How Many Celebrities Does it Take to Make a Hit Web Series?

By Zachary Sniderman

What kind of web series sends you a giant salami in a red and grey tube sock as a promotion? One where said salami actually plays a crucial role in its off-the-wall comedy and even odder plot lines.

Backwash is an entirely strange and utterly surreal new web series premiering on Sony-owned video site Crackle  this November 15.

The 13-episode series largely follows three hapless companions (played by Michael Ian Black, Michael Panes and Joshua Malina, who also wrote and produced the series) after one of them accidentally robs a bank armed with naught but a large salami.

The show features a humongous list of guest actors, including Jon Hamm, John Stamos, Sarah Silverman, John Cho, Allison Janney, Hank Azaria, Michael Vartan, Steven Weber, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Dulé Hill, Fred Willard and others. While some only appear as guest narrators, others will figure into the story arc itself.

Despite the bloated roster, each episode will still run less than 10 minutes. The idea for Crackle, however, is to craft those small segments into something that could stand on its own.

“We’ll have 90 minutes of content, released episodically, at a calibre and quality where we can put them out on DVD, sell them on cable or satellite,” said Eric Berger, Senior VP of Digital Networks for Sony. Backwash is just one of the four original series exclusively produced for Crackle each year.

Berger sees one of the key differences between a video site like Crackle and competitors such as Hulu or YouTube is demographic targeting.

Backwash is another way Crackle can reach out to target demographic of males ages 18 to 34. Crackle provides editorial content through its blog and curates video lists that might appeal specifically to that demographic.

The show has taken a while to become reality, according to Malina.

“I initially just started writing it as comic material,” Malina said. “It went through many iterations. I thought it should be a screenplay, onstage, as a sitcom pilot. I never really completed it, I hadn’t really found the right medium for it.”

It was only when Ken Marino, another actor in the series, suggested trying a web series that Malina felt he found its home. “There’s a surreal aspect to it that’s well suited to the Internet.”

Malina said he enjoyed being able to cast and shoot the show without creative restriction, even though web series have historically low budgets and short shooting times. “A big negative is how you make a living doing [a web series],” Malina said. “We just sort of accepted that it was this new area and we’re not going to get rich off of it.”

It seems like this is the standard for most web series regardless of size: Fiscal gains are given up for a tremendous amount of creative freedom. Hopefully shows like Backwash, with its high production values and star-studded cast, can help elevate web series in the mainstream eye.

via mashable.com

Renault Delivers Zoe, Frenchwomen Cry Foul

Renault gets go ahead for 'Zoe'

It could be the French version of "A Boy Named Sue" - a car named Zoe. A judge ruled Wednesday that the automaker Renault can call its new electric car Zoe, much to the chagrin of some French women and girls with that first name.

Parents of two children named Zoe Renault (pronounced ZOH-eh ruh-NO) had argued in court that their children could end up enduring a lifetime of teasing and annoyance - just like the fictional youth named Sue in the famous Johnny Cash song.

The families, who are not related to the car company, wanted Renault to choose another name for the model.

"There's a line between living things and inanimate objects, and that line is defined by the first name," lawyer David Koubbi told The Associated Press in an interview. "We're telling Renault one very simple thing: First names are for humans."

But a judge found against Koubbi's clients in a fast-track proceeding, ruling that the parents would only have a case it they could prove that naming the car "Zoe" would cause the children "certain, direct and current harm."

Koubbi said he would appeal the decision.

He insisted that while it's clear the Zoe Renaults of the world would be most affected by the release of the car - slated for 2012 - all of France's estimated 35,000 Zoes would feel the sting.

"Can you imagine what little Zoes would have to endure on the playground, and even worse, when they get a little bit older and someone comes up to them in a bar and says, 'Can I see your airbags?' or 'Can I shine your bumper?'" Koubbi said.

The lawyer said Renault named it the Zoe ZE because of the electric-powered auto's zero emissions.

Renault, one of France's two main carmakers, has already given several of its cars female first names - including its compact hatchback Megane and its mini Clio. Both are popular girls' names in France, but there was no organized opposition to either name.

The fight over Zoe, which means "life" in Greek, has gotten considerable media attention in France, where a petition on a Facebook page called "Zoe's not a car name" has garnered more than 6,000 signatures.

First names are a serious matter in France, which formerly restricted parents' choices to a specific list of traditional names. The rules have since been loosened, but even today officials can oppose parents' choices on the grounds that ridiculous names can hurt their future.

In June, Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said he was aware of the issue and wanted to avoid any controversy that could potentially hurt the car's sales.

"We don't want our car to come on the market with a name which is a handicap," he told Europe-1 radio.

Still, a Renault official emphasized that there's no plan to change the car's name.

"We ordered several studies that showed that it's not a handicap for the car, so there's no reason to make any changes," said the official, who declined to give his name in accordance with company policy. "We're very happy with the judge's decision."

Attorney Koubbi said the two Zoes at the heart of the case are 2 and 8 years old and their parents were not seeking any damages.

Koubbi, who has represented French celebrity clients, took the case on a pro bono basis.

Why?

Because his stepdaughter's name is Zoe.

Source: AP

Traps at MBA Entrance Tests: Learn How to Dodge Them

The last time, I focused on few of the commonly faced dilemmas at the various B-School entrance tests. A management entrance test is designed so as to bring out the ability of an aspirant to perform under immense pressure. To subject the students to a bit of stress so as to observe how good they are at handling it, is one of the main objectives of any entrance test. In order to ensure this, the test designers set a few traps in the papers which, an under-prepared aspirant (or sometimes even a well prepared aspirant) can fall into. I will elaborate on a few of those traps here:

Well begun is half done

Visualise this. You have started your test. The first question is a scorcher. You cannot do anything but just scribble the same bit of information which is given. After fighting it out for 2-3 minutes you finally give up. Question two, the same thing again. About 10 minutes into the test and you aren't going anywhere.

You might have been through this a number of times. One of the commonest traps set in any paper. The first DI set, the first RC passage, the first few Quant questions are sometimes, the most difficult compared to the rest of the paper. Reasons are two:

1. It makes you panic as it eats into your time and,
2. It somehow makes you believe that the paper is indeed difficult thus making you score a bit less than what you would.

The best thing would be to get rid of such questions as soon as possible and go to the next one. It is always a great feeling to nail that first question which helps soothing your nerves to a large extent.

The converse of this is also true many a time. The final few questions will be the easiest ones. It is just to make sure that a 'prepared' aspirant goes through all of them and scores to his best ability without getting stuck anywhere.

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Plenty of information. Pretty much useless. You read and read and read some more. End of the day, a simple question awaits. You rue wasting so much of your precious time. The motive is the same old time wasting tactic.

People who took the FMS test last year might recollect the huge RC that was offered. People who have the habit of reading the entire thing first and then answering the questions would have ended up wasting a lot of time. Few questions in DI, have much more info than what is required to solve the questions. An RC might seem to be highly philosophical but could have some sitters for questions. Just looking at the main question and leaving the sub-questions after being disappointed, is one of the frequently used traps.

To get through, one can take a look at the questions first so as to know which part of the information to focus on and then go about reading/skimming through the data and go slow at the relevant portions.

Not to call a spade a spade

Now this has a few variations. They will say that there is a rectangle or a rhombus or a parallelogram. Then there will be a generalised question with some options in variables. One can always assume it to be a square and do it quickly. Similarly with triangles. One can assume it to be an equilateral triangle and get over with it. Similarly with the questions where a series is given, if one cannot solve it completely, one can always put in a few values which satisfy the conditions and check with the options if there is some pattern.

'Its' a bad thing to 'loose'

Notice the errors? These are few of the most common errors in English. In fact there are few questions designed so as to make people pay for the wrong habits. In this case a simple spelling mistake you have not bothered to correct for so long that you can almost challenge anyone that whatever you are saying is right.

Right ya wrong

Under pressure in a moment of madness, one tends to overlook what is asked. The instructions for a question are designed so as to confuse even the most vigilant of the aspirants. You can see an instruction which reads as "Following is a group of sentences amongst which some are not grammatically correct. Identify the sentence(s) which are incorrect in terms of English, usage and grammar. Then choose the most appropriate option." Now, the trouble starts when you get confused between 'incorrect' and 'appropriate.' You must have faced this a lot of times, when instead of picking the incorrect sentences, you end up selecting the correct sentences and because you get an option (obviously a trap), you mark it and forget about it.

The other variations of this trap are found in RC passages and sometimes in DI caselets when a test-taker gets confused between, say the number of wins and the number of matches not lost (which effectively means the number of matches won plus the number of matches drawn).

Shock value

This involves catching a test-taker unaware. There might be some new type of question, a simple logic which is twisted in a such a way so as to give it the 'look' of an entirely new type of question. Or say, maybe a new type of question altogether. Or maybe the pattern won't be revealed till the time you get the booklet. Maybe there will be progressive negative marking. If you notice in last year's XAT, the negative marking was -0.2 for the first five incorrect answers and -0.25 thenceforth. What seems to be a 'harsh' negative marking scheme is actually better than other entrance exams wherein you get a straight -0.25 for every incorrect answer.

The point here is to throw an aspirant off his premeditated strategy and make him panic. At the end of the day, the basics remain the same - "attempt what you know correctly, leave what you don't and start preparing for the next stage."

The art of misdirection

Sometimes, there is information which seems unnecessary, which often 'seems' to contradict the first few statements. This is mainly to misdirect you. More or less similar to a magic show where the magician makes you believe that the trick is what you are looking at but actually it is something else. This is because you are made to think that a particular piece of information is important when in reality isn't. There was a question in one of the mocks in which one of the statements said that 'X was satisfied with the money he had won.' This is designed to make you believe that actually X is the winner though it was nowhere mentioned. This can be one of the seemingly 'wrong' questions. The above statement was just put there to introduce the character X i.e. just to say that the one person about whom nothing has been said is X.

Another variant is commonly seen in the RC passages where, the question asked about what the author does not state in this passage and all the option sentences are present in the passage. The right answer in this case will most often than not have someone else's quote and so not necessarily what the author says. A simpler variant of the same will be when one of the statements is slightly altered (not entirely wrong but not entirely right either).

These are just few of the traps which test-designers commonly set in the entrance tests. If you know of any more of them, do tell us in the comments section.

Source: www.pagalguy.com - India's biggest and most trusted portal and community for cracking MBA entrance exams.

Amazon.com Pedophile Guide Sparks Protests

An e-book for sale on Amazon.com entitled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," was apparently pulled by the online retailer late Wednesday after shocked consumers across the nation called for a boycott.

The title, authored by Phillips Greaves, was published late last month, according to product details previously available on Amazon.com. It sold for $4.79 on the company's Kindle Store.

"This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian [sic] rules for these adults to follow," a product description read. "I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught."

The content led to hundreds of tweets criticizing Amazon for allowing the title to be sold and a Facebook page was created calling for a boycott of the Seattle-based company.

"This is totally unacceptable," one Facebook posting read. "This is not about freedom of speech. This is a HOW TO GUIDE FOR PEDOPHILES! Shame on you Amazon.com."

Another posting read: "They are screwing themselves over just in time for holiday shopping."

Earlier Wednesday, Amazon stood by its decision to sell the e-book.

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable," the company said in a written statement. "Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions."

Online child safety advocacy group Enough is Enough said it wasn't surprised that someone would publish such a book. Selling the book lends the impression that child abuse is normal, the group said.

That doesn't mean Amazon should be prohibited from selling it, countered Christopher Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. He said that Amazon has the right under the First Amendment to sell any book that is not child pornography or legally obscene. Finan said Greaves' book doesn't amount to either because it does not include illustrations.

This isn't the first time Amazon has sold material that promotes illegal activity. It is currently accepting pre-orders for the hardcover version of "I Am the Market: How to Smuggle Cocaine by the Ton, in Five Easy Lessons" by Luca Rastello.

Nor is it the first time Amazon has come under attack for selling objectionable content in its store. In 2002, the United States Justice Foundation, a conservative group, threatened to sue Amazon for selling "Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers." That title is still available through Amazon.

In 2009, Amazon stopped selling "RapeLay," a first-person video game in which the protagonist stalks and then rapes a mother and her daughters, after it was widely condemned in the media and by various interest groups.

ULFA Paid $99 mn Bribe For Arms' Passage in Bangladesh

Dhaka, Nov 11 : An Indian militant group and the embassy of a South Asian country bribed "higher-ups" in the former Khaleda Zia government to ensure safe passage of a huge arms cache that landed in Chittagong port in April 2004, a former minister has told investigators.

The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), operating in northeast India, had teamed with the embassy that was not named, to pay Taka 7 billion ($99.4 million) for transshipment of 10 truckloads of arms, ammunition and explosives, said detained former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar.

Babar was "in the know of things" but was helpless as there were orders from "higher-ups", he told officials of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), reported The Daily Star on Thursday.

Babar, a minister in the Zia government (2001-06), did not name the South Asian embassy.
Ten truckloads of submachine guns, AK-47 assault rifles, other firearms and bullets were seized at the Karnaphuli coast in Chittagong April 2, 2004.

The cache, detected by guards at a warehouse where it was hidden, was meant for the ULFA that was then staging violent attacks from Bangladeshi soil, media reports on the ongoing trial in a Chittagong court have said.

The arms, purchased from China, were brought in a ship owned by a company belonging to Salahuddin Qader Chowdhury, a lawmaker and senior leader of Zia-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Officials have so far questioned a former home secretary, two former chiefs of the National Security Intelligence (NSI) and a former Director General of Field Intelligence (DGFI).
The NSI and DGFI are key intelligence agencies in Bangladesh.

Babar denied receiving any share of the amount, a CID official probing two cases filed in connection with the arms haul told the newspaper.

The former state minister claimed he knew everything but could not interfere in the matter as it was at the hands of "higher authorities", said the CID official quoting him.

"Babar remained silent when he was asked about the higher authorities," said the intelligence official.

The Sheikh Hasina government has closed down the ULFA camps, evicted many of its top leaders and facilitated their detention by Indian authorities.

In a Major Shift, Indian DRDO Looks at Building Arms With US

As DRDO notches up successes in high-tech fields like missiles, aerospace, electronic warfare systems and command networks, senior officials are confident laboratories have much to offer

New Delhi, Nov 11 : India is co-developing and building missiles and military aircraft with Russia; it is co-developing missiles with Israel. But targeted American sanctions, and a Washington licence raj that stifles the outflow of military technology, has ensured that India's Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) has never co-developed weaponry with the world's most evolved and high-tech defence industry - that of the United States.

The US, in turn - even while selling billions of dollars worth of military aircraft to India - has failed to mine the richest lode of the Ministry of Defence (MoD): Joint development contracts like the Indo-Russian Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), which will be signed next month with a corpus of $12 billion, which could rise to over $20 billion. Or, like the $2-billion partnership between DRDO and Israel Aerospace Industries to co-develop an anti-aircraft missile.

But that seems likely to change with Washington agreeing, during the run-up to President Obamas just-concluded visit, to relax controls on technology and defence exports. Top DRDO officials now believe that, given the growing closeness between the US and India, the two defence establishments would be jointly developing high-tech military weaponry by 2020.

DRDOs chief controller, Prahlada, told Business Standard just ahead of the US presidents visit: "Within a decade, we will have major joint collaboration. Maybe in aeronautics, maybe radars... something will click. We are working with Israel and Russia in missiles; with the US, we may work on something else. Both countries are moving towards that." DRDO, aware of the US defence industry's technological self-sufficiency, believes India's key attraction would revolve around lowering the cost of a product through cheaper development and testing costs. And, as the US defence budget plateaus and even reduces, the assured custom from India's military would add significant economies of scale.

DRDOs chief, V K Saraswat, is explicit about the military projects the US and India could undertake jointly. He says: "We have discussed this many times. India has an excellent base in IT, especially computer simulation, virtual reality, and robotics. In any contemporary military platform, you need command and control and communications software. We have some of the best brains in this area and we can develop these systems for both India and the US. If these Indian strengths are harnessed with American technologies, we could build the best and the cheapest military systems in the world".

As DRDO notches up successes in high-tech fields like missiles, aerospace, electronic warfare systems and command networks, its senior officials are confident that their laboratories have much to offer.

Prahlada says: "American and European companies earlier believed that the Indian defence R&D was at some lower level. But now they listen and observe because they know we have developed systems of complexity and that... if they do not work with us, we will somehow find a solution. So, that is not there. Definitely there is an improved way of looking at India."

While the Indo-US Defence Policy Group (DPG), a joint deliberative body that meets regularly - has long provided a forum for exploring research areas, Saraswat complains that US legal restraints have hamstrung its work: "We have identified areas where we can work together. But the US legal framework - regimes such as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR); and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) - require permissions and raise legal issues on dual-use technology." Now, after Obamas unambiguous promise to reform export controls, DRDO expects that many of these difficulties will ease.

According to Saraswat, the US technology regimes have permitted cooperation in fundamental research, but not in developing specific technologies or military systems. The DRDO chief explains: "If we wanted to do research on, say, bio-medical engineering, then it is okay (with the US). But there would be hesitation on their part for research on, say, hypersonic technology, which is used in missiles." Washington's technology safeguard regimes have hindered not just joint military R&D, but also Indian academics researching in US institutions. Saraswat says: "A large number of Indian scientists go and work in the US universities, etc, but when it comes to really doing research in application areas, these US laws are not permitting cooperation in application-oriented research."

Source:Business Standard

‘Killer High Heels’ Have Injured 3 Million Women

The next time you wear those stilettos, better be careful. Here's why.

A new study has suggested that more than three million women have had to seek medical attention for injuries caused by their high heels.

Half either tore a tendon or twisted an ankle, while thousands of others smashed their teeth or broke wrists by falling flat.

But 60 per cent of women said whatever agony a pair of heels caused, they would keep wearing them if they won compliments.

The poll of 3,000 women aged 18 to 65 also found a whopping 89 per cent said uncomfortable shoes have ruined a night out.

More than a third have had to be helped or even carried home because of pain from shoes that are too tight.

And 61 per cent have spent a whole evening sitting down.

But 80 per cent have bought a trendy pair despite knowing they do not fit.

Only two per cent of the women polled by Hotter Shoes never wear heels.

"Women tend to buy shoes that look good, and then worry about the pain later," the Sun quoted spokeswoman Lisa McCarten, as saying.

"It's incredible to imagine the pain and discomfort women endure for a pair of killer heels," she added.

Source: ANI

Mysterious Bubbles Fox Astronomers

Cambridge, MA, Nov 11 : NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way -- a finding likened in terms of scale to the discovery of a new continent on Earth. The feature, which spans 50,000 light-years, may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy.

"What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center," said Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., who first recognized the feature. "We don't fully understand their nature or origin."

At more than 100 degrees across, the structure spans more than half of the sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus. It may be millions of years old.

From end to end, the newly discovered gamma-ray bubbles extend 50,000 light-years, or roughly half of the Milky Way's diameter, as shown in this illustration. Hints of the bubbles' edges were first observed in X-rays (blue) by ROSAT, a Germany-led mission operating in the 1990s. The gamma rays mapped by Fermi (magenta) extend much farther from the galaxy's plane. Credit: NASA/GSFC

A paper on the findings will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Finkbeiner and Harvard graduate students Meng Su and Tracy Slatyer revealed the bubbles by processing publicly available data from the satellite's Large Area Telescope (LAT). Their work expanded on previous studies led by Greg Dobler at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Fermi's Large Area Telescope is the most sensitive and highest-resolution gamma-ray detector ever orbited. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light.

From end to end, the newly discovered gamma-ray bubbles extend 50,000 light-years, or roughly half of the Milky Way's diameter, as shown in this illustration. Hints of the bubbles' edges were first observed in X-rays (blue) by ROSAT, a Germany-led mission operating in the 1990s. The gamma rays mapped by Fermi (magenta) extend much farther from the galaxy's plane. Credit: NASA/GSFC

The structures eluded previous astronomers studying gamma rays due in part to the so-called diffuse emission -- a fog of gamma rays that appears all over the sky. The emissions are caused by particles moving near the speed of light interacting with light and interstellar gas in the Milky Way.

The Fermi LAT team is constantly refining models to uncover new gamma-ray sources obscured by the diffuse emission. By using various estimates of the gamma-ray fog, including the Fermi team, Finkbeiner and his colleagues were able to subtract it from the LAT data and unveil the giant bubbles.

"The LAT team confirmed the existence of an extended structure in the direction of the inner part of the Milky Way and we're in the process of performing a deeper analysis to better understand it," said Simona Murgia, a Fermi research associate at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif.

The researchers believe that an important process for producing the Milky Way's gamma-ray fog, called inverse Compton scattering, also lights up the bubbles. In that process, electrons moving near the speed of light collide with low-energy light, such as radio or infrared photons. The collision increases the energy of the photons into the gamma-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The bubble emissions are much more energetic than the gamma-ray fog seen elsewhere in the Milky Way.

The bubbles also appear to have well-defined edges. Taken together, the structure's shape and emissions suggest that it was formed as a result of a large and relatively rapid energy release -- the source of which remains a mystery, Finkbeiner noted.

One possibility includes a particle jet from the super massive black hole at the galactic center. In many other galaxies, astronomers see fast particle jets powered by matter falling toward a central black hole. While there is no evidence that the Milky Way's black hole sports such a jet today, it may have in the past.

The bubbles also may have formed as a result of gas outflows from a burst of star formation, perhaps the one that produced many massive star clusters in the Milky Way's central light-years several million years ago.

"In other galaxies, we see that starbursts can drive enormous gas outflows," said David Spergel at Princeton University in New Jersey. "Whatever the energy source behind these huge bubbles may be, it is connected to many deep questions in astrophysics."

Finkbeiner noted that, in retrospect, hints of the bubbles appear in earlier spacecraft data, including the Germany-led Roentgen X-ray Satellite (ROSAT) and NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)