A country which is a thinly veiled totalitarian State,to which world has turned a blind eye because of oil,a country where Human Rights violations can not even be voiced because of monetary clout,a place where people flocked to to work for a people who do not know what to do, a Head of the country who is not accountable to any one, where economic transactions are limited to family coterie, with generous doles to foreign corporations, where ordinary citizens have been led to believe building skyscrapers could lead to their happiness, has burst.
Worst is yet to come.
Story:
Wall Street turned lower on Friday, as traders scrambled to play catch-up after downturns in Asian and European markets over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Investors were spooked by reports that Dubai World, the emirate’s investment vehicle, was seeking to suspend repayments on all or part of its $59 billion in debt. That pushed shares down more than 3 percent on European markets on Thursday; Asia markets posted similar declines on Friday.

Immediately after the markets opened, the Dow Jones industrial average fell about 230 points, but shares then started to regain ground. In the last 40 minutes of trading, the Dow was down 1.3 percent or 133 points. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 1.5 percent or 16 points, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq slipped 1.3 percent or 28 points. The stock markets will close at 1 p.m. Friday after being closed Thursday for Thanksgiving. The bond markets close at 2 p.m.

The dollar was just below $1.50 to the euro, and crude oil prices fell $3.08 to $74.88 in New York trading. Treasury prices rose.

Analysts said they thought Thursday’s declines might be overdone, and that a true picture of the market’s reaction would emerge next week as buyers return from the holiday and as more details on the Dubai situation come out.

“I don’t think it’s devastating at all,” said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James. “Nobody knows the collateral damage, but it is clear that our banks have exposure to European banks.”

A research note Friday from Credit Suisse estimated that European banks may be the hardest hit if Dubai World cannot meet its obligations, with total exposure estimated at 13 billion euros ($19.6 billion). European banks on Friday played down their exposure.

“Dubai is really a symptom, a legacy, from the previous boom, rather than symptomatic of a start of a whole new set of issues that are going to create a systemic crisis in emerging markets,” Kevin Grice, senior international economist at Capital Economics in London, said. “Markets assume the worst-case scenario.”

The uncertainty in Dubai did not suggest a coming collapse of the global real estate market, Mr. Grice said.

European markets closed slightly higher. The FTSE 100 in London was up 52 points, or 1 percent, while the DAX in Frankfurt rose 71 points or 1.3 percent. In Paris, the CAC-40 increased 42 points or 1.2 percent.

In Europe, investors were concerned about the state of public finances and possible credit rating downgrades in Greece and Ireland.

Asian markets fell. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong declined 4.8 percent and South Korea’s key market gauge, the Kospi, dropped 4.7 percent. The Nikkei 225 index in Japan and the Taiex in Taiwan both sagged 3.2 percent. The market turmoil was touched off by Wednesday’s announcement from Dubai, one of the seven members of the United Arab Emirates, that it was asking banks to allow Dubai World to suspend its debt repayments for six months.

Dubai’s move — the global high-finance equivalent of a homeowner asking the bank to allow six months of skipped mortgage payments because of a shortage of cash — sowed fear of a contagion of instability that could roil markets that are only now recovering from the near cataclysm of the last year.

“This has sent shockwaves through the markets, even though the problems in Dubai have been known about for two years,” Emil Wolter, a Hong Kong-based strategist the Royal Bank of Scotland, said by phone from Paris.

“But it is not the trigger for a brand-new crisis. Yes, the magnitude of the situation is dramatic for Dubai. But Dubai is not America — and a property crisis in Dubai will not cause the same global crisis as a property crisis in the States.”

Some market experts noted, for instance, that while banks that have lent money to Dubai World could suffer significant losses if the company were to default on all or part of its debt, worries about the sovereign debt of oil-rich Middle Eastern countries were unfounded.

Paul Schulte, head of multi-strategy research at Nomura in Hong Kong, commented in a note on Friday: “Dubai was a carbon copy of Thailand’s disastrous foray as an ‘international financial center’ in the 1990s. Happily, the U.A.E. has oil. Thailand did not.”

Like many Western consumers during the good times, Dubai gorged on debt and borrowed too much to finance a building boom that has gone bust in the downturn.

“Dubai was fairly much the worst example of overextension. It had the worst debt per capita in the world by far,” Christopher Davidson, an expert in Gulf politics at Durham University in Britain, said Thursday. “I would like to put it down as a really enormous white elephant that doesn’t have much in common with the regular economy of a regular state.”

When credit markets froze last year, Dubai, like Iceland, found itself overextended. But Dubai, which has little oil, was backed by its Arab emirate neighbors, especially oil-rich Abu Dhabi — or so investors had assumed.

Saud Masud, head of research at UBS in Dubai, said Thursday that negotiators would feel pressure to reach some kind of deal to present to the markets before trading in the region resumes next week after the Eid holiday. The Dubai government’s total debt is estimated at about $80 billion, of which, Mr. Masud estimated, about two-thirds is held by local investors.

Mr. Schulte of Nomura commented in his note that, in his view, “it is not a matter of when but at what price Abu Dhabi will bail out Dubai.”

Mr. Wolter of RBS said he too believed Abu Dhabi would have no choice but to ultimately come to Dubai’s rescue. Until that becomes clear, though, he said, markets would remain extremely nervous.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/business/28markets.html?_r=1&hp&emc=na

Bhai,
You are not our neighbor,but our brother,notwithstanding the acrimony between the nations because of self seeking politicians.We,majority of Indians , feel sorry for Pakistan and also are also angry as to why with such a common back ground, people of Pakistan seem to be harboring ill will against us.When your cricketers like Intiqab Alam,Asif Iqbal,Zaheer Abbas,Javed Maindad,not withstanding his clownish behavior,Wasim Akram are considered as our own , what prevents you from understanding us?
Why can not the people of Pakistan show the door to warped generals and corrupt politicians and become friendly with us rather than distant US and a wily China?Why should you not shun the mullahs who spit venom on India?
Why do not you own up your mistakes in treating India as your enemy and know that we have lived together for centuries?

Story:
Dear Indian friend,

I am sorry for the tardiness in marking 26/11. It was not deliberate but as we fight daily battles with terrorism, it is not easy to tell what date it is. Don’t consider this letter a sign of weakness because I am a member of proud nation which will one day prove its potential and take its rightful place in the comity of nations as a progressive and modern country at peace within and without.

I do realize however that day is somewhere in the future and I write to you today as a member of an embattled nation fighting its demons and trying to undo the terrible legacy of the 1980s Afghan War. What happened on 26/11 was probably part of the same cycle and I am sorry that it had to come to what it did on 26/11. India was attacked. The attackers- hardened militants and frankenstein’s monsters created by Pakistan- had not just India in mind but they wanted to embroil Pakistan and India into Nuclear war which could lead to a wider global conflict involving all major powers. Fortunately that has not come to pass. Statesmenship of the highest order is required however to ensure that we don’t allow the militants to succeed.

Please also realize that Bombay – or Mumbai as you call it now- is not just an Indian city but one of the premier Asian cities. For us Pakistanis it is hallowed ground- it was this city that our founding father Mr. Jinnah called his own, where he made a name for himself through sheer hardwork and perseverence and which allowed to rise from humble origins to significance. The Taj – which was attacked- was where Mr. Jinnah spent his honeymoon with his beautiful wife Ruttie – a marriage that itself signified the pluralistic and secular ethos of that magnificent city. It is this city that his grandson has built his business empire in. For us Bombay is sacred ground and like much of India, which is littered with monuments of varying importance and significance to Pakistanis, it is our heritage as much as yours.

So let us attach a new significance to 26/11… let this day signify an awakening on both sides that enough with this “geo-strategic thinking” of one-upping each other. Let this be a day when we realize that the zero-sum game we have played have cost us dear in the past and that Pakistan and India must work together for peace, prosperity and progress of this common subcontinent of ours. Let us base our relationship on intense rivalry in cricket, human development and economic growth. Let us renounce all tactics of a thousand cuts once and for all and realize that it is not hard to make bombs but prosperous nations are known by their intellectual health, civic sense and adherence to human rights. Let us sack irresponsible Bonapartists like your Military chief who threatened a “limited nuclear war” and instead seek inspiration from what India’s first Prime Minister Nehru told Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in New York: “Zulfi, we have to save South Asia from Nuclear War”.

Let 26/11 be a new beginning and perhaps a return to Mr. Jinnah’s vision for India-Pakistan relations modelled on US-Canada relationship.

Yours sincerely,

YLH – Your Pakistani Well-wisher and rival claimant to progress and prosperity
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/marking-2611-a-letter-to-our-neighbors/#comment-21721

É verdade que as listas nunca saem de moda. E o New York Times publicou mais uma, desta vez sob o pretexto de elencar os 100 livros “notáveis” de 2009.

A única presença “brasileira” na relação é a biografia de Clarice Lispector (Clarice Vírgula), escrita por Benjamin Moser, lançada este mês no país. As aspas justificam-se: Moser não é brasileiro e a biografada, ainda que tenha escrito em português, é ucraniana naturalizada no Brasil.

“Aos autores que fizeram a lista, parabéns. E a todos que não participaram da escolha, nossas desculpas”.

Correct.SriLanka has to be chastised for genocide, not world recognition of any sort.
Story:
The UK will try to block Sri Lanka’s bid to host the next Commonwealth summit over its handling of the recent war, a UK government source has said.
Sri Lanka could not be “rewarded” for actions that had a “huge impact on civilians”, the source said.
The current Commonwealth summit is about to get under way in Trinidad and Tobago.
Climate change and the controversial membership bid of Rwanda are also high on the agenda.
Rising sea levels
The 60th anniversary Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, being held in Port of Spain, begins on Friday.
One of the key issues will be the choice of the 2011 venue.
The Downing Street source said that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had “real concerns about Sri Lanka’s bid”.

Queen Elizabeth will open the summit on Friday
“We simply cannot be in a position where Sri Lanka – whose actions earlier this year had a huge impact on civilians, leading to thousands of displaced people without proper humanitarian access – is seen to be rewarded for its actions.”
The UN estimates the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels left at least 7,000 civilians dead with 150,000 people still displaced and living in camps.
Climate change will also be high on the agenda, in the last major gathering of international leaders before the global summit on the subject starts in Copenhagen on 7 December.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Danish PM Lars Rasmussen are also attending the Port of Spain summit, to give weight to any statement on the issue.
About half of the Commonwealth’s members are island states, many of them threatened by rising sea levels.

About half of members, like the Maldives, are island states
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who is hosting the three-day meeting, said he hoped the summit could boost momentum for an agreement on carbon emissions at Copenhagen, amid “concerns about the way the negotiations were going”.
“We hope to arrive at a political statement that can add value to the process that will culminate in Copenhagen next month… what we can do is raise our voices politically,” he said.
The Commonwealth’s 53 nations comprise about two billion people, or one-third of the planet’s population.
The leaders are meeting days after pledges by the US and China to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns that the Copenhagen meeting could fail to agree substantial cuts.
Zimbabwe issue
The summit will also discuss Rwanda’s entry into the English-speaking club.
The Francophone nation has been seeking membership following disagreements with France over events leading up to the 1994 genocide.
The issue is likely to be controversial. The nation’s entry bid has received strong backing from some member states.
However, some rights activists are angry that entry would reward a nation they say is guilty of abuses dating back to the 1994 genocide.
BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins, in Trinidad, says the leaders are expected to admit Rwanda.
He says most of the leaders apparently believe that if Rwanda is admitted, then they will be able to apply peer pressure to improve the lives of its people.
Zimbabwe’s possible re-entry could also be brought up at the meeting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8382014.stm

This is going to be the kind of post that offends the offendable, which is excellent, because it will help our audience to self-select. Reader Divia passes along this fabulous NYT article: What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage.  It’s about simple classical conditioning, which I’ve seen mentioned in a number of PUA resources.  Basically it means rewarding someone when they exhibit behaviors you like, although as the article shows, there is more nuance to the implementation.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don’t. After all, you don’t get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.

Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I’d kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.

I was using what trainers call “approximations,” rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior.

I find this technique particularly interesting in the context of the unlikely-to-ever-end theme of manipulation.  Not only is it a manipulative technique, and if done inappropriately, without a sense of loving kindness for your partner, I would go so far as to say it can be evil.  For example, in relationships where one partner is psychologically dominating the other (which can become abusive), conditioning can play a role, with not only appreciation but all love and hate doled out as carrots and sticks to reinforce the dependency.

Fortunately, like most PUA techniques, the mere fact of using it with someone you love in the context of a long-term relationship automatically moves it strongly towards the side of good.  (This is one of my central themes about PUA4LTR, BTW, so expect to see it expressed and explored quite a bit in the future).  Choosing to express some of your appreciation at times that help your partner grow and develop in positive ways is very different if done with a base of unconditional love.

I’m going to give up on arguing about manipulation soon, because logic is unlikely to convince those who find skillful interaction and personal growth innately distasteful (hmm, think I’m biased much?  :) ).  But I want to point out that classical conditioning is something that many of us do to ourselves (“if I go to the gym, I can have a candy bar!”), and to our kids (“Thank you so much for cleaning up your mess, I really appreciate it!”).

Kids are a great example, because they illustrate that base of love that I mentioned.  Giving your kids positive and negative feedback to help them grow and learn, if done with a base of constant love, is part of effective parenting.  Whereas only loving your kids when they get A’s is evil and can lead to lifelong self-esteem issues and approval-seeking.

As with most cases of being a PUA in an LTR, communication with your partner is important.  I won’t go quite so far as to say it is absolutely required, but using this technique without discussion is definitely straying into dangerous ground.  But with communication, it can become part of the dance of partnership and growing together:

When the training techniques worked so beautifully, I couldn’t resist telling my husband what I was up to. He wasn’t offended, just amused. As I explained the techniques and terminology, he soaked it up. Far more than I realized.

…

One morning, as I launched into yet another tirade about how uncomfortable I was, Scott just looked at me blankly. He didn’t say a word or acknowledge my rant in any way, not even with a nod.

I quickly ran out of steam and started to walk away. Then I realized what was happening, and I turned and asked, “Are you giving me an L. R. S.?” Silence. “You are, aren’t you?”

He finally smiled, but his L. R. S. has already done the trick.

High-definition TV sets are expected to top the wish lists of consumers looking to cash in on Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. According to Retrevo’s Gadgetology survey, 30 percent of consumers shopping over the weekend want a new HDTV set, compared to 22 percent that are looking to purchase a new computer and just 14 percent that want a new Blu-ray player.

The competition for HDTV buyers is expected to be intense, with Wal-mart (s WMT), Best Buy (s BBY), Target (s TGT) and other brick-and-mortar retailers slashing prices and offering “door-buster” deals to get consumers in their stores over the weekend. Online retailers like Amazon.com (s AMZN) are being equally as aggressive, with some holiday weekend deals already available.

So what are consumers looking for in their new HDTVs? According to Andrew Eisner, Retrevo’s director of community and content, most new HDTV buyers are being spurred by the digital TV transition to replace their old CRT sets. As a result, there’s been a noticeable shift in consumer buying behavior and retailer pricing for medium-sized TVs vs. large TVs. Whereas last year, consumer interest in HDTVs smaller than 37 inches was about even with those that were bigger, Eisner says that this year consumers are looking at small or medium-sized sets at about a 3:2 ratio.

That’s partly due to attractive pricing on the retailer side. Many retailers are using the holiday weekend to clear out inventory of older, smaller 720p HDTVs. Target, for instance, is offering a 32-inch Westinghouse HDTV at 720p for $246. It’s an entry-level price for an entry-level set, but it’s sure to stir interest from consumers looking for a good deal.

It’s also partly due to budget constraints in a down economy. “We believe that 30 percent of consumers will buy TVs this season, and a big percentage of those are buying on Black Friday and will spend about $1,000. So we conclude that a lot of people will be buying medium-sized TVs for that price,” Eisner said.

While HDTV demand is expected to be robust this holiday season, Retrevo doesn’t see much interest among consumers for Blu-ray players or gaming consoles. Only 14 percent expect to buy a new Blu-ray player over the weekend, and about 10 percent are shopping for a new game console.

Interesting article from The New York Times, about how exercise creates neurons that remain calm in the face of stress.

Just the other day, while reading the news online, I ran into this cool website called Spot.Us. It’s a very interesting project of the Center for Media Change, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, California.

As they describe themselves:

We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics. Contributions are tax-deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.

Good news, a couple of weeks ago The New York Times used for the first time a research partly funded through Spot.Us (full article here).

Spot.Us is a good example of innovative project, successful for its transparency and relevancy, which proves there are many ways to achieve success in your business when you think from the audience perspective and delivers relevant content. It also shows that people are willing to pay for information.

Guess it’s time for change. Starting in our so-many-times-short minds.

Iraq has joined the growing list of nations whose governments have made the move into online video, with the launch of the Iraqi Government channel on YouTube (s GOOG). In his first address on the new video channel, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the Iraqi government will use its YouTube presence to connect to various international communities and viewers interested in following issues that the government faces in rebuilding the country.

“In the interest of enabling the Iraqi government and the National Media Center to use technology and advanced methods of communications and to present our message to other peoples, and in particular with the Iraqi people at home and abroad, the National Media Center has created the Iraqi channel on YouTube, a new and advanced method of communication,” al-Maliki said.

The launch of the Iraqi YouTube channel comes a week after Google CEO Eric Schmidt traveled to the country to meet with government officials. In a video post on CitizenTube, Schmidt says that the officials he spoke with are committed to openness, and that the launch of the video channel will serve to increase that commitment. “There’s nothing more important than communications. There’s nothing more important than information. It’s great that the Iraqi government is introducing the IraqiGov YouTube channel so that we’ll discover even more what’s great about Iraq, this new country that’s being built, the resurgence of a new society, and the amazing things they have in store for all of us,” he says.

The channel follows a slew of similar initiatives from governments and heads of state all around the world, among them channels for the US, France, South Korea, and Estonia, as well as channels for the Pope, the British Royal Family and Queen Rania of Jordan.

Of course, not everyone likes the transparency that YouTube brings, and some governments have taken adversarial positions to the site and its users. Earlier this year, Google took the unprecedented step of disabling comments and uploads from users in North Korea, for example, to protect them from government scrutiny. And China went so far as to block YouTube as part of its censorship program, possibly due to videos of Chinese soldiers beating Tibetans showing up on the site.

Lewackie mainstreamy milczą na temat afery związanej z globalnym ociepleniem. New York Times, mający w swoim dorobku chociażby nielegalnie zdobyte Pentagon Papers w latach 70. dzisiaj milczy na temat przecieku informacji z Uniwersyetu Wschodniej Anglii. Dziennikarze NYT, jak chociażby działający w sekcji Science, Andrew Revkin nie chcą publikować ujawnionych dokumentów, ponieważ jak stwierdził Revkin: “zostały zdobyte w sposób nielegalny i są to rozmowy prywatne”.

Jak widać nie tylko polski światek medialny z Gazetą Wyborczą na czele cechuje się podwójną morlanością i dąży do manipulacji społeczeństwa. Bzdury o globalnym ociepleniu zapełniały przez kilka lat takie brukowce jak New York Times, teraz odwołanie tych banałów będzie dużo trudniejszym zadaniem.

Some people in India perform many tasks simultaneously.Depending upon the number of tasks they perform, they are called ‘Ashtavadani( performs eight tasks simultaneosly,Dasa vadani(performs ten tasks)’.
These acts relate various disciplines, Maths,Vedic hymns, answering questions on music, performing one act with one hand and another with the other hand,Astrology,playing music, and many more.
Testing them would have yielded more insight.
Story:
Next to the many amazing feats our brain pulls off daily, its inferior ability to juggle a few simple tasks sticks out like a sore thumb. Now research from Vanderbilt University suggests that these limits on multitasking arise from slow processing in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s central executive. Although the area has been known to be involved in multitasking, its exact role is a matter of debate.

Using functional MRI, the researchers found that when people were juggling two assignments, their prefrontal cortex appeared to deal with the tasks one by one—creating that familiar mental bottleneck—instead of processing them in parallel as do sensory and motor parts of the brain. With training the prefrontal activation time became shorter, cranking up the speed of the mental conveyor belt by about 10 times. Unfor tunately, the researchers note, the benefits of training might not apply to tasks other than those specifically practiced. “It’s not like you become able to multitask [with drills]; it’s just that you become able to do each task very quickly,” says cognitive neuroscientist Paul Dux, now at the University of Queensland in ­Australia, who conducted the experiment.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mental-bottleneck

Seems to be true..

Very sad.Some doctors, despite fancy degrees,make a cursory examination and arrive at a prognosis.
In this case brain activity should have been mapped or at least pupil dilation examination should have been more thorough.
It is very hard to digest that that this should happen because of inefficiency of the doctors.
Many of us regard doctors next to God, forgetting that medicine is an evolving science ; most of the treatments are exploratory in Nature and these procedures have contra indications as well;some of the medications are effective with out anybody knowing why and how it cures.Classic example is grand mal seizure .We know that this seizure is triggered by sudden increase in electrical discharges in the brain and Eption is prescribed to treat this.But none knows how it works or whether it has side effects.
Because of commercialization of medicine , neither the doctor nor the patient has the time to discuss family history of the patient;nor are the patients interested in slow and steady cure or allowing body to take care with minimal supportive treatment.
It is imperative for patients to inform and discuss with the doctor,your family history,your known allergies and your symptoms.
It is also mandatory on the part of the patients to check the medicines prescribed for contra indications.If yes, inform the doctor and have the medicine changed.Even then you should also chek up on internet about the medicine’s efficacy.This may sound tedious, but will save not only money, but your life as well.
When going for surgery check before hand the anesthesia that is about to me administered and see if it it is compatible with your system for some anesthetics are incompatible.
If you had any disease prior to surgery that has resulted in Edema(especially pulmonary), Nitrous oxide is to be shunned.
While getting tests being carried out make sure at the lab, it is done for the part for which you have problem i.e.what the doctor has prescribed and see that the report is yours when you collect it.Never depute somebody else to collect it.
Also popping pills based on advertisement or based on what your doctor has prescribed earlier ailments is dangerous.
All these jobs are to be carried out by Doctors.Unfortunately,Doctors have no time for patients for they are too busy.

Story:

Conscious but unable to communicate for 23 years after a car accident that was thought to have put him into a deep coma, a quadriplegic Belgian man has described how medical science finally put an end to his agonizing years of silence.

Now able to make himself understood via a computer and specially built keyboard, the man, Rom Houben, said in the Monday issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel that when doctors made the correct diagnosis, it was like starting a second life.

“I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me — it was my second birth,” Mr. Houben, now 46, was quoted as saying.

Mr. Houben, who was an engineering student at the time of the accident, lives in a care home near Brussels. He was assumed to be in a persistent vegetative state until three years ago, when the breakthrough was made.

In the interview he recalled the aftermath of the car accident that paralyzed him and the realization that no one understood that he was fully conscious.

“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he said. He added that he then became a witness to his own suffering as doctors and nurses tried to speak with him until they gave up all hope.

Using brain scanning techniques, Dr. Steven Laureys, a neurological researcher at the Liège University Hospital, discovered that Mr. Houben’s cerebral cortex was still active.

On Monday, Dr. Laureys, who recently published a paper on comas, said that as many as 4 out of 10 similar patients may have been misdiagnosed.

He also described the moment he realized, for the first time that Mr. Houben was fully conscious. “It was one of those rare moments where you really see that what you are doing is useful,” he said in a telephone interview.

“It was a very big moment not just for me but for the whole team, one of those few much-needed moments” for medical professionals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/world/europe/24iht-coma.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a4

This weeks sign the apocolypse is upon us – November 23

Parents Are Borrowing From Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer – NYTimes.com.

While monopoly media power has to be curbed, it is also imperative that Government also ensures that it does not interfere.But this is followed more in the breach.
Story:
The BBC has been holding discussions with City advisers about floating part of BBC Worldwide, its commercial arm, in response to pressure from the government and commercial rivals to dilute its media market power.

As Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he had “an open mind” about the future ownership of Worldwide, people with knowledge of the matter said a partial flotation was one of several possible outcomes, including no change to its status.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e5f8c2b8-d93c-11de-b2d5-00144feabdc0.html

Atrocious.Whose money is this for politicians to dole out without debate and arrange it secretly?
How much more money has been paid or being to whom?What has the Treasury auditor’s doing?
Banks are operated for share holders for profits?Why should public money be paid to them for their mess?They know how to blackmail , stating that ‘investor confidence shall melt?’
The Mafia of Banks and politicians is far more dangerous than Drug cartels.
Incidentally which party and politician has received how much?

The Bank of England has revealed for the first time that it lent Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS £61.6bn in emergency funding last autumn.
Bank governor Mervyn King told a committee of MPs it “was to prevent a loss of confidence spreading through the financial system as a whole”.
The money was repaid in full by January this year, he added.
A spokesman for the prime minister said it was “a powerful reminder” of how the banking system had nearly collapsed.

It was also revealed that Chancellor Alistair Darling had agreed to underwrite any losses which the Bank may have made on the loans.
The Liberal Democrats have called on Mr Darling to explain to the House of Commons why the Treasury guarantees were kept secret.
Vince Cable, the party’s Treasury spokesman, called it a “shocking cover-up”.
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said the revelations about the secret loans showed the need to reform the system of banking regulation.
“The scale of these loans raises the question of how Labour’s tripartite regulatory structure allowed these banks to come so close to collapse in the first place, and underlines the need for fundamental reform to put the Bank of England back in charge,” he said.
Secrecy
It is the first time that the central bank has detailed this support for the two institutions.

We may feel numbed these days when there is talk of the hundreds of billions of pounds in taxpayer support to the banks.
Even so, the revelation of these secret emergency loans to RBS and HBOS a year ago is breath-taking.
The Bank of England only felt it was safe to reveal this covert support now, once the ink was dry on longer-term bailout deals agreed with the banks a couple of weeks ago.
Lloyds shareholders were being asked to approve the takeover of HBOS. Yet they were not told about a Northern Rock-style cash bailout of HBOS.
The authorities argue that disclosing the loans would have caused greater disturbance to the whole system. But bank shareholders might well see it differently.
Mervyn King said the Bank was acting in its capacity as the lender of last resort.
The loans, which were given in October and November of 2008, were in addition to other financial support measures extended to the banks by the government.
The chairman of the Treasury Committee, John McFall, said that when he saw the amount there had been “a little bit of an intake of breath thinking how many universities, how many colleges, how many jobs you could support with this”.
The Bank of England said it had carefully considered the public interest case for disclosure but decided that the assistance should only be revealed “once the Bank considers that the need for secrecy has ceased”.
RBS has since signed up for the government’s Asset Protection Scheme while Lloyds Banking Group – which took over HBOS – has announced plans to raise capital from its shareholders.
The BBC’s chief economics correspondent Hugh Pym said that the £62bn of emergency loans were agreed just as shareholders were being asked to approve the takeover of HBOS. He suggested that shareholders might be unhappy at not being told earlier.
Profound challenges

In his parliamentary testimony Mr King also discussed the wider UK economy, reiterating his view that the recovery was still in the early stages.
He told the Treasury Committee that the economy still faced “profound challenges”.
Regarding the Bank’s policy of quantitative easing – pumping money into the economy to try to boost lending by the commercial banks – Adam Posen, one of Mr King’s colleagues on the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), said he hoped the initiative was “coming to an end”.
Last month, the MPC voted to increase its quantitative easing programme by a further £25bn to £200bn.
However, minutes released subsequently showed a three-way split on the decision, with seven of the nine MPC members voting for it, one wanting a larger increase in the scheme, and one calling for no additional spending.
Mr King also told MPs that he did not think there was any “immediate risk” of the UK having a credit downgrade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8375969.stm

Source: Piper Jaffray

One of the strongest pieces of evidence in support of the existence of an Apple (s aapl) tablet has come into question today. Reports that Condé Nast, publisher of many magazine titles, including The New Yorker and Vogue, was preparing a digital format specifically for the Apple tablet may have overstated the case.

Instead, it looks like Condé Nast and others, including Hearst and Time Inc., are banding together to produce a digital distribution joint venture, which will likely resemble an iTunes store for the magazine industry. The store is apparently being designed with multiple platforms in mind, and is not being specifically targeted at a tablet device from Apple, which may or may not actually exist.

A report in the New York Observer talks about the agreement between the publishing companies, and mentions in particular the fact that the idea is to produce a cross-platform product that’s portable among many different devices:

The company will prepare magazines that can work across multiple digital platforms, whether the iPhone, the BlackBerry or countless other digital devices. The company will not develop an e-book, but create something that people familiar with the plans compare to iTunes—a store where you can buy new and distinct iterations of The New Yorker or Time. Print magazines will also be for sale.

If the deal is successful, according to the interim president of the joint company, John Squires, an official announcement could be forthcoming within weeks, and other major publishers could come on board as well. That doesn’t mean we’ll be seeing a digital newsstand anytime soon, though. Publishers still have to figure out how to create digital versions of the content they aim to provide.

Considering the multiplatform ambitions of the plan, this might be quite a tricky process. Creating a product that remains uniform and recognizable across devices is a major challenge. The consortium simplifies the distribution portion of the equation, though, as a source explained to the Observer:

It’s pretty complicated stuff. The really, really hard part is that you’ve got so many different kinds of devices running on different operating systems. And how do you handle that? The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer. When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want.

It’s possible that this is completely separate from Condé Nast’s plans for Apple’s tablet device, but the timing and nature of the digital distribution scheme make it sound like any tablet formatting may be incidental to a much broader initiative.

Cent percent true.Admission of past mistakes calls for guts and statesmanship, which is absent among leaders ,if any , in Pakistan.
Major problem in Pakistan seems to be that its people are apathetic about their country, excepting during Cricket matches against India.They project to the world a people who seem to be oblivious to the problems of Militancy, Terrorism, suicide bombings,Political skulduggery,corruption, nepotism, back door entry of people to the highest office, a military which, in its passion to hate India is more a divided house than taking care of its borders, short sighted policy of engaging India with Jingoism , when in reality it can not match India in terms of progress,poverty,illiteracy,Fundamentalism and a bankrupt Country living on the doles of US(thus hawking national Honor).
Where are elite and educated?
Where are people who think for the country?
Story:

Courtesy BBC: Guest columnist Ahmed Rashid on how the real problems facing Pakistan are being sidelined by a surge of conspiracy theories

Switch on any of the dozens of satellite news channels now available in Pakistan.

You will be bombarded with talk show hosts who are mostly obsessed with demonising the elected government, trying to convince viewers of global conspiracies against Pakistan led by India and the United States or insisting that the recent campaign of suicide bomb blasts around the country is being orchestrated by foreigners rather than local militants.

Viewers may well ask where is the passionate debate about the real issues that people face – the crumbling economy, joblessness, the rising cost of living, crime and the lack of investment in health and education or settling the long-running insurgency in Balochistan province.

“ The principle obsession is when and how President Asif Ali Zardari will be replaced or sacked ”

The answer is nowhere.

One notable channel which also owns newspapers has taken it upon itself to topple the elected government and appears to hardly ever air democratic views.

Another insists that it will never air anything that is sympathetic to India, while all of them bring on pundits – often retired hardline diplomats, bureaucrats or retired Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers who sport Taliban-style beards and give viewers loud, angry crash courses in anti-Westernism and anti-Indianism, thereby reinforcing views already held by many.

Collapse of confidence

Pakistan is going through a multi-dimensional series of crises and a collapse of public confidence in the state.

Suicide bombers strike almost daily and the economic meltdown just seems to get worse.

But this is rarely apparent in the media, bar a handful of liberal commentators who try and give a more balanced and intellectual understanding by pulling all the problems together.

The explosion in TV channels in Urdu, English and regional languages has bought to the fore large numbers of largely untrained, semi-educated and unworldly TV talk show hosts and journalists who deem it necessary to win viewership at a time of an acute advertising crunch, by being more outrageous and sensational than the next channel.

On any given issue the public barely learns anything new nor is it presented with all sides of the argument.

Every talk show host seems to have his own agenda and their guests reflect that agenda rather than offer alternative policies.

Recently one senior retired army officer claimed that Hakimullah Mehsud – the leader of the Pakistani Taliban which is fighting the army in South Waziristan and has killed hundreds in daily suicide bombings in the past five weeks – has been whisked to safety in a US helicopter to the American-run Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.

In other words the Pakistani Taliban are American stooges, even as the same pundits admit that US-fired drone missiles are targeting the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan.

These are just the kind of blatantly contradictory and nut-case conspiracy theories that get enormous traction on TV channels and in the media – especially when voiced by such senior former officials.

The explosion in civil society and pro-democracy movements that bought the former military regime of President Pervez Musharraf to its knees over two years has become divided, dissipated and confused about its aims and intentions.

Even when such activists do appear on TV their voices are drowned out by the conspiracy theorists who insist that every one of Pakistan’s ills are there because of interference by the US, India, Israel and Afghanistan.

The army has not helped by constantly insisting that the vicious Pakistani Taliban campaign to topple the state and install an Islamic emirate is not a local campaign waged by the dozens of extremist groups, some of whom were trained by the military in the 1990s, but the result of foreign conspiracies.

Economic crisis

Such statements by the military hardly do justice to the hundreds of young soldiers who are laying down their lives to fight the Taliban extremists.

Nor has the elected government of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) tried to alter the balance, as it is mired in ineffective governance and widespread corruption while failing to tackle the economic recession, that is admittedly partly beyond its control.

Moreover the PPP has no talking pundits, sympathetic talk show hosts or a half decent media management campaign that can attempt to refute the lies and innuendo that much of the media is now spewing out.

At present the principle obsession is when and how President Asif Ali Zardari will be replaced or sacked, although there is no apparent constitutional course available to get rid of him except for a military coup, which is unlikely.

The campaign waged by some politicians and parts of the media – with underlying pressure from the army – is all about trying to build public opinion to make Mr Zardari’s tenure untenable.

Nobody discusses the failure of the education system that is now turning out hundreds of suicide bombers, rather than doctors and engineers.

Or the collapsing and corrupt national health system that forces the poorest to seek expensive private medical treatment, or the explosion in crime or suicides by failed farmers and workers who have lost their jobs.

Pakistan cannot tackle its real problems unless the country’s leaders – military and civilian – first admit that much of the present crisis is a result of long-standing mistakes, the lack of democracy, the failure to strengthen civic institutions and the lack of investment in public services like education, even as there continues to be a massive investment in nuclear weapons and the military.

Pakistan’s crisis must be first acknowledged by officialdom and the media before solutions can be found.

The alternative is a continuation of the present paralysis where people are left confused, demoralised and angry.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of the best-selling book Taliban and, most recently, of Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/pakistans-conspiracy-theories-stifle-debate/

November 22, 2009–A newfound creature nicknamed “Dumbo” (pictured) may look like it’s all ears–but the protrusions are actually fins that help propel the animal through the darkness 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) under the sea.

Netted during a recent Census of Marine Life (CoML) expedition to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, this Dumbo is among the thousands of deep-sea creatures the census has documented so far that live without ever knowing sunlight. Reaching six feet (two meters) in length and weighing 13 pounds (6 kilograms), the jumbo Dumbo is the largest of the octopus-like animals ever found.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/photogalleries/new-deep-sea-creatures-dumbo-pictures/images/primary/091122-01-new-dumbo-deep-sea_big.jpg

Cover up and buck passing begins.
The UK government “distanced itself” from talk of removing Saddam Hussein in early 2001 despite concerns about his threat, the Iraq inquiry has been told.
Sir Peter Ricketts, a top intelligence official at the time, said it was assumed it was not “our policy” despite growing talk in the US about the move.
Senior diplomats have finished their evidence on the war’s origins on the first day of public hearings.
The inquiry chairman has said he hopes to conclude his report in late 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8375439.stm

Difference between Mind and Matter is one of degree ,not of kind.While mind vibrates at a higher rate, matter vibrates at a lower frequency.
Lower frequencies are associated with past experiences, higher frequencies are linked to present and Ultra high frequencies with the future.
Consciousness is a stream that is Universal.Individual variations are due to limitations of Space and Time.Mind can relate to and transcend Time and Space with proper discipline.
The exposition of this thought will take too much space;separate blog follows.
What the current studies attempt to prove and proved partially have already been practiced in Hinduism.
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2009) — The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night’s delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you “tune in” to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered a mechanism that the brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information. Their results are reported in 19 November issue of Nature.
Think of your brain like a radio: You’re turning the knob to find your favourite station, but the knob jams, and you’re stuck listening to something that’s in between stations. It’s a frustrating combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on the right frequency is the only way to really hear what you’re after. In much the same way, the brain’s nerve cells are able to “tune in” to the right station to get exactly the information they need, says researcher Laura Colgin, who was the paper’s first author. “Just like radio stations play songs and news on different frequencies, the brain uses different frequencies of waves to send different kinds of information,” she says.
Gamma waves as information carriers
Colgin and her colleagues measured brain waves in rats, in three different parts of the hippocampus, which is a key memory center in the brain. While listening in on the rat brain wave transmissions, the researchers started to realize that there might be something more to a specific sub-set of brain waves, called gamma waves. Researchers have thought these waves are linked to the formation of consciousness, but no one really knew why their frequency differed so much from one region to another and from one moment to the next.
Information is carried on top of gamma waves, just like songs are carried by radio waves. These “carrier waves” transmit information from one brain region to another. “We found that there are slow gamma waves and fast gamma waves coming from different brain areas, just like radio stations transmit on different frequencies,” she says.
You really can “be on the same wavelength”
“You know how when you feel like you really connect with someone, you say you are on the same wavelength? When brain cells want to connect with each other, they synchronize their activity,” Colgin explains. “The cells literally tune into each other’s wavelength. We investigated how gamma waves in particular were involved in communication across cell groups in the hippocampus. What we found could be described as a radio-like system inside the brain. The lower frequencies are used to transmit memories of past experiences, and the higher frequencies are used to convey what is happening where you are right now.”
If you think of the example of the jammed radio, the way to hear what you want out of the messy signals would be to listen really hard for the latest news while trying to filter out the unwanted music. The hippocampus does this more efficiently. It simply tunes in to the right frequency to get the station it wants. As the cells tune into the station they’re after, they are actually able to filter out the other station at the same time, because its signal is being transmitted on a different frequency.
The switch
“The cells can rapidly switch their activity to tune in to the slow waves or the fast waves,” Colgin says, “but it seems as though they cannot listen to both at the exact same time. This is like when you are listening to your radio and you tune in to a frequency that is midway between two stations- you can’t understand anything- it’s just noise.” In this way, the brain cells can distinguish between an internal world of memories and a person’s current experiences. If the messages were carried on the same frequency, our perceptions of the world might be completely confused. “Your current perceptions of a place would get mixed up with your memories of how the place used to be,” Colgin says.
The cells that tune into different wavelengths work like a switch, or rather, like zapping between radio stations that are already programmed into your radio. The cells can switch back and forth between different channels several times per second. The switch allows the cells to attend to one piece at a time, sorting out what’s on your mind from what’s happening and where you are at any point in time. The researchers believe this is an underlying principle for how information is handled throughout the brain.
“This switch mechanism points to superfast routing as a general mode of information handling in the brain,” says Edvard Moser, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience director. “The classical view has been that signaling inside the brain is hardwired, subject to changes caused by modification of connections between neurons. Our results suggest that the brain is a lot more flexible. Among the thousands of inputs to a given brain cell, the cell can choose to listen to some and ignore the rest and the selection of inputs is changing all the time. We believe that the gamma switch is a general principle of the brain, employed throughout the brain to enhance interregional communication.”
Can a switch malfunction explain schizophrenia?
People who are schizophrenic have problems keeping these brain signals straight. They cannot tell, for example, if they are listening to voices from people who are present or if the voices are from the memory of a movie they have seen. “We cannot tell for sure if it is this switch that is malfunctioning, but we do know that gamma waves are abnormal in schizophrenic patients,” Colgin says. “Schizophrenics’ perceptions of the world around them are mixed up, like a radio stuck between stations.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091120000140.htm