I reported last week that the much anticipated, long awaited DreamWorks-Reliance deal was already done, and likely to be signed any day. But at the time I was also told there were just some other issues surrounding the debt financing that had to be wrapped up (probably because the world has been in a financial crisis). Suddenly, the Wall Street Journal comes out with a story just now saying the deal is "done". I presume what the paper means is that it was signed today. My own sources tell me that DreamWorks informed its owner Paramount within the last 24 hours that it has executed its deal with Reliance. But today Paramount waived certain provisions from the original deal to clear the way for the DreamWorks principals and their employees to join their new company "without delay".
The DreamWorks principals will have one of India's largest entertainment conglomerates set up its new $1.2 billion film company. Mumbai-based Reliance ADA Group will invest $500 million equity and provide another $700 million in debt through J.P. Morgan Chase toward the new venture, which will produce a slate of about 6 films a year. The deal now means that David Geffen has engineered his most fervent wish: to give Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks chief exec Stacey Snider enough film financing to produce independently so they can leave an ugly relationship with Paramount behind them.
Next comes a distribution deal, which is why GE's Jeffrey Immelt and Universal's Ron Meyer were dining with Spielberg and Snider last Thursday and why NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker spent the better part of that afternoon with Steven planning out the rebuild of the fire-ravaged Uni backlot. Given how Spielberg sees Universal as his professional home (he never moved his offices even after Paramount bought DreamWorks), I've always assumed he'd land there. Now, with Immelt and Zucker paying homage, it looks like another done deal no matter how much Geffen would dearly love to play one studio off of the other and mastermind a bidding war for Spielberg/Snider. And David himself? He keeps telling everyone that all he wants is to say goodbye to the movie biz.
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LOS ANGELES -- Teens choose to drop out of high school for a variety of reasons, and these days, the large numbers of students making that choice is alarming many educators. Couldn't have anything to do with the 3 million illegal immigrants in California. Nah, the 60% dropout rate at, largely Latino, Jefferson High School in LA is a coincidence. More money, that's the ticket. After all, everyone knows illegal immigrants contribute more taxes than they consume. That's why we Californians can't understand the state's inability to balance the budget. It must be that little minority of Trunks in the legislature. If only the Donks could get a 100% majority and a Governor.
The educators often hear stories like that of Tanya Stoddard, 37, who dropped out of high school in her senior year. "Right when it happened I felt completely brokenhearted, like a total failure," Stoddard said. "I just felt incomplete."
A series of family problems, health and economic woes made school seem irrelevant, Stoddard said, so she left school before graduating and supported herself with a series of odd jobs.
In California, educators are using new tracking data called the Statewide Student Identifier System to get a better handle on the dropout rate and where kids end up going. Recently, they were surprised to learn the figures were twice what they originally thought. "When you look at the dropout figures for California, the 24.2 percent figure is totally unacceptable," said Jack O'Connell, the state's superintendent of public instruction.
That figure is based on the state's new formula for calculating dropout rates. The method for tracking dropouts varies around the country, and other estimates often are much lower. But any way you count them, the dropout numbers can translate to social problems.
"We know that dropouts are much more likely to engage in crime. They're much more likely to be unemployed. They're much more likely to be dependent on welfare," said Russell Rumberger, who heads up the California Dropout Research Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "So they suffer individually as well as society suffering in terms of absorbing all the costs that these dropouts generate."
His research shows California dropouts from a single year, the class of 2009 for instance, could cost state and federal governments nearly $50 billion dollars over the course of their lives in lost wages, social programs, incarceration and health care costs.
But some students are able to get back on the right track and become role models. It took Stoddard just two years to realize the lack of a high school diploma would hold her back from any kind of real success in life, so she went back to school, earned undergraduate and graduate college degrees and now is planning to pursue a doctorate in education. "If your intention is to drop out, pleased don't," she said. "I can't tell you the heartache that comes with dropping out. Even when you say it doesn't matter, it really does. It will stop you from being able to achieve."
O'Connell said one solution, particularly in California, is to invest more in education. Let's tax all the money from the people who have it (except Hollywood) and give it to the people that don't have any. It's the patriotic thing to do.
"The state of California today, if you look at dollars per student, we rank 46th out of all 50 states in terms of dollars per student," he said. "That's abysmal." Illegal Immigration Costs California $10.5 Billion Annually
Aside from money, experts say the focus should be teacher accountability, which often creates problems with powerful unions. Also important are community involvement and a stronger relationship between school and student, so kids view learning as a priority and not a problem.
#2
Whatever the problem with the dropout rate, throw more money at it. That will fix it right up. No doubt about. Always does the job.Give the kids more support for dropping out of school. Look at how succesful this solution has been for solving the teen pregnacy problem. Subsidize the things you want to reduce. we hardly have a teen mom problem at all, unless you count Alaskan daughters of politicans.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/20/2008 10:52 Comments ||
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#3
My sarcasm just swept me away in my las post. I also wanted to say something serious. So here goes. Teens should not be making vital decisions for infants. Tens should not have serious responsibilities for infants. Not if you don't want build a system of screwed up, disfunctional kids you grow up to be disfunctional adults who produce more disfunctional kids. What would happen if pregnant teens and their breeders lost their babies to either responsible adult family or responsible strangers? No apartment and massive government assistence to the little mommie. Other grownups would find the best solution for the interests of the infant. Mommie and daddie would go to some rehabilitation camp to finish school and grow up. OK, maybe not quite that, but take the reward out of teenage pregnacies.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/20/2008 11:08 Comments ||
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#4
"Right when it happened I felt completely brokenhearted, like a total failure, ..."
I guess these things are like acts of God: they just happen.
/sarcasm
#5
Between the rampaging illegals, the Donk stranglehold on both the Legislature and the state's 55 electoral votes, and its large cities exhibiting all the wonderful attributes of Calcutta and Beirut, maybe it's time to put a mechanism in the Constitution that would enable booting California out of the Union.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
09/20/2008 12:19 Comments ||
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#6
Unfortunately, California already spends a disportionate amount on education. Education spending ought to be reduced. The foolish voters a few years ago passed an initiative giving education the biggest slice of the budget pie. There is a bottomless pit on education spending and it needs to stop. But it can't happen unless voters reverse themselves. Californians have to face the fact that a massive tax increase is staring them squarely in the face. They still have no current operating budget, unless one was concluded this morning. And, once again the solution is not cutting expenditures nor implementing a hefty tax increase...it is to borrow yet more. But, this charade may be ending. Selling bonds and continued borrowing are going to be much more difficult following this financial travesty. California voters better grow up and face problems like adults, not spoiled children.
#7
This article also rates a "Master of the Obvious" graphic. I lived in California for over 20 years starting in the mid 1970's. I went to college later than most folks, on the proverbial Ten-Year Plan of night school while working full time. In any class that required group projects with a written termpaper at the end, I could always tell which members of my group were, like myself, products of K-12 education outside of California...we'd invariably be the only ones who could construct a coherent sentence, never mind a paragraph.
California schools - all of them, I don't care where they're located - are nothing more than tax-supported moron factories. Back in the 1980's, I remember talking to an older co-worker whose parents brought her out to California after WWII. In those days, many California schools would bump a kid from a decent Eastern or Midwestern school district ahead by two full grades. Of course, they won't do that now...better to bore the hell out of them and encourage them to add to the dropout rate so the district can whine for more money for "dropout prevention programs." I also found Census data indicating that my old Ohio school district, located in a solidly middle-class but by NO means "rich" district, was sending more kids on to college, with higher SAT scores, than California districts like La Jolla and Beverly Hills.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
09/20/2008 12:35 Comments ||
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#8
Two problems can be solved at once, here. To start with, higher education in the US is on the verge of collapse as a system. It has overbuilt on the idea of endlessly increasing student bodies and budgets.
Yet at the same time, only a fraction of the degrees given are worth anything. A large portion are crap degrees.
So some day soon, business will realize that a college degree just deprives them of four of the most productive employee years. Employees that they have to educate from scratch, anyway.
This means that the sign will go up: hiring preference to non-college degree applicants. Once this happens, oddly enough, it will force high school students to get a high school diploma as well.
Colleges will still be here, just reduced to what they were originally intended to be.
#10
The educators often hear stories like that of Tanya Stoddard, [age] 37
A proof of the quality of that education being that the example given is of a girl who dropped out because of her family situation, then went back two years later to get her GED certificate, thus essentially graduating from high school. It would have been useful to the discussion had the university-degreed journalist noticed -- and provided perspective on -- what percentage of dropouts are actually merely stop-outs who finish later, and what percentage of those stop-outs go on to get higher degrees. Both my parents, for instance, had to stop out of high school. Both subsequently went on to earn PhDs, and both taught at the graduate level, Daddy as a full professor.
#11
Trailing Wife makes a good point. In the US, we give second and third chances to almost everyone. Sex offenders seem to be an exception. A few like her parents do very well, indeed. Most high school dropouts get locked in to a less prosperous future because of early bad decisions. In other countries, for the most part kids are locked in to an educational path early, before puberty in some cases, with little chance to break out of the preordained path. Late bloomers are out of luck. Kids who drop out of school do have chances later on to reenter, but why give them incentives to drop out at all? I'm talking about government support for children raising infants. It is very costly, especially to the future of those babies.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/20/2008 18:28 Comments ||
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#12
Some boomers had a parent or parents who only completed the 8th grade, entered the work force, worked hard during and after the depression, became productive citizens, married, raised families, paid taxes, fought in wars, and stayed out of jail. Government, money and teachers have little to do with personal choices and outcomes. Parential example, motivation, grit, and a swift kick in the arse have about as much to do with staying in school as anything. I do not accept the premise that a lack of education is an excuse or justification for criminal behavior or a ticket into the cult of victimization.
JEDDAH: Inspired by men in the family who lease cars to close relatives, two women from the Al-Mutari family are making money by giving financial aid for an extra charge.
"I started using my daughter's dowry money," said one of them. "My daughter received her dowry more than a year before her wedding. I used 50 percent of that money and started lending to friends and family for an extra charge. When it was time for her wedding I returned the money and a little extra. I had managed to collect enough money to continue my business."
Most of her customers are relatives in the tribe. But other people also seek financial aid from her.
"I receive more customers during the month of Ramadan than any other month," she said. "Most people tend to give their homes a makeover during Ramadan. So cash is needed to pay for the new furniture and I offer the best and fastest service possible. People come for everything: furniture, gold, home appliances and even mobile phones." For each SR1,000 she charges SR300 extra.
So she's a loan shark. In Arabia.
These women said they sought religious counsel to ensure that their business is permitted in Islam. They were advised that their lending is permitted if they make the purchases of the items, and then sell them to their customers with the markup, rather than lending the cash and charging the fee based on the amount of money loaned.
#3
The first thing that came to mind when I read this was the Grameen Bank. (They also charge high interest rates, not this high, but in the range of 20%) If the Saudi ladies in question could use this to get little enterprises running, that might be a very good thing indeed.
Jeddah Holy city of Makkah is to be turned into a smart city.
Now if they can only do something about the inhabitants ...
Advanced technological facilities will be provided for the benefit of millions of pilgrims who visit the holy city for Umrah almost all year round and Haj every year.
You'll always know where the moon is ...
It is with this objective that a two-day international conference on intelligent cities is to be held in Makkah in January next year. The conference will be organised by the Makkah Municipality in association with the Communications and Information Technology Commission and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute for Haj Research.
Mohammed Maqazi, head of the conferences scientific committee, said that the transformation of Makkah into a world-class intelligent city will help address the needs of pilgrims from around the world. The pilgrims need accommodation, meals, information and communication channels, and various modes of transportation.
A combination of the latest technologies that integrate fixed and wireless broadband networks, fixed and mobile GIS and GPS applications, and user-friendly information and communication points can greatly enhance the visitors experience, and the citys objective of quality services to the visitors of the holy sites, he explained.
Because it's all about 'user-friendly' ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/20/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
IIRC, plans are being lain for CHINA??? to build and dev a MOBILE, HI-TECH CENTRIC "ROLLING" CITY roughly similar in design to the CYCLON BASE SHIPS ON BSG, capable of independent maneuver and which will convert/recycle any internal wastes into reusable energy-products [e.g. human wastes].
OTHER PLANS > STATIC? FLOATING CITIES dependent on SOLAR-OCEAN ENERGY.
#2
Hmmmmmmm - Mayhaps they could explain to us infidels how come they use advanced technology invented and/or manufactured by infidels and Jooooooos in their "holy" cities - when mo-ham-head (bees pee upon him) had NONE of these things?
Allen won't like them dissin' their pedophileprofit prophet....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/20/2008 1:06 Comments ||
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#4
We in the West managed to provide "accomodation, meals...and transportation" long before broadband networks. We cleverly deployed the infidel innovation of free markets and voila! Food, housing, ways of getting around are not so much an issue for the overwhelming majority. We can send millions of pilgrims to Disneyworld every year without shortages, pestilence or riots. Amazing.
Allowing people the freedom to do as they please would do a lot more to improve their lives than more bandwidth. Choice would be unislamic, of course. So, that's out. If you have to live in a repressed tyrannical theocracy at least you can have faster downloads. They'll need some way to unblock the pron, naturally, but I bet they'll figure that out. How that's gonna make more food or improve transportation is a little murky, but who cares. You'll be able to browse the Koran online from cafes and kiosks throughout the city! O frabjous day! The hooples are gonna eat it up!
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
09/20/2008 2:33 Comments ||
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#5
As I remember, Mullah Omar's definition of high tech was gold plated automatic faucets for his cattle.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/20/2008 12:07 Comments ||
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#6
I can see the boys at deleted by censor licking their chops.
The U.S. Coast Guard says it intercepted a submarine-like vessel carrying 7 tons of cocaine off Central America's coast. The Coast Guard says a U.S. Navy aircraft spotted the 60-foot vessel Wednesday about 400 miles south of the Mexico-Guatemala border.
The Coast Guard sank the vessel after determining it was too unstable to be towed to port. The Coast Guard's statement Friday did not say if anyone was arrested. Officials didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.
The bust came four days after the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy seized another homemade submarine carrying 7 tons of cocaine. That craft was towed to a Coast Rican port and four Colombians on board were arrested.
Posted by: ed ||
09/20/2008 11:05 ||
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#3
Talk about polluting the ocean ..... but yeah, 7 tons is a whole lot of cocaine. Bolivia and Venezuela are really looking to prop up the economies run by their dictators, huh.
#6
BP - these vessels are neither flagged nor registered
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/20/2008 13:43 Comments ||
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#7
"sank the vessel after determining it was too unstable to be towed to port"
That's about four less occupants for federal prison. I'm glad we've learned from Gitmo.
A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.
By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as part of Russian history."
Kevin Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as the archaeological team is that they've truly found the long-lost city,
The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.
It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.
The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramics that help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.
But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
"If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that's interesting but does not make a big difference," said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. "If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important."
Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.
"We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few," said Kraiz. "But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing."
The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam.
Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency to remain independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. "They embraced Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these days," he said.
In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.
The Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the "Jewish Giant."
"In many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state," Vasilyev said.
He said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes, Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising Caspian Sea around the 14th century.
The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come before Russia's own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from textbooks because they "disproved his theory of Russian statehood," Satanovsky said.
Only now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural projects in Russia.
"Khazar studies are just beginning," Satanovsky said.
#1
temperature of many of the 200 or so magnets in the affected sector to soar by as much as 100C, which would normally take about two weeks to be cooled again.
#8
So this is why we can't detect any evidence of another advanced civilization in the universe? They all reach that one 'Oops' moment?
or
Is it God's alarm. You know God gets a little busy and focused on something over there ->. So, he sets up an ringer, sorta like on your dryer telling you its time to pull and fold the laundry before the wrinkles set in. DING! Ah, they need my attention. Which gets us back to point one, why we can't seem to find another advanced civilization in the universe. Maybe you don't want Daddy's attention. :)
BARNALA: An angry panchayat here not only blackened an Armyman's face for trying to sexually abuse a girl but made her slap him repeatedly in front of a gawking crowd as punishment.
This came even after he apologized and bent down to touch the girl's feet. As if this was not enough, a fine of Rs 50,000 was also imposed on him.
A sepoy in the Army, Sukhchain Singh had come to Nainewal village on leave. Late on Wednesday he entered the house of the girl on seeing her alone. Singh, according to villagers tried to molest the girl, but she resisted and raised an alarm. Hearing her shouts, her neighbours immediately reached the place though at that time he managed to flee.
But the girl, still seething, told her parents about the incident. Soon, Singh was tracked down and on Friday the matter was placed before the village panchayat and a farmers' union. Asked to appear before the panchayat, where he admitted his mistake, an annoyed panchayat blackened his face and asked him to touch the girl's feet in reverential apology.
Then the girl was made to thrash her molester. Finally, he was asked to give Rs 50,000 as fine to the girl's family. Singh is married and has a daughter.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Wow! Perhaps someone ought to tell this panchyat what a strap-on is for the next time this kind of thing happens.
#2
This is actually extremely good. It shows authority taking charge and issuing an appropriate penalty, quickly and with minimum debate. None of this "blame the victim" crap.
And you can bet both that every other girl will be emboldened to object in the future when attacked, and the word will get around to the young men to watch their manners, or else.
#6
I still am a firm believer that women, even in desperately poor countries, need to develop a female ethic that requires them to carry any kind of bladed weapon, and to cut a man who attacks them.
Even a piece of broken glass can give a nasty gash, which is darned effective in stopping aggressive males. And once enough women start carrying, men will have no choice but to behave better.
#7
I agree, Moose. The best self-esteem and self-protection metho is by having the means to defend youself. A blade, a razor, and the willingness to use it, would make current Islamic culture crazy. I'm ggod to go with that. I don't fear women, cuz I don't mistreat them
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/20/2008 20:10 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
I reported last week that the much anticipated, long awaited DreamWorks-Reliance deal was already done, and likely to be signed any day. But at the time I was also told there were just some other issues surrounding the debt financing that had to be wrapped up (probably because the world has been in a financial crisis). Suddenly, the Wall Street Journal comes out with a story just now saying the deal is "done". I presume what the paper means is that it was signed today. My own sources tell me that DreamWorks informed its owner Paramount within the last 24 hours that it has executed its deal with Reliance. But today Paramount waived certain provisions from the original deal to clear the way for the DreamWorks principals and their employees to join their new company "without delay".
