's death is a vindication of George Bush's misadventures in the Middle East. History will remember him well.

What other scenarios can you imagine? Will the Republicans deny America's first Black President this symbolic high point? Or will the Right and Conservatives act with some class and dignity in this moment?

I hadn't seen a 3-D movie since the deep sea extravaganza at the Imax where we all tried to catch the fish in front of our eyes. It was fun, but what exactly was the point? 3-D is not 3-D: it's the illusion of it, an evocation of being there when we are not. So, attending Wim Wenders's Pina, it's hard to avoid cynicism when the screen instructs us to don our special glasses. Yet Pina's own words tell us within the first few minutes that dance is an evocation of experience. So, too, are words. All we can do is...evoke. Now it begins to make sense, and the magic is ready to start.

But wouldn't Pina be just as magical without the 3-D? I suspect it would, because the beauty of Wenders's filming has never let us down before and certainly doesn't do so now. Pina is indeed an evocation: Pina Bausch herself died almost two years ago and this is no documentary, since Wenders tells us nothing of her life or career. Instead he lets her choreography, her dancers and her company's home surroundings of Wuppertal pay tribute through image and only the sparest of words.

The dance rarely stops. Thanks to the 3-D we seem to be on stage amongst the dancers during Bausch's devastating choreography of The Rite of Spring, or riding on the odd dangling Wuppertal monorail to witness a little street theatre: one dancer wears donkey ears while another gets up to all manner of peculiar things with a pillow. Sometimes muslin curtains waft in front of our noses; at other moments we nearly feel the autumn leaves blowing out of the screen, or seem to smell the water that flies around the stage in the dazzling, magnificent and fabulously funny Full Moon.

Pina Bausch is glimpsed in existing film, for little more than seconds. Her dancers each pay a brief and beautiful tribute to her - they are an international crowd of many different shapes, sizes and ages, unified by their devotion to Bausch and her dance style. The latter may look wild, free and zany, but is phenomenally demanding: it requires incredible control, an all-giving and all-taking matter in which if you lose your sense of humour you will quickly be lost too. This is dance as the ultimate human expression, able to travel from high comedy to tragedy and insanity within two blinks: every millimetre of finger or toe contains the very essence of emotion. Marius Petipa, eat your heart out.

Bausch was an artist ahead of her time - it is only now, and largely thanks to this movie, that a wider public appears to be waking up to her astounding work. It has taken a cinematic legend to send her mainstream - and if the 3-D is a gimmick, it's a good one, well-handled and more appropriate than some of us expected. Wenders's poetic touch is assured, luminous; you can go in knowing nothing of Bausch and still come out moved. The dancers' devotion to her and her work says it all. Amazing how two-dimensional Finchley Road appeared on exit.

The film's website has all the background information one might wish for, here. Meanwhile, perhaps we need filmmakers of genius to transform performance art of all types for this still-new century.

"Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost..."

I seem to have had an unlucky run recently. I've met several new people over the last few weeks, and too many have been incredibly ego centric.

You know the sort:

• Whatever you mention, they've been there, done it or seen it. Only better.
• After a couple of hours in their company, you know pretty much everything there is to know about their lives and loves. And they know nothing about yours.
• Everything mentioned in a group situation is turned somehow into "their" story.

Being successful socially (or in Social media) is about other people.

Think back to recent encounters on or off line:

• Did you find out as much about them as they did about you?
• Did you spend half the time talking if there were two of you?
• Did you actively listen to what they were saying, or were you too busy formulating your next point?

There's no sense in trying to be a success at social media, if you can't be a success socially.

More:

1/ Being positive

2/ How to get the best from being an Amazon affiliate

3/ Dealing with failure

It is possible that, a generation from now, Japan will have ushered in a commitment to renewable energy and hyper-efficiency, based on the lessons of its society's moment of truth.

AudioNote…Record notes and audio synced with the best note taking app in the App Store! AudioNote combines the functionality of a notepad and voice recorder to create a powerful tool that will save you time while improving the quality of your notes. Perfect for business or students!


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Listening to the dire warnings of President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner and the messengers of Big Government the American public lives in fear of what might happen if the debt ceiling is not immediately increased. We hear three recurring themes: we could relapse into economic crisis, interest rates will rise, and the US will lose credibility in the international investment community. But are these warnings true? Absolutely not! Let’s look at them in order:

One. If the debt ceiling is not increased immediately the existing debt can still be serviced through tax revenues for quite some time. While it is true that the US has gotten into the habit of servicing old debt by issuing new debt there is nothing wrong with using tax revenues to service the debt while a realistic budget is being worked out. It is possible that some of the current government programs may have to be cut back depending on how long the negotiations persist but isn’t that the whole point? If we can eventually cut government enough to live within our means we will never have to worry about debt ceiling limits and the repercussions of sensible negotiations.

Two. The principles of supply and demand apply just as well to the capital markets as they do to our local farmer’s markets. If bumping up against the debt limit causes fewer new bonds to be issued, and demand stays the same, then interest rates will likely decline not rise. Scaring the citizens into approving an increase in the debt limit without a budget deal will not cause the rules of the marketplace to magically change.

Three. If the US does not approve an increase in the debt limit it will not suddenly cause a loss of international credibility. What will cause a loss of credibility is if the US approves an increase in the debt limit “without” making any serious attempt to work towards a balanced budget. Foreign investors have been increasingly wary of US fiscal policy as evidenced by the decline of the dollar versus gold and foreign currencies. If we were serious enough to not increase the debt limit until we had a reasonable budget agreement the result would likely be “increased” credibility not a loss of credibility.

The political scare tactics of the current administration are not helping the situation. The people deserve a government that lives within it means. To be frightened or bullied into anything less is not worthy of the principles upon which this nation was founded.

For the latest in politics, visit Politics. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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See Also:

• Financial PACs Are Investing In Influential Freshmen Legislators
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Pingdom has published a long list of stats comparing the online worlds of the US with China. But is there a point?

The old FMF.

Fashion Meets Finance began four years ago as a mixer to bring together well-to-do men who work in finance with well-dressed — but could be better dressed — women who work in fashion. "In the New York dating scene, the men of finance are the lions, and the women of fashion are the trophies," FMF founder Jeremy Abelson told this very website almost two years ago. "We have to maintain the purity of the genetic lines." Well, the mixer has gone dark for the past year, and the new organizers pretty readily admit in an e-mail pitch soliciting press for the comeback party on Cinco de Mayo that's because its original incarnation was damn embarrassing:

We have not had a Fashion Meets Finance event in over a year because we have been working on re-vamping/ elevating the brand. In the past the events had a certain connotation that we are trying to get rid of... (rich men seeking trophy type girls/ models) We had a company called Pocket Change that we were working with that put a spin on things for shock value...(you can find several articles online in NY Mag)

(See those here.)

We are no longer working with outside marketing companies and are organically trying to go back to the core of why we started doing these events... to bring people together from gender heavy industries- to mingle, to network, and have an amazing time at an event without paying for an expensive ticket.

Like any respectable New York social event, FMF has decided to affiliate with a charity. And so attendees to the upcoming party are encouraged to make a $10 donation to Indego Africa. Not only is the New FMF designed to encourage attendees to give back — be aware of other people, that sort of thing — but they may also have to let go of how much they care about money and looks:

Gone are the days of the RSVP page where event attendees had the option of uploading a picture of themselves along with their salary! Also The charity has aspects of "fashion" and "finance" and is affiliated with Goldman Sachs and Nicole Miller...

Oh, man. Now what's the point? If Fashion wants to meet Finance the old-fashioned way, without knowing its income or looks in advance, it doesn't have to sign up for a pretentious frat party for the of-age, post-collegiate crowd — it just has to go to one of the all too copious bars in this town with a sub-par $14 cocktail. Or — let's be honest — beer pong.

Fashion Meets Finance [Official Site]

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: fashion meets toolbags, fashion meets finance

The BBC station's commercial rival claims 5 Live has cut its output of 'serious' news – could it be right, and do you mind?

It's been a while since Kelvin MacKenzie owned TalkSport, when he would regularly fire broadsides at his licence fee funded rival, BBC Radio 5 Live.

TalkSport's critique of Radio 5 Live today, in its submission to the BBC Trust's service licence review of the station, is rather more nuanced, but may be no less effective for that.

The UTV Media-owned station reckons Radio 5 Live is breaking its commitment to devote at least 75% of its schedule to news.

TalkSport's formal complaint to the BBC Trust about this was rejected last week – albeit with the caveat that the trust has asked management to come up with a better way of measuring "news" – and now it has published audience research detailing what Radio 5 Live listeners think of the station.

It must be slightly unsettling to have a rival commission and publish such research without your knowledge, but at least Radio 5 Live now knows a little bit more about its audience (possibly they knew it all already) and the licence fee payer hasn't had to pay a penny. Now that's what I call public service.

The main thrust of the TalkSport research findings were that nearly half (49%) of Radio 5 Live listeners think it should focus on more serious news, and that listeners estimate only 38% of airtime is dedicated to news. In other words, backing up TalkSport's complaint – surprise, surprise.

Listeners can't be that unhappy with the station; Radio 5 Live recently recorded its biggest-ever audience figures (as has TalkSport). Just imagine how many it would get if people were happy with what they were hearing.

TalkSport is hardly a disinterested rival, of course – the more Radio 5 Live devotes to news, the more sports-mad listeners will be tempted to retune their radio a little further along the medium wave dial (digital stations are also available).

But there's no doubt that Radio 5 Live has evolved under its current controller, Adrian Van Klaveren, no longer describing itself as a "news and sport" station but a "news, sport and entertainment" station.

Take the axing of the midday news – one of AVK's first changes – and five hours of "serious news" (to use TalkSport parlance) a week was gone in a stroke. Does the Gabby Logan show that now airs in its place tick the same boxes?

And if not – there have been plenty of other changes as well – does 75% of its output still count as news? It's important that it does, because that's what it was set up to do. If its mission has changed, then management should say so and the trust should give its approval (or otherwise).

TalkSport's audience research zeroed in on Richard Bacon's afternoon programme, which is currently counted by the BBC as "news" although listeners appear not to agree – only 20% of the UTV station's survey said they regarded it as news.

It didn't ask them if they found it entertaining – I suspect the figure would be rather higher – but that's not TalkSport's point.

You may be wondering who took part in the research, conducted by Britain Thinks. It asked 1,000 Radio 5 Live listeners who listen to the station at least one hour a week. Possibly you need to listen to a few more to come up with a considered opinion, and possibly many of them do.

TalkSport's point reflects wider commercial radio concerns about the BBC's stations muscling in on their territory – not enough public service content on Radio 2 was a recent complaint by commercial radio trade body, the Radio Centre, as was the suggestion that Radio 3 had adopted some of the tactics of Classic FM to reach a wider audience.

Whether Radio 5 Live will change again as a result of the review is hard to say. Even when the BBC Trust asks stations to do things – like its call two years ago for Radio 1 to shift its average listener age younger (it hasn't) – that doesn't necessarily lead to the desired result.

Perhaps they should appoint an independent auditor to look at this whole "news" thing, outside of the BBC Trust. Kelvin, it's over to you. And you, in fact – do you think there is enough news on 5 Live? And what do you make of the changes under AVK?

I rather like Bacon's afternoon show – when I'm around to hear it – and Danny Baker's return on Saturday mornings can't come soon enough. Gabby Logan's midday show and Kate Silverton on a Sunday morning I can live without, and don't even get me started on 7 Day Sunday. Ah, for the glory days of Fi Glover's Sunday Service. Would that have counted as "news"? Probably.

Putting it all in context. This has been a great 3-part series. Thank you, dswright - Rosi

Part 1  Part 2  

What have we learned?  

Waiting for Superman, a propaganda film for school privatization, was not nominated for an Academy Award for documentary filmmaking because it was revealed that the "documentary" staged scenes. Michele Rhee, who was in consideration for NJ Education Commissioner and is the most public face of corporate education and teacher union busting, was considerably discredited when it was revealed that when teachers in D.C were told to act like greedy corporate executives they, not surprisingly, cheated on their evaluations to get more money.  

It almost sounds impressive when people like Cerf and Rhee say they want to "run schools like a business" until you see how they run their businesses. 

Public education is not a business. What? But business is magical, making things about money always makes them better.  Actually, no. Making things about money just makes them about money...

Public education is actually a relatively new idea. Previous to the introduction of a public or state education only the rich and powerful and their children received even the most basic knowledge. It was a genuine belief that poor and powerless people did not only not deserve an education but that it could be dangerous to give them one. One of the better examples of this view was that if an American slave was caught reading they would often be executed.

In fact, even public elementary school education was not widely available in America until the late 1800s becoming compulsory in the early 1900s with the launch of the Progressive Era - the heritage of those who believe in public education today. With the rise of Progressives came an expansion of public education to both the entire country and what would today be called high schools. Later colleges, notably land grant universities would be established (like Penn State).

Progressive John Dewey was one of the first to make a connection that seems obvious today; the link between education and civil society. Dewy proposed a radical notion that citizens in a democracy should be educated so they can make informed decisions. He would later be called a "dangerous radical" in the 1950s when progressive ideas were labeled communist and socialist. One of the chief smear merchants of progressivism was the John Birch Society, founded by Fred Koch - hmmmm.

In an intersecting and parallel track Booker T. Washington began advocating for black educational opportunities during the still segregated Progressive Era both elementary, high school and college.

With the rise of mass education also came the first Teachers Unions - National Education Association founded earlier was reorganized into its modern form in 1917 along with the American Federation of Teachers being founded in 1916.

Only after World War II, with the passing of the GI Bill in 1944 did higher education become something possible for the average person, and even then just for male war veterans.

Only after the civil rights and the Great Society bills passed in the 1960s were non-whites and women given full public education opportunities.

What's my point? This is not a new battle. Entrenched powerful interests have always hated being taxed to pay for public services like education and have always wanted to exploit the poor/poorer who become more difficult to exploit once educated. School privatization is the tip of a very long spear. A spear that was present when public education was first instituted.

Bob Ingle, a political columnist for Gannett's New Jersey newspapers, wrote a successful book called The Soprano State detailing corruption within New Jersey's state and local government. Though Ingle may be a conservative, the idea of rooting out corruption among powerful interests (public or private) is well within the progressive tradition.

But somehow a clarion call for greater purity in public service has transformed into an obnoxious scream to drown out the sound of cash registers. 

Chris Christie is not a "reformer" he is now what he has always been, a lobbyist, a shill for the rich and Big Business interests. It is not news to anyone who knows him or his history. 

Him and his friends are trying to make money. Money that will line their pockets, put an addition on their mansions and slowly but surely trickle its way into their campaign accounts. But there is a larger point besides corruption in New Jersey government.

Ronald Reagan and his fore-bearers, most notably Barry Goldwater, sought to undo Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. And starting in 1980 up to the present they have made considerable progress in turning the clock back to 1929 - with predictable consequences.

Now reactionary conservatives want to go even farther backward to a time when there were no public education. They claim a corporate business model is the best approach, that business is the solution - but public education is not a business. If public education was such a great business idea it would not have taken progressives to force its progress through coercion by the state. Rich people have never liked paying taxes for poor/poorer people's children to be educated, this is not a new phenomenon. 

So what has changed?

The rich and powerful have become shameless. They are more than willing to watch those less fortunate die in the streets than pay a pittance of the massive wealth they have captured beginning in the 1980s to provide for their fellow man (and woman). In an era of bank bailouts, crony capitalist defense industries and corporate tax cheats it is unions and public education that must be destroyed.

Some attribute this shamelessness to economics, culture, religion (or lack thereof) I attribute it to a reactionary attack on society itself. Margaret Thatcher, Regan's contemporary and hero to the conservative movement once said "there is no such thing as society."

If you believe that and most Neoliberals do, then progressives are truly a menace. "Collectivists" as Alan Greenspan's mentor Ayn Rand would call them. Looters, thieves, the worst kind of parasites - the weak who demand concessions from the strong. Nietzsche, Ayn Rand's inspiration, called it "slave morality."

Which is a useful term because if things keep going on like this it's going to feel like the bottom 99% are living on a plantation.

So we know what the reactionaries trying to wreck government services like public education believe and we know what progressives believe. What does America believe?

I offer a view from one of the earliest Americans, even before there was an America. Reagan himself stole a key concept from him and in reciprocity so shall I.

John Winthrop was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and once gave his view of the society some claim does not exist/want to destroy. It may be useful for the shameless to consider what some of America's earliest leaders thought the country should believe in:

“We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice  together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having  before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community  as members of the same body.”

Procurement at the Tipping Point? At Emptoris Empower Europe, CPOs Report That Global Growth, Volatility and Risk Are Putting Procurement Center Stage Barcelona, Spain April 20, 2011 Procurement organisations are at the "Tipping Point" - gaining critical influence within their organisations as corporations are grappling with the complexities of ...

This post was written by Mirna Bard, a social media consultant, speaker, author and instructor of social media at the University of California at Irvine. SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Last week’s poll question: Do you [...]

How far has Jon Favreau strayed from Iron Man with Cowboys and Aliens? Watch the trailers ... it's all in the wrist action

Although eyebrows may have been raised when Jon Favreau decided to walk away from the Iron Man franchise to concentrate on films about how magical Disneyland is, there's really no need to worry. Favreau's entire career has been based on a reticence to repeat himself, leapfrogging from low-budget indies like Made to charming comedies like Elf to weird Jumanji rip-offs like Zathura: A Space Adventure to the blockbusters he's primarily known for now.

So if we can be certain of anything about Favreau's newest film Cowboys and Aliens, it's that it'll be new and original and won't contain any elements of any of his previous films, especially Iron Man. Or will it? Let's take a look at the new Cowboys and Aliens trailer just to be sure:

Watch the trailer for Cowboys and Aliens

Watch the trailer for Iron Man

In Cowboys and Aliens, the protagonist likes a drink. However, you mustn't take the alcohol on face value, because its appearance signifies that something very bad is about to happen. This thematic complexity is new to Jon Favreau, who ... hang on, doesn't Robert Downey Jr like a drink in the Iron Man trailer?

And doesn't the appearance of alcohol in that film signify that something bad is about to happen, too? What a bizarre coincidence.

However, it's important that we don't start to think that Cowboys and Aliens is just a hollow retread of Iron Man. After all, look at what happened to Daniel Craig after he started drinking booze – he was detained against his will by a group of menacing strangers. Whereas in Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr was ... no, wait, he was detained against his will by a bunch of strangers too, wasn't he?

Sorry, bad example.

It'd also be a bad example to draw attention to the fact that both Cowboys and Aliens and Iron Man feature glowering supporting turns from screen legends, Harrison Ford and Jeff Bridges respectively.

After all, actors of a certain age are always complaining about the lack of starring roles available to them, so it's often the case that taking a supporting role in a summer blockbuster is the smartest way to keep your profile at an acceptable level. So it's unfair to say that Cowboys and Aliens wants to be Iron Man purely because of the ages of their co-stars.

And it'd also be unfair to highlight to the scene in the Cowboys and Aliens trailer where Daniel Craig stands around semi-lit showing off his physique, because there's obviously an identical scene in the Iron Man trailer, too.

It's a cheap shot – films star actors, and actors enjoy showing off their muscles. I'm sure that, once we move away from these generic comparisons, the two films will become much more distinct.

This is much more like it – now that we've dismissed most of the obvious similarities, we can concentrate on what makes Cowboys and Aliens special. Like the bit where Daniel Craig leaps on to an aeroplane and clings on for dear life. That doesn't happen in any of Jon Favreau's other films, does it? What's that? Iron Man? Seriously?

That's slightly too specific to be a coincidence, surely. Still, let's struggle on. I'm sure that Cowboys and Aliens does more than just shamelessly crib from Iron Man all the time. Maybe we're not looking closely enough.

What? Seriously? In Cowboys and Aliens, Daniel Craig gets to blow things up with a thing on his wrist? On his wrist? Just like Iron Man did in just about every single scene in Iron Man? Just like that thing that pretty much only Iron Man can do?

That's all you could think of? And don't think I haven't noticed the riffy Iron Man-style music that plays underneath the entire trailer, either. Really, what's the point? What's the point in watching this? Why not just cover Daniel Craig in tinfoil and call it Iron Man and Aliens? I despair sometimes, I really do.

Between the court filings and trash talk, there were encouraging words heard at the NFL owners meetings. A collective bargaining deal is there ...

I’ll confess to being a little bit confused by what it is the former Council of Economic Advisors chairs who co-signed this op-ed are actually proposing:

To be sure, we don’t all support every proposal here [i.e., from the Simpson-Bowles Commission]. Each one of us could probably come up with a deficit reduction plan we like better. Some of us already have. Many of us might prefer one of the comprehensive alternative proposals offered in recent months. Yet we all strongly support prompt consideration of the commission’s proposals. The unsustainable long-run budget outlook is a growing threat to our well-being. Further stalemate and inaction would be irresponsible.

We know the measures to deal with the long-run deficit are politically difficult. The only way to accomplish them is for members of both parties to accept the political risks together. That is what the Republicans and Democrats on the commission who voted for the bipartisan proposal did. We urge Congress and the president to do the same.

Are they saying congress should enact these proposals into law? Doing so would, obviously, reduce the projected budget deficit. But they authors are assuring us that they don’t actually support all of the proposals. And neither do I. Consequently, if I were in congress I would vote against enacting these proposals into law if they came up for a vote. But in other sentence the authors appear to be merely urging congress to bring the proposals up for a vote. But what’s the point? John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have already clarified that they oppose the commission’s tax reform proposals. And the proposed reform, though slightly revenue-positive, involves a large decrease in tax rates on high income individuals. On what planet is a combination of tax cuts for the rich and deep spending cuts supposed to pass over the objection of the Republican leadership? That’s just silly.

As I’ve been saying, to make progress on the long-term budget what needs to happen next is that the House Republicans need to write down a budget proposal. Because the White House wrote down a budget proposal, it’s possible for deficit hawks to look at the proposal and say that the deficit being proposed is higher than they like. Which is fine. So now the question is what’s an idea that Republicans support that offers a lower deficit? My strong suspicion is that if forced to go through the exercise, Republicans will either move away from their current tax pledge (unlikely) or else develop a proposal that involves a higher deficit than what Obama is proposing (likely). Either way, the stage would be set for a new move in the iterative game. But as long as there’s no proposal from the Republicans, there’s nothing to talk about. I agree with Jon Bernstein that it’s very possible Republicans just won’t write a budget, but if that’s the case then that’s the problem. Without a budget proposal, the process can’t move forward.