Finally, the real secret of "You’re So Vain"
Blog Guy, I read a Reuters story saying singer Carly Simon is giving fans a chance to have some fun with one of the great mysteries in pop music, namely, who is the narcissistic target of her classic, "You’re So Vain"?
Anyway, I recall you used to hang with Carly and her crowd at Martha’s Vineyard, and I thought you might know the big secret.
I do, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. |
Carly Simon seeking videos for "You're So Vain"
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Carly Simon is giving fans and filmmakers an opportunity to have some fun with one of the biggest mysteries in pop music: Who is the narcissistic target of her 1972 chart-topping tune "You're So Vain"? |
Government was told of Toyota claims in 2004: Insurer
DETROIT/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The largest U.S. auto insurer alerted regulators earlier than first believed about a worrying trend of accidents involving Toyota Motor Corp vehicles, while the Obama administration's top transportation official said on Friday he would not relax pressure on the carmaker.
Both developments came as Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, readied to fly to Washington in an extraordinary appearance to answer questions from lawmakers next Wednesday about the safety crisis that has engulfed the company founded by his grandfather. |
Obama Announces Foreclosure Rescue For 5 States
By Deborah Tedford
Unveiling a plan to rescue homeowners in five states stung by high foreclosure rates, President Obama told a crowd in hard-hit Nevada Friday that he will pump $1.5 billion into state and local housing agencies to help Americans stay in their homes.
The plan addresses Nevada, California, Arizona, Michigan and Florida, where home values have fallen more than 20 percent from peak. Obama said federal funds will be channeled to state housing agencies, which can use them for a variety of purposes, such as modifying loans in cases where homes are worth less than their mortgages; buying up foreclosed homes; and enabling unemployed homeowners to avoid foreclosure.
"What we can do is help homeowners who did everything right stay in their homes," Obama said, addressing 1,800 people in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. "During these difficult economic times, we will work to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes and stabilize the housing market so home values can rise." |
Terror Memos Didn't Violate Legal Ethics, Report Finds
By Ari Shapiro
Bush administration lawyers did not violate legal ethics rules when they wrote memos authorizing harsh interrogations for terrorism detainees, the Justice Department said Friday, releasing the long-awaited results of its investigation into the memos.
The report focuses on three men who worked at Justice under President Bush: John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury. All three worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, crafting the standards for interrogating high-value terrorism detainees.
According to the cover letter accompanying the report, the investigation originally found professional misconduct by Yoo and Bybee. But the career official in charge of overseeing the office of professional responsibility overruled that finding. |
Compensation for Black Farmers
After decades of discrimination, litigation, and negotiating, it looks today like agreement has been reached on compensation to black farmers. This is one of those times that government works that Paul Waldman wisely counsels us to celebrate. So, a few words of praise for the real progress made by President Obama's negotiation of the Pigford agreement.
The root of today's agreement between Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack go back to the the decades after World War II when black American farmers were denied federal loans and generally iced out by government agricultural agencies. The number and stature of black farmers plummeted. In 1999, the Pigford vs. Glickman class action suit settlement set up payment to black farmers. The problem was, some 70,000 of them missed the application window. |
Iraq Vet Helped People Escape IRS Office
(CBS/AP) Robin De Haven was driving his truck to another job for the glass company he works for when he saw something that didn't look right - a small plane, flying extremely low over a heavily congested area of Austin.
The 28-year-old Iraq war veteran recalled Friday that he then saw black smoke billowing from the office building and rushed to the scene. A pilot furious at the Internal Revenue Service had slammed his plane into the building Thursday where about 200 IRS employees worked, killing himself and one other person.
De Haven said when he pulled up to the burning building he saw five people peeking through the broken glass. He hurled his 17-foot ladder off his truck and onto the building, helping to rescue them as thick smoke poured into the air. |
Why I'm Dropping Google
By Kirk McElhearn, Macworld.com
For a company whose unofficial slogan is "Don't Be Evil," Google has been ignoring its so-called core value with alarming frequency as of late. And because of that, I decided to delete my Gmail account, along with all other Google services that I am able to do without. I have also deleted as much personal information as possible from my Google profile.
I still need to use some Google services--I have clients who share a couple of documents via Google Docs, I need to access one private blog on Blogger, and I will continue to use Google search (though I plan on exploring alternatives, such as Bing and Yahoo). But for the most part, I'm dropping Google wherever I can. |
Student says school webcam spied on him at home
By Nicole Bliman, CNN
(CNN) -- Pennsylvania parents are suing their son's school, alleging it watched him through his laptop's webcam while he was at home and unaware he was being observed.
Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley are suing the Lower Merion School District, its board of directors and the superintendent. The parents allege the district unlawfully used its ability to access a webcam remotely on their son's district-issued laptop computer.
The lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. |
Apple blocks screenshots, axes sexual content from App Store (Updated)
By Chris Foresman
Apple is stirring up yet another censorship brouhaha with its latest changes to App Store policy. The company recently began blocking screenshots for apps that are outside the acceptable age range in Parental Controls in iTunes. According to iPhone developer ChiliFresh, it seems that all "overtly sexual" apps might be expunged from the App Store too, which is making some users uneasy about Apple's "power" once again.
Last month, we reported on a glitch in the App Store system that let any user browse apps and their sometimes NSFW screenshots in iTunes, even if Parental Controls indicated that the user was a small child. Shortly after the glitch was reported to Apple as a bug, developers were notified that all screenshots for the App Store had to be free of "objectionable material" and be acceptable for a 4+ rating. This, of course, was a good thing. |
Officials: Cleric Had Role In Christmas Bomb Attempt
by Dina Temple-Raston
An American-born imam has emerged as a key figure in the story of the Christmas Day bombing suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Muslim cleric's name is Anwar al-Awlaki.
Timeline: From Student To Radical
He has admitted to knowing Abdulmutallab, but the relationship is much deeper, intelligence officials say. They suspect he may have directed Abdulmutallab to Yemen for training by al-Qaida operatives before the young Nigerian tried to bring down a Detroit-bound trans-Atlantic airliner on Dec. 25th. |
Inspectors: Iran possibly working on nuke. What's the evidence?
It's the first time the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, has said that Iran may be working on a warhead. The IAEA wants specific information on detonators, missile design, and uranium enrichment. So far, Iran says that allegations about a military nuclear program are 'baseless.' |
When things go boom in the night, Pakistanis blame Blackwater
By Carol Huang Staff writer
Armed Americans are driving around in unmarked cars, getting caught, and mysteriously released. Who are they? Blackwater, running covert ops for the United States in Pakistan.Or at least that's what large numbers of Pakistanis appear to believe.
It sounds like textbook conspiracy theory. But in a country that’s already highly suspicious of the US and the notorious security firm, rumors that germinated in small circles have spread nationwide and taken root among mainstream journalists and intellectuals.
For many Pakistanis, the tales confirm that America at best cannot be trusted. For the US, they create another wall of resistance to convincing Pakistanis the US is an ally, one that desperately needs their help fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda. |
As U.S.-China Tensions Rise, Military Ties Suffer
By Tom Gjelten
China's recent disputes with the United States — over climate change, Iran, cyberattacks, currency values, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama — involve just about every agency of the U.S. administration.
But just one, the Pentagon, has been singled out for punishment.
It's a familiar pattern.
"When relations have been good between the U.S. and China, the military relationship has been the last to come along," notes David Finkelstein, a China expert at the Center for Naval Analyses. "When relations have been bad, it's been the first to be thrown overboard." |
Social networking, govt sites hacked in global attack
(Reuters) - A new type of computer virus is known to have breached almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world, including user accounts of popular social network websites, according Internet security firm NetWitness. |
Glaxo Shares Fall After FDA Finds Asthma Drug Risk (Update2)
By Molly Peterson
GlaxoSmithKline Plc declined in London trading after U.S. regulators warned against long-term use of the company’s best-selling product, the Advair asthma treatment, and called for further study of potential health risks.
Advair and AstraZeneca Plc’s Symbicort combine drugs from a class known as long-acting beta agonists with inhaled corticosteroids. The agonists have been linked to increased risk of worsening asthma symptoms, hospitalizations and deaths, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. Use should stop once symptoms are under control, the agency said. The warning may curb U.S. sales of the medicines and hamper development of a new compound for lung disease Glaxo is working on with Theravance Inc., said Mark Purcell and Brian Bourdot of Barclays Capital. |
Charlie Lord, Mental Ward Photographer And Activist, Dies At Age 90
By Joseph Shapiro
In the aftermath of World War II, photos circulated around the world portraying the brutality of the Nazi concentration camps. Then, in 1946, LIFE magazine ran a story on the brutality and violence found inside America's own borders -- in its state mental hospitals. The photos were taken by Charlie Lord, a young Quaker and conscientious objector who had been assigned by the federal government to work in a state mental hospital in Pennsylvania. Charlie had smuggled in a camera -- carrying it in his pocket -- and took photos of a psychiatric ward crowded with hundreds of men, wandering naked and aimlessly. |
Apollo 11 Moon Rock Returns To Space
By Paul McDougall
A moon rock that was retrieved from the lunar surface by Apollo 11 crewmembers and later carried to the top of Everest by a mountaineering astronaut is back in outer space, thanks to the shuttle Endeavour.
As part of their final duties on their current mission, Endeavour crew placed the rock, along with fragments from Everest, in the International Space Station's new, windowed cupola.
Endeavour commander George Zamka said the rocky samples, once separated by about 240,000 miles, will serve as "a reminder of man's reach and man's grit," according to NASA. |
U.S. 'tweaks' stem cell policy
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. government broadened the definition of a human embryonic stem cell on Friday, helping qualify several corporate and academic experiments for federal funding.
Dr. Lana Skirboll, director of the Office of Science Policy of the National Institutes of Health, called the change technical and said it would be posted in the federal register for comment.
Human embryonic stem cells are the body's master cells, taken from very early stage embryos when they are just a ball of cells. |
For Developing Nation Advocates, Hope and Fear for a New UN Climate Chief
By Stacy Feldman
Yvo de Boer's resignation as UN climate chief has left developing country advocates both hopeful and uneasy over the future of global warming negotiations that have been thrown into disarray by a rich-poor rift.
The world is losing a tireless advocate for a new UN climate treaty, advocacy groups say, but some also argue that fresh leadership could spur a reversal of the deterioration that has characterized talks lately. |
California’s Landmark Greenhouse Gas Law Comes Under Attack
By Leslie Berliant
In 2006, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32, the first state global warming legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy. The law calls for capping greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 and reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Supporters say AB 32 will help slow climate change while creating jobs, improving the health of California residents and creating local energy sources that keep energy money from leaving the state. A recent Union of Concerned Scientists study showed that the cost for small businesses of AB 32, which has not yet been implemented, would be negligible. |
LMFAO Rapper: Mitt Romney "Assaulted" Me
By KATE STANHOPE
Days after reports that Mitt Romney was physically threatened by another passenger on a flight from Vancouver, LMFAO rapper Sky Blu has come forward to say he was the other man involved — and that in fact the former Republican presidential candidate "assaulted" him.
In a video posted on the group's website, the rapper said he reclined seat prior to takeoff and that Romney grabbed his shoulder and yelled at him repeatedly to put his seat up. |