tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42318185894898373712024-03-05T14:09:11.631+08:00Oxymanus ChroniclesLIFE AS IT COMES AND GOESOxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.comBlogger506125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-35089399578687701152011-12-13T12:17:00.000+08:002011-12-13T12:27:30.187+08:00Israel Acts to Curb Illegal Immigration From Africa - An ExcerptIsrael Acts to Curb Illegal Immigration From Africa<br /><br />By ETHAN BRONNER - Published: December 11, 2011 (an excerpt)<br /><br />JERUSALEM — The Israeli government on Sunday announced plans to spend $160 million on efforts to stem the growing number of Africans who enter the country illegally, seeking jobs and political asylum. The money will go toward work on an Egyptian border fence that is already under construction, an expansion of detention centers and increased policing of companies that hire undocumented workers.<br />About 50,000 Africans have moved to Israel in the last six years.<br />“If need be, we will close businesses so that the enterprise known as the State of Israel does not close,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after a cabinet meeting that focused on the issue.<br /><br />Over the past six years, about 50,000 Africans, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have trekked across the Sinai into Israel, some of them working in hotels and on construction sites, others living in rundown urban neighborhoods, unable to find work and relying on refugee agencies.<br /><br />All well-off countries face the challenge of how to handle poor foreign migrants and how much credence to give their accounts of political persecution. But the situation in Israel is complicated by Jewish history and has led to a national debate. On the one hand, this is a small country that wishes to maintain a strong Jewish majority. On the other, the Jews’ past of eviction and persecution makes some here argue that Israel should have special sensitivity for those fleeing prejudice and conflict.<br /><br />Mr. Netanyahu said that the overwhelming number of Africans who slip into Israel are not political refugees, but are looking to improve their economic status. He said they pose difficulties for the people they settle among. Poorer Israelis, in particular, resent the Africans’ arrival and compete with them for jobs.<br /><br />“We hear the outcry coming from Israel’s cities,” he said. “We will continue to care for refugees, but they make up a minimal part of the human wave. Entire populations are starting to move, and if we don’t act to stop this we will be flooded.”<br /><br />Refugee advocacy groups in Israel contend that Mr. Netanyahu is wrong, that the majority of those who arrive here are fleeing civil wars or political persecution.<br /><br />Mr. Netanyahu plans to visit several African countries early next year and said he would raise the issue of repatriating the refugees.<br /><br />The influx of Africans began in 2005 after the Egyptian police attacked Sudanese refugees who were camped out in Cairo and demanded asylum. More than 20 people were killed, and word spread that Israel would provide them a better welcome and more job opportunities.<br /><br />The Israeli government hopes that the fence being built along the Egyptian border will keep out most infiltrators. The demands for a fence have grown in the past year with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the increase in tensions with Cairo that followed his ouster.<br /><br />Three months ago, demonstrators in Cairo ransacked part of the Israeli Embassy, leading the Israeli government to airlift its diplomatic personnel from Egypt. In August, infiltrators from the Sinai killed eight Israelis near the popular Red Sea resort of Eilat; in fighting afterward, Israeli troops killed five Egyptian security personnel.<br /><br />But both governments say they wish to maintain ties, and Israel said it would send a new ambassador to Cairo on Monday. No new permanent home for the Israeli Embassy in Cairo has been found.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-14394119836739144142011-12-13T11:53:00.002+08:002011-12-13T12:16:17.593+08:00The Art of Listening By HENNING MANKELL - An Excerpt<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT6qbwvyVt2xThk_xMvuEqc3NgiOaG462tn6tno-tP42ipCyjS8k5_i7-B8vjgRM5t0W124sLIcXlDzqOoJn2E8m76tJ9H9I2ZvSNDB8B7RGK7A6ABiEclXbpCnKqgXLgi47CgGDOwa7U/s1600/MANKELL-articleLarge.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT6qbwvyVt2xThk_xMvuEqc3NgiOaG462tn6tno-tP42ipCyjS8k5_i7-B8vjgRM5t0W124sLIcXlDzqOoJn2E8m76tJ9H9I2ZvSNDB8B7RGK7A6ABiEclXbpCnKqgXLgi47CgGDOwa7U/s320/MANKELL-articleLarge.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5685461948500016450" /></a><br />The Art of Listening<br />By HENNING MANKELL (An Excerpt from NY Times)<br />Published: December 10, 2011<br />Maputo, Mozambique<br />I CAME to Africa with one purpose: I wanted to see the world outside the perspective of European egocentricity. I could have chosen Asia or South America. I ended up in Africa because the plane ticket there was cheapest.<br />I came and I stayed. For nearly 25 years I’ve lived off and on in Mozambique. Time has passed, and I’m no longer young; in fact, I’m approaching old age. But my motive for living this straddled existence, with one foot in African sand and the other in European snow, in the melancholy region of Norrland in Sweden where I grew up, has to do with wanting to see clearly, to understand.<br />The simplest way to explain what I’ve learned from my life in Africa is through a parable about why human beings have two ears but only one tongue. Why is this? Probably so that we have to listen twice as much as we speak.<br />In Africa listening is a guiding principle. It’s a principle that’s been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else. From my own experience, I’ve noticed how much faster I have to answer a question during a TV interview than I did 10, maybe even 5, years ago. It’s as if we have completely lost the ability to listen. We talk and talk, and we end up frightened by silence, the refuge of those who are at a loss for an answer.<br />I’m old enough to remember when South American literature emerged in popular consciousness and changed forever our view of the human condition and what it means to be human. Now, I think it’s Africa’s turn.<br /><br />Everywhere, people on the African continent write and tell stories. Soon, African literature seems likely to burst onto the world scene — much as South American literature did some years ago when Gabriel García Márquez and others led a tumultuous and highly emotional revolt against ingrained truth. Soon an African literary outpouring will offer a new perspective on the human condition. The Mozambican author Mia Couto has, for example, created an African magic realism that mixes written language with the great oral traditions of Africa.<br />If we are capable of listening, we’re going to discover that many African narratives have completely different structures than we’re used to. I over-simplify, of course. Yet everybody knows that there is truth in what I’m saying: Western literature is normally linear; it proceeds from beginning to end without major digressions in space or time.<br />That’s not the case in Africa. Here, instead of linear narrative, there is unrestrained and exuberant storytelling that skips back and forth in time and blends together past and present. Someone who may have died long ago can intervene without any fuss in a conversation between two people who are very much alive. Just as an example.<br />The nomads who still inhabit the Kalahari Desert are said to tell one another stories on their daylong wanderings, during which they search for edible roots and animals to hunt. Often they have more than one story going at the same time. Sometimes they have three or four stories running in parallel. But before they return to the spot where they will spend the night, they manage either to intertwine the stories or split them apart for good, giving each its own ending.<br />A number of years ago I sat down on a stone bench outside the Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique, where I work as an artistic consultant. It was a hot day, and we were taking a break from rehearsals so we fled outside, hoping that a cool breeze would drift past. The theater’s air-conditioning system had long since stopped functioning. It must have been over 100 degrees inside while we were working.<br />Two old African men were sitting on that bench, but there was room for me, too. In Africa people share more than just water in a brotherly or sisterly fashion. Even when it comes to shade, people are generous.<br />I heard the two men talking about a third old man who had recently died. One of them said, “I was visiting him at his home. He started to tell me an amazing story about something that had happened to him when he was young. But it was a long story. Night came, and we decided that I should come back the next day to hear the rest. But when I arrived, he was dead.”<br />The man fell silent. I decided not to leave that bench until I heard how the other man would respond to what he’d heard. I had an instinctive feeling that it would prove to be important.<br />Finally he, too, spoke.<br />“That’s not a good way to die — before you’ve told the end of your story.”<br />It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours.<br />Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.<br />So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue.<br />Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe.<br />Who knows? Maybe someone is out there, willing to listen ...<br />Henning Mankell is the author of many books, including the Wallander novels. This article was translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally from the Swedish.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-31603220208547439882011-12-13T11:31:00.004+08:002011-12-13T11:43:20.784+08:00Excerpt From The New York Times – The Opinion Pages Are All Bloggers Journalists?<span style="font-weight:bold;">Excerpt From The New York Times – The Opinion Pages <br /> Are All Bloggers Journalists?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Introduction – <br /></span>A federal judge in Oregon ruled that Crystal Cox, a blogger who was sued for defamation after she accused the founder of an investment group of acting illegally and unethically, cannot claim protections afforded to journalists under state shield laws. In his ruling, the judge noted that Ms. Cox was not affiliated with a “newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”<br />What are the implications of this ruling for bloggers and journalists? How should judges decide who is protected and who isn’t?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Problem With Pre-Internet Laws</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Kelli L. Sager is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. She represents newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, authors, Internet companies and other publishers.</span><br /><br />The unstated questions that have fueled much of the discussion about bloggers are two-fold: whether bloggers have the same constitutional rights as other authors or publishers, and whether bloggers should be afforded certain statutory protections that apply to mainstream media, such as retraction statutes and reporters’ shield laws.<br />It's hard to imagine excluding bloggers from the protections that shield laws provide.<br />The first question is easy to answer: the rights of free speech and press under the First Amendment does not and cannot depend on the medium through which information is exchanged. Whether the expression is conveyed by a lonely pamphleteer or the world’s most sophisticated communications company, First Amendment protections apply. The notion that bloggers have some lower standard of protection is wholly inconsistent with what the United States Supreme Court has recognized as a necessary marketplace of ideas, where one’s ability to communicate freely is not dependent on access to a printing press or broadcast equipment.<br />The second question is more complex, because it depends in part on the language in a particular statute, and the purpose for which it was enacted. Retraction statutes, for example, typically are intended to provide needed “breathing space” for the exercise of free speech, recognizing that sometimes mistakes will be made. Such statutes also provide an incentive for the timely correction of inaccuracies -- a purpose that benefits the subject of the story as well as the publisher. So why wouldn’t retraction laws apply to bloggers, who can – and often do -- correct a misstatement almost instantaneously? Courts have had little difficulty finding that retraction statutes apply to Web sites; the same rationale includes bloggers.<br />A similar analysis applies to shield laws, which protect journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources and other information. Because most laws were written before the Internet existed, they often refer to then-existing media -- newspapers, magazines and the like -- or simply to “journalists,” without defining who is a journalist.<br />More than five years ago, a California appeals court rejected the argument that the state’s shield law does not cover web publishers. The court wisely declined the invitation to evaluate whether web publishers are “legitimate journalists,” recognizing that doing so is a dangerous step for any branch of the government to undertake. Instead, the court focused on whether the website in question was actively engaged in the gathering and dissemination of information to the public.<br /><br />Given the many important stories originating from bloggers, it is hard to imagine a rationale for the wholesale exclusion of those writers from the protections that shield laws provide, whether they are called “journalists” or not.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Rethink Shield Laws</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Stuart Benjamin is the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law at Duke University Law School and the co-author of "Telecommunications Law and Policy."</span><br /><br />The really interesting question is whether blogging should change the legal regime applicable to journalism. This question arises most directly with respect to journalist shield laws and a possible reporter’s privilege. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia have adopted statutes giving journalists some protection against subpoenas, and in each case the question arises of exactly who is covered.<br />The costs and benefits of the protections for false statements seem to have increased in the blogging era.<br />But I want to raise the less obvious question of the impact of blogging on the desirability of the existing protections against libel and defamation.<br />Beginning with New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the Supreme Court crafted First Amendment protections for false statements of fact on matters of public concern -- requiring “actual malice” if the statement is about a public figure and negligence for a private figure. The Supreme Court opinions laying out these standards do not limit these protections to journalists, or to media more generally.<br />The opinion a few days ago in Obsidian Finance Group v. Cox mistakenly treats references in some cases to the media as a limitation of the protection to media defendants. But the mistake was in some ways understandable.<br />In the 1960s and 70s, when the Supreme Court laid out free speech limits on libel and defamation, the obvious potential sources of false statements that could seriously harm one’s reputation (and thus be worth suing for libel or defamation) were large organizations like newspapers, magazines and broadcasters. Do the freedoms extolled in the Supreme Court opinions have the same resonance when everyone and his brother can publish false information to the world at the push of a button? I’m not sure. Both the costs and benefits of the protections for false statements seem to have increased in the blogging era, and it is not obvious to me which have increased more.<br />And note that the United States is an outlier in the level of constitutional protections it provides to libel and defamation defendants. In the almost 50 years since New York Times v. Sullivan, many other countries have considered a similar regime, and not one has adopted it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">According to the Law</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Kyu Ho Youm, the Jonathan Marshall First Amendment Chair at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, is the author of “International and Comparative Law on the Journalist’s Privilege: The Randal Case as a Lesson for the American Press.” He is on Twitter as @MarshallYoum.<br /><br /></span>Judge Hernandez ruled correctly that Crystal Cox, the self-proclaimed “investigative blogger,” was not a journalist, so she was not privileged to protect her source. But his textual interpretation of the Oregon shield law shows that the pre-Internet law needs updating. As the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated recently, in an era of changing technology and society, “the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.”<br />Judges will continue with their traditional journalist-oriented approach unless their state laws become more ambiguous.<br />The federal court ruling reinforces the judicial reluctance to read bloggers and other journalistic outsiders (“outliers”?) into state shield law. Judges are more likely to continue with their traditional journalist-oriented approach to source protection unless their state laws are ambiguous enough to allow them creative interpretations.<br />Yet I wish that the still evolving rights for bloggers had been more searchingly examined by Judge Hernandez, instead of focusing on “media person” and “medium of communication” under the Oregon law. Not every blogger can be a journalist entitled to the source protection. And some bloggers deserve protection if their work is similar to that of mainstream media professionals.<br />In deciding whether a blogger can claim the journalistic privilege, as journalism scholar Jason Shepard of California State University-Fullerton suggested, judges should scrutinize:<br />1.) whether the blogger’s stated purpose centered on news-gathering and dissemination; <br />2.) whether news-gathering and editorial decision-making processes were regularly employed; and <br />3.) whether the end product of the blogger’s work was sufficiently important within the context of public interest.<br />Otherwise, the privilege would be too broad to serve worthy bloggers in a meaningful way.<br />Significantly, one of the congressional shield law proposals in the mid-2000s featured some, if not all, of the functional journalistic criteria for privileging non-traditional journalists like bloggers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A Broader Definition of ‘Journalist’</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Ellyn Angelotti teaches about social media, digital trends and media law at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalism and democracy in St. Petersburg, Fla.</span><br /><br />Everyone knows that you no longer need to buy ink by the barrel to be considered a publisher. Your grandmother can do it with a laptop.But can anyone be considered a journalist? That is the focus of the Cox ruling. It suggests that a journalist may need to act on a set of professional standards to be recognized as a protected member of the tribe.<br />Instead of focusing on who is doing the publishing, it is more important than ever to look at how they are doing it.<br />So who is a journalist? A journalist -- good or bad -- possesses a hunger to pursue the truth and to share it in compelling ways. Yet some of the best journalists have had no academic training in the field.<br />Blogs compete with mainstream media every day. In some cases, they have become more trustworthy as sources of information than some old school practitioners. Oregon’s shield law does not recognize the blog as a “medium of communication” worthy of special protection. Such a narrow definition of journalism is archaic.<br />Instead of focusing on who is doing the publishing, it is more important than ever to look at how they are doing it. It's true that the public’s confidence in online news is shaky at best. The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk. But it shouldn't matter whether the person calls himself a journalist or not, nor where he publishes a story. The quality of the story and the integrity of the method of reporting should count. By that standard, some bloggers would qualify as journalists while some deadwood reporters at newspapers would fail.<br />The First Amendment is not just for journalists. It affords all Americans the right to unfettered speech. We should celebrate how technology lets us express more speech than ever before -- without discriminating against the “non-journalists.” That doesn't mean that online publishers should not be judged according to an evolving set of standards and practices.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-38283889485621075092011-10-26T10:44:00.003+08:002011-10-26T13:41:01.797+08:00Michael Jackson top earning dead celebrity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB18aE8p6q9kr9KYUA3ylCRt1xoOMS2kYFhSzLToU8IT6VoJoxjlziiXrIuhlcmo2DtSCOnbrigyapNjNHvZGuXHMqdHBaFJ5rAXvHyBo5ofOQE7QRLSKlsFG3YnzbWyV7P9OnGnv9DW8/s1600/MJ.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB18aE8p6q9kr9KYUA3ylCRt1xoOMS2kYFhSzLToU8IT6VoJoxjlziiXrIuhlcmo2DtSCOnbrigyapNjNHvZGuXHMqdHBaFJ5rAXvHyBo5ofOQE7QRLSKlsFG3YnzbWyV7P9OnGnv9DW8/s320/MJ.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667670888582653154" /></a><br />Michael Jackson - still alive and famous !!! <br /><br /><br />Cover Media – 12 hours ago<br />Michael Jackson has been named the highest earning dead celebrity.<br />The King of Pop died two years ago from acute Propofol intoxication but his legacy has lived on and he has earned more dead than in the recent years before he passed away.<br />Forbes magazine have released their list of the year’s Top Earning Dead Celebrities and have placed Michael in the number one spot with an income of $170 million.<br />Elvis Presley came in second with $55 million, thanks in part to the Cirque du Soleil show Viva Elvis<br />Marilyn Monroe made a surprising entry at number three with $27 million. The glamorous 50s icon has not been on the list for a while.<br />An upcoming biopic of the star may have increased interest in the late actress. My Week With Marilyn starring Michelle Williams is due out next month.<br />Michael is actually the second highest earning pop act, dead or alive, coming in just behind rock band U2.<br />Top Earning Dead Celebrities – October 2010 to October 2011<br />1. Michael Jackson - $170 million Musician Died: June 25, 2009 at age 50<br />2. Elvis Presley - $55 million Singer, Actor Died: Aug. 16, 1977 at age 42<br />3. Marilyn Monroe - $27 million Actress Died: Aug. 5, 1962 at age 36<br />4. Charles Schulz - $25 million Cartoonist, creator of the "Peanuts" franchise Died: Feb. 12, 2000 at age 77<br />5. John Lennon - $12 million Musician Died: Dec. 8, 1980 at age 40<br />6. Elizabeth Taylor - $12 million Actress Died: March 23, 2011 at age 79<br />7. Albert Einstein - $10 million Scientist Died: April 18, 1955 at age 76<br />8. Theodor 'Dr. Seuss' Geisel - $9 million Author of the famed "Dr. Seuss" children's books Died: Sept. 24, 1991 at age 87<br />9. Jimi Hendrix - $7 million Musician Died: Sept. 18, 1970 at age 27<br />10. Steig Larsson - $7 million Author of "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" series Died: Nov. 9, 2004 at age 50Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-46664889489203331252011-10-22T16:36:00.002+08:002011-10-22T16:39:23.272+08:007 Gadgets That Won't Be Around in 2020An Excerpt - 7 Gadgets That Won't Be Around in 2020<br />By Seth Fiegerman<br /><br />NEW YORK -- Hindsight may always be 20-20, but you don't need particularly great foresight to know many of the gadgets on today's market won't be around in 2020 given how quickly the tech industry keeps changing. In the first half of the 2000s, retailers were buzzing about the prospects of MP3 players and netbooks, but by the end of the decade, those products had largely been replaced by smartphones and tablets. <br /><br />As tempting as it may be to imagine otherwise, some of the gadgets you may rely on most right now will likely suffer the same fate and be killed off or made obsolete by the end of this decade. Sure, you may still be able to find these products for sale in certain niche stores, but they will no longer be produced for a mass-market audience. <br /><br />"You can still find and buy VCRs and there are people still using mainframes from 1992, so it's not like this stuff disappears forever," says Stephen Baker, an industry analyst at the NPD Group. Baker notes that the main reason retailers continue to market and sell outdated products is to cater to shoppers who buy them for nostalgia's sake, but for all intents and purposes the market has left these products in the dust. <br /><br />So which popular products today will join the likes of VCRs, cassette players and transistor radios in the next few years? We asked five tech analysts to offer their thoughts on the gadgets that will largely be phased out by the end of this decade. <br /><br />Standalone GPS Systems <br />The days of spending $200 or more on a standalone GPS device won't last much longer, analysts say. <br />"Portable navigation devices like those sold by TomTom and Garmin will probably not be sold in 2020, just because mobile phones will have taken on that function themselves and because GPS systems will be standard equipment in cars," says Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, a market research firm. As a result, there won't be much of a need to buy a product whose only function is to tell you directions. <br />If there is a demand for these GPS systems, it will likely come from a very specific segment of consumers. <br /><br />"Maybe you could argue there will be a market for guys climbing Mount Everest or long-distance truckers or the military, but for the vast majority of consumers, standalone GPS systems will be irrelevant and redundant," Baker says. <br /><br />E-Readers <br />The e-reader has already undergone significant changes in its short history, evolving from a product with a keyboard to one with a touchscreen and more recently being integrated into a kind of a tablet-hybrid, but according to Golvin, the market for e-readers will mostly disappear by the end of the decade. <br />"The tablet will largely supplant the e-reader in the same way that the iPod increasingly gets displaced by smartphones," Golvin says. "Tablets will take on the e-reader function of handling magazine, newspaper and book reading." In essence, spending money on an e-reader that can only handle reading when tablets can do this and more will come to seem as useless as buying a GPS system that can only look up directions when other technology does this as well. <br />Just how small the e-reader market becomes may depend somewhat on advancements in display technology. One of the biggest incentives for consumers to buy a pure e-reader is to have an e-ink display (like reading from a book) rather than a backlit display (like reading from a computer screen), but according to Golvin, manufacturers are already working on ways to merge the two reading experiences and create a tablet that doubles as an authentic e-reader. <br />Even then, there may be still be some e-readers on the market at the beginning of next decade, but not many. <br />"It could be that by 2020 you can still buy a super cheap e-reader for $20, but by and large, the volume of sales will be so close to zero as to be indistinguishable, like CD players are now," he says. <br /><br />Feature Phones <br />Several of the products that are likely to be phased out will ultimately be the victim of advances to smartphones, and none more directly than feature phones. <br />Tim Bajarin, a technology columnist and principle analyst with Creative Strategies, predicts that 80% of all phones sold in 2015 will be smartphones and every phone sold in 2018 will be a smartphone. This rapid decline will come about thanks to a drop in prices for consumers and an increase in revenue opportunities for carriers. <br />"Even today, the money that is made is not on the phone itself but on the services," Bajarin says, noting that carriers will opt to "fade out" their feature phone option in favor of smartphones with more services. <br /><br />Low-End Digital Cameras <br />When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S last week, smartphone competitors probably weren't the only ones beginning to sweat. Digital camera makers also have much to be worried about. Apple's newest phone has a killer 8-megapixel camera that takes in more light and records video at 1080p HD video. Until recently, those kind of specs were unique to digital cameras, but increasingly smartphones are taking over the market. <br />"Flip cameras went bye-bye and now low-end camera functions are being taken over by smartphones," says Rob Enderle, principle analyst for the Enderle Group. Going forward, consumers will have less incentive to carry around a camera when they already have a phone in their pocket that takes quality pictures. "The point-and-shooters -- and particularly the cameras that sell for under $200 -- will eventually go away and be replaced by cellphones that do the same thing." <br />On the other hand, Enderle predicts more expensive and high-tech cameras may have a brighter future, though not by much, as a smaller market of photo enthusiasts seek out professional-quality cameras that go above and beyond what's offered on a phone. <br /><br />DVD Players<br />DVD players are in the process of being phased out now by Blu-ray players and will likely be erased from the consumer landscape by the end of the decade.<br /><br />“The DVD player should be replaced by digital delivery,” says Ian Olgeirson, a senior analyst at SNL Kagan, who points to streaming movie services like Netflix as being the future. “Blu-rays and whatever the next generation high-end movie format emerges could prolong the lifespan because of challenges around streaming, but eventually the disc is going to be phased out.”<br /><br />The idea of placing a disc into a DVD player to watch a movie will eventually seem as outdated as placing a record on a turntable, which brings us to the next product on our list…<br />Recordable CDs and DVDs <br />Using CDs and DVDs to view and store content will soon be a thing of the past. <br />"CDs are clearly not going to make it over the next 10 years because everything will shift over to pure digital distribution, so all those shiny discs will be gone," Bajarin says. This will be due in part to more streaming options for music and movies and a greater reliance on digital downloads, combined with more efficient storage options for consumers, including USB drives, external hard drives and of course the cloud. <br />"All a CD is is a medium for distribution of content ... and within 10 years, you won't need a physical transport medium," Bajarin says. <br /><br />Video Game Consoles<br />Popular video game systems such as the Wii, PlayStation and Xbox may still be in homes next decade, but they will look much different. Rather than buy a separate console, Enderle expects that consumers will instead buy smart televisions with a gaming system built into it, not to mention tablets and smartphones that will continue to ramp up their gaming options.<br /><br />“It looks like analog game systems won’t make it until the end of the decade,” Enderle says. “You are already seeing the Wii have a tough time holding on to the market and PlayStation has been struggling for a while.”<br /><br />The gaming systems that will succeed in the future will be those that manage to move away from being focused solely on video games and more on other entertainment options such as movies, evolving from a traditional game console into more of a set-top box.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-41008982948750008612011-10-22T16:14:00.002+08:002011-10-22T16:19:54.889+08:00The Seven Weirdest Things About Moammar Gadhafi<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXI7YZGuQlEhNlzPc3frIuowPL4uxowhDkaxTm1dQqizBUs83fhl8cwf-TTTdmR3xNxebWUvPoRw0WrIeXOhCUTj7R7F12IHBBG1UHfVZQVEsSmqDA9J8Izqd3WwR5-DFbKxVa6Vqe5s/s1600/gaddafi.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXI7YZGuQlEhNlzPc3frIuowPL4uxowhDkaxTm1dQqizBUs83fhl8cwf-TTTdmR3xNxebWUvPoRw0WrIeXOhCUTj7R7F12IHBBG1UHfVZQVEsSmqDA9J8Izqd3WwR5-DFbKxVa6Vqe5s/s320/gaddafi.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666227944648350962" /></a><br /><br />An Excerpt<br />- Seven Weirdest Things About Moammar Gadhafi<br /><br />Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the dictator who ruled Libya for 42 years, was killed by rebels in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday. A dictator who oppressed his own people and sponsored terrorism abroad, Gadhafi's legacy will be stained by violence. But beyond his brutality, Gadhafi will be remembered for something else entirely… being a first-class weirdo. <br />In no particular order, ABCNews.com brings you the seven weirdest things about Moammar Gadhafi. <br /><br />1. The "Bulletproof" Tent: When Gadhafi was at home in Tripoli, he lived in a well fortified compound with a complex system of escape tunnels. But when he travelled abroad, this "Bedouin" brought a bit of the desert with him, camping out in the world's capitals. The tent was so heavy it needed to be flown on a separate plane, wherever the dictator travelled. To complete the Arabian Nights theme, Gadhafi often would tether a camel or two outside. <br /><br />2. All-Female Virgin Bodyguard Retinue: They apparently weren't around when Gadhafi needed them most on Thursday, but the eccentric dictator was historically protected by 40 well trained bodyguards – all of them women. The bodyguards, called "Amazons," were all reportedly virgins who took a vow of chastity upon joining the dictator's retinue. The women, trained at an all-female military academy, were handpicked by Gadhafi. They wore elaborate uniforms, as well as makeup and high-heeled combat boots. <br /><br />3. His "Voluptuous" Ukrainian Nurse: For a decade, Galyna Kolotnytska, a Ukrainian nurse often described in the press as "voluptuous," was regularly seen at the dictator's side. Kolotnytska was described in a leaked diplomatic cable as one of Gadhafi's closest aides and was rumored to have a romantic relationship with him. Several other Ukrainian women served as nurses and they all referred to him as "Papa" or "Daddy." <br /><br />4. Crush on Condoleezza Rice: In 2007, Gadhafi called former Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice his "darling black African woman" and on a 2008 visit she made to Tripoli, the dictator gave her $200,000 worth of gifts, including a ring and a lute. But it wasn't until rebels stormed his Tripoli compound that the depths of the dictator's infatuation were exposed. There among Gadhafi's belongings was a carefully composed photo album made up of dozens of images of no one but Rice. <br /><br />5. Fear of Flying and Elevators: Part of the reason Gadhafi loved travelling with that tent of his was because he was worried about lodging in a hotel where he'd have to ride an elevator. According to leaked diplomatic cables, the Libyan didn't like heights much either, and would only climb to a height of 35 steps. He therefore wasn't much of a fan of flying, refusing to travel by air for more than eight hours at a time. When he would travel to New York of the U.N.'s annual general assembly, he would spend a night in Portugal on the way to the U.S. <br /><br />6. Bunga Bunga: In 2010, one of Gadhafi's most eccentric pastimes was exposed by Italian prosecutors investigating Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A 17-year-old prostitute named Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby Heartstealer, revealed that she had been invited to an orgy, called a "bunga bunga." "Silvio told me that he'd copied that formula from Muammar Gadhafi," she told prosecutors according to La Repubblica. "It's a ritual of [Gadhafi's] African harem." <br /><br />7. An Eclectic Wardrobe: In those photos of world leaders standing shoulder to shoulder on the sidelines of this or that international forum, Gadhafi was always the easiest to pick out. His wardrobe was an eclectic mix of ornate military uniforms, Miami Vice style leisure suits, and Bedouin robes. Gadhafi, who pushed for a pan-African federation of nations, often decorated his outfits with images of the African continent. He'd sport safari shirts printed with an Africa pattern, or wear garish pins or necklaces of the continent.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-19269343376299238622011-08-04T02:31:00.001+08:002011-08-04T02:35:11.133+08:00The World's Fastest Growing Airports - An ExcerptIstanbul tops list of world's fastest-growing airports<br /> - An Excerpt<br /><br />AFP Relax – Tue, Aug 2, 2011<br />Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen Airport is the world's fastest growing airport, according to a new report released by Airports Council International (ACI) August 1.<br />The World Airport Traffic Report 2010, which analyzed the performance of over 1,300 airports in 157 countries around the world last year, suggests that traffic at Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen Airport, completed in 2009, jumped by 75 percent last year.<br />That puts it considerably ahead of Campinas in Brazil, the world's second-fastest growing airport, and Rio de Janeiro, the third.<br />Charleroi in Belgium and Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport rounded off the top five list.<br />Overall, traffic through the world's airports grew by 6.6 percent in 2010, the report shows, a total of 5.04 billion passengers -- the first time global air travel has passed the 5 billion mark.<br />The fastest growth was observed in Latin America and the Caribbean (13.2 percent), ACI said, followed by the Middle East (12 percent), Asia-Pacific (11.3 percent) Africa (9.5 percent), Europe (4.3 percent) and North America (2.5 percent).<br />Preliminary statistics show that for the first six months of this year, global passenger traffic is up by six percent again.<br />The busiest airports in the world overall were Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson in the US, Beijing, Chicago in the US, London Heathrow and Tokyo Haneda.<br />However, stripping out domestic passengers to include just international travel, London Heathrow holds the top spot, followed by Paris Charles de Gaulle, Hong Kong International, Dubai International in the United Arab Emirates and Frankfurt in Germany.<br />The world's fastest-growing airports<br />1. Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport, Turkey<br />2. Viracopos-Campinas, Brazil<br />3. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil<br />4. Charleroi, Belgium<br />5. Moscow Sheremetyevo, Russia<br />6. Belo Horizonte, Brazil<br />7. Bogota, Colombia<br />8. Phuket, Thailand<br />9. Shanghai Pudong, China<br />10. Muscat, Oman<br />11. Ankara, Turkey<br />12. St Petersburg, Russia<br />13. Medan, Indonesia<br />14. Shanghai Hongqiao, China<br />15. Milwaukee, WI, USA<br />Data from Airports Council International - http://www.airports.org/Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-72165973123959668972011-07-06T11:09:00.001+08:002011-07-06T11:11:47.736+08:00World Top Billionaires 2011<strong>WORLD'S TOP BILLIONAIRES </strong><br />» 1. Carlos Slim Helu<br />» 2. William Gates III<br />» 3. Warren Buffett<br />» 4. Bernard Arnault<br />» 5. Lawrence Ellison<br />» 6. Lakshmi Mittal<br />» 7. Amancio Ortega<br />» 8. Eike Batista<br />» 9. Mukesh Ambani<br />» 10. Christy Walton<br />» 11. Li Ka-shing<br />» 12. Karl Albrecht<br />» 13. Stefan Persson<br />» 14. Vladimir Lisin<br />» 15. Liliane Bettencourt<br />» 16. Sheldon Adelson<br />» 17. David Thomson<br />» 18. Charles Koch<br />» 18. David Koch<br />» 20. Jim Walton<br />» 21. Alice Walton<br />» 22. S. Robson Walton<br />» 23. Kwok family<br />» 24. Sergey Brin<br />» 24. Larry Page<br />» 26. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud<br />» 27. Iris Fontbona<br />» 28. Lee Shau Kee<br />» 29. Alexei Mordashov<br />» 30. Michael Bloomberg<br />» 30. Jeffrey Bezos<br />» 32. Michele Ferrero<br />» 32. Mikhail Prokhorov<br />» 34. Vladimir Potanin<br />» 35. Alisher Usmanov<br />» 36. Azim Premji<br />» 36. Oleg Deripaska<br />» 38. Michael Otto<br />» 39. John Paulson<br />» 39. German Larrea Mota Velasco<br />» 39. Rinat Akhmetov<br />» 42. Shashi & Ravi Ruia<br />» 43. Mikhail Fridman<br />» 44. Michael Dell<br />» 44. Susanne Klatten<br />» 46. Steven Ballmer<br />» 46. George Soros<br />» 48. Theo Albrecht<br />» 49. Birgit Rausing<br />» 50. Vagit Alekperov<br />» 51. Aliko Dangote<br />» 52. Mark Zuckerberg<br />» 53. Roman Abramovich<br />» 53. Anne Cox Chambers<br />» 55. Jorge Paulo Lemann<br />» 56. Savitri Jindal<br />» 57. Paul Allen<br />» 57. Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor<br />» 57. Viktor Vekselberg<br />» 60. Philip Knight<br />» 61. Robert Kuok<br />» 61. Carl Icahn<br />» 63. Mohammed Al Amoudi<br />» 64. Donald Bren<br />» 64. Ronald Perelman<br />» 66. Alberto Bailleres<br />» 67. Francois Pinault<br />» 68. Joseph Safra<br />» 69. Abigail Johnson<br />» 70. Viktor Rashnikov<br />» 71. Leonardo Del Vecchio<br />» 72. John Fredriksen<br />» 72. Stefan Quandt<br />» 74. Dan Duncan<br />» 74. James Simons<br />» 75. Luis Carlos Sarmiento<br />» 77. Nasser Al-Kharafi<br />» 77. Eliodoro‚ Bernardo & Patricia Matte<br />» 79. Sammy Ofer<br />» 80. Len Blavatnik<br />» 81. John Mars<br />» 81. Jacqueline Mars<br />» 81. Forrest Mars Jr<br />» 81. Ernesto Bertarelli<br />» 81. Hans Rausing<br />» 81. Klaus-Michael Kuhne<br />» 81. Gautam Adani<br />» 88. Iskander Makhmudov<br />» 89. George Kaiser<br />» 89. Johanna Quandt<br />» 89. Maria-Elisabeth & Georg Schaeffler<br />» 92. German Khan<br />» 93. Dmitry Rybolovlev<br />» 93. Ananda Krishnan<br />» 93. Nobutada Saji<br />» 95. Robin Li<br />» 96. Serge Dassault<br />» 97. Kumar Birla<br />» 97. Petr Kellner<br />» 99. Leonid Mikhelson<br />» 100. Cheng Yu-tung<br />» 100. Georgina Rinehart <br />» 102. Igor Zyuzin<br />» 103. Anil Ambani<br />» 103. Pallonji Mistry<br />» 105. Lee Kun-Hee<br />» 105. Harold Hamm<br />» 105. Andrey Melnichenko<br />» 108. August von Finck<br />» 108. Julio Mario Santo Domingo<br />» 110. Sunil Mittal<br />» 110. Steven Jobs<br />» 112. Ricardo Salinas Pliego<br />» 113. Masayoshi Son<br />» 114. David & Simon Reuben<br />» 114. Steven Cohen<br />» 114. Liang Wengen<br />» 117. Sergei Popov<br />» 118. Silvio Berlusconi<br />» 118. Suleiman KerimovOxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-50566876547537231032011-06-29T20:50:00.002+08:002011-06-29T21:22:48.066+08:00Suriname - Facts ExcerptOfficial Name: Republic of Suriname<br /><br />PROFILE<br /><br />Geography<br />Area: 163,194 sq. km. (63,037 sq. mi.); slightly larger than Georgia.<br />Cities: Capital--Paramaribo (pop. 242,946). Other cities--Nieuw Nickerie, Moengo, Brownsweg, Albina.<br />Terrain: Rain forest, savanna, coastal swamps, hills.<br />Climate: Tropical.<br /><br />People<br />Nationality: Noun--Surinamer(s). Adjective--Surinamese.<br />Population (2004 census): 492,829.<br />Annual growth rate (2004): 1.30%.<br />Ethnic groups (2004 census): Hindustani (East Indian) 27%, Creole 18%, Javanese 15%, Maroon 15%, mixed 12.5%, Amerindians 3.7%, Chinese 1.8%.<br />Religions: Hindu, Muslim, Roman Catholic, Dutch Reformed, Moravian, several other Christian denominations, Jewish, Baha'i.<br />Languages: Dutch (official), English (widely spoken in Paramaribo), Sranan Tongo (Creole language), Hindustani, Javanese.<br />Education: Years compulsory--ages 6-12. Literacy--90%.<br />Health: Infant mortality rate (2004)--7 per 1,000. Life expectancy (2003)--71 yrs.<br />Work force (100,000): Government--35%; private sector--41%; parastatal companies--10%; unemployed--14%.<br /><br />Government<br />Type: Constitutional democracy.<br />Constitution: September 30, 1987.<br />Independence: November 25, 1975.<br />Branches: Executive--President, Vice President, Council of Ministers. Legislative--elected 51-member National Assembly made up of representatives of political parties. Judicial--Court of Justice.<br />Administrative subdivisions: 10 districts.<br />Political parties: Governing coalition—(1) Mega Combination: National Democratic Party (NDP), (PALU), (KTPI), and New Suriname (NS). (2) ACombination: ABOP, BEP, SEEKA; (3) People’s Alliance: (PL). Other parties in the National Assembly—(1) New Front: National Party of Suriname (NPS), (VHP), Suriname Labor Party (SPA), (DA’91). (2) (DOE).<br />Suffrage: Universal at 18.<br /><br />Economy<br />GDP (2010 est.) US$ 3.3 billion (Source: ECLAC)<br />Annual growth rate real GDP (2010 est.): 3%<br />Per capita GDP (2010 est.): US$ 6,250<br />Inflation (2010): 10% (at time of this report: 21% per March 2011)<br />Natural resources: Bauxite, gold, oil, iron ore, other minerals; forests; hydroelectric potential, water, fish and shrimp.<br />Agriculture: rice, bananas, timber, citrus fruits, fish and shrimp.<br />Industry: alumina, oil, gold, lumber.<br />Trade (Source: ECLAC) ): Exports (2010 est.)—US$ 1.887 billion: alumina, gold, crude oil, wood and wood products, rice, and bananas. Imports (2010 est.)—US$ 1.570 billion: machinery and transport equipment, manufactured goods, mineral fuels including lubricants, food and live animals.<br /><br />PEOPLE<br />Most Surinamers live in the narrow, northern coastal plain. For its size, the population is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world. Each ethnic group preserves its own culture, and many institutions, including political parties, tend to follow ethnic lines. Informal relationships vary: the upper classes of all ethnic backgrounds mix freely; outside of the elite, social relations tend to remain within ethnic groupings. All groups may be found in schools and the workplace.<br /><br />HISTORY<br />Arawak and Carib tribes lived in the region before Columbus sighted the coast in 1498. Spain officially claimed the area in 1593, but Spanish and Portuguese explorers of the time gave the area little attention. Dutch settlement began in 1616 at the mouths of several rivers between present-day Georgetown, Guyana, and Cayenne, French Guiana.<br /><br />Suriname became a Dutch colony in 1667. The new colony, Dutch Guiana, did not thrive. Historians cite several reasons for this, including Holland's preoccupation with its more extensive (and profitable) East Indian territories, violent conflict between whites and native tribes, and frequent uprisings by the imported slave population, which was often treated with extraordinary cruelty. Many of the slaves fled to the interior, where they maintained a West African culture and established the six major Maroon tribes in existence today: the NDjuka, Saramaccaner, Matuwari, Paramaccaner, Kwinti, and Aluku.<br /><br />Plantations steadily declined in importance as labor costs rose. Rice, bananas, and citrus fruits replaced the traditional crops of sugar, coffee, and cocoa. Gold exports began to increase in 1900. The Dutch Government gave little financial support to the colony. Suriname's economy was transformed in the years following World War I, when an American firm (ALCOA) began exploiting bauxite deposits in East Suriname. Bauxite processing and then alumina production began in 1916. During World War II, more than 75% of U.S. bauxite imports came from Suriname.<br /><br />In 1951, Suriname began to acquire a growing measure of autonomy from the Netherlands. Suriname became an autonomous part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on December 15, 1954, and gained independence, with Dutch consent, on November 25, 1975.<br /><br />Most of Suriname's political parties took shape during the autonomy period and were overwhelmingly based on ethnicity. For example, the National Party of Suriname found its support among the Creoles, the Progressive Reform Party members came from the Hindustani population, and the Indonesian Peasant's Party was Javanese. Other smaller parties found support by appealing to voters on an ideological or pro-independence platform; the Partij Nationalistische Republiek (PNR) was among the most important. Its members pressed most strongly for independence and for the introduction of leftist political and economic measures. Many former PNR members would go on to play a key role following the coup of February 1980.<br /><br />Suriname was a parliamentary democracy in the years immediately following independence. Henck Arron became the first Prime Minister and was re-elected in 1977. On February 25, 1980, 16 noncommissioned officers overthrew the elected government, which many accused of inefficiency and mismanagement. The military-dominated government then suspended the constitution on August 13, 1980, dissolved the legislature, and formed a regime that ruled by decree. Although a civilian filled the post of president, military officer Desire Bouterse ruled the country in practice.<br /><br />Throughout 1982, pressure grew for a return to civilian rule. On December 8, 1982, military authorities cracked down, arresting and killing 15 prominent opposition leaders, including journalists, lawyers, university lecturers, military officers, and a trade union leader.<br /><br />Following the murders, the United States and the Netherlands suspended economic and military cooperation with the Bouterse regime, which increasingly began to follow an erratic but often leftist-oriented political course. The regime restricted the press and limited the rights of its citizens. The economy declined rapidly after the suspension of economic aid from the Netherlands.<br /><br />Continuing economic decline brought pressure for change. During the 1984-87 period, the Bouterse regime tried to end the crisis by appointing a succession of nominally civilian-led cabinets. Many figures in the government came from the traditional political parties that had been pushed aside during the coup. The military eventually agreed to free elections in 1987, a new constitution, and a civilian government.<br /><br />Pressure for change also erupted in July 1986, when a Maroon insurgency, led by former soldier Ronnie Brunswijk, began attacking economic targets in the country's interior. Brunswijk and his supporters formed the Jungle Commando and were later joined by the Amer-Indian Tucajana group. In response, the army ravaged villages and killed suspected Brunswijk supporters. One of these villages was Moiwana, of which 50 villagers, mostly women and children, were killed. (In 2007 the Moiwana Human Rights Organization successfully requested the OAS and International Organization for Human Rights to order the Surinamese Government to compensate the relatives of the victims and to rebuild the village). Thousands of Maroons fled to nearby French Guiana. In an effort to end the bloodshed, the Surinamese Government negotiated a peace treaty in 1989 with Brunswijk, called the Kourou Accord. However, Bouterse and other military leaders blocked the accord's implementation.<br /><br />On December 24, 1990, military officers forced the civilian president and vice president to resign, through a so-called “telephone coup.”. Military-selected replacements were hastily approved by the National Assembly on December 29 with 77-year old Johan Kraag appointed as president and Jules Wijdenbosch as vice president from December 29, 1990 – September 1991. Faced with mounting pressure from the U.S., the nations of the Organization of American States (OAS), and others, the government held new elections on May 25, 1991. The New Front (NF) Coalition, were able to win a majority in the National Assembly. On September 6, 1991, Ronald Venetiaan was elected President, and Jules Ajodhia became Vice President.<br /><br />The Venetiaan government was able to implement a settlement to Suriname's domestic insurgency through the August 1992 Peace Accord with the Maroon-based Jungle Commando and the Amerindian Tucajana rebels. In April 1993, Desire Bouterse left his position as commander of the armed forces and was replaced by Arthy Gorre, a military officer committed to bringing the armed forces under civilian government control. Economic reforms instituted by the Venetiaan government eventually helped curb inflation, unify the official and unofficial exchange rates, and improve the government's economic situation by re-establishing relations with the Dutch, opening the way for a major influx of Dutch financial assistance. Despite these successes, the governing coalition lost support and failed to retain control of the government in the subsequent round of national elections. The rival National Democratic Party (NDP), founded by Desire Bouterse, benefited from the New Front government's loss of popularity. NDP vice chairman Jules Wijdenbosch became president of an NDP-led coalition government and Pertaap Radhakishun became the Vice-President. Divisions and subsequent reshufflings of coalition members in the fall of 1997 and early 1998 weakened the coalition's mandate and slowed legislative action.<br /><br />In May 1999, after mass demonstrations protesting poor economic conditions, the government was forced to call early elections. The elections in May 2000 returned Ronald Venetiaan and his New Front coalition to the presidency. The NF based its campaign on a platform of fixing the faltering Surinamese economy.<br /><br />In the national election held on May 25, 2005, the ruling NF coalition suffered a significant setback due to widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the economy and the public perception that the NF had produced few tangible gains. Desire Bouterse's NDP more than doubled its representation in the National Assembly. Bouterse, the NDP's declared presidential candidate, withdrew from the race days before the National Assembly convened to vote for the next president and tapped his running mate, Rabin Parmessar, to run as the NDP's candidate. In the National Assembly, the NF challenged Parmessar's Surinamese citizenship, displaying copies of a Dutch passport issued to Parmessar in 2004. Parmessar was eventually allowed to stand for election, and parliament later confirmed his Surinamese citizenship. After two votes, no candidate received the required two-thirds majority, pushing the final decision in August 2005 to a special session of the United People's Assembly, where President Venetiaan was reelected to a third term with a significant majority of votes from the local, district, and national assembly members. His running mate, Ramdien Sardjoe, was elected as vice president. While the Venetiaan administration had made progress in stabilizing the economy, tensions within the coalition continued to impede progress and stymied legislative action.<br /><br />Long-anticipated legal proceedings against those accused of participating in the December 1982 murders began in November 2007 with the issuance of summonses to 25 defendants, including opposition leader Desire Bouterse. The court martial tribunal convened on November 30, 2007, with a series of preliminary motions. The actual trial with judges hearing witness testimonies started on July 4, 2008. Trial proceedings have continued since then, and the case is ongoing.<br /><br />The Venetiaan government lost power in the elections of May 25, 2010, when the opposition’s Mega Combination (MC), led by Desire Bouterse, won a majority in the National Assembly. The MC formed a majority coalition with several political parties to bring their total to 36 seats in the National Assembly and elected Jennifer Geerlings-Simons as Speaker of the Assembly, and Ruth Wijdenbosch as vice-speaker. Desire Bouterse was elected President of Suriname and Robert Ameerali as Vice President with all 36 coalition votes cast in their favor.<br /><br />This was the first time in Suriname’s history that both a president and Vice President were elected with a large majority in the National Assembly. The new President and Vice President were sworn in on August 12, 2010.<br /><br />GOVERNMENT<br />The Republic of Suriname is a constitutional democracy based on the 1987 constitution. The legislative branch of government consists of a 51-member unicameral National Assembly, simultaneously and popularly elected for a 5-year term.<br /><br />The executive branch is headed by the president, who is elected by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly or, failing that, by a majority of the People's Assembly for a 5-year term. If at least two-thirds of the National Assembly cannot agree to vote for one presidential candidate, a People's Assembly is formed from all National Assembly delegates and regional and municipal representatives who were elected by popular vote in the most recent national election. A vice president, normally elected at the same time as the president, needs a simple majority in the National Assembly or People's Assembly to be elected for a 5-year term. As head of government, the president appoints a cabinet of ministers, currently numbered at 17 and apportioned among the various political parties represented in the ruling coalition. There is no constitutional provision for removal or replacement of the president unless he resigns or passes away while in function.<br /><br />A 15-member State Advisory Council advises the president in the conduct of policy. Eleven of the 15 council seats are allotted by proportional representation of all political parties represented in the National Assembly. The president chairs the council; two seats are allotted to representatives of labor, and two are allotted to employers' organizations.<br /><br />The judiciary is headed by the Court of Justice (Supreme Court). This court supervises the magistrate courts. Members are appointed for life by the president in consultation with the National Assembly, the State Advisory Council, and the National Order of Private Attorneys.<br /><br />The country is divided into 10 administrative districts, each headed by a district commissioner appointed by the president. The commissioner is somewhat similar to the governor of a U.S. state but serves at the president's pleasure.<br /><br />Principal Government Officials<br />President--Desire Delano Bouterse<br />Vice President-- Robert Ameerali<br />Foreign Minister--Winston Lackin<br />National Security Advisor-Melvin Linscheer<br />Speaker of the National Assembly - Jennifer Geerlings-Simon<br />Ambassador to U.S.--Subhaas Mungra<br />Ambassador to UN--Henry MacDonald<br />Ambassador to OAS--Subhaas Mungra<br /><br />Suriname maintains an embassy in the United States at 4301 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 460, Washington, DC 20008 (tel. 202-244-7488; fax. 202-244-5878). The embassy also manages Suriname's representation to the Organization of American States (OAS). Suriname has a separate mission to the UN, located at 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 320, New York, NY 10017 (tel. 212-826-0660; fax. 212-980-7029). There also is a Suriname consulate general at 6303 Blue Lagoon Drive, Suite 325, Miami, FL 33126 (tel. 305-265-4655, fax. 305-265-4599).<br /><br />NATIONAL SECURITY<br />Surinamese armed forces consist of the national army, air force, navy, and military police, which are collectively referred to as the “national army,” under the control of the Minister of Defense. A smaller civil police force is under the authority of the Minister of Justice and Police. The national armed forces comprise some 2,500 personnel, the majority of whom are deployed as light infantry security forces. The Netherlands has provided limited military assistance to the Surinamese armed forces since the election of a democratic government in 1991. In recent years, the U.S. has provided training to military officers and policymakers to promote a better understanding of the role of the military in a civilian government, as well as to improve the professional capabilities of its officers and senior personnel. The U.S. also provides assistance and training for disaster preparedness and mitigation as well as significant support for humanitarian aid projects. Since the mid-1990s, the People's Republic of China has provided small amounts of military equipment and logistical material to the Surinamese armed forces. The Netherlands, France, Venezuela, and Brazil also have working relationships with the Surinamese military.<br /><br />Suriname's borders are porous; largely uninhabited, unguarded, and ungoverned rain forest and rivers make up the eastern, western, and southern borders, and the navy's capability to police Suriname's northern Atlantic coast is limited. Protecting natural resources from illegal exploitation such as unlicensed gold mining is difficult, and significant tax revenue is lost. Porous borders also make Suriname a target for transshipment of drugs.<br /><br />ECONOMY<br />Suriname's economy has been dominated by the exports of gold and oil, and to a lesser extent, alumina. Other export products include bananas, rice, and lumber. On the heels of rising world prices for fuel and record prices for gold, these sectors have booked significant successes in 2010. The bauxite sector continued to struggle as world demand for aluminum remained weak. According to the Economic Council for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Suriname’s economy grew by 3 percent in 2010, less than the Latin American average of 6 percent, but significantly better than the Caribbean average of .5 percent. ECLAC predicts that Suriname’s economy will continue to grow in 2011, but at a lesser percentage of 1.2 percent. Suriname’s bauxite deposits have been among the world's richest. After a long standing relationship with Australian owned BHPBilliton, Alcoa subsidiary Suralco became the 100 percent owner of all activities in the bauxite sector on August 1, 2009 after BHPBilliton departed Suriname. In the wake of the world economic crisis this sector has continued to struggle and alumina has lost the importance it once had for the Surinamese economy. In order to survive this world crisis Suralco was forced to postpone all non-essential maintenance, stop all capital investments, and lower production. Another reason cited for reducing production was the expected depletion of reserves in the mines, Kaaimangrasie and Klaverblad, from which the company was operating. Since then, the company has commenced preparations to prepare its concession in the Nassau area in Southeastern Suriname for mining. This new mine is expected to be ready for production in 2013. Additionally the company also launched a bauxite exploration division in 2010 to research possible bauxite residue in areas already mined. This residue is expected to be of a lesser quality, but will, with additional processes, provide sufficient bauxite to keep the refinery operational. The takeover of BHPBilliton assets also left Suralco managing 60,000 hectares of land, of which part is in use by the government. In 2010 the company embarked on a Land Management Program aimed at rehabilitating land no longer being used for mining purposes, and in the case of government-owned land, returning it to its owner. In January 2011 the Government of Suriname officially announced that it was interested in resuming negotiations with Suralco for 40 years worth of bauxite reserves in Western Suriname in the Bakhuys area.<br /><br />In the formal gold sector, the Government of Suriname (GoS) has announced that it plans to sign an agreement with Surgold, the joint venture company between Alcoa subsidiary Suralco and Newmont Mining Corporation, later this year. The agreement will allow for the mining of gold in the Merian area in Southeastern Suriname in the Nassau Concession, as well as the building of a second gold refinery. This agreement has been under negotiation since 2008. The proven reserves in this area are 3 million troy ounces. At the country’s first gold refinery, Rosebel Gold Mine (owned by Canadian mining giant Iamgold), production for the first nine months of 2010 was 276,000 troy ounces at an average production cost of US$ 499 per troy ounce. The company invested approx. US$ 49 million in exploration. Per December 2009 the proven reserves at Rosebel were 2.6 million troy ounces, while the probable reserves were 2.2 million troy ounces. The Rosebel Gold Mine continues to be the most profitable mine in the Iamgold portfolio, with the highest production levels at the lowest production costs.<br /><br />In January 2011 the GoS embarked on an ambitious plan to order the informal gold sector. Once considered small-scale this untaxed and unregulated sector is currently estimated at US$ 1 billion annually. Thousands of Brazilians, mostly illegal, and local maroons find employment in this sector. Chinese shop owners have also set up businesses, also unregulated, near the mining sites. The GoS has set up different commissions that will deal with organizing and registering miners, developing legislation to regulate the sector, and to work on making this sector not only sustainable, but also environmentally safe. In the first instance the miners, owners of equipment, concession holders and all others with activities in the sector were asked to register with a special registration office set up by the GoS. In its first week of operations 3,500 persons registered with this office and its 2 satellite sites. To further simplify the registration process, the government intends to open another 5 satellite sites. The government also intends to establish special one-stop centers in the interior for miners to conduct all their activities with the government. In a follow up process the government will also work on the status of the miners. Miners who do not have a permit to be in the country will be allowed to get their paperwork in order to stay.<br /><br />2010 was a very successful year for Suriname’s oil sector. State-owned State Oil Company Suriname (Staatsolie) reported a gross income of US$ 568 million, which was up by 32 percent compared to 2009 and just US$ 8 million shy from the company’s record earnings of 2008. This was primarily due to increased production and favorable world market prices. Gross profits of US$ 285 million were an increase of 57 percent compared 2009. Tax and dividend payments to the government in 2010 totaled US$ 186 million. Staatsolie produced 5.8 million barrels at an average price of US$ 72 per barrel. Staatsolie is in the midst of implementing its US$ 1 billion expansion project. Of this amount 75 percent will come direct from internal investments. The company took out a US$ 235 million loan from international banks. A national bond issuance brought in US$ 55 million.<br /><br />Suriname has attracted the attention of international companies interested in extensive development of a tropical hardwoods industry and possible diamond mining. However, proposals for exploitation of the country's tropical forests and undeveloped regions of the interior traditionally inhabited by indigenous and Maroon communities have raised the concerns of environmentalists and human rights activists in Suriname and abroad.<br /><br />Although Suriname’s energy supply situation has improved, the country continues to have a shortage in affordable energy to support any major expansion of its economy. The bauxite refinery at Paranam depends primarily on diesel generated energy to support its refining operations. According to Surgold, any refinery built in southeastern Suriname will also have to be powered by diesel generated energy. The doubling of the capacity of the power generating plant of Staatsolie has helped in easing the demand for power in Paramaribo. Actualization of the Tapa-Jai project should further help ease demand issues.<br /><br />Tourism figures for 2008 through 2010 have remained stagnant. The majority of tourists visiting Suriname continue to come from the Netherlands, with some “weekend tourists” from French Guiana. The number of tourists visiting Suriname from other Caribbean countries is on the rise. Tourist organizations have identified the lengthy visa process for Suriname as one of the obstacles to tourism growth, as well as logistics and infrastructure. The lack of organization within the sector has also been identified as playing an important role. In 2009 Suriname was named as one of the top ten destinations in the world for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Additionally the country was also named a top destination spot by Lonely Planet magazine. Suriname’s Ministry of Transport, Communication and Tourism actively takes part in different tourism fairs around the world, primarily Europe, in an effort to promote Suriname. Different private tourism companies are also making efforts to promote Suriname as a tourism destination.<br /><br />FOREIGN RELATIONS<br />Since independence in 1975, Suriname has become a member of 14 international organizations: the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Suriname is a member of the Caribbean Community and Common Market and the Association of Caribbean States; it is associated with the European Union through the Lome Convention. The Netherlands has been Suriname's biggest donor, since independence, but has been surpassed by the U.S. as a trade partner. Suriname participates in the Amazonian Pact, a grouping of the countries of the Amazon Basin that focuses on protection of the Amazon region's natural resources from environmental degradation. Reflecting its status as a major bauxite producer, Suriname is also a member of the International Bauxite Association. The country also belongs to the Economic Commission for Latin America, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. In 2008, Suriname signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.<br /><br />Since taking office in 2010, the Bouterse government has focused on bolstering its regional relationships, assuming leadership positions in multilateral organizations such as the OAS, UNASUR, and CARICOM, and strengthening its ties to France, Venezuela, China, and Cuba. Bilateral relations with The Netherlands have weakened due to its strong statements against the Bouterse presidency and when he assumed office, as well as the decline in economic assistance with the completion of the Treaty Funds.<br /><br />At independence, Suriname signed an agreement with the Netherlands providing for about $1.5 billion in development assistance grants and loans over a 10- to 15-year period, called the Treaty Funds. Initial disbursements amounted to about $100 million per year, but were discontinued during the 1980’s period of military rule. After the return to a democratically elected government in 1991, Dutch aid resumed. The Dutch relationship continued to be an important factor in the economy, with the Dutch insisting that Suriname undertake economic reforms and produce specific plans acceptable to the Dutch for projects on which aid funds could be spent. In 2000, the Dutch revised the structure of their aid package and signaled to the Surinamese authorities their decision to disburse aid by sectoral priorities as opposed to individual projects. In 2001 both governments agreed to spend the remaining development funds to finance programs in 6 different sectors: health care, education, environment, agriculture, housing, and governance. In 2008 the Dutch aid was fully allocated to all identified and jointly approved sector programs, which started the process of ending the Dutch donor aid to Suriname. In 2010, the Netherlands stated that Dutch Treaty funds had been allocated and should be fully depleted by 2012. .<br /><br />Bilateral cooperation agreements with several countries in the region have underscored the government's interest in strengthening regional ties. The return to Suriname from French Guiana of about 8,000 refugees from the 1986-91 Interior War between the military and domestic insurgents has improved relations with French authorities. Longstanding border disputes with Guyana and French Guiana remain unresolved. Negotiations with the Government of Guyana brokered by the Jamaican Prime Minister in 2000 did not produce an agreement, but the countries agreed to restart talks after Guyanese national elections in 2001. In January 2002, the presidents of Suriname and Guyana met in Suriname and agreed to resume negotiations, establishing the Suriname-Guyana border commission. In 2004 Guyana brought a complaint against Suriname under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) regarding their maritime border dispute. In 2007, the UN International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled that both Suriname and Guyana are entitled to their share of the disputed offshore basin which is believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits. Using the equidistance line, the tribunal awarded Suriname 6,900 sq. miles and Guyana 12,800 sq. miles of this basin. Suriname's earlier dispute with Brazil ended amicably after formal demarcation of their shared border.<br /><br />Suriname is densely forested, and increased interest in large-scale commercial logging and mining in Suriname's interior have raised environmental concerns. The U.S. Forest Service, the Smithsonian, and numerous non-governmental environmental organizations have promoted technical cooperation with the Surinamese Government to prevent destruction of the country's tropical rain forest, one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. U.S. experts have worked closely with local natural resource officials to encourage sustainable development of the interior and alternatives such as ecotourism. On December 1, 2000, UNESCO designated the 1.6 million hectare Central Suriname Nature Reserve a World Heritage site. Suriname's tourism sector remains a minor part of the economy, and tourist infrastructure is limited (in 2004, some 145,000 foreign tourists visited Suriname).Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-49184807388856359382011-06-29T20:30:00.003+08:002011-06-29T20:47:27.137+08:00To Bersih or not to Bersih? – An ExcerptA Concerned Malaysian
<br />Jun 29, 11
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<br />Frankly, the above title is just a smart-ass title to get your attention. Indeed, "To Bersih or not to Bersih?" is not the question.
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<br />Before we even venture to consider such a question, let us be very clear what Bersih is.
<br />Even in the newer version known as Bersih 2.0, it is still a coalition of non-governmental and civil society organisations that are collectively campaigning for clean, free and fair elections. (It is not a movement to defeat the incumbent government or one to support the election of the opposition.)
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<br />If I may put it in more concise terms, Bersih is a non-governmental-civil society coalition working towards electoral and political reforms in Malaysia.
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<br />I prefer this description simply because it's less value-laden than the official line, which presumes that Malaysian elections are unclean, unfree and unfair.
<br />Out of the three adjectives, I can only honestly say, with clear evidence, that the third is obvious.
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<br />To me, and most rational people, a fair contest includes giving all contestants equal access to the judges via all legitimate channels; and, in the case of Malaysian elections, it is only fair if candidates and/or political parties are given equal access to voters via the mainstream and alternative media.
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<br />Indeed, to me, the single most important factor in any clean, free and fair election is the information that is made available to the voters, and it's very obvious that the mainstream media, which is under the Federal Government's regulations, is key.
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<br />Unfortunately, any party that is not a member of the current government coalition does not seem to have any chance whatsoever to be given publicity by the mainstream media except to cast them in a negative light.
<br />Fair comment?
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<br />Now, before I come to the question of whether our nation's elections are clean and free, let me digress a little.
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<br />Most Bersih advocates and activists will talk about the electoral roll, the postal ballots, the use of indelible ink and the campaign period. Before I even go there, I'd like to ask the following basic question first:
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<br />Are the parliamentary and state constituencies delineated in a transparent and fair manner, which allows constituents to elect their preferred representatives and also enable their elected representatives to work effectively for their constituents?
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<br />To help you answer the basic question above, consider the following specific questions: Does it make sense to have constituencies where the areas covered do not have any real communal connection with each other?
<br />And does it make sense that some constituencies have 20 times more voters than others? Further, is the 'first past the post' electoral system really the most effective way to provide voters with a meaningful election result?
<br />I leave it to you to answer the above questions yourself. Whether you like it or not, these are questions that are critical to the fairness and effectiveness of our current electoral system, which - if answered honestly and objectively-will lead us to the logical conclusion that it needs to be reformed.
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<br />An acknowledgment that our electoral system needs to be reformed is not an admission that it is not clean, not free and not fair.
<br />Like it or not, the current administration inherited the system from the previous administrations.
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<br />If the prime minister of the day wants to be seen as responsible and proactive, he should implement much-needed reforms before they are demanded by the people.
<br />Having said that, it's not too late to do something about it. It's not how we start but how we finish that matters.
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<br />At the same time, the Bersih rally organisers must realise that their mandate is not simply to organise a rally but to achieve the so-called eight Bersih demands, which includes strengthening public institutions, stopping corruption and stopping corruption (apart from points covered above), by any effective and peaceful means.
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<br />It is very clear to me that Bersih's mandate is a long term one, which imposes on the leaders of the coalition a duty to not only address the Election Commission (EC) and the government of the day but also all participants of the political process in Malaysia.
<br />It is very obvious that the EC cannot strengthen the judiciary and/or stop corruption in the police force. And it is also obvious that the EC cannot stop politicians from 'playing dirty', irrespective of whether they are BN, PR or independent.
<br />If we, the People, represented by Bersih, want the government to reform, we must also be reasonable in our demands and expectations.
<br />If we are sincere and serious about electoral and political reforms, let's work towards it with open minds, not with pre-conceived notions about BN, PR or the EC.
<br />If there is a chance to hold public and/or televised roundtable talks with the EC and/or any interested party, why are we not accepting the offer?
<br />If people want to get together to show their support for Bersih (or electoral and political reforms) and also to celebrate democracy, why can't we do it in a suitable place (read "safe place") instead of on the streets where our boys in blue don't seem to be able to control crowds in a friendly, professional and effective manner?
<br />I am not saying what I am saying to stop people from walking for democracy.
<br />On the contrary, I am saying what I am saying to encourage people to walk for democracy in a safe and effective manner.
<br />Whilst it is the government's responsibility to promote and protect the rights to freedom of assembly and expression, we cannot exercise them and expect the government to undermine the exercise of the same rights by Perkasa and Umno Youth.
<br />However, we can choose to work together with all parties in a fair and transparent process to enjoy the exercise of those rights in a safe, dignified and meaningful manner.
<br />If we, the People of Malaysia, want the Government of Malaysia to change, the real question is, "Are we ready, willing and able to change first?"
<br />Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-76896963286759364932011-05-12T14:31:00.000+08:002011-05-14T04:34:59.498+08:00..SINGAPORE ELECTIONS 2011: Media changing Singapore election<strong>..SINGAPORE ELECTIONS 2011: Media changing Singapore election</strong><br />By Lim Mun Fah in Kuala Lumpur/Sin Chew Daily | ANN – Sat, May 7, 2011<br />...<br /><br />Kuala Lumpur (Sin Chew Daily/ANN) - The Singapore general election has been heating up in recent days. In addition to mass rallies, new media have also played their roles. They have added more unpredictable variables to the election and made it more significant.<br /><br />Some people even said that the relaxed control on new media allowing videos captured during campaign activities to be used in their advertisements is indeed a major historical turning point for long-suppressed Singapore.<br /><br />As an onlooker, I observed that Singapore's print media have indeed increased coverage for the opposition this time. However, most of the young people still believe that there is no so-called freedom of the press in Singapore and therefore, they do not trust traditional media.<br /><br />Singapore was ranked 150 out of 196 countries surveyed worldwide in the latest media freedom study conducted by the US-based Freedom House. Its ranking was even worse than Malaysia which was ranked 143. The report has accurately reflected the perception of young people in Singapore.<br /><br />It is a global phenomenon that the younger generation advocates the new media. However, it has worried the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) when young Singaporeans started to rush to obtain electoral and political information from the new media.<br /><br />In fact, the opposition's website is more popular than the one of the ruling party. One of the examples is, as of 10am 3 May 2011, the number of Singaporeans who joined the Facebook of 24-year-old Nicole Seah, a fresh woman candidate of the National Solidarity Party (NSP), has hit 60, 244 people. Her popularity is even higher than Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who has been joining politics for over half of a century.<br /><br />Another example would be Chen Show-Mao, who is considered as the "trump card" of the Worker's Party (WP). He has 14,266 of Facebook fans. Although he has fewer fans compared to Lee Kuan Yew (57,469) and Foreign Minister George Yeo (22,753), he still has more fans than Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (11,046).<br /><br />In addition, the top 10 candidates with most Facebook fans also include WP Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang (6), WP Chairman Sylvia Lim Swee Lian (7), PAP Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan (8) and woman rookie Tin Pei Ling (9).<br /><br />Of course, the high numbers of fans do not guarantee a victory. However, it is observed that with the "help" of the Internet, the opposition's rallies have attracted more young people and at the same time, caused a pressure for the PAP.<br /><br />Undeniably, the rapid politicisation on the Internet has caused a wind of change in Singapore. However, would it be reflected on votes? It is believed to be the greatest expectation of the opposition and the greatest worry of the ruling party.<br /><br />Translated by Soong Phui Jee<br />...Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-7910930080187911812011-05-12T14:10:00.000+08:002011-05-14T04:34:57.541+08:00PAP delegation to the UN makes a farce of Gay agenda<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc0DTeZJJjN1Ss5YnpmoCxl7w2-XkBM4egIoBvXKqniPpJeYaTtL-DbIie0NJ3Ne-89MtdQCK_uvwAgzMtRlhjkLGOvA4JTsc0vc3vBeOR1uJqpiOsy5eHm-4U2dln7jAGnY5WybVsJnU/s1600/pap+59.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc0DTeZJJjN1Ss5YnpmoCxl7w2-XkBM4egIoBvXKqniPpJeYaTtL-DbIie0NJ3Ne-89MtdQCK_uvwAgzMtRlhjkLGOvA4JTsc0vc3vBeOR1uJqpiOsy5eHm-4U2dln7jAGnY5WybVsJnU/s320/pap+59.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5605712642384409618" /></a><br /><strong>PAP 1959</strong><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_ZUqVqcOnueRR7lhCpi_8Py4yvPwXZG3ByggT5tuq9ANHNNePGptsP2r2FYtReXkxSJ4E2x3Oxa_19nXsEr_mlOtv9UlAK-vCKtQC4MeMQ4g14L3himjlIA4CKstApiBsxieiUstr3I/s1600/pap_buangkok001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_ZUqVqcOnueRR7lhCpi_8Py4yvPwXZG3ByggT5tuq9ANHNNePGptsP2r2FYtReXkxSJ4E2x3Oxa_19nXsEr_mlOtv9UlAK-vCKtQC4MeMQ4g14L3himjlIA4CKstApiBsxieiUstr3I/s320/pap_buangkok001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5605712398486301314" /></a><br /><strong>PAP RALLY 2011</strong><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2tqewmSSJmkVlTFwyiIw3GQvjJwlL1aMqqCxQt-SLETZAJmmsmqrtjjltMRA6El1_aiLsL1BQGXmzJumJljJtJFzo3i45n87zKdcPLlfA96bHJsY2dmpCYW2ecnzIVCKovRH3oioJu0/s1600/wp_hougang004.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2tqewmSSJmkVlTFwyiIw3GQvjJwlL1aMqqCxQt-SLETZAJmmsmqrtjjltMRA6El1_aiLsL1BQGXmzJumJljJtJFzo3i45n87zKdcPLlfA96bHJsY2dmpCYW2ecnzIVCKovRH3oioJu0/s320/wp_hougang004.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5605712174550719074" /></a><br /><strong>WORKERS PARTY RALLY 2011</strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>PAP delegation to the UN makes a farce of Gay agenda </strong>Please watch this short video on the Singapore delegation to the UN's recent speech on gay rights in Singapore: ( see link - http://youtu.be/qke8yDBYugs )<br /><br /><strong>This farce of a Singapore delegation said:</strong><br />"Recognition and success is based on merit and not on factors such as sexual orientation. In the area of employment, the Tripartite Alliance for fair employment practises promotes and educates employers and the general public on fair and responsible employment practises."<br />Well, a couple of weeks before, just prior to the recent elections campaign, then caretaker Minister of Community, Youth and Sports, Vivian "Rainbow Coalition" Balakrishnan and his GRC team issued a statement that was basically a bid to thwart Singapore's first openly gay politician, Dr Vincent Wijeysinghe, in his attempts for political office.<br /><br />If the seeking of political office is seen, correctly I would think, to be a seeking of employment, how is it that a government that claims to already have had in place a 'Tipartite Alliance for fair employment practises promotes and educates employers and the general public on fair and responsible employment practises' managed to be the same ones to try and derail Dr Wijeysinghe's bid for office?<br /><br />All because Dr Wijeysinghe is gay.<br /><br />Futher, this delegation claims that:<br /><br />"In recent time, we had robust debates in Parliamentary debates on<br />whether to decriminalize certain homosexual acts."<br />Yet, it was Vivian Balakrishnan and his team who posed the question on whether Dr Wijeysinghe was harbouring a "Gay Agenda" that he or the Singapore Democratic Party were planning to pursue in Parliament if elected.<br /><br />All this while 4 straight men, three of Vivian Balakhrishnan's PAP colleagues - Hri Krishnan Nair, Charles Chong and Baey Yam Keng - as well as PAP-appointed NMP, Siew Kum Hong, who spoke up in support of gay rights in 2007. It would seem that only straight men are allowed to pursue a "Gay Agenda" in Parliament but not gay ones; gays get our rights under the auspices of straight charity.<br /><br />Vivian Balakhrishnan is of course a Christian; he attends the Barker Road Methodist Church which, along with the Wesley Methodist Church along with many other Christian churches, are known as Christian Taliban Central, and a headhunting grounds for the ruling PAPOxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-77687313642699723782011-03-01T08:20:00.001+08:002011-03-01T08:24:27.718+08:00Oscar Winners 2011<strong>The full list of winners at the 2011 Academy Awards ...</strong><br />Best Picture<br /><br /> * Black Swan<br /> * The Fighter<br /> * Inception<br /> * The Kids Are All Right<br /> * <strong>The King's Speech - WINNER</strong><br /> * 127 Hours<br /> * The Social Network<br /> * Toy Story 3<br /> * True Grit<br /> * Winter's Bone<br /><br />Best Actor<br /><br /> * Javier Bardem, Biutiful<br /> * Jeff Bridges, True Grit<br /> * Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network<br /> *<strong> Colin Firth, The King's Speech - WINNER</strong><br /> * James Franco, 127 Hours<br /><br />Best Actress<br /><br /> * Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right<br /> * Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole<br /> * Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone<br /> * <strong>Natalie Portman, Black Swan - WINNER</strong><br /> * Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine<br /><br />Best Supporting Actor<br /><br /> * <strong>Christian Bale, The Fighter - WINNER</strong><br /> * John Hawkes, Winter's Bone<br /> * Jeremy Renner, The Town<br /> * Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right<br /> * Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech<br /><br />Best Supporting Actress<br /><br /> * Amy Adams, The Fighter<br /> * Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech<br /> * <strong>Melissa Leo, The Fighter - WINNER</strong><br /> * Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit<br /> * Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom<br /><br />Best Director<br /><br /> * Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan<br /> * David O. Russell, The Fighter<br /> * <strong>Tom Hooper, The King's Speech - WINNER</strong><br /> * David Fincher, The Social Network<br /> * Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit <br /><br />Best Original Screenplay<br /><br /> * Another Year<br /> * The Fighter<br /> * Inception<br /> * The Kids Are All Right<br /> * <strong>The King's Speech - WINNER</strong><br /><br />Best Adapted Screenplay<br /><br /> * 127 Hours<br /> <strong>* The Social Network - WINNER</strong><br /> * Toy Story 3<br /> * True Grit<br /> * Winter's Bone <br /><br />Best Animated Film<br /><br /> * How to Train Your Dragon<br /> * The Illusionist<br /> * <strong>Toy Story 3 - WINNER</strong><br /><br />Best Foreign Language Film<br /><br /> * Biutiful<br /> * Dogtooth<br /> * <strong>In A Better World - WINNER</strong><br /> * Incendies<br /> * Outside the Law <br /><br />Best Art Direction<br /><br /> * <strong>Alice in Wonderland - WINNER</strong><br /> * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1<br /> * Inception<br /> * The King's Speech<br /> * True Grit <br /><br />Cinematography<br /><br /> * Black Swan<br /> * <strong>Inception - WINNER</strong><br /> * The King's Speech<br /> * The Social Network<br /> * True Grit <br /><br />Costume Design<br /><br /> * <strong>Alice in Wonderland - WINNER</strong><br /> * I Am Love<br /> * The King's Speech<br /> * The Tempest<br /> * True Grit <br /><br />Editing<br /><br /> * Black Swan<br /> * The Fighter<br /> * The King's Speech<br /> * 127 Hours<br /> <strong> * The Social Network - WINNER</strong><br /><br />Sound Mixing<br /><br /> * <strong>Inception - WINNER</strong><br /> * The King's Speech<br /> * Salt<br /> * The Social Network<br /> * True Grit <br /><br />Sound Editing<br /><br /> *<strong> Inception - WINNER</strong><br /> * Toy Story 3<br /> * Tron: Legacy<br /> * True Grit<br /> * Unstoppable <br /><br />Original Score<br /><br /> * How to Train Your Dragon<br /> * Inception<br /> * The King's Speech<br /> * 127 Hours<br /> <strong>* The Social Network - WINNER</strong><br /><br />Original Song<br /><br /> * "Coming Home" from Country Strong<br /> * "I See the Light" from Tangled<br /> * "If I Rise" from 127 Hours<br /> * "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3 - WINNER<br /><br />Documentary Feature<br /><br /> * Exit through the Gift Shop<br /> * Gasland<br /> * <strong>Inside Job - WINNER</strong><br /> * Restrepo<br /> * Waste Land <br /><br />Documentary (short subject)<br /><br /> * Killing in the Name<br /> * Poster Girl<br /> * <strong>Strangers No More - WINNER</strong><br /> * Sun Come Up<br /> * The Warriors of Qiugang <br /><br />Makeup<br /><br /> * Barney's Version<br /> * The Way Back<br /> * <strong>The Wolfman - WINNER</strong><br /><br />Animated Short Film<br /><br /> * Day & Night<br /> * The Gruffalo<br /> * Let's Pollute<br /> * The Lost Thing - WINNER<br /> * Madagascar, a Journey Diary <br /><br />Live Action Short Film<br /><br /> * The Confession<br /> * The Crush<br /> * <strong>God of Love - WINNER</strong><br /> * Na Wewe<br /> * Wish 143<br /><br />Visual Effects<br /><br /> * Alice in Wonderland<br /> * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1<br /> * Hereafter<br /> * <strong>Inception - WINNER</strong><br /> * Iron Man 2Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-84102767671708754242011-02-21T17:57:00.000+08:002011-02-21T17:58:17.352+08:00Music exec slams Grammys in full-page NY Times adMusic exec slams Grammys in full-page NY Times ad <br />Reuters - 2 hours 35 minutes ago<br /><br /><br />NEW YORK - A veteran music executive has lambasted the Grammy Awards as "a series of hypocrisies and contradictions," in a full-page New York Times advertisement that ran a week after last Sunday's annual ceremony.<br /><br />Steve Stoute's open letter to Grammy organizers ripped the organization and its 12,000-odd voters for snubbing Eminem and Justin Bieber at this year's ceremony, as well as Eminem and Kanye West at past events.<br /><br />"Over the course of my 20-year history as an executive in the music business and as the owner of a firm that specializes in in-culture advertising, I have come to the conclusion that the Grammy Awards have clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture," wrote Stoute, who is currently CEO of the marketing company Translation.<br /><br />"Unfortunately, the awards show has become a series of hypocrisies and contradictions, leaving me to question why any contemporary popular artist would even participate."<br /><br />Eminem, this year's leading contender, lost in most of the major categories for which he was nominated. Two-time nominee Bieber went home empty-handed and disappointed. Both West and Eminem have lost the coveted album of the year race multiple times.<br /><br />"We must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation," Stoute wrote.<br /><br />As for Bieber, he wrote, "How is it that Justin Bieber, an artist that defines what it means to be a modern artist, did not win Best New Artist?"<br /><br />Stoute noted a connection between performers and winners, citing Arcade Fire's surprise album of the year win just after they had finished their performance.<br /><br />"Does the Grammys intentionally use artists for their celebrity, popularity and cultural appeal when they already know the winners and then program a show against this expectation?"<br /><br />There was no immediate reaction from the Recording Academy. Last Sunday's show, despite or because of the shocks, was the highest rated in a decade.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-41074121010780206732011-02-06T23:41:00.001+08:002011-02-06T23:43:46.286+08:00From the grave - By Imran Garda in Middle East ( Excerpt from AlJazeera)Exactly 41 years ago to the day the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell died. Among the countless works that will continue to bring him posthumous recognition, are his various treatises on human psychology and the one thing he considered the principle driving force in social life - power.<br /><br />As Hosni Mubarak addressed the millions of Egyptian people, marching, protesting, bursting with revolutionary fervour intent on seeing him vacate a Presidential seat he's occupied for 30 years, I pondered over what Russell would think of Mubarak, and his address, wherein he promised to step down - eventually. <br /><br />Below are extracts from Russell's articles on political power and the book, "The Conquest of Happiness", offset with extracts of Mubarak's latest speech:<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />BR: The statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself in order that he may be able to carry out the high and noble aims which have led him to eschew comfort and enter the arena of public life, is amazed at the ingratitude of the people when they turn against him. <br /><br /> <br />HM: "Those protests were transformed from a noble and civilised phenomenon of practising freedom of expression to unfortunate clashes, mobilised and controlled by political forces that wanted to escalate and worsen the situation. They targeted the nation's security and stability through acts of provocation theft and looting and setting fires and blocking roads and attacking vital installations and public and private properties and storming some diplomatic missions."<br /><br />BR: It never occurs to him that his work may have had anything but a public motive, or that the pleasure of controlling affairs may have in any degree inspired his activities. The phrases which are customary on the platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a genuine analysis of motives. <br /><br /><br />HM: "I have never, ever been seeking power and the people know the difficult circumstances that I shouldered my responsibility and what I offered this country in war and peace, just as I am a man from the armed forces and it is not in my nature to betray the trust or give up my responsibilities and duties...Hosni Mubarak who speaks to you today is proud of the long years he spent in the service of Egypt and its people. This dear nation is my country, it is the country of all Egyptians, here I have lived and fought for its sake and I defended its land, its sovereignty and interests and on this land I will die and history will judge me and others for our merits and faults.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />BR: Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.<br /><br /><br />HM: "My primary responsibility now is security and independence of the nation to ensure a peaceful transfer of power in circumstances that protect Egypt and the Egyptians and allow handing over responsibility to whoever the people choose in the coming presidential election.”<br /><br />BR: In any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford. Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure. If you ask your boss for leave of absence from the office on some legitimate occasion, his love of power will derive more satisfaction from a refusal than from a consent. If you require a building permit, the petty official concerned will obviously get more pleasure from saying 'No' than from saying 'Yes'. It is this sort of thing which makes the love of power such a dangerous motive.<br /><br /><br />HM: "I am now absolutely determined to finish my work for the nation in a way that ensures handing over its safe-keeping and banner ... preserving its legitimacy and respecting the constitution.<br /><br />"I will work in the remaining months of my term to take the steps to ensure a peaceful transfer of power<br /><br />"I will entrust the new government to perform in ways that will achieve the legitimate rights of the people and that its performance should express the people and their aspirations of political, social and economic reform and to allow job opportunities and combating poverty, realising social justice.<br /><br />"I also demand the judicial and supervisory authorities to take immediately the necessary measures to continue pursuing outlaws and to investigate those who caused the security disarray and those who undertook acts of theft, looting and setting fires and terrorising citizens.<br /><br />"This is my pledge to the people during the last remaining months of my current term: I ask God to help me to honour this pledge to complete my vocation to Egypt and its people in what satisfies God, the nation and its people”<br /><br />BR: Disgusted and disillusioned, he retires from the world after the world has retired from him, and regrets that he ever attempted so thankless a task as the pursuit of the public good. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />HM: "I say in all honesty and regardless of the current situation that I did not intend to nominate myself for a new presidential term. I have spent enough years of my life in the service of Egypt and its people.”Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-91544714342684200212010-12-28T21:06:00.000+08:002010-12-28T21:07:33.177+08:00The Cinematic State of Things - Best Movies of 2010 - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">The Cinematic State of Things <br />By A. O. SCOTT - Published: December 16, 2010</span><br /><br />IN any given year, if you see enough movies — out of habit, ardor or obligation — you will start to notice patterns and clusters. By December the temptation will be nearly overwhelming to generalize from this data, to turn coincidences into trends and trends into matters of world-historical significance. The ad hoc, arbitrary, week-in-week-out sampling of stories and pictures must add up to something, right? Otherwise why bother? <br /><br />One reason you do bother, of course, is precisely to find experiences that defy expectations and break patterns: movies that challenge your assumptions or alter your habits of perception. How often does that happen? Just enough. (At the end of this article you’ll find 30 examples — 10 best and 20 runners-up — selected from more than 600 movies reviewed in The New York Times in 2010.) <br /><br />The ritual of year-end list making is a way of sifting through scattered, memorable moments and forcing them briefly into focus. A handful of movies from 2010 will still be interesting in the future, in which case the date of their first appearance will be little more than the answer to a trivia question. Was it a good year for movies? A great year? Hard to say, and finally, who cares? The movies — good and bad alike — shed a blinking, blurry light on the times, illuminating our collective fears, fantasies and failures of will. An attempt at synthesis can only fail, so in lieu of a comprehensive theory of Cinema Now, I offer a handful of postulates on the Cinematic State of Things. I trust they will stimulate sober discussion and principled argument as well as outright ridicule. <br /><br />1. We are all figments of Leonardo DiCaprio’s imagination. Or Natalie Portman’s. Or Mark Zuckerberg’s. Or Banksy’s. The lines between reality and appearance, reason and madness, truth and fiction have always been blurry, but this was an especially fertile year for dreams, hoaxes and puzzles, many of them playing with fundamental questions of identity. Was Mr. DiCaprio, in “Shutter Island,” a duly appointed federal marshal or loony-bin resident? Awake or asleep in “Inception?” Was “Exit Through the Gift Shop” an elaborate conceptual-art prank by Banksy or an exposé of art-world fraud? And what about “Catfish”? Do our real selves live on Facebook? Or just our real friends? <br /><br />2. It’s all mom’s fault. 2010 was a very good year for female directors, and for actresses, but also a bad year for mothers. In the maternal monster category — surely Mo’Nique, who broke the mold in “Precious,” should present this award — Melissa Leo from “The Fighter” and Barbara Hershey in “Black Swan” will face stiff competition from the cartoon villainess Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) in “Tangled” and Jacki Weaver’s criminal matriarch in the Australian film “Animal Kingdom.” <br /><br />3. But mom is miserable. There was plenty of maternal suffering to counteract such demonization. Rodrigo García’s “Mother and Child” was about nothing else, with Annette Bening, Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts acting out a braided melodrama of longing and loss. But no one suffered as grandly as Tilda Swinton in the operatic “I Am Love,” or as pathetically as Paprika Steen in the unsparing “Applause.” <br /><br />4. Still, the kids are all right. The daughters in particular. It was a year of brave, tough, adventurous and sometimes reckless girls and young women, including the fearless Rapunzel in “Tangled,” who was also a pretty good singer (thanks to the voice of Mandy Moore and the songs of Alan Menken), and both Fanning sisters: Dakota in Floria Sigismondi’s underrated “Runaways,” and Elle in Sofia Coppola’s haunting, clear-sighted “Somewhere.” Not to mention Jennifer Lawrence’s fearless Ozark teenager in “Winter’s Bone,” Hailee Steinfeld’s plucky Old West avenger in “True Grit” and Chloë Grace Moretz’s lonely vampire in “Let Me In.” Perhaps the bravest of all was the sullen, chain-smoking Lisbeth Salander, incarnated (in the Swedish film versions of Stieg Larsson’s best sellers) by Noomi Rapace. <br /><br />5. And the kids grow up. Not just Harry Potter. Yes, the general wallowing in male arrested development continued, with the usual comic suspects (Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis) appearing in the usual puerile comedies (one of them called “Grown Ups”). But at least two films — “Somewhere” and “Greenberg” — took a tough-love attitude toward their immature male protagonists, reckoning the emotional costs of delayed maturity and extended adolescence. (The same might be said of “The Social Network.”) And the experience of sending a child off to college, hardly a common theme in movies before now, seems to have become a touchstone. Or at least an official three-film, cross-genre trend, thanks to “Toy Story 3,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “The Kids Grow Up”: a cartoon, a comedy and a documentary. (Meanwhile the drift and ambivalence of the mid- and post-collegiate young was minutely captured in “The Exploding Girl” and “Tiny Furniture.”) <br /><br />6. Superheroes take a break. Yes, there was “Iron Man 2,” but even that offered a respite from the glowering, pretentious action allegories that have dominated screens for most of the past decade. The battle between good and evil rages on in some quarters, but mostly in self-conscious, self-parodic form. In the strangely similar animated kiddie comedies “Despicable Me” and “Megamind” the heroes and villains are self-conscious role players, and the villains are actually nice as well as more interesting than their occasional square-jawed nemeses. This may reflect genre exhaustion (though another round of superhero blockbusters is already on the horizon), or a measure of real-world cynicism. The investigative documentaries that proliferated this year ("Inside Job," “Client 9,” “Casino Jack and “The United States of Money”) suggest that corruption and criminality exist virtually beyond the reach of justice. <br /><br />7. The Bush era is not over. “Green Zone,” “Fair Game,” “Casino Jack” (both the documentary version and the Kevin Spacey comeback vehicle), “Inside Job,” “Client 9,” “The Ghost Writer.” So many scores left to settle. <br /><br />8. But can’t the ’90s come back, or the ’80s, or some era more appealing than the one we’re in? “Love and Other Drugs,” “Greenberg,” “Hot Tub Time Machine,” “The Runaways,” “Howl,” any music documentary you can name. <br /><br />9. Only a great director can make a great movie, but a good actor can make a bad or mediocre or not-quite-great movie much better. For instance: Helen Mirren in “The Tempest,” Ms. Mirren in “RED,” Paul Giamatti in “Barney’s Version,” Mr. Spacey in “Casino Jack,” Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal in “Love and Other Drugs,” Javier Bardem in “Biutiful,” everyone in “True Grit,” Vanessa Redgrave in “Letters to Juliet,” Liam Neeson in anything he was in, Rachel McAdams in “Morning Glory,” Anthony Mackie in “Night Catches Us.” <br /><br />10. The discussion of movies is frequently more interesting than the movies themselves. It was more fun to read the impassioned, geeky arguments about “Inception” than to endure a second viewing of that film. Early arguments about the accuracy of “The Social Network” and whether that even mattered gave way to a series of reviews, essays and debates about Facebook, digital entrepreneurship, friendship, business, meritocracy and the Ivy League far richer and more relevant to contemporary life than Aaron Sorkin’s glib script or David Fincher’s elegant atmospherics. And as intellectually lazy and emotionally manipulative as it was, Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” nonetheless focused serious polemical attention on the problems facing American education. <br /><br />The 10 Best Movies of 2010 <br /><br />1. INSIDE JOB (Charles Ferguson) The crisis of finance capitalism as a great crime story. <br /><br />2. TOY STORY 3 (Lee Unkrich) The triumph of consumer capitalism as an epic love story. <br /><br />3. CARLOS (Olivier Assayas) The failure of global revolution as farce, melodrama, erotic thriller and music video. <br /><br />4. SOMEWHERE (Sofia Coppola) An eccentric, perfect poem about fame, loneliness and cross-generational need. <br /><br />5. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Lisa Cholodenko) An eccentric, perfect comedy about love, betrayal and cross-generational confusion. <br /><br />6. GREENBERG (Noah Baumbach) A deliberately imperfect comedy about an eccentric fleeing from love, running from betrayal and wallowing in cross-generational confusion. <br /><br />7. 127 HOURS (Danny Boyle) It’s all fun until someone loses an arm. And then, strangely enough, it’s even more fun. <br /><br />8. LAST TRAIN HOME (Lixin Fan) The future of global capitalism, in China and elsewhere: a family tragedy in the form of a documentary, as full of anger, dignity and pathos as a play by Arthur Miller. <br /><br />9. SECRET SUNSHINE (Lee Chang-dong) A family tragedy from South Korea, in the form of a melodramatic crime story. As dense and gripping as a great novel. <br /><br />10. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (Banksy) All of the above. None of the above. Everything and nothing. An elaborate art-world stunt in the form of a documentary. Or vice versa. <br /><br />RUNNERS-UP “And Everything Is Going Fine,” “Another Year,” “Black Swan,” “Boxing Gym,” “The Father of My Children,” “The Fighter,” “A Film Unfinished,” “Fish Tank,” “Four Lions,” “The Ghost Writer,” “Howl,” “I Am Love,” “Let Me In,” “Please Give,” “Solitary Man,” “Tangled,” “Tiny Furniture,” “Vincere,; “White Material,” “Winter’s Bone.”Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-61529902966863297422010-12-28T20:58:00.001+08:002010-12-28T20:58:49.478+08:00AT&T Video Shows Texting and Driving Don’t Mix - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">December 27, 2010, 7:00 am AT&T Video Shows Texting and Driving Don’t Mix<br />By MATT RICHTEL</span><br /><br />“Where u at”<br /><br />That was the last text message by Mariah West, who died at 18 when she skidded in traffic and flipped into the oncoming lane. She was texting at the time.<br /><br />She is among the people who appear in a nearly 11-minute documentary developed by AT&T to warn young people about the dangers of texting and driving.<br /><br />The wireless company planned to release the video today, before New Year’s Eve. The timing is aimed, the company says, at showing that texting and driving deserves to be considered as dangerous as drunken driving. The documentary includes intense, sometimes disturbing, images, including that of Ms. West, as she spent her last minutes alive on a breathing tube.<br /><br />“Our goal is to help make texting while driving as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving,” said Gail Torreano, a senior vice president with AT&T. “We want this to be in every school in the country and for teenagers to know a text message is not worth a life.”<br /><br />Research from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute shows that motorists who text face a 23 times greater risk of crash or near crash. Other wireless carriers, like Verizon Wireless, in the last year have increased efforts to warn about the risks of texting and driving.<br /><br />AT&T says it plans to distribute the documentary to schools, safety organizations and government agencies, and is urging people to take a pledge on its Facebook page not to text and drive.<br /><br />David Teater, senior director of transportation initiatives at the National Safety Council, a nonprofit safety advocacy organization, said AT&T deserved credit. At the same time, he says, texting can be so hard to resist that teenagers aren’t likely to stop just by hearing such a message.<br /><br />“The activity is too compelling,” he said, describing texting as having addicting properties. “What they need to do is start deploying technology that will prevent people from being able to text while driving.”<br /><br />Still, he said: “The wireless industry is very sincere about getting kids to stop texting and driving. I applaud what they’re doing.”Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-90294741768442666762010-12-28T20:54:00.000+08:002010-12-28T20:55:44.467+08:00Frequent Flier My Anxiety in Flight, After Free Fall in an Elevator - an excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">Frequent Flier<br />My Anxiety in Flight, After Free Fall in an Elevator</span><br /><br />Published: December 27, 2010<br />Quote : I’LL be the first one to admit that I’m not a great frequent flier. It’s not just the delays and cancellations; it’s actually the process of flying. <br /><br /><br /> <br />Craig Woerz is a founder and managing partner of Media Storm. <br />Q. How often do you fly?<br /><br />A. About three to six flights per month, all domestic.<br /><br />Q. What’s your least favorite airport?<br /><br />A. I don’t like any of them since I don’t like to fly. But if I had to pick one, it would be O’Hare.<br /><br />Q. Of all the places you’ve been, what’s the best?<br /><br />A. With all the domestic travel I do, I hadn’t ventured overseas. But two years ago, I went to Florence and all through northern Italy. It was amazing.<br /><br />Q. What’s your secret airport vice?<br /><br />A. I love my family and miss them when I travel, so instead of using airport or airplane Wi-Fi signals for work, I love to iChat with my kids. I know that’s not a vice, but maybe it is a guilty pleasure.<br />I used to be O.K. with it and even now, you’d never know I was a little fearful. But I am, although I know that flying is safer than other modes of transport. <br /><br />About 10 years ago, I experienced free fall in an elevator. Everybody always talks about what they would do if they were in an elevator and it started dropping. Let me tell you, you do nothing. It all happens very quickly. <br /><br />I was meeting my prospective client on the 37th floor. The elevator was crowded, but by the time we got close to my floor, I was the last person on. I had a weird feeling. Then the lights went out and the thing started dropping. The elevator stopped after it went down about 10 floors, and the doors opened and I got out. <br /><br />People were milling around and I was told there was a malfunction. No kidding. Apparently, a fire alarm was triggered, and that was supposed to send the elevators down at a slow pace. This one just happened to drop more quickly. <br /><br />I got back on the elevator, believe it or not, and went to my appointment to make my presentation. I didn’t tell the prospective client what happened, but he could tell something was wrong. I eventually did get his business. Ironically, he wound up being an employee a few years later. <br /><br />So the elevator incident convinced me that heights and enclosed spaces really can be a bad combination. <br /><br />To take the edge off of flying, I have a routine. I usually fly out of the same airports, which means I can go to the same coffee shops, clubs and often see the same ticket agents. Once on board, I’ll log on to Wi-Fi, if it’s available, and distract myself. <br /><br />Still, weird things happen. <br /><br />I was on a very turbulent flight last year. All of a sudden, the oxygen masks dropped down and the attendants flung themselves into their seats. I was a little freaked, but I put the oxygen mask on. I was a little more freaked when it didn’t fill up. I hit the wrong button. I wasn’t the only one. <br /><br />After what seemed like an hour, but was really only a minute or two, the pilot came over the speaker system and told us that he had unintentionally hit the wrong control button while trying to send cooling air into the main cabin. <br /><br />People who are relaxed on planes really have it made. But there is a point where you can be too relaxed. I was sitting next to a woman who actually took off her shoes and stockings and gave herself a little pedicure. That wasn’t fun. <br /><br />Then there was a time a guy literally laid down in the aisle. I thought something horrible was happening. But then I was told he thought it would be “fun” if someone checked his blood pressure. I didn’t know you had to lie down for that, but I’m sure his was fine. <br /><br />Good thing they didn’t check mine. <br /><br /><br />By Craig Woerz, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joan.raymond@nytimes.com.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-18859199714300280032010-12-28T20:49:00.001+08:002010-12-28T20:49:54.866+08:00How Superstars’ Pay Stifles Everyone Else - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">How Superstars’ Pay Stifles Everyone ElsePublished: December 25, 2010<br />This article was adapted from “The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do,” by Eduardo Porter, an editorial writer for The New York Times. The book, to be published on Jan. 4 by Portfolio, examines how pricing affects all of our choices. </span><br /><br />Associated Press<br />President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall law in the 1930s to separate commercial banking from investment banking. Standing from left are Senator Carter Glass, Senator Duncan Fletcher, Henry Morgenthau Jr. of the Treasury, Jesse Jones and Representative Henry Steagall. <br />IN 1990, the Kansas City Royals had the heftiest payroll in Major League Baseball: almost $24 million. A typical player for the New York Yankees, which had some of the most expensive players in the game at the time, earned less than $450,000. <br /><br />Last season, the Yankees spent $206 million on players, more than five times the payroll of the Royals 20 years ago, even after accounting for inflation. The Yankees’ median salary was $5.5 million, seven times the 1990 figure, inflation-adjusted. <br /><br />What is most striking is how the Yankees have outstripped the rest of the league. Two decades ago. the Royals’ payroll was about three times as big as that of the Chicago White Sox, the cheapest major-league team at the time. Last season, the Yankees spent about six times as much as the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had the most inexpensive roster. <br /><br />Baseball aficionados might conclude that all of this points to some pernicious new trend in the market for top players. But this is not specific to baseball, or even to sport. Consider the market for pop music. In 1982, the top 1 percent of pop stars, in terms of pay, raked in 26 percent of concert ticket revenue. In 2003, that top percentage of stars — names like Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera or 50 Cent — was taking 56 percent of the concert pie. <br /><br />The phenomenon is not even specific to the United States. Pelé, from Brazil, the greatest soccer player of all time, made his World Cup debut in Sweden in 1958, when he was only 17. He became an instant star, coveted by every team on the planet. By 1960, his team, Santos, reportedly paid him $150,000 a year — about $1.1 million in today’s money. But these days, that would amount to middling pay. The top-paid player of the 2009-10 season, the Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo, made $17 million playing for the Spanish team Real Madrid. <br /><br />Of course, the inflated rewards of performers at the very top have to do with specific changes in the underlying economics of entertainment. People have more disposable income to spend on entertainment. Corporate sponsorships, virtually non-existent in the age of Pelé, account today for a large share of performers’ income. In 2009, the highest-earning soccer player was the English midfielder David Beckham, who made $33 million from endorsements on top of a $7 million salary from the Los Angeles Galaxy and AC Milan. <br /><br />But broader forces are also at play. Nearly 30 years ago, Sherwin Rosen, an economist from the University of Chicago, proposed an elegant theory to explain the general pattern. In an article entitled “The Economics of Superstars,” he argued that technological changes would allow the best performers in a given field to serve a bigger market and thus reap a greater share of its revenue. But this would also reduce the spoils available to the less gifted in the business. <br /><br />The reasoning fits smoothly into the income dynamics of the music industry, which has been shaken by many technological disruptions since the 1980s. First, MTV put music on television. Then Napster took it to the Internet. Apple allowed fans to buy single songs and take them with them. Each of these breakthroughs allowed the very top acts to reach a larger fan base, and thus command a larger audience and a bigger share of concert revenue. <br /><br />Superstar effects apply, too, to European soccer, which is beamed around the world on cable and satellite TV. In 2009, the top 20 soccer teams reaped revenue of 3.9 billion euros, more than 25 percent of the combined revenue of all the teams in European leagues. <br /><br />Pelé was not held back by the quality of his game, but by his relatively small revenue base. He might be the greatest of all time, but few people could pay to experience his greatness. In 1958, there were about 350,000 television sets in Brazil. The first television satellite, Telstar I, wasn’t launched until July 1962, too late for his World Cup debut. <br /><br />By contrast, the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, in which Ronaldo played for Portugal, was broadcast in more than 200 countries, to an aggregate audience of over 25 billion. Some 700 million people watched the final alone. Ronaldo is not better then Pelé. He makes more money because his talent is broadcast to more people. <br /><br />IF one loosens slightly the role played by technological progress, Dr. Rosen’s framework also does a pretty good job explaining the evolution of executive pay. In 1977, an elite chief executive working at one of America’s top 100 companies earned about 50 times the wage of its average worker. Three decades later, the nation’s best-paid C.E.O.’s made about 1,100 times the pay of a worker on the production line. <br /><br />This has separated the megarich from the merely very rich. A study of pay in the 1970s found that executives in the top 10 percent made about twice as much as those in the middle of the pack. By the early 2000s, the top suits made more than four times the pay of the executives in the middle. <br /><br />Top C.E.O.’s are not pop stars. But the pay for the most sought-after executives has risen for similar reasons. As corporations have increased in size, management decisions at the top have become that much more important, measured in terms of profits or losses. Top American companies have much higher sales and profits than they did 20 years ago. Banks and funds have more assets. <br /><br />With so much more at stake, it has become that much more important for companies to put at the helm the “best” executive or banker or fund manager they can find. This has set off furious competition for top managerial talent, pushing the prices of top-rated managers way above the pay of those in the tier just below them. Two economists at New York University, Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier, published a study in 2006 estimating that the sixfold rise in the pay of chief executives in the United States over the last quarter century or so was attributable entirely to the sixfold rise in the market size of large American companies. <br /><br />And therein lies a big problem for American capitalism. <br /><br />CAPITALISM relies on inequality. Like differences in other prices, pay disparities steer resources — in this case, people — to where they would be most productively employed. <br /><br />Despite the great danger and cost of crossing the border illegally into the United States, hundreds of thousands of the hardest-working Mexicans are drawn by the relative prosperity they can achieve north of the border — where the average income of a Mexican-American household is more than $33,000, almost five times that of a family in Mexico. <br /><br />In poor economies, fast economic growth increases inequality as some workers profit from new opportunities and others do not. The share of national income accruing to the top 1 percent of the Chinese population more than doubled from 1986 to 2003. Inequality spurs economic growth by providing incentives for people to accumulate human capital and become more productive. It pulls the best and brightest into the most lucrative lines of work, where the most profitable companies hire them. <br /><br />Yet the increasingly outsize rewards accruing to the nation’s elite clutch of superstars threaten to gum up this incentive mechanism. If only a very lucky few can aspire to a big reward, most workers are likely to conclude that it is not worth the effort to try. The odds aren’t on their side. <br /><br />Inequality has been found to turn people off. A recent experiment conducted with workers at the University of California found that those who earned less than the typical wage for their pay unit and occupation became measurably less satisfied with their jobs, and more likely to look for another one if they found out the pay of their peers. Other experiments have found that winner-take-all games tend to elicit much less player effort — and more cheating — than those in which rewards are distributed more smoothly according to performance. <br /><br />Ultimately, the question is this: How much inequality is necessary? It is true that the nation grew quite fast as inequality soared over the last three decades. Since 1980, the country’s gross domestic product per person has increased about 69 percent, even as the share of income accruing to the richest 1 percent of the population jumped to 36 percent from 22 percent. But the economy grew even faster — 83 percent per capita — from 1951 to 1980, when inequality declined when measured as the share of national income going to the very top of the population. <br /><br />One study concluded that each percentage-point increase in the share of national income channeled to the top 10 percent of Americans since 1960 led to an increase of 0.12 percentage points in the annual rate of economic growth — hardly an enormous boost. The cost for this tonic seems to be a drastic decline in Americans’ economic mobility. Since 1980, the weekly wage of the average worker on the factory floor has increased little more than 3 percent, after inflation. <br /><br />The United States is the rich country with the most skewed income distribution. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average earnings of the richest 10 percent of Americans are 16 times those for the 10 percent at the bottom of the pile. That compares with a multiple of 8 in Britain and 5 in Sweden. <br /><br />Not coincidentally, Americans are less economically mobile than people in other developed countries. There is a 42 percent chance that the son of an American man in the bottom fifth of the income distribution will be stuck in the same economic slot. The equivalent odds for a British man are 30 percent, and 25 percent for a Swede. <br /><br />NONE of this even begins to account for the damage caused by the superstar dynamics that shape the pay of American bankers. <br /><br />Remember the ’80s? Gordon Gekko first sashayed across the silver screen. Ivan Boesky was jailed for insider trading. Michael Milken peddled junk bonds. In 1987, financial firms amassed a little less than a fifth of the profits of all American corporations. Wall Street bonuses totaled $2.6 billion — about $15,600 for each man and woman working there. <br /><br />Yet by current standards, this era of legendary greed appears like a moment of uncommon restraint. In 2007, as the financial bubble built upon the American housing market reached its peak, financial companies accounted for a full third of the profits of the nation’s private sector. Wall Street bonuses hit a record $32.9 billion, or $177,000 a worker. <br /><br />Just as technology gave pop stars a bigger fan base that could buy their CDs, download their singles and snap up their concert tickets, the combination of information technology and deregulation gave bankers an unprecedented opportunity to reap huge rewards. Investors piled into the top-rated funds that generated the highest returns. Rewards flowed in abundance to the most “productive” financiers, those that took the bigger risks and generated the biggest profits. <br /><br />Finance wasn’t always so richly paid. Financiers had a great time in the early decades of the 20th century: from 1909 to the mid-1930s, they typically made about 50 percent to 60 percent more than workers in other industries. But the stock market collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression changed all that. In 1934, corporate profits in the financial sector shrank to $236 million, one-eighth what they were five years earlier. Wages followed. From 1950 through about 1980, bankers and insurers made only 10 percent more than workers outside of finance, on average. <br /><br />This ebb and flow of compensation mimics the waxing and waning of restrictions governing finance. A century ago, there were virtually no regulations to restrain banks’ creativity and speculative urges. They could invest where they wanted, deploy depositors’ money as they saw fit. But after the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up a plethora of restrictions to avoid a repeat of the financial bubble that burst in 1929. <br /><br />Interstate banking had been limited since 1927. In 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act forbade commercial banks and investment banks from getting into each other’s business — separating deposit taking and lending from playing the markets. Interest-rate ceilings were also imposed that year. The move to regulate bankers continued in 1959 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who forbade mixing banks with insurance companies. <br /><br />Barred from applying the full extent of their wits toward maximizing their incomes, many of the nation’s best and brightest who had flocked to make money in banking left for other industries. <br /><br />Then, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration unleashed a surge of deregulation. By 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act lay repealed. Banks could commingle with insurance companies at will. Ceilings on interest rates vanished. Banks could open branches anywhere. Unsurprisingly, the most highly educated returned to banking and finance. By 2005, the share of workers in the finance industry with a college education exceeded that of other industries by nearly 20 percentage points. By 2006, pay in the financial sector was again 70 percent higher than wages elsewhere in the private sector. A third of the 2009 Princeton graduates who got jobs after graduation went into finance; 6.3 percent took jobs in government. <br /><br />Then the financial industry blew up, taking out a good chunk of the world economy. <br /><br />Finance will not be tamed by tweaking the way bankers are paid. But bankers’ pay could be structured to discourage wanton risk taking. Similarly, superstar effects are not the sole cause of the stagnant incomes of regular Joes. But the piling of rewards on our superstars is encouraging a race to the top that, if left unabated, could leave very little to strive for in its wake.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-38220723151746465442010-12-28T20:43:00.000+08:002010-12-28T20:44:24.862+08:00Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines <br />Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel<br />By BROOKS BARNES<br />Published: December 27, 2010</span><br /><br />Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press<br />Crowds line the way to Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom. <br />To handle over 30 million annual visitors — many of them during this busiest time of year for the megaresort — Disney World long ago turned the art of crowd control into a science. But the putative Happiest Place on Earth has decided it must figure out how to quicken the pace even more. A cultural shift toward impatience — fed by video games and smartphones — is demanding it, park managers say. To stay relevant to the entertain-me-right-this-second generation, Disney must evolve. <br /><br />And so it has spent the last year outfitting an underground, nerve center to address that most low-tech of problems, the wait. Located under Cinderella Castle, the new center uses video cameras, computer programs, digital park maps and other whiz-bang tools to spot gridlock before it forms and deploy countermeasures in real time. <br /><br />In one corner, employees watch flat-screen televisions that depict various attractions in green, yellow and red outlines, with the colors representing wait-time gradations. <br /><br />If Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride that sends people on a spirited voyage through the Spanish Main, suddenly blinks from green to yellow, the center might respond by alerting managers to launch more boats. <br /><br />Another option involves dispatching Captain Jack Sparrow or Goofy or one of their pals to the queue to entertain people as they wait. “It’s about being nimble and quickly noticing that, ‘Hey, let’s make sure there is some relief out there for those people,’ ” said Phil Holmes, vice president of the Magic Kingdom, the flagship Disney World park. <br /><br />What if Fantasyland is swamped with people but adjacent Tomorrowland has plenty of elbow room? The operations center can route a miniparade called “Move it! Shake it! Celebrate It!” into the less-populated pocket to siphon guests in that direction. Other technicians in the command center monitor restaurants, perhaps spotting that additional registers need to be opened or dispatching greeters to hand out menus to people waiting to order. <br /><br />“These moments add up until they collectively help the entire park,” Mr. Holmes said. <br /><br />In recent years, according to Disney research, the average Magic Kingdom visitor has had time for only nine rides — out of more than 40 — because of lengthy waits and crowded walkways and restaurants. In the last few months, however, the operations center has managed to make enough nips and tucks to lift that average to 10. <br /><br />“Control is Disney’s middle name, so they have always been on the cutting edge of this kind of thing,” said Bob Sehlinger, co-author of “The Unofficial Guide: Walt Disney World 2011” and a writer on Disney for Frommers.com. Mr. Sehlinger added, “The challenge is that you only have so many options once the bathtub is full.” <br /><br />Disney, which is periodically criticized for overreaching in the name of cultural dominance (and profits), does not see any of this monitoring as the slightest bit invasive. Rather, the company regards it as just another part of its efforts to pull every possible lever in the name of a better guest experience. <br /><br />The primary goal of the command center, as stated by Disney, is to make guests happier — because to increase revenue in its $10.7 billion theme park business, which includes resorts in Paris and Hong Kong, Disney needs its current customers to return more often. “Giving our guests faster and better access to the fun,” said Thomas O. Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, “is at the heart of our investment in technology.” <br /><br />Disney also wants to raise per-capita spending. “If we can also increase the average number of shop or restaurant visits, that’s a huge win for us,” Mr. Holmes said. <br /><br />Disney has long been a leader in technological innovation, whether that means inventing cameras to make animated films or creating the audio animatronic robots for the attraction It’s a Small World. <br /><br />Behind-the-scenes systems — typically kept top secret by the company as it strives to create an environment where things happen as if by magic — are also highly computerized. Ride capacity is determined in part by analyzing hotel reservations, flight bookings and historic attendance data. Satellites provide minute-by-minute weather analysis. A system called FastPass allows people to skip lines for popular rides like the Jungle Cruise. <br /><br />But the command center reflects how Disney is deepening its reliance on technology as it thinks about adapting decades-old parks, which are primarily built around nostalgia for an America gone by, for 21st century expectations. “It’s not about us needing to keep pace with technological change,” Mr. Staggs said. “We need to set the pace for that kind of change.” <br /><br />For instance, Disney has been experimenting with smartphones to help guide people more efficiently. Mobile Magic, a $1.99 app, allows visitors to type in “Sleeping Beauty” and receive directions to where that princess (or at least a costumed stand-in) is signing autographs. In the future, typing in “hamburger” might reveal the nearest restaurant with the shortest wait. <br /><br />Disney has also been adding video games to wait areas. At Space Mountain, 87 game stations now line the queue to keep visitors entertained. (Games, about 90 seconds in length, involve simple things like clearing runways of asteroids). Gaming has also been added to the queue for Soarin’, an Epcot ride that simulates a hang glider flight. <br /><br />Blogs that watch Disney’s parks have speculated that engineers (“imagineers,” in the company’s parlance) are also looking at bigger ideas, like wristbands that contain information like your name, credit card number and favorite Disney characters. While Disney is keeping a tight lid on specifics, these devices would enable simple transactions like the purchase of souvenirs — just pay by swiping your wristband — as well as more complicated attractions that interact with guests. <br /><br />“Picture a day where there is memory built into these characters — they will know that they’ve seen you four or five times before and that your name is Bobby,” said Bruce E. Vaughn, chief creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. “Those are the kinds of limits that are dissolving so quickly that we can see being able to implement them in the meaningfully near future.” <br /><br />Dreaming about the future was not something on Mr. Holmes’s mind as he gave a reporter a rare peek behind the Disney operations veil. He had a park to run, and the command center had spotted trouble at the tea cups. <br /><br />After running smoothly all morning, the spinning Mad Tea Party abruptly stopped meeting precalculated ridership goals. A few minutes later, Mr. Holmes had his answer: a new employee had taken over the ride and was leaving tea cups unloaded. <br /><br />“In the theme park business these days,” he said, “patience is not always a virtue.”Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-7132416363182605022010-12-28T20:35:00.001+08:002010-12-28T20:35:44.655+08:00Teena Marie, 1980s R&B Hitmaker, Dies at 54 - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">Teena Marie, 1980s R&B Hitmaker, Dies at 54By BEN SISARIO<br />Published: December 27, 2010</span><br /><br />Teena Marie, a singer whose funky hits in the 1980s, like “Lovergirl” and “Square Biz,” made her one of the few white performers to consistently find success on the rhythm-and-blues charts, died on Sunday at her home in Pasadena, Calif. She was 54. <br /><br />.The cause was not immediately known, but The Associated Press reported that the authorities said she appeared to have died of natural causes. <br /><br />Born Mary Christine Brockert in Santa Monica, Calif., on March 5, 1956, she grew up in a predominantly black area of nearby Venice, Calif., and began singing and acting while still a child. At age 8, she tap-danced for Jed Clampett on an episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” under the name Tina Marie Brockert. <br /><br />After graduating from high school and briefly attending Santa Monica College, she signed with Motown Records and became of protégée of Rick James, then one of the label’s biggest new stars. Teena Marie’s first album, “Wild and Peaceful,” with James as a producer and the chief songwriter — and his Stone City Band backing her up — was released on Motown’s Gordy imprint in 1979. <br /><br />“I’m Just a Sucker for Your Love,” her duet with James from that album, went to No. 8 on the R&B singles chart. The two began a tempestuous love affair. Another duet, “Fire and Desire,” appeared on James’s hit album from 1981, “Street Songs.” James died in 2004. <br /><br />Through the 1980s, Teena Marie developed a style that folded bits of rap (as on the 1981 hit “Square Biz”) and rock (“You So Heavy,” from 1986, has a scorching guitar solo by Stevie Ray Vaughan) into danceable, funk-driven pop. <br /><br />From the start, race was ambiguous in her music. She was not pictured on the cover of “Wild and Peaceful,” which was promoted to black radio stations. With an earthy voice that pierced with power in its high registers, she was highly credible as an R&B singer, and many listeners learned that she was white only when they saw her portrait on the cover of her second album, “Lady T,” in 1980. <br /><br />“I still have people coming up to me 26 years later and looking at me and all of a sudden going, ‘I didn’t know you were white!’ ” she said in an interview on National Public Radio in 2006. <br /><br />But she was embraced by the R&B audience, and some of her songs have become ingrained in black musical culture. Her 1988 song “Ooo La La La” was sampled and reconfigured by the Fugees as “Fu-Gee-La” in 1996 on their debut album, “The Score.” <br /><br />For many of her fellow musicians, Teena Marie’s biggest accomplishment was made offstage. Her lawsuit against Motown in the early 1980s, for nonpayment of royalties, resulted in a clarification of California law — known in the music industry as the Brockert Initiative or the Teena Marie Law — that made it much more difficult for record companies to keep an act under an exclusive contract. After leaving Motown, she signed with Epic and reached her commercial peak. Her 1984 song “Lovergirl” — featuring her impassioned squeal in the chorus, “I just want to be your lover girl/I just want to rock your world” — went to No. 4 on Billboard’s pop chart and became her biggest seller. <br /><br />In the 1990s, Teena Marie’s career slowed as she raised a daughter, Alia Rose, who survives her. But she continued to release music. She was nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award for best female R&B vocal performance, for her song “I’m Still in Love” — she lost to Alicia Keys — and released her most recent album, “Congo Square,” on the revived Stax label in 2009. <br /><br />Although Teena Marie’s race was hidden from the public at the very beginning of her career, she was always forthright about the black influences in her music. In an interview with Essence.com last year, she suggested that the content of the music mattered more than the singer’s color. <br /><br />“Over all my race hasn’t been a problem,” she said. “I’m a black artist with white skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what’s in your own soul.”Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-61021815925464067802010-12-15T07:48:00.000+08:002010-12-15T07:49:46.718+08:00COMMENTARY: Singapore's disdain exposed - an excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">COMMENTARY: Singapore's disdain exposed<br />ANN - Tuesday, December 14</span><br /><br /><br />Kuala Lumpur (The Star/ANN) - Singapore's most senior Foreign Ministry official Bilahari Kausikan is heading for Kuala Lumpur on Dec 22 as a leader of a delegation to discuss KTM Berhad's land swap deal in Singapore agreed in May by the Prime Ministers of the two countries.<br /><br />This is the fifth round and possibly the last meeting of the Malaysia-Singapore Joint Implementation Team (MSJIT) between officials of both countries, each side with about 20 people representing various ministries and agencies.<br /><br />After the last meeting two weeks ago, a short one-paragraph joint statement was issued describing the meeting as one held in a cordial atmosphere.<br /><br />Come Dec 22, the atmosphere will definitely be awkward, at least to some officials.<br /><br />Simple analogy -- imagine sitting with someone that you know who has been bad-mouthing you to others. How would you feel?<br /><br />Now, how about sitting down to a meeting with the very man who claimed, among others, that Malaysia was "confused and dangerous, fuelled by the distinct possibility of racial conflict"?<br /><br />Not only that, Kausikan said back in September 2008 that "a lack of competent leadership is a real problem for Malaysia".<br /><br />Courtesy of WikiLeaks and not exactly denied by his boss, Foreign Minister George Yeo, Kausikan's remarks are riling up officials in Malaysia.<br /><br />"His remarks are crude and smack of arrogance. It is not just what he has said but how he said it. It shows his sentiment for us.<br /><br />"Every time there is an MSJIT meeting, the host country will host lunch and dinner. It is going to be an awkward situation for us," said one government official.<br /><br />Kausikan's predecessor Peter Ho has also made damaging remarks on Malaysia, along with the ministry's ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh whose views of Japan and India were damaging.<br /><br />"Fat losers, stupid, bad leadership" are some adjectives that had been used by Singaporean diplomats to describe their neighbours.<br /><br />Yeo, in an immediate attempt to play down reports, defended his officials, saying their comments were taken out of context and were interpretations of views reflected by American officials.<br /><br />The comments, which Yeo described as "cocktail talk", were confidential and should not have been released.<br /><br />Yeo said his ministry would not check the veracity of the remarks, nor comment on what could have gone on in an informal and confidential setting.<br /><br />It is normal for diplomats to get information from others during cocktails. What is surprising, though, is that the information gathered from the Singaporeans merit attention from the Americans.<br /><br />"I am sure how it was said by the Singapore diplomats and the sentiment that it merits attention," said an official.<br /><br />For those who have dealt with Singapore, nothing has changed.<br /><br />The general feeling among officials is that their Singapore counterparts do have condescending traits.<br /><br />WikiLeaks exposes in the past weeks have caused embarrassment to diplomats and government officials around the world.<br /><br />This week, it is Singapore's turn. There are thousands of documents yet to be made public by WikiLeaks and who knows if Malaysia would be next, as we are never short of politicians who may not be able to keep their mouths shut.<br /><br />As Yeo said, he did not think relations with the countries will be affected.<br /><br />True, but as the closest neighbour with supposedly warm ties, Singapore would do well to show some kind of regret over the remarks made by its officials.<br /><br />If it had been Singapore at the end of the stick, they would not stop until they get what they want. No doubt, Malaysia will now need to be more alert when dealing with Singapore.<br /><br />During next week's meeting, officials will need to remain professional when they meet Kausikan.<br /><br />They have to stick to the agenda as there are objectives to be met since the leaders have given officials until end of the year to iron out details of the KTM land swap deal and other related projects.<br /><br />The days of being emotional are long gone. It is time to think strategically for the long term and best interest of Malaysia.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-91915400129720562622010-12-07T20:04:00.001+08:002010-12-07T20:06:28.329+08:00If an island state vanishes, is it still a nation? - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">If an island state vanishes, is it still a nation? - AP</span><br /><br />By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley, Ap Special Correspondent – Mon Dec 6, 2:27 pm ET<br />CANCUN, Mexico – Encroaching seas in the far Pacific are raising the salt level in the wells of the Marshall Islands. Waves threaten to cut one sliver of an island in two. "It's getting worse," says Kaminaga Kaminaga, the tiny nation's climate change coordinator.<br />The rising ocean raises questions, too: What happens if the 61,000 Marshallese must abandon their low-lying atolls? Would they still be a nation? With a U.N. seat? With control of their old fisheries and their undersea minerals? Where would they live, and how would they make a living? Who, precisely, would they and their children become?<br />For years global negotiations to act on climate change have dragged on, with little to show. Parties to the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty are meeting again in this Caribbean resort, but no one expects decisive action to roll back the industrial, agricultural and transport emissions blamed for global warming — and consequently for swelling seas.<br />From 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) away, the people of the Marshalls — and of Kiribati, Tuvalu and other atoll nations beyond — can only wonder how many more years they'll be able to cope.<br />"People who built their homes close to shore, all they can do is get more rocks to rebuild the seawall in front day by day," said Kaminaga, who is in Cancun with the Marshallese delegation to the U.N. talks.<br />The Marshallese government is looking beyond today, however, to those ultimate questions of nationhood, displacement and rights.<br />"We're facing a set of issues unique in the history of the system of nation-states," Dean Bialek, a New York-based adviser to the Republic of the Marshall Islands who is also in Cancun, told The Associated Press. "We're confronting existential issues associated with climate impacts that are not adequately addressed in the international legal framework."<br />The Marshallese government took a first step to confront these issues by asking for advice from the Center for Climate Change Law at New York's Columbia University. The center's director, Michael B. Gerrard, in turn has asked legal scholars worldwide to assemble at Columbia next May to begin to piece together answers.<br />Nations have faded into history through secession — recently with the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, for example — or through conquest or ceding their territory to other countries.<br />But "no country has ever physically disappeared, and it's a real void in the law," Gerrard said during an interview in New York.<br />The U.N. network of climate scientists projects that seas, expanding from heat and from the runoff of melting land ice, may rise by up to 1.94 feet (0.59 meters) by 2100, swamping much of the scarce land of coral atolls.<br />But the islands may become uninhabitable long before waves wash over them, because of the saline contamination of water supplies and ruining of crops, and because warming is expected to produce more threatening tropical storms.<br />"If a country like Tuvalu or Kiribati were to become uninhabitable, would the people be stateless? What's their position in international law?" asked Australian legal scholar Jane McAdam. "The short answer is, it depends. It's complicated."<br />McAdam, of the University of New South Wales, has traveled in the atoll nations and studied the legal history.<br />As far as islanders keeping their citizenship and sovereignty if they abandon their homelands, she said by telephone from Sydney, "it's unclear when a state would end because of climate change. It would come down to what the international community was prepared to tolerate" — that is, whether the U.N. General Assembly would move to take a seat away from a displaced people.<br />The 1951 global treaty on refugees, mandating that nations shelter those fleeing because of persecution, does not cover the looming situation of those displaced by climate change. Some advocate negotiating a new international pact obliging similar treatment for environmental refugees.<br />In the case of the Marshallese, the picture is murkier. Under a compact with Washington, citizens of the former U.S. trusteeship territory have the right to freely enter the U.S. for study or work, but their right to permanent residency must be clarified, government advisers say.<br />The islanders worry, too, about their long-term economic rights. The wide scattering of the Marshalls' 29 atolls, 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii, give them an exclusive economic zone of 800,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers) of ocean, an area the size of Mexico.<br />The tuna coursing through those waters are the Marshalls' chief resource, exploited by selling licenses to foreign fishing fleets. "If their islands go underwater, what becomes of their fishing rights?" Gerrard asked. Potentially just as important: revenues from magnesium and other sea-floor minerals that geologists have been exploring in recent years.<br />While lawyers at next May's New York conference begin to sort out the puzzle of disappeared nations, the Marshallese will grapple with the growing problems.<br />The "top priority," Kaminaga said, is to save the isthmus linking the Marshalls' Jaluit island to its airport, a link now swept by high tides.<br /><br />Meantime, a lingering drought this year led islanders to tap deeper into their wells, finding salty water requiring them to deploy emergency desalination units. And "parts of the islands are eroding away," Kaminaga said, as undermined lines of coconut palms topple into the sea.<br />This week in Cancun and in the months to come, the Marshalls' representatives will seek international aid for climate adaptation. They envision such projects as a Jaluit causeway, replanting of protective vegetation on shorelines, and a 3-mile-long (5-kilometer-long) seawall protecting their capital, Majuro, from the Pacific's rising tides.<br />Islanders' hopes are fading, however, for quick, decisive action to slash global emissions and save their remote spits of land for the next century.<br />"If all these financial and diplomatic tools don't work, I think some countries are looking at some kind of legal measures," said Dessima Williams, Grenada's U.N. ambassador and chair of a group of small island-nations. Those measures might include appeals to the International Court of Justice or other forums for compensation, a difficult route at best.<br />In the end, islanders wonder, too, what will happen to their culture, their history, their identity with a homeland — even to their ancestors — if they must leave.<br />"Cemeteries along the coastline are being eroded. Gravesites are falling into the sea," Kaminaga said. "Even in death we're affected."Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-7095855828196253172010-12-05T20:39:00.000+08:002010-12-05T20:40:11.830+08:00Singapore in tough environmental balancing act - An ExcerptBy Agence France-Presse, Updated: 12/3/2010<br /><br />Singapore in tough environmental balancing act<br />Singapore prides itself on being a clean and green city but a booming economy and a high-consumption lifestyle have made it one of the world's biggest carbon polluters per person.<br />As a major United Nations summit is being held in Mexico to find ways of curbing the carbon emissions blamed for global warming, Singapore's environmental balancing act poses challenging questions for the rest of Asia and the world.<br />Singapore's green credentials are in many ways very strong and it is establishing itself as a regional renewable energy hub.<br />Yet, if all Asians emulated Singaporeans' modern and often luxurious lifestyles, greenhouse gas emissions would spike alarmingly.<br />"If everyone in the world enjoyed the same level of consumption as the average Singaporean, we would need three planets to meet the demands placed on our resources," World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) spokesman Chris Chaplin said.<br />Singapore was last month listed by the British global risk advisory firm Maplecroft as the world's seventh largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter relative to its population size.<br />Ahead of it were only the United Arab Emirates, Australia, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.<br />Maplecroft's index was calculated by evaluating annual CO2 emissions from energy use, emissions per capita and cumulative emissions of a country over more than a century -- 1900 to 2006.<br />"The lack of 'clean' energy sources coupled with the growth in Singapores economy and the increasing use of cars as well as electronic appliances such as air-conditioners contribute to Singapore's emissions," Maplecroft said in a statement to AFP.<br />Despite a punishing auto levy and road charges, the number of motor vehicles on its roads reached 925,518 in 2009, up more than 27 percent in five years, with private cars making up 60 percent of the total, official figures show.<br />In a separate list, the WWF ranked Singapore 21st in the world in terms of ecological footprint, or the demand for resources per person, ahead of such countries as Germany, France and Britain.<br />WWF's calculation covered not only emissions -- the biggest component of humanity's carbon footprint -- but also demand placed by people on arable land, fishing grounds, forest and grazing land worldwide.<br />Singapore authorities insist, however, that that the country has had no choice but to rely on imported fossil fuel to power its rapid industrialisation.<br /><br />The trade-reliant economy, valued at 200 billion US dollars in 2009, is tipped to expand by a massive 15 percent this year.<br />With a land area smaller than that of New York City, Singapore has no space among its five million citizens for wind farms, while it is devoid of hydro and geothermal power sources.<br />"We are dependent on fossil fuels because our small size severely limits our ability to switch to alternative energies," the National Environment Agency (NEA) said in a statement to AFP.<br />It said Maplecroft's index neither reflected Singapore's efforts to reduce its carbon emissions nor took into account its unique circumstances.<br />"As a small city-state, the use of per capita emissions inflates our carbon emissions," it said, noting that overall, Singapore accounts for less than 0.2 percent of global emissions.<br />Nevertheless, the government said it was committed to the fight against climate change and was taking steps to reduce the growth of its emissions, including switching from oil to natural gas to produce electricity.<br />Singapore is investing heavily in clean energy technologies -- it has allocated 770 million dollars to develop innovative energy solutions -- and is building a liquefied natural gas terminal that will be ready by 2013.<br />This will allow access to gas sources beyond neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia.<br />It is also pushing its people to do more recycling, doubling its already expansive rail network by 2020 and testing electric vehicles for commercial use.<br />In another positive move, Singapore has offered itself as a "living laboratory" where global energy firms can develop and test new technologies before mass production.<br />Norway's Renewable Energy Corp (REC) opened one of the world's biggest solar technology manufacturing facilities in Singapore in November, a project costing nearly two billion dollars.<br />Vestas, a Danish manufacturer of wind turbines, already has a global research and development centre in the city-state.<br />"Singapore has been very wise in the way they are approaching this," REC's chief executive Ole Enger said. "They have made Singapore a global hub for renewable energy."Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4231818589489837371.post-27139652861780763812010-11-22T15:07:00.000+08:002010-11-22T15:08:42.731+08:00Experts try to convey danger of Merapi volcano - An Excerpt<span style="font-weight:bold;">Experts try to convey danger of Indonesian volcano<br /><br />By SARAH DiLORENZO<br />The Associated Press<br />Monday, November 22, 2010; 12:00 AM</span><br /><br />MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia -- The threat from more than 100 volcanos that dot Indonesia is impossible to predict with any precision.<br /><br />But that's not the hardest part of the job, says Surono, the head of the country's monitoring agency. The hardest part is getting the message out.<br /><br />In the days before Indonesia's most volatile volcano awakened from four years of dormancy last month, Surono, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name, said he saw indications that Mount Merapi had more energy pent up in it than he had ever seen before.<br /><br />But it was not forming its typical lava dome, a glowing red cap that can be seen for miles (kilometers) as magma builds at the summit. In other words, from the villages that cling to its slopes, Merapi didn't look like it was going to blow.<br /><br />On Oct. 26, a day after Surono put it on its highest alert, Merapi erupted. Ten days later, it expanded its reach, unleashing a surge of gas, rock and other debris totaling 1.7 billion cubic feet (50 million cubic meters), the largest explosion in a century. More than 270 people were killed.<br /><br />If Surono knew that the biggest eruption in recent memory was imminent, why did the Nov. 5 blast catch many off guard, cutting people down with searing gases as they tried to flee, charring them in their sleep and destroying whole villages?<br /><br />The fault seems to lie less in failures of prediction than in failures of communication. Villagers who have lived on the volcano all their lives, whose parents lived on the volcano, too, feel they know it.<br /><br />And they are, in fact, gifted at reading visual changes in the mountain, a technique also used by scientists, said Radan Sukhyar, head of the Geology Agency and Surono's boss. For example, they may take volcanic rock littering a village to mean a blast is coming, and an influx of monkeys and deer from their homes at the peak to mean the area is safe.<br /><br />But the villagers also believe in something more ephemeral, a sixth sense that may lull them into believing the mountain can be understood and tamed. Surono calls this feeling "voodoo," a mix of animism and the Hindu beliefs that existed before the rise of Islam in Indonesia. He says the job was much more straightforward when he spoke to people living around Mount Sinabung, a volcano that erupted in September on Sumatra island.<br /><br />"With Merapi, I must talk about nature and culture," he said. "This is not easy."<br /><br />Sedyo Wiyono, for instance, blamed the latest eruption on human failing and suggested that coexistence with the mountain may no longer be possible.<br /><br />"I think Mount Merapi is no longer friendly to those of us who were born and raised at its foot. Maybe it was our sins that made the volcano so angry," said the 62-year-old, whose son was killed in one of the blasts.<br /><br />Communicating is key for any geologist, according to Peter Frenzen, who works for the Forest Service at Mount St. Helens, whose 1980 eruption was the deadliest in U.S. history. In the U.S., he said, scientists fret about sounding an alarm too often or too high because it can make their warnings background noise.<br /><br />But scientists in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest mostly deal with the evacuation of visitor centers or monitoring posts. In Indonesia, by contrast, people live on volcanos, where thousands of years of eruptions have fertilized the slopes, making the soil some of the richest in a country packed with people to feed and a paucity of land with which to do it.<br /><br />Since Merapi began its latest series of eruptions, more than 300,000 have been driven from their homes, living in cramped evacuation centers at the foot of the volcano.<br /><br />As a result, Surono and his team need to make fine distinctions: 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the crater is too close, but 13 miles (21 kilometers) is safe. They want to keep everyone out of harm's way, but they also have to keep as many people in their homes as possible.<br /><br />And the longer they keep people from their homes without an eruption, the more their credibility is called into question, the more their forecasts become background noise.<br /><br />"I try to speak with people. I try to touch their hearts. I try to touch their heads - with logical thinking," Surono said.<br /><br />He tries to explain as simply as possible why he thinks the volcano is dangerous. The night he raised Merapi's alert to its highest level, he called all the chiefs of the nearby villages and begged them to get their residents out when the evacuation order came.<br /><br />But Surono is not the only one talking.<br /><br />For instance, there is Maridjan, the sultan-appointed keeper of Merapi's spirits, who frequently refused to evacuate his home when ordered and whose followers sometimes stayed behind with him. He died, at 83, in the first of the latest series of blasts from Merapi. A dozen bodies were found with his, five miles (eight kilometers) from the summit.<br /><br />Then there are the neighbors. Saminah, who lived with her husband, Sudarjo, and his mother in a village on the slopes, was assured by a neighbor before the Nov. 5 eruption that there was plenty of time to run away if anything happened.<br /><br />There was indeed time for Saminah and her husband to flee, but when Sudarjo went back for his mother, the gases racing down the mountain seared 60 percent of his body, landing him in a burn ward, covered from head to toe with bandages, barely breathing on a ventilator.<br /><br />Another self-appointed expert is Sri Hariyanto, whom anyone tuned to radio Merapi Balerante will hear giving recommendations to evacuate and descriptions of the state of the volcano. Hariyanto is not a volcanologist but runs a community outreach program to educate people on the danger of volcanos.<br /><br />During the current crisis, he took to trying to predict the mountain's moves himself. He speaks with so much authority, it takes time to realize he has no more training in reading volcano behavior than the villagers who gazed out at Merapi on Oct. 25 and didn't believe it was about to erupt.<br /><br />Surono said he is happy to have local groups disseminate information about Merapi, but he wants them to disseminate the scientists' information. Hariyanto, on the other hand, believes 30 years lived in the mountain's shadow gives him a special connection to Merapi.<br /><br />"Everyone has intuition; I use it," he said.<br /><br />Surono tries to outline the risks as best he can and plead with people to listen. But his boss wonders if more drastic action might be taken. Sukhyar said experts are considering recommending that some villages not be rebuilt at all.<br /><br />"Every volcano has places where people live, but we have to admit that we live in places with the potential for danger," he said. "We must admit that, at some volcanos, the threat is quite open-ended."<br /><br />---<br /><br />Associated Press writer Slamet Riyadi contributed to this report.Oxymanushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13825898836859346581noreply@blogger.com0