Happy Birthday, You Bastard

Some Slate pieces are so great, they demand a second reading. Today we revisit John Swansburg?s timeless 2008 masterpiece.

Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer.

What has become of the birthday party? I used to love a good birthday get-together. Some other kid's parents are picking up the tab for an afternoon of bumper bowling? There might be a Cookie Puss from Carvel? Fire up the Datsun, Mom, we're going to be late!

I'm told that when you're a legitimate grown-up?with a spouse and kids of your own?birthday parties are once again events you look forward to. You leave the munchkins with a sitter and go to the Johnsons' for an evening of cocktails and casserole. Maybe an animated game of Taboo breaks out. Sounds delightful. But in the moment between earning your college degree and signing your first mortgage, the birthday party transmogrifies into something else. It becomes the birthday dinner.

For me, it happened in my late 20s. As my friends moved from graduate programs and entry-level positions into decent-paying jobs, a birthday meet-up at a dive bar to pound SoCo-and-lime shots started to feel a shade d?class?. Yet everyone was still living in small studio or one-bedroom apartments?no place for a proper cocktail party. The compromise: People started celebrating their birthdays by inviting friends out to dinner, typically at a moderately fancy restaurant. The kind of place that frowns on bringing your own candles and Cookie Puss but isn't averse to sticking a sparkler in a cr?me br?l?e.

Seems like a nice idea, the birthday dinner. It is not. It is a tedious, wretched affair. It is also an extravagantly expensive one. In these wintry economic times, we need to scale back. I hereby propose that the birthday dinner go the way of the $4 cup of coffee, the liar's mortgage, and the midsize banking institution.

Consider, for example, the birthday dinner I attended not long ago in honor of my friend Simon. In the past, Simon's birthday parties have been rollicking good times. His 25^th, celebrated at a Manhattan club, ended memorably, if abruptly, when Simon was ejected from his own party by a bouncer who'd discovered him taking an indiscreet catnap on the bar. For his 30^th, Simon, now a brain surgeon, organized a more civilized affair: dinner for 10 of his closest friends at an upscale Tribeca steakhouse.

Everything that can go wrong at such a dinner did. A maitre d'?led us to a giant oval table, where I was seated a country mile from the man of the hour. Could I have hit him with a strenuous toss of a French roll? Yes. But polite conversation was out of the question.

Instead, I found myself wedged between Simon's high-school friends and his college friends. Feeling more of a ken for the high-school side of the table, I tried to orient myself in that direction, but the effort required a socially and anatomically awkward craning of the neck. I was left in a no man's land?on the fringe of two conversations, an active player in neither. Had we been at a bar, I could have maneuvered my way out of such a quagmire by excusing myself to order another round of sweet, sweet SoCo and lime. Thus escaping, I could have muscled my way over to the guest of honor and given him a good birthday noogie. But mired in the middle of this dinner table, the only way I was going to get Simon's attention was by faking an aneurysm, and I just wasn't feeling up to it.???

I busied myself by studying the menu, looking up in time to catch a nefarious glint in the eye of our white-smocked waiter. I understand from friends who've waited tables that serving a large party can have its annoyances: It's hard to get anyone's attention; you've got to extol the virtues of the soup du jour four times over. But a seasoned server knows how to work the situation to his advantage, and this guy proved to be positively au poivre.

Given the built-in gratuity for a party of our size, our waiter clearly realized there was nothing to lose by making the hard sell. He was getting 18 percent of whatever he could push on us, so he might as well give it a healthy shove. For an appetizer, he vigorously recommended the frutti di mare platter?an item accompanied on the menu by the dreaded "market price" designation. Working each flyleaf of the table separately, he managed to sell us three of these massive, adjustable-rate heaps of shrimp and lobster tail. One would have sufficed.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=b1589024a7b841fe7f2488ac5872fb23

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Stocks gain, boosted by P&G, Starbucks earnings

NEW YORK (AP) ? Stocks rose on Wall Street in afternoon trading Friday after Procter & Gamble and Starbucks posted strong earnings reports, putting the Standard & Poor's 500 index on track for its longest winning streak since 2004.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 53 points to 13,878 as of 2:21 p.m. Friday. The Standard & Poor's 500 advanced seven points to 1,502. The Nasdaq gained 20 points to 3,151.

The S&P 500 broke through 1,500 Thursday for the first time since December 2007, following a drop in claims for unemployment benefits that added to evidence that the labor market is healing. The index is headed for an eighth consecutive gain, which would be the longest winning streak since November 2004.

Procter & Gamble, world's largest consumer products maker, gained $2.49 to $72.91 after reporting that its quarterly income more than doubled. P&G also raised its profit forecast for its full fiscal year. Starbucks rose $2.40 to $56.97 after reporting a 13 percent increase in profits.

"Earnings are growing," said Joe Tanious, a global market strategist at JPMorgan. "The bottom line is that corporate America is doing exceptionally well."

Tanious expects corporate earnings to grow at about 5 percent over the "next year or two," and stock valuations to rise. Currently, the S&P 500 is trading at an average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, below an average of 15.1 for the last decade, according to FactSet data.

Apple continued to decline, allowing Exxon Mobil to once again surpass the electronics giant as the world's most valuable publicly traded company. Apple fell 1 percent to $444.26, following a 12 percent drop on Thursday, the biggest one-day percentage drop for the company since 2008, after Apple forecast slower sales. The stock is now $257.84, or 37 percent, below the record high of $702.10 it reached Sept. 19.

Apple first surpassed Exxon in market value in the summer of 2011, grabbing a title Exxon had held since 2005. The two traded places through that fall, until Apple surpassed Exxon in early 2012.

Stocks have surged this month, with the S&P 500 advancing 5.4 percent this month. It jumped at the start of the year when lawmakers reached a last-minute deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff." Stocks built on those gains on optimism that the housing market is recovering and the labor market is healing. The Dow Jones is up 6 percent on the year.

Deutsche Bank analysts raised their year-end target for the index to 1,600 from 1,575.

Companies will be able to maintain their earnings even if lawmakers in Washington decide to implement wide-ranging spending cuts to narrow the budget deficit, the analysts said in a note sent to clients late Thursday.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to its price, climbed 5 basis points to 1.91 percent.

Among other stocks making big moves.

? Halliburton gained $1.87 to $39.69 after posting a loss that was smaller than analysts had expected. The oilfield services company said fourth-quarter profits declined 26 percent to $669 million on increasing pricing pressure in the North American market and one-time charges from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Wall Street had expected worse.

?Hasbro fell $1.45 to $37 after the toy maker said its fourth-quarter revenue failed to meet expectations because of poor demand over the holidays. The company plans to cut about 10 percent of its workforce and consolidate facilities to cut expenses.

? Green Mountain Coffee Roasters rose $1.10 to $44.88 after an analyst noted that sales of a competing coffee brewer introduced by Starbucks were getting off to a weak start.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-gain-boosted-p-g-starbucks-earnings-153530667--finance.html

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Egyptian opposition to mark uprising with new protests

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's opponents head to Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to mark the anniversary of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak with protests against the new head of state and his Islamist allies.

On the second anniversary of the uprising, Mursi's secular-minded rivals aim to revive the demands of a revolution that they say has been betrayed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled him to power in an election last year.

"I call on everyone to take part and go out to every place in Egypt to show that the revolution must be completed," Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading liberal, said in a statement.

"It will be against the Brotherhood," said Ahmed Maher, founder of the April 6 movement that helped mobilize the uprising against Mubarak through social media. "The goals of the revolution have not been realized yet," he told Reuters.

Inspired by Tunisia's uprising against President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt's revolution helped set off more revolts in Libya and Syria. But the sense of common purpose that united Egyptians at the time has given way to conflict that has grown only worse and last month triggered lethal street battles.

The anniversary will once again showcase the divide between the Islamists and their secular opponents. The Brotherhood has decided against mobilizing in the street for the occasion, a decision that could reduce the likelihood of confrontation.

Mursi, in a speech marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, called on Egyptians to mark the anniversary "in a civilized, peaceful way that safeguards our nation, our institutions, our lives".

"The Brotherhood is very concerned about escalation, that's why they have tried to dial down their role on January 25," said Shadi Hamid director of research at the Brookings Doha Center.

"There may very well be the kinds of clashes that we've seen before, but I don't see anything major happening that is going to fundamentally change the political situation," he said.

Mursi faces discontent on multiple fronts.

His opponents say he and his group are seeking to dominate the post-Mubarak order. They accuse him of showing some of the autocratic impulses of the deposed leader by, for example, driving through a controversial new constitution last month.

The Brotherhood dismisses such criticism as unfair. It accuses its opponents of failing to respect the rules of the new democracy that put the Islamists in the driving seat by winning elections.

Six months into office, Mursi is also being held responsible for an economic crisis caused by two years of turmoil. The Egyptian pound has sunk to record lows against the dollar.

VIOLENCE FLARES NEAR TAHRIR

Other sources of friction abound. Activists are impatient for justice for the victims of political violence perpetrated over the last two years. Little has been done to reform brutal Mubarak-era security agencies. A spate of transport disasters on roads and railways neglected for years is feeding discontent.

Pointing to the potential for trouble, violence flared near Tahrir Square on Thursday when police clashed with several dozen youths who were trying to remove concrete barriers blocking a road to the nearby government offices.

Five members of the security forces were wounded by rocks and birdshot, the state news agency reported, and the smell of tear gas fired by the police hung over the square.

Some protesters began gathering in the square as night fell. "The people want to bring down the regime," said one banner, echoing the main chant of the revolt against Mubarak.

The parties that have called for Friday's protest list demands including a complete overhaul of the new, Islamist-tinged constitution that was fast-tracked into law by Mursi in December, a move that fuelled street violence.

Its critics say the constitution, which was approved in a popular referendum, offers inadequate protection for human rights, gives the president too many privileges and fails to curb the power of the military establishment.

Mursi's supporters say the criticism is unfair, that enacting the constitution quickly was crucial to restoring stability, and that the opposition is making the situation worse by perpetuating unrest.

With its eye firmly on forthcoming parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood is marking the anniversary with a big charity campaign. It aims to deliver medical aid to 1 million people, offer affordable basic foods, and renovate some 2,000 schools.

A strong turnout on Friday could also help the Brotherhood's opponents ahead of the elections. "There is a lot of power in this day and a real chance to use that to mobilize their supporters in the lead-up to the elections," Hamid said.

(Additional reporting by Mohamed Abdellah; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egyptian-opposition-mark-uprising-protests-012625590.html

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YouTube Capture gets 1080p uploads, other improvements

Google's YouTube Capture app for iPhone has been updated, adding 1080p video uploads, along with other improvements and bug fixes. These include improved audio sync and more detail in your upload feedback. Users can also now share videos to there social networks after they upload instead of just before.

But the ability to upload videos in 1080p is the highlight of this update. Users were previously limited to 720p uploads despite the fact that the two most recent iPhones can shoot 1080p video. To upload full 1080p videos, simply tap the gear icon in the app, then scroll down and choose 1080p under ?Upload Quality?.

The update for YouTube Capture is available right now. Go get it!

• Free - Download Now

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/XreQSKo6Z2w/story01.htm

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Ireland won't ease drunken-driving law for farmers

DUBLIN (AP) ? A license to drive drunk? Some small-town politicians think it's just the tonic for rural Ireland.

Councilmen in Kerry, southwest Ireland, passed a motion this week asking the government to create a permit that would allow isolated farmers the ability to drink a few pints and then return home in their car, or on their tractor, without fear of being busted.

Its backers say the measure is needed to combat an epidemic of boredom and depression on farms ever since Ireland imposed tough new blood-alcohol limits on drivers in 2011.

But Justice Minister Alan Shatter shot down the proposal during a speech in parliament Thursday as "grossly irresponsible."

"There is no question of this government, or indeed I don't believe any future government, facilitating individuals drinking in excess of the blood alcohol limits," Shatter told lawmakers.

A generation ago, drunken driving was commonplace in Ireland and even the smallest villages or forlorn crossroads would feature a pub. But in this century the country has steadily improved road safety standards, introducing mandatory driving tests, blood and breath tests and above all a penalty-points system that removes licenses from dangerous drivers, particularly drunks.

The effort has slashed road-related deaths from more than 400 annually in the 1990s to just 162 last year, a modern low in this country of 4.6 million.

Kerry pub owners say their business has plummeted right along with that nationwide carnage ? yet deny any connection between the two trends. They describe the often narrow, lightly trafficked roads near their businesses as safe for people to navigate even after three pints (57 ounces) of beer.

Danny Healy-Rae, who owns a pub and comes from Kerry's most famous and flamboyant political family, says farmers should be allowed to drive tipsy on their tractors because they don't go fast enough to kill anyone. He said those drinking two to three pints at a pub should be issued a permit allowing them to drive home so long as they stay below 30 mph (50 kph).

He was one of five Kerry County Council members who voted for the motion Monday night. Three others voted against, seven abstained and 12 council members didn't show up. Their decision has no legal standing because the national government, not councils, sets policy on road safety.

Healy-Rae ? who like his politician father is nationally famous for wearing a cap everywhere and talking in rapid-fire local dialect easy to parody but hard to understand ? said pub-loving farmers "are living in isolated rural areas where there's no public transport of any kind. They end up at home looking at the four walls, night in and night out, because they don't want to take the risk of losing their license."

He said the older generation provided the sociological fuel to Ireland's tradition of pub-based music and "craic," Irish slang for entertaining conversation.

"All the wisdom and all the wit and all the culture that they had, the music and the singing, that's all being lost to the younger generation," Healy-Rae said. "These older people might as well be living in Japan and Jerusalem, because the younger generation don't see them at all anymore."

Yet even in Kerry, many have dismissed the idea as both dangerous to public safety and impossible to enforce. And alcohol-abuse campaigners say Healy-Rae's logic is twisted, since alcohol is a depressant and hardly a cure for the blues.

"The link between alcohol use and suicide has been well established and drinking alcohol will exacerbate, not alleviate, any mental health difficulties that a person may be struggling with, such as depression or anxiety," said Conor Cullen, spokesman for a pressure group called Alcohol Action Ireland.

The government emphasized that Kerry's council motion was already a dead letter.

"While rural isolation is a real problem," said Transport Minister Leo Varadkar, "the solution to it is not to hand out drink-driving permits."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-24-Ireland-Drunken%20Driving/id-77521f622af942fc8ccb347951423a92

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Study: Fracking wastewater could be too much

Mladen Antonov / AFP - Getty Images

In this file photo, a fracking fluid pit sits next to a drill site near Waynesburg, Pa.

By John Roach, NBC News

The practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, produces a relatively small amount of wastewater, given all the gas the technique recovers, according to a new analysis of operations in Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, the number of fracking operations has grown so rapidly that the wastewater being produced threatens to overwhelm the region?s capacity to properly treat it.

In fracking operations, 3 million to 5 million gallons of water are injected deep underground, along with sand and a chemical cocktail, to fracture shale rock and extract the embedded natural gas. Some of that water returns to the surface immediately after the fracturing. The rest comes back over the course of months and years. The result is that each well brings up hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of wastewater.

---

Pennsylvania has invested very little in the infrastructure needed to deal with wastewater, even though the region was where the U.S. oil and gas industry got its start more than 150 years ago, Brian Lutz, a biogeochemist at Kent State University, told NBC News.

What?s more, the geology of the region limits the ability to dispose of the massive quantities of wastewater generated during fracking operations by injecting it deep underground, as is done in other regions of the country.

"That?s critical," Lutz said, "because that means we?re generating large wastewater streams in a new geography of the country where we don?t necessarily have a pre-existing capacity and, perhaps, we don?t have the necessary physical capacity to handle these wastes that we have in other regions."

Conventional vs. fracking
He and colleagues analyzed data from 2,189 active Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania, and compared gas production and wastewater volumes to conventional well data. They found that shale gas wells typically produced 10 times the amount of wastewater as conventional wells, but they also produced about 30 times more natural gas.?

Lutz noted that the study is the first to put shale gas production into the perspective of conventional production in order to benchmark the amount of wastewater being produced per unit of gas recovered from shale gas wells.

The findings make the point that "as we expand domestic natural gas production, even if the expansion were driven by conventional production, our wastewater challenge would be no less and perhaps much worse," Lutz said.

Despite the greater efficiency in getting the gas out with fracking, however, the region has seen 570 percent growth in the amount of wastewater generated since 2004, due to the boom in natural gas production.?

In 2011, the last year data were analyzed, more than 830 million gallons of wastewater were generated in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale formation, Lutz and colleagues report in their study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Water Resources Research.?

Natural-gas boom
Over the past decade, the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York to Virginia, has gone from producing 2 percent of the nation?s natural gas output to about 10 percent. And the rush may have only just begun. Hydraulic fracturing was pioneered by the U.S. Department of Energy and its industry partners, and is largely responsible for a boom in natural gas production that some forecasts indicate will help make the country energy independent by 2035.

But independence comes at a price. As the fracking boom has accelerated, so too have concerns about the wastewater it generates and groundwater contamination from the chemicals injected into the wells.

Surprisingly, Lutz and colleagues note, only about a third of the wastewater from the Marcellus Shale wells was classified as flowback ? the wastewater that comes back to the surface within a few days of a frack. The rest is brine, water that is generated in the wells over a much longer time.

"What surprised us about this, and what?s certain, is that waste was definitely being documented as being generated at the well and taken to treatment facilities two, three, four years out after the well began producing and substantial quantities of waste," Lutz said.?

Much of the controversy surrounding fracking has focused on the chemicals in the flowback, many of which are unknown to outside researchers because the drilling companies consider them proprietary. But the brine often contains a much higher pollution load than the flowback, Lutz noted. What?s more, the finding suggests that truck traffic on back roads will have to continue long after the few weeks required for the initial fracturing operation, in order to haul the wastewater off to treatment zones.

Water issues overblown?
John Krohn is a spokesman for Energy in Depth, a gas industry trade group. He said the study highlights the water efficiencies that have come with the technological advancements used to access oil and gas in shale rock formations.

Those findings, coupled with increasing water recycling rates in the natural gas industry show that wastewater issues surrounding hydraulic fracturing "are at the very least overblown and discredited, potentially, by this study," he told NBC News.

Krohn noted that wastewater recycling rates in Pennsylvania were 70 percent in 2012, and some companies have reported rates of 100 percent. Recycling for the industry means using one of many technologies to clean the flowback and brine sufficiently to be used for subsequent fracturing operations.

"In a lot of areas, natural gas producers are able to use this fracturing fluid in excess of 20 to 25 times," he said. "And so what that does is it lessens the water footprint of the entire industry."

Lutz acknowledges that the industry has made strides in wastewater recycling, but he's concerned about a future when new wells aren't being drilled rapidly enough to handle the recycled waste.?

"As soon as your well population starts to stabilize or decline, then you are left with a large volume of wastewater, and there currently is no method than can recycle that water for an alternative use ? municipal or agricultural or something like that," he said.

Krohn said he doubted that such a slowdown in well drilling would occur. If it does, other options such as injection wells will offer viable alternatives, he said.

Given the unlikelihood of a slowdown, Lutz hopes the wastewater issue stays in the discussion.

"Wastewater from the Marcellus Shale is really a central challenge to future development," he said. "It is not an ancillary problem that is perhaps going to solve itself, but something that really needs to lead the discussion, at least from the environmental side of things, as we think about future development."

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/24/16680436-wastewater-from-fracking-could-be-too-much-to-handle-study-says

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10 years in mobile gaming ? Nokia Conversations : the official Nokia ...

Industry veteran Herocraft has just celebrated its tenth anniversary of creating games for mobile phones. But what made them get started and what have they learned about mobile gaming in the last decade? We asked company spokesperson Alexey Sazonov to tell us all.

?In 2002 the concept of mobile gaming was very new, and quite revolutionary. But when the founders looked around, they couldn?t see enormous potential for growth in traditional gaming. For mobiles, on the other hand ? well, we?d already seen the rise of PDA gaming and the success of sites like PocketGear. It seemed very likely to us that we?d see a similar explosion in mobile.

?And we?ve been developing for Nokia since day one, with tens of millions of downloads!?

So, after ten years in the industry, you must have a very good idea of what makes a good game?

?Hah. I wish someone would tell us!

?We try not to follow any formulas, because that would stifle innovation. Instead, we experiment a lot.

?I?d have to say that there are two secret ingredients: passion and good ideas.?

Herocraft is quite unusual in the breadth of its offering. Instead of specialising in one operating system, the company supports a wide cross-section of platforms, and in more than a dozen different languages.

?We?re dedicated to being cross-platform ? we?ll support any device so long as it makes money for us.

?In fact, one part of our business is to take games developed for other platforms and migrate them to new ones. An example of that is Contre Jour, which we?ve just released for Symbian.

?When it comes to choosing platforms, well, we don?t want to miss out on any big new success stories.?

What are the trends Alexey is seeing in mobile gaming?

?Well, the market is mature now, so it?s becoming necessary to find your niche and become expert in it. Herocraft always seeks to have a broad portfolio of different titles in its catalogue. But over time, we?ve come to specialise in strategy titles. Partly because they?re the sort of game we like to play ourselves. Our biggest title, Majesty, fits into that genre.?

Thank you, Alexey for your time, and here?s to ten more years in the business!

NB: HeroCraft is currently having a 10th-anniversary sale on some of its most successful titles for Symbian and Series 40 devices.

Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom Sim

Majesty: Northern Expansion

Romance of Rome

Treasures of Montezuma 2

Scrubs

Farm Frenzy

Source: http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/01/23/10-years-in-mobile-gaming/

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