Purported pyramids, giant jellyfish, and a number of pythons that swallowed more than they bargained for were among the stars of this year’s most popular news photos.
2007 Financial Market Forecasts
We polled 80 strategists for their 2007 predictions, and many think tech stocks will be on top. Call it a 7% year. That’s the return the 80 strategists we polled expect in 2007 for the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Our prognosticators overwhelmingly think technology will be the best-performing sector next year, but still come up with a forecast of only a 9% gain in the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite. They expect the Russell 2000, an index of small-cap stocks, to lag, with just a 6% return. Strategists are listed according to their yearend Dow forecasts, from the most bullish to the most bearish
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms into Big Business
Gilbert Gaul, Sarah Cohen & Dan Morgan:
The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood.
Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation’s abundant food supply.
“In today’s fast-paced, interconnected world, there are few industries where sons and daughters can work side-by-side with moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas,” Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said last year. “But we still find that today in agriculture. . . . It is a celebration of what too many in our country have forgotten, an endangered way of life that we must work each and every day to preserve.”
This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called “empathy payments” for farmers. But it is misleading.
Goodbye VHS, Farewell Fair Use
As VHS tapes and VCRs head the way of Betamax and phonographs, commentator Bill Hammack warns that the right to fair use is in danger of disappearing right along with them.
Back in the 1980s, the Supreme Court ruled VCR makers couldn’t be held liable for copyright infringement.
That gave consumers the right to make personal copies of TV shows and movies using a VCR.
The new digital media that are erasing the VHS format are also erasing our rights.
A few years ago, a Judge issued a catch-22 ruling: Yes, she said, we can copy commercial DVDs too. But no one can sell the software to do that.
Some Skype Numbers
TeleGeography estimates that Skype users are on track to make over 27 billion minutes of computer-to-computer calls this year, with about half of them used for international long distance (all free). While that sounds like a lot, it still represents just 4.4 percent of total international traffic in 2006, up from 2.9 percent in 2005.”
David Isenberg has more:
Even if most of these minutes are new minutes that are only there because C2C Skype is free, this is impressive — in part, because with new computer devices, e.g., open WiFi phones, it is getting hard to distinguish a C2C call from a Phone-to-Phone call. In addition, the new computerphones are erasing the ease-of-use factor that keeps us glued to RJ-11.
Details on AirTran’s Midwest Desires
A two-month exchange of letters between Leonard and Hoeksema, published in an AirTran filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, reveals that Midwest rejected an initial AirTran proposal more than a year ago–for $4.25 per share, according to Skornicka–and that things got testy in mid-November after Hoeksema told Leonard he would present an assessment of the offer to Midwest’s board at its regular meeting on Dec. 6.
Leonard replied Nov. 22 that it was “unacceptable” for Hoeksema to wait for the board’s next regular meeting and suggested that Midwest’s management wasn’t carrying out its fiduciary duty to shareholders. He also hinted at a hostile-takeover attempt–“[O]ur passive response to your rejection of our original offer is not the pattern that you can continue to expect from us.” Hoeksema reassured Leonard Nov. 27 that Midwest wasn’t dragging its feet.
ALSO, LEONARD TOLD Hoeksema that the merged airline would “significantly increase jobs in a way that Midwest could never do under any possible scenario,” and that it would “materially improve the scope and frequency of air service in Milwaukee and Kansas City . . . far beyond anything Midwest can offer as an independent company.” Milwaukee and Kansas City are the origins or destinations of 83% and 13% of Midwest’s service, respectively.
Nice bit of digging in AirTran’s SEC filings. Nothing good will happen if the AirTran takeover occurs. Dennis McCann recently gave both a try.
White House Tightens Publishing Rules for USGS Scientists
New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Top officials at the Interior Department’s scientific arm say the rules only standardize what scientists must do to ensure the quality of their work and give a heads-up to the agency’s public relations staff.
“This is not about stifling or suppressing our science, or politicizing our science in any way,” Barbara Wainman, the agency’s director of communications, said Wednesday. “I don’t have approval authority. What it was designed to do is to improve our product flow.”
Some agency scientists, who until now have felt free from any political interference, worry that the objectivity of their work could be compromised.
B-Side Records Best of the year 2006
While recently entering my favorite five new albums released in 2006 for the KEXP Top 90.3 countdown, I realized that the B-Side Records annual four-page best-of list extravaganza was likely out and on the shop’s counter. Indeed, Madison’s most jam-packed end-of-the-year list — its sixteenth edition — was ready for reading.
The State Street record store’s formula is relatively simple; every current employee and as many past employees as possible are solicited to submit their best-of-2006 list. There are no constricting guidelines, as the lists can be as short as nine albums to nearly as long as one hundred, not counting the supplementary songs and live shows that can listed as well. Then there’s always a guest, one person who is invited by B-Side to submit their favorites too. In the end, everything gets tallied up, and the four-page thicket of lists is condensed to their collected “favorite things,” with any album receiving three or more picks featured and framed.
Mobile Mansions Book
Douglas Kiester takes a fabulous look at Legacy RV’s.
Nothing Good Will Come of a Midwest / Airtran Merger….
AirTran Holdings is roughly a tenth the size of its main competitor, Delta Air Lines. So AirTran executives would seem unlikely cheerleaders of a potential merger that would make Delta 60 percent larger.
But the recent $8.5 billion takeover offer for Delta by US Airways has found a fan in Joseph B. Leonard, chief executive at AirTran, which, like Delta, flies routes across the Southeast from its hub in Atlanta.
“I’m rooting for it,” Mr. Leonard said yesterday in an interview, after announcing his own proposed takeover of Midwest Air, an airline based in Oak Creek, Ill., for $290 million.
Mr. Leonard may relish his role as underdog but that is not why he hopes the carriers merge — he just wants to see fewer jets in the sky. After all, US Airways’ proposed takeover would reduce the two airlines’ combined jet fleet about 10 percent.