Trader Joe's owner dies at 88

ROLAND SCHEIDEMANN / AFP – Getty Images

The man considered one of the fathers of the discount store strategy — a cofounder of the global Aldi supermarket chain and the developer of Trader Joe’s in the U.S. — has died. He was 88.

Theo Albrecht died Saturday in his home city of Essen, Germany, his company’s Aldi Nord division said in a statement Wednesday. The company did not give a cause of the billionaire’s death.

Albrecht was the driving force behind Aldi’s internationalization, expanding stores to France, Spain, Portugal, Poland and the United States.

Albrecht and his elder brother Karl both served as German soldiers in World War II then returned home to Essen and took over a small grocery store their parents owned. By 1950 they were already running 13 stores and five years later they had expanded throughout Germany’s western industrial Ruhr basin.

The first Aldi stores — an acronym standing for “Albrecht Discount” — opened in the early 1960s under the motto: “concentrating on the basics: a limited selection of goods for daily needs.”

Aldi now has more than 4,000 outlets in Germany alone, where it is known for its no-frills shopping environment, streamlined processes and a limited range of discount products.

The two brothers in the 1960s decided to divide up what was then West Germany, with Theo running stores in the north. However, they used their combined bargaining power to lower purchasing prices, enabling them to garner higher profit margins while keeping prices low.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38448116/ns/business-world_business/

How computers and politics revolutionized the oldest science

By John Timmer | Last updated about 24 hours ago

Galileo’s notebook, superimposed on the object of his observations.

NASA/JPL/SSI

Because of its immense practical value for agricultural societies, many early cultures developed something that resembled a science: the observational study of the motion of bodies around the solar system. Four hundred years ago, planetary science also became the first to have a solid theoretical underpinning, as Kepler produced a model of planetary motion that accounted for observations and was predictive. But, according to a review of planetary science published in Nature, the actual science languished for centuries until work in an unrelated field spawned the electronics revolution.

The review’s author, Joseph Burns of Cornell University, suggests the key contributor to the stagnation was in the limitations of ground-based observatories, which couldn’t resolve detailed features on most of the solar system’s other bodies. Even as telescope technology progressed, the only object we could study in any detail was the Moon, which was cold, dead, and lifeless, with a rugged geology dominated by impacts. Venus’ surface was hidden by clouds, while Mars, at this distance, seemed to many to be a reddish version of the Moon, although others engaged in flights of imagination, seeing the planet as a water-covered Eden.

So for many centuries after the first discoveries of early astronomers, Burns says that telescope technology ruled the day, with better optics (and a bit of orbital mechanics) aiding the identification of Uranus and Neptune, the recognition that comets were orbiting bodies, and the identification of the first asteroids. Although these discoveries helped refine Kepler’s ideas, they shed little light on the nature of the bodies, and the lack of a coherent picture left us without anything resembling a theory of how the whole thing could have originated.

That left us in a rather bewildering place in the middle of the last century, as Burns recounts: “As late as 1966, reputable scientists argued over whether vegetation might cover Mars. Ten years before, scientific opinion was split on whether Venus was covered by a desert, a swamp or an ocean. Lunar craters, the only such structures observed in the Solar System but for a handful of terrestrial examples, were believed to be volcanoes until 1950.”

Oddly, planetary scientists didn’t clear up this mess—in fact, Burns argues that the field didn’t really exist until NASA decided it needed to create the discipline in order to have someone understand the data its spacecraft were producing. Instead, a combination of technology and geopolitics changed our perspective on the solar system.

The Space Race

Geopolitics fostered the Cold War Space Race, which quickly sent US and Russian probes to orbit, the Moon, and the nearby planets. These missions were enabled by technology that came from the electronics and computing revolutions, which enabled unmanned probes to give humanity an indirect presence at many planets. But computing power played another key role: as various probes sent back data from different planets, the burgeoning community of planetary scientists fed it into increasingly sophisticated computer models, which grounded many findings in theory (a great example of this is the formation of the moon). The same computing power has also allowed the construction of massive compound telescopes with adaptive optics, providing a better view of the other planets, even when there is no hardware present in orbit.

In some cases, the first of these probes was a revelation. Mariner 2 flew past Venus in 1962, and provided the first measurements of the planet’s temperature, which ultimately changed our understanding of how atmospheres and geology can interact. For others, knowledge took decades to build, like the realization that Mars was a dynamic planet that had experienced a water-filled past.

Even as the Space Race ended and NASA’s budget became an exercise in political compromise, the agency launched what may be one of its greatest successes ever: the grand tour of the outer planets performed by the Voyager spacecraft. The stunning finds of the Voyagers—volcanoes on Io, possible liquid water on Europa, the dynamic rings and moons of Saturn—both captivated the public and overturned many expectations among the scientific community. The combination was critical for the launching of two follow-up missions, Galileo and Cassini.

Big surprises

Burns includes some of the biggest surprises that came with the new discoveries, and two of these stand out. The first is the finding that small bodies, which were once thought have cooled rapidly and then remained static since the birth of the solar system, have turned out to come in a huge variety of shapes and compositions, and bear clear evidence of repeated remodeling. These small bodies have provided information about different areas of the solar system, and preserved chemicals that were present at its origin.

The other is the realization that the solar system isn’t a static, immutable collection of spheres. Instead, the solar system is chaotic: an early Earth collided with a Mars-sized object, destruction in the form of impacts by comets and asteroids still buffet all the planets, and the axes of rotation of the planets feel the pull of their peers, driving changes in planetary climates.

Planetary science may now be a mature field, but Burns suggests that its perspectives have continued to expand in recent years. The discovery that there may be liquid water on a number of solar system bodies has combined with the finding of organisms that thrive in extreme conditions on Earth to completely revise our understanding of the prospects for extraterrestrial life. The rapidly expanding catalog of extrasolar planets is finally enabling planetary scientists to leave the confines of our own solar system behind, and to consider all the probabilities and possibilities for planets throughout our galaxy.

Not bad for a field that NASA had to foster in order to meet its political imperatives.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/07/how-computers-electronics-revolutionized-the-oldest-science.ars

Facebook data harvester speaks out

The torrent is attracting hundreds of downloads

The man who harvested and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users has spoken out about his motives.

Ron Bowes, a security consultant, used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user’s privacy settings.

The list, which contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, name and unique ID, has been shared as a downloadable file.

Mr Bowes told BBC News that he did it as part of his work on a security tool.

“I’m a developer for the Nmap Security Scanner and one of our recent tools is called Ncrack,” he said.

Related stories

• 100m Facebook users’ data listed
• Facebook faces privacy criticism

“It is designed to test password policies of organisations by using brute force attacks; in other words, guessing every username and password combination.”

By downloading the data from Facebook, and compiling a user’s first initial and surname, he was able to make a list of the most common probable usernames to use in the tool.

The three most common names, he found, were jsmith, ssmith and skhan.

In theory, researchers could then combine this list with a catalogue of the most commonly used passwords to test the security of sites. Similar techniques could be used by criminals for more nefarious means.

Mr Bowes said his original plan was to “collect a good list of human names that could be used for these tests”.

“Once I had the data, though, I realised that it could be of interest to the community if I released it, so I did,” he added.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too”

End Quote Ron Bowes Security consultant

Mr Bowes confirmed that all the data he harvested was already publicly available but acknowledged that if anyone now changed their privacy settings, their information would still be accessible.

“If 100,000 Facebook users decide that they no longer want to be in Facebook’s directory, I would still have their name and URL but it would no longer, technically, be public,” he said.

Mr Bowes said that collecting the data was in no way irresponsible and likened it to a telephone directory.

“All I’ve done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis,” he said

Simon Davies from the watchdog Privacy International told BBC News it was an “ethical attack” and that more personal information had not been included in the trawl.

“This is a reputational and business issue for Facebook, for now,” he said

“They can continue to ride the risk and hope nothing cataclysmic occurs, but I would argue that Facebook has a special responsibility to go beyond doing the bare minimum,” he added.

Snowball effect

Mr Bowes file has spread rapidly across the net.

On the Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest file-sharing website, the list was being distributed and downloaded by thousands of users.

Facebook hit its 500m user in mid June 2010

One user said that the list showed “why people need to read the privacy agreements and everything they click through”.

In a statement to BBC News, Facebook confirmed that the information in the list was already freely available online.

“No private data is available or has been compromised,” the statement added.

That view is shared by Mr Bowes, who added that harvesting this data highlighted the possible risks users put themselves in.

“I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too.

“For that reason, I believe in open disclosure of issues like this, especially when there’s minimal potential for anybody to get hurt.

“Since this is already public information, I see very little harm in disclosing it.”

Digital trends

However, he said, it also highlighted a new trend that was emerging in the digital age.

“With traditional paper media, it wasn’t possible to compile 170 million records in a searchable format and distribute it, but now we can,” he said.

“Having the name of one person means nothing, and having the name of a hundred people means nothing; it isn’t statistically significant.

“But when you start scaling to 170 million, statistical data emerges that we have never seen in the past.”

A spokesperson for Facebook said the list was “similar to the white pages of the phone book.

“This is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook.”

“If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications.”

Earlier this year there was a storm of protest from users of the site over the complexity of Facebook’s privacy settings. As a result, the site rolled out simplified privacy controls.

Facebook has a default setting for privacy that makes some user information publicly available. People have to make a conscious choice to opt-out of the defaults.

More on This Story

Related stories

• 100m Facebook users’ data listed 29 JULY 2010, TECHNOLOGY
• Facebook faces privacy criticism 10 DECEMBER 2009, TECHNOLOGY
• Q&A: Facebook privacy changes 26 MAY 2010, TECHNOLOGY
• Picture guide: Facebook privacy 26 MAY 2010, TECHNOLOGY
• Facebook hits 500m user milestone 21 JULY 2010, TECHNOLOGY

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10802730

'Google Me' site may be in the works

According to an online report, Google has invested more than $100 million in socal-game company Zynga.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Reports: Google invested in “FarmVille” maker Zynga as it plans social-networking move
• Online tech pundits say Google Me will aim to take on Facebook
• Former Facebook technical officer says Google plans are “not a rumor”

//

RELATED TOPICS

• // Google Inc.
• // Facebook Inc.
• // Video Games
• // Internet

(CNN) — If online reports are to be believed, Google could be cooking up a rival for Facebook — and bringing the maker of popular social games like “FarmVille” with them.

Google Games, built around some sort of partnership with casual-gaming company Zynga, is in the works and would be part of a larger social network called Google Me, according to technology blog Tech Crunch.

Statements from notable internet players, including Digg founder Kevin Rose and a former Facebook chief technical officer, have suggested in recent weeks that the search-engine giant is working on a social network geared toward rivaling Facebook.

TechCrunch this weekend reported that unnamed sources said Google has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, the maker of successful online social games like “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars.”

The investment part of the deal was confirmed last month and a “larger strategic project” is still in the works, according to that report.

A Zynga spokeswoman said Monday that the company has no comment on the reports. A Google spokesman referred questions to the company’s media-relations e-mail account, which did not respond to inquiries.

The popularity of Zynga’s games — more than 50 million people play them on any given day, according to developerAnalytics — could bring considerable heft to any online networking or gaming project Google launched.

The obvious question then would become whether the “Farmville” maker would pull its games from Facebook. That would be a tall order considering the success those games have seen.

The TechCrunch report also added a new wrinkle to the Google Me speculation — saying the Zynga deal would be part of a project called Google Games, according to sources.

On the question-and-answer site Quora, former Facebook technical officer Adam D’Angelo said the Google Me rumors are real. The project would build on Google Buzz, a social networking effort rolled out by Google in February, he said. Google Buzz has been widely criticized by tech pundits.

Reports have not offered details on how a Google site would look, whether it would link to Gmail and other Google pages like Buzz does, or how Google Games would integrate with it.

“This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this,”D’Angelo wrote.

“They realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.”

9 Beloved Characters Made Horrifying by Japan



Japan can take apart other people’s inventions, like radios or TV sets, and put them back together better, cheaper and likely in the shape of Hello Kitty. However, the Japanese skill for reverse engineering works less well when it comes to reconfiguring our beloved pop culture icons.

#9.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT: Legend of the Supermutants)

It seems almost impossible to out-”wha?” a show already titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but after muttering something about our lack of faith disappointing them, Japan outfitted the Turtles in flamboyant armor that looks like a LARP party on their way to a convention for Liberace Impersonators with an S & M fetish. Because giant, mutated turtles with mastery in martial arts don’t make sense without robo-armor and glittering codpieces.

Obviously Japan isn’t content until your head is spinning with questions. But if you think they’re gong to rest at mere costume-related questions like, “Why is Raphael wearing a bejeweled version of the murder dildo from Se7en?” or “Is Michelangelo about to be devoured by a giant metallic spider?” then you obviously don’t know what happens when the turtles get their hands on the magic stones. Yes, the magic stones.

Alpha, I need four mutated Dolph Lundgrens! Don’t worry about the body paint, he always brings his own.

Of course, once that’s done you simply must have them combine into a gigantic, winged robot…

…after Shredder turns into a city-destroying demon Godzilla because all other types of plot have been outlawed in Japan.

#8.

Star Wars (Star Wars Manga)

So you want to take Star Wars, and filter it through the magical lens of Japanese manga. Clearly the first step has to be to replace the original cast with 11-year-olds. Clearly.

Here’s Leia, looking young enough to make millions of gold bikini fantasies that much more unsettling…

… Luke looking a few years shy of a T-14 learner’s permit…

… and Han, looking too young to smuggle anything that’s not a dirty magazine.

And now the characters have the respect and dignity they deserve. Except Chewie, because you can’t have something that furry in a Japanese comic book and not turn it into a goofy gag-mascot. It’s in their constitution, apparently.

In the movies this guy could rip your arms off. In Japan he’s Marmaduke with a blaster rifle.

While giving the cast of Star Wars the Muppet Babies treatment might make us ask WHY? Japan has other questions on its mind. Specifically, if you shrink all the characters down to half their previous size, what happens to all that left over blood?

Answer: It sprays all over the goddamn place at the slightest provocation.

We also get some slight tweaks to the ending. For instance, Luke still honors his dying father’s request, and removes Vader’s helmet. He just doesn’t bother removing it from his head…

But hey, at least they didn’t replace the cast with big-titted anime girls!

#7.

Alice in Wonderland (Miyuki-chan in Wonderland)

Oh, Japan. We knew you’d come through.

Sometimes you don’t get the true meaning of a piece of art until you get an outsiders view of it. For instance, you probably thought Alice in Wonderland was a tale of childhood wonder as a young girl adventures in a mystical land where talking animals and magic abounds.

Of course you’re way off. Alice in Wonderland, as the Japanese show us, is really about a little girl lost in a world where she is hunted down viciously by whip-cracking dominatrixes and hordes of lesbian furries. Hey, the subtext is all there in Lewis Carroll’s original.

Let’s meet the cast! The White Rabbit:

Tweedledee and Tweedledum:

The Mad Hatter:

The Cheshire Cat:

And, best of all, the Queen of Hearts:

It’s probably worth mentioning that basically every one of those characters is out there to molest the titular Miyuki because that’s the entire plot of this cartoon. And because it’s girl-on-girl, that means these rape attempts are hilarious instead of deeply disturbing.

It would appear the Japanese have stripped away all the magic from Carroll’s tale. But to be fair, in Japan, Lesbians are magical creatures, like leprechauns.

#6.

Dracula (Hellsing)

By now the world has seen vampires that scare, amuse, arouse, teach math, peddle cereal and practice abstinence. So what new element could the anime series Hellsing possibly bring to the table? The answer: a pair of guns that you’d need Hammer pants to conceal.

There’s a place at the mall where you can get your gun engraved.

OK, so Alucard (not Dracula, mind you) now works for the Hellsing family after Van Hellsing defeated him one hundred years ago. And his guns have crucifixes on them. Sure, why not. By this point in the article no one should expect the Japanese give a damn about character integrity. Though they must be concerned about some kind of copyright infringement as they insist on adding an extra “L” to Helsing and only refer to Dracula by his lame backward name. Do the Japanese know what public domain means? Never mind, don’t tell them. It’s more fun this way.

Anyway, this here Dracu- sorry, Alucard, works for a supernatural evil fighting agency run by the Hellsing family. (Yeah, there’s a pretty big pinch of Hellboy in there.) Nevertheless, say what you will about this version of Dracula, but he is rocking that Zoot Suit.

And you’ve got to be a total pimp when you’re facing a giant dog made of eyes commanded by a pedophile with bitchin’ shoulder-pads.

Interestingly, Alucard’s enemies include vampire WWII Nazis and a KKK regiment.

#5.

Various World Leaders (Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku, The Legend of Koizumi)

Yep, that’s Kim Jong Il up there. The Legend of Koizumi is a satirical manga poking fun at the world’s politicians, featuring something like two million of them as characters (rough estimate).

The idea here is that these comic book politicians settle the Earth’s geopolitical differences by playing mahjong, with each round represented by a Dragonball Z-style attack with its own special name and over-the-top look.

Still, apart from the concept and the fact that Bush, Sr. is a nine-foot tall wrestler…

This guy only got one term?

…there’s really nothing that bizarre about the comic…

Ah, there we go. Why Hitler looks ready for the cover of Tiger Beat, we don’t know. Nor can we really explain this:

Bam! Super Aryan Hitler!

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Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18655_9-beloved-characters-made-horrifying-by-japan.html#ixzz0uu9xhtkz

Marijuana Church Founder Called ‘Too Dangerous’ For Bail

Photo: The Hawaii Cannabis Ministry

Roger Christie of THC Ministry is “a danger to the community.” That is, if you believe federal prosecutors.

A Hawaii-based marijuana minister who has for years been preaching the good news about ganja is now under federal indictment, and agents on Friday managed to persuade a federal judge that he is somehow “too dangerous” to be allowed out on bail.

Roger Christie, the founder of The Hawaii Cannabis Ministry (THC Ministry), has been ordered held without bail after the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested him, along with 13 current or former employees and growers, on July 8.

Christie and the others are charged with marijuana trafficking offenses related to their alleged distribution of marijuana as a sacrament at the ministry, reports Stop The Drug War.

Christie had already been raided by the DEA in March, with agents “seizing” cash and marijuana, but not arresting him at that time.

Federal agents claim that after that raid, Christie continued his marijuana distribution at the ministry. He and the others were secretly indicted last month.

Christie had originally been ordered held without bail, at federal prosecutors’ request, as ordered by federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang. The minister and his public defender, Matthew Winter, last week filed a motion seeking his release, citing the nonviolent nature of his offenses, Christie’s longstanding ties with the community, his lack of a criminal record, and his willingness to abstain from marijuana use or distribution pending trial.

A federal pre-trial sentencing report also agreed that Christie should be freed on bail.

But prosecutors hit back with a 46-page memorandum in opposition. Claiming that Christie started back distributing marijuana after the March raids, prosecutors said that made him “a danger to the community and… no conditions/combination of conditions could assure the safety of the community.”

U.S. District Court Judge Alan Kay on Friday agreed with prosecutors.

Christie will now be held behind bars without bail until trial, because the gentle, pot-smoking minister is obviously “too dangerous” to walk around as a free man.

Tags: christie, hawaii, thc ministry

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/07/marijuana_church_founder_called_too_dangerous_for.php

Dosing Kids with Drugs to Shut Them Up is Child Abuse, Study Says

Does your kid really need that dose of cough medicine? Credit: Corbis

Many over-the-counter allergy and cold medications may cause drowsiness.

Hmm, really?

Quit bouncing off the walls for a minute, son. Daddy wants to give you something …

Stop! Don’t do it! A lot of parents joke about drugging their rambunctious kids into submission — preferably with one of those tranquilizer darts from “Wild Kingdom.”

Using Benadryl as a baby-sitter, however, is a form of child abuse, according to a study in the latest issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.

Dr. Shan Yin, a toxicology fellow at the University of Colorado, led the study and concluds that there are at least 160 reported cases a year where parents severely and maliciously control their children with drugs.

The key word there is “reported.” Countless more cases fly under the radar.

The drugs range from illegal street narcotics to prescription and over-the-counter pain killers, stimulants, sedatives, antipsyhotics and cough/cold medications.

Yin and his team gathered information from the National Poison Data System.

Amitava Dasgupta, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, tells ABC News parents should never give cough medicine or pain killers to children under 2 without asking a physician.

And meds should never be given to kids just to shut them up, he adds. Dasgupta tells ABC News he agrees with Yin and the other researchers: It’s a form of child abuse — and should be a criminal offense.

Researchers found 14 percent of the reported cases between 2000 and 2008 resulted in moderate to major consequences. They also found 18 children died — 17 from sedatives.

Carolyn Riley, 35, of Massachusetts was sentenced to life in prison in February after she sent her 4-year-old daughter to bed after giving her toxic levels of pyschotropic drugs. The little girl never woke up.

That may have been an extreme case, but Dasgupta tells ABC News many parents — especially young ones — don’t think over-the-counter meds are any big deal. They’re wrong, he says.

“Because a child or infant’s body is not an adult body, pharmaceuticals can be dangerous,” Dasgupta tells the network.

Doping kids “is likely to have cascading effects on the developing biology of children and even potentially long-term effects,” Alan Kazdin, a professor of psychology and child psychiatry at Yale University, tells ABC News.

Yin’s study couldn’t determine parents’ exact motivations. Pediatric experts tell ABC News parents might use meds to punish children or just get a few minutes of peace.

“If a child is very irritable and colicky, a parent may try to use cough and cold syrup to keep the child quiet, especially if the parent is overwhelmed and immature and thinks the child is doing this on purpose,” Dr. Lea DeFrancisci Lis, an associate clinical professor at New York University School of Medicine, tells ABC News.

Researchers are not mind readers, James Hmurovich, president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America, tells the New York Daily News. They can’t really know parents’ motivations. Therefore, he adds, it’s difficult to generalize the practice of medicating kids as child abuse.

Jill Smokler, a mother and blogger at ScaryMommy.com, writes on her blog that she has sympathy for the parents.

“I suppose it’s better than screaming at or beating a kid when all your buttons are being pushed,” she writes.

Smokler admits on her blog she once gave her 18-month-old daughter Benadryl, hoping the child would sleep through a two-hour flight.

“The plan backfired,” Smokler writes on the blog. “She was wired. The flight was a disaster, and that was the end of that. Since then, I have never given my children medication as a way to benefit me. Lesson learned.”

Nonetheless, she adds, she’s not going to judge other parents. “I’m hardly a perfect parent,” she writes. “Obviously, drugging your child is not a good idea. Big, fat f***ng duh. Neither is beating them or losing it on an airplane full of 200 people.”

Related: More Kids Buzzing On Abuse Of ADHD Drugs

Today in Sex: Men Suffer More in Crappy Relationships Than Women Do

When me or one of my girlfriends are having a hard time with our special naked friend, we talk, we cry, and we go out for cocktails and bitch. Maybe we schedule an emergency therapy visit, and probably eat an ill-advised candy bar or wedge of stinky cheese. In short, we deal. And while the waterworks and chocolate-smeared faces may make us look like we’re suffering more, apparently our strong, silent, menfolk are having a much harder time of it.

A study of over 1600 Miamians, aged 18 to 23, surveyed by The Journal of Health and Social Behavior (and translated out of academese by the New York Times), reported, “It appears that young men benefit more than women from support [that they get from their girlfriends], and that they are more harmed than women by strain in ongoing romantic relationships.”

The authors hypothesize this to be because young men get most of their emotional support and intimacy from their romantic partners, whereas women are more likely to confide in friends and family.

But what about us ladies? Surely we feel pain too. Well, yes, according to the study, we do suffer, but not over rocky relationships–our suffering comes when we’re not in one. Robin W. Simon, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University and one of the authors of the report conceded, “It’s a little bit pathetic . . . Even though there’s been so much social change in this area, women’s self-worth is still so much tied up with having a boyfriend. It’s unfortunate.”

Not only unfortunate, it’s depressing and so grotesquely clichéed. We’d rather be in a shitty relationship than none at all? Ouch. How Scary Sadshaw. Happily, the gender-specific misery disparity lessens with age, though it’s unclear whether this is because guys wise up and realize they need more friends than the woman they’re schtupping, or because women finally realize that being single is better than being with a jackass.

Tags:

Dategirl, New York Times, relationships, science, sex

Find a Job Dating Wine Our Papers Feedback My Stories Friday, Jul 23 2010 9PM 16°C 12AM 13°C 5-Day Forecast Hay, it’s simples! Farmer builds 36ft meerkat sculpture from bales of straw

At 36ft tall and made out of straw, this impressive sculpture of a meerkat is anything but ‘simples’.

Proudly looking out over motorists in rural Nantwich, the statue is built on a 6ft base and has lights in its eyes.

The meerkat, made popular thanks to an insurance company’s TV adverts, is 30 times bigger than a real-life creature, and is the latest in a long line of impressive works of art.

Bales of fun: The 36ft meerkat stands proudly on its 6ft base

Ex-straw-dinary: The meerkat watches over drivers on the A51

Each year, staff at Snugburys Ice Cream Farm, Hurleston, celebrate the summer with a new design.

The concept started in 1998 with a huge Millennium Dome sculpture and has also seen a straw replica of the Lovell telescope, London Eye as well as last year’s Big Ben standing beside the A51 near Chester.

Director Chris Sadler and his wife Cheryl come up with the ideas and the creations are made by Mike Harper, who builds a steel skeleton which is then stuffed with hay.

Str-awesome: The replica of the Lovell telescope was created in the field in 2007

Dead ringer: Last year’s statue of Big Ben celebrated the famous clock’s 150-year anniversary

Speaking about this year’s design, Mr Harper, 57, said: ‘Everyone loves meerkats, especially my wife, so we thought it would be a good idea.

‘We start planning it in January and then have a big push stuffing it at the end which takes about a month.

‘Mike is an amazing talent and was happy to have a go at building it.

‘People absolutely adore it – it says that it cheers them up, and it doesn’t cost them anything.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1296896/Hay-simples-Farmer-builds-36ft-meerkat-sculpture-bales-straw.html#ixzz0uXRF12m8

Which college grads snag the best salaries

Source: PayScale.com By Blake Ellis, staff reporterJuly 22, 2010: 2:08 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Attending school in California and becoming an engineering major can really pay off for college graduates — by thousands of dollars a year.

According to a report released Thursday from salary-tracker PayScale.com, petroleum engineering majors and graduates of Harvey Mudd College are taking home the biggest paychecks.

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While mid-career salaries fell 1.5% overall between 2009 and 2010, engineers, scientists and mathematicians continued to rake in the big bucks, as well as students who graduated from Ivy League schools.

“Our society values something practical — that’s why poetry isn’t popping up on the top of the list,” said Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale. “As in the past, engineering and [similar] fields with a strong math component plus a physical world component remain on the top, with lots of money to be made in these fields.”

The data in the report, collected from 999 bachelor degree institutions in the last year, track median starting salaries of employees who graduated in the last five years and median mid-career salaries of graduates with more than 10 years of experience in a given field.

Follow the money: So where are all the lavishly paid engineers bred? According to PayScale.com, it’s Claremont, Calif., where Harvey Mudd alums go on to earn a mid-level salary of around $126,000.

“Harvey Mudd is the nexus of all good places to be in terms of graduate earnings,” said Lee. “Not only do engineering majors make good money and this happens to be a specialized school for engineering, but southern California is an area that tends to have some of the highest wage earners in the country.”

Meanwhile, Dartmouth College, which claimed the title as the school with the highest paid graduates for the past two years, was knocked down the list to number two — tied with Princeton — with its graduates receiving a starting salary of $54,100 and a mid-career salary of $123,000.

Since a large chunk of Dartmouth students typically head into financial services post-college, many graduates felt a blow to their wallets in the last year as financial companies cut back on pay, said Lee.

Harvard, California Institute of Technology, Colgate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Duke and Bucknell rounded out the top ten list of schools with the highest-paid mid-career graduates.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you choose Coker College in South Carolina — the worst-paying school on the list — be prepared for a starting salary of around $28,900 and a mid-level salary of $40,300.

Majors that pay: Topping the list of best-paying degrees this year, petroleum engineers earn a starting salary of $93,000 and a mid-level salary of $157,000.

That’s $49,000 more than the next most lucrative majors, aerospace engineering and chemical engineering, which both produce graduates earning a salary of around $108,000.

“Petroleum engineering has been an incredibly profitable sector for the last few years,” said Lee. “It’s a very cyclical field and depends largely on the price of oil, and we’re very much on an up cycle right now.”

Electrical engineering was the third-highest paying major on the list, with mid-level pay of $104,000 per year, followed by nuclear engineering, applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, physics and computer engineering.

But I don’t want to be an engineer! If science and math aren’t your thing, don’t worry. There are plenty of other majors — many you wouldn’t expect — that will put you on the money-making track.

“People always think they have to be an engineer if they want to make good money down the line, but there are a lot of other majors that will help you find good careers with salaries that anyone would be comfortable living on,” said Lee.

A building construction major typically leads to a mid-career salary of more than $94,000, while mid-level government majors earn $87,300 on average. International relations, supply chain management and urban planning also boast average salaries of more than $80,000 a year.

Even majors like film production and zoology can help you land a good-paying job. While film-makers earn a starting salary of only $36,100 and recently-graduated zoology majors tend to make about $34,600, mid-level salaries come in at about $77,800 and $68,800, respectively.