America's Worst French Fries (and What You Should Eat Instead!)

READ article on Yahoo! Health: "In spite of the name, French fries are practically an American birthright. They’re offered as the first choice side dish with nearly every fast-food and sit-down chain meal available. But here’s the catch: In a recent study of 7,318 New York City patrons leaving fast food chains during the lunch hour, researchers learned that combo meals—meaning meals with sides—averaged 1,100 calories each, which is over half a day’s allotment. It goes to show: When your regular meals at these restaurants are already pushing the nutritional envelope, adding an extra 300 (or more!) empty calories can make for a dietary disaster.

The authors of the best-selling weight-loss series Eat This, Not That! and Cook This, Not That! have rounded up three of the worst orders of fries available at chain restaurants across the country. We’ve also offered up the surprising winner of the fast food French fry cook-off—you’ll never believe which restaurant chain produces the healthiest fried spuds!"

Quentin Tarantino saves L.A. theater

NOTE from Ryan: I really like "feel-good" stories like this one. Nice to know that someone like Quentin Tarantino would throw his considerable good fortune and wealth behind a little, family-owned movie theater like this. Nice guy!

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards® - Yahoo! Movies: "Of those rooting for Quentin Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds' on Oscar night, the Torgan family might be cheering the loudest.

As the proprietors of the New Beverly Cinema, the Torgans operate one of Los Angeles' last havens for classic movies. And, as of recently, Tarantino is their landlord.

The New Beverly has been the Torgan family business since 1978. But if not for the intervention of the director with the encyclopedic knowledge of film, it would be just another chain franchise.

'It was going to be turned into a Super Cuts,' Tarantino said. 'I'd been coming to the New Beverly ever since I was old enough to drive there from the South Bay -- since about 1982. So, I couldn't let that happen.'

Built in 1929 as a first-run moviehouse, the Torgan family moved into the property and turned it into a 200-seat venue for classic, independent and foreign films. One glance at a recent New Beverly schedule leaves no doubt about what attracted Tarantino to the place -- John Wayne's 'True Grit' one night, Lars Von Trier's 'Antichrist' later that week. The 'New Bev' hosts animation events, celebrity-programmed fests and a bimonthly, exploitation-fueled Grindhouse.

The theater on Beverly a block west of La Brea hit hard times in the mid-2000s as the DVD market chewed into ticket sales. Sherman Torgan, the family patriarch and the operator of the theater, was facing serious financial troubles.

'Since I'm a print collector and I screen movies at my home, I heard from other collectors and projectionists that Sherman might have to close down,' Tarantino recalled. The director got in touch and asked Torgan how much money he needed a month to keep up the theater.

'The answer was about $5,000,' Tarantino said. 'So, I just started paying him that per month. I considered it a contribution to cinema.'"

10 Jobs You Thought Would Pay More

MSN Careers - Career Advice Article: "Everyone has a different idea of what's a good or bad salary. Some people are happy just to make ends meet. Others won't settle for less than six figures. A lot of factors go into what makes a salary seem reasonable.

Therefore you can't really classify any single salary as high or low without bringing in your own bias. That said, sometimes salaries just don't seem large enough. We put together a list of 10 jobs that have salaries we thought would be bigger. Don't mistake these jobs for having salaries that are impossible to live on; instead, these are salaries that seem too low for the amount of work, time or risk they involve."

Avoid an Audit: 6 Red Flags You Should Know

Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: "If history is any indicator, less than 1% of Americans will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service in the coming year. And while some of these audits are totally random, and there's nothing that the individual taxpayer can do about them, many audits are actually instigated by the taxpayers themselves.

To that end, below is a list of 'red flags' that can cause your return to be cherry picked by the IRS for review. Pay particular attention, as knowing what the flags are can keep you out of trouble."

CLICK the link to read more.

Super Bowl spot unites Leno, Letterman

Super Bowl spot unites Leno, Letterman - Business of Super Bowl XLIV- msnbc.com: "Super Bowl viewers were rubbing their eyes at the sight of a TV spot pairing CBS late-night host David Letterman with longtime NBC archrival Jay Leno, plus media magnate Oprah Winfrey.

Appearing early in the CBS-aired game Sunday, the ad depicted Letterman and Leno glumly sharing a couch watching the Super Bowl, with Winfrey seated between them trying to make peace.

Letterman grumbles, 'This is the worst Super Bowl party ever.'

'Now, Dave, be nice,' Winfrey urges.

A disgruntled Leno replies that Letterman is only complaining 'because I'm here.'

In a whiny high voice, Dave mocks what Jay has just said.

Oprah shakes her head and sighs.

That's it. The spot only lasts 15 seconds."

New Orleans Saints: ‘They hug you, they love you, and they show it’ - Super Bowl XLIV

NOTE from Ryan: I really hope the New Orleans Saints win the Superbowl. What a feel-good ending for a city that has endured more than we could ever imagine.

nbcsports.msnbc.com: "Becoming a New Orleanian is not a choice. The city takes a hold of you and doesn’t let go. Live in New Orleans for even a brief time, and the culture envelops you like the thick, humid air or the vines of the magnolias that line the streets.

Live in New Orleans, and you have no choice but to become a Saints fan. The team is the heartbeat the city, of everyone you meet.

Playing professional football in New Orleans is a different experience too, and that goes back to before Hurricane Katrina. The gulf between pro athletes and their fans seem less wide here. They are adored, forgiven, and cajoled like family members."

America's New Housing Crisis Capitals

READ complete story HERE—Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: "Real-time listing prices in these areas are dropping, and experts expect them to fall further this year.

During the housing bust, while the effects of foreclosures and a crushing recession tore through real estate markets in states like Florida, California and Nevada, the Denver metro seemed insulated from economic harm. It has consistently performed relatively well among the 20 major metropolitan housing markets tracked in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which measures sale prices, and is published with a two-month lag. In its January report, covering the year ending in November, Denver topped those markets with a 0.5% home price increase.

But real-time asking price data provided to Forbes by Altos Research, a Mountain View, Calif.-based real estate research firm, suggest the Mile-High city is taking a turn for the worse. In July 2009 listings showed a .5% decline from the year before, the first time the city posted a price tag decline since 2008. The slump has since worsened; in January year-over-year asking prices were down 3%, to $368,870.

Denver is not alone. In eight other areas, current housing trends show similar sustained year-over-year slumps. Altos' data allows its researchers to forecast trends in the coming year, and near-term prices in these spots are expected to continue to drop. They're not all places you might expect. Some, like Charlotte, N.C., and San Francisco, Calif., we last week identified as a smart place to think about buying since, according to our measures, buying for the long-term there had become attractive."

10 Must-Have Features in Today's New Homes

the-10-must-have-features-in-todays-new-homes.html: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: "Americans want smaller houses and they are willing to strip some of yesterday's most popular rooms -- such as home theaters -- from them in order to accommodate changing lifestyles, consumer experts told audiences at the International Builders Show here this week.

'This is a traumatic time in this country and the future isn't something we're 100% sure about now either. What's left? The answer for most home buyers is authenticity,' said Heather McCune, director of marketing for Bassenian Lagoni Architects in Park Ridge, Ill.

Buyers today want cost-effective architecture, plans that focus on spaces and not rooms and homes that are designed 'green' from the outset,' she said. The key for home builders is 'finding the balance between what buyers want and the price point.'

For many buyers, their next house will be smaller than their current one, said Carol Lavender, president of the Lavender Design Group in San Antonio, Texas. Large kitchens that are open to the main family living area, old-fashioned bathrooms with clawfoot tubs and small spaces such as wine grottos are design features that will resonate today, she said.

'What we're hearing is 'harvest' as a home theme -- the feeling of Thanksgiving. It's all about family togetherness -- casual living, entertaining and flexible spaces,' Lavender said.

Paul Cardis, CEO of AVID Ratings Co., which conducts an annual survey of home-buyer preferences, said there are 10 'must' features in new homes."

Do The Rich Deserve More Tax Breaks?

You’re Rich. Get Over It.

Why people who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.

READ full article HERE.

Here we go again. Whenever the subject of taxes comes up—and it's come up in the debate over the Obama administration's decision to let many of the Bush-era tax cuts expire this year—we're treated to a chorus of complaints that people who make $250,000 a year aren't really rich. Raising taxes on these people, we're told, would be raising taxes on the middle class. Media Matters has assembled a few choice quotes on the topic.

As I argued in an article in August 2008, now reprised and updated, I have two pieces of bad news for the over-$250,000 crowd. First, the reversal of some of the temporary Bush tax cuts is probably inevitable, given the appalling mismanagement of fiscal affairs between 2001 and 2008. (It's rich when Bush-era economic officials, like Edward Lazear, Greg Mankiw, and Keith Hennessey, carp about the fiscal situation.) Second, for those of you making more than $250,000, I regret to inform you yet again: Yes, you are indeed rich—any way you slice it."

No Help in Sight, More Homeowners Walk Away

NOTE from Ryan: Now THIS is really depressing. How did we end up here? This is a scary mess to leave to our children.

Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: "In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040.

'People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,' Mr. Koellmann said. 'Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?'

After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration's loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing.

New research suggests that when a home's value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.

In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.

'We haven't yet found a way of dealing with this that would, we think, be practical on a large scale,' the assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, Herbert M. Allison Jr., said in a recent briefing.

The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home's value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance."

Recession's job losses likely to rise by nearly 1 million

Recession's job losses likely to rise by nearly 1 million - Yahoo! Finance: "As bad as the government's jobs readings numbers have been during the Great Recession, we'll soon find out the real situation likely was worse.

Much worse.

Job losses during the recession may have been underestimated by close to a million jobs. So instead of employers cutting just over 7 million jobs from their payrolls since the economic downturn began in December 2007, it's expected that the Labor Department's new estimate will be a loss of 8 million jobs.

'It's an enormous understatement of the severity of the crisis,' said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a union-supported think tank. 'It confirms that things were actually worse on the ground than what the reports suggested.'

The new reading will come when the economists at the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics release their annual revision of U.S. payrolls from April 2008 through March of 2009 Friday, using data that wasn't available as the monthly readings were being estimated and reported.

Typically the revision results in only a slight change in the previous estimate -- about 0.1% to 0.2% of the total number of jobs. But there was nothing typical about the twelve month stretch that ended last March.

That period included the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the seizing up of financial markets and the U.S. economy toppling close to the brink of another depression.

The government's current readings show that 4.8 million jobs were lost in those twelve months, more than twice the jobs lost during any comparable April-March period going back to 1939, when the numbers first started to be compiled.

But the department has already given a preliminary look at this Friday's revision, and it says it believes it will show 824,000 fewer workers on payrolls than the current estimates. That would be the biggest downward revision in the 30 years for which comparisons of those adjustments is possible."

Nicholas and Me

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Originally uploaded by Ryan Yee.

Taking a picture with my new Kodak EasyShare M340 Digital Camera. I really like this camera...very easy to use!

Ryan & Maria on Christmas Day

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Originally uploaded by Ryan Yee.

Yeah, I know I'm a little late posting this since Christmas was almost 30 days ago. But, since we just visited Maria's mom this weekend (and this picture was ALSO taken at her house), I figured this was as good a time as any ;-)