The Sensible Diet

Yonkers’ Unions Collapse in Domino Fashion By Hezi Aris

firefighters would avoid layoffs or demotions under plan

Yonkers, NY — News 12 Westchester yesterday reported that Yonkers Firefighters and City Hall have reached a tentative agreement to restore recently laid off firefighters and reduce the number of previously demoted lieutenants. If approved by the rank and file, the plan calls for the firefighters and fire officers to work one shift without pay by June 30, 2009, the end of the fiscal year. This scenario, is one of the continuing and unending capitulations by the various union leadership and its members that have retreated from their pronouncements that they would respectively not re-open their contracts in private or in public to meet the$16 million mid-year budget deficit divulged by Mayor Phil Amicone in December 2008; and certainly not before the mayor would first consider cutbacks within his staff.

Obama set for presidential lunch

The stalemate brought most members of the Yonkers City Council to come to session in an extraordinary meeting. Empathizing with those who were slated to lose their employment, and concerned that the $16 million deficit was falling exclusively upon the shoulders of city workers, with no reduction in staffing from the second floor, the Yonkers City Council, at the initiation proposed by Minority Leader Liam McLaughlin, announced by Majority Leader Sandy Annabi, advised that they had cut $400,000 from their budget in order to save jobs slated to be cut. The $400,000 savings were offered to Mayor Amicone with no strings attached. The Yonkers City Council effort was meant to show the mayor, by example, that prior to cutting the employment of city workers, Mayor Amicone should consider making some cutbacks from his bloated staff and patronage mill. 

Mayor Amicone did take one staff member from the second floor and moved him to the Yonkers Parking Authority. The $400,000 the Yonkers City Council offered was exclusively used by Mayor Amicone to tempt the Teamsters Union to break ranks with the other unions; they did. With the $400,000carrot, and the promise that the unrepresented middle management staff, disgruntled by what many saw as inequity in recently gained pay raises, would be cajoled to join the ranks and file of the Teamsters. The Teamsters were the first to capitulate; SEIU followed suit. The Firefighters seem next in line. Will the police be next?

Not to be outmaneuvered in garnering credit, Yonkers City Council President Chuck Lesnick is taking credit for the $400,000 seed money that would be the catalyst to break the back of the union membership. Lesnick’s taking credit shepherding the Yonkers City Council budget cuts for the mayor’s use is an admission that he is a shameless shill for Mayor Amicone. 

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Speculation is mounting that Apple is on the verge of a deal that would remove restrictions on its music.

At present, most music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store can only be played through an iTunes interface or iPod.

According to a report on the technology news website CNET, Apple is poised to sign an agreement with Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner Music.

This deal could end digital rights management (DRM) software that is currently attached to iTunes music.

It is thought Apple could announce the agreement at the Macworld conference being held in San Francisco.

Apple has already been selling DRM-free music from EMI for more than a year.

Any new agreement could also mean Apple revising its current pricing structure. At present Apple has a one-price-fits-all strategy - currently 79p per track - with no subscription fee.

Sciencedaily

The new model would see the firm vary its pricing structure, charging more for new releases and chart listed tracks, and less for older back catalogue music.

If the proposal gets the green light, not only would new music be free of the DRM copy protection, but the contents of the entire catalogue of music in the iTunes store would also have their DRM removed.

It remains to be seen whether music already purchased from iTunes would have its DRM stripped off.

The move could potentially spell the end for DRM limited music, which was never popular with users or Apple themselves.

Mark Mulligan, a director with market analysts Jupiter Research, said the end of DRM - in its current form - was inevitable.

But he added: “Don’t be surprised if Apple doesn’t announce the end of DRM today. These rumours were going strong just before Christmas, so we’ve been here before.”

“That said, this is going to happen, whether it’s today or in a couple of months. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is that the record industry has been trying to level the playing field, by giving away DRM free to everyone else, but even that hasn’t dented Apple’s share,” said Mr Mulligan.

“Ultimately, what we’re going to end up with is a new form of DRM. The more you pay, the less DRM you get bolted onto your music. Premium music will be DRM free, the cheaper it gets, the more shackles are attached,” he added.

A spokesperson from Apple declined to comment on the reports.

In 2007 Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, published an open letter called ‘Thoughts on Music’ in which he called on the three big record companies to ditch DRM.

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Muslims in Srinagar stage anti-Israel protests

muslims in srinagar on saturday demonstrated against israel’’s air raids over gaza. hundreds of people, including women and children, gathered in the heart of srinagar and were led by separatist leader javed mir, an leader associate of hurriyat conference, in a protestation procession. the protest was against israel’’s continuing aggressiveness against palestine. individual people joined the …

Save Us ?

from those who would save us from ourselves! connecticut lawmaker wants to bail out failing newspapers. reuters: new york (reuters) - connecticut lawmaker frank nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his part. but others weigh he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome prototype for government involvement in the u.s. press. nicastro represents connecticut’s 79th …

The champ

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Penn Says - Letterman and the Glasses Trick

Mi

penn discusses the magic and his glasses trick was lacking on letterman. shared by : penn sayson: monday, may 12, 2008views: 2614335

Tags: trick david magic illusion says discusses Monday letterman lacking PEnn Talk show File Late night glasses Funny

Google Crowd-Sources For Ideas

Google nearly sneaked this one by us. Probably for the best. They wouldn’t want word to get out their actually listening to people—the comments would never cease. In mid-December Google launched the Google Product Ideas blog, focusing initially on ideas for Google Mobile. The initial blog post reads:

read more

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Become a cleaner, greener person in 2009

we’re all frugalistas now. with the economy in free diminish, it’s not merely up to date to reduce, reuse and recycle; it’s a matter of survival. for lots of us, 2009 will be a year of hard decisions. here’s individual that’s restful: make it a back-to-basics year. clean pass the clutter in your home and in your head, watch the pennies and focus on what’s important. you’ll unceasingly the year greener, leaner, cleaner, and with a happier demeanor.

Solazyme

the dirty dozen: cleaning jobs we all forget

• thoroughly the phones. this includes your room phone. you can see the scum and fingermarks; what you can’t see are the germs and bacteria from your nose, mouth and ears. real simple cleaning suggests using a wrung-visible disinfecting wipe to clean the keypad, handset and cords. dip a cotton swab in rubbing alcohol, squeeze it dry, and use it to disinfect the buttons.

• do the same thing for hand-held electronics, including tv remotes, practise deceit controllers and mp3 players. if you have a keypad at the garage door, give it the treatment too.

• clean the blades of your ceiling fans.
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(CNN) — It appears that Kevin Bacon was one degree too close to Bernie Madoff.

Kevin Bacon and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, had investments with Bernie Madoff, Bacon’s publicist says.

more photos »

Bacon, the prolific actor, and his wife, fellow screen star Kyra Sedgwick, had investments with Madoff, the financial guru accused of swindling his clients out of $50 billion in a massive Ponzi scheme, Bacon’s publicist told CNN Tuesday.

Publicist Allen Eichhorn did not say how much the couple lost, declining to address reports that the figure was in the millions.

"Let’s not speculate," he said.

Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and a charity run by director Steven Speilberg mark some of the other Hollywood heavyweights allegedly bilked by Madoff, who remains in his Manhattan home on house arrest after posting $10 million bail.

Bacon, whose credits include "Mystic River," "Footloose" and the recent political biopic "Frost/Nixon," has appeared in 64 movies or television programs since 1978, according to the Internet Movie Database.

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It’s a career that spawned the parlor game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," in which players attempt to link any other actor to Bacon based on the massive number of co-stars with whom he has worked.

Sedgwick stars in TNT’s "The Closer," and has screen credits that include "Singles" and "Born on the Fourth of July." TNT is a unit of Time Warner, CNN’s parent company.

Madoff was charged earlier this month with securities fraud in a scandal that has shaken financial communities around the globe.

He is accused of running the $50 billion Ponzi scheme from his investment advisory business — a scam that could result in huge losses to financial firms, charities and individual investors worldwide.

First night providence

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Heather Robinson: Iraqi Parliamentarian to His People: “It’s Not Between Palestinians and Israelis, it’s Between Terrorists and Moderates”

Just spoke over the phone with Iraqi Parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi, head of the Iraqi Nation Party in Baghdad, who advocates normalized relations between the new Iraq and Israel and promotes human rights in the Middle East. He says that, not surprisingly, the airwaves in Iraq are saturated with anti-Israel propaganda as Israel strikes back at Hamas for 3+ years of rocket attacks on Israel’s southern towns. But interestingly, a significant number of Iraqis are not reflexively anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, he says.

As Israel strikes back at Hamas, this champion of Iraqi-Israeli cooperation has been explaining to his fellow Iraqis, “the conflict is not between Palestinians and Israelis, it’s between terrorists and moderates.”

Alusi has made several trips to Israel to promote cooperation between Iraq and the Jewish state on counter-terrorism. In February, 2005, as revenge for Alusi’s decision to break the longstanding taboo in the Arab world against visiting Israel, terrorists murdered his two sons, Ayman, 30, and Jamal, 22, who were helping their father build the Iraqi Nation Party, a political party dedicated to protecting human rights and promoting free markets and cooperation among democracies. But Alusi, an ideological pioneer in the middle east, refused to back down. He got his party, which his fallen sons had helped him establish, onto the ballot and in December, 2005 was elected to the Iraqi Parliament.

Tonight Alusi says that many Iraqis, while they are not necessarily sympathetic to Israel, are not pro-Palestinian either. Many, he says, feel they have been abused by Palestinians. For starters, some of the foreign-born suicide bombers who have tormented the Iraqi people in recent years have been Palestinian, and many ordinary Iraqis know it, and resent it. Also, Iraqis remember that many Palestinians were loyal to Saddam Hussein, who hideously abused Iraqis and whom most of them loathe the memory of (Saddam, remember, sent $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers for targeting Israeli civilians).

Furthermore, Alusi says that when he leaves Baghdad’s Green Zone, as recently as the day before yesterday, “thousands of [Iraqi] people would like to shake hands. They know I was in Israel, and they are very positive.”

Moreover, he maintains that the “realists” in Iraq-those people who are not fanatically religious or anti-democracy (and he maintains these “realists” are in the majority) “want to be normal” and are open to the idea of accepting Israel as “a modern country and a … part of the middle east,” especially if doing so would mean cooperating with Israel to protect Iraq against terrorist forces bankrolled by Iran. “Iraqis are willing to be free, to be normal,” he says. “Pragmatic people are moving in the direction of normality.”

While Alusi notes he is grieved by war and hopes Israel’s operations minimize casualties to Palestinian civilians, he believes Israel must devastate Hamas.

“We understand why this fight started, and if someone starts something, he has to finish,” he says. He also referred to connections between some of the extremist religious political parties in Iraq and Hamas, all of whom he says receive funding from Iran, and all of whom are the enemies of free people who oppose terrorism and fanaticism.

“Who do you think the Islamist parties are in Iraq?” he says. “If Hamas wins, they will also be stronger.”

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Obscure Tax on Con Ed Bill Sends NYC Money Upstate

a minor-noticed fee on con ed bills goes to finance spirit expertise projects throughout experimental york state, but a times analysis of how the money gets distributed set up that a disproportionate amount of nyc dollars gets out of town. the so-called sbc [system benefits charge] typically amounts to about a dollar a month for the average nyc con ed customer. according to the times, local con ed customers paid half of the state’s total sbc charges over the past decade, while about 59% percent of the rebates, loans and other benefits handed out by the new york state energy research and development authority went to fund projects extreme of the metropolitan section.

The 250-employee agency that distributes the fund, which could add up to about $350 million this year, is governed by the Public Service Commission, whose five members are appointed by the governor. The amount of money at their disposal has ballooned, so now some state lawmakers are trying to bring it under legislative control. Democratic Assemblyman Kevin A. Cahill tells the Times, “It shouldn’t be a mini-pork barrel.”

Hope and faith

And city officials say New Yorkers deserve a more appropriate proportion of the money, which is spent on things like an energy-efficient ice rink in West Nyack, or incandescent traffic lights in Syracuse that save more than four million kilowatt-hours a year. Closer to home, millions have been spent to recycle the steam produced by natural gas generators installed in office towers like The New York Times Building. The Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in College Point, Queens also used SBC funds to harness steam power, and the Times has an interesting article about that, as well.

Photo courtesy Deeper Sea

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Kwanzaa: Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)

habari gani? ujima!to come together to build and maintain our communities.barack obama credits much of his success to his maternal grandmother. if our entering president recognizes that he did not achieve his success alone … then there is no excuse for the sleep of us.none of us walks alone. especially in the black community. we sine qua non to fulfil that we stand on the shoulders of others. celebrating the nguza sabo principle, ‘ujima‘, gives us a unplanned to ponder about on those that helped us reach our current platform. we can pay homage to our parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, mentors, colleagues or others that came into our lives. nubians in america should also lift up in praise those african americans that came … some were lost … so that we might be subjected to the freedoms we enjoy today. in other words villagers … let’s be proud of our accomplishments. we earned the right to be proud. howsoever, let’s also remember that our accomplishments may never attired in b be committed to happened without the help of others struggling before us. now, we be obliged pay it forward. we must reach back, down or across to others to help them on their journey.those are my thoughts apropos ujima. please steal a mo to team up with this online kwanzaa hallowing with me. what do you think when the ujima comes to mind?harambee!
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On Logic and Barry

beyond the shadow of a doubt seemingly i’ve gone unconscious and upset someone, quite possibly ticked them off. that’s fine, usually times during a discussion individuals let their passion and opinion trump logic. yesterday i reviewed an article over at the hardball times. an article which seemed to disorient a bunch of feathers and even got ‘voted down’ at ball hype (something i have on one’s own never seen from a tht article). that said, there was a very interesting discussion at ball hype in regards to this column. about 10 people chimed in with responses to the article, only one of whom was truly agreeing with the author (although i recognize that people are more like as not to speak up when they disagree then when they agree).the author of that in harmony decided to chime in himself, disregarding many of the comments made and shutting down only those that he can illogically skew - albeit, these were the typical rejections that are met with this review.the discussion at hand is, why did teams up to significant barry bonds? the author believes there is a dense ethical explanation, although it doesn’t hold much weight when you break it down (something i last wishes as do later).what i am writing about is a not many issues i experience with the authors rejection of logic.first, the littrateur ignores the cases in which baseball has turned its taste to ‘bad behavior’. between the information eat at baseball think factory (i encourage you to flip by them, it is a influential and refined discussion) and at ball hype, there are mentions of a relationship between pacman jones and elijah dukes.while pacman jones is starkly not a sitter citizen, elijah dukes isn’t exceptionally reeking of parental approval - although truth be told, i imagine dukes doesn’t care. not being one to typically descend into the personal lives of the sport i love, a post at ball hype states,”baseball steadfast likes to pick and choose its ethical battles, then…drunk driving is a much greater unlucky than steroid use. and do you in fact believe that anyone would hesitate picking up urbina if he weren’t in reform school?”isn’t that the sad correctness. i mull over back to a story when milton bradley asked a police officer if he knew who bradley was. this invariably led to bradley leaving the indians, but in the midst of baseball’s off season, we brood over bradley is whole of the most sought after free agent outfielders. more so then perfect records of adam dunn, pat burrell, and bobby abreu.or how about when baseball’s sensible guy, albert pujols, was named in jason grimsley’s affidavit? how quickly was that brushed aside by baseball? how innumerable reporters jumped on that story discrediting pujols for his fantastic climb up baseballs ladder?the author then turns this morality release on an axis, providing factually defunct examples. one such example, “basketball refuses to do anything about pot use, because it would decimate the league.”decimate the league? i know we hear some about marijuana issues in the nba, but of the 500+ players in the nba, are there more then 10 arrests a year? i mean, how many nbaers played in the olympics? how many of them have tested opinionated for marijuana? were those not most of the unsurpassed players the nba has?at worst, i’d say marijuana use in the nba is good monitoring, but extremely far from being a undertaking to ‘decimate’ the league. i’d say std’s have a change one’s mind shot at doing that.the next error, “has any baseball team ever tolerated the number of criminals, or even a parsimonious cut of exact same, accumulated by the bengals of recent vintage?”answer, no. bravo! but i would like to farther my fit with a topic to the authors question: has any other football team ev

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