Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

Tiger Woods speaks to his then-wife during opening ceremonies at the AT&T National golf tournament in 2009. (Getty Images)

It’s official: Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren are divorced.

Lawyers for the ruined couple say the divorce was finalized Monday, nine months after it was revealed that golfer Woods was cheating big-time on the former Swedish model.

Everyone wants to know who got what, but the terms of the divorce aren’t public. (Except that Woods and Nordegren will share custody of their two young children.)

Still, let me get out my calculator and do some quick math to see if I can figure out how Woods came out.

We can assume Nordegren will get a hefty settlement now that her divorce is final.

Divide by two.

Of course, he lost millions when sponsors pulled endorsement deals. And he took a costly five-month hiatus from playing golf as a mountain of bad publicity swelled.

Subtract millions, add public humiliation.

I hear his game isn’t so great since he came back to golf, so his future income looks a bit shaky.

Smash calculator with golf clubs in a fit of frustration.

During a public apology, he promised to “get help.” Just how much does a good celebrity therapist cost these days?

Subtract millions, add the possibility of restoring athlete-sized ego to a normal size.

Then there’s the obvious fact that it couldn’t have been  cheap to date so many women. (And let’s be honest. They looked like they had expensive tastes.)

Divide by expensive publicity-seeking mistresses.

The numbers don’t lie. If things keep going this way, there’s a good chance Woods will be sleeping in a tent on the third fairway at Pebble Beach before long.

As for Nordegren, I’d advise she do something nice for herself with her share of the Woods fortune. Get a nice car. Take a vacation. Buy Sweden.

Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

The dispute over an Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City may be just the tip of the minaret.

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., outside Nashville, resistance is building to a 52,000-square-foot Islamic Center and mosque, with protests and vandalism, NPR reports. Here’s one opponent’s quote:

This mosque that they’re trying to build, all it is a training center. In Islam, a mosque means we have conquered this country. And where are they? The center of Tennessee. They’re going to say: We have conquered Tennessee.

Opponents of an Islamic cultural center and mosque planned in lower Manhattan cheer a speaker during a demonstration Sunday in New York City. Activists both for and against the proposed Park51 project two blocks from Ground Zero rallied supporters near the proposed building site as the controversy continued. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

This isn’t the first time the controversy has flared in Tennessee– plans for a mosque in nearby Brentwood were shot down after a campaign to block rezoning.

Time reports this week on protests in the Southern California town of Temecula, near Camp Pendleton. The local Islamic center wants to build a mosque on land it owns near two churches. The project prompted a vocal protest by local conservative activists, who brought along dogs to offend Islamic sensibilities and carried signs like “No More Mosques in America.”

Not surprisingly, Fox News’ report on the same dispute makes the protesters seem more rational, citing concerns such as statements by one of the local Islamic center’s board members, Mosaad Rawash, that appeared to support Hamas and holy war (Rawash has been suspended).

Similar battles have taken place in Europe. In London, plans for a “mega-mosque” near the site of the 2012 Olympics were greeted by a 48,000-signature petition campaign (the plan was shelved after the sponsors failed to meet a planning application deadline.) In Switzerland, voters last year banned minarets, with supporters saying Islamic law was incompatible with Swiss democracy.

But the expansion of the controversy to this country is causing concern in Islamic circles that the clash of ideologies that led to France’s attempt to ban Islamic clothing is expanding to the historically tolerant U.S.

Comments(6)

|

E-mail

|

Print

File photo: Getty Images

We’ve heard from the president. We’ve heard from the mayor. We’ve heard from countless cable news commentators.

But in the national debate over the possibility of an Islamic center near ground zero, the voices of one minority have been lost in the noise.

What about the strippers?

It turns out, they are pretty much okay with it.

FROM THE WSJ:

[A] stripper who volunteered in the Ground Zero recovery, sat on a barstool in a tiny, shiny red dress and defended Park51. “They’re not building a mosque in the World Trade Center,” she pointed out. “It’s all good. You have your synagogues and your churches. And you have a mosque.” (Read more)

[Another] worried that calls to prayer from the mosque at Park51 might wake up neighbors. But when she was told that the organizers aren’t planning loudspeakers, she said she didn’t have a problem with the project.

New York Dolls, a strip club on Murray St., is just three blocks north of the WTC site and around the corner from the proposed mosque, a project called Park51. Even closer, the Pussycat Lounge is something of an institution, having survived decades of Wall Street boom and bust.

The clubs are a reminder of the diversity of urban life, lower Manhattan being no exception.

Though deemed “hallowed ground” by many Americans, the area around the former site of the World Trade Center towers appears — in more ways than not — just like the rest of Manhattan.

You’ve got street vendors, a Brooks Brothers and pizza by-the-slice. If it weren’t for the hordes of tourists, you’d be hard pressed to tell any difference.

Emotionally though, the difference is palpable. Even the casual observer is keenly aware of what happened here.

For some, the controversy over the possibility of an Islamic center blocks away from ground zero is much ado about nothing. For many others (including a majority of New Yorkers), it is an alarming and in-your-face affront to the memory of an extraordinary tragedy.

For the strippers though, it’s not that big of a deal.

Comments(3)

|

E-mail

|

Print

On Wednesday, Facebook launched its new Places feature, which allows you to tell your friends where you are. As is typical of Facebook, you’re automatically opted in, and if you don’t want to play, you have to take steps to opt out. [For a clarification, see Update 2.0 below.]

In theory, simply not checking in at a location – either via the updated Facebook iPhone app, or through the service’s mobile site – would ensure your whereabouts remain unknown. But Places also lets your friends do the checking in for you. You can be “tagged” as being in a location by a friend who’s also there.

You could also be tagged at a location even if you’re not actually there, which raises all kinds of questions about both privacy and trust . . .

Disabling Facebook Places involves navigating your account’s privacy settings. While Facebook may have made it easier earlier this year to figure out its privacy controls, turning off Places requires you tweak settings in multiple locations. There’s no one “I don’t want to do Places” button.

Here’s what you need to do to opt out:

1. While you’re logged into Facebook, click on Account in the upper right-hand corner of your main page, then choose Privacy Settings. You’ll be at the Choose Your Privacy Settings page.

Note that, from this page, you don’t yet see the word “Places”. To get there, click the Customize Settings link near the bottom.

2. Look toward the bottom of the “Things I share” category on the Customize Settings page and you’ll see two Places-related items.

Click on the drop-down menu for “Places I check in” to change the default of “Friends Only”. This option allows you to designate who can see where you’ve checked in. Your choices are Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only and Customize. The last selection lets you get quite detailed, and you can even hide your location from specific people. The dropdown here lets you specify Only Me, the most private setting.

3. Also on the Customize Settings page is “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in”. If this is enabled, you’ll be listed as being present on a location’s Places page once you’ve checked in. For example, if you’re at the grocery store and you check in on Places, anyone visiting the store’s own Places page will see you’re there. Uncheck Enable if you don’t want this to happen.

4. Still on the Customize Settings page, scroll down to the “Things others share” category. You’ll see “Friends can check me into Places”.

By default, this is set to “Select One”. Click the drop down and choose Disabled to prevent your friends from disclosing your location.

The folks at Lifehacker have created a useful video showing the steps.

If you’re a Facebook user, will you use Places? Or will you choose to opt out?

Update: The Lifehacker item has an update regarding another Places component you may want to turn off:

As commenter Ryan G. points out, your location can be shared with friends’ applications as well. To turn that off, you have to go to a completely different section. Click the “Applications and Settings” link (pictured to the left) and then go to the “Info accessible through your friends” section. Click “Edit Settings” and you’ll see a bunch of boxes. Anything checked is available to Facebook apps that your friends are using. The last checkbox in this section is “Places I’ve visited,” so uncheck that if you don’t want your friends’ apps grabbing your location information as well.

Update 2.0: A Facebook spokesperson objected to the characterization of Places being automatically opt-in. Although the privacy settings indicate that parts of Places are active, they don’t take effect until the first time you check in at a location. Once you do, you’re presented with an opt-in screen as shown below in the iPhone example. (The Web-based version works similarly.)

Once you have clicked that “I Agree” button, the privacy settings I described earlier govern Places’ behavior for your account.

One exception, however, is location tagging. You can be tagged as being in a location by a friend, and you’ll be sent a request to approve the tag. If you don’t respond, the tag notification only shows up on your friend’s page – it’s similar to a status update – and it’s only visible by your friend, and his or her friends. It won’t show up on your page until you OK it.

The fact that the privacy settings appear to apply to a working service – even if you haven’t yet checked in – is confusing. It implies that Places is active, which is worrisome, particularly in the case of friends checking you in at a location on your behalf. However,  if you have not clicked that “I Agree” button, you can’t be checked in by proxy.

Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

Don’t tweet and drive, kids. You might end up like Dr. Frank Ryan, a famous Hollywood plastic surgeon who died after driving off a cliff near his Malibu home Monday.

Ryan, known for working with celebrities such as Heidi Montag, was tweeting about his border collie, Jill, just seconds before the crash, the doctor’s ex-girlfriend told People Magazine.

Ryan’s Twitter page was last updated at 4:10 p.m. Monday with a picture of Jill on a beach. “Border collie jill surveying the view from atop the sand dune,” Ryan wrote.

About a half-hour earlier, the doctor tweeted that he’d finally stopped to walk up sand dunes.

“After 25 years of driving by, I finally hiked to the top of the giant sand dune on the pch (sic) west of malibu. Much harder than it looks! Whew!”

Jill was in the car when Ryan crashed, according to People. The dog suffered injuries to the head, eye and paw.

In other news, AAA released a survey Wednesday showing that one in five dog owners drives with pets on their laps. No word on how many tweet about their dogs from the car.

The California Highway Patrol confirmed Ryan was texting on his phone when he crashed. The official cause of the accident isn’t yet clear.

Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

When you signed up for your current Internet service, the provider you chose indicated you’d get speeds “up to” a certain amount – say, 8 Mbps.

But good luck actually achieving that. According to a study released by the Federal Communications Commission [PDF], most U.S. broadband users get about half the speed they were promised.

From Ars Technica:

After crunching the data, FCC wonks have concluded that ISPs advertised an average (mean) “up to” download speed of 6.7Mbps in 2009. That’s not what broadband users got, though.

“However, FCC analysis shows that the median actual speed consumers experienced in the first half of 2009 was roughly 3 Mbps, while the average (mean) actual speed was approximately 4 Mbps,” says the report. “Therefore actual download speeds experienced by US consumers appear to lag advertised speeds by roughly 50 percent.”

Now, it should be noted that this is not necessarily a case of selling customers one thing and deliberately providing a lesser product. Many factors affect broadband speeds: Internet congestion, problems with network routers, Wi-Fi interference, defective customer equipment, slow computers and malware. With DSL, your speed can be affected by your proximity to the service’s transmission equipment, while cable modem service can be affected by the number of people in your neighborhood using the service at the same time.

The issue, instead, is making sure customers understand the reality of what they’re being sold. That might be done, Ars writer Nate Anderson explains, using a label that provides a lot more detail about a broadband provider’s service. It’s similar to the “Schumer box” used to outline consumer loan provisions, or the nutrition label found on food packages.

This particular label was designed by the New America Foundation [PDF] for the FCC. Giving consumers more information in an easy-to-understand format is a win for everyone, and is something ISPs should have been doing all along.

So how does your real connection speed differ from what your ISP says is your “up to” speed? Check it using tests at Speakeasy, Speedtest.net or Bandwidth Place.