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Community radio in the U.S. received a large boost in January when President Obama signed a billed that will permit establishment of an estimated 800 to 1200 new local community radio stations About 800 of the non-commercial community stations are already operating and providing music, health, education, and local information, news, and sports. The stations are run by community organizations, churches, and other civic groups, typically staffed by volunteers, and dependent upon donations from organizations and listeners. Community radio operations tend to provide information about community and civic organizations that are overlooked by commercial broadcasting, focus on social issues in communities, and provide services to minority, ethic and immigrant groups. Programming on community radio is distinctively different from commercial radio and tends to be more local than, and providing alternative content to, that of public radio stations. The stations operate on low power,...

If you visit any of the memorials to those who fell in the First World War, you'll find five simple words on most of them - "Their names liveth forever more". A tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of their country. Today is Martyr's Day in India, the day 63 years ago when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. Its a day when the nation is supposed to honour those who laid down their lives for it. Its by and large a forgotten date - just look at today's newspaper to see if there's any mention of it at all. Well , passage of time dims memories. After all the last real war that India fought was in 1971 - well before most readers of this blog were born. Last year I posted this on this day . Today a few words on the greatest of the nation's martyrs - Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi is largely a forgotten man in India today. A few platitudes and he is conveniently brushed aside as belonging to the ancient past. But we would do well to ponder on the ...

Prada, the Italian fashion group, is reportedly going to seek a listing in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Nothing electric about this, except that you would have thought that they would list in Milan. European fashion houses are ,well, snootishly European. So the move to list in Hong Kong does raise eyebrows. This is the magic of China. As even a casual visitor to China knows, every brand is ruthlessly copied and pirated on a big scale. You can easily buy any fashion brand, indistinguishable from the original, perhaps even made in the same factory as the original, at one hundredth the price. Despite this, every fashion house's fortunes these days are driven by demand in Asia, chiefly from China. The nouveau riche in China like to spend. And spend on outrageously priced brands which you can then flaunt. There's a certain pleasure into walking into a room of Prada wearers and knowing that everybody elses is a fake and yours is the real thing. Flaunt your original. But if your main...

This week The Business releases regular Businessmen Alex Koll and Chris Garcia to other comedy duties, and welcomes three special comedy guests in their place: Mary Van Note, Andy Wood and Zach Coulter! Mary Van Note is no stranger to The Business, and she should not be to you either. She has stormed the city, the nation and the internet with her charmingly awkward and sexually blunt stand-up. She has her own web-series on IFC....com, and she is the owner of an impeccable sense of fashion: http://maryvannote.com/blog/ ...and that's just the tip of the Van Iceberg. Catch her prior to her SF Sketchfest show over the coming weekend. Andy Wood is truly Portland's Finest. As a comedian he has performed with the best around, including at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle and the legendary Bentzen Ball in D.C. As a producer and founder of The Bridgetown Comedy Festival, he has brought the best around to Portland for one of the best and well stocked comedy festivals in our modern wor...

There are some ideal moments to observe humanity. From a sidewalk cafe in the heart of Paris on a warm summers day. From the stands at Eden Gardens, or Anfield, or Madison Square Gardens - pick your sport. Or in an Indian train. Another such classic place is when an aeroplane lands. Regular readers of this blog are aware of this blogger's fixation with air travel and this piece will come as no surprise, especially after this and this . As soon as the wheels touch the ground, humanity inside the plane wakes up and warms up. He may have been snoring just a moment ago, but he's wide awake now and is starting to limber up. The hand goes to the pocket and out comes the mobile phone. Its discreetly switched on and is sort of kept hidden between the legs, lest the pretty stew frowns on him and tells him to switch off. However the music on start up or the various pings rather give him away - such auditory masterpieces emanating close to an unfortunate part of the anatomy is brushed asi...

Years ago, a grizzled old oilman found a baby lying abandoned in a basket. That young boy became the oilman's nominal business partner, adding a veneer of respectability to his shady operations. Later, he grew up to be rising local comedy star Chris Thayer (Funny Party, SF Sketchfest), who returns to The Business this Wednesday as part of an unstoppable oil fire of comedy. We've still got Alex Koll, Chris Garcia, Bucky Sinister a...nd Sean Keane, who have agreed to let Mr. Thayer plunder their comedy fields for this evening. Oh, the comedy will be deafening! The jokes will beat you over the head like an old alcoholic wielding a bowling pin! Will the show be loosely based on Upton Sinclair's "Oil"? (No.) The show starts at 8 PM. There's no BYOB, but feel free to drink a milkshake during the show. Or even the milkshake of someone sitting nearby who won't agree to let you buy out his milkshake rights. Five-dollar admission, and don't forget your 2 for 1 ...

In the aftermath of the tragedy at Tucson, Arizona, there has been a frenzy of chest beating in the United States as to whether the poisoned and inflamed political rhetoric that is now commonplace, was a contributor to the tragedy. It took The Economist to say that was the wrong question. The real issue, as The Economist argues , is the gun control laws in the US. For those unfamiliar with the Tucson tragedy, a deranged man attempted to assassinate a Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. Six people were killed, including a nine year old girl. A further thirteen were injured, including Ms Giffords, who is battling for her life in hospital. Unfortunately, such incidents have become all too common in the United States. Even more unfortunately, many of them happen in school and university campuses. Wikipedia even has a depressing listing of such massacres here . Guns are far too easy to get and own in the US. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US constitution....

Onions in India. Cabbage & pork in South Korea. Chilli Peppers in Indonesia. Frighteningly, wheat globally. Riots have already started in Algeria , and is sure to spread. Food price inflation is hitting the world again. Millions of children will echo Oliver Twist's begging in those immortal words which are the title of this post. Are we going to see a repeat of 2008 ? This blogger is no expert on food economics. But the issue of food prices is close to his heart and he has posted on the awfulness of food price inflation here before. All inflation is bad, but food price inflation is especially awful. For it ceases to be an economic problem of supply and demand and becomes an issue of survival for half the world's population. It sparks a humanitarian crisis. And it will inevitably lead to unrest and riots. The world cannot afford inflation in the price of food. Certainly not the high double digit inflation that it is seeing. The issue is a complex one. World food supply and ...

2010 went out with a big bang for The Business, with a sold-out house and a drop in visit from our good friend Sheng Wang. The only way to follow that of course, is to do it again at the first Business of 2011, with another full house and sets from Julian Rodriguez and Ali Wong. With such a big push/kick into the new year, we can only imagine what it will bring. We have some tricks up our sleeve, so keep an ear to the internet tracks and keep coming out to the show. See you there! Sincerely, The Businesmen

The Ancient Library of Alexandria was one of the pinnacle achievements of human civilisation at the time of the birth of Christ. Knowledge is the cornerstone of human achievement and cataloging and storage of that knowledge is a singular feat . The library of Alexandria was, for that age and time, an unbelievable beacon of human endeavor. It is one of humankind's greatest tragedies that the library was burnt down by the Romans. While libraries came and went since, the Encyclopedia Britannica arose as a store of much of the knowledge and wisdom that the human race accumulated. But, with the arrival of the internet, arose another phenomenon in that same illustrious league - Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a singular human achievement, built cooperatively and freely, as a memorial to knowledge. That its free, that its ubiquitous, that it is accessible in so many languages, that it is constantly improved and bettered, is something that the wise men who built the library of Alexandria would...

Of course, there is no such thing as too much money. One man's dream is another man's basic necessity. But then sometimes there are those who don't know what to do with their money. The damn thing is burning a hole in the pocket (or the bank account, or wherever). They've already bought into houses, gold, shares, mutual funds, whatever. Now what ? They invent instruments like catastrophe bonds . I read about them with my jaw dropping - hadn't known that such esoteric stuff existed. Well compared to other even more esoteric species of investments, this might more resemble "plain vanilla". That only underscores my point. Insurance companies issue these catastrophe bonds. They carry a higher rate of interest and investors invest in them. The condition is that the investor loses his investment if the catastrophe occurs. So he is essentially betting that the catastrophe does not occur. For the insurance company, this is a form of reinsurance. If the catastroph...

Is Facebook really worth $50 bn ?? Yes, billion that is, not million. Or are we seeing the second incarnation of the mindless hype that we saw at the dawn of the century which made the word dot com a household name ? Judge for yourself. What happened yesterday was that Facebook raised the first tranche of $500m funding from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor. Goldman Sachs is putting $375m of its own money . Extrapolation is always a dangerous thing, but if you take the licence of using the same valuation per share to determine the value of Facebook as a whole, it somewhere close to $50 bn. Facebook is not a listed company; so we should be careful. But still such a stratospheric valuation ?? Facebook's revenues are reputed to be some $ 2 bn. This all seems to be old style internet ads - very few media companies have succeeded in that space. Google is different - its advertising model is such that a fair proportion of the searches actually lead to a commercial transaction. Clicks...

Every business worth its salt touts a Business Continuity Plan; with that dreaded acronym BCP. In many companies its mostly a piece of paper; not worth what its written on. But in some companies its taken to an obsessive level - elaborate design and repeated testing. The thought leads me to muse on whether a Life Continuity Plan is worth considering for a society or even individuals. It might sound like a morbid thought, especially as the New Year cheer has still not died down, but it isn't. Take societies. Its "life chain"has been optimised so much that there is little slack for things going wrong. One truckers strike is enough to make most goods vanish from stores - happens in India repeatedly. The power grid in most countries is bursting at its seams ; just needs one major breakdown and there will be a fair amount of chaos - remember California of a few years ago. Natural disasters, even minor ones, cause mayhem - recall the Icelandic volcano of last year. And witnes...