Ask the Legends: Kevin O'Leary

Kevin O'Leary, 56
Career highlights
Lives much of his childhood in developing nations due to his stepfather’s job with the U.N.’s International Labour Organization.

Earns a degree in environmental studies and psychology in 1977, and an MBA in 1980.

In 1983, he and partner Michael Perik launch SoftKey Software, which PROFIT names Canada’s Fastest-Growing Company in 1992. Subsequently acquires several educational software companies, including The Learning Co. (TLC), which becomes the company’s name.

In 1999, Mattel Toy Co. acquires TLC in an all-stock deal worth US$3.8 billion. O’Leary and Perik are soon let go after TLC proves not to be the cash cow Mattel had hoped for.

The experience sparks a new interest in investing. O’Leary becomes an outspoken critic of poor investment-management practices, earning a regular spot on TV’s Business News Network in 2003.

Joins the cast of CBC-TV’s Dragons’ Den in 2006 and Shark Tank on
ABC-TV in 2009.

Launches O’Leary Funds Management in 2009, which now boasts more than $1 billion under management.

How did growing up in several developing nations benefit you?
I wouldn’t have known it then, but it certainly has become a powerful motivation for what O’Leary Funds has become. It was very easy for a long time simply to buy Canadian assets and hope you could garner a good yield from that. Today, it’s far more challenging. We are going to have a slower GDP growth than the rest of the world because we are an aging population.

When I go to Brazil, India, China, South Korea, Thailand, Cambodia—Tunisia, even—these economies are on fire. A massive middle class is emerging. The fact that I know where Phnom Penh is and can actually get around town because I lived there, the fact that I know Cyprus, which is the headquarters of all the shipping licences in the world, makes me very comfortable as an investor in these places.

You’ve been described as someone who, even as a kid, has always had an “angle.” What made you so enterprising at a young age?
If you know you want something, why not ask for it? What’s the downside? All they can say is “No.” I learned early on, if there’s something I want, I’m prepared to ask again and again, and try to find the path to getting it. That’s also, I think, what defines an entrepreneur. You set a goal, you may not succeed the first time, but you keep trying.

Which of your fellow Dragons’ Den co-stars would best complement you in business?
The guy that I’m most in sync with is Jim Treliving [chairman and owner of Boston Pizza International Inc.]. My theme of investing now is far more conservative; I’m a value-yield investor. How much money do you have to tie up for how long before it becomes liquid again is the No. 1 question. I think, out of all the other Dragons, Jim’s the one who focuses on that the most.

Which Dragon would you pick if you were an operator rather than an investor?
I’d pick me, every time. I’ve had a fair amount of success, but I’ve also had a fair amount of failure. People don’t tend to focus on failures, but they are what make me a better investor and a better partner.

I think people spend too much time focusing on success and not enough on failure. I’d much prefer to invest in an entrepreneur who has failed three times than one who thinks he’s going to get it right the first time. The calluses you get, the experience of failure, are powerful things. I see too much vim and vigour in young entrepreneurs who don’t understand how hard it’s going to be.

What has your role in Dragons’ Den in Canada and Shark Tank in the U.S. told you about the difference between the two countries?
What I’ve learned about the U.S. market is that no matter how proprietary you think a deal is, when you get into the due-diligence phase, you’re going to find five other guys doing the same thing. That market is so competitive, so large and has so much potential, if you end up being the winner you often find a very similar business plan to any idea. That puts a lot more pressure on the due diligence in deals on Shark Tank that we don’t have in Canada. In Canada, you’re dealing with an economy that’s a tenth of the size. It’s easier to get stuff done here, particularly if you have an idea that’s groundbreaking. You can lift it off in the Canadian market and know you won’t have a lot of competition for the first two years.

What would you tell an aspiring entrepreneur about investor due diligence, which can be traumatizing?
Dragons’ Den works because it highlights the good, the bad and the ugly of the fundraising process. First, you have to present your idea; second, you have to convince the Dragons that you’re the right person to execute it, which is another huge challenge; third, everything you say—everything—has to check out, 100%. Just think about how often the tendency is for an entrepreneur to embellish a statement, or perhaps add an element of optimism that shouldn’t be there. Think of how much that frustrates an investor later, when they send in their lawyers and auditors. I mean, I’ll tear you apart six times. If one thing falls apart, that’s a huge problem for me.

Others on the panel care about the emotional aspect of this; they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. This is business. It’s war, it’s competitive, it’s hard. And if you can’t take the heat, don’t come in.

What makes for a great leader?
To me, great leadership is being able to stand up in a room full of your employees and say, “This is the goal. It’s the only thing that matters.”

If leaders can’t articulate the short-term, medium-term and long-term goals of their company and stay on message, they’re going to fail.

Even if you have your own personal doubts, they can’t show. Everybody in that room has to say, “He knows what he’s doing, he knows how he’s going to get there and I believe that by following them, I’ll get there, too.” You’re going to have that moment of self-doubt, but that moment is what defines you as a great leader or a weak one. You can’t show your weakness; you can only show your strengths, and modify your goals based on the reality and feedback of what the markets and business do.

When you refused to scrape gum off the floor of an ice-cream parlour you worked in as a teenager, you were promptly fired. What did that teach you?
I considered it a demeaning role I hadn’t signed up for. When I got terminated, I had no say in the matter. That is what affected me. I have to be in control of my environment—and you can’t be in control when you’re an employee. And I think that is the motivational drive of most entrepreneurs.

This is why PETA usually protests women wearing fur rather than bikers wearing leather. Sounds to me like the old saying, "you mess with the bull, and you get the horns". Gee, I guess these characters thought that Bikers were going to be politically correct like the rest of the wimpy world. HERE'S HOW POLICE FOUND ONE OF THEM.

Johnstown, PA (GlossyNews) - Local and state police scoured the hills outside rural Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after reports of three animal rights activists going missing after attempting to protest the wearing of leather at a large motorcycle gang rally this weekend. Two others, previously reported missing, were discovered by fast food workers "duct taped inside fast food restaurant dumpsters," according to police officials.

"Something just went wrong,"said a still visibly shaken organizer of the protest. "Something just went horribly, horribly, wrong."The organizer said a group of concerned animal rights activist groups, "growing tired of throwing fake blood and shouting profanities at older women wearing leather or fur coats," decided to protest the annual motorcycle club event "in a hope to show them our outrage at their wanton use of leather in their clothing and motor bike seats." "In fact," said the organizer, "motorcycle gangs are one of the biggest abusers of wearing leather, and we decided it was high time that we let them know that we disagree with them using it. ergo, they should stop."

According to witnesses, protesters arrived at the event in a vintage 1960's era Volkswagen van and began to pelt the gang members with balloons filled with red colored water, simulating blood, and shouting "you're murderers" to passers by. This, evidently, is when the brouhaha began.

"They peed on me!!!" charged one activist. "They grabbed me, said I looked like I was French, started calling me 'La Trene' and duct taped me to a tree so they could pee on me all day!"

Still others claimed they were forced to eat hamburgers and hot dogs under duress. Those who resisted were allegedly held down while several bikers "farted on their heads."

Police officials declined comments on any leads or arrests due to the ongoing nature of the investigation; however, organizers for the motorcycle club rally expressed "surprise" at the allegations.

"That's preposterous,"said one high-ranking member of the biker organizing committee. "We were having a party, and these people showed up and were very rude to us. They threw things at us, called us names, and tried to ruin the entire event. So, what did we do? We invited them to the party! What could be more friendly than that? You know, just because we are all members of motorcycle clubs does not mean we do not care about inclusiveness. Personally, I think it shows a lack of character for them to be saying such nasty things about us after we bent over backwards to make them feel welcome."

When confronted with the allegations of force-feeding the activist's meat, using them as ad hoc latrines, leaving them incapacitated in fast food restaurant dumpsters, and 'farting on their heads,' the organizer declined to comment in detail. "That's just our secret handshake,"assured the organizer.

Its A Joke Folks

When TV did not exist this was the Churches communication media..commissioned painters, sculptures who created art that displayed a message to the masses.


The Seven Acts of Mercy

1. Bury the dead; In the background two men carry a dead man you can sees his feet

2 & 3. Visit the imprisoned & Feed the hungry; On the left a daughter visits her imprisoned father and gives him milk from her bosom.

4. Shelter the Homeless; A Pilgrim (you can tell by the shell in his hat 3rd from the left) seeks shelter from an innkeeper on the left.

5. Visit the sick; The beggar being given the robe is crippled and pulls himself along on the ground and St Martin greet him and clothes him.

6. Clothe the naked; St Martin 4th from the left has torn his robe in half and given it to the beggar.

7. Give drink to the thirsty; On the right Samson (second from the left) drinks water from the jawbone of an ass.

Episode

Episode 1

Beginning in Rome, art critic Waldemar Januszczak details the birth of the Baroque tradition as it burst forth in Italy, with footage of St Peter's Basilica and other gems of the Italian Baroque.

Recently I lost a friend named Ed Mielczarek to Cancer at age 64. He never even had a chance to retire and was working hard when he learned of his health crisis with Cancer which claimed him less then 1 year later.

But he lives on in everyone who remembers him. So I wanted to say that Ed was a good friend.
We travelled to New Orleans the year before Katrina with Ed and his wife Donna and another couple. We had a wonderful times together.

And Ed Mielczarek was a true family man , supportive to his kids and grandkids and his marriage lasted for his adult lifetime. He was a gentleman accountant.

He was a hard working , generous, charming, a soft spoken intuitive , funny man, who I would call my friend.

Dock Phillip Ellis, Jr. (March 11, 1945 – December 19, 2008) was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, among other teams. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. However, he is perhaps best remembered for throwing a no-hitter in 1970 and later stating that he had done it while under the influence of LSD.

As Ellis recounted it:

I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.^[6]

The incident inspired the songs "Dock Ellis" by indie rock singer Barbara Manning, "America's Favorite Pastime" by folk singer Todd Snider, "Dock Ellis' No-No" by Chuck Brodsky,^[7] and "LSD (The Ballad of Doc Ellis)" by Boston rock band Random Road Mother. Robin Williams has incorporated the tale into a standup routine for HBO ^[8] An animated short film about the game, "Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No", features narration in Ellis's own voice, taken from a 2008 radio interview.^[9]

Source

Before you start using aerosol hairspray, let’s try and figure out if anyone can actually live on Gliese 581g.

Here’s the first problem with the new, potentially habitable Earth-like planet just discovered by astronomers. The name. No one’s going to schlep all their stuff to a place called Gliese 581g. Before that sinks in, we need to change the name to something catchier – like “Mars.”

Gliese 581g is about three times the mass of Earth. It’s closer to its star than we are to the sun, but its star is a slow-burning red dwarf, so it’s unlikely we’d be cooked right off it. It sits in what astronomers called the “Goldilocks Zone” of the galaxy – the place where conditions are just right to ensure a supply of liquid water.

We can think of Gliese 581g as our special nest egg, our survival back-up plan. Once we ruin this planet (and rest assured, that’s as good as done), we now have a destination in mind. This is about as likely as you saying, “Once I’ve totally trashed my mom’s basement, I’ll move into Buckingham Palace,” but dreams are important.

However, it’s also important that we understand the sacrifices we’ll be making on Gliese 581g. You’re going to have to give up certain things in order to breathe the (possibly deadly) fresh air. Here they are:

• Your current life: Gliese is 20 light years away. That’s about 190,000,000,000,000 km. That’s a lot.

The fastest man-made object is the Helios 2 space probe, which can travel at 250,000 km/h. The upshot – it’s going to take 87,000 years to get there. So you won’t be moving planets, although if you’re super-talented, some form of DNA goo that resembles you might make it there in a petri dish.

• Jogging: Gravity is a crap-shoot on Gliese. But in all likelihood, once you leave the house, you will either be crushed as flat as a crepe or go spinning off into the ether. Neither of which is much of an aerobic workout.

• Skin: Like the moon, Gliese always shows the same face to its star. So one side is bathed in light – and likely baking hot – while the other side is swathed in darkness – and likely freezing.

Either way, your epidermis is not going to cut it. So prepare to start every day with some variation on this ritual.

• The novelty of your birthday: Gliese rotates once every 37 days – which means “hump day” on Gliese is going to last longer than July.

Coincidentally, that’s also as long as it takes Gliese to orbit its star. So one year is also 37 days. That means it’ll be your birthday every day at 3:30 p.m. And no, you don’t get to take your birthday day off.

The next time you spot an oil slick, resist the urge to light it on fire, no matter how much fun that seems like. Sounds like we’re going to need our beater of a homeworld for a little while yet.

Or will we?

“The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common,” said one of Gliese 581g’s discoverers, astrophysicist Steven Vogt.

Whew. Awesome news. No need to rush. So. How long were they looking before they spotted Gliese 581g? Three days? A week?

Actually, 11 years.

No word yet on the rumour that Prof. Steven Vogt has been en

gaged since 1978.

$12.5M lottery prize theft leads to 3 arrests

Three family members in the Toronto area have been charged in the theft of a $12.5-million lottery prize, while police seek the rightful owner of the Lotto Super 7 ticket bought in 2003.

Three family members in the Toronto area have been charged in the theft of a $12.5-million lottery prize, while police seek the rightful owner of the Lotto Super 7 ticket bought in 2003.

Two of the accused are a father and son who worked at a Burlington lottery outlet and were actively stealing tickets from customers, Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Chris Lewis said in Toronto after the arrests Wednesday.

After the Lotto Super 7 draw on Dec. 26, 2003, the pair handed the ticket over to a female family member to claim, the police allege.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation paid out the prize in December 2004.

Profile of rightful winner

Lottery officials say the actual winner of the $12.5-million prize could be a group that buys tickets regularly. The person or persons bought the original Super 7 ticket at That's Entertainment in St. Catharines in October 2003. It was handed in for validation at the Variety Plus store in Burlington, and the buyer was never told it won a free ticket that went on to win the big prize on Dec. 26. Police believe the customer lived in one city and worked in the other and had a unique spending habit on multiple tickets. The customer played Super 7 regularly but also played other lottery products from time to time.

Kathleen Chung, 29, her brother Kenneth Chung, 28, and the pair's 60-year-old father, Jun-Chul Chung, face a string of charges from theft and fraud to money-laundering and possession of proceeds of crime.

Police have also seized many of the family's assets, including bank accounts, five luxury vehicles, two residential homes, three commercial properties, and other personal property such as jewelry and electronics, bought after the win, Insp. Don Perron said.

At a separate news conference Wednesday, OLG chair Paul Godfrey said the organization will pay the rightful owner of the winning ticket the full prize amount plus interest.

"Someone in our province has potentially been denied a $12.5-million jackpot that is theirs as the rightful ticket purchaser," he said. "We want to find that person. We are committed to making sure the right prize gets in the right hands each and every time."

Using a new in-house data and analytic tool called DART (data analysis and retrieval technology), the OLG created a customer and ticket profile for the winning ticket, Godfrey said.

DART allows OLG to review billions of transactions in a matter of minutes to determine patterns that identify potentially fraudulent behaviour and claims.

"We can find out where tickets with those same winning numbers have been purchased, where they've been validated, which city, which retailer," Godfrey said. "[It] also allows us to know everything there is to know about a ticket, about patterns and routines of play, locations, timing and habits."

CBC's The Fifth Estate profiled the case of Kathleen Chung, who allegedly cashed the winning ticket at her brother's convenience store in Burlington back in early 2004.

The case raised many red flags after Chung claimed not to recall where she bought the ticket and refused a polygraph test.

At first, Chung called the lottery prize office, saying she was phoning on behalf of her brother who "owned" the ticket.

When she appeared at the prize office in person on Feb. 5, 2004, she claimed it as her own, denied a connection to any retailer and even prepared to sign a declaration stating she didn't have a brother.

However, an OLG investigator discovered a familial link between Chung and the store where she validated her winning ticket.

The OLG eventually paid out the money without the usual fanfare, because it was unable to prove any wrongdoing.

The provincial police investigation and arrests follow a scathing report from Ontario's ombudsman, which was triggered by the CBC's The Fifth Estate story.

Since 2007, hundreds of wins have come under question, and the police have taken on a key role in the investigations.

A forensic audit released in February 2009 revealed that lottery retailers, employees and their families have taken home $198 million in prizes over the past 13 years.

Starting on Jan. 1, 2008, a unit of 14 police officers has been working with the OLG regulator, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, to investigate insider and suspicious wins.

P.O.V.:

Lottery fraud: How do you protect yourself? [http://www.cbc.ca/news/pointofview/2010/09/lottery-fraud-how-do-you-protect-yourself.html]

In 2008, the police investigated 477 insider and suspicious wins, resulting in charges against 14 people. Last year, 355 such wins were investigated and four people charged.

Search underway for rightful winner

At their news conference Wednesday, police also released information they hope will identify the rightful winner of the $12.5 million. The customer profile matches that of a group play, Insp. Bill Price revealed.

The Super 7 ticket was purchased at That's Entertainment in St. Catharines, Ont., in 2003. That original ticket was redeemed at the Variety Plus store in Burlington - where Kenneth Chung was manager - and it won a free ticket in the Dec. 26 draw, worth $12.5 million.

The winning numbers for the Dec. 26 draw were: 6, 8, 14, 25, 36, 41 and 42. Police believe the customer lived in one city and worked in the other and had a unique spending habit on multiple tickets. The customer played Super 7 regularly but also played other lottery products from time to time.

"We are optimistic that publicizing information about this investigation will help identify the victim of this fraud," said Lewis.

guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 November 2009 18.15 GMT

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.

The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.

The files, which in total amount to 160MB of data, were first uploaded on to a Russian server, before being widely mirrored across the internet. The emails were accompanied by the anonymous statement: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."

A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia said: "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites. Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all this material is genuine. This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation. We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and have involved the police in this inquiry."

In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

This sentence, in particular, has been leapt upon by sceptics as evidence of manipulating data, but the credibility of the email has not been verified. The scientists who allegedly sent it declined to comment on the email.

"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists say 'trick' not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick."

In another alleged email, one of the scientists apparently refers to the death of a prominent climate change sceptic by saying "in an odd way this is cheering news".

Ward said that if the emails are correct, they "might highlight behaviour that those individuals might not like to have made public." But he added, "Let's separate out [the climate scientists] reacting badly to the personal attacks [from sceptics] to the idea that their work has been carried out in an inappropriate way."

The revelations did not alter the huge body of evidence from a variety of scientific fields that supports the conclusion that modern climate change is caused largely by human activity, Ward said. The emails refer largely to work on so-called paleoclimate data - reconstructing past climate scenarios using data such as ice cores and tree rings. "Climate change is based on several lines of evidence, not just paleoclimate data," he said. "At the heart of this is basic physics."

Ward pointed out that the individuals named in the alleged emails had numerous publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. "It would be very surprising if after all this time, suddenly they were found out doing something as wrong as that."

Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, features in many of the email exchanges. He said: "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."

When the Guardian asked Prof Phil Jones at UEA, who features in the correspondence, to verify whether the emails were genuine, he refused to comment.

The alleged emails illustrate the persistent pressure some climatologists have been under from sceptics in recent years. There have been repeated calls, including Freedom of Information requests, for the Climate Research Unit to make public a confidential dataset of land and sea temperature recordings that is "value added" by the unit before being used by the Met Office. The emails show the frustration some climatologists have had at having to operate under such intense, often politically motivated, scrutiny.

Prof Bob Watson, the chief scientific advisor at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said, "Evidence for climate change is irrefutable. The world's leading scientists overwhelmingly agree what we're experiencing is not down to natural variation."

"With this overwhelming scientific body of evidence failing to take action to tackle climate change would be the wrong thing to do – the impacts here in Britain and across the world will worsen and the economic consequences will be catastrophic."

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: "If you looked through any organisation's emails from the last 10 years you'd find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world's leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke."

• This article was amended on Wednesday 25 November 2009. A unit was garbled: the files amount to 160MB of data, not 160MbB. This has been corrected.

(AP) – 5 hours ago

LONDON — The world's largest offshore wind farm opened off the southeast coast of England on Thursday, as part of the British government's push to boost renewable energy.

Swedish energy company Vattenfall, which constructed the wind farm, said the 100 turbines off the coast of Thanet could, at their peak, produce enough electricity a year to power the equivalent of more than 200,000 homes.

The huge site on the North Sea, built seven miles (12 kilometers) off the coast, will boost the renewable energy now generated by the onshore and offshore wind turbines around the U.K.

With the opening of the Thanet wind farm, Britain now has the capacity to produce 5 gigawatts of wind-powered energy — roughly the amount of energy needed to power all the homes in Scotland, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said.

Britain gets only 3 percent of its energy from renewable sources but is aiming for a target of 15 percent by 2020. The nation ranks 25th of 27 European Union countries on action on green power.

"We are an island nation and I firmly believe we should be harnessing our wind, wave and tidal resources to the maximum," Huhne said at a ceremony at sea as he officially opened the Thanet wind farm.

Each Thanet turbine is up to 380 feet (115 meters) tall and the site is as large as 4,000 football fields. Vattenfall said its new farm could generate 300 megawatts of energy at full capacity, although critics note that wind power output can be intermittent and variable. The company said the farm is expected to operate for at least 25 years.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth said Britain's record on renewable energy is still dismal and urged more investment in green energy projects.

The group wants the British government to guarantee funding of at least 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) a year for the Green Investment Bank, which aims to boost private-sector spending on low-carbon technology.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Computer model shows how the Red Sea may have parted for Moses

The story, told in biblical writings and in the Koran, describes an east wind blowing the water apart, leaving a dry tract of land for the group to flee across.

When the Pharoah's army tries to follow, the walls of water rush back and drown the soldiers.

While this sounds like fantasy, an American research team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder has created a computer simulation model to show that given the right circumstances, it is possible that the waters did indeed part for Moses.

The computer simulations, part of a greater study on how wind affects water, have shown that with a strong east wind blowing overnight at a bend where a river merges with a lagoon, the waters would be pushed back, exposing a land bridge for a short time.

It is due to a phenomenon known as a "wind setdown" where a strong and persistent wind can push a body of water and "pile it up" downwind.

Carl Drew who led the study, says in a video that this phenomenon is well-known, but to re-enact the biblical story, "the tricky part is to get water on both sides of the crossing".

They found that at a point where a river bends to merge with a coastal lagoon, the water "splits at the point of the bend".

"So there's water on both sides and a bunch of refugees can come walking or running across," he said.

Such a place occurred in the ancient Eastern Nile Delta.

Mr Drews and CU oceanographer Weiqing Han analysed archaeological records, satellite measurements and maps and applied the data to ancient topography of an area of the Nile Delta which they believed provided both the right geographical conditions and a plausible site for the Bible story.

Mr Drews told news.com.au that he ran 14 simulation experiments. "They tested various configurations of the geography and the wind (direction and speed). The short answer is that the crossing has some tolerance to variations, but not a whole lot. It's a rare event."

They found that if the wind blows for 12 hours at 63 miles per hour (just over 101km/h) it would push back nearly two metres of deep water.

This would expose mud flats for four hours, creating a safe passage for Moses and the Israelites.

This in turn would push the water into the lake and the channel of the river, creating the two walls of water.

When asked, Mr Drews said he had not had any reactions from church groups as yet. "The overwhelming reaction is that people are fascinated that a 3,000-year-old story, one they've heard about and seen in movies, has a real scientific basis in physical laws."

A YouTube video on view below shows a new Audi being controlled by a computer, not a driver, as it speeds across some open flats. Most commenters were wowed, but one wrote, "Alright, let's test it on a place [with] a few more obstacles, shall we?"

A film crew was doing just that today on Pikes Peak when the helicopter carrying them -- not the car itself -- crashed.

Fortunately, pilot Jim Dirker, who used to fly for 9News, and the three crew members all survived. But the commercial will have to wait for another day. Check out the earlier footage below:

President Obama urged a crowd today to stick with his economic policies as the nation slowly recovers from an economic crisis more than a decade in the making.

"The challenge is, is that the hole was so deep that a lot of people out there are still hurting," Obama told a town hall meeting sponsored by the CNBC financial news network. "So the question then becomes, what can we now put in place to make sure that the trend lines continue in a positive direction, as opposed to going back in the negative direction?"

Obama, taking some critical questions from the audience, denied he is anti-business, and said his administration seeks the best balance between a free market and essential regulation.

Republican Party chair Michael Steele said Obama "trotted out the same old worn-out reassurances on the economy, but Americans are still waiting for the promised recovery that never arrived."

Some play-by-play: Click Here

Contractor Says He Was Paid to Remove Motrin From Shelves

E-Mails Obtained by ABC News Show J&J and FDA Knew of Buyback Program

by Dr. RICHARD BESSER and BRINDA ADHIKARI

Sept. 20, 2010 —

For generations, parents have depended on Johnson & Johnson, trusting the company's medicines in the middle of the night.

Today, the gold-standard brand is in a tailspin and its quality is being questioned as Johnson & Johnson faces a second congressional hearing.

There have been eight recalls in the last year -- 136 million bottles of children's medicines including Children's Tylenol, Motrin Infant Drops, Children's Benadryl and Zyrtec -- and the company is apologizing for the largest over-the-counter children's medicine recall in history.

In November 2008, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary McNeil Consumer Healthcare discovered that some of its Motrin tablets were not dissolving properly -- meaning that if a consumer had a headache and took the medication, it might not work as expected.

Usually when there is a manufacturing problem, the product is recalled even if, as in this case, it does not pose a harm to consumers. In this case, contractors were sent to 5,000 convenience stores around the U.S. to quietly buy the faulty Motrin without alerting the public.

"I had been told not to say that this was a recall," said Lynn Walther who works for a Portland, Ore., inventory company. "I did not understand why I should be telling someone that this is not a recall when in my mind it was a recall."

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Walther said that he was hired by a contractor to walk into convenience stores and quietly buy specific lots of Motrin IB caplet eight-count vials. Though he said his purchases often were met with puzzled looks from store owners, Walther said he had been told not to give the stores an explanation.

"Usually the only thing that was said was 'That's quite a bit of Motrin. What are you going to do with that?'" Walther said. "I just said, 'I'd like to purchase this Motrin.' I didn't make any conversation that I didn't feel was necessary."

He said he was following the instructions he'd been given. "You should simply act like a regular customer while making these purchases," the document said. "There must be no mention of this being a recall of the product. Run in, find the product, make your purchase and run out."

'I Wish ... I Hadn't Done It

Johnson And Johnson Criminal Investigation Click Here

(Trees; clouds; jaywalker and traffic; clouds; church exterior; sun; cross; clouds; cross on pew; clouds)

Ms. DIANA PARMELE: There is God. There is also a devil.

Read this ABC Report http://abc.go.com/watch/2020/166626

TENS of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted.

US government scientists say this massive move to shore by walruses is unusual in the United States. But it has happened at least twice before, in 2007 and 2009. In those years Arctic sea ice also was at or near record low levels.

The walruses “stretch out for one mile or more. This is just packed shoulder-to-shoulder,” US Geological Survey biologist Anthony Fischbach said from Alaska.

He estimated their number at tens of thousands.

Scientists with two federal agencies are most concerned about the 900-kg female walruses stampeding and crushing each other and their smaller calves near Point Lay, Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to change airplane flight patterns to avoid spooking the animals. Officials have also asked locals to be judicious about hunting, said agency spokesman Bruce Woods.

The federal government is in a year-long process to determine if walruses should be put on the endangered species list.

Mr Fischbach said scientists don't know how long the walrus camp-out will last, but there should be enough food for all of them.

During normal summers, the males go off to play in the Bering Sea, while the females raise their young in the Chukchi. The females rest on sea ice and dive from it to the sea floor for clams and worms.

“When they no longer have a place to rest, they need to go some place and it's a long commute,” Mr Fischbach said. “This is directly related to the lack of sea ice.”

Loss of sea ice in the Chukchi this summer in the northern hemisphere has surprised scientists because last winter lots of old established sea ice floated into the region, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. But that has disappeared.

Although last year was a slight improvement over previous years, Mr Serreze says there has been a long-term decline that he blames on global warming.

“We'll likely see more summers like this,” he said. “There is no sign of Arctic recovery.”

AP

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -
world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs. Feed it up a knock,
speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,
down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for
hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies
breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,
common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its
own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn,
return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning,
blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle,
light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament,
a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite.
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic,
slam, but neck, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...

(It's time I had some time alone)

Source

Send "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" Ringtone to your Cell

Obama: 'A lot of people out there are still hurting'

Obama speaks to CNBC Town Hall

Specials & Documentaries - HBO Canada\

Liz Garbus explores the current state of free speech in America, and gives viewers a fascinating perspective on the First Amendment through historical and contemporary examples.

Shouting Fire: Stories From The Edge Of Free Speech Fri Sep. ... Sat Oct. 9 11:30 AM ET / MT. HBO presents a special documentary; located just south of ...
www.hbocanada.com/movies/docsandspecials.php -

Saturday Sep. 18	3:35AM ET / MT
Tuesday Sep. 21	5:45PM ET / MT
Saturday Sep. 25	9:05AM ET / MT
Saturday Sep. 25	6:45PM ET / MT

http://www.hbocanada.com/details/?id=49568

It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage". If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.

– Ward Churchill , Statement to Rocky Mountain News

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality

"There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it." Ward Churchill

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality (ISBN 1-902593-79-0) is a book written by Ward Churchill published in 2003 by AK Press. The "Roosting Chickens" of the title comes from a 1963 Malcolm X speech^{[citation needed]} about the John F. Kennedy assassination, calling it "merely a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.'"^[1]

Churchill used the term "Roosting Chickens" in a short essay Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens first published on September 12, 2001. In that article, Churchill alleged that the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States were "acts of war" by the "Islamic East" in defense against the "crusades" waged by the "Christian West" (e.g. Arab-Israeli conflict and The First Gulf War) throughout the late 20th century.^[2]

Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill
Ward Churchill speaking at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, May 2005.
Born	October 2, 1947 (1947-10-02) (age 62) Elmwood, Illinois, United States
Occupation	Author, Activist

Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American writer and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States (US) government. His work features controversial and provocative claims, written in a direct – often confrontational – style.

In January 2005, Churchill's work attracted publicity because of the widespread circulation of a 2001 essay, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". In the essay, he claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of what he views as unlawful US policy, and he referred to the "technocratic corps" working in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns".^[1]

In March 2005 the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct; it reported in June 2006 that he had done so.^[2] Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007,^[3] leading to a claim by some scholars that he was fired over the ideas he expressed.^{[4][dead link][5]} Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009 a Denver jury found that Churchill was wrongly fired, awarding him $1 in damages.^[6][7] In July, 2009, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, deciding the university has "quasi-judicial immunity". In February, 2010, Churchill appealed the judge's decision.^[8][9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

"If there was a better, more effective way of visiting some penalty...upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting...the Twin Towers, ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1329693/posts - Cached

WTC "Nazi"-Crack Professor to Speak at NY College
Newswatch 50, WWTI, Watertown, NY ^ | January 27, 2005 | AP

Posted on January-27-05 8:59:47 AM by Former Dodger

CLINTON, N.Y. (AP) - An upstate college is being criticized for scheduling a speaker who has compared victims of the September Eleventh terrorist attacks to one of the Nazi architects of the Holocaust. Ward Churchill will take part in a panel discussion at Hamilton College, near Utica, on February third.

Churchill, who's an American Indian, is head of the ethnic studies program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The day after September Eleventh, 2001, Churchill wrote an essay in which he said the victims of the terrorist attacks weren't innocent bystanders and he compared them to Nazi Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in carrying out the Holocaust.

Churchill's scheduled appearance at Hamilton has outraged some students and faculty. One professor says it's "morally outrageous" to invite Churchill to the college. Organizers of the lecture series says allowing diverse viewpoints to be presented on campus is what academic institutions are supposed to do.

---

TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: bizarro; loonyleft; loureedwannabe; narcissist; wardchurchill

Billionaires, millionaires and anyone earning more than $300,000 a year should be fair game for much higher taxes, argue two staunch opponents of gross inequality.

Linda McQuaig, a prolific author and Toronto Star columnist, has worked with leading law professor Neil Brooks to write a new book called The Trouble With Billionaires.

Daw: Billionaires — To envy or raid for our benefit? - thestar.com

(CBS/ AP) Donald Trump is offering to buy out one of the major investors in the real estate partnership that controls the site near ground zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-story Islamic center.

In a letter released Thursday by Trump's publicist, the real estate investor tells Hisham Elzanaty he would buy his stake in the lower Manhattan building for 25 percent more than whatever he paid.


Trump says he's making the offer not because he thinks the location is spectacular but because it would end "a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation."

The letter from Trump, addressed to Hisham Elzanaty, reads in part:

"As part of the offer, it would be agreed that, if you or your representative were to build a mosque, it would be located at least five blocks further from the World Trade Center site."

Fact Check: The "Ground Zero Mosque" Debate

It's unclear whether Elzanaty has total control over the property, which is owned by an eight-member investment group managed by Soho Properties.

Many Republicans and some Democrats say the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque should be built elsewhere where there is no possible association with New York's ground zero. Far more than a local zoning issue, the matter has seized congressional campaigns, put President Barack Obama and his party on the spot - he says Muslims have the right to build the mosque - divided families of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims, caught the attention of Muslims abroad and threatened to blur distinctions between mainstream Islam in the U.S. and its radical elements.

Ruby Dhalla's nanny trouble - thestar.com