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Archive for February, 2012

Let the campaigning begin.

A bipartisan group of senators sent a letter last week to the federal governments top auto industry regulators letting the regulators know that the senators endorse the administrations proposed new corporate average fuel economy standards.

Yes, the same standards announced, oh, back in July.

They also made sure to let EPA and US Department of Transportation regulators know that it was Congress that made these proposed rules possible and handed over power to the regulators. (Insert pat on the back here.)

The senators are referring to the 2007 Ten-in-Ten Fuel Economy Act, which set the wheels in motion for developing the current fuel economy proposal that, as the letter states, unifies state and federal regulations into a single regime.

The letter, dated Feb. 17, is addressed to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

After heaping praise on the proposed 2017-25 model year regulations, it concludes with a three-page list of 30 signatures, starting with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and including some usual suspects, such as Michigan Democrats Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

So whats behind this uncanny show of bipartisan support?

Well, lets remember that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has mounted his own crusade to beat back CAFE.

Not all Republicans agree, and with this being an election year, politicians are working hard to chisel out their stances.

The proposed CAFE rules, which got the backing of 13 major automakers, likely will become effective when EPA and DOT make the final call this summer with some minor tweaks.

The proposed rules would double todays fuel economy requirements to 54.5 mpg by the 2025 model year. The industry is for the most part on board with them. So are other stakeholders, with the exception of the National Automobile Dealers Association, which fears the rules will increase new car costs.

So whats the hubbub all about? Again, its an election year. Its the auto industry. And its time for some victory laps.

You can reach Christina Rogers at crogers@crain.com.
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Thinking about taking a road trip? A lot of us do not plan in advance. We want to jump in the car, find sights and accommodations — wherever the road leads.

Are you a frequent business traveler? You need to check e-mail and edit documents no matter where you go. You will also use a projector for client presentations.

Are you a working commuter? You would like to catch up on Facebook during the train ride. You also want to play some games.

These days, there are many choices for mobile computing. Choosing the right mobile device can be difficult. Smartphones have many of the same abilities as laptops. There are also netbooks and the iPad. Before you make a decision, consider these points:

Storage and connections

Most people have modest needs when it comes to storage. You may store music, some TV shows and a few documents. But others need more space. For example, maybe you want to offload video or photos from a camera.

Of course, youll also need to connect to your camera or camcorder. In these cases, a laptop is your best bet. Laptops offer ample storage and plenty of USB connections. A netbook will also work, but dont plan on serious photo or video editing.

Almost all modern smartphones, netbooks, notebooks, iPads, etc., are Bluetooth-integrated. This allows you to wirelessly connect devices such as a keyboard, a mouse, a headset, etc. However, Bluetooth is a monstrous battery hog. Most people disable it, as they never use it. Those

Lucknow: Political parties have turned visionary, in time for the Uttar Pradesh polls. While for the BJP, the central theme is ‘Vision 2025, for the Congress, it’s Vision 2020. And the road map for the future of the state—which, by all means, remains quite low on the development ladder — borders around key economic issues, such as education, employment and the economy.

Talking of vision, both national parties have on top of their agenda the 50% voting population of the state, which constitutes the youth. Jobs and tech gizmos, such as laptops and tablets, top the priority list, along with agriculture. Basic infrastructure, such as power, roads and high-quality public transport, and land acquisition—which is very important for making the state an industrial hub— make up the rest of the points of attention. The Congress’ nine-point vision document for UP, titled NAV Uttar Pradesh 2020 promises Nyaya (justice), Adhikaar (right) and Vikas…

A SCULPTURE of a county gymnast has been unveiled at Heathrow Airport as part of the build-up to the Olympics.

The casting of rhythmic gymnast Frankie Jones is part of a series of Olympic-themed artworks which have gone on show at Terminal Five’s Expo Fine Art Gallery ahead of the London 2012 Games.

The 21-year-old five-time British champion, of Wellingborough, is being tipped as one of the UK’s Olympic medal hopes.

She lives in the county, but competes for Wales due to her father’s roots in Pontypool, Torfaen.

Miss Jones was present for the unveiling of the carbon fibre resin sculpture by artist Eleanor Cardozo.

It includes a plaque stating: “This sculpture is dedicated to Francesca Jones, whose youth and talent embodies the Olympic spirit and the promise of a generation.”

Her dad Colin Jones said: “As her father I was very proud that the sculpture was unveiled, and she was very thrilled.

“She’s working very hard at the moment ahead of the Olympics. She’s flying out to Bulgaria tomorrow for five weeks training.”

The series has previously included a wire mesh sculpture of diver Tom Daley and a work in bronze depicting Paralympic gold medallist Lee Pearson.

Miss Jones, who earned a silver medal in the Commonwealth Games 2010, was joined by the Great Britain Senior Rhythmic Gymnastics Group for the opening of the new collection of art, which is being held to celebrate sports, including gymnastics, at the official Host Airport of the games.

Passengers can buy any of the 50 works of art on show at the exhibition, with proceeds split between the artist and the British Paralympic Charity.

A spokesman for the airport said: “This exciting new exhibition honours the best of Britain’s sportsmen and women as we eagerly countdown to the 2012 London Olympics.

“We are constantly looking at ways to make every journey better at Heathrow and provide passengers with an immediate taste of British sport and culture, and believe that this art exhibition will be as captivating as it is unexpected.”

The today announced agreement is part of the company’s mission to partner with the most relevant players in the tourism sector, offering its clients with the highest-standard solutions. MAIRDUMONT, while a world leading publisher in tourism, was elected by LatitudeN to be its main provider for content. The decision took into consideration the recognition of the long experience of MAIRDUMONT within the travel and leisure media market, namely with its world known printed travel guidebooks “Marco Polo” or “Dumont”.

The official launch of Farol City Guides is set for January 2012 in the cities of Brussels and London, covering other major European cities throughout this year. Available in English language on the Android market for now, the travel app will be soon available for iPhone and in other languages.

For more information about Farol City Guides please visit www.farolworld.com.

ABOUT LATITUDEN
LatitudeN GmbH is a technology company developing intelligent location-based solutions in tourism. The company is since its foundation part of the European Space Agency (ESA) business incubation initiative.
It is the mission of LatitudeN to create innovative solutions able to project the travel experience to the next level. Our experienced and motivated team, together with an international network of experts, aims to revolutionize the way that people use mobile devices to feel, explore and interact with their surrounding environment.
LatitudeN was founded in 2009 in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, Germany.

ABOUT MAIRDUMONT
MAIRDUMONT is a European market leader in tourism content. The range of its products comprises printed and electronic media. The printed publications includes the Marco Polo Travel Guides, Falk City Plans/City Atlases, Baedeker Allianz Travel Guides, ADAC cartography, the Large General Atlas, DuMont Travel Guides, Lonely Planet travel guides, Varta Guides, the DuMont Illustrated Atlas and the Kompass hiking and cycling-tour range.
MAIRDUMONT was established in 1948 and is headquartered in Ostfildern, near Stuttgart – Germany.

Bruno Fernandes
LatitudeN GmbH
Robert-Bosch-Str.7
64293 Darmstadt
www.latituden.com

But on to the art. Now I’m not a connoisseur of art, and I’m old school and prefer the masters like Raza and Souza and Gade. And I just loved the Jamini Roys and Husains at the DAG booth and the Souzas and Gades at the DMG booth, and of course Ketaki Sheth’s black and white photographs. There were some beautiful sculptures and installations by new contemporary artists.

Now while I understand that I might not have got the finer nuances of some of the art works on display, I do believe that an art work even if it is multi-layered, must appeal at least at one level to anyone viewing it. Everyone doesn’t need to get the subliminal meaning. But if you need a detailed primer or ready reckoner to explain what a book or painting or film is trying to say, for it to appeal to you at any level, I feel it somehow misses the mark.

So people who watch Apocalypse Now, appreciate it or don’t like it as a well-made war film even if they don’t get the Heart of Darkness or TS Eliot references. Or you can enjoy Animal Farm as an entertaining fantastical story and not realise the commentary on Stalin. Of course, Orwell might be turning in his grave as a result, but at least everyone gets something out of what he’s created. Or even if you didn’t get Dali’s surrealism, the sure fantastical nature of his paintings catches your eye.

But what do you make of  a massive steel plate around 12 feet in diameter with strange white phallic-shaped white items each a foot in length piled onto half the plate? Now I didn’t realise my faux pas when I asked someone what it was, only to be greeted by disdain and told that it was the avant-garde Subodh Gupta’s work. That I didn’t get kicked out of the Fair for my show of ignorance is a miracle. A friend did take pity on me and explain that the white phallic pieces were magnified grains of rice. Aah, a commentary on hunger in India. Or so I hope. Anyway, it matters not because there were enough people ooh-ing and aah-ing over the piece.  I seemed to be the only one who’d missed the boat.

The second piece was at Chatterjee and Lal which I might have been drawn to because of the Bengali name. On display was a slightly tattered Victorian lady’s dress which was reminiscent of Dangerous Minds with John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. And behind the gown was a small photograph of a man wearing the same gown. A little unnerving. The picture, it was written, was of the artist wearing the gown, which he had worn while creating his work. The ‘work’ itself was not clear. Now, in an attempt to widen my horizons, I did some reading up when I came home and learnt that the artist, Nikhil Chopra is a performance artist and wears guises and places himself in theatrical settings. For example, in an earlier performance abroad, Chopra would sit in front of backdrops for four hours at a stretch in various guises. In one scene, he sat at a table eating chocolate cake while wearing white boxers, as a commentary on colonialism and identity.  Now if someone had explained all this to me, while displaying a Victorian dress to me even with no Nikhil Chopra inside it, it might have all made a lot of sense to me. Or however much sense it could make. But just a Victorian gown with a picture of a man wearing it, simply made me feel like I’d walked into a seamstress shop.

The most bizarre and the one which made me most uncomfortable was the sight of six people walking around in t-shirts emblazoned with “Talk to me! Living work of art.” These poor dears were part of Mumbai-based artist, Preeti Chandrakant’s exhibit. She’s supposedly spent 6 years ‘molding’ these people and the exhibit was supposed to be a commentary on the fact that everything is for sale. According to news reports (Daily Pioneer), she has said that she has, “made their thinking more precise, their seeing more aware, their hearing more sharpened, their touch had been trained to respond to the subtlest of stimuli, whose tasting has been refined, whose smelling has been heightened, whose sensing has been awaken, whose very materiality has become aware of itself”. A veritable Lady Svengali.

The poor ‘molded’ sextet looked quite out of sorts and seemed to spend at least the hour that I was in the vicinity, speaking just to each other in a huddle. One of them was on his mobile, most probably telling a friend that life had seriously dealt him some cruel cards. Some curious people did take their pictures and chat them up a bit. Or maybe they were testing out the attributes of the sextet, because as a sign of how serious Preeti is in her artistic vision, people can buy any of the ‘living works of art’ from the ‘molder’, and they can take the person or ‘work of art’ home according to the terms of the contract. That I thought negated the entire point Preeti was claiming to make as both the artist and her gallery would be making money of contracting out a person to some slightly warped buyer.

But hell, that’s just me. I obviously only understand art for art’s sake and not for some hidden cause which is impossible to identify without a guidebook. And whether I understood Subodh Gupta’s steel plate and phallic rice grains and Chopra’s Victorian gown or Chandrakant’s living works of art, the first two are the toast of the global art circuit and the third has managed to generate enough media columns to make her a gallery favourite. Obviously the art fair is not catering to philistines like me. So I just hot-footed it to the vodka bar in the hopes of clearing my head.

Rajyasree Sen is a bona fide foodie, culture-vulture and unsolicited opinion-giver. You can read about her adventures with food and life in Delhi on her blog www.brownsahiba.blogspot.com or follow her at @rajyasree

Chromebooks are the electric car of laptops
Chromebooks have to make their mark in education first, because theyre too full of what-ifs for consumers right now.

Well now, this is just neat. Or it could be. Kinect hasnt exactly won the hearts of hardcore gamers just yet, but its got quite the DIY mod following on PC. With Kinect PCs official roll-out mere days away, itll be interesting to watch this thing take on a life of its own — figuratively, mind you, and hopefully not in the apocalyptic Skynet sense. Especially seeing as The Daily reports that Kinect-powered Asus laptops are in the prototype phase. In theory, games are only the tip of the iceberg for the little-camera-that-could (watch you sleep) as well. As Minority Report taught us, voice and motion controls are the future of all things. If, god forbid, Tom Cruise and Hollywood were somehow wrong, however, at least Ill still be able to flail foolishly at my Kinectimals no matter where I go. Thank goodness for that.

Sonys Z, S and C Series Vaio laptops have received a spring refresh, complete with next-gen Intel processors, big-time color and design and (limited) free nylon sleeves.

Turns out the feelings were mutual.

This is typically where the weaving of the tangled web begins. Except that Michael not only knew about his wifes extramarital attraction, he consented to and supported her decision to get romantically involved with the divorced father of two.

Seven years later, Michelle, Michael and Liam are sitting in a downtown cafe telling a reporter how they managed to prevent the destruction of either a marriage or a friendship.

Lets just say that since 2007, Michelle and Michaels marital home has had two master bedrooms. And there are three names on the deed.

I alternate nights, Michelle, a research scientist, says in response to what is probably the question most often asked of people who practise polyamoury.

And Michaels relationship with the man eating soup beside him?

Somewhere between good friends and brothers, he says of Liam, a 49-year-old fellow IT professional and, in poly lingo, his metamour — the partner of ones partner.

polyamoury (poly being Greek for many, and amor Latin for love) is a term coined in the early 90s to describe the practice of having more than romantic relationship at the same time. Its perhaps best defined by what it is not.

polyamoury is not swinging, which is more about recreational sex. It is not an orgy, which is group sex. And it is not (Listen up, Newt Gingrich) a one-sided open relationship, which is cheating.

Were not terribly fond of people who come along on our forum and say, Im polyamorous but my wife doesnt know, says Anlina Sheng, a Winnipeg polyamoury activist and moderator at polywinnipeg.com. The forum has about 200 members in and around Manitoba.

You might say polyamoury is free love with strings attached. Although practitioners have multiple romantic partners, openness and honesty are core tenets of the lifestyle.

Sheng, a 29-year-old freelance graphic and web designer, has a live-in boyfriend, a Winnipeg girlfriend, and casual male partners in both Illinois and the Yukon. They all know about each other.

This feels really natural to me. Its not something I chose, says the one-time Green Party candidate, who has been poly dating since she was a teen and likens being polyamorous to being gay.

Sheng, who is divorced, says that while she and her husband had a sexually open relationship, he wasnt open to multiple romantic connections.

Although polyamourys profile has risen in recent years because of the Internet, its impossible to know how many people practise it since theres no applicable box to tick on any census form — and its still a crime in Canada to have more than one lawfully wedded husband or wife.

John Ince, a Vancouver lawyer and spokesman for the Canadian Polyamoury Advocacy Association, estimates that about three per cent of Canadians live in multiple-partner relationships.

polyamoury, for the record, is quite distinct from polygamy, which, thanks to TV shows such as the fictional drama Big Love and the reality series Sister Wives, people tend to associate with fundamentalist Mormons who practise plural marriage.

Polyamorous relationships are post-modern, secular, egalitarian and consensual, says Ince, while traditional polygamy is a pre-modern institution with religious and patriarchal roots.

A critical distinction is that (in polyamoury) theres no stigma attached to any form of sexual orientation, says the founder of the Sex Party, a political party based in BC, who has been involved in poly relationships for more than 30 years.

The relational groupings can be triads — a triangle if all three partners are intimately involved, or a V if only two of the three pairs have a sexual bond (Michelle, Michael and Liam are a V) — quads, or more. (Groupings of three or more are sometimes called moresomes.) They can be all women or all men and include trangender and transsexual persons.

Ince, 59, who was in a long-term polyamorous relationship with two women but is recently single and currently between other relationships, says its a myth that polyamoury is driven by the male ego and fundamentally about men getting their rocks off.

For one thing, most polyamoury authors are women, he says, including Deborah Anapol, a pioneer of the modern polyamoury movement in the 1980s and author of the seminal book, polyamoury: Love Without Limits.

Most poly people arent just in it for the sex, Ince says, but seek intimacy to a very high degree.

And while he concedes that polyamoury works best for people with high self-esteem, Ince would argue that possessiveness and jealousy are more highly associated with the prevailing monogamous relationship model.

In monogamy, if your partner is attracted to someone else, youre going to lose that partner.

Her feelings for Liam did not negate, trump or interfere with her love for her husband — which has only deepened and grown for their ability to stay together through the whole experience, Michelle says.

What I had to learn through this whole process is that fidelity does not have to be defined through exclusivity, she says.

polyamoury provided me with a context to make sense of my feelings for both (men), understanding that just as a parent can have deep and equal love for more than one child, so can an adult have deep and equal love for more than one partner.

Although Michelle and Michael were legally married in a religious ceremony in 1995, there has been no ceremony or rite to mark her relationship with Liam, although they often talk about having one. And they do wear matching rings to reflect their commitment.

The trio asked that their real names not be published in order to protect the identities of their four children, ages eight to 16, three of whom live in the home full time. They have faced criticism from family and friends, and severed relationships because of their lifestyle choices.

But they consider themselves a blended family, and enjoy recreational activities and vacations together as a family. Michelle also makes sure she spends travel and leisure time with each partner individually to nurture both relationships.

As polyamorous couples go, Michelle and Michael are unusual because they didnt go looking for a third partner.

When asked why he didnt issue his wife of 16 years an ultimatum, Michael, who is soft-spoken and bears a striking resemblance to Liam, replies: I think I understood what Id be asking her to give up.

Which is exactly why I love him as much as I do, Michelle says.

carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca

For more info on Winnipegs poly community, go to www.polywinnipeg.com.