Industry Brief : Panasonic President Will Deliver 2013 International CES Opening Keynote

June 29, 2012

Arlington, VA?Kazuhiro Tsuga, the new president of Panasonic Corp., will kick off the 2013 International CES with his opening day keynote address on January 8 at the Venetian Palazzo Ballroom in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Tsuga will share his vision of the future of Panasonic and its leadership in green innovation. Under his direction, Panasonic is looking to become the electronics industry leader in green innovation by the company?s 100th anniversary in 2018.

Tsuga's keynote address will follow the State of the Industry Address by Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, the owner and producer of the International CES.

For more information on the 2013 International CES, go to CESweb.org. Free registration for CES opens July 9, 2012.

Source: http://www.photoreporter.com/article/panasonic-president-will-deliver-2013-international-ces-opening-keynote/1

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Venezuelan TV channel pays $2.2 million fine

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? The Venezuelan television channel Globovision on Friday paid a fine of more than $2 million imposed by regulators, calling it an unfair penalty but saying it had no choice after the Supreme Court ordered an embargo on its assets for nonpayment.

The channel, which takes a critical stance against President Hugo Chavez's government, has been trying to challenge the fine. Broadcast regulators slapped the penalty on the channel last year for its coverage of a prolonged prison uprising.

"We came to pay the unjust and disproportionate fine," said Carlos Zuloaga, Globovision's vice president, who spoke outside the Supreme Court building with other station executives, accompanied by employees and supporters.

Globovision paid the fine a day after the Supreme Court ordered an embargo on nearly $5.7 million in assets belonging to the channel. Zuloaga said the station paid about 9.4 million bolivars, equivalent to $2.2 million.

He said the court should immediately lift the embargo order now that the fine has been paid. He noted the channel still has legal appeals pending and said Globovision "is going to continue fighting."

"We have an obligation to keep Globovision open," he said.

Telecommunications regulators last year imposed the fine against Globovision accusing it of "justifying crime," ''altering the public order" and promoting political intolerance during its coverage of an intervention by troops to quash rioting at El Rodeo prison.

The telecommunication commission's director general, Pedro Maldonado, said at the time that for four days Globovision broadcast 18 emotional reports with relatives of the prisoners and repeated them almost 300 times, adding the sound of gunfire over the reports.

The June 2011 prison riot erupted after troops raided one of two adjacent prisons looking for weapons. The raid set off gunfights that left three dead, and the standoff finally ended with negotiations after 27 days. Authorities said four inmates who escaped also were slain by soldiers.

Globovision has accused Chavez's government of trying to shut it down, and has said it did nothing wrong. Government officials have repeatedly accused the channel of violating broadcast regulations.

Press freedom groups condemned the Supreme Court's decision ordering the embargo on the channel's assets.

Reporters Without Borders called it "a dangerous precedent for freedom to report the news, given the disproportionate financial penalty that threatens the very survival of the media organization."

The Inter American Press Association similarly criticized the court's order in a statement, saying it was a "flagrant attack on press freedom."

Globovision, a 24-hour news network, provides a key outlet for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles to get out his message ahead of Venezuela's Oct. 7 presidential vote, while state television and other state-run media are largely monopolized by coverage of Chavez's appearances and other government events.

Globovision has been the only stridently anti-Chavez channel on the air in Venezuela since another opposition-aligned station, RCTV, was forced off cable and satellite TV in 2010. RCTV had been booted off the open airwaves in 2007 when the government refused to renew its broadcast license.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-06-29-Venezuela-Anti-Chavez%20TV/id-64bf861b40a34d26b6f91538d3ad0e50

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When the aliens call, who'll answer?

Gail Shumway / Getty Images

In a recently conducted poll, 19 percent of the respondents said they thought Washington, D.C., would be the most likely landing zone for a UFO. But if that ever happened, who's the best person to lead the welcoming party? About 65 percent said they'd rather have Barack Obama than Mitt Romney handle the situation.

By Alan Boyle

A new poll suggests that 77 percent of Americans think there's evidence that aliens have already visited Earth. The same poll suggests most Americans think President Barack Obama would do a better job than presumptive GOP challenger Mitt Romney if we had to fight off an alien invasion. And if we have to rely on a superhero to save us, they'd rather go with the Hulk than Batman.

That somewhat silly survey was conducted to tout a "Chasing UFOs" TV series on the National Geographic Channel, but the results raise a serious question: If an alien civilization does get in touch with us, who's in charge of figuring out what to do?

"Nobody's in charge," says Seth Shostak, who is senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute as well as the chairman of the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study Group.?Shostak and I will be talking about SETI?? the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?? as well as its serious and silly implications on "Virtually Speaking Science." The talk-show program gets under way at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT/SLT) on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world. If you can't tune in on time, don't fret: The hourlong program will be archived on the Web and on iTunes.

---

As the poll done for National Geographic suggests, a good number of people suspect the aliens have already arrived, presumably on UFOs or through interdimensional travel. Most scientists scoff at that idea. "Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?" British physicist Stephen Hawking asked earlier this month. But Shostak thinks it's only a matter of time before extraterrestrial civilizations actually do make themselves known, by sending signals across the light-years. Almost a decade ago, he predicted that we'd detect those signals by the year 2025, and today he told me he's sticking by that prediction.

During our pre-show interview, Shostak laid out his rationale for the 2025 date and discussed how an alien-contact scenario is likely to go down. Check out this edited transcript of the Q&A, and join us for "Virtually Speaking Science" tonight.

Cosmic Log: Do you still feel that 2025 is a good time frame for alien contact? And maybe more importantly, how do we know we're getting closer to the date?

Shostak: People ask, 'Are you getting close?' And we no more know whether we're getting close than Chris Columbus knew he was getting close to the Americas?? we might some palm fronds a day or two out, but other than that, we don't know. In some sense, it' come as a complete surprise if we get a signal. We know that from false alarms. They never occur when you expect them, because you never expect them.

But in terms of the prediction, that's based on the following: We're looking for needles in a haystack. If you ask, when are you going to find a needle, you need to know three things: How big is the haystack? How fast are you going through the hay? And how many needles are in there? We know two out of three. The haystack's the galaxy, and we know how fast we're going through it. We don't know the number of needles. So I took estimates of the number from the Drake Equation, and figured that it's two dozen years out. What's happened in the meantime is that the funding crisis has slowed things down a bit.

Q: Do you think you need to revise the 2025 date?

A: I think 2025, 2030 is about right, given that we can continue to do the experiment.

Q: Is it a steady process, or is there an increasing rate of hay examination?

A: This is all predicated on an increasing rate. That's the march of technology, which is mostly digital electronics. Computers keep getting faster and faster at any given price point, and that's good news for us. We can look at a larger chunk of the radio dial at once. We can go through the stars faster. Or we can look at bigger hunks of sky at once. It's mostly computing power that is responsible for the increasing speed of SETI. We're not sitting around with earphones the way Jodie Foster was.

Q: Could it be that the patterns of communication by extraterrestrial civilizations take a form completely different from what we assume?

A:?We kind of know what areas SETI is weak in. It's been slow, in the sense that you've got a couple of hundred billion star systems in the galaxy, and if you can look at only a couple a day, that's really slow going. That might take forever. Can we look at more stars in a given time, with adequate sensitivity?

The second thing is, it may be that you really have to look for a long time at any given star system. Of course, we don't do that. We look at any given star system, at any given frequency, for at most a few minutes. Some other search programs look for one and a half seconds at any given star system.?If the aliens are broadcasting in our direction once a week, or once a day, or once an hour, we're not going to see it. We know that's a problem.

Another issue is that the aliens may not know we're here because they haven't picked up 'I Love Lucy' yet. They don't know Homo sapiens is here, they just know that Earth is a planet with biology. They may not be motivated to target us relentlessly with reality television. They may broadcast now and then, with a little ping just to see if anybody's here. You really need an experiment that can pick up an intermittent, maybe one-off signal that's designed to ping the planet. Everybody knows that. That's a technology issue, but it's an issue that's getting better.

Q: Has anybody come up with a concept for an all-sky, all-the-time receiver?

A: Yeah, well, all-sky, all the time, all frequencies?? that's what you'd looove to have. On paper, you can design an instrument that can look at the entire sky. All frequencies, that's another problem, but you can certainly cover more frequencies than we do. It's all a question of whether you can afford to build such an instrument. The answer is, no, not now. It takes an enormous amount of computing power to do that. However, one thing you can say about the future is that there will be more computing power. This is not impossible. This is not like building rockets to go at 99 percent of the speed of light. That might work on paper, too, but in practice, that's a long way off. But this is something where you can say, with the computing power of a few decades hence, it becomes a practical thing.

Q: Assuming that alien signals are detected by 2025, is humanity ready for that?

A: Well, I don't know how much planning has been done. We've revised some protocols, but those are just the immediate steps you take if you pick up a signal. They deal with practical matters, like checking the signals out and alerting everybody. But I don't know that there's any large-scale effort to prepare humanity, any more than there was any preparation by the Indians in the Caribbean in case a Spanish ship showed up. I don't think that's a problem, to be honest. In poll after poll, the public has said they believe the aliens are out there. They see them on television every night, and at the movies every third weekend. A third of 'em think the aliens are already here, but they don't see a problem with that, either. Nobody's staying home. Everybody's still going to work.

I think that psychologically, everybody could handle it. It's just be a big news item. Whatever it would be, people would find it interesting. But they'd be savvy enough to realize there's no immediate threat. The aliens would be 500 light-years away, and we pick up their signal. ?There's no reason to think that people would go just completely non-linear.

The long-term consequences are less predictable. People would ask, should we broadcast back? Should we send a rocket in that direction? What should we do?

Q: Who would be in charge if there was an alien signal? Assuming that scientists confirm that there's an anomalous signal pattern, hinting at extraterrestrial intelligence, what's the procedure?

A: I don't think that there's anybody designated to be in charge. There was a flap a few years ago, involving an official at the U.N., but that was all a red herring. She quickly admitted that she's not in charge. Nobody's in charge.

Look, the real people who will be in charge will be the media, because they'll be reporting it. In some sense, whoever finds the signal is probably in charge. If it's us, then somebody at the SETI Institute will be called. Or suppose it's the Berkeley group. Well, they're in charge. Or maybe it's a group that comes across the signal by accident. There's no hierarchy. Anyway, you know how the media work?? they're not going to follow the rules.

There's no danger in any of this, except for one thing: That's the idea that you're sitting around, and suddenly there's a signal, and you call a press conference. That's not the way it will happen. We get signals all the time, and someday one of those signals will pass all the tests, and it slowly emerges as a real signal. But it takes something on the order of five days before you're convinced. During all that time, the media knows about this, because there is no secrecy. But there's no press conference yet, because the scientists aren't yet sure themselves. This time lag means there will be all sorts of stories before the official word is out. It isn't because of leakage, it's because anytime anybody finds something interesting, they may mention it. They'll put it on their blog. Who knows what they'll do?

It'll be very, very messy. And the corollary to this is that you can probably expect a lot of false alarms. There'll be something interesting, and a lot of people will write about it, and three days later it turns out to be nothing.

Q: Some people worry that our own radio signals are advertising our presence in what could be a rough neighborhood, but I take it that's not a concern of yours.

A:?There are people who get their knickers in a knot about this deliberate broadcast stuff. National Geographic is supposed to be collecting tweets to broadcast as an answer to the "Wow Signal." I personally don't get heartburn about broadcasting. The fact is that NBC is broadcasting all the time, right? You can say, well, that's a weak signal. Sure it is. But if you're really worried about broadcasting into space, don't just shut down the publicity stunts. You better shut down the radars at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, too. They're broadcasting into space all the time.

Tune in "Virtually Speaking Science" on BlogTalkRadio or in Second Life?? and bring lots of questions. Seth Shostak and I will be at the StellaNova Small Auditorium, courtesy of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, starting at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT/SLT) tonight. If you miss the live event, don't worry: It'll be archived by "Virtually Speaking" on BlogTalkRadio as well as iTunes.

More nuggets from the National Geographic UFO poll:?

• The "Aliens Among Us" survey polled a random nationwide sample of 1,114 Americans between May 21 and May 29. The poll was conducted by Kelton Research, which used email invitations and online surveys. Quotas were set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the total U.S. population ages 18 and older. Margin of error is +/- 2.9 percent.
• More than one-third of those surveyed (36 percent) believe UFOs exist. Eleven percent are confident they've spotted a UFO, and 20 percent know someone who claims to have seen one.
• Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) said Obama would be better-suited than Romney to handle an alien invasion. Seventy-nine percent believe the government has kept information about UFOs a secret from the public. Nineteen percent think Washington, D.C., is the most likely landing zone for a UFO, while 28 percent think a UFO would touch down in Roswell, N.M.
• Seventy-seven percent think there are signs that suggest aliens have visited Earth. Most of these people said that the evidence came in the form of photographs (60 percent) and videos (57 percent) of UFOs.
• If aliens landed, 22 percent said they would try to befriend the visitors. Fifteen percent said they would run away, 13 percent said they would lock their doors, and 2 percent said they would try to inflict bodily harm.
• Seventy-one percent think that aliens are more likely to exist than are superheroes, vampires and zombies. But if aliens attacked Earth, 21 percent said they would most likely call on the Hulk to deal with the havoc, compared with Batman (12 percent) or Spider-Man (8 percent). Fifty-five percent believe there really are officials like the "Men in Black" who claim to be agents and threaten those who come forward with UFO sightings.?

Previous episodes of "Virtually Speaking Science":

---

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/27/12444154-when-the-aliens-call-wholl-answer?lite

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California Anticipates Health Care Ruling

Californians are waking up to news from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding its ruling that upholds a key component of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.

As one of the law's biggest financial beneficiaries, the state stands to gain as much as $15 billion annually in federal money for health programs.

Justices issued their ruling Thursday morning, upholding the individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance. The court said the mandate couldn?t be upheld under the commerce clause, but said it could be upheld under existing tax authority, NBC News reported.

The court may rule separately on the constitutionality of new Medicaid requirements for states. There's also the question of whether all changes must wait until 2014, when the law is fully in effect.

While the White House has said it was confident the court will uphold the law, GOP Congressional leaders vowed to repeal ?what?s left of it? after the justices announce their ruling.

California has been a model for the federal health care overhaul since the law's passage and has begun implementing parts of it already, including the beginnings of health care exchanges. The exchanges that would provide a marketplace for consumers to purchase insurance policies, starting in 2014.

The state also has banned insurers from refusing coverage for children with pre-existing illnesses and allowed young adults to stay on their parents' plans through age 26.

California passed its own state legislation to ensure those measures would be preserved even if the federal law was thrown out. There are 7.2 million uninsured California residents, according to statistics compiled by the Associated Press.

Refresh this page for updates.

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Hands-On With The Newly Revamped Snip.it: Where Pinterest Meets News, And So Much More

They really are doing face-lifts younger and younger these days. It was just eight months ago in October 2011 when we first met Snip.it, a San Francisco-based startup that has created a web application for people to "snip," collect, and comment on, and share their favorite articles from all over the web. But for Snip.it, it's already high time for a makeover: Today the company is unveiling a top-to-bottom rebuild of its service with a faster, revamped user experience and a heaping handful of new features.

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Alaska glacier wreckage is 1950s military plane

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) ? The wreckage of a military plane found this month on an Alaska glacier is that of an Air Force plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard, military officials said Wednesday.

Army Capt. Jamie Dobson said evidence found at the crash site correlates with the missing C-124A Globemaster, but the military is not eliminating other possibilities because much investigation still needs to be done.

Processing DNA samples from relatives of those on board the plane could take up to six years, Dobson said.

"We're still at the very beginning of this investigation," she said. "This is very close to the starting line, not the finish line."

The Alaska National Guard discovered the wreckage and possibly bones June 10 on Colony Glacier, about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The wreckage was spotted soon after the heavy transport plane vanished Nov. 22, 1952, with 41 passengers and 11 crew members, but it became buried in snow and likely churned beneath the surface of the glacier for decades, Dobson said.

"The ice gives up what it wants to give up when it wants to give it up," she said. "It's really in control."

The plane went down on a flight from McChord Air Force Base in Washington state.

An Associated Press report on Nov. 24, 1952, said the Globemaster was the third big Air Force transport plane to crash or vanish in Alaska that month and the sixth around the Pacific Rim.

Soon after the crash, a 12-member military team tried three times to make it to the site, but was thwarted by bad weather, said Tonja Anderson, whose grandfather Isaac Anderson was among those on board the doomed flight. The 41-year-old Tampa, Fla., woman has researched the crash for 12 years since her grandmother, now deceased, gave her details of the airman who died at age 21, leaving behind a young widow and 1 ?-year-old son.

"I'm overwhelmed," Anderson said Wednesday about the positive identification. It's something she has tried to long get from the military, she said, only to be told that recovering the remains from the plane's hidden grave was unfeasible and would be too expensive.

"If they can bring me one bone of my grandfather or his dog tag, that would be closure for me," she said.

Days after the Globemaster went down, a member of the Fairbanks Civil Air Patrol, along with a member of the 10th Air Rescue Squadron, landed at a glacier in the area and positively identified the wreckage as the Globemaster.

According to an AP account, the civil air patrol member was Terris Moore, who was president of the University of Alaska. After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane "obviously was flying at full speed" when it hit Mount Gannett, sliding down the snow-covered cliffs, exploding and disintegrating over two or three acres.

Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were enough for an identification. Moore said blood was found on a piece of blanket and there was a "sickly-sweet smell of death."

The debris was discovered June 14 while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier. The guardsmen flew over the area several times.

Federal aviation officials implemented temporary flight restrictions over the area while the military investigation was conducted.

An eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week, military officials said. It completed its work Tuesday at the glacier.

The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the wreckage and possible bones from the glacier. The evidence was being taken to the command's lab in Hawaii for analysis.

___

Associated Press researcher Susan James in New York contributed to this report.

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Climate Science Gets a Hug in U.S. Court Decision

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Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Game Cheats | Gta4universe Game ...

With just one 12 months of improvement Grant Theft Auto III adopted and it was an instantaneous success with all PC racing recreation players. So what happens when Rockstar North takes two yr to develop the next sport within the sequence? The Grand Theft Auto San Andreas recreation happened. Larger than life and packed with action the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas recreation takes the participant not via one metropolis but by means of an entire state with three distinct cities and lots of of miles of countryside to quench the players thirst for exploration.

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Screenwriter Nora Ephron Dead At 71

Oscar-nominated writer of 'Sleepless in Seattle' and 'When Harry Met Sally ... ' died of pneumonia.
By Josh Wigler

Nora Ephron
Photo:

Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and director Nora Ephron died Tuesday (June 26) from pneumonia. She was 71. News of Ephron's passing first hit the Internet late Tuesday when journalist Liz Smith, a friend of Ephron's, published a column remembering the late director.

"She never gave the answer I expected to anything. She was grave in her humor, which made it deadly, unexpected, truly funny and dauntingly intelligent," wrote Smith. "She seemed never to want or expect anything, while always demanding the best from the rest of us. She was — always — right and somehow left the smartest, most ambitious and silliest of us in the dust at her feet."

Ephron lived a storied life both on set and behind the scenes. Born in New York City in 1941 and raised in Beverly Hills, California, Ephron worked as a journalist for numerous years before trying her hand writing and directing for film. Her writing appeared in such outlets as Esquire and New York, and she was even married to Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame from 1976 until 1980. She later wed screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi in 1987; they remained married until the time of her death.

In 1983, Ephron's first major Hollywood movie, "Silkwood," arrived in theaters. Starring marquee names including Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher, Ephron's "Silkwood" was based on the true story of Karen Silkwood, who was killed in a suspicious accident during her investigation into the unethical practices of the nuclear power plant that employed her. The film was nominated for five Oscars, including one for Ephron's screenplay.

Over the course of her career, Ephron cemented her place in Hollywood as one of the industry's finest romantic comedy writers. She wrote the iconic "When Harry Met Sally ... " and directed numerous films, including the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan-starring "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail." Her final film as writer and director was "Julie & Julia."

"I won't say, 'Rest in peace, Nora,' " Smith wrote in her eulogy of Ephron. "I will just ask, 'What the hell will we do without you?' "

Share your condolences for Ephron's family and friends in the comments.

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Why I became a Creative Memories Consultant | thecreativemummy

I have been scrapbooking?for nearly 8 years and I have one person to thank for that, my good friend Nat. When I was teaching year 1 I taught her daughter and she asked me along to one of her workshops. I had a ball and became hooked. I started with my wedding album, which then led into Oscar?s baby album and there was no turning back. A few years ago Nat and her family decided to move to Adelaide. I joined another consultant and she encouraged me to become a Creative Memories consultant. Well after lots of thought I agreed.

It is perfect, I get the latest products, I make a little extra money (which normally pays for my scrapbooking), I do what I love ? teach and be creative, I get to socialise and share. Best of all I get to scrapbook. I host monthly workshops in the evenings, all day/night workshops and we like to have a bit of fun on Melbourne Cup day and other special days. I also have started to host kid?s workshops in the school holidays. This has been a big hit!

For those of you who are thinking what is Creative Memories? Here is a brief outline of what Creative Memories can offer?

What is Creative Memories?

Creative Memories will teach you how to properly organise, store and display photos and memorabilia in photo-safe albums. We believe in telling the stories behind your photos by adding simple journaling to your album pages to share the things that are important to you and what makes each photo so special. Creative Memories now offers a diverse range of products, including digital and Home Decor, to help you celebrate those special moments and preserve your memories!

All Creative Memories products have been extensively tested to be photo-safe, ensuring your photos are protected to live on for generations to come. You can make an album for your children or grandchildren. It is a great way to show them how much you love them and how special they are. You can even create a heritage album on your family tree and include stories of your parents and grandparents. You can create albums on any topic, holidays, anniversaries or even create your own stunning wedding album.

People often say to me ?Oh I can?t do scrapbooking I?m not creative?. Creative Memories makes it really easy for you. The products come in different collections that helps take the thinking out of it. As well as provides you with lots of ideas on how you can use their products. It is very unique and you can make it as simple or as detailed as you like. So if you want to preserve your photos and share your family?s stories, why not give it a go!

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• Scrapbooking for holiday?s (thecreativemummy.wordpress.com)

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Great Moments in Google Auto-Complete

As you've surely seen countless times, Google's auto-complete feature fills in what it thinks you might be searching for when you start to type a query.

Most of the time, especially if you enter more than 2-3 words, this can be fast, helpful and surprisingly accurate. Sometimes, though, it's just hilarious.

Take this example. When you simply type "Is", the search engine suggests five apparently common searches, and five great questions of our time:

Behold, a snapshot into the mind of America's search engine subconscious.

Is the Mitt Romney campaign getting nervous? Really? No clue why it would be right now, as President Obama looks shaky as ever. Nervous in that he might blow it?

Only slightly less on the mind of Google users is whether or not Comedy Central star Daniel Tosh is homosexual. Definitely a profound topic of debate.

Snooki, pneumonia contagiousness and Twitter crashing round out this amazing top five. Twitter really does go down a lot for a site of its stature.

Follow the jump for more great Google auto-complete results:

Is it a boy or a girl? Who knew Google was an ultrasound tech!

The long and short of it: People are rather obsessed with all things gay and medical, and incapable of looking out the window to see if it's raining right now.

Finally, the time-honored, philosophical questions of whether God and/or vampires really exist remain unanswered. The Vampire Diaries isn't proof enough??

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Is This War in Afghanistan or on the Moon? [Image Cache]

Another day, another drone—but this RQ-7 Shadow looks like it's being launched in the vacuum of space against some lunar insurgency. More »

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Give a Graduate the Gift of Investing | theprimagecorp.com

By EMILY GLAZER

If you want to give a high-school or college graduate a gift with a big financial impact, go beyond writing a check.

Giving the gift of investing?with individual stocks, bonds or investment accounts and even some financial planning?will help a young adult get started on the long road to financial security.

Individual Stocks

One way to engage young adults in investing is by having them invest in things they know and like. So why not buy a graduate a few shares in, say, a tech company, a favorite retailer or eatery. Chat about why you think that particular stock is a good pick (you should be confident that it is before buying) and a good long-term investment.

Stephen Horan, head of private wealth at the CFA Institute, a nonprofit association of investment professionals, says he received stock in American Electric Power from his grandmother when he was 20. ?It gave me the experience of what it meant to own a stock, what the process was, what a brokerage account statement looked like,? says the now 44-year-old.

Shares in companies that sell consumer staples (think soap and toilet paper) may not be exciting, but they tend to fare well in down times. So they are good options for long-term growth. And many of these companies offer dividend reinvestment plans, or DRIPs, in which stock dividends can be automatically reinvested, says Dayana Yochim, consumer finance expert at financial-services firm Motley Fool.

Elwood Smith

Ms. Yochim says she gave her teenage nephew a beginning investor kit for $100 through discount brokerage ShareBuilder.com so he could buy shares that offer DRIPs. ?It was the perfect example that you don?t have to have thousands of dollars to get started,? she says.

Another option is to transfer stocks and bonds you already own to the grad so he or she can reap any capital gains?and learn about managing wealth?says Kimberly Foss, founder of wealth-management firm Empyrion Wealth Management.

Bonds

Many people still prefer giving low-risk investments like Treasury bonds. For those, Mr. Horan suggests Series I savings bonds, which have a variable rate that?s adjusted for inflation every six months. Such products will teach the grad that the buying power of the dollar changes over time. But with the paltry rates on bonds these days, you may want to limit the amount of money you invest in these, he says. Series I bonds can be purchased online for a minimum of $25 at TreasuryDirect.gov.

Investment Accounts

If the graduate has a job and has earned taxable income this year, get him or her started on retirement planning with a Roth individual retirement account. Since contributions to a Roth are made with post-tax income, withdrawals way down the road will be tax-free.

Consider matching some or all of his or her contributions for a period of time as an incentive. This will get the grad familiar with the concept of an employer match for retirement-savings plans, says Rande Spiegelman, a vice president at Charles Schwab. ?They?ll get into the habit of carving out whatever dollar amount they can afford per paycheck,? he says.

There?s no minimum initial investment required by law to open a Roth, though some IRA providers set their own minimums. You can contribute up to $5,000 annually to a Roth or as much as the person earns in one year, whichever is less.

Mr. Spiegelman suggests a Roth IRA with a low-cost index fund or exchange-traded fund, such as the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, which is broadly diversified. (Minimum investments may apply.)

Debt Relief

Consider giving a graduate a ?get-out-of-debt card? he or she can use in an emergency. Specify its amount and one-time use for specific situations, Ms. Yochim says.

?We?re not talking about a trip-to-Cancun emergency,? she says. ?We?re talking about a real one that could potentially really throw a wrench in their long-term financial well-being.?

A Little Advice

A session or two with a financial planner (fees can run about $100 to $300 per hour) will help a grad get started on saving, budgeting and paying down any debt. Those with a job lined up can get advice on allocating money in a 401(k) plan, choosing insurance and figuring out flexible spending accounts.

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page WSJ2

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Deregulation of Telecommunications in California "No price too high, no lie too big..."

? Telecommunications and information infrastructure rely on the Internet and IP/VoIP platforms.
? The California Public Utilities Commission must exercise regulatory oversight to provide equal access, basic protections and to overcome the Digital Divide.
? SB 1161 (Padilla) is an anti-consumer, anti-labor giveaway to major telecommunications corporations that seek to cut the regulatory powers of the California Public Utilities Commission.
? SB 1161 does nothing to stimulate innovation in Internet services; it claims deregulation will somehow do this, but it is a completely unproven article of faith, and a deceptive pretext for this special-interest legislation.

Stealth Campaign
SB 1161 has moved forward with the transparency of a stealth bomber. Subtitled, ?Communications: Voice over Internet Protocol and Internet Protocol enabled communications service? one must cut through the complex legalistic and technical wording to get to the core thrust of the legislation. Section 1 opens with statements that it is both a job creator and a staunch protector of the ?Open Internet?. These false and misleading claims reveal much about its sponsors and their objectives.

Claim: Section 1. (a)(3) finds and declares, ?California?s innovation economy is leading the state?s economic recovery. Silicon Valley alone added 42,000 jobs in 2011, an increase of 3.8 percent versus a national job growth rate of 1.1 percent. The newly designated ?app,? for application, economy has resulted in 466,000 new jobs nationwide, with 25 percent of that total created in California.?

Fact: Silicon Valley and IT based industries are extremely volatile and unsafe bets:
? In 2011, San Jose based Cisco Systems announced the layoffs of 6500 employees.
? In March of 2012, Sunnyvale-based Yahoo announced layoffs of 1000 or more employees.
? In May of 2012, Palo Alto based HP announced they would lay off 27,000 workers. This follows layoffs in previous years totaling over 20,000 workers.
? In a more recent development that received much attention and undeserved glory, Facebook had a public offering that started with a stock price of $38 dollars and within days dropped to $32. Not only is this a ?black eye? for Silicon Valley; it will have ripple effects throughout the industry, including underwriters in the banking sector, led by Morgan Stanley. To make matters worse, budget projections for the State of California were based on more than a billion dollars in tax revenues, which have disappeared in the devalued stock price.

?Creative Destruction?
In Silicon Valley it is known as ?creative destruction?, a long term pattern of ups and downs. Startups and their CEO?s run the gamut of ?quick launch?, stellar short-term profits, and bust, as a new ?product? hits the market. That phenomenon has been present in California?s past cycles of economic crisis when certain industries, including IT and housing were overvalued and propped up by a market of false expectations, speculation and greed. They gambled with California?s future by placing our hopes and economic prosperity on unsustainable, volatile market schemes. Californians would benefit far more from a stable approach based on solar and other sustainable energy sources, optical fiber broadband, public transportation, infrastructure improvement and other creative and traditional, incremental, value added industries.

Referring again to SB1161?s sponsors and their objectives, these became even more apparent in the key meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee held on 5/14/2012. The members were addressed by an army of ?suits? representing all the usual suspects. They were executives, lawyers and lobbyists from ATT, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, E-Bay, Qualcomm, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Microsoft (Skype) and Cisco Systems, to name a few.

In his presentation to Appropriations, Alex Padilla had the audacity to state, ?This week?s Facebook IPO, most estimate a $900 billion dollar IPO, would result in a $500 million dollar benefit this year and an additional $500 million next year.? He was referring to the revenue that would accrue to the California state budget; almost $1 billion dollars that disappeared overnight in ?creative destruction?.

Claim: Section 1(b)(2) finds and declares it will ?Ensure a vibrant and competitive open Internet that allows California?s technology businesses to continue to flourish and contribute to economic development throughout the state.?

Fact: Beyond Section 1, there is nothing in this bill that even mentions the ?Internet? open or closed, regulated or not. In fact, the only language that has anything to do with the ?Internet? is ?Voice over Internet Protocol? (VoIP) and ?Internet Protocol? (IP) based platforms for telecommunications services.

Claim: In Section 2 (a)(2), the bill purports to preserve the traditional copper based Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), by excluding any ?service that uses ordinary customer premises equipment with no enhanced functionality that originates and terminates on the public switched telephone network, undergoes no net protocol conversion, and provides no enhanced functionality to end users due to the provider?s use of Internet Protocol technology??

Fact: In the same section, it describes VoIP and IP enabled service as any service that: ?Permits a user generally to receive a call that originates on the public switched telephone network and to terminate a call to the public switched telephone network? and ?any service, capability, functionality, or application using existing Internet Protocol, or any successor Internet Protocol, that enables an end user to send or receive a communication in existing Internet Protocol format, or any successor Internet Protocol format through a broadband connection, regardless of whether the communication is voice, data, or video.?

The legalistic play in the wording makes it difficult for the non-expert reader to see that SB1161 could potentially apply to any call that travels for any portion of its trip over an IP based platform, whether originating, terminating or ?IP in the Middle?. At this time, VoIP phone service makes up over one quarter of California?s 10.4 million residential telephone subscriptions, although the volume of calls is much higher. The goal of the industry is to switch all phone service to this network. Long before that is achieved; no call made in California will fall under regulatory oversight.
.
Claim: In regards to the California Public Utilities Commission the bill, ?...does not affect any existing regulation of or existing commission authority over, non-VoIP and other non-IP enabled wireline or wireless service, including regulations governing universal service and the offering of basic service and lifeline service.?

Fact: In the May meeting of the CPUC in Fresno, the majority of the commissioners were very clear in their opposition to SB 1161 because they understood that it would remove oversight. However in a slick maneuver, Alex Padilla launched a last minute protest of a staff report that placed the cost of implementation at $1 billion dollars. He said the data had not been ?vetted? and caused the CPUC to postpone their vote.

f SB 1161 prevails, it will definitely have a negative impact on the CPUC?s oversight of the landline quality of service and consumer protections. Also, in regards to VoIP/IP communications services, in 2011, the Consumer Protection and Safety Division of the CPUC submitted a motion for modification of the scope of rulemaking to extend consumer protection. According to this motion, VoIP and IP based services fall within the definition of telecommunications and as such, are subject to the Service Quality Measurements and other reporting procedures designed to protect consumers.

It has long been the position of consumer groups that not only telecommunications but access to broadband and other internet-based information services should be regulated to assure equitable treatment of poor, rural and inner-city communities. SB 1161 would be another blow to the regulatory framework for oversight of access to broadband and internet-based information services, potentially increasing the digital divide.

Despite the statement to the contrary, it is the regulatory authority of the CPUC that is the actual target of SB1161 as is revealed in the following paragraph:

?No department, agency, commission, or political subdivision of the state shall enact, adopt, or enforce any law, rule, regulation, ordinance, standard, order, or other provision having the force or effect of law, that regulates VoIP or other IP enabled service, unless required or expressly delegated by federal law or expressly authorized by statute or pursuant to subdivision??

Note: In order to cut through the misleading language, one must understand the difference between ?Internet? and VoIP/IP. They both require broadband access and use a unique set of numbers and sub-nets i.e. ?75.23.145.75? that comprise the IP ?address? of the end user. However, ?nomadic? services such as Skype, route calls over the Internet, while VoIP/IP calls travel a separate path. VoIP/IP calls begin and/or end at a phone set with a fixed location and use the provider?s network as the bridge to the Public Switched Telephone Network and the world. ?Nomadic? services connect the user via the Internet, wherever they are. Recently, Skype can connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network at a cost per minute or month, but with spotty results and quality. This is not to be confused with cell phone service.

Who are Alex Padilla and Steven Bradford?
Alex Padilla is the State Senator for the 20th Senate District, Los Angeles area and Chair of the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. He wrote SB 1161 on the behalf of ATT, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and other companies that as and industry have contributed over $57,000 to his re-election campaigns.* Unfortunately he has also received huge sums of money from the labor movement in California. He was known as a friend to Labor, and particularly CWA, but now should be considered ?the Senator from ATT?.

Steven Bradford is the California Assembly Representative from the 51st Assembly District, Gardena, and the Chair of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee which has to clear the bill before it goes to the full Assembly. He is also the principal co-author of the bill. In this case he could be considered the ?Assembly Representative from ATT? who has received ample support both from the industry and from labor.

*MapLight?s Money & Politics

The American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC) and Deregulation
One important discovery in the investigation of deregulation across the United States is the deep collaboration between ALEC and ATT. ALEC is the largest membership association of state legislators in the United States, with over 98% of its revenue coming from corporations and corporate foundations. In the 2010 congressional elections, ALEC boasted 3 of 4 new Senators were ALEC alumni, and 27 of 42 newly elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 2010 ATT gave $3.7 million to federal candidate Political Action Committees; of that, $1,612,582 to Democrats and $2,035,949 to Republicans. The ties between ALEC and ATT go beyond campaign donations. ATT is on the corporate Private Enterprise Board and Pete Hernandez, California Executive Director of Legislative Affairs for ATT is the Private Sector Chair.

Model telecommunications bills have been an important part of ALEC operations in several states including efforts to block utilities from placing optical fiber to a ?hands-off approach? to telecom regulation. Legislation to block VoIP regulation was first launched as far back as 2008. Could it be the California legislators leading this effort are trying to curry favor with ALEC in anticipation of future runs for federal office?

What is the Labor Movement?s position?
The powerful California Labor Federation is unable to take a position due to an archaic protocol triggered when a Local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers chose to side with the industry. This was communicated in a letter from high power California lobbyist Scott Wetch to Alex Padilla which mimics the misleading claims found in the text of the Bill, including, ?California is a global leader in internet technologies because it has not attempted to place unnecessary and duplicative restrictions on the internet.? It concludes with, ?It is an investment in infrastructure deployment that is creating jobs for our members.?

A staff member in the IBEW Washington D.C. Political Legislative Department responded to an email inquiry regarding this letter and stated in part:
?We supported the bill for several important reasons:
1) The chair and sponsor of the bill asked us to
2) AT&T who was extremely helpful to us on past legislation (and an Employer of IBEW members) asked for our help on it
3) Frontier communications (employer of 1245 in California) asked us to
Having said that it wasn't priority for IBEW we only wrote a letter of support. We never did lobby or do and sort of mobilization effort.?
As a result of this ?favor? to the industry, any intervention on this bill would be considered meddling in a dispute between two affiliates of the Labor Fed, which under those circumstances, must remain neutral. (*Note: 1245 identifies the Local of IBEW; the number of members is unknown.)

Can SB 1161 be stopped?
Wherever deregulation of telecommunications has raised its ugly head, it was soon followed by greater concentration of communication and information network ownership, reduced competition, higher prices and fewer choices for consumers. Labor, particularly the men and women of the Communications Workers of America have suffered the biggest hit in jobs and working conditions.

Where there is oversight by the PUC, Quality Service Measurements pressure the Telcos to perform repairs and restore service within reasonable time frames and mitigate customer abuse. Where there is no oversight, there are no standards for consumer protection, and Telcos can allow outages to last to the point where customers might abandon landlines for wireless. The wireless divisions compete with the wireline side, eventually causing a loss of customers and reductions in the workforce.

Even with those Service Quality Measurements, ATT and Verizon performed miserably. Nonetheless, millions of California households still desire wireline phone service, especially with the glitches in wireless service due to insufficient capacity, or spectrum, and choke points caused by the data-consuming ?apps? boasted by the IT firms.

Several years of regulatory analysis and data from various states where the regulatory framework has been attacked and weakened show a steady, building momentum that will be difficult to stop. But it can be defeated, as was the case in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and several other states. The astonishing phenomenon is that this bill is being lauded as a major piece of bi-partisan cooperation as indicated by the votes at various stages:
? 4/25/12 - Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications: 12-0
? 5/29/12 - Senate Appropriations: 7-0
? 5/30/12 - Senate Floor: 30-6
? 6/18/12 - Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee: 13-1
? To be voted out of the full Assembly by July 1

Conclusion: Stop SB 1161 Deregulation of Telecommunications
Communications Workers of America and the communities served by the multi-billion dollar telecommunications industry in California will be the biggest losers in this fight. Despite this, CWA has only begun to mobilize its membership of over 60,000 in California. This is due in part to the intense contract bargaining which is currently taking place with ATT which has become an existential struggle. CWA District 9 members have been working without a contract for over two months. However, deregulation of telecommunications did not begin overnight; it has been on the march, state by state, for over a dozen years. Informed observers admit that inertia and the lack of pro-active analysis and organizing against deregulation have allowed the Telcos and their minions to gain precious ground.

One positive development has been a coalition that has formed between CWA, the Utility Reform Network, AARP, Division of Ratepayer Advocates and over fifty community and consumer groups. It was this type of coalition that beat back deregulation in other states. However, much energy has been lost trying to tweak the language of a bill that in its essence has no redeeming qualities.

You would think that California would be the last bastion to fall to deregulation. But being the biggest state in the union with over 34 million residents, over one-tenth of the population of the U.S., it is also the biggest prize. As such, no price was too high, no lie too big, and no betrayal too great. The Democratic leadership in the legislature, due to ignorance of the technology or other agendas and trade-offs, have turned their backs on labor and California consumers.

Concerned residents of California should contact their State Assembly Representative and urge them to vote against SB 1161. However, based on its history and ?bipartisan? support, it would appear that the only hope may be a veto by Governor Jerry Brown which can only come as a result of intense pressure from a wide coalition of consumer groups with hobbled support from labor. Would he be willing to do so in the face of huge Republican and Democratic votes? On the other hand, can California afford to gamble with our information infrastructure and economic future?

(For information sources used in this document contact comworkerdvocate [at] gmail.com)

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Moody's cuts outlook for US muni debt

Moody's kept the downgrades going Friday by cutting the ratings for $64 billion in US municipal bonds.?

The bonds include debts owed by 1,675 state and local governments, Reuters said. Natural gas bonds issued by utilities in Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas also saw ratings downgrades.?

Moody's said it was cutting ratings on state and local government bonds because they rely heavily on the 15 banks whose ratings were cut by Moody's Thursday.?

The banks provided "support (that) includes letters of credit, standby bond purchase agreements, and other liquidity facilities," Reuters quoted Moody's as saying.

More from GlobalPost: Moody's bank downgrade is a doozy

Markets didn't flip out to the news, which many investors had been preparing for.

"Some investors selectively sold debt that could be affected ahead of the downgrade, while issuers sought additional ratings for their bonds or got backing from banks that weren't being targeted by Moody's," Dow Jones Newswires said.

"There's not going to be any 'oh my gosh' moment here because this was so well telegraphed," one fund manager told the news agency.?

More from GlobalPost: When the BRICs crumble

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/120622/moodys-cuts-outlook-us-muni-debt

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8-year-old 'Mugly' wins World's Ugliest Dog title

AAA??Jun. 23, 2012?1:18 AM ET
8-year-old 'Mugly' wins World's Ugliest Dog title
AP

(From right) Bev Nicholson of Peterborough, England reacts as her Chinese crested dog, Mugly, wins the title of "World's Ugliest Dog" against Dane Andrew and his dog, Rascal, and Kathleen Francis and her dog, Princess Abby, during the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on Friday, June 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Beth Schlanker, The Press Democrat)

(From right) Bev Nicholson of Peterborough, England reacts as her Chinese crested dog, Mugly, wins the title of "World's Ugliest Dog" against Dane Andrew and his dog, Rascal, and Kathleen Francis and her dog, Princess Abby, during the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on Friday, June 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Beth Schlanker, The Press Democrat)

Suzanne Marta holds up her Chinese crested dog, Handsome Hector,Mugly, a Chinese crested dog, owned by Bev Nicholson of Peterborough, England won the title of "World's Ugliest Dog" at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on Friday, June 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Beth Schlanker, The Press Democrat)

Suzanne Marta holds up her Chinese crested dog, Handsome Hector, during at the World's Ugliest Dog contest during the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on Friday, June 22, 2012. ((AP Photo/Beth Schlanker, The Press Democrat)

Jon Adler holds his Chinese crested dog, Icky, during the World's Ugliest Dog contest during the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California, on Friday, June 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Beth Schlanker, The Press Democrat)

PETALUMA, Calif. (AP) ? A Chinese crested's short snout, beady eyes and white whiskers earned it the title of World's Ugliest Dog at the annual contest in Northern California on Friday.

Competing for fame, $1,000 and a year's worth of dog cookies, Mugly won the honor by beating out 28 other ugly dogs from around the world.

The 8-year-old rescue dog from the United Kingdom will also be invited for a photo shoot and will receive a VIP stay at the local Sheraton.

"I couldn't speak when they announced Mugly's name," said Bev Nicholson, the dog's owner. "I didn't know which way to look. I was shaking as much as the dog."

It's not the first time Mugly has been recognized for his unattractiveness. Nicholson said he was named Britain's ugliest dog in 2005.

The contest at the Marin-Sonoma Fairgrounds gets worldwide attention, with reporters and camera crews from around the world traveling to Petaluma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco.

Organizers say the competing dogs are judged for what they term their "natural ugliness in both pedigree and mutt classes."

Mugly's victory was the latest for a Chinese crested. Last year's winner, Yoda, was a Chinese crested and Chihuahua mix.

Associated Press

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Spending on Outdoor Recreation Reaches $646 Billion, Employs ...

More than Play Money: New Report Finds Annual Spending on Outdoor Recreation Reaches $646 Billion, Employs 6.1 Million
CEOs call for policymakers to act to promote the ?well-kept secret? of the American economy

Outdoor Industry Association

WASHINGTON, D.C. --(Ammoland.com)- ?A report released today by Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) shows that outdoor recreation is a major economic driver in the United States ? and one that has grown throughout the recession.

According to The Outdoor Recreation Economy report, more than 140 million Americans engage in outdoor activities each year, directly delivering $646 billion to the economy and supporting 6.1 million domestic jobs.

This new study reinforces what the outdoor industry has known for a long time ? outdoor recreation is a larger and more critical sector of the American economy than most people realize.

Highlight Facts from the Recreation Economy Report
The outdoor recreation economy is responsible for:

• 6.1 million direct American jobs
• $646 billion in direct consumer spending
• $39.9 billion in federal tax revenue
• $39.7 billion in state/local tax revenue

?During a time when some American industries are struggling, we are seeing solid growth,? said Will Manzer, CEO of Eastern Mountain Sports and chair of the OIA Board of Directors. ?Since 2005, the outdoor recreation economy has grown approximately 5 percent annually. In fact, outdoor recreation supports a significant number of jobs, on par with ? or, in some cases, more than ??other sizeable American industries.?

America is recognized globally as the leader in outdoor recreation. CEOs from leading outdoor recreation companies are calling on policymakers to take action to promote this critical component of the American economy.

?As a horizontal industry in a vertical nation, outdoor recreation is often overlooked,? said Manzer. ?However, outdoor recreation directly fuels major sectors of the American economy like manufacturing, hospitality and transportation. Just like any other sector of the U.S. economy, outdoor recreation needs support to continue to thrive.?

OIA is holding a briefing on Capitol Hill today with Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), Representative Charlie Bass (R-NH), Dusty McCoy ? Chairman and CEO of Brunswick Corp., and Manzer.

?This is the definition of a win-win scenario,? said Frank Hugelmeyer, president and CEO of OIA. ?In this country today, we?re battling an economic recession, a healthcare crisis, and we?re trying to create safe and sustainable places for families to live. The outdoor industry provides solutions for all of this. We need to come up with a strategy to protect the industry, its jobs and our customers.?

The outdoor industry can continue to be a growing jobs generator and an economic driver in the United States if parks, waters and trails are managed as a system designed to sustain these economic dividends for America.
For a full copy of the report, please visit outdoorindustry.org/recreationeconomy

About Outdoor Industry Association
Based in Boulder, Colo., with offices in Washington, D.C., Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) is the leading trade association for the outdoor industry and the title sponsor of Outdoor Retailer. OIA supports the growth and success of more than 4,000 manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, sales representatives and retailers of outdoor recreation apparel, footwear, equipment and services. For more information, go to outdoorindustry.org or call ?303.444.3353?.

About the Recreation Economy Report
The economic analysis for the Recreation Economy Report was conducted by Southwick Associates, Inc. The consumer survey was developed and executed by Harris Interactive?. The report was made possible through the financial support companies in the outdoor recreation industry.

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Study shows stagnating life expectancies in US

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Despite modest gains in lifespan over the past century, the United States still trails many of the world's countries when it comes to life expectancy, and its poorest citizens live approximately five years less than more affluent persons, according to a new study from Rice University and the University Colorado at Boulder.

The study, "Stagnating Life Expectancies and Future Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty," used time-series analysis to evaluate historical data on U.S. mortality from the Human Mortality Database. The study authors reviewed data from 1930 through 2000 to identify trends in mortality over time and forecast life expectancy to the year 2055. Their research will be published in an upcoming issue of Social Science Quarterly.

Although the researchers found that the U.S. can expect very moderate gains in coming years (less than an additional three years through 2055), the U.S. still trails its developed counterparts in life expectancy. For example, the average life expectancy in the U.S. for a person born today is is 78.49, which is significantly lower than people born in Monaco, Macau and Japan, which have the three highest life expectancies (89.68, 84.43 and 83.91 years, respectively). In addition, the most deprived U.S. citizens tend to live five years less than their more affluent countrymen, according to Justin Denney, Rice assistant professor of sociology, who was principal author for the study.

Denney said that in 1930, average life expectancy in the United States was 59.85. By 2000, it rose to 77.1 years. "But when broken down, these numbers show that those gains were mostly experienced between 1930 the 1950s and 1960s," he said. "Since that time, gains in life expectancy have flattened out.

"During periods of expansion in length of life, a similar expansion has occurred between more and less advantaged groups ? the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, inequality grows and life expectancy is dramatically impacted," Denney said. "And despite disproportionate spending on health care, life expectancy in the U.S. continues to fall down the ladder of international rankings of length of life. It goes to show that prosperity doesn't necessarily equal long-term health."

Denney said many of the chronic conditions that have led to smaller gains in life expectancy are more easily treated when people are more financially stable. He said the study shows "the ugly side of inequality," and he hopes it will draw attention to the fact that more needs to be done to address stagnating life expectancies in the U.S. and eliminate inequalities in the U.S.

"Even in uncertain times, it is important to look forward in preparing for the needs of future populations," Denney said. "The results presented here underscore the relevance of policy and health initiatives aimed at improving the nation's health and reveal important insight into possible limits to mortality improvement over the next five decades."

###

Rice University: http://media.rice.edu

Thanks to Rice University for this article.

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