Messenger mission systems engineer Eric Finnegan explains some of the features on the craft designed to help it cope with Mercury’s extreme conditions.
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VIDEO: Mercury Messenger’s special design
There’s something about the internet that can move even the most monosyllabic politician to flights of visionary rhetoric. “Imagine if the internet took hold in China,” said George W Bush in 1999, sounding like a knock-off John Lennon. “Imagine how freedom would spread.”
It turns out he was wrong on that one, too. After four years of running a search engine in China, Google last week relocated it to Hong Kong. On the Chinese mainland, Google had been self-censoring search results to keep on the right side of the Communist party; now that it has moved offshore the entire service will face interruptions from the Great Firewall – a massive, sophisticated system that monitors Chinese surfing of any websites outside the domestic internet. What you’re seeing here is not just the humbling of the Don’t-Be-Evil brigade; it’s yet another defeat of the idea that to bring democracy to foreign dictatorships, you simply add the internet.
Bush isn’t the only world leader who believed this. There was Bill Clinton, who famously argued that “trying to control the internet is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall”. And Gordon Brown, who told this paper last summer that Twitter, blogging and all the rest meant “you cannot have Rwanda again”, because word would spread so quickly. And behind the prime ministers and presidents were enough new-media visionaries to fill a dozen wi-fi enabled Starbucks, all preaching the gospel of a borderless internet and free expression for all.
Cyber-utopians, Evgeny Morozov calls them – and the internet scholar admits he used to be one. A few years ago, he worked for a non-profit organisation that promoted web-based journalism in his home of Belarus and other authoritarian parts of the former Soviet bloc. “We wanted more young people in politics,” he says. “They ended up going to prison instead.” A cheap way of building a new civic society was no match for the old repressive structures of the state.
That has become the theme of Morozov’s work. Now an academic in the US, he has plenty of examples of how Beijing, Tehran and Moscow are adapting the internet for their own purposes. He quotes the example of the “Fifty-cent” bloggers in China, so called not because of their fondness for over-muscled American rappers but because of the money they earn for each pro-government blog they post on internet forums. He describes how the clerics of Qom in Iran are now recruiting and training religious bloggers; while the secret police in Tehran find Twitter and Facebook very useful tools for keeping tabs on dissidents.
New means of communication usually excite heady talk about how they will bring about big social changes. As Tom Standage observes in his book The Victorian Internet, the fact that the telegraph allowed people in different continents to communicate almost instantaneously gave rise to predictions that there would never be another international conflict. There then followed two world wars.
Developed in California, the web is often seen as the repository of similarly sunny liberal values. This paper’s coverage last week of the Google case ran under the logo “CHINA V THE WEB” – as if the internet were a sovereign state or a moral philosophy rather than a technology that people use to download porn, or watch videos of a cat playing the piano.
Like all mass technologies, the web is a force for change – primarily because it makes it cheaper and easier than ever before for people to communicate with each other. But there’s nothing that says the change has to be good or bad, or how far it needs to go. The answers to those questions won’t be found on Google.
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You know what? In a way I’m glad the world now knows what I have to work with: some of the most insecure, spiteful, back-stabbing whiners ever to be charged with safeguarding our national defence. Honestly, it’s like Gossip Girl in uniform. Yes, the book will probably make things worse for us in the midterm elections, but if it stops one child from wanting to grow up and become president of the Untied States, it will have been worth it. Sorry, bad day. B
Well done, Bob, for leaking the book in such a publicity-friendly manner. I wish you all success. Just one thing: in future, when I preface a remark by saying “OTR”, that stands for “off the record”. Pretty common shorthand round here. I realise the same letters could also stand for “on the record”, so I guess it’s my fault for being naive. Under the circumstances, I should probably thank you for not telling the world I wear Spider-Man pajamas. That’s still very much OTR (off the record), BTW (by the way). Barack
Hey, Bibi. I just thought I’d send you a link to my UN speech the other day. I noticed none of your people were there – some sort of holiday or something, wasn’t it? Anyway, you might find it interesting – tinyurl.com/39msnjm. It’s about building a framework for lasting peace, instead of MORE SETTLEMENTS. Check it out. BHO
I don’t know even who Serena is. I’ve never seen Gossip Girl. I was just saying that these generals are all like . . . Oh God, I’m too tired to finish this. Hold my calls. B
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Thanks to a plucky woman from Frenchtown, Montana, we now know how to deal with at least one animal menace. Attacked at home last week by a 90kg black bear, she sent it lumbering back into the night simply by throwing a courgette at it. Local police described this as “improvising”. The vegetable-projectile approach will probably fend off all sorts of creatures. But if you don’t fancy putting it to the test, here are some alternatives.
Hungry monkeys: You could simply give the macaque your Magnum. Failing that, try the “open-mouth threat” – make an O with your mouth, lean forward and raise your eyebrows. Then back away slowly. If that doesn’t work, open a can of beer and talk about football (they’re a bit more afraid of men than of women).
Killer bees: Africanised honeybees aim for your mouth and nose first. So pull your top up over your head, then run, run, run away. Don’t give up too soon – they’ve been known to chase victims for more than 400 metres. If possible, shut yourself in a car or building. Diving into water won’t help – they’ll wait till you come up for air.
Crocodiles and alligators: Whatever some idiots tell you, crocs and gators cannot run faster than racehorses. On land, even humans have a good chance of outpacing them. Forget anything you’ve heard about zigzagging – just leg it. If the reptile gets you into its mouth, don’t waste time trying to pry its jaws open. Stick your thumb or finger into its eye. The pain and shock should make it release you.
Sharks: If it’s trying to take chunks out of your boat, hit it with a paddle or a pole. The vulnerable spots are the eyes, gills and snout. If you’re in the water, you may be able to escape by rapid changes of direction. Sharks are not very manoeuvrable. If you’re in its mouth, do not play dead. Eyes, gills, snout, remember.
Elephants: Plan A: Climb a tree, first making sure it’s big enough that it can’t be pushed over. Plan B: Play dead in the hope that Jumbo will get tired of tossing your body around.
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Ah, Malibu, paradise on the Pacific. Sun, sand, surf, Pamela Anderson bounding through the dunes, beautiful people leading holistic, healthy lives. But wait. There is something else in the air of the celebrity haven. Or rather, in the water.
Peer deeply into the pristine ocean and you will see it is murky and grey. Waft aside the plastic bags floating past at Paradise Cove, wade into the ocean at Surfrider Beach, and you may glimpse traces of the matter that has gripped the coastal community: the effluent of the affluent.
At Broad Beach, whose beachfront homes have housed the likes of Redford, Spielberg, De Niro, DeVito and Stallone, workers struggle to erect a barrier to stop the might of the Pacific Ocean carrying off the contents of their septic tanks. For in the twin capital of detox and Botox, whose inhabitants are so removed from humanity’s grubby charm as to represent a distinct life form, one bodily function remains to be conquered: defecation.
At the centre of the mess is one of the most elite of the old Hollywood retreats: Malibu Colony. A gated beachhome area that once housed what seemed the entire population of the movies, from Gloria Swanson to Bill Murray, Malibu Colony suffers from a high water table. Like all of Malibu, it is served by septic tanks rather than mains sewers. A high water table and a septic tank by the beach is not a happy combination, as any of Malibu’s other dominant life form, the surfer dudes, will attest: swimming in the sea here can be a dirty business. “The bottom line is Malibu Lagoon is polluted and has been polluted for decades,” Mark Gold, president of environmental group Heal the Bay, told the LA Times.
With staph infections raging among surfers, and contamination in the local waterways, last week, the decision came from on high: Malibu must phase out septic tanks in the central area of the city and install mains sewage.
The decision threatens the very fabric of the place. The need for septic systems has acted as a brake on development, allowing the community to preserve its rustic charm and protect its exclusivity. Install sewers, and the bluffs of privilege that line the coast would become the playthings of the plebs. The affluent will have to take their effluent elsewhere.
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Melinda Gates doesn’t so much enter the room as take it by storm. She’s 10 minutes late for our interview which, for someone who is known for her passion for efficiency, must be redressed. She sweeps through the door, plonks herself on a chair, and launches straight in, speaking at speed like a horse race commentator, as though she is trying to outpace time itself and regain those lost minutes.
Though poised, and elegant to the last carefully set hair on her head, Gates has the air of someone permanently in a hurry. But then, wouldn’t you be, were you the wife of the world’s second richest man? (Bill Gates narrowly lost the No 1 spot this year, according to Forbes magazine, to the Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim Helú). Wouldn’t you be in a rush if you knew that your personal Microsoft fortune, invested through the world’s largest private foundation, which bears your name, can change, or even save, the lives of millions around the world?
More specifically, she’s in a rush because she is preparing to travel from Seattle, where we meet at her headquarters, to New York to attend TEDxChange. She will deliver the keynote speech at the event on Monday, a one-day blast pulled together by her philanthropic powerhouse, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with the fashionable ideas incubator TED. Given the tech-savviness of both parties, it’s no surprise that her speech will be simulcast to 74 groups across 36 countries – from Los Angeles to Nairobi’s Kibera slum.
The word that Melinda Gates wants to spread is that there is hope. Hope that the millennium development goals (MDG), the eight international targets laid down by the UN in 2000, can be met by the 2015 deadline. “I’d like people in the room to recognise we’ve made huge progress,” she says. “We’re not going to make them all, but government money has made an enormous difference.”
As an example, she points to MDG1 which, despite its less than snappy title, is fundamental: the eradication of extreme hunger and poverty. The world is on course, remarkably, to cut poverty in half by 2015, with 1.3 billion people already having clawed themselves out of it since 1990. “That’s a pretty amazing thing,” she says. “People hear the sad stories of what’s going on in Africa or India. They don’t hear that these investments we’re making as American or French or British citizens are actually working.”
The MDGs speak to the Gates’s belief in the transformative power of technology to deliver measurable improvements. Goals, deadlines, targets, percentages, number of lives impacted – these are part of the language of their evidence-based style of philanthropy. This week the Gateses helped launch, with partial funding, the Guardian’s Global development website, which will track progress of the MDGs.
Another topic that Melinda Gates will be promoting, both at TEDxChange and next month’s Living Proof roadshow in the UK, is child and women’s health. The figures are shocking. Almost 400,000 women die each year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth, yet these are the two UN-backed goals that are least likely to be met in five years’ time.
Gates’s focus on mother and child amounts to a significant shift for the foundation, which until this summer had an emphasis on vaccines. It also points to a contrast in tone, in mindset perhaps, between her and her husband.
Bill Gates, as you might expect, is a binary thinker when it comes to spending money on good causes. What excites him is the power of innovation and science to effect certain and verifiable change, to find a cure, hence the foundation’s pledge earlier this year of bn (£6.4bn) to find new vaccines.
She is no less motivated by innovation; after all, she worked at Microsoft for nine years, which is how she met her future husband. But she brings something more amorphous to the project: the recognition that science is not enough, that unless technology engages with complex human needs, desires and interactions, then it will not take hold.
“You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can’t get her to come and get them then they won’t work. What are the dynamics that motivate her to do that? I’m interested in thinking about how we can change behaviour,” she says.
The behavioural focus has much to do with her empathy for women as a mother of three children (aged 14, 11 and eight). But it may also be a reflection of the long journey she has made from her modest upbringing in Texas to the 5m purpose-built mansion she now occupies in Seattle.
Her father, an engineer, was determined to see his four children through college, and set up a cleaning business to raise extra cash. As a teenager she scrubbed floors and scoured ovens to help out. “My parents were: ‘You will go to college! That is the way for economic opportunity in the US, no matter what you chose to do with your life.”
When years later the Gateses began to think about how to give back some of their largesse, she instinctively homed in on education, starting with a scheme to give out free laptops to schools.
An early push towards philanthropy came from Bill Gates’s late mother, Mary, who pulled no punches when she wrote to her future daughter-in-law before their 1994 wedding. “From those to whom much is given, much is expected,” she said.
“In a funny way I think Mary could see ahead where we might be going,” Melinda Gates says. “I was young when I married Bill, 29. He was so committed to working at Microsoft and she kept pressing him to do more giving. ‘Mom, I’m busy at Microsoft, I’m trying to change the world that way,’ he’d say. But she knew at some point that our place in life would be to give it back.”
The second big impetus towards helping the developing world also came around the time of the wedding, when the couple made their first trip to Africa. They took a group of friends on safari for a three-week engagement celebration. What began as a manifestation of supreme wealth inspired years spent in philanthropic endeavour.
“I loved the animals and I loved the landscape, but at the end of the day you came back saying: ‘My gosh! What’s going on here? How could I live a life like this in Seattle with such a large dichotomy between human beings. That just shouldn’t be.’
“We were driving down the road in what was then Zaire, now Congo, in our smart Jeeps and all the shops in the street were shut down. The women had no shoes and were carrying huge bundles of sticks on their heads with a baby in front and on their back. It was so different, you were almost assaulted by it, in a way that made you want to know more. So we went out into the villages, to understand, and the more we learned the more we wanted to do something to help.”
Since 1994 the Gates foundation has committed bn. In 2006 it received a massive injection of funds from financier Warren Buffett, the couple’s good friend. The foundation’s endowment now stands at bn.
The figures are staggering, and multiplying. Last month the trio announced they had persuaded 40 or so other American billionaires to follow their example and promise to give away at least half their pots of gold to charity.
The billionaires club, or the “giving pledge”, as Gates prefers to call it, is predictably a very male affair, including the likes of the New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, Star Wars creator, George Lucas, old money in the form of David Rockefeller and oil wealth personified by T Boone Pickens. Does Gates finds the testosterone-heavy atmosphere of their occasional gatherings oppressive?
“Not really. When we’ve done these dinners the wives are present too. You can’t overstate how much the wives are part of the decision-making.”
Unlike many of the other wives, though, Melinda Gates has played a full and equal part in running the Gates foundation from the start. There is nothing figurative about her.
“You have to remember my background was computer science, and when I went through that at Duke [University] and then started at Microsoft there weren’t that many women around. So I’ve been pretty used to that for a long time. The great thing here at the foundation is that Bill and I are peers, we do things together.”
Between them, the billionaires are offering to give away 5bn. But the venture also carries with it a risk. By drawing attention to themselves, to the huge donations they propose but also to their fabulous individual wealth, the participants are inviting greater scrutiny and even backlash to the growing phenomenon of what has been called “philanthrocapitalism”.
The Gates foundation, swollen now to about 870 employees, has been questioned for its impact on struggling public sector development projects. The charity is so powerful, so lit up, that it can act as a beacon, attracting the best scientists and taking them away from the poor countries where they are needed most.
Gates says she is well aware of the danger. “Yes sometimes the best and the brightest want to come to work for us, but we want to train and leave a great footprint out in the field. There are some great researchers we are super-deeply involved with in India and I want them exactly where they are: in India.
“Our role is to be catalytic, and all the work we do has to be in partnership. When it comes to polio or malaria or agriculture, we are a drop in the bucket compared with the scale of the problems. We can take some of the risk out of the equation by doing pilot projects, funding research, convening partners who wouldn’t normally come together, but long term it’s really the government funding that counts.”
On a more political level, critics have pointed out that massive giving from Gates and others comes against the backdrop of unprecedented inequality in the US. In the 1970s the richest 1% owned a 10th of the country’s income; now it owns almost a quarter.
I put this argument to Gates: that she and her friends in the billionaires club are giving with one hand what they’ve taken with the other. “You have to let capitalism work the way it works. I don’t think you want to make a fundamental change to capitalism. It would be different if we were taking all the wealth we had and, as Warren says, building pyramids to ourselves. We are not.”
Philosophically, there’s the playing God conundrum. To simplify the point grossly, critics wonder why rich people – who may be brilliant at computer programming, say, but have never had to answer to the electorate – should have the right to decide who gets help and who doesn’t.
“Ultimately we are accountable to society,” says Melinda Gates. “Thank goodness we have a free press in the United States and around the world. The criticisms that have come for the foundation, honestly, they benefit us.
“Bill and I aren’t sitting here in a black box saying, ‘OK, save that life in Africa and not this one in the US.’ We are trying to be informed by lots of people around the globe.”
That still leaves me pondering on a personal, as opposed to political, level how odd it must be to be Melinda Gates. To know that by wielding her own chequebook she can change the world.
“I don’t think of it that way, I really don’t,” she says, hurtling now towards the end of our conversation. “When I’m in India or Bangladesh or one of the many countries I’ve been to in Africa, I try very hard to put myself into the shoes of that woman. I’m constantly saying to myself, I’m lucky I was born in the United States. Leave aside Bill and the wealth, lucky to be in the United States. So if I was that woman in that country, what would I do to lift myself up?”
• For more information, visit the Guardian’s Global development site
Aids and HIV The Gates Foundation had invested 0m in the Global Fund, which finances half of the world’s HIV treatment. It has also funded three programmes working towards HIV prevention and large-scale treatment in Botswana, India and China; funded microbicide technology development; and supported a media initiative to fight Aids in the Ukraine and Russia. Bill Gates announced in July that the goal was to reduce new HIV infections by up to 90% by 2031, which will mark 50 years of the epidemic.
Vaccination Pledged bn over 10 years to deliver vaccines to the poorest countries. 5m has gone to Rotary International’s PolioPlus scheme to eradicate the disease, and 6m to the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative. Over the past decade the foundation has dedicated .5bn to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi).
Agriculture Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa received 4.5m to boost agricultural growth on smallholdings by providing seeds, soils and support. But the foundation has been criticised for ties with Cargill, an agribusiness commodity company, and for buying 500,000 shares in the GM firm Monsanto, worth around m.
Mother and child: Melinda Gates announced another .5bn in June to help mothers during childbirth and babies. Schemes will provide healthcare, nutrition support and family planning in developing countries. The priority is to tackle maternity and infant mortality, particularly in Ethiopia and India.
Education .37bn has been devoted to an UNCF scholarship programme, offering educational and financial opportunities to African American, Native American, Pacific Islander American or Hispanic American students.
Kate Abbott
• This article was amended on 22 September 2010. The original quoted Melinda Gates as saying “When we’ve done these dinners the wives are present too. You can’t underestimate how much the wives are part of the decision-making.” This has been corrected.
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Campaigners against the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy, which bans openly gay people from serving in the US armed forces, were offered hope when Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said he would schedule a vote on it next week. Their campaign was given added impetus when Lady Gaga turned up at Sunday’s MTV music awards with four former service members who had been discharged under the law, and, in an interview on Monday, asked her fans to tweet Reid about the issue.
When the law was brought in by President Clinton in 1993, it was a compromise, replacing a total ban on gay people in the military. Many assumed it was only a matter of time before it was dropped altogether. But since then, more than 13,000 people have been thrown out because of their sexuality and, despite the fact that President Obama has spoken publicly about wanting a repeal, the law is still in place.
In May, hope was rekindled when the House of Representatives said it was in favour of dropping the policy, but the Senate, which must pass any change in the law, has not yet agreed to a repeal. And even if DADT is scrapped, it seems unlikely that those who have been discharged will be reinstated.
Forty-year-old Rhonda Davis served in the US navy for 11 years before her honesty about being gay lost her her job. “I’ve never regretted telling the truth about who I am,” she says. “But I would like to go back in. I know people think Obama should have sorted it out by now, but these things do take time. I know that. I still keep my uniform.”
Research by Nathaniel Frank at the University of California last year found that while women make up just 15% of military personnel, 35% of people ejected under DADT – about 200 a year – are female.
“I came across a lot more gay men than lesbians in my time there,” says Davis. “But I found it to be the case sometimes that men don’t like women having authority and advancing through the ranks. And they really don’t like it when a pretty woman turns them down, whether she’s straight or gay. It’s easy for them to claim that any woman who ticks them off is a lesbian. And once someone claims that about you, whether it’s true or not, you’re pretty much out.”
But Davis was not the victim of bullying; in fact her sexuality was respected by many of those who served around her. Some gay people in the armed forces say their sexuality is an “open secret” among colleagues. However, having friendly comrades who turned a blind eye didn’t protect Davis for ever.
She had joined up at the age of 25, eager to have a career. Her father had spent a short time in the navy and believed it had given him a good grounding. Friends had talked about the great travel opportunities and how the military was like one big family. So, with no other clear career path in sight, Davis went to see a recruitment officer.
It was the mid-1990s, just a couple of years after DADT came into force. Davis was not very familiar with the policy, although had heard something about it. She was comfortable with her sexuality and had been out from a young age in her home town in Virginia. When she mentioned being gay, the recruitment officer said she wasn’t really supposed to tell anyone, but he was happy to sign her up.
“That was illegal,” says Davis. “As soon as he found out I was gay, he shouldn’t have let me join, but he did – probably to boost his numbers – and I soon found myself on the 10-week bootcamp training course.”
She loved her life as a new recruit and found that she didn’t have to hide her sexuality too much when she was with colleagues. Things started to get difficult, though, when she began dating. It was then that she realised she wasn’t allowed the same basic rights as her straight colleagues. She was unable to settle down with a partner because military rules would force them apart, both geographically and mentally.
“You’re constantly thrown to different corners of the globe, you’re not allowed to kiss your partner goodbye at the ship as you go off to war, and they can’t come to see you when you’re ill,” says Davis.
After a brief fling with someone she met at bootcamp, which had to finish when they were posted to different areas, Davis began her first serious relationship while serving. She was stationed in Spain and got together with a local woman.
“In terms of people accepting us, things were sort of OK. We were only allowed off the boat for the night if we were staying with a spouse, but on one occasion they let me stay with her, knowing she was a woman. Later, my immediate supervisor said, ‘We all know you’re gay, but you know you could really get kicked off for this. Be careful.’ I would so often live in fear of someone just coming and removing me from my job.”
Eventually, it all became too much for Davis and she moved to the active reserves for two years, a standby role that involves far less official time commitment. Her aim was to allow her relationship with her Spanish girlfriend to develop. When the relationship ended, Davis went back to the navy full time.
She rose through the ranks and carried on for a few more years before striking up a new relationship with a woman she met while on duty in Japan. But similar problems arose, and this time her frustration reached breaking point.
Three years into the relationship, and 11 years into her service, she did something that would change her life for ever. Davis put on her summer navy whites and headed into New York City to join a march for marriage equality. It was a rainy day in June in 2006, and she knew her whites would get grubby, but she was determined to make a statement.
“Hundreds of us held brightly coloured umbrellas and walked across the Brooklyn bridge chanting for equality,” she says. “It wasn’t long before the uniform attracted attention and I found myself approached to do a live TV interview. Right there, with a camera in my face, in front of millions of viewers and listeners, I swapped more than a decade of lies for one glorious moment of truth. I told reporters I had a girlfriend and wanted to marry her,” she says.
“On Monday morning, my commanding officer called me in and questioned me. ‘If you want to tell me that the person I heard was not you, I’ll drop this case right here,’ he said. I could tell he didn’t want to punish me, but I stayed silent. He kept asking and eventually I admitted it. Within a few hours I was signing my discharge papers.”
Four years on, Davis is living in Florida and working as a university recruitment officer. Her colleagues call her “sailor”. She misses the navy life every day – the routine, the excitement, the professionalism and the respect she was given.
“The choices I made that day cost me 10 years [of working] towards retirement in the navy, a steady pay-cheque, a great job, and some really sweet benefits, but I have no regrets. I did what I had to do,” she maintains.
“There has definitely been a renewed sense of hope with Obama,” she says. “And, I would love to put that uniform on again one day. And this time, I’ll wear it with true, genuine pride.”
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Introducing high-tech audio in a compact speaker designed for live-work lifestyles With sci-fi looks (Battlestar Galactica fans might compare it to a Cylon) and sound design to match, the Audyssey Audio Dock reinvents standard dock set-ups, introducing a bold form factor and better acoustics. The system is the first consumer product from Audyssey, a Southern California company specializing in high-end audio solutions that you might’ve experienced in a Jaguar, home theater or while watching a Sanyo TV. Their proprietary technology delivers accurate sound in a compact body, which means that in this new dock (which they call the South of Market Edition) the group of two four-inch woofers and two 3/4-inch tweeters pack a punch. Five different programs based on psychoacoustics and other research work together to make music sound rich or—if you’re using it for Skype or to make phone calls—voices sound clear. Features designed for our wired world include Bluetooth capabilities for streaming music to the speakers, along with the 30-pin dock, mini jacks, built-in microphones (for speakerphone use) and a USB port. A remote controls all the features, with only one play/pause button keeping the dock itself simple. The SoMA comes out this November, but the young company plans to work with the designers at Ammunition on future consumer products. Check Audyssey’s site and Facebook page for news, including retailers.
Excerpt from:
Audyssey Audio Dock
Sad news for those of us with fond memories of long minutes lost in the more arcane histories of English words: the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which a team of 80 lexicographers has been working on since 1989, will probably never be printed. “The print dictionary market is just disappearing,” Oxford University Press CEO Nigel Portwood told a Sunday newspaper. It will still be available online – in fact, in December, the web version is being relaunched, including for the first time the historical thesaurus of the OED, which contains almost every word in English from Old English to the present. The problem is that it is a tad pricey: £7 plus VAT for a week’s access; £205 plus VAT for a year. Luckily, there are alternatives:
This paper’s preferred arbiter, in its print version, the pocket version is available free online – though, it must be said, boasting some rather confusing orthography. The second entry for the word “help”, for example, reads “2. to contribute to, to help Latin America’s economies” – some italics, or brackets, or bold letters would help. You can buy a 1,888-page hard copy for £70, or download it for a mere £9.99.
The Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, with its 75,000 words and phrases and 110,000 definitions, is free online. This is much more presentable, with quite satisfying lists of definitions, and examples of the word in context. A little bit of etymology, too. Chambers is not, however, accepting new subscribers to the full shebang – 170,000 words and phrases and 270,000 definitions. The 1,871-page print version sells for £40.
The definitions are short and to the point, with no information about sources or background (though there are sample phrases, and a direct link to a thesaurus). It also lets you submit words of your own, and gives you the option of British or American English. Macmillan’s particular wheeze, useful to learners of English, is to highlight the 7,500 core, high-frequency words in the English language: three-star words are the most frequent; one-star words less so. It’s free online, but you’ll pay £24 for a hard copy.
A real discovery, this online site trawls 18,967,499 words in 1,060 different dictionaries – all the major English ones, but also dictionaries for specific subjects (business, art, medicine) or languages. You can customise your search – only in slang, for example; compare entries in different dictionaries; do a wildcard search (asterisks, hashtags or @ symbols account for the characters you can’t remember), or a reverse search (type in “being tried twice for the same crime”, for “double jeopardy”, for example). It doesn’t, however, link to a Scrabble dictionary, which some might feel is an important omission.
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Is your kitchen slightly defective? Not enough storage jars? Low stocks of chocolate morsels? You might be tempted to look to Nigella for inspiration. This, she would have you believe, is a mistake. On the cover of her new book Kitchen: Recipes From the Heart of the Home (£26, Chatto & Windus), she wears an apron, lest the famously creamy décolletage be spattered. It could happen: life is a whirl of after-work urgency and feeding friends when frantic. But no matter how many times she professes to be an anti-perfectionist, it’s hard to believe.
She opens her mouth to tell us that things go wrong for her, too: we hear the slow, silky flow of molten chocolate. She tells us that she forgot to put the vegetables in her Thai chicken noodle soup; we assume she was distracted by plucking a single perfect rose from an Eaton Square windowbox. From the scarlet negligee she poses in with a bowl of “slut’s spaghetti” to the title of How to Be a Domestic Goddess, she’s always had her tongue thrust so far into her cheek that there’s no room for chocolate lime cake. She’s entirely in control of her own image, and she looks, sounds and cooks too smooth. We’re not buying it.
What we will be buying is Kitchen. At 500 pages, it’s the same length as her first, now-classic book How To Eat, signalling a return to form after the flimsiness of Nigella Express. The recipes are reassuringly solid, enticing and, crucially, just that bit less excessive; the sugar count, though still no diabetic’s delight, is down significantly. This aside, she has refused to evolve with fashion, and, in keeping her cooking much the same, has acquired a rebellious appeal. The rest of the civilised culinary world is desperately trying to tread lightly on the earth while smoking its own kippers. Nigella goes shopping in a cab and rips the cellophane off packets of stir-fry veg and ready-made gnocchi. Her only flaw is an urge to make life easier. Perfect.
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Though I’ve tried to remember much over the years, there’s only one quote I know I’ll never forget. It touched me deeply. Asked if she could edit one thing from her past, Fergie, the ex-crystal meth addict and one-time onstage urinator from the Black Eyed Peas, said she’d have started applying eye cream when she was 18. The day I read this, I bought an eye serum. Currently, I’m enjoying Crème de la Mer’s extravagant new eye balm (£95, cremedelamer.co.uk). I forget to use it more often than not, but whenever that interview comes echoing through to me, which it does, admittedly, at moments of great ennui, I’ll dab it on, and sigh for Fergie.
Alternatively…
Perricone MD Cold Plasma Eye £75, selfridges.com
Elemis Eye Serum £26, timetospa.co.uk
Lierac Diopticalm Eye Balm £17, harrods.com
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The mother of a 14-year-old County Durham beauty pageant contestant allows her to have make-up tattooed on her face to “enhance her features”.
Read more from the original source:
Mother backs teen beauty tattoos
To: David Axelrod <davidaxelrod@barackobama.com>, Alyssa Mastromonaco, director of scheduling and advance <alyssa@ whitehouse.gov> Subject: Re: Revised schedule for Martha’s Vineyard this week
Look, I realise the priority here is to make it clear that I’m working really, really hard for the American people despite being nominally on vacation, but is it strictly necessary for me to take my counterterrorism team with me for ice-cream in Oak Bluffs AND make a speech on job creation from the top of a lighthouse, all on the same day? And why is it always lighthouses? Surely there’s something to do in Martha’s Vineyard apart from visit lighthouses, hang out on the beach eating ice-cream, then visit more lighthouses? Barack PS. “Go on a relaxing stroll from the beach to a lighthouse, or vice versa” doesn’t count.
To: David Axelrod <davidaxelrod@barackobama.com> Subject: Re: Time magazine poll: 46% of Republicans think Obama is a Muslim
You know, I’ve been desperately struggling for ways to interpret this poll so that I don’t need to conclude that this country is spiralling irretrievably into a vortex of wilful ignorance, crazed bigotry, and eternal darkness. I think I came up with one: what if I AM a Muslim, without realising it? It’s possible, right? Maybe? Anyway, this means I definitely can’t do that speech from the top of the lighthouse: it’d look totally Muslim. I mean, can you say “minaret”? To be on the safe side, perhaps we’d better skip all lighthouse-related appearances. It’ll be a sacrifice, but I think I’ll cope. Barack
To: Reggie Love <bodyman@barackobama.com> Subject: Beach equipment
So, following our earlier discussions, this is what you’ll need to bring for me for this afternoon at the beach: towels, tennis rackets and balls, bottled water, recliners, frisbee, food for Bo, and a copy of the Bible that says “THE BIBLE” in clearly legible letters on the cover. It needs to be big enough to hide my paperback of The God Delusion, which I haven’t quite finished yet. Thx, BHO
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Phillip Noyce’s neo-cold-war action thriller Salt – the title’s conceivably inspired by Salt II – could well be this year’s top summer movie. It’s pacy, smart, subversive and knocked out with such verve and attack that you’re not in the least bit bothered by how far-fetched it all is. Angelina Jolie plays the famously gender-bendered role originally earmarked for Tom Cruise, and here we might pause to consider this sexist world in which a similar transition would be unthinkable for The Expendables. Golden Girls with Uzis maybe? Anyway, Angelina is the CIA’s special agent Evelyn Salt, who one day accompanies her hardbitten colleagues Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) on a difficult job debriefing a Russian defector who says he’s got very important information. The CIA has apparently a Russian mole in its ranks: a “sleeper” agent ready to carry out an atrocious act, and this is Evelyn herself! Horrified, Salt has to go on the run, because no one believes in her innocence – battling both baddies and goodies to clear her name and foil an assassination plot. Kurt Wimmer’s script channels the spirit of The Manchurian Candidate, perhaps via the Jonathan Demme remake. Evelyn Salt is not merely a super-fit martial-arts ninja but a mistress of disguise: hilariously, she even at one point passes herself off as a man – a lean, wiry, smallish guy with a toothy smile and mop of hair. Short of carrying around the complete works of L Ron Hubbard, the homage couldn’t be made clearer. Very entertaining stuff.
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Of course I’m happy to help — they’re really pushing you at Sidwell Friends, huh? But this one’s pretty simple: it’s just about the concept of logical opposites. If x is true, then not-x is false by definition. So to take a topical example, I’m opposed to attempts to outlaw same-sex marriage, but on the other hand, I’m opposed to making same-sex marriage legal, because . . . wait, that’s weird. Now I think about it, that’s not logical at all. Huh. Let me get back to you on this one, sweetie, OK?
x Dad
The part I never understand is this: if you’re going to blame some sinister organisation for surreptitiously creating a terrifying socialist world government through bike-sharing and farmers’ markets . . . why pick the UN? Least efficient organisation in the history of the planet. If those guys tried to organise even one bike-sharing scheme, it’d take 20 years and several billion dollars just to agree on an acronym for the coordinating committee. As for authorising the purchase of a fleet of black helicopters? Never. Gonna. Happen.
Barack
It was a joke, and he was talking about my leftwing critics. What are you acting so worried about? Also, can we talk about the disgusting quantities of air freshener you seem to be spraying in the corridor right outside your office recently? I could barely breathe when I walked past this morning.
Barack
PS. Your plane KNOCKED OVER ANOTHER PLANE at the airport? Is your whole staff on drugs or something? Is that what you’re worried about?
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All the president’s emails: Rahm Emanuel, Bob Woodward and Binyamin Netanyahu
Monday, September 27th, 2010All the president’s emails: David Axelrod, Alyssa Mastromonaco and Reggie Love
Monday, August 23rd, 2010All the president’s emails: Malia Obama, David Axelrod and Joe Biden
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
This article titled “Freedom is not found online” was written by Aditya Chakrabortty, for The Guardian on Tuesday 30th March 2010 06.00 UTC