Hasta La Gadget!

Garden gnomes are weird. I always imagined that they would come to life and try to kill me in my sleep growing up. I am not such a big fan of the original Star Trek series, but I certainly watched all the big screen movies growing up with the original cast.

If you are a fan of Kirk and Spock and have a garden that is currently gnomeless, check this out. These is now a series of Star Trek garden gnomes. They come complete with the pointy hats and beards that hipsters and gnomes prefer. There are four models with Kirk vs. Gorn, Redshirt, Kirk alone, and Spock.

The Kirk and Spock ones use the little quotes you expect to hear form the characters. My favorite is the dead redshirt. It reads: “Join Starfleet They Said, It’s Be Fun They Said.” Pick up any of the four for $24.99(USD) at ThinkGeek.

It’s not like you can’t get a plethora of accessories for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. They’re two of the most selling devices on the planet and accessory manufacturers obviously cash into the popularity. Users always have the option to buying accessories that Apple itself has made even if the company charges more for them as compared to the market. That’s precisely the case with the new Lightning Dock that Apple has released for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

The dock has been released some nine months after Apple released its current flagship devices, clearly the company was in no hurry to get this accessory out the door.

The dock has arrived following Apple’s announcements today of a cheaper iMac and a new 15 inch MacBook Pro which brings better performance, an additional hour of battery life and the Force Touch trackpad that debuted on the new MacBook earlier this year.

Many docks are already available for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus but if you’d rather have one that’s made by Apple, then be prepared to spend $39 on this accessory, which has a raised bump and flat surface to play host to both models of the iPhone.

The lightning port on the dock can obviously be used to charge the handset and it can even be used as an audio line-out port for headphones.

Apple Releases A Lightning Dock For iPhone 6 And iPhone 6 Plus , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

We have known for a while now that YotaPhone is bringing its latest handset to the United States and for that purpose it is going to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The campaign has gone live today and it’s off to a very good start, so much so that it has shattered its funding goal of $50,000 in just under three hours. YotaPhone 2 has been available in other markets since early last year but for its U.S. launch the company is relying upon a crowdfunding campaign.

Many will find it to be a curious device given that it has a dual-screen AMOLED and e-ink display on the front and back. Apart from the 5 inch Full HD AMOLED and 4.7 inch 960×540 e-ink displays, the handset has a Snapdragon 801 processor with 2GB of RAM, 32GB storage and an 8 megapixel rear camera.

The interesting thing is though that while this campaign was believed to be only for the U.S. launch, the Indiegogo campaign page makes it quite clear that the company is going to ship units to backers from virtually anywhere in the world, so it can be perceived as part of a broader global launch.

Those who are interested in purchasing one will have to pledge under $500 to get one YotaPhone 2 unit which is going to be delivered by August 2015.

YotaPhone 2 U.S. Launch Campaign Off To A Great Start , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

WASHINGTON — The Republican presidential field will spend the next year or so competing over the sterling nature of their fiscally conservative credentials. But for the time being, on one domestic topic, many of the leading candidates are embracing more federal spending.

Faced with stagnant budgets and impending cuts, the National Institutes of Health has become an object of sympathy for the GOP field. This past week, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee became the latest candidate to call for greater federal investments in scientific research.

“Governor Huckabee strongly supports NIH funding because Americans rely on its innovative collaborative research for scientific breakthroughs that will help find cures for so many debilitating diseases,” his top aide, Hogan Gidley, said in an emailed statement to The Huffington Post. “Hopefully, one day, that will include Alzheimer’s. The Governor believes we must protect and expand these critical medical investments.”

Huckabee’s comments come as another likely Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), launched a Senate NIH Caucus with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Weeks ago, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another likely Republican candidate, said he supported greater federal investments in biomedical research.

Unlike the other two, Huckabee’s support for the NIH seems to fit a larger campaign theme. The former governor has focused heavily on elderly voters, both on cultural grounds and with pledges to protect entitlements. And in his campaign announcement he spoke specifically about the need to gear health care reform more toward “prevention and cures” for diseases that afflict predominantly older populations.

“Cures could give real hope to families who hear a dreaded diagnosis and are sentenced to a slow and agonizing death,” he said. “Alzheimer’s disease alone will cost well over $1 trillion by 2050.”

The emergence of the NIH as a domestic priority that leading Republican presidential candidates are comfortable supporting is, undoubtedly, good news for science advocates. The institute is facing a new round of budget cuts this fall, when sequestration comes back into effect, and the hope is that a bipartisan coalition in Congress will find a way to stave it off.

Where negotiations seem likely to stall, however, remains on how or whether to offset an increase in NIH funding with spending cuts elsewhere. Huckabee’s statement did not make it clear whether he believes expanded funds need to be deficit-neutral. Other Republicans, most prominently former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), have argued the GOP should just embrace deficit spending when it comes to the NIH, since the investments will produce medical savings and economic stimulus further down the road.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

From recent numbers, we learned that the unemployment rate for African Americans fell to single digits (9.6 percent) for April 2015. This is the lowest rate in nearly seven years and the lowest of the Obama presidency.

Some in the media have touted this as a great success. In reality this good news masks a much larger and historic problem facing African Americans and the workforce. Despite the improvement, the African American jobless rate is still double the unemployment rate of white workers, which has remained consistent since February at 4.7 percent. In fact, since the 1960s the black unemployment rate has ranged from 2 to 2.5 times the rate for whites.

This harsh historical reality that gets buried in the day-to-day headlines has led some prominent black economists from across the country to label the job situation for blacks in the U.S. a crisis. Algernon Austin, one of those economists, states the situation succinctly “African American communities face a chronic and severe crisis of people who want to work but cannot find jobs.” If one looks only at individuals with a bachelor’s degree, the black unemployment rate still approaches twice that of the white unemployment rate. One reason? Because individual effort on the part of black workers cannot change the minds of the remaining discriminatory employers. Given the structural barriers that remain to the entry of African Americans into the workforce, Austin concludes “bringing equal opportunity to blacks in terms of the relative number of jobs will demand a strong national commitment to creating jobs for black workers.”

But as with many crises there is great opportunity. Two new reports released in May (#BlackWorkersMatter and And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise) shed a great light on the opportunities for black workers to collectively take a much stronger hold of their own economic destinies, organize into unions, and seek to reverse these trends and improve all economic indicators — not just for themselves but for all Americans.

The plight of African American workers in today’s changing economy should be of great concern to all moderate and progressive institutions. Workers of color have been particularly hard hit by the rising tide of inequality. Among the most important things that black workers need to survive and grow in today’s economy are targeted racial and economic justice programs and projects designed to foster, expand, and support opportunities for black worker organizing and collective action.

The potential for black workers to help rejuvenate the U.S. labor movement and transform it into the ultimate working class and civil rights vehicle is enormous. Just as in the 1960s, today a new, bold generation of young black leaders, many of them women, is emerging. And, even in these extremely difficult times for organizing, we can see some encouraging signs of their success. While not in the context of labor organizing, the explosion of protests and activism coming out of Ferguson, Baltimore and cities like it can also be seen as amazingly encouraging. It is remarkable that with so few resources, largely young, low-income African Americans have succeeded in sparking a national conversation about racial justice and the historic economic disparities that stem back to the very founding of this nation.

#BlackWorkersMatter offers a comprehensive picture of the status of both black workers and the struggle for economic opportunity for African Americans. The first and longest section of the report focuses on black worker organizing, its history, and the challenges it faces, relying heavily on interviews with activists and leaders prominent in the worker organizing field. It is followed by four sections that address various aspects of the black jobs crisis, its causes, its effects, and the potential for black worker organizing to provide a path to its resolution. The final section of #BlackWorkersMatter provides recommendations to expand black worker power and opportunity.

And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise is the flagship report of the Institute for Policy Studies new Black Worker Initiative. The report profiles 27 amazing black women activists from across the country who are in different stages of their careers and work in a range of different sectors. The report also features the results of a national survey of more than 450 black women in the labor movement about their experiences.

The main purpose of the report is two-fold:

– to stimulate investment in organizing black women because they are the most receptive group of workers to forming unions and have the highest union election win rate of any other group (nearly 90 percent when organized by other women of color);
– to bring the expertise of black women more fully to bear in strategies to advance economic justice within organized labor and the broader civil rights and progressive movement.

What is needed today is a bold investment in opportunities for black workers and the communities in which they reside. Organizations such as labor unions and the civil rights groups need to take up the economic justice mantle even stronger today than in days past. Race matters and diversity, equity, and inclusion must truly prevail in all its public and private thinking and action. The final story on jobs has yet to be written but with bold action we can all have our voices heard in the narrative.

Marc Bayard, an expert on labor, civil rights and racial justice issues, is an associate fellow and the director of the Black Worker Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.