How to be a modern gentleman - Telegraph

How to be a modern gentleman - Telegraph

The Tweets of War

Hitler spent decades plotting his campaign for world domination. Alwyn Collinson, 24, a recent graduate in Renaissance history from Oxford University, hatched his own plan to invade Poland in a mere five days. On Aug. 26 Mr. Collinson was just a marketing manager at a magazine in Oxford toying with the notion of starting some kind of a real-time Twitter project that would get people’s attention — maybe something like Orson Welles’s 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, but that wouldn’t scare them to death.

Then suddenly he hit on the idea of tweeting the biggest terrestrial war of all time, and on Aug. 31 — roughly 72 years to the hour after Hitler’s tanks moved across the frontier — the Twitter feed RealTimeWWII was under way. By Nov. 9, the same date in 1939 that two British spies were captured by the SS at the Dutch border town of Venlo, the total followers had hit 45,000. Last week Mr. Collinson had more than 140,000 followers, dwarfing the numbers for similar feeds like@ukwarcabinet (based on documents from the National Archives in Britain detailing Winston Churchill’s cabinet debates in 1941). “Those who forget history are doomed to re-tweet it,” declares the tag line of TwHistory, an educational Web site that began in 2009 with a re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in salvoes of 140 characters or less. So, apparently, are those who remember it.

One can hardly spend an hour on Twitter without getting caught up in a blow-by-blow account of theCivil War, Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed 1911 polar expedition or the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, not to mention a welter of biographical offerings from the likes of Paul Revere, John Quincy Adams, Churchill and Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century London diarist, who has amassed more than 22,000 followers. Pepys’s maid, Jane Birch, even has a feed — or at least she did until last March, when she abruptly quit after posting complaints about her employer’s incessant snoring and incontinent dog.

Mr. Collinson puts an appealingly modest face on his wildly immodest project. Last Tuesday, while Hitler was berating his generals for their lack of faith in his ultimate triumph — “dramatic irony stuff,” Mr. Collinson said — he was busy putting the finishing touches on a marketing schedule for Daily Information, the magazine where he holds down a job while pumping out up to 40 war-related tweets a day, timed as much as possible to the precise hour. (The social media tool SocialOomph helps him schedule posts for times when he’s supposed to be working or sleeping.)

When the project began, Mr. Collinson relied mainly on “a few authoritative books,” he said, along with whatever he could find via Google. But over time his readers have led him to some far-flung and obscure sources. One reader sent him an article from a Polish newspaper describing an assassination attempt against Hitler in Oct. 1939 that went unmentioned in the timelines he was consulting. Others sent links to relatives’ wartime diaries, posted on little-read blogs.

Professional historians have been mostly sympathetic to Mr. Collinson’s approach. Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale and the author of “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” said “These kinds of tweets restore to the past the authentically confusing character of the present.”

Other blow-by-blow historical Twitter efforts have run aground. @PatriotCast, a feed devoted to the Revolutionary War with some 2,600 followers, abruptly ceased operations last January with the rather anticlimactic announcement that “a large shipment of gunpowder has arrived in Egg Harbor, N.J.” @MonticelloTJ, a feed based on Thomas Jefferson’s diaries, went silent in Sept. 2010, following weeks of bland remarks about the weather and the state of Monticello’s millet field. More controversially a 10th-anniversary Sept. 11 feed put together by The Guardian in Britain shut down after a mere 16 tweets, following a public outcry.

Mr. Collinson said he is mindful of issues of taste as he approaches the Holocaust. But he’s also determined to stick to his neutral, just-the-facts approach, even as the internationalization of the feed has opened his eyes to the limitations of his own British perspective. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of Chinese history at the University of California, Irvine, points out that that bias was evident from Mr. Collinson’s first tweet. The Chinese, after all, date the beginning of World War II not to Hitler’s invasion of Poland but to the Japanese invasion of North China in 1937.

Edited from an article by JENNIFER SCHUESSLER Published in The New York Times onNovember 27, 2011

With Time Running Short, Steve Jobs Managed His Farewells - NYTimes.com

With Time Running Short, Steve Jobs Managed His Farewells - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

10 reasons to dread turning 50

Here are 10 reasons why I’m dreading turning 50:

1. I’ll be entering my sixth decade.

2. My libido will officially be declared dead. Kingsley Amis said he found the decline of his libido a liberating experience and compared his younger self to a man “tethered to a goat”. But I do not relish the prospect of losing my sexual appetite.

3. My children will become teenagers. Small children = small problems; big children = big problems. Happily, three of my four children are boys and boys can’t get pregnant.

4. The older you get, the quicker time passes and it’s a safe bet that the second half of my life will race by at least twice as fast as the first. It follows that when I turn 50, even if I live another until I’m 100, two-thirds of my life will be over.

5. I don’t have a pension. Maybe I should have put that one further up.

6. You experience a rapid deterioration in your short-term memory and I’m already suffering from that, thank you very much.

7. If you have the face you deserve at 40, what sort of face do you have at 50?

8. Both my parents died of cancer. Fifty rhymes with “Big C”.

9. 40 is the new 30, but 50 is 50 whichever way you look at it. That means that between 40 and 50 I’ll age 20 years.

10. You experience a rapid deterioration in your short-term memory.

By Toby Young, The Telegraph, 4th August 2011 

28 Creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentation Designs

28 Creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentation Designs

Subbuteo is still very much alive and flick-to-kicking | Rob Smyth | Football | The Observer

Subbuteo is still very much alive and flick-to-kicking | Rob Smyth | Football | The Observer
In the Little English Book of Borderline Racist Stereotypes, any mention of the little guys in Sicily would usually involve Joe Pesci-type figures who specialise in an unorthodox and unlicensed form of kneecap surgery. This weekend, however, there is a different connotation. The only things broken will be hearts, dreams and maybe a couple of plastic kneecaps. In Palermo on Sunday evening, the two-day Subbuteo World Cup will conclude.It may seem little more than an endearingly trivial pursuit, but this is serious stuff. Take a look at the YouTube video (20,389 views and counting) of Eric Verhagen scoring the winning goal in the 2008 final. At first he slides to his knees; then he runs off on a lap of honour (admittedly, the fact he is in what looks like a school gym rather than the Maracanã does slightly reduce the grandeur of his celebration) before almost breaking down in tears.The World Cup was even shown on Channel 4 in 1990 – with, and you'll like this, a co-commentator. In the same tournament, one parent spat in the direction of his son's opponent during a match. Anti-football has nothing on anti-Subbuteo. The other boy withstood that and other attempts at intimidation to triumph 2-1 in injury time, at which point he shouted "Justice" into the camera.Three years earlier, a 16-year-old called Justin Finch made the front page of some newspapers after insuring his right hand for £160,000. Subbuteo's appeal has inevitably waned since then, but, despite competition from PlayStations, Xboxes and actually getting off your derrière to play the real thing, it is still much more popular than we might expect for such a quaint game.Much of the appeal is simple nostalgia. If you don't have a DeLorean to go back in time, it makes sense to bring the past to the present. Retro culture will always be popular, but, as a new-age analyst of all things retro might say, it's in a particularly good place right now. Packets of Monster Munch proudly announce, in large lettering, that they are "OLD!" There are umpteen TV channels showing classic episodes (or, as they used to be called, repeats), while pop isn't the only thing that eats itself: cinema, fashion, art and sport are all increasingly drawing on the past.Even for those who haven't played Subbuteo for decades, the memories of those pre-teenage kicks (and flicks) invariably remain vivid. When it comes to words and phrases that evoke childhood, "Subbuteo" is up there with "nappies", "I want my Mummy" and "We have a varied school-dinner menu today: warm beetroot or cold beetroot".You have not truly known joy until you have lovingly opened a box containing 11 little men who represent the Verona side of 1984-85. The smaller they are, the bigger the Proustian rush. For those of a certain age and disposition, having a memory box without a Subbuteo figure in it is as nonsensical as having a pop song without a chorus.Everyone has their particular memory of the game. For some, it was the last day of term at primary school, when the atmosphere was so unusually relaxed you could wear what you wanted, the boys and girls actually spoke to each other, and, best of all, you could play Subbuteo all day. In the summer of 1987, there was one clown who reached the final of our class cup competition by boring his way to the final with a series of 1-0s and 0-0s. Okay, that clown was me. Argentina haven't formally admitted this was the inspiration for their path to the Italia 90 final, but it's a hell of a coincidence.Those little men were often cared for with the tender affection usually reserved for family pets. If one of them snapped his leg – or was scrunched into tiny pieces by the boot of an angry sibling – any attempt to hold back the tears was futile. Somewhere in the world, there must surely have been a formal Subbuteo funeral, a little man buried solemnly in the back garden after dying for the cause.Other memories are of the kid who always insisted on playing by the strictest rules, most of which he'd probably made up (no, that wasn't me); of a different kind of shooting pain, when you would flick just a fraction too hard and feel a sharp pain in your fingernail; and of the moment that really put the beauty in Subbuteo, scoring from a free-kick. Whether the ball was subtly chipped over the wall, elegantly curled around it or, more likely, belaboured right through the wall with murderous intent, did not really matter.It's often said the best things in life are free; tell that to Subbuteo tragics. It's an expensive hobby and, as Guardian writer Scott Murray has pointed out, an under-appreciated part of Subbuteo's appeal is its ability to engage the obsessive in all of us. Anality is the unsung hero of Subbuteo.You can buy all sorts of accessories: stadiums, floodlights, scoreboards, TV cameras, fans. They haven't yet produced a TV pundit in unfeasibly tight trousers who abuses the word 'literally', but it's bound to happen.There will be a real live crowd in Palermo on Sunday night, a reflection of the enduring affection for a game that has defied such piddling concepts as logic and modernity to retain a place in the cultural consciousness.

What Egypt Can Teach America - NYTimes.com

What Egypt Can Teach America - NYTimes.com

It’s a new day in the Arab world — and, let’s hope, in American relations to the Arab world.

The truth is that the United States has been behind the curve not only in Tunisia and Egypt for the last few weeks, but in the entire Middle East for decades. We supported corrupt autocrats as long as they kept oil flowing and weren’t too aggressive toward Israel. Even in the last month, we sometimes seemed as out of touch with the region’s youth as a Ben Ali or a Mubarak. Recognizing that crafting foreign policy is 1,000 times harder than it looks, let me suggest four lessons to draw from our mistakes:

1.) Stop treating Islamic fundamentalism as a bogyman and allowing it to drive American foreign policy. American paranoia about Islamism has done as much damage as Muslim fundamentalism itself.

In Somalia, it led the U.S. to wink at a 2006 Ethiopian invasion that was catastrophic for Somalis and resulted in more Islamic extremism there. And in Egypt, our foreboding about Islamism paralyzed us and put us on the wrong side of history.

We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we’ve treated the Arab world as just an oil field.

Too many Americans bought into a lazy stereotype that Arab countries were inhospitable for democracy, or that the beneficiaries of popular rule would be extremists like Osama bin Laden. Tunisians and Egyptians have shattered that stereotype, and the biggest loser will be Al Qaeda. We don’t know what lies ahead for Egypt — and there is a considerable risk that those in power will attempt to preserve Mubarakism without Mr. Mubarak — but already Egyptians have demonstrated the power of nonviolence in a way that undermines the entire extremist narrative. It will be fascinating to see whether more Palestinians embrace mass nonviolent protests in the West Bank as a strategy to confront illegal Israeli settlements and land grabs.

2.) We need better intelligence, the kind that is derived not from intercepting a president’s phone calls to his mistress but from hanging out with the powerless. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, there was a painful post-mortem about why the intelligence community missed so many signals, and I think we need the same today.

In fairness, we in the journalistic community suffered the same shortcoming: we didn’t adequately convey the anger toward Hosni Mubarak. Egypt is a reminder not to be suckered into the narrative that a place is stable because it is static.

3.) New technologies have lubricated the mechanisms of revolt. Facebook and Twitter make it easier for dissidents to network. Mobile phones mean that government brutality is more likely to end up on YouTube, raising the costs of repression. The International Criminal Court encourages dictators to think twice before ordering troops to open fire.

Maybe the most critical technology — and this is tough for a scribbler like myself to admit — is television. It was Arab satellite television broadcasts like those of Al Jazeera that broke the government monopoly on information in Egypt. Too often, Americans scorn Al Jazeera (and its English service is on few cable systems), but it played a greater role in promoting democracy in the Arab world than anything the United States did.

We should invest more in these information technologies. The best way to nurture changes in Iran, North Korea and Cuba will involve broadcasts, mobile phones and proxy servers to leap over Internet barriers. Congress has allocated small sums to promote global Internet freedom, and this initiative could be a much more powerful tool in our foreign policy arsenal.

4.) Let’s live our values. We pursued a Middle East realpolitik that failed us. Condi Rice had it right when she said in Egypt in 2005: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.”

I don’t know which country is the next Egypt. Some say it’s Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Syria or Saudi Arabia. Others suggest Cuba or China are vulnerable. But we know that in many places there is deep-seated discontent and a profound yearning for greater political participation. And the lesson of history from 1848 to 1989 is that uprisings go viral and ricochet from nation to nation. Next time, let’s not sit on the fence.

After a long wishy-washy stage, President Obama got it pitch-perfect on Friday when he spoke after the fall of Mr. Mubarak. He forthrightly backed people power, while making clear that the future is for Egyptians to decide. Let’s hope that reflects a new start not only for Egypt but also for American policy toward the Arab world. Inshallah.

The day video almost killed the Subbuteo star | Harry Pearson | Sport | The Guardian

The day video almost killed the Subbuteo star | Harry Pearson | Sport | The Guardian

Aston Villa's Chris Nicholl, left, has a shot saved by Everton's Mike Lyons while they play Subbuteo in 1977. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas/Getty Images
Last week a friend came round and told me he was moving to France. "I wanted you to have this," he said, and handed me a bright blue box containing an Adman Model 2000 Grandstand TV game. "Realistic sound effects," the box proclaims. "Real sports action." "Made in Harrogate." Though it doesn't look menacing, the benign appearance is deceptive.

It's said that when Charlemagne saw the first Viking ship off the coast of Provence he wept at what it meant for future generations of Franks (pillage, rape, the abandonment of a short passing game based on speed and movement). If I'd had the emperor's prescience I might have shed a tear or two on that July afternoon in the 1970s when my friend Tim invited me over to his house to play with the fantastic new toy he'd been given for his 14th birthday – an Adman Model 2000. Little did I realise as we sat with curtains drawn against the summer sun and the front room filling with a poisonous adolescent fug of hormones, Hai Karate and odour-eaters that I was witnessing a destructive wave that would engulf so much that we held dear.

In fairness, who would have done? The Adman tennis game didn't look like much: two white oblong bats and a square ball that bounced about on the dark screen emitting a high-pitched "poop". At beginner's level it sounded like the heart monitor of a comatose patient in Marcus Welby MD. Speeded up it produced a more insistent beat (indeed, a recording of our 1974 Wimbledon men's singles final clash would later become Ultravox's second album). Yet, however fast or slowly the TV blooped that day it would have been hard to guess that this rudimentary beast would spawn the Nintendo Wii and a host of others that would later be blamed for killing off the games I loved.

Other sports writers have witnessed the golden ages of football, cricket and boxing; those of us who grew up in the late 60s and early 70s were privileged to live through the gilded era of slightly dodgy sports simulation games made of plastic. Gradually we have watched them all slide to extinction.

Subbuteo table football limps on, but its brothers, table cricket and table rugby, have bitten the dust. The former was, admittedly, undermined by the bowling system: a figure propelled the ball from a metal triangle behind his back at a speed the Starship Enterprise would have struggled to match. Rugby's fatal flaw, meanwhile, was the oval ball that simply refused to move in a straight line. As a result David Duckham would burst to within a millimetre of the tryline only to veer off and begin an inexorable and inexplicable charge back to his own 22.

They were not the only miniature masterpieces to suffer under the crushing screen onslaught. Down into the cupboard-under-the-stairs of history went the Arnold Palmer Golf Game, which featured a miniature Arnie with a three-foot club handle protruding from the small of his back and promised "all the elements of real pro golf" but singularly failed to deliver any enormous prize-money; Battling Tops, the advert for which featured a teenage boy answering the question "How do you do it, champ?" with the ambiguous words "It's all in the wrist action"; and that game in which two robotic 12-inch heavyweights slugged it out toe to toe until one or other's head sprang off with a mechanical twang.

Many have blamed the demise of such games on their lack of realism, pointing out, for example, that in actual football, unlike in Subbuteo, a star striker is not repaired with polystyrene cement so frequently that his torso is reduced to a formless blob (except in the case of Diego Maradona, obviously). In fact the reason for the fall of these is much simpler – the polystyrene figures central to them are simply not sexy enough for the modern sports enthusiast.

Nowadays athletes gaze out at us from magazines, primped, oiled and pouting, like odalisques from the seraglio of some eastern potentate. But back when Subbuteo and its ilk were conceived photographers across the globe worked tirelessly to reassure the public that sportsmen looked just like their Uncle Len.

The technique reached its apotheosis in the Star Stickers collections. These steadfastly presented football as a handsome-free zone. Last-minute transfers were swiftly dealt with by cutting out the player's face and sticking it on to someone else's body, usually one snapped from slightly further away, to produce a pleasing Mr Peanut effect.

A glance through the 1971 album shows a variety of other pulchritude-reduction methods in operation. Ernie Hunt of Coventry is snapped while on the verge of spitting a chunk of sputum the size of Cuba. The great Czech striker Ivan Petras, on the other hand, is pictured against a puke yellow background that seems specifically designed to highlight skin that is as grey and lumpy as institutional rice pudding. Worst of all, however, is Rinus Israel of Feyenoord, whose slab-like, expressionless face complete with thick-rimmed glasses seems destined to one day to be accompanied by a newspaper report featuring the words "neighbours' suspicions were aroused by a smell coming from his drains …"

Clearly any toy reflecting the values of such an era is unlikely to find favour with a generation raised on air-brushed shots of Cristiano Ronaldo and Tiger Woods. These days it's more Battling Pecs than Battling Tops.

11 Tricks to Cutting Travel Costs in 2011 - NYTimes.com

BARGAIN hunters will need to be craftier when booking a trip if they want to get the best prices this year. It’s no secret that airfares are up and added fees for everything from checked bags to exit-row seats are pushing the cost of flying higher. On top of that, hotel bargains are expected to be harder to come by as business travelers begin to return, diminishing the need for hotels to discount rooms in major cities.

But that doesn’t mean a year in front of your television. There are still plenty of ways to cut costs. Here are 11 strategies — and some useful Web sites — to help you save on travel this year.

1. SHOP “PRIVATE SALES” A growing number of Web sites, including SniqueAway.com, TabletHotels.com and Jetsetter.com have flash sales of 20 to 60 percent off hotel packages to travelers on an invitation-only basis. Jetsetter, for example, recently offered a Friday night in January at the Angler’s, a boutique hotel in Miami, for $255 a night, down from the $359 offered at the hotel’s site. Another site, TripAlertz.com, works like Groupon for travel, meaning that the more people who book a deal, the lower the rate. For example, a four-night, all-inclusive stay at the Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort & Spa was initially offered to members for $1,496, or 15 percent off, last month. After 55 bookings, the price dropped to $1,220. At TripAlertz and LivingSocial.com, which offers last-minute getaways, all you have to do is create an account to access the deals. A Google search for “Snique Away invite” turned up a registration form for SniqueAway.com that got me in.

2. BUY ON TUESDAY Most airlines begin sales on Monday evenings, and by the following day other airlines have usually matched the lowered fares on the same routes, said Anne McDermott, editor at Farecompare.com, which tracks price trends. Last month, for example, Virgin America had a sale on Dec. 13, with one-way fares as low as $79 on some routes, according to Farecompare. The next day, there were sales from AirTran, Southwest and American, with one-way fares from $59. Because sales are hard to predict, travelers looking for the best deal should start their searches three to four months in advance, when airlines begin to look closely at which routes may need a sale to fill seats.

3. SEARCH FOR COUPON CODES Practically every travel site includes a box at checkout for a promotional discount code. Sites likePromotionalCodes.com or CouponWinner.com organize such codes into categories so that you can search specifically for airline, car rental or hotel deals. A recent search turned up codes for deals like $94 flights between New York and New Orleans, 15 percent discounts on Avis weekly car rentals and $75 off of three-night Westin Hotels packages.

4. ASK FOR A REFUND Many airlines will refund the difference in price if the fare drops after you purchase a ticket (minus a change fee).Yapta.com helps get you that refund by tracking the price of your ticket and sending you an e-mail or Tweet when the price drops so that you can call the airline to claim the credit. A new site, Autoslash.com, offers a similar service for car rentals.

5. AVOID ROAMING CHARGES Skype and Truphone offer free apps for making cheap international calls using Wi-Fi, with rates that start at pennies per minute. You can pay as you go or sign up for monthly plans to make unlimited calls in certain countries for a flat fee: $13.99 a month for Skype calls to land lines and mobile phones in more than 40 countries, or $12.95 a month for Tru calls in 38 countries with TruUnlimited. Another option: the Vonage Mobile app for Facebook allows travelers to make free international calls over Wi-Fi to Facebook friends who also download the app.

6. CHANGE YOUR CREDIT CARD Most American banks charge currency conversion fees, typically up to 3 percent when you use your credit or debit card outside the United States. But there are some exceptions. Capital One does not charge foreign transaction fees, and Chase recently began waiving the fees on its British Airways Visa Signature Card, its Hyatt Card and the Priority Club Select Visa.

7. SAVE ON PARKING YOUR CAR Bestparking.com steers drivers toward the cheapest parking at off-airport lots near 79 North American airports. Rates are updated frequently, and sold-out lots are highlighted. A recent search for parking near Newark Liberty International Airportoffered a snapshot of rates and locations on a map. The Renaissance Hotel lot was among the cheapest at $12 for 24 hours. There is also a free app for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry users.

8. WAIT A WEEK Avoid the crowds and save by traveling the week after a major holiday. A five-night ski vacation in Breckenridge, Colo., during the last week of December was priced at $1,988 a person, including airfare from Chicago, at Orbitz.com. For the following week, the same trip was listed at $1,037 a person. Similarly, a vacation including airfare from New York and five nights at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort dropped from $821 to $580.

9. NEGOTIATE Though many hotels say that they offer their best rates online, it pays to ask the front desk for a lower rate. My colleague Seth Kugel regularly uses this tactic, as he pointed out in a column last summer: “I arrive with a solid reservation but then check out five or six other hotels and go back and forth between them in an attempt to set off a price war.” The strategy saved him $20 a night in León, Nicaragua. I have had similar success over the phone with reservation agents at New York hotels like the Ritz-Carlton New York and 60 Thompson.

10. TRAVEL LIKE A STUDENT Student travel agencies like STA Travel, StudentCity and StudentUniverse have begun to extend their low prices to nonstudents and older travelers. While some of the deepest discounts are offered only to travelers enrolled in an academic program, recent college graduates can often save 10 to 25 percent with “youth fares.” For example, a recent search for flights in March on STATravel.com, which limits certain deals to nonstudents under the age of 26, turned up seats for $926 round trip on V Australia Airlines. The best rates for the same dates on Kayak.com were $1,187. Though it is not common for older travelers to use student travel agencies, it is possible to do so. There were no age restrictions for a discounted four-day Inca Trail trek with STA Travel for $674 a person, down from $899.

11. DON’T PAY TO CHECK A BAG Checking bags can quickly add up, with airlines charging between $15 and $35 a bag. Delta’s SkyMiles-branded American Express card allows you and up to eight others on the same reservation to each check a bag at no cost. And American Express introduced a travel-rewards card — the Blue Sky Preferred Credit Card — that offers travelers an annual $100 allowance to cover checked baggage, in-flight meals, entertainment or Wi-Fi purchases, and other fees, on any airline.

By Michelle Higgins published in the New York Times on January 4 2011