Catcher In The Fry? McDonald's Happy Meals With A Side Of Books

SerrNovik /iStockphoto.com

SerrNovik /iStockphoto.com

Fast-food giant McDonald's is set to become a publishing giant as well — at least temporarily. For two weeks next month, McDonald's says it will oust the toys that usually come in its Happy Meals and replace them with books it has published itself.

An estimated 20 million children's books, which will feature nutritional messages, will be distributed in McDonald's kids' meals from Nov. 1 to Nov. 14, the company says. To put it in perspective, AdAge notes, that's more than the 15 million print copies of the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy that were sold in 2012.

But don't expect to find classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar with your burger. The four titles that will come with the meals were all created specifically for McDonald's — by advertising firm Leo Burnett, AdAge reports — and include characters like a voracious goat who struggles to eat right and a diminutive dinosaur who grows tall with good nutrition.

Apparently, this is part of a much bigger books initiative at McD's. It's "part of a broader book strategy that will combine the fun of the Happy Meal, new partners and technology to inspire more family reading time," Ubong Ituen, vice president of marketing for McDonald's USA, said in a statement.

The company says it also plans to roll out a new interactive digital book, in partnership with DK Publishing, each month through the end of 2014 on its website HappyMeals.com. Reading Is Fundamental, a large children's literacy nonprofit, is partnering with McDonald's to distribute the Happy Meal titles to kids without access to books.

Earlier this year, McDonald's launched a similar Happy Meal books promotion in England, which gave birth to the Twitter hashtag #mcbooks — now revived, with a nudge from the folks at FastCompany, with this week's news. Among the tongue-in-cheek McD's titles proposed by the Twitterati:

But not everyone was so amused by McDonald's announcement. Sriram Madhusoodanan, a national organizer with Corporate Accountability International, a watchdog group that has called on McDonald's to stop all marketing to kids, said the new books campaign is "more of the same."

What's more, he argues, the digital side of the books campaign is particularly troubling, because kids tend to interact much longer with a brand in cyberspace than they might do otherwise.

"Even with the books in Happy Meals, this is still fundamentally about marketing to kids," he tells The Salt. "And it's undermining the authority of parents and health professionals."

Got a witty idea for a Mcbook title? Share it with us below or on Twitter @NPRFood.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/10/231531070/catcher-in-the-fry-mcdonalds-happy-meals-with-a-side-of-books?ft=1&f=1030
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'World War Z': The Reviews Are In!

Critics are divided on troubled Brad Pitt zombie flick.
By Todd Gilchrist

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1709360/world-war-z-movie-reviews.jhtml

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An Oregon Study Casts Doubt On Whether Health Insurance ...

Written By : Michael Barone
June 21, 2013

Does having health insurance make people healthier? It?s widely assumed that it does.

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Obamacare advocates repeatedly said that its expansion of Medicaid would save thousands of lives a year. Obamacare critics seldom challenged the idea that increased insurance coverage would improve at least some people?s health.

Now, out of Oregon, comes a study that casts doubt on the premise that insurance improves health.

In 2008, Oregon state government had enough Medicaid money to extend the program to 10,000 people but many more were eligible. So the state set up a lottery to determine who would get coverage.

That created a randomized control trial (RCT), to compare the health outcomes of about 6,000 people who won the lottery with a similar number who lost.

RCTs are the best way to test the effects of public policies, as Jim Manzi argues in his recent book ?Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics and Society.?

Other studies compare the effect of policies on populations that may differ in significant ways ? apples and oranges. RCTs compare apples and apples.

The only previous RCT on health care policies was conducted by the RAND Corporation between 1971 and 1982. It found no statistically significant difference in health outcomes from having more insurance. But health care has changed a lot since then.

The Oregon Health Study, published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, found much the same thing. Comparing three important measures ? blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol levels ? It found no significant difference after two years between those on Medicaid and those who were uninsured.

It did find lower levels of reported depression among the group on Medicaid. And it found, unsurprisingly, that they did save significant money. Those findings may not be unrelated.

The findings have serious implications for Obamacare. Half of its predicted increase in insurance coverage comes from expansion of Medicaid.

Obamacare supporters have assumed that those eligible for Medicaid ? poorer, sicker and less steadier in habits than the general population ? would have great difficulty getting health care without insurance.

The Oregon Health Study is evidence that at least in that state Medicaid-eligible people without insurance ? a ?pretty sick? population, one state official said ? nevertheless managed somehow to get care that produced results about as good as those who won the lottery.

It may just be that ordinary people, even those with significant problems, are more capable of navigating the seas of American life than elites, either liberal or conservative, tend to assume. These results run contrary to the predictions of many Obamacare fans, who expected to see more positive effects from Medicaid coverage. It undermines at least a little the case for Obamacare?s vast expansion of Medicaid.

Some Obamacare backers, and others as well, point out that the study did not measure all possible health care outcomes. It couldn?t because it covered only two years; and Oregon, with more Medicaid money, ended the lottery experiment, so there won?t be any more RCT results.

In particular, in a two-year period you aren?t going to have too many cases of catastrophic illness among a population of 12,000. There?s no way you can measure outcomes in those with long-running ailments like cancer, Parkinson?s disease or Alzheimer?s.

Blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol levels can be treated with relatively inexpensive generic drugs. Medicaid coverage may result in more people getting heart bypass surgery and needing expensive drugs for rare ailments.

But that is another way of saying that health insurance as we know it may not do much to improve the treatment of common health problems.

Most U.S. health insurance today, thanks to the tax preference for employer-provided insurance, is not real insurance at all.

Real insurance pays for rare, expensive and unwelcome events, like your house burning down. It doesn?t make sense to insure for routine expenses, like repainting your living room.

The Oregon Health Study suggests that insurance isn?t necessary for people to get what are now, for people of a certain age, routine measures like blood pressure medicine. Maybe government should help poor people pay for them, but they manage to get them nevertheless.

Americans have come to expect health insurance to pay for routine treatments. Obamacare reinforces that in its requirements for coverage and makes it more difficult for many to insure against catastrophic health care expenses.

That?s not likely to make people healthier.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

Also see,

A Libertarian Turn on Marijuana Legalization, Same-Sex Marriage and Gun Rights

Source: http://www.rightwingnews.com/column-2/an-oregon-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-health-insurance-improves-health/

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Wambach is soccer's all-time leading goal scorer

HARRISON, N.J. (AP) ? A drenched and elated Abby Wambach stood at midfield with her U.S. teammates after a win over South Korea, watching the goal onslaught on the big screen.

They laughed, nudged each other and smiled as one great goal after another by Wambach was shown.

It all was appropriate Thursday night after Wambach surpassed Mia Hamm and became the greatest goal scorer in international soccer.

Wambach scored four times in the first half to break Hamm's record for international career goals with room to spare in a 5-0 victory. The second-best game of her career gave the 33-year-old Wambach 160 goals in 207 games, two more than Hamm had in a storied 275-game career that ended in 2004.

"I don't think about how I sit in history, in the books," Wambach said. "What my legacy is, that is something I do care about, and something that has eluded me is a World Cup championship. I think every great athlete in these moments, you do have to separate yourself and really celebrate. I am going to celebrate tonight with my friends and family, but at the end of the day, tomorrow when the sun comes up, I still have to keep working on my game to get better.

"I think that is what the best athletes do. They don't dwell on their championships or records. As soon as they win one, all you want to do is find something new and move toward that."

Wambach came into the friendly at Red Bull Arena needing two goals to tie Hamm.

The chase for Hamm's record of 158 was over with three goals in the opening 29 minutes. She added another in injury time to give her a nice round number.

Ali Daie of Iran holds the men's record with 109.

"I can't say how much I look up to Mia and how amazing the record she set was," said Wambach, who was doused with a bucket of water after the game.

The historic 159th came on a line-drive header that ripped into the twine in the back of the net off a corner kick by Megan Rapinoe.

"I'm just so proud of her," Hamm said. "Just watching those four goals, that's what she is all about. She fights for the ball, she's courageous and she never gives up. Her strength and perseverance is what makes her so great and it's what defenders and opposing teams fear.

"From being her teammate early in her career, I know all she ever wanted to do was win, and she continues to do that. I'm just glad I got to share 158 with her. It was short, but it was fun."

After the record-setting goal, Wambach turned and ran a couple of steps in the direction of the U.S. bench, then stopped as Rapinoe jumped into her arms. The Rochester, N.Y., native was then mobbed by teammates on the field and those who streamed off the bench as the crowd of 18,961 at Red Bull Arena cheered wildly.

After the hugs, Wambach turned to the stands and blew a kiss toward her parents, Judy and Peter.

"My teammates know me super well, and at halftime they said: 'You're such an extremist. You are all or nothing. When you want to do something, you just go do it,'" Wambach said of getting the record. "I am very much like my father in that way."

Other than "perfect ball," Rapinoe quipped, the only thing she said after the goal was, "YESSSS!"

"I'm just so happy for her," Rapinoe said. "This was an amazing, amazing accomplishment in way less games, the way she has done it. It's incredible to be a part of it."

Chants of "Ab-bee, Ab-bee, Ab-bee," cascaded through the stadium as officials got the ball and brought it to the U.S. bench.

The four goals in the friendly were the second-most by Wambach in an international game, and will allow the spotlight that has followed her in her chase of Hamm's record to finally dissolve.

Her first goal Thursday came on a shot in the box past South Korean goalkeeper Kim Jung-mi in the 10th minute. The second came nine minutes later on a flicking header.

Lauren Cheney set up the first two goals on crossing passes on plays in which Wambach eluded Korean defender Shim Seo-yeon.

Wambach's fourth goal was an easy tap-in after Alex Morgan made a run down the right side and centered the ball to the on-rushing 2012 FIFA Women's World Player of the Year.

Wambach, who was stopped on a first-half breakaway shortly after her first goal, had a chance for a fifth, which would have tied her single-game record, but she could not get her head on a cross early in the second half.

"She had her mind set," U.S. captain Christie Rampone said. "She wanted to do it tonight and you could see it. Three goals in less than 30 minutes, an amazing performance by her. It was the best of both worlds, she got to score four goals and then watch the rest of the game and enjoy the day."

Wambach was given a standing ovation by many in the crowd when she was replaced in the 58th minute by Christen Press. Before leaving the field, she exchanged hugs with long-time teammates Rapinoe, Heather O'Reilly and Carli Lloyd and a few others.

As she got to the sideline she applauded the crowd and then hugged her coaches and teammates. The crowd chanted "Abby Wambach" in return.

"It's fantastic, a fairy-tale night," US coach Tom Sermanni said. "She could not have done it any better, just fantastic. She is a great professional. She is in great shape and she was really determined tonight to go out there and break that record, and she did it in great style."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wambach-soccers-time-leading-goal-scorer-074304938.html

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Analysis: Oracle's sales miss magnifies fears about cloud missteps

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - "What the hell is cloud computing?" Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during a diatribe against the whole concept at an investor Q&A in 2008.

Asked to describe his strategy for expanding into a then-small but rapidly expanding sphere, the software giant's head said he had no idea what people were talking about when they referred to cloud computing, describing it as "nonsensical" and those writing about it as "insane".

Five years after Ellison's rant went viral on YouTube, the billionaire is struggling to fit his ageing IT giant into a newly cloud-centric world - a hard scramble spotlighted by what analysts said was Oracle's first fourth-quarter miss on new software sales in a decade.

Its rivals have grown, winning business from corporate and government customers seeking cloud-based software that is cheaper and faster-to-deploy than traditional offerings housed in massive inhouse datacenters.

Oracle is now striving to catch up with its own line of cloud software, built up partly through acquisitions. Ellison has forged alliances with long-time bitter rivals Microsoft Corp and Salesforce.com Inc to drum up new business. On Thursday, Ellison said he will announce those partnerships next week, but provided few details.

Oracle stuck for years to building high-end multi-million dollar "engineered systems" that bundle hardware and software in one package. It started selling them with Hewlett-Packard Co in 2008 and then partnered with ailing computer maker Sun Microsystems, which it agreed to buy in 2009.

Oracle says the engineered systems strategy has been a big success, helping woo business from rivals IBM and SAP

"They spent the last four years focusing on engineered systems when the bigger industry trend was the cloud," JMP Securities analyst Pat Walravens said. "They now have a structural problem."

Oracle's shares plummeted 9.3 percent on Friday, their biggest one-day drop since releasing another weak set of results in March.

Investors took the disappointing results hard because it was the first time in more than a decade that Oracle missed software sales estimates in its traditionally strongest fiscal fourth-quarter, according to analysts. That's when sales representatives hustle to close deals to qualify for year-end bonuses.

And it was the third miss in the past seven quarters for Oracle, Walravens said.

Cloud companies such as Salesforce price their products below the levels at which Oracle can make a decent return, analysts say. Some rivals even sell their products at a loss. Salesforce, for example, posted a net loss of $270 million last year.

Less quantifiably, industry executives have said that emergent business software providers such as Workday started from scratch by focusing on ease of use and simpler interfaces, while old-school IT giants like Oracle have been hampered by legacy systems and software products that they were slow to re-tool.

"This is causing a real disruption in Oracle's business," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer with Solaris Group, which manages about $1.5 billion. "It is going to pressure their business for a while."

SAILING ALONG?

Ellison, a renowned sailing enthusiast who is now devoting time and energy to his company's entry in this summer's Americas Cup, built Oracle from a scrappy operation building a database for the Central Intelligence Agency into one of Silicon Valley's foremost corporate icons.

In past months, he has championed Oracle's resurgent foray into cloud software, at his annual Oracle OpenWorld conference for clients and developers, even while continuing to buy up assets in Hawaii, such as commuter airline Island Air. He bought almost all of the island of Lanai last year.

He and Oracle executives dispute the view that the company is failing in the cloud. They blamed their quarterly miss on the economy, particularly in Asia and Latin America, during a conference call on Thursday.

In the previous quarter, executives blamed disappointing software revenue on poor execution by its salesforce.

"Our success in the cloud is significant and undeniable," Oracle President Mark Hurd said on a Thursday conference call with analysts. He said Oracle had added 500 new customers during the quarter including eBay Inc , Intuit Inc and Yahoo Inc .

Fred Hickey, editor of The High-Tech Strategist, a newsletter widely read by investors, said he does believe a bad economy was behind Oracle's rough quarter, pointing to problems in Brazil, China, India and Mexico and similar comments from other old-guard tech giants including EMC Corp , IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co .

Even up-and-coming cloud software provider Workday had mentioned "economic pressures" in its earnings conference call.

Other analysts said Oracle's installed user base - forged over decades in the business on a reputation of reliability - will be hard to displace in the short term.

"Does Oracle have pressure from the cloud over time? Yes," said Hickey. "Is it imminent? No. They are too big and entrenched."

Cowen & Co analyst Peter Goldmacher, who describes 68-year-old Ellison as "the most brilliant enterprise software person ever," also said that Oracle's problems are structural. He believes there is little Ellison could have done to avoid the slowdown the company is now seeing.

Ellison has grown profits at a healthy clip over the past decade by acquiring other makers of software that customers run in their own data centers, selling customers software up front and then cajoling them into buying long-term maintenance contracts that are highly profitable for Oracle.

That business model does not work with cloud computing because companies like WorkDay and Salesforce do not charge extra for maintenance. The cost of the software and support is combined into a single subscription fee, which generates far lower margins than the products Oracle has traditionally sold.

"The inevitable is the inevitable," Goldmacher said. "You can get as many tummy tucks and face lifts as you as want, but it doesn't make your heart and liver and kidneys any younger."

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Edwin Chan, Patricia Kranz, Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-oracles-sales-miss-magnifies-fears-cloud-missteps-120605766.html

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SmackDown Results: Bryan def. Orton by count-out and is left completely livid

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Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/smackdown/2013-06-21/results

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Paula Deen's not alone: 8 celeb apologies

Pop culture

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper TODAY

6 hours ago

Paula Deen made three apology videos after admitting to using using racial slurs (and not showing up for a TODAY appearance to discuss it) but her many mea culpas weren't enough to save her job -- Food Network announced Friday her contract won't be renewed.

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Charlie Sheen, Kristen Stewart and Kanye West all were sorry for something.

Deen's not the only celebrity who's had to publicly admit an error after a less-than-stellar act. Here are eight eating-crow moments.

Kristen Stewart: Sorry for cheating
In 2012, Kristen Stewart had a fling with Rupert Sanders, the married director of her film, "Snow White and the Huntsman." The "Twilight" star apologized not only to her boyfriend Robert Pattinson, but to her fans, saying "I apologize to everyone for making them so angry. It was not my intention." That didn't stop the terribly tacky T-shirts braying, "Kristen Stewart is a Trampire."

Lance Armstrong: I'm sorry, but everybody did it
Cyclist Lance Armstrong had the right venue for a public celebrity apology for his doping -- he went on TV with Oprah Winfrey, the queen of the celebrity confessional. But he wanted to apologize about as much as he wanted someone to pass him in his numerous Tour de France races. "I made my decisions, they are my mistakes, and I am sitting here today to acknowledge that and to say I?m sorry for that," he said. But he also went on to say using banned substances for a cyclist was like having "air in our tires." Cycling fans viewed the whole apology as a lot of hot air.

Tiger Woods: 'I had affairs'
Thanksgiving 2009 wasn't a nice family occasion for golfer Tiger Woods. His well-publicized one-car crash revealed that he was cheating on his wife, the mother of his two young children. "For all that I have done, I am so sorry," Woods would say in his apology months later. "I had affairs, I cheated. What I did was not acceptable, and I am the only person to blame." He piled praise on wife Elin, but there wasn't enough praise in the world for what she'd found out. They divorced that August.

Mel Gibson: Where did those slurs come from?
Actor Mel Gibson bragged that he "owned Malibu" when he was arrested there for DUI in 2006, but he only got worse when he started bellowing anti-Semitic remarks to the Jewish police officer arresting him. "I said horrible things to him," Gibson later admitted. Later at the station, he called a female officer "sugar (expletive)." In his televised apology, Gibson laughed uncomfortably and claimed he didn't know where the slurs came from. The apology didn't convince everyone, but in 2011, Robert Downey Jr. begged his fellow actors to forgive Gibson, saying he'd helped him through his own struggles and deserved compassion.

David Letterman: Funny man gets serious
Talk-show host David Letterman couldn't apologize without a little humor. When a 2009 extortion plot revealed that Letterman had a relationship with his former show assistant, the comic joked that even "the navigation lady (in my car) wasn't speaking to me." Then he got serious, apologizing to his wife and his staff. But the jokes were everpresent. He also said, "This is only phase one of the scandal. Phase two, next week I go on 'Oprah' and sob."

Hugh Grant: What the hell WAS he thinking?
Jay Leno got right to the point when actor Hugh Grant went on "The Tonight Show" after being caught with a prostitute in 1995. "What the hell were you thinking?" Leno asked. Grant ran down the excuses he could have used and then discarded them all, admitting, "I did a bad thing and there you have it." His willingness to face up to his "bad thing" makes his apology one of the best-received in a crowded field of star "I'm sorrys."

Charlie Sheen: I'm sorry, kind of, but not really
Google "Charlie Sheen apology" and you fall down a rabbit hole of options. "Sheen apologizes for party comments," "Sheen apologies for gay slur," "Sheen apologizes to Ashton Kutcher." But one of our favorites was when Sheen apologized to "Two and a Half Men" co-star Jon Cryer, whom he'd called a "turncoat, a traitor and a troll," apparently for not going to bat for Sheen when he was fired from their hit sitcom. Sheen apologized, then took half of it back because he was apparently still mad. "It's a little bit a half apology," he said. "An apol."

Kanye West: Mom wouldn't be happy
Like Hugh Grant, rapper Kanye West took to "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" to apologize for his infamous 2009 interruption of Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards. "It was rude, period," he said of his behavior. Then Leno asked him what his late mother Donda would've thought of the incident. West, who was very close to his mom, paused for a long break before admitting she wouldn't have been happy. Mother knows best.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/paula-deens-sorry-shes-not-alone-8-celebrity-apologies-6C10411626

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