Despite the upcoming launch of the iPhone OS 3.0 and rumors of a significant upgrade to the iPhone itself, Mike Abramsky of RBC remains cautious about Apple Stock, and is maintaining his “underperform” rating on the stock, along with his $70 price target.  Abramsky wrote in a note to clients that Apple isn’t likely to come out with a low-end iPhone, and that a price umbrella (to borrow a phrase from Tim Cook) might will eat into Apple’s market share. ...

So for all you folks keeping score at home right now, Apple is currently trading at $104.49.  Abramsky has a price target of $70 on Apple.  He gets paid to analyze this stuff.  I don’t.  Let’s see if Apple gets down to $70 anytime soon.

via Edible Apple.

First, Rob is first and foremost a poet/artist/dramatist who has a fantastic gift for communicating in ways that inspire creativity and provoke thought. Rob is far more comfortable and far better at questioning established beliefs and creatively hinting at possible answers than he is at constructing a logically rigorous case defending a definitive conclusion. I enthusiastically recommend Love Wins because of the way it empowers readers to question old perspectives and consider new ones. Unless a person reads this book with a preset agenda to find whatever they can to further an anti-Rob Bell agenda which, I guarantee you, is going to happen readers will not put this book down unchanged.

via Greg Boyd.

This is what it’s like to work at the Foxconn factory: You enter a five- or six-story concrete building, pull on a plastic jacket and hat, and slip booties over your shoes. You walk up a wide staircase to your assigned floor, the entirety of which lies open under unwavering fluorescent light. It’s likely that your job will require you to sit or stand in place for most of your shift. Maybe you grab components from a bin and slot them into circuit boards as they move down a conveyer. Or you might tend a machine, feeding it tape that holds tiny microprocessors like candy on paper spools. Or you may sit next to a refrigerator-sized machine, checking its handiwork under a magnifying glass. Or you could sit at a bench with other technicians placing completed cell-phone circuit boards into lead-lined boxes resembling small kilns, testing each piece for electromagnetic interference.

If you have to go to the bathroom, you raise your hand until your spot on the line can be covered. You get an hour for lunch and two 10-minute breaks; roles are switched up every few days for cross-training. It seems incredibly boring—like factory work anywhere in the developed world.

You work 10 hours or so, depending on overtime. You walk or take a shuttle back to your dorm, where you share a room with up to seven other employees that Foxconn management has selected as your bunkmates. You watch television in a common room with bench seating, on an HDTV that seems insultingly small compared with the giant units you and your coworkers make every day. Or maybe you play videogames or check email in one of the on-campus cybercafes, perhaps sharing a semiprivate “couple’s booth” with a girlfriend or boyfriend.

In the morning, you clean yourself up in your room’s communal sink or in one of the dorm’s showers, then head back to the production line to do it all over again.

via wired.

On August 25, 2005, Ray Kinney was golfing at St. Andrews Golf & Country Club in Chicago when he launched a tee shot poor enough to miss the course entirely and instead sail into Lillian Demo’s backyard and allegedly connect with her skull. Demo sued, claiming that the impact caused her to suffer migraines. She argued that Kinney had been negligent because he “failed to properly aim his golf shot; failed to properly execute the swing of his golf club; [and/or] failed to warn Plaintiff of his errant shot.”

via Forbes.

After Ana Pettus, a 42-year-old mother who lives in Dallas, watched a gold minidress with a plunging, fringed V-neck go down the runway at the Balmain show in Paris last year, she knew she had to have it.  

Final run of Marc by Marc Jacobs during New York Fashion Week 2011.

She bought the piece—she wears it as a tunic instead of a dress—along with three others from the fall 2010 collection at the Paris boutique of the luxury French fashion house. Price tag: €55,150, or about $74,000.

The Balmain pieces now hang in one of Ms. Pettus's four closets, joining styles from Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as a $50,000 voluminous black-and-white gown with a giant picture of Marilyn Monroe on the skirt by Dolce & Gabbana. "I buy what I love," says Ms. Pettus, who is married to the owner of a construction business. "They are beautiful pieces. They're not mass-produced. You pay for that."

via WSJ.com.

Scott Bundgaard, the Arizona state Senate majority leader, was involved in a domestic violence dispute with his girlfriend, but was not arrested because he has legislative immunity, police said on Saturday. Republican Bundgaard's girlfriend, Aubry Ballard, 34, was booked for domestic violence assault, police said.

Phoenix police responded to a report on Friday night that Bundgaard was pulling Ballard out of a car stopped next to the median on State Route 51.

When officers arrived, they encountered Bundgaard and Ballard, and saw both had marks on their bodies showing they had been in a physical altercation, said Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson.

Bundgaard and Ballard were both detained, but Bundgaard told officers that under Arizona law he is immune from arrest while the legislature is in session, police said.

via msnbc.com.