01 Sep
SOURCE: Associated Press
Smile. You are likely on camera, whether you’re driving, walking or swimming in a public pool.
High-tech eyes in the sky — from satellite imagery to sophisticated aerial photography that maps entire communities — are being employed in creative new ways by government officials, a trend that civil libertarians and others fear are eroding privacy rights.
“As technology advances, we have to revisit questions about what is and what is not private information,” said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology.
Online services like Google and Bing give users very detailed images of practically any location on the planet. Though some images are months old, they make it possible for someone sitting in a living room in Brooklyn to look in on folks in Dublin or Prague, or even down the street in Flatbush.
Sean Walter, an attorney and first-term town supervisor in Riverhead, N.Y., insists he is a staunch defender of privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.
But Walter supported using Google Earth images to help identify about 250 Riverhead homes where residents failed to get building permits certifying their swimming pools complied with safety regulations. All but about 10 eventually came to town hall.
Walter said the focus was safety, not filling town coffers with permit money, which averaged about $150 depending on the size of the pool. A 4-foot fence is required, gates have to be self-closing and padlocked. All pools must have an alarm that sounds when sensors are activated indicating someone is in the pool.
“We have a town employee who is a personal friend of mine whose son was found face-down in a swimming pool,” Walter said. “He’s OK, but I don’t want to be the supervisor that attends the funeral of a child that drowns in a swimming pool.”
Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., fears that while Walter’s focus was safety, other municipalities may use the images to check for other transgressions.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Coney said. “There are lots of ordinances where this can be used. In California, where they deal with brush fires, could a satellite image show if a homeowner has brush growing too close to his home? What if someone has junk cars on their lot in violation of ordinances?”
Riverhead resident Tony Villar said the town’s action “could be considered Big Brother looking down at you.”
“But at the same time, if the government can listen to your telephone conversations in the name of terrorism,” he said.
Standing outside the Riverhead Public Library, Walter Casey of Flanders agreed. “I think it’s a great intrusion on people’s privacy; they should use it on the politicians’ backyards.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union’s Donna Lieberman said there are ways to enforce requirements “without this sort of engaging in Big Brother on high. Technically, it may be lawful, but in the gut it does not feel like a free society kind of operation.”
In Greece, officials are struggling with a debt crisis and have sought to catch tax-evaders by using satellite photos to spot undeclared swimming pools — indicators of taxable wealth.
Google spokeswoman Kate Hurowitz said in a statement that Google Earth acquires its information from a broad range of commercial and public sources.
“The same information is available to anyone who buys it from these widely available public sources,” she said. “Google’s freely available technology has been used for a variety of purposes, ranging from travel planning to scientific research to emergency response, rescue and relief in natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake.”
Ground Control . . . Experts say ground control measures, such as metal detectors and airport security style surveillance are not enough anymore to track potential threats. And the more pervasive these become, the more rancor is raised by the public.
At least nine lawsuits seeking class-action status have been filed in the United States, contending that Google collected fragments of e-mails, Web-surfing data and other information from unencrypted wireless networks as it photographed neighborhoods for its “Street View” feature. Google is also facing investigations or inquiries in 38 states as well as in several countries, including Germany, Spain and Australia.
The Mountain View, Calif., company said in May it had inadvertently collected the data from public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries, but maintains it never used the data and hasn’t broken any laws.
Google Earth posts updates about every two weeks on selected images from its providers, with images ranging from a few weeks to a few years old.
For big cities like Chicago, tracking illegal pools, porches and decks through Google Earth requires frequent imaging updates, so the Chicago buildings department uses it as a reference tool on a case-by-case scenario, said spokesman Bill McCaffrey.
“We’re not opposed to adopting new technology, but until it advances where we can get photos of more recent updates, we don’t have any plans to implement it,” he said.
Smaller towns such as Champaign and Naperville, Ill. opted to use satellite images as reference only.
“Mostly it’s so we can see that we’re going to the right building when we go to do inspections,” said Ann Michalsen, lead inspector for code enforcement in Naperville.
It’s also important for police officers to know they have the right destination when executing search warrants, said Joe Pollini, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Most departments would use it as a preliminary step, but they would also use active surveillance with their own aircraft,” he said.
The nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog is seeking to determine the extent of the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration’s use of Google Earth in its investigations, spokesman John M. Simpson said last week.
Federal contracting records reviewed by Consumer Watchdog show that the FBI has spent more than $600,000 on Google Earth since 2007. The Drug Enforcement Administration, meanwhile, has spent more than $67,000.
Simpson has called on Congress to investigate how U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities are using Google technologies. The group says it has concerns that data could be used for racial profiling.
The New York Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center uses satellite imaging and computerized mapping systems to identify geographic patterns of crimes and to pinpoint possible addresses where suspects might flee — information relayed to investigators on the street. The NYPD also has two major security initiatives where a network of public and private cameras will eventually link and be searchable.
The NYCLU has filed lawsuits in opposition.
“We live in an environment where we are told that if it’s on camera, if you have a video record, that will make us safer,” Lieberman said. “That may be appealing, but it is an unproven assertion. There’s no evidence of that. Yet we see millions, if not billions, of post-9/11 money has gone to law enforcement for installing cameras in every conceivable nook and cranny.”
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MY TAKE: I’m pretty comfortable with airport cargo surveillance and have no qualms with the heavy used of metal detection equipment at public venues. Frankly, I say the more surveillance the better when it comes to airports, big malls, or places where police forces on the ground can’t possibly keep their eye on everything that’s going on.
Let the Oklahoma dog training businesses who turn puppies into police dogs do what they can to help give cops more “eyes” on the ground. I’m all for more police dog training as a way to help cops sniff out threats in airports and other public places where my civil liberties just may be outweighed by the need to protect me and others from the bad guys. And there are lots of bad guys out there.
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OTHER RESOURCE
Spread The Word
Imprinted pens are a great way to get your company name out there. Ditto for custom golf shirts. Promotional products are generally cheaper if you order large quantities at a time. Call two or three promotional product distributors and ask for samples of their pens and shirts. These are the same companies who also will imprint advertising bags for trade shows. You can also buy personalized shopping bags for your own store so your customers have your logo and name as they leave and a bag to bring back later on. Most good promotional items companies will send you one, which gives you the opportunity to compare fabric, quality and colors before you make a purchase
01 Sep
SOURCE: Associated Press
Arson investigators looking into the cause of a fire that did $20,000 in damages to a northeast Arkansas home determined the blaze was not caused by an electrical problem or burning food or arson.
Instead, the dead plants did it, according to a report summary provided to the homeowner, Brian Duncan. “The fire was caused by self-heating through decomposition of organic materials contained within a plastic flowerpot,” the Aug. 25 letter from State Farm Insurance Co. said.
Or, in layman’s terms, spontaneous combustion.
Duncan, whose home is a few miles south of Paragould, said the flowerpot had contained dead, decomposing flowers and potting soil that his wife had planted in the summer of 2009. Paragould is about 150 miles northeast of Little Rock.
“She had intended on repotting (the flowers),” Duncan said. But they sat on the porch, unwatered, and eventually died.
He said it was clear where the July 25 fire had begun, because the burning flowerpot and plants charred a hole in the porch and they fell to the ground several feet below.
Still, Duncan said he was surprised at the conclusion contained in the letter. Duncan provided The Associated Press with a copy.
Fortunately, no one was injured in the blaze and Duncan’s father-in-law was able to put it out with a garden hose even before firefighters from a nearby volunteer fire department arrived.
But it still caused some damage.
Duncan, 51, CEO of Craighead Electric Cooperative, said the blaze charred decking around the hole where the flowerpot had been, and caught the home’s vinyl siding on fire. He said the heat broke a sidelight window next to the front door, and his air-conditioning system sucked in smoke from the fire.
“The house was full of smoke,” he said.
The smoke damage inside the 15-year-old home, Duncan said, meant his family had to repaint the entire interior of the 2,200-square-foot home and replace the carpeting, in addition to replacing the vinyl siding on the front of the house and the wooden decking of the porch.
Duncan said that, since the fire, he had begun spreading the word about the potential fire hazards of dead plants.
Computers and other damaged items are irretrievable because the charred equipment no longer is able to be handled by data recovery experts. Data recovery services can mine for lost data if the hardware is still working but not if it’s been burned.
A fire marshal in nearby Jonesboro, Jason Wills, said such an occurrence was rare.
“Spontaneous combustion is something where you have to have a lot of variables come together and it has to be just right,” Wills told Jonesboro television station KAIT. “It’s something that does happen, but this is the first one in our area that I’m aware of.”
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MY TAKE: I read a lot of interesting cases about causes of arson fires as a Los Angeles court reporting freelancer. I know that there are lots of ways to start a fire and collect on the insurance. But combustion is another matter. Recently a report about a mechanic working in a garage left a set of hot tools near the wood platform trucks and the heat from the room ignited a fire. The fire spread to the service carts and then burned the building down. The answering phone service for 911 recorded the call as a chemical fire.
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Other Resources
Multiple Policy Discounts
There are a lot of different industries where it can pay to purchase multiple yet related items from the same company. One such significant industry is insurance and a Scottsdale State Farm agent will usually inquire as to what other insurance policies a person might have if they are otherwise interested in something like an automobile policy. Deciding upon which policies might be best for bundling isn’t that difficult and it’s usually a simple conversation to decide whether bringing over the home owner’s insurance policy is a good idea when purchased with a vehicle policy.
Timeframe on 1031 Exchanges
When considering how best to handle New York 1031 exchanges, one of the largest issues has been the best method for making the process go as smoothly as possible so that there are no issues that come about at the last minute to disrupt the sale. After all, a 1031 exchange will usually take months and if a property sale or transference is going to involve several properties or a substantial tract of land, the amount of time that might be required to complete such a transaction could be significantly increased if the process isn’t handled right.
Divorce Lawyers in Texas
An Austin TX divorce lawyer can help you dig for hidden assets your spouse may have in order to make sure you get the fairest deal in your final decree. If you have children you should make sure your lawyer is also an experienced Austin family law lawyer who can effectively negotiate child custody and support agreements.
California Lemon Law Lawyer and Asymmetry
Although a California Lemon Law lawyer is essential in cases where arguing and interpretation of the state’s lemon law is necessary, it’s amazing that in the transference of ownership, not all required information generally passes to the consumer. Called “information asymmetry,” economists in the 1970’s discussed the fact that the market for used cars greatly lends itself to a situation where the seller knows more information about the product than the buyer and this creates quality uncertainty. A paper written by George Akerlof surmised that the bad cars are usually the type sold in used situations since good used cars rarely end up on the market.
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01 Sep
SOURCE: Associated Press
Paris Hilton has been banned from two Wynn resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and her boyfriend has been “separated” from his position as nightclub manager following their arrests recently on drug and misdemeanor DUI charges, according to Wynn casino officials.
Wynn spokeswoman Jennifer Dunne said Wednesday that Hilton won’t be allowed at the properties anymore.
Dunne also says Cy Waits has been “separated” from his job as managing partner of the Tryst Nightclub at Wynn and XS The Nightclub at Encore.
Hilton was arrested Friday for investigation of felony cocaine possession, and Waits was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor driving under the influence.
Police say a bag containing 0.8 of a gram of cocaine fell from a purse carried by Hilton when she reached
for lip balm. She says it was not her purse.
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MY TAKE: I’m surprised Paris Hilton hasn’t been banned from every New York City car accidents lawyer office, every hair replacement therapy center, and every divorce attorney’s office, every bar, restaurant and airport this side of the North Pole for her outlandish behavior. The girl needs a room with lots of wall padding, where she can contemplate her future and think about what to do with all that money she blows. In fact, maybe she could be forced to work in a hair restoration office and be required to clean the toilets as penance for her bad behavior, and a photo of her with no makeup, glitz or bling in jeans and an old T-shirt splattered on the pole pads at every sport stadium across the country. I don’t this country is interested in wannabe starlets going bizerk anymore.
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OTHER RESOURCES
Use Your Networking Skills
Searching for the right New York tax planning accountants? Get great advice online from referral companies and social networking sites on New York income tax accountants before you hire one. Ditto for you if you’re looking for a collaborative lawyer. Lots of people have had to hire a divorce mediator and they can point you in the right direction before you spend a lot of money on someone who isn’t going to meet your expectations.
01 Sep
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
According to yet another study documenting the loss of hearing among teenagers: they don’t hear so much.
Researchers in New York examined the ears of 8,710 teenage girls who lived in a foster care facility between 1985 and 2008. These young women were from homes and neighborhoods “stressed by poverty, substance abuse, and violence,” according to a study published online Tuesday in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
At the beginning of the study, 10.1% of the girls were diagnosed with high-frequency hearing loss. Twenty-four years later, that figure had nearly doubled to 19.2%, the researchers found.
What’s more, among girls with documented hearing loss, the proportion that were classified as having cases that were “mild or greater” (as opposed to “slight”) rose from 26% in 1985 to 61% in 2008.
In 2001, researchers began asking the teens about their use of personal listening devices. In that year, 18% said they listened to music through headsets; by 2008 that figure had ballooned to 76%.
The number of girls who listened for more than three hours per day tripled during that period, according to the study. Nearly 24% of those who spent a significant chunk of their day with earbuds in their ears were diagnosed with high-frequency hearing loss, and almost 20% wound up with tinnitus, or “ringing in the ear.”
DANGEROUS ON THE ROAD?
Officials are somewhat concerned teens will not do well in academy driving school in NY classes or other critical course that help them move forward in life. Forget about loud stereos and TV of the 1980s and earlier affecting their hearing. iPods and headphones plugged into high voltage computers and other gaming devices are doing the damage. Gone are the days when vinyl lettering on their walls and a radio were enough for entertainment.
The overall prevalence of tinnitus rose from 4.6% in 2001 to 10.6% in 2008. Of the 286 girls who reported having tinnitus, 285 used personal listening devices, the study found.
This degree of hearing loss is not trivial, the authors warned. “It is well documented that even minimal hearing loss poses academic risk for school-age children,” they wrote in the study.
Earlier this month, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. found that 19.5% of all American teens have suffered at least slight hearing loss. As my colleague Thomas H. Maugh reported, researchers are justifiably concerned:
“Just because a hearing loss is slight does not mean it is insignificant, particularly when it is in the high frequencies,” said Dr. Alison Grimes, manager of the audiology clinic at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center.
In English, soft high-frequency sounds such as “s,” “f,” “th” and “sh” “carry a great deal of meaning, and are very important sounds to be able to discern,” Grimes said. But those are the first to be lost, especially in a noisy environment like a classroom. “We know children have more difficulty learning and keeping up academically” when they can’t hear well, she added.
Hearing loss can also affect social lives: The teens may miss parts of conversations and punch lines or may have to keep asking others to repeat things. “It may seem like they are not in touch, and kids are very aware when someone is a little different,” said Dr. Gary C. Curhan of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a coauthor of the report.
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MY TAKE: I agree with this point. What if you’re a teen trying to pass a motorcycle driving course in NY style and can’t hear well? What if you’ve got your sexy costumes pick all ready for Halloween but you put it on and drive the car to the party and can’t hear well? Many Halloween costumes do have masks that block hearing on those with good oratory skills, imagine what they do to these kids that have trouble hearing normally? I also agree that wall letters, band posters and a radio are like the horse and buggy to today’s teen: they want high-tech gadgetry and they want it loud and they want it now.
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Other Resources
Cell Phone Usage Research
As of 2008 most research groups dealing with issues of cell phone usage and the growth of cell phone sales around the world suggested that cell phone use would actually exceed use of land lines and this has caused some individuals within the security and safety world to suggest that cell phone radiation protection might be a good idea simply because of how much time people have spent in recent years on their cell phones instead of on land lines. Some people have even suggested speaker phones might be a good idea for anyone involved in a lot of cell phone talk.
Some Care Homes Closing
There is some worry from people who are working within the elderly and sick care industries that some homes that specialize in such care have had to close because there has been a lack of funding for such projects in recent years. It has become increasingly difficult to find a full care situation in some towns around the United States and this has led more people to consider a Pasadena home care agency because of their availability. Unfortunately for anyone who is not otherwise familiar with the care industry, it has become difficult to decipher how best to navigate this new care territory.
Federal Court Supports Employer Choice in Insurance
With the many stories to have come out of the federal mandate on health insurance changes, shopping for FL affordable health insurance has become an interesting job for citizens, but when people are offered health insurance through an employer that business has the right to charge employees higher health premiums when those employees do not undergo health screenings. The case of Seff vs. Broward County has resulted in the court saying that the county was not in the wrong when they asked county employees to participate in biometric screenings. Higher health insurance charges were applied to anyone who refused a screening.
Car Laws That Let You Change Your Mind
If you are not familiar with the California lemon law you should be. In the Golden State you have a certain number of days after buying a used car, usually 30 days, to return the car no questions asked and get a full refund. If you have attempted to do this, you may want to consult one of the many CA lemon law attorneys out there to discuss your options.
01 Sep
SOURCE: Associated Press
About 500,000 Facebook users have urged the world’s largest social network to ditch its plans to buy electricity from a coal-based energy company for its new data center in the U.S., according to Greenpeace.
Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo sent a letter Wednesday to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg warning that the company risked its reputation and financial health if it ignored the environmental impacts of its actions.
“Facebook is really out of step with the trend” among information technology companies, Naidoo told The Associated Press by phone.
The Amsterdam-based environmental group started a Facebook group in February after the company announced plans to build a center in Oregon, asking it not to use dirty energy. Last week, the group passed 500,000 members, according to Greenpeace’s Web site.
Greenpeace sees such the information industry as the vanguard of companies capable of influencing young people to be aware of concerns over climate change and emissions of carbon dioxide blamed for global warming. Burning coal for power is one of the largest sources of carbon accumulating in the atmosphere.
Google has invested tens of millions of dollars this year in wind farms to power its data centers.
When Facebook broke ground on its center in Prineville, Oregon, in January, it said it would use energy efficient technology to minimize its impact and reduce its power needs, including reusing heat generated by its servers.
But Greenpeace said Facebook signed a deal to source its energy from PacificCorp, which it said uses 83 percent coal in its energy mix.
Facebook “had a choice as to where they located it,” Naidoo said of the data center. “They had a chance to think through this piece of that decision. Clearly they made an active choice to lean in the direction of dirty coal.”
Naidoo said his organization singled out Facebook because of its reach across the globe, especially among the young. Facebook says it now has 500 million users.
He acknowledged Facebook’s policy of neutrality that prevents it from advocating causes on its network, but said climate change should be an exception, since “the future of the planet is at stake,”
Information companies, including titans like Microsoft, contribute an estimated 2 percent of manmade carbon emissions, about the same as the aviation industry. But the IT sector is growing fast. Greenpeace cite studies saying the industry has the capability to reduce its emissions 15 percent by 2020.
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MY TAKE: Lets “face” it: The online sites like Facebook and others make so much money that they can afford to generate their own fuel-efficient energy from anywhere in the world. This should be a no-brainer for these guys. And, it’s a no brainer too for anyone in big business, whether you make personalized sticky note cubes, bridal shower invitations or sell junk cars online. Especially if you sell junk cars for cash or use paper to create personalized custom gifts or birthday invitations. These products are energy vampires and need to be handled with the greenest intentions.
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OTHER RESOURCES
Locked Out?
You ban buy a lockpicking gun on line for about $100.00 or have one of AAA’s lockpicks come and help you out the next time you lock your keys in your car. If you’re prone to doing this more than once or twice a year, you might want to buy the gun, as AAA will charge you after the 2nd visit.
Real Estate On the East Coast
Palisades real estate prices, like prices for homes across much of the country are on the low side. It’s never been a better time to buy Nyack NY real estate.
01 Sep
SOURCE: Bloomberg News
Napping on the job has many famous champions, including Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, former president Bill Clinton and the lovable and annoying George Costanza from Seinfeld.
And with good reason. Ever since sleep scientist David Dinges helped found the modern science of napping in the early ’80s at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, short periods of sleep have been shown to improve alertness, memory, motor skills, decision-making, and mood. All while cutting down on stress, carelessness, and even heart disease.
With Americans averaging fewer than seven hours of sleep per night—and around 20 percent suffering from sleepiness during the day, according to a recent Stanford University study—many companies have turned to the humble nap in an attempt to stave off billions in lost productivity each year. Following the rise of workplace perks like lactation rooms, gyms, and child-care facilities, Nike (NYSE: NKE - News) workers now have access to nap-friendly “quiet rooms” that can also be used for meditation. Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG - News), a forerunner in employee perks, has a number of futuristic napping pods scattered throughout its Mountain View (Calif.) campus.
Jawa, a small mobile technology company in Scottsdale, Ariz., has two resting rooms—one with a similar pod, the other with an old-fashioned couch—that are popular among programmers working long hours. Many airlines, including Continental (NYSE: CAL - News) and British Airways (NYSE: BAY - News), allow pilots to sleep during long international flights while colleagues take over the controls. (The practice is prohibited for domestic flights by the Federal Aviation Administration.) Other companies, such as Ben & Jerry’s, have no official policy but provide unofficial space for the practice and don’t bat an eye when someone spends an extra half hour snoozing in the massage room. “If you have employees working 16-hour days, you want to give them an opportunity to take a power nap,” says Melissa Gierginger, a spokeswoman for Jawa.
Other companies have opted to outsource their daytime sleeping solutions. Yelo, a napping spa in midtown Manhattan, has provided its services to Hearst, Newsweek, and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX - News). It offers naps in a “cocoon-like” treatment room in which clients can adjust aromatherapy, sound, and lighting. A 20-minute nap goes for $15. (A half-hour “Nap Plus”—including a 10-minute foot rub—costs $40.)
“Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of focus on exercise and nutrition, but adequate sleep is arguably the most important element of productivity,” says Christopher Lindholst, co-founder of MetroNaps, which markets a napping chair called the EnergyPod to such companies as Google, Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG - News), and Cisco Systems (NasdaqGS: CSCO - News). The EnergyPod, which looks like Pacman with a really long tongue, boasts ergonomic support and a built-in music system with a headphone jack to eliminate background noise. “The EnergyPod is designed to provide some privacy, but it’s typically installed in a common area so you create an environment of awareness and acceptance,” says Lindholst. MetroNaps rents its EnergyPod for $795 per month.
“Tiny naps are much more refreshing than people tend to realize,” said Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University in England. “A short nap in the afternoon will get rid of sleepiness without interfering with nighttime sleep.” That said, it’s best not to depend on napping as a permanent replacement for lost sleep. “On occasion it will get you over the hump, but whether it gets you back to peak is an open question,” says Dr.
Roger Rosa, a senior scientist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “If you’ve lost an hour of your previous night’s sleep, a nap may be just the ticket. If you’ve been up all night, it may give you a hangover effect” known as “sleep inertia.”
According to Dr. Sara Mednick, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, not all naps are created equal. Mednick believes that naps weighted toward different stages of the sleep cycle confer different benefits. “If you do physical labor, you need more Stage 2 sleep,” says Mednick. “If you are doing memorization or verbal work, you need more slow-wave sleep. And if you do creative or visual work, you need more REM sleep.”
Dr. Mednick has devised an “Optimized Napping Formula” so ambitious nappers can maximize the desired phase of sleep. Napping newbies can purchase a device called Zeo ($199), which promises to track your sleep cycles for you via your brainwaves with a special headband. Those looking for a simpler contraption might prefer the Dream Helmet ($29.95), which serves as mask, pillow, and earplugs all at once.
Some researchers are skeptical about efforts to cultivate a given phase of sleep. “On a practical level, all a person can choose is how long they sleep,” says Dr. Rosa. “You can’t change the pace of the sleep cycle without sleep deprivation, which would be counterproductive.” A strict dozing regimen, such as the kind employed by sailboat racers, military pilots, and astronauts, can replace nocturnal sleep altogether for a limited time. Leonardo da Vinci experimented with erratic sleep schedules, but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that Italian researcher Claudio Stampi invented “polyphasic ultrashort sleep,” which breaks up the day into several equal sections, each of which ends with a brief nap. As long as these mini “days” are kept intact, one can then whittle the naps down to as little as two hours of sleep per 24 hours—at least according to research published in Stampi’s 1992 book, Why We Nap.
Such daring sleep habits are not for everybody. “Going ultrashort is like running a marathon or climbing Mount Everest,” writes Dr. Mednick in her book, Take a Nap! Change Your Life. “You need careful training and a generous period of recovery.” However, the simple “productivity nap” does hold an undeniable appeal for time-crunched workers. Most sleep experts welcome the consequent uptick in nap-friendliness at work, though some are leery of its unintended consequences. “It can get out of hand: If you start encouraging the workforce to sleep in the afternoon, you’re encouraging them to have late nights,” says Horne. “Our society is getting more used to napping in the workplace, but it is still seen as something that could get you fired.”
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MY TAKE: Naps have to be the saving grace for any working mom. Bur workers out there also need naps and whether you manage a VPS hosting company, a DVD copy services firm, or run in particular are the owner of a Las Vegas bachelorette party, you gotta need a nap sometime and the more flexibility your employer or you have to get one the better off you’ll be and the more productive.
Web hosting workers who sit in front of computers all day long might have a much better opportunity to catch a power nap than say the Las Vegas limo company owner or the speedlight duplication firm, but everyone can fit 10-15 minutes on their lunch break to get a little shut eye.
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Other Resources
The Latest Fashion Accessories
While the type of fashion accessories most often paired with the most stylish womens dresses will never change, the unique styles of things like sunglasses, purses, and shoes generally change a little each year with a particular style generally enjoying a three year run before falling out of popularity. The latest trends for sunglasses give one the feeling of being right in the middle of a 1950s Hollywood pool party with vintage cat-eye sunglasses making a major resurgence. Cat eye glasses can be modified to look nice on most different faces with round faces benefiting the most from larger frames and square faces looking best with rounded frames.
Get Your Game Online
You don’t have to shop in stores for you PS3 games. You can download PS3 racing games right on your computer for pennies these days. There are many sites offering PS3 downloads for free, while others charge a one time set-up fee or a monthly membership.
01 Sep
SOURCE: Associated Press
Substantially fewer undocumented workers from Mexico, Latin America and elsewhere are crossing the border in search of jobs, which has resulted a drop in the number of illegal immigrants living in this country for the first time in 20 years as
The analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center suggests the nation’s economic downturn and increased border enforcement have reduced the number of illegal immigrants, who make up roughly 4 percent of the U.S. population.
The findings come amid bitter debate over Arizona’s strict new immigration law — now being challenged in federal court after lawmakers passed it earlier this year. The Obama administration contends the state law usurps federal authority and promotes racial profiling, while Arizona says states are justified to step in if federal enforcement falls substantially short.
The study released Wednesday estimates that 11.1 million illegal immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2009. That represents a decrease of roughly 1 million, or 8 percent, from a peak of 12 million in 2007, before Arizona intervened with its new enforcement measures.
The study, based on an analysis of 2009 census data, puts the number of illegal immigrants about where it was in 2005.
The 11.1 million is slightly higher than the Homeland Security Department’s own estimate of 10.8 million. The government uses a different census survey that makes some year-to-year comparisons difficult.
Much of the recent decrease comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border into the U.S., particularly those from the Caribbean, Central America and South America. An increase in unauthorized immigrants leaving the U.S., by deportation or for economic reasons, also may have played a factor.
Under the flapping Texas flags and against the risks posed by government-paid California private security guards who are protecting the borders, many Mexican immigrants have historically snuck into the country via the El Paso border. But that’s changing.
States in the Southeast and Southwest saw some of the biggest declines in the number of illegal immigrants from 2008 to 2009, including Florida, Nevada and Virginia. Arizona saw a decrease, but it was too small to be statistically significant.
It’s hard to figure out how much of the decline to attribute to the bad economy and how much to immigration enforcement, said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew who co-wrote the analysis.
“They’re certainly acting together,” he said. Passel said illegal immigrants now find it more expensive and dangerous to cross into the U.S. and also have less incentive to do given the languishing job market in construction and other low-wage industries.
“While people are arguing the government is not stopping illegal immigration, our data suggests the flow of undocumented immigrants sneaking into the country has dropped dramatically,” Passel said.
He declined to predict how long the decline in illegal immigration may last, other than to say it could take a while before unemployment in the U.S. substantially improves.
The estimates by Pew will add to the political back-and-forth on immigration reform.
Boosted by immigration and high fertility among Latinos, minorities now make up roughly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which they are projected to become the new U.S. majority by mid-century. Roughly one in four counties currently have more minority children than white children or are nearing that point.
Still, the Census Bureau has made clear that projected minority growth — particularly among Hispanics — could change substantially depending on immigration policies and the economy. President Barack Obama, who is challenging the Arizona law, has pledged to push an overhaul of federal immigration law but has declined to set a timeline.
Following the passage of Arizona’s immigration law — which is now largely on hold as it’s reviewed by the courts — more than a dozen states were considering similar legislation or issued legal opinions aimed at strengthening immigration enforcement. They include Florida, Virginia, South Carolina and Utah.
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MY TAKE: Forget the POW MIA flags. The Texas flags are a common site in the war on immigration. The south east region has been a heavy guarded by well-paid CA private security companies who are vehemently opposed to illegal immigrants’ crossing into the country. California is also a popular destination for illegal immigrants, but studies show that they don’t all stay there. Many have migrated north to work the fields and records show for it: Ask an Redwood City criminal defense lawyer how many cases he or she has taken on involving illegal immigrants who are arrested in the state. Particularly the Redwood City CA DUI attorney, as there is an incidence of high drinking and driving rates among the immigrant communities from Latin America.
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Business Support You Can Rely On
NJ IT Consulting companies can help you comprehensive analysis of your firm’s technology needs by first accessing your current business plan and network system, network management goals, and create a strategy for monitoring its effectiveness. If you think you’re ready for a top NJ IT management company to help your business, don’t wait. They can save you time, which is money back in your pocket.
Light Up the Store
If you own a retail store selling jewelry you might consider enhancing your displays with new jewelry display lighting. One of the advantages, aside from giving your jewelry more visibility and consumer appeal is that many newer cases and displays are equipped with energy efficient lighting so you can also save money.
01 Sep
SOURCE: Associated Press
Goa’s Indian tourism officials say they are bracing for hard times due to the wave of tar balls that have floated ashore on its renowned beaches after a ship dumped tons of waste oil off India’s western coast.
Semisolid lumps of oil formed layers up to six inches deep (15 centimeters deep) on beaches in the popular tourist destination. Scores of civic workers used brooms to collect and clear the oily debris, but still more tar balls were washing ashore about three days after officials believe a ship dumped burnt oil at sea.
Indian navy and coast guard vessels were trying to trace the ship, said Aleixo Sequeira, the state’s environment minister. He declined to say what action would be taken when the vessel is found.
Ships regularly clean their fuel tanks and discharge the waste oil at sea, but this case involved careless dumping that exceeded all proportions, say scientists at India’s National Institute of Oceanography, located in Goa.
“Crude oil mixes with water to form an emulsion that looks like chocolate pudding. Winds and waves continue to stretch and tear the oil patches into smaller pieces, or tar balls,” said S. R. Shetye, who heads the institute.
Popular beaches such as Colva, Candolim and Calangute were badly hit. The beaches are not closed, but few visitors are there since tourism season begins in October.
This is an area of the country that depends deeply not on the income from manufactured goods, such as electronic cigarettes or light bulbs. The beaches of Goa are the main source of income for residents here, and the threat of closures and polluted waters is serious.
Goa’s tourism industry is worried that news of the pollution could put off visitors to one of the most sought after and cheap beach destinations in India. Nearly 2.5 million tourists visit annually, including half a million foreigners, mostly from the U.K., Israel and Russia.
“This should not have happened. It will not be good for tourism in Goa,” said Gaurish Dhond, president of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa.
The tourist season in Goa lasts until March.
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MY TAKE: This is a horrible blow to Goa. Anyone who’s ever visited India knows that the beaches are among the most beautiful and visited in the world. True: the e Cig and light bulbs companies don’t depend on tourism the way Goa does. The hotels are also a big draw, where maid services MD can’t outshine their attention to detail for tourists. And, no Silver Spring MD maid services company I know of has the ability to make you feel like you’ve been handed a first-class vacation for next to nothing than the hotels of Goa.
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OTHER RESOURCES
Service Developing 3PL
When considering what type of provider to select when there is a need for a third party logistics partner, there are a few different types of Los Angeles 3PL operations that can be used. One such style of operation is that of a service developer who will very often offer customers extra services based on what that customer needs such as the tracking of operations, docking and packaging issues and even security. These options go beyond the standard types of activities which might include things like basic warehousing and distribution options that are usually a part of a different package.
Business Solutions For Small Companies
Payroll services done in house can be costly and time consuming. If you want a better way to track your employees’ time and attendance, consider outsourcing your payroll processing to any one of the thousands of payroll solutions providers out there. They can not only help you track and distribute payroll, they can help you organize scheduling and field operators’ accountability. Time saved is money earned.
Redo the Garage on the Cheap
If you have a concrete floor in your garage consider laying down garage floor mats to transform your garage into a second hang-out space. There are many garage flooring products on the market that can help you do it on the cheap. Home Depot has one option. Click here to watch a great how-to video.
23 Aug
Source: Huffington Post
For two decades the ideology in Washington has been “more, not less” when it comes to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the expansion of homeownership.
But in light of the financial crisis and Fannie and Freddie’s near-collapse, policy leaders are also rethinking the government’s role — and many Americans are starting to question whether homeownership is the only path to the American Dream.
Fannie and Freddie function by buying, bundling and then stamping a government guarantee on mortgages. Then they sell them to investors. It keeps the banks happy because it keeps capital flowing, and it keeps consumers happy because it makes low, fixed-rate mortgages possible.
At least that how things were supposed to unfold. But the two mortgage finance giants “made astonishing mistakes,” Raj Date, executive director of a financial policy think-tank called the Cambridge Winter Center, told NPR’s Audie Cornish.
‘It Has All Come Back To Haunt Them’
“As normal people everywhere in the country realized that housing prices seemed to be growing straight into the stratosphere, instead of becoming more conservative about lending against those ridiculously high values, Fannie and Freddie just continued to make the same kind of loans and indeed made more aggressive loans during that period of 2005, 2006, 2007,” Date said. “And it has all come back to haunt them.”
The world we live in today is not quite the world that existed in 1950.
So instead of rationally-priced credit, he said, the country wound up with a $6 or $7 trillion bubble in housing values. And all of Wall Street and most of the country’s banks made the same sort of mistakes, Date said.
Policy makers are at a bit of a crossroads, said Date, who was among a number of industry leaders who huddled with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this week to figure out a new way forward on housing.
Fannie and Freddie have dramatically scaled back their level of aggressiveness in underwriting credit, Date said. But, he added, “the fact of the matter is that on average and over time, Fannie and Freddie represent an economic subsidy from the public at large to middle and upper middle-income homeowners.”
Despite talk on Capitol Hill of dismantling the two organizations, it might be tough to get rid of them. That’s because Fannie and Freddie, along with the Federal Housing Administration, are responsible for some 95 percent of the mortgages in the country today, Date said.
“If you think that the fall of 2008 was calamitous, believe me, you haven’t seen anything yet if you were just somehow to turn off the lights on Fannie and Freddie today,” he warned. “That said, I think the policy makers are trying to be thoughtful about the right long-term answer is for housing finance more broadly, and that involves revisiting some issues that have been treated as sort of untouchable for quite some time.”
Ultimately, Date said it might be time to rethink homeownership as an American ideal.
The White Picket Fence Reconsidered
“The world we live in today is not quite the world that existed in 1950,” he noted. “The nature of households and the rate at which they dissolve and reform, the nature of work and its transient nature across geographies are all things that suggest that maybe, just possibly, a middle-class American shouldn’t stake themselves to an illiquid, very large, concentrated, leveraged asset —- that is to say, a house.”
Alyssa Katz, author of Our Lot: How Real Estate Came To Own Us, also thinks America needs to reconsider the American Dream.
“Homeowenership has gone from being pretty much an unmitigated good — something that would provide stability — and instead has thrown a huge cloud of doubt over the value of homeownership for a lot of people.”
Even so, there also are downsides to renting, she said.
“Some of the common beliefs about renting are absolutely true,” Katz said. “Being a renter has very little security. They don’t have any promise they’ll be able to live in the apartment or home for more than a year or two. Renting is also perceived as something that really divides Americans by class. So I think for a lot of potential renters, or people who own and are thinking of making that transition to renting, they have to overcome this sense that they are giving up a sense of status.”
That’s a tough thing to shake for many Americans, she said.
If more people rent, the benefits of homeownership will only increase for those who own homes because the pool will shrink, Katz said.
“Those who have access to homeownership and the benefits that it brings, as a result of policy, will be even more privileged than they are now.”
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My Take: The American Dream: it’s all about the best table linens, how to compare life insurance quote and hiring the most expensive Denver CO basement remodeliing company you can find, right? Wrong! The reason the wheels are coming off the homeownership bandwagon is because too many people gave too many people access to loans they could not nor will ever be able to repay. When you buy a home you shop for a mortgage. You compare rates and fees just as you would compare insurance rates for you car or your kids. And you buy a home you can afford to pay for, even if you think you might sell it in a few years on a high note. You don’t buy a $400,000 house put in the best Denver basements remodeling plan and spend your paycheck furnishing it at Pottery Barn if you can’t pay your $3,000 a month mortgage. Lenders: You have your marching orders to check and double check financial stats on all mortgage apps. If you do your job and consumers stop overspending, the housing market will return to normal, which isn’t about ballooned prices, by the way.
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Other Resources
Making Loaders Safe
There are a lot of reasons why the average construction site needs to be made a secure area and there are some options that can be utilized by a company to ensure that someone isn’t going to take off with the skid loaders attachments in the middle of the night or something. Generally the attachments are so large that it’s sometimes impossible to keep them safe without actually constructing a physical area that is fenced in where the parts can be stored. This can increase the cost of running the site but it’s also likely that fence can be reused on a new job in the future.
Utilizing Sheathing to Reduce Water
There are more than a few different ways to prevent water from getting into a home when an area is in a geographic zone that receives a healthy dose of rain and other moisture each year and one significant way that NJ waterproofing contractors would ensure that a particular home was going to be very safe against potential water intrusion would be through a sheathing process. This type of waterproofing is almost like a layer of insulation except that it is not meant to keep a constant temperature within the home and is instead meant to keep water from entering.
Used Cell Phones Are Cheap and Easy to Get
For the best used cell phones you can go online. You can find used Verizon Mobile phones, including Blackberries, right online and you can get service without a contract. Click here to find out how it works.
Court Fees Can Be Recovered
Monmouth County DUI attorney fees are expensive, but if you win your case in court you can ask for them back. You can also recoup any money paid out on a traffic violation of your Monmoth County traffic tickets lawyer clears you of the charges.
20 Aug
Source: Associated Press
A salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and led to the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs from one Iowa firm will likely grow, federal health officials said Thursday.
That’s because illnesses occurring after mid-July may not be reported yet, said Dr. Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control.
Almost 2,000 illnesses from the strain of salmonella linked to the eggs were reported between May and July, about 1,300 more than usual, he said. No deaths have been reported. The CDC is continuing to receive information from state health departments as people report their illnesses.
“I would anticipate that we will be seeing more illnesses reported likely as a result of this outbreak,” said Braden. The recall of 380 million eggs from Iowa’s Wright County Egg is one of the largest shell egg recalls in recent history.
The outbreak could have been prevented if new rules to ensure egg safety had been in place a few months earlier, an FDA spokeswoman said.
The rules, which require producers to do more testing for salmonella and take other precautions, went into effect in July. They had languished for more than a decade after President Bill Clinton first proposed that egg standards be toughened. The FDA said in July that the new safeguards could reduce the number of salmonella cases by nearly 60 percent.
“There are preventive measures that would have been in place that could have prevented this,” said Sherri McGarry of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
She and other officials declined to say what specific measures would have prevented this particular outbreak, citing an ongoing FDA investigation.
Hinda Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the company, said it abided by guidance issued by the United Egg Producers, an industry group. Those procedures mirror several aspects of the federal egg safety rule.
FDA’s McGarry said illnesses were traced back to eggs produced on three of five farms the Iowa company owns. The investigation, which includes sampling, records review and sanitation assessments, is focusing on those three farms.
Salmonella is the most common form of food poisoning from bacteria, and the strain involved in the outbreak is the most common kind of salmonella—accounting for roughly 20 percent of all such food poisonings.
Minnesota, a state with some of the best food-borne illness investigators in the country, has tied at least seven salmonella illnesses to the eggs. California has reported 266 illnesses since June and believes many are related to the eggs. Colorado saw 28 cases in June and July, about four times the usual number.
Other states have seen a jump in reports of the same type of salmonella. Spikes or clusters of suspicious cases have also been reported in Arizona, Illinois, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and
Wisconsin.
The CDC said investigations by 10 states since April have identified 26 cases where more than one person became ill. Preliminary information showed that Wright was the supplier in at least 15 of those.
Much of the investigation so far has been centered on restaurants in California, Colorado, Minnesota and North Carolina.
The eggs were distributed around the country and packaged under the names Lucerne, Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma’s, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp.
The businessman who owns Wright County Egg, Jack DeCoster, has been cited for numerous health, safety and employment violations in the past. In 1997, DeCoster Egg Farms agreed to pay $2 million in fines to settle citations brought in 1996 for health and safety violations at DeCoster’s farm in Turner, Maine.
Wright County Egg is already facing at least two lawsuits related to the recall. One is from food distributor Dutch Farms, which says the company used unauthorized cartons to package and sell eggs under its brand name without its knowledge. The other is from a person who said they became ill after eating tainted eggs in a salad at a restaurant in Kenosha, Wis.
The outbreak also raised new questions about federal inspections of egg farms.
McGarry cited jurisdictional issues when she told reporters Thursday that the agency “does not have an inspectional history with this firm.” When asked who does have jurisdiction, McGarry pointed to the Agriculture Department. Yet USDA oversees voluntary grading inspections, but does not test for salmonella in shell eggs.
The FDA acknowledged in a statement late Thursday that it has done some inspections on egg farms already linked to recalls, but did not say anything additional about whether the agency had inspected Wright County Egg.
Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the egg recall shows that stronger authority is needed on the farm.
“Jurisdiction over eggs has been scrambled between numerous government agencies for the last 20 years, resulting in enormous delays in addressing the hazard posed by salmonella,” she said.
Legislation that would increase the frequency of FDA inspections has stalled in the Senate after the House passed it a year ago.
The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight hours to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product. It can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems.
The form of salmonella tied to the outbreak can be passed from chickens that appear healthy. And it grows inside eggs, not just on the shell, Braden noted.
Thoroughly cooking eggs can kill the bacteria. But health officials are recommending people throw away or return the recalled eggs.
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My Take: Get out the brass bells for all those farmers out there “scrambling” to try to keep their eggs from being the next ones to hit the recall lists. This is a serious problem for struggling farmers. We are talking about food, not the impact of faulty advice on software consulting or whether or not the kids desks in our schools contain led in their paint. The egg contamination scare is bound to wreak havoc on the economy in ways that we can’t quite yet imagine, including taking a huge bite out of small businesses’ budgets ranging from the mom and pop convenience markets to the big companies who manufacture the egg cartons themselves.
If we were concerned with lead in the white boards Canada sends down to our schools or something else, it would not be as alarming. But eggs are so much a part of the American diet and the American economy, this is bound to have a rippling effect for some time to come.
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