Starting Points

Jun 1, 2010

'Social Networks' - 1,500+ Links from Alexa Internet

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Happiness May Come With Age, Study Says

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.

It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.

“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”

The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.

The survey also asked about “global well-being” by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.

Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.

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The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.

In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.

Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. “It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s,” he said. “And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this.”

Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. “These results say there are distinctive patterns here,” he said, “and it’s worth some research effort to try to figure out what’s going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?”

The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll’s health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. “These are four reasonable candidates,” Dr. Stone said, “but they don’t make much difference.”

For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.

Proposal for day-laborer site brings a national debate to Centreville

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By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; B01

At first, a Northern Virginia developer's plan to build a gathering place for immigrant day laborers seemed like a simple solution for a local problem. But as the national immigration debate continues to ramp up, the idea of erecting a double-wide work center in Centreville -- privately funded and staffed by church volunteers -- is facing increased scrutiny from those on both sides of the debate.

Albert J. Dwoskin, once described as the region's "shopping center king" and a longtime Democratic Party donor, last month proposed setting up a trailer behind his Centreville Square Shopping Center as a de facto work center for about 50 Guatemalan day laborers who for years have sought construction and landscaping jobs near the stores and the adjacent Centreville Public Library. Fairfax County Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) has supported the plan, and a group of churches, calling itself the Centreville Immigration Forum, has offered to staff the facility.

But a town-hall-style meeting Tuesday to discuss the proposal is expected to bring out hundreds of shopping center tenants and nearby residents who oppose a day-laborer site because they worry that it could lure more immigrants seeking work. Dwoskin acknowledged the potential for a firestorm.

"The less press this gets, the better," Dwoskin, 67, said last week.

Frey, a moderate Republican with a low-key demeanor, said he, too, feared that the meeting could devolve into a larger discussion of federal immigration policy and threaten the community's carefully hatched plans.

"People have wanted me to grandstand and become some kind of a demagogue on this issue," Frey said. "This is a Centreville problem, not a federal problem. Not to say I wish this hadn't bubbled up, say, three months before Arizona," referring to a new Arizona law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

Debate about Spanish-speaking day laborers gathering to seek work has been common in the Washington region, from Herndon, Annandale, Culmore and Falls Church in Northern Virginia to Wheaton, Silver Spring and Gaithersburg in Maryland.

In Centreville, a Fairfax County community of about 50,000 that is both prosperous and quickly diversifying, the controversy focuses on the four dozen or so Hispanic men, some of whom are undocumented immigrants, who often stand near Lee Highway and Centreville Road. For five years, Dwoskin has fielded complaints from many of his 120 shopkeepers, who say their customers are being scared away.

"I personally don't like to see them hanging around there. I have families with kids that come in, and it can be a problem," said Rayman Hamid, a Guyana native and former winner of the Centreville Businessman of the Year award who owns a Baskin-Robbins franchise a few blocks from where many of the laborers gather. "But I feel sorry for them, too. They're human beings, man. I don't know what to do."

A year ago, Dwoskin hired a full-time security guard to keep the men off his property, so they took refuge near the library. The Centreville Immigration Forum, the church group that organized three years ago to work with the Hispanic community, has offered its services, holding public forums about immigration and the difficulties of day laboring. Many of the men have told church officials that they have been cheated by employers, said Alice H. Foltz, a parishioner at Wellspring United Church of Christ. She is the unofficial "convener" of about 40 churchgoers who have agreed to staff the trailer as a day-laboring work center.

"It's an issue of exploitation," said Holtz, a history teacher at Northern Virginia Community College's Loudoun County campus. "But we're not trying to solve immigration here. We're trying to help these men."

No taxpayer funds would be used, Frey said, and Dwoskin would pay for the trailer and its utilities. Edgar Aranda-Yanoc, a community educator in the Falls Church office of the Legal Aid Justice Center, called it a "local solution to a local problem," adding that it has the support of the day laborers who live in a stretch of townhouses near the library.

David Garcia, 35, who moved from Guatemala with his wife about four years ago, said a work center could give him and other immigrants a haven and a steady income. "Sometimes they pick us up and don't pay. So a trailer would help," Garcia said.

But many shopping center tenants and customers said they fear that a hiring center would attract more immigrants seeking work, overwhelming already congested roads and spurring a spike in vandalism, loitering and petty crime.

"It's a terrible idea. They're going to come from all over, and we're going to get a reputation for not being a safe place," said Gary Malm, who owns Centreville Tire and Auto near the trailer's proposed site. "I wouldn't want my daughter or son or my wife dropping off a car at night around here if they were hanging around."

Del. Timothy D. Hugo (R-Fairfax), whose district includes Centreville, sent an e-mail to 9,000 supporters urging them to attend Tuesday's meeting -- scheduled for 7 p.m. at Centre Ridge Elementary School -- and oppose the work center plan. "Centreville is turning a blind eye to the concerns of its residents," said Hugo, who co-sponsored a bill this year that will allow Virginia localities to prosecute those who sell "goods or services" on roadways.

Church forum members say they fear that Centreville could experience the turmoil that occurred in Herndon in 2006 over a plan for a town-sponsored day-laborer center. But Dwoskin and Frey hope the work center idea calms tensions. "We'll see what happens Tuesday," Frey said.

Yahoo to turn subscribers' e-mail contact lists into social networking base

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By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; A08

Yahoo plans to announce Tuesday that it is jumping into social networking by using its massive population of e-mail subscribers as a base for sharing information on the Web.

Over the next few weeks, its 280 million e-mail users will be able to exchange comments, pictures and news articles with others in their address books. The program won't expose a user's contact list to the public, as was done by Google through its social networking application, Buzz. But unless a user proactively opts out of the program, those Yahoo e-mail subscribers will automatically be part of a sweeping rollout of features that will incorporate the kinds of sharing done on sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

The plan could spark criticism from Yahoo e-mail users, who signed up for the free service perhaps never imagining the people they e-mailed would become friends for sharing vacation videos, political causes and random thoughts throughout the day. And the move comes amid growing concern by federal lawmakers and regulators over how firms such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft have handled the privacy of Internet users.

After backlash, Facebook last week announced new privacy tools to make it easier for users to block Web sites from tapping into their information, as well as a simpler way to configure who on the site can see personal data. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked Facebook on Friday to explain what kind of user data it had shared with third-party sites. Conyers also asked Google to retain, for federal and state regulators, the data the company scooped off WiFi networks as it collected Street View mapping photos around the country.

To allay privacy concerns, Yahoo said it would give users a week's notice before launching the new features and provide a single button on the site for opting out entirely.

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"We've been watching and trying to be thoughtful about our approach," said Anne Toth, head of privacy for Yahoo.

Specifically, the company will launch a product called Yahoo Updates that allows e-mail users to see what other contacts on their lists are commenting about or sharing on sites like Yahoo Finance, Facebook and the photo sharing site Flickr. Updates will initially include 15 sites and partnerships and will eventually expand to include partners such as Twitter this summer.

Yahoo has tiptoed into social media, launching a similar tool last year called Connections, which allowed each user to customize a list of contacts with whom to share information. The company also tried two years ago to build a competitive product to Facebook, where users sought "friends," or contacts, to join micro-networks within Yahoo in the same way Facebook users amass friends through requests. Yahoo abandoned that project and instead decided to tap into its captive audience of e-mail users.

The move is part of a revamping of the once-rudderless Internet pioneer. Chief executive Carol Bartz, brought in last year to lead the firm, has stripped the company of unprofitable business units to focus on its greatest strengths -- its popular free e-mail and messaging programs, and its library of sports, news and finance sites -- to keep users in the Yahoo universe longer.

The longer a user stays on the site, the more advertising dollars and e-commerce it generates. But it remains to be seen if users will view their contact lists as the kinds of people they choose to socialize with on the Web. When Google launched Buzz, some users complained that they used Gmail for business and to correspond with strangers and that they didn't want to share birthday videos with their plumbers or bosses.

Yahoo will begin notifying users of the change on June 7, one week before the launch. Users who don't want to participate can click one button on the settings page to opt out. Or they can customize each piece of information -- a Facebook update or a comment on a Yahoo news story -- to either be shared with Yahoo e-mail contacts or Facebook. Eventually, Twitter and other partners with social-networking platforms will also be included.

"What Yahoo has done is recognized that your e-mail or messenger network is a useful resource and that you may be interested in knowing what your contacts are interested in knowing about, and they stop there," said Jules Polonetsky, the director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a privacy think tank. "That's opposed to the idea that then, therefore, your relationship with them risks being exposed."

Israel says Free Gaza Movement poses threat to Jewish state

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By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; A06

Once viewed only as a political nuisance by Israel's government, the group behind the Gaza aid flotilla has grown since its inception four years ago into a broad international movement that now includes Islamist organizations that Israeli intelligence agencies say pose a security threat to the Jewish state.

The Free Gaza Movement's evolution is among Israel's chief reasons for conducting Monday morning's raid on a ship carrying medicine, construction materials, school paper and parts for Gaza's defunct water treatment plant. The movement once drew its support almost entirely from activists and donors in Australia, Britain and the United States. But the ship that Israeli forces stormed Monday morning was operated by a Turkish charity that Israeli intelligence agencies and others contend has connections to radical Islamist groups. The raid left nine activists dead, and at least eight U.S. citizens in Israeli custody.

The movement's leadership rejects Israeli claims of an Islamist takeover.

"That's absolutely ridiculous," said Ramzi Kysia, who sits on the board of the U.S. arm of the Free Gaza Movement. "There's always been an expectation that Israel would try to set an example with one of these flotillas. But the fact that they did so in this way is absolutely insane. The Israeli government is out of control."

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said there was a "qualitative change" to this Gaza aid mission compared with earlier ones that Israel's navy had let pass. He said the group on the Mavi Marmara vessel was "a front for a radical Islamist organization, probably with links to the ruling party in Turkey," which less hawkish Israeli governments than the current one have pointed to as a model of appropriate Islamist rule. He called the aid mission a provocation.

"And we walked right into the trap," Rabinovich said.

Israel's government has long divided Palestinian advocacy groups into two camps -- those run by Israelis and Palestinians, and those headed by foreigners. The two often overlap in terms of financial support, but they act at times toward different ends.

Many of the Israeli and Palestinian-run groups focus on chipping away at the legal framework underpinning Israel's occupation of the territories it seized in the 1967 war. The work does not always make headlines outside the region, which is a chief goal of the Free Gaza Movement and other international groups that seek to draw attention to the Palestinian national cause.

"One of our goals is to bring in actual materials," said Adam Shapiro, a Free Gaza Movement board member whose wife, Huwaida Arraf, was aboard one of the boats seized before dawn Monday. "But there's also a political component. The blockade is a form of collective punishment, and nearly everyone talks about how it shouldn't be in place but never does anything about it. We're showing you must act."

The Israeli government largely sealed off the Gaza Strip when it withdrew its soldiers and settlements from the narrow coastal area in summer 2005.

A 2006 election victory by Hamas, an armed Islamist movement formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement that does not recognize Israel's right to exist, followed by a purging of the rival Fatah a year later gave Hamas day-to-day power over Gaza. The group, and other militant factions, used the territory to launch rocket attacks on southern Israel. The Israeli government hoped a siege would keep weapons out of Gaza and create public antipathy toward the Hamas-run government. The United Nations has criticized the blockade for causing a humanitarian crisis in the strip, where 1.5 million people live, most of them destitute refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants.

Kysia said the group initially set summer 2007 as the date for running the Gaza blockade. But money and volunteers were scarce until the movement began to recruit through the International Solidarity Movement, whose foreign activists often work inside the Palestinian territories. "We maxed out our credit cards, emptied our bank accounts and jumped off a cliff," Kysia said.

By summer 2008, the group had bought two fishing boats, and the Israeli government let them dock in Gaza five times that year. The boats carried medicine, food, school and construction materials, and other non-military items, as well as human rights activists and lawmakers from Europe and Turkey. On one occasion, the boats carried out Palestinian students who had won scholarships to study abroad but had been unable to secure Israeli travel documents.

Then in late 2008, when Israel began "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza to put down Hamas rocket fire, the Israeli navy turned back a flotilla carrying medical supplies. The group tried again in January and June 2009, when the Israeli military seized the ship and detained those aboard for as long as eight days.

Among them was Máiread Corrigan-Maguire, a Northern Ireland peace activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. Corrigan-Maguire was scheduled to travel on the flotilla Sunday night. But Kysia said the cargo ship she was supposed to sail on had mechanical problems and did not leave port. Among the Americans onboard was Edward L. Peck, a retired U.S. diplomat who once served as chief of mission in Iraq.

Israel has been concerned about the participation of IHH, or Humanitarian Relief Fund, a large Turkish charity that raises some of its money from Islamic religious groups. Kysia compared IHH to the U.S. charity CARE, which relies in part on donations from Christian organizations.

"Just because the IHH affiliation is with Islam and not Christianity does not mean they are terrorists," Kysia said.

But an Israeli military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said: "It was called a 'ship of peace,' but they were carrying cargo for war."

The official conceded that "we should've been a little smarter about how to stop them."

Staff writer Laura Blumenfeld contributed to this report.

Iraq's Sunni insurgent groups gather to plot comeback amid political crisis

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By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; A05

BAGHDAD -- Seven years after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, dozens of Iraqis representing various insurgent groups checked into a five-star hotel in Istanbul this spring to plot a comeback. Days later, members of the outlawed Baath Party held a public meeting in Damascus, Syria, to hail the party's rebirth.

The unusual anniversary gatherings rankled Iraqi and American officials. Although the groups don't have large constituencies in Iraq, officials worry that their appeals could gain traction amid a political crisis in Iraq that has weakened the government and left the Sunni Muslims who were dominant under Hussein feeling newly disenfranchised.

Attendees at the Istanbul meeting included representatives of the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the al-Rashideen Army, which were among the Sunni insurgent groups formed to fight the U.S. occupation. Leaders of the loosely connected groups have tried unsuccessfully to band together in the past. The creation of U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary squads in 2007 deflated the insurgency, driving some leaders into exile and forcing others to pledge to help the Americans.

As the U.S. military draws down, many Iraqi Sunnis who aligned themselves with the United States say they feel abandoned and vulnerable in a country run by Shiites. Until recently, insurgency leaders had kept a relatively low profile from exile in countries such as Syria and Jordan.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned Turkey and Syria for allowing the gatherings, and in an interview he accused them of helping to destabilize Iraq.

"The only ones benefiting are al-Qaeda and the terrorist organizations," Maliki said. "Thus, our advice to our friends and brothers: Terror does not know borders, religion or ethnicity. They are now attacking Iraq because there are suitable circumstances, and tomorrow they will attack Turkey and others."

Feeling shut out

The groups could find receptive audiences in Iraq if the next government is widely seen as having insufficient Sunni representation. Many Sunnis accuse the Shiite-led Iraqi government of being sectarian, pointing to factors such as the disproportionate number of Sunni detainees and efforts to weed out Sunnis from government jobs.

Sunnis made a strong showing in the March 7 parliamentary elections, propelling the largely secular Iraqiya bloc to a first-place finish. The bloc did not win enough seats to secure the majority needed to form a government, however, making it likelier that an alliance of two Shiite groups will appoint the new prime minister.

"There is no doubt that Sunnis will feel excluded, disenfranchised and marginalized if they are not given a significant share in government," said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group. "After all, it is with this expectation that they agreed to abandon the insurgency during the surge in 2007."

The Sunni insurgency sprang up after the United States disbanded Iraq's armed forces and a large share of its government workforce following the March 2003 invasion. The groups attacked U.S. troops and sought to sabotage their efforts to install a parliamentary system that empowered the majority Shiites.

The indigenous Iraqi insurgent groups were eclipsed in 2006 by the foreign-led organization al-Qaeda in Iraq, which came to control key parts of the capital and large areas in the west and north. Many members of the original insurgency surrendered or joined forces with the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Aside from al-Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates, the insurgent groups that remain have maintained a relatively low profile of late. In the past, they often were divided by rivalries. "It remains unclear how serious a threat to the security of the state they could pose," Hiltermann said. "The Sunnis' greatest liability is their own internal divisions and lack of popular leadership."

Common ground

The key purpose of the April 10 conference in Istanbul was to find common ground, said Rabih Haddad, one of the organizers. He said group leaders were heartened by the possibilities ahead as the U.S. military withdraws amid the political impasse. "The general mood was one of optimism," he said via phone from Beirut.

Haddad said that nearly 250 people representing 20 groups attended the conference. It was held in Turkey, he said, because it is an "open, democratic" country.

U.S. officials have expressed dissatisfaction to the Turkish government, which made clear it played no role in holding the event. American officials tried unsuccessfully last year to have discussions with political representatives of the Sunni extremist groups to persuade them to participate in the political process.

"These groups at that meeting in Turkey had an opportunity to participate in the electoral process here, had they been playing by the rules," said Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East.

Sunni insurgent groups have said the United States will remain the primary target of their violence. But they have also picked fights with the Iraqi government.

"We are not in favor of using force with the government or any Iraqi," Harith al-Dhari, an exiled Sunni activist who heads the Iraqi Muslim Scholars Association, said in a phone interview from Jordan. "But if the Iraqi government continues using force against the resistance and if they don't take meaningful steps toward reconciliation, we will be obliged to defend ourselves."

Correspondent Leila Fadel and special correspondent Jinan Hussein contributed to this report.

Online dating assistants help the lonely and busy

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By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; A01

Max Hartshorn has pretty much mastered online dating.

It took awhile, but the 24-year-old now knows exactly what kind of message to send to pique a woman's interest. The Montreal research assistant will come home from work, sit down with his laptop and bang out dozens of e-mails to attractive, eligible women.

He's never needy -- always charming and a little flirtatious. He keeps his missives short and usually includes a question or a subtle challenge. He's witty, a touch aloof and not overly complimentary.

And when he gets the woman, it's not his heart that flutters. It's his bank account.

Image by cheeky sushi via Flickr

Hartshorn is a hired gun, ghostwriting correspondence on behalf of single men unwilling, too busy or too inept to do it themselves. His online dating is done on commission for Virtual Dating Assistants, one of the first full-scale Internet-dating outsourcing companies. For $600, Virtual Dating Assistants guarantees clients two dates a month; the "executive service" package promises five dates a month for $1,200.

"I get paid for each woman who writes back positively," explains the modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac. "It's very analogous to sales . . . like a cold-caller or a telemarketer."

A telemarketer who toils anonymously in pursuit of love for the lonely. Darkly romantic, no?

No. "I don't care that much if it becomes a date or not," Hartshorn admits. His job is "lead generation" only. Sealing the deal is up to the company's "closers."

And going out on actual dates? That, unfortunately, the men have to do all by themselves. And the women never need know who hooked them.

* * *

The great promise of online dating is this: You sit on the couch in pajamas, click through sparkling profiles of nearby singles, fire off a few quippy e-mails or a nonchalant "wink" and -- ta-da!-- a series of romantic rendezvous is instantly on the docket.

It's love through a high-speed line, a model of amorous efficiency.

For Scott Valdez it worked, but the endeavor required just a little too much effort. He was working 70 or 80 hours a week in sales for a start-up technology company and traveling constantly. Every time he tried online dating, he met interesting women, but he found the process leading to the dates "really repetitive." So he decided to outsource it.

"Why not just teach my secretary to do it?" he thought.

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She didn't have the time (or maybe the stomach?) to tend to his Internet love life, so Valdez hired a recent college grad who could write e-mails in English and Spanish. Soon he was going on five or six first dates a month.

"It worked for me," he says. "And I knew so many people that could use the service."

Last June, Valdez, now 25, founded Virtual Dating Assistants -- a company that "specializes in making the dating dreams of busy individuals come true."

Author Timothy Ferriss popularized the concept when he wrote about outsourcing his online dating accounts to teams of competing writers in his 2007 book, "The 4-Hour Work Week."

Valdez's Atlanta-based firm is hardly the only outfit to offer such services. Dozens of profile-writing shops such as Arlington County-based TargetLove have popped up in the past few years, and dating coaches are increasingly managing their clients' online pursuits. Not to mention the well-intentioned friends and relatives who have taken over the process for the hapless singles in their lives.

But Valdez and his team of 45 freelance writers, including Hartshorn, do it all: write a client's profile, pick out potential matches, send introductory e-mails and message back and forth until a date is confirmed. Then they turn over the correspondence and tell the lucky fellow where and when he's meeting Madame X. (And it's almost always that gender dynamic; 80 percent of the firm's clients are men.)

Richard, a 39-year-old marketing executive who uses the service, would like to say, for the record: "It's not like I really have a lot of problems dating people in the real world." It's just that he's busy, splitting time among four cities, including Washington and Miami, and he figures it's best to meet as many people as possible.

Online dating has worked for Richard, "but it's all time-consuming," so when he heard about Virtual Dating Assistants, it seemed like a convenient solution for an on-the-go guy. "Just from a cost-benefit analysis -- me spending all this time on doing things that are purely almost secretarial doesn't make any sense for me," says Richard, who asked that his last name not be used because he doesn't want colleagues or potential dates to know he uses the service.

After a lengthy phone interview three months ago, the company's writers drafted a profile, let Richard tweak it and then started fishing for potential dates. Richard says they soon zeroed in on his preferences in terms of a woman's looks, education and interests, and he feels satisfied that he's being represented authentically in e-mails written on his behalf. (This has not been the case for everyone: Valdez described one client who came back from a date saying that "we maybe made him look a little too cool online." From then on, prospective dates were given a heads-up that the man was shy.)

Richard doesn't usually tell the women he dates that he didn't write the e-mails they received. But when one woman wondered why he was constantly active on the site through which they met, he told her the truth: "Look, it's not exactly like that -- somebody's actually doing this stuff for me."

Ask Jared Gordon, the 30-year-old editor of A Bad Case of the Dates, a blog that collects dating horror stories, and he'll tell you the practice is awful: "It is! It's awful! You're misrepresenting yourself. You're lying about yourself."

In Gordon's mind, it's tantamount to having someone else write your college term paper, or putting a picture of a more attractive stranger on your online dating profile. "You're going to fall in love with someone because of their honesty," he says. "And some people might say, 'Who has the time to write a profile?' But if something is that important to you, you make the time to do it."

Richard knows some perceive it as callous outsourcing, but he feels he's being represented authentically by his Virtual Dating Assistant. "These guys are really good at getting to know who you are," he says. And he adds that the one time he confessed to using the service, his date didn't seem to mind. "Once you have chemistry with somebody and they know you're a genuinely good person -- that's really all that matters," he says.

Mark Brooks, founder of Online Personals Watch, a site that tracks Internet dating trends, says this type of outsourcing is an ethically questionable form of "misrepresentation." Still, he expects the field to grow.

Professional matchmakers often charge $5,000 or more a year and have a limited pool of matches. Online dating sites are populated with countless singles but can require more attention than some users are willing to devote. "It may look like instant gratification, like you dive into the pool and instantly come up with a fish, but it doesn't really work like that," Brooks says. "You've got to tap, tap, tap on the keyboard quite a lot to get anywhere." (One site, OkCupid.com, found that a third of all first messages garner a response, though that doesn't mean they are positive or that they lead to dates.)

But for many, it's not just their time that's at stake; it's also their egos.

Luke Chao started having his receptionist send online dating e-mails for him after realizing that there was not enough administrative work for her at the hypnotherapy clinic he manages. It was a win-win, he thought, because "online dating is tedious -- you have to send out 100 messages to get 10 responses. You have to go through 10 conversations to get one date, and that's just the first date." (Dianne Nubla, who writes Chao's e-mails between her other tasks, says it's "a good diversion" that she doesn't mind.)

Chao, a 27-year-old Toronto resident, was soon dating one or two new women a week. In truth, he says, he has the time and writing ability for the task. But by having Nubla take over, he's sidestepping the worst part of the process: being routinely rebuffed.

"Most women you e-mail don't respond. Some look at your profile and don't even read your message before deleting it," he says. "That's just the nature of the game -- intellectually, I know that. But still, emotionally, I do feel a little small pain of rejection every time that happens."

Obama administration moves to distance itself from BP on oil spill response

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By Joel Achenbach and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; A01

Struggling to convey command of the worsening Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Obama administration is taking steps to distance itself from BP and is dispatching Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to the Gulf Coast to meet with federal and state prosecutors. The Holder trip could signal that the environmental calamity might become the subject of a criminal investigation.

Holder has said Justice Department lawyers are examining whether there was any "malfeasance" related to the leaking oil well, and investigators, who have already been on the coast for a month, have sent letters to BP instructing the company to preserve internal records related to the spill. But federal officials indicated that Holder's trip, which will include a news conference in New Orleans on Tuesday afternoon, will focus on enforcement of environmental laws and holding BP accountable.

The opening of a criminal investigation or civil action against BP, if either were to happen, would create the unusual situation of the federal government weighing charges against a company that it is simultaneously depending on for the most critical elements of the response to the record oil spill.

"We're cooperating fully with all inquiries, and we're doing everything we need to do and more in terms of preserving records," BP spokesman Andrew Gowers said Monday.

The relationship between the federal government and the oil company has been an awkward collaboration all along -- "We have them by the neck," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said of BP in congressional testimony last week -- but it reached a turning point Monday when the administration said it no longer wants to share a podium with BP at the daily briefing in Louisiana. Instead, the national incident commander, Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, will give a solo briefing wherever he happens to be.

The public relations shake-up comes in a tense period, with the Gulf Coast rattled by news that last week's attempted "top kill" of the well didn't work. A government forecast shows the oil slick potentially striking the popular tourist beaches of Mississippi and Alabama later this week. The official arrival of hurricane season Tuesday has incited a new rash of dire scenarios. With bad news washing up everywhere, the administration has been desperate to convince the public that the government, and not the oil company, is fully in charge of the crisis and mounting a robust response.

The administration and BP have disagreed over whether the company's next maneuver would cause a temporary increase in the flow of oil into the gulf. In the coming days, BP plans to saw off the top of the leaking riser pipe where it emerges from the blowout preventer that sits on the well. BP will then lower a containment dome, or cap, onto the riser in an attempt to capture the leaking oil.

White House official Carol M. Browner said Sunday that after the pipe is cut, about 20 percent more oil would probably escape before the new cap is in place. BP officials said that they think that is unlikely and that there might be no significant change in the flow.

"We've been increasingly frustrated with BP on matters of transparency," an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Monday. "We're not going to stand there while BP says there's not going to be any increase in flow rate when they cut the riser."

Said Gowers: "We've been very clear about the likelihood of increased flow, and we'll leave it at that."

The seat-of-the-pants nature of BP's effort to deal with the spill was driven home Monday night by the announcement of a new element of the latest containment strategy, this one using hoses deployed in the failed top kill maneuver to channel oil to a free-standing pipe and then onto surface ships. BP said the technique, which might not be ready until early July, would capture more oil and gas. Another change to the pipe near the surface would allow greater flexibility of operations during a hurricane.

Hovering over such squabbles is the bigger question of whose hands are on the wheel of response to the crisis, which began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 people.

President Obama and his lieutenants have insisted that the government has full authority. Before BP attempted the top kill, for example, the federal government issued a statement saying it had given approval for the maneuver. Allen, the incident commander, has said that while BP is the "responsible" party, the federal government is "accountable" for the response and that there's no meaningful way for the government to assume greater authority.

But the daily news briefings have not always bolstered the government's stature as the commanding authority in the crisis. The briefings have been held at the Unified Area Command headquarters in a Shell Oil training facility in the town of Robert, La. The two principal briefers have been Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry and BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles.

Landry tended to give relatively upbeat remarks on the progress of the response and the dedication of those involved. "BP has brought a very, very good team," she said early in the crisis. She rarely delivered bad news. Saturday, after Suttles announced the crushing news that the top-kill effort had failed, Landry said she was disappointed, but she added, "We also want to assure you we've had a very, very aggressive response posture."

Suttles typically delivered the most detailed, urgent news of the day involving the efforts to plug the leak. Reporters directed most of their questions to him.

Now Landry has been rotated back to her position as 8th District commander "in order to focus solely on coordinated federal hurricane response planning and preparation efforts in the Gulf of Mexico," a government spokesman said. The new on-scene coordinator at the command center is Rear Adm. James A. Watson. White House officials said Monday that no one was unhappy with Landry, only with the arrangement in which the government and BP shared a microphone.

Staff writers Robert Barnes, Steven Mufson and Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.

Thai parliament debates government protest response

Hundreds of people were injured during the operation

Thailand's government is facing a no-confidence vote in parliament over the violence which ended lengthy political protests in the capital, Bangkok.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva appears confident of surviving the censure, as his coalition allies have said they will not desert him.

The 19 May crackdown, which followed days of skirmishes, left more than 80 people dead and 1,800 injured.

On Monday, a senior UN official called for an independent inquiry to be held.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged the government to "ensure that an independent investigation of recent events be conducted, and all those found responsible for human-rights violations are held to account".

The government will face a vote on its conduct on Wednesday following two days of intense debate which has focused on the conduct of troops during the operation.

Opposition politicians have taken it in turns to denounce the government for its decision to send in the army to break up the two-month long political protest which paralysed parts of Bangkok.

They say that the majority of the victims were unarmed demonstrators, proof that the soldiers were guilty of using disproportionate force.

But Deputy Premier Suthep Thaugsuban said video footage of the violence in the capital showed the government was not to blame for the deaths of protesters.

"In the past two days your aim has been to make people believe that the prime minister and I ordered the military to kill people," he said.

"Your allegations are extremely unfair to those soldiers."

'Can't hide the sky'

The controversial deaths of six people in a temple during the forced ending to the anti-government "red-shirt" rally has dominated the debate.

Thai and foreign journalists, among other observers on the scene, say soldiers fired into the grounds of Wat Pathum Wanaram from the elevated commuter train nearby. The government has issued various denials.

PM Abhisit Vejjajiva in parliament in Bangkok, Thailand (1 June 2010)

Mr Vejjajiva is expected to survive the no-confidence vote

Six people - including one local Red Cross nurse - were found dead inside the grounds of the temple, where red-shirt protesters had taken refuge from the fire-fights going on during the day.

"What happened at Wat Pathum cannot be ignored," said Jatuporn Prompan- a red-shirt leader and MP in the opposition Puea Thai party - who headlined the debate.

"You can't hide the sky with your palm. The truth must come out."

The government says it only turned to the military as a last resort after all attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the crisis failed.

It also points to the presence of gunmen among the protesters as justification for the use of live ammunition.

Mr Abhisit said he had no concerns about rebutting the charges levelled at him during the debate but claimed that distorted views of the opposition lawmakers might hinder national reconciliation.

"There are attempts to pass the blame on violence and this will make it more difficult for reconciliation to materialise," he said.

Polarised society

The government has promised an independent investigation into all incidents of violence but has rejected the idea of international assistance.

Bangkok clashes mapped Protests: Eyewitness account

Mr Abhisit said he would not interfere with any investigation and that "whatever the outcome," he and Mr Suthep were "ready to accept it", the AFP news agency reports.

But the BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says that opposition politicians, many of whom actively supported the protests, are suspicious that any government-appointed panel will not be impartial.

The governing coalition has a majority in parliament and is thought likely to win the no-confidence vote.

But under the current state of emergency, state media is being strictly controlled and opposition media has been largely shut down. So this debate is, in effect, the first public airing of the bitter arguments polarising Thai society, our correspondent says.

Several opposition figures have made a point of highlighting the government's censorship of the media and its recent closure of a large number of blogs, websites and broadcasts under the continuing state of emergency rule.

They have also complained about a poor signal and frequent interruption of the live broadcast of the censure debate.

The Erawan Emergency Centre in Bangkok says 87 have now died as a result of the violence since 14 May - the majority were civilians. A total of 1,406 civilians and security personel were also injured.

The red-shirts had been protesting in Bangkok since 14 March, occupying the shopping district and forcing hotels and shops to close.

On 19 May, the government moved in to seal off the area and a renegade general who backed the protests was shot dead.

The red-shirts are a loose coalition of left-wing activists, democracy campaigners and mainly rural supporters of Mr Thaksin.

They are demanding fresh polls because they say the government - which came to power through a parliamentary deal rather than an election - is illegitimate.