Sell Watches To You

Though some will try to convince you otherwise, the fact is that the racing calendar – as opposed to its raving, bloated sibling, the fixture list – needs a redesign in much the same way that the famous panorama from the stands at Goodwood would benefit from a petrol refinery.

The folk at Racing For Change must find it terribly vexing, this calendar, evolved largely in obedience to the patrician peregrinations of the 19th century. The big meeting at Goodwood this week, for instance, was timed as a prelude to Cowes. Once the gentry proceed to the persecution of grouse, moreover, they can reconvene near the moors at York next month.

According to everything they teach at marketing school – for instance, how to disclose the terminal atrophy of your intelligence and dignity by use of such quasi-Stalinist phrases as "delivering solutions" or "going forward" – this random, organic development should leave the calendar as an incoherent muddle. Sure enough, that is exactly what RFC tell us it is.

Once again, however, the season is unfolding with a bewitching rhythm. Last weekend we even had a return to the good old days of the King George, with a maturing champion dishing it out to a couple of Derby winners. The Classic generation promptly hit back through Canford Cliffs, gliding past Rip Van Winkle at Goodwood on Wednesday. And, as always, each new answer raises a fresh question. Will Canford Cliffs, for instance, stand between Goldikova and an unprecedented third win at the Breeders' Cup in November?

Presumably not, because we are always being told that the Flat lacks a proper climax. In the meantime, we can again congratulate our ancestors on their civilised migration from midsummer heat towards the salt breezes of Goodwood, or Deauville – or, in the case of their American cousins, to Del Mar. So it is that some outstanding fillies are divided, this weekend, by the bare width of the Channel.

Tomorrow Goldikova continues her journey back to the Breeders' Cup by seeking a 10th Group One prize in the Prix Rothschild at Deauville, where her rivals include the Falmouth Stakes winner, Music Show. Navigating the other way, meanwhile, are Stacelita and Rosanara, for the Blue Square Nassau Stakes at Goodwood today.

Between them, the two French fillies probably offer stronger resistance than Midday (3.05) met here last year, but she would go on to a new peak in the Filly and Mare Turf at the Breeders' Cup. A comeback defeat by her old rival, Sariska, represented a solid effort at the weights and you never know when a Henry Cecil filly has finished improving.

Success for Midday would consolidate Cecil's return to the top five in the trainers' championship, which could itself turn into a useful recruitment tool for RFC this season. Following the success of Canford Cliffs, Richard Hannon retains every right to retrieve the lead surrendered to Sir Michael Stoute when Harbinger won at Ascot. (Hannon, incidentally, reckons Sir Alex Ferguson has another useful colt in Pausanias, who makes his debut on today's card.)

A more obvious stimulant to public interest, however, remains Paul Hanagan's unexpected charge for the jockeys' title. His debt to the skills of Richard Fahey is measurable by the fact that he had to choose between five in the Blue Square Stewards' Cup. Punters, of course, are doomed to a choice of 28, but a surfeit of jockeys excitably contesting the pace over this steep track might just set things up for Palace Moon (3.40).

The calendar, anyhow, is never more than the matrix. And as men like Hanagan and Hannon are showing, much the most engaging "narratives" are those that could never be scripted in advance.

Hannon and Co keep the juvenile winners coming

If strong suit is the best young horse in Richard Hannon's care, as he again insisted after saddling yet another juvenile Pattern winner at Goodwood yesterday, then the chances are he must also be the best in the land. For the stable's unprecedented strength in depth this season is not just a tribute to the partnerships that underpin his operation – one with his son, namesake and assistant, the other with his son-in-law and stable jockey, Richard Hughes – it is also becoming a downright embarrassment to his competitors.

The big spenders dismiss the yearlings favoured by Hannon as merely commercial or precocious, the type that will do a job for his good-time owners. Well, you would not be at all surprised were these same men to try to tempt Hannon's patrons with some of their millions.

There's time yet. In recent years, after all, there has been a shift in the profile of yearlings sent to Ballydoyle, with many staying types emerging in the season's second half. But that stable's relatively quiet start with juveniles has exposed a humiliating vacuum among the other bloodstock superpowers.

And Hannon keeps making hay. Just as at the Newmarket July Festival, he has won all three of the Group prizes offered two-year-olds at Goodwood this week. Yesterday it was the turn of Libranno, who made all in the Tanqueray Richmond Stakes, seeing off The Paddyman by over a length.

Hughes reckons the colt would have to be taught to race a different way to last a mile, and for now connections intend to play to his strengths over six furlongs. "He jumped extremely fast and I was tanking down the hill," Hughes said. "The last two furlongs were very lonely, out there in the middle, but he had killed them off in the middle of the race."

Libranno is now likely to be upgraded to Group One level, possibly in the Middle Park Stakes, and doubts about his stamina prompted bookmakers to leave him at 20-1 for the 2,000 Guineas. You can get the same odds against King Torus, very striking here earlier in the week, and around 6-1 about Strong Suit. Hughes, likewise, rates the Coventry Stakes winner as the best of the bunch – "just through feel" – and is looking forward to riding him at the Curragh next month.

But nobody should get ahead of themselves, in view of the poignant postscript to events here the previous day. Age Of Aquarius has been retired to stud after tearing fetlock ligaments, while overnight it emerged that Borderlescott had returned to the stables lame and will miss the rest of the season. You can't buy luck. And, as Hannon keeps proving, that leaves you with judgement.

driver from www.independent.co.uk

The Russian media has seized upon a raunchy photograph – of the Georgian Economy Minister posing in a nightclub – to release a fresh torrent of criticism at President Mikheil Saakashvili for appointing "strippers" to his cabinet.

Mr Saakashvili appointed 28-year-old Vera Kobalia to the ministerial post this month. Ms Kobalia, an ethnic Georgian, had lived in Canada for 15 years and has no previous experience in politics. She is said to have met Mr Saakashvili during his trip to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February.

A photograph, apparently taken from Ms Kobalia's Facebook page, has been published by a newspaper in Georgia. It shows the minister, her sister and three friends posing. The Russian state-controlled media, which gives wide coverage to any story that paints President Saakashvili in a negative light, jumped on the story and insisted that the picture was taken in a Vancouver strip club.

Ms Kobalia claimed the photo was taken almost 10 years while she was on holiday in Florida. "If the worst thing that the opposition or anyone else can find about me is my old picture from college than I don't see anything wrong with that," she said.

In the photograph, the minister is wearing a dress and there is no indication that she took part in a striptease. There is also no indication from the photograph that it was taken in a strip club, nor any idea in which city or when it was taken.

Ms Kobalia's biography indicates that before leaving Canada for Georgia she worked for a local TV channel and ran a business. This didn't stop the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda running a story yesterday headlined "From Strippers to Ministers" and other Russian news outlets followed with similar stories. The minister herself could not be reached for comment yesterday.

At the time of her appointment, many experts expressed amazement that such a key ministry could be entrusted to a political neophyte. "Think how ambitious a person has to be to take the position of the head of the main economic body in the country, without having either the necessary education or any experience whatsoever," said Nodar Dzhavakhishvili, the former head of the Georgian National Bank, at the time. "I think anyone could find someone in their family who was far more experienced and qualified in this field than Ms Kobalia."

But Mr Saakashvili, who was just 36 when he took over as Georgian President after the Rose Revolution in late 2003, has made a habit of appointing ministers in their twenties and thirties. He claims that catapulting the young generation into power is an integral part of his project to build a new type of country and wipe out the Soviet legacy. "The plan is to have nobody in government who served during the Soviet period," said Mr Saakashvili last autumn. "Some of them don't even remember the Soviet period."

In Tbilisi, observers say that Ms Kobalia has started positively in the job and during her first weeks has shown a ruthless streak. On visiting the Tbilisi tourism information centre, she discovered most of the employees had gone to a jazz festival in a Black Sea resort. She immediately fired the entire staff, according to one local news agency.

driver from www.independent.co.uk

It'll still be hard to top the Hooters episode, but NASCAR and the Chiquita fruit company will be among the corporations participating in the second season of Undercover Boss, CBS announced Wednesday.

There will also be episodes featuring suits from DirecTV and Great Wolf Resorts, North America's largest family of indoor waterparks.

Watch full episodes of Undercover Boss

"We're thrilled with this season's new bunch of bosses," Stephen Lambert, the show's executive producer, said in a statement. "The companies are some of the best known brands in corporate America, and clearly — with the likes of NASCAR, Chiquita, DirecTV and Great Wolf Resorts — we've got an interesting blend of industries."

Undercover Boss puts a senior executive in a job in his or her own company under an assumed identity to see how decisions from the top affect the rank-and-file.

driver from www.tvguide.com

MARSHALL TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Crews were working Tuesday to contain and clean up more than 800,000 gallons of oil that poured into a creek and flowed into the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan, coating birds and fish.

Authorities in Battle Creek and Emmett Township warned residents about the strong odor from the oil, which leaked Monday from a 30-inch pipeline built in 1969 that carries about 8 million gallons of oil per day from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario.

Crews waded in oily water as they worked to stop the oil's advance downstream. Oil-covered Canada geese walked along the banks of the Kalamazoo River, and photos showed dead fish floating in the spill. The Kalamazoo River eventually flows into Lake Michigan, but officials didn't expect the oil to reach the lake.

"This is just a disaster," said Raymond Woodman, 33, of Emmett Township, who watched workers use a vacuum truck to suck oil from the water at the Ceresco Dam, downstream from leak. "It shouldn't matter how much it costs to clean this up. They need to clean it up."

Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge Inc.'s affiliate Enbridge Energy Partners LP of Houston estimated about 819,000 gallons of oil spilled into Talmadge Creek before the company stopped the flow. Enbridge crews and contractors deployed oil skimmers and absorbent booms to minimize its environmental impact.

"We are going to do what it takes to make this right," Enbridge's president and CEO Patrick D. Daniel said during a news conference in Battle Creek.

The company had begun testing the air near the spill, with the primary concern being the possible presence of the cancer-causing chemical benzene. On Tuesday, the company said it hadn't found any levels that would be of concern in residential areas. Groundwater testing also was planned. Authorities evacuated two homes near the leak, and some locals said they were concerned about the fumes. But there were no reports of sickened residents.

As of Tuesday afternoon, oil was reported in about 16 miles of the Kalamazoo River downstream of the spill, said Mary Dettloff, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. She said state officials were told during a company briefing that an estimated 877,000 gallons spilled — a figure more than 50,000 gallons higher than the company's public estimate.

U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer, D-Mich., said he discussed the spill with President Barack Obama. Schauer called the spill a "public health crisis," and said he plans to hold hearings to examine the response.

"The company was originally slow to respond and it is now clear that this is an emergency," Schauer told reporters on a conference call.

Obama has pledged a swift response to requests for assistance, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said.

The cause of spill was under investigation. The site is in Calhoun County's Marshall Township, about 60 miles southeast of Grand Rapids. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm activated the State Emergency Operations Center.

Granholm toured the area by helicopter Tuesday evening, then met with state and federal officials for a briefing. She said more resources should be devoted to cleaning up the spill.

"From my perspective, the response has been anemic," she said.

Enbridge said it had about 200 employees and contractors working on the spill. Local, state and federal agencies also were involved, and the National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation. The pipeline was shut down Monday and isolation valves were closed, stopping the source of the oil, the company said.

The Kalamazoo River eventually bisects the city of Kalamazoo and meanders to Saugatuck, where it empties into Lake Michigan. Officials didn't think the oil would spread past Morrow Lake, which has a dam upstream of Kalamazoo, Dettloff said.

The river already faced major pollution issues. An 80-mile segment of the river and five miles of a tributary, Portage Creek, were placed on the federal Superfund list of high-priority hazardous waste sites in 1990. The Kalamazoo site also includes four landfills and several defunct paper mills.

The Michigan Department of Community Health warned the public to stay away from the creek and river during the cleanup. It also said people shouldn't eat fish from the waterways or have contact with the water, and farmers and homeowners who use the water for irrigation or livestock should stop.

driver from www.msnbc.msn.com

BP CEO Tony Hawyard, who's quickly become the public face of the Gulf Oil spill, will be stepping down within days, according to reports in the British press.

The move is expected to come in anticipation of the company's announcement of its first-half results on Tuesday. BP will announce that it has made approximately $10 billion this year, even while contending with the largest oil spill in history, the U.K.'s Telegraph reports. Here's Telegraph :

The chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward, is finalising the details of his imminent exit from BP this weekend as the oil giant prepares to make an announcement on the chief executive's future possibly within the next 48 hours.

After a weekend of detailed negotiations over Mr Hayward's severance package, it now appears almost certain that he will announce his departure ahead of BP's half year results on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reports that BP is currently discussing Hayward's departure:

Under the plan being discussed, Mr. Hayward would not necessarily depart immediately, these people said, giving the company time to settle on a successor and devise and orderly transition. It is possible, however, that the board could move more quickly in tapping a new chief.
The U.K.'s Guardian also relays news of Hayward's imminent departure, and reports that he will be replaced by Bob Dudley. Dudley is managing the day-to-day Gulf Oil spill operations.

But in a statement issued to Dow Jones Newswires, a BP spokesman said: "Tony Hayward is the chief executive and has the confidence of the board and senior management.

LONDON — Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie accepted undisclosed damages Thursday in London's High Court to settle a privacy claim against a British tabloid that had reported they were planning to split.

The celebrity couple began legal action against the News of the World after it reported in January that they had agreed to separate. The pair argued the newspaper had made false and intrusive allegations in saying that they had planned to divide assets worth 205 million pounds ($320 million) and had made arrangements regarding the custody of their six children.

"When the News of the World failed to publicly retract the allegations and apologize for them – thereby leaving their readers in the dark as to the true position – the couple felt they had no alternative than to sue," the couple's attorney, Keith Schilling, said in a statement. "Today's victory marks the end of the litigation brought by Brad and Angelina."

The newspaper confirmed that a settlement had been reached, but declined to comment further.

The movie star couple did not attend the hearing.

The potential lasting brain damage suffered by NFL players due to the thousands of helmet-to-helmet blows over a career has been the subject of much recent controversy. For years, the NFL has said that it didn't know if playing professional football caused long-term brain damage, even though they started their concussion committee in 1994. Fifteen years later in 2009, Commissioner Goodell testified in Congress that they were still studying the issue. Congresswoman Maxine Waters sent shockwaves through professional sports when she told the Commissioner that having the NFL study brain damage was like the tobacco companies studying lung cancer. Perhaps there was a conflict of interest.

As a psychiatrist and brain-imaging physician, the answer seemed obvious to me. I wondered why the NFL had never performed a large-scale brain-imaging study. How would we ever really know unless we actually looked at their brains? After a number of players came to see me with dementia, depression, irritability and obesity, I decided to study their brains and answer the question, "Does playing professional football put players at risk for long-term damage to the brain?"

My colleagues and I performed two different types of brain-imaging studies on more than 100 active and retired players. We did brain SPECT scans, which look at blood flow and activity patterns in the brain, and QEEG studies, which measure electrical activity. In addition, we performed a group of tests to measure cognitive function. The answer, which did not surprise anyone except perhaps some in the NFL, was that playing professional football causes long-term brain damage.

You cannot get hit by guys like the Minnesota Vikings' offensive tackle Ron Yary (6'5" and 255 pounds, who is one of the players in our study) 30 to 50 times a game and not expect to have some trouble.

Our study found that the retired NFL brain seemed to have its own pattern. Damage typically affected the following areas:

The prefrontal cortex (called the executive part of the brain that controls judgment, impulse control, attention span, organization and planning)
The temporal lobes (mood stability and memory)
The cerebellum (coordination and thought coordination)

The players tended to score poorly on the neuropsychological tests we gave them, except for reaction time and spatial processing. Forty-eight percent of our players had problems with obesity and nearly 30 percent suffered with or had been treated for depression. The incidence of memory problems and dementia were many times the rate in the general population.
As we were doing our study, a new study came out from the University of Pittsburgh that reported as a person's weight went up the actual physical size of their brain goes down. Holy smokes!

Once you admit that you have a problem you can then do something about it.

Our initial findings led us to a question that had much more implications outside of football. "Could we rehabilitate brains that have been damaged by chronic trauma?" I had spent the last 20 years of my career improving people's brains and subsequently their lives.

That became Part 2 of our study.

We put our players on a brain healthy program that included a weight-loss group, regular exercise (surprisingly many of these former elite athletes had become couch potatoes), mental exercises and nutritional supplements that support brain health, such as fish oil, and a proprietary formula including ginkgo biloba, huperzine A, phosphatidyl serine and vinpocetine, among others.

The follow-up results have been nothing short of amazing. We have found that recovery and improvement in cognitive function is indeed possible. This is the most exciting part of our study.

To date we have done follow-up scans and testing on 32 players. Twenty-five of them have shown significant improvement, both on their SPECT scans and on their neuropsychological testing, sometimes improving their test scores by over 400 percent.

Take Cam Cleeland, who played for the New Orleans Saints, New England Patriots and St. Louis Rams, for example. At 34, Cam is one of our younger retired NFL players. He volunteered for our study because he was struggling with problems of depression, irritability, frustration, high stress, obsessive thinking, memory problems and marital problems.

Cam had been diagnosed with a total of eight concussions--three in college and five in the pros. Cam's SPECT scan showed clear brain damage and his Microcog (a test of neuropsychological function) showed significant decreases in general cognitive functioning, information processing speed, attention, memory and spatial processing.

After eight months on our brain rehabilitation program, Cam reported feeling much better and noticed significant improvements in his attention, mental clarity, memory, mood, motivation and anxiety level. He felt his anger was under greater control and he was getting along better with his small children.

His SPECT scan showed dramatic improvement in the areas of his temporal lobes (memory and mood stability), prefrontal cortex (attention and judgment) and cerebellum (processing speed). His Microcog showed dramatic improvement as well.

A similar example is Big Ed White from the Minnesota Vikings, who played in four Pro Bowls and four Super Bowls. He weighed 365 pounds when he first came to see us, but lost 40 pounds in six months. All of his cognitive scores improved as well.

The interventions used in our study are simple. When players do not respond, we have added certain memory-enhancing medications, antidepressants, hyperbaric oxygen treatment and neurofeedback. Again, often the results are very encouraging.

Retired players need the NFL's help and advocacy. The NFL has recently made strides towards admitting that playing football in the NFL is a brain-damaging sport. Once you admit that you have a problem you can then do something about it!

The exciting news in my mind is that if we can demonstrate improvement in football players with chronic brain damage, it offers hope for the millions of people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury, including the 15 percent of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who came home with brain injuries.

My nephew and Godson, Michael, is a Marine who serves in Afghanistan. Two weeks ago he fell and hit his head. I immediately sent him our protocol of supplements. This issue is much closer to home than I like.

If you have a comment, please write below.

To your brain health.

Daniel G. Amen, MD

It's always somebody else's problem. Even when it comes to our own health, we always think the latest risks never apply to us. Most patients know that being overweight predisposes them to diabetes. But nine times out of 10, when I tell my patients with diabetes that if they lost weight, they might be able to improve their diabetes control, the response back to me is "Dr. Whyte, I've been overweight for 20 years... and I've only been diabetic for a year." They either simply do not make the connection or they just do not want to see it.

Unfortunately, that ignorance is no longer restricted to their own health; research also shows that many patients have wrong perceptions of their children's weights. What do I mean?

The majority of parents recognize childhood obesity as a serious health problem. Yet, nearly 85 percent of parents of overweight children think their child as being at a healthy weight. If you consider that a third of children are overweight or obese, it's obvious that the numbers don't add up. In some ways, this is no surprise: no parent wants to admit that their child is overweight. Doing so can damage a child's self-esteem at a tender age when image and self-concept are being developed. Parents also shrug it off as "baby fat" that children will lose in their older years.

But the sad truth is that school-age children and teenagers aren't babies; carrying extra weight can't always be blamed on the growth process. Some parents may also feel that extra weight on their kids is proof that they are providing for them sufficiently, which is a rewarding feeling for parents. On the other hand, it's possible that a lot of parents just don't know what a "healthy weight" is. Ask yourself: Do I know how fat is too fat?

Parents aren't the only ones at fault. Doctors also are to blame. Many pediatricians hesitate to bring up a child's weight to the parents. Interestingly, data show that parents are more likely to misclassify their child's weight if their pediatrician fails to comment on it. In fact, less than 8 percent of parents recalled being told by their pediatrician that their child was overweight.

Even though pediatricians have a responsibility to intervene for the good health of the patient, it isn't always this clear. Some pediatricians are not aware of the latest guidelines, other others are worried about offending parents by suggesting that their child is overweight or obese.
So what's my advice to parents of overweight children?

Well, it's important that you don't feel discouraged if your child is overweight - most kids are nowadays. But at the same time, don't neglect it. You can actually help curb the rise in childhood obesity. Your children's generation is the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents! No parents want this for their kids.

So, get educated. Learn about what obesity is, what dangers accompany it, and how to detect it in your children. Then take action. Ask your pediatrician about your child's weight, and keep track of your child's BMI-for-age in between visits. Learn how to prepare healthier foods at home. Promote more physical activity. Maybe even lead by example and join your kids in getting active.

It's important to be honest with yourself early: one study shows that 73 percent of the heaviest nine-year olds will still be obese at age 50. Much of the focus on the fight against obesity has been on school lunches, vending machines, fast food marketing, and video games. And kudos to Mrs. Obama for raising awareness of childhood obesity.

But if we all acknowledge childhood obesity as a problem, but think it doesn't apply to our kids (and chances are it does!), then we will never solve the problem.

Parents are central to that solution. Loving your kids isn't about spoiling them with their favorite junk foods and turning them into couch potatoes. It's about caring for their health. Show your kids how much you love them by being honest with yourself about their weight and looking out for their healthy future.

 

Driver from: www.huffingtonpost.com

Courtney Purvin got a shock when she visited Facebook last month. The site was suggesting that she get back in touch with an old family friend who played piano at her wedding four years ago.

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The friend had died in April.

“It kind of freaked me out a bit,” she said. “It was like he was coming back from the dead.”

Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, knows a lot about its roughly 500 million members. Its software is quick to offer helpful nudges about things like imminent birthdays and friends you have not contacted in a while. But the company has had trouble automating the task of figuring out when one of its users has died.

That can lead to some disturbing or just plain weird moments for Facebook users as the site keeps on shuffling a dead friend through its social algorithms.

Facebook says it has been grappling with how to handle the ghosts in its machine but acknowledges that it has not found a good solution.

“It’s a very sensitive topic,” said Meredith Chin, a company spokeswoman, “and, of course, seeing deceased friends pop up can be painful.” Given the site’s size, “and people passing away every day, we’re never going to be perfect at catching it,” she added.

James E. Katz, a professor of communications at Rutgers University, said the company was experiencing “a coming-of-age problem.”

“So many of Facebook’s early users were young, and death was rare and unduly tragic,” Mr. Katz said.

Now, people over 65 are adopting Facebook at a faster pace than any other age group, with 6.5 million signing up in May alone, three times as many as in May 2009, according to the research firm comScore. People over 65, of course, also have the country’s highest mortality rate, so the problem is only going to get worse.

Tamu Townsend, a 37-year-old technical writer in Montreal, said she regularly received prompts to connect with acquaintances and friends who had died.

“Sometimes it’s quite comforting when their faces show up,” Ms. Townsend said. “But at some point it doesn’t become comforting to see that. The service is telling you to reconnect with someone you can’t. If it’s someone that has passed away recently enough, it smarts.”

Ms. Purvin, a 36-year-old teacher living in Plano, Tex., said that after she got over the initial jolt of seeing her friend’s face, she was happy for the reminder.

“It made me start talking about him and thinking about him, so that was good,” she said. “But it was definitely a little creepy.”

Facebook’s approach to the deaths of its users has evolved over time. Early on it would immediately erase the profile of anyone it learned had died.

Ms. Chin says Facebook now recognizes the importance of finding an appropriate way to preserve those pages as a place where the mourning process can be shared online.

Following the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, members begged the company to allow them to commemorate the victims. Now member profiles can be “memorialized,” or converted into tribute pages that are stripped of some personal information and no longer appear in search results. Grieving friends can still post messages on those pages.

Of course, the company still needs to determine whether a user is, in fact, dead. But with a ratio of roughly 350,000 members to every Facebook employee, the company must find ways to let its members and its computers do much of that work.

For a site the size of Facebook, automation is “key to social media success,” said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.”

“The way to make this work in cases where machines can’t make decisions is to tap into the members,” he said, pointing to Facebook’s buttons that allow users to flag material they find inappropriate. “One way to automate the ‘Is he dead’ problem is to have a place where people can report it.”

That’s just what Facebook does. To memorialize a profile, a family member or friend must fill out a form on the site and provide proof of the death, like a link to an obituary or news article, which a staff member at Facebook will then review.

But this option is not well publicized, so many profiles of dead members never are converted to tribute pages. Those people continue to appear on other members’ pages as friend suggestions, or in features like the “reconnect” box, which has been spooking the living since it was introduced last October.

Ms. Chin said Facebook was considering using software that would scan for repeated postings of phrases like “Rest in peace” or “I miss you” on a person’s page and then dispatch a human to investigate that account.

“We are testing ways to implement software to address this,” she said. “But we can’t get it wrong. We have to do it correctly.”

The scanning approach could invite pranks — as the notification form already has. A friend of Simon Thulbourn, a software engineer living in Germany, found an obituary that mentioned someone with a similar name and submitted it to Facebook last October as evidence that Mr. Thulbourn was dead. He was soon locked out of his own page.

“When I first ‘died,’ I went looking around Facebook’s help pages, but alas, they don’t seem to have a ‘I’m not really dead, could I have my account back please?’ section, so I opted for filling in every form on their Web site,” Mr. Thulbourn said by e-mail.

When that didn’t work, Mr. Thulbourn created a Web page and posted about it on Twitter until news of the mix-up began to spread on technology blogs and the company took notice. He received an apology from Facebook and got his account back.

The memorializing process has other quirks. Memorial profiles cannot add new friends, so if parents joined the site after a child died, they would not have permission to see all the messages and photos shared by the child’s friends.

These are issues that Facebook no doubt wishes it could avoid entirely. But death, of course, is unavoidable, and so Facebook must find a way to integrate it into the social experience online.

“They don’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings, but yet they are the keeper of those living memories,” Mr. Katz, the Rutgers professor, said. “That’s a real downer for a company that wants to be known for social connections and good news.”

Several new journals, and a recent visit to a great little magazine shop in Berlin, again make one think we are entering a differentage of print. (Of special interest is Tony Judt’s moving essay “Words” in The New York Review of Books.) Though it’s clear that mainstream publications are challenged by the Internet, small magazines keep turning up. One of the funnier, readable fashion mags to come along in a while is I Like My Style Quarterly, a spinoff of ilikemystyle.net, a social network site started two years ago by Adriano Sack. He’s a journalist who divides his time between Berlin and New York and writes a style column for the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. I Like My Style is about the size of a small-town phone book with a ruggedly assured world view of style seekers.

The first issue explains its purpose by asking a series of questions followed by answers. The last in the series is “And who are you guys?” Answer: “A bunch of friends from Berlin, New York, Texas, Austria and Hong Kong.” Mr. Sack says he believes the publication is the first ever user-generated fashion magazine. All of the content is created by users of ilikemystyle.net. The quality of the images is surprisingly good, and the ideas are fresh and interesting. And if some of the pictures are blurry — well, the editors said, that’s the way the world looks at times. Immediate, subjective, and fuzzy.

I also like that the magazine has tons of text, mostly personal observations about clothes and style icons. Mark Krayenhoff, an extravagantly bearded New York architect I once met in a coffee shop, has several pages in the first issue. Despite the sprawling reach of the magazine, it feels sharply edited, somehow. I won’t use the word curated. Bad word. The magazine is distributed by Export Press.

Also worth checking out is Tiffany Godoy’s new magazine from Tokyo, The Reality Show. It’s a group of well-designed folios wrapped in a poster. An authority on Japanese street fashion, Ms. Godoy presents people mixing their clothes with designer looks. You can buy the magazine at restir.com.

I’m completely charmed by Alt/Saglio, a little journal of street photos of the French Vogue editors Emmanuelle Alt and Géraldine Saglio. It’s a bit of an art project, with quotes from a crazy mix of people—Einstein to Bruce Willis—and it’s a mystery. No author is given. I thought Ms. Alt might know something, but she did not respond to my email. The book suggests the obsession with fashion as culture.

 

 

Driver from: www.nytimes.com