Capa was born in Budapest as Endre Friedmann, son of a Jewish dressmaker. He was jailed as a leftist student, and in 1931 left for more tolerant Berlin to study journalism. He intended to be a writer. But he began working as an errand boy for a photo agency, took a noted photograph of Leon Trotsky and, when Hitler came to power, fled to Paris and became a photographer. It happened partly because he was Hungarian: speaking a language that couldn’t travel with him, he was forced into images rather than words. Or in his words: “It’s not enough to have talent. You also have to be Hungarian.”
Nate Silver, statistician, writer, and founder of The New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight.com argues that we need better habits for weighing up information to inform our decisions. He cites Google's Flu trends, the AP's hacked Twitter account and the subsequent stock market dip, as well as the use of polling data in the media as prime examples of this need. To account for subjective views and biases, Silver says you need a systematic method for accounting for large amounts of information in order to understand the full picture and make better decisions.
Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 30 May 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
In the past the Kremlin has shown little tolerance for political challengers. But as Kirill Rogov, an opposition observer, notes, it largely limited its control to politics, manipulating elections and marginalising the opposition. (No political party was allowed to emerge without the sanction of Mr Surkov, Mr Putin’s chief ideologist.) But faced with mass protests by civil activists and ordinary citizens, not politicians, the Kremlin is trying to extend its control to other areas, including the internet and even entertainment magazines which carry protest banners. “The Kremlin is trying to destroy the infrastructure of the protest movement,” says Mr Rogov.
Lacking a coherent ideology, the Kremlin is justifying itself by ratcheting up its confrontation with the West and its search for enemies within. It has partly succeeded: the number who believe that Russia has outside enemies has gone from 13% in 1989 to more than 70%, according to Levada. Nationalism, xenophobia and intolerance, once part of the political fringe, have become mainstream— something even Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russia’s clownish right-wing nationalist leader, cannot have expected. Confrontation with the West has a polarising effect on the Russian elite, squeezing out those most linked to the West and strengthening the siloviki, the security services, who demand more purges.
Opinions differ over how much these talent exchanges will transform the global workforce as a whole. Clearly, they are benefiting from a trend for growing numbers of people to work freelance or on temporary contracts. Depending on the definition, between one-fifth and one-third of American workers are now freelancers, contractors or temps, up from 6% in 1989, according to Accenture, a consultancy. Yet the $1 billion of work done through talent exchanges in 2012 is only one-third of one percent of the estimated $300 billion spent worldwide on these “contingent workers”, which suggests that talent exchanges are still barely scratching the surface. However, those they enroll seem to enjoy the experience, which is why the numbers signing up are growing fast.
In this week's review of advertising work from around the world we feature a dazzling Dutch commercial for Adidas and a shocking anti-bullying film from Mexico. there is also an emotional anti-smoking film from Australia; a British army recruitment film that urges young men to 'step up' and a zany American alcopop ad featuring a bizarre cameo performance by an 84-year-old acting legend
WARNING: This week's video contains violent content which some viewers may find disturbing
Apple's Irish operation has a multi-billion dollar profit – and a tiny tax bill. How does it do it?
The investigation found:
• Apple's Cork site employs large numbers of foreign workers, many employed in call centres dealing with technical-support queries raised in their home countries. Recent Cork job adverts show vacancies for a Spanish payroll analyst, Nordic customer relations adviser, Norwegian Apple specialist, Russian fraud analyst and a German Agreement admin adviser.
• Staff at what Cook calls "our campus in Cork" earned less than the average for Apple, though Harvard professor Stephen Shay has calculated that 2011 profit per employee at the Cork site was more than $9m.
• Although Steve Jobs made Cork his first European base in 1980, most manufacturing operations left Cork years ago. Printed circuit-board production went to Indonesia in 1998, while iMac assembly transferred to Wales a year later.
• Most Apple products destined for all markets outside of the Americas are manufactured by Foxconn in China on orders from Cork. Almost all of them never touch Ireland, being shipped directly to local distributors and retailers in Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, Asia and Australia.
• Apple has been able to draw a secrecy veil over its Irish operations by making extensive use of unlimited companies, which are not required to file company accounts.
• Billions of dollars of profit pouring into Apple's Irish coffers each year are managed by Apple's Nevada-based investment subsidiary Braeburn Capital, making it larger than any US hedge fund. Cash reserves are held in banks in New York with not a penny in Ireland.
• Main accounting records for at least one of these companies are held in Austin, Texas. Meanwhile, notes of board meetings are taken by Apple's California-based general counsel Gene Levoff and sent to a law firm in Ireland to be typed up as formal minutes.
• Auditors to Apple companies are Ernst & Young, the accountancy firm that also audits Google, Facebook and Amazon – each of which have also elected to set up substantial operations in Ireland. E&Y did $6bn of tax advisory work last year.
The campaign gathered momentum, however, when tens of thousands of tweets and emails using the hashtag #Fbrape were sent to the social network's advertisers.
It said it had miscalculated the balance. "In recent days, it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate. In some cases, content is not being removed as quickly as we want. In other cases, content that should be removed has not been or has been evaluated using outdated criteria. We have been working over the past several months to improve our systems to respond to reports of violations, but the guidelines used by these systems have failed to capture all the content that violates our standards."
You all know Thomas "TomSka" Ridgewell right? You don't? Well, he's arguably the most popular British comedy star on the internet. His channel on YouTube, which he set up as a student, has a staggering 1.8 million subscribers and has registered 377 million views. To give you a comparison, Ricky Gervais, the mainstream British comedian who has done most to engage with the YouTube audience, has 128,000 subscribers and 15 million views.
Google has been at pains to remind users that Glass itself does not include facial recognition, and has come under pressure from American senators to answer questions they claim the wearable computer raises over privacy. But the device's terms and conditions do not explicitly forbid using the device’s camera to detect faces and then to identify them via Glass’s screen, which sits above the user's right eye and is visible only to them. The terms do, however, forbid diverse other actions including developers reselling Glass or using it to make money from advertising.
Online audiences don't just visit websites in a vacuum – they are real people with real lives and real families and they no longer consume media in a linear way. When Nielsen recruits people for a panel, we do so with their explicit permission, and that allows us to get to know them. We construct panels that statistically represent the census of the region, and this gives us (and our clients) unique context about consumer behaviour across a wide variety of devices – computers, yes, but also televisions, smartphones, tablets, and more.
This measurement of people provides us with a full-market view – something which is missing from site-centric analytics. Data from a single publisher will only ever be one slice of the pie. What Nielsen does is measure all the players in a market, apply a common set of rules, and report the data such that comparisons can be made across sectors and industries. Our clients can feel confident that the whole universe is being reported, both the winners and losers.
Moscow, like many of the world’s leading cities including London, is positioning itself as an innovation and tech hub to rival Silicon Valley. While London’s status as a financial centre brings certain obvious advantages, it is the geographical location of Russia as a link between Europe and Asia that may make it an attractive alternative.
The perception, however, of Russia as dangerous, corrupt and a tricky place to do business makes this a difficult sell; a Soviet past of bureaucracy and over-regulation underscores this impression. Even the bait of a top tax rate of only 13 per cent may not be enough to attract investment to the country.
But it won’t be through lack of effort. The country has a deep pool of tech talent of scientists, coders and mathematicians that are only now beginning to get the feel of entrepreneurship and how to run a business. While the Moscow event lasts for just three days, the ‘warm-up’ tour that has built up awareness of Startup Village has covered 21,000 kilometres over the past two months.
This caravanserai has gone through 16 cities across the country to encourage innovation and to see if a startup mentality exists. From Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean to Siberia’s major city, Novosibirsk, there appears to be a revolution going on in the country; one that turns the previous (and rather better-known) revolution on its head.
GAMES of chance are risky, but as a source of revenue they are a safe bet. Global lottery sales rose by 7% to $275 billion last year, according to La Fleur's 2013 World Lottery Almanac. Lotto, a game where people pick numbers to match those drawn, is the world’s most popular form of lottery. Last year lotto sales raked in more than $110 billion, followed by scratch tickets at $76 billion. Europeans spend the most on lotteries of all sorts, at $113 billion. Italy’s Lottomatica is the world’s largest lottery operator. Like some of its counterparts it also runs sports betting (La Fleur's list includes revenue from all games that a lottery operator offers, which in several cases includes sports betting.) When Lottomatica’s sales are added with those of Sisal, the next largest Italian lottery, the average Italian spends around $480 annually. That plump sum is not nearly as high as the amount forked out by Singaporeans. The island-state’s 5m people spend about $1,000 each in the Singapore Pools.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Dorsey confirms “We want to bring Square to
the world,” and indicates for the first time that the firm is planning a rapid
international expansion.
“We’ve driven a lot of growth in the United States, but we’re really excited
to get outside the United States,” he says. “You’ll see some announcements very
soon.”
Dorsey remains chairman of Twitter, which is widely thought to be focusing on increasing its own profitability with a view to a stock market flotation in the fairly near future. But with Twitter established as a global force, used by more than 500million people and a permanent fixture in worldwide communications, it is Square that is increasingly likely to attract the attention of a major-sized audience too.
Modern psychology recognises five dimensions of personality: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. Previous research has shown that people’s scores on these traits can, indeed, predict what they purchase. Extroverts are more likely to respond to an advert for a mobile phone that promises excitement than one that promises convenience or security. They also prefer Coca-Cola to Pepsi and Maybelline cosmetics to Max Factor. Agreeable people, though, tend to prefer Pepsi, and those open to experience prefer Max Factor.
People are, of course, unlikely to want to take personality tests so that marketing departments around the world can intrude even more on their lives than happens already. But Dr Haber thinks he can get around that—at least for users of Twitter. He and his team have developed software that takes streams of “tweets” from this social medium and searches them for words that indicate a tweeter’s personality, values and needs.
My 12 years at school were boring and mostly pointless. I barely remember a thing I was taught after learning to read and count. I learnt more about how to write from George Orwell’s 14-page essay “Politics and the English Language” than in all my school years. Nor was I taught much by way of reasoning (which may, of course, be why I’ve ended up a columnist). I wasted the years when my brain was still fairly porous. This experience is probably common but it might all have been different if only someone had taught me one crucial skill: how to learn. Now that my daughter is seven, and setting off on the long slog, I’m planning to issue her with the crucial information beforehand.
Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 23 May 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
It is not surprising that Yahoo’s purchase has unnerved many Tumblr users. After all, the internet giant has a record of buying promising young tech firms such as Delicious, an online-bookmarking service, and GeoCities, which hosts websites, and then neglecting them. The rich price paid for Tumblr, which reportedly made just $13m of revenue last year, is also fuelling doubts about the deal. According to an estimate by John Saroff, a former Google executive, Tumblr would need to generate at least $108m of revenue a year to return more than the opportunity cost of the capital that Yahoo is tying up in it.
Why is Yahoo willing to take such a risk? Part of the answer is that, like an ageing rocker, it hopes being associated with younger stars will make it look cool again. It is also hoping to emulate Google, which snapped up YouTube, a video site, in 2006, and Facebook, which swallowed Instagram, a photo-sharing service, last year. The firms were criticised for paying too much for targets with scant revenues. But both deals now look like winners. Instagram, for instance, has seen its monthly users soar to over 100m, up from around 30m when Facebook bought it.
In order to demonstrate the potency of stock footage, Brazilian agency Almap BBDO has managed to construct a story from a huge series of disconnected pieces of footage sourced from Getty's library. The resulting 85 seconds is as moving as it is mesmerising and it brilliantly illustrates the usefulness of the advertised service. Agency: Almap BBDO (Sâo Paulo) Directors:João Simi / Marcos Kotlhar
Polycell: 'Crack' (01:36) - UK
There's something strange about the father offering his son an endless stream of DIY advice in this eye-catching online film by London agency 18 Feet & Rising. The initial perspective makes him appear to be an entirely conventional middle-aged man but a change of angle reveals there's less to him than meets the eye. Agency: 18 Feet & Rising (London) Director: Simon Willows
Aflac: 'Physical Therapy' (02:11) - US
For the second week running, we have a very silly film directed by ace US director Baker Smith. In last week's Ad Break, he presided over a sordid scene in a winery so it's a relief to see that his latest film is altogether more wholesome: the Aflac duck's recovery after an injury is improved by the peace of mind provided by the insurance company that gave it its name... and a personal trainer that's pushing the aquatic bird to the limit. Agency:Publicis Kaplan Thaler (New York) Director:Baker Smith
Heineken: 'The Kick' (03:15) - Ireland
This is a good example of how a global advertising campaign can be tweaked to take account of local sensibilities. The supremely confident men who have appeared in UK-made Heineken advertising have been replaced by a more hapless fellow in this commercial created by Dublin-based international creative agency Rothco... and he's a lot more likeable than the smug, multi-talented protagonists seen in the ads made on this side of the Irish Sea. Agency:Rothco (Dublin) Director:Steve Cope
Peugeot: 'Wacky Races' (04:20) - Brazil
Your view of this Brazilian commercial for Peugeot is likely to be entirely coloured by your fondness for the Hanna Barbera cartoon series that inspired it. If you're too young to remember Wacky Races then you probably won't have much idea what's happening but if you're old enough to recall sniggering along with Muttley as you waited to see what disaster would befall Dick Dastardly then you might find this live-action version very appealing. Agency:Young & Rubicam Brasil Director:Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
The industry is worth around $80 billion, and although games can be played on
PCs and phones, the industry is still dominated by dedicated consoles. A good
candidate for the earliest games console is the Magnavox Odyssey, released in
1972, predating the home version of Atari's early blockbuster "Pong" by three
years and selling 300,000 units—an impressive tally for something which could
not even generate sound. With every "generation" of consoles (a somewhat
abitrary system for grouping machines with similar release dates and roughly
equivalent power) total sales rose steadily. The industry grew up when Sony
released its PlayStation machine in 1994. Sony's great innovation was to market
its machine not at children, but at men in their early 20s who had grown up with
video games. Its successor, the PlayStation 2, remains the best-selling console
ever produced. Today the industry is dominated by three companies: Nintendo,
Sony and Microsoft. It has been seven years since any of those firms have
released a new console. Now, though, three new machines are arriving more or
less at once. Nintendo's Wii U was released in November 2012 and in February
Sony unveiled details for its PlayStation 4. Microsoft is set to confirm the
newest version of its Xbox console on May 21st. But they launch into a market in
turmoil. Games designed for mobile phones, web browsers and tablets are growing
fast, while sales of console games are lagging.
At the hour-long event in Richmond, Washington, Microsoft unveiled an ambitious vision for the new Xbox. It remains a games machine at heart, but Microsoft's broader aim was clear: to make the Xbox an all-in-one entertainment solution, funneling live TV, video-on-demand and web chat, and allowing users to swiftly and easily move between all three.
The integration with television goes deep: Microsoft announced a deal with the NFL to integrate coverage of the sport with game-like elements such as a Fantasy Football app, allowing viewers to manage their own fantasy sides while watching the real thing in action.
The announcement that Stephen Spiellberg will be producing a TV series based on the best-selling Halo games, exclusively avalable on Xbox One, indicates Microsoft sees itself as a content maker as well as a platform provider.
Speaking at Monaco Media Forum in November, Karp agreed that internet ads "suck": "One of the things I've found most disheartening on the internet today is it's all been defined and relegated to these little blue links. The advertising industry as a whole is an incredibly creative and capable industry… They've got these Mad Men aspirations and right now they're all being squeezed in to these hyper-optimised, hyper-targeted models where you're basically trying to deliver the little blue link at the exact right moment rather than trying to tell stories that make people want to become customers."
To that end, Tumblr has introduced its own tools to let brands tell and promote their stories in a different way – Radar and Spotlight are how marketers can buy links to their blogs in curated sections, while Highlighted Posts and Pinned Posts let small-scale creators pay just a few dollars to gain more prominence in readers' dashboards.
These tools ride the native advertising wave ("content marketing", "branded content" or "sponsored content", depending on who you speak to) on which publishers and platforms are now helping marketers to communicate using language that is indistinct from core content, overcoming readers' increasing aversion to invasive banners and paid links. Thanks to them, Tumblr's revenue has grown fast from a low base, but the effort can now be taken to the next level.
Azerbaijan's ambassador to Russia, Polad Bulbuloglu, disclosed that President Aliyev had ordered an investigation and votes were being recounted. He said that a large number of voters in Azerbaijan, submitting votes by text message, had supported the Russian Federation.
"According to this data, Russia should have received 10 points from Azerbaijan. An announcement will be made about this tonight on Azeri Public Television." Camil Guliyev, head of the country's state broadcaster, said the failure to give Russia any points was of serious concern.
"We sincerely hope that this incident, possibly initiated by certain interest groups, will not cast a shadow over the brotherly relations of the Russian and Azerbaijani peoples," he said, without elaborating.
"Is it the future of comedy? Yes absolutely – but we think comedy on YouTube is already a phenomenon,” says YouTube’s Richard Waterworth and the man behind the Comedy Week. “The reason we have picked comedy to showcase and build this big event around is because it’s such a huge category. Seven out of the 10 most popular channels on YouTube are comedy ones. We’re pulling all that energy and creativity into this week, to create a concentrated moment where everyone can see a lot of exciting new comedy and be introduced to some of the stars on YouTube who have huge followings but maybe aren’t well known in the mainstream media.”
Vevo was launched in 2009, offering music from artists on the record labels Universal, Sony Music and EMI; Warner Music, however, chose to partner with MTV on a rival service. Vevo is owned by Universal and Sony along with the Abu Dhabi Media Company. Jones rejects the comparison to MTV yet the business model is identical: Vevo takes content from the labels, monetises with video ads on distribution networks such as YouTube, and shares what's left with the rights holders. The company won't share revenue figures, but says it has returned $200m to rights holders since launch. "Vevo is at the pointy end of what the labels want to do, right at the heart of the music connecting with the fan," says Jones. "The labels wanted to be proactive and take control. We have a good relationship with them - in fact when we're not live in a country, we have them on our backs wanting to launch." The proposition for brands is just as strong, he argues. "This is not just about targeting socioeconomic groups – this is people in their 20s who are way more engaged with music than anything else, and that's a very rich seam to mine."
Critics have been quick to point out that
advertisers are unlikely to want their ads to appear alongside some of Tumblr’s
content, notably numerous blogs that feature pornographic content. They have
also been pointing out that a big part of Tumblr’s appeal is that its bosses
have not let the service become overrun with advertising. If Yahoo starts to
pump in huge numbers of ads, people may abandon the service in droves.
True, but if Yahoo manages the acquisition carefully it could turn out to be
a smart move. Plenty of folk predicted a mass exodus from Instagram, a
photo-sharing service, after Facebook snapped it up for $1 billion last year.
But the social network has managed to develop the service without making users
head for the exit. If Yahoo can pull off a similar feat with Tumblr, then it
will certainly appear cooler to its shareholders.
Physical video game sales generated almost $500 million in April. That is only part of the games picture, according to the NPD Group: the industry total was just over $800 million.
As the founding editor of Loaded, James Brown redefined magazine publishing and set the cultural agenda for a generation of young men.
After editing GQ and founding – then selling – his own publishing company, Brown now works as a media consultant and runs online magazine Sabotage Times, whose strapline: "We can't concentrate so why should you?" once again catches the spirit of the age.
In the first of a new series of interviews, Brown tells John Plunkett about his digital life: the day he binned his TV, why he prefers not to take his phone into the bedroom, and what soured his relationship with Apple. He also recalls how he came down to earth after an out-of-this-world interview with U2.
It wouldn't be Saturday night without a Scandinavian crime drama. This weekend the action moved to Malmö in southern Sweden. The sensible knitwear was replaced by glittering spandex and the only thing murdered were pop songs.
But though Denmark won easily in the end, the true winner of the evening was the event's host, Swedish comedian Petra Mede. Resplendent in a purple ballgown by Jean Paul Gaultier, Mede navigated perfectly Eurovision's unique blend of geo-political rivalries, deadly serious musical ambitions and camp nonsense.
Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries is under fire about his comments on excluding people who don't fit with the brand. For those of you who missed them, made back in 2006, his comments were: "We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive, all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."
The brand now reinforces this through its sizing policy, with a maximum of women's size 10, and men's 34. This latest development hasn't made Jeffries any friends, but is this really a "Big, Fat, Marketing mistake", or brand management in action?
Sergei Polonsky, a former paratrooper who was one of the richest men in Russia before his real estate business failed, had, alleges Lebedev, been trash-talking everyone in the green room for hours before they got on stage. "Then he offered to hit me on the face, and then he moved sort of in my direction. I have been standing there for two hours. My wife was in the hospital because of some premature … we were expecting another baby. I mean, it's probably wrong the way I hit him." But hit him he did. It wasn't a live recording – he alleges that the TV company rang the Kremlin to ask if they should make it public, and the Kremlin said yes, enthusiastically. How does he know? "Surkov," he says. Vladislav Surkov, Putin's deputy prime minister and designer of Russia's "managed" or "sovereign" democracy, which allows only Kremlin-approved parties and candidates to take part in elections, was pushed out of his post the day before we meet; Lebedev called him immediately. "I offered him support."
As a reader of the Guardian you may have been persuaded that the Brits know a thing or two. I am here to tell you: on this one occasion at least, tune them out. Perpetual losers of the Eurovision Song Competition (they finished dead last three times in the past decade), the British have tried to assuage their pain by dismissing the show as a big joke. The grapes are so sour that one singer from Buck’s Fizz, who won the competition in 1981 with a peppy little number, has called for a UK Eurovision boycott.
So you would do well to avoid watching Eurovision on the BBC, whose commentator offers unamusing (and sometimes straight-up insulting) barbs about nations even the most devoted Ryanair customer would struggle to find on a map. Eurovision is too important to joke about; far better to watch the simulcast in Romanian.
2. Push the borders
“So viel Europa war nie!” – “There has never been more Europe!”, rejoiced Joachim Gauck, the president of Germany, in a landmark speech this February on the future of the troubled continent. It is even truer than he knows. The EU now stretches from Ireland to Bulgaria, but Eurovision encompasses even more territory. In 1998, for instance, the winning country was Israel, represented by a bombshell transgendered Israeli diva singing in Hebrew.
And five different states of the former USSR have won since 2000, most recently Azerbaijan – an only nominally democratic petrostate on the Caspian Sea, 2,500 miles from London. For disgruntled westerners this is a sign of decline. It is the exact opposite: proof of the relevance of the European political project at a moment when too many want to close up shop.
3. Beware of disco
If you are American and getting ready for Eurovision, there’s a distinct chance that, like me, you are a man of a certain sexual orientation. The truth is, though, that while gay men may make up the loudest contingent of Eurovision fans, we’re a minority all the same. (If only Europe had 102.8 million gay men!) Every year there’s at least one tune that makes you want to slather glitter on your chest and throw your arms in the air. I especially liked What About My Dreams?, the Hungarian entry from 2011, which still figures prominently on my cardio mix.
But I warn you: disco never wins. If you’re placing a bet on the winner, you’d do better to look for power ballads, peppy schlager tunes, or the occasional singer-songwriter number. This year the bookies have given the shortest odds to Denmark, represented by an dark-voiced young woman accompanied by military drummers and a fifer.
4. Accept the gimmicks – but don’t be fooled by them
Yes, there are a lot of stupid acts in Eurovision – but no one said democracy was easy! Camp is a losing game, and as Herman Cain will attest, a gimmick may get you some attention for a while, but it won’t get you to the top. A good gimmick, combined with a bit of bloc voting, may be enough to get you to fifth or sixth place, but at Eurovision the best act wins more often than you’d think. Last year’s show featured a collection of bread-baking Russian grandmothers, a middle-aged Sammarinese woman cooing about Facebook, and a decrepit Montenegrin rapper who wheeled a Trojan horse onstage. But the winner, by an overwhelming margin, was Sweden’s raven-haired Loreen, who needed no set and minimal dancing to take the title with Euphoria, the best Eurovision song in a decade.
A word about voting: each country awards points to its 10 favorite entrants, from one to a maximum of 12 points ("douze points!", as the bilingual hosts proclaim), and cannot vote for itself. But Eurovision's ballot framework makes the American electoral college look sensible. Each nation's votes have the same weight: Iceland, population 324,000, counts for just as much as Russia, population 143 million. What's more, viewers' votes only count for 50% of each country's result; the other 50% is determined by a shadowy "professional jury" of alleged music professionals. On the plus side, the tabulation of votes at the end of the show does allow you the chance to learn the names of all the countries in French. Say it with me: "L'ex-république yougoslave de Macédoine."
5. Don’t be ashamed to be American
On the contrary: there are Americans everywhere at Eurovision. The Slovenian entrant this year was an American (though she was eliminated in the semifinal). The best Eurovision gossip blog is edited by an American. One of my favorite performers of recent years, the showgirly Kalomira, tore up the stage with “Secret Combination” and placed third in the 2008 contest. Her killer bouzouki-backed dance moves and questionable English made me assume she was a native, but in fact, Kalomira comes from just around the way in West Hempstead, New York, where her parents run a restaurant. My fellow Americans: Eurovision is our show too.
Link to video: Ad break: Peugeot, Heineken, Getty Images
