The Name's Du Xiao Hua, But Call Me Steve
What's up with Chinese people having English names?

By Huan Hsu (SLATE)

Texas state Rep. Betty Brown suggested recently that Asian-Americans should change their names because they're too difficult to pronounce. During public testimony for a voter-ID bill, she asked political activist Ramey Ko (who happens to be my cousin) why Chinese people don't adopt names for "identification purposes" that would be "easier for Americans to deal with." I know I should denounce Brown's coded use of "American" and point out that Ramey and Ko are both easier to handle than, say, Zbigniew and Brzezinski. But, mainly, I'm struck by how dramatically Brown misjudged her audience. If she wants to peddle her renaming plan, she should do it in China.
When I moved to Shanghai about a year ago, I figured my name would finally seem "normal." No longer would it be the albatross of my childhood in Utah—making me stand out among the Johns, Steves, and Jordans. But when I introduced myself, I was met with blank stares, double takes, and requests for my English name. People—Chinese people—often wondered whether I were being patronizing, like the fabled Frenchman who icily responds in English to an earnest American's attempts to get directions en français. My company almost didn't process my paperwork because I left the box for "English name" blank. "You don't have an English name?" the HR woman gasped. "You should really pick one." She then waited for me to do just that, as if I could make such an important existential decision on the spot; I told her I'd get back to her. People—Chinese people—had trouble recalling my name. One guy at work, a Shanghai-born VP, called me "Steve" for almost three months. At my workplace, which is 90 percent mainland Chinese, just about everyone I interacted with had an English name, usually selected or received in school. The names ran the gamut, from the standard (Jackie, Ivy) to the unusual (Sniper, King Kong), but what really struck me was how commonly people used them when addressing one another, even when the rest of the conversation was in Chinese.
To sort out how English names became necessities in China, I recently spent an afternoon with Laurie Duthie, a UCLA doctoral candidate in anthropology who's finishing up her dissertation in Shanghai. Duthie has studied Chinese white-collar workers since 1997 and traces the popularity of English names in China back to the influx of foreign investment following Deng Xiaoping's market reforms. With foreign investment came foreigners, and many of Duthie's research participants told her that they got tired of outsiders butchering their Chinese names, so they adopted English ones. "If Betty Brown's your boss, or if your boss can't say Du Xiao Hua, I'd want to change my name, too," says Duthie.
Increasingly, these bosses are Chinese, yet the English names persist, in part because English tends to be the lingua franca for business technology, and even native Chinese often find it more efficient to type, write, or sign documents in English. Using English names also creates a more egalitarian atmosphere. Most forms of address in China reinforce pecking orders, such as "Third Uncle" and "Second Daughter" at home or "Old Wang" or "Little Hu" in the village square. Your given name—customarily said in full, surname first—is reserved for use by those with equal or higher social standing, and the default honorific for an elder or superior is "Teacher"—no surprise in a country that reveres education. But an English name, other than separating those with and without such names, frees users from these cultural hierarchies.
Given the nationalism I've witnessed in China, I was a bit surprised at how readily Chinese adopted Western names. (Even my Americanized parents were uncomfortable with the idea of me changing my name. They said I could do as I wished when I turned 18, though always in a tone that suggested such an unfilial act would cause them to die of disappointment.) But Duthie's participants insisted that taking an English name isn't kowtowing, nor is it simply utilitarian. Rather, it's essential to being Chinese and achieving Chinese goals. Whereas in the past patriotism was expressed by self-sacrifice, it is now expressed through economic activity. So by working for, say, 3M, Chinese citizens are helping to build up China, and the English names they take on in the process are as patriotic as Cultural Revolution-era monikers like Ai Guo (Loves China) or Wei Dong (Mao's Protector).
Taking English names also fits with various traditional Chinese naming practices. In the past, children were given "milk names" when they were born, and then public names once they started school. Professionals and scholars used pseudonyms, or hao, that signified membership in an educated class. Confucius, born Kong Qiu, sometimes wrote under his zi, or courtesy name, Zhongni. Even now, Chinese sometimes take new names to mark the start of a new job, entry to graduate school, or a marriage, as my coworkers Alpha and Beta did. They subsequently named their son Gamma. (For the record, Alpha is the male.)
For now, English names remain limited to those living in urban areas or with access to education—ask a migrant worker for his English name and you'll get a quizzical look. But as China globalizes, more and more Chinese pass through checkpoints where they'll acquire English names. Since 2001, all primary schools have been required to teach English beginning in the third grade (for big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, lessons start in first grade), and parents regularly choose English names for their children. China now churns out approximately 20 million English speakers each year, and the estimated number of English learners in China is in the hundreds of millions. In fact, there are probably as many Chinese who can read this sentence as Americans.
In the United States, people tend to view names and identities as absolute things—which explains why I agonized over deciding on an English name—but in China, identities are more amorphous. My friend Sophie flits amongst her Chinese name, English name, MSN screen name, nicknames she uses with her friends, and diminutives that her parents call her. "They're all me," she says. "A name is just a dai hao." Dai hao, or code name, can also refer to a stock's ticker symbol.
I still haven't gotten around to choosing an English name. Maybe my being Chinese-American makes me feel like I already have enough identities, or maybe I've at last outgrown my childhood angst. The other day, I asked my friend Zhengyu, a fellow American in China who also doesn't have an English name, why he had never picked one. "At some point I just stopped caring about it," he said. "I like my name, and I think it would be odd to hear another name identified with me." I have to agree with him. After all these years, I've learned to treat my name like a big nose or a conspicuous birthmark—not my favorite feature, but a part of me all the same.

Huan Hsu is a writer in Shanghai.

From The Times
Should you scrap your old car?
As the Government offers £1,000 towards scrapping bangers, it should be tempting to snap up a new model. Trouble is, we’re emotionally attached
Anjana Ahuja
People rarely make rational decisions, an observation that applies to car ownership as much to marriage. Despite the soaring cost of owning a car, we are loath to give them up. Some of that might be down to such factors as convenience and safety — I’d rather be in my own car at 11pm than fidgeting nervously at a bus stop — but some of us can’t even bear to scrap cars that we no longer drive. Even the lure of the £1,000 bounty being offered on disused motors might not be enough to tempt richer drivers to ditch them.
The truth is, many a chariot spends its twilight years rusting in the garage because its driver refuses to acknowledge the inevitable. In this way, a car is rather like a pet: you know that the crotchety, arthritic furball welded to the armchair is unlikely to fulfil its mouse-chasing duties ever again, but you’d never contemplate sending it to the great cattery in the sky.
Blame oxytocin, otherwise known as the trust hormone. This is the chemical that a lactating mother produces as she breastfeeds her newborn. It is the basis of all bonding among humans, and has evolved primarily as a way of keeping parent and child emotionally attached through one of the longest childhoods in the animal kingdom. The hormone is also released during sex, promoting a feeling of warmth and attachment between lovers (again, a sneaky evolutionary trick to try to keep parents together, since two parents are better than one when it comes to the survival of offspring).
Unfortunately, according to Professor Paul Zak at Claremont Graduate University, who has pioneered research in this area, humans are not very discriminating when it comes to seeking things to bond to. We are unusual among mammals for our propensity to bond with strangers, and the professor has carried out experiments showing that our oxytocin levels can rise if someone we’ve never met shows trust in us (by, for example, sending us money in the post and asking for some to be returned).
This hormonal promiscuity, Zak argues, leads us to bond with inanimate objects too, including cars. He points out that we don’t need the physical presence of another person to bond to him or her — online dating is a perfect example of how trust, friendship and even love can be forged through machines rather than skin-to-skin contact. He even believes that when robots become more humanlike, we will be forced to seriously consider the issue of human-android marriages.
I suppose we trust our cars to get us from A to B, but the psychology underlying the car-driver relationship is still quite curious. It is aptly summarised in this quote, which was an attempt to understand why people name cars but not other appliances, such as fridges or lawnmowers. “I think that many of us spend a lot of time with our cars, not just driving/riding in them, but keeping them running, and counting on them to get us places,” says Ed Liebow, an anthropologist at the Battelle Center for Public Health Research in Seattle. “Important things happen to many of us in cars — relationships begin, grow stronger, end — we listen to the radio or sound system, and associate what we hear with powerful emotions. In short, our cars are not just utilitarian appliances. They occupy meaningful places in our lives. And despite being mass-produced, they are individualised.” One website, virtualvow.com, even offers the opportunity for drivers to marry their cars (although, obviously, the nuptials are not legally binding).
I would scoff at all this, were it not for the fact that my husband and I anthropomorphised our first car. His name was Spode (after the Wodehouse character), he was a mallard-green Vanden Plas 1300 and he boasted the most extraordinary gleaming chrome frontage.
According to a piece that I wrote about him in 1995, we endured eight breakdowns in 18 months. But so what! He had a walnut dash, leather seats and Wilton carpets — facilities that gave us great comfort, on repeated occasions, as we waited for the AA.
As I wrote then: “Could we really give up funny old Spode — the friendly wink of his slightly cross-eyed headlamps, the mock nobility of his not-quite Rolls-Royce grille, and a switch-laden dashboard that would look more at home in a light aircraft?”
In the end, we did. Then we acquired a Fiat Multipla. For those unfamiliar with its many charms, this particular model has been described as a “bozz-eyed swamp hog” and by the Financial Times as the “ugliest car in the world”. Some chap called Humberto Rodriguez described it thus: “It has a lot of qualities, but the problem is it looks so bad, like a toy.” Actually, he was Fiat’s head of design and therefore technically responsible for this vehicular abomination.
Sticking two fingers up to the style brigade, we fell for the Multipla’s idiosyncratic looks and practical design. It had three seats in the front, allowing baby to share the upfront motoring experience (Rosa now runs her tissue-and-crumb empire from the back, and baby No 2 has taken over in front). We have, again, become unreasonably attached to our motor (although she doesn’t have a name, and, no, I can’t really explain why the Mutipla is female, although her peculiar bulges might have something to do with it).
And what of Spode? It was love at first sight for Spode’s new owner. Which was just as well, since the door handle fell off as he drove it away.

South Florida downtowns struggling to revitalize
By YUDY PINEIRO MiamiHerald.com
Even before the economy started to stumble, main streets in municipalities across Miami-Dade County struggled to spur business and attract folks.
Tough times have merely piled onto the dilemma, slowing but not strangling the efforts of several cities to revitalize their main streets.
''There's not much you can do to make people go downtown,'' said Homestead Mayor Lynda Bell. ``I think the economy is tough, but I don't think our downtown is challenged by the economy. I think it's challenged, period.''
Downtowns come in all forms -- from strip malls that stretch just a few blocks to full-fledged central business districts with residential components.
Most municipalities define downtown as the nexus of the community. For most, it's usually the point where government meets business. The city halls of Homestead, North Miami, Miami Lakes, Doral and Coral Gables are located in or near their downtown area.
Officials say the way to pump life into a downtown is to create a buzz.
Take Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who recently initiated an effort called Bike Miami that closes some streets to encourage bicyclists, skaters and pedestrians to visit the heart of the city.
Miami Lakes also tried to infuse more life into its struggling main street by hosting music nights and weekend arts and crafts fairs, but while people come out for the events, they don't shop there. So businesses keep coming and going.
''A lot of people just do their shopping in the malls these days,'' said Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi. ``They don't go to the corner shops anymore.''
One city that has managed to create a destination downtown: Coral Gables, where the restaurants and shops are always abuzz with people and Friday's gallery walks draw dozens.
Ashley Norman, spokeswoman for downtown Coral Gables' business improvement district, said it hasn't struggled like other commercial districts. Five businesses have opened downtown since January and at least seven more plan to open soon, she said.
One of the reasons it hasn't been affected as much, Norman said, is because it already had an established brand.
''Also because we have a business improvement district in place. That's the foundation,'' she said. ``Not everybody has the structured resources in place to devote to bringing new businesses and helping businesses in place prosper.''
The success of any downtown is more than just in the branding; it's also in the packaging, according to Nathan Kogan, the planning and zoning director for Doral.
''Our downtown areas here have to have residential because the retail areas will not survive if you don't have that residential component,'' he said. ``Downtowns that have a big residential component are successful, just look at New York.''
Though the 5-year-old city of Doral is only in the beginning stages of forming a downtown, Kogan said he has put an emphasis on mixed-use projects that feature business, retail and residential to ensure the area's growth and vitality.
Two such projects -- Downtown Doral and Park Square -- are currently underway.
The development phase may have slowed somewhat, but not by much because the projects are planned for the long-haul anyway, Kogan said.
''We're not so concerned that these won't get built,'' he said. ``Perhaps with the downturn economy, things may not develop as quickly, but that definitely doesn't put them under.''
Cities in the process of revitalizing already established, yet floundering main streets have felt the economy's punch though. They've even seen quite a few businesses go under.
''Starbucks, ours was one of the first to close. That and Dogma. We lost both of those -- and those are both kind of victims of the economic downturn,'' said Pam Solomon, a spokeswoman for North Miami.
At the same time, North Miami, which has efforts underway to revive its downtown corridor, has had an influx of furnishing stores open in recent months.
''Our downtown district is an older district. It's one that is in the process of transition,'' said Tony Crapp, director of the Community Redevelopment Agency. ``We're just trying to implement programs to assist our business people.''
Homestead Main Street, a historic downtown, also has had a tough time attracting businesses in general, but Bell said the times only have exacerbated the already dire situation because the businesses there are suffering, too.
She's hoping by organizing weekly events such as the Krome Avenue Cruise In and Music in the Park people will make the trek downtown. She also hopes to create a more pedestrian-friendly downtown by pushing to get trucks off Krome Avenue and a more inviting atmosphere by lining the streets with shady oaks.
''You have to create an area that makes people want to come,'' she said. ``I think everything is going to take work, and it's going to take time.''
© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.

medical examiner (Slate)
Gather 'Round the Cadaver
A new book examines photographs of medical students posing with the bodies they dissected.By Barron H. Lerner
The photographs in the remarkable new book Dissection shocked me, even though I spent a year in anatomy class during medical school. Dissection includes dozens of images of late-19th- and early-20th-century medical students posing, often in comedic manners, with cadavers and skeletons—scenes that, from our modern eye, appear disrespectful and unprofessional. Most disturbing of all are photographs, bearing racist inscriptions, of white medical students dissecting African-American cadavers.
Dissection's compilers, John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson, a historian of medicine and a museum curator, respectively, strive to place the often-jarring images in their proper historical context. Still, one has to wonder if some type of apology to these unwitting participants is in order. It is not the first time that medicine has used the bodies of the poor—especially poor blacks—to advance its agenda.
This lost genre of photographs, Edmonson explains, dates roughly from 1880 to 1930. The images, which were taken at medical schools across the country, generally display groups of student dissectors posing with their cadavers. At times, the students—who are mostly male but occasionally female—are actively dissecting. Not surprisingly, many of the cadavers look less like human beings than pieces of meat.
But in other images, especially those involving the skeletons that students used to help identify the bones and other landmarks in their cadavers, the dead are in unnatural positions, either by themselves or with students. A cadaver smokes a pipe; skeletons play cards; skeletons hug their dissectors; skeletons are even propped up to appear as though they are dissecting sleeping students.
At times, the students sketched epigraphs onto the dissecting tables. "She lived for others but died for us," wrote students at the Medical Department of the University of Louisville. "Her loss is our gain," reported students at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Students at the same school wrote, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" on their table. And, perhaps predictably, students at an unknown school hoped that their cadaver would "rest in pieces."
Although there was surely dark humor in these photographs and inscriptions, Warner writes in an essay, they were not candid shots meant primarily to entertain. Indeed, the facial expressions of the participants are often solemn and even reverential at times. It was not uncommon for students to replicate these images on souvenir or holiday greeting cards that they sent to friends and relatives.
How can these photographs be understood? Warner believes that dissection was a "communal rite of passage" for medical students at the turn of the 20th century and the images served as a "professional coming-of-age narrative." This function is made especially clear by a series of "class portraits" in which cadavers appear among dozens of formally attired students. Although the photographs may appear inappropriate to us, Warner argues, they commemorate a bonding experience between student and cadaver that was actually lost after 1930. After that point, he says, a new era of objectivity and detachment entered medical education, ending the earlier emotional attachment to the dissection process.
I dissected my first cadaver in the 1980s—a "politically correct" era. Our introductory anatomy lecture implored us to respect the bodies and even referred to them as our "teachers." The year ended with a memorial service for the now-dissected specimens, another tribute to their memory. Aside from giving our corpses a few silly nicknames, we more or less behaved ourselves.
While Warner and Edmonson are right to emphasize that these photographs come from a very different era, I wish they had raised the issue of contemporaneous objections. Did anyone within the medical schools or among laypeople viewing the various holiday cards decry what was happening, suggesting that the cadavers were inappropriately being used as a means to an end? Whatever society believed about the privileges of future doctors and the fate of the poor, did this justify voyeuristic displays of dead human beings in various comical and indecent states?
Of course, one reason that the images may not have raised objections is that most of those being dissected appear to have been African-Americans, while most of the dissectors were white (although students at African-American medical schools like Howard also dissected black cadavers and took photographs). "Unlike bodies in the anatomy laboratories of American medical schools today, not one of them willed him- or herself to end up there," Warner writes. "These cadavers were either stolen from their graves or claimed by the state. … These were people whose class, ethnicity, race or poverty made them vulnerable to dissection."
Warner rightly makes an analogy to the gruesome lynching photographs of the same era that were also distributed to genteel society through various souvenir cards. In a clever bit of historical detective work, Warner and Edmonson even discover that a particular photographer, G.H. Farnum of Oklahoma, actually took both types of photographs. Some of the dissection images contain racist inscriptions, such as "Sliced Nigger," from the Wake Forest School of Medicine and "All Coons Smell Alike to Us," from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore.
Warner goes on to cite the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, in which the U.S. Public Health Service deliberately withheld treatment for syphilis from poor African-American men from 1932 to 1972. Both Tuskegee and what went on in these anatomy laboratories, he concludes, contribute "to a legacy of distrust against American medical institutions among many people of color."
That is where Dissection leaves things. But I believe the descendants of these anatomical subjects—black and white—deserve some type of apology. Just because we might never identify their actual kin does not render this task unnecessary. Generations of physicians benefited from the use of these bodies—but also chose to treat them in an undignified, and at times repulsive, manner.
I suppose it can be argued that we have had enough apologies from representatives of the medical profession—not only for Tuskegee, the Human Radiation Experiments, and eugenics but most recently for organized medicine's treatment of African-American doctors. Maybe no one is even paying any attention anymore. So here is another suggestion: Every medical school in this country should get a hold of the images in this remarkable volume and show them to incoming students before they set foot in an anatomy lab. The mistakes of their predecessors might impart a needed dose of humility.Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University

From Craigslist

26 in Bay Area

PLEASE: NO hookups! NO instant-sex! NO marriage after 2 dates! lets make it happen like this: hang out as friends to see if we click THEN let's start dating and see where it goes and hopefully we evolve to a LTR - monogamous ONLY. What a perfect world! lol I'm a stable sane yet not boring masculine educated white/mixed race guy with a B.A. and a secure and stable career looking for a good looking guy who's into more things than bar/clubbing 24/7. NO random sex. I've been single by choice for awhile to just get myself all situated and now i'm ready to get back in the dating world see what i catch. I'm hoping something good will happen... I guess the only bad thing i can get is a new friend? Also NOTE: I do not do open relationships, and don't tolerate cheaters . The physicals: hazel eyes brown hair, facial hair trimmed to a go-t 5'8 175 average built smooth, work out about 2-3x per week nothing insane though mainly get my exercise from hiking and outdoor stuff NOT ripped so if you want some olympic guy not your type ha ha and i'm not a lardass so yeah hense 'average' lol. I'm open about anything and VERY blunt so to cut out potential drama I'm a top to top vers, could be vers if you're ripped haha! I'm hard working guy with goals live on my own in my apt on the peninsula, drive and own a car and drive with the top down a alot, NO drugs (ANY) NO smoking (ANY) NO diseases (ANY) and not a heavy drinker or drinker at all. Interest includes outdoorsy/outgoing stuff like: hanging with friends/family, going to the beach/drives/photography, bowling, random adventures, etc to homebody stuff like cooking, dvds, reading games -video/board/card, having guests over and cooking / entertaining etc. So i'm well rounded with interests. Please be in the age range of 18-33 (MAX is 33 in other words, sorry just my taste), educated, sweet, fun and funny, BIG + to lean/athletic guys who take care of themselves (some meat on your bones, not too much into SUPER skinny types, again just being honest) =) but just be good looking, and healthy. Taller than 5'7 is a + too. But short muscular guys are nice too. Now the NON shallow side: hard working, determined in life, and not afriad of being involved with a guy, monogamous, long term is GREAT. lets trade emails & pictures and maybe go out for coffee =) I will send my face pix first if you don't want to, don't care really lol. myspace is great too. Again for the Location Anywhere in the bay (San Francisco /San Jose/Santa Cruz/ Redwood City /East bay area, etc etc) Location: Anywhere in the bay area + Santa Cruz

Child quotas, abortion, and China's missing girls.

By William Saletan (Slate)
Sixteen million girls are missing in China. And now we know what happened to them: They were aborted because they weren't boys.
A study published last week in the British Medical Journal, based on a survey of nearly 5 million Chinese children and teenagers, bares the gruesome numbers. Worldwide, the number of boys born per 100 girls ranges from 103 to 107. (The numbers later equalize due to higher male mortality.) Among Chinese children born from 1985 to 1989, the number of boys per 100 girls was 108, close to normal. But among those born from 2000 to 2004, the number rose to 124. The authors conclude that as of 2005, "males under the age of 20 exceeded females by more than 32 million."
Why so many more boys than girls? The authors point to two factors. First,
[T]he steady rise in sex ratios across the birth cohorts since 1986 mirrors the increasing availability of ultrasonography over that period. The first ultrasound machines were used in the early 1980s; they reached county hospitals by the late 1980s and then rural townships by the mid-1990s. Since then, ultrasonography has been very cheap and available even to the rural poor.
Second, the boy-girl ratio escalates radically among children who were born second or third in their respective families. The authors report:
The sex ratio at birth for first order births was slightly high in cities and towns but was within normal limits in rural areas. However, the ratio rose very steeply for second and higher order births in cities 138 (132 to 144), towns 137 (131 to 143), and rural areas 146 (143 to 149), although the numbers of second order births in cities were low. These rises were consistent across all provinces, except Tibet, with very high figures for second births in Anhui (190, 176 to 205) and Jiangsu (192, 174 to 212). For third births, the sex ratio rose to over 200 in four provinces …
Two hundred boys for every 100 girls. The number is mind-boggling.
Why would the boy-girl ratio rise so precipitously with birth order? Is there something in the Chinese water supply that makes women increasingly likely to bear sons as their families grow? Of course not. But there is something in Chinese law: the "one-child" policy, which limits family size but allows exceptions, with variations from province to province, for couples who have only daughters. Essentially, the exceptions give you a second or, in some cases, a third chance to have a son. That's why, as couples approach the family size limit or the exception allotment, the boy-girl ratio goes up. You get the ultrasound, and if the fetus is a girl, you abort it and try again for a son.
It's a terrible convergence of ancient prejudice with modern totalitarianism. Girls are culturally and economically devalued; the government uses powerful financial levers to prevent you from having another child; therefore, to make sure you can have a boy, you abort the girl you're carrying.
But maybe the story doesn't end there. Maybe the reach and the cold rationality of modern totalitarian government can be turned against the old prejudice. Although the overall male-female ratio rose to 124 in the cohort of Chinese kids born from 2000 to 2004, the authors point out that "the ratio then declined to 119 (119 to 120) for the 2005 cohort, perhaps indicating the beginning of a reduction in sex ratios for the future."
What could account for this decline? The authors explain:
The government is very aware of the problem and has openly expressed concerns about the consequences of large numbers of excess men for societal stability and security. As early as 2000 the government launched a range of policies to specifically counter the sex imbalance, the "care for girls" campaign. This includes changes in laws in areas such as inheritance by females, as well as an educational campaign to promote gender equality. These measures have had some success, with reports of lower sex ratios at birth in targeted localities.
In other words, the quota on children, translated through sexism into a quota on girls, has created a political problem for the government. And this, in turn, has forced the government to confront sexism economically and culturally. This policy change is being driven not by moral enlightenment but by practical necessity. The old problem was too many children. The new problem is too few girls. Without enough girls, the boys become unruly. So the government, following the same collective logic that inspired the one-child policy, has become the world's biggest promoter of sexual equality.
Part of me wishes this turnaround were being driven by a better motive. But perhaps we should be especially relieved that pure self-interest is behind it. If the devaluation of women, and the expression of that devaluation through sex-selective abortion, becomes a broadly understood threat to regimes worldwide, women won't need to persuade men to value and treat girls more fairly. The population numbers will do the talking.
William Saletan (Slate) Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

First day in Phil Spector’s new life brings a strip search, a jumpsuit and a jail cell
Chris Ayres in Los Angeles
His booking number: 1873015. His “housing location”: the Twin Towers Correctional Facility — the world’s largest jail, covering 1.5 million square feet, in a grim industrial area a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
When Phil Spector woke up yesterday morning, the 69-year-old music producer and former Beatles collaborator found himself in surroundings very different from his 30-bedroom “castle” in the suburb of Alhambra.
Gone was his 28-year-old Playboy-model bride. Gone was his chauffeured Mercedes-Benz. Gone also was his usual selection of elaborate wigs, Teddy Boy loafers and pinstriped, long-tailed coats.
He had been found guilty of seconddegree murder for shooting Lana Clarkson, a 40-year-old former
B-movie star whom he picked up from the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, in 2003. After he was booked by the Sheriff’s Department, the Sixties music legend was driven from the courtroom to the Twin Towers facility where he was subjected to the standard pre-admission strip-search, issued with a fluorescent jumpsuit and then shown to his cell in a segregated part of the jail.
It was not known yesterday if he had a cellmate. A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department told The Times that Spector had not been subjected to solitary confinement in “the hole”. “There’s no such thing as ‘the hole’,” he said. “We always separate recognisable or high-profile inmates.”
Spector will almost certainly remain in Twin Towers until his next court appointment on May 29. It is then that Judge Larry Paul Fidler will decide his sentence — a minimum of 18 years, legal experts say — before placing him in state custody. From there he will be sent to one of California’s state prisons. By the time he completes his sentence he will be at least 87 years old.
Having spent the past six years living in semi-freedom on $1 million bail — during which he sat silently through not one but two murder trials, the first of which was rendered void when the jury could not reach a verdict — Spector must have dreaded being taken into custody.
Yet for a long time after the murder it looked as if he might walk away a free man. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times claimed yesterday that Spector was the first celebrity found guilty of murder on Hollywood’s home turf in at least 40 years, after the infamous acquittals of O. J. Simpson, the football player, and Robert Blake, the ex-Baretta TV actor.
When the verdict was read out in court, the prosecution team celebrated as both Spector’s wife and the jury forewoman wept. Spector briefly gaped before returning to his blank frown. “He took it very stoically,” said Doron Weinberg, his defence lawyer. “He wanted to know what is next.”
The answer to his question is twofold: he will almost certainly face ruinous wrongful-death lawsuits from his victim’s family, and his legal team will begin an appeal. In the meantime, he will remain at the Twin Towers jail at 450 Bauchet Street, a mere nine miles or 15 minutes away from his former life and former home.

Modern life's pressures may be hastening human evolution
By ROBERT S. BOYD McClatchy Newspapers
We're not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.
In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.
Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.
Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists," said Robert Wald Sussman, the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.
"Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one," Sussman said in an e-mail message.
The still-controversial concept of "ongoing evolution" was much discussed recently at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago.
It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion," by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
"For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago," Harpending said. "Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued."
In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend that "human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. ... The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history."
Evolutionary changes result when random mutations or damage to DNA from such factors as radiation, smoking or toxic chemicals create new varieties of genes. Some gene changes are harmful, most have no effect and a few provide advantages that are passed on to future generations. If they're particularly beneficial, they spread throughout the population.
"Any gene variant that increases your chance of having children early and often should be favored," Cochran said in an e-mail message.
This is the process of "natural selection," which Charles Darwin proposed 150 years ago and is still the heart of modern evolutionary theory.
For example, a tiny change in a gene for skin color played a major role in the evolution of pale skin in humans who migrated from Africa to northern Europe, while people who remained in Africa kept their dark skin. That dark skin protected Africans from the tropical sun's dangerous ultraviolet rays; northerners' lighter skin allowed sunlight to produce more vitamin D, important for bone growth.
Another set of gene variants produced a different shade of light skin in Asia.
"Asians and Europeans are both bleached Africans, but they evolved different bleaches," Harpending said.
Despite modern medical and technological advances, the pressures that lead to evolution by natural selection have continued.
The massive AIDS epidemic that's raging in southern Africa, for example, is "almost certainly" causing gene variants that protect against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, to accumulate in the African population, Harpending said.
When he was asked how many genes currently are evolving, Harpending replied: "A lot. Several hundred at least, maybe over a thousand."
Another anthropologist, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, "Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold."
A key reason, Hawks said, is the enormous growth of the world's population, which multiplies the size of the gene pool available to launch new varieties.
"Today, beneficial mutation must be happening far more than ever before, since there are more than 6 billion of us," Cochran said.
The changes are so rapid that "we could, in the very near future, compare the genes of old people and young people" to detect newly evolving genes, Cochran said. Skeletons from a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago also might provide evidence of genetic change.
"Human evolution didn't stop when anatomically modern humans appeared or when they expanded out of Africa," Harpending said. "It never stopped."

Another long pitch from CraigsList: 28 West Bay
Well, I have to say it has been twenty eight years of ups and downs. Mostly the downs I think are good in a lot of ways. (I always try to be optimistic) You take all of the trials and learn from them in your future. It makes your charactor a lot stronger. I take pride in who I am and where I come from. I don't know what the future will bring, but I certainly know who holds the future. Tenacity is my middle name. As one by who has magnificant work ethic. Always working so hard at so many things. I like to juggle many tasks at once. My friends call me a one man band. I have many exuberant goals in life. A customer asked me once, being sarcastic, "Can you tell me the meaning of life"? A co-worker answered, "To live a happy life." Sometimes things do not work out the way they should, but if you never forget your asperations and what you want your life to be, you will always live happily. Since I have turned 28 I have learned many things. I believe the past few years have been the years of enlightenment for me. Ways to implement love and to learn to share more with others no matter which walk of life you come from. Self exploration and self discovery has been amazing. I keep turning the pages because I want to learn more and more. It is challenging to ALWAYS come from love within your heart instead of fear. Even if it is having a conversation with close loved one or stranger on the street. Somehow, I get lost in the past or the future instead of being present in the now. It is something I work on daily along with wanting and asking more from the universes. Mastering this will not be easy, but with practice soon enough, it will be second nature. -This body I hold, this skin I caress I want to nuture these bones and body of organs I hold In my arms you inhale life, breath to breath Every eyelash speakes to me Tender words unspoken Mind, body, speech Mental peace tantric soul harmony Deep and blind infinate ocean But I can see you, it is so clear You take my breath away... About Me: I am spanish/italian/french ethnicity five feet eight and one hundred sixty five pounds average build with shape. Great smile and cute face. Brown hair and brown eyes. I am pretty shy at first and then when I warm up I can let my funny side out. I love to laugh and be wacky. I am pretty low key. Movies, dvd's, shopping in the city, cuddling, kissing, dining, and dancing occasionally. Who I want to meet: I am looking for a great guy with a wonderful personallity. Personallity counts a lot to me. Good looking guys are a plus. Im not looking for ripped abs but, more so average build. Height requirements are flexable. I am looking for men between the ages of twenty eight and thirty three ideally. Preferably in the peninsula and or San francisco. If you would not mind attaching some photographs in your reply, that would be awsome. Being that I have posted four in my ad, I think that is fair. If you have time give me a little synapse of who you are and what you are looking for. Please feel free to ask questions you would like to know about me as well. Thank You for talking the time to read my posting and if It has sparked your interest do not hesitate to respond. Take Good Care...

The Pirates and Us
by Tina Brown
That a ragtag band of pirates fended off America's finest for five days is eerily reflective of what’s been going on in landlocked American business.
Another coup for Obama! This guy has winner’s luck. Unlike Jimmy Carter’s doomed rescue mission in Tehran, this time we got the glorious moment when Navy SEALs grabbed brave Captain Richard Phillips from the pirates who’d held him hostage for five days in a floating oven, and finished off the bastards.
It was beginning to be a sore point for America’s self-image. No one could understand how a ragtag band of four renegade freelancers could board a sturdy U.S.-flagged container ship and defy the mighty U.S. Navy, which seemed to stand by impotently while lawyers and FBI negotiators figured out what to do.
The “business model” of the new piracy marries low cunning with an alphabet of high-tech acronyms. With their GPS devices, RPGs, and AK-47s, they’ve been defying the world for two years. Our $800 million destroyer Bainbridge (ironically named after a Navy commodore whose ship was captured by pirates in the early 1800s) was forced to hang around beside the pirates’ hijacked lifeboat, offering them food and even providing batteries for their two-way radio, so negotiators could continue to talk to them. The threat of these impudent maritime muggers has reduced cargo ships to defending themselves with techniques that seem almost comically derived from The Dangerous Book for Boys. Stand by to repel boarders with…fire-retardant foam, water hoses, and super-slippery goo on bulwarks and decks. Even more fun ideas for your next kiddie birthday party.
The pirate drama feels like the perfect high-seas counterpart of what’s been going on in landlocked American business for some time: Big lumbering corporate entities hover on bankruptcy and plead for bailouts; baffled media companies beef about the Web insurgency; the Google boys rewrite the whole Web environment while mighty Microsoft is asleep; a football-scholarship kid called Howard Schultz comes into the beverage business and soon dwarfs everyone else with Starbucks; a Johnny-come-lately Japanese company, Toyota, humbles historic General Motors. And The New York Times reports that new, smaller risk-taking companies, staffed by the most talented employees who’ve left the struggling super-banks, are challenging the dominance of the financial behemoths who helped to fuel the financial crisis. Says Professor Matthew Richardson at NYU: “If the risk-taking spreads out to these smaller institutions, it is not longer a systemic threat. ”In short, the mantra that the giants got bailouts because they were too big to fail is a fallacy. They weren’t. They were too big to succeed.
It all underlines how vulnerable we are to enemies and competitors who are not dulled by excess money and sclerotic management layers. We were given a horrific version of the same thing on 9/11 and, even more, in the long Bushian aftermath. While America was obsessing about nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction, it was box cutters and flying lessons that brought down the World Trade Center, and a sneaky low-tech rabble insurgency that tied down U.S. military in Iraq for five years.
But there has also been much to love about the pirate episode: Captain Richard Phillips, who saved America’s honor by offering himself as a hostage and spent the days in a hijacked enclosed lifeboat with no toilets, little air flow, and jumpy bad guys with guns until his rescue. What the news headlines at the moment are telling us is that dedicated individuals, not bloated corporations, are what American greatness is all about. First, Captain Sully, with his cool competence, and now Captain Phillips, with his uncomplicated courage. They may not be “masters of the universe,” but they are masters of something more important: themselves.
The exploits of such heroes keep breaking through the relentless beat of bad news with indomitable retro derring-do. Except, of course, it’s not retro at all. There are plenty of quiet tough guys like Sully and Phillips and those Navy SEALs who are getting on with their lives all over the country and fighting for us in godawful places. That’s why 20 percent of Americans now think the economy is getting better compared with 7 percent in mid-January. They know that if we can only cut through the self-serving corridors of power, the corrupted banking system and the rusting superstructures of outmoded industries this country will swiftly turn around. And it’s determined men and women, not flailing governments or propped-up corporations, who’ll do it—many of them the very people who either had the gumption to jump ship or whose talents the behemoths never understood anyway and laid off.
Tina Brown is the founder and editor in chief of The Daily Beast. .

Death on the high seas as pirates put to the sword
A daring French commando raid brought a five-day hostage crisis to a bloody end
Matthew Campbell in Paris (From the Times)
PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the rescue mission off the Somali coast that ended in tragedy when a young French yachtsman was killed as commandos stormed a vessel being held by pirates, releasing his wife and three-year-old son.
For the first time yesterday, details emerged of an extraordinary rescue operation piloted from the Elysée Palace. It involved three French warships, a German frigate and the airdrop of dozens of French commandos some 400 miles off the African coast.
After two successful armed assaults to save citizens from yachts in the same waters last year, Sarkozy’s luck appears to have run out. Florent Lemaçon, a 28-year-old computer programmer from Brittany, was shot dead as his wife, their son and two friends were rescued from their yacht.
The drama, in which two pirates were killed and three taken prisoner, is certain to raise questions about the muscular approach adopted by “Sarko”, the “omnipresident” who relishes the role of commander-in-chief. It may also give pause to America’s military, which was threatening action yesterday against pirates holding a US captain who had thwarted their efforts to hijack his container ship.
Hervé Morin, the French defence minister, said yesterday that he could not rule out the possibility that Lemaçon, described by friends as an “idealist” intent on escaping the rat race, was killed by a French bullet as commandos boarded his yacht, the Tanit. The 36ft craft had been heading towards the Kenyan port of Mombasa when it was seized by pirates on April 4, 400 miles off Ras Hafun in northeastern Somalia.
It emerged yesterday that Sarkozy had dispatched 50 commandos from France to a French base at Djibouti, on the “horn” of Africa, on Thursday, in readiness for the assault.
Joined locally by 20 more commandos, they parachuted from a Hercules plane into the sea, to be picked up by three French warships that had been tracking the pirates, together with a German frigate equipped with hospital facilities.
Somali-speaking intelligence operatives had joined negotiations with the pirates on Wednesday, but found them “intransigent”.
On Thursday shots were fired at the Tanit to disable its sails: the French were determined to prevent the craft, whose engine was not working, from reaching the shore, a pirate haven where dozens of hostages from other vessels have been held for ransom and from where it would have been almost impossible to launch a rescue.
Sarkozy, who throughout the negotiations held regular meetings with his generals in the Elysée, ordered the rescue mission on Friday morning when the Tanit, which had continued drifting towards shore after its sails were destroyed, was only 20 miles from the coast. It was feared the hostages might be taken ashore that night by a pirate speedboat.
The defence ministry said the pirates had refused a French offer to transport them ashore and had turned down a ransom – the amount was not specified. The pirates had also dismissed an offer of exchanging the mother and child for a French soldier. Instead, they were overheard discussing using explosives to blow up the yacht.
After Sarkozy had given his order there was a delay in executing it. “We waited until three of the five pirates appeared on the deck,” General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the army chief of staff, told Le Journal du Dimanche, the French newspaper.
French snipers opened fire, instantly killing two of the pirates. Another was said to have fallen overboard. Some 60 commandos then boarded Zodiac dinghies and approached the yacht. Only eight went aboard, guns at the ready.
Chloé, Lemaçon’s wife, and Colin, their three-year-old son, were rescued from a cabin in the stern of the craft. Dorian Pierre and Steven Ménoret, friends of the Lemaçons, were rescued from a cabin in the bow.
The two remaining pirates were hiding below deck where Lemaçon, the captain, was being held separately from the others. They began to fire their Kalashnikov assault rifles up through the deck, prompting return fire from the French troops preparing to rush down the companionway.
The pirates were quickly overpowered. The mission had taken only six minutes.
The survivors are being flown to Paris today aboard an aircraft chartered by the defence ministry. They will be invited to a meeting in the Elysée with Sarkozy. He has offered his condolences for the death of Lemaçon.
“Sadly, a hostage died,” said a statement from Sarkozy’s office. It emphasised the president’s “determination not to give in to blackmail and to defeat the pirates”.
An autopsy was being conducted as well as an official investigation to determine whether Lemaçon had been killed by French troops or by his captors.
“A zero-risk operation of this nature does not exist,” said Morin, who called the assault the “most feasible solution”.
He went on: “I think it was the best decision possible, the pirates absolutely wanted to take the hostages to the Somalian coast and as soon as that happened we would no longer be able to assure control of them or assure their security.”
Whoever was to blame, the death is likely to stir up emotions in France: the family’s travels from their native Brittany had been followed by many on an internet website. It described their endless difficulties in renovating an old boat on a limited budget.
They set off from Vannes on the Brittany coast in July last year, chronicling their leisurely path down the Spanish coast and into the Mediterranean. They were plagued by repeated mechanical mishaps, including the failure of their engine, but called it a “dream” voyage “to escape consumer society”.
They wanted to visit Kenya and the “spice island” of Zanzibar off the Tanzanian coast. They had also spoken of travelling on to the Seychelles.
In Egypt, while crossing the Suez Canal, they happened to bump into a French couple whose yacht, the 50ft Carré d’As, had been seized during September 2008 by pirates who had demanded a ransom of ¤1m (then £800,000). The couple were freed in a daring rescue mission by French frogmen in which one pirate was killed and six were captured. No ransom was paid.
Sarkozy had also ordered an assault to free the 30 crew members — including 22 French citizens — of the Ponant, a 289ft luxury yacht which had been seized the previous April with no passengers on board.
In that operation, French troops later captured six of the 12 pirates after pursuing them ashore in helicopters and recovered some of the $2m (then £1m) ransom. All the captured pirates have been taken to Paris where they are awaiting trial. The latest three to be captured will soon join them.
The Lemaçons were not to be deterred by the risks. In their blog they described the other couple’s account of being held hostage as “impressive” but also “reassuring” because it was clear to them that the pirates were motivated more by money than any interest in harming westerners.
“The danger exists,” Lemaçon wrote in his blog, “and it has probably grown in the course of these past few months, but the ocean is vast. The pirates must not be allowed to annihilate our dream.”
Two friends came out to join them in Yemen as “reinforcements” for the dangerous part of the journey. Lemaçon was in regular contact with French naval vessels as they approached the Gulf of Aden.
According to the defence ministry, the Tanit was warned, in no uncertain terms, to stay away from the region. “They were told that it would be reckless in the extreme to attempt the trip down to Kenya,” said a defence ministry spokesman. “They were told that the threat from pirates was greater than ever. Frankly, it is baffling to us that the warnings were not heeded.”
Lemaçon’s father has denied that any such warnings were given. He says his son was an experienced sailor who had mentioned “friendly contacts” with the captain of the Floréal, a French frigate taking part in the European Union’s anti-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden.
He says the advice from the navy was simply to avoid the shipping lanes and to stay far out to sea. In his last entry in the blog, Lemaçon says another safety measure they had decided upon was to turn off all lights at night. But such precautions have failed to save even the biggest freighters from the ransom hunters in Somali waters.
Among the pirates’ prize catches last year were a Saudi supertanker carrying 2m barrels of oil and a Ukrainian ship laden with 33 tanks.
The pirates had started off as fishermen. But taking advantage of the anarchy that has plagued Somalia ever since warlords toppled Mohamed Siad Barre, the former dictator, in 1991, they have run rings around the European warships plying the Gulf of Aden in a bid to protect shipping.
The pirates, who use grappling hooks to clamber their way onto the decks of cargo ships, hold some 250 hostages, including 92 Filipinos, from 16 vessels. Most are detained in the pirate lair of Puntland in northeastern Somalia.
There was sadness yesterday in Vannes. François Goulard, the mayor, said “there was something idealistic about that couple”, adding that he had been “devastated” by the news of Lemaçon’s death: “I knew that an intervention was possible but I never expected it to end like this.”
“He was a serious sailor who carefully prepared his trip,” said Michel Petit, president of the local sailing club. “He and his wife were truly passionate about the sea and about their project. It is very sad.”
- Pirates seized a US-owned tugboat, the MV Buccaneer, with a crew including 10 Italians yesterday in the Gulf of Aden.

Original Beatles Albums to Be Reissued
By ALLAN KOZINN (NY Times)
Finally. After watching the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, devote the last few years to developing a site-specific show in Las Vegas, a video game and a line of pricey memorabilia, Beatles fans are finally getting something they’ve been demanding for at least the last decade: sonically upgraded reissues of the group’s original British albums, in stereo and mono. Apple Corps and EMI announced on Tuesday that the much-postponed remasters would be released on individual stereo CDs and in two boxed sets — one stereo, the other mono — on Sept. 9, the same day the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the music video game, is scheduled for release.
Downloadable versions of this music, however, remain in limbo. In December Paul McCartney said that they were being held up because of a dispute between Apple Corps and EMI. More recently, Dhani Harrison, George Harrison’s son, suggested that Apple Corps was dissatisfied with the price Apple, the computer company, was charging for iTunes downloads, and hinted that the Beatles might sell digital downloads through a system of their own. That could be resolved by September as well.
Like the original set of Beatles CDs, released in 1987 and not upgraded since, the reissue series will include only the 12 albums the Beatles released in Britain between 1963 and 1970, from “Please Please Me” through “Let It Be,” along with “Magical Mystery Tour” — an American album that was originally released as a two-EP set in England — and the two-CD “Past Masters” compilation of the group’s nonalbum singles. All told, the set includes 16 CDs. (Beatles projects are typically tightly guarded; few outside EMI have heard the remasters yet.) Compilations released since 1987, including the “Beatles Anthology” series, “The Beatles Live at the BBC,” “Yellow Submarine Songtrack,” “1” and “Love,” the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, are not included in the new series. Nor are the two “Capitol Albums” boxed sets, which presented several of the Beatles’ albums in the versions released in the United States.
The main reason collectors have been so intent on reissues of music they already own is that the 1987 CDs, like many discs released in the early years of the format, sound comparatively harsh and brittle by today’s standards. Since then, improvements in digital sound technology and remastering equipment have yielded a richer, smoother sound, and most of the major groups and artists from the 1960s — from Bob Dylan, the Byrds and Simon and Garfunkel to the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd — have had their catalogs refurbished at least once since their first appearance on CD. And the Beatles’ own recent releases, including the “Capitol Albums” and “Love” discs, showed that the band’s recordings could sound vastly better — warmer and with far greater presence — than they do on the 1987 discs.
Even so, remastering can be a dicey business: noise-reduction techniques can slice away the high frequencies of a recording, dulling the treble sound (in return for eliminating tape hiss). EMI’s remastering team apparently took this into consideration: the company’s production notes mention that fewer than five of the 525 minutes of music were subjected to noise reduction. The new transfers were done using a high-resolution Pro Tools system, and each track was compared with both its vinyl LP and 1987 CD incarnations.
This is largely what collectors have been looking for. But Beatles fans are an exacting bunch, and the release plan gives them some cause for complaint as well. The stereo CDs include video documentaries, directed by Bob Smeaton (“The Beatles Anthology”), about the making of each album. But these will be available only on early pressings, and there are otherwise no bonus tracks, outtakes or extras.
Moreover, the group’s first seven albums (through “Revolver”) include only about 25 minutes of music. The mono and stereo versions of each — collectors prize both because of anomalies like different vocal takes, instrumental lines or effects — could have fit on a single CD with room to spare. In many cases, the contemporaneous singles could have fit as well, making the “Past Masters” set superfluous.
The mono boxed set, in fact, demonstrates this. Because the stereo CDs will include George Martin’s 1987 remixes of “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” — mixes that have been the subject of much criticism and debate among Beatles fanatics — the mono CDs of those albums will include both the mono and the original 1965 stereo mixes of those albums.
Those are, however, available only in the mono boxed set, which includes the 10 albums (through “The Beatles,” popularly known as the “White Album”) that were mixed separately for mono and stereo in the ’60s, as well as a mono equivalent of “Past Masters.” (An 11th album, “Yellow Submarine,” was also released in mono, but the mono version was just a folded-down version of the stereo mix.) The stereo boxed set has a minor attraction as well: the documentaries included on the individual discs are offered here on a separate DVD, a format many collectors will prefer. An Apple Corps spokesman said that prices were not yet available.
Having spent years fantasizing about the ideal reissue series, collectors will also be disappointed about the high-tech opportunities that Apple Corps and EMI did not take. Although many collectors insist that only the ’60s original mono and stereo mixes will do, others, impressed with some of the remixes on the “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” — the version of “Nowhere Man” with centered vocals, for example — had been hoping EMI’s engineers would return to the original multitrack session tapes and use the flexibility of today’s equipment to prepare fresh mixes. And the 5.1 surround-sound mixes included on “The Beatles Anthology” DVDs and the “Love” album had collectors hoping that EMI would release all the original albums in surround.
The wildest dreamers hoped the reissues would be all things to all collectors: Blu-ray DVDs, for example, with the original mono and stereo mixes, a surround mix and a raft of outtakes.
But collectors can look on the bright side: the reissues are imminent, but there is still so much to continue to clamor for. That still elusive 27-minute outtake of “Helter Skelter,” anyone?

From CraigsList

I'm just a guy with a very innocent boyish quality. I have enjoyed two great relationships and wish to share the next chapter with a loving young man who truely wants to be loved and cared about, someone who would be happy in a closed relationship full of warmth, comfort and trust. I am a masculine str8 type guy my hobbies and interests vary and include but not limited to: Playin sports I love physical contact:)....cars, I'm a born engineer/ fabricator...designing and building custom cars and hotrods is my artistic outlet....remodeling my house and landscaping is fun...Typical homeowner stuff....traveling when time and finances allow...and most of all just sharring the day to day adventure with someone U love:) As maturity and wisdom have no age limits...I'm not terribly interested in the stats shopping games so popular in the community...all I do require is the physical ability and want to be very active:) if this interests U, please feel welcome to write and introduce yourself :) Pictures are welcome and rate priority as we all know physical attraction is the first factor for pairing up:) Thanks for your time and hopefully interest:) Oh..and for the obligitory shallow stats: Wht, 6ft,180, blond, athletic build, Vers,7x5 cut....