Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/283475450?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Saturday, February 9, 2013
Friday, February 8, 2013
Net goes nuts over dad's $200 'Facebook Deactivation' offer to daughter
Paul Baier
By Helen A.S. Popkin
The ?Facebook Deactivation Agreement? wasn?t the first pact Paul Baier made with 14-year-old daughter. Past accords involved pushups (if he did five, she?d do two) and candy (both would go 3 to 4 days without eating any). But when Baier conceded to pay his only child $200 if she stayed off Facebook until the end of the school year ? and posted a photo of the official contract they?d both signed on his blog ? it became?his first parenting decision to go viral on the Internet.
?Shocked? is how Baier says he feels about all the attention from both online commenters and news outlets talking about the contract he tells TODAY was his daughter?s idea.
As for his daughter, ?she is absolutely baffled why the adults are so interested in the story,? Baier told TODAY. What?s more, when local reporters wanted to call upon the Boston family, Baier says he was surprised when the teen told him she had no interest in being on TV.
?She just didn?t understand what the hubbub was about, and adults can?t understand that there?s a teenager in America who can live without Facebook,? says Baier. ?Once again, teens and parents are learning what different assumptions they have about each other.?
Plenty of assumptions are being made about this contract, with more than a few commenters on both Baier?s personal blog and on news stories accusing the father of either forcing the high school freshman into the agreement, or bribing her into responsible behavior. ?Why not try something called ?parenting??? reads one of the angrier comments on Baier?s blog, Practical Sustainability, which is usually dedicated to topics he deals with as the vice president of an energy firm in Salem, Mass. ?It's more difficult than bribery but will?[be] more beneficial to your daughter in the long run. Otherwise, she sounds like a spoiled brat and that's your fault.?
Such accusations have little in common with how this whole deal came about, Baier says. ?It?s simpler than that,? he says. His daughter was frustrated she couldn?t find babysitting jobs and couldn?t earn much through chores, so she made a proposal to her pop. If she stayed off Facebook until the end of the school year, would he pay her $200? ?I told her to go away, ?there?s no way you can live without out Facebook.??
Baier's daughter is an honor student. She gets her work done and Facebook really isn?t a problem for her, he says. Nonetheless, ?it?s definitely distracting. Everybody at her school is?connected?to everyone,? he adds. ?Sometimes they talk about school work, but 90 percent of the time, it?s meaningless or distracting.?
After he refused her initial offer, she came back two days later, and asked again. So Baier quizzed her. ?Aren't?you going to be out of the loop?? he asked. ?Dad, I see my friends every day at school,??she countered.
So it was agreed. Baier told her, ?if we do this, we?re going to have a contract.? Which they did, complete with safeguards. She handed over her password so that he could change it, making it all the harder for his daughter to breach their business arrangement.
?Some blogs and stories say I?m forcing her off it,? says Baier. ?I see it as see it as encouraging someone to use Facebook in moderation. And she goes five months without Facebook, that?s a real value to me and I?m happy to support that.?
TODAY Moms contributer Amy McCready, who is the Founder of?Positive Parenting Solutions?and author of ?If I Have to Tell You One More Time,? agrees. ?I am not in favor of bribing kids to get good behavior,? she told TODAY. ?But I don?t think this is about that at all.?
?I think this a great example of a daughter?s entrepreneurship, ingenuity and a great lessons learned in business,? McCready says. ?She had trouble finding employment. From my perspective, she came up with an idea her customer found appealing and she presented a proposal. I?m sure there was some negotiation back and forth and he accepted it.?
McCready, who is a staunch proponent of monitoring kids'?activities?on social networks, adds that if a child does have problems with distraction and the Internet, it's important to put guidelines and rules in place, and not resort to bribery.?
With this particular father and daughter however, it's not about bribery, says McCready. ?Not only was it a great way to bring a father and daughter closer together,? she says, the teen ?learned about contracts, how you get payment up front and payment at the end of the contract for performance. It?s very much a win-win for both of them, and maybe even a lesson she can take with her to college.?
As for Dad, he sees the sudden attention as a good thing. ?Hopefully it inspires parents and kids,? he told TODAY. ?A hiatus from Facebook is healthy.??
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on?Twitter ?and/or Facebook.
?More Digital Life:
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Obama salutes Panetta as he prepares to retire
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) ? President Barack Obama says retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta helped strengthen the military during his relatively brief tenure.
At a farewell ceremony Friday, Obama noted that Panetta oversaw the repeal of a ban on gays serving openly in the military and opened combat roles to women.
Panetta was setd to retire as CIA director in the spring of 2011 when Obama asked him to run the Pentagon.
The 74-year-old Panetta is leaving Washington after more than four decades, including as a congressman, federal budget director, White House chief of staff and CIA director who oversaw the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.
Panetta has said he will remain on the job until the Senate confirms a successor.
Obama nominated former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican, to succeed Panetta.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-salutes-panetta-prepares-retire-215048031--politics.html
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NYC, New England brace for 1 to 3 feet of snow
A group of men help push a sports car up a snow-covered street in the Old Port section of Portland, Mane, during a snow storm, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. The storm is expected to dump up to two feet of snow on the region. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A group of men help push a sports car up a snow-covered street in the Old Port section of Portland, Mane, during a snow storm, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. The storm is expected to dump up to two feet of snow on the region. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A runner runs in the snow in the park along Commonwealth Ave in Boston, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. Snow began falling across the Northeast on Friday, ushering in what was predicted to be a huge, possibly historic blizzard and sending residents scurrying to stock up on food and gas up their cars. The storm could dump 1 to 3 feet of snow from New York City to Boston and beyond. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Mary Ann Bova walks along a slippery snow covered sidewalk during a winter storm in Buffalo, N.Y., Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. In some upstate areas, snow fell early Friday morning and was expected to increase throughout the day, with the heaviest accumulations expected in eastern New York on Friday night.(AP Photo/David Duprey)
Riders wait in a bus stop where color-tinted windows collect snow during a storm, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, in Portland, Maine. The National Weather Service says a blizzard warning is issued Friday evening for the southern coast. The forecast calls for up to 2 feet of snow and winds gusting to 50 mph.(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Morning rush hour traffic makes it's way over the Williamsburg bridge into Manhattan, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 in New York. A storm poised to dump up to 3-feet of snow from New York City to Boston and beyond beginning Friday could be one for the record books, forecasters warned, as residents scurried to stock up on food and water and road crews readied salt and sand. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
BOSTON (AP) ? A storm that forecasters warned could be a blizzard for the history books began clobbering the New York-to-Boston corridor Friday, grounding flights, closing workplaces and sending people rushing to get home ahead of a possible 1 to 3 feet of snow.
From New Jersey to Maine, shoppers crowded into supermarkets and hardware stores to buy food, snow shovels, flashlights as well as generators ? something that became a precious commodity after Superstorm Sandy in October. Others gassed up their cars, another lesson learned all too well after Sandy. Across much of New England, schools closed well ahead of the first snowflakes.
"This is a storm of major proportions. Stay off the roads. Stay home," said Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.
The snowstorm mercifully arrived at the start of a weekend, which means fewer cars on the road and extra time for sanitation crews to clear the mess before commuters in the New York-to-Boston corridor of roughly 25 million people have to go back to work. But it could also mean a weekend cooped up indoors.
Rainy Neves, a mother of two in Cambridge, Mass., did some last-minute shopping at a grocery store, filing her cart to the brim.
"Honestly, a lot of junk ? a lot of quick things you can make just in case lights go out, a lot of snacks to keep the kids busy while they'd be inside during the storm, things to sip with my friends, things for movies," she said. "Just a whole bunch of things to keep us entertained."
In heavily Catholic Boston, the Archdiocese urged parishioners to be prudent about attending Sunday Mass and reminded them that, under church law, the obligation "does not apply when there is grave difficulty in fulfilling this obligation."
Halfway through what had been a mild winter across the Northeast, blizzard warnings were posted from parts of New Jersey to Maine. The National Weather Service said Boston could get close to 3 feet of snow by Saturday evening, while most of Rhode Island could receive more than 2 feet. Connecticut was bracing for 2 feet, and New York City was expecting as much as 14 inches.
By Friday evening, the New York-to-Boston corridor was getting swirling snow and freezing rain. Early snowfall was blamed for a 19-car pileup in Cumberland, Maine, that caused minor injuries.
The snow was expected to be at its heaviest Friday night and into Saturday. Forecasters said wind gusts up to 75 mph could cause widespread power outages and whip the snow into fearsome drifts. Flooding was expected along coastal areas still recovering from Superstorm Sandy.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground said the storm was actually a collision of two storms, and may end up among the Boston area's Top 5 most intense ever.
"When you add two respectable storms together, you're going to get a knockout punch with this one," he said.
It could break Boston's all-time snowstorm record of 27.6 inches, set in 2003, forecasters said. The storm also comes almost 35 years to the day after the Blizzard of '78, a ferocious storm that dropped 27 inches of snow, packed hurricane-force winds and claimed dozens of lives.
Masters said the region could get a break from warmer air trailing behind that is expected to push temperature up to the 40s by Monday. "It's going to be not that difficult to dig out, compared to maybe some other nor'easters in the past, where it stayed cold after the storm went through," he said.
Drivers were urged to stay off the streets lest their cars get stuck, preventing snowplows and emergency vehicles from getting through. New York City ran extra commuter trains in the afternoon to help people get home before the brunt of the storm hit.
Amtrak stopped running trains in cities around the Northeast on Friday afternoon. Airlines canceled more than 4,200 flights through Saturday, and New York City's three major airports and Boston's Logan Airport began shutting down in the afternoon.
Interstate 95 in Rhode Island was closed to all but essential traffic. In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick enacted a statewide driving ban for the first time since the Blizzard of '78. Hours before the ban went into effect at 4 p.m., long lines formed at gas stations, some of which were almost out of fuel.
James Stone said he was saving the remaining regular gas at his station in Abington, Mass., south of Boston, for snowplow drivers.
"It hasn't snowed like this in two years," Stone said. "Most people are caught way off-guard."
In New York, Fashion Week ? a series of designer showings, with some activities held under tents ? went on mostly as scheduled, though organizers put on additional crews to deal with the snow and ice, turned up the heat and fortified the tents. The snow did require some wardrobe changes. Designer Michael Kors was forced to arrive at the Project Runway show on Friday in Uggs.
For Joe DeMartino of Fairfield, Conn., being overprepared was impossible: His wife was expecting their first baby Sunday. He stocked up on gas and food, got firewood ready and was installing a baby seat in the car. The couple also packed for the hospital.
"They say that things should clear up by Sunday. We're hoping that they're right," he said.
Said his wife, Michelle: "It adds an element of excitement."
The snow was too much of a good thing in some places. In New Hampshire, the University of Connecticut's Skiing Carnival was canceled because of the snowstorm. In Maine, the National Toboggan Championships in Camden were postponed from Saturday to Sunday, and the Camp Sunshine Polar Plunge was put off until March.
At Rosie's Liquors in Abington, Mass., customers were lined up eight to 10 deep Friday, snapping up rum, wine and 30-packs of beer.
"We've been absolutely slammed. It's almost been like Christmas here," manager Kristen Brown said. "A lot of people are saying, 'I'm going to be stuck with my family all weekend. I need something to do.'"
___
Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie in Whitman, Mass., Rodrique Ngowi in Watertown, Mass.; John Christoffersen in Fairfield, Conn., and Bob Salsberg in Boston contributed to this report.
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Thursday, February 7, 2013
The dark side of Hong Kong's property boom
Vincent Yu / AP
62-year-old Cheng Man Wai lies in the 16 square foot cage that he calls home, in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013.
By Kelvin Chan,?The Associated Press
Vincent Yu / AP
A car passes luxury houses on Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's most exclusive neighborhood, on Feb. 7, 2013.
Published at 10:27 a.m. ET:?For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.
The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.
Vincent Yu / AP
77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu sits inside his cage home on Jan. 25, 2013.
Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks.?
Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis. Read the full story.
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Vincent Yu / AP
63-year-old Lee Tat-fong walks in a corridor while her two grandchildren -- Amy, 9, and Steven, 13 -- sit in their 50-square-foot room in Hong Kong on Jan. 25, 2013. Lee, like many poor residents, has applied for public housing but faces years of waiting. Nearly three-quarters of 500 low-income families questioned by Oxfam Hong Kong in a recent survey had been on the list for more than 4 years without being offered a flat.
Vincent Yu / AP
77-year-old Yeung Ying Biu eats next to his cage on Jan. 25, 2013. The cage homes date from the 1950s, when they catered mostly to single men coming in from mainland China
Related:
'Coffin' apartments offer wooden box homes for the living
Manila's hidden spaces: Life on the margins in a crowded megacity
Woman leaps to her death as housing disputes surge in China
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Storing Kids Artwork ?Cute Kitchen Nook
February 6, 2013 by Aimee ?
It must be sister week on the blog!?? Yesterday, I told you about a huge closet organization project I worked on with my older sister.? I?m the second oldest.? And today I?m sharing a fun house accessory for moms with kids that my younger sister loves!? (I love it, too).? And of course, most of you know that my baby sister totally rocks and you?ve so sweetly offered to keep her precious family in your prayers ? updates here.
Growing up in a family with three sisters was a lot of fun.? From an early age, our favorite past time was rearranging furniture, throughout the house.? I?m telling you where there?s a will, there?s a way?we moved some beastly furniture up and down the stairs! Total craziness at age ten!? Fast forward some years and when we get together it?s more of the same, but we do a lot more talking about design concepts and a little less actual rearranging.
The art above the crazy cool Ballard Design table was created by my three darling little nephews!? (Yes, nephews.? In preschool, the girls grabbed boy sketches and the boys went for the girls).? Obviously, fine detail like hair length doesn?t matter much to a three year old?painting trumps everything.? I love the profile sketch idea.? Perfect craft for lots of occasions.
And the way the artwork is stored is crazy cool!? How fun to be able to keep up to 50 art projects in one frame?and totally genius to be able to switch the display depending on season or the latest masterpiece!? I love this solution for Storing Kids Artwork!.
In case you?re in the market for something like this, my younger sister said it came from Dynamic Frames? ( I?m not an affiliate, just like the product LOTS!? What I would like to do is try and talk Stud into making a similar piece for my house!? So cool!
On one side there?s a hing and the other is a closure clasp.
How do you like to display your children?s artwork!!?? Tell me about it and/or leave a link in the comments below!!!
It's Overflowing is a lifestyle blog, founded by Aimee Lane, sharing simply inspired home living diy & decor projects, organization, and photography. Subscribe, learn more, or connect with Aimee on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Subscribe to Barns & Noodles for Aimee's favorite recipes.
It's Overflowing is an amazon affiliate.Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned in some of my posts in the hope that I would give it a good review on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission?s 16 CFR, Part 255: ?Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.?
Source: http://www.itsoverflowing.com/2013/02/storing-kids-artwork/
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Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Nigeria appoints academic as power minister to end shortages
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has appointed a new power minister who will have the formidable task of bringing in reforms aimed at ending chronic electricity shortages and catapulting the economy into double-digit growth.
Chinedu Osita Nebo, an academic who was vice chancellor of one of the country's largest universities, will fill the role which has been vacant since Barth Nnaji resigned last August, a statement from the presidency said on Wednesday.
Africa's most populous nation, with more than 160 million people, is the continent's biggest energy producer, but businesses and individuals who can afford them are forced to rely on diesel generators for much of the day.
Jonathan hopes the reforms, which include building several power plants, will not only bolster Africa's second-largest economy but also win him the hearts of tens of millions of Nigerians who have never known reliable electricity, sealing his legacy.
Ending chronic electricity shortages was an election pledge he made two years ago. He promised to increase power supply to 20,000 megawatts, from around 4,000 now, by 2015 - when the next national election is due.
Nigeria, which currently has economic growth of about 6.5 percent, is in the process of selling off state power assets as 17 private companies for about $2.5 billion, but the process is months behind schedule and has been blighted by political wrangling.
Former power minister Nnaji resigned after it was found he had an interest in a company bidding for a power plant.
The presidency statement on Wednesday also announced that Kabiru Tanimu Turaki would became minister for special duties to the president.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-appoints-academic-power-minister-end-shortages-135330189--finance.html
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