CompUSA, owned by the Mexican based firm Grupo Carso SA, has 103 stores in 68 markets.
In recent years, CompUSA has struggled against other big-box retailers such as Best Buy and Internet-based companies such as CDW.
CompUSA was founded in 1984 and rose to national prominence under the guidance of Nathan Morton.
As chairman and CEO, Morton led CompUSA from two stores and $60 million in sales as SoftWarehouse to its standing as a multibillion-dollar national retailer in less than five years.
Houston has already begun testing. The photo shows a Houston Police Department drone flying over the city.
There is a mobile phone college class available in Japan.Japanese already use cell phones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, they can take a university course.
Cyber University, the nation's only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids.
Now we are in a warming cycle just as our planet has done many times before. It’s just that this time Al Gore has found a way to make money with ‘carbon credits’ and become famous at the same time by scaring the bejabbers out of us.With the clamor over global warming, it has become a magnet for an army of environmentalists and climatologists who have given Churchill an air of impending doom.
The Arctic ice-cap is shrinking fast, is their message, and as it disappears, so too will the polar bears.
Today, the polar bear population may hover healthily around 25,000 (they live in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Canada).
Yet, we are repeatedly warned, if the planet continues to overheat at the present rate, within four decades our biggest carnivore will be extinct, starved to death as its natural hunting grounds disappear.
"Come up and see them while you still can," is the gist of their depressing refrain.
The photo below is that now-famous photograph of polar bears appearing to be stranded on an Arctic ice-flow, melting faster than ice-cream on a muggy day.
For a while, this picture became a powerful symbol of the perils of global warming - until it was revealed to have been taken three years ago and during the height of summer!
Link
Think you're smarter than a fifth-grader? How about a 5-year-old chimp?
Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.
They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.
Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.
Subcriptions have surpassed the 3.3 billion mark, a staggering achievement for any electronics product.
Growth is so fast, cell phones are already ingrained with otherwise impoverished countries such as China and India, with some tentative steps being made into Africa
National economies have in some cases benefited greatly: much of Finland's financial health is dependent on Nokia, and among South Korea's corporate giants are Samsung and LG.
After spending six months and $282,000 on a new slogan, Scottish tourism officials have come up with ... "Welcome to Scotland".
Stunning indeed!
Seems to us they could have saved a lot of time and money by consulting with a Wal-Mart greeter.
Link
Democrat Hillary Clinton would lose to all major Republican White House candidates, according to a hypothetical election matchup poll Monday, reversing her months of dominance over potential 2008 challengers.
The Zogby International poll was the latest sign that withering attacks on the former first lady were chipping away at her opinion poll leads just 38 days before the Iowa caucuses, the first party nominating contests.
In the new survey, Clinton trailed Senator John McCain 42 percent to 38 percent, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani by 43 percent to 40 percent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by 43 percent to 40 percent.
Everyone knew it would happen. It seemed almost anticlimactic.Bill Callahan (upper picture) was fired as Nebraska's coach Saturday, his four-year stay marked by the most embarrassing losses at a football program once among the mightiest in the nation.
Interim athletic director and Nebraska great Tom Osborne (lower picture) announced the dismissal one day after the Cornhuskers ended the season at 5-7 following a 65-51 loss at Colorado. They squandered an 11-point halftime lead by allowing 34 consecutive points.It will cost the university more than $3.1 million to buy out Callahan's contract, which was to run through the 2011 season.
The contract was signed in September before a series of the most lopsided losses in decades and the firing of athletic director Steve Pederson, who hired Callahan.
The meeting between Callahan and Osborne only lasted for five minutes.
Osborne’s next task will be to find a new head football coach.
LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini and Buffalo coach Turner Gill are the names mentioned most often to fill one of college football's glamour jobs.
Pelini was defensive coordiantor and Gill was quarterbacks coach at Nebraska. They both left when Callahan arrived.
Link
This hourglass shaped clock displays minutes on the top and hours at the bottom, with an attractive second rotating timer displayed on the upper surface. This attractive and unusual looking clock would look great in the kitchen.
Yes, it would work in the kitchen nicely. Guests would think it was an egg timer.
Should make a good conversation piece. You could have guests try to guess what it is, and then have them guess how read the time displayed by the clock.
Link here.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against the maker of CROCS footwear (product sample shown in photo). Specifically, defendants issued materially false and misleading statements and failed to disclose:
(i) that CROCS was experiencing significant distribution problems in Europe as it had moved distribution facilities and was experiencing distribution problems in Japan with a third-party distributor, causing the Company to lose tens of millions of dollars in sales.
(ii) that the Company's sales were being negatively impacted by seasonal conditions as consumers reduced purchases of the Company's products in cold weather climates.
(iii) that the Company's inventory levels were building far beyond historic levels as sales began to slow and the Company's sales began to be impacted by seasonality.
(iv) based on the foregoing, Defendants lacked a reasonable basis for their positive statements about the Company, its earnings and prospects.
Further, back in June Crocs (NASADQ: CROX) insiders were dumping their stocks which fell from $74.75 per share to $47.74 per share during the third quarter of 2007.
Executives and board members of the company are accused of selling a total of $58 million in stock in the third quarter.
Link here and here.
The larger advertisement says hot Dr Pepper is “devilishly different.”
Police are looking for a man they say robbed a Genesee County convenience store near Flint, Michigan wearing a wrestling mask like one seen in the Jack Black comedy "Nacho Libre."Police say a clerk thinks the same man was in the store about 10 minutes before the robbery, wearing different clothes.
In the movie, Black's character wears a red and aqua wrestling suit. He plays a cook in a Mexican orphanage who moonlights as a masked wrestler.
In two years, tourists will likely be traveling to Alcatraz on green energy.
Australia's Solar Sailor has come up with a way to make large solar panels that can also act like sails.Put one or more of the sails on a boat and the boat gets converted into a hybrid. The boat still has a diesel engine, but it mostly gets around on wind or sun power.
A tour boat in Sydney Harbor has an array of eight small solar sails.
The San Francisco boat (pictured) will likely be able to go several knots on wind power alone.
The sail on the San Francisco boat will approximately be 15 meters high. The boat will only have one sail. The Sydney boat has eight shorter sales that can be sailed in unison or individually. Computer studies, however, convinced Dane that the best design involves only one or two sails.
It was as if someone had poured tons of coffee and milk into the ocean, then switched on a giant blender.
One minute a group of teenage surfers were waiting to catch a wave, the next they were swallowed up in a giant bubble bath. The foam was so light that they could puff it out of their hands and watch it float away.
It stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific in a phenomenon not seen at the beach for more than three decades.
Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed.
All are churned up together by powerful currents, which cause the water to form bubbles.
Why does the media ignore the excellent economic news since George W. Bush was elected to the White House?The stock market roared after the Federal Reserve cut its target rate on Wednesday by 25 basis points to 4.5 percent.
The rate cut was a small insurance policy, just in case the subprime credit crunch and the housing downturn take a larger toll on the economy.
But listening to the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday, you'd think it was 1929 all over again.
Kudlow asks, if things are so bad, whey are they so good?
Well, it’s all Bush’s fault. No, really.
If the president would just get a spine and stand up to all the unwarranted accusations against his administration, some of it would stop and the rest would get a fair hearing in the media.
The longer the president sits back and allows baseless charges to go unanswered, the worse it will get.
Makes one shudder to think what will happen to the economy if the anti-business, pro big government, tax and spend liberals gain control of the both the White House and Congress.
The American economy has been doing well because of the Bush administration policies but the liberal media ignores the story.
Link to the well-written Kudlow article here.
She is one of 360 people taking part as a world-wide trial of Zolpidem as a treatment for people in comas. Sixty per cent of patients taking part in the study have started showing signs of life.
The ability to awaken some patients who have been in a persistent vegetative state is a fortunate side effect of the sleep drug Zolpidem.
The sleeping drug Zolpidem is sold as Ambien in this country.
We reported on this fortunate side effect of Zolpidem (Ambien) two different times. Our postings can be found here and here.
The current story from the Telegraph is here.
Once again, Hillary Rodham Clinton leads in a poll. This time, she was top choice when people were asked which major 2008 presidential candidate would make the scariest Halloween costume
Asked about costume choices, 37 percent in an Associated Press-Ipsos survey this month chose New York Sen. Clinton, the front-runner among Democratic presidential contenders.
Fourteen percent selected former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who leads Republicans in national polls.
No other candidate exceeded 6 percent.
Porter Wagoner, known as “The Thin Man from West Plains,” died Sunday at age 80, the same day country music dignitaries gathered at the Hall to induct its three newest members.A hit-maker for more than a quarter-century, he was a Country Music Hall of Fame member and a three-time Grammy winner whose best-loved singles included “A Satisfied Mind,” “Misery Loves Company” and “Green, Green Grass of Home.”
His syndicated television show allowed him to serve as an ambassador for the genre, and it proved invaluable in spreading the fame of Wagoner’s hand-picked “girl singer,” Dolly Parton, with whom he had hit duets including “Just Someone I Used To Know” and “Making Plans.”
An Opry star since 1957, the well-loved Wagoner had been the show's goodwill ambassador for many years and was photographed by fans millions of times as he clowned onstage in the flashy rhinestone suits that became one of his trademarks.
After suffering a near-fatal stomach aneurysm in 2006, he later recorded a new album, Wagonmaster, released earlier this year.
I enjoyed watched the Porter Wagoner TV show in the 1960’s.
When Norma Jean left the TV show in 1967, Wagoner auditioned dozens of "girl singers" to replace her and finally picked a 20-year-old blonde bombshell from the hills of East Tennessee named Dolly Parton.
Parton proved to be Wagoner's finest moment as a talent scout. Beneath Parton's obvious beauty lived a powerful singer-songwriter whose artistic stature grew with the passing years.
Parton also became a perfect duet partner for Wagoner. He got her on the Grand Ole Opry and RCA Records and, of course, featured her on his road shows.
The years of their association (1967-1974) produced a stunning 14 Top 10 duet hits as Parton the solo artist matured and prospered under Wagoner's supervision.
Dolly Parton would have eventually gained fame on her own, but it was Porter Wagoner who advanced her career at a young age.
Link
Senator Barack Obama says he will start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.
There are patterns at the link below for two skulls you can make just in time for Halloween. for this skull at the link below.
Dow Jones changed hands faster than anyone might have imagined. Could The New York Times be next on the takeover list?
Who would want to buy such a financially troubled newspaper?
Liberals will never allow the Times to go under. It still has powerful editorial clout and liberals must keep it going.
The liberal media has helped elect many progressive (extreme left) Democrats. Much of that has been due to the New York Times.
Actually, it would be a shame if the Times folded. After all, one copy of the paper can keep a birdcage lined for a couple of months!
We recently posted about the Times financial problems here.
We also posted what the front pages of the Times probably would have looked like leaking the “One if by land: two if by sea” story. That story is here.
There cannot possibly be a more anti-American, anti-government city newspaper than the Times.
The Forbes article is here.
Harry Reid (shown on left) engineered a letter in the U.S. Senate intended to bash Rush Limbaugh (shown on right). The smear letter was signed on the Senate floor by the Senators listed at the end of this posting.
Up until now, the largest charity auction on eBay was Jay Leno’s Harley Davidson motorcycle that sold for $800,000.00. That was a celebrity Harley-Davidson. This auction was four pieces of paper.
Four pieces of paper that will haunt the left-wing of the U.S. Senate for years to come.
Word is that Harry Reid thanked Limbaugh for the auction on the Senate floor this morning. It will take more than that to wipe the egg off his face.
I thought the old pocket protector of the middle of the twentieth century had finally faded from the scene.
Some are referring to it as a “nerd pack” designed to hold at least five writing instruments. One can never be too prepared.
TBS announcer Chip Carey (grandson of legendary sportscaster Harry Carey) referred to the Rockies as “destiny’s darlings.”
The article at the link below says that the high court judge said:Mr Gore’s film was “broadly accurate” in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”.
“It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film,” he said in his ruling. “It is built around the charismatic presence of the ex-Vice-Presi-dent, Al Gore (pictured), whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming.
“It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film.”
There are eleven Inaccuracies in Gore’s movie as outlined here.
Why does the Gore film seem to be accepted in this country? Largely because, as the judge in the UK said, it is a political film and Al Gore is the darling of the far left.
Link
Jerry Mathers, who played “the Beaver” will turn 60 on his next birthday and Barbara Billingsley who played June Cleaver, the mom who vacuumed the Cleaver living room wearing high heels and pearls, is 91.
Link
Fred Goldman is the father of Ron Goldman who was murdered along with Nicole Brown Simpson. O.J. Simpson was accused of the murders but received a not guilty verdict after the trial.
The watch turned out to be a fake with a value of about $125. It was returned because it had so little value it fell under an exemption in the judgment excluding jewelry worth less than $6,075.
Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama (pictured) will not wear the American flag pin.“I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said in the interview. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism."
As a candidate running for the presidency of the United States, I guess he had to come up with something to explain why he stopped wearing it right after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Link
Twenty-four minutes after he began speaking in a small restaurant the other day, Fred Thompson brought his remarks to a close with a nod of his head and an expression of thanks to Iowans for allowing him to “give my thoughts about some things.”
Then he stood face to face with a silent audience.
“Can I have a round of applause?” Mr. Thompson said, drawing a rustle of clapping and some laughter.
Iowans saw a subdued, laconic candidate who spoke in a soft monotone, threw few elbows and displayed little drive to distinguish himself from his opponents.
Before it’s over, the entire county will wonder why Thompson didn’t just stay home.
Link
…thanks Twila
It has always puzzled me how an ordained Methodist minister, turned politician from a conservative state could be nearly socialistic in his liberal political views. "I got to know her 35 years ago," McGovern said. "She and her boyfriend, Bill Clinton, took over the McGovern organization in Texas. They did a terrific job against impossible odds. I never forgot that. They worked night and day in that state."
A note about the aircraft Mr. McGovern flew during WW II:
This year in spite of Reggie Bush, Deuce McAllister and Drew Brees they are 0-3.
Actually the sarcasm of the saints fans became popular, as fans of other underachieving teams picked it up. Jets fans were seen to wear paper bags that said ‘Ets’ because they thought the team didn’t play well enough to use the fist letter of their name.
A picture of my cave
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