tinpra | Entries tagged with articles

(lj'er's note: fascinating, strange and--for the conspiracy theorist in [all of] us--a little scary this look at how companies utilize the info they have on us via our paper trails)

By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: February 16, 2012

Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”

Pole has a master’s degree in statistics and another in economics, and has been obsessed with the intersection of data and human behavior most of his life. His parents were teachers in North Dakota, and while other kids were going to 4-H, Pole was doing algebra and writing computer programs. “The stereotype of a math nerd is true,” he told me when I spoke with him last year. “I kind of like going out and evangelizing analytics.”

As the marketers explained to Pole — and as Pole later explained to me, back when we were still speaking and before Target told him to stop — new parents are a retailer’s holy grail. Most shoppers don’t buy everything they need at one store. Instead, they buy groceries at the grocery store and toys at the toy store, and they visit Target only when they need certain items they associate with Target — cleaning supplies, say, or new socks or a six-month supply of toilet paper. But Target sells everything from milk to stuffed animals to lawn furniture to electronics, so one of the company’s primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is Target. But it’s a tough message to get across, even with the most ingenious ad campaigns, because once consumers’ shopping habits are ingrained, it’s incredibly difficult to change them.

There are, however, some brief periods in a person’s life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux. One of those moments — the moment, really — is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs. But as Target’s marketers explained to Pole, timing is everything. Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies. Which means that the key is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way. Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things, like prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing. “Can you give us a list?” the marketers asked. ( Read the rest at the NYTimes online )

by Chris Matyszczyk

Gaming requires a peculiar concentration. It also sometimes attracts peculiar people.

Or is it that gaming makes people peculiar?

I drift into this difficult philosophical territory in memory of Chen Rong-Yu, a 23-year-old gamer in New Taipei, Taiwan. He died while gaming in an Internet cafe.

And, well, according to news agency AFP, no one realized for up to nine hours. ( Read the rest of the blog post at CNET )

(CNN) -- Chinese authorities have released activist Hu Jia, his wife posted Sunday on Twitter.

"On a sleepless night at 2:30, Hu Jia arrived at home. Safe, very happy. Needs to rest for a while. Thanks to each of you," Zeng Jinyan wrote in the tweet.

Zeng is married to Hu Jia, a human rights activist who served a 3 1/2-year sentence for "incitement to subvert state power," according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Hu had written a series of stories denouncing the human rights situation in China ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the group said. He also has been active on AIDS issues in China.

( Read the rest of the, very brief, article at CNN.com )

Note: In case you were wondering, I'm anti-gay marriage, but this is big news and not posting it won't make it any less true. Also, I apparently have a history of posting news articles related to homosexual marriage. I'd honestly forgotten.

N.Y. Gay Marriage Bill Gains Key Votes

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: June 24, 2011

ALBANY — Thirty-three state senators have publicly declared they will support legalizing same-sex marriage, all but assuring passage of the measure which will make New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples can wed.

The Senate took up the measure just before 10 p.m., and the Senate galleries were packed with gay couples in support of the bill and religious opponents of it.

Senator Stephen M. Saland, a Poughkeepsie Republican, became the critical 32nd vote, telling his colleagues in an emotional address that he believed the issue came down to a question of equality.

“I know my vote is a vote of conscience,” he told a hushed chamber. “I am at peace with my vote. It was a struggle. It was an extraordinary deliberation.”

Mark J. Grisanti, a freshman Republican whose Buffalo district is overwhelmingly Democratic and who had also been publicly undecided, joined Mr. Saland in saying he would vote for the bill.

( Read the rest at the New York Times online )

Great News
Paraplegic walks at UC Berkeley graduation with help of 'exoskeleton'

Austin Whitney is walking proof that determination -- combined with creative ingenuity -- can turn a seemingly impossible idea into a reality.

Paralyzed from the waist down since a 2007 drunken driving accident, he had worked hard to graduate on time -- and with honors -- from the University of California at Berkeley.

That was reason enough to celebrate. But nothing compared to how he accepted his diploma on Saturday.

Pressing a button on his walker, Whitney rose to his feet at the commencement ceremony. Then, with the flick of a switch, his legs moved across the stage.

-----

This story was so awesome I had to share it with Mom immediately. Read it. Read it!

Sad News
Savage a wrestling legend in ring and out

Randy “Macho Man” Savage, a pro wrestling icon whose fame reached far past the wrestling ring as a television pitchman with the phrase, “Snap into a Slim Jim, oooh yeah,” died on Friday morning in Pinellas County, Fla., after reportedly suffering a heart attack while driving, leading to an auto accident.

Savage, born Randall Mario Poffo, was 58. While perhaps best known for his pro wrestling battles as Hulk Hogan’s major storyline rival in the late 1980s, Savage was also an actor and a one-time major league baseball prospect.

Lanny Poffo, his brother and also a former pro wrestler under the handle “Leaping” Lanny Poffo, told TMZ.com that Savage suffered a heart attack behind the wheel while driving a 2009 Jeep Wrangler.

----

And this story has got me a little teary eyed. Randy Savage was part of my childhood. I remember watching him and Hulk Hogan and the whole slew of wrestling ppl with my grandpa, my youngest uncle and our family friends every Saturday/Sunday afternoon. Plus all the weekends spent at my community center with my friends, and the trips to see wrestling events (from the nosebleed seats, but, hey, I couldn't have afforded to go myself) for free. So it's sad. Ironically, I was thinking of Randy Savage earlier this week. Thanks,

jaguarx13, for letting me in.

Residents in the Spanish town of Lorca are assessing the damage from quakes that killed nine people and forced thousands to spend the night outdoors.

The mayor of the historic town, with a population of 90,000, said: "Almost no-one slept in their homes".

Some 20,000 buildings are believed to have been damaged in what was Spain's worst earthquake for 50 years.

The magnitude 5.2 tremor hit early on Wednesday evening, around two hours after a quake measuring 4.4.

Those who died - including at least one pregnant woman and a child - were killed by falling masonry in the second tremor.

Regional officials say at least 130 people have been injured, with several in a serious condition.

( Read the rest at the BBC News online. )

( Also, pictures post-quake. )

Mom was telling me about this last night. I didn't realize it had basically just happened. What with everything going on in the world right now it seems to have been semi-buried. I'm glad I saw it on the BBC site.

The leaders of 17 unofficial Christian churches in China have appealed to political leaders to protect their right to worship.

A petition was delivered to parliament demanding an investigation into the treatment of Shouwang church members.

China's constitution guarantees freedom of worship but dozens of church members have been arrested in recent months.

Of China's estimated 70m Christians, about 50m worship with unregistered groups known as "house" churches.

The rest attend government-approved churches.

(Read the rest at the BBC online.)

If you look at the related news stories you'll see this kind of thing isn't new news. PBS also looked at Christians in China, at the official vs. unofficial churches, and the persecution of the latter.

Christians in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, are holding a protest vigil near Tahrir Square following an attack on two churches in which 12 people died.

More than 180 were wounded in clashes on Saturday after conservative Muslims attacked a church in the Imbaba area.

Protesters have gathered outside the country's state television, accusing the army of failing to protect them.

Egypt's army says more than 190 people detained after the violence will face military trials.

The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces called the move a "deterrent" against further violence.

Egypt's justice minister Abdel Aziz al-Gindi has warned that those who threaten the country's security will face "an iron fist". ( Read the rest at the BBC online )

There was more of this stuff going on around Christmas. I still have the links saved to my email to post but I was too mentally worn out to do much of anything (as you may have noticed). If you want to read about the previous problems going on with the Coptic church in Egypt, the BBC has links to their earlier stories.

Funnily enough, I was in the bathtub when the quake struck.

It was a lazy Friday. I had no classes, as it was the end of the year and most of the students were only going to school to attend their clubs. Therefore, I’d spent most of the day doing precisely nothing. I was taking a bath and reading and contemplating a run up to Maiya, the local supermarket.

When the quake hit, I was a little annoyed at first that my lovely bath had been interrupted. And then, as the quake got stronger and kept on going, I got scared. I grew up in Alaska and had just spent two and a half years in Japan; I know earthquakes. This one was different. A little voice at the back of my head started saying, “You need to get out. You need to get out NOW!”

( Read the rest online here )

Pitcher Says No Thanks to Sure $12 Million

By TYLER KEPNER
Published: January 26, 2011

The guaranteed contract is a fundamental principle of Major League Baseball, as much a part of the game as balls, strikes and outs. No matter how a player performs, or how his body holds up, he must be paid in full. Only in rare cases — an injury sustained off the field, gross personal misconduct — does a player forfeit his paycheck.

But the case of Gil Meche is rare for an entirely different reason. Meche, a 32-year-old right-handed pitcher, had a contract that called for a $12 million salary in 2011. Yet he will not report to Surprise, Ariz., with the rest of the Kansas City Royals for spring training next month. He will not have surgery to repair his chronically aching right shoulder. He will not pitch in relief, which involves a lighter workload.

Meche retired last week, which means he will not be paid at all.

“When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”

Meche’s decision plays against type — the modern athlete out for every last dollar. ( Read the rest at NYTimes.com )

Actor Leslie Nielsen, known for his role as Lt. Frank Drebin in "The Naked Gun" series, died of complications from pneumonia Sunday, his family said.

Nielsen, 84, died in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, surrounded by his wife and friends.

"In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in his name to the charity of your choice," the family said in a statement.

(from CNN.com)

By TRYMAINE LEE

In yeshivas, they are sometimes taunted as “monkeys” or with the Yiddish epithet for blacks. At synagogues and kosher restaurants, they engender blank stares. And dating can be awkward: their numbers are so small, friends will often share at least some romantic history with the same man or woman, and matchmakers always pair them with people with whom they have little in common beyond skin color.

They are African-Americans and Orthodox Jews, a rare cross-cultural hybrid that seems quintessentially Brooklyn, but received little notice until last week, after Yoseph Robinson, a Jamaican-born convert, was killed during a robbery attempt at the kosher liquor store where he worked.

At his funeral and in interviews afterward, a portrait emerged of a small, insular but energized community that is proud but underpinned by a constant tug of race and religiosity.

In Crown Heights, one of the city’s hubs of Orthodox Jewish life, blacks and Jews have long lived side by side and have occasionally clashed. In 1991, riots broke out after a car in a motorcade carrying a Hasidic leader veered onto the sidewalk, killing one black child and badly injuring another.

Nobody keeps track of how many black Orthodox Jews are in New York or across the nation, and surely it is a tiny fraction of both populations. Indeed, even the number of black Jews over all is elusive, though a 2005 book about Jewish diversity, “In Every Tongue,” cited studies suggesting that some 435,000 American Jews, or 7 percent, were black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian.

“Everyone agrees that the numbers have grown, and they should be noticed,” said Jonathan D. Sarna of Brandeis University, a pre-eminent historian of American Jewry. “Once, there was a sense that ‘so-and-so looked Jewish.’ Today, because of conversion and intermarriage and patrilineal descent, that’s less and less true. The average synagogue looks more like America.

“Even in an Orthodox synagogue, there’s likely to be a few people who look different,” Professor Sarna said, “and everybody assumes that will grow.”

Through the Internet, younger black Orthodox Jews are coming together in ways they never could before.

( Read the rest on NYTimes online. )

By EMILY STEEL and JULIA ANGWIN

You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.

From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.

The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.

In short: Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself.

( Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal Online )

Geeky-me who inhales cyberpunk on the regular saw this coming. Which is probably why Lives-in-the-real-world me has been trying to avoid it like a Johnny Mnemonic avoids black ICE.

By TRIP GABRIEL
Published: August 1, 2010

At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.

At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.

And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.

Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that.

But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.

( Read the rest at the NYTimes.com )

I know at least two people on my f-list are teachers, and various ones of us are writers or have other creative interests. I think most of us are beyond college. What do you guys think of this? Beyond being lazy and not wanting to put in the hard work of writing, as is mentioned later in the article, I think a lot of the current college generation's apathy about plagiarism, and cheating in general, comes from having cheated for much of their academic lives. I know cheating was alive and strong when I was in middle and high school, and there were definitely mixed feelings about its immorality then.

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- No one survived the crash of a Pakistani passenger plane that went down in the outskirts of the capital Islamabad Wednesday morning with 152 people on board, officials said.

Rescuers worked in heavy rains to recover bodies from the wreckage, as officials launched an investigation to determine why the accident occurred. Pakistani Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said 115 bodies have been taken to area hospitals.

Initially, Kaira and Interior Minister Rehman Malik reported survivors in the crash. Kaira said there were eight survivors and Malik said there were six.

But Kaira said the initial information received from the scene was incorrect, and both men later said no one survived the crash.

( Read the rest at CNN.com )

When I first heard this story this morning they were reporting survivors. It's awful to hear that they don't think there are any now.

Christian College Students Attacked in Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq — About 70 college students, most of them Christians, were wounded Sunday and another Iraqi was killed when a convoy of school buses was attacked in a double bombing on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul, according to a security official.

“We were going for our education and they presented us with bombs,” said Jamil Salahuddin Jamil, 25, a sophomore geography major, who was on board the lead bus. “I still do not know what they want from Christians.”

The attack was a reminder of the threats in a still-disputed part of the country, claimed by Kurds and Arabs, where a resilient insurgency remains active and where American soldiers still staff checkpoints.

( Read the rest at the NY Times. )

Suspect Sought in Foiled Times Square Bomb Plot

A failed car bomb smoked, popped and shut down Times Square, causing panic, evacuations and confusion Saturday on one of the tourist spot's busiest nights. Most of the streets in the area were reopened Sunday morning, though a heavy police presence remained in the area.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said officers are heading to a town in Pennsylvania to talk to a man who believes he may have recorded a bombing suspect on his video camera. Police are looking a for a white male in his 40s who was seen shedding a dark shirt with a red shirt underneath, he said at an afternoon press conference. Investigators are now looking through "hundreds of hours of surveillance videos," Mr. Kelly added.

( Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal. )

There's also an interesting article at the BBC--interesting because of their not-in-America perspective on it.

Seven dead as record flooding engulfs Tennessee

(CNN) -- Some of the worst flooding the mid-South has seen in decades has killed seven people in Tennessee, the state's emergency management agency said Sunday, with up to 20 inches of rain falling in parts of the state since Saturday and more expected Sunday evening.

The rains have washed out major roads, caused evacuations, and prompted dam failures. In Nashville, Tennessee, alone, more than 600 people were rescued from the water this weekend, Mayor Karl Dean said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.

"All of our major creeks and the Cumberland River are near flood level, if not at flood level," Dean said, referring to the waterway that bisects Nashville. "The ground is entirely saturated, and the rain continues to fall. There's nowhere for the water to go."

The western two thirds of Tennessee has seen between 6 and 20 inches of rain since Saturday, with flooding spreading to Kentucky on Sunday.

( Read the rest at the CNN.com )

Current Mood: hot

Dixie Carter, the tough-love mother hen on Designing Women who became the mother-in-law from hell on Desperate Housewives, died Saturday at age 70. Her publicist says she passed away in the morning but gave no further details.

"This has been a terrible blow to our family," husband and frequent costar Hal Holbrook said in a statement. "We would appreciate everyone understanding that this is a private family tragedy."

( Read the rest at E!Online )

:(

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked southern Taiwan on Thursday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries.

Taiwan's interior ministry reported 11 minor injuries.

The quake struck at about 8:20 a.m. (7:20 p.m. Wednesday ET) in a mountainous region about 25 miles northwest of Taitung, on the southeast coast, and 40 miles east of Tainan and Kaohsiung on the southwest coast.

Read the rest at CNN.com

Does anyone know if, like, having one major quake spawns others? I'm almost positive that Taiwan is in the ring of fire, but I am up past my bedtime so who knows.

By ROBERT MACKEY

As my colleague Marc Lacey reports, aftershocks struck Chile Monday morning, complicating efforts to rescue survivors of the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that devastated much of the country on Saturday. The death toll now stands at 711, but is expected to rise. The Lede is tracking the response to the earthquake online. Readers who are in Chile are encouraged to submit first-hand accounts in the form of text, video or photographs by posting comments or links in the thread below.

( You can read The Lede feed at the NY Times website )

It's funny (in a non-haha kind of way), but last week I'd heard or read somewhere that the coverage and concern for the Chilean earthquake wasn't going to be as strong as the one for the Haitian earthquake. So far that seems accurate. There are at least two articles from the Tiimes, in particular, that I'd seen on my iGoogle this afternoon and had wanted to post that are now kaputz. Well...not kaputz, but off my 9-header-max listing. While I'm sure the same kind of thing happened during the Haitian earthquake coverage, the "old news" was replaced with more Haitian news. It took work to find this particular article.

Anywho, so what are people's thoughts? Are we just disastered out? Is it that, although this quake is stronger than Haiti's, Chili is already earthquake prone and so it's "less" newsworthy b/c it's less shocking? I mean an 8.8 is no joke, but Chili is better prepared for a quake than Haiti ever was. Do you think it perhaps has to do with a quake on top of Haiti's abject poverty makes it "more" newsworthy? Or perhaps because there were so many foreigners already in Haiti dealing with other issues when the quake struck. Do you have thoughts at all? Random comments from strangers welcome.

Chile quake affects two million, says Bachelet

Two million people have been affected by the massive earthquake that struck central Chile on Saturday, President Michelle Bachelet has said.

In a TV address, she said the forces of nature were testing the nation.

So far at least 300 people have been confirmed killed in the earthquake that struck in the early hours of Saturday.

The 8.8 quake - one of the biggest ever - triggered a tsunami that has been sweeping across the Pacific, although waves were not as high as predicted.

"The forces of nature have badly affected our country," Ms Bachelet said.

"And once again they've put to the test our ability to deal with adversity and get back on our feet. And we are examining every way to restore all the basic services in the country. But there's still a lot to do. (Read the rest at the BBC News online)

Thousands begin evacuating in Japan as threat of tsunami nears

Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of residents began evacuating from coastal Japan on Sunday in anticipation of a possible tsunami following the 8.8-magnitude quake that rocked Chile the day before, CNN's Kyung Lah reported.

The northern part of the main island is looking at the possibility of a tsunami more than 9 feet high, she said. Rail service has been halted and residents have been urged to evacuate low-lying areas of the island nation.

The warning primarily affected fishing areas and tourist areas; major cities like Tokyo, which is inland, were not affected. (Read the rest at CNN.com)