Written by Chris Baskind

For children, it’s visions of sugarplums. But for the men and women who create the ads we see every day, Christmas represents a chance to trot out their best work during the year’s most important retail quarter.

It’s not as if Christmas is difficult to market. There’s plenty of opportunity to sell on emotion. The visual iconography of the holidays lends itself to warm, attractive advertising. And a little humor never hurts.

We’ve been taking a look at this year’s best commercial offerings. While a couple of us have fairly extensive backgrounds in broadcast and advertising, we’ll be honest: we’ve tossed aside the marketing rulebooks and chosen the ones which made us smile.

So ? the envelope, please! Here are picks for The Five Best TV Commercials of the 2007 Christmas Season:

5. Apple Macintosh Computers. What sells this ad is the faithful reproduction of all those 1960s stop-motion TV specials. Santa (and the oddly conical pine trees in the background) seems to have been abducted from “Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer.” You expect to see the Abominable Snowman at any moment. As an aside, even though we’re an all-Mac shop here, we still like the Windows guy best.

4. Tesco. The UK’s big box giant scored a marketing coup getting the Spice Girls to play hide-and-seek in their spot this year. Tesco has always carried a bit more cachet than, for instance, Wal-Mart. It’s no accident they’ve got Posh front-and-center. This ad is attached to a short news commentary on how Tesco pulled it all together.

3. Macy’s. This one had better make Macy’s registers ring, because it couldn’t have been cheap to produce. Emeril Lagasse, Donald Trump, Usher, Martha Stewart – and a surprisingly charming Jessica Simpson. Her sheepish “My bad!” closes Jessica’s Terrible Year? on a high note. There’s some very strong copy writing to wrap it all up.

2. Oxfam. If you thought Jessica Simpson was cute in the Macy’s spot, wait until you see the star of Oxfam’s 2007 offering. We mentioned the group’s Christmas appeal last November: Oxfam’s attempt to link giving with specific low-cost, high-return investments they’re making in the developing world. Perhaps Oxfam Unwrapped might be a good last minute gift idea for someone on your Christmas list.

1. John Lewis. If you’re not in the UK, you may not be familiar with John Lewis Department Stores. But this was an easy choice for the Best Christmas Commercial of 2007. It’s a fine piece of film making: unexpected, whimsical, and visually striking. Before you ask, the music is from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” We’re betting Prokofiev CDs find their way into a lot of Christmas stockings this year.

Happy Holidays from all of us.

Written by Stacy

You might have noticed from an earlier post that I’m a bit of a Disney buff. This is kind of out of character for me, to be honest, because I’m not a huge fan of happily ever after. I like movie endings that are unexpected. After doing a little research, though, I realized that maybe fairy tales and I are a perfect match: those Disney endings where the prince and the princess end up blissfully married don’t really happen in the original stories. To make sure kids go home happy, not horrified, Disney usually has to alter the endings. Read on for the original endings to a couple of Disney classics (and some more obscure tales).

1. Cinderella

Don’t break out your violins for this gal just yet. All that cruelty poor Cinderella endured at the hands of her overbearing stepmother might have been well deserved. In the oldest versions of the story, the slightly more sinister Cinderella actually kills her first stepmother so her father will marry the housekeeper instead. Guess she wasn’t banking on the housekeeper’s six daughters moving in or that never-ending chore list.

2. Sleeping Beauty

In the original version of the tale, it’s not the kiss of a handsome prince that wakes Sleeping Beauty, but the nudging of her newborn twins. That’s right. While unconscious, the princess is impregnated by a monarch and wakes up to find out she’s a mom twice over. Then, in true Ricki Lake form, Sleeping Beauty’s “baby’s daddy” triumphantly returns and promises to send for her and the kids later, conveniently forgetting to mention that he’s married. When the trio is eventually brought to the palace, his wife tries to kill them all, but is thwarted by the king. In the end, Sleeping Beauty gets to marry the guy who violated her, and they all live happily ever after.

3. Snow White

At the end of the original German version penned by the brothers Grimm, the wicked queen is fatally punished for trying to kill Snow White. It’s the method she is punished by that is so strange – she is made to dance wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes until she falls over dead.

4. The Little Mermaid

You’re likely familiar with the Disney version of the Little Mermaid story, in which Ariel and her sassy crab friend, Sebastian, overcome the wicked sea witch, and Ariel swims off to marry the man of her dreams. In Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale, however, the title character can only come on land to be with the handsome prince if she drinks a potion that makes it feel like she is walking on knives at all times. She does, and you would expect her selfless act to end with the two of them getting married. Nope. The prince marries a different woman, and the Little Mermaid throws herself into the sea, where her body dissolves into seam foam.

Now here are four more fairy tales you might not be familiar with, but you might have trouble forgetting.

1. The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter
What It’s Like: Cinderella, with an incestuous twist

The King’s wife dies and he swears he will never marry again unless he finds a woman who fits perfectly into his dead Queen’s clothes. Guess what? His daughter does! So he insists on marrying her. Ew. Understandably, she has a problem with this and tries to figure out how to avoid wedding dear old dad. She says she won’t marry him until she gets a trunk that locks from outside and inside and can travel over land and sea. He gets it, but she says she has to make sure the chest works. To prove it, he locks her inside and floats her in the sea. Her plan works: she just keeps floating until she reaches another shore. So she escapes marrying her dad, but ends up working as a scullery maid in another land? from here you can follow the Cinderella story. She meets a prince, leaves her shoe behind, he goes around trying to see who it belongs to. The End.

2. The Lost Childen
What It’s Like: Hansel & Gretel meets Saw 2

This French fairy tale starts out just like Hansel & Gretel. A brother and sister get lost in the woods and find themselves trapped in cages, getting plumped up to be eaten. Only it’s not a wicked witch, it’s the Devil and his wife. The Devil makes a sawhorse for the little boy to bleed to death on (seriously!) and then goes for a walk, telling the girl to get her brother situated on the sawhorse before he returned. The siblings pretend to be confused and ask the Devil’s wife to demonstrate how the boy should lay on the sawhorse; when she shows them they tie her to it and slit her throat. They steal all of the Devil’s money and escape in his carriage. He chases after them once he discovers what they’ve done, but he dies in the process. Yikes.

3. The Juniper Tree
What It’s Like: Every stepchild’s worst nightmare

Cannibalism, murder, decapitation? freakiness abounds left and right in this weird Grimm story. A widower gets remarried, but the second wife loathes the son he had with his first wife because she wants her daughter to inherit the family riches. So she offers the little boy an apple from inside a chest. When he leans over to get it, she slams the lid down on him and chops his head off. Note: if you’re trying to convince your child to eat more fruits and veggies, do not tell them this story. Well, the woman doesn’t want anyone to know that she killed the boy, so she puts his head back on and wraps a handkerchief around his neck to hide the fact that it’s no longer attached. Her daughter ends up knocking his head off and getting blamed for his death. To hide what happened, they chop up the body and make him into pudding, which they feed to his poor father. Eventually the boy is reincarnated as a bird and he drops a stone on his stepmother’s head, which kills her and brings him back to life.

4. Penta of the Chopped-off Hands
What It’s Like: Um?you tell us

These old fairy tales sure do enjoy a healthy dose of incest. In this Italian tale, the king’s wife dies and he falls in love with Penta? his sister. She tries to make him fall out of love with her by chopping off her hands. The king is pretty upset by this; he has her locked in a chest and thrown out to sea. A fisherman tries to save her, but Penta is so beautiful that his jealous wife has her thrown back out to sea. Luckily, Penta is rescued by a king (who isn’t her brother). They get married and have a baby, but the baby is born while the king is away at sea. Penta tries to send the king the good news of the baby, but the jealous fisherman’s wife intercepts the message and changes it to say that Penta gave birth to a puppy. A puppy?! The evil wife then constructs another fake message, this time from the king to his servants, and says that Penta and her baby should be burned alive. OK, long story short: the king figures out what the jealous wife is up to and has her burned. Penta and the king live happily ever after. I can’t really figure out what the moral of this tale is. Chopping hands off? Giving birth to a dog? I just don’t get it. Help me out here, people.

OK, there has to be a ton of other creepy fairy tales out there that you would never read to your kids to lull them off to a peaceful slumber. Let’s hear ’em!

Written By Ross Bonander

During the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, two men — Gene Roddenberry and Sherwood Schwartz — developed TV shows with a similar, fundamental premise: The characters would be a microcosm of the world, and only through cooperation could they overcome their differences. Shwartz marooned his creativity on Gilligan’s Island with seven imbeciles who deserved each other.

Alternately, Star Trek, Roddenberry’s creation, featured a cast with groundbreaking persity; it confronted relevant social and intellectual issues, and it was set against the vast expanse of the unknown universe, instead of on a confined island.

This approach struck an unparalleled chord, and four decades later the full Trek franchise is worth billions of dollars. It has been explored through six television series, 10 films, hundreds of novels, scores of video games, a Vegas attraction, and untold merchandising opportunities, from T-shirts and action figures in the millions to a limited-edition golf putter shaped — you guessed it — like the USS Enterprise.

Its devoted fans, Trekkies (some prefer Trekkers), own a fanatic detail-oriented reputation that predates the web and makes a similar phenomenon regarding a four-eyed boy wizard look like the pet rock. They are parodied endlessly and endure heaps of ridicule, all with admirable indifference.

As the franchise prepares for its 11th feature film, scheduled for release in late 2008, we present five things you didn’t know about Star Trek.

1- The original Star Trek was canceled early on

That first series, often referred to today as Star Trek: The Original Series (or TOS for short) aired 79 episodes over three seasons on NBC, from 1966 to 1969, and earned 14 Emmy nominations (notably, two for Best Dramatic Series, and three for Outstanding Supporting Actor for Leonard Nimoy). A fierce letter-writing campaign by fans of the show allegedly saved it from cancellation in 1968, but in each season, the network moved the show to a different, and progressively less desirable, time slot. The series premiered at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday nights, but by its final season it was relegated to Friday nights at 10 p.m., airing its final episode on June 3, 1969.

Syndication a few years later breathed new life into the show and is at least partly responsible for fueling the unprecedented cult phenomenon it is today.

2- A Next Generation character was named in honor of a Trekkie

In what would be a dream come true for any die-hard fan, the Next Generation character Lieutenant Geordi La Forge, played by LeVar Burton, was named after a Trekkie. George La Forge was a devoted attendee of numerous Trek conventions who had muscular dystrophy. He had allegedly built a friendship with Gene Roddenberry over the years, and as a salute of sorts, Roddenberry named a character after him. Notably, like his namesake, the character has a disability (he’s blind), but with a prosthesis he can see better than most.

Unfortunately, La Forge was unable to savor this honor, having died in 1975 — a dozen years before the show premiered on television.

On the same show, Roddenberry also honored another fan in this fashion, although it’s a bit more subtle. The character Q is said to be named for Janet Quarton, a woman who ran the UK fan club in the 1970s.

3- Its creator had little direct influence over the franchise

Indirectly, Gene Roddenberry is the father of the entire franchise and deserves proper credit. Star Trek was his creation, and when it was on he did all he could to keep it on and to keep the quality high. However, while his creation inspired every series and film that followed, his own involvement was limited.

He is said to have been very much involved in the first season (and to a lesser degree, the third) of the most successful series of the franchise, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yet, beyond producing the first movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, he had little influence over the four movies released prior to his death in 1991, serving as a consultant with marginal say over creative decisions.

4- The line “Beam me up, Scotty” was never delivered

It’s not uncommon for certain phrases in television and film to take on a life of their own in the form of paraphrases, but it’s always a surprise to learn that they aren’t as verbatim as first believed. Much like “Me Tarzan, you Jane” (which was star Johnny Weissmuller’s way to describe the level of difficulty acting the lead role in Tarzan), the ubiquitous line “Beam me up, Scotty” assumed to be uttered by Captain Kirk to chief engineer Montgomery Scott, never appeared precisely this way in a Trek series or film.

5- The original series inspired PDAs

The cultural impact of Star Trek is too enormous to deny, but its technological impact is equally as impressive. Some big Silicon Valley names considered themselves fans of the show growing up, notably Steve Wozniak of Apple and Steve Perlman, the founder of WebTV. The inspiration for a number of today’s technologies, such as flip phones, can be traced back to the original series, and many are outlined in William Shatner’s 2002 book, Star Trek: I’m Working on That.

One well-documented example is the user interface developed in the 1990s for the Palm OS. Its designer, Rob Haitani, an admitted Star Trek fan, claims that his first sketches were inspired by the interface on the bridge panels of the Enterprise. He also claims that aspects of the first Treo were influenced by communicators from the original series.

Star Trek is arguably the most successful sci-fi media franchise in history. If you were inclined to watch every canonical minute of every TV show and movie back-to-back, you would have to set aside over three straight weeks (although if your goal is to learn more about Star Trek, you might see more benefit by watching the documentaries Trekkies and Trekkies 2). This franchise has never had the Midas touch, but it enjoys more hits than misses, and the fans are eternally devoted — even non-fans can’t help but be curious.

Trekkies are people too, but for the moment we’ll exclude them from the public at large. The forthcoming Star Trek movie has as much a chance as any other movie to create new fans, but even a cursory look at the wider franchise suggests that anyone approaching it for the first time would find it utterly overwhelming.

This raises the question of whether it’s possible to see an end to Star Trek. It is certainly easy enough to imagine an end to the canonical aspect of the franchise (presumably whenever Paramount no longer deems it profitable), but even if the Trekkie-wide reaction to the new film was “thumbs down” and Paramount pulled the plug, Star Trek would live on the way it always has — through conventions, cultural references, technological innovations, fan fiction, and fan-produced webisodes — because its inspiring premise is restricted only by the limits of human imagination.

Resources:
www.golfsmith.com
http://en.wikipedia.org
www.tv.com
www.tvacres.com
www.bbc.co.uk
http://memory-alpha.org
www.sfgate.com
www.designinginteractions.com

Written by The Internet Journalist

10. Lone Cypress in Monterey

(Image credit: bdinphoenix [flickr])

(Image credit: mikemac29 [flickr])

Buffeted by the cold Pacific Ocean wind,the scraggly Lone Cypress [wiki] (Cupressus macrocarpa) in Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula, California, isn’t a particularly large tree. It makes up for its small size, however, with its iconic status as a stunningly beautiful tree in splendid isolation, framed by an even more beautiful background of the Pacific Ocean.

9. Circus Trees

As a hobby, bean farmer Axel Erlandson [wiki] shaped trees – he pruned, bent, and grafted trees into fantastic shapes and called them “Circus Trees.” For example, to make this “Basket Tree” arborsculpture, Erlandson planted six sycamore trees in a circle and then grafted them together to form the diamond patterns.

Basket Tree (Image credit: jpeepz [flickr])

The two-legged tree (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Ladder tree (Image credit: Arborsmith)

Axel Erlandson underneath one of his arborsculpture (Image credit: Wilma Erlandson, Cabinet Magazine)

Erlandson was very secretive and refused to reveal his methods on how to grow the Circus Trees (he even carried out his graftings behind screens to protect against spies!) and carried the secrets to his grave.

The trees were later bought by millionaire Michael Bonfante, who transplanted them to his amusement park Bonfante Gardens in Gilroy in 1985.

8. Giant Sequoias: General Sherman

(Image credit: Humpalumpa [flickr])

Giant Sequoias [wiki] (Sequoiadendron giganteum), which only grow in Sierra Nevada, California, are the world’s biggest trees (in terms of volume). The biggest is General Sherman [wiki] in the Sequoia National Park – one behemoth of a tree at 275 feet (83.8 m), over 52,500 cubic feet of volume (1,486 m?), and over 6000 tons in weight.

General Sherman is approximately 2,200 years old – and each year, the tree adds enough wood to make a regular 60-foot tall tree. It’s no wonder that naturalist John Muir said “The Big Tree is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and so far as I know, the greatest of living things.”

For over a century there was a fierce competition for the title of the largest tree: besides General Sherman, there is General Grant [wiki] at King’s Canyon National Park, which actually has a
larger circumference (107.5 feet / 32.77 m vs. Sherman’s 102.6 feet / 31.27 m).

In 1921, a team of surveyors carefully measured the two
giants – with their data, and according to the complex American Forestry Association system of judging a tree, General Grant should have been award the title of largest tree – however, to simplify the matter, it was later determined that in this case, volume, not point system, should be the determining factor.

7. Coast Redwood: Hyperion and Drive-Thru Trees

There is another sequoia species (not to be confused with Giant Sequoia) that is quite remarkable: the Coast Redwood [wiki] (Sequoia sempervirens), the tallest trees in the world.

The reigning champion is a tree called Hyperion in the Redwood National Park, identified by researcher Chris Atkins and amateur naturalist Michael Taylor in 2006. Measuring over 379 feet (155.6 115 m) tall, Hyperion beat out the previous record holder Stratosphere Giant [wiki] in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park (at 370 feet / 112.8 m).

The scientists aren’t talking about the exact location of Hyperion: the terrain is difficult, and they don’t want a rush of visitors to come and trample the tree’s root system.

[Image: The Stratosphere Giant – still an impressive specimen, previously the world’s tallest tree until dethroned by Hyperion in 2006.]

That’s not all that’s amazing about the Coast Redwood: there are four giant California redwoods big enough that you can drive your car through them!

The most famous of the drive-through trees is the Chandelier Tree [wiki] in Leggett, California. It’s a 315 foot tall redwood tree, with a 6 foot wide by 9 foot tall hole cut through its base in the 1930s.

Chandelier Tree. (Image credit: hlh-abg [flickr])

6. Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse

Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse (Image credit: Old trees in Netherlands & Europe)

(Image credit: dm1795 [flickr])

(Image credit: Luc Doudet)

The Ch?ne-Chapelle (Chapel-Oak) of Allouville-Bellefosse is the most famous tree in France – actually, it’s more than just a tree: it’s a building and a religious monument all in one.

In 1669, l’Abbe du Detroit and du Cerceau decided to build a chapel in (at that time) a 500 years old or so oak (Quercus robur) tree made hollow by a lightning bolt. The priests built a small altar to the Virgin Mary. Later on, a second chapel and a staircase were added.

Now, parts of the tree are dead, the crown keeps becoming smaller and smaller every year, and parts of the tree’s bark, which fell off due to old age, are covered by protective oak shingles. Poles and cables support the aging tree, which in fact, may not live much longer. As a symbol, however, it seems that the Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse may live on forever.

5. Quaking Aspen: Pando (The Trembling Giant)

Quaking Aspen (Image: Wikipedia)

Aspen grove (Image credit: scottks1 [flickr])

Quaking Aspen in winter (Image credit: darkmatter [flickr])

Pando [wiki] or the Trembling Giant in Utah is actually a colony of a single Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) tree. All of the trees (technically, “stems”) in this colony are genetically identical (meaning, they’re exact clones of one another). In fact, they are all a part of a single living organism with an enormous underground root system.

Pando, which is Latin for “I Spread,” is composed of about 47,000 stems spread throughout 107 acres of land. It estimated to weigh 6,600 tons, making it the heaviest known organism. Although the average age of the inpidual stems are 130 years, the entire organism is estimated to be about 80,000 years old!

4. Montezuma Cypress: The Tule Tree

The Tule Tree Towers over a church next to it (Image credit: jubilohaku [flickr])

Full width of the Tule Tree (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Close-up of the tree’s gnarled trunk. Local legends say that you can make out animals like jaguars and elephants in the trunk, giving the tree the nickname of “the Tree of Life” (Image credit: jvcluis [flickr])

El ?rbol del Tule [wiki] (“The Tule Tree”) is an especially large Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) near the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. This tree has the largest trunk girth at 190 feet (58 m) and trunk diameter at 37 feet (11.3 m). The Tule tree is so thick that people say you don’t hug this tree, it hugs you instead!

For a while, detractors argued that it was actually three trees masquerading as one – however, careful DNA analysis confirmed that it is indeed one magnificent tree.

In 1994, the tree (and Mexican pride) were in jeopardy: the leaves were sickly yellow and there were dead branches everywhere- the tree appeared to be dying. When tree “doctors” were called in, they diagnosed the problem as dying of thirst. The prescription? Give it water. Sure enough, the tree soon recovered after a careful watering program was followed.

3. Banyan Tree: Sri Maha Bodhi Tree

The Banyan tree is named after “banians” or Hindu traders who carry out their business under the tree. Even if you have never heard of a Banyan tree (it was the tree used by Robinson Crusoe for his treehouse), you’d still recognize it. The shape of the giant tree is unmistakable: it has a majestic canopy with aerial roots running from the branches to the ground.

Banyan tree (Image credit: Diorama Sky [flickr])

Closer view of the Banyan aerial root structure (Image credit: BillyCrafton [flickr])

If you were thinking that the Banyan tree looks like the trees whose roots snake through the ruins of the Ta Prohm temple like tentacles of the jungle (Lara Croft, anyone?) at Ankor, Cambodia , you’d be right!

Banyan tree (or is it silk-cotton tree?) in the ruins of Ta Prohm, Ankor, Cambodia
(Image Credit: Casual Chin [flickr])

One of the most famous species of Banyan, called the Sacred Fig [wiki] or Bo tree, is the Sri Maha Bodhi [wiki] tree in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. It is said that the tree was grown from a cutting from the original tree under which Buddha became enlightened in the 6th century BC.

Planted in 288 BC, it is the oldest living human-planted tree in the world, with a definitive planting date!

(Image credit: Images of Ceylon)

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

2. Bristlecone Pine: Methuselah and Prometheus, the Oldest Trees in the World.

Methuselah Grove (Image Credit: NOVA Online)

Bristlecone pine grove in which Prometheus grew (Image credit: Wikipedia)

The oldest living tree in the world is a White Mountains, California, bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) named Methuselah [wiki], after the Biblical figure who lived to 969 years old. The Methuselah tree, found at 11,000 feet above sea level, is 4,838 years old – it is not only the oldest tree but also the oldest living non-clonal organism in the world.

Before Methuselah was identified as the world’s oldest tree by Edmund Schulman in 1957, people thought that the Giant Sequoias were the world’s oldest trees at about 2,000 years old. Schulman used a borer to obtain a core sample to count the growth rings of various bristlecone pines, and found over a dozen trees over 4,000 years old.

The story of Prometheus [wiki] is even more interesting: in 1964, Donald R. Currey [wiki], then a graduate student, was taking core samples from a tree named Prometheus. His boring tool broke inside the tree, so he asked for permission from the US Forest Service to cut it down and examine the full cross section of the wood. Surprisingly the Forest Service agreed! When they examined the tree, Prometheus turned out to be about 5,000 years old, which would have made it the world’s oldest tree when the scientist unwittingly killed it!

Stump of the Prometheus Tree. (Image Credit: James R. Bouldin, Wikipedia)

Today, to protect the trees from the inquisitive traveler, the authorities are keeping their location secret (indeed, there are no photos identifying Methuselah for fear of vandalism).

1. Baobab

The amazing baobab [wiki] (Adansonia) or monkey bread tree can grow up to nearly 100 feet (30 m) tall and 35 feet (11 m) wide. Their defining characteristic: their swollen trunk are actually water storage – the baobab tree can store as much as 31,700 gallon (120,000 l) of water to endure harsh drought conditions.

Baobab trees are native to Madagascar (it’s the country’s national tree!), mainland Africa, and Australia. A cluster of “the grandest of all” baobab trees (Adansonia grandidieri) can be found in the Baobab Avenue, near Morondava, in Madagascar:

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

(Image credit: plizzba [flickr])

(Image credit: Daniel Montesino [flickr])

In Ifaty, southwestern Madagascar, other baobabs take the form of bottles, skulls, and even teapots:

Teapot baobab (Image credit: Gilles Croissant)

The baobab trees in Africa are amazing as well:

Baobab in Tanzania (Image credit: telethon [flickr])

Baobab near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (Image credit: ironmanix [flickr])

There are many practical uses of baobab trees, like for a toilet:

A toilet built inside a baobab tree in the Kayila Lodge, Zambia
(Image credit: Steve Makin [flickr])

? and even for a prison:

A “Prison Baob” tree in Western Australia (Image credit: yewenyi [flickr])

Written by Sawser

I recall reading about an obscure native culture in which the concept of death is fluid rather than fixed. You might be “dead” (somewhat sick), “very dead” (extremely ill) or “completely dead” (actually deceased) according to their terminology. The following 20 funny photos have been organized by these darkly funny and fatalistic categories! Believe it or not, the image above is completely real – the photograph was taken in Lysefjorden, Norway.

Dead (aka Somewhat Sick): The above victims may survive their ordeals but will certainly have some scars an bruises to show for them. A shark bite here, broken nose there and a few gore marks later these traumatized sports players, spectators and commuters all have priceless photos to document their near-death experiences.

Very Dead (Extremely Ill): The top set of photos, while completely unretouched via Photoshop, was of course staged. A French photographer hired hip-hop dancers to jump and appear to be falling on the sidestreets of France. The latter group of images, though, depict dizzying near-death automotive accidents. How do you suppose that last guy got out in time?!

Completely Dead (Actually Deceased): While nothing is sure in life, everything is certain in death and few of the above-featured inpiduals seem likely to make it out alive. To be fair, a few from this last category have ‘gone under the knife’ so to speak and become victims of Photoshop (good news for the ‘victims’ they feature), though they are nonetheless entertaining after their digital ‘surgery’!

Sources: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Written by laurie

Does anyone still believe that the camera never lies? With Photoshop, you can now make a picture speak any thousand words you want, and it will take a cynical attitude and a skilled eye to tell whether any of them is true.

While that might be a creative opportunity for artistic photographers and designers, for news editors, it can all be a bit of a nightmare – and for readers too when the photos skip the newspapers and land straight in your mailbox.

Here are seven of the most famous photoshop fakes.

Tourist Guy

Photography: P?ter Guzli

Perhaps the creepiest Photoshop fake was this shot of Hungarian tourist, P?ter Guzli, apparently standing on top of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 as one of the hijacked planes approaches.

This image did the rounds after the attacks with the claim that it was found in a camera pulled out of the rubble. In fact, Guzli had taken the picture in 1997 and made the edit for friends. Other people then made further edits placing him at every disaster from the sinking of the Titanic to the destruction of the White House by aliens on Independence Day.

The Smoke of War

Photography: Reuters/Adnan Hajj

P?ter Guzli’s collage didn’t fool many people, nor was it intended to. Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj’s shot of smoke billowing above Beirut following Israeli bombing in the summer of 2006 fooled the news desk at Reuters? but no one who had heard of Photoshop.

The repeat patterns in the smoke made lots of people smell a rat and it turned out that Hajj had even copied some of the buildings. LittleGreenFootballs made a neat analysis of the work done on the image and was one of the first to sound a warning. The result was a scramble among photo agencies to clarify their photo editing policies.

Here’s the less smoky original:

Iraqi Civilians

Photography: Brian Walski/Los Angeles Times

Adnan Hajj was a local stringer trying to make a political point. Brian Walski was a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times who just wanted to make a better picture – a much more likely trap for both photographers and editors. After shooting a series of shots of American troops and Iraqi civilians in 2003, Walski found that the best composition came by merging two images together. He was fired.

John Kerry And Jane Fonda

Photography: Owen Franken/ Ken Light

Usually, it’s the photographer who does the editing, either because he thinks he’ll get a better picture or because he believes it will deliver a stronger message. This fake cutting that circulated during the 2004 Presidential primaries was the work of neither of the two photographers whose images it featured. The shot of John Kerry was taken by Ken Light at the Register for Peace Rally in June 1971. Jane Fonda was photographed by Owen Franken as at a political rally in Miami Beach, Florida, in August 1972.

The collage was a dirty trick designed to derail John Kerry’s campaign.

Shirtless Sarkozy

Source: L’Express

So what’s the opposite of a dirty trick? French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave American photographers a scolding for intruding on his American vacation in the summer of 2007 but he wouldn’t have minded what the editors at Paris Match (owned by his friend, Arnaud Lagardere) did to his love handles. Rivals L’Express pointed out that the President had been given some Photoshop liposuction.

Oprah the Model

And Oprah Winfrey might not have complained about this August 1989 cover of TV Guide either. It’s Oprah’s head all right but according to CNet.com the body belongs to actress Ann-Margret. Ann-Margret’s fashion designer recognized the dress and spotted the fakery.

The Reichstag Flag

Not strictly speaking a Photoshop fake as the program wasn’t around during the Second World War, but just a reminder that playing with fake smoke and mirrors isn’t new to the modern era.

Ukrainian photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, didn’t just stage this photo of Soviet troops raising the flag over the Reichstag in 1945 (the first flag had gone up after dusk). He also heightened the smoke and removed the two watches from the wrists of the soldier on the lower left. Good Soviet soldiers don’t loot.

Here’s the original:

Photography: Yevgeny Khaldei

Tell us what Photoshop fakes you’ve spotted. (You can even learn to make your own fake photos here.)note: Thanks to Dan Zimmerman and others for pointing out that the soldier in Brian Walski’s photo is British, not American. We’re better at identifying cameras than guns.

Written by Alex Ion

Giving speeches and presentations is an inevitable part of life. Whether it be at school or at a conference, speeches and orals dominate most fields of study. What is worse is that over three quarters of the population fear presentations in front of people even though, eight times out of ten there is nothing to fear or be anxious about.

For the remaining 20 percent, the following tips will help you better prepare for a public speech and to better deliver, starting today.

photy by D’Arcy Norman

1. Be prepared and practice.
Part of being nervous during an oral or presentation is due to the fact that you feel like you will forget critical pieces of information or that you will get up front of everyone and forget everything. Practice, over and over, until you are able to do your presentation with the minimal amount of cue cards. Practice in different settings, in front of different people.

2. Pick a topic that interests you.
It is hard to speak passionately and with conviction when you are talking about something that you couldn’t care about to save your life. Pick a topic that you know about so that you will be able to inject a little charisma into your speech. When questions come around at the end, you will be more equipped to answer them if you love what you talked about.

Also, picking a topic that interests you, but that you don’t necessarily know a lot about, makes information found regarding that topic easier to encode into long term memory and then to retrieve it! Easier to remember makes for an easier performance.

3. Don’t leave the audience out.
When the audience is pulled into your speech, or is forced to interact with you while you are giving your speech, their curiosity and attention will be on you. When you do not interact with the audience, you are giving them a huge opportunity to daydream, doze off and not listen. Why spend all that time on a speech to have your audience fall asleep?

4. Know your audience.
Know who you will be speaking to and tailor your speech accordingly. If you are talking to medical students you can use medical terms more liberally than if you were talking to sociology majors.

5. Make it simple to understand.
Not everyone will understand what you are saying and not everyone is interested in what you are saying. Especially when the topic is difficult to start with. Even when you define difficult terms they may not keep up. No one cares about how smart you sound. Losing your audience is not ideal either, which is inevitable if they don’t understand. If you have to use complicated terms, complement them with an easy to understand example of what you mean.

6. Complement your speech with visual aids.
Use power point slides or projectors. Illustrate your examples and put definitions of difficult concepts on simple slides. Some people learn better visually.

7. Dress properly.
Do not dress like you are staying in for the day, i.e. sweat pants?Dress like you mean it and are interested in what you are doing. Dress like you are taking this seriously. What you wear says something about you and people take those who dress seriously, more seriously and think they are more competent.

8. Keep your audience hanging and thinking.
Close your speech by leaving your audience thinking. This will perpetuate your speech and cultivate curiosity in others. It will also leave you and your speech more memorable.

Everything from dressing to the way you deliver your speech is important. It is through practice that you will be able to relieve a bit of the anxiety and fear that accompanies public speaking. Speaking slow and with conviction will captivate the audience and leave them wanting more. Remember, anxiety is normal, but if you work through it you will find that it is not as bad as you make it out to be.

Written by classic illiterature

Disclaimer: I like to make sweeping judgments about large groups of people based on very little information. Enjoy!

Here We Go

10. The Wave

If you’re from the beach, want to be from the beach, or went to a popular poster site and picked the best seller from the ‘fine arts’ category, you probably have this one hanging in your bed room.

Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave at Kanagawa” is considered to be a work of great aesthetic and spiritual significance. Apparently it also makes surfers appear sensitive. “The wave is like the most beautiful part of nature,” they will say. Well don’t forget about the bro-dodendra, bro.

9. The Beatles Abby Road

Classic album, classic picture. But guess what? 90% of the people under 35, who have this poster, don’t listen to the Beatles. However, by adding this poster to your wall and talking about the significance of Paul not wearing shoes, people will actually think that you have good taste in music. Just don’t forget to hide the Gucci Mane and Ying Yang Twins cds you’ve been listening to all week.

8. Scarface

“Say hello to my little friend. His name is played out!” Everyone has seen the movie, everyone has seen the poster, and thanks to MTV cribs, everyone is over it.

If you have this poster hanging on your wall, you probably listen to a lot of rap music, sell small amounts of marijuana, and think you are a total badass. If that rings a bell, here is a bit of advice. Take down the poster, buy Abby Road, stop selling pot, and read a book.

7. Girls

There is nothing wrong with this poster. In fact, it was chosen because…well…it’s pretty hot. It does, however, represent one of the most clich? poster trends of all time. Tasteless pictures of hot chicks wearing next to nothing — or in this case, nothing at all.

Do you have one of these hanging above your toilette? If so, you were probably thinking: “Man, this is cool. No one has done this.” You were wrong. You actually saw it in a bar last week and were to drunk to remember. And you have now managed lump yourself in with about 40 million other ‘dudes’ between the ages of 15 and 30. Congrats! How exciting.

6. Mixology

This poster — an absolute staple in large universities across the U.S. — says one thing and one thing only. ‘I’m a drunk. That’s right. I want everyone who walks into my house to know that I drink way too much alcohol and I’m so proud of that, I’m willing to put a notice right here on the fuckin’ wall.’

If you are ever at a house with one of these, you may want to inquire as to whether or not your host has any interesting drinks he can make. He doesn’t. There is a case of Bud Light in the fridge, but you can only have one because his roommates paid for it.

5. Dali

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It is a beautiful painting. No doubt about it. And a lot more people would probably have it in their homes if it wasn’t for all those pretentious hippies who have gone and spoiled it for the rest of us.

I can’t even tell you how many times I have heard someone say that their favorite artist is Dali and then be unable to name their second favorite. Too often, Salvador is the only thing owners of this poster know about art. But they want you to think otherwise. Damn hippies.

4. The inspirational poster

This one makes the list because it’s seen in every counselor/student adviser’s office in the nation. There are a whole serious of them that contain innate dribblings about perseverance, spirituality, and other important life lessons. I’m sorry, if it doesn’t have Michael Jordon on it, I’m just not that inspired.

These are also popular with the hipster crowd, who will sit around reveling in the irony. Oh the irony! (On a side note: If you are a hipster please click here)

3. Muhammad Ali

This poster lets everyone know that its owner is tough. He likes real men, who do real manly things. It also lets you know that he saw this poster at his buddies house and copied the idea since he was too drunk to think of anything original.

2. College

This is so clich?, words are not even needed.

1. Bob Marley

I smoke marijuana. Did you know that? Well, if you didn’t, just take a look at this giant Bob Marley poster on my wall and you will know that I do.

The problem with this poster, is that it’s not about Bob Marley. It is about joe college guy or jane college girl’s affinity for getting way to high every tuesday afternoon. Read the books boys and girls. Leave the reggae alone. It’s not for you.

Written by Ross Bonander

Here are five things you didn’t know about Starbucks

They are largely responsible for turning a diner’s 50-cent cup of joe into a travesty, or at the very least, a pedestrian pursuit. Their “stores” seem to be everywhere, and they’re populated by coffee snobs on both sides of the counter. They appear either indifferent to, or beyond the reach of, fluctuating economies. They are accused of everything from the annoying (market saturation) to the serious (anti-competition), yet Starbucks — the world’s biggest coffee peddler — keeps on peddling.

There may be no better example of the company’s imperialist domination — and the scorn they sometimes inspire — than the shocking installation of a Starbucks store in Beijing’s Forbidden City in 2000. You can’t blame Starbucks for salivating over the real estate; almost 9 million people visited the former home to 24 different Chinese emperors in 2006. Nonetheless, it took seven years of protesting, 500,000 signatures and a refusal on Starbucks’ part to sell other brands to finally drive them out in 2007.

Love ’em or hate ’em, here are five things you may not know about Starbucks, your friendly, ubiquitous coffee house.

1- On average, two new Starbucks have opened every day since 1987

Starbucks has been around since 1971, but it wasn’t aggressive about expansion until 1987, when the company came under the ownership of its current chairman, Howard Schulz. At that time, there were only nine Starbucks stores.

Today, there are about 14,396 (give or take a few). pide that number by 20 years, or 7,300 days and, after rounding up, you get an average of 2 stores per day opening every day for the last 20 years. Naturally, this figure does not include the few stores that, for whatever reason, were shut down.

2- Its name comes from Moby Dick

Confirmed by the company’s current fact sheet, Starbucks was named for the first mate of the Pequod in Melville’s Moby Dick. The question is, why? After all, the company seems more like Captain Ahab than Starbuck. In the famous novel, Starbuck and Ahab are at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum: the first mate is superstitious and conservative, Ahab is narcissistic and monomaniacal. Starbuck is practical, opposing Ahab’s desire to commit the Pequod to circling the world’s oceans in search of the white whale in favor of a commitment to harpooning whales they can sell on the Nantucket Market. Ahab is single-minded, bent on not only killing the white whale, but also on relieving mankind of the source of its evil. Swap out a few of the right words above with terms like “market domination” and “its competition,” and you have Ahab’s, the world’s biggest coffee peddler.

The only ostensible Starbuck-like thing about Starbucks is the conservative evolution of its logo. It used to feature a bare-breasted mermaid but has, over time, developed a degree of modesty that would please the Pequod’s first mate: Initially, her hair covered her breasts, then they were cut out of the frame altogether.

3- Its founders sold Starbucks in 1987 to build Peet’s Coffee & Tea

Here’s the condensed company time line:

• 1966: Alfred Peet opens Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, California.
• 1971: Jerry Baldwin and two other friends of Alfred Peet open the first Starbucks in Seattle.
• 1982: Howard Schultz joins Starbucks.
• 1984: Baldwin et al buy out Peet’s.
• 1987: Baldwin et al sell Starbucks to Schultz to focus on building Peet’s.

It’s not all about coffee and biscotti at Starbucks…

It should be noted that after working there for a very short time, Schultz left Starbucks to launch a line of specialty coffee stores in Seattle. He was able to raise enough money to buy Starbucks in 1987.

Additionally, today Starbucks’ market share is about 70 times the size of Peet’s, but despite the seeming similarity between the two companies, they have somewhat different business models and each has seen considerable success according to those models.

4- Part-time employees are entitled to full benefits

Starbucks seems to have a perennial spot on Forbes’ list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” and it has little to do with the weekly coffee or tea each “partner” takes home.

For starters, Starbucks takes a page from Warren Buffett’s playbook and calls its employees “partners,” even though they hardly qualify as such in a true business sense. The use of such a loaded word goes a long way in breeding company loyalty.

More importantly, they offer an enviable benefits package, one inspired by the childhood of Chairman Howard Schultz. As a boy, he watched his father work low-paying jobs and retire with little to show for his life, and Schultz wanted something different for employees of his company. The result is a benefits package given to employees who work a minimum of 20 hours per week that includes health, medical, dental and vision plans, a 401k, and access into Bean Stalk, the company’s employee stock option plan.

If that weren’t already enough, those benefits extend to the opposite and same-sex spouses of these employees.

5- Starbucks doesn’t franchise its stores

As a rule, Starbucks stores are not franchised to private inpiduals, and the company has no intention to begin doing so. The mentality has a lot to do with maintaining high company standards from store to store; standards that would be difficult to enforce if they were franchised.

The one exception regards their willingness to enter into certain licensing agreements with companies who hold, or have access to, locations Starbucks regards as desirable. To quote from the FAQs on their home page, these sites include “airport locations, national grocery chains, major food services corporations, college and university campuses, and hospitals.” These licensed locations represent over one-third (36%) of all Starbucks stores operating in the U.S.

Starbucks has made a point of being wherever you are. They have a tremendous, almost inescapable, presence in countless, high-traffic neighborhoods. Yet they’re also somewhat cutting-edge, not just in how they treat their employees or in their gutsy (if questionable) expansion tactics, but also in their efforts to stay relevant. This is evidenced in such ventures as adding Wi-Fi connections for customers, building Starbucks Entertainment (film production) and Hear Music (music production) and, most recently, partnering with Apple to allow customers to download songs they hear in a Starbucks from iTunes.

If Starbucks has its way, public interest will continue to rise in the coming years. According to a Time magazine article from 2006, the company aims to open another 25,000 stores in the future, bringing the total number of Starbucks stores worldwide to 40,000.

In case you’re curious, that’s 9,000 more stores than that other corporate intrusion on other cultures (read: McDonald’s) currently has in operation worldwide.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org
www.starbucks.com
http://news.bbc.co.uk
http://money.cnn.com
www.time.com
www.mhhe.com
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com
www.myprimetime.com

Download PDF book here

Introduction
01 The Ten Commandments We AlwaysSee Aren’t the Ten Commandments
02 One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book
03 The CIA Commits Over 100,000 Serious Crimes Each Year
04 The First CIA Agent to Die in the Line of Duty Was Douglas Mackiernan
05 After 9/11, the Defense Department Wanted to Poison Afghanistan’s Food Supply
06 The US Government Lies About the Number of Terrorism Convictions It Obtains
07 The US Is Planning to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
08 The US and Soviet Union Considered Detonating Nuclear Bombs on the Moon
09 Two Atomic Bombs Were Dropped on North Carolina
10 World War III Almost Started in 1995

11 The Korean War Never Ended
12 Agent Orange Was Used in Korea
13 Kent State Wasn’t the Only ? or Even the First ? Massacre of College Students During the
Vietnam Era
14 Winston Churchill Believed ina Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy
15 The Auschwitz Tattoo Was Originally an IBM Code Number
16 Adolph Hitler’s Blood Relatives Are Alive and Well in New York State
17 Around One Quarter of “Witches” Were Men
18 The Virginia Colonists Practiced Cannibalism
19 Many of the Pioneering Feminists Opposed Abortion
20 Black People Served in the Confederate Army

21 Electric Cars Have Been Around Since the 1880s
22 Juries Are Allowed to Judge the Law, Not Just the Facts
23 The Police Aren’t Legally Obligated to Protect You
24 The Government Can Take Your House andLand, Then Sell Them to Private Corporations
25 The Supreme Court Has Ruled That You’reAllowed to Ingest Any Drug, Especially If You’re an Addict
26 The Age of Consent in Most of the US Is Not Eighteen
27 Most Scientists Don’t Read All of the Articles They Cite
28 Louis Pasteur Suppressed Experiments That Didn’t Support His Theories
29 The Creator of the GAIA Hypothesis Supports Nuclear Power
30 Genetically-Engineered Humans Have Already Been Born

31 The Insurance Industry Wants to Genetically Test All Policy Holders
32 Smoking Causes Problems Other Than Lung Cancer and Heart Disease
33 Herds of Milk-Producing Cows Are Rife With Bovine Leukemia Virus
34 Most Doctors Don’t Know the Radiation Level of CAT Scans
35 Medication Errors Kill Thousands Each Year
36 Prescription Drugs Kill Over 100,000 Annually
37 Work Kills More People Than War
38 The Suicide Rate IsHighest Among the Elderly
39 For Low-Risk People, a Positive Result from an HIV Test Is Wrong Half the Time
40 DNA Matching Is Not Infallible

41 An FBI Expert Testified That Lie Detectors Are Worthless for Security Screening
42 The Bayer Company Made Heroin
43 LSD Has Been Used Successfully in Psychiatric Therapy
44 Carl Sagan Was an Avid Pot-Smoker
45 One of the Heroes of Black Hawk Down Is a Convicted Child Molester
46 The Auto Industry Says That SUV Drivers Are Selfish and Insecure
47 The Word “Squaw” Is Not a Derisive Term for the Vagina
48 You Can Mail Letters for Little or No Cost
49 Advertisers’ Influence onthe News Media Is Widespread
50 The World’s Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes

Here you go so you don’t go through PDF hell!