TampaYankee

He's not the first example and certainly won't be the last.

He has aged so well!! He's the Rob Lowe of his generation but even sexier.

I too tend to believe that part of it lies in parenting... and the school board too. Of course, I had two parents, my kids have two parents, and my grandchildren have two parents. That is not to say that I am indicting single parents across the board. There are many good and successful single parents out there. However, it is harder for a single parent -- it has to be. Also, there are failed two-parent families. That is why we have the discipline of statistics: to describe norms and deviations from norms. Every population has them. Not only do a child's parents influence the child but also the child's friend's parents, indirectly, because kids have influence on other kids. I bring the school boards into this because they, many of them anyway, have been complicit in weakening discipline in our 'children's culture'. I have seen it in my own experience. I've had visibility of local school discipline not only as a student, parent and involved taxpayer but also as the spouse (now ex) of a school teacher and librarian in the public schools. Parents are more demanding of their 'child's rights' whether it is what they wear or their cell phones, or how they are allowed to make up blown-off work after the fact because that parent's child must get into Harvard, etc. Problem students seem to have 'problem teachers' although other students in the class seem not to have issues with teachers. Parents are more litigious, at least in their threats, and school board members more removed from support of the community as a whole because that community is busy with two parents working, often with long commutes daily. Whatever interaction they have with the schools is left to infrequent parent-teacher days if their is a problem that makes a meeting worthwhile. Thus school boards are subject to parental harassment and legal threats and rather than taking the calls and pondering how well-spent school district money on law suits would be, there has been a gradual decline in discipline over the years. It is definitely the case from my experience and observations that many parents today are much more permissive than mine were or I was. Now for the other BIG FACTOR: OPPORTUNITY. Kids have much more opportunity to get in trouble today that in my day. There was essentially none of the illicit drugs available save for alcohol and that was much less available. Kids didn't pass alcohol around among themselves or act as pushers. It came from their parents stash or or they got an of-age person to buy it for them. Most parents watched their stuff and took action if their stock went missing. Few people were willing to get busted for buying for minors. Booze was only available from an authorized outlet. There were no moonshine stands in the neighborhood. They supply was out in the open and regulated. Today, kids supply to other kids whatever is going around at the time. They get supplied from underground illicit sources free of government regulation and tracking. Many kids have cars thus they can travel to the trouble or have it brought to them. No so much in my day. Most kids have cell phones to communicate with each other. That facilitates locating trouble. More travel and unfettered communications provide more opportunity. Bottom line is there is more trouble available now than in years past, it is easier to locate it, and easier to get to it or have it brought to you, either by oneself or a friend/acquaintance, on purpose or by happenstance. That's the way I see it as a former kid in earlier times and as parent in the succeeding years.

AOL chat rooms used to be fertile grounds but I haven't visited in years and I don't even know if they still exist.

Yes you are quite right. ACARS was the system. As for the Chinese, I suspect that is mostly for domestic politics and because they haven't been too impressed with the Maylays. However, the Maylays didn't do this analysis, the Brits did. Thus we come back to domestic politics and 'trust but verify'.

Halloween Decorations?

You are quite right that this information was 'deduced' from the satellite data, however these are not surveillance sats but comsats. Their mission is to pass information around the world. To do that they receive and send data, usually time-tagged, from and to users, respectively. In this case it appears the data was health and performance status of the engines. This was a reverse satellite orbit determination problem -- something I know a little about. Usually a tracking station records range (distance) data and possibly range-rate (distance rate-of-change) data by receiving that information from the sat transponder or by skin tracking noncooperative sats i.e. bouncing radar signals off the sat. In this case the 'tracking station' was the sat and the object tracked, the plane. Because the transponder was turned off, the plane was not sending information intended to help with navigation, ie. orbit determination, or more aptly put flight path determination - same thing, different word. However they were able to process i.e. 'back out' some helpful data by mathematically processing time of transmission and time of receipt of the information packets. If we had three independent accurate range measurements we could locate the plane in three dimensional space, say Lat, Lon and Alt. If we have only two ranges then we can locate its position on a circle in that three dimensional space, hence that first arc that was released with the northern and southern legs. Unfortunately, there was no range data available but the principle is still relevant. It is also the case that position and flight path can be determined from range-rate information -- how fast the plane is approaching or receding from you. It is more complicated to extract the flight path from range-rate data but is quite do-able and done by NORAD and NASA everyday. In the absence of range-rate measurements (which is our case here) it does require good timing data and more than back-of-the-envelope calculations, but a capability that the sat company has. The basic idea is that if you know the time of transmission and the time of receipt of the information packet, then difference those times and divide by the speed of light to get the distance from the plane to the sat. That is a range measurement in principle. Three sets of independent time differences yields three ranges in principle. That requires at least 4 'pings' of information from the plane. However, it is never that simple. The clock on the plane tagging the packets is different from the clock on the satellite recording time of receipt. This yields a timing error which is mostly a constant difference so if you have extra packets (pings) of info that yield extra time differences and thus extra range-rate estimates then you can use that to subtract out the time errors. In practice NORAD and NASA routinely use tens and often hundreds of range or range rate measurements for routine satellite orbit determination because all measurements have errors and they require accurate results. The effect of those errors are averaged out with the large number of measurements. In this case INMARSAT had only a handful of 'pings' to deduce 'location' making it unable to do a pinpoint location thus the sizeable search box. Nevertheless, kudos to them for their contribution.

The toilet papers that top Consumer Reports’ tests Consumer Reports – 16 hours ago See this copyrighted report at: http://shopping.yahoo.com/news/the-toilet-papers-that-top-consumer-reports--tests-001516205.html

The top 12 used vehicles most likely to sell for less than $10,000 By Justin Hyde March 21, 2014 12:44 PM Motoramic The average new car in the United States commanded a price of about $32,000 last month — a jump of nearly 4 percent from a year earlier, according to market trackers at TrueCar. More than ever, a new car or truck has become a luxury purchase; these days, even the cheapest new cars — say a Nissan Versa Note, Chevy Spark or Mitsubishi Mirage — start around $13,000. That's been a boon to the used-car market, where used car prices have risen as well; the median second-hand vehicle now sells for about $16,000. But what if you're someone who needs a vehicle and has $10,000 or less to spend? For those of us not lucky enough to stumble onto a cream-puff $100 SUV, the analysts at Iseecars.com decided to answer that question by analyzing some 30 million used-car listings to determine which models were the most likely to have a window price of $10,000 or less. The results were not what you might expect: Rank Model % of Listings $10,000 or Less Avg Mileage Model Year Range 1 Ford Taurus 44.4% 111,723 1986-2011 2 Ford Expedition 39.9% 142,026 1997-2011 3 Volkswagen Passat 33.5% 110,218 1991-2013 4 Ford Explorer 32.2% 127,894 1991-2013 5 Jeep Liberty 29.8% 110,906 2002-2012 6 Dodge Grand Caravan 28.9% 114,355 1988-2012 7 Jeep Grand Cherokee 27.4% 129,336 1993-2011 8 Chrysler Town and Country 25.9% 112,796 1990-2013 9 Hyundai Elantra 24.9% 94,562 1993-2012 10 Ford Focus 24.5% 97,310 2000-2013 11 Dodge Ram 1500 Pickup 23.4% 132,136 1994-2010 12 Honda Civic 23.2% 122,999 1981-2013 This isn't a list of sheer popularity; the Jeep Liberty has never been a huge seller, and the perennial national best-sellers (Ford F-Series, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord) were shut out. Nor is it solely about size or the price of the vehicle when it sold new; in fact, the list is dominated by larger and near-luxury vehicles, with only the compact Focus, Civic and Elantra breaking the top 12. So what gives? For starters, all of these models are well-worn, with an average of more than 100,000 miles on the odometer. Nine of the 12 come from either Ford or Chrysler, with only three imported vehicles (although many of those Civics were made in the United States.) What I see here isn't so much a trend as a history lesson of a decde ago; most of these models were the favorite cars of rental fleets and other business buyers, who tend to pay bottom-dollar new and sell cheaply. The flip side of being a fleet favorite is that it was traditionally how Detroit kept its factories running before the great recession of 2008-09; building far more vehicles than the market demanded, then moving the metal and worrying about losses later. By the time the sixth-generation Taurus went out of production in 2006, Ford was selling it solely to fleets. That bloat depresses the prices of those models not just when new, but throughout their usable lifetimes, and in the years since the SUV boom, less fuel-efficient models like the old Explorer and older versions of the Ram pickup have only grown less appealing. And some of these models would put a gleam in your mechanic's eye for their questionable durability, especially beyond six-digit mileage. The exception to all of this is the Civic, where the law of averages finally starts to kick in. It's possible with enough searching to find just the right used car under $10,000 — but if you're willing to consider those models that weren't all that popular to begin with, the menu's a whole lot bigger. See original article at: http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/the-top-12-used-cars-most-likely-to-sell-for-less-than--10-000-164425342.html

Happy Birthday Charlie! Wishing you many many more. Thanks for sharing your company with us. I do enjoy it as I know many others do too.

That's just his put-up-or-shut-up expression. I'd be very disinclined to shut up.

Intriguing. I need to see this is slo-mo on a really big screen.

The NSA is just one of the two prongs of this massive privacy violation attack. It gets more attention because it is supposed to be clandestine and does have potential dire political consequences. But then dire commercial consequences can affect personal lives as well as the public cultural structure. Think Google. 1984 may not be too far away <-- me, alarmist. They will come take me away... no doubt by a clandestine Google subsidiary shrouded in social media cloak.

Much better show than I was anticipating. Best first episode I've ever seen. I was all set to pass on the season when I turned to it 20 mins after starting to please other viewers at the house.

Amazon Prime has two comedy pilots out, each not bad, and that means something coming from me, to me anyway. Mozart In The Jungle and The Rebels. I do comedies rarely but I would come back for these two based on the pilots.

The last Goldberg I saw was Molly Goldberg who uttered the memorable line in her show to one of the other characters: "Throw an eye in the soup." asking to please check a simmering pot of soup on the stove. Circa 1960. Not sure why I recall this but I do have vidid recall of her standing in the kitchen in a yellow and flowery kitchen smock.

It's obvious they pose a distraction which is a safety hazard for all, not to mention the health hazard for those low hung bikers with their bike chains.

I assume all of our members read too.

Microsoft seems definitely lacking in hardware development taking several trouncings in their phone and tablet ventures. Their OS while omnipresent is usually seen as the leaden-laden race car on the track along with its browser. Office software is about the only realm where they retrain a solid foothold. This is all based on my limited following of all-things-Microsoft these days, so the picture may be better, but if so it has eluded me. I use the OpenSource Office Suit on both the Mac and PC. I love the price. Also, it does everything I need and is compatible with MS Office as far as I can tell. I think Microsoft should consider building boats and maybe aircraft, being in Redmond WA. I hear there are markets up there.

A shout out to all of our readers who live in these areas.

Wealthiest ZIP code? Not 90210By Jane WellsMarch 13, 2014 10:27 AM CNBC | Yahoo Finance Where do America's wealthiest hang their ridiculously expensive hats? After working hard all day to purchase the universe, where do they relax in a gold-plated Jacuzzi? Not in New York. Or San Francisco. Or Beverly Hills. According to the Higley 1000, many of the country's richest residents live in neighborhoods off the beaten path. Increasingly, some of these areas are more racially diverse. Newport Beach, Calif. In the heart of the O.C., two neighborhoods in particular make the Higley 1000 list: Pelican Hill, ZIP code 92657, with its ocean views, and Cameo Shores, ZIP code 92625, with access to private beaches. The average income here is about $550,000, and in Pelican Hill, nearly 1 in 4 residents is nonwhite. East Lake Shore Drive, Chicago This area of historic luxury apartment buildings has been declared a historic landmark. To live here, in ZIP code 60611, you'll need an average income of nearly $600,000. Ethnically, it’s still overwhelmingly white. African-Americans are the second-largest ethnic group, at a mere 2.5 percent. Near Washington, DC Shocker, several of the wealthiest neighborhoods are in suburbs of the nation's capital. Money + Power = America. There's Swinks Mill Road, an exclusive area of high-end homes in McLean, Va., 22102. Next door in Maryland, two areas of Potomac make the list—Carderock and Potomac Manors (a neighborhood made up of 42 custom-built homes). Wealthiest of all is a neighborhood in Bethesda called Bradley Manor, ZIP code 20817, where incomes average $599,400 and where over 3 percent of the population is now African-American, 5 percent is Latino and over 8 percent is Asian. Coral Gables, Fla. High-end homes dot a 15-mile stretch of Old Cutler Road south of Miami, including ZIP code 33157. Here, Latino residents are close to becoming a majority—47.7 percent, compared with 47.9 percent whites. And the richest of all The wealthiest neighborhood, according to the list, is the appropriately named "Golden Triangle" in Greenwich, Conn., ZIP code 06830. According to Forbes, this is home to some of the nation's richest Americans, people who put the "green" in Greenwich. Average incomes here top $610,000 a year. "The relatively large number of Latinos found around the Burning Tree Country Club in Greenwich, Conn. (12.9 percent) is interesting," Stephen Higley wrote in his report, adding that incomes around the country club are roughly the same across ethnic groups. "Evidently this subset of Latinos have found the keys to the kingdom that is Greenwich." Higley sifted through U.S. Census data and census area subdivisions where the mean income was more than $200,000 to create his ranking of the richest neighborhoods.

Enjoyed. Thanks for sharing.

Yes to all of the above to the society-at-large or large segments anyway. I have seen some incredible stuff in their pornography. The word bizarre too limited to capture the depth of that realm. My daughter has studied intensely the Japanese pop culture which is related to her vocation. She has shown me aspects of that society segment which are also creative, inventive, and also bizarre. Overall it is very much a different and amazing culture to the westerner. Of course the above is painted with a broad brush and focuses strictly on the homeland culture. Your Japanese on Long Island are entirely different.

Not in the least. I'd be happy to entertain this hunk or have him entertain me.

These guys have really long arms. This brings out the high-brow lust in me. To view in a larger window copy and paste the url, removing the space, in a new browser window. http:// vimeo.com/51946189