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Obama bemoans ‘people hurting out there’ at Sarah Jessica Parker’s $40,000-per-person fundraiser Mark Knoller ✔ @markknoller At the 4-story brownstone that is the home of Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Brokerick, Pres Obama addressed 50 ppl paying $40K per. 14 Jun 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reported from the glitzy $40,000 a person Obama fundraiser at the home of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Yes, you read that right, $40,000 each.  Ponder that as you read this next tweet: Mark Knoller ✔ @markknoller Pres Obama said he knows there are "still a lot of people hurting...

How much would you pay to watch a replay of a great play, or skip a bunch of television commercials? And should you have to? Those are a couple of the questions raised by a newly surfaced Microsoft patent application. It’s called “Control-based Content Pricing,” and the basic idea is dynamic pricing of video content, based on the preferences of the user at any given moment — essentially setting different prices for different functions of the TV remote. Here’s an excerpt from the filing. For example, if a user initiates a navigation control input to advance past (e.g., skip over)...

Waffle and Tirzah are two cats that really know how to make a dramatic entrance into a crowded room. Heads turned. Jaws dropped. Conversations stopped, except for one woman who said, "Oh my God! Oh my God!" Waffle, a black-and-white tuxedo cat, arrived at the Steel City Kitties cat show behind the wheel of a purple child-sized battery-operated car. His sister Tirzah, a tortoiseshell-and-white cat, lounged regally atop a fluffy white cushion in a two-wheeled cart pulled by the little car.

(CNN) -- When Matt Richardson works from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., he likes to keeps the TV on to stay informed, but some celebrity or another is always taking up airtime and bugging him. "A while ago it was Charlie Sheen. And then it was Sarah Palin. And then it was Donald Trump," said Richardson, who is a video producer for Make Magazine. "And after a while I realized there's sort of always someone who I don't really want to hear about." Like any good hacker, Richardson decided to come up with a fix: He developed a do-it-yourself TV...

BAGHDAD – Despite the stifling heat, Soldiers from 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division and the Iraqi Army teamed up to bring a little relief to a remote, impoverished farming community here, June 4. Spc. John Laursen, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, hands out water during a joint U.S.-Iraqi humanitarian aid mission to the Bashariyah district near Yusifiyah, Iraq, June 4, 2010. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Daniel Schneider.The Iraqi Soldiers took the lead on a humanitarian aid drop to the rural Bashariyah district, a community near the town of Yusifiyah.  Iraqi...

A U.K. man has been jailed for three years for killing his wife by throwing a television remote control at her head... Paul Harvey, 46, killed Gloria Laguna by a fluke chance after the remote struck her on a weak artery near her neck. The couple had been arguing when Harvey lost his temper at his wife, a former American diplomat in India. An argument started about maintenance which Harvey was paying to a stepdaughter from a previous marriage.

What do you get the sports fan who wants to bowl 300 without practicing? Try the RC900, a remote-control bowling ball invented by San Antonio, Texas-based 900 Global. The bowler steers the ball by adjusting the position of a weight screwed onto a threaded shaft inside the ball. The product is being marketed to young children and those unable to bowl because of physical limitations. The ball itself is surprisingly nimble, as evidenced by a user-submitted video (see below) in which one of them slaloms smoothly around four chairs set up along the lane before striking the headpin. Of...

A new world of air combat is unfolding inside a secretive facility in Fargo, N.D., where pilots sitting in front of video screens and clutching joysticks are conducting missions over Iraq and Afghanistan -- and then driving home to the wife and kids at the end of their shift. For the first time ever, the U.S. military will train more pilots to fly unmanned drones this year than it does pilots for jets and bombers. And a storied group from the North Dakota Air National Guard is helping to usher in the historic transition. It's a far cry from the...

YAKIMA, Wash. -- One of the most remote communities in the lower 48 states is finally set to get phone service. The National Park Service is allowing a small telephone company to use public land to bring service to Stehekin, about 100 miles northeast of Seattle in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. Stehekin has about 80 year-round residents and is reachable only by boat, float plane or a several-day hike through the wilderness. The phone company, WeavTel, has been pursuing a chance to install telephone service there for years, despite opposition from some residents who don't want it. A...

Not the greatest image, but there aren't very many of this place. Nonetheless, it is both geologically and geographically significant. So: where is it, and why is it noteworthy? (After guesses, answer will likely be posted Friday evening 05/01 or Saturday 05/02). I've scattered a couple of nebulous clues in this text. Super great cudos if you can name this place. Good luck! (Click for full size, if that helps.)

December 11, 2008: The remote control turret changed the battlefield more than you might think. It all began three years ago, when the U.S. Army realized that new remote control gun turret designs actually worked, and suddenly they could not get enough of them. The army ordered over 9,000 CROWS (common remotely operated weapon stations), but for a while could only get 15 a month. By the end of 2006, there were about a thousand CROWS in service by the end of the year. The main issue was that the enemy was no longer able to knock out the turret...

JERUSALEM - Israeli defense officials say the military has deployed remote-control machine guns along its border with the Gaza Strip. The system allows female soldiers watching television screens in control rooms in the rear to spot targets and open fire. In the past, lookouts had to call in ground forces to intercept militants.

10/7/2008 - BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (AFNS) -- A 40-person team of Airmen, Sailors and Soldiers from the Kapisa and Parwan Provincial Reconstruction Team recently traveled to a remote village to provide medical services. After traversing a rugged, hand-hewn mountain roads barely wide enough for a Humvee, the team of security and medical experts arrived at Pacha Hawk to fulfill their two month plan to provide medical services to the residents, many of whom had never seen a doctor before. A small group of elders and children met the eight-vehicle convoy as it approached the village center, located in a brown...

Navy sees future with drones for spying but not fighting Associated Press Newswires 06/02/2008 Author: Sebastian Abbot ABOARD THE USS HARRY S TRUMAN (AP) - The Navy lags well behind the Air Force in the development of armed drones -- the unmanned aircraft now used increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan -- insisting that its "Top Gun" fighter pilots are still smarter, better and more flexible in combat. But the contrasting visions for the next generation of America's air arsenal point to wider debates within the military about the pace of incorporating remote-control technology into future battle strategies. It also touches...

TONGREN, China - A Tibetan monk crouched in the quiet courtyard of a nearly deserted monastery and bitterly recalled the words he and his fellow monks have been forced to recite every year at government-organized classes: "I love this country." The "patriotic education classes" have been imposed on the monks for the past decade, but the young monk in the centuries-old Rongwo monastery still can speak his own mind to a journalist. "We want freedom," he said. "We want the Dalai Lama to come back to his land." The monastery is located in the valley town of Tongren, in Qinghai...

Grab bag; a rare picture of Kerguelen from space (usually cloud-covered) and a nice picture of Bryce Canyon. Sorry I missed last week. If you click the Kerguelen picture, you get a 250-meter resolution version. Even though there have been surveys, supposedly there are still places on Kerguelen that have never been visited by a human being in recorded history. Bryce Canyon from Bryce Point

BOISE, Idaho – Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote has died. Robert Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made couch potatoship possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday. In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime. The National Academy of Television...

I have a few questions about living in Alaska...

Electrical device is likely behind the interference. A mysterious "dead zone" in Oakland Park has rendered dozens of remote-control car locks impotent over the past several weeks. In a five-block area of warehouses and small businesses near Dixie Highway and Floranada Road, nobody can explain why the gadgets fail to work. Motorists have had to get into cars the old-fashioned way -- with a key. "It worked at home, it worked at church, it worked everywhere else but here at work," said Lynne Masters, whose attempts to unlock her car by remote have been stymied in the so-called dead zone....

Coalition Forces Deliver Cement to Remote Afghan Village An irrigation canal, built with the cement, will supply water for drinking and for the crops. By Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Pete CasianoProvincial Reconstruction Team - Gardez PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Sept. 5, 2006 -- The 3rd Brigade Support Troops Battalion’s Civil Affairs Team in coordination with the Gardez Provincial Reconstruction Team delivered more than 1,200 pounds of concrete to a remote mountain village in Paktya Province. The Coalition forces stationed in Gardez traveled with the Paktya Director of Irrigation to the remote mountain village of Azghana. The cement will be...