Spotlight - Debate

Issue 9, September 2009
Questo è un numero speciale con ben 16 pagine dedicate all’onda verde che ha investito l’economia globale. Preoccupati per la crisi internazionale, pare che i governi delle nazioni più potenti del mondo abbiano puntato su un&rsqu>>

Issue 10, October 2009
Travel: Yellowstone. Yellowstone is America’s greatest and oldest national park. Its deep forests, breathtaking waterfalls and mysterious blue pools rest on top of a supervolcano. >>

Da PC World e Macworld 5 euro per giocare subito su pokersubito.it
In omaggio con PC World e Macworld di ottobre una card prepagata di 5 euro per poter giocare subito, senza carta di credito sul sito di poker online Pokersubito.it… e vincere soldi veri! >>

A wise response
It is understandable that concerns are rising over the spread of deadly swine flu...But health officials are surely right in advocating prudence rather than panic. >>

In the News
Courteney Cox has admitted to feeling old when she sees her reflection >>

MPs shouldn’t be self-serving
When The Daily Telegraph began its series of revelations about MPs’ scandalous expenses claims, we promised that our investigation would extend >>

Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen's latest movie Brüno was formally forbidden to be shown in the Ukraine a week prior to its opening, says E!. >>

September 15, 2009

Does lying pay?

Solitamente il curriculum si riadatta prima di un colloquio, in base al potenziale datore di lavoro. Ma rivedreste - con cautela - anche la verità?

What’s a job worth to you? Would you lie about your education to get a position, or maybe
make a small change to a job title to seem more experienced than you really are? With the high rate of unemployment in the U.S., such questions are in the air, and even more so when high-profile people get caught lying about their qualifications.
An ironic example is that of Marilee Jones. In 2007, she resigned her position as dean of admissions at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Why? It turns out she didn’t have the degrees she’d listed on her résumé.
“I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to MIT 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my résumé when I applied for my current job or at any time since,” Jones told the press.
Putting false information on a résumé may be more common than one thinks. A 2004 article in HR Magazine reported that roughly 40 to 70 percent of job seekers enhance their résumés.

“It’s a way to resolve the discrepancy between the average applicant you think you are and the ideal applicant you think they seek,” Roland Kidwell of the University of Wyoming’s College of Business told Time magazine.
According to a study done by Careerbuilder.com last year, half of hiring managers reported discovering a lie on a résumé. The most common lies were about job responsibilities (38 percent), skills (18 percent), dates of employment (12 percent), and education (10 percent). People were less likely to lie about where they’d worked in the past (10 percent) and about previous job titles (5 percent).
Thanks to the internet, it’s getting more difficult to lie on a résumé. Qualifications are also being checked more thoroughly than ever. According to Forbes magazine, almost 40 percent of personnel managers interviewed in 2005 by the U.S. Society for Human Resource Management reported increasing the time they spent checking qualifications.
If people are more likely to get caught in a lie these days, why do they do it? John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago, told Forbes that a tough job market pushes people to take risks so as to attract the attention of a potential employer. Todd
Bermont, author of 10 Insider Secrets to a Winning Job Search, has a good alternative. He recommends following the advice his mother gave him: “Whenever you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.” Many Americans think that if you can afford to spend
any money right now, you should. If you can’t afford to, well, don’t spend, and hope for the best.

Comments (7)

July 8, 2009

Beauty in the beast

La chirurgia estetica non conosce crisi e l’attività dei chirurghi estetici è in continuo aumento. Ma quanti si affiderebbero a queste cure talvolta invasive per essere più belli e senza imperfezioni?

Beauty, they say, is only skin deep. Still, the pursuit of physical beauty through cosmetic surgery or other treatments seems to have plenty of appeal for many men and women. From Botox to boob jobs, from liposuction to lip enhancement, cosmetic surgery offers something for everyone who wants to look younger, thinner and generally more attractive.

No longer the secret of Hollywood stars, cosmetic surgery is becoming more popular with ordinary people. The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) says that in 2008, more than 34,000 operations were performed in Britain — more than three times as many as in 2003.
Nigel Mercer of BAAPS commented that “despite the beginnings of a financial downturn last year, the public’s interest in aesthetic surgery remained strong”.
Why wouldn’t it? With marketing claims that treatment is cheap, “pain-free” and “low-risk”, women and an increasing number of men are planning to go under the knife, or at least the syringe. Although cosmetic surgery has long been popular among women, it is now becoming
common among men as well. The period from 2007 to 2008 saw a 44 per cent increase in the number of overweight men who had their breasts — or so-called “man boobs” — reduced.
How much is too much, though, and what lessons, if any, have been learned from things that have gone terribly wrong? The example of America’s Jocelyn Wildenstein is enough to make one wonder whether cosmetic surgery can become dangerously addictive. Known as “the real cat woman” for her strange feline look, the 68- year-old surgical junkie has reportedly spent more than $4 million to change the appearance of her face.

Then there’s the New York cosmetic dermatologist Dr Frederic Brandt, who is known as the “king of collagen”.
His $7,000 “New New Face” is a face-plumping technique that is making him rich. Ironically, it’s his own strangely smooth appearance that attracts the most attention to him and what he does. Critics use examples like these to argue that cosmetic surgery is nothing more than an exercise in vanity for people with low self-esteem. The risk to people’s health must also be considered, of course: the procedures can produce unwanted results, and trust is sometimes mistakenly placed in dodgy practitioners.
The question is: are we taking what the fashion magazines tell us about looking beautiful too seriously, or is cosmetic surgery perfectly acceptable?
Many Americans think that if you can afford to spend any money right now, you should. If you can’t afford to, well, don’t spend, and hope for the best.

Comments (8)

June 5, 2009

Should we spend or save?

Comments (7)

January 31, 2009

Dress for success

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January 30, 2009

Watch your mouth!

Chi paga il canone radiotelevisivo vuole veramente un etere pulito o le emittenti dovrebbero
utilizzare lo stesso linguaggio che viene usato nel quotidiano?

Public broadcasting in Britain was rocked by a big scandal late last year. It started when celebrity presenter Jonathan Ross and comedian Russell Brand (at left in the photo) left lewd messages on an actor’s answer phone as part of a BBC Radio 2 broadcast.
The messages said that Brand had “fucked” the granddaughter of Andrew Sachs, known for his role in the classic comedy series Fawlty Towers.

The flood of complaints from the public led to Brand having to leave his radio show. Ross, the BBC’s best-paid broadcaster, was suspended for three months without pay.
Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, apologized to the public, saying that “there are absolute boundaries which we must never cross”.

What are these boundaries, though, and who defines them? As a public broadcaster funded by licence fees, the BBC has a responsibility to keep to programming standards that protect the public it serves, especially people under the age of 18, from “offensive and harmful material”.
One way the BBC and other television broadcasters do this is by protecting what’s called the 9 p.m. wate before 9 p.m., scenes of sex, violence and swearing are restricted.
Similar rules exist for radio. Ofcom, the official regulator for the communications industry, can cite or fine anyone who violates the Broadcasting Code, which says that “the most offensive language must not be broadcast before the watershed”.

Does this method of regulation work? A YouGov study carried out right after the “Sachsgate” scandal found that 57 per cent of Britons think there’s too much swearing on TV. Yet some of the most popular programmes include a lot of bad language. The show with famous cook Gordon Ramsay seems to have a near monopoly on the word “fuck”.
In the media, as in real life, the effect swearing has depends on its context: live comedy, a crime drama or a documentary about troubled teenagers would be more likely than other programmes to include swearing. Broadcasters can also warn people of potentially offensive material before programmes begin, which is one way they keep their creative freedom. Mark Thompson pointed this out in an Observer newspaper editorial, saying, “The BBC must always
dare to be original.”

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January 14, 2009

Sex for sale

La pulsione sessuale non si può frenare. E la prostituzione? È lecito proibire alle persone il gusto del sesso a pagamento? La Gran Bretagna ne discute in questi giorni.

Although prostitution is known as “the world’s oldest profession”, attitudes towards it have
never stopped changing. In Britain today, buying sex is mostly legal — but selling it is not. In
late September, the government decided to outlaw some aspects of buying sex, such as asking in public to pay for sex, and paying for sex with someone who was forced into the business or who is working for someone else’s gain. As part of a six-month study, the government
even considered outlawing the sex trade altogether.

Violent crime against “ladies of the evening” is what convinced Britain’s leaders to take action. In late 2006, five street prostitutes were murdered in Ipswich, a town of 130,000 in the east of England. Steven Wright, now 50, was this year sent to jail for life for the killings. His crimes were a terrible reminder of the murders by Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, between 1975 and 1981 — as well as those by Jack the Ripper in 1888.

The government decided to target the demand side of the sex trade — the 4.3 per cent of British men who, it says, use prostitutes. It looked at the Netherlands, where paying for sex is well regulated, but also at Sweden, which decided in 1999 to make the sex trade illegal.

Would Britain really want to follow Sweden’s example, however, and criminalize
buyers of sex?
In a recent Ipsos MORI survey, 70 per cent of men and 61 per cent of women said that selling sex should be made legal. Critics say the Swedish law may have driven the sex industry underground, leaving sex workers more vulnerable to attacks than before. Would this be any different for Britain’s 80,000 sex workers? About 95 per cent of street prostitutes are
already believed to have serious drug problems. Many also suffer from homelessness, violence and abuse. Of the 25,000 who work in brothels, 85 per cent come from outside the
UK and may have been sold into sex slavery.
After the Ipswich murders, police and outreach groups offered prostitutes more help with drug addiction and social problems. But the ethical debate remains. In a BBC interview late last year, Harriet Harman, leader of the House of Commons and minister for women, asked, “Do we think it’s right in the 21st century that women should be in a sex trade, or do we think it’s exploitation and should be banned?”
This question lies at the heart of Britain’s latest look at prostitution.

Should buying sex be made illegal?

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January 10, 2009

Hands off my land!

Il bene comune sta al di sopra della proprietà personale? In Australia si sta discutendo violentemente per stabilire se il governo possa espropriare terreno agricolo a causa della scarsità d’acqua

Australia is suffering from a water crisis. The “Big Dry” has been going on for seven years and is the worst drought for a century. It has hit the nation’s “food bowl” hard by emptying the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin in the country’s south and east. The basin extends 3,375 kilometres across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, and its rivers are the main source of fresh water for the region’s farms, cities and lakes.
Everyone needs more water, but there’s none to be had. To get things under control, the government considered taking property away from farmers. The reason for this is that
the water rights to the Murray-Darling Basin are connected to the farmland. Under special circumstances, the constitution allows for this kind of government action. In this specific case, the call was to force the sale of the farms that use the most water. That applied mainly to cotton and rice growers who had been on their properties for generations. They faced
a dilemma: either they had to change to growing less water intensive crops, or they had to give up their farms for the “greater good” to save the river system.

Farmers use the Murray-Darling system to water about 40 per cent of the country’s farmland, an area that produces 25 per cent of Australia’s food. With all the competition for water, farmers towards the end of the river system are now getting only a third of the water they once had. Many are, in fact, thinking of selling and leaving — but only if the price is right.
In cities, people are worried, too. Politicians say that water reserves are down by 50 per cent; and by the time the “Mighty Murray” reaches its final destination in the lower lakes near Adelaide, 11,500 of its 13,000 gigalitres have been used up. Today, the once beautiful lakes are an ecological disaster, with fish, trees and other plants dying.

The federal government has now decided to pursue a A$ 10 billion (€5 billion) water rescue plan and is no longer threatening to force sales of private property. It hopes to buy back the water farmers don’t need for irrigation, but the offer to buy land at a “reasonable price” is still being made.

With the effects of global warming, one has to wonder whether other countries will also consider taking private property from people to avert environmental disasters.

Valium Elderly

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January 4, 2009

Is it OK to have an affair?

What does being faithful mean to you? In most of the West, being faithful to someone means,
at the very least, not having sex outside an established relationship. That’s not so in some
parts of South African society, where being faithful to one person can have quite a different meaning.
A study done in 2007 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) explains more. To many black South African men between the ages of 20 and 30, “being faithful” means having a main sexual partner whom you keep “safe” from finding out about your other sexual partners. A man from Gauteng explained the practice: “I have my girlfriend, the one that I spend most of my time with. I am faithful to her, because even when I
have other girlfriends, I do not walk around with them for her to see me. I hide the other girlfriends.”
Why have so many girlfriends in the first place? In South African tribal society, a boy moves to manhood by proving himself sexually — the more partners he has, the more of a man he is held to be. For young women, it is different.
Especially in the countryside, there is still social pressure on them to remain virgins until a dowry is paid.

Even so, many women do have sex before marriage and also describe single motherhood as having improved their social standing. Marriage does not have to come into the picture when a child is born, but if it does, it may not be the kind of marriage a European woman would be open to. In much of South African society, polygamy is an accepted social practice — even though most people are churchgoing Christians. The roots of the practice are in tribal tradition: a man shows how much money he has by being able to afford more than one wife. The arrangement does not conflict with ideas of “being faithful”. Famous polygamists include Zulu politician Jacob Zuma, president of the governing African National Congress party.
So does that mean anything goes? Certainly not: sex with anyone outside of a monogamous marriage is considered immoral in South Africa. This is based on the Christian belief in the sanctity of marriage. Even so, a man’s infidelity is seen to be part of his nature, while a woman who cheats can find herself shut out of her family and community.
Whether infidelity is a reason for ending a marriage, therefore, depends on a complex web of perceptions in South African society and, of course, on who did the cheating.
Ambien By Mail

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October 28, 2008

Uncertain Times

It’s official: Americans are unhappy. Polls taken in mid-2008 by the Gallup organization show that 77 percent have a negative view of the U.S. economy, and 81 percent are dissatisfied with the way things are going in general in the U.S. “Gallup’s long-term trend on this measure of national mood, instituted in 1979, shows only a few other times when public dissatisfaction with the country rose as high as it is today,” the poll explains. It reports 1979 and 1992 as the only years when the nation’s mood was worse.

As the country moves toward the presidential election on November 4, it seems the one thing members of both political parties can agree on is the need for change. Each candidate has a different idea of how to do it, though. Democratic Senator Barack Obama intends to get America out of the costly war in Iraq by 2010. He also wants to invest in new sources of energy that would create more jobs in the U.S. Republican Senator John McCain says that the
way forward is to cut government spending and reduce certain taxes. He wants America to continue its mission in Iraq.

Each candidate hopes that his answers will make sense to voters; but what many people want are solutions that make dollars and cents. An old saying holds that Americans “vote with their pocketbooks.” In other words, people are likely to go with the candidate who offers them more individual prosperity.
This is important right now because Americans are feeling particularly poor. When house prices fell by nearly 30 percent in places like Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, a home owner could suddenly owe more money on a house than it was worth. Another problem was that people with variablerate mortgages had such trouble with their payments that Congress had to pass new laws to slow the rate of foreclosure.
Adding to the gloom are higher gas prices and the jobless rate, which reached a four-year high this summer. “Public confidence took a dip all around as Americans have settled into a recession mentality here,” said pollster John Zogby of Zogby International. “People are much less likely to buy anything or do anything.”

Who’s to blame? Both Republicans and Democrats point their finger at President George W. Bush, now finishing his eighth year in office. But Congress was a willing partner in his decisions. So is it possible for any politician to create real change?

Will this election change America

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October 9, 2008

Are you afraid?

La Gran Bretagna si è trincerata dietro leggi antiterrorismo sempre più numerose e rigide, ma questo forse ancora non basta a far dormire sonni tranquilli agli inglesi.What is terrorism? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as ‘the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims’. That’s a description Britain would agree with after 30 years of bombings by the Irish Republican Army. The IRA’s bloody campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland finally stopped in 1997.
On 7 July 2005, terrorism was back: the rush-hour bombings in the London transport network by Islamic extremists said to be associated with Al Qaeda killed 52 people as well as the four bombers and 700 others were injured. Failed bombings two weeks later spread more fear. The events were associated with Britain’s role in the US-led ‘war on terror’, which began seven years ago this month with 9/11.

To fight back, the British Government introduced new anti-terrorism laws, adding to the powers of the Terrorism act 2000, which had created a new crime: that of having information likely to assist an act of terrorism. The Terrorism Act 2006 increased the powers to keep people in jail without charge from 48 hours to 28 days, This summer, the government proposed an increased to 42 days.According to a study by human-rights organization Liberty, people can normally be held without being charged for two days in the US, five days in Russia and six days in France. In Britain, there are concerns about the loss of habeas corpus rights, and the laws which say that a person under arrest should either be charged or freed. The Terrorism Act 2006 also made it a crime to encourage terrorism and distribute terrorist publications. The Home Office has reported more than 1,200 arrests and 41 convictios under terrorist laws, including that of the ‘lyrical terrorist’ Samina Malik, an internet poet convicted in December 2007 of ‘possessing records likely to be useful to terrorism’. So how worried should people be? Are the laws getting out of control, or are they necessary to protect people? Opinion polls suggest that most people in Britain are more worried about the economy, rising fuel prices, the National Health Service and global warming than terrorism.

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