divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/40650?ns=guardianpageName=Environment%3A+UK%27s+seasonal+starling+flocks+may+disappearch=Environmentc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Wildlife+%28Environment%29%2CConservation+%28Environment%29%2CEndangered+species+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CUK+newsc5=Environment+Conservation%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Juliette+Jowitc7=2008_12_04c8=1128997c9=articlec10=GUc11=Environmentc12=Wildlifec13=c14=h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FWildlife" width="1" height="1" //divpThe sight of tens of thousands of a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/08/birds.starling"starlings/a pirouetting and wheeling together in an ever-changing cloud of rushing wings is one of the UK's great wildlife spectacles./ppBut as this year's annual season of the murmuration reaches its peak, bird experts are warning that the extraordinary scenes mask a serious decline in the species which is now listed as one of the most at-risk birds in Britain./ppThis year, as in recent years, the audience of regular birdwatchers on Brighton Pier has estimated there are about 40,000 birds doing their aerial ballet just before dusk./ppThirty years ago though it is thought the numbers were near a quarter of a million. In some flocks in other countries, the total is thought to be up to 2m./pp"People think 'wow, that's amazing, look at all those birds'," said Gemma Rogers of the RSPB. "Without putting a dampener on it, we wanted people to know: it is amazing but it's not as great as it should be and something needs to be done about it."/ppThe starling spectacle starts ever year in November, when local starling populations are swelled by a vast influx of birds from the extreme cold in northern Europe and Russia, and lasts until around March, always for about an hour before dusk./ppOne of Britain's most popular naturalists, Bill Oddie, admits exactly a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/07/conservation"how and why they make the shapes/a they do is something of a "mystery", but it is thought the birds are finding safety from predators and warmth by forming vast flocks, and perhaps communicating about the best feeding sites./ppWhy they are disappearing is also unknown, though blame is mostly being cast over loss of insects for the starlings to eat because of the increase in chemical use on farms since the 1970s and new grassland management techniques, which might be creating thickets too dense for the birds to penetrate. Further research is the first part of an RSPB project to try and stop the species' decline in the UK./ppStarlings are one of 40 bird species out of 247 regularly seen in the UK which are on the "red list" of birds of conservation concern in the UK drawn up by 14 major bird organisations./ppstrongWhere to watch starlings flock in the UK /strong/ppLeighton Moss, Lancashire/ppFen Drayton Lakes, Cambridgeshire/ppMinsmere, Suffolk/ppNewport Wetlands, Newport/ppSomerset Levels/ppBrighton Pier/ppNorwich/ppNorthampton/ppSource: a href="http://www.rspb.org"RSPB/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/wildlife"Wildlife/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/"Conservation/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/endangeredspecies"Endangered species/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/D0bEShoEzIrhWQglWHZBSx6M0ZI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/D0bEShoEzIrhWQglWHZBSx6M0ZI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

!-- pageType= magazinesmall slug= st_kia section= techbiz subsection= people headline= Mr. Know-It-All: Call-Center Etiquette, Offensive Podcasts, Awkward Transactions authorName= Brendan I. Koerner creditType= illustration credit= Christoph Niemann -- p strong Dear Mr. Know-It-All, is it cool to ask call-center operators what country they're in? I'm not a bigot or opposed to outsourcing, but I like to know who I'm dealing with./strong /p pFire away with the geolocation query, but be wary of how you broach the topic. Call-center operators deal with countless xenophobic jerks, who typically follow the "Where are you located?" question with a stream of invective. An operator may thus turn defensive in anticipation of the same treatment from youmdash;unless you're careful with your tone and timing. "If the very first thing out of your mouth is, 'Hey, what country are you in,' I think that's rude," says a href="http://www.kathleenpeterson.com/"Kathleen Peterson/a, founder of PowerHouse Consulting, which advises call-center operations. Resolve your business first, then feel free to ask about location when there's a natural lull in the conversation. At that point, make sure your voice exudes affability, as if you were simply inquiring about the weather in Omaha./p pAnd, should you learn you're on the horn with someone on the planet's flip side, go easy on the inane chitchat. "A call-center agent has a job to do and probably doesn't want to answer questions about the population of Bangalore," says a href="http://www.globaltelesourcing.com/exper-colton.htm"Bill Colton/a, president of Global Telesourcing, a call-center service provider./p pThe operator may decline to answer your question or try to convince you that he's in Kansas even though his accent screams Ukraine. Such deception indicates that a company either wants to hide the fact that it's outsourcing or doesn't think too highly of its customersmdash;make a mental note of it./p pstrongI've been helping my nongeek friend build a Flash-intensive Web site. It's gotten to the point where I'm spending a dozen hours a week on it. How should I ask for compensation?/strong/p pYour pal surely didn't intend to exploit you. Odds are he doesn't know how much work goes into codingmdash;an impression you encouraged by not demanding dough up front./p pAssuming you want this relationship to survive, bring up the problem without making your friend feel like a total heel. a href="http://www.negotiatingwithgiants.com/introduction.html"Peter D. Johnston/a, the author of emNegotiating with Giants/em, recommends telling him that a sudden influx of paying gigs precludes you from doing more work, but you'd be happy to point him to a replacement. "That approach can get the issue of time and payment out on the table in a nonthreatening way," Johnston says. Presuming he's hesitant to switch horses midstream, your pal should offer to make his project worth your while./p pRefrain from pressing for back pay, however, or you're likely to look like a greedy ass. Those hours you've already spent slaving away in the digital mines? Consider them a lesson in the veracity of an age-old maxim: "Never mix business with pleasure."/p p div id="embed" div id="pic"img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/st_kia2_f.jpg" alt="" / div id="caption"emIllustration: Christoph Niemann/em/div /div /div strongEveryone in my office has sharing enabled on iTunes. One of my coworker's libraries contains several podcasts of sermons I find highly offensivemdash;they contain lots of antigay blather. Should I confront her?/strong/p pIt depends on how you gleaned those sermons' content. If you couldn't help noticing incendiary titles along the lines of "Fags Go to Hell," then a little indirect confrontation is in ordermdash;tell a manager, pronto./p pBut if the titles were innocuous, and you thus had to listen to the podcasts in order to be offended, pause a moment before taking action. You may have a valid case, but you'll have to decide whether this fight can ever yield anything more than a Pyrrhic victory./p pIt would be one thing if your colleague was blasting these sermons through her speakers for all to hearmdash;or, for that matter, telling everyone around the watercooler about the Lord's contempt for sodomites. But a shared iTunes environment such as yours is strictly opt-inmdash;you can easily avoid listening to the offensive content./p pThe best meatspace parallel is a coworker who keeps a small stack of religious pamphlets in plain view, which you can just ignore. True, there have been cases in which employers have been successfully sued for writing Bible verses on paychecks or broadcasting prayers over public address systems. But those situations were a lot more in-your-face than what's going on heremdash;in part because they involved bosses rather than colleagues, but also because the employees couldn't escape the proselytizing./p pAn aggressive lawyer could still argue that the mere presence of those tracks on the network creates a hostile workplace. But that strikes Mr. Know-It-All as making a sermon on the mount out of a sermon on a molehill, especially considering that the suit could very well be a losermdash;you might be hard-pressed to prove that the screeds, tucked away in an iTunes library, are severe or pervasive enough to constitute harassment./p pAs odious as you might find your coworker's views, it's probably best to give her a pass. Look on the bright sidemdash;now you know who to avoid at the office holiday party./p pemNeed help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at /ema href="mailto:mrknowitall@wiredmag.com"mrknowitall@wiredmag.com/a./pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:20d0f30c717b55767a97d16ab4484e9d:g1tf9adfc25jpXgkH8uKhMR%2BngoXs%2BDFLKAaS7SFOP%2FLsmDz%2BdZ%2F6fQrx2gCko%2FwpvWvkl9QfvTDow%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:f0a383436fbc6fa75c537e470d5de6dc:bFugwmegC8RftsXvM3wKBIF5b9LsYeK6cuDyo3RWg0hgPOsFGY%2B8JjdAtvTrVLTKC%2FVJddTgKHOM'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:c162596b45dd2aaf4f1644ef15064491:jxJd6gkLweGPjQ7tNdPUOWCP%2F2ZdfPQ6SO9V2ASSUZdHik%2FrWfaAfshSTEVebcxTQ36rF1lguDCm'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:02ff51d0d029db5fc136e971b6cd6b84:rcQ6Cotybfh21x45NhbpE%2BXMhW0EYpHhwkXIVs87B7yA%2BVfjzP4jvUE6g5CDDOwgoWK94X7Lmgct'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b2cecfe46439f19c1186d417c1984534p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b2cecfe46439f19c1186d417c1984534p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b2cecfe46439f19c1186d417c1984534" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=2ZiwRz"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=2ZiwRz" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/474334199" height="1" width="1"/

IZO translates from Russian LJ user avmalgin's observation (RUS) on Moscow's changing ethnic composition:

The benches on Tsvetnoi Boulevard are covered with inscriptions: “I love you, Rustamchik. Gyuzel.” “Renat+Ainara=Love”, everything in the same vein. Not a single Russian name. I went through them all, from one end to the other. Early on a Sunday morning the place was empty, but in the evenings it's a real Central Asian settlement. Why there? Or is it the same everywhere?

Below are a few responses (RUS) from LJ user avmalgin's readers.

LJ user dmitrivrubel:

Normal assimilation. Please note that everything is written in Russian, and Renat and Gyuzel are writing about their love for one another rather than declaring their faithfulness to Allah. It will get alarming when inscriptions in Arabic appear, which will feature quotes from the Quran or fatwas of Khomeini or Nasrallah.

LJ user ja_mayka:

Three weeks ago, also on Tsvetnoi Boulevard, I caught myself thinking that they were building Moscow on weekdays and spending their time off there on weekends )

LJ user sted_ats_02:

Perhaps not everything is as straightforward, though there's definitely a tendency. And Moscow, of course, isn't just the Russian people's capital, but also the capital of an empire (the former and the present one), with all the consequences inherent in this status.

LJ user avdoshin:

I think it's a totally normal situation for a multi-million city, whose government and business are acutely interested in the influx of cheap labor. It would be worse if all our gastarbeiters lived in some reservations and ghettos, as in New York or Paris. […]

pimg alt="dopplr_logo.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/dopplr_logo.png" width="150" height="29" /With the relative freedom provided by laptops, mobile devices, and more affordable transportation, people have become more migratory and, yet, better at remaining connected - or at the very least, accessible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the tech sector, where individuals are jetting back and forth to attend events or meet up with coworkers halfway across the world. /p pAnd when it comes to keeping track of the techie crowd and their travels, a href="http://dopplr.com"Dopplr/a is one of the best resources around. Now, they're giving users a view into some of those travel patterns with a href="http://blog.dopplr.com/2008/11/27/new-city-pages/"Dopplr city pages/a./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12796amp;cb=12796' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12796amp;n=12796' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pDopplr has been testing the pages internally for some time. Now, they're exposing them to the Dopplr users. As the name implies, these new pages provide a visualization of annual visitor activity for practically any city on Dopplr. There are metrics, as well, including information on fellow travelers in town, the number of trips to the city overall, the number of trips for the given day, local time, and interesting facts - like from which cities people are generally visiting./p centerimg alt="Dopplr Austin" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/imgDOPPLR_%20Austin.jpg" width="600" height="549" //center pLooking at even a few pages reveals some interesting trends. Austin, Texas, USA, for example, gets a heavy influx of Dopplr users in March. Why? The annual hermitage to the a href="http://sxsw.com/interactive/"SXSW interactive festival/a. Portland, OR, USA, by contrast, shows a definite uptick during the summer months. London, Paris, and Tokyo have steady traffic throughout the year. (Obviously, I could spend hours just thumbing through these cities.)/p pBut there's something else interesting happening here - which a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obama_puts_changegov_under_cre.php"Marshall Kirkpatrick mentioned recently/a. To make the reports a little more aesthetically appealing, the city pages pull in images of the respective cities from a href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10898"Creative Commons licensed content held on Flickr/a. Not only does it provide more context for the city, it offers yet another venue for Flickr users to showcase their work. All thanks to Creative Commons./p pUnfortunately, while the image concept is laudable - and often beautiful - many of the randomly selected photos tend to obscure the graphs of the travel data. So, if you're looking for beautiful images, you're in luck. But if you want to read the data, sometimes you're going to have to strain to see it./p pNonetheless, Dopplr city pages are well worth a visit. It's great to see Dopplr exposing some of the interesting data points that the company has been accumulating about its user base. And I'm a firm believer that any time this sort of data is made accessible, it's always wise to take a cursory look, for my own edification./p pTo see city pages in action, register or log in to a href="http://dopplr.com"Dopplr/a and search for the cities that interest you - or try clicking through some of the cities from your trips./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dopplr_city_pages_techie_travel.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iIdzRdUXVtz0CQFCYbEMNxpSOWo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iIdzRdUXVtz0CQFCYbEMNxpSOWo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=SM7t41T9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=tiz8husj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ewW6NZWW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ewW6NZWW" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=HWpEeLBv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=HWpEeLBv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=fUOzcduN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=fUOzcduN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=NysPQWXe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=pz7mnjH3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/gFQk933kIJg" height="1" width="1"/