Top executives with Trip.com, China’s leading online travel service, will accept no salaries starting from this month as the company copes with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, its CEO has told employees.
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US lawmakers told of security risks from China-owned TikTok
US officials on Wednesday stepped up warnings about the potential security risks from the fast-growing, Chinese-owned TikTok as a lawmaker unveiled legislation to ban the social media app from government devices.
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Australia’s newswire axed amid pressure from digital giants
Australia’s only national newswire will be shuttered after 85 years of operation, with around 180 staff told Tuesday their jobs will end in June.
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Twitter staff told to work from home over virus fears
Twitter staff across the world were asked to work from home starting Monday in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly new coronavirus epidemic.
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Stephen King Is More Introspective in His New Novel Doctor Sleep
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In Stephen King’s new novel, Doctor Sleep, King brings back the character of Danny Torrence, the little boy in The Shining. In interviews King says that when fans ask about the fate of specific characters (the one’s that actually live through the horror), he’s been more interested in the those that question the fate of Danny. I think most people who have seen the movie remember the cute little boy on a tricycle with a bowl haircut racing down the empty corridors of The Overlook Hotel. Later to run from a mad “white knuckle alcoholic” who was his father.
Doctor Sleep is, in my opinion, semi autobiographical. Like Duma Key, which deals with the aftermath of a man who is in a horrendous accident (like King), Doctor Sleep deals with the reality of what it is like to be a recovering alcoholic. I didn’t know King was an alcoholic, but he has been in recovery for over twenty years. So he knows the depths to which one can plunge as well as the difficulties in trying to remain sober. In Doctor Sleep, Danny is an alcoholic like his father and a chain smoker like his mother (who, in the novel, has died of lung cancer). When writing the book, King’s son, Owen, told him that the “plunge” he had given Danny, now Dan, was not far enough to equal the plunge Dan’s father, Jack, had taken. King takes his advice. So, if you don’t want gross, speed read ahead. Dan, after having picked up a girl, gotten in a fight, spends all of his paycheck on cocaine, wakes up still drunk and has to go to the bathroom. “Another lurch from his unhappy gut… That released all of the puke triggers: the vinegar smell of hard cooked eggs in a big glass jar, the taste of barbecue-flavored pork rinds, the sight of french fries drowning in a ketchup nosebleed. All of that crammed into his mouth last night between shots. He was going to spew… ” And that he does in spectacular fashion. But that leads to the main reason for the scene… Dan’s plunge. As he’s leaving the bathroom, out of another room comes a toddler with a baggy diaper full of everything a baby discards, sees the coke on the table, runs to it crying, “canny, mama, canny!” Danny keeps him from getting the “canny” and the little boy falls asleep with his drunk mother. Danny notices bruises on the little boy’s body. While the mom is passed out, he goes through her wallet taking all of her money. Justifying this by saying she’d been the one who made him spend his paycheck on coke. The taking of the money haunts Dan. And the bruises on the little boy haunt Dan. This, to me, is the real crux of the novel. Dan can not get beyond the demons of his past, his murderous, alcoholic father, the dead but not dead people from The Overlook who visit him leaving behind pieces of their rotting, putrefying bodies and the mother with her bruised baby boy. Dan discovers “that memories are the real ghosts” and that, “you take yourself with you, wherever you go.”
Of course in every King novel there has to be some type of supernatural forces causing havoc. In this novel, King expands on the concept of “the shining”. It’s the ability to read other people’s minds, or move objects, or project out of one’s self. Dan has it and so does a young teenage girl named Abra. In Doctor Sleep, they have to battle a bunch of centuries old serial killers, the True Knot, disguised as RV driving pensioners who literally feed off the pain of others. They only feed on those with “the shining”, and they make their deaths particularly brutal. It makes for better “steam”. They get a big kick out of 9/11 and other tragedies. The leader of this group, a woman named Rose, has a tusk. In Doctor Sleep, Dan fights his past with much greater dread and sense of terror than he does the woman with the tusk. Dan does, through AA, “come to know a new freedom and new happiness.” He also comes to realize that he “will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” With this novel King, apparently, is not shutting the door on his past.
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Source by Linda M CaminitiViews: 0
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Three Reasons Why Money Was The Worst Invention Of All Time
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Who invented money? Ask any number of people and they couldn’t tell you who it was that actually invented money or where the idea came from. History has given us some bad ideas, but money has to be the worst and here are my top three reasons why.
- Something Invented By Man Should Not Have Power Over Him.
If I think really hard and try to imagine a time without money, before it was invented and used on a daily basis, I tend to imagine that the world was a completely different place. People most likely had a barter type society where goods and services were exchanged and that is how one survived. If I had a particular skill, say hunting, and you were hungry you could come to me for food. The idea would be that if you could make fire, and I could provide the food, then we could exchange our skills or abilities and everyone got what was good for them. I assume, for the sake of argument, that if someone possessed absolutely no skills whatsoever, that person was still allowed to eat. I can’t imagine that I would loan the helpless soul some meat, only if it could be paid back somehow. Before helpless soul could blink, he might owe me for five dinners and then I have to send out the collection agents to call in his debts. Money provides control, in both a positive and negative control. Although it is man made, and essentially just a piece of paper or a mixture of cheap metals, money has power, and is power. I can just imagine Mr. Helpless Soul explaining to his wife that he can’t repay the hunter and doesn’t know what to do. So Mr. Hunter decides to enslave the Helpless Soul family until the debt is repaid. It is unfathomable to me that so many people in my country, and the world go hungry every day. Those who possess the money have the power to deny the needs of those that don’t have means. Where have the humanitarians gone? I’ve seen a business owner kick out a person who was homeless and starving, and then half an hour later deal with a complaining customer as he shouted that his food was not hot enough. Money only has the power that we give it. If we choose to see it as just a means to an end, or just some silly paper we have been told to obey our whole lives, then one can focus on what really matters. I am not advocating not paying debts, or shucking responsibilities. This is the world we live in, and norms must be followed…until the laws change again to suit what the politicians want on any particular whim of a day.
- Money Shifts Focus From Helping One Another To Arbitrary “Worth” Of Mere Things.
Why should I do anything to help anyone else, unless they can pay for it? If my entire focus in life is to obtain material things, then I should only be motivated by money, or obtaining it, to do anything. What is anything really worth? Marketing companies have defined worth for me since I was a child, and it was beaten into me during commercial breaks of GI Joe. What is the value of all of the things you want in comparison to something that really matters? Imagine what the worth is of spending one more hour with a loved one before they pass away and are gone forever. The worth of teaching your children that there is more to life than money and obtaining things. The worth of feeding a homeless man, and helping him have at least one night’s sleep where his stomach doesn’t keep him awake. The value of reaching out a hand and helping someone else in this world is worth more than the largest diamond, the heaviest gold, and the purest oil. Now, I am the biggest hypocrite on this topic, because I love things! It has been programmed in me for so long, it is hard to shake the desire to obtain things. Imagine a life in which people helped each other because it is the right thing to do, and not just for what they could get in return. The argument is, well, that things can’t just be free. You have to pay something to get something. How would the world work if everyone was just giving away everything for free and everyone just had everything they needed and didn’t have to be slave to credit card companies anymore or to a job that they dislike? How would we survive? My answer to those questions is, famously! I would be free to learn a trade that benefits others and could use that ability to provide for my family and to help others. I have wanted to help by donating or giving my entire life, but never had the means. I’ve donated a little time here and there, and not near as much as I should or would have liked to, but at least it was something. But because I like things, and those things have cost me money, I have to continue in my job, and repeat the same cycle my father did.
- Money Makes You Question If People Really Care About You, Or Just Your Money.
I try to envision the end of my life surrounded by those that have made my journey with me, who love and care for me because of the enrichment I gave to them through my friendship and dedication. In my latter years, enjoying my days with my wife, and talking to my grown children and my grand children. I want to soak up every single minute of my life between here and there. I want to feel and love and enjoy all that there is to offer. I have seen families destroyed, fighting over the money left behind after a loved one passes. Some of those grudges are held for the rest of their lives. They lose a relationship and also a loved one, and the only thing they can think about, is how much money they will be getting. More than likely, Mr. Entitlement as we will call him, won’t even miss the loved one that was lost. How many brilliant individuals never get the chance to succeed because of lack of means, and how many elite are given free passes because their pile of paper is bigger than yours. Do the people closest to you care about you or your money? Does the girlfriend only love you because of what you can buy her? Do your children only listen to you in order to get something they want? Take the money away, and would they abandon you? Such a great idea, this money.
My answer to all of this is that I don’t have an answer. My two year old daughter asked me about money and loves putting money in her piggy bank. It made me start to consider all the reasons I worry about money, and fight about money, and read books about money. Nothing like the honesty of a child, to make you sit and think.
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Source by Mitchell PierceViews: 0
- Something Invented By Man Should Not Have Power Over Him.
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Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?
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As you know, we’re now well and truly in the
Information Age. It began about 10 years ago. In fact,
many economists say it began in 1989, with the Fall of
the Berlin Wall (and the start of the World Wide Web).To understand who will become wealthy in the
Information Age, first we need to understand how the
Information Age differs from the Industrial Age (born
about 1860, died about 1989).In fact, let’s get a complete overview and go back to
the Agrarian Age.In the Agrarian Age, society was basically divided
into two classes: the landowners and the people who
worked on the land (the serfs). If you were a serf,
there wasn’t much you could do about it:
land-ownership passed down through families and you
were stuck with the status you were born into.When the Industrial Age arrived, everything changed:
it was no longer agriculture that generated most of
the wealth, but manufacturing. Suddenly, land was no
longer the key to wealth. A factory occupied far less
land than a sheep farm or a wheat farm.With the Industrial Age came a new kind of wealthy
person: the self-made businessman. Wealth no longer
depended on land-ownership and the family you were
born into. Business acumen and factories were creating
a new class of wealthy person. But it still required
enormous capital to build a factory and start a
business.Then came the World Wide Web (in about 1989) and
globalization. Suddenly, everything changed again.Factories (or real estate) were no longer necessary to
run a business. Anyone with a website could start a
business. The barriers to wealth that existed in the
Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age were completely
gone. People who could never have dreamed of owning
their own business were making millions from their
kitchen table.Of course, the Information Revolution didn’t begin
in 1989.It began in 1444 when Gutenberg invented the printing
press in Mainz, Germany.But the printing press (newspapers, magazines,
paperbacks) belonged to the Industrial Age, not the
Information Age.The printing press is a ‘one-to-many’ technology. The
Internet is a ‘many-to-many’ technology. And that was
what changed in 1989.The Industrial Age was about centralization and
control. The Information Age is about
de-centralization and no control. No government and no
media magnate controls the Internet. This is the
crucial thing to understand about the Information Age.As we moved from the Agrarian Age through the
Industrial Age to the Information Age, there’s been a
steady collapse of the barriers that kept one section of
society wealthy and the other section poor.In the Information Age, literally anyone can become
wealthy.So now that we have a clearer picture of how the
Information Age differs from the Industrial Age, let’s
ask that question again: ‘Who will become wealthy in
the Information Age?’:(1) People Who are Self-Taught
To explain this better, let’s go back to the Agrarian
Age and the Industrial Age, and the Transmission of
Skills.In the Agrarian Age, skills were passed on from father
to son. If you wanted to learn how to be a blacksmith
you had to be a blacksmith’s son. If you wanted to
learn to be a stone-mason, you had to be the son of a
stone-mason.With the coming of the Industrial Age, all this
changed. You could go to University and learn whatever
skills you wanted. Knowledge was freely available.But in the Information Age, the Transmission of Skills
is changing once again.The skills necessary to succeed in the Information Age
are not being learnt from our parents (as in the
Agrarian Age), nor are they being learnt in schools
and colleges (as in the Industrial Age). Children are
teaching their parents computer skills. And many of
the entrepreneurs who start hi-tech Internet companies
have never been to college.The millionaires (and billionaires) of tomorrow
probably won’t have a college education. They will be
high-school drop-outs, self-taught people.(2) People with New Ideas.
Again, it’s the people who are able to think outside
of the existing structures who will become wealthy in
the Information Age. Often, it’s just a Simple Idea
that launches people to success in the Information
Age.Take Sabhir Bhatia, for example – the man who invented
Hotmail. Bhatia was a computer engineer working in
Silicon Valley. He had no previous business
experience, whatsoever.But one day, while he was driving back from work, a
friend called him on his cell phone and said that he
had an idea: What about starting a free, web-based
email service? Bhatia knew this was the idea he’d been
waiting for. He told his friend to hang up immediately
and ring him at home on a secure line.Three years later he sold Hotmail to Microsoft for
$400 million.(3) Writers
The third group who will become wealthy in the
Information Age are Writers.In the Industrial Age, Writers depended on large
publishing Houses to get published (remember that the
printing press is an Industrial Age technology – it is
centralized and controlled). And the Publishing Houses
took the lion’s share of the profits.In the Information Age, Writers are doing their own
publishing – and keeping most of the profits
themselves. Indeed, Writers are flourishing on the
Web – mainly through eBooks and Ezine Articles.
But even if you don’t write eBooks or Ezine Articles,
if you own a website, you are a Writer.Why?
Because the Internet is basically a written medium. It
favors writers, people who are able to communicate
effectively through the written word. Remember, it’s
not the graphics on your website that sell, it’s the
words you use.In the Information Age, we’re all Writers!
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