TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

“Will cellphone novels kill ‘the author’?” a famous literary journal, Bungaku-kai, asked on the cover of its January issue. Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.

Whatever their literary talents, cellphone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of.

One such star, a 21-year-old woman named Rin, wrote “If You” over a six-month stretch during her senior year in high school. While commuting to her part-time job or whenever she found a free moment, she tapped out passages on her cellphone and uploaded them on a popular Web site for would-be authors.

After cellphone readers voted her novel No. 1 in one ranking, her story of the tragic love between two childhood friends was turned into a 142-page hardcover book last year. It sold 400,000 copies and became the No. 5 best-selling novel of 2007, according to a closely watched list by Tohan, a major book distributor.

“My mother didn’t even know that I was writing a novel,” said Rin, who, like many cellphone novelists, goes by only one name. “So at first when I told her, well, I’m coming out with a novel, she was like, what? She didn’t believe it until it came out and appeared in bookstores.”

The cellphone novel was born in 2000 after a home-page-making Web site, Maho no i-rando, realized that many users were writing novels on their blogs; it tinkered with its software to allow users to upload works in progress and readers to comment, creating the serialized cellphone novel. But the number of users uploading novels began booming only two to three years ago, and the number of novels listed on the site reached one million last month, according to Maho no i-rando.

The boom appeared to have been fueled by a development having nothing to do with culture or novels but by cellphone companies’ decision to offer unlimited transmission of packet data, like text-messaging, as part of flat monthly rates. The largest provider, Docomo, began offering this service in mid-2004.

“Their cellphone bills were easily reaching $1,000, so many people experienced what they called ‘packet death,’ and you wouldn’t hear from them for a while,” said Shigeru Matsushima, an editor who oversees the book uploading site at Starts Publishing, a leader in republishing cellphone novels.

The affordability of cellphones coincided with the coming of age of a generation of Japanese for whom cellphones, more than personal computers, had been an integral part of their lives since junior high school. So they read the novels on their cellphones, even though the same Web sites were also accessible by computer. They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.

“It’s not that they had a desire to write and that the cellphone happened to be there,” said Chiaki Ishihara, an expert in Japanese literature at Waseda University who has studied cellphone novels. “Instead, in the course of exchanging e-mail, this tool called the cellphone instilled in them a desire to write.”

Indeed, many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers.

The writers are not paid for their work online, no many how many millions of times it is viewed. The payoff, if any, comes when the novels are reproduced and sold as traditional books. Readers have free access to the Web sites that carry the novels, or pay at most $1 to $2 a month, but the sites make most of their money from advertising.

Critics say the novels owe a lot to a genre devoured by the young: comic books. In cellphone novels, characters tend to be undeveloped and descriptions thin, while paragraphs are often fragments and consist of dialogue.

“Traditionally, Japanese would depict a scene emotionally, like ‘The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country,’ ” Mika Naito, a novelist, said, referring to the famous opening sentence of Yasunari Kawabata’s “Snow Country.”

“In cellphone novels, you don’t need that,” said Ms. Naito, 36, who recently began writing cellphone novels at the urging of her publisher. “If you limit it to a certain place, readers won’t be able to feel a sense of familiarity.”

Written in the first person, many cellphone novels read like diaries. Almost all the authors are young women delving into affairs of the heart, spiritual descendants, perhaps, of Shikibu Murasaki, the 11th-century royal lady-in-waiting who wrote “The Tale of Genji.”

“Love Sky,” a debut novel by a young woman named Mika, was read by 20 million people on cellphones or on computers, according to Maho no i-rando, where it was first uploaded. A tear-jerker featuring adolescent sex, rape, pregnancy and a fatal disease — the genre’s sine qua non — the novel nevertheless captured the young generation’s attitude, its verbal tics and the cellphone’s omnipresence. Republished in book form, it became the No. 1 selling novel last year and was made into a movie.

Given the cellphone novels’ domination of the mainstream, critics no longer dismiss them, though some say they should be classified with comic books or popular music.

Rin said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold.

“They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said. “On other hand, I understand how older Japanese don’t want to recognize these as novels. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I’d like cellphone novels to be recognized as a genre.”

As the genre’s popularity leads more people to write cellphone novels, though, an existential question has arisen: can a work be called a cellphone novel if it is not composed on a cellphone, but on a computer or, inconceivably, in longhand?

“When a work is written on a computer, the nuance of the number of lines is different, and the rhythm is different from writing on a cellphone,” said Keiko Kanematsu, an editor at Goma Books, a publisher of cellphone novels. “Some hard-core fans wouldn’t consider that a cellphone novel.”

Still, others say the genre is not defined by the writing tool.

Ms. Naito, the novelist, says she writes on a computer and sends the text to her phone, with which she rearranges her work. Unlike the first-time cellphone novelists in their teens or early 20s, she says she is more comfortable writing on a computer.

But at least one member of the cellphone generation has made the switch to computers. A year ago, one of Starts Publishing’s young stars, Chaco, gave up her phone even though she could compose much faster with it by tapping with her thumb.

“Because of writing on the cellphone, her nail had cut into the flesh and became bloodied,” said Mr. Matsushima of Starts.

“Since she’s switched to a computer,” he added, “her vocabulary’s gotten richer and her sentences have also grown longer.”

via The New York Times

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Sobradinho, Brazil (NTN24) – Instead of using barbed wire, an alarm system or a security guard to keep thieves away, a Brazilian doctor decided to place unusual objects around her property: needles infected with HIV virus.

Tired of having intruders breaking in her home, a female physician living in the city of Sobradinho taped dozens of syringes atop her fence and hung a sign that warned: “Wall with HIV-infected blood. No trespassing.”

The woman, who did not want to be identified, works as an orthopedist in a public hospital and said she got the needles from the institution. She said thieves have entered her place two times and stolen several objects.

“The first time, they (thieves) took my lawn mower, hair dryer and my camera,” said the woman who also had her television taken.

The syringes were placed on Thursday (August 18) and neighbors soon started to complain, saying the woman’s attitude was dangerous.

On Saturday (August 20), the condominium manager ordered the doctor to remove the needles within five days and imposed a fine of 180 reais (around 112 U.S. dollars). The syringes were taken down on Sunday (August 21) night.

The region’s Medical Council will investigate the case, since it is forbidden for workers to take medical supplies from public hospitals.

“Any attitude that a person, a doctor, has which could harm a patient or a person should be condemned,” added the Council’s Secretary, Farid Buitrago.

The woman will undergo clinical evaluation and could lose her license. The city of Sobradinho is located some 22 kilometers from the capital Brasilia.

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(CNN) — Steve Jobs, the visionary in the black turtleneck who co-founded Apple in a Silicon Valley garage, built it into the world’s leading tech company and led a mobile-computing revolution with wildly popular devices such as the iPhone, died Wednesday. He was 56.

The hard-driving executive pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse. In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet — all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age.

His friends and Apple fans on Wednesday night mourned the passing of a tech titan.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

More than one pundit, praising Jobs’ ability to transform entire industries with his inventions, called him a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci.

“Steve Jobs is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism,” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera said in August. “His intuition has been phenomenal over the years.”

Jobs’ death, while dreaded by Apple’s legions of fans, was not unexpected. He had battled cancer for years, took a medical leave from Apple in January and stepped down as chief executive in August because he could “no longer meet (his) duties and expectations.”

Born February 24, 1955, and then adopted, Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California — which would become home to Apple’s headquarters — and showed an early interest in electronics. As a teenager, he phoned William Hewlett, president of Hewlett-Packard, to request parts for a school project. He got them, along with an offer of a summer job at HP.

Jobs dropped out of Oregon’s Reed College after one semester, although he returned to audit a class in calligraphy, which he says influenced Apple’s graceful, minimalist aesthetic. He quit one of his first jobs, designing video games for Atari, to backpack across India and take psychedelic drugs. Those experiences, Jobs said later, shaped his creative vision.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future,” he told Stanford University graduates during a commencement speech in 2005. “You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

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(CNN) — Japan’s parliament elected Yoshihiko Noda as the country’s new prime minister Tuesday, making him the country’s sixth new leader in five years.

Noda won 308 out of 476 possible votes.

The prime minister-elect will officially take over his new post after a ceremonial endorsement by Japan’s emperor, which is expected to happen Wednesday.

Ahead of the vote, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan officially submitted his resignation, as did his Cabinet, clearing the way for Noda’s election.

The Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s ruling party, picked Noda as its new leader on Monday. He served as finance minister in Kan’s cabinet.

In his first speech as party leader, Noda called for party unity to tackle Japan’s massive problems.

“Running Japan’s government is like pushing a giant snowball up a snowy, slippery hill,” he said Sunday. “In times like this, we can’t say, ‘I don’t like this person,’ or ‘I don’t like that person.’ The snowball will slide down.”

On Friday, Prime Minister Kan announced that he would resign. His approval rating had tumbled following the devastating March earthquake and tsunami that triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl as reactor cores overheated and spewed radioactive material into surrounding areas.

An observer of Japan’s revolving door of prime ministers said the country’s political problems are weighing down one of the world’s largest economies.

Japanese politicians lack spine and public support, said Keith Henry of the Tokyo-based Asia Strategy, a government policy consulting firm.

“They’ve got to turn the ship around 180 degrees,” Henry said. “Until they see an iceberg, they’re not going to do it.”

Japan is facing a massive reconstruction program in the region devastated by the tsunami, an ongoing nuclear energy crisis and unaddressed problems in the economy.

Noda, a fiscal conservative, has pledged to raise taxes and would like to privatize state assets.

Last week, the credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Japan to an Aa3 rating from Aa2, blaming the country’s huge deficit and frequent changes in administration that have prevented the government from implementing long-term economic policies.

The CIA World Factbook puts the government debt at more than 200% of the GDP.

via CNN

Brent Lewin for National Post

In Burma’s hilly Chin province, women have sported full-facial tattoos for generations, a cultural tradition and rite of passage for many — a sign of beauty, strength and pride. But Brent Lewin, a Toronto and Bangkok-based photographer, discovered that’s all changing. Earlier this year, he interviewed and photographed some of Chin’s few remaining tattooed women, now in their 60s to 80s. He told the Post’s Sarah Boesveld about the practice and its slow but steady disappearance from Chin culture.

To many of us here in the West, it would be pretty unheard of for a woman to tattoo her entire face. But these women have been doing it for hundreds of years. Why?
When I asked, I got varying responses. But the consensus seemed to be that a long time ago they were known for their beauty, and kings in Burma found out about these Chin women and teenagers. The kings would then come and basically pick out the women he wanted and take them away. In response to that, the village elders who were women started tattooing the girls as a measure against the king coming to take them away. It was almost to steal their beauty.

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SAO PAULO — An overcrowded prison in northeastern Brazil has added a new layer of security against escapes: two geese. Sobral prison warden Wellington Picanco tells the G1 news website the geese make a lot of noise when they sense “strange movements.” He says the geese roaming the prison grounds also will help alert guards to the outbreak of violence among rival gangs at the overcrowded facility. The prison was built to hold 153 inmates. It currently holds 255. Calls to the prison for more details went unanswered.

via huffingtonpost

The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself.

The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed.

The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis.

The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.

A person who was on the farm in place of a friend witnessed the procedures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The witness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile.

The workers ran away in fear when they saw the mother bear rushing to its cub’s side.

Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and eventually strangled it.

It then dropped the cub and ran head-first into a wall, killing itself.

Many TCM practitioners have denounced the use of bear bile in their treatment as there are cheaper herbs and synthetics that can be used in its place.

Bear bile is traditionally used to remove ‘heat’ from the body as well as treat high fever, liver ailments and sore eyes.

via AsiaOne

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Thanks for the tip George B.!

This booking photo provided by the Connersville Police Department on June 22, 2011, shows Willard Yoder of Milroy, Ind. who has been charged with four counts of child solicitation. Police arrested the 26-year-old Amish man who they say showed up in a horse and buggy for what he thought was a meeting to have sex with a 12-year-old girl.

Connersville Police Department / AP

Twenty-one-year-old Willard Yoder, who is Amish, was arrested in Indiana last week for “sexting” a 12-year-old girl and trying to solicit her outside a restaurant.

Their correspondence began when he texted a random number and received a response.  A forensic probe of the girl’s cell phone revealed that Yoder had sent her more than 600 salacious texts, including two video messages and six pictures of himself and his genitalia, according to the Connersville Police Department report obtained by The Smoking Gun.

He arranged to meet the girl last Wednesday night at the Takehome restaurant in Milroy, Indiana.  The report said Yoder “had advised in an earlier text that he would be driving a horse and buggy and the proposed sex act would happen inside the buggy.”

So police staked out the restaurant and, in a sting operation, busted Yoder.  He was arrested on four felony counts for soliciting a minor.  Yoder was “cooperative” and confessed on video to the inappropriate exchanges with the girl, whom he thought was 13 years old. CNN reports that bond is set at $20,000 with a preliminary trial date of September 19.

But how did this guy get a cell phone if he lives in a community that shuns technology?