9 Bathroom Cleaning Problems Solved

 Clever tricks for cleaning your bathroom.

1. "My shower curtain is crawling with mildew"
Wash it with a bleach solution. Shower curtains can be tricky to clean because they are big and cumbersome. Getting rid of mildew, especially during damp weather, can be especially challenging. Here’s a solution that’s quick, easy, and low-cost: Pour 1 gallon (3.7 liters) of warm water and 1⁄2 cup of household bleachinto a plastic bucket. With plastic gloves on, soak a sponge in this cleaning solution, give it a squeeze to avoid drips, and wipe. The mildew will vanish. Rinse using the showerhead.

2. "I’m ready to toss this filthy shower curtain liner"
Toss it in the washer. Don’t throw away your liner just because of mildew and dirt buildup. Extend its life by cleaning it in your washing machine. Set the machine on the gentle cycle with warmwater and 1 cup of regular laundry detergent or 1⁄2 cup of vinegar. Afterward, whirl it in your drier, set on Low Heat or Fluff, for about 20 minutes. Your liner will come out clean and wrinkle-free. Rehang it immediately.

3. "My brass fixtures look dull"
Polish them with baking soda and lemon juice. Don’t rush out to buy an expensive brass cleaner. Save time and money by making a paste with equal amounts of baking soda and lemon juice. Dip an old toothbrush in the mix and lightly scrub the fixtures. Let the solution dry a few minutes and then buff the fixtures with a clean cloth. They’ll look brand new.

4. "The nooks and crannies in my bathroom are hard to clean"
Use an old toothbrush. An old toothbrush is the perfect time-saving bathroom-cleaning tool. For example, you can use it to clean the tracks of your bathtub’s sliding glass doors. Simply spray bathroom cleaner on a paper towel and wrap the towel around the bristle end of the toothbrush. Then scoot the brush along the tracks to dislodge dirt. Or put the little bristles to work on the grime that collects around the rim of a bathroom sink. Once the bristles have loosened the dirt, just mop it up with a damp sponge.

© Polka Dot / Thinkstock

5. "I hate those mineral deposits on my bathroom faucet"
Remove them with white vinegar. No one likes crusty white deposits on a faucet. Try this easy solution: Before you go to bed one night, head to your kitchen for a bottle of white vinegar and three paper towels. Saturate the towels in the white vinegar and wrap them around the faucet like a cocoon. In the morning, remove thetowels. Fill the basin with warm water, plus a squirt of dishwashing liquid. Dip an old toothbrush in the solution and scrub the faucet toremove the final bits of mineral deposit.

6. "I have scum buildup on shower doors."
Use furniture oil to prevent buildup. Cleaning soap scum off a shower door is a tough, time-consuming job. Try using lemon oil furniture polish as a barrier against the scummy buildup. The next time you clean the door, follow up by wiping it with furniture oil on a soft rag. Let the oil sit for two minutes and then polish off the excess with a dry cloth. The furniture polish will leave a slight film of oil that will act as a buffer against future soap scum. Using a shower squeegee (available at discount stores and supermarkets) after every shower will also discourage the buildup.

7. "My glass shower doors are filmy"
Clean them with vinegar, baking soda, and salt. Stubborn mineral buildup on glass shower doors is no competition for a few common household ingredients—white vinegar, baking soda, and salt. Spray vinegar on the door and let it sit for a few minutes. Next, create a paste with equal amounts of baking soda and salt. Use adamp sponge to rub this paste over the door; then rinse well.

8. "My bathroom grout is grungy with mildew"
Spray it with vinegar. Mildew on grout is no match for that miracle household cleaning dynamo called vinegar. Just pour somewhite vinegar into a container, dip in an old toothbrush, and scrub away at the mildew. Or pour the vinegar into a spray bottle, squirt it on the mildew, and let it sit for ten minutes. Rinse with water and apply the old toothbrush if necessary. Bleach is effective in removing mildew from tile grout. Fill a spray bottle with equal parts of household chloride bleach and water. Spray the grout, let it sit a few minutes, and then wipe with a clean white cotton cloth.

9. "Those nonslip bathtub stickers won’t peel off"Loosen them with laundry presoak. You know the ones: They’re shaped like flowers and fish and are stuck on with industrial-strength adhesive. Instead of ruining the smooth surface of your tub trying to scrape them off, follow these simple steps for removing them: Carefully lift corners on each sticker using your fingernail or a plastic scraper. (Metal will scratch most tubs.) Spray the stickers with a good dose of laundry pretreatment product, such as Shout or Spray ’n Wash. Let the stickers soak in the spray for a few hours. This should loosen the stickers and allow you to peel them off. Wipe up any adhesive residue and the laundry spray. Clean and rinse the tub thoroughly.

From Five Minute Fixes

 

Cyberbullying: 5 Things Your Kids Should Know About Their Online Reputation

5 Things Your Kids Should Know About Their Online Reputation,

Just because your child is web savvy doesn't mean they don't need supervision on the Internet.

By Michael Fertik

 

As cyberbullying becomes more and more prevalent in the news and in our children's lives it's important to talk to your kids about their online reputation, especially on social networks, and how it can affect their real lives. Here are 5 basic tips to guide your child as they navigate the Internet:

1. If it’s Online, Consider it Public Information
There’s no way to guarantee that what you post online will stay where you intend it to be viewed. People hack Facebook accounts, friends share private messages, and companies change their privacy policies. Before your child posts a picture, types a wall post, or sends a message, they should consider if what they are sharing is "public information" -- would they want their principal, grandma, or college admissions reviewers to see it? If not, they shouldn't post it.

2. Your Internet Persona Stays With You Forever
The Internet has a very hard time forgetting and is far more like a “permanent tattoo” then we may realize. Today, and even more so in the future, college recruiters look up information about prospective applicants. Fast forward to the day when your child graduates. Hiring managers and recruiters will look at their online reputations before deciding whether to hire. So be wise – Internet mistakes stay around.

3. Practice Good Privacy
Privacy settings aren’t a perfect solution, but they do provide a certain level of protection for social media users. If your child is on a social networking website, make sure he or she knows how to keep updates from public view and max out privacy settings. Sometimes it helps for parents to use the same website, so that you can familiarize yourself with the controls. Additionally, a free tool from ReputationDefender.com, called PrivacyDefender.net, can actually set the privacy settings for you and your child with just two clicks.

4. Your Actions Online Affect Others
Many teens operate under the assumption that anything and everything is okay to share with their online friends. For example, a teen may write, "I wish my Dad would quit his job! He says he hates his job and his boss." While that may seem like an innocuous rant to the teen, if word spread to the father’s boss, that parent might be in trouble. Teens have to learn that what they share online does not only affect them, but that decisions on the Web can have consequences for others.

5. Keep Personal Information Private
One of the cruelest forms of cyberbullying occurs when a bully hijacks another student’s account, locks them out, and then pretends to be the victim. By the time your child has regained control of their account (if ever), their name and reputation could be smeared across the Internet.

To help ensure that your child never has their information stolen, teach the importance of keeping personal information (such as their full birth date, phone number, and address) out of their social networking profile. Additionally, work with your child on creating a strong password that no one else would be able to guess. Some specific tips include using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers. Another good option is making a mnemonic phrase into a password. For example, “I, John Brown, was born at 5:00 in the AM” becomes “IJBwb@5itAM."

Michael Fertik is the CEO and founder of ReputationDefender.com, a pioneer and global leader in the emerging field of online reputation and privacy management. ReputationDefender helps prevent Internet stalking, identity theft/impersonation and other online threats through its technology, allowing people from professionals to parents the ability to monitor and manage what is said and found online.

From readersdigest.com

Literature: Letter from Moscow

Letter from Moscow

By Scott Horton

At the end of part I of Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol presents a romantic vision of his country as it hurtles to its destiny:

And you, my Russia–are you not racing like a troika that nothing can overtake? Is the road not smoking beneath your wheels, do the bridges not thunder as you cross them, and is everything not left in the dust, the spectators, struck with the very show of it, stopped with amazement and wondering if you are not some bolt from heaven? What does that awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell?… Whither, then, are you racing, O my Russia? Whither? Answer me! But no answer comes–only the weird sound of your collar-bells.

Gogol it seems has no idea where his country is headed; he sees it careening to the left and right, between reformers and reactionaries, Westernizers and Slavophiles, religious fanatics and nihlists. The keepers of modern Russian history would certainly grant Gogol one thing: it has been a wild ride. The image of the troika, in the sense of a trio, has also recurred in Russian politics.

In the anxious months that followed Stalin’s death in 1953, the government of the Soviet Union in fact fell into the hands of a troika, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, and Georgy Malenkov. Nikita Khrushchev of course emerged as party leader and ultimately outflanked and liquidated Beria, the core of the troika. In the early politics of the Russian Federation there has also been a troika of sorts. The three most powerful political offices of the nation have consistently been the president, the prime minister, and the mayor of Moscow. Ultimate power rests more with the first two, and the power balance between them has always had more to do with personality and craftiness than with the constitution. On the other hand, Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, began his political climb in earnest as the first “mayor” of Moscow in the late Soviet era (actually he was first secretary of the Communist Party’s Moscow City Committee). From 1992 until earlier this month—a term of 18 years—the office was held by Yuri Luzhkov.

A dynamic political figure, Luzhkov drew renown as a “builder.” Under his administration, Moscow experienced an unprecedented building boom—treasures of the Tsarist era were renovated and covered with miles of gold foil, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (removed by Stalin to make way for a swimming complex) was lovingly restored, public spaces throughout the city were burnished. Building developers generally have loved Luzhkov; NGOs and historic preservationists, not so much. He was guilty of “bulldozing Moscow’s architectural heritage, and replacing it with mock-palaces,” The Guardian wrote. Throughout this period, Luzhkov was the target of insinuations of corruption, especially related to construction contracts, but none of them was ever borne out. His role on the national political stage was, however, wily and effective. Luzhkov’s efforts to launch a political party are generally seen as having triggered Vladimir Putin’s formation of the Yedinaya Rossiya political party which then trounced Luzhkov’s effort in 1999. In a move that says much about the nation’s political culture, Luzhkov then led his party to a combination with Yedinaya Rossiya. Luzhkov was, in the mind of most Kremlin-watchers, the clear potential rival to Putin inside the Russian power structure.

The Moscow Art Theater, where Chekhov’s four masterworks for the stage were premiered. The image of the Seagull appears in the pediment, hence its nickname, the "Seagull Theater."

But of the three horses pulling the Russian troika of state in the last few years, one has clearly been tugging in a different direction: Yuri Luzhkov. He has carefully charted a course to the right of Putin and Medvedev, making a strong appeal to the more xenophobic and chauvinist elements in the Russian political world. This emerged in his tough rhetoric against migrant workers in Moscow, most of whom come from the southern frontier of the former Soviet Union, as well as his continuous gay-baiting. One of the decisive and distinctly liberal policies of the Putin presidency had to do with immigration. He recognized Russia’s need for the skilled and semi-skilled labor of its “near abroad” to fuel the construction industry. When the Russian construction industry sputtered with the global financial downturn at the end of 2008, these policies created an opening for Luzhkov. Difficult as it may be for Americans to understand, in the domestic political sense, Putin has been a liberal—though in the tradition of Pyotr Stolypin, not John Stuart Mill. Putin seeks the creation of a rule-of-law state of sorts, albeit with an autocratic core. And he has promoted a new class of economically privileged professionals and entrepreneurs and the development of a middle class. Luzhkov has a consistent knack for feeling out the space just to Putin’s right as a fertile bed for political rhetoric and propaganda.

The final crack-up came over efforts by the Kremlin to relieve Moscow’s hopeless automotive congestion on the way to and from the prime international airport at Sheremet’yevo by building a new relief highway to St. Petersburg. Luzhkov opposed the routing of the effort. Suddenly the airwaves in Russia were filled with insinuations against him, many of them suggesting that Luzhkov’s opposition to the path of the new motorway was routed in the business interests of his billionaire wife. Luzhkov stood his ground, denounced the attacks as “rubbish” and said he would not be pressured to resign.

Among the followers of Russian politics, it was a classic struggle. President Dmitri Medvedev either had to remove Luzhkov or be viewed himself as weak. He acted in the traditional manner of Russian autocracy, by presidential ukaz. Moscow’s new mayor is Sergei Sobyanin, who was Putin’s chief of staff, a man unlikely to buck the leadership from the Kremlin.

After the Russian Revolution, deposed leaders fled west, a number of them writing their memoirs and taking positions as professors at American colleges. Today, however, exile from the center of power in Russia either means prosecution and imprisonment under challenging conditions in Siberia or flight from the rodina to a comfortable home in a London garden district, and maybe a house or two on the continent as well. Yuri Luzhkov is still testing the political waters in Russia, but he clearly has laid plans for a nest abroad when the time comes. His wife, Yelena Baturina, is reportedly the owner of Witanhurst, the second-largest freestanding residence in London (exceeded only by Buckingham Palace itself), acquired for £50 million in 2008.

• November 9, 2010, 11:00 AM ET

Paul Auster On Book Reviews: ‘I’ve Learned Not to Look’

By Steven Kurutz

Everett Collection

Paul Auster just published his sixteenth novel, “Sunset Park,” which makes him something of an expert on the book publishing process. When we spoke to the Brooklyn-based author recently, we asked if one’s sixteenth book has a different feeling than, say, the fifth. Not really, Auster said. He still cycles through the same post-book emotions: quasi-depression, anxiety, mild dread at stepping away from the writing process in order to promote the book.
One that that has changed, though, is Auster’s relationship to critics. “I’ve learned not to look at reviews,” he said. “Early on I did, I was always curious. You tend to feel very hurt when people attack you and feel indifferent when you get praise. You think, ‘Of course they like it. They should like it.’ I’ve learned that reading one of these attacks is like drinking poison; it goes into your system. You’ll remember the nasty phrases. You can’t get them out of your head. And that doesn’t do you any good as a human being at all to walk around with that sense of rancor or frustration. What can you do?”
The early reviews for “Sunset Park” are mixed, not that Auster has read them.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/11/09/paul-auster-on-book-reviews-i%e2%80%99ve-learned-not-to-look/

Dilma Rousseff: Brazil's new president is latest female leader in Latin America

La Plaza

News from Latin America and the Caribbean

Dilma Rousseff: Brazil's new president is latest female leader in Latin America

November 1, 2010 | 12:46 pm

Brazilians partied on the beaches of Rio and Brazilian stocks rose with anticipation Monday morning as results from Sunday's runoff election confirmed Dilma Rousseff as the South American nation's first female president.

Rousseff, who has never held elective office, won largely due to her ties to her mentor, outgoing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a beloved figure credited with transforming Brazil into a world player. "It's historic," a government worker celebrating Rousseff's win in Brasilia told the Daily Mail. "Brazil elected a factory worker and now a woman. Dilma will be a mother for the Brazilian people."
In her victory speech, Rousseff promised to further attack poverty in Brazil. Making reference to her historic win, she said, "I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say yes, women can."
Here's more coverage in The Times.
Rousseff joins a small but celebrated group of female leaders in Brazil's long history. The last time a woman ruled over Brazil was in the early 19th century, when Princess Maria Leopoldina served briefly as empress consort of the Brazilian empire, and was instrumental in Brazil's declaration of independence from Portugal in 1822. In the final period of the Brazilian monarchy, Princess Isabel, serving as regent, abolished slavery by signing the Ley Aurea in 1888 (link in Spanish).
The abolition of slavery in Brazil triggered the fall of the monarchy.
Brazil became a constitutional republic in 1889. The country witnessed a repressive military dictatorship between 1965 and 1985. It was during this time that Rousseff, daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant and a teacher, became active in Brazil's guerrilla resistance movement.
In this manner she is similar another modern female leader in the Americas. The popular former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, was a member of the resistance during the Pinochet dictatorship and was jailed and tortured, as Rousseff was in Brazil.
Three other women currently serve as leaders in Latin America. Laura Chinchilla was inaugurated as the first female president of Costa Rica in May. Weeks later in Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar became the first female prime minister. Argentina is led by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, its first elected female president.
Brazil hosts the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016, and is set to become a major oil exporter in the coming years.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Dilma Rousseff looks up to a television screen during a presidential debate on Oct. 25. Credit: Reuters

Drinking water crisis: A California town fights back

Greenspace

Environmental news from California and beyond

Drinking water crisis: A California town fights back

November 7, 2010 |  2:36 pm

More than a million Californians live in places where tap water isn't reliably safe to drink, and about a third of them are in small, mostly Latino towns such as Seville in the San Joaquin Valley. Many residents of those communities -- some of the state's poorest -- ignore the often contradictory water-quality notices and spend extra money for bottled water for cooking and drinking.

The crisis has spawned a new group of activists, women such as school bus driver Becky Quintana in Seville, who are pressuring politicians to clean up the water. "People -- even some in Seville -- ask me, 'Why don't you move?'" said Quintana, 54. "But ... my father and his generation sweated for our little house. This isn't about me. It's about our kids and grandkids."

A drive through the San Joaquin Valley, the southern stretch of the Central Valley from Bakersfield to Fresno, reveals the food-producing might of California: Fields of citrus, nuts and vegetables are among more than 200 different crops grown here. Agriculture in these parts is a $28-billion-a-year business.

The small towns where many of the field workers live are far from the highways and major cities. Much of the water contamination in those towns comes from harmful levels of nitrates, which enter the groundwater from fertilizers, feedlot runoff and leaky septic tanks. The colorless and odorless nitrates pose a particular health threat to infants because they can cause "blue baby syndrome," a blood-oxygen disorder that can be fatal. The long-term risk for adults is unclear.

Farmers started using nitrogen fertilizer to boost crop production four decades ago, and since then nitrate contamination in the valley has increased fivefold. The California Water Resources Control Board is writing new guidelines for fertilizer use, but it will take years, perhaps decades, before groundwater pollution begins to ease, water experts say.

"I hear people in Hollywood talk about helping people in the Third World get clean water. Well, we need help in our own backyard first," Quintana said.

Susana De Anda, co-director of the Community Water Center, a Visalia organization that helps small towns make their case to the authorities, says California "has clear and consistent policies: Clean water flows toward money and power."

Seville, population 350, covers five square blocks in northeastern Tulare County, a half-hour's drive from the rolling mountains of Sequoia National Park. Pipes that deliver water from the lone well are riddled with leaks, and tall stands of tules sprout from the pooling water.

Two years ago, the town learned that it had a more serious problem: water contaminated by nitrates. Quintana led a contingent to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors last year.The county eventually agreed to run Seville's water system temporarily, while the community applied for state grants to fix it. But a year has passed with no action from the state, local water bills have increased from $20 to $60 a month — and nothing has been done to improve water quality.

Drinking fountains at Stone Corral Elementary School are shut down, and the 137 students use bottled-water dispensers set up in the classrooms -- at a monthly cost to the school of $220. "I could have bought a whole new language arts series for the cost of that water," said Christopher Kemper, the school's superintendent and principal.

A few weeks ago, Quintana helped launch a grass-roots effort in Seville and nearby communities to replace Supervisor Steve Worthley, who has told Seville residents that he believes their water is probably safe to drink and that any nitrates in the water are probably "naturally occurring."

After all precincts had reported on Tuesday, Worthley trailed his challenger by 21 votes."They've tried to sweep us under the table," Quintana said. "But we will not disappear." Read more, and watch a video, about the Central Valley movement for environmental justice and the drinking-water crisis spawned by agricultural runoff.
-- Scott Kraft

Mom Says Rehab Has Changed Lindsay Lohan

Lohan and her father are reportedly working on their troubled relationship.

LOS ANGELES ( KTLA) -- Lindsay Lohan's addiction treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic has been "life changing," according to her mother.

Dina Lohan says the Rancho Mirage clinic is "an amazing place" that has really brought the 24-year-old actress' problems to the surface.

The troubled actress was spotted shopping on Sunday during an approved outing. According to TMZ, Lindsay reunited with her father, Michael Lohan, during the outing and the two spent several hours at a high-end jewelry store.

The two are reportedly trying to repair their relationship.

Lohan's mother says her daughter is a different person.

Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox sent Lohan back to rehab last month after she failed a drug test in connection with a DUI-related arrest three years ago.

Fox called her an "addict" and ordered her to stay there until Jan. 3.

"You're staying past the New Year's - there's a reason for that," he told her.

This is reportedly the fifth rehab stint for the "Mean Girls" star.

In August, she spent 23 days in a court-ordered rehab program at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center following 14 days in a Los Angeles County jail.

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-lindsay-lohan-rehab-progress,0,3891242.story

What about Michael Knight's new book The Typist

Books, arts and culture                        

Prospero

New fiction

Beatifically sordid

Nov 8th 2010, 21:28 by More Intelligent Life, M.Y. | NEW YORK

GAMBLING, prostitutes, bomb craters and black-market transactions: these are the exigencies of a military occupation, or at least of America's occupation of Tokyo in the mid-1940s. Given the sin-rich atmosphere of “The Typist”, a short novel from Michael Knight, it may come as a surprise that the tone is more beatific than vulgar. But then Mr Knight has never shied away from taking the unexpected angle in his fiction.

“The Typist” begins with Francis Vancleave (“Van”), a young Alabama native who joins the army in 1944 and ships out a year and a half before America drops bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Van is relocated to Tokyo to work as a typist soon after the surrender, churning out directives issued by the brass as well as memos on dental hygiene and runaway inflation. While his roommate shacks up with a local girl and mingles with unsavoury types, Van takes orders, avoids trouble and types letters home to his young wife. He’s a decent person placed in circumstances that tend to rough up young men.
This decency provokes Van to send a birthday gift of tin soldiers to the son of his commander, General MacArthur. The General responds by unexpectedly inviting Van to play with the eight-year old Arthur, a pampered and marooned child. The two develop a brotherly relationship, playing wholesomely on an imaginary battlefield. (“You can’t do that—” Arthur says when Van arranges his soldiers in an ambush position. “The Romans always advance in a phalanx.”) The General, pleased that Van is socialising his son, arranges for the play dates to continue, generating both resentment and curiosity among the other enlisted men.

“I learned to type without reading at all," notes Van of his work, "to let information pass directly from my eyes to my fingers without registering in my conscious mind, and this did wonders for my speed and precision.” This is an apt metaphor for a soldier’s life during the occupation. Van’s modus operandi is not a denial of facts so much as a decision to let the facts pass unanalysed, as Tokyo “return[s] to the business of rising from the ashes” around him. Van’s wife notifies him that she has become pregnant by another man; a military tribunal puts the prime minister of Japan in the defendant’s box, and a tragedy occurs which implicates Van and terminates his relationship with the General’s son. Yet Van keeps typing.

“Beatific” is an unusual way to describe a novel whose plot turns on sordid events, but Mr Knight’s prose transforms even cheap booze and poor weather into lovely atmospheric touches. Liquor tastes “like fruit and kerosene” while snowflakes dart “like schools of fish outside the windows”. Even a brothel “didn’t feel as tawdry as it sounds. The windows were lit with paper lanterns and the girls all smelled like ginger.” Mr Knight’s elegant prose recalls the fiction of W.G. Sebald, another author who explored the melancholy postwar consciousness with subtle mastery.

“The Typist” by Michael Knight is published by Atlantic Monthly Press in America and is out now

About Prospero

Named for the hero of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", an expert in the power of books and the arts, this blog features literary insight and cultural commentary from our correspondents, and includes our coverage of the art market.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2010/11/new_fiction

Rihanna has built a shrine to Bob Marley

Nov 10th, 2010 | Showbizz

 

The Only Girl In The World hitmaker Rihanna has filled a huge room in her new Los Angeles mansion with memorabilia, a giant painting of the legendary Jamaican singer, gun-shaped chandeliers and a bar where she can go and relax.

The Barbados-born beauty explained, “The Bob Marley room is my loungey room, so there’s incense burning, there’s a painting on the wall of Bob Marley in black and white, which I love. The rest of the room goes from green into yellow into red, like the Jamaican flag. There’s a little coffee table and these seats that are like big pillows on the floor, so it’s not formal at all. There are lots of Bob Marley books, lyric books. He’s one of my favourite artistes of all time, he really paved the way for every other artiste out of the Caribbean.”
The 22-year-old beauty also admitted she always listens to her own opinions, regardless of what other people think and refuses to let anyone tell her what to do.
She added in an interview with The Sun newspaper, “I think people are afraid to have fun, they’re afraid of what people think of them, that fear hinders them from being who they really are and expressing themselves the way they really want to. Not everyone is going to love your hair red, but if you want to dye your hair red just do it because you want to, you can do whatever you want. You are a rock star. It’s me, 30 years from now I want to look back and say I really enjoyed it, and lived it to the fullest of my expectations, not like a puppet.”

—Bang Showbiz

Google Toolbar reveals personal data

Bloomberg, Nov 9, 2010, 12.58pm IST

SAN FRANCISCO: Google, owner of the world's most popular search engine, was accused in a lawsuit of violating users' privacy rights because its toolbar software allegedly transmits their Internet activity to the company.

The complaint, filed in federal court in San Jose, California, claims Google has misled users who download the software, used to search and browse the Web, to believe they can disable features that transmit personal data to the company. The case, which seeks class-action, or group, status, was filed on behalf of Jason Weber of Brooklyn, New York.

"With products such as Toolbar, Google acquires a great deal of information about users' Internet activities, adding to the already substantial information it acquires by providing a search engine, network advertising, and more," according to the complaint filed November 5.

Users of Google Toolbar "transmit information about themselves and their online activities to Google that they intended to keep private," according to the complaint.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, has said automobiles equipped with cameras to collect photographs for its Street View product captured personal data from unsecured household wireless networks. The Federal Trade Commission last month ended its investigation of the practice after the company said it will improve privacy safeguards.

According to Google's website, Toolbar features can be used without sharing personal information, except for features designed to work with a Google account. It is possible for some data, such as search queries or page addresses, to contain personally identifying information, the company said on its website.

A Google representative didn't immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.

The case is Weber v. Google, 10-05035, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

Read more: Google Toolbar reveals personal data - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google-Toolbar-reveals-personal-data/articleshow/6893992.cms#ixzz14p1PC3k4

What do political parties do when they desperately seek popular support?

Art on the high table

John Lennon: Three films

John Lennon: Three films

Mark Glancy takes a look at the life and creative genius of John Lennon as seen through the eyes of three films.

John Lennon was born during an air raid on Liverpool in 1940, and it could be said his life never quietened. It included a number of family tragedies, his fame in the Beatles, his outspoken political beliefs and his assassination in 1980. To date, filmmakers have been interested mainly in his youth, and the experiences and influences that led him out of Liverpool and on to the world stage. Interestingly, none has followed the usual path of biopics and made a saint of the subject. Lennon may be a creative genius in each of these films, but he is also angry and arrogant.

1. Nowhere Boy
 Dir: Sam Taylor-Wood, UK, 2009. With Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff, David Threlfall
The opening scene of Nowhere Boy offers a brief but unmistakable reference to the Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). The young John Lennon (Aaron Johnson) is seen running along a portico, while on the soundtrack the opening chord of the song, A Hard Day’s Night, gives way to the sound of screaming fans. But Lennon’s carefree dash is just a dream, and it comes to an abrupt halt when the teenager is woken by his stern Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), who scolds him for oversleeping. This is the film’s portrait of Lennon in a nutshell: he runs toward rock music and fame as a means of escaping his troubled upbringing in Mimi’s middle-class, suburban household.
The film spans the years of Lennon’s adolescence and touches on the key moments of his early musical career. He becomes fascinated by rock music, learns to play the guitar, forms a ‘skiffle’ band called the Quarrymen (named for the Quarry Bank school he attended), meets the younger but more musically able Paul McCartney, and, in the ending, heads off to play gigs in Hamburg.
However, there is more emphasis on Lennon’s upbringing than his music, and a litany of family troubles unfolds. At the heart of the tensions is the struggle between the strait-laced Aunt Mimi, who has raised John since he was five years old, and his mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), a seemingly carefree woman who lives nearby but allows Mimi to raise her son.
With its family traumas, repressive suburban atmosphere, and John’s teenage angst, Nowhere Boy at times harks back to 1950s melodrama, and especially to the fraught family relations of Rebel Without a Cause. It is a subtler film than that, though, and it steps back from caricaturing either Mimi or Julia. Instead, it suggests that John derived his steely temperament from his aunt and his rebellious hedonism from his mother.
Nowhere Boy also offers an evocative recreation of 1950s Britain, and especially a moment when the country was moving out of austerity and into the cultural upheaval of the 1960s.

But is it accurate?
 The film contends that John was haunted by his childhood, and many of the incidents it depicts – including the disturbing scene where the five-year-old is asked to choose between his estranged parents – are true. But the suggestion that John did not see his mother again until he was a teenager is exaggerated and so, too, is the fight between John and Paul McCartney. At the time the film was released, McCartney allowed that Nowhere Boy “captures the essence” of this period of Lennon’s life, but he also insisted that John never punched him.
Accuracy: 6/10

2. Backbeat

Dir: Iain Softley, UK, 1994. With Stephen Dorff, Sheryl Lee, Ian Hart
Backbeat picks up almost exactly where Nowhere Boy leaves off: in 1960, as the Beatles head off to Hamburg. In this film, Lennon (Ian Hart) is more clearly Liverpudlian in accent and intonation. He is also an edgier, angrier and tougher character, which by most accounts is correct.
Aunt Mimi’s genteel influence is not so apparent here. This is a film made out of Beatles legends. The band plays in the Kaiserkeller, a basement bar in the heart of Hamburg’s red light district, where they alternate on stage with striptease acts. Playing six shows a night for an unruly audience, they churn out rough and ready cover versions of songs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley, and they slowly hone their craft.
The dramatic focus is on the triangular relationship between Lennon and his best friend, Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff). Sutcliffe was the Beatles’ bass player in these early days, but while in Hamburg he falls in love with the art student and photographer Astrid Kircherr (Sheryl Lee). Kircherr introduces Stuart and John to a more bohemian side of Hamburg, and she also moulds the Beatles’ look, taking stylish photographs of them and replacing their ‘Teddy Boy’ haircuts with ‘mop tops’. Lennon is dismayed, though, when the romance between Stuart and Astrid leads Stuart to give up the band, remain in Hamburg and pursue his own career as a painter.

But is it accurate?
 There are some chronological anomalies here. These are not substantial and serve dramatic purposes. Likewise, the film can be accused of overplaying Sutcliffe’s importance (even at this stage in the Beatles’ history) and underplaying Paul McCartney’s. Yet the tragic ending – Sutcliffe dies of a brain haemorrhage on the very day the other Beatles returned to Hamburg – is not a scriptwriter’s contrivance. Astrid really did break the news of Sutcliffe’s sudden death to John when he arrived at Hamburg airport in April 1962.
Accuracy: 7/10

 3. The Hours and Times
 Dir: Christopher Munch, UK, 1991. With David Angus, Ian Hart
The Hours and Times takes us forward in Lennon’s life by one more step. It is set in April 1963, just after the Beatles scored their first UK hit singles (with Love Me Do and Please Please Me) but before they went to the USA. The story is not about the beginnings of Beatlemania and indeed not a single Beatles song is heard. It is a much smaller film than that, focused tightly on the friendship between Lennon (Ian Hart) and the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein (David Angus), and a holiday they took together in Spain that month.
Epstein was gay, and so their holiday prompted gossip and speculation. The film ponders this aspect of their relationship, but it is also more broadly concerned with the grounds for their friendship. Epstein was an accomplished middle-class businessman, cultured and polite, from a closely knit Jewish family. Lennon, on the other hand, is portrayed as unworldly, uncultured and indifferent to the needs of others, including his wife Cynthia (heard on the telephone, but not seen).
As in Backbeat, he is portrayed by Ian Hart, but this film offers an even stormier characterisation of the man. The film suggests that it is the ‘times’ that brings these two very different men together – that is, the breaking down of social barriers in the Sixties – and it also portrays their ‘hours’ together as laden with poignancy. The two men talk about the future, what it may hold for them and how they might be remembered. Of course, both
were to die prematurely (Epstein of a drug overdose in 1967).

But is it accurate?

If there is one Beatles song that should be in the film, it is You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, which Lennon is rumoured to have written for Epstein. But that might be too definite for a film which begins with the statement “the following film is entirely fictitious” and thus draws attention to its own speculative nature. The slow pace, inconclusive storyline and black and white photography mean that The Hours and Times is unlikely to be a crowd pleaser, but it won rave reviews among fans of independent films, and diehard Lennon fans would not want to miss it.

Accuracy: 5/10

Mark Glancy teaches film history at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of When Hollywood Loved Britain (Manchester University Press, 1999) and The 39 Steps: A British Film Guide (Tauris, 2003)

http://www.bbchistorymagazine.com/feature/john-lennon-three-films

Madonna Compares Bullying Gays to Lynching, Holocaust

Tuesday – November 09, 2010 – 9:35am

During a satellite appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Tuesday, Madonna makes a heartfelt plea to end bullying in America.
"I'm incredibly disturbed and saddened by the overwhelming number of teen suicides that have been reported lately because of bullying," she says. "Suicide in general is disturbing. Teenagers committing suicide is extremely disturbing, but to hear that teenagers are taking their lives because they are being bullied in schools and dormitories, what have you, is kind of unfathomable."

PHOTOS: Stars who were bullied

Madonna, now 52, says she was bullied as a kid growing up in Michigan.
"I still feel different," she says. "I can totally relate to the idea of feeling isolated and alienated. I was incredibly lonely as a child, as a teenager. I have to say I never felt like I fit in in school. I wasn't a jock. I wasn't an intellectual. There was no group that I felt a part of. I just felt like a weirdo."
It wasn't until her ballet teacher, who was gay, took her under his wing and introduced her to a community of artists that she felt "it was OK to be different," she says.

PHOTOS: Compare Madonna and daughter Lourdes' styles

The gay community "has been incredibly supportive of me," she says. "I wouldn't have a career if it weren't for the gay community."
She says she's been talking to her children about bullying. "We talk a lot about the importance of not judging people who are different -- not judging people who don't fit into our expected view of what's cool and what isn't," she says. "The concept that we are torturing teenagers because they are gay -- it's unfathomable. It's like lynching black people or Hitler exterminating Jews. Sorry if I'm going on a rampage right now, but this is America. The land of the free and the home of the brave...."

Her solution? "I think it would be interesting for everybody to try one simple experiment: Try to get through the day ... without gossiping about somebody," she says. "And not only that -- not even listening to gossip, walking away from it. Can you imagine what your day would be like? How much more free time you'd have? I also feel like you'd feel about better about yourself."

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebritynews/news/madonna-compares-bullying-gays-to-lynching-holocaust-2010911

DISCOVER MORE ABOUT BULLYING
http://www.bullying.org

Get Lauren Conrad's Elegant Side Bun

Tuesday – November 09, 2010 – 12:53pm

Lauren Conrad stepped out at the VH1 Save the Music Foundation Gala on Monday in an elegant blue gown complemented by an equally glamorous side bun.

Mimic her look with this how-to from Devin Toth, stylist at the Ted Gibson Salon in NYC:

Start with smooth, straight hair.
Gently wrap 2-inch sections around a large barrel curling iron. "This will simply enhance or set the blow out. It won't actually curl the hair," Toth told UsMagazine.com.
Next, create a strong side part and brush the hair back to the side of your nape. Secure it in a pony tail. Twist the pony into a large figure-8 twist, and pin it in place.
Glide a finishing cream (Try: Ted Gibson Tame It Shine Lotion, $20) over the hair. Then, on the opposite side that the bun is on, pull out a strand from the front to frame the face.
"This makes the elegant bun less contrived," explained Toth.

http://www.usmagazine.com/stylebeauty/news/get-lauren-conrads-elegant-side-bun-2010911

NORML Women Campaign For Cannabis in High Style

NORML Women Campaign For Cannabis in High Style

From left to right: Sabrina Fendrick, Margot, Pepper, Shaleen Title, Anne Davis, Diane Fornbacher-Wall, Greta Gaines

The image of pot is changing, and the NORML Women’s Alliance is blazing the trail; 

one high-heeled step at a time

A little over one week before California voters will decide on proposition 19, a ballot initiative to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational purposes, the NORML Women’s Alliance and creators of Pot Couture, the first online magazine for sophisticated lady stoners, joined with several other female cannabis activists to spread the message of marijuana reform with a high-style photo shoot designed to reframe the perception of the marijuana legalization movement, and the stereotype of those involved.
The women gathered for the photo shoot are activists and professionals who support proposition 19.  The online magazine partnered with the NORML Women’s Alliance in 2010 with the shared mission of giving a voice to the women in America who oppose marijuana prohibition. “The passage of California’s historic ballot initiative Proposition 19 is a priority for women who recognize that legalization and regulation will create a safer environment for children and families,” says Sabrina Fendrick, coordinator for the NORML Women’s Alliance.

“There’s still this idea that supporters of marijuana reform are on the fringes of society, but that’s just not the case. Marijuana is as mainstream as it gets, and these women are proof,” says Pepper, of Pot Couture.

“Regardless of what happens in California in November, marijuana reform is an issue that is here to stay,” adds Margot of Pot Couture. “The medical benefits of marijuana are proven, and the economic opportunities are real. American women are savvy, and they have no interest in funding a losing war on drugs.”  Margot and Pepper are the two characters depicted in the magazine.
New Jersey NORML Executive Director, Anne Davis, Esq argues, “What we need are common sense marijuana regulations that are practical and enforceable. Marijuana is not nuclear energy or heroin; it is a plant with incredible qualities.  To hold that a natural substance should be prohibited while far more dangerous man-made toxins are permitted is insanity.”
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) speakers bureau director and attorney Shaleen Titlesays, “The pro-legalization cops, judges, and DEA agents at LEAP believe that taking back control of the marijuana trade is about de-funding the only groups that benefit from the prohibition of marijuana – violent gangs and cartels who control its distribution and reap immense profits by murdering rivals and supplying drugs to kids.”

Also taking part in this game-changing makeover of female cannabis consumers are Nashville southern rock singer Greta Gaines, and long-time activist Diane Fornbacher-Wall of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey.
Gaines sums up the purpose of the campaign by saying “if so-called prohibition had succeeded in reducing use rates, reducing crime, decreasing our prison population and benefiting our social and economic conditions, we, the NORML Women’s Alliance, would not be here today.”

Sheep Crossing: A Medieval Trek in Spain

Sheep Crossing: A Medieval Trek in Spain

By Lisa Abend / Madrid Monday, Nov. 08, 2010

 

Every Sunday, Enrique Corrales stops by the Mallorquina bakery in Madrid's Puerta del Sol for a cup of coffee and a sweet roll. But on Oct. 31, there was an unexpected interruption to his ritual. Leaving the bakery, he was mildly shocked to discover the space that only minutes before had been an urban square had suddenly transformed into a barnyard. Pointing to the herd of woolly, braying animals scampering past McDonald's, he asked, reasonably enough, "Why are there sheep in the center of Madrid?"

To answer that question, you have to go back to the 15th century, a time when wool production was the Kingdom of Castile's main industry and shepherds moved their flocks from one end of the realm to another in order to find the best supplies of grass. In 1418, the leading shepherds' organization signed an agreement with the elders of Madrid that guaranteed their right to traverse the city with their flocks during the biannual trek, or trashumancia. Six hundred or so years later, that agreement remains intact, which is why a vast herd of sheep was running through the center of Madrid on Sunday. (See the video "How to Shear a Sheep.)

Today, that ancient agreement is largely symbolic: although some of Spain's sheep still move from pasture to pasture, they tend to do it by truck, not on foot. But this year, residents of the cheesemaking area of La Serena, located in the western region of Extremadura, are helping revive the old practice. And it's not merely for tradition's sake — they're convinced that the trashumancia is good for the environment, the sheep and even the people who eat what comes from the animals. (Comment on this story.)

"The merino sheep is built for the trashumancia: they're the breed that was doing it back in the Middle Ages," says Isidoro Campos, spokesman for the organization that certifies the area's highly regarded artisanal cheeses, called Torta de la Serena. "We want to revive the practice in part because we think it will make better cheese." (See pictures of Spain's madcap tomato festival.)

On June 13, with their own pastures already drying up from the summer heat, 2,200 sheep owned by farmer and cheesemaker Ricardo Quintana left Extremadura and began walking to the cooler, greener north. Along the way, volunteer shepherds joined the flock, tagging along for a few hours or days and helping to keep ovine order. When the herd finally arrived in Tolbaños de Arriba, 370 miles (600 km) away in the province of Burgos, on July 19, it was greeted by the entire town, which turned out to celebrate the return of the trashumancia. "When we were growing up, the herds always came through here," said Begoña Diez at the time. "Our parents and grandparents, their whole economy depended on sheep."

The farmers involved are already seeing the benefits of the trashumancia. The lambs born to this herd, says Primitivo Rodríguez, who has worked as a shepherd all his life, are bigger and healthier than any he's ever seen. "And the cheese is going to pick up all the flavors of the grass and herbs the animals have eaten along the way." (Read "The Fine Art of Sheep-Shearing.")

There are also environmental advantages. The trashumancia has always been a way for shepherds to raise their livestock on pasture year round, even in seasonally dry areas, without having to resort to feed, which is both more expensive for the farmer and less beneficial for the animal's health. But conservationist Jesús Garzón, a leading proponent of the trashumancia, also sees it as an important means of preserving biodiversity. "The migration of herds north in summer and south in winter is ancient," he says. "And the entire Iberian ecosystem is adapted to it. As the herds move, they help spread plant seeds. And if pasture isn't grazed upon, it dries up and becomes a hazard, rather than a benefit." (Comment on this story.)

But there's a reason the trashumancia died out: it's hard work. Soon after the sheep arrived in Tolbaños de Arriba, lead shepherd Rodríguez realized there wasn't enough grass in the area, and the herd had to be moved again. Confronted with long, uneventful days watching the animals, and nights spent in sleeping bags on the cold ground far from home, the other shepherds gradually begged off until Rodríguez was the only one left. "Kids today think they have a right to take vacations, to go to the beach," he says. "I'd like to go to the beach, too, but the sheep don't let me. Somebody's got to watch them." (See pictures of immigration in Europe.)

The lack of interest that young Spaniards have in traditional shepherding makes Rodríguez fear for its survival. But he might have been cheered by the sight on Sunday of David and Ricardo, twin 5-year-old boys. From their post at the side of Madrid's main street, they excitedly watched the herd barrel through the center of town. "Daddy," said Ricardo as his brother reached out to touch the wool on one animal, "I want to be a shepherd!"


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2029457,00.html#ixzz14oreHmGS

Ford can fiesta again

Selling cars

Ford can fiesta again

Innovative marketing helped Ford’s recovery

Oct 28th 2010

“WE LIVED on farms, we lived in cities, and now we’re going to live on the internet!” proclaims the actor playing Sean Parker, one of the Facebook pioneers in the film “The Social Network”. Earlier than most of his rivals, Jim Farley also understood how important the internet was becoming to car buyers. Now, as global marketing chief for Ford, he is hoping to push America’s second-biggest carmaker to the leading edge of online advertising.
This year in America he launched the Fiesta, a European-styled subcompact, using internet campaigns, and introduced the new Explorer SUV on Facebook. Early next year he plans to launch a new Focus compact car globally via the internet. Mr Farley uses traditional media as well as online advertising, but combines both with unconventional marketing.
Ads for mass-market cars are normally dull affairs, but Ford was recently named “Marketer of the Year” by Advertising Age, a trade magazine. And Mr Farley’s methods seem to be helping Ford accelerate into the fast lane. On October 26th the company reported a $1.7 billion profit for the third quarter. This was helped by improved quality and the halo effect from not having to seek a government bail-out and declare bankruptcy, unlike its Detroit rivals. Ford is now hiring workers and paying down its debt. “We are moving from fixing the fundamentals of our business and weathering the downturn to growing the business,” declared Alan Mulally, Ford’s boss.
Mr Mulally poached Mr Farley in 2007 from Toyota, where he had worked for 17 years, often using guerrilla-marketing techniques. Mr Mulally, who had joined Ford the year before, wanted to remake the firm with his “One Ford” global design and development strategy. The idea is that by knitting together far-flung operations with only small adjustments for local tastes, the same cars could be sold in America, Asia and Europe. Mr Farley’s brief was to unify Ford’s marketing and advertising.
Mr Farley found customers were indifferent to the brand—which, he says, “is worse than customers not liking Ford.” Part of the reason was the firm’s image, at least in America, as a Midwestern, staid producer of pickup trucks. As much as Americans seem reluctant to give up their petrol-guzzling SUVs, he concentrated on promoting small, fuel-efficient cars, with a similar message around the world to advertise them.
The launch of the Fiesta in America was a test of the Farley strategy. The car was already made in Europe and Asia. Ford imported European Fiestas and recruited 100 media-savvy members of the public to act as “agents”. In return for a free car for six months, plus insurance and petrol, they agreed to upload their adventures in online videos and to blog about them. The so-called “Fiesta Movement” created a buzz and the car gained the highest vehicle awareness among the public of any car in its segment, says George Rogers, who runs Team Detroit, Ford’s advertising agency.
Mr Farley decided to take a leaf out of the Fiesta book for the global launch of the Focus, which is planned as the centrepiece of Ford’s transformation into a producer of smaller and more environmentally friendly cars. Again, people will be recruited but this time from applicants around the world. They will then be taken to southern Europe next spring to test the new car and to tell their friends about it on Facebook and Twitter in German, Russian, French and any other language. “Word of mouth is more believable than traditional advertising,” says Mr Farley.
The new Focus will be built on one platform and will have the same engine, transmission, chassis and main body in all the markets where it is sold. The current version of the car, which was launched in 2000, was promoted with over 20 different advertising campaigns created by semi-autonomous marketing units. Ford intends to have a global theme this time, but does not rule out tailoring some advertising to local markets where it is felt appropriate. Detroit has long talked about making global cars, but ended up with many differences. The coming together of the world online could give Ford that advantage, provided the Farley strategy continues to run well.