Thursday, May 31, 2012

What $1 million will get home buyers around the U.S.

By Paul Toscano, CNBC.com

How much can you get for $1 million in today?s real estate market? The answer, of course, varies depending on where you?re looking to buy.

In the wake of the U.S. housing crisis, consumer confidence and home values fell sharply, while prices in some cities are less than half of what they were in 2007. In many local markets, however, such as in New York, San Francisco, Anchorage, Alaska, and Omaha, Neb., people on the front lines are optimistic about a recovery in sales volumes, prices and buyer confidence.

One price range of particular interest is the $1 million market, where affordability and luxury come to a crossroads. In some places, $1 million may buy you a mansion; in others it may fetch a more moderate home. Although in most markets, homes in the $1 million range are not typical, they provide a good reference point for spending across the country as well as the health of local economies.

CNBC.com: America's richest counties

CNBC.com surveyed real estate agents in 18 U.S. cities to gain individual perspectives on the health of America?s local real estate markets. The following slides include example homes from each market valued between $1 million and $1.25 million that are either currently for sale or recently sold. The participants in the survey offered a front-line perspective on how local markets are performing compared to last year, how the dynamics are changing and what buyers and sellers are asking when buying a home.

So, how far can $1 million go in today?s real estate market?

Omaha

CNBC.com

Listing price: $1 million
Bedrooms: 4
Bathrooms: 6
Size of home:? 5,629 sq ft

Local perspective:

?Last year, the high end market was dead, and it has picked up tremendously from this time in 2011,? says Deb Cizek of the Cizek Group. According to Cizek, homes valued above $1 million are among the hottest properties in the city, and aggressively priced homes can sell in as little as 30 days, while homes without significant reductions may remain on the market for 120 days or more before being sold.?

Cizek says that most home buyers in Omaha are relocating or upgrading from a previous home, with a noticeable lack of first time buyers. She maintains a positive outlook for prices and buying activity through the end of the summer.

New York

CNBC.com

Listing price: $999,999
Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 1 full, 1 half
Size of home: N/A

Local perspective:
?The real estate market in Manhattan is much more vigorous than it was a year ago,? says Kelly Robinson of Town Real Estate, ?A lot of people feel like they missed the bottom of the market, and it has created a sense of urgency.? According to Robinson, sale prices in the luxury market rose by 8.7 percent per square foot, with the average sales price of homes in Manhattan standing just under $5.6 million in the first quarter of 2012.

The city real estate market is fueled by confidence and increasing rental prices, says Robinson, and the luxury segment for homes priced above $5 million is where the most robust buying activity is focused. That?s because of a limited inventory in this segment and a pool of willing buyers waiting to enter.?

CNBC.com:?Floating homes

Robinson says she has seen a significant increase in activity and number of bidding wars for properties and is expecting strong second-quarter numbers, especially in the luxury sector. New York has seen a variety of buyers, from first time homeowners frustrated with the high price of renting to foreign investors and native residents looking to relocate.

She says that in New York, buyers are concerned about a home?s price per square foot but also have a variety of questions when purchasing, including the financial condition of the building itself, number of owner-occupied units on the property and restrictions on lifestyle and usability of the property, such as whether the owner is allowed to have pets, sublet the apartment or whether the property can be purchased for a child.

San Francisco

CNBC.com

Listing price: $1,099,000
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2 full, 1 half
Size of home: 1,846 sq ft

Local perspective:
Although listing for $1,099,000, the home featured here ended with a final sale price of $1,170,000, according to the broker involved. This upward bidding reflects strength in the San Francisco market, and compared to last year the city is ?seeing more buyer confidence, more buyers, considerably less inventory and a more cautious lending environment, with no real appraisal issues,? says Mark Best of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.

Homes priced in the $1 million range sell slower than entry-level homes priced up to $800,000, says Best, but are selling faster than homes priced above $2 million. However, San Francisco is one of the U.S. cities where homes are selling the fastest. Best sees this trend continuing to improve from last year. He believes that one of the biggest challenges to the market will be to reduce inventory, but sales are helped by low interest rates and a positive jobs outlook.

Honolulu

CNBC.com


Listing price: $1,250,000
Bedrooms: 4
Bathrooms: 2 full, 1 half
Size of home/lot: 2,574 sq ft / 5,998 sq ft

Local perspective:

Home prices are up 10 percent on Oahu, the island where Honolulu is located, says Patti Nakagawa of Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties, although sales have dropped slightly since last year. She says this is a result of low inventory, multiple offers on existing properties and qualified homebuyers waiting for new homes to come to market. In Honolulu, homes selling for more than $1 million take much longer to sell, with about an 11 month inventory waiting to be sold.

Nakagawa anticipates a strong overall market for 2012. She points out that the Hawaii property market has the benefit of a large number of second homes, with buyers from the mainland looking to snatch up vacation properties.

Atlanta

Listing price: $1,095,000
Bedrooms: 5
Bathrooms: 4 full, 2 half
Size of home:? 6,000 sq ft

Local perspective:
Shea Zimmerman of Harry Norman Realtors says: ?There is definitely a change in the market and all for good. Sales are up between 8 percent and 10 percent in our market area.? She says that homes priced in the $1 million to $3 million range are selling much faster than those in higher price ranges, and the area benefits from a light inventory, cutting the average time a house will spend on the market nearly in half from this time in 2011.

CNBC.com:?Cities where homes sell the fastest

Zimmerman?s outlook for Atlanta is increasingly positive. She says increased activity this spring began earlier than normal, a trend she expects to see through the second quarter. Most buyers are relocating or upgrading, she says, and most of their questions are in regard to quality of the neighborhood, instead of price.?

Read the rest of the list of million-dollar homes at CNBC.com.

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Pending homes sales post surprise fall in April

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Dragon Spaceship Has Successfully Returned to Earth [Space]

The Dragon has completed its historic journey to the International Space Station. The first private spaceship to ever dock with the station has returned home. Here is how it happened. More »


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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Morning Links (Theagitator)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

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Acne treatment that actually works - Health and Fitness

acne treatment that actually worksAntibiotics also kill the good bacteria in your stomach which help with the fight against acne. acne treatment that actually works Modern Skin Care Options Acne Laser Removal Having acne trouble is a major concern for many and appears to be a growing trend in the medical skin care world. It is encouraging for acne sufferers to know that scientific research is being conducted every day on acne prevention and control. For highly resistant acne, Baby Quasar is an efficient alternative. In the beginning you may find that your acne help is getting worse. Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to this attack on their self- confidence and can even trigger withdraw and depression, along with feelings of anger and frustration. Don? t pick at your acne does simply because it actually can result in extra irritation, bleeding, and increase your potential for creating scarring damage that acne treatment that actually works is usually permanent. Some Back that Acne Causes Acne does not only occur on someone? s face; it appears all over people? s bodies. Reasons Why the T- Zone Is A Hot Spot For Acne Breakouts Yes, the T- Zone is the area of the face where acne commonly appears. So you should take extra precautionary measures to keep it glowing and breathing all the time. Contrary to what you might believe, some of them are not going to be effective or will be limited in efficiency. The flawless digestion can give you healthy regular life. Little side effects are a big benefit: Over the years herbal acne treatment is gaining in popularity. It encompasses many treatments, substances and techniques. Shalitaetalhavealsoshownasignificant anti inflammtory effectof the420 nmlight. Apart from this, you should consult with your doctor regarding your personal biological matters ( if any) and circumstances, so that this history will be helpful for the doctor to assess the proper measures. Turmeric: This is a beneficial for skin conditions. Having a spiritual life means how your general attitude in meeting everyday challenges of life makes you feel. 1. You may think that these steps are quite simple to pursue but for some people, they merely take these suggestions for granted when thinking of ways on how to stop acne. Overwashing your face can cause the skin to become too dry and you could age prematurely. If you take prescribed drugs, most likely the side effects will be more severe. Cure Acne Fast At Home Acne can affect you regardless of your age or acne gender. Finally, the repairing lotion soothes the skin, provides moisture and treats the pores with micro formulated benzoyl peroxide to protect the skin against future breakouts. His name is Mike Walden. Whenever they can? t sustain the pace, the skin? s pores perform the function. For this reason there is a huge amount of information on the internet about this condition. Though, these side effects would not does sunlight help acne appear treatment to be serious, they can cause damage to your skin in the long term. The face, back, acne chest, and shoulders contain a large concentration of these glands. Be sure to take a high quality multi vitamin- Often , acne is a works sign that you need more in your body in the way of nutrition. Acne can be solved ? you simply need to ensure that sunlight you treat the underlying sources! And have a full 8 hours of sleep.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Mike Norman Economics: Dirk Bezemer ? Credit is What Credit ...

Dirk Bezemer ? Credit is What Credit Does: Finance and Economic Growth Uncoupled

Contrary to conventional wisdom economics is not about money.
?The cutting edge models have no banking sectors at all,? says Dutch economist and INET grantee Dirk Bezemer. ?Models that central banks use have no banks. Just let that sink in.?
Bezemer has conducted a careful analysis of the financial sector that provides a much-needed change from the usual macroeconomic models. In his recent presentation at INET Berlin, Bezemer gave an in-depth explanation of how to create a socially useful financial system.
His answer is simple: ?Credit is what credit does.??
?Most of our credit system does not support economic growth in the sense of supporting transactions in goods and services,? he explains. ?Most of our finance system, most bank loans, support increased asset prices, which have a number of detrimental effects on the economy.??
Debt going to asset markets can be helpful at a low level of debt (when overall debt is about 100% of GDP, Bezemer suggests. The U.S., by comparison, is now at more than 400%.). But when debt gets too high, servicing it becomes a big drain on the real economy. And this means lower economic growth.?
But orthodox macroeconomic models won?t tell you any of this. ?There are no models tracing credit, so a credit crisis will come out the blue,? Bezemer says. ?We can do better than that.?
Bezemer shows that ?on average, at higher levels of credit going to asset markets, there is a negative, inverse relation between international financial flows and fixed capital formation. And therefore you have lower growth.??
Supporting this credit addiction has very obvious symptoms. ?It?s not a coincidence that we have excessive speculation in food prices right now,? he says. ?All that money is still around.?
The solution, according to Bezemer, is pretty simple. We must greatly shrink the financial sector, while preserving the essential functions of credit allocation to the real economy. As Bezemer writes in his recent article for Eurointelligence, ?The threat to growth today is not a shrinking of the financial sector, but it enormous size.?
Read the rest at INET
Credit is What Credit Does: Finance and Economic Growth Uncoupled

Posted by INET


Also?Finance and economic growth delinked
by Dirk Bezemer at Euro Intelligence

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Nursing Classes Education and learning as well as Instruction ...

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Foreclosed homes for sale in Denver | Real Estate Denver

Well, actually I'm going this summer to live with my sister and her boyfriend. We are looking for a home, but everyone we have called that because it comes with an offer on it. I had been considering a handful of websites, but also assume that you sign up for there to pay extra for it. I would not want to pay the dough just to think about it a few times. Have you found All Web pages that provide lists of items for homes for sale? ?. There they were mostly looking for empty because they are so cheap. Which is great if we could do that. By the way. We live in Denver, CO Denver. I thank you in advance. Okay, I have the solution in this article. You will want to have more than an agent showing empty? It is truly free.


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Monday, May 28, 2012

MW2 ? Domination ? la TAR-21 dans Underpass ? [ChNo] et NbA-Worlds [5] [HD]

*LIS LA DESCRIPTION !* C?est avec plaisir que je vous propose cette vid?o ? pr?sentation ? de NbA-Worlds comment?e sur un match en Domination. Suite des vid?os ? venir? D?sol? pour les ? bruitages ? du micro d?Antoine, il aura un nouveau pour notre prochain commentary ;D N?oubliez pas de commenter, ?aimer? et vous abonner ? ma cha?ne ;) S?ABONNER : www.youtube.com FACEBOOK : www.facebook.com TWITTER : twitter.com SKYPE : ChNoAristote

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UFC 146: dos Santos vs. Mir Live Results and Play-by-Play

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Activists: Toll from Syrian attack more than 90

BEIRUT (AP) ? Government troops shelled a string of villages in central Syria before pro-regime thugs swept through the area, shooting people in the streets and in their homes in attacks that killed more than 90 people, activists said Saturday.

The assault on Houla, an area northwest of the central city of Homs, is one of the bloodiest single events in Syria's 15-month-old uprising.

Activists from the region said regime forces peppered Houla with mortars following a large anti-regime protest on Friday. After the bombardment, pro-government thugs known as shabiha raided the villages, killing men on the streets and stabbing women and children in their houses.

Amateur videos posted online showed scores of dead covered in sheets and blankets, some covered with chunks of ice to preserve then until burial. One video showed 14 dead children lined up on the ground, shoulder to shoulder. Another had at least a dozen more, some with holes in their heads and faces, lying on what appears to be the floor of a mosque.

The Syrian government blamed the massacre on "armed terrorist groups" but provided no details or death toll.

The killings strike a stiff blow to an international peace plan brokered by envoy Kofi Annan meant to end the violence in Syria. The basis of the plan is a cease-fire between President Bashar Assad's forces and rebels seeking to topple the Syrian regime. It was supposed to start on April 12 but has never really taken hold, with pockets of daily violence.

The U.N. put the death toll weeks ago at more than 9,000. Hundreds have been killed since.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that there has only been "small progress" on implementing the plan and blamed the Syrian government for much of the "unacceptable levels of violence and abuses." Annan is supposed to visit Syria soon to check on the plan's progress, though no date has been announced.

On Saturday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned the attack on Houla, saying that "with these new crimes, this murderous regime pushes Syria further into horror and threatens regional stability."

Abu Yazan, a local activist reached via Skype, said regime forces fired shells at the villages that make up Houla, an area about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the city of Homs after an anti-regime demonstration Friday.

He said local rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army tried to fight the army off in clashes around the area before pro-regime thugs known as shabiha stormed the villages, raiding homes and shooting at civilians.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 90 people were killed in the Houla area. Abu Yazan said 106 people were killed, most of them in the village of Taldaw. More than 40 were children, he said.

"They killed entire families, from parents on down to children, but they focused on the children," he said.

Another activist, Abu Walid, said that many of the women and children had stab wounds.

The activists said the Houla killings appeared to be sectarian, raising fears that Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with protests calling for political reform, is edging closer to the type of sectarian war that tore apart its eastern neighbor, Iraq.

The Houla villages are Sunni Muslim. Activists said that the pro-regime forces all came from an arc of villages south of Houla that are populated by Alawites, members of the offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad belongs.

"Our area is Sunni and the surrounding villages are Alawite," Abu Walid said. "I don't like to talk about sectarianism, but it was clear that this was sectarian hatred."

Amateur videos posted online showed dozens of bodies laid out in different rooms, including women wearing Muslim headscarves and children in shorts and T-shirts.

Syrian state TV blamed the "massacre" in Houla on "armed terrorist groups" ? a term it often uses for the opposition.

The claims and videos could not be independently verified. The Syrian government bars most media from operating inside the country.

Anti-regime groups, who have expressed frustrations with the international community's reluctance to intervene in Syria's conflict, strongly condemned the killings.

World powers have fallen in behind the U.N. plan, which is supposed to lead to dialogue between all sides on a political solution. The U.S. and European nations say they will not intervene militarily. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya have said they will arm Syria's rebels, although no country is known to be doing so now.

A spokeswoman for the opposition Syrian National Council called on the U.N. Security Council "to examine the situation in Houla and to determine the responsibility of the United Nations in the face of such mass killings, expulsions and forced migration from entire neighborhoods."

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released an unusually harsh statement, saying Arab nations and the international community were "partners" in the killing "because of their silence about the massacres that the Syrian regime has committed."

The U.N. has sent more then 250 military observers to Syria to try to salvage the cease-fire, and a spokesman for the team said they visited Houla on Saturday.

One Houla activist said the observers' visit would not help and could cause the government to attack again.

"As soon as they came we asked them to leave because many areas they go to get attacked," Abu Suleiman said via Skype. "We don't want them to get near us."

Also Saturday, the expected release of a group of Lebanese Shiites who were kidnapped in Syria this week appeared to hit a snag, a day after the Lebanese government confirmed the men had been freed and were on their way to Beirut.

Lebanese and Syrian officials have blamed Syrian rebels for Tuesday's kidnappings of the 11 men in northern Syria, but nobody has claimed responsibility.

A plane was scheduled to fly the men from Turkey to Beirut Friday night, but Lebanese officials said their arrival would be delayed for "logistical reasons."

The kidnappings fueled fears that Lebanon is getting drawn into the bloody conflict in Syria. In the hours after Tuesday's abductions, protests erupted in Beirut's Shiite-dominated southern suburbs.

___

Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley in Paris and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed reporting.

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Sunday, May 27, 2012

China detains official for rapes after online uproar

BEIJING - Police in central China detained Li Xingong, a former Communist Party official, on suspicion or raping underage girls, state media said on Sunday, following an online uproar about the latest case of abuse of power.

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The man, who was the party's deputy head in Yongcheng city in Henan province, is accused of assaulting more than ten girls during police interrogations, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

City authorities have "ordered swift and severe punishment on the suspect in accordance with relevant laws", it added.

The case has been widely discussed on China's wildly popular Twitter-like microblogging site Weibo, after reports about the rapes naming him as the perpetrator began circulating online over the past week.

"Officials these days are all like this. It's really terrible," wrote one Weibo user.

One tweet, 10,000 followers: Dissident artist slips, briefly, through China censor

"These dog officials are everywhere. Only execution will sate the public's anger," wrote another.

While the government has encouraged people to take to the internet to expose corruption and abuse of power, especially at the grassroots level, it generally keeps a tight rein on what can be said about similar problems with more senior officials.

Read more China news on Behind The Wall

After briefly allowing free discussion online following March's sacking of former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai and the naming of his wife as a suspect in the murder of a British businessman, censors moved to block the topic.

The ruling Communist Party has long pushed to eradicate corruption, underscoring a broader fear that, if left unchecked, the problem could hurt the legitimacy of one-party rule and maybe threaten its survival.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

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Brooke White Welcomes Daughter London

Known for her sweet vocals and joyful personality as a season 7 finalist on American Idol, Brooke White has a bundle of joy of her own.

White, 28, gave birth to daughter London, her first child with husband Dave Ray, on Thursday, May 24?at a Los Angeles-area hospital.

?Baby London is here,? an ecstatic Ray tells PEOPLE. ?Our girl came in at 6:41 p.m. and is 8 lbs., 12 oz.!?

Mother and daughter ?are both healthy as well,? Ray adds.

According to Ray, the name London is a nod to his parents and family, who are all from England and specifically the London area.

Both Ray and White visited there two years ago and fell in love with the city.?Also important ? White is fond of the nickname ?Londy.?

?We?re so excited,? White told PEOPLE in January.?By the time the baby?s born, we?ll have been married eight years. I met Dave when I was 19 years old and we?ve been together a really long time, and we?ve always wanted to be parents.?

A year ago, White made her acting debut in the FOX TV movie Change of Plans. This year, she continued to record music with writing partner Jack Matranga as the duo Jack and White. Their latest EP, Undercover, will be released May 29 on iTunes.

Fans can follow White?s baby adventures on her blog, Brookie Babble.

? Cynthia Wang

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Friday, May 25, 2012

Music Reviews: The Murder of My Sweet, Diablo Swing Orchestra ...

And now for the latest collection of music I have enjoyed over the last few days.

The Murder of My Sweet is the musical intersection between Within Temptation and good Evanescence. The band drift between the heavier end of goth pop metal and the lighter end with ease and aplomb. Bye Bye Lullaby is catchy and does get under your skin quite quickly. I caught myself singing along to songs like "Meant to Last Forever" on the second listen without even realizing it.

Diablo Swing Orchestra is a band I have mentioned in this column before and their latest deserves no less kudos. Pandora's Pinata will have even the most cloven-hoofed up and dancing in no time. This is truly heavy rock dance music and I love it. These guys need a gig on Dancing with the Stars for next series to make it really interesting.

Winter in Eden have their Echoes of Betrayal for their musical offering this spring. It is quite a good collection of catchy female-fronted gothic metal. While none of the tracks leap out and grab you, this is decent stuff. They might want to up their game in the songwriting department a bit to compete with the A-listers of the genre. However, it is a valuable addition to the genre and a consistently decent release.

Rounding out the catchy heavy rock for the week is the amusingly named Teodor Tuff with their release Solioquy. Never heard of this bunch, but I do rather enjoy what I hear on here. It is heavy yet accessible all the same, with neat touches like female-male vocal trade-offs. Melodic power metal rarely sounds this good. An impressive sophomore release.

Spider Rockets are more on the pop rock end of things, but have no less heavy an attitude. Bitten is the soundtrack you wished your younger siblings obsessed with Twilight were playing. Lashings of glam rock with a touch of Blondie and all the class you want from this sort of music.

Great White are back with Elation and it is some great rock in the L.A. strip sense. A touch of Tesla and a smattering of Dangerous Toys adds up to something quite entertaining. The only trouble is that it ain't GW, the dripping blues is just not to be had. With no Jack Russell and someone new (Terry Ilous) on the vocals, it just doesn't sound like GW. When it sounds so different to GW, why not call it something else?

Speaking of the L.A. strip via Norway you have a great bunch of musical ruffians in the form of Wig Wam. The album is called Wall Street and it has all the attitude you expect from this sort of music. Fun, disposable and completely catchy. Kind of like a good night out where you don't remember what exactly went on but know you had a good time just the same.

On that note, it is time for me to ask you to stay safe and rocking.

View the original article on blogcritics.org

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IBM Bans Siri in Workplace


IBM has reportedly banned the use of the iPhone 4S voice recognition service Siri, but not because it's annoying or pointless. It's a security risk.

Possibly, anyway.

IBM Chief Information Officer Jeanette Horan said earlier this week that destination for outgoing search inquiries made using Siri could be a concern.

SIRI

When people ask Siri a question the data is sent to Apple's facility in Maiden, N.C. After that, no one knows what the company does with the date.

This alarms IBM, as Apple could be storing their information on their servers.

Apple doesn't sayow long data is stored or who can access it, but Horan has made it pretty clear that the company is "extraordinarily conservative."

Edward Wrenbeck, Apple's Siri developer, downplayed concerns, saying "People already do these things on mobile devices. Maybe Siri makes their lives easier, but it's not exactly opening up a new avenue that wasn't there before."

Well, except for cellphones getting racist or telling off Zooey Deschanel.

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Phillip Phillips wins 'American Idol'

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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Samsung Galaxy Appeal coming June 5, brings a prepaid QWERTY slider to AT&T

Galaxy Appeal

AT&T announced the Samsung Galaxy Appeal today, another addition to its prepaid smartphone lineup. The Appeal will be unique because it will be the first prepaid smartphone that offers a QWERTY sliding keyboard. As more smartphones drop physical keyboards, there is still a large contingent that demands them, so it's good to see the option in the prepaid category.

The Appeal, like many of the other prepaid options, will feature lower end specs. Here there are:

  • 3.2-inch HVGA TFT 480 x 320 screen
  • Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
  • 512MB RAM
  • 1.8GB ROM
  • 800MHz processor
  • 3MP rear-facing camera
  • SD slot that supports up to 32GB
  • Made with 80& recycled materials

AT&T prepaid data plans are as follows:

  • 1GB - $25/month
  • 200MB - $15/month
  • 50MB - $5/month

If you're interested in the Galaxy Appeal, it will be released on June 5th to Walmart stores. On July 15th, it can be purchased from other AT&T GoPhone locations.

Source: AT&T



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What Thomas Kuhn Really Thought about Scientific "Truth"

In 1991, when I was a staff writer for Scientific American, I wrote a letter to Thomas Kuhn, then at MIT. I said I wanted to profile him for Scientific American and ?tell readers how you developed your views of the process of science.? When he didn?t respond, I called. Kuhn was reluctant to do the interview. He distrusted journalists, and he was still peeved by an old Scientific American review of his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. When I persisted, Kuhn asked to see other profiles I had done, and I mailed him pieces on his MIT colleagues Claude Shannon and Noam Chomsky.

I finally wore Kuhn down, and in February 1991 I interviewed him for more than three hours in his cluttered office. He was one of the most ambiguous, ambivalent thinkers I have ever encountered, which helps explain why he is still interpreted in so many divergent and even contradictory ways. Whatever you may think of Kuhn, his view of science has become ?a permanent part of the repertoire of historians and philosophers and people in science studies in general,? as philosopher Ian Hacking, editor of a new edition of Structure, recently told Scientific American?s Gary Stix.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Structure, I?m posting an edited version of my write-up of Kuhn in The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996), which draws heavily on my meeting with him. I hope that this profile?which is longer and more critical of Kuhn than ?Reluctant Revolutionary,? my May 1991 profile for Scientific American?provides insights into the complicated views of this complicated man.

The Structure of Thomas Kuhn

?Look,? Thomas Kuhn said. The word was weighted with weariness, as if Kuhn was resigned to the fact that I would misinterpret him, but he was still going to try?no doubt in vain?to make his point. Kuhn uttered the word often. ?Look,? he said again. He leaned his gangly frame and long face forward, and his big lower lip, which ordinarily curled up amiably at the corners, sagged. ?For Christ?s sake, if I had my choice of having written the book or not having written it, I would choose to have written it. But there have certainly been aspects involving considerable upset about the response to it.?

?The book? was The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which may be the most influential treatise ever written on how science does (or does not) proceed. It is notable for having spawned the trendy term ?paradigm.? It also fomented the now trite idea that personalities and politics play a large role in science. The book?s most profound argument was less obvious: scientists can never truly understand the ?real world? or even each other.

Given this theme, one might think that Kuhn would have expected his own message to be at least partially misunderstood. But when I interviewed Kuhn in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (of all places) some three decades after the publication of Structure, he seemed deeply pained by the breadth of misunderstanding of his book. He was particularly upset by claims that he described science as irrational. ?If they had said ?arational? I wouldn?t have minded at all,? he said with no trace of a smile.

Kuhn?s fear of compounding the confusion over his work had made him press shy. In fact, when I first telephoned him to ask for an interview, he turned me down. ?Look. I think not,? he said. He complained that Scientific American gave Structure ?the worst review I can remember.? (The squib was indeed dismissive; it called Kuhn?s argument ?much ado about very little.? But what did Kuhn expect from a magazine that exalts science?) Pointing out that I had not been at the magazine in 1964, I begged him to reconsider. Kuhn finally, reluctantly, agreed.

When we finally sat down together in his office, Kuhn expressed nominal discomfort at the notion of delving into the roots of his thought. ?One is not one?s own historian, let alone one?s own psychoanalyst,? he warned me. He nonetheless traced his view of science to an epiphany he experienced in 1947, when he was working toward a doctorate in physics at Harvard. While reading Aristotle?s Physics, Kuhn had become astonished at how ?wrong? it was. How could someone who wrote so brilliantly on so many topics be so misguided when it came to physics?

Kuhn was pondering this mystery, staring out his dormitory window (?I can still see the vines and the shade two thirds of the way down?), when suddenly Aristotle ?made sense.? Kuhn realized that Aristotle invested basic concepts with different meanings than modern physicists did. Aristotle used the term ?motion,? for example, to refer not just to change in position but to change in general?the reddening of the sun as well as its descent toward the horizon. Aristotle?s physics, understood on its own terms, was simply different from rather than inferior to Newtonian physics.

Kuhn left physics for philosophy, and he struggled for 15 years to transform his epiphany into the theory set forth in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The keystone of his model was the concept of a paradigm. Paradigm, pre-Kuhn, referred merely to an example that serves an educational purpose; amo, amas, amat, for instance, is a paradigm for teaching conjugations in Latin. Kuhn used the term to refer to a collection of procedures or ideas that instruct scientists, implicitly, what to believe and how to work. Most scientists never question the paradigm. They solve ?puzzles,? problems whose solutions reinforce and extend the scope of the paradigm rather than challenging it. Kuhn called this ?mopping up,? or ?normal science.? There are always anomalies, phenomena that that the paradigm cannot account for or that even contradict it. Anomalies are often ignored, but if they accumulate they may trigger a revolution (also called a paradigm shift, although not originally by Kuhn), in which scientists abandon the old paradigm for a new one.

Denying the view of science as a continual building process, Kuhn held that a revolution is a destructive as well as a creative act. The proposer of a new paradigm stands on the shoulders of giants (to borrow Newton?s phrase) and then bashes them over the head. He or she is often young or new to the field, that is, not fully indoctrinated. Most scientists yield to a new paradigm reluctantly. They often do not understand it, and they have no objective rules by which to judge it. Different paradigms have no common standard for comparison; they are ?incommensurable,? to use Kuhn?s term. Proponents of different paradigms can argue forever without resolving their basic differences because they invest basic terms?motion, particle, space, time?with different meanings.? The conversion of scientists is thus both a subjective and political process. It may involve sudden, intuitive understanding?like that finally achieved by Kuhn as he pondered Aristotle. Yet scientists often adopt a paradigm simply because it is backed by others with strong reputations or by a majority of the community.

Kuhn?s view diverged in several important respects from the philosophy of Karl Popper, who held that theories can never be proved but only disproved, or ?falsified.? Like other critics of Popper, Kuhn argued that falsification is no more possible than verification; each process wrongly implies the existence of absolute standards of evidence, which transcend any individual paradigm. A new paradigm may solve puzzles better than the old one does, and it may yield more practical applications. ?But you cannot simply describe the other science as false,? Kuhn said. Just because modern physics has spawned computers, nuclear power and CD players, he suggested, does not mean it is truer, in an absolute sense, than Aristotle?s physics. Similarly, Kuhn denied that science is constantly approaching the truth. At the end of Structure he asserted that science, like life on earth, does not evolve toward anything but only away from something.

Kuhn described himself to me as a ?post-Darwinian Kantian.? Kant, too, believed that without some sort of a priori paradigm the mind cannot impose order on sensory experience. But whereas Kant and Darwin each thought that we are all born with more or less the same, innate paradigm, Kuhn argued that our paradigms keep changing as our culture changes. ?Different groups, and the same group at different times,? Kuhn told me, ?can have different experiences and therefore in some sense live in different worlds.? Obviously all humans share some responses to experience, simply because of their shared biological heritage, Kuhn added. But whatever is universal in human experience, whatever transcends culture and history, is also ?ineffable,? beyond the reach of language. Language, Kuhn said, ?is not a universal tool. It?s not the case that you can say anything in one language that you can say in another.?

But isn?t mathematics a kind of universal language? I asked. Not really, Kuhn replied, since it has no meaning; it consists of syntactical rules without any semantic content. ?There are perfectly good reasons why mathematics can be considered a language, but there is a very good reason why it isn?t.? I objected that while Kuhn?s view of the limits of language might apply to certain fields with a metaphysical cast, such as quantum mechanics, it did not hold in all cases. For example, I said, the hypothesis that AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus is either right or wrong; language and metaphysics are beside the point. Kuhn shook his head. ?Whenever you get two people interpreting the same data in different ways,? he said, ?that?s metaphysics.?

So were his own ideas true or not? ?Look,? Kuhn responded with even more weariness than usual; obviously he had heard this question many times before. ?I think this way of talking and thinking that I am engaged in opens up a range of possibilities that can be investigated. But it, like any scientific construct, has to be evaluated simply for its utility?for what you can do with it.?

But then Kuhn, having set forth his bleak view of the limits of science and indeed of all human discourse, proceeded to complain about the many ways in which his book had been misinterpreted and misused, especially by admirers. ?I?ve often said I?m much fonder of my critics than my fans.? He recalled students approaching him to say, ?Oh, thank you Mr. Kuhn for telling us about paradigms. Now that we know about them we can get rid of them.? He insisted that he did not believe science is entirely political, a reflection of the prevailing power structure. ?In retrospect, I begin to see why this book fed into that, but boy, was it not meant to, and boy, does it not mean to.?

His protests were to no avail. He had a painful memory of sitting in on a seminar and trying to explain that the concepts of truth and falsity are perfectly valid, and even necessary?within a paradigm. ?The professor finally looked at me and said, ?Look, you don?t know how radical this book is.?? Kuhn was also upset to find that he had become the patron saint of all would-be scientific revolutionaries. ?I get a lot of letters saying, ?I?ve just read your book, and it?s transformed my life. I?m trying to start a revolution. Please help me,? and accompanied by a book-length manuscript.?

Kuhn declared that, although his book was not intended to be pro-science, he is pro-science. It is the rigidity and discipline of science, Kuhn said, that makes it so effective at problem-solving. Moreover, science produces ?the greatest and most original bursts of creativity? of any human enterprise. Kuhn conceded that he was partly to blame for some of the anti-science interpretations of his model. After all, in Structure he did call scientists committed to a paradigm ?addicts?; he also compared them to the brainwashed characters in Orwell?s 1984. Kuhn insisted that he did not mean to be condescending by using terms such as ?mopping up? or ?puzzle-solving? to describe what most scientists do. ?It was meant to be descriptive.? He ruminated a bit. ?Maybe I should have said more about the glories that result from puzzle solving, but I thought I was doing that.?

As for the word ?paradigm,? Kuhn conceded that it had become ?hopelessly overused? and is ?out of control.? Like a virus, the word spread beyond the history and philosophy of science and infected the intellectual community at large, where it came to signify virtually any dominant idea. A 1974 New Yorker cartoon captured the phenomena. ?Dynamite, Mr. Gerston!? gushed a woman to a smug-looking man. ?You?re the first person I ever heard use ?paradigm? in real life.? The low point came during the Bush administration, when White House officials introduced an economic plan called ?the New Paradigm? (which was really just trickle-down economics).

Kuhn admitted, again, that the fault was partly his, since in Structure he had not defined paradigm as crisply as he might have. At one point paradigm referred to an archetypal experiment, such as Galileo?s legendary (and probably apocryphal) dropping of weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Elsewhere the term referred to ?the entire constellation of beliefs? that binds a scientific community together. (Kuhn denied, however, that he had defined paradigm in 21 different ways, as one critic has claimed.) In a postscript to later editions of Structure, Kuhn recommended that paradigm be replaced with the term ?exemplar,? but it never caught on. He eventually gave up all hope of explaining what he really meant. ?If you?ve got a bear by the tail, there comes a point at which you?ve got to let it go and stand back,? he sighed.

One of the sources of Structure?s power and persistence is its profound ambiguity, which explains why it appeals to relativists and science worshippers alike. Kuhn himself acknowledged that ?a lot of the success of the book and some of the criticisms are due to its vagueness.? (One wonders whether Kuhn?s style was intended or innate; his speech was as profoundly tangled, as suffused with subjunctives and qualifiers, as his prose.) Structure should perhaps be viewed less as a work of philosophy than of literature, which is subject to many interpretations. According to literary theory, Kuhn himself cannot be trusted to provide a definitive account of his own work.

Here is one possible interpretation of Kuhn?s text, and of Kuhn. Kuhn focused on what science is rather than on what it should be; he had a much more realistic, hard-nosed, psychologically accurate view of science than Popper did. Popper believed that science can never end, because all knowledge is always subject to falsification or revision. In contrast, Kuhn realized that, given the power of modern science and the tendency of scientists to believe in theories that have withstood many tests, science may well enter a phase of permanent ?normalcy,? in which no further revolutions, or revelations, are possible.

Kuhn thus accepted, as Popper could not, that science might not continue forever, even in a normal state. ?There was a beginning to it,? Kuhn told me. ?There are lots of societies that don?t have it. It takes very special conditions to support it. Those social conditions are now getting harder to find. Of course it could end.? Science might even end, Kuhn said, because scientists cannot make any further headway.

Kuhn?s recognition that science might end?leaving us with what Charles Saunders Peirce had defined as the ?truth? about nature?made it even more imperative for Kuhn than for Popper to challenge science?s authority, to deny that science can ever arrive at absolute truth. ?The one thing I think you shouldn?t say is that now we?ve found out what the world is really like,? Kuhn said. ?Because that?s not what I think the game is about.?

Kuhn tried, throughout his career, to remain true to that original epiphany he experienced in his dormitory at Harvard. During that moment Kuhn saw?he knew!?that reality is ultimately unknowable; any attempt to describe it obscures as much as it illuminates. But Kuhn?s insight forced him to take the untenable position that because all scientific theories fall short of absolute, mystical truth, they are all equally untrue. Because we cannot discover The Answer, we cannot find any answers. His mysticism led him toward a position as absurd as that of the literary sophists who argue that all texts?from The Tempest to an ad for a new brand of vodka?are equally meaningless, or meaningful.

At the end of Structure, Kuhn briefly raised the question of why some fields of science converge on a paradigm while others, art-like, remain in a state of constant flux. The answer, he implied, was a matter of choice; scientists within certain fields were simply unwilling to commit themselves to a single paradigm. I suspect Kuhn avoided pursuing this issue further because he could not abide the answer. Some fields, such as economics and other social sciences, never adhere to a paradigm because they address questions for which no paradigm will suffice. Fields that achieve consensus, or normalcy, to borrow Kuhn?s term, do so because their paradigms, or at least certain components of them, correspond to something real in nature. These paradigms?a few that come to mind are heliocentrism, the new synthesis, quantum mechanics, the Big Bang, the germ theory of infectious disease?rest not on transient, culturally constructed suppositions or inventions but on irrevocable discoveries. Why not call them true?

Photo credit: Frieze.com

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

China targets infrastructure to lift economy, report says

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will fast track approvals for infrastructure investment to combat a slowdown in the economy, a state-backed newspaper reported on Tuesday, showing how Premier Wen Jiabao's call for policies to support growth is being put into action.

The pace of investment in the likes of roads, bridges and real estate is running at its weakest in nearly a decade, April data showed, suggesting the world's second-biggest economy is heading for a sixth straight quarter of slowing growth.

To provide some support the government had asked for project proposals by the end of June, even for those initially earmarked for the end of the year, said the China Securities Journal, one of the country's top financial papers.

Citing government sources, the article said Beijing did not rule out bringing forward next year's projects, if it thought more investments would be needed to stimulate the economy.

"This would be the first concrete evidence that Premier Wen's comments are being put into practice," said Dariusz Kowalczyk, an economist at Credit Agricole-CIB in Hong Kong.

"Improved China growth would benefit all regional currencies, as their economies heavily depend on exports to China."

The newspaper also cited media reports saying the central government will speed up budget allocations to various construction projects, including highway construction.

News of Beijing's latest efforts to bolster growth lifted stock markets. Australian shares rose 1.2 percent and Britain's FTSE 100 gained 1.1 percent as investors bought miners on the prospects of more sales to China.

Chinese infrastructure stocks outperformed, while benchmark copper prices rose to a one-week high.

The five top movers on the China Enterprises Index <.hsce> of Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong were all infrastructure related; China Communications Construction , China Railway Construction Group Corp , China Railway Group , Anhui Conch Cement and Zoomlion Heavy Industry .

To be sure, some economists say the slowdown does not warrant the mammoth 4 trillion stimulus China produced at the height of the global financial crisis when firms had axed some 20 million jobs as global trade ground to a halt.

The economy is stronger that it was then. Today's labor market is tight, wages are rising and employees are struggling for staff, conditions that could fuel inflation if Beijing loosened policy aggressively.

So the latest move by Beijing is another example of its "fine tuning" of policies to prevent the economy for slipping too quickly, they said.

HIGHWAYS, RAILWAYS, POWER

Wang Jun, an economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a government think-tank, said he expected the thrust of the investment to focus on highways, railways, nuclear power and thermal power plants.

"But it will be fine-tuning," Wang said. Indeed, the China Securities Journal said Beijing would focus on projects already under construction or ones that were halted due to funding shortages last year.

Economists also said they doubted the government would look at fresh investment projects. Instead, it would bring forward projects laid out under the national five-year development plan.

Premier Wen signaled Beijing's willingness to take action in remarks at the weekend.

"We should continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy while giving more priority to maintaining growth," he said in comments reported by state news agency Xinhua.

The China Securities Journal said that Beijing's move is partly aimed at offsetting the economic impact of a government-engineered slowdown in the property sector.

Wen reiterated at the weekend that Beijing would maintain a clamp-down on the sector. A series of controls on credit and purchases drove down housing prices in April for a second month in a row compared with year-earlier levels.

China bringing forward investment projects would also be welcome news for the world's mineral producers, particularly those in Australia.

The slowdown in China's economy has weighed particularly hard on the commodities market. Falling prices combined with escalating costs that have squeezed cash flow prompted big miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto to say they were reconsidering the pace of their long-term expansion plans.

However, Xstrata said on Tuesday it expected Chinese copper demand to pick up in the second half of the year and Brazilian miner Vale said it was selling iron ore to China about as fast as it can mine it.

Bringing forward investment projects would add to other evidence of government efforts to support the economy.

Under a "proactive fiscal policy", central government spending rose 26 percent in the first four months of 2012 from a year earlier, more than twice the pace of revenue growth.

The last time spending outpaced revenues in the first four months of the year was in 2009 when China rolled out its big stimulus package to counter the global recession. Spending on transportation is up 84.5 percent in the first four months of 2012.

Industrial production growth weakened sharply in April from a year earlier and retail sales were lower than expected. Fixed asset investment rose 20.2 percent in the first four months of the year compared with the same year-earlier period, the weakest pace since December 2002.

After the disappointing April economic data was released, the central bank cut the amount of cash banks must hold in reserve for the third time since November.

China may also roll out a new round of subsidies for energy-saving home appliances as early as June, the China Business News reported last week.

A Reuters poll showed economists expect annual economic growth in the second quarter of the year to slow to 7.9 percent, the first slide below 8 percent since 2009. It would represent the sixth straight quarter when annual growth slowed down.

China's economic growth averaged more than 10 percent in the first decade of this century. But Wen has said China must embrace a slower rate of growth and political reform to keep the economy from faltering and to spread wealth more evenly in the country of 1.3 billion people.

(Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby in BEIJING; Writing by Neil Fullick, Editing by Dean Yates and Emily Kaiser)

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