My Favorite Cheap Vacation

You really need to put this on your list. Cheap accommodations, fantastic food and clean, clean water. The views and architecture are unreal. People are very friendly.

clipped from information.travel.aol.com Location: Croatia What to See: Visit the region of Istria first, as this is the most accommodating for tourists. Here, you can visit historic Roman towns such as Porec and Pula, as well as medieval castles and national parks. Hostels in most Croatian locations start around $10; if you can afford a little more than that, travel to the island of Brac where you can stay at the charming Villa Adriatica Hotel for around $65 a night. It's worth every cent for those who like their creature comforts. More Cheap Vacations

Ohio Begs Lawyers: Help With Foreclosure Crisis

Does the Chief Justice’s call to action resonate with you? Is the mortgage crisis, as Ohio’s state treasurer says, the defining issue of our time?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com How bad is the housing crisis in Ohio? So bad that the state’s chief justice is begging lawyers for help, and the state treasurer urges, “To anyone who wants to make a difference in the world, this is a defining issue of our time.” Foreclosures have spiked in the Buckeye State, clogging the court system. And yesterday, Chief Justice Thomas Moyer urged lawyers to offer pro bono services to distressed homeowners, according to this NLJ story. “This is more than a legal issue; this is a social issue,” Moyer said, according to a news release. “People’s lives are being seriously affected and the legal community must respond with action.” Ohio has among the highest foreclosure rates in the country. In 2007, foreclosure filings are up nearly 68% from last year, according to RealtyTrac. But does the Chief Justice’s call to action resonate with you? Is the mortgage crisis, as Ohio’s state treasurer says, the defining issue of our time?

Mars in the Path of Asteroid D Day January 30

clipped from news.aol.com Mars could be in for an asteroid hit. A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday. "These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet. The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees. If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004.

Epix Soars 50% On Alzheimer's Data

clipped from blogs.forbes.com EPIX Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: EPIX - News), today announced compelling top-line results from a Phase 2a two-week clinical trial of its novel 5-HT4 agonist, PRX-03140, in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The results show that patients receiving 150 mg of PRX-03140 orally once daily as monotherapy achieved a mean 5.7 point improvement on the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog) versus a 0.2 point worsening in patients on placebo (p= 0.005). Patients on a 50 mg dose of PRX-03140 showed a 1.1 point improvement on the ADAS-cog. After reviewing these data, Serge Gauthier, M.D., Director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Unit at McGill University, stated, “There is such an urgent and undeniable need for additional safe and effective treatments for Alzheimer’s patients. Findings like these data are not only encouraging and compelling – they appear to represent a step forward in our ability to understand and combat the effects of Alzheimer’s.

Dumbest Business of 2007

See this one, Jessica Simpson and others by following the link.

clipped from money.aol.com Made (Badly) in China Grand Prize Winner During 2007, Mattel recalls almost 20 million items made in China because of lead paint and tiny magnets. Pet food makers recall more than 360 million cans of tainted food from China. Chinese-made lunch boxes given away to promote healthy eating among children are found to contain lead. And so on ... and so on ... and so on. · See More China Messes

Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost

clipped from www.nytimes.com Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing. The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent. Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany. Nanosolar has focused on lowering the manufacturing cost Nanosolar claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt

Would You Marry for Money? (And If So, How Much?)

Tell the truth, would you marry for money?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Robert Frank’s wealth column ooks at the growing number of men and women who want to tie the knot for assets, rather than love. According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average “price” that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million. The survey asked people nationwide: “How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?” The column sites an infamous personal ad posted on Craigslist this summer, in which a twentysomething New Yorker who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” wrote that she was looking for a man who made at least $500,000 a year. She’d tried dating men earning $250,000, but that wasn’t “getting me to Central Park West,” she said. (One investment banker replied that since his money would grow over time but her beauty would fade, the offer didn’t make good business sense.)