US home price double dip erases post-crisis gains

What me worry?

Amplify’d from www.ft.com

US house prices are in a double dip that has erased all of their bounce since the recession and threatens to derail a stuttering economic recovery.

The S&P/Case-Shiller house price index fell by 4.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2011, breaking through a 2009 low to hit its weakest level since 2002.

Declining house prices may cause households to rein in both consumption and home buying plans, leading to further falls in house prices and overall weakness in the economy.

House prices are now 33 per cent below their peak in 2006 – a sharper fall than the 31 per cent drop recorded during the Great Depression, according to analysts at Capital Economics.

Prajakta Bhide, an analyst at Roubini Global Economics in New York, reiterated a forecast of a year-on-year fall in house prices of about 8 per cent for 2011, but said that “we have to be worried about prices overshooting on the downside”. Read more at www.ft.com

 

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The Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart

Dubbed “The Greenspan Of Google” by Businessweek recently, Matt’s officially the head of Google’s web spam fighting team. Unofficially, he serves as Google number one fire putter outer. For years, he’s debunked claims against Google, or at least tried to communicate the Google view, outside of Google’s regular PR channels.

Amplify’d from searchengineland.com

The Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart

See more at searchengineland.com

 

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Twitter Augmented Reality Business Card

What do you think?



via Mashable

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

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"The Mathematics Generation Gap"

Another aspect of the mental arithmetic gap that is easily overlooked is its widening over time. Calculators became affordable in the mid- to late-1970s. Students in the 1980s were taught by teachers who had learned mathematics without calculators, and could do basic mental arithmetic. Students today might be taught by a teacher who is himself unable to work out 37+16 without help. ...

Amplify’d from economistsview.typepad.com

The mathematics generation gap, by Frances Woolley: Here's my theory: Some students struggle with economics because they do not fully understand the mathematical tools economists use. Profs do not know how their students were taught mathematics, what their students know, what their students don't know - and have no idea how to help their students bridge those gaps.

The arithmetic gap is the most obvious one: profs over a certain age (and some immigrant profs) were drilled in mental math;... students under a certain age haven't been. Some implications of the arithmetic gap are familiar: profs who can't understand why students insist on using calculators; students who can't understand why their profs are so unreasonable. ... Read more at economistsview.typepad.com

 

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Palin a no-show

Palin, who had 13 percent of the support in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll last week, also is leaving everyone wondering whether she will run for the Republican nomination.

Amplify’d from www.reuters.com

Sarah Palin has found a new way to keep her political faithful guessing.

Palin was a no-show for supporters, celebrity-watchers and media waiting hours for her at the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg on Monday, but her tour bus reportedly was spotted at a nearby hotel, making it likely she would appear in public Tuesday. Read more at www.reuters.com

 

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Alzheimer's Quotes

Amplify’d from www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

I often hear people say that a person suffering from Alzheimer's is not the person they knew. I wonder to myself - Who are they then?

I often hear people say that a person suffering from Alzheimer's is not the person they knew. I wonder to myself - Who are they then? --Bob DeMarco _____________________________________________ I am saddened when I hear these words --this is not the person I knew -- because those words objectify the person suffering from Alzheimer's. When you objectify a person you also dehumanize them. Once dehumanized the person becomes a villain. --Bob DeMarco _____________________________________________ There is no substitute for the love of an Alzheimer's caregiver. --Bob DeMarco

Original content the Alzheimer's Reading Room

Kung Fu Panda 2 Movie Clip

Great movie clip

Chinese Dragon




Kung Fu Panda 2

— MOVIECLIPS.com

The Hangover Part 2 I Think It's Happened Again

Great clip.

Pig!




The Hangover Part 2

— MOVIECLIPS.com

Google Music Beta vs Amazon Cloud Player

via scoble

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

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Clinton exonerates Pakistan over Osama Bin Laden

Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said there is no evidence senior people in Pakistan knew that Osama Bin Laden lived so close to Islamabad. Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

 

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Google offers

URL:  https://www.google.com/offers/t

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1 in 5 Young Adults May Have High Blood Pressure

Scary stuff.

Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com

Nearly one in five young U.S. adults may have high blood pressure, researchers said on Wednesday in a study suggesting the problem of hypertension is more widespread than previously thought.

Hypertension is easy to prevent and inexpensive to treat through diet, exercise and drugs, yet it is the second-leading cause of death in the United States. The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences that often conducts studies for the government, last year declared high blood pressure a "neglected disease" that costs the U.S. health system $73 billion a year.

"The findings are significant because they indicate that many young adults are at risk of developing heart disease, but are unaware that they have hypertension," said Quynh Nguyen, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose study appears online in the journal Epidemiology. Read more at www.foxnews.com

 

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Walk to End Alzheimer's™ Television Commercial

URL:  http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2011/05/walk-to-en...

New commercial from the Alzheimer's Association.

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S&P 500 Crash in Our Future?

URL:  http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/05/25/sp-500-crash...

SocGen’s world-class frightener Albert Edwards, who makes Nouriel Roubini look like Norman Vincent Peale, has a new note out today saying he still sees the S&P 500 going to 400 (it’s at 1318 as we speak) and bond yields going to new lows.

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I Felt Like I Was Being Electrocuted

Amplify’d from www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

I'm sitting here reading and I am reminded of the worst day I ever had as an Alzheimer's caregiver. It is difficult for me to describe what I felt during those moments. I felt like I was being electrocuted...

At the time, I was filled with an enormous anxiety. I felt like my body had been thrown into the air and I was cartwheeling out of control through space. I felt the electricity.

I took several deep breaths and let the air out slowly. I was trying to get my feet back on the ground. I suppose I might have been on the edge of depression. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff once I got my feet back on the ground.

I tried to think and I tried to feel. It was difficult to do it. Read more at www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

 

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Pork cooking temperature changed

URL:  http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2011/05/25/pork-c...

Big news.

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Democrat Wins New York Special Election

Medicare a big issue.

Amplify’d from www.voanews.com

A Democrat has won an upset victory in a hotly contested race for a U.S. congressional seat from upstate New York, where proposed cuts to federal health assistance were seen as a pivotal issue.

Democrat Kathy Hochul won the seat Tuesday in New York's 26th Congressional District, where Republican Chris Lee stepped down after a scandal earlier this year.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district. Until recently, the Republican candidate, Jane Corwin, was expected to win easily. Read more at www.voanews.com

 

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John Edwards: US Green-Lights Prosecution for Alleged Campaign Law Violations Tied to Affair Cover-Up

URL:  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/john-edwards-prosecuted-...

The United States Department of Justice has green-lighted the prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards for alleged violations of campaign laws while he tried to cover up an extra-marital affair, ABC News has learned.

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Celebrities and brands take control of their Twitter accounts with Twylah, first look

via Robert Scoble

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

Celebrities and brands take control of their Twitter accounts with Twylah, first look

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BACKCHANNEL BACKLASH

Interesting. Your thoughts and comments?

Amplify’d from bigthink.com

Electronic ‘backchannels’ at conferences are commonplace these days. But are we ready for teachers who try to incorporate backchannels into their classroom instruction? Earlier this month the New York Times profiled the use of classroom backchannels by Iowa teacher Erin Olson and other educators. The article has prompted 144 comments to date. Here are the 5 ‘most recommended’ comments as of this morning: Read more at bigthink.com

 

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The Genetics of Alzheimer's Video

URL:  http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2011/05/genetics-o...

Ultimately, the full list of Alzheimer’s genes emerging from the family-based genetic studies of the Alzheimer’s Genome Project and the population based studies of the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project are getting us closer and closer to someday being able to eradicate Alzheimer’s disease using a strategy of early prediction and early intervention.

-- Dr. Rudolph Tanzi

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"Nearly Half of Americans Are Financially Fragile"

Nearly half of Americans say that they definitely or probably couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days///

Amplify’d from economistsview.typepad.com

"Nearly Half of Americans Are Financially Fragile"

Nearly Half of Americans Are ‘Financially Fragile’, by Phil Izzo: Nearly half of Americans say that they definitely or probably couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days, according to new research, raising concerns about the financial fragility of many households. ...

The survey asked a simple question, “If you were to face a $2,000 unexpected expense in the next month, how would you get the funds you need?” In the U.S., 24.9% of respondents reported being certainly able, 25.1% probably able, 22.2% probably unable and 27.9% certainly unable. The $2,000 figure “reflects the order of magnitude of the cost of an unanticipated major car repair, a large copayment on a medical expense, legal expenses, or a home repair,” the authors write. ...

Financial fragility isn’t limited to low-income groups. ... “The ... surprising finding is that a material fraction of seemingly ‘middle class’ Americans also judge themselves to be financially fragile...”

Lusardi, Schneider and Tufano also looked at the ways in which people coped with an unexpected expense. Most would use multiple methods ranging from dipping into savings, asking for help from family and friends, using loans or credits cards, taking out payday loans or selling possessions. “Taken together with those who would pawn their possessions, sell their home, or take out a payday loan, 25.7% of respondents ... would come up with the funds for an emergency by resorting to what might be seen as extreme measures,” the authors write. “Along with the 27.9% of respondents who report that they could certainly not cope with an emergency, this suggests that approximately 46.5% of all respondents are living very close to the financial edge.” ... Read more at economistsview.typepad.com

 

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CIVETS, BRICs and JUUGs

The lesson here may be that it matters when you latch onto a theory, and that chasing performance is dangerous. Since the end of 2007, the United States — that boring aging country — has done less bad (down 10 percent) than all but four of the countries in the emerging markets groups. In addition to Egypt and Vietnam, the better performers are Brazil, up 6 percent, and South Africa, up 5 percent.

Amplify’d from norris.blogs.nytimes.com

Investors loved BRICs. Will they be equally fond of CIVETS?

In late 2003, Goldman Sachs coined the term BRIC, standing for Brazil, Russia, India and China. They were to be the great new economies and places to invest.

Now I see that HSBC is proudly announcing “the first CIVETS fund.”

CIVETS stands for Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa. The term is variously credited to the Economist and to HSBC. One factor in choosing the countries is that they have young, growing populations, something the developed world lacks.

Maybe it should be called the ITS fund, with a CEV adjunct. Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa will each get a quarter of the money, based on initial plans. Colombia will get 16 percent, Egypt, 7.5 percent and Vietnam just 1.5 percent. (It sort of makes you wonder if Vietnam was added to provide a needed letter.)

The fund managers plan to give themselves maximum discretion. They may, or may not, decide to put up to a quarter of the money in stocks from “non-CIVETS nations which have similarly attractive demographics, such as Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.”

How, you may wonder, have those baskets done? And how have they fared against what I will call the JUUG markets (Japan, United States, United Kingdom and Germany)? Using the CIVETS weights in the news release, and weighting each of the others equally among the four countries, the above chart shows the results for two periods. The first is from the end of 2003, when the BRIC term was spreading, to the end of 2007, the year stock markets peaked. The second is from the end of 2007 through today. In each case, one leading market average was used for each country. The figures are calculated in dollars and come from Bloomberg. In the first period, the CIVETS stocks performed almost as well as the BRICs. Both left the JUUGs in the dust. Since then, however, nobody has done much. CIVETS are up as a group because Colombia has leaped 77 percent and Indonesia 23 percent. But Egypt and Vietnam are down nearly half (Egypt) or almost two-thirds (Vietnam).

The lesson here may be that it matters when you latch onto a theory, and that chasing performance is dangerous. Since the end of 2007, the United States — that boring aging country — has done less bad (down 10 percent) than all but four of the countries in the emerging markets groups. In addition to Egypt and Vietnam, the better performers are Brazil, up 6 percent, and South Africa, up 5 percent.

By the way, CIVETS is not to be confused with civets. According to an article in The Times last year, civets provide coffee beans that are cherished by some connoisseurs:

Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste. Read more at norris.blogs.nytimes.com

 

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Doomsday - Friday song parody

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

Rooster Teeth Shorts: Doomsday - Friday song parody Read more at www.youtube.com

 

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Dotty Stars in the the New Pajamas (Film)

Amplify’d from www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

During 2003 and 2004 Dotty was meaner than "a junkyard bulldog". I decided something had to change. I embarked on a mission that continues to this day -- I decided we would live our life to the fullest; and that, I would change the "ugliness" into a thing of beauty.

See more at www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

 

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NYC Smoking Ban in Parks, Beaches Goes Into Effect

Amplify’d from abcnews.go.com

As of today, all public parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas will be smoke-free, enforced by a $50 fine. Read more at abcnews.go.com

 

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Project Imagination

URL:  http://www.youtube.com/imagination

Take a look. Ron Howard project.

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IBM’s Watson Being Trained For Medical Service

Amplify’d from www.redorbit.com

IBM’s Watson Being Trained For Medical Service

A doctor is now helping IBM's Watson computer system to learn to work as a medical tool.

The computer is best known for defeating the world's best "Jeopardy!" opponents on TV earlier this year.

IBM said Watson has the ability to understand plain language, can digest questions about a person's symptoms and medical history, as well as quickly suggest diagnoses and treatments. Read more at www.redorbit.com

 

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Fiscally I'm A Right-Wing Nutjob, But On Social Issues I'm Fucking Insanely Liberal

URL:  http://www.theonion.com/articles/fiscally-im-a-rightwin...

The world is a complicated place, and in this day and age, you just can't expect a person to fall on the same political side of every issue he is confronted with.

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How Alzheimer's Destroys the Brain -- Video

This is a five star, must see, video that should be shared with anyone that has been touched by Alzheimer's disease........

By Bob DeMarco 
Alzheimer's Reading Room 

I would like to see every single member of theCollective Brain of the Alzheimer's Reading Room share the link to this article with the entire Alzheimer's community. 

The link should be shared by Alzheimer's caregivers, among their family and friends, in support groups, and with the over 150 million U.S. citizens that are touched by Alzheimer's and struggling to understand the disease.

Watch the video at www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

Apple Is Called Poised to Offer ‘Cloud’ Music

URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/technology/21apple.ht...

Apple has entered the final stages of negotiations with the major record labels and music publishers for a service that will allow people to upload and store their music on the Web and listen to it on smartphones, tablets or computers — so-called cloud-based music.

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Transvideo: using video to aid product launch

via Robert Scoble. Good find.

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

See more at www.youtube.com

 

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Paralyzed Man Stands, Moves With Epidural Stimulation

Amplify’d from www.medpagetoday.com

Paralyzed Man Stands, Moves With Epidural Stimulation

Rob Summers was 20 in the summer before his junior year at Oregon State University in the summer of 2006. A pitcher on the school's baseball team, he went out around midnight to get his gym bag out of his car when a hit-and-run driver jumped the curb, striking him and leaving him paralyzed with an injury to the spinal cord from C7-T1

Today Summers can stand for several minutes and move his legs, feet, and toes. He has regained some bladder control and sexual functioning, as well as the ability to regulate his body temperature through mechanisms such as perspiration.

These gains are the result of unprecedented treatment -- begun in December 2009 -- using electrical stimulation of the spinal cord. Read more at www.medpagetoday.com

 

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Competition time! LinkedIn valuation edition

Where will LinkedIn be trading a week from now once some of the dust has settled?

Amplify’d from ftalphaville.ft.com

Competition time! LinkedIn valuation edition

This is an FT Alphaville reader appeal.

Trading between $83 and $92.99 at pixel time…

Up to 107 per cent above the IPO price…

569 times 2010 earnings:*

In a matter of minutes since the New York open, post-IPO shares in LinkedIn have pretty much trashed all the millions of pixels spilt on its “true” valuation during the last few days.

So here’s our question: Where will LinkedIn be trading a week from now once some of the dust has settled? Read more at ftalphaville.ft.com

 

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Sound Rain Screencast

SoundRain makes it easy to sell all the songs you have on SoundCloud

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

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Six-Word Momoirs: The Contest Winners!

Amplify’d from well.blogs.nytimes.com

Summing up motherhood in just six words is no easy task. But more than 7,000 Well readers did just that, entering their short memoirs as part of our Six-Word Momoirs contest.

The challenge was to explain your mother, someone else’s mother or motherhood in general in just six words. Six contest winners will be named at the end of this post, while several of the best entries will be featured during Smith Magazine’s Six-Word Memoir Story Slam, “I Am Turning into My Mother,” to be held tomorrow, May 18, at the 92nd Street Y Tribeca Main Stage in New York. (Check the Web site for tickets and details.) Read more at well.blogs.nytimes.com

 

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Pull yourself together and DO SOMETHING Joleen Firek !

The movie trailer didn't come in. If you want to see this you will need to follow the link. Thanks. Bob

Amplify’d from www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

Many Alzheimer's caregivers wonder when they are going to see real people in an Alzheimer's special on television. Real people, not stars. Real Alzheimer's caregivers that live in the front row. Real Alzheimer's patients that are in a later stage of the disease...

The famous words of my best friend, Jacquelyn, 4 long years ago. Sobbing on her couch, reeling from my dad’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, overly consumed by the disease destroying our family, she literally SCREAMED me into action! It took a few days, but once her words sank in, I started rolling a (borrowed) camera. I had no idea what exactly would come of it all, but since I “speak” video, I started shooting what was happening to my family and what was going on inside of me. Fast forward 4 years and 300+ hours of footage later… --Joleen Firek, Frankly Speaking: Alzheimer's

Here ya go. Real people living in the front row.

Movie trailer for a proposed documentary on the life of a girl that lived Alzheimer's from the front row. Read more at www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

 

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One Runner’s Suffering Is Another’s Inspiration

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Do we run because we like the pain? Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Glass House Headed for Auction Block

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

House of the Day: Maryland’s Glass House: Built by a local real estate developer as a vacation home, this 9,700-square-foot home in Pasadena, Md., is headed to the auction block next month. The waterfront home features floor-to-ceiling windows and sits on 3½ acres. Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com

 

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Eating While Working Can Make You Fat

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

Many employees these days eat lunch at their desks, because it seems like a harmless way to cram more work into the day.

They might not be so casual about it if they knew the habit was helping them pack on extra pounds. A study in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Nutrition found people who ate while distracted ate more, and felt less full after lunch, than those who focused on eating.

Researchers served a nine-item lunch to 44 participants who were split into two groups. One group was asked to eat lunch while playing a computer game of solitaire. The second group ate lunch without distractions. Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com

 

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Communicating in Alzheimer's World

URL:  http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2009/12/communicat...

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Test Your Memory for Alzheimer's Dementia in 15 Minutes (SAGE)

URL:  http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2010/04/test-your-...

The research from this Alzheimer's memory test, Self-Administered Geocognitive Examination, shows that four out of five people (80 percent) with memory (cognitive) issues will be detected by this test. Ninety-five percent (95) of people who are normal thinking (memory) will have normal SAGE scores. .....

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Medicare to Go Broke in 2024

Amplify’d from www.cbsnews.com

The government said Friday that a bad economy has shortened the life of the trust funds that support Social Security and Medicare, the nation's two biggest benefit programs.

The annual checkup said that the Medicare hospital insurance fund will now be exhausted in 2024, five years earlier than last year's estimate. The new report says that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2036, one year earlier than before.

The trustees for the trust funds said in their annual report that the worsening financial picture emphasized the need for Congress to make changes to avoid disruptive consequences in the future for millions of people who depend on health and pension benefits.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who chairs the trustee's panel, said the new report underscored "the need to act sooner rather than later to make reforms to our entitlement programs. ... We should not wait for the trust funds to be exhausted to make the reforms necessary to protect our current and future retirees."

The trustees said that they moved the target date for the Medicare hospital trust fund to be exhausted from 2029 to 2024 because of a weaker economy, which means fewer people working and paying Medicare premiums into the fund, and continued increases in health care costs.

Last year's report had extended the life of the Medicare fund by 12 years to reflect the savings that were included in the massive overhaul of health care that President Barack Obama got Congress to pass in 2010. Without the changes in health care law, the administration said the Medicare trust fund would be exhausted in 2016.

The savings in the health care legislation are still included in the trustees' projections but have been updated to reflect data on the economy and health care costs over the past year.

Many experts believe that the savings included in Obama's health care program will never be achieved because they include deep cuts in payments to doctors that Congress has routinely waived and other cost savings that will be difficult to realize.

The Social Security trust fund was projected to be exhausted in 2036, compared with last year's projection that it would be depleted in 2027. Read more at www.cbsnews.com

 

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Drug Resistant Bed Bugs Carry MRSA

Researchers are reporting an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph "superbug."

Amplify’d from www.wired.com

Being Scary Disease Girl, I seem to have earned a reputation for never wincing in the face of weird disease threats.

But this, I admit, makes me go squick:

Researchers in Vancouver, BC have found bedbugs there carrying drug-resistant staph, MRSA, and vancomycin-resistant enterococci, VRE.

(Deep breath.)

(Another deep breath.)

OK, details:

In the June issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Christopher F. Lowe of the University of Toronto and Marc G. Romney of the University of British Columbia relay an observation they have made about bedbugs being carried by three patients who live on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside — a neighborhood they describe as “an impoverished community in Vancouver with high rates of homelessness, poverty, HIV/AIDS, and injection drug use.”

Here’s the link.)

The US CDC believes that crowding, poor hygiene and skin disruption increase the likelihood of MRSA infection; crowding and poor hygiene are common in homelessness and shelter living, and bedbugs by definition disrupt the skin’s barrier by their bites. Meanwhile, in the ill and hospitalized, VRE frequently causes infections in disrupted skin, such as a surgical incision or a diabetic ulcer.

…These insects may act as a hidden environmental reservoir for MRSA and may promote the spread of MRSA in impoverished and overcrowded communities. Bedbugs carrying MRSA and/or VRE may have the potential to act as vectors for transmission.

And therefore, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go check my hotel mattress. Just in case.

Maryn McKenna is a journalist for national magazines and the author of SUPERBUG and BEATING BACK THE DEVIL. She finds emerging diseases strangely exciting. Follow @marynmck on Twitter. Read more at www.wired.com

 

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