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Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work,
an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it
over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's
the archive of the moments posted so far!
Today we take a look at "For the Man Who Has Everything," from Superman Annual #11 by Alan Moore
and Dave Gibbons...
Enjoy!
In the 1985 Superman Annual, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons delivered a wonderful tale about
Superman's birthday.
In it, the villain Mongul uses a telepathic plant called the "Black Mercy" to give Superman his
heart's desire, and effectively then leave Superman's Fortress of Solitude ripe for Mongul's
taking.
Here is Superman trapped in the fantasy of the Black Mercy...
Luckily for Superman, his friends Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin (the second Robin, Jason Todd)
were coming by to celebrate his birthday and they fight to save him.
Here's a very nice character beat introducing the heroes to the issue...
The "chum" line is great.
Mongul's introduction to the heroes is also handled beautifully...
While they tussle with Mongul, Superman is trapped in his "heart's desire," although he finds
himself trapped in a Krypton where he is an ineffectual bureaucrat and his father is a person
ridiculed for his beliefs (and Krypton itself is stuck in the middle of a religious war), which
is presumably Superman trying to break free from the "Black Mercy's" effects.
In any event, due to a little help from his friends, Superman eventually breaks free, and he is
none too pleased...
This leads to an encounter where Moore and Gibbons have Superman deliver one of the rare
occasions of Superman looking scary...
"Burn" has become an extremely memorable moment.
This Annual is a great example of a creative team taking an "adult" approach to superheroes
without losing any of the glamor or coolness of the underlying concepts or characters. Wonder
Woman, Batman, Robin and Superman are all very "cool" characters within this comic - it's not
making light of them, it's embracing them, and that helps to make this such an impressive piece
of stand-alone fiction.
And, of course, Dave Gibbons is absolutely amazing here - he makes EVERYone look good, he makes
Superman look SCARY (which is hard to do), he makes Mongul imposing, he makes Jason Todd even
look good!
If only Moore and Gibbons could have worked on another project after this one - who KNOWS how
cool it could have been?
Toyota/Subaru Coupe test mule - Click above to enlarge
Japan's Best Car (via 7Tune) apparently reports that
development costs associated with Subaru's version of the Toyota FT-86 sport coupe have become so high that
all-wheel drive is now being dropped from the equation. If true, this would deprive the
widely-expected Scooby coupe of the feature the brand's entire marketing platform is built on,
likely leaving us with a pair of clones whose only major difference will be styling. To that end,
it's also reported that an effort is underway to more substantially differentiate the Subaru coupe's look from the Toyota FT-86 beyond grilles and badges.
Of course, nothing's official until these cars are formally introduced, but yanking AWD from the
Subaru effectively leaves us with a Japanese version of GM's old Camaro/Firebird scenario, assuming
both cars really do come to market. Frankly, it's hard to see why Subaru would even bother going
with this sans all-wheel drive coupe, though the Herculean PR spin they'd have to put on it would
likely be hugely entertaining ("This is what we wanted all along...").
So, let's hear what you think. Follow the jump for a poll on how a lack of AWD would impact your
interest in the presumed Subaru version of the Toyota FT-86. Thanks to Johnny for the
tip!
It’s that time again! Time for the March celebration of GoRobotics’ 10th Birthday.
We’re once again giving away fabulous robot prizes to 3 lucky winners. Previouscontests
have been great, and we’re excited to be doing it again with prizes from our sponsors
Pololu, Super Droid
Robots, Zagros Robotics, Solarbotics and No Starch
Press.
There are four ways of entering this month’s contest:
1. Simply comment on this post and tell us your favorite robot websites. 2. Follow GoRobotics on Twitter
and leave a comment below telling us your Twitter username. 3. Follow RobotBox on Twitter and leave a
comment below telling us your Twitter username. 4. Retweet the following, “Enter
@GoRobotics.net’s 10 Year Birthday Robot Giveaway http://wp.me/pgDpL-kM“. Leave a
comment when you do.
YOU CAN DO ALL FOUR (four comments) TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING!
Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get
his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is
left over! The contest ends MARCH 31st, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments
are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved
it. Here are this month’s prizes:
The Baby Orangutan B-328 robot controller
from Pololu is the perfect choice for a brain for your robot. Its 24 pin compact form allows
it to fit into very small robots without sacrificing its powerful AVR microcontroller and 2
channel motor drivers. Yep, that’s right – this little guy is both a controller
and a motor driver! All you need to add is sensors and some motors. It has an
ATMega328P processor, an onboard potentiometer and LED, and 32Â KB flash,
2Â KB RAM, and 1Â KB EEPROM. The motor driver can handle up to 1A continuos
per channel, 3A peak.
These powerful 24V motors donated by Super Droid Robots will kick-start your next robot project.
They are high-quality motors with steel gears (not cheap plastic), and used
in Super Droid’s All-terrain
robots. They use a 1:27 gear reduction and have an amazing 12 kgf-cm of torque. That means
they could lift a 26 lb (12 kg) load using a 1 cm lever arm! They are rated for < 250 mA of
drive current. Note: These motors are probably  bit too big to be driven directly
from the Baby Orangutan B-328P. Try the Dual MC33926 Motor Driver Carrier
The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book
features chapters on programming and design, CAD-style drawings, and abundance of screenshots
make it easy for the reader to master the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit and to build and program nine
example robots. Chapters cover using the NXT programming language (NXT-G) as well as
troubleshooting; design; software; sensors; Bluetooth; even how to create a NXT remote control.
2nd Place Prize – Arduino Duemilanove, Tamiya Gear Box and Sport Tires (donated by
Zagros Robotics), and The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS
NXT Inventor’s Guide (donated by No Starch
Press)Â - worth $75
The Arduino Duemilanove is
a powerful and simple robot controller built around the AtMega328P microcontroller. It comes with
a bootloader already on the device so you can easily write and download programs using only a USB
cable. It has many digital and analog IO lines to make connecting it to your project easy.
The Tamiya double gearbox
is perfect for use in amateur robot contests, this gearbox is suitable for use with remote
controlled robots. Choice of 4 gear ratios, offers emphasis on speed or power to suit your needs.
Left/right independent design means you can set different gear ratios for either side. Coupled
with the Sport Tire set,
you’ll have a great robot propulsion system to hook up to your Duemilanove.
The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set is a very powerful robotics toolkit, but it lacks a detailed
user’s guide. This is the user’s guide that every MINDSTORMS owner
needs. The Unofficial LEGO
MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide begins by introducing the NXT set and directing
the reader through setup. Following this is an in-depth discussion of the set’s electronic
elements and other LEGO pieces as well as building techniques. Next, it covers the NXT-G
programming environment and introduces several unofficial programming languages, providing
examples of code and programming insights along the way. Finally, it presents a method for
designing NXT robots in addition to a series of projects with building and programming
instructions for creating complete robots.
3rd Place Prize – Herbie the Mousebot Kit (donated by Solarbotics), and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots (donated
by No Starch Press) – worth $75
The Herbie the Mousebot Kit from Solarbotics
is a great way to introduce ourself or a child to robotics. The kit is a 9-volt battery-powered
light-following robot that loves to chase flash light beams. These little robots are so quick,
you have to run to keep up to them! We’ve even enhanced Herbiewith
functional whisker and tail sensors, so he doesn’t get stuck in corners or under obstacles
while chasing around. It doesn’t require a microcontroller or any programming and the kit
comes with all the parts and documentation to get started.
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking
Robots includes full building and programming instructions for two of Daniele
Benedettelli’s most unique creations—a brand new version of his famous
Rubik’s Cube solver and an interactive Tic-Tac-Toe playing robot.
Rules/Regulations/Fine Print:
To enter the contest, you must comment on this post.
Giveaway ends March 31st, at 12AM EST (9PM PST)
One prize package per winner.
No purchase is necessary to enter the contest – it’s free!
Everyone is eligible, but shipping is free to only those in the Continental US
– if you are outside this area, you will have to pay for shipping.
PayPal is required to pay for shipping if you live out of
the Continental US
Winners will be contacted via email supplied in the comment form.
You have 48 hrs to respond to the email and choose your prize package.
GoRobotics.net makes NO WARRANTY or GUARANTEES about these prizes.
GoRobotics.net can change the rules WHENEVER IT WANTS.
Special Thanks to Our Sponsors! BUY STUFF FROM THEM:
I love services I can interact with via email. I can post to my Facebook page via
email and I can do the same here. One of my favorite services is Instapaper. I use it to bookmark and save articles to read later,
which I often do in bulk on long plane rides.
Earlier this week it quietly added a killer new feature. You can
now email in URLs or newsletters and it will save them to your Instapaper account for perusal
later. I find this invaluable. Kudos to Marco
Arment for continuing to build out a killer product. This is by far the most valuable service I
have added to my arsenal over the last year or so. And it continues to get better. You can get the details here at the bottom of the page.
For the last four years I had two URLs on my business card - my employer's web site and my blog.
But recently, when I went to order a refill, I changed the plan.Â
I of course kept the link to EdelmanDigital.com.
However, with space limited, rather than directing people to yet another web site (this one) I
indicated where they can find me on the sites where I know they are already spending
time, Twitter and Facebook. So far, I am glad that I did.
Blogs aren't dying anytime soon. In fact, the New York Times today has an
article today about how they are great personal branding vehicles for moms.
However, I have started to put a greater emphasis in growing my community where you already are.
The reason is, it's easier to build and manage relationships and measure them. I mentioned that some
companies are already going this route, but it's worth considering as a strategy for
individuals as well. For the last two weeks I have been really putting my focus on building deeper
relationships through Twitter and my Facebook page. I particularly like
the latter because I get all kinds of data about the people who subscribe to the page. And I expect
this will only improve. For example, I can see that my demographic split is not where I would like
it to be, so I am
making an effort to try to bring more women into the conversation. I continue to do
it all (which, ironically, is why I am posting this here), but I am finding the conversations in my
"spokes" deeper, more rapid and more rewarding at times than here on "the hub." But the data helps
me get smarter. I believe that this year we're going to see a lot of bloggers come to
the same realization that Facebook is an awesome tool for building relationships - something that
many bloggers crave. Most traffic to blogs, I suspect, comes in through Google. This is great
traffic of course, but in many ways it's devalued since bounce
rates are high. Now I see many bloggers continuing to do it all
- Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and their blog. However, some may
start to slowly favor Facebook for the same reasons I am if the social network
continues its growth track. In some ways, this is already starting. One of my favorite blogs is
MakeUseOf. I subscribe to their email newsletter and every
now and again they send out a reminder to readers to fan them on Facebook. That's
smart. They're up to 13,000 fans. Here are the
reasons they play up: likes, comments and social sharing. However, I also believe that
relationships and data play a role here as well. This isn't just about Facebook. If
they can give us similar stats, Twitter too will be a larger focus for many. Subconsciously, I
suspect it is for many. I am seeing that people are blogging less than before.
Â
What primary URLs do you give out these days? Do you send people to your
blog, Twitter, Facebook or your company site? How has this changed in
recent years? You may have them all on your card but I bet there's one or two that you prioritize.
For me, it's my company's web site and now my Facebook page. However, I will
continue to do it all. In many ways,
I think you have to since not everyone likes or is even on Facebook.
Cynthia was reluctant when it came time to leave the Machine Monastery. Nobody had predicted that
machines would be Buddhists. Crazed killers, perhaps. Indifferent to humanity, perhaps. Cold
calculators, almost certainly.
She had learned the tactile pleasures of sanding the walnut sides of an imperfect jewelry box she
had made herself with hand tools. The visual pleasure of brushing a finish with a wet edge.
The empty contentedness of sweeping a floor. The ragged exhaustion of breaking out old concrete
sidewalks with a sledgehammer and hauling them to a skip. The gleam of a toilet scrubbed clean.
The machines had done all these things, mostly better than humans could, and had found the same
peace from their lessons. Cynthia would go back to her life in the city, where her finance skills
would pay the bills, and where machine and human craftsmen continue to do their jobs with the
labor-saving tools that made mass production cheap. But perhaps in the summer she would take
another vacation to the mountains east of town, away from the noise, and rejuvenate with the joys
of manual labor.
I’ve yet to try it, so I’m not sure whether the added flv business works or not. Feel
free to give it a shot and leave your experience via the comments. That aside — Cooleyes has
released PMPlayer Advance v3.0.9. PMPlayer is an advanced media player for the PSP; its media
capabilities [...]
Irssi, as blogged extensively throughout this site, is one solid client. The flexibility never
ceases to amaze me, and tonight was one of those times.
Hanging out in the amount of channels I do, I see a lot of activity in my statusbar for all of my
joined channels. This can be overwhelming for some, but I don’t mind it. What I do mind,
however, is when I check in on a specific channel, and see pages and pages of scrollback that is
nothing more than people joining and leaving the channel. I’ve tried blatantly ignoring
JOINS, PARTS and QUITS, as they’re called, but I always disable it, because I usually want
to be kept abreast of when someone leaves a channel that I’m having a conversation with. I
don’t want to look silly continuing to chat to someone, long after they’ve left. So,
I need a way to keep on top of when people are joining and leaving the channel, but not have that
information in the channel itself. Thankfully, Irssi meets this need.
The concept is simple. A JOIN, PART or QUIT is what is referred to as a “level”.
There are a number of different levels that Irssi supports, all of which can be found with
“/help levels” in Irssi. With Irssi, it is possible to ignore, or even redirect,
levels. In my case, I want to redirect these three levels to another window, if possible. So,
digging through the settings in Irssi, I found “window_check_level_first”. By
default, this setting is “OFF”, which means that Irssi has a global setting for
levels, and how they’re handled. Enabling this setting, means to follow the levels that
have been assigned to their respective channels. However, if you turn this on first, without
doing some initial setup before hand, you’ll notice everything going to your status window
by default, including chat. This isn’t what we want, so let’s get setup.
The first thing we need to do is set our levels for all of our currently open windows, as well as
any future windows that we open. We can accomplish this with two commands in Irssi:
/foreach window /window level ALL -JOINS -PARTS -QUITS /set window_default ALL -JOINS -PARTS
-QUITS
Now, the next thing to do is to create a new hidden window that will be the new home for all your
JOINS, PARTS and QUITS. So, from Irssi:
/window new HIDDEN
Navigate to that window, wherever it is placed, and give it a name. For me, I called it
“junk”. Of course, this isn’t necessary, just optional, but I prefer that each
of my windows have a name:
/window name junk
It will have picked up the -JOINS -PARTS -QUITS from our default setting we just applied, so
we’ll need to reverse that. Easiest way is to just apply the converse of what you did
earlier:
/window level -ALL JOINS PARTS QUITS
Sweet. Our window is finished. Now, we can turn on the setting that will tell Irssi to look for
each individual window level setting:
/set window_level_check_first ON
Wait a bit, and you should see all the JOINS, PARTS and QUITS going to your new hidden window,
rather than each respective channel. You’ll also notice that it doesn’t print the
channel where these are originating. I don’t know of an easy way to set that without a
script, so if you know of such a script that exists, or want to write one yourself, sharing that
would be appreciated. In the meantime, this is better than nothing.
Don’t forget to save:
/save
Also, you may not want to make your “junk” window hidden, but rather make it sticky,
and split Irssi, putting the junk window on the top. I’ve done this with my highlight
window, so it would make sense here. In that case, just:
/window stick on /window show (number|name)
You can then size the window as needed if you decide you split your Irssi.
And, there you have it. Now, when people are joining and quitting, rather than filling your
scrollback where precious chat exists, it’s all being forwarded to a window of your choice.
If eventually, you like this setup, and you find that you’re not checking your junk window
for joins and quits, then you may be able to get away with just ignoring JOINS, PARTS and QUITS
altogether Irssi-wide. Which means, if for any reason you want to reverse this setup, it’s
rather trivial:
/set window_check_level_first OFF /foreach window /window level ALL /set window_default ALL
/window close /save
And that would back you out of this configuration, and get you back to default.
I should mention that I’ve heard that WeeChat has a feature that only people you’ve
recently chatted with will show when they quit, or there is a setting for setting this. I
personally think WeeChat is a solid client. However, in this case, I don’t want to see any
quits, even with those I’m chatting with, in that buffer. However, I would like to see it
in another buffer, and Irssi makes this painless. So, while I’m sure WeeChat can also meet
similar needs, Irssi meets my needs best.
As with my other Irssi tutorials, I hope this one was helpful. I find that I personally benefit
from my own writing, and that’s the major reason why I blog. I have searched for doing
solving problems in the past, only to stumble upon my own blog post, outlining the very issue
I’m faced with again. So, if it won’t benefit you, at least it will benefit myself.
Apple in a just-published SEC filing has revealed that its chief operating officer,
Tim Cook, was paid about $22 million in bonuses for acting as CEO during Steve Jobs' medical leave
last year. The payouts included both a $5 million immediate bonus as well as 75,000 units of
restricted stock, which at the time issued were worth about $17 million. Both reflect the
"outstanding performance" in taking Apple's helm, the filing reads....
How many e-book readers do you think are out there right now for you to choose from? If you did a
little digging, I bet you’d find 50 or so. Maybe 10 really worth checking out. But right
now is a bit of a weird period in e-reader history. The Kindle cemented e-readers in the consumer
headspace, catapulting them from weirdo alternative technology to mainstream gadget. That’s
what the iPad threatens to do with tablets
— we’ll see about that. But the Kindle and the iPad are two important data points in
the current e-reader wars; the question, upon the answer of which depends the success of many a
device, is whether “bonus” features like second screens and weird form factors in
e-readers will be enough to differentiate them from the high-profile devices pressing them on
both flanks?
See, the vast majority of e-readers were designed as a response to the Kindle, not to tablet
computers, which may or may not obsolete e-readers altogether. It’s a bad situation:
the whole time you’re improving your competitor’s product, someone else is skipping
your entire device class on the grounds that it will be made ridiculous by their awesome
gadget. Some of the special features developed to combat the Kindle will stay, and some
won’t live to see their own first birthday.
How many e-book readers do you think are out there right now for you to choose from? If you did a
little digging, I bet you’d find 50 or so. Maybe 10 really worth checking out. But right
now is a bit of a weird period in e-reader history. The Kindle cemented e-readers in the
consumer headspace, catapulting them from weirdo alternative technology to mainstream gadget.
That’s what the iPad threatens to do with
tablets — we’ll see about that. But the Kindle and the iPad are two important forces
in the current e-reader wars; the question, upon the answer of which depends the success of many
a device, is whether “bonus” features like second screens and weird form factors in
e-readers will be enough to differentiate them from the high-profile devices pressing them on
both flanks?
Take a second to imagine it as a battle between three armies. On one side of the field is the
steadfast Kindle Corps, seasoned and numerous. On the other is the glorious Apple Brigade,
untried in e-reader combat but veteran of other battles. In between them is a menagerie of Sony,
Asus, and miscellaneous independent mercenaries, bristling with foreign and barbaric weapons,
gathering together only because they don’t stand a chance by themselves. In real life, they
are not gathered at all, but that doesn’t work with the metaphor. Maybe they have a
non-aggression pact or something, I don’t know. Regardless, the battle is about to begin.
See, the vast majority of e-readers were designed as a response to the Kindle, not to tablet
computers, which may or may not obsolete e-readers altogether. It’s a bad situation:
the whole time you’re improving your competitor’s product, someone else is skipping
your entire device class on the grounds that it will be made ridiculous by their awesome
gadget. Some of the special features developed to combat the Kindle will stay, and some
won’t live to see their own first birthday.
Personally, I think e-readers will stick around next to tablet computers, since it’s just
as much of a problem for a device to do too much as it is for it to do too
little. You may not want your e-mail and browsing device to be the same as your reading
device. And of course the Kindle isn’t the end of all readers: the generation currently
being released has among its members a few interesting features… and a few duds.
Let’s take a look.
The nook
is what people think of when this type of e-reader is brought up, and for good reason. It’s
a sexy little bugger. Now, compare it to its rivals: the upcoming
Spring Design Alex and the Entourage
Edge. What do you see? A larger secondary screen. Better, right? Unfortunately, the secondary
screen does two things that pretty much sabotage the idea.
First, it takes away from the readable area (the main screen); 90% of the time you are using an
e-reader, you are reading. That is the device’s stated purpose. When you put in a
secondary screen, you are subtracting from the functional part of your device. I think it’s
an unstated but obvious goal of design that your device should primarily do what it
does.
Second, it implies uselessness on the part of the e-ink screen for UI stuff, and suggests to the
consumer “If you want to do stuff other than read e-books, you’re better off with a
device that’s all secondary screen.” It’s like admitting a strike
against your product before the consumer even sees it. Bad idea.
Not to mention having a color LCD screen raises the cost of the device considerably. It is for
these reasons that I think the secondary screen is a one-generation fluke, not likely to be seen
again after 2010.
There actually aren’t many that fall under this category, but they are on their way, and I
believe this is something that will stick around. Depending on the technology used (Mirasol,
pigment
pores), there may be no downside to having a color screen other than cost. That is to say
that reflectivity, weight, responsiveness, contrast, and resolution will remain the same, except
now you have color (however washed out in these first devices).
As I said, there are practically none of these devices on the market right now. Asus
has an OLED-based one it wants to push, but at six inches it’s not very tempting, and
of course it’ll be expensive. And it’s more of a tablet anyway, so it gets ignored.
But you can bet that Amazon, Sony, and every other company is pushing display R&D like none
other trying to get color e-ink to work for a decent price. We’ll probably have a few
announcements this year, but no products until next CES.
On the other hand, we already have Pixel
Qi, which may beg the question of color e-ink before the latter is even viable. On that
front, we have the popular Notion Ink Adam, demoed
here, which is one of the few devices which genuinely falls under both the e-reader and
tablet categories. Personally I’m bullish about it, though I’m afraid it may crumple
under the combined pressure of Amazon and Apple, both of which will be gunning for it.
At any rate, color is here to stay. Whether it’s an unexploited e-ink technology or a
hybrid like Pixel Qi, you better believe that color will huge in the next year. Not only does it
open up capability for running some applications, but it also lets the device and creator tap
into the huge academic book market, which needs color. Believe me, I wouldn’t have
passed my Neuroanatomy classes with a black and white textbook.
Are you kidding me? Almost every interactive device in the world is going to be touchable by the
end of 2010. Any e-readers that don’t have this feature by the holidays are going to be
laughed at long and hard. Touchscreens you can write on are going to be key as well; if your
e-reader can replace the “back of the napkin” sketches, diagrams, and calculations
you do already, then hell, why not?
The Entourage
Edge needs another mention here, since it has that book-like format, but as I noted before,
that actually ends up being a weakness. You’re splitting your functionality and essentially
the user can only use half the device at any given time, and is all the while thinking
“Man, I wish the other half of this thing didn’t exist right now.” The
Courier, which obviously is not e-reader but tablet, solves this by having both sides active
at all times. Not possible for the Edge.
Here’s a tough one: the
Samsung E6. Its slider form factor reminds one of their slider phones —
this thing in particular. But there are plenty of objections here. You see it and immediately
think, “an e-reader with moving parts? No thanks.” I mean really, simplicity is key
with a device that’s meant to replace a paperback. And anyone will be able to tell
you’re doing something wrong when you need a whole huge sliding mechanism just to reveal a
D-pad and a couple buttons that could easily have been put where the Samsung logo is. And the
speakers are on it too! What the hell, guys? Well, we can all agree that the E6 is going to sell
about three units. I think sliders are out.
But what about a sliding QWERTY keyboard? I haven’t seen one of those yet, but I’m
afraid it might have the same issues as the E6. Besides, better displays means better on-screen
keyboards. These things aren’t meant for typing anyway. Leave it to tablet computers to
figure this out.
What about ultra-slim? Hey, why not? My favorite e-book
reader out there is the Plastic Logic
Que, for no other reason than that it’s slim and handsome, just like me. Seriously
though, a touchscreen (however primitive) and a thin, refined design will sell against the most
robust competitors, and the Que is refined as all hell (though sadly,
delayed). If someone really and truly just wants to read books and magazines on an e-ink
screen, they don’t want or need anything else, but they do care whether it looks
like they’re reading a gigantic BlackBerry or not. Slim, buttonless designs will stay. You
can be sure the next Kindle will have one (though will likely keep its signature side buttons).
Flexibility? The Skiff is
working at this, and it’s something e-ink and (kind of) OLEDs are uniquely capable of at
the moment, but I get the feeling it’s going to end up on the low-end devices. See, as long
as a consumer is paying $400 or so for a device like this, I think that for the time being, they
are going to want build quality that suggests that. They want glass, metal, rigidity, sturdiness,
all that. Until you can actually roll or fold up your e-reader, I don’t see this
being a big selling point. But don’t count it out completely; this feature isn’t
dead, it’s just sleeping.
Another tough one. I don’t have a problem with Android on e-readers — it adds a
little credibility somehow, and I’m sure there are going to be a few apps (if there
aren’t already) that are meant to run only on e-readers, for customizing this or that, or
finding free books. If Android is to be the de facto OS of e-readers, so be it. I feel
that Chrome OS will be too much for an e-reader, so it doesn’t pose a threat, nor any of
the other mobile or free OSes. They could just as easily run a different Linux-based OS, but
Android has name recognition and probably some handy 3G and mobile wi-fi stacks.
There is the issue, however, that in some devices Android does more to show what the device is
not capable of that what it is. Look at
this little thing from Gigabyte. The OS looks completely out of place there, and is a mess to
navigate.
As for Apps in general, well, I think we’ll see a basic stable of apps develop —
things that are applicable to e-ink screens, probably features that the creators should have
included. Most e-readers don’t have the kind of displays or usage patterns as other Android
devices, so lots of the Marketplace will be pointless. And as for other apps, I guarantee
anything worth getting will be integrated into the second generation of the reader as a native
function. Color screens and better responsiveness might change this (as would a Pixel Qi rout)
but for now I’m saying Apps aren’t going to win any battles. Besides, Apple’s
got them licked there.
It should be noted that there are plenty of perfectly nice-looking e-book readers out there that
are not “special” in any way.
Look at this Asus one. Doesn’t it look nice? Yes. But the competition will bury it
unless it’s stupid cheap. The Kindle clones will disappear because the vanilla
Kindle form factor and feature set will start to show its age to casual consumers this year,
especially as alternative and open book stores begin to proliferate (options!) and alternative
e-readers penetrate the collective attention bubble. And of course you can expect a totally new
device from Amazon this year as well, though they got
a bit of a late start.
And what will be the effect of the iPad on all this? I don’t want to say much on this,
because there’s still a lot to be learned about that device. I said earlier that e-readers
will exist alongside tablets for some time, and I stand by that. If people really like to read
books on a device of this form factor, I doubt the iPad (or similar devices) will be their only
device.
Personally, I’m sticking with books, and looking forward to tablets as a way to
read newspapers and magazines, which obviously require color and a net connection, neither of
which is a guarantee with the current or impending generation of e-readers. I’ll be
interested to see how my predictions fare against reality, but I think I’m on solid ground
with most of them.
Remember Me is a film that's shot through with the pain of death, from a brutal
opening segment that could be dropped wholesale into a 1970's era Charles Bronson flick, to its
characters who dwell on losses from which they'll never recover. "We leave fingerprints on everyone
we touch," says hunky-broody Tyler Hawkins (Twilight's Robert Pattinson),
underscoring an overarching theme that death reverberates through the lives of those who are left
behind.
Positioned as a Nicholas Sparks-style tearjerker and starring two current pop-culture faces --
sparkly vamp Pattinson's love interest is Emilie de Ravin of TV's
Lost -- it comes as a surprise to find that Remember Me is literate, sensitive,
often quite funny, and altogether engaging, despite its formulaic underpinnings. Pattinson is very
good as the Rebel with Little Real Cause, burning with daddy issues thanks to his older brother's
suicide and a father (Pierce Brosnan) who's
distanced himself from Tyler and his smart, awkward little sister (Ruby Jerins).
After a standard-issue James Dean-ish kerfuffle that leads to a busted-up face courtesy of an angry
police officer (Chris
Cooper), Tyler takes the rather dumb advice of his best friend and chats up the cop's daughter,
Ally (de Ravin). Naturally, the two fall in love. Naturally, she has issues of her own, going back
to the murder of her mother, on a subway platform, when Ally was ten. Naturally, Tyler fails to
tell Ally about his history with her dad, and what follows is predictable.
Director Eduardo Mesejo Maestre leads a tour at the Deposito del Automovil
in Havana
Recognizing that car guys (and gals) are car guys no matter where in the world they live, the folks
running this weekend's Amelia Island Concours
d'Elegance have decided to use a bit of "Car-Guy Diplomacy" to reach out to that bigger island
a little south of Florida...Cuba. They have invited Ing. Eduardo Mesejo Maestre, Director of
Deposito del Automovil (the Cuban Automotive Museum), to serve as a judge for the event. It's kind
of like those ping pong matches between the U.S. and China back in the '70s, but, you know, with
classic cars.
It's actually a first in U.S.-Cuba relations, for a Cuban national to be invited to judge a major
concours in the States, believe it or not. In fact, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of
the U.S. Department of Treasury had to grant permission for Ing. Mesejo to come here for the event,
which runs March 12-14. For those too young to remember or too inattentive in history class, the
United States has had a commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba, Cuban goods and Cuban
people since 1960. Leave it to the car community to bridge that divide.
Cubans and Americans share a bit of a history with classic American cars, too. Since the embargo
laws blocked the importation of new vehicles into Cuba, Cuban auto enthusiasts have made it a bit
of an obsession to keep the best of the 1950s classics alive and running, relying on a lot of
ingenuity to find or make parts when needed. Ing. Mesejo will join racing legends Denise McCluggage
and Carroll Shelby in the jurying duties, Shelby stepping in for the recently
injured Sir Stirling Moss. Fittingly, they will be judging the "Cars of the Cuban Races" class,
an homage to a series of races held just in 1957, 1958 and 1960. You can read more about the event
and Ing. Mesejo in the full press release
after the jump.
This may forever be remembered as the week when "tickle
fight" entered the political lexicon.
The story stretches back to last week, when Eric Massa (D-NY) announced his resignation from the
House of Representatives. It took many people by surprise, including conservative commentators,
who initially reacted to the story by trumpeting ethics allegations against him to
tarnish Democrats. Sean Hannity compared Massa to disgraced Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), and Rush
Limbaugh sounded enthusiastic that Speaker Nancy Pelosi could lose a vote for health care reform.
But the story took an unexpected turn over the weekend when Massa
charged that Democratic leaders had pressured him to resign because he was set to vote
against the health care bill. On Monday, Hannity and Limbaugh changed their tune accordingly.
Hannity sounded off: "[I]t looks like this is only the latest instance of intimidation to come
from the Obama White House." And Limbaugh bragged that he was doing his part "to make it a
national story."
Enter Glenn Beck. Massa's allegations against the Democratic leadership appeared to confirm all
of Beck's theories about the Obama administration, and Beck soon booked Massa for a full hour on
his Tuesday Fox News show. It was at this point that the story turned toxic for conservatives.
Earlier that day, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin had called into Beck's radio show and given him
prescient advice not to spend an hour with Massa. Their conversation became tense, as
Beck seemed annoyed that Malkin would question his judgment. That afternoon, Limbaugh jumped ship
on Massa. After earlier touting Massa's side of the story, Limbaugh now said he wanted Massa to
remain in Congress as a Democrat because he was a "loose cannon," a "kook," and a "freak."
But Beck pressed ahead with his hour-long interview. Massa did look like a "loose cannon" during
his interview with Beck, in a way that did not reflect well on the host. Massa also walked back
his allegations against Rahm Emmanuel and admitted to having "tickle fights" with staffers in a
house they shared. Beck couldn't get Massa to name names and accuse other Democrats of
corruption. Massa instead talked about the need for campaign finance reform, only further
frustrating Beck. Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert gave the following post-mortem:
Well, in one sense, Beck was right [about devoting an hour to Massa], because yesterday's
colossal flop might just make television history. It might go down as one of the most
pointlessly absurd -- and yes,
truly unwatchable -- hours in cable news. Last night, the
snickering had already reached epic levels. And with the can't-watch-TV performance, Beck
most likely took the Massa issue off the table for Republicans, since the whole story now looks
more like a comedy than an actual scandal.
"The result," Boehlert concluded, was that Beck became a "national laughingstock."
After the interview, Beck apologized to
his viewers for wasting an hour of their time. Only an hour, Glenn?
One further note: Limbaugh apparently wanted to make sure Beck didn't get all the Massa
attention. On Tuesday, Limbaugh was chatting with a caller about New York Gov. David Paterson
appointing Massa's replacement. Limbaugh, never a man to back away from a race-baiting play on
words, said: "So, David Paterson will
become the massa who gets to appoint whoever gets to take Massa's place. So, for the first time
in his life, Paterson's gonna be a massa."
Other Major Stories
The consequences of Rove's Courage
Karl Rove made some media ripples this week with the release of his memoir, Courage and
Consequences. We at Media Matters obtained a copy in advance of its release date,
which gave us the opportunity to expose its falsehoods before most people could even get
their hands on it. What we found would not shock anyone familiar with Rove's history of "play[ing] fast and loose with the facts": Rove's
book was another exercise in rewriting the wrongs of the Bush administration.
For example, in Courage, Rove distorts a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee
report to claim that Bush didn't "lie us into war." Rove writes that Bush's claims that Saddam
Hussein had ties to terrorism were substantiated by the Senate report. The report actually said
that only some of Bush's statements on Iraq were substantiated. The report went on to
contradict Bush's claims about an Iraq-Al Qaeda partnership, and that Saddam was prepared to give
weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
With every book comes a media tour, and Rove spent much of the week appearing on what seemed like
every Fox News program in the lineup (plus an hour-long appearance on The Rush Limbaugh
Show). Talking-head Rove used one of these opportunities to repeat discredited claims about the Valerie Plame leak.
Rove also used his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed to repeat some of the same health
care reform falsehoods that were
in his book.
No rest for the weary: Fishing freak-out and Glenn Beck's musical epiphanies
What happens when an ESPN column makes a far-fetched claim that President Obama would ban
fishing? On ESPNOutdoors.com, Robert Montgomery claimed that a federal strategy "could prohibit
U.S. citizens from fishing the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland
waters."
Conservatives took the bait, and it
wasn't long before Limbaugh, Gateway
Pundit, Fox Nation, RedState, and Michelle Malkin all forwarded the claim.
Was there any truth to it? Would the White House start sending out Secret Service agents to
confiscate our fishing poles and shut down our local bait shop?
To the surprise of absolutely no one with a brain, the story was wrong. ESPN acknowledged its mistake.
But apparently nobody told Glenn Beck, who didn't back off the story. "No more fishing,"
Beck said, adding: "Forget about the frickin' fish. People are losing their rights. Who's more
important: the fish or you?" Eventually, even Fox News debunked the claim.
Beck also exposed us to more of his pop music revelations. A few months ago, Beck explored the meaning of The Beatles' "Revolution"
with the enthusiasm of a college freshman evangelizing Dark Side of the Moon. This week,
he warned his viewers that Woody
Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" is "about a progressive utopia."
The next day on his radio show, Beck and his crew called Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."
"anti-American." My Media Matters colleague Jeremy Holden took Beck and his co-hosts to task for their
"simplistic version of patriotism" that "leaves little room for any criticism of America, its
policy, or the behavior of its people."
For the road
It was a busy week at Media Matters, and some other items deserve attention, too. Former
Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen continuedhisDOJ witch hunt with moreattacks on the Obama Justice Department. Glenn
Beck was called out by the antipoverty
group Sojourners for his continuedattackson the concept of social justice. Beck's busy
week also had him selling "survival
seeds" and stating without irony:
"You cannot lie to the American people for very long unless you're really good." And some
conservative media figures cast Democrats as "suicide bombers" in their push for health
care reform.
Finally, Media Matterswelcomed
Joe Strupp as its new investigative reporter and senior editor. His blog "Strupp" also launched on the Media Matters website
this week.
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.
Do you listen to podcasts? Try theMedia
Matters Minute
For months 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 (iTunes
/ RSS) to the
Minute's daily podcast hosted by Media Matters' Ben Fishel.
You may have seen some of the rather popular videos by Common Craft, which has built a rather large
following based on these videos about technology and social media using paper diagrams on
whiteboards. What the videos are really good at is simplifying things in a way that's easy for
people to understand. For example, the video, Twitter in Plain English has received nearly 1.7 million views and is often
sent around to people who are trying to understand Twitter.
Like most viral video efforts, the videos are hosted on YouTube, which makes them easy to embed and
share. Except, apparently, that's not working within Common Craft's business model. An anonymous
reader sent over a story about how the company has set up a new
licensing scheme for embedding its videos on websites, and the fees get pretty high pretty
quickly. Digital Inspiration notes that embedding one of those videos on a popular website or blog
could cost thousands, since the prices are based on views. Lee LeFever, of Common Craft, responded
in the comments that this was targeted at companies, rather than "bloggers." However, it's not
clear if this means the videos will remain on YouTube -- in which case, companies can just embed
them automatically -- or if they'll keep them off of YouTube.
Either way, it's difficult to see this working out. I'm sure some companies will pay, but on the
whole, it seems to break the value chain here. Common Craft could, instead, offer up the ability to
make custom videos for companies, but on its website, it says that they'd rather just focus on
their own videos -- and points anyone who wants custom videos to a series of other video producers.
The thing is, if you want your video to be viral, you can't also charge for it. There are three
options that I can see, and none of them seem that good:
They leave the videos on YouTube as embeddable, and just hope that companies will pay them
anyway.
In this case, many companies would likely embed the videos anyway, not even realizing that CC
wanted them to pay up. That leads to confusion and no legal basis for CC's request. After all,
it put the video on a video sharing site and allowed embedding. That seems like a pretty clear
authorization to embed the video.
They leave the videos on YouTube, but not as embeddable, and make companies pay to
embed
As we saw with the band Ok Go, when EMI disabled embedding for the band's videos,
traffic plummeted 90%.
You don't go viral if you don't allow embeds.
They stop using YouTube altogether, and don't release the videos publicly
themselves
It's hard to be viral when the videos aren't anywhere online.
So with all of that, I'm still confused as to how this offering works. It seems
like an attempt at the honor system to pretend that an abundant resource isn't abundant. Instead
of doing that, why not focus on the scarcities -- such as creating custom videos (as mentioned),
consulting (scarce knowledge) or advertising/sponsorship (selling the scarcity of attention). It
just seems like other models would make a lot more business sense.
Thursday was a busy day for me. I had to get packed and out of my hotel room
early, and I gave the last presentation of the conference on the very difficult and challenging
issue of Peter Enns. I did not get access to my e-mail until I was sitting at the gate in Charlotte
waiting for my flight back to Phoenix at 8:10pm EST. The first e-mail that came through was from
Peter Lumpkins. As I sat at the gate I could not but shake my head in amazement at the thought
process that went into what he wrote. Here is an accusation that I had made up a single chat
conversation from 2008 being paralleled to the public claims of Ergun Caner relating to doing
debates in a dozen countries and forty states; debating Shabir Ally and Abdul Saleeb; being born in
Istanbul, living in majority Muslim countries all his life before coming to the United States,
Ramadan is forty days long, etc. and etc. How can men think like this? It truly leaves me without
words. But, here's what I was sent:
Subject: So Now Who is is it Making up Conversations?
Dear Mr. White,
You need to be aware of a slight discrepancy apparently on your part. Tony Bryne recently logged on
my site these words:
"p.s. With respect to his first video, I [Tony] have NEVER had a conversation with White about
Robert Reymond at all; no, not even in his chat room. His claim that we discussed Reymond in his
chat channel is totally false."
As a result, I queried David Hewitt--the 'reconciler' (self-appointed or other I do not know)
between you and Byrne--with the following:
David,
The little p.s. Tony left on one level is hilarious and another is alarming. James White has ground
Ergun Caner's name to dust insisting he made up a debate with a Muslim. According to Tony's
insistence on not conversing with White about Reymond, James White apparently made up the
conversation the two had. Unless, of course, Tony is now making this up (or forgotten, etc). So, if
White did have the conversation, then he needs to produce the evidence--a DL phone call, a chat
room thread, or other will do.
If White cannot produce the evidence, could you please explain why he should not release a public
statement of repentance for making up exchanges with people he never had? Could you also explain
why White should not include his own failures each and every time he names the alleged failures of
Ergun Caner?
Or, better yet, James White could come here and straighten out the confusion.
With that, I am...
Peter
I'd be glad to see your evidence for the conversation between you and Tony, Mr. White. If you do
not have such evidence, I suggest you read carefully the questions I gave to David.
With that, I am...
Peter Lumpkins
Now, of course, I have provided the logs demonstrating the conversation did, in
fact, take place, as I will document below. But I wish my readers to ponder for a moment the
mindset illustrated by Peter Lumpkins here. As some of you know, Mr. Lumpkins represents the "keep
your Calvinism out of the Southern Baptist Convention" mindset. He is a gadfly on the Internet, and
over the past few years has shown himself incapable of unbiased analysis of anything relating to
Reformed theology, or yours truly (and a number of others). Recently he has rushed to the aid of
Ergun Caner, not by providing any kind of rational or logical explanation for the wild claims Dr.
Caner has made, and the many self-contradictions they have produced, but by engaging in "distract,
cover, and impugn" tactics meant to keep the less thoughtful from considering the importance of the
real issues.
We have here an example of the mindset that develops when "the tyranny of
denominational traditionalism" sets in. Consider what Mr. Lumpkins has attempted to do here. The
title of his e-mail says it all: without even asking first (remember I contacted Shabir Ally before
I contacted Ergun Caner directly before I made any public posting on the matter), he impugns my
character on the basis of...what? A single conversation noted in passing in a video that took place
in a chat channel. This is not about claiming to have been born in, say, Geneva, or claiming to
have debated Richard Dawkins and Zakir Naik and Pope Benedict the XVI and Captain Kirk (via time
travel). This is about my recollection of a single conversation in a chat channel, and Mr. Lumpkins
seriously wishes to make this a parallel to the consistent pattern of exaggeration and fabrication
that has been demonstrated in the self-promotional claims of Ergun Caner. The rational mind is left
wondering what Mr. Lumpkins was thinking. Let's say I could not produce the information below.
Let's say the logs for that week were lost (it has happened in the past). Would there be some basis
for any charge of personal sin on my part for recalling a chat channel conversation? Evidently, for
Lumpkins and those who cannot see the facts and the truth due to devotion to denominational
tradition, I am guilty until proven innocent (and Dr. Caner is innocent---period, no discussion
allowed).
It is this amazing example of "let's try defending Dr. Caner by making every kind
of incredibly ridiculous accusation we can against anyone who would dare question Caner" that is
most important to see. What a shame this kind of thinking is not uncommon in certain circles.
But now to the rather easy, and I admit, enjoyable, demonstration of Mr.
Lumpkin's error. A word of instruction to would-be accusers: every word you say is recorded in our
chat channel. 24/7. It took less than five minutes to find the logs of the conversation I had
referred to in the video.
Now, there is a chance that Polhill in the following log is not Tony Byrne. It is
possible Polhill is former President George Bush, I suppose. But there is every reason to believe
it is, in fact, Tony Byrne, which raises the question, why did Tony forget this conversation? Do a
search on Tony's blog for Polhill. You will see he quotes Edward Polhill all the time. I found
ten blog entries on Tony's blog using his name (probably more than on any other blog
out there). That would be enough in and of itself, but, it is self-evident that the person posting
under the nick Polhill claims to be Tony Byrne (on the technical level, we identified his IP as
that of Tony Byrne, so it really isn't questionable). I will insert relevant links after his
comments that demonstrate that if this is not Tony Byrne, then he has an impostor running about the
the Internet who knows his own website like that back of his hand, claims to be him, and promotes
his views. I suppose that is possible (I mean, who would not want to impersonate such a well known
Amyraldian blogger?), but I think it is only a little more probable than our being assimilated by
the Borg next year.
So here is the log. I start with when Polhill joined, and include all the
relevant conversation up to the point where the exchange took place that I noted in the video,
thusly refuting Peter Lumpkin's false charge against me:
[09:37] * Polhill (~webuser@pool-71-97-0-132.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net) has joined #ProsApologian
[09:39] (Polhill) Do you all know when the DL broadcast will occur today? 11am MST?
[09:40] (DaleNokia) i think so
[09:40] (DaleNokia) I was wondering that myself
[09:40] (DaleNokia) It should be back to the normal schedule
[09:40] (Polhill) Ok. I thought so as well.
[09:48] (Polhill) frink: Is faith not our act and therefore our "choice," albeit a determined
one?
[09:48] (brigand) Polhill: Faith is a gift.
[09:48] (Polhill) brig, faith is a gift, but it is also the act of the renewed man, as Spurgeon
said.
[09:50] (Polhill) The issue of the ordo salutis does not negate the true point that saving faith is
our act, and therefore our choice.
[09:50] (DaleNokia) Umm
[09:50] (brigand) The supernatural aspect that's absent from the "well, we just raise them to be,
and there they are!" mindset.
[09:51] (Polhill) To deny that faith is our act is to deny that it is our responsibility.
[09:51] (DaleNokia) yes it is our responsibilty but
[09:51] (brigand) Polhill: Yes, faith is ours, it's not someone else's surrogate faith believing
for us.
[09:52] (Polhill) The dispute between Calvinists and Arminians is not whether or not faith is our
choice. Rather, it is over the issue of it being a determined choice resulting from God's
efficacious initiative.
[09:53] (frink) So regeneration comes first, changing our wills causing us to want to believe, so
we do.
[09:53] (Polhill) frink, correct. So, given that, it is still true that the act of faith is ours
and a choice.
[09:57] (Polhill) Nota Bene: It's a common Arminian false either/or dilemma to suggest that either
faith is a libertarian choice or it is not a choice. Rather, the dispute is between whether it is a
libertarian choice or a determined choice.
[09:59] (Polhill) Conviction, the bible doesn't speak of "faith" as a gift that must be accepted.
Rather, it is Christ who is the gift that must be accepted through our act of faith.
[10:02] (Polhill) Conviction, I can't cut and paste the entire NT in here lol. Suffice it to say
that it constantly underlines the fact that we are responsible to believe and Christ is the gift
offered, just as the Reformed Confessions echo.
[10:04] (Polhill) I haven't been in here long today, no. However, I have stopped by before to see
what's being discussed. [Note: in reality, Tony is banned from this chat channel. He is technically engaging in
"ban evasion" at this point.]
[10:05] (Polhill) I am a Christian, a Calvinist and find pleasure discussing theology with other
believers :)
[10:05] (Polhill) I currently reside in Texas, in the Dallas area. How about you? [Note: Tony Byrne's blogger profile indicates he lives in Texas.]
[10:09] (AOMwrkg) where do you go to church Polhill?
[10:09] (Polhill) Rich, when will the DL occur today? We were guessing 11 MST time earlier.
[10:09] (AOMwrkg) top of the hour
[10:10] (AOMwrkg) prefeed begins in 20 minutes
[10:10] (Polhill) I mentioned that above, i.e. Believers Chapel. I'm sure you've heard of Dr. S.
Lewis Johnson. [Note: Here Tony Byrne says he lives in Dallas and refers to Believer's Chapel and S. Lewis
Johnson.]
[10:11] (AOMwrkg) hey Polhill....do you ever use other nicks?
[10:12] (Polhill) I have, yes. I've used BezaeMastyx in here before, twice I think.
[10:13] (AOMwrkg) any others? [At this point the ops in channel were beginning to suspect that Polhill was a banned
person, specifically, Tony Byrne, who had been a regular in channel using the nick ynottony (which
he still uses on his Twitter account.]
[10:13] (Polhill) Probably *evil grin*
[10:13] (AOMwrkg) any others?
[10:13] (Polhill) How about you? What other nicks do you use?
[10:13] (AOMwrkg) only this one
[10:14] (Polhill) ahhh..ok
[10:14] (Polhill) You need something unique!
[10:14] (AOMwrkg) any others?
[10:14] (Polhill) Probably...why?
[10:14] (AOMwrkg) YnottonY ?
-
[10:15] Polhill is ~webuser@pool-71-97-0-132.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net * applet
[10:15] Polhill on #prosapologian
[10:15] Polhill using WilliamsLake.BC.CA.StarLink-IRC.Org [204.50.67.201] Williams Lake, BC,
Canada
[10:15] Polhill End of /WHOIS list. [At this point I did a "whois" on Polhill's nick. Note it indicates the dfw (Dallas) area
IP.]
[10:15] (Polhill) I think I've used that one twice in here before, yes.
[10:15] (AOMwrkg) heh
[10:15] (NA27lrx) Oh good grief.
[I use multiple nicks in channel because I have access to more than one computer connected to the
chat channel. NA27 is the unit that logs the channel.]
[10:15] (NA27lrx) Why am I not surprised.
[10:15] (AOMwrkg) (Gutenberg^) brigand, I found one match to your query: YnottonY. YnottonY
(~webuser@pool-71-97-22-217.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net) was last seen being kicked from #prosapologian
by AOMin ( not interested....bye) 30 weeks 17 hours 41 minutes ago (28.04. 18:33), after spending
14 minutes there. [Here our channel control bot, Gutenberg, provides the last time Tony Byrne had been in
channel, 30 weeks before, and records his being banned by AOMin (Rich Pierce). Note the hostmasks
are the same, proving that Polhill was, in fact, Tony Byrne.]
[10:15] (NA27lrx) Congratulations on having your views presented at the John 3:16 Conference!
[10:16] (NA27lrx) You fellows have helped keep the freedom of God in salvation from being preached
from many a pulpit, to be sure! :-)
[10:16] (Polhill) NA27, thanks ;)
[10:16] (brigand) w00t, the witch hunt is now on for Dr. White!
[10:16] (brigand) And the rest of us, I guess, by association.
[10:16] (NA27lrx) As you probably expected, I will be talking about Allen's reliance upon you today
on the DL.
[10:16] * AOMwrkg locks and loads
[10:16] (Polhill) I thought so, yes.
[10:16] (NA27lrx) For those who are not connecting the dots....
[10:16] (Polhill) We'll be listening ;)
[10:17] (Polhill) As always
[10:17] (NA27lrx) Oh, one question...I am surmising that you provided the citation from the April
DL. Am I correct?
[10:17] (AOMwrkg) of course, now I realize why you were wanting the time for the show
[10:17] (Polhill) Rich, of course.
[10:18] (Polhill) NA, of course. It's on my blog, as you well know. [Note that Tony says the material Allen used was on his website, and, of course, it is,
right here]
[10:18] (NA27lrx) I will enjoy exposing the inconsistencies of the critics yet again. :-)
[10:18] (Polhill) NA27, but what I have on my blog is just the transcript of the call, without any
of my opinions.
[10:18] (Optimator) Tony?
[10:18] (NA27lrx) Yes, what was Allen's added commentary again...
[10:18] (frink) Really, doesn't John 3:16 pretty much disagree with them anyway?
[10:18] (NA27lrx) "brusquely" or something?
[10:18] (NA27lrx) I forget. I'll play it.
[10:19] (NA27lrx) Have to get the files set up.
[10:19] (Polhill) NA, feel free to discuss things, but, as the Peter passage mentions, do so with
"gentleness and respect."
[10:18] (NA27lrx) I expected as much.
[10:19] (Sue2) he always does
[10:19] (NA27lrx) Like Allen did in falsely accusing me in public without even contacting me?
[10:19] (NA27lrx) Is that how that works?
[10:19] (ENielsen) Gentleness and respect, like falsely labeling someone a hypercalvinist. :-)
[10:20] (Polhill) To say that he falsely accused you is to beg the question. He has reasons for
thinking you're a hyper-Calvinist, and you deny it. That's fine. We'll then just have to discuss
the nature of hyper-Calvinism historically.
[10:21] (Polhill) Mr. White: On today's show, I hope you will address the vital question put on the
table, i.e. is there any sense in which God wills, wishes, wants or desires the salvation of all
men, in your opinion?
[10:22] * AOMwrkg finds it interesting that Polhill interrupted a witnessing exchange when this
started
[10:23] (Polhill) Rich, incidentally, why did you bounce me the last time I was in here? [Note that Tony knows he was banned last time, and since he had been a channel regular, he
knows he is ban evading.]
[10:23] (ENielsen) Pol is not a hyper-Calvinist. Pol is a Ponterite.
[10:23] (Polhill) You mean to say that Polhill is a Calvinist? ;)
[10:24] (AOMwrkg) no
[10:24] (AOMwrkg) you are dogmatic
[10:24] (Polhill) AOM, so is the bible, as you know.
[10:24] (Polhill) I make arguments and document the sources, I think ;)
[10:24] (AOMwrkg) dogmatically
[10:24] (AOMwrkg) pfft
[10:25] (Polhill) That's different from "spewing talking points"
[10:26] (Polhill) The problem is not with being dogmatic, but with having the right foundation for
one's dogmatism, it seems to me. If our views are grounded in scripture and in sound historical
sources, then dogmatism seems warranted.
[10:26] (AOMwrkg) but alas.....tame your keyboard.....the DL is in the works and will deal with
you
[10:26] (Polhill) deal with me as a fellow believer, is all I ask. Show respect, don't demean,
etc.
[10:27] (Shamgar) Polhill: You must be new to the DL. DrO has always done that in intramural
debates - even when the other side does not.
[10:28] (Polhill) Rich, incidentally, where did you all get the false notion that classic
hyper-Calvinists were against evangelism or preaching? Hussey and Gill were not against preaching
to all.
[10:29] (Polhill) Have you all not read Iain Murray and Curt Daniel on the subject? Both of them
underline the fact that hypers were not against evangelism or preaching to all. [Now, I had joined the channel under the nick I use during the DL, and here is where I
asked Tony the question that he now denies having discussed with me.]
[10:29] (DrODL) Do you agree with Allen that Robert Reymond is a hyper Calvinist?
[10:29] (Polhill) I got the notion from Mr. White's blog. It's all over the place that he thinks
hypers are against preaching to all or evangelizing all.
[10:30] (DrODL) How old are you, Tony?
[10:30] (Polhill) Mr. White, of course I think Reymond is hyper. He denies that God wills the
salvation of all men. I've blogged it and discussed it on Gene Cook's The Narrow Mind broadcast
recently. [Well, there you have it, directly from the logs from November 25, 2008, exactly as I
recalled it in the video. Mr. Lumpkin's false accusation is thereby refuted, en toto. And note he
mentions being on Gene Cook's program. Here is Tony's link to that program on his blog.]
Tony did not last much longer.
Now it is plain that Polhill was Tony Byrne, and that conversation took place
just as I had said it had. Will Tony admit this in public? I think he will. Will Peter Lumpkins
apologize? I doubt it, but, I'm the eternal optimist. I still hope Ergun Caner will stand before
the students of Liberty Seminary and admit that he is not, in fact, on the forefront of Islamic
apologetics, he is not a debater, he wasn't born in Istanbul, etc., apologize for the exaggerations
and errors, and start anew. So if I can hope that will happen, I can hope Peter Lumpkins will do
the right thing, too.
And with that, I am...still hoping Peter will admit his error.
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 11 PMID: 20220844Authors: Degroote, P. - Aerts, C. - Baglin, A. -
Miglio, A. - Briquet, M. - Noels, A. - Niemczura, E. - Montalban, J. - Bloemen, S. - Oreiro, R. -
Vuckovic, M. - Smolders, K. - Auvergne, M. - Baudin, F. - Catala, C. - Michel, E.Journal: NatureThe
life of a star is dominantly determined by the physical processes in the stellar interior.
Unfortunately, we still have a poor understanding of how the stellar gas mixes near the stellar
core, preventing precise predictions of stellar evolution. The unknown nature of the mixing
processes as well as the extent of the central mixed region is particularly problematic for massive
stars. Oscillations in stars with masses a few times that of the Sun offer a unique opportunity to
disentangle the nature of various mixing processes, through the distinct signature they leave on
period spacings in the gravity mode spectrum. Here we report the detection of numerous gravity
modes in a young star with a mass of about seven solar masses. The mean period spacing allows us to
estimate the extent of the convective core, and the clear periodic deviation from the mean
constrains the location of the chemical transition zone to be at about 10 per cent of the radius
and rules out a clear-cut profile.post to:
CiteULike
Film producer Miranda Bailey was hearing a lot about this whole "green" movement taking
place in Hollywood. So on the production of her latest film, The River Why, she decided
to test the waters and see what it actually takes to make a set with countless bottles of water,
pollution and expansive garbage envionmentally-friendly. Her document of these events,
Greenlit, will be having its world
premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival and she
was happy to answer a few questions about what she was out to accomplish.
Leonardo DiCaprio has been very vocal about his concerns for the environmental
effort. Yet you point out that two of his films, The Beach and Titanic, did great damage during
production to the natural environments they filmed in. Was this your way of exposing a certain
hypocrisy over the green movement in Hollywood or as part of the wake-up call that may have led
DiCaprio to be more aggressive in this cause.
MIRANDA: I pointed out the two films THE BEACH and TITANIC starring Leonardo
DiCaprio because I found it disturbing and ironic. I think it is hard for any one person in this
business to be pro-environment and not contribute to excessive waste just based on how our
industry works. These two films are extreme examples. But all films could do so much more to be
conscious of what we do to our locations and what kind of waste we leave behind. I'm not sure
what Mr. DiCaprio's reasons for being a green advocate are as I have never met him. But I think
it is great that he does speak out and is pro-environment and I admire his recent efforts.
Last fall, I interviewed Pixar CTO/indie film producer Oren Jacob for a GigaOm Pro
piece about using online data in the offline world. At the time, Jacob was considering the
idea of putting his latest project, the Spellbound-esque documentary Ready Set Bag!, online in full for free, as a means of
figuring out how to target audiences who might subsequently go to theaters to see the film again.
Since then, though, Jacob and his team have revised their strategy considerably, and today, at
the Tweet House SXSW event, Jacob announced the launching
of a new Blip channel for the purpose of spreading the word about Ready Set Bag!,
enlisting an eclectic yet well-known team to create content about the film, including
Auto-Tune the News creators the Gregory Brothers, mash-up artist Mike Relm, animation studio Jib-Jab and Pop17 founder
Sarah Austin.
Ready Set Bag! tracks a large ensemble cast of grocery baggers training to win the title
of Best Bagger in America at a national competition held every year in Vegas. Jacob is currently
in process of negotiating a deal with a to-be-named distribution company and is aiming for a
summertime release in 35-40 cities (to date, the movie played at film festivals and individual
theaters, mostly in northern California).
Because the film was a documentary, there’s hours of footage directors Alex D. da Silva and
Justine Jacob had to leave on the cutting room floor — and it’s that, plus the
existing film, which will be made available to the Gregory Brothers, Relm, Austin and anyone else
who wants to get involved with the channel, which launched today with the film’s trailer.
Each will experiment with the existing content in their own way — for example, JibJab will
use animation techniques similar to their
other photo-based series to introduce audiences to the film’s cast of intrepid grocery
baggers. (If you need help guessing what the guys behind Auto-Tune the News might do,
then I feel sorry for you.) In addition, excised storylines and deeper character pieces will be
uploaded as well, giving audiences a broader look at the world of the film.
In order to get his starting line-up of channel contributors, Jacob relied on both old-school and
new media networking, which included approaching Michael Gregory in the men’s room after
seeing him speak at NewTeeVee Live last November. But with the channel’s launch, anyone
will be allowed to submit ideas for their own remixes, spoofs or other contributions directly to
Jacob, who called it “a wide-open casting call” when we spoke via phone.
Those involved committed for a number of reasons, ranging from altruistic — all ad revenue
from the online content will be donated to food banks around the country — to more nerdy
— Jacob showed them the film, and they liked it. Having been provided with a DVD of the
film as well, I get why so many have gotten on board. Ready Set Bag! is an extremely
kind, human story, and you also learn a lot about the challenges of grocery bagging — which
might not seem super-exciting to you, but that’s just because you’ve never seen it
done right. The challenge for a film like this is, of course, getting seen, but Ready Set
Bag! might just be able to bring the eyeballs in.
From a major V&A exhibition to the look of Mad Men's leading ladies, Grace Kelly is
everywhere this spring. Actor Rosamund
Pike pulls on her white gloves and travels to Monaco to recreate her timeless style
The chemistry of being a movie star is about maintaining the perfect temperature. From the
screen, you need to radiate enough heat to keep the audience's pulses racing, to invite a little
fantasy, yet maintain enough coolness to remind them that a fantasy is all it is. Too much
heat and they think you're cheap; too little and they don't look long enough to care. The trick
is to look approachable without being available.
Grace Kelly, if we can use a modern
phrase for a timeless gal, had this nailed. As a gorgeous blonde starlet, she marked herself
out as different by way of her cool, somewhat distant air. The director Fred Zinnemann remarked of his first meeting
with a young, unknown Kelly in 1951, "Nobody came to see me before wearing white gloves."
Four years later, when Time magazine ran a cover
story on Kelly, it was entitled The Girl In White
Gloves.
Half a century later, there is something of the Kelly lineage in Rosamund Pike, the young actor with the
cool-drink-of-water good looks who gamely agreed to model this season's take on the Grace Kelly
look in Monaco for us. Pike wrote in Vogue last
year about the experience of playing the adorable, childlike, Monroe-esque character of Helen in An
Education – a comic role she played to delicious perfection
– and how differently cast and crew related to her, compared with her
experiences playing more arch,
aloof blondes. "Kelly put a lot of space around her, which enabled audiences to project
a lot," is how Pike pegs the Kelly magic. She's right: there's something self-possessed about
Kelly, which seems subtly to reinforce her personal space. Those white gloves remind us to keep
at arm's length. Mention iciness, however – Vogue, after all, dubbed Kelly "as
remote as a Snow Queen" – and Pike comes to her defence: "I don't see icy at
all. No. Icy suggests hardness. She had a way of being untouchable without being cold. She
was intensely natural and fresh and feminine. What do I see? Grace, I suppose, as in the noun."
Yet so closely do we identify Kelly with her 50s glory days that it is almost shocking to see her
in a ruffle-edged 1972 gown by Marc
Bohan for Christian Dior. Her 11-film career lasted only five years, from 1951 to her
wedding, so her enduring image is set firmly in the white-gloved 50s, before the certainties of
those days began to unravel. The ice-blue satin gown and pearl-drop earrings she wore when she won an Oscar (for
The Country Girl) in
1955 are as much the finery of another era. (Incidentally, she had worn the dress at the film's
premiere the previous year; she wore it again on
the cover of Life the month after. How times change.)
Almost more iconic, though, than the pearls and satin is the casual Grace: the capri pants,
headscarf and sunglasses she wore in 1955's To Catch A Thief, and the
Pringle twinsets she wore on honeymoon
with Hermès scarves. Clare Waight
Keller, the current designer at Pringle, says Kelly's beauty "suddenly made this classic
combination highly fashionable and desirable". The twinset has been an icon of the Pringle brand
ever since. The chic, casual, Riviera style was a perfect marriage of the lean, spare aesthetic
of upper-class American style with French chic. It was while filming To Catch A Thief that
Kelly and Head decamped to Paris for a shopping trip, ending up in Hermès "like two girls
in an ice-cream shop", as Head put it, and a love affair with another brand was born.
Kelly's biggest fashion moment came with the culmination of her romance with Prince Rainier
on 19 April 1956, when 600 guests and 30 million television viewers watched her become Her Serene Highness.
She wore a gown by Helen Rose, made of 450 yards of Brussels rose-point lace and silk-faille and a
diamond necklace from the bounteous Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery box the Prince had given her
as an engagement present. Later, Kelly said of the day that she found it "kind of hard to
describe the frenzy... it was nightmarish, really", while her husband recalled, "Grace kept
saying, 'Maybe we should run off to a small chapel somewhere in the mountains and finish
getting married there.' I wish we had, because there was no way either she or I could really
enjoy what happened."
That neither enjoyed the day has not served to interfere with the myth it helped create. A new
book about Kelly, published next month, Cindy de la Hoz's A Touch Of Grace, captures the commercial appeal of the Kelly look with its
subtitle: How To Be A Princess, The Grace Kelly Way. Shortly after the wedding, when
photographers were around, Kelly took to shielding her growing stomach with her Hermès saddlebag, giving this
accessory a new prominence – a prominence not lost on Hermès. Nine
months and four days after her marriage, Kelly gave birth to her first child, Princess Caroline. The
Hermès Kelly handbag was born
shortly after.
Head said of her, "I have never worked with anybody who had a more intelligent grasp of what
we were doing." Keenly aware of the power of image and that elegance is as much about restraint
as it is about flair, Kelly was deliberate about what she held back. She refused to divulge her
measurements at a time when they were considered "standard data" for actors. (In this sense and
in others, the rules have changed. Pike comes from a generation of actors who
– however high their principles – place less store by high
necklines.) Bud Fraker, the Paramount photographer, said, "The only time she gives me any
trouble is when the proofs are ready. She kills all shots that show too much leg, too much
cleavage, or soulful, sexy eyes." Alfred Hitchcock loved that she was as aware of maintaining her clear, inscrutable gaze as
of her body language. "I always tell actors: don't use the face for nothing," he said.
"Don't start scribbling over the piece of paper until we have something to write. We may
need it later. Grace has this control. It's a rare thing for a girl at such an age."
As an actor, and as a princess, Kelly understood the necessity to play a role, but it frustrated
her that her ability to guard her privacy was read as froideur. "I'm not an extrovert, but I'm
not unfriendly either," she said. "I don't like to read that I'm cold and distant. I don't think
I am." (As Pike says, "Kelly had a respect for formality. Sometimes people confuse formality with
coldness.")
Kelly is everywhere this spring. The new Salvatore Ferragamo campaign draws on the atmosphere of To Catch A Thief, featuring the
car used in the film; the hair, colours and gloves, channelled through Mad Men's Betty Draper, are filtering on
to a high-street consciousness. Pike, meanwhile, has moved on to the title role in
Hedda Gabler, a woman with "a husband, a house, a baby on the way: she's got what many women
crave. But she's not happy. She wants freedom." What's wonderful about these all-time great
roles, Pike says, is "how the character can be inhabited by all these different actors, all
different women, but somehow the character remains timeless. The best characters are an
inspiration, but they leave room for you to use your imagination. Which in a way, of
course, is what Kelly did."
· Grace Kelly: Style Icon is at the V&A in
London from 17 April to 26 September.
Our favourite foods are making us fat, yet we can't resist, because eating them is changing our
minds as well as bodies
For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again
– over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former
commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug
Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable
sway over my behaviour.
The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body's
"thermostat" was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my
metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.
But this theory didn't explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting
significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable.
Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose
nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something
changed.
Three decades ago, fewer than one Briton in 10 was obese. One in four is today. It is projected
that by 2050, Britain could be a "mainly obese society". Similar, and even more
pronounced, changes were taking place in the US, where researchers found that not only were
Americans entering their adult years at a significantly higher weight but, while on average
everyone was getting heavier, the heaviest people were gaining disproportionately more weight
than others. The spread between those at the upper end of the weight curve and those at the lower
end was widening. Overweight people were becoming more overweight.
What had happened to add so many millions of pounds to so many millions of people? Certainly food
had become more readily available, with larger portion sizes, more chain restaurants and
a culture that promotes out-of-home eating. But having food available doesn't mean we have
to eat it. What has been driving us to overeat?
It is certainly not a want born of fear of food shortages. Nor is it a want rooted in hunger or
the love of exceptional food. We know, too, that overeating is not the sole province of
those who are overweight. Even people who remain slim often feel embattled by their drive for
food. It takes serious restraint to resist an almost overpowering urge to eat. Yet many,
including doctors and healthcare professionals, still think that weight gainers merely lack
willpower, or perhaps self-esteem. Few have recognised the distinctive pattern of overeating that
has become widespread in the population. No one has seen loss of control as its most defining
characteristic.
"Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more." I had read this in scientific
literature, and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. But here
was a leading food designer, a Henry
Ford of mass-produced food, revealing how his industry operates. To protect his business, he
did not want to be identified, but he was remarkably candid, explaining how the food industry
creates dishes to hit what he called the "three points of the compass".
Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling. They stimulate neurons, cells that trigger the
brain's reward system and release dopamine, a chemical that motivates our behaviour and makes us
want to eat more. Many of us have what's called a "bliss point", at which we get the greatest
pleasure from sugar, fat or salt. Combined in the right way, they make a product indulgent, high
in "hedonic value".
During the past two decades, there has been an explosion in our ability to access and afford what
scientists call highly "palatable" foods. By palatability, they don't just mean it tastes good:
they are referring primarily to its capacity to stimulate the appetite. Restaurants sit at the
epicentre of this explosion, along with an ever-expanding range of dishes that hit these three
compass points. Sugar, fat and salt are either loaded into a core ingredient (such as meat,
vegetables, potato or bread), layered on top of it, or both. Deep-fried tortilla chips are an
example of loading – the fat is contained in the chip itself. When it is
smothered in cheese, sour cream and sauce, that's layering.
It is not just that fast food chains serve food with more fat, sugar and salt, or that intensive
processing virtually eliminates our need to chew before swallowing, or that snacks are now
available at any time. It is the combination of all that, and more.
Take Kentucky Fried Chicken. My source
called it "a premier example" of putting more fat on our plate. KFC's approach to battering its
food results in "an optimised fat pick-up system". With its flour, salt, MSG, maltodextrin,
sugar, corn syrup and spice, the fried coating imparts flavour that touches on all three points
of the compass while giving the consumer the perception of a bargain – a
big plate of food at a good price.
Initially, KFC meals were built around a whole chicken, with a pick-up surface that contained "an
enormous amount of breading, crispiness and brownness on the surface. That makes the chicken look
like more and gives it this wonderful oily flavour." Over time, the company began to realise
there was less meat in a chicken nugget compared with a whole chicken, and a greater percentage
of fried batter. But the real breakthrough was popcorn chicken. "The smaller the piece of meat,
the greater the percentage of fat pick-up," said the food designer. "Now, we have lots of pieces
of a cheaper part of the chicken." The product has been "optimised on every dimension", with the
fat, sugar and salt combining with the perception of good value virtually to guarantee consumer
appeal.
He walked me through some offerings at other popular food chains. Burger King's Whopper touched on the three
points of the compass – then was altered for further effect. In its first,
stripped-down form, the burger was explosively rich in fat, sugar and salt. Then the chain began
adding more beef, extra cheese or a layer of bacon. McDonald's broke new ground in
another way – by making food available on a whim. "The great growth has been
the snacking occasion. You get hungry, you want something, your mind pushes off the reality of
what you ought to eat, and you end up picking up a hamburger and a giant soda or french fries."
Next they introduced a high-fat, high-salt morning meal. "They took what they learned from the
core lunch and dinner menu, and applied it to breakfast. The sausage McMuffin and the egg
McMuffin are stand-ins for the hamburger. In effect, you are eating a morning hamburger."
This kind of food disappears down our throats so quickly after the first bite that it readily
overrides the body's signals that should tell us, "I'm full." The food designer offered coleslaw
as an example. When its ingredients are chopped roughly, it requires time and energy to chew. But
when cabbage and carrots are softened in a high-fat dressing, coleslaw ceases to be "something
with a lot of innate ability to satisfy".
This isn't to say that the food industry wants us to stop chewing altogether. It knows we want to
eat a doughnut, not drink it. "The key is to create foods with just enough chew
– but not too much. When you're eating these things, you've had 500, 600, 800,
900 calories before you know it." Foods that slip down don't leave us with a sense of being well
fed. In making food disappear so swiftly, fat and sugar only leave us wanting more.
According to food consultant Gail Vance Civille, of management consultants Sensory Spectrum, fat is crucial to this process
of lubrication, ensuring that a product melts in the mouth. In the past, she says, Americans
typically chewed food up to 25 times before it was swallowed; now the average American chews 10
times. "If I have fat in there, I just chew it up and whoosh! Away it goes," she says. "You
have a 'quick getaway', a quick melt."
The Snickers bar, Civille says, is
"extraordinarily well engineered". Unlike many products whose nuts become annoyingly lodged
between your teeth, the genius of Snickers is that as we chew, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts
and the caramel picks up the peanut pieces, so the entire candy is carried out of the mouth at
the same time. "You're not getting a build-up of stuff in your mouth."
Kettle chips are another success
story. Made of sugar-rich russet potatoes, they have a slightly bitter background note and brown
irregularly, which gives them a complex flavour. High levels of fat generate easy
mouth-melt, and surface variations add a level of interest beyond that found in mass-produced
chips. Heightened complexity is the key to modern food design.
Not so many decades ago, a single flavour of ice-cream was a special treat. Our options ran to
vanilla, chocolate and strawberry – and when we could buy all three in a
single carton, we saw that as a great innovation. Now ice-cream has countless flavours and
varieties; it comes mixed with M&M's or topped with caramel sauce.
When layers of complexity are built into food, the effect becomes more powerful. Sweetness alone
does not account for the full impact of a fizzy drink – its temperature and
tingle, resulting from the stimulation of the trigeminal nerve by carbonation and
acid, are essential contributors as well.
"The complexity of the stimulus increases its association to a reward," says Gaetano Di Chiara, an expert in
neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of Cagliari in Italy. Elements of that complexity
include tastes that are familiar and well liked, especially if not always readily available, and
the learning associated with having had a pleasurable experience with the same food in the past.
Take a bowl of M&M's. If I've eaten them in the past, I'm stimulated by the sight of them,
because I know they'll be rewarding. I eat one, and experience that reward. The visual cue
gains power and stimulates the urge we call "wanting". The more potent and complex foods become,
the greater the rewards they may offer. The excitement in the brain increases our desire for
further stimulation.
In theory there's a limit to how much stimulation rewarding foods can generate. We are supposed
to habituate – to neuroadapt. When Di Chiara gave animals a cheesy snack
called Fonzies, the levels of dopamine in their brains increased. Over time, habituation set in,
dopamine levels fell and the food lost its capacity to activate their behaviour.
But if the stimulus is powerful enough, novel enough or administered intermittently enough, the
brain may not curb its dopamine response. Desire remains high. We see this with cocaine use,
which does not result in habituation. Hyperpalatable foods alter the landscape of the brain in
much the same way.
I asked Di Chiara to study what happens after an animal is repeatedly exposed to a high-sugar,
high-fat chocolate drink. When he'd completed his experiment, he sent me an email with "Important
results!!!!" in the subject line. He had shown that dopamine response did not diminish
over time with the chocolate drink. There was no habituation.
Novelty also impedes habituation, and intermittency is another driver. Give an animal enough
sugar-laden food, withdraw it for the right amount of time, then provide it again in sufficient
quantities, and dopamine levels may not diminish.
There's still a lot we don't know about the relationship between the dopamine-driven motivational
system and our behaviour in the presence of rewarding foods. But we do know that foods high in
sugar, fat and salt are altering the biological circuitry of our brains. We have scientific
techniques that demonstrate how these foods – and the cues associated
with them – change the connections between the neural circuits and their
response patterns.
Rewarding foods are rewiring our brains. As they do, we become more sensitive to the cues
that lead us to anticipate the reward. In that circularity lies a trap: we can no longer control
our responses to highly palatable foods because our brains have been changed by the foods we
eat.
I wanted to know how much the industry understood about how the food we eat affects us; about
what I have termed "conditioned hypereating" – "conditioned" because it
becomes an automatic response to widely available food, "hyper" because the eating is excessive
and hard to control. I turned to Joseph
Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics.
"Does the industry know that what it feeds us gets us to eat more?" I asked.
"The industry has jacked up what works for it," Stiglitz said. "The learning is
evolutionary." Practical experience has been its guide – it does not need lab
rats when it can try out its ideas on humans. Its decision-makers do not have to analyse human
brain circuitry to discover what sells.
A venture capitalist who knows the business intimately cited Starbucks as a company that has recognised
and responded brilliantly to a cultural need. The caffeine and sugar in the coffee, with their
energising effects, are certainly part of the equation, but the chain also offers something much
more primal. "It's about warm milk and a bottle," he says. "One of my colleagues said, 'If I
could put a nipple on it, I'd be a multimillionaire'."
But it was thinking creatively about how to attract more consumers that led Starbucks to the
Frappuccino, the venture capitalist told me. Although its stores were crowded early
in the day, by afternoon "they were so empty you could roll a bowling ball through them". The
creation of a rich, sweet and comforting milkshake-like concoction utterly transformed the
business. A Starbucks Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino comes with whipped cream
and 18 teaspoons of sugar: all in all, this "drink" contains more calories than a personal-size
pepperoni pizza, and more sweetness than six scoops of ice-cream. By encouraging us to consider
any occasion for food an opportunity for pleasure and reward, the industry invites us to indulge
a lot more often.
Starbucks learned a basic lesson: make enticing food easily and constantly available, keep it
novel, and people will keep coming back for more. With food available in almost any setting, "the
number of cues, the number of opportunities" to eat have increased, while the barriers to
consumption have fallen, says David Mela, senior scientist of weight management at the Unilever Health Institute. "The environmental stimulus
has changed."
Of course, when food is offered to us, we're not obliged to eat it. When it's on the menu, we
don't have to order it. But this takes more than willpower. As an individual, you can practise
eating the food you want in a controlled way. As a society, we can identify the forces that drive
overeating and find ways to diminish their power. That's what happened with the tobacco industry:
attitudes to smoking shifted. Similar changes could be brought about in our attitudes to food
– by making it mandatory for restaurants to list calorie counts on their
menus; by clear labelling on food products; by monitoring food marketing. But until then few of
us are immune to the ubiquitous presence of food, the incessant marketing and the cultural
assumption that it's acceptable to eat anywhere, at any time.
Call it the "taco chip challenge" – the challenge of controlled eating in the
face of constant food availability. "Forty years ago, you might face the social equivalent of
that taco chip challenge once a month. Now you face it every single day," Mela said. "Every
single day and every single place you go, those foods are there, those foods are cheap, those
foods are readily available for you to engage in. There is constant, constant opportunity."
How to take back control
Plan when and what you will eat There should be no room for deviation; the idea
is to inhibit mindless eating and eliminate your mental tug-of-war. Once you've set new patterns,
you can become more flexible.
Practise portion control Eat half your usual meal; see how you feel one and two
hours later. A just-right meal will keep away hunger for four hours.
List the foods and situations you can't control Cut out those foods; limit
exposure to those situations. If offered something you overeat, push it away.
Talk down your urges Learn responses to involuntary thoughts: eating that will
only satisfy me temporarily; eating this will make me feel trapped; I'll be happier and weigh
less if I don't eat this.
Rehearse making the right choices Before entering a restaurant, imagine chosing
a dinner that's part of your eating plan. Think of this as a game against a powerful
opponent. You won't win every encounter, but with practice you can get a lot better.
· This is an edited extract from The End Of Overeating: Taking Control Of Our Insatiable Appetite, by David A
Kessler, published by Penguin on 1 April at £9.99. To order a copy with free UK
p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop.
'I had no way of reaching him, and had to face the truth – if Getu was alive,
he'd have found me'
Ten years ago, we landed at Heathrow on a grey morning. Just months earlier, our lives had been
so different. My father had a successful business in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, we had a
lovely home and went to a good school. I was 16, and had a boyfriend I adored.
Everything was mapped out: Getu and I would marry, have children and grow old together.
But the war with Eritrea changed everything. My parents were from there, so overnight they became
the enemy. My father was imprisoned and we were ordered to leave. My six older siblings fled to
the countryside. My mother took my nine-year-old sister and me into hiding. Soon after, she
announced we were leaving the country. I wanted to tell Getu and rang his neighbour, but he
wasn't home. I cried all the way to the airport; it was only then I found out we were heading for
the UK.
For three weeks we lived in a hostel in London. I was desperate to call him, but we were
penniless and phone cards cost a fortune. By the time we were moved to Manchester, my mother had
sunk into a depression. It was up to me to sort out benefits and education. Virtually
every penny went on food and bus fares, but eventually I scraped enough for a phone card.
"Getu's left," his neighbour told me.
I had no way of reaching him, and had to face the truth – if Getu was alive,
he'd have found me. I grieved in secret; my mother had enough to worry about, as we feared
deportation and longed for news of my father. I threw myself into my studies, becoming fluent in
English and working as an interpreter. Then we heard my father had died while being deported to
Eritrea; he'd had health problems, and was treated badly in prison. He was 49. With him gone,
there was nothing for us back home.
I started going out with a fellow student. We married in 2002 and Maysoun arrived two years
later. But, deep down, I knew the marriage wasn't working. Much as I tried to deny it, I'd never
stopped loving Getu. Four years later, we separated.
By now I was managing a refugee centre. Helping vulnerable newcomers gave me huge satisfaction.
As a single mother, I didn't get out much, so after tucking Maysoun up I'd spend hours on
Facebook, joyfully rediscovering friends who'd fled Ethiopia. When my old schoolfriend Saada
popped up on screen, now in Australia, I squealed in disbelief. Minutes later, my
computer pinged. "Sysay," came her reply, "I've just been home and you'll never guess who I met?
Getu – he's fine, and he's never stopped looking for you," she said, adding
his phone number.
I started to laugh, then cry – Getu was alive. It took a couple of days
to pluck up the courage to call, but impulse soon took over. I punched the last digit and
held my breath. It rang, and then I heard his voice for the first time in eight years. I got as
far as saying his name before I began crying. "Sysay?" he asked incredulously. "Is that you?"
Then he was crying, too. We began to talk; an hour flew by. We phoned regularly after that and
emailed constantly. We were desperate to see each other and started saving furiously.
Last April, Getu was granted a temporary visa. I was so nervous waiting at Heathrow. The last
time I'd been here was as a frightened teenager; now I was a 26-year-old mother. The arrivals
door opened and a figure broke free from the crowd. My heart gave its familiar leap at the sight
of his face. Oblivious to the crowd around us, he got down on one knee. "I've wanted to do this
for so long and I'm not waiting a minute longer," he said. "Sysay, will you marry me?" All I
could do was nod. A ring flashed as he put it on my finger and applause broke out.
Those first few months weren't always easy: we were embarking on a relationship that was so
different from the one we'd had as teenagers. He was suddenly dependent on me; I was working,
fluent in English and used to Britain. But we were determined to make it work.
Last July – 20 years after we first met – we finally
married. A traditional Ethiopian song played as I walked up the aisle, but our vows were in
English – this is our home now. After, we had a small party back at home. It
was all we wanted, and needed. When you've been separated as long as we were, what you appreciate
most is time together. We never take it for granted.
First Apple COO Tim Cook received $12.3
million in stock for watching the company while Steve
Jobs was on sick leave and now he's receiving an additional cash-and-stock bonus worth $22
million.
More »
First Apple COO Tim Cook received $12.3
million in stock for watching the company while Steve
Jobs was on sick leave and now he's receiving an additional cash-and-stock bonus worth $22
million.
More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc has awarded its chief operating officer a bonus valued at $22
million for leading the company while Chief Executive Steve Jobs was on 6-months' medical leave
last year.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple's Chief Executive Officer, Tim Cook, received a bonus
worth $22 million for his work filling in for Steve Jobs' during the CEO's 2009 medical
leave.
It's not that I don't like other people – indeed I would go so far as to lay
claim to a rich and varied social life. It's just that, as I have grown older, I have found that
I increasingly like spending holidays in a place where I can guarantee that I won't have to talk
to anyone. Not splendid isolation exactly, no far-flung mountain huts or Buddhist retreats,
rather something we might class as "minimal interaction": no small-talk by the pool, late-night
karaoke or group safari outings, thank you very much.
For this, I blame the holidays of my childhood: invariably two weeks in a remote cottage in
Anglesey. There were long walks, damsons to pick, fields of cows and sheep to admire and
occasional trips to the beach but, crucially, also plenty of time to read, eat, sleep and row
about in the creek at the bottom of the garden. I would holiday there still, were it not for the
flat grey skies and the viciously cold Irish Sea. For the past few years I have been trying to
find somewhere that, while warmer than north Wales in August, is still just as quiet and still
and lovely.
And so it may puzzle you to learn that I recently took a holiday to Thailand. Some 14 million
people flock here each year, drawn by the natural beauty and myriad delights: elephant rides and
jungle adventures, temples, beaches, romantic idylls and, of course, phenomenal food. As I stood
on the streets of Bangkok, breathing in the canteen smells and the diesel smoke, listening to the
calls of the market vendors selling everything from Viagra to coconut water, and wind-up toy dogs
to neatly-threaded garlands of flowers, I began to fear that visiting Thailand to escape the
world might have been a giant mistake.
But Bangkok was not my ultimate destination. Two hundred miles east of this giddying street, near
the Cambodian border, lies the small island of Koh Kood, home to rainforest, coconut and rubber
plantations, sleepy fishing villages, and fewer than 2,000 people.
Koh Kood's great advantage is its relative remoteness. Getting there requires an internal flight
or train journey from Bangkok, followed by an hour's boat ride from the mainland. This sounds
more of an expedition than it actually is. It's about an hour from Bangkok to the small airport
at Trat, with its manicured lawns and string of topiary elephants along the runway. The car ride
to the ferry port took me through lush green countryside, past villages and temples and fruit
stalls. And there are, I thought to myself as I watched the land disappear and the surf ride up
behind our speedboat, surely worse ways to spend an hour than sailing the clear blue waters of
the Gulf of Thailand, especially if you care to use the time for a bit of dolphin-spotting.
Accommodation on Koh Kood is varied. There are homestays and budget hotels, as well as a handful
of luxury resorts, but even these promote a barefoot, relaxed approach. There are no landlines,
little internet access, and few cars. Electricity is minimal – homes and
hotels rely on generators or solar power. All is slow, warm tranquillity.
I disembarked at the jetty of Away, a quietly luxurious resort with a cluster of bungalows
overlooking a bay. There's plenty of warm and graceful hospitality here, as well as a spa and one
of Koh Kood's best diving centres, but no one jostles you into a hike or a snorkelling excursion.
Mostly this makes for a fine place to do nothing; slow and calm and unruffled, you can feel Koh
Kood subtly working its way into your bones. On an average day here I did little beyond loll
about in the hammocks and deckchairs along the boardwalk, beneath the palm trees, and
strategically positioned on the jetty to take in the sunset. I took a kayak across the clear blue
sea to a small golden curve of beach; I took a quiet boat ride over to it the next bay. I swam, I
slept, I read some Per Petterson, and amid the cool rooms and quiet corners, I felt my mind
gently unwinding.
Most evenings, when the sun was low but the air was still heavy and damp, I strolled into the
nearby village, for dinner or a beer. The road is a dusty strip, tan-coloured and warm underfoot,
and at night the jungle grows inky black, full of twitching, chirruping, wild sounds
– the calls of birds and frogs and monkeys. The restaurants here are simple
but fantastic, and after even a short walk through the thick evening air you are pleased to find
a cold bottle of Chang beer and a bowl of yellow curry.
A short jeep drive from Away, Shantaa is an undeniable step up in luxury. The 10 private villas
sit on a hillside, amid lush gardens, with a simple stylish bedroom, a balcony and an open-air
bathroom, home to exotic flowers, passing geckos and, to my great excitement, even the occasional
iguana. There is a village nearby where you could venture for dinner, but it would be hard to
leave the resort's restaurant. Family-owned and staffed by students, it is one of the island's
best. The menu offers traditional Thai dishes plus some twists, such as raw sea bass salad with
peanut sauce, and mango parfait with coconut ice cream.
I can think of few places I have enjoyed staying more. Flinging open the doors of my villa to lie
in bed and watch the sun rise over the palms each morning, I would cross over the wooden pier to
walk along the long stretch of soft, pale sand. Afternoons would be spent swimming in the warm
turquoise sea, sipping limeade at the beachside cafe, and taking an open-air Thai massage, all
feet and breath and tiger balm, to the sound of birdsong and the steady hush of the waves.
For a treat I spent my last night at Soneva Kiri, which was a bit of a trip from the sublime to
the ridiculous. Imagine an uber-swanky Center Parcs, an enclosed resort amid acres of forest and
organic vegetable gardens, where guests fly in by private plane, and spend their days in a kind
of ludicrous Hollywood luxury; where you have your own personal valet, and everyone hums about on
golf buggies and retro bicycles, shuttling between the spa and the library and the giant
inflatable cinema screen (available for private hire, should the mood strike you).
I can think of few places less like the remote Welsh cottage of my childhood holidays, and even
if you can't afford to stay there, the resort's Benz's restaurant is worth seeking out, for an
exquisite, Thai feast, from leaf-wrapped mieng kam to sweet tapioca in coconut milk and
perfectly ripe mango and dragonfruit, served as you watch the sun dip below the water and the
fireflies begin to blink.
Later, as I took a midnight swim beneath a clear sky and a full moon, I thought how finally,
after all this time, I had found an island every bit as quiet and still and lovely as a rainy
Anglesey in August.
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Apple in a just-published SEC filing has revealed that its chief operating officer,
Tim Cook, was paid about $22 million in bonuses for acting as CEO during Steve Jobs' medical leave
last year. The payouts included both a $5 million immediate bonus as well as 75,000 units of
restricted stock, which at the time issued were worth about $17 million. Both reflect the
"outstanding performance" in taking Apple's helm, the filing reads....
What about ultra-slim? Hey, why not? My favorite e-book
reader out there is the 
Film producer Miranda Bailey was hearing a lot about this whole "green" movement taking
place in Hollywood. So on the production of her latest film, The River Why, she decided
to test the waters and see what it actually takes to make a set with countless bottles of water,
pollution and expansive garbage envionmentally-friendly. Her document of these events,
Greenlit, will be having its 
Recommandations
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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