More deception.

Twitter users are increasingly buying followers in a bid to boost their online reputations. A number of firms are now catering to the demand for phantom followers, offering thousands of fake profiles for just a few pounds. They say their clients include bloggers, entrepreneurs and aspiring performers. – The Sunday Times

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. – Ernest Hemingway

What are Apple thinking?

The title of Naomi Wolf’s new book, which explores why the vagina is still thought of as “slightly shameful” even today, has been censored by Apple.

Apple’s iTunes store has starred out part of the title of Wolf’s new book Vagina, calling it instead V****a, and replacing the word throughout the book’s description. So, according to Apple, Wolf’s book is “an astonishing new work that radically changes how we think about, talk about and understand the v****a”. The author, writes Apple, “looks back in history and show[s] us how the v****a was considered sacred for centuries until it began to be cast as a threat”, and asks why “even now in an increasingly sexualised world, it is thought of as slightly shameful”.

Amazon and Waterstones’ online stores both allow the word to be seen in full. And unfortunately for Apple, a picture of Wolf’s book jacket clearly displays the title on iTunes just centimetres to the left of the starred-out version.

Wolf herself was startled to hear about the censorship. “You won’t believe it – I gather Apple is censoring Vagina: A New Biography on iTunes though expletives get through – think different?” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Readers were also shocked. “Are Apple worried that people are going to discover that ‘lady parts’ have a name?” wrote Kevin Hayes in a review of Vagina on Apple’s online store. Another reader wondered why, “if it has radically changed the way we talk about something three billion people on the planet have, why is it that we can’t even see the medical term for it in print?”

Wolf is not the only writer to have had her title censored by Apple: Eve Ensler’s play has become The V****a Monologues on iTunes, and an “A to Z guide” becomes V is for V****a. The word is also starred out in the titles of numerous other books and songs, as is penis.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment before going to press.

From the Guardian

Zimbabwe’s youth getting active … from Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust (YETT) latest newsletter:

A group of about 30 young people from Gweru have painted potholes white in protest of council’s slow pace in fixing them.

“We have painted the potholes white as they have become an eyesore and it helps to ensure their visibility so that at least if they are not fixed then drivers can be able to see their presence from a distance so that accidents are minimized,” said Nyaradzo Madzikura, one of the participants in the exercise.

“It gave me a great pleasure when I went into town the following morning and heard a number of rank marshals talking about it and council officials were debating the motive of the exercise as I could feel that people had noticed hence such activities should be carried out regularly,” she added.