Shrinking

Mexico.Maybe it’s just the unflattering bikini top, but the 34-year-old German beauty looked half the girl she used to be.Three children with pop hit hubby Seal, 45, seem to have taken a bit of a toll on her bust and tummy.An onlooker said: “She still looks great but kids play havoc with your body — and supermodels are no different.”Heidi was on her annual trip to Mexico to ‘re-marry’

Product Description A realistic and pracitical guide to success with the truly "global" customer Product Details Amazon Sales Rank: #857207 in Books Published on: 2006-05-01 Format: Illustrated Number of items: 1 Binding: Hardcover 242 pages

Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. This is sort of a big deal. This lecture entails the increasingly harsh financial conditions of the middle class family today.

I’ve been getting a lot of email questions about the rebates that imply that all taxpayers are entitled to the full rebate. This is not the case. Here are some guidelines that might answer many of your questions… You may receive a rebate if: 1, You have a valid Social Security number. 2, You file a 2007 tax [...]

Is your shower shrinking? Do you feel like this guy? According to MoreShowerSpace.com 47% of shower curtains get “clingy”, effectively reducing the amount of space you have while showering. According to Z, my roommate and myself, our shower curtain is the “King of Cling”, acting up 89% of the time or more. Not [...]

Photo credit: TCM hitchhiker You would think sorcerers would have better ways to make money than run around shrinking mens penises and then extorting the victims. But, according to a recent Reuters article, it has become a very real and widespread panic in Congo’s capitol city. Police have arrested thirteen sorcerers suspected of shrinking, and in some [...]

Quick and dirty exploit peril The length of time between the development of security patches and the development of exploits targeting the security holes they address has been dropping for some time.… Read more…

Jimmy's Road to Damascus ain't really my style of humor, but the two Cox & Forkum cartoons convey a message that must be seen to be appreciated. On the whole, this post is well worth reading and deserves more exposure to a wider audience. Please read it and vote it up at RCP.Ben 04/16/08

So far, my debt-reduction efforts have been leading to weight gain, not weight loss. After all, sitting in front of a computer for hours and not buying salads because they’re more expensive than burgers does not a thin person make. I weighed myself on Monday and I’m at my highest weight ever - 143 pounds. [...]

Christina Aguilera's post-pregnancy mamma-jamma's of power (above from February) are rapidly shrinking, according to The Sun: Like countless other celebs mums, the Dirrty star has been quick to shed the pounds after giving birth. Apparently, she has been doing a spot of boxing as well as lifting weights in a bid to get into shape for her chart comeback. Christina has also taken up swimming but not the healthy aerobic kind. It's more like the "totally gross I can't believe I'm out to repeat it" kind: Her neighbours have reportedly got a little upset with Xtina and hubby, JORDAN BRATMAN, going skinny dipping at their $6 million Beverly Hills mansion because they're TOO noisy. One told a US magazine: "They don’t just splash around – they laugh, scream, swear and make sexy noises."

If you think it might just be your imagination that money is not going quite as far as it used to, well it is not your imagination at all. It is a cold hard reality that many of us are just now waking up to. When you visit the grocery store and your cart is [...]

~Snooper~The vast majority of Americans know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the alleged "peace movement" is nothing of the sort. They are, however, a group of SDS socialist sycophants and primarily made up of ignorant chronic malcontents that can not allow themselves to accept responsibility for their own stupidity...they always blame someone or something else. Perhaps this is why the news media gives them so much attention - maybe.In a recent article in the NY Slimes, the bastion of BDS and state secret tellers, they had a headline which read; A War Protest Falls Short in Manhattan. Not only are the gatherings of cowards and socialists shrinking, they are getting more and more violent...it is getting more physical. One of our own was accosted at a rally in recent days.Why are their n

If you're no fan of the FCAT, state budget cuts may have a silver lining. According to a list of possibilities (see pages 16 and 17) recently outlined by Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith (left), the DOE could eliminate the...

La Liga -the Spanish Football League- has been so HOT lately!! All because of the stretching and shrinking workouts by the Royal Team Real Madrid and the Catalonia Team Barcelona!In the last couple of months, Points Difference between Real Madrid and Barcelona has stretched up to 9 Points -making the Royal team happy and feeling that La Liga Championship is secured for the second year respectively-, then shrank to 2 points only –so everyone thought Barca is back and will steal the Cup from Real Madrid-, then back to shrinking up to 8 points now! All in couple of months! But Real Madrid was always on the top in all cases!Those stretching and shrinking workouts made La Liga so HOT!! So everyone just can't resist watching and waiting for a happy ending! :)As Real Madrid has been sadly knock

This post is in response to the article:Peres : Window For Peace is Shrinking “The window of opportunity for peace is shrinking” President Shimon Peres said Sunday during a meeting with visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. TALK ABOUT OPTIMIST! Peres, wake up and smell the gunpowder… In order for the ‘window’ to be shrinking, a window WOULD [...]

As I promised back in January I'm going to revisit my Shrinking P/E Ratio Screen at the beginning of each month in 2008. That being the case, the purpose of this post is to share the results of the screen as of the beginning of February.For more information on this screen, you can check out my previous posts on the subject here. In short, this screen pulls companies with nicely growing earnings and revenues but with steadily declining P/E ratios over the previous year. My theory which I've yet to prove is that the stocks that are spit out of this screen may be attractive on average as "value plays". By running this screen each month of 2008 I'm hoping to amass some anecdotal evidence of whether my theory is correct or not. My ultimate goal with this study and with any screening or technica

Florida surgeon Dr. J. takes an interestingly terrifying peak at the effects of obesity in men. He says that when men gain weight, abdominal fat changes testosterone to estrogen that remains stored in all that extra fat. The unfortunate result is a shrinking “Mr. Happy” (or whatever you call your thing, i.e., Richard, Woody, Mini [...]

Shrinking Attitude: Getting Away From the Evil Spider Robot By St. Nick, age 7 (transcribed by Mom) It all starts with one mom and one dad and one sister and two boys. But one time when they were driving in the car, they smashed into another car. But the car transformed into a Giant Evil Spider! But until it's done transforming, it shakes the car and the robot is really strong. Everybody falls

I've written several times now about an interesting stock screen I like to run which looks for stocks that have shown a steadily declining P/E ratio over the past year despite rapidly growing revenues and earnings. (For my past posts on the subject click on this link.) I have some ideas about what a steadily declining P/E ratio might be telling us in general but I've lacked sufficient data up until now to scientifically test my theories. In the interest of starting to compile the necessary data to backtest this filter, I intend to run the screen at the beginning of every month during 2008 and to track each stock generated by the filter from that point on.To that end, the purpose of this post is to share the results of the Shrinking P/E Ratio screen as of now. Please note that I have modifi

Jenna Jameson should really stop acting and posing like she’s some famously rich actress with five Oscar nominations and a millions of adoring fans all over the world. Um… in fact, if we take out the "Oscar" part, I think that in some twisted way everything else applies – she is famous and has millions of fans – among the male adult population, who used to watch her on-screen porn exploits with wonder and fascination – but in the grand scheme of things, does that really matter? As for the money, if that Club Jenna "porn empire" she set up is still running (and it was, last time I checked… for purely professional reasons, that is) this former porn queen is set for life. OK, back to my original idea: someone should tell Jenna that she may be rich and (still mildly) famous, but she’s still a frightening appearance. That’s more like it! First of all, I’m not sure it’s a result of the whole breast implants

Twice in the past (Feb 2007 and May 2007) I have written about a fundamental screen which identifies stocks that have experienced a constant decrease in P/E ratio over the previous year. Being a bargain hunting bottom feeder at heart, I originally created this screen in an attempt to identify high quality, yet beaten up stocks. The more I think about it, however, the less confident I am that "high quality" has anything to do with it.Given that I have limited data at this point I can't really draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of the screen. That said I intend to revisit the previous results of this screen in an attempt to learn a thing or two. To that end the purpose of this post is to check in on the stocks that were identified by the screen in February. At some point I hope to add a little science and track every stock that is spit out of this filter for a substantial period of time.This particular screen places a big premium on growth and steadily falling P/E ratios. In t

In this day of moving internet the best way to get internet connection through your laptop is to plug in a cellular modem on your laptop’s USB port and get online. However Sprint ovations U727 Usb modem does much more than just that. It also offers GPS service and also removable media storage. This modem [...]

About a year ago, I wrote SQL SERVER - Shrinking Truncate Log File - Log Full. I was just going through some of the earlier posts and comments on this blog and one particular comment by Praveen Barath caught my eye. It is very good explanation. I am copying complete explanation here with full credit to original author. How to truncate log file in SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2005 is quite different from SQL Server 2000. To truncate log file is one thing which is different from SQL Server 2000. In SQL Server 2000, you just use Shrink to whatever file size you like. In SQL Server 2005, sometime I cannot shrink the log file at all. Here I want to describe some tricks to truncate log file for a database in SQL Server 2005. The work environment is MS SQL Server Management Studio. I. Shrink the log file size at the right time I found out this trick: Immediately after I use the SSIS package or Import the data to the database ( highlight the database->Tasks->Import data … ), or Export t

Everyone knows the Middle East is a rather dreary hot place inhabited by quarrelsome people. So why is it so important to America? There are a few of us who expect the rapture to first breakout over Jerusalem, but that notion has never been a major factor in State Department policy.The only reason the Middle East matters at all is oil.Last week the petroleum thugs met in Saudi Arabia. There was huffing and puffing from Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . They threaten to strangle America with their oil.Of course, many of the Sheiks, do not wish to precipitously destroy America . They are heavily invested in the American economy, and have a gargantuan stash of dollar bills.But all of them are concerned about the tumbling value of the dollar.Since 1971 the American dollar has been backed by oil rather than gold. In that year, Nixon realized that we would be unable pay out our remaining 280 million ounces of gold. Essentially, the federal government declared its insolvency and just

Probably most of the adsense publishers are getting lower and lower eCPM from adsense, and now Google hits us another round with their new strategy which mean to prevent Click Fraud. Techcrunch reports, Google has made a small change to AdSense that may make a big difference in cutting out errant clicks and even your AdSense revenue. [...]

Notwithstanding all the political noise now reverberating around President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Peso surged to 43.85/$1 last Tuesday. In the past two days, the momentum was sustained as the Peso closed at 43.675 to $1 on Wednesday. According to news reports, this is the strongest level hit by the peso since reaching 43.59:$1 on July 5, 2000. (Inquirer) Incidentally, this should be another propaganda boost for the fledging Arroyo government. The pardon may have bought her time to deflect offensives against her on account of the bribery and ZTE corruption issues and reorganize her ranks, but all is not smooth sailing for the rest of her term even after having driven former President Estrada away from attempts to destabilize her administration. Citing a study entitled “Trends and Characteristics of the Middle-Income Class in the Philippines: Is it Expanding or Shrinking?” presented during the recent National Statistical Conference by statisticians which include the secretary-g

Valero Energy Corp., the nation's largest independent oil refiner, said today it expects to report third-quarter earnings far short of Wall Street estimates because the cost of refined products... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Valero Energy Corp., the nation's largest independent oil refiner, said today it expects to report third-quarter earnings far short of Wall Street estimates because the cost of refined products hasn't kept up with rapidly rising crude costs. Earnings from continuing operations, excluding special items, are now expected to be $1.30 to $1.40 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had been expecting earnings of $1.91 per share. Such forecasts typically exclude one-time items. Valero said its estimate does not include a $91 million pretax gain related to a loan repayment by a foreign subsidiary, or a $94.5 million payment for a stock repurchase program completed in July. Including those items, third-quarter earnings will be $1.25 to $1.35 per share, Valero said. The company said it also expects to report earnings from discontinued operations of approximately 75 cents per share related to the sale of its refinery in Lima, Ohio. In addition to higher crude costs, Valero said earni

The US middle class is shrinking and people know it, feel it. Here is an interesting blog on the subject Whatever happened to sharing the pie of prosperity? Some highlights: Last week, a friend in his 30s prodded me to explain how my generation, the boomers, had botched so many things. While not exactly conceding that we had, I said that the one thing none of us had anticipated was that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared prosperity. Median family income over the past quarter-century has stagnated. The economic rewards from increased productivity, which went to working-class as well as wealthy Americans from the 1940s to the ’70s, now go exclusively to the rich. The manufacturing jobs that anchored our prosperity were offshored, automated, or deunionized; lower-paying service-sector jobs took their place. … a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center reveals a transformation of Americans’ sense of their country and themselves that is startl

Can you believe one of my kids asked me the other night:Mommy, what are man boobs?I totally blame their father of course. Click here to read why at So mommy, what are man boobs?, my latest post at Incredible Shrinking Ladies. Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.

For the second time this week, a vendor has mentioned something about me being... well... exacting in my standards and very vocal when these standards aren't met.Example #1Since I got my new car, and it is small enough to fit, I have been given a parking space at the office. Calling it a parking space is too generous by far, but I don't know what else to call it... Cubby Hole sounds so "Kindergarten", though it more accurately describes the size of the space I am allowed to park in.So I guess I'll call it a cubby space. This space had been vacant because most of the office staff drives SUV's, sedans and other types of vehicles that are too large too fit. My new Matirx fits with room to spare. So does a crappy green Subaru.A fellow parker, who advocated my taking this space because she is awesome, came to me one morning and asked who drove a green Subaru and why was it parked in "my" cubby? After much investigation - we turned up no leads. It was there - miraculously - and no other

In September 2003, news sources documented numerous accounts of mysterious foreigners (origin and description varying with each retelling) in Khartoum, Sudan who were causing penises to disappear by shaking the hands of their victims in public. Details were rarely consistent but media accounts told of victims who reported that their penises began to "melt into their body" either after shaking hands or using a "penis-melting cyborg comb" that had been given to them by a mysterious stranger. One Sudan based columnist went as far as reporting in a foreign-based newspaper that ""Even though what I write today will harm 'tourism' in Sudan, I consider it my duty to warn anyone who wants to come to Sudan to refrain from shaking hands with a dark-skinned man. Since most Sudanese are dark-skinned, he had better avoid shaking hands with anyone he doesn't know…". The mysterious hand-shaker (often referred to as `Satan`s Friend`) was said to ``drain men`s vi

The Suits are having a stressful week. Global financial markets have been falling dramatically since yesterday, following the decision of France’s largest publicly-owned bank to freeze some of its funds with exposure to the US housing credit market, as well as the announcement Thursday of a major US mortgage firm that an increase in homeowner defaults caused its $50 million losses for the second-quarter. The scare sparked panic among banks and their investors whose investments face similar exposure, raising many governments’ fears of a global “credit crunch” in which banks reign in credit lines to one another. Virtually all US, European, and Asian markets have suffered losses, prompting central banks in many countries to intervene with extra cash to calm these markets. A narrow drill has reached the void where those Utah miners are trapped, but offers no indication that they are alive. Boston Globe on the Hillary v Obama argument over how their campaigns

Mine is getting smaller by the day. The reason damn extra toolbars I install them out of professional curiosity with the intention of uninstalling them when I've seen how they work. This very rarely happens as they're so damn handy.My latest is the facebook toolbar...Facebook Developers | Facebook Toolbar for FirefoxIt really is great to be able to copy stuff straight to you facebook profile page even images.I'm wondering to myself how far the facebook development is going to go and how much it's going to be used in business?read more | digg storySubscribe to this feed

Talking to people about their summer plans, I've come up with a new term that I think could become a new diagnosis if the trend continues: Shrinking Vacation Syndrome, or SVS. Sadly, people do not seem to put a priority on family vacations any more.The answers are always similar variations of the same few themes: no time, no money, kids too young, kids too old. Work needs me too much. (I love that one!) No one to watch the kids. We earn vacation yet don't take it, unlike every other country in the world. At the same time, we are also the only civilized country that doesn't guarantee vacation to employees. No wonder we are all so stressed. Vacation is as vital to our beings as breathing, eating and sleeping. Vacation is how we regroup as individuals and family. Vacation is not frivolous or a waste of time. In fact, vacation is how we sharpen our senses so we can become more efficient when we do work. For families, vacations allow for reconnection which is so important with liv

There once was a time when every homeowner wanted a 4,000 sq ft home on a couple of acres, with 3 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms and a masterful gourmet kitchen. Perhaps similar to this: or this! A little extreme but you get the picture. Well more and more people are saying forget the upkeep and the hefty price, in favor of tiny cottages. Architects are reporting less demand for increases in the square footage and volume of homes and cite a reversal of the decades of expanding home sizes. What’s driving this McMansion reversal? Could it be the huge baby boomer population looking to downgrade their empty nest? Could it be high property taxes? These reasons can definitely be a small driver of the trend but most of it can be attributed to style. Small cottages less than half of the McMansion size ranging from 550 to 940 square feet are a popular trend these days (AKA “Use It All Living Spaces”). Another driver which may have sparked this trend is Hurricane Katrina. Right af

Way back on February 24th- just days before the market blew up temporarily- I wrote about a fundamental screen that I find fascinating. This particular screen finds companies that are growing revenues and earnings impressively (more than 40% and 60%, respectively) and yet for some reason the P/E ratio at which the market values them has done nothing but shrink over the past year.As of February 24th I believed that Google was the star of this screen and I even went so far as to say that GOOG's inclusion in this screen "underscores my basic belief that GOOG is a buy here". How wise am I? Well, since then Google's stock price has risen from a lowly $470.62 all the way up to an impressive $471.12. That is a 0.11% return in just 69 days, or an annualized return of 0.56%. Assuming you bought $10,000 worth of GOOG on 2/24/07 and sold on 5/4/07 and have a brokerage account with $5 trades, you would have netted a robust 62 cents for your troubles. You're welcome.Anyway, I thought it might be

It seems that Britney Spears’ post rehab vigorous exercise regime has had a little extra effect on her breasts.It was clear that Spears’ formally buxom cleavage had reduced, after she was spotted in a lavender sundress with a plunging neckline.A source told the American magazine Star that with Britney already eyeing the revival of her flagging career, the first thing she wants to get back in shape is her figure."Britney wants to look better than she ever has in her life. She has a plan and has already started working on it. She is a size 6 (UK size 10) and wants to be a size 2 (UK size 6) when she is done in three months," the Daily Mail quoted the source, as telling Star.However, her smaller frame has already fuelled rumours that her weight loss could be due to cosmetic surgery. The singer was spotted a week ago emerging from a cosmetic surgery clinic showing signs of losing some of the weight she has put on due to her back to back pregnancies.

It seems that Britney Spears’ post rehab vigorous exercise regime has had a little extra effect on her breasts. It was clear that Spears’ formally buxom cleavage had reduced, after she was spotted in a lavender sundress with a plunging neckline. A source told the American magazine Star that with Britney already eyeing the revival of her flagging career, the first thing she wants to get back in shape is her figure. "Britney wants to look better than she ever has in her life. She has a plan and has already started working on it.She is a size 6 (UK size 10) and wants to be a size 2 (UK size 6) when she is done in three months," the Daily Mail quoted the source, as telling Star. However, her smaller frame has already fuelled rumours that her weight loss could be due to cosmetic surgery. The singer was spotted a week ago emerging from a cosmetic surgery clinic showing signs of losing some of the weight she has put on due to her back to back pregnancies.

Salu Digby, Shrinking VioletFirst appearance: Action Comics #276, 1961. She was one of the first members introduced of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th century, a native of the planet Imsk, and was co-created by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney.Current status: she sometimes goes by the name of Atom Girl today.Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she was once kidnapped by radicals from her home planet, and suffered a trauma from that. But she was also betrayed by Duplicate Boy, who hadn’t even tried to rescue her. In a story called “Battle of Venado Bay” in which she and her fellow Imskians were battling the home planet of Cosmic Boy, she had to save her fellow Legionnaire, who was badly injured, from her own fellow fighters. He was so crazy with pain that he didn’t recognize her and smashed her in the head, destroying her right eye and leaving a scar on her face. Shrinking Violet and Cosmic Boy reconciled later and she had her eye repaired, but left the scar

Read the previous entries in Road Warrior without an Expense Account here: Part I – Adjunct University TeachingPart II – Realities of Professional FreelancingPart III – The Rise and Fall of the Full-Time Professional OrchestraPart V - Regional OrchestrasPart VI - The Vicious CyclePart VII - Private TeachingPart VIII - Burnout__________ This is the fourth installment of my Road Warrior without an Expense Account series. The intent of this installment is to highlight the increased competition for the progressively decreasing full-time orchestral positions. The statistics I present here are only theoretical and may certainly differ from the exact number or audition openings and candidates, but they nevertheless serve as a demonstrative example of the current audition scene. As always, I welcome any comments or elaboration on this post or any post in this series. ____________ As the actual number of full-time playing positions decreases with each passing year, t

A scientist named Walter invented a shrinking ray. He tried it on himself, and it worked. Unfortunately he couldn't reverse the process, and he was stuck being the size of a normal man's thumb. He had a loyal lab assistant who worked with him, though, so his diminutive size didn't affect Walter's work too much. Still, after a while, Walter began to long for female companionship. His lab

This study says glaciers were shrinking long before George W. Bush got into office. We're physicists, not glaciologists ( though it sounds like the kind of cool, non-specific, government-funded title that could be a lot of fun ) so we're inclined to look for the opposing view as well. We should receive that via email, with accompanying hate-filled invective, shortly after this hits the internet

Alright, I'll admit that there is nothing whatsoever amazing about my Amazing Shrinking P/E Ratio Screen. It's merely my 967th different attempt to identify high quality, beaten up stocks. And it arose from my fascination with Google's shrinking P/E ratio in my Google vs Yahoo post.This particular screen places a big premium on growth and steadily falling P/E ratios. In this screen I required volume over 200K per day and the following:Year over year revenue growth of at least 40%;Year over year EPS growth of at least 60%;Trailing P/E ratio higher 1 year ago than it was 6 months ago; Trailing P/E higher 6 months ago than it was a month ago;P/E higher a month ago than it is today;And, in order to weed out companies whose declining P/E ratio was due to declining forward EPS, the forward P/E ratio had to be lower than the current P/E ratio. Given that Google was my inspiration for doing this screen, it shouldn't be surprising that #1 on the list is none other than good old GOOG. Here a

Jodie Foster never fit the Hollywood mold, whether with her Ivy League education, or her carefulness in choosing roles, she's always impressed us Up until a few months ago, we thought she was not touched by the heather light weight craze that has swept the entertainment industry, but now she showed up at her movie premier for her latest project, Nims Island, in Australia looking extremely unhealthy