links for 2010-10-21

Marathoners typically have two goals: finish the race, and finish the race under a set time without hitting the wall. One researcher thinks he's found a new formula that calculates how much carbohydrates a runner needs to eat and at what pace he or she needs to run in order to complete the race without feeling any ill effects or dropping out.

Running the 2005 New York marathon was the catalyst for the study by Benjamin Rapoport, a student in the Harvard-MIT division of health sciences and technology. He hit the wall during the last few miles of the race, and said in a news release, "You feel like you're not going anywhere. It's a big psychological letdown, because you feel powerless. You can't will yourself to run any faster."
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Read it all

On Tuesday October 26, 2010, local bloggers are organizing a phone bank to support CD-47 candidate Van Tran in his race to unseat 7 time congress woman Loretta Sanchez.

The event will be held at Van Tran HQ in Garden Grove: 12942 Harbor Blvd, Garden Grove, CA 92840

Just come and bring your cheerful phone voice. The campaign will have phones and sample scripts to help you make calls.

Organizers will be there from at least 4:30-7:30PM, but time is flexible based on your schedule. Any time you can come that day for an hour or two is great.
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If you live in the OC, can you spare a few hours to help?

Google's Marissa Mayer is hosting President Obama for a Democratic party fundraiser tonight.

The event will be at Marissa's Palo Alto house, not her swanky San Francisco apartment.

Tickets are $30,000-a-head, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

And we thought Marissa's recent promotion to Google's operating committee – known as the "OC" internally – was big.

The White House's official schedule says at 7 PM tonight "the President delivers remarks at a DNC dinner" at a "California, Palo Alto, Private Residence."
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Looks like Google wants to keep that low foreign tax break scheme, eh?

Reporting from Washington —
As National Public Radio weathered a storm of criticism Thursday for its decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams for his comments about Muslims, Fox News moved aggressively to turn the controversy to its advantage by signing Williams to an expanded role at the cable news network.

Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. The Fox News contributor will now appear exclusively and more frequently on the cable news network and have a regular column on FoxNews.com.
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Good for him

A legal dispute between the U.S. and India over a herbal toothpaste was leaving a bitter aftertaste between the two countries Thursday, with Colgate Palmolive accused of filing a bogus patent.

Colgate, the world’s largest producer of toothpaste, patented a toothcleaning powder in the hope that it would take the multibillion-dollar Indian oral hygiene market by storm.

However, Indian activists claim that the patent is bogus because the ingredients — including clove oil, camphor, black pepper and spearmint — have been used for the same purpose for hundreds, “if not thousands,” of years on the subcontinent.

The dispute is likely to become a test case for who owns India’s folk medicines — a repository potentially worth billions.
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Wow…..

The race for the US Senate in California is an actual dead heat, with both Fiorina and Boxer standing right at forty-four percent (44%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) of voters are voting for one of the other candidates, and 5% are undecided…

It is also important to note that Boxer’s negatives are fully institutionalized to the point where she has never once broken the 45% level in terms of her ballot strength, and there are a “hard” fifty-three percent (53%) of voters who believe it is time for a new person.
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Indeed and read it all.

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google’s income shifting — involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” — helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”
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What say you Obama and Dems?