New Level of Political Attack Ad Reached

The ad from Dwight McKenna, a candidate for Orleans Parish Coroner, attacks the incumbent coroner, Frank Minyard, as a Dr. Frankenstein who sells body parts — complete with an assistant Igor.

The basis for the accusations are overblown a little, but this IS a political ad, so not surprising.

Coroner Frank Minyard and the underground trafficking of body parts

Posted in News, Political, Random.

Comments

By eliminat – February 2, 2010

US Consumer Debt Statistics

These are not happy statistics. Debt can help the economy and even consumers when used properly, but unfortunately these numbers are instead scary.

Statistics of a recent Consumer Reports survey:

• One-third of Americans do not own a credit card.
• 54% pay their balance in full each month
• 33% carry balances up to $10,000 (median balance: $2,254)
• 13% carry balances over $10,000 (median balance: $17,366)
• 21% of consumers said they were treated unfairly by card companies and 32% have paid off and closed a card since January 2008. Half of those that canceled did so in direct response to the actions of credit-card issuers, such as cutting limits, hiking rates, or imposing fees.
• 45% of survey respondents say they are charging less
• 11% are charging more than they did a year ago
(source: Consumer Reports Magazine, November 2009)

Posted in News, Random, Uncategorized.

Tagged with consumer debt, consumer reports magazine, consumer reports survey, consumers, credit card issuers, debt statistics, direct response, economy, scary statistics, survey respondents.

Comments

By eliminat – January 23, 2010

Keep Up With the Supreme Court With SCOTUSBlog

Much attention is focused in the news every day on Congress and especially on the President of the United States. Many news networks often seem to forget the third, yet equally important branch of the United States, the Supreme Court. SCOTUSBlog is a blog dedicated to covering the daily happenings in the Supreme Court, both in legal terms and everyday terms. For people interested in the law, politics, their rights, or how the government works it is a very useful and informative site. Also very useful for research into cases and proceedings.

SCOTUSBlog

Also provided is a wiki about cases and statistics.

SCOTUSWiki

Posted in Random.

Comments

By eliminat – January 19, 2010

How to fix iPhone – Outlook – Sync Problems

A few people I know (not me personally, I don’t currently own any Apple products) have had problems sync’ing their Outlook and iPhone calendars. Below are the fixes that I’ve found have worked depending on the specific causes. I suggest trying them in this order.

Fix 1:

1) Open iTunes
2) under “edit” open “preferences”
3) under the tab “Devices” click the button “reset sync history”
4) sync

Fix 2: Many people have reported better luck when their Outlook PST was in the newer Unicode Format.

Determine the format of your PST file:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/out…
Convert your PST file:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/out…

Fix 3:

download the Microsoft Live Maps Add-in for Outlook via the following address:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/de…

Then once completely installed, immediately go into Add/Remove Programs and remove it. Attempt a re-sync with iTunes.

Fix 4:

Export your calendar into a comma separated values file and import into another calendar. Sync to the new calendar.

If you know of, or find an additional possible fix, leave it in the comments.

Posted in Random, Tech.

Tagged with apple products, calendar, comma separated values, fix, format, itunes 2, microsoft com downloads, Outlook, PST, sync, unicode format, www microsoft com downloads.

Comments

By eliminat – January 15, 2010

Top Major Shipping Lanes and Ports in the World

If you’ve ever wondered how busy the oceans are, or where things are shipped to/from over the oceans, this is a fascinating map. It lists the top 20 ports, as well as showing the top shipping lanes on the world’s oceans. You can also easily see the connection between wealthy nations (the US, Western European nations, China) and the number of ports/trade routes between them as opposed to South America, and Africa.

If you’re gonna be lost at sea, and want the best chance of being found, the North Atlantic is definitely the place to do it.

Source: Pablo Kaluza et al., “The complex network of global cargo ship movements,” 1001.2172 (January 13, 2010), http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.2172.

Posted in News, Random.

Tagged with Africa, cargo ship, China, complex network, connection, map, North Atlantic, number, Pablo Kaluza, ship movements, shipping, shipping lanes, South America, trade, trade routes, US, wealthy nations, Western European, World.