October 31, 2006
WiserAdvisor.com University: Top 12 Mistakes 401k Investors Make
Here is what a former SEC Chairman has to say on the issue: “You should fire your broker and find an investment advisor. Brokerage firms would like you to think that they perform the same functions as investment advisors. Many brokers call themselves 'financial consultants' or 'financial advisors'. But they are not the same as independent investment advisors... an investment advisor's fiduciary duty is on a higher plane, like that of a lawyer, a trustee, or the executor of an estate." - Arthur Levitt, Former SEC Chairman
interesting
Posted by TY at 10:17 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
What Pilots Can Teach Hospitals About Patient Safety - New York Times
“We’re where the airline industry was 30 years ago” when a series of fatal mistakes increased scrutiny and provoked change, said Dr. Stephen B. Smith, chief medical officer at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska.
It is well established that, like airplane crashes, the majority of adverse events in health care are the result of human error, particularly failures in communication, leadership and decision-making.
“The culture in the operating room has always been the surgeon as the captain at the controls with a crew of anesthesiologists, nurses and techs hinting at problems and hoping they will be addressed,” Dr. Smith said. “We need to change the culture so communication is more organized, regimented and collaborative, like what you find now in the cockpit of an airplane.”
After the Canary Islands accident, NASA convened a panel to address aviation safety and came up with a program called Cockpit or Crew Resource Management. The Federal Aviation Administration requires that all pilots for commercial airlines and the military undergo the training. They learn, among other things, to recognize human limitations and the impact of fatigue, to identify and effectively communicate problems, to support and listen to team members, resolve conflicts, develop contingency plans and use all available resources to make decisions.
interesting
“The trend is not surprising given the similarities between health care and aviation,” said Dr. David M. Gaba, associate dean of immersive and simulation-based learning at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif.
“Both involve hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror,” he said.
GULP
Posted by TY at 9:45 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 30, 2006
MercuryNews.com | 10/30/2006 | Non-stop flights dwindling at S.J.
When Barbara Norvell of San Jose boards a plane these days, her destinations are typically faraway and exotic -- South America, Asia, Europe. But in recent months, her choice of airports has become faraway, too.
Norvell, who lives just 12 minutes from Mineta San Jose International Airport, flies out of San Francisco far more often than she once did. That's because she has fewer non-stop options from San Jose on her preferred carrier, American Airlines.
``It's very discouraging,'' she said.
These days, it seems the airport is ``international'' in name only.
Destinations such as Paris, Taipei and Vancouver are no longer available, and American Airlines flew its last San Jose-Tokyo route on Friday, ending a 15-year run. If you want to fly internationally, you'll have to settle for one of three daily flights to Mexico on Mexicana Airlines.
But even as business struggles, especially on flights operated by American, airport officials believe a turnaround is coming.
Last week, Frontier Airlines announced that it has applied to the Department of Transportation to begin service from San Jose to Cabo San Lucas four times a week in March. Bill Sherry, the airport's director of aviation, said he is also in talks with three other carriers on trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific routes, including Tokyo.
How true. How sad. :(
Posted by TY at 10:26 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
St. Louis is U.S.'s most dangerous city - Yahoo! News
A surge in violence made St. Louis the most dangerous city in the country, leading a trend of violent crimes rising much faster in the Midwest than in the rest of nation, according to an annual list.
ADVERTISEMENT
The city has long fared poorly in the rankings of the safest and most dangerous American cities compiled by Morgan Quitno Press. Violent crime surged nearly 20 percent in St. Louis from 2004 to last year, when the rate of such crimes rose most dramatically in the Midwest, according to
FBI figures released in June.
"It's just sad the way this city is," resident Sam Dawson said. "On the news you hear killings, someone's been shot."
The ranking, being released Monday, came as the city was still celebrating Friday's
World Series victory at the new Busch Stadium. St. Louis has been spending millions of dollars on urban renewal even as the crime rate climbs.
Mayor Francis Slay did not return calls to his office seeking comment Sunday.
doh
Posted by TY at 12:46 AM
| Comments (1)
| TrackBack
October 28, 2006
GAO chief warns economic disaster looms - Yahoo! News
Calculations by Boston University economist Lawrence Kotlikoff indicate that closing those gaps — $8 trillion for Social Security, many times that for Medicare — and paying off the existing deficit would require either an immediate doubling of personal and corporate income taxes, a two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits, or some combination of the two.
Why is America so fiscally unprepared for the next century? Like many of its citizens, the United States has spent the last few years racking up debt instead of saving for the future. Foreign lenders — primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners — have been eager to lend the government money at low interest rates, making the current $8.5-trillion deficit about as painful as a big balance on a zero-percent credit card.
In her part of the fiscal wake-up tour presentation, Rogers tries to explain why that's a bad thing. For one thing, even when rates are low a bigger deficit means a greater portion of each tax dollar goes to interest payments rather than useful programs. And because foreigners now hold so much of the federal government's debt, those interest payments increasingly go overseas rather than to U.S. investors.
More serious is the possibility that foreign lenders might lose their enthusiasm for lending money to the United States. Because treasury bills are sold at auction, that would mean paying higher interest rates in the future. And it wouldn't just be the government's problem. All interest rates would rise, making mortgages, car payments and student loans costlier, too.
A modest rise in interest rates wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, Rogers said. America's consumers have as much of a borrowing problem as their government does, so higher rates could moderate overconsumption and encourage consumer saving. But a big jump in interest rates could cause economic catastrophe. Some economists even predict the government would resort to printing money to pay off its debt, a risky strategy that could lead to runaway inflation.
Macroeconomic meltdown is probably preventable, says Anjan Thakor, a professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis. But to keep it at bay, he said, the government is essentially going to have to renegotiate some of the promises it has made to its citizens, probably by some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts.
But there's no way to avoid what Rogers considers the worst result of racking up a big deficit — the outrage of making our children and grandchildren repay the debts of their elders.
"It's an unfair burden for future generations," she says.
oh noes
Posted by TY at 9:59 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
GAO chief warns economic disaster looms - Yahoo! News
David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office. "This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."
[snip]
From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season, America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in
Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier for the American people.
What they don't talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.
There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them.
doh
Posted by TY at 6:55 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 26, 2006
The Cheapest City on Earth - WSJ.com
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- From my hotel window I can see one of Asia's tallest buildings -- the dramatic Petronas Twin Towers. My room is spacious and has all the little touches, such as thick terry cloth robes, that you'd expect from a five-star hotel. Downstairs, near the gym, there is a spa with hot and cold whirlpool baths. The breakfast buffet features specialties from Malaysia, China and Japan. All of this, with taxes and service charge, at the Shangri-La Hotel, is costing me $107 a night.
[The Petronas Towers]
The Petronas Towers
I haven't asked the manager for a discount, nor have I used airline miles to cover two-thirds of the cost. Rather, my room is so inexpensive because I've taken a trip to the world's cheapest major city.
Every three years, Swiss banking giant UBS does a survey of prices around the world, including what a tourist would pay for a typical overnight package of an upscale hotel room, meals, transportation and theater outings. In this year's survey, released recently, Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, took the honors, outranking cities with a reputation for budget travel such as Mumbai and Prague. Kuala Lumpur's total UBS travel package costs $260 -- less than one-quarter of what the same package would go for in London ($1,180) or Tokyo ($1,090), the two most expensive cities for tourists. Of the four U.S. cities in the survey, the lowest package cost $720 in Los Angeles and the highest was $920 in New York.
Good to know
Posted by TY at 11:34 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
The Expat Life - WSJ.com
A couple of friends had purchased cars with the help of African expat "Beijing Bob," who was said to make the process quick and painless. After browsing his Beijing Car Solution Web site, I told him we were interested in a Mitsubishi Futurer, which has a starting price of just over $20,000 total as well as a confusing array of Chinese named products all grouped together. He said he would arrange for us to see them. The next day, his employee Alice called and said the dealer was "close, close. Off the 4th Ring Road." Rebecca would be coming from the office to meet us there.
The 4th Ring Road runs fairly close to our house, but it also circles Beijing and once Alice's driver got on it, we turned south and drove nearly to the other side of the city, passing at least two Mitsubishi dealers en route. After 40 minutes, we got off and drove through a maze of side streets before emerging near a string of car dealers. Oddly, rather than pulling into one of them, we parked by the side of a dirt field bisected by a metal construction fence. As I got out of the car, Rebecca called to say Mr. Dou, her office driver, was lost. This furthered my feeling of being on another planet; he never gets lost. Alice's driver took the phone and he and Mr. Dou had an animated discussion.
Meanwhile, a young woman appeared, peeling back a section of the fence to allow us through. We crossed more dirt before entering a large, unmarked hangar-like structure. Four or five vans sat in the middle, each covered with a heavy layer of dust and grime. Alice cheerfully said, "Here they are." The dusty cars represented the different models, from cheapest (manual transmission, cloth seats, no air bags) to most expensive (leather seats, dual airbags, DVD player). It was the strangest way to view new cars I could imagine.
By the time Rebecca arrived, it had started raining and the dirt field was growing muddy. We asked if we could take the top-of-the line model for a test drive. They seemed puzzled but said okay. We circled the bumpy dirt road around the large building. The car seemed okay, though I had serious reservations about the in-dash DVD player, and big questions about just what made this car, which bore a Chinese logo, a Mitsubishi. "Mitsubishi engine," Alice explained. "What about this one?" I asked, pointing to the next cheaper model. "Mitsubishi design," she said matter-of-factly.
The next stop was what Alice described as a Hyundai dealer. We drove almost an hour to reach the showroom, where they obviously had some connection with Bob, but they turned out to sell "Hindais." At least I think they did; maybe it was a joint venture with Hyundai, but the van said "JAC" and it only had one airbag, breaking the main requirement I had laid out. We returned home after spending hours literally driving around in circles, annoyed and confused and no closer to having a new car.
[snip]
Figuring out how to get the dealer 160,000 renminbi shouldn't have been difficult since we had the money sitting in the bank, aware that financing was not an option since we are foreigners. I was about to learn just how naïve I actually am about international finance. I transferred the money into a Citibank account designed for expats in which we usually only keep a small amount of cash for ATM withdrawals, then walked into a Beijing branch to transfer the money to the dealer's account. Liu was waiting to go pick up the car.
The nice people at Citi restrained their laughter and explained that I could not access my U.S. account. Tracy Tian, a bilingual bank manager who would prove to be something of a guardian angel, patiently explained that I had to open a separate renminbi account, then transfer the money. Ready to scream, I opened the account and wired in the funds.
I then had to convert it from dollars to renminbi, which can only be done at the rate of $10,000 per day. After three more trips downtown, I could finally see a light at the end of the tunnel and could only hope it was not a train. When I had 183,000 renminbi in the account I asked Tracy for a cashier's check and she looked at me as if I had inquired if she ever laid eggs. They don't really do checks in China so I had two choices -- withdrawing bags of cash, as most Chinese customers do (there is no currency larger than a 100 renminbi note), or transfer the money into the dealer's account, which I chose to do.
ANd there's more - what a crazy story.
Posted by TY at 11:30 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
What Your Pet is Thinking - WSJ.com
Just about every pet lover has a story about the astonishing intelligence of his cat, dog, bird, ferret or chinchilla. Ethologists, the scientists who study animal behavior, have amassed thousands of studies showing that animals can count, understand cause and effect, form abstractions, solve problems, use tools and even deceive. But lately scientists have gone a step further: Researchers around the world are providing tantalizing evidence that animals not only learn and remember but that they may also have consciousness -- in other words, they may be capable of thinking about their thoughts and knowing that they know.
In the past few years, top journals have been publishing reports on self-awareness in dolphins and wild chimps whose different nut-cracking "technologies" constitute unique cultures. Others argue that rats have a sense of fun, mice show empathy for cage-mates and scrub jays are capable of "mental time travel" that enables them to remember where they stashed worms and seeds.
[rhesus macaque monkey]
Rhesus macaque monkeys have been the subject of memory studies in Atlanta
While researchers have yet to attain the field's holy grail -- proving that animals are self-aware -- the findings already have broad implications. For the 69 million U.S. households that own a pet, such knowledge might lead owners to question their animal companions' awareness of what they're fed, how they're housed and how often the kitty litter is changed. All of that would be a boon for the pet industry, which generates $38 billion in annual revenue, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, selling everything from food and grooming services to pet exercise gear, hotels and psychics.
Drug companies are already addressing animals' feelings. Some 15 million dogs have taken Pfizer Inc.'s animal pain-reliever Remadyl. The company's Anipryl targets "cognitive dysfunction syndrome" in dogs. (In a dog, symptoms include failing to recognize people or respond to its name and getting lost in the house.) Experts expect a steady stream of drugs aimed at pets' minds instead of bodies.
interesting
Posted by TY at 11:05 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Boeing 787 gives investors a sudden fright
The Boeing Co. threw a scare into Wall Street on Wednesday when it announced it was pouring hundreds of millions of dollars more into the development of its hot-selling 787 jetliner to head off problems that could otherwise threaten the project.
With the first flight less than a year away, the Dreamliner is still too heavy. And some suppliers are falling behind schedule.
Boeing said it has funded a contingency plan to hire more machinists to help with 787 final assembly at the Everett plant should they be needed to keep the program on track. The additional jobs -- Boeing wouldn't say how many -- would be temporary.
Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney, in a conference call to discuss third-quarter earnings Wednesday, reassured analysts several times that he believes the 787 issues will be resolved and will not delay the plane's entry into service in May 2008.
Remember, investment and hiring is bad for stock prices.
Posted by TY at 10:43 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 25, 2006
CareerJournal | Survey: M.B.A.s Are The Biggest Cheaters
"We have found that graduate students in general are cheating at an alarming rate and business-school students are cheating even more than others," concludes a study by the Academy of Management Learning and Education of 5,300 students in the U.S. and Canada.
Many of these students reportedly believe cheating is an accepted practice in business. More than half (56%) of M.B.A. candidates say they cheated in the past year. For the study, cheating was defined as plagiarizing, copying other students' work and bringing prohibited materials into exams.
"To us that means that business-school faculty and administrators must do something, because doing nothing simply reinforces the belief that high levels of cheating are commonplace and acceptable," say the authors of the academy report, Donald McCabe of Rutgers University, Kenneth Butterfield of Washington State University and Linda Klebe Trevino at Penn State University.
However, what's holding many professors back from taking action on cheaters is the fear of litigation. To that end, the academic world is becoming much more like the business world where those who walk with a heavy legal stick can swat others out of the way; it may be time to impose a whistleblower statute for students and teachers.
Yes, it seems to have come to that. With 54% of graduate engineering students, 50% of students in the physical sciences, 49% of medical and other health-care students, 45% of law students, 43% of graduate students in the arts and 39% of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities readily admitting to cheating, something must be done to correct course.
interesting
Posted by TY at 11:46 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Students resort to private loans, staggering debt
Ethan Winsby considers himself in financial ruin at age 27 -- but not because he lost at gambling or risked everything on a startup that went bust.
Like a growing number of young adults, he had to take out private loans to attend college.
He graduated from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco in 2005, but he said his subsequent low-paying job as a cook has made it nearly impossible for him to repay the $35,000 he borrowed.
As the 18 percent interest rate compounded, his debt has soared to $50,000. The monthly payments, if he made them, would be two-thirds of his $1,200 monthly after-tax salary.
With no prospects of paying his loans off quickly, Winsby sees his debt spiraling out of control.
"At this rate, I'm going to be in default," he said. "Default means you have no options. It's the main source of stress in my life. It shouldn't be. I was trying to make a career for myself. I wish I hadn't even gone to school."
18% interest??
Posted by TY at 11:35 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day
As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my case) or some other sort of normal laryngitis. It happens to people in my age bracket.
I asked my doctor – a specialist for this condition – how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero. While there’s no cure, painful Botox injections through the front of the neck and into the vocal cords can stop the spasms for a few months. That weakens the muscles that otherwise spasm, but your voice is breathy and weak.
The weirdest part of this phenomenon is that speech is processed in different parts of the brain depending on the context. So people with this problem can often sing but they can’t talk. In my case I could do my normal professional speaking to large crowds but I could barely whisper and grunt off stage. And most people with this condition report they have the most trouble talking on the telephone or when there is background noise. I can speak normally alone, but not around others. That makes it sound like a social anxiety problem, but it’s really just a different context, because I could easily sing to those same people.
I stopped getting the Botox shots because although they allowed me to talk for a few weeks, my voice was too weak for public speaking. So at least until the fall speaking season ended, I chose to maximize my onstage voice at the expense of being able to speak in person.
My family and friends have been great. They read my lips as best they can. They lean in to hear the whispers. They guess. They put up with my six tries to say one word. And my personality is completely altered. My normal wittiness becomes slow and deliberate. And often, when it takes effort to speak a word intelligibly, the wrong word comes out because too much of my focus is on the effort of talking instead of the thinking of what to say. So a lot of the things that came out of my mouth frankly made no sense.
To state the obvious, much of life’s pleasure is diminished when you can’t speak. It has been tough.
whoa
Posted by TY at 2:12 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Weight gain means lower gas mileage - Yahoo! News
Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight.
That's the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage.
Using recent gas prices of $2.20 a gallon, that translates to about $2.2 billion more spent on gas each year.
"The bottom line is that our hunger for food and our hunger for oil are not independent. There is a relationship between the two," said University of Illinois researcher Sheldon Jacobson, a study co-author.
"If a person reduces the weight in their car, either by removing excess baggage, carrying around less weight in their trunk, or yes, even losing weight, they will indeed see a drop in their fuel consumption."
The lost mileage is pretty small for any single driver. Jacobson said the typical driver — someone who records less than 12,000 miles annually — would use roughly 18 fewer gallons of gas over the course of a year by losing 100 pounds. At $2.20 per gallon, that would be a savings of almost $40.
Outside experts said that even if the calculations aren't exact, the study makes sense.
"If you put more weight into your car, you're going to get fewer miles per gallon," Emory University health care analyst Kenneth Thorpe said Wednesday.
duh
Posted by TY at 1:28 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 24, 2006
Hong Kong Start-Up Brings Budget Fares To Long-Haul Flights - WSJ.com
Travelers who fly long distances have largely been shut out of the cheap fares offered by budget airlines. Now, a Hong Kong-based start-up is taking discounted flights over oceans and continents, launching a Hong Kong-to-London route for as little as $209 one way.
Beginning today, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines will offer four flights a week to London's Gatwick Airport, launching service with a pair of second-hand 747-400 jetliners. It hopes to expand its Hong Kong service to Oakland, Calif., and Chicago within the next year or so.
Other budget airlines around the globe are also winging their way into long-haul territory. Australian budget carrier Jetstar plans to start flying next month from Sydney to Honolulu. Viva Macau, a Macau-based carrier set to make its debut later this year, aims to offer low-cost flights to Europe and the U.S. In Europe, Ryanair this month offered to pay $1.76 billion for Aer Lingus, seeking to combine its own short-haul operations with the long-haul flights of its Irish rival. Budget carriers are one bright spot in an industry that is facing tough times, as rampant competition and stubbornly high fuel prices inflict billions of dollars in losses on airlines.
Oasis is taking aim at Cathay Pacific Airways, which dominates long-haul traffic from Hong Kong. To do so, Oasis is offering promotional one-way economy-class fares of $209 and business-class fares of $927. That compares with Cathay's current fares from Hong Kong to London's Heathrow Airport of about $530 for coach and $3,641 for business class, one way. These fares include airport taxes, fuel surcharges and other fees.
But Oasis' economy class promotional fares are limited: The $209 fare is good for travel through Nov. 30 for people who booked between Oct. 3 and 15. After that -- but only guaranteed for the first year of Oasis' operation -- just 10% of seats in the economy cabin will be available at that promotional price. Other economy-class fares range from about $215 to $590 each way, not including taxes. (Taxes are about $125 from London and $80 from Hong Kong.)
interesting
Posted by TY at 11:02 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Hong Kong Start-Up Brings Budget Fares To Long-Haul Flights - WSJ.com
Travelers who fly long distances have largely been shut out of the cheap fares offered by budget airlines. Now, a Hong Kong-based start-up is taking discounted flights over oceans and continents, launching a Hong Kong-to-London route for as little as $209 one way.
Beginning today, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines will offer four flights a week to London's Gatwick Airport, launching service with a pair of second-hand 747-400 jetliners. It hopes to expand its Hong Kong service to Oakland, Calif., and Chicago within the next year or so.
Other budget airlines around the globe are also winging their way into long-haul territory. Australian budget carrier Jetstar plans to start flying next month from Sydney to Honolulu. Viva Macau, a Macau-based carrier set to make its debut later this year, aims to offer low-cost flights to Europe and the U.S. In Europe, Ryanair this month offered to pay $1.76 billion for Aer Lingus, seeking to combine its own short-haul operations with the long-haul flights of its Irish rival. Budget carriers are one bright spot in an industry that is facing tough times, as rampant competition and stubbornly high fuel prices inflict billions of dollars in losses on airlines.
Oasis is taking aim at Cathay Pacific Airways, which dominates long-haul traffic from Hong Kong. To do so, Oasis is offering promotional one-way economy-class fares of $209 and business-class fares of $927. That compares with Cathay's current fares from Hong Kong to London's Heathrow Airport of about $530 for coach and $3,641 for business class, one way. These fares include airport taxes, fuel surcharges and other fees.
But Oasis' economy class promotional fares are limited: The $209 fare is good for travel through Nov. 30 for people who booked between Oct. 3 and 15. After that -- but only guaranteed for the first year of Oasis' operation -- just 10% of seats in the economy cabin will be available at that promotional price. Other economy-class fares range from about $215 to $590 each way, not including taxes. (Taxes are about $125 from London and $80 from Hong Kong.)
interesting
Posted by TY at 11:00 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
As Shoplifters Use High-Tech Scams, Retail Losses Rise - WSJ.com
William Swanberg had a thing for Legos, but it was hardly child's play.
After he was arrested last November near Portland, Ore., police investigators determined he had stolen more than $600,000 of the Danish building toys over three years from dozens of stores in at least five Western states.
He pilfered the toys by creating counterfeit bar codes that allowed $100 Lego sets, for example, to be rung up for just $19. Then he resold them on a Web site for toy collectors.
that's a lot of legos
Bar-code swindlers are hard to catch, says Mr. Brekke, a former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If an alert cashier points out that a bar code is ringing up the wrong price, the thief can either pay the difference or just say he doesn't want the item any more and walk out. "The risk level is very low," he says.
doh
Posted by TY at 10:52 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Limbaugh: Michael J. Fox Exploited Disease, Conservative Talk Show Host Says He'll Apologize If Fox Wasn't 'Acting' In Political Ad - CBS News
His body visibly wracked by tremors, actor Michael J. Fox appears in a political ad that was the subject of widespread discussion on Monday after conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed Fox was "either off his medication or acting."
well i guess Rush would know a lot about meds...
Posted by TY at 10:44 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
'All Chinese can look the same' says Scottish judge - Yahoo! News
A Scottish judge cleared a student from China of a motoring offence after claiming that "all Chinese people can look the same", a newspaper has reported.
ADVERTISEMENT
Sheriff Margaret Gimblett dismissed the evidence of two police officers who had identified Hui Yu, 23, who had been charged with driving without insurance.
She was quoted by The Times Monday as telling Greenock Sheriff Court, near Glasgow: "Without wanting to be derogatory in any way, sometimes it is said that all black people look the same at first glance and the same can be said that all Chinese people can look the same to a native Scot.
Heh
Posted by TY at 9:56 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Cubicle Culture - WSJ.com
When Michael Schiller, a management consultant, wanted to talk with his 15-year-old daughter about where she was going with her friends, he told her, "You have to recognize your ARAs and measure against them."
His wife rolled her eyes, knowing that he was using HR speak to address accountability, responsibility and authority. His daughter, he says, "looked at me like I was from outer space."
Similarly, when Sally Schaeffer's husband, Tom, said he needed to hire people for his landscaping business, the senior research analyst told him, "You should reach out to Hank" for leads.
"What is 'reaching out'?" he asked her. "Going up to Hank and touching him softly."
And a couple of months ago, when Mike Puccini was griping at the dinner table about the whopper electrical bill, his wife said, "Well, you should push back."
To which Mr. Puccini ultimately said what his children, young adults, were also thinking: "What are you talking about?"
Argue the matter, she explained.
"Then say that!" Mr. Puccini snapped, which resulted in the two of them "pushing back and forth for the next 20 minutes," he says. "Corporate lingo is worse than general slang and even curse words."
Yet, business jargon is infiltrating our homes, as unwelcome as water damage. And it's hardly the King's English, pushing us to verbify nouns (to whiteboard, to effort, to calendar) and to nounify verbs (a solve).
noted. AIs all around.
What results is a topsy-turvy swap between work and home. "My kids have school status reports, my co-workers have needs and feelings," says Michael Reene, an executive at an information and technology company. "My kids are measured, graded and ranked, but my co-workers have relationships and workplace issues."
Hah
Posted by TY at 12:05 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Cubicle Culture - WSJ.com
When Michael Schiller, a management consultant, wanted to talk with his 15-year-old daughter about where she was going with her friends, he told her, "You have to recognize your ARAs and measure against them."
His wife rolled her eyes, knowing that he was using HR speak to address accountability, responsibility and authority. His daughter, he says, "looked at me like I was from outer space."
Similarly, when Sally Schaeffer's husband, Tom, said he needed to hire people for his landscaping business, the senior research analyst told him, "You should reach out to Hank" for leads.
"What is 'reaching out'?" he asked her. "Going up to Hank and touching him softly."
And a couple of months ago, when Mike Puccini was griping at the dinner table about the whopper electrical bill, his wife said, "Well, you should push back."
To which Mr. Puccini ultimately said what his children, young adults, were also thinking: "What are you talking about?"
Argue the matter, she explained.
"Then say that!" Mr. Puccini snapped, which resulted in the two of them "pushing back and forth for the next 20 minutes," he says. "Corporate lingo is worse than general slang and even curse words."
Yet, business jargon is infiltrating our homes, as unwelcome as water damage. And it's hardly the King's English, pushing us to verbify nouns (to whiteboard, to effort, to calendar) and to nounify verbs (a solve).
noted. AIs all around.
Posted by TY at 12:04 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Sending the Baby To a Shrink - WSJ.com
Jean M. Thomas, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist, recently saw a patient who was struggling with her emotions. She was agitated and couldn't stop crying. She was recovering from an eating problem and had trouble forming relationships.
She was 11 months old.
Therapists are increasingly moving their treatments from the couch to the crib. While the field of infant mental health -- which encompasses the study of children from birth through age three -- has been around for decades, new research on everything from brain development to maternal depression is giving it a boost. A widely used mental health and development diagnostic manual for infants was revised last year for the first time since 1994 to include two new subsets of depression, five new subsets of anxiety disorders (including separation anxiety and social anxiety disorders) and six new subsets of feeding behavior disorders (including sensory food aversions and infantile anorexia).
By starting treatment as soon as possible -- even before their patients are out of diapers -- doctors feel they are helping kids become better adjusted. But the field is also getting a push from anxious parents, who are increasingly eager to catch serious problems, such as autism or anxiety disorders, in their children as early as possible. Indeed, doctors are finding that they can recognize the signs of some of these problems earlier -- sometimes in infants as young as one.
"Early intervention can make a difference," says Dr. Thomas, who practices at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
interesting
Posted by TY at 12:02 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
In San Francisco, Red-Light Denizens Fight to Stay Seedy - WSJ.com
"Wanted" posters went up around the Tenderloin last year, featuring Ms. Abst's photo. Someone circulated pamphlets disparaging her. Residents yelled at her in the street. Ms. Abst's offense: trying to plant 400 trees in the area. "I had no idea that cleanliness, beauty and safety could get people so riled up," the 58-year-old says.
[Carolyn Abst]
In San Francisco's Tenderloin, residents aren't fighting the usual gentrification battle over displacing low-income families. Instead, they are fighting for the neighborhood's gritty ambience.
Often described by tourist guides as San Francisco's worst neighborhood, the Tenderloin has for years been a gathering point for pimps, drug addicts and transvestites and transgender residents, some of whom work as prostitutes. Some residents say that's what gives the Tenderloin its personality and makes it a crucial piece of San Francisco's diverse cityscape. Cleanup efforts, these residents contend, threaten to destroy an atmosphere that welcomes people on the fringe of society, who otherwise could find no refuge. And it distracts from the issues the neighborhood really cares about, such as safety for sex workers and affordable housing.
"This was a place where people who don't fit in, the ostracized and cast-off, could find a place of their own," says Tenderloin resident Matt Bernstein Sycamore, a former prostitute and now a member of a local gay activist group called Gay Shame. The group, which was behind the "wanted" posters that targeted Ms. Abst and her tree-planting campaign, has been joined by other neighborhood activists in efforts to combat what it calls a "sanitized vision for the future."
Mr. Sycamore, a sometime club host who is also known by his drag-queen name, Mary Hedgefunds, says he has now moved out of his one-bedroom Tenderloin rental because the neighborhood is no longer a place where he wants to live.
At least one city official is sympathetic to the local activists' cause. "Yes, people are addicted to drugs and, yes, there's homelessness," says Chris Daly, a Democrat who represents the Tenderloin district on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, the city's legislative branch. But "why shouldn't these people have a place of their own?" Mr. Daly, a proponent of affordable housing, has steered funding to nonprofit social services and tenant-protection programs for the area.
interesting
Posted by TY at 12:00 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 23, 2006
FBI Stats Show Many Colleges Understate Campus Crime - WSJ.com
Northeastern University tallied just five burglaries on and around its campus here in 2004, far below most other colleges in the area.
That stellar figure, reported to the U.S. Education Department and distributed in the school's literature for students and staff, helped tip some safety-minded applicants toward Northeastern, school officials say.
James Ferrier, a campus police officer who compiles the university's crime statistics, calls Northeastern an "oasis compared to crime in the rest of the city." But those statistics may be more like a mirage.
[Chart]
Northeastern may have recorded only five burglaries -- thefts that involve trespassing -- but the university also counted 345 instances of larcenies, which don't involve unlawful entry. These larcenies, included in a separate report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, weren't reported to the campus community. Furthermore, federal regulators say that many larcenies at Northeastern and other schools should have been reported as burglaries and disclosed on campus.
[snip]
According to the FBI, larcenies occurred three to four times more often than burglaries nationwide in 2004. But many colleges report a sharply lower burglary proportion to the FBI -- and repeat the low burglary numbers in the Clery data they must share with students. Rice University in Houston reported just one burglary in 2004 compared with 149 larcenies. The College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Va., reported three burglaries and 334 larcenies. And the University of Michigan's campus in Ann Arbor listed 25 burglaries and 908 larcenies. Statistics for last year aren't yet available from all schools.
Rice and William and Mary both declined to comment on their crime-reporting policies, as did other private schools with lopsided burglary and larceny statistics. At Michigan, a spokeswoman explained that in cases with no indication of which type of theft occurred, the campus police score the crime as larceny.
Harvard University says it adheres to the FBI's definition of burglary. As a result, Harvard reported 446 burglaries and 229 larcenies in 2004. That's 132 burglaries per 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the highest such rate in the Ivy League.
doh
Posted by TY at 12:54 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Eyes on the Road - WSJ.com
Now, BMW is starting to build an entirely new X5, which will be shipped to more than 100 countries from its big factory near Spartanburg, S.C. The new X5 represents BMW's most overt effort yet to expand its appeal beyond driving enthusiasts with Y chromosomes.
Capable of carrying up to seven passengers in three rows of seats, the new 2007 X5 is a technological marvel whose most noticeable feature, for many buyers, will be the decidedly un-Bavarian Big Gulp-ready cup holders designed into the center console just in front of the shift lever.
Call it the Ultimate Mommy Machine.
The driver's seat of the new X5 offers a commanding view -- and not just of the twisty mountain roads between Greenville S.C. and Asheville, N.C. You can see a lot about where the luxury vehicle business is heading, too.
Let's start with those cupholders. They are a symbol of just how much competitive pressure now confronts even elite brands such as BMW. Albert Biermann, the project director who led the new X5's development, says one strong request from BMW's U.S. marketing team was "please demonstrate that BMW can execute a cupholder" to U.S. tastes.
Not so long ago, BMW engineers -- like their counterparts at other German luxury brands -- blew off cupholders as just another American vulgarism. Not anymore.
Cupholders are just one way in which the new X5 represents a new level of effort by one of Europe's proudest auto makers to cater to American tastes. Another is that optional third row of seats, which most X5 owners will never sit in unless they are being punished by an angry spouse. Perhaps, in a different world, BMW would have stuck with a five-seat configuration for the X5, rather than add weight and body structure to a vehicle that's supposed to be agile. But the social reality is that well-to-do Americans have to ferry their kids and their friends to soccer practice or school just like everybody else. One of the biggest complaints about the old X5 was that it had less cargo space than one of BMW's 5 series wagons.
interesting
Posted by TY at 12:50 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
TheDenverChannel.com - News - Many Americans Experience Anxiety On Sunday Nights
Sunday nights are supposed to be a time for relaxing, but for many people it is one of the most stressful times of the week.
For many Americans, Sunday nights make people feel stressed out and depressed.
"I never sleep on Sunday night very well because I'm worried about going to work on Monday morning," said one worrier. "My job is very stressful and you kind of have to gear up for Monday and getting back into that."
After sitting at their desks all workweek long, people can't help but look forward to the weekend. But once it comes, it can go by fast.
By the time Sunday night comes around, it's all but over and that is when the panic sets in for many people.
not surprising
Posted by TY at 12:27 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 22, 2006
Entrees Reach $40, and, Sorry, the Sides Are Extra - New York Times
That item is the $40 entree.
Until recently, such prices were the stuff of four-star, white-tablecloth meals, the kind that ended with a diamond ring on the petit four tray. But now entrees over $40 can be found in restaurants that are merely upscale, where diners wear jeans and tote children. In geographic terms, New York and Las Vegas have led the charge, and in culinary ones, luxury items like steak and lobster were first and are still most prevalent.
But the $40 entree is migrating: to restaurants in Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale and Denver, and to ingredients like fish and even pasta. Several national chains serve entrees priced above $40.
âForty is the new 30,â said Richard Coraine, the chief operating officer of Union Square Hospitality Group, which recently began charging $42 for a 1¾-ounce appetizer portion of lobster at lunchtime at the Modern in New York. Ten percent of its lunch patrons order the dish, it says.
Hovering just below the $40 mark is an even vaster group of $38 and $39 entrees, waiting to cross the line like thirtysomethings approaching a zero-ended birthday. The arctic char at the Indianapolis branch of the Oceanaire Seafood Room chain is $38.50. Metropolitan Grill in Seattle serves shrimp scampi for $39.95. At Mikeâs, a new steakhouse in Brooklyn Heights, $9.95 chicken nuggets share the menu with $38.95 veal chops.
doh
Posted by TY at 4:13 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Beware of the Squish Behind the Jet Seat - New York Times
Increasingly, that describes the modern airliner, an untidy tube hurtling through the sky full of passengers who cannot wait to land and go wash their hands with disinfectant soap. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but in the airline industry it has taken a back seat to financial survival.
Airlines, which have been paring their fleets to cut costs, are flying their jets fuller than ever — and, like New York City in the summer, some of them are just a little too crowded not to smell. After dispensing with the expense of most meal service, airlines invited passengers to bring their own food aboard, and many planes now land littered with a smorgasbord of wrappers and leftovers.
Once on the ground, there are fewer employees to tidy up, thanks to widespread layoffs. And planes, which make money only when they fly, sit at the gate for shorter periods, often making cleanup a rush job.
“You put your hand in the seatback pocket and there’s an open McDonald’s ketchup container in there,” said Joe Brancatelli, a frequent flier who runs an advice Web site for business travelers. Tidiness has declined in recent years, he said. “The problem is they’ve made so many cuts.”
Indeed.
Posted by TY at 3:25 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Concordes ‘left to rot on the runway’ - [Sunday Herald]
Three of the four Concordes remaining in the UK are being left to corrode on exposed stretches of tarmac. Campaigners fighting to preserve the supersonic airliner have warned that unless action is taken these symbols of engineering and scientific discovery could be lost to future generations.
“Our national heritage is being left to rot on a forgotten runway. These iconic aircraft represent the single most stunning achievement in Britain’s post-war history, yet they are being allowed to slowly turn to rust,” said Ben Lord of the Save Concorde Group.
The warning comes after campaigners carrying out a routine survey of one of the remaining Concordes discovered a small hole in its fuselage.
Despite promises that a custom-built hangar would be provided for the aircraft at Filton in Bristol, building work has yet to begin, and fears are mounting that winter is likely to worsen the corrosion.
Two other Concordes, at Manchester Aviation Park and Brooklands Museum, will also spend the winter outdoors. Of Britain’s four remaining examples, only the one held by the Scottish Museum of Flight, in East Fortune, East Lothian, is housed in a specialist facility.
oh dear
Posted by TY at 12:34 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 20, 2006
Iraq Aims to Limit Mortality Data - washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office has instructed the country's health ministry to stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations, jeopardizing a key source of information on the number of civilian war dead in Iraq, according to a U.N. document.
A confidential cable from the United Nations' top official in Baghdad, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi of Pakistan, said the Iraqi prime minister is seeking to exercise greater control over the release of the country's politically sensitive death toll. U.N. officials expressed concern that the move threatens to politicize the process of counting Iraq's dead and muddy international efforts to gain a clear snapshot of the scale of killing in Iraq.
not surprising
Posted by TY at 10:20 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Smelly Carpets, Meet Silver Ions - WSJ.com
In July, Home Depot introduced a new line of carpeting, Puresque, which has salts that are chemically bonded to its fibers. The retailer says the salts "act like magnets to trap and destroy odors." Manufactured by Beaulieu of America, the carpet sells for $1.77 to $3.22 a square foot, uninstalled, about the same price as non-odor-eating carpets. Last year, textile giant Milliken & Co. started putting odor-fighting ions in all of its carpeting and fabric. And Interface's FLOR carpet tiles, introduced in 2003, have antimicrobials the company says inhibit the growth of smelly bacteria.
Researchers say the market is ripe for such products. Americans are more obsessed with sanitation and personal hygiene than many other cultures, says chemist Craig Warren, a visiting scholar at the University of California in San Diego and the science adviser to the Sense of Smell Institute in New York. Fabrics that clean up after themselves are an attractive alternative: Americans spent an average of 12.3 hours a week on housework in 2004, down from 14.05 hours in 1985, according to John Robinson, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. To make matters worse, soft surfaces like carpets, drapes and couches are hard to clean, so they get cleaned less often, says Dr. Warren. "They become the home's odor sinks."
[carpet tile]
Milliken Carpet's Tesserae carpet tile
Mike Judge had 200 square yards of Puresque carpeting installed in his five-bedroom home in Marietta, Ga., last week. An executive at a firm that builds germ- and dust-free clean rooms for hospitals and computer facilities, he says he was initially skeptical that the carpet could neutralize bad smells. (Mr. Judge says he has never used such products in his job.) But so far, he says, it's handled every olfactory offender, from cat litter to burned pork roast. Indeed, it's worked almost too well, he says, erasing pleasant scents, too, such as his wife's lavender air fresheners.
interesting
Posted by TY at 12:19 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 19, 2006
Happy, confident students do worse in math - Yahoo! News
Kids who are turned off by math often say they don't enjoy it, they aren't good at it and they see little point in it. Who knew that could be a formula for success?
ADVERTISEMENT
The nations with the best scores have the least happy, least confident math students, says a study by the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy.
Countries reporting higher levels of enjoyment and confidence among math students don't do as well in the subject, the study suggests. The results for the United States hover around the middle of the pack, both in terms of enjoyment and in test scores.
In essence, happiness is overrated, says study author Tom Loveless.
"We might want to focus on the math that kids are learning and just be a little less obsessed with the fact that they have to enjoy every minute of it," said Loveless, who directs the Brown center and serves on a presidential advisory panel on math.
classic
Posted by TY at 12:18 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Fried Coke a big hit at US state fairs - Yahoo! News
Fried Coke has become the latest artery-clogging hit at US state fairs, local media reports.
ADVERTISEMENT
The gooey Coke-battered nuggets topped with cola syrup won the "most creative" title at the Texas state fair in Dallas last month. Since then, the deep-fried phenomenon has spread to North Carolina and Arizona.
"We've been getting calls from everywhere since we introduced it," Elizabeth Martin, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina fair, told the Dallas Morning News. "Everyone wants to know where they can get it."
Fried treats are as big of a draw at state fairs as the rides and prize-winning farm animals. Twinkies, cookies and even pickles are stuck with a stick, dipped in batter and then seared in the deep fryer.
Fried Coke's inventor, concessionaire Abel Gonzales Jr., is a creative fryer whose experiments have proven popular. Last year he sold 20,000 fried peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches, the Morning News reported. Fried Coke looks to be an even bigger hit: he sold 16,000 cups of the sticky balls in the first two weeks of the fair, which runs through Oct. 22.
medicare be damned
Posted by TY at 12:16 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Obesity may be linked to sleeping times - Yahoo! News
A trend for children and adolescents to stay up later and sleep less may be linked to rising levels of obesity, according to a review of existing research published on Thursday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Bristol University researcher Shahad Taheri said televisions, computers, mobile phones and other gadgets should be banned from children's bedrooms to enable them to get a good night's sleep.
Writing in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, Taheri said there was increasing evidence that shortened sleeping times result in metabolic changes that may contribute to obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes and heart disease.
A UK study published last year indicated that insufficient sleep in infants aged 30 months was associated with obesity by the time they reached the age of seven.
Taheri said this suggested that sleep loss at a young age may alter the body's mechanisms that regulate appetite and energy expenditure.
doh
Posted by TY at 12:16 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 18, 2006
Sex talk dominates N.C. election debate - Yahoo! News
U.S. Rep. Brad Miller (news, bio, voting record) chuckled through most of the first debate with his Republican challenger, who led a tense and often awkward discussion about sex-related issues Tuesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Vernon Robinson, who has run a series of brash advertisements about the two-term Democratic congressman, charged that Miller wants to import homosexuals to the United States and supported scientific studies that would pay teenage girls to watch pornography.
"Those are San Francisco values, not North Carolina values," said Robinson, repeating a common theme of his campaign.
A bemused Miller countered by blasting Robinson for a campaign mailer that implicitly suggested the congressman was gay and criticized Miller for being "childless." Miller's wife had a hysterectomy more than two decades ago.
doh
Posted by TY at 1:18 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 17, 2006
Bindi Irwin to star in wildlife series - Yahoo! News
Like father, like daughter. Bindi Irwin, the 8-year-old daughter of the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, will star in a wildlife series to air on the Discovery Kids network early next year. The show's working title: "Bindi, The Jungle Girl."
ADVERTISEMENT
Her father, animal lover and conservationist Steve Irwin, died from the poisonous jab of a stingray Sept. 4. Besides Bindi, he left behind her mother, Terri, and 2-year-old brother, Bob.
The show, now in the early stages of production, was originally "going to be a father-daughter thing," starring the nature-loving duo, Discovery publicist Annie Howell told the Associated Press on Monday. "Steve and Bindi were very enthusiastic about doing the show together."
Irwin will appear with Bindi in scenes filmed before his death, his manager, John Stainton, said in an interview on People magazine's Web site.
"Some people think that I would be afraid of them, but I'm never ever afraid of an animal," Bindi said in an interview Monday on ABC's "Australian Story."
"I just get excited and some that are dangerous I just think, `Oooh! What's going to happen?' and things like that."
Apparently, they haven't heard of Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee
Posted by TY at 12:36 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Doolittle paid lawyer to talk to agency - Yahoo! News
Republican Rep. John Doolittle (news, bio, voting record) of California paid an attorney more than $38,000 in recent months to talk to the Justice Department in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying investigation, new campaign finance reports show.
ADVERTISEMENT
A spokeswoman said the money was spent after Doolittle asked his attorney, David Barger, to contact the Justice Department "to further express the congressman's willingness to be helpful and satisfy the Justice Department that the congressman has done nothing wrong."
In a statement, spokeswoman Laura Blackann said Doolittle has not been contacted by prosecutors in the ongoing congressional corruption probe stemming from the conviction of GOP lobbyist Abramoff. Doolittle "has no reason to believe that he is the target of an investigation," she said.
What an unfortunate name for someone with a political career!
Posted by TY at 12:35 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 16, 2006
village voice > news > Planespotting by Trevor Paglen & A. C. Thompson
Ray is somewhat unusual among planespotters because, much more than others with the same hobby, he tends to move beyond the "How does it work?" questions and venture into "What does it all mean?" When he logs new aircraft or sees suspicious movements, he's quick to check newspapers and, when necessary, file Freedom of Information Act requests to develop a deeper understanding of what he's logged. Because he follows up his planespotting with intensive database and Internet searches, phone calls to journalists and public-affairs officers at military bases and airports, he's made some discoveries about the workings of the U.S. military and other government agencies that add up to much more than a sum of collected data. That's how he inadvertently discovered the CIA's fleet of "torture planes." He became aware of the network of unmarked airplanes, front companies, and unexplained incidents involving American "civilians" around the world after noticing a collection of unusual aircraft at a remote airstrip in central Nevada called Base Camp. "If you want to know about how I started tracking these torture planes," Ray would later explain to us, "I think we're going to have to talk about Base Camp."
Base Camp is about ten miles northeast of Warm Springs at the junction of Highway 6 and Highway 395 in Nevada's remote Hot Creek Valley. Base Camp is little more than a dusty collection of trailers with an adjacent 7,300-foot airstrip. It's an active, albeit small, installation, and no one outside of government knows for sure what goes on there. The facility was originally built in the late 1960s to house Project Faultless, an exploratory effort to move underground nuclear testing away from the Nevada Test Site. (Las Vegas casinos had begun to complain about the earth-trembling explosions just to their north.) After a particularly disruptive January 1969 test at the Faultless headquarters, the Atomic Energy Commission deemed this part of Nevada unsuitable for further nuclear testing and closed shop at Base Camp. Today the Air Force runs Base Camp, though it remains unclear just what goes on there.
And this is why Base Camp is so interesting to planespotters. Base Camp certainly looks like a secret military base. First, the runway has large "Xs" painted on either end, a mark that usually means an airfield has been decommissioned or is otherwise unsafe for landing. This is suspicious because planes definitely fly in and out of the place. Second, there are persistent rumors that Base Camp is somehow connected to the "non-existent" Area 51 base to the south, which definitely does exist and definitely has nothing to do with aliens�in reality Area 51 has long served as a test site for experimental aircraft. The U-2 and F-117A stealth fighter, among others, were developed there. Unmarked passenger planes spotted flying into Area 51 have also been seen at Base Camp.
interesting
Posted by TY at 9:02 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
Basking on the Beach, or Maybe on the Operating Table - New York Times
Medical Tours International has 12 registered nurses and three doctors who help patients plan medical treatment and trips. They also visit and check out the overseas hospitals — noting, for example, whether they have emergency evacuation signs in English — and evaluate doctors, requesting copies of their credentials, talking with doctors’ colleagues and reading what patients say about them on online message boards.
Last year, Medical Tour International sent 1,324 people to India, Costa Rica, Thailand and Brazil for procedures like in-vitro fertilization, dental work and orthopedic surgery. Ms. Sulger says she expects sales this year to reach $1 million.
In April, Gary Hulmes, a furniture store manager in Englewood, Fla., paid $295 to a company called PlanetHospital, based in Calabasas, Calif., to help him plan a trip to India. In back pain for months and without health insurance, Mr. Hulmes, 44, opted to go to a Max Hospital in New Delhi for spinal surgery rather than having it done at home.
He paid $9,000 for the three-week trip, which included a five-day hospital stay, airfare, hotel and sightseeing at spots like the Taj Mahal. At home, it could have run $36,000 to $50,000, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
American hospitals “offered me a payment plan, but I would have been in debt for the next 10 years,” said Mr. Hulmes, adding that his recovery is going well. “When you’re uninsured and you don’t have a whole lot of options, it’s pretty scary.”
Whoa
Posted by TY at 12:54 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
You Can Complain, or You Can Make Money - New York Times
For students slogging their way through school, here are the merest hints of how you can and cannot reach that top 1 percent, that place where you are paid well even if you make mistakes:
• You do not get to it by studying African feminism in the 19th century, whether or not you are at an Ivy League college. You do not get to it by studying Bulgarian poetry. You do not get to it by any field of endeavor or study that is esoteric and has no connection with helping other people either become healthy or make money.
• You do not get to it by being a civil servant unless you are the kind of civil servant — say, a cabinet member or a United States Senator — who can use his or her connections later to lobby for well-heeled clients. You do not get to it by a lifetime of work in any field in which there are government price caps on earnings.
• You do get to it by working in fields in which you can fix your wages, preferably with the government’s help. These include law, where you need a license to practice, and thereby can lift yourself out of working for free-market wages. (Everyone in this country pays homage to the free market, but no one wants to work for free-market wages.) They also include medicine, where a far more difficult license is required, and where desperate patients will pay almost anything to look and feel good. They also include accounting at the C.P.A. level.
• You are always better off working in a field where torrents of money are sloshing through and you can grab a handful as it goes by. That means Wall Street. Finance is the ultimate great business. (Warren E. Buffett famously said that you are always better off being mediocre in a great business than great in a mediocre business, and he easily could have been talking about Wall Street.) Money pours through Wall Street in vast oceans. Even if you take off a tiny helping, you are going to wind up in that 1 percent. If you can do the daily double and work on Wall Street and be in a position to fix your own wage — say, by being in high management at a major Wall Street firm that has such prestige and connections that it can control its fees and other compensation — you will wind up living a great life, at least money-wise. (It is very difficult in many other ways, and I do not envy the people who do it. The tension is just far too much for little me.)
• You make money by making money for people who already have money. This is another reason finance is such a well-paid field. One good day’s work for a man who has a $100 million account you are trading is worth far more than a lifetime’s work at the checkout counter at Wal-Mart. Yet, amazingly, managing wealthy people’s money is far less difficult and stressful than checking out customers at Wal-Mart. It’s not even close. As my smart sister Rachel says, you make money by making money. It’s tricky, but it’s right.
• You make money by learning skills that lead to any of these: making people feel and look better, learning how to draw their wills, learning how to manage their money so they don’t underperform the bogey terribly, learning how to make complex things like computer parts in ways that lead your employer to make money and reward you with stock options. This is by no means an exclusive list. You also make it by manufacturing cardboard boxes and selling scrap metals. But usually, education in finance, medicine, law, accounting, electrical engineering — something in which you learn to add value instead of having fun in school — is the key.
YOU can try to get into that 1 percent by acting, playing drums or shooting hoops. That rarely works. The sure way is to learn skills that allow you to help make money for other people (or that give them the illusion you’re doing that) or make them feel better (or that give the illusion of doing that on national television).
Interesting
Posted by TY at 12:53 AM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack
October 14, 2006 | 