firehose

Young novice monks play football at a temple on Jeju Island, South Korea.

Photograph: Yonhap/EPA

Found at The Guardian

gaysavior:

m’lady

A recently published report outlines the Air Force's future plans for its fleet of drones, including whether they would ever be used to carry out a nuclear strike.

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 ”Revenues derived from college athletics is greater than the aggregate revenues of the NBA and the NHL,” said Marc Edelman, an associate professor at City University of New York who specializes in sports and antitrust law. He also noted that Alabama’s athletic revenues last year, which totaled $143 million, exceeded those of all 30 NHL teams and 25 of the 30 NBA teams.

Texas is the largest athletic department, earning more than $165 million last year in revenue — with $109 million coming from football, according to Education Department data. The university netted $27 million after expenses.

Other major programs such as Florida ($129 million), Ohio State ($123 million), Michigan ($122 million), Southern California ($97 million) and Oregon ($81 million) also are grossing massive dollars.

Those numbers of course are not counting the fundraising value of collegiate athletics.  There is more here, via Michael Makowsky.

Here is our previous post on higher education and athletics.

svxp:

You think this a game, motherfucker?

We've got very little hard information, but it seems a handful of European and Scandinavian individual bloggers have been seeded with photos of these forthcoming IKEA designs. The Swedish furniture giant will soon be releasing their IKEA PS 2014 collection, a new line designed "for a home in constant motion, always ready for new situations and furniture needs."

The pieces are quirky to be sure. For one there's this peculiar narrow bench, intended to be a used as temporary butt-parking station while you take your shoes on and off, and it takes up a minimum of space:

There's this odd pendant lamp (pictured at top and below) that brings to mind an exploding Death Star:

(more...)

[happy2bsad/buy]

Difficult times may have forced Americans to scale back on a few expenses, but dog food doesn’t appear to be one of them. Not the fancy stuff, anyway.

Dog food sales have just about doubled in the US since 2000. Americans spent a record $14 billion feeding its pet canines last year, and that number is expected to climb another 19% to nearly $17 billion by 2018, according to data from Euromonitor. But no dog food is selling quite like fancy dog food.

The market for premium dog food—the most expensive kinds, including pricey organic offerings and never-frozen meals—has grown by nearly 170% over the past 15 years. It now accounts for a bigger chunk of the market than medium- and low-priced varieties combined. Far more, in fact. So much so, that the most expensive chow now accounts for some 57% of the overall dog food market, compared to the 36% share it held back in 1999.

Americans are spending more overall on dog food because they’re buying more dogs. There are now more than 83 million dogs in the US. Some 57% of American households now own a dog, according to a 2013 survey by the American Pet Products Association.

The rise in fancy pet food specifically, however, is another story. On the one hand, it’s a nod to the nationwide trend towards more natural, and often expensive, foods—for evidence, look no further than the tumble of Colgate-Palmolive’s Science Diet brand dog food, which is associated with artificiality. But it’s also, more simply, a marker of a growing tendency to treat pets like proper members of the American family. “It is now considered socially acceptable to treat pets as members of the family and to express that by spending lavishly on them, especially when it comes to food,” David Lummis, senior pet-industry analyst for Packaged Facts, told the New York Times back in 2012.

That’s precisely why new, ultra premium brands, are marked with labels like “human grade,” and made in factories alongside canned food for human consumption. Nearly 80% of US pet owners are as concerned about the quality of their pet’s food as as they are of their own, according to market researcher Mintel. Some have even seen it fit to simply make multi-ingredient gourmet meals for both themselves, and their dogs.

Of course, not everyone can afford the hefty price tag all-natural dog foods tend to carry. In fact, the fancy pet food boom is being driven, almost entirely, by the dog owning elite. Households with incomes of more than $70,000 accounted for more than half of total spending on pet products in 2010, according market research firm Packaged Facts. Households making more than $100,000 a year now account for about a third of the total market.

Where is my mind?

ST. LOUIS—More than a month into his employment at Archmont Insurance, colleagues of account manager Martin Wallace told reporters Tuesday they can now definitively state that the 30-year-old’s constant errors and general carelessness on work ...

Los Angeles police officers tampered with voice recording equipment in dozens of patrol cars in an effort to avoid being monitored while on duty, according to records and interviews.

Original Source

How deep was the no-hire policy? When Google sought to hire an Apple employee based in Paris, Google literally sought permission from Mr. Jobs first. “Google would like to make an offer to Jean-Marie Hullot to run a small engineering center in Paris. Bill, Larry, Sergey and Jean-Marie believe it is important to get your blessing before moving forward with this offer,” a Google vice president wrote to Mr. Jobs. “Google’s relationship with Apple is extremely important to us. If that relationship is any way threatened by this hire, please let me know and we will pass on this opportunity.” Mr. Jobs later objected and Google rescinded the offer to Mr. Hullot’s team. “Steve is opposed to Google hiring these engineers,” the vice president wrote. “He didn’t say why, and I don’t think it is appropriate for me to go back for clarification. I can’t risk our relationship with Apple to make this happen over his objections.”

For years, Southwest Airlines has celebrated its differences with other airlines, starting with the way it treats its people. Founder Herb Kelleher emphasized it as the secret of the company’s success.

Famously, the company has never cut jobs or wages. On the customer side, it resisted bag fees, seated on a first-come first-serve basis, and offered affordable flights, all while remaining consistently profitable.

But the company is now facing major labor conflict for the first time in its history, asking its workers for what The Wall Street Journal calls (paywall) “some of the biggest contract changes” ever seen at Southwest in an attempt to cut costs. Management wants to tighten rules on sick time, freeze (though not cut) compensation for some, and significantly increase the part-time component of the workforce.

Union leaders are not happy. Both The Wall Street Journal (paywall) and The Guardian found employees who miss Herb Kelleher’s extremely personal management style, and the feeling that the company’s success was tied to their own. ”Ever since Herb…left, this has been more of a corporation and less of a family,” Union representative Randy Barnes told The Journal. (paywall) Kelleher stepped down as CEO in 2001 and chairman in 2008. He remained a full time employee through 2013 in a diminished role.

And other changes are coming. CEO Gary Kelly has said bag fees are on the table, and that international service will begin soon. Fares are up by 21% since 2008; larger competitors saw single digit increases during that period.

The pressure to cut costs comes from several sources: The company’s growth away from its budget-airline model; increased competition from other lower end carriers, newer entrants like JetBlue; and the fact that larger airlines have consolidated so massively.

But labor cost is a big part of it, despite good relative financial performance. The company has been dedicated to giving people long careers at the company, and shares profits with employees—average compensation including benefits was nearly $100,000 in 2012. Senior people tend to stick around and make a lot of money, and while other airlines have used bankruptcies and restructuring to invalidate expensive labor contracts, Southwest hasn’t done that.

The result of those policies is that the company pays more for labor as a percentage of costs than its competitors. It pays a higher rate than industry giant, United; low-cost competitor Spirit Airlines; and JetBLue, which is fighting for its base of middle class customers. When it comes to fuel, Southwest’s costs are close to or exceeds its peers.

In the past, the company managed its higher labor costs by having an especially effective workforce, flying short routes, and by only using one type of aircraft. But now the company’s growth means it is competing for longer routes that require more people to work longer shifts. So much of Southwest’s labor force—over 80%—is unionized, and the company has a harder time ramping up to respond to demand because it has comparatively few part time workers to fill gaps or accept flexible schedules.

Fuel costs have also significantly increased, contributing to the changes that have stressed the company’s labor policies: Using fuel more efficiently means purchasing larger planes, competing in bigger markets, and flying longer routes.

Southwest still has a strong brand identity and plenty of consumer goodwill. But it might be losing some of that goodwill from its own workers.

Deseret News

Supreme Court turns deaf ear on New Mexico gay wedding photo case Deseret News A New Mexico couple who declined to photograph a same sex "commitment ceremony" for religious reasons lost its bid for Supreme Court review Monday when the court declined to review the New Mexico Supreme Court ruling against them. National Edition. and more »

Snyder and Capullo's "Batman" remained the #1 comic in March, the only title to top 100K, while "Superior Spider-Man" remained Marvel's best seller.

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The Huskies are actually the NCAA National Champs.

Yesterday, the UConn Huskies won the NCAA Tournament. NCAA stands for "National Collegiate Athletic Association." A Fox anchor said the Huskies are the "NAACP national champs." NAACP stands for "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People." These are not the same things.

h/t Awful Announcing

A fried chicken restaurant is a fast food restaurant, often a chain, that serves (mainly) fried chicken—usually chunks of chicken, battered or breaded and deep-fried—as opposed to other ways of cooking chicken such as broiling or roasting.

Link

martinlkennedy:

Moebius ‘Futurs Magiques 2’, 1983

Safety first.

The World Cup is the biggest event in soccer and with Brazil hosting it this time around, it means even more to the Selecao. The country is abuzz and they all expect Brazil to capture a record sixth title, but don't expect manager Luis Felipe Scolari to feel the pressure and start acting like a dictator.

Big Phil is so relaxed, he's okay with players having sex in the tournament. Well, some sex.

"If it's normal sex, okay. If this is normal, it is normal, it is not sending oneself in the air too high," said Scolari when asked about whether he'll ban his players from having sex.

And the only reason we need to have this conversation is those damn acrobats.

"Normally, normal sexual intercourses are made in a balanced way, but there are certain forms, certain ways and others who do acrobatics. And that, no."

Dr. Luis Felipe Scolari, sexual safety expert.

And despite his Ph.D in sexual safety, Big Phil still wants to make sure his team is on board with him. He won't set the limits on his own, instead bringing the team into the discussion.

"We will put limits and survey the players."

A scientific survey for a man of science.

There only needs to be one rule: stick the dismount.

Via The Street Journal

Today you can finally get the paperback version of my book on the future of humanity, Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. Plus, I'll be at Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA this Thursday — and in my first-ever Reddit AMA this afternoon!

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Rep. Vance McAllister, R-La., says he’s planning to run for re-election this year despite being caught on videotape kissing a female staffer. McAllister, a married father of five children, told the News Star in Monroe, La., that he does not intend to resign and will run for a full term “unless there is an outcry for me not to serve, and so far there has been an outpouring of support, not for my actions but for me to continue to represent the people.”

submitted by simonpercy [link] [9 comments]

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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