North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 1.22 in February 2010 compared to 1.23 in January, according to SEMI.

American officials have condemned plans by the Ethiopian prime minister to block U.S.-funded Voice of America broadcasts in Amharic, the main local language.

American officials have condemned plans by the Ethiopian prime minister to block U.S.-funded Voice of America broadcasts in Amharic, the main local language.

How a Classically Trained Chef Reinvented Fast Food     It's a classic variation of the American success story: An aspiring entrepreneur starts a hole-in-the-wall restaurant serving food that's quick and unpretentious. Pretty soon, he starts a second restaurant, and then a third. Investors flock to the company, attracted to the owner's relentlessly perfectionist style. Before long, identical versions of that hole-in-the-wall have popped up in food courts and strip malls all across the country. And it's only a matter of time before this simple fast-food joint decides to take on the world.   On one level, that story describes the career of Steve Ells, who in 1993 founded a burrito restaurant in Denver that he called Chipotle Mexican Grill. Today, that restaurant is a publicly traded company with $1.3 billion in revenues from some 900 restaurants across North America. On November 14, 2009, Ells formally announced plans for the first European Chipotle, on London's Charing Cross Road, set to open next April.In January, Chipotle announced that it was also scouting potential locations in France and Germany.     But, as he made clear in a November Wharton Leadership Lecture, Ells is not your average chain-restaurant tycoon, a Colonel Sanders in trendy eyewear. And the chain he founded is not your average fast-food behemoth. As such, it provides a case study in whether a firm can thrive even as it spends extra money to honor a set of non-economic values. Ells believes the answer is yes.   "Chipotle now buys more naturally-raised meat -- antibiotic-free and no growth hormones, and fed an all-vegetarian diet -- than any other restaurant company in the world," he said. "I'm very proud of that, and it's more sustainable than the mass-produced commodity way." The chain has also begun buying organic beans and trying to source vegetables locally in-season. "All of a sudden I find myself with this team of 25,000 Chipotle employees who are excited about feeding people really good, sustainably raised food."

Almost every day a new person, someone I have never met or corresponded with, writes me an email in response to my blogs or one of my books. I do my best to answer such writers if the tone and spirit of their correspondence is gracious and invites a thoughtful reply. The only exception is when person simply wants to trash me personally and or attacks my work in a way that offers me no real room for cordial conversation. In such a case I will usually provide a short answer that expresses my inability to respond to such a letter since there is no room for dialog and mutual respect. I desire dialog and mutual respect and always offer the same back wherever I can.

Harshly negative responses once deeply troubled me. I still struggle with this kind of criticism. It leaves me feeling fragile and defenseless. It is humiliating. I was too sensitive while I was a pastor, and I have had a hard time dealing with the same kind of thing over the last nineteen years as the president of ACT3 and as a published author. Everyone who teaches and writes invites criticism. I expect it. What I did not but have finally come to expect sadly, is the angry person who simply wants to tell me off or makes a “case” for why my life and ministry is a disaster. I recall the late Vance Havner saying that every minister needed “the heart of a saint and the hide of a rhinoceros.” I am quite sure I have neither in abundance but I will press on praying for them both till my numbered days are finished.

A few days ago I receive a very interesting email regarding my posts last year on the late Keith Green. While I never knew Keith I loved him and feel he was, as I said at the time, the “real deal.” He made more than a few mistakes but they were made because he was young and filled with real zeal. Such zeal frightens folks, but some people need to be frightened now and then. Lethargy grips far too many of God’s people, and the church will never be bold and obedient until the prophets are heard. Keith was a prophetic voice. But he was more, as I noted in my articles. My “new” friend wrote the following to me (slightly edited by me):

I have to admit that I had not heard of you until recently. For this I am sorry. I just came upon a couple of articles you have on your blog site about [the late] Keith Green. I thought these were wonderful. I'm 49 years of age and was raised in the heart of the Jesus Movement at Maranatha Church in Portland, Oregon. Maranatha Church, along with Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, were probably the first two Jesus Movement "mother" churches of the late 1960's. I was there as a child among all those converted hippies. This experience gave me a broad context that some who have only heard about these events—but who weren’t actually there—or some who have since seen [the more recent] copies of real revival, do not have. I later bumped into Keith Green hearing him for the first time at Jesus Northwest. I'm thinking this was around 1977. This was amazing stuff. But like you I was concerned all along the way—deeply concerned to the point of considering writing him a letter but figured he'd not have gotten it—a big mistake I now realize. I remember seeing how strident he was at a concert that I attended in Vancouver, Washington. He was right on with what he said but when he apologized in the last article that came out before his death it was as if Keith had finally figured out grace. "I'm sorry if I blew you away with my lack of love,” he wrote. I loved that humility. It was like a glow came over him—and then I saw what I had seen at Maranatha—zeal with love; with so much more love than zeal. To get rid of the darkness we can rail against it or we can turn on the light!!

I still love Keith Green. His music seems so different than his teachings, or at least the words that I recall—his music isn't angry. Thank you for publicly calling Keith Green's former teachings into question—it's a very good thing to hear. I am sure that it is going to be hard for some people to hear this message since many never saw the zeal with love that I got to see at Maranatha—it was either a dry church or the passion of Keith Green for so many people in that context.

Rev. Armstrong I really do appreciate your writing. It was fun to read what you said. I want to thank you for your measured and balanced approach to Keith Green. It is so sad that he wasn't able to live to be a fully grown-up Christian. I wonder, along with you, what would have happened if he had lived and matured. I suspect that he would have been a very sweet man who taught the love of Jesus and more or less ignored the condemnation of those who at one time he had said were playing church. After all what's the point eventually? It seems to me that it is much better to be an example of balance and to be [more] like Jesus in the world. One former Foursquare pastor told me one of the greatest things I've ever heard as a Christian: "The most releasing day was when I found out I wasn't the Holy Spirit." I love that thought so much—I imagine Keith Green would have really figured that out too had he lived a little longer.

After I received this letter I wrote the author and asked permission to print an edited and anonymous version of his words to me. He wrote back another thoughtful and engaging letter. This reflects something of the breadth of readership on this site. It is a breadth I intentionally cultivate and desire. I welcome readers like my friend. Here is what he wrote in his second letter:

Thank you also for taking the time to write to me after I wrote to you. [You may use my thoughts anonymously.] One thing happened at the Keith Green Vancouver, Washington, concert that a friend of mine remembers but I don't is that apparently Keith got down on his knees during the concert, raised his arms to the heaven and proclaimed "Oh praise IT.” This was his commentary on the "I Found It" public relations campaign [directed by Campus Crusade for Christ across America] going on at that time. That was so funny [also insightful and courageous] but I've never heard it mentioned by anyone. A friend told me this story and said he was there with a friend whose father was on the national "I Found It" board. He said this guy wasn't amused!! That incident sums up Keith Green and his biting commentary on the times. He was really unvarnished.

Thank also for telling me about your site(s) and your new book. My vision has been to [move in the direction of] so much of what you are doing in your speaking and writing. I'm not sure when or exactly how those doors will open but I hope I'm ready when/if they do. It's exciting to talk to you and hear and see what you are doing. I'm one of those odd Christians who is a Democrat [something like] the teacher and author Tony Campolo but I am sometimes saddened by what I hear, not necessarily from him but from the other people on the Christian Left [who are evangelicals] . . . I wish they would build bridges with the Christian Right. The hard thing for the Right I think is that they just don’t know the difference—they just don't understand compassion in a [real] works kind of way and I believe we can teach them by being sweet to them. I think bridges can be built. My dad was a pioneer in migrant-rights worker movement back in the 1950's and then worked in the War on Poverty thus I feel so blessed to have seen what can be done to change people's lives by such action— something I think my friends on the Christian Left are trying to do—but honestly I don't quite understand either extreme among Christian evangelicals. I think of something that shocked me when I really realized it. At the end of the age, when we stand before the Lord, he is not going to ask "How many people did you lead to me?" This was shocking to me as a born again guy who has always been taught that bringing people to the Lord was the critical thing, which I do still believe. But Christ is going to ask us about our involvement in social justice. I was hungry and you fed me. It's such a shocking difference in spiritual priorities from what I usually hear in church. This is rather weird isn't it?
 
Thanks again. It's really fun to meet a new person who is insightful and is looking to teach and lead Christians into thinking and to balance. If there's anything I can do to help you let me know. I look forward to seeing more of your work and thoughts in your writings.

I hope this is the beginning of a relationship even if it is only via the Internet. This is not a virtual friendship any more than Christians who exchanged letters in centuries past, and never met face-to-face, had real friendships for the kingdom of God. I welcome my new friend into the circle of those who know and love me. I need his insights and his prayers. I need your insight and prayer too if I am to do a better job in my work for the whole church.

When it comes to cell phone radiation, everyone thinks they're an expert. Recently, however, GQ talked to the real experts, and though there's no consensus, one thing's clear: the rest of the world is worried. The U.S. is not. More »

When it comes to cell phone radiation, everyone thinks they're an expert. Recently, however, GQ talked to the real experts, and though there's no consensus, one thing's clear: the rest of the world is worried. The U.S. is not. More »

Surgeons say the recession has cut demand in America for cosmetic procedures that are not covered by health insurance

Americans appear to be finally falling out of love with cosmetic surgery after a new report revealed that the number of operations dropped by 18% last year.

The new reluctance to have a facelift, a tummy tuck or a breast enlargement marks a dramatic turn away from procedures that a few years ago seemed almost commonplace.

Figures collated by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that 1.9m operations took place last year, down from 2.1m in 2005. One big factor cited by many plastic surgeons is the recession. The biggest downturn since the Great Depression has hit many high-end consumer industries; plastic surgery certainly qualifies as a luxury commodity for many Americans. Purely cosmetic operations, such as nose-shaping or breast enlargements, often cost thousands of dollars and are not usually covered by health insurance.

"I believe one can credit the downturn of the economy for the decline in surgical procedures that obviously are more costly than non-surgical procedures," said Dr Elliot Jacobs, a leading New York plastic surgeon whose private surgery is on Park Avenue.

But some say there could be something in the zeitgeist, too. Over the past decade, plastic surgery saw a massive boom. Something previously seen as the province of Hollywood royalty and the very rich trickled down to the merely wealthy and then the middle class. It became the subject of numerous TV shows, such as Nip/Tuck, which followed the antics of a pair of Miami plastic surgeons and famously opened its first episode in 2003 with the controversial line: "Tell me what you don't like about yourself."

It was not just soap opera that fell under the surgeons' spell: reality TV shows got in on the act, too. Programmes such as Extreme Makeover and The Swan gave ordinary people a chance of free operations to improve their appearance. The shows were not without controversy, especially The Swan, whose premise was to transform a contestant into a more beautiful person physically. However, both shows have been cancelled, and this year Nip/Tuck also broadcast its last episode.

Nor are celebrities immune from criticism about the plastic surgery they have undergone. Many stars receive frequent sniping in gossip columns for having operations deemed too obvious.

Recently reality-TV star Heidi Montag was on the end of an avalanche of criticism – even from her husband – after she revealed she had had 10 plastic surgery procedures in one year.

Dr Michael Hall, a plastic surgeon in Miami Beach, said that an age of excess in the industry had come to an end, mirroring wider society. "When it comes to plastic surgery, people are now using more common sense. They don't want radical procedures," he said.

But while full-on surgical operations might be falling, the number of non-surgical cosmetic procedures is steady or rising. Many plastic surgeons say there has merely been a shift in taste and treatment. Non-surgical operations, such as Botox, lip injections or lasering, are cheaper and becoming more effective. "Women are looking for non-invasive procedures," said Hall.

There are other changes, too, reflecting both cultural and economic trends. Dr Richard Baxter, a plastic surgeon in Washington state, noticed a marked decrease in the size of breast implants as the economy started to go downhill. Before the recession, fewer than a third of Baxter's clients chose a B cup implant; now about half pick a B. "People have turned to more natural-looking things," he said.

The question concerning the industry now is what the longer-term trend will be. Some predict a permanent shift, while others say there are already signs of a renewed up-tick. One thing most doctors agree on, though, is that there is still no shortage of demand for changing one's body, just a change in preferred methods. "Has the plastic surgery bubble burst? I doubt it. As long as a woman or a man has a mirror available, there will be a continued interest in plastic surgery," said Jacobs. Hall put it another way, pointing out that some human emotions and desires are both recession-proof and fashion-proof: "There is no lack of vanity. There is just a little more hesitation."

• Plastic surgery
• US healthcare
• United States

Paul Harrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

With a new collection of short stories to his name and two of his plays currently showing in New York, the notoriously private Pulitzer prize-winner discusses masculinity, his battle with drink and his 'tumultuous' relationship with Jessica Lange

Where do you even begin with Sam Shepard? With his Pulitzer prize? His Oscar nomination? The fact that he's routinely described as "America's greatest living playwright?" Or if you're going to be superficial about it – and I am, just for a moment – maybe the place to start is with the image of him as the tall, taciturn test pilot, Chuck Yeager, the cowboy-ish character he played in The Right Stuff; a man whose life was spent exploring the outer edge of what is and isn't possible.

But then I speak to Patti Smith on the phone and ask her what her impression was of Sam Shepard the first time she met him back in 1970 (shortly before they began an affair), and it's the first thing she says too: "He was just everything that one could want. He was – still is – a very handsome man. And he had this animal magnetism. It was almost visceral. He was so high energy and had a real glint in his eyes. He was born for rock'n'roll. I had no idea who he was when I met him. He was a drummer in a band, the Holy Modal Rounders, at the time and he just had something in him that made him a great, great performer. I just thought he was the future of rock'n'roll. I had no idea that actually he was this great writer too." If you had to invent an all-American literary hero, he'd be something like Sam Shepard. With his slow, western drawl, and his love of the open road and the empty badlands way out west, he's always seemed like the authentic voice of a certain sort of American manhood; telling stories – of suffocating families and wretched lovers – from the forgotten, inbetween places of the American outback. He wrote the screenplay for Paris, Texas, the great, atmospheric Wim Wenders film, and played another cowboy-ish character in Robert Altman's adaptation of Shepard's stage play Fool for Love, fixing an image in the public imagination of both him and a remote, fly-blown America a world away from the metropolises on either coast. But then Sam Shepard is that man. He comes to New York for work but his heart is with his horses back at the ranch in Kentucky that he shares with the actress Jessica Lange, his partner now for nearly 30 years.

All this, then, and a literary reputation that it's hard to overstate. According to Christopher Bigsby, professor of American literature at the University of East Anglia, who I consult on the matter, he's simply the most significant playwright of the past 50 years. His biography groans with accomplishments, he's written nearly 50 plays, acted in dozens of films, directed others, and written the screenplays for still more. And then there's the books about him, the academic treatises on his art, a Cambridge companion to his work, critical exegeses of his themes, analyses of his stagecraft... oh, the list goes on and on.

The one thing he isn't, though, is much of a talker. He doesn't often give interviews but when he does he's routinely described as "taciturn" and "private"; his answers are "curt" or "terse". He's "famously press-skittish". Worse, I read time and again of how he's "notoriously protective of his privacy" and won't answer personal questions. Which is a shame because there are so many personal questions I want to ask him. About his relationship with Jessica Lange, and his time with Patti Smith, and his three children, and being on the road with Bob Dylan. He's spoken extensively about his relationship with his alcoholic father before, but not about his own drinking: last year he was arrested for driving under the influence and ordered to attend an alcohol rehabilitation programme.

He'll talk about the work but there's nothing I read which gives much sense of him as a man. I can't help but feel a pang for the journalist who asked him if, one day, he might turn their conversation into dialogue in one of his plays. "We're not having a dialogue, this is question and answers," he says curtly. "Dialogue is like jazz. Dialogue is creative.'"

I am prepared for the worst, then, and when he ambles into the restaurant he's chosen near New York's Times Square, it seems this is probably just as well.

How long have we got, I ask, while fumbling with my tape recorder.

"Well," he says sitting down and ordering tea, "that all depends on the questions."

It's a heart-sinking moment and, as it turns out, a completely misleading one. Because it transpires that Sam Shepard isn't actually cold or taciturn or intimidating at all. Or at least the Sam Shepard I meet isn't, because it turns out that there seem to be several different Shepards co-existing side by side. At one point, he says of Jessica Lange that her greatest quality, or the one that struck him most acutely when he first met her, was her modesty. "I'd never met anybody like her," he says. "She was astounding. One of the great things about her, aside from her natural beauty, which was remarkable, was her humbleness."

But he has it too. He's dressed in country clothes – a checked shirt and a nondescript jacket – and, unlike most writers, he has an outdoors complexion; a lived-in face. But what's most noticeable is his sense of humour. It's a lovely, gentle thing; he pokes fun at me, at himself; and when I listen back to the tape, I realise something more shocking still: he doesn't just laugh, and on occasion guffaw, he actually giggles. Sam Shepard is a giggler.

The private, difficult Sam Shepard is nowhere to be seen. Or at least not for a good three hours of tea drinking and conversation that is remarkably relaxed. The restaurant, an unpretentious place he's chosen, is deserted when we arrive. It gradually fills with the pre-theatre dinner crowd, becomes loud and noisy, and has started  to empty again by the time I finally blow it and ask a question too far. Nice, easy Sam vanishes instantly, replaced in a second by cautious, wary Sam. "Oh, he's a very charming guy," Patti Smith tells me. "Very compassionate and thoughtful about other people's feelings. But he's not one for bullshit either."

But then I ought to know something of the idea of two Sam Shepards, existing side by side, because it's how he wrote himself in his most famous play, True West: as two warring brothers, Austin the Hollywood screenwriter, and Lee the desert drifter, two sides of the same Sam Shepard coin, intellect versus instinct locked in an eternal battle for supremacy.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all about Shepard's talent is the sheer range of it. He's risen to the top of his field in almost everything he's tried his hand at, but, despite all the diversions, the acting and the directing and the music playing, he is, at heart, a writer. Who simply can't stop writing. Not one but two of his plays are currently playing in New York – Ages of the Moon, a new work, and A Lie of the Mind, a modish revival directed by Ethan Hawke. On top of which, a new collection of short stories, Day Out of Days, has just been published. It's the kind of success that most writers would maim and kill for, although it's largely beside the point, says Shepard.

"The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness. All this stuff is happening. And yet it is not what you are after as a writer. Even though they are relatively successful. Ages of the Moon has sold out, the book is doing well, and yet it's not The Thing. And then you're left... there's this feeling... what is it, then? And, I guess, it's the writing itself which is important."

His sheer output is evidence of Shepard's drive to write. He burst on to the off-off-Broadway scene in 1964, writing in his off-duty hours from waiting tables in the Village, enthralling his audience with his exotic tales of the badlands way out west, puncturing the greatest American myths, and he hasn't stopped writing since. It's the process, I say, not the results, that makes you happy?

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although happy isn't the exact word. It makes you feel that you're not useless. That you're at least putting your hand in. I think without writing I would feel completely useless."

These days he seems to have it all: as much professional success as he can handle, a long and steadfast relationship, three children, the ranch in Kentucky and bolt holes in New York and New Mexico. And, in some ways, he's the American dream personified: he was born Samuel Shepard Rogers in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the son of a second world war bomber pilot. As a child he was "Steve Rogers" but after a short stint at college studying animal husbandry he lit off across America, finally landing in New York, where he emerged as "Sam Shepard". His life is the ultimate act of self-creation; he came from nowhere, was little-read and poorly educated, and he turned himself into one of America's leading literary lights.

"And yet still feel so unfulfilled?" he says, and ponders on it for a moment or two. But then anyone with even the slenderest acquaintance with Shepard's work knows that "the American dream" is to be treated with circumspection; in Shepard's universe it's a false concept to be blown wide apart and splattered across all surfaces.

"The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is."

He writes on a manual typewriter, and refuses to so much as look at the internet. "I have a cellphone but I have no Google, I have no gaggle."

Really? But everything you've ever wondered, ever, is out there, I say.

"No, no, no! The things that I wonder about most are not on the internet, I promise you that."

He's still, even after all these years, he says, an outsider. "I'm inhabiting a life I'm not supposed to be in... and at certain times in my life I have felt a wrongness. And not a moral wrongness but a sense that this isn't what I was born to be doing." The writers who he responds most to are those who seem to share a sense of "aloneness", and "writing is almost a response to that aloneness which can't be answered in any other way".

For Shepard, the heart of this, seemingly, and a recurring theme in his work, is bound up with the relationship he had with his alcoholic, abusive father. It's there in True West, Fool for Love, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and A Lie of the Mind, and even now, at the age of 66, it troubles him still. In Fool for Love, written almost three decades ago, the main character is haunted by the chilling possibility that he is turning into his father. Back then it was a fear; now, he says, it has become a fact.

"You think about it, you talk about it, analyse it, and then all of a sudden you have become the thing that you were most vehement against. It's very Greek. They invented this shit. Or at least gave it a name."

He's been sober, he says, since the drink-driving incident a year ago. "And prior to that I was sober for four years and then I relapsed. It's a constant struggle. It's such a knucklehead disease because you refuse to see it. It wasn't until the 90s that I actually started going to AA and made a real compact with myself to quit. And I did quit for four years. And then I picked it up again. It's like being a junkie. I think I have that sort of thing in my blood, in my psyche. I can become addicted very easily, although the curious thing is that I have two sisters who are not. So I don't know. Maybe it's just a toss of the dice."

It's the sort of thing a Sam Shepard character might say. In the new book, Day Out of Days, characters wander through the pages, lost within their own lives (one of the most memorable features a man trapped in a public toilet who is literally driven mad when he's forced to listen to Shania Twain on an endless loop). They struggle for personal agency or a sense that they're in control of their own lives.

"And they never are," he says. "That's the one thing about being an author as opposed to being in one's life is that you have the illusion that you can bring some form to it. Which is the beautiful part of it. You don't feel that you are so much in chaos. I don't know what it would be like if I didn't have some form, short stories or plays or whatever."

He feels "blessed", he says, to have discovered writing. "It fulfils something in me that I don't know how I'd serve otherwise." His father was a bright man, the winner of a Fulbright scholarship, a fluent speaker of Spanish, but he never found that outlet. Or at least the outlet he found was drink. He struggled with the return to civilian life after the war, moving his family from airbase to airbase, training as a Spanish teacher, until he was sacked for drinking, and then moving the family to Duarte, California, where he attempted to farm, his drinking increasing year by year. "The alcohol just completely deranged him," says Shepard.

Roxanne, his younger sister, told People magazine back in the 80s: "There was always this kind of facing off between them [Shepard and his father], and it was Sam who got the bad end of that. Dad was a tricky character because he was a charismatic guy when he wanted to be. And at the other side he was like a snapping turtle. With him and Sam it was that male thing. You put two virile men in a room and they're going to test each other."

It's this quality, of a simmering, barely controlled violence that disrupts and distorts all of Shepard's families, that is at the heart of much of his best work. In Shepard's world, romantic love as the meeting of two souls and the family as the nurturing heart of American life are nothing but delusions. "They're wonderful retreats from the illusion of being protected from spinning off the planet. But I don't believe it. And I never did."

So you didn't celebrate Valentine's Day then?

"Oh yes. We just did. I bought her a couple of bottles of wine. I don't drink."

It's not the most romantic gift, I say.

"They were two really good bottles of wine. Really good ones. Oh, and a tape measure. Because she was putting up a painting."

Love in Shepard's universe is never straightforward, never wholly life-enhancing; it's life-destroying, too, a struggle for power or control; a curse as well as a blessing. He and Lange have survived but the relationship was "tumultuous" from the outset. "I mean, we have long periods of relative calm. But then you know..."

But you've always seemed like such an incredible match.

"Yeah, well, we're definitely an incredible match. But, you know, not without fireworks... although at this point, you know, she's the only woman I could live with. Who could live with me! What other woman would put up with me?"

She is, he says, the most honest person he's ever met. "I've never known her, ever, to lie about anything. And I couldn't say that about..."

Yourself?

"About myself. About anybody. Men lie all the time."

Really?

"You don't know that?" he says and raises his eyebrows. "Whereas Jessica has this absolute honesty. I think it's a direct quality of the midwest, of that background that she's from."

While the children were growing up, that's where they lived, in Jessica's hometown in Minnesota, down the road from her mother (and with Jessica's daughter from her relationship with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Shura). It's the equivalent, today, of Brad and Angelina deciding to settle in a suburb of Wisconsin. But then, although Shepard and Lange have both appeared in movies, and been nominated for Oscars – Shepard, one; Lange, six (and she's won two) – they've always refused to be movie stars.

There's a couple of great quotes from Jessica about you, I say.

"Is there? My God. What? Actually, no. Just give me the good ones."

She said: "No man I've ever met compares to Sam in terms of maleness."

"Well, that's a double-edged sword."

Really? I took it as a compliment.

"This morning she had a conversation with me about France, because she was in Paris in the 70s, about the gay scene in Paris, which she was very enchanted with. She was talking about a couple of incidents, and at the end of it I said: 'Well, that's very charming.' And so I think she now thinks I'm a homophobe because she said: 'Asshole!' and stormed out of the room. I thought, 'Oh my God, well obviously I'm not sophisticated enough to talk about the gay 70s in Paris.'"

He was married once before, to another actress, O-Lan Jones. She was 19 at the time, he was 26. Their son, Jesse, was born shortly after the wedding, and then Shepard met Patti Smith. The attraction was instantaneous, as was their affair, an intense, full-throttle romance, conducted mostly at the Chelsea Hotel. It was Shepard who encouraged Patti Smith to become a performer. "She already had this incantatory, lyrical, chanting way of talking, all she needed was a little shove. She was inhibited by not knowing guitar. I said: 'Guitar is just a back-up for your voice. You're not going to be Jeff Beck, don't worry about it. Just learn these chords and you'll be able to back yourself up.' And then it turned out she has this extraordinary voice too."

Reading about the Jones-Shepard-Smith triangle, it all seems very 60s somehow, an amicable bohemian ménage à trois. When I speak to Patti Smith, though, she puts me straight: "It was the early 70s. And it wasn't that amicable."

Shepard had decided to return to his wife and baby. "And it was painful," says Smith. "We knew it was going to end and we were in a room at the Chelsea Hotel. And instead of sitting around and moping, Sam said: 'Let's write a play.' And I said: 'I don't know how to write a play.' And he said: 'I'll be one character, and you can be the other.' And we just sat up all night, him writing a line and then pushing the typewriter across the table to me, and then I'd write a line."

The result was Cowboy Mouth, which opened at the American Place Theatre with Sam Shepard and Patti Smith playing themselves, in a double bill with Shepard's play Back Bog Beast Bait in which O-Lan played a character based on Patti. It was too much, and without warning, Shepard quit, and fled with O-Lan and Jesse to London.

There are so many of these ruptures in the story of your life, I say to Shepard. You're doing one thing and then suddenly you're doing something else.

"I know. I don't why it had to be so traumatic. It very definitely felt like these were earthquakes when they happened. They're terrible and yet on the other side of the coin they're ecstatic. Like when I met Jessie. It was terrible leaving my oldest boy at that time. He was 13, which is a really hard age. And, in one way, I can't forgive myself for that. And, in another way, I'm glad of the life that I've had with Jessie. What's the trade-off? It's always felt like that. The other thing that's kind of amazed me is that I've had absolutely no qualms about setting off into unknown territory. I've never been afraid to just start something new."

It was on the set of the film Frances that he met Lange. I tell him that one critic I read claimed that after meeting Jessica his depiction of male-female relationships became more complex and interesting. He says that you started writing meatier parts for women.

"Hmm. I guess that's true. Fool for Love came out of my relationship with Jessica and that's pretty powerful."

Fool for Love features a tumultuous relationship between two characters, Eddie and May, who both attract and repulse each other. And who, it turns out, are half-brother and sister.

I was looking at photographs of you and Jessica next to each other and I was struck by how similar you look, I say.

"We do, kinda."

Is the theme of incest in Fool for Love in some way borne out of that?

"I'm sure there's something about that. I'm sure when you're looking for someone, you're looking for some aspect of yourself, even if you don't know it... What we're searching for is what we lack. You lack something and your hope is that it'll be fulfilled by who you find."

His relationship with his father has had such a profound effect upon his life, his work, it's inevitable that he must have reflected upon his own effect upon his children, Jesse, 39, Hannah, 24, and Samuel Walker, 22.

He hesitates when he replies. "I would like to think... you can never determine how you are going to influence someone, particularly your children. I mean, they are all musicians in some way or another, so I feel as though... I think that's a result... And my daughter is also a really good writer. Really good."

The thing about your children compared to you, I say, is that they had a very stable...

"Stable?"

Oh, is that the wrong word?

"Well, relatively stable."

They haven't had the childhood that you had...

"They haven't had an abusive childhood. On the other hand, they have a different set of problems."

Having a father who is very successful..."

"And a mother," he says. "Yeah. There's a lot of stigmas. My youngest boy is very, very shy. He doesn't want anything to do with celebrity. And my daughter, she's not crazy about it. None of them covet fame."

He shies away from speaking about his sons but he seems happy enough to talk about Hannah, his daughter, currently studying for a PhD at the University of Galway.

"I never thought about having a daughter and then I had a daughter and it was a remarkable thing. It was very different from having a son and your response to it. With a son, it's much more complex. And it's probably because of my stuff in the past. With a daughter, I was surprised at how simple it is."

It's to her, he says, that he intends to leave his notebooks, "because she's the one who's asked for them."

He's obsessed with his notebooks, he says; they travel with him wherever he goes, "like gremlins". And he fishes his current one out of his coat and shows it to me. On the inside back cover he's written the places it's been to with him over the year – Sicily, Kentucky, New Mexico – and then he flicks through the pages and says, "Look at this! Look at these drawings." And he shows me some stick men, riding the sort of horses I drew aged eight. "You know, I was sitting in the University of Texas where they have the original manuscript of Watt by Mr Beckett and it was amazing because there were all these drawings on them, so I sat there one afternoon and copied them!"

It's almost as if Sam Shepard has spent his life circling around Samuel Beckett. It was discovering his plays as a young man that first inspired him to write, and Patti Smith says that in those days he never went anywhere without a copy of one or other of his plays on him. "Of course, now he's read everything. He's always discovering something new, whether it's Japanese death poetry or some new Venezuelan writer or whatever."

Not meeting Beckett is his greatest regret, he says. "My greatest literary regret."

Do you think you're starting to look like him, I say, tongue-in-cheek, although there's an element of truth to it; he's still recognisable from his cinematic glory days but his face is craggier now, crisscrossed with experience. He guffaws, enjoying the joke.

"No! It'd be flattering if I did but I think my features are a little bit more savage."

Themes of regret and remorse, of time passing and humans ageing have started to creep into his work. "I don't believe people who say, 'I have no regrets'. How can you not have regrets?"

Death, he says, changes all perspectives. When I ask him how old his father was when he died, he replies immediately. "A year older than I am. He was 67."

Does that weigh on you?

"I think about it. But it doesn't weigh on me because of the way in which he died." His father was run down by a car while drunk. "So I don't worry about it that way. I don't worry about the way I'm going to die...

But do you think about death?

"Yeah. There's not a day goes by. But that has always been the case. We're all haunted by it in one way or another. And it's the easiest thing in the world to push it away, you just get a cappuccino. But, yes, you're haunted by it in a different way [as you get older]. I feel its presence. I feel it in sleep, in dreams, in waking. Particularly in the morning."

Do you think about the things that you would lose?

"No. You feel that you're diminishing in some way. You feel that your senses are diminishing. I don't see as well. I'm not as quick as I used to be. Things like that. Knock on wood, I'm not sick. I don't how people deal with that... I mean life is tough enough. And now you're going to die! Wow!"

In Ages of the Moon his central character, Ames, has been unfaithful to his wife. "She discovers this note, this note from this girl, which to this day I cannot for the life of me remember," says Ames. "Some girl I would never in a million years have ever returned to for even a minor blow job."

"Minor?" asks his friend, Byron.

In his earliest plays, Patti Smith says, his characters had to act. "They had to do something, kick a door down or whatever. Now they tend to be more introspective. They're more likely to examine what they're doing and why."

And Shepard too. His life is in his plays, he's always said that. And so I ask him. About Ames's infidelities. About whether that's been a source of regret for him too.

"I'm not going to talk about that. You're not going to sucker me into that one! When did you think I was born?"

Oh dear. It's a classic interview mistake: the question too far. He's amicable enough, and we carry on for five or so more minutes, but I've got the other Sam. He looks the same but I can tell he's scanning the horizon for an escape route; it's Sam Shepard, the cowboy, the character in all his plays; the desert drifter, shifty, cautious, suspicious of strangers. The giggles are over. And then he's gone, with the briefest of handshakes and a rush to the door. It's not an entirely inappropriate ending. Shepard's world is a place of blundering people and blundered words; where plots are never neatly tied up and truths are only ever hinted at, never fully revealed, least of all to the characters themselves.

Day Out of Days is published by Knopf

• Sam Shepard
• Fiction
• Theatre

Carole Cadwalladrguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

It's unfortunate that more American audiences aren't familiar with Australian cinema. The problem isn't one of apathy or indifference; it's more a case of access. Many Aussie films never make it to America, meaning only the most devoted cinephiles -- who go to extraordinary lengths and cost to import DVDs -- get a chance to see them. Luckily, that seems to be changing now and American audiences are about to get a firsthand opportunity to check out some of the best titles coming from the land down under. Here are three that you should keep an eye on. Trailers for the films are after the jump.

The Square
Our own Will Goss described Nash Edgerton's The Square as " ... the blackest comedy rather than the bleakest noir, full of the best punchlines that you'll never actually hear, as our poor, unfortunate Raymond only endures further and further punishment in the name of his transgressions and aspirations." Those transgressions include an affair with Carla, whose husband "acquires" a bag of cash. The duo tries to escape, but their plan to take the money and run goes horribly wrong. The Square gets a limited US release on April 9 with the possibility of a wider screening in May.

The Horseman
"Writer/director Steven Kastrissios creates a pulverizing experience ... ," says our Peter Martin -- and perhaps more disturbing than the violence in The Horseman is what we are left to wonder. Christian (Peter Marshall) sets out through rural Queensland with a young runaway to uncover the truth behind his daughter's tragic death. The Horseman will be available on an import Blu-ray on April 6, but US audiences will be able to enjoy this one on the big screen, courtesy of Screen Media Ventures on June 15. [hit the jump for details on Van Diemen's Land and trailers]

Filed under: Drama, Horror, Thrillers, Noir, Distribution, Home Entertainment, Trailers and Clips

Continue reading Aussie Watchlist: 'The Square', 'The Horseman' & 'Van Diemen's Land'

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I've spent the last day in a funk at the news that my friend, Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was convicted of obstruction for getting out of his car at a US Border crossing and asking what was going on, then not complying fast enough when he was told to get back in the car. He faces up to two years in jail. David Nickle, a mutual friend who worked with Peter on his defense, has a very good post on the subject, including a quote from one of the jurors: The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts "obstructed/resisted" the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He's not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don't make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge. That's apparently the statute: if you don't comply fast enough with a customs officer, he can beat you, gas you, jail you and then imprison you for two years. This isn't about safety, it isn't about security, it isn't about the rule of law. It's about obedience. Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking "why?" It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small. I don't know if Peter will appeal. I hope he does. I hope he gets a jury who nullify the statute. I hope he brings a civil action against the officials who clearly played fast and loose with the truth (From David: "Under cross-examination by Mullkoff, the border guards had conceded that Peter hadn't assaulted anyone; hadn't threatened to assault anyone; and that his aggressive stance was nothing any reasonable person would consider aggressive. The allegations that he had somehow choked border guard Andrew Beaudry while Beaudry was hitting him, were demolished."). I don't know if he will. He may decide to take his chances for a suspended sentence and forswear ever visiting America again, opting to be a writer instead of a professional litigant. I'd understand. But tonight, I'm understanding that dark place that so many of Peter's books seem to come from. I think of myself, fundamentally, as a optimist and a believer that justice can and will prevail. But in the face of that jury's decision, in face of the dishonesty of the officials, in the face of the absurdity of the statute, I feel like justice is a joke and hoping for it is a waste of time. I'm sorry that the system failed you, Peter. Guilty Previously:Peter Watts found guilty Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and ... Peter Watts's wonderful dystopias under a CC license...

American living in America, looking for someone to skype with and meet later if we want to.

I'm tall and skinny (5'10" and 115 lbs).

I suppose it's boredom and curiosity that brings me here.

Please reply with a photograph.

In the world of technology, drama is a valuable commodity. Disruptive change may happen in the minutiae of software code or the gradual execution of a business plan, but we see its effects in the dramatic narratives of companies rising and falling, or getting locked in combat with each other. Which is why the rivalry between Google and Apple is such a compelling story.

It’s so tempting to get drawn into the ego battles between Steve Jobs and the Google triumvirate while placing bets on who will win that it’s easy to forget a deeper truth about this rivalry: Google and Apple need each other.

They both have a deep desire to stake out claims on the mobile web, but the mobile web is in a nascent stage. In order to develop, it needs to have both rigid structure and a sometimes reckless creativity. Structure is necessary to provide a strong foundation and a set of standards everyone can understand. And creativity is essential to bringing the innovative potential of the mobile web into full bloom.

This dichotomy was present when the Internet began to develop in the early 90s. Many people who came online then did so through America Online’s walled gardens, a safe little enclave where consumers and content providers alike could create the rules of a new medium. Then the web itself took off and sites like Yahoo and GeoCities offered a much more creative environment to explore what else could be done.

Now it’s happening again, only with Apple and Google. Apple’s stern and unforgiving approach to the iPhone offers the structure this new medium needs to succeed. Cupertino’s control-freak tendencies stretch from enforcing adherence to ever-changing app guidelines to banishing plastic screen protectors from its retail stores.

Google’s approach is nearly the opposite, much more open and free-wheeling. Its Android OS, based on the Linux kernel, has so many versions available the company is struggling to consolidate them. The Android Market is such an unregulated affair that it’s hard for anyone to count the number of apps on sale.

Google’s culture has built into it a tolerance for the failures that come with creative experiments. Its 70-20-10 rule seems rooted on that spirit of tolerance — how many companies require employees to spend time on something that may never fly? — and Google has floated so many failed ideas it’s hard to keep track of them all. Apple, by contrast, starts with an instinctive idea of how consumers will experience its products and fits everything, even the ecosystem of apps that extends beyond its corporate walls, into making it work.

It’s in the tension between these two companies and their respective cultures that the mobile web is being forged. But as America Online found out, the walls eventually come down as consumers grow more comfortable with the new medium and desert the walled garden. That would suggest the balance will tip in favor of Google.

But I would be surprised if Apple isn’t anticipating this evolution. Right now, iPhone owners are experiencing the mobile web through the 150,000 or so apps it offers through the App Store. But Apple has also backed HTML5, which allows a smartphone browser to have rich app-like features without requiring any new software to be downloaded. Just as people stopped downloading AOL’s software and switched to browsers, we may well abandon most of the apps on our phones today.

Both companies will continue to play a major role on the mobile web, but I doubt either will ever gain the upper hand. This dramatic tension between Apple and Google may be around for a long time. So executives at both might as well get used to it.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

With The iPad, Apple Takes Google To the Mat

It wasn’t too long ago that the path to success for mobile carriers was a straight one: Simply offer compelling handsets at competitive prices and maintain a top-notch network and your customers would be happy. And for those that weren’t, manage a competent customer-care division. That model is rapidly changing, though, as we reach the point of market saturation.

Carriers in Western markets have precious little room for growth unless they poach customers from their competitors. Cell phone penetration in the U.S. stands at 89 percent, according to CTIA, and Chetan Sharma pointed out earlier this month that mobile’s market penetration in America is 99 percent for people over than the age of five. The increase of machine-to-machine connections and the coming wave of connected consumer electronics (non-phones) will help, but carriers will have to evolve beyond being simple network operators if they’re to thrive in the coming world of mobile data.

Another factor beyond market saturation is at play here, too. Mobile is no longer just about being a provider of wireless phones and connectivity; it’s about adding value with applications that leverage Web 2.0 features like presence and community and combining them with mobile’s unique characteristics, such as portability and location awareness.

While the rise of mobile Web 2.0 is a looming threat for network operators, it also presents an opportunity to develop and market more compelling “over-the-top” offerings — applications and services from carriers that can be targeted at users on other networks. In my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, I’ve taken a closer look at this topic, with a special focus on AT&T’s Buzz.com offering. I’m sure we’ll see more examples as carriers attempt to make a very difficult transition beyond their established business model into uncharted waters. What kind of opportunities do you see?

Image courtesy of Flickr user kevindooley

The second round of voting begins now!

Simply choose your favorite (whether it be that you think they're more interesting, more appealing, whatever criteria you want to use) in the following match-up. The voting concludes 48 hours from right now!

The seeding was mostly based on the results of our 2007 DC/Marvel Character Poll and then split into brackets based on when each character was introduced!

Enjoy!

1. Batman (Bruce Wayne) vs. 9. Lex Luthoronline surveys

4. The Joker vs. 5. Robin/Nightwing/Batman (Dick Grayson)answers

3. Superman vs. 6. Wonder Woman (Diana Prince)poll

2. Captain America (Steve Rogers) vs. 10. Captain Marvel (Billy Batson)survey

Check back Monday to see who advanced to the next round!

The hunt for Captain America may be over by the weekend. THR's Heat Vision is reporting that Chris Evans has been offered the part of Captain America. Let me stress the key word in that sentence: offered. He has not yet accepted, and neither Evans, his reps, or Marvel will confirm or deny whether negotiations have been opened.

Marvel would be taken a bigger leap of faith than they did with their other candidates, as he reportedly still hasn't screen tested for the role. But he has a good relationship with the shingle after Fantastic Four, and he's an actor who attracts a lot of buzz for his performances, but just hasn't managed to crack that A-List ceiling.

One thing keeping Evans from accepting could be schedule conflicts. The First Avenger: Captain America is set to shoot this summer, and Evans has already signed for the romantic comedy What's Your Number? The demanding contract may also be an issue. Many actors have balked at Marvel's universe building demands, and any possible Cap faces three solo Captain America movies, plus The Avengers. Most of the Marvel deals have signed actors and actresses for a minimum of 9 films. That's a tough commitment for any young up-and-coming actor like Evans.

Obviously, it's all still in the whispering stages, and it may be a test to see how fandom reacts. I think he'd be a great pick, and is the best candidate so far. What about you?

Filed under: Action, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, War

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This article has been published at RLSLOG.net - visit our site for full content.

DJ group has released this 2CD sized compilation “Fashion House Vol. 3 New York Edition″. Cue files are provided as well. Read more for tracklist & download link.

Tracklist:

CD1
1. Hanna Hais – I Love America (DJ Meme Main Club Mix)
2. Sharam feat. Kid Cudi – She Came Along (REUP Club Mix)
3. D.O.N.S. vs Jocelyn Brown – Somebody Else’s Guy 2009 (Baggi Begovic Remix)
4. Barbara Tucker – I Get Lifted (David Tort Remix)
5. Andy Caldwell & Mr. V – It’s Guud
6. Stuffa – A Million Secrets (Club Mix Dub Edit)
7. DJ Chus pres. The Groove Foundation – That Feeling (DJ Chus 2010 Revisited Mix)
8. Diva & Jones – Thriller (David Jones Remix)
9. Tv Rock feat. Rudy – In The Air (Axwell Remix)
10.Kaskade & Deadmau5 – Move For Me
11.Moony – I Don’t Know Why (Dj Chus & Jerome Isma-Ae Superdub Mix)
12.Ron Carroll & Superfunk – Lucky Star 2009 (D.O.N.S. Remix)
13.Hoxton Whores feat. Krysten Cummings – Sunrise (Hoxton Whores Remix)
14.Prok & Fitch feat. Cevin Fisher – Mundo (David Penn Remix)

CD2
1. Larse & Fish – Cesenatico
2. Nacho Marco feat. Aqeel – Move You
3. Matt Flores & Tyree Cooper pres. Goosebumpz feat. Wayne Darrin – Shining Lights (Dub Version)
4. Dj Leroi feat. Roland Clark – I Get Deep
5. Loco Dice – Pimp Jackson Is Talkin’ Now!!! (Luci Gets Loco Remix by Luciano)
6. Marc Romboy vs. Smokin Jo – What Is This?
7. Mahan – Memory Box
8. Catz N Dogz feat. Pol_On – Me
9. Home & Garden – Domesticated (Pezzner Remix)
10. The Timewriter – Revealing The Sound (Milton Jackson‘s Dark Matter Remix)
11. Filippo Moscatello – Houz (Quarion?s Start And Stop Remix)
12. Sebastian Davidson & Estroe – Swabian Pancakes (Estroe’s Raisins Remix)
13. Blaze – Lovelee Dae (20:20 Vision Remix)
14. Tiger Stripes – New York New York
15. DJ Meme – Chanson Du Soleil 2009 (Andy Sant Remix)

Release Name: VA_-_Fashion_House_Vol_3_New_York_Edition_(CLS0001992)-Digipak-2010-DJ
Genre: House
Label: Clubstar Germany
Quality: VBRkbps / 44,1kHz / Joint-Stereo
Size: 225.62 MB
Rip Date: 19-03-2010
Store Date: N/A

Links: NFO
Download: HOTFiLE, Torrent Search

more at RLSLOG.net

NEW YORK—The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that the combined revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal, and countless independent music labels in 2009 totaled $18. “The music industry is back,” RIAA representative Doug Fowley said. “Not only was Kenny Chesney’s Greatest Hits CD purchased at a Knoxville, TN Borders for $12.99, but we also had two songs downloaded through iTunes, and our ringtone sales reached three.” Fowley added that as long as no one returns or exchanges the CD, the music industry would continue to be a vital and creative force in American culture.
Report: Music Industry Made $18 In 2009 | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

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Alors qu'il se confiait à notre confrère Geoff Keighley dans le dernier numéro de l'émission GameTrailers TV, Jack Tretton, président et CEO de SCE America, a évoqué Killzone 3 et...

It's official: Aksys Games is localizing BlazBlue: Continuum Shift for North America. Continuum Shift, the sequel to Arc System Works' high-resolution 2D fighting game, will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3 this summer. Like the Japanese release, this updated version adds new characters.

It also adds new modes, including a Beginner Mode, which simplifies the control scheme, a Challenge Mode with specific missions for each character, and Legion Mode, a mini-strategy game in which players fight enemies to gain control of a map.

"If you're not on the hype train this time, you're missing out on the latest greatest 2D game from Arc", Aksys marketing director Gail Salamanca said in a quote we can't help but pass along, "GET HYPE, CHOO CHOO!"

Gallery: BlazBlue Continuum Shift

Aksys announces North American release, hype train for BlazBlue: Continuum Shift originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's official: Aksys Games is localizing BlazBlue: Continuum Shift for North America. Continuum Shift, the sequel to Arc System Works' high-resolution 2D fighting game, will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3 this summer. Like the Japanese release, this updated version adds new characters.

It also adds new modes, including a Beginner Mode, which simplifies the control scheme, a Challenge Mode with specific missions for each character, and Legion Mode, a mini-strategy game in which players fight enemies to gain control of a map.

"If you're not on the hype train this time, you're missing out on the latest greatest 2D game from Arc", Aksys marketing director Gail Salamanca said in a quote we can't help but pass along, "GET HYPE, CHOO CHOO!"

Gallery: BlazBlue Continuum Shift

Aksys announces North American release, hype train for BlazBlue: Continuum Shift originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

In the most interesting interview OSV conducted with Catholic iconographer Marek Czarnecki, that I referred to yesterday, we gain a sense of how we can properly understand the real language of icons. Before I quote from the second part of that OSV interview let me answer a question or two about this subject.

Am I suggesting that you cannot worship fully without icons? Not in the least. Am I suggesting that icons must be used in public worship? No. But are icons a form of idolatry? Those who answer yes to this question are numerous in evangelical Protestant circles and can easily impress others to follow their simplistic and iconoclastic reasoning without the evangelical having a framework for considering this subject. I am attempting to give such a framework and at the same time telling you why I use icons in my own worship.

Here is the second part of the interview that I began sharing yesterday from the (February 7, 2010) OSV.

*************

OSV: It seems like there is a lot going on in icons that many of us are not aware of. Is that true?

Czarnecki: When you look at an icon, the meaning of it should be absolutely open. There shouldn’t be anything hidden in an icon. There shouldn’t be anything esoteric in an icon. There shouldn’t be anything so complicated in an icon that you can’t immediately start praying with it. It’s like the Gospels. You don’t need a degree in philosophy or theology to open up the Gospels and read them and understand them. The icon has to be exactly the same. . . . People think icons are some very complicated symbolic map, and they’re not. They express the reality of a person’s life. Iconographers only use signs and symbols when the language when the language of naturalism is inadequate to express a spiritual truth.

It’s forbidden to make an icon of God the Father because the First Person of the Trinity is inexpressible. Like when Jews write up the Torah, they leave an empty space, and that absolutely correct. We have no adequate expression of God the Father, even though our churches are filled with them. In order to express that Jesus is divine, we can only make an image of his physical presence. To show that he’s divine we have to use signs and symbols because there is no adequate way to express his divinity. So we start with a halo, we put a three-barred cross in his halo, and the Greek characters that in English look like WON, which is an abbreviation for “I am Who I am.” Y putting in those characters, we demonstrate what Christ himself said, which is, “I and the Father are One.” But there’s no way that I can figure out how to paint that so we have to lapse into the use of semantic symbols, but it should be minimal, and it should only be used when you can’t express something in a very straightforward way.

OSV: For Westerners, icons can sometimes seem foreign, even off-putting. What’s behind that and how can we get past it?

Czarnecki: When the schism [between the Eastern and Western Churches] happened, it was such a profound thing, like a divorce. The Western Church moved toward more incarnational theology. The Eastern Church developed into more mystical theology. And the art in both churches reflects that theology. Both are correct. . . . Western art was much more naturalistic because it talked about the immanence of God in the world. Orthodox iconography just kept developing internally to show the transcendence of God in the world.

There are a couple of things that make the artistic language of the icon a little bit different than Western art, and one is the idea of space. When we make a naturalistic painting of a landscape, for example, an artist uses what’s called one-point perspective. You have a horizon line and all space recedes as it gets to the horizon line and things become smaller. In the icon, the idea is that we are looking through a window into that space of eternity. Since we’re looking into an eternal space, there can’t be a horizon. There can’t be an end. We use what’s called inverse, or reverse, perspective so that all things continually open up in front of us. . . . The other thing that’s different is the way the iconographer uses light. In a naturalistic painting, you always have some definite light source. In the icon, the light has to look like it comes from inside the figure and from many different points outside it. In an icon, you’ll never have cast shadows because a shadow means that there’s some light source.

OSV: If icons are looking into eternity, where does Western religious art look?

Czzarnecki: If you think of St. Francis of Assisi and that traditional act of making the first Nativity scene, what he was doing was starting the process of the humanization of Catholic art. . . . . When he made that Nativity scene and people were able to walk into a setting where they felt themselves participating in that space and God was participating in their space by statues, it was an articulation of God coming out into our space, and that’s an articulation of immanence.

It’s also a reflection of the very strong social mission of the Catholic Church. We aren’t afraid to get our feet dirty. I think of Dorothy Day. We put ourselves out into the world, go out into the world and find God.

Orthodoxy is inverted. It’s not better or worse, it’s just a different vision. In Orthodoxy, the approach is usually to leave the world, go find some high mountain, some dense forest, some dry desert and go into God’s space. That’s also the vision of the icon—to go into God’s space—whereas statues articulate God coming out into our space. Both ways are correct, but that schism created what I call a psychosis, two halves of the same picture.

*************

Several years ago I was involved in a dialogue with a group of Anglican priests and lay folks in an annual meeting of the Anglican Mission in America in Dallas. I was in a room where Dr. James I. Packer and I were asked to discuss theology and ministry with mostly younger leaders. It was a memorable time for me. There was a moment when someone asked Dr. Packer if he still held to the view he held against religious art being used in worship as a clear violation of the second commandment. (He expresses such a view in his classic book, Knowing God.) I was not surprised to hear Dr. Packer say that he had changed his mind about his understanding and that he no longer held to a strict Puritan view about religious art. I came to the same view many years ago but did not know Jim had also changed his mind. I thought to myself, “This is another reason why I love this man so dearly. He is willing, in his eighties, to keep thinking and to even admit that he had changed his mind regarding a particular section of a best-selling classic book that he wrote decades ago.”

Whatever you think of art and icons I hope you will better understand the positive role that they have in the hearts and experience of Christ’s people now. The word iconoclast broadly refers to those who oppose widely accepted traditional views. The word actually originated in the church. An iconoclast was a person who made it their goal to write and speak against icons. Some even worked to destroy icons as their special ministry for Christ. The spirit of the iconoclast lives on in many forms, literally and spiritually. An understanding of the real purpose of icons just might change all of that. I expect that we will see a growing number of younger Christians return to the use of icons as they see them in the way that I have explained in this mini-series. I welcome this and hope that they will discover more of Christ’s power and love in the process.

Casio has been in the timepiece business for quite a fair number of years already, and most of us would have fond memories of a digital watch from Casio, although these days it seems to be imported from China instead of its spiritual home, Japan. Ah well, their range of G-Shock watches are also a cause to celebrate, since those are some tough devices which can withstand the rigors of an active lifestyle. This time round, Casio America takes the next step forward in the world of watches with its latest addition to the Pathfinder collection, otherwise known as the PAG110C-3. This new Pathfinder will definitely appeal to those who constantly brave the great outdoors, but it also has a conscience since it is eco-conscious with features such as solar technology and recycled packaging.

After all, having your watch die out on you while you’re in the lush forest in the middle of nowhere can be quite a frightening thought. So why not throw in some solar panels to make sure the watch has enough juice to keep going? We wonder whether they will come up with a hybrid mechanism that relies not only on kinetic energy to keep the timepiece ticking, but a solar panel as well for another alternative source of renewable energy. The PRG110C-3 will incorporate Casio’s Tough Solar Technology which increases battery life via the regeneration of electrical power from sunlight. This will help decrease battery consumption associated with traditional watches, which in turn assists in cutting down over three billion batteries thrown away each year by Americans – at least that is what the Environmental Protection Agency say. Basically, you wil decrease the presence of heavy metals in landfills which cause toxic contamination to the environment if you pick up this digital watch.

Despite being eco-conscious, this Pathfinder timepiece retains its core features, with the PAG110C-3 boasting advanced outdoor capabilities such as a digital compass, altimeter, barometer and thermometer, where all of it are more than capable of meeting the needs of the serious outdoorsman. You will also be able to enjoy five daily alarms, a stopwatch and world time in 30 cities. Is it raining, or do you have to forge rivers? Fret not – the watch is water resistant up to 100 meters and low temperature resistant as well. Each Casio PAG110C-3 will retail for $250 as an exclusive item on Amazon.com.

Press Release
Tech Cult – We cover the latest tech news, but always with a funny twist.
[ Casio unveils Pathfinder PAG110C-3 timepiece copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.

Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.

Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.

I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.

Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”

Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.

“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)

Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.

Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”

India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.

There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.

Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”

Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.

But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.

This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.

Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.

You know those special amps used by Spinal Tap that go to 11, in order to provide "that extra push over the cliff"? It appears Fox News has gotten a hold of some and hooked them up to its coverage of health care reform.

As the reform bill moved closer to a vote in the House, the Fox News noise machine went into overdrive, hurling every false and misleading claim it could muster.

The week in Fox News health care hysteria began with an oldie-but-goodie -- Steve Doocy, Bill Hemmer, and Bill O'Reilly all claimed or suggested that the bill will, in O'Reilly's words, "require American taxpayers to fund abortion." But it doesn't, at least not beyond what is currently permitted under current law. Fox News, unfortunately, is not alone in repeating this falsehood.

Then, Doocy and Hemmer, joined by Neil Cavuto and several other hosts, jumped on the idea that a legislative procedure the House is reportedly considering to pass the Senate's version of health care reform would allow them to do so without a vote. Wrong again -- the House would need to vote to implement that procedure.

Carl Cameron, however, broke through the noise on this issue, pointing out that the process would simply pass the bill "in one vote instead of two" and that the process "has been used, literally, for centuries" -- indeed, Republicans made copious use of the "self-executing rule" when they controlled Congress. Even Charles Krauthammer conceded that it's constitutional. Still, that didn't keep Alisyn Camerota from scoffing that the rule "might as well be a self-immolating rule."

Fox News then pounced on a survey claiming to have found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes. O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and contributor Dr. Marc Siegel all portrayed the survey as having been published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Except it wasn't. The article was written by the physician-recruiting firm that conducted the survey, and it actually appeared in an employment newsletter produced by the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine, not the Journal itself. Further, the survey itself was not all that scientific -- done via email contacts taken from the recruiting firm's database -- so any claim that the survey's results accurately reflect the view of the American medical community is dubious at best.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly did eventually note that the survey was "not a scientific poll." But that didn't keep Glenn Beck from insisting -- hours after Kelly corrected the record -- that "The New England Journal of Medicine says that if this bill is passed nearly one-third of doctors will quit practice medicine."

(Beck, meanwhile, is keeping up the long tradition of Fox News hosts pushing partisan political agendas by joining with Republican Rep. Steve King to promote an anti-reform rally in Washington.)

Fox News contributor and serial misleader Dana Perino made her own non-contribution to the health care debate, asserting that the reform bill's Medicare investment tax on those making over $200,000 a year is "so disturbing ... because the people who make that money are the small business owners." In fact, fewer than 1.3 percent of small business owners would be affected by the tax.

When the Congressional Budget Office released new numbers detailing how the reform bill would reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years, Fox News didn't want to talk about that -- it spent far more time highlighting how much the bill would cost instead of how much it would save. And when that didn't seem to work, it tried to discredit the CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable. Never mind that when the CBO issued "favorable" numbers last fall on a Republican health care reform plan, Fox News praised the CBO as "nonpartisan."

The Fox News spin is even confusing its own hosts. Brian Kilmeade can't quite comprehend how a bill can cost money yet reduce the deficit, and Kelly admitted, "I don't understand anything they're talking about when it comes to this potential law."

Fox News' inept war against health care reform, while in keeping with its function as the communications arm of the Republican Party in exile, is making itself look like the Spinal Tap of news. It doesn't really need that "extra push over the cliff" -- after all, that's what it's been speeding toward for years.

At this rate, it probably won't be too long before a Fox anchor spontaneously combusts.

Other stories this week

A whole lot of shaky earthquake claims goin' on at Fox

How much does Fox News oppose health care reform? It's pretending natural disasters didn't happen if they're inconvenient to the anti-reform agenda.

On March 18, Doocy took exception to President Obama's statement that a provision in the health care reform that would help Louisiana cope with Medicaid shortfalls resulting from Hurricane Katrina might also help Hawaii because it "went through an earthquake. "Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake?" Doocy asked. "There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two." After noting that the provision applies to states that have suffered a natural disaster "within the last seven fiscal years," Doocy added: "Essentially it boils down to just one state, and that is Louisiana."

Doocy seems to have forgotten that there was an earthquake in Hawaii in 2006. Not only did it cause tens of millions of dollars in damage, the Bush administration "declared a major disaster exists in the State of Hawaii and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts" as a result of the quake.

But Doocy didn't need to rely on federal agencies for information on the quake -- Fox News reported on it at the time. (Investor's Business Daily similarly ignored its own reporting to suggest there was no recent Hawaii quake.)

It seems that rather than trust the federal government or his own news organization, Doocy chose instead to trust right-wing bloggers, who were spreading the misinformation. That runs counter to a 2007 memo -- issued after Doocy and other Fox hosts falsely claimed that Obama was educated in a madrassa -- in which Fox News vice president John Moody reportedly wrote, "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC."

Media Matters has written Fox News requesting that Doocy correct the record. We shouldn't have to, since Fox News is supposed to have a "zero tolerance" policy toward on-air mistakes, but then, these are the same folks that ludicrously insisted that a Fox & Friends graphic in which poll numbers added up to 120 percent contained no errors.

The latest right-wing witch-hunt target: Jim Wallis

Fox News has long been a leader in witch hunts against Obama and his administration (or, really, anyone who can be remotely tagged as liberal). Now Glenn Beck, as an extension of his repeated challenged Beck to a debate over social justice, Beck demurred, his vaguely threatening statements making it clear his witch hunt was more important than reasoned debate: "In my time, I will respond. ... Just know the hammer's coming. ... And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over."

Right-wing website WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, blundered into the breach with a poorly written article that attempted to put words in Wallis' mouth. WND claimed that Wallis was a "champion of communism," even though Wallis has declared communism to be a "failed" system; asserted that Sojourners has published "a slew of radicals" while ignoring that it has also published a slew of conservatives; and alleged that "Sojourners' official 'statement of faith' urges readers to 'refuse to accept [capitalist] structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class,' " even though the word "capitalist" -- inserted by WND -- actually appears nowhere in the statement. WND even falsely claimed that Wallis "labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life.' "

Somehow, we suspect that Beck's upcoming assault on Wallis will be just as divorced from reality as WorldNetDaily's.

Erick Erickson joins the "scumbags" at CNN

Should a blogger who once called a retiring Supreme Court justice a "goat f---ing child molester" be rewarded with a regular commentary gig on CNN? Doesn't matter -- the deal's been done.

CNN announced this week that RedState editor Erick Erickson has joined the network as a political contributor, mainly appearing on John King's new show. The network claimed that Erickson is "a perfect fit" for King's show, adding that "Erick is in touch with the very people John hopes to reach."

Media Matters has detailed Erickson's history of outrageous statements, of which the aforementioned is but one.

Predictably, conservatives defended Erickson's new job, his fellow RedStaters among them. One of Erickson's RedState defenders, however, went a tad off-message: "From Non-Conservatives, to Academics and Liberal Elitists, to self-soiling and unprincipled Professional Politicians and firmly-entrenched good ole boys inside the M(ostly) S(cumbags) M(edia), each of these clowns has a tale of doom about the hell we're headed for compliments of CNN's hand basket."

We have to wonder: Does Erickson consider his new CNN colleagues to be "scumbags"?

This week's media columns

This week's media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows: Eric Boehlert examines the media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers," and Karl Frisch tells you how to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg

Media Matters maintains active online communities on the nation's leading social networking sites. Be sure to join us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg and join in on the discussion.

Media Matters Minute now on YouTube

For some time now, radio shows and stations throughout the country have been carrying the Media Matters Minute, a daily, minute-long recap of our work topped off with the "most outrageous comment" of the day. We encourage you to subscribe (YouTube / iTunes /RSS) to the Minute's daily podcast, hosted by Media Matters' Ben Fishel.

This weekly wrap-up was compiled and edited by Terry Krepel, a senior web editor at Media Matters for America.

Ah, leave it to The Onion to successfully encapsulate the state of the recording industry with a report that is basically as accurate as most of the reports that come out of the RIAA these days: The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that the combined revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal, and countless independent music labels in 2009 totaled $18. "The music industry is back," RIAA representative Doug Fowley said. "Not only was Kenny Chesney's Greatest Hits CD purchased at a Knoxville, TN Borders for $12.99, but we also had two songs downloaded through iTunes, and our ringtone sales reached three." Fowley added that as long as no one returns or exchanges the CD, the music industry would continue to be a vital and creative force in American culture.

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Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, Hyundai, Nissan

Over the past couple of years, Hyundai has been credited as having some of the best marketing efforts of any automaker in the U.S. The executive most credited with such programs as Hyundai's Assurance program is Joel Ewanick. As vice-president of marketing at Hyundai Motor America, he led the team that came up with ideas like Hyundai Assurance, which promises to continue making payments or take a car back if a buyer loses his or her job.

Ewanick is now moving over to Nissan North America where he will take on the same task for the Nissan division. Ewanick is replacing Christian Meunier, who was recently appointed president of Nissan Brazil. Ewanick starts at Nissan on Monday March 22, so prepare for some marketing magic out of Nissan's Tennessee headquarters shortly thereafter if he does for Nissan what he did for his former employer.

[Source: Nissan]

Continue reading Joel Ewanick defects from Hyundai to Nissan, takes top marketing post

Joel Ewanick defects from Hyundai to Nissan, takes top marketing post originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In our latest employment-specific round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from SCEA Santa Monica, WB Games and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Gameloft: 3D Graphics Programmer
"As a member of our engineering team you will be part of the full development cycle of 3D video games for iPhone from start to finish, primarily focusing on 3D graphics. Duties could include: Analyze existing 3D functions in the engine and adapt them so they are compatible with current conventions; Support 3D functions and systems conceived for the production; Work with Game Developers, as well as Design teams to determine the different constraints of the game and put all the elements together."

Guerrilla Games: Senior Game Designer
"Guerrilla Games is looking to add a battle-hardened Senior Game Designer to its ranks for an upcoming project. If you're recruited, you will play a pivotal role in formulating the game design and guarding the game's vision. You will also act as a mentor, problem solver and source of bravery and inspiration for your fellow troops."

Rockstar North: Graphics Programmer
"Rockstar North, one of the world's leading video game developers, is a community of creative individuals from a variety of backgrounds. We are based in Scotland out of modern, spacious, purpose-built studios at the heart of Edinburgh. We develop original game titles and are proud to be the developer of the phenomenally successful Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar North has been part of the Rockstar family since 1999."

Sony Computer Entertainment America Santa Monica: Senior Combat Designer
"Join the God of War team! Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) markets the PlayStationÂ@ family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS oneâ„¢ console, the PlayStationÂ@2 and PlayStationÂ@3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSPâ„¢)."

WB Games: Art Development Director
"The Art Development Director develops art content staffing plans and monitors resource load and schedule for the external outsource teams as well as the insourced teams. In addition, he or she monitors content creation tasks in collaboration with production staff and art leads handling communication and feedback between the external partners and the internal game teams."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) Desktop, Server, and Netbook editions and of Ubuntu 10.04 Server for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon’s EC2. Codenamed "Lucid Lynx", 10.04 LTS continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop and Netbook Editions continue the trend of ever-faster boot speeds, with improved startup times and a streamlined, smoother boot experience.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition provides even better integration of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, with its install-time cloud setup.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server for UEC and EC2 brings the power and stability of the Ubuntu Server Edition to cloud computing, whether you’re using Amazon EC2 or your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

The Ubuntu 10.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu, also reach beta status today.

Desktop features
————————

Social from the start: We now feature built-in integration with Twitter, identi.ca, Facebook, and other social networks with the MeMenu in the panel.

New Design: Cleaner and faster boot, new notification area, new themes, new icons, and new wallpaper bring a dramatically updated look and feel to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu One: Choose any folder in your home directory to sync, choose from millions of songs for purchase in the Ubuntu One Music store.

Please see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1 for details.

Server features
———————-

Cloud computing: The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud installer has been vastly improved in order to support alternative installation topologies. UEC components are now automatically discovered and registered, even with complex topologies. Finally, UEC is now powered by Eucalyptus 1.6.2 codebase.

UEC and EC2: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS continues the tradition of official Ubuntu Server image releases for UEC and for Amazon’s EC2, giving you everything you need for rapid deployment of Ubuntu instances in a cloud computing environment. UEC images, and information on running Ubuntu 10.04 on EC2, are available at:

http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04/beta1

Stability and security: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS brings many improvements over Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to keep your servers safe and secure for the next five years, including AppArmor profiles for many key services, kernel hardening, and an easy-to-configure firewall.

Ubuntu Netbook features
———————————-
Ubuntu Netbook Edition is optimised to run on Intel atom based netbooks. It includes a new consumer-friendly interface that allows users to quickly and easily get on-line and use their favourite applications. This interface is optimised for a retail sales environment.

It includes the same faster boot times and improved boot experience as Ubuntu desktop.

Kubuntu features
————————

Kubuntu 10.04 LTS will be the first LTS to feature KDE 4 Platform and Applications. KDE 4 has come a long way since its early releases and is now suitable for the high demands of LTS users. Being an LTS we have focused on bug fixing and stability for this release, but we did find time to add features such as touchpad configuration, Firefox KDE integration, Kubuntu notification improvements, and cross-desktop systray menu standardisation. Kubuntu features the Plasma Desktop while Kubuntu Netbook Remix comes out of preview status with the Plasma Netbook workspace.

See https://wiki.kubuntu.org/LucidLynx/Beta1/Kubuntu for more details.

Edubuntu features
————————-

Edubuntu in Lucid features a more complete live environment containing more software from universe and all existing language packs as well as our usual educational software in their current version. For Lucid the text installer has been removed and so is LTSP for the time being. We expect to have LTSP back on the DVD for the next beta. The DVD is then much smaller than it used to be but will still provide a complete education environment based on Ubuntu Lucid.

Also included on the Edubuntu DVD is a small repository containing the required packages to transform the regular Edubuntu desktop into a LTSP server or install the Netbook edition interface.

Mythbuntu features
—————————

Mythbuntu 10.04 introduces MythTV 0.23. This new version is significantly faster and should feel more responsive and stable than older versions. It also integrates better into the OS with better support for things like ConsoleKit and Upstart.

Please see http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.23 for more details about changes introduced in 0.23.

See http://mythbuntu.org/10.04/beta for information about the Mythbuntu beta release.

Other
——-

* On the Desktop: GNOME 2.30, KDE SC 4.4, XFCE 4.6.1, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, X.Org server 1.7.5

* On the Server: Apache 2.2, PostgreSQL 8.4, PHP 5.3.1, LTSP 5.2

* "Under the hood": GCC 4.4.3, eglibc 2.11, Linux 2.6.32.9, Python 2.6.5

The full release notes can be found at
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta1

About Ubuntu
——————

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/support

To Get Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1
———————————————

To upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 from Ubuntu 9.10 or Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LucidUpgrades

Or, download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 here (choose the mirror closest to you):

Africa:

* http://ubuntu.saix.net/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (South Africa)

Asia:

* http://mirror.rootguide.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (China)
* http://ubuntutym2.u-toyama.ac.jp/ubuntu/10.04 (Japan)
* http://mirror.khlug.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Korea, Republic of)
* http://ubuntu.qualitynet.net/releases/10.04 (Kuwait)
* http://ftp.mtu.ru/pub/ubuntu/releases/10.04 (Russian Federation)
* http://tw.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Taiwan)
* http://ftp.linux.org.tr/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Turkey)

Europe:

* http://ubuntu.linuxbe.com/10.04 (Belgium)
* http://ubuntu.ipacct.com/releases/10.04 (Bulgaria)
* http://hr.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Croatia)
* http://releases.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/releases/10.04 (Czech Republic)
* http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/ubuntu-cd/10.04 (Denmark)
* http://ftp.estpak.ee/pub/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Estonia)
* http://ubuntu.trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/releases/10.04 (Finland)
* http://ftp.oleane.net/ubuntu-cd/10.04 (France)
* http://ubuntu.mirror.tudos.de/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Germany)
* http://speglar.simnet.is/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Iceland)
* http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Ireland)
* http://releases.ubuntu.fastbull.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Italy)
* http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04 (Netherlands)
* http://no.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Norway)
* http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/ubuntu/10.04 (Portugal)
* http://rs.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Serbia)
* http://ubuntu.cica.es/releases/10.04 (Spain)
* http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Sweden)

North America:

* http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/10.04 (Canada)
* http://mirror.pnl.gov/releases/10.04 (United States)
* http://mirror.yellowfiber.net/ubuntu/10.04 (United States)
* http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (United States)
* http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/10.04 (United States)

South America:

* http://ubuntu-cd.innova-red.net/10.04 (Argentina)
* http://mirror.pop-sc.rnp.br/mirror/ubuntu/10.04 (Brazil)
* http://ubuntu.c3sl.ufpr.br/releases/10.04 (Brazil)

Rest of the world:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04 (Great Britain)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

The final version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is expected to be released in April 2010.

Feedback and Participation
—————————————

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn this Beta into the best release of Ubuntu ever. Please note that, where possible, we prefer that bugs be reported using the tools provided, rather than by visiting Launchpad directly. Instructions can be found at

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but are not sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

More Information
————————

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

[Discuss Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1 on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-announce mailing list by Steve Langasek on Fri Mar 19 16:32:05 GMT 2010

Cartoon Network Latin America ran this cute Aqua Teen Hunger Force promo years ago, but I hadn't seen the commercial until today! The 8-bit spot throws the Adult Swim cartoon's goateed star Frylock into Data East's classic (but terrifying) arcade game BurgerTime. Things seem to be going well for Peter Pepper, right until he runs into pepper-immune Frylock.

Unfortunately, this is just an advert and not an actual Taco Time game. Maybe someone will like this joke enough to turn into a playable thing, similar to what happened with Invaders! Possibly From Space! and Vinnie Vole's Existential Nightmare? In the meantime, you can settle for this Aqua Teen Hunger Force-themed BurgerTime Level created in LittleBigPlanet.