the cman blog

5February2010

Friday Music: Manooghi Hi

Posted by Connor under: Music; Video.

Indie meets Hindi. H/T my Director of Market Intelligence.

5February2010

Google to Drop Support for Internet Explorer 6

Posted by Connor under: Internet; Technology.

Last week Google announced that it will no longer support older browsers. Specifically, this means that Internet Explorer Version 6 will no longer be supported by Gmail, Google Docs and the rest of the Google suite.

This isn’t really that much of a shock. Microsoft itself has been pushing its users to dump IE6 for more than a year. Not just because the shiny new IE7 and then IE8 came out. But because IE6 is a security nightmare and they don’t want to expend the resources any longer. Also, newer technologies like advanced JavaScript and the new HTML5 extensions will not be supported by IE6 ever.

Google is pushing its Chrome browser. I use it every day and like some of the features, but for my money, Firefox, even with its large memory footprint is still the best browser out there. Explorer is a distant third.

If you sill use IE6, notable by its plain blue logo, then you should, at a minimum upgrade to IE8. But really, you should just get Firefox or Chrome
.

The plain vanilla Internet Exlorer 6 logo.

The logo for Internet Explorer 8

5February2010

Sick of Winter

Posted by Connor under: Uncategorized.

I hate you, you little rodent bastard.

4February2010

Local Business News

Posted by Connor under: Clinton; Uncategorized.

Lyondell Basell

India-based Reliance is continuing to try to purchase the bankrupt chemical giant. The offer, initally tendered in November, stands at $13.5b.

The Dutch-based Lyondell is continuing to work through its Chapter 11 reorganization, and recently filed a motion for settling claims of creditors and setting up a litigation trust fund.

Bridgepoint Education-Ashford University

Of course the big news for Bridgepoint and Ashford recently was the purchase of the property of the Clinton Country Club for an undisclosed price $2.5 million.

Ashford University is adding to its educational offerings, most recently adding specializations to its MBA program. Ashford graduated a record number of students at it winter ceremony and attracted a prominent commencement speaker in National Public Radio’s senior correspondent, Susan Stamberg.

RockTenn

RockTenn posted very good earnings growth in its Q1 2010 filing.

The Norcross, Ga.-based packaging and folding cartons maker (NYSE: RKT) had net income of $56.3 million and earnings of $1.43 a share, compared with net income of $30.6 million and earnings of 79 cents a share in the first quarter of 2009.

The company has also recently announced price increases in its corrugated box and sheet as well as its uncoated recycled paper products.

ADM

ADM is beginning initial startup of the bioplastics plant in Clinton.
The cogeneration facility is up and running.

The company also donated 700 tons of rice to Haiti relief.

4February2010

You Wanna See A Real Local Government Financial Crisis

Posted by Connor under: Economics.

Head to Colorado Springs.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

4February2010

Local Stock Exchanges for Sustainability

Posted by Connor under: Economics.

Via Small Mart a very interesting idea: local stock exchanges as a way to stimulate local and regional economies. From an idea featured in the San Francisco Federal Reserve’s Community Development Investment Review.

Since the global financial system unraveled in 2008, U.S. policymakers have struggled heroically to improve the performance and oversight of global banks and investment firms. But these actions have been largely unresponsive to the growing number of Americans who would like to remove their hard-earned retirement savings from these high financial fliers altogether and invest their nest eggs in their community. Might it be time for policymakers to consider the potential stimulus payoffs from nurturing micro-equity investments?

Growing evidence suggests that every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two to four times more economic benefit—measured in income, wealth, jobs, and tax revenue—than a dollar spent at a globally owned business. That is because locally owned businesses spend much more of their money locally and thereby pump up the so-called economic multiplier. Other studies suggest that local businesses are critical to tourism, walkable communities, entrepreneurship, social equality, civil society, charitable giving, revitalized downtowns, and even political participation.

We have two fundamentally contradictory legal regimes operating today. One, called gambling, allows every adult, irrespective of income, to risk everything for a probable loss. Another, called small-stock investing, prohibits 98 percent of us from investing in the local businesses that are essential for the well-being of community, unless businesses pay prohibitively expensive lawyers’ fees to prepare the unreadable disclosure statements.

Something is deeply wrong here. Outdated federal securities laws have left Main Street dangerously dependent on Wall Street, and overhauling them may well be a key to economic revitalization.

30January2010

What Do Teachers Make

Posted by Connor under: Video.

Apropos of nothing save the current sturm und drang regarding school budgets and school administration. Remember what its all about: teachers and students.

H/T Sully.

29January2010

SotU Reaction

Posted by Connor under: Uncategorized.

For whatever reason, my 250 words banged out in the 15 minutes between the end of the speech and my deadline did not make the cut for the print edition of the Des Moines Register, so here it is.

This was a strong speech. There were some real clunkers of course, the spending freeze most notably. No one, including Candidate Obama, believes that is a serious debt reducing measure. But overall, especially at the beginning and end it was very powerful, classic Obama. It will leave little doubt among anyone inclined to give the President any benefit of the doubt that he is sincere and dedicated to accomplishing the goals he sets out. But the larger question is, as one pundit put it, “Do you think speeches can change things?”

The answer is, they can help. They can give a boost of impetus. But that has to be followed up with some strong force if one is going to move the huge mass of cynicism and fecklessness that is the US Congress. So the question that I and many who want the President to succeed will be asking ourselves is: what is he willing to do to provide that necessary force? To date, Obama has been what many of us knew him to be all along: a smart, moderate politician. But now, with the forces of cynicism and self-interest so entrenched, we need him to be the idealistic master of political jujitsu that we saw in the campaign.

I fear that we are at a tipping point in our public lives in this country. That public trust in the ability of our elected officials has eroded to the point where the legitimacy of the government is increasingly called into question. If there is to be meaningful change, then the time is now. Comes the hour, comes the man. I just hope President Obama, can be the man Americans want him to be.

Aporopos of that last sentiment. Here is Andrew Sullivan yesterday:

“[W]hen the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American Constitution is such as to grow every day more and more encroaching. … The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and Johnadams scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society,” – John Adams, as cited by Jim Sleeper.

My foreboding sense is that America may have already passed the point of no return in terms of civil, constitutional governance.

I’ve been working over recently the idea that our institutions inability to deal with our problems is the meta-problem of our day. (See here and here.) When people’s faith wanes so much in their government to govern responsibly and responsively to the nation’s needs then the entire legitimacy of the government begins to be called into question. And that gets us into some very dangerous territory.

26January2010

Nothing to See Here.

Posted by Connor under: Andersons; Des Moines Register Blog Posts.

I’ve got a busy week scheduled at work. Most of my writing efforts will be focused this week on live-chatting/blogging the State of the Union Address Wednesday over at the Des Moines Register. I also have a 9:30 p.m. deadline for analysis of the speech to be published in Thursday’s paper.

So, this is your advanced notice that there probably won’t be much to see here this week. In the meantime, enjoy a Cute Overload Moment courtesy of Dexter, the love-sponge.

Where have all the little dogs gone?

22January2010

Friday Music: Mexican Chili Taco Fiesta

Posted by Connor under: Uncategorized.

By request of a buddy. Mexican surf rock band. They aren’t a joke either,

A supergroup comprised of Danny “Daddy-O Grande” Amis of Los Straitjackets, Esteban “Crunchy” Lopez and “Señor” Caleb Ramirez of Los Acapulcos, and Enrique “Truko” Casasola of Los Twin Tones, MCTF is all that you could want out of a Mexicano surf rock quartet. On their self titled debut, the group charges out of the gate with crunchy guitars and running bass lines with the track “Tamales Oaxaquenos.”

Dig it: Mexican Chili Taco Fiesta, "Tamales Oaxaquenos "

Sorry no video this week.