Movie Review: 'Men in Black 3' Mojo Saves Galaxy Again - Snellville ...

It's been a decade since "Men in Black" last defended the galaxy from bad guys. The world has certainly moved on, but the MIB team has not because it's business as usual in "Men in Black 3."

Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) continue their exploits, this time with Smith going back in time, to 1969, where he teams up with a younger agent K, played by Josh Brolin, to save the future version of his partner and, of course, the world.

The rest of the film is really all about saving Agent K, saving the world from evil aliens and learning a little bit about the back story of each of our favorite G-Men. It ends with plenty of alien interventions and a nice salute to the fan base who has had an ongoing affection for the MIB universe.

The movie script was not completely done when they started production, shedding light on what many have said is a less than perfect movie. MIB3 is a ?redundant extension of a series that ran out of gas a decade ago, and it doesn?t need a neuralyzer to be forgettable.

The Flick-O-Meter gives "Men in Black 3" a three out of five. It's not as good as "Men In Black" (the original) but superior in almost every way to MIB2. Few things in life are worth waiting a decade for, and this isn?t one of them. But after witnessing so many big-screen sci-fi comebacks go so hideously wrong in recent years, "Men In Black 3" emerges as something of a triumph, of sorts.

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Friday random ten: What I am is what I am (Offthekuff)

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Child addicts at heart of Indonesia anti-smoking suit

KARAWANG GIRANG, Indonesia (Reuters) - Anti-tobacco advocates in Indonesia plan to file a class action lawsuit this month using cases of child addicts in the hope of forcing tougher regulations on a society where one in three people smokes.

It is a rare attempt of its kind to constrain a tobacco industry which looks to the world's fourth most populous country and its growing appetite for cigarettes to replace dwindling sales elsewhere.

The suit against tobacco companies and the Indonesian government argues that feeble regulation has left children dangerously exposed to the risks of smoking.

"There are ... kids who have fallen victim to the impact of cigarette companies and smoking. They are addicted. In the context of people's rights, the society has been disadvantaged by the tobacco industry," head of the National Commission for Child Protection, Arist Merdeka Sirait, said.

Indonesia is something of a paradise for both smokers and tobacco companies, with the world's fifth largest population of smokers. It is a widely tolerated habit and one which even in this relatively poor archipelago most can afford to feed.

And it is getting more popular as the economy grows. In 1995, one in four Indonesians smoked. Fifteen years later it had risen to one in three.

That in turn has tempted international tobacco firms to join the hugely profitable home-grown ones such as Gudang Garam, P T Djarum and Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna, which is now part of Philip Morris International.

The government even gives tax incentives for the manufacture of hand-rolled cigarettes because it provides such a major source of employment in east Java where the local firms congregate.

Sampoerna said it had only seen reports of the planned lawsuit and could not comment. Other producers also had no immediate comment.

A spokesman for the Federation of Indonesian Cigarette Manufacturers said he had heard of the suit but declined comment because it was not aimed at the federation.

"If a child is smoking is that the problem of the advertisement or the parents?" spokesman Hasan Aoni said.

ADDICTION TRANCE

Ilham Hadi has become something of a poster child for the anti-smoking campaign.

He began smoking aged four when his mother Nenah said she gave him 3,000 rupiah ($0.32) to buy snacks at school. He bought a cigarette instead.

The addiction has since blackened his teeth, damaged his skin and, his friends say, made the now nine-year old a useless soccer player and slow, wheezy runner.

"He sometimes bangs on the window at 4 a.m. in the morning to buy a cigarette," said Iin Indriyani, who runs a tiny store from the front room of her home around 100 yards (meters) up a winding path from the two-room house where Hadi's family lives.

"Whenever he wants a cigarette he looks like he is in a trance," she told Reuters, saying that he sometimes hit her and her daughters to demand cigarettes.

Hadi smokes two packs a day, adding to the financial stress on his parents given that his father earns only $5-6 per day as a laborer and part-time motor bike taxi driver.

"If there is no money left at home, nothing to sell anymore, he would go to the grocery shop, get money by helping park cars and come back home with cigarettes, sometimes a pack, sometimes two and expensive brands too," said his father Umar.

His habit has also brought the family unwanted celebrity as media crews troop to their house on a hillside beside a rice paddy in the village of Karawang Girang around 40 miles south of the capital.

The child protection commission paid for Hadi to be treated in March and he quit, but last week he ran away from home - not for the first time - in search of cigarettes and has not been seen since.

His case has triggered a debate among the village's 344 residents about smoking and an attempt by the head of the village to make Karawang Girang a smoke-free zone, said Husein, a local government health worker.

But the chances of it leading to a broad national conversation about the dangers of cigarettes, seen by many as a sign of sophistication, seem slim.

The vast majority of Indonesian smokers puff cigarettes laced with cloves, called kretek, a word based on the crackling sound made by the burning, heavily scented spice.

So pervasive is the habit that tobacco products are the number two item in household expenditure after rice, according to the statistics bureau.

Health worker Husein blames advertising. Billboards in the main street near the village feature cigarette advertisements and local entertainment events are often sponsored by tobacco firms.

It is a scene replicated across Indonesia's vast network of islands.

The annual cost of smoking-related diseases is estimated as high as 11 trillion rupiah, said analyst Abdillah Ahsan of the University of Indonesia's Demography Institute.

By contrast, cigarette firms are expected to produce 268.4 billion cigarettes in 2012 and contribute $8.45 billion in tax r e venue, according to the finance ministry.

It is enough to make national and regional authorities reluctant to tighten regulations and risk losing funds.

"Every time you want to make a regulation, it is very difficult because on every level of the bureaucracy they have been bought by the cigarette industry," said Tutus Abaci, a member of Indonesia's National Commission on Tobacco Control.

($1 = 9242.0000 Indonesian rupiah)

(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

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App lets anyone track Twitter to play the stock market

Niall Firth, technology editor

(Image: Alex Segre/Rex Features)

There are lots of ways to decide whether or not it's worth investing in a company. You can look at the figures, sure, or you can look at its forecasts for the coming year. Or you could just see what Twitter has to say.

That was the idea behind the launch last year of a hedge fund that used Twitter sentiment alone to guide its choices. Now the firm behind it has announced that it is launching an app and website that will let any investor do the same thing. If they dare.

Derwent Absolute Return Fund, set up by Derwent Capital Markets, was closed earlier this year, after a fairly respectable performance of around 2 per cent growth in 2011 - a particularly bad year for hedge funds. It worked by mining tweets for information that gave a clue as to how the public was feeling. The idea was based on a research paper published in 2010 which showed that tracking the emotions expressed in millions of tweets closely matched - and even predicted - the performance of the Dow Jones index.

The new platform, due to launch over the summer, will use the same software to give would-be investors a "sentiment rating" in real time on any stock or currency - and then let them trade instantly.

"It means that people will be able to monitor global stock sentiment for the first time and use the information to influence their own personal investment decisions," says Derwent Capital founder Paul Hawtin. "I guess in the same way that GPS was developed by the military and then years later we all had TomToms in our cars."

Access will be free, but would-be investors will have to open a dealing account with the firm before they can use it. That ?100 burning a hole in your pocket? Why not see what Twitter thinks you should do with it?

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Dreams of Growth and Expansion

Small business owners often dream of expansion, growth and enhanced profitability; those strategic moves and timely tweaks that catapult their operation to the next level of success. I say dream because it?s the official 2nd step in the popular business transformation model called Appreciative Inquiry (AI), introduced by management theorist, David L. Cooperrider, back in the early ?80s.

In this dream step, (there are fours steps: Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny) owners and other team members close their eyes, and based on the current organizational assets and individual competencies, dream of an ideal ?future state? where the company?s best practices are employed and most ambitious goals are realized.

When it comes to expansion, owners invariably find themselves dreaming of an accelerated state of operations which includes extensive research, game-changing product innovation, new hiring, training and daily decision making. And oh yes? travel. If you?re venturing into the apparel market, you?ll have to visit China and Vietnam where the major garment factories are located. If you decide to produce toilets, sinks and showers, you?ll have to go to Japan. The textile factories are in Buenos Aires. And for coffee distribution, you?ll have to press elbows with Starbucks in Guatemala.

All markets are global. So you?ll have to leave the comfort of your CEO control booth to travel afar. You?ll have to lead the charge into new markets, crafting new strategies, fomenting new relationships, and adjusting your already overcrowded schedule to a new, more demanding timeline. At this point in the AI process, reality sets in. Your glorious dream quickly transforms into a nightmare.

You?re dreaming about growth because all small businesses face the same universal growth imperative: either, grow or wither and die on the vine. But in this new world order of growth and expansion, you can no longer devote the majority of your time to managing day-to-day operations. Think of it this way. You?re giving birth to a new thing, a critically important thing that will impact your company?s future survival. While you?re in labor, someone else will have to take the helm.

In our technologically advanced society, inundated by talking smart phones, wifi-enabled tablets, encrypted teleconferencing and 24/7 cloud access, it?s easy to delude oneself into thinking we are always in touch, always in control. This is a false assumption, especially when it comes to running the day-to-day operations of a small business organization during its three to five year infancy. The team?s motivation, interaction, competitiveness, goodwill and spirit of reciprocation are tied directly to the owner/CEO?s philosophy and conduct. During these fragile years of struggle and uncertainty, rules and procedures remain in a state of flux. Many decisions are being made for the first time. Too many mistakes and everybody goes home.

Be your organization?s visionary

More importantly, the owner/CEO is most often the true (Michael Dell /Steve Jobs) visionary within the organization, the person that reassures everyone the impossible is possible, and that dreams do come true. That?s what visionaries do. They take an unfamiliar, untested concept and transform it into something believable, attainable, and beneficial to the participants. In a way, they are legendary conmen, peddling the truth instead of a lie. They believe, then make it possible for others to believe; enduring skepticism, criticism and even sabotage along the way.

Visionaries are charismatic, persuasive, confident and high risk takers. They demonstrate tremendous self-control during times of crisis. But of all the characteristics that set them apart, the most compelling one is social intelligence. Visionaries have an uncanny ability to gage the shifting emotions, priorities and anxieties of their internal and external audiences, and then, respond accordingly.

Visionaries use the power of empathy (toward the priorities of others) to make things personal. Many times Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, had to beg people to take a vacation because their ?personal buy-in? to assignments and sense of being appreciated was so strong, it superseded their desire to take time off. Google has the same problem. If there is one common thread you should recognize among successful visionaries, it is their ability to not only create innovative, game-changing products and services, but also build a burning passion among stakeholders who associate themselves with the cause.

But back to you?

You?re dreaming of expansion, and rightfully so. But if you?re the company?s visionary, how can you afford to turn over the reins of power to your second-in-charge VP. He?s good at what he does. But he?s a manager in the traditional sense, cut from a conservative, no nonsense cloth. He?s not a visionary like you. What will happen to the company while you?re in Japan giving birth to this new thing?

The answer is simple. What eventually happens depends on you.

First, you must embrace your earlier assumption that he is not a visionary. He doesn?t have to be. In fact, when you examine the strategic impact that role playing has on successful team building, it may be a good thing he?s not. In most instances, two visionaries just won?t fit into one small business box.

Respect your Drone/Enforcer

In the book, What?s Wrong With Your Small Business Team [Executive Hardback], I refer to your second-in-charge VP as the? Drone/Enforcer. If you?re a Star Trek fan and followed the series featuring Captain Kathryn Janeway of the USS Voyager, you?ll remember her first officer, Commander Chakotay. Chakotay represents the ideal depiction of what a drone/enforcer should be. He?s a designated, trustworthy, hand-picked team leader that thoroughly understands the stated and unstated mission of the organization, and functions as a trumpeter of the core message, a process-server of the detailed execution of policies derived from the core message, and a transparent firewall between the owner?s visionary leadership activities and responsibilities for the daily operation.

Though fiercely loyal, he is, by no means, a yes-man. He?s not afraid to question, challenge, correct and even express disappointment in the small business owner?s decision-making. But because of his respect and loyalty, these critical exchanges almost always occur behind the scenes. During the civil rights movement, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy was Martin Luther King, Jr.?s drone. Vice President Dick Cheney was the Bush Administration?s drone. And before he left Microsoft, Bill Gates relied on Steve Ballmer as his drone.

As a small business owner with years of team building ahead of you, there is a sophisticated premise in play here you should understand. Drones are not concerned with visionary breakthroughs or saving polar bears at the North Pole. Drones are interested in three things: knowledge, efficiency and control. Chances are, your detail-oriented, ever-vigilant second-in-charge VP knows more about your day-to-day operations than you. He knows which trucks are most dependable and which leaks in the warehouse roof need to be fixed first. He knows that invoice #2355RT has not been paid because he?s trying to teach vendor #277 a lesson about over billing.

This superior knowledge serves as a balancing mechanism that defuses potential ego clashes when you?re standing at the podium, smiling, waving, and having your photo taken as you receives the Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The drone/enforcer is content, knowing true power lies in superior knowledge rather than the pomp and circumstance of bright lights and formal ceremonies.

With this critical understanding of team dynamics and the importance of role playing within your organization, you can, indeed, go off to India and China and Japan to give birth to this new thing, free from worry your operation will fall apart. Your drone will take care of your operation. What you need to do is concentrate on taking care of your people.

If you have ten to twenty team members working for your organization, call three a day? that includes warehouse workers and janitors too. Find out what they?re doing. Get them excited about what you?re doing. Use that wifi, encrypted, 24/7 technology to stay in touch. When you fly back on weekends, bring some tea cups from China, or whiskey glass from Russia, depending on the alcoholic tendencies of your group. Do what visionaries do. Do it without the slightest expectation your drone will do it for you. Make it personal. Show empathy for the priories of your team members. And then watch your business grow.

Dreaming businessman image courtesy of Shutterstock

Tagged as: AI, expansion, growth

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The secret to good tomato chemistry

Public release date: 24-May-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Elisabeth (Lisa) Lyons
elyons@cell.com
617-386-2121
Cell Press

There is nothing better than a ripe, red, homegrown tomato, and now researchers reporting online on May 24 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have figured out just what it is that makes some of them so awfully good (and your average supermarket tomato so bland).

"We now know exactly what we need to do to fix the broken tomato," said Harry Klee of the University of Florida.

Tomato flavor depends on sugars, acids, and a host of less well-defined aroma volatiles (so named for the ease with which they vaporize, sending scent molecules into the air). Klee's team set out to define the chemicals that are most important to our fondness for one particular tomato or another.

First, they assembled chemical profiles of 278 tomato samples representing152 heirloom varieties, most of which were bred before the ubiquitous commercial tomatoes of today even existed. That effort turned up an unexpectedly large chemical diversity within the heirloom tomatoeswith variation in some volatile contents of as much as 3,000-fold across cultivars.

That diversity presented the researchers with an opportunity to really explore what makes consumers favor one tomato over another. They did a series of taste tests with a consumer panel using a subset of those heirlooms that represented the most chemical diversity. Panelists rated their overall liking of each variety as well as the overall tomato flavor intensity, sweetness, and sourness. Panelists also rated supermarket tomatoes in the same way.

A sophisticated statistical analysis of the chemistry and taste test results showed that flavor intensity traces to 12 different compounds and sweetness to another 12, including 8 that were also important for overall flavor.

The researchers also found that some flavor volatiles influence the perception of sweetness through our sense of smell. "In other words," Klee says, "there are volatile chemicals unrelated to sugars that make things taste sweeter." That raises the tantalizing possibility that this feature might be played up in tomatoes and other foods to make us experience no-calorie sweetness through our noses instead of our tongues.

The analysis also showed that some of the volatiles most abundantly present in tomatoes offer little in terms of our enjoyment of them in comparison to other and much more rare ingredients.

"This is the first step to restoring good flavor in commercial tomatoes," Klee says, and that could go a long way.

"Consumers care deeply about tomatoes," he says. "Their lack of flavor is a major focus of consumer dissatisfaction with modern agriculture. One could do worse than to be known as the person who helped fix flavor."

###

Tieman et al.: "The Chemical Interactions Underlying Tomato Flavor Preferences."

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 24-May-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Elisabeth (Lisa) Lyons
elyons@cell.com
617-386-2121
Cell Press

There is nothing better than a ripe, red, homegrown tomato, and now researchers reporting online on May 24 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have figured out just what it is that makes some of them so awfully good (and your average supermarket tomato so bland).

"We now know exactly what we need to do to fix the broken tomato," said Harry Klee of the University of Florida.

Tomato flavor depends on sugars, acids, and a host of less well-defined aroma volatiles (so named for the ease with which they vaporize, sending scent molecules into the air). Klee's team set out to define the chemicals that are most important to our fondness for one particular tomato or another.

First, they assembled chemical profiles of 278 tomato samples representing152 heirloom varieties, most of which were bred before the ubiquitous commercial tomatoes of today even existed. That effort turned up an unexpectedly large chemical diversity within the heirloom tomatoeswith variation in some volatile contents of as much as 3,000-fold across cultivars.

That diversity presented the researchers with an opportunity to really explore what makes consumers favor one tomato over another. They did a series of taste tests with a consumer panel using a subset of those heirlooms that represented the most chemical diversity. Panelists rated their overall liking of each variety as well as the overall tomato flavor intensity, sweetness, and sourness. Panelists also rated supermarket tomatoes in the same way.

A sophisticated statistical analysis of the chemistry and taste test results showed that flavor intensity traces to 12 different compounds and sweetness to another 12, including 8 that were also important for overall flavor.

The researchers also found that some flavor volatiles influence the perception of sweetness through our sense of smell. "In other words," Klee says, "there are volatile chemicals unrelated to sugars that make things taste sweeter." That raises the tantalizing possibility that this feature might be played up in tomatoes and other foods to make us experience no-calorie sweetness through our noses instead of our tongues.

The analysis also showed that some of the volatiles most abundantly present in tomatoes offer little in terms of our enjoyment of them in comparison to other and much more rare ingredients.

"This is the first step to restoring good flavor in commercial tomatoes," Klee says, and that could go a long way.

"Consumers care deeply about tomatoes," he says. "Their lack of flavor is a major focus of consumer dissatisfaction with modern agriculture. One could do worse than to be known as the person who helped fix flavor."

###

Tieman et al.: "The Chemical Interactions Underlying Tomato Flavor Preferences."

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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