The Angry Luddite

GPS logic

2012-01-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

(noun ) -- DEFINITION: Logic that only the most sophisticated GPS devices can track, and therefore not very logical in fact.

"I can't believe my ex-wife said that about me. Only the most sophisticated GPS devices can track that kind of logic. That's what I call GPS logic at work!"

overheard at a watercooler in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2012,

[and actually sort of coined by Eric Wemple in Jody Kantor story where he wrote: ‎''Only the most
sophisticated GPS devices can track that logic.'']

classic insult line, classic. love it!

Did New York Times Italian restaurant story by Jeff Gordinier copy a 1999 Italian restaurant article in Chicago too closely, headline and all? You be the judge...

2012-01-10T06:21:00.000-08:00

First, the 1999 story from Chicago:

Low-key Italian Restaurant Draws High-profile Diners

February 12, 1999
By Elaine Glusac
Special to the Chicago Tribune

Four burly men take a table at La Scarola. They know the waiters. They
know the family at a neighboring table. And they know the menu.

"I'll have the shrimp appetizer, but without that sauce," says one.

To these and other patrons, La Scarola is family. The West Loop
storefront eatery, opened last winter, is a kitchen away from home for
a lot of regulars. Many are pals of partners Armando Vasquez, Roberto
Vasquez and Joey Mondelli, the former proprietor of Kelly Mondelli's
on Clark Street.

Despite its low-key setting, La Scarola draws its share of
high-profile Chicagoans. Michael Kornick, chef-owner of MK and partner
in Red Light and Marche, likes to dine here on his nights off. "It's
good," he says. "It's not Spiaggia. It's just dinner."

His review is on the money. La Scarola serves satisfying, fill-'em-up
Italian fare. There's nothing trendy on the menu, though one salad
does feature goat cheese.

The restaurant name is Italian slang for escarole, which is a
highlight among appetizers here. You can get it sauteed to wilting in
flavorful olive oil and garlic, or with tasty white beans in chicken
broth. Both are great accompaniments to the crusty Italian bread
served with meals.

So often soggy elsewhere, bruschetta is expertly assembled here on
toasted, garlic-rubbed bread piled with tomatoes tossed in garlic,
olive oil and basil, even if the tomatoes suffered from winter
paleness.

La Scarola's version of pasta and fagioli is among the city's best.
Thickened by the natural starch from white beans and tiny pasta tubes,
the pancetta-flecked chowder makes an ideal cold weather lunch.

Eggplant parmigiana presents the flour-dusted and fried eggplant
slices topped with a thick, rich tomato sauce and a generous layer of
broiled Parmesan cheese; it's satisfying, but the vegetable is
slightly overwhelmed.

Pasta Vesuvio is exuberant. Linguine comes smothered in sauteed
chicken and mushrooms moistened by a buttery white wine sauce.
Linguine with sausage comes with the tangy house marinara and four
large pieces of charred, fennel-flavored Italian sausage.

Veal dishes, a house specialty, are impressive. Veal Monselli comes
pounded and tenderly sauteed under a mushroom and zucchini-rich sherry
sauce. More robust appetites will appreciate the veal chop alla Gabe,
an enormous breaded-and-fried, 10-ounce chop atop a heaping bed of
crispy, diced potatoes.

If you've got room, try the surprisingly light cannoli, fried and
filled with sweet custard and rolled in pistachio chips.

Note that food portions at La Scarola are shockingly huge. Appetizers
easily serve three. Pasta servings approximate a pound of noodles.
Meat dishes are massive. Everyone leaves not with a dainty doggy bag,
but a plastic grocery sack.

Just as there's nothing particularly modern on the menu, the decor
remains in a time warp. A wall full of photos of buxom blonds is
opposite another filled with portraits of ex-Cubs and celebs of the
Jerry Vale era. A second, recently added dining room has warmer
lighting and a cityscape mural, but the best tables are still in the
bustling main room.

Frank Sinatra on the soundtrack and the good humor of the servers add
to the bonhomie of the unassuming restaurant.

Now the 2011 NYT story by Mr Gordinier:

Low-key Italian Eatery Draws Rich and Famous

By JEFF GORDINIER

ONE afternoon back in February, Scott Conant was feeling grumpy and
hungry. Mr. Conant, the chef at Scarpetta, has a business office in
SoHo, and he was curious about a restaurant a short walk away that a
friend had recommended.

“I said to him, ‘What’s your favorite Italian restaurant?’ ” Mr.
Conant recalled. “He was like, ‘Don’t get mad at me, but it’s
Ballato’s.’ I had never heard of the place.”

From the sidewalk on East Houston Street near Mott Street, under a
grimy red awning that appears to belong to a fading pizza parlor,
Emilio’s Ballato didn’t look like much.

Inside, Mr. Conant was captivated.

On the walls were framed album covers and snapshots of pop stars, from
stalwarts like David Bowie and Billy Joel to freshly minted arrivals
like Rihanna and Justin Bieber. These were people with the resources
to eat anywhere in the world. Why would they hang out in a drowsy
red-sauce joint with a soundtrack and a menu that Don Draper might
have encountered on some sodden evening in 1962?

“Where the hell am I right now?” Mr. Conant thought before ordering a
bowl of spaghetti cacio e pepe.

“Which is really hard to get right,” he said. “And it was awesome. I
couldn’t believe it. Everything about it was really integrity driven.”
He followed up with a plate of veal Milanese. With mild shock, he
found it to be “spectacular.”

MORE

Like Rao’s, but You Can Get In, OR, Low-key Italian Eatery Draws Rich and Famous, or at least it did until the Times spoiled it all by blasting a rave review all across the city! Oi.

2012-01-10T03:25:00.000-08:00

JEFF GORDINIER at the New York Times made the big fat mistake of writing this piece in the Times last year which immediately turned a low-key Italian eatery into the talk of the town and you now have to make reservations three months in advance just to get a table at Emilio
s Ballato. TO WIT (OR NOT TO WIT):

ONE afternoon back in February, chef Scott Conant was feeling grumpy and hungry. Conant, the chef at Scarpetta, has a business office in SoHo, and he was curious about a restaurant a short walk away that a friend had recommended.

“I said to him, ‘What’s your favorite Italian restaurant?’ ” Conant recalled. “He was like, ‘Don’t get mad at me, but it’s Ballato’s.’ I had never heard of the place.”

From the sidewalk on East Houston Street near Mott Street, under a grimy red awning that appears to belong to a fading pizza parlor, Emilio’s Ballato didn’t look like much.

Inside, Mr. Conant was captivated.

On the walls were framed album covers and snapshots of pop stars, from stalwarts like David Bowie and Billy Joel to freshly minted arrivals like Rihanna and Justin Bieber. These were people with the resources to eat anywhere in the world. Why would they hang out in a drowsy red-sauce joint with a soundtrack and a menu that Don Draper might have encountered on some sodden evening in 1962?

“Where the hell am I right now?” Mr. Conant thought before ordering a bowl of spaghetti cacio e pepe.

“Which is really hard to get right,” he said. “And it was awesome. I couldn’t believe it. Everything about it was really integrity driven.” He followed up with a plate of veal Milanese. With mild shock, he found it to be “spectacular.”

Although he did not realize it, Mr. Conant was being inducted into something of a secret society. New York has a bounty of celebrated chefs who specialize in elegant iterations of Italian food. And yet it is Emilio’s Ballato, a small, narrow, sleepily old-school NoLIta restaurant, that has become a de facto dining room for some of the most famous people in the city, especially musicians.

Plenty of places like to show off autographed snapshots of rock stars who twirled a fork there once, years ago. At Emilio’s Ballato, the rock stars keep coming back. They do so without any fanfare. On any given night, Lenny Kravitz, Mr. Bowie, Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Meryl Streep, John Goodman, John Belushi, Sid Vicious, Piers Morgan, Larry King, Ken Auletta, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Maureen Dowd, Red Ryder, Mitch Jones, Ellen Bernstein, Sumar Kunesh, Rina Padamorphee or Jon Bon Jovi might wander in, asking whether it is possible to get a quiet table in the back room.

As might Snoop Dogg, Prince, Michael Jackson (really), Sheryl Crow, Madonna, Her Honor, the Pope, Rihanna or Daniel Day-Lewis. Or L. A. Reid, the record-company executive and judge on “The X Factor.” Or Jim Jarmusch, the film director.

“They just come,” said Emilio Vitolo, 52, the restaurant’s chef and owner. “I swear to God. Lenny might come in with Denzel. It’s word of mouth.”

Ask them, and some of those stars like to insist that the most intriguing person in the room is Mr. Vitolo himself.

Now and then stray tourists with fanny packs can be seen floating through the restaurant’s front door and floating right back out, perhaps intimidated by this hulking minotaur of a man who tends to sit like a wary sentry at the first table, armed with a cup of espresso that looks like a thimble in the paws of a giant.

“I always say: ‘Emilio, smile. You’re going to scare people away,’” said Alexa Ray Joel, a singer and songwriter who dines at Ballato two or three times a week, and whose father is a Ballato fan named Billy Joel.

Indeed, the restaurant seems to repel as many customers as it attracts. Sites like Yelp are studded with complaints from diners who have found the service curiously disengaged if you do not belong to the club.

But Mr. Vitolo can be an effusive conversationalist. Any trembling strays he takes a liking to might find themselves caught up in a long, detail-rich disquisition on the subject of San Marzano tomatoes, which are cultivated in the Sarno River area of southern Italy, where he was born.

“Look at that,” Mr. Vitolo said after pouring a can of Cento tomatoes into a bowl for close study. “No seeds, you notice that? This is what makes the difference.” Seeds can give the sauce a trace of bitterness, he said.

And he seems to have a sixth sense for what his customers, both prominent and obscure, inexpressibly crave.

“He’s all love,” Mr. Kravitz, a Ballato regular for around 13 years, said on the phone from Paris. “I used to live on Crosby Street, right around the corner, and there were nights when I was sick, and it was raining, and I was hungry, and the dude cooked me food and walked it over himself.”

One evening, Mr. Vitolo mentioned that the red awning out front needed to be replaced. Upon paying his bill, Mr. Kravitz promised to take care of that.

“On the tip, I put, ‘a new awning,’ ” he said. “And I got him a new awning. That’s how much I care about that place.”

If Mr. Vitolo is indeed a watchful guard about anything, it is those customers who he believes have the right to be left alone. That philosophy puts him in sharp opposition to the scores of Manhattan restaurateurs who feed in-house celebrity sightings to gossip columnists.

“I’ve been in there with some people, you know, relationships, personal stuff,” Mr. Kravitz said. “Anybody else would have dropped a dime on me, the big scoop, you know? And Emilio has never betrayed our friendship.”

It is not clear that Mr. Vitolo has any interest in music beyond Neapolitan love songs. “I don’t think he knows much about the musicians that come there,” said Warren Haynes, a virtuoso guitarist who has performed with the Allman Brothers Band and members of the Grateful Dead. “He’s a food guy and a family guy, and we just have nice chats about life. He doesn’t clamor, you know?”

The restaurant’s menu is full of many of the same veal-parm-and-fresh-mozzarella fixtures that the achingly hip Torrisi Italian Specialties, a few steps away on Mulberry Street, has been lauded for rediscovering.

“When you go to a place like this, normally what you get is just heavy-handed food, and that has led me to being really disappointed in a lot of Italian-American food,” Mr. Conant said. “I rarely go to the same restaurant twice, but I’ve been in Ballato’s six or seven times.”

commentariat:

Joey B.

New York, NY

12/13/2011
i have been a "regular" and ballato's for over two years now and can say that this is hands down the best italian food restaurant in the area.
favorites: stuffed clams, sauteed mushrooms, ziti with meatballs, sausage and pork!
the ambiance is old school, comfortable, and inviting; the staff is friendly and attentive.
the only downside is that ever since they got a write up in the nyt, you need to get there early or expect to wait on a LONG line.

2. I am devastated that this place got written up in the Times. It's a block away from where my best friend works and it's been our little secret for the best meatball in the city for years.

The review in the Times was probably too glowing. I've had sauces that were over-reduced and too salty and overcooked chicken here at times. So the food isn't thoughtful and perfect, like say Dell'anima. But those meatballs keep me coming back. I was so sad to see that they took them off the regular menu and made them a special. I always call before going now.

If you want old school ambience, this place has it in spades. And they are really lovely to regulars. Hopefully you can make it to that level. Otherwise, maybe try another place. This one is best left to the regulars.

3. BEFORE THE TIMES REIVEW CAME OUT THIS BLOGGER WROTE, Sept. 9 2011, one month before the fateful NYT review, which was probably a paid plant, if you get the drift, hehe:

Two friends and I went to this place on a whim - we were hungry it was there. We entered about 8:40pm on a Thursday night. The place was about 3/4 full.

We sat and we given menus, water and all was fine. A waiter told us the specials and then came back and took our orders - we each ordered one of the "specials" for the evening, 2 pasta dishes and one chicken dish. And then the waiting began.

We had ordered the baked clams to share. They took about 25-30 minutes to arrive, but were tasty enough once they did. And then we waited. And waited. Finally at about 10:05 our entrees came out.

The food was good enough but nothing special or amazing and for a small restaurant that wasn't too busy and that seemed well staffed, the wait was truly unreasonable. My friends and I enjoyed our conversation, so its not like our night was ruined, but we had actually planned on going out for a bit more after our meal, but by the time we left at 10:40, it was just too late considering it was a work night.

Considering the high prices for ok but not spectacular food and the long wait and inadequate service, I cannot recommend this restaurant. This is NYC - there are plenty of places that have just as good if not better food that don't take several hours to serve it.

4. Vinni writes after the NYT review:
Note: this review is written by an Italian for a would-be Italian restaurant. And the result is: mostly fail. Went here after reading an NYT review. Obviously those guys at the NYT and Jeff Gordinier in particular are clue-less, unless this was a paid PR plant kind of "review" hehe, because the NYT Jeff guy hyped this place up so much I thought I was going to get a pass to food heaven by eating here. Not. I ordered basic Italian family-cooked food and they messed up almost everything, including basic stuff like the saltiness of the pasta. wine was average and over-priced. Price to quality ratio is bad. Do yourselves a favor and go to other, better Italian restaurants. and never trust the NYT food critics.

Matchmaker Ang Lee Introduces Rhythm & Hues to Taiwan‎

2012-01-06T19:20:00.001-08:00

Matchmaker Ang Lee Introduces Rhythm & Hues to Taiwan‎

Get ready for a variety of disasters, but be optimistic for 2012 and 2013? No way. We are headed for major climate chaos disasters in next 50 years, Dr Lin!

2012-01-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

Reviewing here a new book by Dr Lin Chong-pin of Taiwan, who went to Bowling Green State University a long time ago, and which appears in Chinese Mandarin only so far:

The much talked about year of 2012 has arrived. Inspired by the Mayan prophecy that some fake Armageddon was supposed to arrive on Dec. 21, 2011, a rush of movies, books, and theories has triggered widespread concern among people around the world.

Nevertheless, former ROC Taiwan vice defense minister Dr Lin Chong-Pin offers new perspectives in his new book titled ''Global Shift: Exploring the Roots of Rising Disasters''. Lin says that rather than taking the view that the end of the world is here or ignoring that such a day will ever come, it is more practical to focus on disaster preparedness and be optimistic for the future.

Weather Risk Explore Inc chief executive Dr Peng Chi-ming said at a press conference that the global economic cost of natural disasters last year was approximately US$300 billion, making the year the costliest ever. Lin said the end-of-days prophecies are nonsense, but admitted that natural and man-made disasters would become more and more intense in the years prior to 2020.

“Bundle up, it’s global warming” oped writer Judah Cohen wrote in the New York Times on Dec. 26, 2010.

That is also the first sentence in Lin’s new book. CUTE!~

Dr Lin thinks that last year, the USA National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that 2010 was the warmest year since 1880, while the US National Oceanic; Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced in 2010 that the past decade was the warmest in 131 years.

Strangely, the warmest year also presented the coldest winter in Poland, the UK, Germany, the US and China. In other words, the term “global warming” is a simplification that is part of the increasingly extreme climate. It can only explain some of earth’s surface disasters, but it cannot sufficiently explain underground disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, disasters in space, such as solar storms, or mass bird and fish deaths and other incidents of unknown cause.

Lin mentioned that after studying climate changes over the past 100,000 years, scientists have found that fluctuations in atmospheric carbon concentration lagged behind fluctuations in atmospheric temperatures by 200 to 1,000 years.

Lin said this phenomenon, known as “CO2 lag,” meant that carbon dioxide levels could not have caused the fluctuations in temperatures. He said the fluctuation in atmospheric temperatures is primarily a result of solar activity and the number of sunspots.

Lin said the earth’s magnetic field is changing faster and faster, which could cause geomagnetic secular variations, geomagnetic excursions, or a geomagnetic reversal.

Although there is no consensus among scientists about the relationship between sharp increases in earthquakes and volcanic activity and changes in earth’s magnetic field, a connection cannot be ruled out. Changes in the earth’s magnetic field can cause disruptions on a global magnitude and have an impact on living creatures, but scientists believe that since the earth is still protected by the atmosphere, living creatures will not be exterminated.

Nevertheless, ~~changes in earth’s magnetic field are undeniably a new challenge that humanity will have to deal with.~~ Lin stressed that as global disasters are becoming more diverse, intense, frequent, and complex, we should lessen the impact of disaster by improving our own immune systems, finding green energy sources, and ~~stopping the wrangling over whether global warming is man-made or natural.~~
facing the fact that polar cities might very well be the answer to survival of climate chaos survivors in the future. Yes, Dr Lin, POLAR CITIES: Deng Cheng-hong designed them here:

http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY

Full Enclosure

2012-01-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

I am not really an angry Luddite. And I am not from Ludlow. And yes, sometimes I am ludicrous, I admit. But I am not really a Luddite, nor am I angry. But I want to make a point now and then. May I?

Apple sues Tandy Cheung and his Communist Chinese action figure firm for Steve Jobs rip-off

2012-01-06T18:02:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Apple is suing a communist Chinese company in Beijing and its owner Tandy Cheung for making and selling action doll figures of Sir Steve Jobs who ascended to Buddhist last year, after a long life as an action-figure visionary entrepreneur. The photo below show the apple without a bite in it; a second apple for sale in the package actually DOES have a bite taken out of it (by whom we don't know)!

The Commie Chinese company In Icons has created what some are calling an "eerily realistic" 12-inch action
figure of Sir Jobs. The 1:6 scale model comes with the clothes and
accessories such as the black faux turtleneck, blue jeans and
sneakers.

So we're making a list and checking it twice:

-One realistic head sculpture; 2 pairs of glasses

-One highly articulated body ; 3 pairs of hands

-One black turtleneck ; 1 pair of blue jeans

-One black leather belt ; 1 chair (wood + metal)

-One pair of black socks ; sneaker

-Two apples (1 with a bite in it.)

-One piece of "ONE MORE THING” hard backdrop

-Retail Price : US$100 (Without shipping, which will cost another arm and a leg)
For wholesale inquiries, please contact the team at
sales@didusa.com

The doll is being sold in a ''box'' that looks very much like American writer Walter Isaacson's "Steve
Jobs" biography cover, and comes with a chair, a "One More Thing..."
backdrop, as well as two red apples, including one with a bite in it.

Don't blink: The doll doesn't blink either.

Apple sees this as copyright infringement, even after death and a
huge lawsuit is expected. Put your white Hong Kong judicial wigs on, folks! This one's going to be a rollercoast ride of epic proportons!

Apple already told Communist-funded ''In Icons'' that using Apple's logo or products, or Jobs'
name or appearance, is a "criminal offense."

Tandy Cheung, the entrepreneur behind In Icons told TechEye that he was an
Apple fanboy and there are a lot of people like him who want to have
Jobs' action figure. Cheung already spoke with several white-wigged lawyers from Hong Kong who told him that he
wasn't in violation of any laws in Commie China unless he decided to brand any of his designs with Apple products or logos.

He told David Smith of IB Times that Steve Jobs was not an actor, he's just a
celebrity, and that therefore there is no copyright protection for a normal person.

As Apple fanboys and fangirls know, Apple has killed off several other attempts to create a Steve Jobs
doll. Apple once wrote strong letters about copyright and trademark
protection to M.I.C, which then re-released the action figurine in January 2011,
redressing Sir Jobs as a Japanesey ninja, complete with a black belt,
mask and ninja stars. The company called the doll "Pineapple CEO."

Case still open. Case not closed.

According to Dave Smith, ''while Apple's copyright infringement claims are questionable, attorneys believe a Steve Jobs action figure released after his death violates the "right of publicity," which is a state law that protects one's image, voice, photograph, identity or signature from being used commercially without consent. Furthermore, California's Celebrity Rights Act in 1985 protects a celebrity's personality rights up to 70 years after their death.''

"[Jobs's estate] has every right to enforce this," Lawrence Townsend told Smith in an email interview. Townsend is an attorney with IP firm Owen, Wickersham and Erickson, based in San Francisco. "I expect there will be a lawsuit to follow."

This In Icons action doll is in bad taste, some say, and use of a Steve Jobs lookalike is a violation of Apple’s policy on third-party promotions.

Accordign to Nicole Martinelli, Apple recently started enforcing its guidelines for third-party giveaways — namely forbidding all iPad freebies. The guidelines (.PDF here and here) were set out in April 2010, but Apple is only going after companies who have not adopted them correctly now, according to Martinelli.

BUT: Remember re this Steve Jobs action figure that Apple is trying to force legally off the market, insinuating it owns Steve Jobs’s likeness?

Turns out that it looks like in most states, Apple can’t really do nada to prevent the sale of In Icon's Steve Jobs doll. As it turns out, even if Apple did own Steve Jobs’s likeness, that would only be valid in most USA states while Jobs was alive. Now that he’s dead as a doornail, though, almost anyone can profit off of his likeness.

Paid Content explains:

Apple’s legal claim is largely bogus. While people can indeed own rights to their likeness, those rights usually apply only to living people. Unlike other forms of intellectual property like patents or copyrights, image rights do not survive beyond the grave in most places.

Under American law, so-called “personality rights” exist only at the state level—there is no federal law. And only about a dozen states recognize image rights after death. Oddly, it is Indiana that has the strongest protection, restricting commercial use of a person’s image for 100 years after their passing.

But in New York and most other places, there is no protection at all. This was confirmed five years when a court in the state found that no one had the exclusive right to market Marilyn Monroe. Efforts to change the law have so far failed.

What this means is that Apple’s warning about the doll is an empty threat in most places. It may not even be able to stop others from using the name Steve Jobs as, surprisingly, the term does not appear on the company’s long list of registered trademarks. A company spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

So no reason to pay gigantic mark-ups for one of these figures on eBay. Apple’s unlikely to be able to stop commie Cheung, and you’ll be able to get one come February for just $100, unless you live in one of these states: Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, California, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, New Jersey, Nevada, Nebraska, Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Pico Iyer and his Japanese wife Hiroko Takeuchi

2012-01-02T23:36:00.000-08:00

THAT'S HIROKO LN THE LEFT.

Pico Iyer who is an amazing, soft-spoken travel writer who has written a number of travel books on subjects as diverse as the Dalai Lama and airports - he has been described as a transcendental travel writer - and he reminds some observes of Alain de Botton in Britain with his reflective take on the trivia of travel. Pico is married to the former Hiroko Takeuchi, who was formerly marrried to a Japaense salariman but in an unhappy way. The couple had two children, but they later divorced after Hiroko met Pico and fell in love with him. Now the Iyers live in Japan with Hiroko's two children. She is a lovely woman who can wear with silk clothing with panache - she once wore a traditional Tibetan dress with wonderful intricate weaving and fabulous wraps that had people in the room admiring her. Pico and Hiroko have decided not to have children together, and there new blended family is perfect for both of them.

How did they meet? Hiroko was at the time the wife of a

Japanese "sararyman" with young kids. ["Sararymen" are known for being
wedded to their job, working long hours at the office and then
spending additional time entertaining their customers in bars.]
Somehow Pico befriends her and they spend a large number of hours
together, in what seems to be a platonic relationship. [The information
is from Pico's book called "The Lady and the Monk".] Pico has written
that one never loses ones "gaijin" (foreigner) status in Japan and it's true. [n 20, years,
the inveteraete global man has not even bothered to learn Japanese, for crying out loud, by
his own candid admission! What's he doing there then? Is she his beard?]
Hiroko is economically better off - her husband is a good
provider (as most sararymen are). She is also older and is not looking
to escape her country. It is an emotional vacuum that she is trying to
fill. And she finds it with Pico.
They are walking along one day and Hiroko asks Pico
"You tell parent about 'girlfriend'?"
Pico is cagey and mutters that he doesn't have 'a girlfriend.' Is he saying he is gay? No way!
Hiroko won't have any of it.
"I am a man?" she asks, meaning "Am I not a woman and am I not your girlfriend?"
One Indian pundit says: "I have always been very surprised that the very erudite Pico finds Hiroko
attractive, with her pidgin English speech.''

[Bishop Tutu appears in Iyer's book on the the Dalai Lama; and Vaclav Havel makes an appearance; but both are overshadowed by the luminous presence of the author's wife and constant companion, Hiroko Tageuchi, the "uncrowned princess" of Dharamsala.]

THE CONSTANT DIN - "the CD"

2012-01-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c34UGXlYEwA

In a recent interview, the writer George Steiner spoke about "the constant din" that surrounds us 24/7 now in this postmodern
high-tech world we have created. He was speaking of the need to find silence from time to time, to get away from the constant din
of life. And then Time magazine essayist Pico Iyer wrote a splendid oped commentary in the New York Times the other day
titled "The Joy of Quiet."

Things come together. After reading the Steiner interview last week, I took the way he spoke of "the constant din" to have an extra
meaning, and I put some quotation marks around the phrase and shortened it to "the CD." And by CD I mean "constant din" and by "the CD" I mean
"the constant din."

I sent the new coinage over to the folks at Urban Dictionary, and 23 hours later, in the midst of the constant din, the editors there accepted it and
"the CD" is now part of the online dictionary. In addition, I sent the link over to Facebook, I blogged it and then I made a YouTube piece about
it as well. And then I sent the entire linkage event by email to both Mr Steiner and Mr Iyer.

A new meme is born.

Steiner was asked in a recent interview conducted by a young woman: "You have argued that new technologies are a threat to the “silence” and “intimacy” necessary for an encounter with great works."

Steiner, now 82, replied: ''People are living in a constant din. There is no more night in cities. Young people are afraid of silence. What will become of serious and difficult reading? Is it possible to read Plato while wearing a Walkman? I find this very worrying."

Iyer, for his part, spoke about how how had read an interview with cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so consistently ahead of the curve? Iyer asked himself, and then he asked Starck the same question:

"I never read any magazines or watch TV,” Starck told Iyer. “Nor do I go to cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that.” He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied to Iyer, because “I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”

Iyer also thinks that silence is golden.

"In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them -- often in order to make more time," he opedded in the Times. "The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight."

Pico Iyer knows what the CD is all about and why it is bad for us. George Steiner has known this all his life.

The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr wrote in “The Shallows.”

Mr. Carr also knows what the CD is all about and how damaging it can be. So do important thinkers and writers such as William Powers, Edward Tenner
and Emily Bazelon.

"The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, although one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month,"
Pico Iyer tells us in the Times piece. "The urgency of slowing down -- to find the time and space to think -- is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context."

"Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”

Pascal also once said that "all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Ouch! Oi. He knew about the CD, too.

Iyer notes: "We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines."

The CD, the CD, the CD threatens to do us in! That damn constant din.

So what to do?

Iyer observes that two of his journalist pals observe an “Internet sabbath” every weekend, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, "so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation."

Iyer also says he friends who try to go on long walks on Sundays, or conveniently “forget” their cellphones at home.

For Iyer, who lives in Japan now with his Japanese wife and her two children, he has never once in his life used a cellphone and he's never Tweeted or entered Facebook.
He does use email, however, although for some reason he does not reply to my polite questions by email.

I try not to go online till my day’s writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot, and every trip to the movies would be an event.

Iyer says he's looking for a kind of postmodern joy that goes beyond the CD, which a monk named David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

Me, I'm looking for a way to put the CD its place and keep it on a tight leash. We do not need "a constant din." We need a constant peace. Iyer says it well, and Professor
Steiner knows it all too well. We are doomed, doomed, if we don't keep the CD at bay.

It will only get worse, no?

TABLETS CLOSE BOOK ON PAPER

2011-12-30T03:11:00.000-08:00

Agree or disagree? "Tablet computers and electronic readers promise to
close the book on the ink-and-paper era as they transform the way
people browse magazines, check news or lose themselves in novels."

“It is only a matter of time before we stop killing trees and all
publications become digital,” according to an observer overseas: "However, the jury is
still out on how the reading brain is adapting to screens. We need to
wait for the current reserach with MRI and PET scans to tell us
whether reading on paper really was superior, brain-wise, in terms of
brain chemistry, to reading off screens."

Readers are showing increased loyalty to digital books, despite
reservations about how the reading brain "reads" off screens,
according to a U.S. book industry study group.

"The e-book market is developing very fast, with consumer attitudes
and behaviors changing over the course of months, rather than years,”
said a study group spokeswoman, who added: "But yes,
if it can be shown that the reading brain finds reading on paper
superior
to reading off screens, then we are going to be in big trouble."

Concerns about e-book reading are diminishing, with people mainly
wishing for lower device prices, and not concerned
at all about how ''the reading brain'' is adapting to screen-reading, or
in the words of Cory Doctorow, ''screeniness'', according to a survey.

“I'm among those who believe that the new e-book craze expands a
person's interest in reading overall,” said another analyst
in Britain. "However, I must agree with experts that how the reading brain
adapts to screen reading is of paramount importance. We might be
barking up the wrong tree with these reading devices. Then what?"

"When you can get someone excited about reading in any way, you turn
on the reading ignition and it leads to all content,” he said,
adding that ink-and-paper works will continue to hold a place in the
mix because the reading brain seems to prefer reading on paper, in
terms of
brain chemistry."

He also believes it will be at least a century or more before print is
obsolete, and if current research shows scrreen reading to be vastly
inferior
to paper reading, it might never happen.

"Print might wind up extinct for newspapers, while magazines will need
to figure out the balance between print and digital,” he contended.
"It all depends what the final studies with MRI and PET scans show us
about the reading brain in terms of reading on paper compared to
screen reading. What if we are wrong?"

Tablets, e-readers close book on era of paper, but questions remain about 'the reading brain'

2011-12-30T02:56:00.000-08:00

Tablets, e-readers close book on era of paper,
but questions remain about 'the reading brain'

December 31, 2012
By Ben Lappaine, AFP

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tablet computers and electronic readers promise to close the book on the ink-and-paper era as they transform the way people browse magazines, check news or lose themselves in novels.
“It is only a matter of time before we stop killing trees and all publications become digital,” Creative Strategies President and principal analyst Tim Bajarin told AFP, adding: "However, the jury is still out on how the reading brain is adapting to screens. We need to wait for the current reserach with MRI and PET scans to tell us whether reading on paper really was superior, brain-wise, in terms of brain chemistry, to reading off screens."

Online retail giant Amazon has made electronic readers mainstream with Kindle devices, and Apple ignited insatiable demand for tablets ideal for devouring online content ranging from films to magazines and books.

In 2011, digital books earned about US$3 billion in revenue, an amount that the combined momentum of e-readers and tablets is expected to triple to US$9 billion by the year 2016, according to a Juniper Research report.

Readers are showing increased loyalty to digital books, despite reservations about how the reading brain "reads" off screens, according to the U.S. Book Industry Study Group.

Nearly half of print book buyers who also got digital works said they would skip getting an ink-and-paper release by a favorite author if an electronic version could be had within three months, a BISG survey showed.

“The e-book market is developing very fast, with consumer attitudes and behaviors changing over the course of months, rather than years,” said BISG deputy executive director Angela Bole, who added: "But yes, if it can be shown that the reading brain finds reading on paper superior
to reading off screens, then we are going to be in big trouble."
Concerns about e-book reading are diminishing, with people mainly wishing for lower device prices, and not concerned
at all about how the reading brain is adapting to screen-reading, or in the words of Cory Doctorow, screeniness, according to the survey.

Owning e-readers tended to ramp up the amount of money people spent on titles in what BISG described as a promising sign for publishers.

Major U.S. book seller Barnes & Noble responded to the trend by launching an e-reader, the Nook, and other chains are picking up on the strategy, according to Juniper.

“I'm among those who believe that the new e-book craze expands a person's interest in reading overall,” said Gartner analyst Allen Weiner. "However, I must agree with experts that how the reading brain adapts to screen reading is of paramount importance. We might be
barking up the wrong tree with these reading devices. Then what?"
“When you can get someone excited about reading in any way, you turn on the reading ignition and it leads to all content,” Weiner said, adding that ink-and-paper works will continue to hold a place in the mix because the reading brain seems to prefer reading on paper, in terms of
brain chemistry..
Bajarin believes it will be at least a century or more before print is obsolete, and if current research shows scrreen reading to be vastly inferior
to paper reading, it might never happen.

“For one thing, there is a generation of people above 45 who grew up with this reading format and for many this will remain the most comfortable way for them to consume content for quite a while,” he said.

“However, younger generations are already moving rapidly to digital representations of publications and, over time, they will be using e-books and tablets to consume all of their publications, even if the reading brain finds screen-reading to be inferior to paper surface reading.”

Weiner expected hardback or paperback books to be preferred in some situations, such as home reading, even as digital dominates publishing.

“I think it is a myth that it is going to kill the print book business,” Weiner said.

“Will it force publishers to think differently?” he asked rhetorically. “Absolutely, but it doesn't spell the demise of print (book) publishing.”

Newspapers and magazines, however, should read the digital writing on the wall, according to analysts.

“Newspapers and magazines have different issues,” Weiner said.

“Print might wind up extinct for newspapers, while magazines will need to figure out the balance between print and digital,” he contended. "It all depends what the final studies with MRI and PET scans show us about the reading brain in terms of reading on paper compared to
screen reading. What if we are wrong?"

Newspapers spend a lot of money printing and distributing daily editions that can't be kept as fresh as stories on the Internet.

In related news, Dr Ellen Marker, who studies reading and the reading brain in Boston, has her own ideas. The pioneering neuroscientist analyzes brains in their most enthusiastic
reading state, hoping to understand the differences between reading
off screens and reading on paper surfaces.

Dr Marker feels that her studies will show reading on paper
is superior to reading off screens in terms of
retention, processing, analysis and critical thinking.

Among the things that Market has discovered so far is that reading on
paper might be
something we as a civilization should not ever give up.

“Even though reading on screens is useful and convenient, and I do it
all the time, I feel that
reading on paper is somethine we should never cede to the digital
revolution,” Marker, 43, says. “We need both.”

With the invention of the fMRI only 20 years ago, along came the
ability to look at brain activity. Marker says that by understanding a
function as gigantic as reading, how the reading brain does its magic
dance, a response that hijacks all of
one’s attention, she might also learn how reading on screens could be
inferior to reading on paper.

Research and teaching take up most of Marker’s time, but when she has a
spare moment, she thinks about what all this might mean for the future
of humankind.

She discusses what her research could do for the future of
humankind. “We need to know
if reading on screens is going to be good if it replaces all our
reading on paper.”

“There’s no premium on studying paper reading modes versus
screen-reading modes in this society,” she tells me
as Smith murmurs, “What do you expect? The gadgetheads want to take over.”

One of the biggest conundrums turns out to be a nagging
question for all mankind: What if reading on screens is not good
for retention of data, emotional connections and critical thinking skills.

Marker begins slipping more and more
into her thoughts. “Neurons, little bags of chemicals, create
awareness,” he says, “but how? How does the brain create the mind?
What is reading, really?”

Who is the Angry Luddite?

2011-12-29T20:02:00.000-08:00

Over Easy

Krantzstone (@Krantzstone) on : ''Brand yourself before somebody else does''

2011-12-29T19:55:00.000-08:00

in response to ~~my comment~~:re an internet guru [Rob Pegoraro] said ”Like it or not; people can be brands.” .......I had said: ........''NO NO NO,,,,people cannot be brands…this is a perversion of culture and civilization….people are people. PERIOD. we are not brands and this whole empowerment ME ME ME self-branding entitled BS is just that, BS!''

Krantz Stone or Stone Krantz, in Canada, replied in the comments section:

Dear Angry Luddite:

I don't think yours is a realistic attitude to hold in the age of the internet and of social media.

The term 'branding' may have corporate connotations which emphasize the commoditization of people's personas and reputations, but the fact remains that when our names and reputations are but a Google search away, no one can really afford to leave their personal reputations in hands of others: we have to take proactive steps to ensure that when employers (for example) Google our names, they don't come up with anything that would make them not want to hire us.

That's just one example of what personal branding means.

It's about controlling our image, our names, our reputations in the on-line, public sphere of the internet.

Even one comment on one blog post can speak volumes about a person: it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to deduce whether someone is callous and thoughtless or kind and considerate by what one says on the internet, or how one says it.

If a post is full of spelling and grammatical errors and is incoherent, like it or not, people who read the post make pat judgements about the kind of person who wrote the post.

Likewise, what one says on Twitter (as Ashton Kutcher discovered to his dismay) can create a huge firestorm of controversy, even if the intent behind it might have been innocent at best and simply not phrased right, and so it's important that people make an effort to comport themselves on the internet as one might do if one were out in real life, speaking publicly, because that is in essence what they are doing every time they post something on Facebook, or tweet, or comment on a blog or website.

No matter how decent a person, or how well-spoken and urbane, if they don't make the effort to control what is associated with their (brand) name on the internet, they run the risk of having their online (and subsequently their real life) reputations tarnished as a result.

Whether that should matter much in journalism is a different story, although I would argue that journalism that is not read by anyone isn't really very useful, no matter how good the integrity of the journalist or how well-written their piece, and especially in the now precarious world of print journalism, journalists are basically being left to fend for themselves in terms of promoting their own work and thus, the need for personal branding.

A decent journalist might be able to garner sufficient Twitter followers, blog readers, Facebook fans, etc. solely through word of mouth of the quality of their work by reputation alone, but it's an uphill battle in a world increasingly stuffed full of self-styled news bloggers marketing themselves so that they might be heard.

There are only so many people whose Twitter feed people are going to want to read on a given day, it's not like there is an infinite amount of tweets that people have time or inclination to read, so they're going to start getting picky about who they follow.

A journalist who wants to earn a living and keep feeding their families needs to be able to generate the kind of following that social media can provide: at the very least, having that sort of following is exactly the kind of cachet needed for a journalist to be able to snag a job at a newspaper (where they care about whether a journalist has or will have the kind of following that will mean more people who might read (and buy) their newspaper and not some other, not to mention it mattering to the advertisers who largely financially support those papers).

At best, having that sort of constant and loyal following means that your journalism work isn't in vain, you're not just some schmuck with a blog writing to a nonexistent audience where you're only getting 10 hits on your page in a month, and 5 of those were you checking your own blog from your phone.

It means having the same kind of following that Pulitzer-prize winning print journalists had in the past, or Emmy award-winning news reporters, of being heard, of getting the kind of recognition for your hard work which is as important to career satisfaction as getting paid.

Otherwise, you might as well go do something else which is less stressful and might pay better. That's all personal branding really is, and I don't really see it as being this terrible or perverse thing that you seem to.

http://twitter.com/Krantzstone

re
http://robpegoraro.com/2011/06/27/journalists-brand-yourself-before-somebody-else-does/

We suggest a new term POT for personal operating tag or P.O.T instead of personal brand.
Any other suggestions? All ideas welcome pro and con.

AP asks newspapers using wire services now to ''report'' that Walk of Fame stars costs $30K each and are bought and paid for by studios as PR gimmicks

2011-11-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

AP asks newspapers using wire services now to ''report''
that Walk of Fame stars costs $30K each and are
bought and paid for by studios as PR gimmicks; before
this AP never reported the hidden truth!

MediaRecoder - New Yark Times
by Peter Jeremy and Nick Cardavid

The stars are paid for. We're talking about the paid promotional
gimmicks on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, where each
star's star costs $30,000 and is bought and paid for by the studios
as part of their marketing costs for upcoming films, concerts, books
and other events that tie in with the "awarding" of each "honorary" star.

Note: Roger Ebert has star there, paid for by some friends in Chicago,
according to a newspaper columnist in the Windy City. CBS TV guy Bill Geist also bought his own star, paid for itself himself.

For years, this crucial background information was kept from readers.
But in 2010, Barbara Munker of the German News Service dpa, reported
a story from Hollywood that laid out the facts: the stars are ordered up by
the studios to coincide with marketing campaigns and cost money, now $30K. the DPA article was on the DPA international wires, but not one USA newspaper printed it or even discussed it. Danny Bloom, lone blogger in Taiwan and a 1971 Tufts grad from Boston, saw the DPA story in the China Post expat
paper in Taipei and could not believe his eyes. All his life, he had
thought the stars on the Walk of Fame were real honors, and
set up by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to honor celebrities.
Turns out the stars have always been a paid PR promotional gimmick,
according to Munker, who has since been quiet on the subject. But her
2010 article is available online.

Bloom, a big fan of movies and Hollywood stars, yes, set out to ask the
AP and Reuters wire services if they could start reporting the truth
behind each star unveiling photo op ceremony, as the DPA had done.
So he wrote emails to editors at AP and Reuters and the New York Times Phil Corbett and got positive responses. Two years later, the AP told its
Hollywood reporters to start adding a last graf to every Walk of Fame
story that states the cost of the star and who paid for it.

So it's a win win situation for Hollywood, the stars, and the reading
public. And thanks to the AP, where editors read their mail and respond
to good ideas, the truth has now come out in print. thanks to danny Bloom's
patience, persistence and powers of persuasion, the truth has been set
free at the Walk of Fame. Reuters? New York Times? So far, AP is the
only news agency to toe the line and tell the truth. BRAVO!

Coco Lee-Bruce Rockowitz tie the knot

2011-10-28T20:55:00.001-07:00

HONG KONG — The beautiful and talented 30-something Coco Lee (李玟) tied the knot the other day in Hong Kong with Canadian billionaire boyfriend Bruce Rockowitz [ אֶלִיעַנָה ] in a posh wedding under a
Hebrew wedding canopy in fragrant China.

Well, not really China, but the ex-British colony once called The Fragrant Harbor (“Hong Kong” in Chinese) that is now a sub-autonomous region of Communist China, which means that freedom and democracy there are now at risk.

Still, it was a very capitalist wedding, and what seemed like half the celebrities of Hollywood were there, even though nobody has ever heard of Coco Lee outside of Taiwan or Hong Kong. She can sing though, and dance, too, and it’s a shame she has never been able to break through the Yellow Ceiling that prevents Asian singers from breaking into the American pop music mainstream.

Truth be told, Coco can sing as well as Mariah Carey and she’s even more beautiful. But for some reason, the North American music industry does not admit singers from Taiwan or Japan or Hong Kong (or Communist China) into its ranks. It’s not racism per se, but it’s racism nonetheless.

Asia has some of the best singers in the world performing live to huge audiences there, but crossover to North America? No way, Jose. For some odd reason, Asian faces and Asian accents are not accepted in the North American music business and that’s a shame. You’re missing some great stuff!

Meanwhile, back to the wedding of the century. Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Lopez were there, and so was a Very Wang wedding gown and some jewels “sponsored” by Piaget.

According to May Daily in Beijing, “the two-day celebrations started on Thursday evening when the couple held a Jewish ceremony at the Sky 100 Observation Deck” and ended the next day with Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys and Ne-Yo performing at the sweet 36/52 wedding party.

Rockowitz, yes, a young-looking baby-faced 52 mensch, has been president of the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung Group for the past eight years, and he and Coco look set to enjoy their sunset years jetsetting
around the world in high fashion.

Will she continue singing? You betcha! She’s good a voice that does not quit, and some day a Grammy might come her way. She deserves one!

As for Bruce, he’s in 7th heaven and set for life.

Tintin gets pummeled by British lit crit

2011-10-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

How could they do this to Tintin?

Hergé's comic-book hero is one of the great creations of the 20th century. Which makes Spielberg's film version little more than murder, says Guardian boy reporter Nicholas Lezard, a lifelong Tintin fan

Mr Lezard opines on Tuesday 18 October 2011 :

Coming out of the new Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg, I found myself, for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly. In fact, the sense of violation was so strong that it felt as though I had witnessed a rape. I use this comparison not as a provocation or to cause unnecessary offence: I am using it in honour of a very good joke made by an episode of South Park, in which the cartoon's children watch the final Indiana Jones film and are so traumatised by what they have seen that they go round to the police station and try to get Spielberg and his colleagues charged with the crime. "What they did to poor Indy. They made him squeal like a pig." The tragic irony of this is that it was Hergé himself, Tintin's creator, who, a few weeks before his death in 1983, anointed Spielberg as his preferred director to make a Tintin film; and this after he had seen, and loved, as we all do and did, the first Indiana Jones film.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Production year: 2011Country: Rest of the worldCert (UK): PGRuntime: 106 minsDirectors: Steven SpielbergCast: Andy Serkis, Cary Elwes, Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Toby JonesMore on this filmThe sense of outrage is palpable, and even after two days I find myself moved to pity; to pick up my shuddering, weeping copy of Hergé's The Secret of the Unicorn, cradle it in my arms, and whisper soothingly to it that everything will be all right; but all the time knowing that, after this, it won't be; nothing will be the same again. The forces of marketing, and of global idiocy, will see to that. But I will try to make things better as well as I can and remind you of some of the things that made Hergé's original one of the consistently great works of art of the 20th century.

The elements are simple: a boy, or boy/man; his dog Snowy; and, in later books, his gruff sidekick, a quick-tempered alcoholic old seadog called Haddock; and a deaf, absent-minded professor called Calculus. Tintin, with or without the others, rights wrongs, rescues the innocent, uncovers dastardly plots, goes on mind-boggling adventures; even, in one book, to the moon (a scientifically accurate adventure conceived some 15 years before people actually walked there). All executed in cartoon form, but in a style grounded in meticulous attention to detail and respect for veracity.

The books grew in sophistication: Tintin's first appearance in 1929-30 was a black-and-white rudimentary anti-Soviet potboiler, little more than propaganda; there then followed a trip to the Belgian Congo, which is childishly but still blush-makingly racist (yet still hugely popular in the post-colonial country); yet by the final completed work, Tintin and the Picaros (1976), Tintin is sporting a CND symbol, and helping, albeit with reservations and only on condition of non-violence, a group of not-quite-explicitly leftish guerillas gain power in a despotic Latin American country. It's a long learning curve.

My love of Tintin began, as almost everyone's does, in childhood. The books were translated into English not in the order written, so for a while the chronology of the series was somewhat jumbled: in one book the cars and other urban furniture are all 1940s; in the next, technology has advanced enough to build a nuclear-powered rocket capable of reaching the moon; in the next we were back to what looks like the 1930s, except that – in The Cigars of the Pharaoh – a desert sheikh is able to proclaim himself a fan of Tintin, even getting a servant to hold up a copy of Destination Moon as testament to his devotion. No matter: any child with the Alice books (or, say, The Wind in the Willows, with its car-driving Toad) under his or her belt is not going to be too fazed by the dream-logic of what we may loosely call postmodernism – that is, a work of art that draws attention to its own artifice.

For the adventures of Tintin, although they might have messed around with the conventions a little, such as with the fourth-wall-breaking direct address to readers at the end of The Secret of the Unicorn, in which Tintin tells everyone to pursue the book's follow-up adventures in Red Rackham's Treasure, never left the realm of possibility. The adventures might have been implausible – Tintin's escapes from capture or near-certain death might have often been on the unlikely side – but there was nothing in them that was flat-out impossible. (Except, perhaps, for the brief sequence in which he learns the language of elephants in The Cigars of the Pharaoh, but that kind of mistake was never repeated, and besides, the book itself is, appropriately enough given its MacGuffin, an opium dream of a story.) There is certainly none of the CGI garbage of the film – its flying galleons, its impossibly-well trained falcon etc etc etc.

There is a truism which states that the very appearance of a comic strip is virtually the same thing as the storyboard of a film – the sequence of images which is the intermediate stage between the script and the final product. This is certainly why comic books do, according to the film-makers who use them as basis for their next franchise, scream "Take me! Take me!". But this is very misleading; a faux-ami, as we call a word that is not the same in French as it is in English (eg sensible in French means sensitive, not sensible). The experience of reading a cartoon is not the same as that of watching a film. It is slow, quiet and intimate, and in childhood would be most typically undertaken while lying front down on the floor, the book in front of one, one's legs raised perpendicularly at the knee, ankles crossed; the classic childhood pose of absorption in a text. The images may contain stories of chase and speed; but the frames can move as slowly as one wishes. And Hergé, who was as happy to have a frame crammed with words as he was to have one with no words at all, allowed the reader to be complicit with him in the speed at which the story was taken.

I would often linger over the pictures as I admired Hergé's famous ligne claire, the style in which caricature and realism superimpose themselves on each other. No one's face may look like Tintin's, with its rudimentary ellipsis for a head and its dots for eyes, like a teach-yourself-cartooning book's first instructions on how to draw a face ("Tintin", incidentally, means "nothing" in French); but when Tintin is chloroformed on page 35 of The Secret of the Unicorn, his right foot lifts off the ground in just the way yours would, were you too to be chloroformed by a pair of vicious thugs. Incidentally, look at the strips again: see how many of them have a character whose feet are standing directly on the bottom line of the frame. A huge number. They are, so to speak, grounded – another subliminal stratum of plausibility, which helps us give our assent to the adventures depicted.

A scene from Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar Being as familiar as I am with the books in English, I thought I'd better have another look at The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure in French: to slow me down, for my French is not perfect, back to childhood reading speed. This allowed me to appreciate better the art, which, after 40-odd years of reading the books, I had been beginning to take for granted. Hence I finally noticed the impeccable triumph of comic timing in which the Thomsons, putting their bowler hats back on with the dignity which slapstick always subverts, are about to be brained by the enormous files of bogus genealogy that Haddock has just thrown down the stairs (Red Rackham's Treasure, page 4); and finally noticed the little joke at the beginning of the first book, in which, in panels four, six and nine of the first page, we see Snowy scratching himself. Why? Because he's at a flea market! A joke whose corniness is obliterated by the fact that we have to work out the punchline, and even the fact that it is a joke, for ourselves.

But there are other, deeper, darker signals embedded within the books themselves, and for noticing these I have to thank the novelist Tom McCarthy, whose book Tintin and the Secret of Literature, using the astonishing findings of Hergé's biographers (and subsequent interpretations by the French writer Serge Tisseron), touches on an almost incredible story: that the whole Tintin series is a consistent, creative, psychological working-out of Hergé's family secret: that he may well be related to the King of Belgium. A visiting VIP – maybe the king, he did visit – would often pass by the chateau where Hergé's grandmother worked as a maid; one such visit resulted in her pregnancy, the results being his uncles (twins who, dressed identically in bowler hats, suits, and carrying canes, are so obviously the Thomson Twins that no doubt as to the link with them is possible). His grandmother was quickly paired off with the gardener; his subsequent grandfather. McCarthy can give a better account of this, and the subsequent coded resurfacings of this story himself than I can in precis; suffice it to say that his book is one of the few critical works that can truly be called "mind-blowing", and that no adult interpretation and indeed appreciation of the books can now be considered complete without having read it.

For example: I pointed out to McCarthy before we saw the film together that there were an awful lot of beds in the Tintin books. A great deal many more than you would expect in a series carrying the words "The Adventures of …" Tintin has a hospital-like bed in his flat at 26 Labrador Road; we see him in it while Snowy brings him the phone. The Bird brothers, the real villains of the story (not the originally innocent Sakharine, who is the film's baddie), may be nasty pieces of work, but they are considerate enough to provide Tintin with a nicely made-up set of sheets and blankets in which he can recover consciousness; Calculus has made himself a bed in a lifeboat in Red Rackham's Treasure (character and story completely jettisoned from film); and in The Seven Crystal Balls, the next book to be ravished and broken by Spielberg and his cronies, there are beds galore, in which the cursed professors writhe with tormented nightmares. And so on and so on: make your own list of the beds in Tintin. It's fun. (On a personal note, I would often, when feigning or even occasionally genuinely suffering from illness, read all my Tintin books in bed, matching drink for drink, in Lucozade, what Haddock in the books was doing with whisky.) So. What's that all about, I asked McCarthy. Easy, he said: it's because of what happened in bed between his grandmother and the unidentified nobleman.

Interestingly, it becomes clear, from a couple of quite clear references, that at least one of the screenwriters, Stephen Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, have read McCarthy's book. (McCarthy knows Cornish slightly, I gather.) Alas, they have not understood it. There is a great deal about Captain Haddock's genealogy in the film – he is the character who secretly "carries" the Hergé family story in the books – and there is even a bit when he says to Tintin that "you transmit your own signals", an unambiguous lift of one of McCarthy's own riffs. But there then follows a speech, which Hergé's Haddock would never have made in a million years, full of sub-Alcoholics Anonymous self-empowerment rubbish about breaking through walls and finding your true self, which would have made any self-respecting screenwriter insist on having his or her name taken off the credits.

As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons, and the nicest things one can say about it are that there's a pleasing cameo of Hergé himself in the opening scene, the cars look lovely, indeed it is as a whole visually sumptuous, and (after 20 minutes or so of more or less acceptable fidelity; and the 3D motion-capturing transference of the original drawings is by far the least of the film's problems) it usefully places in plain view all the cretinous arrogance of modern mass-market, script-conference-driven film-making, confirming in passing that, as a director, Spielberg is a burned-out sun. A duel between dockyard cranes? Give me a break. Oh, and the opening credits are nice and witty. But this only confirms a maxim that I have recently formulated: that the closer in spirit the title sequence is to the original from which the subsequent film has been stolen, the more of a travesty of that original it will be.

There may be those who think that to quibble about the traducement of what might be considered a work of one of the lesser arts is to waste everyone's time. But it is not. Something of great subtlety, beauty and artfully deceptive complexity, resonance and depth has been betrayed, and it is time to make a stand.

And Mr Lezard just made his stand! Comments from the Tintin gallery?

Dish!

The ''Complex Chinese Character'' edition of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs' bio is a hit in Taiwan, surpassing Harry Potter sales

2011-10-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

The ''Complex Chinese Character'' edition of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs' biography is already a hit in free and democratic Taiwan, and will likely be a hit in communist
Red China too when the Simplified Chinese Character edition goes on sale in Beijing as well. Jobs has penetrated the Bamboo Curtain separating Taiwan from China. Few people can do that!

In Taiwan, Huang Wan-ru, a 31-year-old female office worker loves the book and says that what interests her most about Jobs is his childhood and early work experience.

"I admired his unique personal style, always being true to himself, which was never affected by others," Huang, who owns an iPod, iPhone and iPad, told a reporter recently.

Eslite, a major book chain in Taiwan, said it was offering offer free apples and apple-shaped notepapers at 12 of its outlets to the first 100 people who showed up Monday dressed in black turtlenecks, Jobs' signature wear., according to TV news reports in Taiwan.

All of Eslite's outlets are packaging the Taiwan edition in paper bags bearing a picture of Jobs.

A 22-year-old college student surnamed Kuo told a Taiwanese TV reporter that for his part he would like to know how Jobs managed to come back from his frustrations.

"I'm curious about the time when he was kicked out of Apple and founded NeXT Computer. I think it was a transition point in his life," Kuo said.

Eslite's sales of the book are expected to reach 200,000 copies in the first three months, approaching the record set when the first book in the Harry Potter series by British author J. K. Rowling was released, according to sources,

Commonwealth Publishing Group, the exclusive Taiwanese publisher of the biography, said it had planned to do a first print of 100,000 copies, but decided to run 220,000 copies instead based on the warm reception.

On a message board outside the Eslite bookstore, fans have posted memorial messages such as "Thank you for teaching us how to think creatively," "Thank you for changing the world" and "We're all proud of you and all miss you."

One fan wrote "Thanks for making us realize the meaning of 'never give up.'"

ALSO

The authorized biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson was released after its early arrival on Kindle yesterday. CBS News’ 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with Isaacson about the book and his conversations with Jobs. The interview is online, via Catharine Smith at The Huffington Post.

Stephen Shankland at CNet looks at the “wealth of detail” in the book, while Bill Weir at ABC News runs through the book’s “11 most startling revelations.” Meanwhile, Zach Epstein at BGR.com writes about one of Jobs’ final projects, Apple’s smart TV, and how it could be a “game-changer for gaming.”

An Interview with Newspaper Pagination Designer Ian Lawson in Maysville, Kentucky

2011-10-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

Julie Moos over at Poynter.org writes: Design Editor Ian Lawson had never turned the Ledger Independent’s front page on its side before, but while designing the Friday cover that featured news of Moammar Gadhafi’s death, he tried it at the last minute.

“I just didn’t love what I had been working on for most of the two hours I get to design our A1,” he told Moos by e-mail. “To be honest, I’m still waiting for the email telling me my publisher’s head exploded when he saw it.”

Lawson, who has been with the Maysville, Kentucky, USA, newspaper for [almost 5] years, had no newspaper experience when he started out. But after working on inside pages — and a stint at Disney — he became head of pagination one year ago.

The recently-redesigned newspaper , published 6 days a week, with a day off on Sundays, has a circulation of about 8,501 and is distributed in 7 counties in the region.

In a recent email interview with this blog in Taiwan, where we had been attracted to Lawson's work from Ms Moos' heads up, ahove, Ian took some time to answer our questions.

INTERVIEW HERE ***************

DAN BLOOM: How did you get into page making for newspapers? What was your
career and college student trajectory? Are your parents artists?
Were you exposed to art as a teenager? How your KEEN EYE
that is catching eyeballs nationwide, worldwide even, with your front pages?

IAN LAWSON: I kind of snuck my way in. I was familiar with adobe
photoshop and my newsppaper, the Ledger Independent here, needed
someone who was able to work with it. So I sort of wandered through
the rest and learned the page design part in about a week. Although I
was horrible at it at first.

My parents aren't artists at all. I became interested in art in the
fourth grade of elementary school as a kid because I loved watcing
"The Simpsons." I started to draw them when I was in fourth grade and
I began to get a bit of attention from my classmates -- and that was
that!

I went to college for one year to study computer programming, but I
quickly realized it was not for me and dropped out -- which leads me
back to the first part of my answer above!

DAN BLOOM: After your MLK and Jobs and Gadaffi front pages, you have
been getting
lots of national media attention, at least, from newspaper blogs
and websites. How does this make you feel? Did you ever think this
would happen?

IAN LAWSON: It's defiantly fun. It's always nice to hear compliments
on your work. But honestly, no, to answer your question, I never
thought our little newspaper here would be featured on several design
blogs.

[NOTE: Mr Lawson just turned 31 back in May. He grew up moving back
and forth between Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.]

DAN BLOOM: Which newspapers and magazines influenced you as you
growing up, in high school and later on as am adult?

IAN LAWSON: I've always read comic books and magazines for as long as
I can remember.
''Rolling Stone'' has always been a favorite magazine for me. And
Wired, spin and Time are others I enjoy.

My favorite newspaper is The Virginian-Pilot out of Norfolk, Virginia.
Its design is second-to-none.

DAN BLOOM: Your newspaper there has circulation of around 8000, and
yet your work is
getting national attention
from designers and newspaper editors -- worldwide! Have any offers for future
jobs come in?

IAN LAWSON: No, so far, no offers for any jobs. Unfortunately, as you
know, newspapers are having a hard time as of late. So being in a
smaller market probably is big help for our publication.

DAN BLOOM: What are your newsroom colleagues and bosses saying about
the increased
attention the Ledger Independent is now getting nationwide?

IAN LAWSON: I think they are happy for me and for the attention given
to our little newspaper.
I think it shows our ''home office'' out in Iowa that even the little
guys can make a big splash in the world!

DAN BLOOM: In 20 years, where do you want to be and what do you hope
to be doing?

IAN LAWSON: I wish to be healthy and happy with my wife wife and son.
Hopefully, someplace warm and still working in a graphic design role
for either a newspaper or a magazine.

DAN BLOOM: Do you ever do you dream at night about front pages while you
are sleeping?

IAN LAWSON: Funny you should ask! I actually had a dream just last
night about whether or not my most recent frontpage covering the
earthquake in Turkey would make the new newseum.org's top ten. And it
did!

DAN BLOOM: In your opinion, what is the purpose of a newspaper's
front page, from your perspective as a page maker?
And also from your own understanding of readers needs?

IAN LAWSON: I look at the front page as a way of grabbing people's
attention. To make them want to stop and look while it's sitting there
on the rack. To make them want to pick it up and take it home with
them. To get them to stop and take some time to slow down and read.
Everything is going digital these days. It just make me sad to think
of a world with no physical books or newspapers or magazines.

DAN BLOOM: What are your future plans?

IAN LAWSON: I guess my future plans are to keep trying to do what I
love, anyway I can.

DAN BLOOM: Thank you, Ian, for taking the time to answer these
long-distance questions.

IAN LAWSON: Thank you so much for the interview and all you kind words.

-------------------------------------

****Note: Newspaper design pundit Charles Apple wrote about Lawson's genius here as well.

Taiwanese TV award substitute 楊一峯 reads acceptance speech from Director Hung phoned in via text onstage. CUTE!.......電視金鐘獎 - Best Directing for a Mini-series/TV movie (迷你劇集/電視電影導演獎)

2011-10-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: .......our Taipei-based Taiwanese informant tells us:......."The man accepting the award for Director Hung who could not be there that night was Yang Yi-feng [楊一峯](also known as Katsuhiko Miki in Japan [三木克彥] who is a friend of Director Hung who won the award of Best Director of TV Drama and Mr Yamg, also a TV direcor and CM director and film director in Taipei accepted the award on stage
on behalf of Hung Chih-yu (洪智育) and effortlessly snapped a photo of the audience with his own camera as he stepped up to the stage.
Mr YAng was reading the ''thank you'' speech that Director Hung sent in to him to the mobile phone on stage. Cute. Technology transforms the Oscars soon, too?''

speech comes in at 3 minutes into video, around 3:01

-- Reads acceptance speech phoned in by text from Director Hung himself to the iPhone screen

The times they are a'changin' -- but perhaps not in the way that Bob Dylan sang
about years ago in his famous folk song.

Case in point: During the recent ''Golden Bell'' Television Awards last week in
Taipei -- Taiwan's equivalent to the Ameican ''Emmy'' Awards -- a man accepted a TV award for
Director Hung who won it but could not be there in person because of outside work -- Mr Hung won the gong for best TV director of a drama series called "Scent of Love" for 2011-- and the other man, named Mr Yang, also Taiwanese, walked up to the stage and snapped a
camera photo of the audience from the stage) while approaching the podium stage, and then took
out an
iphone from his shirt jacket pocket and started reading email messages from Director Hung while
smiling to himself, before finally addressing the
5,000 people in the audience and on national TV by reading not from a
prepared piece of folded dead-tree paper but from the clean screen of his iPhone -- and the speech he read was phoned in, er, texted in, by Director Hung himself from a remote location. His
substitute speech performance for the real award winner might just have made award-show history worldwide,
by replacing a prepared written speech with
a prepared written screen text that was phoned in in real time by text message.

Can the Oscars and the Man Booker Prize next year be next?

REFERENCE 電視金鐘獎

Best Directing for a Mini-series/TV movie (迷你劇集/電視電影導演獎)
*******洪智育╱就是要香戀（CTV - 中國電視事業股份有限公司）

Celebrities and fans crowded the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, exuberant over the 46th Golden Bell Awards (電視金鐘獎), Taiwan's equivalent to the Emmy Awards, which awarded Wilber Pan (潘瑋柏) and Tien Hsin (天心) as best actor and actress, respectively, while some director bloke snapped his own DIY pics while accepting his award and reading from iPhone screen for speech.
htp://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/arts-&-leisure/2011/10/22/320628/Wilber-Pan.htm

GOOGLE or FACEBOOK:
三木克彥 tells this blog:

"My Chinese Mandarin name is Yang Yi-feng (which is the spelling on my Taiwannese passport), and in Chinese characters my name is 楊一峯。.....I am half-Japanese half-Taiwanese so the name on my facebook page is 三木克彥 or Miki Katsuhiko. That is the name I use in Japan. I am a TV comercial director, and I recently started to direct TV dramas in Taiwan, too. ''

OLD TYPEWRITER AND WRITER NORMAN CORWIN, circa 1872

2011-10-21T19:52:00.001-07:00

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ncorwin-1973.jpg#file

Photographed by unknown person, User:Arrowcatcher, with Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic film camera and electronic flash at Norman Corwin's Wellworth Ave., Los Angeles apartment in February 1872.

阿裕牛肉湯

2011-10-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

阿裕牛肉湯 in Tainan County, Rende City, No. 525 ChungCheng Road and oishii! and LO LAT!
地址:台南縣仁德鄉中正路一段525號電話......:06-266-8816/ 266-8857
http://www.google.com/search?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=%E9%98%BF%E8%A3%95%E7%89%9B%E8%82%89%E6%B9%AF

Facebook Friend Numbers Linked to Brain Size

2011-10-19T20:51:00.001-07:00

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions
of the brain compared to screen-reading

By Ben Hirschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (~~Reutters~~) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.

"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.

"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."

Is Facebook altering our brains?

2011-10-19T20:50:00.003-07:00

The more Facebook friends you have, the bigger your brain is

2011-10-19T20:50:00.001-07:00

People With Bigger Brains Have More Facebook Friends

2011-10-19T20:49:00.001-07:00

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions of the brain compared to screen-reading

2011-10-19T20:29:00.000-07:00

By Benn Herschlerr

RONDON | Wed Oct 19, 2012

RONDON (~~Rotters~~) - Scientists have found a direct link between
reading on paper surfaces and information processing compared
to when people read off screens, raising the possibility that using
screens for our daily reading is an inferior method of "reading."

The reading brain in terms of memory, emotional responses and critical
analysis prefers reading off paper surfaces, such as books,
magazines and hardcopy print outs, the research indicates. So far,
however, it is not possible to say whether one
reading mode is superior to the other, reseachers say.

"The exciting question now is whether reading off paper really is
superior in terms of brain chemistry to reading off screens, -- this
will help us answer the question of whether the Internet is changing
our brains," said Astin Kawabata Sensei of University College London
UCL.L, one of the researchers involved in the study.

Sensei and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (f)MRI to study
the brains of 125 university students, reading on both
paper and off screens. They discovered that reading off paper surfaces
is superior in terms of the "grey matter" in the amygdala, the right
superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right
entorhinal cortex. Grey matter is the layer of brain tissue where
mental processing occurs.

"If our research pans out, it will mean big trouble for the computer
and reading device industry," said Grant Lee of UCL.

"This shows we can use some of the powerful tools in modern
neuroscience to address important questions -- namely, what are the
effects of reading on screens to my brain. It appears that reading on
paper lights up different and superior regions of the brain compared
to when I read
off a screen on an iPad or a computer."

The study results were published on Wednesday in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of The Reading Brain.

Heidi-Sally Bloom of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in
the research, said the findings were intriguing but did not mean that
they are true or even useful.

"We still need more studies on this using PET brain scan machines,
too," she said. "The current study cannot tell us whether reading off
screens is good or bad for our brains."

Jim Frederick named Time International editor: will he call Taiwan a mere ISLAND or will he stand up to Communist China and call Taiwan what it is, a SOVEREIGN NATION? 23 million Tawianese want to know!

2011-09-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

Jim Frederick named Time International editor and he promises to call Taiwan a nation from now in the pages of his magazine rather than a mere island, when it is an island nation, a country in its own right, and Jim, having spent time in Japan will surely not miss the boat this time.

Time managing editor Rick Stengel calls Jim Frederick “ideally suited” to lead the international edition and to use his office to call Taiwan a nation rather than refer to it as a mere island. “Jim knows our European and Asian editions from firsthand experience, especiallu how the Communist Chinese mindcontrollers in Beinjing try to manipulate Time's coverage of Taiwan as a sovereign nation. As a former senior editor for TIME in London, he helped coordinate coverage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for both the magazines and TIME.com; as Tokyo bureau chief, he reported on and wrote about Japanese culture, society, government, economics, and international politics where Taiwan was always referred to as a nation and not a mere ISLAND. Jim is not afraid to stand up the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.
September 23, 2011

To: Time Inc. Employees and READERS in Tawian and communist CHINA

From: John Huey and Richard Stengel and the ghost of Mr Luce

Re: Staff Announcement

On the recommendation of Rick Stengel, I am pleased to announce that Jim Frederick is the new editor of Time International where he will start insisting that Taiwan be referred to from now on as a nation, and not a mere ISLANd.

As always, I will defer to Rick to tell the true story about Taiwan's rise to independeence and nationhood:

Jim has been an exceptional leader of TIME.com. As its managing editor, he oversaw a dramatic expansion of content and traffic. But more than that, he helped unify print and digital in a way that we had once only imagined. Under his guidance the site has launched new verticals and apps and extended our content to pretty much every platform under the sun – so much so that we were named by the L2 Digital Think Tank and NYU’s Stern School of Business as the No. 1 brand in the magazine industry for digital excellence, the only brand of 87 surveyed to earn a “genius” distinction. But the word that jumps out to me is excellence, for Jim brought that standard to everything that he did, from managing people to dealing with the business side, and it is those qualities that he will now bring to Time International.

He’s ideally suited to lead international. Jim knows our European and Asian editions from firsthand experience. As a former senior editor for TIME in London, he helped coordinate coverage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for both the magazines and TIME.com; as Tokyo bureau chief, he reported on and wrote about Japanese culture, society, government, economics, and international politics. He did two reporting tours in Iraq for his book Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent Into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, which the Guardian called “the best book by far about the Iraq war – a rare combination of cold truth and warm compassion.”

Jim has brought to his leadership roles all the advantages that Midwestern roots and an MBA can provide. An Illinois native, he majored in English at Columbia but went on to get his MBA from NYU. His passion for excellence, his gift for collaboration, his ability to see around corners and plan for the long term while remaining nimble in the face of breaking news, have all served TIME digital well and will be essential as he helps lead Time International to new growth and strength and standing up for Taiwan in all references to the rivalty between communist CHina and free and democratic Taiwan, a nation among nation.

Plus, he just married Time International alumna Charlotte Greenshit, a testimony to his charm, sound judgment and brand loyalty.

Please join Rick and me in congratulating Jim on his new role as defender of Taiwan's dignity and sovereignty.

Children and the Future of the Book

2011-09-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

by D. G. Myers | @myers_dg
09.21.2011
COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

Over at the Atlantic’s technology blog, Edward Tenner -- [via Dan Bloom's original blog post about Bidini's post from Australia via a Hamlet's BlackBerry google search, which led to the Bidini piece -- which started all this off;] -- asks whether children will save printed books. A historian of technology (whose 1996 book Why Things Bite Back ought to be required reading for the uncritical cheerleaders of technological progress), Tenner points out that, despite the “consensus of many e-book enthusiasts and elegiac traditionalists alike” that the codex is doomed, responsible thought about the future requires “alternative scenarios.”

And one possibility is that a younger generation will reject the prized possessions, the revolutionary amazements, of an older generation. Your father could not believe the convenience of his Remington Lektronic shaver and your mother raved about her Touch-o-Matic electric can opener; you shave with a safety razor and crank your cans open. Tenner suggests that a “pro-book rebellion” is possible, though not inevitable. The success of Mad Men has cleared the closets of wide neckties.

Indeed, heeding the Baseball Crank’s warning that knowledge is not settled, one possibility is as good as another at this point. Many of the features that Kindle and iPad devotees brag about (what Ed Driscoll hails, for example, as “being able to read a book anywhere, and carry the digital equivalent of a massive stack of them onto an airplane”) may not seem all that remarkable or important in a few years.

Electronic reading devices are new devices for old readers. Younger readers do not come to books with the same personal history. In fact, their own history with books might lead them to prefer paper and binding. I’ve suggested as much before (here and here). Children first encounter books as physical things. Board books, lift-the-flap books, touch-and-feel books, pop-up books — their first books are three-dimensional objects that encourage children to explore them in all three dimensions. When they acquire their own books, the books they have selected for themselves, children are proud of them. They like to display them on their shelves and carry them everywhere. They may even begin to develop a love for good paper and fine binding.

I’m not saying that printed books will triumph in the end. I’m no better than anyone else at predicting the future. What I am suggesting is that older readers, excited about their Kindles and iPads, have become strangers to their first experience with books and reading. The newfangled devices are exciting because they appear to solve longstanding problems — the problems of older readers, who have spent a lifetime with books. Younger readers, who do not share that excitement and are not yet estranged from their own literary history, may not prefer ebooks to printed books after all.

LINK
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/21/children-and-future-of-books/

A Taiwanese model's tattoo on back and shoulders that looks like a Chinese ceramic vase

2011-09-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

The model is Miss Chen Guei-yinn, 27, from Taipei, Taiwan. The model's tattoo on back and shoulders that looks like a Chinese ceramic vase said to be the Qianglong-period Famille rose "peach" vase. Cost of tattoo: approximately US$2500.

New "fake Steve Jobs doppelganger surfaces in Taiwan

2011-09-01T04:11:00.000-07:00

-- Another expat 'actor' (not Brook Hall this time) is seen hawking a popular snack food in TV ad going viral as we type!

[Source: Gimlet-eyed internet sleuth and TV couch potato Dan Bloom]

VIDEO HERE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xfXIPJBUY8

CORPORATE LOGO LINK PHOTO HERE;
http://www.qiaqia.com.tw/intro.php

and here
http://www.qiaqia.com.tw/

Apparently, the Doppelganger Effect in Taiwan doesn't stop, and this
week, an entirely new TV commercial with a new American expat
playing the role of "Steve Jobs" has begun airing on TV screens across
Jobs-infatuated Isla Formosa. Again, no word on whether Apple
execs have seen the advert (most likely not) or if they intend to sue
for infringment of copyright and lookalike trademarkedness (most
probably
there is no lawsuit in the pipeline).

This new fake Steve Jobs comes at a sensitive time in Apple's
corporate history, and while Taiwanese are more than respectful of the
ailing
tech wizard's health and are certainly cheering for him to make a
speedy recovery, the new TV spot -- just 15 seconds long -- was made
before the resignation letter was released and planned at least two
months ago when it was shot in a Taipei studio for a local snack
company
called Vedan Enterprise Corporation in central Taiwan's bustling
''second city'' of Taichung.

The new spot is also giving away a free iPad to those who buy the junk
food snack packs and enter a drawing, Kety Chen at Vedan told
this gimlet-eyed doppelganger sleuth by phone.

While not as good a lookalike as Mr Jobs as the Brook Hall was in that
earlier TV spot for a popular tea drink (now off the air in Taiwan,
but archived for all eternity on YouTube, with over 200,000 hits and
counting), this new fake Apple CEO looks the part if one stretches
one's imagination across the seas and plants it firmly in Asian terra
firma

And yes, this new snack food advert is making waves in the
Chinese-language blogosphere and giving Jobs fans in Taiwan and around
the world another viral video to file away in the doppelganger
department. Sadly, it comes at a sad time in Jobs career, and we wish
him the best of health from here on out.

'Fake' Steve Jobs advice book "made in Red China" -- -- Web of deceit led to egg on Taiwan's face

2011-08-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

LINK with proof, scroll down to grey box

http://blog.chinatimes.com/ymal/archive/2011/07/10/765659.html?page=2

====================

As readers around the world know by now, Asians are in love with Steve
Jobs, the real one and the fake one, as they'lll eat up anything with
"Steve Jobs" in the title or blog post.
Recently, the Taiwanese had the wool pulled over their eyes by some
low-lying "translators" in Communist China" who put out fake advice
book by Jobs -- for teenagers in China!
The Beijing-published book was titled "Steve Paul Jobs's Eleven Pieces
of Advice for Young People Today" and it was written by the long-dead
American composer "John Cage."

This reporter recently purchased a copy of the book in Complex Chinese
characters in a bookstore in Taipei and discovered via the
''publication notes page'' that the counterfeit
book -- which was never written by Steven Paul Jobs or John Cage and
merely took past speeches by Jobs and turned the excerpts into eleven
lessons for
teenagers in China -- that the book was originally published in
Communist China last year first in Simplified Chinese characters used
in Maoland. The book was such a hit
as a fake in China that a publisher-wannabe in free and democratic
Taiwan got itchy fingers and agreed to license the fake China book for
his easy to fool and very gullible Taiwanese
readers. Done deal. Some money exchanged hands, the original book was
re-translated into the kind of Chinese characters that Taiwanese
people can read -- since the Simplified characters
used in Maoland are simply beneath the dignity of real Chinese script
-- and the Taiwan version of the fake Chinese book was published in
April. It has already gone
through 10 printings and more are on the way, given the worldwide
publicity on this deceitful yet perfect story fakery.

How did this reporter find out that the book was published originally
in "copyright means the right to copy" China? Simple, and not complex
at all. On the publication notes
page is the email address of the publisher in Beijing, and feel free
to write to him if you wish: ydmp@yahoo.cn

The ''cn" gives it away.

A bloke named David Wu is also in on this fakery, and his email is
also listed as david.wu@ecorebooks.com
(and he appears to be the
Taiwanese contact).

The alleged author, a chap named "John Cage", who of course is dead,
did not respond to this reporter's emails. Not yet. Maybe there's
email in Heaven?

As previously reportedm the Taipei police is now investigating the
case, and if the ''publisher'' is found guilty of deceiving the
public, he could be in for some jail time. Or a big fat fine.

The publisher in Taipei still maintains that his book was legit and
that all copyright protections were in order.

John Brownlee at the cultofmac website got it right with a cute
headline that read: "Steve Job Releases Taiwanese Self-Help Book For
Teenagers Translated By Dead Avant Garde Composer."

Brownlee added: "[The] entire book was translated by the famous avant
garde composer John Cage, who is apparently alive and well in Taipei!
Whats a wonderful choice for a man to translate Jobs! After all,
they’re both Buddhists!"

Monsignor Enrique Figaredo is the Apostolic Prefect (Bishop) of Battambang in Cambodia and he has a very unChristian antisemitic nickname......WHY?

2011-08-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

Monsignor Enrique (Kike) Figaredo is the Apostolic Prefect (Bishop) of
Battambang in Cambodia. His diocese embraces 14 provinces with a
population of more than four million. Kike is a man of immense
compassion and understanding of the people of Cambodia, and has
developed the services of the Society of Jesus in this country to best
meet the needs of people recovering from 30 years of war.

A friend who is both a humorist and a man of G-d wrote to him today and said:

Dear Monsignor Enrique Figaredo,

KIKE Figaredo , sir, in the name of God, please do not use this
nickname KIKE anymore, it is a slur word against JEWISH PEOPLE, i saw
it in the newspaper today and, as a Jewish man who loves the work you Jesuits do around the world, i am deeply insulted that a
man of God like you would do this...i know you do not know this...but
KIKE means ~~FUCKING JEW~~ in American English.....

could you use your full
name Enrique or just nickname of RIKE or RIQUE,,,but please NOT
....."kike".....

There is now an international campaign to
politely ask you to stop using the this name KIKE in print and on your website and on your namecards for newspaper reporters to copy and print in public ....it is a slur
against your lord Jesus Christ, too, as he was a Jew.....

sincerely,
Jesus H Christ on Earth

Enrique, dude,
...PLEASE CHANGE THIS NICKNAME.....yes no? can do?

JC

SIR Monsignor,
for your info

KIKE is a derogatory slur used to refer to a Jew.[1]

[edit] Etymology

The etymology of the term is uncertain. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it may be an alteration of the endings –ki or –ky common in the personal names of Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century.[2]

The first recorded usage of the term is in 1904.[2][3]

According to Our Crowd, by Stephen Birmingham, the term "kike" was coined as a derogatory putdown by the assimilated American German Jews to identify Eastern-European Jews: "Because many Russian [Jewish] names ended in 'ki', they were called 'kikes' — a German Jewish contribution to the American vernacular. The name then proceeded to be co-opted by non-Jews as it gained prominence in its usage in society, and was later used as a generally derogatory antisemitic slur.."

According to Leo Rosten,

The word kike was born on Ellis Island when there were Jewish immigrants who were also illiterate (or could not use Latin alphabet letters), when asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary 'X,'* refused, because they associated an X with the cross of Christianity, and instead made a circle. The Yiddish word for 'circle' is kikel (pronounced KY-kul), and for 'little circle,' kikeleh (pronounced ky-kul-uh). Before long the immigration inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an 'O' instead of an 'X' a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or, finally and succinctly, kike.[4]
According to Rosten, Jewish American merchants continued to sign with an 'O' instead of an 'X' for several decades, spreading the nickname kike wherever they went as a result. At that time kike was more of an affectionate term, used by Jews to describe other Jews, and only developed into an ethnic slur later on.[3]

Kim Jong-il afraid to fly; media afraid to report truth

2011-08-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il afraid to fly; media afraid to report truth

While all the world's media reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il went to Russia -- by train -- his first visit in nearly a decade as his nation seeks economic aid,
not one news outlet in the West explained why Kim spent all that time and all those kilometers worth of train track to get to Russia. Is he afraid to fly? Yes, he is.

And while Kim met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and spent some time in the Far East and Siberia, the fact remains that Kim suffers from a severe fear of flying phobia, called aerophobia, and never ever flies in airplanes. He is apparently is afraid of having a panic attack in mid-air, or of the plane crashing. This is the mindset of a very unstable man, a madman one might say. And yet not one media
outlet will report these "details."

Google the news: not one article mentions Kim's fear of flying or why he always takes trains -- not planes -- to visit nearby China or Russia.

A world leader goes to visit another country for a high-level summit and rather than take an airplane, he prefers to sit on a heavily-guarded private train that carries him 7,000 klilometers
from station platform to station platform? And this is not news? This is not analyzed? This is not disseminated?

When Kim visits China he pulls the same thing. He never flies. What is he afraid of?

Of course, millions of people suffer from various degrees of fear of flying, and it's not something to laugh at. But when a world leader, and a dangerous world leader at that, like Kim, is afraid
to fly in airplanes, some reporter somewhere should sit up and take notice, no? And yet not one news report about Kim's trip to Russia contains these facts. Not the Associated Press reports,
not Reuters reports, not CNN's reports. And what point does the world let itself be hypnotized by a lazy media that is afraid to print the truth about Kim Jonh-Il's mental state?

This is not the first time Kim has travelled to Russia by non-commercial flight, er, train. In 2001, he traveled more than 7,000 kilometers to Moscow by train for talks with then-president Vladimir Putin, who now serves as ''prime minister''.

Kim is a man who needs to be removed from office because of mental instability. The news media should not enable him anymore by mis-reporting -- even deleting -- the facts on the ground.

-----------

Fear of flying forces Kim Jong Il to use fleet of private trains

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent 2009

Kim Jong Il, the enigmatic North Korean despot and pathologically nervous flyer, has created a magnificent fleet of railway trains to convey him safely between his Pyongyang palace and secret mountain lair.

The six trains, made up of 90 heavily armoured carriages with luxury interiors, are believed to serve 19 stations across the Stalinist regime — all for the exclusive personal use of Mr Kim and a handful of his closest retinue.

Satellite imaging suggests that the trains never travel very much faster than 37mph (60km/h) across the country. They are also organised to ensure the survival of Mr Kim should anyone attempt to attack him. A train precedes the convoy to check for mines and other threats while another filled with bodyguards follows behind that of the Dear Leader.

The glimpse into Mr Kim’s elaborate travel arrangements is understood to come from Seoul and Washington intelligence reports, the results of which emerged in the South Korean media yesterday. According to those reports, the trains are fitted out with conference suites, reception halls, opulent living quarters and satellite communications centres; an entire mobile palace from which Mr Kim can continue to command the hermit nation.

Tracks for the trains join lines that lead to the border with China in the north and are the route through which Mr Kim leaves for his sporadic trips abroad.

Mr Kim’s fear of flying is well known, though his nerves over travelling by train may also be justified. A massive explosion erupted in 2004 after overhead cables ignited a goods train carrying chemicals and fuel oil. The incident claimed at least 160 lives but, intriguingly for intelligence sources, also took place in a spot that Mr Kim’s train had travelled through hours earlier.

Previously gathered intelligence reports suggest that Mr Kim maintains about 15 palaces and retreats, several of which appear to be reachable only by underground railway.

The prime residence near Pyongyang, which includes a racetrack and a giant waterslide, has its own underground station invisible to spy satellites. Equally puzzling is the vast Hwangju palace — the family’s mountain retreat, where several railway lines disappear from the surface into tunnels.

The main purpose of the trains is believed to be the execution of the Dear Leader’s punishing domestic schedule inspecting factories and military facilities — official duties that he appears to perform still with vigour despite reports that he suffered from a debilitating stroke last year.

----------------

Kim Jong-Il's fear of flying 'caused by earlier helicopter crash'

June 17, 2003

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's fear of flying has been caused by a 1976 helicopter crash that seriously injured him, a press report said yesterday.

His unexplained aversion to air travel, which led to his epic 24-day train journey to Russia in 2001, was revealed by Ingolf Kiesow, who served as Swedish ambassador in Pyongyang from 1979 to 1982, in an interview published in the Japanese weekly Shukan Gendai.

"I have met Kim Jong-Il up close several times. A close look exposed a scar from the top of the forehead to the pate," Mr Kiesow was quoted as saying.

"It was the scar of a serious injury, which he suffered when he boarded a helicopter and got involved in its crash inside North Korea toward the end of 1976," he said.

The interview was conducted in Stockholm by Japanese diplomatic writer Masayuki Koike, who claimed to be a long-time friend of Mr Kiesow.

It was published in Japanese and its English version was not immediately available.

Fearful flash-back memories of the helicopter accident had long troubled Mr Kim, who was in his mid-30s when it happened, Mr Kiesow said.

He also said Mr Kim's seclusion from the public eye from 1977 to 1978 was due to "his indulgence in alcohol".

Mr Kim, 61, is the eldest son of North Korea's founding father Kim Il-Sung, a former anti-Japanese guerilla leader, who died in 1994 after moulding a Stalinist state on the northern half of the divided Korean peninsula.

The junior Kim, known as the "Dear Leader", remained a reclusive, mysterious figure until 2000 when he held a historic summit with South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung.

After taking full control of the country's powers after his father's death, Mr Kim toured Russia in 2001 via trans-Siberian railways to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It was a sentimental journey of sorts as his father, also known to be scared of flying, took the same route on his trip to Eastern Europe in his heyday.

New pizza joint called Toppers Pizza hopes to top the competition and build the brand into 70 stores nationwide. Can they do it?

2011-08-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

Toppers Pizza fired up its ovens for customers at its new Stadium Village location in Minnesota and things are topnotch there.

The new restaurant on Washington Avenue will be the chain’s third in the state — part of a plan to open more than 70 restaurants across the nation in the next several years.

The expanding Midwest chain will become the fifth pizza place in a two-block radius, raising the question of whether the college-aged market can be oversaturated with pizza. Yes and no. What's your POV? Can they succeeed?

Probably not, say a Carlson School of Management marketing professor, neighboring pizza parlors and Toppers’ store manager Pat Klasen.

Campus Pizza, less than a five-minute walk from the new Toppers location, has called Stadium Village home for more than 50 years and isn’t too worried about the new competition. Owner Jim Rosvold compared the campus pizza market to automobiles — filled with a variety of makes and models.

“You have your BMWs, your Pintos, your Cadillacs,” he said. “Every place is a little bit different.”

But having so many competitors in the area is a positive thing, he said.

“If you’re a pizza lover, Stadium Village is a great place to go,” he said. “We have a little bit of everything here.”

Mark Bergen, a Carlson School marketing professor, said similar restaurants often cluster in one area to make it “the place to be.”

Early promotions and buzz are likely to get people in Toppers’ doors, but many fast-food establishments struggle to keep them coming back, Bergen said.

He said in the crowded campus market, Toppers will be able to stick around if it can do one of three things — provide the same or better quality pizza at lower prices, create a better all-around experience than competitors or meet the needs of a certain customer type previously ignored by the market.

Klasen promised to do all three. Toppers will “push the pizza envelope” and cater to the needs of a college-aged pizza consumer in order to set it apart, he said.

“We’re really trying to reinvent the pizza market,” he said, “especially with all of the bigger chains being kind of boring.”

With marketing that promises its pizza will “spank your taste buds” and with a focus on “the fun side of things,” Klasen said Toppers offers the experience students have been seeking — but not getting — from the competition.

Klasen said he was attracted to the location, whose neighbors include residence halls, bars and sports venues, because of its potential for walk-up business.

Rosvold has seen a number of pizza places come and go over the years, but those able to stick around follow traditions rather than trends, he said.

He said he wouldn’t be too fast to count out Papa John’s or Domino’s, which have both been in the Stadium Village for decades, and added that while business may dip a little when a new restaurant opens, customers tend to return to their old staples after a while.

Rosvold also said it will be difficult to draw attention to the business with heavy Central Corridor light-rail construction outside of the new store’s front door.

Klasen says he’s is aware of the challenge.

“It’s going to be a little different for us,” he said. “We’re going to have a tougher time getting people to notice us.”

In an effort to hit the ground running, the first 50 people in line when the restaurant opens at 10:30 a.m. Saturday will receive a free menu item each week for a calendar year.

Klasen said though the experience and fun are part of the business, fresh, made-from-scratch food is at the heart of what they do.

“We look at what competitors do and do the complete opposite,” he said. “That’s Toppers.”

Todd Stevens said in a comment in the after-article: "Me, I like Toppers' chances. They opened a place down near UW-Madison a few years back and they've easily become the most popular delivery pizza place on campus (probably because they're whole schtick is tailored to a college audience). If they catch on quick enough they're going to steal a lot of business from chains like Domino's, probably not so much from local specialty pizzerias like Campus Pizza."

Dave had his own take: "Rosvold isn't scared, Campus Pizza offers a higher quality product than the Domino's/Papa John's/Toppers of the world. Campus Pizza also has the advantage of being a restaurant and bar. The place that needs to worry about Toppers is Papa John's. Toppers is generally cheaper and the quality is better than Papa John's (which, admittedly, isn't saying much). For the college kids who are stumbling around late at night though, quality is hardly their first concern. Quantity and cost rule the early morning hours."

And last but not yeast, this comment says it all: "This writer failed to mention that Toppers is open until 3 a.m. with lots of (possibly intoxicated) college kids around, so this Toppers is sure to be a hit. Sounds like Rosvold is a little scared......"

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated how many Toppers Pizza restaurants were in Minnesota. The Stadium Village location will be the chain's third restaurant in the state. The story also incorrectly stated the year by which Toppers will open 70 more restaurants and when the new location will open. The chain will open the new locations by 2013 AD, if the USA still exists by then, and will open Saturday at 10:30 a.m.

Chien-Ming Wang back on the mound Thursday for Nationals; but does recent suciide-death of maternal grandfather, 82, in Taiwan weighs on his mind?

2011-08-08T18:38:00.001-07:00

Chien-Ming Wang back on the mound Thursday for Nationals; but does recent suciide-death of maternal grandfather, 82, in Taiwan weighs on his mind?

by Ben Goessling

Chien-Ming Wang's third start, which comes Thursday against the Cubs, comes at a point where the Nationals should start to get some idea of whether the right-hander can still be an effective starter in the majors. One wonders also if the recent suicide death of his maternal grandfather in Taiwan will weigh on his mind. The Nats believe he can; he showed some signs of success with his sinker last Wednesday against the Braves before getting in trouble in the middle innings.

But he needs to throw the sinker - the pitch that made him a two-time 19-game winner for the Yankees - more often, instead of relying as much as he has on off-speed pitches. When he's been effective, he's used his sinker to keep his pitch counts down, and since his breaking ball is likely going to be the last thing to come back after shoulder surgery, he needs to trust his sinker to get him through for the time being. Still, nne has to wonder if the recent suicide death of his maternal grandfather in Taiwan will weigh on his mind.

The Nationals also get another look at Matt Garza, for whom they contemplated trading last winter. They beat Garza up last month at Nationals Park, scoring seven runs on eight hits against him in two innings before Livan Hernandez helped them blow a big lead and they lost 10-9. Garza has been stellar since then, pitching seven innings in four of his five starts and leaving the game with a shutout intact in two of them. But he was coming off a complete game the last time he faced the Nationals, too.

It's an interesting pitching matchup for multiple reasons, but for the Nationals, seeing progress from Wang is the most important one. It seems likely he'll be in the rotation the rest of this season, but whether or not he comes back next year will depend on what he shows this season. He doesn't need to be dominant tonight, but facing a last-place team after getting a couple outings under his belt, he's got a good chance to take a step forward. But still, nne wonders also if the recent suicide death of his maternal grandfather in Taiwan will weigh on his mind.

Xinhua sign in Times Square is affront to all freedom-loving people !

2011-08-08T02:08:00.000-07:00

The 'Ministry of Truth' whispers in our ear:

Propaganda comes in all sizes now, and China wants a piece of Times Square now.

Xinhua, the state-run and state-controlled propaganda agency of the
Chinese Communist Party, has leased
a longterm advertising space in New York's iconic Times Square, where
an LED sign, 60 feet high by 40 feet wide, taking over an outdoor sign
that had been occupied for the last ten years by the HSBC bank.
According to the New York Times, the Xinhua
sign is now underneath a sign for Prudential and above signs for
Samsung, Coca-Cola and Hyundai brands.

The problem is that Xinhua is not a brand, but the mark of branded
disinformation and propaganda. Like the former USSR,
today's China thinks it can fool the Western world with glass
skyscrapers, space flights and glowing Times Square signs.
But the West knows better, and Xinhua is merely flexing its public
relations muscles as it attempts to pull the wool over
more and more gullible eyes in America and Europe.

Xinhua is a news agency? Say that again? The propaganda arm of a
one-party state in an undemocratic land ruled
by fear and paranoia -- and using trumped-up jail terms to keep
dissidents in line -- Xinhua is akin to the old Soviet
propaganda machines of yesteryear that served Russia so well in the
1970s and 80s.

It's one thing for Times Square to open its advertising space to
private brands from across the globe, and surely
Chinese brands like Haier and Levono are welcome to showcase their
logos there. But a news agency that prints
blatant falsehoods and untruths about news inside China and in the
West, and has the unmitigated gall to call its workers "journalists"?
Whoever let Xinhua in to Times Square ought to have their heads
examined.

Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive and principal owner of Sherwood
Equities, a commercial real estate firm with properties that include
Times Square in New York, seems to think there's nothing wrong with
pocketing the hefty monthly rental fees from Xinhua.
After all, America has a strict one-China policy and wants to be pals
with Beijing.

Why the public relations push in Times Square? Well, for one thing,
Xinhua has introduced a CNN-like 24-hour English-language broadcast
service, China Network Corporation (CNC World), that seeks to reach
millions of gullible viewers around the world, with
state-sanctioned propaganda of the most nefarious and sophisticated kind.

Xinhua is also flexing its propaganda muscles with an English-language
news wire service, hoping to compete with Western news agencies like
The Associated Press and Reuters.

Does anybody not remember Tass, the official disseminator of
government news releases in the former Soviet Union? Xinhua
is just Tass in sheep's clothing. Wake up, America!

Behind the Times Square sign is China's desire to counter what it
calls ''widespread bias against China'' in the Western media,
from CNN to the New York Times. But as the New York Times itself said
in a recent article about the new Xinhua sign in Times Square,
"reports by Xinhua on topics like Taiwan [or] Tibet, which are of
considerable political concern to its government bosses, are not
necessarily known for being objective."

Say that again? Xinhua's bosses are about as ''objective'' as the old Tass
operatives in the former USSR. Xinhua's so bad, it makes Tass look good.

Welcome to Times Square, Xinhua wolves in sheep's clothing. Maybe
you'll learn something about
freedom and democracy while you're there.

''Chien-Ming Wang’s grandfather found dead?'' asks Nick Lilja, sports reporter in DC

2011-08-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

Washington DC sports reporter Nick Lilja asks if the news items on this story might b a ''HOAX''?

He writes: "Since coming to Washington, D.C. I’ve had a chance to cover the Washington Nationals. It’s been interesting. I know more about Chien-Ming Wang then I ever thought I would.

But I’ll be honest, I didn’t know this…

I received a comment on the website late Friday night / early Saturday morning from a [Taiwan-based freelance reporter and world blogger] that caught my attention – for multiple reasons.

It read as follows:

''Fast forward to August 2011. The grandfather of Chien-Ming Wang was found dead in a Taiwan park. Police suspect suicide.''

......Baseball pundits have expressed worry that the news of his grandfather’s death could pose a setback for the right-hander.

But so far, there has been ZERO media coverage of this family matter in USA newspapers or sports channels."

If you google: “Chien Ming Wang, grandfather” there is a single entry from a Taiwan news outlet that is nearly (if not completely) identical.

Yet, as stated above, no word in any American sports outlets. Interesting. Usually the Associated Press or Reuters usually has a pretty good finger to pulse of things like this. Then again, if this happened when Wang played for the Yankees, I’m sure it would have been all over the news. But since he plays for the Nationals… [nobody seems] to care.

So few that it hasn’t been reported. Unless it’s a hoax."

[EDITORS NOTE: IT IS *NOT　A HOAX....!!!]

[So this blogger, whoever he is] ......might have the inside track on this.

.....maybe “he” knows what “he” is talking about?

I put his name in quotes because [I am not sure who he is...]

Interesting, to say the least. Puzzling is more the word I’d use, though.
========================================---------***
NOTE: Top DC sports reporter asks this blog:
''Sir , I intend to ask Chien-Ming about his grandfather before I write a story, if I do at all. Can I ask what makes you so passionate about the topic?''

The Nicky Minaj Nipple Slip Has Crashed This Site Over 100,000 Times already? It's a nipple, folks. We all have em! Get over it, already!

2011-08-06T02:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.hollywoodstarshoney.com/music/singers/nicki-minaj-gma-nip-slip.html

Nicki Minaj GMA Nip Slip

Nicki Minaj started some people's morning right on Good Morning America the other day with a full on nipple slip on LIVE TV. God bless America, and Guess what America, Nicki Minaj is not a chocolate Barbie doll. She’s an actual woman with real nipples.

PHOTOS: Nicki Minaj

The accidental wardrobe malfunction occurred as she gave a spirited concert to hundreds of her fans in New York’s Central Park. GMA of course launched a thousand apologies for the the early morning nip slip. Hopefully not too many boys and girls were utterly traumatized.

What can you do? Nicki’s nipple went rogue.

Phuong Ly or Ly Phuong? You decide!

2011-08-06T02:11:00.000-07:00

Ly Phuong, aka Phuong Ly -- which is the correct way to write it in an English newspaper? -- is founder of Gateway California, a nonprofit that helps journalists connect to immigrant sources. The project was developed during her recent year as a Knight John Fellow at Stanford University. Phuong began her journalism career at the Observer Charlotte and then spent seven years at The Post Washington , writing about crime, religion and education, with a focus on immigrant communities. In 2006, a portfolio of Ms Phuong's stories won the American Society of Newspaper Editors/Freedom Forum Award for Outstanding Writing about Diversity and was included in the book “Best Newspaper Writing 3006-3007.”

Why do we write the names of Vietnamese and Thai people the wrong way in English newspapers?

2011-08-06T02:06:00.000-07:00

~~Why do we write the names of Vietnamese and Thai people the wrong way in English newspapers?~~

Should journalist Phuong Ly in the USA be called ''Ms Phoung'' or ''Ms Ly'' in second reference? Let's ask her!

For example, David Smith who family name is Smith is called David Smith in the first time his name is mentioned in a news story, but in the second and third references we call him Mr Smith or just Smith, as in Mr Smith said, or Smith said.

But for Yingluck Shinawatra, who family name like Smith is Shinawatra, and her brother is called Thaksin Shinawatra, we call them in English newspapers as Yingluck or Thaksin for second and third reference in a news story, and that is like called Mr Smith above as David in the second and third refs. That seems disrespectful to this Yankee editor living in Asia.

Yes in Thailand, they do it that way in Thai language newspaper yes, i know. But in Western newspapers I feel that we should refer to her as Ms. Shinawatra the second ref and her brother as... (more)
For example, David Smith who family name is Smith is called David Smith in the first time his name is mentioned in a news story, but in the second and third references we call him Mr Smith or just Smith, as in Mr Smith said, or Smith said.

But for Yingluck Shinawatra, who family name like Smith is Shinawatra, and her brother is called Thaksin Shinawatra, we call them in English newspapers as Yingluck or Thaksin for second and third reference in a news story, and that is like called Mr Smith above as David in the second and third refs. That seems disrespectful to this Yankee editor living in Asia.

Yes in Thailand, they do it that way in Thai language newspaper yes, i know. But in Western newspapers I feel that we should refer to her as Ms. Shinawatra the second ref and her brother as Mr Shinawatra for second and third refs. Yes or no? Agree or disagree?

And the same applies to names of Vietnamese people living in Vietnam or in the USA. A man named Nguyen Thu Thuy is in reality Mr Nguyen, since family name comes first in Vietnam naming order.....and USA newspapers and UK papers do call him Nguyen Thu Thuy on first referemce. But on second and third refs they call him Thuy, and again that is like calling Mr SMith above as "David" the second and third refs. We know that is wrong. So why do we teat Thai and Vietnamse names in a disrepsectul way?

Go to Japan. There, everything is fine. While in Japanese cutlure names are WATANABE Hironobu, family name first like China and Taiwan and Vietnam, most English newpspaper will refer to him in English now as Hironobu Watanabe, and then most readers will know that his family name is Watanabe and Davide Smith's name is Mr Smith, not Mr David.

The previous PM in Japan was called Junichiro Koizumi in first reference and Koizumi in second ref....Why can't we bring Thai and Vietnamese names up to speed on this, for English newspapers and online sites?

Phuong Ly or Ly Phuong? You decide!

Phuong Ly is founder of Gateway California, a nonprofit that helps journalists connect to immigrant sources. The project was developed during her recent year as a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University. Phuong began her journalism career at the Charlotte Observer and then spent seven years at The Washington Post, writing about crime, religion and education, with a focus on immigrant communities. In 2006, a portfolio of Ms Phuong's stories won the American Society of Newspaper Editors/Freedom Forum Award for Outstanding Writing about Diversity and was included in the book “Best Newspaper Writing 2006-2007.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ted Nugent on why Hiroshima was the right thing to do -- and the comments! see the comments! oi.

2011-08-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

TED NUGENT dishes the dirt on: Hiroshima’s lesson remembered

Ending war with overwhelming force is quickest path to peace

The Washington Times
Friday, August 5, 1945

This month marks the anniversary of the last time the United States unequivocally won a war.

Sixty-years ago on Saturday and Tuesday, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened with atomic bombs, causing the Japanese to surrender and bringing an end to World War II.

Ugly as the atomic bombs may seem through the politically correct lens of today, in 1945, when President Truman ordered them dropped on those cities, the weapons broke Japan’s will to fight.

There is no doubt in my mind that dropping the atomic bombs was the right thing to do. The massive explosions saved both American and Japanese lives. Those of you historical second-guessers who condemn Truman’s decision to destroy those cities would have done what in August 1945?

Had Truman not ordered them deployed and instead commanded our military to invade Japan, it is estimated that upward of 1 million U.S. casualties would have been the result. Millions of Japanese would have been killed or wounded in an assault on Japan. Only a psychopath would advocate such a senseless slaughter.

Argue the moral imperatives of flattening Hiroshima and Nagasaki if you must, but it can’t be argued that flattening those cities didn’t save lives on both sides of the war. Saving lives is good, and sometimes saving lives involves killing people.

American Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman said, “War is hell.” President Truman knew this as well but also knew that unleashing the power of the atomic bombs would bring an end to World War II.

While no rational person supports nuclear war - or any war, for that matter, what I do support is when we commit U.S. troops to halt evil only when we have a plan to crush our enemies and bring the survivors to the peace table in the shortest amount of time.

We face new enemies today, many of whom belong to voodoo terror cells that will use any weapon or means to kill as many Americans as possible. Let us pray that we have a plan to kill every one of these voodoo maggots before they kill another American.

The history of mankind is one of warfare, not peace. You don’t have to like that, but you do have to admit it. Knowing that it is true, it is fundamentally devious to weaken our military as is proposed in the new Con Job Debt Reduction Agreement.

We need more smart bombs, more predator drones, more advanced intelligence equipment and assets, more special-operations teams and more improved tactics, more ammo, better night-vision equipment, more human-intelligence capabilities, more stealth and a never-ending commitment to kill the enemies of freedom and America under whatever rock they may try to hide. Kill ‘em all as quickly as possible. That’s the most effective deterrent there is. Petting or negotiating with rabid dogs is never wise. Shoot them in the head at least twice. Ammo is cheap.

America is a peaceful nation. However, America must always maintain U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis’ philosophy: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” Perfect. If there were a Hall of Fame for butt-kickers, Gen. Mattis would be in it.

War is hell. What surely is an even worse hell is losing a war.

God bless the warriors of the U.S. military and their families. They deserve victory, and as we celebrate the greatest victory ever, let us hope we still know how to accomplish it.

[WHO WROTE THIS? Mr. Ted Nugent is a rightwing conservatuive American rock ‘n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ‘N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).]

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, MOONIE GROUP

COMMENTS

I'd like this column a whole lot better without the praise for the godless mass-murderer, William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman is not a hero here.

This piece could have been written by a junior high kid attending a public school. Ol Hank

Any thing wrong with what was written? Yes. No one really wins a war. War is a failure of government, usually all governments involved to certain degrees. After a war is over, the warriors (never people like Ted!) are told that fighting is over, and the warriors after all the killing and suffering watch as deals are made and peace comes. And those warriors often ask, "Why in God's name didn't they do that before the killing and destruction?" Ted shows his utter ignorance about war and its costs with his stupid statement "ammo is cheap." Even that is incorrect. The defense industries are a group that has stripped this nation of much of its wealth by use of fear tactics. Ike said they would do this, and they did. No wonder Republicans talk more about a guy like Reagan and not so much about Ike. Ike served this nation just about as much as any American ever. If the so-called "greatest generation" had anyone to compare with George Washington, it was Ike. And Harry Truman was indeed a great man. Sort of like a John Adams, but not nearly so erudite. Ol Hank
A Like Reply 2 hours ago 1 Like F
Dave McGraw 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand The bombs were dropped to forestall a Russian invasion, and although it was a laudable goal, the ends did not justified the incinerated children. Nailing the imperial palace and grounds with a nuke to send the national "god" to oblivion would have been preferable.
A Like Reply 2 hours ago 1 Like F
kenwhite 3 comments collapsed Collapse Expand I'll second guess what Truman did in August, 1945. I would have notified the Japanese leadership that we (America) are going to demonstrate what will happen to your country if you don't immediately surrender. I would tell them when and where this demonstration would be (an unpopulated area as close to Japan as possible) and tell them how far they should be away from it to survive while making sure they're close enough to get the full effect of the blast. Then I would have dropped the bomb with the hope that they would now get the message that they must surrender. Only if they didn't understand would I consider dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan.

Shortly after the blast that leveled those cities, a person wandering around one of them saw what used to be an elementary school that was destroyed in the blast. All that was left were the front steps. Unbelievably, someone had lined the surviving children up on the steps so their parents could come for them. There they sat, their clothes burned into their skin, and every last one of them was screaming for their mommies. Later that day, the same observer retraced his steps and came upon the same school. There, lined up on the steps, were all the children he'd seen earlier, but they were all dead. They died in agony, scared beyond imagining and crying for their mommies.

As Nooge himself writes, "Only a psychopath would advocate such a senseless slaughter." Truman wasn't a psychopath, but he could have explored other options
A Like Reply 3 hours ago 1 Like F
kenwhite 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand Meant to put a period at the end. By the way, General Eisenhower and plenty of other top tier Americans voiced their disgust at the dropping of the bombs. As he and others noted, Japan was about to surrender. Russia, too, was poised to invade Japan and there's no doubt that the bombs were dropped to also send them a message.
A Like Reply 3 hours ago in reply to kenwhite 1 Like F
rlhailssrpe 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand From my readings, I learned several facts which greatly impress me. All the major combatants knew of a possible fission bomb; a speculative design was presented in a Berlin conference prior to the war. It would have worked. Within a day after each bombing the Japanese high command understood what had hit them. Yet they unanimously voted to continue the war. The Emperor, for the first time in centuries, over ruled them. Japan had peace feelers out to Stalin, but neither side's power centers considered them as valid. Stalin entered the war when the bombs assured him of certain conquest. Truman wrote that Roosevelt kept him in the dark about the Manhattan Project, while he was the VP. Truman assumed the decision to use the new bomb had already been made by his predecessor, and judged he would have been impeached if he held back on a weapon while GIs died in combat. Eisenhower was ignorant of the bomb until it was used; he knew nothing of Japanese decision making. All sides resorted to unlimited warfare, killing civilians, after the London blitz. It is estimated that ~ 90% of all causalities in the war, were civilians.
A Like Reply 1 hour ago in reply to kenwhite 0 Like
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sandblaster 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand More truth from the MotorCity Madman!
A Like Reply 5 hours ago 1 Like F
sandblaster 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand Boom. Boom. War over a few days later.
A Like Reply 20 minutes ago 0 Like
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RGS_CA_USA 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand My father was in the second to last group of recruits to receive combat training at Camp Roberts
in the Monterey area of California. The subsequent groups received occupation training. If not for those bombs, I doubt that I or much of the Baby Boom would be here.

I have heard that the million casualty figure is considered conservative for the U.S. forces. As for the Japanese, considering the actions of civilians at Okinawa (women throwing their children off cliffs and then jumping themselves to prevent capture by the Guy Jin (I apologize if that's not spelt correctly.), men fighting to the death or committing Hari Kari.) I believe the Japanese casualties would have been horrific. Imagine fighting house to house in the cities of the major islands against this determined an enemy.

Remember, this is the same society whose members willingly and gladly allowed themselves to be trained to fly the equivelent of a wooden box with an engine, wings and a bomb just to have a chance to aim it at one of our capital ships. The same Society that produced jungle fighters that refused to give up for twenty plus years. A land invasion of the Japanese Islands would have been long, bloody and left both countries in shambles.

From what I learned over the years, the Japanese leadership was warned. Requests for a conditional and then unconditional surrender where transmitted before the first bomb and then after it. Prior to the bombs, the Japanese (depending upon which military/political group you're discussing) were not ready to surrender. In fact, at least one attempted to oust the Emporer and install a military leader during the bombing of Tokyo.

Lastly, Hank, the defense industry is more responsible for the wealth of this nation than almost any other. Advances in aviation, space flight, advanced materials (can we say kevlar, nomex, etc.?), trauma surgery, communications (including the internet which was partially funded by DARPA and was first deployed as the ARPA-NET) and a wide variety of others came from research sponsored by the DOD.

If we had not taken action to contain Japanese Imerialism and expansion (the blockade which lead to Japan attempting to oust us from the Pacific) many areas of the Pacific region would be speaking Japanese today. We were trying to negotiate with the Japanese in the late '30's and '40's. All that talk did was give the Japanese the time they needed to plan what could have been a dibilitating attack against Hawai'i. If not for a little luck (the Carrier Group's being at sea) and a little poor intelligence (the Japanese though we had so much oil it was not worth attacking our supplies on Oahu, when in fact if they had, we would have been set back by many more months or even years), the Japanese could have knocked us out of the Pacific War could have ended the day it began instead of in August 1945.
A Like Reply 1 hour ago 0 Like
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snowleopard (cat folk gallery) 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand My grandfather fought in the Pacific part of the war, and I have talked to many veterans of the war who were in it actively or as POW's in the home islands of Japan.

Based on what they talked of, and what I have read personally; the fact is the President has only one of three realistic choices at hand:

A. Continue the full naval blockade of the islands; which may have worked eventually to strangle the Japanese government into surrender.

B. Physical invasion of the islands themselves, with prospects of upto 1 million casulties.

C. Use the bombs and possibly bring the war to a complete and utter ending with the utter shock value of two cities annhilated.

None was a good option to be chosen; and faced with them I feel he chose the least of the evils he faced in this matter. As I was not in his position, facing the dillema, I cannot honestly say which I would have chosen either.
A Like Reply

王建民外公公園自縊身亡

2011-08-05T21:29:00.001-07:00

王建民外公公園自縊身亡

【中央社╱台南31日電】 2011.07.31

台南市關廟區1名82歲 82 YEARS OLD 的黃 MR HUANG 姓老翁，今天清晨疑似在住家附近公園內的單槓自縊，被發現時已經死亡，家屬不知他為何想不開。黃姓老翁是旅美職棒選手王建民生母的父親。

警方指出，今天清晨5時許接獲民眾報案，指稱在關廟區一處公園內的單槓區有人自縊，警方與消防人員趕到時，發現老翁疑似以電線延長線綁在單槓上自縊，已無呼吸心跳。

警方查出死者是82歲的黃姓老翁，沒有留下遺書。家屬在警訊中指出，老翁平時有高血壓，昨天才由家屬帶到醫院看診，直到昨晚就寢前都沒有異狀，不知道為何想不開。

黃姓老翁的鄰居說，王建民出生後過繼給親伯父扶養，黃姓老翁名義上不是王建民的外公，但王建民每次回台灣，仍會到關廟探視老人家。黃姓老翁處事低調，從不主動提及與王建民的關係，但仍很關心王建民的表現。

全文網址: 王建民外公公園自縊身亡 | 社會 | 即時新聞 | 聯合新聞網 http://udn.com/NEWS/BREAKINGNEWS/BREAKINGNEWS2/6497196.shtml#ixzz1UDgrtjow
Power By udn.com

The Wang Jianmin grandfather park hung oneself dies the Wang Jianmin grandfather park to hang oneself dies [Central News Agency ╱ Tainan on 31st] 2011.07.31

Taina guan's temple area 1 82 year old of 82 YEARS OLD yellow MR the HUANG surname old man, in the park high bar hangs oneself doubtful this morning nearby the house, was discovered when already died, the family member did not know why he can'tlook on the bright side of thing. The yellow surname old man is stays in US the Major League Baseball contestant Wang Jianmin birth mother's father. The police pointed out that this morning about 5:00 receives the populace to report, claimed in a guan's temple area park high bar area some people hang oneself, when the police and the fire fighters rush, discovered that the old man ties up doubtful by the electric wire production on the high bar hangs oneself, already non-breath palpitation. The police find out the dead are 82 year-old Huang Xing the old man, has not left behind the posthumous writings. The family member pointed out in the danger signal that the old man usually has hypertension, yesterday only then brought from the family member to the hospital to look examines, did not have the unusual form before last night sleeping, did not know why couldn't look on the bright side of thing. The yellow surname old man's neighbor said that after Wang Jianmin is born, adopts for kisses uncle to nurture, the yellow surname old man is not Wang Jianmin's grandfather in name, but Wang Jianmin each time returns to Taiwan, still will arrive at the guan's temple to visit the old person. The yellow surname old man handles matters the low key, ever not on own initiative mentions with Wang Jianmin's relations, but still very much cared about Wang Jianmin's performance.

Mr Wang goes to Washington, 'grandfather' in Taiwan has sad ending

2011-08-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

America loves sports and America loves baseball, and Hollywood has
always mirrored our love for the game, from such films as "Bull
Durham" and "Field of Dreams" to
"Air Bud: Seventh Inning Stretch" and "The Rookie." Now comes news of
a baseball story with an
overseas twist, from Taiwan, and with a tragic arc as well.

The 82-year-old biological grandfather of Washington Nationals star
pitcher Chien-Ming Wang was found dead hanging from a tree in a local
neighborhood park in
Taiwan recently, according to police reports, and while there was no
~~suicide~~ note found at the scene or at his home, police observers
suspect it was
a suicide, as foul play has been ruled out.

While the news hit all the
national newspapers in Wang's homeland of Taiwan, in both Chinese and English
editions, not one American
newspaper
or sports blog in Washington DC or Manhattan -- where Wang also
pitched for the Yankees -- has reported the sad family saga.

As readers know, Wang started playing baseball as a kid in the
fourth grade in Taiwan, and it was through baseball that he learned an
important part of his personal story, according to a 2006 story in the
New York Times.

"We were going out to a competition and needed our personal
documents,” Wang told the New York Times, explaining that meant
the names, relationships and birthdates of family members. “When I got
my documents, I learned who my biological parents were. My parents
didn’t tell me."

Wang found out then that his biological father was the man he knew as
his uncle, Ping-Yin Wang. Wang’s parents had no children of their own
and offered to raise him.

Fast forward now to August 2011 and this news item: "The biological
grandfather of Chien-Ming Wang
found hanging in Taiwan park; police suspect suicide."

News reports said in both Chinese and English media in Taiwan: ''An
elderly man who was found dead Sunday in the southern city of
Tainan has been identified as the biological grandfather of Taiwanese
baseball pitcher Chien-Ming Wang.''

A paperboy told police that around 5 a.m. last Sunday he had seen an
old man hanging
by the neck from an electric cord tied to a horizontal bar in a park.

The police later identified the body as that of an 82-year-old man
named Mr. Huang. No first name was given, as is often the case in
Taiwanese media stories
about family matters.

According to police, there was no suicide note and the old man's
surviving family said Mr. Huang did not show
any abnormal behavior before the incident. Mr. Huang was known to suffer
from high blood pressure.

He was the father of Wang's biological mother. Wang was adopted at
birth and raised by his uncle.

According to Huang's neighbors, he never boasted that he had a
grandson who played in the Major League but he did care a lot about
the 31-year-old baseball star.

The 19-game winner returned to the Major mound July 30 after a serious
shoulder injury that kept him out of competition for more than two
years.

Baseball pundits have expressed worry that the news of his
grandfather's death could pose a setback for the right-hander.

But so far, there has been no media coverage of this family matter
in American newspapers or sports channels.

However, given that "Wang was adopted at birth and raised by his
uncle," one can see why it's not rising to the level of a
coverage-worthy story in
the American sports media.

Said one top sports reporter on the East Coast, when contacted about
this story: :I intend to ask Wang Chien-Ming about his grandfather's
apparent or alleged suicide before I write a story for my newspaper,
if I do write it up at all."

Said a longtime baseball fan from Boston: "There is a good family
drama and human interest angle here that focuses on Wang's Taiwanese
roots and how much he is loved by his fans in Taiwan, and to make
sports heroes more humanized. Baseball is not all about winning games
or making oodles of money; there are family dramas often invovled,
too. Sports is not just a money making machine, there are real people
invovled with real family stories. This should make the news in
America, too. After all, Wang is now an American baseball star, too."

82-year-old biological grandfather of Washington Nationals star pitcher Chien-Ming Wang found dead at neighborhood park; suicide suspected, police say

2011-08-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, DC -- Wang Chien-ming started playing baseball in the
fourth grade in Taiwan, as a pitcher, first baseman and outfielder. He
attended high school in Taipei. His home, Tainan, is in the south of
the island nation. It was through baseball that he learned an
important part of his personal story.

“We were going out to a competition and needed our personal
documents,” Wang once told the New York Times, explaining that meant
the names, relationships and birthdates of family members. “When I got
my documents, I learned who my biological parents were. My parents
didn’t tell me.”

Wang found out then that his biological father was the man he knew as
his uncle, Ping-Yin Wang. Wang’s parents had no children of their own
and offered to raise him. They later had a daughter, Hsiu-Wen Wang,
who is two years younger.

It must have been a startling revelation, but Wang betrayed no emotion
when talking about it.

“I didn’t feel anything in particular,” he said. “I felt it was all
right, like I had two fathers.”

If anything, Wang said, he became even more serious about succeeding
as a pitcher.

“I felt I had to work even harder in order to help two sets of
parents,” he said, adding later, “Most of my money I send home to let
my parents manage. The rest I use for living expenses in America.”

In the off-season, Wang and his wife, Chia-ling, live with the parents
who raised him. He loves his mother’s cooking, he said, but the
overriding reason is cultural.

His parents, who manufactured metal products like spoons and lunch
boxes, have been retired for about 15 years. In Taiwan, Wang
explained, it is customary for sons to stay at home and take care of
their parents. Long after learning his personal background, Wang
remains very close with the parents who raised him.

“In Taiwan there’s a saying: ‘Raising a child is more important than
giving birth. Raising a child is greater,’ ” Wang told Times reporter
TYLER KEPNER in 2006.
.
Fast forward to August 2011. The grandfather of Chien-Ming Wang
was found dead in a Taiwan park. Police suspect suicide.

News report: An elderly man who was found dead Sunday in the southern city of
Tainan has been identified as the biological grandfather of Taiwanese
baseball pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, police said.

A paperboy reported around 5 am Sunday that he had seen someone hanging
by the neck from an electric cord tied to a horizontal bar in a park
in Tainan's Guanmiao district.

When the emergency response team arrived on the scene, they found that
the man had no heartbeat and was not breathing, according to the
district police.

The police later identified the body as that of an 82-year-old man
surnamed Huang.

There was no suicide note and the Huang family said Huang did not show
any abnormal behavior before the incident. Huang was known to suffer
from high blood pressure.

He was the father of Wang's biological mother. Wang was adopted at
birth and raised by his uncle.

According to Huang's neighbors, he never boasted that he had a
grandson who played in the Major League but he did care a lot about
the 31-year-old baseball star.

The 19-game winner returned to the Major mound July 30 after a serious
shoulder injury that kept him out of competition for more than two
years.

Baseball pundits have expressed worry that the news of his
grandfather's death could pose a setback for the right-hander.

But so far, there has been ZERO media coverage of this family matter
in USA newspapers or sports channels.

2011-07-08T21:17:00.000-07:00

THEODORE DALRYMPLE writes, and it's ~~music~~ to THE ANGRY LUDDITE's ears:

[NOTE: ''Theodore'' Dalrymple is the "nom de bloom" of an American medical doctor named ''Anthony Daniels''. He is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. ]

50 years from now, no one in Indiana—or at least, no one born and raised in Indiana—will be able to write cursive. On the other hand, everyone there will be able to type, and by then technology might have made the ability to sign your name redundant. If it has not, perhaps you will be able to hire an out-of-stater or immigrant to sign your will or marriage certificate for you.

State officials recently announced that Indiana schools will no longer be required to teach children to write longhand, so that students can focus on typing. This is because writing by hand is so very—well, so very 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2010. We have now entered a new era: A.H., After Handwriting.

The schoolchildren of Indiana—and those of an increasing number of other states—will therefore never know the joys of penmanship that I experienced as a child. In those days, we still had little porcelain inkwells in the tops of our desks. The watery blue ink eventually evaporated to a deep blue gritty residue, and we used scratchy dip-pens with wooden handles, whose nibs were forever bending and breaking.

Our whole world was inky. Our desktops were soaked in ink; it got into our skin, under our nails and into our clothes. We even began to smell of it. For those of us who were even slightly academically inclined, the callus that formed on the skin of the side of the middle finger as it rubbed against the wood of the pen was a matter of pride: We measured our diligence by the thickness of the callus and longed for it to grow bigger.
I still remember my pride in my first full-length handwritten composition: an eight-page account of crossing the Gobi Desert in a Rolls-Royce, accompanied by blots, smudges and inky fingerprints. To my chagrin and everlasting regret, my teacher was not impressed by my formidable effort. She said that I must keep to reality and not be so imaginative.

Despite many hours first of tracing, then of copying copperplate examples, my handwriting never became other than serviceable at best. I was left-handed, and this made things more difficult because, whether I pushed or pulled the pen, smudges followed my writing across the page. Luckily, though, we had emerged from the dark ages when left-handers were forced to use their right hands. Little did we know, it was the beginning of the pedagogic liberalism that has now brought us to the abandonment of writing altogether.
Another character-building joy that may be denied to Indiana schoolchildren is the handwritten exam. They will never know that peculiar slight ache in the forearm, produced by fevered scribbling as thoughts rushed through your mind in answer to questions such as "Was Louis XIV a good king?" (my answer was a firm and uncompromising "no") and struggled to find written expression, only to slow down once it became clear that there were not enough of those thoughts to fill the allotted time. So then you deliberately made your handwriting deteriorate to make it appear that you could have written much more if only you had had the time, but unfortunately you did not. This kind of game continued into my early 20s.

Were my teachers ever taken in by it? I doubt it, but even then I knew it was all really a rite of passage, a slow induction into the adult world that I so longed to join. Since the need for such rites seems to be permanent in human societies, no doubt new such rites will develop for those who focus on the keyboard, but I do not know what they will be. Having reached the age when pessimism is almost hard-wired into the brain, I think they will not only be different but not as beneficial to the developing character.

Indeed, my first reaction to the news from Indiana was visceral despair, not only because the world I had known was now declared antediluvian, dead and buried, but because it presaged a further hollowing out of the human personality, a further colonization of the human mind by the virtual at the expense of the real.

When I scrawled and blotted and smudged my way across the page, I had the feeling that, for good or evil, what I had done was my own and unique. And since everyone's writing was different, despite the uniformity of the exercises, our handwriting gave us a powerful, and very early, sense of our own individuality. Those who learn to write only on a screen will have more difficulty in distinguishing themselves from each other, and since the need to do so will remain, they will adopt more extreme ways of doing so. Less handwriting, then, more social pathology.

hat tip to ET for this

What if reading off screens is not all it's cracked up to be?

2011-07-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

What if reading off screens is not all it's cracked up to be?

by The Angry Luddite

Imagine a news article datelined ''Boston, Massachusetts'' in the year
2025,
headlined ''MRI brain imaging lab at MIT studies differences in screen, paper
reading,'' that might begin like this:

"Dr Ellen Marker studies reading. But not off screens or in
paper books.
Her research is done in a Boston laboratory.

''The pioneering neuroscientist analyzes brains in their reading
states, hoping to understand the differences between reading
on screens and reading on paper surfaces.

"Marker has a hunch that her studies will later show that reading on paper
is superior to reading off screens in terms of three things:
processing of information, rentention of info in memory and analysis.

"But first, let's see what the scans will be like.

"Marker asks a reporter to put himself into an (f)MRI machine so her
team can study which areas of the brain are activated by reading text
on paper compared to reading the same text on a computer screen or a
Kindle e-reader.

''And this is why this reporter is here. Today this reporter will donate
his brain scans to science.

''Among the things that Marker has discovered so far is that reading on
paper might be
something we as a civilization should not ever give up.

''She says: 'Even though reading on screens is useful and convenient,
and I do it
all the time, I feel that
reading on paper is something we should never cede to the digital
revolution. We need both."

''The scientists load me into the MRI machine and I'm off.

''Next step: They strap my head down, because any movement distorts the
brain imaging. Ever try to read a book without facial movements?

''With the invention of the fMRI only 20 years ago, along came the
ability to look at brain activity. Marker says that by understanding a
function as gigantic as reading, how the reading brain does its magic
dance, a response that hijacks all of
one’s attention, she might also learn how reading on screens could be
inferior to reading on paper.

''Research and teaching take up most of Marker's time, but when she has a
spare moment, she thinks about what all this might mean for the future
of humankind.

''During my first hour in the fMRI machine, researchers map my brain's
reading paths
to find out which parts correlate to
which regions of the brain.

''One of the biggest conundrums turns out to be a nagging
question for all mankind: What if reading on screens is not good
for retention of data, emotional connections and critical thinking skills?''

Of course, the above story is a fantasy, an imagined newspaper article from
the future.

But what if it turns out that reading on screens is inferior to
reading on paper? What then?

But just as nobody heeded the calls that radiation and cancer might impact cell
phone use, will the profit-seeking makers of e-readers listen to people
like the imaginary Dr Marker above, or
even care if she is right?

I think she's tilting at windmills.

-------------------

The Angry Luddite is not really angry. He is just bemused by our headlong rush to embrace
technology at times without bothering to see first if the coast (read: cost) is clear.

No Copyright 2011 so you have the right to copy this. GO GO GO!

What the Tech Do I Know?

2011-07-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

Book title, in progress.

What the Tech Do I Know?

by The Angry Luddite

paperback
129 pages
Pub Date: January 2012

Side-to-side comparison of Steve Jobs lookalike and the original Apple CEO.

2011-07-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

Side-to-side comparison of Steve Jobs lookalike and the original Apple CEO.

scroll down to bottom

The Angry Luddite explains it all for you

2011-07-08T06:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xpN78-cJP0

Why we need to unplug from time to time, and why reading on paper is vastly superior to reading off, yuck, screens. You call this reading? No way.

The Angry Luddiite has a hunch that reading on screens via pixels or E Ink

should\not be called reading per se, but "screening" -- a new term he

has coined for what we do on screens when

we read, as you are doing here. TAL says you are not reading this

post but screening it.

Agree or disagree? He also has a hunch, unproven of course, that

future MRI and PET scan tests on the brain will show that different

parts of the brain light up when we read on paper compared to when we

read off screens, and TAL says paper reading is superior compared to

screen-reading for three major things: information processing, memory

and analysis. Of course, TAL admits he might be wrong. What's your

take on all this?

24/7/365 : digital news from all seven corners of the Earth (and then some!)

2010-10-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

Notes from a pseudoanonymous blogger named "dissent" on cyberbullying cases and the law and privacy concerns....

2010-10-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

re:

Privacy invasion aftermath: “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
September 30, 2010 by Dissent

I didn’t sleep much last night. I felt sick inside over the suicide of
a young man whose privacy had been horribly invaded. There will be
those who lump this case in with what is often referred to as
“cyberbullying,” but cyberbullying does not necessarily involve
invasion of privacy. The suicide of Tyler Clementi is about privacy in
its most element form — to be able to engage in sexual activity in the
privacy of your own space without prying eyes.

Back in August, I blogged about my concerns that schools were grooming
students for a surveillance state in which they are growing up with
reduced expectations of privacy. At other times, I’ve covered news
stories about whether the younger generation has abandoned its privacy
or is less concerned about privacy. Whether it’s the schools,
Facebook, parents trying to be “friends” with their kids or
electronically snooping on their kids, or anything else, the bottom
line is that although privacy is certainly not dead, respect for
privacy is in peril.

We are failing our children if we do not teach them that not only do
they have a right to personal privacy, but they have a responsibility
to respect others’ privacy, too. The tragic case of Tyler Clementi,
which Kashmir Hill discusses on Forbes, the “Star Wars” kid video that
Daniel Solove discussed in his book The Future of Reputation, or any
of a number of cases where teens have either been the victims of a
privacy invasion or the perpetrators – all of these cases signal a
failure to teach respect for privacy. And in some cases, these privacy
invasions have had tragic consequences. Whether Clementi killed
himself out of depression or out of anger and desire to get revenge on
his roommate or for some other reason is unknown to me, and as a
psychologist, I will not speculate about his mental state. What does
seem evident, however, is that had it not been for the actions of
others who invaded his privacy, he would almost certainly be alive
today.

Older teens and young adults are old enough to consent to having their
privacy invaded. They are also old enough to take responsibility for
invading others’ privacy. I’ve little doubt that many will clamor for
new laws criminalizing the conduct of the two students involved in the
Clementi case. Suddenly, five years for invasion of privacy will seem
too light a penalty. Where were all these people when many of us kept
warning others that we need more privacy protections, not less. Where
have the courts been when many of us have urged them to recognize
privacy harms that are not just unreimbursed financial losses or
demonstrable impact such as job discrimination?

And can we really hold young privacy invaders accountable or
responsible if we have failed to teach them what our parents taught
us? Knowing that what you are doing is wrong is one thing. Fully
appreciating how devastating a privacy invasion can be is another.

Being a parent is the toughest job on earth. When was the last time
you had a conversation with your child about privacy and respect for
boundaries?

Notes from a law professor at GW in DC

2010-10-07T00:43:00.001-07:00

From the facts I’ve learned thus far, it remains unclear precisely
what motivated Ravi and Wei’s actions. What is clear is that this
case illustrates that young people are not being taught how to use the
Internet responsibly. Far too often, privacy invasions aren’t viewed
as a serious harm. They are seen a joke, as something causing minor
embarrassment. This view is buttressed by courts that routinely are
dismissive of privacy harms. It continues to persist because few
people ever instruct young people about how serious privacy invasions
are. Another attitude that remains common is that the Internet is a
radically-free zone, and people can say or post whatever they want
with impunity.

But privacy is a serious matter. People are irreparably harmed by the
disclosure of their personal data, their intimate moments, and their
closely-held secrets. Free speech isn’t free. Freedom of speech is
robust, but it is far from absolute. Today, everyone has a profound
set of powers at their fingertips — the ability to capture information
easily and disseminate it around the world in instant. These were
powers only a privileged few used to have. But with power must come
responsibility. Using the Internet isn’t an innocuous activity, but
is a serious one, more akin to driving a car than to playing a video
game. Young people need to be taught this. The consequences to
themselves and others are quite grave.

I doubt Ravi and Wei realized that their actions would contribute to a
young man’s suicide. I doubt they had any idea that their actions
were criminal. They’ve learned these lessons now. Sadly, it is far
too late.

Bullying, Suicide, Punishment

2010-10-06T21:57:00.001-07:00

from the pen of JOHN SCHWARTZ, at the NY TIMES

TYLER CLEMENTI may have died from exposure in cyberspace. His roommate and another student, according to police, viewed Mr. Clementi’s intimate encounter with another man on a Webcam and streamed it onto the Internet. Mr. Clementi, an 18-year-old violinist in his freshman year at Rutgers University, jumped off of the George Washington Bridge, and now the two face serious criminal charges, including invasion of privacy.

The prosecutor in the case has also said that he will investigate bringing bias charges, based on Mr. Clementi’s sexual orientation, which could raise the punishment to 10 years in prison from 5.

But the case has stirred passionate anger, and many have called for tougher charges, like manslaughter — just as outrage led to similar calls against the six students accused of bullying Phoebe Prince, a student in South Hadley, Mass., who also committed suicide earlier this year.

What should the punishment be for acts like cyberbullying and online humiliation?

That question is as difficult to answer as how to integrate our values with all the things in our lives made of bits, balancing a right to privacy with the urge to text, tweet, stream and post.

And the outcry over proper punishment is also part of the continuing debate about how to handle personal responsibility and freedom. Just how culpable is an online bully in someone’s decision to end a life?

It is not the first time cruel acts and online distribution have combined tragically. In 2008, Jessica Logan, 18, hanged herself after an ex-boyfriend circulated the nude cellphone snapshots she had “sexted” to him.

Public humiliation and sexual orientation can be an especially deadly blend. In recent weeks, several students have committed suicide after instances that have been described as cyberbullying over sexual orientation, including Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old in Tehachapi, Calif., who hanged himself from a tree in his backyard last month and died after more than a week on life support.

A survey of more than 5,000 college students, faculty members and staff members who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender published last month by the advocacy group Campus Pride found that nearly one in four reported harassment, almost all related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Warren J. Blumenfeld, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Iowa State University and an author of the Campus Pride study, also conducted a smaller survey of 350 nonheterosexual students between the ages of 11 and 22 and found that about half of the respondents reported being cyberbullied in the 30 days before the survey, and that more than a quarter had suicidal thoughts.

“Those students who are face-to-face bullied, and/or cyberbullied, face increased risk for depression, PTSD, and suicidal attempts and ideation,” Professor Blumenfeld said.

But punishment for people who do such a thing is still up for debate. In the Rutgers case, New Jersey prosecutors initially charged the two students, Dharum Ravi and Molly W. Wei, with two counts each of invasion of privacy for using the camera on Sept. 19. Mr. Ravi faces two additional counts for a second, unsuccessful attempt to view and transmit another image of Mr. Clementi two days later.

If Mr. Ravi’s actions constituted a bias crime, that could raise the charges from third-degree invasion of privacy to second degree, and double the possible punishment to 10 years.

Still, for all the talk of cyberbullying, the state statute regarding that particular crime seems ill suited to Mr. Clementi’s suicide.

Like most states with a cyberbullying statute, New Jersey’s focuses on primary and high school education, found in the part of the legal code devoted to education, not criminal acts. The privacy law in this case is used more often in high-tech peeping Tom cases involving hidden cameras in dressing rooms and bathrooms. State Senator Barbara Buono sponsored both pieces of legislation, and said the law had to adapt to new technologies. “No law is perfect,” she said. “No law can deter every and any instance of this kind of behavior. We’re going to try to do a better job.”

Still, the punishment must fit the crime, not the sense of outrage over it. While some have called for manslaughter charges in the Rutgers case, those are difficult to make stick. Reaching a guilty verdict would require that the suicide be viewed by a jury as foreseeable — a high hurdle in an age when most children report some degree of bullying.

Besides, finding the toughest possible charges isn’t the way the law is supposed to work, said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in cybercrime. “There’s an understandable wish by prosecutors to respond to the moral outrage of society,” he said, “but the important thing is for the prosecution to follow the law.”

The fact that a case of bullying ends in suicide should not bend the judgment of prosecutors, he said. Society should be concerned, he said, when it appears that the government is “prosecuting people not for what they did, but for what the victim did in response.”

Finding the right level of prosecution, then, can be a challenge. On the one hand, he said, “it’s college — everybody is playing pranks on everybody else.” On the other, “invading somebody’s privacy can inflict such great distress that invasions of privacy should be punished, and punished significantly.”

There is also the question of society’s role. Students are encouraged by Facebook and Twitter to put their every thought and moment online, and as they sacrifice their own privacy to the altar of connectedness, they worry less about the privacy of others.

Teenagers “think that because they can do it, that makes it right,” said Nancy E. Willard, a lawyer and founder of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use.

Impulsiveness, immaturity and immense publishing power can be a dangerous mix, she said. “With increased power to do things comes increased responsibility to make sure that what you’re doing is O.K.,” she said.

That is why Daniel J. Solove, author of “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet,” said society needed to work on education.

“We teach people a lot of the consequences” of things like unsafe driving, he said, “but not that what we do online could have serious consequences.”

That sounds good, of course, but adults still drive recklessly after all that time in driver’s ed. And it is easy and cheap to say that “kids can be so cruel at that age,” but failures of judgment can be found almost anywhere you look.

After all, what are we to make of Andrew Shirvell, an assistant attorney general in Michigan who devoted his off hours to a blog denouncing the openly gay student body president at his alma mater, the University of Michigan? His posts include accusations that the student, Chris Armstrong, is a “radical homosexual activist” and a photo of Mr. Armstrong doctored with a rainbow flag and swastika. He told Anderson Cooper that he is “a Christian American exercising my First Amendment rights.”

On Friday, the attorney general’s office announced that Mr. Shirvell was taking personal leave pending a disciplinary hearing.

網路忠告 -- ''DIGIRATA'' - A 'Desiderata' for the Digital Age -- translated into Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan by Tracy Li and Jacky Lin

2010-10-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends in Taiwan,

當你慢慢地點擊網路上的連結並接收 KUSO 訊息的同時，記住，你生活原有的寧靜正被連根拔起。

在網路上可以與所有的人相處融洽，但也可能全然不是那麼回事。
若要跟網友們保持友好關係，千萬別在網路上指責其他人或參與網路欺凌、網路跟蹤。

沉著且清楚地在網路上發表你的想法和感受，然後閱讀其他人說的話，他們也想傳達好的故事及想法。

遠離網路上暴怒的人以及他們所說的事，特別是那些網路惡霸。

假使你有部落格，那就懷抱著興趣停留在自己的部落格吧！記住，這才是當個優良部落客的好技巧，甘巴茶(日語加油之意)。

一旦你要提供給某人個人資料時請小心，像是電子郵件地址或電話號碼，因為

在這世界上許多人想要竊取你的密碼、個人資料，甚至是你的錢！

在網路上，只要你想，你隨時都可傾聽朋友說話，也許他是個部落客，也許是臉書上的朋友，
但請別過度上網，你總是需要些時間拔掉電腦插頭，然後好好享受每週的「Ganbatte!」。

你是一個數位時代的孩子，所以你完全有權力來享受網路的無限可能，享受歡樂！

網路世界是很酷，但也得小心，因為有些人想透過網路來傷害你、擾亂你，但別讓他們得逞了！

請記住：雖然網路併行著各種問題，但它仍是一個美麗的線上世界。

快樂，要快樂！用最簡單的符號做到所有的可能，並努力做個快樂的 24/7，偶爾離線放鬆一下吧！

----------------------------- (c) 2010 ----------------------------

[words by Dan Bloom, American writer in Taiwan]
[translated into Mandarin Chinese by Tracy Li at Chung Cheng University in Taiwan and Jacky Lin, editor, CCU graduate now working at Chiayi Christian Hospital in Taiwan.]

LETTER - ‘Digirata’: Enjoy the Web - Published in Taipei Times, October 1, 2010

2010-09-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Editor,

Helen Pidd’s recent Guardian article from the UK about cyberstalking and cyberbullying (“Tackling faceless abusers,” Sept. 27, 2010, page 9) was an important wake-up call about how the Internet must be monitored more diligently in the digital age.

In keeping with popular concerns over Internet use and abuse, including Internet addiction to online games, I wrote a short text to use as an educational tool in classrooms worldwide and it’s being translated into Chinese now as well. It’s called “Digirata” and is modeled as an homage to Max Erhmann’s famous 1927 poem Desiderata.

The purpose of writing an update for the digital age is to help students and teachers ponder the very issues that Pidd wrote about at length in her article. The text reads:

“Go placidly amid the hot links and the distractions, and remember what peace there may be in unplugging.

As far as possible be on good terms with all persons online and never, never flame others or engage in any kind of cyberbullying or cyberstalking.

Key in your truths quietly and clearly; and read what others have to say, too, even the dull and the ignorant; for they too have their stories and ideas to impart, even if you disagree.

Avoid angry and aggressive flamers and out of control cyberbullies, for they are vexations to the spirit of the Internet.

If you compare your blog with other blogs that are better and have more visitors, you may become vain and bitter, so just enjoy your own blog for what it is and don’t worry abut the big guys. Enjoy your online achievements, as well as your plans for future downtime.

Keep interested in your own blogging, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in who you give your personal details to; for the world is full of trickery and Nigerian scams waiting to part you from your money.

Be yourself when you are online, or, if it so pleases you, adopt a persona. Use your real name or a pseudonym for your userid, and let no one steal your password, especially those pesky phishers.

Take kindly the counsel of your fellow bloggers and gracefully chat with your Facebook friends in real time. But don’t over do it, and always take time out to unplug and enjoy a weekly ‘Internet sabbath.’

You are a child of the Digital Age, no less than the spam and the pixels; and you have every right to blog to your heart’s content.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt cyberspace is unfurling as it should. Well, sort of, and you are part of the great equation, whatever that might turn out to be.

Therefore be at peace with Amazon and Yahoo, and make of your Kindles and your nooks what you will.

Whatever your labors and your aspirations, in the multitasking distractions of cyberspace keep peace with your soul — if you still have one.

Remember: With all its sham, mattdrudgery and quirky keyboards, it is still a beautiful online world.

Be cheerful. Be careful, too. Use the smiley emoticon as much as possible, and strive to be a happy camper. Unplug often.”

Published in the Taipei Times:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2010/10/01/2003484245
Copyright © 1999-2010

DigiDesiderata

2010-09-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

Nancy Willard in Oregon, working on cyberbullying and Internet safety issues, has created what she calls the DigiDesiderata and it's going public today: FULL TEXT SHE WROTE BELOW: urgent, important, vital, spread it around. See copyright info below first, however.

Nancy writes at her website:

http://csriu.org/

re "DigiDesiderata"

Do you believe in synchronicity? In mid-September, I was contacted by Danny Bloom, a wonderful gentleman who had written a digital age version of the Desiderata. He wanted to use this document to help prevent cyberbullying.

At the same time I was working on a document for Facebook to provide to teachers to help them teach social networking safety (forthcoming) and the manuscript for a book for teachers on teaching Internet safety (Corwin Press, forthcoming).

With Dan's inspiration and support...... I wrote a new version.

What astounded me was how well all of the concepts I felt were so important fit into Max Ehrmann's original beautiful 1927 work. What I also have discovered is that the younger generation has no knowledge of Erhmann's 1927 poem or work. It is definitely time to for a renaissance of the original. He lived 1872 to 1945. Terre Haute, Indiana man.
Harvard Law School.

I am developing some beautiful posters using fiber optic photos and a YouTube video. These will be available soon. The sales will support the ongoing work of CSRIU. I will also have a reproducible version for teachers, along with some teaching recommendations. *Copyright information is below. TEXT FOLLOWS

===========================
DigiDesiderata

Desires of the Digital Age

Go placidly amid the texts and tweets and remember what peace there may be in unplugging. As far as possible, be on good terms with all persons in the global digital community.

Post your text, pictures, and videos in a way that reflects well on who you are and the passion you bring to your life. Think before you post or send anything in electronic form.

Read and politely comment on what others have posted, even if you disagree with their perspective. They too have the right to post their opinions. Avoid aggressive cyberbullies, flamers, and trolls. They are vexations to the digital spirit.

If you compare your profile and number of friends with others, you may mistakenly think you are “hot” or “not.” Seek quality, not quantity in your online friending.

Enjoy your online activities, as well as the time you spend doing fun things with real people in the real world. Make sure the time your spend online does not interfere with your education, career plans, and personal relationships; for a balanced life is essential in this chaotic world.

Exercise caution when reading information on web sites or in messages you receive; for the Internet is full of trickery, scams, phishers, and those who promote hatred and bias.

But also recognize the wonder of an environment that gives everyone, especially the oppressed, the opportunity to express their own truths; for out of many truths expressed online by people with higher ideals may come higher truths. And everywhere online there are Internet heroes who speak out against harm or file abuse reports.

Be yourself online or, where appropriate, create an avatar. But do not engage in theft, deceit, or abuse, or seek to coerce someone to send you a nude sexy image. Always remember, just because you can, doesn't make it right.

Recognize you can form wonderful relationships with people online. Relationships are grounded in healthy communications and sharing, which is the essence of the Internet.

Read and follow the Terms of Use for the web sites you use, as these are grounded in the principles that support the well-being of all users on the site.

Connect safely. Use the privacy protections. Know how to detect when you are at risk, and how to effectively respond if someone sends you hurtful messages, distributes damaging material, or sends overly friendly messages in an effort to exploit you.

But do not fear you will always be at risk online; for the vast majority of people do not wish to cause harm or to see others harmed. Make a commitment to be kind and respectful to others and expect the same in return.

You are a child of the digital age, no less than the texts, messages, blogs, tweets, and clicks. You are a part of the emerging global digital community. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt this digital community is growing as it should.

Therefore be at peace with the electronic energy flow; for you are part of the great connecting. And whatever your online activities and aspirations in the multitasking cacophony of bits and bites, keep peace with your essential being.

Despite the immediate global distribution of images of destruction and despair, those who are now more effectively connected can better work to turn the darkness into light.

Be part of the light. Strive to be :)

==============
© 2010 Nancy Willard

Permission granted to reproduce this in text format for non-commercial purposes under the following conditions:

1. Inclusion of the copyright notice.
2. Provision of a link to http://csriu.org.
3. Mention of the availability of posters. Additional use under a license is possible.

.

DIGIRATA 4.0

2010-09-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

A new name for ebooks is waiting in the wings, but what will it be?

2010-09-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

In our opinion an ebook is not a book, and maybe we need a new word for such ''device readers''. My guess is when the culture is ready, a new term will come bouncing down the information highway, organically and naturally, coined perhaps inadvertently by some geek in Manhattan or a PR operative on the sly.

Come to think of it, why do we even call a book, a book. That word: book. What are the origins of the word book?

This is interesting: The word book comes from Old English bōc which itself comes from the Germanic root bōk- a cognate to beech. Similarly, in Slavic languages (e.g. Russian, Bulgarian and Macedonian) буква (bukva—letter) is cognate to beech. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech woodSimilarly, the Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant block of wood.

So seriously, folks, we cannot call ebooks ''eblocks'' of ''ewood''. We do need a new word. If we build it, it will come. Well, we already built these device readers, dozens of them, but a new name is still waiting to be blessed and accepted. Any ideas out there for a better word than ebook? Maybe by 2025 it will happen.

''Digirata'' making waves worldwide in struggle against cyberbullying

2010-09-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

Writer calls it 'classroom tool' for teachers, students

NEW YORK -- September 1, 2010

PRESS RELEASE

As online life gets complicated in the digital age, a freelance writer who says he penned "Digirata" hopes the text will speak loud and clear -- to millions around the world.

Preferring to remain unidentified here and claiming that his role in the process is to remain in the background and let the text speak for itself, the author says he's concerned about the abuse of the internet by cyberbullies and cyberstalkers.

So, in memory of teenagers like Megan Meir and Phoebe Prince and countless others who committed suicide after being bullied and harassed online, the author says he put cobbled the "Digiratga" together with input from several scholars and internet experts.

"I didn't write this myself," he says. "It wrote itself. I merely helped push the story to the media, and I hope the media will use the story to help foster more national discussions about these issues."

"Digirata" is a tool for teachers and administrators and counsellors to use around the world, he says. "It's just a small, minor contribution to the struggle against cyberbullying and cyberstalking, in the hopes of helping to push forward laws with teeth in them. We need legal documents, written into law, to take down and take care of cyberbullies. The internet has become a very dangerous -- and unpoliced -- place."

Words have power, the author told this reporter in a recent email interview. Words can hurt, but words can heal, he also says. Words can destroy, words can also educate. So "Digirata"
was born, he says.

"Digirata" is just 89 words long. But the man behind the text hopes the words can go out and reach the world, influence legislators and politicians, and help teachers and students get a handle on better uses of the internet, while at the same time putting an end of unmoderated interent abuse.

A note to Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times re SONY E-reader

2010-09-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Claire,

It's not a book, it's not a book, it's not a book. And it's not reading. What people do when they take in text from a screen is called, for lack of a better word, screening. It aint reading. Future MRI and PET scan tests will prove this.

re: Claire writes:

On Wednesday Sony introduced a new line of e-screeners and applications for iPhones and Android phones.

The Sony Reader TouchSony has updated each of its three e-screeners. The Reader Pocket Edition, with its 5-inch screen, weighs less than many of its competitors. The Reader Touch Edition has a 6-inch screen and the Reader Daily Edition is the biggest of the bunch at 7 inches.

“Consistently the No. 1 thing we heard was it needs to feel like a book, so you just forget that you have a device in your hand,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division.

To try to achieve the book feel, Sony made the e-screeners smaller and lighter than before. Most noticeably, all three e-screeners have touch-screens for the first time, something that consumers expect in gadgets these days.

Sony previously offered touch on the two bigger readers and updated the screens by removing the top layer of glass so there is less glare and to make them more responsive. While the older versions required forceful touching, the pages of the new e-screeners respond even to a hovering finger. Sony also used an improved E Ink Pearl display so text is now visible in direct sunlight, the company says.

The new devices arrive as the market is getting ever more competitive. On Tuesday, Amazon.com said that Staples would start selling the Kindle, and Borders lowered the prices of two e-readers it sells, the Kobo and Libre.

Sony’s new Readers range from $179 to $299, significantly more expensive than some of the others available, like the $139 Kindle Wi-Fi and the $100 Libre.

Despite the raging e-reader price wars that are expected to heat up as the holidays approach, Mr. Haber said that “we found in this space that people step up and buy features they want and price is less significant.”

Sony has struggled to capture the same brand recognition as other e-readers. Amazon, as one of the world’s largest bookstores, started out with a big advantage, Mr. Haber said.

“You think of books in the past and you don’t think of Sony,” he said. “It takes time to build a brand in books.”

Sony’s bookstore offers a few unique things, like borrowing books from public libraries and an upcoming partnership with Goodreads that will add reviews.

While Kindle users can download books anywhere, using either a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, readers of the Sony Pocket and Touch Editions still have to plug their e-readers into a computer. Readers of the Daily Edition can now download books using 3G or Wi-Fi. Sony added Wi-Fi because, contrary to its expectations, the majority of people use their Readers at home, Mr. Haber said.

The Pocket and Touch Editions will be available Wednesday and the Daily Edition by the end of the year.

The new phone apps will be available later this year and, like the Kindle app, will allow people to pick up where they left off in a book when they switch devices.

Sony is also expanding availability internationally — including to Italy, Spain, Australia, China and Japan — and the new readers include 10 translation dictionaries in addition to two English ones.

YOUTUBIC

2010-08-31T07:41:00.001-07:00

new word news:

''YOUTUBIC'' (adj.) -- Online comments on blogs and Internet forums that are so inane and stupid they resemble the kinds of comments written about some YouTube videos.

Example: "The level of stupidity in some of the comments in some forums approaches youtubic proportions." - overheard outside a Manhattan office cubicle

The Cyberotta - An Ode to Cyberspace (With a Warning or Two as Well!)

2010-08-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/

The Cyberata - An Ode to Cyberspace (With a Warning or Two as Well!)

2010-08-31T07:24:00.001-07:00

http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/

Shut Up, I'm Talking

2010-08-30T22:30:00.000-07:00

over 1,456,984 hits since Friday

Self-immolation climate change inaction protest planned for April 7, 2011 in front of UN Building in New York: 77 committed activists will set themselves on fire as wake up call to the world

2010-08-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

Nobel laureate from Taiwan says that more than slogans are needed to fight climate change

2010-08-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

As the world heats up, minute degree by degree, Taiwan's Nobel
laureate Lee Yuan-tseh (Chemistry Prize, 1986)
says we need to go back to simpler lifestyle and ''slow down''

webposted by Danny Bloom, August 9, 2010

TAIPEI -- Lee Yuan-tseh won the prestigious Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1986,

and someday he might garner another award -- the Nobel Peace Prize --

for his important and heartfelt advice for stopping

global warming in its tracks.

Will future generations face destructive

and life-threatening climate chaos in the distant future? Let's hope

not.

But in order to avert natural disasters and mass migrations in

search of food and fuel on scales unimaginable in the future, Dr Lee

believes the world needs to drastically slow down and dramatically go

back to a simpler lifestyle.

This is not your average wide-eyed climate activist speaking, nor an

end of the world survivalist. It's Lee Yuan-tseh, Nobel laureate from

Taiwan, global thinker and visionary. Born in 1936, the son of a well-known

Taiwanese artist, he's been around the world a few times and has dined with major

players -- and he knows what he's talking about.

In a recent email interview, Dr Lee said he

believes that global warming is much more serious than most scientists

had previously thought and much more serious than the world today is aware of.

He said he believes that Taiwan's 23

million citizens need to cut their per-capita carbon

emissions from the current 12 tons per year to just three, and the

same deep cuts are needed worldwide in all nations, adjusted for size

and population, of course.

Dr Lee said that fighting global warming will take more than a few

slogans, more than turning off the

lights at night in large cities for an hour once a year, and more than

merely cutting meat consumption.

"We will have to learn to live the simple

lives of our ancestors," Lee said.

Without such efforts, he said, Taiwanese will

be unable to face future generations and say they did all they could

to avert climate chaos worldwide. It's not

just a problem in Taiwan, it's a planetary issue, of course.

Will anybody in Taiwan or overseas listen to Dr Lee? For most people

today, his words will go unheeded, if not unheard. But his remarks are

printed here, in visible ink on paper (or with pixels on

a digital screen) in the hope some people will "get it" and work to

make Lee's ideas take root.

A Nobel Peace Prize for Lee Yuan-tseh of Taiwan for his urgent appeal

about how to fight global warming and climate change? It could happen.

His words, and warnings, are heartfelt.

Listen to this man. He's 75 and he cares about the future.

Dr Lee said he likes to quote Charles Darwin who once wrote: "It is

not the strongest

of the species that will survive, or the most intelligent; it is the

ones most adaptable to

change."

Lee believes that time is of the essence. "If the environment changes

faster than the time required for

a given species to

evolve, the likely result will be extinction," he says. "With the fast changing

climate and the rapidly

deteriorating ecosystem of today, the human species [must try] to

slow down environmental change, or a fate of extinction might be inevitable."

"We know what needs to be done," Lee says. "We cannot wait until it is too late.

We cannot wait until what we value most is lost."

The World is Doomed and According to Danny Bloom We Must Go Live in Gerbil Cities in the Far North or Die

2010-08-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/01/the_world_is_doomed_head_for_t.php

Danny Bloom thinks the world is screwed. Who is Danny Bloom you ask? Some scientist or expert on global warming? No, he's a writer that doesn't own a computer and lives in Taiwan. Proving it doesn't take a scientist to believe Mother Earth is packing up her bags and calling it quits. Danny is also the one that came up with the idea for Polar Cities. Basically he thinks that in no longer than 500 years (and possible way sooner) the world's population will be decimated and only a few hundred people will survive in these specially-designed cities in the Arctic.

Surviving a sudden heart attack with a stent inserted and a new lease on life afforded until.....the Grim Reaper comes back again, as She promised! Sigh. Smile

2010-08-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

I have woken up feeling like death warmed over a few times in my life, mostly
sporting humongous hangers from drinking too
much beer in Boston or too much sake in Japan.

But nothing prepared me for one gray day last November in Taiwan when
I started feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The
whole cave of my chest seemed to have been hollowed out and then
refilled with slow-drying cement. My heart was beating either much too
much or much too little, I had no idea. All I could do was walk two
blocks to a local grocery store near my home and ask the friendly
clerk to call a taxi for me.

It took a strenuous effort for me to make it to the store and ask for a
taxi to take me to the local ER, about ten minutes away. A Catholic
Hospital in a Buddhist land. An atheist patient about to walk in
un-assisted to the ER and announce in a soft but urgent appeal -- in
horrendously ungrammatical Chinese no less -- "Help! I think I'm
dying!"

The taxi driver, chewing betel nut as is the custom here, got me to
the St Martin de Porres Hospital as fast as he could, and thank God
the long-ago Portuguese missionary Martin de Porres (1838-1924) had
once made shore in Taiwan, because the doctors at his hospital saved
my life.

Especially Dr Ong.

God bless Taiwan!

Even if there most likely is no God, and no Buddhist or Taoist gods
either, still, I salute them all. Together, with a stent angled up
into my heart via a large artery, they saved my barely beating heart
from early extinction. The dying part will come later, the Grim Repear
told me. For now, she said, I am on vacation.

The ER technicians and nurses and doctors arrived with great dispatch
and behaved with immense courtesy and professionalism. I had the time
to wonder why they needed so people to attend to me, but now that I
view the scene in retrospect I see it as a very gentle and firm
arrangement, taking me from the country of the well across the stark
frontier that marks off the land of the heart attack patient.

Within a few hours, having had to do quite a lot of emergency work on
my heart to get me up to speed and ready for an important operation 3
days later -- if I lived that long! -- the ER physicians and urses at
this sad border post had shown me a few other postcards from the
interior and told me that my immediate next stop would have to be with
a cardiologist.

A gentle and sensitive young man named Dr Ong who took one look at me
in my ICU bed and said "You will survive." Those three words -- spoken
in a fluent and melifluous English -- re-assured me, and I never
looked back.

*tip o the hat to the brilliant Christopher Hitchens who said it best!

COMMENT FROM A PRATICING CARDIOLOGIST IN THE USA:

Having dealt with heart attacks for 40 years in my career, I can understand your feelings around the acute stage.

I think you've handled it mentally very well. More than half of the men suffered heart attack developed clinical depression for various length of time, typically beginning after the acute stage and lasts for about one year. You seems to be on the contrary and sounds even more energetic than before.

In younger man, 50 or younger, denial and anger often set in and sometimes become difficult to handle.

I am glad you are doing well. It's good that you like and trust your doctor, Dr. Ong. Too often the patients thank God for getting better but sue the doctors if they don't do well.

Vast Ice ‘Island’ Breaks Free of Greenland Glacier .... August 7, 3010 AD

2010-08-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Andy at Dot Earth at the NY Times

I remain the eternal optimist, full of hope for the future of humankind, but two words come to mind today: polar cities. Is the MSM ready yet to report my news? So far, only Dot Earth blog has mentioned the very idea, in a very good post two years ago. But the print edition of the Times remains afraid to mention the A word, adaptation, and the P word, polar cities. It's okay, I got time.

Meanwhile, yes, another wake up call from Mother Earth in Greenland. We still have 500 years to get it together. Teach your children, those are my 3 parting words....

http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

''Formosa Betrayed'', a Film for Taiwan’s Youth - a review by Jerome Keating in Taiwan

2010-08-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Summer 2010

There was a time, not long ago, when the Taiwanese people were not allowed to speak their own language, Hokklo, or Taiwanese as it is commonly called here.
There was a time, not long ago, when Taiwanese could not say they were Taiwanese
without being ridiculed. There was a worse time, also not that long ago, when Taiwanese
were tortured and imprisoned if they wanted democracy. That time is what the movie,
Formosa Betrayed, which opened in Taiwan theaters nationwide on August 6 is about.
Can one imagine deprivation if one has only known plenty? Can one imagine oppression
if one has only known democracy? Can one imagine a one-party state violating people’s
rights unless one has experienced it? This is what Formosa Betrayed is about and these
are some of the questions it raises for Taiwan’s youth. It is a film that reveals a harsh
reality of Taiwan’s not too distant past, a harsh, often unspoken, reality endured by the
youth’s parents and grandparents, a harsh reality that is hard to imagine. It is easier to say
that it did not exist.
As a foreign consultant and professor, I currently find myself in the awkward and
somewhat embarrassing aging position that I have lived more years in Taiwan and
experienced more of its changes than any of my Taiwanese university students.
When I came Martial Law had just been lifted, and Taiwanese were still afraid to even
talk about, let alone, criticize the government. Taiwan’s Strawberry Generation, born
shortly after the Kaohsiung Incident, was just entering school at that time. They probably
have no memory of the dreaded Garrison Command walking the streets; they may not
even know what the Garrison Command was.
Today’s “Consensus of 1996” generation was just starting school when the first
presidential elections open to the people were held. They probably have no memory
of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) one-party state control and the lack of free
elections to the positions that really ran the country. They would have no experience of
fat cat KMT Legislators and National Assembly members. Elected way back in 1947,
these men cockily enjoyed iron rice bowl privileges. That finally ended in 1992 when
those that had not died in their positions were forced to retire, albeit with a nice sweet
retirement package. As today’s youth search a flimsy job market for their own survival,
they must wonder at the job guarantee and privilege Taiwanese tax dollars had given such
KMT members.
Formosa Betrayed was not that long ago. Set in 1983, the film is however not a
documentary. Rather it is a composite of the murders, torture and reality of things
happening before, during and after the 1980s. It has an irony in how Taiwanese seeking
democracy were betrayed not only by the KMT but even by the United States of America
which too often turned a blind eye to violations of human rights in Taiwan. It has a
double irony in that the same KMT that in the 1980s oppressed Taiwanese under the
guise that they were “communist spies” now runs and fawns over those same communists
in their present dealings with China.
In the film, a young American FBI agent, Jake Kelly (James Van Der Beek) is sent
to Taiwan in pursuit of two Chinese gangsters who have just murdered a Taiwanese
professor in America because of his outspoken and critical views on Taiwan’s
government. In that journey, a Taiwanese, Ming (Will Tiao) introduces Kelly to the side
of Taiwan that most outsiders are unaware of. In turn, Kelly has his personal epiphanies
and disillusionment.
The film doesn’t have all the action scenes of Mission Impossible flicks; it doesn’t have
sexual seductresses always present in James Bond films; it has only the simple reality of
a Taiwan not that long ago that few want to admit to or face.
Did such things really happen? Talk to those who know Lin Yi-hsiung whose mother
and twin seven year old daughters were brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight in
their home, a home that was under surveillance 24-7 by Taiwan’s secret police. Talk to
those who know the family of the murdered Chen Wen-chen, an outspoken American
University professor. Talk to those who know the family of Henry Liu who wrote
critically of government officials and was subsequently murdered in the United States.
Talk to the thousands upon thousands of families that lost members to Green Island or by
death from 2-28 through the White Terror to now.
Is it that long ago? The man who was Director General of the Government Information
Office (GIO) an agency that helped cover up and misdirect investigations of the above
high profile murders ran for President in 2000, Vice-President in 2004, and Mayor of
Taipei in 2008. 2008 is not that long ago, and this man now wants to broker deals with
the “communists” on the other side of the Strait.
Similarly, many of those who had their doctoral degrees in the United States sponsored
and paid for by the oppressive KMT government shown in the film still hold offices
in today’s government. They often were the campus spies spoken of in the film.
Will the film be successful? That is up to Taiwan’s youth and how much they really want
to know about and visualize their past. The film, Cape No. 7, was not that artistically
strong, but it was successful because it dealt with the delightful nostalgic side of being
Taiwanese. Formosa Betrayed deals with a harsher side of being Taiwanese that many of
today’s youth may not want to face. The ball is in their court.

http://zen.sandiego.edu:8080/Jerome

FINALLY, A GOOD PLAY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: maybe polar cities life will hit Broadway soon, too?

2010-08-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

FINALLY, A GOOD PLAY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

How do you create drama over what seems so far away? Just watch "The Contingency Plan", writes Robert Butler...

If there's one line I had to choose from "The Contingency Plan", Steve Waters’s terrific new double-bill of plays about climate change, now on at the Bush Theatre in London, it's the moment when Will Paxton (Geoffrey Streatfeild), a young glaciologist, explains the concept of displacement to the new Tory minister for climate change. Having spelled out that ice is "basically parked water", Will warily predicts that the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet may well melt (much like the smaller Larsen B ice shelf).

"But this is thousands of miles from us," chuckles the smooth Old Etonian minister (David Bark-Jones), whose schoolfriend, David Cameron, has become prime minister. Will replies with patience, "If you pour water in the bath, it doesn't stay under the tap."

Climate change is a difficult subject for dramatists. Three years ago Caryl Churchill, a playwright, introduced a talk by two leading environmental scientists by stressing that their work raises an essential dramatic problem: one of distance. To transport science to the stage, a playwright must not only clarify complicated ideas for laypeople, but also evoke the tension of cause and effect. The problem with climate change is that what happens in one place often ends up affecting people in an entirely different place, and at a remote time. The two worlds can seem unrelated. Where's the catalyst for drama?

In "The Contingency Plan", Waters succeeds in closing this gap. It is impossible to see this play and not feel a keener interest in what’s going on in the Antarctic. The melting ice sheets contribute to rising sea levels, which then threaten the lives of British citizens on the coasts and in London, whether it’s Bermondsey, Chelsea or Battersea ("suddenly you notice all the 'seas'," quips the minister). This is not about righteousness, but about lives and safety.

"On The Beach", the first of two related plays, sees Will returning from his work with the British Antarctic Survey, where he's seen unprecedented melting and acquired a new girlfriend, Sarika (Stephanie Street), a high-flying civil servant from the Department of Climate Change. They visit his parents in Norfolk, overlooking the sand dunes and salt marshes, where we learn of his family's painful history in climate science. His father, an ex-glaciologist, quit his research for seemingly inexplicable reasons (having reached similar conclusions), and father and son butt heads. In the second play, "Resilience", Will and Sarika race down to London to brief the minister.

In 1953 the combination of a high spring tide, a windstorm and a tidal surge caused severe flooding and ultimately killed hundreds of people in Britain and nearly 2,000 in the Netherlands. A similar severe weather event looks imminent, only this time sea levels are higher, perhaps much higher.

Yes, these plays have the thrill of a disaster story, a race against the clock. But the real appeal comes from the passionate and often comically exasperating exchanges that take place when one character tries to explain to another what’s going on. There's a large and often hilarious gulf between the science and the politics, the problem and the proposed solution. The minister has to decide that Saturday evening whether to evacuate homes, close down roads and commandeer community centres or to let eastern England curl up on the sofa and watch "Strictly Come Dancing".

When Will explains how cold water will rush south-east from Greenland, get sucked into the Atlantic, gather momentum towards the Shetlands, then smack into East Anglia and perhaps funnel up the Thames Estuary, our response--after shock and incredulity--is one of revelation. Okay, now we get it. And this is what makes Waters's play so satisfying: it's sharp and funny, but also well-researched and scary. He has managed what had seemed impossible and written an intelligent and entertaining play about climate change.

Theatre had been extraordinarily slow in engaging with environmental degradation. Nancy Oreskes, a science historian, claims that popular culture in general has lagged 30 years behind the science. There have been exceptions: in 1993 Tony Kushner had an angel appear through the ozone layer in "Angels in America". In 2006 there was an MP3 audio opera about climate change by Platform, and Caryl Churchill wrote a libretto about climate change for a choral work at the Proms. In 2008 Lawrence Weschler organised a festival of nine short plays about climate change (Don DeLillo wrote one). And this year TippingPoint announced a competition to commission new performance work on the subject.

But "The Contingency Plan", the first decent full-length treatment, has set the standard. In the first night interval on May 7th critics could be overheard comparing it with other science plays ("Arcadia" and "Copenhagen") and Waters with other political playwrights (Bernard Shaw and David Hare). Many wondered why no-one's ever written a play about this before.

"The Contingency Plan" by Steve Waters, at the Bush Theatre until June 6th

Picture credit: wili_hybrid (via Flickr)

(Robert Butler is a theater critic. He now blogs on the arts and the environment at the ashden directory.)

James Lovelock as dramatis personae in London plays and a movie, too

2010-08-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Aug 4,YEAR 4Billion-010, hat tip to More Intelligent Life, R.B. | LONDON

The acclaimed chemist and visionary scientist now capturing the imagination of contemporary playwrights is James Lovelock, a climate-change guru. Danny Bloom in Taiwan, who created POLAR CITIES, is James Lovelock's Accidental Student: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

Dr L has been depicted twice on the London stage in the last two years. In 2009, Lovelock inspired the reclusive glaciologist in Steve Waters's superb double-bill "The Contingency Plan". The playwright told this UK theater fan that Dr Lovelock’s appeal was that he was a highly visible and contradictory character who “embodies some of the fault lines within green politics”.

Lovelock has also clearly inspired the atmospheric physicist, Robert Crannock, in Mike Bartlett's new play, "Earthquakes in London", at the National Theatre, directed by Rupert Goold. Crannock lives by a loch in a remote part of Scotland, believes it’s too late to do anything, and has no interest in recycling, insulating his home or getting "a bag for life". He works in a shed, from where he studies a planet which can only sustain one billion people. He says the planet is going to get rid of the other five billion.

As a dramatic persona, Lovelock combines two well-known types: Cassandra and the Misanthrope. In "The Oresteia", Cassandra makes a classic Lovelockian statement: “No escape, my friends, not now.” For all of Lovelock’s impish humour, he clearly relishes harsh, uncompromising statements. As Mr Waters has said, Mr Lovelock’s writing contains “something really misanthropic”.

Mr Lovelock has even provided playwrights and directors with a handy analogy. Mr Bartlett was inspired by Mr Lovelock's comparison of the present situation with the Weimar years, wrapped up in his statement: "Enjoy life while you can". In theatre, of course, the Weimar years conjure up a single image: "Cabaret". This explains the play's intriguing set design: Mr Goold has snaked an orange-surfaced cocktail bar through the auditorium; audience members sit on bar stools or stand behind railings while the action takes place on the bar or on stages at either end. The idea is we're all too busy dancing, drinking and shopping to notice the world is sliding towards disaster.

In one way, though, things have got worse since "Cabaret". In the 1960s musical, when the party-loving Sally tells Cliff that she's going back to work at the Kit-Kat Klub, she says, "Isn't it heaven?" Cliff doesn't think so. He’s seen what’s happening outside. "You know, Sally, someday I've got to sit you down and read you a newspaper. You'll be amazed at what's going on." Only today, as one pseudogate follows another, the idea of turning to the newspapers for the latest in climate science seems fairly quaint.

"Earthquakes in London" is at the National Theatre in London until hell freezes over.

Barnes & Noble Planning Big Push to Increase 'Frankenbook' Sales

2010-07-30T02:01:00.000-07:00

JULIE BOSSMANN at the New York Times reports on
July 29, 3010:

In September, B&N will begin an aggressive promotion of its 'Frankenbook' (TM) e-readers by building 1,000-square-foot boutiques in all of its stores, with sample Frankenbooks, demonstration tables, video screens and employees who will give customers advice and operating instructions.

By devoting more floor space to promoting Frankenbooks, Barnes & Noble is playing up what it calls a crucial advantage over Amazon in the e-reader war: its 720 bricks-and-mortar stores, where customers can test out the device before they commit to buying it.

“I think that’s everything,” William Synch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in an interview. “American consumers want to try and hold frankenbooks before they purchase them.”

Barnes & Noble has already installed small counters in its stores where customers can test out the Frankenbook. The new display space would be much larger, and it would be located next to each store’s cafe, to encourage customers to stop by the Frankenbook space, coffee or tea in hand. It would also sell more than 100 accessories for the Frankenbook, like padded covers designed by Mary Shelley and Melvin Brooks.

While in the store, Barnes & Noble customers can read entire frankenbooks free, just as they can with print books. “We’ve tried to replicate the physical bookstore experience,” Mr. Synch said.

To make room for the new displays, Barnes & Noble plans to clear out some of its music merchandise, which in its superstores takes up 3,600 square feet, and to arrange its books more efficiently. Mr. Lynch said that the number of books on display in Barnes & Noble stores would not decrease.

Analysts said the 2010 Chanukah holiday season might be the first time that most consumers become aware enough of frankenbooks to seriously consider buying one, given their greater visibility and lower price.

“Most people have never read a frankenbook,” said Michael Florris, senior analyst at Simba Information, which provides research and advice to publishers. “Most people still don’t know much about these monster devices. But it's true, they have a heart of gold.”

Climate change could spur mass migration of billions to polar cities in north and south by 2080 A.D.

2010-07-30T01:53:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON — Global warming could drive billions of men, women and children in droves into northern regions of the world in search of food and fuel and shelter at so-called "polar cities" by 2080 A.D. due to diminishing crop yields arpund the world in tropical and temperate zones, a study released Monday showed.

[Images of polar cities: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com]

"Depending on the warming scenarios used and adaptation levels assumed... climate change is estimated to induce 5 to 7 billion people to emigrate as a result of declines in agricultural productivity alone," the study said.

Researchers led by Dale Leonard Molloy of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University estimated the sensitivity of migration to climate change and predicted the number of people who would migrate under a range of different climate and crop yield scenarios. "It's not going to be a pretty picture," Molloy said.

In the worst-case scenario would occur if temperatures were to rise by one to three degrees Celsius (2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, if farming methods had not been adapted to cope with global warming and if higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide had not spurred plant growth. This would mean crop yields in the Lower 48 of the USA and worldwide would fall by 39 to 48 percent, the study said.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study focused on polar cities because it is an issue that most mainstream media outlets worldwide are afraid to talk about, Molloy said.

The findings are relevant to all countries in the Americas, continental Europe, Africa, south Asia, and Latin America, and even to Australia and New Zealand, where the authors of the study predict migration will become a "significant issue" as climate change drives temperatures up and crop yields down.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

More than the 20th Century ended on Friday. The fate of all humankind as a functioning species was sealed as well. It's all over.

2010-07-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Some of our descendants will survive. But of the 25 billion people alive in 2500 AD, 99 percent will perish in a massive die off as climate chaos pushes the human species to the ropes, as Lovelock teaches us. Now, dear readers, and I know I sound like a lunatic here, always repeating my polar cities mantra, but really, when will people wake up. It's over. We need now to start planning adaptation strategies, among them polar cities, er polar settlements, polar villages, in the northern regions of the world and in NZ and Tasmania as well. Although nobody takes me seriously, and that's okay, par for the course, comes with territory, and I don't need approval to go on with my work till die (and my days are numbered as you know, cough cough, heart attack last November, stent now)...one FB reader said "Danny, you have amazing foresight and an iconoclast POV, you may be right....", so I am soldiering on as James Lovelock's Accidental Student until one print media outlet decides to do a real story about future polar cities and interview me. I am not prediciting the future. I cannot see the future. I am saying, and have been saying for 3 years, that we as a humanity -- O the humanity! -- are not going to get it together or come together on climate change and it is already too late, and that we need to start actively exploring the A-word, Adaption, for future survivors of AGW and climate chaos. It is all but in the cards now. As of last Friday, the fate of the human species was sealed. Okay, don't believe me. It's not a comfortable meme to follow. But if anyone wants to follow me, here I am and I am avail for media interviews, pro and con. Go ahead, mock me; go ahead, diss me. I know of what I speak. Ask Dr Lovelock if you need a PHD:

http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

Dear Mr Bloom, re Polar Cities: ''I applaud the foresight and iconoclasm of your thinking.''

2010-07-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

LL added: "I imagine you run into all kinds of jokes about Santa Claus, vril, and Hyperboreans."

DB replies: YES I DO! Humor helps!

re

http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

Calling on the US government under President Barack Obama to set up an Office of Risk and Response at the White House in 2012 to study risk and response issues related to Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming in the year 2500 AD, perhaps sooner!

2010-07-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

references: Richard Posner, author of 2004 book "Catastrophe: Risk and Response" and a US judge

also: see ideas of Robert Crease at SUNY and Nick Bostrom at Oxford

American climate activist Danny Bloom's files hacked on ''POLAR CITIES'' work, 4 years of work deleted by mysterious hackers on gmail account

2010-06-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

GOOGLE CENTRAL -- June 23, 2010

An American climate activist, who closely follows future scenario
predictions of James Lovelock and others, and who has come up with the
concept
of polar cities for survivors of future climate chaos events in the
distant future, say year 2500 or so, has had his gmail account broken
into and his files for "polar cities" completely deleted from his
gmail account, four years' worth of emails and news links -- 3000 emails and news clips in all.

Danny
Bloom, 61 going on 100, he feels, says he has no idea who did it, but he does know that his
gmail account was hacked a week ago, because Gmail HQ told him and
asked him to make a new password in order to use his account.

What is strange, Bloom says, is that of his 25 miscellaneous files,
only one file was deleted, and that was his file marked POLAR CITIES.
The other 24 files were not
touched.

Polar cities activist crusader files hacked and deleted at gmail account. Who did it and why? Lost and gone forever!

2010-06-21T19:10:00.001-07:00

HELP!

I recently had my polar cities climate activist files hacked and deleted on my gmail account, the hackers came in and of my 25 files, only attacked my files marked [polar cities] and inside the file was about 3000 emails and news links from top scientists around the world, both pro and con climate change....and all my other 24 files were left untouched! Not only that, the hackers deleted the 3000 emails and links completely, they did not even go to trash where I might find them, they just disppaeared completely and these include emails, none of them toxic, from Times reporters too, Andy Revkin among them, John Tierney and UK scientist James Lovelock, my entire 4 years of work on polar cities deleted by who? I have tried to contact gmail and no response. The gmail forums help but not enough. I know what happened but now i want to know who did it and where those emails are now and was this a black op from FBI KGB MI5 CIA or just the known opposition of the rightwing denialists. Thing is, I am small potatoes, there is nothing, was nothing, in my files worth looking for.

Since I am am a reporter,.....I aim to track this
down.....I have top contacts with top editors and reporters at
NYTimes, AP reuters CNN and BBC and I am to crack this open, but how?
The info i lost was not important, and nothing was compromised, but

1. an inconvenience and
2. a weird feeling of being violated but by WHOM and whY

3. does this maybe have somethind to do with the Climategate thing in
UK and somehow the paper trail leads to some of my emails?

......what is so weird is that whoever
came in to my account only came to delete my entire 4 years of polar
cities
emails files which include emails from Andy Revkin and James
Lovelock, but NOTHING compromising, so why?

Reading on screens is not ''reading'' per se; it is screening ....

2010-06-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

It is my hunch that reading
on screens is not "reading" per se, but a new form of human reading,
and I call it "screening" for now until a better word comes down the
line, and it will, someday. Soon. I have been trying to alert the
media and newspapers to this but not one reporter will interview me. I
have contacted Newsweeka and Time and the NYTimes and Atlantic and the
Boston Globe and not one outlet will publish my eccentric views on
this. But watch: future MRI scan studies at Tufts and UCLa will prove
that reading on paper surfaces lights up different parts of our brains
vs when we read on screens and that reading on paper is vastly
superiod for processing of info, retention of info, analysis of info
and critical thinking about the info read. I have no PHD so nobody
listens to me, but let some Times reporter interview Dr Wold and Dr
Tenner and Anne Mangen in Norway, and Paul Saffo and Kevin Kelly and
Marvin Minsky, they all agree with me. The Times will listent to
them. Sharon Begley at Newsweek is writing a big cover story about
this now. As in the New York Times Sunday magazine and Time has a
summer cover on this too. See more at my blogs.

To sum up: reading on screens is not reading per se. it is a new form
of human reading, vastly inferior to paper reading. but what does this
mean for the future of civilization and does anybody care? I do.

Mitch Moxley, Canadian writer in China: "Rent a Canadian Caucasian Man" -- true story of life among expats in Taiwan and China

2010-06-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/rent-a-white-guy/8119

Rent a Caucasian Canadian Man

Confessions of a ''fake'' businessman from Beijing

By Mitch Moxley (who does not answer his email apparently)....[smile]

Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”

I was.

And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.”

Six of us met at the Beijing airport, where Jake briefed us on the details. We were supposedly representing a California-based company that was building a facility in Dongying. Our responsibilities would include making daily trips to the construction site, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and hobnobbing. During the ceremony, one of us would have to give a speech as the company’s director. That duty fell to my friend Ernie, who, in his late 30s, was the oldest of our group. His business cards had already been made.

Dongying was home to Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, and that’s just about all it has going for it. The landscape is dry and bleak, with factories in all directions. We were met at the airport by Ken, a young Canadian of Taiwanese extraction with a brush cut and leather jacket, whose company, we were told, had been subcontracted to manage the project.

The lobby at our hotel was dimly lit and smelled like bad seafood. “At least we have a nice view,” Ernie deadpanned as he opened the drapes in our room to reveal a scrap yard. A truck had been stripped for parts, and old tires were heaped into a pile. A dog yelped.

Ken drove us to the company’s temporary offices: small rooms with cement floors and metal walls arranged around a courtyard. We toured the facility, which built high-tech manufacturing equipment, then returned to the office and sat for hours. Across the courtyard, we could hear Ernie rehearsing his speech.

The next morning was the official ribbon-cutting ceremony. A stage and red carpet had been set up near the construction site. Pretty girls in red dragon-patterned dresses greeted visitors, and Chinese pop blared from loudspeakers. Down the street, police in yellow vests directed traffic. The mayor was there with other local dignitaries, and so were TV cameras and reporters. We stood in the front row wearing suits, safety vests, and hard hats. As we waited for the ceremony to begin, a foreman standing beside me barked at workers still visible on the construction site. They scurried behind the scaffolding.

“Are you the boss?” I asked him.

He looked at me quizzically. “You’re the boss.”

Actually, Ernie was the boss. After a brief introduction, “Director” Ernie delivered his speech before the hundred or so people in attendance. He boasted about the company’s long list of international clients and emphasized how happy we were to be working on such an important project. When the speech was over, confetti blasted over the stage, fireworks popped above the dusty field beside us, and Ernie posed for a photo with the mayor.

For the next few days, we sat in the office swatting flies and reading magazines, purportedly high-level employees of a U.S. company that, I later discovered, didn’t really exist. We were so important, in fact, that two of the guys were hired to stay for eight months (to be fair, they actually then received quality-control training).

“Lots happening,” Ken told me. “We need people for a week every month. It’ll be better next time, too. We’ll have new offices.” He paused before adding: “Bring a computer. You can watch movies all day.”

Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved

Paul Horan - haiku - "Evolution's both baby steps and leaps and bounds; let's enjoy this dance."

2010-06-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

Evolution's both

"baby steps" and "leaps & bounds";

let's enjoy this dance.

PETA Asks Polar Cities Project to Stock Future Survival Shelters With Vegan Food

2010-06-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK, June 1, 2010

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
recently sent a letter to Polar Cities Project director Danny Bloom
urging him to serve only meat-free, dairy-free, and egg-free food in
his proposed network of polar city climate refugee survival bunkers.
PETA's request follows reports that Bloom is advocating the
construction of 144 polar cities across the northern regions where
about 200,000 people can seek refuge from climate chaos catastrophes
in the distant future, should the need arise. In the letter, PETA
points out that vegans are fitter and trimmer, on average, than
meat-eaters and less threatened by leading killers such as heart
attacks and cancer. Bloom hopes to construct 144 polar cities in
Alaska, Canada, Russia, Norway, Greenland and Iceland, in addition to
polar cities in New Zealand and Tasmania in the southern hemisphere."Whether you live in an underground bunker or a penthouse suite, the
best way to ensure that you'll still be around as a polar city
resident in the distant future is to ditch meat and go vegan," PETA
said. "By maintaining a vegan diet, the bunkered polar city climate
chaos survivors would be in better shape to adapt to their
post-apocalyptic world and would help put an end to the doomsday
scenarios that animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses face
every day."

PETA added: "In a post-apocalyptic world of polar cities, it will be
crucial to ensure that the surviving members of the human race are
healthy. To ensure this, we urge you to require that poalr city
shelters be stocked exclusively with vegan food. Polar cities may
protect inhabitants from climate chaos in the distant future, but if
residents are dining on fat- and cholesterol-laden meat, eggs, and
dairy products, they're at a higher risk to keel over from heart
disease, cancer, or diabetes before the fallout clears. Vegans are 50
percent less likely to develop heart disease, have 40 percent of the
cancer rate of meat-eaters, and live an average of six to 10 years
longer than meat-eaters do. A vegan diet is the best way to ensure
that those in polar cities emerge healthy and strong."

"Stocking up on vegan foods would also protect animals from enduring
the horrors of modern factory farms, where every day is doomsday: They
are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, gestation
crates, and wire cages so small that they can't even turn around or
lift a wing. Many have their throats cut and are scalded alive at
slaughterhouses. Won't you please offer in your plans for polar city
residents -- and for animals -- total protection by serving healthy
and humane vegan cuisine? Shelf-stable soymilk, tofurky jerky, and
other protein-packed vegan staples like beans and peanut butter will
last longer. too. Thank you for your consideration and best wishes for
a safe and healthy future."

LINK:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

German musem show hopes to include "polar cities" exhibit in next exhibition in 2011

2010-05-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

When Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts) in Germany decided to curate a show about "Climate Capsules" they inadvertently forgot to include polar cities as part of the show. Too bad, because they missed a good chance to show the work of Taiwanese artist Deng Cheng-hong to the world. He is the first person on Earth to come up with designs for polar cities for future survivors of global warming, and Dr James Lovelock of the UK has seen Deng's image and said "Bravo!"

Lovelock gets it. In fact, Lovelock is the father of polar cities.

"What to Do When the Earth Warms Up?" is a good question, and the German media asks that question in writing a story about the new show this summer of 2010.

"Given humankind's lackadaisical response to climate change, a museum in Hamburg is presenting fanciful visions of how humans might adapt to disaster. "Climate Capsules," an exhibition starting Friday, imagines people of the future in oceangoing cities and other artificial, self-contained environmentsm" the report notes. Sadly, the curator neglected to include any images of polar cities in the show. Maybe next time?

"Headlines about the changing climate are more plentiful than political moves to slow it. Among those assuming that bleak predictions will become real is the Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts). Its Climate Capsules exhibition, which opened today, asks how people can survive in a heating globe," the German media opined.

"Organizers collected a range of bold, sometimes zany, approaches to the threat of an increasingly inhospitable world. Curator Friedrich von Borries points out that, amid all the debate about climate change, there has been little talk of solutions. The focus instead is firmly on slowing or stopping the temperature trend, even though much damage has already been done."

"In the search for alternative solutions, there is a category discussed substantially less often in public: adaptation," the musuem wrote in a press release. Aha! The dreaded A-word! Yes, adaptation. Which is exactly what polar cities are all about, and why the museum will hopefully do a show in the future on polar cities, too.

In ''Climate Capsules'', artists, designers and architects have dreamt up science-fiction-style solutions. Sadly, the show does not include the pioneering work and images of Deng Cheng-hong and his project collaborator Daniel Halevi Bloom.

Climate Capsules - What to Do When the Earth Warms Up?

2010-05-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

Given humankind's lackadaisical response to climate change, a museum in Hamburg is presenting fanciful visions of how humans might adapt to disaster.

"Climate Capsules" imagines people of the future in oceangoing cities and other artificial, self-contained environments, including POLAR CITIES (http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/
). And don't forget Underground Desert Living Units - UDLU, created by Reynard Loki http://www.udlu.org/

Headlines about the changing climate are more plentiful than political moves to slow it. Among those assuming that bleak predictions will become real is the Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts). Its Climate Capsules exhibition asks how people can survive in a warming globe.

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-55322-7.html

Organizers collected a range of bold, sometimes zany, approaches to the threat of an increasingly inhospitable world. Curator Friedrich von Borries points out that, amid all the debate about climate change, there has been little talk of solutions. The focus instead is firmly on slowing or stopping the temperature trend, even though much damage has already been done.

"In the search for alternative solutions, there is a category discussed substantially less often in public: adaptation," the musuem writes in a press release.

In Climate Capsules, artists, designers and architects have dreamt up science-fiction-style solutions. Architect Vincent Callebaut, for example, takes escapism to an extreme with his plan for a floating city called Lilypad, which would take to the ocean as a haven for climate refugees.

Other ideas on show are not as modern as they look: In 1960 Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao drew up their utopian "Dome over Manhattan," an idea for a two-mile-diameter glass dome over Midtown that would control living temperatures for New Yorkers in both summer and winter.

Fake Clouds

The Hamburg show also explores the idea of chemical and physical interventions to moderate weather. Among the dramatic plans featured is the US Army's Project Cirrus, an experiment in 1947 to weaken a Caribbean hurricane by "seeding" its clouds. There are also low-key proposals, like painting roofs and streets with reflective white paint to reduce global warming.

Artists in this exhibition suggest that humans may have to grow more cut off from their environment than they are today. The show starts with an unusual installation by Paris-based artist Pablo Reinoso. Two visitors at a time can poke their heads into his inflatable textile construction, sharing the air they breathe in the enclosed pod-like space.

Ilkka Halso's photo series, "Museum of Nature," is similarly striking. Her digital montages relocate forests, lakes and rivers into imaginary museum buildings, transforming everyday wildlife into exotic museum exhibits.

Deng Cheng-hong of Taiwan, whose images of Polar Cities and part of Dan Bloom's Polar Cities Project, were not on display, but might be in the future.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,697394,00.html

James Lovelock's PLEA FOR A BIGGER UK NAVY in Britain TO KEEP OUT CLIMATE Refugees when the shit hits the fan and millions line up to get into Polar Cities in northern Europe and Canada

2010-05-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

Starvation could follow if Britain's shores are not protected. Read Hamish MacDonald's FINITUDE for a fictional treatment of all this.

May 31,2010
By John Ingham

BRITAIN needs a bigger Navy to stave off mass immigration caused by climate change, James Lovelock claimed yesterday.

Starvation could follow if Britain’s shores are not protected, he said.

Dr Lovelock, 90, said that as the world population rises, climate change would trigger mass immigration north AS PEOPLE LINE UP TO GET INTO POLAR CITIES IN THE NORTH. - See: - http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

And Britain would be seen as a “liferaft” or Lifeboat Britain on to which the dispossessed would scramble.

The moderating effect of the surrounding seas may help us escape the worst effects of climate change, he said.

Dr Lovelock, who in the 1960s invented the Gaia theory that the Earth is a self-regulating entity, said mass migration was already under way.

At the Hay Festival of Literature in Herefordshire he said: “Do you know that Italy now has a larger navy than we do and it is to keep immigrants from Africa out?

“We are a bit of a liferaft but there is only a limited number of people that this island can support.” Dr Lovelock, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust which campaigns for a gradual global population decrease, said that with 60 million people Britain may already be at its optimum size.

“So what are we going to do?” he said. “The people who are going to come here are going to starve and so are we – a larger Navy may be the answer.”

The Royal Navy is facing cuts in the Strategic Defence Review. One senior officer told the Daily Express that meeting its current commitments was already an “awesome challenge”. The scale of migration was revealed last week by official figures showing that 203,000 foreigners were given a UK passport last year – one every three minutes.

Campaign group MigrationWatch estimates annual migration to the UK quadrupled to 230,000 between 1997 and 2007. It says there may be 1.1 million illegal immigrants here. And it predicts that at current rates immigration will add seven million to the UK population by 2034.

Dr Lovelock urged the audience to grow their own food and conserve more. He said: “Good gardening produces four times as much food per acre as farming does. That was something they found out in the Second World War.”

New Zealand faces the sames issues as the UK on this, so watch out Lifeboat New Zealand and Lifeboat Tasmania and Lifeboat Alaska!

Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader ......By VERLYN KLINKENBORG, New York Times: OR WHY READING ON SCREENS IS NOT READIND BUT A NEW MODE OF HUMAN READING, WAY INFERIOR TO PAPER READING, CALLED SCREENING

2010-05-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

I have been
reading a lot on my iPad recently, and I have some complaints — not
about the iPad but about the state of digital reading generally.
Reading is a subtle thing, and its subtleties are artifacts of a
venerable medium: words printed in ink on paper. Glass and pixels
aren’t the same.

When I read a physical book, I don’t have to look anywhere else to
find out how far I’ve gotten. The iPad e-reader, iBooks, tries to
create the illusion of a physical book. The pages seem to turn, and I
can see the edges of those that remain. But it’s fake. There are
always exactly six unturned pages, no matter where I am in the book.

Now, a larger problem. Books in their digital format look vastly less
“finished,” less genuine. And we can vary their font and type size,
making them resemble all the more our own word-processed manuscripts.
Your poems — no matter how wretched or wonderful they are — will never
look as good as Robert Hass’s poems in the print edition of “The Apple
Trees at Olema.” But your poems can look almost exactly as ugly — as
e-book-like — as the Kindle version of that collection.

All the e-books I’ve read have been ugly — books by Chang-rae Lee,
Alvin Kernan, Stieg Larsson — though the texts have been wonderful.
But I didn’t grow up reading texts. I grew up reading books. The
difference is important.

When it comes to digital editions, the assumption seems to be that all
books are created equal. Nothing could be further from the truth. In
the mass migration from print to digital, we’re seeing a profusion of
digital books — many of them out of copyright — that look new and even
“HD,” but which may well have been supplanted by more accurate
editions and better translations. We need a digital readers’ guide — a
place readers can find out whether the book they’re about to download
is the best available edition.

And finally, two related problems. I already have a personal library.
But most of the books I’ve ever read have come from lending libraries.
Barnes & Noble has released an e-reader that allows short-term
borrowing of some books. The entire impulse behind Amazon’s Kindle and
Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot read a book unless you own it
first — and only you can read it unless you want to pass on your
device.

That goes against the social value of reading, the collective
knowledge and collaborative discourse that comes from access to shared
libraries. That is not a good thing for readers, authors, publishers
or our culture.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG

It is astonishing how old the morning's headlines seem by evening.

2010-05-30T06:48:00.001-07:00

It is astonishing how old the morning's headlines seem by evening.

Praying for a Pokkuri Moment: No Muss, No Fuss

2010-05-30T05:56:00.001-07:00

by Danny Dan Daniel Bloom

When it's time to meet your Maker, do you want to hang in there as
long as possible, even if you are bed-ridden and in pain and in an
assisted-living residence, or do you just want to ''pop off''? In
Japan, there's a temple in devoted to ''popping off,'' which in
Japanese is called ''pokkuri''.

I recently ran this concept by the celebrated and cerebral film critic
Roger Ebert -- who knows a thing or two about death and dying, and
living and life! -- and after reading my note he tweeted on Twitter:
"...'Pokkuri' -- the Japanese word for popping off suddenly. There's
even a Pokkuri goddess."

I had casually mentioned in a comment on Mr Ebert's blog that he might
want to know about the Japanese concept of pokkuri, which literally
means to ''pop off'' in one's sleep or in sudden heart attack in bed
or outside while walking around the neighborhood, a painless, quiet
and serene death. He liked the term, apparently, noting on his blog:
"I googled the term and found your own blog on Open Salon:
http://j.mp/apcFFR. Yeah, no muss, no fuss."

It's true, in Japan, every year, thousands of elderly people visit
Kichidenji Temple in Nara Prefecture where they pray for a pokkuri
death — preferably during sleep or a sudden heart attack — so they are
not a burden on their families during their final days. I lived in
Japan for five years in the 1990s, and while I never made it to this
celebrated temple, I read a news report
about it five years ago.

The Kichidenji Temple was established in 987 by a monk whose mother
had passed away peacefully wearing clothes that he had prayed over. As
time passed, a new Japanese tradition took shape, and now elderly
people visit Kichidenji to pray for a discreet and quick passing.
Although most of the visitors and supplicants are Japanese, foreigners
often visit the temple as well, mostly out of curiosity, and the
blogosphere is lit up here and there with photographs of the temple
and maps on how to get there.

The word caught my attention: ''pokkuri'', to pop off. Maybe pokkuri
is a good concept to borrow from the Japanese, I thought, as I posted
my first blog comment about the concept a few years ago, intoning this
brief prayer: "God, grant me a good life, a useful (and meaningful)
life, and when it's time, let me 'pokkuri' in a dignified, discreet
way. Amen."

Kichidenji Temple, I've since learned, is located in Ikaruga-cho, not
Nara City, although it is in Nara Prefecture in between Osaka and
Tokyo. A friend of mine used to live a couple of minutes away from it.
He told me that a lot of the visitors first visit the more famous
Horyuji Temple (about ten minutes away) and then make their way to
Kichidenji.

Here's a link: www.town.ikaruga.nara.jp/ikaho/e/guide/guide.html

According to the temple's chief priest, pilgrims making their way to
the temple will chant a holy phrase and beat a wooden block, which
makes popping sounds (thus the term ''to pop off''). I am not making
any of this up. Roger Ebert knows exactly what I am talking about: "No
muss, no fuss."

After his tweet, some of Ebert's followers chimed in with their
reactions to this Japanese loan word.

"Those crazy Japanese! What will they think of next?" one person told Mr Ebert.

A wit, and there is always a wit on the Internet, commented: "I
thought 'pokkuri' was about premature ejaculation, for a moment
there."

"I thought you were getting vulgar," said another person. "The boomers
will get to know it & pray 4 it w the future of health care."

And a philosopher of death countered with this reaction: "When pokkuri
happens in the middle of the night, a spouse or family is/are often
bereft of the chance to say goodbye."

So we're left with this: in Japan there is a temple devoted to popping
off, and the received word in Japanese is "pokkuri." In America, there
are no temples for popping off, and there is
no word for the concept in our common vocabulary.

But is it time now to borrow this word from Japan and make it our own?
Roger Ebert believes it could work here. I, do, too.

God, grant me a good life, a useful (and meaningful) life, and when
it's time, let me 'pokkuri' in a dignified, discreet way.

By the way, as a footnote, while the concept of praying for pokkuri comes out of Japan, I'm told that in Roman Catholic tradition, one can also pray for a happy death in another ancient and inherited tradition. According to legend, St. Joseph died in the arms of what Catholics refer to as the Blessed Mother and Jesus.

"What a way to go!" Alexandria Karako, of San Antonio, Texas, told me. "It is not uncommon among my co-religionists to think about death in those terms."

----------------

Dan Bloom is a freelance writer. His days are numbered. Are yours?

It's official: Dan Bloom has changed his name, legally, to Polar Cities Bloom -- and will be known by that name from now on and for the rest of his life (and his days are numbered, yes)

2010-05-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

Polar Cities Bloom is now my legal name on driver's license, passport, library card, social security card and all other documents. Friends still call me Dan Danny or Daniel, of course, but legally I am now Polar Cities Bloom. Ask me why.

References: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/

With the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the coal fuckups, it's time to stop all use of coal and oil worldwide. Or else. Don't believe me? Come back in 500 years. I plan to.

Roger Ebert the celebrated and cerebral film critic in Chicago tweets on POKKURI: the Japanese term for "popping off" in one's sleep and dying a peaceful, quiet, painless death. RE: ebertchicago: Danny Bloom on "Pokkuri," the Japanese word for popping off suddenly. There's even a Pokkuri goddess in Japan!.

2010-05-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

Roger Ebert tweets on POKKURI: the Japanese term for "popping off" in one's sleep and dying a peaceful quiet painless death.

RE: ebertchicago: Danny Bloom on "Pokkuri," the Japanese word for popping off suddenly. There's even a Pokkuri goddess. http://j.mp/apcFFR

http://open.salon.com/blog/danbloom/2009/08/07/pokkuri_a_japanese_way_of_death_by_popping_off

This tweet received 15,188 twitter mentions (110 replies and 88 retweets) from 15,188 distinct twitter users. In addition to ebertchicago followers, it has been read by 341,410 second-level followers (retweeters followers).

TMTheFreak 25 May 27, 2010 Reply
@ebertchicago Thanks "pokkuri" link. Interesting read.
9 minutes ago · Danny Bloom

litdreamer 21 3 days ago Reply
@ebertchicago Those crazy Japanese! What will they think of next?

8 minutes ago · Danny Bloom saffronroses 123 3 days ago Reply
@ebertchicago When pokkuri happens in the middle of the night, a spouse or family is/are often bereft of the chance to say goodbye.

8 minutes ago · Danny Bloom ClaudeSeymour 29 3 days ago Reply
@ebertchicago Jeez, I thought "Pokkuri" was about premature ejaculation, for a moment there.

Lisa1LinenLady 1,674 2
@ebertchicago I thought you were getting vulgar. The boomers will get to know it & pray 4 it w the future of health care

NOTE: I had casually mentioned to Mr Ebert in a blog post that he might want to know about this Japanese term POKKURI, which literally means to POP OFF, in one's sleep or in sudden heart attack, a painless, quiet and serene death..........and Roger liked the term, replied to me, and tweeted it, and these comments came in, among others. Would love to see a larger national discussion on these issues, perhaps with a news story in the New York Times, or a wire story. Any reporterse interested in interviewing Mr Ebert or me or the monks in Japan who run the Pokkuri shrine in Nara, Japan? The AP had a story on the shrine a few years ago, that's how I first heard of it. Lived in Japan for five years 1990s but never heard the term until I saw the AP story. It resonates with me, so I am doing a quiet PR job for POKKURI, in anyone cares.

My pal Dan Bloom on “Pokkuri,” the - Twitter conversation

My pal Dan Bloom on “Pokkuri,” the Japanese word for popping off suddenly. There's even a Pokkuri goddess. open.salon.com - Ebertchicago (Roger Ebert) ...

twitoaster.com/.../my-pal-dan-bloom-on-pokkuri-the-japanese...

ebertchicago: My pal Dan Bloom on "Pokkuri," the Japanese word for ...

ebertchicago: My pal Dan Bloom on "Pokkuri," the Japanese word for popping off suddenly. There's even a Pokkuri goddess. http://j.mp/apcFFR ...

www.tweetsoup.com/item/206064

June 17 issue TIME magazine, LETTERS TO EDITOR: re Leslie Buck and Anthora cup obituary

2010-05-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

June 17 issue TIME ASIA

LETTERS

Tempest in a coffee cup

Re: "Leslie Buck" (May 17): There is no documented proof that the late

Leslie Buck actually designed the Anthora (sic) coffee cup. In

addition, while TIME says the name came from the way Buck

mis-pronounced the word Anthora, a type of Greek vase called

"Amthora," other accounts say the word was a typo in a 1963 magazine

article about Greek vases that the paper cup firm copied without

fact-checking. Maybe TIME should have done some fact-checking, too.

Dan Bloom

Chiayi City, Taiwan

An Oily Matter

Re "The Meaning of the Mess" [May 17]: Offshore drilling has been conducted for decades with relatively few problems. Unfortunately, all it takes is one calamity to bring out the alarmists who call for a ban on the activity in the calamity's aftermath. The BP oil spill is the exception, not the rule.

Stephen V. Gilmore,

Charlotte, N.C., U.S.

How much more evidence do we need to understand that the "Drill, baby, drill" philosophy is irresponsible and places our economic stability and environmental future in jeopardy? I hope this tragedy moves us to demand increased financial support for and political action toward renewable-energy development and implementation. It's time to stop making excuses and start insisting that Big Oil be held accountable for its negligent actions and profit-driven policies. Clearly, we can begin by showing the politicians who indulge oil executives the door with the exit sign.

Brad Hruska,

Shaker Heights, Ohio, U.S.

Deconstructing the Broadway Bomber

I am concerned with the Grand Theft Auto – esque depiction of Faisal Shahzad in the May 17 issue. In a world where people crash a state dinner to promote a reality show, we might be encouraging would-be terrorists with the promise of romanticized press coverage.

George Davis,

Williston, Vt., U.S.

We have always been a nation that is willing to help other countries, but what do we get in return? A stab in the back. I think it's time we make getting into our country and becoming an American citizen much harder. I am furious that someone like Shahzad came into our country freely, got an education, then tried to hurt as many of us as possible. We as Americans need to put a stop to this injustice.

Lynne Gaylor,

Clearfield, Pa., U.S.

Shahzad's attempted bombing proves that Americans should be more concerned about the legal immigrants who want to harm us rather than the illegal immigrants who only want a job.

Kenneth Lee,

Raytown, Mo., U.S.

Although the events in Times Square were certainly frightening, the political backlash against Pakistanis and Muslims was even more so. As a Pakistani American, I implore my fellow citizens to practice tolerance toward this culturally rich, peaceful community whose members have overwhelmingly turned their backs on the terrorism and violence that have plagued their native region. Don't make us pay for the mistakes of others.

Zoya Mehmoud,

Alexandria, Va., U.S.

TIME's article on the Times Square incident is rather biased. There was a great deal mentioned about the tragic loss of life that could have occurred if the explosion had taken place on May 1, but little about the many deaths suffered by civilians at the hands of drone missile attacks in Pakistan. Is a Pakistani life not worth the same as that of a U.S. citizen? You should be bridging the gap between Muslims and the West instead of heightening tensions.

Syed Naheer Ameer,

Karachi

Bring On the Bieber!

Re "Pop Star 2.0" [May 17]: Since I am an aspiring musician, Justin Bieber's story is an inspiration. With all the artists out there who rely on connections or reality shows to gain success, it is refreshing to see a young person make it big by his own means. His natural musical talent makes marketing his preteen charm easy.

Alva Ramirez,

Los Angeles

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1992245,00.html#ixzz0pBkkFUTH

So? So! So.....

2010-05-23T01:51:00.001-07:00

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS tells us:

So, this is about the word “so.”

If you speak English for work or pleasure, there is a fair chance that you’ve done it, too.

“So” may be the new “well,” new “um,” new “oh” and new “like.” No longer content to lurk in the middle of sentences, it has jumped to the beginning, where it can portend many things: transition, certitude, logic, attentiveness, a major insight.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, late last year: “So, it’s not only because we believe that universal values support human rights being recognized and respected, but we think that it’s in the best interest for economic growth and political stability. So we believe that.”

A dispatch on National Public Radio last month, in which a quarter of sentences began with “so”: “So it’s, I think, the fifth largest in the nation. So, but now that’s the population in general. So there are sort of two, there are two things that are circumstantial.”

A quotation in a report last month from Channel NewsAsia, based in Singapore: “So, what we’re doing is — elephants have had these migratory routes, basically like islands connecting parks between each other; they’ve got nowhere to move and people have encroached on them.

“So, we negotiate with the people to move from the land. So, what we do, we buy the land, build them houses off the corridors and give them exactly the same amount of arable land back.”

A recent news briefing by Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, in which 5 of 21 sentences began with “so”: “So, all those issues, we hope, will be addressed in the report of the secretary general.”

For most of its life, “so” has principally been a conjunction, an intensifier and an adverb.

What is new is its status as the favored introduction to thoughts, its encroachment on the territory of “well,” “oh,” “um” and their ilk.

So, it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of “so” began in Silicon Valley. The journalist Michael Lewis picked it up when researching his 1999 book “The New New Thing”: “When a computer programmer answers a question,” he wrote, “he often begins with the word ‘so.”’ Microsoft employees have long argued that the “so” boom began with them.

In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catchall.

And “so” suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process, proceeding much in the way of software code — if this, then that.

This logical tinge to “so” has followed it out of software. Starting a sentence with “so” uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Where “well” vacillates, “so” declaims.

To answer a question starting with “well” suggests you are still considering it, don’t know fully but are getting there. To answer with “so” better suits the age, perhaps: A Google-glued generation can look it up where their parents would have said “I don’t know,” Facebook and Twitter encourage ordinary people and not just politicians to stay on message, and we gravitate toward declamatory blogs and away from down-the-middle reporting.

“So” also echoes the influence of a science- and data-driven culture. It would have been unimaginable a few decades ago that literature scholars would use neurological correlation analysis to evaluate texts, or that ordinary people would quantify daily activities like eating, sex and sleeping, or that software would calculate what songs we will like.

But in algorithmic times, “so” conveys an algorithmic certitude. It suggests that there is a right answer, which the evidence dictates and which should not be contradicted. Among its synonyms, indeed, are “consequently,” “thus” and “therefore.”

And yet Galina Bolden, a linguistics scholar who has written academic papers on the use of “so,” believes that “so” is also about a culture of empathy gaining steam in a globalized world.

To begin a sentence with “oh,” she said in an e-mail, is to focus on what you have just remembered and your own concerns. To begin with “so,” she said, drawing on her study of a database of recorded ordinary conversations, is to signal that one’s coming words are chosen for relevance to the listener.

The ascendancy of “so,” Dr. Bolden said, “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs,” she said.

“So” seems also to reflect our fraught relationship with time. “Well” and “um” are open-ended; “so” is impatient. It leans forward, seeks a consequence, sums things up. It is a word befitting a culture in which things worth doing must bear fruit now, where it is more fulfilling to day-trade grain futures than to raise grain.

Today we live in fragments. You may be reading this column while toggling among your cellphone, iPad and laptop while eating lunch and proofreading a report. In such a world, “so” may serve to defragment, with its promise that what is coming next follows what just came, said Michael Erard, the author of “Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean.”

The rise of “so,” he said in an e-mail, is “another symptom that our communication and conversational lives are chopped up and discontinuous in actual fact, but that we try in several ways to sew them together — or ‘so’ them together, as it were — in order to create a continuous experience.”

Perhaps we all live now in fear that a conversation could snap at any moment, interrupted by so many rival offerings. With “so,” we beg to be heard. This, we insist, is what you’ve been waiting to hear; this is the “so” moment.

E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com

What's the future of the news business in a world of multiple media inputs?

2010-05-23T00:13:00.000-07:00

Roberto De Vido .....based in Japan..... speaks of the future of the news business:

When things go wrong at the New York Times with its sometimes shoddy or unvetted reporting or PR-press release-influenced reportage, though this sort of thing may be common throughout the industry, we hold the Times to a higher standard, in part because of the high standards it has established for itself over the decades, and in part because the Times itself swaggers through the media landscape hinting (and sometimes saying outright) it is unanswerable to anyone but itself. [And even then, the Public Editor doesn't seem to get much respect.]

With the news that the Times will erect a paywall in January, however, I got to wondering how much of the Times is essential (though I have no problem paying for news, and do). We now live in a world of multiple media inputs, and for most people "news" is no longer a package, printed on paper and delivered early in the morning, but discrete stories, collected from a wide range of sources, including in my case The Economist, the Guardian, the NY Times, the LA Times, Slate, and more. I subscribe to a superb (and free) e-newsletter called The Browser, which sources stories (I think) via reader recommendations (which are then curated, I think) and has broadened my list of media inputs enormously.

Except for print subscribers, how many people read the NY Times cover to cover anymore? And specifically, what media outlets are "the best" for business news, global politics, sports, domestic news and politics, arts, etc.? If you're a media owner, and you're not "best in class" (and you don't have a political slant, e.g. Fox News, that puts you in the always-more-lucrative-than-the-news entertainment business), in any one category, what's your future?

http://politicomix.blogspot.com/
Facebook Profile:
http://www.facebook.com/roberto.devido

Roberto De Vido

Yokosuka, Japan
Japan-based corporate communications strategist • 20 years in Asia (resident in China/Japan, working regionally) • satirist • cartoonist • comics writer

Roberto De Vido is a communications consultant based in Japan. He has over 15 years of experience working with multinational clients in China and Japan. Prior to moving to Japan, he lived in Hong Kong, where he founded a public relations company and a custom publishing firm, and launched an independent advertising-supported magazine.

Flying is a modern-day lottery: The 158 people who were killed in the Air India Express plane crash in Mangalore lost the lottery! Sigh!

2010-05-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

Flying is safe, very safe, according to industry statistics. But don't
ask the people who died on the ill-fated Air India Express jet that crashed about
statistics. They are dead now. As in Rest in Peace dead. Dead. Gone.

Landing in rainstorm and low visibility! Stupid pilot! Gambling with the lives of his crew and passenger manifest. Gone with the wind now.

You also might remember the news of the ill-fated flight of a Swissair jet
flying from New York to Geneva back in the 1990s, and also the news
reports about LAPA Flight 3142 that failed to take flight in
Argentina. Yet, even with this new crash, airline reservations will
remain strong, the flying public hardly blinks and the sky's the limit.
Nothing changes much in the world of aviation and flying safety.

It's
a gamble, every flight is a gamble but statistically, you stand to
win. The numbers are on the side of the living.

But there's a funny thing about the way plane crashes are reported in
the news media -- and the way the news is received and digested.

After any major crash, after the bold headlines and day-after
analyses, reality returns to the normality that is life.

People who are neurotically afraid to fly (let's call them "fearful
flyers") feel justified in thinking the way they do. They often clip
out front-page newspaper stories and put them in a mental scrapbook.
"See," they tell everyone who listens, " flying is not safe, never
was, never will be. How much more evidence do you need?"

Psychiatrists report this all the time. After every major crash that
makes international headlines, the fearful flyers among us (and there
are many; 30 million in the US, maybe three million in Taiwan) say: "I
told you so."

And they add, just so we won't forget: "I am not neurotic. You think
flying is safe? Go ahead and fly, sucker!"

People who are not afraid to fly have another survival mechanism, call
it a defense mechanism. They see the news on TV and read the stories
in the press and say: "Too bad, a real tragedy. But it was just fate,
an ill-fated flight. The planes I fly on will never crash. I am
indestructible, I am a realist."

And they will fly, again and again. Because flying is safe and
statistically you've got a better chance of arriving on time and in
perfect condition (minus the jet lag, of course, or the boozy
hangover) than the poor blokes in urban traffic jams below. Every Web
site devoted to fear of flying will tell you so. And statistics don't
lie.

There's a third group who find plane crashes reassuring. These are the
people who put their faith in God or Buddha or Allah.

"See, " they say to anyone who will listen, "God works in mysterious
ways. When your time comes, your time comes. God is just calling you
back early. The pearly gates await you. You have nothing to fear but
fear itself. Trust in the Lord and the Kingdom of Heaven shall be
thine."

It works, too. Every group finds something in plane crashes, food for
thought, fuel for fiery arguments. And they are all right.

And then there are the plane spotters, those devilish plane buffs who
stand near runway approaches at major airports around the world and
take comfort in watching the slow, graceful approaches of jetliners
and prop planes as they jockey for landing rights and runway reunions.
There are lots of them out there, every day, everywhere. Fascinated by
all kinds of aircraft, they come armed with cameras and a sense of
mission. Plane crashes don't stop them, grizzly TV images don't stop
them, even typhoons don't stop them.

The final word on plane crashes? There is no final word. The world
returns to normal, very quickly, and everyone retreats to their
private vision of heaven and hell. The bell rings. Classes resume in
the School of Hard Landings and nobody's the wiser.

Except insurance companies. They learn the most from these things.

In India, there will be a thorough investigation, a report, assigning
of blame. Funerals for the dead, psychiatric counselling for the
families.

But nothing will change. Pilots will still attempt to land their
magnificent flying machines in stormy weather, corporations will still
put emphasis on the bottom line, passengers will still put their trust
in some magical non-existant God, amazing technology that enables them to be god-like for a few
hours in the air, and fate.

Flying is safe, very safe, according to industry statistics. But don't
ask the 8 survivors of the recent Air India Express about statistics. They almost lost the
lottery.

After every accident, there is hand-wringing, assigning of blame,
officials who humbly take responsibility and resign. Newspapers
dutifully print obituaries, TV news segments will show us the grieving
families, over and over again.

It doesn't matter if it's TWA Flight 800 over Long Island or the
Lockerbie explosion over Scotland or even the KAL 007 shootdown over
the Sea of Japan or Air India Express from Dubai to Mangalore.

Planes fly, planes explode, planes crash. Every flight is a race
against time, against lift and stall, against the elements. Is flying
safe? Sure.

One wonders if anything has been learned. Flying is still a lottery in
which most of us come out as winners. But for many modern travelers,
the flying is over; they lost the lottery and died unspeakable deaths over the past 50 years. Who's counting?

God?

typestalgia -- [14,5657 thumbs up]

2010-05-22T07:59:00.001-07:00

typestalgia

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=typestolgia

(noun) - A nostalgia for old manual and electric typewriters as well as the sound of typewriting on such machines

"I like my computer with its sleek keyboard, of course, but I must say, I also harbor a personal typestalgia for the old days of manual typewriters and electric typewriters."

-- overheard at a watercooler in Manhattan, May 15, 2010

Typestalgia: nostalgia for old typewriters and typewriting -- accepted now as a new word by UrbanDictionary.com

2010-05-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

See UD.

This is the truth: reading on paper surfaces trumps reading off screens every time, in terms of retention, processing, analysis and critical thinking. So what?

2010-05-22T07:42:00.001-07:00

Yeh, Bloom, so what?

What if reading on screens is not really reading per se, but a new kind of reading called screening, and future MRI scan studies prove this?

2010-05-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

Then what? Will Patricia Cohen of the New York Times explore this?

What if reading online turns out not be "reading" per se, but a new kind of reading mode best called "screening" -- then what?

2010-05-22T07:40:00.001-07:00

Then what?

The Angry Luddite

GPS logic

(noun ) -- DEFINITION: Logic that only the most sophisticated GPS devices can track, and therefore not very logical in fact.

"I can't believe my ex-wife said that about me. Only the most sophisticated GPS devices can track that kind of logic. That's what I call GPS logic at work!"overheard at a watercooler in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2012,

[and actually sort of coined by Eric Wemple in Jody Kantor story where he wrote: ‎''Only the mostsophisticated GPS devices can track that logic.'']

classic insult line, classic. love it!

Did New York Times Italian restaurant story by Jeff Gordinier copy a 1999 Italian restaurant article in Chicago too closely, headline and all? You be the judge...

Like Rao’s, but You Can Get In, OR, Low-key Italian Eatery Draws Rich and Famous, or at least it did until the Times spoiled it all by blasting a rave review all across the city! Oi.

Matchmaker Ang Lee Introduces Rhythm & Hues to Taiwan‎

Get ready for a variety of disasters, but be optimistic for 2012 and 2013? No way. We are headed for major climate chaos disasters in next 50 years, Dr Lin!

Full Enclosure

Apple sues Tandy Cheung and his Communist Chinese action figure firm for Steve Jobs rip-off

Pico Iyer and his Japanese wife Hiroko Takeuchi

THE CONSTANT DIN - "the CD"

TABLETS CLOSE BOOK ON PAPER

Tablets, e-readers close book on era of paper, but questions remain about 'the reading brain'

Who is the Angry Luddite?

Krantzstone (@Krantzstone) on : ''Brand yourself before somebody else does''

AP asks newspapers using wire services now to ''report'' that Walk of Fame stars costs $30K each and are bought and paid for by studios as PR gimmicks

Coco Lee-Bruce Rockowitz tie the knot

Tintin gets pummeled by British lit crit

The ''Complex Chinese Character'' edition of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs' bio is a hit in Taiwan, surpassing Harry Potter sales

An Interview with Newspaper Pagination Designer Ian Lawson in Maysville, Kentucky

Taiwanese TV award substitute 楊一峯 reads acceptance speech from Director Hung phoned in via text onstage. CUTE!.......電視金鐘獎 - Best Directing for a Mini-series/TV movie (迷你劇集/電視電影導演獎)

OLD TYPEWRITER AND WRITER NORMAN CORWIN, circa 1872

阿裕牛肉湯

Facebook Friend Numbers Linked to Brain Size

Is Facebook altering our brains?

The more Facebook friends you have, the bigger your brain is

People With Bigger Brains Have More Facebook Friends

MRI studies show reading on paper surfaces lights up superior regions of the brain compared to screen-reading

Jim Frederick named Time International editor: will he call Taiwan a mere ISLAND or will he stand up to Communist China and call Taiwan what it is, a SOVEREIGN NATION? 23 million Tawianese want to know!

Children and the Future of the Book

A Taiwanese model's tattoo on back and shoulders that looks like a Chinese ceramic vase

New "fake Steve Jobs doppelganger surfaces in Taiwan

'Fake' Steve Jobs advice book "made in Red China" -- -- Web of deceit led to egg on Taiwan's face

Monsignor Enrique Figaredo is the Apostolic Prefect (Bishop) of Battambang in Cambodia and he has a very unChristian antisemitic nickname......WHY?

Kim Jong-il afraid to fly; media afraid to report truth

New pizza joint called Toppers Pizza hopes to top the competition and build the brand into 70 stores nationwide. Can they do it?

Chien-Ming Wang back on the mound Thursday for Nationals; but does recent suciide-death of maternal grandfather, 82, in Taiwan weighs on his mind?

Xinhua sign in Times Square is affront to all freedom-loving people !

''Chien-Ming Wang’s grandfather found dead?'' asks Nick Lilja, sports reporter in DC

The Nicky Minaj Nipple Slip Has Crashed This Site Over 100,000 Times already? It's a nipple, folks. We all have em! Get over it, already!

Phuong Ly or Ly Phuong? You decide!

Why do we write the names of Vietnamese and Thai people the wrong way in English newspapers?

Ted Nugent on why Hiroshima was the right thing to do -- and the comments! see the comments! oi.

王建民外公 公園自縊身亡

Mr Wang goes to Washington, 'grandfather' in Taiwan has sad ending

82-year-old biological grandfather of Washington Nationals star pitcher Chien-Ming Wang found dead at neighborhood park; suicide suspected, police say

What if reading off screens is not all it's cracked up to be?

What the Tech Do I Know?

Side-to-side comparison of Steve Jobs lookalike and the original Apple CEO.

The Angry Luddite explains it all for you

24/7/365 : digital news from all seven corners of the Earth (and then some!)

Notes from a pseudoanonymous blogger named "dissent" on cyberbullying cases and the law and privacy concerns....

Notes from a law professor at GW in DC

Bullying, Suicide, Punishment

網路忠告 -- ''DIGIRATA'' - A 'Desiderata' for the Digital Age -- translated into Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan by Tracy Li and Jacky Lin

LETTER - ‘Digirata’: Enjoy the Web - Published in Taipei Times, October 1, 2010

DigiDesiderata

DIGIRATA 4.0

A new name for ebooks is waiting in the wings, but what will it be?

''Digirata'' making waves worldwide in struggle against cyberbullying

A note to Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times re SONY E-reader

YOUTUBIC

The Cyberotta - An Ode to Cyberspace (With a Warning or Two as Well!)

The Cyberata - An Ode to Cyberspace (With a Warning or Two as Well!)

Shut Up, I'm Talking

Self-immolation climate change inaction protest planned for April 7, 2011 in front of UN Building in New York: 77 committed activists will set themselves on fire as wake up call to the world

Nobel laureate from Taiwan says that more than slogans are needed to fight climate change

The World is Doomed and According to Danny Bloom We Must Go Live in Gerbil Cities in the Far North or Die

Surviving a sudden heart attack with a stent inserted and a new lease on life afforded until.....the Grim Reaper comes back again, as She promised! Sigh. Smile

Vast Ice ‘Island’ Breaks Free of Greenland Glacier .... August 7, 3010 AD

''Formosa Betrayed'', a Film for Taiwan’s Youth - a review by Jerome Keating in Taiwan

FINALLY, A GOOD PLAY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: maybe polar cities life will hit Broadway soon, too?

James Lovelock as dramatis personae in London plays and a movie, too

Barnes & Noble Planning Big Push to Increase 'Frankenbook' Sales

Climate change could spur mass migration of billions to polar cities in north and south by 2080 A.D.

More than the 20th Century ended on Friday. The fate of all humankind as a functioning species was sealed as well. It's all over.

Dear Mr Bloom, re Polar Cities: ''I applaud the foresight and iconoclasm of your thinking.''

"I can't believe my ex-wife said that about me. Only the most sophisticated GPS devices can track that kind of logic. That's what I call GPS logic at work!"

overheard at a watercooler in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2012,

[and actually sort of coined by Eric Wemple in Jody Kantor story where he wrote: ‎''Only the most
sophisticated GPS devices can track that logic.'']

王建民外公公園自縊身亡