Blaming Video Games Won't Prevent Another Shooting Tragedy

call of duty

When tragedy strikes, it is human nature to look around for someone to blame and the killings at Sandy Hook elementary school have prompted a flurry of finger-pointing.

The media demands big-picture culprits and the reckless power of the gun lobby or the failure of mental heath services aren't enough.

Conservative commentators have dipped into their usual basket of bugbears, including video games, violent movies and godlessness.

The Sun, however, has gone boldly off-piste by training its outrage on "brainless" Coronation Street star Helen Flanagan, who on Monday posted a picture of herself pointing a gun at her head, and asking grieving parents for their views on this woman they've never heard of.

It's an absurd yet familiar attempt to erect a cultural cordon sanitaire around a terrible event. For a few days, we must all pretend that run-of-the-mill gun imagery is utterly beyond the pale, an insult to the dead, before resuming normal service.

And if, in showing such remarkable empathy for the bereaved, the Sun gets the chance to show a picture of Flanagan in a lacy bra, well that's just a bonus.

These spasms of hypersensitivity and hypocrisy always seem ridiculous in retrospect.

Remember Massive Attack abbreviating their name to Massive during the gulf war, Kylie changing her album title from Impossible Princess after Princess Diana's fatal crash, the Strokes dropping the mildly disrespectful New York City Cops from their debut album following the World Trade Centre attacks, or the Proms cutting American composer John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine after both Diana's death and 9/11?

These were panicky decisions based on fear of outrage. They are part of the standard ritual of public grief but that does not make them rational or useful. Although there are extreme cases when bad timing can't be ignored – US radio stations had little choice this week but to stop playing Ke$ha's new single Die Young – censorship is always problematic.

After 9/11, US radio giant Clear Channel drew up an informal blacklist of "lyrically questionable" songs, which elided merely unfortunate titles (the Gap Band's You Dropped a Bomb on Me) with politically loaded ones ("all songs by Rage Against the Machine"). In the name of sensitivity, political dissent itself became "questionable".

At least you could argue that 9/11 was truly unprecedented, but last year 8,583 Americans were murdered by guns. Aside from a few well-publicised spree shootings, culture proceeds as normal regardless of the feelings of the bereaved.

If posing with a gun is genuinely crass and offensive then it should have been crass and offensive last week and it should be a month from now, but no, it only counts for one news cycle.

When we hear about a horrific event we feel that something must be done, yet we can do next to nothing ourselves. Nobody can reverse what happened at Sandy Hook and only US legislators have any power to keep semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of deeply troubled individuals.

In the absence of real power, some take the methadone of synthetic outrage and pretend that, in the face of 26 shocking murders, one tacky photograph matters an iota.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/-v6rbsV33AY/pop-culture-not-to-blame-for-newtown-2012-12

debt recovery agency debt recovery agents debt recovery letter debt recovery solicitors

How 20,000 Pounds Of Potatoes Brought Wi-Fi To Airplanes

Potatoes on an airplane

If you're flying somewhere this holiday season, you could be on a plane that offers Wi-Fi.

And a good Wi-Fi connection on a plane flying 500 miles per hour at 35,000 feet was a particularly hard tech problem to solve, say the Boeing engineers who solved it.

Packing a lot of people in a small space can interfere with radio signals like Wi-Fi. That leads to hot and cold reception spots on the plane, which means some passengers get great connections and others don't. It also has safety implications: You don't want Wi-Fi signals to bounce around and mess up the plane's instrumentation.

Engineers at Boeing thought up a way to fix the issue. But to test it they would need to fill a plane with people and make them sit there for days.

That's where the potatoes came it. It turns out that a sack of potatoes acts a lot like a person, at least as far as wireless signals are concerned. Instead of hiring people, the engineers filled all the seats of an old plane with sacks of potatoes—some 20,000 pounds in all.

The potatoes were content to sit quietly. They didn't need lunch breaks or bathroom breaks. What would have taken two weeks of testing with people took only 10 hours with the potatoes. (Update: A Boeing engineer tells us that they did keep the potatoes on board for a couple more weeks of tests, too.)

So next time you're watching Netflix on an airplane, thank a French fry.

Don't miss: Guess When These 20 Sci-Fi Technologies Are Coming To Your Phone Or PC

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/gsOl60QBULo/20000-lbs-potatoes-airplane-inflight-wi-fi-2012-12

debt free america debt freedom canada debt harassment debt help services

CHECK IN: Manhattan's New Tuscany Hotel Mixes Classic History With Modern Design

Location: 120 East 39th Street, New York City

Why Go: The Tuscany, a property of the luxe St. Giles Hotel chain, is a modern and sophisticated hotel which opened yesterday after a multi-million dollar, year-long renovation. Design is a priority here. All of the rooms and public areas are decorated with interesting details: rooms have leather-wall paneling, soft velvet furniture, and hardwood floors while public areas have unique lighting installations and furnishings.

Standout Feature: All 124 guest rooms are giant for Manhattan. Since this hotel once served as an apartment building (and then an office building and later a hotel), rooms—which were converted from 1- and 2-bedroom apartments—are large. Even the basic rooms are around 400 square feet—larger than many Manhattan apartments. Suites are larger.

Interesting Tidbit: The hotel was originally an apartment building called The Tuscany, built in 1928 by Henry Mandel. Although the developers totally gutted the building to make it a completely modern hotel, they unearthed some hidden treasures from the original construction, including a few fireplaces hidden behind plaster and some personal letters from the 1930s and '40s that got stuck in the building's mail shafts. (They haven't opened or displayed the letters, but it's still cool.)

Rates: Introductory rates start at $269.

The Tuscany hotel-front deskThere's a suede and studded panel behind the front desk that was made by artisans from Italy.

The Tuscany hotel-roomGuest rooms are giant for Manhattan, at an average of 400 square feet. Rooms have king-size beds, desks, sitting areas, and flat-screen TVs embedded in a leather wall panel.

The Tuscany hotel-roomThe hallways in each room have hardwood floors. The bathrooms are sleek and modern.

The Tuscany hotel- bathroom amenitiesBathrooms have luxurious toiletries from Molton Brown.

SEE ALSO: The Top 10 Hotels In The World >

Please follow The Life on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/EwG4vc-Xzqo/st-giles-hotel-new-york-the-tuscany-2012-12

business debt relief business debt settlement capquest debt recovery christian debt relief

How Happy A Woman Is In Her Relationship Fluctuates With Her Hormones

flirting and texting

A woman's relationship satisfaction changes as she nears ovulation, when she's most fertile.

But whether or not she's more or less happy with her guy depends on his sex appeal.

In a new study, heterosexual women who rated their guys as highly sexually desirable felt closer to their partners and more satisfied with their relationships just before ovulation, as compared to their less-fertile days.

The opposite was true for women who said their partners were less sexy; they felt less close to their male partners and were more critical of their mate's faults as they approached ovulation.

Previous research has shown that the type of man a woman prefers tends to change across her ovulatory cycle, as she becomes more attracted to masculine faces and bodies, and bilateral symmetry, when she's fertile.

Another recent study showed that heterosexual women actually look and sound more attractive to guys on the women's fertile compared with non-fertile days.

"This is the first research to show that these changes have implications for relationship functioning," said study researcher Christina Larson, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hormones likely influence these fluctuating preferences and evaluations. However, the researchers didn't directly measure hormones.

"So we can't say exactly which hormones were responsible or how exactly they change women's behaviors," Larson said. Estrogen, which peaks at ovulation, is a strong candidate, she said.

Sexiness and satisfaction

The study, detailed online Dec. 3 in the journal Hormones and Behavior, involved 108 heterosexual women who had not used birth control in the past three months and who were not pregnant or breast-feeding.

The women, who had been in committed relationships for an average of two years, answered the same questions during two sessions, one during their high-fertility phase and one during their low-fertility phase.

The subjects self-reported where they were in their cycles, and the researchers confirmed the high-fertility session with an ovulation test. [10 Odd Facts About a Woman's Body]

The questionnaires included prompts such as, "How desirable do you think women find your partner as a short-term mate or casual sex partner, compared to most men?" and, "How sexy would women say your partner is, compared to most men?"

The women also answered questions about their closeness to their partners, their partners' faults and virtues, and the women's commitment to and satisfaction with their relationships.

The good news for men: Although a woman's time of the month seemed to influence her feelings about her partner and relationship satisfaction, her commitment to the relationship stayed constant throughout the cycle.

The findings are in line with the so-called dual-mating hypothesis, which suggests that women have two mate-choice mechanisms: "one leading to preferences for sexually desirable men who have high-fitness genes, and one leading to preferences for men who are able to invest in a woman and her children," the authors wrote in the journal article.

Choosing mates

Though the researchers can't say that hormones caused the mate-preference changes, there's reason to think the two might be related from an evolutionary perspective.

Dissatisfaction with a less sexually desirable partner when a woman is near ovulation may have encouraged cheating among our female ancestors, thus increasing the likelihood of conceiving children with sexually desirable partners, Larson told LiveScience.

Because sexually desirable traits like masculine appearance in men are thought to have indicated genetic quality in ancestral environments, these couplings outside the primary partnership might have provided an evolutionary advantage for ancestral women.

"All else being equal, a woman who conceived children with men who possessed high fitness genes (e.g., relatively free of deleterious genetic mutations) probably had children who were more likely to survive and later reproduce than the children of a woman who chose a less genetically fit partner," the authors wrote.

Sexually desirable men would have benefited, as well, but "if men were sexually undesirable, these behaviors were likely to be reproductively disadvantageous if they caused their partners to conceive children with other men," Larson said.

Jealousy and mate guarding — actions that men perform more frequently when their partners are fertile, according to research — may have coevolved to counter cheating. Larson’s lab previously showed that men identified as not very sexy were more jealous and attentive to their mates on the women's high-fertility days.

In the future, Larson plans to study whether or not women actually change their behavior — treating less desirable partners differently than sexier guys, or even cheating on them — when fertile.

Please follow Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/3Cc5nOr7z2o/ovulating-women-like-sexy-men-2012-12

federal debt consolidation freedom debt relief scam get debt help government debt consolidation loans

Amazon Can Drive Big Kindle Growth With China Launch

The huge market size and Amazon pricing its devices at low margins which most likely will appease the growing Chinese middle class leads us to expect that the devices will be well received and likely provide substantial upside to e-books and other content sales as well.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/12/17/amazon-can-drive-big-kindle-growth-with-china-launch/

debt collection process debt collection rights debt consolidation agency debt consolidation blog

Benefits of Credit Card Debt Consolidation

Consolidation Loans with Bad Credit Is debt consolidation a good solution for my credit card debts? Debtors, upon realizing that in a few years their credit cards would have accumulated thousands of dollars through interests ask the same question. Credit card purchases, in many instances are actually more expensive because of high interest rates. Someone [...]

The post Benefits of Credit Card Debt Consolidation appeared first on legal debt help online.

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/06/29/benefits-of-credit-card-debt-consolidation/

langhorne debt solutions medical bankruptcy mercers debt michigan debt consolidation

Manchester United's Alex Ferguson Shares The Secrets Of His Success With Harvard Business School

alex fergusonIn what is possibly the most wide-reaching talk ever given by Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager has told students at Harvard Business School in Boston the secrets of his success.

Ferguson, who was the subject of an academic study by professor Anita Elberse at the Harvard Business School, visited the school earlier this year to meet students to discuss the report.

The Scot later described the experience as "excellent, enjoyable, and comfortable" while also learnt a lot about himself.

“The whole atmosphere was professional,” Ferguson told the HarvardGazette . “It was clear that they had done their homework. They had properly read the case study and supplemented that with their own opinions and research. That gave me a certain assurance that I had made the right decision to go ahead with the case.

“The key element for me was Anita, and how she controlled the room. I am always talking about ‘control.’ She controlled that room. She was the boss. I thought that was very impressive, plus the fact that she has a certain humility about her; she’s quite down-to-earth.

“The process was excellent, enjoyable, and comfortable,” Ferguson added. “I never felt intimidated in any way, and I never felt reluctant to be anything other than completely open.

“The part of the discussion from which I learned the most about myself was when they were discussing the balance between ‘fear’ and ‘love’ in my approach to managing people. If you look at my history, there’s all this hype about hair dryers and anger and so on. But the students acknowledged another side to it, which is more apt in terms of how I have fostered relations with people and developed the team over the years.

"The reality is not always how the press portray it. I felt the students were quite accurate in terms of how they analyzed this aspect, questioning and recognizing this important dynamic of management.

THE BEST OF FERGUSON

Encouraging words

"I once heard a coach start with 'This must be the 1,000th team talk I've had with you,' and saw a player quickly responding with 'And I've slept through half of them!'

"So I like to tell different stories, and use my imagination.

"Generally, it is about our expectations, their belief in themselves, and their trust in each other.

"I remember going to see Andrea Bocelli, the opera singer. I had never been to a classical concert in my life.

"But I am watching this and thinking about the coordination and the teamwork, one starts and one stops, just fantastic. So I spoke to my players about the orchestra - how they are a perfect team."

Talking tactics

"Tactics can change depending on whom we are playing.

"I tend to concentrate on one or two players of my opponents - the ones that are the most influential.

"Who's the guy who is taking all the free-kicks? Who's the guy who's on the ball all the time? Who's the one urging everyone on? The rest of the time I concentrate on our own team.

"On Friday we take our players through a video analysis of our opponents: their strengths, their weaknesses, their set pieces, what their team is likely to be, and so on.

"Then on Saturday, we might give them another, shorter version - just a recap of the previous day."

Quick talking

"There are maybe eight minutes between you coming up through the tunnel and the referees calling you up on the pitch again, so it is vital to use the time well.

"Everything is easier when you are winning: you talk about concentrating, not getting complacent, and small things you can address.

"But when you are losing, you know that you are going to have to make an impact.

"The last few minutes of the first half I'm always thinking of what I'm going to say. I'm a little bit in a trance. I am concentrating.

"I don't believe in taking notes. I see other coaches do it, but I don't want to miss any part of the game.

"And I cannot imagine going into the dressing room, looking at my notes, and saying 'Oh in the 30th minute, that pass you took'. I don't think it's going to impress the players."

Anger management

"I've still got a wee bit of anger in me, thinking of how we threw the league away last season.

"It was another day in the history of Manchester United. That's all it was. It created the drama that only United can produce.

"Who would have thought that Blackburn, bottom of the league, would beat us 3-2 at Old Trafford? Or that Everton would draw with us when we were up 4-2 with seven minutes to go?

"My motivation to the players will be that we cant let City beat us twice in a row."

Old big ears

"It's difficult to marry the two competitions in one season.

"We are in a country where tribalism is rife. There is strong competition between regions and top clubs, with Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham based in London, two clubs here in Manchester, and Liverpool.

"That puts tremendous pressure on you to win your league. But the European Cup is the biggest trophy.

"Last season, when we went out in the group phase, I made a mistake. I was playing a lot of the young players.

"Although that had worked in the past we got careless in our games.

"It was a shock, because it was only the third time I've not qualified for the knockout stage. I decided I wouldn't be taking the risks I took in Europe last year."

Playing politics

"The Glazers decide. They have generally been very supportive and are very low-key.

"If I owned United and they won the league, I would be over the moon.

"I remember when I played with Rangers, when the directors were under the shower with their clothes on, dancing about.

"But the Glazers shook a few hands and had some photographs taken, that was it.

"Some English clubs have changed managers so many times that it creates power for the players in the dressing room.

"That is very dangerous. Football management in the end is all about the players. You think you are a better player than they are, and they think they are a better manager than you are."

Building blocks

"The first thought for 99 per cent of newly appointed managers is to make sure they win to survive. They bring experienced players in, often from their previous clubs.

"But I think it is important to build a structure for a football club - not just a football team.

"You need a foundation. And there is nothing better than seeing a young player make it to the first team.

"There are three categories: players from 30 and above, the players from roughly 23 to 30, and the younger ones coming in.

"The idea is that the younger players are developing and meeting the standards that the older ones have set before.

"For me the hardest thing is to let go of a player who has been a great guy.

"But all the evidence is on the football field. If you see the change, the deterioration, you have to start asking yourself what it is going to be like two years ahead."

Special ones

"Jose [Mourinho] is very intelligent, he has charisma, his players play for him, and he is a good looking guy.

"I think I have most of those things, too, apart from his good looks.

"He's got a confidence about himself, saying 'We'll win this' and 'I'm the Special One'.

"I could never come out and say we're going to win this game. It's maybe a wee bit of my Scottishness?

"[Pep] Guardiola is an impressive guy. He's brought about change in Barcelona, urging the team to always work hard to get the ball back within seconds after losing it.

"They are gifted but work hard. It was a fantastic achievement. He elevated the status of his players."

Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/hveGwfP1gj4/alex-ferguson-talks-with-harvard-2012-12

american credit card debt american debt relief american debt settlement american debt solutions

How To Make A Toy For Girls: Take Gender-Neutral Toy, Add Fairies And Flowers, Make It Purple

As a child, did you ever have one of those magnetic fishing games where plastic fishes’ mouths snap open and shut and you try to snag them with a magnet? I had one, and I enjoyed that toy very much as a little girl. Let me emphasize the “as a little girl” part. One would think that this is a … [More]

Source: http://consumerist.com/2012/12/18/how-to-make-a-toy-for-girls-take-gender-neutral-toy-add-fairies-and-flowers-make-it-purple/

debt clearance debt collection agencies uk debt collection attorney debt collection guidelines

Japan Is On Its Longest Streak Of Trade Deficits Since 1980

Italy Port Shipping Containers Economy Manufacturing Boat Expansion

Japanese exports fell 4.1 percent in November.

However, it wasn't as bad as the 5.5 percent drop expected by economists.

The export driven economy has been getting slammed thanks to political turmoil with China, which has caused China's taste for Japanese goods to collapse.

Exports to China tumbled 14.5 percent during the period.

Exports to the EU did worse, tanking 19.9 percent.

The trade deficit came in at 953.4 billion yen, which was the fifth straight month of deficits.  This is the longest streak of deficits since 1980, reports CNBC World.

Japan recently voted former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe into power on Sunday.  Abe, a conservative, ran on the platform of aggressive easy monetary policy in an effort to stimutate the struggling economy.

With the threat of inflation and currency debasement on the horizon, experts like Jeff Gundlach have recommended shorting the Japanese yen and buying Japanese stocks.

SEE ALSO: The New Jeff Gundlach Trade Is Going Wild, And It's Been Less Than A Week >

Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/lNfhC3AFwWc/japan-exports-2012-12

freedom debt relief scam get debt help government debt consolidation loans grants to pay off debt