The Help by Kathryn Stockett
In my book club last year, one of the themes that continued to arise as we read books from many cultures was how we are perceived by the people we hire to help us in our homes. In The White Tiger, a Man Booker Award Winner, the main character lucks into a job working for a family as a driver. We see the people for whom he works from the inside, their sweet acts and all their flaws. We see how callous they can be, and, ultimately, how the driver takes his revenge and becomes his own boss. (Not one of my favorite books, but then again, I’m still thinking about it a year later, so there is something to be said for it.)
In Half of a Yellow Sun we saw an entirely different relationship (in a book I totally loved, BTW) between employer and employee, but it shared with White Tiger the aspect of employer as seen from the eyes of an employee inside the house who sees the family and all its interactions intimately.
The Help, a surprise best seller, does the same to 1960’s era Mississippi. A recent graduate from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) starts interviewing the maids from local households, any maid that will talk to her. At first, no one will talk with her, but after traumatizing racial clashes, one by one, they share their stories. Just interviewing the maids, just the maids sharing their stories, is enough to bring on serious consequences.
First, the book is riveting. I have a million things I really REALLY need to be doing, and I can’t stop reading. There is something about peeking into your neighbors house, seeing how they behave when they think no one is looking, that appeals to the voyeur in each of us.
Second, these women are taking serious risks. I am on the edge of my chair with each reading, hoping nothing bad happens to them.
Third, there is something that makes you squirm, it is the old “wee giftie” that shows us the worst in ourselves as others might see us; our own hypocrisies, our condescensions, our patronizing acts, how cruel our charitable acts can appear through the eyes of others, and how callous we are in the end towards those who take care of us every day.
It has rocketed onto the best seller list, now the #6 best selling book on Amazon.
If your book club is looking for a book to read that will get you talking and keep you talking for a long time, this is one of the best.
If you have hired help in the house, I double-dog-dare-you to read this book. (OOps, sometimes the little Alaska girl in me pops back out!) Fair warning, though, once you start, you won’t want to put it down.
FBI Press Release Re: FaceBook, Social Networking Sites
Read the message for yourself on the FBI Press Release Page
No, Your Social Networking “Friend” Isn’t Really in Trouble Overseas
According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), there has been an increase in the number of hijacked social networking accounts reported to http://www.ic3.gov.
One of the more popular scams involves online criminals planting malicious software and code onto to victim computers. It starts by someone opening a spam e-mail, sometimes from another hijacked friend’s account.
When opened, the spam allows the cyber intruders to steal passwords for any account on the computer, including social networking sites. The thieves then change the user’s passwords and eventually send out distress messages claiming they are in some sort of legal or medical peril and requesting money from their social networking contacts.
So far, nearly 3,200 cases of account hijackings have been reported to the IC3 since 2006.
Cyber thieves are also using spam to promote phishing sites, claiming a violation of the terms of service agreement or creating some other issue which needs to be resolved. Other spam entices users to download an application or view a video. Some of these messages appear to be sent from friends, giving the perception of legitimacy. Once the user responds to a phishing site, downloads an application, or clicks on a video link, the electronic device they’re using becomes infected.
Some applications advertised on social networking sites appear legitimate but install malicious code or rogue anti-virus software. These empty applications can give cyber criminals access to your profile and personal information. These programs will automatically send messages to your contacts, instructing them to download the new application too.
Infected users are often unknowingly spreading malware by having links to infected websites posted on their webpage without the user’s knowledge. Since the e-mail or video link appear to be endorsed by a friend, social networking contacts are more likely to click on these links.
Although social networking sites are generally a safe place to interact with friends and acquaintances, keep in mind these suggestions to protect yourself while navigating the Internet:
• Adjust website privacy settings. Some networking sites have provided useful options to assist in adjusting settings to help protect your identity.
• Be selective when adding friends. Once added, contacts can access any information marked as viewable by all friends.
• Limit access to your profile to only those contacts you trust with your personal information.
Disable options, such as photo sharing, that you might not regularly use. You can always enable these options later.
• Be careful what you click on. Just because someone posts a link or video to their wall does not mean it is safe.
• Familiarize yourself with the security and privacy settings and learn how to report a compromised account.
Each social networking site may have different procedures on how to handle a hijacked or infected account; therefore, you may want to reference their help or FAQ page for instructions.
If your account has been hijacked or infected, report it to by visiting http://www.ic3.gov or http://www.lookstoogoodtobetrue.com.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center is a partnership between the FBI and National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).
Exporting Trash to Poorer Countries
From The New York Times, where you can read the entire article on exporting trash by clicking here
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: September 26, 2009
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — When two inspectors swung open the doors of a battered red shipping container here, they confronted a graveyard of Europe’s electronic waste — old wires, electricity meters, circuit boards — mixed with remnants of cardboard and plastic.
“This is supposed to be going to China, but it isn’t going anywhere,” said Arno Vink, an inspector from the Dutch environment ministry who impounded the container because of Europe’s strict new laws that place restrictions on all types of waste exports, from dirty pipes to broken computers to household trash.
Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become a vast and growing international business, as companies try to minimize the costs of new environmental laws, like those here, that tax waste or require that it be recycled or otherwise disposed of in an environmentally responsible way.
Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe, has unwittingly become Europe’s main external garbage chute, a gateway for trash bound for places like China, Indonesia, India and Africa. There, electronic waste and construction debris containing toxic chemicals are often dismantled by children at great cost to their health. Other garbage that is supposed to be recycled according to European law may be simply burned or left to rot, polluting air and water and releasing the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.
While much of the international waste trade is legal, sent to qualified overseas recyclers, a big chunk is not. For a price, underground traders make Europe’s waste disappear overseas.
After Europe first mandated recycling electronics like televisions and computers, two to three tons of electronic waste was turned in last year, far less than the seven tons anticipated. Much of the rest was probably exported illegally, according to the European Environment Agency.
Paper, plastic and metal trash exported from Europe rose tenfold from 1995 to 2007, the agency says, with 20 million containers of waste now shipped each year either legally or illegally. Half of that passes through this huge port, where trucks and ships exchange goods around the clock.
When we were blogging about pirates in Somalia, a Somali wrote in that part of the problem was that rich western countries were dumping toxic trash off the coast of Somalia and damaging the traditional fishing wealth of the country. Once trash is exported, there is no telling where it will be dumped, or what problems we are causing for our descendants down the road. I can’t help but think that we reap what we sow – and that we need to be paying attention to what we are dumping and where we are dumping it.
Expose Violators to Protect Consumers?
This article is from the Qatar Peninsula but it applies equally in Kuwait, in Seattle, in Pensacola . . . when a restaurant violates a health code, shouldn’t those results be made public? They are serving the public, they take our money, shouldn’t we know the state of hygiene and the safe-practices they observe – or don’t observe?
We still remember a time in Monterey, California when we walked into one of the most popular Chinese restaurants in town and found a table, without having to wait. It was astonishing. There were few customers that night. The next day in the paper we found it had been closed for health-code violations. We took comfort in knowing that when it re-opened, it had to pass a re-check, and it was probably the cleanest it had ever been, or would be for a time to come. 🙂
Restaurateurs want names of eateries violating rules to be made public
Web posted at: 9/27/2009 23:45:38
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: The identity of the eateries punished for flouting health and safety rules should be disclosed by the authorities concerned, feel a number of restaurateurs in the city.
Not disclosing the name of an erring eating outlet is unadvisable since it can make all the eateries of a locality suspect in the eyes of patrons, say restaurateurs.
This happens especially as the authorities do mention the area an erring eatery is located in but fight shy of publishing its name in local newspapers.
Al Sharq Arabic newspaper in its weekly online survey took up this issue this time and an overwhelming 94 percent of the respondents said they were in favor of disclosing the identity of an erring eateries.
Only five percent said they did not back the idea, while one percent said they were undecided.
Wikipedia Today
I found this story in Time Magazine where you can read the rest of the story by clicking on the blue type. Wikipedia has been a great source of information for me, and I am fascinated to know Wikipedia’s growth is slowing – and why . .
Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?
By FARHAD MANJOO
Looking back, it was naive to expect Wikipedia’s joyride to last forever. Since its inception in 2001, the user-written online encyclopedia has expanded just as everything else online has: exponentially. Up until about two years ago, Wikipedians were adding, on average, some 2,200 new articles to the project every day. The English version hit the 2 million — article mark in September 2007 and then the 3 million mark in August 2009 — surpassing the 600-year-old Chinese Yongle Encyclopedia as the largest collection of general knowledge ever compiled (well, at least according to Wikipedia’s entry on itself).
But early in 2007, something strange happened: Wikipedia’s growth line flattened. People suddenly became reluctant to create new articles or fix errors or add their kernels of wisdom to existing pages. “When we first noticed it, we thought it was a blip,” says Ed Chi, a computer scientist at California’s Palo Alto Research Center whose lab has studied Wikipedia extensively. But Wikipedia peaked in March 2007 at about 820,000 contributors; the site hasn’t seen as many editors since. “By the middle of 2009, we realized that this was a real phenomenon,” says Chi. “It’s no longer growing exponentially. Something very different is happening now.”
What stunted Wikipedia’s growth? And what does the slump tell us about the long-term viability of such strange and invaluable online experiments? Perhaps that the Web has limits after all, particularly when it comes to the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing. Wikipedians — the volunteers who run the site, especially the approximately 1,000 editors who wield the most power over what you see — have been in a self-reflective mood. Not only is Wikipedia slowing, but also new stats suggest that hard-core participants are a pretty homogeneous set — the opposite of the ecumenical wiki ideal. Women, for instance, make up only 13% of contributors. The project’s annual conference in Buenos Aires this summer bustled with discussions about the numbers and how the movement can attract a wider class of participants.
At the same time, volunteers have been trying to improve Wikipedia’s trustworthiness, which has been sullied by a few defamatory hoaxes — most notably, one involving the journalist John Seigenthaler, whose Wikipedia entry falsely stated that he’d been a suspect in the John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations. They recently instituted a major change, imposing a layer of editorial control on entries about living people. In the past, only articles on high-profile subjects like Barack Obama were protected from anonymous revisions. Under the new plan, people can freely alter Wikipedia articles on, say, their local officials or company head — but those changes will become live only once they’ve been vetted by a Wikipedia administrator. “Few articles on Wikipedia are more important than those that are about people who are actually walking the earth,” says Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that oversees the encyclopedia. “What we want to do is find ways to be more fair, accurate, and to do better — to be nicer — to those people.”
Yet that gets to Wikipedia’s central dilemma. Chi’s research suggests that the encyclopedia thrives on chaos — that the more freewheeling it is, the better it can attract committed volunteers who keep adding to its corpus. But over the years, as Wikipedia has added layers of control to bolster accuracy and fairness, it has developed a kind of bureaucracy. “It may be that the bureaucracy is inevitable when a project like this becomes sufficiently important,” Chi says. But who wants to participate in a project lousy with bureaucrats?
There is a benign explanation for Wikipedia’s slackening pace: the site has simply hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion. In its early days, it was easy to add stuff. But once others had entered historical sketches of every American city, taxonomies of all the world’s species, bios of every character on The Sopranos and essentially everything else — well, what more could they expect you to add? So the only stuff left is esoteric, and it attracts fewer participants because the only editing jobs left are “janitorial” — making sure that articles are well formatted and readable.
Read the rest of the article Here
Bedbugs Bite
With all my articles on household cleanliness, you all are going to think I am a cleanliness freak, but I am not. I DO think there are things we take for granted that we should not. I never thought twice about bedbugs until we stayed once in a reputable hotel and ended up with bites. I am particularly sensitive to all insect bites, and ended up with huge swellings. Fortunately, we were able to get rid of them easily, but we had to sterilize all our bedding and get rid of our mattress – we brought the bugs home with us from Florida. 😦
Now, both AdventureMan and I check the sheets everywhere we stay, and we often feel creepy-crawlies even when none are there! We will never feel entirely safe again.
You can read the entire article on the world-wide bedbug resurgence at BBC Health News You can read more about bedbugs on Wikipedia: Bedbugs
Bedbugs were almost entirely eliminated, and then when the use of DDT was forbidden – for good reasons, by the way. They are now world-wide such a big problem that a conference was recently held in Seattle on how to deal with the bedbug problem.
There has been a massive increase in the number of bed bug infestations, according to a survey.
Statistics from councils in London and the Midlands show the rate increased three-fold in the last decade.
The figures were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Bed Bugs Limited, which says the insects “breed at a phenomenal rate”.
Bed bugs are insects that commonly hide in mattresses and carpets and in the crevices of furniture.
They are a reddish-brown colour, oval-shaped insect that can grow to a quarter of an inch long.
They cannot fly and survive by sucking blood from a host animal, mainly at night.
There are distinct hotspots in highly populated areas, with lots of multi-occupancy housing where the bugs can easily spread from one household to another.
Bed bugs spread on clothes, bags and in furniture when it is moved.
They do not choose a dirty home over a clean one – all they are interested in is your blood.
BED BUG SIGNS
Bed bugs are not known to carry diseases, but many people develop an itchy swelling when bitten
Check bed and furniture for black dots, which are bed bug faeces
Check sheets for blood, as feeding bugs can be rolled on and squashed
Microbiologist for Bed Bugs Limited, David Cain, said: “If exposed, anyone can bring them home and quickly have a problem, as they breed at a phenomenal rate.”
It is thought that one of the reasons for the rise is increased travelling.
There are corridors of infestations that radiate out from airports like Heathrow and Gatwick, which support the theory that bedbugs have been brought back to this country from countries where they have never been eradicated.
Experts say they are also spread on public transport and short of decontaminating passengers every time they get on a bus, train or plane it would be impossible to stop them spreading.
The advice from Mr Cain is “don’t sit down”. But the epidemic is not just a British problem.
The World Health Organisation says there are infestations in many cities throughout Europe and North America, where bed bugs have been stopped in the past through the use of strong pesticides like DDT, many of which are now longer used.
Bed bugs are not known to carry diseases, but many people develop an itchy swelling when bitten.
Microbiologist for Bed Bugs Limited, David Cain, said: “If exposed, anyone can bring them home and quickly have a problem, as they breed at a phenomenal rate.”
It is thought that one of the reasons for the rise is increased travelling.
There are corridors of infestations that radiate out from airports like Heathrow and Gatwick, which support the theory that bedbugs have been brought back to this country from countries where they have never been eradicated.
Experts say they are also spread on public transport and short of decontaminating passengers every time they get on a bus, train or plane it would be impossible to stop them spreading.
The advice from Mr Cain is “don’t sit down”. But the epidemic is not just a British problem.
The World Health Organisation says there are infestations in many cities throughout Europe and North America, where bed bugs have been stopped in the past through the use of strong pesticides like DDT, many of which are now longer used.
Family Worship
One of the great blessings of visiting our son and his wife is just spending time together doing the normal things that families do when Mom and Dad don’t live many time zones away in a far and distant land earning a living. This last weekend, we were able to attend church together, which was one of the highlights of my visit with them.
We found a lovely church, Christ Episcopal, in downtown Pensacola. It has organ music, and as my husband says “they sing REAL hymns!” We smiled to see so many families there, from the youngest babies to older folk – the church welcomes us all.
And then AdventureMan spotted the Lutheran Church next door and said “Oh! They have a church souk!”
It was a truly glorious day.
Sudan Journalist Escapes Flogging, Chooses Jail
This spunky journalist has chosen to go to jail in the Sudan instead of paying the fine. Her lawyer is aghast, but Lubna Hussein says it will give her material to do a series on Sudanese jails, LOL! The judge had the option of sentencing her to flogging, but, wisely, abstained. You can read the entire story on AOL News
This is a follow up to an earlier story Whip Me if you Dare
Journalist Escapes Flogging in Sudan
By MOHAMED OSMAN and SARAH EL DEEB, AP
KHARTOUM, Sudan (Sept. 7) – A Sudanese judge convicted a woman journalist on Monday for violating the public indecency law by wearing trousers outdoors and fined her $200, but did not impose a feared flogging penalty.
Lubna Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by the public order police in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.
The female journalist on trial in Sudan for wearing trousers in public was convicted Monday for violating the country’s indecency law. A judge ruled that Lubna Hussein, seen above outside the courthouse after the verdict in Khartoum, will not be flogged, but must pay a $200 fine. The case has made headlines around the world.
“I will not pay a penny,” she told the Associated Press while still in court custody, wearing the same trousers that had sparked her arrest.
Hussein said Friday she would rather go to jail than pay any fine, out of protest of the nation’s strict laws on women’s dress.
“I won’t pay, as a matter of principle,” she said. “I would spend a month in jail. It is a chance to explore the conditions in jail.”
The case has made headlines in Sudan and around the world and Hussein used it to rally world opinion against the country’s morality laws based on a strict interpretation of Islam.
Galal al-Sayed, Hussein’s lawyer, said he advised her to pay the fine before appealing the decision. She refused, he said, “She insisted.”
The lawyer said the judge ignored his request to present defense witnesses.
“The ruling is incorrect,” he said, adding that the prosecution witnesses gave contradictory statements.
Al-Sayed said the judge had the option of choosing flogging, but apparently opted for fine to avoid international criticism. “There is a general sentiment in the world that flogging is humiliating.”
Ahead of the trial, police rounded up dozens of female demonstrators, many of them wearing trousers, outside the courtroom.
The London-based Amnesty International on Friday called on the Sudanese government to withdraw the charges against Hussein and repeal the law which justifies “abhorrent” penalties.
Human rights and political groups in Sudan say the law is in violation of the 2005 constitution drafted after a peace deal ended two decades of war between the predominantly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south Sudan.
The Amnesty statement said Sudan had been urged to amend the law which permits flogging, on the grounds that it is state-sanctioned torture, after eight women were flogged in public in 2003 with plastic and metal whips leaving permanent scars on the women. The women had been picnicking with male friends.
Barnes and Noble Reward
I’ve been so good. I haven’t spent much money at all, I have kept my shopping under control, even though there are things I see in the stores that make my blood run faster and give me the urge to pull out my credit card.
So I rewarded myself. I knew Philipa Gregory had a new book out called The Other Queen and so I allowed myself a trip to Barnes and Noble. I only came out with four books, and one is for someone else! Woooo HOOOOO on me!
A long time ago, I read a book by Katherine Neville called The Eight. It’s kind of like the Da Vinci Code would be if it were written by someone who kept track of his plot thread, researched his topic a little better and had something important to say about how international finance operations are run. I’ve read it more than once, I like it so much, so I am eager to see how this one works out. I like her characters, I like how they develop insight and put the puzzle pieces together.
Philippa Gregory writes total page-turners, and I always hated English history, but she makes it come alive, makes all those historical characters into flesh-and-blood human beings, so I feel like I know them. (Some of them I want to throttle. That’s a good author!)
LeCarre – he is amazing. He is brilliant. Have you read The Constant Gardener? This man has something to say, and what he says is deep, and troubling.
The Will Shortz New York Times Puzzle book is for someone a lot smarter than I am.
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