Friday, September 28, 2012

Soil samples to be taken in Hoffa body claim

ROSEVILLE, Mich. (AP) ? State investigators will take soil samples from outside a home in suburban Detroit as police continue looking into a man's claim that a body he says he saw buried in a backyard 35 years ago might have been that of missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

The samples are set to be removed Friday morning from beneath the driveway of a home in Roseville and eventually tested for human decomposition.

Hoffa was last seen July 30, 1975, outside a restaurant in Oakland County, more than 30 miles to the west.

The results could put the rest the latest turn in the search for Hoffa's remains.

Previous tips led police to excavate soil in 2006 at a horse farm more than 100 miles north of Detroit, rip up floorboards at a Detroit home in 2004, and search beneath a backyard pool north of the city in 2003.

There were even rumors that Hoffa's remains were ground up and tossed into a Florida swamp, entombed beneath Giants Stadium in New Jersey or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.

One local theory was that the body was beneath the foundation of a downtown Detroit hockey stadium, said 57-year-old Cindi Frank, who snapped photos Thursday of the Roseville driveway.

The daughter of a unionized driver and salesman for a Detroit bakery, Frank remembers conversations about Hoffa while he was alive and rumors about his fate.

"It was a family thing. Every time we'd go somewhere we'd say, 'Hey, I wonder if Jimmy Hoffa is buried there?'" Frank said. "It's just been one of those unsolved mysteries that's gone on for 30-something years. If he show up in Roseville ..."

Results of the soil samples taken Friday are not expected before next week.

News of the search has brought attention to the mostly working- and middle-class suburb from the curious and naysayers. Slowly moving vehicles have clogged the residential street as camera-wielding neighbors snapped photos for keepsakes.

"I believe it's him. My sister said it is, and she's a psychic," said Mike Smith after ambling up to the home Thursday and shying a bit from the yellow police tape stretched across the driveway.

Feisty and iron-willed in contract talks, Hoffa was an acquaintance of mobsters and adversary to federal officials. He spent time in prison for jury tampering.

The day he disappeared, Hoffa was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit mafia captain. He was declared legally dead in 1982.

At the request of police, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality used ground-penetrating radar last week on the Roseville driveway. An anomaly, or shift, in the soil was detected.

Police Chief James Berlin told The Associated Press on Thursday that his office is "not claiming it's Jimmy Hoffa" beneath the slab but that they are "investigating a body that may be at the location."

Roseville was one of several inner-ring communities that grew quickly as unionized auto factory workers left the city in search of nicer homes and bigger yards.

"Maybe the most inconspicuous spot might be the place to stash a body or something," said 52-year-old Andrew Kacir, who lives across from the taped off driveway.

Recently retired Detroit FBI chief Andrew Arena is among the doubters.

"You've got to check it out, but this doesn't sound right," he told the AP. "The working theories that have developed over the years, this really doesn't fit any of those. If this was the mob and they killed somebody, I just don't see them burying the body basically at the intersection of a residential neighborhood with this guy standing there."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/soil-samples-taken-hoffa-body-claim-072010180.html

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Buddhist statue acquired by Nazis is space rock

One religious statue has a stronger connection than most to the heavens. An 11th-century carving from Mongolia of the Buddhist god Vai?ravana was fashioned from a meteorite fragment, a chemical analysis shows. Its extraterrestrial origins make it unique in both religious art and meteorite science.

The iron-rich statue, 24 centimetres tall, has had a colourful past. It was apparently brought to Germany in 1939 by a Nazi-backed archaeological expedition to search for the roots of Aryanism.

A swastika on the armoured Buddha's breastplate may have been a motivating factor in bringing the statue to Germany. The swastika is a common symbol in eastern culture and decorates many Hindu and Buddhist statues ? although the version on the statue is a mirror image of the form favoured by the Nazis.

It's unclear whether the Nazis found anything of unusual significance in the statue, but Elmar Buchner at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and his colleagues certainly have.

"When I first saw the statue I was sure that it is made of an iron meteorite," Buchner says.

Their chemical analysis of the statue confirmed the hunch. It showed that the concentrations of metals, including iron, nickel, cobalt and chromium, matched the values known from iron meteorites.

Space Buddha

More precisely, Buchner's team has managed to tie the statue to a known meteorite ? the Chinga ataxite, which fell to Earth between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago near the border between Siberia and Mongolia. It fragmented as it fell, and just two pieces heavier than 10 kilograms were known before the new analysis. The "Space Buddha", as Buchner's team has dubbed the statue, is the third such piece, at 10.6 kilograms.

"Having looked at some of the published trace element data for this artefact, it looks pretty convincing to me that this is very likely originated from Chinga iron meteorite," says Meenakshi Wadhwa, director of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Other venerated objects are thought to have had similar extraterrestrial origins ? including the Black Stone in Mecca, Saudi Arabia ? but Wadhwa says it is difficult to verify these assumptions because the objects have never been fully analysed scientifically. And none of these supposed meteorite fragments has been carved into a religious sculpture, making the Space Buddha the only one of its kind.

Meteoritic metal is associated with a number of ancient cultures, says Matthew Genge at Imperial College London. "There are reports of Egyptian necklaces including meteoritic metal," he says. "But there is no evidence that the Egyptians were aware of their extraterrestrial provenance."

Sky iron

In Tibet, though, meteoritic iron was long known as namchag, or "sky iron", says Buchner's team, suggesting the locals were aware of the origins of the unusual material.

"There is no definitive evidence that ancient peoples witnessed and revered meteorite falls," says Genge. "However, the chances are good. There are so many modern witnessed falls that ancient people must have seen them. They are such special events that they must have attracted awe and speculation."

The age of the Chinga meteorite means that no one alive when the Space Buddha was carved would have seen this particular rock fall from the sky. Instead it would have been recovered much later ? making it what geologists call a meteorite find.

That creates something of a problem, says Genge. How did ancient people come to venerate meteorites, or meteorite craters, without witnessing the moment of impact?

"One of the most puzzling examples is Gosses Bluff in Australia," he says. "This crater is 142 million years old, and yet the Aborigines hold that it formed by the fall of the baby of one of the celestial women from the sky. A strange coincidence perhaps."

Journal reference: Meteoritics & Planetary Science, DOI: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2012.01409.x

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Factbox: Spain's 2013 budget and economic reforms

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain announced a timetable for economic reforms and a tough 2013 budget based mostly on spending cuts on Thursday in what many see as an effort to pre-empt the likely conditions of an international bailout.

BUDGET

Central government spending will be cut by 7.3 percent while revenues are forecast to increase by 4 percent, including a 14.6 percent increase in consumer tax revenues.

TAXES

Several tax breaks for companies will be removed.

New levies on energy will be created to promote the use of green energies.

A tax break on properties, a new levy on lottery gains, a new tax on short-term capital profits and a wealth tax will raise an estimated 1.7 billion euros.

SPENDING

Overall spending at government ministries will be cut by 8.9 percent, including a 25.4 percent cut at the agriculture ministry, 21.3 percent at the industry and energy ministry and 17.2 percent at the education ministry.

The government has pledged to keep unemployment benefit spending under control but did not give any further detail.

Wages of civil servants will be frozen for the third year in a row. Civil servants who retire will not be replaced except for one in 10 positions in key areas such as hospitals and schools.

The cost of servicing the public debt will increase by 9.7 billion euros or 33.8 percent in 2013 to 38.6 billion euros.

PENSIONS

Pension spending will increase by 4.9 percent, including a 1 percent rise in monthly pension payments. Government officials declined to say whether the government would eliminate inflation adjustments for pensions.

The government will present a new law by year-end to restrict early retirement.

Another law will also be put forward to make sure the pension system remains sustainable by changing parameters such as life expectancy.

The government also announced it would tap 3 billion euros from a 69 billion euro social security reserve fun to pay pensions in 2012.

REFORMS

An independent fiscal authority will be created in the first quarter of 2013 to oversee budget drafts and execution. This responds to a demand from the European Commission.

A series of structural reforms will be implemented in the next six months, including liberalizing further the energy, telecom and services sectors.

(Reporting by Julien Toyer; Editing by Fiona Ortiz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/factbox-spains-2013-budget-economic-reforms-192657946--business.html

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Earth cracking up under Indian Ocean

YOU may not have felt it, but the whole world shuddered on 11 April, as Earth's crust began the difficult process of breaking a tectonic plate. When two huge earthquakes ripped through the floor of the Indian Ocean, they triggered large aftershocks on faults the world over, and provided the best evidence yet that the vast Indo-Australian plate is being torn in two.

Geologists have spent five months puzzling over the twin quakes - of magnitude 8.6 and 8.2 - which took place off the coast of North Sumatra. Events that large normally occur at the boundary between tectonic plates, where one chunk of Earth's crust slides beneath another, but these were more than 100 kilometres from such a subduction zone. What's more, both involved rocks grinding past each other sideways with very little vertical movement - what geologists call strike-slip earthquakes. Yet strike-slip quakes this large had never been reported before.

Matthias Delescluse at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure in Paris, France, and his colleagues have an explanation. They analysed quakes in the area since December 2004, when a magnitude-9.1 quake in a subduction zone near Sumatra triggered a devastating tsunami. They found earthquakes during this period were nearly 10 times more frequent compared with the previous eight years. What's more, 26 of the quakes that happened between December 2004 and April 2011 were similar to the 11 April quakes in that they involved rocks being pushed and pulled in the same directions.

Taken together, the events suggest that the Indo-Australian plate is breaking up along a new plate boundary, say the researchers, and that may account for both the location and the size of April's quakes (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11520). Although both are currently on the same plate, Australia is moving faster than India. This is causing a broad area in the centre of the Indo-Australian plate to buckle. As a result, the plate may be splitting (see map).

John McCloskey at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, UK, is not yet convinced, saying the evidence from the April events is still too weak to support such a bold claim. But Lingsen Meng at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied the rupture pattern of the larger 11 April quake, is more confident. "I think it's a fair argument that the 11 April earthquakes may mark the birth of a plate boundary," he says. Things should become clearer as more earthquakes shake the region.

If they are anything like the 11 April events, the rest of the world may shake too. In another new study, Fred Pollitz at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, and his colleagues found that the global rate of quakes with a magnitude of 5.5 or greater increased almost fivefold in the six days after 11 April - something that has never been seen before, even after very large earthquakes (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11504).

"This was the most powerful event [ever recorded] in terms of putting stress on other fault zones around the world," Pollitz says.

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Brit + Co. Gets Into E-Commerce With ?Brit Kits?, Monthly Deliveries Of All Things Crafty

BritKits-Blue-1-645x444For the past year, Silicon Valley's geek-chic answer to Martha Stewart, Brit Morin, has been full speed ahead on Brit + Co., her tech-meets-fashion-media-and-lifestyle startup -- raising $1.25 million, hiring 10 full-time staff (half of whom are engineers), cranking out two mobile apps, snagging big-name partnerships. And the launches just keep coming.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zuM0RjBKtS0/

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LG Display countersues Samsung over OLED patent infringement

Samsung 55-inch OLED TV at CES

The strained relationship between the two tentpoles of Korea's tech industry is starting to wear, now that LG Display has counter-sued its local rival over OLED patents. Earlier this month, Samsung filed for an injunction accusing its frenemy of stealing secrets, but LG is claiming instead that it's the victim. If successful, Lucky Goldstar would seek a ban on devices including the Galaxy S III, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Note on the pair's home turf -- so, yeah, this one looks like it's going to run and run.

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LG Display countersues Samsung over OLED patent infringement originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/27/lg-countersues-samsung-oled/

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

James Falzone On Tour With Vox Arcana This Week ? Improvised ...

(September 25, 2012)

Photo: David C. Sampson

Today, Chicago-based clarinetist/composer James Falzone heads out on tour with longtime bandmates Fred Lonberg-Holm and Tim Daisy in support of Soft Focus (Relay Records),?their third recording as the chamber-jazz trio,?Vox Arcana.

Richard Winham previews the tour in the latest issue of The Pulse in Chattanooga.

Here?s the schedule:

09/25 :: Thomas Moore College?(Covington, KY)
09/26 :: Barking Legs Theater?(Chattanooga, TN)
09/27 :: The Stone Fox?(Nashville, TN)
09/28 :: The University of Alabama?(Tuscaloosa, AL)
09/29 :: Conundrum Music Hall?(Columbia, SC)
10/01 ::?Now That?s Class?(Cleveland, OH)
10/02 ::?Elastic Arts Foundation?(Chicago, IL)

Once he?s back home, Falzone won?t have much time to rest before he and his working quartet KLANG embark on their own CD release tour for?Brooklyn Lines ? Chicago Spaces (Allos Documents) the following weekend, preceded by a live radio performance?on WBEZ?s?Eight Forty-Eight?on Thursday, October 4th at 9:00 a.m. (CST).

Learn more about James Falzone and his musical activities at http://allosmusica.org

This entry was written by admin, posted on at 8:57 am, filed under Allos Documents, General, James Falzone and tagged alabama, Allos Documents, barking legs theater, brooklyn lines, CD, cello, chattanooga, chicago, chicago spaces, clarinet, cleveland, columbia, conundrum music hall, covington, dates, drums, eight forty-eight, elastic arts, foundation, Fred Lonberg-Holm, improvsation, james falzone, KLANG, marimba, nashville, now that's class, relay records, release, soft focus, the stone fox, thomas moore college, Tim Daisy, tour, tuscaloosa, university, vox arcana, wbez. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

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Source: http://www.improvisedcommunications.com/blog/2012/09/25/falzone-voxarcana-tour/

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Promoting Arithmetic and Algebra By Example

I've been a developer for about 16 years, and have had a pretty spotty math education. I've generally taught myself what I need to know as I needed to know it - 3D programming? What's a matrix? How do I rotate things with it? Developing animate graphical charts? How do I scale from business coords to pixel coords, and animate? Draw box an whiskers charts etc...

Recently, I've decided to stop doing the corporate developer gig and to go to school. As part of that, I've needed to take math a lot more seriously, so I've bought some books and been going through a more rigorous program.

One thing I've discovered through this process is that I *really enjoy it*. I'm not being pressured to learn something for a test, I'm not worried about a grade. Instead, I take my books to a coffee shop and relax and think about fascinating things, like trying to visualize the complex plane, and what the value for i really is, and what dividing by zero really means.

Instead of memorizing the quadratic equation, I spent some time learning how to derive it from basic principals. Instead of memorizing that the vertex of a parabola can be found by -b/2a, I noodled around and tried to visualize the determinant (sqrt(b^2 -4ac)), it's effect on an equation, and what happens if you zero it out.

I spend a leisurely afternoon coming up with a visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem, and was pretty excited when I finally had it, and was even more excited when I googled it and saw the same basic proof has been derived by students for a really long time - I loved the notion that I was connected back through time with a whole bunch of other people who were going through the same mental steps.

This stuff is great! And I'm only scratching the surface. I'm in baby algebra - and I'm excited to keep going.

My point is - we go about this stuff all wrong. Forcing kids to memorize equations so they can pass an exam is absolutely pointless, if not masochistic. Exploring really interesting concepts about numbers, and what they mean - this stuff should be recreation. It's great!

I see my older son struggling through his algebra course, and he hates it. He doesn't care, and hates doing the homework. But when I get excited about some math problem I'm studying, he'll come over to look over my shoulder to see what I'm doing, and we'll puzzle it out together. He forgets that we're doing math, instead we're talking about concepts and challenging each other. We'll spend an hour or two going over something that's really cool, and we both have a great time.

Ask him about math, however, and he immediately relates it to school, and he'll tell you how much he hates it.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/BAj_k92Rft0/promoting-arithmetic-and-algebra-by-example

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Xbox Challenged as Cable Plots to Make Consoles Obsolete ...

AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable are gearing up for a push to deliver video games directly to TVs, said people with knowledge of the matter, a strategy shift that poses a threat to traditional consoles such as the PlayStation, Wii and Xbox.

Can cable companies go after the gaming business?

Trials of cloud-gaming services are likely to start later this year so carriers can test and tweak the technology before wider deployments that may begin as early as 2013, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Other carriers are aiming for 2014, the people said.

If successful, web-based games could accelerate a shift away from consoles, the industry's main money maker for the past three decades. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have helped to build a market worth $24.1 billion in the U.S. in 2011, according to NPD Group Inc. Consumers are already dumping consoles in favor of games on smartphones and tablets, leading to a 39% decline in video-game hardware sales last month from a year earlier.

Consoles have been busily adding streaming video and download services that could ultimately undermine cable companies' business. Now cable companies may be able to strike back. "Everybody has a TV," said Atul Bagga, a video-games analyst at Lazard Capital Markets in San Francisco. Cable and phone companies are "looking for new ways to monetize their users and gaming can be pretty compelling," he said.

By adding popular games to their TV, internet and phone packages, carriers can offer another service to their almost 50 million digital TV subscribers.

In addition to AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Cox are also in talks to offer video-gaming services, the people said. They're all looking to go beyond social games from Zynga and casual games such as "Tetris" and "Solitaire," with technology that can deliver the most advanced action games from top publishers such as Electronic Arts.

Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable, which had 12.3 million subscribers as of mid-2012, and Jennifer Khoury, a spokeswoman for Comcast, which had 22.1 million subscribers, declined to comment.

Jan Rasmussen, a spokeswoman for AT&T, said in a statement the company is "exploring unique ways to offer cloud gaming services to our TV and broadband customers." AT&T had 4.15 million subscribers for its U-verse TV services as of June.

Deidre Hart, a spokeswoman for Verizon, said that while the company has the capability, it doesn't currently "offer anything regarding HD cloud gaming." Shana Keith, a spokeswoman for Cox, said the company is exploring a number of cloud-based broadband services, declining to provide specifics. Verizon had 4.47 million TV subscribers, while Cox had 4.66 million, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

With cloud gaming, consumers will be able to avoid buying Sony's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Nintendo's Wii, and play using generic controllers connected to their set-top box or TV. Some carriers are looking at software that turns smartphones into controllers, the people said.

Carriers still have to get the technology in place. To stream games from remote servers to multiple devices simultaneously, they need to license virtualization technology. And to make the experience comparable to that of a console, they also must incorporate powerful graphics processors into their data centers, replacing chips used in consoles.

Putting all those pieces together proved too difficult for OnLive, a startup backed by units of AT&T and Time Warner, which went through a restructuring last month after failing to attract enough $9.99-a-month subscribers to its cloud-gaming system. Gaikai, a competitor in the market, agreed to be bought earlier this year by Sony for $380 million.

Large service providers have an advantage because they have deeper pockets, big data centers and an existing subscriber base. Still, delivering a cloud service with the same quality as game consoles and creating a profitable business will be a challenge, said Mitch Lasky, a partner at venture firm Benchmark Capital in Menlo Park, Calif., and an early investor in Gaikai.

"It makes perfect sense why they would want to go after this market," said Mr. Lasky, who was previously an executive at Electronic Arts. "Streaming games use a ton of bandwidth and really benefit from good networks. But it's a gnarly execution problem they're trying to solve."

~Bloomberg News~

Source: http://adage.com/article/media/xbox-challenged-cable-plots-make-consoles-obsolete/237399/

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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Finding the statistical fingerprints of election thieves

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2012) ? The art of swaying an election is as old as democracy itself. Strategies like ballot stuffing, redistricting, voter venue switching, and temporary traffic detours have skewed regional results, and sometimes determined the winner.

While some tactics get exposed the old fashioned way -- by angry voters or investigations -- others don't. But new research suggests some kinds of election fraud leave a trace in the voting data.

In a paper appearing September 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Stefan Thurner brought science to the problem.

"We got into this by chance, when a Russian colleague brought us the 2011 Russian Duma-election data and asked us to take a look," says Thurner. "From the first look we were all pretty shocked, and decided to take a second look."

Thurner, a Santa Fe Institute External Professor who heads the Section for Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna, and colleagues looked for two kinds of rigging: incremental fraud, where votes for one party are kept in the ballot box while those for the other candidates are tossed, and extreme fraud, which shows 100 percent voter turnout in a district, all voting for the same party.

The team examined data on number of eligible voters, valid votes, and votes for the winning candidate (or party) from a dozen recent elections around the world. By comparing the distributions of votes for the winning candidate against turnout numbers, they found that rigged elections show a different voting pattern than fair ones.

In fair elections, a nation's voting pattern tends to feature one cluster, showing a general trend of voter turnout and vote for the victorious party (though some nations' regional voter preferences can distort it). Rigged ones show a cluster, but with a smear of votes toward the upper right for incremental fraud. Extreme fraud has a second, smaller, completely separate cluster at the top right corner, signifying up to 100 percent turnout and votes for the winner.

Next, the team developed a model to detect how much forged or manipulated results affected the outcome, then ran through all possibilities of both fraud types playing 0 percent to 100 percent of a part in the election, and compared those to actual data to determine their prevalence.

Among the countries studied, data from recent elections in Russia and Uganda showed both the smear of incremental fraud and the second cluster of extreme fraud, with up to 64 percent of districts being affected in Russia's 2011 vote and 39 percent in 2012. Other countries' data showed little to no such trends.

"I think it could contribute to the benefit of democracy if for every nationwide election on this planet, the raw data is made available on say a United Nations or OECD database," says Thurner. "One could then think of a set of quality standards and checks for any election -- like the ones we presented -- or better ones."

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Journal Reference:

  1. P. Klimek, Y. Yegorov, R. Hanel, S. Thurner. Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1210722109

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/XsRpLrBGRRg/120925152137.htm

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AAA Michigan: Gas prices fall about 11 cents

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Microsoft launches charity for young people

Microsoft says global initiative YouthSpark aims to create education, employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities for 300 million youths. The $500 million philanthropic venture is Microsoft's biggest ever. ?

By Janet I. Tu,?The Seattle Times (MCT) / September 24, 2012

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaks during a launch event in New York last week. Microsoft has announced its biggest philanthropic program yet: a $500 million effort to address the 'opportunity gap' for young people around the world.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters/File

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Microsoft?announced Thursday that it?s undertaking a new global initiative to combat the ?opportunity gap? for young people.

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Philanthropically, the initiative is ?the biggest step we?ve taken in the 37 years of the company,? said?MicrosoftGeneral Counsel Brad Smith.

Called YouthSpark, the program marks a new emphasis in?Microsoft?s?philanthropic efforts, one that focuses on global youth programs. The company said it is investing $500 million in the initiative. Some of the money will be shifted from other charitable areas in which the company is involved worldwide, and some of the money will be new.

Taken altogether, that means?Microsoft?is committing the majority of its corporate cash giving to philanthropic efforts that support and serve youth.

YouthSpark is aimed at creating opportunities such as education, employment and entrepreneurship for about 300 million youths in 100 countries over the next three years.

Microsoft?is partnering with hundreds of nonprofits worldwide in the effort.

The initiative will likely reach about 50 million people in the United States and about 250 million in the rest of the world, Smith said at a media briefing Thursday on the program.

CEO Steve Ballmer placed the initiative in the context of the ?big, bold bets??Microsoft?is making this year with the introduction of Windows 8 and other new products or upgrades. He said YouthSpark is another bet ? one to close the ?opportunity gap.?

Smith said the YouthSpark initiative does not change?Microsoft?s?corporate giving focus in the Puget Sound area of Washington. ?We recognize this is our home state,? he said.

Support for, say, local arts groups and hospitals is ?definitely not going to be going down,? he added.

The YouthSpark initiative is launching with three new programs:

?Give for Youth, a global microgiving marketplace.

?YouthSpark Hub, an online space where people can find out more about the programs and resources.

?Innovate for Good, a global, social online community geared toward connecting youths with each other.

Part of the initiative also involves donations of?Microsoft?products, including Office 365 for education, free tech tools for teachers and students and Skype in the classroom.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/7vnlJVLsWDA/Microsoft-launches-charity-for-young-people

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Monday, September 24, 2012

Oil & Gas - Nicaragua - Albanisa cleared to court foreign investors for Bol?var refinery

Nicaragua's assembly approved a bill to develop the El Supremo Sue?o de Bol?var refinery complex in the area of Miramar in the municipality of Nagarot...


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Source: http://member.bnamericas.com/news/oilandgas/albanisa-cleared-to-court-foreign-investors-for-bolivar-refinery

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iPhone 5 vs Galaxy S III: Smartphone Display Technology Shoot-Out [Iphone 5]

The iPhone 5 has been the most anticipated mobile device of 2012 together with its cousin the iPad Mini, which we expect to be seeing shortly. Apple has made displays their most prominent marketing feature because it determines the quality of the visual experience for everything on a smartphone or tablet—including apps, web content, photos, videos, and its camera. The retina displays on the iPhone 4 and the new iPad were significant advancements—not just in sharpness but in picture quality and color accuracy, which is what provides the display's real wow factor. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/OHspr28UpCA/iphone-5-vs-galaxy-s-iii-smartphone-display-technology-shoot+out

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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Neither Bell Canada nor Telus will carry the Lumia 920, Rogers may be exclusive

The carriers? responses to a couple of customer inquiries about the next flagship device from Nokia revealed that the Lumia 920 is not in their plans.

TELUS was arguably a little cryptic, stating that ?The Nokia 920 is not part of the list of phones coming to TELUS by the end of the year.? That could mean that a Nokia Windows Phone 8 will find a place in their stable next year. The Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 610 have been part of their line-up, so hopefully a relationship will remain between the carrier and the Finnish manufacturer.

Bell Canada does indeed plan on offering two Windows Phone 8 devices, but neither of them will be the Lumia 920. The devices have not been announced by Bell yet, but there are not so many choices to pick from. As Bell does not currently offer any Huawei devices in their line-up, we are pretty comfortable setting the expectation that they will offer the Samsung ATIV S and one of the HTC 8 devices.

That leaves Rogers, and Canada?s largest carrier has not yet announced if the new Lumias will be offered. Since they do sell the Lumia 900, one would hope that the 920 will follow later this year.

If any of our Canadian readers get any tips about the new Nokia Lumias being offered by the carriers there, let us know!

sources: MobileSyrup and WMPoweruser

Source: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Neither-Bell-Canada-nor-Telus-will-carry-the-Lumia-920-Rogers-may-be-exclusive_id34790

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17 workers trapped after coal mine accidents in China

BEIJING: A fire broke out in a coal mine in northwest China today while another mine was hit by flooding, leaving 17 workers trapped underneath the ground.

The two accidents hit mines in energy-hungry China's Heilongjiang Province.

A fire broke out in a mine in the Shuangyashan City today when 13 people were working inside.

While two were lifted out after the accident, 11 workers still remained trapped.

The government said the county's coal management bureau had ordered the mine to suspend production on Sept 3, after its license expired a day earlier.

Illegal production was being blamed for the accident, the government said.

Another incident yesterday saw flooding at a coal mine in Jidong County, also in Heilongjiang Province, trapping six miners.

Coal mine accidents in China are a common occurrence as mines work overtime to extract coal which continues to be a premium energy resource.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/17-workers-trapped-after-coal-mine-accidents-in-china/articleshow/16516895.cms

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Romney and Ryan say Obama jeopardizes U.S. leadership in space (Los Angeles Times)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/250335134?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Providing non-caloric beverages to teens can help them avoid excessive weight gain, study shows

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2012) ? A new study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that adolescents who eliminated sugar-sweetened beverages for one year gained less weight than those who didn't, shedding light on an effective intervention to help combat adolescent obesity.

This is one of the first high-quality randomized control trials to examine the link between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and their direct impact on weight and body mass index (BMI), as well as how a teen's home environment impacts sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in general.

The study, led by Cara Ebbeling, PhD (associate director) and David Ludwig, MD, PhD (director), both from the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children's Hospital, found that adolescents who received deliveries of non-caloric beverages for one year gained an average of 4 fewer pounds than their peers who continued to drink sugar-sweetened beverages. Within the two-year study, the one-year intervention also included motivational calls with parents, check-in visits with participants and written intervention messages to stop drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.

The 224 study participants were overweight or obese 9th or 10th graders who regularly drank sugary beverages. The study intervention was designed to reduce consumption of these beverages. Researchers used a novel method of intervention: delivering non-caloric beverages to participants' homes for participants and their families.

During the year-long intervention, the experimental group of adolescents -- who virtually eliminated consumption of sugary beverages -- gained 4 fewer pounds and had essentially no BMI increase compared to the control group, which continued to drink sugar-sweetened beverages regularly (although at reduced levels possibly due to local public health efforts). In addition, Hispanic adolescents showed the greatest benefit -- gaining 14 fewer pounds than the control group. "No other single food product has been shown to change body weight by this amount over a year simply through its reduction," says Ludwig.

The two-year study consisted of one year of intervention and one year of follow up. While the one-year mark showed a significant difference in weight between the intervention group and the control group, the groups did not differ after the second year -- which did not include an intervention. These findings suggest that teens are more likely to make healthier choices (drinking non-caloric beverages) when they are more easily available to them.

This study underscores the need for healthy choices to be more easily available to adolescents, as well as the need for more research into effective interventions among minority populations with particularly high obesity rates. "Our findings suggest that both access to non-caloric beverages and clear messages for consumers may be at the heart of behavior change. Adolescents can make healthful dietary changes with adequate support and understandable messages," says Ebbeling.

The study is part of a series in the New England Journal of Medicine that looks at the association between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity.

The Center recently published another study in the Journal of the American Medical Association by the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children's Hospital suggesting that conventional low-fat diets may not be the best for weight-loss maintenance, and that reducing intake of refined carbohydrates (so called, low-glycemic diets) provide metabolic benefits and reduced risk of heart disease.

Research was funded by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK073025; K24DK082730); the National Center for Research Resources to the Boston Children's Hospital General Clinical Research Center (M01RR02172), the Harvard Catalyst Clinical and Translational Science Center (UL1RR025758), and the New Balance Foundation.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Boston Children's Hospital.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Cara B. Ebbeling, Henry A. Feldman, Virginia R. Chomitz, Tracy A. Antonelli, Steven L. Gortmaker, Stavroula K. Osganian, David S. Ludwig. A Randomized Trial of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Adolescent Body Weight. New England Journal of Medicine, 2012; 120921130020003 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1203388

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/gLtMrsFnvdc/120921162305.htm

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Saturday, September 22, 2012

'Obamacare' foes fear GOP losses

The total link site for the news and information junkie: Libertarianism. Property Rights. Government Corruption. Chicago Mob. Struggle Against Socialism. Union Corruption. Pension Meltdown. Blacked Out History. New York Mob. Higher Education rip-offs. Housing Crash. Rent-seeking. Obama-Chicago Democratic Machine. Gun Control Monopolists. The Ron Paul Revolution. Organized Crime...Other Politically Incorrect matters of interest.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/wHtV/~3/yxQ0NfBm7h0/obamacare-foes-fear-gop-losses.html

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Dudamobile mobile pages, Viralheat social ... - Duct Tape Marketing

Like this? Share with friends.

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don?t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or one that I took out there on the road.

Good stuff I found this week:

DudaMobile ? Very easy to use tool turns any website into a user friendly mobile version of itself.

Feed43 ? Easily convert any webpage to an RSS feed ? great way to create custom feeds for clients.

Viralheat ? Free service that allows you to manage multiple social media profiles ? track, respond and publish from your dashboard.

Like this? Share with friends.

Source: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2012/09/22/weekend-favs-september-twenty-two/

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Friday, September 21, 2012

Romney releasing 2011 tax return, paid IRS 14.1 percent

Mitt Romney arrives in Las Vegas, Nevada September 21, 2012. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Looking to blunt relentless Democratic attacks, Mitt Romney on Friday released his 2011 tax return, a summary of his effective tax rates for the past two decades and, for good measure, two doctors' notes attesting to the good physical health of the candidate and his running mate, Paul Ryan.

The tax return was released at 3 p.m. Eastern time on the website www.mittromney.com/disclosure. Ahead of the release, the former Massachusetts governor's campaign released a blog post summarizing the document.

Releasing information on a Friday afternoon is traditionally a way to reduce the amount of media exposure.

The move fulfills a promise Romney made earlier in the 2012 presidential campaign. But it was unlikely to quiet Democratic criticisms that Romney has failed to live up to a standard set by his father, former Michigan Governor George Romney, who released 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in 1968.

The Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 of mostly investment income for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. (The Obamas paid an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent in 2011, a lower rate than the president's secretary, according to the White House.) ?

Romney, who is thought to have a personal fortune in the neighborhood of $250 million, gave $4,020,772 to charity, 30 percent of their income. (The Obamas gave 21.8 percent of their income to charities).

The blog post, written by the manager of Romney's blind trust since 2003, R. Bradford Malt, said the Romneys had filed their 2011 tax return with the IRS Friday morning. It also indicated that the Romneys' tax preparer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, would provide a letter summarizing the tax rates that the Romneys paid from 1990 to 2009.

The Romneys paid an average annual effective federal tax rate of 20.2 percent, with the lowest rate coming in at 13.66 percent. Over that same stretch of time, they gave an average of 13.45 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity.

And Romney paid a far lower rate than the top 35 percent tax rate levied on the largest salaries because most of his income came from investments, which are taxed at far lower rates.

"During the 20-year period covered by the PWC letter, Gov. and Mrs. Romney paid 100 percent of the taxes that they owed," the blog post read.

Democrats led by the Obama campaign have repeatedly hit Romney over his refusal to disclose his tax returns?a fight that has helped to keep Romney's vast wealth in the media spotlight at a time when the president is trying to paint him as an out-of-touch millionaire bent on helping the wealthy.

Romney paid a price?literally?for saying that he paid at least 13 percent in federal income taxes over the past decade. He and his wife did not take the full deductions to which they were entitled for their charitable giving.

"The Romneys' generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year," Malt wrote. "The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years."

Team Obama showed no sign of letting up in its attacks, with Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter saying in a statement that Romney paid a lower tax rate than some middle-class families "because of a set of complex loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top."

Cutter charged that the 2011 return "continues to mask Romney's true wealth and income from Bain Capital, leaving the American people in the dark about critical details about his finances.

"Why does Mitt Romney not just release the full returns, instead of the bare summary he has provided of the last 20 years,?so voters can make their own judgments about Mitt Romney's finances?" Cutter asked.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/romney-release-2011-tax-return-paid-irs-14-181125301--election.html

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Finding The Diversity In Media And Communication Stocks | Media ...

Sometimes when I tell my friends how my investment strategies specialize in media, entertainment, leisure, communications, and related technologies, they seem surprised that I could have two successful money management businesses built around such a narrow focus.? I point out that my self-defined universe of investable stocks numbers at least 400.?

The next question is often, "But aren?t the stocks you invest in highly correlated?" The answer is yes, but not as much you might think.

I?ve been reminded of the diversity in media and communications several times recently.? A journalist at the Hollywood Reporter asked me about DreamWorks Animation (NASDAQ:DWA) over the weekend for an article he was working on regarding the possibility that the company would be sold.? About 10 minutes later, news broke that Tom Rothman was leaving as head of Fox Filmed Entertainment just weeks after a deal was finalized for Fox to replace Paramount as DreamWorks film distributor.

Monday night, Liberty Media (NASDAQ:LMCA) announced that it was converting half of its preferred stock stake in Sirius XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) into voting common shares.? The move gives Liberty 32% of the voting power at Sirius, effectively allowing Liberty to nominate and elect its own directors at the next Sirius annual meeting.? Clearly, the end game for Liberty taking control of Sirius and defining the future financial strategy for both companies is coming shortly.

No positions in stocks mentioned.

Entermedia is a long/short equity hedge fund focused on media, communications, and related technologies. Steve Birenberg is co-portfolio manager of Entermedia, owns a stake in the Funds? investment management company, and has personal monies invested in the Funds. CBS and Discovery Communications are widely held by Northlake Capital Management, LLC, including in Steve Birenberg?s personal accounts. Steve is sole proprietor of Northlake, a long only registered investment advisor.

The information on this website solely reflects the analysis of or opinion about the performance of securities and financial markets by the writers whose articles appear on the site. The views expressed by the writers are not necessarily the views of Minyanville Media, Inc. or members of its management. Nothing contained on the website is intended to constitute a recommendation or advice addressed to an individual investor or category of investors to purchase, sell or hold any security, or to take any action with respect to the prospective movement of the securities markets or to solicit the purchase or sale of any security. Any investment decisions must be made by the reader either individually or in consultation with his or her investment professional. Minyanville writers and staff may trade or hold positions in securities that are discussed in articles appearing on the website. Writers of articles are required to disclose whether they have a position in any stock or fund discussed in an article, but are not permitted to disclose the size or direction of the position. Nothing on this website is intended to solicit business of any kind for a writer's business or fund. Minyanville management and staff as well as contributing writers will not respond to emails or other communications requesting investment advice.

Copyright 2011 Minyanville Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Source: http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/media/articles/dwa-lmca-siri-manu-gm-dreamworks/9/20/2012/id/44194

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James Cameron is finally getting over Titanic

Fifteen years after ?Titanic,? James Cameron says he?s finally ready to move on. He never really had been that much of a Titanic enthusiast; he said he was just looking for a new project after such films as ?Terminator? and ?Aliens,? when he ran across a copy of ?A Night to Remember,? the 1958 film about the sinking of the great ship.

The rest, as they say, is history ? plus a couple of star-crossed lovers, 11 Academy Awards and worldwide gross earnings of something more than $2 billion. ?I think I?m in the process of letting go of it now, but it?s been a 17-year journey that started with great interest and became an obsession,? said Cameron when we sat down with him for an ABC News/Yahoo! News Newsmakers interview.

?And the fascination, I think, is not just the human story, but there?s also the forensic analysis of the wreck. What can we learn from that twisted steel at the bottom of the ocean that ? we can work backwards, like an airplane crash, and figure out, can we find the iceberg damage? What happened when it broke up? What happened when it sank to the bottom, and so on??

Cameron has, of course, done other things since ?Titanic? premiered in 1997 (you may have seen a little project of his called ?Avatar? ? the only other film in history ever to gross more than $2 billion). But the Titanic?s sinking kept pulling him back in.

There was ?Titanic,? the documentary to mark the centennial of the ship?s sinking. There was ?Titanic,? the re-release in 3-D. There?s now been ?Titanic,? the 3-D release on Blu-ray disc. And there?s ? well, there won?t be ?Titanic 2,? despite some elaborate spoofs you can find online.

Cameron says he?s satisfied he knows what there is to know about the 1912 tragedy. He?s been down to the wreck himself 33 times; he?s done computer simulations of how it came apart as it went to the bottom on that cold April night in 1912.

?And I think we?re able to tell that story quite clearly now, but it?s taken 15 years of investigation to do it,? he said.

He talked about the link he sees between filmmaking and exploration. Having succeeded at the former, he?s done his share of the latter. In April he rode a submersible to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the South Pacific, the deepest spot in the world?s oceans.

It is an explorer?s obligation, he said, to bring back experiences for the rest of us to share. ?Maybe it?s a filmmaker?s impulse,? he said. ?To me, to go and explore without taking high-quality imagery ? it?s a tree falling in the forest. The job of the explorer, partially, is to be a storyteller, to bring the story back. And what better way to do it than in 3-D HD, which is why, when I went to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, I made sure we had 3-D cameras on the sub.?

He described himself as a one-time aspiring scientist, though his math grades weren?t good enough. He?s contented himself with science fiction. His childhood heroes included deep-sea explorers and astronauts. He said, when asked, that he?d love to go to Mars, though with five children to think about, he may leave it to others.

?I think you have to send people,? he said, though he applauds the imagery sent from the Martian surface by NASA?s Curiosity rover. ?The robots are good, they bring back good data, good science, but they don?t captivate the public imagination the same way as a human being going out there at the vanguard of human experience.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/newsmakers/james-cameron-is-finally-getting-over-titanic.html

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Thursday, September 20, 2012

How Would Mitt Romney Fix the Mitt Romney Campaign?

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Mitt the private equity manager has tough words for Mitt the candidate

Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GettyImages.

From: Mitt Romney, CEO, Bain Capital

To: Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate

My friend, I couldn't help but notice that your campaign has been underperforming of late, what with those sagging poll numbers, the infighting among your staff, and now this unfortunate ?47 percent? speech. I?ve turned around dozens of floundering organizations and I?ve rarely seen one in such sorry shape. But I'm here to tell you that this campaign can still be salvaged. It just needs a little restructuring. And some outsourcing. And some firing. You know, the usual.

Here?s how we?ll do it, step by step.

Right-size the workforce. Let me get this straight: An editor at Yahoo News takes a swipe at your campaign and gets canned faster than you can say ?hot mic.? But your own ?aides, advisers, and friends? are taking potshots at your campaign, and you?re planning ?no major changes?? We need to bring back the Mitt who liked being able to fire people. Start handing out pink slips, and don?t stop until at least 30 percent of your workforce has joined the 8.3 percent. Bonus: Raising the unemployment rate is your best chance at this point.

Eliminate redundancies. Politico reports that you had at least three convention speechwriters whose work you didn?t even use. Tell Wehner, McConnell, and Scully to clean out their desks. Instant streamlining.

Bring in a handpicked, temporary turnaround management team. Forget ?Karl Rove equivalents.? Get the real Karl Rove. He?s available.

Outsource the phone banks. Your firms used to be ?pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers.? You can?t afford to have Americans calling their fellow Americans to tell them to vote for you. Ship this operation to India.

Sell off underperforming assets. With offices in all 50 states, you?re hopelessly overextended. Write off New York and California and all those other blue states. You said it: They?re not going to vote for you, so don?t waste your time. Likewise, stump speeches in Michigan and Massachusetts probably sounded great when you were in growth mode, but at this point you can?t justify those expenses. Yes, I know those are your home states. But this is business?we can?t afford to be sentimental.

Focus on your core value proposition. What are your core values again? Well, anyway, whatever they are, you can?t be everything to everyone. You?re poorly positioned in the health care ideas market, your forays into foreign policy are a distraction, and your position on abortion isn?t paying any dividends either. The way I see it, your only real competitive advantage is that you?re not Obama. Never stray from that single fact, and you might be surprised how far you?ll go.

Leverage up. You?ve got more than $150 million on hand, which is nice?except that you?re going to need half a billion if you want to right this sinking ship. Sell your buddy Adelson another round of promissory notes on Israel policy to raise some fresh capital.

Know your target market. Start referring to the poor and unemployed as ?the bums.? The 53 percent will appreciate the straight talk.

Find a high-profile scapegoat. Mitt, I have a lot of respect for the work you?ve done. No one will be sorrier to see you go than I am. But the changes have to start at the top, and let?s face it: You?ve been the source of a lot of the problems around here. Someone?s got to take the fall for this mess, and it isn?t going to be me. I mean, it is going to be me.

Put a fresh face out front. We need a young, ambitious go-getter?a real ideas guy?who we can hold up as the face of this organization. Someone who'd restore the faith of investors and suggest we?re moving in a new direction. What do you make of this Ryan character?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=e23bdd4d036d277ec5d10a263a9e3ce1

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