The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Hermosa versión de "Va pensiero"
NABUCCO
Aunque hayas oído otras versiones, creo que esta escena del "Va pensiero" de la ópera "Nabucco", con música de Giuseppe Verdi, merece la pena
1) Es el Coro del Metropolitan House de New York.
2) Fíjate desde qué posición cantan algunos integrantes.
Comentario de una corista española:Es la escena tal vez más bella de la ópera, los hebreos esclavizados están de rodillas a orillas del Éufrates, en Babilonia, como dice el salmo; su oración fervorosa, su anhelo de libertad, la añoranza de la patria lejana, se condensan en la inolvidable escena coral de «Va pensiero sull'ali dórate».
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Should shipwrecks be left alone?-BBC World
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Should shipwrecks be left alone?
By Chris Summers
SS Gairsoppa, Irish coast, 1941 Site: SS Gairsoppa (British merchant ship)
Date of loss: 16 February 1941
Lives lost: 84 (one survivor)
Discovered: 2011, 300 miles off Irish coast
Artefacts: Said to contain 200 tonnes of silver from India, worth as much as £150m
MS Estonia, Baltic Sea, 1994 Site: MS Estonia
Date of loss: 28 September 1994
Lives lost: 852 (mainly Swedes, Estonians and Finns)
Discovered: Two days after it sank en route to Stockholm
Artefacts: Contents of the ferry, including the remains of the dead, have been protected but the bow door was recovered for examination.
Queen Anne's Revenge, Beaufort Inlet, 1718 Site: Queen Anne's Revenge (pirate ship, previously known as La Concorde de Nantes)
Date of loss: 10 June 1718
Lives lost: none (Blackbeard escaped on another ship)
Discovered: 1996 off the coast of North Carolina
Artefacts: Cannons, pistols, rum bottles, slave shackles, surgeon's kit
Undersea ruins in Alexandria, Egypt Site: Ruins of ancient Alexandria
Date of loss: Fourth century AD
Lives lost: Unknown number died after earthquakes and tidal waves
Discovered: 1968 by British diver Honor Frost. More detailed exploration by Franck Goddio in 1990s. (Photo: Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation)
Artefacts: Ancient statues have been found intact as well as large amounts of ceramics from Ancient Greek and Roman period.
Graf Spee, Montevideo, 1939 Site: Graf Spee
Date of loss: 17 December 1939 (scuttled by Germans off coast of Uruguay)
Lives lost: None
Discovered: Site was always known but wreck first explored in 2004
Artefacts: One of the ship's main guns, a rangefinder as well as a 2m (6ft) bronze eagle have been recovered from the deep.
Admiral Zheng He's fleet, Kenya, 1418 Site: The fleet of Admiral Zheng He
Date of loss: 1418
Lives lost: Unknown but probably in the hundreds
Discovered: Porcelain found on seabed but wreck not definitely found
Artefacts: May contain large quantities of Ming China ceramics
The San Diego, Philippines, 1600 Site: The San Diego (Spanish galleon)
Date of loss: 14 December 1600
Lives lost: 259
Discovered: 1992
Artefacts: Cannons, arquebuses (guns), anchors, Ming pottery and hundreds of Thai, Burmese and Mexican jars as well as a rare astrolabe navigational device (pictured).
It is 10 years since a deal to protect the world's thousands of shipwrecks, but the UK and several other major maritime powers are yet to ratify it. Should this underwater heritage be protected or is it acceptable to plunder?
When a ship sinks and lives are lost, it is a tragedy for the families involved.
For the relatives of the dead, the ship becomes an underwater grave but as the years pass the wreck can become a site of archaeological interest.
In recent years technological innovations have allowed commercial archaeologists, decried by some as "treasure hunters", to reach wrecks far below the surface.
The most famous of them all, the Titanic, is more than four miles down and to get there as film director James Cameron has shown, involves using "robot" divers which are prohibitively expensive - around $50,000 (£32,000) a day.
Continue reading the main story Unesco conventionAdopted in Nov 2001 but only came into force in 2009 when the 20th nation - Barbados - ratified itDesigned to complement the 1982 UN Law of the Seas, which failed to mention shipwrecks40 nations have ratified it but the only major seafaring nations are Spain and PortugalThe convention only covers wrecks or ruins which are over 100 years oldStates are responsible for ships in their territorial waters but for wrecks in international waters a number of "interested parties" could be involved
Salvage firms are most interested in ships with cargoes of gold and silver, ceramics or other valuables.
In November 2001, the Unesco Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage was finally adopted.
But 10 years on, it still has not been ratified by the UK, France, Russia, China or the US, and commercial archaeologists continue to locate wrecks, remove their cargoes and sell them off.
"The convention has not been ratified yet because of the issues it throws up about the cost of implementing and policing it," a spokesman for the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, says. "Discussions continue within government, but ratification is not currently seen as a priority."
In September Britain's Department of Transport announced it had signed a deal with Odyssey Marine Exploration for the salvage of 200 tonnes of silver, worth up to £150m, from the SS Gairsoppa, which was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1941.
The British government will get 20% of whatever Odyssey recovers but Unesco says the deal broke the spirit of the convention.
The wreck of Captain Kidd's pirate ship was discovered off the Dominican Republic
Robert Yorke, chairman of the Joint Nautical Archaeology Policy Committee, argues the real reason the government, and the Ministry of Defence in particular, are not ratifying the convention was becayse of a misplaced fear about the implications for British warships around the world.
The internationally recognised concept of "sovereign immunity" means nations should not interfere with foreign warships.
Under the Military Remains Act 1986, a number of British warships around the world are protected, including several ships sunk during the Falklands conflict. Also covered are several German U-boats in UK waters.
There are an estimated three million wrecks on the seabed.
Unesco believes attitudes to the exploration of wrecks are out of step with land archaeology.
"The looting of the tombs of Tutankhamen is now considered unacceptable, so why is the looting of shipwrecks considered acceptable?" says Unesco's Tim Curtis.
Caesar Bita is a Kenyan maritime archaeologist and an expert on ancient trade between China and Africa.
This gold pendant, from South America, was found on the Nuestra Senora de Atocha off Florida
He believes he is close to finding the remains of the legendary fleet of Zheng He. According to stories, a ship from the Chinese admiral's fleet is thought to have foundered off the coast of Kenya in the early 1400s.
Bita says the wrecks could provide evidence of early contact between China and East Africa.
"Shipwrecks are always under threat all over the world by people collecting material from the site and the situation in Kenya is not unique," he says.
Sean Fisher, whose grandfather Mel discovered the treasure ship Nuestra Senora de Atocha off Florida, says he is not "ashamed to call himself a treasure hunter."
"Purist archaeologists turn up their noses at us," he says. "But every artefact we find, whether it's a piece of pottery, a gold bar or a spike used in the rigging gets treated with exactly the same care.
"Everybody loves gold and everybody has a bit of treasure hunter in them but for me the most exciting thing I ever found was a 400-year-old arquebus (hook gun). It was like bringing history back to life."
But the idea that mass heritage is at risk is scaremongering, says Dr Sean Kingsley, a director of Wreck Watch International and a spokesman for Odyssey.
"Sand dredging, offshore fishing, pipeline laying, scuba-diving trophy hunters and governments' failures to police these industries are the true greatest threats to the world's shipwrecks."
He argues that the nations which have ratified the convention represent only 5% of the world's coastline.
The convention only covers wrecks that are over 100 years old, which means the Titanic will only be covered from next year and ships from World War I and II have no protection.
That is something which concerns naval veterans.
Last month seven European naval associations wrote a letter to The Times to protest at Dutch salvage firms who they said were "desecrating" the graves of three British warships, which were torpedoed off the Netherlands in 1914, in their search for scrap metal.
But some wartime wrecks have been protected.
The Polish Maritime Office recently placed a 500m diving exclusion zone around the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff, which sank in the Baltic in January 1945. The ship, packed with 10,000 German refugees from the Eastern Front, was sunk by a Soviet sub. Only 500 survived and it is the single largest death toll at sea.
In 2006 Australian divers located the wreck of a Japanese mini-submarine, M24, three miles off Sydney.The sub, which is believed to contain the bodies of two young Japanese submariners, came to grief after taking part in an attack on Sydney harbour in 1942.
The Australian authorities placed a similar 500m zone around the wreck, monitored by sensitive hydrophones, with a A$1.1m (£725,587) fine for anyone who interferes with the wreck.
Maritime archaeologist Mark Wilde-Ramsing is unlikely to get to meet the relatives of those who died on the wreck he is exploring.
This Spanish seal was found on the San Diego, which sank in the Philippines in 1600
The Queen Anne's Revenge was an English pirate ship commanded by Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, which sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1718.
Many of the exhibits - including pistols, rum bottles, slave shackles and a surgeon's kit - are now on display at a museum in North Carolina but sadly Blackbeard's treasure was nowhere to be found.
But the convention does not just apply to shipwrecks.
It also covers archaeological sites which are now underwater, such as Port Royal in Jamaica, a former pirate harbour once described as the "wickedest city on Earth", as well as prehistoric sites in the North Sea, and the waters off Alexandria, in Egypt.
But if wrecks and ruins continue to fascinate, what is the best way to satisfy the public curiosity?
In 1982 the Mary Rose, flagship of England's King Henry VIII, was raised from the Solent and next year a £35m museum will open in Portsmouth.
Some argue it would have been better, in hindsight, for the Mary Rose to have stayed on the seabed, because of the expensive chemical treatment needed to preserve the timbers.
Shipwrecks can be significant sites for archaeologists
"It has created the myth that all shipwrecks are bottomless money pits and that hull and mass artefact recovery are best avoided," suggests Dr Kingsley.
But Prof Jon Adams, head of maritime archaeology at the University of Southampton, strongly disagrees.
"If it was falling to pieces and nobody came to see it I'd agree, but its conservation has been a highly successful research project in its own right and it is the most popular maritime museum in world with over 300,000 visitors a year," he says.
Many experts believe the future is in underwater trails or virtual museums, where the wreck remains in situ and cameras relay real-time pictures to a museum on the surface.
Australia is also home to a number of "underwater heritage trails", with plaques offering information for divers.
In the Dominican Republic a "living museum" has been set up around the wrecks of two Spanish galleons which sank during a hurricane in 1724.
The living museum was the idea of Prof Charles Beeker, of Indiana University.
"We want people to come and visit but to take only pictures and leave only bubbles," he says.
Prof Beeker, who has also discovered the wreck of Captain Kidd's pirate ship the Quedagh Merchant, said all divers had to be "sensitive" to the fact that wrecks are essentially graveyards and he criticised some who took the skulls of Japanese seamen from the many wrecks in Truk Lagoon in the Pacific.
The Mary Rose, which was excavated from the Solent in 1982, will go on display in a new museum
While it pushes in situ preservation, Unesco is hopeful several major countries, including Australia and France, might soon ratify the convention to give it more weight.
Dr Kingsley is doubtful and says self-regulation is the best way forward: "The future is going to be an expensive and unimaginable journey, a challenge best met by sharing ideas, information and enlightened management, not by using the Unesco convention to slap parking tickets' on robots' windows."
But Prof Adams says self-regulation does not work and added: "The Unesco convention represents best practice and is the only feasible way of protecting underwater cultural heritage in international waters."
Should shipwrecks be left alone?
By Chris Summers
SS Gairsoppa, Irish coast, 1941 Site: SS Gairsoppa (British merchant ship)
Date of loss: 16 February 1941
Lives lost: 84 (one survivor)
Discovered: 2011, 300 miles off Irish coast
Artefacts: Said to contain 200 tonnes of silver from India, worth as much as £150m
MS Estonia, Baltic Sea, 1994 Site: MS Estonia
Date of loss: 28 September 1994
Lives lost: 852 (mainly Swedes, Estonians and Finns)
Discovered: Two days after it sank en route to Stockholm
Artefacts: Contents of the ferry, including the remains of the dead, have been protected but the bow door was recovered for examination.
Queen Anne's Revenge, Beaufort Inlet, 1718 Site: Queen Anne's Revenge (pirate ship, previously known as La Concorde de Nantes)
Date of loss: 10 June 1718
Lives lost: none (Blackbeard escaped on another ship)
Discovered: 1996 off the coast of North Carolina
Artefacts: Cannons, pistols, rum bottles, slave shackles, surgeon's kit
Undersea ruins in Alexandria, Egypt Site: Ruins of ancient Alexandria
Date of loss: Fourth century AD
Lives lost: Unknown number died after earthquakes and tidal waves
Discovered: 1968 by British diver Honor Frost. More detailed exploration by Franck Goddio in 1990s. (Photo: Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation)
Artefacts: Ancient statues have been found intact as well as large amounts of ceramics from Ancient Greek and Roman period.
Graf Spee, Montevideo, 1939 Site: Graf Spee
Date of loss: 17 December 1939 (scuttled by Germans off coast of Uruguay)
Lives lost: None
Discovered: Site was always known but wreck first explored in 2004
Artefacts: One of the ship's main guns, a rangefinder as well as a 2m (6ft) bronze eagle have been recovered from the deep.
Admiral Zheng He's fleet, Kenya, 1418 Site: The fleet of Admiral Zheng He
Date of loss: 1418
Lives lost: Unknown but probably in the hundreds
Discovered: Porcelain found on seabed but wreck not definitely found
Artefacts: May contain large quantities of Ming China ceramics
The San Diego, Philippines, 1600 Site: The San Diego (Spanish galleon)
Date of loss: 14 December 1600
Lives lost: 259
Discovered: 1992
Artefacts: Cannons, arquebuses (guns), anchors, Ming pottery and hundreds of Thai, Burmese and Mexican jars as well as a rare astrolabe navigational device (pictured).
It is 10 years since a deal to protect the world's thousands of shipwrecks, but the UK and several other major maritime powers are yet to ratify it. Should this underwater heritage be protected or is it acceptable to plunder?
When a ship sinks and lives are lost, it is a tragedy for the families involved.
For the relatives of the dead, the ship becomes an underwater grave but as the years pass the wreck can become a site of archaeological interest.
In recent years technological innovations have allowed commercial archaeologists, decried by some as "treasure hunters", to reach wrecks far below the surface.
The most famous of them all, the Titanic, is more than four miles down and to get there as film director James Cameron has shown, involves using "robot" divers which are prohibitively expensive - around $50,000 (£32,000) a day.
Continue reading the main story Unesco conventionAdopted in Nov 2001 but only came into force in 2009 when the 20th nation - Barbados - ratified itDesigned to complement the 1982 UN Law of the Seas, which failed to mention shipwrecks40 nations have ratified it but the only major seafaring nations are Spain and PortugalThe convention only covers wrecks or ruins which are over 100 years oldStates are responsible for ships in their territorial waters but for wrecks in international waters a number of "interested parties" could be involved
Salvage firms are most interested in ships with cargoes of gold and silver, ceramics or other valuables.
In November 2001, the Unesco Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage was finally adopted.
But 10 years on, it still has not been ratified by the UK, France, Russia, China or the US, and commercial archaeologists continue to locate wrecks, remove their cargoes and sell them off.
"The convention has not been ratified yet because of the issues it throws up about the cost of implementing and policing it," a spokesman for the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, says. "Discussions continue within government, but ratification is not currently seen as a priority."
In September Britain's Department of Transport announced it had signed a deal with Odyssey Marine Exploration for the salvage of 200 tonnes of silver, worth up to £150m, from the SS Gairsoppa, which was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1941.
The British government will get 20% of whatever Odyssey recovers but Unesco says the deal broke the spirit of the convention.
The wreck of Captain Kidd's pirate ship was discovered off the Dominican Republic
Robert Yorke, chairman of the Joint Nautical Archaeology Policy Committee, argues the real reason the government, and the Ministry of Defence in particular, are not ratifying the convention was becayse of a misplaced fear about the implications for British warships around the world.
The internationally recognised concept of "sovereign immunity" means nations should not interfere with foreign warships.
Under the Military Remains Act 1986, a number of British warships around the world are protected, including several ships sunk during the Falklands conflict. Also covered are several German U-boats in UK waters.
There are an estimated three million wrecks on the seabed.
Unesco believes attitudes to the exploration of wrecks are out of step with land archaeology.
"The looting of the tombs of Tutankhamen is now considered unacceptable, so why is the looting of shipwrecks considered acceptable?" says Unesco's Tim Curtis.
Caesar Bita is a Kenyan maritime archaeologist and an expert on ancient trade between China and Africa.
This gold pendant, from South America, was found on the Nuestra Senora de Atocha off Florida
He believes he is close to finding the remains of the legendary fleet of Zheng He. According to stories, a ship from the Chinese admiral's fleet is thought to have foundered off the coast of Kenya in the early 1400s.
Bita says the wrecks could provide evidence of early contact between China and East Africa.
"Shipwrecks are always under threat all over the world by people collecting material from the site and the situation in Kenya is not unique," he says.
Sean Fisher, whose grandfather Mel discovered the treasure ship Nuestra Senora de Atocha off Florida, says he is not "ashamed to call himself a treasure hunter."
"Purist archaeologists turn up their noses at us," he says. "But every artefact we find, whether it's a piece of pottery, a gold bar or a spike used in the rigging gets treated with exactly the same care.
"Everybody loves gold and everybody has a bit of treasure hunter in them but for me the most exciting thing I ever found was a 400-year-old arquebus (hook gun). It was like bringing history back to life."
But the idea that mass heritage is at risk is scaremongering, says Dr Sean Kingsley, a director of Wreck Watch International and a spokesman for Odyssey.
"Sand dredging, offshore fishing, pipeline laying, scuba-diving trophy hunters and governments' failures to police these industries are the true greatest threats to the world's shipwrecks."
He argues that the nations which have ratified the convention represent only 5% of the world's coastline.
The convention only covers wrecks that are over 100 years old, which means the Titanic will only be covered from next year and ships from World War I and II have no protection.
That is something which concerns naval veterans.
Last month seven European naval associations wrote a letter to The Times to protest at Dutch salvage firms who they said were "desecrating" the graves of three British warships, which were torpedoed off the Netherlands in 1914, in their search for scrap metal.
But some wartime wrecks have been protected.
The Polish Maritime Office recently placed a 500m diving exclusion zone around the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff, which sank in the Baltic in January 1945. The ship, packed with 10,000 German refugees from the Eastern Front, was sunk by a Soviet sub. Only 500 survived and it is the single largest death toll at sea.
In 2006 Australian divers located the wreck of a Japanese mini-submarine, M24, three miles off Sydney.The sub, which is believed to contain the bodies of two young Japanese submariners, came to grief after taking part in an attack on Sydney harbour in 1942.
The Australian authorities placed a similar 500m zone around the wreck, monitored by sensitive hydrophones, with a A$1.1m (£725,587) fine for anyone who interferes with the wreck.
Maritime archaeologist Mark Wilde-Ramsing is unlikely to get to meet the relatives of those who died on the wreck he is exploring.
This Spanish seal was found on the San Diego, which sank in the Philippines in 1600
The Queen Anne's Revenge was an English pirate ship commanded by Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, which sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1718.
Many of the exhibits - including pistols, rum bottles, slave shackles and a surgeon's kit - are now on display at a museum in North Carolina but sadly Blackbeard's treasure was nowhere to be found.
But the convention does not just apply to shipwrecks.
It also covers archaeological sites which are now underwater, such as Port Royal in Jamaica, a former pirate harbour once described as the "wickedest city on Earth", as well as prehistoric sites in the North Sea, and the waters off Alexandria, in Egypt.
But if wrecks and ruins continue to fascinate, what is the best way to satisfy the public curiosity?
In 1982 the Mary Rose, flagship of England's King Henry VIII, was raised from the Solent and next year a £35m museum will open in Portsmouth.
Some argue it would have been better, in hindsight, for the Mary Rose to have stayed on the seabed, because of the expensive chemical treatment needed to preserve the timbers.
Shipwrecks can be significant sites for archaeologists
"It has created the myth that all shipwrecks are bottomless money pits and that hull and mass artefact recovery are best avoided," suggests Dr Kingsley.
But Prof Jon Adams, head of maritime archaeology at the University of Southampton, strongly disagrees.
"If it was falling to pieces and nobody came to see it I'd agree, but its conservation has been a highly successful research project in its own right and it is the most popular maritime museum in world with over 300,000 visitors a year," he says.
Many experts believe the future is in underwater trails or virtual museums, where the wreck remains in situ and cameras relay real-time pictures to a museum on the surface.
Australia is also home to a number of "underwater heritage trails", with plaques offering information for divers.
In the Dominican Republic a "living museum" has been set up around the wrecks of two Spanish galleons which sank during a hurricane in 1724.
The living museum was the idea of Prof Charles Beeker, of Indiana University.
"We want people to come and visit but to take only pictures and leave only bubbles," he says.
Prof Beeker, who has also discovered the wreck of Captain Kidd's pirate ship the Quedagh Merchant, said all divers had to be "sensitive" to the fact that wrecks are essentially graveyards and he criticised some who took the skulls of Japanese seamen from the many wrecks in Truk Lagoon in the Pacific.
The Mary Rose, which was excavated from the Solent in 1982, will go on display in a new museum
While it pushes in situ preservation, Unesco is hopeful several major countries, including Australia and France, might soon ratify the convention to give it more weight.
Dr Kingsley is doubtful and says self-regulation is the best way forward: "The future is going to be an expensive and unimaginable journey, a challenge best met by sharing ideas, information and enlightened management, not by using the Unesco convention to slap parking tickets' on robots' windows."
But Prof Adams says self-regulation does not work and added: "The Unesco convention represents best practice and is the only feasible way of protecting underwater cultural heritage in international waters."
Argentina 'Angel of Death' Alfredo Astiz convicted-BBC World
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
27 October 2011
Argentina 'Angel of Death' Alfredo Astiz convicted
Crowds cheered as the judge jailed Alfredo Astiz for life
Continue reading the main story Related StoriesArgentina recalls student abductionsArgentine ex-army officers jailedLife term for Argentina ex-ruler
Former Argentine naval officer Alfredo Astiz has been jailed for life for crimes against humanity during military rule in 1976-83.
Astiz - known as the "Blond Angel of Death" - was found guilty of torture, murder and forced disappearance.
Among his victims were two French nuns and the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group.
Eleven other former military and police officers were also given life sentences for crimes against humanity.
Four others were jailed for between 18 and 25 years.
All worked at the Naval Mechanical School in Buenos Aires - known as Esma - which was the biggest secret torture and killing centre set up by the military during what became known as the "Dirty War".
Of the 5,000 or so prisoners taken to Esma, 90% did not come out alive.
Some were killed by firing squad while others were thrown from planes - drugged but still alive - into the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 70 of those who did make it out were among the witnesses in the 22-month trial.
Symbol of oppression
Astiz looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the sentence was read out.
Campaigners celebrated the end of a long fight for justice
Among the others given life terms are Jorge Acosta, Antonio Pernias and Ricardo Cavallo.
Human rights groups had campaigned for years to bring the perpetrators to justice, and there were celebrations as the sentences were read out.
"We resisted. We never committed a crime. This is why this is just. They committed crimes. They are imprisoned," said Esma survivor Ricardo Coquet.
Astiz, 59, is one of the most notorious symbols of oppression during military rule in Argentina.
As a young naval intelligence officer he infiltrated the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group, which was set up to find relatives abducted by the security forces.
He then arranged the kidnap and murder of its three founders - Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino and Maria Ponce.
He had already been convicted in absentia in France for the murder of the French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, who disappeared in Argentina in 1977.
In his defence, Astiz said he had acted to save Argentina from left-wing "terrorism", and he dismissed his trial as an act of political vengeance.
Human rights groups say 30,000 people were killed or made to disappear by the armed forces in their campaign against opposition activists and left-wing guerrillas.
27 October 2011
Argentina 'Angel of Death' Alfredo Astiz convicted
Crowds cheered as the judge jailed Alfredo Astiz for life
Continue reading the main story Related StoriesArgentina recalls student abductionsArgentine ex-army officers jailedLife term for Argentina ex-ruler
Former Argentine naval officer Alfredo Astiz has been jailed for life for crimes against humanity during military rule in 1976-83.
Astiz - known as the "Blond Angel of Death" - was found guilty of torture, murder and forced disappearance.
Among his victims were two French nuns and the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group.
Eleven other former military and police officers were also given life sentences for crimes against humanity.
Four others were jailed for between 18 and 25 years.
All worked at the Naval Mechanical School in Buenos Aires - known as Esma - which was the biggest secret torture and killing centre set up by the military during what became known as the "Dirty War".
Of the 5,000 or so prisoners taken to Esma, 90% did not come out alive.
Some were killed by firing squad while others were thrown from planes - drugged but still alive - into the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 70 of those who did make it out were among the witnesses in the 22-month trial.
Symbol of oppression
Astiz looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the sentence was read out.
Campaigners celebrated the end of a long fight for justice
Among the others given life terms are Jorge Acosta, Antonio Pernias and Ricardo Cavallo.
Human rights groups had campaigned for years to bring the perpetrators to justice, and there were celebrations as the sentences were read out.
"We resisted. We never committed a crime. This is why this is just. They committed crimes. They are imprisoned," said Esma survivor Ricardo Coquet.
Astiz, 59, is one of the most notorious symbols of oppression during military rule in Argentina.
As a young naval intelligence officer he infiltrated the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group, which was set up to find relatives abducted by the security forces.
He then arranged the kidnap and murder of its three founders - Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino and Maria Ponce.
He had already been convicted in absentia in France for the murder of the French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, who disappeared in Argentina in 1977.
In his defence, Astiz said he had acted to save Argentina from left-wing "terrorism", and he dismissed his trial as an act of political vengeance.
Human rights groups say 30,000 people were killed or made to disappear by the armed forces in their campaign against opposition activists and left-wing guerrillas.
INTAFF-Palestinians get Unesco seat as 107 vote in favour-BBC World
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
31 October 2011
Palestinians get Unesco seat as 107 vote in favour
A two-thirds majority was needed in Paris, and no state had a veto
Continue reading the main story Palestinian UN membership bidQ&A: Bid explained Palestinians score points at UN Showdown at UN
The UN cultural organisation has voted strongly in favour of membership for the Palestinians - a move opposed by Israel and the United States.
Of 173 countries voting, 107 were in favour, 14 opposed and 52 abstained.
Under US law, Washington can now withdraw funding to Unesco. This would deprive the agency of some $70m (£43.7m) - more than 20% of its budget.
The UN Security Council will vote next month on whether to grant the Palestinians full UN membership.
Membership of Unesco - perhaps best known for its World Heritage Sites - may seem a strange step towards statehood, says the BBC's Jon Donnison, in Ramallah, but Palestinian leaders see it as part of a broader push to get international recognition and put pressure on Israel.
This is the first UN agency the Palestinians have sought to join since submitting their bid for recognition to the Security Council in September.
This is a historic day, said Palestinian deputy Minister of Antiquties Hamdan Taha, beaming from ear to ear in Ramallah.
Unesco membership may seem a strange and short step to Palestinian statehood. But leaders here see it as part of a broader push to get international recognition and pressure Israel. They see it as a warm-up for a more important vote next month when the UN Security Council will decide whether to admit Palestine as a full member state.
The US has veto power at the security council and has threatened to use it. It had no such power at Unesco so instead lobbied hard to try and force the Palestinians to back down. It will likely cut all US funding for Unesco - $70m a year, or 22% of its annual budget.
But Unesco members seemed to put politics before money, clearly voting in favour of the Palestinian bid. This was a failure of US power, one Palestinian official told me.
The victory will give a boost to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He lost ground to his rival Hamas when the Islamist movement secured the release of hundreds of Palestinan prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli solider Gilad Shalit two weeks ago.
"This vote will erase a tiny part of the injustice done to the Palestinian people," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told the Unesco meeting in Paris, after the result was announced.
Widespread applause greeted the result of Monday's vote in the chamber, where a two-thirds majority is enough to pass the decision and no country has the right of veto.
The BBC's David Chazan in Paris says Arab states were instrumental in getting the vote passed despite intense opposition from the US.
He says that in an emotional session, China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa voted in favour of Palestinian membership, while the US, Canada and Germany voted against and the UK abstained.
'No shortcuts'
The outcome was swiftly denounced by the US and Israel.
US ambassador to Unesco David Killion called the move "premature" and "counterproductive", and said it could affect relations.
"We recognise that this action today will complicate our ability to support Unesco's programmes," he told journalists.
"The only path to the Palestinian state that we all seek is through direct negotiations. There are no shortcuts."
A US law passed in the 1990s allows Washington to cut funding to any UN body that admits Palestine as a full member.
Continue reading the main story Palestinian UN Statehood BidPalestinians currently have permanent observer entity status at the UNThey are represented by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)Officials now want an upgrade so a state of Palestine has full member status at the UNThey seek recognition on 1967 borders - in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and GazaEnhanced observer member status could be an interim option
The US currently funds more than 20% of Unesco's entire budget.
An Israeli foreign ministry statement called the vote a "unilateral Palestinian manoeuvre which will bring no change on the ground but further removes the possibility for a peace agreement".
"The Palestinian move at Unesco, as with similar such steps with other UN bodies, is tantamount to a rejection of the international community's efforts to advance the peace process," it said.
The statement added that Israel would be considering further steps regarding its co-operation with Unesco.
Correspondents say Monday's vote is a symbolic breakthrough but that on its own it will not create a Palestinian state.
A vote is expected in November at the UN Security Council on granting full membership of the UN to the Palestinians. The US has said it will exercise its veto.
31 October 2011
Palestinians get Unesco seat as 107 vote in favour
A two-thirds majority was needed in Paris, and no state had a veto
Continue reading the main story Palestinian UN membership bidQ&A: Bid explained Palestinians score points at UN Showdown at UN
The UN cultural organisation has voted strongly in favour of membership for the Palestinians - a move opposed by Israel and the United States.
Of 173 countries voting, 107 were in favour, 14 opposed and 52 abstained.
Under US law, Washington can now withdraw funding to Unesco. This would deprive the agency of some $70m (£43.7m) - more than 20% of its budget.
The UN Security Council will vote next month on whether to grant the Palestinians full UN membership.
Membership of Unesco - perhaps best known for its World Heritage Sites - may seem a strange step towards statehood, says the BBC's Jon Donnison, in Ramallah, but Palestinian leaders see it as part of a broader push to get international recognition and put pressure on Israel.
This is the first UN agency the Palestinians have sought to join since submitting their bid for recognition to the Security Council in September.
This is a historic day, said Palestinian deputy Minister of Antiquties Hamdan Taha, beaming from ear to ear in Ramallah.
Unesco membership may seem a strange and short step to Palestinian statehood. But leaders here see it as part of a broader push to get international recognition and pressure Israel. They see it as a warm-up for a more important vote next month when the UN Security Council will decide whether to admit Palestine as a full member state.
The US has veto power at the security council and has threatened to use it. It had no such power at Unesco so instead lobbied hard to try and force the Palestinians to back down. It will likely cut all US funding for Unesco - $70m a year, or 22% of its annual budget.
But Unesco members seemed to put politics before money, clearly voting in favour of the Palestinian bid. This was a failure of US power, one Palestinian official told me.
The victory will give a boost to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He lost ground to his rival Hamas when the Islamist movement secured the release of hundreds of Palestinan prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli solider Gilad Shalit two weeks ago.
"This vote will erase a tiny part of the injustice done to the Palestinian people," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told the Unesco meeting in Paris, after the result was announced.
Widespread applause greeted the result of Monday's vote in the chamber, where a two-thirds majority is enough to pass the decision and no country has the right of veto.
The BBC's David Chazan in Paris says Arab states were instrumental in getting the vote passed despite intense opposition from the US.
He says that in an emotional session, China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa voted in favour of Palestinian membership, while the US, Canada and Germany voted against and the UK abstained.
'No shortcuts'
The outcome was swiftly denounced by the US and Israel.
US ambassador to Unesco David Killion called the move "premature" and "counterproductive", and said it could affect relations.
"We recognise that this action today will complicate our ability to support Unesco's programmes," he told journalists.
"The only path to the Palestinian state that we all seek is through direct negotiations. There are no shortcuts."
A US law passed in the 1990s allows Washington to cut funding to any UN body that admits Palestine as a full member.
Continue reading the main story Palestinian UN Statehood BidPalestinians currently have permanent observer entity status at the UNThey are represented by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)Officials now want an upgrade so a state of Palestine has full member status at the UNThey seek recognition on 1967 borders - in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and GazaEnhanced observer member status could be an interim option
The US currently funds more than 20% of Unesco's entire budget.
An Israeli foreign ministry statement called the vote a "unilateral Palestinian manoeuvre which will bring no change on the ground but further removes the possibility for a peace agreement".
"The Palestinian move at Unesco, as with similar such steps with other UN bodies, is tantamount to a rejection of the international community's efforts to advance the peace process," it said.
The statement added that Israel would be considering further steps regarding its co-operation with Unesco.
Correspondents say Monday's vote is a symbolic breakthrough but that on its own it will not create a Palestinian state.
A vote is expected in November at the UN Security Council on granting full membership of the UN to the Palestinians. The US has said it will exercise its veto.
MF Global files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection-BBC World
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
MF Global files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
MF Global could be one of the biggest eurozone debt casualties
US brokerage firm MF Global has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after revealing £4bn of eurozone debt exposure.
The US brokerage, which has 2,000 staff worldwide including 600 in London, is said to be planning to sell its assets to rival Interactive Brokers Group.
Shares in MF Global were suspended by the New York authorities on Monday.
MF Global worried markets last week after disclosing a $191.6m (137m euros; £120m) quarterly loss.
This saw its shares fall by two-thirds, and its credit rating cut to junk.
Chapter 11 postpones a US company's obligations to its creditors, giving it time to reorganise its debts or sell parts of the business.
Hedge fund spin-off
Jon Corzine, who took over as chief executive of MF Global last year, made big bets on sovereign bonds issued by European countries, it is claimed.
The unsteady future of the eurozone meant investors downgraded the firm's prospects.
It was first reported at the weekend that Mr Corzine was seeking a buyer for the business.
MF Global's roots go back nearly 230 years to a sugar brokerage on the banks of the River Thames in London.
The firm was spun off from a hedge fund in 2007 and is one of the world's largest players in exchange-traded futures and options.
MF Global files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
MF Global could be one of the biggest eurozone debt casualties
US brokerage firm MF Global has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after revealing £4bn of eurozone debt exposure.
The US brokerage, which has 2,000 staff worldwide including 600 in London, is said to be planning to sell its assets to rival Interactive Brokers Group.
Shares in MF Global were suspended by the New York authorities on Monday.
MF Global worried markets last week after disclosing a $191.6m (137m euros; £120m) quarterly loss.
This saw its shares fall by two-thirds, and its credit rating cut to junk.
Chapter 11 postpones a US company's obligations to its creditors, giving it time to reorganise its debts or sell parts of the business.
Hedge fund spin-off
Jon Corzine, who took over as chief executive of MF Global last year, made big bets on sovereign bonds issued by European countries, it is claimed.
The unsteady future of the eurozone meant investors downgraded the firm's prospects.
It was first reported at the weekend that Mr Corzine was seeking a buyer for the business.
MF Global's roots go back nearly 230 years to a sugar brokerage on the banks of the River Thames in London.
The firm was spun off from a hedge fund in 2007 and is one of the world's largest players in exchange-traded futures and options.
Are there really seven billion of us?-BBC World
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
31 October 2011
Are there really seven billion of us?
By Rema Rahman
The United Nations estimates that on Monday 31 October the world's population will reach seven billion. But how accurate is this figure?
Not only is the world's population supposedly reaching seven billion today, the charity Plan International has anointed a girl born in India as the seven billionth.
In reality, things are much less clear.
The UN's population estimates chief, Gerhard Heilig, describes it as "nonsense" to suggest anyone could pinpoint where the seven billionth child will be born.
And he says the UN recognises that its own figures come with a 1-2% margin of error. Today's population could actually be 56 million higher or lower than seven billion, Mr Heilig says.
"There is a window of uncertainty of at least six months before and six months after the 31 October for the world population to reach seven billion," he told the BBC.
Continue reading the main story “Start QuoteYou are always going to be essentially guessing… We will never have a true, definitive figure”
End Quote Professor Mike Murphy London School of Economics
The UN Population Division website adds that no-one can determine the date with an error margin smaller than about 12 months, as even the best censuses have "inevitable inaccuracies".
"In fact, due to very poor demographic statistics in a significant number of developing countries the uncertainty may be even larger."
The UK census of 2001 illustrates the problem. The population had been thought to be about 60 million, while the census showed it was closer to 59 million.
"The British figures were revised by more than 1% in 2001 and that's in a highly developed country," says London School of Economics professor, Mike Murphy.
There are plenty of other countries, he says - Nigeria for example - where recording systems are far less accurate, and some countries that have not held censuses for decades.
One child
According to some experts, the UN has jumped the gun.
The US Census Bureau says the most likely date the world population will reach seven billion is between March and April next year.
Continue reading the main story Births in ChinaThe UN estimates fertility (the average number of children born to a woman) using census data, surveys, vital registers compiled by national statistical offices - and, in countries where fertility statistics are controversial, other sources such as immunisation data.
A large number of data sources are used to estimate fertility in China, including vaccination studies and school enrolment ratios. The UN says fertility estimates for China are "very controversial", in China itself as well as in the rest of the world.
Sergei Scherbov of the Vienna Institute of Demography, meanwhile, says there is a 95% probability that the figure will be reached between January and July 2012.
Earlier this year, he and two colleagues published a paper arguing that the seven billion figure was most likely to arrive in 2012 or 2013 - and was almost as likely to occur in 2014 as in 2011. But since then, he says, new figures have come in that make 2012 more probable.
"People have no idea how many of us are here," he says, modestly.
Mike Murphy agrees. "As you can never get a true figure to compare, you are always going to be essentially guessing… We will never have a true, definitive figure," he says.
Continue reading the main story Out for the countNo census for more than 25 years:
AfghanistanAngolaBurmaDR CongoEritreaFaeroe IslandsIcelandLebanonCensus data not received by the UN
Dutch CaribbeanLebanon (last census 1932)SomaliaUzbekistanWestern SaharaSource: UN
UN 2010 World Population and Housing Census programme
China illustrates one kind of problem. While it conducts well-organised censuses, the one-child rule means that births could be under-recorded.
Mr Scherbov believes the average number of children born to a woman is about 1.4, but the UN used a figure of 1.7 between 2000 and 2005 and 1.64 between 2005 and 2010. That means the UN could have overestimated the population of China by several million, he says. By the same token, Mr Scherbov might have underestimated it by this amount.
The UN's reason for naming a symbolic date as seven-billion day is to draw attention to the speed of population growth, with less than 13 years having passed between the six-billion and seven-billion milestones.
"It can focus attention of people all around the world on global population challenges," says Mr Heilig.
Plan International's goal in picking a girl born in Uttar Pradesh as the seven billionth member of the world population is to draw attention to sex-selective abortion - the practice of aborting female foetuses in countries where male children are prized.
India is also the country with the highest predicted population growth for 2010-2015 - 135 million compared to 80 million in China.
The charity knows of course, just like the UN, that the number seven billion is approximate.
One of its campaigns is designed to ensure that more children are properly registered - as otherwise they have no proof of identity and "no legal existence" - and it cites estimates that 51 million newborns go unregistered every year.
Ultimately, does it matter if the seven billion figure is 1-2% out, or more?
Not really, says Mike Murphy.
"It's not in the end a figure that people use to make specific decisions. It may inform the context in which these decisions are made, but it's not a figure used in decision-making," he says.
The figure plays a part in the debate about the world's ability to grow enough food to feed its growing population. But if population figures are uncertain, Professor Murphy says, this is even more true of food production figures.
31 October 2011
Are there really seven billion of us?
By Rema Rahman
The United Nations estimates that on Monday 31 October the world's population will reach seven billion. But how accurate is this figure?
Not only is the world's population supposedly reaching seven billion today, the charity Plan International has anointed a girl born in India as the seven billionth.
In reality, things are much less clear.
The UN's population estimates chief, Gerhard Heilig, describes it as "nonsense" to suggest anyone could pinpoint where the seven billionth child will be born.
And he says the UN recognises that its own figures come with a 1-2% margin of error. Today's population could actually be 56 million higher or lower than seven billion, Mr Heilig says.
"There is a window of uncertainty of at least six months before and six months after the 31 October for the world population to reach seven billion," he told the BBC.
Continue reading the main story “Start QuoteYou are always going to be essentially guessing… We will never have a true, definitive figure”
End Quote Professor Mike Murphy London School of Economics
The UN Population Division website adds that no-one can determine the date with an error margin smaller than about 12 months, as even the best censuses have "inevitable inaccuracies".
"In fact, due to very poor demographic statistics in a significant number of developing countries the uncertainty may be even larger."
The UK census of 2001 illustrates the problem. The population had been thought to be about 60 million, while the census showed it was closer to 59 million.
"The British figures were revised by more than 1% in 2001 and that's in a highly developed country," says London School of Economics professor, Mike Murphy.
There are plenty of other countries, he says - Nigeria for example - where recording systems are far less accurate, and some countries that have not held censuses for decades.
One child
According to some experts, the UN has jumped the gun.
The US Census Bureau says the most likely date the world population will reach seven billion is between March and April next year.
Continue reading the main story Births in ChinaThe UN estimates fertility (the average number of children born to a woman) using census data, surveys, vital registers compiled by national statistical offices - and, in countries where fertility statistics are controversial, other sources such as immunisation data.
A large number of data sources are used to estimate fertility in China, including vaccination studies and school enrolment ratios. The UN says fertility estimates for China are "very controversial", in China itself as well as in the rest of the world.
Sergei Scherbov of the Vienna Institute of Demography, meanwhile, says there is a 95% probability that the figure will be reached between January and July 2012.
Earlier this year, he and two colleagues published a paper arguing that the seven billion figure was most likely to arrive in 2012 or 2013 - and was almost as likely to occur in 2014 as in 2011. But since then, he says, new figures have come in that make 2012 more probable.
"People have no idea how many of us are here," he says, modestly.
Mike Murphy agrees. "As you can never get a true figure to compare, you are always going to be essentially guessing… We will never have a true, definitive figure," he says.
Continue reading the main story Out for the countNo census for more than 25 years:
AfghanistanAngolaBurmaDR CongoEritreaFaeroe IslandsIcelandLebanonCensus data not received by the UN
Dutch CaribbeanLebanon (last census 1932)SomaliaUzbekistanWestern SaharaSource: UN
UN 2010 World Population and Housing Census programme
China illustrates one kind of problem. While it conducts well-organised censuses, the one-child rule means that births could be under-recorded.
Mr Scherbov believes the average number of children born to a woman is about 1.4, but the UN used a figure of 1.7 between 2000 and 2005 and 1.64 between 2005 and 2010. That means the UN could have overestimated the population of China by several million, he says. By the same token, Mr Scherbov might have underestimated it by this amount.
The UN's reason for naming a symbolic date as seven-billion day is to draw attention to the speed of population growth, with less than 13 years having passed between the six-billion and seven-billion milestones.
"It can focus attention of people all around the world on global population challenges," says Mr Heilig.
Plan International's goal in picking a girl born in Uttar Pradesh as the seven billionth member of the world population is to draw attention to sex-selective abortion - the practice of aborting female foetuses in countries where male children are prized.
India is also the country with the highest predicted population growth for 2010-2015 - 135 million compared to 80 million in China.
The charity knows of course, just like the UN, that the number seven billion is approximate.
One of its campaigns is designed to ensure that more children are properly registered - as otherwise they have no proof of identity and "no legal existence" - and it cites estimates that 51 million newborns go unregistered every year.
Ultimately, does it matter if the seven billion figure is 1-2% out, or more?
Not really, says Mike Murphy.
"It's not in the end a figure that people use to make specific decisions. It may inform the context in which these decisions are made, but it's not a figure used in decision-making," he says.
The figure plays a part in the debate about the world's ability to grow enough food to feed its growing population. But if population figures are uncertain, Professor Murphy says, this is even more true of food production figures.
The Biology of Attraction-Psychology Today
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The Biology of Attraction
Much of courtship and mating is choreographed by nature. In fact, nature designed men and women to work together.
By Helen E. Fisher, published on April 01, 1993 - last reviewed on March 31, 2010
In an apocryphal story, a colleague once turned to the great British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, and said, "Tell me, Mr. Haldane, knowing what you do about nature, what can you tell me about God?" Haldane replied, "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles." Indeed, the world contains over 300,000 species of beetles. I would add that "God" loves the human mating game, for no other aspect of our behavior is so complex, so subtle, or so pervasive. And although these sexual strategies differ from one individual to the next, the essential choreography of human courtship, love, and marriage has myriad designs that seem etched into the human psyche, the product of time, selection, and evolution. They begin the moment men and women get within courting range—with the way we flirt.
In describing these strategies, I make no effort to be "politically correct." Nature designed men and women to work together. But I cannot pretend that they are alike. They are not. And I have given evolutionary and biological explanations for their differences where I find them appropriate.
Flirting
Women from places as different as the jungles of Amazonia, the salons of Paris, and the highlands of New Guinea apparently flirt with the same sequence of expressions.
First the woman smiles at her admirer and lifts her eyebrows in a swift, jerky motion as she opens her eyes wide to gaze at him. Then she drops her eyelids, tilts her head down and to the side, and looks away. Frequently she also covers her face with her hands, giggling nervously as she retreats behind her palms. This sequential flirting gesture is so distinctive that [German ethologist Irenaus] Eibl-Eibesfeldt was convinced it is innate, a human female courtship ploy that evolved eons ago to signal sexual interest.
Men also employ courting tactics similar to those seen in other species. Have you ever walked into the boss's office and seen him leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, elbows high, and chest thrust out? Perhaps he has come from behind his desk, walked up to you, smiled, arched his back, and thrust his upper body in your direction? If so, watch out. He may be subconsciously announcing his dominance over you. If you are a woman, he may be courting you instead.
The "chest thrust" is part of a basic postural message used across the animal kingdom—"standing tall." Dominant creatures puff up. Codfish bulge their heads and thrust our their pelvic fins. Snakes, frogs, and toads inflate their bodies. Antelope and chameleons turn broadside to emphasize their bulk. Mule deer look askance to show their antlers. Cats bristle. Pigeons swell. Lobsters raise themselves onto the tips of their walking legs and extend their open claws. Gorillas pound their chests. Men just thrust out their chests.
"Copulatory" Gaze
The gaze is probably the most striking human courting ploy. Eye language. In Western cultures, where eye contact between the sexes is permitted, men and women often stare intently at potential mates for about two to three seconds during which their pupils may dilate—a sign of extreme interest. Then the starer drops his or her eyelids and looks away.
No wonder the custom of the veil has been adopted in so many cultures. Eye contact seems to have an immediate effect. The gaze triggers a primitive part of the human brain, calling forth one of two basic emotions—approach or retreat. You cannot ignore the eyes of another fixed on you; you must respond. You may smile and start conversation. You may look away and edge toward the door. But first you will probably tug at an earlobe, adjust your sweater, yawn, fidget with your eyeglasses, or perform some other meaningless movement—a "displacement gesture"—to alleviate anxiety while you make up your mind how to acknowledge this invitation, whether to flee the premises or stay and play the courting game.
Baboon Love
Baboons gaze at each other during courtship too. These animals may have branched off of our human evolutionary tree more than 19 million years ago, yet this similarity in wooing persists. As anthropologist Barbara Smuts had said of a budding baboon courtship on the Eburru cliffs of Kenya, "It looked like watching two novices in a singles bar."
The affair began one evening when a female baboon, Thalia, turned and caught a young male, Alex staring at her. They were about 15 feet apart. He glanced away immediately. So she stared at him—until he turned to look at her. Then she intently fiddled with her toes. On it went. Each time she stared at him, he looked away; each time he stared at her, she groomed her feet. Finally Alex caught Thalia gazing at him—the "return gaze."
Immediately he flattened his ears against his head, narrowed his eyelids, and began to smack his lips, the height of friendliness in baboon society. Thalia froze. Then, for a long moment, she looked him in the eye. Only after this extended eye contact had occurred did Alex approach her, at which point Thalia began to groom him—the beginning of a friendship and sexual liaison that was still going strong six years later, when Smuts returned to Kenya to study baboon friendships.
At The Bar
Could these courting cues be part of a larger human mating dance?
According to David Givens, an anthropologist, and Timothy Perper, a biologist, who spent several hundred hours in American cocktail lounges watching men and women flirt, American singles-bar courtship has several stages, each with distinctive escalation points. I shall divide them into five. The first is the "attention getting" phase. Young men and women do this somewhat differently. As soon as they enter the bar, both males and females typically establish a territory—a seat, a place to lean, a position near the jukebox or dance floor. Once settled, they begin to attract attention to themselves.
Tactics vary. Men tend to pitch and roll their shoulders, stretch, exaggerate their body movements. Instead of using the wrist to stir a drink, men often employ the entire arm, as if stirring mud. The normally smooth motion necessary to light a cigarette becomes a whole-body gesture, ending with an elaborate shaking from the elbow to extinguish the match.
Then there is the swagger with which young men often move to and fro. Male baboons on the grasslands of East Africa also swagger when they foresee a potential sexual encounter. A male gorilla walks back and forth stiffly as he watches a female out of the corner of his eye. The parading gait is known to primatologists as bird-dogging. Males of many species also preen. Human males pat their hair, adjust their clothes, tug their chins, or perform other self-clasping or grooming movements that diffuse nervous energy and keep the body moving.
Young women begin the attention-getting phase with many of the same maneuvers that men use—smiling, gazing, shifting, swaying, preening, stretching, moving in their territory to draw attention to themselves. Often they incorporate a battery of feminine moves as well. They twist their curls, tilt their heads, look up coyly, giggle, raise their brows, flick their tongues, lick their upper lips, blush, and hide their faces in order to signal, "I am here."
Some women also have a characteristic walk when courting; they arch their backs, thrust out their bosoms, sway their hips, and strut. No wonder many women wear high-heeled shoes. This bizarre Western custom, invented by Catherine de Medici in the 1500s, unnaturally arches the back, tilts the buttocks, and thrusts the chest out into a female come-hither pose. The clomping noise of their spiky heels draws attention too.
Keeping Time
Body synchrony is the final and most intriguing component of the pickup. As potential lovers become comfortable, they pivot or swivel until their shoulders become aligned, their bodies face-to-face. This rotation toward each other may start before they begin to talk or hours into conversation, but after a while the man and woman begin to move in tandem. Only briefly at first. When he crosses his legs, she crosses hers; as he leans left, she leans left; when he smoothes his hair, she smoothes hers. They move in perfect rhythm as they gaze deeply into each other's eyes.
Called interactional synchrony, this human mirroring begins in infancy. By the second day of life, a newborn has begun to synchronize its body movements with the rhythmic patterns of the human voice. And it is now well established that people in many other cultures get into rhythm when they feel comfortable together. Our need to keep each other's time reflects a rhythmic mimicry common to many animals. Chimps sometimes sway from side to side as they stare into one another's eyes just prior to copulation. Cats circle. Red deer prance. Howler monkeys court with rhythmic tongue movements. Stickleback fish do a zigzag jig. From bears to beetles, courting couples perform rhythmic rituals to express their amorous intentions.
Wooing Messages
Human courtship has other similarities to courtship in "lower" animals. Normally people woo each other slowly. Caution during courtship is also characteristic of spiders. The male wolf spider, for example, must enter the long, darker entrance of a female's compound in order to court and copulate. This he does slowly. If he is overeager, she devours him.
Men and women who are too aggressive at the beginning of the courting process also suffer unpleasant consequences. If you come too close, touch too soon, or talk too much, you will probably be repelled. Like wooing among wolf spiders, baboons, and other creatures, the human pickup runs on message. At every juncture in the ritual each partner must respond correctly, otherwise the courtship fails.
The Dinner Date
Probably no ritual is more common to Western would-be lovers than the "dinner date." If the man is courting, he pays—and a woman instinctively knows her partner is wooing her. In fact, there is no more widespread courtship ploy than offering food in hopes of gaining sexual favors. Around the world men give women presents prior to lovemaking. A fish, a piece of meat, sweets, and beer are among the delicacies men have invented as offerings.
This ploy is not exclusive to men. Black-tipped hang flies often catch aphids, daddy longlegs, or houseflies on the forest floor. When a male has felled a particularly juicy prey, he exudes secretions from an abdominal scent gland that catch the breeze, announcing a successful hunting expedition. Often a passing female hang fly stops to enjoy the meal—but not without copulating while she eats.
"Courtship feeding," as this custom is called, probably predates the dinosaurs, because it has an important reproductive function. By providing food to females, males show their abilities as hunters, providers, worthy procreative partners.
Odor Lures
Every person smells slightly different; we all have a personal "odor print" as distinctive as our voice, our hands, our intellect. As newborn infants we can recognize our mother by her smell. Both men and women have "apocrine glands in their armpits, around their nipples, and in the groin that become active at puberty. These scent boxes differ from "eccrine" glands, which cover much of the body and produce an odorless liquid, because their exudate, in combination with bacteria on the skin, produce the acrid, gamy smell of perspiration.
Today in parts of Greece and the Balkans, some men carry their handkerchiefs in their armpits during festivals and offer these odoriferous tokens to the women they invite to dance: they swear by the results.
But could a man's smell actually trigger infatuation in a woman? This possible link between male essence and female reproductive health may provide a clue to attraction. Women perceive odors better than men do. They are a hundred times more sensitive to Exaltolide, a compound much like men's sexual musk; they can smell a mild sweat from about three feet away; and at midcycle, during ovulation, women can smell men's musk even more strongly. Perhaps ovulating women become more susceptible to infatuation when they can smell male essence and are unconsciously drawn toward it to maintain menstrual cycling.
A woman's or a man's smell can release a host of memories too. So the right human smell at the right moment could touch off vivid pleasant memories and possibly ignite that first, stunning moment of romantic adoration.
But Americans, the Japanese, and many other people find odors offensive; for most of them the smell of perspiration is more likely to repel than to attract. Some scientists think the Japanese are unduly disturbed by body odors because of their long tradition of arranged marriages: men and women were forced into close contact with partners they found unappealing. Why Americans are phobic about natural body smells, I do not know. Perhaps our advertisers have swayed us in order to sell their deodorizing products.
Love Maps
A more important mechanism by which human beings become captivated by "him" or "her" may be what sexologist John Money called your love map. Long before you fixate on Ray as opposed to Bill, Sue instead of Ceciley, you have developed a mental map, a template replete with brain circuitry that determines what arouses you sexually, what drives you to fall in love with one person rather than another.
These love maps vary from one individual to the next. Some people get turned on by a business suit or a doctor's uniform, by big breasts, small feet, or a vivacious laugh. But averageness still wins. In one study, psychologists selected 32 faces of American Caucasian women and, using computers, averaged all of their features. Then they showed these images to college peers. Of 94 photographs of real female faces, only four were rated more appealing than these fabrications.
As you would guess, the world does not share the sexual ideals of Caucasian students from Wyoming. Despite wildly dissimilar standards of beauty and sex appeal, however, there are a few widely shared opinions about what incites romantic passion. Men and women around the world are attracted to those with good complexions. Everywhere people are drawn to partners whom they regard as clean. And men in most places generally prefer plump, wide-hipped women to slim ones. Looks count.
So does money. From rural Zulus to urban Brazilians, men are attracted to young, good-looking, spunky women, while women are drawn to men with property or money. Americans are no exception.
These male/female appetites are probably innate. it is to a males' genetic advantage to fall in love with a women who will produce viable offspring; it is to a woman's biological advantage to become captivated by a man who can help support her young. As Montaigne, the 16th-century French essayist, summed it up, "We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity."
Love At First Sight
Could this human ability to adore another within moments of meeting come out of nature? I think it does. In fact, love at first sight may have a critical adaptive function among animals. During the mating season a female squirrel, for example, needs to breed. It is not to her advantage to copulate with a porcupine. But if she sees a healthy squirrel, she should waste no time. She should size him up. And if he looks suitable, she should grab her chance to copulate. Perhaps love at first sight is no more than an inborn tendency in many creatures that evolved to spur the mating process. Then among our human ancestors what had been animal attraction evolved into the human sensation of infatuation at a glance.
Infatuation Fades
Alas, infatuation fades. As Emerson put it, "Love is strongest in pursuit, friendship in possession." At some point, that old black magic wanes. Yet there does seem to be a general length to this condition. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov measured the duration of romantic love, from the moment infatuation hit to when a "feeling of neutrality" for one's love object began. She concluded, "The most frequent interval, as well as the average, is between approximately 18 months and three years" John Money agrees, proposing that once you begin to see your sweetheart regularly the passion lasts two to three years.
Psychiatrist Michael Liebowitz suspected that the end of infatuation is also grounded in brain physiology. He theorized that the brain cannot eternally maintain the revved-up site of romantic bliss. As he summed it up, "If you want a situation where you and your long-term partner can still get very excited about each other, you will have to work on it, because in some ways you are bucking a biological tide."
Harem Building
Only 16 percent of the 853 cultures on record actually prescribe monogyny, in which a man is permitted only one wife at a time. Western cultures are among them. We are in the minority, however. A whopping 84 percent of all human societies permit a man to take more than one wife at once—polygyny.
Men seek polygyny to spread their genes, while women join harems to acquire resources and ensure the survival of their young. If you ask a man why he wants a second bride, he might say he is attracted to her wit, her business acumen, her vivacious spirit, or splendid thighs. If you ask a women why she is willing to "share" a man, she might tell you that she loves the way he looks or laughs or takes her to fancy vacation spots.
But no matter what reasons people offer, polygyny enables men to have more children; under the right conditions women also reap reproductive benefits. So long ago ancestral men who sought polygyny and ancestral women who acquiesced to harem life disproportionately survived.
Man Is Monogamous
Because of the genetic advantages of polygyny for men and because so many societies permit polygyny, many anthropologists think that harem building is a badge of the human animal. But in the vast majority of societies where polygyny is permitted, only about five to 10 percent of men actually have several wives simultaneously. Although polygyny is widely discussed, it is much less practiced.
Whereas gorillas, horses, and animals of many other species always form harems, among human beings polygyny and polyandry seem to be optional opportunistic exceptions; monogamy is the rule. Human beings almost never have to be cajoled into pairing. Instead, we do this naturally. We flirt. We feel infatuation. We fall in love. We marry. And the vast majority of us marry only one person at a time.
Pair-bonding is a trademark of the human animal.
Unfaithfully Yours
Although we flirt, fall in love, and marry, human beings also tend to be sexually unfaithful to a spouse. Americans are no exception. Despite our attitude that philandering is immoral, regardless of our sense of guilt when we engage in trysts, in spite of the risks to family, friends, and livelihood that adultery entails, we indulge in extramarital affairs with avid regularity.
A survey of 106,000 readers of Cosmopolitan magazine in the early 1980s indicated that 54 percent of the married women had participated in at least one affair, and a poll of 7,239 men reported that 72 percent of those married over two years had been adulterous.
Why? From a Darwinian perspective, it is easy to explain. If a man has two children by one woman, he has, genetically speaking, "reproduced" himself. But if he also engages in dalliances with more women and, by chance, sires two more young, he doubles his contribution to the next generation. Those men who seek variety also tend to have more children. These young survive and pass to subsequent generations whatever it is in the male genetic makeup that seeks "fresh features," as Byron said of men's need for sexual novelty.
Unlike a man, a woman cannot breed every time she copulates. In fact, anthropologist Donald Symons has argued that, because the number of children a woman can bear is limited, women are biologically less motivated to seek fresh features.
Sexual Variety
Are women really less interested in sexual variety? My own modest proposal is that during our long evolutionary history most males pursued trysts to spread their genes, while females evolved two alternative strategies to acquire resources: some women elected to be faithful to a single man in order to reap a lot of benefits from him; others engaged in clandestine sex with many men to acquire resources from each. This scenario roughly coincides with common beliefs: man, the natural playboy; women, madonna or whore.
In a study by Donald Symons and Bruce Ellis, for example, 415 college students were asked whether they would have sex with an anonymous student of the opposite sex. In this imaginary scenario, participants were told that all risk of pregnancy, discovery, and disease was absent. The results were those you would expect. Males were consistently more likely to say yes, leading these researchers once again to conclude that men are more interested in sexual variety than women are.
But here's the glitch. This study takes into consideration the primary genetic motive for male philandering (to fertilize young women). But not the primary motive for female philandering—the acquisition of resources.
There is no evidence whatsoever that women are sexually shy or that they shun clandestine sexual adventures. Instead, both men and women seem to exhibit a mixed reproductive strategy: monogamy and adultery are our fare.
Parting
We all have our share of troubles. But probably one of the hardest things we do is leave a spouse. From the tundras of Siberia to the jungles of Amazonia, people accept divorce as regrettable—although sometimes necessary. They have specific social or legal procedures for divorce. And they do divorce. Moreover, unlike many Westerners, traditional peoples do not make divorce a moral issue. The Mongols of Siberia sum up a common worldwide attitude, "If two individuals cannot get along harmoniously together, they had better live apart."
Why do people divorce? Bitter quarrels, insensitive remarks, lack of humor, watching too much television, inability to listen, drunkenness, sexual rejection—the reasons men or women give for why they leave a marriage are as varied as their motives for having wedded in the first place.
Overt adultery heads the list. Sterility and barrenness come next. Cruelty, particularly by the husband, ranks third among worldwide reasons for divorce. I am not surprised that adultery and infertility are paramount. Darwin theorized that people marry primarily to breed.
The Four-Year Itch
Hoping to get some insight into the nature of divorce, I turned to the demographic yearbooks of the United Nations. Divorce generally occurs early in marriage—peaking in or around the fourth year after wedding—followed by a gradual decline in divorce as more years of marriage go by. The American divorce peak hovers somewhat below the common four-year peak. Purely as a guess, I would say that this may have something to do with American attitudes toward marriage itself. We tend not to marry for economic, political, or family reasons. Instead, as anthropologist Paul Bohannen once said, "Americans marry to enhance their inner, largely secret selves."
I find this remark fascinating—and correct. We marry for love and to accentuate, balance out, or mask parts of our private selves. This is why you sometimes see a reserved accountant married to a blond bombshell or a scientist married to a poet. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the American divorce peak corresponds perfectly with the normal duration of infatuation—two to three years. If partners are not satisfied with the match, they bail out soon after the infatuation wears off. So there are exceptions to the four-year itch.
Divorce Is For The Young
Another pattern to emerge from the United Nations data regards "divorce with dependent children." Among the hundreds of millions of people recorded in 45 societies between 1950 and 1989, 39 percent of all divorces occurred among couples with no dependent children, 26 percent among those with one dependent child, 19 percent among couples with two, 7 percent among those with three children, 3 percent among couples with four young, and couples with five or more dependent young rarely split. Hence, it appears that the more children a couple bear, the less likely they are to divorce.
This pattern is less conclusively demonstrated by the U.N. data than the first two. Yet it is strongly suggested and it makes genetic sense. From a Darwinian perspective, couples with no children should break up; both individuals will mate again and probably go on to bear young—ensuring their genetic futures. As couples bear more children they become less economically able to abandon their growing family. And it is genetically logical that they remain together to raise their flock.
Planned Obsolescence Of The Pair Bond
Marriage clearly shows several general patterns of decay. Divorce counts peak among couples married about four years. And the longer a couple remain together, the older the partners get, and probably the more offspring they produce, the less likely spouses are to leave each other.
This is not to say that everybody fits this mold. But Shakespeare did. Etched in Shakespeare's marriage and in all these other divorces recorded from around the world is a blue print, a primitive design. The human animal seems built to court, to fall in love, and to marry one person at a time; then, at the height of our reproductive years, often with single child, we divorce; then, a few years later, we remarry once again.
Adapted from Anatomy of Love; The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce, by Helen E. Fisher. Copyright C 1992 by Helen E. Fisher. Reprinted by arrangement with W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.
The Biology of Attraction
Much of courtship and mating is choreographed by nature. In fact, nature designed men and women to work together.
By Helen E. Fisher, published on April 01, 1993 - last reviewed on March 31, 2010
In an apocryphal story, a colleague once turned to the great British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, and said, "Tell me, Mr. Haldane, knowing what you do about nature, what can you tell me about God?" Haldane replied, "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles." Indeed, the world contains over 300,000 species of beetles. I would add that "God" loves the human mating game, for no other aspect of our behavior is so complex, so subtle, or so pervasive. And although these sexual strategies differ from one individual to the next, the essential choreography of human courtship, love, and marriage has myriad designs that seem etched into the human psyche, the product of time, selection, and evolution. They begin the moment men and women get within courting range—with the way we flirt.
In describing these strategies, I make no effort to be "politically correct." Nature designed men and women to work together. But I cannot pretend that they are alike. They are not. And I have given evolutionary and biological explanations for their differences where I find them appropriate.
Flirting
Women from places as different as the jungles of Amazonia, the salons of Paris, and the highlands of New Guinea apparently flirt with the same sequence of expressions.
First the woman smiles at her admirer and lifts her eyebrows in a swift, jerky motion as she opens her eyes wide to gaze at him. Then she drops her eyelids, tilts her head down and to the side, and looks away. Frequently she also covers her face with her hands, giggling nervously as she retreats behind her palms. This sequential flirting gesture is so distinctive that [German ethologist Irenaus] Eibl-Eibesfeldt was convinced it is innate, a human female courtship ploy that evolved eons ago to signal sexual interest.
Men also employ courting tactics similar to those seen in other species. Have you ever walked into the boss's office and seen him leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, elbows high, and chest thrust out? Perhaps he has come from behind his desk, walked up to you, smiled, arched his back, and thrust his upper body in your direction? If so, watch out. He may be subconsciously announcing his dominance over you. If you are a woman, he may be courting you instead.
The "chest thrust" is part of a basic postural message used across the animal kingdom—"standing tall." Dominant creatures puff up. Codfish bulge their heads and thrust our their pelvic fins. Snakes, frogs, and toads inflate their bodies. Antelope and chameleons turn broadside to emphasize their bulk. Mule deer look askance to show their antlers. Cats bristle. Pigeons swell. Lobsters raise themselves onto the tips of their walking legs and extend their open claws. Gorillas pound their chests. Men just thrust out their chests.
"Copulatory" Gaze
The gaze is probably the most striking human courting ploy. Eye language. In Western cultures, where eye contact between the sexes is permitted, men and women often stare intently at potential mates for about two to three seconds during which their pupils may dilate—a sign of extreme interest. Then the starer drops his or her eyelids and looks away.
No wonder the custom of the veil has been adopted in so many cultures. Eye contact seems to have an immediate effect. The gaze triggers a primitive part of the human brain, calling forth one of two basic emotions—approach or retreat. You cannot ignore the eyes of another fixed on you; you must respond. You may smile and start conversation. You may look away and edge toward the door. But first you will probably tug at an earlobe, adjust your sweater, yawn, fidget with your eyeglasses, or perform some other meaningless movement—a "displacement gesture"—to alleviate anxiety while you make up your mind how to acknowledge this invitation, whether to flee the premises or stay and play the courting game.
Baboon Love
Baboons gaze at each other during courtship too. These animals may have branched off of our human evolutionary tree more than 19 million years ago, yet this similarity in wooing persists. As anthropologist Barbara Smuts had said of a budding baboon courtship on the Eburru cliffs of Kenya, "It looked like watching two novices in a singles bar."
The affair began one evening when a female baboon, Thalia, turned and caught a young male, Alex staring at her. They were about 15 feet apart. He glanced away immediately. So she stared at him—until he turned to look at her. Then she intently fiddled with her toes. On it went. Each time she stared at him, he looked away; each time he stared at her, she groomed her feet. Finally Alex caught Thalia gazing at him—the "return gaze."
Immediately he flattened his ears against his head, narrowed his eyelids, and began to smack his lips, the height of friendliness in baboon society. Thalia froze. Then, for a long moment, she looked him in the eye. Only after this extended eye contact had occurred did Alex approach her, at which point Thalia began to groom him—the beginning of a friendship and sexual liaison that was still going strong six years later, when Smuts returned to Kenya to study baboon friendships.
At The Bar
Could these courting cues be part of a larger human mating dance?
According to David Givens, an anthropologist, and Timothy Perper, a biologist, who spent several hundred hours in American cocktail lounges watching men and women flirt, American singles-bar courtship has several stages, each with distinctive escalation points. I shall divide them into five. The first is the "attention getting" phase. Young men and women do this somewhat differently. As soon as they enter the bar, both males and females typically establish a territory—a seat, a place to lean, a position near the jukebox or dance floor. Once settled, they begin to attract attention to themselves.
Tactics vary. Men tend to pitch and roll their shoulders, stretch, exaggerate their body movements. Instead of using the wrist to stir a drink, men often employ the entire arm, as if stirring mud. The normally smooth motion necessary to light a cigarette becomes a whole-body gesture, ending with an elaborate shaking from the elbow to extinguish the match.
Then there is the swagger with which young men often move to and fro. Male baboons on the grasslands of East Africa also swagger when they foresee a potential sexual encounter. A male gorilla walks back and forth stiffly as he watches a female out of the corner of his eye. The parading gait is known to primatologists as bird-dogging. Males of many species also preen. Human males pat their hair, adjust their clothes, tug their chins, or perform other self-clasping or grooming movements that diffuse nervous energy and keep the body moving.
Young women begin the attention-getting phase with many of the same maneuvers that men use—smiling, gazing, shifting, swaying, preening, stretching, moving in their territory to draw attention to themselves. Often they incorporate a battery of feminine moves as well. They twist their curls, tilt their heads, look up coyly, giggle, raise their brows, flick their tongues, lick their upper lips, blush, and hide their faces in order to signal, "I am here."
Some women also have a characteristic walk when courting; they arch their backs, thrust out their bosoms, sway their hips, and strut. No wonder many women wear high-heeled shoes. This bizarre Western custom, invented by Catherine de Medici in the 1500s, unnaturally arches the back, tilts the buttocks, and thrusts the chest out into a female come-hither pose. The clomping noise of their spiky heels draws attention too.
Keeping Time
Body synchrony is the final and most intriguing component of the pickup. As potential lovers become comfortable, they pivot or swivel until their shoulders become aligned, their bodies face-to-face. This rotation toward each other may start before they begin to talk or hours into conversation, but after a while the man and woman begin to move in tandem. Only briefly at first. When he crosses his legs, she crosses hers; as he leans left, she leans left; when he smoothes his hair, she smoothes hers. They move in perfect rhythm as they gaze deeply into each other's eyes.
Called interactional synchrony, this human mirroring begins in infancy. By the second day of life, a newborn has begun to synchronize its body movements with the rhythmic patterns of the human voice. And it is now well established that people in many other cultures get into rhythm when they feel comfortable together. Our need to keep each other's time reflects a rhythmic mimicry common to many animals. Chimps sometimes sway from side to side as they stare into one another's eyes just prior to copulation. Cats circle. Red deer prance. Howler monkeys court with rhythmic tongue movements. Stickleback fish do a zigzag jig. From bears to beetles, courting couples perform rhythmic rituals to express their amorous intentions.
Wooing Messages
Human courtship has other similarities to courtship in "lower" animals. Normally people woo each other slowly. Caution during courtship is also characteristic of spiders. The male wolf spider, for example, must enter the long, darker entrance of a female's compound in order to court and copulate. This he does slowly. If he is overeager, she devours him.
Men and women who are too aggressive at the beginning of the courting process also suffer unpleasant consequences. If you come too close, touch too soon, or talk too much, you will probably be repelled. Like wooing among wolf spiders, baboons, and other creatures, the human pickup runs on message. At every juncture in the ritual each partner must respond correctly, otherwise the courtship fails.
The Dinner Date
Probably no ritual is more common to Western would-be lovers than the "dinner date." If the man is courting, he pays—and a woman instinctively knows her partner is wooing her. In fact, there is no more widespread courtship ploy than offering food in hopes of gaining sexual favors. Around the world men give women presents prior to lovemaking. A fish, a piece of meat, sweets, and beer are among the delicacies men have invented as offerings.
This ploy is not exclusive to men. Black-tipped hang flies often catch aphids, daddy longlegs, or houseflies on the forest floor. When a male has felled a particularly juicy prey, he exudes secretions from an abdominal scent gland that catch the breeze, announcing a successful hunting expedition. Often a passing female hang fly stops to enjoy the meal—but not without copulating while she eats.
"Courtship feeding," as this custom is called, probably predates the dinosaurs, because it has an important reproductive function. By providing food to females, males show their abilities as hunters, providers, worthy procreative partners.
Odor Lures
Every person smells slightly different; we all have a personal "odor print" as distinctive as our voice, our hands, our intellect. As newborn infants we can recognize our mother by her smell. Both men and women have "apocrine glands in their armpits, around their nipples, and in the groin that become active at puberty. These scent boxes differ from "eccrine" glands, which cover much of the body and produce an odorless liquid, because their exudate, in combination with bacteria on the skin, produce the acrid, gamy smell of perspiration.
Today in parts of Greece and the Balkans, some men carry their handkerchiefs in their armpits during festivals and offer these odoriferous tokens to the women they invite to dance: they swear by the results.
But could a man's smell actually trigger infatuation in a woman? This possible link between male essence and female reproductive health may provide a clue to attraction. Women perceive odors better than men do. They are a hundred times more sensitive to Exaltolide, a compound much like men's sexual musk; they can smell a mild sweat from about three feet away; and at midcycle, during ovulation, women can smell men's musk even more strongly. Perhaps ovulating women become more susceptible to infatuation when they can smell male essence and are unconsciously drawn toward it to maintain menstrual cycling.
A woman's or a man's smell can release a host of memories too. So the right human smell at the right moment could touch off vivid pleasant memories and possibly ignite that first, stunning moment of romantic adoration.
But Americans, the Japanese, and many other people find odors offensive; for most of them the smell of perspiration is more likely to repel than to attract. Some scientists think the Japanese are unduly disturbed by body odors because of their long tradition of arranged marriages: men and women were forced into close contact with partners they found unappealing. Why Americans are phobic about natural body smells, I do not know. Perhaps our advertisers have swayed us in order to sell their deodorizing products.
Love Maps
A more important mechanism by which human beings become captivated by "him" or "her" may be what sexologist John Money called your love map. Long before you fixate on Ray as opposed to Bill, Sue instead of Ceciley, you have developed a mental map, a template replete with brain circuitry that determines what arouses you sexually, what drives you to fall in love with one person rather than another.
These love maps vary from one individual to the next. Some people get turned on by a business suit or a doctor's uniform, by big breasts, small feet, or a vivacious laugh. But averageness still wins. In one study, psychologists selected 32 faces of American Caucasian women and, using computers, averaged all of their features. Then they showed these images to college peers. Of 94 photographs of real female faces, only four were rated more appealing than these fabrications.
As you would guess, the world does not share the sexual ideals of Caucasian students from Wyoming. Despite wildly dissimilar standards of beauty and sex appeal, however, there are a few widely shared opinions about what incites romantic passion. Men and women around the world are attracted to those with good complexions. Everywhere people are drawn to partners whom they regard as clean. And men in most places generally prefer plump, wide-hipped women to slim ones. Looks count.
So does money. From rural Zulus to urban Brazilians, men are attracted to young, good-looking, spunky women, while women are drawn to men with property or money. Americans are no exception.
These male/female appetites are probably innate. it is to a males' genetic advantage to fall in love with a women who will produce viable offspring; it is to a woman's biological advantage to become captivated by a man who can help support her young. As Montaigne, the 16th-century French essayist, summed it up, "We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity."
Love At First Sight
Could this human ability to adore another within moments of meeting come out of nature? I think it does. In fact, love at first sight may have a critical adaptive function among animals. During the mating season a female squirrel, for example, needs to breed. It is not to her advantage to copulate with a porcupine. But if she sees a healthy squirrel, she should waste no time. She should size him up. And if he looks suitable, she should grab her chance to copulate. Perhaps love at first sight is no more than an inborn tendency in many creatures that evolved to spur the mating process. Then among our human ancestors what had been animal attraction evolved into the human sensation of infatuation at a glance.
Infatuation Fades
Alas, infatuation fades. As Emerson put it, "Love is strongest in pursuit, friendship in possession." At some point, that old black magic wanes. Yet there does seem to be a general length to this condition. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov measured the duration of romantic love, from the moment infatuation hit to when a "feeling of neutrality" for one's love object began. She concluded, "The most frequent interval, as well as the average, is between approximately 18 months and three years" John Money agrees, proposing that once you begin to see your sweetheart regularly the passion lasts two to three years.
Psychiatrist Michael Liebowitz suspected that the end of infatuation is also grounded in brain physiology. He theorized that the brain cannot eternally maintain the revved-up site of romantic bliss. As he summed it up, "If you want a situation where you and your long-term partner can still get very excited about each other, you will have to work on it, because in some ways you are bucking a biological tide."
Harem Building
Only 16 percent of the 853 cultures on record actually prescribe monogyny, in which a man is permitted only one wife at a time. Western cultures are among them. We are in the minority, however. A whopping 84 percent of all human societies permit a man to take more than one wife at once—polygyny.
Men seek polygyny to spread their genes, while women join harems to acquire resources and ensure the survival of their young. If you ask a man why he wants a second bride, he might say he is attracted to her wit, her business acumen, her vivacious spirit, or splendid thighs. If you ask a women why she is willing to "share" a man, she might tell you that she loves the way he looks or laughs or takes her to fancy vacation spots.
But no matter what reasons people offer, polygyny enables men to have more children; under the right conditions women also reap reproductive benefits. So long ago ancestral men who sought polygyny and ancestral women who acquiesced to harem life disproportionately survived.
Man Is Monogamous
Because of the genetic advantages of polygyny for men and because so many societies permit polygyny, many anthropologists think that harem building is a badge of the human animal. But in the vast majority of societies where polygyny is permitted, only about five to 10 percent of men actually have several wives simultaneously. Although polygyny is widely discussed, it is much less practiced.
Whereas gorillas, horses, and animals of many other species always form harems, among human beings polygyny and polyandry seem to be optional opportunistic exceptions; monogamy is the rule. Human beings almost never have to be cajoled into pairing. Instead, we do this naturally. We flirt. We feel infatuation. We fall in love. We marry. And the vast majority of us marry only one person at a time.
Pair-bonding is a trademark of the human animal.
Unfaithfully Yours
Although we flirt, fall in love, and marry, human beings also tend to be sexually unfaithful to a spouse. Americans are no exception. Despite our attitude that philandering is immoral, regardless of our sense of guilt when we engage in trysts, in spite of the risks to family, friends, and livelihood that adultery entails, we indulge in extramarital affairs with avid regularity.
A survey of 106,000 readers of Cosmopolitan magazine in the early 1980s indicated that 54 percent of the married women had participated in at least one affair, and a poll of 7,239 men reported that 72 percent of those married over two years had been adulterous.
Why? From a Darwinian perspective, it is easy to explain. If a man has two children by one woman, he has, genetically speaking, "reproduced" himself. But if he also engages in dalliances with more women and, by chance, sires two more young, he doubles his contribution to the next generation. Those men who seek variety also tend to have more children. These young survive and pass to subsequent generations whatever it is in the male genetic makeup that seeks "fresh features," as Byron said of men's need for sexual novelty.
Unlike a man, a woman cannot breed every time she copulates. In fact, anthropologist Donald Symons has argued that, because the number of children a woman can bear is limited, women are biologically less motivated to seek fresh features.
Sexual Variety
Are women really less interested in sexual variety? My own modest proposal is that during our long evolutionary history most males pursued trysts to spread their genes, while females evolved two alternative strategies to acquire resources: some women elected to be faithful to a single man in order to reap a lot of benefits from him; others engaged in clandestine sex with many men to acquire resources from each. This scenario roughly coincides with common beliefs: man, the natural playboy; women, madonna or whore.
In a study by Donald Symons and Bruce Ellis, for example, 415 college students were asked whether they would have sex with an anonymous student of the opposite sex. In this imaginary scenario, participants were told that all risk of pregnancy, discovery, and disease was absent. The results were those you would expect. Males were consistently more likely to say yes, leading these researchers once again to conclude that men are more interested in sexual variety than women are.
But here's the glitch. This study takes into consideration the primary genetic motive for male philandering (to fertilize young women). But not the primary motive for female philandering—the acquisition of resources.
There is no evidence whatsoever that women are sexually shy or that they shun clandestine sexual adventures. Instead, both men and women seem to exhibit a mixed reproductive strategy: monogamy and adultery are our fare.
Parting
We all have our share of troubles. But probably one of the hardest things we do is leave a spouse. From the tundras of Siberia to the jungles of Amazonia, people accept divorce as regrettable—although sometimes necessary. They have specific social or legal procedures for divorce. And they do divorce. Moreover, unlike many Westerners, traditional peoples do not make divorce a moral issue. The Mongols of Siberia sum up a common worldwide attitude, "If two individuals cannot get along harmoniously together, they had better live apart."
Why do people divorce? Bitter quarrels, insensitive remarks, lack of humor, watching too much television, inability to listen, drunkenness, sexual rejection—the reasons men or women give for why they leave a marriage are as varied as their motives for having wedded in the first place.
Overt adultery heads the list. Sterility and barrenness come next. Cruelty, particularly by the husband, ranks third among worldwide reasons for divorce. I am not surprised that adultery and infertility are paramount. Darwin theorized that people marry primarily to breed.
The Four-Year Itch
Hoping to get some insight into the nature of divorce, I turned to the demographic yearbooks of the United Nations. Divorce generally occurs early in marriage—peaking in or around the fourth year after wedding—followed by a gradual decline in divorce as more years of marriage go by. The American divorce peak hovers somewhat below the common four-year peak. Purely as a guess, I would say that this may have something to do with American attitudes toward marriage itself. We tend not to marry for economic, political, or family reasons. Instead, as anthropologist Paul Bohannen once said, "Americans marry to enhance their inner, largely secret selves."
I find this remark fascinating—and correct. We marry for love and to accentuate, balance out, or mask parts of our private selves. This is why you sometimes see a reserved accountant married to a blond bombshell or a scientist married to a poet. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the American divorce peak corresponds perfectly with the normal duration of infatuation—two to three years. If partners are not satisfied with the match, they bail out soon after the infatuation wears off. So there are exceptions to the four-year itch.
Divorce Is For The Young
Another pattern to emerge from the United Nations data regards "divorce with dependent children." Among the hundreds of millions of people recorded in 45 societies between 1950 and 1989, 39 percent of all divorces occurred among couples with no dependent children, 26 percent among those with one dependent child, 19 percent among couples with two, 7 percent among those with three children, 3 percent among couples with four young, and couples with five or more dependent young rarely split. Hence, it appears that the more children a couple bear, the less likely they are to divorce.
This pattern is less conclusively demonstrated by the U.N. data than the first two. Yet it is strongly suggested and it makes genetic sense. From a Darwinian perspective, couples with no children should break up; both individuals will mate again and probably go on to bear young—ensuring their genetic futures. As couples bear more children they become less economically able to abandon their growing family. And it is genetically logical that they remain together to raise their flock.
Planned Obsolescence Of The Pair Bond
Marriage clearly shows several general patterns of decay. Divorce counts peak among couples married about four years. And the longer a couple remain together, the older the partners get, and probably the more offspring they produce, the less likely spouses are to leave each other.
This is not to say that everybody fits this mold. But Shakespeare did. Etched in Shakespeare's marriage and in all these other divorces recorded from around the world is a blue print, a primitive design. The human animal seems built to court, to fall in love, and to marry one person at a time; then, at the height of our reproductive years, often with single child, we divorce; then, a few years later, we remarry once again.
Adapted from Anatomy of Love; The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce, by Helen E. Fisher. Copyright C 1992 by Helen E. Fisher. Reprinted by arrangement with W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.
Fruits and Vegetables Can Directly Influence Brain Function
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Fruits and Vegetables Can Directly Influence Brain Function
There is good news and bad news.
October 25, 2011
by Professor Gary L. Wenk, Ph. D.
Sometimes scientists tell us things that we're fairly certain we already believe. Still, it's always nice to know that what we believe to be true is in fact true. A group of scientists in France investigated whether eating fruits and vegetables for thirteen years (!) would actually protect against a decline in cognitive abilities that humans commonly experience with normal aging. It does, and this is how they proved it.
The study began with a very large group of adults, over 6800; however, only 2500 finished the study by adequately completing all the dietary and cognitive evaluations. The subjects were between the ages of 45 and 60 years old at the beginning of the thirteen year study and each was required to maintain careful and detailed records of their daily diets. The subjects were evaluated at the beginning and end of the study for a variety of cognitive abilities, including verbal memory and higher executive functions such as decision-making and mental flexibility, among many other tests. Their results were published in the November 2011 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. There is good news and bad news.
First of all, their diets were composed of a variety of fruits and vegetables, but specifically excluded potatoes, legumes and dried fruits (they each introduce specific complications that might interfere with the outcome). The adults were divided into the folate-rich diets containing both fruits and vegetables, the beta-carotene-rich diets containing both fruits and vegetables, the vitamin C-rich diets of both fruits and vegetables, and the vitamin E diets containing both fruits and vegetables. The individual consumption of specific nutrients, i.e. folate, beta-carotene, and vitamins C and E were also monitored. The subjects were allowed to choose how much of each diet they wished to consume each day; therefore, daily intakes of each nutrient varied. This was allowed in order to more closely reproduce how most of us actually select our daily intakes. At the end of the study, this is what they found.
Eating fruits and vegetables have differential and significant beneficial effects on different aspects of brain function. When the specific diets were examined more closely diets that consisted of only fruits or diets with vitamins-C & E rich fruits and vegetables selectively benefited only verbal memory scores. This test involved being told to remember 48 different words and then recalling them after a delay with distractions. If this sounds like your job then you're in luck. Now the bad news.
Diets that consisted of vegetables alone or diets that were beta-carotene-rich were negatively associated with executive functioning scores. If your job involves making difficult executive decisions then you might want to avoid beta-carotene-rich diets. These fruits and vegetables typically have bright orange and yellow pigmentation.
This study is valuable because the authors tried to determine the effects of specific aspects of our diet upon brain function. Clearly, our diets can influence how well our brain works and how we feel. As an added bonus, these diets tend to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer—and you'll be thinner while doing so.
© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. Author of Your Brain on Food (Oxford, 2010)
Fruits and Vegetables Can Directly Influence Brain Function
There is good news and bad news.
October 25, 2011
by Professor Gary L. Wenk, Ph. D.
Sometimes scientists tell us things that we're fairly certain we already believe. Still, it's always nice to know that what we believe to be true is in fact true. A group of scientists in France investigated whether eating fruits and vegetables for thirteen years (!) would actually protect against a decline in cognitive abilities that humans commonly experience with normal aging. It does, and this is how they proved it.
The study began with a very large group of adults, over 6800; however, only 2500 finished the study by adequately completing all the dietary and cognitive evaluations. The subjects were between the ages of 45 and 60 years old at the beginning of the thirteen year study and each was required to maintain careful and detailed records of their daily diets. The subjects were evaluated at the beginning and end of the study for a variety of cognitive abilities, including verbal memory and higher executive functions such as decision-making and mental flexibility, among many other tests. Their results were published in the November 2011 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. There is good news and bad news.
First of all, their diets were composed of a variety of fruits and vegetables, but specifically excluded potatoes, legumes and dried fruits (they each introduce specific complications that might interfere with the outcome). The adults were divided into the folate-rich diets containing both fruits and vegetables, the beta-carotene-rich diets containing both fruits and vegetables, the vitamin C-rich diets of both fruits and vegetables, and the vitamin E diets containing both fruits and vegetables. The individual consumption of specific nutrients, i.e. folate, beta-carotene, and vitamins C and E were also monitored. The subjects were allowed to choose how much of each diet they wished to consume each day; therefore, daily intakes of each nutrient varied. This was allowed in order to more closely reproduce how most of us actually select our daily intakes. At the end of the study, this is what they found.
Eating fruits and vegetables have differential and significant beneficial effects on different aspects of brain function. When the specific diets were examined more closely diets that consisted of only fruits or diets with vitamins-C & E rich fruits and vegetables selectively benefited only verbal memory scores. This test involved being told to remember 48 different words and then recalling them after a delay with distractions. If this sounds like your job then you're in luck. Now the bad news.
Diets that consisted of vegetables alone or diets that were beta-carotene-rich were negatively associated with executive functioning scores. If your job involves making difficult executive decisions then you might want to avoid beta-carotene-rich diets. These fruits and vegetables typically have bright orange and yellow pigmentation.
This study is valuable because the authors tried to determine the effects of specific aspects of our diet upon brain function. Clearly, our diets can influence how well our brain works and how we feel. As an added bonus, these diets tend to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer—and you'll be thinner while doing so.
© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. Author of Your Brain on Food (Oxford, 2010)
Diet Not Working? Your Brain Could Be the Reason
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Your Brain on Food
How chemicals control your thoughts and feelings.
by Gary Wenk, Ph.D.
Diet Not Working? Your Brain Could Be the Reason
Lacking prefrontal lobe willpower may cause obesity
Everyone likes to eat. Why? Your brain rewards you with a deep and pleasant feeling of satisfaction when you eat. This ensures that you'll eat again and that you'll have children who will pass on your love-to-eat genes. Your brain likes it when you eat and makes you feel happy because if you eat your brain will continue to live. Your brain likes it when you eat.
How does your brain find out that you've eaten something? Your body sends your brain several different signals that communicate the presence of food in your stomach and intestines. Your brain also receives signals from your body's fat cells in order to know how much energy is stored for future use. It is in your brains best interest that you have plenty of stored energy, i.e. fat.
The most important signal your brain receives to inform it that you've just eaten is a dramatic rise in the level of sugar in your blood. When sugar sensors in the feeding centers of your brain notice the increase in sugar in the blood your brain rewards you with very positive feelings - we've all felt it and it's wonderful.
The brain now knows that it has all the calories and nutrients that your body will need to survive until the next meal. For normal weight people this sugar signal is enough to convince you to stop eating - you've had enough. For obese people, this signaling process is not working correctly. A recent study published by scientists working at the New Jersey Medical School and Yale University in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (September, 2011) discovered that the ability of blood sugar to stop obese people from continuing to eat even when they're full, even when they're well aware that they've eaten a lot of food already, is simply missing. This might be why some people find it so difficult to stop eating at holiday buffet tables or all-you-can-eat restaurants.
The problem is that the prefrontal cortex, whose job usually is to activate your willpower to back away from high calorie foods after you've had enough, largely turns itself off in obese people. The way this process normally works is that when your blood sugar levels are low because you've not eaten recently, your prefrontal cortex turns itself off and your food reward centers turn themselves on. After a meal, your prefrontal cortex turns itself on and your food reward centers turn themselves off. Thus your willpower returns and your drive to eat is gone.
The tendency to obesity is inheritable; possibly, so is this misbehavior by the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, the best advice for people whose prefrontal lobes refuse to do their job is to avoid going near buffet tables or all-you-can-eat restaurants.
© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. Author of Your Brain on Food (Oxford, 2010)
Your Brain on Food
How chemicals control your thoughts and feelings.
by Gary Wenk, Ph.D.
Diet Not Working? Your Brain Could Be the Reason
Lacking prefrontal lobe willpower may cause obesity
Everyone likes to eat. Why? Your brain rewards you with a deep and pleasant feeling of satisfaction when you eat. This ensures that you'll eat again and that you'll have children who will pass on your love-to-eat genes. Your brain likes it when you eat and makes you feel happy because if you eat your brain will continue to live. Your brain likes it when you eat.
How does your brain find out that you've eaten something? Your body sends your brain several different signals that communicate the presence of food in your stomach and intestines. Your brain also receives signals from your body's fat cells in order to know how much energy is stored for future use. It is in your brains best interest that you have plenty of stored energy, i.e. fat.
The most important signal your brain receives to inform it that you've just eaten is a dramatic rise in the level of sugar in your blood. When sugar sensors in the feeding centers of your brain notice the increase in sugar in the blood your brain rewards you with very positive feelings - we've all felt it and it's wonderful.
The brain now knows that it has all the calories and nutrients that your body will need to survive until the next meal. For normal weight people this sugar signal is enough to convince you to stop eating - you've had enough. For obese people, this signaling process is not working correctly. A recent study published by scientists working at the New Jersey Medical School and Yale University in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (September, 2011) discovered that the ability of blood sugar to stop obese people from continuing to eat even when they're full, even when they're well aware that they've eaten a lot of food already, is simply missing. This might be why some people find it so difficult to stop eating at holiday buffet tables or all-you-can-eat restaurants.
The problem is that the prefrontal cortex, whose job usually is to activate your willpower to back away from high calorie foods after you've had enough, largely turns itself off in obese people. The way this process normally works is that when your blood sugar levels are low because you've not eaten recently, your prefrontal cortex turns itself off and your food reward centers turn themselves on. After a meal, your prefrontal cortex turns itself on and your food reward centers turn themselves off. Thus your willpower returns and your drive to eat is gone.
The tendency to obesity is inheritable; possibly, so is this misbehavior by the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, the best advice for people whose prefrontal lobes refuse to do their job is to avoid going near buffet tables or all-you-can-eat restaurants.
© Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. Author of Your Brain on Food (Oxford, 2010)
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
October 30, 2011
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
October 30, 2011
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
Mona Simpson Shares Steve Jobs' Final Words: 'Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow'
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
October 31, 2011
Mona Simpson Shares Steve Jobs' Final Words: 'Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow'
By Kukil Bora
Steve Jobs' biological sister Mona Simpson has shared the final words of her genius brother in the eulogy she delivered at his Oct. 16 memorial service at Stanford University. The surprising last words that Jobs uttered from his deathbed were, "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow."
The riveting eulogy, printed in The New York Times Sunday, reveals the final days and moments of the Apple co-founder's life along with his family members in a Palo Alto, Calif., hospital. It also revealed a great deal of the relationship between Jobs and Simpson, whom he met first when she was 25 years old.
The eulogy, a transcript of Simpson's thoughts about her brother, entwines in words what she believed were the keystones of Jobs' genius - his modesty and hard work, his love of learning and his family.
"I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They're not periods of years, but of states of being," she said. "His full life. His illness. His dying."
According to Simpson, while she was busy writing her first novel in New York, she got a call from a lawyer informing about her "long-lost brother." The lawyer told her that her brother was rich and famous, and wanted to contact her.
Simpson said since her father was an emigrant from Syria, she imagined her brother as an Omar Sharif look-alike. She kept on imagining: "I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James - someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying."
"When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif."
Simpson described Jobs as a person who "worked at what he loved." "He worked really hard. Every day," she said. "He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures."
Jobs was sentimental and extremely emotional inside, he was a person who spent much time talking about love. His love for his wife Laurene, whom he married in 1991, "sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere," Simpson said.
"Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him."
While talking about Jobs' illness from pancreatic cancer, Simpson gave a touching description of his declining health.
"After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back," she said. But still he "always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man."
Jobs was struggling with his health in the final hours of his life, but despite that, "there was also sweet Steve's capacity for wonderment, the artist's belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later," she said. "He was working at this, too. Death didn't happen to Steve, he achieved it."
At the very last moment of his life, Jobs looked at his children and his wife Laurene for a long time, and then uttered the "monosyllables, repeated three times" - "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."
Currently working as a professor of English at the University of California, Simpson is a feminist. But still, she had been waiting her whole life for a man to love and "who could love" her. For decades, she thought that man would be her father. Eventually, when she met that man, he was her brother.
October 31, 2011
Mona Simpson Shares Steve Jobs' Final Words: 'Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow'
By Kukil Bora
Steve Jobs' biological sister Mona Simpson has shared the final words of her genius brother in the eulogy she delivered at his Oct. 16 memorial service at Stanford University. The surprising last words that Jobs uttered from his deathbed were, "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow."
The riveting eulogy, printed in The New York Times Sunday, reveals the final days and moments of the Apple co-founder's life along with his family members in a Palo Alto, Calif., hospital. It also revealed a great deal of the relationship between Jobs and Simpson, whom he met first when she was 25 years old.
The eulogy, a transcript of Simpson's thoughts about her brother, entwines in words what she believed were the keystones of Jobs' genius - his modesty and hard work, his love of learning and his family.
"I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They're not periods of years, but of states of being," she said. "His full life. His illness. His dying."
According to Simpson, while she was busy writing her first novel in New York, she got a call from a lawyer informing about her "long-lost brother." The lawyer told her that her brother was rich and famous, and wanted to contact her.
Simpson said since her father was an emigrant from Syria, she imagined her brother as an Omar Sharif look-alike. She kept on imagining: "I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James - someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying."
"When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif."
Simpson described Jobs as a person who "worked at what he loved." "He worked really hard. Every day," she said. "He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures."
Jobs was sentimental and extremely emotional inside, he was a person who spent much time talking about love. His love for his wife Laurene, whom he married in 1991, "sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere," Simpson said.
"Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him."
While talking about Jobs' illness from pancreatic cancer, Simpson gave a touching description of his declining health.
"After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back," she said. But still he "always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man."
Jobs was struggling with his health in the final hours of his life, but despite that, "there was also sweet Steve's capacity for wonderment, the artist's belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later," she said. "He was working at this, too. Death didn't happen to Steve, he achieved it."
At the very last moment of his life, Jobs looked at his children and his wife Laurene for a long time, and then uttered the "monosyllables, repeated three times" - "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."
Currently working as a professor of English at the University of California, Simpson is a feminist. But still, she had been waiting her whole life for a man to love and "who could love" her. For decades, she thought that man would be her father. Eventually, when she met that man, he was her brother.
Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs-Eng/Sp Version
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs
By Jim Higgins of the Journal Sentinel
Oct. 31, 2011
'Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother," writes the novelist Mona Simpson in her eulogy for that brother, Steve Jobs. Her eulogy was published in the New York Times on Sunday.
When Simpson received that call, she was living in New York and working on her first novel:
"I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying. "
Though he was a millionaire, Jobs always picked Simpson up at the airport when she came to visit him. She also experienced sides of him that few outside his close circle would know:
"Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him."
Even when Jobs was very sick, Simpson writes, "his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham."
As the Green Bay Press Gazette explained in a recent story, Jobs' biological mother was 23-year-old Joanne Schieble, whose family owned a mink farm on Green Bay's east side. She met his father, 23-year-old Abdulfattah Jandali, of Syria, while both were students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Schieble gave birth to Jobs in California, and he was placed with an adoptive family. Schieble and Jandali later married and had a daughter, Mona, in 1957. After her parents divorced, her mother remarried, and Mona became Mona Simpson.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/132894078.html
****************************************************************************
La emotiva carta de la hermana de Steve Jobs
Mona Simpson publicó en The New York Times un texto con el recuerdo al ex CEO de Apple y contó cuáles fueron sus últimas palabras
WASHINGTON.- El legendario cofundador de Apple Steve Jobs fue recordado por su hermana, la novelista Mona Simpson, como un alma amorosa y tierna en un conmovedor texto publicado en el New York Times ayer.
Simpson, que conoció a Jobs cuando ambos tenían más de 20 años, destacó la importancia que tenía el amor para su hermano.
El amor, lo más importante
Él era "como una niña por la cantidad de tiempo que pasaba hablando sobre el amor", dijo la escritora, hija de la madre biológica de Jobs, quien lo dio en adopción al nacer y no le contó luego a su hija que tenía un hermano.
El amor para Jobs era "su virtud suprema, su dios de los dioses", sostuvo Simpson, quien leyó ese mismo texto el 16 de octubre durante una ceremonia en memoria del mítico inventor, fallecido a principios de mes a los 56 años tras una larga batalla contra un cáncer de páncreas.
Cómo lo conoció
Simpson recordó la primera vez que se vieron, después de que ella se enteró de que tenía un hermano. Jobs era para entonces un exitoso y millonario genio de la informática.
También contó lo que Jobs le dijo el día en que conoció a su esposa, Laurene. "Hay una mujer hermosa y es muy inteligente y tiene un perro y me voy a casar con ella", aseguró efusivamente Jobs.
Las últimas palabras
La pareja, que compartió 20 años de matrimonio, terminó teniendo tres hijos. Su familia cercana estuvo junto a él desde horas antes de su muerte. Debilitado por su lucha para mantenerse con vida, Jobs pasó un rato mirándolos uno a uno antes de decir sus palabras finales: "Oh, guau, oh guau, oh guau", contó Simpson.
En una autobiografía recientemente publicada, Jobs intentó durante nueve meses luchar contra el cáncer con una dieta vegana, acupuntura y hierbas medicinales, a pesar de las protestas de familiares, amigos y médicos para que se operase.
Cuando finalmente fue intervenido en 2004, el cáncer se había extendido a los tejidos alrededor del páncreas.
"Yo realmente no quería que me abrieran el cuerpo, así que traté de ver si algunas otras cosas funcionaban", dijo Jobs a su biógrafo Walter Isaacson.
El 16 de octubre, celebridades y pesos pesados de Silicon Valley rindieron homenaje al venerado jefe de Apple en una ceremonia privada bajo estrictas medidas de seguridad en la Universidad de Stanford..
AFP y The New York Times-La Nación
Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs
By Jim Higgins of the Journal Sentinel
Oct. 31, 2011
'Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother," writes the novelist Mona Simpson in her eulogy for that brother, Steve Jobs. Her eulogy was published in the New York Times on Sunday.
When Simpson received that call, she was living in New York and working on her first novel:
"I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying. "
Though he was a millionaire, Jobs always picked Simpson up at the airport when she came to visit him. She also experienced sides of him that few outside his close circle would know:
"Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him."
Even when Jobs was very sick, Simpson writes, "his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham."
As the Green Bay Press Gazette explained in a recent story, Jobs' biological mother was 23-year-old Joanne Schieble, whose family owned a mink farm on Green Bay's east side. She met his father, 23-year-old Abdulfattah Jandali, of Syria, while both were students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Schieble gave birth to Jobs in California, and he was placed with an adoptive family. Schieble and Jandali later married and had a daughter, Mona, in 1957. After her parents divorced, her mother remarried, and Mona became Mona Simpson.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/132894078.html
****************************************************************************
La emotiva carta de la hermana de Steve Jobs
Mona Simpson publicó en The New York Times un texto con el recuerdo al ex CEO de Apple y contó cuáles fueron sus últimas palabras
WASHINGTON.- El legendario cofundador de Apple Steve Jobs fue recordado por su hermana, la novelista Mona Simpson, como un alma amorosa y tierna en un conmovedor texto publicado en el New York Times ayer.
Simpson, que conoció a Jobs cuando ambos tenían más de 20 años, destacó la importancia que tenía el amor para su hermano.
El amor, lo más importante
Él era "como una niña por la cantidad de tiempo que pasaba hablando sobre el amor", dijo la escritora, hija de la madre biológica de Jobs, quien lo dio en adopción al nacer y no le contó luego a su hija que tenía un hermano.
El amor para Jobs era "su virtud suprema, su dios de los dioses", sostuvo Simpson, quien leyó ese mismo texto el 16 de octubre durante una ceremonia en memoria del mítico inventor, fallecido a principios de mes a los 56 años tras una larga batalla contra un cáncer de páncreas.
Cómo lo conoció
Simpson recordó la primera vez que se vieron, después de que ella se enteró de que tenía un hermano. Jobs era para entonces un exitoso y millonario genio de la informática.
También contó lo que Jobs le dijo el día en que conoció a su esposa, Laurene. "Hay una mujer hermosa y es muy inteligente y tiene un perro y me voy a casar con ella", aseguró efusivamente Jobs.
Las últimas palabras
La pareja, que compartió 20 años de matrimonio, terminó teniendo tres hijos. Su familia cercana estuvo junto a él desde horas antes de su muerte. Debilitado por su lucha para mantenerse con vida, Jobs pasó un rato mirándolos uno a uno antes de decir sus palabras finales: "Oh, guau, oh guau, oh guau", contó Simpson.
En una autobiografía recientemente publicada, Jobs intentó durante nueve meses luchar contra el cáncer con una dieta vegana, acupuntura y hierbas medicinales, a pesar de las protestas de familiares, amigos y médicos para que se operase.
Cuando finalmente fue intervenido en 2004, el cáncer se había extendido a los tejidos alrededor del páncreas.
"Yo realmente no quería que me abrieran el cuerpo, así que traté de ver si algunas otras cosas funcionaban", dijo Jobs a su biógrafo Walter Isaacson.
El 16 de octubre, celebridades y pesos pesados de Silicon Valley rindieron homenaje al venerado jefe de Apple en una ceremonia privada bajo estrictas medidas de seguridad en la Universidad de Stanford..
AFP y The New York Times-La Nación
Sunday, October 30, 2011
World population to hit seven billion today-Daily News Online
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
World population to hit seven billion today
Ridma Dissanayake
A United Nations report released last week, revealed that the world population is to officially hit seven billion today.
The report entitled 'People and Possibilities in a World of 07 Billion' launched last week shows that the challenges ahead are formidable. It also contains snapshots from nine countries,where ordinary people,national demographic experts and policy makers talk about the challenges they face and how they confront them.
This report also talks about the issues and challenges confronting Sri Lanka.
It shows that there are five million young people in Sri Lanka and this is the largest population of young people in the country's history.
"Currently young people are interconnected like never before and they are transforming societies,politics and culture. But they also face a number of challenges in today's world. Many of these are related to growing up and managing relationships, the UN report revealed.
"Not only in Sri Lanka but in the whole world people under the age of 25 already make 43 percent of the world's population,reaching as much as 60 percent in some countries.
However the issue of population is not a matter of space.
The issue of population is one of equity,opportunity and social justice," the report added. "There is a dramatic increase in the number and proportion of older persons in Sri Lanka which in turn has led to various political, economic and social consequences and challenges.
Adequate responses from society are therefore needed when it comes to health services,long-term care,living arrangements,income and social security and protection against abuse to address the rights of the elderly," the report revealed. The 'People and Possibilities in a World of 07 Billion' report also discussed security,economic,strength and independence in old age, influences fertility, the power and impact migration, planning a need for growth of cities and sharing and sustaining earth's resources.
World population to hit seven billion today
Ridma Dissanayake
A United Nations report released last week, revealed that the world population is to officially hit seven billion today.
The report entitled 'People and Possibilities in a World of 07 Billion' launched last week shows that the challenges ahead are formidable. It also contains snapshots from nine countries,where ordinary people,national demographic experts and policy makers talk about the challenges they face and how they confront them.
This report also talks about the issues and challenges confronting Sri Lanka.
It shows that there are five million young people in Sri Lanka and this is the largest population of young people in the country's history.
"Currently young people are interconnected like never before and they are transforming societies,politics and culture. But they also face a number of challenges in today's world. Many of these are related to growing up and managing relationships, the UN report revealed.
"Not only in Sri Lanka but in the whole world people under the age of 25 already make 43 percent of the world's population,reaching as much as 60 percent in some countries.
However the issue of population is not a matter of space.
The issue of population is one of equity,opportunity and social justice," the report added. "There is a dramatic increase in the number and proportion of older persons in Sri Lanka which in turn has led to various political, economic and social consequences and challenges.
Adequate responses from society are therefore needed when it comes to health services,long-term care,living arrangements,income and social security and protection against abuse to address the rights of the elderly," the report revealed. The 'People and Possibilities in a World of 07 Billion' report also discussed security,economic,strength and independence in old age, influences fertility, the power and impact migration, planning a need for growth of cities and sharing and sustaining earth's resources.
World Population Tops 7 Billion
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
World Population Tops 7 Billion
October 30, 2011
KABUL, 31 October 2011 – The United Nations projects that the world population will reach 7 billion today. This global milestone is both a great opportunity and a great challenge.
The challenges confronting humanity as the world’s population reaches 7 billion are presented in a new report by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund launched worldwide on October 26th.
The State of World Population 2011: People and possibilities in a world of 7 billion shows that actions we take today could determine whether world population will grow to 10 billion or 16 billion by the end of the century, and could ensure that our future is more equitable and environmentally sustainable.
“With planning and the right investment in people now – to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves, but also for our global commons – our world of 7 billion can have thriving sustainable cities, productive labour forces that fuel economies, and youth populations that contribute to the well-being of their societies,” says UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin in the foreword of the report.
This year’s State of World Population report, People and Possibilities in a World of 7 Billion, looks at the dynamics behind the numbers. It explains the trends that are defining our world of 7 billion and documents actions that people in vastly different countries and circumstances are taking in their own communities to make the most of their–and our–world. It is mainly a report from the field, where demographers, policymakers, governments, civil society and individuals are grappling with population trends ranging from ageing to rapidly rising numbers of young people, from high population growth rates to shrinking populations, and from high rates of urbanization to rising international migration. The countries featured in this report are China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, India, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The State of World Population 2011 report shows that the issue of population is a question of human equity and opportunity more than space.
While our world of 7 billion presents a complex picture of trends and paradoxes, there are some essential global truths the report observed. It is relevant to note that educating and empowering girls and women allow them to have fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers did, and they choose this path whenever and wherever they can. It is also generally observed that boys and men must be consistently involved, for they are the critical partners for health and development.
UNFPA Report states that additional investments in youth are needed. Of the world’s 7 billion, 1.8 billion are young people between the ages of 10 and 24. As parents and teachers of the next generation, their choices will determine future population trends. Investing in the health and education of youth would yield enormous returns in economic growth and development for generations to come.
“In Afghanistan people less than 25 years old make up almost 70 percent of the total population. Investing in adolescent girls is one of the smartest investments a country can make. With health, education and opportunities, girls and women can contribute fully to their societies and help break the cycle of poverty. To celebrate the 7 billion possibilities behind the 7 billion people of this world, UNFPA stands close to Afghan women’s right to a safe and healthy motherhood”, said Arie Hoekman, UNFPA Afghanistan Representative.
The report includes selected demographic, social and economic indicators monitoring the progress made on the internationally agreed upon goals during the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, Egypt – September 1994).
Population dynamics in Afghanistan are described by the following numbers:
- population growth 3.1%
- urban population 23%
- total fertility rate 6.0
- life expectancy at birth for male and female is 49
- population using an improved sanitation facility 37%
- maternal mortality 1400 per 100,000 live births
- births attended by skilled health personnel 14%
- contraceptive prevalence rate any method 23%, modern method 15%
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
Source: www.khaama.com
World Population Tops 7 Billion
October 30, 2011
KABUL, 31 October 2011 – The United Nations projects that the world population will reach 7 billion today. This global milestone is both a great opportunity and a great challenge.
The challenges confronting humanity as the world’s population reaches 7 billion are presented in a new report by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund launched worldwide on October 26th.
The State of World Population 2011: People and possibilities in a world of 7 billion shows that actions we take today could determine whether world population will grow to 10 billion or 16 billion by the end of the century, and could ensure that our future is more equitable and environmentally sustainable.
“With planning and the right investment in people now – to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves, but also for our global commons – our world of 7 billion can have thriving sustainable cities, productive labour forces that fuel economies, and youth populations that contribute to the well-being of their societies,” says UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin in the foreword of the report.
This year’s State of World Population report, People and Possibilities in a World of 7 Billion, looks at the dynamics behind the numbers. It explains the trends that are defining our world of 7 billion and documents actions that people in vastly different countries and circumstances are taking in their own communities to make the most of their–and our–world. It is mainly a report from the field, where demographers, policymakers, governments, civil society and individuals are grappling with population trends ranging from ageing to rapidly rising numbers of young people, from high population growth rates to shrinking populations, and from high rates of urbanization to rising international migration. The countries featured in this report are China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, India, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The State of World Population 2011 report shows that the issue of population is a question of human equity and opportunity more than space.
While our world of 7 billion presents a complex picture of trends and paradoxes, there are some essential global truths the report observed. It is relevant to note that educating and empowering girls and women allow them to have fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers did, and they choose this path whenever and wherever they can. It is also generally observed that boys and men must be consistently involved, for they are the critical partners for health and development.
UNFPA Report states that additional investments in youth are needed. Of the world’s 7 billion, 1.8 billion are young people between the ages of 10 and 24. As parents and teachers of the next generation, their choices will determine future population trends. Investing in the health and education of youth would yield enormous returns in economic growth and development for generations to come.
“In Afghanistan people less than 25 years old make up almost 70 percent of the total population. Investing in adolescent girls is one of the smartest investments a country can make. With health, education and opportunities, girls and women can contribute fully to their societies and help break the cycle of poverty. To celebrate the 7 billion possibilities behind the 7 billion people of this world, UNFPA stands close to Afghan women’s right to a safe and healthy motherhood”, said Arie Hoekman, UNFPA Afghanistan Representative.
The report includes selected demographic, social and economic indicators monitoring the progress made on the internationally agreed upon goals during the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, Egypt – September 1994).
Population dynamics in Afghanistan are described by the following numbers:
- population growth 3.1%
- urban population 23%
- total fertility rate 6.0
- life expectancy at birth for male and female is 49
- population using an improved sanitation facility 37%
- maternal mortality 1400 per 100,000 live births
- births attended by skilled health personnel 14%
- contraceptive prevalence rate any method 23%, modern method 15%
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
Source: www.khaama.com
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