Top 5 Flaws of 2012 Honda Civic

Honda Civic is one of the flagship cars rolled out from the house of the Japanese car maker Honda Motor Company. This car was first launched way back in 1972 in the form of a hatchback. This is one of the best selling cars in the developed markets such as United States and Canada. It has seen a huge success in the developing world such as Brazil and India as well. So many people have trusted Honda Civic so really the car does have some substance. So if you are planning to buy a Civic and trying to see what all features and benefits it has to offer, you should also have a look at all the potential negative aspects of the Honda Civic. This will help you make an informed decision before you take the plunge and buy this car.

During our review we found five major flaws in the successful Civic and we are sure that it will help you get a clear picture before you actually buy the car.

1. The top flaw is the 2012 redesign that has done a great job to kill the whole impression that Honda Civic managed to create in last few years. The redesign has been termed as ugly by many critics. The redesigned car is no more that eye candy cool car that you have a picture of in your mind.

2. Another major concern that many of the reviewers have noticed along with us is the acceleration issues. The car’s acceleration is not all that great. If this were just a one off things that we could have been okay with, it would have been okay. But acceleration is one of the most important aspects not only for the driving experience but also for the safety of the driver especially when you are driving on a highway.

3. The interior of the new Honda Civic is not something that many have liked so far. There are many other options that are much better in today’s scenario. The cars exterior has already been “changed” to say the least and on top of that the interiors are also not very commendable. The materials used inside could have been much better.

4. Price of the Honda Civic is also one of the pain areas. This is one of the highly priced cars in its segment. The price is mainly because of the brand value that it has created over the years. Because of the name Civic being sold even the insurance premium would be on the upward scale.

5. The car tends to be a tad noisy as well sometimes. Especially when you are on faster speeds you would feel the noise. This is very much noticeable and because of which it is an absolute deal breaker.

This article was to make you aware about some points that no other site would provide. Do consider all these poor aspects of the new Civic before you settle down for it.

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Ranking The Top 5 GOP 2012 Contenders

Although Barack Obama has only been in office for a couple of months, this hasn’t stopped the 2012 Republican presidential contenders from jockeying for early position in what will likely be a crowded GOP field, and if the length of the 2008 campaign was any indication, it won’t be long until the race for 2012 will get going. The question is who among the contenders will challenge President Obama?

I have ranked the five most likely contenders for the GOP nomination based on their likelihood of winning the nomination and the degree of difficulty that they would present for Obama in the general election.

5). Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC)

What he’s got: Southern roots, experience as a governor, has been an early and vocal critic of the Obama stimulus

What he lacks: National name recognition, fund raising, appeal outside of the GOP

Outlook: There are going to be some known quantities and rising stars in the 2012 field. Stanford has the look of a candidate destined for an early exit, and possible running mate status.

4). Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)

What he’s got: Youth, ethnicity, a conservative message.

What he lacks: Charisma, experience on the national stage, fundraising, and luck with volcanoes.

Outlook: Bobby Jindal may have a serious run at the presidency in his future, but I don’t think that 2012 will be his year. The field will be too crowded with candidates who have either more money (Romney), more charisma (Palin), or a base of support (Huckabee). As Jindal’s disastrous Republican response to President Obama’s address to Congress demonstrated, he is not quite ready for prime time. Jindal would be best served by waiting until what is likely to be a non-incumbent presidential election in 2016. He could use the time between now and then to polish his skills and develop a national presence.

3). Mike Huckabee

What he’s got: Huckabee has national presidential primary campaign experience, a build in coalition of evangelical Republican supporters, a now known name, and a winning personality. He is also a son of the South.

What he lacks: Strong positions on non-social issues, fundraising, the ability to appeal to non-socially conservative voters.

Outlook: Huckabee will be a player in the 2012 GOP primary because he appeals to the socially conservative backbone that makes up most Republican primary voters. Huckabee has already been hard at work building and expanding his base of support, specifically with evangelical voters. Huckabee is going to find himself in a dogfight with Sarah Palin for the hearts of social conservatives. Palin and Huckabee are the two potential GOP candidates with real personality and charisma, but Huckabee would be labeled as too far right to defeat Obama.

2). Sarah Palin

What she’s got: As the running mate of John McCain in 2008, she was given the biggest platform to launch her political star. She is beloved by large segments of the GOP base, and is perceived by many as the heir apparent 2012 nominee. Palin has personality and is one of the few current Republicans that can raise money. Her appeal cuts across the party. She is the candidate most likely to unify the GOP.

What she lacks: Palin has a high disapproval rating with Democrats and Independents. She has yet to prove any sort of competency on the issues. Palin is polarizing and divisive. After giving McCain an initial bump, she hurt the ticket especially with Independent voters. What Palin lacks most is a clean slate. She will come in to the 2012 campaign as a known quantity, but she also brings with her a ton of baggage.

Outlook: Palin could easily find herself in the top slot of future GOP fav 5 2012 rankings, but for right now there are serious doubts about her ability to win a general election. We have also not seen how Palin will hold up in a primary campaign. It is possible that the biggest favor Republicans could do for Democrats would be to nominate Sarah Palin, who unifies them in a way that no other Republican outside of George W. Bush can. Palin is so unpopular that Obama would likely crush her in a general election match up.

1). Mitt Romney

What he’s got: Romney has money, experience on the economy, political experience, and national campaign experience.

What he lacks: A personality, the ability to connect with voters, a solid conservative record, and he has a history of flip flops. His Mormon faith hurts him with evangelical voters.

Outlook: Mitt Romney is one of those candidates who if he could survive his own party’s nomination process could pose some problems for Obama. If the economy is still struggling , Romney has the ability to discuss economic policy in a knowledgeable way. Romney has oodles of money so fundraising isn’t a problem.

Romney has the ability to appeal to the middle, and one of his biggest mistakes in 2008 was his shameless pandering to the far right. If Obama looks strong heading into 2012, the GOP would be wise to nominate Romney who at worst would save Jindal or Palin from taking a beating at the polls.

Agree? Disagree?

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Darth Vader being a d*ck to a perfectly innocent woman on the subway

KeepRecipes creates an iTunes for cookbooks

By Kevin Fitchard Jan. 27, 2012

Online community cooking portal KeepRecipes launched an “iTunes for recipes” on Friday, in hopes of building an online marketplace for culinary ideas where cooks and gastronomic publishers can buy and sell individual digital recipe cards and eventually whole cookbooks.

KeepRecipes is starting out small. It has signed deals to distribute the contents of five cookbooks from two publishers, Gooseberry Patch’s 101 Recipes and Harvard Common Press’ Not Your Mother’s cookbook series. The site is also hosting individual recipes from seven famous chefs and authors, including Masaharu Morimoto of Iron Chef fame and New York Times food columnist and cookbook writer Mark Bittman, giving the portal’s members access to 1,000 different dishes, priced at 99 cents each. But CEO and founder Phil Michaelson said he is hoping he can build off that small core of cuisine, proving to publishers that there is money to be made distributing their cookbooks online and convincing consumers that some online recipes are worth paying for.

The comparison to iTunes isn’t just a gimmick. It is uncanny how closely KeepRecipes is following Apple’s music distribution model, all the way down to direct integration with the iPhone. The recipes are bought and stored through KeepRecipes’ online portal, where they can be sorted and searched, organized into collections — recipe playlists, if you will — and shared with up to five friends in the KeepRecipes community. A mobile app allows members to access their collections through the iPhone.

What’s more, those paid recipes become part of the members’ overall digital recipe collection within the portal. Michaelson said KeepRecipes is trying to do away with the concept of the digital cookbook as just another e-book, trapped in between electronic covers. Instead, the portal aims to help its members build a comprehensive digital cooking library — a task I can tell you from experience is almost impossible to do — by bringing in recipes from multiple sources.

“We want to provide a place where you can keep all of your recipes in one spot, whether it’s your family recipe, a web recipe or premium content,” Michaelson said.

Recipes found online can be grabbed through KeepRecipes’ bookmarklet or by entering its URL through the website. You can enter your own recipes manually, and you can “keep” any nonpaid recipe in your friends’ collections. Just as customers can annotate, comment and add pictures to their own recipes, they can do the same for the ones they have paid for.

The remaining obstacle to building a complete digital cooking library is integrating the thousands of recipes that sit bound on our bookshelves. But Michaelson is working on that problem as well. KeepRecipes is working with its publishers to allow members to download the digital contents of their physical books for a fee of $5 per cookbook.

If you read my post earlier this month on why digital recipes need to emulate digital music, this idea might sound eerily familiar. I thought I was being pretty creative at the time, but it turns out Michaelson and his developers have been developing that concept since KeepRecipes’ inception. Michaelson has already found solutions for problems that I merely posed, such as how to deal with digital rights management and controlling distribution.

In fact, KeepRecipes seems to have all the tools in place to make a comprehensive online recipe library possible. What it lacks is scale. That is understandable, considering KeepRecipes only launched in August, has only 10,000 members — of which about 15 percent are active — and is still in its early stages of funding. For a company of that size to have attracted the attention of even small publishing houses is impressive.

Michaelson said he has found cookbook publishers are eager to go online, but many of them see the inherent limitations of the e-book format, which is why they are working with KeepRecipes. Publishers are also concerned that once they make their cookbooks more digitally accessible, their recipes will escape into the wilds of Internet, where they won’t be able to charge for them. “They are very intrigued by the idea of a social portal and sharing on Facebook and Twitter,” Michaelson said. “But they’re also fearful of a total loss of control.”

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My blueprint for success at the early Tony Hawk games.

Please click to enlarge image

Casualities of 9/11, The War on Terror And The Invasion of Iraq

Does Apple help iPhone thieves?

JAN 27 2012 / BY ALEX ION

Ever heard your friend with an iPhone boasting about the ease with which he gets a replacement from an Apple support outlet? He is not boasting. Apple is very generous in providing easy, on the spot replacements or discount on a new unit, if a broken iPhone under warranty is brought to service.

Well, the twist of the story is that thieves are making a good use of this generosity, since Apple doesn’t care who brings the phone, and only checks if it is still under warranty. Seems the phone is more attached to warranty than the original owner.

The case is making a furor among the iPhone users, as iPhones are a major target of smartphone snatchers in the US. According to NYPD, 70 percent of all phones snatched at subways and streets are iPhones.

Making most of the service policy of Apple, thieves are approaching the stores at least to get a discounted device, which they sell for a better price to someone else, making some quick bucks.

There are instances, where iPhone users, like MIT student Kayla Menard, who found an email from Apple support that her phone was repaired. Though she ran to the support store, she found them helpless.

Menard got the mail some days after her phone was snatched by a thief. She went to the store to claim the phone, but the staff was not able o help her saying that somebody else brought it to the store. Though, she got a sympathetic move from her network carrier Verizon, who blocked the device, she was not able to get it back, due to ‘Apple support’.

It seems, for iPhone users, there is no way in relying Apple, once they lose the device. Anybody else can use it. May be the only solution is to use any tracking app, or apps like iGot Ya, which will send a snap of anybody who is typing the password incorrectly to owner’s email, with the location of the device on a Google map. But if he gets to any Apple support store, before you, you lose the game.

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Earth's next ice age could be delayed by global warming, research finds

Does it feel hot in here? Well, it may do for some time, with scientists predicting that the next ice age could be delayed. What’s more, carbon dioxide emissions may have something to do with it.  The current warm interglacial period could continue for longer than expected – with some climate models even suggesting another 500,000 years – if we consume all the fossil fuel reserves, according to scientists at University College London and Cambridge University.

‘There have been lots of climate models published that say if we stopped pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today, we would probably remain in an interglacial state for the next 50,000 years,’ said lead author Prof Chronis Tzedakis, from UCL.  ‘One, because the summer solar radiation changes are subdued during this period and two, because the CO2 concentrations are so high it just won’t get cold enough.’

The research, which was conducted by comparing the current climate with a similar period 780,000 years ago, revealed that CO2 levels – which are currently about 380 parts per million – would need to fall to about 240ppm in order to glaciate.  ‘Although some people are rejoicing that we have “avoided” an imminent glaciation, the real message here is that the climate system may be highly sensitive to small changes in CO2,’ said Dr Luke Skinner, from Cambridge University

‘We could say that if we were trying to avoid a glaciation by emitting CO2, we have tried too hard.’  Prof Tzedakis added: ‘If we stopped pumping CO2 today, it would take a very long time for it to be completely removed from the atmosphere through natural processes.’  With pre-industrial CO2 concentrations of 280ppm sufficient enough to delay the ice age therefore, there seems to be little to support the impact of human emissions on this.

Some scientists argue that atmospheric CO2 would naturally have been at about 240ppm today if early humans had not already caused gases to start rising gently from 8,000 years ago in the early farming practices.  ‘Regardless of whether or not this is true, a change of 40ppm seems to have been enough to change the course of climate history for quite some time, which puts into perspective the massive 100ppm change that we have effected since the industrial revolution,’ he said.

‘Arguably, any change in our future emissions will result in a different future climate outcome. What is especially difficult though is to know in advance what level of sacrifice is required or warranted for a given “target” climate outcome.  Prof Tzedakis said: ‘The main fundamental question underlying all this is, at what level do we reach dangerous climate change? There is a big debate about this, with some scientists saying we have already reached it.

‘The rate of increase is relentless and it is a huge challenge to slow it down. There isn’t going to be one or two solutions. It is about dividing the problem and everyone trying to do something.’ One possible solution is carbon capture, where  CO2 is scrubbed from the air.  Although this is yet to be rolled out on a large scale, research suggests that a new polymeric material may be used to capture carbon dioxide at the source – such as a car’s exhaust pipe.

‘Taking CO2 directly out of the atmosphere must be the holy grail of climate change mitigation,’ said Dr Skinner.  ‘Can it be done on a large scale? I suspect that “hoping so” will not be enough… but let’s hope so nonetheless.’

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk

Verizon Wireless invested around $730 million in California

JAN 25 2012 / BY JONATHAN SPIKE

California benefitted from a great investment by Verizon Wireless.  More than $729 million was spent on all the materials and equipment just in California. This investment caused greater wireless coverage, larger capacities, and more reliable voice and data functions throughout the state.   This brings the total amount invested in California to over $7.2 billion spent on wireless broadband and voice infrastructure.

Starting in early 2011, Verizon Wireless started to install its 4G LTE network.  The San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego were three of the first cities to get the new 4G LTE service. Throughout the year, Verizon rapidly worked on the 4G LTE expansion all over the Golden State.  By the end of the year 75% of the state’s population had access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network.

This is no small achievement, especially when compared to the expansion rates of other wireless providers’ 4G LTE networks.  Verizon Wireless claims to have the world’s largest and most advanced 4G LTE network. They also lay claim to the fastest 4G network.  Notice the “LTE” is missing as AT&T has its HSPA+ network that it advertises as 4G.  HSPA+ is much slower than 4G LTE.

Their 4G LTE network covers 195 US markets and covers a population base of 200 million people.  They have a goal of completing their LTE network by the end of 2013. Verizon Wireless has 108.7 million wireless devices owned by 92.2 retail customers.

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SEX BY NUMBERS: IT’S ONLY NATURAL EDITION

by Mallory Ortberg on January 27, 2012

It’s almost the end of January, which means that for at least the last 3 weeks your life has been a gray, dull, hopeless blur of days in which you’ve almost certainly been forced to listen to your co-worker’s latest cleanse. Nobody’s drinking, nobody’s going out, and it’s probably raining. Wouldn’t it make you feel better to read a string of sex-related facts?

Number of years since the last time Tim Gunn had sex: 29. $1.30: the price of a gallon of gas in the last year that Tim Gunn had sex. Number of unique combinations of sex acts the average sexually active adult has recently performed, as reported by a recent American study: 40. 3 years: Length of time a male lobster’s sperm can survive inside of a female

What happens to the genitals of male honeybees after having sex: they explode. What happens to the genitals of banana slugs after having sex: they are chewed off and eaten. 10%: Percentage of office workers who claim to have slept with a co-worker in their building. 14: Factor by which having an abortion is safer than giving birth. Reported increase in sexual dysfunction, as related to the use of intravenous drugs: 800%

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Reel Sex: 9 Snubbed Movies That Prove The Oscars Hate People Having Sex in 2012

By Gwen Reyes

People were up in arms Tuesday after the announcement of nominees for the 84th Annual Academy Awards. So many seem to forget that every year they are disappointed with the nominees and every year there is some film or performer who was left off or included on the prestigious list. I may have spent the final weeks of 2011 lamenting my utter ennui with last year’s films, but I never in a million years expected some of the Oscar outcomes. No Supporting Actor nomination for Albert Brooks, whose performance in Drive unnerved audiences to the core? Or the blatant disregard for solid documentary filmmaking in The Interrupters, Buck, or Project Nim, three entries into filmmaking that will forever impact the way we view the world around us? No, the Academy seemed to forget the impressive and daring offerings in favor of an adorable dog in a silent film. What is this, 1920? Last I checked The Jazz Singer pushed us into the land of the talkies.

I could spend all day gnawing my tongue over which films shouldn’t have been included in this year’s awards recognition, but just like arguing the virtues and evils of the MPAA, our time is better used talking about some of the sexy pieces of work that the Academy felt were too provocative to include (for reasons I have completely made up in my mind. Hey, they have their prerogative, I have mine.). Going along with the Academy’s new voodoo math rules of deciding the appropriate number of Best Picture nominees (something about getting 5% votes and then jumping a broom after falling off a cliff), I have picked out nine salacious films ignored for what we can only assume is their brave use of sex, sexual orientation, Ezra Miller’s hips, or worldwide punishment for one woman’s ill-timed infidelity.

As The Rock so eloquently asked for in the cinematic masterpiece Fast Five, let’s start with the veggies. The veggies in this case are the less obvious and therefore easily forgotten entries. Dee Rees’s Pariah is one of those incredibly simple yet thought provoking films the Academy loves to ignore. They see “black,” “lesbian,” and “inner city” in the summary and instantly the monocle-wearing older gentlemen running “things” mutter to themselves “well, who would want to watch that type of film? Didn’t we already try being edgy with Precious?” Well, it turns out the Sundance darling is actually an engaging and inspiring piece of film that focuses just as much on lead character Alike’s (Adepero Oduye) sexual awakening and as it does on her acceptance of self. She is a prime example of a character moving forward from the heartbreak of a sexual coming-of-age, and Rees’s perfectly sculpted script would have been a shining beacon amongst the worn out drivel (Bridesmaids aside) competing for Best Original Screenplay.

Another daring and controversial film ignored in the Best Original Screenplay category is the tight, brutal, and sexually-charged Bellflower. Now, I know suggesting rookie Evan Glodell’s story of what happens when love goes wrong may seem a little out there (remember, we Rejects are champions of all things Medusa), I want to point out that the script is one of the more surprisingly realistic offerings of 2011. Last year was full of films uncovering the darker, sadder parts of love, and Bellflower was courageous enough to compare the destruction of love to the terror of the Apocalypse—but with sexier people. Fortunately we will see more from both Rees and Glodell in the future, but it’s a pity these two sexually daring scripts won’t get the same stamp of approval as the nearly silent The Artist.

I know you might be ready to jump down to read (again) about Michael Fassbender’s boner in Shame, and I promise you I haven’t forgotten about him, but before we do that let’s talk about a film genre near and dear to my heart—documentaries. Director Errol Morris released the hilarious and unnerving documentary Tabloid last summer, a film chronicling the sexual delusions of a woman who would eventually become one of the most notorious subjects of tabloid fodder. What Tabloid introduces, besides a crazy woman, is the well-accepted notion that a woman cannot rape a man. This may have not been Morris’s intended theme, however it is one that is blatantly clear once the story of former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney’s obsession and abduction of her Mormon boyfriend begins to reveal that she forced herself upon him while keeping him against his will.

McKinney recounts the story for Morris, who does not shy away from the satire the subject lends herself, and in each passing scene her sanity is questioned along with the audience’s understanding of what constitutes rape. Unlike the narrative The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, rape in Tabloid almost comes off like a joke. As if it is something only humor can remedy. And regardless of how sensitive the subject, the lighter touching of rape in this documentary actually proves that McKinney is a nut job. This year’s Best Documentary nominees cannot hold a candle to the inspiring filmmaking Morris is capable of doing even when he’s not trying to make a serious film.

Infidelity, like rape, is something the Academy enjoys primarily seeing when the victim is being punished for being just that, a victim. Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion absolutely deserves no accolades for its uneven portrayal of a world-wide epidemic, however composer wunderkind Cliff Martinez does deserve a nod for beautifully narrating the nearly world-ending catastrophe brought on by one woman’s ill planned affair. Along with Alberto Iglesias’s moving score for Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (thankfully sitting high on the nomination hog), Martinez’s Contagion score perfectly captures the foreboding feeling the ensemble cast feels as their story unfolds. Without the use of a slutty trumpet or a saucy drum roll, Martinez hinted unobtrusively to the dire consequences infidelity can have on more than just the two parties involved, even if we really should be blaming the bat-pig.

Our last five rudely neglected films feature performances audiences will remember well beyond some of their would-have-been competitors. Don’t worry; I’m not putting the shirtless Channing Tatum into this bunch. Starting with the Best Supporting Actor category, two sexually daring (confusing?) performances were forgotten. First was the sexy-creepy Patrick (John Hawkes) in Martha Marcy May Marlene, a man so sexually compelling he had an entire cult of lost Urban Outfitter models following him along on morally conflicting excursions. Hawkes is quickly becoming the Judy Greer of the indie scene, and the Academy’s exclusion of him in the Best Supporting Actor category once again proves they just don’t get it (and maybe they need to get some).

Meanwhile, another scene-stealing background performer whose name was not called yesterday was Patton Oswalt. Young Adult was entirely forgotten this year, and it is an insult that Oswalt’s sexually misidentified Matt (a character who accepts he is sexually undesirable but doesn’t let that define himself) would not get recognition for falling in love with the emotional succubus that is Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron). It’s easy to say Matt is naive in thinking Mavis won’t crush his soul after she seeks sexual comfort from the tiny chubster, but Matt is so much more than that. He is weak and strong, something a real person can identify with. He knows Mavis is a wretch of a human, and he sleeps with her not thinking it would make her fall in love with him, but maybe actually help him fall out of love with her. Unfortunately Young Adult is not Matt’s story to tell, and we are left uncertain as to Matt’s final outcome once he realizes Mavis has fled. It is obvious Oswalt was Matt at one point, and that makes his lack of nomination sting even more.

The ladies didn’t have it any easier this year, as two impressive women were left off the final list of Best Actress nominees. Both Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia) submitted performances that were rooted in the evils or solace of sex. Both characters saw the adverse effects of their sexual decisions. Justine’s (Dunst) need for sex with a stranger the night of her wedding grants her a few fleeting moments of feeling something other than manic, but in the end she is living a sham of a life and wants others to accept their mortality on the cusp of the end of the world. Dunst’s performance is erotic in her unflinching bearing of herself, both physically and emotionally, yet it’s one of those performances where a beautiful person is not made ugly on the outside, but her overwhelming sadness destroys everyone watching. Dunst creates a character with such crippling melancholy that we cheer her on in ever poor decision she makes with her body.

Swinton’s Eva is a woman struggling to keep her unraveling marriage together as her terror of a son, Kevin (Ezra Miller), torments everyone from his younger sister and mother to his fellow students. Swinton is a chameleon, and she once again loses herself behind Eva’s perfectly manicured life. Hiding behind Swinton’s black eyes you can see the sadness of a woman whose sexual longing for her future husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) results in a real-life Damien, while she flashes back on how if she hadn’t given into her own desires her life wouldn’t been in the hellacious ditch it currently inhabits. Yes, Swinton already has an Oscar of her very own, but Eva is arguably one of the more underappreciated female characters of last year thanks to the film’s uncomfortable, ugly, and intense story; which is a shame of immeasurable proportions.

Ah! See what I did there? Shame? Yeah, okay you did. Shame is a film about a sex addict that almost feels like it needs less attention, and maybe in a way Fassbender’s Oscar snub is a direct result of championing a film too much. Fassbender bared not only his junk but also his character Brandon’s soul in Shame, completely immersing himself in a man whose sex appeal is actually his emotional undoing. Brandon could be anyone and have any addiction, but he is a rich white man with a little talked about addiction to carnal pleasures. He is sexy and disgusting, and Fassbender’s willingness to hold nothing back while in Brandon’s expensive shoes only proves that the Academy is afraid of sex for pleasure and wants to only reward actors engaging in sex on screen when the consequences are clear cut and easy to understand.

What other sexually proactive, engaging, or disturbing films and performances do you think the Academy failed to recognize this or in previous years?

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Space: 1999 Is The World We Should Be Living Now In Futures Past

AUTHOR: JOSH TYLER | CATEGORY: SCI-FI

This week my obsession with the way we used to see the future takes me to Earth’s moon, hurtling out of orbit in Space: 1999. Blast off with the latest installment in GFR’s ongoing series, Futures Past, right now. Six years after Apollo 11′s historic 1969 landing on the moon it seemed as though man was taking the first step to something bigger and grander. By comparison to some of the other science fiction being produced in the time period, Gerry Anderson’s (Thunderbirds, UFO) British produced television series Space: 1999 actually took a fairly conservative approach to what man might accomplish in the depths of space. Yet even Gerry’s view, realistic though it strove to be, turned out to be far too optimistic.

Still, in 1975 it seemed entirely plausible that man would have a permanent base on the lunar surface within the next 25 years. So Anderson set out to make a show based in what, at least then, seemed like an inevitable future. Here’s Martin Landau in the very first episode of Space: 1999, which was believe it or not, at the time the most expensive television program ever made. Watch it and I’ll see you afterward to discuss how they did at predicting the future…

The truth is that, aside from all the sleeve zippers, this is the world we should be living in right now. Establishing a base on the lunar surface, maybe even a base just like Moonbase Alpha, would have been completely plausible by 1999 had NASA continued to receive the kind of funding it deserved. Instead, after Apollo 11 America’s interest in exploring the cosmos waned and so did our government’s willingness to spend money on it.

Part of the problem, as it turns out, is that there just isn’t any profit in it. The moon’s a barren wilderness and we’ve yet to find anything worth going through all the trouble to go up there and get. Space: 1999 tries to clear this obstacle by presenting the moon as a reasonable solution to the world’s waste storage problem. That might have made sense if the cost of launching material into space had ever reached manageable levels. Unfortunately since money was never spent to develop a cheaper way of getting to the moon the cost to launch anything, let alone waste, remains prohibitively high.

Space: 1999 stayed on the air for two seasons and 48 episodes. At the time critics praised it, though as you’d expect scientists and science fiction authors alike were a little less than enthused with the whole “launching the moon out of orbit with a nuclear reaction” premise. Even then, that didn’t make a lot of sense. Yet so much of the rest of the show feels well thought out, right down to the G-forces when the moon’s blasted out of orbit, it’s easy to forgive them that one big piece of ridiculousness.

In an era where most science fiction predicted a future that was largely a wild fantasy, like the stuff of Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rodgers, Anderson’s series deserves praise for almost getting it right. Actually, I submit that he did get it right. Space: 1999 is the world we should be living in, we’re the ones who got it wrong.

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Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

By Stephanie Pappas | LiveScience.com

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Controversy ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics. "They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody." Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You] "The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

Brains and bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican] In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races. "This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

A study of averages

Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said. "There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said. Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally. "We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world. "Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice." In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link.

Simple viewpoints

Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.

The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general. "My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."

Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.

"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.

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Apple patent filing hints at possible touchscreen TV remote

Would remove 'clutter' from regular remotes

A newly-published patent application, originally submitted in September, hints at some of what Apple might have planned for its rumored TV set. The filing is titled Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control, and complains that most remotes need a sea of buttons to control all functions. "The controls that are not normally used clutter the remote control and can cause confusion to the user when trying to locate a seldom-used feature," Apple writes.

The company suggests that other universal remotes are even more complex than the basic remotes they replace, sometimes without covering all of the same functions. "Hence, users must spend time learning a new remote control or programming an existing universal remote each time they purchase a new remotely controllable appliance, which detracts from the enjoyment of using the appliance after it is first purchased," the application reads. "What is needed is an apparatus and a method to provide remote control over multiple appliances without the difficulties described above."

Apple suggests a remote with touchscreen interface, capable of displaying simpler, custom layouts depending on the device they want to control. Some examples include TVs, stereos, home automation, and computer MP3 or DVD playback, suggesting the possibility of iTunes support. An essential aspect of the patent is that the devices would transmit their interfaces to the remote, which would list them as options, graying out anything either turned off or out of range.

One report has suggested that the main interface for an Apple TV could be Siri, the voice command system currently restricted to the iPhone 4S. Since voice might not always be practical, though, a touchscreen remote could serve as an alternative or backup option.

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Bill Gates: 'I wrote Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying. He kept it by his bed’

By Mary Riddell

Bill Gates has frugal tastes. Asked to name his luxuries, he lists DVDs, books and takeaway burgers. It is hard, however, to think that any fast-food outlet would get rich on Gates’s custom. During a long list of engagements beginning well before dawn, he consumes nothing but cans of diet cola. For America’s wealthiest citizen, austerity is relative. The retinue of staff and the private jet hint at a fortune said to be approaching £40 billion. As he told pupils at a south London school he visited this week: “If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet. Ninety-nine per cent of it will go.” In an era when the wealthiest are society’s pariahs, the Microsoft founder has become the people’s plutocrat. Although some diseases, such as malaria, remain rife, his charitable foundation and his lobbying have borne results. In the past year, not a single citizen in India contracted polio. “People think aid is abstract and thousands of miles away. I go there and see it. I’m intent on making sure that my money gets to people who need it, and I come back and say it’s working.” This message has been heeded by “Cameron and George,” who have promised to hit the recognised goal of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid.

Is he not disappointed that Mr Osborne will effectively be cutting the budget by more than £1.1 billion over three years, because the economy is shrinking? “I have nothing but praise for the UK. [The drop] is certainly unfortunate, but I can hardly complain about it. 0.7 per cent is the gold standard, and most countries aren’t living up to that.” Should Britain’s richest citizens follow his example? “Philanthropy should be voluntary.” No one, he says, is going to take up giving “because someone scolded them or they heard Bill Gates say something mean. But I do think people are missing an opportunity to make an impact, learn a lot and be fulfilled.” Having persuaded almost 70 like-minded Americans, Warren Buffett included, to give up a large slice of their wealth, Gates would be happy to advise any Britons thinking of following suit. “We’re looking for philanthropists to co-invest, so any advice we can give them [is on offer].” Whether Britain’s bonus beneficiaries will avail themselves of this service is questionable. Still, as Gates points out, there is always tax. “With deficits the way they are, the rich are going to have to pay more. Unfortunately, almost everyone’s going to have to pay more, and it should fall more heavily on the rich… Just raising taxes on the rich won’t solve the crisis, but it seems reasonable to people – and there’s plenty of room to do that without creating disincentives or distortions.”

The news that the mega-rich Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, pays 15 per cent tax “wasn’t shocking at all. That’s the US system. If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.” Bill Gates moves seamlessly between worlds. His day in London started in the VIP suite of a television studio and shifted to a school assembly hall before he left for Davos, where yesterday he announced a new $750 million package to fight Aids, malaria and TB. Accustomed to morphing from the subsistence farms of Africa – the focus of his latest effort – to the salons of prime ministers, he does not see himself as a global power broker. “I hope they’re having a good time up at the top table, but I doubt they’re discussing diarrhoea and malaria.” Though always courteous, he has the inscrutable quality of the outsider. As a teenage geek in Seattle, he was entrusted with compiling class timetables on the ponderous school computer. At Harvard, he was the drop-out who founded a multi-billion dollar corporation, and at Microsoft, he was the pioneer in an uncharted techno-world.

One of the few people to understand his compulsions was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who died of cancer in October. The two men’s long and stormy relationship has been chronicled in Jobs’s latest biography, but, until now, Gates has said little about their divisions - and their bonds. “Steve was an incredible genius who contributed immensely to the field I was in. We had periods, like the early Macintosh, when we had more people working on it than they did. And then we were competitors. The personal computers I worked on had a vastly higher [market] share than Apple until really the last five or six years, where Steve’s very good work on the Mac and on iPhones and iPads did extremely well. It’s quite an achievement, and we enjoyed each [other’s work].”

This tribute, part praise, part reminder of Gates’s dominance, is more tactful than the comments Jobs made in his lifetime. “He spent a lot of his time competing with me. There are lots of times when Steve said [critical] things about me. If you took the more harsh examples, you could get quite a litany.” In Jobs’s view, his rival was “unimaginative”, “a bit narrow” and derivative. As he once told an interviewer, “He [Gates] would be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram.” The atmosphere changed in 2007 when Gates left Microsoft to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife. “Steve and I did an event together, and he couldn’t have been nicer…I got a fair bit of time with him in his last year. Some months before Jobs died, Gates paid him a long visit. “We spent literally hours reminiscing and talking about the future.” Later, with his old adversary’s death imminent, he wrote to him. “I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know.”

That last gesture was not, he says, conciliatory. “There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.” After Jobs’s death, Gates received a phone call from his wife, Laurene. “She said; 'Look, this biography really doesn’t paint a picture of the mutual respect you had.’ And she said he’d appreciated my letter and kept it by his bed.” Bill Gates rarely talks in such human terms. As a mathematician, he prefers numbers to emotion, focusing on the billion people in desperate poverty and the money needed to help them survive and work towards prosperity. As someone on the front line of mortality, he has balanced his aims against his own lifespan and wealth. Asked about his goal by a pupil at the school he is visiting, he says: “I’m 56. Hopefully I’ll live another 25 to 30 years to see [unnecessary] deaths drop to zero.”

“It’s not about legacy,” he tells me. “I’d like to see it get done. That is my job.” He has no expectation that his three children, who will inherit only a tiny fraction of his money, will follow him. “Our foundation won’t last long beyond Melinda’s and my lifetime. The resources will last about 20 years after whichever is the last of us to go. There is no family business, and my kids will make their own careers.” While he speculates that they will be “great doctors or great lawyers”, he admires not only entrepreneurs but the market system. “Capitalism has worked phenomenally. Look at North Korea versus South Korea, or China before and after 1979. Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that. We don’t have to [ask] whether capitalism is wrong.”

Though not especially religious, and far from pious (“People on the front line are the saints”), Bill Gates is driven on by faith. “I believed in the personal computer and I devoted my life to it,” he says. “If you have a dream, and it comes true, it’s a very cool thing.” Now he extends the passion he once expended on enterprise to ending disease and starvation. The man who changed the way the rich world lives is equally determined to change the way in which the poor world dies.

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