Spreadtrum shares fall after 3Q profit disappoints

NEW YORK (AP) ? Shares of Spreadtrum Communications Inc., which makes chips for smartphones and other electronics, fell Friday after it reported earnings that missed expectations.

THE SPARK: Late Thursday, the Shanghai-based company reported net income of $23.2 million, or 44 cents per American depositary share, for the three months ended Sept. 30. Analysts expected 46 cents per share.

Revenue rose about 2 percent to $187.9 million.

Spreadtrum said its operating profit margin would be similar in the fourth quarter, disappointing analysts.

THE ANALYSIS: Jefferies & Co. analyst Ken Hui said the results supported his concern that as the company is expanding its portfolio, research and design spending is shooting up. Even so, he expects its market share to shrink in favor of competitors Mediatek and Leadcore. He kept a "Neutral" rating.

Nomura Securities analyst Aaron Jeng cut his "Buy" rating on Spreadtrum to "Neutral" for similar reasons.

SHARE ACTION: Spreadtrum shares fell $1.89, or 8.9 percent, to close at $19.44. The drop wiped out a month of gains.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/spreadtrum-shares-fall-3q-profit-disappoints-211310827--finance.html

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NYC rationing gas for first time since '70s fuel crisis

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Looking at car insurance rates and how they ... - Car Auto Insurance

It is not always obvious how your insurance premiums are calculated. Safety is one of the most important criteria used during the calculation. Insurance companies determine how safe you and your vehicle are when setting rates. Several factors are taken into consideration which helps insurers establish premiums on a case-by-case basis. Understanding these factors is critical if you want to get the best car insurance rates.

Driver Safety

Safe drivers automatically get lower rates than drivers who have been involved in accidents or received speeding tickets. Aggressive and distracted drivers are more likely to cause accidents. You can improve your safety record by driving within posted speed limits, wearing your seat belt, and using defensive driving tactics when road conditions are hazardous. Many insurance companies give additional discounts to customers who complete remedial driver education classes.

Vehicle Safety

Customers who drive vehicles that are safe, as determined by industry-wide safety ratings, will be given lower premiums by insurers. These ratings are established based on criteria that include crash test results and safety features of each type of vehicle. Cars that have air bags, anti-lock brakes, and automatic seat belts are preferred by insurers. Older vehicles are less likely to include these features so owners of newer cars get the lower rates. Most insurance companies give better rates to owners of mid-sized vehicles because they are safer.

Geographic Factors

Your premiums can be impacted by where you live and work. There is a greater chance of car being damaged or stolen if they are parked in neighbourhoods that are unsafe. Driving on congested roads is another risk factor that insurance companies consider when calculating premiums. This is why city drivers often have higher rates than rural drivers. Weather is closely related to geography from an insurance company?s point of view. If you live in an area that rarely gets snow or severe weather such as tornados, your rates will be lower than customers who do live in these communities. Each of these geographic factors is used to establish safety or risk scores for your car insurance rate calculation.

If you believe you have met these safety requirements but are still paying high premiums, consider using an online quotes service to compare rates from other car insurance providers in your area. You can easily save money on car insurance by getting quotes from multiple insurers at one time. Always confirm you have received the maximum safety-related discounts available before selecting a particular policy.

Source: http://www.brazilbook.info/looking-at-car-insurance-rates-and-how-they-can-be-affected-by-safety.html

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Bahraini lawyers, activists face lost citizenship

A Bahraini man gestures from behind a car in Barbar, Bahrain, on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, that residents said was damaged when it was hit by tear gas canisters fired by riot police. Police used tear gas in several villages to prevent residents from leaving to participate in midday prayers in the northern village of Diraz. Shiite clerics nationwide had called for worshipers to pray in Diraz on Friday where top Shiite cleric Sheik Issa Qassim preaches in a show of support for him at a time of concern among Shiites that he may be arrested as part of a government crackdown on the opposition. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

A Bahraini man gestures from behind a car in Barbar, Bahrain, on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, that residents said was damaged when it was hit by tear gas canisters fired by riot police. Police used tear gas in several villages to prevent residents from leaving to participate in midday prayers in the northern village of Diraz. Shiite clerics nationwide had called for worshipers to pray in Diraz on Friday where top Shiite cleric Sheik Issa Qassim preaches in a show of support for him at a time of concern among Shiites that he may be arrested as part of a government crackdown on the opposition. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

Lawyer Taimoor Karimi is seen outside his home in Muharraq, Bahrain, on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. Karimi is one of 31 people to have his Bahraini citizenship revoked by the government as part of its crackdown on the opposition. A religious banner behind him praises Islam's founding Prophet Mohamed. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

A Bahraini youth who nurses said was hit in the head with a tear gas canister fired by riot police is treated in a home in Barbar, Bahrain, on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. Police used tear gas in several villages to prevent residents from leaving to participate in midday prayers in the northern village of Diraz, where top Shiite cleric Sheik Issa Qassim preaches in a show of support for him at a time of concern among Shiites that he may be arrested as part of a government crackdown on the opposition. Protesters often are treated in homes, fearing arrest if they are taken to hospitals. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

Bahrain's top Shiite cleric Sheik Issa Qassim speaks during midday prayers in Diraz, Bahrain, on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. Shiite clerics nationwide had called for worshipers to pray at the Diraz mosque where Qassim preaches in a show of support for the cleric at a time of concern among Shiites that he may be targeted for arrest as part of a government crackdown on the opposition. Police blocked all roads to the area and used tear gas to keep back worshipers who abandoned their cars to try to walk to the village. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

Bahraini anti-government protesters return to the streets after being dispersed by riot police firing tear gas resume their demonstration in Malkiya, Bahrain, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali

(AP) ? Off a road guarded by three police checkpoints, Bahraini lawyer Taimoor Karimi wonders about his future in a country that no longer considers him a citizen.

He and 30 other Shiites were stripped of their nationalities this week in the Gulf nation's latest attempt to crush a 21-month-old uprising against the Sunni leadership. Karimi ponders the possible loss of rights and benefits as a stateless outcast.

"I have no place to go, nowhere to go," he told The Associated Press during an interview at his home after learning of Wednesday's decision.

The kingdom revoked the citizenship of Karimi and other Shiite activists and lawyers as battles appear to be escalating on all sides in the Gulf's main Arab Spring flashpoint.

A series of five bomb blasts on Monday killed an Indian and a Bangladeshi worker and authorities claimed the attacks carried the hallmarks of the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah. Just days earlier, authorities banned all protest rallies under a "zero tolerance" policy that brought an unusually harsh rebuke from the U.S., which is normally wary about pushing too hard against Bahrain's leaders who host the strategically important U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

The sense of hardening positions in Bahrain has implications far outside the kingdom, which is no bigger in area than New York City.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states are deeply committed to saving Bahrain's Sunni dynasty as a firewall against possible future challenges to the ruling sheiks and monarchs in the region. Washington, meanwhile, faces a difficult balancing act between unease over Bahrain's increasing harsh tactics and the need to preserve critical military and political alliances with the Gulf states as front-line partners against Iran.

The Bahrain-based 5th Fleet is the Pentagon's main naval counterbalance to Iran's expanded military bluster in the Gulf, including threats to close oil shipping lanes and a reported firing at U.S. surveillance drone in international airspace on Nov. 1. Pentagon press secretary George Little said the drone was not hit and returned to base.

In Bahrain, the majority Shiites seek a greater political voice in the country's affairs. Near nonstop unrest since February 2011 has claimed more than 55 lives and brought some changes from the Sunni leadership, including giving more oversight powers to the elected parliament. But authorities also increasingly portray the opposition as traitors and influenced by Shiite giant Iran.

On Friday, security forces set up blockades and fired tear gas in an apparent attempt to disrupt weekly prayers by the country's most senior Shiite cleric, Sheik Isa Qassim, who has often criticized the government's crackdowns. A teenager was killed in a car accident connected to the protests, the opposition said.

Sixteen-year-old Ali Abbas Radhi was "martyred" after being struck by a car when security forces "attacked citizens" west of the capital Manama to prevent them from reaching Friday prayers, the largest Shiite political bloc, Al-Wefaq, said in a statement. The Ministry of Interior confirmed that a teenager was killed, without providing further details.

"The revoking of citizenship from honorable people is aimed at punishing those who have opposition views," Qassim told worshippers who managed to reach his mosque.

The decision to void the citizenship for 31 prominent Shiite figures ? including some political activists in self-exile and former opposition lawmakers ? was the latest blow against perceived threats to "state security," according to the official Bahrain News Agency.

Officials did not respond to requests for additional details on the allegations. They appeared, however, similar to claims against dozens of opposition leaders who have been sentenced to prison, including several life terms. The group stripped of citizenship, including 30 men and one woman, can appeal, the state news agency added.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was "greatly concerned" by the move.

"We have continually called on the government of Bahrain to create a climate that is conducive to reconciliation, to meaningful dialogue, to reform, to bring peaceful change," she said on Wednesday.

At about the same time, the lawyer Karimi gathered with his family in the old section of Muharraq island, about 10 kilometers (six miles) northeast of Manama, and under near round-the-clock security watch as are many Shiite districts.

Karimi spent six months in detention after protests broke out last year and claims his missing teeth and marks on his hands are evidence of the alleged torture he suffered behind bars. Among those also losing their citizenship were several neighbors and activists living in self-exile in London.

"There is no due process," said Karimi, 55, a well-known lawyer who was born in Bahrain and studied in Egypt. "It is against human rights ... and an intimidation against the Shiite community in Bahrain."

He said he does not expect to be deported ? "No documents, no passport," he shrugged ? but to now fall under the category of a stateless resident, known in Arabic as Bidoun and common in some areas of the Middle East. The stateless sometimes go back generations in some countries, but are often denied access to state benefits such as pensions and subsidized health care.

"I am Bahraini and I won't leave my country," he said.

Targeting citizenship has been used elsewhere in the Gulf as rulers try to muzzle opposition emboldened by the Arab Spring wave of revolutions that led to the ouster of leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen.

In the United Arab Emirates, at least six activists were stripped of citizenship for criticizing the country's leaders, and at least one person was deported to Thailand under a Comoros Islands passport arranged by UAE authorities.

Bahrain has used the punishment as far back as 1954 when Sunni leader Abdul Rahman al-Baker lost his citizenship because of his political activities. He and two other activists were later deported to St. Helena in the South Atlantic in the same prison where Napoleon Bonaparte was jailed.

In the 1960s and 70s, many dissidents studying outside Bahrain were not allowed to return and their passports were not renewed. And hundreds of Bahrainis with Persian origin were forcibly exiled to Iran in the 1980s after their citizenship was revoked. Many had to wait until political reforms in 2001 to have their citizenship restored.

International rights groups have condemned Bahrain's latest decision, with Amnesty International saying it "appears to have been taken on the basis of the victims' political views."

"We urgently call on the Bahraini authorities to rescind this frightening and chilling decision," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-11-09-ML-Bahrain/id-aefedf74628749d7b1ad7b9ee341d26f

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TED Blog | Are orphanages a necessary evil, or is there a better way?

08 November 2012

More than 8 million children live in orphanages worldwide. But as Georgette Mulheir shares in today?s brave talk, given at TEDSalon London Spring 2012, an estimated 90% of them are not true orphans. These children are sent to orphanages because a single parent is not adequately able to care for them, because of rampant poverty at home, or because they have a disability or special needs.

This is something that Mulheir?s organization, Lumos (interesting fact: it was founded by JK Rowling), hopes to change, because children who grow up in orphanages do not integrate seamlessly into larger society. As Mulheir shares, children raised in orphanages are 10 times more likely to be involved in prostitution, 40 times more likely to have a criminal record and ? shockingly ? 500 times more likely to commit suicide.

Mulheir has visited hundreds of orphanages in 18 countries, and notes a similar feedback loop at work in each ? children have limited contact with caregivers and don?t get the stimulation they need for optimum development. They develop self-soothing behaviors ? like self-harming ? that get them labeled as disabled and keep them in institutions long term. This is not necessarily because orphanage personnel are bad people ? it?s because they simply have too many kids to care for.

In her talk, Mulheir wonders if there is another way and calls for a radical resource redistribution. She points out that giving support ? both financial and otherwise ? to desperate parents and foster families would cost governments far less than maintaining large care institutions. With the saved funds, smaller, better institutions could be created for children who truly have nowhere to go.

?Children are amazingly resilient,? says Mulheir. ?We find that if we get them out of institutions and into loving families early on, they recover their developmental delays and go on to lead normal happy lives.

How bad can orphanages be? Listen to the vivid description in Mulheir?s talk. And after the jump, Mulheir shares a blog post she wrote as she visited an orphanage in November 2009.? She?s happy to report that the last of the children moved out of the institution by summer of 2012.

Mulheir writes:?

The first thing that greets you is the smell: it is a specific stench that, unless you?ve experienced it, is hard to define. It is a combination of stale urine, boiled cabbage and fear. ?It remains with you long after you leave the building. And, no matter how much they wash, it is a smell that remains on many children for weeks after they leave an institution and move into a family home.

This residential special school is a three-hour drive from the capital. It is remote, isolated and inaccessible. It is typical of everything that is wrong with the institutional system of caring for children.

The main building is familiar to me even before we arrive ? an immense, grey, concrete block, like so many others in the former Soviet bloc. I know the layout immediately, because they were all designed in the same way. I imagine that a factory in some former Soviet republic produced all the institutions for children, in the same way that all trams were produced in what was Czechoslovakia and all the parachutes in what is now Transnistria. An identikit building, designed to homogenise an entire population, and to raise a generation of children loyal to the Party and the State.

Such thoughts are reaffirmed as I enter the lobby of the building: 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we are greeted by a bust of Lenin. I have been visiting this country for 10 years and I have never seen such open homage to the old regime, whatever people may think privately.

The Director is also there to meet us, eager to show us around her empire. We walk to her office through corridors that are dark and dank. The floors are wet and, as we walk around the institution, 20 metres ahead of us there is always the same elderly woman mopping the floor furiously. Those children we pass do not raise their eyes to look at us. Even when we try to engage them in conversation, their gazes are fixed, firmly, to the floor.

We are taken to the Director?s office for the obligatory discussion about the institution?s history and its incredible success as a school.

?We have 120 children here,? she tells us. ?They all have special educational needs and we do our very best to provide a good education for them. But more than that, many of these children come from terrible families. Here we provide them with the care they need ? we are their parental home.?

I think about the stench, the damp, the deadened eyes of the children and wonder what sort of home this is.

?We opened in 1956,? she continues, proudly, ?and since then more than 5,000 children have come through this institution. We have many successes to be proud of: some of our ?graduates? have established their own families and now their children are living here with us.?

There is no irony in her statement. She appears to believe this is a genuine measure of success.

?Our children have many problems, illnesses and terribly difficult behaviours,? she explains. ?So many of them have enuresis, but the doctor gives them pills to treat it.?

Enuresis ? or bedwetting ? is a common problem for children in institutions. Here, it is exacerbated by the toilet situation. I am sure the Director had hoped we would not visit the toilets when she showed us around the building, but we do. The floors are sparkling and, bizarrely, covered in brand new rugs. The stench, however, cannot be hidden. And when I enter each of the five cubicles I find that each is covered in old excrement: none of them is functioning.

It is clear that there are no toilets here that work. For the 120 children who live here, going to the toilet means visiting the latrine outside. In winter, the temperature falls to minus 25?C. No wonder that so many of the children wet the bed.

The next stop on our guided tour is the kitchen. Here, two cooks are preparing a chicken dinner for the children. This, I?m later reliably informed, is a rare occasion. The children don?t often receive meat. As we?re there, a piece of meat falls on the floor. One of the cooks picks it up, hesitates, looks at me, and even though she sees that I?m watching, she throws it back into the pot.

The dining room is next door ? dark, dank, huge and Dickensian. Row upon row of bare tables and wooden benches.

We move on to the classrooms. Here we meet some of the children and see them at their lessons. The six and seven year olds are so small. My colleague bends down to speak to one the girls.

?What are you working on?? she asks.

?I want my mum,? she responds, her eyes filling with tears.

Several of the other children also look on the verge of tears. I sit next to one little boy and try to engage with him. He turns away, refusing to make contact. He is terrified.

We enter another classroom, filled with 10- and 11-year-olds. They cope better with our visit. They answer our questions, jump up and say a few words in English, and offer to help me improve my Maths. They are all bright kids. I have yet to see one child who I think would need special education. Again, though, there is a girl looking sad. She sits in the corner, on her own. My colleague asks the Director what is wrong with her.

?Oh, she was at home with her mum for a month,? the Director responds loudly, ?but she came back to us yesterday and she isn?t used to it yet.?

The girl begins to cry.

After visiting several more classrooms we are taken to a room you would find hard to imagine. It?s clearly a type of bathroom, dank and dirty, with rusting pipework and chipped and broken tiles on the wall. In the middle of the room is an odd contraption: half shower, half primitive bidet.

?What?s this room for?? I ask.

?This is the female hygiene room,? a member of staff responds. ?The girls come here to clean themselves when it is their time of the month.?

A flustered member of staff tries to demonstrate the contraption, but the water is turned off and the boiler is broken. So we move on.

Next are the bedrooms. They are not too large, with eight to ten beds per room. There are brand new blankets on the beds. Their colours are so vivid that the contrast to the rest of the building is almost an assault on the eyes. There is, however, nothing personal in the rooms. There are no personal spaces. There are no personal possessions.

There are just a couple of broken-down cupboards and a shelf. One toothbrush, one tube of toothpaste and one bar of soap sit on the shelf. All of them are still in their packaging, unopened.

There are three corridors of bedrooms, with 40 children on each corridor. For some bizarre reason, there are boys? and girls? bedrooms on each floor.

?How many members of staff are on duty at night?? I ask.

The answer is three. They are untrained and unqualified. The Director refers to them as babysitters.

How can one member of staff ensure the protection and safety of 40 children? How easy is it for one child to distract the staff member, while others sneak into bedrooms so they can bully those more vulnerable?

I have seen it before in institutions where I have made unannounced visits. The staff members are drunk or asleep. The children do what they want. The law of the jungle prevails.

Finally, we?re taken to the piece de resistance: the hall where the children ?play?. A feast has been prepared for us. So much food. So much variety. I am sure the children never see anything like this. I feel sick. We try to refuse, but in the end we must take a small bite to eat. We do, however, successfully refuse the Director?s invitation to a drink of vodka. It is only 10.30am, but she is clearly disappointed.

?What do you think of the reform process and the future of these institutions?? we ask her.

?The reform is a very good thing,? she responds. ?We support the reform, but you can?t just leave these children with such terrible families. And if they closed our school, where would our children receive such a good education? We agree with the reform, but only when the community is ready to look after children.?

I know there is no point explaining to the Director that the educational outcomes of her institution are appalling and that studies show repeatedly that children raised in institutions in this part of the world do not do well as adults. I hold my tongue, because I know that I will never convince this Director of the truth.

Thankfully, the local county council agrees with us that this institution has to go. They asked us to visit because they want to close it and they want to know if we can help them do this.

As she leads us to the door, we pass a huge sign on one of the walls. It summarises the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Children?s right to family, to a good education and healthcare. Their right to speak up and be heard.

We thank the Director for her hospitality and say goodbye to Lenin and his young charges.

This place must close. These children deserve better. After our visit, the County Councillor agrees a date for us to meet very soon in order to finalise the plans for closing this institution, so that she can convince all of her colleagues.

By the summer, we hope to able to start finding families for these children. So they have a place they can truly call home.

To hear more about what?s it?s like to grow up a ?ward of the state,? listen to Lemn Sissay?s powerful TEDTalk, ?A child of the state.?

Source: http://blog.ted.com/2012/11/08/are-orphanages-a-necessary-evil-or-is-there-a-better-way/

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Green Blog: First Things First: An Efficient Abode

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity at our construction site in Moab as we enter our final month volunteering for the nonprofit group Community Rebuilds. We installed the doors, windows and interior walls and screwed up drywall for the ceiling of the straw bale home we?re building. It?s starting to look like the inside of a real house.

The master bathroom doesn?t have a window, so my wife, Julia, helped install a sun tube to illuminate the space during the day without having to switch on a light. It?s a flexible mirrored shaft capped by a plexiglass dome sticking out of the roof that directs sunlight through a hole in the ceiling of the bathroom.

The goal of Community Rebuilds is to build affordable, sustainable homes for low-income families, and the sun tube is an inexpensive design strategy for cutting the homeowners? daily energy needs once they move in. According to the organization?s founder, Emily Niehaus, limiting the owners? utility costs is a major consideration.

Another goal ? beyond that and building small ? is to wean homeowners from heavy reliance on fossil fuels, a big factor in the advance of climate change. Electricity around Moab comes from coal-fired power plants, and most of the homes are heated with natural gas.

Emily and her design team chose to build homes from straw bales partly because the material is superinsulating, resulting in drastically lower heating and air-conditioning costs. Yet she is not installing solar panels or any other electricity generation system based on renewable energy sources.

She came to that decision after meeting Jeff Tobe, a photovoltaic instructor for the Colorado-based nonprofit Solar Energy International Although he is a strong solar advocate, he convinced Emily that solar panels were not where she should put her time or her clients? money.

Mr. Tobe, a former heavy metal headbanger turned industrial engineer turned renewable energy guru, recently ran a daylong workshop for us. (Nine of us volunteers are working on the straw bale house.)

The majority of Solar Energy International?s work involves training people to design and install photovoltaic systems (known as PV) and training others how to do it. That?s where society?s focus and the money is these days, he said.

But using solar panels to make electricity is actually the last, and least important, part of making a home less dependent on fossil fuels, he said.

?You can?t go to a standard residential home and slap PV on it and think you have solved our energy problems,? Mr. Tobe said. ?We can?t make enough PV modules on planet earth to solve our energy issues if we don?t address how we use energy first.?

Heating and cooling consumes almost half the energy in a typical American home, so designing a building that naturally stays thermally comfortable is the best way to reduce energy consumption.

For Mr. Tobe, that means making sure the house is superinsulated and takes advantage of passive solar design.

Passive solar design resurrects some basic building design principles that were common throughout the world before fossil fuels made mechanically heating and cooling a home relatively easy and cheap. The idea is to use the sun?s heat to warm a building during the day and to then trap the heat inside for the night.

In the Northern Hemisphere, buildings should be oriented so their longest wall faces directly south with plenty of windows to let in the sun. The north wall should have very few windows, since it never receives direct sunlight and windows are poor insulators.

Modern window technology allows for fine-tuned calibration of a home?s glazing. Windows are rated for the insulation (U value) and how much light they let through (E value). Generally, the south wall should be glazed with windows that let in a lot of light, while the other walls should be glazed with windows that have better insulation.

The next component of passive solar design is thermal mass. Ever notice how a rock left out in the sun all day stays warm at night? That?s thermal mass in action. The rock absorbs the suns energy and releases it slowly.

In a house, heavy, thick materials like adobe, stone, brick or concrete that contain a lot of thermal mass should be placed inside the living space in the path of the direct sunlight coming in through the south windows. In our straw bale house, the six-inch-thick adobe floor and one-inch-thick earthen plaster over the straw bale walls will act as the main thermal mass.

During the day, they absorb heat, keeping the living space a little cooler. When the sun goes down and the temperature outside drops, these thermal masses radiate their heat back into the living space. As a result, the ambient temperature in the house stays relatively constant as the outside temperature rises and falls.

In the summer, keeping cool is the priority. Since the sun arcs higher in the sky, strategically placed eaves and window shadings prevent direct sunlight from passing through the windows.

The leaves of trees and shrubs planted around the house can also block out direct sun in the summer. After their leaves fall, they let rays from the winter sun pass through.

At the beginning of our build project, Mr. Tobe lent us a simple low-tech device called a Solar Pathfinder. It?s designed to figure out where to place solar panels for maximum effect, but we used it to site the house on the property for optimal passive solar performance.

The pathfinder is essentially a reflective plexiglass dome and a stack of circular black pieces of paper called sun path diagrams. The diagrams are covered with a series of white arcs delineating the path of the sun at different times of year for different latitudes.

We picked the diagram for Moab?s 38-degree northern latitude and put it under the plexiglass dome, making sure it was level and facing true south. Standing on the north side of the dome and looking down into it, we could see the reflection of the trees, red rock cliffs and neighboring buildings that obscured the sky. Using a white grease pencil, we traced the outline of those obstructions onto the diagram sitting just beneath the dome.

When we removed the dome, the pencil mark cut through the various arcs on the diagram representing the path of the sun in different months of the year. Within the area demarcating clear sky, we could see what percentage of the day?s direct sunlight would strike the house each month.

We repeated this process at several locations around the property and found the spot where the house would get the most direct winter sunlight possible and put the house there.

According to Mr. Tobe, beyond using passive solar to cut your heating and cooling bills, the other important way to reduce fossil fuel consumption is to get serious about energy efficiency.

?Efficiency is the first place to start, always,? he said. ?And if you are thinking about off-grid, you better home in on this, or you?re not gonna be able to afford going off grid.?

Mr. Tobe recommends replacing old incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents and upgrading to more energy-efficient appliances. In fact, when designing off-the-grid photovoltaic systems for clients, Mr. Tobe said, he will sometimes spend part of the client?s budget on a new, more energy-efficient refrigerator.

In the end, he said, the client will need fewer solar panels because the new refrigerator requires so much less power to run. The money spent on the new fridge is less than the extra capacity would have cost.

He said he also encourages homeowners to turn down the thermostat on the hot water heater by 10 degrees and wrap the device and all hot water pipes in the house in insulation.

The other major power suck, according to Mr. Tobe, are phantom loads. These are the myriad of electronic devices that consume small amounts of power even when they are off. The main culprits are home entertainment equipment like television sets and stereos and on any device that has a power converter, that little box on the end of its power cord where you plug it into the wall, like cellphone and laptop chargers.

For example, Mr Tobe said, an average DVD player uses about 20 watt hours of power to play a two-hour movie. But the other 22 hours of the day, when it is doing nothing, it still burns through 44 watt hours of power, more than twice what it took to actually do its job.

The cheap and easy fix, Mr. Tobe said, is to buy surge protectors, plug your electronics into them, and switch them off when not in use.

After passive solar design and super-insulation and making a home energy-efficient, ?it?s still not time for solar electric,? he said.

The next most cost-effective way to reduce fossil fuels is installing either solar hot water, solar air systems or both.

Solar hot water systems pump water through a tightly wound series of black pipes installed in a glass box on the roof facing south. The sun heats up the water in the tubes and then the heated water is stored in an insulated tank that feeds the shower, sinks, etc. Often a gas- or electric-powered boiler is necessary to add a boost of heat to the tank when the sun?s energy is not quite enough.

Similarly, solar hot air systems use the sun to heat up air in a box mounted on the outside of the house and then blow it inside. When a thermostat kicks the system on, fans suck cool air out of the house through a metal heat collector that can be anything from a stack of beer cans to intricately baffled duct work.

The air heats up in the metal collector and shoots out of vents into the house. Here?s a unit recommended by Mr. Tobe.

Using photovoltaic cells to heat water or air is a bad idea, Mr. Tobe said. Electricity is an inefficient way to create heat. The sun?s energy should be harnessed directly as heat when that is the end goal, not converted from light to electricity and then to heat.

After considering all these other ways to cut fossil fuel use, then it?s time to think about photovoltaic solar panels, Mr. Tobe said. Although the price has dropped steadily in recent years, they?re not cheap. While emphasizing that the needs of every household are different, he used PVWatts, a Web site run by the Department of Energy?s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, to show us how to estimate the cost of the photovoltaic needs for a typical energy-efficient home near Moab whose owner wanted to generate all the electrical power it used.

The result was a three-kilowatt photovoltaic array tied into the grid with a DC-to-AC inverter that would cost roughly $15,000 to buy and have installed. Grid-tied photovoltaic costs $5 to $9 per watt, Mr Tobe said. Compared with the price of electricity in Utah these days, the system has about a 50-year payback on the financial investment, excluding any rebates or tax incentives.

That seems like a pretty high premium to pay, but Mr. Tobe argues that the reason to consider solar power in the first place is that the environmental consequences of burning cheap coal are not factored into our energy bills, and the financial bottom line should not be the motivation for going solar.

Many of his potential clients considering solar panels have disposable income, he said, and his job is to convince them it was a more important investment in their children?s future than, say, the new fishing boat they?ve been eyeing.

What is more, the 50-year payback for solar panels is based on the assumption that the price of electricity stays low. In Utah, it averages 7 cents per kilowatt-hour and in New York State, about double that. But fossil fuels are nonrenewable.

Environmental advocates warn that just as the price of oil will creep up as the world burns through what it has in coming years, coal and natural gas will gradually become scarcer. Solar power, on the other hand, will always be free.

Of course, for budget-conscious builders like Emily, none of this matters if there is no capital to invest in solar in the first place. That?s why Mr. Tobe dissuaded her from investing in photovoltaic electricity for the Community Rebuilds homes.

The only reason to consider solar panels before undertaking the other energy-efficiency measures is if the government or utility companies are offering great rebates that might not be around forever, Mr. Tobe said. He directed us to the database of state incentives for renewables and efficiency, a Web site maintained by the North Carolina Solar Center.

My wife and I are planning to build a home on land that her family owns outside Woodstock, N.Y. I checked out the government incentives that would be available to us.

First off, any incentives only apply to renewable energy systems plugged into the electrical grid. Going off the grid may sound more hard-core and resilient, but it costs significantly more to install, and you get no support from the government, Mr. Tobe said.

The federal government provides a 30 percent tax credit for solar panels, solar hot water systems, wind turbines and a few other clean energy technologies. In New York State, we can get a 25 percent tax credit worth up to $5,000 for solar panels, solar hot water or solar air heating systems..

On top of that, we would be eligible for $1.50 in cash back per watt of photovoltaic capacity installed, up to 40 percent of the cost of the system after the tax rebate.

I don?t know what my electricity needs will be. But if I use Mr. Tobe?s typical three-kilowatt photovoltaic system as a baseline, according to Solar-estimate.org, I would pay around $18,000 for it to be installed in New York. ?But I would get back around $12,000 from state and local incentives.

Around $6,000 for decades of free, clean power is starting to sound more appealing.

However enticing these incentives seem, we will revisit the state of our home construction budget after we?ve spent our resources on the less sexy stuff that Mr. Tobe suggests.

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/first-things-first-an-efficient-abode/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Dear Bossip: I Lied & Said He Was Physically Abusive & We've ...

Dear Bossip,

Terrance, I love reading your brutally honest responses. So, I am prepared to brace myself for what you have to say.

Let me begin with a little background information and then get down to my question.

Back in 2009, I was just about to turn 22-years old when I met this man we?ll call ?Mike.? When we met I was already involved with someone so Mike and I remained friends. For about one year Mike and I spoke maybe once or twice a month just being reliable friends, listening ears, and offering advice. At some point during that year things ended with my current boyfriend and tragedy struck. When Mike heard about my misfortune he called everyday for 4 months to comfort me and never once mentioned my loss. He was there to support me and kept me from slipping into a deep depression with funny stories and comforting words.

After that he and I were inseparable. We began to date and went strong for 11months? but then his insecurities surfaced and I found myself in an unbearable emotionally abusive situation. When things were good, they were great, but the second Mike couldn?t get his way he would lash out by calling me everything but a child of God and belittling me to no end. Every time this happened I lost a little more self-esteem and would apologize and blame myself. One night, during my cousin?s graduation weekend, the arguing got so bad that the police were called. That was the straw that broke the camel?s back. When I was finally released with no charges against me I had to face my entire family, who had come to town for the celebration. I lied and told them that the argument had gotten physical so that they would hate Mike as much as I did. They supported me and helped me move past the situation.

Now, it?s 2012 and I?m 25-years old and three and a half years wiser. I have relocated and begun my master?s program while working full-time. You would think living 700 miles apart meant never having to worry about him again? but low and behold I ran into Mike and his younger sister while they were on vacation in my new city. His sister and I spent a day hanging out and catching up. She informed me that after the conflict Mike attended over a year of anger management classes and had really matured and come into his own. He purchased his first home, finished his master?s program and had broken the 6 figure mark in his career. I said ?good for him? and left it at that. Three weeks later, Mike e-mails me asking if we can start again. I agreed to it, but only if we completed couples counseling (which I knew would be no easy feat due to our distance). True to his word he found a counselor willing to work with us via Skype and in person whenever he was in my town. After 3 months of counseling we began dating again and haven?t had any real problems. I was originally waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I am happy to say he really has changed and we have both matured for the better of our relationship.

Now my question: How long should I wait to see if this is worth bringing up to my family? And how should I even go about telling them? Most of them believe that Mike is a physically abusive a**hole because I needed someone on my side after the arrest incident. I don?t want to get over confident and tell them too soon, but I also am very close with my family and feel like I am hiding something special in my life. ?? Tangled Web Weaver

Dear Ms. Tangled Web Weaver,

Brace yourself Ms. Thang because here it comes! You are a liar. You are the manipulator. You are the one who is the a**hole. You lied to your family to protect yourself, and you lied on ?Mike? at the detriment of his reputation. That is trifling, and I don?t understand why he is with you, unless you didn?t tell him the truth either about the lie you told on him.

Have you gotten therapy about the liar that you are? Have you told your man that you lied on him and ruined his character? Because the lie you told about him has already spread beyond your family. Chile, I hope you don?t think that the lie you told about him being abusive stayed amongst your family members. People talk. And, you?ve tarnished this man?s name for the sake of saving face of something you could have been honest about from the beginning.

So, how about you start with telling yourself the truth, telling Mike the truth, and then tell your family the truth. Let?s see if Mike will stick around then. Let?s see if your family will believe you, and still support your relationship. Somebody needs to smack the hell out of you and reposition that damn wig on top of your head.

You are deceptively leading this man into a relationship in which he is unaware of the lie you told on him. You are deceptively leading this man into believing you are an honest woman whom he can start anew with, and build a relationship with. He rectified his wrongs by attending anger management counseling, and even at the suggestion of reconnecting with you he was proactive in seeking out a couples? counselor in order to work on your relationship. Yet, you are harboring a lie that got you into the situation you?re in. He is probably thinking the entire relationship failed because of him and his behavior, when in actuality, you?re equally, if not more, responsible for the failure of the relationship. Weren?t you the one who went to jail for the incident several years ago?

Mike is a stand-up dude, but you Ms. Honey! I can?t with you! You are the worse kind of woman. The type that will lie on a man, stick to the lie, and then reconnect with the man knowing the real reason why your family, friends, and nobody likes him, but will lead him to believe it?s because of something he did or has done. TRIFLING A** TRICK! ?In the words of Marsha Ambrosius, ?I hope he cheats on you with a model chick!?

This man probably feels guilty for what he did to you. He is probably working really hard to right his wrongs, and you?re the bish that is still holding on to the secret and allowing him to feel guilty for something that you created. SMDH! You are truly a special one. You got a lot of nerve and gall.

Then, you?re sitting up here talking about how special he is to you? Really Ms. Thang? Really! He?s so special to you that you will live with the lie and not be honest with him? He?s so special to you that you reconnected with him knowing you deceptively used him and led him to believe the detriment of your relationship was because of what he did? Yes, he had an anger problem, but you lied. He worked on his issues, you haven?t. So, who?s the bad guy here? You or him? Girl, miss me and start being honest for once in your life. Start being truthful and tell everyone how you lied and why you lied. Maybe, and perhaps if you?re honest yourself, and those you claim you love, then you will have an honest and loving relationship with others.

Ask yourself these questions: Why did I lie? How has this lie served me? What damage has this lie caused? What can I do to rectify this situation? What will the truth look like, and can I handle the repercussions in telling the truth? Can I be honest with those I claim I love, and especially the man I hurt? ? Terrance Dean

Hey Bossip Fam, what do you think? Share your opinions and thoughts below!

Also, e-mail all your questions Terrance Dean: loveandrelationships@bossip.com

Follow Terrance Dean on Twitter: @terrancedean

?LIKE? Terrance Dean on Facebook, click? HERE!

Make sure to order my books Mogul: A Novel (Atria Books ? June 2011; $15), and Straight From Your Gay Best Friend ? The Straight Up Truth About Relationships, Love, And Having A Fabulous Life (Agate/Bolden Books ? November 2010; $15). They are available in bookstores everywhere, and on Amazon, click HERE! ' + '' + '' + google_ads[0].line1 + '' + '' + '' + '' + google_ads[0].visible_url + '' + '' + '' + google_ads[0].line2 + '?' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { s += 'Ads by Google
' for(i = 0; i Ads by Google
' + google_ads[i].line1 + ' ' + google_ads[i].visible_url + ' ' + google_ads[i].line2 + '?' + google_ads[i].line3 + '
'; } } if (google_ads[0].bidtype == "CPC") { /* insert this snippet for each ad call */ google_adnum = google_adnum + google_ads.length; } document.write(s); return; } google_ad_client = 'ca-pub-1940594850564020'; /* substitute your client_id (pub-#) */ google_ad_channel = '6608948957'; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_ad_type = 'text'; //google_image_size = '728x90'; google_targeting = "content"; google_feedback = 'on'; google_skip = google_adnum; /* to skip for multiple units, insert this snippet for each ad call */ // -->

Source: http://bossip.com/676703/dear-bossip-i-lied-said-he-was-physically-abusive-weve-reconnected-but-how-do-i-tell-my-family/

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Online Market Research Made Easy With Google Consumer Surveys

google consumer surveys for businessAs a business owner, how much market research did you conduct before starting your business? ?What about when launching a new product or service?

If you?re like most small business owners, you probably created your own ad-hock market research study which entailed asking your friends and family what they thought about your business concept. ?If you conducted advanced market research, you may have included a sampling of people who weren?t family or friends. ?Not only is a small (and biased) sampling statistically non-significant, it can lead you and your business down a road to potential failure.

So what?s a small business owner to do? ?Hiring a research firm to conduct a market research study can be cost prohibitive, and depending on their tactics, totally ineffective. ?You?re not a big brand with deep pockets, but you also realize that testing your idea is an important step that most people skip, which can have dire consequences when your a small business with shallow pockets.

As an online marketer, one of the tactics I often use is Google Adwords. ?Before any time and money is invested in a project, I may opt to run some test Pay Per Click campaigns to gauge interest for a product or service. ?I can test product offers, pricing, geographic locations?and ad copy. ?For a few hundred dollars you can get a surprising amount of data to help you make sound business decisions for your business.

Google has recently introduced a new survey platform for marketers and businesses to gather loads of consumer data, fast and cheap.

?Google Consumer Surveys

Google Consumer Surveys puts gathering market research data within reach of just about everyone. ?It?s a self serve platform and creating and launching a survey only takes a few minutes. You can quickly gather a good sampling of market data in a short amount of time, helping you to make smarter business decisions.

Surveys for small business with Google

How Google Surveys Work

After creating your survey, Google will place the survey on one of their partner websites (they have relationships with thousands of websites through their Adsense program) and people will answer one of your survey questions before being able to take the action they wanted on that website. ?Examples would be answering a survey question before viewing a video or before downloading something from the website. It?s set up so that it only takes a consumer a few seconds to respond to the survey and move on to whatever they were doing. ?It works in the same fashion as the way Google servse ads on partner websites through Adsense, except this time it?s with a short, one question survey.

What Do The Google Survey Ads Look Like?

You can create up to 20 questions in a single survey, though only one question will be served to a given consumer at a time as not to overwhelm them. ?As people answer your survey questions, you?ll be able to see the data accumulate.

Google survey test ad

?

Google survey product testing for packaging

?

How Much Does It Cost

For conducting a survey for the general population, a one survey answer will run you $0.10. ?To target your survey to a specific demographic, one survey answer will run you $0.50. ?To gather a statistically significant pool of responses, Google recommends that you gather 15,000 responses for a general population survey ($150) and 500 responses for a demographically targeted survey ($150).

Pricing for Google Consumer Surveys

How Can I Use It

There are a variety of ways to use this survey tool. ?From the way people will be viewing and responding to the survey questions, simple and straightforward questions seem like they would work best. ?Some examples of what you could gather data on:

  • Logos
  • Product packaging
  • Feature preferences
  • Brand awareness
  • Terminology (what words do ordinary people identify with when describing your product)
  • Any type of A/B split testing

?

Survey results from packaging test

?

Are you ready to conduct some market research?

I admit, i?m a Google fan. ?I?m a long time Google Apps user (still using Hotmail for your business email?), an Adwords Agency Partner as well as a host of other programs they offer. ?While they may have their faults, there isn?t another company I know of that has given so many business tools to small businesses either for free, or at a price point they can participate in. If you?re a soon to be business owner, or thinking a launching a new product, consider give Google Consumer Surveys a try.

?

Gary Shouldis is a father, husband, business owner and blogger. He is the founder of 3Bug Media , a web marketing company that helps small business owners and service professionals get found online. You can give him a virtual high five over at Twitter or on Google Plus

Related posts:

Source: http://www.thesmallbusinessplaybook.com/online-market-research-made-easy-google-consumer-surveys/

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96% Sister

All Critics (45) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (2)

L?a Seydoux fulfills Louise, and Kacey Mottet Klein, as Simon, is one more to join the pantheon of film's excellent child actors.

Haunting and sad. And absolutely worth seeing.

The chemistry between the two leads is a razor's-edge dance: feral, childish, tender and always complex.

Movies about wayward kids are a European specialty. The new film "Sister" deepens the specialty.

The influence of Belgian masters Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's documentary eye for youth on the margins is evident in Ursula Meier's calmly heartbreaking drama.

It's a terrific, bracingly sad movie.

Emotionally engaging and impeccably crafted

Klein and Seydoux give such naturalistic performances that they're never overwhelmed by the spectacle.

"Sister" is loose and episodic, but held together with nicely sketched characters.

[A]voids bathos. . .reveals unexpected depth in a heartbreaking bond. . . Different classes conflict [in] adjacent spaces . . .in spare, realistic Dardennes' style.

Meier draws out wonderfully naturalistic performances from her young stars, with Mottet Klein particularly good as the young roustabout Simon ...

It comes over like a subtle short story and is well acted.

Meier's portrait of Simon ... is richly atmospheric and never sentimental.

An enigmatic, heartfelt account of a vulnerable young boy's yearning for a better life.

Most intriguing is how the writers and director have transformed what's essentially a rather dark, bleak story into something involving and emotionally resonant, all without ever turning sentimental.

It is an interesting and well-made movie, though with an uncertain ending.

Sister gradually reveals pattern in its tapestry of everyday life.

An expert piece of storytelling with a host of strong character turns and thematic depth to burn.

A healthy seam of mischief helps cut through the occasionally rote social comment.

An emotionally engaging, beautifully shot and impressively directed Dardennes-esque French drama with a superb script and excellent performances from Kacey Mottet Klein and L?a Seydoux.

An unusual, involving, slightly strained character study from Ursula Meier, the French director of 2008's satirical dystopia, 'Home'.

'Sister' often recalls the recent work of the Dardenne brothers of Belgium and that landmark of the French new wave, Francois Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows' (1959).

Psychologically complex. You may be shocked, you may be moved, but you won't easily forget "Sister."

Director Ursula Meier reveals a whopper of a twist that packs the impact of a piledriver performed on top of a folding table.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lenfant_den_haut/

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