British Actor ‘Outed’ by Guardian Blunder

Guardian columnist Jane Czyzselska, writing for the newspaper's companion website, mistakenly 'outed' Shakespearean actor and 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' star Patrick Stewart as being gay.



In a column celebrating 'Inception' actress Ellen Page actually coming out as gay, Czyzselska wrote "some gay people, such as Sir Patrick Stewart, think Page's coming out speech is newsworthy because a high-profile and surprisingly politically aware young actress has decided not to play by the rules that so many closeted Hollywood actors are advised to follow if they are to enjoy mainstream success,"

It just so happens that the 73-year-old Shakespearean actor, best known for his roles as Professor Charles Xavier in the 'X-Men' movies and as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV series 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' and its companion films - isn't gay.



In fact, Stewart has been married - to Women - three times, most recently in September of last year, when he married American jazz singer Sunny Ozell. He also has two children from a previous marriage.

The Guardian rushed to correct its mistake, adding an addendum at the bottom of the page, but Stewart didn't seem to mind a bit.

"It makes a nice change" tweeted Stewart in response to the 'outing'. "At least I didn't wake up to the Internet telling me I was dead again". At the time of writing, that post has been 'retweeted' 1,181 times.

For those who don't know, Sir Patrick Stewart is a huge supporter of LGBT rights. He vocally supports gay marriage and was even given the 2013 'Straight Ally of The Year Award' from PFLAG.

Fellow 'Star Trek' star William Shatner joined in the fun, Tweeting, "I never get that kind of coverage! I'm jealous!"

The confusion may have arisen because Sir Patrick's best friend is openly gay actor Sir Ian McKellen. If that was the case, Stewart tweeted this response: "I have, like, five or even SEVEN hetero friends and we totally drink beer and eat lots of chicken wings!" Is it just me, or is it impossible to read the above quote without hearing Captain Picard's voice in your head?

On a more serious note, Stewart has often spoken about civil rights, he once said, "From my earliest years as an actor I have always been proud of the support the creative community gives to all forms of human and civil rights,"

In fact, Patrick Stewart is no stranger to fighting the good fight, the actor has been a vocal opponent of domestic violence (working with Amnesty International) and he is also a patron for Refuge, a UK-based charity for abused Women.

... And no, he isn't dead.

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Could we now have found possibilities of life from another planet?

A team of British scientists believe that they have discovered organisms in earth’s environment that originate from space.

As hard as that could be to believe, Professor Milton Wainwright, the team’s leader, insists that this is definitely the situation.

The team, out of the University of Sheffield, exposed the little organisms (misleadingly known as ‘bugs’ by a great deal of demanding journalists) living on a probe balloon that was sent 16.7 miles into our environment through last month’s Perseids meteor shower.

According to Professor Wainwright, the minuscule creatures couldn’t have been passed into the stratosphere on the balloon. He said, "Most people will imagine that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it’s generally accepted a particle of the volume found can't be lifted from Earth to heights of, for instance, 27km. Really the only well-known exception is by a violent volcanic explosion, none of those occurred within three years of their sampling trip."

Wainwright maintains that the only most important end is these organisms originated from space. He went on to mention that “life isn’t restricted to the planet also it nearly certainly didn’t originate here”

However, not everyone seems to be so convinced. Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project said, “I’m very skeptical. This claim has been made beforehand, and dismissed as terrestrial contamination." The team responds to this by saying they were thorough when they prepared the balloon before the experiments began.

Yet, they do acknowledge that there might be an unknown reason for those organisms to reach such altitudes. It should also be renowned that microbal organisms discovered within the 1980’s and 1990’s and called ‘extremophiles’ stunned the scientific community by living in environments that will instantly kill the majority of life on earth.

These creatures have always been observed living deep under Glacial ice and even 1900 feet below the ocean floor. In March of that year, Ronnie Glud, a biogeochemist at the Southern Danish Uni in Odense, Denmark was quoted as saying "Inside the most secluded, inhospitable places, you are able to actually have higher activity than their surroundings," which "Yow will discover microbes all over the place - they're enormously adaptable to surroundings, and stay alive wherever they are," so it seems more plausible that either the team is in error, or that this is just another case of microscopic life showing up in an unusual place.

In addition, it is not the 1st time this unique team has come under fire for stating such statements, either. Back in January of this year, astrobiologist Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe reported that ‘fossils’ found inside a Sri Lankan meteorite were testimony of extraterrestrial life, an assertion that is widely criticized by scientific community.

Other scientists have complained that there frankly isn’t enough proof to make this type of claim, as a theory this vital would require a sizable body of proof to prove its authority.

What that claims to the reporter is that microbes can exist basically anyplace which it simply is not good science to leap to wild conclusions like aliens each time a more plausible explanation is most probably present. Science should not be subject to such wild leaps of fancy. Imagination is a good aid to science, however it isn't a science in and of by itself. Sadly, Dr. Wainwright and his group appear to be seeing what they need to observe.

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What is Formal Communication?

Formal communication is to the use of language what formal wear is to casual clothing (and no, we don’t mean that it’s uncomfortable, ill-fitting and only comes out for weddings, workdays and funerals!).

Essentially, formal communication is a type of communication that uses correct language, avoids slang entirely and keeps personal information to a minimum. If you write an email to your boss (known as ‘upward communication’ in the working world – how delightfully condescending of them!), then it is likely that you will be using formal communication.

Likewise, if you were to write a letter of complaint regarding, say, an inconsiderate neighbour or an unsatisfactory product, you would once again be using formal communication. If a lawyer writes to you, his/her letter will almost certainly be written formally.

Casual swearing (or any kind of swearing for that matter!), colloquialisms, personal anecdotes/questions and bad spoken habits (such as using the word ‘like’ as a form of punctuation, or ‘umming and ahhing’ too often) have no place in formal communication.

People communicating formally (as opposed to formicating communally, you understand), will also tend to use longer, perhaps more academic words and terms appropriate to the theatre of communication. If you work in marketing, for example, formal communication would see you using marketing-specific terminology at a far greater rate than you ever would in social situations.

The opposite of formal communication is ‘informal communication’. Informal communication would include the way you address friends and family, using first names instead of surnames and using a lot more slang words and opinionated speech.

When communicating formally, it is usually best to keep personal opinions to a minimum and, where possible, to discuss things from a third person perspective. Thus,

“I’ve been looking at these figures all night. So much so that I think I’ve gone cross-eyed! Anyway, I think its safe to say that the product isn’t selling”

Becomes,

“After careful evaluation of the figures, it is reasonable to assume that the product isn’t selling”

No personal involvement. No anecdote. Statistical data takes a greater role than personal opinion. See?

Of course, using informal communication in certain formal situations can be beneficial. Today, many corporations are employing informal language in order to better relate to customers and staff and corporate CEOs and motivational speakers tend to use informal communication as a way of maintaining a ‘man/woman of the people’ image. 

How Does My Radio Work?

The theory behind radio technology is actually disarmingly simple.

To better demonstrate this point, here is a little experiment that practically anyone can do; first, take a fresh 9-volt battery and a small coin. Then, tune an AM radio to static (i.e. where there are no pre-existing signals coming through). If you place the battery relatively close to the antenna and tap the coin against the battery terminals, you will hear this signal relayed over the radio (it will break the static, effectively broadcasting the signal). You couldn't use this method for much more than Morse code (and probably only over a distance of a couple of centimeters), but still, it is a pretty impressive little experiment, is it not?

At its core, radio isn’t much more complex than that. But how does it actually work?

Well, basically, it all has to do with these things called ‘sine waves’. A sine wave is a radio wave that has been encoded in a specific way (this prevents it from getting confused with any other radio wave). Each sine wave operates along a different frequency, so there is no interaction between signals. Without sine waves (or any similar technology), it would be next-to impossible for us to use cell phones, AM/FM radios, walkie-talkies, TV, GPS and much more, because all the signals would interact with one another, all at the same time.

A radio, of any kind, needs a receiver. In the case of our battery experiment, for example, there is both a transmitter and a receiver. The battery/coin setup is the transmitter and the AM radio is the receiver. Radio devices that can both send and receive signals are called ‘transceivers’.

Again, this setup is actually quite simple. The transmitter encodes information (such as a TV broadcast, or a person’s voice) into a sine wave and then transmits it, via the electrons in its antenna. The receiver then captures the signal in the intended antenna (it has electrons that are coded to the same frequency as the transmitter) and then decodes it, using the radio’s internal system, so that the original information is readily available to the user.

The science behind the decoding process is a little more complex, but it isn’t really too difficult to grasp. We’ve run quite a few answers on the ‘ins and outs’ of that stuff lately, so check those out if you wish to know more. Thanks for your question. 

What are communication concepts?

Communication concepts, basically, refer to different types of communication, topics of communication and communication terms.

‘Ask Jeeves’ actually defines this term pretty well, so we’ll go with that.

“A type of communication could be interpersonal referring to a relationship between two. A topic of communication could be empathy and how well one can empathize. Terms include identity, and finding oneself”.

Thank you, Jeeves. That will be all.

Remember that scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life? The one where the middle age couple order a philosophical conversation from a restaurant? Well, that scene pretty much sums up the topic part. A topic of communication, quite simply, is what you talk about; it is the subject being discussed.

A type of communication could be, for example, professional communication. In this type of communication, personal information is kept to a minimum and topics are more likely to include work-related themes. A conversation on the same work-related themes that takes place with your Wife or Husband, however, will include a lot more personal data, such as opinions and information that may be unprofessional to reveal in the workplace.

For example, a conversation with your manager about a project might go something like this, “I’m concerned that this deadline is going to be difficult to meet. It might be prudent to discuss effective time management strategies with the staff in order to ensure success”

However, that same conversation, when conducted with your partner, might be closer to this, “I have no idea how I’m going to get all this stuff finished on time. I’m so tired and the staff just aren’t putting in the effort. It takes them ages to do anything”

See the difference?

Communication terms are those terms that are used in the discussion. “Effective time management strategies” for example, is a term used in our above conversation regarding oncoming deadlines. It is a term not generally used in day-to-day discussion with loved ones and friends, but is frequently used in workplace communications. As a result, it is specified as a professional terminology and used in the professional communication example, but not in the romantic communication example.

Communication is a vast and varied field of study; areas as diverse as psychology, marketing and business management devote considerable time to the study of effective communication.

The phrase ‘communication concepts’ refers to just one part of an enormous (and potentially all-encompassing) subject. 

Gupta: Cell phones, brain tumors and a wired earpiece

What’s your favorite feature of the radio accessory? Personally, I like the design job – Its cooler than an Inuit’s underpants!

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Medical Correspondent

Just about every time I use a cell phone, I plug in my wired earpiece first. Having discussed the use of earpieces on several news shows, people expect to see me using one. If I am walking around the CNN studios, my colleagues often comment on it. In airports, people will stop me in the rare cases I forget to use the earpiece, and remind me about it. Perhaps, they are intrigued because I am a neurosurgeon who openly shows some concern about cell phones.

Truth is, it is a pretty easy thing to do – using an earpiece. Furthermore, my neck doesn’t hurt after being on the phone for a long conference call, and given that many of those calls take place in a car, an earpiece becomes a requirement. Still, though, I don’t want to dodge the obvious question: Do cell phones cause brain cancer?

It may be too early to say for sure. The latency period or time between exposure and recognition of a tumor is around 20 years, sometimes longer. And, cell phone use in the U.S. has been popular for only around 15 years. Back in 1996, there were 34 million cell phone users. Today there are 9-10 times as many. Keeping that in mind, it is worth taking a more detailed look at the results of Interphone, a multinational study designed to try to answer this question.

The headline from this study was there was little or no evidence to show an association between cell phones and cancer. Though, if you went to the appendix of the study, which interestingly was available only online, you found something unsettling. The data showed people who used a cell phone 10 years or more doubled the risk of developing a glioma, a type of brain tumor. And, across the board – most of the studies that have shown an increased risk are from Scandinavia, a place where cell phones have been popular since the early 1990s. For these reasons, the whole issue of latency could become increasingly important.

Cell phones use non-ionizing radiation, which is very different from the ionizing radiation of X-rays, which everyone agrees are harmful. Non-ionizing radiation won’t strip electrons or bust up DNA. It’s more like very low power microwaves. Short term, these microwaves are likely harmless, but long term could be a different story. Anyway, who likes the idea of a microwave, even a low-powered one, next to their head all day?

And, what about kids? I have three of them, aged 5, 4 and 2. Fact is, they are more likely to lead to my early demise than cell phones. But, as hard as it is to believe sometimes, they actually have thinner skulls than adults, and will probably be using cell phones longer than I ever will.

The first person to encourage me to regularly wear an ear piece was Dr. Keith Black. He also is a neurosurgeon, and makes a living removing – you guessed it – brain tumors. Keith has long believed there is a link, and for some time, his was a lonely voice in this discussion. Nowadays, he has loud and prominent voices accompanying him. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, sent a memo warning staffers to limit their cell phone use. One of the possible consequences, he says, is an increased risk of brain cancer. The city of San Francisco is trying to pass an ordinance requiring radiation warning labels on all cell phones. The European Environmental Agency has said cell phones could be as big a public health risk as smoking, asbestos and leaded gasoline. Even the makers of cell phones suggest you don’t place a device against your head, but rather advocate holding it 5/8 to a full inch away.

Many will roll their eyes at this, scoffing at the precautionary principle on display here. Fair enough. Still, I like my wired earpiece, and I don’t have to turn my life upside down to use it. I also text and email a lot more, because my kids rarely allow me to have a phone conversation. Speaking of kids, you will probably see mine using earpieces too, when my wife and I decide they are old enough to use one, which isn’t in the foreseeable future.

Gupta: Cell phones, brain tumors and a wired earpiece

Facebook Acquires WhatsApp for $19bn (£11bn)

Social media giants Facebook have purchased smartphone messaging app WhatsApp in a deal worth $19bn.

According to official statistics, WhatsApp has around 450 million monthly users. The makers of the app claim that it registers 1 million new users every day.

For those not in the know, WhatsApp is an Internet-based messaging service that allows people to get around text message charges. It works in much the same way that SMS (or ‘text messaging’) works, but crucially, it is free. For a small fee of $1 a year, it is possible to upgrade the service.

This is by far Facebook’s largest acquisition to date and has been met with some scepticism, but Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t seem daunted by the huge price tag; he described WhatsApp as “incredibly valuable” in a statement announcing the deal.

Prior to this deal, Facebook’s biggest purchase had been photography app Instagram, for which they paid $1bn.

Richard Taylor, North America Technology Correspondent with the BBC, said, “Some are seeing the $19bn price tag as further evidence of swollen valuations of companies as the sector experiences what may yet prove to be another dotcom bubble. WhatsApp does give Mark Zuckerberg inroads into international markets and, as importantly, to a younger demographic. But what is less clear is whether the finances will add up in the long term”.

The acquisition includes $4bn in cash, about $12bn in Facebook shares and about $3bn in stock options for WhatsApp founders and employees (of which there are around 50).

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum has also become a member of Facebook’s board of directors. “We’re excited and honoured to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world,” said Mr. Koum. Koum has also stated that he does not intend to allow advertising on the app.

Zuckerberg stated that he believed that WhatsApp was well on its way to having a Billion users.

In an interview with BBC News, senior research analyst with eMarketer Cathy Boyle said, “WhatsApp actually has greater penetration in a lot of international markets than Facebook,” It is possible that by linking the two services, Facebook will be able to increase its customer base. She then went on to say, “WhatsApp is trying to siphon the billions that the telecom industry would make from [traditional SMS text messaging]” if that is Facebook’s intention (and we have to consider it as one of them), then it actually makes good business sense.

SOURCES:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26266689

Facebook Acquires WhatsApp for $19bn (£11bn)