Occupy Asteroids
Sometimes the news reads like a cross between a corporate promotional campaign gone haywire and a rejected science-fiction B-movie script. The announcement this week of an asteroid mining venture — backed by Google executives, the Perot Group, and James Cameron, among others — is precisely the sort of item that conjures both absurdity and horror in its full implications. Like rubberneckers passing a highway pileup, let’s take a closer look, because we just can’t help doing so…
The company, called Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to mine 100 or more near-Earth asteroids for resources including water and various precious metals. Space resources are “just so valuable” and “really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system,” co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. The idea is to generate resources in space sufficient to impel additional colonization efforts, creating a network of veritable “in-space gas stations” to fuel ongoing and expanding operations.
The initial impetus of the project will include a prospecting phase. “Before you decide where to put the gas stations,” said Anderson, “you’ve got to understand where the trucks are going to be driving by.” (Fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series can shed light on how the notion of an “interstellar superhighway” can go horribly awry.) Part of the initiative also includes potential plans to “snag and drag” a massive asteroid into the moon’s orbit in order to facilitate lunar settlement.
In their ideal form, such activities are seen as ushering in an era focused on the increasing exploration of deep space. But in the shorter term, much more mundane concerns are evident. The language of “healthy profits,” “resource extraction,” and “swarms” of robotic spacecraft used to mine the asteroids peppers the materials released by the company and the ensuing news reports. By securing new sources of precious metals Windows 7 64 bit key, according to a company statement, “the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts. And with the abundance of these metals, we’ll be able to use them in mass production….”
There’s more in this vein, but you get the idea. This all seems like something out of the first reel of a low-budget apocalyptic straight-to-video film. “Hey, let’s drag and drop a bunch of massive asteroids close to the Earth in order to make a buck. What could possibly go wrong?” By the second act, tidal patterns have dramatically shifted, ocean waters are rapidly rising, and the moon hangs in the sky with a sickly pink glow. In the finale, the moon moves closer to Earth, and its altered gravitational pull yields rampant volcanic eruptions and a thoroughgoing decimation of numerous major cities. As asteroids plummet to Earth, a scrappy band of survivors holds out hope in a deep cavern — and two tattered souls fall in love in the face of, and as a rebuke to, their impending doom.
OK, so, putting aside the worst-case scenario in which everything goes wrong, it needs to be noted that the whole concept of this project is simply wrong at the outset, although not so much the logic of near-Earth exploration as a precursor to human expansion into the heavens (I’m as much into Star Trek as anyone) but more so the entire premise of doing this primarily for purposes of profit, under the auspices of continued “resource extraction,” which has already pushed this planet to the brink of its capacities to support human life. The basis of this operation seems to be the notion that if we simply had more resources to support our wasteful Server 2008 Key, consumptive ways, everything will be fine.
On the other hand, one could read between the lines and spot an implicit recognition on the part of some wealthy and powerful forces that the Earth is getting close to being used up, and that a viable escape plan could be realized (by the uber-elite) in a few years’ time if orbital resources were to be harnessed and utilized for sustaining small human settlements in space. We might get cheaper cell phones and computers in the process, but all the myriad problems of waste, war, toxicity, climate change, and more will remain firmly in the face of those left to cope with an Earthbound future.
Indeed, this gets precisely at the perversity of the asteroid-mining plan: it merely continues the same paradigm of extraction and profiteering that has led us to the precipice in the first place. By virtue of their preexisting wealth, certain actors will be able to parlay that into laying claim to space resources that should be the property of no one, or perhaps everyone. This is merely an updated version of the doctrine of “prior appropriation,” which plies the misbegotten logic of “first in time, first in right” to privatize and control resources (like water and minerals) at the expense of common holdings, indigenous peoples, and environmental sustainability all at once.
With all due respect to the folks at Planetary Resources, Inc., they can kiss our asteroids! They don’t own these rocks, or the moon, or any of the other heavenly bodies that occupy the skies above. It’s bad enough that their modus operandi has essentially turned the Earth itself into a globally privatized system (at least as far as profits go; losses are still sought to be collectively placed on all the rest of us to bear). Now they want to file title deeds and mining claims to the heavens Windows 7 Product Key, and by promising us cheaper toys in the process we’re not supposed to notice or care. Is that how it works?
These issues were recently discussed in one of my college courses. I asked the students what could be done differently to make this a sustainable and just project rather than the one that’s on the drawing board right now. The responses were rational and visionary: the fruits of space exploration could be declared up front as the shared wealth of all peoples and nations; any profits or gains yielded could be directed toward the alleviation of poverty and inequality; any input of additional resources could include a moratorium on Earth-based extractive industries and a prohibition on wars presently fought for such resources; an expansion of the “closed system” in which we live could also include an equivalent expansion of creatively reusing waste products as is done on space stations.
These were just some of the suggestions brought forth by these sharp young minds (including the apropos title to this piece, “Occupy Asteroids,” as well). Questions of values and ethics were discussed, and whether humankind was morally ready to cast our net outward while we still have so much to do right here and now to set things right again. The proposed space mining plan is akin to buying a new house to avoid cleaning up the old one. If the monies readily exist to mine asteroids for platinum, etc., why can’t we use them to stop genocide, cure diseases, and promote free education and health care instead? Why should the rich get richer while the poor get sicker? The very idea of “gas stations” in space seemed especially repugnant, given the current geopolitical landscape.
I’ll cast my lot with the vision of these nascent adults over the B-movie illogic of the corporatists any day. The question now is how much we’ll tolerate in the name of so-called “progress” before we find ourselves awash in a toxic soup with no way out of the pot. As the students’ insights suggest, we don’t have to crawl back into caves in order to avert a looming cataclysm; rather, we simply need to reformulate our conceptions of who profits from (and how we utilize) the essential resources in our midst. If there was ever a moment to rejuvenate the notions of common holdings and collective wealth, this is it. As humankind prepares to launch its first major off-world resource operations, let’s bring the discussion back down to Earth and boldly go forward into the heavens together.
A Million Users Pshaw. What’s a Hit in Today’s
Illustration via Shutterstock | Picsfive
This week Rovio said its Angry Birds games have been downloaded more than a billion times. That’s a serious milestone, and beyond that there’s no doubt about the cultural effect of the franchise’s stuffed animals, movie tie-ins and repeat success with new titles. So I think it’s fair to call Angry Birds a smashing success.
But on a daily basis, we get pitched by start-ups who want to talk about how they have a thousandth of that many users. Really, a million registered users? Does that even matter anymore?
Well, yes — maybe for a paid subscription service or a marketplace. It’s not quite as impressive for a social game or a photo- or video-sharing service.
How do you know when something hits the big time, between numbers of downloads, users, visitors, page views, subscriptions, customers, monthly actives and daily actives, engagement, growth curves, millions and billions? It all starts to run together.
And very often, these metric milestones are massaged and selectively disclosed.
While it’s been well established that the number of people who actively use an app is more interesting than the number of people who have registered for it or downloaded it since it was released replica watches, many companies still tout those all-time user counts.
In response to criticism of it referring to registered user numbers, Google now counts people who have Google+ accounts and also use any Google product within a certain time period as “active” users of Google+. It’s a puzzling substitute for real engagement stats.
But numbers do tell a story. Take Instagram’s growth: 1 million registered users in December 2010, 15 million in December 2011 replica watches, 30 million in the beginning of April, an estimated 50 million by the end of that month, after it launched on Android and was bought by Facebook.
Or look at mobile gaming, where the records are eclipsed almost as soon as they are set. In the month of April, Draw Something reached 50 million downloads, 50 days after it launched – while Angry Birds Space took only 35 days.
I asked some metrics providers and investors what’s enough to turn their heads.
One public place to find up-and-coming mobile products is the top app charts that are published by Apple and Google. An iPhone app that is consistently in the top 10 of the U.S. popular app charts gets 1.5 to 2 million downloads per month, according to Oliver Lo of App Annie.
Meanwhile, Peter Farago of mobile analytics provider Flurry told me, “What makes a hit, in our view, is 1 million daily active users per platform (e.g., 1 million on iOS and 1 million on Android).”
Jack Abraham, who founded Milo and now leads local at eBay, was one of the earliest investors in Pinterest a few years ago. What got him to notice that company when so many other people couldn’t tell it was about to become a juggernaut? It was the growth chart, he recently told me.
“What I look for is 1 to 3 percent sustained growth in users per day,” Abraham said. “It could be as small as 5,000 or 10,000 users if it has that growth.”
Suhail Doshi, CEO of the widely used analytics start-up Mixpanel, said that even active user counts can hide a larger story.
“You should pay attention to what their definition of ‘active’ even means,” he said. For instance, the number of users who are active on a service within a month could be swayed by a single day’s big spike in usage. “An average rolling daily active is far more indicative,” he said.
By far the most important metric for a consumer app, Doshi argued, is retention — which is to say, the percent of users who come back the very next day after they first sign up. (Of course, measuring retention is Mixpanel’s specialty.)
“Any VC worth their salt is asking for retention numbers,” Doshi said. “You’re nothing without it.”
A reasonable retention rate is 20 to 30 percent, Doshi said. Really great retention is 50 to 60 percent.
However, it’s fair to expect lower retention rates for transactional services like TaskRabbit or Airbnb replica watches, where users might not return every day but often spend money when they do, Doshi said.
Mets Welcoming Back Jose Reyes
When All-Star shortstop Jose Reyes left the New York Mets this past winter Best Tattoo Ink, it was very hard for me. As a New Yorker, I really didn’t know how to react, since dealing with high-profile free agents leaving New York was just not a concept I was very familiar with. While it’s not as if the Mets ever won as much with Jose as they did with someone like Mike Piazza, Reyes was (and still is) an incredibly special baseball player, one that is already very badly missed in the Mets clubhouse. Between his speed, his bat, his glove and his infectious smile, Jose Reyes was a true fan favorite.
Though the Mets’ 2011 season was mostly unmemorable, it was truly a remarkable time for Jose, and he was really the only reason why I continued to watch the team on a daily basis even in the month of September when they had already been out of the pennant race for several weeks. But then, the season ended, and questions had to be answered. Jose had just won the batting title, the Mets were out of money and the newly formed Miami Marlins were ready to spend all the money in the world to ensure that they could compete in 2012 as something more known than just an underdog.
Now let’s think about this logically, in the shoes of Jose Reyes. Pretend you are one of the top players in baseball and you have arguably been so for the past several seasons. You’ve mostly been playing for a losing team that is not likely to give you the kind of money that you want, so as a functional human being, you at least want to see what kind of offers you would get by testing out the free agent market. Then, Marlins’ owner Jeffrey Loria approaches you and says, “Hey, I’ll give you over $100 million to play in sunny Miami, Florida over the next six years for a franchise that is clearly in the business of winning not in a few years, but now.” Now, doesn’t that sound like the kind of deal you might take? I certainly think so, particularly if I’m being given the chance to play in the same division that I know for a fact I can hit well against.
So when Jose Reyes comes back to Citi Field, give the man the respect he deserves. He treated us with incredibly exciting baseball over the past several seasons, and he doesn’t deserve to be booed just because he left a franchise that, at least at the end of 2011, appeared to be in shambles. He simply took a deal that was too good to turn down, and although it wasn’t what many of us ideally would have liked, it was what had to happen.
Some fans are angry with the Mets’ intention to show a short video tribute preceding Tuesday’s game. They think he somehow “betrayed” the Mets by not only leaving but also joining a “division rival” in Miami. Come on, folks. The Miami Marlins are not a true “division rival”. And I can tell you that based on my time in the Mets clubhouse throughout 2011 Tattoo Ink, Jose Reyes wanted to remain a New York Met. He really did. But, the offer wasn’t right. Whether this was because the front office was financially challenged or other reasons, Fred Wilpon and Sandy Alderson just couldn’t match what the Marlins had to offer, so Jose left for Miami, or I suppose, “took his talents to South Beach.” As for tomorrow, it’s not as if the Mets are making it “Jose Reyes Day” or giving him a shiny new car Good Tattoo Ink, they’re simply presenting a video to show them that despite the unfortunate end to his relationship with the Mets, the organization still and will always appreciate the joy that Jose brought to Queens for so many years. While he might be in a different uniform, I’m looking forward to seeing Jose again this week, just as I always have.
Romney Predicts GOP Takes Back North Carolina in N
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – With the site of the Democratic National Convention behind him, Mitt Romney today looked forward to this fall Tattoo Machines And Supplies, predicting a win in the crucial state of North Carolina and previewing what he believes President Obama will and will not say to Americans when he accepts the Democratic nomination.
“I know the Democratic National Convention is going to be right behind us,” said Romney Tattoo Kits Cheap, pointing to the Bank of America Stadium in downtown Charlotte, as the crowd booed. “I know the president’s going to do everything he can to get North Carolina in his column and that will not be enough because we’re going to win North Carolina in November.”
“I want to give you some thoughts about what’s going to happen there, a bit of a preview, if you will,” said Romney, who stood at a podium adorned with a sign reading, “Obama Isn’t Working.” “I predict that you will not hear a reprise of President Obama’s speech from four years ago in Denver. They will not be quoting it extensively. But because they won’t, I thought I would.”
And with that, Romney delivered a speech unlike his standard remarks, listing off the various things Obama said in 2008 and at times even reading word for word portions of Obama’s speech.
“At that time the president said, and I quote, ‘Democrats have a different measure of what constitutes progress,’ and then he went on to list specifically the things that Democrats feel constitute progress,” said Romney. “He said you measure progress by, quote, ‘How many people can find a job that pays the mortgage.’”
“Now, what you won’t hear at that convention is that for the last 38 months, unemployment has been above 8 percent, that we’ve had 24 million Americans that are out of work, stopped looking for work, or underemployed,” said Romney. “You won’t hear that since he gave that speech and became president that there have been 50,000 more job losses here in North Carolina, more than twice as many as would fit in that stadium.”
“You will not hear that 400,000 North Carolinians are out of work. You will not hear that 93 percent of the people who lost their jobs during the Obama years have been women,” he continued. “Those are things you will not hear, but as I’m the nominee for our party, I hope, I’m going make sure the people of America hear those things loud and clear.”
Romney’s speech today, dubbed by his campaign as a “prebuttal” to Obama’s convention speech still more than four months away, is the first major push from the Romney campaign in the battleground state North Carolina since becoming the presumptive nominee last week.
During the 2008 presidential election, then-Senator Obama successfully flipped the state from red to blue for the first time in more than 30 years, winning 50 percent of the vote, inching out Sen. John McCain’s 49 percent.
Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., in a conference call touted by the Obama re-election campaign earlier today, charging Romney as being unclear in his vision for America.
“What we have heard doesn’t sound good for a majority of Americans Glitter Tattoo Kits,” said Hagan. “As President Obama continues to fight for the middle class, strengthen our economy so that it’s built to last, and build on the 25 straight months of private sector job growth we’ve seen under the president, Mitt Romney will speak in Charlotte today and lay out his plans to return to the same failed policies of the past: tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations paid for with cuts to Medicare, Social Security, education, housing and initiatives to boost our economy for everyone else.”
On Thursday, Romney will continue to chase President Obama around the country: The candidate is scheduled to hold an event in Lorain, Ohio, the same city where the president delivered a speech today.
“Our campaign is going to go toe-to-toe and post up against the Obama machine every day to help get the message out that Mitt Romney will be able to deliver what this president could not – and that’s a more prosperous America,” said Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho.
Crushed driver’s death blamed on council
A coroner has found a young driver's death when a huge tree branch crushed her car could have been prevented by better council action. Buy Bandage dresses
Rebecca Jolly, 20, died when a branch fell in Greenhill Road in Adelaide's eastern suburbs in January 2010.
The coroner says the death could have been prevented had Burnside Council thoroughly assessed the tree after another limb fell just months before the fatality.
A seven-metre branch from a grey box gum tree fell onto the young woman's car. The inquest heard another limb from the same tree fell in August 2009.
Coroner Mark Johns found the council, which was responsible for maintenance of the significant tree, failed to thoroughly inspect it after the first incident.
He said had council workers realised the potential danger and pruned the gum tree, Ms Jolly's death would have been prevented.
Mr Johns said Burnside Council's acting manager of open space and recreation, John Draper, who developed the council's tree management strategy, was evasive in his oral evidence.
“Mr Draper did not, in my opinion, do himself justice in some aspects of his oral evidence,” the coroner said.
“It is most unfortunate that neither Mr Draper nor any other council officer took the opportunity in August 2009 to consider the northern leader (branch) and the risk that it presented in overhanging Greenhill Road.”
Mr Johns said more could have been done after the earlier branch fell.
“It would have been appropriate for Mr Draper to have carried out a more extensive assessment of the subject tree in August 2009,” he said.
“Had that occurred Emilio Pucci Dresses sale, I think it very likely that the northern leader would have been regarded as being at risk of failure.
“That in turn would have precipitated steps which, had they been taken in August 2009, would have meant that the northern leader was not present in January 2010. “
Council protocols
Mr Johns did not make any specific recommendations arising from his findings.
“In reaching that conclusion, I do acknowledge the immense difficulties posed in the management of remnant trees in the Adelaide metropolitan area,” he said.
“I would not wish it to be thought that I would expect councils to carry out individual inspections of every tree within their area and not even every tree that overhangs a road.
“However the difference in this case is that a major event occurred which provided the opportunity for attention to be given to the subject tree.”
The coroner conceded there were already appropriate protocols for local government.
“It is clear that efforts are being made and that, within the limits of the resources available, the people responsible for this area of public administration are genuinely attempting to manage a very difficult situation,” he said.
“It is impractical to expect that every single tree in metropolitan Adelaide will be individually inspected and assessed.
“It is probably impractical to expect even that, within existing resources, every tree that might pose a risk if it failed will be so inspected. Of course when a risk has been drawn to a local authorities' attention then it is incumbent upon that authority to carry out a complete inspection of that risk in accordance with generally-accepted standards.”
Extraordinary accident
Ms Jolly's parents, Mark and Grace, said their daughter was a beautiful person and the centre of their lives.
“At 20 she was basically a skier, a windsurfer, designer, painter. Pretty well a bit of everything,” her father said.
“Very beautiful, very loving. The centre of our lives, the light of our lives. Now she's gone through a most extraordinary accident and this finding here from Mark Johns is a chance to maybe make a bit of sense of it.
“[It was] an extraordinary accident combined with some tree management issues.”
He said he hoped the findings would lead to changes which improved safety.
In a statement, Burnside Council said the findings would contribute to its work to minimise any risk of similar incidents.
Burnside Council CEO Paul Deb said amid the court proceedings, the council had not forgotten that a young person lost her life.
The Local Government Association said there had been an independent inquiry into the issue of tree management on public land.
It said 20 recommendations had been made and the Association would consider the coronial findings before advancing on strategies for local government to deal with the issues.
Sympathy for Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
The Democrats and their fellow travelers convulsed with fury yesterday at the news that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. had given $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. Democratic Governors Association Executive Director Nathan Daschle sent a letter to Roger Ailes, who heads Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, demanding that Fox News start running a disclaimer informing viewers of its donation in its coverage of governors and of gubernatorial campaigns.
Liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America flayed Murdoch and Fox News, Fox Business Network, and FoxNews.com for not reporting the donation. “Any pretense that may have existed about the ties between Fox News and the Republican Party has been ripped violently away,” a Democratic National Committee spokesman told the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz.
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Although I’ve made Murdoch my whipping boy in the past, I’ve got to defend the genocidal tyrant’s donation. To begin with, many media corporations make political donations. As Kurtz points out in the Post, General Electric, which owns NBC and half of MSNBC, has given the Republican governors $205,000 since last year. Perhaps the only reason the Democrats and Media Matters didn’t bitch about that donation was because GE also gave $245,000 to the Democratic governors over the same interval. So the Democrats’ real complaint isn’t that Murdoch has tainted his company’s journalism by making a political donation. It’s that he didn’t give them as much fun money as he did the Republicans.
For Murdoch or any other CEO, campaign donations aren’t donations—they’re investments. Competing as he does in the highly regulated industry of broadcasting, Murdoch cannot function without government licenses. He cannot expand his broadcast holdings without securing new licenses. Because his very livelihood depends on the whims of politicians and regulators Tattoo Supplies, he’d be insane not to be funneling all the legal cash he can to the most powerful and influential politicians. I hate to write this, but it’s true. Murdoch is a victim of government power. If Washington didn’t flex so much regulatory power, he wouldn’t feel compelled to pay them such steep tribute.
Whether you want to view Murdoch as a victim or not, the $1 million he just dropped on the Republicans will pay future dividends as some of these politicians move to Washington to take Senate seats or other positions of power in the permanent government.
In 1987 Tattoo Supplies, Murdoch learned from Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., that you can never have too many political allies. The two senators pushed through a measure that prevented the Federal Communications Commission from extending the temporary waiver that had allowed Murdoch to own TV stations and newspapers in the same cities (Boston and New York) at the same time. Had Murdoch stockpiled the right flavors of political juice, he probably could have drowned Kennedy’s move, which cost him ownership of the New York Post for several years. Since then, Murdoch has wisely labored to keep fed the political mouths he needs the most.
Although Murdoch tilts right ideologically, he rarely lets his own politics come between him and business. By dumping the Tories in England for Labor’s Tony Blair, he earned himself an honorary seat in the Blair Cabinet, according to a former Blair spin doctor. Then, he was happy to dump Labor to support Tory David Cameron in the last election. He’s thrown fundraisers for uber-Democrats Hillary Clinton and Charles E. Schumer. And he’s flattered, kowtowed to, and paid off the Communist establishment in China in hopes of winning the regime’s favor for his broadcast empire. (The effort failed. He recently sold down his China TV investment.)
I’d rather judge Murdoch on what sort of favors he asks of the politicians on his payroll than to judge them by what party they belong to. As long as Murdoch doesn’t play offense by asking politicians to punish his competitors with new regulatory measures and limits himself to playing defense—i.e., requesting relief from onerous or extractive regulation—I’m fine with his donations.
Writing on the New York Times op-ed page about the Blagojevich case today, Scott Turow observes that corporations and unions have obligations to spend money to improve profits and benefit their members. If Murdoch wasn’t making timely and legal political donations, the News Corp. board of directors would have no choice but to remove him as the chairman and chief executive officer.
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2013 Mercedes-Benz SL brochure leaks ahead of Detr
It’s getting darn near impossible for automakers to keep their latest wares hidden from view until they are good and ready to show them. Such is the case with Mercedes-Benz Missoni Dresses sale, who’s latest SL has leaked to the internet courtesy of the crew at Autoblog.nl.
If we had to guess Cheap Christian Audigier Clothes, we’d say these images come from a brochure of some sort DKNY Clothing sale, and they show the 2013 Mercedes-Benz SL from the front and rear Buy Chloe Dresses, along with the top up and down. We also get a lone shot of the interior, and though it’s all in various shades of black and white Cheap BCBG Dresses, everything looks just as polished and stately as we’d expect from M-B’s range-topping non-AMG machine.
We know that the 2013 SL will be a few hundred pounds lighter than its predecessor, but we don’t yet know what range of engines will be in the “S-Class of Roadsters.” We’d guess a few V8 options with the vestigial V12 hanging around for at least one more generation.
We’ll just have to wait until the 2012 Detroit Auto Show to find out all the details Buy DKNY Clothes, but in the meantime, have a gander at the pics in our high-res image gallery.
Vancouver authorities sieze $2M in cars for street
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Authorities in Vancouver have impounded a total of 13 exotic cars valued at more than $2 million after the drivers were spotted reportedly street racing. Amongst others Cheap DKNY Clothing, the collection included a pair of Maserati models and a pair of Mercedes-Benz coupes Discount DKNY Clothes, a few examples of the mighty Nissan GT-R, an Audi R8 Replica Herve Leger v neck, one Ferrari and a stack of Lamborghini models. Here’s the full list:
2007 Ferrari 599 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo 2009 Lamborghini Gallardo 2009 Audi R8 2012 Nissan GT-R 2010 Nissan GT-R 2010 Nissan GT-R 2010 Maserati GranTurismo 2010 Maserati GranTurismo 2011 Mercedes SL63 AMG 2011 Mercedes SLS AMG 2005 Aston Martin DB9 The vehicles were spotted rolling along at around 125 miles per hour with two drivers holding up traffic to give the other exotics some space to stretch their legs. Police eventually cornered the racers and began impounding their vehicles. Each driver was cited for driving without due consideration of others.
If all of this weren’t strange enough for you Cheap Christian Audigier Clothing, The Vancouver Sun reports that all of the cited drivers were under 20 years old, with most displaying N, or Novice licenses. Summer jobs must pay considerably more than they used to. The vehicles will all be impounded for seven days and the drivers will face a fine of $196 each. Check out our image gallery Discount DKNY Clothing, then head over to TheProvince.com for a look at a gallery of the cars being towed off into the sunset.
Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Save
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
Photograph by Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images.
The eurozone crisis seems to be reaching its climax Buy Emilio Pucci Dresses, with Greece on the verge of default and an inglorious exit from the monetary union, and now Italy on the verge of losing market access. But the eurozone’s problems are much deeper. They are structural, and they severely affect at least four other economies: Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus, and Spain.
For the last decade, the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) were the eurozone’s consumers of first and last resort, spending more than their income and running ever-larger current-account deficits. Meanwhile, the eurozone core (Germany, the Netherlands Replica Chanel Dresses, Austria Christian Audigier Clothing sale, and France) comprised the producers of first and last resort Discount Hale Bob Dresses, spending below their incomes and running ever-larger current-account surpluses.
These external imbalances were also driven by the euro’s strength since 2002, and by the divergence in real exchange rates and competitiveness within the eurozone. Unit labor costs fell in Germany and other parts of the core (as wage growth lagged that of productivity) Herve Leger sale, leading to a real depreciation and rising current-account surpluses, while the reverse occurred in the PIIGS (and Cyprus), leading to real appreciation and widening current-account deficits. In Ireland and Spain, private savings collapsed Buy DKNY Clothing, and a housing bubble fueled excessive consumption, while in Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Italy, it was excessive fiscal deficits that exacerbated external imbalances.
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The resulting build-up of private and public debt in over-spending countries became unmanageable when housing bubbles burst (Ireland and Spain) and current-account deficits, fiscal gaps, or both became unsustainable throughout the eurozone’s periphery. Moreover, the peripheral countries’ large current-account deficits, fueled as they were by excessive consumption, were accompanied by economic stagnation and loss of competitiveness.
So, now what?
Symmetrical reflation is the best option for restoring growth and competitiveness on the eurozone’s periphery while undertaking necessary austerity measures and structural reforms. This implies significant easing of monetary policy by the European Central Bank; provision of unlimited lender-of-last-resort support to illiquid but potentially solvent economies; a sharp depreciation of the euro, which would turn current-account deficits into surpluses; and fiscal stimulus in the core if the periphery is forced into austerity.
Unfortunately, Germany and the ECB oppose this option, owing to the prospect of a temporary dose of modestly higher inflation in the core relative to the periphery.
The bitter medicine that Germany and the ECB want to impose on the periphery—the second option—is recessionary deflation: fiscal austerity, structural reforms to boost productivity growth and reduce unit labor costs, and real depreciation via price adjustment, as opposed to nominal exchange-rate adjustment.
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Return to the Frey
Vanity Fair, June 2008 In a column, Michael Wolff explains why “sex … in politics is as significant a subtext as race.” The public and the media fixate on politicians’ sex lives because “how you handle your sexual embarrassment, because you will have to handle it, has become a major political test and skill.”… A piece argues that discredited memoirist James Frey could have been enabled (and encouraged) by publishers and editors eager for a best-seller: “[I]t now turns out that it was something of an open secret in the publishing word that the industry had been complicit in the scandal, and that Frey, though he was not innocent, had become a whipping boy.” Frey, who claims he initially labeled his book a novel, “embraced the badass role he’d written for himself” and “began standing by his book as straight nonfiction.”… The article accompanying the much-discussed seminude photo of Miley Cyrus considers the success of the teen juggernaut. Part of her popularity stems from the fact that she’s “cute, but not too cute, and she sings with more character than most pop stars her age.” (Meghan O’Rourke weighs in on Cyrus in Slate.)
Newsweek, May 12 The cover story, an excerpt from Fareed Zakaria’s recent book Fake A Lange & Sohne Watches, suggests Americans are gloomy because a “seismic shift in power and attitudes” is taking place as the world moves from “anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.” The growth of nations like India and China is “naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans How to buy Replica Swiss Movement Watches, but it should not be” because the post-American world “will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else.” (The Post-American World just happens to be the book’s title.) … A profile of the late Deborah Jean Palfrey reveals the so-called D.C. madam said she identified with the “stifled, battered, but sultry small-town girl” played by Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter. … On the 10-year anniversary of Seinfeld’s final episode, dueling op-eds argue for and against the sitcom’s cultural legacy.
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New York, May 12
The cover story interviews Sarah Jessica Parker on the eve of the Sex and the City movie’s release. Parker says New York City has changed since she first arrived in 1976: “[T]here’s just so much money now Replica Breitling Watches, and the city is so affluent, and all the colors, all the shops, the look of a street from block to block is just terribly absent of distinguishing coffee shops, bodegas. All of that stuff that made it possible to live in New York is gone.”… A harrowing feature investigates the working conditions of New York subway employees, who toil where “there’s so much steel dust swirling around that when you blow your nose your snot is black” and “[o]n summer days, the temperature regularly exceeds 100 degrees; in the winter, it’s below freezing.” Worse than their working conditions is the danger they encounter underground, where they have to clean and repair the tracks, and have little space to avoid oncoming trains.
The New Yorker, May 12 In the “Innovators Issue,” an article reviews the history of animal-language studies. It focuses on the story of Alex, the late African gray parrot who could converse using about 50 words. Language researchers have long been interested in birds because of their ability to mimic human speech, and recent studies have bolstered the theory that “avian brains, long regarded as primitive, are not so different from mammalian brains after all.”… A profile of prominent chef Grant Achatz explores the phenomenon of taste while detailing his fight to save his tongue from cancer. Achatz, a molecular gastronomist whom critics have called “a successor to Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck,” refused to have his tongue removed in the conventional treatment for the disease to save his sense of taste. … A review of Barbara Walters’ autobiography observes she is “among the few remaining on-air television journalists whose careers encompass almost the entire history of television news.”
Vogue, June 2008 A piece on Jenna Bush’s upcoming nuptials reveals that the first daughter did “feel some pressure” to marry at the White House but decided against “a public, almost ’state’ event on taxpayer-funded property.” Bush says, “There’s a glamour to it, I know, but [Bush's fiance] Henry and I are far less glamorous than the White House.”… An article on Patrick Robinson, Gap’s head designer, explains why his company, which was the “symbol of all that was shiny and clean and optimistic in the Bill Clinton nineties,” has “now slumped into a coral-sweatered, baggy-cargo’ed mess.” Gap’s fall from its “glory years” can be blamed on poor corporate management that “disastrously undermin[ed] the individual specialness of Gap’s offer” by bulk-ordering material for the company and its sister brands. Robinson, who is a “guy equipped with both the silo-shattering Replica Raymond Weil Watches, snowflake-killing determination of a design warrior and a collegial lack of ego,” hopes to turn the company back into a destination for “super-cool American classics.”
Weekly Standard, May 12 In the cover story How to buy Replica Chopard Watches, a former student examines the life of William Bee Ravenel III, an instructor and mentor who John McCain said “helped teach me to be a man.” Ravenel taught English to McCain at Alexandria, Va., Episcopal High School and “was always reaching out, always trying not so much to instill as to bring out the qualities McCain would need in the future”… A piece debunks a Gallup poll that states only 7 percent of the world’s Muslims are radical—that is, believe “the attacks of September 11 Discount Replica Burberry Watches, 2001, were ‘completely’ justified” and “view the United States unfavorably.” The piece argues that the poll is misleading because they did not include the “23.1 percent of respondents … who told pollsters the attacks were in some way justified.”… An op-ed derides a Swiss ethics panel that recently “weighed in on the ‘dignity’ of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong.” The move, the piece claims, represents “the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.”