We’re guessing the past few months haven’t been the greatest at Thinkflood, who has been dealing with a nasty recall of RedEye Mini IR dongles . Based on information passed down from the company to us today, each one of the recalled units have been replaced, and now the redesigned / better-than-ever models are on sale for the same price as before. $49 nets you an IR adapter that plugs into your iDevice headphone jack, enabling your iPod touch, iPhone or iPad to control essentially any home entertainment component that understands Infrared. Crisis averted, as they say. Thinkflood survives recall, now shipping redesigned RedEye Mini originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 06:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Arab ministers have agreed to give the US another month to try to keep Israeli-Palestinian peace talks from collapsing. The decision came on Friday at an Arab League summit in the Libyan city of Sirte. The Arab leaders want the US to persuade Israel to renew a freeze on West Bank settlement construction. They have supported the Palestinians’ decision to stop direct talks with Israel unless the Israelis agree to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank. The Arab
Continue reading …Wait for miners ‘like living in a dream’ Copiapo, Chile (CNN) — There may be light at the end of a nearly completed tunnel for the 33 men trapped since August 5 almost half a mile below ground, with rescuers expected to reach them within a day, Chile’s mining minister said Friday afternoon. “Hopefully before that,” Mining Minister Laurence Golborne told reporters about the time when a rescue drill is expected to pierce the roof of the mine. As of Friday afternoon, it was 40 meters (about 130 feet) away. “Maybe tomorrow morning, early Saturday. We have to wait and see.” Once the mine has been reached, the rescue process could begin within three to four days, Golborne told reporters….
Continue reading …TIANJIN, China (AFP) – UN climate talks were set to wrap up on Saturday with China and the United States locked in a stand-off, slowing down progress ahead of a major summit next month on global warming. The major powers sparred throughout the six days of talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, prompting the hosts to warn on the penultimate day that the atmosphere for negotiation had deteriorated. “I want to emphasise no compromise… on the interests of developing countries,” the Chinese foreign ministry's special representative for climate change, Huang Huikang, told delegates on Friday. “We are losing trust and confidence.” Delegates…
Continue reading …Bill Maher on Friday called former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a horse’s ass. In the opening monologue of his “Real Time” program on HBO, Maher brought up the recent brouhaha surrounding Alaska Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller’s refusal to express his support for Palin as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. “So then Todd Palin, all pissed off, wrote him a bunch of emails full of like grammatical errors, spelling errors,” joked Maher. The comedian continued, “You mess with Todd Palin, you could wake up with a horse’s ass in your bed, like he does every day” (video follows with transcript and commentary): BILL MAHER: And Todd Palin, have you heard this story? Okay. In Alaska, Joe Miller, he’s the tea bagger nut who’s running for senate there. They got into a big brouhaha because apparently Sarah Palin put this guy on the map, and then this guy, Joe Miller, was asked if Sarah Palin could be president, and kind of, – “I don’t know.” [Laughter] So then Todd Palin, all pissed off, wrote him a bunch of emails full of like grammatical errors, spelling errors. Don’t f–k with Todd Palin. He will make you an offer he can’t pronounce. [Applause] I’m serious. You mess with Todd Palin, you could wake up with a horse’s ass in your bed, like he does every day. Can you imagine a Democrat woman being joked about this way? The National Organization for Women would be demanding an apology or a resignation within minutes. Sadly, what we’ve seen in recent years is there are absolutely no boundaries involving sexism or misogyny when the butt of a joke is a conservative woman. These days, comedians like Maher clearly flaunt this double standard with total impunity. Must be nice to be able to offend and demean women on national television knowing full well women’s rights groups won’t care due to the politics of the woman in question.
Continue reading …BUDAPEST – Emergency workers found the bodies of two more victims of the toxic red sludge near the village of Devecser on Friday afternoon, bringing the death toll of the spill to seven. One person remains missing. Tibor Dobson, spokesman for the disaster mitigation staff reported finding the two bodies, but gave no details. Two women and one man are believed to have been missing. An…
Continue reading …QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Gunmen in southwestern Pakistan set fire to nearly 30 tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Saturday, an official said, two days after the United States apologized to Pakistan for a cross-border air raid that killed two Pakistani soldiers. Suspected Islamist militants have…
Continue reading …America was horrified by the story that erupted in the national news, that Rutgers college freshman Tyler Clementi threw himself off a bridge because his new roommate used a webcam to tape a homosexual encounter in which he’d engaged. Media outlets quickly dispatched their cavalry to find the experts to explain why America is a land of incessant bullying. The if is no longer debatable. We’re on to the why. This could have been a moment of national unity. Almost everyone can tell a story of being the target of bullying or mean-spirited ridicule about being too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, too dumb, too smart, you name it. But others found this tragedy offered too rich a rhetorical opportunity. It was not a suicide to them. It was a murder. CNN’s “Larry King Live” brought on the antonym of human dignity, Kathy Griffin, who quickly inflamed the Clementi moment by charging “the blood’s on their hands” of our “so-called leaders.” She insisted, “I think that the way that we had trickle-down economics in the ’80s, this is trickle-down homophobia. And I really want people to connect the dots. And that’s why I believe there’s a connection between Prop 8, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and now the string of teen suicides.” Holy smokes. So Ronald Reagan killed him. Let’s put aside that ridiculous “connecting the dots” charge for a second. Larry King should have been asked: Given that Kathy Griffin regularly takes to the stage and television to viciously attack other people, is she really the kind of personality that can plausibly pose as the guardian of empathy and the role model for anti-bullying behavior? This year, she made the rounds of talk shows laughing up the controversy she created when she said Sen. Scott Brown’s daughters were “prostitutes.” One daughter, Arianna, is a freshman at Syracuse University – the same age as the boy who took his own life. Griffin’s even wished violence on people. She recently told a Playgirl magazine writer “I’d like to push Sarah Palin down the stairs.” Now she’s CNN’s anti-bullying poster child. But Griffin wasn’t alone. Sitting right next to her was lesbian comic Wanda Sykes, who chimed in with her own love taps. “In the laws and everything else that’s out here, in the churches that they preach that homophobia [sic] is wrong. You pretty much have given kids permission to disrespect and, you know, and to cause harm to the gay and lesbian community.” This is the same “comedian” who “joked” in front of the president that she hoped Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys failed and he died. Now, she’s on CNN lecturing on bullying. Then there’s Sarah Silverman, another comedian who thrives on shocking and insulting comments. Silverman went on YouTube to lecture the country: “Dear America, When you tell gay Americans that you can’t serve their country openly or marry the person that they love, you’re telling that to kids, too. So don’t be f—ing shocked, wondering where all these bullies are coming from who are torturing young kids and driving them to kill themselves because they’re different. They learned it from watching you.” Once again, putting aside the downright stupid accusation that opposing gay marriage is a bullying-and-suicide platform, is Silverman a role model against bullying? At almost the same time her accusatory video piled up more than 200,000 views, Silverman was vomiting this sex “joke” on Twitter: “9/11 widows give the best [sex act].” Can you say cognitive dissonance? She’s now lecturing on bullying. The left has no shame. None. On her satellite radio show, Rosie O’Donnell joined in the same party-line smear: “Well, if the society sanctions bigotry against gay people, how can you expect the children of this society not to…internalize that? Whether it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ whether it’s gay marriage, [it's] being told by your country that you are not as valuable as your neighbor who’s straight.” Rosie O’Donnell denouncing bullying is akin to Michael Vick denouncing dog fighting. Perhaps the least famous but most ridiculous scold on this issue is Hollywood gossip Perez Hilton, who CNN also sought out for advice and hailed his anti-suicide activism. Hilton’s most famous for being a judge in the Miss USA contest and demanding during the final question-and-answer period that Miss California Carrie Prejean endorse gay marriage. When she refused, he did a round of interviews calling her a “dumb [B-word].” Then on a picture of her holding a microphone, he drew in a penis on his website. He’s done that and worse sexual smears to celebrity pictures for years. Now he’s featured on CNN in an ongoing parade of guests denouncing conservatives for bullying.
Continue reading …People may call Meg Whitman many things—“ whore ” is probably not the term most typically among them. In among what may be the former Governor’s worst nightmare, Jerry Brown forgot to hang up the phone during his race for election. … At 1: 50 in the attached YouTube video blurb, the taped phone conversation by Brown complains that Whitman has bought support of police—creating an exception for them in the Whitman pension reform plan. ”They know Whitman will give ‘em, …
Continue reading …The HotAir blog had perhaps the most charitable thing to say about Brown: Look on the bright side. It’s an improvement over Jerry Brown’s earlier comment comparing Meg Whitman to Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. … But the same diatribe that led to the “ whore ” insult also had Brown, in that private, unscripted moment, saying he was going to lose an important endorsement because he wasn’t willing to give a special pension break to a law enforcement union. …
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