NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Even as General Motors executives are seriously discussing a recently-unthinkable bankruptcy back in Detroit, others were unveiling an equally implausible prototype for a futuristic personal transportation vehicle in New York City.
Believe it or not, the company best known for riding the SUV wave to the brink of collapse now says it is committed to bringing this small, weird-looking contraption to a city near you. I was among the first to get a chance to ride around in GM and Segway's sole prototype vehicle.
The Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or PUMA, isn't intended to replace cars. It can only travel at speeds up to 35 miles per hour and it has a range of just 35 miles before needing a recharge.
Unlike electric vehicles you can buy today, the PUMA will be able to, essentially, drive itself, GM says. A transmitter inside the vehicle will share moment-by-moment driving information with other vehicles nearby creating a moving network of vehicles that will enable the cars to automatically avoid hitting one another.
Developed in cooperation with Segway, which produces the famous two-wheeled transporter of the same name, the PUMA is intended for use in urban environments where a compact, highly maneuverable vehicle like this could significantly reduce congestion, GM (GM, Fortune 500) said.
First impressions
Getting into the PUMA prototype was a hassle as I wrestled with a complex four-point safety harness that, I assume, will not be on the production vehicle. A technician warned me to gather up the loose ends of my overcoat lest they get caught in the wheel. (In some ways, it reminded of an experience I once had driving a Model T Ford.)
"Close the door" someone yelled and a technician came forward to lower the yellow-and-black safety bar that, for now, passes for a "door."
"Keep your legs loose," the driver warned me.
When in motion, the same sort of automatic balancing technology that holds the Segway personal transporter - commonly called a "scooter" - upright on its two wheels allows the PUMA to do the same with two seated occupants.
During a test ride - for now, only trained drivers are allowed to operate the prototype vehicle - the PUMA transporter felt perfectly stable. Other than the fact that it can rotate while standing in place, it felt similar to riding in a small car at slow speeds.
As he pushed the steering wheel, the vehicle leaned gently forward and trundled off to the end of a blocked off section of Manhattan's West 18th street. When we reached the end of the street, the driver pulled back on the steering wheel and the car stopped, staying balanced on its two wheels. He then turned the wheel rotating the booth-shaped car 180 degrees and off we went in the other direction, steering to avoid hitting our CNN cameraman.
Only when the vehicle prepared to park did it feel a bit unnerving, as the vehicle leaned forward to settle onto its extra set of small front wheels.
The floor slid forward as the PUMA extended its small front wheels to park but I forgot to keep my legs loose. I had to draw them back quickly or I feared getting my toes pinched under the body.
Not quite ready for prime time
GM executives emphasized the this prototype does not represent what the final vehicle will look like. This is essentially the bare frame.
GM designers are already working on various body styles for the vehicles, which could be fully enclosed like other cars. Steering could be done either with a steering wheel, as was on the prototype, or by using a joystick.
The PUMA is the exact opposite of a Hummer, said Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development. The Hummer represents "the ultimate in over-engineered personal transportation, " he said. The two seat PUMA, meanwhile, is barely larger than the two occupants themselves who sit side-by-side.
The PUMA rides on just two wheels, one on each side of the vehicle, each powered by a separate electric motor. A pair of small caster-like wheels more out from the front to hold the vehicle up when it's parked. Power comes from lithium-ion batteries.
A key feature, GM executives said, will be a "connected vehicle network" that would allow various types of motor vehicles, not just PUMA transporters, to communicate with one another in a network. This would require each vehicle to have a small transponder device, which Burns said is about the size of today's "smart phones."
The device will allow vehicles to share information with one another regarding the vehicle's own movements as well as alerting nearby vehicles to hazardous road conditions such as an ice patch. The vehicles themselves would also be able to directly sense other hazards, such as pedestrian.
"This is a very polite vehicle," said Burns.
That kind of system, which Burns described as a "mobility Internet," would allow vehicles that are smaller and less crashworthy to ply the roadways along with cars and trucks without fear of a wreck.
The PUMA might make its initial appearance in more controlled environments like gated communities, Burns said. They could also be provided vehicle lanes in which only vehicles with vehicle-to-vehicle data transponders could drive, he said. Highly congested developing nations, such as India, might also have a strong interest in this sort of vehicle, he said.
This isn't the first time GM has tried to tackle the problem of urban transportation. Forty years ago, in 1969, the carmaker showed off the 512 Series Urban Cars. These were three small vehicles that were intended for use on specially designated roadways. Like the PUMA, they could travel at speeds of up to 30 or 40 mph.
Slim Shady mercilessly lampoons celebrities, from Lindsay Lohan to Sarah Palin, in the new clip.
By Gil Kaufman
Where do we start? Slim Shady promised he was up to his old tricks in the video for "We Made You," his first solo clip since 2005 and the official opening shot from his forthcoming album, Relapse, due May 19.
And man, does he spray some serious lead. The video, which debuted exclusively on MTV's "AMTV" on Tuesday morning (April 7), was directed by Joseph Kahn (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Britney Spears), and it is merciless in its lampooning of celebrity culture.
Right off the bat, you have Em seated on a throne, who's wearing a long blond wig and a cowboy hat (he's Bret Michaels, in case you couldn't tell), asking for the chorus, which is then crooned by a voluptuous Jessica Simpson-like dancer in tight denim shorts and a ruffled red top. Moments later, as if there was any doubt before, Em comes out in a Dallas Cowboys uniform, looking like Tony Romo and doing a nasty dance behind the faux Jessica.
All the while, in a kind of rogues gallery green room, Em does his best preening Michaels, dangling a rose with a backstage pass on it in front of a line of rock star wannabes that includes impersonators of Sarah Palin, Samantha Ronson, Lindsay Lohan and a dentally challenged Amy Winehouse.
Like so many of Em's previous singles — "My Name Is," "Without Me," "The Real Slim Shady" and "Just Lose It" — the comical clip takes aim at some of our most famous (or is it infamous?) celebrities with the help of the MC's legendarily nimble, witty wordplay.
"There's some celebrity bashing in it," Em warned in a clip from the video set obtained by MTV News. "I wanna say it's not necessarily intentional bashing in it; it's not necessarily taking deliberate shots at people. ... Yes, it is. What the f--- am I talking about?"
Standing on a set that resembles "Guitar Hero," he finally gets to spitting, tossing out the verbal volley: "Back by popular demand/ Now pop a little Zantac/ Or antacid if you can/ You're ready to tackle any task that is at hand/ How does it feel? Is it fantastic, is it grand?"
Soon enough, Dr. Dre appears as the captain of the Starship Enterprise (which looks way more, ahem, streamlined, shall we say). Then Eminem shows up as a rock star going out to dinner with a way bootylicious Kim Kardashian, whose assets threaten to blow him out of the chair.
We also see him as a truck driver who has picked up Lindsay and Sam, who are all over each other in his cab. Eminem 2.0 says he's not trying to offend lesbians as he begs, "Lindsay, please come back to seein' men/ Samantha's a 2; you're practically a 10." And for no reason we can discern, when he touches Sam, he shakes his hand as if getting burned and turns into a Transformer with a Mohawk, breasts and a coffee cup.
The multiple disses in the video seem to be inspired by the track's sing-songy chorus: "When you walked through the door, it was clear to me/ You're the one they adore, who they came to see/ You're a rock star, everybody wants you."
Before the video's premiere, Eminem said that he was using the song as a kind of Jedi mind trick. "Hot chicks who don't want me, I'm telling them they do," he explained. "It's kind of like a reverse-psychology thing, and I'm gonna see if the record comes out and it works."
Who else is a target in this video? Let's see, there's Eminem as Spock, giving the Vulcan neck pinch to Uhura; paying a visit to Ellen DeGeneres' show; pretending to be Kevin Federline as a slim Britney dances nearby; showing off his buff physique as he poses shirtless with an ax in the office of a pouty Palin, who is, of course, wearing a very low-cut bustier to show off her ample experience in office. He also plays John Mayer in a straw porkpie hat, crooning to Jennifer Aniston.
Finally, a master of the build-up, Eminem gets to the video scene that set tongues wagging recently, when a still image from the shoot at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas drew some comparisons to the movie "Rain Man." Em, dressed in a gray suit similar to the one worn by Dustin Hoffman's savant character in the movie, is led through a casino by Dre, wearing a similar suit (à la Tom Cruise), and they sit down at a blackjack table with 50 Cent.
When he's done counting cards and making it rain, farting in bed dressed as Michaels snuggling with Palin, playing Elvis, getting punched out by Jessica Alba, making out with Winehouse while dressed as Blake Civil-Fielder, engaging Ronson in a Vulcan sword fight and feeding Kardashian into a "Fargo"-like wood chipper that spits out cash, Em does a little dance to take us out. Another Eminem classic.
The song was reportedly produced by Dre, and though Fif makes a brief cameo in the video at the Vegas card table, he's not on the track. Eminem has said he is planning a follow-up LP to Relapse later this year.
It all started while we were researching an article on future user interfaces. Touch interfaces are hardly futuristic at this point, but multi-touch hardware like the Microsoft Surface or the iPhone is just starting to become a big deal, and we decided to see what big things are going on in that field. What we found that surprised us..
Some actresses are OK with going naked in front of the camera and others are not. Although going nude should arguably be mandatory by age 25, many beautiful, young actresses actually have a no-nudity clauses in their contracts. While disappointing for the male audience, it has helped to generate demand regarding the world’s desire to see some of the world’s most famous full frontals. Here is our list of the top twenty actresses we want to see do a nude role sometime in the near future. So help us God, we will end up seeing at least half of them nude in our days.
According to The Insider, Scarlett Johansson has insisted on a no-nudity clause in all of her movie contracts, and will not do a movie if that clause isn’t added to her contract. She says this clause is important so that she will be regarded as a serious actor. Well, just because I’ve seen Paris Hilton’s sex tape doesn’t mean I don’t take her acting serious…Actually, that is a bad example…
Dunst was quoted in an interview about doing nude scenes claiming, “…I don’t feel comfortable with that. I have younger people watching my films and I want to be a good role model and I don’t think it’s necessary, either, and it’s tasteless, for me, for a girl my age to be doing that in a film. I don’t think it’s right.” My Spidey sense is telling me she’ll do a nude scene if her career takes a turn for the worse. If this is the case, lets hope she continues to make movies like Marie Antoinette.
Though Jessica Biel has posed in some pretty revealing photo shoots for magazines, she is committed to not bearing it all in her films. She admitted, “I’m sure I’ve lost some roles because I don’t do it. The other day I read a script that required some nudity, something topless. It’s probably going to be a great movie but I just don’t want to do it.” Well here’s another reason for males to be jealous of Justin Timberlake, not only can he sing, dance, and make you laugh, he’s the only one who gets to see Ms. Biel in the buff.
Thankfully, there is no mention anywhere about a no-nudity clause with Megan Fox. This means in the near or even distant future, she may reveal more than meets the eye. It was also recently reported that Megan Fox signed on to take Angelina Jolie’s role in upcoming Tomb Raider film. Just imagine if Megan Fox as Laura Croft, allowed us to find her treasure…Heaven!
Ms. Duff told a British paper in an interview in 2006, “If I do a movie I want to be myself. I don’t want to take my top off or anything.” She then added, “In the ‘States, it seems to be the trend to turn 18 or 19 and then take your shirt off and do something crazy, and I don’t know what comes after that.” Such a bummer.
Ironic, Rachel Bilson in a 2008 Playboy interview said she refuses to do nudity, because in her opinion, “Movies can be sexy or sexual without showing things.” She almost declined to do the Last Kiss with Zach Braff due to the nude scene in the movie; she went on to applaud the role of the body double in cinema. Well there is no applause here, I just feel saddened and deceived, I thought those were your boobs Rachel!
There is some controversy whether Mila Kunis really appeared nude in a film called Boot Camp, or not. If you’ve never heard of it, you are not alone; it was straight to DVD in France. In any case, this bombshell is known to use body doubles if her movie roles call for nudity. She has not publicly come out and said she is against appearing nude in movies, but her actions continue to speak louder.
Who would not want to jump into this picture, and what is wrong with you. “Other than Sin City, I don’t really wear skimpy outfits in my movies. People know that I’m a prude. Word has gotten around,” explained Ms. Alba in 2007 interview. Regardless if she is a prude or not, Alba is known for parading her no-nudity clause around Hollywood like J. R. Knight at a gay pride rally (rimshot). Though this clause is frustrating, at least her fans have her swimming scantily clad in Into The Blue with super-douche bag Paul Walker. Seriously, this movie has one of the sexiest opening scenes ever committed to film.
Though Ms. Hewitt is getting older, there are millions of men still dying to see those ta-tas unshirted. According to an interview done in 2005 Ms. Hewitt said she might consider it. “You know, I don’t really want to see myself naked, so I’m not really going to push that on other people. I wouldn’t wish that for anyone,” she then went on to say, “I don’t like to say ‘absolutely not,’ because if a great part came along… that I thought was really tastefully done, then maybe?” Until she takes that role, her Hanes bra commercial will have to hold us over until then. Good thing there’ s always RedTube…
When Ms. Deschanel was asked about nudity in film, she responded, “Well, my goodness. I don’t really want to do it. I’m not totally comfortable with full frontal nudity. I don’t think it’s necessary a lot of time.” Regardless of her stance on nudity, hipster and emo boys will dream of the day Ms. Deschanel changes her mind and decides to take on the role that will change their lives, something her fiancés music has never been able to accomplish.
Sadly Ms. Lilly hates having to kiss fellow actors on screen because her parents always object to any on-screen risqué behavior involving their daughter. She went onto say she agrees with her parents and, “I’ll never do nudity.” I guess that’s what you get from women with religious roots. Funny, these types either turn out to be prudes or all out porn stars, never anything in the middle. This is such a shame.
Sarah Michelle Gellar has used the no-nudity clause to generate quite a bit of publicity throughout the years. Initially, she hinted that she might remove her clothes for the right director or the right movie. However, she soon followed her announcement with a contradictory statement in which she declared that she would never appear nude on screen or stage for any reason. When she announced this, male Buffy fans all around the world sadly and slowly staked their own hearts.
Though many people think they have seen Australia’s Isla Fisher nude in her role as the crazy sister in Wedding Crashers, this is not the case. Hollywood skillfully cast a body double to stand in for Ms. Fisher while she toplessly violated Vince Vaughn in all the right ways. Though there have been no public reports of no-nudity clauses for Ms. Fisher, the closest we’ll probably ever get to seeing her nude is by watching her husband play Borat.
Ms. Witherspoon once told Glamour, “If [actresses] take their clothes off, they objectify themselves. I am flabbergasted by how many legitimate actresses do it.” She then went on to say how proud she is to be a role model for her children, and that she believes humility and being non-judgmental are what made her successful as a never-nude actress. I guess she forgot she went topless in the 1998 movie Twilight…Resse, you dirty little hypocrite you!
The closest we ever got to seeing the nasty bits of this Canadian dream nude was when she played a porn star in The Girl Next Door. Unfortunately the no-nudity clause reared its ugly head again, and robbed film-going males of all ages. As a result, internet message boards became filled with angry males who felt taken advantage of. Their tirades exclaimed, “We paid to see Ms. Cuthbert play a porn star in an R-rated film and all we got was a side shot of her boob.”
Some controversy has surrounded Anna Faris and her willingness to break her own no-nudity clause in her latest role in the comedy The House Bunny. She called the entire experience “humiliating,” and blamed the whole thing on “complicated factors” with the body double. Though she did break her no-nudity clause, all that is shown in the movie is her backside. What is even more frustrating is that she broke her clause for a movie that tanked at the box office. I guess that’s what happens when you go back on your own principles.
When Ms. Watson’s magical co-star Daniel Radcliff did a live nude scene on stage in London, the entire nerdom of Hogwarts jumped for joy in hopes that the now, 19-year-old, Ms. Watson would be next. When asked about on-screen nudity in an interview with a London Daily, Ms. Watson reportedly said, “Yes. For Bernardo Bertolucci. It, depends. I’m not getting my kit off any time soon, but it is part of my job.” After reading quotes like this, it appears there’s going to be a whole lot more on-screen magic for this young British actress.
Ms. Simpson grew up in a strict Christian home, with very strict parents. And after she made the transition from music to film, there was a rumor she was in the running for a role that required full frontal nudity. The rumor ended up being false and her ex-husband Nick Lachey sighed with relief. America i
When Ms. Diaz was dating Justin Timberlake (that bastard!), he was reported to say he did not want his girlfriend to do nude scenes. She responded to this by saying, “I won’t say that I won’t do nudity for other people’s benefit. It has nothing to do with other people, it’s just what I’m comfortable with.” Regardless if Ms. Diaz is for or against on-screen nudity, the public has yet to see more than she was willing to offer in There’s Something About Mary - at least on film.
Though Ms. Fisher seemed to pose nude on the cover of the geekzine Wired, she has been known to arogantly flaunt her no-nudity clause. She told The Insider, “Well, I wouldn’t do anything I wouldn’t be proud to show my parents.” That’s nice, she still respects her parents, but where does that leave her adoring fans? Apparently she has selfishly decided she owes her parents a lot more than she owes us.
Also: Why have government workers been spared layoffs?
By John W. Schoen
With the value of the dollar jumping up and down against other countries' currencies, what if the world just agreed to use the same currency? It sounds like a simple idea. But like many simple ideas, it would come with all kinds of unintended consequences.
Recently, Chinese leaders argued for the creation of a unified global currency, a concept that has been proposed by a number of academics and political officials in modern economic history. While the idea has certainly not received widespread support, the success of the euro demonstrates that currency unification can work and may even have certain economic benefits. What ramifications might the adoption of a universal currency have on global trade and national economies in general? — R.Z., New York
The Chinese proposal for a single global currency was part of Beijing’s effort to take a more prominent place among world powers at the recent G20 meeting. And they have legitimate reason to float the idea of replacing the dollar as the “reserve” currency — the medium of exchange used for the majority of financial transactions around the world.
As the holder of some $2 trillion in dollar-denominated savings the Chinese government has reason to be concerned about the long-term strength of the dollar. One time-honored method of reducing large government debt is to gradually inflate the currency to reduce the real value of that debt. That would also devalue that big pile of Chinese savings.
The dollar’s role as a reserve currency also gives the United States a dominant role in the global economy. That also means other countries are subject to U.S. fiscal and monetary policies over which they have no control.
So it’s no surprise that China would like to see another entity — it suggests the International Monetary Fund would be a good choice — issue a single global currency that would be used by all countries in place of the dollar. There would be many advantages to this. But it has about as much chance of happening as the adoption of Esperanto as a common global language.
A nation’s currency serves several purposes, one of which is a global proxy for the depth, strength and productivity of its economy and the stability of its political system. For all of the problems facing the United States, investors around the world believe the dollar is the safest place to park their wealth. That’s why, for the moment, interest rates on dollar-denominated debt like U.S. Treasuries are so low.
Currencies are also valued based on trade flows; if the Japanese yen is relatively weak compared to the dollar, and American car buyers can buy a higher-end Japanese model for the same price in dollars, they will choose the Japanese car. That means that countries that are more productive generally see the value of their currency strengthen, which gives people who earn wages in that currency more buying power when they buy products priced in other, weaker currencies.
This makes the Chinese proposal for unified currency somewhat ironic, given that for many years, China artificially suppressed the value of its currency, the yuan, to make its products more competitive when priced in other currencies. With a single, unified currency, countries no longer have the luxury of devaluing their local currency to make their product more competitive.
There are other problems with a unified currency — as countries in the Eurozone are learning. Though the first 10 years of sharing a single currency went relatively smoothly, cracks have begun appearing on the continent as the global recession deepens.
One of the original goals of the Euro was to raise the overall productivity of the European economy, as weaker, smaller countries had to become more competitive with larger, stronger countries. In fact, the reverse is true. Weaker countries enjoyed higher purchasing power without having to produce more goods and services. Overall productivity growth slowed in Europe from 1.6 percent a year before the euro to half that pace since.
The Euro also suffers from the fragmented political structure that governs the economy it represents. Since each member country can issue its own debt, the euro is used in 16 different bond markets. Each country sets its own tax and spending policies; some countries now carry debts larger than their gross domestic product.
So while they’ve been freed of the impact of currency fluctuation, euro countries now face a different — in some cases more painful — impact from the whims of global investors. Borrowing costs in heavily indebted countries like Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal are much higher than of Germany, which has accumulated the largest pile of savings.
That presents these countries with some painful choices they didn’t have to deal with back in the days when they could devalue their local currency. Italy, for example, faces some stark choices, according to a 2006 report by the Center for European reform, a London-based think tank. It can continue to muddle along as the slowest growing economy among euro countries. Or it could boost productivity, chiefly by cutting wages. Or it could leave the euro, devalue its debts and create its own currency. Doing so, however, would make it much more difficult to borrow.
Other euro countries with high debts face similar downward spirals. Those debts increase costs, forcing tax increases or spending cuts. Cutting future borrowing costs means raising productivity — either through layoffs or wage cuts or both. None of those choices is likely to win much support on Election Day.
Unless and until the world had a single government to maintain uniform fiscal and monetary policies, it's hard to see how any independent body would be granted sufficient powers to make a workable global currency — especially in times of global recession when the most painful choices are required. (This is what ultimately began the collapse of the gold standard in the 1930s.)
And as long as the global economy consists of a collection of local economies governed by multiple countries, a single global currency would do little to eliminate the resulting imbalances that result from the different economic policies pursued by those sovereign nations.
With layoffs happening everywhere in an order to cut costs and stay in business, has the government made any cuts? They aren't very efficient. — Curt, Lindstrom, Minn.
Yes, government employment began shrinking from a peak in August 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, the sector lost another 5,000 jobs.
Like the rest of the economy, government employment has its ups and downs. Still, it has roughly tracked the growth of the nation's overall population. From 1980 to 2008, the latest figures available, the population grew by about 39 percent and the government workforce grew by about 35 percent.
Which is more or less what you would expect. The more citizens who demand services from their government, the more people it takes to provide those services.
As for the productivity of those workers, that’s a little harder to get at. The government stopped measuring productivity of government workers in 1994. That’s when productivity throughout the work force — public and private — began making great strides due in part to technological developments like the personal computers and the Internet.
Pre-1994, though, government productivity didn’t measure up very well. From 1987 to 1994, output per employee among government workers rose 0.4 percent a year. That compares with gains in output of 1.5 percent a year by "nonfarm business" workers and gains of 2.2 percent a year by manufacturing workers during the same period.
If readers can point us to more recent data on government worker productivity, we’ll include it in a future column.
Former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr perform at the Change Begins Within Concert, Saturday April 4, 2009 in New York. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)
NEW YORK — An all-star concert on meditation brought Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr together for their first performance together in seven years.
The reunion of McCartney and Starr, the surviving members of the Beatles, was the highlight of the "Change Begins Within" concert on Saturday night. The event was held at Radio City Music Hall to benefit the David Lynch Foundation, which aims to teach at-risk youth meditation techniques.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Shears," McCartney told the crowd, referring to the fictional character on the classic Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," as Starr emerged and immediately launched into his part in the Beatles' classic "With a Little Help from My Friends."
McCartney and Starr last performed together in 2002 at the Concert for George, which honored former Beatles George Harrison at London's Royal Albert Hall a year after Harrison's death.
Saturday's concert, which also featured Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Donovan and others, ran for about four hours. But McCartney had thousand of fans on their feet as he hit the stage near the show's end. Opening with a spirited version of "Drive My Car," he went through a generous selection of Beatles and Wings classics, from "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Let It Be" to "Jet" and "Band on the Run."
McCartney remembered John Lennon by playing "Here Today," a song he wrote for the former Beatle, slain in 1980.
For the encore, McCartney was joined on stage by Donovan, Crow, Mike Love (of the Beach Boys), Vedder, Paul Horn, and of course, Starr on drums. After an epic version of "Cosmically Conscious," he launched into the crowd-pleasing "I Saw Her Standing There."
Other key moments of the night included an energetic cover of Queen's "Under Pressure" by Vedder and Ben Harper, while Crow paid tribute to Harrison with a harmonious version of his "My Sweet Lord."
Between the music, the night's stars talked about the power of meditation to overcome problems. Howard Stern said he has meditated for 37 years, told the crowd that he credits meditation for saving his mother from depression.
He was followed by Starr's three-song set. Starr introduced the Beatles song "Boys" by saying: "I've been playing this next song longer than Howard Stern has meditated."
Upon seeing these stunning images of rice terraces in Southeast Asia and China, one could think that rice is actually only the byproduct of a bigger project: landscape art. The technique of rice farming and the work today is done pretty much the way it was millennia ago – one reason why most of the amazing rice terraces are still intact.
WAUSAU, Wis. - A single-engine airplane flown away from an airport in Canada by a student pilot Monday was intercepted by jet fighters over Wisconsin but kept flying south through two more states. It finally landed on a road in southeastern Missouri and the pilot was apprehended.
The pilot hadn't communicated with authorities through the entire flight. The incident caused the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison to be evacuated as a precaution as the plane flew through that section of the state.
Mike Kucharek, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado, said the Cessna 172 was stolen from Thunder Bay, Ontario, about 2:30 p.m. Monday. The pilot was flying erratically and didn't communicate with the fighter pilots from the Wisconsin Air National Guard who intercepted the plane at the
The pilot had acknowledged seeing the F-16s but he didn't obey their nonverbal commands to follow them, Kucharek said.
The pilot finally landed the plane on a road at Ellsinore near Poplar Bluff in far southeastern Missouri, said Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Sgt. Marty Elmore, Missouri Highway Patrol public information officer, said a man was taken into custody about 9:30 p.m. in the Ellsinore area. He identified him as Adam Dylan Leon, 31, but didn't have a hometown for him.
Brown said the plane came from the Confederation College Flight School at Thunder Bay International Airport.
Major Brian Markin with the North American Aerospace Defense Command said the plane landed at 8:45 p.m. CST. That meant it was in the air just over six hours since the reported theft.
"We tailed it all the way," he said. "Once it landed our aircraft returned to base."
Kucharek said the plane had enough fuel to fly for nearly eight hours. The Web site cessna.com indicated the Cessna 172 Skyhawk is a four-seater with a range of about 790 miles and top speed of 141 mph.
In Madison, Department of Justice spokesman Bill Cosh said the state Capitol building was evacuated shortly after 5 p.m. as a precaution because of the airplane.
Many workers had already left for the day. Gov. Jim Doyle was not in the building. He had been in Chicago Monday.
Capitol police ordered everyone out of the building and told them to go at least a block away. Police cars with sirens on drove on the sidewalks by the doors of the Capitol. Others drove on the streets of the Capitol square, telling people to move away.
People were allowed back in the building about an hour later.
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AP writers Todd Richmond in Madison and James Carlson in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES — Trent Reznor was backstage one afternoon last summer, fooling around with his iPhone to stave off boredom before a show, when he realized that fans standing in line outside were broadcasting photos from the scene using their iPhones.
So he took the obvious next step: Using Twinkle, the same Twitter app the fans were using, he started sending out photos from backstage. And so an idea was born.
"We started thinking, 'Hey, this could be pretty cool,'" Reznor recalls. A few days from now, the results should be up on Apple's App Store for anyone to use.
The free Nine Inch Nails app, scheduled for release as soon as it gets final approval from Apple, is a mobile window on all things NIN: music, photos, videos, message boards, even — thanks to a GPS-enabled feature called Nearby — the fans themselves.
Nearby is "kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network," says Rob Sheridan, Reznor's long-time collaborator. "You can post a message or a photo by location, and if you're at a show you can see conversations between other people who are right there."
Fans have had their curiosity stoked by hints about the iPhone app that have shown up on Reznor's Twitter feed.
"We're all waiting for it," says Brandon Dusseau, a Milwaukee-based web designer who's one of the founders of NinWiki, one of the group's leading unofficial fan sites. "I'm sure it will get tons of downloads, and I'm hoping it will be a really cool resource. But all I know is, it's coming out soon."
In an exclusive interview at Reznor's home, a coolly modern structure high above the Westside region of Los Angeles, Reznor and Sheridan previewed the new app and explained how it fits in with their plans for survival in a post-label world.
The iPhone app is the culmination, at least for now, of a process that began a year-and-a-half ago, when Nine Inch Nails succeeded in extracting itself from its contract with Universal Music Group's Interscope label.
"When we found out we'd been released it was like, 'Thank god!'" says Reznor, trim and beefy in black jeans and a black T-shirt. "But 20 minutes later it was, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying."
Since then, Reznor has pioneered a new, fan-centered business model that radically breaks with the practices of the struggling music industry. His embrace of "freemium" pricing, torrent distribution, fan remixes and social media seem to be paying off financially even as they have helped him forge deeper connections with the Nine Inch Nails faithful.
It's something he never could have done before, even on an indie label. "Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact — no idea," he declares. "I'm surprised they know how to use e-mail. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more."
Meanwhile, the entire system that for a lucky few turned those discs into hits — rock radio, MTV, music mags, CD megastores — has crumbled, and label execs have no idea where to turn. "They're in such a state of denial it's impossible for them to understand what's happening," Reznor says. "As an artist, you are now the marketer."
And the only marketing vehicle that makes sense is the net. Reznor and Sheridan had used it successfully before, in the alternate-reality game they created with 42 Entertainment to explain NIN's 2007 album, Year Zero. But what else should they do? The Radiohead experiment — offer downloads online and ask people to pay what they want — struck him as an invitation to be insulted.
So after selling music for nearly 20 years, Reznor decided to give it away. He would expand NIN's website into an all-inclusive resource fans could use to find not just tour dates but photos, video, music — "a one-stop shop for every bit of information you could ever want," he says. Everything in the shop — including The Slip, his most recent album — would be free.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't think music should be free," Reznor says. "But the climate is such that it's impossible for me to change that, because the record labels have established a sense of mistrust. So everything we've tried to do has been from the point of view of, 'What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?' Now let's work back from that. Let's find a way for that to make sense and monetize it."
Over the past year, NIN.com has quietly evolved into a series of interlocking services designed to deliver maximum benefit to the fans at minimal expense to the artist. To build it out, Reznor decided to use off-the-shelf resources — Blogger, Twitter, FeedBurner, Flickr, YouTube — rather than trying to duplicate what other people had already created. "They're going to do a better job than we are," he explains, "and they're going to have a lot more resources to put into it."
"We're using what people are already using every day anyway," adds Sheridan, a smaller figure with a three-day growth of beard and pale, wolf-blue eyes. "It's media on the fans' terms, how they want to use it, instead of trying to be like this" — he wraps his arms around his torso as if trying to hold himself in — "which is the old-media strategy."
Under the circumstances, it made little sense to try to manage what went up on the site. Why would they, when they had an army of people who'd relish the job? "We'll never outdo a community of obsessive fans," Reznor says. "People who have the same maniacal completion problem that Rob and I have playing videogames — let them funnel that shit into making our website cool."
To put the fans to work, NIN's tech team — a Glendale, California, outfit called Sudjam — used the APIs for Flickr and YouTube to enable users to connect their NIN accounts with their accounts on those sites. That meant users could tag items on Flickr and YouTube and have them pop up on NIN.com, where other users will find them neatly ordered and ready for viewing. Sudjam expects to do the same for Photobucket and Vimeo shortly.
Obviously someone has to supervise all this, but Reznor has crowdsourced that function as well. NIN.com is mostly governed by fan moderators — unpaid superfans who enjoy special privileges on the site. "It becomes a source of pride for them," says Sheridan, "to make sure everything is what it says it is."
Next up: Incorporating a wiki into the site. The most likely candidate is NinWiki, which was built on MediaWiki, the open source software written for Wikipedia. By putting a fan wiki together with NIN.com's media galleries, which at last count comprised some 30,000 photos and videos, the utility of the data the two sites possess could increase exponentially.
"Here's this tour date from three years ago," Sheridan hypothesizes. "Through MediaWiki, the fans have entered in a set list. Each song is clickable, so you can see every show that song was ever played at. And it's tied into our image and video database, so you can also see every video that song appears in."
By making available — for free, of course — the individual tracks that make up the master recordings of his songs, Reznor has even crowdsourced the remix function. He released multi-track versions of his songs as early as 2005, but Interscope wasn't happy with the idea of putting fan remixes online. Now that he's been sprung from the label, that's no longer an issue.
At last count, NIN.com had 11,000 fan remixes available for streaming or download. Thanks to an XML feed, you can even subscribe to them as a podcast. "I doubt I'll ever pay someone to do a remix again," Reznor says, "because there's some amazing stuff just coming out of bedrooms."
Free downloads can cost a lot of money to deliver, especially when the options include better-than-CD sound quality. So for the higher-quality offerings, Reznor turned to BitTorrent — "the domain of pirates," he acknowledges, "but it's also a great technology that is free." Pirates are no longer the enemy anyway: "Our battle is against download costs."
To cover the costs of recording and distributing the album, Reznor also offered The Slip as a limited-edition CD for $10. Even as he urged fans to download and share the album online, he sold 250,000 numbered copies of the CD. The album is also available on iTunes for $9.90. "So we managed to permeate the marketplace," Reznor says, "and we also managed to monetize the album."
The one part of NIN.com that Reznor had custom-built is the piece that sits at the center of it all: the database of fan info that has been harvested from the registration process that's required to take full advantage of the site. That database, created by Sudjam, is what makes the tie-ins with Flickr and YouTube work, but it's also given Reznor 2 million e-mail addresses — which adds up to a pretty powerful distribution network.
"If The Slip had X number of downloads, we know who those people are and we'll reach out to them with the next thing we have," he says. A concert coming up in Atlanta? It's a simple matter to send out e-mails to everyone within a hundred-mile radius of the city. "That seems to be the most valuable thing you can get — a way to reach people," Reznor says.
"There’s an enormous value in having a relationship with your fans," he says. "More value even than in selling your records. I think old Trent's a sharp cookie."
Taking that connection mobile was the logical next step. "We created an app," Reznor says, "that reformats the website to make almost everything on it available in an iPhone-able version and also adds location-based awareness. This now brings it into the real world, where you can find people if you choose to."
When the band toured Europe last year, Sheridan regularly updated the site by posting pictures he'd snapped onstage. It was great, Reznor says: "People felt included. People kind of felt like they were getting postcards from us."
The iPhone app takes that a big step further. NIN.com has a Google Earth plug-in that fans can use to see conversations and photos from across the planet, or at a specific location. A feature on the iPhone app's Nearby tab will enable them to post messages and photos from their iPhones to the website and have them pop up in Google Earth.
All this is a long way from the powerlessness Reznor felt when he was starting out in Cleveland in the 1980s.
"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract," he says. "I said, 'Wait — you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the fuck made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' — like I did."
Reznor is still experimenting, and it remains unclear how effective his methods will be for less-established bands. But by spurring him to try new ideas, ending his label affiliation has given him a tentative new business model as well as a new form of engagement with his fans.
If the labels had tried to connect with fans online instead of dragging them into court, he figures, the music industry wouldn't be collapsing today. But no matter; he's moved on.
"My quest in life now is to surround myself with smart, innovative people," he says, "instead of the gangster types who have exploited artists over the years."
- - -
Frank Rose is a contributing editor of Wired magazine. He is writing a book on how the internet is changing storytelling, and posting on the subject at his Deep Media blog.
The Incredible HULC This illustration shows the Lockheed Martin-developed HULC exoskeleton, which could supplement human strength enough to let a soldier carry a 200-pound load while running at 10 mph. | Discovery News Video
Eric Bland, Discovery News
April 6, 2009 -- Stronger, faster and harder is the promise of a new exoskeleton developed by Lockheed Martin for U.S. soldiers. Dubbed the Human Universal Load Carrier, or HULC, the device helps a soldier carry up to 200 pounds at a top speed of 10 mph.
"The soldier has the feeling of maybe an extra five to 10 pounds," said Doug Medcalf, Business Development Manager at Lockheed Martin. Today some soldiers are carrying loads of up to 130 pounds into combat.
Unlike most exoskeletons built to boost human ability, the HULC, which Medcalf says does not owe its name to the popular green comic book character, isn't limited to the length of its power cable.
The titanium HULC instead runs on a four lithium ion batteries nestled into the small of a soldier's back. Eight batteries can power the HULC on missions up to 96 hours.
The HULC is easy to put on, its makers report. It arrives folded into a small package. The soldier stretches a leg out and steps into foot beds underneath the boot. Straps wrap around the thighs, waist and shoulders.
The foot pads ensure that the weight from the soldier's load rests directly on the ground, not on the soldier's body. Inside the foot pads are pressure sensors that relay information about the speed and walking style of the soldier to an onboard computer. The computer's artificial intelligence moves the hydraulic system to amplify and enhance that movement.
The HULC allows a soldier to walk, run, kneel and crawl, among other things. It can impede other movements however, but if a soldier comes under fire and needs more flexibility, the HULC can be removed in about 30 seconds.
Wounded soldiers could be evacuated faster and easier by other HULC-equipped soldiers, Lockheed says. Retreating soldiers could deny the enemy equipment that today would have to be left behind because of its heft.
The HULC comes at a critical time. U.S. Army reports show that 20,000 soldiers are classified as "non-deployable." Half of those were injured during battle. The other half cannot be deployed because of physical problems, such as an inability to haul heavy loads.
HULC wasn't created to reduce injuries, but "if it does reduces injuries along the way, that is a positive for the war fighter," said Medcalf.
Medcalf said they could design an exoskeleton that could carry more weight, but they don't expect their customers will need to carry more than 200 pounds at once.
As a product of millions of years of evolution, the human body is naturally good at moving around, said Aaron Dollar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Yale University. Any attempt to improve on nature's design is a difficult engineering challenge.
"Walking is one of the things that the human body is most efficient at," said Dollar. "Anytime something is really good, like human walking, it is hard to improve it."
A woman who believes she was being stalked by a cult has been charged with stabbing her 2-year-old daughter 100 times with scissors, her lawyer and police have said, and can be heard yelling "Die! Die!" on a 911 call.
Susan Johnson's screams can be heard on the 911 call made by a security guard who helped to subdue her in a laundry room at a Gardner apartment building Wednesday night.
Johnson, 38, also used an electrical cord from a dryer to try and strangle the toddler, police said, but the security guard and two residents separated mother and child just before police arrived.
"I heard a woman screaming very loudly that she was going to 'Kill, kill, I have to kill you, Die, die, die,'" said resident Real Belliveau, 65, who lives just down the hall from the laundry room. He was watching a Boston Celtics game on TV when he heard the commotion.
When he ran to the laundry room he thought the child was already dead because she was limp, covered in blood and had the cord wrapped around her neck.
The girl was taken to a hospital suffering from as many as 100 wounds to her head, neck and torso, but many of them were superficial, police Chief Neil Erickson said. The child, who is now in the custody of state child welfare authorities, was taken to a hospital and is expected to survive.
The state Department of Children and Families made a check on the girl at her home in Turners Falls, about 35 miles west of Gardner, the day before the attack, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and WBZ-TV reported. Department spokeswoman Alison Goodwin refused to confirm the report Thursday and said only the department is now investigating.
It's unclear what she was doing in the apartment building. She has family in Gardner, defense attorney Peter Binder said.
Johnson has a history of depression and had not been taking her medication, Binder said, adding she does not remember the attack in the laundry room.
"She seems to be very paranoid," he said.
Johnson was held without bail on a number of charges including attempted murder and ordered to undergo a competency evaluation at her arraignment Thursday in Gardner District Court. A dangerousness hearing was scheduled for April 17.
The spellcheck-defying Inglourious Basterds, premiering this month in Cannes, has been described as Pulp Fiction meets The Dirty Dozen meets The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, set in Nazi-occupied France. Brigitte Lacombe invades the set of the latest from Quentin Tarantino, who provides an exclusive scene from his script for the May issue of Vanity Fair.
photographs by Brigitte Lacombe May 2009
Brad Pitt as the Nazi-hunting Lieutenant Aldo Raine.
Diane Kruger as the stunning German screen actress Bridget von Hammersmark.
Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus.
Femme fatale Kruger lights up in character.
From left, Laurent, Christopher Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa, Omar Doom as P.F.C. Omar Ulmer, Daniel Brühl as Frederick Zoller, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth as Sergeant Donny Donowitz, Kruger, and Pitt.
Pitt in a sinister moment on the set of Inglourious Basterds, at Studio Babelsberg, in Potsdam, Germany.
Shots were fired near Gisele Bündchen's beachfront home. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Gisele Bündchen, the Brazilian supermodel, and her husband, the American football star Tom Brady, have taken the task of keeping their wedding photos exclusive to extremes, it has emerged.
A pair of celebrity photographers had the back window of their Suzuki SUV shot out by security guards when they tried to flee with snatched stills and videos of the happy couple's big day at Bündchen's villa in Mal Pais, Costa Rica.
The Boston Herald, which claims to have exclusive pictures of the wedding that it plans to publish tomorrow, said the paparazzi were from the INF photo agency, and were hiding in bushes near Bündchen's beachfront home taking pictures of the event when they were caught by the newlyweds' security guards.
"The photographers, identified as Yuri Cortez and Rolando Aviles, were marched to Bündchen's villa where they were ordered to surrender their still photos and video," the paper reported. "The men refused and fled with the security guards in pursuit. Two of the photographers ran to a waiting SUV and jumped in as a guard fired a shot at them, the photo agency said. The bullet shattered the Suzuki's rear window, passed between the two men in the front seat and bounced off the windshield."
No one was injured, but the incident gives a new meaning to the term "shotgun wedding". New York Daily News has a picture of the shot-up car. According to the Can't Stop the Bleeding blog, Cortez was shocked. "I couldn't believe it when I realised what they had done," he told the photo agency. "I could have lost my life for the sake of some pictures that Gisele didn't want published. Are they insane?"
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
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