Tailoring Ads to Email Users, Google Has Some Poor Fits

Tailoring Ads to Email Users, Google Has Some Poor Fits - WSJ.com

Obituaries | Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

Guardian Unlimited Books | Obituaries | Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

New Prize for Asian Writers

New Prize for Asian Writers - New York Times: "The investment house that sponsors the Booker Prize has begun a new award intended to recognize Asian authors living in the region and writing in their own language, Agence France-Presse reported. The prize, an annual award of $10,000 to be known as the Man Asian Literary Prize, was announced yesterday in Hong Kong and is to be given next autumn for the first time by Man Investments. Robb Corrigan, a spokesman for the company, said, "There is a specific goal to bring Asian voices to the global stage." Peter Gordon, director of the Hong Kong Literary Festival, which took part in the announcement, said the prize would be open to writers in 24 countries in a "triangle defined by Japan, Indonesia and Afghanistan."

AOL - CNN - Time Warner & Pathfinder

Time Inc. Picks Its Web Winners -- And Its Flagship Isn't One - WSJ.com

Time Inc. Picks Its Web Winners --
And Its Flagship Isn't One
By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG and SARAH ELLISON

Media - Bias - Political leanings

Deja Vu - WSJ.com: In Early Newspapers, Only 'Mr. Silky Milky' Would Be Impartial

By CYNTHIA CROSSEN

Definitive list of must-see masterpieces

We're asking you to help compile a definitive list of must-see masterpieces | | Guardian Unlimited Arts

The new arts blog

The Guardian's film, book, TV and arts critics will form the backbone of our new blog site. They will by joined by fresh new voices - poets, artists, novelists, musicians, directors and actors among them - in what we hope will become a noisy forum for debate about everything from South Park to Mansfield Park, White Cube to Albert Square. We will also be giving readers space to post their own reviews. Join in at blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts

Masaccio
The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c. 1427)
Brancacci Chapel, Florence

Pablo Picasso
Guernica (1937)
Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

Jackson Pollock
One: Number 31 (1950)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Michelangelo
Moses (installed 1545)
Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Rembrandt
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

San rock art
South African National Museum, Cape Town

Titian
Danaë (c. 1544-6)
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

Caravaggio
The Burial of St Lucy (1608)
Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily

Velázquez
Las Meninas (1656)
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Mark Rothko
The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66)
Houston, Texas

Hans Holbein
The Dead Christ (1521-22)
Kunstmuseum, Basel

Funerary mask of Tutankhamun (1333-1323BC)
Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Jan van Eyck
The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (c. 1435)
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Parthenon Sculptures (Elgin Marbles) (c. 444BC)
British Museum, London

Henri Matisse
The Dance II (1910)
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Leonardo da Vinci
The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1481)
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

If you want truly to appreciate a work of art, there's no substitute for seeing it in person. To celebrate the launch of the Guardian's new arts blog, we're asking you to help compile a definitive list of must-see masterpieces. Jonathan Jones kicks it off with his own top 20

Definitive list of must-see masterpieces

We're asking you to help compile a definitive list of must-see masterpieces | | Guardian Unlimited Arts

The new arts blog

The Guardian's film, book, TV and arts critics will form the backbone of our new blog site. They will by joined by fresh new voices - poets, artists, novelists, musicians, directors and actors among them - in what we hope will become a noisy forum for debate about everything from South Park to Mansfield Park, White Cube to Albert Square. We will also be giving readers space to post their own reviews. Join in at blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts

Masaccio
The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (c. 1427)
Brancacci Chapel, Florence

Pablo Picasso
Guernica (1937)
Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

Jackson Pollock
One: Number 31 (1950)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Michelangelo
Moses (installed 1545)
Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Rembrandt
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1654)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

San rock art
South African National Museum, Cape Town

Titian
Danaë (c. 1544-6)
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

Caravaggio
The Burial of St Lucy (1608)
Museo di Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily

Velázquez
Las Meninas (1656)
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Mark Rothko
The Rothko Chapel (paintings 1965-66)
Houston, Texas

Hans Holbein
The Dead Christ (1521-22)
Kunstmuseum, Basel

Funerary mask of Tutankhamun (1333-1323BC)
Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Jan van Eyck
The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (c. 1435)
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Parthenon Sculptures (Elgin Marbles) (c. 444BC)
British Museum, London

Henri Matisse
The Dance II (1910)
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Leonardo da Vinci
The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1481)
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

If you want truly to appreciate a work of art, there's no substitute for seeing it in person. To celebrate the launch of the Guardian's new arts blog, we're asking you to help compile a definitive list of must-see masterpieces. Jonathan Jones kicks it off with his own top 20

Nobel Peace Prize winner

The New Yorker: Fact: MILLIONS FOR MILLIONS - This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and some high-tech entrepreneurs are competing to provide credit to the world’s poor. by CONNIE BRUCK

Working Poets

The New Yorker: PRINTABLES

The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Alice Quinn, talks with these two longtime contributors about how they discovered their vocation, the impact of the Vietnam War, and the process of revision.

This week, the magazine publishes poems by Philip Levine and Galway Kinnell. The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Alice Quinn, talks with these two longtime contributors about how they discovered their vocation, the impact of the Vietnam War, and the process of revision.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/061030on_onlineonly03

THE NUTTY PROFESSORS

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books: The history of academic charisma. by ANTHONY GRAFTON

Mitts in the air, pal ...

Mitts in the air, pal ... | Features | Guardian Unlimited Film: The thugs in noir flicks used to pull off capers like nobody's business. Joe Queenan decides he wants a piece of the action

South Dakota, Abortion, Rights

Time to speak up | Health | SocietyGuardian.co.uk: "It's 39 years since abortion was legalised in this country, yet these days it's rarely discussed without mention of 'shame', 'mental trauma' or 'viability'. With pro-lifers dominating the debate, and even leftwingers describing abortion as a 'necessary evil', women's hard-won rights could soon be under threat. In an introduction to an eight-page special, Zoe Williams asks: are we just going to roll over? "

· The act does not extend to Northern Ireland. Abortion is only legal there if the life or the mental or physical health of the woman is at "serious risk". There are no clear guidelines, however, and provision depends on the moral outlook of individual doctors.

· In 2004/05, 64 women had an abortion in Northern Ireland, according to the Family Planning Association.

· In 2005, 1,164 women from Northern Ireland travelled to England for an abortion. Women travelling from Northern Ireland for an abortion cannot have them on the NHS.

· 1,900 abortions (1%) were classified as having been carried out because of a risk that the child would be born with disabilities.

Shashi Kapoor to inaugurate IFFI-2006

The Hindu : New Delhi News : Shashi Kapoor to inaugurate IFFI-2006: "Richard Attenborough is being invited to attend the special screening of his much talked about film "Gandhi". Twenty prominent feature films from various regional languages, including Rituparno Ghosh's "Dosar", will be screened at the festival.

The Indian Panorama section will open with "Missed Call" (English/Hindi) directed by Mridul Toolsidass and Vinay Subramanian, while the opening film of the non-feature section would be "And The World Remained Silent" directed by Ashok Pandit.

The feature films include five Malayalam movies, three Tamil and an equal number of Marathi movies as also two Bengali and two Hindi movies.

The juries, which gave their report to the I&B Minister have also recommended that the Tamil film "Sringaram" directed by Sharada Ramanathan and Sonam, a film directed by the upcoming filmmaker Ahsan Muzid in an Arunachali dialect, "Monpa", will represent India in the Asian, African and Latin American Competition section of the IFFI-2006. "

Daughter steps into Pramod Mahajan’s shoes

IndianExpress.com :: Daughter steps into Pramod Mahajan’s shoes: NO SON-RISE: After Priya Dutt and Supriya Sule, Poonam latest to inherit father’s political legacy

Poonam Mahajan joins a list of daughters in Maharashtra who have inherited the political legacy of their fathers. Just last month, Maratha leader and NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule entered the Rajya Sabha; Sunil Dutt’s daughter Priya is already in the Lok Sabha; Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s daughter Pranati is her father’s poll manager; and Congress MP Eknath Gaikwad’s daughter Varsha is now an MLA.

Varsha Gaikwad is a PhD in Maths and quit her job at Mumbai University to follow in her father’s footsteps. Her constituency is Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum where she’s rooting for free public schools for the poor and open spaces.

Sushil Kumar Shinde’s 25-year-old daughter Pranati is the youngest of the crop. She manages poll campaigns for her father in Solapur and, with her fund-raising campaigns for cancer, is perhaps hoping to wipe off mother Ujjwala Shinde’s loss in the 2005 assembly polls with a thumping political debut.

However, perhaps the one son who made it from Maharashtra doesn’t see the arrival of daughters as an example of women empowerment. Milind Deora, son of Petroleum Minister Murali Deora and South Mumbai MP, says: “The real role women should play in politics should not be in Parliament but in the villages. I’m saying it openly and it applies to me too: political heirs are not examples in empowerment. Unless people from villages rise to the top without any political background, I’ll not call it a change.’’

Women go topless for rain relief

Women go topless for rain relief : vidarbha, farmer suicide, madhya pradesh, tribal farmers : IBNLive.com : CNN-IBN: "While in the Vidarbha region, hundreds of debt-ridden farmers are being driven to suicide, in UP, they are being doled out cheques worth Rs three as drought relief by an apathetic government.

In Madhya Pradesh's drought-hit Dindori district, the Baiga tribal women farmers have resorted to ploughing their fields half-naked to please the rain gods. Once the "topless ritual" is over, villagers worship a frog, dip it in water and use that water to sprinkle the fields."

Whither Web 2.0?

Article - Money - Whither Web 2.0?: The future of innovative new Internet sites is difficult to gauge.

When the final chapter of the Web 2.0 story is written, the survivors will be the businesses that manage to build that sort of innovative relationship with consumers – and make a profit at the same time.

Top Universities :: Rankings

QS Top Universities: THES - QS World University Rankings - The World's Best Universities: "In Asia-Pacific, Japan has the three new entrants - Keio University at 120, Kyushu University at 128 and Waseda University at 158 -joining the Top 200, bringing the total of Japanese Universities represented to a record eleven institutions. The University of Wollongong in Australia also joins the top 200 for the first time at 196, as does the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia at 185.

Only four new entrants are from the United States and Canada: University of California, Davis at 170, Queen’s University, Canada at 176, Brandeis University at 187 and University of California, Irvine at 198. "

China's dam plan will hit north-east

The Hindu : National : China's dam plan will hit north-east, says Gogoi: "Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Tuesday expressed concern at media reports of Beijing's plan to construct a dam on part of the Brahmaputra flowing in China and divert about 200 billion cubic metres of water to feed the Yellow River.

Mr. Gogoi said the Brahmaputra-Barak-Meghna river system contributed almost one-third of the total surface water resources of the country and any large-scale diversion would have serious repercussions for the northeast and the country as a whole."

Tibetans recount shooting by guards

Tibetan survivors of Chinese shooting despair for relatives back home - The Boston Globe: "Thousands of Tibetans flee Chinese rule in Tibet every year. Unable to obtain passports, many trek over Himalayan passes to reach Nepal and then India, where the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, lives in exile. Reports of arrests and ill-treatment by Chinese authorities are common.

As 75 Tibetan refugees were making a secret trek across the border into Nepal, moving in single file across a mountain slope near the 19,000-foot-high Nanpa La Pass, Chinese border guards opened fire.

One woman -- a 25-year-old Buddhist nun -- was killed immediately. Chinese officials, in a statement, have said a second person also died."

Google customizes search tool to cut through Web noise

Google customizes search tool to cut through Web noise - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "Called the Google Custom Search Engine, the new product, introduced Monday, lets Web site owners choose which pages they want to include in their index and rank the pages as they like.

Yahoo has introduced a similar product, called Search Builder."

Custody death in Noida

Custody death in Noida - A Suburb of Delhi: "Sonu was eighteen years old, well built, healthy and full of life. He was irrigating his farmland in a village near Khurja barely fifty Km. from Delhi when he was asked to accompany plain cloth police men of Noida a suburb of Delhi. It was six o’clock in the evening, 1st of September 2006. Sonu was dead in lock up of police station by four o’clock in morning of 2nd September. Police claimed he committed suicide inside the lock up making loop of his worn out shirt."

If I were raped today, I would not report it

If I were raped today, I would not report it | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited: Julie Bindel on why she has lost faith in the system

"For years afterwards, while campaigning against rape and other crimes as a founder of the group Justice for Women, I bitterly regretted not reporting my attackers. My overwhelming feeling was guilt. What if they succeeded next time?

Then there was the 18-year-old "lap dancer" recently jailed for six months for perverting the course of justice. Various footballers accused of "roasting" women have been exonerated, while the women who accused them of rape are vilified as "prostitutes" and "gold-diggers". In the past seven years, women have also been sued for defamation by men accused of raping them after their cases were discontinued by the police."

Headstones Too Go Global

Headstones Too Go Global, and One City Pays the Price - New York Times: " For decades, the granite industry made Barre, near Montpelier, a boomtown and Vermont’s biggest melting pot, drawing immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Poland and Canada. During their heyday, in the early-to-mid-20th century, the manufacturers here employed about 3,000 people.

Today the number is only 1,500, said John P. Castaldo, executive director of the Barre Granite Association, and most of those are in sales or administration. Roughly 300 actually make headstones and memorials, working with heavy machinery, and those who still hand-carve granite are no more than six or so.

The biggest problem during the last decade has been imported headstones, mostly from China and India, which cost about half as much as those made in Barre (pronounced BEAR-ee)."

RSF Releases 2006 World Press Freedom Index

allAfrica.com: Africa: RSF Releases 2006 World Press Freedom Index: "Press freedom is genuine is Benin (23rd), Namibia (26th), Mauritius (32nd), Ghana (34th), Mali (35th), South Africa (44th) and Cape Verde (45th) and comparable to that in Western democracies. It does not exist or is constantly under attack in Eritrea (166th), Gambia (149th), Somalia (144th), Democratic Republic of Congo (142nd), Zimbabwe (140th) and Equatorial Guinea (137th).

The three worst violators of free expression - North Korea, bottom of the Index at 168th place, Turkmenistan (167th) and Eritrea (166th) - have clamped down further. The torture death of Turkmenistan journalist Ogulsapar Muradova shows that the country's leader, "President-for-Life" Separmurad Nyazov, is willing to use extreme violence against those who dare to criticise him. Reporters Without Borders is also extremely concerned about a number of Eritrean journalists who have been imprisoned in secret for more than five years. The all-powerful North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, also continues to totally control the media.

Yemen (149th) slipped four places, mainly because of the arrest of several journalists and closure of newspapers that reprinted the cartoons. Journalists were harassed for the same reason in Algeria (126th), Jordan (109th), Indonesia (103rd) and India (105th).

But except for Yemen and Saudi Arabia (161st), all the Arab peninsula countries considerably improved their rank. Kuwait (73rd) kept its place at the top of the group, just ahead of the United Arab Emirates (77th) and Qatar (80th).

Two countries moved into the Index's top 20 for the first time. Bolivia (16th) was best-placed among less-developed countries and during the year its journalists enjoyed the same level of freedom as colleagues in Canada or Austria. But the growing polarisation between state-run and privately-owned media and between supporters and opponents of President Evo Morales could complicate the situation. Bosnia-Herzegovina (19th) continued its gradual rise up the Index since the end of the war in ex-Yugoslavia and is now placed above its European Union member-state neighbours Greece (32nd) and Italy (40th).

Ghana (34th) rose 32 places to become fourth in Africa behind the continent's three traditional leaders - Benin (23rd), Namibia (26th) and Mauritius (32nd). Economic conditions are still difficult for the Ghanaian media but it is no longer threatened by the authorities.

Panama (39th) is enjoying political peace which has helped the growth of a free and vigorous media and the country moved up 27 places over the year."

U.S. Rank on Press Freedom Slides Lower

U.S. Rank on Press Freedom Slides Lower - washingtonpost.com: "Serious threats against the artists and publishers of the Muhammad cartoons, which caricatured the prophet of Islam, caused Denmark, which was also in first place last year, to drop to 19th place. Yemen, at 149th place, slipped four places, mostly because of the arrests of journalists and the closure of newspapers that reprinted the cartoons. Journalists in Algeria, Jordan, Indonesia and India were harassed because of the cartoons as well.

Some poor countries, such as Mauritania and Haiti, improved their record in a global press freedom index this year, while France, the United States and Japan slipped further down the scale of 168 countries rated, the group Reporters Without Borders said yesterday.

The news media advocacy organization said the most repressive countries in terms of journalistic freedom -- such as North Korea, Cuba, Burma and China -- made no advances at all. Iran ranks 162nd, between Saudi Arabia and China. The report said conditions in Russia and Belarus have not improved.

Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the United States now stands at 53, having fallen nine places since last year. France, 35th, dropped five places since last year because of searches of media offices and journalists' homes, as well as physical attacks on journalists during a trade union dispute, the group said.

In Lebanon, a series of bomb attacks targeting journalists and publishers in 2005, and Israeli military attacks last summer, contributed to a drop in the country's ranking from 56th to 107th in the past four years."

Advice on the Basics

Not Sure How to Tie A Tie? Peel an Apple? Fold Your Clothes? - WSJ.com: The Answers Are on the Web, As a Rash of New Sites & Offer Advice on the Basics

VideoJug.com


On eHow.com, one of the most popular topics is "How to Boil an Egg" -- broken down into six steps of written instructions. Videos at ViewDo.com, launched this summer, address such matters as how to peel and slice an apple. WikiHow.com provides a written tutorial on playing "Hide and Go Seek." (Step Three: "Determine who will be 'It.'... Use 'One Potato, Two Potato' or similar method.")

Some traditional how-to outlets have also been eyeing the user-generated approach. Scripps Networks, a division of E.W. Scripps Co. and the company behind HGTV and the Food Network, is testing models for adding user-participation features to its sites, such as DIYNetwork.com, says Jim Sexton, senior vice president of the interactive group for Scripps Networks.

Disneyfication of war

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The Disneyfication of war allows us to ignore its real savagery: Statues of canine 'heroes' from the second world war are still being unveiled while the deaths of Iraqi civilians go unrecorded

George Monbiot's latest book is Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, monbiot.com

Don't suppress radical Islamic ideas, challenge them

EducationGuardian.co.uk | comment | Frank Furedi says free speech is the best way to tackle extremists on campus

Frank Furedi is a professor of sociology at the University of Kent and author of Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone?, published by Continuum Press. He will be among the speakers at the Battle of Ideas on October 29. www.battleofideas.co.uk

Self-Portraits Chronicle a Descent Into Alzheimer’s

Self-Portraits Chronicle a Descent Into Alzheimer’s - New York Times: "When he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, William Utermohlen, an American artist in London, responded in characteristic fashion. “From that moment on, he began to try to understand it by painting himself,” said his wife, Patricia Utermohlen, a professor of art history.

Mr. Utermohlen’s self-portraits are being exhibited through Friday at the New York Academy of Medicine in Manhattan, by the Alzheimer’s Association. The paintings starkly reveal the artist’s descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened and details melted away. His wife and his doctors said he seemed aware at times that technical flaws had crept into his work, but he could not figure out how to correct them.

“The spatial sense kept slipping, and I think he knew,” Professor Utermohlen said. A psychoanalyst wrote that the paintings depicted sadness, anxiety, resignation and feelings of feebleness and shame."

Smartest State 2006-2007

Smartest State 2006-2007

1. Public Elementary and Secondary School Revenue per $1,000 Personal Income (Table 56) +
2. Percent of Public Elementary and Secondary School Current Expenditures used for Instruction (Table 134) +
3. Percent of Population Graduated from High School (Table 171) +
4. Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate for Public High Schools (Table 174) +
5. Percent of Public School Fourth Graders Proficient or Better in Reading (Table 203) +
6. Percent of Public School Eighth Graders Proficient or Better in Reading (Table 211) +
7. Percent of Public School Fourth Graders Proficient or Better in Writing (Table 219) +
8. Percent of Public School Eighth Graders Proficient or Better in Writing (Table 227) +
9. Percent of Public School Fourth Graders Proficient or Better in Mathematics (Table 235) +
10. Percent of Public School Eighth Graders Proficient or Better in Mathematics (Table 243) +
11. Average Teacher Salary as a Percent of Average Annual Pay of All Workers (Table 364) +



12. Average Daily Attendance as a Percent of Fall Enrollment in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools (Table 398) +
13. Percent of School-Age Population in Public Schools (Table 389) +
14. High School Drop Out Rate (Table 191) -
15. Special Education Pupil-Teacher Ratio (Table 339) -
16. Percent of Public Elementary and Secondary School Staff Who are School District Administrators (Table 380) -
17. Average Class Size in Public Elementary Schools (Table 425) -
18. Average Class Size in Public Secondary Schools (Table 426) -
19. Median Pupil-Teacher Ratio in Public Primary Schools (Table 429) -
20. Median Pupil-Teacher Ratio in Public Middle Schools (Table 432) -
21. Median Pupil-Teacher Ratio in Public High Schools (Table 435) -

Number Crunching

Number Crunching - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine: "Let's say that the study is way off, off by a factor of 10 or five—in other words, that the right number isn't 655,000 but something between 65,500 and 131,000.

The researchers reached this conclusion through a common technique known as "cluster sampling." They randomly selected 47 neighborhoods in 18 of Iraq's regions. Within those neighborhoods, they visited a total of 1,849 households, comprising 12,801 residents, and asked how many of their members had died before the invasion and since the invasion. The researchers then extrapolated from this sample to the entire Iraqi population of 27 million people—from which they concluded that since the war there have been about 655,000 "excess deaths," of which 601,000 were caused by violence.

Based on the household surveys, the report estimates that, just before the war, Iraq's mortality rate was 5.5 per 1,000. (That is, for every 1,000 people, 5.5 die each year.) The results also show that, in the three and a half years since the war began, this rate has shot up to 13.3 per 1,000. So, the "excess deaths" amount to 7.8 (13.3 minus 5.5) per 1,000. They extrapolate from this figure to reach their estimate of 655,000 deaths.

However, according to data from the United Nations, based on surveys taken at the time, Iraq's preinvasion mortality rate was 10 per 1,000. The difference between 13.3 and 10.0 is only 3.3, less than half of 7.8. "

AIRPORT EXPANSION THREATENS TO WIPE OUT CHENNAI SUBURB

Tehelka - The People's Paper :: GROUND TURBULENCE IN TN:

AIRPORT EXPANSION THREATENS TO WIPE OUT CHENNAI SUBURB
Pozhichalur residents say land acquisition was changed to suit land sharks, politicians and hoteliers

OVERVIEW
Almost 30,000 people are likely to be displaced if the project is implemented in Pozhichalur and its neighbourhood
Families have built houses through bank loans and by investing their retirement benefits
In March, the state government passed an order freezing building activities in the area
Plan for greenfield airport in the outskirts of the city have no takers

Magazines lose numbers, Saras Salil and India Today lead in respective genre

India media news marketing India advertising Indian brands tv media newspapers: "The fate of magazines, as per the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2006 Round 2 isn’t much different than what it was in Round 1 and even competing studies like the National Readership Survey (NRS) 2006 has reflected this trend. Magazines have registered a drop in readership in both surveys.

Looking at the press reach figures here, magazines have dropped both on Average Issue Readership (AIR) and Claimed Readership (CR) – on the former the drop is from 7.3 per cent in Round 1 to 6.4 per cent in Round 2; and on the latter, the drop is from 14.3 per cent to 13.6 per cent.

Language Magazines

Top of the charts in this category is Saras Salil (Hindi) with a readership of 63 lakh, in the previous round, this figure was at 73.61 lakh. Vanitha (Malayalam), on the second spot, has dropped from 35.16 lakh to 33.1 lakh readers. Grihashobha (Hindi) has dropped from 31.93 lakh to 27.7 lakh readers and is on the third slot.

Kungumum takes the fourth position and has dropped from 37.59 lakh readers to 26.3 lakh readers. Kumudam has dropped from 30.71 lakh readers to 25.4 lakh and is the No. 5 player. India Today (Hindi) has dropped from 28.49 lakh readers to 24.4 lakh readers and is on the sixth position. Ananda Vikatan has dropped from 25.5 lakh readers to 23.4 and takes the seventh place.

The eighth position is taken by Meri Saheli, which, too, has registered a dropped from 24.81 lakh readers to 20.9 lakh readers. Cricket Samrat at No. 9 has also dropped from 20.67 lakh readers to 17.2 lakh readers. On the tenth spot is Grehlakshmi with a readership of 16.6 lakh.

English Magazines

India Today is the highest read English magazine despite a drop in number or readers from 35.09 lakh in the last round to 31.4 lakh. Reader’s Digest follows at No. 2 and has dropped from 23.06 lakh readers to 20.5 lakh readers. General Knowledge Today is the third largest in this domain with a readership of 18.2 lakh – in the last round, this was 2.14 lakh readers. Competition Success Review at No. 4 has dipped from 17.3 lakh readers to 14.1 lakh readers. Filmfare, the fifth player in the segment, too, has registered a drop from 16.71 lakh readers to 12.7 lakh readers.

Outlook has dropped from 11.44 lakh readers to 10.9 lakh readers and is at No. 6. Stardust at No. 7 falls from 10.95 lakh readers to 8.8 lakh readers. Wisdom dips from 10.31 lakh to 8.1 lakhs to be at the ninth position, while Diamond Cricket Today has seen a drop from 8.29 lakh readers to 6.2 lakh readers to complete the top 10 list."

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

LRB | Terry Eagleton : Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins · Bantam, 406 pp, £20.00

"Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass.The two most deadly texts on the planet, apart perhaps from Donald Rumsfeld’s emails, are the Bible and the Koran. The God Delusion argues that the status of atheists in the US is nowadays about the same as that of gays fifty years ago. The book is full of vivid vignettes of the sheer horrors of religion, fundamentalist or otherwise."

Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester University. His latest book is How to Read a Poem.

Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever - Books - Review - New York Times: "In a scathing 1949 critique, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Baldwin boldly linked the sentimentality of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to the melodrama of Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “Native Son,” a work far more appealing to black power types. “Uncle Tom” had become such a potent brand of political impotence that nobody really cared how far its public usages had traveled from the reality of its literary prototype.

Manichean simplicity is a central feature of some of Baldwin’s own work, like the plays “The Amen Corner” and “Blues for Mr. Charlie” and the novels “Another Country” and “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone.” The suppleness of his prose gives way to stereotypical depictions of two-dimensional characters, both black and white — individuals who seem to exist as set pieces for ideological diatribes rather than nuanced explorations of their full humanity."

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the W. E. B. Du Bois professor of the humanities at Harvard. He is the editor, with Hollis Robbins, of the forthcoming “Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” from which this essay is adapted, and the author of “Finding Oprah’s Roots,” to be published in February.

Comments from the vigilante:
"The prblem of master-slave won't go away, as it is in history. Hegel and Marx could wipe it only by wiping the past. So much of the past also has good and god in it. Gates uses a simple term but powerful description- manichaean simplicity. Yes, the dual category of master slave does not begin to explain the problem. Adoor made a movie elipathayam, i believe, which made the same point. Thought you may read this and react. "

And you, what are you doing here?

LRB | Michael Gilsenan : And you, what are you doing here?: "A Season in Mecca: Narrative of a Pilgrimage by Abdellah Hammoudi ed. Pascale Ghazaleh · Polity, 293 pp, £12.99"

"As a steam rather than a sailing ship, the Jeddah was itself a small part of the transformations which affected the calculations of economy, means of transport and time that Muslim pilgrims (then usually referred to by the British as ‘Muhammadans’) from the Malay Archipelago and elsewhere had to make in the later 19th century. Land and sea transport changed rapidly. The length of voyages shortened dramatically. Caravan traffic lost its dominant place in Africa and the Middle East. ‘The pilgrimage’ was being modernised.

Sisyphus, Making It Work on the Streets of New York

Man Push Cart - Movies - Review - New York Times: "Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), the Pakistani immigrant who is the protagonist of Ramin Bahrani’s “Man Push Cart,” goes through a Sisyphean daily grind. In the wee small hours of each morning, he commutes by subway from his shabby one-room apartment in Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan, where he sells coffee, doughnuts and bagels on the street.

Partly inspired by “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus’s treatise on the absurdity of existence. Ahmad finds a stray kitten and impulsively brings it home. But as tenderly as he feels toward his pet, which becomes a surrogate for his son, he has little idea of how to care for it. Filmed in less than three weeks, “Man Push Cart” is an exemplary work of independent filmmaking carried out on a shoestring.

Teach yourself Judology

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Is there really a 'Jewish dimension' to Eurovision, facial hair and Britain's hottest TV cook?: Yes, says Jonny Geller, in an extract from his comic new book - and what's more he can measure it

The calculation

Each category is marked out of 7, the mystical Kabbalistic number

Backlash (or anti-semitic potential) + Impact (on the world)

x J-factor ( or "Jewishness")

= Tzurus (Yiddish for troubles - the default position for world Jewry)

÷ Kabbalah (the mystical number 7)

= the good/not good Judology rating.

If an entry is defined as "not good" it does not necessarily mean that it is bad for the Jews. It is merely not a positive force for them.

What the scores mean

0-7: not good for the Jews

7.1-7.99: borderline, probably not good for the Jews

8-14: good for the Jews

So, for example, in the case of Easter:

Backlash 7 + impact 6.2 x j-factor 3.35 = tzurus 40.87 ÷ kabbalah 7 = 5.84

Therefore, Easter is not good for the Jews

Beyond Skimpy Skirts, a Rare Debate on Identity

Beyond Skimpy Skirts, a Rare Debate on Identity - New York Times

Education system must account for change

Education system must account for change: "# The 25 percent of China's population with the highest IQ is greater than the total population of North America (and in India, the figure is 28 percent). China has more honors kids than we have kids.

# China will soon be the No. 1 English-speaking nation in the world.

# Today's students will have had 10 to 14 jobs by the age of 38.

# One in four workers at any company are employed there for less than a year.

# The amount of technical information in the world doubles every two years, so some of what students are learning in college will be outdated by the time they graduate."

LEASING THE RAIN

The New Yorker: Fact: The world is running out of fresh water, and the fight to control it has begun.
by WILLIAM FINNEGAN

PM himself a middleman in Govt for Sonia

PM himself a middleman in Govt for Sonia:

Tainted election winners, scam experts are politician middlemen

In an interview Nakeeran Gopal says: “Veerappan did bury precious treasures at several locations inside the Satyamangalam forest but it was neither money nor jewellery…..They were buried in 50-100 locations. At each place, there would be 50 kg rice, sugar, mirchi powder, salt, candle, and matchstick, carefully hidden, so that when a gang member is fleeing, he does not starve. There is no other treasure I know of," In the same way politicians bury so many locations their middlemen criminals, terrorists, naxalites, insurgents, separatists, tainted winner in elections, scam experts etc., so whenever election is coming, their party, candidates and supporters not feel shortage.

Can PM block Sonia Gandhi for taking kickbacks?

The Prime Minister recently suggested that presence of agents in defense deals was unavoidable but their role could be regulated. Scam Events forced him to say like that. Though he is a PM but how he can block Sonia Gandhi taking kickbacks? There was a Quattrocchi in Bofors, Abhishek Verma in War Room Leakage, Natwar Singh in Oil for Food, Sharad Pawar in Wheat import through AWB ltd. and so many other middlemen of scams. Can in India any mighty authority give result of the scams in which politicians are involved?

By Premendra Agrawal

Musharraf's new book cannot be believed

OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts : An 'Ally' With His Own Agenda BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN

Comedy to the rescue

Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts features | Comedy to the rescue: "Want to know what's going on in politics? Forget the news. Armando Iannucci on how comedians are filling the gap where serious debate used to be "

This is an edited extract from the Tate Britain Lecture given by Armando Iannucci last night.

Proper Judgment

Proper Judgment

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Mt 7:1-2). This is part of Jesus' teaching and, by itself, it clearly says not to judge others, because you will receive the same kind of judgement. However, consider the rest of the teaching.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye" (vs 3- 5).

The Hamas Network

OpinionJournal - Extra :: The case for boycotting terrorist media: "With its Al Manar television station launched in 1991, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has pioneered the use of mass media as a weapon. It uses the broadcaster to recruit suicide bombers, raise money for terrorist operations, conduct pre-attack surveillance and incite violence. This fall, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is poised to follow in Hezbollah's footsteps.

Until now, Hamas's Al Aqsa television has been broadcast only within the Gaza Strip. But this month it will begin satellite distribution via the Nilesat satellite, the Palestinian News Agency (Ramattan) reported in August. This would allow Hamas to spread its message of hatred across the Middle East, North Africa and most of Europe. Nilesat, owned by the Egyptian government, and Arabsat, majority-owned by the Saudi government, are the only two satellites still carrying Al Manar despite joint U.S.-European efforts to halt its broadcasts."

Mr. Dubowitz leads the Coalition Against Terrorist Media, a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Mr. Snow, who is writing a book on Hamas media, is manager of research for FDD.

Prof K Swaminathan

SPECIAL STORY :: A Himalayan professor and savant - I

Film and the Christianization of Nigeria

University of Wyoming :: Religion Today Column for Week of Oct. 22-28: Which film center produced more commercial movies in 2005: Hollywood (United States), Bollywood (India), or Nollywood (Nigeria)? If you guessed Hollywood, guess again. America produced only 611 commercial films in 2005. Ok, Bollywood then. Nope. Although India outshone the United States, producing 964 films, they produced less than half the output of Nollywood, which released more than 2000 films. (Hollywood comes out on top when the criteria is gross sales income.)

Abducted at gunpoint

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | First person: I was abducted at gunpoint: Nicola Rayner made a split-second decision to take a taxi. Then the driver thrust a gun in her belly ... and her life was changed for ever

Stammering

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Dylan Jones on the 'utter hell' of growing up with a stutter - and how he finally overcame it: "Stammering has never been a particularly dignified affliction, tied in as it is with foppish dilettantes who wander around Wodehouse novels like accidents waiting to happen. We stammerers are portrayed as crooks, perverts, chinless wonders, maladjusted members of the underclass, or simply figures of fun. It is an affliction that rarely inspires anything but pity, or sarcasm. No one likes to stammer. It has no kudos.

For years I have been what is medically known as a covert stammerer. Having stammered since the age of five, I quickly learned to avoid the various letters and words that I began to find difficult to pronounce. If asked to identify the one thing that has caused me the most irritation in my life, I would have to point, not to a debilitating illness or handicap, but to the consonant that follows ABC."

Dylan Jones is the editor of GQ and the author of Mr Jones' Rules

'Even other Muslims turn and look at me'

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Zaiba Malik wears a niqab for a day and is shocked by the reaction of strangers: Muslim journalist Zaiba Malik had never worn the niqab. But with everyone from Jack Straw to Tessa Jowell weighing in with their views on the veil, she decided to put one on for the day. She was shocked by how it made her feel - and how strongly strangers reacted to it

"I would have thought that one size fits all but it turns out I'm a size 54. I pay my £39 and leave with three pieces of black cloth folded inside a bag.

The next morning I put these three pieces on as I've been shown. First the black robe, or jilbab, which zips up at the front. Then the long rectangular hijab that wraps around my head and is secured with safety pins. Finally the niqab, which is a square of synthetic material with adjustable straps, a slit of about five inches for my eyes and a tiny heart-shaped bit of netting, which I assume is to let some air in."

U.S. has always been a "dangerous nation"

OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts :: Outward Bound : The U.S. has always been a "dangerous nation" on the world stage. BY BRENDAN SIMMS

"Mr. Kagan is much too subtle a writer to make direct comparisons with our own times, but they are ubiquitous in "Dangerous Nation"--hiding, as it were, in plain sight. Thus he speaks of Benjamin Franklin's plans for a "pre-emptive strike" against the French in the 1750s, by expelling them from Quebec before they could overrun the 13 colonies.

the book is also intended for Democrats, who may at first hate it. They will bristle at the breezy triumphalism with which Mr. Kagan chronicles the annexations that completed the union. They will think it no coincidence that Mr. Kagan's 19th-century heroes are mostly Republicans, and they will sharpen their knives for the second volume.

But they may want to think before they strike. As it happens, Democrats have special reason to look forward to the 20th-century sequel, for Mr. Kagan's narrative of American power is, in many ways, the story of their own party. Soon enough, the torch will pass to Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy and, if we think of NATO's belated Balkan intervention, even Bill Clinton. "


Mr. Simms teaches modern European history at the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University. Kagan's book "Dangerous Nation"

Indian grain robbery

NDTV exposes great Indian grain robbery: "Last year India exported a whopping four million tonnes of rice. And the export industry is buzzing with stories of the great rice theft from godowns of the Food Corporation of India scattered across the country. The rice, meant for the poorest of the poor, makes its way to several ports via a closely guarded web of officials, agents and exporters.

Our first stop was North Karnataka's Raichur town and Gopal a big rice broker. His employees are helpful. They say they don't trade in FCI maal but can put us on to those who do. "Veerbhadreshwara Agencies, Bellary. They trade in FCI maal," said one of the employee.

As the NDTV team walk out, they meet Gopal's father Ram Kishan, the big seth. He opens up when told that we have a big export order of 5,000 tonnes. He explains how the FCI deal works. In a conversation recorded on a hidden camera, Ram Kishan, a Raichur rice merchant, said: "You will get it from Gangavathy or Davengare. In Raichur, we don't have such quantities. We can't trade in it, if it is not in large quantities. In Raichur, we don't have that many villages."

It is getting clear that this is a nationwide phenomenon. The next link in the chain is Vijay of Veerbhadreshwara Agencies. He is away in Bangkok so we speak to his brother Vineet at his office in Bellary town. When Vineet hears we need 5000 tonnes or 313 trucks of FCI rice he immediately gets down to business, checking freight charges to Kandla.

Then the bargaining begins. He quotes a price of Rs 1,021 for a quintal, showing us his last deal with a Delhi based rice exporter who has a godown in Kandla. After visiting several markets and rice traders NDTV's team finally reached Gangavathy, which is supposed to be a major hub FCI rice diversion. What was unearthed is a huge network of traders and exporters spread across the country.

As the NDTV investigation went deeper, the extent of the network from Bellary to Hyderabad, to Raichur, to Kandla port in Gujarat became clear. The team then headed to the port of Kandla in Gujarat. At an exporter's godown the team said they want to buy 5000 tonnes of Punjab rice, a non-basmati variety grown only in Punjab and Haryana."

The Arms-Control Illusion

OpinionJournal - Hot Topic :: A short history of nonproliferation failure

Five Best books on political insiders

OpinionJournal - Five Best Behind the Scenes

1. "You're the Boss" by Edward J. Flynn (Viking, 1947).
2. "Ballots and Bandwagons" by Ralph G. Martin (McNally, 1964).

3. "The Advance Man" by Jerry Bruno and Jeff Greenfield (William Morrow, 1971).
4. "Right From the Start" by Gary Hart (Quadrangle, 1973).

5. "Suite 3035" by F. Clifton White and William J. Gill (Arlington House, 1967).

Mr. Murphy has run campaigns for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Jeb Bush. He is now a screenwriter in Hollywood.

How judges threaten direct democracy

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail :: Taking the Initiative

What I saw in North Korea

OpinionJournal - Featured Article :: Great Leadership - ON THE PENINSULA

Ms. Kim, a 2006 Guggenheim fellow, is author of "The Interpreter" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003).

TV might cause autism

TV might cause autism. By Gregg Easterbrook - Slate Magazine: findings from a new Cornell study.

http://www.slate.com/id/2149002/

http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/faculty/profiles/waldman/autpaper.html

http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3793/4705/20155.aspx

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/160/10/1847

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/insidest.html#Intro1

http://www.seattlechildrens.org/home/pdf/early_television_and_attentional_problems.pdf#search=%2522adhd%20television%20christakis%2522

http://www.aap.org/pubed/ZZZGF8VOQ7C.htm?&sub_cat=1

FCI rice worth crores being exported

FCI rice worth crores being exported: "NDTV has exposed a nexus of corruption, revealing how thousands or even lakhs of tonnes of rice are being illegally sourced from Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns and exported. The sting investigation was spread over two states, namely Gujarat and Karnataka.

Unlike PDS diversion, NDTV has traced this scandal to welfare schemes like food for work, particularly those that were begun after 2001. During this period, the NDA government had opened overflowing FCI godowns for programmes like the Sampoorna Gram Rozgar Yojna.

Most of the rice illegally sourced from south India and exported was non-basmati rice, mainly grown in Punjab and Haryana. Seeking to expose the nexus of corruption between FCI officials, agents and exporters, the NDTV investigation picked up the rice trail at Raichur town in north Karnataka.

The trail led the investigation to Veerbhadreshwara Agencies in Bellary, which was found to be trading in FCI rice. The exporter at Veerbhadreshwara Agencies agreed to an order of 5,000 tonnes of FCI rice, also explaining the modus operandi in use to siphon off the rice meant for the poor in villages.

In a conversation recorded on a hidden camera, Ram Kishan, a Raichur rice merchant, said: "You will get it from Gangavathy or Davengare. In Raichur, we don't have such quantities. We can't trade in it, if it is not in large quantities. In Raichur, we don't have that many villages."

"This stuff goes to the villages where work is done and half of it is stolen. You won't get the Andhra rice here. It is available in Mehboobnagar, but the deal is done in Hyderabad. If you give me an hour, I will get you the broker's number in Hyderabad," he added.

As the NDTV investigation went deeper, the extent of the network from Bellary to Hyderabad, to Raichur, to Kandla port in Gujarat (a major centre for export of this FCI rice) became clear. NDTV has exposed a network whose illegal business ran into thousands of crores of rupees. Several gained from rice from the FCI godowns, which was meant for the poor across India."

Religion and rationality

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | I am a Catholic. I'm also sane. But these days people find it hard to accept that religion and rationality can co-exist

· This week Martin read A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts: "An amusingly written account of the triumphs of the Anglosphere." Martin watched every available episode of Scrubs, the US hospital sitcom: "The funniest thing on TV." Martin also used the last of the year's sunshine to run and hike through the Kent countryside.

Muslim leaders 'risking voluntary apartheid' as veil row escalates

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Muslim leaders 'risking voluntary apartheid' as veil row escalates

· Davis weighs in amid fears of issue's 'corrosive effect'
· Minister says teaching assistant should be fired

Universities urged to spy on Muslims

EducationGuardian.co.uk | higher news | Universities urged to spy on Muslims: "Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on "Asian-looking" and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned.

They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists.

The Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centres of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to "collaborating with the 'secret police'". It says there will be "concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (eg Muslims)"."

Deja Vu - WSJ.com

Deja Vu - WSJ.com: Why Don't Americans Like to Vote? Politics Are Only One Reason

Hunger vs. the Arts

Hunger vs. the Arts - WSJ.com: "Today's philanthropists want to fight disease and poverty -- shortchanging operas and museums. How high culture is fighting for its share of the charity dollar."

Five Best War Books

OpinionJournal - Five Best

War Is Hell :: And these are a hell of a quintet of books.

1. "The Irish Guards In the Great War" by Rudyard Kipling (Doubleday, 1923).

2. "Lost Victories" by Erich von Manstein (Regnery, 1958).

3. "Some Desperate Glory" by Edwin Campion Vaughan (Henry Holt, 1981).

4. "Storm of Steel" by Ernst Jünger (1920).

5. "But Not for the Fuehrer" by Helmut Jung, with Mike Nesbitt (AuthorHouse, 2004).

Mr. Cramer is the host of CNBC's "Mad Money" and the markets commentator of TheStreet.com.

Trying Again To Make Books Obsolete

Trying Again To Make Books Obsolete - New York Times: "In 2003, Barnes & Noble shut its e-book store, Palm sold its e-book business to a Web site and most people left the whole idea for dead.

Not everybody, however. Some die-hards at Sony still believe that, properly designed, the e-book has a future. Their solution is the Sony Reader, a small, sleek, portable screen that will be introduced this month in some malls, at Borders bookstores and at sonystyle.com for $350. "

Pamuk is a Nobel winner for our times

Guardian Unlimited Books | Special Reports | Margaret Atwood: Pamuk is a Nobel winner for our times

Related articles
13.10.2006: Maureen Freely: Pamuk receives the Nobel for being a writer, not his politics
13.10.2006: News: Nobel prize for hero of liberal Turkey stokes fears of nationalist backlash
13.10.2006: Leader: Pamuk's noble prize
03.04.2006: Interview with writer Orhan Pamuk
23.01.2006: Turkey draws back from prosecuting outspoken novelist
16.12.2005: Trial of Turkish author adjourned
16.12.2005: Leader: In praise of... Orhan Pamuk
24.04.2004: Orhan Pamuk on the road to rebellion
08.05.2004: Profile: Orhan Pamuk

Culture Vulture
Pamuk: The right choice?

Related reviews
06.08.2006: The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
17.04.2005: Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
29.05.2004: Snow by Orhan Pamuk
15.09.2001: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Read an extract
12.03.2005: Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

Useful links
Orhan Pamuk author page
More about Orhan Pamuk on the Nobel prize site

Mohd Yunus, Grameen Bank win Nobel

Mohd Yunus, Grameen Bank win Nobel: "Bangladeshi Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in advancing economic and social opportunities. The economist and his bank, who will share the prize, were cited for their efforts to help "create economic and social development from below" in their home country.

Yunus used innovative economic programmes such as microcredit lending. "Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the Nobel Committee said in its citation. Yunus has drawn praise for advancing microcredit, which has been credited with helping poor women to advance their lives and pull them out of poverty.

"Economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male," the committee said. Grameen Bank, which was founded by Yunus, provides credit to "the poorest of the poor" in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral, according to its website.

Rules of Engagement

VANITY FAIR : FEATURES : GENERAL: "On November 19, 2005, in Haditha, during Kilo Company's third tour of duty in Iraq, a land mine planted by insurgents exploded beneath a Humvee, killing a 20-year-old Marine. What happened next—the slaughter of 24 Iraqi men, women, and children—was not entirely an aberration. These actions were rooted in the very conduct of the war. As the men of Kilo Company face investigation, the author exposes the political, military, and human realities that now make such carnage routine"

William Langewiesche is Vanity Fair's international correspondent. His next book, Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear-Armed Poor, will be published next year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Before joining V.F. earlier this year, he spent 15 years covering the Middle East and much of the rest of the world for The Atlantic. He has been working in Iraq since 2003.

Sivaji - Rajni songs unveiled (Shankar)

RajinifansDiscussions : Message: Sivaji songs unveiled (Behindwoods.com)

Credible sources revealed that Sivaji has 7 songs to its credit. All being pep songs with energetic beats from Rahman, they are sure to propel the movie's music in the top position for a long time.

Out of the seven songs from Sivaji, we have got news about 5 numbers.

Va ji, Va ji, Sivaji…

This could be the opening song of the movie. Though it was decided
earlier not to have Rajini's entry into the movie with an introductory song, Shankar is contemplating with the thought of reinstating one such song. That could be it.

Unpeyar ennada…

As is the rule in Rajini's movies, we presume that this is a philosophical number joining the likes of other famous songs of the same genre, which are quintessential for his movies.



Boom boom jee boom ba …

This most likely is the duet song with Shreya and Rajini in the lead. If that is true Rajini could be seen shaking his legs with Shreya either in the exotic European locations or simply in our neighbouring Karnataka.

Talla dimi takka dimi pucha..pyun pyun enna rastina..ho ra ho yenna
rastina.. hoo haa..

Didn't decipher a word of it, don't you worry or be concerned about the plight of Tamil lyrics in songs. This song is Japanese and will be shot in Japan when the next schedule commences.



Adaal udan pesadha di.. en salangai ku bhadil solladi..

You might wonder what the old Vanjikottai Valiban song is doing in Sivaji's song list. We assume that inspired by the hits the remix of old songs generate, Shankar has decided to embrace one such song. This song could be a climax song or just like the one in Padayappa where Ramyakrishnan challenges Rajini with her dance moves, but with the lead ladies.

Georgia stands up to Russia

OpinionJournal - Featured Article :: Unprovoked Onslaught - TBILISI DISPATCH BY MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI

Mr. Saakashvili is president of Georgia.

Asia Weighs Risk of Sanctions

Asia Weighs Risk of Sanctions - WSJ.com: North Korea's Neighbors Fear Pressure May Breed Regional Chaos

Web Browsing Create a Unique 'Clickprint'

Does Your Web Browsing Create a Unique 'Clickprint'? - Knowledge@Wharton: "A different type of anonymous Internet profiling is highlighted by Wharton operations and information management professor Balaji Padmanabhan in a working paper -- co-authored with Catherine Yang, a professor at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis -- titled, "Clickprints on the Web: Are There Signatures in Web Browsing Data?""

Right to wear the veil - liberal anti-Islam agenda?

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Sorry, but we can't just pick and choose what to tolerate: The furore over the right to wear the veil has exposed the double standards of the liberal anti-Islam agenda

David Edgar is a playwright and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Accept North Korea into the nuclear club or bomb it now

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Accept North Korea into the nuclear club or bomb it now: "So what now? North Korea is the fourth, possibly fifth, state to have rejected the 1970 non-proliferation treaty and proceeded towards a nuclear arsenal. The others are India, Pakistan, Israel and perhaps Iran. That makes five states in the old nuclear club (America, Russia, Britain, France and China) and five in the new one. The appropriate relationship, diplomatic, military and moral, between the two clubs is now a consuming world obsession.

There is no easy answer. If strategically secure countries such as Britain and France want nuclear missiles as an ultimate line of defence, why not Iran and North Korea? Pakistan is an unstable dictatorship that has sold nuclear technology and harbours terrorists. Yet it is embraced by the west. So is India, which is about to enjoy American nuclear cooperation. Given a nuclear Israel, not just Iran but conceivably Turkey and Egypt are pondering a bomb. Japan may similarly react to the North Korean test.

Britain's bomb did not deter Argentina from invading the Falklands, nor was America's massive arsenal a deterrent in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia or Iraq. Possessing such bombs is largely a matter of status. It is also reasonable to wonder whether the present crisis might have been avoided had George Bush not wrecked President Clinton's mild engagement policy towards North Korea and opted instead for belligerence and rhetoric.

Ask Castro, Gadafy, Saddam and the ayatollahs. The North Koreans are poor beyond the power of economic squeeze. The proposal that China devastates the country by cutting its power would merely generate starvation and mass migration. Sanctions are cowards' wars, cruel and counterproductive. In this case they are anyway too late.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, estimates that some 40 countries are on the brink of being able to make nuclear bombs.

Sophisticated air power, useless in counter-insurgency, has a role in the "coercive diplomacy" of non-proliferation. Israel used it effectively against Iraq's nuclear plant in 1981 and the US repeated the exercise with Operation Desert Fox in 1998 (though Bush and Blair later refused to believe it had worked). If Kim is the unstable menace he appears, his bomb-making capacity and missile sites should be removed at once with Tomahawk missiles. Fewer people would die that way than with any other pre-emptive response."

UN divided over severity of nuclear sanctions

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UN divided over severity of nuclear sanctions: "One of the toughest sanctions would allow the UN to stop any North Korean ship on the high seas to search for nuclear technology, a potential flashpoint. Mark Fitzpatrick, a specialist in proliferation at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned of the dangers. "The first time a North Korean ship refuses to stop there could be an incident and that could spiral," he said.

Another proposal is for a ban on travel and luxury goods, both targeted at Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, his family and others in the regime. Other sanctions under discussion are to put a squeeze on its overseas finances and to extend a ban on missile technology, imposed in July, to include other military hardware and training. Members unanimously rejected broad sanctions that would hurt the already impoverished population.

Hideyuki Ban, co-director of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre, did not believe him. He said Japan's plutonium stockpile, thought to total more than 43 tonnes, could be diverted from civilian energy use to build nuclear weapons "in a matter of months"."

Democrats reduce North Korea to political soundbites

OpinionJournal - Featured Article :: Poisoning the Water's Edge: "Are they seriously interested in bringing about North Korea's internal collapse? It would be good to see the kind of rhetorical energy the Democrats invested in Darfur go into publicizing the plight of North Korean refugees. Would they like to see the U.N. contribute positively to managing the crisis? Then send a message of solidarity to our adversaries by confirming as U.N. ambassador John Bolton, one of the world's leading experts on proliferation.

None of these steps alone is going to resolve a crisis in which U.S. options are limited or problematic. But it would help if just once public discourse on the subject did not instantly degrade into an exercise in cynical political point-scoring. Fat chance."

So This Is Journalism

OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts: Bob Woodward takes a novel approach in his new book on the Bush administration.

The story is classic Bob Woodward: fly-on-the-wall descriptions of super-secret discussions, details missed by every other reporter, a juicy scoop. But the account leaves lingering questions: Did Prince Bandar really get the Chinese to release the hostages? Was that the whole story? How does Mr. Woodward "know" all this? Could it be that Prince Bandar himself is making the claim? Your guess is as good as mine. Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us.

"State of Denial" is replete with similar Woodwardian reporting: secret meetings recounted in vivid detail, complete with lengthy, verbatim quotations of what key players said to each other as the story unfolded. Once again, it all reads as if Bob Woodward was lurking in the background as the meetings happened, taking exceptionally detailed notes. But of course he was not there. We learn not only what the president and all his men said but also what unspoken thoughts raced through their minds. But Mr. Woodward wasn't inside their heads either, it is safe to say.

Mr. Woodward attempts to write like a novelist, not a journalist: His books are scenic and dramatic and dialogue-driven, more sensationalism than history.

Mr. Karl is senior national security correspondent for ABC News.

Pardon subject to judicial review: SC

Pardon subject to judicial review: SC: "It also ruled that the power of pardon shouldn't just benefit the convict who is pardoned. The effect of the pardon on the family of victims and society as a whole should also be kept in mind.

However, religious and political considerations should not come into play while considering remission of sentences. Wednesday's strong statement by the SC can be read as a message on granting clemency to Mohd Afzal, who has been sentenced to death in the Parliament attack case.

President APJ Abdul Kalam is currently considering Afzal's clemency plea. The SC made the observation while setting aside the remission of sentence granted by former Andhra Pradesh Governor Sushil Kr Shinde to a Congress leader.

The leader was convicted for 10 years in a murder case involving TDP workers but was pardoned after serving only five years in jail.

Political reactions to the apex court's ruling have begun. TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu has called for the resignations of Chief Minister Y S R Reddy and Sushil Kumar Shinde, who is presenty the Minister for Power."

Kalam objected to Barak deal

Kalam objected to Barak deal: "NDTV has learnt that a letter written by President APJ Abdul Kalam in 1999 contradicts claims that he backed the Barak missile deal. Former defense minister George Fernandes, who has been named in an FIR in the Barak missile deal, has claimed that Kalam backed the pact.

But on the contrary, letters written by Kalam, who was the then DRDO chief, show he objected to India buying the Barak missile system. n a related development, the Naval officer in-charge of checking out the Barak missiles system says he had rejected it.

In fact, Vice Admiral (Retd) Madanjit Singh, who was the then Chief of Western Naval Command, said his objections were looked upon as dissent. "Initially during the test firing there were some failures and as a result of that I had raised objections about the Barak missile which were subsequently dealt with.

"The missile was suited to the Israeli system not Indian system. Israeli ships don't stay out at sea for long periods of time whereas Indian Navy ships do," he maintained. But the former Defence Minister continues to be defiant and has once again rejected the charges against him.

The contract for seven Barak Anti-Missile Defence (AMD) Systems and 200 missiles was signed in October 2000 with the Israeli firm."

John Grisham's nonfiction is as simpleminded as his fiction

OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts :: The Page-Turner as Polemic: "ohn Grisham, in his first nonfiction book, writes about the 1987 trial and sentencing to death of Ron Williamson for the murder and rape five years earlier of 21-year-old Debbie Carter. Mr. Williamson's appellate lawyer succeeded in getting his conviction overturned based on claims that his first trial lawyer was inadequate. While preparations for a new trial were being made in 1997, newly available DNA testing established that neither Mr. Williamson nor his friend and co-defendant, Dennis Fritz, was the killer.

In Mr. Grisham's novels, the characters usually divide into two groups: the good guys caught up in evil conspiracies and the villains who concoct them. "The Innocent Man" is no different. Thanks to his abundant storytelling skills, the author delivers an account that is as vivid as the Grisham fictional fare sold at airport kiosks--but it is also, alas, just as oversimplified as his novels, and it distorts the justice system in the same way. Make no mistake, "The Innocent Man"--with its blunt subtitle ("Murder and Injustice in a Small Town") and its author's long-professed zeal to attack capital punishment--is not simply a legal thriller drawn from real life. It is a polemic."

Dynamic Capitalism

OpinionJournal - Featured Article :: Entrepreneurship is lucrative--and just.: "There are two economic systems in the West. Several nations--including the U.S., Canada and the U.K.--have a private-ownership system marked by great openness to the implementation of new commercial ideas coming from entrepreneurs, and by a pluralism of views among the financiers who select the ideas to nurture by providing the capital and incentives necessary for their development. Although much innovation comes from established companies, as in pharmaceuticals, much comes from start-ups, particularly the most novel innovations. This is free enterprise, a k a capitalism.

The other system--in Western Continental Europe--though also based on private ownership, has been modified by the introduction of institutions aimed at protecting the interests of "stakeholders" and "social partners." The system's institutions include big employer confederations, big unions and monopolistic banks. Since World War II, a great deal of liberalization has taken place. But new corporatist institutions have sprung up: Co-determination (cogestion, or Mitbestimmung) has brought "worker councils" (Betriebsrat); and in Germany, a union representative sits on the investment committee of corporations. The system operates to discourage changes such as relocations and the entry of new firms, and its performance depends on established companies in cooperation with local and national banks. What it lacks in flexibility it tries to compensate for with technological sophistication. So different is this system that it has its own name: the "social market economy" in Germany, "social democracy" in France and "concertazione" in Italy."

Mr. Phelps, the McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia, was yesterday awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for economics.

Jolie-Pitt Photog All Choked Up - Oct 09, 2006 - E! Online News

Jolie-Pitt Photog All Choked Up - Oct 09, 2006 - E! Online News: "Video footage of the dustup, which was caught on tape by an Indian television station, shows a bodyguard grasping a camera-wielding paparazzo by the throat before forcibly shoving him away from the couple.

The hapless shutterbug, who was identified as Sam Relph of Barcroft Media, told the Hindustan Times that the security guard threatened his life.

'He said if I took his pictures he would kill me,' the paper quoted Relph as saying. 'I couldn't breathe. He had his fingers on my windpipe and he knew what he was doing.'"

Mau Mau veterans to sue Britain over torture and illegal killings in Kenya

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Mau Mau veterans to sue Britain over torture and illegal killings in Kenya

· Action alleges human rights abuses in 1950s
· Case runs risk of reviving internal divisions

Take off the veil, says Straw - to immediate anger from Muslims

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Take off the veil, says Straw - to immediate anger from Muslims: Cabinet minister opens debate with claim that veil is a symbol of separation

Celebrities who adopt from abroad

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Emine Saner on celebrities who adopt from abroad: "Joan Crawford, Mia Farrow, Angelina Jolie. And now, it seems, Madonna. A long list of celebrities have chosen to adopt children from abroad. But why do they go so far - and can it be right, when there are thousands of children in this country in need of a loving home? Emine Saner reports"

Supermarkets accused over organic foods

Environment Unlimited | Food | Pressure to ease standards, say experts: "Supermarkets are putting pressure on organic food watchdogs to lower standards so they can fully exploit a billion-pound industry which is growing by 30% a year, according to leading figures in the movement.

Fears that organic farming is falling victim to commercial pressures to abandon key principles have led to disputes in the Soil Association, the gold standard of the groups that certify "green" products."

Callous Indian Airport Employee

Airport officer stops ‘dangerous’ autistic boy : HindustanTimes.com: "For a country with an estimated 1.7 million autistic people, we are probably the most insensitive bunch of people. On Thursday, eleven-year-old Ahed was denied entry into the airport. Reason: he is autistic.

Ahed and his parents, Tamil actor Prithviraj and his wife Beena, were stopped at the security gate of the Bangalore airport. CISF inspector Bhavesh Kumar told them that Ahed could not board the Air Deccan flight to Chennai because he looked different.

Furious at this insinuation, Prithviraj asked the officer to explain the rules under which he was stopping his son. "The officer merely replied that there are rules, but could not quote any. He kept saying my son could be a threat to other passengers," Prithviraj told the Hindustan Times.

"I started filming the argument and he kept blocking the camera lens. We had to argue for 30 minutes before the officer relented," Prithivraj said.
While his parents fought back vehemently, little Ahed kissed his mother repeatedly. Beena interpreted it as his way of saying, "It is all right. Don't worry."

This is not the first time Prithviraj has had to deal with such insensitive remarks about his son. An official at the Delhi airport once asked Prithviraj if his son was mad and the actor shot back: "You seem to be mad."

"We have never encountered such problems in Europe or other Asian countries," recalled Ahed's mother Bheena who runs a school for autistic children.

So has Prithviraj ever tried shoving a medical certificate at such ignorant officials? The actor said he once tried to get an autism certificate for his son from a medical authority in Delhi. "But autism has not been classified as a disability under the Disability Act. The authorities asked me if I could accept a certificate that labeled him mentally retarded," Prithviraj said.

The CISF, however, defended its official. And while doing so, its spokesman only betrayed his level of ignorance. He said the CISF officer was only following rules since international civil aviation rules do not permit a “mentally retarded person abroad an aircraft”.

New Hot Spot For Tech Firms Is the Old One

New Hot Spot For Tech Firms Is the Old One - WSJ.com: Start-ups are moving back to Silicon Valley, despite predictions that the Web would make operating elsewhere easier.

Time Waster

Time Waster - WSJ.com: Web Site Lets Users Create Their Own Polls -- And Any Answer Goes
October 4, 2006

With midterm elections just around the corner, countless man-hours are being spent on public-opinion polls. But of all the questions put to the body politic these days, one you won't likely hear is, "Who is our scariest diet guru?"

At Grupthink.com, a growing number of Web surfers are exploring the diet-guru terrors buried in the American psyche and more.

Reservation in premier institutions

The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Reservation in premier institutions: While reservation is a political hot button, it is about societal endurance, ethics, and value issues. If it is a pure political solution then, unfortunately, premier institutions will probably lose the battle.

Georgia and Russia

Georgia and Russia: with you, without you Donald Rayfield - openDemocracy: Wine and roses, spies and sanctions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia...Tbilisi's long, intimate and turbulent relationship with Moscow has gone badly wrong. Donald Rayfield explains how and why.

'Pope protesters' hijack airliner

BBC NEWS | Europe | 'Pope protesters' hijack airliner

Shashi Tharoor pulls out of UN race

Shashi Tharoor pulls out of UN race: "India's nominee Shashi Tharoor has pulled out of the race for the post of the next UN Secretary General. The decision came after the South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon emerged a clear winner in the fourth straw polls.

"It is quite clear that from today's straw poll that Minister Ban Ki-Moon is the candidate that the Security Council will recommend to the General Assembly," said Chinese Ambassador to the UN Wang Guangya. With that statement outside the UN Security Council on Monday evening, Shashi Tharoor’s hopes to become the next UN Secretary General were dashed.

Under the UN's system for electing its secretary general, Monday’s coloured-card straw poll was considered the make or break moment. It was an overwhelming poll in favour of the South Korean Foreign Minister. 14 of the security council’s 15 members gave their encouragement for Mr Ban, and only 1 country abstained.

Shashi Tharoor only managed 10 encouragements, and 3 against. but he most importantly received a discouragement from a permanent member, effectively a veto. Although its unclear who the veto came from for Mr Tharoor, sources in the UN have speculated it was from the US.

Tension between the UN and the USA has been on the rise with major differences over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the crisis in Lebanon recently, as well as the on going confrontation with Iran. The US, which had so far been silent on who it would support in the race for Secretary General, came out in open support of Ban after the final straw poll.

"We have a lot of respect for Foreign Minister Ban. We know him well from his service in Washington and here in New York and think very highly of him professionally and personally," said John Bolton, US Representative to the United Nations.

There were a total of six candidates in Monday's poll. All apart from Ban received at least one discouragement from a permanent member of the Security Council. The Security Council is expected to move to a formal vote in Mr Ban’s favour next week. Kofi Annan, will complete his second five-year term at the end of the year and its widely considered Asia's turn to hold the post of secretary general.

Seven months of campaigning seem to have helped Ban Ki Moon. His popularity and key role in the six party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme outweighed both Tharoor's campaign as well as allegations that South Korea was buying influence on the UNSC.

Now unless a new candidate enters the race this week, it is almost certain that Ban Ki Moon will be the next UN Secretary General."

Dengue under control, says Ramadoss

Dengue under control, says Ramadoss - NDTV.com - News on Dengue under control, says Ramadoss: "Union Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss has asked people not to panic even as more dengue cases were reported from the capital and northern India.

The Health Minister said 497 people in all have been officially diagnosed with dengue and there have been 12 deaths but the situation is under control. Alarmed by the increase in dengue cases, Ramadoss has called for a meeting of the affected states on October 5.

"I am meeting the Health Ministers of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on Thursday. We will discuss steps for preventing its spread," he told reporters. The minister also expressed concern at why premier hospital AIIMS had become such a hotspot for dengue.

Many resident doctors had fallen ill and one doctor has also died from dengue at the hospital. AIIMS doctors are now saying that mosquitoes could have become resistant to chemical sprays and they will conduct research to determine it.

They said they have been spraying chemicals the past months so there is no other reason for the outbreak in AIIMS.

Earlier, on Tuesday morning Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit held an emergency cabinet meeting, which was attended by senior officials of the government. The Delhi government has decided that it will not declare the dengue as an epidemic for the time being as the disease had claimed 14 lives till now.

Schools have been asked to implement the winter uniforms now instead of in November. While this doesn't necessarily mean jerseys and jackets, it could include long sleeved shirts and trousers. All ministers have been given the duty of monitoring and supervising the cleanliness drive in their respective areas.

A special drive will also be carried out in Delhi government hospitals to provide blood platelets and beds and wards for dengue patients. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has cancelled leave of its employees and is trying to procure more fogging machines from other government departments. At the moment, the MCD has 375 small and 12 big fogging machines.

Dengue now appears to be spreading to other parts of north India. In Haryana, the number of dengue cases is 19, eight people have tested positive in Panchkula and Kurukshetra and 11 cases have been confirmed in Gurgaon.

One person has died in Pune's KEM hospital due to dengue. KEM has treated about 70 patients in the past three months but doctors are not calling the situation serious. They have confirmed that one person died last week because of the disease.

In Rajasthan the government has officially confirmed that seven people have died due to Dengue. Another 193 confirmed cases have been reported from across the state in the past two months.

Besides dengue 20 people have died due to malaria in the state in the past two months and over 2000 are now suffering from malaria in the state. Reports coming in from Uttar Pradesh say 70 cases of dengue have been reported from 68 districts of the states.

State capital Lucknow reported 22 cases while Noida has 18 cases. So far four people have died due to dengue in the state in past 10 weeks. Separately, an NDTV undercover reporter who toured the special dengue ward at AIIMS reveals the hospital is not equipped to deal with a steady stream of patients.

At AIIMS, dengue patients were found applying saline drips to other patients belying government claims that extra doctors were deployed to deal with the situation. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences or AIIMS is considered India's top medical facility.

Pictures shot by hidden camera at the hospital show patients accommodated in corridors and tents after the ward ran short of beds in the wake of dengue outbreak. The NDTV team at the hospital reports, "not a doctor or nurse could be seen at the ward and patients complained no one was willing to listen to them".

A patient suspected to be ill with the disease said, he was refused admission to AIIMS - the hospital saying it cannot take any more patients. On Monday, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi issued notices to a dozen hospitals in the capital for allowing mosquitoes breed on their premises.

The Delhi health department has deployed an additional 2,400 officials to contain the outbreak. It also plans to launch an intensive mass awareness drive through advertisements in newspapers about the disease. They also want to take necessary preventive measures such as keeping coolers clean and not accumulating water in and around residential and office complexes. (With PTI inputs)"

Couples Who Run the House for Others

Couples Who Run the House for Others - New York Times: "THEY seem like a quintessential 1950’s couple. She keeps the house stocked and clean, makes sure that dinner is ready and the laundry pressed and put away. He maintains the lawn and cars, and troubleshoots any electrical or other repairs. Together, they create a household budget, hire a housekeeper or others as needed and manage any continuing maintenance or remodeling.

This well-oiled team maintains the home to near perfection — but it is not the couple’s home. Sometimes they can’t even tell you whom they work for, because of restrictive legal documents they have signed. Such is the life of domestic husband-and-wife teams who, for privacy reasons, will discuss little about their jobs — not to protect their privacy, but that of their multimillionaire employers.

Domestic couples are hired as a “unit” to maintain their employers’ home, compound or estate. The work can range from in-home care for a wealthy elderly couple to managing a compound that is closer in scale to a hotel, with manicured grounds, daily maintenance reviews and a flurry of important guests coming and going. Their typical combined salary is $50,000 to $100,000 or more a year, not counting benefits that often include housing, health insurance and the use of a car. But the couple are usually on call around the clock."

Netflix offers cash for good suggestions

Netflix offers cash for good suggestions - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "Netflix, a popular online movie rental service, is planning to award $1 million to the first person who can improve the accuracy of movie recommendations based on personal preferences.

To win the prize, a contestant will have to devise a system that is more accurate than the company's current recommendation system by at least 10 percent. And to improve the quality of research, Netflix is making available to the public 100 million of its customers' movie ratings, a database the company says is the largest of its kind ever released.

Recommendation systems, also known as collaborative filtering systems, try to predict whether a customer will like a movie, book or piece of music by comparing past preferences to those of other people with similar tastes. Such systems will look at, say, the last 10 books, movies or songs a customer has rated highly and try to extrapolate an 11th."

Web-Video Spots Present Dilemma For Advertisers

Web-Video Spots Present Dilemma For Advertisers - WSJ.com: ""Over time, users might choose to go to sites which don't have these kinds of ads," says Gokul Rajaram, a director of product management at Google. The search giant decided to eschew pre-rolls after discussions with advertisers and online publishers about the potential for pre-roll ads to drive viewers elsewhere, he says. Google doesn't yet sell video ads on Google Video, but it has tested "post-roll" spots that run at the end of a video."

Free-hug man speaks out

Free-hug man speaks out - Music - Entertainment - smh.com.au

My Chomsky - News - The Phoenix

My Chomsky - News - The Phoenix: "Whether there is a grain (or a bushel) of truth in these criticisms, you’ll have to decide for yourself. I’m too much of a partisan to pronounce. But even if you decide to toss out 25 percent or 50 percent or 75 percent of Chomsky’s charges against American foreign policy, that still leaves quite a tidy pile of unnecessary suffering that the United States is responsible for. And it’s your country."