On March 8, Charlie Sheen launched another salvo in an online-video broadcast where he described the decision to fire him as "completely and entirely illegal," and attacked the executives involved as "nothing shy of traitors," among other personal insults. The outcome of the fight could come down to a legal decision about the actor's contract—and whether Warner Bros. can prove that his actions give them grounds to terminate it, some employment lawyers say. "It's going to be for a fact-finder to determine whether they had the ability to discharge him," said Barry Peek, an entertainment labor lawyer at Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein. A key question could be Mr. Sheen's performance on set, lawyers said. If Mr. Sheen's admitted partying behavior affected his ability to work, Warner Bros. could have cause to terminate his contract. In its March 7 letter to Mr. Sheen's lawyer, Warner Bros. said that it has filming outtakes that show "Mr. Sheen had difficulty remembering his lines and hitting his marks." "If they can establish it, that will be the case—whether he can perform his job," Mr. Stein said. There is also the question of Mr. Sheen's off-screen behavior. Mr. Sheen's attorney has said the star is not subject to a traditional "morals clause," which typically allows an employer to fire a star for embarrassing behavior. But Warner Bros., in its March 7 letter, quoted a section of Mr. Sheen's contract that offers a narrower standard: If producers believe the star has committed felonies involving "moral turpitude."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188962205491674.html

1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, from the next room. The Scottish-born Bell had a lifelong interest in the nature of sound. He was born into a family of speech instructors, and his mother and his wife both had hearing impairments. While ostensibly working in 1875 on a device to send multiple telegraph signals over the same wire by using harmonics, he heard a twang. That led him to investigate whether his electrical apparatus could be used to transmit the sound of a human voice. Bell’s journal, now at the Library of Congress, contains the following entry for March 10, 1876: I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.’” We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. Watson’s journal, however, says the famous quote was: “Mr. Watson come here I want you.” That disagreement, though, is trifling compared to the long controversy over whether Bell truly invented the telephone. Another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a similar device, and recent books claim that Bell not only stole Gray’s ideas, but may even have bribed a patent inspector to let him sneak a look at Gray’s filing.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/03/0310bell-invents-telephone-mr-watson-come-here/

Leslie Valiant, professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has received the 2010 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, computational complexity and the theory of parallel and distributed computing. Often referred to as the Nobel prize in computing, the Turing award has, since its inception in 1966, honored computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/121118/20110310/harvard-computer-science-professor-computing-turing-award-computation-machine-learning-artificial-in.htm

Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp. , Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston's Emerson College with smartphones and unlimited service in exchange for students working gratis on the company's local Internet push. Universities, in some cases, receive funding or proprietary consumer data from companies for their research. Students get experience they can display on their résumés, and add lively classes to the usual mix of lectures and written exams. "We are helping students to go out and get hired," says Randy Hlavac, an instructor at Northwestern University's Medill School. "They've done the work." The partnerships are emerging as businesses are scurrying to bolster their ability to engage with their customers on the Web by using Facebook, Twitter and the like. Of course, some parents may be surprised to learn their tuition dollars are helping to underwrite corporate marketing in addition to their children's education. Sprint provided students in an online marketing class at Emerson College with 10 smartphones with unlimited wireless access. In exchange, students blogged, tweeted, produced YouTube videos and posted Facebook updates about the launch of Sprint's 4G network in Boston. "We're teaming up with the class again this semester it worked so well," says Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott.
http://special.registerguard.com/jobs/here-tweeting-is-a-class-requirement/

AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. recently ended a longstanding practice in which they "smooth" large gains and losses generated by pension assets into their financial results over a period of years. From now on, these companies will count all such gains and losses in the same year they are incurred. While the moves might seem like arcane accounting steps, they have important implications for investors. The companies say the changes will make their earnings reporting more transparent, but they also sweep away tens of billions in past pension losses the companies have yet to smooth into—and hurt—their results. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188843415326976.html

Miv Schaaf wrote the column "Things," which appeared in The Los Angeles Times' View section (now Life & Style) from 1972 to 1987. Her final column, published Oct. 4, 1987, offered a farewell to the house where she had raised a daughter, dogs and a garden, and where she had been widowed in 1984. She ended the column: "I wish you joy, and time to think." An advocate of historical preservation, she set up the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Commission in 1973 and co-wrote the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Ordinance. Schaaf also worked to promote public libraries and was a frequent speaker at librarians' conferences. She earned awards from the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System and the California Library Assn. Her books reflected her interests in preservation and libraries--"Residential Architecture in Southern California" and "Who Can Not Read About Crocodiles," about the joys of reading. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/aug/25/news/mn-16421

Setting Sail in a Sea of Books by Miv Schaaf
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/mar97/3-97.things.html

Who Am I?
I write in longhand for about seven hours a day. The New York Times in 1989 wrote that my "name is synonymous with productivity." I write fiction and non-fiction, and received ten awards between 1968 and 2006. Answer is forthcoming.