Why I love Twitter and barely tolerate Facebook

For the past decade, I've tried every new social media product to come
along but I find myself returning to the two giants of the industry
most often: Twitter and Facebook. I'm optimistic and delighted every
time I open up Twitter on my browser, while Facebook is something I
only click on once or twice a day and always with a small sense of
dread. This week I sat down to think about why that is.

Twitter put simply is fun, fantastic, and all about the here and now.
The fact that I can't even search my own feed for past things I've
said makes it exist almost entirely in the present tense. The people I
follow are people I know, people I work with and live near, but also a
good dose of random comedians, musicians, and celebrities I'll never
meet. The things everyone tweets about are mostly jokes or things that
make you smile, either random things that popped into the writers'
heads or comments on current events.

There's no memory at Twitter: everything is fleeting. Though that
concept may seem daunting to some (archivists, I feel your pain), it
also means the content in my feed is an endless stream of new
information, either comments on what is happening right now or
thoughts about the future. One of the reasons I loved the Internet
when I first discovered it in the mid-1990s was that it was a clean
slate, a place that welcomed all regardless of your past as you wrote
your new life story; where you'd only be judged on your words and your
art and your photos going forward.

Facebook is mired in the past. My spouse resisted Facebook for many
years and recently I got to watch over her shoulder as she signed up
for an account. They asked her about her birth and where she grew up
and what schools she attended, who her family might be. By the end of
the process, she was asking me how this website figured out her entire
social circles in high school and college. It was more than a little
creepy, but that's where her experience began.

My experiences with Facebook are roughly similar. At first I only
signed up to try it out and later (after quitting a few times) I kept
running into applications that required Facebook, so I kept my account
around. After the initial rush of adding a few personal friends, I
started to get a steady stream of people coming out of my past to
contact me. It feels strange to be active and highly visible on the
Web for 15 years but it was only when I joined Facebook that someone
from elementary school or high school ever contacted me.

Touching base with an old acquaintance is all about catching up. If I
haven't talked to someone in 20 years, the level of detail I'd like to
see is what you typically see in letters from a family that accompany
their holiday cards. Let me see a photo, how many kids do you have,
what trips did you recently take, where are you working, how is
everyone doing, and that's about all I want to know for the next 20
years. But on Facebook I only have the option of adding an old
acquaintance as a friend or denying them, and then I am met with daily
updates on their daughter's ballet classes, photos from their
workplace, and who they think should win the big game tonight,
forever. I kind of wish I could just see a person's About page for
five minutes and move on, as I don't need the daily detail/updates of
every old high school buddy's life. Facebook doesn't offer much
granularity in this regard, without moving all your friends into
complex groups with different levels of permissions.

If I look at everyone I'm following on Twitter, by and large they are
peers I've known for the past few years in my current circle of
friends, people that excite me with new ideas, music, and art, and
lots of humor. On Twitter, I have no idea where most people grew up,
what schools they attended, and they are similarly in the dark when it
comes to me. You get to know more about the people you follow day by
day as their comments and ideas fill my picture of what makes them
tick.

At Facebook, half the people in my recent feed are defined by the
university they attended, even if that was 50 years ago. Their
location is mentioned in posts and prominently on their profile, as
well as their entire school history. Heck, the whole notion of
organization at Facebook is now defining a person as a "Timeline." I
find the new life history Timeline approach to be a way of constantly
dredging up the past, to show others how it shaped this person, and
it's not necessarily the best way to define ourselves.

I like my current social circle of friends and their thoughts, jokes,
and ideas they share each day on Twitter. I know I'll be delighted
with new information on Twitter, interesting articles to read,
breaking news, and jokes about those. Twitter is a steady stream of
mostly joy and makes my life better. Facebook is filled with people I
barely know, chain-emails and disaster news about the sky falling that
reminds me of my own past as well as my "friends" at every turn. The
Internet is here today and all about tomorrow, and I prefer my social
media to reflect that, and that's why I love Twitter.

(Honestly, if I didn't like music on Spotify so much, I'd never have
had this problem of how to deal with old friends and family on
Facebook.)

medium.com

Asteroid Apocalypse

The recent crash-down in Russia was a fleabite. The one in 2036 could destroy entire nations...

Maybe Chicken Little was right after all.

It was an amazing spectacle, a rapid succession of giant asteroids blazing across the sky. First, on February 15, Russia was hit with the biggest asteroid in 100 years. Barely a few hours later, an even bigger one made the closest approach to Earth ever recorded for an asteroid of its size. Then the residents of San Francisco, Cuba, and south Florida looked up and saw meteors streak across the sky, rattling their nerves.

A meteor streaks across the sky in Russia on the morning of February 15. 2013. (Nasha Gazeta/AP)

It was a historic display of nature's cosmic firepower, something I never expected to see in my lifetime. Mother Nature was showing Hollywood who's boss.

The city of Chelyabinsk in Russia bore the brunt of the celestial fireworks. A piece of rock, about 50 feet across and weighing more than 7,000 tons, came crashing to Earth. Traveling at a blinding speed of over 40,000 miles per hour, it created a sonic boom and shock wave that shattered windows across the city: 1,200 people were injured, mainly by the flying pieces of glass, and 52 were hospitalized, 2 of them in serious condition. Chelyabinsk, once known as one of the most polluted places in the world due to its storage of nuclear waste, will now be known as "meteor city."

The asteroid packed a huge punch, the power of 20 Hiroshima bombs. It was a "city buster," capable of flattening a modern metropolis and reducing it to rubble. It was a miracle that the asteroid exploded roughly 10 to 15 miles above ground: had there been a ground burst, it would have caused tens of thousands of casualties. If that asteroid had hit just a few seconds later, it would have created a tragedy on Earth.

While Russia was still reeling from the shock of this meteor impact, just a few hours later, 17,200 miles in space, an asteroid three times larger than the Russian one came within a whisker of hitting Earth. Called 2012 DA14, it actually sailed about 5,000 miles closer to Earth than our communications satellites (which orbit at 22,000 miles). If the asteroid had arrived just a few minutes earlier, it might have hit Earth, with truly cataclysmic consequences.

To see what might have happened in the case of a collision with DA14, one can study the 1908 Tunguska impact, which hit Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, giving Earth a black eye. That meteorite was about the same size as DA14, i.e., the size of an apartment building. The energy of the impact was so great that it devastated 830 square miles of Siberia, including 80 million trees. Pictures of the area show millions of trees lying on their sides, as if a giant hand came down and flattened every tree in sight. The impact was so spectacular that the blast was heard hundreds of miles away, and strange lights were seen as far away as Europe.

Fortunately, the 1908 and 2013 asteroids that hit Russia missed hitting a major metropolitan area like Moscow. However, because of the similarity with nuclear blasts, one can imagine what might happen if such an object had hit, say, New York.

First, one would see a blinding flash of light as the asteroid smashed into Earth. Midtown Manhattan would be instantly vaporized by the impact, leaving a crater almost a mile wide. Seconds later, the blast wave would spread out from the crater, toppling all the skyscrapers in the city as if they were made of twigs. Minutes to hours later, there would be a rain of fiery meteors falling from the sky, created by debris blown out of the original crater. Then, for hours and days, firestorms would incinerate an area roughly 30 miles from the impact site. Large swaths of Long Island, Connecticut, Westchester County, and New Jersey would be set on fire. At Hiroshima, about 100,000 people died in the opening phase of the blast. An asteroid impact could have casualties numbering in the millions.

All this sounds like overheated science fiction, but the reality is actually much worse. Lurking in space are asteroids even bigger than the city busters—to wit, "nation busters" big enough to destroy Germany or England. The most dangerous one is called Apophis, which is 1,000 feet across and will come dangerously close to Earth in 2029 and again in 2036. The most recent calculations show that Apophis will barely miss Earth in 2029, but will actually graze our atmosphere. But because of the uncertainty of its path as it whizzes past, there is a small possibility that its orbit may be perturbed so it might actually hit Earth in 2036. NASA scientists are reasonably confident it will still miss Earth in 2036, but the head of the Russian space agency takes the threat of a collision seriously, stating that we have to prepare for the worst. If Apophis hits Earth, it would have the force of approximately 20,000 Hiroshima bombs.

But of all the threats that face the planet, only one can actually destroy all life on Earth in almost an instant, and this is a "planet buster." An object several miles across has enough energy to kill everything on Earth.

The most famous planet killer is the asteroid or comet that plowed into the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico 65 million years ago, creating a crater about 110 miles in diameter. The impact created a huge tsunami and firestorms that raged throughout the Caribbean and North and South America. The impact was so great that the dirt and debris sent into the atmosphere cut off the sun, darkening Earth until temperatures plunged around the world, eventually killing off the dinosaurs.

(Some scientists have proposed a rival theory, that volcanic activity near India at around that time might have blackened the skies and killed off the dinosaurs. But other scientists have proposed yet another theory, that perhaps the impact was so great that a shock wave went through Earth and blew out the crust on the other side, creating the volcanic activity in India. In this scenario, the dinosaurs were killed by a one-two punch caused by the original impact.)

Fortunately, as frightening as these scenarios are, these big impacts are extremely rare. Small meteors are actually quite common, but a city buster might hit Earth on a time scale of once every several centuries. A nation buster might hit once every few hundred thousand years. And a planet buster might hit once every few tens of millions of years. But we are clueless to say precisely when the next impact might be. We are playing Russian roulette with the planet.

How real is this threat? It's sobering to realize that we live in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery. There are about a million asteroids that orbit near the path of Earth. Of these, NASA estimated in 2007 that perhaps 20,000 can one day pose a direct threat to Earth.

These asteroids have passed by Earth since the dawn of humanity, yet we were blissfully unaware of them. Many asteroids would land in the oceans or in uninhabited areas, where there was no one to record the impact. Today our instruments are revealing how frequent near misses really are, and the results are deeply disturbing.

What can be done about them?

Sadly, at present we are sitting ducks. We have no systematic way of detecting these objects, let alone destroying one. Basically, we depend on amateurs as our first line of defense to find these threats. These hobbyists brave the cold every night in hopes of capturing a comet or asteroid in their telescopes. (Only recently have computerized telescopes in Hawaii and the Southwest joined forces with them.)

Basically, we are defenseless. So it is a no-brainer that our first goal should be to build an early-warning system, a space telescope specifically designed to spot asteroids smaller than a football field. This could be done with off-the-shelf technology and would cost only a few hundred million dollars, which is pocket change compared with a typical space mission. (Just one space-shuttle launch could cost upwards of $800 million.)

With this space telescope, scientists could give a realistic estimate of the true threat posed by these asteroids and identify a handful that might actually hit Earth in the coming decades. Unfortunately, every time scientists present this proposal to politicians, they treat us as if we are space cadets. The "giggle factor" is one reason why this proposal has never been taken seriously by Congress. But perhaps the latest Chelyabinsk meteor is a game changer.

However, if, one day, the space telescope actually finds an asteroid with our name on it, there is little we can do with present-day technology. Forget movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon. The space shuttle has been canceled, and moreover, it was never designed to leave Earth's orbit and go into deep space. An entirely new booster rocket would have to be designed to meet this threat.

President Obama, canceling the shuttle and the manned mission to the moon and Mars, left open the possibility of one day landing on an asteroid. To lay the groundwork for this mission, NASA plans to launch a probe in 2016 that will eventually intercept an asteroid and in 2023 return a sample back to Earth. If this paves the way for a manned mission, it could be refocused to intercept and eventually deflect an asteroid.

Numerous proposals have been made. The obvious one of blowing up the asteroid with H-bombs might be a bad idea, since it would only create a fleet of baby asteroids—which would, in turn, do more damage than a single asteroid. A more realistic possibility is to land on the asteroid, put a rocket on it, and then gently push the asteroid out of its trajectory by firing the rocket. Even a gentle push, if done when the asteroid is in deep space, could nudge it off of its Earth-killing course.

So, Bruce Willis, watch out!

Other possibilities include using the gravity field of the rocket to tug on the asteroid so it is deflected. Yet another possibility is to detonate an H-bomb a safe distance away, so the blast wave pushes the asteroid out of its path.

It is inevitable that one day we will be hit, and hit hard. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We realize this every time we see the pockmarked surface of the moon. Unfortunately, without an early-warning system, we don't know when such an impact might take place.

Although deflecting a killer asteroid will not be cheap, consider it an insurance policy. There is a historical lesson here. The dinosaurs did not have a space program. That is why we are here and they are not. But without a robust space program, are we next?

thedailybeast/newsweek

Pippa Middleton takes supermarket job

does the headline do justice to the reality?

London: Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of Prince William's wife Catherine, has signed a deal to write for the in-house magazine of a British supermarket, it announced on Monday.

The 29-year-old, who shot to fame when she was a bridesmaid at the royal wedding in 2011, will share her tips on entertaining for friends in a monthly column for upmarket supermarket Waitrose.

In a statement, she said she was "delighted" at her new job at the magazine, for which she is the cover star for the April issue.

"My column, 'Pippa's Friday Night Feasts', will be an exciting opportunity to share my own passion and enthusiasm for food and entertaining, and I can't wait to get started," she said.

Middleton has worked for her parents' party-planning business and last year published a book of recipes and ideas on entertaining, although it was widely panned in the media for being full of glaringly obvious advice.

William Sitwell, editor of "Waitrose Kitchen" magazine, said he hoped readers would appreciate "her relaxed and easy entertaining ideas, which will help with the preparation for all sorts of occasions".

ndtv

Map of Craigslist Missed Connections

On Craigslist there's a section in the personals for "missed connections" which lets people post missed chances at love with the (slim) hopes that the person he or she saw sees the random post on Craiglist. They usually start off like, "I saw you in that place, and you were..." Dorothy Gambrell mapped the most frequent location for each state.

In California, there's apparently a lot of eyeballing at 24 Hour Fitness, and in New York it's the subway, which shouldn't be surprising. I like how bars are most mentioned in North Dakota and Wisconsin, which matches up with the bars versus grocery stores map from a couple of years ago.

flowingdata

Everyone Wears J. Crew

From the clothes we wear to the ways we wear them, how a single brand came to epitomize how the American man dresses now


Men — a lot of men, most men — don't always know their suit doesn't fit correctly until they try on a well-tailored suit that does. It doesn't always occur to most men that the sleeves of their button-down shirt are billowy until someone hands them a shirt with the sleeves cut slimmer, so you can actually make out the arms inside. They could go half their career wearing blazers with straight sides — the line from the armpit to the hip — until someone pinches in the fabric at the back, revealing that blazers look better when made with perhaps 7 percent less material, for snugness around the middle. Only when he sees these garments, feels them wrap and hug the contours of his body and his alone, will a man be convinced, because men require proof. So you can tell a man that, for example, his blazers are too boxy, and he might not even doubt you, but he won't do anything about it, and he won't understand that he might feel better, walk taller, in a blazer that really fits him until you pinch that fabric at the back. Until you show him. It's like the difference between explaining the benefits of countersinking a screw into a piece of wood and grabbing a drill to demonstrate it.

Oh. That's what you mean.

And once he is convinced, he is convinced for life.

Five years ago, J. Crew, a clothing company that at the time was not known as a brand for men, that at the time was not known for much of anything in particular besides its catalogs full of toothy models wearing preppy clothing available in cleverly named colors like "bright flame," decided to try something new in the $400 billion world of men's clothing. It would design and produce a few essential pieces that every man should own — the best suit, the best shirt, the best pants, the best jeans — which would look cleaner and feel better than what men had come to expect from most stores and brands. The cuts would be slimmer. The notches on the lapels would be tighter, and the lapels themselves would be narrower. The spread of the shirt collar — the distance between its two points — would be exactly right, whatever that meant. (They would know it when they saw it.)

So that was the first thing: Make clothes that fit.

And then, once they did that, they would surround their own creations with a handful of shoes, shirts, watches, and other accessories made by iconic companies. Why try to reinvent the men's dress shoe if Alden already makes some of the best on earth? Why not enlist one of the world's great shirtmakers, Thomas Mason, to help design the world's greatest shirt? J. Crew, an independent company whose clothes were not available in any department store, would itself create a sort of miniature department store for men only.

That was the second thing: Show men how to wear clothes. Give them options. Make suggestions. Encourage.

And that was J. Crew's plan, five or so years ago, and it was a good plan except for the huge risk. The huge risk was that men wouldn't notice. That they would keep wearing slightly ill-fitting clothes that weren't quite ill-fitting enough that men would feel impelled to make a change. That men just don't really care.

full article

Yahoo abolishes work-at-home policy

Since Marissa Mayer became chief executive of Yahoo, she has been
working hard to get the Internet pioneer off its deathbed and make it
an innovator once again.

She started with free food and new smartphones for every employee,
borrowing from the playbook of Google, her employer until last year.
Now, though, Yahoo has made a surprise move: abolishing its
work-at-home policy and ordering everyone to work in the office.

A memo explaining the policy change, from the company's human
resources department, says face-to-face interaction among employees
fosters a more collaborative culture — a hallmark of Google's approach
to its business.

In trying to get back on track, Yahoo is taking on one of the
country's biggest workplace issues: whether the ability to work from
home, and other flexible arrangements, leads to greater productivity
or inhibits innovation and collaboration. Across the country,
companies like Aetna, Booz Allen Hamilton and Zappos.com are
confronting these trade-offs as they compete to attract and retain the
best employees.

Bank of America, for example, which had a popular program for working
remotely, decided late last year to require employees in certain roles
to come back to the office.

Employees, especially younger ones, expect to be able to work
remotely, analysts say. And over all the trend is toward greater
workplace flexibility.

Still, said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger Gray &
Christmas, an outplacement and executive coaching firm, "A lot of
companies are afraid to let their workers work from home some of the
time or all of the time because they're afraid they'll lose control."

Studies show that people who work at home are significantly more
productive but less innovative, said John Sullivan, a professor of
management at San Francisco State University who runs a human resource
advisory firm.

"If you want innovation, then you need interaction," he said. "If you
want productivity, then you want people working from home."

Reflecting these tensions, Yahoo's policy change has unleashed a storm
of criticism from advocates for workplace flexibility who say it is a
retrograde approach, particularly for those who care for young
children or aging parents outside of work. Their dismay is heightened
by the fact that they hoped Ms Mayer, who became chief executive at 37
while pregnant with her first child, would make the business world
more hospitable for working parents.

"The irony is that she has broken the glass ceiling, but seems
unwilling for other women to lead a balanced life in which they care
for their families and still concentrate on developing their skills
and career," said Ruth Rosen, a professor emerita of women's history
at the University of California.

But not only women take advantage of workplace flexibility policies.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly as many men
telecommute.

The bureau says 24 percent of employed Americans report working from
home at least some hours each week. And 63 percent of employers said
last year that they allowed employees to work remotely, up from 34
percent in 2005, according to a study by the Families and Work
Institute, a nonprofit group studying the changing work force.

During the recession, the institute expected employers to demand more
face time, but instead found that 12 percent increased workplace
flexibility, said Ellen Galinsky, its president and co-founder. She
attributed this to companies' desire to reduce real estate costs,
carbon footprints and commuting times.

Technologies developed in Silicon Valley, from video chat to instant
messaging, have made it possible for employees across America to work
remotely. Yet like Yahoo, many tech companies believe that working in
the same physical space drives innovation.

A Yahoo spokeswoman, Sara Gorman, declined to comment, saying only
that the company did not publicly discuss internal matters.

The company's memo, written by Jackie Reses, director of human
resources at Yahoo, and published on All Things D, a blog on digital
issues, said: "Some of the best decisions and insights come from
hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu
team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work
from home."

In part, the memo looks like an effort to bring a Google spirit to
Yahoo, said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners who covers both
companies.
TOI

Torture is for amateurs

The film "Zero Dark Thirty," a fictionalized account of the hunt for
Osama Bin Laden, has refueled the debate about the efficacy of harsh
interrogation techniques. After facing harsh criticism from both
Democrats and Republicans, the film, which was nominated for five
Academy Awards, had a poor showing at the Oscars last night as well,
winning only the award for Best Sound Editing in a rare tie with the
James Bond film "Skyfall."

Director Kathryn Bigelow's film "Zero Dark Thirty" presents torture as
a necessary and effective method of extracting information from
prisoners and an essential tool used by the Central Intelligence
Agencyto find bin Laden. Though many in the intelligence community
said the film portrayal of torture yielding the information key to
getting bin Laden is inaccurate, most viewers come away with the
impression that "enhanced interrogation" not only works – but that it
can be vital.

For the military interrogators I interviewed who have questioned
hundreds of detainees in Afghanistan andIraq, nothing could be further
from the truth.

As part of a recent study about military interrogations techniques, I
spoke to many human intelligence (HUMINT) collectors. Through an
online survey, 143 active-duty reserve, and retired military
interrogators were asked them how they performed their jobs. These men
and women, who served in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan,
were also asked to rate the effectiveness of a variety of
interrogation techniques.

With the exception of one member of the sample, these interrogators
uniformly agreed that torture and other harsh methods were worth
little when trying to gather accurate human intelligence. The majority
of study participants stated a strong dislike of violence in
interrogations and asserted time and again that if the direct
questioning of a detainee failed, building rapport was the most
effective way to collect information from a human subject. As one
study participant wrote, "Torture is for amateurs."

Official Army policy supports this view as well. The US military's
interrogation bible, the Army Human Intelligence Collector Operations
Field Manual, advises human intelligence collectors that the direct
approach – asking a subject a direct question – has been historically
shown to work with 90 percent or more of interrogation subjects.

The manual also advises that all human intelligence collection begins
with the direct approach. In addition, a rapport-building strategy "is
an integral part of the approach phase." While sometimes
time-consuming, interrogators in my study endorsed rapport building as
the most effective approach for evoking accurate intelligence from a
prisoner.

The historical record also refutes the idea that torture "works."
Hanns Scharff, a legendary German interrogator who is the subject of a
book by military writer Raymond Toliver, cited preparation not
violence as the surest way to procure intelligence from an enemy
prisoner of war.

From Mr. Toliver's book, "The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns Joachim
Scharff: Master Interrogator of theLuftwaffe", we learn that Scharff,
who primarily questioned downed US pilots, used guile and charm to
evoke information from an interrogatee. Scharff, who was referred to
as "The Master," championed rapport building. And he was so successful
at building relationships with American POWs that after World War II
concluded, he reunited with some of his former interrogation subjects
in the United States.

The participants in my study also emphasized the importance of
preparation in conducting a successful interrogation. One study
participant asserted that the most critical part of any interrogation
is the creation of an interrogation plan. Before an interrogator
enters the interrogation booth, he or she learns as much as possible
about the interrogation subject. Interrogators indicated to me that
poor preparation produced poor interrogations that usually yielded
information of little or no value.

Every interrogation is different, as is every interrogation subject.
Not all strategies work for all people and sometimes interrogators
have little information with which to prepare. But the subjects of my
study overwhelmingly agreed that if violence entered the interrogation
booth, the interrogation was a failure.

The majority of them emphasized that human connections, not physical
abuse, insured the greatest likelihood of success during an
interrogation. Interrogators in my study argued that an offer of a
cigarette, a joke, or a discussion of religious beliefs produced
greater results than waterboarding, beatings, or sleep deprivation.
One interrogator reported that if "the interrogator, the interpreter
and the subject were laughing together, information [was] generally
more reliable."

Rapport building can also be effective with high-value targets. One
active duty Army interrogator, with 19 years of human intelligence
collecting experience wrote: "Hardened terrorists we capture expect
physical and verbal abuse. When we offer a cup of tea instead it takes
them out of their comfort zone." An Air Force reservist of 26 years,
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported this view. He indicated
that "establishing trust and rapport through displays of cultural
finesse and the appearance of genuine concern for the detainee" is the
most effective practice.

The interrogators I spoke with present a very different picture from
the one portrayed in the film "Zero Dark Thirty." The film may be a
cinematic triumph, its disappointing Oscar showing aside, but one of
its central messages could not be further from the truth. Torture
doesn't work. Just ask interrogators.

Matthew D. Semel, J.D., Ph.D. is assistant professor of criminal
justice at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, N.Y.

csmonitor

Iran photoshops Michelle Obama's 'revealing' dress

An Iranian news agency has digitally altered an image of US First Lady Michelle Obama announcing the Oscar in a bid to make her look more modest.   Michelle wore a sleeveless and low cut dress by Naeem Khan, as she announced the Oscar for Best Picture last night. 

But Iran's Fars manipulated the photo to cover her chest and shoulders, Politico reports.   

The photo manipulation was first reported by the blog Persian Letters. It said that Fars, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), noted that it was unusual that Michelle had announced this year's award for Best Picture, which went to what it called the "controversial and anti-Iranian' film "Argo.' 

Steve Jobs

Charge your mobile phone with hot water

New Delhi: While researchers are busy finding newer sources of energy and ways of harvesting it, Ryan Johnstone, an independent inventor based in Nairobi, Kenya, has invented a solution that could help mobile phone users charge their devices with just the power of hot water. Ryan has developed the Bottle Charger, as he likes to call it, an apparatus that utilises the power of hot water to run a small turbine, which in turn produces electric current potent enough to charge small devices.

Explaining its working, Ryan said to The Mobile Indian, "The Bottle Charger works like a small wind turbine. Instead of natural wind currents, the pressurised air is created by expansion and contraction due to the presence and absence of hot water."

This change in air pressure is then used to run a small turbine that sits inside the apparatus and generates electricity for charging mobile devices. The inventor claims that the Bottle Charger creates electricity as long as you have access to hot water of around 100 degrees Celsius. With this the Bottle Charger enables users to charge smaller electronic devices such as mobile phones, MP3 players and so on for 15-30 minutes depending on surrounding temperatures.

The device converts the power of hot water to electricity for charging mobile devices.

The Bottle Charger involves using a 20 litre water jar along with a BUCT (Blackbeard Unidirectional Constant Turbine) module to create electricity. The quality of water does not cause any difference; it can be normal tap water as well.

The project is in its very nascent stage but holds promise. The inventor has taken help of crowd funding website Indiegogo to raise money to make the device better and smaller.

ibnlive

14 Things Successful People Do On Weekends

Here are 14 things successful people do (or should be doing) on weekends:

1. Make time for family and friends. This is especially important for those who don’t spend much time with their loved ones during the week.

2. Exercise. Everyone needs to do it, and if you can’t work out 4 to 5 days during the workweek, you need to be active on weekends to make up for some of that time, Vanderkam says. It’s the perfect opportunity to clear you mind and create fresh ideas.

“I know an owner of a PR firm who takes walks in the park with his dog to spark ideas about how to pitch a new client, or what angle to take with the press for a story,” Kurow says.

Cohen suggests spin classes and outdoor cycling in the warmer months. “Both are energizing and can be organized among people with shared interests. For example, it is not uncommon for hedge fund folks and Wall Street professionals to ride together on weekends. It is a great way to establish and cultivate relationships based on membership in this elite professional community.”

3. Pursue a passion. “There’s a creative director of a greeting card company who went back to school to pursue an MFA because of her love of art,” Kurow says. “Pursuing this passion turned into a love of poetry that she now writes on weekends.”

“Successful people make time for what is important or fun,” Egan adds. “They make space for activities that add to their life balance.”

4. Vacation. Getting away for the weekend provides a great respite from the grind of an intense week at work, Cohen says.

5.  Disconnect. The most successful people avoid e-mail for a period of time, Vanderkam says. “I’m not saying the whole weekend, but even just a walk without the phone can feel liberating. I advocate taking a ‘tech Sabbath.’ If you don’t have a specific religious obligation of no-work time, taking Saturday night to mid-day Sunday off is a nice, ecumenical time that works for many people.”

6. Volunteer. “I know a commercial real estate broker who volunteers to help with cook-off events whose proceeds are donated to the Food Bank,” Kurow says. “The volunteer work provides a balance to the heavy analytical work she does all week and fulfills her need to be creative — she designs the promotional material for the non-profit.”

Cohen says a lot of successful people participate in fundraising events. “This is a great way to network and to meet others with similar interests,” he says. “The visibility also helps in branding a successful person as philanthropic.”

7. Avoid chores. Every weekend has a few have-to-dos, but you want these to take the minimum amount of time possible, Vanderkam explains. Create a small window for chores and errands, and then banish them from your mind the rest of the time.

8. Plan. “Planning makes people more effective, and doing it before the week starts means you can hit Monday ready to go, and means you’ll give clear directions to the people who work for you, so they will be ready to go, too,” Vanderkam says.

Trunk agrees. She says successful people plan their month and year because “if you get stuck on short-term lists you don’t get anything big accomplished.”

9. Socialize. “Humans are social creatures, and studies of people’s experienced happiness through the day finds that socializing ranks right up there, not too far down below sex,” Vanderkam says.

Go out with friends and family, or get involved in the local community.

“It has been demonstrated that successful people find great satisfaction in giving back,” Cohen says. “Board membership, for example, also offers access to other successful folks.”

10. Gardening/crafts/games/sports/cooking/cultural activities.This is especially important for those cooped up in an office all week.

“For the pure joy, some folks find great satisfaction in creating beautiful gardens,” Cohen says.

Kurow knows an attorney who uses her weekends to garden and do mosaics and tile work to satisfy her creative side. “Filling her life this way enables her to be refreshed on Monday and ready to tackle the litigation and trial prep work. Artwork for her is fulfilling in a way that feeds her soul and her need to connect with her spiritual side.”

Bridge lessons and groups can also sharpen the mind and often create relationships among highly competitive smart professionals, Cohen says. “I once saw a printout of a bridge club’s membership list; its members were a who’s who of Wall Street.”

Theatre, opera and sporting events can also enrich one’s spirit, he adds.

11. Network. “Networking isn’t an event for a successful person, it’s a lifestyle,” Trunk says. Wherever they go and whatever they do, they manage to connect with new people.

12. Reflect. Egan says truly successful people make time on weekends to appreciate what they have and reflect on their happiness and accomplishments. As Rascoff said, “weekends are a great chance to reflect and be more introspective about bigger issues.”

13. Meditate. Classes and private instruction offer a bespoke approach to insight and peace of mind, Cohen says. “How better to equip yourself for success in this very tough world?”

14. Recharge. We live in a competitive world, Vanderkam says. “Peak performance requires managing downtime, too–with the goal of really recharging your batteries.” That’s how the most successful people get so much done.

Successful people know that time is too precious to be totally leisurely about leisure, Vanderkam concludes. “You’re not going to waste that time by failing to think about what you’d like to do with it, and thus losing the weekend to TV, puttering, inefficient e-mail checking, and chores. If you don’t have a busy workweek, your weekend doesn’t matter so much. But if you’re going from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, it certainly does.”

forbes

“ARGO”: THE JIMMY CARTER EXPERIENCE

Jimmy Carter is out with his review of “Argo.” It’s a rave with a caveat.

Here’s the relevant exchange, from a Piers Morgan interview that aired last night, on CNN:

MORGAN: You’ve seen “Argo,” I take it? How accurate is it from your memory?

CARTER: Well, let me say, first of all, it’s a great drama. And I hope it gets the Academy Award for best film because I think it deserves it. The other thing that I would say was that ninety per cent of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian. And the movie gives almost full credit to the American C.I.A. And, with that exception, the movie is very good.

But Ben Affleck’s character in the film was only—he was only in, stayed in, Iran a day and a half. And the main hero, in my opinion, was Ken Taylor, who was the Canadian Ambassador who orchestrated the entire process.

I was informed about it the first day. And I was very much involved with the Canadian government because the Canadian government would not legally permit six false passports to be issued. So the Canadian Parliament had to go into secret session the first time in history, and they voted to let us use six Canadian passports that were false.

MORGAN: But when you first heard about this outlandish plan to create a fictitious science-fiction movie to get these hostages out, you’re the President of the United States. I mean, if this had gone badly wrong, you would have been an absolute laughingstock. So it’s a bold moment for you, for the Presidency, for the country.

CARTER: Well, I don’t deny that. But it was much bolder for the Canadian government to do it, because the Canadian government was not involved in the hostage crisis, as you know. They could have been hostages themselves had it been revealed.

But as I said, you know, they did the primary work. And as a matter of fact, the American hostages left Iran and landed in Switzerland and landed before the Iranians ever discovered that they had been there.

When I left office, I ordained that we would not reveal any American’s involvement in the process, but to give the Canadians full credit for the entire heroic episode. And that prevailed for a number of years afterward.

But I think it’s a great film, and it tells a dramatic story. And I think it’s accurate enough.

This clears up a point I’d been wondering about. When I saw the movie, it occurred to me that if the “Argo” mission had crashed and burned—as the Desert One rescue mission crashed and burned, literally, three months later—it would have been a huge political catastrophe for Carter. He did what? He risked the reputation of the United States of America on a ludicrous Hollywood science-fiction slapstick scam that only an idiot would think might work? Typical Carter! What naïveté, what incompetence! If you think Dukakis in a tank looked silly, try Carter dressed up like a Klingon.

We can now see that the political risk Carter took wasn’t quite as great as the movie makes it appear. Yes, the idea for the caper was the C.I.A.’s. Agent Tony Mendez deserves his belated accolades. Carter deserves a few, too, for green-lighting the thing. On the ground, in Tehran, this was overwhelmingly a Canadian caper—the ultimate Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.

If it had turned out to be a public fiasco, Ottawa would have taken the fall—and the fall wouldn’t have been nearly as precipitous, the landing not nearly as hard, as it would have been if, as in the movie, Washington had played the starring role. Plucky little Canada, people would have thought. It didn’t work, but they tried. Good for them.

As it was, Canada got all the credit. Carter and the C.I.A. got almost none—certainly much less than they deserved. That was part of the plan, of course. But Carter and his top aides—Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Gary Sick, and many more—sat on this incredibly juicy story for nearly twenty years, long after there was any national-security reason to stay silent. There’s nary a word about it in the memoirs they published in the nineteen-eighties. I was there—I was Carter’s chief speechwriter at the time—and I had no idea. Say this for Carter and his confidants, Georgian and not: these guys knew how to keep a secret.

I share Carter’s enthusiasm for the film. And I admire his modesty. It says a lot about him that his big objection to it is, essentially, that it gives him too much credit.

I also share his forgiving attitude toward the historical liberties the movie takes. It has its full share of what can fairly be called inaccuracies. (The Wikipedia entry has an excellent rundown.) With the possible exception of the one Carter has reservations about, though, they’re all anodyne. Pretty much all of them are amply justified by the exigencies of cinematic dramatization. And some—such as the perils-of-Pauline car-and-plane chase at the Tehran airport—telegraph their own made-up-ness through their sheer over-the-topness.

“Argo” has a shot at winning Best Picture on Sunday. It’s a good old-fashioned American story about good old-fashioned American ingenuity. It’s tight and intelligent. Its satire of Hollywood is as affectionate as it is sharp. Its politics, to the extent it has any, are basically liberal. How can the Academy not love it? To beat it, you’d have to make a movie starring, I don’t know, Abraham Lincoln himself.

“Zero Dark Thirty,” however, has no chance. I haven’t seen it, so for all I know it may be greatly superior, simply as filmmaking, to “Argo.” It probably contains a smaller number of historical inaccuracies than “Argo” (or even that other movie about American history). But what is widely seen as its one huge inaccuracy—its suggestion that torture “worked,” that without torture Osama bin Laden would still be watching videos in his suburban villa in Pakistan—is fatal. Kathryn Bigelow’s previous outing, “The Hurt Locker,” won the Oscar not just because it was a terrific movie but because it hit the political sweet spot. People who were against the Iraq War loved it, and so did people who were for the Iraq War. Fairly or unfairly, though, for many Academy members, to vote for “Zero Dark Thirty” is to a vote for Bush, Cheney, and torture.

Me, I’m rooting for “Life of Pi.” If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you see the 3-D version. And try to get a seat about two-thirds of the way back, in the middle.

 HENDRIK HERTZBERG, newyorker

Born to Wait

The first parent lined up at 4 a.m. on a Sunday, when the only other people around were out just long enough to stumble from warm taxis through sobering 19-degree air into their homes.

Twenty minutes later, other parents showed up and a line began to form down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. One father kept a list so that anyone searching for a thawing hot coffee could do so without losing a place in the line. He abandoned that project as more and more people trickled in and the end of the line was no longer visible from the front.

Some parents stood, shimmying and hopping to keep warm. A few line veterans brought chairs and buried themselves under blankets. It was too dark to read so they chatted about things like schools or children, and they poked fun at one another for being there. Every few minutes, someone would check his watch and express the hope that Carmelo the Science Fellow would open his doors early for his annual summer camp registration.

If waiting in line in the predawn of a January morning for science camp registration sounds crazy, you do not have a New York City child born after 2004. For those children and their parents, especially in the neighborhoods of brownstone Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan and the Upper West Side, not getting into activities, classes, sports teams — and even local schools — has become a way of life. If every generation must have its own designation, call theirs Generation Waiting List.

Looking for a spot in a public prekindergarten program in Lower Manhattan? Put your name on the waiting list.

Ballet for 3-year-olds at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Fort Greene, Brooklyn? The class is full, but they do have a waiting list.

Parks Department swim classes? Full. But maybe you can get on a waiting list.

At first blush, the waiting lists are a little surprising, given that in New York City there were 7 percent fewer children 9 and younger in 2011 than there were in 2000, according to census findings. Indeed, every borough has seen a decrease in children in that age range.

But the distribution of children is highly uneven, and some neighborhoods, especially those deemed “family friendly,” have seen population explosions that outpace the general population growth, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College.

In Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan, the 9 and younger population has grown by 129 percent over the last decade; uptown, the Lincoln Square neighborhood has seen a 56 percent growth.

In Brooklyn, Park Slope had a 2 percent increase and its more affordable neighbor, Windsor Terrace, grew by 11 percent. The mostly Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood saw a 25 percent increase.

“The people having kids these days, they are a lot more well-off,” Professor Beveridge said, “so those parents are much more likely to have kids who are clients” — of summer camps, music schools and the like.

On Laura Congleton’s first day of motherhood, she waited for a delivery room at what is now NYU Langone Medical Center. So many mothers were giving birth, they were kept in waiting areas until delivery rooms became available, she recalled. Five years later, she is still waiting — this time for kindergarten. In her Brooklyn Heights neighborhood and adjoining Cobble Hill, the number of children under age 9 has jumped 31 percent since 2000, leaving her son on the waiting list at local private schools.

“There are too many kids,” Ms. Congleton said, and too few spaces for them. “I just wish there was more room.”

In some cases, the growth in the numbers of children clamoring to get into the same activities outpaces even the demographic change. Nationally, enrollment in the American Youth Soccer Organization has dropped 8 percent over the last five years. But in the Brooklyn region that encompasses Park Slope, Ditmas Park and Kensington, and draws players from Brooklyn Heights and Carroll Gardens as well, the number of children under 8 who play has jumped 43 percent in the past seven years, to 600 children from 420, said Ainslie Binder, the region’s director.

Except for Brooklyn Heights and Windsor Terrace, the under-9 population from many of the neighborhoods feeding the league grew by only a few percentage points. Registration for the fall season is open for a month, from June 1 to July 1, but “it’s like anything in the city, if you don’t jump on it, you won’t get in,” said Elizabeth Kenney, a Brooklyn mother whose 9-year-old son was relegated to the waiting list last year and had to sit out the season.

Maria Lord also found that lesson out the hard way. Last year, she applied in July but found that every team was filled. Her son never made it off the waiting list. She does not plan to repeat her mistake. “We are definitely going to try to get in this year,” she said. “There’s this need for affordable team sports, but there aren’t enough leagues and the demand is so great.”

Besides population density, social mobility drives the waiting lists in certain neighborhoods, said Tamara Mose Brown, a sociologist who teaches at Brooklyn College. It is no longer a given that people who came to the city from the suburbs as single adults will return to them when they have families, she said. Those who stay tend to settle in neighborhoods where people are similarly educated and share like values. They want their children to experience the diversity and spontaneity of the city, but they also want to control the youngsters’ exposure to those things by keeping them within a neighborhood bubble.

The more people bump into one another, the more ingrained a family becomes into a community and the more information will be exchanged about classes, or public schools. Those connections create cultural capital that helps families socially advance in their worlds. But it also puts them into competition for the limited number of slots for the most highly sought-after activities.

“All of this capital creates a certain type of anxiety among parents which, in turn, creates the ‘waitlisted’ child,” Ms. Mose Brown said.

Brett Sonnenschein of Carroll Gardens feels that anxiety. He was one of those standing in line to register for Carmelo’s science camp. Six years ago, when his daughter was applying for a private pre-K, he and his wife did not rush down on the first day applications were available for their first-choice school. Their daughter ended up on a waiting list there. Ever since, Mr. Sonnenschein been conscientious about tapping into playground gossip on what programs fill up first — and what steps to take to avoid ending up on the waiting list. “We’ve had many years of paranoia about this kind of thing,” he said with a laugh.

Havona Madama’s fear of waiting lists led her to start a database to track her 5-year-old daughter’s favorite classes and their registration deadlines. Two years ago, she decided to leave her law practice to turn her research into KidKlass.com, a hub of information for brownstone Brooklyn about classes, camps and all-important registration dates. The site is still being developed, but she counts 50 to 100 visitors a day who peruse the listings. Still to come, she said, is an “alert” system to let parents know what deadlines they are about to miss.

One of her more popular offerings is Camp Panic — a fair in May at which parents who have not made plans for their children can see which summer camps still have room. “I can’t stand to be on a wait list,” said Ms. Madama, who lives in Carroll Gardens. “I don’t like to waste my time waiting to see what the schedule is going to be.”

Technology has fueled the phenomenon. In 2012, the city moved to online registration for its free summer swim classes at its outdoor pools. The number of applicants jumped to 34,134, from 20,393 in 2011, when officials began to introduce the online application. (That year, four pools still required on-site, in-person registration. Most people got in.) Last summer, only 24,532 applications got spots.

Often, the activities that fill up fastest are the ones that are most affordable and most accessible, like the swim classes. At the New York Public Library in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 25 children can be accommodated at the free story-time sessions. Parents and other caregivers routinely show up when the library opens at 10 a.m. to get a ticket for the 10:30 a.m. story times on Mondays and Wednesdays. On a recent Wednesday, tickets were snatched up within five minutes.

For children, waiting on a list for soccer or missing story time might not be a tragedy, but for parents, winding up on a list can mean having to put life on pause. In the Brooklyn line for science camp, the parents talked about how getting a spot could determine whether they could go to work on particular days, or whether they would have to spend extra money on a baby sitter.

At Public School 139 in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, parents showed up at 5 a.m. on the second day of school to sign their children up for the city-financed after-school program run by a nonprofit community organization known as CAMBA. Because of budget cuts, slots in the program were cut back: This year, about 52,000 children are being served citywide, compared with 85,000 in 2009.

Sandra, a single mother, could not afford to line up then, because she did not have child care. As a result, her daughter, who had been in the program before, could not get in this year. “I wanted to cry my eyeballs out,” said Sandra, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her job as a nanny. Instead, her daughter goes to a public library every afternoon, staying until 6 p.m., when it closes. Over the summer, Sandra reviewed with her daughter how to walk down the street, turn the corner and find the library. “I had to teach her to be responsible faster than normal. I had to have her grow up,” she said. “She’s only 8!”

Parents in the Riverdale section of the Bronx or in northern Manhattan have long taken their children farther south into Manhattan or ventured north into Westchester for activities because their own neighborhoods had few. That is starting to change as offerings increase — but there are waiting lists. too. Leonisa Ardizzone opened Storefront Science in Washington Heights last year, and almost immediately had a waiting list for the first two weeks of her summer camp. She thinks this year will be similar.

Nearby in Inwood, Bread and Yoga has an after-school program offering classes like children’s capoeira and art that fill up within the first week of registration. If you want in, you have to act fast, said Jo Flattery, a Washington Heights resident.

“It’s just a fact of living in the city,” Ms. Flattery said. She has learned not to discuss classes with her children until it is certain they will get in. She also follows a strategy that may add to the waiting lists. “You fill up every class you can, and you drop if you don’t need it. Everyone overschedules — it’s the only route to choice,” she said.

The first year Carmelo the Science Fellow offered his summer camp, in 2006, there were 20 students a week. Now there are 120, and by 10 a.m. on the day of registration, most slots were filled. When the doors opened at 7 a.m. (an hour ahead of schedule), parents quietly filed past terrariums with heat lamps keeping snakes and lizards cozy.

Their wait ended at a desk where Carmelo Piazza and his wife, Karen, greeted many of them personally, with handshakes and kisses and questions about how the children had been.

Parents handed over a deposit and a form enrolling their children in camp and, just like that, on the last Sunday in January, their children’s summers, and perhaps their own, fell into place.

NYT

A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Before Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, started to write “Lean In,” her book-slash-manifesto on women in the workplace, she reread Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” Like the homemaker turned activist who helped start a revolution 50 years ago, Ms. Sandberg wanted to do far more than sell books.

Ms. Sandberg, whose ideas about working women have prompted both enthusiasm and criticism, is attempting nothing less than a Friedan-like feat: a national discussion of a gender-problem-that-has-no-name, this time in the workplace, and a movement to address it.

When her book is published on March 11, accompanied by a carefully orchestrated media campaign, she hopes to create her own version of the consciousness-raising groups of yore: “Lean In Circles,” as she calls them, in which women can share experiences and follow a Sandberg-crafted curriculum for career success. (First assignment: a video on how to command more authority at work by changing how they speak and even sit.)

“I always thought I would run a social movement,” Ms. Sandberg, 43, said in an interview for “Makers,” a new documentary on feminist history.

And yet no one knows whether women will show up for Ms. Sandberg’s revolution, a top-down affair propelled by a fortune worth hundreds of millions on paper, or whether the social media executive can form a women’s network of her own. Only a single test “Lean In Circle” exists. With less than three weeks until launch — which will include a spread in Time magazine and splashy events like a book party at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s home — organizers cannot say how many more groups may sprout up.

Even her advisers acknowledge the awkwardness of a woman with double Harvard degrees, dual stock riches (from Facebook and Google, where she also worked), a 9,000-square-foot house and a small army of household help urging less fortunate women to look inward and work harder. Will more earthbound women, struggling with cash flow and child care, embrace the advice of a Silicon Valley executive whose book acknowledgments include thanks to her wealth adviser and Oprah Winfrey?

“I don’t think anyone has ever tried to do this from anywhere even close to her perch,” said Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College, who invited Ms. Sandberg to deliver a May 2011 commencement address about gender in the workplace that caught fire online. (Ms. Sandberg, who will grant her first book interview to the CBS program “60 Minutes,” declined to comment for this article.)

Despite decades of efforts, and some visible exceptions, the number of top women leaders in many fields remains stubbornly low: for example, 21 of the current Fortune 500 chief executives are women. In her book, to be published by Knopf, Ms. Sandberg argues that is because women face invisible, even subconscious, barriers in the workplace, and not just from bosses. In her view, women are also sabotaging themselves. “We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” she writes, and the result is that “men still run the world.”

Ms. Sandberg wants to take women through a collective self-awareness exercise. In her book, she urges them to absorb the social science showing they are judged more harshly and paid less than men; resist slowing down in mere anticipation of having children; insist that their husbands split housework equally; draft short- and long-term career plans; and join a “Lean In Circle,” which is half business school and half book club.

The project has the feel of a social experiment: what if women at major corporations could review research on how to overcome gender barriers, along with instruction on skills like negotiation and communication? Will working women, already stretched thin, attend nighttime video lectures on “Unconditional Responsibility” and “Using Stories Powerfully”? The instructions for the gatherings, provided to The New York Times by an outside adviser to the project, are precise, down to membership requirements (participants can miss no more than two monthly meetings per year) and the format (15-minute check-in, 3 minutes each for personal updates, a 90-minute presentation, then discussion).

Ms. Sandberg has asked a wide array of women to contribute their success stories to her new Web site. (Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, wrote an essay, and the newspaper is one of many corporations to sign on to the project.) The written requests ask for positive endings, suggesting that tales closing with missed promotions or broken marriages are unwelcome. Hoping to reach beyond an elite audience, Ms. Sandberg and her foundation joined forces with Cosmopolitan magazine, which is publishing a 40-page supplement to its April issue devoted to Ms. Sandberg’s ideas, and plan to spread her message to community colleges, according to those involved in the project.

But criticism is also starting to build: that Ms. Sandberg places too much of the onus on women who are already struggling to fulfill impossible demands, and too little on government and employers to provide better child care, more flexible jobs and other concrete gains.

Ms. Sandberg “does what too many successful women before her have done: blaming other women for not trying hard enough,” wrote Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a consultant who works with companies to improve their gender balance, after watching a video of Ms. Sandberg speaking on the topic at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month. “Every resistant man on the planet will be able to quote her” saying that women simply must become more ambitious, Ms. Cox continued. (Ms. Sandberg writes that she focuses on internal barriers because the external ones get more attention.)

Ms. Sandberg’s project, according to members of her launch committee and their solicitations, asks little of the corporations signing on as “launch partners,” which include American Express, Google, Sony, Johnson & Johnson and multiple media businesses. Mostly they are asked to lend their logo to Lean In and distribute its materials to employees. In exchange, they will get recognition for supporting the Lean In cause, the solicitation says.

Ms. Sandberg’s chief critic has been Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor and former top State Department official, who published an Atlantic Magazine article titled “Why Women Can’t Have It All,” last year arguing that feminism — and Ms. Sandberg — were holding women to unattainable standards for personal and professional success.

Since then, both women quietly developed perhaps the most notable feminist row since Ms. Friedan refused to shake Gloria Steinem’s hand decades ago.

According to several people who have spoken to both women, Ms. Sandberg felt blindsided by Ms. Slaughter’s criticisms, and though they briefly exchanged e-mails, Ms. Sandberg stopped replying and refused joint speaking appearances. Ms. Slaughter continued her commentary: “Sheryl Sandberg is both superhuman and rich,” she told Fortune magazine, implying that her advice makes little sense for anyone who is not.

“She’s made a real contribution with the book, but it’s only half the story,” Ms. Slaughter said in an interview.

The Slaughter-Sandberg match may represent what some may see as a welcome new phase in the debate over work and motherhood. The “mommy wars,” with working and stay-at-home mothers sniping at one another’s choices, may have finally run their course. Instead, Ms. Sandberg, Ms. Slaughter and many others are arguing about the best strategy for fulfilling feminism’s promise. “If you tell women to look inside themselves, you’re letting the corporations and government off the hook,” said Ms. Spar, the Barnard president, and “if you focus on the corporations and the governments, you’re not being realistic.”

Ms. Sandberg, who wrote a senior thesis at Harvard about domestic violence and women’s income, and who has championed women at Google and Facebook, shows no sign of relenting. On top of running a major company and rearing two young children — her husband, Dave Goldberg, is chief executive of SurveyMonkey, a technology company — she has thrown herself into her new project.

Though she insists she is committed to Facebook, which might be awkward for her to leave given its rocky initial public offering, some wonder whether “Lean In” is the first step toward a new career for her, perhaps in politics.

“She is using all of her social capital on this,” said Rachel Sklar, founder of a networking list for women in technology, who is on the Lean In launch committee. Asked how Ms. Sandberg would balance her demanding job with the creation of a new movement, a member of the team offered a tentative answer: she plans to use her vacation days.

NYT