MySpace Targets Overseas

MySpace has signed a deal with a British-based production firm, ShineReveille International, to distribute its video content overseas. This will make MySpace a breeding ground for television series.

The Web site with 110 million members wants to be seen as an outlet for original content. The company owned by News Corporation, called itself “Hollywood’s digital playground.”

ShineReveille International has carried the international format rights to shows including “The Biggest Loser” and “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”

Elisabeth Murdoch, a daughter of the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, is the chief executive of the Shine Group.

Online videos usually are not high cost productions and last less than five minutes. MySpace wants to change that. It had one web-based show which flopped in February, "Quaterlife." Fewer than four million viewers tuned into the debut on NBC.

But Shine intends to localize shows for international markets and adapt specific concepts of the shows for television.

MySpace will be using a new technique to test pilots. Instead of spending millions in a show that might not even get a series, they intend use its social network as a test bed. In the United States, MySpace’s TV section has two original shows, “Roommates” and a hidden-camera series, “Special Delivery,” and more than a dozen in development.

From MySpace to YourSpace

MySpace to Discuss Effort to Customize Ads

Do You MySpace?

New Generation Studies Philosophy for an Examined Life

The number of students graduating with philosophy degrees has gone up tremendously over the last few years. Many think it is because students want to arm themselves with the ability to live an examined life.

Facing such issues at the conflict in the Middle East and the political scandal of the week, it's no wonder younger generations want to possess the tools to be able to form their own opinions and beliefs.

At the City University of New York, where enrollment is up 18 percent over the past six years, there are 322 philosophy majors, a 51 percent increase since 2002.

Students at Rutgers said that studying philosophy, with its emphasis on the big questions and alternative points of view, provided good training for looking at larger societal questions, like globalization and technology

David E. Schrader, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, a professional organization with 11,000 members, said that in an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. “It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking,” he said.

Leaning analytical skills and knowing how "think through" a problem to a solution could certainly be used in numerous fields.

Philosophy: Only Education can Make Nation Prosperous

Students Choose Philosophy

How to Use You Philosophy Degree

Health Database "Ignores" Abortion

Federal officials raised questions about two articles in Popline's database, the World's largest database for reproductive health, run by Johns Hopkins University.

The University had the system ignore the word "abortion" in searches of large, publicly financed databases.

After learning of the restrictions on Friday, the dean, Dr. Michael J. Klag, said: “I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the Popline administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.”

Pro Choice advocates weren't happy either.

Ted Miller, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, said: “The public has a right to know why someone would censor relevant medical information. The Bush administration has politicized science as part of an ideological agenda. So it’s important to know if that occurred here.”

Officials said users could search for the topic using synonyms like "unwanted pregnancy." Nay-Sayers were quick to point out that an unwanted pregnancy was not a symptom for abortion.

The dean of the Public Health School lifted the restrictions after learning of them.

Health Database Censors Abortion

Popline Ignores Abortion

Can Search for Abortion Again on Health Site

52 Children Removed from Polygamist Compound

Texas law enforcement removed 52 children from a West Texas ranch founded by Warren Jeffs, a convicted polygamist. They were responding to an accusation of sexual abuse on a 16-year-old female.

All 52 were female and eighteen of the children, ages 6 months to 17 years, were believed to have been abused or at risk of abuse. They were placed in foster care by Child Protective Services, said Darrell Azar, communications manager for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Thirty-four were taken to a nearby civic center for questioning, Mr. Azar said.

There were no immediate arrests. The 1,700-acre compound, the Yearning for Zion Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect, is located in Eldorado, about 160 miles northwest of San Antonio.

Mr. Azar said the girls were removed “because we had reason to believe they had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse.”

“We haven’t talked to any boys yet,” he said. “We will be interviewing boys, too.”

The ranch was built in 2003 by followers of Jeffs, who was sentenced last November in Utah to 10 years to life in prison for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin and to submit to sexual relations against her will. Mr. Jeffs is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate rape charges involving the arranged marriages of two teenage girls to older relatives.

Why Blog? A Book Deal

Today everyone can be a journalist with the blogging medium. But not everyone can get a book deal from creating a blog.

Christian Lander, an Internet copy writer, did just that. He started a blog called "Stuff White People Like." The site contains a list of cultural totems, including gifted children, marathons and writers’ workshops, that a certain type of moneyed and liberal American might be expected to like.

March 20 Random House announced that it has purchased the rights to a book by the blog’s founder. The Price? About $300,000, a sum that many in the publishing and blogging communities believe is an astronomical amount for a book spawned from a blog, written by a previously unpublished author.

Barbara Fillon, a Random House spokeswoman, said her office mates were laughing about the content on White People for weeks before they heard there was a book proposal in the offing.

But it will be difficult for the publisher to make a profit, said Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly. She figured Random House would have to sell about 75,000 copies, a total that would likely land the book on best-seller lists, to earn back its $300,000 advance.

Random House is not worried about racist accusations. They said it is a book in which almost anyone can relate.

Stuff White People Like

Blogging = $$$

Blog is worth $300,000

Wine at home teaches responsibility?

Is introducing wine at the dinner table earlier than 21 a way to prevent binge drinking later in life? Some scientists thing so.

Paul Steinberg, a psychiatrist in Washington, who is the former director of counseling at Georgetown University, said the attitude of forbidding adolescents to even so much as touch a drop of alcohol is almost counterproductive.

“The best evidence shows that teaching kids to drink responsibly is better than shutting them off entirely from it,” he said. “You want to introduce your kids to it, and get across the point that that this is to be enjoyed but not abused.”

He said that the most dangerous day of a young person’s life is the 21st birthday, when legality is celebrated all too fervently. Introducing wine as a part of a meal, he said, was a significant protection against bingeing behavior.

In 1983, Dr. George E. Vaillant, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, published “The Natural History of Alcoholism.” His study concluded that teenagers should be introduced to wine with meals. More than 25 years later, he still stands but the results.

But both men say sips of wine are key; they are not endorsing an entire glass.

“If you are taught to drink in a ceremonial way with food, then the purpose of alcohol is taste and celebration, not inebriation,” Vaillant added. “If you are forbidden to use it until college then you drink to get drunk.”

Not everyone agrees with this school of thought. Recent studies have shown that heavy drinking does more damage to the teenage brain than previously suspected, while the part of the brain responsible for judgment is not even fully formed until the age of 25.

But is it again naive to think teens won't experiment with alcohol until they are at least legal, let alone 25?

Does Wine Bring the Family Together?

The Age of Concent for Wine

Kids are Drinking Earlier

European Travel to be Cheaper and Easier

Traveling to Europe is about to get easier and cheaper. March 30, the "open skies agreement" will be effective. This agreement allows airlines based in the U. S. as well as European airlines to travel to any two airports in either region.

Before the agreement, the trans-Atlantic flights were governed by different agreements; one between the U. S. and separate European regions. The pacts required airlines to take off or land in their native countries, and limited which airlines could serve certain airports.

Before this new agreement British Airways flights headed for the U. S. had to take off in Britain. And only two U. S. carriers could land at Heathrow Airport (London), United and American.

When this agreement goes into effect Continental, Delta and Northwest will be able to serve Heathrow for the first time.

Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, the Irish no-frills carrier, has said he plans to start a new airline that will fly from secondary European markets like Liverpool or Birmingham to a half-dozen American cities like Baltimore or Providence, R.I., for a base fare as low as 10 euros, or about $16 at $1.59 to the euro.

Air France will begin operating a daily flight between Los Angeles and Heathrow on March 30.

This agreement is said to be a blessing for most travelers. Currently there is no direct flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Heathrow. This forces passengers to fly from Dallas to Gatwick or Luton, other London airports, even if they have a connecting flight out of Heathrow. The passengers then have to haul luggage through passport check points, take a cab or bus to the other airport and check in again, a process that could take more than three hours.

Aside from making things easier on the traveler, this new agreement should put pressure on airlines to reduce fairs. United will begin flying between Denver and Heathrow on March 30, with introductory fares starting at $570 round trip for travel before May 15. British Airways, by contrast, has been offering that same route for $1,461, according to an online search.

Consumers are warned not to expect great deal yet. With the price of fuel sky-rocketing, this will have an effect on ticket pricing.

Trans-Atlantic Flights for Air France and Delta

"Open Skies" Help Trans-Atlantic Flights

British Airways Monopoly Broken on Trans-Atlantic Flights