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28 January 2012

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New TV Shows Bombing Out

Oct 4 at 11:11am by Kristine Doluche

friends-seasonSOURCE: Los Angeles TimesNew TV shows are failing to live up to both viewers’ and networks’ expectations so far.

Two weeks into the fall TV season, the broadcast networks have gotten off to one of their most sluggish starts ever. For the first time in at least five years, not a single new show has cracked the top 10 either among total viewers or the advertising-friendly demographic of adults aged 18 to 49, according to the Nielsen Co. Even CBS’ remake of “Hawaii Five-0,” with its familiar brand name and 10 p.m. Monday time slot, has failed to sizzle and has tumbled compared with “CSI: Miami” last year.

Then there are the outright bombs. After two airings Fox axed its critically acclaimed drama about a Texas con man, “Lone Star.” A pair of episodes was likewise all it took for ABC to yank the critically unheralded youth soap “My Generation.” Industry watchers predict that ABC’s legal drama “The Whole Truth” and NBC’s Jimmy Smits vehicle “Outlaw” will be next on the road to oblivion. As a result, Fox — the No. 1 network among young adults for several years running — and ABC both saw their premiere-week ratings slide by double digits compared with a year ago.

As is customary, poor marketing has been cited as a factor in the demise of some new shows, especially “Lone Star.” In that case, network promotion experts were presented the difficult task of trying to persuade a recession-weary public to care about a hotshot young crook who two-timed his wife and bilked people out of their life savings.

But there may be a simpler explanation: The new shows just aren’t that good. Even before the season started, TV executives and critics alike grumbled that the freshman class lacked any series with breakout potential. Viewers seem to agree, at least so far.

“There simply weren’t many shows with positive preseason buzz,” said Steve Sternberg, a veteran TV analyst who writes a subscription-based newsletter for media buyers. “I keep reading how the press is surprised about ‘Lone Star,’ but I don’t know a single one of my peers who thought it would do well.”

The legacy networks also face a tougher job these days because cable rivals now churn out so much original programming during the summer, blunting the effect of the broadcasters’ marketing push. In July, TNT’s “Rizzoli & Isles” — the kind of star-driven crime franchise broadcasters used to own exclusively — set a record as the most-watched cable series launch ever, with 7.6 million total viewers.

“Fewer and fewer people are watching each broadcast net during the summer,” Sternberg said. “Their stubborn refusal to cross-promote one another’s shows, as cable has done so effectively for years, is the main reason ratings aren’t higher for new shows. I’ll bet that most people never even heard of more than two or three of the new series.”

Yet while the new shows have clearly disappointed, there are still positive signs for the networks. Chief among them: The overall erosion in viewership for broadcast TV appears to be slowing at last. The five over-the-air, English-language networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW) are still down in total viewers compared with year-ago figures, but it’s by the smallest amount — 2% — in at least four seasons.

Viewers have turned out in droves for favorite returning shows, such as Fox’s high school musical “Glee,” which is soaring to record ratings in its second season. Meanwhile, NFL games on CBS, NBC and Fox, as well as ESPN, are hitting all-time highs.

“Many viewers opted for familiar favorites versus the newbies that launched against them,” said Shari Anne Brill, an independent media analyst who pointed to the hard-fought battleground of 9 p.m. Mondays, where “Lone Star” got crushed against ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and CBS’ comedy block.

CBS has done a particularly good job of hanging on to its audience. Ratings for its premiere week were flat compared with last year’s among young adults, even though it took a big hit by downgrading ” CSI: NY” to Friday nights. One savvy move that paid off was switching the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” from Mondays to Thursdays, giving the network a successful comedy block on the latter night for the first time in decades.

NBC was the only network to show premiere-week growth, up 11% in young adults. True, much of that was due to last year’s disastrous experiment putting Jay Leno in prime time, which made it relatively easy to put up better numbers this time around.

And it’s far too early to count out all the new series. “No Ordinary Family” could still grow into a solid performer for ABC; ditto the sitcom “Raising Hope” for Fox and NBC’s “Law & Order: Los Angeles.”

By the way: NBC’s “Law & Order” Los Angeles” is said to have dug deep into Los Angeles Court Reports for material.  We know it doesn’t get any juicer for a Los Angeles court reporter than to be inside a criminal courtroom, and this version of the hit show is bound to get attention.

As Brill pointed out, “Successful early returns in Week 1 are not necessarily a predictor for success.… There have been many shows with great premises and promising pilots that were not executed well in subsequent episodes. Remember ‘Flash Forward’? And,” she added, referring to a notorious NBC bomb spun off the massive hit “Friends,” “how about that show ‘Joey’?”

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MY TAKE: Lets face it: If it’s not reality, it’s not TV  People seem more enthralled these days with watching a rhinoplasty surgeon perform his practice on TV than do watching a story about a western cowboy law man gone bonkers.  I’m sure that there’s the odd ball TV fanatic, the computer repair guy out there who loves all the sci-fi shows, but I think mainstream America would rather see an liposuction surgeon do his work than a lawyer or a doctor.  If the networks sent out questionnaire software ahead of buying season and asked viewers what they wanted, I bet they’d do a better job.  They should also use online survey software to get a sense of what mothers want for their kids.

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Other Resources

Targeting Audiences for Advertisements

One of the best ways to make sure that the advertisements a company buys are being shown to the right people is to make sure that certain options are chosen to ensure that a specific audience is going to see those adds which will allow a person a much easier way to make money with Facebook. Sometimes it’s a good idea to widen a search radius as far as locations are concerned because people might actually be willing to travel a bit further than expected to patronize a particular business from whom they have never bought anything before.

Lawyers 123

Colorado liability lawyer fees can be costly.  If you’ve been searching for a team of Denver construction lawyers and still are having trouble finding someone to represent your case that’s reputable and affordable, check with the Colorado Bar Association for help.

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Minorities Targeted In Mortgage Crisis

Oct 4 at 11:11am by Kristine Doluche

NobelPrize

SOURCE: ReutersPredatory lending aimed at racially segregated minority neighborhoods is now being blamed for the high rise in foreclosures that led to mass foreclosures that sparked the  U.S. housing crisis, according to a new study published in the American Sociological Review.

Predatory lending typically refers to loans that carry unreasonable fees, interest rates and payment requirements.

Poorer minority areas became a focus of these practices in the 1990s with the growth of mortgage-backed securities, which enabled lenders to pool low- and high-risk loans to sell on the secondary market, Professor Douglas Massey of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and PhD candidate Jacob Rugh, said in their study.

The financial institutions likely to be found in minority areas tended to be predatory — pawn shops, payday lenders and check cashing services that “charge high fees and usurious rates of interest,” they said in the study.

“By definition, segregation creates minority dominant neighborhoods, which, given the legacy of redlining and institutional discrimination, continue to be underserved by mainstream financial institutions,” the study says.

Redlining is the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking and insurance, to residents in specific areas, often based on race.

The U.S. economy is still struggling with the effects of its longest recession since the 1930s, which was triggered in large part by the housing crisis, which was in part triggered by the crash of the subprime loan market.

Subprime lending refers to loans made to consumers with poor credit and others considered higher risk. They tend to have a higher interest rate than traditional loans.

The study, which used data from the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, found that living in a predominantly African-American area, and to a lesser extent Hispanic area, were “powerful predictors of foreclosures” in the nation.

Even African-Americans with similar credit profiles and down-payment ratios to white borrowers were more likely to receive subprime loans, according to the study.

“As a result, from 1993 to 2000, the share of subprime mortgages going to households in minority neighborhoods rose from 2 to 18 percent,” Massey and Rugh said.

They said the U.S. Civil Rights Act should be amended to create mechanisms that would uncover discrimination and penalize those who discriminated against minority borrowers.

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MY TAKE: Are there lawyers for people who specifically fell victim to prey by these mortgage monsters?  I know if I get injured by a doctor, there’s always a Brooklyn medical malpractice lawyer, or if I need Monmouth County municipal court attorney to assist me with family law matters, that’s available.  I can even get a New Jersey child support lawyer to help me with my case in California.  But what about people of color who may have been victims of scams on mortgage loans?  Who do they turn to?  I know the Bronx construction accidents lawyer is there to help the guy who falls off the ladder who’s building the home for which the loan was secured, but not sure where to go if I’m the mortgage holder.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Bright Lighting Sources

If you use old fashioned retail lighting bulbs for your business you may want to make some changes. Even if you only use bulbs for jewelry lighting display cases you can save a bundle by switching out your bulbs to CFL fixtures.

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Bear Pays California Homeowner A Visit

Oct 4 at 10:10am by Kristine Doluche

NobelPrize

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times/National Geographic

A resident in Monrovia got quite a surprise Sunday — a bear climbing high in an oak tree in her backyard.  Loretta Keener spotted the bear in her yard in the 200 block of West Greystone around 10:30 a.m.

Keener’s granddaughter, Kari Nicolas, took video of the bear climbing down the tree.  Keener called animal control, who came and left because the bear was too high up the tree.  They advised her to stay out of the backyard until the animal left.

Keener said this wasn’t the first time this particular bear has turned up in the neighborhood.  Some other area residents spotted the bear in a backyard on Monroe Place after it left Keener’s yard.

Apparently, black bears have efficiently adapted to the urban couch potato lifestyle, according to a recent study that compared urban and wild land bears in the Lake Tahoe region of Nevada.

Given a readily available and replenishing food resource—garbage dumpsters—the urban bears are nearly a third less active and weigh up to thirty percent more than bears living in more wild areas, biologists with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society report.

“A lot of people suggested [bears] might alter their behavior in the presence of humans. We went out and specifically tested some of these hypotheses with rigorous science,” said Jon Beckmann, a biologist with the society’s Eastern Idaho Field Office in Rigby.

Beckmann and colleague Joel Berger report their findings in the current issue of the Journal of Zoology. The Wildlife Conservation Society biologists were at the University of Nevada, Reno, when they conducted the research for the study.

In addition to seeking grub in dumpsters behind fast-food joints and suburban neighborhoods instead of foraging for wild berries and deer in the mountains, urban bears have also become night owls, whereas wild land bears are active during the day.

Mike Mitchell, a U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher who teaches at the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences at Auburn University in Alabama, said the findings are pretty much what he would expect.

“Bears are extremely efficient foragers and so intelligent, resourceful, and adaptable,” he said. “They’ll figure out a good food resource almost instantly and make the best use of it as quickly as they can.”

Mitchell added that urban bears are not lazier than wild land bears, just more efficient. Since they live in a garbage-can-rich environment, they expend less energy than do bears that have to forage in untamed lands for hours to get the same caloric intake.

Wild Land Impact?

Beckmann and Berger present evidence in their study that more and more bears are relocating to the cities, leaving wild lands sparsely populated by the big, furry carnivores. They question what impact this change in behavior is having on the environment.

“It’s possible that if we change their behavior, we can lose the ecological processes they are involved in,” said Beckmann. “For example, bears that now have a reliance on garbage may not be doing the things bears have historically done in those systems.”

While the ecological role of bears is poorly understood, biologists believe they may be important in decomposing felled logs, dispersing seeds of berries, and removing rotting flesh from the forest floor.

Mitchell said that he is not certain of the extent to which non-urban bears are moving to the cities, and if they are what sort of an effect the re-location would have on the untamed environment.

“In principle, one has to believe that an effect exists, but defining that effect clearly and quantifying its magnitude might be very difficult to do,” he said.

Bear-Proof Garbage

Regardless of the impact an exodus of bears from the wild lands to the cities might have on the environment, the researchers all agree that a population of bears relying on food from garbage cans is not a healthy situation.

There is no evidence to suggest that the garbage itself is a bad diet—though Beckmann said he can’t imagine it’s good, either—but the increase in urban bear populations has resulted in an increase in bear mortality, primarily from collisions with vehicles.

The dumpster-diving bears are also quick to learn where the food in the garbage cans comes from, and incidents of bears breaking into cars and homes when people are asleep are on the rise.

“Such conflicts rarely work out well for the bears,” said Mitchell. “It is hard to imagine the development of a stable, commensal relationship between high density populations of bears and people.”

As a remedy to the problem, Beckmann and Berger suggest that city planners and county commissioners require individuals and businesses to purchase and use bear-proof dumpsters.

“We know they work,” said Beckmann. “Once they go into a homeowners association, the bears no longer visit.”

Mitchell added: “As focused as bears are on food, and as capable as they are of finding it, the less that bears associate people with food, the better for both bears and people.”

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MY TAKE: I’ve got a funny bear story to tell as well.  I worked for a manufacturing company in Oregon a few years ago.  They made rivets for True Religon jeans.  I ran the call answering services center for their customer line. I also worked part time for a cleaning services DC on the side, but mostly I provided all the data support for the answering services for the jeans company.  Anyway, a bear got stuck in the dumpster and I can promise you he wasn’t looking for Mek jeans.  He was after our food scraps and he got stuck in there for about six hours.  Usually bears only want your food or your water, and sometimes your pets.  Be sure to never throw anything at a bear.  That makes them angry and they will charge!

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Other Resources

Maintaining a Black Vehicle

Making a dark car look great can take a lot of time because there is the expectation that such a vehicle will require extra cleaning to keep it looking nice even if a dual action polisher is used to bring out a true shine. One thing to remember about removing the dirt from the surface of a vehicle is the idea that it can’t be simply power hosed off with a spray machine and must actually be buffed out with a cloth. Of course, on that same note, the cloth used should be of high quality to avoid scratching the surface.

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Websites Get Folks to Open UP

Oct 4 at 9:09am by Kristine Doluche

dynamic_websites_graphic[1]

SOURCE: TIME

If you’re looking to glean sensitive information from consumers, design a sloppy looking website, says a new study forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research.

The study found that survey respondents were more likely to admit to engaging in questionable behaviors — trying cocaine, watching someone undress without their knowledge, driving drunk — if they were asked about their habits on a crude, unprofessional-looking website. Even though subjects admitted they felt the primitive Web page was less secure, they were more willing to spill secrets to a site that is less likely to keep them secret.

So why are Web users dumb enough to hand over info to prying marketers, phishers and scammers? “When sites come across as strange and frivolous, people let their guard down,” says Leslie John, a doctoral student in behavioral decision theory at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of the study. “They don’t think about privacy.” (See spam e-mail’s placement in TIME’s 50 worst inventions.)

The study asked 200 students from Carnegie Mellon a series of 15 invasive questions, such as “Have you ever looked at pornographic material?” and “Have you ever sold marijuana (i.e. pot, weed) to someone?” Other questions pertained to using sex toys and snooping in other people’s e-mail accounts. About a third of the participants received these questions from a flimsy site done in a red font, with a devil logo and an inscription reading, “How BAD Are U???” on the top. Others were asked the questions from a site titled “Carnegie Mellon University Executive Council Survey on Ethical Behaviors,” which included the Carnegie Mellon seal and a black font. Subjects who answered the questions on the devil site were nearly twice as likely to admit engaging in shady behavior than those answering the survey on the Carnegie Mellon site. (See the top 10 Internet blunders.)

It stands to reason, of course, that at least some of the Carnegie Mellon students would hesitate telling their school’s “Executive Council” that they’ve taken nude pictures of themselves. To account for the possibility that students answering the survey on the “professional” site were intimidated by the school seal, the researchers also set up a “baseline” scenario: about a third of the subjects answered the questions on a vanilla site with no logos or embellishments, simply titled “Survey of Student Behaviors.” The devil-site respondents were 1.74 times as likely than those subjects to admit to bad behavior.

Perhaps influenced by the devil logo and “How BAD Are U???” tease, students who answered the questions on the more frivolous Web page could have been exaggerating their naughty behavior. Some of the differences were striking. On the unprofessional site, for example, 19.7% of the respondents said they had watched someone undress without their knowledge. Only 4.7% of those on the professional page made the same admission. (See TIME’s 50 best websites for 2010.)

But follow-up research revealed that those who took the devil survey reported that they were not more likely to answer “yes” to behaviors they had not engaged in. Those who took the Carnegie Mellon survey, however, said they were much more likely to hide the truth — to say they hadn’t tried cocaine when they had — than those in the devil scenario. In other words, subjects withheld private information from an official-looking website that a rational consumer could trust to protect it. At the same time, they were significantly more willing to cede their privacy to a site that the same rational consumer shouldn’t trust at all. (Comment on this story.)

“You would never reveal sensitive information to a street urchin lurking on the corner,” notes John. “Over the course of time, basic rules of personal interaction have been ingrained into our brains. But we haven’t learned ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ on the Web.”


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MY TAKE: Hmm.. interesting theories here.  I know I tend to talk more opening on the telephone to complete strangers trying to sell  promotional products, E cigarette starter kits and other junk.  Sometimes   job seekers in waiting rooms will discuss private information with you if they are nervous enough, but not me. I usually keep my cards close to the vest.  I’ve never bought electronic cigarettes or imprinted school T shirts on the phone, but I’ve shared with them my secrets about other things.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Loans for Homes

If you’re shopping for commercial real estate loans to finance your Piermont homes project you should know that lenders are opening up.  A year ago the process for buying Piermont real estate and obtaining solid commercial mortgage financing was quite difficult, thanks to tougher lending laws due to the market fall out of bad loans.  Look for tighter scrutiny of your credit history but you’ll find more lenders are willing to start rolling up their sleeves again.

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IVF Pioneer Awarded Nobel Prizeps

Oct 4 at 7:07am by Kristine Doluche

NobelPrizeSOURCE: Los Angeles Times

The 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded to Robert Edwards of Britain for developing in-vitro fertilization, a breakthrough that has helped millions of infertile couples conceive.

Edwards, an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, started working on IVF as early as the 1950s. He developed the technique, in which egg cells are fertilized outside the body and then implanted in the womb, together with gynecologist surgeon Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988.

On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown in Britain became the first baby born through the groundbreaking procedure, marking a revolution in fertility treatment.

“(Edwards’) achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity, including more than 10 percent of all couples worldwide,” the medicine prize committee in Stockholm said in its citation.

“Approximately 4 million individuals have been born thanks to IVF,” the citation said. “Today, Robert Edwards’ vision is a reality and brings joy to infertile people all over the world.”

The probability of an infertile couple taking home a baby after a cycle of IVF today is 1 in 5, about the same that healthy couples have of conceiving naturally.

Steptoe and Edwards founded the first IVF clinic at Bourn Hall in Cambridge.

Past Awards and Future Awards
The Nobel Prize is intended to recognize scientific and medical advances, but some have suggested there be new categories for other areas, such as technology which may encompass Playstation repair experts or mobile drawer cabinet designers for the handicapped.

In a statement, Bourn Hall said one of Edwards’ proudest moments was discovering that 1,000 IVF babies had been born at the clinic since Brown, and relaying that information to a seriously ill Steptoe shortly before his death.

“I’ll never forget the look of joy in his eyes,” Edwards said.

The statement said Edwards was “not well enough to give interviews” on Monday.

Brown, 32, reportedly is a postal worker in the English coastal city of Bristol. In 2007 she gave birth to her first child — a boy named Cameron. She said the child was conceived naturally.

Aleksander Giwercman, head of reproduction research at the University of Lund in Sweden, said Edward’s achievements also have been important for other areas, including cancer and stem cell research.

“We received a tool that could be used for many other areas,” Giwercman said. “Many of the illnesses that develop when we are adults have their origin early on in life, during conception.”

The medicine award was the first of the 2010 Nobel Prizes to be announced. It will be followed by physics Tuesday, chemistry Wednesday, literature Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and economics Oct. 11.

The prestigious awards were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, and first handed out in 1901, five years after his death. Each award includes 10 million Swedish kronor (about $1.5 million), a diploma and a gold medal.

Famous Nobel winners include President Obama, who received last year’s peace prize; Albert Einstein; Martin Luther King Jr.; Nelson Mandela; and Winston Churchill. But most winners are relatively anonymous until they are catapulted into the global spotlight by the prize announcement.

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MY TAKE: I have a fond place in my heart for IVF researchers because I know they have helped a few of my friends have a family who could not conceive.  Today, with the scientific and medical knowledge available to us it’s no wonder men aren’t having babies!  But that’s a joke.  I do think the categories for the Nobel Prize will be expanded, however, and possibly that should include tech advances for the Web.  I’m not talking about collocation companies, Web page designers, or manufacturers of computer service carts.  I’m talking about backend “geeks’ who make it all work for us users on the other side.

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OTHER RESOURCES

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Verizon to Pay Millons For False Web Use

Oct 4 at 12:12am by Kristine Doluche

US-TELECOM-COMPANY-VERIZONSOURCE: Los Angeles TimesVerizon Wireless has agreed to repay millions of dollars in refunds to 15 million cell phone customers who were apparently were erroneously charged for data sessions or Internet use.

Verizon did not disclose how much exactly it would have to pay but said 15 million customers would receive credits or refund checks that in most cases would range from $2 to $6 but would go beyond this in some cases, on their October or November bills.

Former customers will get refund checks while existing customers will get credits.

A person familiar with the matter said the refunds would come to more than $50 million. If all 15 million customers receive $6 in refunds each this would come to $90 million.

The case marks a misstep in an area wireless service providers are dependent on for future growth.

Operators like Verizon Wireless have been heavily promoting ever more advanced phones in the hope of convincing consumers to go beyond making voice calls and to also spend money on data services such as web-browsing and downloading applications such as games and movies download.

The New York Times, which first reported the settlement, cited unnamed people familiar with the settlement plan saying that the US telecommunications regulator, the Federal Communications Commission is pressing Verizon to agree to a penalty for the unauthorized charges.

The charges affected customers who did not have data usage plans, but were billed because of exchanges initiated by software built into their phones.

The use of data recovery and mining software have been used to track erroneous usage.

For example, trying out a demonstration of a game that Verizon Wireless had pre-loaded onto a phone would sometimes trigger data transmissions from the phone unbeknownst to the customers who were then charged by Verizon Wireless for the data.

In the past three years, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission received complaints from Verizon Wireless customers who said they were charged for data usage or Web access, the New York Times reported Sunday.

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MY TAKE: If you want my take, the way my cell phone bill looks every month I wouldn’t be surprised if I was download new movies and not know it.  The costs I’ve racked up would pay for new garage floor tile.  I might have extra beyond garage flooring if I didn’t have to also factor in the costs of paying for a Denver car accident lawyer last year.  But it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d been charged all along for Web access and didn’t know it.

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Other Resources

Long Term Unemployment Falls

There has been a lot of information about the health of the economy in recent years and it has come to the attention of people who measure those types of statistics that one of the most important economic indicators for staffing solutions is that the number of people who were unemployed on a long term basis, which means they had been out of a job for at least nine months, dropped in December, which is very encouraging news. The higher the number of people who are unemployed for a long time, the less recovered the economy seems to be.

Legal Matters

Brockville drinking and driving lawyer fees are expensive. If you’ve been accused of Toronto provincial offences you need to hire an attorney right away.  Don’t settle for a public defender.  Find a way to pay for a retainer fee for a good lawyer who will treat your case individually and with the ultimate goal of representing you in court and achieving the best possible result.

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Texting While Driving Worse Than DUI

Oct 3 at 6:06pm by Kristine Doluche

Don't be stupid

SOURCE:  Los Angeles Times

Texting and Driving, experts suggest can be deadly as driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

“Border collie jill surveying the view from atop the sand dune.” Those were the last words of Malibu plastic surgeon Frank Ryan, best known for “reconstructing” reality TV star Heidi Montag. It’s not quite up there with “Et tu, Brute?” Yet it seemed important enough for him to text it just before driving off a cliff in August. Jill survived.

We don’t know what the message was in a 2007 accident involving the sender and her four fellow New York high school cheerleaders. But it probably wasn’t worth slamming head-on into a truck, killing them all. And the 2008 Chatsworth train collision, in which 25 people died and more than 100 were injured, was officially attributed to the engineer of the Metrolink commuter train being distracted by text messaging.

Unfortunately, laws intended to deal with the problem of texting while driving, a major topic at the Transportation Department’s Distracted Driving Summit on Sept. 21, reflect vital misunderstandings about why a cellphone combined with a moving vehicle can be so deadly and how to deal with it.

Texting while driving can be more dangerous than driving while swigging Jack Daniels, according to studies. In a 2009 survey, Car and Driver magazine tested two of its staffers under a variety of conditions. It found that on average, driving at 70 mph, one man braking suddenly while legally drunk (0.08 blood alcohol content) traveled 4 feet beyond his baseline performance. But reading an e-mail while driving sober, he traveled 36 feet beyond the baseline result and 70 feet while sending a text. In the worst case while texting, he traveled 319 feet before stopping.

Yet 66% of respondents to a 2007 Harris Interactive poll admitted they’ve texted while driving, even as 89% said it should be banned. And it’s the youngest drivers, who already are in far more than their share of road accidents and deaths, who do it most, according to government and insurance industry reports.

There are no reliable studies regarding deaths associated with driving and texting. But consider that in 2002, when texting was still a novelty, cellphone usage killed an estimated 2,600 Americans, according to a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Yet texting and driving is 17 times more dangerous than just talking on a phone, according to a 2009 Virginia Tech study. And we sent about 15 times the number of messages in 2009 as we did in 2005, according to one wireless industry report.

One possible explanation for why we can’t seem to keep our paws off those tiny keyboards is that surveys show that a vast majority of American drivers believe themselves to be above average — and not just in Lake Wobegon. Hence the belief that we need to ban thee but not me.

For those who have legal problems . . . Redwood City DWI lawyer will be able to help you if you have a DUI/DWI.  Redwood city criminal attorneys can come in handy as well when you have a DUI or you have another criminal charge.  It is always wise to check with a lawyer before you say anything!

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s idea of putting cigarette-pack type warning labels on cellphones is as worthless as it sounds. We don’t need text education. We need legal coercion. Yet 20 states still don’t ban texting and driving, and only eight plus the District of Colombia ban talking on hand-held phones while driving. None ban hands-free phones.

However, the mere existence of laws alone is not enough. Almost twice as many Californians in a new Automobile Club of Southern California survey say they now use cellphones while driving than admitted to doing so before it became illegal 20 months ago. And texting laws in four states surveyed have done nothing to reduce reported collisions, according to figures released by an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Why? Penalties are a joke and enforcement is essentially nonexistent. A first offense is merely a $20 fine in California, and $50 for subsequent violations. By contrast, a first DUI conviction in the state carries a jail sentence of four days to six months, a fine as high as $1,000, a six-month license suspension and more.

Enforcement efforts are virtually nonexistent because everyone thinks it’s so difficult. Yet equipment that detects outgoing radiofrequency signals is neither new nor cost-prohibitive and no more invasive than traffic control cameras, radar or radar detector spotters. But even such low-tech “equipment” as human eyeballs can work. Results from two pilot programs released Tuesday by the Department of Transportation show that. During a yearlong test, using a combination of public service announcements and programs in which officers were specifically watching out for drivers using cellphones, hand-held cellphone use while driving dropped 56% in Hartford, Conn., and 38% in Syracuse, N.Y.; texting while driving declined 68% and 42%, respectively.

“The laws are simple to enforce,” says Jennifer Smith, president of Focus Driven, patterned after the highly effective Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Yet none of this will have any effect if we don’t recognize that the specific cause of the distraction “isn’t your hands or eyes but your head,” as University of Illinois cognitive scientist Daniel Simons puts it. “Texting requires you to take your mind off the road.” Indeed, hands-free phones may induce a fatally false sense of complacency “if you falsely believe that you will notice what’s on the road while focusing attention on your phone or a keyboard,” Simons adds. That’s why studies repeatedly show hands-free phones to be just as dangerous as hand-helds.

But current state laws universally allow hands-free phones, except in a few places for certain categories such as teens and bus drivers. And yes, there are voice-to-text apps that allow verbal text messaging, which some promote as a safer alternative.

For now, all you can do is control your own conduct, including downloading software that automatically blocks outgoing messages while turning off alerts for incoming ones. No message is worth dying for.

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MY TAKE: Make no mistake, kids are texting on every phone made from T-Mobile PDA phones to cheap  no contract cell phones, not only while driving, but walking into stores, movie theaters, malls, on campus and everywhere else.  They are not even looking up to see the sky above them anymore or notice life going on around them.  Even as families sit down to enjoy a meal together at a restaurant, they are texting!

If I still ran my personal injury lawfirm I would be raking up the big bucks on these text while driving cases. I know one wrongful death lawyer who is amidst a case involving a mother of four who was texting while driving.  She hit a man in a crosswalk and killed him.  She has ruined her life all for the sake of a message.  What happened to the plan to put texting ed. classes in all CDL driving school courses, from the best academy driving school in New York has to offer to the private classes in California?  And what about putting some teeth into the laws?

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Wolves Back In the Crosshairs

Oct 3 at 5:05pm by Kristine Doluche

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SOURCE: Associated Press

Two decades after a $2 million federal program for reintroduction of gray wolves to the Northern Rockies, lawmakers say it’s time for Congress to step in again — this time to clamp down on them due to concerns of ranchers and others.

To do so they are proposing to bypass the Endangered Species Act and lift protections, first enacted in 1974, for today’s booming wolf population.

Critics say the move would undercut one of the nation’s premiere environmental laws and allow for the unchecked killing of wolves across the West.

But bitterness against the iconic predator is flaring as livestock killings increase and some big game herds dwindle.

And with state efforts to knock back the predators’ expansion stalled in court, senators from Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah want to strip wolves of their endangered status by force.

“When they brought wolves to Idaho, the Legislature voted against it, the governor didn’t want it and the Congressional delegation didn’t want it,” said Idaho Republican Sen. James Risch. “We didn’t want them in the first place. But we are prepared to deal with them as we see fit.”

Following the reintroduction study, 66 wolves were brought from Canada to Central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. The population hit the original recovery benchmark of 300 animals a decade ago, yet they remain officially endangered.

At least 1,700 wolves now roam parts of six states.

Yet wildlife advocates warn the attempt to strong-arm a public hunt through Congressional action would set a dangerous precedent for other endangered species — and unravel a wolf recovery program that has cost $30 million to date.

“It’s comparable to throwing an individual species off of Noah’s ark,” said Doug Honnold, a Montana attorney representing groups that won an Aug. 5 court ruling that returned wolves to the endangered list.

No state has proposed getting rid of wolves entirely, despite calls to do so by individual ranchers. Montana and Idaho have plans to reduce their populations by 15 percent and about 40 percent, respectively.

Those states and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service appealed the August ruling last week. A final ruling could take years.

There also are proposals to hold wolf hunts with the animals still listed as endangered. That idea has gotten a cool reception from federal wildlife officials.

State officials say intervention by Congress may be the only viable option remaining.

Environmentalists have vowed to lobby hard against several wolf bills introduced in the past two weeks. And the measures face another hurdle: Lawmakers are split along party lines over which states should be allowed to hunt wolves.

A measure introduced by Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, Montana Democrats, would leave wolves endangered in Wyoming, which has a shoot-on-sight law for wolves across most of the state.

That Wyoming law played a pivotal role in the August court ruling and another in 2008 that reversed a previous attempt to take wolves off the endangered list.

“If Wyoming doesn’t want to put forward a management plan that works, that’s Wyoming’s fault,” Baucus said. Tester said Wyoming “hasn’t wanted to play” and suggested that Montana could not wait for its southern neighbor to change its mind given ongoing livestock losses from wolf attacks.

Republicans have sponsored more sweeping measures that would delist wolves across the lower 48 states, including Wyoming. Idaho’s delegation has yet another bill, described as a fallback plan, that includes only that state and Montana.

Senators from both parties and across the region met last week in part to resolve the Wyoming issue. But a common front has yet to emerge.

Wolves were off the endangered list for over a year before the latest court ruling. In that time, hunters in Montana and Idaho killed 260 of the animals.

Environmentalists decried the shootings as unprecedented for a species just off the endangered list. Among the wolves killed were members of a well-known Yellowstone National Park pack that crossed onto Montana land.

Yet those managed hunts were a far cry from the days when bounty hunters known as “wolfers” poisoned, shot, trapped and burned the species to near-extinction early last century.

A count at the end of 2009 showed the region’s wolf population rose slightly last year despite the hunts. Wildlife officials heralded the increase as proof the states could show restraint.

Load testing and a software test of the latest data on wolf populations is not cut and dry: Some states have to report their populations, others don’t.

Even without public hunting, government wildlife agents regularly retaliate against wolves that attack livestock, typically by shooting them from aircraft.

About 270 were shot last year under the program and more than 1,300 have been killed since Congress’ initial involvement.

“Government agents killing wolves with shotguns from helicopters — that’s not the model we had of conservation we had in mind,” said Carolyn Sime, the head of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ wolf program.

“It took an act of Congress to direct the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to study reintroduction. Maybe that’s fitting as a way to resolve this,” she said.

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MY TAKE: I know people have big addictions.  Some like to play blackjack online, others like to hunt.  Personally if I had to chose one over the other, I’d spend my extra time and money on casinos online and let wildlife live as it was meant to.  They were here first.

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San Francisco Targets Happy Meals

Oct 3 at 4:04pm by Kristine Doluche

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SOURCE: Associated Press

San Francisco latest target: Ronald McDonald.

A proposed city ordinance would ban McDonald’s from putting toys in Happy Meals unless it adds fruit and vegetable portions and limits calories. The proposal would apply to all restaurants, but the focus has been on McDonald’s and its iconic Happy Meals.

Supervisor Eric Mar said he proposed the law to protect the health of his constituents, but McDonald’s has waged an aggressive fight to block the measure. A battery of McDonald’s Corp. executives showed up at city hall to argue that the legislation is a heavy-handed effort that threatens the company’s decades-old business model and the free choice of its customers.

The proposed Happy Meal law is just the latest in a string of San Francisco ordinances aimed at regulating public health. The city recently expanded a law banning tobacco sales in pharmacies to include grocery stores and big-box stores that also have pharmacies.

Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order earlier this year banning sweetened beverages like Coca Cola and Pepsi from vending machines on city property. Local leaders considered but ultimately abandoned laws recently that would have imposed a fee on businesses that sell sugary drinks and alcohol.

Newsom has slowed down in his support of some health measures after he was attacked by his opponent in next month’s lieutenant governor’s race, Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, for being the “food police.” Newsom vetoed the alcohol and soda fees, and he’s indicated he’ll do the same for Ronald McDonald. The Board of Supervisors could overturn a veto but needs the votes of eight of 11 supervisors to do so.

Tony Winnicker, a Newsom spokesman, has said the mayor was opposed to the measures in part because of their negative impact on local businesses.

“The mayor is always open to argument and evidence about a better way — he’s not ideological, he’s not wedded to one approach,” Winnicker said. “This is not the time to be considering new fees and taxes that would put San Francisco at a disadvantage to other counties around the state.”

Mar said he expected his Happy Meal bill to pass out of committee Monday and receive a vote by the full Board of Supervisors later this month.

McDonald’s vice president for nutrition and menu strategy, Karen Wells, said that denying a toy to a child would undermine the authority of parents to decide what their children should eat and would be difficult to execute.

“It’s different from what we’re doing today and different from what we’ve done for 25 years, successfully,” Wells said.

Responded Supervisor Sophie Maxwell in an exasperated voice, “Just because it’s different does not make it necessarily difficult. I mean, McDonald’s is an amazing institution. It’s been around for many years … because it’s able to change and to adapt to new circumstances and new things that people are eating so I think I have a lot more confidence in McDonald’s, I guess, than you do.”

Cynthia Goody, McDonald’s nutrition director, said there was no evidence that childhood obesity would be reduced by requiring a fruit or vegetable with all meals.

In response, a supervisor asked what mix of foods would lower childhood obesity. Goody said she would need to conduct more research to provide an answer.

The Happy Meal ordinance is not all surprising given San Francisco’s famously liberal leanings.

“San Francisco has a reputation — and it’s well deserved — of being a very progressive city,” said Alex Clemens, founder of Barbary Coast Consulting, a local political communications firm. “With that comes naturally, hand in hand, a reliance on government to encourage thoughtful change — that’s just tradition.”

MY TAKE: Unless you live in a bubble, there’s no ignoring the divide between Northern and Sothern Californians.  Everything from San Diego flowers for wedding venues and wall letters on stadium sidelines speaks to the differences.  It’s not surprise that The Golden Gate city would move to ban toys from Happy Meals and frankly it’s OK with me.  I’m not big supporter of one San Diego CA wedding decorations company over a rival business up North.  Wall decals mean about as much to me as the difference between cleaning in Bethesda and cleaning in Iowa.  Not that MD home cleaning services have anything to hold over my cleaning company.  But that’s another story.

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IMF Warns of Currency War

Oct 2 at 4:04pm by Kristine Doluche

hijab1SOURCE:  AFP

The IMF’s managing director has urged major economies to step up and cooperate in order to prevent a global currency war which could impede economic recovery.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn said at an economic conference in the Crimean Black Sea resort of Yalta that a global economic recovery is underway, even if it is a “very uneven recovery”.

But he said an unwillingness of major economies to repeat the coordination they showed in implementing measures to overcome the crisis when it broke in 2008 has emerged as a major risk to the recovery.

Some economies, especially China, have been criticized for keeping their currencies low in order to promote their exports and Brazil’s Finance Minister Guido Mantega has said the world is seeing “an international currency war.”

“We succeeded in avoiding a bigger crisis thanks to economic coordination especially in monetary policy and in fiscal stimulus,” Strauss-Kahn told reporters at the conference.

“But today we have another threat which is that this willingness for consensus and cooperation has decreased. And we see around the world a possibility of the beginning of a currency war.”

He said the economic policymakers needed to get back to talking about cooperation, “discussing the value of the currencies, trying to adjust what has to be adjusted, fighting against global imbalances.”

He said that if they didn’t, there would be a new crisis “of countries trying to find domestic solutions to a global problem.”

In recent weeks nearly a dozen governments from Colombia to Singapore have admitted to buying up local currency in the hope of driving down the price of the currency to make exports cheaper.

As well as the declining commitment to economic cooperation, Strauss-Kahn said risks to the recovery also came from unemployment and private debt.

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MY TAKE: I’m just a Philadelphia divorce lawyer, so I know very little about how the IMF works.  But even inside my little  Philadelphia PA family attorneys office we understand the nature of the situation.  Our access to small business funding virtually dried up two years ago.  I was not able to obtain a small business loan in order to move to bigger offices in 2008 because of the trickle down effect from the global economic crisis.  I also have a friend who is in the plastic gift bag industry. He says the costs of plastic bags from China has gone up almost double since 2008, while the value of the dollar there has shrunk compared to the local currency.  He essentially can no longer afford to stay in business.

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