Fine Lifestyles

Russia's $165,000 per night space hotel

2011-08-18T22:47:00.000-07:00

Russia's planned Commercial Space Station hotel may be a steal at $165,000 per night, but you may want to consider the $410,000 travel costs. Photo: Orbital Technologies SEE ALL 78 PHOTOS

Best Opinion: Nation, Business Insider

The image: Russian company Orbital Technologies wants to take luxury hotels to new hights — orbiting 217 miles above the Earth — by 2016. The proposed Commercial Space Station (CSS) would house seven guests in four cabins, including such space luxuries as precooked gourmet meals, sealed showers, and spectacular views of the home planet (see images below). Though the accommodations are more likely to evoke a high-tech dentist's office more than a chic Miami getaway, the space hotel will be "far more comfortable" than the even more spartan International Space Station, says Orbital chief executive Sergei Kostenko.

The reaction: "Russia may have lost the first space race to America," but it's dead set on winning the space-hotel race, says M.O. in Pakistan's The Nation. If you're lucky enough to make the trip, though, be aware that "aside from the spectacular view, there’s not much else to do, so you'd be wise to take a good book." Lucky, indeed, say Linette Lopez and Dina Spector in Business Insider. At about $165,000 per person for a five-night stay, and $410,000 for the trip up there on a Russian Soyuz rocket, "experiencing the final frontier from your bedroom window... won't be cheap."

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Eat Like a Foodie at Home, Without Breaking Your Budget

2011-08-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Just because you enjoy great food doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money dining out or buying upscale foods for delicious meals at home. With the advice of some noted chefs and food writers, you can elevate the level of your home-cooked meals even while working with a tight grocery budget, producing feasts that wow for just a few dollars per serving.

We'll show you where to shop and what to stock in your pantry to maximize your dollars-to-enjoyment ratio. We'll also show you how to save more on buying meat (often the most expensive part of the meal) and techniques and recipes for cooking up some exquisite dishes. Note: you don't have to consider yourself a "foodie" to use these suggestions—all you need to bring is a desire for great food.

Learn Techniques to Make the Most Out of Your Meals

Some cooking techniques like braising and slow cooking are very cost-effective and simple, producing flavorful meals; you can tenderize extremely tough—and inexpensive—cuts of meat with these techniques.

Make the Most Out of Cheap Proteins

The biggest cost savings you find may be on proteins, especially with today's rising meat prices. If you're not a vegetarian, the meat portion of the meal could very well make up the majority of your grocery budget (thus, it also follows that you can make the most out of your food budget by switching to a flexitarian diet or just eating a meat-less meal every once in a while).

Learning a few cooking techniques to enhance even cheap cuts of meat can help you turn a $5 steak into a $50 steak, so to speak:

Slow cooking: Even if you don't decide to hack your slow cooker into an off-the-charts sous vide cooker, a slow cooker can make even the toughest of meats tender and tastier. (Apparently you can also hack a beer cooler into a sous vide cooker.) Plus, the hands-off approach of using a slow cooker also means you can get flavor-packed meals without a lot of effort. You don't want just an everyday slow cooker meal though: foodie recipe search engine Punchfork can help you find more advanced slow cooker meals to make at home, like this carnitas recipe from TheKitchn that uses an inexpensive cut of pork: place a 6-8 pound pork butt (a.k.a., pork shoulder) in the slow cooker with some spices and tomato and orange juice and 8 hours later, you've got tender meat that falls off the bone.

Braising: Deb Perelman of the beautiful Smitten Kitchen food blog suggests we embrace braising. Cooked low and slow, ribs, briskets, pork shoulders, and so on "make incredible flavor-packed, stewy meals that can easily be spooned into tacos/served over rice or egg noodles and stretched to feed you for a week." Want recipes? Try Deb's knee-weakening braised beef short ribs or other braised recipes. Don't know what braising is? Previously mentioned cooking video library Cookblast has some videos and recipes for this slow cooking technique.

Salting: That $5 steak that tastes like it came from the very expensive steakhouse? It's all about salt. Basically, salt your steak like crazy at least 40 minutes before cooking (wash the salt off before) for the juiciest steak you've every made. You can intensify the flavor of all of your meats with wet and dry brining techniques—basically using salt to enhance the flavor of your meats by immersing them in a salty solution or just applying a dry salt rub directly.

How to Save on Proteins

With the techniques above you can make cheaper cuts of meat, like pork shoulder, taste extraordinary, but here's how to save even more:

Process your meat yourself: For the most savings, buy your meat (and other foods) minimally processed. Serious Eats' James Kenji Lopez-Alt (who forever transformed my steak-cooking technique and subsequent lifelong enjoyment) says that his biggest tip is:

Buy your meat in the least processed form possible and learn how to do some very minimal butchering yourself. So don't buy boneless skinless chicken breasts. If you want them, buy a whole chicken, which ends up costing about the same price as you'd pay for its breasts alone, but then you end up with chicken leg meat for a whole extra meal, as well as a carcass with which you can make stock. Three meals for the price of one, and all you've got to do is learn how to break down a chicken.

Buying and learning how to cook cheaper cuts of meat is very useful as well. Pork shoulder, for example, to me tastes a hundred times better than a pork chop. You just have to be willing to cook it a little longer. It takes well to methods like braising, slow roasting, or grinding into mince.

He also recommends buying a meat grinder, because not only will it give you the freshest tasting burgers, it lets you use up leftover scraps of meat you'd normally throw out. (Ready to take the plunge? Serious Eats shows you how to buy, use, and care for a meat grinder and what to do once you've got one.)

Cheaper cuts: Katerina, who writes the Daily Unadventures in Cooking blog says that:

One of the well kept secrets of foodies is that the cheaper the cut of meat, the harder to cook but the more the flavour. Lamb shanks and neck? Pork belly? Octopus? Short ribs? As proteins, they all represent a cheap way to impress guests at home if you are willing to take the time to properly cook them.

For example, if you have some cheap pork shoulder, TheKitchn managing editor Faith Durand says you can really maximize the flavor of it by grilling before braising.

Clay Dunn, who writes the popular and informative Bitten Word blog with partner Zach Patton, generously offered these two preparation techniques:

One of the best, most versatile and most affordable cuts of meat you can find is a skirt steak. You can often grab it for about $2 per serving. Another plus: It's also one of the easiest cuts of meat to cook. Amp up the flavor by rubbing the steak with instant espresso powder and some cayenne pepper. Then just sear it in a stovetop pan over high heat for a couple minutes per side, let it rest for several minutes, and slice it against the grain. You can stretch your protein dollar even further by incorporating the skirt steak into a steak salad: It's fantastic tossed with fresh dark lettuces, green beans and a sweet vinaigrette.

Another favorite inexpensive protein of ours is chicken thighs. They're tasty and succulent — way more flavorful than white-meat breasts. And you can frequently find chicken thighs for about a dollar per serving. We always by these instead of chicken breasts. Sear them on all sides in hot oil, toss some chopped onions and fresh tomato into the pan, and throw the whole thing in a 375-degree oven for 16-18 minutes to roast. Delicious! Maximize the flavor — and your budget — even more by stirring in a few fresh basil leaves, chopped, right before you serve.

Buy from a farm directly: Brian Lee, who runs the EatDrinkMadison dining guide says you can save a lot of money by purchasing a side or ¼ beef (100 lbs.) from a farm. You'll need a separate freezer, most likely, or someone to share with you, but you can get quality, ethically-raised beef for between $3.50-$5.50 per pound from the farm versus three times that much or more from Whole Foods.

How to Save on Fresh Produce

Speaking of Whole Foods, you don't really need to shop there for any or all of your choice foods. Farmer's markets, or greenmarkets, offer fresh-from-the-farm foods, and as mentioned here at Lifehacker previously, shopping later in the day at a farmer's market can save you some extra cash. (Dunn said you can find some really great deals at farmer's markets if you buy the fruits and vegetables at the peak of the season—you could get a pint of berries for a third of what it would cost you at the grocery store.)

Joining a CSA (community supported agriculture) group may likewise be a worthwhile investment where you get a load of in-season veggies and/or fruits (or even eggs and flowers) for about $20-$50 a month.

Canning, freezing, and even layering in salt can extend your food's life as well.

Perelman also reminds us that good looks don't always matter when it comes to your fruits and veggies:

Don't be afraid of ugly produce (in fact, be more suspicious of the overly pretty stuff and what has to be added to the soil to get blemish free beauties); ugly tomatoes make great sauce

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To get the most bang for your organic buck, you can also focus your spending on just those organic foods most prone to pesticide (e.g., with this organic food buying cheat sheet). If your main reason for buying organic is to avoid pesticides, foods like avocado and bananas, which have thick peels that aren't eaten, can be bought safely non-organic. Peppers, celery, peaches, apples, strawberries and other fruits and vegetables with thin or edible skins are better organic options.

Of course, you can also save a lot of money by starting your own vegetable garden, if you have the space. Cheap Vegetable Gardener has a chart of the most profitable vegetables/herbs to grow yourself. (Previously mentioned tools like Smart Gardener can help you set this up and grow your own food successfully even if you don't have a green thumb.)

Where to Buy Other Quality Food for Cheap

Beyond fresh produce and meats, you can save a whole lot more by shopping in unconventional places.

Look to ethnic grocery stores for better deals on spices, for example, or just the international aisle of your main grocery store, Dunn advises.

Online shops let you find specialty foods that you couldn't find in brick-and-mortar stores. International food market places like Foodzie, Zingerman's and Import Food offer specialty ingredients that can elevate your dish. As CNN reports, most foodmakers will also ship direct to you, for even more savings:

A pound of Humboldt Fog goat's-milk cheese, ordered off Zingerman's, will run you $35; the same amount from the cheesemaker, Cypress Grove, is $20.

How to Stock Your Gourmet Pantry/What to Buy

Sometimes, all it takes is that one key ingredient—a unique sauce or a condiment—to make your meal extraordinary. Investing your food money wisely lets you scrimp on some expensive items (like meats) while still getting a lot of flavor from your meal.

Stephanie Trahd at artisan foods marketpace Fooducopia says "It's much more affordable to take a cheaper cut of meat and dress it with a gourmet steak wash, than it is to buy a filet and only be able to afford a parsley garnish!"

Likewise, Chef Mark Estee, owner of Moddy's Bistro and Lounge and Burger Me in Truckee, CA, reminds us that having great staples in your pantry is important because "bad quality in, bad quality out." The staples he suggest you invest in: extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salts, chutneys, and mustards.

Durand adds to the list nut oils like hazelnut and roasted walnut oil for delicious salads, and really likes this smoked olive oil featured on TheKitchn. (When cooking, stick to cheap olive oil to save cash, but for salads or drizzling over food, you may actually taste the difference in a higher-quality oil.)

Keeping basics in stock will also help you avoid the dine-out/take-out bug. Lopez-Alt says he always has on hand a collection of Chinese, Japanese, and South East Asian condiments and sauces ready to go, so all he has to do for a quick and savory meal is pick up a protein and boil some rice.

I'm with Perelman on splurging on milk, eggs, produce and meat; it's worth the extra cost to us to buy ethically raised and cleanly produced foods. But even then, you can still save even on organic produce, grass-fed beef, free-range eggs and the like using some of the shopping tips above.

Favorite Versatile, Inexpensive Meals

When asked what their most delicious yet cheap meals were, our food sources had so many great suggestions:

Durand reminded me of the addictiveness of chickpeas when toasted as a snack, turned into fresh hummus or a spicy chickpea salad for lunch.
You'll find great pizza cooking at Smitten Kitchen; Deb says you can "buy the softest, fanciest mozzarella" and toss in some proscuitto plus imported tomato puree to make a $5 meal for many.
This recipe for Grilled Mussels with Herb Butter at Bitten Word is one of the least expensive dinners Clay and Zach say they've ever made, and it has a huge "wow" factor. Total cost of the meal for three people: under $15. (Besides being flavorful and inexpensive, mussels are also one of the most sustainable seafood choices, so this may be a great go-to recipe.)

How to Get More Value Out of Your Wines

If you agree with the old Andre Simon quote that "Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost," you'll probably want some good vino with your home-cooked meal. For many people, a wine store filled with bottles upon bottles of wines of varying prices can be overwhelming.

Jsaon Mancebo, who writes the 20 Dollar Wine Blog, said the best strategy is to develop a relationship with a wine monger at a smaller wine shop, so he/she can get to know your style, palate, and price ranges. Regionally speaking:

The usual suspects for bargains in the past 10 years or so are Australia, Chile and Argentina, but recent economics make Spain, Portugal and even Italy VERY attractive now. Great Rioja, Alentejo and Barolo are certainly within reach! If you're normally only a red wine fan, try some rose' from Provence or white from the Langhe. There's lots to explore and great stuff to pair with the dishes you create!

Though you can find good wines at $10 or below, they're not as easy (i.e., super-easy) to find at $20. The sweet spot, Mancebo says, may be about $15-17.

I also like Lopez-Alt's answer: "It's the summer. I like having inexpensive, easy-to-drink wines, like a nice cold vinho verde."

"Foodie" Meals at Home: In a Nutshell

To sum up, you can save more but still get a lot of value and tastiness out of the foods you buy and make at home. The basic guidelines:

Buy from less conventional/mass marketplaces. Explore ethnic markets, farmer's markets, and grow your own if you can
Buy as much as you can whole and unprocessed
Learn how to preserve your foods (e.g., how to store food properly in the freezer and fridge or food preservation techniques)
Use all parts of the food if possible. Use chicken bones to make stock, toast pumpkin seeds, etc.
Splurge on items that will enhance the rest of the meal and where a little will go a long way. Or focus on one quality ingredient in each dish.

Doing this may increase the quality of your meals at home to the point where you might even prefer dining in rather than out. Bon appetit!

Got your own tips for increasing the foodieness of your homecooked meals (on a budget)? We're all ears in the comments.
Photo by benicce / Shutterstock.

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Over career, most doctors in US will face lawsuit

2011-08-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

By Chelsea Conaboy

Most doctors in America will be sued at some point during their career, a Harvard study released yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine has found. Physicians who perform high-risk procedures, including neurosurgeons and obstetricians, face a near certainty of being named in a malpractice case before they reach age 65.

Yet a relatively small number of claims, about 22 percent, result in payments to patients or their families.

Authors of the study, which examined 15 years of data, said it highlights the need for changes in malpractice law so that doctors and patients can resolve disputes before they resort to litigation, which often costs both parties money and heartache.

“Doctors get sued far more frequently than anyone would have thought, and in some specialties, it’s extremely high,’’ said Amitabh Chandra, an economist and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and an author of the study. “In some sense, the payment is the least important part, because you can insure against it, but you can’t insure against the hassle cost.’’

The study looked at claims data for nearly 41,000 physicians from 1991 to 2005. The researchers found that 7.4 percent of physicians had a malpractice claim against them each year and that 1.6 percent had a claim that led to a payment each year.

The likelihood and outcome of lawsuits varied considerably across specialties. But the fact that even doctors in low-risk areas of practice, such as family medicine, had a 75 percent chance of being sued during their career is cause for concern, Chandra said.

Every time doctors are sued they face lost income from the time they spend out of the office fighting the case, said Dr. Alan Woodward, a retired emergency physician who is chairman of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s committee on professional liability. The threat to their reputation is a cause of major stress, and the anxiety can compromise the care they provide to other patients, he said.

Fear of lawsuits drives many physicians to practice defensive medicine - ordering more diagnostic tests than necessary, for example - or to retire early, Woodward said. And when doctors fear legal retribution, they are less likely to share information, with patients or internally.

“It creates a culture of secrecy and fear,’’ he said.

The small number of successful malpractice cases does not mean most are frivolous, said Chandra. It can be difficult to prove that an injury resulted from an avoidable error in patient care, he said.

“Many of us are coming to the conclusion that litigation is not the answer,’’ Chandra said.

Woodward met with Chandra yesterday and discussed the study, which included researchers from Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, the Rand Institute, and the University of Southern California. Woodward said it provides more evidence that government regulations should encourage doctors to talk openly with patients, apologize when warranted, and offer compensation when appropriate.

Some advocates, including the consumer group Health Care for All, have been trying for at least four years to get a law passed in Massachusetts making such apologies inadmissible in court; such laws exist in many other states. The hope is that doctors will feel more secure in talking about a patient’s care and even admitting an error. The patient could still pursue a case based on the medical evidence.

Previous studies have shown that patients are less likely to sue when they receive an apology and explanation from their doctor.

Brian Rosman, research director of Health Care for All, said everyone will benefit if patient-doctor communication is divorced from legal proceedings. That would allow doctors and hospitals to deal more directly with the root cause of an error.

“Fixing this problem can also improve the quality of care,’’ he said.

The medical society has been working with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, using a $273,782 federal grant, to design a plan for a system that would encourage apologies and compensation, when justified, in Massachusetts. The plan is set to be released this fall.

The group has interviewed dozens of people representing patients, hospitals, the legal community, and doctors.

Woodward said that nearly universal support exists for a system that encourages doctors to apologize.

Woodward said the medical society, along with the hospital and other partners, have applied for a three-year grant of about $3 million to create pilot projects at Baystate Health in Western Massachusetts and Beth Israel Deaconess and to launch a statewide campaign educating patients and doctors.

He is also working with lawmakers to draft legislation requiring malpractice cases to go through a six-month vetting period in which the physicians would share all pertinent medical records with the patient and analyze whether an avoidable error occurred.

Litigation plays an important role in exposing errors and getting patients the help they need, said medical malpractice lawyer Jeffrey Catalano, vice president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. But, he said, it is often inefficient.

He supports what is referred to as the apology law.

“The devil’s in the details, but it has a lot of promise,’’ said Catalano, who represents patients.

Catalano said out-of-court reviews should be overseen by a third-party attorney and that patients’ lawyers should be allowed to participate to ensure their clients’ rights are protected.

Chandra and his coauthor, Dr. Anupam B. Jena of Mass. General, said they hope their study will dispel the fear that many doctors have of big payouts. Their study found just 66 claims that resulted in payments exceeding $1 million. Average claims by specialty ranged from $117,832 in dermatology to $520,923 in pediatrics.

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Food Surprise! Subsidizing Healthy Food Helps Kids Lose Weight

2011-07-11T00:32:00.000-07:00

It seems obvious to anyone who's ever paid money for something: Make things cheaper, especially things people absolutely need, and you'll sell more of them. And yet it seems the U.S. government has yet to grasp that lesson. For decades now, America has been struggling with rising obesity, but rather than invest in subsidizing healthy foods for citizens, the government has instead dumped tens of billions of dollars into corn subsidies. What that's done is give rise to vast stockpiles of corn syrup, corn chips and soda, all on the taxpayer's dime. Whereas more than $15 billion in subsidies went to corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans in 2009, only $825 million went to fruits and vegetables. We're not just getting fat, we're paying to do so out of both hands (once with our taxes and once at the store).

A new report (PDF) from the U.S.D.A.'s Economic Research Service outlines exactly how damaging these subsidies are on America's children. Working on behalf of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign against youth obesity, a team was able to ascertain that just a 10-percent decrease in the price of lowfat milk for one quarter was associated with a .35-percent drop in children's BMIs. Similarly, lowering the cost of dark green vegetables by 10 percent saw a .28-percent BMI drop. And the effect worked both ways: When the price of sweets fell, BMIs increased.

It's important to note that BMI is often attacked as a bad way to measure a person's health, but until there's a better metric that can be applied generally in these types of studies, BMI will have to do. Also, if you're thinking that a .35-percent drop doesn't seem like a lot of weight, you're right. But it's an important start, and one whose impact could be larger if we enacted subsidies cutting health-food prices by more than just 10 percent.

Let this be a reminder that poor people, who are more overweight than the wealthy, shouldn't be written off as pigs who stuff their kids full of empty calories every night. The simple fact is that unhealthy food costs less, and cost is of primary importance when you're on a very limited budget.

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Opposites attract? Apparently not, according to study

2011-07-11T00:28:00.000-07:00

Partners are drawn to individuals in a similar 'league' and of the same desirability

By Daily Mail Reporter

When it comes to love, there are no hard and fast rules though many people follow the age-old theory that opposites attract.

But now a study has found that more often that not, similarity rules the day.

Researchers at Berkeley found that people are drawn to potential romantic partners if they are of their own or similar league and desirability, which they called the 'matching hypothesis'.

Hot: The Berkeley study found that the more popular the individual the more a similarly popular individual would be attracted to them

Of course personality traits and common interests play a factor but for that instant attraction, like is drawn towards like, putting paid to the phrase, 'You're out of my league'.

For their research, the authors of the study turned - as most singletons do today - to online dating sites.

More...

The couple who found the secret to wedded bliss... live in separate homes

They measured the popularity of more than 3,000 heterosexual users of a site and looked at the popularity of each.

Popularity was defined by the number of opposite-sex individuals who had sent unsolicited messages to a user.

Findings: The authors of the study said individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability equals their own

Analyses indicated that high-popularity users contacted other popular users at a rate greater than would be expected by chance.

Similarly, the less popular users of the site also contacted other low-popularity users.

The researchers then conducted a follow-up study of more than a million users and found a similar result - when it comes to dating, potential mates stick to someone in their own league.

Like attracts like: Couples are said to be attracted to each other due to their level of desirability

The authors found that: 'Individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability approximately equals their own.

'Using data collected in the laboratory and from users of a popular online dating site, the authors found evidence for matching based on self-worth, physical attractiveness, and popularity, but to different degrees and not always at the same stage of the dating process.

'The most striking prediction is that undesirable individuals will choose undesirable partners.'

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News of the World's best ever front pages Read more: http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/07/08/news-of-the-world-best-front-pages/#ixzz1Rm8UZqBO

2011-07-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

By Sam Parker

Last week, James Bond baddie Rupert Murdoch and his evil henchman James Murdoch surprised us all by announcing that today will be the last time ever that the News of the World goes to print.

In the wake of still-growing phone-hacking scandal, the News International overlords decided the popular rag's time was up, while curiously standing by Rebekah Brooks, the woman who presided over the whole messy business in the first place.

And so, as 200 largely blameless journalists, sales people, designers and finance staff walk the plank to save their superiors, we take a moment to celebrate the News of the World's most memorable front page splashes.

From celebrity sex scandals to sporting corruption via loads of stuff that made the royal family whince, we might not have always liked what it had to say but nothing raised our eyebrows quite like the News of the World. Click below for our highlights.

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In Defense of Antidepressants

2011-07-11T00:20:00.000-07:00

Enlarge This Image

Leo Jung

Enlarge This Image

Leo Jung

IN terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos.

Last month brought an especially high-profile debunking. In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, favorably entertained the premise that “psychoactive drugs are useless.” Earlier, a USA Today piece about a study done by the psychologist Robert DeRubeis had the headline, “Antidepressant lift may be all in your head,” and shortly after, a Newsweek cover piece discussed research by the psychologist Irving Kirsch arguing that the drugs were no more effective than a placebo.

Could this be true? Could drugs that are ingested by one in 10 Americans each year, drugs that have changed the way that mental illness is treated, really be a hoax, a mistake or a concept gone wrong?

This supposition is worrisome. Antidepressants work — ordinarily well, on a par with other medications doctors prescribe. Yes, certain researchers have questioned their efficacy in particular areas — sometimes, I believe, on the basis of shaky data. And yet, the notion that they aren’t effective in general is influencing treatment.

For instance, not long ago, I received disturbing news: a friend had had a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. Hoping to be of use, I searched the Web for a study I vaguely remembered. There it was: a group in France had worked with more than 100 people with the kind of stroke that affected my friend. Along with physiotherapy, half received Prozac, and half a placebo. Members of the Prozac group recovered more of their mobility. Antidepressants are good at treating post-stroke depression and good at preventing it. They also help protect memory. In stroke patients, antidepressants look like a tonic for brain health.

When I learned that my friend was not on antidepressants, I suggested he raise the issue with his neurologists. I e-mailed them the relevant articles. After further consideration, the doctors added the medicines to his regimen of physical therapy.

Surprised that my friend had not been offered a highly effective treatment, I phoned Robert G. Robinson at the University of Iowa’s department of psychiatry, a leading researcher in this field. He said, “Neurologists tell me they don’t use an antidepressant unless a patient is suffering very serious depression. They’re influenced by reports that say that’s all antidepressants are good for.”

Critics raise various concerns, but in my view the serious dispute about antidepressant efficacy has a limited focus. Do they work for the core symptoms (such as despair, low energy and feelings of worthlessness) of isolated episodes of mild or moderate depression? The claim that antidepressants do nothing for this common condition — that they are merely placebos with side effects — is based on studies that have probably received more ink than they deserve.

The most widely publicized debunking research — the basis for the Newsweek and New York Review pieces — is drawn from data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the late 1980s and the 1990s by companies seeking approval for new drugs. This research led to its share of scandal when a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the trials had been published selectively. Papers showing that antidepressants work had found their way into print; unfavorable findings had not.

In his book “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” Dr. Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Hull in England, analyzed all the data. He found that while the drugs outperformed the placebos for mild and moderate depression, the benefits were small. The problem with the Kirsch analysis — and none of the major press reports considered this shortcoming — is that the F.D.A. material is ill suited to answer questions about mild depression.

As a condition for drug approval, the F.D.A. requires drug companies to demonstrate a medicine’s efficacy in at least two trials. Trials in which neither the new drug nor an older, established drug is distinguishable from a placebo are deemed “failed” and are disregarded or weighed lightly in the evaluation. Consequently, companies rushing to get medications to market have had an incentive to run quick, sloppy trials.

Often subjects who don’t really have depression are included — and (no surprise) weeks down the road they are not depressed. People may exaggerate their symptoms to get free care or incentive payments offered in trials. Other, perfectly honest subjects participate when they are at their worst and then spontaneously return to their usual, lower, level of depression.

THIS improvement may have nothing to do with faith in dummy pills; it is an artifact of the recruitment process. Still, the recoveries are called “placebo responses,” and in the F.D.A. data they have been steadily on the rise. In some studies, 40 percent of subjects not receiving medication get better.

The problem is so big that entrepreneurs have founded businesses promising to identify genuinely ill research subjects. The companies use video links to screen patients at central locations where (contrary to the practice at centers where trials are run) reviewers have no incentives for enrolling subjects. In early comparisons, off-site raters rejected about 40 percent of subjects who had been accepted locally — on the ground that those subjects did not have severe enough symptoms to qualify for treatment. If this result is typical, many subjects labeled mildly depressed in the F.D.A. data don’t have depression and might well respond to placebos as readily as to antidepressants.

Nonetheless, the F.D.A. mostly gets it right. To simplify a complex matter: there are two sorts of studies that are done on drugs: broad trials and narrow trials. Broad trials, like those done to evaluate new drugs, can be difficult these days, because many antidepressants are available as generics. Who volunteers to take an untested remedy? Research subjects are likely to be an odd bunch.

Narrow studies, done on those with specific disorders, tend to be more reliable. Recruitment of subjects is straightforward; no one’s walking off the street to enter a trial for stroke patients. Narrow studies have identified many specific indications for antidepressants, such as depression in neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis and epilepsy; depression caused by interferon, a medication used to treat hepatitis and melanoma; and anxiety disorders in children.

New ones regularly emerge. The June issue of Surgery Today features a study in which elderly female cardiac patients who had had emergency operations and were given antidepressants experienced less depression, shorter hospital stays and fewer deaths in the hospital.

Broad studies tend to be most trustworthy when they look at patients with sustained illness. A reliable finding is that antidepressants work for chronic and recurrent mild depression, the condition called dysthymia. More than half of patients on medicine get better, compared to less than a third taking a placebo. (This level of efficacy — far from ideal — is typical across a range of conditions in which antidepressants outperform placebos.) Similarly, even the analyses that doubt the usefulness of antidepressants find that they help with severe depression.

In fact, antidepressants appear to have effects across the depressive spectrum. Scattered studies suggest that antidepressants bolster confidence or diminish emotional vulnerability — for people with depression but also for healthy people. In the depressed, the decrease in what is called neuroticism seems to protect against further episodes. Because neuroticism is not a core symptom of depression, most outcome trials don’t measure this change, but we can see why patients and doctors might consider it beneficial.

Similarly, in rodent and primate trials, antidepressants have broad effects on both healthy animals and animals with conditions that resemble mood disruptions in humans.

One reason the F.D.A. manages to identify useful medicines is that it looks at a range of evidence. It encourages companies to submit “maintenance studies.” In these trials, researchers take patients who are doing well on medication and switch some to dummy pills. If the drugs are acting as placebos, switching should do nothing. In an analysis that looked at maintenance studies for 4,410 patients with a range of severity levels, antidepressants cut the odds of relapse by 70 percent. These results, rarely referenced in the antidepressant-as-placebo literature, hardly suggest that the usefulness of the drugs is all in patients’ heads.

The other round of media articles questioning antidepressants came in response to a seemingly minor study engineered to highlight placebo responses. One effort to mute the placebo effect in drug trials involves using a “washout period” during which all subjects get a dummy pill for up to two weeks. Those who report prompt relief are dropped; the study proceeds with those who remain symptomatic, with half getting the active medication. In light of subject recruitment problems, this approach has obvious appeal.

Dr. DeRubeis, an authority on cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, has argued that the washout method plays down the placebo effect. Last year, Dr. DeRubeis and his colleagues published a highly specific statistical analysis. From a large body of research, they discarded trials that used washouts, as well as those that focused on dysthymia or subtypes of depression. The team deemed only six studies, from over 2,000, suitable for review. An odd collection they were. Only studies using Paxil and imipramine, a medicine introduced in the 1950s, made the cut — and other research had found Paxil to be among the least effective of the new antidepressants. One of the imipramine studies used a very low dose of the drug. The largest study Dr. DeRubeis identified was his own. In 2005, he conducted a trial in which Paxil did slightly better than psychotherapy and significantly better than a placebo — but apparently much of the drug response occurred in sicker patients.

Building an overview around your own research is problematic. Generally, you use your study to build a hypothesis; you then test the theory on fresh data. Critics questioned other aspects of Dr. DeRubeis’s math. In a re-analysis using fewer assumptions, Dr. DeRubeis found that his core result (less effect for healthier patients) now fell just shy of statistical significance. Overall, the medications looked best for very severe depression and had only slight benefits for mild depression — but this study, looking at weak treatments and intentionally maximized placebo effects, could not quite meet the scientific standard for a firm conclusion. And yet, the publication of the no-washout paper produced a new round of news reports that antidepressants were placebos.

In the end, the much heralded overview analyses look to be editorials with numbers attached. The intent, presumably to right the balance between psychotherapy and medication in the treatment of mild depression, may be admirable, but the data bearing on the question is messy.

As for the news media’s uncritical embrace of debunking studies, my guess, based on regular contact with reporters, is that a number of forces are at work. Misdeeds — from hiding study results to paying off doctors — have made Big Pharma an inviting and, frankly, an appropriate target. (It’s a favorite of Dr. Angell’s.) Antidepressants have something like celebrity status; exposing them makes headlines.

It is hard to locate the judicious stance with regard to antidepressants and moderate mood disorder. In my 1993 book, “Listening to Prozac,” I wrote, “To my mind, psychotherapy remains the single most helpful technology for the treatment of minor depression and anxiety.” In 2003, in “Against Depression,” I highlighted research that suggested antidepressants influence mood only indirectly. It may be that the drugs are “permissive,” removing roadblocks to self-healing.

That model might predict that in truth the drugs would be more effective in severe disorders. If antidepressants act by usefully perturbing a brain that’s “stuck,” then people who retain some natural resilience would see a lesser benefit. That said, the result that the debunking analyses propose remains implausible: antidepressants help in severe depression, depressive subtypes, chronic minor depression, social unease and a range of conditions modeled in mice and monkeys — but uniquely not in isolated episodes of mild depression in humans.

BETTER-DESIGNED research may tell us whether there is a point on the continuum of mood disorder where antidepressants cease to work. If I had to put down my marker now — and effectively, as a practitioner, I do — I’d bet that “stuckness” applies all along the line, that when mildly depressed patients respond to medication, more often than not we’re seeing true drug effects. Still, my approach with mild depression is to begin treatments with psychotherapy. I aim to use drugs sparingly. They have side effects, some of them serious. Antidepressants help with strokes, but surveys also show them to predispose to stroke. But if psychotherapy leads to only slow progress, I will recommend adding medicines. With a higher frequency and stronger potency than what we see in the literature, they seem to help.

My own beliefs aside, it is dangerous for the press to hammer away at the theme that antidepressants are placebos. They’re not. To give the impression that they are is to cause needless suffering.

As for my friend, he had made no progress before his neurologists prescribed antidepressants. Since, he has shown a slow return of motor function. As is true with much that we see in clinical medicine, the cause of this change is unknowable. But antidepressants are a reasonable element in the treatment — because they do seem to make the brain more flexible, and they’ve earned their place in the doctor’s satchel.

Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University.

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Strangest McFoods from Around the World

2010-02-11T22:18:00.000-08:00

McDonald’s is, at this point in American history, ubiquitous. You can’t swing a dead Fry Guy in the U.S. without hitting a McDonaldland. This isn’t only well-known; it’s part of their corporate identity right on their signage: billions and billions served (they’ve stopped counting, by the way—which sort of sucks, really).

What’s perhaps less known is that McDonald’s is ubiquitous worldwide. It’s not just Americans who are lovin’ it. But since tastes in fast food differ from place to place? So does the McFood being offered. And sometimes—at least to American eyes? The menu gets pretty odd.

10. McHomard (Canada)

Canadians are generally seen as a fairly even-tempered lot. But just try to take away this lobster-roll Mickey-D’s style (homard is French for lobster), and watch them Canadians kick some McAss. They say you can get this in Maine, too—but really, is Maine all that different from Canada? Let’s not split hairs, people.

9. Maharaja Mac (India)

Cows are sacred to the Hindi in India—and not in the same way that beef is sacred to the American dinner plate. So to avoid rioting in the Bangladesh streets, McDonald’s there came up with a new versions of the Big Mac: the McMutton. When that didn’t take, they tried chicken, and called in the Maharajah Mac (and no actual Maharajahs were harmed in the making of this Mac). So: Big Mac, hold the sacrilege.

8. Pasta Zoo Happy Meal (Australia)

The weird thing about this Australian kids’ meal wasn’t that it included animal-shaped pasta, or even that there were specifically ten pieces of pasta in each pack. (Okay, that’s a little anal, but whatever.) The really disturbing thing was the sauce, which they called Zoo Goo. I’m sorry, but…what? I’ve been to many zoos, and there’s no goo that I’ve seen there that I’d want anywhere near my pasta.

7. Greek Mac (Greece)

File this one under “barely even trying”. If you stick the innards of a Big Mac into a pita, does that mean that it’s Greek? I guess the special sauce is made from yogurt, but no feta? And the burgers are still crappy Mcpatties? I guess some disappointment is universal.

6. Bacon Potato Pie (Asia)

Pies at McDonald’s are normally limited to dessert items: their traditional apple, if you’re lucky, a specialty pie like cherry or blueberry, or pumpkin for the holidays. But ask for a pie in parts of Asia, and you’ll get something that tastes like either a deep fried pirogue, or an incomplete shepherd’s pie.

5. McMollettes (Mexico)

An English Muffin topped with refried beans, cheese, and salsa. I’m sorry, is this a Mexican dish, or something from a trailer park?

4. KiwiBurger (New Zealand)

This burger doesn’t sound so strange—beef patty, tomato, fried egg—until you get down to the last ingredient: beetroot. If someone asked me “hey, is there any veggie you don’t want to try on your burger?” “Beetroot” would be right up there. Just in case, I’d also not like the following on my burger: grass, corn husks, or orange rind.

3. My Poutine (Canada)

Everyone has their own idea of what’s good on French fries: ketchup, mayonnaise, ranch dressing, chili and cheese, even mustard. But in Quebec, they add cheese curds, and top it off with brown gravy. What’s more annoying than all that is the fact that they refer to it with the added possessive “My”. And honestly, I want no part of curds and gravy, thanks. Don’t try to drag me into that mess.

2. Koroke Burger (Japan)

This Japanese entry sort of defies the idea of “burger”. If it’s on a bun, and that’s all the sandwich shares with a hamburger, is it still a burger? If I put tuna salad on a bun, does that make it a burger? I don’t think so. Likewise, this concoction of mashed potato, shredded cabbage, and katsu sauce just doesn’t seem like a burger to me. It seems like a “here’s some crap I found in my fridge” sandwich (which is pretty much what I lived on in college).

1. Mega Mac (China, Ireland, Serbia, Japan, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand)

Okay, suddenly the Koroke Burger seems more logical. At least it’s probably semi-healthy. This monster is just a super-sized double-meat Big Mac, which means that the weirdest thing about it is that it’s not widely available in the States. And seriously, no more talk about how being stupid-obese is a peculiarly American deal, okay?

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Porsche 911 GT3 R hybrid

2010-02-11T22:15:00.000-08:00

By Stephen Dobie

Porsche is taking a hybrid version of its 911 supercar to the 2010 Geneva motor show. It’s no ordinary 911, either – it’s the GT3 R racing car, perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a green-pleasing powertrain.

Not that this one’s particularly green, of course. A 473bhp 4-litre flat-six engine powers the rear wheels, while two electric motors (each developing around 80bhp) power the front axle, effectively making this a four-wheel-drive GT3.

Those motors are powered by an electric flywheel generator, which is charged up by regenerative braking each time the driver slows. And rather than cutting in automatically during the drive (or indeed race) cycle, the electric power is made available KERS-style, as the racing driver requires it for a six to eight second boost.

The 911’s hybrid system is also intended to increase fuel efficiency. Ideal, really, as the car’s first big race with be May’s Nurburgring 24-hour race. And for Porsche, it really is about the taking part rather than the winning: racing the hybrid GT3 R will be ‘a ‘racing laboratory’ that will provide invaluable knowledge and insight on the subsequent use of hybrid technology in road-going Porsche sports car’.

A road-going hybrid version of the next 911, then? Certainly sounds like it…

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Tesla CEO Takes Private Jet as Company Takes Public Loan

2010-02-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

By Chuck Squatriglia

The CEO of Tesla Motors, which has received a fat federal loan, flew to Washington, D.C., aboard a private jet at least 12 times in the past 14 months. Although it isn’t unusual for CEOs to jet around on corporate planes, Elon Musk did so not long after lawmakers berated the heads of the Big Three automakers for doing the same thing while seeking a government bailout.

PeHub.com, citing FAA records, says Musk flew to Washington aboard his Dassault Falcon 900 on June 15, 2009 — one week before the Department of Energy agreed to lend the company $465 million to help build the Model S sedan, and two weeks after Tesla took over paying the plane’s operating costs. Those costs came to $175,000 in the second half of last year, according to the paperwork Tesla filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of an impending IPO.

The Silicon Valley automaker lost $31.5 million in the first nine months of 2009. Although the company has been steadily cutting its losses, it has lost $236.4 million since its founding in 2003. Tesla turned its first and only profit in July, 2009 but said in the Form S-1 filed with the SEC: “We expect the rate at which we will incur losses to increase significantly in future periods from current levels.” The same document notes Musk is taking $1 a year in salary.

Since Tesla started footing the bill, Musk’s plane has flown to Washington five other times, including one flight this year. Four of those flights were made after the feds approved the loan but before they finalized it. PeHub did not list the remaining six flights it claims Musk made since the beginning of 2009.

As PeHub notes, there’s nothing odd about the CEOs of tech firms billing their companies when flying in their jets. But PeHub quotes one venture capitalist who says it is highly unusual for the CEO of a startup to do so.

“It’s really not normal. and I don’t think it’s actually right,” said Ho Nam of Altos Ventures, which does not have a stake in Tesla. “It’s okay to expense what it would have cost to fly commercial, but the difference should be covered by the person using it. It’s really about the culture and the message it sends to the rest of the company.”

Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes said the company does not own a jet but pays for expenses incurred when Musk and other employees fly.

“Tesla has no corporate jet,” he said in an email. “When traveling on business, Elon and other Tesla employees have used his private airplane, especially for urgent or unscheduled travel, other times they fly coach. Tesla has paid for expenses such fuel charges and landing fees on some of the trips.”

Musk may have done nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with someone as busy as Musk — who runs three companies — flying around on a private jet. And some of those flights may have involved business related to Musk’s other ventures, Space-X and Solar City. But to have Tesla Motors foot the bill for any flights pertaining to its business while taxpayers underwrite the Model S is a colossal PR blunder.

Just ask Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli.

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Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary Discovered

2010-02-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

By PATRICIA COHEN

The climactic moment in William Faulkner’s 1942 novel “Go Down, Moses” comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their “scarred and cracked backs” and “yellowed pages scrawled in fading ink” — proof of his family’s slave-owning past. Now, what appears to be the document on which Faulkner modeled that ledger as well as the source for myriad names, incidents and details that populate his fictionalized Yoknapatawpha County has been discovered.

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Southern Historical Collection/Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Francis Terry Leak’s diary was read by Faulkner. A page from 1856 records a slave sale.

Times Topics: William Faulkner

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Associated Press

William Faulkner at his home near Oxford, Miss., in 1950.

The original manuscript, a diary from the mid-1800s, was written by Francis Terry Leak, a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi whose great-grandson Edgar Wiggin Francisco Jr. was a friend of Faulkner’s since childhood. Mr. Francisco’s son, Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, now 79, recalls the writer’s frequent visits to the family homestead in Holly Springs, Miss., throughout the 1930s, saying Faulkner was fascinated with the diary’s several volumes. Mr. Francisco said he saw them in Faulker’s hands and remembers that he “was always taking copious notes.”

Specialists have been stunned and intrigued not only by this peephole into Faulkner’s working process, but also by material that may have inspired this Nobel-prize-winning author, considered by many to be one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century.

“I think it’s one of the most sensational literary discoveries of recent decades,” said John Lowe, an English professor at Louisiana State University who is writing a book on Faulkner. He was one of a handful of experts who met Dr. Francisco at the hand-hewn log house in Holly Springs last month. There they saw the windowpane where a cousin, Ludie Baugh, etched the letters L-U-D-I-E into the glass while watching Confederate soldiers march by — a scene that appears in several Faulkner works.

During the gathering Dr. Francisco, known in childhood as Little Eddie, described how Faulkner stood in front of that window and said, “ ‘She’s still here,’ like she was a ghost,” Professor Lowe recalled.

Dr. Francisco, speaking by telephone from his home in Atlanta, remembered hearing Faulkner rant as he read Leak’s pro-slavery and pro-Confederacy views: “Faulkner became very angry. He would curse the man and take notes and curse the man and take more notes.”

Sally Wolff-King, a scholar of Southern literature at Emory University who uncovered the connection between the author and the journal, called it “a once-in-a-lifetime literary find.”

“The diary and a number of family stories seem to have provided the philosophical and thematic power for some of his major works,” she added.

Names of slaves owned by Leak — Caruthers, Moses, Isaac, Sam, Toney, Mollie, Edmund and Worsham — all appear in some form in “Go Down, Moses.” Other recorded names, like Candis (Candace in the book) and Ben, show up in “The Sound and The Fury” (1929) while Old Rose, Henry, Ellen and Milly are characters in “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936). Charles Bonner, a well-known Civil War physician mentioned in the diary, would also seem to be the namesake of Charles Bon in “Absalom.”

Scholars found Faulkner’s decision to give his white characters the names of slaves particularly arresting. Professor Wolff-King said she believes he was “trying to recreate the slaves lives and give them a voice.”

Dr. Francisco says he is still very uncomfortable that his family’s connection to Faulkner has come to light. “I wouldn’t have done it at all,” he said about publicizing the diary. “My wife urged me until I finally did it,” he said of Anne Salyerds Francisco, his wife of 50 years. “She pushed and Sally pulled.”

“There were long-repressed things that Faulkner uncovered that I didn’t know were in the family,” Dr. Francisco explained, adding that his father never talked about Leak and his slave-owning past. “I just bottled all that up and forgot about it.”

Dr. Francisco said that neither he nor his father ever read much of Faulkner’s work, including “Go Down, Moses.”

“I tried to read that book years ago,” he said, “but I got so angry I threw it across the room, and it stayed there for months.” He said he now might give it another go.

The mothers of Faulkner and of Dr. Francisco’s father were close. The boys went to each other’s childhood birthday parties. Later they double dated and became hunting and drinking buddies, remaining friends until their 40s, when they drifted apart, a situation probably encouraged by Mr. Francisco’s wife, who did not approve of Faulkner’s drinking, smoking and cursing.

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, above, with a typescript of an old family diary. As a boy, he used to see William Faulkner reading the original.

Times Topics: William Faulkner

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Sally Wolff-King, a Faulkner scholar who bases some of her new research on the diary.

Professor Wolff-King had been working on a book about people who knew Faulkner and ended up connecting with Dr. Francisco because he was an alumnus of Emory. When she visited his home in Atlanta, his wife suggested he show the professor a typescript copy of the ledger. Included was a facsimile of a page that listed dollar amounts paid for individual slaves.

“At that moment I realized this diary may not only have influenced the ledger and slave sale record in ‘Go Down, Moses’ but also likely served an important source for much of William Faulkner’s work,” said Professor Wolff-King, who has spent 30 years studying the writer.

A short preview of her findings is in the fall 2009 issue of The Southern Literary Journal; her book “Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Diary,” is due out in June from Louisiana State University Press.

Professor Lowe reviewed the manuscript before publication. To protect against leaks the editor arranged a meeting in a coffee shop. “He gave me the manuscript in a plain brown wrapper, and I was sworn to secrecy,” he said.

“I was electrified when I was reading it,” he said. “Faulkner had a very intense and intellectual relationship with Dr. Francisco’s father,” which seems to have formed “the basis of some of the conversations you find in ‘Absalom, Absalom!’ and ‘Go Down, Moses.’ ”

The Leak papers are not unfamiliar to scholars. The family donated the journal, which includes the plantation accounts as well as descriptive sections, to the University of North Carolina in 1946 and received a typescript copy of the material that runs 1,800 pages. The original documents have been used by Southern economists and social historians for their insights into Mississippi’s plantation life, but no one has previously been aware that Faulkner, who died in 1962, had any connection to them.

Professor Wolff-King argues that elements and terms from the diary repeatedly surface in Faulkner’s work, including the ticking sound of a watch that Quentin Compson is obsessed with in “The Sound and the Fury”; descriptions of building a plantation match Thomas Sutpen’s in “Absalom, Absalom!”

Noel Polk, the editor of The Mississippi Quarterly and among the deans of Faulkner scholars, said, “I was surprised at the discovery of what is so clearly a major piece of information about his life, and maybe his work.”

He and others said it was still too early for them to gauge just how significant the diary is without reading Professor Wolff-King’s book and examining the ledgers themselves, especially when it comes to the more common details about the antebellum and Civil War eras.

“Almost every document that you can come up with that Faulkner used is interesting, but the question is what do you do with it,” Judith L. Sensibar, whose biography “Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art” was published last year. What does it tell us, for instance, about his “obsession with the ways in which slavery has disfigured the lives of both the slaves and their masters?” she asked.

Although literary experts have been taken aback by this unexpected find, Faulkner more than anyone would have understood how the past can unpredictably poke its nose into the present.

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“Do I have the right to refuse this search?”

2009-12-20T03:10:00.000-08:00

Today’s guest author is Deirdre Walker. She retired recently as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police. She spent 24 years as a police officer.

“Do I have the right to refuse this search?”

This is a question I heard many times during my law enforcement career. Often my answer was no. But occasionally it would be “yes,” followed by an admonition to have a good day.

For the last half of my career, I would have documented each interaction, whether or not it involved an arrest. I would have written down the nature and length of the interaction, the gender, race, and age of the person, and the outcome of the contact (arrest, citation, etc.).

I carry the baggage of this history with me as I’ve traveled over the last eight years, mindlessly placing my luggage on the conveyer belt and removing my shoes for TSA inspection.

Recently, something changed.

Within the last few months, I have been singled out for “additional screening” roughly half the time I step into an airport security line. On Friday, October 9, as I stepped out of the full-body scanning device at BWI, I decided I needed more information to identify why it is that I have become such an appealing candidate for secondary screening.

Little did I know this would be only the first of many questions I now have regarding my airport experiences.

Over these last few months, I have grown increasingly frustrated with what I view as an unjustifiable intrusion on my privacy. It was not so much the search (then) as it was the embarrassment of being singled out, effectively being told “You are different,” but getting no explanation as to why.

That frustration has been tempered by a combination of my desire to be a good citizen, and my empathy for the TSA screeners. These folks, after all, are merely doing what we, the American traveling public, have permitted and now expect them to do.

I am left to wonder whether my own passive acceptance of these evolving search procedures has contributed to a potentially fatal dichotomy: what we allow TSA screeners to do in order to maximize efficiency and enhance our perception of safety, or what we really need them to do in order to preserve our rights and dignity and enhance our actual safety.

We have asked TSA to find the tools terrorists use and prevent both from boarding a passenger plane. We have unintentionally created an agency that now seeks efficiency and compliance more than any weapon or explosive.

While returning my computer and shoes to their proper places, I watched the screening line at BWI. I thought about the haphazard events surrounding the security screening process. As I watched the screening officers, I wondered what information drives their decisions. Left only to my observations, I concluded that their decisions were entirely random, and likely based upon three criteria: passenger load, staffing, and whim.

I was left to conclude that I am not screened because I look like a terrorist. I am routinely screened because I look like someone who will readily comply. I decided then that my next invitation to enjoy additional screening would be met with more inquiry.

I did not have wait very long. On my return through Albany to BWI — Surprise! – I got “randomly selected” for additional screening.

This time, I was “invited” to step into one of the explosive detection machines, commonly referred to as a “puffer machine.” The traveller is exposed to short, intense bursts of air, which are then, supposedly, analyzed for trace residue.

I read an article awhile ago that suggested these machines are entirely ineffective. I have subsequently observed that they now sit idle at many airports where they were originally installed (Tampa International, for example). In recently renovated airports (San Jose) they have not been installed. At some other airports (like BWI), they have been replaced by the body-scanning technology.

When notified by the cheerful screener that I had been selected for additional screening (the screener’s tone reminded my of the announcer who tells the contestant that she has just won a TV on the Price is Right), I stepped reluctantly toward the machine and asked her quietly whether I had the right to refuse the search. I did not want to become a spectacle, or have to rent a car and drive back to Maryland.

The screeners face dropped and she appeared stunned, as if my question had been received like a body-blow. She asked me to repeat what I said, and I repeated my inquiry regarding whether or not I had the right to refuse this search, especially since it was my understanding that the equipment did not work. She responded defensively, “It sounds an alarm!”

What followed is what I can only describe as a process that left me with more questions and a hunger for something we need and something that has apparently been missing from TSA procedures since September 12, 2001: Data.

It is, again, important to note my general respect for the front line TSA screeners — with the exception of those screeners who feel that it is necessary to yell at people. In my experience as a cop, as a supervisor and as a manager, I know that yelling at people is the one method guaranteed to ensure sub-par performance and a collapse of any semblance of cooperation.

My motivation to write this piece is first, to vent, but then to take a stab at the windmill that has grown from flawed processes to become a barrier to achieving the real mission and ultimate goal: Passenger safety.

I believe, fundamentally, that our collective compliance with the current screening procedures has served only to undermine TSA, and has denied our screeners the tools they need to correct their course.

After realizing I was serious about refusing to step into the puffer machine, I was told that I would be subjected to a “full-body pat-down” and that all of my “stuff would be fully searched.”

I shrugged and waited while the screeners figured out what to do next. One of the screeners said “Who is the supervisor? Notify a supervisor.” I waited two to three minutes with two female screeners. I was then approached by a uniformed screener and the following exchange took place.

“She refused the puffer. We are supposed to notify a supervisor. You’re a supervisor, right?”

Apparently reminded of his role, the subordinate screener then said “We’re notifying you.” She said nothing further. The supervisor then informed me that if I did not step into the “puffer” I would be subjected to a full body-pat-down, that I would be “wanded” and that all of my belongings would be fully searched by hand.

By this time, my belongings had already passed through the x-ray and sat oddly unattended on the belt. They had aroused no suspicion, either as they passed through the x-ray or as they sat completely unattended. I thought it odd that my initial refusal to be subjected to the ‘puffer’ now rendered the x-ray examination effectively flawed. I was being cajoled and was then offered the opportunity to change my mind, which, again, I thought rather odd. If I posed such a risk by refusing the secondary screening, why would that risk be now mitigated, if only I were to change my mind?

I did not change my mind. So, I stepped between two glass walls and was subjected to what my police training would allow me to conclude was a procedural vacuum.

I had been told repeatedly I would be subjected to a “pat-down.” I correctly suspected otherwise. During the course of my police career, I have conducted many pat-downs on the street. The Supreme Court has described pat downs as a cursory check of the outer clothing of a person by a police officer, upon articulable suspicion that the officer’s safety is at risk of being compromised. My department’s procedure indicated that this pat-down was to be conducted with an open hand, gently patting the outer clothing of an individual, for purposes of officer safety only, with the goal of detecting weapons. In other words, it is not a search.

What happened to me in Albany was not the promised “pat-down.” It was a full search conducted in full public view. It was also one of the most flawed searches I have ever witnessed.

From the outset, it was very clear that the screener would have preferred to be anywhere else. She acted as if she was afraid of me, though given that I had set myself apart as apparently crazy, perhaps I cannot blame her. With rubber-gloved hands she checked my head, my arms, my legs, my buttocks (and discovered a pen that had fallen into one of my pockets) and even the bottom of my feet. Perhaps in a nod to decorum, she did not check my crotch, my armpits or either breast area.

Here was a big problem: an effective search cannot nod to decorum.

These three areas on a woman, and the crotch area of men, offer the greatest opportunity to seclude weapons and contraband. Bad guys and girls rely on the type of reluctance displayed by this screener to get weapons and drugs past the authorities. We train cops to realize that their life depends upon the ability to compartmentalize any apprehension about the need to lift and separate. Fatal consequences can and do result when officers fail to detect a secreted weapon which is later used against them.

At the Albany airport, I was left to wonder what kind of training the screener received. I was forced to conclude the answer might be “none.” At a minimum, she needs re-training, assuming there is any policy or training that governs searches. Further, after being repeatedly informed that I would be “wanded” by the metal detector in addition to the ‘pat-down,’ I was not.

Had I actually intended to move contraband past the screening point, my best strategy would have been to refuse secondary screening.

I am also forced to conclude that the purpose of the “pat-down” was not to actually interdict contraband. In my case, I believe I was subjected to a haphazard response in order to effectively punish me for refusing secondary screening and to encourage a different decision in the future.

All of this is admittedly subjective, based on my perceptions at the time. What is also entirely subjective is identifying which travelers are selected for secondary screening.

This is where I find myself now obsessing over TSA policy, or its apparent lack. Every one of us goes to work each day harboring prejudice. This is simply human nature. What I have witnessed in law enforcement over the course of the last two decades serves to remind me how active and passive prejudice can undermine public trust in important institutions, like police agencies. And TSA.

Over the last fifteen years or so, many police agencies started capturing data on police interactions. The primary purpose was to document what had historically been undocumented: informal street contacts. By capturing specific data, we were able to ask ourselves tough questions about potentially biased-policing. Many agencies are still struggling with the answers to those questions.

Regardless, the data permitted us to detect problematic patterns, commonly referred to as passive discrimination. This is a type of discrimination that occurs when we are not aware of how our own biases affect our decisions. This kind of bias must be called to our attention, and there must be accountability to correct it.

One of the most troubling observations I made, at both Albany and BWI, was that — aside from the likely notation in a log (that no one will ever look at) — there was no information captured and I was asked no questions, aside from whether or not I wanted to change my mind.

Given that TSA interacts with tens if not hundreds of millions of travelers each year, it is incredible to me that we, the stewards of homeland security, have failed to insist that data capturing and analysis should occur in a manner similar to what local police agencies have been doing for many years.

Some might argue that the potential for intrusion is not the same between police and TSA. I believe my experience this past weekend demonstrates otherwise. Currently, there is no way to know whether a certain male screener routinely identifies predominantly women for additional screening. There is no way to identify whether a Latino screener routinely isolates African-Americans, or vice versa. To assert that the screeners are highly trained and do not engaged in this type of discrimination, whether passive or active, is unsupportable because there is no data. You simply cannot solve problems that you do not want to identify.

Finally, I am most concerned about the “random” nature of my repeated selection for secondary screening. If there is no discrimination at work, and my selection is entirely random, then we have yet another, and probably more significant problem.

For years in policing, we relied on random patrols to curb crime. We relied upon this “strategy” until someone went out and captured some data, and did a study that demonstrated conclusively that random patrols do not work (Kansas City Study).

As police have employed other types of “random” interventions, as in DWI checkpoints, they have had to develop policies, procedures and training to ensure that the “random” nature of these intrusions is truly random. Whether every car gets checked, or every tenth car, police must demonstrate that they have attempted to eliminate the effects of active and passive discrimination when using “random” strategies. No such accountability currently exists at TSA.

As I left the screening check point in Albany, I looked over a few feet and observed an elderly Asian couple talking to “my” supervisor. I unashamedly eavesdropped.

I heard the man say that his wife had not been told that the machine would blow air and that she had been quite startled. The woman said she should have been informed and the supervisor agreed. He said he would speak to the screener (but again, who knows whether he actually did).

Then the man said “And she should have been told she can refuse.” The bells in my head were deafening.

I believe what we have here is the beginning of the end of complacency. It is now apparent to me that in the haste to ensure compliance with procedures that are inconsistent if not inarticulable, TSA has hastened the likelihood of failure. If we do not insist that TSA work to create articulable policies that make sense, procedures that are explicit and consistent and training that supports both, then we are complicit in what will inevitably be an ultimate compromise of TSA.

That compromise may come in the form of terrorist attack, or it may come in the form of a collapse of public support. Either or both are inevitable. Either or both are preventable.

"I'll have a bowl now - and a bowl to go please." (Pic)

2009-12-20T03:06:00.000-08:00

Seven Things You Didn't Know About the 2010 Tesla Roadster

2009-12-20T01:21:00.000-08:00

By John VoelckerJohn Voelcker

Tesla Roadster as used by videogame designers

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High Gear Media has partnered with Tesla Motors on a new writing contest where YOU can win a tour and road test of the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport. You can submit as many articles as you like and enter multiple times. Enter now!

Well, maybe you actually knew some of these seven if you're a true Tesla enthusiast. But we bet you didn't know every single one ...

# 7: ORB SEALS

What are OrbSeals, you ask? Why, they're special pellets pumped into the side rail of the Tesla chassis. When they're heat-treated, they expand in volume 50 times, to absorb noise and vibration.

2010 Tesla Roadster Sport

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2010 Tesla Roadster Sport

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2010 Tesla Roadster Sport

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# 6: LITHIUM-ION CELLS

It was the very first production car to use lithium-ion cells*, which pack roughly twice the energy into a given mass as do the nickel-metal-hydride batteries used in almost every hybrid car for the last dozen years. More energy = more power = more driving fun. Case closed.

# 5: TAKE 6,831 CELLPHONES AND ...

Those lithium-ion cells? The Tesla Roadster uses exactly 6,831 of 'em inside a big black battery pack that weighs 900 pounds. Unlike other electric cars that use larger lithium cells specially designed for auto use, Tesla bases its battery on "commodity cells" that are made by the millions and power such mundane items as mobile phones and laptop computers.

The plus: They're cheap, they're readily available, and they're a very well-known quantity.

The minus: It takes a hellacious amount of of wiring, cooling, instrumentation, control software, and safety features to ensure that even if one of them short-circuits, the others don't.

# 4: SOFTWARE THAT TEACHES ITSELF

The algorithm that calculates the state of charge of the battery pack--a very important number, since that's what gives you the "range remaining" number--in each individual Tesla keeps learning and gets more accurate over time, by comparing its calculations to the actual behavior of the pack as it discharges.

# 3: CARBON FIBER

A lot of enthusiasts don't realize that the Tesla's body panels are made of carbon fiber. You know, the lightweight, ultra-strong material used in fighter jets and other very fast moving objects.

# 2: ON-THE-FLY PERFORMANCE MODE

Sure, you can use the Tesla touchscreen to select the software mode for "Performance". But there's also a cool trick that only the Tesla cognoscenti know: Turn the key one extra click, any time, at rest or on the move, and it's on. Instantly. Which is very handy for those last-minute stop-light drag races with annoying Porsche owners who think electric power is for wussies.

# 1: NO MORE GOLF CARTS!

Even if the company were to vanish in a puff of dust tomorrow, Tesla's place in history would be secure.

Why? Because it accomplished something that a century of hapless green-car enthusiasts never quite managed: It got rid of the tiny, geeky, golf-cart image that came to mind every time someone said the words "electric vehicle".

Original here

How To D*Face A Skate Pool With A Thousand Skulls

2009-12-20T01:09:00.000-08:00

In counter-cultural urban expression, there’s nothing more sublime than the sight of a skater achieving near weightlessness as they rip into a vertical transition before flying off the coping into thin air, clutching their board, while the concrete space from which they soared awaits their return. Ever since the early ’70s, when a legacy of past masters carved an ineffaceable groove in the concrete landscape with nothing but a plank and four wheels beneath their feet, the drained swimming pool has held a special place inside the ribcage of the street skater.

Environmental Graffiti talked to London-based street artist D*Face fresh from his return from painting an abandoned swimming pool for skateboarders in California.

Ramp skating may win more prizes, it may even hit greater heights, but riding the beautifully curved 1950s pools of San Bernadino – aka the ‘Badlands’ – is skating to the core, harking back to the early days when air was first caught and bones first broken. D*Face recently took a trip to the skate community where it all started to paint the perfect pool.

Inspired by skate graphics and the street art scene that spawned him, D*Face helped create a skater’s dream spot with his design for a pool dubbed ‘Ridiculous’ by the guys who discovered it, MTV host Peter King and legendary skateboarder Steve Alba. The slightly cryptic name is a marker of its ridiculously perfect shape and curvature, from a skater’s point of view.

San Bernadino was hit hard by the economic slump and subprime mortgage fiasco, so many of its properties have been left vacant. This gave the skating community the chance to mark their turf on an abundance of abandoned swimming pools – echoing the era when Alba and others took their hardcore style to the pools following the 1970s drought in Southern California.

The invitation to paint ‘Ridiculous’ was put out by MTV, but if that makes this sound more commercial than it perhaps should, remember that the guys who found it could, in theory, have been arrested for this stunt. And look no further than D*Face’s skull designs, hundreds of which litter the pool basin, to see that this is a graphic artist doing what comes naturally to him – and an artist who loves skating.

D*Face was, in the vernacular, stoked to paint the pool and realise a dream of visiting the traditional Mecca of all skate scenes, where his early interest in the relationship between art and skateboarding first came alive – even if he was just a little too young to know it at the time. Nourished by a passion for hip-hop and punk music, cartoon animation and of course street art, his style fitted the bill well.

Asked how his art interacts with skating and the skate aesthetic in his painting for ‘Ridiculous’, D*Face told EG:

“I guess because my work can be seen in the public domain, for free, by any passers-by, and uses elements of repetition to build awareness and subversion and shock to provoke reaction. Skateboarders I believe are a different breed. They pay attention to the environment that surrounds them, they are often chased off spots they’re illegally skating, so there’s a synergy between my work, skateboarders and skateboarding.”

“The Ridiculous pool was slightly different in as much as I hadn’t seen the actual pool before, so only had a very vague idea of the size. Also it was going to be ridden by skaters who hadn’t seen or weren’t necessary familiar with my work, so I wanted to produce a piece that had instant appeal and impact and would tessellate, enabling me to cover as much or as little of the pool as time allowed and to allow me to work with the natural flow and line of the pool that the skaters ride.”

“Skulls or more importantly death plays a significant part in my work. It’s also something synonymous with skateboarding and skateboard art, so the idea was to cover the pool with over a 1000 life size skulls in various shades, as a tribute to the fallen skaters and past masters.”

“My work in the public domain is also ephemeral, subject to ever changing elements, both natural and human. Much like the graphics on a skateboard they’re only temporary. As soon as the boards are ridden they start to decay and take on their own life. The same can be said for my work in the street. It’s this natural element of weathering and ageing that is beautiful and brings a new life to the piece. The exact same effect applies to the Ridiculous pool. It wasn’t complete until it had been skated hard. The lines, scrapes and scuffs that run through the painting bring a whole new life and texture to the pool that would be impossible to replicate.”

And what about the history of his love for skating? D*Face told us:

“Skateboarding changed my life. I was never the academic kid and didn’t take particularly well to the education system, so I looked to other means of ‘education’ and found what I can only describe as the manuals to my life; Subway Art, Spraycan Art and Thrasher Magazine.”

“I used to get Thrasher from the older kids at school, around ‘82 – ‘89. Those magazines and books were like eye candy to a visually starving child, particularly the adverts in Thrasher for various skate brands’ boards. Those struck me hard. I didn’t know who or how you’d get to create such amazing artworks to grace the bottom of a skateboard, that was essentially then going to get ruined, but they had a profound influence on my work. I later came to find out the skate artwork that I was particularly inspired by was by Jim Philips and Vernon Johnson.”

“I skated my teenage years away and at a time where skateboarding was seen as an outcasts’ thing to do. We had to be resourceful in finding spots to skate, particularly as England was decades behind the USA in building actual skate parks, so skateboarding taught me to look at the city differently – you know, what had been designed as an architectural feature became a skate-able object. This looking differently at our public domain is a key factor in my work now as an artist. A blank wall with high visibility becomes a prime canvas to display artwork on.”

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And finally, were there any other incentives for this gig? D*Face:

“Meeting Steve ‘Salba’ Alba who is a pool skating legend and a skater I’ve admired since a child. He’s a regular at the Ridiculous Pool, in fact the area San Bernardino where the pool is located is nicknamed Salba Land as he’s skated so many pools in that area. Also getting to fulfill a childhood dream of hopping backyards to skate pools with Salba and Peter King and watching amazing skaters session the pool was incentive enough.”

D*Face finally completed his creation after four, marathon 17-hour days of painting. As the sun set on the fourth day, over 100 skaters led by Steve Alba dropped in on the vertical backyard slopes, grinding the proverbial icing into D*Face’s creative cake: interactive street-art done good. Would other legends from back in the day have enjoyed the show? Only if they’d have been the ones to break in first.

With special thanks to D*Face for taking the time to answer our questions.

Original here

Google to immortalize Iraqi museum

2009-11-27T00:04:00.000-08:00

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)

Google is taking Iraq's national museum global. Company CEO, Eric Schmidt, said Tuesday that Google is going to document what's in the museum and will share photographs of the war-torn countries museum holdings with the world. The museum, which reopened this year, was torn apart after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003.
At a ceremony with Iraqi officials, Schmidt said, "The history of the beginning of - literally - civilization is made right here and is preserved here in this museum." He continued, "I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from your civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide." Already, Google has shot around 14,000 photos of the museum and its contents. They'll be up on the web for all to see early next year. As artifacts from the museum's vaults and from others across Iraq become available, they will be brought into the program. Some of these items date back to the Stone Age, as well as the Babylonian, Assyrian and Islamic periods.

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Prediction: In 2015, fuel cell vehicles "will be cheaper than a Rolls-Royce"

2009-11-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed)

_{2009 Honda FCX Clarity - Click above for high-res image gallery}

A lot of automakers are targeting 2015 as the year to introduce fuel cell vehicles to the market, GM, Toyota and Honda foremost among them. This is fine and all, but there are still some serious questions about the cost of hydrogen fuel cell systems to figure out between now and then. A quote buried deep in a new UPI Asia article on Japanese leadership in FCVs gives us one researcher's prediction: "By the time FCVs are commercially available in 2015 they will be cheaper than a Rolls-Royce [$550,000], but it will be difficult to price them down to the level of a Corolla [$22,000]."

That's the view of Kenichiro Ota, a professor at Yokohama National University, and it flies in the face of what automakers like GM are claiming. Everyone seems to be coming into agreement that the cars are technologically solid – the distance they can go on a kg of H₂ is increasing, for example – but that cost issue isn't going away.

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The best books of the ’00s

2009-11-26T23:55:00.000-08:00

by Ellen Wernecke, Vadim Rizov, Donna Bowman, Zack Handlen, Genevieve Koski, Michaelangelo Matos, Samantha Nelson, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robinson, and Todd VanDerWerff

Anyone looking for trends in our selection of the best books of the ’00s might have a hard time finding them amid the wizards, 19th-century serial killers, dysfunctional families and such. Narrowing down our decisions was pretty tough, and the process required a number of back-and-forths about what was significant as well as beautifully executed, which book from a given author represented his or her best of the decade, and so on. So consider these alphabetically listed selections 30 of the many, many memorable books published this decade, and as always, let us know what we missed.

Non-fiction:

Devil In The White City (2003), Erik Larson
It’s easy to imagine Devil In The White City as a historic true-crime novel, devoted to telling the chilling story of the serial killer H.H. Holmes, with the Chicago World’s Fair simply serving as a backdrop. But what makes the book so remarkable is the level of detail provided by Larson’s research into the setting and the protagonists. Architect Daniel H. Burnham wanted to parlay the fair into a forum that would make Chicago a global city; his quest gets as much page time as the grim details about how Holmes murdered more than 27 young women, and it’s just as compelling. The result is a non-fiction thriller, a tale of creation and destruction filled with bizarre facts and stories that expose the best and worst of human ingenuity.

Fargo Rock City (2001), Chuck Klosterman
The trouble with High Fidelity is that it’s a great book about relationships and a miserably anachronistic one about music: Nick Hornby’s steadfast, monolithic devotion to the super soul hits of the ’70s fails to get anything right about the intersection of ’90s music and love. Enter Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City, the most trenchant book ever written about that ’80s punchline, “hair metal.” Over the course of his engaging, infinitely quotable discursus, Klosterman unpretentiously maps what music can mean, both within its own imposed narrative, and once it reaches the outside world. He veers all over the place: one moment he’s giving readers a detailed analysis of Guns ’N Roses’ Use Your Illusion video trilogy, and the next, he’s talking about why metal turned him into an alcoholic, and why it’s weird that Pavement never talked about the beer they were drinking. His passion is contagious: You don’t have to like (or even be familiar with) the music to be sucked into a world of beautifully argued, casually hilarious passion. In terms of books about what listening to music can mean when you love it to the point of idiocy, few are better.

Freakonomics (2005), Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner
There’s often profit and acclaim in writing books that make abstruse fields of study accessible to the layman: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time, for instance. But there’s even more glory in writing books that make those fields fun. The bestseller Freakonomics, co-authored by journalist Steven J. Dubner and “rogue economist” Steven D. Levitt, is an excellent example. By defining economics as “the study of incentives” rather than anything specifically tied to money or commercial interests, Levitt freed himself up for economics-style analysis of everything from dropping crime rates to the outcomes of sumo-wrestling matches. Like any mass-appeal, pop reevaluation of a scientific field, Freakonomics was controversial, with detractors questioning Levitt’s premises, processes, and conclusions. But just opening up the field to a wider consideration and discussion was a victory, and Levitt and Dubner’s lively prose and intriguing conclusions were icing on the cake.

Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich’s exploratory journey through the struggling underbelly of American society, undertaken when she realized how many women were being forced into minimum-wage jobs, and decided to try some herself, is emotionally draining but intellectually illuminating. Now, after the great financial collapse of 2008, the work reads more and more like prophecy, as untold millions struggle to scrape up enough change to just make rent, to say nothing of trying to buy food, or care for their kids. Ehrenreich’s travels take her from waitressing to Wal-Mart, and at all turns, she feels desperate and belittled, a feeling many people rudely tossed atop the unemployment line now share. It’s rare that a social-issues book becomes more prescient as time goes by, but Nickel And Dimed is an urgent exception.

Nixonland (2008), Rick Perlstein
The long 5 o’clock shadow over American politics gets his due in Perlstein’s exhaustively detailed tome on how the 37th president shaped his country. Richard Nixon’s long-building resentment toward the privileged, plus his conviction that disadvantaged men like himself deserved to be in charge, allowed him to exploit a widening gap between the counterculture and the counter-counterculture, invoking the cues that built a majority to carry him to the White House. Rejecting facile explanations of the aftermath of the 1960s, Perlstein redraws the map of two turbulent decades and picks apart the faux-populism that still inflects political discourse today, drawing those parallels without emphasizing them.

Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood (2008), Mark Harris
This account of the making of the five movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar of 1967—Bonnie And Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?, and the winner, In The Heat Of The Night—is one of the great Hollywood books: deeply reported, sharply nuanced, and hugely entertaining even when diving into production minutiae. Harris doesn’t caricature subjects even when the temptation must have been overwhelming, such as drunken, racist Dolittle star Rex Harrison, soft-liberal Dinner producer-director Stanley Kramer, and haughty New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, whose one-man crusade against Bonnie And Clyde cost him his job. And the great stories are innumerable, as when The Graduate director Mike Nichols breaks down the skepticism of producer Joseph Levine over Nichols’ multiple uses of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds Of Silence” in its first 40 minutes: “I ran it, and he said, ‘I smell money!’” says Nichols, “thereby endearing himself to Paul Simon for all time.”

Them: A Memoir Of Parents (2005), Francine Du Plessix Gray
In a decade marked by the memoirs of angry children determined to mine some authorial gold from their unhappy early lives, Du Plessix Gray’s chronicle of growing up as an immigrant in mid-century New York relates history rather than agony, building subtly toward judgment while still acknowledging a debt of gratitude. Francine’s mother and stepfather, Russian émigrés who fell in love in Paris while they were both married to other people, were artistic geniuses and unrepentant social climbers, too exhausted or indifferent to be proper parents. With her eye to the keyhole, Du Plessix Gray weaves her early recollections into a riveting biography of two strangers she happened to live with, balancing memories of their often-irrational behavior with a sparkling account of their talents as celebrated by the world.

The Tipping Point (2000), Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller looked to epidemiology to explain how ideas and phenomena blew up, and ended up becoming its own proof for the theory. Who doesn’t know what a tipping point is now? Who could have said that a decade ago, before Gladwell started playing with the idea, then saw others popularize and spread it? While some of Gladwell’s example have been challenged—The Tipping Point’s view of declining crime rates contrasts sharply with the one found in Freakonomics—the concept seems not only solid, but downright prescient, arriving as it did before talk of Internet memes became a part of casual conversation.

The Wisdom Of Crowds (2004), James Surowiecki
Crowdsourcing would have remained an empty dot-com buzzword if James Surowiecki, the perceptive New Yorker business writer, hadn’t put real-life example and surprising science behind it. His persuasive book shows how properly constituted groups outperform individual experts, even on tasks where no member of the group seems to contain the relevant expertise. From the very first example—a county-fair guess-the-number-of-gumballs-in-the-jar contest—through the much-maligned terrorism-predicting “markets” set up by U.S. intelligence in the wake of 9/11, Surowiecki cuts through common-sense solutions to show that our reliance on pundits and geniuses is misplaced. Together, we know more than Alan Greenspan knows separately, which reveals our culture of overpaid technocrats to be thoroughly backasswards. Pair this book with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and you have a blueprint for a truly enlightened democratic capitalism.

The World Without Us (2007), Alan Weisman
The environmental-writing market boomed in the ’00s, as more and more people became convinced that climate change would doom us all within the century. But few environmental books have the terrific gimmick or evocative writing of Weisman’s The World Without Us. Weisman starts from an irresistible premise—how long would it take the planet to erase all traces of human society if we all disappeared tomorrow?—but bolsters it with a tremendous feel for place, sticking readers in the middle of the quiet solitude of the last old-growth forest in Europe, or the controlled chaos of an oil refinery, with equal ease. Weisman managed the rare feat of getting readers to consider their impermanence while also thinking about how it might be a good thing.

Fiction:

The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay (2000), Michael Chabon
By the end of the decade, it had almost become a cliché for authors to wed pulp influences to the sorts of epic family sagas that defined American fiction. But when Michael Chabon tried it with Kavalier & Clay, it felt fresh and new. Though he wasn’t the first to dabble in blending these influences, his was the breakthrough novel that made the technique safe for others to try. And even now, after all the imitators, his book still feels alive in a way that few pulp novels or epic family sagas do, as it follows two boys in Great Depression New York City who invent a comic-book superhero. While the book’s occasional trips off into pulp adventure can seem a little goofy, its wistful, romantic heart and longing for Golden Age archetypes to chart a course for truth and justice remain potent.

Atonement (2001), Ian McEwan
On paper, it sounds like the most boring novel ever: yet another examination of repressed Britons on the eve of World War II. Instead, Ian McEwan turned the story of a forbidden love affair and a young girl on the edge of comprehending adult interaction, but not quite there yet, into a moving examination of guilt, forgiveness, and the power of fiction. The novel’s opening passages—where said young girl makes a terrible mistake and accuses her sister’s lover of a crime he didn’t commit—are written with keen psychological insight and leisurely pacing that nonetheless remains tense. But in the book’s following sections, McEwan’s games with narrative structure and unreliable narrators become something else altogether, an increasingly sad look at how little power stories have over real life.

Bel Canto (2001), Ann Patchett
In December 1996, a group of Peruvian revolutionaries began a hostage crisis in the official residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima that ended violently more than four months later. Ann Patchett was paying attention, and her novel finds a bittersweet lyricism in a fictionalized take on the same event. Stuck together, hostages and hostage-takers find the factors dividing them—politics, language, and in one of the central relationships, the distance between a famous opera singer and a devoted fan—matter less than the needs that unite them. The grace they find can’t last, however, and like the music that helped inspire the novel, Patchett earns her novel’s heartache by suggesting the possibility of a sweeter, more beautiful world.

The Blind Assassin (2000), Margaret Atwood
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has shown a career-long interest in gender relations and generational changes, particularly how the past gives way to a present that only dimly and incorrectly remembers what came before. That obsession gets worked out in a number of absorbing ways in one of her most ambitious, artful novels to date: The Blind Assassin follows several interlocked threads, as Atwood plays games with identities, connections, parallels, and altered histories. In one thread, she explores the childhood of two sisters, Iris and Laura; in another, Iris is a cantankerous, elderly widow, and Laura is an apparent suicide whose posthumously published novel became an enduring classic. Atwood only gradually reveals what happened between these bookends, and she keeps readers guessing, as it becomes clear that what the world remembers about Laura has very little bearing on what actually happened. Like many Atwood novels, Assassin is a puzzle box, but luminous writing, well-drawn characters, and the keenly melancholy theme of generational amnesia have more to do with the novel’s success than the series of reveals Atwood puts her readers through.

Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007), Junot Díaz
It’s lonely on the corner between Hispanic slang and geek culture, but this 2008 Pulitzer-winner’s “lovesick nerd” Oscar de Leon can only dream about hanging out somewhere else. The frenetic multi-generational saga of family curses and the legacy of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is a hero’s tale and a fantasy homage rising out of a thicket of bilingual wordplay and a glorious stew of cultural references. Oscar’s determination to overcome his fate, set into motion when his grandfather runs afoul of Trujillo’s wishes, captivates even the jaded sometime narrator Yunior, faithful to his memory even though he was unable to be to his sister.

Carter Beats The Devil (2001), Glen David Gold
Popcorn fiction and historical fiction were both sneered at more often than not in the ’00s, as poorly written tales of the secret history of everything overwhelmed the bestseller charts. Enter Gold’s debut novel, a romp through early 20th-century San Francisco and the world of vaudevillian magic that makes few claims to historical veracity, and rockets along like the best page-turners. But Gold’s novel is about more than how a sad magician finds love and constructs the ultimate illusion while avoiding assassins and those who suspect him of killing the president. It’s also about moving on past crippling loss, overcoming depression, and learning how to feel again. Gold’s pacing makes Carter easy to read, but his sense of emotion makes it take up space in the heart.

The Corrections (2002), Jonathan Franzen
The Tolstoy-esque family novel got its 21st-century upgrade early, and has withstood all comers since. The Lamberts’ disintegration under the pressures of work, illness, and love unfolds with a cynical humor that strips the family’s pretensions away until only their most craven selves survive as they struggle to break free. As these unsympathetic characters go through the wringer, Jonathan Franzen outlines the symptoms of modern malaise, whose only cure is being able to see through the layers of protective self-delusion. The modern dysfunctional family wriggles under Franzen’s microscope, but its features are all too familiar. Oprah, take note: His next book, Freedom, is due to arrive next fall, just in time to inform the next decade.

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time (2003), Mark Haddon
Written from the perspective of an autistic boy obsessed with detective work, Mark Haddon’s astounding tightrope act portrays his protagonist’s richly odd inner life and places it in the context of a suspenseful journey outside his comfort zone of numbers, routines, and maps. Plunged into an unfamiliar world of train travel and self-reliance, Christopher tries to find out who killed his neighbor’s dog, emulating his hero Sherlock Holmes, and trying not to be fooled by fake phantasms like Holmes’ creator. Not merely the finest fictional depiction of the autistic brain yet produced, Curious Incident is also among the best page-turning thrillers of the decade.

Empire Falls (2001), Richard Russo
Much of America made it out of the 20th century badly equipped to deal with the 21st. Richard Russo’s Empire Falls is set in just such a place, a rust-belt Maine town that’s kept going even though the industry that led to its creation can no longer sustain it. Russo brought his by-then-familiar command of memorable characters and comic moments to a novel more ambitious than any he’d attempted before. The book captures a time and place unnerved by a future that offers no reassuring promises of a better tomorrow beyond the comfort its inhabitants can give each other.

Fortress Of Solitude (2003), Jonathan Lethem
Maybe Jonathan Lethem didn’t set out to create a magnum opus with Fortress Of Solitude, but that’s what he ended up with. The novel ties together a lifetime of obsessions—with music, art, fathers and sons, comics, and more—and grounds them in the 1970s Brooklyn of Lethem’s childhood. It’s a place of sadness, peril, and racial unease, but it’s also overflowing with the imaginative possibilities of childhood, at least until crises and looming adulthood start to shut them down. It’s a novel immersed in the past, but deeply distrustful of nostalgia and fully aware that the pain of youth has a habit of lingering, and even the presence of magic does little to secure happiness.

Gilead (2004), Marilynne Robinson
Twenty-three years after the luminous Housekeeping, Robinson proved herself one of the greatest American writers of her generation, winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for literature for her equally heartbreaking Gilead. Few could have predicted that the same pen that channeled orphans Ruth and Lucille coming of age in rural Idaho could so masterfully evoke an aging Congregationalist minister, looking back over his life with wonder for the grace given him but regret for his namesake, the son of a good friend who never took the path his elders would have chosen for him. Replete with references to Calvin, Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, and other thinkers with whom Reverend Ames takes respectful issue, Robinson’s novel serves as a gentle theological treatise, but it never loses the glow of human relationships.

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (2005), J.K. Rowling
Arguments for and against its place in the Great Western Canon aside, the Harry Potter series was undeniably the biggest literary phenomenon of the ’00s. Though the first installments from the ’90s were inarguably children’s books, beginning with 2000’s Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, the series began to morph into something decidedly more complex, reaching its apex in 2005 with Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. The penultimate entry in the seven-part series is most notable for the shocking death at its climax, probably the series’ most unexpected, harrowing moment. But even more remarkable is the fact that it spends 650-plus pages basically filling in backstory and moving pieces into place for the series’ conclusion without sacrificing momentum or character development. (Though it perhaps attempts to cover too much ground at times, giving some elements short shrift.) In spite of whatever other limitations she has as a writer, J.K. Rowling is at her best in Half-Blood Prince, capably unspooling her epic yarn in the straightforward yet enthralling manner that accounts for the series’ unprecedented success.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), Susanna Clarke
It's the kind of literary mash-up that’s simultaneously strikingly original and comfortingly familiar: Take a sort of idealized version of the Victorian-era novel, with all its drawing-room manners and morally repressed emotions, and insert some magic. And not the symbolic kind, either—actual magic, with rules, mysteries, and all kinds of difficult-to-fathom but impossible-to-ignore dangers. Susanna Clarke’s first novel is the warmly readable study of a frequently chilly world, a story to get lost in about the seduction of being lost, and an exhaustively researched tome on a subject whose research is entirely fictional. Ten years in the writing, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell still feels as light as a feather, and its tale of the friendship and rivalry of the two greatest magicians of their age has the ageless quality of all truly great fantastical fiction, reassuring without being entirely trustworthy, and utterly intoxicating.

Middlesex (2002), Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides’ long-in-the-making follow-up to The Virgin Suicides adds layer after layer around a kicky, potentially sensationalistic premise. Cal is born Calliope to a family of Greek descent, and spends years living as a girl, unaware of the intersexed condition that makes him genetically male. Jeffrey Eugenides follows the path of the gene that leads to that surprising revelation, tracing it back to Old World conflicts between Greece and Turkey while considering its place in the novel’s sharply realized 20th-century New World of 1970s Michigan. The past doesn’t die, it just mutates, and maybe, hopefully improves, on its way from one generation to the next.

Never Let Me Go (2005), Kazuo Ishiguro
Mainstream authors of literary fiction self-consciously slumming it in genres of ill repute ended up being one of the surprising movements of the ’00s. While most of these novels and stories were too aware of their genre roots, Kazuo Ishiguro’s tale of two girls who slowly realize the true nature of their existence keeps what’s best about his writing—his sense of the world as an ephemeral place that could pop out of being at any moment—and weds it to the best dystopic science fiction’s sense of raw humanity breaking through in a sterile world. Like the similar literary science-fiction experiment The Road, Never Let Me Go ends up becoming a testament to the many ways love finds to stay alive.

The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy
A father and son travel through a post-apocalyptic America, half-starved, choking on a never-ending stream of ash sifting down from the sky, and with no hope for an end to their suffering beyond dissolution and death. Much has been made of the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel, but given its subject matter, the bleakness isn’t all that surprising. What is surprising is the way McCarthy manages to find a modicum of purpose in all that despair, creating a world in which all normal reasons for living—accomplishment, social structure, the possibilities of the future—have been ruthlessly stripped away, then showing how existence still struggles onward, in spite of all barriers against it. It’d be a stretch to call The Road uplifting, and the book has more than its share of horrors, but what makes it such a powerful, wrenching experience isn’t the aftermath of society’s collapse, but the suggestion that, even removed from sentimentality, the basic forward momentum of a dependent and his protector remains. Things don’t have to be good to continue, but they will continue, and sometimes that’s all that’s left.

The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle (2008), David Wroblewski
Wroblewski’s first novel retells the story of Hamlet on a farm in northern Wisconsin, and with some of the characters replaced by dogs bred by the Sawtelle family for extraordinary intelligence. And not a word of this lengthy, immersive journey into the struggle of young Edgar to break through the dangerous relationship between his uncle and his mother feels like a gimmick. Full of detail about the training methods that make the Sawtelle dogs special, and anchored by a fugitive quest for justice with only adolescent and canine wits to sustain them, Edgar’s story has the mesmerizing quality of great literature. It’s a world that feels found by accident, unknown to outsiders, and so beautifully tragic that readers will beg the pages to turn more slowly.

The Terror (2007), Dan Simmons
In 1845, Captain John Franklin led two ships on a hunt through the Arctic for the fabled Northwest Passage. Both ships became icebound in the Victoria Strait, and all 128 men were lost. It’s hard to imagine a more horrible way to die, starving slowly as the temperatures plunge and scurvy drives shipmates to contemplate murder and cannibalism, but Dan Simmons decided to make things worse in his 2007 novel, throwing a monster out on the ice and letting the blood flow freely. Telling the story through the perspectives of various real-life crew members, Simmons creates a tense, unrelenting narrative about survival pushed to its extremity, where an inexplicable dark god lurking at the edges isn’t nearly as upsetting as the dwindling food supplies and an actively hostile environment. As grippingly detailed as a true-life adventure narrative, with all the symbolism and tragedy that fiction can provide, The Terror is a rewarding, haunting read. Just make sure to check the thermostat before opening the cover, whatever the season.

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), Audrey Niffenegger
The decade was kind to debut novels of powerful imagination, and none were better poised to seize the American reading public than Audrey Niffenegger’s artfully constructed romance. Only in novelistic form could the emotions of her time-crossed lovers be fully appreciated. As readers proceed linearly through the book, Claire travels from birth to death in the normal way, while her husband Henry is yanked unpredictably through time. Told from their alternating perspectives, the story builds on the yearning and regret that comes from knowing the end before the beginning, and from being given glimpses of the future that others cannot know until it arrives. The Time Traveler’s Wife earns the tears it so copiously extracts, and creates an epic love affair perfect for the turn of the millennium.

White Teeth (2000), Zadie Smith
From one of the most original talents this decade produced, White Teeth follows an unconventional friendship that becomes a portal into a world where every character’s story sounds truer than the last. The chance meeting of Archibald Jones and Samed Iqbal, fellow World War II veterans who reunite in 1970s London, are just the first brushstrokes in a richly detailed portrait of a neighborhood changing faster than its inhabitants can understand as they struggle to find meaning in a world radically altered from their forefathers’. In spite of its Dickensian spread, Zadie Smith’s debut novel never feels overstuffed or self-consciously stylish. Instead, its assured tone guides readers through genetic controversy, radical Muslim groups, and past-as-prologue, toward a profound commentary on assimilation and culture in the lives of her diverse subjects.

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Year after fatal Wal-Mart stampede, Black Friday gets makeover

2009-11-26T23:51:00.000-08:00

Associated Press archiveIn November 2008, Nassau County police examine the front of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., where a temporary store worker died after a throng of shoppers broke down the doors on Black Friday.

Victoria Rogers had originally planned to make an early stop the day after Thanksgiving last year at the Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream on Long Island. Her last-minute decision against it might have saved her life.

"We saw the mob, and we said no," she said. "Wal-Mart's not the store."

What she saw that day was no ordinary crowd of shoppers, but a throng police say jammed through the doors upon the store's opening in a mad dash for holiday savings, trampling a guard to death.

"No price can be worth someone's life," said Rogers, of the New York City borough of Queens, on a recent visit to the same store.

One year later, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is embroiled in lawsuits, appealing citations and instituting companywide changes, including staying open 24 hours on Thanksgiving, and has inspired voluntary federal guidelines outlining what other retailers should do to avoid the same result.

"What happened is tragic, and we're still saddened by it," said Daphne Moore, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores, based in Bentonville, Ark. "We are committed to looking for ways to make stores even safer for our customers and associates."

Joe LaRocca, senior asset protection adviser for the National Retail Federation, said the trade group worked with retailers to come up with its own guidelines for managing crowds during special events, including the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday because it is traditionally considered the day stores break into profitability for the full year.

"Following the incident last year, retailers took another look at their crowd control and major event guidelines," he said. "Many retailers already had these guidelines; some enhanced what they had."

Best Buy ran rehearsals for Black Friday weekend, practicing lining customers up, placing products in the store, checking out overall flow and how the event may flow within the store.

Other companies have worked closely with mall operators on where to form lines and how they might better communicate with customers. They have been examining staffing plans and hiring extra security.

Wal-Mart signed off in May on an agreement with local prosecutors that required it to overhaul security for Black Friday sales in its 92 New York locations, but it recently said it is employing its new strategy nationwide.

The settlement also required Wal-Mart to consult with experts to develop safety plans for each store. Crowd-management staff will be deployed, and maps will show customers where the hot sale items are.

Stores will also place the hottest items -- marked-down TVs, toys and laptop computers, for example -- far apart to prevent big crowds from gathering.

Wal-Mart will also erect barriers to manage traffic flow and distribute wristbands to customers on items with limited inventory. Security monitors will help ensure procedures are being followed, officials said -- not just guards, like Jdimytai Damour.

At 6-5, 270 pounds, Damour was built like NFL linebacker, but he was no match for an estimated 2,000 people who broke down the doors when the Valley Stream Walmart opened at 5 a.m. on Black Friday last year.

Damour, who was 34 and described by friends as a "gentle giant," had been hired only days before. He was trapped inside the vestibule and died of asphyxiation. Several other people, including a pregnant woman, were injured.

A criminal investigation forced Wal-Mart Stores to revamp security planning for the holiday season and led federal regulators to issue safety recommendations for all merchants conducting special events like Black Friday sales.

Damour's family is suing the retailer and Nassau County officials, claiming police could have controlled the crowd better, although police contend that was Wal-Mart's responsibility.

Edward Gersowitz, an attorney for the Damour family, says "positive discussions" continue with Wal-Mart about a possible settlement.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Wal-Mart for inadequate crowd management, but the retailer is appealing.

The National Retail Federation, the industry's largest group, said Damour's death is believed to be the only instance of a store worker dying in the post-Thanksgiving rush.

Police said customers stepped over or on Damour's body as they forced their way through sliding glass doors.

"I think the people themselves were at fault because they were like animals, wild people," Joe Staskowski, of Valley Stream, said on a recent trip to the store. "And for a couple of dollars for people to get hurt or killed? It's a tragedy."

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice contended that had Wal-Mart been found guilty of a crime, the maximum penalty it could have faced was a $10,000 fine. Instead, the store agreed to a $400,000 compensation fund for victims and donated $1.5 million to county social services programs and nonprofit groups.

So far, only three people have qualified for payments from the victims' fund, a Rice spokesman said. They had to prove they were at the store that morning and provide documentation of any physical injury or damage to possessions.

Among the survivors last year was Leana Lockley. The 29-year-old Queens woman was five months pregnant when she was caught up in the stampede and found herself being trampled. Her attorney says she credits Damour with helping save not only her life, but also that of her daughter, Alicia Skye Lockley, who was born in April.

She, too, has sued Wal-Mart but is negotiating a possible settlement, said attorney David Sloan.

Lockley declined to be interviewed but issued a statement: "I believe that there are many lessons to be learned from this tragic incident and I do hope and pray that this year will bring a happy, festive and orderly time for all."

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21 Secrets to Save on Travel

2009-10-04T07:01:00.001-07:00

By Stacy Rapacon, Reporter, Kiplinger's Personal Finance

The travel industry continues to smart from the recession, so deals abound. You just need to know where to look. Search no further than our 21 tips to save on lodging, airfare, vacation packages and cruises:

Book a bargain stay

1) Check TripAdvisor.com for 25 million property reviews from real travelers and professional critics. For details on cozy and often less-costly venues, go to BedandBreakfast.com.

2) Visit Hotels.com every Thursday for its new last-minute deals. While you’re there, watch for other rate sales and package specials.

3) Book directly through the hotel's Web site. Many places offer special online-booking and prepaid deals. You can also opt in to hotels’ free rewards programs and receive e-mails about special promotions and discounts.

4) Book blindly for rock-bottom rates. The auction-style booking pushed by William Shatner’s “Priceline Negotiator” in the popular commercials really can cut up to 50% off regular hotel rates (and 40% off airfare and car-rental rates). And Hotwire.com’s “Hot Rates” can knock up to 60% off retail room prices. With either, you specify your length of stay, preferred neighborhood and a guaranteed minimum star class. But you won’t know the exact hotel or location until after you pay – an especially big risk when visiting unfamiliar areas, particularly overseas. (Blind booking is a safer bet for car rentals; a sedan is a sedan is a sedan. But it’s a big gamble for flights because you won’t know exact flight times or airlines.)

5) Call your hotel to confirm an online reservation, especially if you made one at the last minute, and ask about any additional fees you should watch out for. Most hotels are especially willing to waive fees for frequent visitors or rewards-program members. Also, request a copy of your bill the night before you check out so you have time to dispute any extra charges.

6) Consider specialty lodging, such as condos, villas and vacation home rentals, especially when traveling with a big group. These options often offer more space and amenities for prices similar to or less than hotel rates. HomeAway.com offers the biggest selection of rentals, with more than 176,000 listings worldwide.

Fly for less

7) Use Kayak.com to quickly scan hundreds of travel Web sites for the best airfares. And don't forget to check Southwest.com; Kayak does not include the discount airline’s fares.

8) Sign up with airlines’ free loyalty programs to get the best bargains delivered straight to your in-box. Or visit Airfarewatchdog.com, where the site’s employees join airlines’ rewards programs to snag those promotional codes and special offers to share with you.

9) Plan your purchase at Bing.com/travel, formerly Farecast.com. The site’s “price predictor” forecasts whether fares on major domestic routes will go up or down. Enter your itinerary and it will return a list of airfares with a recommendation to either buy now or wait for a fare drop.

10) Try flying at less-traveled times; flights on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons typically see the least demand and therefore offer the best rates.

11) Choose your destination based on the cheapest flight. For example, if you’re interested in a Caribbean vacation but don’t have a specific location in mind, you can use Kayak’s Buzz tool to search for flights to anywhere in the Caribbean and then pick the place with the lowest fare.

12) Dodge flying fees. To avoid charges levied for buying tickets in person or by phone, book directly with the airline's Web site or with one of the big three online travel agencies – Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz- which recently dropped their flight-booking fees. . And pack lightly to dodge baggage costs. At FlyingFees.com, you can compare the baggage fees carried by 30 major airlines, and other types of fees charged by 20 major airlines.

Save a bundle on vacation packages

13) Online travel agencies Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz are well known for their bundled bargains. But don’t forget to check packages offered by airlines such as United Vacations and smaller operators such as Apple Vacations for some of the sweetest deals.

14) Check the cost of add-ons, such as rental cars, show tickets, tours and museum passes, when booking packages with online travel agencies. Sometimes the agencies offer those extras at a discount.

15) Get one price on your trips with all-inclusive deals from resorts such as Club Med and Sandals.

16) Add travel insurance to your bundle. With Expedia's Package Protection Plan, for example, you're ensured a refund if you need to cancel or change plans. You'll also be reimbursed for trip delays, baggage losses and medical expenses. The package costs $40 to $89, depending on your destination. If you're not offered this protection when you book, or if you need more insurance than what you are offered, go to TravelGuard.com.

Cruise to savings

17) The best deals are close to the departure date -- just don't expect the really cheap tickets to get you a stateroom with a view.

18) Understand the different elements of a cruise, including theme, cabin types and ports of call. CruiseMates.com provides useful reviews and advice columns to get you started. But if you're a first-timer feeling overwhelmed, consider using a travel agent.

19) Visit CruiseCompete.com, where you submit your cruise preferences and more than 300 travel agents compete for your business.

20) Book your flight separately. Using Kayak or Bing.com/travel, you can often find fares that are lower than what a cruise line will package in for you. Make sure you allow enough time to reach the departure port; the ship won’t wait for you if your flight is delayed.

21) Sail into big savings with a repositioning cruise. Ships need to take these one-way voyages in order to relocate for the season. For example, ships that cruise near Alaska in the summer head south once fall arrives, and cruise lines invite passengers aboard for the ride at deeply discounted rates.

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Save Money on Organic Food: Join a Natural Foods Co-op

2009-10-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

By Derek Markham

One common reason you might shy away from purchasing only organically grown food is the relatively higher price when compared to conventionally grown and sourced foods.

If your budget doesn't seem to cover it, then even if you know the importance of eating organic foods for your own health (and the health of the soil and water), you'll choose the foods you feel like you can afford.

Luckily for us, the tradition of natural food cooperatives still survives. Many food cooperatives (co-ops) were formed out of necessity - natural foods and health food items were not readily available at the corner grocery store - but have survived because of the community-powered principles behind them.

The definition of a co-op, from the International Cooperative Alliance:

"A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise. Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others."

Co-ops are guided by the cooperative principles:

Voluntary and Open Membership
Democratic Member Control
Member Economic Participation
Autonomy and Independence
Education, Training and Information
Cooperation among Cooperatives
Concern for Community

In essence, co-ops serve their member's needs. They aren't out to make huge profits for absentee stockholders, they're out to provide maximum value for their shareholders (the members). And one of the things they can do is save you money on food - sometimes on regular prices, but most often in the form of bulk purchasing.

Many co-ops have discounted pricing for bulk orders, for example, on bags of grains, beans, oats, even produce, personal care, and prepared foods. This means that by purchasing the foods you eat regularly in large quantities, you'll not only be assured of having your staples on hand, you'll also pay less per serving. You do have to come up with the cash up front, plus a place to store the food, but it's definitely worth it.

Other advantages of buying in bulk:

You may have access to other food choices that aren't carried on the shelf at the store.
It uses much less packaging than buying packaged goods.
The foods you usually eat will be on hand, making it less likely to eat junk food or go out to eat.
The less times you have to enter the grocery store, the better, as you're likely to purchase extras each time you go.
Whole natural foods purchased in bulk generally means fresher food.
By ordering ahead and keeping staples on hand, you will be better able to plan your food budget and stick with it.

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What Went Wrong With Saturn?: Analysis

2009-10-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

By John Pearley Huffman

With the announcement that General Motors and the Penske Automotive Group have broken off negotiations to transfer ownership of the Saturn brand between them, the Saturn saga sadly ends. Over the next few months, GM will implement the "wind-down" agreements it has with Saturn dealers and start closing up the division. As you read this, the last bundles of Saturn sales brochures are likely being heaved into dumpsters around the country.

It's an almost tragic end to one of GM's boldest experiments. Devised back in the early '80s, the Saturn concept was for GM to set up an entirely new company that would be owned by GM but operate outside its entrenched culture. It would build small cars to compete with Toyota and Honda that many analysts believed couldn't be manufactured profitably in North America. Saturn was a startlingly creative burst from then GM Chairman Roger Smith—not a man known for indulging much creativity.

After years of development, Saturn was created. Dealers were recruited. A new assembly plant was built in Spring Hill, Tennessee and a new, innovative labor contract was negotiated with the United Auto Workers. Saturn developed its own S-Series small sedan, coupe and station wagon that shared little with any other GM product. When the first Saturn rolled off the line in July 1990, Roger Smith and UAW President Owen Bieber were both in it.

Saturn dealerships operated under a no-haggle pricing mandate and early buyers of Saturn cars were thrilled with the service and attention they received from the dealers. It was a premium buying experience for small cars. Yet Saturns were anything but premium priced. The S-Series sold well, but cracks were already appearing in the Saturn architecture.

The front-drive S-Series wasn't a bad car, but it wasn't a particularly good one either. About the only innovative aspect of their engineering was space-frame construction covered in plastic panels impervious to most parking lot damage. The S-Series engines ran roughly, the handling was mediocre, the interiors were chintzy and those plastic panels needed big gaps at the seams to deal with their expansion and contraction in heat. Some S-Series buyers loved (and still love) their Saturns, but they weren't cars that had every owner turning into a repeat buyer.

Roger Smith left GM shortly after Saturn opened and his pet project quickly became an orphan. Rumors abounded that within GM other division heads saw Saturn sucking up resources they thought were needed by GM's established brands. The internal politics soon had Saturn starving; when satisfied S-Series buyers returned to their dealers to trade up to a new car, there was nothing to trade up to. Saturn didn't get a larger car to sell until the 1999 model and the car it got, the L-Series, was pure mediocrity. By then, the S-Series was getting more and more tired.

In short, Saturn was a great buying experience that didn't have the right products to sell.

But with the turn of the century, GM re-committed itself to Saturn. The Vue small crossover joined the line in 2002 and the S-Series was redesigned as the Ion in 2003. By 2007 Saturn dealers had a thick portfolio of significantly improved vehicles to sell including the mid-size Aura sedan, versatile Outlook crossover and the two-seat Sky roadster. But buyers had lost the habit of shopping at Saturn and sales for all of them were lackluster.

Ironically, while Saturn started going downhill because of a lack of attractive products, its fate was sealed when it couldn't sell a full range of solid products.

Penske broke off negotiations, it says, because of the inability to secure future vehicles to be sold at Saturn dealers once the current GM-produced products had run through their life cycles. It's a pity. Because for a few moments in the Nineties it looked like Saturn had the potential to be something special.

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The new rules of news

2009-10-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

Dan Gillmor

You may have noticed – you could hardly miss it – the blizzard of anniversary stories last month about the fall of Lehman Brothers, an event that helped spark last year's financial meltdown. The coverage reminded me that journalists failed to do their jobs before last year's crisis emerged, and have continued to fail since then.

It also reminds me of a few pet peeves about the way traditional journalists operate. So here's a list of 22 things, not in any particular order, that I'd insist upon if I ran a news organization.

1. We would not run anniversary stories and commentary, except in the rarest of circumstances. They are a refuge for lazy and unimaginative journalists.

2. We would invite our audience to participate in the journalism process, in a variety of ways that included crowdsourcing, audience blogging, wikis and many other techniques. We'd make it clear that we're not looking for free labour – and will work to create a system that rewards contributors beyond a pat on the back – but want above all to promote a multi-directional flow of news and information in which the audience plays a vital role.

3. Transparency would be a core element of our journalism. One example of many: every print article would have an accompanying box called "Things We Don't Know," a list of questions our journalists couldn't answer in their reporting. TV and radio stories would mention the key unknowns. Whatever the medium, the organisation's website would include an invitation to the audience to help fill in the holes, which exist in every story.

4. We would create a service to notify online readers, should they choose to sign up for it, of errors we've learned about in our journalism. Users of this service could choose to be notified of major errors only (in our judgment) or all errors, however insignificant we may believe them to be.

5. We'd make conversation an essential element of our mission. Among other things:

- If we were a local newspaper, the editorial pages would publish the best of, and be a guide to, conversation the community was having with itself online and in other public forums, whether hosted by the news organization or someone else.

- Editorials would appear in blog format, as would letters to the editor.

- We would encourage comments and forums, but in moderated spaces that encouraged the use of real names and insisted on (and enforced) civility.

- Comments from people using verified real names would be listed first.

6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.

7. We would replace PR-speak and certain Orwellian words and expressions with more neutral, precise language. If someone we interview misused language, we would paraphrase instead of using direct quotations. (Examples, among many others: The activity that takes place in casinos is gambling, not gaming. There is no death tax, there can be inheritance or estate tax. Piracy does not describe what people do when they post digital music on file-sharing networks.)

8. We would embrace the hyperlink in every possible way. Our website would include the most comprehensive possible listing of other media in our community, whether we were a community of geography or interest. We'd link to all relevant blogs, photo-streams, video channels, database services and other material we could find, and use our editorial judgement to highlight the ones we consider best for the members of the community. And we'd liberally link from our journalism to other work and source material relevant to what we're discussing, recognising that we are not oracles but guides.

9. Our archives would be freely available, with links on every single thing we've published as far back as possible, with application interfaces (APIs) to help other people use our journalism in ways we haven't considered ourselves.

10. We would help people in the community become informed users of media, not passive consumers – to understand why and how they can do this. We would work with schools and other institutions that recognise the necessity of critical thinking.

11. We would never publish lists of ten. They're a prop for lazy and unimaginative people.

12. Except in the most dire of circumstances – such as a threat to a whistleblower's life, liberty or livelihood – we would not quote or paraphrase unnamed sources in any of our journalism. If we did, we would need persuasive evidence from the source as to why we should break this rule, and we'd explain why in our coverage. Moreover, when we did grant anonymity, we'd offer our audience the following guidance: We believe this is one of the rare times when anonymity is justified, but we urge you to exercise appropriate skepticism.

13. If we granted anonymity and learned that the unnamed source had lied to us, we would consider the confidentially agreement to have been breached by that person, and would expose his or her duplicity, and identity. Sources would know of this policy before we published. We'd further look for examples where our competitors have been tricked by sources they didn't name, and then do our best to expose them, too.

14. The word "must" – as in "The president must do this or that" – would be banned from editorials or other commentary from our own journalists, and we'd strongly discourage it from contributors. It is a hollow verb and only emphasizes powerlessness. If we wanted someone to do something, we'd try persuasion instead, explaining why it's a good idea and what the consequences will be if the advice is ignored.

15. We'd routinely point to our competitors' work, including (and maybe especially) the best of the new entrants, such as bloggers who cover specific niche subjects. When we'd covered the same topic, we'd link to them so our audience can gain wider perspectives. We'd also talk about, and point to, competitors when they covered things we missed or ignored.

16. Beyond routinely pointing to competitors, we would make a special effort to cover and follow up on their most important work, instead of the common practice today of pretending it didn't exist. Basic rule: the more we wish we'd done the journalism ourselves, the more prominent the exposure we'd give the other folks' work. This would have at least two beneficial effects. First, we'd help persuade our community of an issue's importance. Second, we'd help people understand the value of solid journalism, no matter who did it.

17. The more we believed an issue was of importance to our community, the more relentlessly we'd stay on top of it ourselves. If we concluded that continuing down a current policy path was a danger, we'd actively campaign to persuade people to change course. This would have meant, for example, loud and persistent warnings about the danger of the blatantly obvious housing/financial bubble that inflated during this decade.

18. For any person or topic we covered regularly, we would provide a "baseline": an article or video where people could start if they were new to the topic, and point prominently to that "start here" piece from any new coverage. We might use a modified Wikipedia approach to keep the article current with the most important updates. The point would be context, giving some people a way to get quickly up to speed and others a way to recall the context of the issue.

19. For any coverage where it made sense, we'd tell our audience members how they could act on the information we'd just given them. This would typically take the form of a "What You Can Do" box or pointer.

20. We'd work in every possible way to help our audience know who's behind the words and actions. People and institutions frequently try to influence the rest of us in ways that hide their participation in the debate, and we'd do our best to reveal who's spending money and pulling strings. When our competitors declined to reveal such things, or failed to ask obvious questions of their sources, we'd talk about their journalistic failures in our own coverage of the issues.

21. Assess risks honestly. Journalists constantly use anecdotal evidence in ways that frighten the public into believing this or that problem is larger than it actually is. As a result, people have almost no idea what are statistically more risky behaviours or situations. And lawmakers, responding to media-fed public fears, often pass laws that do much more aggregate harm than good. We would make it a habit not to extrapolate a wider threat from weird or tragic anecdotes; frequently discuss the major risks we face and compare them statistically to the minor ones; and debunk the most egregious examples of horror stories that spark unnecessary fear or even panic.

22. No opinion pieces or commentary from major politicians or company executives. OK, this is a minor item. But these folks almost never actually write what appears under their bylines. We're being just as dishonest as they are by using this stuff. If they want to pitch a policy, they should post it on their own web pages, and we'll be happy to point to it.

Original here

George Romero to Write His Definitive Guide to Zombies

2009-10-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

By Lauren Davis

Filmmaker George Romero birthed the modern zombie, and now he's finally ready to reveal all the secrets of the walking dead. In his first novel, Romero will explain the full capabilities of the undead and how the zombie plague began.

UK publisher Headline has signed Romero for a book delving into the mythology he helped create, simply titled The Living Dead. The book will explain what zombies can and cannot do, and will finally give us Romero's take on the origin of zombies and how the world at large reacts:

It starts in San Diego, where a corpse sits up and begins to walk during an autopsy, while a reporter from Atlanta shows viewers "glimpses of increasing chaos from around the globe."
Original here

Budget and Avis ban smoking in rental cars

2009-09-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

First you couldn't smoke on planes. Then trains banned smoking. Now, you can't smoke in rental cars, at least, not if you rent from Avis or Budget. As of October 1, all cars in both rental companies' fleets will be non-smoking.

Avis and Budget say the policy came about in response to the needs of renters, citing a non-smoking car as the most-popular rental request. Cars that have been smoked in also require additional cleaning and are out of service longer, costing the companies more money. A spokesman for the Avis Budget Group says they expect some smokers to be upset with the new rules and to take their business elsewhere, but that they think overall the new plan will attract more customers than it will lose.
Avis and Budget will be the first major rental car companies to ban smoking entirely (others offer "non-smoking" cars but many don't guarantee them), though they are only instituting the ban among their North American fleet, not worldwide. Each car will undergo an inspection upon return and renters who have smoked in the vehicle will be charged a cleaning fee of up to $250.

Original here

Volkswagen’s Diesel-Hybrid L1 Concept Gets 170 MPG, Available by 2013

2009-09-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

Written by Jerry James Stone

Volkswagen will display an updated version of its 1-Liter concept this week at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. The diesel-hybrid car which only weighs around 800 lbs gets an jaw-dropping 170 MPG. So who wants one?

It was seven years ago when VW first announced the idea. Dr. Ferdinand Piëch–currently the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Volkswagen Group–drove a prototype of the car from Wolfsburg to Hamburg. It was the world’s first car to travel 100 kilometers on just a single liter of fuel. But the concept wasn’t ready for production as the body’s carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) was too costly for consideration.

“It is an enormous challenge to control costs in producing the monocoque out of CFRP,” says Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, member of the Board of Management for the Volkswagen Brand with responsibility for development.

The 2-seater L1, with a length of 150 inches, is still similar to that of a Volkswagen Fox, and a height of 45 inches..it nearly matches that of a Lamborghini Murciélago.

Aerodynamics was a huge part of the L1 concept. The idea behind it was the form of a glider–one seat behind the other. It has a special chasi of aluminum components to take advantage of the CFRP body.

The two-cylinder rail-injected TDI, the E-motor and the 7-speed Direct Shift Gearbox are all rear located. The combo not only delivers a high fuel consumption but it only emits 36 g/km of C02. The hybrid module has been integrated into the housing of the 7-speed DSG and consists of a 10 kW / 14 PS electric motor and a clutch.

During general acceleration the electric motor can supply 40-percent additional torque and even propel the L1 over a short distance by itself. It also operates as a generator to charge the lithium-ion battery by recovering braking energy.

Full details on the car can be found at VWVortex. On display with the L1 concept, Vdub will also be showing off their Up! concept. I suspect we will be seeing a lot of these roll out under VW’s new BlueMotionTechnologies brand.

Source: VWVortex

Cash for kids in Japan

2009-09-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

By David Nakamura — Special to GlobalPost

TOKYO, Japan — In the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, the newly empowered Democratic Party of Japan has proposed a solution: pay to procreate.

As part of the manifesto that helped the DPJ rout the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party in last month’s election, families will receive 26,000 yen (about $280) per month for each child through junior high school.

“We could use the money; it would help us manage,” said Jun Otake, a human resources manager at Japan Airlines who stands to receive $840 per month for his three young daughters. “People need help regardless of the number of children, but obviously more children mean more mouths to feed.”

Otake, 41, should know. He and wife Yuki are raising their daughters, ages 11, 7 and 2, in an 800-square foot apartment with two bedrooms and a single bathroom that Jun, as the only man in the house, finds ever-more frequently off limits.

To support this modest lifestyle, Jun commutes to work 90 minutes each way from the Tokyo suburb of Fujisama, not arriving home until midnight. Yuki, who gave up her own career 12 years ago, juggles the care of the girls. Their only time together on weekdays comes during mandatory 7 a.m. family breakfast.

It isn’t easy to raise children in Japan, where the birth rate of 1.37 children per woman has fallen well below the replacement level of 2.07 and contributed to structural problems facing the world’s fastest-aging society. The reasons cited are myriad: the cost of schooling, a lack of daycare options and an increasing number of women unwilling to interrupt or forego their careers among them.

But the new measure, which mirrors similar programs in other countries (France, for example, for years has heavily subsidized the cost of raising children), is not without its critics.

The child stipend plan — part of the DPJ’s populist agenda that includes making high school education free and removing tolls on highways — has been criticized by economists who question whether the $54 billion program, which costs more than the country’s defense budget, is affordable.

Furthermore, women without children wonder if the money would be better spent on increasing the number of day care centers and other methods to help women return to work after giving birth.

“The child allowance is not a fundamental solution,” said Vivian Tokai, 41, director of government relations at an international conglomerate who is married but has no children. She and her husband, a marketing executive at a Japanese brewery, live in Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood, where waiting lists for public day care facilities are long.

Last October, more than 40,000 Japanese children were unable to register with government-approved day care centers, which are larger than their private counterparts and have better resources, such as playgrounds.

The DPJ proposed the allowance “as a bargaining chip to get elected,” Tokai said. “The government needs to overhaul the fundamental things. Finding child care is very, very difficult.”

Tell that to Mayumi Yamamoto and her American husband, Brad Horton, college professors who are raising a 6-year-old daughter in one of Tokyo’s most child-rich wards.

It took Yamamoto, 49, and Horton, 42, more than two years to find a spot for Shiori because their neighborhood center concluded that the couple was working only part-time at their universities and rated them as lower priorities than families with two working parents.

The ordeal was so difficult and protracted that the couple decided not to have a second child, Horton said. “That’s one less child living in Japan,” he added ruefully.

For working women who succeed in finding care for their children, the costs add up. Eiko Tanaka, who works in the Tokyo branch of a Danish pharmaceutical company, pays about $478 per month to send her daughter to day care each day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tanaka recently returned to work after taking a year off to care for her second daughter, who recently entered a nursery.

Still, Tanaka said she and her husband can afford the costs, adding that the child allowance, which will be paid to all families regardless of income, should be limited to poorer families. “I don’t like that they are giving it to everybody,” Tanaka said.

But Naoko Kaihata, 36, a senior consultant at the Tokyo office of CB Richard Ellis real estate firm, said she and her husband, who works as a research analyst at the Bank of Yokohama, welcome the stipend to help raise their 4-year-old daughter, whose day care costs more than $500 per month.

“It is not so much that we think we will spend more on our daughter’s stuff or family expenses, but this does help us feel more secure for our future,” Kaihata said.

She paused, then added that the government also must spur economic growth by creating incentives for businesses.

“If I can’t get a job in the future, a child stipend is not enough,” Kaihata said. “I will feel insecure and I will start to think I do not want any more kids.”

Original here

"The Lost Symbol" and the Freemasons: 8 Myths Decoded

2009-09-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

Novelist Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, is doing for the Freemasons what its predecessor, The Da Vinci Code, did for the Catholic Church's Opus Dei—showering new fame, and new fictions, on a brotherhood that's already catnip for conspiracy theorists.

Since long before The Lost Symbol, Freemasons have been accused of everything from conspiring with extraterrestrials to practicing sexual deviancy to engaging in occult rituals to running the world—or trying to end it. Detractors include global conspiracy theorists and religious organizations, including the Catholic Church.

Released today, The Lost Symbol isn't likely to squelch any rumors, beginning as it does with a wine-filled skull, bejeweled power brokers, and a dark Masonic temple steps away from the White House.

But what if Freemasons—the world's largest international secret society—are just a bunch of guys into socializing, non-satanic rituals, self-improvement, and community service?

To separate Freemason fact from Lost Symbol-style myth, National Geographic News went inside the centuries-old order with two Masons and a historian of the ancient Christian order from which some claim the Masons sprang in the 17th or 18th century.

FREEMASON MYTH 1
Masonic Symbols Are Everywhere

It's true that Masonic symbols are anything but lost, said Freemason and historian Jay Kinney, author of the newly released Masonic Myth.

Freemasonry is rich in symbols, and many are ubiquitious—think of the pentagram, or five-pointed star, or the "all-seeing eye" in the Great Seal of the United States.

But most Masonic symbols aren't unique to Freemasonry, Kinney said.

"I view the Masonic use of symbols as a grab bag taken from here, there, and everywhere," he said. "Masonry employs them in its own fashion."

The pentagram, for example, is much older than Freemasonry and acquired its occult overtones only in the 19th and 20th centuries, hundreds of years after the Masons had adopted the symbol.

Likewise, the all-seeing eye saw its way to the Great Seal—and the U.S. dollar bill—by way of artist Pierre Du Simitiere, a non-Mason.

The eye represents divine guidance of the U.S. ship of state, or as Secretary of the U.S. Congress Charles Thompson put it in 1782, it alludes "to the many signal interpositions of providence in favour of the American cause."

There was one known Mason on the committee to design the seal, Benjamin Franklin. His proposed design was eyeless, and rejected.

FREEMASON MYTH 2
Masons Descend From the Knights Templar

Much has been made of the Freemasons purported lineage to the Knights Templar. The powerful military and religious order was established to protect medieval pilgrims to the Holy Land and dissolved by Pope Clement V, under pressure of King Phillip IV of France, in 1312.

After modern Masonry appeared in the 17th- or 18th-century Britain, some Freemasons claimed to have acquired the secrets of the Templars and adopted Templar symbols and terminology—naming certain levels of Masonic hierarchy after Templar "degrees," for example.

"But those [Knights Templar] degrees and Masonic orders had no historic connection with the original Knights Templar," Kinney explained.

"These are myths or symbolic figures that were used by the Masons. But because the association had been made with these degrees, and the degrees had perpetuated themselves, after a time it began to look like there had been a connection."

Helen Nicholson, author of The Knights Templar: A New History, agrees that there is no possibility that Freemasons are somehow descended from the Knights Templar.

By the time of the first Masons, the Cardiff University historian said, "there were no more Templars."

FREEMASON MYTH 3
Masons Are Hiding Templar Treasure

One of the Templar-Mason theory's many veins suggests that some Templars survived the order's 14th-century destruction by taking refuge in Scotland, where they hid a fabulous treasure beneath Rosslyn Chapel (as seen in The Da Vinci Code).

The treasure, and the Templar tradition, were eventually passed down to the founders of Freemasonry, the story goes.

In fact, there was Templar treasure, Nicholson said, but it ended up in other hands long ago.

"The most likely reason [the Templars were dissolved] is that the king wanted their money. The King of France was bankrupt, and the Templars had lots of ready cash."

FREEMASON MYTH 4
Washington, D.C.'s Streets Form Giant Masonic Symbols

It's long been suggested that powerful Freemasons embedded Masonic symbols in the Washington, D.C., street plan designed mainly by Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant in 1791.

The Lost Symbol is expected to prominently feature "Masonic mapping," detecting pentagrams and other symbols by connecting the dots among landmarks. Pre-release clues released by author Dan Brown, for example, include GPS coordinates for Washington landmarks.

"Individually, Masons had a role in building the White House, in building and designing Washington, D.C.," said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. "And [small scale] Masonic symbols can be found throughout the city, as they can in most U.S. cities."

But there's no Masonic message in the city's street plan, Tabbert said. For starters, Pierre L'Enfant wasn't a Mason.

And, Tabbert asked, why would Masons go to the trouble of laying out a street grid to match their symbols?

"There has to be a [reason] for doing such a thing," said Tabbert, himself a Mason. "Dan Brown will find one, because he writes fiction. But there isn't one."

FREEMASON MYTH 5
Freemasons Rule the World

Maybe it's the impressive list of prominent Freemasons—from Napoleon to F.D.R. to King Kamehameha (IV and V!)—that's led some to suggest the group is a small cabal running the globe. But Kinney, the Masonic historian, paints a picture of a largely decentralized group that might have trouble running anything with much efficiency.

"I think the ideals that Masonry embodies, which have to do with universal brotherhood, are shared by Masons around the world [regardless of] religious, political, or national differences," he said.

"But having shared ideals is one thing—having some sort of shared hierarchy is something else altogether."

Kinney noted that the U.S. alone has 51 grand lodges, one for each state and the District of Columbia. Each of these largely independent organizations oversees its many local blue (or beginner) lodges and has little real coordination with other grand lodges.

Internationally, Masonic lodges not only don't speak with a single voice but sometimes refuse to even recognize each other's existence.

Also, many Masons are independent minded and tend to resist edicts from above, Kinney said. "There is no way that they could be run by a single hierarchy. There is no such entity."

FREEMASON MYTH 6
Freemasonry Is a Religion—Or a Cult

But Masons stress that their organization is not a religion, that is it has no unique theology and does not represent a path for believers to salvation or other divine rewards.

Even so, to be accepted into Freemasonry, initiates must believe in a god—any god. Christians may be in the majority, but Jews, Muslims, and others are well represented in Masonic circles. At lodge meetings religious discussion is traditionally taboo, Kinney and Tabbert said.

But some religious leaders believe that Masonic rituals and beliefs—with its temples, altars, and oaths—do constitute an opposing faith. And the Masonic refusal to rank one religion above the others hasn't always been popular.

A 1983 Catholic declaration approved by Pope John Paul II, for example, said that "Catholics enrolled in Masonic associations are involved in serious sin and may not approach Holy Communion."

FREEMASON MYTH 7
Freemasons Started the American Revolution

Prominent Freemasons like Ben Franklin and George Washington played essential roles in the American Revolution. And among the ranks of Freemasons are 9 signers of the Declaration of Independence and 13 signers of the Constitution.

But Freemasonry—born in Britain, after all—had adherents on both sides of the conflict. Tabbert, of the George Washington Masonic Memorial, said Masonic groups allowed men on both sides of the revolution to come together as brothers—not to promote a political view, which would be against Masonic tradition.

"For many years [Masons] claimed in their own quasi-scholarship that all of these revolutionaries and Founding Fathers were Freemasons," Tabbert said. "A fair number of them were, but they weren't doing these things because they were Freemasons."

FREEMASON MYTH 8
Membership Requires Shadowy Connections

Contrary to The Lost Symbol, you don't have to drink wine from a skull to become a ranking Freemason. In fact, tradition dictates that Masons don't recruit members but simply accept those who approach them of their own free will.

When Freemasonry hit its peak in the U.S. during the late 1950s, Kinney, the Masonic historian, said, almost one of every ten eligible adult males was a member—a total of some four million and hardly a tiny elite.

Today membership numbers, like those of other fraternal organizations, have declined dramatically, and only about 1.5 million U.S. men are Masons.

But with The Lost Symbol already igniting interest in Freemasonry, Masonic centers are bracing for tourists—and maybe a few new recruits.

Original here

Bowling For Brews

2009-08-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

By Pete Wells

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times The newly opened Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg.

Each time I’m buckling my 5-year-old into his car seat on the way to another of his peers’ birthday parties, I say a little prayer that there will be beer. This Sunday, the party was at Brooklyn Bowl, and yes, there was beer. All the taps at Brooklyn Bowl pour beers brewed in the borough: Kelso, ~~Six Points~~Sixpoint and kegs from Brooklyn Brewery, right next door in Williamsburg. The birthday boy’s father, who works at the bowling alley, told me that it’s been getting some of the brewery’s products before any other place in the city.

I’ve never thought of bowling alleys as being in the avant-garde of beer (or any kind of avant-garde, really), so I called Brooklyn’s brewmaster, Garrett Oliver, for verification. He said that since they can just roll kegs across the alley between the two businesses, and since the tap room at the brewery is only open on weekends, yes, Brooklyn Bowl would tend to get some beers first.

So far, bowlers have had a chance to taste just one beer, Sorachi Ace, before anyone else. It’s a Belgian farmhouse-style ale with a bright lemony flavor and aroma it gets from a Japanese hop of the same name.

Mr. Oliver said that the relationship with the bowling alley was “informal, but since they’ve been building next to us for a year, we now know everybody there really well. I’m about to go next door and see if I can borrow their kitchen.”

It turns out that as well equipped as Mr. Oliver’s brewery is, it doesn’t have an actual stove, something he needed to cook up a batch of malt mash. It’s a special malt that was smoked in the same room with some of the bacon made by the legendary Allan Benton. “It’s almost terrifying how much the malt smells like bacon,” Mr. Oliver said.

He plans to brew about 15 gallons of barleywine with that malt. In the meantime, he’s been infusing a brown ale with the flavor of Benton’s bacon fat through a technique known as “fat washing.” (Nick Fauchald described the process in this profile of the bartender Eben Freeman.) Oh, and the bacon-fat-infused ale was also aged in bourbon barrels, because bourbon and bacon go together like, um, beer and bacon.

Eventually, the barleywine with the bacon-smoked malt and the bourbon-aged, bacon-fat-infused ale would be blended to create one monstrously bizarre beer.

“One of two things will happen,” Mr. Oliver predicted. “Either this will be the most amazingly disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted in your life. Or I shall rule the earth.”

He also talked about collaborating with the Bromberg brothers, of the various Blue Ribbon restaurants, who are in charge of the food at Brooklyn Bowl. The idea, as far as I could make it out, was for the Brombergs to bake a bread from many of the ingredients in a Brooklyn beer called Local 2. There was also something about making a cheese from the milk of cows fed on spent grain from the brewery, and how it would be cool to wash that cheese in Local 2, so you could have bread, beer and cheese that were practically siblings. By that point my head was spinning, and I hadn’t had a drop to drink.

Original here

BMW’s Hybrid X6 Saves 20% On Fuel And Gets 480 HP

2009-08-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

Written by Jerry James Stone

BMW’s new ActiveHybrid X6 promises to be the world’s most powerful hybrid with 480 hp (358 kW) and 575 lb-ft of torque (780 N·m).

The ActiveHybrid X6 will hit 60 mph in just under 6 seconds all while providing a 20-percent fuel savings according to the EU test-cycle. The EU also gave it a CO2 rating of 231 g/km. EPA numbers aren’t yet available.

ActiveHybrid X6 is BMW’s first application of the two-mode transmission developed in partnership with GM and then-DaimlerChrysler. Along with its 4.4 liter overcharged gasoline V8 engine, the X6 includes two electric synchronous engines that get 91 hp (68 kW) and 86 hp (64 kW), respectively

Top speed of the BMW ActiveHybrid X6 is limited electronically to 130 mph (209 km/h).

The offering, accompanied by the BMW ActiveHybrid 7, will be unveiled this September at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The X6 is expected to hit the U.S. market around at the end of this year. The ActiveHybrid 7 will arrive in the US in Spring 2010.

A full press release is available on the next page.

Source: Autoblog Green

The myth-making genius of Neil Gaiman

2009-08-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Spell-binding ... Neil Gaiman. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Neil Gaiman has just won this year's Hugo award for best novel, for The Graveyard Book – and I can't be the only one who isn't surprised by the news. I knew Gaiman was more than just a great writer when I read the comic mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living in 1993. I'd already been blown away by The Sandman, but in the spin-off series featuring Dream's older sister, Death, I found something more. I found a grungy-looking young lad called Sexton, living with a hippie single mother and driven to the brink of suicide by a world in which the World Wrestling Federation could be allowed to exist. Sexton meets Didi, either an orphaned young Goth woman or the personification of Death, who, for one day in every 100 years, must take human form. This story could have been written for me. I was a grungy-looking young lad. I lived with a hippie single mother. Suicide was never far from my muddled teenage thoughts. And boy, did I want to meet a cute Goth girl who thought she was Death. I was under Neil's spell.

I wasn't the first, and I wouldn't be the last. By 1993, Neil had entranced hundreds of thousands of readers with his Sandman stories: their re-mixing of mythology and fairytale, combined with brilliantly observed characters, had attracted an audience that few other writers were reaching. Early graphic novels such as Violent Cases had marked Gaiman as an original voice in comics. The Books of Magic, featuring a bespectacled young boy who discovers his destiny as a great magician, introduced Gaiman to a younger readership, that he would further entrance with novels such as Coraline. Good Omens, written in collaboration with Terry Pratchett, is still a frequent presence on bestseller lists almost two decades after its publication. But it was with the release of American Gods in 2001 that Neil finally captured a mainstream readership. The story of an America populated by all the gods who had ever washed up on its shores, and a war between ancient magic and modern technology, resonated deeply with millions of readers who did not know how much they longed for myth until they were given one.

Neil Gaiman has won over his audience one-by-one with stories in which readers find intense personal meaning. But that audience is now numbered in its millions because of Gaiman's understanding of the primal role of myth in our lives, and our hunger for myths that suit our modern age. His stories stitch together a 21st-century mythology, woven from the legends of ancient Greece and the Norse pantheon, eastern European folktales and the British literary tradition of Milton and Shakespeare, to name just a few of his sources. Into this fabric are embroidered modern mythic figures for our age: Dream and his family of the Endless; the bespectacled boy wizard; and now the child raised by nightmares in a graveyard.

The Graveyard Book is a story that deserves to be told and retold. The tale of Bod, whose parents are murdered and who is raised by the ghosts, ghouls and vampires inhabiting the graveyard where he takes shelter is more than just a spooky tale for children. It's a story for an age in which many people find that family doesn't offer the security they need; a story about the strength and love found in friendship, but also about the need for growth and change that means we must sometimes let go of friendship. It's the kind of tale people tell their children at bedtime. The least we can do to celebrate it is to give the author a prize.

Original here

Cash for Killing Your Lawn: Cities Get Creative on Water Savings

2009-07-21T01:12:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Wheeland

In Las Vegas, the biggest desert city in the U.S., and still one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, the local water utility is offering cash incentives to replace water-sucking lawns with drought-resistant landscapes.
If you've currently got a grass lawn in the Las Vegas area, the Southern Nevada Water Authority will pay homeowners and business owners alike $1.50 per square foot of lawn replaced with desert-friendly plants. That rate is good for the first 5,000 square feet, up to $7,500 in rebates; beyond that, the SNWA will pay $1 per square foot for the next 195,000 square feet of lawn ripped out, for a maximum of $300,000 per year in rebates.

It's part of a 10-year-old program called the Water Smart Landscapes Rebate program, and in that time more than 130 million square feet of lawns have been replaced with more native, less water-intensive plants. As a result, the city of Las Vegas has seen its water use drop by 18 percent, or 15 billion gallons per year, even as its population skyrocketed.

Image courtesy of the SWNA. Click for a full-sized image.

In an article on GreenRightNow.com, Melissa Segrest explores how Las Vegas's pioneering effort is part of a growing trend from cities to encourage water conservation from the ground up.

Segrest writes:

Other cities in the dry southwest have implemented similar programs. Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power started a program last month to pay single-family homeowners $1 for every square foot of grass they pull up and replace with drought-tolerant plants and permeable ground cover. The department will pay up to $2,000. Twenty-nine cities within California’s East Bay Municipal Utility District (including Alameda, Berkeley and Oakland) can get 50 cents for every square foot of grass they replace, up to $1,000 to single-family residences.

Cities in Arizona, Mesa and Chandler, for example, also give cash back to those who replace grass with low-water plants. Even though cash for grass programs are popping up in drought-ridden states across the country, they have a long way to go to match Las Vegas.

Image courtesy of the SWNA. Click for a full-sized image.

In addition to the grass payback, Southern Nevada’s water authority instituted a water-saving car wash program, providing coupons to car washes that either recycle their own water or send it to a treatment facility for recycling. Residents can get money back for buying a swimming pool cover (without it, the authority says, 10,000 to 15,000 gallons of water can evaporate from a pool).

Water use is becoming a huge concern for businesses and municipalities alike, although there are innovations aplenty in the works: A report released in May explored ways that companies in California -- currently in the midst of a long-term drought -- can use existing technologies to cut water use in half, and earlier this year we ran an in-depth report on how companies nationwide are saving significant amounts of water, and how you can start up a water management program at your company.

Original here

Inflight WiFi "Rules" Keeps Sky Surfers In Check

2009-07-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

by Shawn Oliver

We've heard of crazy recommendations and pointless surveys, but man, this is just world-class comedy here. Though, to be fair, most everything recommended is legitimate, but it's mostly common knowledge. Inflight Wi-Fi is expected to soar in popularity of the next few years--that's a well known fact at this point--but debates are still raging over whether or not that's a good thing.

Most airlines, if not all, have disabled VoIP calling while on their planes. This keeps patrons from dialing up friends via Skype while onboard, and in turn making every other passenger around them furious and agitated. A recent survey commissioned by 3M found that four in five business travelers admitted that they wanted inflight Wi-Fi, so they sought travel expert Chris McGinnis to type out the following "manners list" to follow while surfing at 30,000 feet:

Enjoy the view without the glare. While you may enjoy the view from your window seat, be aware that your seatmate may be using the time to catch up on some work or watch a movie on his or her laptop. Since the glare from the window makes it difficult to view computer screens, ask if the glare is a problem and then agree to a happy medium.
Beware of prying eyes. While you may not be interested in what your seatmate is watching or working on, 49 percent of passengers admit to sneaking peeks at their neighbor's laptop(1). To help protect confidential information, consider using a 3M Privacy Filter, which prevents others from seeing what is on your laptop by darkening side views.
Dim that screen on night flights. Flying is the perfect time to catch up on all the TV shows or movies you've missed. But don't forget that the constant glow and flicker of the screen can irritate your seatmate, especially on overnight flights.
Lower the volume. You know the volume of your headphones is too loud when your neighbor can follow along with the movie you are watching on your laptop. Keep the volume at a reasonable level to avoid disturbing your seatmates.
Share the "juice." The Wi-Fi antenna on your laptop is a power hog and can drain your battery faster than you think. While some planes offer power plugs, every seat in a row may not have an electrical outlet available, so share the power supply with your neighbor.
Set your boundaries, but know your limits. It is never OK to comment on what someone else may be working on or watching, unless of course it is overly offensive or noisy. If a seatmate is watching something you find overly offensive, consider moving to another seat. If that's not possible, politely tell your seatmate that you find what they are watching offensive. If all else fails, ask your flight attendant to intervene.

To us, this all brings up a much larger point. Many airplanes used today are just not qualified to be used as Wi-Fi planes. What good is unlimited surfing for 6.5 hours when your battery dies after two? We'd love to see AC outlets in all coach seats as well as personal lights that can be angled down to better reflect on the screen. Do we really expect this to happen anytime soon? No, not with airlines charging fees for every last thing, but we do expect inflight Wi-Fi to become entirely more usable over time as fleets get upgraded.

Original here

I'll Take a Venti Beer, Please

2009-07-21T01:05:00.000-07:00

By OLSEN EBRIGHT

Taking a page from Europe's coffeehouse playbook, Starbucks is hoping alcohol may be the silver bullet to boost its stagnant stock price.

The grand experiment begins next week in Seattle with a new store called "15th Ave. Coffee and Tea inspired by Starbucks," USA Today reported:

Starbucks plans to create two more similar stores in the Seattle area at locations that aren't currently Starbucks stores. And if the concept works, it could be tested in other cities, says Major Cohen, senior project manager at Starbucks.
For Starbucks, which has suffered a humbling mix of closed stores, employee layoffs and same-store sales declines during the recession, the move is an attempt to extend the brand into the evening, when business is typically at its slowest.

CEO of consulting firm Brandstream and former marketing chief at Starbucks, Scott Bedbury, said alcohol is common at European coffeehouses.

But Americans may not be ready for European-style coffeehouses, and if not, we may never see booze at our local Starbucks. This experiment could go down in the beverage history books as just another New Coke.

So for now, the lone test store will serve a half-dozen kinds of beer and wine, ranging in price from $4 to $7.

If all goes according to Starbucks' plan, this could be a much-needed edge in the so-called coffee wars. The caffeine giant has been in the crosshairs of McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts for some time now. Perhaps it won't be long before we see the McWine Cooler.

O riginal here

15 Rites of Passage From Around the World

2009-07-21T00:52:00.000-07:00

By Ned Hepburn

While a rite of passage can be just about anything, some have stood the test of time long enough to be known, expected, and respected. Some mark the day when a boy ends his childhood and becomes a man, others may mark occasions of career milestones, religious standings, or social class hierarchies. While these rites will vary throughout the world, one thing is certain – rites of passage are something we all inevitably go through. These are 15 of such rites that carry on traditions today.

Maasai Lion Hunt

Source

The Maasai are a peaceful people in Kenya and Tanzania, but they still need a way to keep their men on their toes. Instead of using humans as targets for their warriors to hone their skills, they prefer to target lions- and not the sickly, young or female ones. The Maasai Warriors only hunt capable, large, male lions that have a pretty decent chance of winning, and they do it with a spear. Considering the fact that guys on safari with huge rifles still manage to get killed by lions every year, those Maasai Warriors have some guts.

Bar Mitzvah

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Jewish law says that a boy should be capable of handling his life as a man at the age of 13. We overlook the importance of this nowadays, but the implications are huge. Once a boy has his Bar Mitzvah, he’s responsible for his own actions, and able to do adult things like get married. We may still largely view teenagers as kids here, but in the parts of Israel where the old laws still have clout, people pay much more attention to this sort of thing.

High School Graduation

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High schoolers across America both dread and covet this day. All at once, they’re free from the horrors of high school, and suddenly expected to actually do something. While every study yields a slightly different result, less than half of all Americans both go to college and actually finish a four-year degree. On top of that, “college student” has all but become a career, with the average time it takes for that four-year degree being something like six to eight years. That means high school diplomas are still the mainstay of our educational milestones. Since graduation happens so close to legal age of 18, most of America views it as the crossing point into adulthood.

Poy Sang Long

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The look on this kid’s face is priceless. Young Burmese boys, usually around ten years old, go through this three-day long Buddhist ceremony. They spend most of those three days riding around on the shoulders of grown men, dressed up in full swagger to imitate Buddha, the idea being that he himself was a prince before giving it all up to walk the path of enlightenment. On the third day it all comes to a head when the young boys are ordained and entered into the priesthood, and spend at least one week with the monks. Afterwards, some go home to their families and some stay to become monks themselves. Bet you thought you had it bad when your family dressed you up as a kid.

Walkabout

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The Aborigines of Australia take becoming a man pretty seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they send their adolescent boys out into the wild to see if they can survive in the Austrailan Outback, unassisted for six months. During this time they are forced to survive on their own, and spend a great deal of time thinking about all the great big stuff men think about when they’re wandering around a desert. When they come back to their people, they don’t get a merit badge, they get respect. Boy scouts have nothing on these guys.

Seijin Shiki

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The Japanese celebrate their Coming of Age day as a national event on the second Monday of January. Once the ceremony itself is over, the event turns into one big annual party for all 19-20 year-olds (whose birthday fell before April 1st of that year). When the boys-turned-men aren’t too busy ogling all the girls in their dress-kimonos and party outfits, they’re getting ridiculous on their own since afterward they’ll be considered adults (and finally have to act like them).

Vision Quest

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Native Americans may be shrinking in numbers, but there are many who do their best to pass on the old traditions. Vision Quests, much like the Aboriginal Walkabout, involve a period of solitude and introspection out in the wilderness. Unlike most rites of passage though, a young boy who leaves on a Vision Quest won’t come back a full-fledged man, but instead with a sense of purpose for his continuing journey toward becoming a man. The quest lasts only a few days, and usually involves an Animal Spirit, subject to much pop-culture ridicule and called a purely hallucinogenic experience.

Russefeiring

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While American high school graduations tend to be over in a single afternoon, Norway does things a bit differently. A ridiculous (and awesome) mash-up of universally color-coded outfits (Star Trek anyone?) and Spring Break-meets -Mardi Gras, Russefeiring has all of Norway knee-deep in shenanigans for 17 straight days. Along with the constant partying, challenges earn the “Russ” merit tokens. These aren’t boring either, since they consist of tasks like crawling through grocery stores and barking like a dog while biting ankles, and having sex with a different chick on each of the 17 days of the celebration. Since there is always proof required, well, you get the idea.

Hunter’s First Kill

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Men have taught their sons how to hunt since prehistoric times, and pieces of that legacy still live today. A hunter’s first kill is a pretty big occasion, usually marked by ritual. While some families have their own rituals, passed down a few generations, most follow the universal theme of “first blood.” The new hunter will mark himself with the blood of his prey, usually painting his face with it, and some even go as far as to drink the blood. Once this happens, the young man can call himself a hunter.

‘Redneck’ Coming of Age

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While wholly unofficial, the Redneck Coming of Age is a widely known and much joked-about tradition. Fathers are often eager for their sons to “grow up” and be men. In this “ritual” a dad will go out and buy his son a hooker for his 18th birthday. The idea behind it may be trashy, but looking back throughout history, it’s really not all that weird, and can you really say that your dad gave you a present you enjoyed so much when you were a kid?

Rumspringa

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No, this is not just a fun word to name your bad college Ska band. Rumspringa is the Pennsylvania German word for “running around,” and that’s exactly what the Amish who go through it do. Basically, young Amish men aren’t forced to stay Amish, at around 16 they can leave the community and sew their wild oats. If, in the end, they decide to go back and be baptized in the Amish way, then they’re welcomed back with open arms and a clean record. The obvious catch being that it’s the only time they’ll be able to abandon their strict rules for living and still keep their status.

Circumcision

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Men who undergo circumcision as babies usually don’t ever stop to consider just how lucky they were to have it done then as opposed to later on in life. While many cultures go through circumcision, not all of them do it to newborns. In many African countries, males go through the dangerous procedure as young adults, as a final step to becoming a man and becoming eligible for marriage. Entire villages get involved annually as all the males of the right age get circumcised, and then are isolated outside town to heal. The “surgery” is rarely done by a surgeon, and infection rates are staggering. In this quest to become men, many boys end up dying, alone in a tent.

Crossing the Equator

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Navies from around the world hold a special ship-wide “ceremony” for all the sailors on-board who cross the Equator the first time. The “Crossing the Line” ceremony, as it’s called, crosses every line it can. These floating debaucheries can get so out of hand, that the legality is sketchy at best, and just about every rule goes out the window. It’s tradition for these guys to dress up in drag and eat things that should not be seen, much less eaten. While it may have been tamed some in the last few years as more and more women are aboard naval vessels these days, the party still goes on, turning “pollywogs” into “shellbacks” one shipload at a time.

Fraternity Pledging

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Becoming a much-loathed Fratboy isn’t something just anybody off the street can do, it takes hard work and dedication. For generations, young men have gone away to college, but could not fully realize their potential without going through some of the most humiliating punishments that a young man can imaginatively inflict upon other young men. Once they make it through these (now largely illegal) trials of brotherhood, the worthless pledge becomes a valued member of the fraternal order. A former pledge won’t likely forget what he’s gone through, but not for lack of trying.

Marriage

Source

In all the world, there may not be nearly as terrifying a rite of passage into manhood as that of Marriage. No other moment in life is held so universally as a doorway to manhood, regardless of any previous life experience or even age. Once a guy takes this plunge into the ‘Happiest Moment of His Life’, he’s done for. Family members will often try to ply the young man with alcohol and gifts, but nothing can really soothe the pain, that’s what bachelor parties are for.

Original here

High Stakes: A Call to Legalize Marijuana

2009-07-21T00:49:00.000-07:00

Photo
(CBS/AP)
(CBS) A high-stakes political battle is underway in the cash-strapped state of California. At issue is the narrowly-defined liberty people have there to grow and sell a certain plant . . . and the desire of some folks to have the state government TAX it. John Blackstone reports our Cover Story:
In Oakland, Calif., Richard Lee runs a string of businesses, from coffee shops to glass blowing that are helping revitalize the once-decaying downtown.

But Lee's business empire is built on an unusual foundation: Selling marijuana

In the back of his Blue Sky Coffee Shop there's a steady stream of cash buyers, and not just for coffee.

"In the front you get the coffee and pastries, and in the back you get the cannabis," Lee said.

A salesman told customers, "You're welcome to pull the bags out and smell the herb as you like."

What's going on here is illegal under federal law, but permitted under California law that since 1996 has allowed marijuana for medical use.

A dozen other states have similar laws. One customer named Charles said pot is exactly what his doctor ordered.

"So that's what relieves my anxiety and allows me to cope and feel good," he said.

Lee has dubbed his Oakland neighborhood "Oaksterdam" . . . with a nod to Amsterdam and its liberal drug laws. His goal is to make this a tourist destination, with marijuana its main attraction.

"Does that worry people around here?" asked Blackstone.

"No, people around here love it 'cause they see how much we've improved the neighborhood," Lee said.

Next door to where Lee sells marijuana, Gertha Hays sells clothes. She says the dispensary brings people from all walks of life. "There's no particular pothead," she said, "so everyone comes over there."

"So these aren't just druggies in there?" Blackstone asked.

"No, not at all. If you look and see who comes up and down thethe block you'll see it's so diverse," Hays said.

Part of the Oaksterdam neighborhood is a nursery growing a cash crop: Medical marijuana is now estimated to be a $2 to 3 billion business in California.

"Yeah, there's a lot of people making a lot of money," lee said.

(CBS)
There are now several hundred medical marijuana dispensaries in California . . . and much more marijuana being sold on the street.

"We estimate, overall, [the] California cannabis industry is in the neighborhood of around $15 billion," lee said.

While there is disagreement over the real size of the marijuana market it's big enough to have captured the attention of lawmakers trying to fill a huge hole in the state budget.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is pushing legislation to legalize pot so the state can inhale new taxes.

"I thought it was high time, no pun intended, for this to be on the table," Ammiano said. "I'm trying to beat everybody to the punch with the jokes, because I get a lot of 'em," he laughed.

There are many who ridicule the idea, but the state tax board estimates Ammiano's proposed tax of $50 an ounce could bring in $1.5 to 2 billion a year.

"We find that highly unlikely," said Rosalie Pacula, of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center. She says California is likely to be disappointed by the revenue raised on marijuana that now sells for about $150 an ounce.

"If you try to impose a tax that is that high, you have absolutely no incentive for the black market to disappear," she said. "There is complete profit motive for them to actually stay."

The tax proposal, though, has started an unusual political discussion. According to one poll, 56 percent of California voters say marijuana should be legalized and taxed. Even California's Republican governor has not snuffed out talk of legalization.

"No, I think it's not time for that, but I think it's time for debate," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "All of those ideas for creating extra revenues, I'm always for an open debate on it."

Check out reports on the debate over legalization in CBSNews.com's special section "Marijuana Nation."

Of course, Governor Schwarzenegger, from his earlier life, does have some experience . . .

. . . as does the president himself.

"I inhaled, frequently," Mr. Obama admitted on the campaign trail, in a nod to President Bill Clinton's earlier quasi-admission. "That was the point."

And while the president says he is opposed to legalizing pot ("No, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy"), his administration has ordered the DEA to stop raiding state-approved medical marijuana dispensaries.

It's a big change from decades of viewing the plant as the indisputable evil portrayed in the 1936 film "Reefer Madness."

But that old image has been going up in smoke for decades.

It was along for the trip in 1969 in the movie "Easy Rider," and on the cover of Life Magazine. On TV today it's just a part of suburban life in the series "Weeds."

And then there's the growing recognition of marijuana as medicine.

"Marijuana has been a medicine for 5,000 years," said Dr. Donald Abrams of San Francisco General Hospital. "It's only for the last 70 years that it hasn't been a medicine in this country."

Dr. Abrams has been studying marijuana for twelve years and is convinced it is both effective and safe.

"I think marijuana is a very good medicine," he said. "I'm a cancer doctor. I take care every day of patients who have loss of appetite, nausea, pain, difficulty sleeping and depression. I have one medicine that can treat all of those symptoms, instead of five different medicines to which they may become addicted.

"And that one is marijuana, and they're not gonna become addicted to it?" Blackstone said.

"That's correct," said Dr. Abrams.

But those who have been fighting the war on drugs say that, just because marijuana may be medicine, that doesn't mean it should be legal.

"There's just no doubt about it that the drug cartels and the drug organizations are very much involved in the production and sale of marijuana, said Roy Wasden, police chief in Modesto, Calif., where a lot of marijuana is grown.

"You can be out walking through the national forest, and if you hike into one of these marijuana grows, you'll be at great risk," he said.

And drug fighters warn aging boomers that marijuana isn't the gentle weed they remember. Today's pot is a whole different kettle of fish

"The marijuana of the 1960s and Woodstock is not what's being sold on the streets in the United States today, said Chief Bernard Melekian, head of the California Police Chiefs Association. "The narcotic portion, the THC of marijuana in the '60s, hovered around one or two percent. THC today is around 27 to 30 percent.

"You have a very significantly different plant."

Teaching people to grow that plant is another one of Richard Lee's businesses.

Lee runs Oaksterdam University, where students also learn how to stay within the state's medical marijuana laws.

"So you can't plant those seeds until you know what the law is?" Blackstone asked.

"Right," said Lee. "Vote today and get high tonight."

Students like Darnell Blackman and Barbara Kramer see an opportunity to do good . . . and to do well . . . by growing marijuana.

"Just like aspirin or ibuprofen or any of those other medications, cannabis is just another way of helping people," said Blackman.

"I thought maybe there was some way that I could get in the ground floor, get ahead of the curve on where this industry might be going," said Kramer.

There are still plenty of obstacles before it's a legal industry. Chief Wasden says this is no time for a surrender in the war on drugs.

"Fewer kids are using drugs today," he said. "We're not losing the war on drugs. Kids are starting to understand the negative, negative consequences of drug abuse. Do we need to introduce another dependency-driven substance into our community when in fact we're making progress?"

But in the community now known as Oaksterdam, the drug warriors are nowhere to be seen . . . as a whole neighborhood goes to pot.

Original here

The 10 Most Dangerous Foods to Eat While Driving

2009-07-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

By Tony Borroz

Insurance.com has come up with a list of the 10 most dangerous things eat behind the wheel. Seriously. Topping the list is the one thing we’ve all shoved into our faces during the morning commute.

Before we get to that, though, we should explain why Insurance.com thought this was important enough to investigate. Hagerty Classic Insurance, the folks who let you cover that ‘57 Chevrolet Bel Air or 1935 Dusenberg SJ in your garage, ran an applicant through the DMV. It discovered the guy had a restraining order barring him from having food within his reach while driving. Apparently the guy had been in several accidents while stuffing his maw.

Wait, it gets better (and by that we mean infuriatingly worse). Insurance.com decided to draw up a list of things you absolutely, positively should not sip, slurp, chomp or chew behind the wheel. Here from the home office in Cleveland are the ” The 10 Most Dangerous Foods to Eat While Driving”.

It should be said this is by no means scientific; it’s a rundown of things actuaries don’t think you ought to have in your hand (or mouth) when driving. That said, the list is more frightening than the repair bill we got when our Jag needed a transmission rebuild.

1. Coffee. It’s hot. It can spill. That’s bad. That said, we’re guilty of this. So are you. Admit it.
2. Hot soup. It’s hot. It can spill. That’s bad.
3. Tacos. Very messy.
4. Chili. It’s hot. It can spill. That’s bad. And it’s very messy.
5. Hamburgers. Greasy hands and a steering wheel do not mix.
6. Barbecued food. Um, that should go without saying.
7. Fried chicken. You think burgers are greasy?
8. Jelly or cream-filled donuts. Ever bitten into one and not had it squirt all over the place?
9. Soft drinks. Big threat of spillage, says Insurance.com, and unacceptable risk of “fizz up your nose.” Huh?
10. Chocolate. It melts on your fingers, which makes a mess on the steering wheel.

Allow us to make a special shout out here to item number two: Soup. Soup? Are you kidding? Who in their right mind thinks it’s OK to eat soup while driving a two-ton projectile? And who the hell is trying to spoon chili down their gullet in traffic? Good lord, people. It’s a CAR. Do not take that call from Joe in accounting, do not try to read that Brad Pitt cover story in Wired and do not try to munch a freakin’ taco. Just DRIVE.

Soup? To quote the great Tom Wolfe, “It’s enough to make the Fool Killer hang his head in shame at the missed opportunities.”

Original here

10 Ways to Look Good in Photos

2009-07-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

By Karen Lee, former model handler at the Elite modeling agency and head of the Karen Lee Group.

1. Focus your eyes just slightly above the camera lens, move your face forward a bit, and tip down your chin.

2. Put your tongue behind your teeth and smile, which will relax your face.

3. Keep your arms by your side—but not glued there. To look natural, they should be a little away from your body.

4. Test-drive clothing against a white wall, with an indirect, natural light source (under a tree, indoors near a window)—it will show whether blue really is your best color.

5. As a rule, avoid patterns.

6. Photos exaggerate everything, so go easy on the makeup. For women under 30, a little mascara and lip gloss; over 30, add a touch of concealer.

7. Practice the classic model pose: Turn your body three quarters of the way toward the camera, with one foot in front of the other and one shoulder closer to the photographer. When you face forward, your body tends to look wider.

8. For standing photos, belly in, buttocks tight, shoulders back, spine straight.

9. Study photogenic people as well as photos in which you think you looked best. Look at your best angle. You’ll probably see that you were laughing or having a good time. Capturing someone when they’re relaxed or most animated usually makes for the best results.

10. To feel at ease, try closing your eyes, then opening them slowly just before the photo is taken.

Original here

Airport security bares all, or does it?

2009-05-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

By Jessica Ravitz
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Privacy advocates plan to call on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to suspend use of "whole-body imaging," the airport security technology that critics say performs "a virtual strip search" and produces "naked" pictures of passengers, CNN has learned.

A TSA employee, shown from the back, as he stands in an airport whole-body imaging machine.

The national campaign, which will gather signatures from organizations and relevant professionals, is set to launch this week with the hope that it will go "viral," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which plans to lead the charge.

"People need to know what's happening, with no sugar-coating and no spinning," said Coney, who is also coordinator of the Privacy Coalition, a conglomerate of 42 member organizations. She expects other groups to sign on in the push for the technology's suspension until privacy safeguards are in place.

Right now, without regulations on what the Transportation Security Administration does with this technology, she said, "We don't have the policy to hold them to what they say. They're writing their own rule book at this point."

The machines "detect both metallic and nonmetallic threat items to keep passengers safe," said Kristin Lee, spokeswoman for TSA, in a written statement. "It is proven technology, and we are highly confident in its detection capability."

Late last month, freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced legislation to ban these machines. Of concern to him, Coney and others is not just what TSA officials say, it's also what they see. iReport: Tell us what you think about these scanners

The sci-fi-looking whole-body imaging machine -- think "Beam me up, Scotty" -- was first introduced at an airport in Phoenix, Arizona, in November 2007. There are now 40 machines, which cost $170,000 each, being tested and used in 19 airports, said TSA's Lee.

Whole-Body Imaging

These six airports are using whole-body imaging as a primary security measure, according to TSA:

San Francisco, California

Miami, Florida

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tulsa, Oklahoma

Salt Lake City, Utah

Las Vegas, Nevada

Six of these airports are testing the machines as a primary security check option, instead of metal detectors followed by a pat-down, she said. The rest present them as a voluntary secondary security option in lieu of a pat-down, which is protocol for those who've repeatedly set off the metal detector or have been randomly selected for additional screening.

So far, the testing phase has been promising, said Lee. When given the choice, "over 99 percent of passengers choose this technology over other screening options," she said.

A big advantage of the technology is the speed, said Jon Allen, another TSA spokesperson, who's based in Atlanta, Georgia. A body scan takes between 15 and 30 seconds, while a full pat-down can take from two to four minutes. And for those who cringe at the idea of being touched by a security official, or are forever assigned to a pat-down because they had hip replacements, for example, the machine is a quick and easy way to avoid that contact and hassle, he said.

Using millimeter wave technology, which the TSA says emits 10,000 times less radio frequency than a cell phone, the machine scans a traveler and a robotic image is generated that allows security personnel to detect potential threats -- and, some fear, more -- beneath a person's clothes.

TSA officials say privacy concerns are addressed in a number of ways.

The system uses a pair of security officers. The one working the machine never sees the image, which appears on a computer screen behind closed doors elsewhere; and the remotely located officer who sees the image never sees the passenger.

As further protection, a passenger's face is blurred and the image as a whole "resembles a fuzzy negative," said TSA's Lee. The officers monitoring images aren't allowed to bring cameras, cell phones or any recording device into the room, and the computers have been programmed so they have "zero storage capability" and images are "automatically deleted," she added.

But this is of little comfort to Coney, the privacy advocate with EPIC, a public interest research group in Washington. She said she's seen whole-body images captured by similar technology dating back to 2004 that were much clearer than what's represented by the airport machines.

"What they're showing you now is a dumbed-down version of what this technology is capable of doing," she said. "Having blurry images shouldn't blur the issue."

Lee of TSA emphasized that the images Coney refers to do not represent millimeter wave technology but rather "backscatter" technology, which she said TSA is not using at this time.

Coney said she and other privacy advocates want more oversight, full disclosure for air travelers, and legal language to protect passengers and keep TSA from changing policy down the road.

For example, she wants to know what's to stop TSA from using clearer images or different technology later. The computers can't store images now, but what if that changes?

"TSA will always be committed to respecting passenger privacy, regardless of whether a regulation is in place or not," Lee said.

She added that the long-term goal is not to see more of people, but rather to advance the technology so that the human image is like a stick-figure and any anomalies are auto-detected and highlighted.

But Coney knows only about what's out there now, and she worries that as the equipment gets cheaper, it will become more pervasive and harder to regulate. Already it is used in a handful of U.S. courthouses and in airports in the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, Australia, Mexico, Thailand and the Netherlands. She wonders whether the machines will someday show up in malls.

The option of walking through a whole-body scanner or taking a pat-down shouldn't be the final answer, said Chris Calabrese, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"A choice between being groped and being stripped, I don't think we should pretend those are the only choices," he said. "People shouldn't be humiliated by their government" in the name of security, nor should they trust that the images will always be kept private.

"Screeners at LAX [Los Angeles International Airport]," he speculated, "could make a fortune off naked virtual images of celebrities."

Bruce Schneier, an internationally recognized security technologist, said whole-body imaging technology "works pretty well," privacy rights aside. But he thinks the financial investment was a mistake. In a post-9/11 world, he said, he knows his position isn't "politically tenable," but he believes money would be better spent on intelligence-gathering and investigations.

"It's stupid to spend money so terrorists can change plans," he said by phone from Poland, where he was speaking at a conference. If terrorists are swayed from going through airports, they'll just target other locations, such as a hotel in Mumbai, India, he said.

"We'd be much better off going after bad guys ... and back to pre-9/11 levels of airport security," he said. "There's a huge 'cover your ass' factor in politics, but unfortunately, it doesn't make us safer."

Meantime, TSA's Lee says the whole-body imaging machines remain in the pilot phase. Given what the organization has gleaned so far, she said additional deployments are anticipated.

Original here

Candy Bar From Mars Aims For Women From Venus

2009-05-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

Listen Now

Enlarge

The "Fling" is the first new chocolate bar Mars has introduced in more than 20 years. Courtesy of Taylor Global Inc.

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The word "finger" is an industry term for a long, slim confection, Mars spokesman Ryan Bowling says. Courtesy of Taylor Global Inc.

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A promotional postcard for the Fling. Courtesy of Taylor Global Inc.

All Things Considered The Snickers bar has a new sibling, and it's a girl.

She's sexual, uninhibited — and only 85 calories. The "Fling" is the first new chocolate bar Mars has introduced in more than 20 years.

Wrapped in a shiny pink and sliver package, this delicate "chocolate finger" is intended for women. The word "finger" is an industry term for a long, slim confection, Mars spokesman Ryan Bowling says, but with ads that invite you to "Pleasure yourself" in pink lettering, consumers might come to other conclusions.

The tag line on the package is "Naughty, but not that naughty." A TV spot starts with what looks like strangers having sex in a store dressing room. Currently the candy bar can be bought only California and online, but if all goes well, Mars is hoping women will be having Flings all across the country. But is this hyper-feminine, hyper-sexualized marketing coming on too strong?

"The overall campaign feels weird," Lisa Johnson says. "It feels creepy." Johnson is the co-author of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy — and How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market. She describes the marketing as a "full-frontal attack."

"The language of it has so much sexual innuendo, you could pack it into a trashy novel." Johnson says marketers are taking the connection women often make between chocolate and sensuality too literally. "There are other things you can do that can hit this note without banging on it."

Bowling says the campaign has been received well so far. Whether the Fling will keep calling itself a "finger," however, remains to be seen.

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Shoppers of the future will 'pick' fruit from supermarket shelves

2009-05-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor

Produce out of season takes about three or four days to travel from field to supermarket shelf Photo: GETTY

Instead of buying pre-packaged packs of tomatoes or strawberries, they will be able to "harvest" as much or as little as they like – introducing the concept of "harvest by" dates rather than "best before" dates.

The idea has been proposed by Futurelab, a company that helps businesses predict trends of the future, and was part of a report commissioned by Sainsbury, the supermarket chain.

Lucy MacLennan, Sainsbury's technical manager, said: "This would completely change how we sell produce to our customers. It would get rid of best before dates and allow shoppers to buy the freshest possible fruit and vegetables."

Currently, produce out of season takes about three or four days to travel from field to supermarket shelf, but under the futuristic plan the plants would be grown in hydroponic pods.

These are special mini greenhouses that allow plants to grow without the need for soil; they grow in a special nutrient-enriched solution, cutting down on pesticides.

The pods would be very light and would allow the farmer to transport the plant from his farm to the supermarket while it is still growing.

Ms MacLennan said that shoppers picking their own crops in-store would, realistically, not happen for another ten years at least.

"It could cut right down on wastage and packaging. It would make not just environmental sense, but economic sense too so we are looking at it seriously," she said.

The produce most likely to be sold this way would be light-weight crops such as peppers, strawberries, raspberries, beans, peas, tomatoes and mushrooms.

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Top 5 Of The Gnarliest College Drinks Known To Man

2009-05-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

by Ned Hepburn

The world is full of rough drinks. As most of us can attest to, we’ve all been at “that point” somewhere in our early years - the point where you only have cheap alcohol and hardly anything to mix it with. These are the drinks that put hair on your chest and gravel in your voice. They are also the stupidest drinks known to man - but really, is there anything more freeing than being broke and happy? You got to be like the MacGuyver of alcohol there for a little while. Or maybe you still are. I know a guy that can make a great cocktail out of D-grade vodka and a whole orange and a handful of ice cubes and some hot sauce, no joke.

And they’re also the most thoroughly fun to make, too. There’s nothing - absolutely nothing - more aggravating than a bartender (or “mixologist”) that takes themselves too seriously. While I love a well made Jack & Coke, I also enjoy the weird drinks that only three guys know to make. Guys with scars and beards and stories - not some white collar jackass who took a class on bar-tending at the YMCA.

While this list is here for humorous purposes, these are all drinks that we here at Manolith have actually made at some point in our lives. So, enjoy.

5. The Gambler

While in college I had a speciality drink I called “The Gambler” (named after the Kenny Rogers opus). It consisted of:

Half filling the glass with ice
Half filling the glass with Smirnoff
Half filling the rest with blue Gatorade. Only blue. No other kind worked.

4. The Lazy Susan

Fill a glass with crushed ice.
One can of Dr Pepper. Fill glass 3/4 of the way, drink the rest of what is left in the can.
Fill the rest of the glass with cheap rum.
Unwrap a Hostess™ Sno-Ball. Preferably the pink one.
Take a large swig of your drink, and follow it with a large bite of the Sno-Ball. The trick is to finish both at the same time.

3. The Intervention.

Modified from the popular joke about the sexual position. Google it. My boss would shoot me point blank if I typed out the whole thing.

This particular drink has a history of a bet I lost while watching a certain episode of A&E’s “Intervention”. However, it’s a lot of fun.

You will need one bottle of Peppermint Schnapps, and one can full of whipped cream, and a TV showing “Intervention”. That is how the original game was played - in a basement apartment, too.
Take shots of Peppermint Schnapps alternated with a mouthful of whipped cream every time a family member cries.

2. The Bacontini

This was made after me and my roommate at the time had literally nothing to do nor drink except the ingredients to a martini and bacon. I’ve actually seen this served in a real bar in New York - somewhat different.

Cook 3 strips of bacon until crisp.
Immediately eat one. Why? Just because.
Crumble up the second one, put into ice in the Martini shaker.
Strain the gin and vermouth through one of those Martini shaker things.
Place other bacon strip into this new drink.
Congratulate yourself.

1. The Quantum Leap

One tall can of PBR
One shot of vodka.
One shot of Jack Daniels.
One half can of Red Bull.
Mix.
Drink.
If you can drink this, Dean Stockwell will advise you to leap into the next body, as your job is done here.

(Photo By Tranchis and NoalseGolden)

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How to Fix Squeaky Brakes: DIY Auto

2009-05-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

By Mike Allen

The solution: This anaerobic adhesive will make the pad stick to the caliper, hopefully reducing squeal.

It’s the first nice day of summer; you’ve taken the convertible out of winter storage and you’re ready to hit the road. The stereo is cranking sweet guitar riffs as you cruise the beach, but for some reason the feedback on Wayne Kramer’s ax (Motor City 5, for the uninitiated) starts to sound more like the drone string on Ravi Shankar’s sitar. And that’s not good. Changing tracks, you find that same droning noise, and it isn’t coming from your high-end stereo—in fact, it’s your brakes. They are squealing. By the time you get back home, the noise has become so shrill it makes the dog hide under the porch and bark. The brakes seem to work just fine, but any application of pedal immediately makes the noise louder. Owww, it’s hurting your ears. Time to check the brakes.

It’s Music, Man

Let’s make one thing clear right up front: Sometimes your brakes will make noise. If you expect supreme silence, or expect your mechanic to make your brakes totally mute in every circumstance—that just may not be possible. Relax, don’t worry. A squeaking brake can stop a vehicle as quickly as a quiet one.

So what makes the squeal, then? Modern brakes use a cast-iron disc squeezed between two brake pads lined with friction material. Under the right conditions, the disc, the pads and the caliper they’re mounted in can start to vibrate—in exactly the same way a violin’s string vibrates when stroked by the horsehairs on the bow. The violin’s pitch is controlled by the position of the violinist’s finger on the string, not by how hard or fast the bow is stroked. Similarly, most brake squeals occur at a single discrete frequency. The speed of the vehicle and how hard you press down on the left pedal will only change the volume of noise, because the pitch is controlled by the stiffness and mass of the pad and disc.

Inadequate development at the manufacturer that leaves brake systems prone to noise can usually be overcome by a Saturday mechanic without totally re-engineering the caliper/mount/pad/disc system. We can try to damp out the noise, or simply change the resonant frequency of the whole arrangement until it stops singing in any audible frequency. Here’s how.

Normal Pad Noises

Many brake pad compositions will make a swishing or grinding noise for the first few stops in the morning until the pads warm up and drive off any moisture they’ve accumulated overnight. Ever notice a hissing or grinding noise on some rainy or dewy mornings? It’s the pads sweeping a thin film of rust that’s formed on the iron discs, and it’s perfectly normal.

In the past, brake pad friction material relied heavily on asbestos. Unfortunately, asbestos tended to give asbestos workers and brake mechanics lung cancer, so the industry has almost completely changed over to less dangerous alternatives. Kevlar is one material that’s seen a lot of use, but it tends to be dusty. Improved brake performance is more important nowadays because of increased safety requirements and equipment—and the extra road-hugging weight that comes along with these. That leads to the increased use of metallics and ceramics in the brake pad friction material. And this stuff can make the brakes hiss or even grind a little as you slow down. It’s a small price to pay for increased performance. So all pad noise is fine, right? Hold up there, Sparky, there’s one brake noise you need to pay attention to right away. Many brake pads have a small finger of spring steel that will scrape on the disc as the pad reaches its wear limit. This tells you that it’s time to change pads for fresh, thicker ones before the friction material wears completely away, and you’re trying to slow down on the metal backing plates. It’s a sound not easily confused with brake squeal—it’s more of a ripping-sheet-metal noise, not a single, high-pitched note.

Silence, Please

Okay, let’s dig in and silence our brake noise. One fix is to simply change pads to a different type of friction material. It’s usually hard to beat the original-equipment pads for a good compromise of pad life, noise, grip, dust creation and price, but changing to an aftermarket premium metallic or ceramic pad just might change the interaction that affects the resonant frequency of the pad and disc and, literally, change its tune.

Go into any auto parts store and you’ll see a shelf full of potions and widgets claiming to cure squeaks. One class of products I’m leery of is simple aerosols that you spray onto the pad’s friction material. I have no idea if they actually make the squeak go away, because I’m unwilling to try anything that changes the friction characteristics of the pad. Let’s not forget, the first reason your brake system exists is, in fact, to make your car slow down. Anything that could reduce that system’s effectiveness in any way is probably not a good idea.

Still got noise? Or still have plenty of pad material remaining and don’t want to drop fifty or a hundred bucks on a fresh set? You may be able to decouple the piston acoustically from the pad by purchasing shims made of Teflon, which are intended to go between the pad and the caliper’s hydraulic piston. I’ve tried those shims with middling success—sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Warning: Some calipers will not have enough extra travel in the piston bore to allow any shimming without making the brakes drag, at least with fresh, unworn pads.

You can achieve a similar decoupling without Teflon shims by simply coating the back face of the pad’s backing plates with high-temp brake grease or even antiseize compound. Unlike shims, this tweak won’t last forever, as water and road dirt will wash it away eventually.

We chose high-end ceramic-based pads for our brake job, hoping the different friction characteristics would cure the squeal. Surprise, the new pads came out of the box fitted with Teflon-coated shims already installed.

Sticky Solution

Our favorite tweak for squeaks relies on a different principle: Instead of using shims or lubricants to decouple the pad from the caliper, stick the backing plate to the piston or caliper housing, effectively making its mass far larger. That will move the system’s resonant frequency out of the range that squeals. A smear of Super Glue won’t do it: You need something that will withstand the water, salt, filth and especially the heat that cars see in hard everyday use. How hot do brake systems get? I’ve seen brake discs glowing bright orange at the bottom of Pikes Peak, and flames shooting out of the brake drums of trucks descending Donner Pass. I’ve seen the brakes on my own race car visibly glow right after a few hot laps.

I’ve used several products over the years, but they’re all basically anaerobic adhesives, applied as either a lipstick-style film or a toothpaste-style goo. The application of this product is simple: Remove and clean up the old pads, or use new pads. Clean the area on the piston and caliper where the pad backing plate touches. Apply the antisqueal adhesive, reinstall the pads and button up. These anaerobic products will stay gummy until you apply the brakes and squeeze out the oxygen. Then they stick like, well, glue.

Whenever you’re installing any brake parts, be sure you remove any corrosion or road dirt from the mating parts—the brake pad or caliper housing needs to be able to slide in and out to compensate for wear. Clean up any sliding parts, which may require a wire brush or a file, until you can push the pads in and out with your bare hands. I prefer to replace any brake hardware (especially on drum brakes) that isn’t in perfect condition—hey, it’s cheap insurance. Apply a thin film of high-temp brake grease to any sliding surfaces. Obviously, avoid getting anything like grease or antiseize on the pad or disc, and clean any greasy handprints off the disc surface before you hang the wheel on too.

Brake Hardware Nitty Gritty

1. This is one product we’ve tried that usually works to bond brake pads to the caliper and reduce or eliminate squeal.

2. This sheet-metal finger is just long enough to contact the disc when the pads are mostly worn out. The noise is calculated to make you replace the pads.

3. Here are two different compositions of brake pads. The one on the left is the stock pad installed by the factory, with a high concentration of organic fibers and brass particles. The aftermarket pad uses less brass and more ceramics for longer wear and improved braking.

4. When installing new or old pads, sparingly coat all of the sliding surfaces on the pads, pins and hardware with high-temp brake grease. Use sparingly, and—duh—don’t get any on the pads or discs.

5. File, sandpaper or grind any burrs, extra paint, rust or high spots off the pads, new or old, to be sure the pad will slide easily in and out as the brakes are applied and released.

6. Check out the raised areas—leftovers from the manufacturing process. We had to file down the steel backing plate on this aftermarket pad.

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CEO Promises GM Has New Vehicles That Will Blow You Away

2009-05-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

Posted in: Next Generation

Facing a fast approaching deadline of June 1st by which GM either restructures or enters bankruptcy, GM CEO Fritz Henderson took to he web to field questions from the public. There are more Q and As on the Fastlane site, but the following exchanges were particularly interesting.

Henderson was asked by one consumer who needs to replace his first generation Prius, why he should “wait” for the Volt.

Henderson responded “I would love to take you out of your prius! so why wait for the volt? the car will be beautiful, a great driving experience, and if you commute less than 40 miles per day, the car should deliver a totally electric experience to the owner without using any gas at all.”

Next he was asked what GM has planned for its next green initiative beyond the Volt and 2-mode plugin. Henderson wrote “the volt needs to be launched by year end 2010, which means we still have work in front of us. we have a separate team looking at gen II erev technologies while looking at other potential vehicle applications. alongside the volt we have a host of other technology initiatives underway, from second gen biofuels, to hybrids, etc.”

Finally Henderson was asked about how GM will flesh out its new lower number of brands and what each brand’s flagships might be.

He replied “We have big product and technology plans for all our brands. Chevrolet is already loaded with great cars, crossovers and trucks with a lot more coming like the Cruze, Spark and Orlando - and of course, the Volt. And we’ve got some great new Cadillacs, as well as Buicks and GMC cars in trucks in the works. Each week I join our Design chief Ed Welburn, the head of GM Product Development Tom Stephens and a few others to tour GM design and look at future cars and trucks. It’s great to be reminded what this business is all about, and it fills me with optimism about the new GM. I promise you that we have new vehicles that will blow you away.”

Source (GM)

The Last of the Power Rangers?

2009-05-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

By LAWRENCE ULRICH

SINCE the automobile got its first taste of gasoline, drivers’ need for speed has often trumped other considerations, including money, safety and common sense. Over just five years from 1895 to 1900, ingenious racecar builders tripled top speeds from 15 miles an hour to a maniacal 50 m.p.h.

From top, the BMW M3, Cadillac CTS-V, Jaguar XF Supercharged, Lexus IS-F and Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG. More Photos »

Today, safety is paramount. But money and sense can still get blown into the weeds by street-going supersedans that can exceed 180 or even 190 m.p.h. Such speeds are legal only on racetracks, of course.

With 400 or 500 horsepower — and more — these cars aren’t just fast by four-door standards. Some rank among the most formidable production cars in history.

With a four-decade edge in technology, these four-doors could embarrass any muscle car of the 1960s and ’70s. But like the fast cars of the previous golden era of speed, the latest versions could be rendered extinct by volatile fuel prices and tougher emissions controls — not to mention an economic climate in which frugality seems on the upswing. Certainly, it’s hard to imagine mainstream cars becoming much stronger unless they are driven by electricity, hydrogen or other gas alternatives.

These amped-up versions of everyday luxury sedans — with models from BMW, Cadillac, Jaguar, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and others — speak powerfully in English, German and Japanese. Audi’s entry, the S4, has been on hiatus this year, though a new version arrives this fall as a 2010 model.

Many historians trace the sport sedan’s roots to BMW, which at the urging of its American importer, Max Hoffman, brought over its tiny, squarish 2002 model — with a powerful 2-liter 4-cylinder engine — in 1968. By 1971, the 2002tii was producing 130 horsepower, and BMW began building its image as the king of performance sedans.

In 1986, BMW introduced the first M3, a 195-horsepower version of its 3 Series model. That 4-cylinder car breezed from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 7.5 seconds and reached a top speed of 146 m.p.h. The M3 became a street and road-racing legend, and painted a bull’s-eye on BMW’s back at which rivals still take aim.

Today, after escalating bouts of one-upmanship, 400 horsepower is the new minimum for membership in the club.

The Mercedes C63 AMG, with 451 horsepower, rockets to 60 m.p.h. in less than 4 seconds — roughly half the time of the original M3. To keep pace, even BMW has abandoned its three-decade-long reliance on in-line 6-cylinder engines; for the latest M3, it developed its own V-8.

Suffice to say when driven on public roads, these sedans push the limits of sanity with performance that scoffs at speed limits and social conventions — though some owners do explore the cars’ full performance potential by taking them to racetracks.

These cars also gobble as much fuel as two typical family sedans. In my testing of five performance sedans, the Cadillac CTS-V proved the thirstiest at 11 m.p.g., with the Mercedes just behind at 12 m.p.g. Among these cars, only the Jaguar XF Supercharged and Lexus IS-F avoid the federal gas-guzzler penalty.

Not only do they drink heavily, but each model demands premium fuel that, for a time last year, was selling for close to $5 a gallon.

Even with a respite in fuel prices, skeptics might ask why these sedans’ creators are partying as if it’s 1999.

First, these cars’ designs were set in motion years ago, before the current economic storms. Second, automakers and dealers still find a small but profitable niche in hopped-up sedans that command premiums of $20,000 to $40,000 over the price of mainstream versions of the same cars. (The exclusive $72,000 Audi RS4, not currently offered in the United States, was perhaps the most dubiously priced at more than double the A4’s base ticket.)

To the added benefit of dealers, many early buyers happily fork over $5,000 or much more above the sticker price to be the first on their block with a limited-production model.

Pressed on green responsibility, automakers respond that since they sell only a few thousand of each model, these cars’ environmental footprint is negligible. Yet it’s easy to see these g-force carnival rides being marginalized or legislated out of existence.

Affluent owners may not fret over fuel bills, but demands for higher mileage and lower carbon-dioxide emissions could spell the end anyway. (In recent years, automakers with a heavy concentration of high-performance models have countered corporate average fuel economy requirements by paying millions of dollars in penalties to the government.)

Looking ahead, if gas prices spike and the market continues to slump, these cars could become steals in the used market. Even in flush times, some of Mercedes’s high-performance AMG models have become notorious for their weak resale values. The market for used — and sometimes abused — luxury supersedans is limited. (And it is largely confined to men; sales data suggest that many women scoff at such over-the-top machines.)

But for those who can still afford the payments, it’s possible to live fast even in a slowing economy. Owners of these powerful sedans can scribble the checks, fill ’em up and duke it out. Our own tests of the BMW M3, Cadillac CTS-V, Jaguar XF Supercharged, Lexus IS-F and Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG were like a bacchanal in Las Vegas: when you’re having so much fun, guilt and consequences seem a million miles away.

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Stand Back for the Exploded View!

2009-05-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

by Phil Patton

At the new Porsche Museum, outside Stuttgart, there are many clever displays, such as the overlapped silhouettes of iconic 911 models through the years, the empty fiberglass shell of a 356 America hung from wires to show its lightness and the racecar attached to the ceiling. But my favorite mode of display is the exploded view, used for the most powerful Porsche engine ever—the 12-cylinder racing engine. Its parts, though suspended manually, seem to hover in air.

The exploded Porsche 12-cylinder racing engine at the Porsche Museum, in Stuttgart.

Porsche’s engine put me in mind of another “exploded diagram” I had seen recently, this one at the Harley-Davidson Museum, in Milwaukee. Abbott Miller designed the museum’s installations to complement the architecture of his fellow Pentagram partner James Biber. As one part of the display, he “cut up” a motorcycle into seven pieces. Seen head on, the pieces appear to be a single, solid bike. But seen from the side, they break up the frame, engine and other pieces. “As visitors enter the gallery,” Harley-Davidson’s publicity materials explain, “they see a motorcycle in profile, and as they move further into the space, the motorcycle is revealed as a series of ‘slices’ that coalesce into a unified image, with the V-twin engine at its center.” In other words, “A mechanical drawing brought to life.”

An exploded motorcycle on display at the Harley-Davidson Museum, in Milwaukee.

I thought of the vinyl layers in the Encyclopedia Britannicas of my childhood, with skin, muscles, organs and skeleton printed on overlaying sheets. And of course I thought of instructions and diagrams. These days one is as likely to find a working mechanic’s exploded diagram for a Harley part as a more playful interpretation of the idea, such as an illustration for the menu of a Brooklyn burger joint. The exploded drawing suggests the desire graphic designers feel to move into three dimensions.

My own fascination with exploded diagrams on paper goes back to childhood and years spent playing with Erector sets or assembling plastic model airplanes and automobiles. (I think I fell in love with the idea of them following while assembling Hellcats and Flying Fortresses. Or maybe it was the glue...) Wonderful exploded views still show up Lego instructions.

Building instructions for Brickster’s Trike by Lego (at left) and for 67 Burger, Brooklyn (right, designed by Heather Jones).

Those instructions teach a wider lesson. The process of model-making leads you to focus on each part and their relation to the whole. It teaches you to concentrate on one step at a time, to have faith in the order to the steps and the result that would eventually emerge. (It was always hard not to simply start with the most interesting part of the assembly.) They taught not just patience but process.

Car companies are good at slicing and breaking up their wares at car shows and museums, to show the internal power and mystery of their technology. I recall the Visible V8 model kit of my childhood—almost as fascinating as the Visible Woman! Since an engine’s basic job is to contain explosions and harvest their energy to make motion, there is a particular rightness to depicting one in exploded form.

Exploded Diesel, by Rudolph de Harak (1985).

The first example of an exploded engine in 3-D that I know of dates to 1985, when Rudolph de Harak created Exploded Diesel, what he called a sculpture, for the museum of the Cummins Engine Company, the maker of industrial machinery known for its enlightened patronage of architecture in its hometown of Columbus, Indiana.

It is significant that it was a designer who first ventured into three dimensions, through exhibition design, to illustrate the exploded engine idea. The exploded diagram is a place where the graphic artist meets the sculptor. Citing de Harak’s achievements, Steve Heller wrote: “His exploded diesel engine, the centerpiece of the Cummins Engine Museum in Columbus, Indiana, in which almost every nut and bolt is deconstructed in midair, is evidence of the designer’s keen ability for extracting accessible information from even the most minute detail.”

But the exploded diagrams speak of things beyond the mere parts. The Cummins engine appears to function as a social symbol as well—Heller notes the design of the museum was built on hours of interviews with employees. It is a morale-building model of the organization, a celebration of teamwork in which every part is shown and has its critical role to play. It was a positive representation of the worker who feels, “I am just a cog in the machine.”

Not merely an engine or motorcycle but an entire vehicle was exploded by the artist Damián Ortega in Cosmic Thing, his 2002 sculpture in which the parts of a disassembled Volkswagen Beetle hang in space. London’s White Cube Gallery describes it as being “re-composed piece by piece, suspended from wire in midair, in the manner of a mechanic’s instruction manual.” (Cosmic Thing was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and later at the 50th Venice Biennale, in 2003.) “The result was both a diagram and a fragmented object that offered a new way of seeing the ‘people’s car’ first developed in Nazi Germany but now produced in Ortega’s native Mexico,” curators declared.

(From left) Damián Ortega’s Cosmic Thing (2002) and Materialista (2009).

In a show now on display at the Galeria Fortes Vilaça, in Sao Paulo, Ortega applied a similar technique to the chrome trim of a transfer truck. Trucks have become a subject of debate in relations between Mexico and the United States since NAFTA first allowed them to cross borders. The piece is called Materialista, which in Mexican Spanish means a truck that carries construction materials, but which also explores issues of how ideas achieve embodiment in materials.

Honda took a page from Ortega’s book in 2006, when it hired Dutch artist Paul Veroude to create an exploded view of a Honda Formula One racecar for the British Motor Show, with all 3,200 bits and bolts hovering. This 3-D exploded diagram was designed to get spectators “closer than ever to the engineering secrets of the world’s most technically advanced sport.”

While the floating parts in these works suggest a freeze frame of an explosion, the work of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang uses a time-lapse approach to render the explosion itself. For his 2004 piece Inopportune: Stage One, displayed last year at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, he hung Chevrolets so they seemed to tumble through the spiraling atrium. All the cars are identical to suggest the flight of single vehicle, captured like sequential snap shots of a car bombing.

A recent print ad for Hermès watches.

Luxury brands have also used 3-D exploded diagrams to assert their technological power and boast of value hidden inside. Take for instance a recent advertisement for Hermès watches that reveals all the gears, escapements and jewels to convey the product’s importance and the preciousness of its complexity.

In today’s world, the news is often punctuated by explosions, and increasingly there is a sense of the center losing grip and of things flying apart. The exploded diagram might make real life seem menacing. But dissection is also teaching, and showing the parts is a fundamental element of learning and study. The verb ‘articulate’ can mean identifying the bones of a skeleton or the segmented parts of something, as well as to make meaning clear. Exploded diagrams, whether on paper or in space, do something similar. They offer an exposition of a subject. Maybe a better word for the exploded view should be a hybrid—I propose explosition.

About the Author: Phil Patton is the author of Dreamland: Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, Made in USA, Open Road and other books. He writes regularly for the “Design Notebook,” “Public Eye,” and the New York Times’ automotive columns, and is a contributing editor of I.D. magazine, Wired and Esquire, for which he writes on design and automobiles. www.philpatton.com

So maybe the slackers had it right after all

2009-05-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

By David Scharfenberg

WE MOVED to San Francisco and Brooklyn and Mission Hill. We jumped from job to job. Put off marriage. Never bought a place. And we never heard the end of it. We were drifters, they said. Layabouts. No respect for work and real estate or the value of a good pair of cufflinks.

But now, in the cold glare of a recession, everything looks different: We've got no house to lose, no career to dash, no school-aged children in need of pricey Wii gaming systems.

Not recession-proof, exactly, but recession-resistant, at least.

Of course, it's not like we saw the crash coming. We didn't plan for this, didn't time the market. And we made some bad choices along the way: The persistent neglect of our 401(k)s, battered stock market notwithstanding, will catch up to us someday.

But in retrospect, it's clear that we did something right. We lived a smaller life, a life we could afford. And as the country rebuilds the economy, as it tries to replace it with something more sustainable than a leaning tower of subprime mortgages and consumer binging, it is time to reevaluate that much-maligned Gen X archetype: the American Slacker.

"Slacker," like most labels, has always been a crude and misleading shorthand. We were a bit aimless, us urban, liberal-arts types. We were a little too enamored of irony, perhaps. A little too frivolous.

But there was something to be said for a life in the moment; for a dalliance in California, for concerts and failed screenplays, for a little fun before the fall. And the truth is, we were always more purposeful - more responsible - than our fathers and uncles and grandmothers realized.

Those of us who took low-wage jobs were not just marking time. Not all of us, anyway. We were doing work we cared about, as journalists and teachers and social workers.

All that job-hopping and freelancing? We were dilettantes, on some level, it's true. But we also understood, before most, that something had shifted - that we were moving to an economy of telecommuters and independent contractors and less-than-loyal employers.

And while the best minds on Wall Street cooked up the real estate mess that destroyed a global economy, we were sensible enough to steer clear of that overpriced condo and move into a dingy, three-bedroom rental with a few of our meathead friends.

You see, while Alan Greenspan and Countrywide Financial were creating a capitalism of disastrous excess, we were busy working on a more workable model. Not without its indulgences, of course. The exuberance of the dot-com bubble was undoubtedly irrational. But we did pretty well, this little slice of Generation X.

We brought you the Internet, worked on green technology, and filled the ranks of Teach for America. We crossed the color line, ate local produce, and bought secondhand clothing. We lived in smaller spaces, drove smaller cars, and took the subway to work.

It all seemed like a quaint liberal fantasy at the time. And on some level it was. But now, with a creaking economy and an overheated planet, it reads more like a survival manual: a guide to multicultural living in an increasingly diverse society, an incubator for the technology that might save the American auto industry, an antidote to our awful adventures in sprawl.

Of course, we could abandon this life as we get older, I suppose. We could grow impatient with our little apartments and cramped hatchbacks. We could set our sights on the kind of suburban existence we've forsaken. But I'd like to think we're smarter than that.

We created something worthwhile - a sustainable neighborhood, a tech future, a life we can manage. And we won't let it go too easily.

At least I hope not. As the nation rebuilds a crumbling capitalism, it could use a little perspective, a little wisdom. Bet you didn't think you'd get it from us.

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So Long, Coach: Get an Upgrade at the Airport

2009-05-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

By WORKS by Nicole Williams (View Profile)

The unfortunate reality of business travel today involves cramped economy seats, rental cars, and second-tier hotels. These treasured tips for bagging an upgrade on your ticket class at the airport may be just what you need to say so long to coach.

Turn on the charm and ask nicely. If the agent at the ticket counter seems open and friendly, turn on your award-winning smile and ask politely if there is any chance for an upgrade today. While the chance of this working may be slim, it has worked for us in the past. Things to keep in mind: upgrading wholly depends on the authority of who you are speaking with, the open capacity of seats, and your status with the airline.

Look the part. We can all spot the difference between the well-traveled business exec and the casual traveler in sweatpants. Dress and act like a first-class passenger and your chances of getting upgraded are greatly enhanced.

Let the ticket agent know if you are traveling for a special occasion-a honeymoon or anniversary-and they may honor you with an unexpected upgrade.

Ask the ticket agent if they will add a code to your ticket, which will indicate to the gate agent that you are eligible for an upgrade. Do your research beforehand on which codes your airlines uses and when. Each airline has their own way of coding passengers and upgrades.

Ask the ticket agent about the cost of buying an upgrade. Depending on the flight, upgrades can cost as little as $150, which may be worth it for your cross-country trip.

Be willing to use your miles and upgrade certificates. For a flight of more than three hours, it can be a worthwhile use, especially on a packed plane.

When you board the plane, if you see an empty first class seat ask the flight attendant if it is available. Flight attendants will generally consider an upgrade if you are having an issue with your seat (seatbelt issues, broken seat) or problems with your neighbors (an upset small child, a smelly or oversized passenger).

When booking, try to add an OSI (Other Significant Information) to your ticket. This can be done when booking directly with an airline or with a travel agent. From the airlines perspective, an attractive OSI may be if you are a VIP, CEO, travel agent, magazine writer or event planner.

Originally published on NicoleWilliams

How to Use Twitter To Bypass The Endless Taxi Line At McCarren

2009-05-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

by markj

Did you hear the news? Conferences and tourists are returning to Vegas. Well, they never really left, however as the economy begins to improve you can bet that the trade shows and tourists will make sure your arrival into McCarren International Airport is crowded and chaotic.

Once you have dealt with the monorail, and once you have made it to the bottom of the escalator and retrieved your bag you must deal with the dreaded Vegas cab line. During midweek, and for that matter during this down economy, the cab line has not been much of an issue, but on Friday nights and during conventions that line can be over half an hour long. How do you beat it? Easy.

Find a Skycap. Let them know they can help you with your luggage. Give the guy a nice tip and tell him you want to go to Yellow #1. Here cab drivers will get pulled out of the long cab line servicing the regular folks in order to pick you up at Yellow #1. No waiting.

Now during super crowded times even this Yellow #1 tip can have a line behind it. What do you do then, or for that matter if you want to take no chances on waiting in line? When your plane lands and the pilot allows you to turn on your cell phone, Twitter Vegas Cabbie (he is the one who gave us the above tip in the first place) and tell him your flight just landed and you will gather your luggage and meet him at Yellow #1.

He, or someone will @ reply you and by the time you get your luggage and head out to Yellow #1 your chariot will await you.

Ah the joys of social webbing in Vegas.

Original here

220MPH Solar-Powered Bullet Train on Arizona Horizon

2009-05-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

by Jorge Chapa

Travelers going from Tucson to Phoenix may soon be blazing across the desert in speeding solar bullet trains propelled by the sun’s rays. Hot on the heels of President Obama’s plan for High Speed Rail in the US comes the news that Arizona-based Solar Bullet LLC is proposing a new 220mph bullet train that will be entirely powered by the sun and will make the trip in 30 minutes flat.

The adoption of high speed rail in the states stands to greatly curb greenhouse emissions while cutting down on our reliance on carbon-spewing cars and airplanes. Needless to say it’s one of our favorite transportation topics here at Inhabitat, so to say that this one caught our eye would be an understatement.

The system is being proposed by Solar Bullet LLC, founded by Bill Gaither and Raymond Wright. Their plan is to create a series of tracks that would serve stations including Chandler, Maricopa, Casa Grande, Eloy, Red Rock and Marana, and may one day stretch as far as Mexico City. The train would require 110 megawatts of electricity, which would be generated by solar panels mounted above the tracks.

Although the project is still in its early stages of development and the estimated cost is a whopping 28 billion dollars, the idea that someday in the future we could all be riding on solar powered bullet trains is simply too cool to resist.

Original here

Ten Ways to Stay On Top Of Your Work

2009-05-16T01:37:00.000-07:00

by Ali Hale

Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in work? Your inbox is overflowing, you have to move two stacks of papers to get to your keyboard, you have a constant nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten about something vital, and that major project you want to start work on still remains a pipe dream.

Some people say they “work well under stress”, but most of us are happier, healthier and more productive when we feel that we’re on top of things. With that in mind, here are ten tips to help you stay on top of your work.

Don’t Take On Too Much
If you’re overworked, is it because you’re not very efficient and waste time (be honest) or is it because you simply have too much work?

All the time management tips in the world won’t give you more than twenty-four hours in a day. When you’re offered an exciting new project to be part of, when a colleague asks for a favor, or when you’re thinking about sticking up your hand and volunteering in a meeting ... stop and think about your other priorities. Remember that if your day is currently full and you take on new work, something else is going to have to go.

Minimize Meetings
Many time-management writers, from Tim Ferriss to Mark Forster, advocate avoiding meetings if at all possible. How often have you sat in a meeting, bored out of your skull, wishing you could be getting on with your actual work?

If you’re obliged to be in regular meetings, try cutting the frequency (perhaps a team meeting every fortnight, not every week, would be just as effective) or the duration (it’s surprising how much can be accomplished in half-an-hour).

If you can possibly avoid meetings, do. That goes doubly for meetings which are off-site – there’s a lot of wasted time involved in getting there and back.

Make A To-Do List The Day Before
If you normally work on whatever catches your attention, you’re working ineffectively, and you’re likely to end up feeling overwhelmed. Each evening before you stop work for the day, make a “to do” list for the following day. This should cover the crucial things that you want to get done. Make sure that at least one of them is advancing a long-term project.

The next morning, start on your to-do list before doing anything else (checking email, gossiping round the water cooler, making a round of coffee).

“Big Rocks First”
There’s an oft-cited time management adage “Big Rocks First”. The analogy goes like this: if you had to fill a jar with sand and rocks, it’s hard (almost impossible) to do it by pouring in the sand first then trying to fit in the rocks. But if you fit all the rocks first, the sand can simply flow into the gaps.

Fit your “big rocks” – the major things you want to work on – into your day first. All the little jobs like checking email, tidying your desk and making phone calls can fit into small time-gaps in between the bigger tasks.

Work In Timed Bursts
No one can sustain their concentration for hours at a time. And all of us find that we can speed up and focus well when it’s three thirty on Friday, or when we’re off on vacation for a fortnight. Take advantage of this effect by working in timed bursts: for example, work on that big report that’s been hanging over you for thirty solid minutes (no checking emails, Twitter, Facebook...) You’ll be surprised how much you can get done in a short space of time.

It’s often useful to use this to do “big rocks” and then to relax your attention by attending to the “sand” tasks like answering emails.

Develop Good Systems
We often work inefficiently because we just haven’t taken the time to develop a good system for something. If a particular aspect of your job is always causing you headaches, chances are that you need to fix the system you use for dealing with it. (In many cases, this means consciously implementing a system!)

For example, if you find that you’re always forgetting to follow up on action points for meetings, develop a framework to help you do this. That might mean that you schedule yourself fifteen minutes after the meeting to go through your notes and put your action points onto your to-do list.

Limit Email Checking
Most of us spend far too much time on email – some companies have even started introducing “no email days”, where workers are encouraged to phone or talk face-to-face rather than use emails. Reading and replying to emails can often be a distraction from getting on with more important work.

Try “batching” your emails: instead of replying as soon as one arrives, set certain times of day (ideally, not before 10am) when you’ll read and reply to all your emails.

Set Your Own Deadlines
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could set your own deadlines? Well, you can, of course: just make your deadline before the one that management (or your client) has given you.

If you aim to get each project finished a few days in advance of the “real” deadline, you’ll feel considerably less stressed (you’re working to your own time, not to someone else’s) and you’ll also be able to cope with any genuine emergencies that crop up, without blowing the deadline.

Delegate
One great way to stay on top of your work is to pass on low-level tasks to someone else. If you’re in management, you’re wasting your time and your company’s time when you perform tasks that a junior colleague could have carried out.

(If, like many people, you’re not confident about delegating work, read Accomplish More Each Day: Four Steps To Easy Delegation)

If you’re self-employed, can you pay someone else to do tasks for you? For example, you might find a student willing to do some administrative tasks, and you could pay an accountant to help with your taxes.

Ask For Less
Depending on your job, you might be unable to delegate anything – in fact, you may be overwhelmed with other people delegating work to you!

If this is the problem, don’t be afraid to say that you're being given too much to do. Your line manager may not realise that you’re feeling swamped. Don’t moan about having too much work, but mention your concerns that some aspects of your work aren’t getting done (or are being rushed) because you have too much else on.

Original here

GM to Cut 1100 Dealers

2009-05-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

Posted in: Dealers, Financial

GM has 15 days to meet a government deadline to successfully restructure or else enter bankruptcy restructuring proceedings. Chrysler has already been in bankruptcy court since May 1st.

A major element of restructuring for both companies is the ability to eliminate excess dealerships. Maintaining too many dealers in a much smaller market than it used to be is a major expense.

Yesterday Chrysler announced a cut of 789 dealers, leading to shock and sadness across the country. Not only because of loss of jobs and revenue, but car dealers are often important community members and sponsors of local activities.

Starting today 1124 GM dealers will get their pink slips. This represents 18% of the total GM dealerships. Those getting letters will be told their contracts which expire in October 2010 shall not be renewed. They are ones considered to be underperformers.

GM actually plans to eliminate 42% of total dealerships to a goal of 3605 by the end of next year. As GM is not currently in bankruptcy they do not have to publicly announce which dealerships will be receiving letters. Chrysler’s list is published below.

“We have said from the beginning that our dealers are not a problem but an asset for General Motors,” said Mark LaNeve, GM Vice President of Sales Service and Marketing. “However it is imperative that a healthy, viable GM have a healthy, viable dealer body that can not only survive but prosper during cyclical downturns. It is obvious that almost all parts of GM, including the dealer body, must get smaller and more efficient.”

Most recently GM CEO Fritz Henderson has said GM bankruptcy is probable. However it is expected the bankruptcy process will allow GM to successfully restructure its debt and expenses and survive as a lean green reinvention of itself.

Either way Volt will survive, only the dealer you might be hoping to get it from right now may not be there in November 2010.

List of Chrysler Dealers

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Marketing Business & Law

Source (Detroit Free Press)

Wisconsin court upholds GPS tracking by police

2009-05-16T01:07:00.000-07:00

By Ryan J Foley

MADISON, Wis. -

Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights – even if the drivers aren’t suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

That means “police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone’s public movements with a GPS device,” he wrote.

One privacy advocate said the decision opened the door for greater government surveillance of citizens. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials called the decision a victory for public safety because tracking devices are an increasingly important tool in investigating criminal behavior.

The ruling came in a 2003 case involving Michael Sveum, a Madison man who was under investigation for stalking. Police got a warrant to put a GPS on his car and secretly attached it while the vehicle was parked in Sveum’s driveway. The device recorded his car’s movements for five weeks before police retrieved it and downloaded the information.

The information suggested Sveum was stalking the woman, who had gone to police earlier with suspicions. Police got a second warrant to search his car and home, found more evidence and arrested him. He was convicted of stalking and sentenced to prison.

Sveum, 41, argued the tracking violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. He argued the device followed him into areas out of public view, such as his garage.

The court disagreed. The tracking did not violate constitutional protections because the device only gave police information that could have been obtained through visual surveillance, Lundsten wrote.

Even though the device followed Sveum’s car to private places, an officer tracking Sveum could have seen when his car entered or exited a garage, Lundsten reasoned. Attaching the device was not a violation, he wrote, because Sveum’s driveway is a public place.

“We discern no privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment that is invaded when police attach a device to the outside of a vehicle, as long as the information obtained is the same as could be gained by the use of other techniques that do not require a warrant,” he wrote.

Although police obtained a warrant in this case, it wasn’t needed, he added.

Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, said using GPS to track someone’s car goes beyond observing them in public and should require a warrant.

“The idea that you can go and attach anything you want to somebody else’s property without any court supervision, that’s wrong,” he said. “Without a warrant, they can do this on anybody they want.”

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s office, which argued in favor of the warrantless GPS tracking, praised the ruling but would not elaborate on its use in Wisconsin.

David Banaszynski, president of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, said his department in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood does not use GPS. But other departments might use it to track drug dealers, burglars and stalkers, he said.

A state law already requires the Department of Corrections to track the state’s most dangerous sex offenders using GPS. The author of that law, Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said the decision shows “GPS tracking is an effective means of protecting public safety.”

Original here

Ford Engineer Builds 125 MPG 3-Wheeler, Puts It On Ebay

2009-05-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

Written by Jerry James Stone

A Ford Motor Company engineer has built a 3-wheel motorbike capable of getting 125 mpg. The fuel economy expert crafted the vehicle at his home shop in Belleville, MI. It’s a street legal, two-passenger, 3-wheel motorbike that is made from aircraft materials. Oh, and it is capable of a top speed of over 100 mph.

John told EcoModder that “After working [on] improving conventional production car/truck fuel economy I wanted to try something with fewer constraints.”

I guess the Ford Escape Hybrid wasn’t cutting it.

He says the vehicle gets about 105 mpg when taken out on the highway, but that “when equipped with the pictured motorcycle tires (not included) and a smaller rear sprocket it achieved 125 mpg.”

According to the Ebay auction, where the bike’s listed for $15,600, the “motorbike” has the following specs:

The engine is a 250cc liquid cooled, four stroke, DOHC 2 cylinder with a six speed transmission.
It weighs just 505 lbs with a .16 coefficient of drag.
It has 4 point seat belts, roll bar and front mounted IMPAXX crash foam as now used in NASCAR
The front turn signals are integrated into the rear view mirrors for aerodynamics.
Front headlight is a projector HID, the rest are LEDs.

Hopefully whoever buys it doesn’t have a police record.

John explained about one run in with the cops, “Four squad cars showed up, several houses of neighbors came out and the whole thing turned into a spectacle. No ticket, everyone was genuinely interested in ecomodding!”

I hope the motorbike eventually sells as his next project will be a plug-in hybrid.

Source [EcoModder]

In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars

2009-05-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

Martin Specht for The New York Times

Biking and walking are the principal means of transport within the suburb of Vauban, Germany.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where middle-class families from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes. And that, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming. Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.

While there have been efforts in the past two decades to make cities denser, and better for walking, planners are now taking the concept to the suburbs and focusing specifically on environmental benefits like reducing emissions. Vauban, home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life. But its basic precepts are being adopted around the world in attempts to make suburbs more compact and more accessible to public transportation, with less space for parking. In this new approach, stores are placed a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant highway.

“All of our development since World War II has been centered on the car, and that will have to change,” said David Goldberg, an official of Transportation for America, a fast-growing coalition of hundreds of groups in the United States — including environmental groups, mayors’ offices and the American Association of Retired People — who are promoting new communities that are less dependent on cars. Mr. Goldberg added: “How much you drive is as important as whether you have a hybrid.”

Levittown and Scarsdale, New York suburbs with spread-out homes and private garages, were the dream towns of the 1950s and still exert a strong appeal. But some new suburbs may well look more Vauban-like, not only in developed countries but also in the developing world, where emissions from an increasing number of private cars owned by the burgeoning middle class are choking cities.

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting “car reduced” communities, and legislators are starting to act, if cautiously. Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much larger role in a new six-year federal transportation bill to be approved this year, Mr. Goldberg said. In previous bills, 80 percent of appropriations have by law gone to highways and only 20 percent to other transport.

In California, the Hayward Area Planning Association is developing a Vauban-like community called Quarry Village on the outskirts of Oakland, accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and to the California State University’s campus in Hayward.

Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus at Cal State and a leader of the association, says he “can’t wait to move in” and hopes that Quarry Village will allow his family to reduce its car ownership from two to one, and potentially to zero. But the current system is still stacked against the project, he said, noting that mortgage lenders worry about resale value of half-million-dollar homes that have no place for cars, and most zoning laws in the United States still require two parking spaces per residential unit. Quarry Village has obtained an exception from Hayward.

Besides, convincing people to give up their cars is often an uphill run. “People in the U.S. are incredibly suspicious of any idea where people are not going to own cars, or are going to own fewer,” said David Ceaser, co-founder of CarFree City USA, who said no car-free suburban project the size of Vauban had been successful in the United States.

In Europe, some governments are thinking on a national scale. In 2000, Britain began a comprehensive effort to reform planning, to discourage car use by requiring that new development be accessible by public transit.

“Development comprising jobs, shopping, leisure and services should not be designed and located on the assumption that the car will represent the only realistic means of access for the vast majority of people,” said PPG 13, the British government’s revolutionary 2001 planning document. Dozens of shopping malls, fast-food restaurants and housing compounds have been refused planning permits based on the new British regulations.

In Germany, a country that is home to Mercedes-Benz and the autobahn, life in a car-reduced place like Vauban has its own unusual gestalt. The town is long and relatively narrow, so that the tram into Freiburg is an easy walk from every home. Stores, restaurants, banks and schools are more interspersed among homes than they are in a typical suburb. Most residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts that they haul behind bicycles for shopping trips or children’s play dates.

For trips to stores like IKEA or the ski slopes, families buy cars together or use communal cars rented out by Vauban’s car-sharing club. Ms. Walter had previously lived — with a private car — in Freiburg as well as the United States.

“If you have one, you tend to use it,” she said. “Some people move in here and move out rather quickly — they miss the car next door.”

Vauban, the site of a former Nazi army base, was occupied by the French Army from the end of World War II until the reunification of Germany two decades ago. Because it was planned as a base, the grid was never meant to accommodate private car use: the “roads” were narrow passageways between barracks.

The original buildings have long since been torn down. The stylish row houses that replaced them are buildings of four or five stories, designed to reduce heat loss and maximize energy efficiency, and trimmed with exotic woods and elaborate balconies; free-standing homes are forbidden.

By nature, people who buy homes in Vauban are inclined to be green guinea pigs — indeed, more than half vote for the German Green Party. Still, many say it is the quality of life that keeps them here.

Henk Schulz, a scientist who on one afternoon last month was watching his three young children wander around Vauban, remembers his excitement at buying his first car. Now, he said, he is glad to be raising his children away from cars; he does not worry much about their safety in the street.

In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany. But whether the concept will work in California is an open question.

More than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in the Bay Area’s “car-reduced” Quarry Village, and Mr. Lewis is still looking for about $2 million in seed financing to get the project off the ground.

But if it doesn’t work, his backup proposal is to build a development on the same plot that permits unfettered car use. It would be called Village d’Italia.

Original here

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