io9 All the Evidence that Time Travel is Happening All Around Us | Jalopnik Elon Musk Is Secret Buyer Who Spent $866K On James Bond's Lotus Sub | Jezebel After Steubenvillesque Outcry, Maryville Rape Case Will Be Reopened | Kotaku Soldier Awarded Medal Of Honor, And You Can Now See What He Did
Source: http://j-smith.kinja.com/io9-all-the-evidence-that-time-travel-is-happening-all-1447061141/@gmanaughLONDON (AP) — A violin believed to have been played on the Titanic before the doomed vessel sank was auctioned for more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) Saturday, a fantastic figure which one collector said may never be beaten.
The sea-corroded instrument, now unplayable, is thought to have belonged to bandmaster Wallace Hartley, who was among the disaster's more than 1,500 victims.
The story of Hartley's band, which stoically continued playing on the ship's deck until the disaster's final hour, is a memorable part of James Cameron's "Titanic," when Hartley and his colleagues are seen playing "Nearer, My God, To Thee" as the passengers around them scream and drown in the icy water.
The incredible story, and its heart-rending portrayal in one of the world's most popular films, likely played a role in pushing the instrument's price to 900,000 pounds, or past 1 million pounds when the buyer's premium and tax are taken into account.
"It's a world record for a Titanic artifact," said Peter Boyd-Smith, a Titanic memorabilia collector at the auction, hosted by Henry Aldridge and Son in the western England town of Devizes.
"The only other items that are probably worth that kind of money are the items salvaged from RMS Titanic if they are ever put up for sale and those are in the exhibitions that go around America and Europe.
"It may never get beaten."
The violin, with Hartley's name on it, is believed to have been found at sea with the musician's body more than a week after the Titanic sank.
"Mr. Hartley and the band were very brave people ... standing by their posts to the bitter end," auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said ahead of the sale.
Henry Aldridge and Son said the violin has been subject to numerous tests to check its authenticity since it was discovered in 2006. It said earlier this year that the violin was Hartley's "beyond reasonable doubt."
The violin, of German make, was a gift from Hartley's fiancee Maria Robinson, and was engraved with the words: "For Wallace on the occasion of our engagement from Maria."
Andrew Aldridge said the buyer, who bid over the phone, wished to remain anonymous.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide car bomber attacked a small convoy of vehicles Friday near a heavily fortified private residential compound used by hundreds of foreigners on the outskirts of Kabul, killing two passers-by, Afghan officials said.
Inferior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said a suicide car bomber attacked two vehicles used "by foreigners" near the Green Village compound. There were no reports that the people in the vehicles were injured.
A police official said two civilians passing by the site of the explosion were killed by the blast. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the car bombing and said Green Village was the intended target.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that a car bomb attack had occurred in Kabul and that "there was one enemy killed as a result of the attack."
"We have no operational reports of ISAF personnel fatalities," it said in a statement.
Small arms fire could be heard after the initial blast, apparently as guards in the industrial zone where the blast occurred started shooting. An Associated Press reporter there saw fire trucks move to extinguish a blaze started by the blast.
Police initially reported that the residential compound was the target of the attack. The camp houses contractors from various countries, European diplomatic personnel and United Nations employees.
It is located on the main highway connecting Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad and is surrounded by layers of blast walls and has dozens of armed guards.
Green Village was last attacked by a suicide car bomber and armed attackers on May 2, 2012, and a number of Afghan guards were killed. None of its residents was injured in that assault.
___
Associated Press writer Patrick Quinn contributed to this report.
A few weeks ago we confirmed reports
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/9q_eX96jUMY/heres-why-the-iphone-5s-accelerometer-is-so-screwed-up-1445966306STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Tyler Gaffney ran for 171 yards and two touchdowns, and No. 13 Stanford smothered Brett Hundley and ninth-ranked UCLA 24-10 on Saturday.
Kevin Hogan threw for 227 yards and a spectacular touchdown to Kodi Whitfield as the Cardinal (6-1, 4-1) regrouped again after losing at Utah last week. Stanford has not lost consecutive games since October 2009.
Stanford hurried Hundley all afternoon to slow down UCLA's up-tempo offense.
Hundley completed 24 of 39 passes for 192 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions to Jordan Richards — the second with a little more than 2 minutes remaining to seal Stanford's victory. UCLA (5-1, 2-1) has not started 6-0 since 2005.
The Cardinal came out on top again in a rematch of last season's Pac-12 title game and showed they're not bowing out of the conference race. Stanford has won six straight over UCLA, including three times in the last year, and 14 in a row against teams from California.
The Bruins entered the game averaging 45.8 points per game. That ranked second in the Pac-12 behind Oregon, which hosts UCLA next week before traveling to Stanford on Nov. 7 in matchups that will likely decide the Pac-12's championship game.
Stanford, which had its 13-game winning streak snapped in Salt Lake City last week, showed just why it has been so tough to keep down the last four years.
The Cardinal outgained UCLA 419 to 266 yards, won the time of possession 37:11 to 22:49 and made big the play when it mattered most again.
With Hundley and UCLA's offense taking the field late with 2:57 remaining, the Cardinal hurried Hundley twice before Richards dove for his second interception after receiver Thomas Duarte fell down. Gaffney capped off a quick Stanford drive with a 4-yard TD run that put the game out of reach.
Devon Cajuste caught seven passes for 109 yards for Stanford before leaving with a right leg injury early in the fourth quarter. UCLA also lost a key player, with inside linebacker Eric Kendricks taken to the hospital for tests on his kidney after making nine tackles in the first half.
It was not immediately clear what caused Kendricks' kidney issue.
The Cardinal controlled the flow from the start but missed opportunities in the first half to ahead big.
Ty Montgomery dropped a deep pass near the goal line on Stanford's first drive. The Cardinal later lost 10 yards on first-and-goal when they fumbled a pitch, and Ishmael Adams intercepted Hogan's pass at UCLA's 6-yard line in the final minute of the half when Cajuste bobbled the ball into his Adams' arms.
But Stanford's scoring erupted with one of the most spectacular plays of the season.
While running to his right on a post route, Whitfield leaped in the air and reached back to make a backhanded catch with his right hand between two defenders. The 30-yard TD reception put Stanford up 10-3 and left most of the crowd "oohing" every time the replay was shown on the video boards.
On UCLA's next drive, Stanford forced a turnover for the 32nd straight game — the second-longest streak in the country — when Richards intercepted Hundley's pass. Richards' return for a touchdown was called back because of a holding penalty.
No matter.
Cajuste caught a leaping 34-yard pass at UCLA's 2 on third down. And three plays later, Gaffney ran for a short TD to put the Cardinal up 17-3 late in the third quarter.
Hundley regrouped to lead UCLA on an 11-play, 75-yard scoring drive. He capped it off with a 3-yard TD pass to Shaquelle Evans that sliced Stanford's lead to 17-10 early in the fourth.
Hundley and the Bruins never looked so smooth again. Ka'imi Fairbairn kicked a tying 38-yard field on the opening drive of the second half for UCLA's only other score.
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Antonio Gonzalez can be reached at: www.twitter.com/agonzalezAP
If you're after a little more creativity in your Micro Four Thirds shooting sessions, Lomography is looking to oblige with a trio of lenses aimed at just that. The outfit's Experimental Lens Kit offers three options for image capture: 160-degree fisheye, 12mm wide-angle and standard 24mm glass. Touting a "world's first," the units boast the ability to take multiple optical exposures with a digital camera. They also allow for the use of color inserts for added effect. Sound too good to pass up? Well, the package is available now via the second source link below for $89. A closer look and a smattering of sample shots can be found in the promo video after the break, too.
Some parts of the real estate market have been slowing down in recent months, but at least one group of investors is enjoying home flipping. According to a new report from RealtyTrac, almost 33,000 single-family homes were flipped in the third quarter, down 35 percent from the previous quarter and down 13 percent from a year earlier.
Home flippers — people who purchase a home and sell it again within six months — made an average gross profit of $54,927 on single-family homes in the third quarter, up 12 percent from $48,893 in the third quarter of 2012. The higher gross profit was boosted by a 34 percent annual increase in high-end flips on homes that sold for $750,000 or more. In fact, flips on homes priced between $1 million and $2 million increased 42 percent year over year, while flips on homes priced between $2 million and $5 million surged 350 percent year over year.
“Increasing home prices over the past 18 months combined with decreasing foreclosures have created a market less favorable to the high quantity of middle- to low-end bread-and-butter flips that we saw late last year and early this year,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “But the sharp rise in high-end flipping indicates there is still good money to be made for flippers willing and able to take on the additional risk of buying and rehabbing more expensive homes.”
Here’s a look at the top 10 flipping markets based on average gross profit from RealtyTrac.
Her new album won’t be available for purchase until Tuesday (October 22) but Katy Perry has made the entire opus streamable right now.
The “Hot N Cold” songstress’ forthcoming record will be available in a 13-song standard edition as well as a 16-track deluxe version.
And Katy is giving her fans a chance to hear each and every ditty all weekend long before heading to stores and online retailers to snag a copy next week.
The Prism track listing is:
1. Roar
2. Legendary Lovers
3. Birthday
4. Walking On Air
5. Unconditionally
6. Dark Horse (ft. Juicy J)
7. This Is How We Do
8. International Smile
9. Ghost
10. Love Me
11. This Moment
12. Double Rainbow
13. By The Grace Of God
Bonus Tracks:
14. Spiritual
15. It Takes Two
16. Choose Your Battles
NEW YORK (AP) — Little did Nico Muhly know when he composed "Two Boys" that the type of Internet deception he based the opera on would keep repeating over and over.
So when reports surfaced last winter that Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o was duped into an online relationship with a nonexistent woman, Muhly took notice.
"I was so happy," he said, "in a perverse way."
Then he explained how the Web had created such a tangled web.
"It wasn't just some sort of man and girl in the suburbs. So that to me was very satisfying," he added with a laugh, going on to cite the case of a physicist duped into smuggling cocaine while believing he was courting a bikini model.
"It happens to random people, to famous people, to really smart people, to educated people, to uneducated people. There's a real kind of egalitarian nature to deceit, you know what I mean?"
The work by the 32-year-old New Yorker receives its North American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, a fictionalized account of a British teenager who used the Internet in an attempt to arrange his own murder in 2003. The first composition to reach the Met stage from the company's 7-year-old commissioning program with Lincoln Center Theater, "Two Boys" has been revised since its world premiere two years ago at the English National Opera.
Starring mezzo-soprano Alice Coote as Detective Anne Strawson and tenor Paul Appleby as Brian, a 16-year-old accused in the stabbing of a 13-year-old named Jake, "Two Boys" is a starkly contemporary piece.
Met General Manager Peter Gelb said the adult themes ruled out the opera from inclusion in the company's high-definition theater simulcasts.
"It's full of such darkness, such personally really upsetting things that I have to witness that, yeah, I feel very tired," Coote said. "There's a lot of sexual and emotional abuse going on in this piece."
Gelb first became aware of Muhly when he was an executive at Sony. They started talking soon after Muhly was a pianist for a workshop of what became Rufus Wainwright's "Prima Donna."
Muhly wrote the opera with librettist Craig Lucas in a method Mozart, Verdi and Wagner would be unfamiliar with. When he had drafts of music ready, he would email them to Lucas as PDF files. Muhly composes at home and on the road — and on Amtrak trains.
"The cafe car is the best," he said. "I find out in advance where it's going to be and then wait by the staircase in Penn Station."
Reviews at the original run were lukewarm. Rupert Christiansen wrote in The Telegraph that it was "a bit of a bore — dreary and earnest rather than moving and gripping, and smartly derivative rather than distinctively individual. Yet I wish that I could have heard it again before passing judgment."
Since the London premiere, they've switched the beginnings of the two acts to make the work more linear, created more of a backstory to the detective, added about 1½ minutes of music, inserted dancing to the online chat room choruses and made minor changes to the orchestration,
"I think most operas after their first performance get revised, since the beginning of time," Muhly said. "And others go through a period of heavy, heavy revision, and then you realize the first instance was right."
Gelb has instituted a commitment to contemporary operas at the Met since he took over as general manager in 2006, presenting the company premieres of John Adams' "Nixon in China," Thomas Ades' "The Tempest" and Philip Glass' "Satyagraha." Trying to fill its 3,800 seats, the Met has put up posters in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, erected signs in New York City subways and advertised on MTV's "Catfish: The TV Show," a reality program about Manti Te'o-style trickery in online dating.
"In general a piece that is completely unfamiliar to the audience is harder to sell, obviously, than a piece that is familiar," Gelb said.
For all the modern technology, Appleby says the emotions of the story are familiar. He compares it to plays of Shakespeare and the French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac.
"A very, old traditional story about people trying to reach out and looking, longing for a connection or longing for love and not feeling comfortable expressing themselves," he called it.
Everyone involved describes "Two Boys" as troubling.
"This is written in such a way that it almost expresses the disjointedness of daily life that we all live," Coote said. "What has become of us as humanity when we're so dominated now by the Internet, by technology, as our lives are quite a lot of the time being lived within those realms?"
Update: Since we published this article the price for the silver model has been reduced even further to £375.
Despite the deluge of great new phones we've experienced in recent months, the HTC One is still one of the best out there, and picking one up off-contract in the UK just got a bit cheaper. Amazon UK has the 32GB silver HTC One for £375 inc. VAT, while the black model is just a little more, at £389. Either price is a considerable saving on the £440-450 you'd usually pay for an unlocked European HTC One with LTE support.
Check out our review (and two-month redux) for more on the HTC One, or hit the link below to pick one up for yourself.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/514OTImmqMw/story01.htm
2 hours ago
The prison breakout film "Escape Plan," which opens Friday, stars two longtime powerhouse action stars — Sylvester Stallone, 67, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, 66. In other words, Rocky and The Terminator! Or is it Rambo and Conan the Barbarian?
Most actors would consider their career made if they landed just one iconic role, created only a single character with whom they'll be forever associated. A small number of actors and actresses actually have two.
Stallone broke out as scrappy boxer Rocky, then managed to earn another round of fame as troubled Vietnam vet John Rambo. Schwarzenegger's breakthrough role was that of muscly Conan, and just three years later, he put on a pair of sunglasses and captivated audiences as The Terminator. (He's had many more roles since — but the roles he played in such films as "Kindergarten Cop" aren't parts that moviegoers know by name.)
The two-iconic-roles club is a small one. Harrison Ford is surely a charter member, for playing both Han Solo in the "Star Wars" films and daring archaeology professor Indiana Jones. Some actors have one iconic television role and one in the movies, such as Dick Van Dyke, who charmed as both Rob Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and as Bert the chimney sweep in "Mary Poppins." Women make the list, too — some may best recall Mary Tyler Moore from her "Dick Van Dyke" role as housewife Laura Petrie, but others will forever associate Moore with 1970s career woman Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
Take a trip through our slideshow and see which actors created a memorable character not once, but twice.
NVIDIA's news day apparently isn't over just yet, as the company just revealed a new graphics card: the NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti. It's apparently hitting retail shelves this November, and it's just one step below the company's super high-end GPU, the Titan. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang didn't offer many specifics on ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/DgCV__0_iuI/Cache' Heidel, the fiancee' of football player Jonathan Ferrell who was shot and killed by North Carolina police officers after a car wreck, speaks out.
By Gabe Gutierrez, NBC News Correspondent
The fiancée of a former football player who was fatally shot ten times by a Charlotte police officer after a car accident, has a surprising message.
“I’ve forgiven him,” Caché Heidel said in an interview with NBC News. “I'm not hateful. I understand it. He was scared. It just hurts.”
Still, one month after Jonathan Ferrell’s death, Heidel is struggling with the pain of what happened that night in mid-September.
"Everything went wrong that evening that could possibly go wrong,” she said, choking back tears.
The night he never came home
Heidel said Ferrell, her 24-year-old fiancé, had dropped off a co-worker and was driving home around 2 a.m. Sept. 14 when he veered off the road, crashed, and ran to a nearby house for help.
A frightened woman thought a burglar was banging on her door and called 911.
“She was afraid,” Heidel said when asked about the woman’s response. “She had a baby. It was 2 in the morning. She just reacted on fear and that’s all that happened that night.”
When three officers arrived, police say Ferrell ran towards them. One officer used a Taser, unsuccessfully, but it’s still unclear why it didn't connect.
Then another officer, Randall Kerrick, fired 12 shots, hitting the unarmed Farrell ten times.
"It hurt me when I found out he pretty much emptied his clip," Heidel said. “It was out of fear. I do feel like he intended to kill him because he was so scared.”
She said she believes the officer had an “unconscious bias” that he didn’t realize he had “until that moment.”
"I felt like if somebody had just taken a step back and really figured out what was going wrong with him they would have known he didn't cause a threat to anybody," she said.
Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter less than 24 hours after the incident — which was uncharacteristically fast for a police-involved shooting.
His attorney, Michael Greene, declined to comment on Heidel's interview, telling NBC News that his previous statements still summarized the defense team's position.
"We are confident that at the resolution of this case, it will be found that Officer Kerrick's actions were justified," Greene said in September.
National outrage
The case has sparked debate across the country. The president of the Charlotte-Mecklenberg branch of the NAACP, for one, doesn’t think the manslaughter charge is enough.
“When you find out that he shot four times, paused, (then) shot six times, paused, (then) shot two times — that was deliberate murder,” said Rev. Kojo Nantambu.
Still, the NAACP and Ferrell’s family has praised Charlotte Police Chief Rodney Moore for investigating so quickly.
"This is the only time in my career I've ever heard of a police officer being charged with a crime arising out of a shooting the same day," said Scott MacLatchie, an attorney and police training expert.
Yet some police unions are saying the quick charge will have a chilling effect on officers on patrol.
“Officers throughout this country are going to be concerned that they are going to be arrested when actions are taken that are justified,” said Daniel Trelka, the police chief in Waterloo, Iowa. “As such, someone is going to lose their life acting too slowly. “
Civil lawsuit may be next
The North Carolina attorney general is now investigating the case, but Chris Chesnut, the attorney representing Ferrell’s family, said he also plans to file a civil lawsuit.
“This is completely unreasonable,” Chestnut said. “It’s demonstrative of a lack of training. It is frightening — this unconscious bias that leads to 12 shots at an innocent, unarmed victim.”
Ferrell’s family also wants the police dashcam video to be released.
'Sweets'
Meanwhile, Heidel is still without her 'Sweets.'
“I always called him 'Sweets' because he was the sweetest person I ever met,” Heidel said.
They had been engaged for six years after meeting during their junior year of high school. A few years later, he proposed. But they endured a long-distance relationship. He played football for Florida A&M University, but she was in graduate school in Winston-Salem, N.C.
They had recently moved to Charlotte to be together. She was an accountant. He was working two jobs to finish school. He wanted to build engines.
Heidel smiles when she remembers the moment she fell for him. They were driving home from a high school football game. He was pumping gas when he saw a woman digging through the trash. While Heidel waited in the car, she said she saw Ferrell take the woman inside the gas station and bought her food.
“He was someone who felt bad walking past the homeless person on the street,” Heidel says.
But often, she speaks of him in the present tense.
“He's my best friend.”
Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/328176cb/sc/8/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C10A0C150C20A98150A20Efiance0Eof0Eshooting0Evictim0Eforgives0Echarlotte0Epolice0Eofficer0Echarged0Ewith0Emanslaughter0Dlite/story01.htmSpend a few minutes watching the preview for The CW's lusty new drama, Reign (premiering Thursday at 9 p.m. ET), and you can see why the network's largely teen audience might like it. Reign is like Gossip Girl in corsets. Telegenic 20-somethings scheme in the name of love and power. There are alliances, and betrayals, and mean moms who just don't understand. The setting happens to be France in the mid-1500's, but oh! The idea of sex with adorable, boyish rogues is timeless!
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/cw-show-reign-historical-inaccuracies/1-a-549970?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Acw-show-reign-historical-inaccuracies-549970By Rodrigo Campos and Julia Edwards
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It is back to basics on Wall Street after several weeks of market obsession with political maneuvering over a government shutdown and threatened debt default. But some of corporate America's numbers have been found wanting.
The U.S. stock market broadly celebrated an agreement in the U.S. Congress that ended a 16-day partial closure of federal agencies and budget impasse but was then socked by earnings from market bellwether IBM.
Big Blue, as it is commonly known, was joined by a pair of underwhelming results from fellow Dow members Goldman Sachs Group and UnitedHealth Group - and all three stocks dropped Thursday. That was balanced, however, by gains in other components such as American Express, Verizon and Coca-Cola, which have all reported better-than-expected results.
The mixed nature of the picture was underlined by disappointing results in the technology sector from eBay on Wednesday, which was more than offset late on Thursday when Google reported revenue and profit that exceeded Wall Street's expectations.
With the S&P 500 touching an all-time record Thursday after the congressional deal, some of the earnings reports send a cautionary message. Profit margins are declining, and part of the market's rally earlier in the year was based on expectations for strong second half results. That has not happened, making current valuations - at about four-year highs - questionable.
The market "is not at an expensive valuation compared to historic levels, but it's expensive relative to recent history," said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Overall earnings growth is expected to come in at just 1.9 percent for the third quarter, down from an estimated 4.5 percent at the beginning of October. Any impact from the government shutdown and related political uncertainty will likely only be felt in the fourth quarter.
The disarray in Washington has had a silver lining for investors as it has ensured the Federal Reserve's massive bond-buying program to stimulate the economy is unlikely to be reduced until next year. Money coursing through the financial system should remain plentiful and cheap for at least the next few months.
For the market to sustain its rally, however, investors will need to believe that stocks are still undervalued based on hopes for future earnings growth - whether that growth is due to Fed stimulus or more fundamental growth in the global economy.
The S&P's forward price-to-earnings ratio is around 14.5, about the highest in four years, and a shade under the long-term mean of 14.85. The P/E multiple has risen throughout the year as earnings growth has remained stagnant, and forecasts are likely to fall in coming months. Without improved growth, that P/E will start to look expensive.
"The stock market's expansion this year has been driven by multiple expansion rather than material improvement in underlying fundamentals. That's why people do take a lot from IBM," said Adrian Cronje, chief investment officer at Balentine in Atlanta.
IBM said profitability in its hardware business declined by $1 billion year-to-date, and it missed revenue expectations by about $1 billion as well. The company's margin on earnings excluding interest and taxes fell to 17.8 percent for the first nine months of 2013, compared with 19.2 percent for the first nine months of 2012.
That's emblematic of a continuing trend, Goldman Sachs highlighted in a research note Wednesday. Excluding financial stocks, the S&P's earnings margin before interest and taxes - an important way of measuring profitability - had dropped for seven consecutive quarters through the second quarter, with the tech sector's margins hitting a three-year low.
This underscores the continued squeeze as a result of weakening demand and cost-cutting.
"The question is, how many levers do these companies have left to pull to keep that earnings growth going?" asked JonesTrading's O'Rourke.
LOFTY FORECASTS
Part of what fueled the rally this year - other than Fed policy - was expectations for a strong second half of the year.
In July, Credit Suisse noted that six of the 10 sectors in the Russell 2000 were forecast to earn more than their usual percentage of earnings in the second half, with technology garnering 55 percent of its 2013 earnings from the latter half of the year.
"Earnings estimates for this year were very back-end loaded and if Q3 earnings are missing, it should lead to a healthy reduction of Q4 estimates," O'Rourke said. "That's the point (at which) the market starts to reconnect with the economic data, earnings and the real economy."
Those estimates have been driven sharply lower. The 1.9 percent expected growth in the third quarter compares with an estimate of 8.5 percent at the beginning of July. But forecasts for the fourth quarter have not fallen as much, and 2014's estimates have stayed pretty steady in the 11 percent range for months.
Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup Global Markets, believes these lofty forecasts are going to decline in the next couple of months, and "hence, buying into the risk-on trade has its detriments."
Levkovich specifically sees cyclical sectors, including consumer discretionary, materials, and industrials as having already priced in the good news. Current 2014 growth estimates for discretionary and materials shares sit at 18.9 percent and 17.4 percent respectively, according to Thomson Reuters data.
For their part, Wall Street analysts do not expect many gains next year, seeing the S&P 500 ending 2014 at 1,845, which would represent a 6.7 percent increase from current levels.
Still, the fourth quarter did not start well with the shutdown and threat of debt default expected to cut about 0.6 percent from gross domestic product growth, further hurting corporate earnings.
The struggles in Congress and the Fed's easy money have kept investors focus away from earnings in recent weeks.
"Right now the market is not looking at the economic data and earnings," O'Rourke said. "But several disappointing numbers and I would expect lower revisions for the fourth quarter will eventually weigh on equity prices."
(Editing by David Gaffen, Martin Howell and Grant McCool)
It turns out the myriad of benches dotting parks and green spaces can be doing so much more than just providing a place to sit or dispose of your gum. MARS Architects—a Shanghai-based firm—designed these wonderful bench alternatives that look like upholstered chesterfield couches, but are actually reservoirs for collecting rain that can later be used to water plants.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-fake-upholstered-sofa-collects-rainwater-for-green-1447221684
