A while back, the Turkish TV soap opera Noor saw wide viewership in the Arab world, in subtitled form. Several divorces has been attributed to this show, with social scientists attributing this to unrealistic expectations by some viewers vs. real life.

Now, British researchers have independently reached a similar conclusion: romantic comedies set unrealistic expectations, and hence ruin couple's relationship.

The Dayton Daily News has a nice article on NCR's history and archives tracing some of the long history spanning more than a century.

The article, NCR maintains, 'Dayton is our headquarters' addresses the troubling trend of moving large parts of the company to other locations, such as Atlanta (for the Worldwide Customer Service center) and New York's World Trade Center (for the executive offices).

According to Glass Door's blog on companies with lowest overall employee rating, NCR ranks 15th out of the 50 worst rated companies.

Bill Nuti has an approval rating of only 27%.

This is based on 'at least' 25 employees rating the company.

Other companies on the list are who's who in badly managed companies, such as United Airlines, Reynolds and Reynolds and Radioshack.

I wrote before on France, and the marginalization of minorities causing alienation and ethnic strife. That was triggered by police chasing an immigrant youth who hid in an electric station and died when shocked by the current. Days of rage followed with confrontation between police and immigrant youth. Lots of property damage ensued.

One of the culture phenomenons everywhere is the emergence of unlikely entertainers suddenly, gaining fame in a short time, and everyone listening to their music/performances.

In the USA this is often a result of a mighty marketing machine behind mediocre talent, coupled with tabloids gossiping about the latest juicy rumor (e.g. Britney Spears).

US President-Elect Barack Obama was on an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC yesterday.

Among the things that was discussed, was his intention on keeping the Blackberry he currently uses.

What struck me was this quote:

"One of the things that I'm going to have to work through is how to break through the isolation -- the bubble that exists around the president.

A word of caution for female tourists visiting Egypt: be careful of the many of the men working in tourist areas in Egypt.

Although the vast majority of Egyptians have a high sense of honor and good conduct, it seems that tourist areas seem to attract a relatively high concentration of people with lax morals, who would exploit tourists in many ways. It can manifest itself as persistent aggressive begging, peddling cheap goods, charging 10X the normal prices for services and goods, and what this article focuses on: exploiting female tourists.

According to a report by the National Intelligence Council, the USA's global dominance is waning over the next two decades. Other rising economic powers include China, India, Russia and Brazil.

Ever wondered why the weird date used for HTTP headers in Drupal? Specifically, did you ever check the Expires: header in Drupal?

You may have stumbled on it while inspecting header data using wget or FireFox tamper data. Or you were simply browsing Drupal's source code in bootstrap.inc, and saw this?

header("Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT");

Well, that magical date is today, and it is Dries' birthday. So he turns 30 years old today!