The Happy Booker

He may not be able to turn a phrase, but he can turn a profit:

Philip Parker... has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, "the most published author in the history of the planet." And he makes money doing it.

Among the books published under his name are "The Official Patient's Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea" ($24.95 and 168 pages long); "Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers" ($28.95 for 126 pages); and "The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India" ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Parker a compiler than an author. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman's ear, it does not to Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. "I've already set it up," he said. "There are only so many body parts."

There's a lesson here...and there

Supply and demand determine price of photos of naked first ladies:

A nude photograph of France's first lady, Carla Bruni, has been auctioned for $91,000 (£46,098) - more than 20 times the expected price.

The image was taken by photographer Michel Comte in 1993, when Ms Bruni was a highly sought-after model.

The picture was bought by an anonymous bidder on behalf of a collector, said Christie's auction house in New York, which sold the image.

The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy has declined to comment.

And, halfway around the world, a government tries to ignore that economic principle, with predictable results:

As global prices for rice surge to ever higher levels, the world's biggest importer, the Philippines, shows all the signs of being gripped by a rice crisis.

Huge queues form wherever government stocks are being sold at subsidised prices.

The government has been scouring the international markets for new supplies to replenish its stocks, paying record prices.

Rice dominates the newspaper headlines every day, and seems to be consuming the government's energy.

But this crisis is not all it seems. "There's no shortage," Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap told me. "The problem is not with supplies, but with price."

Which are inextricably linked.

Let's Get Naked

They'll get paid only if they deliver:

It takes a bit of courage, and perhaps a lot of ego, to tell large companies that their ad campaigns have been failing miserably.

But that's exactly what the advertising firm Naked claims to do regularly.

"We get up in front of a group of agencies and tell them, very nicely, that they have wasted tens of millions of dollars," said Ben Richards, senior strategist at Naked New York.

For that advice, of course, Naked hopes to earn a chunk of the supposedly wasted money. ....

Unlike many ad agencies, Naked does not create ads or purchase the space for them from media companies. ....

Naked's success will, in part, be driven by the success of its clients. The firm often accepts part of its compensation based on whether its strategies translate into higher sales. That marks a dramatic departure from the typical pay model in advertising, which is based on producing ads or placing them in particular media.

Ridin' the Rails

The French taxpayer gets the bill:

The French government is to pay Eurotunnel 24 million euros (38 million dollars) in compensation for break-ins by illegal immigrants who used its rail link to cross from France and Britain, the company said Tuesday.

The Channel tunnel operator had claimed damages of 53 million euros from France for delays caused by migrants based at a Red Cross centre in Sangattein northern France between 2000 to 2002.

It also challenged bills from the British authorities for the cost of detaining and returning illegal immigrants who arrived via the tunnel.

A special arbitration court in The Hague ruled in favour of the companylast year.

Eurotunnel chairman Jacques Gounon told a press conference the group had reached a settlement with the French government for compensation of 24 million euros, with an accord to be signed shortly.

It also said Britain had agreed to the principle of a settlement, with negotiations to begin soon.

An offer he can't refuse, Mate

The latest in the collapse of Aussie stockbrokerage Opes Prime:

AS former underworld boss Mick Gatto landed in Singapore last night on a mission to uncover $1billion in assets believed to have been funnelled out of Opes Prime accounts, one burnt investor - gun Sydney lawyer Chris Murphy - revealed he received a $250,000 Maserati as a gift from the now failed stockbroker.

Mr Murphy, who lost more than $100 million when Opes Prime collapsed, admitted he still owned the Maserati - albeit garaged, uninsured and unregistered - after angry creditors were told in Melbourne yesterday they might get as little as 30c in the dollar in the wash-up from the disaster.

"When I was a successful trader I picked the shares and Opes financed them. I was given the Maserati," Mr Murphy told The Australian. "The first time I drove it I hit the gutter. I went to Bob Jane T-Mart to get the wheel replaced and they said $6000. So I still drive my Corolla."

The revelation was the latest twist in the Opes scandal, which took a bizarre turn yesterday, with Mr Gatto, a one-time prominent member of Melbourne's criminal underworld who now runs a mediation and arbitration business, promising unnamed investors he would return from his overseas trip with their money.

....It is believed Mr Gatto will meet businessmen related to Opes's operations in Singapore, including two associated companies: an Islamic finance fund called Five Pillars and a Singapore-based hedge fund.

Mr Gatto, who escaped a murder charge at the height of Melbourne's gangland war after claiming self-defence in shooting dead a hitman in an Italian restaurant, is expected to meet Raj Maiden, the chief executive of Five Pillars, along with director Australian-born Gordon Browne, who started his career with stockbroker Potter Warburg (now UBS) in Sydney. Before leaving Australia, Mr Gatto said he would be more successful in retrieving assets than a class action being spearheaded by law firm Slater and Gordon.

"History shows that if you leave it to the lawyers and the receivers, they stretch it out foryears and the investors get nothing," he said.

....It is not known who Mr Gatto is representing, but speculation suggests that it includes Mr Murphy....

"We've got leads that we're following at the moment, but it's all confidential and I can't really say because everyone else will jump on board, but we're one step ahead of the posse," he said.

"We can't divulge our methods, otherwise everyone else will be doing it, but we get the result -- put it that way.

"We never use violence. It's always done amicably. There's no evidence that I've ever used violence ... We fix sticky problems and people come to me with all sorts of problems - they have for many years.

"We've got results for lots of people and people keep coming to me ... I'm quite happy with that."

They sleep with the fishes

New York's subway cars continue to be active in packing in the sardines?

Sixteen nautical miles from the Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater, a building boom is under way at the Red Bird Reef.

One by one, a backhoe operator has been shoving hundreds of retired New York subway cars off a barge, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog.

"They're basically luxury condominiums for fish," Jeff Tinsman, the artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said as one of 48 of the 19-ton retirees from New York sank toward the 666 already on the ocean floor.
But now, Delaware is struggling with the misfortune of its own success.

....The summer flounder and bass have snuggled so tightly on top and in the nooks of the subway cars that Tinsman is trying to expand the housing capacity. He is having trouble, however, because other states, seeing Delaware's successes, have started competing for the subway cars, which New York provides free.

...."The secret is out, I guess," said Michael Zacchea, the Metropolitan Transit Authority official in charge of getting rid of old New York subway cars.

Delaware's prospects for expanding the reef look grim, Zacchea added, because the state of New York has said it wants all of the city's retired subway cars once the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers updates the state's reef permit this summer. Zacchea said he would soon stop shipments out of state, saving perhaps $2 million in transport costs.

Save the Rainforest

And enjoy the experience:

The Brazilian government has begun producing condoms using rubber from trees in the Amazon.

The health ministry says the move will help preserve the largest rainforest in the world.

It will also cut dependence on imported contraceptives, which are given away to fight Aids.

The Brazilian government has one of the biggest programmes in the world to distribute free condoms in the fight against the disease.

The new state-run factory is in the north-western state of Acre, and will initially produce 100 million condoms a year, which will be known by the name Natex.

....The latex will come from the Chico Mendes reserve, an area named after the famous conservationist and rubber tapper who was shot dead in 1988 by local ranchers.

My Name is HAL...

And, I'll be your waiter:

The tracks run all the way from the kitchen, high up in the roof, down to the tables, twisting and turning as they go. And down the tracks - in little pots with wheels fixed to the bottom - speeds food.

Supersonic sausages, high-pace pancakes and wine bottles whizzing down to the customers' tables with the help of good old gravity. One pot is spiralling down so fast, it looks like an Olympic bobsleigh (but it's only Bratwurst).

...at the 's Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg, you don't need waiters to order food. Customers use touch-screen TVs to browse the menu and choose their meal.

....Up in the kitchen, it is man, not machine, that makes the food. They haven't found a way of automating the chef, just yet.

Everything is prepared from fresh. When it is ready, the meal is put in a pot and given a sticker and a colour to match the customer's seat.

Then it is put on the rails and despatched downhill to the correct table.

...."You can save labour costs," explains restaurant spokesperson Kyra Mueller-Siecheneder.

"You don't need the waiters to run to the customers, take the orders, run to the kitchen and back to the guests."

Not to mention that without waiters, there's no need for tipping.

We thought we would never see

Trees hauled into court for violating anti-shade law:

Trees - redwoods, live oaks or blossoming fruit trees - are usually considered sturdy citizens of the sun-swept peninsula south of San Francisco, not criminal elements. But under a 1978 state law protecting homeowners' investment in rooftop solar panels, trees that impede solar panels' access to the sun can be deemed a nuisance and their owners fined up to $1,000 a day. The Solar Shade Act was an obscure curiosity until late last year, when a dispute over the eight redwoods (a k a Tree No. 1, Tree No. 2, Tree No. 3, etc.) ended up in Santa Clara County criminal court.

The couple who planted the trees, Carolynn Bissett and Richard Treanor, were convicted of violating the law, based on the complaint of their neighbor, Mark Vargas, and were ordered to make sure that no more than 10 percent of the solar panels are shaded.

No Honey, No Money?

Northwestern University continues research on the cutting edge:

When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.

The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.

"You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area," said Camelia Kuhnen, a Northwestern University finance professor who conducted the study with a Stanford University psychologist.

Their research appears in the current edition of the peer-reviewed journal NeuroReport.

The study involved 15 heterosexual men in the 18-26 age range at Stanford University. It focused on the sex and money hub, the V-shape nucleus accumbens, which sits near the base of the brain and plays a central role in what you experience as pleasure.

When that hub was activated by the erotic images, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime. Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans.

That You Do So Well

He has the perfect first name for it:

Popular in Haiti even among many of those who attend Christian churches, voodoo lacks the formal hierarchy of other religions. Most voodoo priests, known as houngans, operate semi-independently, catering to their followers without a whole lot of structure.

But many of Haiti's houngans recently came together into a national federation and named [Max] Beauvoir, 72, as their public face. He is now the spokesman for a religion that followers believe too often gets a bad rap and is in dire need of an image overhaul. ....

"My position as supreme chief in voodoo was born out of a controversy," Beauvoir said, explaining how Haiti's elite have marginalized the houngans that generations ago wielded significant influence in society.

"Today, voodooists are at the bottom of society. They are virtually all illiterate. They are poor. They are hungry. You have people who are eating mud, and I don't mean that as a figure of speech."

Beauvoir, a doctor's son who was not particularly interested in spiritual matters in his youth, left Haiti in the mid-1950s for the City College of New York, where he studied chemistry. Then he went off to the Sorbonne for graduate study in biochemistry. After various jobs in the New York area, he returned to Haiti in the early 1970s to conduct experiments on traditional herbal remedies.

It was then that voodoo called.

.... Beauvoir has devoted the rest of his life to studying the religion....The more he learns about voodoo, Beauvoir said, the more convinced he is that it can, and should, play a role in resolving Haiti's problems, especially given the religion's reach among the most disenfranchised people.

As it is now, he said, the government seeks the input of Catholic and Protestant leaders when grappling with societal issues. "But do they call for the input of the voodooists?" he asked, shaking his head.

....To turn things around, Haiti's voodooists decided they needed to organize themselves and confront voodoo-bashing head on.

"We decided to come together and form a new voodoo structure," Beauvoir said. "We Haitians want to move forward in life. We need to find our identity again, and voodoo is our identity. It's part of our collective personality.

Save That Tiger

The economics of dropping out of college:

In the fall of 1995, one of the students who took [John] Taylor’s introductory economics course was golfer Tiger Woods, who left Stanford soon thereafter. “Perhaps I explained the concept of opportunity costs a bit too clearly,” Taylor jokes. He adds that he now uses the example of Woods—and the estimate of the $40 million in earnings the golfer would have forgone had he stayed at Stanford—to explain the concept of opportunity costs to incoming students. “They get the idea right away.”

Dust Up

Because lumber is down:

From Maine to Oregon, the price of sawdust, along with other wood byproducts, has soared.

When they can find it, sawdust buyers — dairy farmers, particleboard makers, wood-pellet manufacturers among them — are paying up to $50 a ton or more. That's double what they paid a year ago, some say.

There was once a time when sawmill operators could barely give away their sawdust. They dumped it in the woods or incinerated it just to get rid of the stuff. These days, they have ready markets for sawdust, as well as bark, wood chips and board trimmings that can't be sold as lumber.

....The numbers tell the story of what's going on.

In the first three months of the year, U.S. sawmills have been shipping about 114 million board feet of lumber per day, said Henry Spelter, an economist with the U.S. Forest Service forest-products laboratory in Madison, Wis. That's down from 135 million board feet per day the first three months of last year, and 160 million board feet in 2006.

....Less lumber means less sawdust.

At the same time, wood-pellet plants are popping up in need of raw supply, thereby increasing the demand, he said.

"The result, not surprisingly, is higher prices," Spelter said.

Get the Lead Out...

Before someone steals it:

For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of an accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concerted assault on churches since the religious conflicts of the Reformation. Only instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near-record price that lead - the stuff many old church roofs are made of - is fetching on commodity markets.

"The local parish church has become a victim of international demand for metals," said Chris Pitt, a spokesman for Ecclesiastical, a company that specializes in insuring religious buildings and other heritage sites in Britain.

The price of lead on global markets has rocketed sevenfold in the past six years, largely because of rising demand from industrializing countries like China and India. Centuries ago, its malleability made it a popular building material; now it is sought after mainly as a source for batteries for vehicles and backup power systems for computer and mobile phone networks. It is also used to make bullets and shot, cables and paints.

....A critical problem for Britain's churches is that many go unused for long periods of time, largely because of a decline in church-going. Services...in Edmondthorpe, for example, are sometimes held just six times a year.

In some cases, clergy and parishioners only discover roof thefts once rain pours into the building, damaging cherished items like carved wooden screens and ancient organs. Such thefts can mean thousands of pounds of structural damage, too.

....Historical preservation rules require many churches to replace roofs with original building materials, including lead, despite its attractiveness to thieves and its cost. So parishioners fear thieves might return after repairs have been made.

Ferry Interesting

The retired head man of the Washington State Ferries wouldn't ride them if they were free:

Is Mike Anderson, who retired as director of Washington State Ferries in December, eligible for a lifetime ferry pass?

Union retirees and their spouses can ride the ferries for free for life. Since 2004, 219 passes have been issued to retirees and 142 to spouses, according to the state.

During much of his 34-year tenure with the ferry service, Anderson belonged to The Inlandboatmen's Union (IBU) but lost union status when he left his job as a terminal supervisor to become a manager.

Union officials with the Ferry Agents, Supervisors and Special Project Administrators Association (FASPAA), which represents terminal supervisors, say Anderson is entitled to the ferry pass.

But Anderson, who now works for an engineering firm, says he doesn't want one, didn't ask for one, didn't authorize the union to fight for one for him and probably wouldn't use one if he got it.

....Anderson, who says he doesn't want to be in the middle of warring unions, said the whole issue is irrelevant because he never rides the ferries.

In Clover

Brew a better cup of coffee, and Starbucks will beat a path to your shed's door:

Starbucks last month announced plans to buy Coffee Equipment Co., the 11-employee company that makes Clover...[coffee makers] in an old trolley shed in Ballard [Washington]. [Inventor Zander] Nosler is thrilled.

"It's always nice to get asked to go steady, and I love not having to go ask for more investor money," he said of the deal, whose price and other terms, including a possible closing date, have been kept secret.

The machine that struck Starbucks' fancy is a single-cup brewer that costs coffee shops $11,000, about the same price as many commercial espresso machines and at least $9,000 above most high-end commercial drip-coffee machines.

In two years, Coffee Equipment has delivered fewer than 250 Clover machines to coffee shops around the world.

....Some coffee shops charge more for their Clover brew. In Manhattan, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz paid $7 for his first cup of coffee from a Clover.

"How do you do that?" Schultz jokingly asked Nosler in front of shareholders at Starbucks' annual meeting last month.

Nosler designed the Clover with two fellow engineering alumni from Stanford University, Randy Hulett and Jorah Wyer.

First, Do No Health Care

In Spain, the medical reign falls mainly on the pained patients:

MADRID - On Tuesday, for the second consecutive day, police were called to intervene at Henares Hospital's Emergency Centre as angry patients fed up with waiting for hours in overcrowded halls without seeing doctors started to revolt.

The first uprising was on Monday when the daughter of a 79-year-old patient called the police after her mother suffered two heart-attacks during her five-hour wait for someone to see her. Many other patients had similar complaints for the police.

Before the hospital reopened in February, local health unions had protested that it suffered from serious infrastructure and personnel deficiencies.

On Monday, however, the Health Ministry attributed the chaos to rising patient numbers due to a strike by primary care physicians.

Waiting for Go To

Want to be semi-retired?

Many of France's top-notch diplomats are under-employed, waiting for months on end for an assignment or foreign posting, according to a government monitoring body quoted in a newspaper Wednesday.

The Cour des Comptes office, which monitors public spending, wrote a letter to Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in late 2007 raising concern that "senior civil servants are being left without any definite assignment for more than a few months."

....Asked about the report, foreign ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani said France was struggling with an ageing diplomatic corps and that there were limited opportunities for them.

....The foreign ministry in December offered an early retirement package to diplomats over 58, and Le Figaro said there would soon be offers of compensation for employees who agreed to give up their jobs.

France has the second biggest diplomatic corps in the world after the United States, with 158 embassies, 98 consulates and 16,000 employees.

See You in Court

Unless we're right:

A giant particle accelerator that mimicks the effects of the "Big Bang" could destroy all life on Earth by sucking it into a black hole, a lawsuit claims.

Walter Wagner, who runs a botanical garden on Hawaii's Big Island, and Luis Sancho, a Spaniard, have asked for an injunction to prevent the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or Cern, starting up the Large Hadron Collider.

The accelerator, which will be the world's most powerful particle smasher, is due to begin hurling protons at each other at its base outside Geneva this summer.

Physicists hope that the device, which has taken 14 years and £4 billion to build, will provide clues to the universe's origins by mimicking its condition a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

....The... lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court in Honolulu, seeks a temporary restraining order banning Cern from finishing the accelerator until it has produced a safety report and an environmental assessment.

Defendants named in the suit are Cern, the US Department of Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the National Science Foundation. The US Justice Department said it would represent the Energy Department at a meeting over the lawsuit in Hawaii in June.

Undead as a Dodo

Next for French scientists; Jerry Lewis's career?

Eurosceptic MP David Heathcoat-Amory reacted angrily after the EU officially sanctioned a proposed project to recreate the egg of the Dodo, extinct 300 years before the union was formed.

Brussels, Monday 31 March - The EU sanctioned research and development by a team of French scientists who aim to reconstruct the egg of a Dodo in special incubators in the hope that they might bring the creature back to life.

Eurosceptic MP David Heathcoat-Amory described the plans as “preposterous” and branded the project “Jurassic lark”. Dr Patrick Refrain, one of the founders of l’Institut de Beauville-sur-Lys, close to Paris, responded by saying that laymen should refrain from commenting on matters “outwith their sphere of knowledge”. [Such as English?]

....The EU department for zoology and anthropology has initially earmarked 3 million euros (4, 7 dollars) for initial tests and promised further funding “should progress be deemed significant”.

Heathcoat-Amory told reporters from his Cheshire home that the researchers were "living with Alice in Wonderland" and that it was the EU “who would be extinct shortly and no one will bring it back”.