If Google sells its own unlocked cell phone next month as widely rumored, it could finally bring unlocked phones to the attention of the American public. Commonplace in Europe, unlocked mobiles allow the owner to choose a cell phone provider based solely on service rather than on its phone selection. When you purchase a cell phone on a two-year contract in the United States, you get a substantial discount that ranges from half to all of the phone’s retail price. While this might seem like a good deal, the balance of the cost of the phone is built into the provider service payment over the life of the contract. Just like a home mortgage or a car loan, you will pay a hefty premium for the privilege of spreading the payments over a two-year period. Conversely, many Europeans are used to paying full price for their phones and subsequently enjoy lower service charges while paying month-to-month. Nokia recently introduced the N900 phone, billed as a mobile computer, and it is available only in the unlocked version. With holiday cash to burn, Dayton, OH resident Nathan Coffee tracked down the popular Nokia N900 online for well below retail and […]
Brit Hume turned evangelist on Fox New Sunday, in a segment with panelists predicting the future for Tiger Woods after Woods’ notable ‘transgressions’ (now a 2009 top euphemism, along with ‘Appalachian Trail,’ as a signifier for ‘mistress.’) Hume forecasts Woods will recover as a golfer but …Whether he can recover as a person depends on ‘his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redeption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’ This fits with the interview he had with The Hollywood Reporter when Hume retired from Fox News in 2008. Asked what he’d like to do in his free time, Hume said enjoying his family came first but then, he said: I certainly want to pursue my faith more ardently than I have done. I’m not claiming it’s impossible to do when you work in this business. I was kind of a nominal Christian for the longest time. When […]
NEW YORK — Policies forbidding payment for news interviews increasingly seem like the network television equivalent of the 55 mph speed limit: a rule often winked at unless you’re heading into a speed trap. Three of the past month’s accidental celebrities – Jasper Schuringa, who helped thwart an attack on a Detroit-bound plane; David Goldman, who took a custody fight for his son to Brazil; and the White House party-crashing Salahis – have either sought or received goodies from TV networks eager to hear their stories. Schuringa gave interviews to outlets that had agreed to purchase blurry cell phone images he’d taken of a man who authorities say tried to use explosives to take down the plane. Goldman and his son accepted NBC’s offer of a ride home from Brazil on a charter airplane. Representatives for Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who embarrassed the Obama administration by sneaking into a state dinner, were reportedly seeking six-figure bids from networks to tell their story. ‘I don’t know if people would have thought of that in the past,’ said Andy Schotz, head of the ethics committee for the Society of Professional Journalists. ‘But now often the first thing people […]
WASHINGTON — Banks and other lenders are still foreclosing on Americans’ homes at a rate that’s outpacing the Obama administration’s main effort to stem the crisis. In fact, while the Treasury Department’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has started the mortgage modification process on almost 760,000 homeowners who are at risk of losing their homes, less than 5 percent of those workouts have become permanent, government data show. ‘HAMP has made only limited progress for nine months now, and the residential foreclosure crisis continues to mount,’ said Richard Neiman, the superintendent of banks in New York state and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel that was formed to monitor the Treasury bank bailout funds that support the mortgage program. He was appointed to the post by the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. Another member of the oversight panel, U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and a critic of the bailout bill, called the mortgage program ‘a failure.’ In a recent report, he said the administration’s efforts ‘have assisted only a small number of homeowners while drawing billions of involuntary taxpayer dollars into a black hole.’ (Hensarling recently left the panel.) […]
Today, a European company put the finishing touches on a wind project in North Dakota which Americans have known for decades is ‘the Saudi Arabia of Wind.’ Spain’s Iberdrola Renovables, the parent company of Iberdrola Renewables Inc that built the project became a giant global wind company in the wake of the Kyoto Accord. The European renewable energy sector grew from the resulting renewable energy legislation in Europe. The result is that it is European wind companies such as Vestas and Iberdrola, that are now building the wind energy that we need. Iberdrola Renovables is the largest provider of wind power in the world. It now has over 10 Gigawatts of wind power in operation in 23 countries and 56 GW of projects in the pipeline. It began in 2001 from an initial renewables capacity of little more than 1,000 MW. That tremendous growth is indicative of what legislation like the Kyoto Accord and the resulting EU carbon markets will do to grow renewable energy companies. But renewable energy legislation has been filibustered by the Republican Party each time it was brought up, since 1993. Because of these 16 years of Republican refusal to allow […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
