Systems Analysis

Vegetarian Doctors Go Whole Hog to Burn Bacon in Iowa

HHZander — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:05:43 +0000

By JEANNETTE NEUMANN

On Saturday, pork aficionados will meet up in Des Moines, Iowa, for the fifth annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, billed as America’s “premier” bacon celebration.

The event, which sold out all 4,000 tickets in 25 minutes, offers something to make every swine lover swoon: unlimited bacon samples, a bacon-eating contest, educational lectures, a bacon-themed songwriting contest and crowning of a new bacon queen. Organizers plan to serve up about three tons of the fatty strips.

WSJ’s Jeannette Neumann reports on Mean Street about Iowa’s fifth annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, along with so-called ‘bacon bashers’ who have voiced opposition to the event.

They’re also prepared for a bit of oinking from outsiders.

A group of vegetarian doctors has been skewering Iowans over the event for months. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says he wants to publicize the flip side of bacon.

He says the PCRM plans to hand out fliers with warnings about how bacon “rotting in your mouth” potentially has various health risks, including cancer and diabetes.

“With so much attention focused on this most unhealthful food, we want to make sure our message is there,” says Dr. Barnard.

The group had already sizzled up trouble in advance of the event, starting with a billboard that made graphic reference—with skull and crossbones—to the potential health risks of eating bacon.

PCRM doesn’t limit itself to bacon-bashing: It also has taunted cheeseheads with a billboard near the Green Bay Packers’ football stadium and hot-dog lovers at a Nascar race in Indianapolis.

Still, the anti-bacon campaign is proving to be an uphill battle. After canvassing the state, the doctors’ group has so far enlisted only six volunteers, and has been locked out of the event’s official schedule.

As the festival loomed, organizers tried to serve up a sort of detente. They invited the doctors’ group to participate in a lecture series where festival attendees would have the chance to heighten “their bacon knowledge and beliefs.”

Susan Levin, the PCRM’s nutrition-education director, says the offer came with impossible strings attached: She had to agree to discuss how bacon fits into a healthy diet.

“Of course, I said no,” she says.

Pro-bacon lecturers at the festival will speak about “Zombies, Bacon and Survival” and “How Bacon Is Changing My Life.”

Late last week, Ms. Levin sent one last email appeal, asking to speak on her own terms. But organizers say attendees don’t want to be bummed out. Her request was denied.

The doctors group’s ultimate goal is to raise awareness of the benefits of a plant-based diet. Those who crave bacon’s taste but want to avoid “the embarrassment” associated with the meat and its potential health effects, says Dr. Barnard, can enjoy bacon-like strips made from soy.

Brooks Reynolds, who helped start the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival in 2008 and signs his emails with “OHHHH, BACON!” says organizers don’t see the need to serve turkey bacon, let alone the fake stuff.

“Who doesn’t love bacon?” he says. “Even vegetarians will come back.”

Elizabeth Cummings, a 41-year-old Iowa City vegan who plans to hand out leaflets Saturday, says she was shocked when her health-food cooperative in Iowa City hosted cooking classes last year called “We Love Bacon.”

The doctors’ group set its sights on Iowa because it is smack in the heart of bacon country, with about six times as many pigs as people. Last year, the Iowa House of Representatives declared Feb. 26 Iowa Bacon Day.

“Whereas, the people of Maine have lobster, the people of Idaho grow great potatoes, and the folks of Texas make great chili, we Iowans have bacon—nature’s perfect food,” the resolution declared.

On Wednesday evening, Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad served Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping a “Taste of Iowa” meal. The canapés and main course included bacon and the first course featured prosciutto, a dry-cured ham. Mr. Xi, on a U.S. tour, is expected to become China’s top leader later this year.

Growing up in Fargo, N.D., even Dr. Barnard chowed down on bacon.

Both his father and grandfather were cattle ranchers. His palate changed, though, when he went off to Washington, D.C., for medical school.

A pathologist told Dr. Barnard, then 22 years old, to unlock a morgue freezer, pull out a body and help him examine the patient, dead from a heart attack.

The patient’s arteries were “hard as a rock,” Dr. Barnard recalls. The pathologist replied: “There’s your bacon and eggs, Neal.”

Soon, the medical student began to leave his carnivorous ways behind.

While bacon now disgusts Dr. Barnard, Mr. Reynolds’s passion for the meat has swelled to a point where “people basically talk to me about bacon all the time,” Mr. Reynolds says.

Corinne Joshu, an expert on colorectal cancer at Johns Hopkins University, says that while a high intake of processed meats like bacon and hot dogs have been “consistently associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer,” moderation is the key. Dr. Joshu says even she “likes a little bacon now and then.”

The annual bacon festival has its origins in an annual weekend gathering of Mr. Reynolds and more than a dozen friends at a lakeside cabin in Iowa. They often sat around a campfire and professed their love for bacon.

“I love bacon,” he says. “Bacon loves me.”

The event has morphed into one of the hottest tickets in Des Moines. This year’s installment, the fifth annual festival, is dubbed “Baconpocolypse Now: I Love the Smell of Bacon in the Morning.”

Dr. Barnard believes that the group’s billboard grabbed the attention of some drivers, prompting awareness of the meat’s potential health risks.

Some passersby had a different reaction. Coleman Young, a 36-year-old computer programmer, says the sign made him want to turn his car around, go home and fry bacon.

Tom Halterman, a health-care executive, agreed the billboard was tantalizing—but ultimately ineffective. “I don’t see it taking a bunch of Midwesterners who have eaten bacon all their life and turning them to a vegan diet,” says Mr. Halterman.

Write to Jeannette Neumann at jeannette.neumann@wsj.com

Forget Lincoln Logs: A Tower Of Books To Honor Abe

HHZander — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:05:43 +0000

Story By: by NPR Staff

The Abraham Lincoln book tower stands 34 feet tall and 8 feet around in the lobby of the new Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington, D.C. Click here to see the tower from the top down.

This President’s Day, a group of historians in Washington, D.C., decided they wanted to do something different to recognize the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. But how do you memorialize someone who is already one of the most memorialized people in history?

Their solution: to physically illustrate Lincoln’s importance by creating a tower of books written about him. The tower measures about eight feet around and 34 feet â that’s three and a half stories tall.

“It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him,” says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

The towering tribute to the 16th president rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership, located just across the street.

Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln â more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ.

Nearly 7,000 of these books are contained in the tower. They even look authentic up close (click here to get a closer look) but the tower’s books are actually replicas made of pieces of bent aluminum, with the covers of the real books printed on them.

“There are books here for people of all ages,” says Tetreault. “There’s young people’s books, there’s an Abraham Lincoln stickers book, there’s an Abraham Lincoln coloring book. And then of course there’s all of the bestsellers: David Herbert Donald’s great book about Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals â all of these major scholars who’ve written about Abraham Lincoln, they’re all contained in this stack.”

China media: Deng’s speeches

HHZander — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:05:43 +0000

Most regional newspapers including the Beijing News lead with a long Xinhua News Agency feature on the 20th anniversary of a trip to southern China made by late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

China Youth Daily is one of a handful of national newspapers that picked up the Xinhua article, which marked Mr Deng's speeches emphasising the importance of economic reform.

Mr Deng's visit in 1992 is seen as a milestone in China's recent economic success.

People's Daily instead marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Communist China's best known Good Samaritan, Lei Feng, because a recent Communist Party meeting called for Lei Feng's spirit to be studied. The actual anniversary will be in August.

In other news, People's Daily leads with the report of a Politburo meeting chaired by President Hu Jintao which discussed the forthcoming government work report to be delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao.

People's Daily and China Daily also continue their coverage of Vice-President Xi Jinping's foreign visit. Mr Xi met the Irish president and prime minister before heading to Turkey.

People's Daily talks to the Chinese ambassador to Turkey, who says there is a bright future for China-Turkey relations.

The Global Times picks up the news that Japan's Mayor of Nagoya Takashi Kawamura apparently denied the existence of the Nanking Massacre as he received a visiting delegation from Nanjing City. Beijing's Foreign Ministry has denounced Mr Kawamura's comment.

Also, Beijing News questions in its editorial a plan to turn the Sichuan township of Yingxiu into a major tourist spot.

The editorial called for respect to those who died in the deadly earthquake in 2008, which completely ruined Yingxiu.

Tuesday is New Year's Eve for Tibetans, and both China Daily and People's Daily portray a festive scene with reports on how people are preparing for celebrations and how a few ethnic Tibetan soldiers are celebrating with fellow Han Chinese troopers in the southern island of Hainan.

In Hong Kong, most newspapers lead with the news of former top minister Henry Tang submitting his nomination to run for Hong Kong's chief executive post.

The scandal-hit Mr Tang has received support from four property tycoons in the city, says Ming Pao Daily News, including Li Ka-shing.

The Standard and others also reports legislator Regina Ip's announcement that she is running for the same post. Mrs Ip resigned from her previous post of secretary of security in 2003 after the draft anti-subversion legislation sparked a massive rally in protest against the bill.

Don’t Let the Facts Get in the Way Of a Good Election

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:05:43 +0000

By PAUL BECKETT

New Delhi

Scene One – The grungy, dimly-lit upstairs conference room at the Press Club of India on Monday afternoon. About 20 journalists, maybe less, sit under the creaking fans; a lone, dusty water cooler surrounded by glasses sits on a table at the back. Two officials from National Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms take their seats behind a desk and unveil the latest statistics on the quality of people India gets to choose its politicians from:

Paul Beckett

–Total number of parliamentary candidates facing criminal charges: 1,114, or 15% of all candidates. In 2004, the percentage was 24%. The reduction is presented as a welcome development. It’s still roughly one in six.

–Congress has fielded the most: 114. Bharatiya Janata Party: 113. Bahujan Samaj Party: 105. Samajwadi Party: 55.

–Among the criminal counts: 1,379 charges of a “heinous nature” including murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and extortion.

–188 constituencies score a hat-trick: Three or more candidates face criminal charges. Uttar Pradesh has 40 of the 188.

Scene Two – The ballroom of the Hotel Oberoi on Tuesday evening. The invitation reads: Public Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs, cordially invites you to the release of the documentary film “Indian Elections: A Mammoth Democratic Exercise.”

“Why make this movie? Why write about those things? Why portray India that way?”

The main act: Shivshankar Menon, foreign secretary, and Navin Chawla, chief election commissioner. The audience: About 250 diplomats, foreign journalists, government officials. The purpose: To marvel at India’s brilliance in conducting elections and to celebrate, so the documentary tells us, “India’s undying commitment to the electoral process.”

The movie showcases:

–A grizzled grandfather in an orange turban saying, as he produces his voter ID card, “My freedom is in my pocket.”

–How Indian elections since independence mean the country has broken free of “humbling” social traditions like caste and other social hierarchies.

–A tea seller in Old Delhi who has stood for election 11 times and lost every time.

–Barkha Dutt

–The fact that the election commission has developed “zero tolerance level” for any form of malpractice and that Indians believe voting is “like a spiritual exercise.”

It was a startling contrast within the space of almost 24 hours. I don’t mean to demean the foreign ministry’s efforts. Conducting elections in a country the size of India is an overwhelming task that is admirably and ably handled by, as the documentary noted, almost 7 million polling personnel. To the moviemakers’ credit, they did spend some time – OK, a little time – on problems: “Money power,” and the lack of urban elite voters. And this was clearly a public relations exercise for people unlikely to spend any time upstairs in the press club.

Still, at times it veered dangerously toward a disconnect that happens all too often in Indian officialdom, both business and political: A belief that if you ignore something awkward and tout the successes, the awkwardness won’t exist.

It was a common response among business people and the self-appointed protectors of India’s image to the novel “White Tiger” and the movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” The takeaway was not: These raise interesting and disturbing issues we need to address. Or even: An entertaining look at India’s seamy underside. Instead, it was: Why make this movie? Why write about those things? Why portray India that way?

Except that the India of 1,114 political candidates facing criminal charges does exist. Yet it is rarely, if ever, talked about, which is a sure sign that it will never be fixed. Ditto during this election campaign for: The faltering economy, corruption in public life, national security, poverty, hunger, access to good healthcare, Pakistan. And on, and on.

At least in the U.S., the election — albeit endless and heavily dependent on money — hashes out major issues that are of pressing concern to voters. It really was about the economy, stupid, in 1992. It largely was again in 2008, as well as sweeping the corruption out of Washington and restoring the nation’s faith in itself after five years of war.

India, sadly, rarely gets the chance to debate such issues with any honest assessment of reality, let alone actually make strides in dealing with them. Official India is much more comfortable crowing about its “energetic, pulsating vibrant democracy.” That leaves it vulnerable to a criticism more often leveled at my profession: Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

—Paul Beckett is the Wall Street Journal’s bureau chief in New Delhi

Write to Paul Beckett at paul.beckett@wsj.com

A bird’s-eye view

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:05:43 +0000

The Haj — the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Makkah — is very much a growth industry. In 1932, 20,000 pilgrims made the symbolic journey, the fifth pillar of Islamic obligation. This year, the faithful will number more than 3 million. One of the striking aspects of this eye-opening exhibition at the British Museum is the way that the yearly mass migration invokes profound abstract geometries.

The anti-clockwise currents and eddies of human bodies around the great black stone of the Ka’aba, each pilgrim shuffling to complete the necessary devotional seven laps, is a gift to time-lapse photography. You come away with perfect cubes and the circular motion of a white-robed tide of humanity imprinted on your retina. The sight, even on film, of the weeping millions on the Plain of Arafat, every contour of the central mountain moving with bodies from across the globe, is perhaps the most powerful spectacle of the physical attraction of faith the world has to offer.

Every time a devotee turns to pray to Makkah, this sacred cartography is invoked. The concentric rings of orderly submission gesture to an all-powerful centripetal force. The Saudi artist Ahmad Mater Al Ziad makes the obvious but perfectly executed analogy of magnetism to describe this global force field. In one corner of the show, he has recreated his celebrated piece in which a black cube of magnet draws its attendant iron filings into Haj-like patterns of devotion on a sheet of white paper. Some of the chips of metal lie prostrate; others are held quivering upright.

Idris Khan, the young Birmingham-born artist, has created two similarly simple pieces. At the entrance to the old Reading Room, which houses the linear progression of the exhibition, he has placed 49 cubes of black marble, each face sandblasted with a Quranic verse.

Article continues below

Carnival Can Right the Ship

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:05:43 +0000

Fat Tuesday parties may be in full swing from Rio to The Big Easy, but the past month has been anything but a carnival for Carnival Corp.

The world’s largest cruise operator was left reeling following the tragic capsizing of the Costa Concordia, a 4000-passenger cruise ship operated by Carnival’s Italian subsidiary on Jan. 13th. The accident claimed 17 lives and caused injuries to many passengers – casualties that may have been caused or compounded by mistakes of the ship’s own command.

Carnival (ticker: CCL), with a $18 billion market cap, has shed more than 11% of its market capitalization …

30 prisoners escape after riot

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:05:43 +0000

CNN’s Rey Rodriguez in Mexico City, journalist Victor Badillo in Monterrey and CNNMexico.com contributed to this report.

The family that works – and claims benefits

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:05:43 +0000

The Welfare Reform Bill goes back before MPs on Tuesday amid wrangling over the detail. The Bill will impose a cap of Â£26,000 on the amount of benefits that households can claim.

Father-of-five Ade, like Raymond, is happy to detail his income and expenditure. But unlike unemployed Raymond, who has not worked for more than a decade, Ade works as a full-time systems analyst, on take-home pay of Â£20,592.

The family's biggest outgoing is the mortgage on their home, a three-bedroom end-of-terrace. But, says Ade: "One day we will own it outright so it's not wasted money."

"We are reaping benefits of a good society and I see no problem with that," he says. "Benefits are a good thing, and if society can afford it, they should be paid."

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Bahrain: Tenders are now a click away

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:12:11 +0000

All tenders pertaining to projects, works and procurement by the government will soon be called for and accepted via the newly created portal www.tenderboard.gov.bh. This is expected to not only speed up the process and make it easier but also increase transparency, efficiency and productivity.

In a landmark step on the way to enhance eGovernance, Deputy Prime Minister HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, whos also Chairman of Supreme committee of Information and Communication Technology, yesterday launched the first phase of the eTendering System of the Tender Board.

During the pilot phase, the eTendering System will enable government entities to prepare the application documents online, upload them onto the website and allow their purchase by private sector suppliers and contractors. The remaining procedures will subsequently be completed as the conventional way for now.

The second phase which covers the full cycle of the process – from submission of offer applications, announcement of tender invitations, shortlisting of the interested bidders, acceptance and secure deposit of bids, culminating in evaluation of the offers and the award of the contract – will also be completed soon. Over 85 ministries and entities are subject to the law regulating government tenders and purchases, and around 2,000 tenders are annually processed, with the total annual value estimated in many millions of dinars.

The Tender Board portal that was also launched during the ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton in Manama yesterday, contains the rules, regulations and tender related data, in addition to news and activities. The portal would also feature live broadcast of the opening of tenders during the weekly meetings held every Thursday and includes additional features such as smartphone interaction interfaces and an advanced search engine. The eContent was revised to meet the public institutions websites standards set by the United Nations.

On the occasion, Housing Minister and Tender Board chairman Basim bin Yacob Alhamer said, the eTendering system will improve government performance and facilitate procedures related to government tenders and purchases. The system would be governed by the Tender Law and be under the supervision of the Tender Board, with a view to engaging the private sector in a more efficient way.

The minister further said, the system has proved to be effective in reducing administrative costs, processing time and curtail procedural delays as storage, retrieval, tracking and securing of tender documents as well as bids would be much easier and faster. Additionally, it would increase the level of quality and transparency in the decision-making process, thus reducing complaints and disputes.

Through ease of access and higher credibility, the system would encourage more participation. It would also help to automate the work-flow, added Mr. Alhamer. The minister also declared that the board has already started utilising iPad applications and reducing paperwork, which resulted in saving of efforts and costs, in addition to enhancing the boards productivity.

eGovernment Authority Chief Executive Officer & Tender Board Member Mohammed Al Qaed said the initiative is a key step on the road to a robust, integrated tendering system covering the full cycle of the tendering process, starting from setting of specifications, evaluation, award of contract and settlement of financial transactions. Mr. Al Qaed also pointed out that an online tendering system for government tenders would also promote the position of the Kingdom as a hub for eCommerce.

In a related development, Tamkeen, the labour fund authority, announced the extension of its e-Tendering Training Programme with the aim of training an additional 550 business owners in the fundamentals of e-Tendering. The programme, done in cooperation with the Tender Board, is part of Tamkeens objective of delivering accessible business support services to enhance the productivity and growth of enterprises and individuals in Bahrain. The BD42,000 programme provides free training to business owners to become adept at using the Tender Boards e-procurement system, including how to register, receive notifications, submit bids, and tracking tenders through the e-Tendering Portal.

Tamkeen’s Chief Executive Mahmood Al Kooheji who was also present on the occasion said: The e-tendering platform is not only transparent, but it also levels the playing field amongst businesses to compete for open tenders. By demystifying the process behind it, we are enabling more business owners, particularly those of SMEs, to use such platforms and pursue previously untapped growth opportunities which expand their business. As of December 2011, 450 business owners had already benefited from the programme, and after this extension the total number of beneficiaries will be 1,000. The inauguration ceremony was attended by their Ministers and Undersecretaries, Tender Board and eGA management executives, along with representatives of companies and purchasing authorities and institutions, who will take part in the pilot phase of the service.

European hedge fund stars profit in buoyant January

HHZander — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:12:11 +0000

By Laurence Fletcher

LONDON |
Mon Feb 6, 2012 5:27am EST

LONDON (Reuters) – Star European hedge fund managers including Crispin Odey and Pierre Lagrange were among the top performers in an upbeat January for the industry, as the European Central Bank’s cash boost for battered banks fuelled a stock market rally.

Shrugging off a disappointing 2011, in which the average hedge fund lost around 5 percent according to HFRI, managers profited from gains in most assets as investors bet a solution could be found for the euro zone’s deepening debt crisis.

“All markets were up in January, it was just a very good month all the way around,” said Lisa Corvese, managing director for global business strategy at hedge fund software group PerTrac, which looks closely at hedge fund performance.

“It doesn’t matter what market you were in, you’re up right now. It’s a rising tide.”

The average hedge fund gained 1.72 percent in January, according to Hedge Fund Research’s HFRX index, which measures global hedge fund performance, with equity funds among the best performers, gaining 2.07 percent.

In comparison, the euro zone’s blue-chip Euro STOXX 50 .STOXX50E gained 4.3 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 .FTSE rose 2 percent.

Funds were helped by a 10 percent rise in the European banking sector .SX7P, after the European Central Bank provided banks with 489 billion euros of ultra-cheap, long-term cash, with more expected at the end of this month.

Among the most high-profile winners was London-based Crispin Odey, whose Odey European fund is up 14 percent so far this year, with particularly strong performance coming in the past few days.

The fund, which fell 20 percent last year, has benefited from its bullish positioning on sectors such as banks and media and individual stocks such as Pendragon (PDG.L) and Sports Direct (SPD.L).

“Our stock selection has been good. It wasn’t a stockpicker’s year last year but we held our nerve,” Odey CEO David Stewart told Reuters.

“The deep value stuff we’ve always liked … is doing well,” he added. “We think stocks are cheaper than other assets.”

Lansdowne Partners, which manages around $16 billion as at last year and which has been bullish on banks such as Lloyds (LLOY.L), saw its flagship UK fund return 5.7 percent in January.

The fund, run by Stuart Roden and Peter Davies, made millions shorting banks during the financial crisis but lost around 20 percent in 2011.

Pierre Lagrange, the long-haired Belgian who navigated 2011′s choppy markets to return 7.2 percent over the year, made 4.7 percent in GLG’s European long-short hedge fund in January, according to a source familiar with the matter.

GLG, part of Man Group (EMG.L), the world’s biggest listed hedge fund manager, also saw gains of 4.2 percent in John White’s Alpha Select fund and 3.9 percent in its Emerging Markets fund.

And CQS’s Australian founder Michael Hintze returned around 9 percent in his multi-strategy Directional Opportunities fund for the month to January 27, said a source familiar with the situation. CQS declined to comment.

Elsewhere, CapeView Capital, which was launched by Theo Phanos and which focuses on credit and equity opportunities, saw its flagship European credit fund rise close to 3 percent to January 27, said an investor who had seen the figures.

However, some hedge funds were hurt by their defensive positioning in rising markets.

Marshall Wace’s $450 million Global Opportunities fund, an equity long-short fund with an emerging markets bias, fell 4.19 percent during the month.

The portfolio, managed by Fehim Sever, gained 27.5 percent last year as one of 2011′s strongest performers.

(Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by David Cowell)