Clicking In

Source: BBC

Daily wage labourers Shiv Sagar Sahni and his young son Sugarath Sahni had a thatched house, two goats and 2,000 rupees (£24) until a fortnight ago.

Now they are a penniless and famished family of eight taking shelter on National Highway 57.

They had to sell their goats and take loans from some well-off villagers to survive.

Like 50 other families, their village of Jarang-Baluaha, about a kilometre from the highway, was marooned in the floods.

Sharing a little space under a black polythene sheet and wooden cot, the Sahni family is among millions in the flood-ravaged northern Indian state of Bihar who have been stranded either on raised national highways, railway tracks or the rooftops of some government buildings.

“What to do. It’s our tryst with destiny every year from which there seems to be no escape for us,” Shiv Sagar Sahni told the BBC.

We’re hungry and surviving somehow eating snails or rats Rajesh and Ajudh Manjhi

Rows of buffaloes, cows and goats can be seen stranded with people on the highway.

Most people are sleeping or sitting under the open sky, ruing their fate and the recurring flood.

Rajesh Manjhi and Ajudh Manjhi have taken shelter on a road bridge.

“Last night some people brought a sheet of polythene for each family. That’s the only help we have received till now,” they said.

“No food, no relief… nothing has come to us so far. We’re hungry and surviving somehow eating snails or rats.”

Flood injustice

Pointing towards their submerged thatched houses in Atarbel village, they said that only two things had been rising for them during the last fortnight: “our hunger and debt”.

“What can we do? We’re poor people. Who cares for us?” they asked.

Animals are the silent sufferers of the flood menace which has gripped our area Banslal Sahni

They are agricultural labourers who make 45-50 rupees (a little more than a dollar) a day, but ever since the floods, they have been unable to find any work.

It’s a vicious circle of debt for the poor families living on highways or embankments.

A week ago Kamod Ram and Basant Ram saw a helicopter dropping food packets at some distance on the highway, but they were grabbed by some bus passengers crossing the road.

“The government declares that relief has been sent for people like us but that is usurped by upper caste, well-off people on the way.

“They sell the stuff to ration shops and we buy them from there, paying money borrowed from those well off people,” they said.

Animal victims

Sixty-year-old Banslal Sahni, sitting under the canopy of his black umbrella, has taken shelter on the highway because of his animals.

“I’ve come here for the sake of my animals. My family members could save their lives by going to the roof of the house but where could these hapless animals go?”

It happens every year. There is nothing new in it. This is our destiny Rajkumari Devi

Sahni has 12 buffaloes and two cows tied to his cot on the highway.

Finding fodder for animals has also become a big problem in the area.

“Animals are the silent sufferers of the flood menace which has gripped our area. No-one takes notice of them.

“But what can you expect from a government which is not even taking care of us?” asks Rajkumari Devi.

Mother of three children and wife of a rickshaw puller, Rajkumari Devi, has taken shelter on the narrow part of the national highway near Bochaha village in Muzaffarpur.

Many of the displaced have taken on more debt to pay for food (Pic: Prashant Ravi)

Her nine-year-old eldest daughter, Sarita Kumari, was making chapati for the first time in two weeks after Devi took a loan of a few hundred rupees from a local shop-owner.

Their thatched house in the village has been completely damaged and swept away by the flood waters.

“It happens every year. There is nothing new in it. This is our destiny,” says Ms Devi.

She and her family are lucky that they have been able to get at least one square meal after two weeks.

There are others who have not been able to eat even chapati for the past two weeks.

“We’re somehow surviving on a handful of beaten rice, or snails and fish caught from the flood water,” says Batohi Manjhi.

A major problem is drinking water.

The villagers say they drink, bathe and wash clothes in the same water that is used for sanitation.

Video footage:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7588774.stm

Source: BCC

-Sichuan is still recovering from its May 12th earthquake and its aftershock.

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck China’s Sichuan province on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The quake’s epicenter was located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north-northwest of Guangyuan, near Sichuan’s border with neighboring Gansu province.

The Olympic torch was making its way through parts of Sichuan on Tuesday, three days before the Summer Games get underway in Beijing, some 1,200 kilometers (800 miles) away.

The earthquake occurred just before 6 p.m. local time, a few hours after the relay made its final stop in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

The region is still recovering from the after-effects of a devastating 7.9-magnitude temblor in May, which killed almost 70,000 people and left 18,000 missing and 5 million homeless.

The epicenter of the initial quake was about 290 kilometers (180 miles) southwest from Tuesday’s temblor.

source: CNN

What are your thoughts when you see this DVD on sale?? Well, i’m not sure if it is something considered normal in Australia but it definitely has been a booming industry in Japan. Below is an article about elder porn from TIME.

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that’s because he’s kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

Shigeo Tokuda is, in fact, his screen name. He prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 films over the past 14 years. And in his double life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan’s sexuality: in surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. Those figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with “elder porn” one of its fastest-growing genres.

Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he has just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.

Tokuda’s exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an “old man” series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. “The adult-video industry is very competitive,” says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. “If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers’ hearts.”

Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers. “I think that, as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them,” says Kono passionately.

But Tokuda stresses the appeal of his work to an audience of his peers: “Elderly people don’t identify with school dramas,” he says. “It’s easier for them to relate to older-men-and-daughters-in-law series, so they tend to watch adult videos with older people in them.” The veteran porn star plans to keep working until he’s 80 — or older, as long as the industry will cast him. Given the bullish market for his work, he’s unlikely to go without work.

“People of my age generally have shame, so they are very hesitant to show their private parts,” Tokuda says. “But I am proud of myself doing something they cannot.” Still, he says, laughing, “That doesn’t mean that I can tell them about my old-age pensioner job.”

Japan’s adult-video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year, according to industry insiders, with the largest video-store chain Tsutaya releasing about 1,000 new titles monthly, while the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month. Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward “mature women” has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are “mature women” films.

Ryuichi Kadowaki, director of Ruby Inc., which specializes in mature-women titles, says that when the company started offering the genre a few years ago, the term referred to actresses in their late 20s, and that last year it was expanded to those in their 70s. The company believes the advantage of mature titles is their enduring appeal. “Adult videos with young actresses sell well only in the first three months after the release,” Kadowaki explains. “On the other hand, mature-women films enjoy a steady, long-term popularity, which after 10 years or so might lead to a best seller.” And then there are the cost savings. A popular young actress can earn up to $100,000 per film, while a mature actress is paid only $2,000.

The market for elder porn has doubled over the past decade, according to Kadowaki. “In view of [Japan's] aging society,” he adds, “I think that in the future, we will see a steady increase in demand.”

Senator John Warner — elected in 1978 — recently expressed interest in the idea of a national speed limit to conserve gasoline. Warner, who is not running for re-election this year, wrote to U.S. Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman, asking “at what speed is the typical vehicle traveling on America’s highways today most fuel efficient?”

Warner told TIME his concern is for “the many millions and millions [of Americans] of limited means, sitting around their kitchen table trying to figure out how to make ends meet.” Unlike long-term alternative energy sources, Warner says, a speed limit would work to bring down gas prices immediately. “Maybe some guy’s got a better idea,” he says. “But I haven’t seen it.”

The National Maximum Speed Limit of 55 mph was created in 1974, when Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Energy Highway Conservation Act. Prior to that, states had been free to set their own speed limits, but the new law threatened to strip Federal highway funding from any state straying above the national standard. The ostensible purpose of this limit was to keep down gas prices, which had been driven through the roof by an OPEC embargo touched off by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. And with gas-prices once again sky-high, Warner isn’t alone in talking up a cap on speeding.

Jackie Speier, a first-term Democratic congresswoman from California, is already on the case. Earlier this month, she introduced a bill that would cap highway speed limits at 60 mph — 65 in rural areas. It’s currently awaiting a hearing before the House Committee on Transportation. Warner says he hasn’t contacted Speier, but adds that he’d be willing to “stroll out on the floor” in favor of a speed-limit bill. He has yet to propose a similar bill in the Senate.

The thinking behind Warner and Speier’s speed-limit proposals is simple. At a certain speed, a car’s gas mileage begins to drop; the faster you go, the more fuel your burn. Ergo, slow down and save gas. According to fueleconomy.gov, a website run by the Department of Energy, “each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.30 per gallon for gas.” Warner approvingly cites a congressional study showing that “the law resulted in reduced consumption of 167,000 barrels of petroleum a day.” With millions of more cars on the road now than there were in 1974, the volume saved could be even greater.

Then there’s the issue of safety. Tim Castleman, founder of the pro-limit group Drive 55 Conservation Groups, notes: “When they instituted [a national speed limit] in 1974, it was a one-year deal, but after one year they found highway deaths had dropped by 4,000.” This unexpected side benefit, Castleman says, led Congress to make what had been a temporary measure permanent.

Some opponents of the speed limit question the numbers tossed around by Warner, Castleman, and others. Indeed, the safety argument looks a bit flimsy on closer examination. Since the 55-mph limit was repealed in 1995, the number of fatal motor vehicle crashes has increased by little more than 1,000, while deaths per 100,000 licensed drivers dipped over the same period.

In a 1999 study for the libertarian Cato institute, economist Stephen Moore noted that the number of auto crashes actually fell by 66,000 after the 55 mph limit was lifted. Moore also points out that a lower speed limit means more time wasted idling in traffic: “The most valuable resource on this earth is not oil, its human time.”

A law only works when it’s obeyed — and it’s an open question how many motorists would comply. The 1974 law was considered a joke by the many drivers, who violated it with impunity. “Real compliance out on the interstate was somewhere around twenty percent,” says Jim Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association. “Eighty percent of the population was exceeding the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit!”

Some groups would meet the return of the speed limit with a yawn rather than a groan. Instead of waiting for the government to step in, they’ve chosen to self-regulate. A number of trucking companies have mandated that their fleets stay at or below 65 mph. Douglas Stotlar, CEO of Con-way Inc., says his company’s decision to lower their limit to 62 was driven both by environmental concerns and because “fuel prices were going to unprecedented levels.” Exactly, say foes of a national speed limit; people can be trusted to slow down and conserve gas without the government leaning over their shoulder.

But Warner insists the government has got to do something, and do it now. Though he favors drilling offshore, he also says “That’s five, six, seven years out. The pain is tonight, tomorrow night, and the night after that. I’m just sensitive to people’s pain. Who’s got the courage to do something like this?” Warner, who arrived on the national political scene in the oil-starved ’70s, thinks that era might just hold the solution to our current energy crisis.

Senator John Warner (R-VA) — elected in 1978 — recently expressed interest in the idea of a national speed limit to conserve gasoline. Warner, who is not running for re-election this year, wrote to U.S. Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman, asking “at what speed is the typical vehicle traveling on America’s highways today most fuel efficient?”

Warner told TIME his concern is for “the many millions and millions [of Americans] of limited means, sitting around their kitchen table trying to figure out how to make ends meet.” Unlike long-term alternative energy sources, Warner says, a speed limit would work to bring down gas prices immediately. “Maybe some guy’s got a better idea,” he says. “But I haven’t seen it.”

The National Maximum Speed Limit of 55 mph was created in 1974, when Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Energy Highway Conservation Act. Prior to that, states had been free to set their own speed limits, but the new law threatened to strip Federal highway funding from any state straying above the national standard. The ostensible purpose of this limit was to keep down gas prices, which had been driven through the roof by an OPEC embargo touched off by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. And with gas-prices once again sky-high, Warner isn’t alone in talking up a cap on speeding.

Jackie Speier, a first-term Democratic congresswoman from California, is already on the case. Earlier this month, she introduced a bill that would cap highway speed limits at 60 mph — 65 in rural areas. It’s currently awaiting a hearing before the House Committee on Transportation. Warner says he hasn’t contacted Speier, but adds that he’d be willing to “stroll out on the floor” in favor of a speed-limit bill. He has yet to propose a similar bill in the Senate.

The thinking behind Warner and Speier’s speed-limit proposals is simple. At a certain speed, a car’s gas mileage begins to drop; the faster you go, the more fuel your burn. Ergo, slow down and save gas. According to fueleconomy.gov, a website run by the Department of Energy, “each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.30 per gallon for gas.” Warner approvingly cites a congressional study showing that “the law resulted in reduced consumption of 167,000 barrels of petroleum a day.” With millions of more cars on the road now than there were in 1974, the volume saved could be even greater.

Then there’s the issue of safety. Tim Castleman, founder of the pro-limit group Drive 55 Conservation Groups, notes: “When they instituted [a national speed limit] in 1974, it was a one-year deal, but after one year they found highway deaths had dropped by 4,000.” This unexpected side benefit, Castleman says, led Congress to make what had been a temporary measure permanent.

Some opponents of the speed limit question the numbers tossed around by Warner, Castleman, and others. Indeed, the safety argument looks a bit flimsy on closer examination. Since the 55-mph limit was repealed in 1995, the number of fatal motor vehicle crashes has increased by little more than 1,000, while deaths per 100,000 licensed drivers dipped over the same period.

In a 1999 study for the libertarian Cato institute, economist Stephen Moore noted that the number of auto crashes actually fell by 66,000 after the 55 mph limit was lifted. Moore also points out that a lower speed limit means more time wasted idling in traffic: “The most valuable resource on this earth is not oil, its human time.”

A law only works when it’s obeyed — and it’s an open question how many motorists would comply. The 1974 law was considered a joke by the many drivers, who violated it with impunity. “Real compliance out on the interstate was somewhere around twenty percent,” says Jim Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association. “Eighty percent of the population was exceeding the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit!”

Some groups would meet the return of the speed limit with a yawn rather than a groan. Instead of waiting for the government to step in, they’ve chosen to self-regulate. A number of trucking companies have mandated that their fleets stay at or below 65 mph. Douglas Stotlar, CEO of Con-way Inc., says his company’s decision to lower their limit to 62 was driven both by environmental concerns and because “fuel prices were going to unprecedented levels.” Exactly, say foes of a national speed limit; people can be trusted to slow down and conserve gas without the government leaning over their shoulder.

But Warner insists the government has got to do something, and do it now. Though he favors drilling offshore, he also says “That’s five, six, seven years out. The pain is tonight, tomorrow night, and the night after that. I’m just sensitive to people’s pain. Who’s got the courage to do something like this?” Warner, who arrived on the national political scene in the oil-starved ’70s, thinks that era might just hold the solution to our current energy crisis.

Source: Time

It’s been a heck of a year for Facebook, everyone’s favorite social network. That was obvious when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at F8, the annual developers’ conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

With a series of slides that looked like text-book examples of “hockey stick” growth, Zuckerberg showed how quickly his network has taken off. A little over a year ago, Facebook had 24 million users. Today? Zuckerberg claimed that 90 million folks — two thirds of whom are from outside the U.S. — use the network. He pretty much guaranteed that the number of active users would hit 100 million by year’s end. Some 200,000 programmers are making applications for Facebook, and have attracted more than $200 million in investment. That’s a lot of users and developers, and a spectacular amount of dough. Zuckerberg and his team ought to feel pretty great about what they’ve built in a relatively short period of time.

“Movement”. That’s what Zuckerberg called Facebook throughout his hour-long presentation yesterday: A movement. As in “Last year at F8, everyone here together at the San Francisco Design Center started a movement!”

OK, it was cute when he did it at the first F8 last year. It got your attention. It was exciting. Especially coming from the tech world’s Doogie Howser. But now?

Zuckerberg may want his users to think of Facebook as a movement, but to the grown-ups it’s a business — and one that’s working very hard to be profitable. But it’s got a ways to go before it’s in the money, and all this “movement” talk makes me suspicious — like Zuckerberg’s putting something over on me. I’m not saying he is. I’m just saying.

Yesterday, while he talked about the movement, and how Facebook’s goal was to be a place that promotes sharing and connecting, I couldn’t help thinking about Beacon. You might recall that Beacon, an advertising play, was intended to broadcast Facebook users’ purchases from external websites. Initially, it was forced on users; there was no opting out. But that turned out to be a nightmare for the young company. Zuckerberg had to apologize and retreat. “We made a lot of mistakes during the past year,” he admitted yesterday. Clearly, explaining to your users how advertising works on a social network was one of them.

And so at the developer’s conference yesterday, we saw a kinder, gentler Zuck who, though he embraced “transparency” as a laudable goal, was charmingly opaque.

“When we talk about the movement we’re a part of, it’s important for us to have a very clear sense of our mission and the purpose behind what we’re all doing,” the new, “What, Me Beacon?” Zuckerberg told the assembled. Then he launched into a story about how he and the team were trying to come up with a mission statement for the movement about six months ago, when he had to go on vacation to Istanbul right in the middle of it. One night, he had dinner with a local entrepreneur there and had a terrific time, he felt a powerful connection to this person. After dinner he had an epiphany about what Facebook should be: “I really want to see us build a product that allows you to really feel a person and understand what’s really going on with them and feel present with them.”

That became part of the new mission statement for Facebook: “Giving people the power to share, in order to make the world more open and connected.”

“Sharing” here refers to the new features that Facebook unveiled this week in its redesigned user profile pages which make it even easier for me to broadcast the stuff I like. “News feeds” (a Facebook term I’ve always found vaguely offensive since it trivializes actual news) are now simpler to manage. When you read a “story” on your news feed and find out a friend has just really enjoyed a Big Mac, you can comment on it (”OMG! Me too!!!”), right in the feed. And FacebookConnect, which will start showing up on finer websites and blogs everywhere in the fall, is an ID system that let’s you log into places — for commenting, say, or Digging stories — with your Facebook ID.

All of this makes it easy to publish and discuss all the things you do, the books you read, the clothes you bought, the movies you saw, on Facebook and off. All these things you “share” help connect you to your friends, yes, but more importantly, they connect you, TO ADVERTISERS. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. But you need to be aware of it.

Advertising is the essence of Facebook’s business, it’s the great and shining hope of that company and social media in general. Maybe even all media. But so far, it’s not exactly justifying valuations. There’s been loads of investment coming in, but not much real, sustainable revenue coming out. That’s why the company is working so hard to add all new sharing/connecting/movement features: To make advertising work the way it should on a social network.

At Fortune’s Brainstorm Conference earlier this week, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that the privately held company isn’t feeling any pressure from its investors to produce profits yet, but pointed out the obvious: that Facebook’s real potential was in the “unusual and extraordinary opportunity” afforded by advertising. What she’s talking about, is inserting brand advertising into the shared experiences of Facebook’s users. And the only kind of movement that is, is the movement of money.