Who's decorating the trees on the Garden State Parkway?

Maybe more people should be doing this.

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com Someone is trying to spread a little Christmas cheer along New Jersey's Garden State Parkway. The AP reports that just after Thanksgiving, two large glass ornaments mysteriously appeared on two large pine trees alongside the Parkway in New Jersey's Pinelands. Since then, five more decorations have popped up in the same house-free area. "Somebody has a lot of holiday spirit, which is great, but a lot of spare time at night, which is not so great," Joseph Orlando, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, told the AP. The authority operates the 173-mile toll road, which traverses the state and cuts through 50 municipal areas. No one has taken responsibility for the ornaments. "It's a mystery to us," State Police Capt. Al Della Fave told the AP. (Photo by Mel Evans, AP)

Billion Dollar Loogie

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Sure, the walking, talking gob of phlegm (pictured) was genius. But it was a clever intellectual property strategy that made that loogie worth $2.3 billion. That’s how much British conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser just agreed to pay for Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, the maker of the cough medicine Mucinex (and sponsor of the Mr. Mucus ads). Guaifenesin, the active ingredient in Mucinex, is a medicine that’s about as old as the hills. But Adams was the first company to do clinical trials to prove to the FDA that the long-acting form of the drug is safe and effective. That meant it got exclusive rights to that formulation — which was enough to get the FDA to bump a bunch of generic versions off the market. And congested consumers, happy to take their medicine less often, snapped up Mucinex.

What’s in a Name?

Would you think about this before naming your kid?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com In this week’s print column, I analyze a study that links people’s initials to surprising trends. For example, major league baseball players with first or last initial K were more likely than average to strike out; and business graduate students with initials C or D had lower grades, on average earlier research exploring this link between our names and our taste — in brand names, in hometowns (Louis prefers St. Louis, Jack likes Jacksonville), and in street names. clipped from blog.newsweek.com People like their names so much that they unconsciously opt for things that begin with their initials. Even weirder, they gravitate toward things that begin with their initials even when those things are undesirable, like bad grades or a baseball strikeout. The pattern held for grades, too. Using 15 years (1990–2004) of grade point averages for business school grads, they found that students whose names began with C or D earned lower GPAs than those whose names began with A or B. clipped from papers.ssrn.com Moniker Maladies: When Names Sabotage Success

Nearly 20,000 Downgrades — and Counting

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The tsunami of subprime-related bond downgrades this quarter sent shockwaves throughout the financial markets. Now that the tide has weakened, analysts are surveying the wreckage. According to research from Deutsche Bank, credit rating companies Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings have issued an unprecedented 19,795 debt downgrades so far this year among securitized assets. That compares with the 2,539 separate downgrades they issued for all of 2006, and the previous annual record for downgrades, which was 4,168 in 2003. The percentage of subprime-mortgage-backed debt affected by downgrades is much higher – for example, 58% of collateralized debt obligations backed by subprime collateral that were issued from 2005 to 2007 have been downgraded “Even more alarming is the degree to which very highly rated securities seem to have deteriorated overnight some securities issued by collateralized debt obligations had their ratings slashes from triple-A to “distressed”

The Subprime Bailout Bonanza

clipped from blogs.wsj.com And so it begins. The bailout to end all bailouts government involvement in the markets on a level not seen since the resolution of the S&L crisis Lehman Brothers expects about 2.8 million subprime mortgages to reset in 2008 and 2009 about 30% higher The questions that remain is whether intervention in these markets will produce an solution that will enhance the value of the vast supply of mortgages “The cost of this is, actually, going to be absorbed by investors in mortgage-backed securities,” they write. “This is why ‘good credit’ borrowers are not going to be ‘rewarded’ — because investors cannot be brought to forgo that much interest.” The double-A rated ABX was traded at 39.8 cents on the dollar this morning, as investors still see very little value being recovered from those loans.

Bridezilla Back, Sued Florist

Everybody gets 15 minutes.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Lawyer Bride Who Sued Her Florist Elana Glatt et al. v. Posy Floral Design Studio sued the florist after she was displeased with how things turned out. (Click here and here for Law Blog Background.) she goes by Elana Elbogen, her maiden name click here for pages 4 through 11 of the answer click here for the 19-page complaint in full. highlights: groom-to-be allegedly had no involvement in the floral arrangements! Glatt and her future mother-in-law allegedly disagreed on the floral arrangements! “ Herbert Glatt, MD, the father of the groom, allegedly paid for the flowers Elana and her future mother-in-law made so many last-minute changes even “up until the final few hours of the latest possible date that Posy Designs was able to place flower orders for Plaintiff’s wedding event that were known and expected to be imported directly from Holland.” The florists asked for sanctions against Glatt for filing a frivolous and malevolent lawsuit.

Insure Everybody, One Way or Another

clipped from blogs.wsj.com This country can keep private insurance and require everybody to buy in. Or we can cover everybody with a government-funded, single-payer system. But one way or another, the American College of Physicians argues in this new paper, we have to cover everybody. But as the Philadelphia Inquirer notes, many docs have historically been wary of a single-payer system, which some have worried would give the government too much control. now that covering the uninsured has become a high-profile issue in the presidential race, the ACP may have figured the moment is opportune to jump into the public debate. In fact, the ACP also put out this guide to where the candidates stand on health care. What should the federal government do about the uninsured? Require everyone to have insurance coverage, but keep private insurance. Adopt a single-payer, government-funded system. The government shouldn’t require everyone to have health care.

Bad Service Cost UnitedHealth 315,000 Customers

clipped from blogs.wsj.com UnitedHealth had its own analyst day in New York yesterday — and the company told investors that it lost 315,000 customers this year because of poor customer service, the AP reports. CEO Stephen Hemsley said the company will continue to lose customers into the first quarter of next year. UnitedHealth’s been diversifying beyond traditional insurance. It’s a big player in administering the Medicare drug benefit, and it also sells Medicare fee-for-service plans. Trackback URL: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/12/05/bad-service-cost-unitedhealth-315000-customers/trackback/

IPhones Take Over the Internet

Amazing. Really amazing.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com iPhone owners were responsible for nearly one out of every 1,000 Web page views last month. This erases any doubt that the future of mobile devices most certainly includes the Web. The iPhone has the same browser as Apple’s computers, meaning iPhone owners can see the same version of Web pages people see on their PCs. IPhone owners embraced the browser to the extent that they represented 0.09% of all Web pages viewed in November. That doesn’t sound like much, but consider that through September, Apple had only sold 1.4 million iPhones. As a point of comparison, devices running every version of Windows mobile operating system combined made up 0.06% of Web page views. Companies have been making mobile devices that run Windows since 1996, according to Computer World, and three million of the devices were shipped in the first quarter of 2007 alone, according to research company Gartner. By our calculations, iPhone owners are about 90 times more likely to view a Web page than the typical Internet user, of whom there are approximately 1.25 billion worldwide.

IPhones Take Over the Internet

Posted by Ben Worthen

We’ve always felt that the iPhone’s game-changing feature was its Web browser. Now we have proof: iPhone owners were responsible for nearly one out of every 1,000 Web page views last month. This erases any doubt that the future of mobile devices most certainly includes the Web.

Many phones have Web browsers, but most of the time these were made specifically for mobile devices and only give phone owners access to watered-down versions of Web sites. The iPhone has the same browser as Apple’s computers, meaning iPhone owners can see the same version of Web pages people see on their PCs.

IPhone owners embraced the browser to the extent that they represented 0.09% of all Web pages viewed in November. That doesn’t sound like much, but consider that through September, Apple had only sold 1.4 million iPhones. As a point of comparison, devices running every version of Windows mobile operating system combined made up 0.06% of Web page views. Companies have been making mobile devices that run Windows since 1996, according to Computer World, and three million of the devices were shipped in the first quarter of 2007 alone, according to research company Gartner. Here’s some more perspective: By our calculations, iPhone owners are about 90 times more likely to view a Web page than the typical Internet user, of whom there are approximately 1.25 billion worldwide.

It’s obvious that people have a need for Web access even when they aren’t at their desks or at home or wherever else they have a PC. We think that businesses could make their employees more productive by making sure that the mobile devices they give them have a full-fledged browser. We’re not saying companies should go out and buy everyone an iPhone – although if you do we’d love to hear about it. But presumably, it’s just a matter of time until an iPhone-like browser is a standard feature on mobile devices.

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Links to the best Catalogs

Links to the 20 highest rated catalogs.

clipped from buzz.yahoo.com L.L. Bean Catalog JCPenney Catalog Gander Mountain Catalog Argos Catalog Sundance Catalog Current Catalog Fingerhut Catalog Lane Bryant Catalog Bass Pro Shop Catalog ABC Distributing Catalog Grainger Online Catalog Chef's Catalog LTD Catalog Abercrombie & Fitch Catalog Collectibles, Etc. Catalog Herrington Catalog Improvements Catalog Frontgate Catalog Spiegel Catalog JC Whitney Catalog

The USA's unluckiest $1M lottery winner

How do you think this winner should be treated?

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com How do you think this winner should be treated? It was the best of times for Timothy Elliott. It was the worst of times for Timothy Elliott. On the one hand, he won $1 million in the Massachusetts lottery. On the other hand, he is a convicted bank robber who appears to have violated the terms of his probation by purchasing the $10 lottery ticket. Elliot is scheduled to face the music on Dec. 7, when he goes before the judge who will determine whether he should be punished for breaking the rules that barred him from gambling. This doesn't faze the agency that runs the state's gambling operations. "Winners are winners," Dan Rosenfeld, the lottery's communications director, tells The Globe. "We treat them the way winners should be treated."

Could Grapefruit Juice Cut Drug Costs?

The WSJ reports, some researchers are now trying to use grapefruit juice to their advantage. A University of Chicago study is pairing grapefruit juice with rapamycin, which is sold by Wyeth as an immunosuppressant and is being studied to treat cancer.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The WSJ reports, some researchers are now trying to use grapefruit juice to their advantage. An enzyme that lives in the gut, charmingly named CYP3A4, breaks down drugs before they enter the bloodstream. Grapefruit juice has a compound that temporarily gets rid of CYP3A4 — which allows more of a drug to enter the bloodstream. That can be a bad thing in some cases. Patients shouldn’t take statins (such as Pfizer’s Lipitor or Merck’s Zocor) with grapefruit juice, because doing so can cause the drug to build up to unhealthy levels in the body. It’s too early to tell how far this sort of thing might go, and standardizing grapefruit juice as part of a drug regimen could be tricky. But some docs think the grapefruit effect could ultimately allow patients to take lower doses of drugs. Oral oncology therapies are costing $3,000 to $5,000 a month If we can lower the costs of those by 50%, you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars saved.”

Dementia often first noticed at holidays

clipped from alzheimersreadingroom.blogspot.com It was at large gatherings that the Holladay family first noticed their mother was suffering from dementia. She couldn't find the bathroom in a family member's home. She sat at the edges of a party, too confused to interact with the family. A diagnosis of Alzheimer's followed for the now 75-year-old woman. The signs of early dementia may be disguised during the year, when sufferers can rely on habit. But mess with the routine - as the holidays do - and the signals become obvious, Foster said. Other real-life examples of dementia surfacing around the holidays: A patient who forgot to buy presents for all of her grandchildren. Another who bought every grandchild, boys and girls, the same gift. A father who flew to meet his son for Christmas and didn't recognize him at the airport. Stick with the familiar. Maintain routines and skip strange and noisy restaurants. * Keep it small. Large family get togethers "become too disruptive," Genebach said.

Anatomy of a Spy Satellite

Read more Anatomy of a Spy Satellite

clipped from www.space.com For military and intelligence communities, outer space has become a highground, hide-and-seek arena -- a kind of "now you see me, now you don't" espionage playing field. One lawmaker, Jay D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, openly criticized the program on the floor of the U.S. Senate. He said the program "is totally unjustified and very wasteful and dangerous to national security," adding that he has voted to terminate the program for two years, with no success. "I think this episode suggests that secrecy is sometimes used not to protect national security, but to line someone's pockets The MISTY effort was broached in Richelson's first-rate book on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology several U.S. senators openly blew the whistle on a mystery spy satellite program, critical of its high cost while calling to question its utility in today's post-9/11 world.

6,000 apply for 300 Wal-Mart jobs

Is this a reflection of what is to come in the economy? Where did they come from? What were they doing?

clipped from www.cleveland.com As the world's largest private employer, Wal-Mart is used to being greeted by large numbers of applicants almost every time it opens a new store. But the 6,000-plus people who applied for jobs at the new Supercenter in Cleveland's Steelyard Commons took everyone, even Wal-Mart, by surprise. When thousands of people compete for a few hundred ordinary jobs, trend watchers say it's an indication not only of a less-than-stellar economy but also of a workforce short on marketable skills. The huge number of applicants wouldn't have caught anyone's eye had these been skilled, high-paying jobs, the types of positions that thousands of people always seek. It could have been worse. In Illinois recently, Masten said, 25,000 and 15,000 people applied at two Wal-Mart stores in the Chicago area But these were regular retail jobs with low-to-average wages and benefits, not the sort of positions typically in high demand. Wal-Mart draws huge crowd - of applicants reflection on economy