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Alexander McQueen’s final collection was presented as part of Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday.

Image by Giovanni Giannoni/WWD. See ALL the photos on WWD if you have a password.

Robert Polet, chairman and chief executive officer at Gucci Group, told WWD: “It was a very moving experience to take a deep and serious look at his last collection. It showed Lee’s unique talent to create pieces of beauty that touch many of your senses, leaving one enriched….Although the sense of loss afterwards, I found overwhelming.”

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/alexander-mcqueens-final_n_491773.html

A wild brawl broke out in a bridal store in Michigan after a soon-to-be bride became irate when the owner of the store refused to help her with alterations to her dress. The owner said she was impossible to deal with, and asked her to leave, but instead she called her husband for reinforcements. He showed up with three men and chaos ensued. One of the men spit on and slapped the owner’s wife, and at one point the owner’s son ends up shirtless and people have picked up mannequins to use as weapons.

“They don’t know how to handle things in the United States,” the owner told a reporter. “They thought they were somewhere in Fallujah or in the Iraq mountains.”

WATCH:

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/bridal-store-brawl-caught_n_492134.html

Arnold Beichman, 96, an author, scholar and influential polemicist best remembered for his sharply anti-communist writings, died Feb. 17 in Pasadena, Calif. He had congestive heart failure.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/arnold-beichman-dead-anti_n_492133.html

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.

But sovereign are we, over our blogs and the contents and comments therein?

We are bloggers. We want freedom. But who are we?

Are we mere individuals, exercising our right to free speech? Or serving in a larger reserve corps of citizen journalists, doing the menial chores mainstream fleet streeters balk at, breaking community stories and spotlighting abuses that may otherwise be ignored?

If the latter, we are all scribes. But while our bold brethren scribing for broadsheets enjoy the protection of law for work, property and ideas, we tend to fall inebriated between the bar stool of individualism and the wooden pew of public reach. Even though we may be genuine aggregators and investigators of information, we are not offered the protection afforded to journalists, nor privy to the same outrage when one of us is hoisted out of the public sphere and into an anonymous cell.

If the former, we are individuals who generate, in part opine and pontificate and in part to prevaricate. But in doing so, we meet the basic human need of self-expression and ask permission for the right to exercise freedom of expression. Thinkers like Stuart Mill have argued for liberty on the premise that it increases happiness. As beings capable of abstraction, rationalization, and expression, the life of a pebble is not for humans. The mere acts of creation, expression, and sharing offer joy. The artisan hews, the painter paints, the poet sculpts reality out of verse; thus, so should a blogger be permitted to throw together prose.

If either of the narratives above describes us, we shall call it our own, for both present obvious, pressing arguments for blogger rights: the first as foot soldiers for transparency, the second as mere individuals who wish to be individual.

But both narratives also imply a sense of duty, responsibility, and measure, which we ignore at our peril.

If we are to be journalists, we must then be very good journalists because we are our own editors, sources and type-setters. We cannot throw around accusations on whim and cast doubts on fancy, because we then fail our cause and cannot in good faith ask for the protection afforded to accredited and audited correspondents.

If we are to be mere individuals, we must recall that the right to swing our fists — and opinions — ends at the tip of our subjects’ noses. Salaciousness, fabrication, and mendacity are not pleasing attributes, be they evident in real life or the blogosphere.

The world does not yet know how to treat us because we don’t yet know who we are — journalists, individuals, or both.

But of two points we can be sure.

First, bloggers the world over have been invaluable in offering perspective, insight, indignation and indeed new information that has held the world’s attention and created pressure for constructive change in political as well as corporate matters. From Egypt to Iran, Dell to Etisalat, blogging has represented a democratization of information that, while it may not always be correct, offers empowerment that often translates into positive action.

Second, freedom of expression is the flimsy catchphrase preventing functioning societies from falling into autocratic tyranny. For that purpose alone, it should be encouraged. We will not stand up and insist that every single factual nuance ever noted by us is accurate and cross-checked as we’d ideally want. But we will, proudly and vehemently, insist on our right to expression — not merely as bloggers but as humans — without the fear of persecution.

So let the first blogger who dies in prison be the last. In fact, expand that remit. Let the next person who dies in prison for exercising expression in any form be the very last. Ever.

For more information on blogger rights, it may be helpful to refer this CNET article by John Conyers.

This post is in support of the March 18 movement for blogger freedom.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hisham-wyne/who-are-we-individuals-ci_b_489270.html

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Microsoft researcher has won the $250,000 Turing Award, one of technology’s most coveted prizes, for his work helping design and build what is widely considered the first modern personal computer.

While at Xerox Corp.’s famed Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, in the 1970s, Charles Thacker led the hardware development for the Alto, which featured innovative display and other technologies that helped inspire future generations of computers.

Thacker, 67, was also co-inventor of the Ethernet networking technology for connecting computers.

The Turing Award is funded by Google Inc. and Intel Corp. It is named for the mathematician Alan Turing.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/charles-thacker-turing-aw_n_492157.html

Last week, MSCI, Inc., a provider of investment support tools, agreed to acquire RiskMetrics Group Inc., the leading provider of risk management services, corporate governance ratings and proxy advisory services, in a deal valued at approximately $1.55 billion. While markets and analysts responded positively to the news, this exuberance may be short-lived thanks to RiskMetrics’ wholly-owned subsidiary, ISS. ISS is incompetent and it is only a matter of time before markets and regulators realize.

ISS or Institutional Shareholder Services is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. ISS sells proxy voting advice services to institutional investors, issues corporate governance ratings on publicly traded companies, and operates with minimal accountability and transparency. A significant portion of institutional investors, including some 80% of mutual funds and 68% of pension funds, rely on ISS’ advice and corporate governance ratings, but the MSCI deal and the recent financial crisis call into serious doubt whether investors should be following ISS’ judgment in the first place.

Exactly fourteen days before Lehman Brothers Holding, Inc. filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, ISS gave Lehman a corporate governance rating of 87.6%, meaning that Lehman’s corporate governance in ISS’ view was better than 87.6% of other diversified financial companies. ISS also doled out generous ratings to other ailing financial companies such as Washington Mutual, which was rated by ISS as being “better than 44.3% of S&P 500 companies and 95.6% of [b]ank companies” just weeks before it’s undoing. And if that was not enough, a few days before AIG scurried to put together an emergency loan, ISS rated AIG as being “better than 97.9% of S&P 500 companies and 99.2% of [i]nsurance companies.”

ISS defends its corporate governance ratings (known as the “CGQ”) as a “dynamic corporate governance tool that helps investors manage investment risk and drive value” and ISS touts its CGQ as a tool that helps investors “identify the worst corporate offenders.” Well, if this is true, several questions come to mind. First, why did the CGQ fail the market in this last financial crisis? Second, in light of the obvious fallacies in ISS’ CGQ, should investors place any stock in them as a reliable measure of a company’s corporate governance? And third, if the CGQ does indeed help investors identify the “worst corporate offenders”, why did RiskMetrics, ISS’ parent, agree to be bought by MSCI, who according to ISS has a CGQ of 2.5%? This means that in ISS’/RiskMetrics’ view, MSCI is in the bottom 2.5% of all S&P 400 companies in terms of corporate governance, or to use their own words, MSCI is one of the “worst corporate offenders.” By agreeing to take MSCI stock as consideration for the merger, RiskMetrics’ action belies the reliability of its own corporate governance ratings system.

The evidence is clear — there is serious reason to doubt ISS’ ratings and investors would do well to stop relying on ISS’ view of corporate governance.

Moreover, ISS has also been repeatedly criticized for being riddled with conflict of interest problems, using faulty analysis in coming up with its voting recommendations, making errors, mistakes and/or omissions that impact its proxy voting advice, hiring relatively unskilled employees to conduct its analysis, being “blatantly opportunistic” in peddling its services, and merely following the fad of the time instead of truly developing well-thought out, sound corporate governance policies. In fact in 2003, ISS acknowledged that sometimes its advice was less than stellar, and with regard to a particular incident acknowledged that it had “screwed up…[and] was embarrassed by the [revealed] operational misstep.” Of course while after-the-fact apologies may serve some therapeutic purpose, the problem is that when mutual funds and other institutional investors follow ISS’ recommendations en masse and those recommendations turn out to be faulty, it is not ISS that is left holding the bag. Instead it is the underlying portfolio companies affected by the recommendations and the long-term shareholders of those companies.

Thus for MSCI, while the RiskMetrics acquisition promises to result in significant cost synergies, the deal also promises to expose MSCI’s corporate structure to substantial risk unless they can figure out what to do with ISS. ISS’ ratings and advice are unreliable and it is only a matter of time before investors lose confidence.

Ironically, the success of MSCI’s acquisition hinges on the bet that once again ISS has miscalled it, and that contrary to ISS’ ratings, the management of MSCI actually knows what it is doing.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-belinfanti/mscis-risky-bet-on-riskme_b_492130.html

On February 23 and 24, the New York Times published two full page articles on experimental drug trials on malignant melanoma, respectively titled “After Long Fight, Drug Gives Sudden Reprieve” and “A Drug Trial Cycle: Recovery, Relapse, Reinvention.”

As stated in the February 24 article, at an international oncology meeting, Dr. Keith Flaherty described “the extraordinary recovery of the melanoma patients in the experimental drug trials he was leading.” However, he frankly admitted “The drug’s ability to stop the melanoma, on average appears to be approximately six months.”

Malignant melanoma is the fastest rising cancer in the world. Since 1975, its incidence in white men and women has increased by about 240 percent and 170 percent, respectively, while its mortality has increased by 55 percent and 24 percent, respectively. In sharp contrast, malignant melanoma is virtually unknown in black men and women.

All these articles focused on efforts to treat this lethal cancer. However, exclusive emphasis was directed to a specialized experimental treatment known as “targeted therapy,” strongly promoted by the cancer drug industry — notably its two giant companies, Roche and Glaxo. Emphasis was also directed to clinical trials by two patient “advocacy groups,” the Melanoma and Melanoma Research Foundations. However, minimal or no reference was made to the obvious fact that malignant melanoma, just like lung cancer, is essentially avoidable.

A 1992 publication by Dr. Garland in the American Journal of Public Health, “Could Sunscreens Increase Melanoma Risk” documented the scientific evidence that sunscreens protect against sunburn due to short-wave ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation. However, sunscreens give no more than two hours protection, no matter how high their sun protection factor (SPF) is rated. Also, sunscreens wash off readily following even a short swim.

More seriously, Dr. Garland emphasized the alarming evidence that sunscreens do not protect against long-wave (UV-A) radiation. This penetrates deeply into the skin, and is responsible for the lethal malignant melanoma, now the fastest rising cancer in the world.

Prolonged exposure to sun is particularly dangerous during childhood and adolescence. Years of research data has clearly shown a strong relationship between the number of sunburn episodes before the age of fifteen, and the subsequent development of malignant melanoma later in life.
Since 1975, its incidence in white men and women has increased by about 240 percent and 170 percent, respectively, while its mortality has increased by 55 percent and 24 percent, respectively. In sharp contrast, malignant melanoma is virtually unknown in black men and women. This reduced cancer risk is due to the fact that skin contains high levels of melanin, the natural black pigment, which is very effective in blocking the dangerous long-wave radiation.

In a sharp contrast to sunscreens, sunblocks, based on zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, are highly protective and long-lasting. They act by reflecting radiation off the skin surface. However, sunblocks are generally unfavored as they whiten the skin. Far more seriously, unscrupulous manufacturers have increased their effectiveness, by incorporating unlabeled ultra-microscopic particles known as “nanoparticles.” These are ultra dangerous as they can penetrate deeply through the skin and even invade small blood vessels, with poorly predictable body wide toxic effects.

Fortunately, as emphasized in my 2009 book Toxic Beauty, there are safe alternatives to sunscreens. These include Soyscreen, based on natural plant ingredients, which is long acting and does not wash off in the sea. They also include Solumbra, a highly effective sun-protection brand of light clothing, particularly for children.

Surely the Melanoma foundations will support these and related initiatives for reducing exposures to long-wave UV radiation, and thus eliminate the only known and well-documented cause of the malignant melanoma, apart from a possible role of ozone depletion.

CONTACT:

Samuel S. Epstein, MD
Professor emeritus Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago
School of Public Health
Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition
Chicago, Illinois 60612
Web: http://www.preventcancer.com/
To subscribe: http://ens-news.net/lists/?p=subscribe&id=9

More on Health

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-s-epstein/malignant-melanoma-how-to_b_482824.html

The story is told that the elephant-headed Ganesha and his brother Kartikeya, the god of war, were once locked in a dispute. To break the impasse they sought the counsel of their parents, the great God Shiva and Goddess Parvati. Lord Shiva proposed that the boys compete in a race of 3 laps around the universe. Kartikeya mounted his peacock and dashed out of sight, hoping to open up an early lead. Ganesha, on the other hand, was in no hurry. He walked over to Shiva and Parvati, went around them thrice and bowed, saying, “You, my dear parents, are the manifest universe. I have completed the race.”

This parable illuminates Ganesha’s character – loving, highly intelligent; a fount of wisdom. Immensely loved in India, he is acknowledged as a scholar nonpareil, music runs in his blood, and as his portly figure suggests, he is a confirmed foodie. It was Ganesha who transcribed the great Hindu epic Mahabharata in real time while the sage Vyasa dictated it.

Ties to Ganesha run deep in Hindu families where he is often viewed as a member of the household. He is invoked at the beginning of every new undertaking and His blessings sought at major events in life. Generations of students given to goofing off have been known to petition Him for a lifeline just before writing their final exam.

The festival of Ganesha Chathurthi is celebrated every year, and the festivities in western and southern India are especially intense. Our slideshow looks at this remarkable icon from the Hindu pantheon, with photographs drawn from different parts of the country.

More on Religion

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajan-p-parrikar/ganesha—god-of-knowledg_b_492149.html

Are cupcakes still trendy? Sometimes, in spite of the new outposts of Crumbs cropping up daily, I’m not so sure. I’ve been hearing word that macaroons, even eclairs, will soon succeed them in sweets-lovers’ lives. I’m not so sure about this either. Still, just as they were perfect for parties in elementary school, cupcakes are great for celebrating twenty-something birthdays too, and I wind up pulling out my muffin tin constantly.

For my own 25th birthday, I received a copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s new cookbook, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. It is beautiful and the cakes are beautifully photographed, and it’s full of dramatic and original ideas. Strangely enough, Rose’s first, and very famous, cookbook, The Cake Bible, might have been one of very few classic cookbooks my family didn’t own while I was growing up. I don’t know why it never sat on the shelf next to Nick Malgieri and Carole Walter. So I may be late to the party, but I’m a very eager guest.

Because Phoebe and I live in fear of the disastrous effects of having too few cupcakes (there were tears, believe me, at Phoebe’s 23rd birthday when I brought 2 dozen carrot cake cream cheese cupcakes and the birthday girl somehow missed out), I was intent on baking copious sweets for a party we were cooking for, the party being held for our best friend Jordana’s birthday. The cupcake recipes from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes make 16 per batch, and because they call for things like 1/2 tablespoon sour cream, I didn’t dare mess with the ingredient quantities. Instead of doubling, I simply made a third flavor of cupcake. But I wanted all three to be sufficiently different from one another. I spent at least a week’s worth of breakfasts flipping through the “Small Cakes” chapter, and here are the mixes-and-matches I came up with:

*Chocolate Butter Cupcakes with Coffee Neoclassic Buttercream and White Pearl Sprinkles

*White Velvet Butter Cupcakes with Dreamy Creamy White Chocolate Frosting and Turquoise Sugar

*Yellow Butter Raspberry Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Buttercream (the surprise champion of the evening)

You can find the building blocks of these recipes in Rose’s book, and so I’ll refrain from posting the first two here. Just take my word for it that these are very, very good cupcakes. However, I think my modification of the yellow butter cake batter into a veritable PB&J Cupcake merits its own recipe (see below).

A note about eating cupcakes: I had no idea there were as many ways of eating a cupcake as an Oreo! Though I’d intended the cupcakes to be a step up from the childhood sandwich, trust our friend Evan to revert to the elementary school years: apparently, he’s pioneered an icing-spreading method of eating cupcakes whereby he pulls apart the cupcake along its horizontal axis, affixes the bottom to the icing-covered top, and bites–first into a thinned layer of cake, next into icing, then into cake again. We’re working with Evan on a diagram to illustrate this.

--Cara Eisenpress of Big Girls, Small Kitchen

Yellow Butter Raspberry Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Buttercream
Makes 16 cupcakes
Adapted from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum

For the Cupcakes:

Ingredients
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2/3 cup sour cream, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoon unsalted butter, at soft room temperature
3/4 cup frozen organic raspberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a cupcake pan with paper liners.

Whisk the eggs with 3 tablespoons of the sour cream and the vanilla.

In a separate bowl–the bowl of a stand mixer if you have one–whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add the butter, cut into rough tablespoon-sized chunks, and the remaining sour cream, and, using your hand-held mixer or your very strong arm if you don’t have a stand mixer, beat this together for nearly two minutes. It will be quite creamy. Pour in the egg mixture in two parts, beating for nearly a minute after each. Fold in the raspberries, still frozen.

Distribute the batter among the liners (if your pan holds 12, remember you’ll be making about 4 more). Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cupcakes bounce back when pressed lightly.

Cool completely before frosting.

For the Peanut Butter Buttercream:

Ingredients
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter, at room temperature
scant 1/2 cup cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, at room temp
2 teaspoons sour cream
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a food processor, beat all the ingredients until very smooth and uniform in color. You can store the buttercream in the fridge, but use it at room temperature. It goes on very smoothly with a knife if, like me, you’re not into piping.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/big-girls-small-kitchen/cupcakes-taking-the-trend_b_491324.html

It may have sounded like a lot when the Vancouver Olympics were stocked with 100,000 condoms, and it may have been shocking when that huge total did not suffice. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa, however, promises to blow Olympic condom records out of the water.

South Africa has said that it needs one billion condoms in 2010, due in large part to the upcoming soccer tournament. A batch of 42 million is already headed to the host nation by way of Britain.

According to the Guardian, one billion condoms would represent a substantial increase from the country’s typical supply:

Some 450m male condoms are distributed in South Africa every year but, with 16 million sexually active men and one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, there are never enough.

In addition to the surge of condoms, 40,000 prostitues are expected to enter South Africa during the World Cup.

More on Soccer

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/world-cup-condoms-one-bil_n_492160.html