Eideard

Grand Prize Winner Lake Superior Photo Contest 2010
“Lucky Strike,” taken near Ironwood, Michigan
Rob Wiener, Eagle River, Wisconsin

Thanks, Cinaedh

“I’m eating my damn breakfast. Leave me alone!”
(Actually, I’d be delighted to get that response)

OK, so this isn’t a current story at all. Or is it? I pose this question as a followup to reports from September 2010, which indicated that Spassky had suffered a stroke in Moscow. The last I read, he was receiving physical therapy in France. Details were sketchy at best, and it wasn’t clear where information was coming from.

So.. maybe someone who knows something will run across this and give me an update?

It never hurts to ask. I hope he is well.

That’s right. #1 seller in the U.S. is still the F-150

Toyota’s U.S. vehicle sales fell in 2010 while industrywide sales rose 11 percent and every other major automaker reported gains. Ford moved up to second place behind only General Motors…Deliveries in December accelerated to the fastest pace of the year…

“The black clouds from Toyota’s recalls just don’t seem to go away,” said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends for Santa Monica, California-based auto pricing website Truecar.com. “We saw Ford, GM and Hyundai-Kia come on strong. Brand loyalty isn’t what it used to be.”

Industrywide sales in 2010 totaled 11.6 million, according to Autodata Corp., based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. That’s up from 10.4 million the previous year for the first gain since 2005 and the largest percentage increase since 1984…

Like everything else associated with the Great Recession, you shouldn’t be surprised over dynamic percentage increases. Even the rate of jobs growth is larger than previous recessions – but, it doesn’t always feel like much since we’re starting back from the exceptional pit dug by neocon corruption and laissez-faire economics.

“This is a market that’s coming back significantly,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with IHS Automotive, a researcher in Lexington, Massachusetts. “And with really strong products coming from GM, Ford and Chrysler, there’s a lot of opportunity for change in the marketplace…”

Ford was the best-selling make in the U.S. in 2010, displacing Toyota’s namesake brand, which fell to third behind GM’s Chevrolet. Ford sold 1.76 million Ford-brand vehicles last year, while GM sold 1.57 million Chevrolets and Toyota sold 1.49 million Toyota cars and trucks…

Rising consumer confidence and retail spending bode well for car sales and may help boost 2011 industrywide sales, including heavy-duty trucks, to 13 million to 13.5 million vehicles, Don Johnson, GM’s vice president of U.S. sales operations, said today on a conference call.

RTFA for details on each marque. They all bode well. Well enough, I guess, for partisanship to resume among those of us who were cheerleaders for TARP and keeping an entire national industry from going down the tubes to satisfy those who base their dollar politics on redemption tales and the Kool-Aid Party.

Take it easy on the bamboo juice.

This was more cool than I was expecting… but then, I’m an animal person.

Friday, November 5
Lun Lun’s new cub is thriving due to her superb mothering skills. I have gotten several good looks at the cub and it is moving well, has a fat tummy, and a healthy set of lungs! All of the nursery keepers have observed the cub nursing and its round belly is evidence of this. Lun Lun has not eaten since the afternoon before her labor began and the last time she drank was during her labor. This is normal. Wild giant panda mothers do not leave their cubs for at least a few days after the birth and one mother did not leave her cub for three weeks after giving birth. This is astounding given that giant pandas feed almost exclusively on bamboo, and thus do not build up significant fat stores. This is just one more example of how interesting giant panda behavior and physiology is. It is normal for captive females to refrain from eating and drinking after birth too, even though food and water are only a few feet away. However, tonight Lun Lun was leaning with her back against the wall close to one set of the vertical bars and I was able to safely offer her a small tub of water through the bars. She was able to lean over and drink without putting the cub down. She drank the entire amount and wanted more, so I filled the tub again and she drank all of that as well. Although it is normal for her to refrain from eating, drinking or eliminating for several days after giving birth, keeping hydrated will help her to stay healthy and continue to provide excellent care to her baby. –Heather Baker Roberts

Way cool, Heather!

Giant panda born at Zoo Atlanta, November 3rd

I had read that Boris Spassky suffered a life-threatening stroke last month, but I hadn’t been able to find any updates. This is all I know:

Boris Spassky, 75, former world champion and longtime adversary of Bobby Fischer, suffered a stroke in Moscow, while visiting as a guest at the Women’s Blitz championship. Although his life was in danger, latest reports are that he is in stable condition, can eat and move around, though he has suffered some paralysis on one side.

Yes it is, according to Bruno Giussani, European director for TED, the nonprofit organization that on Tuesday is beginning TEDGlobal 2010, its third conference in Oxford.

“Someone has written, in presenting the conference, that good news is a species that is becoming extinct. If you look at any newspaper … we are bombarded by bad news,” he said as attendees chatted at a welcome party at Keble College on Monday. “But if you dig, if you look under the surface and search, you will find a lot of new technology, new science, new art, new ways of thinking, politically, socially, philosophically that may give you, when you string them all together, a more optimistic view of the future…”

Giussani said part of the goal of the conference is to “inspire [people] to open up to new ideas and points of view, to act on those ideas and to engage.” He also described the conference as a “platform for new ideas. Some of those have legs, and some don’t. But those that have legs seem to have long legs and run very fast…”

TED began as a California-based conference in the 1980s named after its three initial subjects: technology, entertainment and design. It has expanded its subject matter and its geographical scope, holding conferences around the world and making videos of its speakers, so far more than 700, freely available at http://www.ted.com/. Volunteers translate talks into more than 70 languages. [CNN partners with TED to present a TEDTalk every week, with added content, on CNN.com]

Among the themes to be explored this year at the Oxford conference are how the brain works, how people make decisions and the brainlike functions of neurons in control centers in plants that enable them to process information and communicate with other plants.

Giussani said speakers will also spotlight the role of women in societies torn by conflict and disease, the potential of sustainable practices and organic farming to change agriculture and the restaurant business and the ways corporations and nongovernmental organizations can collaborate to protect workers in global supply chains.

So there really is some good news, he believes.

Newspapers filled with bad news reflects more than anything else the demented editorial belief that disaster and tragedy sells more product than happiness. It’s big in local TV and radio news. Significant in national TV and radio news. The whole genre of Talk Radio is founded upon the fear and impotence defining ethically-deficient right wingers and religious nutballs.

But it grows. And that is good news. Conservatism has nothing like it to offer, after all.

Andrés Iniesta breaks everyones’ heart in Holland

A match like many of the World Cup Finals I’ve watched in the past forty years.

Mostly played out in the midfield. Individual attacks, sometimes in pairs or threes; but, never jeopardizing the need for defense. Some of those efforts almost succeeded, should have succeeded. But, that was up to the players on the pitch.

No brilliant field general or Titan of sport. Just twenty-two skilled, talented, disciplined and well-trained athletes giving their all.

I didn’t expect more than that. It was well worth watching.

Netherlands 0 – 1 Spain

Yes, South Africa was a big winner on the day, as well.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The rotten parliament is dissolved; this week a new one will be elected. Scores of incumbents who fiddled their expenses will be evicted. Many who did not are standing down anyway, too defeated by the public’s loathing of politicians to face the campaign trail.

So change is inevitable. Parliament will be full of novice MPs. It might also, if current opinion polls are borne out, be hung…

The vital context for this election is the twin crises in our economy and our politics. On both issues most credit accrues to the Liberal Democrats. Their Treasury spokesman Vince Cable was prescient in warning of an unsustainable debt bubble; Nick Clegg pushed for greater openness about expenses long before the scandal erupted.

The Lib Dems have in recent years developed a habit of getting things right. They were first of the big three to embrace environmentalism, first to kick back against the assault on civil liberties, alone in opposing the Iraq war…

The thrust of Nick Clegg’s manifesto is right on political reform, right on tax reform that would redistribute wealth from high finance to ordinary citizen, right on liberty and equality…

The Tories have misdiagnosed the country’s problems and offer the wrong prescriptions. They think society is broken, and think wedding bells can fix it. They say the economy is wounded, and offer cuts to save it.

For all the government’s failings and mistakes over 13 years, Labour’s historic instinct is to protect those most vulnerable in a harsh economic climate. Many voters will want to reward that instinct even if it has been poorly expressed by the party’s high command. There are constituencies where the only way to ensure a presence in parliament that might halt a Tory assault on public services is to support the local Labour candidate…

There is a moral imperative to consider in this election, distinct from the old Labour-Tory contest. Opinion polls throughout the campaign suggest that the country wants the Lib Dems to take a place of equal standing alongside the other main parties. A grossly unfair voting system has historically deprived them of that right. It is vital this time that they win a mandate for real change expressed in the overall share of the vote, not just in the discredited distribution of seats in parliament.

There is only one party on the ballot paper that, by its record in the old parliament, its manifesto for the new one and its leader’s performance in the campaign, can claim to represent an agenda for radical, positive change in politics. That party is the Liberal Democrats. There is only one way clearly to endorse that message and that is to vote Liberal Democrat.

Bravo! I only wish we had the understanding, gumption and long-term will here in the United States to offer a similar choice.

Have you filled out your “2010 Congressional District Census” yet?

It’s arriving this week in mailboxes in Minnesota, New York and Washington state. At first glance, it might appear to be related to the upcoming once-a-decade count of every man, woman and child in the United States.

It’s not. It’s a Republican fundraiser and opinion poll…

“This is as egregious as it gets,” said Luz Maria Frias, director of St. Paul’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity and the city’s point person for raising awareness of the federal 2010 U.S. census.

“Between now and April 1, there will be an inundation of census information, and the timing of this is really suspect. It smells.”

Inside the envelope, which is labeled “DO NOT DESTROY — OFFICIAL DOCUMENT,” beneath “2010 Congressional District Census” and above the relevant congressional district and alphanumeric “Census Tracking Code” (which appears to be meaningless), appears the smaller-type phrase: “Commissioned by the Republican Party.”

Understand that Republican tactics are formulated by the same slimeballs who send phony mailers to our homes – trying to look like they’re from the Social Security Administration – to sell us supplemental medicare insurance from Bill Frist.