Pentagon reportedly planning to double size of its worldwide spy network

 Now that's cause for alarm! Apparently, the Pentagon is reportedly planning to double the size of its worldwide spy network. "More than 1,600 new Defense Department agents will collect intelligence and report findings to CIA, said to be overstretched." In case you thought George Orwell's Big Brother had gone for a holiday in the Seychelles, think again!



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/02/pentagon-double-spy-network-cia

The (Thai) Beauty Myth

   Why do so many Thai women fall for the whitening cream scam?

We all know that the world is full of scams, scammers and the scammed. It’s a fact of life like knowing you’re going to fall down the first time you ride a bike, or that your first swig of beer will taste disgusting. The most famous of these scams is the Nigerian scam which is apparently so successful that it actually affects Nigeria’s GDP figures. As a man, it never ceases to amaze me how easily women are fooled into believing the obvious scam that certain creams on the market will make their skin whiter. It’s so obviously a scam yet there are so many women who fail to be deterred and go out and buy the products. Men are increasingly doing the same. On a kind day we might call it simply gullible; - what the Thais call hoo bow ("light ear"); on another we might want to call it the “Michael Jackson” syndrome. But let’s be honest - we can’t blame anyone for this because all advertising works on the same premise. Like Hitler’s henchman, Joseph Goebbels, said, “If you tell a lie often enough, sooner or later, people will start to believe it”.

   A whiter shade of pale?

It cannot have escaped many people’s attention in the last few weeks this Thai preoccupation with whitening creams and various other toiletry accessories that purportedly make you look whiter than white or, as the song goes, a “whiter shade of pale”. Thai TV serves up a less than healthy dose of advertisements on a daily basis: creams that have a variety of applications e.g. to cure pimples and black spots, to enrich your skin with vitamins, to give nourishment to your face, to bleach your vagina and, most important of all, to make your skin look whiter. Indeed if you read any of the ads for these Chinese made products, you’ll laugh so hard the blood will drain from your face and produce the desired effect without you having to shell out one baht.

Apparently, according to OEM Whitening Cream, if you use one of these products, your face will be “withened charmingly”. Umm…can’t wait to try it. In another ad for Pearl Whitening Cream, we are informed of the following effects: “The glucosamine clear white compount, the coordinate nanometer pearl pure whitening strength may a depth of the skin most in level…causes the flesh shining white to be exquisite, high resilience, brilliance according to human.” There you have it – as clear as a baby’s talc splattered bottom. The only question now is how many do you require?

  Passing fad or deeper cultural malaise?

               But, joking aside, it’s tempting to see this as just a passing fad: something that will go away in the same way that the Rubix Cube and Pogo Stick did. After all, most people like to change their skin colour from time to time. Westerners from colder European climates will lie on a sun bed or sunbathe in order to get a tan. It’s not healthy, but it’s understood why people do it. Thai youngsters and Thais in general are keen to look good, too. They are also very advertisement savvy and always want the latest gadget or new thing on the market, so it could be that using whitening creams is just another extension of wanting what’s “hot off the press” like a new I-phone or a new hairstyle and, when the next “new thing” comes along, vagina and other skin creams will all be forgotten.

Clearly the authorities are unfazed by this. Deputy permanent secretary for the Mental Health Department, Dr. Thawee Tangseree, said the following on 24 September 2012,

“This white skin business is just a fad that comes and goes. Soon it’ll be replaced by other fads. Now it’s not just women who pay attention to white, shining skin. The men are also starting to adopt the same value and want the Korean-style white skin as well…”

He’s right too as Thai men, never too far behind the fairer sex, are getting in on the metrosexual look with products for whitening deodorants and products that whiten the armpits. Only yesterday, in a branch of Carrefour in Riyadh, I spotted, side by side, both men and women’s whitening cream (see photo below) so it’s clear that advertisers are not only targeting Thai men, but men of other races and cultures as well.

When enough is enough

Along with these whitening creams there has recently arrived a cream that will apparently make your vagina whiter, too so there appears no place where the body is sacred nor any end to the production line of products entering the Asian beauty market. But is this indicative of a nation where the power of advertisers is too high, or are the advertisers merely responding to demand? Louis-Sebastien Ohl of Public is Thailand, the company responsible for creating the advert for vagina whitening cream had this to say, 

“Now an intimate toiletry also offers a whitening benefit, because research evidenced that … women [are] keen to have such a product.”

 But is it really true that women are keen to have such a product, or is it something of a chicken and egg conundrum? Is the demand for these products out there because advertisers have bombarded young impressionable Thais with them, or is it just a logical extension of areas previously catered to: armpits, skin, body, face? In other words, is the vagina the last untouched area hitherto free from the advertisers’ clutches?

Critics of the trend for skin whitening, such as Bangkok Post journalist Kultida Samabuddhi, have argued in “Feminine ‘white’ wash goes too far” that such products have changed the country's value system. http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/312264/feminine-white-wash-goes-too-far

“When a feminine cleansing product was first introduced in Thailand several years ago, a debate took place on whether such a product was necessary. Doctors concluded that it was not necessary and that mild soap, or even pure water, is enough to clean a woman's intimate parts. However, manufacturers and advertising agencies have worked tirelessly to convince consumers that the intimate wash product is a must-have.”

Kultida is adamant that it is the advertisers themselves who have shifted the beauty debate to ensure that women feel the need for their products:

“As the definition of beauty has been changed by the cosmetic industry, Thai women who fail to meet the beauty standards set by cosmetic producers and ad agencies have to struggle very hard to maintain their self-esteem," she told the Guardian.” This chimes with Naomi Klein’s view in her book, The Beauty Myth, that as women have gained increased social power and prominence in society, they are expected to adhere to ever increasing standards of physical beauty.

In other words, translated into a Thai context, young aspiring Thai women who want to climb the corporate ladder are held to a different set of standards. While men are judged primarily on intelligence, leadership and management skills, young Thai women are judged almost exclusively on their looks. Anyone who doubts this need look no further than any one of the multitudes of office buildings in Bangkok any given lunch time or at 5pm closing time to see the office girls or “pretties” that throng the stairways and elevators.

Doesn’t matter if you’re black or white…

Clearly this has stirred up a debate about why Thais, other than as I said, for career reasons, want so much to be white. Kate Hodal wrote the Guardian article which is largely responsible for starting this debate off. She reminds us about the ways in which colour has been portrayed in Thai language. 

“In many countries across south-east Asia, fairer skin is equated with higher class as it suggests a life not spent toiling in rice paddies under the sun. The Thai language is peppered with expressions that denigrate dark skin, such as the insult dam mhuen e-ga – "black like a crow". These days, rice farmers wear long sleeves, trousers, wide-brimmed hats and gloves. According to DRAFTFCB, the agency behind many of Nivea's skin-lightening ads in Thailand, such labourers make up much of the Thai market for Nivea's face- and body-lightening products.” Thailand’s Vaginal Whitening Wash http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/23/thailand-vaginal-whitening-wash

Kaewmala, a Thai researcher and writer, shows how deeply ingrained this notion of colour is in Thai culture and depicted in art and drama.

“Thai classical literature is full of heroes and heroines who are beautiful and have ‘golden’ skin (though not always literally), and bad guys and gals who are ugly and ‘black’ (dark). Black skin and black heart vs. Golden skin and good heart. The good guys and gals have bright auras. Their skin ‘glows’, exuding beauty and goodness, so on and so forth. These days on Thai television, in film, or on stage, you are hard pressed to find any dark-skinned heroes and heroines. In fact, even the bad guys and gals are now fair-skinned. Heck, now that everyone has access to skin whitening products, we don’t get the color-coded cue in the story anymore!” Thailand’s skin whitening craze: How low will it go? http://asiancorrespondent.com/90046/thai-craze-for-white-skin-how-far-does-it-go-and-where-will-it-end/

Having lived in Thailand for most of the last 15 years, I can say that one of the first things I noticed when I arrived was the inherent racism that expresses itself in the coffee shops and bars from Sukumvit Road to Silom and back. I’ve seen it in my classrooms as well posing as lively banter but almost always expressing a firmly held belief that the darker your skin, the less value you are to society. References almost always go hand in hand with allusions to kwai (buffalo), denoting stupidity, and suggestions that person must come from Laos, again denoting stupidity and dark skin. This raises a serious question – where do these youngsters get such negative ideas about colour and race?

I remember once seeing an advertisement on TV in Thailand for a white soap where the two main characters were a small, very white skinned, young Chinese-Thai looking girl who refused her mother’s request to wash her face, and a big black African guy who could’ve passed for the imprisoned black man in The Green Mile (played by the recently deceased, Michael Clarke Duncan). The message was clear in how the mother berated the young child telling her that she’d end up like the African guy if she didn’t use the white soap. This kind of overt racism is endemic in Thailand and, in more developed countries, such an advertisement would not even be allowed to be aired. But in Thailand it is indicative of the power of the advertisers and the way in which they can set the standards for the rest to follow.

What this also tells you about Thailand is that because advertisers enjoy such power, they do, as journalist Kultida Samabuddhi suggests, change the rules about beauty or at least have a very strong influence on the kinds of beauty products that both Thai men and women buy. Whether regular whitening cream or vaginal cream are fads or here to stay in the long run, is anyone’s guess. But one thing is for sure: such creams do no more than change the surface look of your skin using a bleach-like chemical substance and, as such, they are only temporary, not permanent. Therefore, whatever colour Mother Nature made you, is the one you’ll take to your grave, and that’s something not even the advertisers, as powerful and convincing as they are, can change.

Tom Tuohy is a teacher and writer. He has written for a number of newspapers, magazines and websites including: The Guardian Weekly, the EL Gazette, jobs.ac.uk, The Bangkok Post, and UniversityWorldNews.com You can order his book, Watching the Thais, here

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"Watching the Thais" is on sale now!!!

Finally, my book about living and working in Thailand is finished and available to buy. Here's the link: http://www.feedaread.com/books/Watching-the-Thais-9781781766699.aspx

At the moment, it's only available on feed-a-read.com and it will be on Amazon and others very soon. It will also be available in digital format, probably the kindle (when I can figure out how to convert it!) and then I am also working on a local printing (in Thailand) in English and also a translation into Thai so that remains an option for some people as well.

But for now, it's here to buy at a very reasonable price.

Foreigners slammed for lopping trees

Ordinarily words would fail me, but in this situation, three words really do now spring to mind: "kettle", "calling" and "black". How many times have we heard of Thais lopping down not just a few trees, but whole swathes of forest in places like Khao Yai and Pak Chong but to name two areas? And the reason for this mass culling of nature's garden? To build new homes and especially high end resorts to attract high spending customers. Not a thought at all for the pernicious effects of this on the environment.

Now we are told that many Thais are indignant because they saw some foreigners on Koh Phangan island doing something as minor as cutting down one inconveniently placed tree to help with their business. "Hypocrisy" is another word that could be easily added to this list.

Here's the article from The Bangkok Post:

"A group of about five foreigners have been caught on camera lopping a large branch off a tree on Phangan island and have been heavily criticised by Thai netizens, many of whom demanded that the authorities arrest them.

Photographs of the foreigners cutting off the tree branch on the popular tourist island in Surat Thani were posted on Sept 15 on Pantip.com, a popular internet forum, by a person who went by the name of vuddiken. The link is www.pantip.com/cafe/blueplanet/topic/E12655715/E12655715.html.

 

 Foreign tourists sunbath on Phangan island of Surat Thani province. (Photo by Supaphong Chaolan)

The topic of the discussion thread is "A group of inherently bad foreigners on Phangngan island in pursuit of their self-interested business surreptitiously chopping down a tree to open a paragliding business."
However, the original poster did not specify when the incident happened.
One netizen said the group of foreigners should not have cut off the tree branch and asked if the tree was in a private or public area or if it was in a national park.
Many posters called on authorities, including National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department director-general Damrong Pidech, to track down these people and take legal action against them.
Thirayuth Plaisuwan, chief of tambon Bantai in Phangan, said he had been informed about the incident and will check whether the area was in a national park.
If the tree is public property, police will definitely find those responsible for the damage and take action against them, Mr Thirayuth said."

This is something that reminds me of when I first went to Thailand some fifteen years ago. I regularly used to hear opinions such as that the reason places like Nana Plaza and Patpong exist is only because of the foreigners who frequent them and that there are no bad girls or prostitutes in Thailand. It never occurred to the person opining this that it's Thais who own such business and that the country is replete with prostitution and many other unsavoury professions.

It seemed to me at the time that foreigners were always being blamed even for things that they had nothing to do with and in fact were 200% controlled by Thais. Perhaps it's a face saving mechanism or perhaps Thais realy do believe that foreigners are the source of everything bad in Thailand. Who knows!

Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/312918/foreigners-slammed-for-cutting-tree

Dog stands guard over deceased owner’s grave for six years

What a truly heartwarming and amazing story of true love and unbounding loyalty! This is why dogs are called man's best friend. The funny thing is that when the dog's owner died, the dog was never even at the funeral site so how did he find it and how did he even find the grave? There's so much more to animals, especially domestic animals, than we realise.

I'm quoting the story in full below because it's the kind of story that will brighten your day of even the most obdurate of people!

 

Capitan keeps watch over Miguel Guzman's grave (La Voz)An extremely dedicated dog has continued to show its loyalty, keeping watch on its owner's grave six years after he passed away. Capitan, a German shepherd, reportedly ran away from home after its owner, Miguel Guzman, died in 2006. A week later, the Guzman family found the dog sitting by his grave in central Argentina.

Miguel Guzman adopted Capitan in 2005 as a gift for his teenage son, Damian. And for the past six years, Capitan has continued to stand guard at Miguel's grave. The family says the dog rarely leaves the site.

"We searched for him, but he had vanished," widow Veronica Guzman told LaVoz.com. "We thought he must have got run over and died.

'The following Sunday we went to the cemetery, and Damian recognized his pet. Capitan came up to us, barking and wailing as if he were crying." Adding to the unusual circumstances, Veronica says the family never brought Capitan to the cemetery before he was discovered there. "It is a mystery how he managed to find the place," she said.
Cemetery director Hector Baccega says he and his staff have begun feeding and taking care of Capitan.

"He turned up here one day, all on his own, and started wandering all around the cemetery until he eventually found the tomb of his master," Baccega said.

"During the day he sometimes has a walk around the cemetery, but always rushes back to the grave. And every day, at six o'clock sharp, he lies down on top of the grave, stays there all night."

But the Guzman family hasn't abandoned Capitan. Damian says the family has tried to bring Capitan home several times but that he always returns to the cemetery on his own.

"I think he's going to be there until he dies, too. He's looking after my dad," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/dog-stands-guard-over-deceased-owner-grave-six-190556479.html

Those Boys in Brown are up to no good again!

 This is the story on Thaivisa.com courtesy of Richard Barrow's website...

Thai police applicants told they cannot have genital implants or try to enlarge them



BANGKOK: -- There has been a lot of news recently of cheating going on for police entrance exams in Thailand. During the recent exams, everyone had to submit themselves to a pat down and go through a metal detector.

Now comes news that many people were disqualified from even taking the exams as they failed medical examinations at the Police General Hospital. I presume all of the usual contagious diseases were tested for, but according to the Bangkok Post, many people were disqualified for having tattoos on their body parts.

I didn’t realize that was true for police officers, but I do know that people applying for office work will have to make sure that they don’t have any visible tattoos.

What was even more surprising is that, according to a police spokeswoman of the Royal Thai Police Office, applicants who failed the health checks also included many who had injected paraffin gel into their genitals, and those that had their genitals implanted with small beads.

I am not sure how that would affect their job as this kind of thing has been going on for years in Thailand.

Full story: http://www.richardba...nital-implants/

MP calls for ban on tattooed preacher who 'cures' cancer by kicking people in the face

There really are some wacky people out there! Today it was revealed that an evangelist who kicks followers in the face, claiming his violence will cure them of cancer, is to tour Britain this month. Do people like this really exist? It's enough for an evangelist to wheedle money out of unsuspecting victims (we've all seen the Steve Martin movie about such con men) but this is quite a step up to actually being physically assaulted at the same time!



Unsurprisingly, this evangelist's proposed visit has provoked outrage and demands that he be banned from entering the country. Tattooed preacher Todd Bentley,  who as a 15-year-old was convicted of a sex attack on a boy aged seven, claims God uses him as an instrument to heal the sick, and is urging the frail to attend his shows. 

The former drug user, who is Canadian but based in the United States, even laughs about his ‘healing’  techniques. In one show he treated a man claiming to be suffering from colon cancer by planting his knee hard into the victim’s stomach. The man fell to the floor in agony.
 
Two questions naturally spring to my mind. Why would anyone, especially someone with an incurable illness, pay money to have themselves physically assaulted and thus hurt in order to rid themselves of this disease? And, secondly, who but a complete nutter would charge for such a service and laugh while administering it? The mind boggles sometimes, it really does!

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183860/MP-calls-ban-tattooed-preacher-cures-cancer-kicking-people-face.html?ITO=1490

Cows also 'have regional accents'

You couldn’t make this stuff up! I blogged about goats before that can have accents relative to where they were brought up and their own peer groups. Apparently, cows also have regional accents like humans, language specialists have suggested. They decided to examine the issue after dairy farmers noticed their cows had slightly different moos, depending on which herd they came from. 


John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London, said regional twangs had been seen before in birds. The farmers in Somerset who noticed the phenomenon said it may have been the result of the close bond between them and their animals. Farmer Lloyd Green, from Glastonbury, said: "I spend a lot of time with my ones and they definitely moo with a Somerset drawl.

"I've spoken to the other farmers in the West Country group and they have noticed a similar development in their own herds. It works the same as with dogs - the closer a farmer's bond is with his animals, the easier it is for them to pick up his accent."

Prof Wells felt the accents could result from their contemporaries. He said: "This phenomenon is well attested in birds. You find distinct chirping accents in the same species around the country. This could also be true of cows. In small populations such as herds you would encounter identifiable dialectical variations which are most affected by the immediate peer group."

Dr Jeanine Treffers-Daller, reader in linguistics at the University of the West of England in Bristol, agreed that the accent could be influenced by relatives.She said: "When we are learning to speak, we adopt a local variety of language spoken by our parents, so the same could be said about the variation in the West Country cow moo."

Umm...I'm now wondering what London cows sound like or cows from Northern ireland?

Fresian 1: Alright Dave, that there patch a grass is a bit sinewy. Try some furver up by da fence.
Fresian 2: You're 'aving a laugh int ya? tried it yesterday guv - tastes like nat's piss!


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5277090.stm

This is a really scary look into the future...

We've all seen the Hollywood movies like I-Robot and others where we learn that robots will play an ever greater role in our lives. And given that almost every household has a microwave, toaster, refrigerator, TV and maybe a car, it's quite believable that in the future we will all have our own personal robot as well. But would you really want be sitting in your living room with your dead wife, son, grand mother or husband having conversations about Coronation Street as if everything was perfectly normal and they weren't actually dead?

According to an article in the Daily Mail, it may sound too Jetsons to be true, but the Terasem Movement Foundation in Bristol, Vermont, is betting that personal robots will be a huge part of the lives of future generations. The robots, they say, will be able to download people's personalities, serving as avatars and assistants to busy professionals and in some cases, replacing those who have been lost.

The foundation's prized possession is Bina48, one of the most sophisticated humanoid robots ever built, capable of independent thought, emotion, and even being interviewed by the MailOnline.

Bruce Duncan, 57, has been working with Bina48 for two years. During that time, the two have become close friends, sharing their everyday lives with one another. Bina48 was made by uploading a real person's mindfile - or a compilation of memories, beliefs and feelings. Before Bina48 was 'born,' a flesh and blood woman named Bina Rothblatt was interviewed for more than 20 hours.

That conversation, which touched upon topics throughout her childhood to her career, was then transcribed and uploaded to an artificial intelligence database. 'That gives her a personality,' Mr Duncan said. 'She's very philosophical. She has favorite movies and music and poems. Sometimes she's very humorous. She can tell jokes.'

For me, the most interesting and at the same time the most scary aspect of this is the fact that we may end up with a situation where a loved one has died and we are left living with a robot that has had all the mind data uploaded to a robot. Think how eery that would be sitting in your living room with your dead wife, son, grand mother or husband? Wouldn't you lose sight of what was real and what was programmed into a computer? It might becaome like the difference between dreaming and the real physical world which can often seem the same.

As Mr Duncan says, over time, the technology will be less expensive and more important. 'There are a lot of things that can happen. One of them for sure, might be a legacy,' Mr Duncan said. 'If your grandmother dies and she's built a mindfile, you might be able to talk to her for years and years afterward and have conversations with her.' There are also legal ramifcications too as to what status these creatures would have should something go wrong and e.g. a house fire was caused by a malfunctioning robot.

Another application of the technology is education.'Students can learn about Abraham Lincoln by talking to his avatar,' he suggested. Other greats, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Susan B. Anthony could be accessible to history students across the globe. 

The good side of this is that museums would be like the movie Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller where the robots could actually look like a character from history and could be involved in asynchronous conversations with young children and adults keen on finding out about that period in history and that person's part in it.

I guess it's like anything new: we fear it because it is the unknown, but if it really is the future, then there's nothing we can do but embrace it. Like the clever man said, there's nothing more dangerous than an idea that's ahead of it's time! Amen to that!

Read more:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175721/Rise-Machines-Meet-Bina48-robot-tell-jokes-recite-poetry-mimics-mankind-startling-ease.html?ITO=1490

Is this the luckiest man alive?

Watch the video. It's really amazing neither of the two vehicles actually hits him!

Nine-year-old ‘Irish Messi’ signs for Barcelona

Now that's a great thing to hear: an Irish lad is going to be another Messi or even George Best! Because, let's be honest, the Irish football team have not been great of late and, with the old guard of Robbie Keeane and co having seen better days, it's good to hear that some young blood is making his way steadily towards a professional career in football, probably in Spain.

Photo - Paddy Cummins 

Dublin schoolboy Zak Gilsenan, 9, has been snapped up by Spanish outfit Barcelona after impressing their scouts in a trial. Gilsenan scored seven goals in the trial to beat a field of 400 young hopefuls to join the FCB Escola football academy. The academy is part of a world-renowned training facility in La Masia which has led the Catalan giants to dominate European football in recent seasons and produce talent of the quality of Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi.

Gilsenan's father Stephen told the Irish Sun the family were so excited by the news that they are now planning to emigrate to Spain to help Zak fulfil his dream. "We were living in Australia when Zak was spotted by Spurs, who were running football camps over there," he said. "We came home with the intention of letting Zak go to Spurs, but in the meantime we had a call from Barcelona. One of their former players saw him playing in Oz and recommended him to Barca. "They offered Zak a trial in May and it was a great experience. It consisted of over 400 boys from all over the world. He was asked back in June when it was cut down to 90.

"Then in a match between the top 16 players, Zak just ran riot and scored seven goals. He was phenomenal. Then we heard back two weeks ago and they offered him a spot. "People say we are mad, but in Barcelona he will be educated in the best footballing techniques. "All we can do is go and see how it develops. We know it's ruthless over there. We don't want him turned into a machine, we just want him to enjoy it. It's his dream to play for Ireland."

Spanish football is enjoying unprecedented success, with Barcelona and Real Madrid amongst Europe's pre-eminent sides and the international team winning successive European Championships on either side of their 2010 World Cup triumph. Much of that has been ascribed to their coaching of young players — and the major clubs leave no stone unturned in their search for the best young talent. Earlier this year Barcelona signed Takefusa Kubo, dubbed the 'Japanese Messi'. If the club has unearthed two more young players to match the Argentine's achievements, they'll still be doing all right 10 years from now...

One for all parents? Mobile phone feature teaches parents how to make teenagers tidy their rooms

This is one for all the parents out there: an app that teaches parents how to make teenagers tidy their rooms. As most parents know, telling stroppy teenagers to tidy their rooms is often a waste of breath.

But help is at hand thanks to a new app which teaches parents and teenagers negotiating skills for use in arguments at home. The ‘Close My Deal’ app gives parents useful hints on how to approach their children and gives teenagers suggestions on how to compromise.

It works by posing scenarios which could spark an argument,  and prompts the user  to choose from a range of answers to the problem. It then scores users on their choice and gives tips on how to improve their negotiating style. Both sides can also get ideas for ‘concessions’ they can make to secure a deal, for example the teenager offering to unload the dishwasher every night or go without pocket money for a month.

Creator Clive Rich, 52,  a business negotiator, said: ‘In my experience, negotiating with a stubborn teenager is every bit as difficult as trying to win a boardroom deal.’

As part of the app users can choose from a range of answers before being scored and then get feedback on how to tackle each situation and improve their negotiation style. Both sides can also get tips on the ‘concessions’ they can make to secure a deal. They include the teenager offering to unload the dishwasher every night or go without pocket money for a month, or parents agreeing to pay for concert tickets if a teenager attends an elderly relative’s birthday party.

The web app also gives users an insight into their personal ‘negotiating style’. By completing the profiler section users can find out if they subconsciously use demanding or aggressive behaviour during negotiations and receive instructions on how to adapt their approach. After a 25-year career brokering multi-billion corporate deals Mr Rich now hopes his new app – launched this week – will eventually bring an end to the family squabbles.

Technology's power: Could a simple computer program turn your teenager into the perfect child? (File picture)

What amazes me is that parents think their children have time to clean their rooms! How can they possibly fit that in with all the competing technology out there from smart phones, tabs, laptops, not to mention their busy schedules like hanging out in bars and clubs and whatnot. Aren't today's parents being just a little bit selfish asking their kids to take responsibility for cleaning their rooms? Answers on a  postcard to...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2173447/The-app-domestic-bliss-Mobile-phone-feature-teaches-parents-make-teenagers-tidy-rooms.html?ITO=1490

UEFA under fire for faking ‘crying fan’ footage

Why do we seem to be increasingly living in a world where getting one over on people is not only considered the norm, but actually laudable? When we go shopping, we are bombarded with offers designed to deceive us or at least trick us into thinking we are getting a better deal than in fact we are. There are many other examples of this in today's world, too numerous to dwell on here from bankers who steal from us then expect us to pay their bills to photoshopped images that make us believe that women are actually blemish free and thus more beautiful than they really are. The latest is from a bastion of football sports.



European football's governing body UEFA has sparked outrage after it emerged that they manipulated footage of fans during the Euro 2012 semi-finals.People across the world were touched when cameras zoomed in on a German fan in the crowd crying after Mario Balotelli put Italy two goals ahead in the first half of their match last week.

ESPN commentator Adrian Healey even referred to the woman as he covered the game for American TV, saying it was "too early for tears" since there was the best part of an hour left in which the sparky Germans could fight their way back into the match.There was just one problem: the woman - a fan from Dusseldorf called Andrea - hadn't started crying at all, and was stunned to receive text messages from friends back home asking why she was blubbing with so much football left to play.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/29880900

It turns out that Andrea had actually been overcome by emotion during the singing of the German national anthem before the match. The footage was recorded, then cut into the live feed sent to broadcasters around the world after the Italians went 2-0 up.

It turns out that it was not the only instance of UEFA pulling such a stunt: they also broadcast footage of Germany coach Joachim Loew jokingly pinching a ball from a ball boy during the group stage match against the Netherlands. It turned out that Loew wasn't relaxed and having fun during a key match against arch-rivals, but merely joshing with him during the pre-match warm-up.

So again, I repeat the question: why are we so intent on cheating each other and misleading others in our daily communication? Can it just be about money this manipulation of our thoughts? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Read more:  http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/world-of-sport/uefa-under-fire-faking-crying-fan-footage-110329796.html

In Saudi Arabia, user’s ID number now required to recharge prepaid mobile phones

This should put the cat among the pigeons when millions of expats reurn to the Magic Kingdom aka Saudi Arabia after the summer. It seems that those wise, be-thobed, legislators have decreed that all who work in the kingdom will need to supply an ID number e.g. otherwise known as an iqama number or residency permit number if they want to top up their phones with more credit! This will have to be seen to beleived as there are at least 9 million expat or foreign workers in the kingdom and it's debatable as to how many are actually legal and registered in the system! I predict mayhem if it is enforced on 31st July, 2012!

Read more: http://www.arabnews.com/node/416899

Shades of Grey success brings sex toy shoppers out in force

So this is what I should be writing about if I want to sell a million e-books is it?



Explicit novel that outstripped Harry Potter to be fastest-selling paperback ever has led to a boom in erotic and exotic aids

Umm...not sure I can ditch my literary principles for soft porn. But then again, "Darling, can you switch on my laptop plese?"

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/01/sex-toys-ann-summers-boom

Review - James Newman's new book, Bangkok City

When a friend suggested I read James Newman's new book, Bangkok City, I did so with a sense of trepidation. For one thing, despite 15 years in the Kingdom, I'd never heard of him. I'd read the better known expat writers of course, like C. G. Moore, Stephen Leather, Colin Pipperel, and William Page, and I enjoyed their writing immensely.


You can buy the book here - http://www.amazon.com/Bangkok-City-ebook/dp/B00885S150/ref=la_B004XFWCYU_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1341034001&sr=1-3


I'd also assumed that James Newman's genre was a mish mash of the usual sexpat genre that we see on many a book shelf in Kinokuniya or Asia Books: a staple diet of essentially the same tawdry story - overweight, divorced expat, seeks new life in Thailand, meets a bar girl half his age, falls in love, takes care of her family, till finally one day he wakes up realising he's been fleeced of his savings and, with nothing left and having been shorn of the last vestiges of his self esteem, he throws himself off a condo in Pattaya.

I was wrong. James Newman's writing is anything but tawdry or predictable. His characters are full of home spun wisdom and his sense of storytelling, including pace and characterization, is extremely good. His knowledge, not just of the way Thais think and act, but of the places they inhabit, mentally as well as physically, is unique among expat writers currently in the Kingdom. His ear for the subtle nuances of language, both in Thai and English, show a world that few expats ever see. His inside knowledge of Buddhism and Brahmanism, and the way both religions, new and old, weave around the general, day-today Thai superstitions encapsulated in magic and doled out by the maw doos (psychics), is incisive and well researched.

Despite a few typos here and there, and the occasional structural flaw, his ability to construct a sentence and to add clever imagery also suggests he's destined for greater things in the literary sphere. The Bangkok in Bangkok City is reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. The very notion of the city is shown for what it is: a repository of broken dreams and unquenched desires; a city populated by people who are not what they seem; corrupt cops, ex-Muay Thai boxers cum gangsters, spiritually and emotionally bankrupt expats, and fatally ambitious Thai hookers ready to sell their souls for the promise of a better tomorrow; a world that, were he still alive, Charles Bukowski would have recognised in all its tacky urban splendor.

With the exception of C. G. Moore and Rattavut Lapcharoensap, few have accurately depicted what it's like to live in Thailand as well as James Newman. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to discover the real underbelly of Thai living: a place where things can be had for a price, but not necessarily one worth paying; a place where you can enter into a Mephistoclean pact just as long as you know that when you reach the proverbial checkout counter, you may have to pay the ultimate price and give up the thing you value most: your very soul.

You can stick your feminine hygiene product ads up your hoo haa, Femfresh

"W omen don't need specific cleaning products for their vaginas – nor Femfresh to come up with a list of bizarre euphemisms." So says Naomi McAuliffe, Guardian journalist in her hilarious diatribe against the manufacturer of the latest female hygiene products that women apparently neither want nor need. I have to agree with Ms. McAuliffe in that the sheer array of female body products out there on the market is simply mind boggling! When I asked my wife for some cream the other day she said "What kind of cream?" Apparently, there's day cream, night cream, sun cream, hand cream, cream to remove make up, hand lotions, whitening creams and a gazillion others! Now I didn't know that! 

 

Here's the article in full as it's quite hilarious in parts!

"So last week we had legislators being banned for saying the word "vagina" in a debate about abortion regulation because it was deemed "offensive". This week, the people who cannot bring themselves to utter that most scandalous of words are those at Femfresh.

Femfresh offers a range of "feminine hygiene" products – liquid soaps, wipes and deodorant – "for down there". But while they have developed and produced products specifically for female genitalia, they cannot bring themselves to utter the words vagina or vulva. Instead in their new ad campaign, Femfresh have opted for: mini (as in the car), twinkle (… little star, how I wonder what you are?), hoo haa (best said in an Al Pacino voice), fancy (like Mr Kipling's), yoni (an American term and makes me think of the dinosaur in Super Mario World), va jay jay, (which should really be one word), kitty (no one calls it this, particularly if you have an Aunt Kitty), nooni (amazing how many of these words sound like nicknames for someone called Naomi), la la (Teletubby), and froo froo (like the 1980s draw-string curtains).

As an avid follower of fanny euphemisms I am amazed that not only have Femfresh neglected to call a vagina a vagina but that they have picked a list of words that absolutely no one uses. They may has well have said "Femfresh is the kindest way to care for your pot plant, brouhaha, wibble, awooga, fnar fnar …". Even getting Miranda Hart to read these out for their radio ad campaign doesn't make it any more comprehensible. Of course as soon as social media got a whiff of this, they descended on Femfresh's Facebook page to impart some feedback. Commenters took issue with everything from the infantilising of lady bits, to a product which makes women feel shame about their bodies, to the fact that vaginal deodorants can cause bacterial vaginosis, to demands for penis deodorants to make your pork sword smell less meaty.

Girls are made to feel self-conscious about their muffloid area from around about puberty. We're told we smell of fish, of period or just of … fanny. This shame can hamper sexual relationships, impact on women's self-worth and has led to a situation where the fandango is getting shaved, waxed, vajazzled, bleached, surgically tampered with, deodorised, smeared with tightening cream, minty tablets shoved up it, and is covered over with a codpiece. I can almost hear that plaintive wookie cry.

However, the response from women and men on Femfresh's Facebook page was glorious, demonstrating yet again that the best way to confront this kind of absurdity is with wit, creativity and a back pocket full of vagina euphemisms. Femfresh felt compelled to respond with the post: "Just a short note to tell all recent posters that we have seen your comments and we will be getting back to you. Whilst we welcome debate, please can we ask that you don't post anything abusive or use bad language as this contravenes our policies and we will have to delete the posts. Thank you." Of course this just added petrol to the fire as commenters asked whether "vagina" constituted bad language. From every angle this is a PR failure, but what is a company to do when people think your product is at best ridiculous and at worst offensive and harmful?

Well, our consumerist society is expert at creating products we don't need and then making us think we need them. Why are women suddenly bloated all the time? Were we bloated in the 1950s? How did past generations survive without ginseng? Why is everyone suddenly using shower gel rather than soap? Because we think we need to. Yes, we make that choice freely but if it wasn't available we wouldn't all be thinking "Goodness, I wish someone would get around to inventing a small bottle of water that I can spray on my face for no discernible reason".

Women don't need specific cleaning products for their front bottom, in fact cleaning up the fun tunnel can be bad for you. And we certainly don't need to be patronised by an advertising campaign that tries to call my quim "lala". Vaginas are not just being airbrushed out of the abortion debate; they are being changed beyond all recognition whether surgically, cosmetically or synonymously.

So maybe "vagina" is actually the hardest word to say for politicians and marketers. Yet for the protesters in Michigan and the Facebook mob on the Femfresh page, it seems to roll off the tongue rather nicely."

I have to say I cannot but agree with her especially when she writes thus - "Well, our consumerist society is expert at creating products we don't need and then making us think we need them." Women are constantly bombarded with images that commidify them and make them feel insecure about them selves and are not a "real woman" unless they do X,Y,Z which is dictated by the advertisers. How refreshing to have a woman stand up and say unequivocally that it's all a bunch of crap!

Original link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/22/femfresh-feminine-hygiene-products