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Sunday, November 30, 2008
Lencioni's Thoughts on Management
Association Management - December 1, 2002
Carole Schweitzer
In his work in organizational development at Oracle Corporation and Sybase and as a management consultant, first with Bain & Company, and now as president of The Table Group, San Francisco, Lencioni has worked with hundreds of executive teams and CEOs. His observations have formed the basis for three management books, the latest The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Parable (2002, Jossey-Bass).
Lencioni, the keynote speaker at M&T: ASAE Winter Conference 2002 (December 9-11, Washington, D.C.), offers a model for a frontal attack on the failings of work teams, requiring not only CEOs but also their managers and staff to enter the danger or suffer the consequences: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. These five dysfunctions stand in the way of organizational health, which Lencioni considers the ultimate competitive advantage.
In an interview with ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT, Lencioni described some of the tough work that teams and their leadership must tackle to remain competitive and relevant.
In dealing with dysfunctional teams, you suggest that the establishment of trust--which is central to building a healthy work group--often results when association leaders are able to demonstrate their own vulnerabilities. What kind of situation might provide an executive the opportunity to do this?
Lencioni: The key element is that the display of vulnerability must be genuine. It can't be contrived, so it has to come at a moment when it's not easy for the leader to admit something. I advise leaders to be quite frank about their weaknesses and strengths, their mistakes, their needs for help, and the skills of the people in the organization that exceed their own. In doing this, they show that they are capable of being human; and the people they lead do want to know if the leader is big enough, human enough, and vulnerable enough to admit imperfection.
This can be done at an off-site meeting during which you create focused time with a small group of direct reports. You may consider using an instrument such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, whereby the entire group does self-profiling and each manager reports on his or her results. In this way, you begin to develop a knowledge and vocabulary for strengths and weaknesses. Then when people call each other out during a meeting, rather than sounding as though they are putting their careers on the line, they're simply pointing out what people have already admitted to be true--and recognizing that someone else may be the better person to answer a question or head up a project.
Clearly, some leaders would have a problem admitting shortcomings. How have you helped those individuals to open up to this?
Lencioni: Of all the dysfunctions and temptations of leadership that I discuss in my books, the resistance to admitting vulnerability is one of the most changeable traits. When you help people understand that by doing this, they will build a stronger relationship with their people and will actually achieve more--it's a relief for them. In addition, the benefits of doing this, although initially painful, are relatively quick. By guiding leaders to take some fairly small steps in this direction, they soon realize: 'Hey, this isn't going to kill me. I can tell people what I don't do particularly well and find the skills in the organization to shore this up.' Almost all leaders can open up to this. And, frankly, for those who can't, people simply won't want to work with them.
You describe effective teams as those able to openly engage in the kind of constructive conflict that leads to effective management decisions. What steps need to be taken to establish this kind of dynamic?
Lencioni: The first question you ask when there is disagreement--or agreement, if it is forced and simply rubber stamping the leader's ideas--is to ask yourself, "Is this a conflict issue or a trust issue?" So often discussions are impeded by a lack of trust. If that is the case, you need to go back and establish that because it is the foundation for absolutely everything else.
In those cases where there is plenty of trust, sometimes people don't want to engage in conflict because they don't want to hurt each other's feelings or they feel that perhaps it's juvenile to strongly disagree. The role of the leader is to provide them with a little bit of exposure therapy, helping them deal with the dynamics of conflict. As leader, you have to put that conflict out there on the table and tell people that they are going to have to resolve it. When they do start to question decisions--and each other--the leader needs to stop them and remind them that what they are doing is exactly the right thing. If they start to feel guilty or anxious, remind them that this is an excellent conversation. I've seen teams get much better at this, but when the underlying issue is trust--and you keep pushing them to confront issues--your effort will be fruitless. People will not, and probably should not, engage in conflict with one another if they don't inherently trust each other. If a team member can't admit that he or she has made a mistake or that someone else has a better idea about something, why would you question his or her behavior or propose your idea? That's why vulnerability-based trust is at the heart of a great team. You have to use that trust to engage conflict around issues.
When you work with a team that includes people who cannot make this leap, does it generally result in those people leaving or being let go?
Lencioni: An effective leader will resolve this quickly. If a person cannot trust or earn trust and cannot engage in conflict, the leader of the team has a clear decision to make: Am I going to halt the development of my team at this point and live with it, or am I going to continue to have my team develop and improve--and move this person out? Interestingly enough, the thing a leader has to do is come to terms with the fact that it's OK to lose a team member. That, ironically, is what will give [the team members] the courage to do the right thing, which might actually result in them staying and developing. Once they realize that you as a leader are willing to move somebody out for the good of the team, they might develop the incentive to change. But, if team members know that there's a limit to what the leader will do, why should they change? The willingness to lose team members is sometimes the very thing that keeps them.
When you complete your team building work with a client, does the team have a tendency to regress?
Lencioni: We almost always follow up with the team three to six months after our last session. We sit in on staff meetings or participate in an off-site retreat, observing behaviors and offering feedback. We ask people what they've done well and what they haven't.
The good news is that when teams make progress they see the benefits of constructive conflict, how they can get more done, and why they should continue. But, it's true, sometimes teams have false starts and they drift back [to their earlier behaviors]. They need to recommit to what it is they need to do. So, yes, follow up is important, but it shouldn't be forever. There will be three steps forward and two back--but rarely all the way back. And the leader needs to continue to encourage the team to take the next three steps forward.
In your work with nonprofit boards, what situations have you observed that might require these exercises in trust building and conflict resolution at the board level?
Lencioni: The most important relationship when it comes to boards is the CEO's relationship with the elected chair. If that relationship is strong, it becomes the chair's job to manage the board. And, it's important to distinguish that the board is not a team in the same sense of the executive team. Board members don't spend enough time together; this usually isn't their number one priority. So that is why it's the chair's job to use them in the most appropriate way for the good of the organization and to know where to draw the line so that the board doesn't become too intrusive and too influential. The board needs to understand its role, but it doesn't need to operate as a team. That's not to say that they shouldn't get along, but they are a collection of individuals, all of whom can help the organization. You are not going to get rid of someone because his or her Myers Briggs profile doesn't mesh well with that of another board member. If board members bring individual goodness, whether it's in fundraising, insight, experience, or contacts, that's fine. The chair has to be able to use all of those talents in a way that helps the organization.
On the other hand, the board needs to make sure that it has the right executive in place. If it doesn't, no committee, no great board of directors can save the organization. You don't want the board and the CEO to be working at cross-purposes. That's why the relationship between the CEO and the board chair is so critical.
How can that relationship be quickly established, given that many organizations elect a new board chair each year?
Lencioni: That is a problem. Rapid turnover in board chairs in organizations where bylaws call for a new chairperson all the time is quite dangerous. This is especially true if there is an expectation that the board chair gets to decide how influential he or she will be. Then, what you are doing is ensuring a lack of continuity. In that situation, the most important thing is that the CEO has self-esteem and is not trying to please the board. Rather than make the board happy, the CEO's job is to make the organization succeed--and sometimes that means that he or she has to take a tough position with the board--enter the danger, if you will--and not necessarily do whatever the board tries to dictate at the moment.
This means that there must be a highly constructive level of conflict between the CEO and the chair--and that relationship comes from trust. A board chair has to be able to say to the CEO, "You know, you're a good CEO but you're really bad at this particular aspect of the job. So, I'm going to help you with this part, and I think you need to get other outside assistance." The volunteer and staff leaders each have a responsibility to be frank about these realities. If they are not, there will be a temptation to micromanage.
You've said that in the end organizational health trumps smartness and that such health is often neglected. What actions do you recommend CEOs take to maintain organizational health on an ongoing basis?
Lencioni: CEOs need to realize that organizational health is the multiplier that determines how well they're going to leverage their intellectual abilities. In other words, if they have a great strategy in place or a great brand or a great technology, their ability to tap into that and fully leverage it is a function of how healthy the organization is. No one can ensure that the organization is healthy except the CEO. You can delegate strategy or technology or marketing, but the CEO cannot delegate the management of the executive team, the clarity of that team, the communication from the team down to the rest of the organization, and the institutionalization of a few critical human systems--that has to come from the CEO and his or her direct reports.
A healthy organization puts all other things at risk. And if CEOs realize that, when their head hits the pillow at night, they are going to ask themselves four questions: Is my team cohesive? Are we clear about where we are headed? Are we telling everybody about it all the time? And are we institutionalizing our values?
Carole Schweitzer is executive editor of ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT. E-mail: cschweitzer@asaenet.org.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Swatch's great ideas factory
Swatch has launched a "007 Villain Collection", with 22 watches, referencing the villains of 22 007 flicks.
The large watch at the left is featured in the opening titles of the 1965 "Thunderball" movie (a bad one, incidentally). Jonathan Pryce was the villain Emilio Largo. The silver watch, on the right is Swatch's creation. Try finding out the similarities and references.
All the 22 watches have interesting references to the corresponding movie. Some quite subtle. Jaw's teeth, for instance, are referenced in its watch strap.
One watch is dedicated to the anonymous, infamous, evil-looking white Blofeld's cat. It resembles a pet collar. Smart guys...
By the way: have you noticed the reference to Emilio Largo's eye patch, on the swatch dial?
Pinky sexy string-playing babes perform the Korobushka
Could it be cheesier?
Yes, it could. Check this out.
"Korobushka" performed by "Bond", Live at the Royal Albert Hall, London
Yes, it could. Check this out.
Talking about 007...
How the quality of the 007 movies opening title sequence evolved, in 45 years, though still preserving themes such as "women in silluete" and the "travel of the bullet".
1962 - Dr. No
1973 - Live and Let Die
1997 - Tomorrow Never Dies
2008 - Quantum of Solace
This is how the "über cool red computerized girl", of the 1997 'Tomorrow Never Dies' opening, descrived her experience, 10 years later:
1962 - Dr. No
1973 - Live and Let Die
1997 - Tomorrow Never Dies
2008 - Quantum of Solace
This is how the "über cool red computerized girl", of the 1997 'Tomorrow Never Dies' opening, descrived her experience, 10 years later:
"Girls shake and shimmy on screen for the venerable Mr Bond. Hey I'm in it!Will her grandchildren still be watching 007 movies? Very likely. Tomorrow never ceases changing... but slowly.
When I had a casting for the job in London, my boyfriend at the time told me to dance as if my body were covered in gold paint. [Goldfinger-inspired tip]
I think that visualization helped and sure enough, I got the part. I was in France on holiday when I heard the good news.
There were three of us dancing, and we all got on really well. The song, we all agreed, was fantastic; we never tired of it through many, many takes. A choreographer led us through the moves, but mostly the vibe was catwalk and attitude. We were all models, so this came easily to us.
The director of the title sequence Danny Kleinman was really a darling man, and proved that he had the vision and the talent.
By far it was my favorite job, and the one I'll have the most fun telling my grandchildren about one day..."
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Space Turkey
HOUSTON — Astronauts raised plastic cups of iced tea and toasted the Thanksgiving holiday before eating a traditional dinner of smoked turkey, cornbread dressing and candied yams at the international space station.
"To Thanksgiving. Wishing everyone on Earth, and off Earth, a good Thanksgiving," said Endeavour astronaut Donald Pettit, holding a makeshift cup he had made from plastic covers of shuttle reference books.
Astronauts normally drink from pouches using straws, to prevent liquids from spilling out in weightlessness, but Pettit wanted to show that they could sip from cups. Pettit also made an iced-tea toast to future space explorers and "just because we're in space and we can."
The seven Endeavour astronauts and three space station crew members ate their Thanksgiving meal at the joined shuttle-space station complex, 220 miles above Earth. They spent an off-duty morning in which they talked to friends and relatives on the ground or just looked out the window.
"Just that ability to look out the window and look down on this beautiful planet that we live on is a source of thanks that we all have," Endeavour commander Christopher Ferguson said during a series of television interviews.
Differing schedules and chores usually prevent shuttle and station crews to eat together.
The shuttle astronauts had to do last-minute packing before saying goodbye and closing the hatch between Endeavour and the space station
Thursday afternoon. The shuttle was set to undock early Friday and return to Florida on Sunday, completing a 16-day mission.
Endeavour delivered to the space station a new bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms, exercise equipment, and a system that purifies urine, sweat and condensation into drinking water. All that is needed to double the space station's population to six next year.
Endeavour astronauts also performed four spacewalks to clean and lubricate a jammed joint that rotates solar wings in the direction of the sun in order to generate power. The shuttle will bring back astronaut Gregory Chamitoff who lived for six months at the space station.
"To Thanksgiving. Wishing everyone on Earth, and off Earth, a good Thanksgiving," said Endeavour astronaut Donald Pettit, holding a makeshift cup he had made from plastic covers of shuttle reference books.
Astronauts normally drink from pouches using straws, to prevent liquids from spilling out in weightlessness, but Pettit wanted to show that they could sip from cups. Pettit also made an iced-tea toast to future space explorers and "just because we're in space and we can."
Clockwise from upper left: green beans and mushrooms, candied yams, cranapple dessert, cornbread stuffing and smoked turkey.
The seven Endeavour astronauts and three space station crew members ate their Thanksgiving meal at the joined shuttle-space station complex, 220 miles above Earth. They spent an off-duty morning in which they talked to friends and relatives on the ground or just looked out the window.
"Just that ability to look out the window and look down on this beautiful planet that we live on is a source of thanks that we all have," Endeavour commander Christopher Ferguson said during a series of television interviews.
Differing schedules and chores usually prevent shuttle and station crews to eat together.
The shuttle astronauts had to do last-minute packing before saying goodbye and closing the hatch between Endeavour and the space station
Endeavour delivered to the space station a new bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms, exercise equipment, and a system that purifies urine, sweat and condensation into drinking water. All that is needed to double the space station's population to six next year.
Astronauts and the Space Turkey
Endeavour astronauts also performed four spacewalks to clean and lubricate a jammed joint that rotates solar wings in the direction of the sun in order to generate power. The shuttle will bring back astronaut Gregory Chamitoff who lived for six months at the space station.
Howard Schultz's now classic Valentine's Day memo in 2007
As you prepare for the FY 08 strategic planning process, I want to share some of my thoughts with you.
Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.
Many of these decisions were probably right at the time, and on their own merit would not have created the dilution of the experience; but in this case, the sum is much greater and, unfortunately, much more damaging than the individual pieces.
For example
When we went to automatic espresso machines, we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre that was in play with the use of the La Marzocca machines. This specific decision became even more damaging when the height of the machines, which are now in thousands of stores, blocked the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista.
This, coupled with the need for fresh roasted coffee in every North America city and every international market, moved us toward the decision and the need for flavor locked packaging. Again, the right decision at the right time, and once again I believe we overlooked the cause and the affect of flavor lock in our stores. We achieved fresh roasted bagged coffee, but at what cost? The loss of aroma -- perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores; the loss of our people scooping fresh coffee from the bins and grinding it fresh in front of the customer, and once again stripping the store of tradition and our heritage?
Then we moved to store design
Clearly we have had to streamline store design to gain efficiencies of scale and to make sure we had the ROI on sales to investment ratios that would satisfy the financial side of our business. However, one of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store. Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee.
In fact, I am not sure people today even know we are roasting coffee. You certainly can't get the message from being in our stores. The merchandise, more art than science, is far removed from being the merchant that I believe we can be and certainly at a minimum should support the foundation of our coffee heritage. Some stores don't have coffee grinders, French presses from Bodum, or even coffee filters.
Now that I have provided you with a list of some of the underlying issues that I believe we need to solve, let me say at the outset that we have all been part of these decisions. I take full responsibility myself, but we desperately need to look into the mirror and realize it's time to get back to the core and make the changes necessary to evoke the heritage, the tradition, and the passion that we all have for the true Starbucks experience. While the current state of affairs for the most part is self induced, that has lead to competitors of all kinds, small and large coffee companies, fast food operators, and mom and pops, to position themselves in a way that creates awareness, trial and loyalty of people who previously have been Starbucks customers. This must be eradicated.
I have said for 20 years that our success is not an entitlement and now it's proving to be a reality. Let's be smarter about how we are spending our time, money and resources. Let's get back to the core. Push for innovation and do the things necessary to once again differentiate Starbucks from all others. We source and buy the highest quality coffee. We have built the most trusted brand in coffee in the world, and we have an enormous responsibility to both the people who have come before us and the 150,000 partners and their families who are relying on our stewardship.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge all that you do for Starbucks. Without your passion and commitment, we would not be where we are today.
Onward…
How Starbucks' Growth Destroyed Brand Value
Posted by John Quelch on July 2, 2008 10:02 AM
Starbucks announcement that it will close 600 stores in the US is a long-overdue admission that there are limits to growth.
In February 2007, a leaked internal memo written by founder Howard Schultz showed that he recognized the problem that his own growth strategy had created: "Stores no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store." Starbucks tried to add value through innovation, offering wi-fi service, creating and selling its own music. More recently, Starbucks attempted to put the focus back on coffee, revitalizing the quality of its standard beverages. But none of these moves addressed the fundamental problem: Starbucks is a mass brand attempting to command a premium price for an experience that is no longer special. Either you have to cut price (and that implies a commensurate cut in the cost structure) or you have to cut distribution to restore the exclusivity of the brand. Expect the 600 store closings to be the first of a series of downsizing announcements. Sometimes, in the world of marketing, less is more.
Schultz sought, admirably, to bring good coffee and the Italian coffee house experience to the American mass market. Wall Street bought into the vision of Starbucks as the "third place" after home and work. New store openings and new product launches fueled the stock price. But sooner or later chasing quarterly earnings growth targets undermined the Starbucks brand in three ways.
First, the early adopters who valued the club-like atmosphere of relaxing over a quality cup of coffee found themselves in a minority. To grow, Starbucks increasingly appealed to grab and go customers for whom service meant speed of order delivery rather than recognition by and conversation with a barista. Starbucks introduced new store formats like Express to try to cater to this second segment without undermining the first. But many Starbucks veterans have now switched to Peets, Caribou and other more exclusive brands.
Second, Starbucks introduced many new products to broaden its appeal. These new products undercut the integrity of the Starbucks brand for coffee purists. They also challenged the baristas who had to wrestle with an ever-more-complicated menu of drinks. With over half of customers customizing their drinks, baristas hired for their social skills and passion for coffee, no longer had time to dialogue with customers. The brand experience declined as waiting times increased. Moreover, the price premium for a Starbucks coffee seemed less justifiable for grab and go customers as McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts improved their coffee offerings at much lower prices.
Third, opening new stores and launching a blizzard of new products create only superficial growth. Such strategies take top management's eye off of improving same store sales year-on-year. This is the heavy lifting of retailing, where a local store manager has to earn brand loyalty and increase purchase frequency in his neighborhood one customer at a time. That store manager's efforts are undercut when additional stores are opened nearby. Eventually, the point of saturation is reached and cannibalization of existing store sales undermines not just brand health but also manager morale.
None of this need have happened if Starbucks had stayed private and grown at a more controlled pace. To continue to be a premium-priced brand while trading as a public company is very challenging. Tiffany faces a similar problem. That's why many luxury brands like Prada remain family businesses or are controlled by private investors. They can stay small, exclusive and premium-priced by limiting their distribution to selected stores in the major international cities.
Starbucks announcement that it will close 600 stores in the US is a long-overdue admission that there are limits to growth.
In February 2007, a leaked internal memo written by founder Howard Schultz showed that he recognized the problem that his own growth strategy had created: "Stores no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store." Starbucks tried to add value through innovation, offering wi-fi service, creating and selling its own music. More recently, Starbucks attempted to put the focus back on coffee, revitalizing the quality of its standard beverages. But none of these moves addressed the fundamental problem: Starbucks is a mass brand attempting to command a premium price for an experience that is no longer special. Either you have to cut price (and that implies a commensurate cut in the cost structure) or you have to cut distribution to restore the exclusivity of the brand. Expect the 600 store closings to be the first of a series of downsizing announcements. Sometimes, in the world of marketing, less is more.
Schultz sought, admirably, to bring good coffee and the Italian coffee house experience to the American mass market. Wall Street bought into the vision of Starbucks as the "third place" after home and work. New store openings and new product launches fueled the stock price. But sooner or later chasing quarterly earnings growth targets undermined the Starbucks brand in three ways.
First, the early adopters who valued the club-like atmosphere of relaxing over a quality cup of coffee found themselves in a minority. To grow, Starbucks increasingly appealed to grab and go customers for whom service meant speed of order delivery rather than recognition by and conversation with a barista. Starbucks introduced new store formats like Express to try to cater to this second segment without undermining the first. But many Starbucks veterans have now switched to Peets, Caribou and other more exclusive brands.
Second, Starbucks introduced many new products to broaden its appeal. These new products undercut the integrity of the Starbucks brand for coffee purists. They also challenged the baristas who had to wrestle with an ever-more-complicated menu of drinks. With over half of customers customizing their drinks, baristas hired for their social skills and passion for coffee, no longer had time to dialogue with customers. The brand experience declined as waiting times increased. Moreover, the price premium for a Starbucks coffee seemed less justifiable for grab and go customers as McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts improved their coffee offerings at much lower prices.
Third, opening new stores and launching a blizzard of new products create only superficial growth. Such strategies take top management's eye off of improving same store sales year-on-year. This is the heavy lifting of retailing, where a local store manager has to earn brand loyalty and increase purchase frequency in his neighborhood one customer at a time. That store manager's efforts are undercut when additional stores are opened nearby. Eventually, the point of saturation is reached and cannibalization of existing store sales undermines not just brand health but also manager morale.
None of this need have happened if Starbucks had stayed private and grown at a more controlled pace. To continue to be a premium-priced brand while trading as a public company is very challenging. Tiffany faces a similar problem. That's why many luxury brands like Prada remain family businesses or are controlled by private investors. They can stay small, exclusive and premium-priced by limiting their distribution to selected stores in the major international cities.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
WPP’s Sorrell Given Right to Herd Sheep Over London Bridge
By Jim EdwardsAdvertising Industry Blog on BNET
WPP chief Martin Sorrell has been given the freedom of the City of London by the lord mayor and other bigwigs. The purely ceremonial honor comes with a number of bizarre privileges dating back to medieval times. Among them is the right to herd sheep over London Bridge. Other rights Sorrell now has include:
- To go about the City with a drawn sword.
- To be married in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
- To be buried in the City.
- If convicted of a capital offense, to be hanged with a silken rope.
- To avoid being press-ganged (i.e. forced to work on a ship).
- To be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest.
Past “freemen” include The Queen, Florence Nightingale, Dwight Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
E-Suicide
Adapted from GREG RISLING; copyright © 2008 The Associated Press.
LOS ANGELES — A Missouri mother is accused of conspiring to harass a 13-year-old girl with Internet messages that allegedly prompted her suicide.
Megan Meier was allegedly drawn into the Internet ruse devised by Lori Drew, the mother of Megan's one-time best friend.Lori Drew is accused of conspiring with her daughter, Sarah, then 13, and her 18-year-old assistant to cause emotional distress to Megan.
Drew has pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing computers without authorization. She could be sentenced to as many as 20 years in prison if convicted of all counts.
U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien portrayed Drew, 49, as the guiding force in a "mean" plan to humiliate Megan by inventing a make-believe boy named "Josh Evans" who would woo her on the MySpace Web site, then be revealed as nonexistent.
"Lori Drew decided to humiliate a child," O'Brien said in his summation. "The only way she could harm this pretty little girl was with a computer. She chose to use a computer to hurt a little girl and for four weeks she enjoyed it."
The defense said the case is a matter of computer law and accused prosecutors of misleading jurors into thinking it was a murder case.
"If you hadn't heard the indictment read to you, you'd think this was a homicide case," said Dean Steward, a defense attorney. "And it's not a homicide case. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a computer case, and that's what you need to decide."
Steward insisted the only question is whether Drew violated the terms-of-service agreement of MySpace. He said that Drew, her daughter and assistant Ashley Grills never read the seven-page agreement.
"Nobody reads these things, nobody," he said. "How can you violate something when you haven't even read it? End of case. The case is over."
The hoax ended with Megan never finding out that her online boyfriend did not exist. On Oct. 16, 2006, a message was sent from "Josh" to Megan telling her the world would be better off without her.
Shortly afterward, the girl went to her room and hanged herself in a closet. She died the next day.
The case is being prosecuted in Los Angeles because MySpace computer servers are based in the area.
Selling zero-G painting
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/11/18/art-in-space-painting-created-in-zero-gravity-sells-for-a-small-fortune/
On Friday, November 14th, the painting sold for $332,500 at Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Part II auction in New York.
Dancing Scientists Invade YouTube
Six weeks ago, the Gonzo Scientist challenged researchers around the world to interpret their Ph.D. research in dance form, film the dance, and share it with the world on YouTube.
A panel of nine judges--the three winners of the first "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, three scientists from Harvard University, and three artistic directors of the dance company Pilobolus--scored the dances on their ability to bridge the art and science worlds.
A panel of nine judges--the three winners of the first "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, three scientists from Harvard University, and three artistic directors of the dance company Pilobolus--scored the dances on their ability to bridge the art and science worlds.
Graduate Students
Sue Lynn Lau chose classical ballet and highly kinetic party dancing as the way to interpret her Ph.D. thesis, "The role of vitamin D in beta-cell function".
Postdocs
Miriam Sach's solo contemporary dance was her 2004 Ph.D. thesis at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, titled "Cerebral activation".
Professors
Graceful double pas de deux, representing the interaction of pairs of hemoglobin molecules.
Popular Choice
Landry used a tango to convey her thesis Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes
On Journalism
November 17, 2008
And now it is happening in my corner. In the US, TV news shows such as the one I work on are being replaced by so-called fearless commentators in mock attack on one another from opposing corners of a studio. It is useless TV foisted on us for no better reason than it is cheaper. It is not news.
And the coverage of daily news on TV more and more has a feel of external hands managing the process. Expensive outside broadcast vans, reporters and cameras assemble, working more it would seem in the business of event management than news reporting. When we are there in the crowd our instinct is to break free and find the real story. And that is what I am doing. I have loved working at Four Corners and am grateful for the generous support and opportunities given to me, in the same way it is given to reporters at this newspaper.
While The Australian and the ABC are often at odds there is a proud shared record of supporting investigative journalism. Never more has the importance of leadership in expressing the worth of what we do been more important.
As I see whenever I return from an overseas assignment, Australia is still a long way from Stasiland. We are lucky to live in a wonderful country and work in an exciting industry. Opportunities are still with us. While limits to press freedom crowd in, there is still enormous power in our own potential - and those stories waiting to be told.
Chris Masters, the longest-serving reporter on Four Corners, retired from the Australian broadcast ABC last week after 25 years.
I HAVE been talking about myself a lot lately - not always a comfortable circumstance for someone who has long argued the journalist is the storyteller and not the story.
A benefit has been a rare focus on positive elements of a beloved occupation.
I can understand some of the reasons why journalism has a bad name. When I see a pushy reporter harassing a comparatively powerless television repairman or the like, I too find myself looking into my hands, directing sympathy away from my own profession.
But for all that, I don't see the majority of reporters as exploitative and predatory. Most work harder for the public than they do for themselves. Many of our neighbours are better paid and spend more time with their families. Journalists regularly get into trouble for the sake of the community, often bearing community ire for doing so.
And now it is getting harder. While the communication revolution booms around us we watch our industry shrink. While our skill levels increase, our opportunities are narrowing. The Sunday program is gone from Channel Nine, and The Bulletin magazine is no longer there to run long-form print stories. Across our industry it is harder to find managers and proprietors who grasp the essence of journalism. It is difficult to reconcile that somehow, with all our communication skills, we fail to convey, even to our own employers, the worth of what we do.
I am pleased to be able to look back on a career and offer to the public a scorecard of public achievement. And, I am a long way from being the only one. The skills we develop as gatekeepers of public information embody values that outreach simple explanation.
We learn to make what is important interesting. We grade information, day by day, interview by interview, lie by lie - honing our talent for truth. We break into forbidden territory, challenging abuse of power and staring down the hypocrites. We try to give the public the facts, often when it is bad news - when they least want to know what they most need to know.
The thrill of it for me is this search for truth, a worthy life-long quest. Never quite getting there is probably what makes it so energising. My most important trick was collected from my mother, and that is finding nobility in the commonplace. Olga Masters was a suburban reporter who did not need a car crash to find a story. I got from her a sense of proceeding with whatever I had selected, or had come my way - and seeing where it took me. Every story, big and small, became a battle to find out as much as I could in the time that I had. Over time, I came to recognise the brilliance of this approach.
It made me less inclined to self-censor stories with a higher degree of difficulty, or adjust my focus to the easier ones that appeared to promise awards and acclaim - the "good get" as we often put it.
The preferred "next cab off the rank" approach can be more painful at first, but far more rewarding over time, as you find and develop narrative skills to make what is before you work. We become less fearful of inconvenient facts, and more inclined to allow the invisible hand of the story to choose the pathway, and move us closer to our best understanding of the truth. Checks and balances begin to organically apply. And rather than a nuisance, balance and fairness becomes a virtue.
The journalist who develops as a confident storyteller undergoes a process of liberation. When you are interested in the whole you don't so eagerly rely on an angle. Open-minded research propels us on a wild ride, which to me is where the job is at its most thrilling. Recognising nuances - integrating opposites - giving texture to the characters - surprising the reader. Good journalism is like good drama. It is life - and the more we allow ourselves to be alive to the intricacies of the yarn, the better the writer, the stronger the message and we would hope, public engagement with the story. I can see, looking back, that spending most of the first half of my career working in smaller communities had another benefit. There is nothing like waking up again and again in a place where nothing happens to advance your skills in investigative journalism. And it is that much harder to absolve yourself of moral responsibility when you are in direct touch with the audience. Journalism is supposed to connect with society.
So there is a lot to like about good journalism and a lot the public don't see that would improve our reputation. But it would be foolish to pretend that is all there is to see. My sense is our poor reputation has a lot to do with a perception that we capture public information first of all for our own benefit. Journalism is not an industry with a clear and uniform value system. It is hard to get a room full of reporters to agree on how and why we do what we do. Some reporters see information as public property, while others see that it belongs to them. Enormous institutional competitiveness encourages possessiveness and detachment from the element we all share - public responsibility.
To go on too much about all this is baying at the moon. But we could at least talk about it more. Just as journalists are secretive about stories, so too are they wary of sharing ideas. So here is one:
Get rid of the commentators. Not necessarily all of them, just the bloody great majority. The next time a reporter says they are sick of making all those phone calls and wish to settle into a regular opinion piece, let us agree to lead them into the snow.
Like those energy ratings symbols on the fridge, editors could insist on similar telephone-like icons accompanying each column. It is a treat when you read a column supported by visible research. Opinion without facts is worth little and yet the opinion columns have grown, as far as I can see sometimes influencing and invading news.
And now it is happening in my corner. In the US, TV news shows such as the one I work on are being replaced by so-called fearless commentators in mock attack on one another from opposing corners of a studio. It is useless TV foisted on us for no better reason than it is cheaper. It is not news.
And the coverage of daily news on TV more and more has a feel of external hands managing the process. Expensive outside broadcast vans, reporters and cameras assemble, working more it would seem in the business of event management than news reporting. When we are there in the crowd our instinct is to break free and find the real story. And that is what I am doing. I have loved working at Four Corners and am grateful for the generous support and opportunities given to me, in the same way it is given to reporters at this newspaper.
While The Australian and the ABC are often at odds there is a proud shared record of supporting investigative journalism. Never more has the importance of leadership in expressing the worth of what we do been more important.
As I see whenever I return from an overseas assignment, Australia is still a long way from Stasiland. We are lucky to live in a wonderful country and work in an exciting industry. Opportunities are still with us. While limits to press freedom crowd in, there is still enormous power in our own potential - and those stories waiting to be told.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Spaces = Opportunities
Earth From Below from Stephen Alvarez on Vimeo.
In societies, markets and economies, as in the geography:
"There are forces way outside my control, undergraound, and they create these huge spaces..." -- Stephen Alvarez
The Screen People of Tomorrow
Everywhere we look, we see screens. The other day I watched clips from a movie as I pumped gas into my car. The other night I saw a movie on the backseat of a plane. We will watch anywhere. Screens playing video pop up in the most unexpected places — like A.T.M. machines and supermarket checkout lines and tiny phones; some movie fans watch entire films in between calls. These ever-present screens have created an audience for very short moving pictures, as brief as three minutes, while cheap digital creation tools have empowered a new generation of filmmakers, who are rapidly filling up those screens. We are headed toward screen ubiquity.
When technology shifts, it bends the culture. Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word. The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book.
Video Citing: TimeTube, on the Web, gives a genealogy of the most popular videos and their descendants, and charts their popularity in time-line form.
Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.
The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier to attend a play than to produce one. But movies in particular suffer from this user asymmetry. The intensely collaborative work needed to coddle chemically treated film and paste together its strips into movies meant that it was vastly easier to watch a movie than to make one. A Hollywood blockbuster can take a million person-hours to produce and only two hours to consume. But now, cheap and universal tools of creation (megapixel phone cameras, Photoshop, iMovie) are quickly reducing the effort needed to create moving images. To the utter bafflement of the experts who confidently claimed that viewers would never rise from their reclining passivity, tens of millions of people have in recent years spent uncountable hours making movies of their own design. Having a ready and reachable audience of potential millions helps, as does the choice of multiple modes in which to create. Because of new consumer gadgets, community training, peer encouragement and fiendishly clever software, the ease of making video now approaches the ease of writing.
This is not how Hollywood makes films, of course. A blockbuster film is a gigantic creature custom-built by hand. Like a Siberian tiger, it demands our attention — but it is also very rare. In 2007, 600 feature films were released in the United States, or about 1,200 hours of moving images. As a percentage of the hundreds of millions of hours of moving images produced annually today, 1,200 hours is tiny. It is a rounding error.We tend to think the tiger represents the animal kingdom, but in truth, a grasshopper is a truer statistical example of an animal. The handcrafted Hollywood film won’t go away, but if we want to see the future of motion pictures, we need to study the swarming food chain below — YouTube, indie films, TV serials and insect-scale lip-sync mashups — and not just the tiny apex of tigers. The bottom is where the action is, and where screen literacy originates.
Fighting with photons
Oct 30th 2008 From The Economist print edition
LIKE so much else in science fiction, the ray gun was invented by H.G. Wells. In the tentacles of Wells’s Martians it was a weapon as unanswerable by earthlings as the Maxim gun in the hands of British troops was unanswerable by Africans. Science fiction, though, it has remained. Neither hand-held pistols nor giant, orbiting anti-missile versions of the weapon have worked. But that is about to change. The first serious battlefield ray gun is now being deployed. And the next generation, now in the laboratory, is coming soon.
LIKE so much else in science fiction, the ray gun was invented by H.G. Wells. In the tentacles of Wells’s Martians it was a weapon as unanswerable by earthlings as the Maxim gun in the hands of British troops was unanswerable by Africans. Science fiction, though, it has remained. Neither hand-held pistols nor giant, orbiting anti-missile versions of the weapon have worked. But that is about to change. The first serious battlefield ray gun is now being deployed. And the next generation, now in the laboratory, is coming soon.
The deployed ray gun (or “directed-energy weapon”, in the tedious jargon that military men seem compelled to use to describe technology) is known as Zeus. It is not designed to kill. Rather, its purpose is to allow you to remain at a safe distance when you detonate unexploded ordnance, such as the homemade roadside bombs that plague foreign troops in Iraq.
This task now calls for explosives. In practice, that often means using a rocket-propelled grenade, so as not to expose troops to snipers. But rockets are expensive, and sometimes miss their targets. Zeus is effective at a distance of 300 metres, and a laser beam, unlike a rocket, always goes exactly where you point it.
Only one god
At the moment, there is only one Zeus in the field. It is sitting in the back of a Humvee in an undisclosed theatre of war. But if it proves successful it will, according to Scott McPheeters of the American army’s Cruise Missile Defence Systems Project Office for Directed Energy Applications, be joined by a dozen more within a year.
If Zeus works, it will make soldiers’ lives noticeably safer. But what would really make a difference would be the ability to destroy incoming artillery rounds. The Laser Area Defence System, LADS, being developed by Raytheon, is intended to do just that—blowing incoming shells and small rockets apart with laser beams. The targets are tracked by radar and (if they are rockets) by infrared sensors. When they come within range, they are zapped.
If it works, LADS will be a disruptive technology in more senses than one. It will probably supersede Raytheon’s Phalanx system, which uses mortars to do the same thing. Phalanx and its competitors require lots of ammunition, and can be overwhelmed by heavy barrages. By contrast, Mike Booen, vice-president of Advanced Missile Defence and Directed Energy Weapons at Raytheon, observes, as long as LADS is supplied with electricity it has “an infinite magazine”.
And LADS is merely the most advanced of a group of anti-artillery lasers under development. Though Raytheon is convinced it is on to a winner and is paying for most of the development costs out of its own pocket, it has received some money from the Directed Energy Weapons Programme Office of the American navy. In August, inter-service rivalry reared its head, when the army handed Boeing a $36m contract to develop a similar weapon, known at the moment as the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator.
The army’s Space and Missile Defence Command is also in the game. Its Joint High Power Solid State Laser, a prototype of which should be ready next summer, is meant to destroy rockets the size of the Katyushas used by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by Hizbullah in Lebanon.
The most ambitious laser project of all, though, is the Airborne Laser, or ABL, being developed by the American Missile Defence Agency and Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The beam is generated by mixing chemicals in a reactor known as a COIL (chemical oxygen iodine laser) and packs a far bigger punch than the electrically generated beams emitted by systems such as LADS. When mounted in the nose-cone of a specially converted Boeing 747, an ABL should be capable of disabling a missile from a distance of several hundred kilometres.
The aim is to hit large ballistic missiles, including ICBMs, just after they are launched—in the boost phase. The ABL is therefore a son of Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars scheme, although in that programme, which dates back to the 1980s, the lasers would have operated from space.
There are many advantages to attacking a missile during its boost phase. First, it is still travelling slowly, so it is easier to hit. Second, it is easy to detect because of its exhaust plume (once the boost phase is over, the engine switches off and the missile follows Newton’s law of gravity to its target). Third, if it has boosters that are designed to be jettisoned, it will be a larger target when it is launched. Fourth, any debris will fall on those who launched it, rather than those at whom it was aimed.
Getting the system to work in practice will be hard, though. A missile launch is observed using an infrared detector. Then the missile must be tracked. When the beam fires, the control system must compensate both for aircraft jitter and for distortions in the beam’s path caused by atmospheric conditions. And ABL-carrying planes must be in the right place at the right time in the first place. Even so, a number of tests have been carried out, and according to Colonel Robert McMurry, the head of the Airborne Laser Programme Office at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, there will be a full-scale attempt to shoot down a boost-phase missile off the coast of California next summer. 
All of which is good news, at least for countries able to deploy the new hardware. But wars are not won by defence alone. What people in the business are more coy about discussing is the offensive use of lasers. At least one such system is under development, though. The aeroplane-mounted Advanced Tactical Laser, or ATL, another chemical laser being put together by Boeing and the American air force, is designed to “neutralise” targets on the ground from a distance of several kilometres. Targeting data will be provided by telescopic cameras on the aircraft, by pictures from satellites and unmanned aerial drones, and by human target-spotters on the ground. The question is: what targets?
The ATL’s supporters discuss such possibilities as disabling vehicles by destroying their wheels and disrupting enemy communications by severing telephone lines. Killing troops is rarely mentioned. However, John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military think-tank in Alexandria, Virginia, who is an expert on ATL, says its main goal is, indeed, to kill enemy combatants.
Surely this is forbidden?
Boeing is unwilling to discuss the matter and John Wachs, the head of the Space and Missile Defence Command’s Directed Energy Division, observes that it is “politically sensitive”. The public may have misgivings about a silent and invisible weapon that would boil the body’s fluids before tearing it apart in a burst of vapour.
That seems oddly squeamish, though. War is not a pleasant business. It is doubtful that being burst by a laser is worse than being hit by a burst from a machine gun. As the Sudanese found out at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, the year that “The War of the Worlds” was published, that is pretty nasty too.
Bedtime stories go online
Jemima Kiss, guardian.co.uk,
Thursday November 20 2008 12.17 GMT
Noddy on Windows Live Messenger: Mr Men and Paddington Bear are also set to be adapted for the tool
Thursday November 20 2008 12.17 GMT
Noddy on Windows Live Messenger: Mr Men and Paddington Bear are also set to be adapted for the tool
Bedtime stories may never be the same after the launch of an online tool to let parents and children who cannot be together share classic tales.
Built by entertainment company Chorion for the Noddy stories, Time for a Story lets parents and grandparents contact a child through Windows Live Messenger and lead them through a digital version of stories about the character.
Chorion is initially releasing three Noddy stories through the application, with more planned. Mr Men and Paddington Bear are also scheduled to be adapted for the tool – although they may target at an older age group than the two- to five-year-olds Noddy is aimed at.
It is thought grown-ups in their 30s may also sign up for a dose of nostalgia based around their favourite childhood characters.
Time for a Story, developed by agency Digital Outlook, is being promoted through the Mumsnet community website, which took part in a trial of the application, and also on the MSN website, which gives a demonstration of the tool.
Users in the UK can access the stories through the "activities" tab in Windows Live Messenger. Parents control the speed of the story by clicking through pages, while the child can interact with pictures and words on screen for each part of the story.
"The kernel of the idea was from a producer who was working late a lot and not getting home to speak to his child, and ended up talking to them through IM," said a Chorion spokeswoman.
"There's no way we're saying this should replace that one-to-one contact or reading to a child while you are there, but we are trying to create a tool that allows parents or grandparents to interact with the child in a meaningful way when they can't be there."
The spokeswoman added that the tool provided a structure to the conversation through the form of the story – which would allow even very young children to benefit, and because instant messenger enables video chat it provided an emotional connection.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Nike de Trevieres
Le Monument aux Morts, created by sculptor Edmond de Laheudrie (1861-1946).The statue is dated 1920 and was originally dedicated on 16 May, 1921 in the memory of the 44 men of Trevieres, France who died in WWI.
It was installed upon a low pedestal outside the Church of St. Aignan, in Trevieres, France.
Two decades later, WWII began.
The statue was surrounded by turmoil. Shortly after the Allies came ashore on D-day, Germany established a heavily fortified position around the city where the statue stood. Battle ensued and either shrapnel or a direct round tore open the face of the statue.
After the war, a copy was directly recasted from the original -- preserving the damage caused by war -- and donnated by Guy Wildenstein and his family to the city of Bedford, VA and the American nation, in gratitude to the USA for helping to restore France's freedom, for granting asylum to the Wildenstein family, and for halting the extermination of the Jewish people.
Bedford, VA lost more soldiers (proportionally) on D-Day than any other town/city in the US, and that's why the American National D-Day Memorial is located there.
The plaque at the statue reads:
"...Le Monument aux Morts,
preserved as transformed in battle,
is a spectral testament to the destructiveness of war,
evanescence of victory,
and fragility of peace.
Its presence at the D-Day Memorial mutely and eloquently argues
that peace is a consequence of vigilance and justice-
not an accident of complacency or indifference.
In bearing witness to that
Laheudrie's ruined Nike is the Memorials most powerful tribute
to the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of the Allied Forces
whose rich legacy
is our freedom."
Darwin Monkey
Sonho de consumo:
This iconic bronze statue is available in its original form for the first time in almost a century.
Hugo Rheinhold's "Monkey with Skull" -- real, large, bronze statue in a deep and rich Florentine Brown patina. Marble plinth & 100% bronze.
Overall dimensions are (h) 34.5 cm x (w) 20.5 cm x (d) 23.0 cm.
The weight is 10 kg.
Made to order. Branding to your specification possible. All enquiries and requests are welcome. Orders can be made online or by phone. Any location. Delivered straight to your door.
US$ 940
This iconic bronze statue is available in its original form for the first time in almost a century.Hugo Rheinhold's "Monkey with Skull" -- real, large, bronze statue in a deep and rich Florentine Brown patina. Marble plinth & 100% bronze.
Overall dimensions are (h) 34.5 cm x (w) 20.5 cm x (d) 23.0 cm.
The weight is 10 kg.
Made to order. Branding to your specification possible. All enquiries and requests are welcome. Orders can be made online or by phone. Any location. Delivered straight to your door.
US$ 940
Monday, November 17, 2008
Imperial Stormtroopers Arrest Santa
By Jesus Diaz, 11:55 AM on Sun Dec 16 2007
SANTA'S FACTORY, North Pole (Agencies) - An Imperial Stormtrooper commando broke into Santa's Factory on the North Pole yesterday evening, killing an undetermined number of elves, arresting the owner and confiscating his sled.
Joe Kwazansky, local spokesman for the Evil Galactic Empire in Los Angeles, appeared in a press conference this morning confirming the rumors of an Imperial takeover of Christmas' celebrations. "The Emperor wants to assure His subjects that Xmas will continue as planned. The pug-nosed fatso, however, will pay for his crimes," Mr. Kwazansky said amid the palpable shock in the press corps. Apparently, the arrest has occurred in connection with earlier reports on the manufacturing and stealth placement of Weapons of Mass Destruction:
SANTA'S FACTORY, North Pole (Agencies) - An Imperial Stormtrooper commando broke into Santa's Factory on the North Pole yesterday evening, killing an undetermined number of elves, arresting the owner and confiscating his sled.Joe Kwazansky, local spokesman for the Evil Galactic Empire in Los Angeles, appeared in a press conference this morning confirming the rumors of an Imperial takeover of Christmas' celebrations. "The Emperor wants to assure His subjects that Xmas will continue as planned. The pug-nosed fatso, however, will pay for his crimes," Mr. Kwazansky said amid the palpable shock in the press corps. Apparently, the arrest has occurred in connection with earlier reports on the manufacturing and stealth placement of Weapons of Mass Destruction:
Answering questions about the causes of this assault and Santa Claus' detention, Mr. Kwazansky pointed out that Imperial Intelligence had undeniable proof of Santa's production of WMDs at his factory located near the North Pole. "He is also a perv, you know," he added, "a guy who goes around his house clad in red velvet and has underaged boys assisting him all day long. Illegal sex? Forced labor?"
Later in the press conference, Mr. Kwazansky, 48 years old and still living with his parents, revealed that Santa may have been stealing industrial secrets from Imperial-exclusive defense contractor Sienar Fleet Systems. "And what's with the bloody flying reindeers anyway?" he said, "how the Force do they fly? I bet they have Twin Ion Engines up their butts. That's classified technology." The spokesperson left the stage laughing maniacally, muttering something about how Santa was going to suffer for all those years of coal back at the Imperial Orphanage.
Commenting on the strike, UN's North Pole representative Kalle Jugercømmandersson said that "we don't understand this act of unprovoked agression. The North Pole has been weapons-free since 1959, when Timmy the Polar Bear was killed by a drunk seal using a 38." Then, he started sobbing, crying "and we are not little boys! We are little grown men!" out loud.
Lord Darth Vader was unavailable to comment at the time of this report.
(Photo of Santa being taken to an Imperial Shuttle—or something like that—courtesy of Michael Sibbernsen)
Oooh! The Royal Maori welcome...
The UK's Princess Royal is visiting New Zealand,where she was given a Maori welcome at the Burnham Military Camp in Christchurch.
US Admiral 'stunned' by pirates' reach
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The top US military officer said Monday he was "stunned" by the reach of the Somali pirates who seized a Saudi supertanker off the east coast of Africa, calling piracy a growing problem that needs to be addressed.
But Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were limits to what the world's navies could do once a ship has been captured because national governments often preferred to pay pirates ransom.
Somali pirates pictured from a US Navy ship in October"I'm stunned by the range of it, less so than I am the size," Mullen said of the seizure of the Sirius Star Sunday by armed men.
The huge, oil laden prize, which is three times the size of a US aircraft carrier, was some 450 miles east of Kenya when it was boarded, he said.
That is the farthest out at sea that a ship has been seized in the latest surge of piracies, according to Mullen.
The pirates, he said, are "very good at what they do. They're very well armed. Tactically, they are very good."
"And so, once they get to a point where they can board, it becomes very difficult to get them off, because, clearly, now they hold hostages.
"It's got a lot of people's attention and is starting to have impact on the commercial side, which I know countries raise as a concern," he said."And so there's a lot more focus on this. It's a very serious issue. It's a growing issue. And we're going to continue to have to deal with it," he said.
The Times (of London) reports Saturday's hijacking has already had a ripple effect on the price of crude.
News of the hijacking lifted global crude prices above $58 a barrel - meaning that the content of the vessel could be worth up to $116million on the open market. The pirates' haul accounts for almost a third of Saudi Arabia's daily oil output.
The MV Sirius Star, owned by Saudi oil company Aramco but flagged by Liberia, was heading to the Caribbean when it was attacked 450 miles off the coast of Kenya.
[The ship] is 1,080 feet long – about the length of an aircraft carrier – making it one of the largest ships to sail the seas. It can carry about 2 million barrels of oil....
Warships from the more than a dozen nations as well as NATO forces have focused their anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, increasing their military presence in recent months.
But this attack occurred well away from mulitnational forces patrolling the Gulf of Aden, where the majority of the attacks have occurred, reports the AP.
Saturday's hijacking of the MV Sirius Star tanker occurred in the Indian Ocean far south of the zone patrolled by international warships in the busy Gulf of Aden shipping channel, which leads to and from the Suez Canal....
Maritime security experts said they have tracked a troubling spread in pirate activity southward into a vast area of ocean that would be extremely difficult and costly to patrol, and this hijacking fits that pattern.
"It is very alarming," said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau. "It had been slightly more easy to get it under control in the Gulf of Aden because it is a comparatively smaller area of water which has to be patrolled, but this is huge."
According to the The Times (of London) the ship and its 25-member crew, which includes Britons, Croatians, Poles, Filipinos, and Saudi Arabians, are heading toward an area believed to be a safe haven for pirates.
The US Navy says the ship is believed to be heading toward the semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland.Lieutenant Nate Christensen, of the US Navy, 5th Fleet, said that the tanker was today approaching an area of the Somali coast controlled by bandits.
An October New York Times article described one area of Puntland as catering to the piracy industry.
The pirates use fast-moving skiffs to pull alongside their prey and scamper on board with ladders or sometimes even rusty grappling hooks. Once on deck, they hold the crew at gunpoint until a ransom is paid, usually $1 million to $2 million....
People in Garoowe, a town south of Boosaaso, describe a certain high-rolling pirate swagger. Flush with cash, the pirates drive the biggest cars, run many of the town's businesses – like hotels – and throw the best parties, residents say....
This is too much for many Somali men to resist, and criminals from all across this bullet-pocked land are now flocking to Boosaaso and other notorious pirate dens along the craggy Somali shore. They have turned these waters into the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.
Saturday's incursion comes after a spate of recent attacks – a chemical tanker owned by Japan was also seized Saturday – and 11 ships are currently being held while pirates await ransom monies, CNN reports.
According to Bloomberg, Saturday's attack signals Somali pirates are willing to take more risks."It's quite an escalation," said Tudor Ellis, maritime security expert at Drum Cussac, a London-based risk advisory company. "They've taken chemical tankers before and they've attacked oil tankers, but they've never taken an oil tanker before."
The most notable previous attack that pirates launched this year was on the MV Faina, a Ukrainian tanker carrying arms, that was seized in September and is among the 11 still being held. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the attack reinvigorated international efforts.
"The sheer volume of weapons on board, and the fact that it could even represent the turning point in the Islamists' war on land, could serve to force the international community to get serious, albeit rather later," says Bruno Schiemsky, a recent chairman of the United Nations' Monitoring Group on Somalia.
In a Q&A in The Guardian, reporter Peter Walker discusses the rise in pirate attacks in the region:
In 2007, the [International Maritime Organization] recorded 60 piracy attacks off east Africa, up from 31 the year before, and the Chatham House thinktank, which released a report on Somali-based piracy last month, said more than 60 attacks had taken place in the region so far in 2008.
According to a September article in The Christian Science Monitor, piracy off Somalia's coast surged in 1991 following the government's collapse, but appeared to be under control as recently as two years ago.
Two years ago it [piracy] was all but stamped out by the Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled most of southern and central Somalia for six months. But the pirates returned with a vengeance this year.
Though the Islamists shut down the pirates when they were in power, it seems they are happy to use them to help bring weapons, cash, and fighters into the country as they wage war against the government and Ethiopian forces.
The pirates appear to be operating in conjunction with al-Shabaab, the youth wing of Somalia's Islamist movement, which controls the key port city of Kismayo and swaths of the country.
Life caused explosion in our planet's mineral wealth
16:29 14 November 2008 by Marcus Chown and Nov 13th 2008 The Economist print edition
EVOLUTION has come a long way since Charles Darwin’s time. Today it is not only animals and plants that are seen as having evolved over time, but also things that involve the hand of humans, like architecture, music, car design and even governments. Now rocks, too, seem to be showing evolutionary characteristics.
As life has evolved into all its abundance and diversity, Earth's rocks have come along for the ride. Two-thirds of the kingdom of minerals – the building blocks of rocks – can be traced to the emergence of life, say geologists.
This new perspective could shake up our picture of Earth's geological history, and might even help us find life on other planets.
"Rocks and life evolved in parallel," says Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington DC. "It's so obvious - you wonder why we geologists didn't think of it before."
All rocks are made up of constituent minerals. For example, granite contains quartz, mica and feldspar. Geologists tend to classify such minerals in a methodical way, using factors such as their colour, hardness, and composition.
Hazen and his colleagues decided to take a fresh approach by exploring how the diversity, abundance and associations within the mineral kingdom have evolved over time. "What we have done differently is recognise that each mineral has its own story." he says.
Breath of life
According to Hazen, the story begins with a mere 12 minerals that existed in the dust swirling around in the clouds that would eventually form the solar system - minerals like diamond, created in the fury of supernova explosions. When the Sun ignited, the heat from this event boosted the number to around 60.
The formation of the Earth and subsequent geochemical processes upped that to around 500, and the switching on of the conveyor belt of plate tectonics to around 1500.
"But it was life, which made its first appearance about 4 billion years ago, that made the biggest difference," says Hazen. "It boosted the number of minerals to more than 4000."
Life brought profound changes to Earth's atmosphere and ocean chemistry.
Photosynthesising organisms created abundant atmospheric oxygen. Under this oxygen-rich environment, the chemical processes of oxidation and weathering generated a swathe of new species of metal-rich minerals, such as iron.
"Four billion years ago, metals on the surface like iron and copper remained pure and shiny," says Hazen. "But the new atmosphere oxidised them, creating a host of new minerals." Approximately half of the 4300 known mineral species are down to oxidation or weathering.
Microscopic algae, the earliest living organisms, drew carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and expelled oxygen. Over millions of years this created an oxygen-rich atmosphere that rapidly removed electrons from minerals near the surface, creating rust out of iron and forming thousands of new minerals from other metals like nickel, copper and uranium.
Living stones
Around two billion years later, the nature of the mineral kingdom evolved again with the emergence of hard-bodied marine organisms. Their bodies mineralised shells and skeletons for protection and support. Corals too started combining the calcium and carbonate that was floating freely in the water to construct reefs. All of the materials that animals made started to litter the sea floor and this vast accumulation of bone, shell and coral got pressed together into a mineral known as calcite.
On the land, plants produced acids around their roots that converted minerals of volcanic origin, like mica, feldspar and pyroxene, into clay minerals that ultimately formed intensely rich soils. This explains why volcanic islands like Hawaii are so lush.
Even the amounts of precious metals may have been influenced by life - microbes are thought to trigger the deposition of gold from hot waters inside rocks.
New minerals created by living things continue to turn up. One of the most recent discoveries was by Hexiong Yang, who named it Hazenite as a tribute to Dr Hazen, his former teacher. Hazenite is a mineral formed by microbes in the highly alkaline Mono Lake in California.
Search for ET
Hazen says the new perspective could aid the search for extraterrestrial life. He reckons probes sent to planets like Mars should be designed to look for particular mineral features such as oxidised zones in cliff faces.
"If we find certain minerals, they will point uniquely to certain organisms," he says.
With NASA’s Messenger probe now going into orbit around Mercury, Dr Hazen predicts that it will find only 300 or so minerals on the planet. If there are 500-1,000 detected, then it will suggest that there is a lot more to Mercury than anyone originally thought. And if minerals that depend upon life for their formation show up, then researchers will be flummoxed. The same is true for Mars and other planets—including the exoplanets that have been known about but which have just been seen for the first time orbiting stars outside the Solar System (see article). Dr Hazen argues that considering minerals in evolutionary terms is a powerful way to help identify how far a planet has developed geologically. Moreover it can tell you whether life was present at some point—and even whether it is present now.Gary Ernst at Stanford University describes the study as "breathtaking" and says the new perspective could revolutionise the way geologists describe the mineral kingdom.
Journal reference: American Mineralogist (vol 93, p 1693)
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