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The cell phone business is booming, but consumers are still not getting their dollar's worth according to Consumer Reports magazine. Consumers Union President and CEO Jim Guest says a survey of 31-thousand cell phone users in 12 cities found poor quality of service among all carriers. He says that in terms of dropped calls, dead zones, static and billing errors, "consumers are no more satisfied this year than they were a year ago." Guest says there "really has not been improvement in the industry," though being able to keep your number when you switch carriers is getting consumers better deals....

The experience was typical of most of my previous experiences growing up in Canada under socialized healthcare. After a three-and-half-hour wait in a small room overcrowded with sick children, we finally saw the lone doctor on staff that evening. The examination room was nowhere as spacious as what I had become accustomed to in the United States, and even more tellingly, nowhere nearly as well equipped. Unlike my previous experiences growing up in Canada, now that I had tasted American healthcare both the wait and the quality of service seemed unbearable. In the United States, I have never waited longer...

That title is from a Car and Driver article of the mid-1980s, about the results of the editors' putting two engines into a little Honda CRX. The Hubbas are even more fitting today, as Honda keeps building the best cars in the world, forcing other automakers to work hard to keep up. Some are having more success than others. How does Honda do it? In Honda's case, as with any corporation, much of what the consumer sees comes from the top. Soichiro Honda, the founder, was a daring, hard-headed, friendly entrepreneur and engineer. He thwarted the good-ol'-boy Japanese business environment...

Who could have imagined a few short months ago that the bombastic, self-styled "outsider" Howard Dean would rocket to the head of the Democrat presidential pack? The hardcore political left that is the foundation of the Democrat Party, that's who. And why shouldn't they have expected it? He represents everything that makes a leader in their eyes. He is a bit tepid on gun control, but as the primary season heats up, he'll likely make the same convenient adjustments to his core beliefs that Joe Lieberman did when he was tapped as Al Gore's running mate. What he does possess...

The Dutch PC-Active magazine has done an extensive CD-R quality test. For the test the magazine has taken a look at the readability of discs, thirty different CD-R brands, that were recorded twenty months ago. The results were quite shocking as a lot of the discs simply couldn't be read anymore: Roughly translated from Dutch: The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was recorded 20 months ago had become unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers. It is presumed that CD-Rs...

Once renowned for never going wrong, German cars have fared badly in the latest survey of reliability by the Consumers' Association, published yesterday. Volkswagen, for decades the solid workhorse of the motorways across Europe, was classed as "poor" by Which? magazine after a study of breakdown rates of cars under two years old. Two of its subsidiaries - Seat and Audi - dropped from good to average in the reliability tables as the Teutonic reputation for solid performance took a battering. The Audi TT, described as "exuberant, passionate and classic" by its manufacturers, fared less well when scrutinised by Which?,...

Okay FReepers I need to know. If price was not a factor why would I use premuim gas over the Regular? Is there a diff? I figure I am paying for a better quality which is better for the life of my van. I want my van to last as many years as possible as it is custom with a WC lift and pop top ect. I have had a few in the past and it is a big pain to factory order than go thru equipping it. Must have transportation so I take my van in for service on...

A German website is giving the country's prisons star ratings just like a hotel guide. Inmates, staff and visitors rate the prisons based on a system of up to five stars. Almost all 220 German prisons are listed. One of the most popular is Hamburg prison, nicknamed Santa Fu. One inmate wrote: "Very good food, very nice cells, nice officers, a decent daily rhythm. I keep coming back." A member of staff there added: "The only thing missing is 24-hour room service. Sometimes I think I should change sides." But there is also heavy criticism, like the comments on Erfurt...

Chesapeake Bay's Health Not Improving WASHINGTON, DC, October 17, 2002 (ENS) - Promises by state governments and federal agencies to clean up the Chesapeake Bay have made virtually no impact in the past five years, according to an annual report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The nation's largest estuary rates a 27 out of 100 on the environmental group's health index for 2002, unchanged from last year and a long way from the organization's goal of reaching 40 by 2010. The benchmark of 100 reflects the Chesapeake as described in the early 1600s, when clean water revealed meadows of...

Ever had a nasty cup of coffee? As prices of raw coffee have slumped in recent years, so has the quality of what we drink. Coffee drinkers may be swallowing ground up twigs, dust and floor sweepings as they sup their morning cup. Some coffees contain up to 20% rogue ingredients, which can also include mouldy and unripe beans. While much of the coffee drunk in the UK is classed as "reasonable" or "high quality", there is alarm about some brands at the bottom end of the market. And the plummeting price of raw coffee in recent years has made...

------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted on Sat, Sep. 14, 2002 Bowling Green plant to build new Cadillacs BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - Test production of a new line of Cadillac sports cars will create 128 new jobs at the General Motors factory here, although most of them will go to outsiders. The plant is expected to reach full production by April of the Cadillac XLR, a $70,000, two-seat sports car that goes on sale next year. All but about 20 of the new jobs will go to workers already employed by GM in factories elsewhere. The Bowling Green plant was specifically chosen for the production...

Heavier Vehicles Not Always Safer ANN ARBOR, Michigan, July 29, 2002 (ENS) - More quality, not more weight, may make vehicles safer, say researchers from the University of Michigan and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The study counters car industry warnings that tighter emissions and fuel efficiency requirements would force the production of smaller, lighter - and less safe - vehicles. Physicist Marc Ross and LBML scientist Tom Wenzel have released a report showing that vehicle quality is a better predictor of safety - both for the driver and for other drivers - than vehicle size and weight. Recent...

Home > Articles > When Art Becomes Inhuman :: Page « 1 » Notice There are postmodernist works featured in this article that some may find disturbing. Our sole intention in including these works has been to illustrate the aesthetic and moral values championed by the contemporary art establishment. We do not endorse these self-proclaimed "artists". any of today’s avant-garde artists, I’ve decided, have modeled themselves on that well-known societal fixture, the snot-nosed teenager. Since the 1960s, the hippest modern art has aspired to exactly what every garden-variety 13-year-old brat aims for: maximum opportunities to shock, flout, insult, and...

!--mobile-->Zoning bible to alter face of city June 4, 2002BY FRAN SPIELMAN CITY HALL REPORTER Developers respond to possible changes BY DAVID ROEDER BUSINESS REPORTER The power to tax has been called the power to destroy. But in Chicago, the power to zone can be just as lethal. By producing a densely written ordinance and drawing new lines on musty maps, City Hall can transfer millions of dollars in land value, enriching some investors while leaving others in the cold. Zoning is a public policy decision about what to build where. If it's ill-advised, neighborhoods suffer. Developers and community groups,...

Faulty Genes Explain Why Cloning Is So DifficultMon May 27, 3:07 PM ETCloning may not always completely reprogramme an egg cell the way sexual reproduction does, which might explain why the process fails more often than it works, experts say. Dolly, the world's first cloned animal, stands in her pen at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh in this February 23, 1997, file photo. REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cloning may not always completely reprogram an egg cell the way sexual reproduction does, which would explain why the process fails so often, researchers reported on Monday. While lawmakers around the world debate...