Exceedingly...

2008-10-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

2008-10-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

In Sign of the Times, Global Village gathers to watch sign

2008-09-29T18:12:00.001-07:00

Preston Fosback and his mother, Kristine, were shocked when their Obama sign was stolen one night in April from the front yard of their Portland, Ore., home.

When they put up another one nine days ago, that, too, was swiped within hours. Undeterred, they made their own sign and put it up the next day.

Preston Fosback

But this time, 16-year-old Preston had a plan: He set up a video camera inside the house and trained it on the sign from behind a window. He figured he would catch the thief on film, should he return. He hooked up the camera to a Web site that provides live streaming. He wrote a few words on the site explaining its purpose.

And then, the handmade sign with red, uneven letters went global.

A few people started watching the video, which shows the sign next to another sign endorsing a local candidate, beside a flowerbed. The only reliable action consists of the occasional car passing in the background.

Still, by that first evening, more than 100 people were watching. The next day, when Preston checked the site during lunch at school, more than 450 were there, not only from around the U.S. but as far away as Australia, Sri Lanka and Japan.

"We had no intention of making this so public," says Preston, who goes by "signkid" on the online chat that runs next to the video. "It just kind of took over by itself."

Keeping an Eye on the Sign

Obama Sign CCTV 1

Watch the Obama lawn sign on the Internet.

Dozens of viewers now take shifts, based on their time zones, so as not to leave the sign unwatched at any time. Viewers in Europe take over for those turning in on the West Coast, who are in turn relieved by a dedicated crew of Australians. It's attracted more than 40,000 viewers and ranks among the top 10 most-watched videos on Ustream.tv, the Web site that hosts the video, among videos of the two presidential candidates and comedian Dane Cook.

"It's not that boring really," says Elena Johansson, a 26-year-old law student in Turku, Finland. "There are squirrels moving around."

Ms. Johansson admits to staying up until 4 a.m. one night, participating in the around-the-clock vigil. She's drawn to the sense of purpose, as well as the community developing in the online chat, which focuses primarily on the U.S. presidential race, the participants' personal lives and, of course, the sign.

Given that little happens on screen, mundane occurrences can generate fevered excitement.

When a car passes, someone often types, "CAR!" Each night when Preston turns on the two lamps aimed at the sign, held on the roof by pillow cases filled with dirt, viewers type, "LIGHTS!" A few nights ago, Ms. Fosback, a public-school teacher, provided some entertainment by feeding pizza to their golden retriever, Mandy, in front of the camera.

The community -- which now calls itself CHAOS, or Citizens Hanging Around the Obama Sign -- has become protective not only of the sign but of the Fosbacks.

When Preston joined the online chat during a school day, several asked why he wasn't in school. He explained he was in computer class. Some have offered to start a college fund for him. Others, now aware of his mother's teaching schedule, have suggested Preston not respond to any strangers on the site until his mother gets home.

At first, the Fosbacks were cautious about telling anyone about the video, keeping their identity anonymous. Ms. Fosback, who goes by "teachkids" on the forum, disclosed their secret to a neighbor, so she could keep an eye on things when the Fosbacks are out. Preston recently began telling a few friends at school.

One of them, named Ben, called Preston one night and asked him to prove it was really him behind the video. Preston then wrote, "Hi Ben," on a piece of paper and walked in front of the camera with it, prompting a chorus of questions on the site asking who Ben was.

When Preston informed them that his friend was a McCain supporter, a wave of derision followed until Preston warned viewers he would ban anyone from the site who wrote anything negative about Ben. Some then started writing, "I love Ben," or "Ben is my best friend."

"That's when I realized how influential I was in this chat," says Preston.

Lorraine Armstrong, a 40-year-old human-resources manager for a construction company in Orlando, Fla., says she's had the video on her computer screen, both at home and work, since she discovered it a week ago. She has a clock on her computer set to the time in Portland.

Campaign signs in the Orlando area for both candidates have been vandalized, she says, keeping her from displaying any of her own. While she sees the video as mostly humorous, she says it involves more serious matters, too, such as freedom of speech.

"There's a sense of being able to help someone do this," says Ms. Armstrong. She adds she's helped name things in the video. Some rocks near the signs, for example, are now called "Ba-rocks."

For a while, things stayed quiet around the sign. Then, at 11:13 Portland time Tuesday night, something actually happened.

Through the darkness, viewers could see two teenage girls emerge and move toward a small gnome Preston had set up by the sign. Earlier in the day, some viewers had asked Preston to put something outside to provide some variety. He and his mother came up with the gnome, left in their garage from a ceramics class.

The "chat people," as Preston calls them, loved it, naming the gnome "O'Merkley," a mixture of Obama and the name of the local candidate, Jeff Merkley, whose name is on the other sign in the yard.

The two girls approached the signs. One of them grabbed O'Merkley, the ceramic gnome, and stuffed him in a garbage bag, breaking the brittle figure in the process. They then ran off. The online forum, meanwhile, had gone berserk, with comments ranging from "PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to "Stop stop stop" to "Call 911."

But since no one knew the identity of the Fosbacks, who were sleeping at the time, or had their phone number, the viewers couldn't alert them. "It was a helpless feeling," says Candice Smith, a 44-year-old in San Francisco who sells antiquarian books on the Internet and has been monitoring the video.

The next morning, after finding the destroyed gnome by the sign, Ms. Fosback dressed in black and pretended to weep in front of the camera. That night, the forum stopped chatting for a moment of silence in the gnome's honor. One viewer made a T-shirt with the inscription, O'Merkley: Rest in Peace.

"The Internet," says Preston, "has a way of taking simple things and making them extraordinary."

Write to Christopher Rhoads at christopher.rhoads@wsj.com

2008-09-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

2008-09-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

Muppets - Beaker sings Rick Roll

2008-09-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley

Muppets - Star Stripes Forever

2008-09-21T09:44:00.001-07:00

LoL!! This was the best video I've seen for a long time!
You just gotta love the muppets!

2008-09-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

2008-09-10T05:17:00.000-07:00

2008-09-07T08:44:00.001-07:00

2008-09-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

2008-09-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

2008-08-11T08:59:00.001-07:00

Christianity is Hate

2008-08-11T00:28:00.001-07:00

I watched a documentary tonight.. much like "Jesus Camp" but more inclusive to give the big picture of Christianity in America today.

After watching it, this is what I wrote to a friend who has to hide her atheistic believes in fear of her immediate environment (She seem to hint its Christianity but she's hiding a lot of information about herself in fear)

"In America tonight, there was a program called "God's warrior" on CNN - its a documentary on Christians here.

Irene (not true name), this documentary has shocked me into disbelief and pain.

I see nothing but pure distilled hate festering in the multitudes of fanatic Christians - their face, contorted like the devil's, their eyes, sunken deep in an almost satanic lust for condemnation and contempt of men.

This is the very impenetrable wall against all reasoning. I don't see them as intelligent debaters more so than blood lusting animalistic passion to destroy all who disagree.
It's painful and its shocking.

The interview of the Islamic fundamentalist by Dawkins gave me goosebumps, but the very cousins of my faith in my backyard who are far more intent on destruction of mankind froze my spine and mind into an anaphylactic shock.

Everything that Jesus came to do, the peace and tolerance he preached has been cast aside like a useless rag doll, and they have morphed Him into a spiteful megolithitic Hell monster determined to go so far as to kill people to prove his morality.

I think its time people get together to do something - a war for the minds of rationality and peace. Moderate Islamists, Moderate Christians, Atheists, Buddhists, etc need to stop this soon.
If Obama does not win, America will be one step closer to theocracy - I hope it will never end up there.
Two sets of theocracies - United States and Israel verses Islamic States - that could be the end of the world. Infact, Pro-Israeli war Christians want to hasten the end of the world to fulfill their prophesy.
This is sick, this is pure evil, this is the new Satan's Christianity."

It is really sad, it started off with my journey into biology. I hated evolutionists and wanted to disprove their theories. Unfortunately, when I was presented with the multitudes of evidence, I felt as stupid as the Christians who claimed Galileo was a heretic for showing scientific evidence for a heliocentric model. There is plenty, and if anyone wants some evidence, I can forward you to the scientific papers - on any part of evolution.
Anyway, that's just a science, so what if Christians don't believe?
I'm ok with that, but somehow, through non-scriptural acrobatics of reasoning, almost all fundamentalists see Evolution as a reason for immorality in the world. - That if somehow, evolution makes people not feel accountable to God, and therefore makes them immoral.
The fallacy is that Hindu, Atheists, Buddhists, even before the advent of evolution, or astronomy, did not believe in God, but were they immoral?

I think there is a strong case that it is quite the opposite, Christians in devilish fervour have prosecuted and oppressed tons of people to satisfy their lust for hate - Spanish inquisition, witch hunts, women rights, slavery, jews, arabs, scientists, atheists, etc etc. Even Hitler talked about his Christian faith as justification for the holocaust. However, if we think such purified hate is a thing of the past, we are experiencing it right here in America. Christian groups spit, curse and growl at homosexuals and tolerant Christians. They even bombed and killed doctors in their political agenda against abortion. Is this an eye for and eye theology? Superceding Jesus's words? I don't care about correct theology at this point, any part of the bible can support the most hateful speech and opinion. And hence, the moral majority that Rev Falwell have created, has become Satan's New Christianity - preaching the gospel of hate against non-christians so they will see that Christianity is an extreme religion of violence and hate, and never want to accept Christ.

It is truly sad, its is the ultimate perversion of Jesus's ministry - He was against the very men, the pharisees who insist on using the laws of the bible to rule people's life. And now, the loudest voice of Christ, is the phariseetical scream of hate against people based on strict interpretation of the law - propounding and spreading Satan's Christianity.

2 Peter 2 : 1-3
1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

1 John 4:1
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Galations 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Galations 5:19-20
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these .... HATRED... WRATH

2008-08-10T09:29:00.001-07:00

2008-08-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

Firebombings at Homes of 2 California Researchers

2008-08-05T21:56:00.001-07:00

The disgusting and unethical violence of PETA.

August 4, 2008
Firebombings at Homes of 2 California Researchers
By JESSE McKINLEY

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — The police and federal authorities are investigating firebombings at the homes of two researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The attacks, which the university described as “antiscience violence,” occurred nearly simultaneously before dawn on Saturday, just days after the police in Santa Cruz discovered pamphlets in a coffee shop warning of attacks against “animal abusers everywhere.” The pamphlets included the names, addresses and other personal information of several researchers at the university, according to a news release put out on Friday by the university.

About 5:30 a.m. Saturday, two small bombs ignited outside the researchers’ homes. In one of the attacks, a vehicle was destroyed in a faculty member’s driveway. At the second residence, a two-story home near the university’s front gates, the fire forced the researcher, his wife and two children to flee the home from an upstairs window. The fires were quickly extinguished.

One minor injury was reported, according to The Santa Cruz Sentinel, which also said the police were viewing the attacks as acts of attempted homicide and domestic terrorism. The Santa Cruz Police Department would not comment on their investigation on Sunday.

But the researcher whose house caught fire was identified by The Associated Press as David Feldheim, a molecular biologist, who was listed in the pamphlet. The other researcher was not identified.

The fires provoked an angry response from the university’s chancellor, who said the attacks were being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as by the campus police and the state fire marshal’s office.

“These unconscionable acts put the researchers, their families — including their children — and their neighbors in grave danger,” the chancellor, George R. Blumenthal, said in a news release.

The university described the attacks as the latest in a series of threats and provocations from those opposed to “biomedical research using animals,” including a February incident in which several masked intruders entered a researcher’s home. After a confrontation, the intruders fled. That incident followed harassing phone calls and vandalism of researchers’ homes, the university said.

In December, the 10 chancellors at the University of California campuses affirmed in a statement their support of animal research and the university system’s commitment to “the highest standards of animal care, safety and health.”

At one of the bombed properties, the porch was badly scorched and a plastic watering can lay melted next to the charred front door. Two small windows in the door had also melted.

The attacks surprised some in Santa Cruz, a genial beachfront town where laid-back college students and equally relaxed day-trippers make up much of the landscape.

Chris Conway, who lives across the street from one of the homes that was attacked, said investigators had combed the site all day Saturday.

“I don’t know what they did to deserve that,” said Mr. Conway, a 19-year-old student. “I think that’s kind of messed up to do that to someone’s home.”

2008-08-03T13:03:00.001-07:00

2008-08-02T09:29:00.001-07:00

2008-08-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

2008-07-31T08:13:00.001-07:00

Animal rights?? Bullshit...

2008-07-29T06:32:00.002-07:00

Check out Penn and Teller's mockumentary on PETA - an extremist organization with a cute face.

Doctor and Patient, Now at Odds

2008-07-29T06:18:00.001-07:00

Doctor and Patient, Now at Odds
By TARA PARKER-POPE

A growing chorus of discontent suggests that the once-revered doctor-patient relationship is on the rocks.

The relationship is the cornerstone of the medical system — nobody can be helped if doctors and patients aren’t getting along. But increasingly, research and anecdotal reports suggest that many patients don’t trust doctors.

About one in four patients feel that their physicians sometimes expose them to unnecessary risk, according to data from a Johns Hopkins study published this year in the journal Medicine. And two recent studies show that whether patients trust a doctor strongly influences whether they take their medication.

The distrust and animosity between doctors and patients has shown up in a variety of places. In bookstores, there is now a genre of “what your doctor won’t tell you” books promising previously withheld information on everything from weight loss to heart disease.

The Internet is bristling with frustrated comments from patients. On The New York Times’s Well blog recently, a reader named Tom echoed the concerns of many about doctors. “I, as patient, say stop acting like you know everything,” he wrote. “Admit it, and we patients may stop distrusting your quick off-the-line, glib diagnosis.”

Doctors say they are not surprised. “It’s been striking to me since I went into practice how unhappy patients are and, frankly, how mistreated patients are,” said Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, director of the heart failure program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and an occasional contributor to Science Times.

He recounted a conversation he had last week with a patient who had been transferred to his hospital. “I said, ‘So why are you here?’ He said: ‘I have no idea. They just transferred me.’

“Nobody is talking to the patients,” Dr. Jauhar went on. “Everyone is so rushed. I don’t think the doctors are bad people — they are just working in a broken system.”

The reasons for all this frustration are complex. Doctors, facing declining reimbursements and higher costs, have only minutes to spend with each patient. News reports about medical errors and drug industry influence have increased patients’ distrust. And the rise of direct-to-consumer drug advertising and medical Web sites have taught patients to research their own medical issues and made them more skeptical and inquisitive.

“Doctors used to be the only source for information on medical problems and what to do, but now our knowledge is demystified,” said Dr. Robert Lamberts, an internal medicine physician and medical blogger in Augusta, Ga. “When patients come in with preconceived ideas about what we should do, they do get perturbed at us for not listening. I do my best to explain why I do what I do, but some people are not satisfied until we do what they want.”

Others say the problem also stems from a grueling training system that removes doctors from the world patients live in.

“By the time you’re done with your training, you feel, in many ways, that you are as far as you could possibly be from the very people you’ve set out to help,” said Dr. Pauline Chen, most recently a liver transplant surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of “Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality” (Knopf, 2007). “We don’t even talk the same language anymore.”

Dr. David H. Newman, an emergency room physician at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, says there is a disconnect between the way doctors and patients view medicine. Doctors are trained to diagnose disease and treat it, he said, while “patients are interested in being tended to and being listened to and being well.”

Dr. Newman, author of the new book “Hippocrates’ Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine” (Scribner), says studies of the placebo effect suggest that Hippocrates was right when he claimed that faith in physicians can help healing. “It adds misery and suffering to any condition to not have a source of care that you trust,” Dr. Newman said.

But these doctors say the situation is not hopeless. Patients who don’t trust their doctor should look for a new one, but they may be able to improve existing relationships by being more open and communicative.

Go to a doctor’s visit with written questions so you don’t forget to ask what’s important to you. If a doctor starts to rush out of the room, stop him or her by saying, “Doctor, I still have some questions.” Patients who are open with their doctors about their feelings and fears will often get the same level of openness in return.

“All of us, the patients and the doctors, ultimately want the same thing,” Dr. Chen said. “But we see ourselves on opposite sides of a divide. There is this sense that we’re facing off with each other and we’re not working together. It’s a tragedy.”

2008-07-25T09:23:00.001-07:00

2008-07-25T09:22:00.001-07:00

Griping Online? Comcast Hears and Talks Back

Finally! A company that gorges me penniless with outrages fees, it's nice that they are finally doing something about customer service...
I like this - I don't agree that its "Big Brother" - if you don't want Comcast to read it, just don't post it on a public space.

By BRIAN STELTER

PHILADELPHIA — Brandon Dilbeck, 20, a student at the University of Washington, was complaining recently on his blog, Brandon Notices, about Comcast's practice of posting ads in its on-screen programming guide.

He assumed he was writing for his own benefit. "It feels like nobody ever really reads my blog," he said. "Nobody has left a comment in months."

Shortly afterward, he received an e-mail message from Comcast, thanking him for the feedback and adding that it was working on a new interactive guide that might "illuminate the issues that you are currently experiencing."

Mr. Dilbeck found it all a bit creepy. "The rest of his e-mail may as well have read, 'Big Brother is watching you,' " he said.

But Frank Eliason, digital care manager at Comcast, says he was just trying to help.

From a sparse desk dominated by two computer screens in the new Comcast Center here, Mr. Eliason uses readily available online tools to monitor public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks for any mention of Comcast, the nation's largest cable company. When he sees a complaint like Mr. Dilbeck's, he contacts the source to try to defuse the problem.

"When you're having a two-way conversation, you really get to clear the air," Mr. Eliason said.

Comcast is not the only company trying to reach out to customers online. Using the social messaging service Twitter, Southwest Airlines answers customer questions about ticket prices and flight delays, Whole Foods Market posts details about discounts, and the chief executive of the online shoe store Zappos shares details of his life with 7,200 "followers." Many other companies also monitor online discussion groups.

But Comcast is going an extra step by talking back, contacting customers who are discussing the company online.

Odds are they are complaining about Comcast. The company was ranked at the very bottom of the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index, which tracks consumer opinions of more than 200 companies. Hundreds of customers have filed grievances on a site called ComcastMustDie.com.

Comcast says the online outreach is part of a larger effort to revamp its customer service. In just about five months, Mr. Eliason, whose job redefines customer service, has reached out to well over 1,000 customers online.

Lyza Gardner, a vice president at a Web development company in Portland, Ore., used Twitter to vent about a $183 cable bill last month. (The bill was prorated for almost two months of service.) Her comment — "very angry at Comcast" — set off Mr. Eliason's search tool, prompting him to type out his typical reply: "Can I help?" The response caught Ms. Gardner off guard.

"It's one thing to spit vitriol about a company when they can't hear you," she said in an interview. It's another, she said, when the company replies. "I immediately backed down and softened my tone when I knew I was talking to a real person."

As blogs, forums and social networking sites have become pervasive parts of people's lives, companies have grappled with whether — and how — to deal with them. The sites expose hundreds and potentially thousands of other people to the experiences of individual customers.

Brian D. Solis, who runs a public relations firm, FutureWorks, that specializes in social media, said companies like Comcast are "taking what used to be an inbound call center and turning it into an outbound form of customer relations" that can also help spot problems before they get out of hand.

Still, others agree with Mr. Dilbeck, the University of Washington student, that the online outreach is annoying. "Comcast Is Watching Us," declared a blog called Contempt for the World in February, when Mr. Eliason started wading into the comment sections of blogs.

On the whole, though, all the talking back appears to be good for the company's public image. Mr. Eliason said he remembered only seven cases in which customers had called him creepy, and he believed the benefits far outweighed the occasional awkwardness.

When a commenter makes claims of being mistreated by Comcast, Mr. Eliason contacts the person directly and steers the case toward a resolution. "Wish me luck @comcastcares," William Pomerantz, an employee at the X Prize Foundation in Washington, wrote last month as he headed to his new apartment to await his third appointment for a Comcast installation.

Three hours later, Mr. Pomerantz badly needed some luck. The technician had not arrived, a telephone representative had disconnected his call, and Mr. Eliason's online account was "strangely silent," as he complained online.

Mr. Eliason, checking his messages as he rode home on a commuter train, noticed Mr. Pomerantz's comments and responded: "I will get someone there!"

Half an hour later, a technician arrived. "Before he was done, I had two more technicians call and say they were ready to come immediately if I still needed assistance," Mr. Pomerantz recalled. "The reaction was a thousand times better than what I was getting by phone."

Of course, most customers still call when they have problems. If they all started blogging and commenting instead, Mr. Eliason would be quickly overwhelmed. "This is a channel, but it is not the first step" for customer concerns, he said.

Already the number of online comments are more than Mr. Eliason can handle himself, so his staff has gradually grown to seven people; soon it will have 10.

By acting quickly when customers complain — even at the oddest hours — the team has proved that its service is not aimed solely at users with the loudest virtual voices. Noting the thunder and wind late on the night of June 11, richrecruiter, a Twitter user, wrote that he was "counting down to Comcast outage interrupting tonight's Phillies game." Mr. Eliason quickly replied with a brief "LOL," short for "laugh out loud."

"See, I knew you were listening to me!" the customer answered. By then, it was past 11 p.m.

"Absolutely," Mr. Eliason replied from his BlackBerry, his wife sound asleep in the bedroom. "A little tired tonight, but I am still on it."

Histrionic personality disorder (HPD)

2008-07-23T14:32:00.001-07:00

Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriate seductiveness, usually beginning in early adulthood.

The essential feature of histrionic personality disorder is an excessive pattern of emotionality and attention-seeking behavior. These individuals are lively, dramatic, enthusiastic, and flirtatious. They may be inappropriately sexually provocative, express strong emotions with an impressionistic style, and be easily influenced by others.

Women with HPD are described as self-centered, self-indulgent, and intensely dependent on others. They are emotionally labile and cling to others in the context of immature relationships. Females with HPD over-identify with others; they project their own unrealistic, fantasized intentions onto people with whom they are involved. They are emotionally shallow to avoid distress and have difficulty understanding themselves or others in any depth. Selection of marital or sexual partners is often highly inappropriate. The majority of the time their partners will have symptoms of personality disorders far worse than their own. Women with HPD often tend to enter into abusive relationships with partners who increase the abuse as time wears on. Pathology increases with the level of intimacy in relationships, which is exactly the same for males with HPD. Women with HPD may show inappropriate and intense anger masking their internal battle between the quest for intimacy and avoiding pathology. HPD women with borderline tendencies often form entirely negative convictions towards the male gender and treat them like pawns as a defense mechanism concealing their own inadequacies. They may engage in self-mutilation and/or manipulative suicide

threats as one aspect of general manipulative interpersonal behavior.^[1]

People with this disorder are usually able to function at a high level and can be successful socially and professionally. People with histrionic personality disorder usually have good social skills, but they tend to use these skills to manipulate other people and become the center of attention. ^[4] Furthermore, histrionic personality disorder may affect a person's social or romantic relationships or their ability to cope with losses or failures. People with this disorder may seek treatment for depression when romantic relationships end, although this is by no means a feature exclusive to this disorder. They often fail to see their own personal situation realistically, instead tending to dramatize and exaggerate their difficulties. They usually blame others for failures or disappointments. They may go through frequent job changes, as they become easily bored and have trouble dealing with frustration. Because they tend to crave novelty and excitement, they may place themselves in risky situations. All of these factors may lead to greater risk of developing depression.

The cause of this disorder is unknown, but childhood events such as deaths in the immediate family and genetics may both be involved. Histrionic Personality Disorder is more often diagnosed in woman than men; men with some quite similar symptoms are often diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.^[5] However, some psychologists argue^[who?] that it is more often diagnosed in women for the simple reason that attention-seeking and sexual forwardness are considered to be less socially acceptable for women than for men. ^[6]

Little research has been conducted to determine the biological sources of this disorder. Psychoanalytic theories incriminate seductive and authoritarian attitudes by fathers of these patients.^[7]

The symptoms include:

Constant seeking of reassurance or approval.
Excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotions.
Excessive sensitivity to criticism or disapproval.
Inappropriately seductive appearance or behavior.
Excessive concern with physical appearance.
A need to be the center of attention (self-centeredness).
Low tolerance for frustration or delayed gratification.
Rapidly shifting emotional states that may appear shallow to others.
Opinions are easily influenced by other people, but difficult to back up with details.
Tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are.
Making rash decisions.
Threatening or attempting suicide to get attention.^[9]

Diagnostic Criteria

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention
interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior
displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions
consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to self
has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail
shows self-dramatization, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion
is suggestible, i.e., easily influenced by others or circumstances
considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are

Dependent personality disorder

2008-07-23T14:19:00.001-07:00

Definition

Personality traits are enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to and thinking about one's environment and oneself that are exhibited in a wide range of social and personal contexts. Only when personality traits are inflexible, maladaptive and cause significant functional impairment or subjective distress are they considered personality disorders. The essential feature of a personality disorder is a continuing pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates noticeably from the expectations of the individual's culture and is manifested in at least two of the following areas: cognition/thinking, affectivity/interpersonal functioning or impulse control.

This persistent pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations, and leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning. The pattern is stable and of long duration, which means its onset can be traced back to at least adolescence or early adulthood. This pattern is not better accounted for as a manifestation or consequence of another mental disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (such as drug abuse, medication, exposure to a toxin) or a general medical condition (such as head trauma).

Dependent personality disorder is described as a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of that leads to a submissive and clinging behavior as well as fears of separation. This pattern begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts. The dependent and submissive behaviors are designed to elicit caregiving and arise from a self-perception of being unable to function adequately without the help of others.

Individuals with dependent personality disorder have great difficulty making everyday decisions (such as what shirt to wear or whether to carry an umbrella) without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others. These individuals tend to be passive and allow other people (often a single other person) to take the initiative and assume responsibility for most major areas of their lives. Adults with this disorder typically depend on a parent or spouse to decide where they should live, what kind of job they should have and which neighbors to befriend. Adolescents with this disorder may allow their parent(s) to decide what they should wear, with whom they should associate, how they should spend their free time and what school or college they should attend.

This need for others to assume responsibility goes beyond age-appropriate and situation-appropriate requests for assistance from others (such as the specific needs of children, elderly persons and handicapped persons). Because they fear losing support or approval, individuals with dependent personality disorder often have difficulty expressing disagreement with other people, especially those on whom they are dependent. These individuals feel so unable to function alone that they will agree with things that they feel are wrong rather than risk losing the help of those to whom they look for guidance. Individuals with this disorder have difficulty initiating projects or doing things independently.

They may go to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support from others, even to the point of volunteering for unpleasant tasks if such behavior will bring the care that they need. Individuals with this disorder feel uncomfortable or helpless when alone, because of their exaggerated fears of being unable to care for themselves. When a close relationship ends (such as a breakup with a lover or the death of a caregiver), individuals with dependent Personality disorder may urgently seek another relationship to provide the care and support they need. They are often preoccupied with fears of being left to care for themselves.

Symptoms

People with this disorder do not trust their own ability to make decisions and feel that others have better ideas. They may be devastated by separation and loss, and they may go to great lengths, even suffering abuse, to stay in a relationship. Other symptoms include:

Inability to make decisions
Passivity
Avoiding personal responsibility
Avoiding being alone
Devastation or helplessness when relationships end
Unable to meet ordinary demands of life
Preoccupied with fears of being abandoned
Easily hurt by criticism or disapproval

Complications to this disorder may include depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and susceptibility to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Causes

The cause of this disorder is not known. The disorder usually appears in early adulthood. This disorder is common but not well studied; however, more women than men have been found to have dependent personality disorder.

Treatment

There is no specific treatment for this disorder. Psychotherapy may be useful in gradually helping people to make choices that affect their own lives. Medication may also be helpful. Improvements are usually seen only with long-term therapy or treatment.

Medications

Medication may be helpful to treat any other underlying conditions. Certain types of drugs such as antidepressants, sedatives and tranquilizers are often prescribed for patients with dependent personality disorder to treat co-occurring conditions.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is the preferred form of treatment for people with dependent personality disorder. Cognitive-behavioral therapy focuses on patterns of thinking that are maladaptive, the beliefs that underlie such thinking and resolving symptoms or traits that are characteristic of the disorder, such as the inability to make important life decisions or the inability to initiate relationships.

Dependent personality disorder: While many people exhibit dependent behaviors and traits, people with dependent personality disorder have an excessive need to be taken care of that results in submissive and clinging behavior, regardless of consequences. Diagnosis requires at least 5 of the following features:

Difficulty making decisions without guidance and reassurance
Need for others to assume responsibility for most major areas of the person's life
Difficulty expressing disagreement with others
Difficulty initiating activities because of lack of confidence
Excessive measures to obtain nurturance and support
Discomfort or helplessness when alone
Urgent seeking for another relationship when one has ended
Unrealistic preoccupation with fears of being left to fend for themselves

2008-07-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

wait a minute.. are we getting less food?

2008-07-19T17:14:00.005-07:00

The latest tub size on the right

With food and transportation prices rising, I guess instead of turning us off with higher prices, we're getting less for what we pay!

Remembering a medical legend, with gratitude

2008-07-19T12:41:00.001-07:00

Remembering a medical legend, with gratitude
Posted: 11:38 AM ET
By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Chief Medical Correspondent
If you mention Michael DeBakey’s name to just about any surgeon in the country, you are likely
to get a colorful story. Called a “rock star,” and the greatest surgeon of the 20th century, Dr.
DeBakey no doubt had a profound influence on the world of medicine. He saved tens of
thousands of lives, created the modern MASH unit, and helped found the National Library of
Medicine. On a personal note, it was Michael DeBakey who pioneered the coronary artery
bypass procedure to prevent heart attacks, which is the reason my own father is with me
today and doing so well.

More recently, Debakey in his 90s developed a ventricular assist device. It is an incredible
machine that is used to give patients with heart failure a little boost while they are waiting for
a transplant. If you ask him where he got so much life inspiration, he will tell you he read a new
book at least once a week, and in his case it was the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He read it
cover to cover. While he was a professor and a “maestro,” it turns out he was also an eternal
student.

DeBakey died last week, just two months shy of his 100th birthday. Today he goes to his final
resting place, Arlington National Cemetery. If he were still alive, he probably would’ve told
you that as the son of Lebanese immigrants, he learned the value of hard work from his
parents and the value of sewing from his mother. It seems the man never stopped working
and embodied JFK’s famous quote, that we do things “not because they are easy, but
because they are hard.”

A couple years ago, he felt a searing pain rip through his chest. At 97, he was at first sure he
was having a life-ending heart attack, and he didn’t even bother calling 911. A few minutes
later when his heart was still beating, he realized in fact his diagnosis was a thoracic aortic
dissection, which is a tearing of a major blood vessel in the chest. It was, of course, DeBakey
who had first figured out how to repair such damage to the body and it was DeBakey who in
a way supervised his own operation. It was amazing.

I met the man once. I was a medical student and he was the greatest living surgeon. Quite a
contrast. We were in the operating room and I was standing in a corner on a stand so that I
could see. For a baseball fan, it was like going to the World Series – bottom of the ninth, score
tied and bases loaded. It was what I had dreamed of for most of my young life. In the world of
surgery, so full of colorful personalities and enormous ego, everyone agreed DeBakey was the
best. Simply.

I heard about DeBakey’s death with the rest of you last week, and I immediately called my
dad. I shared some of these same stories with him that I am now sharing with you. My dad
said, “Wow.” And, I say thank you Dr. DeBakey, please get some rest finally.

So, how do you find the best surgeon or doctor and what qualities do you look for?

Big giant thwarted.. for now...

2008-07-19T08:02:00.001-07:00

Large Yahoo Shareholder Backs Board

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

Yahoo got a show of support on Friday from one of its biggest shareholders for its efforts to defend itself against a proxy fight by the activist investor Carl C. Icahn.

Bill Miller, who runs Legg Mason Capital Management, backed Yahoo's incumbent board, after weeks of speculation over whether he would support Mr. Icahn's efforts to unseat those directors. Mr. Miller's fund holds about 4.4 percent of Yahoo's outstanding stock.

Because of the size of his portfolio's holdings, Mr. Miller has been considered a power broker in the dispute between Yahoo and Mr. Icahn, which erupted after the Internet company spurned takeover bids from Microsoft. Now that Mr. Icahn is seeking to replace Yahoo's board — and then negotiate a sale of Yahoo's search business to Microsoft — Mr. Miller's support may prove crucial to Yahoo's efforts to retain its directors and management.

The battle will be joined at Yahoo's shareholder meeting, scheduled for Aug. 1. The company is scheduled to report earnings on Tuesday, and it awaits a report on the proxy fight by the RiskMetrics Group, the influential shareholder advisory firm.

Representatives for Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment. Mr. Icahn could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Icahn contends that Yahoo rejected Microsoft's bids without considering shareholders' best interests. Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo outright, and more recently made a bid to purchase its search business.

"Our company is on a precipice, and our board seems ready to take the risk of seeing it topple," Mr. Icahn wrote in a letter to shareholders on Monday.

But Mr. Miller said in a statement Friday that he disagreed with Mr. Icahn. "We believe the current board acted with care and diligence when evaluating Microsoft's offers," he said.

Seattle’s Automated Toilets Go Way of the Box and Chain

2008-07-17T08:13:00.001-07:00

Seattle’s Automated Toilets Go Way of the Box and Chain
By CHRISTOPHER MAAG

SEATTLE — After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it quits.

In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them.

The units were put up for sale Wednesday afternoon on eBay, with a starting bid set by the city at $89,000 apiece.

The dismal outcome coincides with plans by New York, Los Angeles and Boston, among other cities, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for expansion this fall in their installation of automated toilets — stand-alone structures with metal doors that open at the press of a button and stay closed for up to 20 minutes. The units clean themselves after each use, disinfecting the seats and power-washing the floors.

Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets, which are to close on Aug. 1, were placed in neighborhoods that already had many drug users and transients. Then there was the matter of cost: $1 million apiece over five years, which because of a local ordinance had to be borne entirely by taxpayers instead of advertisers.

In the typical arrangement involving cities that want to try automated toilets, an outdoor advertising company like JCDecaux provides, operates and maintains them for the municipality in exchange for a right to place ads on public property like bus stops and kiosks. Revenue from the advertisers flows to both the company and the city.

But a strict advertising law here barred officials from such an arrangement, meaning Seattle had to pick up the entire $5 million cost. “That’s a lot of money, a whole lot,” said Ray Hoffman, director of corporate policy for Seattle Public Utilities, the municipal water and sewage agency that ran the project.

Richard McIver, a Seattle city councilman, agrees. “Other cities around the world seem to be able to handle toilets civilly,” Mr. McIver said. “But we were unable to control the street population, and without the benefit of advertising, our costs were awfully high.”

Automated toilets have been common fixtures on European sidewalks for decades. But they have been less popular in American cities, where concerns including their appearance, cleanliness and tendency to attract illegal activity have slowed their installation.

In Seattle, problems arose almost immediately. Users left so much trash behind that the automated floor scrubbers had to be disabled, and prostitutes and drug users found privacy behind the toilets’ locked doors.

“I’m not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there,” said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. “But I won’t even go inside that thing now. It’s disgusting.”

In May, the City Council decided to close the toilets. It agreed to pay an additional $540,000 fee to end, five years early, its maintenance contract with the operator, Northwest Cascade, a local company with no prior experience in the field that was chosen when established operators like JCDecaux and Cemusa declined to bid because the project lacked advertising revenue.

Seattle’s automated toilets, 12 feet in circumference and 9 feet high, are round and shiny like steel cans. New York’s design is a modernist box of steel and frosted glass, while the toilets in Los Angeles and San Francisco resemble ornate trolley cars without wheels. All have mechanisms that control the doors and clean the floors.

Nowhere was the controversy over public toilets more bitter or longer than in New York, where it lasted 18 years and vexed three mayoral administrations.

“At this point, I’m glad it’s happening at all,” said Fran Reiter, a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration who led a failed effort to build toilets in the city in the mid-1990s.

In 2005, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed an agreement giving Cemusa, a Spanish company, a 20-year franchise to sell advertisements on bus stops, newsstands and kiosks. In return, the city will receive $1.4 billion in cash and 20 automated toilets. The first, in Madison Square Park, opened in January. Four more are to be installed in Brooklyn and Queens this fall.

In Boston, a similar advertising contract has paid for six automated toilets, said Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and the city plans two more this fall.

“It works very well for us,” Ms. Joyce said.

But opposition to advertising is hampering the effort in Los Angeles. In 2002, the city gave CBS Outdoor and JCDecaux a contract to sell advertisements on bus shelters, kiosks and newsstands in exchange for 150 automated toilets. Thirteen are operational so far, with two more coming this fall, said Lance Oishi, who leads the project for the city. Six of the units are downtown near Skid Row, but others sit near transit stations or shopping areas, Mr. Oishi said, and, contrary to Seattle’s experience, all 13 have remained clean and largely crime free.

Neighborhood groups are blocking construction of new structures on which to place advertising, however, and that means there is not enough revenue to support additional toilets, Mr. Oishi said.

“I do feel some frustration that things are not moving as fast as I’d like,” he said.

Some cities have had problems with maintenance. The 25 automated toilets in San Francisco require constant fiddling, officials there say. “You need a dedicated crew taking care of them every day,” said J. François Nion, executive vice president of JCDecaux North America, whose French parent company maintains 3,229 automated toilets worldwide.

Rather than automated toilets, some cities are looking for cheaper alternatives that would be cleaned by human attendants. One prototype, to be installed next month in Portland, Ore., would cost $50,000 each, compared with some $300,000 for an automated unit.

Randy Leonard, a Portland city commissioner, helped design that toilet, which in addition has open gaps at the top and bottom of the door, a feature discouraging drug abuse, prostitution and the like.

But given that lesser privacy, it is unclear how popular such a toilet might be, as Mr. Leonard acknowledges.

“We in the U.S. have yet to shed our puritanical roots,” he said. “We are uptight about toilets.”

Patient Voices: Bipolar Disorder

2008-07-17T07:37:00.003-07:00

July 16, 2008
Patient Voices: Bipolar Disorder

What is it like to have bipolar disorder? To be labeled "crazy"? How do you balance the ups and downs? Here, in their own words, are the stories of nine men and women living with bipolar disorder.

Fascinating look into the lives of bipolar patients....

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/16/health/healthguide/TE_BIPOLAR_CLIPS.html?th&emc=th

- Its a biochemical reaction- not because patients are bad people or something really wrong with their character.
One of them had unsupportive family members - they sent her holy water and a contact number for an exorcist!
With the symptoms of the illness being very out of the ordinary, its a mistake for religious support groups to be overly zealous to attribute it to a supernatural cause while keeping the patient from adequate medical care.
One of the patients actually heard God tell her to donate all her life savings to charity which drove her to debt.
And another found herself running "towards God" naked.

Medications are extremely helpful in taming off the mood swings and keeping the biochemical reactions from getting overwhelming. However, these medications are not very specific and comes with many side effects. One patient decided to wean off medications slowly while replacing it with a form of psychology by Carl Jung and has been able to cope with his bipolar for 2 years without medication.

These people can't control their episodes very much and the after effects are extremely painful to them. So being very supportive and understanding that they are not in any flawed in character or weak in will. I really hope not many patients were forced into exorcism by over zealous religious support groups. Its demeaning and not helpful.

In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic

2008-07-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic
By JANE SIGAL

PARIS

EVEN if you couldn’t be on the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day on Monday to watch seven parachutists float down in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy, you can still celebrate the greatness of France with a new local tradition.

Eat a hamburger.

Beginning a few years ago but picking up momentum in the past nine months, hamburgers and cheeseburgers have invaded the city. Anywhere tourists are likely to go this summer — in St.-Germain cafes, in fashion-world hangouts, even in restaurants run by three-star chefs — they are likely to find a juicy beef patty, almost invariably on a sesame seed bun.

“It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit — the subversive, even,” said Hélène Samuel, a restaurant consultant here. “Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.”

It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald’s for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign.

But as French chefs have embraced the quintessentially American food, they have also made it their own, incorporating Gallic flourishes like cornichons, fleur de sel and fresh thyme. These attempts to translate the burger, or maybe even improve it, strongly suggest that it is here to stay.

“It’s not just a fad,” said Frédérick Grasser-Hermé, who, as consulting chef at the Champs-Élysées boîte Black Calvados, developed a burger made with wagyu beef and seasoned with what she calls a black ketchup of blackberries and black currants. “It’s more than that. The burger has become gastronomic.”

Some of the most celebrated chefs in the city have taken up the challenge. Yannick Alléno, who earned a third Michelin star in 2007 for his precise, rarefied cuisine at Le Meurice, serves a thick, succulent hamburger at his casual restaurant, Le Dali. Mr. Alléno’s baker, Frédéric Lalos, a winner of one of the country’s fiercest cooking competitions, makes the buns. With smoked bacon, lettuce, dill pickles, mustard, mayonnaise and fries, the burger at Le Dali costs 35 euros, about $56.

Romain Corbière, the chef at Alain Ducasse’s restaurant Le Relais du Parc, in a Norman-style manor near Trocadéro, cooks a seasonal burger a la plancha. This summer Mr. Corbière, a veteran of Mr. Ducasse’s Louis XV in Monaco, is substituting a shrimp and squid patty for the beef burger he served in cooler weather.

L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon offers Le Burger, actually two small burgers topped with slabs of foie gras of almost equal size.

The only thing more surprising than the about-face in chefs’ attitudes may be the enthusiasm with which their patrons have devoured these haute burgers.

“I didn’t think we would sell so many,” said Sonia Ezgulian, guest chef at Café Salle Pleyel, which Ms. Samuel opened last fall in an airy, modernist space inside one of Paris’s most prestigious concert halls.

On some days, as many as a third of her customers order the burger, which is offered alongside Mediterranean-inspired dishes like sea bass with fennel confit and pistachios. “Sometimes we say we have no more,” she said. “It’s just too much.”

When a new guest chef replaces Ms. Ezgulian at the end of August, he will keep the burger on the menu. It’s in his contract.

IT is not as if hamburgers were unknown in Paris. American restaurants here like Joe Allen have long served them. Ms. Grasser-Hermé ate her first in 1961 at the American Legion, 11 years before McDonald’s unveiled its golden arches in France. But with few exceptions the local burgers were flat, overcooked and shunned even by American expatriates.

Other forms of ground or chopped beef have been enjoyed here for years as well. Butchers sell kilos of ground meat destined to become steak haché, a pan-seared patty made with lean meat, pressed into an oval, and served without a bun.

And while steak tartare shows up on practically every brasserie menu, chefs now recognize that a hamburger is not simply six ounces of chopped lean beef grilled until crusty.

“No, that would be an error,” said Ms. Grasser-Hermé.

“A hamburger is the architecture of taste par excellence,” she explained. “The meat needs to be a mix of fatty and lean. Not raw, not rare. It must be medium rare. At the same time the bread needs to be smooth, tepid, toasted on the sesame side. I like to brush the soft side with butter. There needs to be a crispy chiffonade of iceberg lettuce. Everything plays a role.”

In developing the Salle Pleyel burger, Ms. Samuel and Ms. Ezgulian felt the weight of tradition. “We’re a little terrified of making a mistake,” said Ms. Samuel. “We cling to things like the soft buns, sweet-and-sour pickles, onions, tomatoes, cheese. We need these guideposts because we don’t have the history, the context. Otherwise, for us, it’s not a burger. It’s a hot sandwich.”

Yet Ms. Ezgulian has taken some liberties. The current version of her burger is a riff on steak tartare. She’s kneaded a mixture of chopped sun-dried tomatoes and tangy cornichons and capers into the ground meat. Parmesan shavings stand in for the usual Cheddar.

Céline Parrenin, a co-owner of Coco & Co, a two-level place devoted to eggs that opened in St.-Germain last year, didn’t feel any such compunction when she and her business partner, Franklin Reinhard, invented the Cocotte Burger. The Cheddar cheeseburger, with pine nuts and thyme mixed into the meat, sits on a toasted whole-wheat English muffin pedestal. In a wink at the restaurant’s egg theme and recalling the time-honored steak à cheval, a fried egg is placed on top.

All the chefs are making hamburgers for the first time, and they are uncertain about the exact cuts of beef they are using. Mr. Alléno, for example, simply relies on his butcher, Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec, whose shop, Le Couteau d’Argent, is in the Paris suburb Asnières.

For Mr. Alléno’s burgers, Mr. Le Bourdonnec delivers a mix of chuck and beef rib. But the butcher thinks the American T-bone steak is an ideal cut. The T-bone does not exist in France, but to make his point, Mr. Le Bourdonnec made his own. He combined a piece of filet, which is tender but less flavorful, with a piece of contrefilet, which is marbled and tasty, but slightly less tender.

Using a long, razor-sharp knife, he sliced the meat into quarter-inch dice, chopped it fine with a cleaver and shaped it into patties, to be cooked rare in a hot skillet filmed with olive oil. No bun, no pickles, no cheese, no special sauce; only a few grains of fleur de sel.

“What you have is texture and the flavor of meat,” he said. “No artifice.”

“That’s not a burger, Papa,” pointed out his 13-year-old son, Paul. “There’s no bread.”

HOW did the dripping, juicy hamburger come to be one of the signature dishes of Paris? For one thing, expatriate French chefs reinventing American classics in the United States made it safe for their countrymen to try it back home.

“I didn’t have this burger culture,” said Ms. Samuel. “A hamburger, what’s that? I didn’t get it. Then I tasted it at DB Bistro Moderne,” she said, speaking of Daniel Boulud’s restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. “If Daniel hadn’t done it, maybe I wouldn’t have either. He helped me understand.”

Mr. Corbière grew up with burgers, but he didn’t think of putting one on the Relais du Parc menu until he tasted Laurent Tourondel’s Black Angus burger at BLT Market in New York last October.

Both Mr. Tourondel and Mr. Boulud laughed when they were told that they had helped the hamburger conquer Paris.

“I think it’s shocking, but at the same time the French are realizing that a burger is real food, it’s good,” said Mr. Boulud.

Mr. Tourondel grew up in a small town where, he said “nobody ever saw a burger until 10 years ago. Everybody was against it, but everybody goes to eat it.”

Whether the interpretations are classical or whimsical, Americans would probably recognize most of the burgers in Paris. They might be flummoxed, however, by the etiquette associated with eating them.

Ketchup does not automatically come with a burger. If requested, it may appear in a porcelain bowl. At the Café Salle Pleyel, servers do produce a ketchup bottle on demand. At lunch there one recent day, a businessman shook the ketchup onto his plate, then, taking a knife in his right hand, spread the condiment onto a forkful of hamburger in his left hand before lifting it to his mouth.

Alicia Fontanier, the co-owner and chef at the tiny gourmet bar Ferdi on the rue du Mont-Thabor, laments that many of her customers insist on using silverware. Ms. Fontanier is the sister of Maria Luisa Poumaillou, who owns a couple of boutiques down the street, and many of the socialites, expatriate international types and fashionistas who shop there invariably stop in for her burger, the Mac Ferdi, and guarapita de parchita, a potent drink of cachaça and passion fruit juice.

“Eating with your hands is part of the pleasure,” Ms. Fontanier said, seated in a dining room decorated chiefly with her 15-year-old son’s childhood toy collection. “But nine out of 10 people use knife and fork. I’m happy not to see it. I’m in the kitchen.”

At Floors, a three-story diner in a former printing shop near Sacré-Coeur that features custom burgers, Emil Lager, a waiter, said that many of the diners seem self-conscious about ordering.

“Another thing I’ve noticed is that the muscled guys order the boeuf double with bacon, egg and fries, and a Diet Coke,” he said. “Then they share a cheesecake. They don’t want to gain weight.”

Also, he explained, Parisians don’t really understand about drinking a milkshake with the burger. They order it as dessert.

2008-07-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

I searched "xenophobia" and found this. =)

Stuck on Lapel Pins

2008-07-15T07:49:00.010-07:00

Stuck on Lapel Pins

By Steven Heller

Senator Barack Obama’s patriotism has been scrutinized and questioned because of his refusal early on to wear an American flag pin, on the grounds that, in the wake of 9/11, these pins had become substitutes for true patriotism.

Now, as the campaign heats up, the presumptive Democratic nominee is seldom seen at public events without “old glory” on his lapel (a smart rectangular version). For some, this gesture is a little too late; for others, it is pandering to the electorate.

Since Mr. Obama promotes himself as the candidate of change, maybe he should start wearing a different kind of lapel pin that signals his patriotism as well as other values he wants to communicate. To provide him with options, I asked some illustrators and designers to suggest alternatives. Here are a few:

Tamara Shopsin, an illustrator, suggests substituting a portrait of Abraham Lincoln for the flag.

“The flag pin has for the time lost its meaning because it has become part of a politician’s uniform,” she says. For her, Lincoln represents America at its best.

Oliver Munday, an illustrator, contends that Obama buttons are the new generation of flag pins. Adam Michaels, from the design firm Project Projects, was inspired to make a movie screen pin by this much-quoted excerpt from Mr. Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope”:

“I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.”
Rick Landers, from the design firm Landers Miller, says, “I’m not entirely sure that one pin would make up for Mr. Obama’s perceived lack of patriotism. In fact, one lapel pin seems like it would be the bare minimum in this case.

“All of this hoopla and attention to his choosing not to wear an American flag lapel pin reminds me of the movie ‘Office Space’ in which Jennifer Aniston plays an employee working at a T.G.I. Friday’s-style chain establishment. Throughout the movie she is chastised by her boss for not wearing enough ‘flair’ to ‘express herself.’”

Daniel Young, a design entrepreneur, designed a mirror-flag pin.

“Obama tries to reflect the better nature of the country,” says Young. “He opposes the mentality that insists on a personal display of the national flag as a sign of patriotism, but surrenders to political expediency and begins exploiting the flag. His mirror begins to show the things his pollsters tell him are important to undecided voters.”
Peter Sis, children’s book author and illustrator, offers what he calls a “silly idea.” He proposes lapels made to look like the American eagle.

Sis says, “this would look different and fresh, especially during the G-8 meetings.”
Kit Hinrichs, author and designer of the book “100 American Flags: A Unique Collection of Old Glory Memorabilia,” says his “unity pin” can be worn by anyone (regardless of gender, sexual orientation, color, ethnicity or political persuasion) on any piece of clothing.

“I believe the flag belongs to all of us and as such should not be relegated to, or relinquished by, any single political group or point of view. Nonetheless, the current flag pin has become a polarizing symbol of patriotism. So the design of the unity pin attempts to sidestep the purely ‘patriotic’ aspect of the pin by linking the 13-star flag with the 50-star flag, representing the historic continuum of American democracy over the last 232 years and celebrating the constant renewal of the American spirit.”
And Ray Bartkus, painter and illustrator, has a simple solution:

“No lapels; no lapel-pin issues.”

The Politics of Satire

2008-07-15T07:44:00.001-07:00

The satirical piece that sparked an outrage

Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke
By BILL CARTER

What’s so funny about Barack Obama? Apparently not very much, at least not yet.

On Monday, The New Yorker magazine tried dipping its toe into broad satire involving Senator Obama with a cover image depicting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife, Michelle, as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office. The response from both Democrats and Republicans was explosive.

Comedy has been no easier for the phalanx of late-night television hosts who depend on skewering political leaders for a healthy quotient of their nightly monologues. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and others have delivered a nightly stream of jokes about the Republican running for president — each one a variant on the same theme: John McCain is old.

But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique. And within a late-night landscape dominated by white hosts, white writers, and overwhelmingly white audiences, there has been almost none about his race.

“We’re doing jokes about people in his orbit, not really about him,” said Mike Sweeney, the head writer for Mr. O’Brien on “Late Night.” The jokes will come, representatives of the late-night shows said, when Mr. Obama does or says something that defines him — in comedy terms.

“We’re carrion birds,” said Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” on the Comedy Central channel. “We’re sitting up there saying ‘Does he seem weak? Is he dehydrated yet? Let’s attack.’ ”

But so far, no true punch lines have landed.

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic “take” on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore’s robotic persona.

“The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way,” said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson’s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. “He’s not a comical figure,” Mr. Barry said.

Jokes have been made about what Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton really thought about Mr. Obama during the primaries, and about the vulgar comments the Rev. Jesse Jackson made about him last week. But anything approaching a joke about Mr. Obama himself has fallen flat.

When Mr. Stewart on “The Daily Show” recently tried to joke about Mr. Obama changing his position on campaign financing, for instance, he met with such obvious resistance from the audience, he said, “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.” Mr. Stewart said in a telephone interview on Monday, “People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them.”

Despite audience resistance, Mr. Stewart contended, his show had been able to develop a distinctive angle on Mr. Obama.

Noting that the senator seems to emphasize the historic nature of his quest, Mr. Stewart said, “So far, our take is that he’s positioning himself to be on a coin.”

There is no doubt, several representatives of the late-night shows said, that so far their audiences (and at least some of the shows’ writers) seem to be favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.

“A lot of people are excited about his candidacy,” Mr. Sweeney said. “It’s almost like: ‘Hey, don’t go after this guy. He’s a fresh face; cut him some slack.’ ”

Justin Stangel, who is a head writer for “Late Show With David Letterman,” disputed that, saying, “We always have to make jokes about everybody. We’re not trying to lay off the new guy.”

But Mr. Barry said, “I think some of us were maybe too quick to caricature Al Gore and John Kerry and there’s maybe some reluctance to do the same thing to him.”

Of course, the question of race is also mentioned as one reason Mr. Obama has proved to be so elusive a target for satire.

“Anything that has even a whiff of being racist, no one is going to laugh,” said Rob Burnett, an executive producer for Mr. Letterman. “The audience is not going to allow anyone to do that.”

The New Yorker faced a different kind of hostility with its cover this week, which the Obama campaign criticized harshly. A campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said in a statement that “most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive — and we agree.”

Asked about the cover at a news conference Monday, Mr. McCain said he thought it was “totally inappropriate, and frankly I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive.”

The cover was drawn by Barry Blitt, who also contributes illustrations to The New York Times’s Op-Ed page. David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, said in an e-mail message, “The cover takes a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are.

“It’s a lot like the spirit of what Stephen Colbert does — by exaggerating and mocking something, he shows its absurdity, and that is what satire is all about,” Mr. Remnick continued.

Mr. Colbert said in a telephone interview that a running joke on his show has been that Mr. Obama is a “secret Muslim”; the New Yorker cover, he said, was consistent with that. “It’s a completely valid satirical point to make — and it’s perfectly valid for Obama not to like it,” he said.

Mr. Colbert said he had been freer to poke fun at Mr. Obama than other late-night hosts because “my character on the show doesn’t like him. I’m expected to be hostile to him.”

Mr. Stewart, who is also an executive producer of “The Colbert Report,” said the Obama campaign’s reaction to the New Yorker cover seemed part of what is now almost a pro forma cycle in political campaigns. “Nothing can occur without the candidate responding,” he said.

Bill Maher, who is host of a politically oriented late-night show on HBO, said, “If you can’t do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?”

One issue that clearly has some impact on writing jokes about Mr. Obama is a consistency among the big late-night shows. Not only are all the hosts white, the vast majority of their audiences are white. “I think white audiences get a little self-conscious if race comes up,” Mr. Sweeney of Mr. O’Brien’s show said.

Things might be somewhat different if even one late-night host was black. Black comics are not having any trouble joking about Mr. Obama, said David Alan Grier, a comedian who, starting in October, will have a satirical news magazine show on Comedy Central, “Chocolate News.”

“I tell jokes on stage about him,” Mr. Grier said, reciting a few that would not ever get onto a network late-night show (nor into this newspaper).

But he said of the late-night hosts, “Those guys really can’t go there. It’s just like the gay comic can do gay material. It comes with the territory.” Still, he said, he has no sympathy for the hosts. “No way. They’ve had 200 years of presidential jokes. It’s our time.”

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the ABC late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” said of Mr. Obama, “There’s a weird reverse racism going on. You can’t joke about him because he’s half-white. It’s silly. I think it’s more a problem because he’s so polished, he doesn’t seem to have any flaws.”

Mr. Maher said that being sensitive to Mr. Obama was in no way interfering with his commentary, though on HBO he has more freedom about content than other comedians. “There’s been this question about whether he’s black enough,” Mr. Maher said. “I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk? He bowled a 37 — to me, that’s black enough.”

Mr. Kimmel said, “His ears should be the focus of the jokes.”

Mostly the late-night shows seem to be in a similar position.

Mr. Burnett of the Letterman show said, “We can’t manufacture a perception. If the perception isn’t true, no one will laugh at it.”

Mr. Sweeney said, “We’re hoping he picks an idiot as vice president.”

2008-07-15T07:33:00.001-07:00

Mind

Take Two Prozac and E-Mail Me in the Morning

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D

Ah, the promise of e-mail! The minute I started giving out my address to my patients, I fantasized about how much time I would save on routine phone calls and how clear and unambiguous the communication would be.

Indeed, there was a honeymoon period. Could I change a Monday appointment for Wednesday? Of course. Would I phone in a renewal of Prozac? With pleasure. This was really neat: no more phone tag with patients, just simple requests with simple solutions.

Not for long.

"Dear Dr. Friedman," one patient e-mailed at 3 a.m. "I am having dark thoughts and wonder if I should increase my antidepressant. Can you let me know what you think?"

It was 8:30 that morning when I opened my e-mail and read her message with alarm. What exactly were "dark thoughts"? I wasn't sure, but I had to assume the worst — suicidal feelings or thoughts — and called her immediately.

She came in later that afternoon and explained that she felt bleak and hopeless and thought she and her family might be better off with her dead.

"Why didn't you call me right away?" I asked, as I recall the conversation.

"It was the middle of the night and I didn't want to disturb you," she replied.

Getting disturbed is what I do for a living, and in this case e-mail seemed like a potential obstacle to her care. Considering the sheer volume of messages, and how many of them are spam, it was lucky I did not miss it.

I was beginning to worry about what I had gotten myself into. When patients had only my phone number, I just had to keep track of voice mail; now I had to be on the lookout in my e-mail, too. This was going to make my life easier?

"I know we ran out of time, but there was just one more important thing I wanted to tell you," a patient e-mailed me and signed with a smiley face. "I mean it would only have taken five minutes of your time — tops."

Couching the sentiment in humor, my narcissistic patient was enraged that I had not given him what he felt entitled to: more time.

At least this was grist for the therapeutic mill. I brought up his message in the next session: "You are angry and resentful that I didn't give you five extra minutes, in the same way you feel the world owes you special treatment."

Not all my attempts to make therapeutic use of e-mail were as successful. A young woman who was jilted by her boyfriend e-mailed me between sessions: "Here's installment No. 2. I had a terrible date last night. The guy was a disaster. Can't keep at this social scene. Or should I?"

"Let's discuss it when we meet this week," I e-mailed back.

That was not what she wanted to hear; she was expecting immediate reassurance or advice. This was a patient who had trouble tolerating any frustration or separation from people she felt close to, including me.

For her, e-mail was probably antitherapeutic: it meant, in effect, never leaving my office — and never disconnecting from me, something she was supposed to accomplish in therapy.

"Why did you give your e-mail in the first place?" she asked angrily, when I tried to explore the topic with her. She was right. I had made a mistake.

On one occasion, e-mail was critically valuable. A patient traveling in India lost his medication when his backpack was stolen. Given the time difference, it would have been hard to connect by phone, so he e-mailed from an Internet cafe. Though his medication was not available in India, I was able to give him quick advice about a substitute.

For all the convenience and clarity of e-mail, it can be perilous for a clinician; as part of the written record of patients' treatment, it can be subpoenaed just like chart notes in the unfortunately common event of legal action. Not just that, but e-mail must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which has complex rules to safeguard patient privacy and confidentiality. Your psychiatrist could not, for example, send you a reassuring message about your recent lithium blood level — unless you e-mailed first and specifically asked for it.

Still, being an impatient person, I love the speed of e-mail. But being a psychiatrist, I am leery about the quality of information it conveys. How can I tell whether my patient is being humorous, sarcastic or ironic? Smiley faces are no substitute for the real thing.

Which brings me to e-therapy. Cyberspace is full of therapists happy to treat you — for a nice fee. But unless you live where there is nary a therapist, I would have second thoughts about this. Internet-based therapy, whether by e-mail or live chat, seems like a poor substitute for a real human bond with all its nonverbal cues and face-to-face exchanges.

After all, if there is no excitement or emotional charge, you've probably got a sterile therapeutic relationship that is more likely to liberate you from your money than from your conflicts.

So here is what e-mail with my patients has taught me: if you need to reschedule an appointment or need a routine medication refill, please push "send"; if you have something on your mind you want to talk about, please call me — the old-fashioned way. I'm almost wistful for the sound of a ringing phone.

Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.

2008-07-13T10:35:00.001-07:00

Classic non sequitur.. =)

Now a look into what non sequitur actually means..
- there are 2 possible meanings, both quite related but used in different context.

1) - a logical fallacy.
It is the coming to a conclusion that does not follow its premises. The conclusion may be true or false, but the argument is a fallacy because it does not follow from the premise.

2)- A comic device.
a comment which, due to its lack of meaning relative to the comment it follows, is absurd to the point of being humorous or confusing. (One of my favorite types)

So what is the logical non sequitur?

For example
1. If A is true, then B is true.
2. B is stated to be true.
3. Therefore, A must be true.
Or
1. If A then B. (e.g., If I am in Tokyo, I am in Japan.)
2. Not A. (e.g., I am not in Tokyo.)
3. Therefore, not B. (e.g., Therefore, I am not in Japan.)

One of my favorite Non Sequiturs was from Steven Colbert -
"the Bible is infallible, because it says it is"

The first google search on "Why is the bible infallible" came to
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-acb/acb-t002.html
Which states:
2 Timothy 3:16 contains the classic claim that the Bible was produced by God, not just men:
"All Scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

So the main impetus behind reading the bible literally - the infallibility of the bible is because one author of the bible claimed it so.

Now, even if this logical fallacy is ignored, how the bible was canonized was an accumulation of works after the letters of Paul, up to 300 years after his letters.
Do we know if Paul, when writing "All Scripture" is referring to works written and unwritten at that time, or he meant scriptures that he knew at that time? or did "All Scriptures" also referred to other christian books that were rejected by later church leaders?
So it is not a very strong argument, yet many people are willing to hurt other people based on that premise that the bible has to be read literally.

I used to be a strong believer in the infallibility of the bible and therefore the importance of literal reading of the bible. However, the resulting effects of that are resoundingly hateful and non-Christ-like behavior by Christians. That can't be what Christianity stands for. There has to be a flaw in how these people are interpreting the bible.
The Fruits of the spirit are undeniably clear.

What if the Candidates Pandered to Economists?

2008-07-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah! I agree with many of the view points!

Economic View
What if the Candidates Pandered to Economists?
By N. GREGORY MANKIW

IN the months to come, John McCain and Barack Obama will be vying for the support of various voting blocs. It is safe to say, however, that one group won’t get much attention: economists.

The American Economic Association represents only a small fraction of 1 percent of the electorate. In every election season, we economists expect to be largely ignored, and, unlike many of our other forecasts, that one often turns out to be right.

But suppose it were otherwise. Imagine that those running for office tailored their economic positions to attract the experts in the field. What would it take to put the nation’s economists solidly behind a candidate?

On many issues, from universal health insurance to increased taxes on the rich, economists do not speak with a single voice. But on some issues we do. Here is an eight-plank platform designed to attract a majority of economists. It is based on discussions I have had with my colleagues — call them focus groups, if you’d like — and polls of my profession:

SUPPORT FREE TRADE Economists are nearly unanimous in their support of an unfettered system of world trade. Here, Senator Obama lags behind Senator McCain. Senator Obama’s bad-mouthing of Nafta and his opposition to free-trade pacts with Colombia and South Korea make most economists cringe.

Many economists would go even further than Senator McCain has suggested by, for example, repealing antidumping laws. The ostensible purpose of these laws is to prevent foreign companies from selling in the United States at prices below fair value, but the law’s notion of “fair” rarely makes sense. In practice, these laws are little more than an excuse for special interests to shield themselves from competition.

OPPOSE FARM SUBSIDIES Economists like free markets, a principle that applies to agriculture as much as any good or service. Again, Senator McCain has the lead. Senator Obama’s endorsement of the recent $300 billion farm bill, his support for domestic ethanol subsidies and his opposition to imported sugar ethanol may bring votes from farmers, but economists view these policies as a burden on taxpayers and consumers.

LEAVE OIL COMPANIES AND SPECULATORS ALONE With the stunning rise in oil prices, both presidential candidates have been tempted to demonize market participants. Senator McCain has complained about the “obscene profits” of oil companies and called for a “thorough and complete investigation of speculators.” By contrast, most economists see nothing more sinister than the forces of global supply and demand at work. There is little benefit, and potentially much harm, in the candidates’ populist finger-pointing.

TAX THE USE OF ENERGY Senator Obama wins a point by opposing a summer gas tax holiday, a McCain proposal that economists greeted with derision. Most economists advocate increased taxes on energy products. The recent response of consumers to higher gas prices — including the increased use of mass transit and greater purchases of small cars, scooters, and even bicycles — demonstrates that the price mechanism is the most reliable way to reduce energy consumption and to curtail a variety of driving-related problems.

RAISE THE RETIREMENT AGE Like both presidential candidates, most economists recognize that Social Security faces a long-term problem. Senator Obama says he wants to fix it by extending the payroll tax to high incomes. Senator McCain opposes tax increases and wants the Social Security system to include personal accounts, but he has avoided proposing specific benefit cuts needed to make the numbers add up.

Some economists endorse Senator Obama’s tax hike, and some endorse Senator McCain’s personal accounts, but a much greater number would increase the age of eligibility for benefits. As Americans live longer, we need to redefine old age — a theme that should resonate with Mr. McCain, who is 71.

INVITE MORE SKILLED IMMIGRANTS As part of their embrace of globalization, economists are more open to immigration than is the general public. Admittedly, unskilled immigrants raise some potential problems: They may depress wages for Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder, exacerbating the rise in inequality, and they may overburden the social safety net. By contrast, skilled immigrants promote economic growth, especially among poorer Americans, and pay more in taxes than they get in government benefits. The more, the merrier.

On this issue, economists very clearly practice what they preach. Many of the best economists at top American universities were born abroad.

LIBERALIZE DRUG POLICY Many economists marry their support of economic freedom with a similar support of personal freedom. Drug policy is a case in point. A 2006 poll of professional economists asked whether the United States should legalize marijuana. Those in favor outnumbered those opposed more than three to one.

RAISE FUNDS FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH The government subsidizes economic research through an arm of the National Science Foundation. The amount of money is relatively small — measured in the millions, not billions — and spending has been about flat in inflation-adjusted terms over the last decade. If Senator McCain or Senator Obama wants to endear himself to economists, there is no easier way than by promising an extra few million dollars to improve our understanding of how the economy works.

You might view this policy as nothing more than a way to buy a few votes. Perhaps you view economists as mere mortals, as tempted as anyone else by special interests. Maybe you would regard more funding for economic research as not very different from the billions thrown every year at farmers.

If you are that cynical, I won’t try to dissuade you.

N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to President Bush and advised Mitt Romney in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

2008-07-12T08:10:00.001-07:00

Former White House spokesman Tony Snow dies

2008-07-12T08:05:00.005-07:00

A sad day in America.. I was really looking forward to seeing him on CNN.

Former White House spokesman Tony Snow dies

* Story Highlights
* NEW: Former Bush spokesman a smiling fighter, congressman says
* President calls Snow "a devoted public servant and a man of character"
* Former Fox commentator had recently joined CNN
* Snow resigned White House job, saying he needed higher income

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former White House press secretary Tony Snow -- who once told reporters "I'm a very lucky guy" -- died at the age of 53 early Saturday after a second battle with cancer.

Snow, who had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a recurrence of the disease, left his White House job September 14, 2007, and joined CNN in April as a conservative commentator.

President Bush said Saturday that he and first lady Laura Bush were "deeply saddened" by Snow's death.

"The Snow family has lost a beloved husband and father. And America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character," the president said in a statement.

"It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day."

Snow's successor, White House press secretary Dana Perino, said, "The White House is so deeply saddened by this loss. He was a great friend and colleague and a fantastic press secretary. And his dear family is in our thoughts and prayers." PhotoSee images from Tony Snow's White House days »

Republican Rep. John Boehner called Snow "a proud son of Cincinnati," the Ohio city that Boehner represents in Congress and where Snow grew up.

"Churchill said, 'I like a man who grins when he fights,' and that was Tony Snow," Boehner said. "For 35 years, as a writer, broadcaster, and spokesman, he fought fiercely for what he believed in, and he did it with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. His loss is a loss for our country."

In 2007, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten had told senior White House staffers that unless they could commit to staying until Bush leaves office in January 2009, they should leave by Labor Day 2007, so Snow resigned.

In parting comments to reporters at his final White House news conference, Snow said, "I feel great."

He also called the job "the most fun I've ever had."

Snow said he was leaving the White House position to make more money for his family. His White House salary was $168,000, and he said he had taken out a loan so he could take the job. Snow said he was leaving because the loan money ran out.

Snow is survived by his wife, Jill Walker, and three children -- Kendall, Robbie and Kristi.

Snow was first diagnosed with colon cancer in February 2005. His colon was removed, and after six months of treatment, doctors said the cancer was in remission.

A recurrence of the illness was diagnosed 11 months after he began the White House media job. At that time, doctors also discovered that the colon cancer had spread to his liver.

He underwent five weeks of treatment before resuming his daily briefings to the press corps. He was greeted with applause upon his return.

"Not everybody will survive cancer," Snow told the reporters, "but on the other hand, you have got to realize you've got the gift of life, so make the most of it. That is my view, and I'm going to make the most of my time with you."

Perino announced March 27, 2007, that Snow's cancer had recurred, and said doctors had removed a growth from his abdomen the day before. VideoWatch how Snow fought through the illness »

Bush tapped Snow to replace Scott McClellan in April 2006.

Snow had been an anchor for "Fox News Sunday" and a political analyst for Fox News Channel, which he joined in 1996. He also hosted "The Tony Snow Show" on Fox News Radio.

During the 1990s, he was a regular guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio program. During that decade he was a writer, correspondent and host of a PBS news special, "The New Militant Center," a regular commentator for National Public Radio and a frequent guest on television news programs.

Snow was known for his candor.

In a November 11, 2005, column, Snow wrote that Bush's "wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson."

"The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment," Snow's column said.

"I asked him about those comments," the president joked at the time of Snow's appointment. "And he said, 'You should have heard what I said about the other guy.'"

Bush said Snow's long career as a journalist helped him understand "the importance of the relationship between government and those whose job it is to cover the government."

Robert Anthony Snow was born June 1, 1955, in Berea, Kentucky, and was raised in Cincinnati. When he was 17, his mother died of colon cancer at age 38.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977, Snow pursued graduate work in philosophy and economics at the University of Chicago.

He worked as an editorial writer and editor at several newspapers, including The Washington Times and the Detroit News. He wrote a column in Detroit, and later wrote a syndicated column.

Snow joined the administration of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, in 1991, first as chief speech writer and later as deputy assistant to the president for media affairs.

Snow became a television personality when he launched his news shows on Fox in 1993.

When he returned to work at the White House on April 30, 2007, after the second cancer diagnosis, a usually articulate and loquacious Snow stumbled to find words.

"You never anticipate this stuff," he said. "It just happens."

"I want to thank you all. It really meant the world to me. Anybody who does not not believe that thoughts and prayers make a difference, they're just wrong."

He then prefaced a discussion of his health by saying, "I'm a very lucky guy."

Outside of work, Snow played the guitar, saxophone and flute, and was in a band called Beats Workin' with other Washington professionals.

Iowa Church Is a Beacon After Immigration Raid

2008-07-12T07:46:00.003-07:00

The tearing apart of families is digusting. What this church has done is awesome and very compassionate, I can't believe there are people who are so cold hearted that they send threats and insults to the church!
I understand the need to maintain law and order, however, the way some Americans are not able to feel compassion or their inability to treat these immigrants humanely is highly indicative that this issue is not so much a legal or economic issue, but one that is a disguised form of a disturbing past in xenophobicity.

Iowa Church Is a Beacon After Immigration Raid
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

POSTVILLE, Iowa — Back in 2002, before all the trouble, the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk retired from St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church here, his last station in 43 years of ministry. He built a home 35 miles away in a town along the Mississippi, and he indulged a passion for family history, tracing his lineage to an ancestor who had arrived in New Amsterdam with the Dutch East India Company.

Once a month or so, Father Ouderkirk drove back to St. Bridget’s to officiate at a wedding or baptize a baby. He savored those rituals, proof that the Hispanic immigrants who had arrived over the past decade to work in Postville’s kosher-meat plant were setting down roots. Some had bought homes. Their children had graduated from high school, even been selected for the National Honor Society.

Then came the morning of May 12, when both satisfaction and retirement ended for the 75-year-old priest. Federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors factory, arresting nearly 400 workers, most of them men, for being in the United States illegally. Within minutes of the raid, with surveillance helicopters buzzing above the leafy streets, the wives and children of Mexican and Guatemalan families began trickling into St. Bridget’s Church, the safest place they knew.

It was about that time, with several dozen cowering people inside the church, when Sister Mary McCauley, the pastor administrator at St. Bridget’s, found out that Father Ouderkirk was attending a ceremony for diocesan priests nearly two hours away in Dubuque. Unable to reach him directly, she left a simple, urgent message: “We need to see a collar here.”

By the time Father Ouderkirk extricated himself and reached Postville in the evening, nearly 400 families, some of them not even Catholic, filled the rotunda and social hall of St. Bridget’s. They occupied every pew, every aisle, every folding chair, every inch of floor. Children clutched mothers. One girl shook uncontrollably.

A few volunteers from the old Postville, descendants of the Irish and Norwegian immigrants who settled here more than a century ago, set out food. Others took turns standing watch at the church door, as if the sight of an Anglo might somehow dissuade the feared Migra, as the immigrants call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from invading their sanctuary.

Already, members of the church staff and a Spanish teacher from a nearby college were tallying the names of the detained workers. Father Ouderkirk conducted his own version of a census in this predominantly Hispanic parish. Gone were all but two members of the choir he had assembled over the years. Gone were all but one of the eight altar servers. Gone were the husbands from the weddings he had performed, and gone were the fathers of the children he had baptized.

As for the mothers, many of them also worked at Agriprocessors and had been arrested. In a putative show of compassion, federal authorities released them after putting an electronic homing device on each woman’s ankle to monitor her whereabouts. These mothers were, in the new lexicon of Postville, “las personas con brazalete,” the people with a bracelet.

During his earlier tenure at parishes in North Texas and Marshalltown, Iowa, Father Ouderkirk had experienced immigration raids twice before, but never on this scale. By the second day, he had moved back into his bedroom in the rectory.

“It’s like God saying, ‘I gave you a little practice,’ because this is the worst,” Father Ouderkirk said in an interview late last month at St. Bridget’s. “This has happened after 10 years of stable living. These people were in school. They were achieving. It has ripped the heart out of the community and out of the parish. Probably every child I baptized has been affected. To see them stunned is beyond belief.”

The only redemptive thing that can be said, perhaps, is that in the crisis at Postville — with nearly 400 immigrants imprisoned and facing deportation, with 40 mothers under house arrest awaiting their own court dates, with families that had two working parents now forced to survive on handouts from a food pantry — the beacon of the Roman Catholic Church to immigrants has rarely shone more brilliantly.

“I came to the church because I feel safe there, I feel secure,” said Irma López, the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who was arrested along with her husband, Marcelo, after they had worked at Agriprocessors for six years. “I feel protected. I feel at peace. I feel comforted.”

At a practical level, Father Ouderkirk has hired four temporary staff members to help track the court cases and distribute food and financial aid to the affected families. Along with other religious leaders around Iowa, he had been preparing for a march in defense of immigrants’ rights. St. Bridget’s parish, which has only about 350 members, is spending $500,000 in the relief effort, he said.

One month after the raid, St. Bridget’s held a Mass in remembrance of the detainees. The name of every one was recited from the altar, and after every 20 names, a candle was lighted, usually by a persona con brazalete. The candles, half burned, remain in the nave, beneath a wood carving of the Virgin Mother, each one an offering for a miracle.

“I pray to God for the opportunity to stay in this country so my daughter can be educated here,” Mrs. López said. “That was my dream.”

Sitting in the rectory alongside Mrs. López, Rosa Zamora nodded in agreement. “When I pray, I know God is close to me,” said Mrs. Zamora, whose husband, like Mrs. López’s, is now jailed in Louisiana awaiting deportation to Guatemala. “I know there are laws, but God is the judge of everything.”

Judgment of a different sort, though, has been visited on Father Ouderkirk and his aides. One anonymous phone message warned him, “What you’re doing is against the law. Harboring criminals.” Sister Mary received an unsigned letter stating: “You are as far as possible from being the image of Mother Teresa. May you rot in hell.”

It is infuriating in a particular way for Father Ouderkirk and his staff members to hear from such nativists. St. Bridget’s Spanish-speaking lay pastor, Paul Real, has forebears who settled in what is now New Mexico in the 1500s. And Father Ouderkirk’s heritage, of course, goes back to the Dutch colonists.

“I think it’s made me more empathetic,” he said. “I think of the chances my ancestors had. Here are people who’ve been here 10 years, and to get torn up like this, it’s doesn’t make any sense to me. It cuts so deep. Like Sister Mary says, once you’ve cried for two straight weeks, you don’t have any more tears. But it doesn’t mean you stopped feeling.”

Stanford University Medical Center Map

2008-07-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

Key

A	Stanford Clinic - Boswell
B	Beckman Center for Molecular Biology
C	Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and Sciences
b-h	Hospital patient units
BW	Stanford Clinic - Blake Wilbur
CCSR	Center for Clinical Sciences Research
CV	Falk Cardiovascular Research Bldg.
D	Fairchild Research Bldg.
GK	Mayer Cancer Biology Research Building
L	Lane Building Medical Library

LPCH	Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
M	Medical School Building
N	Hoover Pavilion
P	Medical School Lab Surge Bldg.
PL	Lucas Center for Magnetic Resonance
R	Edwards Research Building
S	Grant Science Building
T	Health Research and Policy Bldg.
W	Anatomy and Administration Annex
X	Medical School Office Building

2008-07-11T07:23:00.001-07:00

Limits imposed on internet use by companies

2008-07-11T07:18:00.001-07:00

An Imminent Victory for ‘Net Neutrality’ Advocates

By Vindu Goel

When Comcast admitted last fall that it was blocking — or slowing down, as the company preferred to call it — certain file transfers by customers, a lot of people complained that the company was unfairly discriminating against heavy Internet users.

Now it seems that the Federal Communications Commission is poised to agree.

The Associated Press reported late Thursday that the F.C.C.’s chairman, Kevin J. Martin, has concluded that Comcast improperly blocked some file transfers. Mr. Martin told the A.P. he would recommend that the commission punish Comcast, and order it to stop the blocking, tell the commission how and how often it blocked file transfers and disclose to consumers its future plans for managing its network.

Such an action would be the first time that regulators have slapped an Internet provider for violating F.C.C. open-access rules. Those rules are designed to prevent providers from favoring some services over others — for example, by accelerating the transfer of video from their own movie service or slowing down transfers from competitors.

That will surely please “net neutrality” advocates like Free Press, which brought the original complaint. The group issued a statement Thursday night saying: “The F.C.C. now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money.”

Comcast’s blocking efforts ignited a wildfire of criticism last fall, after the A.P. tested Comcast’s network and reported that the cable company was manipulating Internet protocols to intermittently block file transfers made by customers using a popular program called BitTorrent.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, admitted that it was slowing down certain traffic but claimed it was legitimately managing its network so that a few bandwidth hogs didn’t bog things down for everyone else.

Still, in response to critics, the company decided to work with BitTorrent and experiment with other traffic-management techniques to handle the loads on its network.

The dirty little secret of the Internet industry is that all the providers use software tools to manage their network traffic. Comcast got caught and may have been more aggressive than some rivals, but it’s certainly not alone.

Mr. Martin’s proposed ruling in favor of openness could actually end up hurting Internet users if it accelerates the nascent moves by the industry to charge customers based on how much data they use instead of offering essentially unlimited data for a flat fee.

To Curb Traffic on the Internet, Access Providers Consider Charging by the Gigabyte
By BRIAN STELTER

Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files.

For years, both kinds of Web surfers have paid the same price for access. But now three of the country’s largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity.

One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.

That same week, Comcast said that it would expand on a strategy it uses to manage Internet traffic: slowing down the connections of the heaviest users, so-called bandwidth hogs, at peak times.

AT&T also said Thursday that limits on heavy use were inevitable and that it was considering pricing based on data volume. “Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years,” the company said in a statement.

All three companies say that placing caps on broadband use will ensure fair access for all users.

Internet metering is a throwback to the days of dial-up service, but at a time when video and interactive games are becoming popular, the experiments could have huge implications for the future of the Web.

Millions of people are moving online to watch movies and television shows, play multiplayer video games and talk over videoconference with family and friends. And media companies are trying to get people to spend more time online: the Disneys and NBCs of the world keep adding television shows and movies to their Web sites, giving consumers convenient entertainment that soaks up a lot of bandwidth.

Moreover, companies with physical storefronts, like Blockbuster, are moving toward digital delivery of entertainment. And new distributors of online content — think YouTube — are relying on an open data spigot to make their business plans work.

Critics of the bandwidth limits say that metering and capping network use could hold back the inevitable convergence of television, computers and the Internet.

The Internet “is how we deliver our shows,” said Jim Louderback, chief executive of Revision3, a three-year-old media company that runs what it calls a television network on the Web. “If all of a sudden our viewers are worried about some sort of a broadband cap, they may think twice about downloading or watching our shows.”

Even if the caps are far above the average users’ consumption, their mere existence could cause users to reduce their time online. Just ask people who carefully monitor their monthly allotments of cellphone minutes and text messages.

“As soon as you put serious uncertainty as to cost on the table, people’s feeling of freedom to predict cost dries up and so does innovation and trying new applications,” Vint Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist for Google who is often called the “father of the Internet,” said in an e-mail message.

But the companies imposing the caps say that their actions are only fair. People who use more network capacity should pay more, Time Warner argues. And Comcast says that people who use too much — like those who engage in file-sharing — should be forced to slow down.

Time Warner also frames the issue in financial terms: the broadband infrastructure needs to be improved, it says, and maybe metering could pay for the upgrades. So far its trial is limited to new subscribers in Beaumont, Tex., a city of roughly 110,000.

In that trial, new customers can buy plans with a 5-gigabyte cap, a 20-gigabyte cap or a 40-gigabyte cap. Prices for those plans range from $30 to $50. Above the cap, customers pay $1 a gigabyte. Plans with higher caps come with faster service.

“Average customers are way below the caps,” said Kevin Leddy, executive vice president for advanced technology at Time Warner Cable. “These caps give them years’ worth of growth before they’d ever pay any surcharges.”

Casual Internet users who merely send e-mail messages, check movie times and read the news are not likely to exceed the caps. But people who watch television shows on Hulu.com, rent movies on iTunes or play the multiplayer game Halo on Xbox may start to exceed the limits — and millions of people are already doing those things.

Streaming an hour of video on Hulu, which shows programs like “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” consumes about 200 megabytes, or one-fifth of a gigabyte. A higher-quality hour of the same content bought through Apple’s iTunes store can use about 500 megabytes, or half a gigabyte.

A high-definition episode of “Survivor” on CBS.com can use up to a gigabyte, and a DVD-quality movie through Netflix’s new online service can eat up about five gigabytes. One Netflix download alone, in fact, could bring a user to the limit on the cheapest plan in Time Warner’s trial in Beaumont.

Even services like Skype and Vonage that use the Internet to transmit phone calls could help put users over the monthly limits.

Time Warner would not reveal how many gigabytes an average customer uses, saying only that 95 percent of customers use under 40 gigabytes each in a month.

That means that 5 percent of customers use more than 50 percent of the network’s overall capacity, the company said, and many of those people are assumed to be sharing copyrighted video and music files illegally.

The Time Warner plan has the potential to bring Internet use full circle, back to the days when pay-as-you-go pricing held back the Web’s popularity. In the early days of dial-up access, America Online and other providers offered tiered pricing, in part because audio and video were barely viable online. Consumers feared going over their allotted time and bristled at the idea that access to cyberspace was billed by the hour.

In 1996, when AOL started offering unlimited access plans, Internet use took off and the online world started moving to the center of people’s daily lives. Today most Internet packages provide a seemingly unlimited amount of capacity, at least from the consumer’s perspective.

But like water and electricity, even digital resources are finite. Last year Comcast disclosed that it was temporarily turning off the connections of customers who used file-sharing services like BitTorrent, arguing that they were slowing things down for everyone else. The people who got cut off complained and asked how much broadband use was too much; the company did not have a ready answer.

Thus, like Time Warner, Comcast is considering a form of Internet metering that would apply to all online activity.

The goal, says Mitch Bowling, a senior vice president at Comcast, is “ensuring that a small number of users don’t impact the experience for everyone else.”

Last year Comcast was sued when it was disclosed that the company had singled out BitTorrent users.

In February, Comcast departed from that approach and started collaborating with the company that runs BitTorrent. Now it has shifted to what it calls a “platform agnostic” approach to managing its network, meaning that it slows down the connection of any customer who uses too much bandwidth at congested times.

Mr. Bowling said that “typical Internet usage” would not be affected. But on the Internet, “typical” use is constantly being redefined.

“The definitions of low and high usage today are meaningless, because the Internet’s going to grow, and nothing’s going to stop that,” said Eric Klinker, the chief technology officer of BitTorrent.

As the technology company Cisco put it in a recent report, “today’s ‘bandwidth hog’ is tomorrow’s average user.”

One result of these experiments is a tug-of-war between the Internet providers and media companies, which are monitoring the Time Warner experiment with trepidation.

“We hate it,” said a senior executive at a major media company, who requested anonymity because his company, like all broadcasters, must play nice with the same cable operators that are imposing the limits. Now that some television shows are viewed millions of times online, the executive said, any impediment would hurt the advertising model for online video streaming.

Mr. Leddy of Time Warner said that the media companies’ fears were overblown. If the company were to try to stop Web video, “we would not succeed,” he said. “We know how much capacity they’re going to need in the future, and we know what it’s going to cost. And today’s business model doesn’t pay for it very well.”

Perfection secrets in cookie making

2008-07-11T07:13:00.001-07:00

Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret
By DAVID LEITE

TOO bad sainthood is not generally conferred on bakers, for there is one who is a possible candidate for canonization. She fulfills most of the requirements: (1) She’s dead. (2) She demonstrated heroic virtue. (3) Cults have been formed around her work. (4) Her invention is considered by many to be a miracle. The woman: Ruth Graves Wakefield. Her contribution to the world: the chocolate chip cookie.

One day in the 1930s, Mrs. Wakefield, an owner of the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Mass., 23 miles south of Boston, was busy baking in her kitchen. Depending on which of the many legends you subscribe to, the fateful moment may have happened when a bar of Nestlé semisweet chocolate jittered off a high shelf, fell into an industrial mixer below, and shattered, or when Mrs. Wakefield, in a brilliant move to make her Butter Drop Do cookies a bit sexier, chopped up a bar of chocolate and tossed in the pieces. Whether by accident or design, her Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies delighted her customers and became the culinary mother to an august lineage that almost 80 years later is still multiplying and, in some cases, mutating.

Made from nothing more than flour, eggs, sugar, leavening agents, salt, and chocolate, the cookie seems idiot-proof. After all, it’s simple enough that an eighth-grader can make it, right?

Not necessarily.

“If it was just a matter of a recipe,” said Hervé Poussot, a baker and an owner of Almondine, in Dumbo, Brooklyn, “we’d all be out of business. It’s what goes into the making of the cookie that makes the difference.” Like the omelet, which many believe to be the true test of a chef, the humble chocolate chip cookie is the baker’s crucible. So few ingredients, so many possibilities for disaster. What other explanation can there be for the wan versions and unfortunate misinterpretations that have popped up everywhere — eggless and sugarless renditions; cookies studded with carob, tofu and marijuana; whole-wheat alternatives; and the terribly misguided bacon-topped variety.

All this crossbreeding begs the question: Has anyone trumped Mrs. Wakefield? To find out, a journey began that included stops at some of New York City’s best bakeries as well as conversations with some doyens of baking. The result was a recipe for a consummate cookie, if you will: one built upon decades of acquired knowledge, experience and secrets; one that, quite frankly, would have Mrs. Wakefield worshipping at its altar.

The first visit was to the City Bakery, on West 18th Street, owned by Maury Rubin, who seems to get as much pleasure from talking about food as from eating it. When asked about the secret to his cookies, he said, “We bake them in small batches every hour so they’re always fresh.” He went on to say that the store sells more than 1,000 cookies a day.

Why, then, does almost everybody say they prefer homemade to bakery bought?

Mr. Rubin smiled, having already figured out the answer. “It’s the Warm Rule,” he said. “Even a bad cookie straight from the oven has its appeal.”

It’s an opinion expressed by every baker visited. Jacques Torres, who has three branches of his Jacques Torres Chocolate in Manhattan and Brooklyn, has a small warming tray set up near the register so customers can get their cookies soft and gooey, although he offers them at room temperature, too. Seth Berkowitz, the owner of Insomnia Cookies on East Eighth Street, goes so far as to have a display case filled with baskets spilling over with stand-in cookies; the real deals are sold straight from a holding oven.

Heather Sue Mercer, one of three sisters who own Ruby et Violette, which recently reopened on West 50th Street, believes that her bakery’s basic chocolate chip cookie “is definitely better warm,” but, she said, “I think some of our others are better served room temperature for the best flavor.” A warming oven allows all their cookies to be served either way.

Given the opportunity to riff on his cookie-making strategies, Mr. Rubin revealed two crucial elements home cooks can immediately add to their arsenal of baking tricks. First, he said, he lets the dough rest for 36 hours before baking.

Asked why, he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “They just taste better.”

“Oh, that Maury’s a sly one,” said Shirley O. Corriher, author of “CookWise” (William Morrow, 1997), a book about science in the kitchen. “What he’s doing is brilliant. He’s allowing the dough and other ingredients to fully soak up the liquid — in this case, the eggs — in order to get a drier and firmer dough, which bakes to a better consistency.”

A long hydration time is important because eggs, unlike, say, water, are gelatinous and slow-moving, she said. Making matters worse, the butter coats the flour, acting, she said, “like border patrol guards,” preventing the liquid from getting through to the dry ingredients. The extra time in the fridge dispatches that problem. Like the Warm Rule, hydration — from overnight, in Mr. Poussot’s case, to up to a few days for Mr. Torres — was a tactic shared by nearly every baker interviewed.

And by Ruth Wakefield, it turns out. “At Toll House, we chill this dough overnight,” she wrote in her “Toll House Cook Book” (Little, Brown, 1953). This crucial bit of information is left out of the version of her recipe that Nestlé printed on the back of its baking bars and, since in 1939, on bags of its chocolate morsels.

To put the technique to the test, one batch of the cookie dough recipe given here was allowed to rest in the refrigerator. After 12, 24, and 36 hours, a portion was baked, each time on the same sheet pan, lined with the same nonstick sheet in the same oven at the same temperature.

At 12 hours, the dough had become drier and the baked cookies had a pleasant, if not slightly pale, complexion. The 24-hour mark is where things started getting interesting. The cookies browned more evenly and looked like handsomer, more tanned older brothers of the younger batch. The biggest difference, though, was flavor. The second batch was richer, with more bass notes of caramel and hints of toffee.

Going the full distance seemed to have the greatest impact. At 36 hours, the dough was significantly drier than the 12-hour batch; it crumbled a bit when poked but held together well when shaped. These cookies baked up the most evenly and were a deeper shade of brown than their predecessors. Surprisingly, they had an even richer, more sophisticated taste, with stronger toffee hints and a definite brown sugar presence. At an informal tasting, made up of a panel of self-described chipper fanatics, these mature cookies won, hands down.

The second insight Mr. Rubin offered had to do with size. His cookies are six-inch affairs because he believes that their larger size allows for three distinct textures. “First there’s the crunchy outside inch or so,” he said. A nibble revealed a crackle to the bite and a distinct flavor of butter and caramel. “Then there’s the center, which is soft.” A bull’s-eye the size of a half-dollar yielded easily.

“But the real magic,” he added, “is the one-and-a-half-inch ring between them where the two textures and all the flavors mix.”

Testing once again bore out Mr. Rubin’s thesis, which might be called the Rule of Thirds. The 24-hour and, especially, the 36-hour cookies developed the ring Mr. Rubin enthusiastically described. The crisp edge gave way to a chewy circle, with a flavor similar to penuche fudge, surrounding a center as soft as that of the first batch. His theory on the impact of size on texture so delighted Ms. Corriher that she wanted to include it in her new book, “BakeWise” (Scribner, $40), due out in October.

Super-size cookies seem to be the 21st-century rage. Mr. Torres and Mr. Poussot sell cookies as large as Mr. Rubin’s. Levain Bakery, on West 74th Street, offers six-ounce, slightly underbaked behemoths that, while not adhering to Mr. Rubin’s Rule of Thirds — they’re too mounded for that — do have some crunch around the edges.

And what would a chocolate chip cookie be without the wallop of good chocolate? According to most of the bakers, only chocolate with at least 60 percent cacao content has the brio to transform the dough into the Hulk Hogan of cookies. Some, like Mr. Rubin and Mr. Torres, have their chocolate made exclusively for them. Others, including the Mercer sisters, use high-quality imported brands, like Callebaut or Valrhona, and shoot for a ratio of chocolate to dough of no less than 40 to 60.

Break apart a Torres cookie, and a curious thing happens. Inside aren’t chunks of chocolate, but rather thin, dark strata. “I use a couverture chocolate, because it melts beautifully,” he explained, something traditional chips don’t do. Couverture is a coating chocolate used, for instance, for covering truffles. To get his trademark layers, Mr. Torres has his chocolate, which is manufactured by the Belgium company Belcolade, made into quarter-size disks — easily five times the volume of a typical commercial chip. Because the disks are flat and melt superbly, the result, he said, is layers of chocolate and cookie in every bite.

Dorie Greenspan, author of several baking books including “Baking: From My Home to Yours” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), was asked to fill in any blanks left by the master bakers during the quest for the ultimate cookie. Although unsure she could bring anything new to the party, she went through the usual checklist: read through the recipe first, make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature, use the best-quality ingredients you can find, don’t overmix. Then she hit upon something everyone else had missed, and some home bakers are nervous about: salt.

“You can’t underestimate the importance of salt in sweet baked goods,” she said. Salt, in the dough and sprinkled on top, adds dimension that can lift even a plebian cookie. To make the point, she referred to her recipe for Sablés Korova, a chocolate chocolate-chip cookie with a hefty pinch of fleur de sel, from her book “Paris Sweets” (Broadway Books, 2002). Five years ago, sea salt as a must-have ingredient and garnish for sweets wouldn’t have registered on the radar of many home bakers, but now it has become almost commonplace, in part because of Ms. Greenspan’s unwavering belief in its virtue.

After weeks of investigating, testing and retesting, the time had come to assemble a new archetypal cookie recipe, one to suit today’s tastes and to integrate what bakers have learned since that fateful day in Whitman, Mass. The recipe included here is adapted from Mr. Torres’s classic cookie, but relies on the discoveries and insights of the other bakers and authors. So, in effect, it’s all of theirs — the consummate chocolate chip cookie.

This creation, the offspring of some of baking’s top talent, truly bests Mrs. Wakefield’s. Doubt it? There’s only one way to find out.

2008-07-11T07:12:00.001-07:00

Recipe
Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Jacques Torres

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons

(8 1/2 ounces) cake flour

1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract

1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)

Sea salt.

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Note: Disks are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate; Valrhona fèves, oval-shaped chocolate pieces, are at Whole Foods.

Serenity Prayer Stirs Up Doubt: Who Wrote It?

2008-07-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

Serenity Prayer Stirs Up Doubt: Who Wrote It?
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Generations of recovering alcoholics, soldiers, weary parents, exploited workers and just about anybody feeling beaten down by life have found solace in a short prayer that begins, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

Now the Serenity Prayer is about to endure a controversy over its authorship that is likely to be anything but serene.

For more than 70 years, the composer of the prayer was thought to be the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, one of modern Christianity’s towering figures. Niebuhr, who died in 1971, said he was quite sure he had written it, and his wife, Ursula, also a prominent theologian, dated its composition to the early 1940s.

His daughter Elisabeth Sifton, a book editor and publisher, wrote a book about the prayer in 2003 in which she described her father first using it in 1943 in an “ordinary Sunday service” at a church in the bucolic Massachusetts town of Heath, where the Niebuhr family spent summers.

Now, a law librarian at Yale, using new databases of archival documents, has found newspaper clippings and a book from as far back as 1936 that quote close versions of the prayer. The quotations are from civic leaders all over the United States — a Y.W.C.A. leader in Syracuse, a public school counselor in Oklahoma City — and are always, interestingly, by women.

Some refer to the prayer as if it were a proverb, while others appear to claim it as their own poetry. None attribute the prayer to a particular source. And they never mention Reinhold Niebuhr.

An article about the mystery of the prayer, by Fred R. Shapiro, associate library director and lecturer at Yale Law School, will be published next week in the Yale Alumni Magazine, an independent bimonthly publication. It will be followed by a rebuttal from Ms. Sifton.

Mr. Shapiro, who edited “The Yale Book of Quotations,” said in an interview, “Reinhold Niebuhr was a very honest person who was very forthright and modest about his role in the Serenity Prayer. My interpretation would be that he probably unconsciously adapted it from something that he had heard or read.”

In his quotation avocation, Mr. Shapiro says he has debunked claims about the provenance of other famous sayings, including Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong will”) and P. T. Barnum’s (“There’s a sucker born every minute”).

Ms. Sifton faults Mr. Shapiro’s approach as computer-driven and deprived of historical and theological context. In an interview, she said her father traveled widely in the 1930s, preaching in college chapels and to church groups — especially Y.M.C.A.’s and Y.W.C.A.’s — and could have used the prayer then. She said she fixed the date of its composition to 1943 in her book, “The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War” (W. W. Norton, 2003), because she had relied on her parents’ recollections.

Ms. Sifton said the newly unearthed quotations were merely evidence that her father’s spellbinding preaching had had a broad impact. And she said she took greatest umbrage at Mr. Shapiro’s notion that the prayer was so simple that it could have been written by almost anyone in any era.

“There is a kind of austerity and humility about this prayer,” Ms. Sifton said, “that is very characteristic of him and was in striking contrast to the conventional sound of the American pastorate in the 1930s, who were by and large optimistic, affirmative, hopeful.”

The precise origins of the Serenity Prayer have always been wrapped in a fog. Even in Niebuhr’s lifetime, his authorship was challenged. His response was typically modest. He was quoted in a magazine article in 1950 as saying: “Of course, it may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don’t think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself.”

The version of events most often cited in biographies of the theologian is that after Niebuhr used the prayer in a sermon in rural Massachusetts, a neighbor who was an Episcopal priest asked for permission to print it in a booklet for the armed forces in 1944. The U.S.O. distributed it widely.

Alcoholics Anonymous also embraced it and circulated it widely as a motto for its 12-step program.

The prayer is now ubiquitous, on mugs and greeting cards and embroidered pillows, sometimes with Niebuhr’s name attached. But it is possible to find attributions ranging from Aristotle to St. Augustine to Francis of Assisi.

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations attributed it to Niebuhr but gave the date as 1934, perhaps citing an erroneous reference in an article in the magazine of Alcoholics Anonymous, Mr. Shapiro said. But Ursula Niebuhr, who died in 1997, wrote in a memorandum (which an assistant for Mr. Shapiro saw in the Library of Congress) that her husband “may have used it in his prayers” by 1934, but “it certainly was not then in circulation.”

A Niebuhr biographer, Charles C. Brown, said he was surprised to hear of the early references. “It is now well established beyond the shadow of any doubt among knowledgeable and fair-minded people,” Mr. Brown said, “that Niebuhr did compose it, probably in 1941 or ’43.”

Mr. Brown said that perhaps Ms. Sifton’s theory was right, that the newspaper quotations were from people who heard Niebuhr speak the prayer years before he wrote it down.

“His name was very much before the more theologically literate public” by the early 1930s, said Mr. Brown, author of “Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prophetic Role and Legacy” (Trinity Press International, 1992).

But, Mr. Shapiro argued, knowing that Niebuhr was so famous by then, why did none of the people who cited the prayer in the clippings also cite him?

The artifacts that Mr. Shapiro unearthed dismayed the Rev. Gary Dorrien, the Reinhold Niebuhr professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, which was Niebuhr’s scholarly home for many years.

Professor Dorrien said, “What has the ring of truth to me is that some of the phrases in it, the gist of it, he heard or came into contact with in some way that he wouldn’t have remembered, since he’s not a scholarly, bookwormish person with habits of scholarly exactitude anyway.”

“He is a preacher. He is coming into contact with things and blending them,” Professor Dorrien said, adding that for preachers, “it’s an occupational hazard.”

Gene discoveries yield autism clues

2008-07-11T00:26:00.002-07:00

Autism is still a very poorly understood disease.
So far, consistent with the studies, Autism seems to be due to the brain's inability to form the correct connections or synapses resulting in poor learning.

In a developing child, tons of connections or synapses are made - much more than needed, it is only later that the not-as-useful synapses are removed, leaving the important connections that the child has been using while learning.

In autism, some scientists have suggested that it is in during the "pruning" or removing phase that autism happens - so without adequate pruning, there would be a huge messy web of connections that are very hard to make sense of.
Another theory would be that normal levels of learning do not help synapses form in autistic kids, therefore not enough synapses are formed.

With the huge variety of symptoms and genetic deficiency of autistic kids, it is probably a combination of both and some other factors that we may not be aware of at this stage.
In any case, it is interesting to follow the research. Especially given the whole Hoohah over vaccinations.

Gene discoveries yield autism clues

* Story Highlights
* Study: Genes suggest autism happens in brains that can't form proper connections
* Some genes may have been stuck in "off" position, respond to therapy
* Study reveals wide variety, almost a custom set, of gene defects in each patient
* Genetic cause is known for only about 15 percent of autism cases

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Harvard researchers have discovered half a dozen new genes involved in autism that suggest the disorder strikes in a brain that can't properly form new connections.

The findings also may help explain why intense education programs do help some autistic children -- because certain genes that respond to experience weren't missing, they were just stuck in the "off" position.

"The circuits are there but you have to give it an extra push," said Dr. Gary Goldstein of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which wasn't involved in the gene hunt but is well-known for its autism behavioral therapy.

The genetics suggest that "what we're doing makes sense when we work with these little kids -- and work and work and work -- and suddenly get through," he said.

But the study's bigger message is that autism is too strikingly individual to envision an easy gene test for it. Instead, patients are turning out to have a wide variety, almost a custom set, of gene defects.

"Almost every kid with autism has their own particular cause of it," said Dr. Christopher Walsh, chief of genetics at Children's Hospital Boston, Massachusetts, who led the research published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Autism spectrum disorders include a range of poorly understood brain conditions, from the mild Asperger's syndrome to more severe autism characterized by poor social interaction, impaired communication and repetitious behaviors.

It's clear that genes play a big role in autism, from studies of twins and families with multiple affected children. But so far, the genetic cause is known for only about 15 percent of autism cases, Walsh said.

So Walsh's team took a new tack. They turned to the Middle East, a part of the world with large families and a tendency for cousins to marry, characteristics that increase the odds of finding rare genes. They recruited 88 families with cousin marriages and a high incidence of autism, from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. They compared the DNA of family members to search for what are called recessive mutations -- where mom and dad can be healthy carriers of a gene defect but a child who inherits that defect from both parents gets sick.

In some of the families, they found large chunks of missing DNA regions that followed that recessive rule. The missing regions varied among families, but they affected at least six genes that play a role in autism.

Here's why this matters: All the genes seem to be part of a network involved in a basic foundation of learning -- how neurons respond to new experiences by forming connections between each other, called synapses.

In the first year or two of life -- when autism symptoms appear _ synapses rapidly form and mature, and unnecessary ones are "pruned" back. In other words, a baby's brain is literally being shaped by its first experiences so that it is structurally able to perform learning and other functions of later life.

"This paper points to problems specifically in the way that experience sculpts the developing brain," explained Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the work.

Some earlier research had pointed to the same underlying problem, so these newly found genes "join a growing list to suggest that autism is a synaptic disorder," he said.

If that sounds discouraging, here's the good news: The missing DNA didn't always translate into missing genes. Instead what usually was missing were the on/off switches for these autism-related genes. Essentially, some genes were asleep instead of doing their synapse work.

"I find that hopeful" because "there are ways that are being discovered to activate genes," Walsh said. "This might be an unanticipated way of developing therapies in the long term for autism: Identifying these kids where all the right genes are present, just not turned on in the right way."

At Kennedy Krieger, Goldstein thinks the work may provide a gene-level explanation for why some children already are helped by intense therapy.

"We have trouble getting through to these children, but with repeated stimulation we can do it," he said. "These are circuits that have an ability not so much to recover but to work around the problem."

Just a closer walk with thee - Gospel

2008-07-10T20:38:00.002-07:00

Here's Mahalia Jackson, one of the biggest gospel giants, paying a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

I'm a little curious.. I've read somewhere that Jazz was used to be seen as a vulgar art form.. and people have been comparing the hip hop culture to Jazz - that it'll slowly become a respectable art form.
Quincy Jones, a jazz great,spoke at my commencement about jazz and hip hop music as two great genres of American culture.
I don't know. I might have to get over the derogatory remarks in the lyrics and stuff..

Here's the oliver james trio..
Oh man.. what I'd give to play the piano that way... ooh.. feel the groove!

Amazing Grace - Scottish Bagpipes End Scene credits

2008-07-10T20:26:00.002-07:00

This is my most favorite End Scene credits for a movie..

I just love the bagpipes.. and my Boys Brigade roots.

Leann Rimes - Amazing Grace

2008-07-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

Speechless...

Groovy Blues Amazing Grace on Harmonica...

2008-07-10T20:19:00.001-07:00

Gotta love that sound!

2008-07-10T19:33:00.001-07:00

What they say about Curiousity...

collection of scare pranks

2008-07-10T19:22:00.002-07:00

Did I see Singapore Zoological Gardens in here?

Lol..................

2008-07-10T19:17:00.003-07:00

Blondes...
clean yet not so clean... haha

Hidden Camera videos

2008-07-10T09:53:00.002-07:00

Parking ticket prank

Sinking a BMX Z4 - one of the most hilarious and elaborate pranks EVER!!

Mirror prank with twin sisters!

iRack presented by Steve Jobs

2008-07-10T09:32:00.001-07:00

Lol.. one of my favorite classics!

2008-07-10T08:08:00.001-07:00

Widow Sues Pfizer Over Chantix After Husband’s Suicide

2008-07-10T07:59:00.002-07:00

I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but I think the public should be familiar with the side effects of drugs and that they do have bad effects on a certain percentage of the population. When taking a drug, you are putting yourself at risk of having different side effects, some of them may not have been caught in the FDA approval process.
Pharma companies, by being responsible to their shareholders, have an incentive not to frighten customers away by the side effects. They usually affect a small percentage of the population and in most cases, the benefits outweigh the risks.

Not referring to this case specifically, but each lawsuit brought upon the pharma is added costs to the drugs that everyone else is using. Its simple accounting - the costs that arises from heavy litigation has to be covered by the sales of the drug. Since most of these drugs are near monopoly or oligopoly, Pharma companies can simply pass down these litigation costs to the drug.
Who pays in the end?
Everyone else who use the drug, increasing the cost of health care for everyone.

Good litigation is important in keeping big pharmas from being fraudulent, however, excessive litigation payouts are simply passed down the consumers. There needs to be a better balance.

Widow Sues Pfizer Over Chantix After Husband’s Suicide
Posted by Sarah Rubenstein

Where there’s a drug-safety controversy, there’s a lawsuit waiting in the wings.

chantixIn Pfizer’s case, the suit over the smoking-cessation drug Chantix was filed by the widow of a man who shot himself to death in January, Dow Jones Newswires reports. He’d started using Chantix in late October 2007, according to the suit, filed by Linda Collins of Gas City, Ind.

Collins alleges that Pfizer should have known Chantix was associated with psychiatric side effects and should have warned sooner about the issue. The husband didn’t have any history of psychiatric disorders, according to Collins’s lawyer, Kristian Rasmussen.

Pfizer said in a written statement that it has acted “responsibly, appropriately and in the best interests of patient safety” in connection with Chantix. It said it hadn’t been served with a copy of the suit yet but planned to file a formal response.

Rasmussen of Birmingham, Ala., told the Dow Jones he believes this will set off a wave of lawsuits against Pfizer. Perhaps that’s wishful thinking on his part, but lawsuit waves aren’t exactly rare for Big Pharma. After controversy erupted over Merck and Schering-Plough’s cholesterol drug Vytorin earlier this year, we noted that a New York attorney brought suit on behalf of his mother. It wasn’t long before class-action suits were in the picture too.
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The Claim: Beware of Drink Mixers Based on Diet Soda

2008-07-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

July 8, 2008
Really?
The Claim: Beware of Drink Mixers Based on Diet Soda
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

THE FACTS

Usually it is solely the liquor component of a cocktail — not the mixer — that determines its inebriating effects. But some people contend the artificial sweeteners in diet soda speed the absorption of alcohol.

Odd, perhaps, but research suggests it’s true. In a 2006 study, a team of scientists recruited healthy subjects and had them consume vodka cocktails. On some occasions, it was a 20-ounce drink mixed with a sugar-sweetened beverage, and on others it was a nearly identical drink mixed instead with a diet beverage.

In the diet-mixer conditions, the alcohol entered the subjects’ bloodstream about 15 minutes faster, and their blood-alcohol concentration was higher, peaking at 0.05 percent, compared with 0.03 percent with the regular mixer.

One theory is that the alcohol is absorbed more quickly because there is no sugar to slow it down, which would mean that club soda would have a similar effect. A second study in 2007 also showed that alcohol was absorbed far more quickly when mixed with carbonated beverages than with flat mixers, possibly because of the effervescence. As a result, experts say, it’s best to choose flat mixers like orange or cranberry juice over diet sodas or juices.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Compared with sugar-sweetened drinks, artificial sweeteners can speed inebriation.

scitimes@nytimes.com

Should Doctors Lecture Patients About Their Weight?

2008-07-10T07:38:00.002-07:00

This is a tough issue to handle, but that what makes empathizing and compassion in medical care so important. Diagnosing and treatment is one aspect, but the delivery and service is just as important in achieving results for the patient.

It is challenging, especially if so many patients are clearly obese and need to lose weight, but doctors have to understand the difficulty behind trying to correct something like obesity. We're too use to quick fixes in surgery and drugs.

Should Doctors Lecture Patients About Their Weight?

Overweight people already know they are overweight. So should doctors keep nagging them to lose pounds?

That’s the issue tackled recently by one of my favorite medical blogs, called “Musings of a Distractible Mind.'’ The author, who goes by “Dr. Rob,” is Dr. Robert Lambert, an Augusta, Georgia physician who is board certified in internal medicine and pediatrics. On his blog, Dr. Rob muses about a variety of topics like llamas, twinkies and favorite patients. But I was particularly moved by a recent post, which was written after Dr. Rob’s encounter with an overweight patient who was clearly accustomed to being lectured about obesity. As Dr. Rob was about to discuss whether the man needed surgery for sciatica and back pain, the patient interrupted him, hanging his head in shame and blaming his weight for the problem. Dr. Rob writes:

This whole episode really bothered me. He was so used to being lectured about his obesity that he wanted to get to the guilt trip before I brought it to him. He was living in shame. Everything was due to his obesity, and his obesity was due to his lack of self-control and poor character. After all, losing weight is as simple as exercise and dietary restraint, right?

Perhaps I am too easy on people, but I don’t like to lecture people on things they already know. I don’t like to say the obvious: “You need to lose weight.” Obese people are rarely under the impression that it is perfectly fine that they are overweight. They rarely are surprised to hear a person saying that their weight is at the root of many of their problems. Obese people are the new pariahs in our culture; it used to be smokers, but now it is the overweight.

Dr. Rob says obese patients don’t need lectures.

Instead of patronizing obese patients with a lecture, I try sympathizing with them. Just because something is simple doesn’t make it easy. How do you quit smoking? You just stop smoking. We should just pull out of Iraq. There should be peace in the middle east. People should stop hurting each other and start being nice. All of these are good ideas, but the devil is in the details. Losing weight is a struggle, and it really helps to have people giving you a hand rather than knocking you down.

Dr. Rob writes that he still tries to help patients to lose weight, but he is concerned that a “culture of accusation and shame” is making matters worse for them.

The idea that their personal worth lies on their BMI is extremely damaging. There are a lot of screwed-up skinny people out there; just look at super-models. It is a lot easier to lose weight when you actually like yourself and want to do something about your health. Our culture of accusation and shame simply makes obese people hate themselves. If you hate yourself, why should you want to take care of your body?

Is obesity a problem? Sure it is. But we need to get off of our self-righteous pulpits. Obese people should not be made into a group of outcasts. The “them” mentality and the finger-wagging are no more than insecure people trying to feel better by putting down others.

What do you think? Is a “culture of shame and accusation” contributing to the nation’s obesity problem? Post your thoughts below.

Love Your Sunglasses (Should I Know You?)

2008-07-10T07:30:00.003-07:00

“Sunglasses aren’t armor anymore — they’re not about saying don’t touch me,”
Lol...
I love sunglasses.. not so much because of style as this article is about.. but because of armor..
Staying in Rainy Seattle has developed my inner vampirish distaste for garish sunlight. *Reveals fangs and hisses*

Love Your Sunglasses (Should I Know You?)
By RUTH LA FERLA

THE Ilori store in SoHo must be one of the only sunglass emporiums with a V.I.P. room. Lounging there with a flute of Moët, nibbling dark chocolate, shoppers can ponder just the right accessory to create the allure that they are Somebodies.

Will these Tom Ford wood-and-steel aviators convince onlookers that my natural habitat is the red carpet? Will Ralph Lauren’s $350 shades suggest I have stepped off a yacht in Edgartown?

To see for themselves, shoppers can peer into six full-length mirrors around the store, the better to coordinate their eyewear and their entire outfit. This is what appealed to Olivia Munoz, who was scrutinizing her image from head to toe recently while trying on the wares. “I’m beginning to love sunglasses as much as I love shoes and bags and jewelry,” said Ms. Munoz, 21, a student at the University of Mississippi. She added somewhat sheepishly, as if to justify her splurge, “It’s going to be my birthday.”

Ms. Munoz typifies the shopper who has diverted her spending from Stella McCartney tunics and Balenciaga totes into high-priced designer sunglasses. Ilori, a chain that also has stores in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Honolulu, seems to have positioned itself perfectly in a season when statement sunglasses are one luxury that consumers are still willing to splurge on.

Prices for designer sunglasses have jumped to $350 or more in recent months, from an average of $250, retailers say, and the price spike has not turned off shoppers. “The youth of America has discovered sunglasses to be the aspirational and prestige item of the moment,” said Marshal Cohen, a senior analyst with the NPD Group, a market research firm. He predicts, “Sunglasses will replace the handbag as the image item” among teenage girls and young women.

While sales of handbags declined 14 percent in the last year, according to NPD, total sales in the $3 billion eyewear industry rose by 10 percent, even while the number of individual glasses sold has slackened — an indication there has been significant growth at the upper end of the market, Mr. Cohen said.

Why are designer sunglasses bucking the downturn of other luxury goods? Retailers and other fashion authorities cite It-bag fatigue (women have bought more bags in recent years than they can store in their closets), whereas sunglasses are still a novel way to acquire the cachet of a designer brand.

Sunglasses at the top rung of the price ladder are in step with trends, changing shapes and colors seasonally to reflect the whims of buyers. This summer, a heightened enthusiasm for aviator and wraparound frames and vintage Jackie O styles is contributing to their status as the luxury accent of the hour.

Designers are playing into shoppers’ desire to be recognized, at least by those in the know, by downplaying big logos and incorporating more subtle signals of provenance. Bottega Veneta offers frames with woven leather insets that are recognizable to connoisseurs of the house’s hand-woven leather goods. Prada butterfly frames echo the motifs of the brand’s recent runway collections. Chrome Hearts frames are embellished with sterling bolo designs and leather trim reflective of the company’s rough-rider image.

Such stealth-wealth signifiers appeal to Sylvia Toporkiewicz, a visitor from Poland, who was browsing late last month at the Sunglass Hut on Spring Street in SoHo. She weighed the hip factor of a pair of crystal-encrusted Versace frames against some equally costly but understated Ray-Ban glasses, choosing the Ray-Bans, because, she explained, “I don’t want to look Paris Hilton.”

She is among those turning their backs on ostentatious styling, and especially on the owlishly super-size frames popularized a few years back by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, in favor of scaled-down rectangles in bi-colored plastic, imitation tortoise shell, wood, titanium or even gold.

Over all, “people are leaning towards the classics in rich materials,” said Richard Talmadge, the chief operating officer for Safilo, which makes Balenciaga, Jimmy Choo and Valentino eyewear. The company’s best sellers include Marc Jacobs aviators and television-screen-shaped plastic frames worthy of Anouk Aimée in “La Dolce Vita.”

The most coveted styles have a candidly patrician cast. “They look back to the 1970s,” said Jayne Mountford, a trend consultant in Los Angeles. “They represent the iconic look of the jet setter.”

In contrast to the ’70s originals, which made people seem aloof or anonymous, contemporary variations often feature gradient lenses that are tinted on top and clear below — a more approachable look.

“Sunglasses aren’t armor anymore — they’re not about saying don’t touch me,” said Ed Burstell, the vice president for cosmetics and accessories for Bergdorf Goodman in New York. Among the more rarefied labels at Bergdorf are Bulgari, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Chanel and Barton Perreira, a six-month-old brand coveted by aficionados.

In the fall, the store plans to expand its already large sunglasses boutiques by 25 percent. Bergdorf prices range from about $300 to $750 for a high-end tortoise-rim version of Ray-Ban’s Wayfarers, or $1,395 for frames from the brand Gold & Wood, which have diamond-studded temples.

Despite the price, Mr. Burstell described luxury sunglasses as relatively accessible to shoppers used to paying in the thousands for bags or dresses, a “fashion purchase that doesn’t break the bank.”

The demand for luxury sunglasses has spurred designers to quickly affix their logos to the latest styles, including some designers who had not previously had eyewear lines. The roster includes established giants like Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani, and cutting-edge brands like Stella McCartney, Proenza Schouler and Thakoon, some offering wares for both women and men.

“Men have embraced sunglasses with a passion, and may even be driving sales,” said James J. Spina, the editor in chief of 20/20, an eyewear monthly. “Unlike men’s previous pet object, the watch, which half the time is covered by a sleeve, sunglasses are always visible, a kind of jewelry for the face. They give men an identity.”

Browsing at Ilori last month, Matthew Knoll, the owner of a catering company in New York, seemed inclined to that view. He was prepared to spend $400 or more for a distinctive look, he said, adding, “I don’t want to see my sunglasses on someone else’s face.”

Ms. Toporkiewicz continued to scour the Sunglass Hut for frames she hoped would compliment her steeply-angled cheekbones. She would be happy, she said, to spend $300 for a pair that gave her an old-fashioned Garbo-esque allure. “But if they are really nice,” she added, “I would pay any price.”

Cutting Out the Middlemen, Shoppers Buy Slices of Farms

2008-07-10T07:25:00.001-07:00

"I don't wanna shop at the grocery stores no more... let's go farm shopping instead!"

Cutting Out the Middlemen, Shoppers Buy Slices of Farms
By SUSAN SAULNY

CAMPTON TOWNSHIP, Ill. — In an environmentally conscious tweak on the typical way of getting food to the table, growing numbers of people are skipping out on grocery stores and even farmers markets and instead going right to the source by buying shares of farms.

On one of the farms, here about 35 miles west of Chicago, Steve Trisko was weeding beets the other day and cutting back a shade tree so baby tomatoes could get sunlight. Mr. Trisko is a retired computer consultant who owns shares in the four-acre Erehwon Farm.

“We decided that it’s in our interest to have a small farm succeed, and have them be able to have a sustainable farm producing good food,” Mr. Trisko said.

Part of a loose but growing network mostly mobilized on the Internet, Erehwon is participating in what is known as community-supported agriculture. About 150 people have bought shares in Erehwon — in essence, hiring personal farmers and turning the old notion of sharecropping on its head.

The concept was imported from Europe and Asia in the 1980s as an alternative marketing and financing arrangement to help combat the often prohibitive costs of small-scale farming. But until recently, it was slow to take root. There were fewer than 100 such farms in the early 1990s, but in the last several years the numbers have grown to close to 1,500, according to academic experts who have followed the trend.

“I think people are becoming more local-minded, and this fits right into that,” said Nichole D. Nazelrod, program coordinator at the Fulton Center for Sustainable Living at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa., a national clearinghouse for community-supported farms. “People are seeing ways to come together and work together to make this successful.”

The shareholders of Erehwon Farm have open access to the land and a guaranteed percentage of the season’s harvest of fruit and vegetables for packages that range from about $300 to $900. Arrangements of fresh-cut blossoms twice a month can be included for an extra $120 — or for the deluxe package, $220 will “feed the soul” with weekly bouquets of lilies and sunflowers and other local blooms.

Shareholders are not required to work the fields, but they can if they want, and many do.

Mr. Trisko said his family knows that without his volunteer labor and agreement to share in the financial risk of raising crops, the small organic farm might not survive.

“It’s very hard for them to make ends meet,” he said, “so I decided to go out and help. We harvest, water, pull weeds, whatever they need doing.”

Under the sponsored system, farmers are paid an agreed-upon fee in advance of the growing season, making their survival less dependent on the vicissitudes of the market and the cooperation of the elements. The arrangement involves real farms and real farmers and is distinct from community gardens and other forms of urban farming, where vacant or public land is typically put to agricultural use by residents.

The average share price is $500 to $800 a season across the country, Ms. Nazelrod said, though community-supported agriculture seems most popular on the coasts and around the Great Lakes region. The states with the most farms, she said, include New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and California.

“The C.S.A. provides a base that’s certain, and we get the money when we need to spend the money,” said Beth Propst, who farms the fields at Erehwon, using the abbreviation for community-supported agriculture. “Having the money upfront and guaranteed, that gets us through at least the beginning of the season.”

The operations are as diverse as they are numerous.

Erehwon — the word “nowhere” spelled backward — started with two shareholders, reached its goal of 140 last year, and now has raised its target to about 200 members. Another farm in the Chicago area where the community sponsors the crops, Angelic Organics, makes weekly deliveries to more than 1,400 families in Illinois and Wisconsin.

At least 24 vegetable farmers serve an estimated 6,500 members throughout the five boroughs of New York City, said Paula Lukats of Just Food, which connects farmers with residents there. In 2005, there were 37 C.S.A. groups in the city; today, there are 61.

The Golden Earthworm Organic Farm, on 80 acres on the North Fork of Long Island, grew from 10 members in 2000 to about 1,300 this year, according to Matthew Kurek, one of the owners. About half of the members live in Queens, he said, and the farm delivers their weekly shares to six different sites there, mainly churches and community centers, 26 weeks a year. The farm grows arugula, strawberries and sugar snap peas in the spring; watermelon, eggplant and tomatoes in the summer; and broccoli, potatoes and carrots in the fall.

At the Cattleana Ranch in Omro, Wis., Thomas and Susan Wrchota offer grass-fed meat and organic produce through a community-supported arrangement. They have 55 members, and a seven-month meat membership costs $715.

Mr. Wrchota developed a taste for grass-fed beef while working for the Peace Corps in Costa Rica in the 1970s. When he returned home, he said, he was at a loss for that particular flavor and eventually decided to raise animals himself, starting with just one cow.

“We don’t do millions in revenue, but we make a living, which is rare,” he said. “Our goal is to provide a full portfolio of products for folks who want sustainable products. Up until about five years ago, we had to do a tremendous amount of guerrilla marketing. The consumer who is interested now, they’re doing their homework. They know the health and taste benefits.”

Teresa Crisco is one such consumer in Little Rock, Ark. She is a member of the community-supported agriculture program at the Heifer Ranch, an international humanitarian relief organization that is experimenting with how to make such arrangements more popular and profitable for farmers around the world.

“You feel like you’re doing more than one thing: you’re helping the project and you’re helping yourself,” said Ms. Crisco, a document specialist at a mortgage company who heard about the program from a friend. “The whole premise is really neat.”

Here in Illinois, Erehwon sold out of shares last year and had to turn people away.

Tim Fuller, Ms. Propst’s longtime companion and business partner in running the farm, said: “People are coming to us. We do very little marketing except for explaining what we do. It’s amazing.”

With a wry smile, Mr. Fuller said he considers himself both personal farmer and personal trainer, because shareholders under his direction are going to break a sweat.

“There’s always pressure on,” he said. “This is a complicated business, growing so many crops. We do everything by hand for more than 100 different crops.”

The farm expects to gross between $80,000 and $90,000 this year.

Some shareholders said they found the arrangement a bargain compared to grocery shopping, while others considered it a worthwhile indulgence. Most agreed that the urge to buy and spend locally — to avoid the costs and environmental degradation that come with shipping and storage — was behind the decision to join. Shareholders can pick up their goods at the farm or at a store across the street.

“From a ‘going green’ standpoint, it’s an appropriate thing to do,” said Gerard Brill, a musician who bought a share of Erehwon. “Like everything organic, it’s not a bargain, but what price do you put on being healthy? Considering all things, it’s actually a very good deal.”

The downside for people who are used to grocery shopping comes when they want fresh blueberries in January or, as was the case at Erehwon last week, the tomato plants needed more time in the ground because of a cold spring.

“We eat with the seasons, and there’s no guarantee that Mother Nature will cooperate,” Ms. Propst said. “That’s all part of the deal.”

Catrin Einhorn contributed reporting from Chicago.

The ‘Fake’ Steve Jobs Is Giving Up Parody Blog

2008-07-10T07:19:00.001-07:00

The ‘Fake’ Steve Jobs Is Giving Up Parody Blog
By BRAD STONE

The once-mysterious blogger known as “Fake Steve Jobs” is turning off his iPhone for good.

Daniel Lyons, the former Forbes magazine journalist who wrote the blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for the last two years, is moving on with his professional life and creative pursuits. In a final entry Wednesday entitled, “I’m sailing away,” the author, who is moving to Newsweek as a technology columnist this fall, said he was shutting down the popular parody of the life of the Apple chief executive and starting a new blog under his own name.

Mr. Lyons said that he had grown tired of his fictional creation, but mainly he was worried about making fun of a real person whose health has been a recent topic of speculation. (After a reporter for The New York Times asked about his lean appearance at a conference last month, Mr. Jobs said he was healthy.)

“I tried transitioning to other voices, like Jerry Yang’s, but it just didn’t work,” Mr. Lyons said, referring to the embattled Yahoo chief. “It seems clear that people reading the blog wanted to read Fake Steve or nothing.”

For Mr. Jobs’s online doppelgänger, the lights are dimming on a creation that once captivated the technology world. Publishing pseudonymously until an article in The Times revealed his identity last summer, Mr. Lyons wrote with insight and hyperbole about Mr. Jobs’s tyrannical moodiness at Apple and the fictional antics of other high-profile technology figures, including Microsoft’s Steven A. Ballmer and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

An industrywide guessing game as to the identity of “Fake Steve” ensued, with the real Mr. Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates weighing in.

Mr. Lyons translated the appeal of his blog into a novel, “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody,” published in October by Da Capo Press, and he is writing a screenplay based on the book for Hollywood production house, Media Rights Capital. Unlike the book, Mr. Lyons said, the screenplay will feature a generic chief executive.

Yahoo enlisting small partners on its battle against the Big Friendly Google

2008-07-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

Yahoo, don't attack our beloved BFG!

----

Yahoo Is Inviting Partners to Build on Its Search Power
By MIGUEL HELFT

SAN FRANCISCO — Unable to beat Google in the Web search business on its own, Yahoo is trying a new approach.

Yahoo wants to enlist a small army of search start-ups as allies in the hope that collectively they will be able to stop the Google juggernaut, whose share of Web searches keeps growing.

To do so, on Thursday Yahoo is opening its search technology and powerful data centers to other companies, allowing them to build new or customized search engines without having to make the huge investments needed to develop a search service from scratch.

Yahoo, in turn, will sell ads on those new search engines; if some grab even small slivers of the search market, Yahoo will share in their success.

Yahoo’s future remains uncertain. Hoping to seize on growing shareholder dissatisfaction, Carl C. Icahn, the activist investor, is trying to wrest control of the company from Yahoo’s board and management team. Microsoft might renew its bid for Yahoo if Mr. Icahn succeeds.

Yahoo executives said they had high hopes for the new strategy, which they call Boss, or build your own search service.

“Over the course of years, we want this to be much more than a blip,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of research and search strategy at Yahoo. Mr. Raghavan showed a pie chart in which a hypothetical collective market share of the new search engine had grown to be comparable to Yahoo’s own. He joked that the chart was a “pie in the sky” and would not discuss actual market share estimates or timelines.

Yahoo had 20.6 percent of all searches in the United States in May. Google’s share was 61.8 percent, three times as large.

Analysts said Yahoo’s strategy was clever but added that many elements of the plan, like the terms of the business relationships between Yahoo and its partners, had yet to be defined.

“This is being done as a public-facing move to show that Yahoo has an idea for how to get traction in online search,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner. “The overall concept is very sound. But it is way too early to determine what kind of impact it will have.”

Mr. Weiner said it was unclear how many developers would embrace the idea of building new search services on top of Yahoo’s. As of now, two start-ups, Me.dium and Hakia, have signed up to use Yahoo’s search technology.

Me.dium offers a service in which users can see what Web sites their friends are visiting. That allows the company to collect information about what sites have “buzz” at any given time, said Kimbal Musk, the company’s chief executive. Me.dium will use that information to rearrange and supplement Yahoo’s search results, creating a service that captures the “social zeitgeist” of the Web, Mr. Musk said.

A search for “Barack Obama” on Yahoo, for instance, returns a set of news articles, followed by the candidate’s official site and an entry from Wikipedia. On Me.dium, whose search service is still in a test phase, the top results include the candidate’s official site, followed by a popular YouTube video of Senator Obama dancing on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” followed by Obama-themed images for PC desktops.

“We think that for a good percentage of searches, we’ll get people to where they want to go a lot faster than regular search engines,” Mr. Musk said. He said it would have been impossible for Me.dium to create a search service on its own.

Yahoo estimates that it would cost $300 million to build a search service from scratch.

Google has allowed Web sites to customize its search results, but not nearly to the extent that Yahoo is doing with Boss.

Yahoo executives acknowledged that the new strategy, if successful, could cannibalize Yahoo’s own search business. But they said that if a search start-up became popular, it would probably take more users away from Google than from Yahoo, as Google has a far larger share of the market.

“We did a lot of analysis,” said Bill Michels, senior director for Yahoo’s open search platform. “We are comfortable with the risks associated with it.”

The Audacity of Listening

2008-07-10T07:09:00.001-07:00

"if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity."

The Audacity of Listening
By GAIL COLLINS

We have to have a talk about Barack Obama.

I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money.

I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about.

Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats.

Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field?

When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a “new consensus,” he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way.

Here’s a helpful story: Once upon a time, there was a woman searching for a guy who was ready to commit. One day, she met an attractive young man.

“My name is Chuck,” he said, grinning an infectious grin. “I’m planning to devote my entire life to saving endangered wildlife in the Antarctic. In five weeks I leave for the South Pole, where I will live alone in a tent, trying to convince the penguins that I am part of their flock. In the meantime, would you like to go out?”

“I have just met the man I’m going to marry,” she told her friends. She had been betrayed by poor listening skills, which skipped right over the South Pole and the tent. Of course, after five weeks of heavy dating, Chuck flew away and was never heard from again.

A year and a half of campaigning and we still haven’t heard Obama’s penguins, either. It’s not his fault that we missed the message — although to be fair, he did make it sound as if getting rid of the “old politics” involved driving out the oil and pharmaceutical lobbyists rather than splitting the difference on federal wiretapping legislation. But if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity. “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war,” he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq. He did not, you will notice, say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building. He was antidumb.

Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance.

On the common-ground front, he’s called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs, but only if the services they offer are secular. People can have guns for hunting and protection, but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers. Putting some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap is better than nothing, even though he would rather have gone further.

Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday, backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals, one should actually pay attention to what the generals say.

Touching both bases are Obama’s positions that 1) if people are going to ask him every day why he’s not wearing a flag pin, it’s easier to just wear the pin, for heaven’s sake, and 2) there’s nothing to be gained by getting into a fight over whether the death penalty can be imposed on child rapists.

His decision to ditch public campaign financing, on the other hand, was nothing but a complete, total, purebred flip-flop. If you are a person who feels campaign finance reform is the most important issue facing America right now, you should either vote for John McCain or go home and put a pillow over your head. However, I believe I have met every single person in the country for whom campaign finance reform is the tiptop priority, and their numbers are not legion.

Meanwhile, Obama has made it clear what issues he thinks all this cleverness and compromising are supposed to serve: national health care, a smart energy policy and getting American troops out of Iraq. He has tons of other concerns, but those seem to be the top three. There’s definitely a penguin in there somewhere.

Wal-Mart Leads Better-Than-Expected June Sales

2008-07-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

__________________________________
NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal

July 10, 2008

Retailers posted better-than-expected sales for June as federal rebate checks continued to reach taxpayers last month, with Wal-Mart Stores reporting its biggest same-store-sales increase in years, while Target edged higher. Gap's comparable sales dropped 7%, but that wasn't as bad as feared.
Warehouse stores Costco and BJ's Wholesale posted sharp jumps. The results come as consumers are facing $4-a-gallon gasoline and climbing food costs.

For more information, see:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121568999546842387.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

For a sortable chart of retailers' results and comments, see:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/june-sales-chart-how-retailers-fared/

EBay Drops PayPal Plan Down Under

2008-07-10T06:55:00.001-07:00

Yeah! No anti-competitive practices!
Paypal always try to limit payment online to banks, but I prefer to use my credit.
card

Sometimes it’s better to backpedal. EBay seems to have learned that lesson in Australia, and some of the online auction giant’s sellers think that’s a good thing.

The company in April announced a plan that would initially require sellers in Australia to offer eBay’s PayPal online-payment service as an option, and would later require either PayPal or cash to complete transactions. But eBay last week dropped the second phase of that plan, in an announcement before the July 4 holiday that attracted little attention.

EBay’s move came after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a draft notice that the Paypal plan denies consumers “choice” of payment methods–raising concerns about anti-competitive behavior.

Simon Smith, in a statement issued last week, said the company disagreed with the commission but “decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay Community.”

Phil Leahy, president of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance in Australia, hailed the move as a victory for sellers. He said that eBay sellers enjoy the choice of other payment methods including bank transfer, checks, money orders and other online-payment methods.
“I don’t think it’s been a great experience for them down here,” Leahy says of eBay. “I don’t think they thought it was going to go this way.”

Leahy suspects eBay was using its Australian marketplace as an experiment: If it could successfully require PayPal as the primary payment method in Australia, it would attempt to do the same thing in other markets such as Germany, he says.

EBay spokesman Alan Marks says it fully expects a healthy back-and-forth dialogue with its users to help guide its decisions. The company is trying to improve the buyer experience on its auction marketplace, which in turn will improve the seller experience, and lift the entire community. “Community engagement and dialogue is such an important part of what makes eBay work, particularly this year as we try to drive change through the marketplace, that conversation is part of the process,” Marks says.

Contrary to Leahy’s assertion, the company’s Australian team was the one which decided to roll PayPal out more broadly to its site, based on data about buyer satisfaction, Marks says. Last year, people who used PayPal in eBay Australia were almost four times less likely to dispute transactions than people who paid with bank deposits, credit cards, money orders and cheques. EBay had no plans to broadly require PayPal usage in other markets, based on its plan in Australia, Marks says.

The PayPal initiative in eBay Australia is one of many changes eBay is implementing to revive growth in its auction business. It has also required better customer service of its sellers and altered its search technology to display listings from better sellers.

-Mylene Mangalindan
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2008-07-09T12:47:00.001-07:00

"Dancing" - a youtube hit

2008-07-08T07:06:00.004-07:00

You gotta watch this: It has the critical components a classic viral internet video with a feel good at the end. How many of those cities have you been?

A Private Dance? Four Million Web Fans Say No
By CHARLES McGRATH

There are no weekend box office charts for online videos. But if there were, near or at the very top of the list right now might well be a four-and-a-half-minute video called “Dancing,” which more than four million people have viewed on YouTube, and perhaps another million on other sites, in the just over two weeks since it appeared. It’s the online equivalent of a platinum hit, seeping from one computer to the next like a virus.

The title is not misleading. “Dancing” shows a guy dancing: a big, doughy-looking fellow in shorts and hiking boots performing an arm-swinging, knee-pumping step that could charitably be called goofy. It’s the kind of semi-ironic dance that boys do by themselves at junior high mixers when they’re too embarrassed to partner with actual girls.

The dancer is Matt Harding, the 31-year-old creator of the video, and with some New Agey-sounding music playing in the background, he turns up, grinning and bouncing, in 69 different locations, including India, Kuwait, Bhutan, Tonga, Timbuktu and the Nellis Airspace in Nevada, where he performs the dance in zero gravity.

He started doing it at work, years ago, when he was living in Brisbane, Australia. “I’d dance at lunchtime or during an awkward pause or just to annoy people,” Mr. Harding said. “It was sort of a nervous tic.”

Now he’s on the streets in Mumbai one minute, balanced on the Giant’s Causeway rock formation in Northern Ireland the next, and then he’s in a tulip field in the Netherlands or in front of a geyser in Iceland. Sometimes Mr. Harding dances alone. On a Christmas Island beach he has an audience of crabs, and on Madagascar he performs for lemurs.

But more often — and this accounts for much of the video’s appeal — he’s in the company of others: South African street children in Soweto, bushmen in New Guinea, Bollywood-style dancers in India, some oddly costumed waitresses in Tokyo, crowds of free spirits in Paris, Madrid and rainy Montreal, all copying, or trying to, his flailing chicken-step. Mr. Harding even dances for a lone military policeman (unmoved to join him) in the Korean demilitarized zone.

In many ways “Dancing” is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it’s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all — just a guy dancing.

However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus.

Children, not surprisingly, turn out to be the best at picking up on Mr. Harding’s infectious vibe. There’s frequently a grown-up, on the other hand — especially one in the front row of a crowd — who tends to ham it up and make a fool of himself.

The other remarkable thing about the “Dancing” phenomenon is that it is, to a very considerable extent, a creation of the Internet. It doesn’t just live, so to speak, on the Web; it was the Web that, more or less accidentally, brought it into being. The current video is actually the third iteration of a project that began in 2003, when a friend, using a Canon pocket camera with the capacity to record brief videos (when it was still something of a novelty), shot Mr. Harding doing his dance in Hanoi.

It was the equivalent of taking a photograph as a souvenir, Mr. Harding said in a phone conversation recently while driving with his girlfriend in Northern California. Mr. Harding, who grew up in Westport, Conn., skipped college at the suggestion of his father, who didn’t see the point of paying tuition for someone he thought was unmotivated. He has been employed in a video game store and as a designer of video games, but prefers just to travel. “It’s one thing I’m really good at,” he said.

He collected all the dancing shots from that first trip in 2003, edited them into a little video with a soundtrack from an adaptation of a traditional song from the Solomon Islands, performed by the group Deep Forest, and, at his sister’s suggestion, posted it on his Web site, wherethehellismatt.com. (No reference intended to the “Today” show feature “Where in the World Is Matt Lauer?” “I’m almost never up that early,” Mr. Harding said.)

The video went up in the fall of 2004, before YouTube or the other big video upload sites, but even so it quickly became a hit among the people trolling the Internet back then.

“It got picked up by somethingawful.com and sites like that,” Mr. Harding recalled. “Usually, what they showed was people getting hurt or doing something really stupid, so I was bracing myself for abuse, but everyone seemed to like it.”

So did the newly formed Stride chewing gum company, which offered to underwrite Mr. Harding’s subsequent travels, virtually no strings attached. (In the 2006 version the Stride name pops up in the corner of the screen every now and then, and, in the newest video, the company is acknowledged at the very end, but amazingly, in this era of shameless commercial tie-ins, Mr. Harding is not obliged to wear a Stride T-shirt or deliver a little pitch for the product. Exactly what connection the company sees between gum and a guy dancing, but not chewing, remains a bit of a mystery.)

In 2005 Mr. Harding released a second video much like the first — exotic locations, guy dancing, New Agey music — except with better sound and camera resolution, and in 2006 he went back to Stride and asked if he could repeat the venture, this time with other people dancing along with him.

The idea first came to him in 2006, he recalled, when he was dancing with some street kids in Rwanda. “If I had tried dancing with kids in a mall in San Francisco, say, I probably would have got arrested,” he said. “But in Africa there aren’t any barriers, and there’s immediate access to this kind of joy and irreverence.”

He added: “Those first videos were something I needed to do for me, but I realized then that watching me dance was getting a little old. The new video pushes a different button — you’ve got all these different people doing the same thing. I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if you could capture that?’ ”

The new video has better photography still and a score, called “Praan,” that Mr. Schyman orchestrated for a 25-piece band. For the lyrics, he and Mr. Harding decided to stick with a language other than English (because it’s less of a cliché, Mr. Harding said) — but how do you find someone who can sing Bengali? On the Internet, of course. Mr. Harding’s girlfriend, Melissa Nixon, who works for Google, discovered Ms. Siddique on YouTube.

Mr. Harding is aware that fame on the Internet is fleeting, and needs novelty for life support. On the one hand, data is never lost — it’s floating out there in cyberspace forever — but, on the other, our memories (and those of our computers) are limited and subject to constant upgrades. A video is downloaded, sent to a friend or two and then quickly forgotten. Who anymore goes back to look at that animated dancing baby that was all the rage in the ’90s? So Mr. Harding isn’t certain yet whether he wants to make a sequel.

“I wouldn’t want to make another video unless there was something to say that I hadn’t said,” he explained. “I’m going to see if there’s something more to be done, but if not, I’m happy with what there is. I don’t want to pop the bubble.”

Whohoo! Seattle was the last city!
And I saw the Merlion in Singapore in there too!

Church of England Endorses Women as Bishops

2008-07-08T06:54:00.002-07:00

Traditionalists say that having female bishops would lead to the division of the church.

Church of England Endorses Women as Bishops
By JOHN F. BURNS

LONDON — The governing body of the Anglican Church in Britain voted on Monday to approve the appointment of women as bishops, a step that appeared to risk a schism in the church in its historic homeland as the Anglican church worldwide faces one of the most serious threats to its unity in its history, over the ordination of gay clergy members.

After a debate late into the night in the city of York, the General Synod of the Church of England, an assembly that holds ultimate authority on church doctrine in Britain, voted by comfortable margins within each of the synod’s three houses — bishops, clergy and laity — to approve the consecration of women as bishops in the face of bitter opposition from traditionalists.

The vote came 16 years after the synod voted, after similarly fractious debate, to approve the ordination of women as ministers within the British church. But traditionalists unreconciled to the end of the male monopoly within the clergy revived the battle over the issue of approving women as bishops, warning that it could lead to a breakup of the church in Britain.

The move to approve women as bishops in Britain followed the lead taken by Anglican churches elsewhere; in the United States, Australia and Canada, women have been appointed as bishops for some years. Opponents of female bishops argue that Jesus, in choosing men for his 12 disciples, intended that men alone should have the responsibility of ministering to his followers.

The vote came at an awkward time for the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, who leads the worldwide Anglican Communion, with a claimed membership of about 80 million, about 55 million of them active in church affairs. His efforts to prevent a schism within the church in Britain have taken place against a background of deep division between liberals and traditionalists within the Anglican church worldwide, mainly over the issue of homosexuality within the clergy.

This month, Archbishop Williams will host the Lambeth Conference in London, a two-week gathering of Anglican bishops from across the world that meets every 10 years. This year’s meeting will seek ways of preventing a breakup of the communion over differences that have pitted the Episcopal Church in the United States against conservatives, mainly from Africa, who oppose the ordination of gay priests and bishops, and the appointment of women as priests and bishops.

At a meeting last week in Jerusalem, the conservatives voted to create a separate body within the Anglican union to carry the fight against the American church and its liberal allies, amid warnings that the new body could form the basis for a separate church if the conservatives’ demands went unheeded. Archbishop Williams has condemned the move, saying that the new body has no legal standing and challenges Christian teachings of tolerance.

Ahead of the synod in York, traditionalists claimed to have the backing of 1,300 clergy members in Britain who were prepared to leave the church rather than accept women as bishops. Opponents included some female ministers who said that they would prefer that the appointment of women as bishops be deferred rather than risk a widening of divisions within the Church of England.

Church officials have said that the first female bishops will not be appointed before 2014. Monday’s vote was qualified by a requirement that the church draw up a “code of practice” to govern the change, which appeared to open the way for further challenges by traditionalists, one step in a process that church officials said could delay final approval of female bishops for several years.

Church legislation to approve the change will come before the synod again next February, church officials said. But for the appointment of female bishops to proceed, the legislation will need a two-thirds majority, in separate votes, among the synod’s membership of bishops, clergy and laity.

Monday’s vote suggested that reformers were close to amassing the votes needed to meet that requirement. More than 460 delegates attended the York meeting, and the breakdown provided by church officials indicated that reformers won 28 to 12 among the bishops, and 124 to 44 among the clergy. Among the laity, the vote was 111 to 68.

But traditionalists emerging from the meeting vowed to continue their fight and hinted that the risk of a breakup of the church remained. Several British newspapers reported in recent days that a group of British Anglican bishops traveled to Rome ahead of the vote in York to meet senior Vatican officials to explore the possibility of so-called Anglo-Catholic traditionalists quitting the Church of England and joining the Roman Catholic Church.

Spokesmen for the Church of England, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Britain, said they had no knowledge of any meeting in Rome. But a meeting in Rome, if it occurred, would be an echo of what happened when the church first voted to admit women as priests, when traditionalists within the church, including about 500 clergymen, broke away and joined the Roman Catholic Church.

“It’s getting worse; it’s going downhill very badly,” the Rev. David Houlding, a leader of the traditionalists, said after the York vote, according to a report by the newspaper The Guardian. “It’s quite clear that there is a pincer movement, and we’re being squeezed out.” But he added, “There will be no walkout — yet.”

The voting in York rejected a compromise proposal put forward in the last days before the synod by one of the church’s most senior bishops in Britain, the Rt. Rev. John Packer, who is bishop of Ripon and Leeds. The compromise would have created a group of three so-called super-bishops, chosen from among traditionalists, who would be given authority over parishes that refuse to accept the leadership of a female bishop or priest.

But the proposal met with strong resistance among liberals. The Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, an opponent of the compromise, said that the new tier of bishops would create “a ghetto of no-go areas” within the British church, amounting to the licensing of a breakaway church.

2008-07-08T06:49:00.000-07:00

In Big Win for P&G, Pringles Found to be ‘Not Potato Crisps’

2008-07-07T18:59:00.001-07:00

The "non-potato-ness" of pringles saves tax for British consumers!

Posted by Ashby Jones

pringlesWe’ve often wondered about Pringles, the chips that come neatly and unnaturally stacked in a can, but we’ve never had reason to question whether they’re actually potato chips. That is, until now.

On Friday, a British tax court ruled that Pringles are not, in fact, potato crisps — and therefore are not subject to Britain’s 17.5% sales tax. Here’s coverage from Bloomberg and Paul Caron’s TaxProf Blog. Click here for a copy of the opinion.

According to the Bloomberg story, most food in the U.K. is not taxable. The national tax office, however, had argued that Procter & Gamble’s Pringles fall into a category of taxable food for potato chips “and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch.”

But at a hearing in May, P&G’s lawyers claimed that Pringles don’t look, feel or taste like a regular potato chip (you’d get no argument from us on that). The lawyers also claimed the snack isn’t made like a chip since it is cooked from baked dough, not potato slices. According to the judgment, P&G’s lawyers had argued that potato chips “give a sharply crunchy sensation under the tooth and have to be broken down into jagged pieces when chewed.” A Pringle, they continued “is totally different . . . a Pringle is designed to melt down on the tongue.”

The tax court agreed, though it didn’t address what Pringles are. So, being the intrepid reporters that we are, we went to the Pringles Web site and clicked on “nutritional information.” We’re not sure this clears it up, but here’s the list of ingredients for the original red-canned snack:

INGREDIENTS: DRIED POTATOES, VEGETABLE OIL (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: CORN OIL, COTTONSEED OIL, SOYBEAN OIL, AND/OR SUNFLOWER OIL), RICE FLOUR, WHEAT STARCH, MALTODEXTRIN, SALT AND DEXTROSE. CONTAINS WHEAT INGREDIENTS.

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Is Google making us stupid?

2008-07-07T15:26:00.001-07:00

Lol.. this article is ironically long..
=)
----

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial »

brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

Also see:

Living With a Computer
(July 1982)
"The process works this way. When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen..." By James Fallows

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”

As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”

The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.

The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts, its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.

About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man named Frederick Winslow Taylor carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the efficiency of the plant’s machinists. With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.

More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it—was embraced by manufacturers throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management, was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.” Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. “In the past the man has been first,” he declared; “in the future the system must be first.”

Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”

Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.

The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”

Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to use technology, in Eric Schmidt’s words, “to solve problems that have never been solved before,” and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn’t Brin and Page want to be the ones to crack it?

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”

I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

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Hey! A Singaporean cartoonist was featured on time!

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Splurging Is Good for Your Health

2008-07-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

"Hoooray!"

July 7, 2008, 12:11 pm
Splurging Is Good for Your Health

Buying overpriced indulgences may feel good in the short term, but you pay the price later. Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.

But a study by a couple of business-school professors says splurging now makes you happier later. Even more surprising: Not splurging now gives you pangs of regret later.

Gucci shopper

Anat Keinan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and Ran Kivetz, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, make their case for the vice lifestyle in an article in the Harvard Business Review.

One of their studies polled college students and alumni on the subject of spring breaks. Regret about not having spent more money or traveling during breaks increased with time, whereas regret about not having worked, studied, or saved money during breaks decreased with time.

The authors write: “We saw a similar pattern in a study of how businesspeople perceived past choices between work and pleasure. Over time, those who had indulged felt less and less guilty about their choices, whereas those who had been dutiful experienced a growing sense of having missed out on the pleasures of life.” (As the old saying goes, nobody dies saying “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”)

The authors also did a study of mall shoppers, asking about their regret about buying an expensive item of clothing. Those who anticipated short-term regret bought less-expensive items, while those who anticipated long-term regret splurged. “Thinking about short-term regret drives consumers to be virtuous, while thinking about long-term regret leads them to be extravagant,” the authors write.

Luxury-goods makers, of course, will eat this up. I can see the slogan now: “Luxury: It’s Good for Life.” But whether luxury is good for your finances is another matter. (Nobody goes bankrupt saying “I wish I’d spent more on Gucci bags).

Wealth Report readers, what do you think? Do the long-term benefits of indulgence outweigh the short-term risks of regret?

2008-07-07T10:00:00.001-07:00

Does Green Tea Help the Heart?

2008-07-07T09:40:00.002-07:00

A study shows that Green Tea is beneficial for Heart disease, but it is a good addition to a healthy diet not a miracle cure.

Does Green Tea Help the Heart?
By Alice Park

The next time you're offered a choice between Earl Grey and green tea, you might want to go green.

A new study shows that the beverage, which is more popular in Eastern cultures, can protect heart arteries by keeping them flexible and relaxed, and therefore better able to withstand the ups and downs of constant changes in blood pressure. Led by Dr. Nikolaos Alexopoulos of Athens Medical School in Greece, the researchers found that among 14 subjects, those who drank green tea showed greater dilation of their heart arteries on ultrasound 30 min. later than those drinking either diluted caffeine or hot water. That's because, the scientists speculate, green tea works on the lining of blood vessels, helping cells there to secrete the substances needed to relax the vessels and allow blood to flow more freely. It's the flavonoids in the tea, which work as antioxidants and help prevent inflammation in body tissue, that keep the vessels pliable. These substances may also protect against the formation of clots, which are the primary cause of heart attacks. "We found very promptly [that] after drinking green tea, there was a protective effect on the endothelium," says Dr. Charalambos Vlachopoulos, a cardiologist and one of the authors of the study.

All it took, says Vlachopoulos, was 6 g of green tea, which amounts to 3 to 4 cups. To make sure the dilation effect was not due to the small amounts of caffeine found in green tea, the group compared the arterial sizes in the green-tea drinkers with those consuming a diluted caffeine beverage and found no change in arterial size in the caffeine drinkers. Even more intriguing, the beneficial effect seems to be long-lasting and cumulative. When the doctors measured the green-tea drinkers' arteries two weeks after daily consumption of the beverage, they found that their vessels were more dilated than they had been at the beginning of the study. "It's something that needs to be investigated, but we think that if someone takes green tea for one or two months, the beneficial effect will be even greater," says Vlachopoulos.

But experts caution that one study isn't enough to catapult green tea to wonder-drink status. Dr. Robert Eckel, a professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, and past president of the American Heart Association, notes that endothelial function is affected by a number of factors, including large doses of vitamins E and C. "Green-tea consumption may have beneficial effects on the arteries, but we should stop short of translating that into a recommendation that everybody should be drinking green tea because it's been proven to reduce heart attacks and strokes," he says. He acknowledges, however, that early studies hint that green tea may be a good addition to a heart-healthy diet. The American Heart Association does not yet include the beverage in its dietary recommendations, but more studies like this one may change that. In the meantime, if you're drinking tea, it might not be such a bad idea to go green.

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America's Shrinking Groceries

2008-07-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

Friday, Jun. 27, 2008
America's Shrinking Groceries
By Kate Pickert

American supermarkets are epics of excess: it often seems like every item in the store comes in a "Jumbo" size or has "Bonus!" splashed across the label. But is it possible that the amount of food Americans are buying is, in fact... shrinking? Well, yes. Soaring commodity and fuel prices are driving up costs for manufacturers; faced with a choice between raising prices (which consumers would surely notice) or quietly putting fewer ounces in the bag, carton or cup (which they generally don't) manufacturers are choosing the latter. This month, Kellogg's started shipping Apple Jacks, Cocoa Krispies, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks containing an average of 2.4 fewer ounces per box.

Similar reductions have recently happened or are on the horizon for many other products: Tropicana orange juice containers are shrinking from 96 ounces to 89; Wrigley's is dropping its the 17-stick PlenTPak in favor of the 15-stick Slim Pack; Dial soap bars now weigh half an ounce less, and that's even before they melt in the shower. Containers of Country Crock spread, Hellmann's mayonnaise and Edy's and Breyer's ice cream have all slimmed down as well (although that may not necessarily be a bad thing).

"People are just more sensitive to changes in price than changes in quantity," says Harvard Business School Professor John Gourville, who studies consumer decision-making. "Most people can tell you how much a box of cereal costs, but they have no clue how much is actually in it." Other segments of the economy have made similar moves to pass on their higher costs to the consumer without raising prices directly. American Airlines announced in May that it would charge $15 each way for a single checked bag, part of what airlines have dubbed "a la carte" pricing, which — along with the industrywide drive to put price tags on former freebies like soft drinks, meals and headphones — some airline observers say is really an effort to avoid increasing base ticket prices.

Once they're asked about the changes, food manufacturers are quick to explain their own increasing overhead costs — a Kellogg's spokeswoman said reducing the amount of cereal per box was "to offset rising commodity costs for ingredients and energy used to manufacture and distribute these products" — but most are not exactly going out of their way to let consumers know they're getting less for their money. Some claim newly shrunk products are responses to consumers' needs. Tropicana told the New York Daily News earlier this month that its orange juice containers, which also include a newly designed cap and retail for the same price as the previous larger size, were the result of customer complaints. Said spokeswoman Jamie Stein, "We had a lot of spillage with our old products. It's a value-added redesign."

Reducing the size of products as a way of increasing prices is not new. Frito-Lay cut the amount of chips in their bags and Poland Springs reduced its water cooler jugs from 6 to 5 gallons years ago, all while keeping prices the same. Still, says Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federal of America, "What's going on now is definitely reflective of rising food costs and rising fuel costs." Waldrop says he doesn't blame manufacturers for taking the step to protect their bottom lines, but says the food companies should be honest with their customers about it. "If they're transparent and open, consumers are less willing to think [manufacturers] are trying to pull one over on them," says Waldrop. The changing product sizes are part of the reason the Bureau of Labor Statistics says groceries cost 5.8% more than the same time last year. Price checkers in the department measure more than 2,000 food items to determine overall food inflation, and when they notice product size changes, they adjust the inflation index accordingly, according to Ephraim Leibtag, an economist with the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture.

When a product amount drops below a benchmark like "1 pound" or "1 gallon" consumers often take note, according to Gourville. But after that, it's much easier for manufacturers to further whittle down amounts. It's all about taking away consumers' ability to compare apples to apples. The best way to compare food products if you're not sure if sizes have changed is to look at the "unit price," which breaks down the cost per ounce or per quart.

— With Reporting by Alex Altman

This DVD Will Self-Destruct

2008-07-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, Jul. 01, 2008
This DVD Will Self-Destruct
By Sarah N. Lynch

You've heard of disposable dishes, cameras and even video cameras. But what about disposable DVDs?

No-return DVD rentals that essentially self-destruct within 48 hours after they are removed from their packaging are now rolling out at airports, travel centers and every Staples store across the country. Each location will offer about 25 new movie releases and, rather than return them, consumers can recycle them for free when they're done watching or just throw them out.

The DVDs, which were created by the Georgia-based company Flexplay Entertainment, look like regular discs, but they are made with a special glue that is sensitive to oxygen. Once the disc is exposed to air, a chemical reaction causes the glue to darken so the laser in the DVD player can no longer read the disc. Sealed discs can last for about one year. "It's like DVD on demand," says Joe Fuller, Flexplay's executive vice president of marketing. "You can get Flexplay at the store today, but your rental period doesn't actually start until you've opened the sealed package."

The company hopes these DVDs will appeal to business travelers who don't usually rent movies because their busy schedules make it hard to find time to return them. In addition to Staples, which has never offered movie rentals before, the discs will be for sale at Flexplay's own Web site, Travel Centers of America, Love's and at about 200 Hudson Group–owned newsstands at airports and travel hubs. "You can pick up a couple of movies and put it in your briefcase," Fuller says. "And the next time you are stuck at an airport, you can pop it in your DVD player or computer and you can enjoy a movie."

This is not Flexplay's first foray into the market. In 2003, Flexplay partnered with Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment and tested out their invention, then dubbed EZ-D, in chains like Papa John's, Walgreens and 7-Eleven. The pilot, however, lasted only a year, and both companies met with resistance from environmental groups that felt the product was wasteful. This time around, Fuller says the company is making it easier to recycle. As before, customers can still go onto Flexplay's Web site and download a free shipping label to mail the disc back. Flexplay is also partnering with GreenDisc, a company that recycles technotrash, to place recycling bins for the DVDs in most of the retail locations. Any materials that are recycled will be used to make DVD display cases at retail shops. Fuller notes the discs will now be offered at a lower cost (roughly $4.99) and the titles will no longer just be limited to movies from one studio. So far, Paramount, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema and Starz have entered licensing agreements with Flexplay.

But some environmentalists still have their doubts about the viability of a disposable DVD. At a time when the country is focused more than ever on curbing global warming, environmentalists question whether most studios will support Flexplay. "From our perspective, nothing has changed in terms of the wastefulness of this," says Mark Murray, the executive director of Californians Against Waste, whose group opposed the product last time. "It's just the message this is sending — that we should produce hard products, permanent products, products that are not going to break down in the natural environmental whose useful life instead of being measured in years is now literally being measured in hours."

Although Flexplay does not consider Blockbuster or Netflix to be major competitors, there is still the question of whether a disposable disc for $4.99 can compete in the market. Redbox's kiosks, which dispense new-release films at supermarkets around the country for about $1 a day, appear to be growing in popularity. Other potential competitors include Web sites that allow viewers to download movies right onto their computers — a service that may be of interest particularly to travelers.

Steve Swasey, the vice president of corporate communications for Netflix, said he had not heard of Flexplay's latest launch, but he agreed their product does not seem to be a "direct competitor" to his company. "The whole thing with Netflix is convenience, selection and value," Swasey says, noting that Netflix already has a subscription base of customers who enjoy unlimited DVDs and a wide selection. While Flexplay offers only the newest films, Swasey notes that the bulk of Netflix's business entails shipping out older titles. "New releases are less than 30 percent of what we ship every day," he says.

Ross Rubin, the director of industry analysis for The NPD Group, a market research firm, says he sees potential in the Flexplay disc. "DVD rental is a large market," Rubin says. "If the company can overcome some of the educational challenges in helping consumers understand what it is and that it is only valid for one viewing session, and if they can line up more studio support, then there's an opportunity there."

Steve Tyrell...

2008-07-07T07:55:00.001-07:00

I hope to catch him at Jazz Alley this weekend!

There are a couple of really touching songs in here.. especially the ones in association with his wife's cancer

2008-07-07T07:44:00.001-07:00

Google, Zen Master of the Market

2008-07-07T07:25:00.001-07:00

Anti-trust worries of Google?

By STEVE LOHR

Bill Gates, who walked away from full-time work at Microsoft last month, was perhaps the foremost applied economist of the second half of the 20th century.

Mr. Gates and Microsoft fundamentally shaped how people think about the behavior of modern markets in which technology plays a central role. Under Mr. Gates, Microsoft also challenged the conventional wisdom about competition, business strategy and even antitrust law.

Now, in the early years of the 21st century, Google is the company prompting a rethinking of assumptions.

Microsoft was a master practitioner of "network effects," the straightforward precept in economics that the value of a product or service often goes up as more people use it. There is nothing new about the concept. It was true of railways, telephones and fax machines, for example.

Microsoft, however, applied the power of network effects more lucratively than any company had done before it.

Microsoft attracted consumers and software developers to use its technology, the software that controls the basic operations of a personal computer. The more that people used Microsoft's operating system (DOS and later Windows), the more that third-party developers built products to run on Windows, which attracted more users.

So Microsoft's success snowballed, and the company owned the essential technology, making it harder for users and developers to switch to alternatives.

But the Internet has changed the rules of networked competition, partly because Internet software standards are more open than those in the PC industry. That helps explain why Microsoft has struggled to catch up with Google in the rich new market for Internet search advertising.

Google's huge, widening lead in that business suggests that while some weapons of competition have changed, the market dynamics are similar, say economists and industry experts. At this stage, they note, Internet search appears to be a market that is winner take most, if not all.

Google, it seems, is the emerging dominant company in the Internet era, much as Microsoft was in the PC era. The study of networked businesses, market competition and antitrust law is being reconsidered in a new context, shaped by Google. Google's explanation for its large share of the Internet search market — more than 60 percent — is simply that it is a finely honed learning machine. Its scientists constantly improve the relevance of search results for users and the efficiency of its advertising system for advertisers and publishers.

"The source of Google's competitive advantage is learning by doing," said Hal R. Varian, Google's chief economist.

In the Internet marketplace, Mr. Varian notes, users can easily switch to another search engine by typing in another Web address, so there is no tight technology control, as there is with proprietary PC software. Similarly, Mr. Varian says, advertisers and publishers can switch fairly easily to rival ad networks operated by Yahoo, Microsoft and others.

But economists and analysts point out that Google does indeed have network advantages that present formidable obstacles to rivals. The "experience effects," they say, of users and advertisers familiar with Google's services make them less likely to switch. There is, for example, a sizable cottage industry of experts who tailor Web sites to get higher rankings on search engines, which drive user traffic and thus ad revenues. These experts understandably focus their efforts on the market leader, Google — another network effect, analysts say.

Google executives often point out that personal data in its services like Web e-mail is not held in proprietary document formats, as it is in PC software. Formats aside, however, a person with a year or so of e-mail housed in Gmail is highly unlikely to switch as a practical matter, analysts say.

Taken together, these networked advantages enjoyed by Google are significant, most analysts agree. "It certainly does have an impact on whether other companies can be competitive threats to Google," said Michael Katz, an economist at New York University's Stern School of Business. "But it's a very different way to lock people in than it was for Microsoft. It would be a lot easier for people to walk away from Google."

Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees the difference in terms of what he calls "direct network effects" and "indirect network effects." The direct effects, he says, include software document formats and technology standards that are owned by one company and that are incompatible with a rival's technology. The indirect effects, he adds, include large numbers of users, the ability to learn from those users, the power of a well-known brand and user inertia.

"For Google," Mr. Cusumano said, "the indirect network effects are very powerful."

Google's market power, it seems, is the economic equivalent of what in foreign affairs is called "soft power," a term coined by the political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. This is the power to co-opt rather than coerce.

The implications of Google's market power for antitrust law are just beginning to be considered. The Justice Department is reviewing Google's planned partnership with Yahoo. Under the agreement, Yahoo, the No. 2 company in search, would farm out some of its search advertising to Google, the leader. Google has said the deal is simply a voluntary outsourcing arrangement, while opponents say it will reduce competition in search advertising even further.

Google's market share alone invites scrutiny worldwide. In the United States, antitrust law defines a dominant firm with potentially monopolistic power as a company with 70 percent market share or more. In America, Google has garnered more than 60 percent of searches conducted and about 70 percent of the search ad market. In Europe, the definition of a dominant firm is one that has as little as 35 percent of a market, legal experts say.

Still, dominance alone is not an antitrust problem. The issue is the powerful company's behavior, says Andrew I. Gavil, a professor at the Howard University School of Law. "You have to be big and bad, not just big," he said.

The telltale signs of a company's bad behavior include raising prices, hindering innovation and excluding competitors. There is no evidence that Google is engaged in suspect behavior, but it could be hard to spot. Its ad auction system, for example, is essentially a private marketplace run by Google, without much disclosure to advertisers or to Web publishers.

Mr. Varian, Google's chief economist, acknowledges that the company has been criticized for its lack of transparency. But he says that the Google approach is a byproduct of its virtue as a fast-moving learning machine. "The system is constantly evolving to optimize efficiency, improve ad quality and make the pricing smarter, so you don't want set rules that say we do X and we don't do Y," Mr. Varian explained.

Whether that kind of "trust us" explanation will satisfy government regulators, if Google's market power continues to grow, remains to be seen. But Google seems to have learned a lesson from Microsoft and its antitrust troubles. Mr. Varian said antitrust training is mandatory now for Google managers.

"Google looks at what happened to Microsoft, and we're going to follow the rules," he said. "If you're really successful, you need to know about antitrust. That goes with the territory."

Doctors Press Senate to Undo Medicare Cuts

2008-07-07T07:12:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON — Congress returns to work this week with Medicare high on the agenda and Senate Republicans under pressure after a barrage of radio and television advertisements blamed them for a 10.6 percent cut in payments to doctors who care for millions of older Americans.

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The advertisements, by the American Medical Association, urge Senate Republicans to reverse themselves and help pass legislation to fend off the cut.

How to pay doctors through the federal health insurance program is an issue that lawmakers are forced to confront every year because of what is widely agreed to be an outdated reimbursement formula. But the dispute, which showcases the continued potency of health care issues, has reached a new level of urgency this year. Some doctors are reassessing their participation in the program and powerful interests on all sides are in a lobbying frenzy.

Just before the Fourth of July recess, the House passed a bill to prevent the Medicare pay cut by a vote of 355 to 59. In the Senate, Republicans blocked efforts to take up the bill, so the cut took effect on July 1, as required by the formula. But the Bush administration has delayed processing of new claims to give Congress time to come up with a compromise.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said he planned to force another vote this week, and Democrats pressed their case over the weekend in their national radio address.

Democrats need just one more vote to pass the bill, and they hope to win over Republicans who were hit by advertisements over the recess. The advertisements assert that Republicans have been protecting "powerful insurance companies at the expense of Medicare patients' access to doctors." The commercials were aimed at 10 Republican senators, including seven up for election this fall.

But President Bush has vowed to veto the bill, so the fight — and the uncertainty — could continue for weeks.

Mr. Bush and many Republicans oppose the bill because it would finance an increase in doctors' fees by reducing federal payments to insurance companies that offer private Medicare Advantage plans as an alternative to the traditional government-run Medicare program.

Insurance companies and the White House argue that the bill would hurt beneficiaries who rely on private Medicare plans. America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, ran television advertisements last week, urging Congress to "stop cuts to Medicare Advantage."

Medicare is just one issue on which Congress is stalled. The Senate has yet to finish work on a bipartisan bill to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Lawmakers are also struggling with legislation to regulate electronic surveillance and deal with soaring gasoline prices.

But the Medicare issue has been a sticking point for years. The question is how to rein in the rapidly rising cost of the federal health program. Members of both parties say they want to change the formula, which defines a "sustainable growth rate" for spending on doctors. But Congress is nowhere near agreement.

The pending bill offers a short-term fix. It would reverse the 10.6 percent cut and increase Medicare payments to doctors by 1.1 percent in January. Under the current formula, doctors would still face cuts of more than 5 percent a year from 2010 to 2012.

Despite the president's veto threat, many House Republicans bolted and voted for the bill, putting added pressure on their colleagues in the Senate.

As the maneuvering goes on in Washington, doctors around the country have begun to reassess their participation in Medicare.

Dr. David D. Richardson, 40, an ophthalmologist in Los Angeles County, closed his practice last week to all but emergency patients and those needing surgery.

"I love practicing medicine," Dr. Richardson said, "but I would lose more money by keeping my office open than by pulling it back to a skeleton crew. Just like a physician in the emergency room, I try to reduce the hemorrhaging."

In Topeka, Kan., Dr. Kent E. Palmberg, senior vice president and chief medical officer of the Stormont-Vail HealthCare system, said its 70 primary care doctors were "no longer accepting new Medicare patients as of July 1 because of the draconian cut in Medicare reimbursement."

Dr. Gerald E. Harmon, a family doctor in Pawleys Island, S.C., said he decided last week that he would not take new Medicare patients "until further notice."

"This is not what we enjoy doing," says a notice in his waiting room. "It is what we must do to maintain financial viability."

Dr. Harmon said that Democrats had been more helpful on Medicare legislation, but that the two parties shared responsibility for the impasse.

"Rome is burning, and Nero is fiddling away, trying to get re-elected," Dr. Harmon said.

Doctors have also entered the political arena. One made a direct appeal to Mr. Bush at a fund-raiser last week in Jackson, Miss. Dr. J. Patrick Barrett, a spine surgeon and president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, said he had told Mr. Bush that the Medicare pay cut would be "extremely detrimental to the health and welfare of the elderly population."

In an interview, Dr. Barrett said: "I lose money whenever I operate on a Medicare patient. In the last week, a number of doctors have told me they will quit seeing new Medicare patients or will cut back on the amount of Medicare work they do."

The A.M.A.'s advertisements focus on Senators John Cornyn of Texas, John E. Sununu of New Hampshire and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, among others.

Republicans defend their position in various ways. Mr. Cornyn said the bill provided only "a patchwork fix." Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said Democrats were playing "partisan games."

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, said, "Nobody wants to cut physicians' pay." But lawmakers disagree over how to cover the cost of remedial legislation.

More than 10 million of the 44 million Medicare beneficiaries are in private Medicare Advantage plans offered by companies like Humana, UnitedHealth and Coventry Health Care. Many of these plans offer extra benefits like vision and dental care. But independent studies have repeatedly found that the private plans cost the government more per person than traditional Medicare.

Expecting the battle to resume this week, Coventry Health Care, in an e-mail message dated July 3, asked insurance agents across the country to call Congress and oppose the pending Medicare bill, saying that it would be "harmful to beneficiaries."

On the other side of the issue, military families have joined doctors and AARP, the advocacy group for older Americans, in lobbying for the bill.

Relatives of active-duty military personnel, military retirees and their dependents receive care under a federal program known as Tricare, which uses the Medicare fee schedule to pay doctors.

When Medicare reduces payments to doctors, fees under the military program are also reduced, and it becomes more difficult for military families to find doctors.

Congress is "playing chicken with your health care," the Military Officers Association of America told its members in a bulletin last week.

Medicare receives 15 million claims a week for services paid under the physician fee schedule, so any change in payment rates has big implications.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said he would try to "minimize the impact" of the cut by instructing Medicare contractors to hold claims for 10 business days.

Kerry N. Weems, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said doctors would not be paid at the lower rates "before July 15 at the earliest."

However, Medicare officials said, that is simply what the law requires. Under existing law, claims cannot be paid sooner than 14 days after they are received. And if claims are filed on paper, rather than electronically, they cannot be paid sooner than 29 days after they are received.

Giant rubber snakes to capture wave power!

2008-07-06T09:56:00.005-07:00

Looking like something out of a Fifties B-movie, it slithers and slides through the waves.

But far from being a deadly predator, the 600ft-long rubber sea snake could one day be the answer to the country's energy crisis.

The device - named the Anaconda after the large snake that lives in water - is a wave power generator, which converts the rise and fall of the oceans into cheap, green electricity.

Its creators say it could offer a reliable alternative to the thousands of wind turbines due to be built in the next decade.

Professors Francis Farley and Rod Rainey, the snake's inventors, predict that, if tests continue to be successful, the first 'Anaconda farms' could be built within five years.

The device, which is 20ft wide, is made up of a long rubber tube, closed at both ends and filled with water.

Designed to be anchored with one end facing the oncoming waves, it should be used in water between 120ft and 300ft deep, typically about one or two miles from shore.

Because it is made of rubber - meaning it is lighter than other wave generators and does not need complicated hydraulic ramps, hinges and articulated joints - it is cheaper to build and needs less maintenance.

Tests using small-scale models of the device at Southampton University suggest each Anaconda could provide one megawatts - enough to provide energy for a few hundred homes.

Project director Tom Roach said the best sites for the farms would be off the west coast of Scotland and Ireland, or the South-West of England.

'It works best where you have these large sea swells generated over long distances,' he added. 'They would have little environmental impact because they're designed to float below the surface.'

He said a study by the Government's-Carbon Trust found the Anaconda tubes could produce electricity more cheaply than offshore wind farms.

Professor John Chaplin, who is leading the research, said: The Anaconda could make a valuable contribution to environmental protection by encouraging the use of wave power.'

Snakes Alive! Each Anaconda could create enough electricity to power 'a few hundred homes'

The snakes would be placed in water between 120 and 300 feet deep, and would be submerged under the surface

2008-07-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Neuroanatomy revision in 1 minute

2008-07-06T01:25:00.002-07:00

Do you have a neuroanatomy exam the next day?
Do you have a need to brush up on your neuro before a presentation?

Here's a 1 minute final revision of the brain brought to you by Pinkie and the brain! =)

Unfortunately, it may not be as funny if you haven't had Neuro..but.. oh well.. this goes out to all the neuro and medical fans out there..

2008-07-05T08:12:00.000-07:00