These individuals range from college
students who frequently damage or lose their phones to wary, first-time buyers
to senior citizens whose kids or grandchildren insist they use a cellphone.
About a year ago, GreatCall Inc. introduced its Jitterbug cellphones, which
were aimed squarely at the senior set with large keys, a free operator service
and the phone's own number prominently displayed on a sticker.
It seems that GreatCall was on to
something. Verizon Wireless recently followed the company's lead by introducing
its straightforward, no frills Coupe, a cellphone that offers many of the
helpful traits found on Jitterbug phones, like large screen fonts, but without
a lot of extras. Verizon simultaneously unveiled two calling plans designed
specifically for seniors, and was followed a month later by AT&T and its
own monthly plan for those 65 and over. AT&T also has an uncomplicated
phone of its own in the works for 2008.
This week I tested Verizon's $40 (with
a two-year contract) Coupe (www.verizonwireless.com1) against GreatCall's $147
Jitterbug Dial (www.jitterbug.com2) to see how the two stacked up. I found the
Jitterbug more comfortable to use for longer phone calls because of its
cushiony earpiece, which blocks out external sound and helps the phone rest
easier between your shoulder and ear during conversations. And Jitterbug's
mantra of simplicity will appeal to cellphone newcomers.
But for those who have been using
cellphones and are familiar with the way they work, Jitterbug's nonconformist
features -- like Yes and No buttons in place of Send and End and the use of a
dial tone whenever the clamshell-shaped phone is opened -- can come across as
too basic, to the point that they're confusing. One example: many standard
cellphones redial the last number called when the Send button is pressed twice,
but redialing on the Jitterbug requires navigating through five screens to
redial the last number.
The Coupe is the smaller of the two
and blends in with other cellphones. It includes a few of the extra functions
found in normal mobile phones, like an alarm clock, calculator and the
capability to send and receive text messages; perhaps most people who buy the
Coupe won't use it for texting, but it's nice to have the built-in option. (The
Jitterbug doesn't have any of these features.) Right now, this cellphone only
comes in shiny black with a blue border around its outside display screen. An
included charging cradle adds a touch of convenience.
The Coupe also has some fun features
that give it a more personal touch, including a choice of 24 ringtones and 10
wallpaper designs for the main screen's background. After seeing low-grade
camera lenses on nearly every digital device that I've picked up recently, the
Coupe looked a little naked without one.
Three red buttons labeled I, C and E
(for In Case of Emergency) are positioned just below the phone's screen and can
be assigned names and numbers to work as shortcuts to those most often called.
A specially marked "911" button on the phone's keypad is designated
specifically for emergencies, though this must be held down to use and, even
then, asks if the caller definitely intended to call 911.
A speaker button is also clearly
labeled on the Coupe's keypad, and pronounced volume adjustment keys line the
phone's side. On-screen fonts appear larger than those found on regular
cellphones.
Verizon's well-known network is sure
to be a draw for potential buyers, especially because any plan used with the
Coupe includes free calls to other Verizon Wireless users. Though any of this
carrier's plans work with this basic phone, the Nationwide 65 Plus plan made
its debut with the Coupe in hopes of appealing to those ages 65 and up. A
single-line plan allows 200 anytime minutes and 500 night and weekend minutes
for $30 monthly; the two-line plan offers roughly double the minutes (to be
shared) for double the price. These plans aren't exclusively usable with the
Coupe.
GreatCall's Jitterbug comes in two
$147 models: the Dial, with a numeric keypad and the OneTouch, with just three
large buttons labeled Operator, Tow and 911. I've tested both in the past, but
this time around I looked at the Dial because it's most comparable to Verizon's
Coupe.
The Jitterbug Dial phone comes in
black or white, and its buttons and all of its on-screen lettering appear
considerably larger than the Verizon Coupe's. Its number keys glow bright white
and are encircled by yellow borders, while the Coupe's digital keypad is black
with glowing blue numbers -- colors that aren't as distinctive. Unlike the
Coupe, Jitterbug doesn't come with a charging cradle, though GreatCall has
plans for adding cradles in 2008.
A free operator service can be reached
from Jitterbug phones by pressing "0." This operator greets users by
name, places calls on the user's phone (saving you the trouble of dialing) and
can add numbers to a phone's contact list if a user doesn't want to or can't do
this.
The Jitterbug can be pre-programmed
with names and numbers; I ordered mine with five pre-programmed numbers, a
luxury that nervous new cellphone owners might find worthwhile. Things get
difficult when you try to enter your contacts. Even though each number key has
three or four letters assigned to its key as on all phones, adding a contact
involves using Jitterbug's clumsy system of choosing one letter at a time from
the screen. You're better off using the free operator service for this.
Jitterbug phones let users store only
50 contact names and numbers, while Verizon's Coupe will store 500. Many
first-time cellphone owners will be content with 50, but, again, options are
good.
The Jitterbug and Coupe each have
small screens on their outer shells that display the time, date and phone
numbers of incoming calls. But the Coupe displays its remaining battery power
both on this outer screen and inside on its main screen, while the Jitterbug
only flashes battery status on the screen if the battery reaches a certain low
level, or if you navigate to a special "Phone Info" screen.
[Graphic]
Behind the scenes, GreatCall's
Jitterbug phones run using networks set up by other carriers; I never had any
trouble dialing out or receiving calls. A variety of calling plans can be used
with Jitterbug phones ranging from $10 monthly for pay-as-you-go at 35 cents a
minute to $80 monthly for 800 minutes. Add-on packages of minutes and sharing
plans are also available.
If you're familiar with cellphones,
the Jitterbug will be a confusing step back for you, even though its free
operator service and comfortable earpiece are pluses. Some people will prefer
the Jitterbug's larger fonts and number keys to the Verizon Coupe's smaller,
more stylish build. Still, the Coupe is a good option for people who have at
least some familiarity with technology and cellphones. Each in its own way does
a good job of sticking to the basic task of handling phone calls.
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For people who find it difficult to
concentrate at work, some scientists suggest the problem is too few
distractions, not too many, New Scientist reports.
Scientists used to think that the act
of concentrating itself might screen out distractions. But researchers such as
Nilli Lavie at University College London believe that making a deliberate
effort to concentrate isn’t enough to filter out irrelevant information.
Instead, the brain becomes more engaged in tasks as the visual demands of the
problem increase and effectively block additional stimuli. In practical terms,
the research could be used to improve children’s textbooks, or to add textured
backgrounds or moving images to enhance dull slide presentations.
Not everyone is persuaded by the
theory. John Duncan, an attention researcher at the University of Cambridge,
says that different areas of the brain that involve hearing or physical cues
such as hunger also play a role in concentration that go well beyond visual
perception.
Louis J Sheehan
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
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WASHINGTON — At least four top White
House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency
between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret
interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former
administration and intelligence officials.
The accounts indicate that the involvement
of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes
in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have
acknowledged.
Those who took part, the officials
said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until
early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick
Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January
2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E.
Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.
It was previously reported that some
administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the
emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several
administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to
whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes
should be destroyed.
Louis J Sheehan
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
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In June, biologists at the J. Craig
Venter Institute announced that they had successfully transplanted the genome
of one species of bacteria into another bacterial species. “This was the
ultimate in identity theft,” says Venter, a biologist well known for his
private-sector contribution to the sequencing of the human genome. “The
chromosome [genome] that we put in took over the cell completely, and any
characteristics of the original species were lost.”
HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The transplant team took several steps
to be sure the transfer was complete. First, they added two genes to the donor
species’ chromosome: one that made the cells resistant to the antibiotic
tetracycline and one that made them turn blue. By dosing all the
post-transplant bacteria with tetracycline and looking for blue colonies, the
scientists could identify which cells had the donor DNA.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Next, they tested all the blue, tetracycline-resistant
bacteria for any traces of the recipient species’ genome. When they found none,
they knew the bacteria must contain only the donor species’ genome. Finally,
they found that all the proteins manufactured by the new bacteria were
characteristic of the donor species.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
This is a critical advance in Venter’s
quest—which he has been pursuing for a decade—to create a fully synthetic
life-form. Now, he says, it could be just a matter of months before a living
cell stocked with a synthetic genome becomes a reality.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
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Throughout 2007 in Australia, the
evening news announced the levels of the nation’s reservoirs, billboards posted
water consumption statistics, and the public fretted over reports of a strained
economy. What is said to be the country’s worst drought in a millennium
continues for a seventh year, driving drinking-water reserves to record lows
across the country. Environmental experts warn that Australia’s plight should
be making the whole world thirsty: As global warming continues, many nations
around the world may have to adapt to less water.
Last April, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change warned that water shortages will intensify in
Australia, as well as across Africa, China and other areas of Asia, parts of
Europe, and the United States. Lack of water may affect 3.2 billion people by
2100.
In response, desalination plants for
Australia’s major cities are either under construction or planned. Conservation
incentives and industrial water recycling programs are also helping reduce
demand.
“Australia is the canary in the coal
mine when it comes to the impact of climate change on water resources,” says
Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association of Australia.
“Many people thought there would be adequate time to adapt to less water. The
lesson from Australia is that the shift has been very dramatic and has occurred
in a very short period.
HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
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WASHINGTON, Iowa – John Edwards vowed Saturday that corporate
lobbyists would not be allowed to work in his administration, if elected.
“When I am president of the United States, no corporate lobbyists
or anyone who has lobbied for a foreign government will work in my White
House,” Mr. Edwards said, speaking at a public library.
He followed it up with an implicit attack on Mr. Obama.
“I hear people argue that the way you can get things done is you
sit at a table with drug companies, insurance companies, oil companies and
negotiate with them, and somehow they will voluntarily give away their power,”
he said. “I think it is a complete fantasy.”
In a November speech to Iowa Democrats, Mr. Obama promised that
lobbyists would not work in his White House. “I have done more than any other
candidate in this race to take on lobbyists, and I have won,” Mr. Obama said at
the time. “They have not funded my campaign, they will not get a job in my
White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when
I am president.”
But he later amended his position, saying that lobbyists would not
“dominate” his White House.”
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, responded to Mr. Edwards’
announcement with a memo contrasting Mr. Obama’s record of lobbying reform
proposals with Mr. Edwards’. “The truth is, in his six years as a U.S. Senator,
John Edwards did not propose or accomplish a single thing to reduce the power
of lobbyists while Barack Obama passed the most sweeping lobbying reform since
Watergate,” Mr. Burton said in an e-mail message.
When campaigning, Mr. Edwards frequently reminds voters that he
has never taken campaign contributions from lobbyists. Mr. Obama has banned
lobbyist contributions from his presidential campaign.
But there are signs that potential caucusgoers are associating the
message of fighting lobbyists and big corporations more with Mr. Edwards than
with Mr. Obama.
Jana Warren, an undecided voter, attended an Obama event last
night in Muscatine, and then an Edwards event Saturday morning. After filing
out of the Edwards event, she said she was leaning strongly toward Mr. Edwards.
In the end, Ms. Warren said, her decision is guided by economic
issues.
“I think Mr. Obama is inspirational,”
she said. “But I think corporate greed is a really big problem in our country,
and I like what Mr. Edwards had to say about that.”
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/ImageGallery/CategoryList.aspx?id=a1206a74-5f7f-443f-97f5-9b389a4d4f9e&m=0
http://louis1j1sheehan.us/ImageGallery/CategoryList.aspx?id=36f0e6c9-8b8a-4f0a-8630-e5d3b879fad4&m=0
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December 17, 2007, 1:42 pm
What the Internet Knows About You
Posted by Ben Worthen
We often wonder why there isn’t more
outrage when companies announce they’ve lost data about customers or employees.
Here’s part of the answer: Most Americans don’t care what information about
them is publicly available. HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
That doesn’t mean Americans aren’t
curious what the Internet knows about them. A new study by the Pew Internet and
American Life Project, a non-profit organization which tracks the Internet’s
impact on society, found that 47% of Americans say they’ve searched the
Internet for information about themselves on the search engine Google, up from
22% in 2002. (While less than half of Americans say they’ve Googled themselves,
72% have looked for information about other people.) Sixty percent of these
searches returned information.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Thirty-five percent of people who use
the Internet say that their home addresses and the name of the company they
work for are available for anyone to see online. Other information available
online includes email addresses (32%), phone numbers (30%), things they’ve
written (24%) and photographs (23%). Eighty-seven percent of searchers say the
information they find is accurate. Twenty-one percent are surprised about how
much information is available. HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
So people are waking up to the fact
that this information is out there and that it’s next to impossible to control.
But most aren’t concerned: Pew says that 60% of the people who took its survey
aren’t worried about the information about them available online. Of those who
do care, only 54% have taken steps to limit the information about themselves
that’s available.
Why aren’t people concerned? Our guess
is that it’s evolutionary. Five years ago, as the study shows, people didn’t
even think to look what information might be available about themselves online
– heck, only half the population does now. Outrage will rise in proportion to
the number of people who find things they don’t like.
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Louis J Sheehan The matter that makes
up everything we can see or touch, either on Earth or beyond, is exceedingly
rare, cosmically speaking. Most of the material in the universe is something
called dark matter, mysterious stuff that doesn’t emit or reflect light and
doesn’t interact with what we think of as ordinary matter. It reveals its
presence only by its gravitational effects, guiding the evolution of the early
universe and still affecting the motion of galaxies. Earth-based experiments
have attempted to detect dark matter particles, but so far they have drawn a
blank.
Astronomers, however, have had a
better year, continuing to find evidence of the crucial role dark matter plays
in shaping the visible cosmos. Thanks to about a thousand hours of observation
by the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have compiled a dark matter map of a
tiny slice of the sky, about two square degrees of the entire sky’s
40,000-square-degree span. The map, which was published in the journal Nature
last January, confirmed a central prediction of modern astrophysics: Galaxies
formed in, and remain bound to, enormous clouds of dark matter.
In the early universe, astronomers
believe, dark matter provided the gravitational scaffolding on which ordinary
matter coalesced and grew into galaxies. According to these dark matter
theories, as the visible galaxies formed, some of the matter surrounding them
should have clumped together into hundreds of small satellite galaxies, most of
which should survive today. But the observed number of satellite galaxies is
only a fraction of what the theory predicts. “We should see about a hundred to
a thousand, but up to 2005, there were only 12,” says Marla Geha, an
astrophysicist at Yale University. Astronomers call it the missing satellite
problem. HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Louis J Sheehan Astronomers had
speculated that the existence of small, dark matter–dominated satellite
galaxies might solve the problem, but there was no evidence that any such
galaxies existed.
Last spring, Geha and Josh Simon, a
colleague at Caltech, used the 10-meter Keck II telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea
to study the mass of eight newly discovered satellite galaxies, detected over
the last two years by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an ongoing effort to make a
detailed map of a million galaxies and quasars. Geha and Simon found that these
satellite galaxies were much fainter and smaller in mass than the other known
satellites—and 99 percent of their mass was in the form of dark matter. Given
that the galaxies found by Geha and Simon have such high concentrations of dark
matter, it’s likely that many other satellite galaxies could be 100 percent
dark matter.
“We expect some to be undetectable,
with no stars or gas,” says Geha. “There are indirect ways of finding the dark
matter satellites, but it will take more work.”
Some astrophysicists believe that dark
matter particles may occasionally annihilate each other, producing bursts of
high-energy gamma rays. If the Milky Way has dark matter satellites, and if
they do emit gamma rays, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, scheduled
for launch in February, might detect them.
Dark matter may also be responsible
for creating the most awesome objects in the universe: the enormous black holes
believed to lurk in the center of nearly every large galaxy. Tom Theuns and
Liang Gao, astronomers at Durham University in England, used a computer model
last year to study how two types of dark matter, known as warm and cold, may
have influenced the formation of the very first stars in the universe—and the
first giant black holes. HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Louis J Sheehan In their simulations,
Gao and Theuns found that within clumps of cold dark matter, single massive stars
formed, but warm dark matter formed filaments about a quarter the width of the
Milky Way, attracting enough ordinary matter to create some 10 million
stars—and some of these very first stars could still be around. “You could
potentially form low-mass stars,” says Theuns. “And they live very much longer.
They could live for 13 billion years and could be in the Milky Way today. Maybe
we’ve seen them already. Who knows?”
But the most unexpected result of the
model was that the filaments could catastrophically collapse, warping
space-time to form a huge black hole.
The model suggested that collapsing dark matter
could warp space-time to form a huge black hole.
“Even if only 1 percent of the mass in
a filament takes part in the collapse, that’s already 100,000 times the mass of
the sun, a very good start to making one of these supermassive black holes,”
Theuns says. “We know that the formation of these supermassive black holes has
to be very rapid because we can see very bright quasars very soon after the Big
Bang, not much later than the epoch of the first star formation.”
Is there any chance that astronomers
could detect an echo of the primordial cataclysms that birthed these black
holes?
“You would think it’s such a violent
process that something would be left over from that,” Theuns says. “I don’t
have any predictions, but you would think there would be something.”
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HTTP://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Voters Signal a Hunger for Change
December 18, 2007; Page A2
Change is the most powerful word in
politics, and it's beginning to appear American voters want to send change
roaring through the system like a gale-force wind in 2008.
We're talking about the kind of change
that doesn't merely adjust the dials but twists them in a decidedly different
direction. The signs that such sentiment is afoot in the land are starting to
multiply.
They can be seen in the rise of Mike
Huckabee among Republicans and Barack Obama among Democrats in the presidential
campaign. The two candidates are gaining ground precisely because they
represent a significant departure from the status quo.
The change imperative is implicit in
all kinds of polling numbers. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll,
two-thirds of those surveyed now regularly say that things are "off on the
wrong track," the highest sustained level of dissatisfaction in 15 years.
The sentiment was evident last week in
the results of a little-noticed special election to fill a House seat in Ohio
vacated by the death of Republican Rep. Paul Gillmor. Republicans should have
kept the seat easily. The Fifth District has been reliably Republican for
decades, and the Republican candidate won more than 60% of the vote in nine of
the previous 10 House elections. But this year, Republicans had to spend
heavily to keep the seat, and new Rep. Bob Latta got just 57% of the vote.
Republicans held back the winds of change.
The change impulse can even be seen in
the success this year of Rep. Ron Paul in the Republican presidential race. His
libertarian message of scaling back government on all fronts once would have
been considered too radical. Yet he already has raised an impressive $18
million this quarter alone, which will make him a force to be reckoned with in
New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary and beyond.
Elections that truly change the
country's direction aren't very common. In fact, they come along perhaps once
in a generation. And, of course, a shocking event such as a terrorist attack
next year could change the equation, compelling voters to value stability over
change.
For now, though, change with a capital
"C" would figure to hurt Republicans most, because they've been in
charge most of this decade. But Democratic incumbents shouldn't be too
sanguine.
The groundwork for a big-change
election this year may have been set in the results of the 2006 election, when
Democrats swept into power in both the House and the Senate.
But often such a congressional
election is followed by a general election in which voters get cold feet about
lasting change. In 1958, for instance, Democrats picked up a whopping 49 seats
in the House and 15 in the Senate in the middle of Dwight Eisenhower's second
term. But the Democratic surge didn't continue; two years later, Democrats lost
20 seats in the House and John F. Kennedy barely won the presidency.
Similarly, Republicans picked up 54
seats in the House and 10 in the Senate in the Gingrich revolution of 1994. But
two years later, Republicans relinquished three of those House seats, and
Democrat Bill Clinton easily won re-election.
Sometimes, though, the tremors in an
off-year election are followed by a true earthquake in a general election. In
1978, Republicans took over 15 House seats and three Senate seats. That simply
set up the Ronald Reagan landslide of 1980, in which Republicans took over the
White House and gained 34 House seats and an unusually high 12 Senate seats,
the biggest Senate swing in two decades.
Politicians themselves often don't see
the signs of an earthquake. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the third-ranking Democrat in
the House, says that in 1980 many Democrats wanted to run against Mr. Reagan,
thinking him too conservative for the country.
The question, of course, is whether
2008 will be another 1980. One intriguing hint of change comes in the behavior
of Republican voters. In recent years, Republicans have tended to act like the
well-behaved kids in school, who walk in straight lines and keep quiet. They
have reliably fallen in behind the establishment candidate.
This year, with no incumbent president
or vice president running, there isn't an obvious establishment favorite, and
Republicans are all over the map -- hence, the rise of Mr. Huckabee, and the
surprising resilience of another unconventional Republican candidate, former
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, atop national Republican polls.
Now, the task for other campaigns is
to show they understand the forces of change. Republican Sen. John McCain has
done better since he's stopped acting like the establishment candidate and
starting acting more like a maverick. The campaign of former Massachusetts Gov.
Mitt Romney, who once led comfortably in Iowa and New Hampshire, is seeking to
persuade voters that Mr. Huckabee's occasional collisions with ethics and
reform forces while governor of Arkansas show he isn't the agent of change he
purports to be.
The further Romney message is that
competence is key to changing the system and that their man has proved he has
it. Mr. Romney has led "very large organizations toward success,"
says spokesman Kevin Madden. "He didn't do that by sitting in committee
hearing rooms on Capitol Hill."
And on the Democratic side, the goal
of Hillary Clinton's campaign is to show that she is a change agent as much as
Sen. Obama is. Its message: There would be no bigger change than electing a
woman president. And some experience working within the system, which she has,
makes it easier to change that system.
Write to Gerald F. Seib
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A KEY GAUGE of U.S. home prices shows
they are falling sharply across most of the nation, as a deepening slump in the
housing market threatens to damp consumer spending.
Export-driven economies across Asia
are keeping a close eye on U.S. spending trends as they brace for a possible
slowdown.
Home prices in 10 major U.S.
metropolitan areas in October were down 6.7% from a year earlier, according to
the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes, released Wednesday by
credit-rating firm Standard & Poor's. That exceeded the previous record
year-to-year decline of 6.3% in April 1991, when the economy was emerging from
a recession.
New statistics from the U.S. Census
Bureau, meanwhile, indicate a slowdown in the number of Americans moving to
states that led the housing boom, including Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
The silver lining behind the latest
home-price data is that they signal the market is making what most economists
see as a necessary adjustment, dragging home prices back into closer alignment
with Americans' ability to pay. The market is working its way "back to
reality," says David Seiders, chief economist of the National Association
of Home Builders. He thinks U.S. house prices will bottom out by early 2009.
Some other economists say that might
not happen before 2010. "The housing shock is only about halfway over, and
housing prices will continue to fall well into 2009," says Lehman Brothers
economist Michelle Meyer.
During the housing boom in the first
half of this decade, fast-rising home prices made it easy for homeowners to
take out home-equity loans or refinance their primary mortgages to extract some
cash. That helped sustain consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of
U.S. economic activity.
Economists now worry that falling home
prices will prompt U.S. consumers to pull back on spending enough to slow
growth or even tip the economy into recession. "Eventually what's
happening in the housing market is going to catch up with us," says
Patrick Newport, an economist at research-firm Global Insight Inc.
Fears of a sharp drop in consumption
were assuaged somewhat last week with a report that U.S. consumer spending in
November grew at the fastest pace in 31⁄2 years. And though holiday sales fell
short of retailers' expectations, consumers, spurred by discounts, spent
heavily in the final days before Christmas. Economists say that even if overall
spending slows in December, the strength seen in October and November would be
enough to keep the U.S. economy afloat in the near term.
"The most important determinant
of [spending] is always income," says Harm Bandholz, an economist at
UniCredit in New York. He said that Americans' disposable income has risen a
"solid" 2.5% over last year. He and others say that as long as the
job market holds up and incomes keep growing, Americans will continue to spend.
The S&P/Case-Shiller index showed
that some of the fastest declines in home prices are in metropolitan areas that
were among the hottest during the housing boom. Prices were down 12.4% from a
year earlier in Miami, 11.1% in San Diego, 10.7% in Las Vegas and 10.6% in
Phoenix.
Home prices are still up from a year
ago in some U.S. cities, such as Seattle and Charlotte, N.C. And people who
bought their homes several years ago still are sitting on sizable gains in most
of the country.
The boom more than doubled prices in
many populous areas near the coasts of the U.S. The run-up was fueled in part
by unusually low interest rates, which slashed the cost of monthly mortgage
payments. In addition, in the wake of the technology-stock bubble, many
Americans viewed real estate as a safer investment than stocks, and so poured
increasing sums into second homes and rental properties.
U.S. home sales began to slow in
mid-2005. Prices leveled off and then started declining in 2006. Over the past
year, mortgage defaults have soared, leading to rapid growth in foreclosures.
As the market adjusts, single-family
housing starts have fallen 55% from their January 2006 peak to a seasonally
adjusted annual rate of 829,000. In recent months, lenders and investors have
begun owning up to billions of dollars of losses on mortgages and related
securities, clearing the decks for an eventual revival in lending.
But the recovery of the housing market
is likely to be a gradual process. That's partly because the boom left prices
so far out of whack with incomes. As measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller
national index, home prices jumped 74% in the six years through 2006. During
the same period, U.S. median household income rose 15%. (Neither figure is adjusted
for inflation.) That made housing unaffordable for many Americans.
For a few years, lax lending standards
-- some loans required no down payments and offered low introductory interest
rates -- meant U.S. borrowers could buy more expensive houses than they could
really afford. But lenders have been burned by a surge in defaults that started
in 2006, and such mortgages generally are no longer available. That means house
prices will have to fall to a level potential buyers can afford.
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's
Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pennsylvania, predicts that on
average U.S. house prices will decline about 12% by the second quarter of 2009
from their peak in the second quarter of 2006. He expects household income to
rise by about the same amount over that period.
Prices of new homes are likely to
start recovering in the first half of 2008 because builders are aggressively
chopping prices to clear inventories, says Edward Leamer, an economics
professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
On average, prices of previously
occupied homes, as measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes, are likely to
drop another 7% in 2008 before flattening out in 2009, says Thomas Lawler, a
housing economist in Vienna, Virginia.
Inventories of unsold homes remain
very high and may increase in the new year as lenders dump more foreclosed
houses on the U.S. market. The number of detached single-family homes listed
for sale in October was enough to last 101⁄2 months at the current sales rate,
according to the National Association of Realtors.
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan, Esquire
The mortgage market also needs to
adjust further. Most of the funding for home loans comes from investors who buy
securities backed by bundles of mortgages. Since August, many of those
investors have shunned the market amid fears of rising defaults.
The current scarcity of funds
available for mortgage lending creates a chicken-and-egg situation, says Prof.
Leamer. Investors who provide funding for home loans don't want to commit more
money until they believe the housing market is getting better. But it is hard
for the housing market to rebound as long as mortgage credit is tight. Lower
prices eventually will break this impasse, by luring buyers back into the
market, he says.
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Black holes are weird. Well, duh,
right?
But they do something that surprises
most people: besides hoovering down almost everything nearby, they can also
eject material as well. And by eject, I mean send it out screaming at nearly
the speed of light and heated to a bazillion degrees.
Picture from Chandra of the active
galaxy pair 3C321
The image above is from the Chandra
X-Ray Observatory, and it’s all about this scary scenario. Let’s take a walk
down the gravity well, shall we?
Basically, as matter swirls down into
the maw of the hole, it forms a flattened disk called an accretion disk.
Friction, magnetism, and other forces heat the disk up. A lot. At the poles of
the disk, all this heat and force can focus twin beams of fury, jets of matter
and energy of unbelievable violence.
Every galaxy has a supermassive black
hole in its core, and if these black holes are actively feeding, they can emit
these beams. They can be so energetic that these galaxies, called Active
Galaxies, are among the brightest objects in the entire Universe!
As you can imagine, it sucks to be in
the path of that beam. All that high-energy radiation pelting you, even from
thousands of light years away, can be enough to do some serious hurt.
This object is actually two galaxies.
Both have active black holes in their cores, but one of the two is creating
these death ray beams… and the other galaxy is in the way.
The picture from Chandra shows this
drama unfolding. The beams are coming from the lower left, where the more
active galaxy sits. The orange and red colors (from Hubble) represent optical
and ultraviolet light emitted by the galaxy. This generally indicates regions
where stars are being born; it appears as if the beams from the black hole are
compressing gas in the galaxy, collapsing it, and aiding it in forming stars.
Purple represents high-energy X-rays
(seen by Chandra), caused by all sorts of events, but quite a bit is from the
beam slamming into material in the galaxy itself. The blue is lower energy
radio emission. Radio waves (detected by MERLIN) are also generated when the
beam hits the other galaxy in the upper right. You can see how the beam gets
distorted as it rams into the gas in the other galaxy.
The two galaxies are only 20,000 light
years apart (for comparison, our Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years
across), so the galaxy in the upper right is enduring a world universe of hurt.
Any planets in the path of that beam are being pummeled by all manners of
radiation. It’s not easy to know if that would make them uninhabitable, but it
seems likely; the beams would interact with the air and destroy most of the
molecules in the upper atmosphere. Ozone is very susceptible to this, and it’s
our ozone layer that protects us from damaging ultraviolet light from the Sun.
Without it, the krill and other sea life making up the base of the food chain
on our planet would die.
That would be, to use a scientific
word, a bummer.
By studying the interaction of the
beam from the one galaxy with the other, astronomers can learn just what sorts
of things happen when galaxies go bad. And while this seems far removed from
our everyday life, I have to add that there is a supermassive black hole in the
center of our Galaxy. It’s not currently active, and to be honest there’s no
indication that the beams would be aimed at us that even if it were to start
chomping down on gas clouds and stars; most likely they would be aimed up and
out of the Galaxy, very far from where we are.
Still, forewarned is forearmed. The
more we know about this stuff, the better I feel.
Plus, geez, it’s just so cool! Too bad
they didn’t release this image before I chose my Top Ten images of the year.
And, finally, I’ll note that I talk
about this (as well as black holes in general, and other kinds of killer beams)
in "Death from the Skies!" It’ll be a few more months before it’s
out, but if you like destruction writ large, you’ll have fun reading the book.
ooooooo
Over the past three decades, China has
emerged as an economic colossus, becoming the world’s source of cheaply
manufactured exports. In 2007, numerous reports of contaminated Chinese imports
revealed a nasty downside to this rapid growth.
The first blow came in March, with the
revelation that cat food and dog food were killing family pets across the
United States; it contained wheat gluten, an ingredient imported from the
People’s Republic of China, which was laced with deadly melamine.
In May came the news that some
American hospitals and prisons were distributing Chinese toothpaste tainted
with diethylene glycol, a potentially fatal compound.
The biggest wallop hit over the
summer, when Mattel and other companies announced they’d sold thousands of
Chinese-made toys that were coated with lead-based paint. The businesses
involved juggled recalls and apologies as China’s government scrambled to
repair its industrial reputation.
In August, the crisis prompted China’s
commerce minister, Bo Xilai, to protest that “more than 99 percent” of the
country’s exports “are of good quality and are safe.”
The blowups over tainted products,
however, overshadowed landmark news regarding a far more dangerous Chinese
export: pollution. Back in 2000, China’s economic planners boldly predicted
that the country would double its energy usage by 2020. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, in turn, estimated that China would surpass the United
States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide by that same year.
Propelled by a decade of blistering growth unfettered by environmental
regulations, China managed to hit its energy usage goal in 2007, 13 years ahead
of schedule. And depending on whose estimates you accept, the country has
already taken the carbon-dioxide emissions crown.
Given that China is home to 20 percent
of the planet’s population and a burgeoning, ever more consuming middle class,
it’s not surprising that the country’s footprint on the environment is growing.
What is shocking is the extent to which that footprint is stomping not just
China’s ecology but that of the rest of the planet.
China has become the leading importer
of illegally harvested timber. It is the global hub for endangered wildlife
trafficking. The Chinese are the world’s largest consumers of grain, meat,
coal, and steel. And China is feeding its appetites for those commodities—and
increasingly for oil—by investing in resource extraction in less-developed
areas like Africa. Even in a government not prone to harsh self-evaluation, a
top Chinese environmental official pronounced ominously last year that the
pollution crisis at home “allows for no optimism.”
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