Odd Names In The News

Odd Names In The News

Odd names in the news - In case you missed it, music power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z just welcomed a baby girl and, like many celebs before them, named her something unusual. Between that and a strangely named Wisconsin man making the news lately, we compiled a list of some of the more unique names to make the news.

man call 911 fight a cop

man call 911 fight a cop

man call 911 fight a cop - Man allegedly makes strange 911 call, An Illinois man was arrested after he allegedly called 911 and said he wanted to fight a cop. When officers got to his home, they say he began pushing and shoving them, and he was taken to jail.

Bruce Jenner: Why Kendall and Kylie Might Skip College

Bruce Jenner: Why Kendall and Kylie Might Skip College

Since their first appearance on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" in 2007, Kendall and Kylie Jenner have become stars in their own right, thanks to lucrative modeling campaigns and a thriving teen fashion empire.

PHOTOS: Kardashians as kids

When Us Weekly spoke to their father Bruce Jenner at the Performance 3D demonstration in New York on Monday, the 62-year-old Olympian admitted his girls' careers are so busy they may not pursue higher education.

"If they want to go to college, certainly, I think it's a good idea. But I'm not the advocate of, 'You've got to go to college!'" Bruce said. "I think by the time they graduate from high school, they will probably be in a position to go right to working."

10 Most Expensive Car Repairs

10 Most Expensive Car Repairs

Like real estate and relationships, cars require upkeep. If you neglect to change the oil, ignore the check-engine light or skip routine servicing, you're setting yourself up for a rude — and expensive — awakening. According to Art Jacobsen, vice president of CarMD.com, which publishes an online database of the most common and expensive check-engine-related automotive repairs, the key is to diagnose your car's problems early: "You've got to tackle it; address it when it's small, before it escalates." Here are the 10 most expensive vehicle repairs and what you can do to avoid them.10. Replace Turbocharger/Supercharger Assemblies
Turbochargers and superchargers help force air through the engine, allowing it to use more fuel, generate a bigger explosion in the cylinder and increase power. These devices typically operate at high rotational speeds, which make them vulnerable to damage and susceptible to heat. When they go bad, it can cost about $1,600 to replace them, with related repairs spiking the price by $700 to $3,000. If you're lucky enough to have a turbocharger or supercharger, you'll need to take care of it. "Make sure you have the right amount of oil in these units," Jacobsen says, noting that too much can be just as bad as, if not worse than, not enough.

9. Replace Torque Converter Assembly
The torque converter assembly is a hydraulic coupling between the engine and the transmission. It's similar to a clutch in that it allows you to come to a stop in an automatic-transmission vehicle without stalling the engine. But when the torque converter overheats, it can spring leaks and its parts can warp, and a busted torque converter may prevent you from starting — or more disastrously, stopping — your car. One way to avoid overheating this part, and incurring roughly $1,800 in repairs, is to not rev the engine while you have your foot on the brake.

Read: 9 Ways to Save on Car Maintenance

8. Replace Catalytic Converter
Catalytic converters, which detoxify exhaust emissions, are important when you're getting a smog check and if you care about your car's impact on the environment. Most are built to last for 15 to 20 years, and before they go kaput, there are plenty of warning signs. Two culprits are busted oxygen sensors and misfires, which happen when fuel catches fire as it passes through the engine. When a catalytic converter fails, it's pricey: Repairs can cost up to $2,692. It's the parts that are expensive, not the labor. "They contain platinum, palladium and rhodium — three of the most precious metals known to man," Jacobsen says.

7. Replace Hybrid Battery
A hybrid battery is often bundled with an integrated motor-assist battery, which charges it. Change one and you have to change both — to the tune of about $2,700. Because the technology is fairly new, it can be difficult to troubleshoot hybrid engines. "Hybrids are great, but when something goes wrong, you better have your checkbook ready," Jacobsen says. That's because there are a limited number of mechanics servicing hybrids and because parts are scarce. Hot weather in the South and Southwest taxes these batteries. To avoid repairs, you're best off driving them in mild climates.

Read: 9 Things to Know Buying Electric

6. Replace Injection Pump
A clogged injection pump, the device that delivers fuel into the engine's cylinders, is a relatively common problem for drivers, and the repair costs can vary widely. A Honda fuel pump might run a couple of hundred dollars and be straightforward to change. But in trucks and SUVs, the repair can cost upward of $2,900 because it's labor-intensive, requiring the mechanic to put the vehicle on a hoist and disassemble its rear. If you follow your vehicle's scheduled maintenance program and change the fuel filters regularly, your fuel pump should stay clog-free.

How Much Do Looks Matter in Presidential Politics?

How Much Do Looks Matter in Presidential Politics?

Ever since the first televised presidential debate in September 1960, when Richard Nixon was said to have been deemed the winner by Americans listening on the radio and John F. Kennedy was preferred by those watching TV, conventional wisdom has dictated that looks matter in politics. For decades political observers have pointed out that in presidential match-ups, it’s often the taller man who wins. In recent years, social and political scientists have begun looking seriously at this question, trying to quantify the effects of physical attractiveness in the lab. In presidential politics, does it help to look like Mitt Romney? Or, put another way, how much does Newt Gingrich’s face hurt him?
The answer will be disappointing to those who believe in the myth of the rational voter. Looks do indeed matter. But they don’t matter in exactly the way we thought—it’s not attractiveness alone that counts, but a cluster of traits people believe we can read into faces. It appears that voters, particularly those who aren’t paying much attention, don’t know much about politics, and don’t have strong partisan affiliations—which is to say, a solid number of Americans—operate like 19th-century phrenologists, believing on some not-quite-conscious level that that they can read a politician’s character by glancing at things like his eyebrows and jaw line.
For a long time, social scientists looked no farther than attractiveness when measuring the importance of candidate looks, and for good reason. Studies going at least as far back to the 1970s tended to show a positive correlation between handsomeness and how subjects assessed a candidate. Scholars sometimes reasoned that the attractiveness effect took place because voters without a lot of information about a candidate used good looks to infer other good qualities—a kind of “halo effect.” The beauty advantage makes intuitive sense because we see it in other, non-political arenas. Attractive people appear to benefit in all sorts of situations, like in the workplace and in legal situations. Heck, even babies are predisposed to focus on good-looking facesAnd then, in 2005, Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov and colleagues published an astonishing study suggesting that beauty didn’t tell the whole story. Rather, voters appeared primarily drawn to faces that suggested competence—so much so that the effect could actually be seen in election results. In the lab, subjects glanced for a single second at the faces of congressional candidates. They didn’t know anything else about the candidates, and they didn’t recognize them. Almost 70 percent of the time, the face that subjects judged as more competent-looking actually won the election.
What does competence look like? Working with subjects rating photos of hundreds of faces, Todorov and colleagues have developed computer models of how faces can suggest character traits like trustworthiness and likability. The competent face shape is masculine but approachable, with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and large eyes. When people say Romney just looks presidential, this is the image they’re summoning.
Todorov and other psychologists believe that otherwise expressionless faces can appear to show emotion based on how they’re formed—the shape of the eyebrows can suggest anger, for instance, while a long distance between the eyes and the mouth can suggest sadness. On Todorov’s computer model of an incompetent face, beady, close-together eyes paired with high eyebrows suggest fearfulness, even through the face is expressionless. Todorov believes our tendency to read expression into neutral faces amounts to an “overgeneralization” of a healthy trait—human beings’ ability to judge others’ intentions from a brief glance. We need to know in an instant if the guy approaching us on the street poses a threat. Todorov has found that people make judgments about the faces of strangers after just 34 milliseconds of exposure to an image.

CELEBRITIES AT SUNDANCE 2012

CELEBRITIES AT SUNDANCE 2012

Kate Bosworth poses at the premiere of "Black Rock" during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 21, 2012.

America's happiest workplaces

America's Happiest Workplaces

America's Happiest Workplaces - A 2012 survey by a job-information website suggests that employees want policies and programs that help them advance their careers.