Click here to view this media The clip is from earlier this month on Fox Business, but seeing as perhaps 800,000 people are about to lose their unemployment benefits at midnight, and a further 1.2 million on December 31, it seems as good a time as any to see the arguments presented through the Fox Looking Glass. For instance, the host notes armed guards are now being posted at unemployment centers, in case anyone “loses it”, and then asks if his guests are armed. Assured both aren’t “packing”, things move along to the more natural questions of just how bad things are out there in the job market (otherwise known as “the real world”), but not before Bo Dietl suggests the strong likelihood of such incidents with the coming Holiday season. Former Senator Al D’Amato thinks that if only the Obama’s wouldn’t take foreign trips that would somehow pay for unemployment extensions. Near the middle things go off the rails again when one of the guests dares to say out loud that all the Bush Tax Cuts be repealed and “everyone pay their fair share” to get us out of this mess. An uproar naturally ensues for the next 2-3 minutes on how horrible it would be for small buiness owners (aka millionaires) to be subjected to any such thing. All in all, probably a typical moment in everyday Fox Land, where the unemployed are painted as lazy and criminal, while the rich are not expected to be subjected to any personal sacrifice whatsoever.
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Kremlin relies on criminals and rewards them with political patronage, while top officials collect bribes ‘like a personal taxation system’ US and other western diplomats believe the Russian government is a corrupt ‘mafia state’, according to WikiLeaks cables Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a “virtual mafia state”, according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower….
Continue reading …Gay Rights Activist/MSNBC Anchor Contessa Brewer: Support for DADT ‘Doesn’t Make A Lot of Sense’
December 1, 2010 No Comment
During Wednesday's 12PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer attacked those who want to maintain the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy: “…the Marine Corps and Catholic chaplains, who say they support the policy on moral grounds. It doesn't make a lot of sense…if it's homosexuality that they have a problem with – they're basically saying, 'Yeah, just keep lying about it.'” Later in the hour, Brewer interviewed Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman about his support for repealing the policy. She labeled Arizona Senator John McCain as the villain preventing repeal: “So John McCain has been one of the most formidable foes when it comes to repealing this policy….Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen support repealing this policy. Have you talked with Senator McCain? Is he willing to give?” read more
Continue reading …NC State and CMU develop velocity-sensing shoe radar, aim to improve indoor GPS routing
December 1, 2010 No Comment
The world at large owes a good bit to Maxwell Smart , you know. Granted, it’s hard to directly link the faux shoe phone to the GPS-equipped kicks that are around today, but the lineage is certainly apparent . The only issue with GPS in your feet is how they react when you waltz indoors, which is to say, not at all . In the past, most routing apparatuses have used inertial measurement units (IMUs) to track motion, movement and distance once GPS reception is lost indoors, but those have proven poor at spotting the difference between a slow gait and an outright halt. Enter NC State and Carnegie Mellon University, who have worked in tandem in order to develop a prototype shoe radar that’s specifically designed to sense velocity. Within the shoe, a radar is attached to a diminutive navigational computer that “tracks the distance between your heel and the ground; if that distance doesn’t change within a given period of time, the navigation computer knows that your foot is stationary.” Hard to say when Nike will start testing these out in the cleats worn by football players, but after last week’s abomination of a spot (and subsequent botching of a review by one Ron Cherry) during the NC State – Maryland matchup, we’re hoping it’s sooner rather than later. NC State and CMU develop velocity-sensing shoe radar, aim to improve indoor GPS routing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Images credit Zhao Kang Rents in Beijing are high, so designer Daihai Fei built himself a wonderful little green home that may well become a new icon for the Tiny House Movement. Tipster Spooky writes: Daihai Fei built his amazing egg-house on a bamboo frame, covered with various insulating materials, and topped with a layer of stitched bag. The bags themselves are filled with sawdust and g… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Photo: respres , Flickr, CC Yes, it’s conventional wisdom at this point that a bursting housing bubble was the cause of the current, ongoing recession. But a primary reason that bubble may have burst was that homeowners had less money to pay their mortgages after rising costs of gasoline and electricity ate into their budgets. This is precisely what a new report published in the journal Environment Research Letters proposes. In fact, the report points out that rising energy costs have preceded … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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LeBron James returns to Cleveland Thursday night with his new Miami Heat teammates. AP Sports Writer Tom Withers says James can expect a healthy serving of boos as the city and Cavs fans haven’t quite gotten over losing their superstar forward. (Dec. 1)
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Breast shields should be used to spare the breast tissue from radiation in both men and women undergoing CT scans of the lung.
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AP college football writer Ralph Russo says the NCAA has cleared Cam Newton of certain allegations but the book is not closed on the Auburn quarterback. (Dec. 1)
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