বৃহস্পতিবার, ৩১ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

Private survey shows employers added 192,000 jobs in January

New York?

Private-sector employers added 192,000 jobs in January, more than economists had expected, indicating Friday?s jobs report from the government may be a good one.

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The numbers, from a private survey by payroll processor ADP, provided a glimmer of optimism about the economy the same morning the government reported the nation?s GDP contracted in the fourth quarter.

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?It feels to me that the job market is improving,? said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody?s Analytics. ?Job growth has accelerated.?

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Job growth is now hovering at about 175,000 jobs a month, he said, which should be enough to bring the unemployment rate down every month. Zandi predicts the unemployment rate, currently at 7.8%, will fall to 7.3% by the end of the year, and will dip below 7% by this time next year.

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Although the ADP report showed weakness in the manufacturing sector, probably related to sluggish European economies, it showed growth in construction, trade and professional and business services.

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Small businesses, with one to 49 employees, provided the bulk of the hiring, ADP said. Small businesses added 115,000 jobs. Medium businesses, with 50 to 499 employees, added 79,000. Large businesses actually shed 2,000 jobs in January.

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The ADP report only tracks private-sector employment, while Friday?s jobs report also includes the government sector, which has been contracting for the better part of two years. The numbers usually provide some guidance to economists about what to expect from the national job figures, although last month, ADP showed employers had added 215,000 private-sector jobs, while the government figures showed that the private sector added just 168,000.

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Zandi was quick to emphasize the good news about the ADP report, while downplaying the surprising GDP contraction. He said that when the government revises the number, he expects it will show growth, rather than contraction, in the fourth quarter.

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?I will be surprised if we end up with negative quarter,? he said.

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Still, GDP growth will only grow 1.5% in the first quarter of this year, he said, which is not a very impressive number. That?s because a payroll tax was restored after two years, meaning consumers have less take-home pay, and probably will spend less as they adjust to their new finances.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average, on the brink of passing 14,000, was down in early market trading.

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ALSO:

Economy shrinks unexpectedly in fourth quarter

U.S. economy grows by 155,000 jobs in December

Consumers to see smaller paychecks despite fiscal cliff deal

Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-adpreport-20130130,0,5146393.story?track=rss

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Deadrin Senat chooses South Florida over South Carolina. What now?

The three star defensive tackle picks the Bulls over the Gamecocks. Where does that leave USC for the 2013 recruiting class?

A little more than a week ago, it appeared as though Immokalee, FL defensive tackle Deadrin Senat was on the brink of committing to South Carolina, but on Tuesday he announced his intention to sign with the South Florida Bulls.

The good news is that the crown jewel of the Gamecocks' defensive line class - Hochston, GA defensive tackle Kelsy Griffin - is already committed to South Carolina. The bad news is that Senat's commitment, paired with reports that Auburn is pulling away with Alabama LB Jonathan Walton, means that South Carolina has a much slimmer margin for error with the remaining targets if they want to finish with a strong class.

Remaining Targets

Keith Bryant, 4 stars 183rd overall, 21st defensive tackle*

Bryant's recruitment has had more twists and turns and To Be Continued... cliffhangers than a J.J. Abrams television series. Bryant originally committed to the Miami Hurricanes, then was thought to be favoring South Carolina after an his unofficial during the weekend of the Georgia game, then decommitted from Miami, and then flaked on his scheduled official visit to South Carolina on January 18th to visit Miami while now naming Florida State as the favorite.

The Gamecocks finally got him back on campus for an official visit last weekend, a trip that Bryant and his family have given rave reviews. Now, Bryant says that his decision is "practically made." Steve Spurrier will be in Florida on Thursday to visit Bryant. The big defensive tackle is expected to announce a final decision on National Signing Day.

Completely unscientific approximation of the probability that Bryant will sign with South Carolina: 50%

Yannick Ngakoue, 4 stars, 315th overall, 18th inside linebacker

For the most part, everything has been quiet with the Mr. Ngakoue since his official visit to South Carolina on January 18th. Yannick was scheduled to visit Miami last weekend but cancelled that visit after his OV to Columbia. G.A. Mangus made the trip to visit Ngakoue in D.C. on January 23rd. Maryland assistant Mike Locksley dropped in on Tuesday. It's expected to come down to those to schools on National Signing Day.

I feel cautiously optimistic about South Carolina's chances of landing Yannick for a pair of reasons:

1) Ngakoue and Gamecock commit Na'Ty Rodgers have bonded during the recruiting process and the pair made their official visit together, which may negate to a certain degree any advantage that Maryland might have by having Ngakoue's teammate, Derwin Gray, already committed to their 2013 class

2) Ngakoue's decision to cancel his official visit to Miami in the wake of his visit to South Carolina logically suggests that something happened on his official visit to Columbia to make him think that he had seen all that he needed to see and didn't need to visit anywhere else.

Completely unscientific approximation of the probability that Ngakoue will sign with South Carolina: 50%

Skai Moore, 3 stars, 385th overall, 28th outside linebacker

Last weekend Moore visited Rutgers, the school to which he was originally committed. Coming out of his January 18th official visit, Moore was naming the Gamecocks as a favorite, but things seem to be up in the air now between a number of schools, including South Carolina, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Moore is currently scheduled to OV to Arkansas this weekend, but he could potentially change those plans and visit the Volunteers.

Completely unscientific approximation of the probability that Moore will sign with South Carolina: 40%

James Hearns, 3 stars, 311th overall, 17th inside linebacker

Since mentioning the Gamecocks as a team of potential interest in the immediate aftermath of having his offer pulled by Florida, not much has happened on the James Hearns front. Keep in mind that academics were the impetus behind his departure from the Gators' recruiting class, so even if he did end up committing to South Carolina, there's a high probability that he would end up needing to be placed in a JUCO or prep school.

Hearns visited Kentucky last weekend and does not currently have plans to visit South Carolina.

Completely unscientific approximation of the probability that Hearns will sign with South Carolina: 20%

Tyrell Lyons, 3 stars, 467th overall, 39th outside linebacker

Though Lyons has been committed to Florida State since February of 2012, his coach at First Coast described his recruitment as "up in the air between the Gamecocks and Seminoles at this point" coming out of his official visit to Columbia last weekend. A final decision from Lyons is expected within the next couple of days.

Completely unscientific approximation of the probability that Lyons will sign with South Carolina: 40%

Jonathan Walton

As alluded to above, most seem to think that Auburn's interest in trying Walton out as something of an h-back on the offensive side of the ball and his proximity to the school will lead to Walton ultimately signing with the Tigers.

Steve Spurrier visited Walton on Tuesday.

Completely unscientific approximation of the probability that Walton will sign with South Carolina: 25%

Keep 'Em Committed

Three star Lithonia, GA defensive and and current South Carolina commitment David Johnson visited Vanderbilt last weekend. For now he's saying that he's still a Gamecock, but he's also saying that he'll have a final decision in the next couple of days.

As of right now, Johnson is the only Gamecock commitment openly considering another school.

*All ratings and rankings are according to 247Sports Composite.

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Source: http://www.garnetandblackattack.com/2013/1/30/3930858/deadrin-senat-chooses-south-florida-over-south-carolina-what-now

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বুধবার, ৩০ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

Apollo, Metropoulos near deal for Hostess Twinkies: source

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private equity firms Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co are near a deal to buy snack cake brands including Twinkies from bankrupt Hostess Brands Inc, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A deal, part of Hostess's bankruptcy reorganization, is not yet final, said the source, who declined to be identified as the discussions are not public.

The so-called stalking horse bid would be for more than $400 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. It would serve as the baseline offer for the business and could be topped by others at an auction.

Spokesmen for Metropoulos and Apollo were not immediately available to comment. Hostess declined to comment.

Earlier this month, Hostess chose a $390 million offer by Flowers Foods , maker of Tastykake products, as the stalking horse bid for several brands including Wonder bread.

On Monday, Hostess said it chose McKee Foods Corp, maker of Little Debbie snack cakes, as the initial bidder for its Drake's cakes, which include Ring Dings, Yodels and Devil Dogs. It also chose United States Bakery as the lead bidder for four of its smaller bread brands plus bakeries, equipment and depots.

(Reporting By Martinne Geller in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apollo-metropoulos-near-deal-hostess-twinkies-source-170059961--sector.html

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Anthropologist in the Attic: Jared Diamond: what we can learn from ...

The west's dwindling connection with the natural world puts it in increasing peril, says the distinguished biologist in his new book. Many of the practices of tribal cultures can help us to rediscover our way, he argues ? from respecting the environment to letting toddlers play with knives

The Kaulong people of New Britain used to have an extreme way of dealing with families in mourning. Until the 1950s, newly widowed women on the island off New Guinea were strangled by their husband's brothers or, in their absence, by one of their own sons. Custom dictated no other course of action. Failure to comply meant dishonour, and widows would make a point of demanding strangulation as soon as their husbands had expired.

The impact on families was emotionally shattering, as Jared Diamond makes clear in his latest book, The World Until Yesterday. "In one case, a widow ? whose brothers-in-law were absent ? ordered her own son to strangle her," he says. "But he could not bring himself to do it. It was too horrible. So, in order to shame him into killing her, the widow marched through her village shouting that her son did not want to strangle her because he wanted to have sex with her instead." Humiliated, the son eventually killed his mother.

Widow-strangling occurred because the Kaulong believed male spirits needed the company of females to survive the after-life. It is a grotesque notion but certainly not the only fantastic idea to have gripped traditional societies, says Diamond. Other habits have included infanticide and outbreaks of war between neighbours, though these are balanced with many cases of care and compassion, particularly for the elderly, and a concern for the environment that shames the west.

"We have virtually abandoned living in traditional societies," explains Diamond when we meet. "But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life."

Diamond is wearing a bright red jacket, checked trousers, a carefully ironed shirt and a tie. With his moustache-less beard, he looks more like a renegade Amish preacher than a distinguished biologist. His book, subtitled "What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?", is a form of rescue anthropology, he explains, a bid to save the last useful nuggets of tribal life before it is finally destroyed by the spread of nations and states. The World Until Yesterday is Diamond's latest foray into a field that he has virtually made his own ? the biological analysis of human history ? and will be eagerly awaited by a global army of loyal readers. While traditional historians concentrate on treaties and successions, Diamond has concerned himself with the ecological constraints that influence the fate of a particular nation or state.

Consider Diamond's astonishingly successful Guns, Germs and Steel, which has sold more than 1.5m copies since its publication in 1998. It was written to provide an answer to a basic question: why did Spain conquer the Incas and not the other way round? Or to put it in more general terms, why did the nations of the west prosper at the expense of the rest of the world?

Historians have tended to avoid this question or have alluded to the innate intellectual vigour and genetic strength which, they have suggested, are possessed by western people. Diamond has no truck with that thesis. Europe became a power base because its nations grew out of the first farming societies, which arose in the Middle East 8,000 years ago, he says. And agriculture first appeared there because the world's most easily domesticable animals, including sheep, cattle and horses, were found there. With this head start, Europe was able to maintain a level of food production that allowed the first political states and military power bases to materialise. Guns and steel were invented there and were then used to conquer the rest of the world. Lacking these technologies, the Incas had little chance against the Spanish. Germs ? "Europe's sinister gift to other continents" ? followed in our wake. The book's message is simple but politically charged: there is nothing special or innately superior about western people. They are not the master race. They are simply geographically privileged.

Guns, Germs and Steel has been praised for its erudition, clear prose and elegant syntheses of multiple sources, from archaeology to zoology. One US reviewer hailed it for being "Darwinian in its authority" while in the Observer we described it as "a book of extraordinary vision and confidence". The book won a Pulitzer prize; was misquoted by Mitt Romney during last year's US presidential campaigns; and spawned a number of sound-a-like works, including Peter Nowak's history of modern America: Sex, Bombs and Burgers.

Diamond today seems fit and self-confident, and, although he is now 75, he assures me he still takes field study trips every year or two to New Guinea. For several decades, he has camped in its forests with local tribes, studied their habits and watched as they have embarked on endless raids and bouts of conciliation.

"It has been an utterly fascinating experience, " he says, "and the initial motivation for writing The World Until Yesterday was to share my times in New Guinea over the past 50 years and to show what the people have taught me."

Diamond came to his field from an odd angle. His father, Louis, was a distinguished paediatrician and expert on blood diseases, while his mother, Flora Kaplan, was a concert pianist and linguist. Both parents came from east European Jewish families who escaped the pogroms of the early 20th century and who settled in Boston where Diamond grew up, leaving him with a husky, mellifluous New England drawl in which his vowels seem stretched near to bursting point.

Jared followed his father into medicine and studied physiology at Harvard and later Cambridge before becoming an expert in salt transfer processes in the human gall bladder. In his 20s, Diamond swapped subjects to take up ornithology, which took him?to New Guinea. (He is the author of several academic works on the island's birds.) There he became fascinated by its various native societies, and he turned finally to the field of cultural anthropology and sociology. He is currently a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Since moving to LA, Diamond has produced a series of books that have propelled him to fame. The first, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, appeared in 1992, its title referring to Homo sapiens, who are depicted by Diamond as a species of chimpanzee that is increasingly out of kilter with the natural world, particularly since the invention of agriculture, "a catastrophe from which we have never recovered". With the arrival of farming, Diamond argues, women were subjected to domestic drudgery; people started to hoard resources and wealth; and our proximity to animals triggered disease epidemics that still threaten to overwhelm us. "With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence," he states. The Third Chimpanzee won the Royal Society prize for science books that year.

Guns, Germs and Steel came next, with Diamond adding a new sin to those introduced by the first farmers: colonialism, including ? as we have already mentioned ? the enslaving of the Inca people by the conquistadors of Spain. Then, in 2005, came Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. Here he attempted to answer another basic question about the human species: why do some cultures implode and disintegrate because their members destroy their own habitats while other cultures maintain a careful ecological balance? Why did the Vikings perish in 16th-century Greenland while the Inuit flourished? Why did the ancient Mayans wreck their own ecology by stripping their lands of forests, thus triggering the soil erosion and starvation that caused the collapse of their civilisation? And, most poignantly of all, why did the people of Easter Island chop down every tree on their remote island and so maroon themselves in the middle of the Pacific, where they eventually descended into civil war and cannibalism?

In tackling this question, Diamond identifies several factors which help to explain why societies collapse: political intransigence, climatic change, loss of trade, attacks by neighbours and self-imposed environmental degradation. Crucially, these factors are now operating at a global scale, he says. Painted on a larger canvas, the fate of the people of Easter Island could therefore be repeated for the whole planet unless we take action.

There are no great heroes or leaders according to the narratives of Jared Diamond. The pages of The Third Chimpanze, Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse contain no Churchills, no Hitlers and no Genghis Khans. This is history stripped of its personalities, its nameless human protagonists hovering at the edge of extinction in an environmentally unfriendly world. Some anthropologists resent Diamond's assumption that individuals play no real role in the grand sweep of historical affairs. These critics claim that men and women are depicted not as conscious agents but as helpless pawns of their environment by Diamond, that he underplays the importance of human initiative.

Other critics make more particular accusations. Several challenge Diamond's claim that the fate suffered by the Easter Islanders was self-inflicted, for example. Slave raids and diseases introduced by Europeans were the real causes of depopulation, not civil war, while feral animals were the reason for the island's environmental collapse, they state.

Most reviews ? for all Diamond's books ? have generally been favourable, however. Writing in the New Yorker (about Collapse), Malcolm Gladwell praised the importance that Diamond places on biological issues when it comes to studying cultures and societies. Praising ourselves for being civilised is no guarantee of survival, says Gladwell. "We can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal."

The same vexed issue lurks at the back of Diamond's writing: humanity's increasing dissonance with the natural world. He describes how small groups of humans ? ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred hunter-gatherers ? survived several ice ages, kept close to nature and still managed to conquer the world. "I believe the few remaining tribes and nomad groups left on the planet have a great deal to teach us," he says and it is this belief that inspired The World Until Yesterday.

Some tribal customs, such as widow-strangling, will not be missed, of course. "We should not romanticise traditional societies," he says. "There are horrible things that we want to avoid, but there wonderful things that we should emulate."

Take the example of child rearing. Far from being harsh towards children, many tribes and groups adopt highly permissive attitudes. "I mean permissive in that it is an absolute no-no to punish a child. If a mother or father among African pygmies hits a child, that would be grounds for divorce. There is no physical punishment allowed at all in these societies. If a child plays with a sharp knife and waves it around, so be it. They will cut themselves on some occasions, but society figures it is better for the child to learn the hard way early in life. They are allowed to make their own choices and follow their own interests."

Diamond has twin sons, Max and Joshua. Both were treated as honorary pygmies by their parents. "We let them do what they wanted as much as possible and never spanked or hit them," says Diamond. Giving free rein to his children's interests had unexpected consequences, however. Aged three, Max developed a passion for snakes and the Diamond household ended up as repository of more than 150 reptiles and amphibians. For his part, Joshua transferred his first love of butterflies to rocks and finally to second world war and civil war battlefields. "I took him to Guam one time," Diamond recalls fondly. Today Joshua is training as a lawyer. Max is a gourmet cook. "The crucial point is that they were allowed to follow their own paths. I learnt that from the people of New Guinea."

Diamond has studied traditional societies in Africa, Asia, South and North America and the Arctic, but most of his analysis comes from his observations of his old scientific stamping grounds in New Guinea, a process that has not been without its tribulations.

Several years ago, Diamond says he met a tribesman called Daniel Wemp who said he had organised a clan war in New Guinea to avenge the death of an uncle. According to Diamond, after three years, and 30 deaths, Wemp's target ? a man called Isum Mandingo ? was left paralysed in an attack. Diamond wrote up the story for the New Yorker in 2008 - and found himself at the receiving end of a $10m libel lawsuit from Wemp and Mandingo.

An investigation by Rhonda Roland Shearer ? the widow of the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and publisher of iMediaEthics, a not-for-profit news website ? alleged that the New Yorker article was riddled with errors, that Wemp had not organised the clan war and that Mandingo was injured in an unrelated attack when he was protecting his land. It was also claimed that Wemp was now living in fear of his life because of Diamond's article. Hence the lawsuit. For their part, both Diamond and David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, vigorously denied the allegations. Their story was backed by careful notes that had been taken at the time by Diamond, while his text had been carefully scrutinised by one of the magazine's best fact checkers, Remnick added.

Nevertheless, Shearer maintains: "Neither Diamond nor New Yorker fact checkers verified maps or political districts, contacted missionaries working in the area, checked local government, police, court or hospital records, or contacted the leading anthropology expert in the area, Paul Sillitoe, to verify Diamond's single-source story. Our report revealed Diamond named and accused people he never met of killing. He now writes that he removes or changes names as is required in anthropological practice to protect informants."

The case caused a flurry among science journals but has since fizzled out. Diamond blinks and looks pained when I mention the name Rhonda Shearer. "A distinctive person about whom I shall refrain from commenting," he mutters. Wemp and Mandigo's case was withdrawn by mutual consent after the sudden death of their lawyer but it's now understood that a new lawsuit is pending. There is no mention of the Wemp tale, although highly relevant to Diamond's thesis, in The World Until Yesterday. Caution appears to have won the day.

The issue of vengeance is central to Diamond's book. In the west, when a person is robbed or injured in an attack, the state ? in the form of the police ? take responsibility for tracking and punishing the culprit. Traditional societies take a very different approach. Minor offences are normally settled by payment of compensation ? the pig is the traditional currency in New Guinea ? or by holding a feast to signal the re-establishment of friendly relations. For more serious offences, including murder, a family will seek to make alliances with others to help track down and kill their relative's murderer. This usually triggers an identical response from the murdered murderer's family and the process is repeated. The west's depersonalised system of justice looks a lot better from this perspective.

But there is a cost, says Diamond, pointing to an example provided by his wife Marie's family. Her father, Jozef Nabel, was Jewish and born in Klaj, near Krakow, in Poland. During the second world war, he was captured by the Russians, imprisoned and later recruited into the Red Army. He survived, became an officer and in 1945 took a platoon to Klaj to find his family. He discovered that his father had been transported to a concentration camp when the Nazis arrived. However, his mother, sister and a niece had survived, in hiding, for a further two years until a local gang had killed them, believing that, because they were Jews, they must possess gold.

Jozef found the gang leader and with a loaded gun faced the killer of his mother, sister and niece ? but could not shoot. He had had enough of people behaving like animals, he told himself. The killer was handed to local police but was released a year later. For the rest of his life, Jozef was tormented by grief, that he had not saved his family, and regret that he had not properly avenged them. Every night, just before sleep, he thought of his mother and sister and how he had let their murderer go, a fact that he admitted to his family only when he was in his late 80s, says Diamond. "He kept his torment to himself until near his death."

Jozef's fate is a consequence, albeit an extreme one, of life in modern states. Here robberies and murders are dealt with by police because this is the most efficient way of dealing with crime. As a result, vengeance is viewed as being socially unacceptable and is strictly outlawed. "But it is a basic emotion along with hate, love, anger and jealousy, and if one is told to sit on this feeling the result is ? like my father-in-law ? something that can get bottled up for the rest of one's life. It is an unfortunate consequence of state justice and we need to help those caught up in it. We don't give enough consideration to the feelings of those who have been robbed of their loved ones."

Or consider the issue of old age. "Most traditional societies give their older folk much more satisfying existences than we do and let them live out their last years surrounded by their children, relatives and grandchildren," says Diamond. "Old people are useful ? as sources of knowledge because these societies do not have books. If you want to survive a cyclone, an old person's past experiences might well determine whether that group lives or dies. And they are often the best makers of tools and pots and baskets and weapons. In the west today ? with our cult of youth ? we seem to have lost how to get value from our older people."

There are exceptions. Nomad tribes, particularly those in the Arctic or deserts, faced with insufficient food will often kill old people or abandon them ? or encourage them to commit suicide, a grim policy taken to extremes not just by the Kaulong but by people of the Banks Islands in the Pacific, whose old and sick would beg their friends to bury them alive to end their suffering, and the Chukchi, who live in the northeastern corner of Asia, who used to encourage their old folk to let themselves be strangled on the promise they would get preferential treatment in the next world. Yes, it sounds grim, admits Diamond, but it has a cruel logic: food supplies are limited and what else should they do when resources dry up? Let their children starve?

Finally, there is the issue of everyday risks, a topic that modern western men and women have got absurdly out of context, Diamond argues. "We worry about dangers from events that kill lots of people at once: plane crashes, nuclear-plant explosions, terrorist attacks. But the chances that we will be killed in one of these events is utterly negligible."

By contrast, people in traditional societies worry about small-scale local risks. "On one trip in New Guinea, I wanted to pitch a tent under a dead tree. My guides thought I was mad. It could fall and kill me in the night, they told me. I argued the risk was low but later realised, if you spend a long time in forests, these will accumulate. It is the same with western life. The risks from little events mount up, and don't forget, if you slip in the shower or on the sidewalk, you can break a hip. For someone of my age that could end my life or at least my walking life. Similarly, car accidents pose genuine dangers.

"So we should take a leaf out of the New Guineans' book and worry about showers, sidewalks and cars and not fret about plane crashes or terrorist attacks. Of course, most of my American friends think I am paranoid, but, as I point out, I am still here."
__________________________
References:

McKie, Robin. 2013. ?Jared Diamond: what we can learn from tribal life?. The Guardian. Posted: January 6, 2013. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/06/jared-diamond-tribal-life-anthropology

Source: http://anthropologistintheattic.blogspot.com/2013/01/jared-diamond-what-we-can-learn-from.html

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Hagel supports nuclear arms cuts, then elimination

FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with his choice for Defense Secretary, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, after announcing Hagel's nomination in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with his choice for Defense Secretary, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, after announcing Hagel's nomination in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

(AP) ? Chuck Hagel, the likely next secretary of defense, would be the first to enter the Pentagon having publicly advocated for sharply reducing the number of U.S. nuclear weapons, possibly without equivalent cuts by Russia. He supports an international movement called Global Zero that favors eliminating all nuclear weapons.

That puts him outside the orthodoxy embraced by many of his fellow Republicans but inside a widening circle of national security thinkers ? including President Barack Obama ? who believe nuclear weapons are becoming more a liability than an asset, less relevant to 21st century security threats like terrorism.

"Sen. Hagel certainly would bring to office a more ambitious view on nuclear reductions than his predecessors," said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "While he would likely take a less dramatic position in office, it might not be a bad thing to have a secretary of defense question what nuclear deterrence requires today."

Pentagon press secretary George Little said Tuesday that Hagel does not support unilateral nuclear cuts "and, if confirmed, would not as secretary of defense. Suggestions to the contrary are inaccurate."

The customary stance of defense secretaries in the nuclear age has been that the weapons are a necessary evil, a required ingredient in American defense strategy that can be discarded only at the nation's peril.

Hagel, 66, takes a subtly different view ? one shared by Obama but opposed by those in Congress who believe disarmament is weakness and that an outsized American nuclear arsenal must be maintained indefinitely as a counterweight to the nuclear ambitions of anti-Western countries like North Korea and Iran.

Hagel argues for doing away with nuclear weapons entirely, but not immediately and not unilaterally.

In a letter to Obama two months after his former Senate colleague entered the White House in 2009, Hagel wrote that Global Zero was developing a step-by-step plan for achieving "the total elimination of all nuclear weapons," but with a "clear, realistic and pragmatic appreciation" for the difficulty of realizing that goal.

Dozens of prominent politicians, diplomats and retired military leaders signed the letter. One month later Obama spoke in Prague of "a world without nuclear weapons," while saying it might not happen in his lifetime. Obama declared that "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it."

Hagel, a Republican whose nomination has drawn heated criticism for his past statements on Israel, Iran and gays, is likely to also face questions on nuclear issues at his Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday. A Vietnam War veteran, he served in the Senate from 1997 to 2009.

The questions actually began last week at the confirmation hearing for John Kerry, Obama's nominee for secretary of state. Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican, said he found Hagel's affiliation with Global Zero "very concerning," and he worried that Hagel's views appeared to make him "very different than previous defense leaders."

Kerry said he believes Hagel is a realist on the topic of nuclear arms reductions. But he also acknowledged that when he first heard about Global Zero's central vision ? the elimination of all nuclear weapons - "I sort of scratched my head and I said, 'What? You know, how's that going to work?'" But then he came to see this as nothing more than a long-range goal ? "it's not something that could happen in today's world."

Hagel, indeed, is thinking long term.

"Getting to global zero will take years," Hagel wrote in the March 2009 letter to Obama on behalf of Global Zero. "So it is important that we set our course toward a world without nuclear weapons now to ensure that our children do not live under the nuclear shadow of the last century."

Hagel stands out in this regard in part because history ? first the demise of the Soviet Union, then the rise of terrorism as a global threat ? has changed how many people think about the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. For decades after the birth of the atomic age in the 1940s the chief concern was controlling the growth, and later managing the shrinkage, of nuclear arsenals without upsetting the balance of power.

Today the thinking by many national security experts has shifted as the threat of all-out nuclear war has faded and terrorist organizations with potentially global reach, like al-Qaida, are trying to get their hands on a nuclear device.

"Hagel's views reflect the growing bipartisan consensus in the U.S. security establishment that whatever benefits nuclear weapons may have had during the Cold War are now outweighed by the threat they present," said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Hagel was co-author of a Global Zero report last May that proposed, as an interim step, reducing the U.S. arsenal to 900 weapons within a decade, with half deployed and the other half in reserve. That compares with a current U.S. stockpile of 5,000, of which 1,700 are deployed and capable of striking targets around the globe.

The report said these cuts could be taken unilaterally if not negotiated with the Russians or carried out through reciprocal U.S. and Russian presidential directives. It called the unilateral approach "less good" but feasible. At a later stage China and other nuclear weapons countries would be brought to the table for negotiations on further cuts on the path to global zero, it said.

The White House last year weighed options for substantial new cuts in the number of deployed weapons, possibly to about 1,000 or 1,100 and probably as part of a negotiation with Moscow. But a decision, following a lengthy review of U.S. nuclear targeting requirements, was put off prior to the November election. Officials and private experts close to the administration believe Obama will soon embrace those cuts.

Previous secretaries of defense have supported reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile under certain circumstances and have paid lip service to the United States' commitment under the 1970 nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to eventually eliminate its nuclear arms. But none has pushed these ideas like Hagel has.

"It's historic," said Bruce Blair, a co-founder of Global Zero and a former Air Force nuclear missile launch control officer.

"We will have, if he's confirmed, a secretary of defense who's committed to the sharp reduction of nuclear weapons, leading down a path toward their elimination," Blair said in an interview last week. "I don't think any sitting secretary of defense has ever come anywhere close to Hagel's advocacy for this cause."

Leon Panetta, the current defense secretary, has not taken a public stance on future nuclear reductions.

Some Pentagon chiefs, like William Perry, became public advocates for eliminating nuclear weapons after leaving office.

At least one apparently harbored doubts about the conventional wisdom while still serving.

In his 1995 memoir, Robert McNamara, who served as President John F. Kennedy's defense secretary, wrote that by the time he entered the Pentagon in 1961 he had privately concluded that nuclear arms served no useful purpose. But he could not say that publicly, he wrote, because it contradicted established U.S. policy.

___

Follow Robert Burns on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-29-Hagel-Nuclear%20Zero/id-b83ebb088904428ca1325038285201c0

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মঙ্গলবার, ২৯ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

City of the Month: Park City, UT ? Travel Smart Blog

Last week, the acclaimed Sundance Film Festival honored the top independent movies and players. Every year, its host, Park City, Utah, takes the best supporting role for the annual celeb-studded event.

Park City is topping all the travel lists (Forbes, Travel + Leisure, Ski Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler) lately surpassing destinations such as Aspen. Why? Accessibility, creativity, and activity!

Park City is a transformed old mining town with three ski resorts surrounding it. The quaintness of Park City?s Main Street is a thin veil for souvenirs and high-end retail. And don?t be deceived by the quaint fa?ade as the price tag for a vacation in and around this city is never bargain-priced. The four block historic strip is perfect for strolling or you can step into Robert Redford?s restaurant, Zoom, which offers some delicious local fare.

Accessibility

Nobody wants to spend the better part of a day traveling into a destination. Park City is more accessible than many of the top ski resort towns ? located only 45 minutes from The Salt Lake City airport. The international airport serves many airlines; Delta Air Lines has nonstop flights from more than 100 cities. Shuttles are a better choice than renting a car.

Hotels in Park City are numerous; from the big brand hotels to the local lodges.

Creativity

It has become a hub of culinary creativity with more than 100 restaurants and some truly inspired eateries.

If dining among celebrities in a beautiful mountain setting sounds appealing, you?ll want to check-in to the Waldorf-Astoria. Get a table at Slopes, a new restaurant deemed America?s hottest hotel restaurant in 2012 by Travel & Leisure.

The Waldorf-Astoria?s renowned bar and lounge, Powder Ice Lounge, features a 14-foot sculpted ice bar (it?s literally made of ice) and is one of the most popular photo-ops in the city.

Activity

Park City features three world-class resorts ? Deer Valley Resort, Canyons Resort and Park City Mountain Resort ? that offer three seasons of fun for everyone. (I say three because spring is a transitional season when the resorts close, the snow melts, and the preparations for the summer season are taking place.)

In the winter, the powder is abundant. Park City is home to the steep mountains where the US Ski Team trains attracting the world?s top snow sport enthusiasts, and a very chic and sophisticated crowd.

The Utah Olympic Park near Park City was the site of the 2002 Bobsled, Luge and Ski Jumping competitions. Today, visitors are treated to a guided tour of the park, athlete training sessions, 70 mile-per-hour bobsled rides, zipline rides, Quicksilver alpine slide rides, Olympic museum, an interactive museum, freestyle aerial and ski jumping shows on Saturdays at noon and a variety of camps for all ages.

In the summer and fall, the resorts convert their lifts and runs into over 400 miles of trails for biking and hiking and endless activities. Deer Valley?s Mountain Biking School offers lessons for those looking to improve their skills or just a guide for some of the areas best trails.

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Source: http://www.travelsmartblog.com/2013/01/city-of-the-month-park-city-ut/

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Pushing boundaries | The Budapest Times

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Source: http://www.budapesttimes.hu/2013/01/28/pushing-boundaries/

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More than 1 brain behind E=mc2

Monday, January 28, 2013

Two American physicists outline the role played by Austrian physicist Friedrich Hasen?hrl in establishing the proportionality between the energy (E) of a quantity of matter with its mass (m) in a cavity filled with radiation. In a paper about to be published in EPJ H, Stephen Boughn from Haverford College in Pensylvannia and Tony Rothman from Princeton University in New Jersey argue how Hasen?hrl's work, for which he now receives little credit, may have contributed to the famous equation E=mc2.

According to science philosopher Thomas Kuhn, the nature of scientific progress occurs through paradigm shifts, which depend on the cultural and historical circumstances of groups of scientists. Concurring with this idea, the authors believe the notion that mass and energy should be related did not originate solely with Hasen?hrl. Nor did it suddenly emerge in 1905, when Einstein published his paper, as popular mythology would have it.

Given the lack of recognition for Hasen?hrl's contribution, the authors examined the Austrian physicist's original work on blackbody radiation in a cavity with perfectly reflective walls. This study seeks to identify the blackbody's mass changes when the cavity is moving relative to the observer.

They then explored the reason why the Austrian physicist arrived at an energy/mass correlation with the wrong factor, namely at the equation: E = (3/8) mc2. Hasen?hrl's error, they believe, stems from failing to account for the mass lost by the blackbody while radiating.

Before Hasen?hrl focused on cavity radiation, other physicists, including French mathematician Henri Poincar? and German physicist Max Abraham, showed the existence of an inertial mass associated with electromagnetic energy. In 1905, Einstein gave the correct relationship between inertial mass and electromagnetic energy, E=mc2. Nevertheless, it was not until 1911 that German physicist Max von Laue generalised it to include all forms of energy.

###

Boughn S., Rothman T. (2013), Hasen?hrl and the Equivalence of Mass and Energy, European Physical Journal H, DOI 10.1140/epjh/e2012-30061-5

For more information, please visit www.epj.org.

Springer: http://www.springer.com

Thanks to Springer for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126477/More_than___brain_behind_E_mc_

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সোমবার, ২৮ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

A comparison of smartphone and tablet shipments

On Wednesday, Research In Motion Ltd. plans to unveil a new BlackBerry phone. BlackBerry devices have been losing market share to rivals, such as Apple's iPhone. Here are details on the number of devices RIM and Apple shipped in recent quarters, with percentage change from the same period a year earlier.

RESEARCH IN MOTION:

? Quarter ending Dec. 1, 2012: 6.9 million BlackBerry smartphones (down 51 percent), 255,000 PlayBook tablets (up 70 percent)

? Quarter ending Sept. 1, 2012: 7.4 million BlackBerry smartphones (down 30 percent), 130,000 PlayBook tablets (down 35 percent)

? Quarter ending June 2, 2012: 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones (down 41 percent), 260,000 PlayBook tablets (down 48 percent)

? Quarter ending March 3, 2012: 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones (down 26 percent), 500,000 PlayBook tablets (not on sale previous year)

? Quarter ending Nov. 26, 2011: 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones (down 1 percent), 150,000 PlayBook tablets (not on sale previous year)

APPLE:

? Quarter ending Dec. 29, 2012: 47.8 million iPhones (up 29 percent), 22.9 million iPads (up 49 percent)

? Quarter ending Sept. 29, 2012: 26.9 million iPhones (up 58 percent), 14.0 million iPads (up 26 percent)

? Quarter ending June 30, 2012: 26.0 million iPhones (up 28 percent), 17.0 million iPads (up 84 percent)

? Quarter ending March 31, 2012: 35.1 million iPhones (up 88 percent), 11.8 million iPads (increase of about 2.5 times)

? Quarter ending Dec. 31, 2011: 37 million iPhones (more than double), 15.4 million iPads (more than double)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/comparison-smartphone-tablet-shipments-210856776.html

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WindowsAndroid runs Google's mobile OS natively on the Windows kernel

WindowsAndroid runs Google's mobile OS natively on the Windows kernel

Sure, you could enjoy Android on your PC through dual-booting or virtualization, but the folks at Socketeq have whipped up yet another alternative: a port of Mountain View's mobile OS, fittingly dubbed WindowsAndroid, that runs natively on the Windows kernel (under Vista, 7 and 8) instead of Linux. Not only does the operating system run speedily since its free of virtualization chains, but it serves up the appropriate tablet or smartphone UI based on window size, and plays nice with keyboards and mice, too boot. Socketeq's solution serves up the full Android experience, but you'll have to separately flash the Google apps that typically come baked in, according to Android Police. Ice Cream Sandwich is the freshest flavor of Android to have undergone the kernel-replacement treatment, and it's currently being offered as a free "first-try" download at the source.

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Via: Android Police

Source: Socketeq

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/27/android-native-windows-kernel/

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Men Arrested for Stealing $65,000 Worth of Chicken Wings

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/01/men-arrested-for-stealing-$65-000-worth-of-chicken-wings/

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রবিবার, ২৭ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

Best- and worst-run cities in America

3 hrs.

The population of the United States living in urban areas is growing faster than the national rate. At last count, more than four in five Americans lived in a metropolitan area, an increase of over 12 percent in the last decade. Meanwhile, the proportion of Americans living in rural areas declined. If this trend continues, nearly all Americans will live in megacities in the near future.

Regardless of whether this happens, more pressure will be placed on mayors to manage their growing populations. 24/7 Wall St. has completed its second annual ranking of the 100 largest cities in the U.S., based on local economies, fiscal management and quality of life measures. To evaluate how well a city is managed over the long-term, we looked at factors like the city's credit rating, poverty, education, crime, unemployment, and regional GDP. The best-run city this year is Plano, Texas. The worst-run is San Bernardino, Calif.

Measuring the effective governance of a city and comparing it to others can be challenging. Each city has its own unique challenges and advantages. The strength of the regional economy, the level of state funding, and the presence of major corporations or industries can all impact a city?s prospects. They play a big part in a city?s employment levels, safety and fiscal stability.

All those factors, of course, are directly affected by how a city is managed. Mayors, school boards, and city councils all have a role to play in that regard. All of these groups must work with the resources available to keep budgets balanced.

24/7 Wall St.: The best- and worst-run states in America

Many of the best-run cities either have at least one industry that is supporting the labor force, or are close enough to major urban centers, such as Dallas, Phoenix and San Francisco, to benefit from jobs available there.

The economies of the worst-run cities fall into two categories. Some were badly damaged by the housing price collapse. These include Riverside and Stockton in California and Las Vegas, Nevada. Others have had much more long-term economic troubles. These include Detroit, St. Louis and Cleveland, whose once-booming manufacturing-based economies have been decimated by jobs going overseas.

Fiscal management is another factor that had a strong impact on where cities ended up on our list. The majority of the best-run cities had their general obligation debt rated Aaa by Moody?s. None of the worst-run cities received that perfect score; some, such as Detroit and Stockton, were rated below investment grade. Stockton is notable for actually defaulting on its debt in June of last year.

These are the best and worst-run cities in America:

Best -run cities

1. Plano, Texas

????????? Population:?271,380

????????? Credit rating:?Aaa, no outlook

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?1.62 (2nd lowest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?6.9 percent (13th lowest)

Plano, based in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, is the best-run city in America. Among households in the city, 14 percent earned over $200,000 in 2011, the fourth-highest proportion of all cities. Meanwhile, a mere 1.9 percent of households earned under $10,000, which was the second-lowest of all cities. The city?s 1.62 violent crimes per 1,000 people is the second-lowest of all large cities. Plano is home to many corporate headquarters, including J.C. Penney and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. These companies are among the 10 largest employers in the city. The city appears to be largely unaffected by the housing crisis. The median home price rose by more than 5 percent between 2007 and 2011, while the national median price fell by more than 10 percent.

2. Madison, Wis.

????????? Population:?236,889

????????? Credit rating: Aaa, stable

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?3.48 (15th lowest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?4.9 percent (2nd lowest)

Madison is home to the state capitol, as well as the University of Wisconsin?s flagship campus. In addition, the region is a base to employers in fields such as technology and health?care. The unemployment rate of 4.9 percent in 2011 was the second-lowest among all large cities in the U.S. Of the city's adult population, 54 percent have a bachelor's degree, the third-highest rate among the top 100 largest cities. In December, the Madison City Council adopted a rule banning the government from using emergency reserves to fund the operating budget unless two-thirds of members vote otherwise. With the city exercising this kind of caution, it is no surprise Moody?s analytics rates madison general obligation debt as a perfect Aaa, with a stable long-term outlook.

24/7 Wall St.: The 10 most-hated companies in America

3. Irvine, Calif.

????????? Population:?215,511

????????? Credit rating:?Not rated

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?0.56 (the lowest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?6.5 percent (tied- 11th lowest)

With almost 97 percent of residents aged 25 and over with at least a high school diploma, and with nearly 63 percent with at least a bachelor's degree, Irvine has the most educated population of all of the 100 most populous cities. The city?s high educational attainment has translated to a highly compensated population -- a whopping 18.8 percent of households earned more than $200,000 in the last year. Irvine has the lowest violent crime rate of all the 100 largest cities, with just 0.56 violent crimes per 1,000 people in 2011. Irvine?s government has received a lot of flack recently for its efforts to transform the Orange County Great Park, with critics arguing that more than $200 million worth of spending has gone to waste. The newly elected City Council has pledged more oversight on spending and has terminated contracts with two firms working on the project.

4. Lincoln, Neb.

????????? Population:?262,350

????????? Credit rating:?Aaa, stable outlook

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?3.71 (18th lowest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?3.9 percent (the lowest)

Lincoln?s 3.9 percent unemployment rate in 2011 was the lowest of all metropolitan areas in the country. The city is home to the University of Nebraska?s flagship campus, which employs more than 8,000. Like Omaha, Lincoln has been spared from the recession more than most places. Home values rose 2.7 percent between 2007 and 2011 compared to a 10.7 percent drop nationwide. In 2011, just 0.36 percent of Lincoln?s homes were in foreclosure, the eighth-lowest rate among large cities. Like many of the other top-rated cities, Lincoln?s general obligation debt is rated as a perfect Aaa, with a stable outlook.

5. Fremont, Calif.?

????????? Population:?216,912

????????? Credit rating:?Not rated

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?1.77 (6th lowest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?7.5 percent (tied- 23rd lowest)

Fremont was incorporated in 1956, joining five towns together as a single city. The city is near the core of Silicon Valley, while also connected to San Francisco by the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. It has one of the most educated and high-earning populations in America, with over 51 percent of residents age 25 and older holding a college degree in 2011. That year, median household income was $92,665, the highest of any large city in the U.S. The city has an exceptionally strong manufacturing base, with almost 22 percent of working adults employed in the sector. Among the companies with manufacturing operations in Fremont are tech manufacturers Western Digital and Seagate Technologies, as well as electric car builder Tesla Motors.

Worst-run cities

1. San Bernardino, Calif.

????????? Population:?213,008

????????? Credit rating:?not rated

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?8.76 (27th highest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?17.6 percent (3rd highest)

Few cities were hurt by the housing crisis to the same extent as San Bernardino, where the median home value declined by 57.6 percent between 2007 and 2011, more than any other large city in the U.S. By the end of 2011, almost 4.4 percent of homes in San Bernardino were in foreclosure, among the highest rates for all large cities. That year, the unemployment rate reached 17.6 percent, or nearly double the U.S. rate and almost 10 percentage points higher than city?s annual rate in 2007. In August, declining home values and rising employee retirement costs forced the city to file for bankruptcy. But the city?s filing is being challenged by its largest creditor, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which is demanding payments.

2. Miami, Fla.

????????? Population:?408,760

????????? Credit rating:?A2, negative outlook

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?11.98 (12th highest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?12.4 percent (17th highest)

Between 2007 and 2011, the median home value in Miami fell by 43.5 percent. Additionally, the city had one of the nation?s lowest median household incomes, at under $29,000, while 31 percent of residents lived below the poverty line -- nearly twice the U.S. rate of 15.9 percent. Despite the difficult economic conditions Miamians faced, the city joined with Miami-Dade County to pay for almost 80 percent of the more-than $600 million cost of building a new baseball stadium for the Miami Marlins. The deal has caused significant uproar. While taxpayers pay extremely high costs to service the stadium debt, the team has traded many of its top players. In 2011, the SEC launched an investigation into the agreement.

24/7 Wall St.: Nine beers Americans no longer drink

3. Stockton, Calif.

????????? Population:?296,367

????????? Credit rating:?Caa3, negative outlook

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?14.08 (8th highest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?20.2 percent (the highest)

Last year, Stockton was unable to fund its pension liabilities and make debt-service payments. As a result, it became the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. The city had been especially hurt by the recession. Its unemployment rate for 2011 was above 20 percent, while more than 5 percent of homes were in foreclosure -- both among the highest rates for any large city. Just before the bankruptcy filing, Moody?s downgraded the city?s credit rating to account for the likelihood of a default. Moody?s noted, ?The Caa3 rating level assumes losses to bondholders will be greater than 20 percent. The negative outlook reflects the high likelihood that losses could exceed our estimates.? Not only have the city?s creditors been affected, but so have city employees and retirees. According to NPR, the city may cut health benefits to reduce its $417 million in unfunded liabilities.

4. Detroit, Mich.

????????? Population:?706,640

????????? Credit rating:?Caa1, negative outlook

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?21.37 (the highest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?19.9 percent (2nd highest)

Detroit was hit hard during the recession, with the near-collapse of the automobile industry and a further slowdown of the already embattled housing market. The median home value between 2007 and 2011 tumbled by 43.5 percent, or more than four times the rate of decline across the country. The lack of income coming into the city?s coffers in the last few years has led to significant financial difficulty for Detroit. Moody?s currently rates city?s bonds as Caa1, which is considered junk status and the worst-rating Moody?s gave to any major city. Mayor Dave Bing signed a budget that aims to cut $250 million in the 2012-2013 fiscal year, with total spending of $1.12 billion.

5. Hialeah, Fla.?

????????? Population:?229,967

????????? Credit rating:?not rated

????????? Violent crime per 1,000 people:?3.78 (18th lowest)

????????? Unemployment rate:?14.1 percent (tied- 9th highest)

Home prices between 2007 and 2011 fell by 44 percent in Hialeah, the 10th-highest decline of all 100 largest cities. The median household income of $27,208 in 2011 was the third-lowest of all major cities, after declining by 44 percent during the recession. Of workers residing in Hialeah, 15.5 percent worked in the generally low-paying retail trade, the highest percentage of all of the 100 largest cities. As a result of industry composition, nearly 40 percent of city residents are without health insurance, higher than any other large city in the U.S.

How did your city do? Click here to read all of the best- and worst-run cities

?2013 24/7 Wall St.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/best-worst-run-cities-america-1C8110146

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Time and Punishment: Police Have Done More Than Prisons to Cut Crime in New York

[unable to retrieve full-text content]While the American prison population has doubled in the past two decades, New York City has reduced its numbers as its crime has declined over two decades.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/nyregion/police-have-done-more-than-prisons-to-cut-crime-in-new-york.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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AP Interview: Algeria admits mistakes in standoff

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? Algeria's foreign minister acknowledged that security forces made mistakes in a hostage crisis at a Saharan gas plant in which many foreign workers were killed by Algerian military strikes.

Mourad Medelci, in an Associated Press interview, also conceded that Algeria will need international help to better fight terrorism. Algeria's decision to refuse foreign offers of aid in handling the crisis, and to send the military to fire on vehicles full of hostages, drew widespread international criticism.

The Jan. 16 attack, which an al-Qaida-affiliated organization has claimed responsibility for, sent scores of foreign energy workers fleeing across the desert for their lives. A four-day siege by Algerian forces on the complex left at least 37 hostages and 29 militants dead. Some of the fatalities were badly burned, making it difficult to identify them.

"We are in the process of assessing our mistakes. In that assessment we are leaning more towards establishing that the operation was a success," Medelci told the AP at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Friday.

He said Algeria is likely to reinforce security measures at sites where multinationals operate in the oil- and gas-rich country. But he insisted that foreign workers in Algeria "will continue to work in Algeria and that is the best way to answer the terrorists."

He defended the government's decision to attack instead of negotiating. "Faced with such an attitude (of terrorism), it's not just words that solve the problem. It's action," he said.

But he admitted that Algeria, which faced years of internal extremist violence, "can't continue to face international terrorism alone. It absolutely needs support."

He argued that Algeria wasn't the target of the attack, but "they are targeting investors in Algeria and the foreigners who work there."

___

AP correspondent Angela Charlton contributed from Davos.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-interview-algeria-admits-mistakes-standoff-090850588--finance.html

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Mudsmith Coffee Shop Comes to Greenville | Dallas Food Nerd

Brooke Humphries (owner, Acme F&B/Barcadia Bar & Grill/It?ll Do/Barcadia Bar) will open the doors at Mudsmith this coming Monday, January 28th. Mudsmith promises to deliver a unique coffee shop experience serving celebrated Four Barrel coffee out of San Francisco.

Located on Greenville Avenue, across from the future site of Trader Joe?s, Mudsmith?baristas will be using Chemex and V-60 machines for slow pour over methods and two custom made Stradas by La Marzocco for specialty espresso drinks. French press will be the house coffee. All coffee drinks will be carefully made with the Four Barrel beans and specific technique.??Eight craft beers and four wines on tap will rotate frequently.??Fresh pastries baked in-house and a selection of sandwiches such as the jalapeno meatloaf with redneck cheddar and guava BBQ sauce and a ham and cheese with raisin chutney also made in-house with local and organic ingredients will be offered. Three Happy Cows yogurt, Roots Juices and several other local companies? product will fill the shelves of the coolers.

Humphries explains, ?I wanted to create a coffee shop experience reminiscent of New York, Portland or San Francisco that combines the?underground elements of local craft beer with craft coffee in an environment that?s hip yet rustic and modern.?

With metal and steelwork provided by Steve Mabry of Rusty Buffalo and the interior designed by Ryan Chaney of Chaney 44, Mudsmith evokes a feeling of comfortable community in a rustic, reclaimed modern space with ?old school? design elements.

About Four Barrel Coffee?(source:?www.fourbarrelcoffee.com)

As with everything we do at Four Barrel, sourcing the highest quality green coffee requires a relationship built on mutual respect and a passion for quality. Sourcing coffee the way we do is time consuming, expensive and plain hard work. But, it is the only way we can vouch for the quality of our coffees, firsthand. And, it?s the only way we can uphold our end of our most important relationships?the ones with our farmers.

We are old-fashioned about roasting. We rely on highly trained people, not machines, to see through the intention of our roasting style: to highlight the intrinsic qualities of a coffee that drove us to buy it in the first place: cleanness, sweetness, acidity, complexity. We roast on a hulking beast of a vintage German roaster?one that was made to hold consistent heat and let air flow through in simple ways controlled by a person.

Mudsmith is located at 2114 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75206. Website:?www.mudsmithdallas.com?Phone: 214.370.9535

Hours of operation: Monday ? Sunday 7 a.m. ? 11 p.m.

Credit: Joy Zhang Credit: Joy Zhang

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শনিবার, ২৬ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

How full moons got their peculiar names

The first full moon of 2013 will light up the night sky tonight (Jan. 26), but did you know it's a full moon of many names?

Full moon names date back to Native American tribes of a few hundred years ago who lived in what is now the northern and eastern United States. Those tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred.

There were some variations in the moon names, but, in general, the same ones were used throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England on west to Lake Superior. European settlers followed their own customs and created some of their own names. Since the lunar (or "synodic") month is roughly 29.5 days in length on average, the dates of the full moon shift from year to year.

Here is a listing of all of the full moon names, as well as the dates and times for 2013. Unless otherwise noted, all times are for the Eastern time zone:

Jan. 26, 11:38 p.m. EST ?Full Wolf Moon: Amid the zero cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages.? It was also known as the Old Moon or the Moon after Yule.? In some tribes this was the Full Snow Moon; most applied that name to the next moon. [Full Moon: Why Does It Happen? (Video)]

Feb. 25, 3:26 p.m. EST ?Full Snow Moon: Usually the heaviest snows fall in this month. Hunting becomes very difficult, and, hence, to some tribes this was the Full Hunger Moon.?

March 27, 5:27 a.m. EDT ?Full Worm Moon: In this month the ground softens and the earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signals the end of winter, or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. TheFull Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. [Phases of the Moon in 2013: A Lunar Calendar]

In 2013, this is also the Paschal Full Moon? the first full moon of the spring season. The first Sunday following the paschal moon is Easter Sunday, which indeed will be observed four days later on Sunday, March 31.

April 25, 3:57 p.m. EDT ?Full Pink Moon: The grass pink or wild phlox is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names were the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon and ? among coastal tribes ? the Full Fish Moon, when the shad come upstream to spawn. The moon will also undergo a very slight partial lunar eclipse, which will be visible from the Eastern Hemisphere, but not from North America. At its peak, less than 1.5 percent of the moon's diameter will be immersed in the Earth?s umbral shadow; a very underwhelming event to say the least.

May 25, 12:25 a.m. EDT ?Full Flower Moon: Flowers are now abundant everywhere. It was also known as the Full Corn Planting Moon or the Milk Moon. The moon will also undergo a penumbral lunar eclipse, but the passage of the moon's disk into the Earth's shadow will result in one of the slightest eclipses of all, administering a mere touch of penumbral shadow at the northernmost part of the lunar limb.

June 23, 7:32 a.m. EDT ?Full Strawberry Moon: Strawberry-picking season peaks during this month.? Europeans called this the Rose Moon. The moon will also arrive at perigee only 32 minutes earlier, at 7 a.m. EDT at a distance of 221,824 miles (356,991 kilometers) from Earth. So this is the biggest full moon of 2013. Very high ocean tides can be expected during the next two or three days, thanks to the coincidence of perigee with the full moon.?

July 22, 2:16 p.m. EDT?Full Buck Moon: Named for when the new antlers of buck deer push out from their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, thunderstorms now being most frequent. Sometimes it's also called the Full Hay Moon.

Aug. 20, 9:45 p.m. EDT ?Full Sturgeon Moon: This large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water like Lake Champlain is most readily caught at this time. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon, because when the moon rises it looks reddish through a sultry haze. It was also known as ?the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.

Sept. 19, 7:13 a.m. EDT ?Full Harvest Moon: Traditionally, this designation goes to the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal (fall) equinox. The Harvest Moon usually comes in September, but (on average) once or twice a decade it will fall in early October.? At the peak of the harvest, farmers can work into the night by the light of this moon.?

Usually the moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the U.S., and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans and wild rice ? the chief Indian staples ? are now ready for gathering.

Oct. 18, 7:38 p.m. EDT ?Full Hunters' Moon: With the leaves falling and the deer fattened, it's now time to hunt.? Since the fields have been reaped, hunters can ride over the stubble, and can more easily see the fox, as well as other animals, which can be caught for a thanksgiving banquet after the harvest.?

A penumbral lunar eclipse will also take place. Perhaps for some minutes centered on the time of greatest eclipse (7:50 p.m. EDT) might the penumbra be marginally detectable over the moon?s southernmost limb; for at that moment the penumbral magnitude will reach 76.5 percent.? Those living across the eastern half of North America might see some evidence of this faint penumbral shading soon after local moonrise.

Nov. 17, 10:16 a.m. EST ?Full Beaver Moon: At this point of the year, it's time to set beaver traps before the swamps freeze to ensure a supply of warm winter furs. Another interpretation suggests that the name Beaver Full Moon came from the fact that the beavers are now active in their preparation for winter. It's also called the Frosty Moon.

Dec. 17, 4:28 a.m. EST ?Full Cold Moon: On occasion, this moon was also called the Moon Before Yule. December is also the month the winter cold fastens its grip. Sometimes this moon is referred to as the Full Long Nights Moon and the term "Long Night" Moon is a very appropriate name because the nights are now indeed long and the moon is above the horizon a long time. This particular full moon makes its highest arc across the night sky because it's diametrically opposite to the low sun.?

Editor's note:?If you have an amazing picture of the full moon or any other night sky view that?you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to managing editor Tariq Malik at?spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The?New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/moon-swoon-2013s-full-moons-got-peculiar-names-143423946.html

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