CopyBlogger: Should We Be Worried About Fast Food Content?

Earlier this week on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote an alarmed post about “fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today.”

Mom and pop operations and hand-crafted content sounds an awful lot like you and me, doesn’t it?

So is this actually something we need to worry about? Is what Arrington calls “the rise of cheap, disposable content on a mass scale, force fed to us by the portals and search engines” going to destroy the businesses we’re building on a foundation of high-quality content?

Arrington is deeply concerned about sites like AOL and Demand Media, which scrape and mash real content into something that’s theoretically legitimate (since it was compiled by a human being rather than a piece of software), but in practice gives no value to the reader.

This “mainstream spam” can be efficiently optimized for search, or thrust onto the unsuspecting eyeballs of AOL users. (Haven’t the poor things suffered enough already?)

Arrington believes there’s no hope against this onslaught of junk content, which is going to overwhelm all of the good stuff.

Clearly, we’re all doomed
Arrington advises content creators (that’s you and me) to:

Figure out an even more disruptive way to win, or die. Or just give up on making
money doing what you do. If you write for passion, not dollars, you’ll still
have fun. Even if everything you write is immediately ripped off without
attribution, and the search engines don’t give you the attention they used to.
You may have to continue your hobby in the evening and get a real job, of
course. But everyone has to face reality sometimes.

Apart from the whining, the exaggeration, and the hysteria, the problem with Arrington’s argument is it’s based on a number of bad assumptions.

Specifically:

Bad assumption #1: Search engines and mega portals are the only way to get traffic
AOL is feeding their content slop to their “massive” audience (which, in fact, is shrinking at rates that would make Biggest Loser proud). Arrington makes the assumption that those AOL customers won’t come find your non-crap content, because the fast food stuff is the only thing on their radar.

This then leapfrogs to another bad assumption, that the only way anyone sees content is to find it on a mega site like AOL, or via a search engine like Google.

Links from your favorite bloggers count for nothing. Tweets from a friend count for nothing. Facebook pointers count for nothing. Email from your mom counts for nothing. No one ever points a friend to genuinely valuable content and says, “Hey, you should check this out, you would like it.”

Bad assumption #2: Readers will keep reading crappy content
AOL’s user base is still big enough that I’m sure they’ll get some readers at least skimming their stuff.

But when it comes to content, Darwin rules. If content doesn’t meet the needs of users, it dies. We can’t even force grade-school kids to read what doesn’t engage them. What makes us think that AOL can “force feed” their users anything?

And what makes us believe that even if those users do skim AOL’s lame content, that they’ll never read anything else, or that, when they have a particular need or concern, they won’t go actively looking for something more useful?

Business tip for TechCrunch: when you find yourself afraid of a stumbling dinosaur like AOL, there’s something gravely wrong with your thinking, your business model, or both.

Bad assumption #3: Google would rather serve fast food content than your content
Now I hold no illusions that Google is a benevolent, all-knowing deity that rewards the just and punishes the wicked. But based on observation, it’s pretty clear that Google would rather serve good content than scraped and mashed junk content.

Google wants their searchers to find a good experience on the other side of their search result. If sites like Demand Media, a video producer that slaps together 4,000 videos a day in what amounts to content sweat shops, can deliver content worth watching, they’ll do well.

If they don’t deliver something worth watching, they don’t give Google’s searchers the experience Google wants to deliver. Which means Google becomes less valuable.

Google can’t be “force-fed” any more than readers can. There’s no reason to believe they’ll treat this “hand assembled” spam more kindly than the bot-created kind.

Bad assumption #4: Content means news
Arrington also says that sites like the New York Times are “outright stealing” his content and passing it off as their own. (And he warns you, little mom and pop, that your content’s going to be stolen without attribution as well.)

By “stealing,” Arrington apparently means that when TechCrunch publishes a breaking story, the New York Times often writes a story on the same topic, using their own reporters and neglecting to thank him for his tireless journalistic efforts.

If you’re not TechCrunch, this is not a problem that you need to spend even four seconds thinking about. You already know from hanging out on Twitter and reading blogs that news spreads more quickly than anyone’s ability to control it, and that nobody “owns” a breaking story.

For those of us who create “hand crafted” content, what we say isn’t nearly as important as how we say it. We rarely break news (although occasionally we become the news.)

If readers want the latest news, they rightly go to a site like TechCrunch, the Times, or, increasingly often, Twitter.

It’s when they want useful knowledge, insight, or analysis that they come back to us. Plus, there’s a reason we get you to focus on delivering educational content versus commodity news, right?

We’re valuable precisely because we can cut through the noise and give them only what’s useful and relevant to them.

I’m sure it’s irritating to Arrington not to get a linkback from the Times, but that’s his headache, not ours. He seems to be doing ok without it.

Bad assumption #5: You need millions of eyeballs to make a living
There’s an implicit bad assumption behind all of the explicit bad assumptions in Arrington’s post, which is that the only way you’ll be able to make a living with content is to attract huge amounts of traffic.

In other words, the only possible model is to attract enough attention (via search engines, for your breaking news) to monetize your site with advertising.

But you already know that’s not a business model for the real world.

Let’s say you have a blog that gives business advice to yoga teachers. You’ve paired that with a simple but effective marketing system to sell group coaching, individual consulting, and information products to readers who want to go further with what you’re teaching. You only need to find a few hundred customers a year to make a very nice living.

No fast food content generator on earth is going to outrank you for “how to run a yoga studio.”
If a cheap, scratch-the-surface video or post does outrank you for that #1 spot, the reader quickly finds out that the fast food content doesn’t meet her needs at all. Click goes the back button, and she’s looking for you again.

Your content collects links from like-minded people, because it’s cool and valuable.

Other yoga teachers (and herbalists and organic co-ops and past-life regression therapists) will spread the word about you faster than Google ever could.

You have no reason to run advertising for anything other than your own products. So you don’t need to pull hundreds of thousands of “eyeballs” to make a decent living. You just need to make a great connection with the right 300 people.

So what should a “whole food” content producer do?

Exactly what you were doing yesterday.

Keep your eyes on your audience, not Chicken Little pundits telling you (again) that you can’t make a living.

Keep following the First Rule of Copyblogger. Keep creating content that rewards the reader for consuming it. Keep cutting through the clutter and noise by being smarter, more relevant, and more interesting.

Fast food content is just the latest incarnation of an old affliction — spam. If it hasn’t killed us yet, this new version isn’t likely to make much of a dent.

For content-based marketing strategies that work in the real world, sign up for the free Copyblogger email newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. It’s packed with the information and advice you need to create real business success, and it’s 100% hysteria-free.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Addictive and Abusive Behaviour in Children

A new US survey has found that more and more American teens are participating in abusive and addictive behaviours i.e. smoking pot, abusing pain killers and using illicitly-obtained stimulants prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
15.9 percent of tenth graders reported using marijuana in the last month. The percentage of eighth graders who considered using ecstasy once or twice a dangerous activity decreased from 42.5 percent in 2004 to 26 percent in 2009.

Abusive Activities
It isn’t just drugs our kids are addicted to. Kids are now playing a very dangerous and abusive game called “the choking game”. This “game” is an abusive activity that involves them choking one another or using improvised nooses to cut off the essential oxygen supply to the brain, just long enough to feel “high” and not long enough to black out, hopefully.

Self Harm
Teens are also using sugary drinks and food as a drug. This comfort eating is causing obesity rates to soar. These are simply avoidance and coping strategies that children are using to avoid facing what's happening in their lives and in the world today. It's like saying that anything will do to get them away from reality.

Obesity in children has the effect of excluding a child from normal competitive activities, not just sports but social activities involving interactivity and relationships between the sexes. This is a more 'comfortable' place for the child to inhabit and once established, it is very difficult to leave.

Positive re-enforcement
Obesity in children can be induced by parents trying to deminstrate their love in an inappropriate way and because the food is provided by a loving, comforting person, the child associates the food with love and comfort. It is this positive re-enforcement that is difficult to overcome.

Technology abuse
Marijuana, pain medication, stimulants, the choking game or fast food are not necessarily the biggest “drugs” to which kids are addicted. They are using their iPods, DSIs, YouTube, reality TV and the modern cult of 'celebrity' as escapism.

They are doing this to shut down their minds, avoid dealing with their feelings and emotions. They have come to substitute these unpredictable and complex emotions with the simpler on/off “high” of being lead by technology and have become voyeurs to other people's distress and emotions, displayed to them on a screen, and categorised as 'entertainment.'

At What Cost?
The price that humanity will pay for raising a generation of substance, technology and artificially stimulated emotion addicts, is probably incalculable. We can certainly expect that teenagers using pot, painkillers, choking each other for kicks, etc will be unable to resolve their emotional and psychological issues, in this way.

Consequently, they face an increased rate not only of repetative substance dependence, underpinned by depression and anxiety and associated physiological disorders, e.g. hypertension, cardiac disease, malignancy, etc.

Puberty and Sex
Unresolved emotional conflicts during puberty lead to greater risk taking in sexual exploration and intercourse becomes the 'perceived' answer. After all that's what the glossy magazines, films, pop stars and popular personalities advocate.

If our young people turn to sex to resolve issues, we can expect higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, over the next ten years. We have to anticipate more violence from both sexes, because our young people are evolving into adults with little or no real experience or guidance as to how they manage their emotions, including anger, envy and jealousy.

Avoidance of Disruptive Interruptions
There is also a higher likelihood of repeatedly turning to street drugs, to try to contain or avoid the uncomfortable feelings and emotions that arise everyday and in normal human interaction.


Their psyche is broadcasting emotional shockwaves that their immature brains do not understand and cannot, or do not want to, deal with. Therefore it grasps at a familiar avoidance tactic. The drug induced solution turns off or turns down, the level of consciousness and therefore the need to deal with this disruptive 'interruption.'


Life-threatening events
If the distraction becomes a life-threatening event, as in the 'choking' game, then the brain is forced to re-calculate it's priorities. The internal alarm systems trigger and the more dominant and instinctive reactions that are pre-programmed to sustain the life of any human, take over. They stabalises and normalises the body's physiological functions.


The release of adrenalin and nor-adrenalin during these traumatic events create a 'high' feeling, as well as dispelling and discarding any 'non'essential' thoughts, emotions and activities. The troubled thought have been extinguished but only for a limited space of time and is has been done at a huge cost to the body.


There are better ways to resolve troubled thoughts. Ways that are more effective and not only less damaging but also more beneficial and soothing to the psyche.

Muffled Senses
All of this activity can be reduced to the simple adage that you need to get 'high' to enjoy life and to fully participate in life's great adventure. We need to be intoxicated in some, less cognitive and have a more distorted or muffled sense of our present reality. This comes from the 'brand' and 'lifestyle' marketing that our children are faced with all day every day. They have grown up with it, you, as parents have not.

Don't Panic!
I believe there is still hope for our children and that hope is in the parents' hands. Your role, as a parent or guardian, is to show them the pleasure and joy that can exist in being with other people, interacting in a playful non-threatening way, listening to the experiences of their elders or people from other countries.

Show them the benefit of cooperation and collaborative play, the value of each link in the chain of events that leads to a succesful outcome and the resolution of troubling issues. The pessimistic view is too painful to endorse and with effort, it can be changed from this point on. As their parents or guardians, take the lead and break their addiction in a positive, loving and supportive way.

You are invited to share your experiences, successes and concerns with me here. Please post a comment.

Artists who Twitter and blog

Find more photos like this on #Artwalk

Being Santa at a Childrens' Hospice is the best and worst job ever

A Santa Claus volunteer leans in for a girl who just received a candy cane at a hospice care center. John Scheuch, Santa-America's executive director, says these kids sometimes ask difficult questions.

"I visited a 6-year-old who asked Santa, 'What is it going to be like when I die?' After a gulp and a deep breath I said, 'I don't really know, but I do know you will not be hurting or in pain anymore and that can only be more pleasant.' Then we spoke of other things."

By Christmas Day, a career Santa can name the top 10 toys for girls and boys in a heartbeat. He has sat smiling patiently, swathed in red velvet on his gilded throne, and listened to countless children whisper their innermost desires.A volunteer hospice Santa hears a different sort of wish list. Sometimes, the children he visits don't want to talk. Others ask questions no one feels brave enough to answer.

ON THE WEB: More information at santa-america.org

The non-profit national volunteer service organization known as Santa-America has 175 hospice-trained Santas, scattered over more than 40 states, who visit terminally ill children or youngsters who are grieving because of the loss or impending loss of a parent.

The Santas are an elite and bearded group from all backgrounds: Some are retired, others work at jobs that range from salesmen to psychologists. Before visiting a home or hospital, they memorize names of family members and pets; they undergo a rigorous background check and receive ongoing instruction in grief, bereavement, symptom management and spirituality.

"First and foremost, you have to remember that these are children, and you have to go in treating them like children," says John Scheuch, Santa-America's executive director. "I have visited babies who are only weeks old, and, on Christmas morning, it's clear that some won't survive.

There are others who are realising where they are and what is going to happen and they are wrestling with that.

Guaranteed to bring a year to your eye. Read More at the Washington Post ...........

Germany wants to keep submarine maker in German hands

German Class 212A and 214 submarines were the first in the world to undertake long dives independent of external air sources.

The German government is pushing to prevent foreign investors buying a majority stake in submarine maker Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW), the Spiegel weekly reported on Sunday.

Representatives from the German economy ministry were in talks with two German companies that have expressed an interest in HDW, which is currently owned by steelmaker ThyssenKrupp, Spiegel said, without naming its sources.

Also involved in the talks is Abu Dhabi MAR, which owns interests in other European shipyards and which is eyeing a minority stake in HDW, Spiegel said.

HDW specalises in submarines powered by fuel cells and has supplied navies around the world, including Israel's. Because of the firm's sensitive area of business, a sale of the company would require government approval.

Thomas Kossendey, state secretary in the defence ministry, told an industry conference in September that Berlin wanted to ensure that the design and construction of military vessels "stayed in German hands."

Beware the Greeks: They have no Gifts to Bring to the Party

The future of the planet may hinge on the deliberations under way in Denmark, but the eyes of many Europeans will be fixed on a country rather further to the south. For the future of the eurozone may hinge on the grim developments under way in Greece, a usually delightful country that accounts for less than 3 percent of the European Union's gross domestic product.

Greece is hurting. Its two prize industries are shipping and tourism. Shipping has been badly hit by the fall in world trade, and cargo rates are currently bumping along near the bottom of a 25-year low. Tourism has been hurt by the general recession in Europe but also by Greece's misuse of the euro currency. And years of massaging the economic statistics have battered the country's credibility.

The comfort blanket of the euro tempted recent Greek governments to live and spend far beyond the country's means, while prices for tourists remain high. They are much cheaper in Turkey, its neighbor and rival for the tourist euro, because Turkey was free to devalue its currency.

So Greece this year faces a budget deficit of 12.7 percent, with its debt soaring above 100 percent of GDP and the new center-left government reluctant to slash public spending in the draconian way the Irish did last week. So Greece now has to pay 2.5 percent more interest on its euro-denominated bonds than Germany does, and the downgrade of its debt from AAA- to BBB+ status means that the European Central Bank may be unable to accept them as collateral for loans.

This should be a Greek crisis, but the euro dimension makes it start to look like a European one, because several other eurozone countries are in similar difficulties. If members of the eurozone cannot be bailed out, then the credibility of the euro is in deep trouble. The ECB is hoping that the Greeks take the bitter Irish medicine, or that Greece turns to the IMF (which could to the same thing).

The question the ECB does not want to ask is whether Germany, the backbone economy of the euro, will stand by its partners. Germany's own borrowing is set to double next year to 6 percent of GDP, after its GDP shrank this year by 5 percent. The main reason for the increased deficit is the government is trying to revive the economy with tax cuts and more labor-market subsidies.

"Public finances are in an extremely strained state due to the dramatic weakening of overall economic activity," said a joint statement of finance ministers from the country's 16 states and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Germany's unemployment has remained low because of a government measure to subsidize short-term working, paying up to 67 percent of an employee's salary to prevent layoffs, even when a company has few customers. This has worked in the short term, but unless German exports revive soon it is likely to prove unsustainable, and if the subsidy stops German unemployment will soar above 10 percent. At that point, it would become politically toxic to talk of bailing out the feckless Greeks.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. Between them, governments and central banks have over the past year pumped about $5 trillion (or 10 percent of global GDP) into fending off another Great Depression. This has supplied a modest recovery, but the private economy has not yet been able to take over the heroic job of sustaining it.

"We have not yet achieved self-reinforcing recovery," former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker warned the Germans in a widely cited interview with Der Spiegel last week. "We are heavily dependent upon government support so far. We are on a government support system, both in the financial markets and in the economy."

The G7 economies are approaching the ugly moment of transition. The massive deficit spending by states and liquidity creation by central banks cannot be long maintained. They are running out of ammunition. Within the next six to 18 months, they will have to rein in the deficit spending and increase interest rates, and hope that the private economy will by then have recovered sufficiently to restore growth. It is very questionable whether the private economy is healthy enough to do this. And in the case of weak economies like Greece, governments will then face an ugly choice between depression and default.

The crisis may come sooner, because of the growing threat of a major currency crisis. Since China will not revalue its currency and alleviate the problem of chronic imbalances, the United States is letting the dollar fall against more flexible currencies. This is pushing the burden of adjustment onto the euro and the yen in a way that is becoming unsustainable for eurozone exporters.

A currency crisis would be disastrous and probably trigger a wave of populist protectionism against Chinese exports. That is the main reason why the "recovery" is so unconvincing and also why gold remains above $1,000 an ounce. The risks are ahead are as daunting in Greece as they are in Denmark.

China: Beijing cuts broadcaster's signal amid censorship and media crackdown

China has blocked the broadcasting signal for a popular television network, a company official said Monday, amid growing media censorship in the country.

Sun TV viewers on the Chinese mainland called the network's Hong Kong office on December 5 to report that they had lost their signal, the spokesman said, declining to give his name or job title.

"Some people in the audience called our broadcasting centre," he told AFP.

"We later confirmed that all the signals on the mainland are blocked, but we don't know the reason."

Chinese talk show celebrity Yang Lan founded Sun TV, which is owned by Hong Kong-listed Sun Television Cybernetworks Enterprise. Its programmes are aired in Hong Kong and throughout Southeast Asia.

It was unclear why China cut the signal, but the network's politically outspoken guests may have angered Beijing.

The move comes after China detained several thousand people in a crack down on internet pornography with authorities offering rewards of up to 10,000 yuan (1,465 dollars) to Internet users who report websites with adult content.

China's Communist Party has a history of blocking online content it deems unhealthy, which includes pornography and sensitive political information.

As of November 30, authorities had shut down over 400 video and audio websites this year for operating without a licence or for containing pornography, copyright-violating content or other "harmful" information.

Popular sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have also been blocked in China as authorities try to tighten the flow of information, especially following unrest in Xinjiang this year and Tibet last year

H1N1: Swine Flu Vaccine for Children Withdrawn

Hundreds of thousands of swine flu shots for children manufactured by French drug company Sanofi Pasteur have been recalled because tests indicate the vaccine doses lost some strength, government health officials said Tuesday.

The recall is for about 800,000 pre-filled syringes intended for young children, ages 6 months to nearly 3 years. The shots were distributed across the country last month and most have already been used, according to the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Doctors were notified of the voluntary recall on Tuesday. Dr. Anne Schuchat, a CDC flu expert, stressed that parents don't need to do anything or to worry. The vaccine is still safe, she said.

The issue is the vaccine's strength. Tests done before the shots were shipped showed that the vaccines were strong enough. But tests done weeks later indicated the strength had fallen slightly below required levels. Why the potency dropped isn't clear.

Children in that age group are supposed to get two doses, spaced about a month apart. Health officials don't think children need to get vaccinated again, even if they got two doses from the same lots, said Schuchat.

Swine flu vaccine has been available since early October, and since then manufacturers have released about 95 million doses for distribution in the United States.

The recalled shots were made by Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of France-based Sanofi-Aventis Group. The company reported the potency findings to the government officials and did a voluntary recall. A Sanofi Pasteur representative could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Hackers Brew Self-Destruct Code to Counter Police Forensics

Hackers have released an application designed to thwart a Microsoft-packaged forensic toolkit used by law enforcement agencies to examine a suspect’s hard drive during a raid.

The hacker tool, dubbed DECAF, is designed to counteract the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, aka COFEE. The latter is a suite of 150 bundled, off-the-shelf forensic tools that run from a script. Microsoft combined the programs into a portable tool that can be used by law enforcement agents in the field before they bring a computer back to their forensic lab. The script runs on a USB stick that agents plug into the machine.

The tools scan files and gather information about activities performed on the machine, such as where the user surfed on the internet or what files were downloaded.

Someone submitted the COFEE suite to the whistleblower site Cryptome last month, prompting Microsoft lawyers to issue a take-down notice to the site. The tool was also being distributed through the Bit Torrent file sharing network.

This week two unnamed hackers released DECAF, an application that monitors a computer for any signs that COFEE is operating on the machine.

According to the Register, the program deletes temporary files or processes associated with COFEE, erases all COFEE logs, disables USB drives, and contaminates or spoofs a variety of MAC addresses to muddy forensic tracks.

The hackers say that later releases of the program will allow computer owners to remotely lock down their machine once they detect that it has fallen into law enforcement hands. The hackers, however, have not released source code for the program, which would make it easy for anyone to see if the program contains malware that might also harm a computer or allow the attackers to take control of it.

Update: The developers of DECAF have taken issue with Threat Level referring to them as hackers. “We’re just two developers who support the free flow of information and privacy,” one of them wrote Threat Level in an anonymous e-mail. “You could say we’re just average joes.”

First-born children are 25% less trusting and cooperative

Popular (mis)conceptions say that 'First-born children are more likely to achieve greatness', but recent research claims that if this is true, then it comes at a price. Scientists say that the only-child and the first-born child is more likely to be less trusting, and have a less generous or a less cooperative disposition.

Previous Research
Previous studies would lead us to believe that firstborns are generally smarter than their younger siblings and perhaps more likely to become leaders, while younger brood-members tend to be more rebellious. It would be interesting to know if you have found this to be proven, in the real world.

Recent Research
To see if trust in adults might also be affected by birth order, Alexandre Courtiol at the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in Montpellier, France, paired 510 students with anonymous partners to play a finance-based game.

It is a standard game used to shows a umber of things:

• the level of trust a person has in other people,
  
• their willingness to take part in collaborative and cooperative behaviour and
  
• the level of risk they are willing to take.

It can also be used to try and understand the level of 'greed' a person has but that's a much more intangible trait that needs other coroborating data.

The Rules of the Game
Both players were given 30 monetary units and told that whatever they had left at the end of the game would be converted into real cash. Player A was told to give any sum of money to player B, with the knowledge that this would be tripled for player B's pot. Player B then had the option of giving any sum of money back to player A.

The Results
The selfish decision would have been for neither player to give any money away, but less than 1 in 10 participants played this way. The more money player A gave away, the more trusting they were judged to be and the more money player B tended to return, showing reciprocity.

Summary
On average, an only-child or the eldest of a number of sibling, gave 25 per cent less "money" than non-firstborns or only children, whether they were in role A or B. Courtiol interprets this as meaning firstborns were 25 per cent less trusting and reciprocating (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.09.016).

8 Questions that will increase your blog traffic

8 questions to ask yourself to help identify what is working (or what might work) with your readers and niche:

• What topics generate most comments on your blog?
• What topics generate most comments on other blogs in your niche?
• What other sites do your readers visit a lot? What activities are they doing there?
• What features are readers asking for?
• What was your biggest traffic day – what brought it about?
• Which of your posts seem to get Retweeted most on Twitter and passed around most on other social media sites?
• Which of your posts are getting linked to most from other blogs/sites?
• What other sites send you most traffic? How can you build relationships with these sites?

This list could go on and on. It is all about looking for points of life on your site (even small ones) where there’s some kind of energy or positive outcome happening and then repeating them in a slightly different and unique way.

You are looking for opportunities to build on and improve on what you did previously. Good luck!

Picture This! Artwork, Graphics and Visualisation for better data management

"A good sketch is better than a long speech..." -- a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte
The ability to visualise the implications of data, is as old as humanity itself.

Yet due to the vast warehouses (quantities, sources, and silos) of data being carried around our global economy at an ever increasing rate, the need for superior visualisation is growing dramatically.

Over time we will naturally migrate toward superior visualisations to cope with this oceanic tide of information or be lost in the tidal wave that engulfs us.

Our ability to deal with data, in a non-visual and graphical nature, is self limiting. Whereby the human becomes the squeeze point where data grinds to a complete halt, awaiting further decisive action.

Neanderthal Approach
Since the days of the cave paintings, graphic depiction has always been an integral part of how people think, communicate, and make sense of the world. This modern world is no different, new information systems are at the heart of all management processes and organisational activities.

The good news is that even in a world of information surplus and overspill, we can draw upon deep human habits on how to visualise information to make sense of a dynamic reality and enable understanding and comprehension.

Moore's Law
The quality, timeliness, granularity, and volume of data has increased greatly. Also, with the ever improving assistance of Moore's Law, we have the power to recombine and analyse the vast stream of information at a price point that makes even very advanced visualisation techniques within the reach of any business.

The Power of Three
Working with my clients, I've seen three primary benefits of superior graphic representation:

1. Greater visualisation is more efficient — they let people look at and absorb vast quantities of data quickly.
2. Graphics or visual representations can help an analyst, or a group, achieve more insight into the nature of a problem and discover new understanding.
3. Better visualisation can help create a shared view of a situation and it will establish a shared alignment on needed actions.

Data Combination
In addition to arranging the information to create shared understanding, visualisation gives us the ability to combine data to create a new insight, quickly and clearly

Mapping Tools
The quality of cheap mapping tools and the availability of vast quantities of free or inexpensive data is growing. The planet is becoming "smart" in the sense that we can track, monitor and see much more of both the built and the natural environment.

The Challenge
The challenge is that if management teams do not consciously build in great visualisations, their organisations will waste an inordinate amount of time, sifting through the quagmire of bits, and may not even get to the effective insights they need.

Collaboration
Perhaps most perniciously, people will be too focused on their own part of the puzzle, never getting to the shared and collaborated understanding that allows teams to take the right action in a tight time-frame.

Questions?
Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is there a simple map or maps of information that could make my life easier?
2. Do we have the ability to take this data mountain and synthesise it into these new forms?
3. How much time does the organisation waste arguing about the facts instead of deepening understanding or crafting solutions?

CHINA: CNPC-led consortium wins contract for Iraq's Halfaya field

A consortium led by China's CNPC was awarded the contract for Iraq's Halfaya oil field at an auction on Friday, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said.

The group also includes Malaysia's Petronas and France's Total. It requested fees of 1.40 dollars per barrel of oil extracted from the field, and projected that it would produce 535,000 barrels per day.

Halfaya, in southern Iraq near the border with Iran, has proven reserves of 4.1 billion barrels of oil. It lies just north of the giant Majnoon field. Dutch oil company, Shell is also bidding for drilling and exploitation rights in the region.

The successful bid beat three other offers. A joint bid between Norway's Statoil and Russia's Lukoil requested 1.53 dollars per barrel and projected production of 600,000 bpd. India's ONGC and India Oil submitted their own bid with Turkey's TPAO, requesting 1.76 dollars per barrel with production of 550,000 bpd.

Separately, a consortium made up of Italy's ENI, South Korea's KoGas, the US's Occidental Petroleum, China's CNOOC and Angola's Sonangol asked for 12.50 dollars per barrel, with projection of 400,000.

China: Gas pipeline from Turkmenistan nearly completed

China said Thursday a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to its Xinjiang region would be completed this month, as President Hu Jintao prepared for a weekend visit to the central Asian nation.


The pipeline will ship gas over more than 1,800 kilometres (1,120 miles) from Turkmenistan, through neighbouring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China, vice foreign minister Wang Guangya told reporters. "The construction started in July 2008 and one of the two lines of the project will be completed in mid-December this year," Wang said at a briefing on Hu's upcoming trip.


According to earlier state press reports, the two-line project will have a total transmission capacity of 30 billion cubic metres (1.1 trillion cubic feet) of gas a year to energy-hungry China. Hu is due to leave for Kazakhstan on Saturday and will head on Sunday to Turkmenistan, where he will attend an inauguration ceremony of the so-called Central Asia-China gas pipeline.

Turkmenistan: Saudi and Israeli partnerships

The drive by foreign companies to grab a piece of the action in gas-rich Turkmenistan is reported to be producing some strange bedfellows. In particular, PetroSaudi, owned by the son of King Abdallah, and Merhav, an Israeli conglomerate run by former Mossad intelligence officer Yosef Maiman.

According to Intelligence Online, a Paris-based Web site that covers global security issues, the companies from these longtime Middle Eastern adversaries are negotiating a partnership "through intermediaries" to explore the Serdar field that straddles the border between Turkmenistan and oil-rich Azerbaijan.

It is reported to contain the equivalent of at least 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

Turkmenistan is the world's 10th-largest gas producer. The United States, Europe, China, Russia and Iran are all clamoring for access to its vast gas fields.

These contain an estimated 20 trillion cubic meters of natural gas -- enough to supply Europe for 66 years.

Maiman once worked for the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, and is reputedly linked to a network of companies owned by the agency.

He has been moving into Central Asia for some time, spearheading an Israeli effort to secure influence -- and a significant intelligence presence -- in the energy-rich Caspian Sea basin, the economic center of the five former Soviet republics that make up the Muslim region.

The Merhav Group has been involved in Turkmenistan's natural gas industry for years. In 2004 The Jerusalem Post described Maiman, a familiar figure in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat, as a "leading figure" in Central Asia's gas sector.

According to some reports, Maiman was made a citizen of Turkmenistan by decree of the country's eccentric and authoritarian president, Saparmurad Niyazov, who died of heart disease Dec. 21, 2006.

According to Intelligence Online, Maiman was behind the appointment of Israel's first ambassador to Turkmenistan, Reuven Dinia, by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently. Dinai is another ex-Mossad officer, who once ran its Moscow station until he was expelled in 1996.

Merhav has reportedly dominated foreign business in Turkmenistan, including brokering energy projects in the country.

Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are closely linked to Israeli commercial interests -- not to mention Israeli intelligence -- and Maiman appears to be well-placed to broker an agreement between them over the disputed Serdar field, which Ashgabat and Baku both claim, and secure a contract.

The German-born entrepreneur, who became an Israeli citizen in 1971 and founded Merhav five years later, also has longstanding business links with Saudi Arabia.

These connections may well expand as Israel and Saudi Arabia both find themselves in confrontation with nuclear-wannabe Iran.

Maiman has traveled to Riyadh several times in recent years on his collection of non-Israeli passports.

PetroSaudi, headed by Turki bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, one of the sons of the Saudi monarch, thus may be a front-runner in Turkmenistan if it cements its partnership with Merhav.

IRAN: Iran and Afghanistan, threaten Gulf security

The Afghan war and the Iran nuclear crisis are among the threats to security in the Gulf region, Kuwaiti foreign minister and deputy prime minister Sheikh Muhammed Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah said Friday.

Sheikh Muhammed was addressing delegations from more than 25 countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council at the opening of the sixth Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain.

Threats to GCC security ran from "Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, go through Iran's confrontation with the international community, to the reality of Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people, down the Horn of Africa, to the crisis in Yemen," he said.

In additional and implicit swipe at Iran, he spoke of "when people call for rebellion against the regime, challenging the government and calling for the overthrow of the government in place."

Gulf officials "should recognise the risks of abusing ideologies in the relations between states," he added. Iran has been accused by the West and various Gulf states of interfering in the affairs of its neighbors and attempting to foment instability.

Sheikh Muhammed also discussed what he described as mid-term problems: the threat posed to Gulf countries by international economic downturns, and the risk of relying primarily on oil for revenue. And he added: "We must look closely at the demographic situation of our six GCC countries, and we will note that there are real demographic challenges in the mid- and long-term."

These challenges included the projected 30 percent rise in the population of the GCC countries by 2020; the large percentage of young people; and the large number of foreign workers in the Gulf.

The consequently large remittances being sent out of the Gulf and the growing number of children of foreign workers in GCC countries also posed a problem, he added. "This generation has no other home than the GCC countries -- they were born, have lived and worked here, and they represent a great challenge in terms of absorption into society from a cultural and a social viewpoint," he said.

The Manama Dialogue conference is sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. This year's conference, which lasts through Sunday, will focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iran.

H1N1: Swine flu toll in Gaza reaches 10

Two more people died of swine flu in the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday, bringing to 10 the total number of Gazans who have been killed by the disease, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

"Two more cases died today, a 25-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man, bringing the total number of deaths from A(H1N1) to 10," said Hassan Khalaf, a ministry spokesman.

He added that another 67 people have been stricken with the disease, including "a number of serious cases."

Gaza, which has been under strict Israeli closure since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June 2007, was among the last places in the world to see cases of the virus, the first of which were reported a week ago.

The ministry has demanded 300,000 vaccines for the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people, including some 13,000 vaccines for government and public and private health workers.

Israel has already allowed in 10,000 doses of swine flu vaccine in a bid to prevent the latest outbreak from spreading to the Jewish state, which has lost 67 people to the virus.

Israel said last week it will allow in 30,000 to 40,000 more vaccines supplied by the World Health Organisation, but the transfer has not yet taken place, according to a military spokeswoman.

The Hamas-run government has meanwhile started examining foreigners entering the territory through the Erez crossing with Israel for signs of the disease, including by taking their temperature.

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Does Disruptive technology always lead to Disruptive Innovation?

Disruptive technology and disruptive innovation are terms used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, e.g. lower priced, designed for a different set of consumers, new materials or technologies.

Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into low-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption (i.e., consumers who would not have used the products already on the market), whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers for whom price is more important than quality.

Dusruptive Technology
Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an unexpected direction.

A disruptive technology can come to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as cheaper, lower capacity but smaller-sized flash memory is doing for personal data storage in the 2000s) or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has largely replaced film photography).

Sustaining Innovation
In contrast to "disruptive innovation", a "sustaining" innovation does not have a changing or disruptive effect on existing markets but instead it has a developmental, supportive and/or complimentary effect.

Sustaining innovations may be either "discontinuous" (revolutionary) or continuous"
(evolutionary) but in both cases they are based on the original mindset, framework or concept.

Revolutionary Innovation
Revolutionary innovations are not always disruptive or certainly not immediate in their disruptive effect i.e. they have a long term effect not a short term one.

Although the automobile was a revolutionary innovation, it was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market remained intact until the debut of the lower priced Ford Model T in 1908. A similar example would be the rise in technological investment into space tourism.

Social Scientists Build Case for 'Survival of the Kindest'

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more supportive, compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and the 'Selfish Gene' by Steven Hawkins, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits. They call it "survival of the kindest."

"Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others," said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. We are a social animal and as Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct."

Empathy in our genes
Keltner's team is looking into how the human capacity to care and cooperate is wired into particular regions of the brain and nervous system. One recent study found compelling evidence that many of us are genetically predisposed to be empathetic.

The study, led by UC Berkeley graduate student Laura Saslow and Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University, found that people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances.

Informally known as the "cuddle hormone," oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, nurturing and romantic love, among other functions.

"The tendency to be more empathetic may be influenced by a single gene," Rodrigues said.

The more you give, the more respect you get
While studies show that bonding and making social connections can make for a healthier, more meaningful life, the larger question some UC Berkeley researchers are asking is, "How do these traits ensure our survival and raise our status among our peers?"

One answer, according to UC Berkeley social psychologist and sociologist Robb Willer is that the more generous we are, the more respect and influence we wield. In one recent study, Willer and his team gave participants each a modest amount of cash and directed them to play games of varying complexity that would benefit the "public good."

The results, published in the journal American Sociological Review, showed that participants who acted more generously received more gifts, respect and cooperation from their peers and wielded more influence over them.

"The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated," Willer said. "But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status."

"Given how much is to be gained through generosity, social scientists increasingly wonder less why people are ever generous and more why they are ever selfish," he added.

Cultivating the greater good
Such results validate the findings of such "positive psychology" pioneers as Martin Seligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose research in the early 1990s shifted away from mental illness and dysfunction, delving instead into the mysteries of human resilience and optimism.

While much of the positive psychology being studied around the nation is focused on personal fulfillment and happiness, UC Berkeley researchers have narrowed their investigation into how it contributes to the greater societal good.

One outcome is the campus's Greater Good Science Center, a West Coast magnet for research on gratitude, compassion, altruism, awe and positive parenting, whose benefactors include the Metanexus Institute, Tom and Ruth Ann Hornaday and the Quality of Life Foundation.

Christine Carter, executive director of the Greater Good Science Center, is creator of the "Science for Raising Happy Kids" Web site, whose goal, among other things, is to assist in and promote the rearing of "emotionally literate" children.

Carter translates rigorous research into practical parenting advice. She says many parents are turning away from materialistic or competitive activities, and rethinking what will bring their families true happiness and well-being.

"I've found that parents who start consciously cultivating gratitude and generosity in their children quickly see how much happier and more resilient their children become," said Carter, author of "Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents" which will be in bookstores in February 2010. "What is often surprising to parents is how much happier they themselves also become."

The sympathetic touch
As for college-goers, UC Berkeley psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton has found that cross-racial and cross-ethnic friendships can improve the social and academic experience on campuses.

In one set of findings, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, he found that the cortisol levels of both white and Latino students dropped as they got to know each over a series of one-on-one get-togethers. Cortisol is a hormone triggered by stress and anxiety.

Meanwhile, in their investigation of the neurobiological roots of positive emotions, Keltner and his team are zeroing in on the aforementioned oxytocin as well as the vagus nerve, a uniquely mammalian system that connects to all the body's organs and regulates heart rate and breathing.

Both the vagus nerve and oxytocin play a role in communicating and calming. In one UC Berkeley study, for example, two people separated by a barrier took turns trying to communicate emotions to one another by touching one other through a hole in the barrier.

For the most part, participants were able to successfully communicate sympathy, love and gratitude and even assuage major anxiety.

Researchers were able to see from activity in the threat response region of the brain that many of the female participants grew anxious as they waited to be touched. However, as soon as they felt a sympathetic touch, the vagus nerve was activated and oxytocin was released, calming them immediately.

"Sympathy is indeed wired into our brains and bodies; and it spreads from one person to another through touch," Keltner said.

The same goes for smaller mammals. UC Berkeley psychologist Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney, a professor of biological psychiatry and neurology at McGill University, found that rat pups whose mothers licked, groomed and generally nurtured them showed reduced levels of stress hormones, including cortisol, and had generally more robust immune systems.

Overall, these and other findings at UC Berkeley challenge the assumption that nice guys finish last, and instead support the hypothesis that humans, if adequately nurtured and supported, tend to err on the side of compassion.

"This new science of altruism and the physiological underpinnings of compassion is finally catching up with Darwin's observations nearly 130 years ago, that sympathy is our strongest instinct," Keltner said.

H1N1: 10,000 Deaths in US from Swine Flu Pandemic

Swine flu has already infected 50 million Americans, killing 10,000, most of them children and younger adults, federal officials reported Thursday.

The new estimates suggest that the flu, also known as H1N1, has spread through 15% of the U.S. population since it was first identified in April. As of Nov. 17, 200,000 people have been hospitalised, says Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's about the same number of people hospitalised during the entire flu season, which usually lasts until May.

At least 7,500 adults 18 to 64 and 1,000 children younger than 18 have died of the disease, Frieden said. In a typical flu season, roughly 80 children die.

"Many times more children and younger adults, unfortunately, have been hospitalised or killed by H1N1 influenza than occurs during a usual flu season," Frieden says.

The analysis marks the government's latest assessment of the H1N1 epidemic. The virus has upended expectations of flu by targeting the young rather than the old. In a typical year, 95% of deaths are in people 65 and older; so far, 95% of deaths have been in people younger than 65.

William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University, says the new estimates reinforce the message that "this isn't an infection to be trifled with or blown off."

Although flu seems to be waning — with just 25 states now reporting widespread activity, down from 48 little more than a month ago — the virus remains highly infectious and may come roaring back, Schaffner says.

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EUROPOL: Tax fraud loses EU carbon trading billions Euros

Tax fraudsters have targeted the EU's carbon emissions trading system, pocketing around 5 billion euros (7.4 billion dollars), the Europol police agency said Wednesday.

"The European Union Emission Trading System has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months," said the agency in a statement.

"This resulted in losses of approximately five billion euros for several national tax revenues."

The agency, based in The Hague, added that it estimated "in some countries, up to 90 percent of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities."

France, the Netherlands, the UK and Spain had all changed their tax rules on the transactions to prevent further losses, the agency said.

"After these measures were taken, the market volume in the aforementioned countries dropped by up to 90 percent," according to the statement.

According to a Europol official, the alleged fraudulent traders set themselves up in one country and bought carbon polluting allowances from a second country, making the allowances exempt from value-added tax (VAT). They were then allegedly sold on to firms in the country where the trader was based, but with the VAT added on, the official said.

The traders are accused of pocketing the VAT instead of handing it to tax authorities, the official said.

The Emission Trading System was launched in the EU in 2005 in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which many scientists link to global warming.

Under the system, the EU allocates carbon polluting allowances to member states to meet its obligations under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.

The states then assign quotas to those industries that belch most CO2 into the atmosphere.

Companies that emit less than their allowance can sell the difference on the market to companies that exceed their limits, thus providing a financial carrot to everyone to become greener.

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CISCO: Beware Koobface - Cyber crooks tarketing banks-social networks

Koobface is malicious code that steals social networking account credentials, logs into profiles and sends "friends" messages along the lines of wanting to share scintillating online videos.

An annual security report being released Tuesday by technology titan Cisco warns that banks and online social networks are prime targets for increasingly sophisticated cyber crooks.

"Criminals have been taking note of the large crowds in social-networking sites," said Cisco security researcher Scott Olechowski. "They steal them with various techniques."

Tactics used to get into social-networking profiles include hacking password databases at vulnerable online services and then exploiting the fact that many people use one password for multiple accounts.

Cisco estimates that a Koobface computer worm, named as a play on social networking hot spot "Facebook," has infected more than three million computers since it first appeared in 2008.

Koobface is malicious code that steals social networking account credentials, logs into profiles and sends "friends" messages along the lines of wanting to share scintillating online videos.

Links enclosed in the messages lead to bobby-trapped Web pages that trick visitors into infecting their machines with copies of the worm.

Crooks sometimes set up fake profiles and then finagle their ways into people's online social circles and entice them to opening computer files tainted with malicious code.

Money-making tricks can be as simple as hackers using social-networking profiles to pretend to be friends in desperate straits that ask to be wired money to get out of trouble in a far-away places.

Social networks are also targeted by hackers out to control or disrupt political discourse.

Business computers can wind up infected because one of every 50 "clicks" in the workplace is to social-networking websites, according to Cisco.

"The blending of social media for business and pleasure increases the potential for network security troubles, and people, not technology, can often be the source," said Cisco fellow Patrick Peterson.

"Without proper cognizance of security threats, our natural inclination to trust our 'friends' can result in exposing ourselves, home computers and corporate networks to malware."

Cyber criminals can mine profiles for names and email addresses of business executives or accounting department members to "spear phish," target strategically placed workers with scams.

The potential for workplace computers to be infected through a social-networking attack is all the more disturbing given the rise of a computer Trojan named Zeus crafted to digitally loot money from banks.

Once in computers, Zeus can swipe information and alter what is seen in Web browsers so that people tending to online banking see correct balances on screen while accounts are actually being emptied by cyber thieves.

"Zeus is sold on a retail basis by criminals to criminals," Olechowski said, putting the price at 700 dollars.

Gangs have used Zeus to steal "400,000 to 1.5 million dollars a shot," he added. Cisco predicts Zeus will be a growing bane in 2010.

Spam remains a tried-and-true method for tricking people into downloading malware or buying specious products, such as fake medicine.

Cisco's report estimates that the amount of spam worldwide next year will rise 30 to 40 percent above 2009 levels.

While US and European countries shut down spam-spewing networks of "zombie" computers infected with malicious code and commandeered by criminals, more are being created in developing countries, according to the California-based firm.

Brazil this year dethroned the United States as the country producing the most spam, according to Cisco. The amount of spam coming from Vietnam and India has also soared.

"In the World Cup of spam, Brazil beat the US for the first time," Olechowski said. "We are starting to see emerging economies represent the bulk of spam globally."

Cyber criminals are taking advantage of improved broadband Internet and computer access in developing countries where people may still have lessons to learn about Internet security.

Increasing spam in developing countries is a symptom of a greater problem, acccording to Cisco senior security researcher Henry Stern.

"This means that there is a greater rate of compromised machines, which means there will be more banking Trojans and other malware," Stern said.

Cisco created a Global Adversary Resource Market Share (ARMS) Race index, which estimates that between five and 10 percent of the world's personal computers are "compromised" by malicious software.

Germany: Springtime for Hitler comedy, To Be or not?

Should Germans laugh about Adolf Hitler? The Deutsche Theater in Berlin last week gave its own "Yes" answer by staging a theatrical version of "To Be or Not To Be," Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 cult movie that satirizes Germany's takeover of Poland.

The play centers on a group of theater actors in Poland who drop their SS play for Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in order not to provoke Nazi Germany, which nevertheless overruns the country.

In the ensuing months, famed actress Maria Tura and her husband, the egocentric theater star Josef Tura, become entangled in an outrageous spy plot that pulls the ensemble together one last time for a final play to save their lives and their country: Relying on their old SS costumes and their acting qualities, they stage an SS parade and in the end even produce a naked Hitler to intimidate a local Nazi brute, and to fly off into freedom.

The Lubitsch film is now an all-time classic, but it took years until it was really respected. When it was unveiled in 1942, at a time when it felt like Hitler might prevail in Europe, the movie was thrashed.

"To say it is callous and macabre is understating the case," The New York Times scathed, and Life asked how "Hollywood could convert part of a world crisis into such a cops-and-robbers charade."

The Deutsche Theater interpretation, stuffed with Nazi memorabilia (usually illegal to display here in Germany) such as swastikas, Fuhrer paintings and a blow-up Reichsadler, did not raise eyebrows. That had been done by the Mel Brooks-authored musical "The Producers," which opened at the nearby Admiralspalast -- where Hitler once had his own VIP box -- earlier this year to rave reviews and considerable controversy.

The German press had extensively discussed whether Germans could and should laugh at Brooks' play without guilt. In Berlin, this discussion became especially meaning-laden.

The city's buildings still bear the scars of World War II in the form of bullet holes. From here, the real Hitler plotted a war and atrocities that killed 20 million people. The Nazi era still burdens Germans with a sense of collective guilt. While Hitler may be dead, neo-Nazism isn't.

Germany saw an upshot of far-right extremism in the 1990s, with hoards of bald-headed neo-Nazis torching asylum homes and clashing with German police. The democratic reaction was swift: Hundreds of thousands of Germans marched peacefully against xenophobia and neo-Nazism.

Over the past years, a series of plays and films have taken World War II as a subject, with "The Downfall" dramatizing Hitler's last days in the bunker. So the stage seemed set for "The Producers," which was a success. Laughing at Hitler seemed to be a liberating experience for Germans, and they did so many times at the second premiere of "To Be or Not to Be."

It was a pleasure to watch the slapstick talents of Bernd Moss, as Joseph Tura, and of Ingo Huelsmann, as his villain-counterpart Professor Silewski, who is trying to rat the entire Polish resistance only to be denied by the actors. Joerg Gudzuhn gives off a ridiculous Bavarian SS brute, and Juergen Huth a frighteningly real-looking Hitler -- heaven thanks that he loses his pants in the end.

Critics from Berlin-based newspapers thrashed the play because they said it offered nothing substantial beyond the film, and that the many comical scenes didn't reach below the surface. That might be true, but sometimes, it's not necessary to laden a play with extra meaning. Instead, why not take it what can be -- and is two hours of fun.

H1N1: BMJ Medical Experts Debunk Tamiflu effectiveness and usage

The ongoing investigation of antiviral drugs and their unproven effectivenesss continues.

UK medical experts from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) are questioning the effectiveness of antiviral drug Tamiflu commonly used against the swine flu virus spreading across the globe, according to a study reported in Britain Tuesday.

An investigation by the British Medical Journal acknowledges that the drug oseltamivir, which trades as Tamiflu, has "a very modest effect in reducing flu symptoms and infectivity in otherwise healthy adults."

But "researchers say there is insufficient published data to know if oseltamivir reduces complications in otherwise healthy adults," the media groups said in a joint statement.

The use of flu drugs like oseltamivir has increased dramatically since the A(H1N1), or swine flu, pandemic began in April 2009, with government rushing to stockpile treatments while persuading people to have vaccinations.

The global death toll since the virus was uncovered in April approached 8,770 in early December, with confirmed infections in 207 countries, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Claims about the effectiveness of drugs like Tamiflu against flu complications have been a key factor in governments' choosing to spend millions of dollars to hoard them, the British Medical Journal said.

The British government has spent about 500 million pounds (813.9 million dollars) on such drugs, they said.

But research on the drugs by scientists from Australia's Bond University was hampered by a "paucity of good data" available from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche that produces oseltamivir.

"As a result, they conclude that they have no confidence in claims that oseltamivir reduces the risk of complications of influenza in otherwise healthy adults, and believe it should not be used in routine control of seasonal influenza."

The researchers called on governments to set up studies to monitor the safety of drugs like Tamiflu, which are called neuraminidase inhibitors.

A team from the University of Birmingham concluded meanwhile that oseltamivir may reduce the risk of pneumonia in otherwise healthy people who contract flu.

"However, the absolute benefit is small, and side effects and safety should also be considered," the statement said.

Professor Nick Freemantle from the University of Birmingham said he saw "very little evidence to support the widespread use of oseltamivir in the otherwise healthy population who are developing signs of influenza-like illness."

"We have remarkably few resources in this country to spend on pharmaceuticals on health and it's surprising to see such widespread use of oseltamivir," he said.

British Medical Journal editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee warned that the review left unresolved important questions about effectiveness of the drugs.

"Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge," she said.

Roche has estimated sales of 1.6 billion pounds this year alone from the drug, the statement said.

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H1N1: 3 Deaths in Netherlands from Influenza A mutation

A third patient in the Netherlands infected by a mutant strain of the swine flu virus has died, the country's health and environment institute said Tuesday.

The Netherlands has officially reported eight cases of the mutated A(H1N1) virus, including the three fatalities, but claims that the strain is not spreading, the institute said.

"The latest fatality was an adult woman who was already ill," institute spokesman Harold Wychgel said, without giving the date of her death. "There is no cause for panic."

"She had been treated for flu for some time and during treatment built up a resistance to Tamiflu," one of the main anti-flu treatment drugs, he said.

Tamiflu and Relenza have since been revealed to be ineffective in the treatment of the current strains of InfluenzaA.

A total of 42 people have died in the Netherlands after contracting the H1N1 virus, and nearly 2,000 have been hospitalised since April.

France, Spain and Norway have all reported deaths related to the mutated form of the virus.

China: Surge in Luxury cars sales for Audi, BMW & Mercedes

Strong Chinese luxury auto sales have lifted the prospects of German luxury car makers which were left behind in an earlier rush to buy cheaper models with 'cash-for-clunkers' subsidies, analysts say.

Audi, BMW and Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, all reported better sales in November on a 12-month basis, with China clearly the fastest growing market for all three.

"China is outstanding right now," Metzler Bank auto analyst Juergen Pieper reports.

Already the biggest market for Audi's parent group Volkswagen, "within five years it will be the most important country for Daimler and BMW and in the next three or four years for Audi," Nord LB analyst Frank Schwope forecast.

Schemes approved by governments worldwide to boost the auto sector with credits for junking an old car mainly benefitted makers of cheaper autos, including VW which aims to overtake Toyota as the biggest automaker by 2018.

Budget conscious auto buyers shunned the kind of powerful cars that Germany is best known for and luxury auto sales slumped sharply early this year.

November deliveries thus compared favourably with what were already weak sales one year earlier, with Daimler reporting a gain of 16 percent, BMW one of 11.5 percent and Audi one of 8.9 percent.

"Since September, sales have been back on the growth track," BMW sales director Ian Robertson said in a statement. "We intend to continue this trend in December and continue to exploit the increasing demand in China," he added.

H1N1: Tamiflu results questioned by the UK BMJ

Research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has confirmed that the antiviral oseltamivir, is only effective in reducing influenza A symptoms by 1 day. (normally Influenza A symptoms persist from 7 - 10 days)

It also confirmed that there was no evidence that oseltamivir prevented the most fatal complications, pneumonia and severe respiratory disorders.

It comes after the Government and GPs failed to reach an agreement on the swine flu vaccination programme for under-fives, with health visitors and district nurses now set to be asked by local NHS managers to step in.

The BMJ research has questioned the validity of research from Roche, the pharmaceutical giant that makes oseltamivir (Tamiflu).

More than a million courses of antivirals including Tamiflu have been given out to people across Britain since the start of the swine flu pandemic.

A review of 20 existing studies was carried out by a team led by experts from the Cochrane Collaboration, which last reviewed the evidence in 2005. Their updated study found Tamiflu "did not reduce influenza-related lower respiratory tract complications".

The drug was found to induce nausea while evidence of adverse reactions to the drug were "under-reported", they said.

Tamiflu was claimed to be effective in treating people preventatively, i.e. after they had come into contact with somebody who was infected, and shortened the length of symptoms in those with swine flu.

But the study criticised some of the evidence available and said Roche had not been able to "unconditionally" provide the information needed. As a result, the team dropped eight trials that were included in their earlier review because they were unable to independently verify the findings.

This leads to further speculation that the mass innoculation of peoples is commercially based, adding to the profits of the pharmaceutical companies, without there being sound medical evidence to back it up.

The power of the pharma lobbyists is such that this conspiracy to defraud the public has extended into the medical and political hierarchy and large incentives are being offered to executives, politicians and medical authorities that support the exploitation of this pandemic.

China: Slams foreign banks over 'evil intentions' behind derivatives losses

China has accused several foreign investment banks of "maliciously" selling derivative products to dozens of state-owned companies, which then booked more than 11 billion yuan in losses on the deals.

The losses were "closely associated with the intentionally complex and highly leveraged products that were fraudulently peddled by international investment banks with evil intentions," said Li Wei, vice chairman of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

"To some extent some international investment banks were the chief culprits and the root of ruin for the Chinese enterprises who encountered this financial derivatives Waterloo."

Li singled out Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup in the article published in the latest edition of the Study Times, an official Communist Party newspaper.

He said 68 of the more than 130 companies controlled by SASAC bought derivatives to hedge against rising commodity prices and fluctuating exchange and interest rates.

China: Regulator raises capital requirements for banks

China's banking watchdog has tightened capital requirements for banks amid concerns rampant lending will lead to a sharp rise in bad debts, state media reported Friday.

Wang Zhaoxing, vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said the minimum capital adequacy ratio for large banks (CAR, the amount of capital banks must hold against their risk) has been raised to 11%.

The CAR was previously set at a minimum of 8%. The move was in response to the "changing macroeconomic situation," Wang wrote in the latest edition of the central bank-backed China Finance magazine. Wang did not say when the new rules came into effect.

"The intention is to ask banks to convert more earnings into capital and provisions ... to withstand potential risks in the future," Wang said. The regulator has told small- and medium-sized lenders to maintain a CAR of at least 10%, he said.

The watchdog last month issued a rare warning that it will impose curbs on banks unless they strengthen their defences against bad loans as Beijing tries to put the brakes on record lending.

Those that fail to comply will face "restrictions on market access, overseas investment, and outlets and business expansion," the regulator warned.

New bank loans reached 7.4 trillion yuan (1.1 trillion dollars) in the first half of the year, hitting a record 1.89 trillion yuan in March, as banks heeded Beijing's calls to pump money into the world's third largest economy.

The figure declined significantly to 355.9 billion yuan in July before rebounding in August and September amid concerns that much of the money had been funnelled into stocks and property at the risk of spiking asset prices.

H1N1: Spain reports death from swine flu virus mutation

Spanish health ministry has reported that a Spanish patient, infected by a mutant strain of the swine flu A(H1N1) virus, has died.

"We have registered three cases of this mutation, including one which was fatal. We believe these are three isolated cases, and that there has been no transmission to any other person," a ministry spokesman reports.

It is the sixth officially reported fatal case of this mutation of the A(H1N1) virus in Europe, health minsters have acknowledged one in the Netherlands and two each in France and Norway.

Last month the WHO said that this mutation had been observed in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Ukraine, Italy and the United States as early as April 2009.

Pandemic flu is declining in North America: WHO

The World Health Organisation confirmed on Friday that swine flu has peaked in North America and was declining, in its latest weekly data on the pandemic. However, in both Canada and the United States, the virus remains "active and geographically widespread,"

The WHO also added that for the past eight weeks hospitalisation and death rates exceeded those seen in a normal flu season.

H1N1 influenza A, was reaching a peak of intensity in much of western Europe, as the disease progressed eastwards into central Europe and through parts of Asia, the WHO added in its pandemic update.

In the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere, the early arriving winter influenza season continues to intensify across central Europe and in parts of central, eastern, and southern Asia.

The UN health agency nonetheless also reported signs of a levelling off of flu activity in eastern European countries that have been hit hard recently, such as Ukraine and Belarus.

As swine flu reached into 207 countries, the global death toll since the H1N1 influenza A, virus was uncovered in April reached 8,768 (an increase of 942) slightly less than the sharp jump recorded the previous week.

The fastest growth in the death toll was recorded in the WHO's European region, which stretches from Ireland to the Pacific coast of Russia, including former Soviet states in Central Asia and Turkey. Some 918 people have died of flu there since the outbreak was recorded, a 41 percent increase in the week to November 29, but still half the surge recorded a week earlier.

In the hardest hit region, North and South America, the toll grew by just under 10 percent to 5,878. Be assured, the WHO are still doing their job in monitoring the widespread outbreak of this pandemic and keeping count of the death toll but do we not expect more than that?

Brazil starts exploitation of major oil reserves

A welder on the job in the shipyard of Angra Dos Reis, Brazil, where workers are building enormous oil platforms that will feature 14,000-ton decks the size of football fields.

Once the offshore pools of oil are tapped, Brazil's proven oil reserves are expected to double. (Juan Forero/the Washington Post)

The challenge facing Brazil's state-controlled energy company, Petrobras is huge: developing a group of newly discovered deep-sea oil fields that will catapult this country into the ranks of the world's petro-powers.

The oil pools are 200 miles out in the Atlantic and more than four miles down, under freezing seas, rock and a heavy cap of salt.

Petrobras has launched a five-year, $174 billion project to provide platforms, rigs, support vessels and drilling systems to develop tens of billions of barrels of oil. Energy officials here project that Brazil, over the next decade, will have one of the world's biggest oil reserves.

"It's going to change the role of Brazil in the geopolitics of oil," Petrobras's president, José Sergio Gabrielli, said in an interview at the company's headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. "We are going to become a much bigger producer."

Petrobras estimates that production in Brazil could reach 3.9 million barrels by 2020, up from more than 2 million a day now. Proven oil reserves would rise from 14.4 billion barrels to more than 30 billion barrels, according to government estimates, putting Brazil in the same league as such major oil exporters as Qatar, Canada, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.

The new discoveries in Brazil's offshore "pre-salt" region do not mean that the country will become a major exporter of crude, according to Gabrielli. He noted that Brazil's economy, which is the world's eighth-largest and is steadily growing, is expected to consume much of Petrobras's projected production.

Iran: Student and Civil Unrest provokes Internet Censorship, Journalists confined to quarters

As the rain poured down, Government opponents shouted "Allahu Akbar" and "Death to the Dictator" from Tehran's rooftops on the eve of student demonstrations planned for Monday.

Authorities choked off Iran's Internet access and have given severe warnings to journalists working for foreign media, to stay in their offices for the next three days. Journalists working for foreign media organisations are banned from covering Monday's protests. They were told by the Culture Ministry that their press cards would be suspended for three days starting Monday.

Thousands of riot police and Revolutionary Guard members armed with tear gas, batons and firearms were deployed Monday outside Tehran University to prevent student demonstrations backed by the opposition. Witnesses said police were conducting ID checks on anyone entering the campus to prevent opposition activists from joining the students.

The measures were aimed at depriving the opposition of its key means of mobilising the masses as Iran's clerical rulers keep a tight lid on dissent.

Government opponents are seeking, nonetheless, to get large numbers of demonstrators to turn out on the streets on Monday and show their movement still has a potent momentum.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi threw his support behind the student demonstrations and declared that his movement is still alive. A statement posted on his Web site said the fundamental clerical establishment cannot silence students, free speech and was losing legitimacy in the minds of the Iranian people.