Older people with low levels of vitamin B12 may be more prone to age-related memory declines and brain shrinkage.
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Kenya’s Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai dies Telugu News – Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai dies of cancer Kenyan heroine Wangari Maathai dies in hospital MVwambanji says: RT @ karennattiah : RT @ CapitalFM_kenya : NOBEL Peace prize winner Wangari Maathai dies while receiving treatment at … http://t.co/wDG02EUn
Continue reading …It’s either Jesus or jail for small-time offenders in Bay Minette, Alabama. Operation Restore Our Community is kicking off there this week, giving misdemeanor offenders the choice between a year of Sunday church services or fines and jail, Raw Story reports. Pastors invented the program on the presupposition that crime…
Continue reading …Android powered 56 percent of smartphones sold in the last three months
September 26, 2011 No Comment
When last we checked in with Nielsen (which was earlier this month) Google’s mobile OS had a sizable lead, powering just under 42-percent of smartphones sold, while Apple had cornered a more than respectable 28-percent of the market. In the few short weeks since, Android has seen its share grow to 43-percent. More interestingly, of the over 25,500 surveyed who had purchased a smartphone in the last three months, a whopping 56-percent chose to go with the Goog. Apple held a steady 28-percent across the board. Big G’s gains came at the expense of RIM (only 9-percent of phones sold in the last three months were BlackBerries) and the ambiguous “other” (Symbian, Windows Phone 7, Bada, MeeGo, etc… accounted for 6-percent of sales). More important than choice of platform though, is that smartphone sales in general are climbing — accounting for 58-percent of all handsets sold in August and driving smartphone penetration to 43-percent. Android powered 56 percent of smartphones sold in the last three months originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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DoreenTQE says: PSP: Study : more young people having unsafe sex – http://t.co/KeJUKcnI
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Hottest MLB Wives Hottest Baseball Wives 2010 Contest | Fantasy Basebal Dugout salemiot says: RT @ TMZ : Red Sox pitcher John Lackey has filed to divorce his wife, who is in the middle of battling breast cancer http://t.co/mph91ZkW
Continue reading …John Caughman Sues Bank Of America After Being Locked Inside Connecticut Branch (WATCH)
September 26, 2011 No Comment
Already this year Bank of America has allegedly dealt with depositing $30,000 of Social Security payments into the wrong account and asking a man to pay $0.00 in order to avoid foreclosure. Now, one customer is suing the banking giant for allegedly locking him alone inside a Connecticut branch, according to The Consumerist. The man went into his safe deposit box to examine some documents while the bank was being evacuated due to a bomb threat, The Consumerist reports. No one told the customer, however. Instead he found himself locked alone inside the building as police surrounded the bank branch. The man, John Caughman, was finally escorted out of the bank by a police officer after being left in the building for “a considerable length of time,” according to his official complaint obtained by Courthouse News. But the ordeal didn’t end once he was outside; bank employees mocked him, joking that they left him inside and forgot him, Courthouse News reports. The man is seeking damages for false imprisonment, emotional distress, negligence and medical expenses, according to The Consumerist. This is at least second lawsuit announcement Bank of America is facing in a week. A shareholder sued the Bank of America on Friday, accusing the company of failing to disclose a potential $10 billion AIG loss, according to Reuters. And it’s not Bank of America alone that’s become familiar with the customer mishap. Just this month, Chase was forced to deal with the fallout accompanying accidentally freezing the account of a couple with sufficient funds.
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The Washington Post puffed up the rookie performance of liberal Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan on the front page Monday. The headline was “Kagan made her mark in a bold rookie term.” But inside the paper was the more obvious conclusion, in the headline: “Kagan soothed liberal fears by shoring up the court’s left flank.” Reporter Robert Barnes is one of many liberal reporters who like pretending that Kagan was somehow an ideological mystery during the confirmation process, despite being picked to be Barack Obama’s solicitor general before the high court. While Kagan’s writings as an academic did not suggest a strong legal philosophy, her opinions and dissents from the bench have shown a conversational, confident writer, at times as sarcastic and cutting as a veteran. And liberals who worried that she would not shore up the court’s left flank have so far found their concerns unfounded. The man she replaced, Justice John Paul Stevens, said he can think of only a couple of cases where she voted differently than he would have. And the senior liberal justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seems especially taken with her. “She has already shown her talent as an incisive questioner at oral argument and a writer of eminently readable opinions,” Ginsburg said in a speech this summer. Richard Lazarus, a Harvard law professor who closely follows the court, said the “most striking thing about the term, especially since she had never been a judge, was that she hit the ground running and seemed to fit right in at the court.” For their part, MRC research found the networks prevented any conservatives from speaking out about how Justice Kagan would be a very liberal-pleasing Obama pick. But now, she's cast as the brash lefty, the socialist Scalia: In two cases, she wrote powerful dissents that displayed a strong opposition to government efforts that aid religion and a lengthy defense of campaign finance laws enacted to remove corruption from politics. In both, she represented the liberal side of the court. She received plaudits for her crisp writing and uncompromising language, and a few questions about whether she was too brash for a rookie… She also was tough and sarcastic in her dissents; Cornell law professor Michael Dorf called it “channeling her inner-Scalia,” referring to the senior justice’s famously acid-tipped pen. Dorf thought it was at times the wrong tone for Kagan in her first year. “It struck me as her saying, ‘Hey, I can be one of the boys.’ ” he said. But he acknowledges that others disagree. For instance, in the campaign finance dissent, she said her colleagues on the other side thought that they had found a smoking gun. “But the only smoke here is the majority’s, and it is the kind that goes with mirrors,” Kagan wrote. When her interviewer at Aspen read that line, the audience laughed and applauded. Kagan said: “You know, listening to that, I’m not sure I would have written it that way again.” That's the Aspen Institute, all right — the liberal establishment, often accompanied by top journalists. After all, Aspen head Walter Isaacson a former CEO of CNN and longtime editor at Time magazine.
Continue reading …Title: Godzilla Artist: Blue Oyster Cult This video will surely start your week off right.
Continue reading …AP’s Delays Dedicating a Story to Cain’s Fla. Victory Until ‘Today’ Puts Him on the Defensive
September 26, 2011 No Comment
Herman Cain's victory in Saturday's GOP straw poll in Florida didn't become headline news at the Associated Press until after the candidate's Monday morning “Today Show” interview. Earlier today at NewsBusters , Kyle Drennen noted how “Today's” Ann Curry tried to frame the result as some kind of “protest vote.” Having delayed dedicating a story to Cain's victory for roughly 36 hours, the headline in AP's unbylined story this morning was: “GOP's Cain says win in Fla. straw poll not a fluke.” In other words, it didn't become news at the wire service until someone else in the media put the candidate on the defensive about the significance of his win, thus avoiding giving him any moment of unvarnished recognition for the good old-fashioned butt-kicking he delivered (37% Cain, 15% Perry, 14% Romney, 11% Santorum, all others under 10%). How convenient. A more detailed rendition: Saturday night (at NewsBusters ; at BizzyBlog ), I noted that the AP's Philip Elliott and Kasie Hunt did not even deign to devote a story to Cain's victory. The only Cain-related activity on Sunday was what was from all appearances a slight update of the Saturday evening story which relegated the details of Cain's victory to Paragraph 12, while burning most of the first eleven paragraphs with Rick Perry's situation and the supposed interest in New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's possible candidacy. This morning's unbylined six-paragraph AP report made sure to plant seeds of doubt before telling readers what actually happened on Saturday: GOP's Cain says win in Fla. straw poll not a fluke Businessman Herman Cain says his victory in the Florida Republican straw poll was authentic and wasn't a statement by voters against Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Cain tells NBC's “Today” show the weekend test balloting was “not a protest vote.” Cain says his performance shows “the voice of the people is more powerful than the voice of the media.” … Cain says the straw poll illustrates that “people are listening to the message and not just, with all due respect, to the media.” Two reports at Pajamas Media, one by Kyle-Anne Shiver and the other by Myra Adams, reinforce the notion that Cain's win was far from flukey, and far from insignificant. First, Ms. Shiver : The first time I heard Herman Cain refer to himself as “the dark-horse candidate,” I knew that man had the kind of character and wisdom which smart people look for when picking a leader. Cain has risen so far above the superficiality of racialist, skin-color thinking that he makes those who pander to it or run from it look like a bunch of kindergarteners hurling spitballs. … For one thing, the Presidency 5 isn’t run like Iowa’s straw poll. In Florida, the state party leaders take their swing-state significance and their 29 large-share electoral votes very seriously. Not just anyone who shows up at Presidency 5 gets to vote in the election (and they call it an “election,” not a “straw poll”). … Every person casting a vote in Florida’s poll has been active in party politics and earned their spot, which makes Florida’s pre-election poll much more significant than Iowa’s… … No matter how the pundits slice, dice, or try to puree Cain’s phenomenal victory this weekend in Florida, this shakes up the presidential race in much the same way that the Tea Party has been doing since the spring of 2009. Cain’s win might not signal an earthquake yet, but it helps him in some very significant ways. For one thing, the Florida Republican Party delegates have sent a very loud message to the high-rolling insiders in D.C. The conservative party base has grown very weary of its step-child status among the GOP establishment and are signaling that they might not just go along to get along this time around. … Herman Cain was on the ground in Orlando by Friday morning, just after a sterling debate performance in Tampa the night before. Cain, the nomination underdog, worked hard Friday and Saturday, speaking extemporaneously to small groups of delegates — groups that reportedly grew larger and larger as the weekend progressed. And Cain was evidently winning voters over one at a time the way candidates used to do it — in person. They call it “retail politics.” … Floridian delegates got over their “not electable” reticence and took a chance with Cain. Cain says this is what you call “momentum,” and he’s turned around failing businesses enough to know momentum by its scent. Ms. Adams doesn't believe that Cain's performance was necessarily a game-changer, but came away duly impressed: Herman Cain showered the delegates with lots of love, inspiration, and political wisdom. The delegates, in turn, received his love. In fact, they were positively smitten, and rewarded Cain with their votes. This blossoming love affair unfolded slowly and built up to a frenzy right before the straw poll votes were cast. … So what happened between Thursday night and late Saturday afternoon that enabled Cain to win over the hearts and minds of 37% of the delegates, with Perry receiving 15.4% and Romney 14%? As one of the delegates succinctly said to me shortly after Cain’s victory was announced, “Cain is a businessman; he groomed us, he entertained us, and he closed the sale.” Another delegate leaned first towards Perry, then after the debate towards Romney, and ended up voting for Cain, because he said “Romney ignored us” and “his organization was poor.” … (At CPAC’s Friday night “Reagan Reception”) Cain mesmerized the crowd with what I call a cross between a Tony Robbins-style motivational speech and a Sunday morning church sermon in a slow, deep, voice that sounded like the movie voice of God. Furthermore, Cain was always present when the other frontrunners had either left the state (Romney especially) or were otherwise too busy or too uppity to socialize freely with “the folks.” Cain showed he cared enough to send his very best — himself. Instead of taking the event seriously, as those who attended clearly did, Elliott and Hunt on Saturday night dismissed the event as “mostly a popularity contest among the delegates selected by local party organizations.” It's almost enough to make you wonder if anyone at AP was actually there to see any of what went on, or even to interview people who could have relayed what was really going on. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .
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