A Brave New Plan for America, the World, and Noodles: My Time in Madison, Wisconsin
March 1, 2011 No Comment
One morning last week I awoke and read the news: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican legislature were ready to pass a budget repair bill aimed at bridging the state’s $3.6 billion deficit, protecting 5,500 public employees from lay-offs and furloughs, granting freedom of choice to public employees with regard to joining a union, Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Big Government Discovery Date : 28/02/2011 13:48 Number of articles : 4
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Jane Russell, star of ’40s and ’50s films, dies; Charlie Sheen says he’s fighting for ‘Two and a Half Men’ crew to be paid fully; ‘Hall Pass’ goes to No. 1 on debut weekend. (Mar.1)
Continue reading …Towns throughout Ohio and parts of the Midwest braced for more flooding Tuesday, a day after storms and tornadoes damaged buildings and homes in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. Three tornadoes touched down in Indiana on Monday. A tornado destroyed three homes in Kentucky’s Henry County, northeast of Louisville, and six…
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First, the good news: Xtreamer has its lovely little Ultra HTPC out and hooked up here at CeBIT. Now, the bad: the considerably more beautiful Prodigy streamer is under lock and key, and they won’t be doing any demos. Ah, well — may as well make the best of the situation, right? In brief, the Ultra might be the baddest little HTPC we’ve seen here at the show — Xtreamer seems to have nailed the equation with the small size and the price point. It doesn’t look cheap, either; we imagine it’s a little overbuilt-looking with those faux heat sink fins for some living rooms, but you can plug in an IR extender and bury the actual box in a cabinet if you like. The company’s staying very media platform-agnostic, shipping with Boxee and XBMC among others on a 2GB USB flash drive that houses the entire operating system. And at a shipping price of €200 (about $277), it puts the hurt on the Boxee Box. Look for it in early April. Turning our attention to the Prodigy, this thing is seriously gorgeous for one reason: a large curved sheet of metal covering the top and sides. Functionality is another matter entirely, though, and as we mentioned before, Xtreamer isn’t demoing it here. On paper, at least, it should take care of business thanks to USB 3.0 and AirPlay support along with an internal 3.5-inch hard drive bay — and the company is currently taking pre-orders for €50 (about $69), which seems dirt cheap for what you’re getting. Like the Ultra, Xtreamer expects to ship it in early April. Gallery: Xtreamer Ultra and Prodigy hands-on at CeBIT 2011 Xtreamer Ultra HTPC hands-on — and Prodigy eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Okay, picture an ASUS Eee PC 1015. Got it? Good — now picture it with AMD Fusion internals. Boom: the 1015B is born. We spied versions in both white and black trim here at CeBIT , promising 1080p output in your choice of 1.2GHz single-core and 1GHz dual-core APUs, both with ATI Radeon HD 6250 graphics, 1GB of RAM (expandable to 2), and Bluetooth 3.0 along with 802.11b/g/n WiFi. If you’re looking for something a little beefier, ASUS has a Fusion remake of the 1215, too — the 1215B — with many of the same features but the added benefit of a larger 12.1-inch WXGA LCD, an optional 1.6GHz AMD E350 dual-core processor, and up to 4GB of RAM. No word on when these will be in retail channels, but by all appearances, these are production or very-near-production models on display here at the show, so we imagine they’ll be popping up any time now. Gallery: ASUS Eee PC 1015B hands-on at CeBIT 2011 Gallery: ASUS Eee PC 1215B hands-on at CeBIT 2011 ASUS Eee PC 1015B and 1215B hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Photo: B. Alter: Aquatics Centre, December, 2010 London’s successful bid for the Olympic 2012 Games was based on its commitment to a sustainable legacy: that’s Olympic-speak for maintaining and reusing the buildings for athletic and community use after the big event. The massive Olympic Stadium has just been saved from threat of demolition but now the Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatics Centre is going down the drain. The giant swimming pool has been controversial from the start and rema… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Poll: Over One Million Wisconsin Voters Ready To Sign His Recall Petition, But Walker Doubles Down
March 1, 2011 No CommentYou have to hand it to Scott Walker — he’s a wingnut true believer, with the charming personality of a rock and absolutely all the political instincts of a dead fish. Because Wisconsin voters are awake now, they know that class war is being waged, and they’re not going to sit and take it: MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s explosive proposal to take nearly all collective bargaining rights away from most public workers represents just one piece of his vision for the state’s future. Now he’s ready to reveal the rest. With the union rights proposal stuck in a legislative stalemate thanks to runaway Senate Democrats, Walker planned to forge ahead with the Tuesday release of his two-year spending plan that will include major cuts to schools and local governments to help close a projected $3.6 billion budget shortfall. Tens of thousands of protesters have demonstrated for two weeks against Walker’s collective bargaining proposal, which he calls necessary to free local governments from having to bargain with public employee unions as they deal with the cuts he’ll outline Tuesday. Schools last week started putting teachers on notice that their contracts may not be renewed for next year given the budget uncertainty. Walker has confirmed he will propose cutting education aid by about $900 million, or 9 percent statewide. School leaders are bracing for more bad news. The governor is expected Tuesday to announce a new revenue limit that would require a $500 per-pupil reduction in property tax authority. The limits, in place since 1993, have gradually grown to reflect increasing education costs. That part of Walker’s proposal alone would reduce the money available to the state’s 424 districts by 7 percent, or nearly $600 million , based on a study done by University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor Andrew Reschovsky. Looks like his arrogance will cost him big-time . A new poll shows that an estimate 1.1 million Wisconsin voters are willing to sign his recall petition, and that of eight Republican state senators. Yes, elections have consequences. But when you act as if you’re the only person whose opinions count, well, the voters have a way of reminding you otherwise.
Continue reading …Poll: Over One Million Wisconsin Voters Ready To Sign His Recall Petition, But Walker Doubles Down
March 1, 2011 No CommentYou have to hand it to Scott Walker — he’s a wingnut true believer, with the charming personality of a rock and absolutely all the political instincts of a dead fish. Because Wisconsin voters are awake now, they know that class war is being waged, and they’re not going to sit and take it: MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s explosive proposal to take nearly all collective bargaining rights away from most public workers represents just one piece of his vision for the state’s future. Now he’s ready to reveal the rest. With the union rights proposal stuck in a legislative stalemate thanks to runaway Senate Democrats, Walker planned to forge ahead with the Tuesday release of his two-year spending plan that will include major cuts to schools and local governments to help close a projected $3.6 billion budget shortfall. Tens of thousands of protesters have demonstrated for two weeks against Walker’s collective bargaining proposal, which he calls necessary to free local governments from having to bargain with public employee unions as they deal with the cuts he’ll outline Tuesday. Schools last week started putting teachers on notice that their contracts may not be renewed for next year given the budget uncertainty. Walker has confirmed he will propose cutting education aid by about $900 million, or 9 percent statewide. School leaders are bracing for more bad news. The governor is expected Tuesday to announce a new revenue limit that would require a $500 per-pupil reduction in property tax authority. The limits, in place since 1993, have gradually grown to reflect increasing education costs. That part of Walker’s proposal alone would reduce the money available to the state’s 424 districts by 7 percent, or nearly $600 million , based on a study done by University of Wisconsin-Madison economics professor Andrew Reschovsky. Looks like his arrogance will cost him big-time . A new poll shows that an estimate 1.1 million Wisconsin voters are willing to sign his recall petition, and that of eight Republican state senators. Yes, elections have consequences. But when you act as if you’re the only person whose opinions count, well, the voters have a way of reminding you otherwise.
Continue reading …‘Ethicist’ Columnist Randy Cohen Departs New York Times, Leaving Leftist Legacy Behind
March 1, 2011 No Comment
After 12 years and 614 columns (by his count), Randy Cohen has penned his last “Ethicist” column for the New York Times Magazine , signing off last Sunday. Cohen’s columns, in which he gave letter-writers advice on the right thing to do in ethically sticky situations, often glanced over cultural and ideological topics, which Cohen consistently addressed from a pungent left-wing perspective. According to the paper's veteran columnist, Bush was an incompetent and insane president who lied us into war, socialism is a good thing, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates should have sued the police, and no one can work for a tobacco company in good conscience. Below are some liberal lowlights from Cohen, both from his column, his blog, and various television appearances. In an October 24, 2010 column, Cohen wrote that no one could honorably work for a tobacco company. The gravity of the misdeeds is also significant. I believe, for example, nobody may honorably work for a tobacco company, the maker of a toxic product that, used as directed, annually kills 400,000 Americans. How grave is too grave? Alas, there is no universal bright line. But your employer seems to have crossed yours. On June 20, 2010 Cohen defended socialism's good name: Incidentally, not that the president is one, but how does it defame a person to call him a “socialist” (outside of nutty far-right circles) — a set of ideas many advanced Western democracies find congenial, what with the accessible health-care, affordable higher education and good public transportation? In a July 27, 2009 blog item on nytimes.com, he wrote of the then-current controversy over Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, urging Gates to sue the Cambridge police for arresting him for disorderly conduct, arguing that a lawsuit would be a valuable tool to probe “the troubled history of police interactions with African-Americans.” Cohen judged the entire episode through the prism of race, failing to address the fact that at least two of Crowley's black fellow officers back him up and not Gates.
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