Did Michael Jackson Die from an Eating Disorder?
By: Kate Taylor (Double X News)

For years, the surgical alterations in Michael Jackson’s face have presented such a haunting spectacle that another aspect of his physical transformation—his drastic weight loss—went relatively unnoticed.
According to autopsy reports [2], the King of Pop was a skeletal 112 pounds when he died last Thursday. Although the cause of death won’t be known for weeks, two authors of Michael Jackson biographies have put forward an intriguing theory: that Jackson might have died of anorexia.
“I`m going to make a prediction: Part of the contributing factor not only will be substance abuse ... but it will also be anorexia,” Diane Dimond, who wrote a book about Jackson’s molestation trial [3], said on CNN on Thursday. She went on to recall that, when she was reporting on the trial in 2005, Jackson was so emaciated [4]that she wondered how he could stand up.
Meanwhile, Ian Halperin, author of the forthcoming Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, wrote in the U.K. Daily Mail that Jackson had lost significant weight [5] in recent months, and that his doctors wondered if he was bulimic. He quoted a Jackson staff member saying: “He goes days at a time hardly eating a thing, and at one point his doctor was asking people if he had been throwing up after meals.” The staff member continued: “‘He suspected bulimia, but when we said he hardly eats any meals, the doc thought it was probably anorexia.’”
So Michael Jackson, spiritual sister to Mary-Kate?
Maybe. There are several unknowns here, so it’s a little early to add Jacko to the list of celebrity anorexics, with Portia de Rossi and the singer Karen Carpenter, who died of heart failure in 1983, collapsing at her parents’ home at the age of 32.
In particular, it’s hard to disentangle the causes of Jackson’s weight loss from his reported drug abuse. When anorexics die of heart failure, it is usually, as in Carpenter’s case, because they are vomiting or taking laxatives. Both practices lead to potassium imbalance, which can cause heart arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. It has been suggested that Jackson could have been taking laxatives, because the painkillers he was taking, like Demerol, cause constipation.
Still, it’s hard not to wonder if Jackson’s wraith-like frame in recent years was another result of his obsession with physical self-manipulation. Some consider Jackson’s repeated plastic surgeries—the autopsy report suggests he had 13—to have been a deliberate exploration of identity, but it’s just as easy to see them as the expression of a tortured self-image. There is a psychiatric disorder known as body dysmorphia, in which a person becomes fixated, to a crippling degree, on perceived defects in his appearance. It can lead to a dangerous obsession with plastic surgery, to excessive dieting, and to attempts to camouflage despised features (which is one way to interpret Jackson’s habit of wearing a surgical mask over his nose). It can also lead to alcohol and drug abuse, as a way of self-medicating.
The eating disorders “community” is apparently eager to claim Jackson as one of their own. Cynthia Bulik, a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that the Twitter feeds she follows were abuzz with speculation about Jackson’s possible anorexia. Bulik herself thought that Jackson might fit into a category that professionals refer to as “multi-impulsive eating disorders.” “There are some people who just have whole cluster of co-morbid conditions: They might have substance abuse, alcohol abuse, an eating disorder, body dysmorphic disorder,” she says. “It becomes an exercise in futility to find out what caused what.”
One thing is for sure: If it were determined that anorexia contributed to Jackson’s death, it would change the popular image of the illness forever. Many Americans had never heard of anorexia before Karen Carpenter died. Now the disease is well-known, but it’s mostly associated in people’s minds with young, white women, not middle-aged, black (or formerly black) men.
Estimates of the proportion of men among anorexics range from 1 in 10 to as many as 1 in 4. One reason the numbers are hard to pin down is that many doctors still fail to diagnose anorexia in men, assuming that weight fixation is a woman thing. But the truth is that men can torment their bodies, too, and for a similarly wide range of reasons, ranging from perfectionism to identity confusion to sexual abuse.
Interestingly, several other male singers have acknowledged battling eating disorders. Caleb Followill of Kings of Leon and Daniel Johns of Silverchair both admitted to struggling with anorexia as teenagers, while Justin Hawkins, the former lead singer of the Darkness, has said he vomited and used laxatives in an attempt to stay thin. Their explanations have varied, with Hawkins saying he was anxious about how he would look onstage and Johns attributing his illness more to depression and his having been beaten up regularly outside of school.
Was Jackson part of this club, too? We don’t know yet. But if he were, it would be just one more stereotype he shattered.

More Speculation!

Bonnie Fuller (Huffington Post Blog)
The Real Reason for Michael Jackson's Death? His Secret Fatal Illness
Was the King of pop really felled by prescription drug use and abuse ? Those who speculate on this theory could be dead wrong! Instead, Michael could very well be the victim of the lupus he suffered from.
Did you know that Michael Jackson, was the victim of a rare auto-immune disease called lupus? Yes, he was according to his Wikipedia biography and as it turns out -- lupus sufferers frequently die in their 40s and 50's from sudden heart attacks, caused by atherosclerosis. Let me explain.
Lupus causes inflammation in many of the body's organs including the arteries of the heart. The inflamed arteries then cause cholesterol to deposit on their walls.These deposits cause scarring, and the whole process primes lupus victims to have massive heart attacks, which are often asymptomatic beforehand.
Mild lupus sufferers, like Jackson, are actually more at risk for having a fatal heart attack, according to Dr Michael Lockshin, a rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. The reason for this is because people who have a mild case of lupus are less likely to take any of the medications which would prevent inflammation of the organs.
Now if you don't believe that Jackson had lupus consider this: vitiligo, which Jackson also suffered from, resulting in the famous pigment loss in his skin, is also an auto-immune disease. Coincidentally, vitiligo and lupus are often diagnosed in the same person, explains Dr. Lockshin. In other words, it would not have been unusual for Michael Jackson to have suffered from both ailments.
Here's another key fact: African-Americans are four times more like to be lupus victims than Caucasians. However, lupus is far more common in women than men. Still men, do get it.
So would prescription drug abuse have exacerbated a case of lupus? Only if demerol was injected intravenously, would it also have damaged Jackson's heart, according to Dr. Lockshin. Demerol injected into his muscles would not have played a deadly role and neither would drugs like Xanax and Zoloft.
Lupus also frequently causes inflammation and pain in the joints, which could explain why Jackson was sometimes seen in a wheel chair. This might also explain why Jackson had not performed in years. Maybe it wasn't just the stress of the child molestation charges and trials that forced him to put his performance career on hold. Maybe, he was simply unwilling to share his medical problems with the public.
Until a possible lupus-induced heart attack felled him, the King of Pop may have preferred to preserve the illusion that he was still, at least in some ways, invincible!
Follow Bonnie Fuller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bonniefuller

Bloodsuckers, Liars, and hangers-on besiege Jackson Family

Mallika Chopra (Huffington Post).
In the aftermath of Michael Jackson's death, I found myself in a surreal situation that gave me a glimpse into the dark side of bloodsuckers, media and celebrity.
In those few hours, I saw a side of humanity that saddens me - where people try to take advantage of vulnerability, confusion, and grief for their own advantage. I realized that much of media has so much more to gain when they report salacious gossip, even in the aftermath of a tragic death like Michael's. I also realized that all of us, myself included, who participate in the engagement of that media feed so-called journalists to do anything to get their information. In the end, personalities like Michael are portrayed as freaks and dysfunctional, people who love them are taken advantage of, and those seedy, washed out journalists profit.
I share my experience because it involves Grace Rwaramba, who served as the nanny to Michael's three kids. Grace is more than my best friend - I refer to her as my sister, and she thinks of my parents as her own (she actually calls my father papa).
In the last day in the aftermath of Michaels death, recent quotes have surfaced about her life with Michael, as well as speculation about her role in potential custody battles for the three children.
Grace has read this article before I published it.
Michael had a pattern of letting those close to him in and out of his life, and Grace was no exception. Lisa Marie Presley’s reflection on her emotional relationship with Michael expressed beautifully the power Michael had with those he loved. Over the years, Grace faced a similar cycle of wanting to save him and being hurt by him. It was an endless cycle that seemed similar to those faced by friends and families of other addicts. Michael had a knack of surrounding himself with enablers, and avoiding people who wanted to help him like his family, real friends who cared deeply about him, Grace and my father, Deepak Chopra.
Daphne Barak, a so-called journalist who claims to be a friend of the Jackson family and who got to know Grace through them, has been cultivating a friendship with Grace over several years. Unfortunately, the story with Daphne and Grace seems to be one that echoes the vultures that took advantage of Michael throughout his life.
Daphne reached out to Grace a few weeks ago, when she knew she was in a vulnerable place, having recently been let go by Michael yet again (this was a regular pattern). In the 17 years that Grace has worked with Michael, she has never spoken to the press. She loves Michael and his children at her core.
Grace genuinely believed Daphne was her friend who was trying to help her. Daphne had offered to help Grace launch a foundation she was creating to monitor non profit work in Africa. (Grace was originally from Rwanda.) She told Grace that they should record her speaking about the work. However, every time they began to record, her questions would center on Michael. Grace would say she was uncomfortable speaking about him.
On the morning of June 26th, after finding out that Grace was also in London, I rushed to her hotel. She was staying in a suite with Daphne. Daphne told tell me she had invited Grace to stay with her in Switzerland as her guest, and how she had helped Grace with the immediate aftermath of shock hearing about Michael's death. She said that she had spent several thousand dollars to buy a business class ticket for Grace to fly to LA. She boasted about how close she was to the Jackson family, world leaders, etc.
I witnessed Daphne act as a friend while trying to bait information from Grace on her conversations with Jackson family members and friends about his death. She warned Grace that the family was going to try to set her up for Michaels downfall, and that it was critical that Grace speak with a lawyer before leaving. As a friend, she had organized a "lawyer" to get Grace's story before she left for the airport.
In essence, Daphne was setting up a scenario to garner more information from Grace before she left for LA. I discovered that one of her friends who happened to be there had made a documentary on Princess Diana.
When we tried to leave, Daphne screamed at Grace - in front of my young children who began to cry -- that she was an ingrate. She had spent thousands of dollars hosting her, she was her guest, and she wanted to spend the time to say goodbye. (Daphne obviously could not believe her luck that she had baited Grace as a sympathetic friend for stories before he died, and had Grace with her on that sad day.)
Ultimately, Daphne, having obviously drunk a bit much, threatened to release the recordings she had made of their private conversations. Grace was petrified. I held her by the shoulders, looked in her eyes, and said lets just go. So what, let her put it out there. She is a washed up journalist trying to mine a tragic situation. Michael was gone now, and the future is the wellbeing of the children. Grace agreed.
Ultimately, I had to get the hotel manager involved to escort Grace out of the hotel. I also bought Grace's ticket home myself, discovering that Daphne had misled us about the time and the price. It was a 650 Pound economy ticket, not several thousand dollars.
Twenty four hours later, I found that Daphne indeed had written an article full of quotes by Grace for a tabloid magazine. (A quick search of her other work not surprisingly shows she did a recent feature on Amy Winehouse.) Grace's quotes are now being picked up by other tabloids and will find their way into more magazines and articles. (People Magazine is also featuring some today, including the inaccurate claim the Grace pumped Michael's stomach several times. For the record, Grace never pumped Michael's stomach. She has no idea how she would even do such a thing.) Which quotes are true, which are in context, (many are not) to me frankly doesn't matter. I will not be surprised if Daphne releases audios or videos soon.
Grace feels used, insecure and shaken that she could have been so naïve, particularly having witnessed so many vultures in Michael's world over the years. She made a mistake. The sad truth is that when you are a celebrity, or a close friend or family of one, in a world of tabloids, you must be impeccable in what you say and to whom. Michael probably faced the epitome of vultures, bloodsuckers and hanger-ons displayed in his endless cycle of managers, enabling doctors, and new business partners. How could anyone blame him for becoming so paranoid in his life?
In the article, Daphne tries to portray a rift between Katherine Jackson and Grace. This is not true.
I would like to go on record, with Grace's permission, to say that Grace firmly hopes that the Jackson family gets custody of Prince, Paris and Michael. It would be detrimental to the children to be separated, and they should be with Michael's family. They should know their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and they should learn about who he was as a person, not just as an icon. She has no interest in custody, and just wants the children to be happy and secure. She will be there for them whenever they need or want her.
As for the appetite for the salacious details of Michael's life, my hope is that we let him go in peace. We already know he led a tortured life. He also led a great one in which he loved, and was loved, by many.
Let his family heal, and let his fans celebrate his music and his giving heart.
This post was originally posted on www.intent.com.
Mallika Chopra is the founder of Intent.com,

Dr. Drew Pinsky.

High on Fame: Michael Jackson and Enabling Doctors
Huffington Post.
A tragic case like Michael Jackson's reinforces the recurring story of addicted celebrities and their enabling doctors. Being a celebrity does not change the simple fact that the user is a drug addict. And having an M.D. after your name does not change the fact that if you supply the addict you're still a drug pusher. But to be famous and addicted does make treatment much more difficult.
Whether or not Michael Jackson's sudden death was directly caused by prescription drugs, this tragedy highlights the need to crackdown on M.D.s who become enablers of addiction. It's no exaggeration to say that they are basically drug pushers or at least suppliers. Their role although perhaps well meaning can become genuinely sinister, for it's not just a matter of joining a star's entourage by virtue of a prescription pad. Physicians are quite aware of the potential for addiction with opiate/opioid pain medication. The same narcotics like Demerol and OxyContin that became a regular part of Michael's life also lead to high addiction rates among physicians themselves. In the celebrity culture, some doctors become co-dependent and enmeshed with the stars to whom they hitch themselves, creating a mix of compulsions for fame, approval, power, and self-indulgence. As with other enablers in their entourage, the doctor is unable to set limits, frustrate and confront the celebrity lest the physician be banished and another eager medical provider step in. But the bottom line is always the same: the standard of care has not been maintained; pain and potentially treatable conditions are overlooked. And their oaths as physicians have been violated. These doctors are doing harm.
Without a doubt, enabling M.D.s are hard to control, since they can hide behind any number of excuses, the favorite one being that the celebrity himself (or herself) deceived them. "I had no idea he was that strung out, and anyway, he had a dozen other doctors he was fooling." A familiar rationale and a credible one -- addicts who aren't celebrities devise contorted ways of getting drugs. Celebrities are better at it and can dismiss anyone who doesn't agree to play along with their addictive lifestyle. Merely because a drug is prescribed or even taken as directed does not mean the patient is not addicted. The community of physicians needs to show more vigilance when dealing with these difficult patients.
Serious medical issues must be faced, among them:
-- Celebrities are known to have higher rates of trauma in their childhood, whether physical, sexual, or emotional. Behind the glitter of fame they feel real pain and suffer from conditions that need serious medical and psychiatric treatment.
-- The narcissism of celebrities looks glamorous -- who wouldn't want to be the center of attention? -- but in fact it is actually a symptom of psychological damage. There's a frightened refusal to look at their problems and an inability to see how much they themselves are contributing to the turmoil that uproots everyday existence. (To make matters worse, the enabling doctors have their own narcissistic issues, which may be gratified by basking in the glow of celebrity. Doctors, too, may be defensive and manifest the same refusal to take responsibility.)
-- The use of short-acting painkillers isn't innocuous. These can cause changes in the brain that impair thinking and perception. After a certain point, the addicted brain sends the message that getting off drugs will be like committing suicide. Under heavy use, painkillers are in fact the cause of pain, a condition known as hyperalgesia. But reckless doctors keep supplying pills and injections because "my patient is in pain." This ignores the simple fact that pain can be managed in many ways. Even if narcotics are called for, that's not the same as saying they are called for at addictive or dangerous levels.
-- Opiates suppress respiration, but often this effect isn't noticed until suddenly the addict stops breathing completely. Subjectively they may not feel sedated even as larger and larger doses are given over time (known medically as drug tolerance or tachyphylaxis). A drug can stop producing the desired effect after only one dose. The addict wants subjective relief, but as larger doses continue to have no greater effect, the addict fails to notice that his body is suffering from serious side effects. This is one of the covert causes of sudden death.
The list of risks extends much farther, but the overall point is that trained physicians know of these dangers. Therefore, participating in an escalating daily regimen of opiates for any patient with probable addiction, much less a celebrity is indefensible. Ignorance is no defense if you have a medical license.
What can be done?
The public's attention span is short, but widespread awareness is the first step. The real target audience are the local licensing boards and peer review committees who handle medical practice. The culture of "just say yes" when a celebrity shows up in a doctor's office needs to be condemned. This condemnation needs to be followed up with serious consequences for enabling physicians. If they recklessly addict a patient, severe repercussions should follow. If they themselves are addicted, complete abstinence must be achieved before they are allowed to return to medical practice, and random drug testing should be required by all states. Computerized medical histories should be instituted, so that we know precisely how many prescriptions are being written by each doctor and filled by each patient. With a centralized database, celebrities won't be able to pull off the trick of fooling dozens doctors and pharmacists all over town. And we need to do a better job educating physicians about the nuances and difficulties of treating patients such as these.
These steps are a beginning. Realistically, celebrities will always be first in line in gaining easy access to drugs. They have the means, the excuses, the money, and the opportunity. But at the very least the culture of enabling physicians must be branded as shameful. The same image that fools the public has eroded medical ethics. The abuse of prescription medication is becoming an alarming problem in this country, It's not fun to take drugs, it is serious business as is our charge to care for patients, celebrity or not. Doctors that enable celebrities must be brought to justice or else we will continue to witness shattered lives and sudden death.
Read Dr. Drew Pinsky on Huffington Post and at dr.drew.com

Deepak Chopra.Author

A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That's not who I will remember, however. His mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me. For twenty years I observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael -- and to want to protect him -- his sudden death yesterday seemed almost fated.
Two days previously he had called me in an upbeat, excited mood. The voice message said, "I've got some really good news to share with you." He was writing a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help informally with the lyrics, as we had done several times before. When I tried to return his call, however, the number was disconnected. (Terminally spooked by his treatment in the press, he changed his phone number often.) So I never got to talk to him, and the music demo he sent me lies on my bedside table as a poignant symbol of an unfinished life.
When we first met, around 1988, I was struck by the combination of charisma and woundedness that surrounded Michael. He would be swarmed by crowds at an airport, perform an exhausting show for three hours, and then sit backstage afterward, as we did one night in Bucharest, drinking bottled water, glancing over some Sufi poetry as I walked into the room, and wanting to meditate.
That person, whom I considered (at the risk of ridicule) very pure, still survived -- he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked the last time, two weeks ago. Michael exemplified the paradox of many famous performers, being essentially shy, an introvert who would come to my house and spend most of the evening sitting by himself in a corner with his small children. I never saw less than a loving father when they were together (and wonder now, as anyone close to him would, what will happen to them in the aftermath).
Michael's reluctance to grow up was another part of the paradox. My children adored him, and in return he responded in a childlike way. He declared often, as former child stars do, that he was robbed of his childhood. Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more sinister.
It's not my place to comment on the troubles Michael fell heir to from the past and then amplified by his misguided choices in life. He was surrounded by enablers, including a shameful plethora of M.D.s in Los Angeles and elsewhere who supplied him with prescription drugs. As many times as he would candidly confess that he had a problem, the conversation always ended with a deflection and denial. As I write this paragraph, the reports of drug abuse are spreading across the cable news channels. The instant I heard of his death this afternoon, I had a sinking feeling that prescription drugs would play a key part.
The closest we ever became, perhaps, was when Michael needed a book to sell primarily as a concert souvenir. It would contain pictures for his fans but there would also be a text consisting of short fables. I sat with him for hours while he dreamily wove Aesop-like tales about animals, mixed with words about music and his love of all things musical. This project became Dancing the Dream after I pulled the text together for him, acting strictly as a friend. It was this time together that convinced me of the modus vivendi Michael had devised for himself: to counter the tidal wave of stress that accompanies mega-stardom, he built a private retreat in a fantasy world where pink clouds veiled inner anguish and Peter Pan was a hero, not a pathology.
This compromise with reality gradually became unsustainable. He went to strange lengths to preserve it. Unbounded privilege became another toxic force in his undoing. What began as idiosyncrasy, shyness, and vulnerability was ravaged by obsessions over health, paranoia over security, and an isolation that grew more and more unhealthy. When Michael passed me the music for that last song, the one sitting by my bedside waiting for the right words, the procedure for getting the CD to me rivaled a CIA covert operation in its secrecy.
My memory of Michael Jackson will be as complex and confused as anyone's. His closest friends will close ranks and try to do everything in their power to insure that the good lives after him. Will we be successful in rescuing him after so many years of media distortion? No one can say. I only wanted to put some details on the record in his behalf. My son Gotham traveled with Michael as a roadie on his "Dangerous" tour when he was seventeen. Will it matter that Michael behaved with discipline and impeccable manners around my son? (It sends a shiver to recall something he told Gotham: "I don't want to go out like Marlon Brando. I want to go out like Elvis." Both icons were obsessions of this icon.)
His children's nanny and surrogate mother, Grace Rwaramba , is like another daughter to me. I introduced her to Michael when she was eighteen, a beautiful, heartwarming girl from Rwanda who is now grown up. She kept an eye on him for me and would call me whenever he was down or running too close to the edge. How heartbreaking for Grace that no one's protective instincts and genuine love could avert this tragic day. An hour ago she was sobbing on the telephone from London. As a result, I couldn't help but write this brief remembrance in sadness. But when the shock subsides and a thousand public voices recount Michael's brilliant, joyous, embattled, enigmatic, bizarre trajectory, I hope the word "joyous" is the one that will rise from the ashes and shine as he once did.

From The Sunday Times
Nanny reveals tragic secret life of Jackson
Maurice Chittenden and John Harlow Los Angeles THE nanny who became “mother” to Michael Jackson’s three children has told how she regularly had to pump his stomach to remove dangerous cocktails of drugs.
Grace Rwaramba, 42, who flew from London to Los Angeles yesterday in the hope of being reunited with his children, has given a graphic account of the singer’s increasingly desperate final months.
She paints a grim picture of Jackson, sometimes penniless but deluded about his “riches”, leading a nomadic life, moving from country to country and hotel to hotel, before allegedly falling under the increasing influence of the Nation of Islam, the extremist sect.
Jackson is believed to have been taking up to eight different drugs a day, including three narcotic painkillers. Rwaramba, who is expected to be interviewed by detectives about whether she helped administer the drugs, said: “I had to pump his stomach many times. He always mixed so much of it.
“There was one period that it was so bad that I didn’t let the children see him . . . He always ate too little and mixed too much.”
The nanny says she once called in the singer’s mother, Katherine, and sister, Janet, to attempt an “intervention”, trying to persuade the singer to come to terms with his addiction. Instead Jackson turned on her, accusing her of betraying him. “He didn’t want to listen; that was one of the times he let me go,” she said.
Rwaramba, who is from Rwanda, worked for Jackson for more than a decade, starting as an office assistant before becoming nanny to his children, Michael Jr, known as Prince, aged 12; Paris, 11; and Prince Michael II, 7, nicknamed Blanket to distinguish him from his brother.
She was dismissed for a final time last December but still went back to see the children. When she visited them in April she claims Jackson was so hard up she had to buy “happy birthday” balloons for Paris on her own credit card.
On a previous occasion he had sent her to Florence to buy antiques for $1m. “We didn’t even have a home to live in. So we had to put the antiques in storage,” she said.
Yesterday an official with the Los Angeles police revealed the singer had become “heavily addicted” to the powerful painkiller OxyContin and had received an injection of Demerol, another painkiller, an hour before his death. It is now almost certain the police will begin a full investigation into the singer’s death and that Rwaramba will be regarded as a witness. Coroners in the case said yesterday there was no suspicion of foul play but toxicology tests would take several weeks.
One theory is that Jackson was taking an increasing amount of drugs to combat the stress of his forthcoming 50 concerts at the O2 in London. The nanny said: “Fifty performances! I told him . . . what are you doing? He said ‘I signed only for 10’. He didn’t know what he was signing. He never did.”
Detectives have made contact with Dr Conrad Robert Murray, a cardiologist who was with Jackson at his rented mansion when he died, and have made clear they want to interview him. Police denied a report that they also want to talk to a second doctor.
Police will also want to know whether early CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) efforts to save the singer’s life were botched. On a tape of conversations between the Jackson home and the ambulance service, one of Jackson’s staff tells the dispatcher that Jackson is on the bed and that a “doctor is here”, meaning Murray.
Medical experts say it is usual for the patient to be on a hard surface because it is difficult to compress the chest on a soft surface. The operator told the caller to “get him on the floor”. A car towed by police from Jackson’s home is registered in the name of Murray’s sister in Texas.
Rwaramba claims the Nation of Islam, the sect that had become increasingly prominent in Jackson’s life, told him it cost $100,000 (£60,000) a month to rent the mansion, but she believes similar properties were on the market for no more than $25,000 a month.
The sect has supplied bodyguards to the singer and allegedly intimidated auction houses that were selling Jackson memorabilia.
“Michael had no idea about money,” Rwaramba said. “He got a proposal to make an appearance in Japan for $1m . . . By the time everyone took their share, he ended up with $200,000.” At one stage Jackson and his entourage flew economy class to Germany. One of the worst periods was after Jackson was acquitted following a five-month trial in 2005 on charges of sexually abusing a boy during sleepovers at his Neverland ranch.
Jackson, Rwaramba and the children went to Bahrain as guests of Sheikh Abdullah, a son of the king, who hoped to make a CD with the singer.
People there described yesterday how they sometimes saw Jackson walking through a mall, his frail body draped in a woman’s abaya, or robe, which covered part of the face. He drew a crowd since he did not walk like a woman.
When the singer and the sheikh fell out, Jackson and his family moved to Ireland to stay with friends of Rwaramba and then in a small house in New Jersey where Jackson slept in a downstairs room while she and the children shared a bedroom.
When Jackson did have money, he hid it in black rubbish sacks and under the carpets at the Los Angeles house. Rwaramba says Katherine Jackson rang her in London at 7am on Friday to ask where the money was, possibly to stop it being stolen.
Sources close to the Jacksons yesterday told the TMZ entertainment website, which broke the news of his death, that the children would stay with their grandmother and grandfather Joe at the family home in Encino, California.
They said: “We’re told the family is 100% behind this - feeling that Katherine and Joe Jackson are the only people who can help the children understand who their father was, help them grieve, and teach them to deal with life in the spotlight.”

Stonewall Baby, All Grown Up
By Michael Hamill Remaley
Washington Post
I was born on the day of the Stonewall riots, June 27, 1969, so my life is an individual history of the 40-year-old modern gay rights movement. What makes my story particularly representative is just how conventional my life has become.
I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. My parents were liberal college professors, but I was aware in high school -- in the 1980s, when AIDS had no treatment and hatred for gays reached a fever pitch -- that they wanted both of their boys to be heterosexual. Logically, it seemed to be the only path to a happy, successful life. I knew I was gay but said nothing.
I applied only to urban universities, seeing the city as a place to find other people like myself. When I decided toward the end of college that it was time to "come out," it seemed like a big deal -- as any grand declaration would be. Back then, you couldn't just live your life. You had to say "I'm gay!" and hope to be accepted or learn to live with the rejection.
Straight kids start experimenting with dating in high school. I didn't really get going until I turned 21 and could start going to gay bars. There was no other way to safely meet other gay people. Basically, the entire trajectory of my romantic life was delayed by several years. My first relationship was the kind of stupid mistake that most people go through in their teens in high school. My 20s were a bit of a waste in terms of establishing an adult romantic relationship.
On the plus side, my 20s were a good start to a vibrant career. With an undergraduate degree in journalism and a graduate degree in public policy, I chose a profession that was more welcoming to gay people than most were in the early 1990s. In my first job out of college, I spoke cautiously but in a purposefully casual way about my life and my relationship with my (first) boyfriend. I was a little scared, since very few people I knew were out in their workplace, even in relatively urbane Philadelphia. Most of my friends thought I was reckless, talking about my gay life at work. I did feel a bit like a rebel, but I knew I was incapable of hiding secrets so I thought I might as well stand tall.
In the past decade, I've lived in Philadelphia, Washington and New York -- encountering people from all over America and the world. Without compromising my identity or censoring my life, I have slowly moved up the ranks at prestigious policy organizations such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Harwood Institute and Public Agenda. I am director of communications for the Russell Sage Foundation, working on issues including behavioral economics, low-wage work, immigration, social justice and cultural diversity.
My experiences in the workplace and the wider world bear out what has been documented in public opinion research on gay issues. Without a doubt, as more gay people live their lives unashamedly, those who come in contact with gay people accept them as normal and say we are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as others.
I'm having a 40th-birthday party. My parents, my brother, and his wife and children will be there, as will my boyfriend's parents. My boyfriend, who is 14 years younger than me, has had a much different experience from mine. I think his is representative of his generation. He never "came out" to his parents -- he didn't have to. He just lived his life, talked to his parents all the time and discussed what he was doing and who he was doing it with. No "I'm gay!" declaration seemed necessary. Almost all of his friends are straight, and he rarely goes to gay bars. He's never felt that he needed to stay confined in gay circles to feel safe. He is just himself, with no apologies or explanations. Gay-circuit parties and the trappings of stereotypical urban gay life hold little allure for him. His straight friends are now my friends, and while I love my gay friends, I don't miss gay bars and the ghettoizing culture that they represent to me.
Four decades ago, a group of gays and lesbians in New York pushed back against persecution. When my loved ones celebrate my birthday today, we will also be raising a glass to 40 years of progress on gay rights. Being in a quiet long-term relationship and having a disturbingly "respectable" professional life means that I'm basically boring. Gay marriage in New York is painfully just out of reach, but looking back on the 40 years since Stonewall, my staid domestic life is a major triumph unto itself.

The writer lives in New York.

Past Revolutions in Iran
Nathan Gonzalez
Huffington Post

The last one and a half centuries of modern Iranian history have been marked by recurring popular revolts in the streets of Tehran and throughout the rest of the country. Among the countless uprisings, three stand out as dramatic examples of a people imposing their collective will on a despotic regime: The Tobacco Protest (1891-92), the Constitutional Revolution (1906-11), and the Islamic Revolution (1978-79). Today, we are witnessing a fourth such movement.
There have been enough mass uprisings in Iran to identify the important trends they all share. One such trend has been the involvement of various segments of society with a common purpose. Grand coalitions of secular intellectuals, merchants from the bazaar, and the clergy, have always been the driving force behind any revolution. Clerics and bazaaris are especially critical, since they project traditional Islamic values and piety to the Iranian masses. Without their active participation it is hard to imagine any uprising succeeding.
Among the first, large-scale revolutionary coalitions was formed during the Tobacco Protest, which was organized by the clergy and the bazaar in a response to the shah's decision to hand over Iran's entire tobacco market to a single British citizen. After over a year of merchant strikes and demonstrations, it was Ayatollah Mirza Hasan Shirazi's fatwa calling for a boycott of the product that forced the shah to finally cancel the deal. (It is said that Shirazi's word was so powerful that even the shah's harem refused to smoke.)
A second common trend in Iran's mass demonstrations has been the length of time it has taken them to mature--over a year of demonstrations in each of the cases mentioned here. The Constitutional Revolution, which began as a grassroots movement of citizen councils demanding a parliament and a written constitution in early 1906, was not fully quelled until pitched street battles between constitutionalists and Russian-commanded forces came to an end in 1911. By then, the parliament and constitution had become staples of Iranian political life, even if those in power chose to systematically ignored them.
The third and arguably most important common denominator of revolutionary activity in Iran has been the ideals that protesters have embraced across the centuries. Repeatedly, Iranian movements have centered around two key premises: First, that Iran should be free of foreign meddling (whether it be British, Russian, or American); and second, that the country's politics should be reflective of popular will. In other words, modern Iranian revolutions have always sought a degree of democracy and national independence.
The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was in many ways a culmination of the previous century's upheaval. It ended with the toppling of Mohammad Reza Shah, a foreign-backed dictator who inspired a unique kind of hatred among his subjects. But while post-revolutionary Iran became the poster-child of political independence and self-reliance, the second goal of Iranian social movements, that of democracy at home, quickly fell by the wayside.
As Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini consolidated power over the emerging Islamic Republic and the country fought an eight-year war with neighboring Iraq, political development in Iran took a back seat to national security and survival. The millions who had taken to the streets in 1979 to demand political representation soon found themselves on the receiving end of an increasingly brutal regime, one that, like the shah's government before it, had few qualms about enforcing obedience through murder, rape, and torture.
It was not until the blatant theft of the June 12 election by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that masses of Iranians from all walks of life have taken to the streets once again. Today, a revolution is underway in Iran, and democracy is once again on the table.
As with past revolutions, it is difficult to tell just how and when it will end. Should the regime beat and kill the revolutionaries to a standstill, it will only be kicking the ball forward, setting the stage for a future confrontation. If, on the other hand, the uprising can grow to include the massive bazaars of Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz, and more active participation from clerics in the Shia holy cities of Qom and even Southern Iraq (yes, Iraq), it is hard to imagine how Ayatollah Khamenei would not change his tune, or even be forced to step aside.
Whatever happens, the world will look back on the 2009 Revolution as one in a long line of movements to reconcile the harsh reality of Iranian politics with the unresolved grievances and unmet aspirations of a population willing to fight for its principles. While coalitions from across all sectors of society finally succeeded in ridding Iran of its status as a Western puppet back in 1979, the Iranian masses have yet to achieve individual rights and self-determination; values that do not necessarily resonate with the rest of the world, but most certainly carry potent meaning in Iran.
One thing is certain: The current revolts are no longer about who won the June 12 election. They are the manifestation of a national ideal that not only pre-dates the Islamic Republic, but will most certainly outlive it.
Nathan Gonzalez, a Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, is author of Engaging Iran: The Rise of a Middle East Powerhouse and America's Strategic Choice.

From the Los Angeles Times
Ed McMahon: A salute to the king of sidekicks
By Robert Lloyd
Although he did other things in his 86 years, Ed McMahon, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles, will be remembered mostly as the man who sat next to Johnny Carson, except when more important celebrities came between them.

Notwithstanding the dozen years of hosting "Star Search," a role in the 1997 Tom Arnold sitcom "The Tom Show," a high-profile Cash4Gold ad during the last Super Bowl and all that knocking on people's doors in the name of the Publishers Clearing House, McMahon was a professional sidekick, a less-than-equal partner in an enterprise of which he was nevertheless a vital part: Thinking of Johnny, one proceeds quickly and naturally to Ed, who by dint of association was almost as famous as his boss -- I say "almost" to include that fraction of the world that may have seen or heard of Carson but never watched his show.

It's easy to underestimate his accomplishment -- or even to wonder whether it should be called an accomplishment at all. We live in a nation of aspiring quarterbacks, pitchers, lead singers and presidents, where we are told to dream big and have it all. (The vice presidency of the United States is regarded as a rarefied form of failure.) But in a world where everyone is innately a star, what does it mean to settle for life as a mere moon?

And yet, just as the moon plays upon the Earth, animating its tides and its werewolves, the sidekick is not without power of his (or her) own. His very presence is the proof that his presence is required. He may come as a straight man, a stooge, a teacher, an apprentice, a servant or pal, but he completes the star-hero in some way to their mutual advantage -- as a counterweight, an anchor, a witness, a frame for the picture, a setting for the stone. Like Jiminy Cricket, a conscience. Who is Prince Hal without Falstaff, Don Quixote sans Sancho Panza? Little John and Robin Hood, Horatio and Hamlet, Friday and Crusoe, Watson and Holmes, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, Ethel and Lucy, Barney and Fred, Barney and Andy, Ed and Ralph, Rhoda and Mary, Willow and Buffy, and all those traveling companions to Doctor Who -- unequal, perhaps, yet inextricable.

We may reflexively regard him as slower, dumber, less handsome than the hero he shadows, but in practice the sidekick may be the smarter, funnier, faster, better-looking or more practical one. Less bound by convention or expectation, flexible rather than stiff-necked, he is free in ways forbidden the hero. His life is simpler, his soul less troubled. Ed Norton may be a dimwit, but he isn't tormented, like Ralph Kramden, by desperation and desire. Spock is cooler than Kirk. It seems like the better job.

Not every talk show host has employed a sidekick in the McMahon mold. Merv Griffin had Arthur Treacher, a very tall British character actor who earlier specialized in butlers, appropriately, and, after McMahon, the best of the breed. Regis Philbin played second banana to Rat Packer Joey Bishop on his short-lived 1960s late-night show. But Dick Cavett was a solo act; Mike Douglas relied on changing celebrity co-hosts; and Jay Leno had no one on his couch. Still, it seems a sign of respect to McMahon (and to the institution he served) that when Conan O'Brien took the reins of "The Tonight Show," he had a partner in place, original "Late Night" sidekick Andy Richter.

Ed and Johnny were "as close as two non-married people can be," as McMahon wrote in his book, "Here's Johnny: Memories of Johnny Carson, 'The Tonight Show' and 46 Years of Friendship." McMahon, who was only two years older than Carson, began working as his announcer in in 1957, on the game show "Who Do You Trust?" and accompanied him to "The Tonight Show" in 1962, where they kept on for 30 years..

An uncharitable or undiscerning critic might say McMahon had an easy job: Laugh at the boss' jokes, read a few cue cards, sell a little dog food, cheerfully absorb whatever cracks are made at his expense, slide further down the couch as the evening's guests arrive. (Phil Hartman's "Saturday Night Live" impression of him -- the over-hearty laugh, the booming "You are correct, sir" -- has replaced the actual McMahon in the minds of a couple of generations of viewers.) But the way McMahon told it, that was the point: "My role was to make him look good while not looking too good myself," he wrote, and "to get Johnny to the punch line while seeming to do nothing at all." Carson, for his part, left the air saying, "This show would have been impossible to do without Ed."

There is a kind of genius in knowing how to live with a genius. Did anyone want to grow up to be Ed McMahon? Maybe not. (Though I would rather be Illya Kuryakin than Napoleon Solo.) But they also serve who only sit and laugh -- and cry "Hey-yo!" once in a while. Of all the things Ed provided Johnny, continuity was perhaps the most meaningful: Guests came and went; wives came and went; the world turned. But where there was Johnny, there was always Ed, the witness, the audience, one of us.

Blacks abandon San Francisco
No US city has seen a more rapid decline of its African-American population.
By Michael B. Farrell Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
San Francisco
On a recent overcast Saturday, just before noon, the ministers from some of this city's largest black churches arrived in their dapper and dark suits, looking somewhat out of place on a dusty construction site.
They had come to break ground on 21 affordable apartments – a joint project between a church-affiliated development group and Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare provider. There were photo ops, the ceremonial shovels of dirt, and, given the number of reverends on hand, plenty of prayers.
This neighborhood, known as the Western Addition, was once the heartbeat of San Francisco's African-American community. Fillmore Street, known for its vibrant postwar jazz scene, is a few blocks away. KPOO, the first black-owned noncommercial radio station west of the Mississippi, is up the street. And the ministers say they hope that these new apartments – albeit not solely for black residents – begin to stem the rapid decline of the city's African-American population.
Blacks have been leaving San Francisco in record numbers. Blacks accounted for 6.5 percent of the population in 2005, down from a high of 13.4 percent in 1970 – the steepest decline of any major US city, according to the US Census Bureau.
While San Francisco's image has been defined by a history of tolerance and openness, some say today's reality is much different. They paint a picture of a racially and economically divided city where blacks are vanishing from the social and cultural fabric, priced out and marginalized by the urban redevelopment policies of the past half century.
The decline in the black population has been so rapid that Mayor Gavin Newsom launched the African American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee in 2007 to reverse the trend. One key recommendation of the committee is for more affordable housing – much like the new development in the Western Addition.
It's projects like this, says the Rev. J. Edgar Boyd of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, that could help retain middle-class African-Americans who may otherwise flee to northern California cities such as Stockton or Antioch. That flight has left a wide gulf within the black community here. On one end of the spectrum, seniors stay because they own homes. On the other, poorer and younger black families populate public housing. What's missing, he says, is a middle ground.
That means fewer churchgoers in the pews on Sundays and not as many parishioners taking part in community efforts. "It just kills the life and spirit of the community," he says.
Findings of the mayor's task force confirm that black families with moderate and above-moderate incomes have been leaving since 1990. As a result, very-low-income households made up more than two-thirds of the black population in 2005 – up from roughly one-half in 1990.
The task force also said that the per capita income for African-Americans here is 56 percent less than that of whites. Blacks "lag behind the rest of the city in almost every key economic indicator and face significant barriers to addressing the disparities," it said.
The absence of middle-class blacks in San Francisco leaves the impression that "we are not stakeholders in the community," says Pastor Boyd.
"A lot of African-American people feel that way," says Fred Blackwell, executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, echoing the task force's conclusion that many black San Franciscans feel increasingly disconnected with the city.
That was true for Rachel Satterfield, the child of an African-American father and Puerto Rican mother, who came to San Francisco three years ago searching for the diversity her hometown in Alaska never had.
Now, the 20-something hipster with a burst of dark curly hair has found people like her – but only after leaving San Francisco. She has moved across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland. "That's what I was expecting to find when I moved to San Francisco," she says.
The decline of the black community began decades ago, many say, long before the dotcom boom and the housing bubble pushed housing to a peak median price of $665,000 in 2007.
During a massive redevelopment of Western Addition between 1958 and 1971, hundreds of homes owned by black residents were torn down and businesses razed. Public housing tracts replaced blocks of the large Victorians – houses that may have been dilapidated at the time but would be valuable now.
What's more, the transformation of San Francisco's economy has been a key factor. Closure of the city's shipyard in the early 1970s caused many blacks to leave for jobs elsewhere in the Bay Area and to move out of the Bay View-Hunters Point neighborhood. As San Francisco's economy moved away from manufacturing, activists say, blacks were left out of the new service economy.
But the out-migration of blacks from San Francisco has positive aspects, too. An "increase in economic status has enabled many African-American homeowners to sell their houses and take the profits to the suburbs," states a study by San Francisco State University's College of Ethnic Studies and its Public Research Institution.
For John William Templeton, author and black historian, there's no choice: He's smitten with San Francisco even though he says blacks are being "excluded from the heritage and the economy."
"Everybody in the world is trying to get to San Francisco, but black folks are leaving. What's up with that? It's because they don't see a future," he says. •

From The Times of London
Can you live without Google?
Eight out of ten people prefer Google but the power of the website is under threat from rival search engines and firms that manipulate its results
James Harkin
In the space of a single decade, internet search has changed the way we look at the world beyond recognition. Google has become our binoculars and our window on to the net.
With that blinking cursor on our internet search box only a button away and ever ready to unleash a geyser of electronic information, no longer do we have to go into any encounter wholly unprepared. Sometimes we rely on it too much.
A survey of 100 American business recruiters in 2006 revealed that four-fifths of them now resort to search engines when hiring new staff. More than a third admitted that they had rejected a candidate on the basis of unverified information that they found on the net.
While search is good, then, it is far from perfect. As I was writing this article, I googled three people. First there was Giulia Ricci, a promising young artist who I was to meet for coffee later in the day; then I typed in Matthew Taylor, the former think-tanker and director of the RSA, because I wanted to read his blog.
The last person I looked up was Shaun Phillips, about two minutes after he rang me to commission the piece. First place in the list of blue links Google sent me for “Giulia Ricci” came an Italian porn star who looked nothing like the woman I was meeting.
Among the hits for “Matthew Taylor”, Google was touting information on a pop singer, a Liberal Democrat MP, a footballer and a Guardian journalist. Worse luck, the “Shaun Phillips” who works at The Times had been ousted by an American football player for the San Diego Chargers.
Had I been “feeling lucky”, in Google’s whacky terminology, and plumped for the first hits that came my way on each, I would have come away with information about an Italian porn star, an US football player and a Liberal Democrat MP. This frustrating gap that exists between where we want to go on the net and what we get from Google is leading to some interesting new challenges to Google’s overwhelming superiority in the search business, and throwing up fruitful ideas about the future of the system.
Ten years ago, Google arrived like a breath of fresh air. Unlike the big beasts that came before it, Google was the first company really to understand that we wanted to navigate our own way around the internet rather than stare at a showy “portal”, and it rapidly became our trusted guide.
The company’s mission-statement committed it to organising the world’s information and rendering it accessible and useful.
That, however, was easier said than done. Google’s worthy ambition of digitising all the world’s books, for example, is a complex and daunting project that will probably take many decades, even it if isn’t scuppered before then by the worries of everyone from authors to advertising agencies. In the meantime, what Google does so well with its search technology is to bring everyone within range of the net into a fluid and chaotic global conversation — one that is constantly refreshed by the questions and opinions of every one of them.
Think about what Google does. Like most search engines, it works by trawling the web, taking regular digital snapshots of what’s out there, indexing it and rendering it accessible to anyone. That, however, still leaves its engineers with the job of ranking the information that Google has made its business to serve up. Though it protects its ranking technology as intently as Coca-Cola protects the recipe for its sugary drink, its most essential ingredient is its PageRank algorithm.
PageRank stems from the clever idea of Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, that a good way of calculating the import of any web page was not via any objective criteria but by counting up how many people were pointing at it from their own websites and then measuring the weight and worth of all those pointing links.
Weighing up, in other words, a piece of information by seeing how many other people found it worthwhile. But that wasn’t all. As Google’s search technology became more sophisticated, it enabled its users to feed back into Google’s information loop their own opinion of the information that Google sent their way.
So every time we choose from the list of hits that Google serves up in response to our search, we are helping it rank the information of our peers, and that information is used to track the best destinations on the web.
When we use Google we are tapping into a conversation of millions of people on the net — canvassing what other people think and why they think it before we make our decision. Some of Google’s users will trust the first source of information that it gives them. Most, however, will take the trouble to browse through two or three.
When Google decided to measure the worth of a piece of information by looking at how many other people found it valuable, it sowed into its operation a feedback loop that helped traffic flow around the web much more quickly and smoothly. As a result, it gobbled up about four fifths of the global search business and became one of the richest companies on Earth. Google is now worth roughly £100 billion.
The open, collaborative way that Google uses us to organise its material works wonders at finding interesting nuggets of information, but it is far from ideal. Sometimes, for example, the signposts it sends us are topsy-turvy. When I interviewed Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, for my last book, Cyburbia, he bemoaned the way in which Google’s PageRank system, and others that followed in its wake, are becoming increasingly skewed by search-engine “optimisation” firms. These buy up links from an open market to route traffic in the direction of their clients.
There can, of course, be pleasure in the chase. Taking wrong turnings on the net can lead us to information that we didn’t even know we were looking for and can encourage our natural curiosity and thirst for discovery. In April 2007, a survey concluded that two-thirds of British internet users spent time “wilfing” (“what was I looking for?”) while hopping around on the internet.
A quarter of those surveyed admitted to whiling away 30 per cent or more of their time on the internet in this way, the equivalent of spending one working day every fortnight lost in an electronic reverie. In the past five years, many of us have become more impatient about getting exactly where we want to go to on the net.
While Google keeps tweaking its algorithm and the mass of material that is on the net has grown to almost infinite proportions, the fundamental technology that powers its searches hasn’t changed a great deal. Google makes us work for our information — it turns us into map-makers, tracing relationships and assembling connections in the electronic ether to see whether it adds up to anything we can rely on. It is all too easy to get lost.
So what are the alternatives to Google? Recently the company has been joined by a range of different search engines, which claim to outdo Google either on accuracy and speed or both.
At the austere end of the search business came WolframAlpha, launched last month and named after the British physicist Stephen Wolfram. It promises to be an “answer engine” for researchers, returning rock-solid data in response to statistical or factual queries by scanning only authoritative databases.
It throws up impressive-looking spreadsheets for results and can tell you a great deal about the properties of potassium or the performance of a publicly listed company. Wolfram is in its infancy — thus far the databases at its command are limited to scientific, political, economic and historical data, but it does offer a step towards the goal of what internet technicians such as Berners-Lee call a “semantic web”, where search engines are capable of understanding plain English and taking us more precisely to our destination. Google is also feeling the pinch among those who want immediate access to the kind of electronic chatter, or “buzz”, at which its constantly bubbling PageRank algorithm has traditionally excelled.
Last month Larry Page admitted that his company was falling behind in the race to publish immediate and “real-time” information to Twitter, the latest online social networking craze. Whereas Google’s vast library of information can take whole days to index and to update, Twitter, which allows users to express themselves or forward snippets of news in 140 characters or less, allows anyone to search through its constantly rolling mass of “tweets” almost instantaneously.
Then there is Microsoft’s latest attempt to make up ground on Google in the rapidly expanding search business. Bing, which was launched in the US last week and is now being reworked for the UK, reportedly stands for “Bing is not Google” and takes its onomatopoeic name from the sound of something being found very quickly.
It has its work cut out. Bing is designed to replace its MSN Live Search, which services only 4 per cent of UK searches compared with Google’s 84 per cent share. Bing boasts intuitive new technology, which claims to stand a better chance of finding what its users really want rather than bogging them down in links. It promises to be a “decision engine”, giving its users access to targeted information rather than a list of random web pages and the opportunity to see previews of web pages or videos with having to click through into them.
In the $100 million ad campaign that accompanied its launch, Microsoft made much of its own research that suggests that 30 per cent of searchers abandon their information hunt dissatisfied with what they receive. In one of its ads intended to mimic the experience of using Google, a woman goes into a clinic saying: “I’m having this back pain.” The receptionist says: “Back-packing? Back-to-school? Johann Sebastian Bach?”
So can Bing, WolframApha and Twitter loosen Google’s iron hold on the search business? There is good reason to doubt some of their claims: the world of internet search is littered with cocky also-rans, and all of Microsoft’s previous attempts to refresh its search technology have ended in tears. In a “blind test” site set up by a Microsoft employee last weekend, which showed results from Google, Bing and Yahoo! and invited passers-by to pick the best, Bing sprinted into an early lead before falling slightly behind Google a day later.
Microsoft, however, is resigned to playing a long game. “The major search engines were developed over a decade ago, and we believe the category is still in its infancy,” Paul Stoddart, its head of UK research, says. “It’s important to challenge and evolve the search market . . . there is much more that people can and should expect.”
Google has one of the most powerful brands in the world at its disposal and it will be not to be easy to prise people away from a company whose name is synonymous with searching the net. One thing is clear: the technology is improving and the whiff of change is in the air.
The problem for its competitors is that, since the company has been busy spending its money to accumulate more reliable databases than anyone else thanks to Google Books, Google Maps, Google Earth and all its other projects, the next “Google” is very likely to come from the company itself.
James Harkin is the author of Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are, published by Little, Brown. www.cyburbia.tv

Renovated High Line Now Open for Strolling
By ROBIN POGREBIN NY Times
Standing on a newly renovated stretch of an elevated promenade that was once a railway line for delivering cattle — surrounded by advocates, elected officials and architects who made the transformation happen — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cut a red ribbon on Monday morning to signify that the first phase of the High Line is finished and ready for strolling.
Calling the High Line, which opens to the public on Tuesday, “an extraordinary gift to our city’s future,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “Today we’re about to unwrap that gift.” He added, “It really does live up to its highest expectations.”
The first portion of the three-section High Line, which runs near the Hudson River from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street, will be open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. There are entrances at Gansevoort Street (stairs) and at 16th Street (elevator); exits are located every few blocks.
The second phase, which extends to 30th Street, is under construction and expected to be completed by fall 2010. The third phase, up to 34th Street, has yet to be approved.
The High Line project is something of a New York fairy tale, given that it started with a couple of guys who met at a community board meeting in 1999 — Joshua David, a writer, and Robert Hammond, a painter — and discovered they shared a fervent interest in saving the abandoned railroad trestle, which had been out of commission since 1980 and was slated for demolition during the Giuliani administration. That began a decade-long endeavor that involved rescuing the structure and enlisting the Bloomberg administration in its preservation and renovation.
Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, called the project “a great West Side story.”
The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, described it as “a miracle of perseverance,” and said, “The idea could easily have gone into a file, ‘great ideas that will never happen.’ ”
With all the bureaucratic hurdles that the project had to overcome, it was fitting that so many representatives of different arms of local government were there for Monday’s celebratory news conference, including Amanda M. Burden, the city planning commissioner; Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner; Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York; and Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Also present were two couples who have been the project’s major benefactors — Diane von Furstenberg, the fashion designer, and her husband, the media mogul Barry Diller, and Philip Falcone, a hedge fund billionaire, and his wife, Lisa Maria Falcone.
The walkway, designed by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio & Renfro, includes more than 100 species of plants that were inspired by the wild seeded landscape left after the trains stopped running, Mr. Bloomberg said. He added that the High Line has helped to further something of a renaissance in the neighborhood; more than 30 new projects are planned or under construction nearby.
One of those projects includes a new satellite for the Whitney Museum of American Art, designed by Renzo Piano, which will anchor the base of the High Line at Gansevoort. The mayor announced on Monday that the city was finalizing a land sale contract with the museum.
The first two sections of the High Line cost $152 million, Mr. Bloomberg said, $44 million of which was raised by Friends of the High Line, the group that led the project.
All of the speakers’ comments echoed the triumphal subject line of an e-mail message sent out by Friends of the High Line right after the festivities had concluded: “We did it.”

Acapulco Resort Shooting Leaves 16 Dead
ACAPULCO, Mexico — Soldiers fought for two hours with armed men apparently holding police hostage at a house in Acapulco, leaving one soldier and 15 gunmen dead, a military official said Sunday.
Three soldiers and three Mexican bystanders were wounded. Several Mexican tourists were evacuated from small hotels in the old Acapulco neighborhood, which was once popular with Hollywood stars but has since become run-down.
The gunbattle erupted Saturday night when soldiers received a tip about the presence of armed men at a gated house, said an army colonel who led the operation and spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The gunmen opened fire and hurled some 50 grenades at soldiers who arrived at the house, according to the colonel, who wore a ski mask as he led reporters through the scene.
Several gunmen tried to flee, but crashed their car into a Humvee blocking the gate. At one point during the fighting, armed men with grenades arrived in a car to reinforce the gunmen in the house, but they died in the shooting, the colonel said.
Soldiers found four Guerrero state police officers handcuffed inside the garage of the house, the colonel said. The officers, who were still bound and sitting the floor when reporters arrived, said they were being held captive by the gunmen, the colonel said.
The soldiers did not know the police were inside when the shootout began, and the colonel said their claims would be investigated.
"We found them like this, handcuffed, and they say they were kidnapped. So, if they were kidnapped, as they say, then we rescued them," the colonel said, pointing to the four men.
Residents cowered inside their homes and several small, low-cost hotels while the fighting lasted.
When the shooting subsided, several people too scared to stay in the area were evacuated in an ambulance.

Julian Lennon comforts ailing Lucy in the sky
The Beatle's son reveals the woman who inspired the famous song has an incurable illness

(London Times)
MORE than 40 years after John Lennon wrote Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, his son has gone to the help of the real Lucy, who is now suffering from an incurable disease.
Lucy O’Donnell, who was at nursery school in Surrey with Julian Lennon, became “the girl with kaleidoscope eyes” as the subject of one of the Beatles’ most famous songs, written at the height of their flirtation with psychedelia.
Julian had drawn a picture with starlike shapes before telling his father that it was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.
His father used it as a title for a song he penned for the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which was released in 1967.
Lucy, now 46, is suffering from lupus, an auto-immune disease where the body attacks its own cells, causing immense pain and organ breakdown.
Two months ago Julian, who lives in France, heard through his personal assistant, who knows Lucy’s sister, that she was chronically ill. “I’ve been able to help out a bit,” he said. “I was so upset to hear what had happened.”
Julian revealed the plight of his father’s unwitting muse – now Lucy Vodden after marrying 13 years ago – in an interview with The Sunday Times ahead of a new exhibition of John Lennon memorabilia.
It marks a “reconnection” with his father’s memory. Lennon divorced his mother, Cynthia, when Julian was five, to free him to marry Yoko Ono, and then rarely saw him for years after.
They were later partly reconciled and Julian, who has had his own successful musical career, made his musical debut at the age of 11 on his father’s Walls and Bridges album, playing drums on Ya Ya.
Julian enjoyed immediate success with his debut album Valotte in 1984. It reached the top 20 album chart and spawned the No 6 single, Too Late For Goodbyes. His last hit was in 1991 with the single Saltwater, which also reached No 6.
He has also had interests in film-making, sailing, sculpting and an internet business. WhaleDreamers, a documentary he produced and narrated about an an aboriginal tribe and its relationship to whales, was shown at the Cannes film festival two years ago.
Julian says he has finally forgiven his father for the appalling way he treated both him and his mother. “There is nothing but love now,” he said. “If he was able to come into the room now, we’d hug and cry.”
After Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980, Julian had few keepsakes from his father. During the past two decades he has spent £1m buying up a collection of Lennon’s possessions. “It is in a way horrendous that this is what I needed to do to get my father’s possessions,” said Julian. “Yet I’m lucky too that I now have the money.”
He says the hostility between him and Ono, as well as his half-brother Sean, is in the past.
He and his mother Cynthia will appear together at a ceremony on June 16 when he will lend his collection to the Beatles museum in Liverpool.
It includes hand-written recording notes by Paul McCartney of Hey Jude, a song originally written as Hey Jules to console the then five-year-old Julian during his parents’ divorce. The collection also includes Lennon’s Afghan coat and his cape from the film Help!.
The whereabouts of Julian’s painting of Lucy Vodden is uncertain, although at one stage it was in Cynthia’s possession. Vodden says she never saw him drawing her but believes the painting must be worth at least £250,000.
When Julian initially heard of her illness he sent a huge bunch of flowers to her home in Surbiton, Surrey, with a personally written card. He followed up with garden centre gift vouchers because he had learnt that she took solace in looking at her plants.
“It was lovely of Julian,” said Lucy, who has only seen him once – 23 years ago at one of his concerts – since they were both four. Julian did, however, send a greeting when Lucy married Ross Vodden in 1996.
“We were two very energetic school kids,” she said. “He would say, ‘Come on, Lucy,’ to get me to do things. He was the bravest boy in school whom I recall jumping into a freezing swimming pool.” She remembers Cynthia as being “lovely” but Lennon being “loud and frightening”.
For many years there was speculation that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds referred to the drug LSD. “Not so,” said Vodden.
Some have suggested that “Lucy” was Lucy Richardson, who was several years older than Julian and attended the same school. She later worked as an art editor in the film industry on such movies as Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, and Chocolat, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. “Wrong again,” said Vodden.
Julian suffered his own drink and drug problems. A new album, the aptly titled Everything Changes, is due out within the next year.
Over the years he has often criticised his late father. “But that is now all in the past,” he said. “Yes, Mum and I were treated with disrespect. Yes, there was a lot of anger from Dad towards the two of us, but I can now understand why. Maybe it’s the passing of time and me being older.
“I was actually very like Dad as we were both angry young men. He had locked all his emotions away about his own mother. It then came out as anger.”
Lennon’s mother Julia left when he was five and they were only reunited in his teens. She died in a car accident when Lennon was 17 while on the way to visit him at his aunt Mimi’s home, where he lived.
“I too became extremely short-tempered and snide,” said Julian. “But I’ve moved on. I’m a relatively happy camper now.”
This weekend Cynthia, who lives in Spain, is staying with Julian in France. The two will travel to Liverpool next week to open the exhibition at The Beatles Story, which also includes a letter from Lennon to Cynthia after the divorce where he admits “being a bastard”. The exhibition will include recordings from both Julian and Cynthia reliving their life with Lennon.
Julian says he never went to auctions himself to buy. “I would look at the catalogues, work out what I’d like and could afford, and send someone to bid. Some items I could not afford.”
Julian now gets on very well with Sean, the son of Lennon and Ono, who is also a musician. “It’s a fabulous relationship,” he said.
Julian tells how he was in Croatia two years ago where Sean was playing. “I surprised him after the show by coming backstage. I then went with him in the van on the tour. We met up again last month when he was at the Cannes film festival with his girlfriend. There is not an ounce of anger between us.” Describing himself as “the polar opposite” of his former self with a diet these days of salads, exercise and just the occasional drink, Julian always had a very good relationship with McCartney and George Harrison. “George and I were very close. He was one of the nicest and most generous people.
“Paul and I have always exchanged birthday and Christmas cards, and I last saw him in Las Vegas a couple of years ago.”
Julian was excluded from his father’s will after his murder, but eventually reached an agreement with Ono under which she gave him a large but undisclosed sum.
He now describes their relationship as cordial. “I unleashed hell on her, but we’ve made our peace. We’re okay.” The two had dinner together last year in New York. “There was no point in continuing the anger. It’s a waste of time and energy,” he said.

From The London Times
Susan Boyle: ‘The odds are against a real long-term career’
After coming second in Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle was admitted to the Priory clinic suffering from exhaustion. Will she still be able to pursue a career that could see her earning millions?
A few weeks ago, in Susan Boyle’s home town of Blackburn, West Lothian, I was one of the many, many journalists who came clodhopping down her quiet wee street to make her life a misery. I won’t lie, I felt fairly uncomfortable about it. I’d watched all of her interviews on YouTube and I’d noted the transition from the smiley, happy lady who chatted with the bloke from the West Lothian Courier and sat on the Scottish Television sofa to the shell-shocked, monosyllabic bag of nerves who, weeks later, was doing video links with Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman. Even so, the word on the street was that I’d got the wrong end of the stick. Videos aside, everybody said, she was still a happy lady, loving her new life and looking forward to the final. To my pronounced and unprofessional relief, I only ever saw her cat, anyway. Boyle herself was down at the shops.
“Her friends and family may have been very well meaning,” says Dr Pam Spurr, a behavioural expert, “but they will have had no idea of the things they should or shouldn’t have been saying to her. They could have been saying ‘You’re going to win, you’re going to win’. It becomes very one-sided. Win or it’s all lost. And she didn’t.”
Then again, for the past few months perhaps everybody has been a bit lost. Max Clifford, the publicist, doesn’t represent Susan Boyle but does represent Simon Cowell, her new Svengali. “This is an unique situation,” he says. “I have worked with the biggest stars in the world. Nobody has ever become world famous this instantly before. With Paul Potts (Britain’s Got Talent, 2007) it happened quickly but nothing like as quick as this. Total obscurity to world fame in seconds. Nobody knows how to handle this because it has never happened before. We’re all learning. Simon’s learning. None of us saw it coming.”
Boyle was admitted to the Priory Clinic in North London on Sunday, after an unspecified incident at the Crowne Plaza hotel, Central London. The police have confirmed that officers attended to help “doctors assessing a woman under the Mental Health Act”, and the London Ambulance Service said that its staff had been there, too. She is not thought to have been sectioned. All the same, by the end of yesterday it was considered unlikely that she would be taking part in the Britain’s Got Talent live tour, which starts on June 12, or that she would undertake a planned trip to the US. Pam Spurr is not surprised. “If she has had any sort of breakdown,” she says, “three weeks is not a very long time.”
By mid-afternoon, Talkback Thames (the producers of BGT) had admitted that contestants were not psychologically profiled before appearing on the show, and that this was a policy it was now reviewing. Reports were also suggesting that Ofcom was considering launching an inquiry into Britain’s Got Talent, after receiving a “large number” of complaints that Boyle was allowed to perform in the final at all. Speaking to The Times, Ofcom confirmed the complaints but denied the inquiry.
After visiting Blackburn last month, I spoke to Sara Lee, the publicist from Talkback Thames, who was handling Boyle’s media. I was surprised, I told her, that Susan was still in her house in Blackburn. Still nipping down to the shops, or into the Happy Valley pub for a pint of lemonade on her regular chair in the corner, for any passing hack to (almost) see. Lee says: “We’ve been led by what Susan wanted and she wanted to stay at home. If she’d wanted to go away to a hotel, then she would have done. And she did, for a couple of days. But she has always wanted to do what she wanted to do. ”
In the run-up to last weekend’s final, tabloids were reporting arguments and temper tantrums. “That was the first major sign of a problem,” Spurr says. “And if that was the first major sign that we all saw, then there must have been minor signs that the production company saw. Something like that doesn’t just come out of the blue. Either the people looking out for her were not qualified to determine that this was a serious sign, or they didn’t have anybody looking out for her. If they did have a system in place, then it was a massively flawed system. It was obvious that she was vulnerable from the first performance.”
“This is the modern equivalent of a freak show,” says Mark Borkowski, the publicist and author of The Fame Formula: How Hollywood’s Fixers, Fakers and Star Makers Created the Celebrity Industry. “I’m one of the few people who didn’t feel that she had much of a future. You can’t pluck somebody with those issues and fix them overnight. This has been a fantastic soap opera for the fame-makers, Syco [Simon Cowell’s record label] and Talkback TV. I’m not suggesting that they are cynical and deliberately looking to exploit, but they have got their eye on the buck. They’ve done very well out of Paul Potts and they want to see what they can make out of this. We are beginning to see more and more people who are casualties of the process. Jade Goody was over. She was resurrected by her illness.”
Jim Chancellor is the managing director of Fiction Records, and signed Elbow and Snow Patrol among others. “I’ve a real problem with those talent shows,” he says. “Her fame is based on the fact that she turned out to be something other than what she appears to be. It’s abhorrent, this idea of ‘let’s roll out a bunch of freaks and then gasp as we see how good they are’. People are being made to feel that it’s acceptable to build someone up and knock them down in the space of a few weeks. That’s not a part of the industry I want to work with. It all happened in a few weeks. It must have hit her like a ton of bricks.”
What next for Susan Boyle? Understandably, nobody will say. The Priory won’t even confirm whether she is there. “I will say this,” Max Clifford says, “she’s better today than she was yesterday. She’s somewhere quiet, she’s being looked after.”
What Boyle needs now, he says, is people from home. “People close to her, whom she has been close to for many years. People who are happy to be in that situation. As opposed to being on her own, isolated, surrounded by television and music executives. These are people who understand the machinations of the media but they don’t understand her. She comes from a different planet.”
Clifford says that he can’t see Boyle ever being able to live a quiet life again. “But I keep reminding people,” he says, “she put herself forward. She wanted to be on stage. Right up until last week, when the tabloids turned on her, she was loving the whole process. Simon sees the most important thing as her being happy and fulfilled, whether she is pursuing a career or not.”
If Boyle does manage to have a career after this, almost everybody agrees that it will be a lucrative one. Stuart Clarke, A&R editor at Music Week, agrees. “It may be short-lived but you can’t argue with the huge exposure she’s had globally,” he says. “She could sell a lot of albums and concert tickets — if she’s mentally fit she could be a very big earner. Looking at the examples of artists who have come out of reality shows; the odds are against a real long-term career. There will be another programme, another year.”
“When you need to buy time,” Borkowski says, “you shove someone in the Priory. They want this woman to be fit and are hoping she will come through the other side. If they get this right, she could make millions. But at what personal cost?”
Additional reporting Chloe Lambert

Susan Boyle: A cautionary tale for celebrity age
By Mike Collett-White
LONDON (Reuters) - Talent show contestant Susan Boyle's giddying rise from unemployed Scottish church volunteer to global superstar has come at a price, in what is being seen as a cautionary tale for the celebrity age.
On the way up, the 48-year-old's performance last month of "I Dreamed a Dream" on television series "Britain's Got Talent" was downloaded nearly 200 million times on the Internet, and within days Boyle was headline news around the world.
Camera crews camped outside the home where she lived alone with her cat; Larry King and Oprah Winfrey invited her on to their U.S. shows and tabloid newspapers tracked her every move.
But as the pressure built ahead of Saturday's final, which Boyle had been runaway favorite to win, she was reduced to tears, threw a tantrum and threatened to pull out of the show.
On Sunday, after her shock defeat by dance troupe Diversity, the singer was admitted to a clinic in London that treats people with mental health problems, suffering from exhaustion. The Sun tabloid reported she had an "emotional breakdown."
"Being famous is not all it's cracked up to be, and the idea that you can have a personal life and a media life is often pretty conflicting," said David Moxon, a health psychologist who specializes in stress.
"It must be difficult to walk down the street and be mobbed by people.
"I don't think Boyle did that (deliberately pursued celebrity). She was pursuing a love of singing that she had and that is the sad part of this story. But it is a cautionary tale for people and it shows fame has its price."
Moxon and others said people's reaction to pressure was impossible to predict. The fact that Boyle was starved of oxygen at birth leading to learning difficulties, according to show judge Piers Morgan, may have affected her ability to cope.

BACKLASH
Experts question whether shows like "Britain's Got Talent" and "American Idol" are unnecessarily cruel.
Judge Simon Cowell in particular is renowned for his acerbic put-downs of less accomplished acts, some of which are watched by tens of millions of people.
One of Boyle's co-finalists, Hollie Steel, burst into tears during her faltering semi-final performance and begged to be allowed to try again. Aged 10, she was deemed by many to be too young to appear on the show. And a potential American Idol contestant, ridiculed by Cowell after her audition, apparently committed suicide in November outside the home of fellow judge Paula Abdul.
Morgan, who backed Boyle throughout Britain's Got Talent, put some of the blame for her travails on the media and public. The former tabloid newspaper editor felt people turned against the singer having built her into a household name.
"Show business is a fickle business, and the reality TV end of it even more so," Morgan said in his blog on the show's website, written before Boyle was admitted to a clinic.
"The British, and I'm as guilty as everyone ... like nothing better than building people up, and knocking 'em down again."
Boyle's disheveled appearance and idiosyncratic manner challenged people's notion of what a celebrity should be, prompting commentators to ask why people were so surprised that a woman dubbed "frumpy" and a "hairy angel" should be so gifted.
Although she failed to win Britain's Got Talent, and in spite of questions over her ability to cope with pressure, experts predict a bright future for the singer.
"I predict she will have a huge selling album out in a few months, and more to follow," Morgan said, amid reports that Cowell's record label is about to sign Boyle.
British bookmakers are already taking bets on Boyle recording a No. 1 UK and U.S. chart hit and appearing in a West End musical before the year is out.
(Editing by Steve Addison)