$ 25 MILLION SPACE TOUR [Reuters, April 8, 2007] BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan --U.S. software mogul Charles Simonyi and two Russian cosmonauts blasted into orbit on Saturday aboard a Russian spaceship watched by Simonyi's friend, lifestyle guru Martha Stewart. The Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft, with a roar of its engines, lifted off from the Kazakh steppe into the night sky exactly on schedule at 11:31 p.m. local time (1:31 p.m. EDT). Nine minutes later, loudspeakers at the launch-pad announced the rocket had safely delivered Simonyi -- the world's fifth space tourist who paid $25 million for the trip -- into orbit. "He had a big grin on his face," said Simonyi's family spokeswoman Susan Hutchison, who was able to see the crew via a live camera inside the cockpit as the spacecraft pulled away from the launch-pad. Simonyi, a 58-year-old billionaire who helped found Microsoft, is making a 12-day round trip to the International Space Station (ISS). He was joined on the outward flight by Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov. As the crew bid farewell before boarding the craft, two and a half hours before the launch, a crowd of friends and relatives shouted "Charles, have a good flight" and "Go, Charles." Stewart, a close friend of Simonyi and a celebrity in the United States, spent the day touring Baikonur, a scattering of Soviet-era buildings in the middle of the Kazakh steppe, while she waited for the night launch. She took a ride on a camel and examined a yurt, a Kazakh felt hut. "Baikonur is beautiful," she said. Simonyi is carrying a special dinner packed in an aluminum container which he will share with ISS colleagues on Russia's Cosmonauts Day, April 12. Stewart chose the menu featuring quail roasted in wine, duck breast with capers and rice pudding, among other courses. The two Americans have been reported to be romantically linked. In a private farewell before the launch, Stewart and Simonyi, separated by a glass quarantine panel, exchanged personal words and waved goodbye to one another. Asked about speculation in some media about their private life, spokeswoman Hutchison said: "I think he is extremely focused on space right now. I can tell you if he wanted to propose marriage to her he would not do so through a glass window.". Simonyi was born in Hungary and moved to the United States where he joined a start-up company called Microsoft and made a fortune developing some of its most profitable applications like Word. Simonyi, who now runs his own company, and the Russian cosmonauts are due to dock with the ISS on Monday. "He is calm, his blood pressure was healthy and his pulse was low this morning when they did the final test," said Hutchison.

IGNORING HINDU CUSTOMS NOT APPRECIATED [The Daily Telegraph, April 10, 2007] In a bizarre twist to her recent wedding ceremony, Hollywood star Liz Hurley faces a three year jail term for breaching Hindu custom. Even more bizarrely, wedding pictures the star sold to Hello! magazine for $5 million might be used to prosecute her, combined with evidence from her new father-in-law. A devout Hindu, Vishnu Khandelwal, who is thought never to have met the couple, has begun legal proceedings saying their lavish wedding broke with Hindu custom. Among the allegations are that Hurley refused to take off her shoes when they arrived at the marriage mandap (marriage place) and that she drank alcohol. Pictures of the pair kissing in Hello! will be used to show that they failed to "behave soberly,” while it was noted that kissing is also against Hindu culture. "We are using the Hello! pictures to prove our case,'' prosecuting lawyer HM Saraswat said. Hurley's father-in-law Vinod Nayar has also contacted the prosecutor saying he has help regarding the case. "He wants to disclose some important facts,'' Mr Saraswat said. Mr Nayar famously disowned his son and daughter-in-law last week after claiming he and other Indian guests at the wedding were made to feel like a "second class citizens'' in comparison to European guests at the lavish do. If found guilty of a "deliberate and malicious act'' against the religion, both Hurley and her husband Arun face a three-year jail sentence. "An arrest warrant could be issued for Arun and Liz as soon as the prosecution has made its case - -either because they are summonsed to give evidence or they have been found guilty,'' Mr Saraswat said. "Vinod Nayar told me that when Arun Nayar and Liz Hurley came to the marriage mandap ,Arun Nayar left his footwear outside but Liz Hurley refused to remove her footwear. "When we worship we just remove our shoes because we pray to God and at that time shoes should be removed. Our intention is to prove that the procedures adopted by both the accused for their marriage is against our Hindu rites.'' The pair could also face an unlimited fine - putting a sizeable hole in their Hello! advance -- by the judge presiding over the case if he decides there is a prime facie case to answer. They could be charged under section 295A of the Indian penal code, detailing an intention to outrage the feelings of Hindus by insulting their religious and ritualistic beliefs. Hurley's father-in-law has agreed to testify against the couple with written evidence but, despite his and the prosecutor's best efforts, legal experts said it was unlikely the couple would go to jail.

ANTI WHALING ACTIVISTS LABELLED "ECO TERRORISTS" [Australian Associated Press, February 12, 2007] The crew of a Japanese whaling ship issued a distress call today and labelled activists "eco-terrorists" following collisions in Antarctica's icy waters today. Japanese authorities have blamed the dramatic incident on activists with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, but the group has said the whaling vessel, Kaiko Maru, was at fault. The Rescue Coordination Centre of New Zealand this afternoon said the Kaiko Maru had issued a distress call, saying it had collided with two ships crewed by Sea Shepherd activists. The centre later said the Kaiko Maru was no longer in distress, did not require any assistance and was able to continue under its own power. Sea Shepherd leader, Captain Paul Watson, said there was only one collision -- involving the group's protest ship, the Robert Hunter -- and the Kaiko Maru. Watson blamed the incident on the whaling vessel, saying it had "backed up and hit" the Robert Hunter, which had earlier tried to force the Japanese ship into part of the sea heavy with ice. The action was taken after the whaling ship was seen bearing down on a pod of whales, Watson said. "At one point the Kaiko Maru turned to starboard and struck the Robert Hunter," the Sea Shepherd group said in a statement. "The Kaiko Maru has issued a distress signal. We have acknowledged this distress signal but they refuse to say what distress they are in." Watson said the collision had torn a hole about 30cm in diameter in the hull of the Robert Hunter, but it was not large enough to sink it. In a statement tonight, Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) accused Sea Shepherd protesters of using pirate-like tactics. "Eco-terrorist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has rammed and damaged one of the Japanese research fleet," the statement said. "Afterwards, both the Robert Hunter and the Farley Mowat came to the either side of the Kaiko Maru, stopping her from continuing. This was done in the same manner employed by pirates. Its propeller (the Kaiko Maru's) has been damaged by them." Sea Shepherd activists have been facing off against the whalers north of the Balleny Islands, west of the Ross Sea, trying to stop Japan's controversial annual whale hunt. Last week, the rival groups called a temporary truce as the whaling ships joined in the search for two protesters who became lost while trying to foul the propeller of one of the Japanese vessels. The pair, including Australian Karl Neilsen, were found safe about seven hours later, and hostilities quickly resumed. International director of Sea Shepherd Jonny Vasic was aboard the Robert Hunter when today's collision occurred. "It was a loud noise -- a big bang. I actually shuddered a bit," Vasic said. "The ships collided two times, once side by side, and once when they rammed into us. I haven't inspected it yet, but they did some damage to our hull." Vasic said the damage would ``absolutely not'' stop protesters' activities. "We are here to keep those guys out of the whale sanctuary. We are not damaged beyond repair. We are still seaworthy," Vasic said. Another environment group in the Antarctic waters, Greenpeace, condemned the clash. Karli Thomas, the expedition leader on Greenpeace vessel, the Esperanza, said the focus should be on saving whales, not damaging ships. "We completely condemn any violent action by anyone. Potentially endangering lives in the middle of the Southern Ocean is unacceptable," Thomas said. The Esperanza, which has been searching for the Japanese whaling fleet, is headed directly towards the co-ordinates given in the distress call. Earlier today captain Watson said today the Farley Mowat was almost out of fuel and he was considering giving the Japanese whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru, a "steel enema" by ramming it. Watson said his boat was now seen as a pirate vessel, and he would rather lose it in defence of whales than to bureaucrats. Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace vessels have run campaigns of interference in recent years aimed at frustrating Japan's whale hunt. Japan continues to claim its hunt is for scientific purposes but admits whale meat from the catch ends up on restaurant tables. Australia, New Zealand and other countries have lobbied at the International Whaling Commission to end the hunt. Australia's Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull tonight said that while Australia remained opposed to whaling, Sea Shepherd activists should refrain from dangerous action. "We again call on Sea Shepard to conduct their operations in a safe and peaceful manner," he said in a statement. "The type of action they are now proposing -- such as ramming vessels -- could result in a tragedy."

VOLUNTARY NATIONAL SERVICE FOR SCHOOL LEAVERS School leavers will be offered a year of voluntary national service in the armed forces as part of a new $1 billion recruitment plan. The Howard Government has rejected conscription, opting instead for "voluntary" national service. Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson announced the new policy to recruit up to 1000 young men and women a year into a special "first year out of school" program, beginning in 2008. Dr Nelson described the latest approach to defence recruitment as "try-before-you-buy, obligation-free. Not only as the Minister, but as a parent, I'm very much behind this," he said. Students will have to have completed year 12 and be at least 18 years old. They will be offered places mostly in the army, but also in the RAAF and RAN. Dr Nelson said it was unlikely they would be deployed in action. But he said they might be sent abroad for logistical or supply jobs that were not directly in the line of fire. "They'd receive training in a range of areas," Dr Nelson said. "But we wouldn't envisage they'd be deployed and they wouldn't be in combat roles. It would imbue them with values of integrity, commitment, teamwork and problem solving. At the same time they'd be exposed to a range of technologies. It's the sort of experience that would be valued by future bosses and it would expose families to the ADF experience. It would be good to have on your CV." The recruitment plan is part of a $1 billion overhaul of the defence system. Defence seeks about 8,000 recruits a year, but is attracting only 7,000. Defence will aim their campaign at about 34,000 school leavers who take off a so-called "gap year," in which they travel or do odd jobs. Instead of committing themselves for five or six years, the young recruits will be able to choose after only a year whether to stay or quit. "It will be highly attractive to prospective employers. And they will be paid," Dr Nelson said. “But solving the recruitment crisis would not involve a compulsory scheme of conscription. We would only ever consider conscription if we were under direct attack," he said. "Conscription would be highly divisive. It would put a fault line down the middle of Australia."

Anglican Leader Says Creationism Should Not Be Taught In Schools The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, says he does not believe creationism -- the Bible-based account of the origins of the world -- should be taught in schools. "I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there has just been a jarring of categories," Dr Rowan Williams told The Guardian newspaper. "My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he added. A debate over creationism or a related subject known as intelligent design (ID) has triggered divisions in Britain and fierce divides in the United States, The Guardian explained. Intelligent design is the argument that creation is so complex an intelligent, religious force must have directed it. The religious right in the United States has pressured some states to consider giving ID equal prominence to Darwinism, the widely accepted scientific account of the evolution of life, the newspaper said. The Guardian noted that most scientists believe intelligent design is merely an attempt to sneak fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching.

DE-TOX PROGRAM FOR INTERNET GAMING ADDICTS [SMH, August 12, 2006] If you had told Keith Bakker two years ago that one day he would be starting Europe's first clinic for video-game addicts, he might have laughed at you. Yet when the director of the Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants noticed that more and more clients with drug addictions were also obsessed with gaming, the evidence was impossible to ignore. "We run an organisation where we have facilities for - I hate to call it that - 'regular addictions' such as chemical dependency and eating disorders," Bakker says. Because we are based in Amsterdam where soft drugs are pretty much legal, we get a lot of kids in with soft drug addictions. In the last 18 months, when we did psychosocial and addiction histories for the kids, we kept seeing gaming come up. This was obviously an enormous obsessive-compulsive behaviour that they were having a lot of trouble with." Bakker says the idea for a video-game treatment centre started with one client about a year ago. "His parents brought him in for a cocaine problem - he had stolen money to buy some. Then it turned out he was just a gamer, who took cocaine just to stay awake. "We didn't have a program for just gaming addicts. I looked around for somewhere to send this kid and there was nothing, nowhere in the world. The kids kept showing up and we had to develop something around the kids that came in." Bakker says that since opening the game detox clinic, his consultancy has been bombarded with requests for information from academics, psychiatrists and other professionals from around the world. There also has been a flood of applications from prospective clients, mostly from the United States. "It'll be full forever," he says. Bakker reckons the number of video-game addicts is potentially huge. He says 20 per cent of the world's population has a genetic disposition to addiction. The Netherlands alone potentially has 800,000 under-18s at risk. "If you repeat those numbers across the world it's crazy," he says. In a large majority of cases people become obsessed with one type of game -- the multiplayer game. Their obsession revolves around advancing to the next level of the game. "The one we see the most is World of Warcraft. It's really heavy. In these games it's all about levelling up, you can only level up. So there's never a moment when they have any satisfaction or esteem. So these kids turn up [to the clinic] as little wrecks." In the centre of Amsterdam, the clinic consists of two 16th-century townhouses on a canal. The vast majority of clients are young males. "There are very few women, maybe four out of 100," Bakker says. "Basically they're all white males from ages 10 to 25. They're all quite intelligent -- many of these kids have scholarships to university." The treatment costs about 500 euros ($840) a day, which includes meals, activities, accommodation and therapists. Drugs are not part of the treatment. "Compared to most treatments it's quite reasonable," Bakker says. "That's because there's no medical detox. But there's a hardcore psychological detox. We don't have to keep them under 24-hour medical supervision. We do have to keep a guard on the door to make sure they don't run away and go find an internet cafe." Clients are allowed to bring clothes, toiletries and books for studying. Mobile phones are forbidden, along with Game Boys and anything connected with video games. "The first thing you have to do is detox them, no contact at all with any electronic video game, nothing with moving images except for television," Bakker says. "Obviously it sounds crazy, but there's no remote control anywhere. "Look at the second word of that [remote control] - control. If you want to have some fun, you know what you do? You get 10-15 video gamers in a room and you throw the remote control in and see who gets it." The clinic takes 10 clients at a time. Each day starts at 7am and lights are out at 11pm. Bakker says they have a great cook on site. "As soon as they come in they see a nutritionist. Sometimes the kids are overweight or underweight." Video-game addicts can forget about that staple of gamers everywhere, Red Bulls. "They're a trigger for gaming behaviour." Therapy begins in the same way as any other obsessive-compulsive disorder. "They have to realise it's not the second or third game that's going to kill them, it's the first one. They also have to realise it's all about control, that there's no way they can control their gaming behaviour [without help]. The horror is that it's an obsession of the mind. It's a mental thing, it's not about gaming itself. "Then there's the other side. Let's imagine a 14-year-old kid. He's chubby and he's got pimples and the girls don't like him and he gets picked on at school. And he comes home and turns on his computer and he becomes Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting the world but he has total control over his little environment. There's this need to go off into a fantasy world to control everything, but then they're losing control. "Then there's the social side. If we're going to have any type of long-term success these kids have to fill a hole which has been filled sometimes for years with gaming. We give these kids new living skills, other activities where they can get some kind of fulfilment." The withdrawal symptoms for gaming include panic attacks, sleeping problems and sweating when seeing a computer. Unfortunately, in the modern world, video-game addicts can't just give up their computers to get the cyber monkey off their backs. And no one is asking them to. "If you work on a job in 2006 you have to work on a computer," Bakker says. "It's like with an eating-disorder client -- we have to get them to the point where they eat three meals a day. What they have to learn with the game is that the dealer is one click away. They need to learn to be very vigilant. They learn how dangerous gaming is by looking at the evidence of their life." Part of the therapy is to have clients take part in "activities that build their self-esteem. There's skydiving, paintballing, strategic games in the woods. We do rope exercises, team-building exercises and wall climbing. There's a lot of team stuff and competitive games. They love competition." The duration of the stay depends on the individual. "Some kids in the first conversation look at the situation and say, 'Holy Christ' and that's it," Bakker says. "But usually the kids that have come here have already lost a whole lot." And what they lose is time. An addict might spend five hours a day, which equals 35 hours a week, on their addiction, stealing time away from their families and their future. "There's no time for anyone else, to form social relationships, to learn how to talk to the opposite sex, play football, do your homework. We've seen hundreds of emails since this has hit the press -- what we see are these horror stories of kids who have lost scholarships, they stay up all night and don't go to class the next day." China has also recognised the extent of the problem. It has started its own clinic for internet and associated gaming addiction. Others are sceptical that video games can be addictive. Tim Weaver, editor of Xbox World 360, thinks that "addiction" is the wrong word. "Playing games frequently and for long periods of time is unequivocally not the same as being addicted to gambling, drugs or alcohol," Weaver says. " Those three, to me, are far more serious and far more dangerous." "The better the game is, the more likely players are to spend time with it. We get a lot of correspondence about Halo 2. We don't get a lot about Barbie's Horse Adventure." Consultant psychiatrist Dr Clive Allcock, who is president of the National Association for Gambling Studies, can see similarities between playing games and poker machines. "It's the consistency of the activity, the time the mind is focused on something that is fast," he says. "The parallel does seem to be it's exciting for them so that there may be a chance when they grow older that might switch over to poker machines. I've had a case where it's gone the other way, where one individual stopped playing gambling machines but spent considerable time on video games. The avoidance issues just switched over to games." A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Health says there are no plans to start a video-game addiction clinic in NSW, "but we will watch with interest the Amsterdam trial." SEVERE MEASURES USED TO TREAT GAMING ADDICTS IN CHINA If you think rampant gaming is just a problem in Western countries, think again. China has started its own clinic to address internet addiction at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital. Many of the patients are addicted gamers. "Every day in China, more than 20 million youngsters go online to play games and hit the chat rooms, and that means that internet addiction among young people is becoming a major issue," says the head of the clinic, Dr Tao Ran. During their two-week courses, patients receive drug and psychological therapy, electroshock treatment and exercise.

OPRAH WINFREY -- BILLIONAIRE and GURU TO MILLIONS After two decades of searching for her authentic self - exploring New Age theories, giving away cars, trotting out fat, recommending good books and tackling countless issues from serious to frivolous -- Oprah Winfrey has risen to a new level of guru. She's no longer just a successful talk-show host worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes' most recent estimate. Over the past year, Winfrey, 52, has emerged as a spiritual leader for the new millennium, a moral voice of authority for the nation. With her television pulpit and the sheer power of her persona, she has encouraged and steered audiences (mostly women) in all matters, from genocide in Rwanda to suburban spouse swapping to finding the absolute best T-shirt and oatmeal cookie. "She's a really hip and materialistic Mother Teresa," says Kathryn Lofton, a professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who has written two papers analyzing the religious aspects of Winfrey. "Oprah has emerged as a symbolic figurehead of spirituality." On Monday, Winfrey shares one of her most ambitious events of the past year -- Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball -- as a special on ABC (8 p.m. ET/PT). It lets viewers in on a weekend in which she invited 25 legendary black women and other guests to her home in Montecito, Calif., for a luncheon, ball and gospel brunch in their honor. It was something she spent a year planning and describes as one of the "greatest moments" of her life. "This weekend was the fulfillment of a dream for me: to honor where I've come from, to celebrate how I got here, and to claim where I'm going," Winfrey says on her website. And now, as Winfrey "lives her best life," as her TV motto says, we get to experience it with her. Although the concept of the Rev. Oprah has been building through the years, never was it more evident than this season of her talk show, during which she conducted the public flogging of author James Frey. Feeling stung and embarrassed after endorsing his memoir about addiction, A Million Little Pieces, which turned out to include exaggerations and falsehoods, Winfrey had Frey on the show to do an about-face. "I left the impression that the truth is not important," she said on the show. "I am deeply sorry about that because that is not what I believe." It was a watershed Winfrey moment, showing herself as not only a talk-show host with whom you don't want to mess, but also someone who is fully aware of the power of her own image. Think back: She appeared in New Orleans to take on the government after Hurricane Katrina hit last August, and she sent a message to us all about civil rights as she stood by the casket of Coretta Scott King in February. Last week, she shed a tear with Teri Hatcher over sexual abuse memories, and she jumped on the Darfur bandwagon, encouraging viewers to support refugees there. "She's a moral monitor, using herself as the template against which she measures the decency of a nation," Lofton says. But while this past year showed Winfrey at new heights, it also was a year that polarized people, particularly after the Frey incident: "A self-righteous attack dog," wrote arts and culture critic Steven Winn in the San Francisco Chronicle. "A sanctimonious bully," said media critic Robert Thompson on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "She puts the cult in pop culture," wrote media critic Mark Jurkowitz in The Phoenix Winfrey was applauded by many for her public mea culpa and for getting Frey to do the same, but her righteous demand for justice also evoked criticism. "No one person should have that kind of power to affect markets, politics or anything else," says Debbie Schlussel, a lawyer, conservative columnist and blogger. Love her or loathe her, Winfrey has become proof that you can't be too rich, too thin or too committed to rising to your place in the world. With 49 million viewers each week in the USA and more in the 122 other countries to which the show is distributed, Winfrey reaches more people in a TV day than most preachers can hope to reach in a lifetime of sermons. "One of the things that's key," says Marcia Nelson, author of The Gospel According to Oprah, "is she walks her talk. That's really, really important in today's culture. People who don't walk their talk fall from a great pedestal -- scandals in the Catholic Church, televangelism scandals. If you're not doing what you say you do, woe be unto you." In Ellen DeGeneres' stand-up comedy act several years ago, she included a joke about getting to heaven and finding that God is a black woman named Oprah. Last fall, at the start of this 20th season of The Oprah Winfrey Show, guest Jamie Foxx said much the same thing, but he wasn't joking. "What you have is something nobody can describe," Foxx said to Winfrey on the air. Then he explained about how he told Vibe magazine: "You're going to get to heaven and everyone's waiting on God and it's going to be Oprah Winfrey." He told her she has "different gears" than most people. "You're on the top of the world, and we really do watch and listen for everything you do and say to kind of get our lives together. It's the truth." In a November poll conducted at Beliefnet.com, a site that looks at how religions and spirituality intersect with popular culture, 33% of 6,600 respondents said Winfrey has had "a more profound impact" on their spiritual lives than their clergypersons. Cathleen Falsani, religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently suggested, "I wonder, has Oprah become America's pastor?" "I am not God," Oprah said in a 1989 story by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison that ran in The New York Times Magazine titled The Importance of Being Oprah. But at the time, Winfrey called her talk show her "ministry," Harrison wrote. It remains an interview Winfrey says she hates. In a Los Angeles Times interview in December, the talk-show host said that "at every turn everything I said was challenged and misinterpreted." She declined to be interviewed for this story, and she declined to allow USA TODAY to cover her most recent, and now rare, Live Your Best Life seminars. Tickets, priced at $185 each, sold out in minutes. Katrina Singleton, 34, paid $450 each for tickets to the February event in Charleston, S.C., which she purchased through a ticket broker. "For Oprah, nothing is too much," she told the Associated Press. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience." At the seminar, according to AP, Winfrey repeatedly spoke of her relationship with God. She even sang a chorus of I Surrender All. "I live inside God's dream for me. I don't try to tell God what I'm supposed to do," she told the crowd. "God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself." Claire Zulkey, 26, an Oprah follower who has written about Winfrey in her online blog at zulkey .com, says, "I think that if this were the equivalent of the Middle Ages and we were to fast-forward 1,200 years, scholars would definitely think that this Oprah person was a deity, if not a canonized being." Marcia Nelson says that it's not going too far to call her a spiritual leader. "I've said to a number of people -- she's today's Billy Graham." Nelson said that concept was most apparent when Winfrey co-hosted the 2001 memorial service held 12 days after the terrorist attacks in New York. She urged the people who filled Shea Stadium that day, and all Americans, to stand strong, rousing the audience by repeating the refrain, "We shall not be moved." One of Winfrey's most appealing subtexts is that she's anti-institutional, says Chris Altrock, minister of Highland Street Church of Christ in Memphis. He says Winfrey believes there are many paths to God, not just one. After doing his doctoral research three years ago on postmodernism religion, a religious era that began in the 1970s as Christians became deeply interested in spirituality and less interested in any established church, he came up with what he calls "The Church of Oprah," referring to the culture that has created her. "Our culture is changing," he says, "as churches are in decline and the bulk of a new generation is growing up outside of religion." Instead, they're turning to the Church of Oprah. "People who have no religion relate to her," Nelson says. When Winfrey started in the talk-show business 20 years ago, her goal was to beat Phil Donahue, then the reigning talk-show champ. As the Jerry Springer era of tabloid talk shows came into favor, she vowed to use her show to promote good, not sleaze. By the late '90s, Winfrey's focus was Change Your Life TV, and a New Age message was more prevalent. She preached making the message of her life - take responsibility, and greatness will follow -- the substance of the show. Keep a personal journal, purchase self-indulgent gifts, take time for you -- because you deserve it. The notes rang true to millions of viewers. Debbie Ford's book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, shot up the sales charts after Ford appeared on Winfrey's show in October 2000 to talk about aspects of ourselves that we deny but which can be sources of joy and strength. "I think at the time when she had me and Gary Zukav and a lot of the other spiritual teachers on her show, it was her own journey, and she was taking all of the world on that spiritual evolution," Ford says. Lately, Winfrey has seemed to focus more on social issues (along with the inescapable talk-show fare of celebrity guests, home and diet makeovers, and marriage and financial troubles). "She's fabulous. She looks great and is not suffering," Ford says, so it makes sense she isn't exploring New Age philosophies anymore. Instead, Ford says, people now "look to her to find their greatness. She is so real. That's why people are attracted to her -- for different reasons. Some people will say her brilliance. Others will say authenticity. Others will say her power. They're seeing part of themselves in her. We're all on Oprah's journey, in a sense." Schlussel says Winfrey followers "are incredibly gullible, bandwagon-jumping trend-slaves." Winfrey, she says, "acts as if her show has 'evolved,' but in fact, she still has the salacious sex and deviance stories, with a psychologist in the audience to make it seem highbrow and give it the kosher seal of approval. If this is the person whose morals we are putting on a pedestal, then America's moral compass is in much need of retuning." The fact that Winfrey has never been married, never had children and is a billionaire distances her from her audience, Schlussel says. "How could anyone like this be in touch with the average American woman?" Lofton points out that any discussion of Winfrey should not be one that criticizes her or how she came to be a spiritual icon for the history books but one that examines how it came to be that way. "Why do we all need her so much? What is wrong with us that we so need this little woman in Chicago?" Jim Twitchell, a professor at the University of Florida who has written several books about branding and describes himself as a cultural anthropologist, says Oprah reverence makes sense. "Religion essentially is based on high anxiety of what's going to happen to you." Winfrey pushes the idea "that you have a life out there, and it's better than the one you have now and go get it." It's most apparent in the setting of her show, Twitchell says. "The guest is sitting beside her, but what she's really doing is exuding this powerful message of 'You are a sinner, yes, you are, but you can also find salvation.' What I find intriguing about it is it's delivered with no religiosity at all, even though it has a powerful Baptist, democratic, enthusiastic tone. "It has to do with this deep American faith and yearning to be reborn. To start again."

WHEN NATURE CALLS ...... A Federal Government website offering directions to Australia's 14,295 public toilets is ensuring more than one thousand people a day are never caught short. People can now even trace the shortest route to a loo using satellite images taken from space, when the National Toilet Map website is used with the Google Earth site. Users are downloading maps from the site on to mobile phones and pocket GPS units with compass and map directions leading them to the nearest convenience. The site is now so popular overseas tourists are using it to plan their entire holidays around toilets listed on the map. It was originally designed to help the disabled and older Australians with continence problems and is now attracting attention from the world's major cities with interest from London and New York. The Government sponsors the site at a cost of $200,000 a year, including a national toilet map help line. It was a massive task to coordinate all the local councils in Australia to send details of toilets. A team of spot checkers travelled throughout Australia to verify the locations of the toilets were correct and more are being added to the site as they are discovered. A Tasmanian company is employed to maintain the site. Human Solutions project manager Lauren Bryan said the site now gets 1,000 hits a day and the company has two full time workers to maintain it and the helpline. She said toilets are mapped using latitude and longitude points on the Earth. "The site is aimed at people who have continence issues but you get a whole range of people using it from tourists to pregnant women," Ms Bryan said. "Basically anyone who likes to be prepared before they travel." Ms Bryan, who co-presented a paper on the project at the 2005 World Toilet Forum with president of the Australian Toilet Association Bill Chapman, said that international toilet experts have expressed a great deal of interest in the site.

CALIFORNIA'S GOVERNATOR SPENDS BIG WITH PUBLIC MONEY [SMH and Los Angeles Times March 25, 2006] ALMOST everywhere California's Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, travels, he is shadowed by another sturdy Austrian: Dieter Rauter, his stunt double on Terminator 3 and other films. Mr Rauter is a member of the Governor's vast and expensive political apparatus. When Mr Schwarzenegger meets the public, Mr Rauter's hand-held digital camera records the event for posterity, a service that has cost $US62,000 ($86,000) since Mr Schwarzenegger entered politics about four years ago. Another Schwarzenegger friend gets $US100,000 a year as a speech coach. A Hollywood acquaintance makes campaign jackets and T-shirts, a $US70,000 expense so far. Mr Schwarzenegger hires scores of the best political operatives, travels exclusively by private jet and insists on a sought-after cinematographer to film his commercials - productions that involve casting agents, caterers and drycleaners. In flashiness and magnitude, his public appearances have exceeded anything else in modern California politics. The premium expenses show that although Mr Schwarzenegger is working in Sacramento, he has not entirely left Hollywood. The platinum-plated operation has given a tactical advantage to his political foes, whose spending habits have been more efficient and traditional. The Governor spends tens of millions on public events, television ads, polling and other traditional political activity. But he has spent a smaller percentage than his opponents on the No. 1 task of any campaign: communicating with the public. The public employee unions that ran an anti-Schwarzenegger campaign during last year's special election spent about 75 per cent of their money addressing voters through television and radio ads, phone banks and mailed brochures. The Governor, who sponsored four ballot initiatives and lost every one, spent 63 per cent of his cash communicating his message that way. Mr Schwarzenegger was vastly outspent by his opponents last year, but inefficiency hurt him, too, said Ray McNally, a lead consultant on the successful union-backed effort. The Governor waited so long to schedule time on TV stations, for example, that he paid dearly for it -- frequently double what the unions paid to place an ad in the same time slot. In politics, Mr McNally said, there are "two things you cannot afford to waste -- money and time -- and he wasted both." Mr Schwarzenegger's spending could be a critical issue this year as he seeks re-election. He hopes to raise as much as $US75 million, and must contend with new limits on donations. His two main Democratic rivals have millions more than Mr Schwarzenegger, whose campaign started the year in debt. He said he personally reviewed last year's finances and "couldn't really find anything. It was not like someone ripped us off, or someone misused money." Mr Schwarzenegger is not the biggest spender in Californian politics. The unions spent $US164 million against his initiatives last year. The pharmaceutical industry unloaded $US90 million on two other measures related to drug prices, both of which failed. The Governor came in third, spending about $US74 million, rounding out the most expensive year ever in California politics. However, Mr Schwarzenegger's fame gets him more publicity than his opponents, which costs his campaign nothing. But no other elected official in California has raised and spent as much money as Mr Schwarzenegger, particularly in such a short time. The Governor has paid his core group of consultants handsomely -- not much more than other campaigns pay top consultants, but he employs dozens where most candidates hire a few. In all he has paid them $US14.7 million -- about 10 per cent of his campaign spending.

MANDARIN MORE DIFFICULT THAN ENGLISH

Mandarin speakers use more areas of their brains than people who speak English, scientists said, in a finding that provides new insight into how the brain processes language. Unlike English speakers, who use one side of their brain to understand the language, scientists at the Wellcome Trust research charity in Britain discovered that, in Mandarin, both sides of the brain are used to interpret variations in sounds. "We were very surprised to discover that people who speak different sorts of languages use their brains to decode speech in different ways; it overturned some long-held theories," said Sophie Scott, a psychologist at the charity. Using brain scans on volunteers, Dr Scott discovered that different areas of the brain are used to interpret words and intonation. The left temporal lobe of the brain is active when English speakers hear the language but Mandarin speakers use the left and right lobe, which is normally used to process melody in music and speech. Intonation is important in Mandarin because it gives different meanings to the same word. The word "ma" for example can mean mother, scold, horse or hemp, depending on the tone. "We think Mandarin speakers interpret intonation and melody in the right temporal lobe to give the correct meaning to the spoken word," Dr Scott said in a statement. She believes the research could provide insights into what happens when people are forced to relearn speech comprehension following a stroke. "It seems that the structure of the language you learn as a child affects how the structure of your brain develops to decode speech. Native English speakers, for example, find it extraordinarily difficult to learn Mandarin," Dr Scott said. The findings will be presented at a science exhibition this week at the Royal Society, Britain's academy of leading scientists, in London. [Reuters]

HOW THE PRINT MEDIA WORKS

By JULIAN HANCOCK I will now hereby endeavour to explain, from my personal experience, how the media works. The printed media is a separate issue to TV, which relies on dramatic graphical images to attract the viewer's attention. Firstly ... and this is the fundamental issue which even highly educated people do not take into account .... a newspaper is a business, whose primary concern is to return a profit to its shareholders. There are simply no logical grounds for the assumption by most people that a newspaper is somehow obliged to supply a totally accurate and comprehensive recording of events. Secondly ... as the cover price of a print publication represents only a very small proportion of the cost of producing the publication (from memory, something like 10%) the main revenue comes from advertising. And so we come to the first BIAS: major advertisers exert an enormous influence on both the content and political leanings of the publication. [Special glossy Feature inserts are merely a way of attracting more revenue, and rarely include any meaningful news] Thirdly ... the owner ... which includes the shareholders who are partially funding the publication ... adds his/their political bias to the equation. Fourthly ... the time factor. The majority content of a morning daily has to be submitted by early evening on the day before. There is a conference between the chief-of staff (who is responsible for assigning particular stories to particular reporters), the News Editor, ( and possibly the Editor), and the head of the photographic department. The actual editor of a metropolitan daily doesn't get particularly involved in this process. Editorials are actually written by a normal journalist assigned to this task, just as choice of Letters to the Editor to be published is also the responsibility of one individual, the Letters Editor. Fifthly ... by the time this meeting is held, the layout of the newspaper has already been drawn up by artists, based on the amount of advertising sold for that particular day. There is a fixed ratio here. From memory it might be 60/40 in favour of advertising, but don't quote me on the precise ratio. The ONLY reason that the number of pages varies considerably from one day to another is because of the advertising space sold for that day. Days which advertisers find the most advantageous produce the largest newspapers. On small days, hard news is chosen very selectively. On big days, any old rubbish is used to fill the much greater space assigned to news and opinion. Sixthly ... Whilst newspaper proprietors undoubtedly attempt to establish the political perspectives which they would like their readers to follow, the general content is, in my opinion and observation, largely set by the readers. the GP (general public) are fascinated by violence, scandal, gossip etc., and the various newspapers are obliged to cater to these preferences if they want to maintain their share of the market. So sensational stories are published at the expense of what I would consider more important news, especially developments in science and other academic disciplines. Seventhly ... but my no means lastly, time is of the essence. In the case of afternoon newspapers (which no longer exist in Sydney) there are several deadlines during the day, and news gatherers are under a lot of pressure to get the story in before the opposition publication. As these afternoon papers depend a lot for their sales on impulse buying, the one which comes up first with the most sensational poster will sell the most copies. So that while afternoon papers are just as concerned as morning papers with trying to report accurately, the deadline factor does not allow for much checking of the story. Summing up ... while the above points do not cover all the influences involved, it should give a fair picture of why accurate, unbiased reporting is just not an option. The largest influence is money, and as particular media empires increase in size, power (equatable with political motives) enters more and more into the equation. The reporter ... so spare a thought for the poor journalist, who is fully aware of all the pressures listed above, and knows that it is pointless to try and write what he/she may believe to be the truth if it is likely to come into conflict with any of these influences. Now I could list from my own experience numerous instances in which significant stories have been dropped completely, or edited almost beyond recognition, before going into print. So yes, the news that is actually published is very selective and biased. But to think that the media has a civic duty to publish the unadulterated truth is utter rubbish. The "people's" news service ... the ABC ... is continually criticised as being biased in favour of Labor. Actually most journalists are Labor voters, as they know that the Liberal Party is only concerned with the interests of the wealthy, and are therefore logically more inclined to exert bias on the press. We are lucky to live in a country where we have access to a reasonably fair version of what's happing around the world, and especially within Australia. I followed the SMH's Paul McGeough's (possibly wrong spelling there) accounts of the war from his position inside Baghdad. Nothing has since emerged to suggest that his reporting was in any way less than accurate and fair.