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But ask enough people in speedskating, especially in Illinois, and the conversation always returns to Ed Rudolph, who founded the club in 1952.
"Ed Rudolph was the guy that single-handedly made Northbrook Speedskating Club into what it is," said Dave Mann, whose four kids skated and who now volunteers with the club.
Rudolph grew up skating on ponds in Glencoe and competed on a local speedskating circuit, falling short of the 1932 Olympics when he slashed his heel with a skate. He gave up his skating career and turned to helping kids start theirs, flooding his front yard for them to skate.
In 1960, when he was on the Northbrook Park District Board, the town opened an outdoor velodrome — it's now named after Rudolph — for cyclists to use in the summer; the track is filled with water and frozen over during winters for speedskaters.
Rudolph was a tireless worker, from starting a church group in his basement to spearheading the local cycling club. But he always returned to speedskating. He was the driving force behind Tower Rink, an outdoor skating rink. In 1968, the park district opened the Northbrook Sports Complex, which boasted two rinks and year-round skating.
"Dad, just, I don't know, it was in his blood. It was all about the kids," said his son, Gordon Rudolph, who skated competitively. "He had a heart of gold for the young kids of Northbrook."
Owning a landscaping business meant the elder Rudolph could devote winters to coaching skaters, many of whom won on the national and world stages. Additionally, nearly a dozen skaters and coaches interviewed said Rudolph paid for club trips overseas during the 1960s and 1970s, an era devoid of corporate sponsors and online fundraising.
"He was pretty inspirational," said Henning, who won her gold medal at 16 and is now a teacher in Colorado. "Ed would drive us to Wisconsin (for meets) out of the kindness of his heart and the love for speedskating."
Today, the club is a much smaller outfit than when Henning trained. But kids who join — fees start at about $1,000 — still are motivated by the rush of skating fast. They are expected to come in with some basic skills, ready to improve their crossovers instead of learning how to do them.
The club's newest members are put in the mix with older kids, some of whom have been tested at the national and international levels.
"The total beginner is at the same practice session as an Olympian or national champion," Nathaniel Mills, a three-time Olympian who helps run a youth skating organization in Washington, said. "You had these great role models while you're on the ice. That rubs off and it becomes a normal thing."
In speedskating, weekend competitions — sanctioned by the sport's national governing body, US Speedskating — are family affairs. That means throngs of kids and parents camped out with coolers and sandwiches in the stands. Speedskating is a niche sport, so the same families see each other every weekend, wherever they compete.
During a recent practice, 16 skaters ranging from 8 to 16 took to the ice in Northbrook. It was the first night for one 9-year-old who wore his hockey uniform and skates.
But most of the others looked like mini-Olympians decked out in suits with "Northbrook" emblazoned on the sides, their skates making the loud clops when the long blades smack against the ice.
Drills can be painful for the beginners — and the parents watching: the falls, skating cautiously, a coach's encouragement.
But races are the fun part, and the ice — it's always "the ice" — is thrilling no matter how old the skater. There was a tense feeling as they zipped around the track — maybe not the 35 mph like Hansen but still pretty fast.
Coaches urged them to skate faster, bend over and swing their arms.
"Go! Go! Go!" Burke urged one skater. "The idea is not to let them catch you."
The club's head coach, Chris Stankiewicz, and Burke both said if they weren't coaching, they're not sure who would. Stankiewicz started skating and made his way to Northbrook when he was around 14 or 15.
"If you wanted to improve, Northbrook was the place to go," he said. "It's the really the tradition: one Olympian every Olympics. That spirit lives on."
After his recent winter break, Tatelli, the 9-year-old from Highland Park, began wearing an autographed pair of long-track skates that once were worn by a former member of the club — Brian Hansen.
Apple is offering refunds to parents who have been hit by in-app purchases made by their kids. It has opened a refund request process that will run until 15 April 2015, and if your purchases were made by a "minor" you might be able to get the money back.
The company has sent emails to customers in the US who have purchased in-app items in the past, with instructions on how to claim a refund.
"We’ve heard from some customers that it was too easy for their kids to make in-app purchases. As a result, we’ve improved controls for parents so they can better manage their children's purchases, or restrict them entirely. Additionally, we are offering refunds in certain cases," it says.
You need to check your in-app purchases on your Purchase History page as part of your online iTunes account.
If some of your listed in-app items were bought by a child, you need to submit a refund request through Apple's Support Email service, adding "Refund for in-app purchases made by a minor" in the Details section. This must be accompanied by the requested information.
Apple will then review the request and take action if it deems a refund is required.
It also suggests parents learn how to switch on parental controls in iOS to prevent further charges.
At present, it seems this refund process is only available in the US. We've contacted the UK Apple team to see if there are plans to implement it in the UK too.
READ: How do I turn off in-app purchases for iPhone, iPad and Android?
You will not be surprised to learn that the NSA is spending nearly $80 million trying to build "a cryptologically useful quantum computer." The Washington Post just published details of the program, codenamed "Penetrating Hard Targets," based on documents supplied by Edward Snowden.
Yes, it's terrifying. But it's hardly surprising. A quantum computer is one of the holy grail of technological innovation right now, and scientists have been struggling to build one. Whereas regular computers work with digital systems to process information, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, as opposed to bits (ones and zeroes). Qubits can represent a one, a zero or anything in between, which gives the computer exponentially more power. That's obviously great when it comes to solving very difficult problems like cracking sophisticated encryption.
Drawing on David Garland’s (1996, 2001) observations about the ‘limits of the sovereign state’, we seek in this article to develop a critical understanding of the recent response in the USA to ‘notario fraud’—an unlawful act committed when a non-lawyer poses as an immigration attorney. While efforts to protect immigrants from fraud on their surface represent a counter to recent anti-immigrant policies, our analysis of materials distributed by what we term an anti-notario fraud apparatus suggests that such activity amounts to neoliberal governance. Specifically, we study immigrant advocacy groups’ discourse around the issue and argue that anti-notario efforts are akin to responsibilization.
We also study how law enforcement officials discuss the issue and theorize how a one-dimensional framing of notarios as villains supports the neoliberal regime by protecting the state’s sovereignty to manufacture what Nicholas De Genova (2002) has called ‘deportability’.
Longazel, Jamie and Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin, "Beware of Notarios: Neoliberal Governance of Immigrants as Crime Victims" (2013). Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications. 23.
This 1.22 acre lot is a beautiful mountain property in the Irwin Townsite that backs up to National Forest boundary. It is a short walk to Irwin Lake and all the recreational opportunities it offers as well as hiking, biking, hunting and backcountry skiing. Build your dream, off the grid, mountain home here!
West Coast rapper Snoop Dogg has no plans of working with one-time rap rival Iggy Azalea and proved it when approached by paparazzi over the weekend.
Footage of Snoop lashing back at Iggy showing a disinterest in working with him has surfaced online.
Approached by paparazzi in Los Angeles last week, Iggy shut down the idea of a Snoop joint track.
A few days ago, Hustle Gang leader T.I. said he decided to get himself involved in Snoop’s war of words once the issue turned serious.
Iggy Azalea jumped onto Twitter earlier this month to accept Snoop’s apology for the publicized feud he sparked.
Let that be that people, time to focus on the positive things I've got going on. no time to dwell on the negative.
The move could send the message 'that the U.S. is taking the gas pedal off of cybersecurity,' one former NSC official says.
President Donald Trump’s national security team is weighing the elimination of the top White House cybersecurity job, multiple sources told POLITICO — a move that would come as the nation faces growing digital threats from adversaries such as Russia and Iran.
John Bolton, Trump’s hawkish new national security adviser, is leading the push to abolish the role of special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator, currently held by the departing Rob Joyce, according to one current and two former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of deliberations about internal White House operations.
Bolton’s deputy, Mira Ricardel, supports the idea of eliminating the coordinator role, according to two of the sources. “She’s thinking about whether to simply pick up the [cyber] function on her own,” said one of the former U.S. officials, who added that the odds were “60-40” that the White House would eliminate the job.
While Bolton has advocated a more aggressive cyber strategy against U.S. adversaries than past administrations — for example, talking about a "retaliatory cyber campaign against Russia" — he has also told staff that he intends to reorganize the entire NSC. Those "changes could include combining higher-level director positions,” according to a memo Fox News cited last month.
Losing the cyber coordinator post "would be a tremendous disappointment,” said Kiersten Todt, who managed former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity commission and is now resident scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. Obama’s commission had recommended in its final report that the White House elevate the cyber coordinator to the rank of assistant to the president, on par with the national security adviser and homeland security adviser.
The White House deliberations on the fate of the coordinator role come as the Trump administration faces numerous challenges in the cyber arena, from Russian intrusions into election systems and power grid equipment, to cyber thefts by China and North Korea, to Iranian hackers who may be newly emboldened by Trump’s abrogation of the international nuclear deal. Experts say the absence of this critical position could leave the government without a cohesive strategy for confronting these issues.
“Given the complexities of the issues that we face in cyberspace … you’re going to have to have somebody that’s focused on dealing with those issues at the White House level,” said Michael Daniel, the Obama administration’s cyber coordinator from 2012 to 2017.
The internal debate over the cyber adviser job is the latest example of government dysfunction in the digital security realm. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of its recommendations related to election security, highlighting several areas where agencies like DHS fell short during the hack-plagued 2016 election.
Joyce, who took the cyber coordinator job shortly after Trump's arrival at the White House, is a widely respected career cyber professional who spent nearly 30 years at the National Security Agency. He plans to return to the intelligence agency Friday.
At the White House, Joyce oversaw the Trump administration’s response to several major cyber incidents over the past year, including the WannaCry and NotPetya malware outbreaks that raced around the world and crippled computers at government agencies and major businesses. He also led the overhaul and publication of the government’s once-secret plan for deciding when to tell tech companies about digital flaws that agencies discover.
The two former officials said that Joyce is leaving in part because of frustration with how Bolton’s team approaches cyber policy. When Bolton arrived, he forced out homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, a cyber expert who supervised Joyce’s team in addition to managing the government’s response to natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
In a brief statement, the White House did not deny that the coordinator role might be eliminated. “Cyber is a key priority for the Trump Administration," NSC spokesman Robert Palladino told POLITICO. The NSC, he said, was "committed to assembling an effective team to advance the President's agenda of protecting Americans and American interests."
Some former officials expressed concern that without a cyber coordinator, day-to-day leadership of the team would fall to Josh Steinman, the senior director for the NSC cyber team's foreign policy portfolio. Steinman, a protégé of ousted former national security adviser Michael Flynn, has set his sights on replacing Joyce and has spent months criticizing him, sources previously told POLITICO, but had scant cyber policy expertise before joining the White House after Trump’s inauguration. As senior director, he has clashed with career staffers, according to the current and two former officials.
Steinman did not respond to an email seeking comment. Palladino, the NSC spokesman, defended Steinman, calling him "a trusted advisor" and an "effective member" of the NSC. "Josh has effectively advocated to modernize and streamline efforts to advance our values in cyberspace and protect the United States," he said.
The current official and several former officials described the situation as fluid and said the White House was still considering replacing Joyce. Christopher Krebs, a top DHS cyber official, “was actively soliciting names” for a new cyber coordinator at the RSA Conference, a cybersecurity industry gathering in San Francisco last month, according to a former White House cyber official. This person added that Krebs may have been doing so on his own initiative and not at Bolton’s request.
Morale on the cyber team “is definitely low,” the former official added.
Stifel, the former NSC international policy staffer, said federal agencies aren’t capable of coordinating their cyber strategies without centralized guidance.
One former official conceded that Ricardel — Bolton’s deputy — appears qualified to oversee the cyber portfolio. She spent five years in senior Pentagon roles during the George W. Bush administration and was the top adviser to the secretary of Defense for a region that included Russia. Later, as acting assistant secretary for international security policy, she was responsible for missile defense, space policy and the Pentagon’s relationships with NATO and European allies. But the person worried that with everything on her plate, she would not have enough “bandwidth” to handle the extra cyber role.
Rob Knake, a former NSC director for cyber policy, said the White House cyber job is important to private companies as well. It’s “a much more public-facing role [than other NSC team leaders] in a sector of national security that requires close coordination with the private sector, even far more so than incident response on the physical side,” he said.
Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to make cybersecurity a “top priority,” including by appointing “a national cyber adviser who will report directly to me,” but it took him until December 2009 to name veteran cyber executive Howard Schmidt to be his cyber coordinator. Schmidt, who passed away in March, had led Microsoft’s cyber program and served as the first president of the IT sector’s cyber threat information sharing organization.
Schmidt left the White House in May 2012, and Obama replaced him with Michael Daniel, then head of the OMB’s intelligence branch. Daniel’s tenure saw major cyberattacks such as the hacking of the Office of Personnel Management by Chinese intelligence operatives, North Korea's breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Iran's crippling attack on a Saudi oil giant and the Russian government's interference with the 2016 presidential election.
Creative financing alternatives open up new avenues for entrepreneurs as well as investors.
Coming up with an innovative product might be the easiest element of entrepreneurship. Traditionally, funding the idea has been the more difficult task.
But new financing options are changing the innovations game, experts say. These creative options, which include angel investment, entrepreneurial competitions and crowdfunding, are making it easier and more profitable for startup businesses to climb the product-development ladder.
As in other parts of the country, the Phoenix area has seen entrepreneurial growth explode over the past few years. According to the 2015 Kauffman Index: Startup Activity study, metro Phoenix ranks 14th among the top 40 metro areas — slightly below its No. 12 population rank, but still a solid showing.
“Right now, we’re at the beginning on the growth curve,” said Sidnee Peck, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.
Many of the catalysts behind these startups are recognized today in The Republic and azcentral.com's ninth annual list recognizing "35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Younger."
Programs such as ASU’s and others at Grand Canyon University and University of Arizona, along with incubators and co-working spaces, have helped accelerate the launch of new entrepreneurial businesses in Arizona. They’ve also created awareness and support for entrepreneurship through mentoring programs and business-development services.
Startups that have developed in the past three to five years, whether on their own or through these programs, are reaching the next stage of financing, Peck said. They’ve made it through the early years, typically fueled by creative bootstrapping, she said.
“It’s how scrappy, creative and resourceful can somebody be when they really have nothing,” she said.
Early-stage entrepreneurs generally fund their businesses by using their own money, borrowing from Mom, Dad and friends, or using their retirement savings, said Stephen Hart, spokesman for the Arizona Small Business Administration.
The failure rate for small businesses is 50 percent during the first year, he said.
Those who make it past 12 months will at some point need more capital to move to the next step.
“At this point, you don’t really have a business, you have yourself and your integrity,” said Jim Goulka, managing director of Arizona Tech Investors, an angel investment group.
Having no track record makes it difficult to find backing. That’s where creative financing comes into play.
Angel investment is one of the popular options. Angels generally are more willing to take more risk to invest in a company they believe has high potential to succeed.
“Angels are looking for high-growth, scalable enterprises,” said Tim Kelley, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Grand Canyon University. He is an angel investor and is chairman of Canyon Investors, an angel investment network tied to GCU. He also is a founding member of Thunderbird Angel Network, a group of Thunderbird School of Global Management alumni, professors and friends.
Angels typically invest $25,000 to $500,000 in exchange for ownership equity. Like Kelley and Goulka, many angels belong to networks, which are groups of investors who participate together in funding businesses.
Brother-and-sister team Peter Morgan, 33, and Laura Morgan, 29, financed the first location of their business, Reformed Pilates & Cycle, using personal equity. But when the two, who are winners in this year's "35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Younger" competition, expanded their business to two additional Phoenix locations, they received funding from a small group of investors.
Entrepreneurial competitions such as Venture Madness, a partnership between Invest Southwest and Arizona Commerce Authority, have increased the visibility of startups and have provided other opportunities for angel investors to get involved, Kelley said.
Being among the six winners in the fall 2014 Arizona Innovation Challenge helped ParkX fund its smartphone parking payment app, said Chief Executive Officer Ross Shankin, 26, another of this year's honorees. The startup combined the $250,000 awarded in the competition with investment from angels to build out the program. Earlier this month, ParkX won Phoenix’s Smart City App Hack competition and will represent the city at the global competition in Barcelona, Spain, in November. The technology allows drivers to pay for parking directly from their smartphones, monitor time left and add extra money as needed.
Crowdfunding, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, is another option that has taken off, with entrepreneurs and investors alike, Robb said. This type of financing comes with an additional advantage for business owners: a built-in customer base, she said.
“It’s not only funding but a whole crowd of people who can give you feedback on your product,” she said.
According to Kickstarter, more than 9.7 million people around the globe have backed projects, which to date number almost 95,000. In return for their investment, backers typically get something in return, usually one of the products being produced, a one-of-a-kind experience or a limited edition of the product.
One of the newest trends is equity crowdfunding, in which companies can raise capital online in return for equity. In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted new rules that allow everyday Americans, not just accredited investors, to invest in startups. The rules are mandated by Title IV of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which was signed into law in 2012.
Because the trend is so new, “it’s not clear what this looks like yet,” Kelley said.
There are entrepreneurs who opt for the more traditional route: getting a bank loan. Qualifying, however, can be difficult for entrepreneurs who have no track record. Particular business types also have a tough time getting loans, Hart said. For example, “restaurants have a terrible time getting loans because they fail so fast,” he said.
One of the "35 Entrepreneurs" winners who has used bank loans as a financing method is Nolan de Graaff, 33, the president of Ice Now, an ice distribution and snow production company based in Phoenix. The company, which began in 2009, also has a Las Vegas location.
Entrepreneurs who choose this route have options. The Small Business Administration participates in a number of loan programs that help fund businesses that likely would have difficulty qualifying, Hart said. Other loan options include applying for funding from a for-profit or a non-profit lender, such as Accion International, a global non-profit organization.
Some entrepreneurs finance their businesses by using a combination of creative and traditional financing and bootstrapping.
For example, "35 Entrepreneurs" honoree Eric Luster, 35, funded his Laveen-based business, Movement Interactive LLC, using grants, personal funding and investor funding. The company has developed the Hiji Band and accompanying software to detect and report head impact that can cause concussions.
Another honoree, Ron Robertson, 29, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tempe-based Picmonic Inc., tapped into a combination of personal investment, money from friends and family, angel investment and venture capital. Picmonic is a visual-learning platform that turns dry facts into memorable images.
When to get the financing depends on the company. However, financing should be on an entrepreneur’s mind from the get-go, not something to consider months after starting a company, said Greg Bullock, spokesman for the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation, a Phoenix-based incubator that is a division of Maricopa Corporate College.
“We always say, ‘If you think you need to raise money, you’re six months too late.’ It’s a six-month process,” he said.
The trick to getting financing of any type, however, goes back to the idea or product.
Exciting ideas get attention, ASU's Peck said.

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