text:
Here's the comment:
I know I'm late to the party here, but having just been shown this post I want to make one thing absolutely clear: the fact that many of us are now *against* what mainstream feminism has become absolutely does not mean we're *with* the likes of you.
We're not against feminism because we disagree with its purported goal of true equality of opportunity among the sexes, or our absolute right to self-determination and bodily autonomy, or with dismantling gender roles and the expectations and assumptions they impose on individuals.
We're never going to stand with anyone who believes anything, ever, gives a person the "native right" to use another's body sexually without their ongoing enthusiastic consent. Or dehumanises men by insinuating that they are such slaves to impulse that if they can't rape their wives they'll inevitably cheat on them. Or generalises the nature of individuals' sexuality based on their sex alone. Or does not support an individual's right to end a relationship on their own terms. Or espouses the sexist view that marriage is somehow a pillar of femininity more than one of masculinity. Or implies women (but not men) must choose *either* a career or a family. Or believes that when partners each choose to keep their own names in an equal relationship this is somehow emasculating.
We're "against feminism" because yes, the mainstream feminist movement ignores and derides male issues, because it adopts stances that are fundamentally sexist, because it fails to address intersectionality with issues of race and gender identity, and because it manufactures victimhood and fear, among other things.
But we're still for true equality. Not for tired old sexist bullshit like using women who don't wear what you think they should wear as a simile for being clueless and out of touch.
A woman with three advanced science degrees.
And my response:
I think you characterize our position. Please allow me to rebut.
Let's look at what "the likes of us" have actually been saying here, not what feminism has portrayed us as saying. At no point have I (or most in the Manosphere - I understand that there are some exceptions) endorsed or espoused any denial of equal opportunity or equal treatment under the law. Nor has their been any serious suggestion of impairing any of the rights women currently enjoy under our liberal democratic system of government. I myself am politically a Progressive, meaning my political philosophy stems from Humanism. Most folks in the Manosphere are adherents to this philosophy, which advocates the legal, moral, and ethical equality of all people.
With me so far?
Let me be blunt: the Red Pill does not advocate anyone ever doing anything non-consensual, sexually or otherwise. It never has, and to say so is a gross mis-characterization of the praxeology. What you portray as a "native right" is actually a biologically determined pattern of mating behavior that belies the feminist perspective on sex and sexuality. When idealism collides with the realities of science, idealism usually suffers. Just ask the Marxists in Eastern Europe.
Far from "dehumanizing" men, the Red Pill approach to positive masculinity acknowledges the deep importance of sexuality to the average man's life and attempts to help him realize his goals in that regard. It is the feminist perspective, that all men are aggressive sexual predators, that dehumanizes men. The Red Pill uplifts them to a more profound understanding of their own masculinity. And yes, sex is a valued part of that equation.
But some of your other issues demonstrate a lack of regard for masculine culture and masculine behavior - as men determine to define it, not women. For example, the refusal of a wife to take a husband's name IS emasculating, and indicative of her eventual desire to end the marriage. It's a legitimate warning sign men who fear divorce (and what man doesn't?) need to be aware of before marriage. That's a pragmatic, not idealistic perspective. Nor does the Red Pill demand that women choose between career and family or ask that men do; Mrs. Ironwood, and most other RP women, do have careers of their own. The difference is that they have demonstrably put their family life ahead of their career goals in a way that makes feminists cringe. Most RP men would also say they share that perspective: their careers are a means to support their families, not the other way around.
The fact that marriage does advantage women more than men - and that divorce punishes men more than women - makes it a far more desirable goal for women than men, nor is the burning desire for wedding cake a common discussion in male circles. Men control commitment in our species, however, so marriage and commitment are important issues for us . . . just as they are highly important to a large number of women.
If we generalize sexuality, that's because we look at science, for which generalities - that is, aggregate data - show patterns at work from which useful data can be used. Knowing such "generalizations" can steer men away from dangerous and unproductive relationships. If that means a few innocent girls get dumped along the way, I think greater femininity can take the hit.
But refusing to acknowledge the scientifically-studied biological truths that underlie the patterns of human mating in our society, namely the prevalence of Hypergamy and Polygamy as the primary mating strategies of humans in nearly every human culture, is seeking to place the rosy ideal of equality above the brutally pragmatic reality that most people face every day. Men do cheat. Women do cheat. We explain why, and what to do to avoid it. Post-feminism, marriage is bad for men. We explain why and how to deal with it. Divorce is very bad for men. We explain why and what to do to avoid it.
Marriage used to be the negotiated exchange (yes, by any scientific definition) of sex and security; without the security of consensual sex and real authentic commitment, men are simply better off avoiding commitment altogether. It's not a matter of ideals or ideology, it's a simple, pragmatic fact. Women are more aroused by more dominant men, therefore teaching men how to be dominant gets them more of what they want, sex. There is no oppressive ideology here. There is only a praxeology of how to fulfill a man's vision of his own masculinity.
You see, while you celebrate the ending of gender roles, you fail to appreciate all of what that entails. Not only did it liberate women from the expectations of pursuing family instead of a career, it also liberated men from the social obligation of verbally pandering to an ideology in the hopes of social acceptance. Once you add the sexual element into the equation - and you cannot NOT add it in - and men start pursuing their issues and interests as THEY define them, then all ideology falls by the wayside. One thing we know about the Red Pill is that desire cannot be negotiated. Ignoring what men and women find arousing and/or attracting in favor of pursuing an abstract ideal and allowing that to determine your personal course is the road to folly, misery, and divorce.
We may deride the flood of bitterly-unhappy women who are discovering that their ideology, which promised that there would be a long line of decent dudes waiting around for them when they were done "exploring themselves", but that's because they are a product of their own self-inflicted ideology. We snicker at those women who discover, to their horror, that the intended future involving a good caring man and children (sometime after 35 and, say, 3 degrees) utterly fails to materialize, because she was more inclined to believe feminism's promise than the "patriarchal" system of assortative mating that insists you lock down a dude before you're 25 or get what's left over.
We snicker when we hear feminists and other women talk about "true equality", and then dismiss the fact that Selective Service registration is mandatory for one sex but not the other as "men's fault". We laugh when we hear about our "male privilege" and then read how yet-another friend blew his head off, or ended up on the street, or got assaulted by his girlfriend again but no one will take him seriously because he's a dude. Or a pal who hasn't seen his kids in 8 years because his wife thinks he's a danger to his children - and he's a Quaker. These men will never have "equality". They live in a system that lauds their "privilege" while demanding yet-more sacrifices of them, then subjects them to the emasculating humiliations and shame that feminism dumps on them for the crime of having a penis.
I understand your anger against feminism, and I share it. But you're right, we aren't approaching the matter from the same place. You are determined to fight for a world of equality. I understand, because of the nature of my gender, that we will never truly achieve it. I don't think that women will allow us to achieve it. If you truly understood what social and cultural responsibilities and expectations men are subjected to that women are not, you would not be so eager to press for "equality", for that is a dreadful burden that most women would reluctant to "share".
Feminism has denigrated and derided masculinity and male-ness for so long, no number of perky pop princesses lecturing us about it at the UN are going to change the fact that when our culture and civilization are in peril, it is men, not women, who are expected to give their lives, liberty, and property up for the common good. Men are expendable, and we know it. We're told that from the time we are boys. While feminists fret about "male privilidge", that priviledge includes baggage that most women just choose not to see. Yet it is a burden that must be borne, if by an ever-decreasing number of us.
You can thank feminism for that.
A man with plenty of useless degrees, twenty-five books, three kids, and a wife who understands and supports him because he's a great man, not because of the ideology of "equality".


text:
The Ripon Police Department has assumed responsibility for the response to municipal code violations. Staff responds both to complaints of violations, as well as observed violations of the Ripon Municipal Code.
Violations range from illegal fencing that obstructs roadway visibility and poses safety hazards, to abandoned vehicle abatement, to excessive weeds/vegetation which may pose safety or fire hazards.
Code Enforcement will assist you in any way possible. However, some issues may require referral to a different department or agency for resolution. Ripon Code Enforcement cannot help citizens rectify the following problems:
Emergency situations that threaten human life or property and demand immediate attention – please call 9-1-1
Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions – (CC&R) violations
Private disputes between neighbors
Situations which are not specifically addressed in the Ripon Municipal Code.
You can file a complaint of Municipal Code violation by contacting the Ripon Police Department at (209)599-2102, or contact the code-enforcement officer, CSO Forks at (209)599-0271 or [email protected] FILE A COMPLAINT

subset: commoncrawl


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The long hours Americans put in at work aren't just stressing us out, according to a new study by Dr. Youngjoo Cha of Indiana University — they're also helping keep our workplaces gender-segregated.
The study, "Overwork and the Persistence of Gender Segregation in Occupations," published in the journal Gender & Society, found that "[T]he norm of overwork in male-dominated workplaces and the gender beliefs operating in the family combine to reinforce gender segregation of the labor market."
Examining data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a national household survey carried out by the U.S. Census Bureau/National Bureau of Economic Research, Cha found that 6.8 percent of the mothers surveyed who worked 50 hours a week or more in male-dominated fields ended up exiting those jobs within four months, compared to 4.3 percent of women without children. (The percentage of men leaving those professions was just slightly over 2 percent, whether they had children or not.) Having children, the report notes, increases the odds of a woman leaving a male-dominated field where she is expected to work 50 hours or more by 52 percent.
Cha explains to Working in These Times that women who have care-giving responsibilities at home are less likely to be able to work all day long, and care work is still seen as a woman's job — in her paper, Cha cites a 2012 study that found that even women who make more money than their spouses spend 30 percent more time with their children. Yet male-dominated occupations — which still, Cha notes, pay more than female-dominated ones — demand long hours of workers. Fields like law or medicine expect total commitment, and even skilled blue-collar jobs tend to require longer work hours and lots of overtime. The expectation that workers will be able to stay on the job longer, combined with the expectation that women will do most of the care-giving, leads to more women leaving those male-dominated fields, either exiting the labor force entirely or finding a job that doesn't have the same kinds of demands.
In fields dominated by men, Cha notes, women are less likely to have social support in the workplace. "Basically, women's experiences are not reflected in workplace policy, workplace practices and norms. This makes it more difficult to combine family responsibilities and at the same time meet workplace expectations," she says.
As Kathi Weeks, a professor of women's studies at Duke, points out in her article "'Hours for What We Will': Work, Family, and the Movement for Shorter Hours" in Feminist Studies, "Work time, including 'full-time,' 'part-time,' and 'overtime,' is a gendered construct, established and maintained through recourse to a heteronormative family ideal centered around a traditional gender division of labor." Part-time jobs rose up as a way for women to make a little extra cash but presumed that they had a husband to provide the family-sustaining income — and for whom they needed to be home to make dinner.
Overtime, on the other hand, presumes that a worker has no other responsibilities. If one person in a family regularly works not just full-time, but 50 or 60 hours a week, that leaves the other partner picking up the slack around the house. Both norms are built around a model that assumed a heterosexual family in which a man worked full-time (or more) at a job, often a factory or professional job, and a woman, if she worked at all, would tailor her work schedule around her household responsibilities, particularly children.
We'd like to think this ideal is changing, but Cha's research suggests otherwise. She found that occupations in which women made up less than 10 percent of the workforce had the longest working hours — around 43.1 hours a week — while occupations that had 70 percent or more women averaged about 35 hours or less. Some 20 percent of men worked 50 hours or more each week, compared to 13 percent of women, and 14 percent of women worked part-time jobs, while only 6 percent of men did.
In order to fully integrate workplaces, research has found that some 40 percent or more of men or women would need to change occupations. But the demand for longer hours has increased for both men and women. A 2004 study found that, between 1979 and 2000, the proportion of those who work 50 hours or more per week increased from 5 to 11 percent for women and from 21 to 27 percent for men. "Work hours become almost a proxy to measure one's commitment and professional competence," Cha says. Even with too-high unemployment and too-low consumer demand still keeping the economy stagnant, the pressure remains on workers who do have jobs to work longer and harder.
Cha's work and that of other researchers suggests that people are feeling the crunch. As the proportion of couples needing two incomes to get by has grown over the past few decades, a greater number of people are facing work-family conflict. "They're feeling overworked, they're stressed out, they would like to lower their work hours," Cha says. And meanwhile, the proportion of workers who would like to work full-time but can't get enough hours has also gone up, contributing to the polarization of work hours that, she says, characterizes today's labor market.
Yet this research suggests that when families make decisions about how much time to spend at work and who will take responsibility for children, gender norms play a bigger role even than income. Cha explains that in a prior study, she found that women with husbands who worked long hours were more likely to leave the labor force, but the same didn't hold true for men whose wives worked long hours. In her new paper, even when she controlled for the income of the spouse to see whether women who left male-dominated occupations did so because their spouse was the higher earner, her findings didn't change much — whether the higher earner was male or female, the woman was more likely to leave her job. Who gets to stay at work and who gets to go home, she notes, are decisions that tend to follow gender norms.
Solving this problem won't happen on an individual level, Cha points out, since individuals are likely to be influenced by existing gender norms. Instead, it'll take policy changes to really change the structural inequality in the workplace and in unpaid care work. She suggests regulating work hours, setting maximum allowable hours to mitigate the culture of overwork that is so prevalent in the United States. A law that prohibits compulsory overtime work (even with overtime pay) could also have an effect on working time, and an expansion of overtime pay provisions might also help.
Cha also suggests making the jobs on the other end of the spectrum, part-time jobs, which remain female-dominated, into better jobs by requiring that they provide benefits. This could help reduce the stigma attached to part-time work and would ensure that workers who take on care-giving roles at home don't have to lose benefits.
As I wrote in this month's Jacobin magazine, the labor movement over a hundred years ago took up the cause of shorter hours as an issue that could unite all workers — men and women, black and white, immigrant and native-born. The eight-hour-day movement appealed especially to women back then; Cha's research seems to suggest that a revived shorter-hours movement like the one Kathi Weeks has called for would disproportionately benefit women in the present day, too.
"The solution," says Cha, "should be to make the workplace more realistic so that workers can work in a healthier and happier environment, rather than try to meet the assumption that used to be there from the 1950s."
I hope you found this article important. Before you leave, I want to ask you to consider supporting our work with a donation. In These Times needs readers like you to help sustain our mission. We don't depend on—or want—corporate advertising or deep-pocketed billionaires to fund our journalism. We're supported by you, the reader, so we can focus on covering the issues that matter most to the progressive movement without fear or compromise.
Our work isn't hidden behind a paywall because of people like you who support our journalism. We want to keep it that way. If you value the work we do and the movements we cover, please consider donating to In These Times.
Sarah Jaffe is a Type Media Center Fellow, co-host (with Michelle Chen) of Dissent magazine's Belabored podcast, and a columnist at The Progressive. She was formerly a staff writer at In These Times and the labor editor at AlterNet. Her previous books are Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone and Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, which Robin D.G. Kelley called "The most compelling social and political portrait of our age." You can follow her on Twitter @sarahljaffe.


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text:
– Plans to deposit dredge spoil from the Marsh
Harbor canal on a property in Friendship Village
near Berlin
have neighbors fearing for the local water table and their property values.
"The whole community is very upset about this,"
said Doreen Hudson, a resident of Friendship
Rd. whose home sits across from the dredge spoil
site. "We do not want a dredge spoil site in this area."
Lifelong Friendship resident Harry Mitchell said his
property abuts the spoil site and that he is "very much against it."
"It's a quiet little village. We're very proud of
it. We don't need a dredge spoil site in the middle of it. It's got people very
upset," he said.
Whaley Brittingham, owner of the Marsh Harbor
canal, also owns the proposed dredge spoil site, through a family trust.
"There is a canal that is on the south side of
those town homes, where they moor big boats, sportfishing boats," said
Brittingham's attorney Mark Cropper. "The canal is on Chincoteague
Bay and just from the flow of the currents, there is a hump [of
sand] there."
Brittingham must dredge that out, Cropper said.
The spoil will be placed on an interior site, 1.59
acres of the 56-acre parcel, he said. Spread evenly, 5,000 cubic yards of spoil
will cover the site to a depth of two feet.
"He lives in West Ocean City. I guess he cares less about the
people here; all the people feel that way, anyway," Mitchell said.
Villagers cited several concerns over the dredge
spoil intended for the community: water contamination, property value
reductions, truck traffic and odors.
"The big concern is the contamination of the wells.
It' got to go somewhere and it's got to go down," Mitchell said.
"What they're dumping, I have no idea what it is,
and I need to know," said Gail West, owner of Beary Best daycare on Friendship Rd.
According to West, daycare wells are monitored
closely by state and county agencies contaminants, from bacteria to arsenic.
"My water has to be tested every quarter and yearly,"
West said. "My well water is monitored and if it isn't up to spec then my
license is not renewed. I would lose my business, and it's not safe for the
Cropper said, "The dredge material is sand from the
canal. It's no different than the dredge spoils placed on Homer Gudelsky
Park. It bleaches out.
It's sand."
Mitchell, who owns two parcels near the spoil site,
is worried that the dredge spoil's effect on the water table will render them
unfit for building.
"What's in this material? We have yet to be told,"
he said. Mitchell added, "There's the
truck traffic. Five-thousand cubic yards is going to be brought in there.
You're looking at over 400 truckloads coming in there."
Hudson said, "They can't prove
to us right now what all of this is going to do to our well water."
West said she is also worried about airborne
"I'm very concerned about the odor and what [the
children] are going to be breathing," she said. "If you've ever ridden behind one of those trucks, they're always
School bus traffic is
already high on Friendship Rd.,
which leads to Stephen Decatur Middle and High Schools.
"We have trouble enough
with people stopping for the school bus," West said. "People are not going to
stop as quickly as they can."
If the dumping
continues, Mitchell said it's inevitable property values will drop.
"I understand it's
going to be a perpetual dredge site. He can dump 5,000 cubic yards there every
year," Mitchell said. "Who's going to want any land close to it? Property
values will go down."
An informational
meeting will be held on Friday at Friendship
Church, at 7 p.m. The
proposal will go before the Board of Zoning Appeals on Feb. 14.
"We hope we defeat it.
We're going to give it a run," Mitchell said.


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From our Mini Maker Faire brethren in Toronto!
We'd love to make something this beautiful with interviews etc for East Bay Mini Maker Faire 2011. We've got so much to show off! Anyone in? Come to the kickoff meeting for Booze, Bites & Bizness… this Wednesday, May 18th, at Park Day School!


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Small Scale LED Lighting + Off-Grid Cell Phone Charging in Mali
Matt Berg currently serves as the Information Communications Technology (ICT) Coordinator for the Millennium Villages Project based out of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City and prior to that, was the director of the Geekcorps Mali program in Bamako, Mali.
Inspired by Jan Chipchase, I put together the following photo montage [pdf alert] covering the ever increasing number of cheap Chinese LED lights that are transforming the way people access lighting. There are a lot of amazing NGOs doing work to address the issue of rural household lighting but I think they are at best a fill-gap to an existing market gap. The mass market solution (LED + small rechargeable battery + 1 W solar panel) that will really make a difference will be Chinese and at a price that will encourage extremely fast adoption rates. This is evident from the introduction of LED flashlights in Mali that completely took over the market in less than six months.
I also document the common way most cell phone charging is done in an off-grid environment. While it may not the be the most power efficient or battery safe method it works and is both cheap to the supplier and consumer. Used car batteries you can see are the 'power lines' in a lot of African villages that form the basis of distributed power distribution.
More at http://buildafrica.org/2009/04/28/led-lights-and-12vcell-phone-charging-mali/
Matt Berg is exactly right. LED light, battery, and small solar packages will hit the market within a year or two. LED lights and cell phones bring most if not all of the world's population into the electric (and communication) network. They can also be charged with a hand crank or bicycle generator. Extra 6 volt motorcycle and 12 volt car batteries can be charged in the course of driving a car or truck. Minimum "clean" electricity is affordably feasible in the world today, if only we realize it.
I wish the US government noticed. By my count, there have been over 700,000 solar/dynamo am/fm/sw radios distributed in Afghanistan by US and NATO forces since before our 2001 invasion. None of them can charge a cell phone or a standard size battery as currently configured. US AID is sending 16,000 solar/dynamo radios to the Sudan this year and plans to send 250,000 over the next few years as part of a nation-building program. None of them, so far, will charge a cell phone or an extra battery. All of them could.
These techniques can also be useful when the grid goes down, which is one reason why I say:
Solar IS Civil Defense
Labels: development, LED, solar


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So the really big news yesterday, outstripping that of a new Pope is the news that Google is Powering Down Google Reader, which for many people is a total disaster. Google's hypocrisy is taken to entirely new heights in their post on the matter; they say "We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We're sad too." No, what they really mean is 'we don't care'. This is the usual typical stance that Google takes - a regretful 'but there's nothing we can do about it'. They are citing the decreased use of the product as the reason for closure, but if they'd wanted to I am absolutely sure that they could have done something to stop that decrease - there was some integration into G+ but they could have done a great deal more. I also love the line "as a company we're pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience." Tell me, how are self drive cars going to make my user experience better? At least be honest enough to say that 'we're pouring our energy into products that make more money for us' because that's the real bottom line. Google Reader doesn't bring in the eyeballs on adverts, so it's got to go. It really IS that simple.
So, what are the alternatives? There are surprisingly a fair number of them, but it depends on the platform that you use.
Tablet Devices
If you use tablets, you have an interesting array of choices. You can pull up news via Zite, which is an excellent tool and one that I use daily. It has recently had a makeover, which makes it even more interesting. It works in a rather different way to Google Reader, in that it pulls together stories for you based on your interests, which it presents in a visual magazine type format on the screen for you. You can then touch a story to see the entire thing, and tell Zite if you want to see more or less stories like that in the future, and if you like it. You can also highlight the source and ask for more or less from that source.
You can quickly flick through pages, open your list of resources on the top right hand side, and search for new material. However, you cannot import content from Google Reader, and you can't customise to the same extent.
Pulse is another alternative that works well with tablets. This is a more traditional RSS type reader in that you can set up a number of tabs, and then choose feeds to populate them. The posts appear in magazine format again, and it's easy enough to flick through them as needed, clicking to view the entire story. This is also available on the web, which makes a nice change. It looks like this:
There is the ever favourite Flipboard, which lots of people rave about, but I've never particularly cared for. This one allows you to link your social media accounts to it, so it's easier to see what your friends and colleagues are doing.
Alternatively, you can try News 360, Trap!t which works with social media accounts, Sulia, or Relevance. Or if you don't like those, try Feedly, which does pull content directly from your Google Reader account AND works on Firefox as well. Another very similar product is The Feed, which also takes content directly from your Reader account and displays it very neatly. If you really want to keep the Google Reader feel, these are the two that I would be inclined to look at first.
This is Feedly - don't be put off by the dark main part of the screen, it does this only when the user is concentrating on the list of feeds:
This is the screenshot from The Feed:
Web based news curation tools
There are a number of tools that you can use to pull information directly into your email accounts. Agreed, not the same thing as a Google Reader, but if we're looking at alternatives, we need to widen the net a little.
You can have News.Me which pulls data down based on your social media networks, but it only looks at the really big stories, so this is really more of an adjunct rather than replacement. Scoop.it is a great tool, but you do have to really go to the pages that have been created by people, so it's more like visiting their weblogs directly. Curate.me again pulls up stories for you in your email, but also on a web page, but it doesn't give you the same control that Google Reader does. Paper.li is a fun tool and it pulls up interesting resources for you, and you can personalise it - here's The Phil Bradley Daily for example. However, once again it's a rather different concept.
RSS Reader alternatives
So if you're not happy with anything I've looked at so far, lets go for some more traditional RSS readers. The first one that I would really recommend looking at is Netvibes. I love Netvibes with a passion - it's a start page, you can publish your own content for the world to see, and it's a pretty good RSS reader as well. More to the point, it looks like a traditional reader as well, although if you prefer, these can also look like widgets too.
I would recommend taking a look at this one, not just because of the RSS aspect, but because if you start to use Netvibes it will make your entire life on the web easier, guaranteed.
A beta outfit, The Old Reader is just starting up (so no screenshot!) but it does allow you to pull your Google Reader content right into their service. Another new entrant into the field is Taptu, available for web and tablet, plus smartphone. I have not used this myself, but it's getting good reviews, but it's another primarily news aggregation tool, pulling content from Twitter and Facebook contacts.
How about an oldie and a goodie? Yes, I'm thinking of Bloglines. It's still out there, and you can still use it. I haven't been back to it in quite some time, but it's a possible that's worth trying.
You could take a look at News Is Free, which you can use without creating an account if you just want headline stuff, but you can obviously open an account to use on the web. There are over 30K of RSS feeds you can choose from, but if you want to add your own, you'll have to go down the premium route.
As I mentioned, Feedly works on the web as well as tablet and they have a very handy blog entry on migrating your Google Reader account directly to their product. Newsblur is also quite traditional in its approach, but you can only have 64 feeds, unless you pay them $1 a month, which provides unlimited feeds, which sounds like a good deal to me. It also has a nice traditional feel about it.
How about downloading your own reader onto your desktop? It's a bit of a weird idea I agree, but when I first started out using RSS I used a product that was on the desktop, though it's so long ago I can't remember the name. Feedreader is a download, and it's also available on the web too.
None of these tools are going to be exactly what you want. But then at some point in the dim and distant past you hadn't tried Google Reader, and it was a new experience. If it's any consolation I haven't used Google Reader in a while, though I would peek at it maybe once or twice a week. I prefer to use the tablet tools that I mentioned, and I get most of what I need from Zite, Pulse and Twitter. It takes a while to get used to the idea that you might be missing news, because you can't tailor the tool to your exact requirements, but then I always worried if I was missing really good blogs, so the worry stays, just about something slightly different. The important point in all of this is the networks that you have created. If you have good networks on Twitter and Facebook for example, that's key to a Google Reader free world, since your contacts will find the good stuff and keep you up to date. So yes, it's going to be a real wrench, but there are other options available to you.


text:
Todd Bertuzzi ignites Red Wings to win over Wild
DETROIT -- Detroit Red Wings fans filled Joe Louis Arena fired up to boo Ryan Suter and Zach Parise.
When the game was over, the Red Wings gave their followers a reason to stand and cheer.
Henrik Zetterberg snapped a tie midway through the second period, and Todd Bertuzzi scored his second goal of the game early in the third to lift Detroit to a 5-3 win over the Minnesota Wild on Friday night.
Suter was booed when he had the puck, and Parise was jeered after he scored his first goal. Both players have become unpopular in the Motor City because they turned down deals from Detroit to sign with Minnesota last summer.
"Of course, you heard them," Zetterberg said.
Detroit's new captain also heard a lot of sighs and groans early in the game from red-and-white clad fans when the Wild dominated play for much of the scoreless first period.
"They gave us what we deserved because we weren't playing well," Zetterberg said. "Fans are very engaged here; that's why this is a great place to play."
Detroit wanted to keep its depleted roster stacked with talent last July by making offers to Suter and Parise, the top two free agents, but both chose to play together in Minnesota with matching 13-year, $98-million contracts.
Parise, though, said the Red Wings were definitely one of the teams he was very interested in playing for this season.
"They're just a great organization. I have a lot of respect for them," Parise said. "They do things the right way. They play the game the right way. That was a tough one, because it's a really good place to play."
Pavel Datsyuk, who assisted on Zetterberg's goal, put Detroit ahead by two late in the second period. Datsyuk also set up Bertuzzi on his second goal that gave the Red Wings a 5-2 lead.
Parise's second goal of the game banked in off Zetterberg to pull the Wild within two midway through the third period.
Jimmy Howard made 23 saves for the Red Wings, who were outshot 11-6 in the first.
"Howard was good early when we struggled with the puck," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said
Minnesota's Josh Harding gave up four goals on 17 shots in the first two periods and finished with 22 saves.
"You're looking at the goals, which one could you fault him on?" Wild coach Mike Yeo asked. "There are times the puck goes in the net and there's nothing you can do."
The Red Wings scored two power-play goals in the second period after failing the first 17 times they had an advantage over their first three-plus games this season. Detroit's special teams breakthrough leaves the defending Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings as the NHL's only team without a goal on the power play in the lockout-delayed season that started last weekend.
Red Wings rookie Damien Brunner took advantage of extra space on a power play, racing up the right side of the ice to score off an assist from Zetterberg, his Swiss league teammate during the lockout, for the game's first goal 13 seconds into the second period.
"That's why they signed him, to shoot the puck like that," Bertuzzi said.
Bertuzzi redirected the puck past Harding 42 seconds later to give Detroit a 2-0 lead. He made his season debut after missing the first three games because of the flu. Bertuzzi was originally diagnosed with mononucleosis, an ailment he said would have prevented him from playing for at least a month.
The rugged forward, who will turn 38 next week, made the most of his opportunity to play with Datsyuk. Babcock separated him from Zetterberg for the first time this season.
"I'm very lucky at this age to be playing with a world-class player like that," Bertuzzi said.
Detroit's second-period cushion didn't last long.
Parise scored off an assist from Suter, who got his first point with the Wild, at 2:49 of the second during a 5-on-3 power play. Tom Gilbert made it 2-all 6:29 into the period.
Zetterberg's first goal of the season gave the Red Wings the lead back, and Datsyuk restored their two-goal advantage.
The two stars will have to carry a rebuilding team this season that is trying to compete without seven-time Norris Trophy winner Nicklas Lidstrom and net-front specialist Tomas Holmstrom, both of whom retired. Voids were also created when defenseman Brad Stuart was traded to San Jose, a team he would have likely signed with if he wasn't dealt. Forward Jiri Hudler left to sign with Calgary.
"That's still an elite team, especially when you give them space with the puck," Harding said. "They've got a lot of guys who can score when they get a chance."
Game notes
The Red Wings took Darren Helm (back) and Jakub Kindl (groin) off the injured list, and put Mikael Samuelsson (groin) on it. ... Wild D Jonas Brodin, the 10th pick two years ago, made his NHL debut and assisted on Gilbert's goal.
Regular Season Series
DET leads 1-0
Game Information
- Referees:
- Kevin Pollock
- Brian Pochmara
- Linesmen:
- Andy McElman
- Jean Morin


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LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The first close-up pictures of the massive asteroid Vesta reveal a northern hemisphere littered with craters ? including a trio nicknamed "Snowman" ? and a smoother southern half, researchers reported Monday.
Running along the asteroid's equator are deep grooves ? a surprise to scientists who did not expect to see such features.
"We're seeing quite a varied surface," said chief scientist Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles. The images were taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which began orbiting the 330-mile-wide rocky body last month and beaming back incredible surface details that the team is only beginning to pore over. It's the first time that Vesta has been viewed up close. Until now, it has only been photographed from afar.
Since entering orbit, Dawn has taken more than 500 pictures, while refining its path and inching ever closer to the surface to get a better view. The probe will officially start collecting science data next week once it is 1,700 miles from the surface. It will get as close as 110 miles while it orbits Vesta for a year.
Vesta's southern section is dominated by a giant crater, the result of a collision eons ago that's believed to have pelted Earth with numerous meteorites, or broken off pieces of asteroids. The northern side is filled with older craters including three that scientists dubbed "Snowman."
Vesta is "so rich in features" that it will keep scientists busy for years, said Holger Sierks, of the Max Planck Society in Germany, who helps operate the camera.
Currently some 117 million miles from Earth, Vesta is the second-largest resident of the asteroid belt, a zone between Mars and Jupiter filled with hundreds of thousands of space rocks orbiting the sun. The belt formed some 4.5 billion years ago around the same time and under similar conditions as Earth and the inner planets.
It's thought that larger chunks such as Vesta could have merged into planets had they not been foiled by Jupiter's gravity. Despite being denied planethood, asteroids are of interest to researchers because they date back to the early solar system.
Powered by ion propulsion instead of conventional rocket fuel, Dawn slid around Vesta on July 15 after a 1.7 billion-mile cruise. Most orbit insertions are tricky because a speeding craft has to slow down or risk overshooting its target.
Since Dawn has been traveling slow relative to Vesta, the orbit capture was a ho-hum event.
"It wasn't dramatic, but it is exciting," said chief engineer Marc Rayman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Launched in 2007, Dawn is the first mission to explore Vesta and Ceres, the two largest members of the asteroid belt. It's also the largest interplanetary probe launched by NASA, measuring 64 feet tip to tip with its solar panels unfurled.
Though the $466 million project was conceived long before the United States decided to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, the data gathered by Dawn should help future manned missions.
After a year, Dawn will move on to Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.
Unlike dry and rocky Vesta, Ceres is icy and may have frost-covered poles. Due to the possible presence of frozen water, Dawn will not be able to venture as close to Ceres' surface for fear of contaminating the asteroid.
The team does not plan to post raw images online as other NASA missions have done. Instead, there will be just one picture released daily.
Dawn mission: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia


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iPhone, iPad momentum may prompt Apple to give less conservative guidance
Analyst Shaw Wu with Sterne Agee said in a note to investors Friday that although Apple is famous for "vintage conservative guidance," the company may be more aggressive next Tuesday. He cited momentum for both the iPhone 4S and the new iPad as the main reasons Apple could push investor expectations higher for the June quarter.
Wu's research on iPhone sales has led him to believe there is "room for upside" ahead of next Tuesday's earnings release. He also attempted to dispel some recent concerns that sales of the iPhone 4S could be slowing in developed markets.
Specifically, he noted that some investors are concerned that iPhone activations at Verizon were slightly disappointing, even though Apple outsold all other smartphones at the largest wireless carrier in the U.S. Verizon reported on Thursday that it activated 3.2 million iPhones in the first quarter of calendar 2012.
"We believe concerns of (Verizon) iPhones coming in a little low are overdone," Wu wrote. "Keep in mind VZ is one of what we estimate to be 150 iPhone carriers."
While Wu isn't concerned about the iPhone for the March quarter, he does believe that Mac sales to start the year were likely lighter than expected. His checks with Apple's supply chain have indicated that Apple is drawing down inventory ahead of product refreshes, and also that there has been "some minor cannibalization from the iPad."
Wu expects Apple to have sold 29.5 million iPhones in the March quarter, along with 12.3 million iPads and 4.3 million Macs. He has projected the company will report $36.8 billion in revenue and $10.20 in earnings per share.
For the June quarter, Wu has modeled $37.6 billion in revenue and $10.80 in earnings per share, slightly ahead of Wall Street consensus of $37.4 billion in revenue and $9.91 in EPS. Sterne Agee has maintained its "buy" rating for AAPL stock and its price target of $750.


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The lovely people from Map Toys have kindly sent Logan their EZ Fort toy to test and review for them. Logan loves to play hide and seek so I thought this would be the perfect toy to build him a den to hide in. Here is what we thought.
Map Toys say: "From the creators of TOOBEEZ, comes the EZ-FORT, 54 piece framework building system. With all the safe, hardwearing fun of it's bigger brother, EZ-FORT is the perfect size for smaller spaces whether in the house or the garden. Colour coded lengths of robust polycarbonate tube push into the precision engineered connecting spheres to create a vast array of structures."
The EZ Fort comes in a handy cardboard carry box which has a handle on it so perfect for children to take along to their friends or into school on a play day. The box is very brightly coloured and Logan got really excited when I brought it through to our livingroom to play with. He sat patiently on the floor right beside the box waiting for me to open it and oh what a ball he had playing away with the polycarbonate tubes and connecting spheres.
The other half helped Logan build a tent and we threw a spare bed sheet over it so it was like a proper little tent and he loved it. Logan would crawl in and out of it and scream with delight when we played cheek-a-boo with him. He really thought it was great and we all spent ages playing away.
This building toy is designed for children aged 3 - 7 but Logan is only 19 months old and he still loved it. I don't think he got the concept as well as maybe a 3 year old would as he kept trying to destroy the structure but we had fun all the same.
The only real problem we had like I said was Logan trying to destory anything we built after a while and it was very easy for him to do as the tubes were easy to pull from the spheres without any energy required. Ofcourse Logan thought this was hilarious when we gave him a telling off for it and would do it all the more! So if one improvement could be made it would be that the tubes need to fit a bit more snuggly into the spheres so it requires a bit more effort to pull them out. I'm sure Logan will stop this as he gets older though.
You can purchase your very own EZ Fort from Amazon for £39.89 plus free delivery.
Overall a lovely toy that I'm sure will capture your childs imagination. Easy to put up and put away but too easy for toddlers to pull down so maybe best sticking to purchasing for 3 - 7 year olds. Brilliant fun though and something which I would recommend.
Logan's rating - 8/10
Mummies rating - 7/10
Please visit www.maptoys.co.uk for more products and information.
23 June 2011
Review: EZ Fort
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The Breastest News at Thursday, June 23, 2011
Labels: building, children's toys, ez fort, map toys, play time, team work, toys
Labels: building, children's toys, ez fort, map toys, play time, team work, toys
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Next week, I will be participating in a session entitled, "Reach Out and Blog Someone" along with Steve Swenson of the Bakersfield Californian at the United Way of Kern County's Professional Development Conference for Nonprofits. You can read Steve's blog at the Eye of Bakersfield.
A lot of nonprofit blogs have come on the scene in the year between these events and I feel like it is time to revise and update my "10 Ways" post to include not only ways that nonprofits can use blogs, but also engage bloggers to support their cause. Blogs fall under the category of "social media" because they are, well, social. They are a tool that allows for a conversation between the reader and the writer, and for information to reach people quickly all over the world. It only makes sense that if your nonprofit is going to include a blog in its communications strategy that it includes other bloggers too.
So here it goes . . .10 Ways Nonprofit Can Use Blogs and Bloggers to Support Their Cause
1. Include bloggers on your press list.
There are a lot of people out there reading and writing blogs.
According to the blog search engine, Technorati's, "State of the Blogosphere" in October 2006:
Technorati is tracking more than 57 Million blogs.According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project report, "Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers" from July 2006:
Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day
8% of Internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog.
39% of Internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs.
90% of bloggers say they have read someone else's blog
2. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Create Your Own Media Coverage
When the men accused of murdering Gwen Araujo, a woman they beat, bound and strangled after they discovered that she was biologically male, went to trial, the Community United Against Violence decided to use a blog to document the trial.
Because many of CUAV's volunteer bloggers were more knowledgeable about issues such as the trans-phobic tactics that were being used by the lawyers, they were able to address many issues that the mainstream media missed. The blog also kept people informed during the second trial, when media coverage had diminished, and eventually drew attention to the trial when the blog got news coverage.
3. Provide bloggers, and your supporters, with an RSS feed of news related to your organization so that they can spread the word for you.
Don't be afraid of RSS feeds. First of all, what are they? From Yahoo! News:
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" -- it's a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs.Web publishers use RSS to easily create and distribute news feeds that include links, headlines, and summaries. The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and CNET News are among the many sites that now deliver updated online content via RSS.
Human Rights Watch doesn't have a blog, but they offer RSS feeds of human rights news to supporters so that they can blog about, and share information with others, about human rights issues.
For more information, check out the Tech Soup article, "Easy Ways to Publish Your Own RSS: Use RSS to Help Your Constituents Stay On Top of News and Announcements," and the Social Signal article, "Make Your Nonprofit More Effective with RSS Aggregation."
4. Include outreach to bloggers as part of your online fundraising campaigns.
As I mentioned in my post about "extra-organizational activists", there are bloggers out there who would love to raise money for your cause:
Beth Kanter raised $800 for the Sharing Foundation using the ChipIn widget plus her blog, social networks, Flickr and video in 26 days.Why not ask your supporters how many of them have a blog or web site where they would be willing to promote your fundraising campaign? Widgets like ChipIn and Network for Good Badges, and services like Firstgiving make it easy for them to support your cause. (Full disclosure: I am on ChipIn's nonprofit advisory board).
Darren Rowse celebrated ProBlogger's two year anniversary by using his blog to raise $830 US ($100 AU) for Oxfam Australia with his Blogging for Chickens campaign.
Beth Kanter raised $50,000 for the Sharing Foundation using a Network for Good Badge and similar tools to the ChipIn campaign, in three weeks.
Chez Pim raised almost $62,000 with her Menu for Hope Campaign in 2.5 weeks using her food blog and an online auction.
5. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Raise Money
Many blog readers have money to give. Why not ask them?
According to BlogAds 2005 Blog Reader Survey, 43% of blog readers had incomes greater than $90,000. In 2006, BlogAds broke down the reader demographics even more:
The median political blog reader is a 43 year old man with an annual family income of $80,000. He reads 6 blogs a day for 10 hours a week. 70% have contributed to a campaign.According to the 2005 article, "Blog Readers Spend More Time and Money Online," by Sean Michael Kerner:
The median gossip reader is a 27 year old woman with annual family income $60,000. She reads 4 blogs a day, five hours a week.
The median mom blog reader is a 29 year old woman with an annual family income of $70,000, reading 5 blogs a day for 4 hours a week.
The median music blog reader is a 26 year old man with an annual family income of $60,000 reading 5 blogs a day four hours a week.
Blog readers tend to make more online purchases. In the first quarter of 2005, less than 40 percent of the total Internet population made online purchases. By contrast, 51 percent of blog readers shopped online. Blog readers also spent six percent more than the average Internet user.6. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Involve Volunteers and Supporters
Nonprofit workers often tell me that they don't have time to write a blog. Depending on your organization's work and audience, you may not have to. I write for the NetSquared blog each day (it takes me anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on the topic), but it is also designed to be a community blog, so any registered user can post on it about how nonprofits are using the social web for social change.
Interplast, an international humanitarian organization that provides free reconstructive surgery in developing countries asks their surgical volunteer staff to upload posts to the blog from their worksite.
Urban Sprouts, a school gardening program, allows volunteers, as well as staff, to post on their blog.
The Best Friends Animal Society allows its supporters to create blogs on their Best Friends Network around animal, and animal adoption issues that they care about.
March of Dimes' Share Your Story blog allows families with children in NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) to share their experiences with one another.
7. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Report Back From an Event, Trip or Disaster
Do you have staff or constituents going to a conference that your supporters would be interested in hearing about? Ask them to blog during conference sessions and post photos. For example, here is a post that I wrote from Aspiration Tech's Nonprofit Developer's Summit for NetSquared blog readers.
Perhaps your staff makes a lot of international trips. Witness for Peace has a blog for their team in Mexico and for their team in Nicaragua to report back on their work there.
Blogs can also provide ways for people to find out information about loved ones if your organization works in disaster relief situations. Gregg Swanson, the Executive Director of HumaniNet, blogged and uploaded photos to HumaniNet's Flickr account using a satellite connection as part of a disaster response simulation exercise in Asia.
8. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Work Smarter
Would you like to avoid the crunch when it comes time to write the annual report or quarterly newsletter? If you post organizational news on your blog regularly, when it comes time to pull stories together for other publications, you will already have a lot of the material written.
For example, for this post, and to prepare for this session, I am drawing from other posts that I've already written. When we publish the NetSquared e-newsletter, we often draw from the NetSquared blog for material.
You can also use reader comments, or posts by volunteers or constituents in grant applications. Urban Sprouts Executive Director, Abby Jaramillo, brought her laptop to one meeting with a funder and showed them the positive comments written on a post by teachers and students who were being served by the program.
9. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Build Trust with Supporters
In a time when donors are being asked for money from more organizations than ever, when nonprofit scandals are in the news, and when funders want more accountability for where their money is going, it is important that they trust your organization and see that there are real people, like them, working there. A blog can give them a glimpse behind the scenes, and provide a transparency and authenticity that an annual report or brochure may not.
Dave Rochlin, the COO of TransFair USA, the only third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States, recently started a blog for their organization. In his first post entitled, "A Fair Trade blog . . .so why now? Rochlin writes, "So why start blogging? We decided that since we're more than just a label, it would make sense to let you see what's behind it."
If your organization decides to start a blog, I highly recommend that you allow readers to see who the individual or individuals are who write each post, rather than saying, "posted by organization x."
Blogs also build trust because readers can write comments and correspond with the writer(s). In a world where web sites offer only an anonymous email@example.com address, or make you go through a maze of automated messages and "press 2 now" in their phone system, the value of human connection can't be underestimated.
The Ann Arbor District Library System uses a blog for the front page of their site. Library users can ask questions and make suggestions about library news, announcements and events in the comments of each post.
10. Use Your Nonprofit Blog to Build a Broad-Based Movement
There is a lot of talk these days about nonprofit "silos." There are groups that are working on environmental issues, groups that are working on women's issues, groups that are working on disability issues and groups that are working on poverty issues, but really, aren't all the issues connected? Aren't we all trying to create positive change?
Part of a blog's structure is something called a blog roll, a list of blogs in the sidebar that the blogger reads, or feels is related to the topic of their blog. Something I don't see enough of is nonprofit bloggers listing other nonprofit blogs in their blog roll, referencing other nonprofit bloggers posts in their posts, and commenting on each other's blogs. Cross-referencing between organizations' blogs can add supporters to both organization's lists and paves the way for future collaborations.
Take a look below at this quick round-up of nonprofits blogs. Are there any you could add to your blogroll? (Big thanks to the Have Fun * Do Good and NetSquared readers who sent me some of these links).
AARP Issues Blog
Amnesty International Death Penalty Blog
Ann Arbor District Library System
Brown Bagging for Calgary's Kids
Center for Global Development
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Environmental Defense
First Book Blog
Foothills United Way Blog
Generation Why/Oxfam Blog
iAbolish-American Anti-Slavery Group
Jane Goodall Institute's Gombe Chimpanzee Blog
Jubilee USA
Mile High United Way Blog
ONE Campaign Blog
People's Grocery
Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary
Rainforest Action Network
Streetside Stories
SOS Community Services
Sustainable TableTransFair USA
Urban Sprouts
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
United Way of Central Florida
Walker Art Center
Witness for Peace Mexico Blog
Witness for Peace Nicaragua Blog
WITNESS Video Hub Blog
What are some other ways that you have seen nonprofits use blogs?
If you are excited to start a blog for your nonprofit, check out 5 Tips to Start a Nonprofit Blog.


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Humans and human activities have clearly altered the Earth's landscape and oceans in countless ways, often to the detriment of other plants and animals. But a new report published online on January 28th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows just what a tangled food web we've woven.
Two species of Mediterranean seabirds change their every move based on the activities of local fisheries and, in particular, the fish that people toss away. The seabirds' shifting movement patterns can be seen at the regional scale.
"We show that human activities in the natural environment can promote critical transitions in the spreading properties of foraging animals by locally changing the predictability and availability of their resources," said Frederic Bartumeus of Princeton University and Institut Català de Ciències del Clima in Spain. "Our study suggests an elementary but often disregarded connection between human local resource exploitation and global movement patterns of organisms."
The findings may have important implications for conservation biology and the study of invasive species, the researchers said. The work also provides a solid statistical framework for quantifying movement patterns across ecological scales, which can now be applied to other species and other circumstances.
Bartumeus' team took advantage of existing satellite data on the Cory's shearwater and the Balearic shearwater, which tracked the seabirds' movement over multiple foraging trips. Each trip typically lasts less than two days and covers distances anywhere from 10 to 1000 kilometers. Because the fisheries don't operate on holidays and weekends, the researchers were able to characterize the birds' activities in the presence and in the absence of the fisheries' trawling activities.
When the fisheries don't operate, seabirds essentially combine local searching with very large traveling distances, Bartumeus explained. Such a multiscale search pattern generates what he calls superdiffusive movement properties, meaning that the birds spread out from one another at a rate that accelerates over time. "Such a movement pattern allows for efficient explorations when the birds are looking for their natural prey of small fish and squid, which are highly mobile and unpredictably distributed in space and time," he said.
In contrast, when fishermen are discarding fish, seabirds perform local searches around the boats, which act as an "attracting force." As a result of such confined movement, the spreading of scavenging seabirds in the seascape decelerates with time, and movement patterns involve well-defined spatial scales related to the fishery activity.
In a nutshell, says Bartumeus: "Fishery activities impact the foraging ecology of seabirds at much larger spatiotemporal scales than one might expect intuitively. The macroscopic spreading properties of seabirds through the seascape are directly influenced by the presence of fishermen's boats discarding fish."
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U.S. household debt reached a record high in the first three months of this year, topping the previous peak reached in 2008, when the financial crisis plunged the economy into a deep recession.
Americans have stepped up borrowing over the past three years, yet the nature of what Americans owe has changed since the Great Recession. Student and auto loans make up a larger proportion of household debt, while mortgages — the epicenter of the financial crisis — and credit card debt remain below pre-recession levels. Those changes suggest households are still cautious about taking on debt to fuel day-to-day consumption.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Wednesday that household debt, which also includes home equity lines of credit, stood at $12.73 trillion in the first quarter. That's above the $12.68 trillion outstanding in the fall of 2008, the previous record. The figure isn't adjusted for inflation or population size.
Even with debt levels back to record heights, analysts note that household borrowing appears more sustainable now than it did nearly a decade ago. Interest rates are lower, and lenders are much more focused on credit-worthy borrowers.
"This record debt level is neither a reason to celebrate nor a cause for alarm," Donghoon Lee, research officer at the New York Fed said. "The debt and its borrowers look quite different today."
Measured as a percentage of the overall U.S. economy, household debt is still smaller than in 2008. It is equivalent to 67 percent of the economy now, compared with 85 percent nine years ago.
Americans also appear to be better able to handle the loans they've taken out. The percentage of all household debt that is seriously delinquent — meaning payments are 90 days or more overdue — is 3.4 percent. That's down from the post-recession peak of 8.7 percent in early 2010.
Just 203,000 Americans declared bankruptcy in the first three months of this year, the lowest in the 18 years that the New York Fed has tracked the data.
Still, there were some areas of concern. Auto loans have ballooned 44 percent to $1.17 trillion since the last peak in household debt nine years ago. And a greater percentage of those loans have fallen 90 days or more overdue: 3.8 percent now, up from 3.3 percent two years ago. Still, that's down from a recent peak of 5.3 percent in late 2010.
Student loans are also a potential trouble spot: They topped $1.3 trillion in the first quarter, soaring by 120 percent since 2008. Nearly 11 percent of that debt is 90 days overdue or more. The Fed estimates that the true figure could be double that amount, because many borrowers are able to defer loan payments while they continue their studies or if they are unemployed.
Danny Shepelow and his girlfriend reflect the new credit profile of many Americans, particularly younger ones. They are both in their early 30s.
The couple rents an apartment in Atlanta and pays off their credit cards every month. They have thought about buying a home but are holding off, despite earning a combined income of about $130,000.
They are also carrying more than $175,000 in student loan debt between them, requiring $1,100 in monthly payments.
Shepelow, who works in digital marketing, says he is skeptical about the value of a home as an investment. The home he grew up in fell sharply in value during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
"I saw my parents sitting on a house they couldn't sell, and when they did, getting three-fourths what it was worth a year earlier," he said.
Overall, more debt is now held by older and more credit-worthy Americans, which should make defaults less likely. Older households generally have higher incomes and wealth than younger ones.
Americans aged 60 and older hold 22.5 percent of all loans, up from 16 percent in 2008, the New York Fed said in a separate presentation in April.
The shift has been particularly dramatic in the case of mortgages, which have become much harder to obtain for Americans with lower credit scores. Loans to "subprime" borrowers, or those with lower credit scores, fueled much of the housing bubble.
Nearly 61 percent of new mortgages in the first quarter went to borrowers with credit scores of 760 or higher, according to the New York Fed's report. That's up from just 36 percent in 2008. Only about a third of Americans have a score that high.
Homeownership rates have fallen from a peak of 69 percent in 2005, during the housing bubble, to 63.6 percent now. That's kept total mortgage debt below pre-recession levels: There was $8.6 trillion outstanding in the first quarter compared with $9.3 trillion in 2008. Credit card balances are also lower than nine years ago, the Fed said.


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Airline: Delta
Incident Date: Oct 04, 2011
Report Date: December 2011
Incident Type: Death
Animal: Cat
Brachycephalic: No Definition
Animal Age: 4 years
Flight Number: 0014
Originating Airport: ATL (Hartsfield - Jackson Atlanta Intl)
Destination Airport: FRA (Frankfurt International Airport )
Reporting Airport: FRA (Frankfurt International Airport )
Carrier: Delta Air Lines
Flight Number: 0014
Date and Time of Incident 04 October 2011 – 7:30 AM
Type of Incident: Death
Description of Animal Breed: Domestic Short Hair cats Age: 4 and 14 years
Description of Incident:
Two cats had expired upon arrival at Frankfurt International Airport. The cats were traveling with their owner and missed their booked flight the previous day. The pets were held overnight in a commercial kennel where they were offered food and water. A dog traveling on the same flight arrived without incident. The aircraft was checked and all systems associated with cargo bin ventilation were found to be working normally. The flight crew indicated that all system controls were normal. Necropsies were performed. The translation of the necropsy for the first cat (4 years old) indicated the cause of death was a result of acute circulatory failure due to transport related stress. The vet indicated the animal was overweight at 8.26 kgs.
The second cat (14 years old) also suffered from circulatory failure due to transport related stress. The cat had endocardial fibrosis which resulted in damage to the lungs and liver. Both cats had subcutaneous injection hemorrhages detected on their hind legs.
Cause of Incident: Unknown
Corrective Action Taken: No corrective action indicated.
PetFlight Report:
December 2011 Airline Pet Travel Report
Original Report
Map of all airports that have reported an air travel, pet related incident.
The inspiration for PetFlight.


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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A year ago at this time, Utah quarterback Jordan Wynn was dancing with joy, celebrating a blowout win over rival BYU and seemingly dispelling critics who wondered if he could come back from yet another shoulder surgery.
On Tuesday, a disappointed yet composed Wynn was saying goodbye to the game that brought so many highs and lows - the last being a fourth shoulder injury that forced him to retire.
"Obviously it's not ideal how it ended, but I have no regrets and I'm walking away with my head held high," said Wynn, his left arm in a sling during Tuesday's news conference. "I went out and tried the best I could and worked hard. In the end, it was just not meant to be. In the end my shoulders just couldn't hold up."
Wynn said he expects to have surgery on his left shoulder - the third on the non-throwing arm and fourth overall - as soon as possible.
Wynn was hit hard with 1:04 left in the first half of an eventual 27-20 overtime loss Friday night to Utah State and knew immediately it was serious.
"That was the one that jarred it loose," Wynn said. "I watched it on tape and it was not a huge hit. But I got hit in the right spot for it to come out."
He said the shoulder dislocated in a different way than before and "what's holding it in place now is pretty shattered."
Wynn, 22, said he was grateful for the opportunity to play Division I football, which allowed him to earn a degree in economics this spring after 3 ½ years.
He finishes eighth on Utah's all-time passing charts with 4,637 yards - one of 11 quarterbacks in school history to throw for 4,000 yards. His 33 touchdowns are sixth-most by a Utes QB.
While many will remember the injuries, there were good times, especially early in his career.
Wynn arrived from Oceanside (Calif.) High School as a two-time all-state selection, and took over the starting job as a freshman in 2009.
In his first collegiate appearance, he rallied Utah to a victory over Wyoming by completing 9 of 14 passes for 82 yards and a touchdown.
The season would be the best ever for a Utah freshman as Wynn completed 104 of 179 passes for 1,329 yards, with eight touchdowns. He capped it by earning MVP honors in the Poinsettia Bowl, completing 26 of 36 passes for a season-high 338 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Cal.
The MVP trophy still sits on his nightstand.
As a sophomore, he threw three touchdown passes against Pittsburgh and passed for 325 yards against Iowa State.
Injuries struck that year, first to his thumb then to his right shoulder, the latter requiring season-ending surgery in December 2010.
His 2011 season would end in October with surgery to the dislocated left shoulder.
But not before that 54-10 victory over BYU in which he passed for two touchdowns then joined his teammates in a raucous locker room celebration.
"We lost to them down there my true freshman year then to get a win of that magnitude was icing," Wynn said. "It was fun. I was coming off another shoulder injury, but that was one of the games I had the most fun in my career."
Now he'll watch Saturday's from the sideline, helping the two players battling to replace him - senior Jon Hays and freshman Travis Wilson.
"Either of them can get the job done," Wynn said. "Jon went through the grinder last year. He has that experience and even got better this offseason."
Hays stepped in when Wynn underwent his second straight season-ending shoulder operation in October, and had a 6-3 record as a starter.
The 6-foot-7 Wilson, who has seen spot action in various wildcat packages, is considered the future and has as much arm strength but even more athleticism than Hays. He is 3 for 3 passing this season, with one passing TD, and two rushing touchdowns.
Whoever wins the job this week won't have it easy with rival BYU coming to town with a defense ranked No. 10 nationally (and tied for fourth in sacks with nine).
"The main thing is to try to stay poised," Wynn said. "I'll be on the sideline making sure they stay calm."
Wynn hopes to get into coaching, and would love an opportunity to remain part of Utah's program if that opportunity arises.
First, he had to get through the last four days.
"All weekend was kind of tough, off and on," he said. "I'd try to stay busy with my roommates and take my mind off it, but no doubt there were times when I'd sit in my room and it would set in that I'm never going to play football again."
Tuesday, he joked before the news conference that "I better not cry."
"But I have no regrets, no hostile emotions toward anyone," he said. "I can sleep at night. It's disappointing and saddening, but there are other things to life, one of them being my health."
He said he'd like to be able to use that left arm in the future, whether it's holding a clipboard, or continuing with his favorite hobby, golf.
After the news conference, he walked out with a smile after getting a slap on the other shoulder from a teammate. Then he thought back to the last prepared speech he had given, at his grandmother's funeral in May 2011.
"That was a lot tougher," he said.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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Construction | Handles | Blade Material | Cutting Edges | Knife Varieties To choose a knife that is of good quality and best fits your needs, you need a basic knowledge of the various parts and construction of a knife. It is also beneficial to be familiar with the varieties of knives that are available. The information below should be helpful in selecting and maintaining your knives.
Blade Manufacturing There are basically two methods that are used to manufacture blades. The blades are either forged or stamped. It is felt that the forging process produces a better quality blade. The two processes are explained below.
The material a knife blade is made from will affect the durability and maintenance of the knife. Factors to consider when determining if the blade material will suit your needs are how the knife will be used, how easy it is to sharpen, how well it keeps a sharp edge, and how susceptible is it to corrosion. The information below should help in understanding the qualities of the most common blade materials available.
Knife handles are generally made of wood, plastic, metal or a combination of wood and plastic. Some pros and cons of different types of handle materials are shown below.
The following descriptions and images of different varieties of knives are general examples only. Although the basics of each knife style is the same, different manufacturers have different design variations for each type of knife. Bird's Beak Knife | Boning Knife | Butter Knife | Ceramic Knife There are several things to consider when you are going to purchase knives, such as price, functionality, maintenance, and comfort. When purchasing knives, always purchase the best quality you can afford. Good quality knives will make the task of using them more efficient and they will last much longer than less expensive knives. When choosing knives, consider the tips below to ensure that you purchase the right knife for you. Tips for Choosing the Right Knife:
Maintaining and Storing Knives
Tools for Sharpening Knives
Knife Sharpening Most knives will need sharpening after three to five months of normal usage. In-between sharpening times the knife may need to be steeled to maintain the sharp edge on the blade. There are several methods and techniques that can be used for sharpening knives. Shown below is one method using a sharpening stone and steel.
Remember that keeping your knives sharpened will make using them easier and more efficient. It is also safer to have a sharp knife than to have it dull when trying to use it. A dull knife often results in the blade slipping off items you are trying to cut, presenting more of a chance of causing an accidental cut. |