ECO-TERRORES
Fuzzy Math: Cook the Planet, Cook the Books, Call it Growth
This is the nation's hidden accounting scandal, the one that neither government nor media will touch. It concerns the accounting for the entire economy, the way the government purports to determine whether things are getting better or worse. This accounting is called the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. It is central to the big policy debate in Washington, and is the template for the policies the United States projects upon the world. The media regards it with a reverence bordering on awe. The Wall Street Journal recently called the GDP the "world's most reliable economic indicator."
Yet like the books of Enron, Tyco et. al., the federal economic accounting is a sham. It portrays regress as progress and misery as economic advance. If you ever have wondered how you could feel so harried, stressed, maxed out and under siege, even when the government says the economy is doing well, the answer is here. If the president really is looking for chief executives who "cook the books," he might well take a look at the economic books over which he himself presides. They truly are a mess.

ZITE
Mars Unearthed: This site contains comparisons, animations, and stereoscopic 3D anaglyphs
created from images from the Mars Global Surveyor's Orbital Camera (MOC).

VITAMEDIAS
Kissinger kiss-up: Media not doing their job: The Times, for example, quickly opposed the choice President Bush announced rather cannily on Thanksgiving eve, when half the country was on the road and the other half in the kitchen. This week, the New York Times criticized Kissinger's refusal to give up his lucrative international consulting business or to reveal the identity of its clients, which are thought to include both Mideastern governments and U.S. corporations doing business with them.
What is conspicuously missing, however, are the analytic profiles and investigative news reports concerning a factual record that is almost perversely dissonant with the responsibilities now laid upon him.
Kissinger, after all, is a man whose entire record of public service is studded with attempts to suppress information about the conduct of government and to deceive the American people and their elected representatives.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Has pop culture couched our fear of the shrink? And when it comes to the New Jersey mobster's weekly visits to a psychiatrist's office, a cornerstone of HBO's ''The Sopranos,'' some Bostonians may have concluded that if it works for Tony Soprano, it could work for me.
[O]ver the last few years, the number of area residents who have sought outpatient therapy has sharply increased. At a time when psychiatry is front and center on both the small and big screen - ''The Sopranos'' wraps up its fourth season on Sunday and ''Analyze That,'' a sequel to 1999's thug-in-therapy film, ''Analyze This,' opens Friday - the crowded path to therapists' offices

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Random House Settles Lawsuit Against Electronic Publisher: Random House Inc. has settled a lawsuit against an e-book publisher that was selling digital versions of Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" and seven other popular titles.
RosettaBooks will continue publishing the disputed works and will collaborate with Random House on additional books. [...]
But the settlement announced Wednesday leaves the issue unresolved. The two sides essentially agreed it was better to work together than to fight.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Don’t Judge A Book By Sales, Study Shows: 83 percent of bestsellers now come from five publishing houses because of industry consolidation in the 1990s. [A] book's success is determined in part by Internet retailers such as Amazon.com and celebrity endorsements from talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and others.

VITAMEDIAS
Punch bags internet comeback: Punch, the satirical magazine closed down earlier this year by Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed after 161 years, has been reborn online.

VITAMEDIAS
The Unbiased Truth About Media Objectivity: The reporting of the news is supposed to be objective, a dispassionate recitation of the facts. But of course it never is and never has been. What's more, it never will or could be.

ECO-TERRORES
Bolsa aplaude «fim» da operadora apesar de prejuízos na EDP e BCP
A venda da OniWay e o seu encerramento deverão provocar um «buraco» de 114 milhões de euros nas contas do grupo EDP [...] Apesar disso, a EDP está a ponderar um pagamento excepcional de dividendos para compensar os accionistas pelo encerramento da operadora de telemóveis.
Tarifas Eléctricas para 2003 Acompanham a Inflação: As tarifas eléctricas em 2003 vão aumentar 2,8 por cento, em termos nominais e para todos os escalões de consumo

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Page Earners: Buy 'Em by the Word
Tom Clancy
Deal: $45 million for two books
Based on the success of...: Everything he's ever written.
Advance per page: $42,694
Per word: $133
(Rates based on previous books' page counts and an average of 320 words per page.)