Interested!

From the Albuquerque Pride press release:

"...GLBTQQII (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersexed, interested)..."

When, oh when, will the poor, excluded straight people rise up to protest their oppression???? Why should they have to camouflage their true identities under the euphemism "interested"? How can it be ethical for a community that so prides* itself on inclusivity to exclude people based on their sexual orientation? I just can't understand it, myself.


Stolen here

IAT: Implicit Association test

it is based on a seemingly obvious- but nonetheless quite profound - osservation.
We make connections much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to us. What dooes that mean? Let me give you an example. Below is a list. Assign each name to the category to which it belongs. Do it as quickly as you can. Don't skip over words and don't worry if you make mistakes.

Male........... Female

..........John............
..........Bob.............
..........Amy............
.........Holly...........
.........Joan.............
........Derek...........
.........Peggy..........
.........Jason..........
.........Lisa............
.........Matt...........
.........Sara...........

That was easy right? The reason that was easy is that when we read or hear the name John or Bob we don't even have to think whether is masculine or feminine name.

Now try this

Male................................Female

...or...................................... or

Family ............................ Career


...................Babies...........................
...................Sarah............................
...................Derek...........................
................Merchant........................
...............Employment...................
...................John.............................
....................Bob..............................
...................Holly............................
.................Domestic.......................
...............Entrepreneur..................
.................Office.............................
...................Joan............................
.................Peggy.............................
................Cousins..........................
...............Grandparents................
................Jason.............................
.................Lisa...............................
..............Corporation...................
................Matt...............................

Well.. it was different. This was a bit harder, wasn't it?
It took you longer to put entrepreneur into career. Most of us have must stronger mental association between what's maleness and career oriented concept than we do between femaleness and ideas related to careers.
Have a look here for ones that really will change the perception of how you think.
The most famous one is the Race IAT.
For full details on the study
Click here

Smokeclear....

100% Natural - Vegetal Origin - Biodegradable - Cellulose - Non-Plastic - Odorless - Tasteless - Innocuous - Slow Burning - No Chemical!

They are totally transparent, a bit of a pain to use, but they are selfadesive and they are really slow burning.
smokeclear

Ehm a weekend home with Vulcano

drunk man walks in to the video store, he asks to pay 1 £ for a 2£ already discounted video.
The video woman tells him he can't as it's 2 £. Drunk man keeps begging her as the video is only 80 minutes, so she could give him a discount. Anyway the lady doens' t give in, so the drunk man says he'll return later on with 2 £ to purchase the video.
A description of drunk man:
AH! do you mean the intelligent drunk
M: why?
A: because he was trying to buy a video.
M: Did u see what video he was going to buy
A: No, well it was a video.

Rhetoric and Reality: The View from Iran

I thought this will interest my politically engaged friends

Stratfor gives a very insightful analysis of the difference
between the rhetoric of Iran and the reality of the world
they face. George Friedman, President of Stratfor,
dispassionately gives us a look at the world from
Iran's point of view. Given the reality of today's
political climate, it is important to understand
what is going on inside a nation that is giving
much of the world so many concerns.

Stratfor is the closest thing to a "private CIA" as
the organization provides in-depth analysis on
geopolitical events spanning the globe.

Rhetoric and Reality: The View from Iran

The Iraq war has turned into a duel between the United States and Iran. For the United States, the goal has been the creation of a generally pro-American coalition government in Baghdad -- representing Iraq's three major ethnic communities. For Iran, the goal has been the creation of either a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad or, alternatively, the division of Iraq into three regions, with Iran dominating the Shiite south. The United States has encountered serious problems in creating the coalition government. The Iranians have been primarily responsible for that. With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June, when it appeared that the Sunnis would enter the political process fully, the Iranians used their influence with various Iraqi Shiite factions to disrupt that process by launching attacks on Sunnis and generally destabilizing the situation. Certainly, Sunnis contributed to this, but for much of the past year, it has been the Shia, supported by Iran, that have been the primary destabilizing force. So long as the Iranians continue to follow this policy, the U.S. strategy cannot succeed. The difficulty of the American plan is that it requires the political participation of three main ethnic groups that are themselves politically fragmented. Virtually any substantial group can block the success of the strategy by undermining the political process. The Iranians, however, appear to be in a more powerful position than the Americans. So long as they continue to support Shiite groups within Iraq, they will be able to block the U.S. plan. Over time, the theory goes, the Americans will recognize the hopelessness of the undertaking and withdraw, leaving Iran to pick up the pieces. In the meantime, the Iranians will increasingly be able to dominate the Shiite community and consolidate their hold over southern Iraq. The game appears to go to Iran. Americans are extremely sensitive to the difficulties the United States faces in Iraq. Every nation-state has a defining characteristic, and that of the United States is manic-depression, cycling between insanely optimistic plans and total despair. This national characteristic tends to blind Americans to the situation on the other side of the hill. Certainly, the Bush administration vastly underestimated the difficulties of occupying Iraq -- that was the manic phase. But at this point, it could be argued that the administration again is not looking over the other side of the hill at the difficulties the Iranians might be having. And it is useful to consider the world from the Iranian point of view. The Foundation of Foreign Policy It is important to distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality of Iranian foreign policy. As a general principle, this should be done with all countries. As in business, rhetoric is used to shape perceptions and attempt to control the behavior of others. It does not necessarily reveal one's true intentions or, more important, one's capabilities. In the classic case of U.S. foreign policy, Franklin Roosevelt publicly insisted that the United States did not intend to get into World War II while U.S. and British officials were planning to do just that. On the other side of the equation, the United States, during the 1950s, kept asserting that its goal was to liberate Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union, when in fact it had no plans, capabilities or expectations of doing so. This does not mean the claims were made frivolously -- both Roosevelt and John Foster Dulles had good reasons for posturing as they did -- but it does mean that rhetoric is not a reliable indicator of actions. Thus, the purple prose of the Iranian leadership cannot be taken at face value. To get past the rhetoric, let's begin by considering Iran's objective geopolitical position. Historically, Iran has faced three enemies. Its oldest enemy was to the west: the Arab/Sunni threat, against which it has struggled for millennia. Russia, to the north, emerged as a threat in the late 19th century, occupying northern Iran during and after World War II. The third enemy has worn different faces but has been a recurring threat since the time of Alexander the Great: a distant power that has intruded into Persian affairs. This distant foreign power -- which has at times been embodied by both the British and the Americans -- has posed the greatest threat to Iran. And when the element of a distant power is combined with one of the other two traditional enemies, the result is a great global or regional power whose orbit or influence Iran cannot escape. To put that into real terms, Iran can manage, for example, the chaos called Afghanistan, but it cannot manage a global power that is active in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously. For the moment, Russia is contained. There is a buffer zone of states between Iran and Russia that, at present, prevents Russian probes. But what Iran fears is a united Iraq under the influence or control of a global power like the United States. In 1980, the long western border of Iran was attacked by Iraq, with only marginal support from other states, and the effect on Iran was devastating. Iran harbors a rational fear of attack from that direction, which -- if coupled with American power -- could threaten Iranian survival. Therefore, Iran sees the American plan to create a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad as a direct threat to its national interests. Now, the Iranians supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003; they wanted to see their archenemy, former President Saddam Hussein, deposed. But they did not want to see him replaced by a pro-American regime. Rather, the Iranians wanted one of two outcomes: the creation of a pro-Iranian government dominated by Iraqi Shia (under Iran's control), or the fragmentation of Iraq. A fragmented Iraq would have two virtues. It would prove no danger to Iran, and Iran likely would control or heavily influence southern Iraq, thus projecting its power from there throughout the Persian Gulf. Viewed this way, Iran's behavior in Iraq is understandable. A stable Iraq under U.S. influence represents a direct threat to Iran, while a fragmented or pro-Iranian Iraq does not. Therefore, the Iranians will do whatever they can to undermine U.S. attempts to create a government in Baghdad. Tehran can use its influence to block a government, but it cannot -- on its own -- create a pro-Iranian one. Therefore, Iran's strategy is to play spoiler and wait for the United States to tire of the unending conflict. Once the Americans leave, the Iranians can pick up the chips on the table. Whether it takes 10 years or 30, the Iranians assume that, in the end, they will win. None of the Arab countries in the region has the power to withstand Iran, and the Turks are unlikely to get into the game. The Unknown Variables Logic would seem to favor the Iranians. But in the past, the Iranians have tried to be clever with great powers and, rather than trapping them, have wound up being trapped themselves. Sometimes they have simply missed other dimensions of the situation. For example, when the revolutionaries overthrew the Shah and created the Islamic Republic, the Iranians focused on the threat from the Americans, and another threat from the Soviets and their covert allies in Iran. But they took their eyes off Iraq -- and that miscalculation not only cost them huge casualties and a decade of economic decay, but broke the self-confidence of the Iranian regime. The Iranians also have miscalculated on the United States. When the Islamic Revolution occurred, the governing assumption -- not only in Iran but also in many parts of the world, including the United States -- was that the United States was a declining power. It had, after all, been defeated in Vietnam and was experiencing declining U.S. military power and severe economic problems. But the Iranians massively miscalculated with regard to the U.S. position: In the end, the United States surged and it was the Soviets who collapsed. The Iranians do not have a sterling record in managing great powers, and especially in predicting the behavior of the United States. In large and small ways, they have miscalculated on what the United States would do and how it would do it. Therefore, like the Americans, the Iranians are deeply divided. There are those who regard the United States as a bumbling fool, all set to fail in Iraq. There are others who remember equally confident forecasts about other American disasters, and who see the United States as ruthless, cunning and utterly dangerous. These sentiments, then, divide into two policy factions. On the one side, there are those who see Bush's surge strategy as an empty bluff. They point out that there is no surge, only a gradual buildup of troops, and that the number of troops being added is insignificant. They point to political divisions in Washington and argue that the time is ripe for Iran to go for it all. They want to force a civil war in Iraq, to at least dominate the southern region and take advantage of American weakness to project power in the Persian Gulf. The other side wonders whether the Americans are as weak as they appear, and also argues that exploiting a success in Iraq would be more dangerous and difficult than it appears. The United States has substantial forces in Iraq, and the response to Shiite uprisings along the western shore of the Persian Gulf would be difficult to predict. The response to any probe into Saudi Arabia certainly would be violent. We are not referring here to ideological factions, nor to radicals and moderates. Rather, these are two competing visions of the United States. One side wants to exploit American weakness; the other side argues that experience shows that American weakness can reverse itself unexpectedly and trap Iran in a difficult and painful position. It is not a debate about ends or internal dissatisfaction with the regime. Rather, it is a contest between audacity and caution. The Historical View Over time -- and this is not apparent from Iranian rhetoric -- caution has tended to prevail. Except during the 1980s, when they supported an aggressive Hezbollah, the Iranians have been quite measured in their international actions. Following the war with Iraq, they avoided overt moves -- and they even were circumspect after the fall of the Soviet Union, when opportunities presented themselves to Iran's north. After 9/11, the Iranians were careful not to provoke the United States: They offered landing rights for damaged U.S. aircraft and helped recruit Shiite tribes for the American effort against the Taliban. The rhetoric alternated between intense and vitriolic; the actions were more cautious. Even with the Iranian nuclear project, the rhetoric has been far more intense than the level of development seems to warrant. Rhetoric influences perceptions, and perceptions can drive responses. Therefore, the rhetoric should not be discounted as a driving factor in the geopolitical system. But the real debate in Iran is over what to do about Iraq. No one in Iran wants a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad, and blocking the emergence of such a government has a general consensus. But how far to go in trying to divide Iraq, creating a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and projecting power in the region is a matter of intense debate. In fact, cautious behavior combined with extreme rhetoric still appears to be the default position in Tehran, with more adventurous arguments struggling to gain acceptance. The United States, for its part, is divided between the desire to try one more turn at the table to win it all and the fear that it is becoming hopelessly trapped. Iran is divided between a belief that the time to strike is now and a fear that counting the United States out is always premature. This is an engine that can, in due course, drive negotiations. Iran might be "evil" and the United States might be "Satan," but at the end of the day, international affairs involving major powers are governed not by rhetoric but by national interest. The common ground between the United States and Iran is that neither is certain it can achieve its real strategic interests. The Americans doubt they can create a pro-U.S. government in Baghdad, and Iran is not certain the United States is as weak as it appears to be. Fear and uncertainty are the foundations of international agreement, while hope and confidence fuel war. In the end, a fractured Iraq -- an entity incapable of harming Iran, but still providing an effective buffer between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula -- is emerging as the most viable available option.

I don't know if you think this will be funny,

but I reckon that shows the different life we conduct compared to someothers in the world.
Told you about the shelves already, well everything now was fixed out of the despach of furniture from last year.
But there was one thing left, actully 2 heavy supports of steel unplaced, but everything had feet.. so I thought mah!. we tried everything, then I decided it must have been a mistake I'll do some use with them.
Instead

ciao

ho inviato la foto ,che mi hai inviato, a misura emme

il pezzo fotografato non corrisponde a nessuna parte della ferramenta .

sei sicura che e' di misura emme o fa parte di altri arredi da montare?

fammi sapere.

saluti
Ciao N,
grazie per la risposta.
Siamo riusciti alla fine a montare le menSole utilizzando dei sostegni e delle viti speciali, purtroppo qui i muri sono solo stucco..

A essere sincera non saprei proprio a quale altro mobile possano appartenere.
Ho ordinato un divano, ma ha i pieni in legno, un tavolo in venghe', una libreria sempre in legno. La parete attrezzata con il porta cd in metallo, un tappeto, delle poltrone Frau e un soft wall e non mi sembra manchino pezzi da nessuna parte.

Mah! direi che saranno in piu'.

Grazie per il tuo aiuto,

ciao

ho trovato a cosa serve

e' il basamento della libreria soft wall B&B.

saluti Nico
Wow veramente..Io l'avevo appoggiata al muro. Moh li monto allora
Grazie mille e buon weekend

Err...

To me it doesn't look two faced

Ok.. it has a pair of lips in the wrong place. I reckon Filippo ( the new addition or addiction to the blogger family!) would love a human version of it..

The recent barrage of two-faced (or otherwise unusually shaped) animals just won't stop coming.

Hot on the heels of the two-faced cow and the six-legged cow comes a new entrant in the odd animal hall of fame.

But unlike the previous examples, which have been hailed as a sign of the imminent apocalypse, the birth of this two-headed pig in China is being hailed as a miraculous conception by the farmers.

Icarta.. The best a man can get. Or was it Gillette?

Stereo Dock for iPod® with Bath Tissue Holder

Now you can Enhance your Experience in any room with your favorite music
from your iPod.

Fractals and nature

Math is the greatest thing ever invented.

Numbers give me comfort, they are always there, they never betray you. They have a reason to exist and answers to most questions.







Shown here, the stage-4 Sierpinski tetrahedron provides a powerful visual introduction to fractal geometry and the concept of "self-similarity", in which a shape can be broken into smaller copies of the whole. Each new stage is composed of 4 smaller copies of the previous stage. As the number of stages increases, the Sierpinski tetrahedron approaches "exact self-similarity".
Such geometric fractals provide an important scientific model for characterizing many of the complex processes and shapes found in the natural world, that are echoed in the settings of the tetrahedra. Trees, land formations, clouds, and their images exhibit "statistical self-similarity" in which a small part "looks like", but not "exactly like" the whole. Just as a part of the Sierpinski tetrahedron reminds one of the whole, a small branch of a tree reminds one of the entire tree.
The mathematics of fractal geometry and the science of chaos are now bridging the gaps between math, science, art, and culture. They treat the messiness of the everyday world. They are based on natural self-similarity and observations of complicated behavior from simple equations. They provide a new mathematical language for capturing, manipulating, and simulating nature.

uhm. I'm bored

Shelves are eventually up, it just took 1 year 7 manhours and here you go, they are attached to the wall. It's still not clear if they gonna stand, but they are there for the moment.

I'm so glad I didn't decide to buy a drill and do it myself..
It must be said they were made in Italy for italian walls, here the situation is slightly different, what it's actually called wall is 10 mm 12 if you are lucky of plaster board.. I mean!
Result : one holds a little plant, the other the buddha and I got a huge bump on my head as I managed to bang against them and make my forehead bleed.

I've been home with back ache for 3 days now and I really had enough. How can people think it's nice to stay home watching a movie, relax, I just can't do it. It must be my ocd but there are tons of things I'd like to do, but I can't really move that much. After 3 days I would have expected my clothes to be ordered by shades of colours and everything else by width or heigh, but no, everything is still the same and my todo list just got longer instead of shorter.
I also went to the cinema last Friday. I think somebody must sense that I really don't like doing that, because it can't be a coincidence that I was the only person for which the forgot to cook the pre-cinema meal at wagamama, so foodless I also had to sit without poppycorny in the front row, to watch In pursuit of happyness or something like that. Apparently based on a true story really?? I don't think so.. nonetheless I cried all the way through, because after all the world is unfair, life is unfair and I truly shouldn't need to pay to cry especially for such a stupid movie.
See.. I try it's not my fault.


I also read a book.. A long way down by Nick Hornby. Will they jump or they won't. There were many nice passages in the book, it was funny, sad or just a clear representation of today's society. If you'r thinking of topping it, wait 90 days you should change your mind, doesn't matter how desperate your life seemed at the time ( this must be a reason for seasons!)
" I felt low too, I had that terrible feeling you get when you realise that you are stuck with who you are and there is nothing you can do about it"
" Telling me I can do everything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it and see what happens".
" We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal.
Or because we are so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing yourselves they're not, looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. Maybe not out loud, if it's going to get you in trouble. Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you'r living means lying , and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies just for one minute."

Anyway I won't bore you furthermore I'll just end with the Morale: There is nothing you can't fuck up if you try hard enough.

Do I have to stop dancing to be able to move?

Well... I haven't written yet the resolutions for 2007, as they probably will go along the line of stopping smoking, 15 days have already passed and I haven't, trying to be healthier, exercise more or whatever.

But unfortunately considering my inability to move for the last 24 hours I presume that I will have to give up what actually keeps me alive: dancing... as I reckon it must be the cause for my back issue. I'm not 60 and I'm not a man, but weekgly acupunture, alexander techinique, osteopath, patches chinese medicine and all this bollox well have not improved the situation. So.. I thought I just compile a list of new cool albums which will come out this year and I will probably only be able to listen to and not jump tarantula styleto them. Here you go, typing the names shouldn't hurt.

Arcade Fire will launch Neon Bible

Rufus will launch is 4th album Release the Stars

Bloc Party Launch in the city

Radiohead ( for the joy of Albeo) will launch the 7th album of their career

Artic Monkeys their 2nd album

Kings of Leon Because of the Times

Klaxons Myths of the Near future

Kaiser Chiefs Yours Truly, Angry Mob

Wouldn't you be gutted if you died for drinking too much water ?

Add to that that you drank water to win a Wii and there you go. Dead...
Isn't that cruel, pointless and unreal.. But it happened..
Morale: Do not overdo on water in your January detox as it can kill you. Have a glass of red instead.


Water overdose kills woman in Wii challenge


Staff and agencies
Monday January 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A Californian woman died of water poisoning after taking part in a bizarre drinking contest to win a computer games console, according to US authorities.
Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead in her home in Rancho Cordova, California, on Friday after drinking as much water as she could without going to the toilet

A preliminary investigation by the local coroner determined that her death was "consistent with a water intoxication death". It is not yet known how much water she drank.
Water intoxication, also known as hyponatremia, is extremely rare and only usually affects endurance athletes, such as long distance runners.

The condition is caused by a loss of sodium in the blood due to sweating and dilution by drinking large volumes of water. Typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting and headache. In the most serious cases the brain swells causing confusion, seizures, coma and even death.

The real Iphone

Oh... and eventually it materialised.. Well not as great as the speculations, see previous post,
but nonetheless impressive.
A bit too large, but it has 3 sensors, one that recognise if it's next to your ear so it disactivates the touchpad, one that recognise if you are holding it horizontally or vertically, so it adjusts the view and the third to save power as it adjust the the room light.
Oh well, not available yet as it still has to pass the communication registration, but hey, we have a definite picture.
By the time it comes out in June it might be obsolete as well, but for the cool effect and for the Mac maniacs it will become a must have.
At least it has the widgets which are a cool feature.
Cisco is suing Apple for the name.. Now.. did anybody tell Cisco man that he's an idiot and that his Cisco phone is not even worth the shelves of budgens, or do I have to send him an e-mail?
Iphone vs Icrap

This is a fantastic example to explain to non bankers our life spent in front of multiple screens.

Why `Penis' Will Make This a Most-Read Story: Michael Lewis
2007-01-11 00:08 (New York)


   Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- ``New Jersey Man Clips Penis in
Vacuum Mishap.''
   As recently as 1998, this headline on the Bloomberg was
born to attract a crowd on Wall Street. That one sentence was
equipped to win any battle of financial news stories, and it
did. On the day the story broke, May 15, there was no shortage
of harder news: mass riots in Indonesia, a spike in U.S.
inflation, Sandy Weill's announcement that he would like to buy
Fidelity.
   None of that news interested Bloomberg readers so much as
the tale of the New Jersey man sucked into his own vacuum
cleaner.
   And so, if you had asked me which of the thousands of news
stories that flashed across Bloomberg screens in 2006 would be
among the most read, I would have given you a list of the
bizarre and the macabre. The story of the woman whose farting
grounded a commercial airliner, for instance, or the news that
cocktails at the Kentucky Derby were going for $1,000 a pop.
   What these most-read story lists capture is the sort of
news readers are drawn to when they happen to be sitting in
front of Bloomberg terminals -- which is to say, when they are
at work. And when Wall Street people are talking on two phones
at once as they glance at three screens, what they are generally
looking for is something to jar them out of their state of
abstraction. Something, anything, to cause them to stir in their
seats and remind them, however briefly, of their five senses.

                         Most Read

   But times have changed, apparently, and the change is
reflected in this recent list of the most-read news items of the
year. Of the 30, only an airplane crashing into a Manhattan
building, the foiling of a U.K. terrorist plot to blow up
commercial airlines, the suicide of a former National Football
League player, and the news that there was a video to be seen of
a Brazilian MTV hostess fornicating on a beach distracted Wall
Street from money.
   But even that suggests a false breadth of attention, as the
man with the MTV hostess was a Merrill Lynch banker, and both
the plane crash and the bomb plot obviously implicated Wall
Street lives. Of the 30 Bloomberg stories most read in 2006
there was really just one in no way connected to Wall Street,
the news that former Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters had
shot himself.
   Shareholders in Wall Street firms -- where Bloomberg
readers tend to work -- might see this as a step in the right
direction. It's good to know that the time once spent discussing
the pros and cons of inserting one's penis into a vacuum cleaner
is now spent dwelling on financial news.

                          Look Closer

   Upon closer inspection, however, it wasn't the useful
financial news that captured Wall Street's attention. You can
count on one hand the stories that might move markets, or affect
business: three items about the Federal Reserve and a pair of
stories about giant corporate acquisitions.
   News that implicated Wall Street jobs and paychecks, on the
other hand, drew huge crowds: Goldman Sachs's bonuses, Morgan
Stanley's bonuses, Credit Suisse's trading losses, commodity
traders' losses, commodity traders' booming pay -- the list goes
on.
   In a year filled with breaking news on the war on terror,
wild fluctuations in energy prices, the collapse of American
support for the war in Iraq, the demise of Tony Blair and the
Republican Party, and changes at the helms of the Federal
Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department, a story of more interest
to Bloomberg readers than any of these was the report that
HSBC's New York branch might get rid of as many as 20 bond
traders.
   In this list there is both mystery and pattern.

                     Follow the Paycheck

   The pattern -- and the thread is fine, but so brightly
colored that it shouldn't be ignored -- is an overwhelming
interest in a particular kind of financial news story: stories
that implicate, in one way or another, what Wall Street people
might be paid at the end of the year. The Bloomberg reporter who
wanted to be most-read might best spend his or her time digging
not into the market forces affecting Wall Street's business but
those affecting Wall Street's employees.
   The mystery is Amaranth. Amaranth was far and away the
topic of greatest interest to Wall Street. And it was obviously
big news -- the largest trading loss in financial history, or at
any rate that anyone can recall.
   But Amaranth's collapse was a surprisingly antiseptic
event. The characters were small and the themes dull. The story
offered no obvious lesson, apart from the obvious one that no
one should gamble away $6 billion on the direction of natural-
gas prices.
   The event didn't ripple through the financial world in the
same way, say, as the collapse in 1998 of Long-Term Capital
Management. And for all these reasons it didn't engage the
general reader. Amaranth proved that it's possible for a trader
to blow $6 billion of other people's money and still bore the
average American.

                        Amaranth Appeal

   This didn't bore Bloomberg customers. Just about any story
written about Amaranth attracted Bloomberg readership, and five
of them made Bloomberg's list of the top 30.
   The angle that appealed most wasn't Amaranth's effect on
markets or investors. Nor even, really, the inner workings of
the Amaranth mind. For instance, a riveting article, mostly
ignored, explained how natural-gas speculators such as
Amaranth's Brian Hunter may have been relying on the (wildly
inaccurate) 2006 hurricane forecasts generated by a 26-year-old
rookie at Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric
Science.
   That story was of relatively little interest to Wall Street
readers.
   What Wall Street readers wanted from their Amaranth stories
was the answer to three simple questions: Who won, who lost and,
above all, how much? The interest in Amaranth, in short, seems
to have been the first cousin to the interest in Goldman Sachs's
bonus pool. After all, the $6 billion lost by Amaranth didn't
simply vanish. Someone on Wall Street was on the other side of
those trades. Goldman's bonus pool came from somewhere.

Did you think recycling was good? well no!

UK Waste Ends Up In China

Updated: 16:32, Tuesday January 09, 2007

Peter Pottier is one of millions of Britons who faithfully recycle their rubbish for the good of the environment.

UK Waste Ends Up In China

So he was horrified to discover a plastic-covered letter he had carefully recycled at his Sevenoaks home had ended up in a dump in a small town in China.

If you've been carefully separating your plastic for recycling, there's a good chance that it's also ended up half way around the world in Lianjiao, in the dozens of recycling yards that line the town's streets, writes Sky News' Asia producer Holly Williams.

The workers here earn around £50 a month, shredding waste plastic apart, and then melting it down into small chips to be used again. For the poor farmers who labour in the town it's a much-needed living. The problem is, they also take home a toxic dose of pollution.

Peter Pottier

In Lianjiao's recycling plants they melt plastic down into molten lumps. It gives off fumes that can cause lung disease. Smoke stacks bellow clouds of chemicals that hang above the town. Poisonous waste pours directly into rivers, turning them to a stagnant black sludge. Entire families live amongst the filth.

We visited yard after yard filled with rubbish from across Europe. We watched a container truck unloading household waste from France. Another yard specialised in German plastic.

Next door we found a container-load of household rubbish just off the boat from Britain. Baled and compressed by the companies that ship it here, it was stacked to the ceilings. Workers sifted through shopping bags from Tesco and Asda. We saw Sainsbury's milk bottles, packaging from Cadbury's chocolate, and plastic wrapping from pet food.

Lianjiao is truly a globalised rubbish dump, and the workers here - though often illiterate - seem to have a profound grasp of economics.

Pollution in Lianjiao

"You don't do this work anymore because in your country you're rich," said Chen Xiaomei, a rubbish scavenger in her 40s. "We're poor, so we still do it."

The factory bosses in Lianjiao weren't as friendly as their workers. We were repeatedly roughed up. In virtually every yard we visited the bosses pushed us out their doors, often threatening to call the police. They're worried that if the world finds out about this festering town they'll stop shipping their rubbish here.

Back in the UK I managed to track down Mr Pottier - the resident of a quaint cottage in a quiet street in Sevenoaks. A young father of two, and an avid recycler, Peter Pottier was disturbed to hear that his best environmental efforts ended up harming others half way across the world.

He viewed our pictures of his mail, and clearly remembered that it was a piece of junk mail with plastic wrapping that he had deliberately separated for recycling by his local council.

Sainsbury's packaging in China

"I'm lost for words," he told me. "We do our bit to make sure that we separate the recycling. I wasn't expecting that it would end up being sorted out by individuals without even gloves, breathing toxic air."

Plastic waste is now one of Britain's biggest exports to China. Container ships arrive in Britain from China loaded with consumer goods. Many of them then go back packed full of British waste. It's a trade that's completely legal. The government even accredits companies to export this country's rubbish to the Far East.

But it doesn't have to be this way. British waste could be recycled safely at home.

Leigh Atley runs a plastic recycling plant in the Cotswolds, built to the highest environmental standards. He's losing millions of pounds in potential income - as well as the possibility of expanding his business and providing more jobs - because he can't compete with Chinese waste dumps.

"We need to have our own infrastructure in this country capable of recycling everything that we are producing every year," he told me. "And we are producing more and more."

But for now it's simply cheaper to ship our problem to China. And it's the people of Lianjiao who are suffering the consequences.

Gina strikes even over the phone.

Well, she obviously doesn't know that the first Friday of the month at 1.30 pm Non Farm payrolls comes out and market moves quickly.

Hence guess when did she fell the urge to call?

Mum I can't stay on the phone, I'll call you back.. No no wait I've a surprise, guess who's here..

Mum I have to go.... but no she insisted. At the end I managed to close.

My movie junkie friends... Why did you hide this from me.

Well as I'm probably becoming accustomed to english reality shows or the indecency of it... Tonight... celebrity Big Brother... I mean.. who on earth are these people? and yes... they couldn't choose more freaks than that.. Anyway while searching for the pictures of the Bollywood actress in there.. ( yes yes... my obsession ok.. I discovered this... )
It might not be the biggest movie database but to me it's the most wonderful one..

Happy new year my darlings

I'm waiting to get pictys, if I can find some of the pantomime experience I went to before midnight. In the meantime I think the festivities since G & P could be summarised with one of Madame Bollinger quotes:

"I drink Champagne when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty."

Eventually... the long awaited.. Iphone

If you were going to buy a new Ipod, don't.. look what just materialised?


IPHONE