NASA will have a new space explorer added to its fleet as early as 2014 and so far the project looks to be on schedule. The head of NASA, Charles Bolden, toured the Lockheed-Martin facility where components of the ship are being built, and all indications are that tests conducted on the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle have all come back with stellar results. This is a huge step in putting together the finished product, the Exploration Flight Test 1.

Bolden expressed his satisfaction with the progress to date as well as how impressed he was with the hardware involved in putting together this capsule concept vehicle. The Exploration Flight Test 1 will be replacing the now out of date Constellation program. The new craft is being called the first of its kind insofar as being designed for human exploration of deep-space destinations such as asteroids or the moons of Mars.  The first planned flight for the spacecraft is an unmanned test in 2014 that will take the craft outside of Earth’s atmosphere, orbit the planet two times, and then rocket back home to make sure that its heat shield and other systems are up to snuff.

Many have seen a lack of interest in Washington for the space program, especially in light of the recent recession taking a huge bite out of every budget in its path. And this Orion project is just the kind of big ticket NASA program that lawmakers love to target when playing budget politics with their adversaries in the House of Representatives. However, Bolden says that he isn’t worried about the politics of the budget process and he remains confident that there will be adequate funds available to keep the program moving forward toward its goal of a 2014 launch.

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My take:

This sounds like a really incredible spaceship and should be a source of pride for all Americans. The space program has always been at the forefront of technological advances and this project is sure to be similar in delivering much more than we could ever begin to imagine to the everyday lives of everyone.

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Other Resources

Simplifying Traveling with Data

With the amount of ease that wireless signals offer individuals who must connect on the go, there are also some other options that are great for people who have to travel and require access to significantly sized files on a regular basis. For anyone involved in various industries where rather large files are required it’s a good idea to look into an online file sharing tool because having to carry around a physical memory stick or a USB drive can become burdensome if someone is always on the go and has to keep taking their files from location to location.

Cited: CNN

Market watchers are concerned that Americans are dipping into their savings at alarming rates and that it could be the undoing of the recovery as soon as savings reach rock bottom. Economists say that more people are scaling back their contributions to college funds, and worse yet, borrowing from retirement funds, despite the tax penalties incurred when doing so. Much of the spending is going toward day-to-day spending, which is also worrisome. In addition, some fear that a return to using credit cards for purchases like groceries, or monthly bills will increase and that is an ominous sign for future economic growth overall.

Analysts point to lower savings levels, which have dipped to levels not seen since 2007, as a sign that consumption is being fueled by savings and that this is unsustainable going forward. The personal savings rate fell in November to 3.5%, down from 5.1% a year earlier according to the U.S. Commerce Department. 

While some economic indicators have been showing signs that the economy is finally starting to pull out of the recession, many are not convinced about the longer term viability of this uptick, and that lower savings rates could be one indicator that the worst may not be over just yet. The savings rate is seen as falling from necessity with things like food and energy costing more and people having no choice but to find a way to pay for vital services such as food and utilities. And in the past when Americans borrowed record amounts against their homes now the trend is shifting to borrowing against retirement plans and other saving vehicles in order to keep their heads above water.

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My take:

It is a shame to fathom that most middle class families, even those with both husband and wife working, cannot afford the basics of supporting a family while trying to save a little for a rainy day, or college. It won’t be long now before we hear the Wall St. overlords whining about the drop in 401k programs hurting their bonuses.

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Other Resources

Buying Travel Items

One of the habits that tend to turn into a type of expensive venture for a vacation is the purchasing of a ton of travel size items that will be taken on the plane. For the most part, all of the reductions in price that someone gets through hotel deals, low price auto rentals and cheap airline tickets might be for naught if a person goes out and spends a few hundred on excess toiletries. Usually the best investment is in travel size plastic containers that can be reused each trip and can be filled with a person’s existing shampoo and other items.

Cited: CNN

While many analysts and lawmakers have expressed their hopes and confidence that the unemployment rolls in the U.S. states will continue to decline and that a healthy recovery in the jobs market is just around the corner, Kraft Foods announced today that they would be laying off up to 1200 employees this year in operations conducted at various locations in the U.S.  According to Kraft, the move comes as part of their larger plan to separate their company into two distinct units, one focused on groceries and the other on the snack business. The cuts are likely to be felt in their sales, corporate and business units, and should not effect manufacturing plants, at least that’s what one spokesman for Kraft said earlier today at a press conference to announce the plans for Kraft Foods going into 2012.

However, some industry watchdogs and labor union executives are concerned about parts of the Kraft statement that mention that the food giant will continue to monitor their manufacturing facilities to consider what is best for the two new entities that will spin off from the larger company later this year. Often they say, this can be corporate speak for layoffs. Kraft says that it will reduce the number of management centers in its new grocery division after the company splits and will relocated its units in Tarrytown, N.Y. and East Hanover, New Jersey. The corporate offices for both the grocery division and the snack division will be located in Chicago, Illinois. The news was well-received by the market with Kraft shares rising by 1.5% following the information released earlier today.

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My take:

If Kraft is looking for ways to stay lean and fast to react to the changing trends in their market, the move to two separate divisions makes sense. And if they have to cut some employees in both management and on the line, they won’t hesitate to do so.

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Other Resources

Safety and Lab Experience

Individuals who have been working in an industry where much of the work is done in a laboratory will often have to learn various safety procedures associated with such conditions and for the most part, many types of laboratories will include various types of equipment such as an induction heater or other items which would operate under very hot conditions when in use where it would always be proper practice to make sure that everyone utilizing such items was well versed in various safety procedures. More experienced members of the lab should usually work with newer members regarding safety lessons.

Replacing Lighting Parts

There are a number of public buildings in use around the country which have been standing for decades and while some municipalities have been able to repair such areas, the depressed economy certainly has made some issues for cities where major repairs have been required for quite some time now. It is no longer just the lights that need repairing in many areas but it’s the entire lighting ballast and many of the electrical systems within some of the older buildings in use in some towns where public facilities were built in the earliest decades of the twentieth century.

Storing Food and Medicine

There are many things that a family might need to store should they run out of room in their home or are moving but can’t get into their new place immediately, but a Sayville NY self storage unit is generally not considered the best place to store food and medicine for any length of time. Anything that otherwise requires a temperature controlled environment should not be stored in a unit unless the units are specifically advertised as being those that would be temperature controlled. In addition, medication of any sort is usually not a good thing to store.

Popular Dress Lengths

Over the years the average length of a dress for a girl at prom has gotten shorter but long dresses have also remained popular as prom dresses that sweep the floor can be very dramatic. Of course, this hasn’t stopped girls from being interested in finding dresses that are amazingly short. The best course of action for any girl who wants to wear a shorter dress is to see about doing so only after she’s looked at the potential rules and regulations that could be guiding just how short a school might allow dresses to be for prom.

Trying to Quit Smoking

There are millions of people out there who smoke but there are also many people out there who want to quit smoking and have found it almost impossible to do so. There are some seen on TV items that might be able to assist in this process this is a device called the Smoke Assist which is a type of electronic cigarette that allows someone to keep up the feeling of smoking but without the offensive smoke smell and aroma of a cigarette that can bother people who are nearby but who aren’t smokers and don’t want to be around smoke.

Fun Gym Options

Getting out to the gym can be difficult if a person lives in an especially remote area or otherwise isn’t living in a warm zone and if there’s six feet of snow on the ground, chances are a better way to exercise rather than freeze out in the cold is to use an as seen on TV product called the Total Body Door Gym. This neat product is an amazingly full training system that only needs a door to work and can attach to nearly any door to provide everything from strength work to various cardio options.

Consoles Shift to Different Sales Model

One of the interesting changes to the way that some modern companies have been looking to craft games for modern consoles is the idea that most games wouldn’t be a permanent purchase and that people would be very likely to trade in games on a regular basis after they had spent time playing a particular game to completion. Many games now are starting to be developed in such a way that they are meant to be finished and likely won’t be played over and over again after a person has mastered that particular game and reached the end.

Cited: CNN

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reaffirmed the justice department’s commitment to upholding voting rights across the U.S. Speaking on the steps of the South Carolina State house in commemoration of Martin Luther King Day, Holder promised to aggressively protect federal voting rights for minorities.

Flanked by leaders of the NAACP, who took the opportunity to denounce the banner of stars and bars that continues to fly over the South Carolina State House, the attorney general focused his speech on defending the provisions of the voting rights act that he says are being assaulted by the South Carolina legislature. For example, the Holder justice department has refused to grant the needed approval of a law passed by South Carolina legislature requiring voters to carry a government issued photo ID before they can vote.

In addition, his department is also in the process of suing South Carolina and challenging the law recently passed to curtail illegal immigration. Holder has made similar moves in response to similar laws being passed in six other states including that of Arizona, which sparked so much controversy last year.

Another item on Holder’s agenda is the continuing review by the Justice Department of efforts by many legislative districts in the South to redraw congressional boundary lines, in what some say is an effort to further push the House of Representatives into the Republican’s favor.

Holder did not address the GOP primary that is the focus of attention in South Carolina but he did draw a loud round of applause when he mentioned President Barack Obama’s name.

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My take:

Words are easy and really don’t carry much weight in light of the nationwide assault on voter’s rights and voter access. This has always been part of the extreme right agenda and now they seem to be gaining steam.

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Other Resources

Some Advocate Arbitration

Canadians have a version of the lemon law available to them that they can utilize and for the most part people will actually enter into arbitration style agreements instead of actually going to court. This has led to some rather swift resolutions of various issues and because of the fast solutions, some people have been advocating that California lemon law have this type of arbitration option added into the official rendering of the law. Although it is a possibility in the United States, the official law doesn’t specifically support an arbitration process which might lower the time spent fighting a lemon case.

Early Dental Prosthetics

Although the type of dental options available today to people who might have lost a tooth are quite advanced and the type of prosthetics available through Springfield VA dentists when a tooth has been lost are quite amazing, it’s interesting to note that people as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans were actually trying to figure out how to make fake teeth when one of theirs had fallen out or they’d had a dental mishap and some of the bodies recovered through excavations of ancient burial sites are such that there is some evidence of early dental implants.

Going Into Digital Zoom

Most digital cameras these days have two types of zoom methods that will allow a person to take a picture of a far off object at close range simply by ratcheting a lever on the camera itself. But unless someone is in charge of a Minneapolis commercial photography studio, they might not understand the true difference between a digital zoom and an optical zoom. The optical zoom is such that it uses the actual machinery of the camera to zoom in toward an object whereas a digital zoom uses the digital equipment instead to zoom in further than the optical zoom would be able.

Cited: MSNBC

You only need to watch a couple of episodes of Paula Deen’s shows on the Food Network to know that you won’t be losing any weight if you follow her recipes. Now you might also have to wonder if her concoctions might also lead to diabetes, a reality that the TV food star is being forced to confront in her own life after recently being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

Deen has been keeping her diabetes something of a secret for the past three years and now that its out in the open she is doing all she can to defend her recipes and with them her reputation. She claims that her motto has always been to enjoy everything she cooks in moderation, at one point joking with Oprah that she is her cook not her doctor. Experts in the medical community don’t say that what you eat will lead to diabetes but it can contribute to gaining excessive weight, which is a cause of diabetes. Other factors effecting whether or not you might be susceptible to diabetes are genetics, weight, and exercise – or lack of it to be more precise.

Paula Deen is famous for her Southern style cooking with excessive amounts of butter, fat, sugar, and other not-so-healthy ingredients. Her recipes, if followed and eaten on a regular basis can make it very difficult to maintain a healthy weight and for some can lead to what doctors call adult onset diabetes, or type 2 diabetes. But experts are quick to point out that its not what you eat but how much you eat when it comes to diabetes.

My take:

I have never been much of a fan of Deen and her recipes. I find them to be almost as off-putting as her phoney-bologna accent. You don’t have to be much of a chef to slog fat on top of sugar on top of grease. I hope they cancel her show.

Cited: CNN

The overall debt levels carried by U.S. citizens dropped by more than 11% in 2011, with the decrease being spread evenly across the country. Credit card balances outstanding averaged $6.576 down from $7,404 in 2010 according to CreditKarma.com, a company that compiles credit card data.

The news is something of a double-edged sword in that its always good to see that people are keeping an eye on their spending, especially if they don’t have the cash on hand, but the other side of the story is that the recession and the extremely tight lending conditions by banks have also contributed to the decline in outstanding debt. These aren’t particularly favorable indicators about economic activity in the U.S. Outstanding debt levels have been on the decline for the last couple of years however many economists believe that the trend might reverse itself this year, especially if the economy picks up a little steam.

Wisconsin residents have the lowest balances on their credit cards at $5,062, with Mississippi and Alabama close behind. However, with five of the ten poorest counties in the U.S. being in the South, this is something of a dubious distinction. Leading the charge higher were Alaska residents, who ran up balances on average of $7,937.

Mortgage debt in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with California residents having the highest outstanding mortgage balances and West Virginians having the lowest. The only debt levels that actually increased in 2011 were auto loans, rising 2% to an average of $15,504.  Taking into account all types of debt the average consumer held a total debt load of $210.236, only a small decrease from 2010 levels.

My take:

It really is a mixed bag when you look at credit card balances outstanding because some decrease might come from people being smarter about using their credit cards while other factors are probably more related to a very poor economy. Perhaps the lower debt loads will give everyone a little more room to splurge when things turn around.

Cited: CNN

The executive MBA program at the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania retained its status as the best of the best programs of any business school worldwide in a new 2012 survey by PoetsandQuants. A degree from the Wharton program does come with a somewhat hefty price tag however with an EMBA from the home campus in Philly costing about $167,160, while the same credentials from their campus in San Francisco will run you about $173,940.

Wharton has been the top corporate doggie traing ground for quite a while and for good reason; the program is the most competitive and hardest to get into in the first place; more so than almost any other graduate business school. It accepts only four out of every ten applicants and while others don’t even require that their prospective students take the Graduate Management Admissions Test, Wharton students have the highest average scores for the GMAT of any school, 700 out of a possible 800.

Following behind Wharton at number 2 is Chicago Booth, with Northwestern Kellogg, Columbia Business School, and New York University Stern filling out the top spots. The rankings from  PoestsandQuants are based on the overall reputation of these schools taking into account the latest ratings from BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and U.S. News and World Report. The rankings from these journals are blended together to come up with a list that reflects a more standardized measure without anomalies found in some other school reviews.

The executive MBA programs at these schools usually attract a more seasoned, older group with most applicants already having up to twelve years experience in the work force. And while the price of the EMBA is quite high in all of these programs, the average salary for a graduate with a Wharton EMBA exceeds the cost of the education so for most it is well worth the investment.

My take:

Wharton must be doing something right because they are constantly at the top of the business school rankings. And while the price seems a little high, it really isn’t anything if you can make more than the price of admission after just one year in the workplace.

Cited: CNN

Could 2012 actually be the year that workers in the U.S. stop taking all of the slash and burn policies of their employers and perhaps take a little more control of their situations? Some market watchers think so while labor leaders hope so. With the unemployment rate in the U.S. falling for four consecutive months and non-farm payroll data showing a bigger appetite to hire workers, the conditions might just be staring to turn in favor of labor, but no one is getting too far ahead of themselves about drawing that conclusion just yet.

One prominent economist has dubbed 2012 as “The Year of the Payback,” meaning that this is the year that corporations start to worry about retaining skilled workers and that they realize that they cannot simply dictate unfair policies to a labor force that may very well start to have other options other than to just sit back, take it, and be happy to have a job.  With economic activity starting to pick up, especially in some key areas like automobile sales and production, corporations will have to start worrying about being able to grow their business without proper help on the lines of operation. The consequences are lower productivity, and perhaps the most talented worker leaving to join the competition. One indication that workers might be sensing the tide shifting in their direction is that for the first time since the recession began in 2007, there was an uptick in the number of workers who actually quit their jobs, not fired from their job.

Some of the more progressive and pro-active companies out there are already trying to get ahead of their peers in keeping workers happy and on the line by offering a whole host of incentives to their employees including fringe benefits like work-life initiatives, retraining, education and wellness programs, and other ways to manage and reduce stress in the workplace.

My take:

The pendulum always swings too far to one side and then the other. The way that American workers and the few unions that exist anymore have been treated by corporate America over the last decade is deplorable and the shift back toward providing a real living wage and support for the middle class can’t come soon enough.