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http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Vic-Tafur-s-Week-11-picks-4042498.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20121122063552id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/49ers/article/Vic-Tafur-s-Week-11-picks-4042498.php | Vic Tafur's Week 11 picks | 20121122063552 | Bears at 49ers (-5): Jason Campbell should be OK for the Bears until Jay Cutler comes back, just not on the road against this defense. 49ERS
Saints (-5) at Raiders: I think I liked New Orleans even before Darren Sproles was back from a hand injury. Oakland should show some fire after giving up 97 points the past two weeks but ... it gave up 97 points the past two weeks. That's no fluke. SAINTS
Eagles at Redskins (-3 1/2): The Eagles are in the stick-a-fork-in-them position, but I think they will play more relaxed and better without Michael Vick. The Redskins' defense is bad and LeSean McCoy should have a huge day. EAGLES
Packers (-3 1/2) at Lions: Detroit's secondary is banged up and Green Bay had a week off to prepare. This one looks too easy ... but we will still side with Joe Public again (Saints) and take Aaron Rodgers and the PACKERS.
Cardinals at Falcons (-10): Would love to take Arizona's defense and the points here, but that's not enough points against a team coming off its first loss of the season and playing at home. FALCONS
Bucs (-1 1/2) at Panthers: Carolina had 10 yards rushing in a Week 1 loss to Tampa Bay, and that's the kind of stat that coaches beat into players' heads all week. The Bucs - road favorites, really? - are due for a letdown. Take the fired-up PANTHERS.
Browns at Cowboys (-8): My favorite game of the week. Cleveland has fought hard all season, is coming off a bye and has the best offensive player on the field in running back Trent Richardson. Dallas is coming off a big win over Philly and is not great at home. BROWNS
Jets at Rams (-3 1/2): Hmmm. Looks like an old, bickering team with a bad quarterback against a young, hungry team with a good quarterback. Go with the old team, pride and the points. JETS
Colts at Patriots (-9 1/2): Two overrated teams with great quarterbacks. Indianapolis is more overrated. Tom Brady is greater than Andrew Luck and wants everyone to recognize that. PATRIOTS
Jaguars at Texans (-15 1/2): Houston is coming off a huge win on national television. Blaine Gabbert and Rashad Jennings are the worst quarterback-running back combo in NFL. But look at those shiny 15.5 points. JAGUARS
Bengals (-3 1/2) at Chiefs: Kansas City just had its Super Bowl against hated former coach Todd Haley, and while the Chiefs covered the spread, they lost. They woke up Tuesday morning deflated and the stench was back. BENGALS win big.
Chargers at Broncos (-7 1/2): One of the big premises we work with here is Norv Turner is not a good head coach but you can't kill him. He is The Turninator. Case in point: He is 5-1 against the spread in same-season revenge games. CHARGERS
Ravens (-3 1/2) at Steelers: Pittsburgh receivers say Byron Leftwich's passes are 25 mph slower than injured Ben Roethlisberger's. We still love the big lug against a Baltimore defense that is a shell of its former self. STEELERS
Record: 81-63-2 against the spread. Dusting myself after my second losing week of the season. Won't go 6-8 again after Thursday's pick of C.J. Spiller and the Bills minus-2. | Saints (-5) at Raiders: I think I liked New Orleans even before Darren Sproles was back from a hand injury. Cardinals at Falcons (-10): Would love to take Arizona's defense and the points here, but that's not enough points against a team coming off its first loss of the season and playing at home. Carolina had 10 yards rushing in a Week 1 loss to Tampa Bay, and that's the kind of stat that coaches beat into players' heads all week. The Bucs - road favorites, really? - are due for a letdown. Cleveland has fought hard all season, is coming off a bye and has the best offensive player on the field in running back Trent Richardson. Kansas City just had its Super Bowl against hated former coach Todd Haley, and while the Chiefs covered the spread, they lost. Chargers at Broncos (-7 1/2): One of the big premises we work with here is Norv Turner is not a good head coach but you can't kill him. Pittsburgh receivers say Byron Leftwich's passes are 25 mph slower than injured Ben Roethlisberger's. | 3.095455 | 0.968182 | 28.068182 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-4719864.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20121125051147id_/http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-4719864.html | Israeli Targets Gaza's Hidden Tunnels | 20121125051147 | November 4, 2009 11:06 AM
Still soaring out of Gaza on a whoosh and a white plume, every rocket aimed at Israel is another reminder of an enemy supply line the Israeli military can't seem to cut, even though Hamas is surrounded.Just south of where CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reported from, Gaza's 25-mile long Mediterranean Sea coast is sealed off by an Israeli naval blockade. Gunboats off shore command the sea, and block access to Gaza's port.All along their land border, high-tech fences and constant patrols separate Israel and Gaza. And, helped by $23 million of American aid last year, Egypt too has beefed up security along its short frontier.So Gazans get over their border by going under it, through a network of tunnels that runs from buildings on their side deep under the ground - and the border fence - to hideaways in Egypt."These tunnels are not just foxholes," said Maj. Ron Edelheit, an Israeli Army spokesman. "They are very complicated structures. They're long. They have electricity. They have trails and tracks going through them."Stretching as far as three quarters of a mile, the underground interstate is big enough for a barnyard of livestock to be smuggled through. That's not what bothers Israel."Food? Who cares; but when we talk about bombs and rockets and TNT and C4 and you name it, that terrorizes the Israeli population that surrounds it, this is not something the state of Israel can live by," Edelheit said.To win the war, Israel says it needs to stop the smuggling of arms and explosives. Military sources believe aerial bombardment so far has destroyed about 200 tunnels. But 100 more may still be in use. | CBS Evening News: Half Of Underground Pathways Destroyed In Mideast Crisis | 27.333333 | 0.5 | 0.5 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/11/21/holiday-banquet-for-videogamers/km0ZHnDgmKpbe46KSJJ2KN/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20121127201617id_/http://bostonglobe.com:80/business/2012/11/21/holiday-banquet-for-videogamers/km0ZHnDgmKpbe46KSJJ2KN/story.html | A holiday banquet for videogamers | 20121127201617 | Mass destruction has gotten to be a November habit with me, right up there with turkey and bad football. Video game controller in hand, I’ve been annihilating digital terrorists, aliens, and even a fair number of British redcoats. And like a man who’s overindulged on Thanksgiving, I feel really good about it, mainly because the games are really good.
Start with Halo 4, the latest in Microsoft’s string of sci-fi blasters that features the series’s iconic hero, the Spartan warrior called Master Chief, and his digital sidekick Cortana. Lost in space after the climax of Halo 3, the Chief is awakened from hibernation to fend off an assault by the evil alien cult, the Covenant. But there are new enemies as well, robotic creatures called Prometheans who prove distressingly hard to kill.
Assassin’s Creed III: $60, for Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii U consoles, and Windows PCs. There’s a complex, intelligent plot with demanding but sometimes frustrating gameplay.
They’re all led by the malevolent Didact, a being with rather unpleasant plans for the human race.
And then there’s Cortana. The chief’s electronic companion through countless battles is slowly going insane. Only by defeating the Didact can the Master Chief hope to save her. But when he can no longer trust Cortana’s guidance, how can the Spartan hope to win?
It’s a nice setup for a robust and exciting game. The software was developed by 343 Industries, which has taken over for Bungie, the company behind the original Halo series. They’ve sharply upgraded the graphics and audio effects, making this the best-looking and sounding title in the series.
Still, the game lacks the wallop of Bungie’s final entry in the series, 2010’s Halo: Reach. That game, a prequel about the start of the human-Covenant war, turned a team of Spartan super soldiers into engaging, credible characters, then killed them off one by one. Go ahead and laugh, but I still get sentimental about it. Halo 4, not so much. But it’s still a rock-solid first-person shooter, well worth a play.
There’s plenty of emotional impact in two other new titles. For example, the protagonist of the cerebral, complex adventure Assassin’s Creed III, is a half-European, half-Mohawk Indian inhabitant of New England in the mid-18th century. When his mother is brutally murdered by agents of the ancient order of the Knights Templar, Connor (his Mohawk name is darn near unspellable) joins an equally ancient brotherhood of assassins who have been fighting the Templars over several centuries and five previous video games.
In his quest for vengeance, Connor allies with American revolutionaries such as Samuel Adams and George Washington, advances the cause of liberty, and of course, kills a lot of redcoats —mostly with knives, swords, or bare hands. Call it a first-person slicer.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II: $60 For Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii U, and Windows PCs. Hyperkinetic action driven by dark paranoid plot.
Gamers hoping to fling themselves headfirst into a digital bloodbath may be disappointed. This game is often slow going early on, with long sequences designed to teach players the skills needed to win. A great deal of game play involves sneaking rather than fighting. The player learns to scale walls, race across rooftops and treetops, tiptoe past belligerent sentries.
A complicated game control system doesn’t help matters. Just figuring out which button to push and when is occasionally infuriating.
But stick around. The game’s intense battle sequences deliver a rousing payoff, while its clever story line will power you over the sticky spots. Be prepared for the best plot twist I’ve yet seen in a game, a turnabout that had me reeling. Other shooters may deliver a higher body count than Assassin’s Creed III, but none has a higher IQ.
Still, brains aren’t everything. For me, there’s no substitute for sheer kinetic mayhem, which brings us to Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
The first Black Ops game, released in 2010, set a new standard for military games with its blend of merciless action and 1960s Cold War paranoia. When I learned that the sequel would be set in the future, my heart sank. If it’s all about robots and ray guns, they might as well call it Halo 5.
Not to worry. The dank cynicism of the original is still in full effect, thanks to a story rooted in US-Soviet conflicts during the 1980s. Part of the “collateral damage” was a Nicaraguan child whose father is whacked by the CIA. He grows up to become a global narcotics trafficker and a relentless enemy of all things American.
By 2025, he’s rich and powerful enough to force a showdown that he hopes will bring the United States to its knees.
The story line supplies a patina of realism that’s often missing from the actual game play, which is at once too difficult and too simple.
Why so many bad guys attacking at once? And why do they die so willingly? While not exactly easy, I found that Black Ops II was far less demanding than Assassin’s Creed III.
Which was fine by me. Its narrative force and intense action make it the most fun I’ve had pulling a trigger in quite a while, and my pick for the year’s top shooter. | Mass destruction has gotten to be a November habit with me, right up there with turkey and bad football. Videogame controller in hand, I’ve been annihilating digital terrorists, aliens, and even a fair number of British redcoats. And like a man who’s overindulged on Thanksgiving, I feel really good about it, mainly because the games are really good. | 15.550725 | 0.985507 | 38.405797 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.nytimes.com/1865/06/30/news/question-reconstruction-letters-chief-justice-chase-president-lincoln.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20121218051923id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/1865/06/30/news/question-reconstruction-letters-chief-justice-chase-president-lincoln.html | THE QUESTION OF RECONSTRUCTION. | 20121218051923 | The following letters were written immediately previous to the assassination of President LINCOLN, and have just been brought to light:
MY DEAR SIR: When all mankind are congratulating you, one voice, heard or not, is of little account; but I add mine.
I am very anxious about the future; and most about the principles which are to govern reorganization; for as these principles are sound or unsound, so will be the work and its results.
You have no time to read a long letter, nor have I time to write one; so I will be brief.
And first, as to Virginia. By the action of every branch of the government, we are committed to the recognition and maintenance of the State organization of which Gov. PEIRPOINT is the head. You know all the facts, and recapitulation would be useless. There will be a pressure for the recognition of the rebel organization, on condition of the profession of loyalty. It will be far easier and wiser, in my judgment, to stand by the loyal organization already recoganized.
And next, as to the other rebel States.
The easiest and safest way seems to me to be the enrollment of the loyal citizens without regard to complexion, and encouragement and support of them in the reorganization of State Governments, under constitutions securing suffrage to all citizens of proper age and unconvicted for crime. This, you know, has long been my opinion. It is confirmed by observation more and more.
This way is recommended by its simplicity, facility, and, above all, justice. It will be hereafter counted equally a crime and a folly if the colored loyalists of the rebel States are left to the control of restored rebels, not likely, in that case, to be either wise or just, until taught both wisdom and justice by new calamities.
The application of the principle to Louisiana is made somewhat difficult by the organization which has already taken place; but, happily, the constitution authorizes the Legislature to extend the right of suffrage; and it is not to be doubted that, on a suggestion from the national authorities that its extension to colored citizens, on equal terms with white citizens, is believed to be essential to the future tranquility of the country, as well as just in itself, the Legislature will promptly act in the desired direction. What reaches me of the condition of things in Louisiana impresses me strongly with the belief that this extension will be of the greatest benefit to the whole population.
The same result can be secured in Arkansas by an amendment to the State Constitution, or, what would be better, I think, by a new convention, the members of which should be elected by the loyal citizens, without distinction of color. To all the other States the general principle may be easily applied.
I most respectfully but most earnestly commend these matters to your attention. God gives you a great place and a great opportunity. May he guide you in the use of them.
I noticed this morning your proclamation closing the ports, and was glad to see it. I presume the law of forfeiture was well considered, and also the effect of discrimination against foreign vessels. Most respectfully and truly yours, S.P. CHASE.
The next day the Chief-Justice addressed the President again on the same subject:
DEAR SIR: The American of this morning contains your speech of last evening. Seeing that you say something on the subject of my letter to you yesterday -- reorganization -- and refer, though without naming me, to the suggestions I made in relation to the amnesty proclamation, when you brought it before the heads of departments, I will add some observations to what I have already written.
I recollect the suggestions you mention; my impression is that they were in writing. There was another which you do not mention, and which, I think, was not in writing. It is distinct in my memory, though doubtless forgotten by you. It was an objection to the restriction of participation in reorganization to persons having the qualifications of voters under the laws in force just before the rebellion. Ever since questions of reconstruction have been talked about, it has been my opinion that colored loyalists ought to be allowed to participate in it; and it was because of this opinion that I was anxious to have the question left open. I did not, however, say much about the restriction. I was the only one who expressed a wish for its omission, and did not desire to seem pertinacious.
You will remember, doubtless, that the first order ever issued for enrollment, with a view to reorganization, went to Gen. SHEPLEY, and directed the enrollment of all loyal citizens; and I suppose that since the opinion of Attorney-General BATES, no one connected with your administration has questioned the citizenship of free colored men, more than that of free write men. The restriction in the amnesty proclamation operated as a revocation of the order to Gen. SHEPLEY; but as I understood you not to be wedded to any particular plan of reconstruction, I hoped that reflection and observation would satisfy you that the restriction should not be adhered to. I fully sympathized with your desire for the restoration of the Union by the change of rebel slave States into Union free States, and was willing, if I could not get exactly the plan I thought best, to take the plan you thought best, and trust to the future for modification.
I know you attach much importance to the admission of Louisiana, or rather to her right to representation in Congress, as a loyal State in the Union. If I am not misinformed, there is nothing in the way except the indisposition of her Legislature to give proof satisfactory of loyalty by a sufficient guarantee of safety and justice to colored citizens, through the extension to loyal colored men of the right of suffrage. Why not, then, as almost every loyal man concurs with you as to the desirableness of that recognition, take the shortest road to it, by causing every proper representation to be made to the Louisiana Legislature of the importance of such extension?
Mr. CHASE entered more in detail into a discussion of the question, covering in the main his often expressed views, and concluded thus:
Once I should have been, if not satisfied, partially, at least, contented with suffrage for the intelligent and those who have been soldiers; now I am convinced that universal suffrage is demanded by sound policy and impartial justice. I have written too much already, and will not trouble you with my reasons. I shall return to Washington in a day or two, and perhaps it will not be disagreeable to you to have the whole subject talked over.
Truly and faithfully yours, S.P. CHASE. | The following letters were written immediately previous to the assassination of President LINCOLN, and have just been brought to light: BALTIMORE, April 11, 1865. MY DEAR SIR: When all mankind are congratulating you, one voice, heard or not, is of little account; but I add mine. | 22.534483 | 0.913793 | 21.913793 | medium | medium | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2012/12/15/family-filmgoer/AN2T8k7zUq6bRLr3P3yiKM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20121224015617id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2012/12/15/family-filmgoer/AN2T8k7zUq6bRLr3P3yiKM/story.html | Family Filmgoer - Movies - The Boston Globe | 20121224015617 | The Central Park Five (119 min., unrated) The vicious crime that’s discussed, the Central Park jogger case, and some of the language that’s used make the film too strong for under-16s. It explores the 1989 arrest and eventual conviction of five youths, four African-American and one Latino, in New York City. They were charged with the rape and near-fatal beating of a woman in Central Park. The film briefly shows gruesome photos of the jogger’s face after the attack. Videotapes of the teenagers’ confessions include graphic language about the rape, words often put in their mouths by police detectives heard in the background. The Central Park Five themselves, in present-day interviews, occasionally use profanity.
The Hobbitt: An Unexpected Journey (169 min., PG-13) Peter Jackson, having triumphed with his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, returns to Middle-earth to adapt the book that began the whole business. There are two more films to follow. Battle scenes involve beheadings, lopping off of arms, and runnings-through with swords. Little if any blood flows, but the mayhem is definitely PG-13-worthy. Gross humor about smelly behinds and loogies seems worse in 3-D. Andy Serkis’s Gollum, computer-enhanced, bug-eyed and insane, continues to be a scary screen creation.
Playing for Keeps (95 min., PG-13) Gerard Butler plays a former soccer star who coaches his 9-year-old son’s soccer team and suffers — or should that be enjoys? — romantic entanglements with the likes of Jessica Biel, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Uma Thurman. In addition to implied sexual liaisons and infidelities, adult characters use crude language and mildish profanity. Father and son take a joy ride in a Ferrari and nearly crash it.
Hyde Park on Hudson (94 min., R) Bill Murray plays Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One scene only earns the R rating. FDR and his lover have a sexual encounter in a car, shown mostly from a distance, but strongly and rather graphically implied with movement. The film includes little profanity. There are a few veiled verbal jokes about Mrs. Roosevelt’s friends, whom the president calls “she-men.”
Killing Them Softly (97 min., R) This small-scale crime film, based on George V. Higgins’s novel “Cogan’s Trade,” stars Brad Pitt as a gangland hit man. The violence occurs less frequently than one might expect. When it does, it involves much blood and often unfolds in slow-motion. One character gets a jaw-crushing beating, and another uses extremely crude and explicit sexual language. The dialogue is highly, comically profane. Several characters drink and use drugs. | A roundup of movie capsules for family filmgoers. | 59.222222 | 0.444444 | 0.444444 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/06/200849162635575145.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20121230070215id_/http://www.aljazeera.com:80/archive/2003/06/200849162635575145.html | US Marine killed in Djibouti "terror" camp | 20121230070215 | One US Marine was killed and eight other troops injured on Sunday in a blast that might have been caused by a bomb dropped from a B-52 in Djibouti.
The US has 900 military personnelat Camp Lemonier
The B-52 Stratofortress that might have been involved in the blast landed near forces training at Godoria Range, along the northern coast of the Horn of the African nation, said the statement.
The incident is being investigated. Two people suffered minor injuries and were treated at Camp Lemonier, the headquarters of Washingtonâs âcounter-terrorismâ task force in the Horn of Africa.
Four US soldiers would be evacuated from Djibouti on Monday, said military sources.
"That means that they were seriously injured," said a military source who requested anonymity.
Two other servicemen were taken to Bouffard hospital in Djibouti for treatment. Camp Spokesman Captain William Klumpp said that the injured troops were in âstableâ condition.
The forces supporting the Combined Joint Task Force were participating in a routine training exercise.
Two CH-53E super Stallion helicopters, which were participating in the exercise, were damaged in the accident.
Military specialists questioned by AFP said that the B-52 bomber might have come from the US base in Diego Garcia since large planes cannot land in Djibouti or Godoria.
Diego Garcia is part of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean belonging to Britain. Its 8000 inhabitants were forced to leave when the island was leased to the US in the 1970's.
Camp Lemonier is a former French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti. US forces have been using it since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States.
The joint task force was purportedly set up late last year, as part of efforts to pursue alleged al-Qaeda members in the Horn of Africa and boost the US military presence in the region. | One US Marine was killed and eight other troops injured on Sunday in a blast that might have been caused by a bomb dropped from a B-52 in Djibouti. | 11.965517 | 0.965517 | 16.896552 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2012/12/26/critics-picks-theater/fF57fIAIDJuI8Qrs78tz0J/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130101103601id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/theater-art/2012/12/26/critics-picks-theater/fF57fIAIDJuI8Qrs78tz0J/story.html | Upcoming arts events around Boston | 20130101103601 | ANTHONY MOORE: BEHIND THE MODERN PAVISE Moore’s paintings echo the painted oblong shield, or pavise, that sported religious and heroic imagery and was carried to battle by medieval soldiers. Moore applies a fractured style with realist elements in vivid tones, recalling stained glass. Pictured: “Pavise No. 5, 2012.” Through Feb. 4. Childs Gallery, 169 Newbury St. 617-266-1108, www.childsgallery.com
FULLY COMMITTED Becky Mode’s solo comedy of desperation gets a hectic, highly entertaining production directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary and starring Gabriel Kuttner in a virtuoso performance, playing the beleaguered reservations clerk at a four-star restaurant and the dozens of self-interested, self-important people conspiring to make his life a living . . . well, you know. Through Dec. 30. New Repertory Theatre, Black Box Theater, Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown. 617-923-8487, www.newrep.org
ARABIAN NIGHTS A remount of last year’s bewitching production, again starring Evelyn Howe as the quick-thinking storyteller and Vincent Ernest Siders as the hot-tempered king. Adapted by Dominic Cooke and directed by Daniel Gidron, with visually ravishing set and puppet design by David Fichter. Through Dec. 30. Nora Theatre Company andUnderground Railway Theater. At Central Square Theater,Cambridge. 866-811-4111, www.centralsquaretheater.org
OUR TOWN “When the theatre pretends to give the real thing in canvas and wood and metal,” playwright Thornton Wilder wrote, “it loses something of the realer thing which is its true business.” Director David Cromer’s stark production aspires to Wilder’s “realer thing” and achieves it. ThroughJan. 26. Huntington Theatre Company. At Roberts Studio Theatre, Boston Center forthe Arts. 617-266-0800, www.huntingtontheatre.org
SEAN FIELDER AND THE BOSTON TAP COMPANY Fielder assembles an energetic crew of young hoofers from Greater Boston to tap their way into this First Night showcase welcoming in the new year. Dec. 31, 9:30 p.m., $18 First Night button (children under 4 free). Hynes Convention Center Ballroom. 617-542-1399, www.firstnight.org
FIRST NIGHT FROG POND SKATING SPECTACULAR You can ring in the new year with the Skating Club of Boston, which celebrates the occasion with a showcase of talented students, seasoned competitors, and national champions in some of their fanciest new routines. Dec. 31, 6 p.m., Free. Boston Common Frog Pond.617-635-2120, www.bostonfrogpond.com
O’SHEA-CHAPLIN ACADEMY OF IRISH DANCE First Night offers two chances to see the enthusiastic young dancers of this well-known area dance school inperformances that featuretraditional and contemporary styles from the Emerald Isle. Dec. 31, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.,$18 First Night button (childrenunder 4 free). Hynes Convention Center Ballroom. 617-542-1399, www.firstnight.org
ORIGINATION This admirableeducation organization focuses on teaching African-influenced dance, such as hip-hop, jazz, step, and Caribbean styles. Dec. 31, 8 p.m., $18 First Night button (children under 4 free). Hynes Convention CenterBallroom. 617-542-1399, www.firstnight.org
BOSTON IN THE GILDED AGE: MAPPING PUBLIC PLACES During the latter half of the19th century, Boston’s map was radically altered by the filling in of Back Bay and a deadly fire in 1872. This exhibit charts those changes. Through March 17. Norman B. Leventhal MapCenter, Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St. 617-536-5400, www.bpl.org
LAKE EFFECT/ NOR’EASTER: PART II Winter is here, and three artists — Zachary Buchner, Andreas Fischer, and Philip Vanderhyden, offer work that addresses the season, in abstractions that emphasize surface, tone, and mark. ThroughJan. 26. LaMontagne Gallery, 555 East 2nd St., South Boston. 617-464-4640, www.lamontagnegallery.com
BLUE Every other year, the Cambridge Art Association’s juried show takes blue as its theme, and offers a wide range of interpretations. Mass MOCA’s director Joseph Thompson was the juror.Through Jan. 10. Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge Art Association, 25 Lowell St.,Cambridge and University Place Gallery, 124 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge. 617-876-0246, www.cambridgeart.org
AMERICAN VANGUARDS:GRAHAM, DAVIS, GORKY, DE KOONING, AND THEIR CIRCLE, 1927-1942 A look at the influence of John Graham’s circle on American modernism. Through Dec. 30. Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover. 978-749-4015, www.andover.edu/museums/addison.
JULIANNE SWARTZ: HOW DEEP IS YOUR Inventive, poetic, and witty installations and sculpture that play with perception. Through Dec. 30. deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln. 781-259-8355, www.decordova.org
CHROMO-MANIA! THE ART OF CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY INBOSTON 1840-1910 A brilliant survey of color prints in Boston, which was the first American city to introduce chromolithography. Through Jan. 12. Boston Athenaeum. 617-227-0270, www.bostonathenaeum.org
IN THE HOLOCENE A group exhibition that conceives of art as a speculative science, featuring work by John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Jack Goldstein, Joan Jonas, On Kawara, and Robert Smithson, among others. Pictured: Joseph Beuys’s “Capri-Batterie.’’ Through Jan. 6. List Visual Arts Center. 617-253-4680, listart.mit.edu | Recommended performances and exhibits around the area. | 124.875 | 0.5 | 0.5 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/list/201301/notre-dame-fighting-irish-alabama-crimson-tide-bcs-football | http://web.archive.org/web/20130107021857id_/http://www.thepostgame.com:80/blog/list/201301/notre-dame-fighting-irish-alabama-crimson-tide-bcs-football | The Real Notre Dame-Alabama Breakdown | 20130107021857 | In 2001, Alabama hired Mike Price and before he ever coached a game, he was fired for getting rowdy in a strip club, bringing two strippers back to his hotel room, and running up a room service bill upwards of $1,000. Two years later, Notre Dame hired George O'Leary, who lasted just five days because because he listed NYU-Stony Brook as his alma mater. The problem? NYU-Stony Brook doesn't exist. He also listed that he played football at the University of New Hampshire, which was also proved to be false. Alabama's gaffe was an oversight of character while Notre Dame’s was one of credentials. Since credentials are much easier to measure than character, the Irish takes this one. Edge: Notre Dame. | College football analysts have been comparing Alabama and Notre Dame in every which way before the BCS championship game: Scrutinizing their offenses,... | 5.84 | 0.48 | 0.56 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/02/facebook-matures-losing-its-edge/4yJoIxHk5TwRzCcuu6NpsM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130406132735id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2013/04/02/facebook-matures-losing-its-edge/4yJoIxHk5TwRzCcuu6NpsM/story.html | As Facebook matures, is it losing its edge? | 20130406132735 | NEW YORK — To see what Facebook has become, look no further than the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer. Sometime last year, people began sharing tongue-in-cheek reviews of the banana-shaped piece of yellow plastic with their Facebook friends. Then those friends shared with their friends. Soon, after Amazon paid to promote it, posts featuring the $3.49 utensil were appearing in even more Facebook feeds.
At some point, though, the joke got old. But there it was, again and again — the banana slicer had become a Facebook version of the knock-knock joke your uncle has told for years.
Has Facebook become less fun?
That’s something many users — especially those in their teens and early 20s — are asking as they wade through endless posts, photos ‘‘liked’’ by people they barely know, and spur-of-the moment friend requests. Has it all become too much of a chore? Are the life events of your loved ones drowning in a sea of banana slicer jokes?
‘‘When I first got Facebook I literally thought it was the coolest thing to have,” says Rachel Fernandez, 18, who signed up four or five years ago. And now? ‘‘Facebook got kind of boring.’’
The Pew Research Center recently found that 61 percent of Facebook users had taken a hiatus from the site for reasons that range from ‘‘too much gossip and drama’’ to ‘‘boredom.’’ Some respondents said there simply isn’t enough time in the day for Facebook.
If Facebook Inc.’s users leave, or check in less frequently, its revenue growth would suffer. The company, which depends on targeted advertising, booked revenue of $5.1 billion in 2012, up from $3.7 billion a year earlier.
But so far, for every person who has left, several have joined up. Facebook has more than 1 billion users around the world; 618 million sign in daily.
‘‘We have never seen a social space that actually works for everybody,’’ says danah boyd, who studies youth culture, the Internet, and social media at Microsoft Research. ‘‘People don’t want to hang out with everybody they have ever met.’’
Might Facebook go the way of e-mail? Those who came of age in the ‘‘You’ve got mail’’ era can reminisce fondly about arriving home from school and checking their AOL accounts. Boyd, who is 35 (and legally spells her name with no capitalization), recalls being a teen and ‘‘thinking e-mail is the best thing ever.’’
Few share that sentiment these days. Although e-mail has gone from after-school treat to a dull routine in 20 years, no one is ready to ring its death knell. Similarly, Facebook’s lost luster doesn’t necessarily foreshadow its obsolescence.
‘‘I don’t see teenagers leaving in droves,’’ boyd says. ‘‘I just don’t see it being their site of passion.’’
In early March, Facebook unveiled a redesign to address some of its users’ gripes. The retooling is intended to get rid of clutter.
Facebook surveys its users regularly. Jane Leibrock, whose title at Facebook is user experience researcher, says about a year ago she noticed people were complaining about clutter. She asked them what they meant. It turns out that the different types of content flowing through people’s News Feeds — links, ads, photos, status updates, things people ‘‘liked’’ or commented on — were ‘‘making it difficult to focus on any one thing,’’ she says.
The new design seeks to address the issue. There is a distinct feed for ‘‘all friends,’’ another for different groups of friends, one just for photos, and one for pages that users follow.
As a result, says Chris Struhar, lead engineer on the new design, people have a way to see everything that’s going on.
‘‘The amount of stories you have available to see has continued to increase,’’ Struhar says. ‘‘What we try to do now is give you more control.”
With that, the company hopes, people will spend more time on the site and share more information about themselves so companies can target them better with advertisements.
Tammy Gordon, vice president of AARP’s social media team, says the 50-plus set is just now settling into Facebook. The group’s own Facebook page grew to a million fans last year.
This age group is growing the fastest because older people tend to be latecomers to Facebook. | To see what Facebook has become, look no further than the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer. Sometime last year, people began sharing tongue-in-cheek online reviews of the banana-shaped piece of yellow plastic with their Facebook friends. Then those friends shared with their friends. But at some point, the joke got old. Still, there it was, again and again — like that old knock-knock joke your weird uncle has been telling for years. Has Facebook become less fun? That’s something many users —especially the younger set— are asking themselves as they wade through posts, photos and friend requests. Has it all become too much of a chore? Are the important life events of your closest loved ones drowning in a sea of banana slicer jokes? | 6.129252 | 0.92517 | 13.414966 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/boroughs/ottomanelli-kin-beef-article-1.630699 | http://web.archive.org/web/20130410041112id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/archives/boroughs/ottomanelli-kin-beef-article-1.630699 | OTTOMANELLI KIN END THEIR BEEF | 20130410041112 | THERE'S A TRUCE in the Ottomanelli war. Two scions of the famed New York clan of butchers have decided to bury the hatchet - and not in each other's backs. Cousins Frank and Nicolo Ottomanelli have been locked, on-and-off since 2000, in a bitter legal battle in Brooklyn Federal Court over the trademark of the family name. There are 10 meat markets and restaurants in Manhattan, Queens and upstate N.
Y. featuring the Ottomanelli name. Frank and Nicolo are sons of the Ottomanelli brothers, who immigrated from southern Italy in 1937 and opened a butcher shop in Greenwich Village. The roots of the dispute are murky. Both cousins declined to discuss the legal beef. "It's unfortunate," said another cousin, Frank Ottomanelli of the flagship store on Bleecker St., who has the same first name as one of the warring cousins. "We are the original store, and we try to get along with everybody. I just want to be a kissing cousin. Maybe someone stepped on someone's toes and didn't say sorry.
" Tim Zagat, publisher of the Zagat Survey, said similar feuds have erupted with foodie families like the folks at Patsy's Pizza or Citarella who are protective of their brand name. "It's important that people know what they're buying and just because it's called 'Ottomanelli,' that it's the same Ottomanelli that they know and love," Zagat said. Court papers tell part of the story. In late 1995, Frank Ottomanelli registered the Internet domain name Ottomanelli.
com and started selling meat under the trade name Ottomanelli Gourmet Food, according to Nicolo's sworn affidavit. Nicolo's attorney fired off a cease and desist letter, and Frank Ottomanelli responded with a lawsuit. According to Frank's affidavit, Nicolo started the feud in the 1990s when he "secretly started registering" the family name with the U.
S. Patent and Trademark Office. "After Nicolo's actions came to light and a number of other disputes arose, my company and I filed this lawsuit," Frank said. A settlement was reached, granting Nicolo custody of the trademark, while Frank could keep Ottomanelli.
com as long as the Ottomanelli products contained the prefix F or Frank. But last year Nicolo accused Frank of violating the deal. Nicolo once again accused Frank of creating consumer confusion by offering puttanesca sauce without the required F prefix. Nicolo also complained that operators of Frank's toll-free telephone number were answering calls "Ottomanell gourmet foods," which was a no-no. On May 10, the cousins cut a deal that appears to make Nicolo the victor. Lawyers for Frank and Nicolo said their clients preferred not to comment with the matter now settled. "Give me a call if [Nicolo] changes his mind," said Frank's lawyer David Kohane. jmarzulli@nydailynews. | THERE'S A TRUCE in the Ottomanelli war.
Two scions of the famed New York clan of butchers have decided to bury the hatchet - and not in each other's backs.
Cousins Frank and Nicolo Ottomanelli have been locked, on-and-off since 2000, in a bitter legal battle in Brooklyn Federal Court over the trademark of the family name. There are 10 meat markets and restaurants in Manhattan, Queens | 6.765432 | 0.975309 | 33.716049 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/18/google-earnings-rise-advertising-regains-strength/0COCcV6fd7czaZ8AuLFbAO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130420015137id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/18/google-earnings-rise-advertising-regains-strength/0COCcV6fd7czaZ8AuLFbAO/story.html | Google’s earnings rise 16% as advertising regains strength | 20130420015137 | SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s latest quarterly results provided further proof that the Internet search leader is figuring out how to make more money as Web surfers migrate from personal computers to mobile devices.
The first-quarter numbers released Thursday show that a recent decline in Google’s average ad prices is easing. The trend indicates that marketers are starting to pay more for the ads that Google distributes to smartphones and tablet computers. Mobile ads so far have fetched less money than those viewed on the larger screens of laptop and desktop computers.
But a growing number of people are clicking on mobile ads as they increasingly connect to Internet services on smartphones and tablets, driving down the average price paid for a marketing link. Google’s average price, or the ‘‘cost per click’’ to advertisers, has fallen from the previous year in six consecutive quarters, including the opening three months of the year.
The latest decrease in average ad prices was 4 percent. By comparison, Google’s average ad price fell by 6 percent during the final three months of last year and by 12 percent during last year’s first quarter.
Google’s stock edged up $4.09, or 0.5 percent, to $770 in extended trading after the numbers came out.
Google is a good way to monitor the health of digital commerce because it runs the Internet’s largest advertising network and is now a major player in the mobile computing market. It is also one of the world’s most powerful companies, so what happens to it can affect millions of people and businesses.
Google Inc. earned $3.3 billion, or $9.94 per share, during the opening three months of the year. That was a 16 percent increase from $2.9 billion, or $8.75 per share, last year.
If not for certain expenses, Google said it would have earned $11.58 per share. That figure exceeded the average earnings estimate of $10.65 per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Revenue climbed 31 percent from last year to $14 billion.
After subtracting ad commissions, Google’s revenue totaled $11 billion — $335 million below analyst estimates.
Google has been growing at an impressive clip for a company of its size. Its ability to keep growing has given the company a market value of more than $250 billion, second only to Apple among technology firms.
Yet it faces competition with Facebook Inc. for ad dollars and attention. For a time, Facebook’s popularity had people worried that it would become a more important ad vehicle than Google’s search engine.
Google has countered that by establishing its own social network, Google Plus. It also makes the most widely used smartphone operating system, Android. That gives the company channels for sending ads to mobile phone users, through built-in Google apps such as YouTube, maps and search.
Google dominates the mobile search market with 93 percent of US mobile search advertising dollars, according to eMarketer. | Google’s latest quarterly results provided further proof that the Internet search leader is figuring out how to make more money as Web surfers migrate from personal computers to mobile devices. The first-quarter numbers released Thursday show that a recent decline in Google’s average ad prices is easing. The trend indicates that marketers are starting to pay more for the ads that Google distributes to smartphones and tablet computers. Mobile ads so far have fetched less money than those viewed on the larger screens of laptop and desktop computers. But a growing number of people are clicking on mobile ads as they increasingly connect to Internet services on smartphones and tablets, driving down average price paid for a marketing link. Google’s average price, or the ‘‘cost per click’’ to advertisers, has fallen from the previous year in six consecutive quarters, including the opening three months of the year. | 3.448485 | 1 | 46.551515 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20130501-impala-wins-the-dash | http://web.archive.org/web/20130503143657id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/autos/story/20130501-impala-wins-the-dash | Chevy Impala: New thinking from an old horse | 20130503143657 | When a brand repositions a tired old nameplate toward a younger, more affluent buyer, the eye rolls are never far behind.
But sometimes, the freshest thinking comes from the stodgiest corners of the marketplace. Case in point is the 2014 Chevrolet Impala full-size sedan, a car that contains no shortage of clever features – as BBC Autos learned during a brief orientation with chief vehicle engineer Todd Pawlick – and bears lessons that all automakers (who lately seem bent on building particle accelerators into their cars’ dashboards) would be wise to heed.
Illustrated by this photograph, the multimedia screen on the Impala’s centre stack rises upward to reveal a cubby, much like those increasingly found throughout the General Motors family. Portable MP3 players can live within this space, as could – gasp – CD jewel cases. But in perhaps a sop to the middle-age target driver of the Impala, this trap door is not operated with eye blinks or hand waves or foot taps, but with a hard switch just below the screen, whose action is reassuringly smooth and consistent. (In valet mode, the cubby can be locked with a four-digit passcode, in the manner of a hotel lock-box.)
To the right of this button, meanwhile, is a rotary knob, the kind that in another era would tune in the ballgame or traffic report. Here it acts as a redundant control for Chevy’s MyLink infotainment system. If a driver would rather not depend solely on a touch-screen interface to place a phone call, check the weather forecast or connect to a streaming-audio service, the knob allows the driver to toggle among the icons until the desired application is found.
And on the inboard side of the steering wheel, unobtrusive audio volume control buttons are literally at a driver’s fingertips, removing a task that is typically absorbed by driver-facing steering-wheel controls – thereby freeing the outboard buttons to access other functions.
This kind of thinking about control redundancy has long been the province of Audi. That Chevrolet is not only giving it thought, but executing on it, is as clear a sign as any that GM has turned a corner. Or flipped a switch. | The full-size sedan, redesigned for the 2014 model year, puts a fresh spin on the dashboard knobs, dials and buttons of yesteryear. | 15.214286 | 0.642857 | 1.5 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.tmz.com/2007/09/17/barry-to-elisabeth-your-view-is-dangerous/190/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20130508183150id_/http://www.tmz.com/2007/09/17/barry-to-elisabeth-your-view-is-dangerous/190/ | Barry to Elisabeth: Your "View" is Dangerous | 20130508183150 | Barry to Elisabeth: Your "View" is Dangerous
A source tells TMZ that it's not Barry who's writing
song -- in fact, "View" producers pulled the plug on Manilow's performance when his people demanded that he appear on the show without Elisabeth. Manilow has in fact performed on the show twice before -- both last year -- when Hasselbeck's been co-hosting.
TMZ has learned that legendary singer
has pulled out of his scheduled appearance on "The View" tomorrow -- because he strongly disagrees with host Elisabeth Hasselbeck's conservative view! Paging Rosie O'Donnell!
In an exclusive statement to TMZ, Barry says, "I strongly disagree with her views. I think she's dangerous and offensive. I will not be on the same stage as her." Barry, taking a stand!
Manilow is currently on a press tour promoting the release of his new album, "Greatest Songs of the Seventies."
A network spokesman had no comment. | UPDATE: A source tells TMZ that it's not Barry who's writing this song -- in fact, "View" producers pulled the plug on Manilow's performance when his… | 5.617647 | 0.911765 | 13.794118 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2013/05/25/filmmaker-comes-home-show-support/tK2frOKgiT5TuVyQqn7LMJ/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130610070135id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2013/05/25/filmmaker-comes-home-show-support/tK2frOKgiT5TuVyQqn7LMJ/story.html | Filmmaker comes home to show support | 20130610070135 | Indie filmmaker and TV star Adam Green returns to his native Boston Tuesday through Thursday to host a series of events including the first public screening of “Hatchet III.” Proceeds from Green’s events will benefit One Fund Boston, which aids families affected by the Boston Marathon attacks. Green is best known for his 2006 horror comedy “Hatchet,” which proved popular enough to spawn two sequels. “Hatchet III,” which opens in theaters on June 14, will screen as part of the “Hatchet” movie marathon on Thursday, 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Revere Hotel, Theater One, 200 Stuart St. Besides special guests from the films, the marathon also boasts a rare 35mm print of the original “Hatchet” from the United Kingdom and an uncensored 35mm print of “Hatchet II.”
Green is also the creator and star of the sitcom “Holliston,” named after and set in his Massachusetts hometown. The second season of “Holliston” premieres on FEARnet on June 4. But local audiences can see three episodes in advance on Tuesday at 7 p.m. when Green hosts a preview at Holliston High School followed by a Q&A session that includes cast members Joe Lynch and Laura Ortiz.
Green’s slate of local events also includes a “Boston Strong Party” at the Worcester Palladium Wednesday starting at 7 p.m. The party and silent auction (yes, you can bid on a date with Green) features “Hatchet” stars Kane Hodder and Zach Galligan. All proceeds will go toward One Fund Boston. Tickets will be available at the door the day of each event.
For more information, go to www.rockandshock.com.
There’s no better way to welcome summer than with a feast of surfing movies. So head to Boston Surfs! The Regent Surf Film and Music Festival, four nights of international shorts and features Wednesday through Friday all starting at 7 p.m. at Arlington’s Regent Theatre. Presented with the Arlington International Film Festival, the opening program on Wednesday includes the short film “Relative” from Britain; “Surfing and Sharks” from South Africa; and “Surfing for Life,” which profiles 10 legendary surfers from the United States. Highlights on Thursday include the feature “Splinters,” about surfers who compete for a national championship as a way out of Papua New Guinea; and the Israel-Palestine feature “God Went Surfing With the Devil,” about a mixed group of Israelis and Americans who deliver surfboards to their Palestinian counterparts. The East Coast premiere of the Australian feature “Immersion,” surfer and filmmaker Tim Bonython’s love letter to the sport, takes place Friday.
For more information, go to www.regenttheatre.com.
The DocYard’s summer series presenting new documentaries and filmmakers begins June 3 at the Brattle Theatre. Director Ben Nabors will engage in a discussion with the audience following the 7 p.m. screening of “William and the Windmill,” a grand jury prizewinner from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. The feature documentary profiles young Malawian William Kamkwamba as he builds a power-generating windmill from scrap parts to help his family escape famine and poverty.
Director Gregorio Smith presents the Boston premiere of his new documentary “Truth Be Told” for a one-night showing June 5 at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Smith, who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, says in a press release that his feature documentary “lifts the veil” on his childhood religion to, among other things, “expose a profit-driven, isolationist culture.” Smith will field audience questions following the screening.
Additional information at www.hereliesthetruth.com or www.coolidge.org. | Indie filmmaker and TV star Adam Green returns to his native Boston Tuesday through Thursday to host a series of events including the first public screening of “Hatchet III.” Proceeds from Green’s events will benefit One Fund Boston, which aids families affected by the Boston Marathon attacks. Green is best known for his 2006 horror comedy, “Hatchet,” which proved popular enough to spawn two sequels. “Hatchet III,” which opens in theaters on June 14, will screen as part of the “Hatchet” movie marathon on Thursday, 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Revere Hotel, Boston. Besides special guests from the films, the marathon also boasts a rare 35mm print of the original “Hatchet” from the United Kingdom and an uncensored print of “Hatchet II.” | 4.576159 | 1 | 47.304636 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/11/cboe-paying-settle-sec-charges-oversight/tGcJOHSDlMKllJpu3lgIeM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130618032637id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2013/06/11/cboe-paying-settle-sec-charges-oversight/tGcJOHSDlMKllJpu3lgIeM/story.html | CBOE paying $6M to settle SEC charges on oversight | 20130618032637 | WASHINGTON — The largest US options exchange will pay a $6 million penalty to settle federal charges it failed to enforce trading rules.
The penalty being paid by the Chicago Board Options Exchange is the first imposed on an exchange for failures of regulatory oversight, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.
The CBOE is a self-regulating organization, like the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. They are charged with enforcing trading rules. The SEC has broad oversight but leaves day-to-day monitoring to the exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The SEC said the CBOE failed, among other things, to prevent abusive short-selling (betting a stock will lose value). Excessive short-selling targeting weak companies can push them into collapse and fan market volatility.
The exchange agreed to take corrective action but neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. The SEC also censured the exchange. Censure brings the possibility of a stiffer sanction if the alleged violation is repeated.
The settlement came two weeks after the SEC fined the Nasdaq $10 million for computer failures and decisions alleged to have disrupted Facebook’s public stock offering last year. | The largest US options exchange has agreed to pay a $6 million penalty to settle federal charges that it failed in its duty to enforce trading rules. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that the penalty being paid by the Chicago Board Options Exchange was the first imposed against an exchange for failures of regulatory oversight. The CBOE is a self-regulating organization charged with with enforcing trading rules for its members. The SEC has broad oversight over the trading. But it leaves the day-to-day monitoring to the exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The SEC said the CBOE failed, among other things, to prevent abusive short-selling by a member firm. Short-selling is when a trader bets a stock will lose value. | 1.538462 | 0.888112 | 7.377622 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2013/06/24/music-for-every-occasion-from-beach-road-trip-dinner-party-and-more/mXdaGbCloCyCi1SFN7nCzO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130629231619id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2013/06/24/music-for-every-occasion-from-beach-road-trip-dinner-party-and-more/mXdaGbCloCyCi1SFN7nCzO/story.html | Music for every occasion, from the beach to the road trip to the dinner party and more | 20130629231619 | Summer soundtracks come in all shapes and sizes. What sounds great in your car with the sun shining and the windows down might not be the best option for a cozy dinner party at home later that night. With that in mind, we rounded up 20 recent albums that will put you in the mood for the season’s various settings.
She & Him, “Volume 3” The latest from Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward bounces out of the speakers like a beach ball on a sun-drenched day. A mix of Deschanel’s originals and a few covers (including a choice take on Blondie’s “Sunday Girl”), “Volume 3” mines the magic of Deschanel’s winsome vocals and Ward’s quicksilver guitar work. (She & Him perform at the Bank of America Pavilion on July 10.)
Natalia Clavier, “Lumen” Known for her work as a vocalist with the band Thievery Corporation, this Argentine singer-songwriter steps out on her new debut for Nacional Records. “Lumen” is a beguiling mix of slinky electronica, pan-global rhythms, and horn-stoked soul, and sung in both English and Spanish.
Colleen Green, “Sock It to Me” A former Boston resident, Green has a lot of fun scrambling different segments of ’60s music, from Brill Building pop to jagged garage rock, with a bit of ’90s alt-rock dissonance thrown in to muddy the sound even more.
The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra, “The Benevolence of Sister Mary Ignatius” As a loving tribute to the sounds he grew up with, Thompson re-creates a world where ’60s reggae reigns supreme. That comes naturally to Thompson, an English musician who was the saxophonist and songwriter for the ’80s ska band Madness.
Pistol Annies, “Annie Up” The fierce combination of country gals Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley leads to some raucous party tunes and down-home ballads on their sophomore album. The opening song says it all: “I Feel a Sin Comin’ On.”
Keaton Henson, “Birthdays” Listen closely, and you’ll swear you can hear Henson’s exhales on this haunting collection of songs that sound like they’re on life support. Dusky and decorous, “Birthdays” brings to mind both Elliott Smith and Nick Drake.
Melissa Ferrick, “The Truth Is” This longtime and beloved fixture on the local folk scene takes a refreshing detour into noirish country on her latest, which she recorded in Boston. “The Truth Is” finds Ferrick working in organic Americana territory, with cameos by Paula Cole, Anne Heaton, and Rose Polenzani.
Dayna Kurtz, “Secret Canon Vol. 2” Kurtz isn’t kidding when she boasts that she looks good in bad on the opening track. A singer of profound emotional resonance and physical strength, Kurtz is her usual chameleonic self here, seamlessly weaving from the blues to jazz to country soul. (Kurtz performs at Johnny D’s on Aug. 9.)
Eleanor Friedberger, “Personal Record” While on hiatus from the Fiery Furnaces, the band she leads with her brother, Matthew, Friedberger delves deeper into her psyche on this album that jingles and jangles like a tambourine. I’m officially nominating “When I Knew” for this summer’s official jam.
Jason Isbell, “Southeastern” Rambling and ruminative, the new solo record from this former member of the Drive-By Truckers finds the sweet spot between heart-on-sleeve country heartache and barroom fervor. (Isbell performs at the Sinclair on July 29.)
Hanni El Khatib, “Head in the Dirt” The story goes that El Khatib met the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach in a bar in Paris and after a few bourbons they decided to make a record together. “Head in the Dirt” is their baby, and it’s what you would expect: a guttural blues-rocker that’s filthy, beautiful, and tender all at once.
The Mantles, “Long Enough to Leave” Like a forgotten match-up of the Byrds and the Velvet Underground, the Mantles’ sophomore release takes its time to unfurl over long stretches of psychedelic guitar pop.
Booker T., “Sound the Alarm” Joining forces with neo-soul singers such as Anthony Hamilton and Mayer Hawthorne, the legendary organ player proves he’s every bit as vital and youthful as his guest stars. This is a smoking soul record rooted in the past with an eye to modern sensibilities. (Review, Page 5.)
Disclosure, “Settle” English brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence have a penchant for turning electronic dance music into infectious jams that lodge deep in your brain. On their first album for a major label, the beats come a mile a minute and somehow hold steady throughout.
Cassie, “RockaByeBaby” Released online as a free mixtape (Google it), this curveball from R&B singer Cassie recasts her in the context of bass-heavy hip-hop, featuring a supporting cast of rappers Wiz Khalifa, Fabolous, Rick Ross, and Meek Mill.
Pretty & Nice, “Golden Rules for Golden People” The very definition of a summer soundtrack, the new album from these Boston rockers is a sugar rush: buoyant melodies, psychedelia lurking in the vocals, and harmonies worthy of the Beach Boys.
Takako Minekawa & Dustin Wong, “Toropical Circle” There’s immense beauty in the multiple colors and textures on this collaboration between guitarist Wong and vocalist Minekawa. His melodies are often undulating repetitions, while she adds a fine sheen with a series of wordless exhultations.
Little Annie & Baby Dee, “State of Grace” Little Annie comes from the old school of cabaret artists who are believable because they’ve actually survived the hell they chronicle in song. On this meeting of the minds with pianist and songwriter Baby Dee, they explore the despair of the disenchanted and offer the most heartbreaking cover you’ll ever hear of Stevie Wonder’s “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer.”
Cécile McLorin Salvant, “Woman Child” This American-born jazz artist who’s based in France gives a tour de force performance on her latest, which beats with a wild rhythm and summons the electricity of Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan.
Simone Dinnerstein & Tift Merritt, “Night” At the intersection of classical and folk music, the pairing of Americana singer-songwriter Merritt and pianist Dinnerstein is evocative for its grace and minimalism. They’re kindred spirits in search of something sublime. | Summer soundtracks come in all shapes and sizes. What sounds great in your car with the sun shining and the windows down might not be the best option for a cozy dinner party at home later that night. With that in mind, we round up 20 recent albums that will put you in the mood for the season’s various settings. The albums range from She & Him, from Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, to Keaton Henson to Booker T. | 14.569767 | 0.976744 | 29.139535 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/07/07/your-cellphone-yourself/eSvTK1UCqNOE7D4qbAcWPL/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130709115926id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/07/07/your-cellphone-yourself/eSvTK1UCqNOE7D4qbAcWPL/story.html | Cellphone data mined to create personal profiles | 20130709115926 | As we live our lives, we leave behind a vapor trail of information: the places we go and how fast we get there, the people we talk to, the stores where we shop, taverns where we drink, churches where we pray.
Powerful computers in our purses and pockets are now recording that data. The cellphone is not just a communication device; it is a diary. And with the data from millions of these diaries, businesses, government agencies, and scientists are learning how to forestall medical crises, identify emotional problems, prevent the spread of infections diseases, or simply sell more pizza.
For Anmol Madan, phone data offer an extraordinary opportunity to keep people healthier at lower cost.
“There’s a fundamental problem in health care in that there’s almost no information about how patients behave when they’re outside the clinic,” said Madan, who holds a doctorate from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Madan founded Ginger.io, a company whose software turns a smartphone into a medical monitor. The app uses the phone’s GPS location chip to constantly track the user’s location. At the same time, it employs the phone’s accelerometer chip, which rotates the on-screen display when you turn the phone on its side, as a motion detector that keeps track of the user’s movements. It is a simple way to see if he or she is getting enough exercise.
In addition, the Ginger.io app logs the number and duration of phone calls. There is no threat to privacy; the software does not track who the user calls or what is said.
So why bother? Because of research showing that people who are more sociable also tend to be healthier.
“You want to make sure that somebody who’s got diabetes, that he’s not depressed,” said Madan.
So Ginger.io tracks a person’s phone usage over time. If a patient’s calling pattern radically changes, it could indicate an unwelcome mood shift, and the software will notify a physician. Madan said the technology could reduce hospital readmissions of chronically ill patients.
Meanwhile, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University say they can figure out the kind of person you are, simply by studying the way you use your cellphone. Between March 2010 and June 2011, researchers collected data on 69 study participants, using an app that recorded various indicators of how each phone was used.
“Do you call a lot of numbers, or all the time the same numbers? Do you call the same number every day at noon? Do you respond very quickly to a text?” said Jordi Quoidbach, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at Harvard who was recently appointed an assistant professor at Pompeu Sabra University in Barcelona.
He and other members of the team also measured variables such as the locations from which calls and texts were sent, and how often the person used the phone from home.
“The way people interact with each other shows their personalities, even when they’re on a cellphone,” said Alex Pentland, director of MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory.
Each participant was also given standard psychological tests that identify personality traits. The researchers found the cellphone data enabled them to predict how people would perform on the tests. For example, they could spot an extrovert by tracking how often the phone is used at home, the distance traveled each day, and how many places are visited.
Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, an applied mathematician at the MIT Media Lab who worked on the study, hopes it will be possible someday to run psychological tests on entire cities or countries, simply by analyzing the citizens’ phone records.
“Our main goal is both to show that it is possible . . . and to see if this method can be applied on a larger scale,” Montjoye said.
For example, scientists might use phone records someday to estimate how many Americans are prone to depression, with no need to conduct millions of individual tests.
But Quoidbach admitted the technique could be misused by marketing companies trying to gain insights into consumer buying habits.
“Right now it’s kind of a gray zone,” said Quoidbach, who favors strong safeguards to ensure that cellphone profiling does not infringe on privacy rights.
Such data, though, are already in commercial use. MIT’s Pentland cofounded a company, Sense Networks, to analyze usage data from smartphones to precisely tailor mobile advertising campaigns. The company’s clients include QIP Holder LLC, owner of the Quiznos chain of fast-food restaurants.
Sense Networks uses the GPS bread crumbs recorded by the cellphone to track where users go in daily routines — to the supermarket, the mall, nightclubs, museums, or movie theaters. That can indicate whether the cellphone user is a sensitive patron of the arts, a shot-and-a-beer sports fan, or both.
Sense Networks aggregates the data to create customized market segments — music lovers or sports junkies, for example. When someone in a targeted group launches a smartphone app, Sense Networks makes sure they will see a relevant advertisement.
Verizon Wireless does much the same thing with its Precision Market Insights program, which combines phone-location data with information about the apps running on customers’ phones and the websites they visit. The results are like a road map for marketers. During last year’s Super Bowl, for example, Precision Market Insights found more smartphone users visited the websites of Chevrolet, Best Buy, and Ford after their ads ran during the game — instant evidence the commercials had an impact.
Nathan Eagle, another MIT Media Lab veteran, wants to use cellphone data from millions of users to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
Eagle is the chief executive of Jana Mobile Inc., a Boston company that conducts surveys and marketing campaigns via cellphones. Eagle and his wife, Caroline Buckee, an epidemiologist at Harvard School of Public Health, have used cellphone records of 15 million people in Kenya to track the spread of malaria in that country.
By studying cellphone records, scientists “get a real-time lens into how the aggregate population is actually behaving,” Eagle said. “That’s useful for anything from urban planning to public health.”
For example, IBM Corp. used cellphone location data to track commuters in Abidjan, the largest city in the African nation of Cote d’Ivoire, and plotted more efficient routes for bus lines to reduce commute times. IBM hopes to apply the same method in other cities.
Tracking people through their phones is bound to alarm privacy advocates, especially since the recent revelations that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting vast amounts of telephone and e-mail data.
But public outrage probably will not halt the mining of mobile phone information.
“I’d love to be able to access the data that my [cellular] operators have on me,” Eagle said. “I think that data can be used in all sorts of great ways that goes far beyond marketing.”
After all, it is one of the most valuable databases on earth, and it gets more valuable whenever one of us switches on a cellphone. | The cellphone is not just a communication device; it is a diary. And with the data from millions of these diaries, businesses, governments, and scientists are learning how to forestall medical crises, identify emotional problems, prevent the spread of infections diseases or simply sell more pizza. Ginger.io turns a smartphone into a medical monitor that tracks how often users move around or interact socially. Meanwhile scientists at MIT and Harvard University say they can figure out the kind of person you are, simply by studying the way you use your cellphone. The researchers found the cellphone data enabled them to predict how people would perform on personality tests — spot an extrovert by tracking how often the phone is used and how far it travels. | 10.145985 | 0.963504 | 16.058394 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.nydailynews.com/2.1353/world-expensive-cars-gallery-1.41064 | http://web.archive.org/web/20130715233552id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/2.1353/world-expensive-cars-gallery-1.41064 | World's Most Expensive Cars | 20130715233552 | These buildings, including One World Trade Center, are some of the tallest in the world.
You know what they say, 'nothing is certain but death and taxes.' And it looks like some celebs learned this the hard way. From Pamela Anderson to Martha Stewart, Heidi Fleiss to Wesley Snipes, these stars have been ensnared in tax scandals.
Fast food pillowcases. Fake boobs to help kids sleep. Duster socks for the cat's feet. These are real - and real stupid - inventions.
Despite their fame and fortune, some stars blow through their money in the blink of an eye.
Take a look back at the the biggest hits from Apple through the years. | This 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa is the most expensive cars ever sold at auction, fetching $12.2 million at the Ferrari Leggenda e Passione event in 2009 (sold by RM Auctions in conjunction with Sotheby's). "The beautiful and immediately recognizable Scaglietti-designed 'pontoon-fender' 250 TR was produced from 1957 to 1958 during which only 22 examples were constructed. The Ferrari 250 TRs entered 19 international championship races from 1958 through 1961 emerging with 10 victories and earning them legendary status among discerning collectors, as well as the honor of being one of the most desirable and competitive racing Ferraris ever
built," according to Reuters.com. | 1.097561 | 0.276423 | 0.308943 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/26/crystal-palace-rebuild-chinese-developer | http://web.archive.org/web/20130731071844id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/26/crystal-palace-rebuild-chinese-developer | Raising the glass: Crystal Palace to come back from the dead | 20130731071844 | It once showcased the latest in Victorian technology and hosted the world's first pedigree cat show beneath its soaring vaults of iron and glass. Now, the Crystal Palace might be rebuilt in south London as a complex of exhibition spaces, shops and cafes, if a Chinese developer gets his way.
Ni Zhaoxing, billionaire owner of Shanghai-based real estate giant ZhongRong Holdings, has expressed his desire to create an exact replica of the 900,000 sq ft glass halls in Crystal Palace park. The majestic structure was originally designed by Joseph Paxton and first erected in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, assembled by 5,000 navvies at a cost of £150,000 (equivalent to £13m today). After the exhibition, it was relocated to Sydenham and redesigned in a much grander beaux arts style, complete with a barrel-vaulted roof and two new transepts – costing £1.3m (around £97m today) – before being destroyed by fire in 1936.
An Act of Parliament in 1990 specified that any new building erected on the site must be in the spirit of Paxton's original building, a challenge attempted in vain by a 1996 plan for a 20-screen multiplex cinema on the site by Ian Ritchie architects, followed by a later iteration in a hopeless Paxton pastiche.
Now the ZhongRong group wishes to follow the Act to the letter. The company has appointed Arup engineers to work on the project, and is in early-stage talks with the Greater London Authority and Bromley Council to develop the idea, with a view to submitting a planning application later this year.
The project is thought to provide the necessary financial backing to help Bromley Council revive long-stalled plans to regenerate the park. In 2008, planning permission was granted for a £67m masterplan, drawn up by the now-defunct London Development Agency. The plans outlined the substantial re-landscaping of the park, a new sports centre, and 180 apartments – controversially proposed for a site of metropolitan open land, to help pay for the overhaul of the park.
The scheme, developed by German landscape firm Latz and Partner, also proposed a new grove of trees on the site of the Crystal Palace terraces, laid out in a grid to mimic the former iron columns. The architects were firmly against a revival of the building itself.
“The palace was much bigger in our heads than it ever has been in reality,” said architect Tilman Latz. “The ghost of Crystal Palace is the strength of the site.”
Some locals were not so convinced. Sue Nagle, of the local Triangle Traders association, said planting a “tree palace” on the site was a “lost opportunity to capitalise on one of the most famous brand names in the world.”
“Once 350 trees have been planted,” she told the Croydon Guardian in 2007 when the masterplan was unveiled, “the possibility of rebuilding the Crystal Palace in the future will be gone forever."
But now with Ni Zhaoxing's ambitions in the frame, that unlikely possibility may well return. Hearing news of the latest plans, John Payne of the Crystal Palace Community Association was unimpressed.
“Here we go again,” he told the Guardian. “It's about the fifth proposal for a commercial shed on this site. Every time, we have fiercely battled these schemes, and even taken them to the European courts to stop them from happening. We are completely opposed to commercial building on public parkland – but this time it sounds like there's some serious money behind the proposal.”
The ZhongRong group is no stranger to glass megastructures: the company is responsible for the bulbous 48-storey shaft of Jasper Tower in Shanghai's Pudong district, along with the neighbouring hulks of Hengrui International Plaza and the International Business City complex.
So how might their ambitions translate to the verdant surrounds of Bromley?
“It is a matter of public record that we are committed to improving Crystal Palace Park which remains a jewel, not just in Bromley, but in London’s crown,” said a council spokesperson. “We are continuing to explore all funding options, including grant funding, that might be available to help secure a long term and viable future. As part of this, we have had discussions with a number of parties and all of these conversations remain at early stages.” | Shanghai-based company to create an exact replica of Joseph Paxton's iron and glass halls in Crystal Palace park | 40.047619 | 1 | 4.047619 | high | high | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2013/08/22/pianist-satoko-fujii-search-leads-singular-sound/iybasgWQDpqy4vPb5z223J/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20130826080838id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2013/08/22/pianist-satoko-fujii-search-leads-singular-sound/iybasgWQDpqy4vPb5z223J/story.html | Pianist Satoko Fujii’s search leads to a singular sound | 20130826080838 | We’ve all heard the advice “Just be yourself.” Whether it’s in preparation for a job interview, a first date, or any kind of “performance.” And yet, the advice itself is often part of the problem. Like the command “Relax!”
The 54-year-old Japanese pianist and composer Satoko Fujii has heard this advice several times in her life, but her trip to being “herself” was hard won. At this point, no one would deny her individuality. As a pianist and composer with more than 60 albums to her credit, she has forged a unique amalgam of influences — jazz, classical, Japanese folk. A solo piece might start with a discordant clash of harp-like plucked piano strings that gives way to a series of sweetly meditative chords and then an elaborate improvised melody. With the collective quartet Kaze, Fujii arranges free-jazz explosions of trumpet and drums that can clear for a Morton Feldman-like reverie of meditative chords. Likewise with her celebrated big band recordings, which mix free-jazz ferocity with detailed ensemble writing. Fujii’s coloristic range at the piano, her note choices and marksmanship, distinguish her as a singular virtuoso — player and composer at once.
It wasn’t easy getting there. Fujii — who has degrees from both Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory and comes to the Lily Pad on Sept. 2 with her husband, the trumpeter Natsuki Tamura — studied for years as a classical pianist in the Tokyo suburb where she grew up. She remembers her first lesson with a jazz pianist. “He said, ‘Just improvise!’ Well, you know, I was there because I couldn’t do it!”
Fujii had first been bitten by the jazz bug when she was studying with the esteemed composer and pianist Koji Taku, who had quit a prestigious conservatory position in order to play jazz. Fujii, having grown up in a middle-class Japanese household, was stunned. “This was shocking to me.” And so she began to listen to jazz on the radio. Nothing grabbed her until she heard John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” “It was something I had never heard before. I couldn’t understand anything, but I could feel something. Behind this music was a big energy. That was the start for me.”
Fujii tried to teach herself to improvise, but got nowhere. “If I didn’t have music paper in front of me, I couldn’t play anything. I felt like a well-trained dog.”
She decided to quit piano altogether. She formed an experimental band with some friends — using only their voices, hands, and feet, they made a racket together, singing, shouting, beating on the floor. “I wanted to see where music came from. The music our ancestors made, when music was born.”
But she was also going to jazz clubs and discovered that she still loved piano. She took lessons, studied theory, and was soon playing every night in one of the many swing bands populating the Tokyo cabarets. Still, she wasn’t happy. “I thought, Maybe I don’t have the talent. Maybe I’m not gifted.” The best way to find out, she decided, was to commit herself completely. So she enrolled at Berklee.
Fujii (right) with (from left) husband Natsuki Tamura, Peter Orins, and Christian Pruvost.
She auditioned for an arranging class taught by the late Herb Pomeroy. “I don’t remember what I arranged, but it was something based on very basic theory. So I didn’t do anything wrong. But I failed. Herb said, ‘This doesn’t have your voice.’ ” The next semester she tried again, arranging Coltrane’s “Naima” to a funk beat. “I forgot about theory. I just used sounds that I liked,” using “violations” of standard theory. “And Herb really liked it!,” she said.
Several years passed, in which she married Tamura (whom she had met at Berklee) and the couple moved back to Japan. She played in clubs and wrote for music magazines. Still she was dissatisfied. Then she met the percussionist Taki Masuko, who had studied and taught at New England Conservatory, her next stop.
There, she took piano lessons with one of her heroes, Paul Bley. “Right now,” says Fujii, “I’m making music because I want to make music that no one has heard before. I would like to make something unique. Back then, I wasn’t so sure.” She wanted to play like McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea. “I knew it wasn’t right, but it sounded so good!” In the first lesson, Bley said, “Just play yourself. McCoy Tyner is already here.” Fujii felt liberated. “Everything was like that with him” she says of Bley’s pedagogical technique, which is famously part music-business tutorial and part talk therapy.
In her solo and band performances, Fujii says she likes “directed improvisation,” a seamless division between composed and improvised sections — an old dream for jazz composers. All the better for finding that music no one has heard before.
The serenely focused young Boston trumpet player Jason Palmer brings his septet into Scullers on Aug. 28 to play from his latest CD, “Take a Little Trip,” dedicated to ’70s singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton. . . . Also at Scullers, on Aug. 29, pianist Marc Cary celebrates another songstress, his former boss, the late, great Abbey Lincoln, drawing from his album “For the Love of Abbey.” (For more on Cary, see Page 30.) . . . On Sept. 6, the mesmerizing pianist Jacky Terrasson plays Scullers while Derrick Hodge , bassist with the Robert Glasper Experiment, supports his Blue Note debut, “Live Today,” with a gig at the Regattabar. . . . The following week, guitar god John Scofield revives his groovin’ Überjam Band at the Regattabar (Sept. 11 and 12), while Nicholas Payton comes into Scullers (Sept. 12) with his formidable trio, in which powerhouse drummer Lenny White and bassist Vicente Archer support Payton simultaneously playing trumpet and Fender Rhodes. The band’s “#BAM Live at Bohemian Caverns” found them digging dark, heavy grooves indeed. | We’ve all heard the advice “Just be yourself.” Whether it’s in preparation for a job interview, a first date, or any kind of “performance.” And yet, the advice itself is often part of the problem. Like the command “Relax!” The 54-year-old Japanese pianist and composer Satoko Fujii has heard this advice several times in her life, but her trip to being “herself” was hard won. At this point, no one would deny her individuality. As a pianist and composer with more than 60 albums to her credit, she has forged a unique amalgam of influences — jazz, classical, Japanese folk. Fujii — who has degrees from both Berklee and New England Conservatory — comes to the Lily Pad on September 2 with her husband, the trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. | 7.929936 | 0.993631 | 53.783439 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/oct/03/architecture.religion | http://web.archive.org/web/20130830191624id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/oct/03/architecture.religion | Jonathan Glancey on the restoration of Canterbury cathedral. | 20130830191624 | Pollution and old age is causing serious damage to the home of the Church of England. Photograph Neil Munns/PA.
Canterbury cathedral is falling down. Does this come as a surprise? Probably not.
Even though most of us - whatever our religious beliefs or lack of them - like to think of our medieval cathedrals as a kind of architectural bedrock, these are ambitious and sometimes even nervous structures, filled with astonishing art and craft, and sheltered under prodigious roofs every bit as prone to rot and decay as any temple, mosque, synagogue, or even office block or humble home.
Today, Canterbury cathedral launches its latest worldwide appeal for major funds to keep it standing for the next several hundred years. This is, in itself, at a time when so much of the world is crying out for temporal aid - to fight off illness, starvation, invasion and brutality - a 21st century act of faith. How much do these stones, that 12th century stained glass, those owl-like Gothic towers matter?
Europe's medieval cathedrals were themselves built as acts of faith - religious, architectural, engineering - and so they were never less than highly charged and dramatic structures. They displayed the intensity of belief, and the religious and human ambition, of those who commissioned, designed and crafted them. They vaulted so high into the medieval sky that several collapsed - twice in the case of the nave of the never-completed Beauvais cathedral - while the structures of others, like Wells, had to be shored up by ingenious feats of medieval engineering.
All of them, despite invasions by shouty, digital camera-wielding, gum-chewing tourists dressed resolutely in shorts, trainers, rucksacks, baseball caps and relentlessly tacky souvenir stalls, remain havens of spirituality, or, at least, of a very different world from that of the brand-crazy, ultra-capitalist, global junk culture beyond their glass-rich walls. Canterbury cathedral matters not just because it is a great and complex work of architecture, and not even for its Croesus-rich history, but because it remains a beacon of warm and forgiving faith in a world of turbulent ideas, stunning greed, unrelenting intellectual myopia and moral cretinism.
And yet, because it is also a kind of time capsule of a rich slice of the history of these islands, too, we have a duty, a need, and, hopefully, a desire to protect its venerable stones. Canterbury is at once a prayer and our collective life enshrined in stone. Its spiritual, as well as its architectural influence, has spread, very gently for the most part, across the globe. Any Kentish visitor to Calcutta will be happily surprised to witness the bell tower of that city's St Paul's cathedral: it's a doppelganger for Canterbury's famous 91m high (297-ft) Bell Harry tower, commissioned by Prior Henry of Eastry and completed in 1510. Faith, says Bell Harry tower, is universal, even if it flowers in 100 different ways.
In any case, given that so much of Kent has been, or is about to be, subsumed into the faithless, valueless, artless world of the gormless "Thames gateway" development plan, and given the transformation of great tracts of south-east England into cynical, brand-led, shopping-mall, executive-housing hell, any money diverted from this developers' and devil's game into the stones of Canterbury must be a good thing. And, when all the cheapjack junk built in the next quarter of a century turns to dust, the bells of Canterbury will ring out loud, clear and well-supported by the renovated architecture holding them aloft.
· Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic | As Canterbury cathedral calls for restoration funds, Jonathan Glancey says the awesome building stands as a rebuke to the crassness of modern life. | 29 | 0.68 | 1 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/aug/30/art.gayrights | http://web.archive.org/web/20130831222153id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/aug/30/art.gayrights | Jon Savage threads together the lives of three men persecuted for their homosexuality | 20130831222153 | Just over 40 years ago the Sexual Offences bill received Royal Assent and became an act of law. In overturning the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 - the "blackmailer's charter" - the Sexual Offences Act substantially decriminalised homosexual acts and allowed gay men some freedom to live their lives openly and without fear. However, for three high-achieving and, in their own way, extraordinary, British gay men, 1967 marked the end, not a beginning.
The outline of their deaths is well documented. On February 3 1967, the independent record producer Joe Meek killed his landlady, Violet Shenton, before turning the shotgun on himself. On August 9, the hottest new British playwright of his generation, Joe Orton, was murdered by his companion, Kenneth Halliwell. On August 27, the body of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was found after an accidental overdose of a prescribed sleeping pill.
Within the still small, incestuous world of London's entertainment industry, the three had links that went beyond the year of their deaths. During 1966, Meek had meetings with Epstein about managing Liverpool's the Cryin' Shames, whose wracked ballad, Please Stay, was Meek's last top 30 hit. In early 1967, Joe Orton had been sounded out about writing the script for the Beatles' third United Artists movie - provisionally entitled Up Against It.
However, they shared more than professional interests. All three were born within five years of each other: Meek in 1929, Orton in 1933, Epstein in 1934. All turned 21 in the early to mid-50s, a time when homosexuality became the number one enemy within - associated not only with perversion, but, thanks to the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, the dreaded spectre of communism.
The eventual passing of the SOA - in the teeth of some manic parliamentary opposition - marked well over a decade of campaigning that began out of this extreme prejudice. The process began with the September 1957 publication of the report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution. The Wolfenden Report, as it was better known, recommended a change in the law for both humanitarian and practical reasons, while observing that the authorities should not concern themselves with private acts.
To commemorate this 50-year anniversary, BBC4 is running a week of programmes that aim to shed light on the hidden lives that most gay men were forced to live before 1967. For, despite its liberalising provisions, the SOA didn't overturn decades of extreme prejudice overnight: there would be no magical rebirth for many gay men who had borne the brunt of tabloid hostility, draconian sentencing, and the tender ministrations of blackmailers and police provocateurs.
During the early 50s, there was a major crackdown on male homosexuality in Britain. Though there is no definitive evidence for an anti-communist witch-hunt, some of this could have come from the establishment wish to assert a restrictive normality after the social upheavals of the second world war, with the police casting themselves as the guardians of a traditional morality.
The highest profile case of that period was the joint trial of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood in early 1954. Convicted of sexual offences with two young airmen, Montagu was jailed for a year, the other two for 18 months. Incensed by his treatment, Wildebood, a journalist, wrote a campaigning biography, Against the Law, which on its publication in 1955 helped to crystallise opinion against the harsh application of sexual offence laws.
Partly as a result of the publicity that the Montagu case received, the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution had already been set up in the summer of 1954. Refuting the standard slurs then used against homosexual men (paedophilia, the destruction of family life etc), the report caused a stir on its publication in September 1957: well ahead of public opinion, it marked a sea change in attitudes towards male homosexuality.
Three months earlier, Epstein had found himself in big trouble. Arrested in April 1957 for "persistent importuning" by a police provocateur in a Swiss Cottage toilet, he was devastated. As he wrote at the time, "the damage, the lying criminal methods of the police in importuning me and consequently capturing me leaves me cold, stunned and finished".
The handwritten, impassioned document for his defence makes for fascinating reading. In his turmoil, Epstein had "believed that my own will-power was the best thing with which to overcome my homosexuality." At the same time, it gave him a wider understanding of what it was to be an outcast: "I feel deeply because I have always felt deeply for the persecuted, the Jews, the coloured people, for the old and society's misfits."
It was this realisation of his marginality that led Epstein away from a conventional career path into pop management. In late 1961, he found an outlet for his visions in a scruffy group that nobody wanted. Divining the Beatles' world-beating quality, he spent much of early 1962 - while they were struggling to get a record contract - telling anyone who would listen that they would be bigger than Elvis. He was not taken seriously.
Epstein avoided prison, despite this and other dangerous encounters, but Joe Orton did not. In April 1962, while still struggling writers, both he and Halliwell received a six-month prison sentence for stealing and defacing library books (which they then returned: their inspired and witty collages could now be considered high-concept art). Orton was certain that the sentence was passed "because we were queers".
For Halliwell, prison was a crushing blow, but it honed Orton's prose: "Being in the nick brought detachment into my writing," he said in 1964. Within a year of his release, he received his first commission when The Boy Hairdresser was accepted by the BBC Third Programme. In September 1963, he began a new, full-length play designed as a full-blown attack on British society, that "old whore" which had lifted up her foul-smelling skirts.
While Orton was writing Entertaining Mr Sloane, Joe Meek found himself in deep trouble. On November 11 1963, he was caught in a public toilet just off the Holloway Road and charged with "persistently importuning". He was fined, but his real punishment did not occur until the next day, when he was named and shamed on the front page of the Evening News as The Man Who Wrote Telstar. He became the target of blackmailers.
The arrest happened at a critical time for Meek. In the early 60s, he had built himself up into Britain's foremost independent record producer with elemental melodramas like John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me and Wild Wind. In the last quarter of 1962, he hit paydirt with the Tornados' Telstar, No 1 in both the US and the UK, which gave a melody to the media age. However, the onset of the beat boom meant that he was becoming passe. The Beatles, not the Tornados, were at No 1 at the end of 1963.
Meek continued to fight the odds. His last big hit came in 1964 with the Honeycombs' stomping Have I the Right - an oblique comment on his own blocked sexual and emotional fulfilment. In August 1966, he went public with his homosexuality in Do You Come Here Often, a Tornados B-side. This extraordinary slice of 60s gay life was among his very last releases.
For all their unprecedented freedoms, however, the 60s could not wipe away the past. All three of these major cultural innovators were scarred by what they had gone through in the early 1950s, when to be homosexual meant that you were the lowest of the low. All three had suffered violence, prejudice, and the bullying attention of Laura Norder. Out of this adversity, however, came a ferocious drive.
This is the syndrome known as gay over-achievement, an incandescent thirst for revenge - right, if you think I'm a piece of dirt, I'm going to show you and the world that I'm not. In fact, I'm going to do more than show you that I'm not a piece of dirt, I'm going to ram the fact that I'm better than you right down your throat. In public. So you have to see the fact that I am richer, cleverer, prettier than you every day, in the newspapers, in the magazines, on the television. So you can choke on your dirty words.
All three enacted this drive with incredible force, as their experiences coloured their visionary sensibilities. Meek expanded the possibilities of recorded sound in a series of records that remain perfect distillations of teenage angst. Between 1964 and 1967, Joe Orton wrote five plays and three television screenplays and transformed British theatre with a new farcical language that combined camp's caustic cadences with stylised naturalism. In January 1967, Loot was awarded an award for the best play of the year.
In the five years before his death, Brian Epstein saw his visions come true. Under his sympathetic guidance, the no-hoper Beatles became the biggest pop stars in the world. Unlike Elvis, they did not settle into mediocrity but changed the possibilities of pop forever by growing artistically and spiritually. The release of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in June 1967 was the pinnacle of their extraordinary career: as Brian Epstein had foreseen, they remain the biggest showbusiness story of the 20th century.
Despite their achievements, all three found that success didn't eradicate the deep scars of exile. They had got to the top, and, for Meek and Epstein at least, it was a barren plateau. Drugs and sex - for Orton, lust was "an emotion indistinguishable from anger" - might have filled the hole, but they were never enough. If there was an underlying message to the 60s' careening momentum, it was that rage could turn inwards to self-destruction.
The shocking thing about Joe Meek's lethal self-hatred is how many gay men of his generation shared the impulse. In his diary for March 11 1967, Joe Orton wrote about a conversation he had with his friend Kenneth Williams, by then a national figure in the UK for his appearances in the Carry On series of films. Orton found Williams "a horrible mess" sexually: "He mentions 'guilt' a lot in conversation."
Though Orton rejected Williams's sexual guilt as the holdover from a bygone era, he couldn't escape his older partner, Kenneth Halliwell. The more that Orton flaunted his promiscuity in the diary entries and revelled in his success, the more depressed Halliwell became. On August 9 1967, his resentments exploded in a spasm of shocking violence.
In turn, Epstein's mental state had deteriorated since August 1966, after the Beatles' stopped touring: he hadn't been able to attend their last ever show at San Francisco's Candlestick Park because his then boyfriend, a hustler called Diz Gillespie, had robbed him of money and valuable documents. According to his attorney and close friend Nat Weiss, that accounted for "his first major depression, the start of his loss of confidence".
At the very moment that homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, the No 1 record was the Beatles' All You Need Is Love - the recording of which had marked Brian Epstein's last ever public appearance with the group. Just when Britain began to savour the new freedoms that they had envisioned and help to bring about, Meek, Orton and Epstein succumbed to the actual or willed suicides that were one logical conclusion to the years that they had spent in the shadow. Stigmas can kill.
· Jon Savage is the writer of the Arena documentary The Brian Epstein Story, which is broadcast on September 6 as part of BBC4's Hidden Lives week. Savage's anthology of gay records from 1960 to 1978, Queer Noises: From the Closet to the Charts, is available on Trikont Records. | Jon Savage threads together the extraordinary lives of Brian Epstein, Joe Orton and Joe Meek - three men persecuted for their homosexuality who died in 1967 - the year the stigma was supposed to be lifted. | 61.052632 | 0.868421 | 1.289474 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20130910-do-this-before-moving-in-together | http://web.archive.org/web/20130913224128id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/capital/story/20130910-do-this-before-moving-in-together | The good, the bad, the ugly: Finances of cohabitation | 20130913224128 | You fell in love, moved in together … now, who should pay for what? Navigating finances as a cohabitating unmarried couple is one of the biggest strains on a relationship, but doing it correctly can be a predictor of whether it’ll last.
Couples are notoriously poor about discussing their individual finances. Instead, they save those conversations for after they’ve moved in together. That means they keep separate bank accounts and have little knowledge of each other’s debt.
“People tend not to think about their finances as a couple, but think about them in individual terms,” said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
That may make sense short term, he said, but long term it can become problematic — especially since more and more couples share a home, but don’t tie the knot. Over the past two decades, the number of couples who live together, unmarried, has nearly doubled in many countries including the US, United Kingdom and other European nations. In Sweden, the majority of couples cohabitate, marrying only after they have children.
“Many couples slide into a cohabiting relationship without discussing what it means” to them financially, says Galena Rhoades, a marriage researcher and associate professor at the University of Denver in Colorado.
To split costs or not
Most cohabitating couples divide expenses down the middle, Wilcox said. But that can be a problem when one half of the couple earns more than the other. The lower wage earner may feel the need to spend more to keep up with their partner and, as a result, save less or repeatedly dip into savings accounts to keep up. Not addressing a wage discrepancy “can create resentment,” Wilcox said.
To keep finances fair, Jamie Seaman, a New York-based medical device sales representative, said she and her boyfriend split rent, utilities and big purchases based on their earnings. Seaman pays 40% of expenses, she said. The couple uses a spreadsheet to track purchases over $100. The system, managed by Seaman’s boyfriend, offers the couple transparency when it comes to who owes what.
“Someone has to be the treasurer of your relationship,” she said.
For most people, Wilcox recommends maintaining separate bank accounts while also opening a joint account used to pay common bills. That creates “a shared liability and a private zone,” Wilcox said. The higher wage earner should pay a larger share of the bills. Over time, cohabitating couples should start to naturally pool more of their money together to save for things like vacations or furniture.
Dealing with ghosts of money past
Being forthright about debt from previous purchases, loans or credit cards can be the biggest hurdle when couples first start to mingle finances. Setting clear expectations is also important. For example, will paying rent mean part ownership if you move in with your partner and he holds a mortgage on the house you now both live in?
“If, for the next five to seven years, you [fund] the mortgage and you have no equity, that’s something that would concern me,” said Gary Shor, a vice president of financial and estate planning at AEPG Wealth Strategies in Warren, New Jersey.
Disclose any big debts you have, too. Be honest about your obligations.
Financial experts suggest a “no-nup” or pre-cohabitation agreement for those in the UK, US and most parts of Europe. These function in the same way as a prenuptial agreement and can be drawn up by a lawyer for about $1500. A customisable template is available for free at sites including rocketlawyer.com.
If a no-nup isn’t appealing, attorney Frederick Hertz, author of Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples, recommends getting everything in writing, even a simple email, which is then agreed to by both partners in emailed responses.
“In an absence of an agreement, neither will have any rights if they break up,” Hertz said.
Keep evidence of leases, investments and large purchases, whether they’re purchased by one person or both. While it can take weeks to draft a contract or even an email agreement, “the process should strengthen your relationship,” said Hertz. “Lack of clarity is harmful.”
Studies show that combining finances before marriage can be a positive for the relationship, said Rhoades — although perhaps not for the most romantic reasons. When you don’t intermingle funds, it is far easier for one person to simply leave the relationship without as much thought about what disentanglement could mean, she said.
“They have already set up that exit plan,” Rhoades said.
But there’s also a happy medium for some couples — a shared budgeting process. Tyler Felous, a co-founder of a financial start-up, said he and his girlfriend have come up with a joint budget that they manage together. It helps them understand each other’s financial goals. To keep costs down, the Ann Arbor, Michigan, couple agree to spend no more than $300 on dining out and $600 on groceries per month. Felous, 25, and his girlfriend also keep a monthly tally sheet to make sure they are on track with their spending.
“It’s helped us understand how we will coexist once we get married,” he said.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. | Combining love and money? The secrets to successfully splitting expenses and merging funds when you live together | 59.944444 | 0.777778 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/16/british-pop-art-pioneers-christies | http://web.archive.org/web/20130921212014id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/16/british-pop-art-pioneers-christies | British pop art pioneers take belated bow in Christie's show | 20130921212014 | Detail from Kim Novak (1959) by Peter Blake. © Christie's Images © Peter Blake, 2013 Photograph: Christie's
They were pioneers and international innovators, but the achievements of early British pop artists have often been overlooked – remarkably, there has not been a UK exhibition devoted to their work apart from a touring show from Germany which visited York in 1976.
But now the auction house Christie's has said it is planning to fill the gap, staging a major show in new gallery space it is to open in central London later this year.
The opening of Christie's Mayfair in Bond Street represents something of a first for an auction house. It will occupy 11,500 sq ft of space over three floors to stage three or four museum-quality curated exhibitions every year that are, according to Francis Outred, "interesting, intellectual academic shows which are also commercial".
Outred, Christie's head of postwar and contemporary art, said the model did not exist in the UK, adding that early British pop art was crying out for serious appraisal. "What's really interesting here is that it's not like the British were second – they were first. Britain invented the term pop art and it is now a global phenomenon which is known principally as an American phenomenon."
The show is expected to feature 70 works from artists including David Hockney, Allen Jones, Patrick Caulfield, Peter Blake, and RB Kitaj.
It will show how it was British artists who went on to influence the big American pop artists such as Warhol and Lichtenstein. "As the Americans became more and more popular and strong it seems the Brits became a bit more shy and went more esoteric," said Outred. "The aim of this show is to bring it back to its core roots and show how strong, visual and directly communicative it was."
Although there have been British pop art shows in Spain, Italy and Germany, there has not been one in the UK since the touring one fetched up at Cïty Art Gallery in York in 1976. Brits were perhaps not good at blowing their own trumpet, suggested Outred, citing as a further example the fact that there still has not been a major museum survey of the YBAs.
When the show, titled When Britain Went Pop!, opens in three months it will have been a year in the planning. It is being staged in association with the Waddington Custot gallery which, as Waddingtons, was involved with many pop artists in the 1960s.
Christie's has also been working with living artists such as Jones and Blake and the families of other artists. The exhibition will show many works that have not been seen in public for decades and showcase pieces from the important Young Contemporaries show in 1961, including the first work David Hockney ever sold – which still has its £12 price tag on the back.
Outred said: "One of the unique things about an auction house running a gallery is that we have access to things around the world and collections around the world, which means they have been able to track down works, many of which have not been seen since the 1960s, if at all."
There will be surprises, said Outred, not least how far the works go back – with a 1948 proto-pop art collage by Eduardo Paolozzi being one of the earliest works.
The British pop artists were mostly men, although the show will have two women, Jann Haworth and Pauline Boty, who will be represented in the show by, ironically, a piece called It's a Man's World.
"It is very exciting," said Outred. "To be able to look at British pop art in such depth, to show the period as it was and to go into such detail on so many of the artists, will help us to make a strong argument for it being very undervalued both academically and in the marketplace." | Auction house to stage first major show since 1976 devoted to artists who influenced Warhol and Lichtenstein in new Mayfair space | 36.285714 | 0.952381 | 1.809524 | high | high | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jun/01/karla-black-at-venice-biennale | http://web.archive.org/web/20130930093913id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jun/01/karla-black-at-venice-biennale | Karla Black at the Venice Biennale: 'Don't call my art feminine' | 20130930093913 | A view of Karla Black's solo exhibition in the Palazzo Pisani, Venice. The Glasgow-based Turner prize contender is representing Scotland at the 54th Venice Biennale. Photograph: Gautier Deblonde/Courtesy the artist and Gallery Gisela Capitain
In the 15th-century Palazzo Pisani, Karla Black has made the kind of work that whets the appetite for the Turner prize, the award she is tipped to win this December: boulder-size bundles of sugar paper chalked over in shades of peach and pistachio and bedecked with talcous mounds of plaster powder; sheets of paper sprayed with fake tan; and balsa wood painted with eyeshadow. In one series of rooms, the floors are scattered with soil on which sit industrial-size cubes of soap from toiletries chain Lush, a sponsor of the exhibition.
Don't, though, whatever you do, call this apparent onrush of girliness feminine. She finds this description of her art disgusting. "It is ridiculous and annoying," she says. "Why do people call it feminine? Because it is light, fragile, pale? Because it is weak, impermanent? When you start going to work on it you realise how ridiculous the description is. How can a work of art be feminine?"
It is certainly Black's year. Aside from being the insiders' favourite, neck and neck with painter George Shaw, to win this year's Turner prize, as Scotland's representative at the Venice Biennale she has been thrust on to the largest and most prestigious international stage for art.
Though not an official participating country – Mike Nelson represents the UK in the Biennale proper, eligible to win the Golden Lion for the best national exhibition – this is the fifth time Scotland has staged its own "collateral" show, an increasingly important platform for the nation's artists. Martin Boyce, fielded by Scotland in 2009, is also shortlisted for the Turner prize.
Her sculpture, Black says, is absolutely non-representational. "There is no image, no metaphor," she says. Rather, the point is the sculpture's sheer materiality, its heft and presence and fact of being in the world as it confronts the viewer. The use of materials gleaned from Boots' cosmetics counter, she explains, is not a kind of feminist critique of sculpture – "though I am a feminist". It is, she says, not as simple as that: "When I am spraying fake tan on paper I am actually thinking of people making cave paintings. They would hold the colour in their mouth and spit it out: that was the first spray paint."
This autumn, Black will be preparing for her Turner prize exhibition at the Baltic centre for contemporary art, Gateshead. Having been far from a household name, she will be pushed out into the public gaze, her work seen by thousands and pored over by the media. "I'm pleased," she said. "But I am keeping my head down. I have a lot of work to do and I am concentrating on it. Next year it will all be over, and it will be someone else's turn."
Karla Black is at the Palazzo Pisani (S Marina), Calle de le Erbe, Cannaregio 6103, Venice, from Saturday until 27 November | In the Palazzo Pisani, Glasgow-based Turner prize contender sculpts cosmetics into peach and pistachio 'cave paintings' | 30.285714 | 0.952381 | 3.714286 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/13/tate-buys-at-frieze-art-fair | http://web.archive.org/web/20131001024730id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/13/tate-buys-at-frieze-art-fair | Tate buys sculpture, drawings and video installation at Frieze art fair | 20131001024730 | These drawings by Helena Almeida are among works bought by the Tate thanks to the Outset/Frieze art fair fund. Photograph: Frieze art fair
The Tate has gone shopping at the Frieze art fair and acquired three contemporary works, including an example of a "tumour" sculpture by the celebrated Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow.
Each year the Tate's director, Nicholas Serota – along with colleagues from the museums and guest curators – selects works on show at the fair, a vast contemporary art market in Regent's Park, London, featuring work from more than 150 galleries.
This year they had a £150,000 fund, part of an annual bequest linked to Frieze and supplied by Outset, a philanthropic group.
Szapocznikow's work from 1969, four years before her death from cancer, is a small sculpture incorporating a crushed-up photo of the artist, one of a series she produced about her illness.
The other works bought with the fund are a video installation by Melanie Smith, a UK artist based in Mexico, showing the surrealist garden created in Xilitla by the British poet Edward James, and drawings by Helena Almeida, a leading Portuguese artist best known for her dramatic photographic self-portraits daubed with blue paint.
The Frieze money provided "an essential annual injection of new acquisition funds", Serota said.
"This generosity enables Tate to buy significant works of art for the nation and is increasingly important at a time when funding for acquisitions is so limited." | £150,000 fund enables gallery director Nicholas Serota to acquire three contemporary works at open-air art market | 15.105263 | 0.789474 | 1.631579 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/04/munich-hoard-lost-art-nazis | http://web.archive.org/web/20131109021924id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/04/munich-hoard-lost-art-nazis | Does the Munich hoard turn the story of art and the Nazis on its head? | 20131109021924 | It is one of the most shuddered-at chapters in the story of art. In July 1937, Nazi officials turned up in full uniform alongside evening-suited cultural eminences of the Third Reich at an art gallery in Munich for the opening of the Exhibition of Degenerate Art. They came not to praise modern art, but to laugh at it.
Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – the masters of modernism, including giants of Germany's own avant garde, were shown in this exhibition as deviant, decadent practitioners of so-called Degenerate Art – "Entartete Kunst". Sections of the show had titles such as "Total Madness", "The Prostitute Raised to a Moral Ideal", "The Negroisation of Art". Modern art was interpreted in the catalogue as a conspiracy by Russian Bolsheviks and Jewish dealers to destroy European culture. The admiration for African carvings that had so fired Picasso and other artists was taken as proof of modern art's racial degeneracy.
Vile stuff – but the Nazi attitude to modern art may have been radically misunderstood. An amazing discovery in 21st-century Munich turns the story of art and the Nazis on its head.
Cornelius Gurlitt's flat looks meagre in photographs. It is located in an apartment block in Munich that, from the outside, appears to have seen better days. Yet in that flat lay secrets of the Third Reich only now accidentally uncovered. Intrigued by Gurlitt's lack of German identity documents and odd behaviour while crossing the border on a trip to Switzerland, police raided his home and found a hoard of more than 1,500 works of art including pieces by Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Otto Dix and Oskar Kokoschka. The understandably reclusive Gurlitt turned out to be the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, an art dealer who played a key role in the Nazi roundup of "degenerate art". Although half-Jewish, and the cousin of the "degenerate" composer Manfred Gurlitt, the Nazis considered him a useful expert. This is not just any haul of stolen goods: it may turn out to be one the most important recoveries of lost art ever. For it takes us to the heart of the cultural policies and crimes of the Third Reich.
It raises massive questions about the fate of art in and after the second world war. As the allies entered Germany in the last phase of the war they took with them experts, nicknamed the "monuments men", whose job was to find out where the Nazis had stashed looted works of art. For it was not just modern art the Nazis abused. All over Europe, they seized the best masterpieces from the finest museums. Many of these, including such treasures as Titian's Danae and Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece, were found stashed in mountain tunnels and mines. Others, including many of the works of art shown in the Degenerate Art exhibit, are believed lost for ever. Paintings such as Van Gogh's The Painter on his Way to Work and 14 masterpieces by Gustav Klimt are written off as destroyed. But is it possible a Nazi network preserved a secret world of stolen art after 1945? Is it even possible such art was used to fund neo-Nazi activities or maintain war criminals in quiet comfort?
To put it another way: were Hildebrand Gurlitt and his son unique, or is the find in Munich a clue to some larger network of Nazi art hoarders sitting on secret treasures all this time in postwar Europe, living off occasional covert sales of the Picassos that they keep among the canned foods in their anonymous flats?
One thing is certain: this story comes from the dark heart of Nazi Europe. Munich was Hitler's art capital. As a young man, famously, he wanted to be an artist. He wasted an inheritance trying to get an art education in Vienna. While Klimt was creating modern art there, Hitler was going to the opera to hear Wagner (conducted by the modernist Gustav Mahler), and soon eking a living painting drab topographic scenes. Eventually he left for Munich, where he survived as a hack painter of typical German scenery until the first world war gave him a new life as a soldier. Hitler loved Munich, and when he came to power lavished money on its art scene. The city's expressionist painters were in trouble. But while Degenerate Art pilloried them, in 1938 Hitler opened a huge exhibition of "proper" German art at the newly built House of German Art, a grand neo-classical temple to the art of a new, fascist Europe. Where the year before thousands had flocked to see the art they were told to hate, far fewer went to see Nazi-favoured art.
This is where the cliches start. It is conventional to contrast the avant-garde art the Nazis maligned with the traditionalism and conservatism of the art they admired. But the National Socialist nightmare was not "conservative". It was, in its own way, horribly modern – it imagined a different, perverted vision of modernity. The House of German Art still survives in Munich. Today it is used as an alternative arts centre. Video and installation look subversively great in its grand icy halls. You wouldn't call these rooms old-fashioned. Rather they have a chilly neo-classical hauteur that speaks of sublime ambition. This is the neo-classical modern art of Nazism that can still be seen in Leni Riefenstahl's terrifying films – some of the most disturbingly beautiful ever made – and the designs of Hitler's architects Paul Troost and Albert Speer.
Hitler did not hate art – he loved it. Other leading Nazis just saw it as money. Goering, greedy and corrupt, amassed art because it symbolised wealth and power. Munich was at the centre of the regime's cultural pretensions. The Gurlitt hoard is a survival of the Nazis' strange and ambivalent attitude to art, from Hitler's aesthetic New Order to the simple philistine greed that probably motivated most of their art theft.
Gurlitt's cache reveals that many assumptions about the Nazis and art are simply untrue. The Degenerate Art exhibition was real enough – but did it really mean the Nazis hated modern art? It is because we take this for granted that no one has been searching for lost "degenerate" works such as those in the flat in Munich. Some works from the Entartete Kunst exhibition, many seized from once-progressive German museums, were sold abroad afterwards. Others have vanished. As the war began and Nazi racial policies became ever more explicit, more modern and pre-modern works were seized or bought for a pittance from Jewish owners. Much was destroyed. Or was it?
One of the most suspicious cases is that of Klimt's lost works. Fourteen paintings by this Austrian visionary of dreams and desire were stored in an Austrian castle during the war. In 1945, an SS battalion reportedly held an orgy there before setting the castle alight. The Klimts are presumed lost, but there were rumours that some might have been spirited away. Now, surely, such stories need to be re-examined. The 1,500 works hidden by the Gurlitts, father and son, were also presumed lost.
The allies tend to blame themselves for art lost in Germany in the 1940s. Almost every major German city was bombed by Britain and the US during the second world war. Firestorms ravaged museums and art stores as well as killing thousands of civilians. "Bomber" Harris, Britain's Bomber Command mastermind who insisted this was the way to win the war, was apparently responsible for burning paintings such as Van Gogh's Painter on the Way to Work and Caravaggio's first version of St Matthew, as well as his portrait of a courtesan.
Perhaps the single most significant fact that has so far come out about Hildebrand Gurlitt is that he claimed his collection of looted art was destroyed in the bombing of Dresden. So it was the allies who burned it. If he lied so easily about that, what about other Nazi-owned art that supposedly vanished in wartime air raids?
The massive destruction the Nazis brought down on Germany created chaos in 1945. As the "monuments men" were seeking out stolen art treasures in Alpine mines, it seems Gurlitt was carefully and quietly preserving his personal hoard.
The reason he got away with it is that he had grabbed so many modernist works. Ever since 1937, it has been assumed that "degenerate art" was either sold abroad or destroyed. The "monuments men" went searching for Titians, not Picassos. But the Munich hoard proves the naivety of this assumption. Even in the mind of Hitler, modern art was bizarrely fascinating. You do not put on an exhibition of something you do not want to look at. In some strange way the Nazis needed modern art, as a demonic image of their nightmares. The Degenerate Art exhibition is, after all, the biggest backhanded compliment ever paid to the avant garde. Many people think art has no influence on the world. Hitler knew it did. The old saw that he hated modernism is just too simple. He loved to hate it. What you love to hate, you want to keep, somewhere, if only as a freakshow curiosity.
Other Nazis simply went along with Hitler's taste in public but did not really know what the would-be artist in him was talking about. In Mussolini's Italy, the Futurist movement was cosy with fascism. There was no reason – Italy proved – that fascists needed to spurn modernism. Some German modern artists, notably Nolde, were themselves sympathetic to the far right.
Then there was greed. In the end, the National Socialists were thugs, criminals and murderers. The idea that most of them believed deeply in ideological discriminations about art is not that plausible. For men like Gurlitt, modern art made a good stash. He and his son sat on the hoard while his claim that it was lost in a firestorm was taken at face value.
Now the books on Nazi loot need to be reopened. It seems only too possible that other Gurlitts hid away other art treasures in the chaos of defeat.
In one of the last photographs ever taken of Adolf Hitler he is in the bunker in Berlin contemplating Albert Speer's design for a new art capital to be built at Linz. Much as he loved Munich, this city was closer to his childhood home. Its massive new museum was to have contained all the art treasures of conquered Europe.
While Hitler doted on his cultural fantasies, paintings were vanishing into fruit cellars and attics. It was so easy to write them off in the Führer's Götterdämmerung.
Read Jonathan Jones on the masterpieces that are missing in action | The discovery in a Munich flat of 1,500 'lost' works raises fresh questions about the Nazis' attitude to the modern art they loved to hate, says Jonathan Jones | 65.0625 | 0.9375 | 1.625 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/aug/05/art-theft-duke-wellington-goya | http://web.archive.org/web/20131216193527id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/aug/05/art-theft-duke-wellington-goya | How Goya's Duke of Wellington was stolen | 20131216193527 | The 21st of August is the anniversary of two shocking art thefts: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre 100 years ago, and Francisco de Goya's The Duke of Wellington taken from the National Gallery, London, exactly 50 years later. The two thefts share more than the same date. Both thieves concealed the famous paintings for several years without being caught and both decided to return them: the Duke was deposited in the left-luggage office of New Street station in Birmingham. More significantly, once they had confessed, the thieves puzzled the authorities by not matching the expected profile of being debonair figures such as EA Hornung's Arthur Raffles, or Thomas Crown (whether Steve McQueen or Pierce Brosnan).
When in July 1965 a 61-year-old retired truck driver announced at West End Central police station that he had stolen the Goya, it was hard for the police to take Kempton Bunton seriously as he differed so much from the presumed image of whoever it was who had sent a sequence of notes, written in capitals, to various newspapers.
Although the Mona Lisa theft is considerably more famous, the loss of the Goya is significant. It was a fundamental shock to the National Gallery: its first ever theft, and the painting had been taken only 19 days after going on display. The work had become prominent earlier in the year when a New York collector, Charles Wrightsman, bid £140,000 for it at auction. He graciously ceded it to the National Gallery when the Wolfson Foundation offered £100,000, and the government was embarrassed into offering a special Treasury grant of £40,000, thus "saving" the Duke from export. A reward of £5,000 was offered by the Metropolitan Police for its immediate return.
Following the theft, a government enquiry, led by Lord Bridges, examined how the thief, having apparently left a window unlatched in the Gents on a previous day, was able in the early hours of the morning to exploit building works at the rear of the gallery, remove the painting and scale the wall on St Martin's Street. Philip Hendy, as director, offered his resignation, but the trustees, led by Lord Robbins, refused to accept it. However, a number of important improvements to security were introduced, including a night patrol with a dog, and the secondment of a senior police officer as security adviser for all the national collections, a post which has evolved into the role of national security adviser.
The person claiming to hold the painting had a mission, and the first of a sequence of notes was posted on 31 August. The thief explained that: "The act is an attempt to pick the pockets of those who love art more than charity . . . the picture is not, and will not be for sale – it is for ransom – £140,000 – to be given to charity." He later claimed that: "My sole object in all this was to set up a charity to buy television licences for old and poor people who seem to be neglected in an affluent society."
The trauma for the gallery was matched by speculation about the theft and the thief. In February 1962 the Sunday Telegraph carried a piece reporting that the theft was to do with controversial restoration policies at the gallery. And in December 1963 the New Statesman reported that "Spike Milligan would like to contact those who have the missing Goya portrait in their possession. He sympathises with them and would like to attempt to meet them with a view to raising money independently . . . to be donated to a charity of their choosing. This is a sincere offer and done without the connivance of the police or the authorities." It came to nothing, as also did the offer from the Royal Academy that submission to the Summer Exhibition might be a discreet route for the painting's safe return.
A note from Kempton Bunton of July 1963 enclosed a label from the back of the painting. A fourth note suggested how it might be returned: £140,000 to be given to an agreed charity plus immunity from prosecution. Bunton encouraged the chairman, Lord Robbins, to "assert thyself and get the damn thing on view again. I am offering three pennyworth of old Spanish firewood, in exchange for £140,000 of human happiness". In March 1965 he posted in Darlington a note marked as "5th & Final Com": "Goya's Wellington is safe. I have looked upon this affair as an adventurous prank – must the authoritys [sic] refuse to see it this way. I know now that I am in the wrong, but I have gone too far to retreat." He proposed the anonymous return of the painting followed by an exhibition at which members of the public would pay five shillings each to view it, the funds being sent to a charity . . . and the thief not to be pursued.
The Daily Mirror enthusiastically took up the challenge of organising such an exhibition and suggested that, "this great national art treasure should be taken immediately to the shop of any newsagent in the land". Although neither the police nor the National Gallery could offer immunity from prosecution, the Mirror became a communication route, and in May a left-luggage ticket from New Street station arrived at their offices, leading to the recovery of the painting, in good condition, but without its frame. It was shown at a press conference on 24 May 1965, and went back on display, almost four years after it had been stolen.
When Kempton Bunton offered himself to the police in July, he had a statement with him explaining: "(1) My secret has leaked – I wouldn't like a certain gentleman to benefit financially by speaking to the law. (2) I am sick and tired of the whole affair. (3) By surrendering in London I avoid the stigma of being brought here in 'chains'." He was charged on five counts: with the theft of the picture; with the theft of the frame; with demanding money from Lord Robbins with menaces; with demanding money with menaces similarly from the editor of the Daily Mirror; and with "causing a nuisance to the public by the unlawful removal and wrongful detaining of a painting on display at the National Gallery".
Bunton had form, having served some time in prison after repeatedly refusing to pay his licence fee. He did well to be represented by Jeremy Hutchinson QC, who had made a name for himself in the successful defence of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960. In court he worked both to undermine some of the charges and to persuade the jury to be sympathetic to Bunton. Recalling the trial recently, Hutchinson said that Bunton "was just rather a darling. I had an affection for him . . . I had a great ace up my sleeve which was that the ex-president of the Royal Academy, Sir Gerald Kelly, had written to the Sunday Times saying that this painting wasn't worth £140,000, and that he had doubts about its authenticity."
Hutchinson wanted to demonstrate mainly that the accusation of "stealing", in the form of larceny in this instance, would need proof of criminal intent to sell or keep the work. He made it clear that Bunton took the painting only because he wanted the £140,000 paid to OAPs, and had no intention of keeping it. He demonstrated that, in the strictest sense of the law, it was not a theft as Bunton had merely "borrowed" the painting.
Bunton was acquitted on the other four charges, but convicted of stealing the frame, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. However, the judge summed up the general view – held with vehemence by the National Gallery – when he said that there cannot be people "creeping into art galleries" and removing paintings. And the case led to an important clause being inserted into the Theft Act of 1968, making it illegal to "remove without authority any object displayed or kept for display to the public in a building to which the public have access".
Reality and fiction often overlap in cases of art theft. However the link between the two was made very specific when in Dr No, the first of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels to be produced as a film in 1962, the evil scientist's underwater lair at Crab Key in Jamaica provides the setting for an unexpected encounter. Sean Connery, as Bond, pauses as he walks through the dining room to admire a portrait on an easel – it is Goya's The Duke of Wellington. The image fuels the commonly held view that thefts of great works of art are carried out at the behest of criminal collectors – a notion that has rarely been found to be true.
Even though a detailed account of how Bunton accomplished the theft was published in 1977, posthumously, it is possible that he was not the thief. He might have used the painting to promote his cause and confessed to cover up for another. The judge pronounced that the theft was a "remarkable feat" for the 17-stone Bunton, who had retired from driving because of injury. In 1969, the press reported that someone had made a statement claiming to be the actual thief, but the police did not pursue it. Hutchinson recalls seeing a statement at the time of the trial claiming that someone else obtained the painting and passed it to Bunton, but without clarifying what really happened. Had two people fallen out over how best to exploit the stolen Duke? Bunton described in the Old Bailey how he had asked a young man to take a parcel (containing the wrapped painting) to the luggage office for him. Could this have been a collaborator of some kind?
The myths that surround art theft – whether the obsessive desire for possession caused by great works of art, or the notion of an underworld in parallel existence to our own – need to be unpicked with great care. In the case of the Goya, although taken 50 years ago there may still be more to learn.
Sandy Nairne is director of the National Portrait Gallery. His Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners is published by Reaktion Press. | Sandy Nairne tracks a portrait from the National Gallery to Dr No's lair | 130.666667 | 0.866667 | 1.933333 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/12/10/industrial-production-slows-germany/HRHtkiIqtQDo9yAanIhN8L/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140102182202id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2013/12/10/industrial-production-slows-germany/HRHtkiIqtQDo9yAanIhN8L/story.html | Industrial production slows in Germany | 20140102182202 | PARIS — Output at German factories, mines, and power plants declined in October for a second straight month, official data showed Monday, the latest sign that the economy at the heart of the eurozone recovery might not be growing as quickly as had been hoped.
Industrial production, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, fell 1.2 percent in October from September, when it fell a revised 0.7 percent, the Economy Ministry reported from Berlin. The latest data represented a significant disappointment, as economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting an increase of 0.8 percent.
The production data followed an Economy Ministry report Friday that showed a 2.2 percent decline in German factory orders in October from September, more than twice market expectations.
With the biggest economy in Europe, Germany has been the locomotive of the 17-nation eurozone, and signs of weakness there could bode poorly for its neighbors and the millions of unemployed people across the Continent.
The euro bloc, still under pressure from the sovereign debt crisis and the austerity measures adopted for addressing it, grew just 0.1 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, with Germany growing a larger, but still anemic 0.3 percent.
The poor economy and signs that deflation was becoming a danger led the European Central Bank in November to cut its main interest rate to 0.25 percent from 0.5 percent.
Those factors have also prompted the bank to consider new monetary policy measures, including so-called quantitative easing or negative deposit rates, bank officials have said recently.
The data Monday suggested that Germany’s “main growth engine has not only stalled, but gone into reverse,” Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics in London, said in a report.
Loynes noted that German industrial output had fallen for three of the last four months for which data were available and was off by 1.4 percent in the four months since June.
Monday’s report was at odds with other more recent indications of strength, however, and the Economy Ministry played down the September-October contraction. The government noted that the slowdown had followed a strong summer, when output increased at a 0.7 percent quarterly rate amid pent-up demand.
“The manufacturing sector is likely to expand its production in the coming months,” the ministry said in its statement. | PARIS — Output at German factories, mines, and power plants declined in October for a second straight month, official data showed Monday, the latest sign that the economy at the heart of the eurozone recovery might not be growing as quickly as had been hoped. Industrial production, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, fell 1.2 percent in October from September, when it fell a revised 0.7 percent, the Economy Ministry reported from Berlin. The latest data represented a significant disappointment, as economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting an increase of 0.8 percent. But financial markets took the news in stride, with the euro little changed and the main European stock indexes flat in afternoon trading. | 3.4375 | 0.90625 | 41.625 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/01/22/week-ahead-pop-and-rock/rAX0rlNS1OwZPo2UHAXSwO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140126032440id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2014/01/22/week-ahead-pop-and-rock/rAX0rlNS1OwZPo2UHAXSwO/story.html | WEEK AHEAD: POP AND ROCK | 20140126032440 | XENIA RUBINOS “Magic Trix,” Rubinos’s 2013 debut, was meant for the omnivore: From one song to the next, the Brooklyn musician wailed like a wounded soul singer, channeled the ferocity of ’70s punk, and set feet in motion with dance tunes tinged with Latin pop. No wonder Man Man, a band of fellow musical misfits, enlisted her to open its current tour. (This is a solo show in between date opens for Man Man.) Jan. 27, 9:30 p.m. Tickets: $10. Great Scott. 800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com
REVEREND HORTON HEAT “Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em,” the guns-blazing debut from Reverend Horton Heat, was released in 1990. But you’ll swear it doesn’t sound like this trio has aged even a year on its new (and 11th) studio album. “Rev” is loaded with what the good Reverend likes to call his potent style: psychobilly, which is to say rockabilly on some serious speed. Jan. 23, 8 p.m. Tickets: $22, $20 in advance. Royale. 800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com
THE STEPKIDS Psychedelic soul is not exactly the most crowded genre, but the Stepkids are among its most enthusiastic purveyors. The Connecticut trio takes glee in muddling styles as if creating a musical cocktail: equal parts jazz, ’60s folk, and synth-pop. They’re on the road behind last year’s kaleidoscopic “Troubadour.” Jan. 23, 9 p.m. Tickets: $10. Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge. 617-864-3278, www.ticketweb.com
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES Torch meets twang in the sleek but steely country rock Bains and his band conjured on their 2012 debut, “There Is a Bomb in Gilead.” It’s Southern rock for anyone who groused that Kings of Leon sold out. The album caught the attention of venerable indie-rock label Sub Pop Records, which recently signed the Alabama-bred band. Jan. 29, 9:30 p.m. Tickets: $9. Great Scott. 800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com
GIPSY KINGS With this tour, the Gipsy Kings are marking the 25th anniversary of making their idiosyncratic flamenco pop, and in celebration of that fact, the band of brothers is giving rather than receiving: everyone who buys a ticket to Thursday’s show will get a download of the Kings’ new album, “Savor Flamenco.” Jan. 23, 8 p.m. Tickets: $49.50, $79.50. Lynn Auditorium, Lynn. 800-745-3000. www.ticketmaster.com
HARD WORKING AMERICANS Why not bring together the best songs and the best musicians, thought Todd Snider? So he did, and the result was the Hard Working Americans, an intersection of “perfect songs” (Kevin Gordon’s “Down to the Well,” the Bottle Rockets’ “Welfare Music”) and new friends (like Duane Trucks and Neal Casal) Snider met while hanging around the jam band scene. Jan. 24, 9 p.m. Tickets: $20. Brighton Music Hall. 800-745-3000. www.ticketmaster.com
DIANA JONES Jones's music — a literate, sparse brand of country-folk — is rooted in Appalachian folk and old-time mountain traditions, which made her choice of recording location for her latest collection peculiarly appropriate. In an on-site cabin at the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton, Tenn., she and her accompanists circled toward each other in front of a crackling fire and played her songs. Jan. 25, 8 p.m. Tickets: $15. Bull Run Restaurant, Shirley. 877-536-7190. www.bullrunrestaurant.com
BELA FLECK AND BROOKLYN RIDER Fleck pushes his banjo further into the classical music world with this tour, which finds him and the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet combining for a program that will feature Fleck’s piece for banjo and quartet, “Night Flight Over Water,” from his most recent release. Jan. 29, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $49. Mechanics Hall, Worcester. 508-754-3231. www.musicworcester.org
MICHELLE “EVIL GAL” WILLSON The powerful, passionate singer — a Boston native and marvelous mistress of blues, jump, and swing — celebrates her rollicking new recording, “Fortune Cookie,” with her 5-piece band. Jan. 24, 8 p.m. Tickets: $12. Chan’s, 267 Main St., Woonsocket, RI. 401-765-1900, www.chanseggrollsandjazz.com
LYNDA D’AMOUR The Boston-based cabaret artist with the sultry alto voice and bulls-eye lyrical sense sings an eclectic assortment of standards, show tunes, pop songs, and more. Jan. 25, 8 p.m. Club Cafe, Napoleon Room Cabaret. 617-536-0966, www.clubcafe.com
JOHN FUNKHOUSER QUARTET The accomplished, Boston-based pianist and composer (who is also a marvelous acoustic bassist!) celebrates the release of “Still,” his brilliant new piano quartet album, with the superb band featured on the record: guitarist Phil Sargent, bassist Greg Loughman, and drummer Mike Connors. Jan. 26, 2 p.m. Tickets: Free. Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington St., Wellesley. www.wellesleyfreelibrary.org
MATT WILSON QUARTET PLUS JOHN MEDESKI Drummer Wilson and keyboardist Medeski first met decades ago in Boston’s own Either/Orchestra. Today, they are among the most acclaimed players and bandleaders in jazz. “Gathering Call,” their new album with Wilson's Quartet — bassist Chris Lightcap, multi-reedist Jeff Lederer, and trumpeter Kirk Knuffke — shows them at their eclectic, joyful, propulsive best. Jan. 29, 8 and 10 p.m. Tickets: $30. Scullers. 617-562-4111, www.scullersjazz.com
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BSO assistant conductor Andris Poga leads an ambitious program featuring Wagner’s Overture to “Rienzi,” Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15, and Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto, with Garrick Ohlsson as soloist. Jan. 23-25. Symphony Hall. 617-266-1200, www.bso.org
ROBERT LEVIN The eloquent Cambridge-based pianist may be best known as a specialist in the classical era, but he has also forged close links to living composers. In this recital, he plays works written for him by Yehudi Wyner, Hans Peter Türk, John Harbison, and Bernard Rands. Jan. 26, 3 p.m. Free. Sanders Theatre, Cambridge. www.music.fas.harvard.edu
BORROMEO STRING QUARTET Lean, angular, and unrelentingly powerful, Bartok’s set of six string quartets stands at the dark heart of the modern quartet literature. Chamber music fans with an ear for 20th-century music will not want to miss the Borromeo’s marathon performance of all six quartets. Jan. 26, 7:30 p.m. Free. Jordan Hall. 617-585-1260, www.nec.edu.
ALEXANDER MELNIKOV The formidable Russian pianist concludes his two-part survey of Shostakovich’s great keyboard cycle, the 24 Preludes and Fugues. If Sunday’s first installment is any indication, we can expect playing of intense concentration and considerable depth. Jan. 26, 1:30 p.m. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 617-278-5156, gardnermuseum.org | REVEREND HORTON HEAT “Smoke ’Em If You Got ‘Em,” the guns-blazing debut from Reverend Horton Heat, was released in 1990. But you’ll swear it doesn’t sound like this trio has aged even a year on its new (and 11th) studio album. “Rev” is loaded with what the good Reverend likes to call his potent style: psychobilly. Jan. 23, 8 p.m. Tickets: $22, $20 in advance. Royale. 800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com THE STEPKIDS Psychedelic soul is not exactly the most crowded genre, but the Stepkids are among its most enthusiastic purveyors. The Connecticut trio takes glee in muddling styles as if creating a musical cocktail: equal parts jazz, ’60s folk, and synth-pop. Jan. 23, 9 p.m. Tickets: $10. Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge. 617-864-3278, www.ticketweb.com | 7.812865 | 0.976608 | 43.023392 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/07/2008491474453783.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140130185245id_/http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/07/2008491474453783.html | German hostage in Algeria dies of heatstroke | 20140130185245 | A German woman held hostage in the Algerian Sahara desert by suspected Islamic rebels has died of heatstroke.
The deceased was among 15 European holidaymakers being held hostage for almost five months, German television reported on Tuesday.
ARD television said the woman was a mother of two and that the kidnappers had probably buried her body in the southern Algerian Sahara, where daytime temperatures have touched 50 degrees Celsius in recent months.
The German foreign ministry informed the woman's relatives of her death on Tuesday morning, ARD said.
A spokesman for the German foreign ministry said, "In the interest of the hostages who are still in a very difficult situation, the government cannot give any information. The government continues to do everything in its power to help the affected.â
News reports in recent days had said the hostages had been moved to neighbouring Mali. ARD said efforts to secure their release had redoubled since the move.
Switzerland has sent a police officer to Mali to join around a dozen Dutch and German experts working on the case there. One report, quoting Algerian security sources, said the kidnappers had accepted an army offer of safe passage to Mali in exchange for freeing the tourists.
"We are not denying nor confirming anything. We all want to get the hostages freed, all the work the state is doing is aimed at preserving the lives of the hostages," a senior official at Mali's ministry for territorial administration said.
"The government continues to do everything in its power to help the affected.â--German Foreign Ministryspokesman
Officials in Mali say security forces have moved to step up patrols in the Kidal region, on the eastern side of the border with Algeria, and enlisted the help of local nomads in their search for clues as to the hostages' whereabouts.
Some 32 European tourists were kidnapped in late February and early March while travelling without guides in separate groups in southern Algeria, famous for its ancient grave sites.
Seventeen hostages were freed in May when Algerian commandos stormed a hideout in the desert, killing the kidnappers.
The authorities suspect the kidnappers are members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, who have been fighting for an Islamic state in Algeria. | <P class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-layout-grid-align: none">A German woman held hostage in the Algerian Sahara desert by suspected Islamic rebels has died of heatstroke. <?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft- | 5.613333 | 0.333333 | 4.893333 | low | low | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/02/19/bitcoin-atm-pulls-into-south-station/hoaji2iSSReCC3Ya5OzoxN/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140301223301id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/02/19/bitcoin-atm-pulls-into-south-station/hoaji2iSSReCC3Ya5OzoxN/story.html | Bitcoin ATM pulls into South Station | 20140301223301 | Last May, I wrote about the coming wave of bitcoin ATMs. Today, it looks like they have arrived, landing first in Boston’s bustling South Station.
The device, manufactured by New Hampshire’s Lamassu, Inc. and placed by Boston startup Liberty Teller, appears to have narrowly beat out a planned bitcoin ATM launch in New Mexico (though that may be disputed).
Liberty Teller triumphantly tweeted the launch and said it was planning to give away free bitcoins stored in paper wallets to encourage adoption of the digital currency.
Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency that, in some ways, is analogous to cash: It can be transferred from one person to another without a third-party, can be bought and sold anonymously, and is tradeable on a variety of currency marketplaces.
It has been closely tied with black markets online, where it is popular as a way to transact business without a credit card or PayPal account, and among libertarians worried about government monetary policy.
It has also been an incredibly volatile currency with the value of a single bitcoin peaking at around $1,200 in December and then crashing down to under $600 more recently — after having been valued at $100 per bitcoin for much of 2013.
Despite the volatility, the currency is somewhat usable on a day-to-day basis: Overstock.com and a number of other online retailers now accept it, as do a few local restaurants, to occasionally mixed results. Those preferring to dine in can even get their bitcoin-bought meal delivered via Foodler. | What is likely America's first bitcoin ATM has arrived in some prime Boston real estate, setting up shop at South Station. Customers can exchange cash for bitcoin in as little as 30 seconds, the company behind the machine promises, and to celebrate its launch the company is giving out free bitcoin. | 5.210526 | 0.596491 | 0.842105 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/02/24/for-hints-apple-plans-read-its-shopping-list/JNBqolf9lhfbD2JebieYBP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140307005609id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/02/24/for-hints-apple-plans-read-its-shopping-list/JNBqolf9lhfbD2JebieYBP/story.html | For hints at Apple’s plans, read its shopping list | 20140307005609 | NEW YORK — One company used sensors to read body movements. Another recommended TV programs. Several others offered location and mapping services.
All of them had at least one thing in common: They were among the more than 20 relatively small companies Apple says it has bought within the last 15 months.
As fellow tech giants have reached billion-dollar deals in recent years to add significant new arms to their businesses — Facebook buying WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion, and Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business for more than $7.1 billion — Apple has ventured down a different path.
The company has avoided jaw-dropping takeovers in favor of a series of smaller deals, using the companies to buttress or fill a gap in products that already exist or are in development.
Still, in the past few years, Apple has gradually increased its overall spending on these acquisitions. In the last quarter, for instance, Apple spent $525 million on acquisitions, nearly double what it spent in the same period a year earlier.
And while the deals may be small — particularly given Apple’s nearly $160 billion cash hoard — they offer a window into where the secretive company is headed and which products and services it is trying to build or improve.
Apple’s biggest acquisition last year was PrimeSense, a company with about 150 employees that Apple bought for $300 million to $350 million, according to reports. Prime-Sense developed sensors that helped Microsoft let Xbox owners control games using body movements, and some analysts say Apple could eventually apply PrimeSense’s skills and technology to a television set.
Apple also purchased Matcha.tv, a service that recommends things to watch on TV, another acquisition that signals its strong interest in the living room.
And Apple’s purchase of location data services like Locationary, HopStop, and Embark suggests a steadfast interest in Internet services — especially mapping, where Apple has been harshly criticized for lacking the competence of its competitors Google and Nokia.
“They’re preemptively investing in areas where they think there are opportunities to grow,” said Ben Bajarin, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies who follows Apple. “Without doubt Apple is a bit more focused and lean in their approach and disciplined about the things they buy.”
But as the growth of Apple’s profit has slowed in the past couple of years, some pundits and analysts have called for the company to break into other markets and create new revenue streams through a game-changing deal. Investors and analysts have suggested that Apple buy Tesla to build cars, Facebook to get into advertising, Netflix to get deeper into the entertainment industry, and even Yahoo to get into the search business.
Apple declined to comment for this article, but none of those possibilities appear close to coming true.
Still, Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, has said that Apple would have no problem paying billions for another company if it would help Apple make more high-quality products.
Apple has kept the stakes low in recent years. Several of the companies it has bought had as few as one or two people, like SnappyLabs, a one-man developer of a camera app. The founder, John Papandriopoulos, an electrical engineer, had developed an app to make the iPhone’s camera take high-resolution photos at a faster frame rate than Apple’s built-in camera software. Apple bought the company this year and made Papandriopoulos a software engineer.
These tiny acquisitions, made in large part to add the skills of an individual as much as the company, are known as acquihires in Silicon Valley. Most other major tech companies make them frequently, as well.
When Apple buys a startup with more than a couple of people, it is often looking for groups with specific skills who work well together as a team, said a person who worked at a startup Apple acquired last year, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Apple then takes these small teams and assigns them to new projects or pairs them with older teams at Apple. | One company used sensors to read body movements. Another recommended TV programs. Several others offered location and mapping services. All of them had at least one thing in common: They were among the more than 20 relatively small companies Apple says it has bought within the last 15 months. As fellow tech giants have reached billion-dollar deals in recent years to add significant new arms to their businesses — like Facebook buying WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion, and Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business for more than $7.1 billion — Apple has ventured down a different path. | 7.245455 | 1 | 28.018182 | low | high | extractive |
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/03/05/here-one-sign-that-not-stock-market-bubble-tips-from-mom-cabbies-bartenders/Xl9pqj9OA02dfwjMCd4GEM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140307114133id_/https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/03/05/here-one-sign-that-not-stock-market-bubble-tips-from-mom-cabbies-bartenders/Xl9pqj9OA02dfwjMCd4GEM/story.html | Here's one sign that we’re not in a stock market bubble. No tips from Mom, cabbies, or bartenders | 20140307114133 | How do I know if the stock market is in a bubble?
When Mom starts giving me stock tips.
And she hasn’t, not once in this five-year bull run we’re in. Compare that with the late ’90s, when it seemed like she was calling every week to drop a get-rich-quick tip that would make me want to ditch my day job for day trading.
When you start looking at the numbers, it’s actually quite extraordinary to see how far the stock market has roared back — and how we have mostly chosen to ignore it.
Five years ago this week, the Dow Jones industrial average skidded to the 6,500-point level as the world churned through a financial crisis and the Fed desperately pumped money into a lifeless economy.
At Tuesday’s close, the Dow was just shy of 16,400, following a year in which it grew by nearly 30 percent. That means you didn’t have to be legendary investor Peter Lynch to figure how to make money in the market.
Put it another way, if you kept investing in the biggest US stocks near the October 2007 market peak through the end of February, $10,000 would have swelled to over $13,800, including dividends, according to a Morningstar analysis of the S&P 500. If you pulled out near the bottom, you would have lost close to $5,000.
Despite eye-popping returns, a lot of cash is still sitting on the sidelines in safe CDs, money markets, and probably under a lot of mattresses. The memories of two big crashes less 10 years apart are seared into our 401(k) portfolios.
That’s one of the reasons some Wall Street gurus don’t think we’re heading into a bubble — the point at which good times suddenly implode. Sure, corporate profits are expected to rise, interest rates remain low, and the nation’s economy is growing, but droves of mom and pop investors have yet to jump into stocks, prompting a new round of buying that would push healthy stock prices even higher.
“Because it is such an unloved bull market,” said Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, “the market still has room to move.”
In this town, John Spooner should be feeling the love. But over dinners and cocktails last year, the charming Boston money manager — who is a also best-selling author on investing — might as well have been a social pariah.
“Not one person brought up the subject of the stock market, which was amazing to me,” said Spooner. “There is almost a generation of Americans who don’t think anything will be good again.”
During the late ’90s dot-com era, Spooner’s phone rang off the hook with calls from clients stressed over whether they might be missing out on the next big thing.
“It was rampant greed,” he said. “My neighbor is getting rich.”
John Hailer, who oversees the mutual fund firm Natixis’s investments in the Americas and Asia, said today’s investors are more sophisticated. They’re asking about unemployment numbers, the retail sector, the Chinese economy. And if anyone is worried about a bubble, he’ll tell them it doesn’t matter.
“I don’t really care if we are at the top. I don’t care if we are at the bottom,” he said. “Without risk, you don’t get a return.”
Our new sober attitude — however sobering — is actually healthy. We’re thinking about how to invest for the long term — buying and holding. We’re not glued to CNBC, chasing paper riches and trolling for stock tips from cabbies, bartenders, or hairdressers.
Joseph Kennedy Sr., who was a savvy investor, liked to joke about how he survived the 1929 crash that ushered in the Great Depression.
The summer before, he started to get unsolicited stock advice from people like the shoeshine boy and the newsstand dealer. That’s when he knew it was time to get out, finding no wisdom in crowds.
Today, even Eddie McGuire, the longtime bartender at the Langham Hotel in the heart of the Financial District, has stopped passing along tips. It’s just as well, because the traders and brokers who stream in after the 4 p.m. Wall Street close aren’t saying much about what they’re into.
Instead, over Bud Lights, they’re complaining about how commissions used to be better. Back in the ’90s, it was martinis all around.
“It’s not really as fun as it used to be,” said McGuire.
What we’ve learned, in all of this, is that maybe Mom doesn’t know best. Buying is easy, selling is hard — and best left up to the professionals. | How do I know if the stock market is in a bubble? When Mom starts giving me stock tips. And she hasn’t, not once in this five-year bull run we’re in. Compare that with the late ’90s, when it seemed like she was calling every week to drop a get-rich-quick tip that would make me want to ditch my day job for day trading. When you start looking at the numbers, it’s actually quite extraordinary to see how far the stock market has roared back – and how we have mostly chosen to ignore it. Five years ago this week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average skidded to the 6,500-point level as the world churned through a financial crisis and the Fed desperately pumped money into a lifeless economy. Today, the Dow is just shy of 16,400, following a year in which it grew by nearly 30 percent. That means you didn’t have to be legendary investor Peter Lynch to figure how to make money in the market. | 4.921466 | 0.994764 | 35.947644 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/02/03/nicole-atkins-slow-phaser/onyLJJecYfUTL62N3bbfUO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140313233955id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2014/02/03/nicole-atkins-slow-phaser/onyLJJecYfUTL62N3bbfUO/story.html | Nicole Atkins, ‘Slow Phaser’ | 20140313233955 | On the surface, “Slow Phaser” appears to be a return to the immaculate popcraft of Nicole Atkins’s sparkling debut “Neptune City” after veering toward more a rough-and-tumble rootsiness on its follow-up “Mondo Amore.” And indeed, returning “Neptune City” producer Tore Johansson once again provides a crispness, with each sonic building block set precisely in place. But Atkins’s songwriting has since mutated, so that even songs that would have fit on “Neptune City” (the remix-ready disco track “Girl You Look Amazing”) or “Mondo Amore” (the stomping country-gospel “Sin Song”) represent a progression. The rest tilts toward the sweep of early Kate Bush-style art pop, from the darkly pretty simmer of “Red Ropes” to the bounce of “The Worst Hangover.” And Atkins’s vocals — she was born with Stevie Nicks’s voice but insists on singing like Mama Cass — remain a marvel. Releasing three remarkable albums with three personalities may complicate building a fanbase, but it’s terrific for building a body of work. (Out Tuesday)
Nicole Atkins performs at Brighton Music Hall Feb. 14. | On the surface, “Slow Phaser” appears to be a return to the immaculate popcraft of Nicole Atkins’s sparkling debut “Neptune City” after veering towards more a rough-and-tumble rootsiness on its follow-up “Mondo Amore.” And indeed, returning “Neptune City” producer Tore Johansson once again provides a crispness, with each sonic building block set precisely in place. But Atkins’s songwriting has mutated since the two last collaborated, so that even songs that would have fit on “Neptune City” (the percolating, remix-ready disco track “Girl You Look Amazing”) or “Mondo Amore” (the stomping country-gospel blasphemy of “Sin Song”) represent a progression. | 1.65942 | 0.956522 | 30.42029 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2014/02/15/painter-julia-von-metzsch-bigger-bolder-moodier/TspaWZLNuHf0FAfaWDgbCL/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140321193644id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/theater-art/2014/02/15/painter-julia-von-metzsch-bigger-bolder-moodier/TspaWZLNuHf0FAfaWDgbCL/story.html | Building momentum: Photographer Greer Muldowney | 20140321193644 | Think of: Michael Wolf’s photographs of Hong Kong’s densely stacked architecture, with more scope and more eye candy. Muldowney’s capacious photographs raise political and sociological questions about urban and suburban landscapes.
What caught our eye: Muldowney’s 2013 exhibition of her photos of Hong Kong at Gallery Kayafas: old packed against new, smoggy but luminous, a world in speedy transition. She has work up now in the “Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Program Fellows and Finalists Photography” show at the New Art Center.
Light-bulb moment: Muldowney’s view of a wind turbine in front of the Mystic power plant sparked her latest project photographing wind turbines in Northeast cities. “What do they mean to the community that sees it from all angles? Some of them are PR. What will they look like in 20 years?”
Biggest thrill: Muldowney teaches at Boston College and the New England Institute of Art, and she organizes a student show for the annual Flash Forward Boston photography festival, which will take place in May. “The student show is the first exhibition for these college kids. . . . I love it when it goes up on the wall, and they bring their parents, who may be skeptical of this life choice.”
Biggest surprise: “When I started applying for shows with the Hong Kong work. First you get 30 rejection letters. Then I get into one show, then two shows by the end of 2011, and by June 2012 I was getting calls from all over the country and showing in Europe. That year was crazy.”
Inspired by: The Asian photos of Wolf and Edward Burtynsky. “Burtynsky tends to flatten the environment, and take a privileged, Western perspective. I was trying to counter that.” Also, photographers Brian Ulrich and Jeff Rich.
Aspires to: “I’m riding a fine line between organizational work in the arts, educational work in the arts, and my own work. I know I’ll always be involved in the photography community. Right now I don’t want to put myself into much of a box.”
For good luck: “I try to go to as many of my friends’ openings as possible. If you don’t support others, karma will bite you in the ass.”
What people should know: “My work is more questions than answers. It’s clearly political; I’m not trying to dodge that. I approach [a subject] from as many angles as I can, so it seems ambiguous, and people can enter into a dialogue with it.”
Coming soon: Muldowney will be featured in Photo District News’s “30 2014” story in its April issue. | BUILDING MOMENTUM: Photographer Greer Muldowney Age: 29 Hometown: Trenton, N.J. Think of: Michael Wolf’s photographs of Hong Kong’s densely stacked architecture, with more scope and more eye candy. Muldowney’s capacious photographs pose political and sociological inquiries into the built environment. What caught our eye: Muldowney’s 2013 exhibition of her own photos of Hong Kong at Gallery Kayafas: old packed against new, smoggy but luminous, a world in speedy transition. She has work up now in the “Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Program Fellows and Finalists Photography” show at the New Art Center. | 4.6875 | 0.883929 | 28.169643 | low | medium | extractive |
http://www.tmz.com/person/justin-bieber/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140322104116id_/http://www.tmz.com/person/justin-bieber/ | Justin Bieber News, Pictures, and Videos | 20140322104116 | Born – March 1, 1994 Ontario, Canada
The biggest teen sensation ever!!! Unless you count The Jonas Brothers, ‘NSYNC, Britney Spears, Donny Osmond, The Beatles, Ricky Nelson, Frank Sinatra, etc. Also Menudo.
Was discovered on YouTube, got signed by Usher, introduced the world to a bold new haircut.
His single "Baby" is one of the most viewed YouTube videos ever, just behind the video of the monkey peeing into his own mouth.
Won "Best New Artist" at the 2010 BET Awards, which makes total sense since he is very clearly bl... essed with talent.
Threw a fit in 2011 when his manager wouldn't let him buy a remote control helicopter. Now rolls around in a $200,000 Ferrari.
Has been compared to Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake and countless lesbians … ‘cause he kinda looks like one.
Will be fondly remembered for getting violently blown away on “CSI” ... roll the clip! Oh, we can't do that here? Well trust us. It's great. | Justin Bieber on TMZ, your go-to source for celebrity news, photos, & videos. Latest Story: Justin Bieber -- Paying Mom's Rent ... And Mom's In Trouble! | 5.861111 | 0.444444 | 0.444444 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/01/anselm-kiefer-royal-academy-of-arts | http://web.archive.org/web/20140402033955id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/01/anselm-kiefer-royal-academy-of-arts | Royal Academy's Anselm Kiefer exhibition shows 'powerful vision' | 20140402033955 | Anselm Kiefer is probably best known for his dramatic, monumental paintings, which are sometimes so heavy that gallery walls have to be reinforced for them to hang. But his first full retrospective shows there is much more to him than just size.
For example, his early watercolours possess a "lyricism and lightness of touch that I think will surprise many," said Kathleen Soriano, the departing director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy and curator of what promises to be a significant exhibition.
The RA said it was giving over its galleries to the German artist on a similar scale to its exhibitions for David Hockney and Anish Kapoor.
Kiefer is considered as one of the most important artists of his generation. Christopher Le Brun, the president of the RA, said Kiefer's influence was enormous. "If anybody has brought back the idea of history painting and painting with a serious subject matter, with moral and powerful vision, it is Anselm. He has absolutely transformed European art."
Soriano has spent the last four years planning the show with Kiefer and there will be at least five galleries of new work, she said.
Kiefer said he was happy to have the retrospective, although he admitted: "I think a retrospective for an artist is difficult because it is boring. It is your own work. I prefer to look to the future."
On Tuesday the RA gave its first details of the show. The exhibition will span Kiefer's career over more than 40 years and include painting, sculpture, photography and installation. It will explore Kiefer's fascination with history and his attempts to address some of the biggest moral and philosophical issues.
His work confronts head-on Germany's darker history and the show will include photographs and paintings from his Occupations and Heroic Symbols series from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The images, controversial at the time, record Kiefer's re-enactment of the Nazi salute made in locations across Europe.
Kiefer is not a fan of forensically dissecting his art and has previously spoken of how he fears that the beauty of art will "dissolve into ashes" when it is talked about
His paintings are loaded with meaning, however, and while they will be explored at length in the audio guides and the catalogue, Soriano said they planned minimal interpretation in the show.
"This is to allow the viewer to make their own personal connections with the works and also to allow for the purely aesthetic response to, what I feel, are sublimely beautiful works."
There will also be a major Kiefer installation planned for the RA's courtyard.
• Anselm Kiefer is at the Royal Academy from 27 September - 14 December | German artist's retrospective charts progress from early watercolours to controversial 1970s re-enactments of Nazi salute | 28.777778 | 0.833333 | 1.277778 | medium | medium | abstractive |
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/ovitz-didn-fail-gay-mafia-killed-article-1.496014 | http://web.archive.org/web/20140411225338id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/archives/gossip/ovitz-didn-fail-gay-mafia-killed-article-1.496014 | OVITZ: I DIDN'T FAIL, GAY MAFIA KILLED ME | 20140411225338 | Fallen mogul Michael Ovitz is blaming billionaire David Geffen and a "gay mafia" for putting a hit on his Artists Management Group. "David has always hated me," Ovitz says in the new issue of Vanity Fair. Without saying who is or isn't gay, Ovitz fingers Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, Universal Studio President Ron Meyer, talent manager Bernie Brillstein and Ovitz's former Creative Artists Agency associates as members of a cabal out "to eliminate me. This business [AMG] would've worked except for these five or six guys. They wanted to kill Michael Ovitz. If they could have taken my wife and kids, they would have.
" Ovitz, once dubbed "the most powerful man in Hollywood," claims Geffen and New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub were in league to topple him. "Geffen comes up with the spin, and Weinraub parrots it back," Ovitz tells Vanity Fair's Bryan Burrough, who reports that the humbled dealmaker came close to tears during their interview. Weinraub had no response. Meyer calls the charges "ridiculous.
" Geffen says, "This is insane. I think he needs a psychiatrist. It's so paranoid.
" Branding Ovitz homophobic, he adds, "All the gay people get together, like the Jewish people get together. I mean, yeah, we meet on Thursdays. I'm offended.
" Ovitz claims Geffen talked USA Networks chief Barry Diller out of a deal with AMG. Calling Ovitz's gay-smear "fairly rotten," a flabbergasted Diller insists Geffen "had no input in my decision.
" Likewise, AT&T Chairman Michael Armstrong shoots down talk that his "acquaintance" Eisner had any influence on the telecom giant's decision to back out of a $165 million-plus deal with AMG. Jeter + Jordana. Derek Jeter seems to be firmly on base with Jordana Brewster. The Yankee shortstop and the "Fast and the Furious" actress danced all night at his 28th-birthday party Sunday at Flow in SoHo. "They were kissing and holding hands," a spy tells us. "It definitely looks like the game is on.
" The two have been seeing each other for a few weeks. Jeter is one of the city's most sought-after bachelors (even Mariah Carey was smitten at one time). Brewster, the 22-year-old granddaughter of former Yale president Kingman Brewster, used to date Mark Wahlberg. Pumped up after the Yanks' 8-0 victory over the Mets, Jeter arrived at the club around 2 a.
m. He was joined by teammates Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi, Nick Johnson, Jorge Posada, Shane Spencer and Rondell White. Vanquished Met Mo Vaughn graciously poured him Champagne. Also on hand were Knick Allan Houston and former teammate Marcus Camby, comic Jimmy Fallon, model Tyson Beckford and promoter Unik (who organized the bash). Sean Combs came with Kim Porter, obviously putting aside the nasty custody battle over their son, Christian. J records honcho Clive Davis brought his girl trio, Lyric, to lead a soulful "Happy Birthday" to Jeter, who waved - rather than blew - the candles out. Guy's got a good arm. Risky comments. Tom Cruise says he's secure in his homeland. Speaking at last week's London premiere of "Minority Report," the actor told reporters, "I think the U.
S. is terrifying, and it saddens me. You only have to look at the state of affairs in America. I do worry about my children. As a parent you are always concerned. I just want them to be in a place where they are going to be strong enough to be able to make the right choices.
" Cruise added that he "depended" on Nicole Kidman, who has has said she'd prefer bringing up their children, Conor and Isabella, in Australia. But Cruise's rep, Pat Kingsley, denies that he's ready to ship them out of the "terrifying" United States. "They're going to school in L.
" Kingsley told us, adding that the children will spend the Fourth of July with dad, who turns 40 tomorrow. "Tom and Nic are very wary, as every parent is, about security problems. But that doesn't mean he's sending them out of the country.
" Romantic Rudy. Rudy Giuliani hands down the judgment in Adam Sandler's movie "Anger Management.
" In a scene shot last week at Yankee Stadium, Sandler's character is about to be hauled off by security guards after interrupting a game to declare his love to Marisa Tomei's character. Rudy comes to the rescue, telling the guards to let him speak. After Sandler opens his heart to Tomei, she orders him to kiss her in front of the crowd. According to a spy, Rudy suggests "Give her a Frenchie!
" (Giuliani's rep would confirm only that he has a cameo.) Tapes not rated R's. R. Kelly just caught a break. Four sexually explicit videotapes were recently found in a rented recreational vehicle in Orange County, Fla. Police there believed they might have bearing on the Chicago case in which Kelly has been indicted on 21 counts of child pornography. (Kelly was arrested in nearby Polk County, Fla.) Florida cops handed the tapes over to the Chicago police. A Chicago police spokesman now tells us that, after reviewing the tapes, investigators found "nothing there of evidence" and returned to them to Orange County. Kelly, who pleaded not guilty to the charges last week, is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 7. Still Boyle-ing? Jack Nicholson and Lara Flynn Boyle kept separate quarters in the Hamptons last weekend. (She stayed at the Hunting Inn, he bunked at the home of "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels.) But Saturday night, they came a deux to the private screening of "Men in Black II" director Barry Sonnenfeld had at his home. And Sunday night, at Nick and Toni's post- premiere benefit for Bridgehampton's Hayground School, Boyle looked almost motherly with Jack's youngest children Lorraine, 12, and Raymond, 10, whose mother is Rebecca Broussard. Racy Rachel. Brit rocker Robbie Williams and model Rachel Hunter have been caught in a series of high-humidity photos. The pictures - which feature a topless Hunter straddling a naked Williams poolside at an L.
A. hotel - ran in London's News of the World on Sunday. Some wonder if Williams staged the romp for publicity. Hunter's estranged husband, Rod Stewart, is said to be furious about the shots, fearing that their two children will see them. Reps for Stewart and Hunter didn't return calls. Williams' rep had no comment. Side dishes. HEATH LEDGER and Kirsten Dunst stopped to smell the perfume together at a recent shopping trip in Beverly Hills. The pair visited Saks Fifth Avenue holding hands and trying on fragrances, sources say. Ledger is said to be one of the actors considered to play Spider-Man before the part was nabbed by Tobey Maguire, Dunst's former flame ... ROBIN WILLIAMS had his own solution to last week's federal appeals court ruling that it is unconstitutional to make children recite that we are "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. In this week's New Yorker, Williams suggests: "Why don't they change it to 'one nation under Canada? Or 'over Mexico?
' That way, everybody's happy" CHRIS ROCK has another girl in his life. Rock's rep announced yesterday that the 36-year-old comedian and wife Malaak Compton-Rock, 32, welcomed their first baby, Lola Simone, on Friday. WOODY HARRELSON has made amends with a London cabbie. The 40-year-old actor was arrested June 6 on suspicion of criminal damage, but police said yesterday that the charges were dropped. The taxi driver, Les Dartnell, withdrew his allegation and said Harrelson gave him $1,500 to repair the damage. Ironically, the actor is one of the stars of "Anger Management.
" Surveillance. CYNTHIA ROWLEY unveiled her new swimwear on Saturday at a show sponsored by Tide detergent. One frisky male model made sure the designer literally got clean - by pushing her into the pool at the Hamptons house rented by Stuff magazine. Actress Ileanna Douglas followed her into the drink. Proceeds from the event will go to breast cancer research CARSON DALY enjoyed the mountainous landscape of Scores Saturday night. The talkmeister left the East Side strip club at around 4 a. | Fallen mogul Michael Ovitz is blaming billionaire David Geffen and a "gay mafia" for putting a hit on his Artists Management Group.
"David has always hated me," Ovitz says in the new issue of Vanity Fair. Without saying who is or isn't gay, Ovitz fingers Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, Universal Studio President Ron Meyer, talent manager Bernie Brillstein and Ovitz's former Creative Artists Agency associates as members | 20.6125 | 0.9875 | 44.2625 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/15/siemens-donates-million-software-massachusetts-technical-schools-and-colleges/1SNQllORV4wCzUDk68b3RI/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140418143935id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/15/siemens-donates-million-software-massachusetts-technical-schools-and-colleges/1SNQllORV4wCzUDk68b3RI/story.html | Siemens donates $660 million of software to Massachusetts technical schools and colleges | 20140418143935 | It’s not your father’s factory anymore, and that’s the problem facing manufacturers in the US.
Enter Siemens, the global industrial giant, which is donating nearly $660 million in software to a dozen technical schools and colleges in Massachusetts to help train a new generation of workers. The grant, the largest of its kind given to our state, has the potential to prepare thousands of students for careers in advanced manufacturing, producing everything from Bose speakers to Boeing planes.
“We really see a big transformation in manufacturing,” said Siemens USA chief executive Eric Spiegel, who is in Worcester Wednesday, along with Governor Deval Patrick, to unveil the gift. “What we used to call blue collar, these are not blue collar. Plant workers now walk around with iPads in their hands.”
Schools getting the software include Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Fitchburg State University, MassBay Community College, Northern Essex Community College, Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, and Worcester Technical High School. “This grant will really assist us in making sure we are providing 21st-century learning for our students,” said Sheila Harrity, principal of Worcester Technical.
The vocational school wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford the software. Worcester Technical applied for 60 seats, which would have cost about $72 million.
After years of offshoring, Made in the USA is back in vogue, particularly when it comes to making high-tech products, and Massachusetts is on the cutting edge. Manufacturing generates 13 percent of our state GDP, more than any other major sector, according to the UMass Donahue Institute.
But here’s the hitch. While manufacturing is far from dead, kids think it’s a dead-end job. With low enrollment in those programs and tight budgets, our education system isn’t investing as much as it should in teaching students how to operate sophisticated, computer-controlled machinery. Of the roughly 13,600 seniors participating in the state’s high school vocational programs this academic year, only about 1,500 are enrolled in fields related to manufacturing, such as machine tools and robotics. That kind of anemic number keeps business leaders up at night. They call it the skills gap, or the training gap. What’s driving all this worry is the manufacturing sector’s aging workforce — retirements will create 100,000 job openings over the next decade, says Barry Bluestone of Northeastern University. And they’re good-paying jobs, with average salaries of about $75,000.
It’s a problem that has been on the state’s radar over the past few years, enough to spur initiatives and private sector partnerships. One of the issues is companies think we’re a great state for research and development, but not so much if you want to actually make products. The big complaint: It’s too expensive here. “The stereotype is that we’re the brainy state,” said Greg Bialecki, Massachusetts secretary of housing and economic development. “We have tried to fight that.”
Bialecki said it’s not just about creating jobs, but about staying innovative. He points to East Asian countries that started out manufacturing electronics, but now are leaders in designing electronics because they learned a lot about design in the process of making products. Prime example: South Korea.
Starting in the ’90s, Siemens — a German company with a rich tradition of job training — began giving away software to schools around the world. Its “Product Lifecycle Management” technology is used by tens of thousands of companies to design and build products ranging from Dyson vacuum cleaners to NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover.
About two years ago, the company took an interest in investing in Massachusetts and started discussions with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a group that advises small and medium manufacturers. Siemens has about 2,100 employees across the state, with nearly half working in plants in Worcester and Walpole.
Our state caught Siemens’s eye because schools and the private sector collaborated to develop a certificate in manufacturing technology. Siemens also liked the idea of a common curriculum that created a pathway from high school to college to the workforce.
The partnership recruited schools to apply for the software license, and Siemens selected them based on several criteria including their commitment to use the software, such as providing computer lab time and faculty support.
There has been a lot of talk about public-private partnerships lately. Siemens just set the bar very high for the rest of corporate America. | It’s not your father’s factory plant anymore, and that’s the problem facing manufacturers in the US. Enter Siemens, the global industrial giant, which will say on Wednesday that it is donating nearly $660 million in software to a dozen technical schools and community colleges in Massachusetts to help train a new generation of workers. The grant, the largest of its kind given to our state, has the potential to prepare thousands of students for careers in advanced manufacturing, producing everything from Bose speakers to Boeing planes. “We really see a big transformation in manufacturing,” said Siemens USA chief executive Eric Spiegel. “What we used to call blue collar, these are not blue collar. Plant workers now walk around with iPads in their hands.” | 5.931034 | 0.993103 | 26.993103 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2014/04/23/barely-passing-grade-for-bad-teacher/MWH28w42cpCEx53wK993QO/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140426131027id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/television/2014/04/23/barely-passing-grade-for-bad-teacher/MWH28w42cpCEx53wK993QO/story.html | Barely a passing grade for ‘Bad Teacher’ | 20140426131027 | There have been much better and much worse television series adapted from films than “Bad Teacher,” premiering Thursday at 9:30 p.m. on CBS, and adapted from the 2011 Cameron Diaz film of the same name. (Diaz receives a producer credit here.)
So perhaps “Mediocre Teacher” would be a better title for this so-so comedy about trophy wife Meredith Davis (Ari Graynor), who suddenly finds herself replaced by a shinier trophy.
Upon discovering what the words “pre-nuptial agreement” actually mean, the newly penniless Meredith crashes with her best friend. While walking her friend’s stepdaughter Lily (Sara Rodier) to school, Meredith has an epiphany: The best way for her to mine more gold is to fake her way into a teaching job at Lily’s middle school for the children of affluent parents.
Forget that she has no qualifications (unlike Diaz’s character in the film) and waltzes in without so much as a background check, this plan seems like an awful lot of work to land a rich man for an inherently lazy woman who could just as easily accomplish her task sitting on a barstool at a country club or yacht rock concert. But this is Meredith’s scheme.
Enter all of the people who hope to aid and abet, foil, or be stupefyingly oblivious to this plan.
Rigid faculty president Ginny (Kristin Davis doing an academic gloss on her “Sex and the City” character) sees through Meredith and will clearly make it her mission to bring her down. Mousy Irene (Sara Gilbert) is an awkward fellow teacher who will say “how high?” when Meredith instructs her to jump. Hot, snarky gym teacher Joel (Ryan Hansen) is also on to her, but willing to see where the ride goes. And weepy Principal Carl (David Alan Grier) is happy to have a newly divorced friend with whom he can commiserate. All of these actors are gifted and have been in shows more worthy of their skills. But they’re all also skillful enough that, were the writers to give them more to work with, they could bump this show past the mere passing grade the pilot deserves.
What the show really needs is a home on a cable network like FX or AMC, which would allow “Bad Teacher” to have a darker tone. As it is, we’re likely to see lots of examples of selfish Meredith uncovering slivers of empathy in her not-so-cold heart that were there all along beneath her impressive decolletage.
That compassion emerges, thanks to the plucky trio of nerds she adopts — including Lily — and defends. This results in the pilot’s best line, when Meredith tries to give them a pep talk after they’ve been humilated by the mean girls. “It gets better,” she says, adding, “just not right away. And honestly, not for everybody. It will probably only get better for one of you.”
Graynor, a Boston native and Broadway and film veteran,has just the right blowsy attitude and the timing to pivot from sassy to sentimental. Hopefully, she’ll help “Bad” get better. | “Bad Teacher,” which premieres Thursday night, is a mediocre new CBS comedy adapted from the 2011 Cameron Diaz film. | 25.5 | 0.875 | 3.541667 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/04/24/watching-year-old-detective/VdMSUq0kgpXx6ydL03JIQL/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140426160348id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2014/04/24/watching-year-old-detective/VdMSUq0kgpXx6ydL03JIQL/story.html | Watching the (13-year-old) detective | 20140426160348 | Nono (Thomas Simon) goes on a clue-following quest in “The Zigzag Kid.”
What is a modern moviegoing child to make of “The Zigzag Kid,” a 2012 Dutch family adventure opening today at the West Newton? The characters are live-action and recognizably human and the locations are on this planet. As far as I can tell there are no digital effects whatsoever. A tie-in soundtrack is definitely not available and the only musical number is sung by an aging chanteuse played by Isabella Rossellini. How do you sell this thing to your kids? Being delightfully inventive will have to do.
Based on a book by Israeli writer David Grossman (and coming to the screen in a Babel of English, Dutch, and French, the latter two subtitled), “Zigzag Kid” feels a little like the recent “Hugo” filtered through the old “Emil and the Detectives.” Nono (Thomas Simon) is the 13-year-old son of one of Europe’s greatest police detectives (Fedja Van Huet); but while the old man has taught him the secrets of criminology, Nono’s still a kid and a mischievous one. Beneath that mischief is a sense of sadness at the hole left by his late mother (Camille de Pazzis), who died when he was a year old.
When his father packs him off on a train ride to Uncle Schmuel to straighten Nono out, the journey is interrupted by what appears to be a follow-the-clues adventure engineered by Dad, or maybe by his long-suffering secretary/girlfriend Gaby (Jessica Zeylmaker), or maybe by a sprightly old man named Felix, who may or may not be a criminal mastermind . . . It’s complicated. Before Nono can learn who he is, he has to figure out who everyone else is, starting with the mother he never knew.
How Rossellini gets worked in here, playing a world-weary cabaret singer named Lola Capirola, is worth the bother of finding out. “The Zigzag Kid” takes place in the ’60s and has the vibe of a fast-paced Euro-classic from that era: It tootles along like a vintage Citroen. Simon is immensely appealing in the lead — smart, resourceful, weighed down with a few more cares than a kid his age should have. There are couples who meet cute in vats of chocolate, breathless escapes along construction cranes, but all the adventure is tethered to Nono’s emotional journey, one that doesn’t feel cooked up by a screenwriting software program.
Kids old enough to read (or be read to) and to keep up with the narrative switchbacks and occasional moments of despair are likely to be enraptured. So will any parents in the mood for an old-school tale well told. If your children come out still squawking to see the latest CGI family franchise sequel — well, it’s never too late to disown them. | “The Zigzag Kid” is a delightful kids’ film from Europe, about a 13-year-old budding criminologist. | 27 | 0.714286 | 2.047619 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/dancing-with-the-stars-candace-cameron-bure-blog-mark-ballas | http://web.archive.org/web/20140505234132id_/http://www.people.com/article/dancing-with-the-stars-candace-cameron-bure-blog-mark-ballas | Candace Cameron Bure's Blog: I'm Performing a Duel Dance with Charlie White | 20140505234132 | 05/05/2014 at 11:00 AM EDT
Candace Cameron Bure and Mark Ballas
I can't believe we're going into week eight and
! Whoo hoo! My personal goal was to make it to week six, so anything after this is just a cherry on top.
After this week's show, we're in the home stretch with only the semi-finals and finale left. I'm giving it my all and am proud of my efforts no matter what the outcome and again want to thank you all for you support. It's been tremendous!
I came off a great week last week, pushing through my nerves and performing what has so far been my favorite dance, the Argentine tango. I had good scores, along with our fantastic team dance scores that placed me smack in the center of the leaderboard.
, with only six of us left, so I won't be surprised if I'm still in jeopardy tonight. You just never know what's going to happen and there's no way to ever feel safe (unless you're
Tonight, I'll be performing a fun Foxtrot with Mark that seems to fit my personality well. I admit that my nerves again
during my camera rehearsal yesterday and I blanked out mid-way through my routine. I'm going to continue using the tools Dr. Jenn gave me, like deep breathing, imagery of my routine in first person and positive thoughts to myself affirming that I
, I have access to my choreography and that I can do it.
and reciting of scripture assure me that I will do it! And even if it's not perfect, it's okay.
We are also dancing a duel dance and I'm paired up with Charlie White! In the duel dance, Mark and I
with Charlie and Sharna, and then Charlie and I will dance together without our partners. I was so excited when Charlie picked my name out of the hat and I believe we are suited so well together for our solo.
I don't want to give anything away, but I can't wait for you to see it! We're doing something no other celebrity couple has done before.
My kids came to rehearsal with me this weekend and
was able to pop in, too! This has
and my family has been
to me. I know they'll be excited to see it to the end – hopefully the very, very end – and then get Mom
I'm also so proud of Mark, whose new single drops TODAY on iTunes!! Make sure you download it and checkout Mark opening tonight's show with "Get My Name."
He's such a talent, and I am blessed to have gotten him as my partner. He's more than I could have hoped for and has become a great friend to our family.
Don't forget to vote! Our number is 1-800-VOTE4-07. Thank you! | "We're doing something no other celebrity couple has done before," she writes in her Dancing blog | 28.55 | 0.8 | 6.3 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/05/miami-looks-beyond-beaches-bikinis-tech/GcTBmwEiWhsHa95FCAsbBM/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140509124105id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/05/05/miami-looks-beyond-beaches-bikinis-tech/GcTBmwEiWhsHa95FCAsbBM/story.html | Miami looks beyond beaches, bikinis to tech | 20140509124105 | MIAMI — Famed for beaches, cruises, and Cuban coffee, South Florida is now angling to become one of the nation’s next tech hot spots by leveraging its role as the gateway to Latin America and luring northern entrepreneurs with cheap living costs and lots of sun.
The Miami area has long pinned its fortunes on real estate and banking, but the recent recession, which shook those economic drivers, an increase in cloud computing, and the rapid growth of mobile devices in Latin America have civic leaders and entrepreneurs pushing to diversify into tech.
‘‘We’re not trying to replicate what other tech hubs are doing. We want to complement them,’’ said Daniel Lafuente, 26, a Miami native who cofounded the open workspace and tech training center Lab Miami. ‘‘Miami is a place that provides its own benefits: lower costs of living, no income taxes, the proximity to Latin America.’’
Two years ago, the idea of a tech hub in Miami seemed a long shot to Lafuente and partner Wifredo Fernandez. The University of Pennsylvania graduates had returned home but found few innovative business opportunities. So they created their own in Miami’s gritty Wynwood Arts District, where freelance Web designers and startup entrepreneurs rent space, meet, and collaborate.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is helping to spearhead efforts to draw the technology industry to Miami, committing $6 million in the past 18 month to an array of projects.
‘‘In Miami there are enormous disconnects,’’ the foundation’s program director, Matt Haggman, said. ‘‘If you are an entrepreneur and you want to connect with an investor, where do you go? To date it’s been you’re really on your own.’’
On a recent evening at Lab Miami, more than 100 young professionals, tech geeks, and artists roamed between a 3-D printer demo on one side and a bilingual review of the latest fashion industry apps on the other. Nearby, civic-minded coders huddled, tapping out ways to improve city services.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan founder of the tech-based, English-language school OpenEnglish feted tech movers at his poolside South Beach condo.
Last week, Microsoft announced the opening of its first US-based technology innovation center at the new downtown entrepreneurial training center and startup Venture Hive. ‘‘We look at Miami as a great hub for technology from the Southern US perspective,’’ said a Microsoft vice president, Sanket Akerkar. ‘‘It’s a great destination in and of itself, and then you add that it’s a gateway to Latin America.’’
Manny Medina, the former owner of a data services company he sold to Verizon for $1.4 billion in 2012, is behind the tech conference eMerge Americas that kicked off Friday, mixing investors and startups.The global nonprofit Endeavor has also become a catalyst. It has long matched small companies with its network of investors and Fortune 500 mentors in the developing world. It opened its first US office here last fall.
‘‘What’s missing is a robust public agenda,’’ County Commissioner Juan Zapata said. ‘‘What area of town do we want to draw these companies to? What educational goals?’’
South Florida lacks famous universities and the critical mass of computer engineers and investors found in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York.
Toward that end, the region’s universities are partnering with new institutions like Venture Hive, where the Microsoft center will be located. The Hive was launched in 2013 and houses 35 mostly tech startups.
Luring big investors, though, remains the challenge.
‘‘You start by changing the mindset,’’ Medina said. ‘‘Begin bringing people to Miami thinking technology, not thinking ‘I’m going to go shopping.’ ’’ | MIAMI — Famed for its beaches, cruises, and cafecitos, South Florida is now angling to become one of the nation’s next tech hot spots by leveraging its role as the gateway to Latin America and luring northern entrepreneurs with cheap living costs and lots of sun. The Miami area has long pinned its fortunes on real estate and banking, but a combination of factors — the recent recession, which shook those economic drivers, an increase in cloud computing, the rapid growth of mobile devices in Latin America, and a vast health care industry — now have civic leaders and entrepreneurs making a push to diversify into tech. | 6.220339 | 0.932203 | 19.20339 | low | medium | extractive |
http://time.com/106507/sisi-egypt-president-boycott/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140521204134id_/http://time.com/106507/sisi-egypt-president-boycott/ | Egypt Election Boycotts Can’t Stop Sisi’s Inevitable March to Presidency | 20140521204134 | Two years ago, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a medical doctor and moderate Islamist politician, was a serious contender for Egypt’s presidency. Today, as Egypt lurches toward its second presidential contest in as many years, and its first since the military overthrew elected president Mohamed Morsi last July, Aboul Fotouh has refused to run again.
“This isn’t a democratic election,” he told TIME last week. “It’s more like a referendum with two names, and one of the candidates represents state institutions and the military.”
That candidate is Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the former commander of the armed forces who ousted and imprisoned Morsi, led a sweeping clampdown on Islamists under the guise of a “war against terrorism” and is now poised to prevail in the upcoming presidential election. “There’s no real competition because he’s had the support of the media since July 3,” Abul Fotouh said of the former military chief.
With a Sisi victory regarded as a near-certainty, the stage is set for an electoral anticlimax. Sisi’s only challenger, longtime Nasserist activist Hamdeen Sabahi, is polling in the single digits and struggling to overcome the cult of personality surrounding Sisi, who has positioned himself as the candidate of law and order and the man who rescued Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that alienated much of the public while in power and has been demonized in the media since the military takeover.
The upcoming election also comes in the aftermath of the deadliest period of political violence in Egypt’s recent history. In the wake of Morsi’s ouster, the military-backed government has arrested as many as 21,000 people including dissidents and journalists, outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, and killed more than 1,000 people during clashes with demonstrators. Islamist news organizations have been shut down, and a new law bans street demonstrations that take place without a government permit.
As a result, several distinct political blocs are refusing to participate in the election to protest the crackdown. The Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of deposed president Morsi, who at one time were the largest organized force in Egyptian politics, are boycotting the election outright on the pretense that the position of president is “not currently vacant.” Many ordinary Egyptians plan to sit out the poll out of exhaustion and disgust with politics after more than three years of upheaval — a sea change from the colorful, chaotic, and unpredictable presidential campaign of 2012, when Aboul Fotouh ran as an independent.
The 62-year-old was a longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the same group to which Morsi belongs. A voice of political pluralism, he was expelled from the organization in 2011 over his bid for the presidency. His campaign promised reform and assembled a rainbow coalition of Islamists and secular activists. In the first round of voting, he came in fourth, but still garnered more than four million votes, or more than 17% of the total.
Despite spending most of his career in Islamist politics, Aboul Fotouh condemned Morsi’s polarizing style of politics as president, and backed the protests against him. But the former candidate rues what has happened since Morsi was deposed. “In this security atmosphere, this republic of fear, true political, democratic hope isn’t possible,” he said. “This repression has to stop, this use of the security apparatus to oppress people, or else there will be another revolutionary explosion, dangerous for the country.”
Numerous activists, veterans of the protests against both Mubarak and Morsi, also regard the election as a pageant. Ali Hassan Ali, 51, campaigned after Mubarak’s departure to try and convict police and security officials responsible for the deaths of protesters. Today he is part of a group of activists urging what he calls a “positive boycott.” The idea is for people to show up at the polls, but write on their ballots that they reject the premise of the current election. “The goal of the boycott is to continue the revolution,” said Ali. “There is a large group of revolutionaries who reject this electoral process, because it is at its core the result of a military coup.”
The April Sixth Youth Movement, a group that was instrumental in helping to launch the protests against Mubarak, has also called for an election boycott weeks after the group’s activities were banned by a court order. “It became clear that this is theater and that Sabahi is joining just to make Sisi’s propaganda look good,” said Ramy El Swissy, co-founder of the movement and member of its political office, speaking in a separate interview. “There’s no such thing as a free election after a coup.”
Sabahi is not letting such doubts dampen his candidacy, embarking on an upbeat multi-city campaign swing on May 16, through Nile Delta en route to Alexandria. His aides insist that the campaign is serious, noting that Sabahi came from behind in 2012 to finish third behind Morsi and Mubarak’s last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. “We’re sure that Sabahi can win this election,” said Emad Atef, a member of Sabahi’s campaign committee.
But even Atef acknowledged the problem of voter fatigue. Since 2011, Egyptians have voted in three constitutional referendums, three phases of parliamentary voting, and a presidential election. “They’re tired of politics,” he said. “The political process hasn’t made any kind of real change in the last three years.”
That may be why many Egyptians, yearning for stability and hoping for an economic and social recovery, welcome the firm leadership that Sisi represents. “Sisi is a strong man. He has a military background. He knows there is terrorism in the country, that the entire Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. They killed people, police, and soldiers,” said Zeinab Abdel Halim, a grocer on a leafy corner in a middle class section of the Cairo neighborhood of Mohandiseen.
But millions of others remain disaffected. “If someone speaks against Sisi, they’re terrified. Everyone’s scared,” said Abdallah Mohamed Said, a taxi driver from the working class district of Shubra. “I’m not voting. There’s no point. Egypt is finished.”
The aura of inevitability gathering around Sisi has both drained the suspense from the current election cycle and moved the argument ahead to how Sisi will tackle Egypt’s stagnant economy, creaking infrastructure, and persistent Sinai-based armed insurgency, and whether the political crackdown will continue. The winner of the election “will be the president,” said Aboul Fotouh, sitting in his New Cairo office. “Their authority will be a reality,” he said, “de facto.” | Although many Egyptians consider this weekend's presidential election an undemocratic farce, little stands in the way of the former military commander's ascendancy to the nation's highest office | 41.709677 | 0.548387 | 1.129032 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/05/17/the-modern-sound-mauritania/h6nxQP7fgB253zAbMludOL/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140523031216id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2014/05/17/the-modern-sound-mauritania/h6nxQP7fgB253zAbMludOL/story.html | The modern sound of Mauritania | 20140523031216 | In the sequence of events that has finally brought the Mauritanian singer Noura Mint Seymali and her band to perform in the United States, a corporate gig in 2012 for the staff of courier firm DHL at a hotel in Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, stands out.
That’s when Noura, a singer raised in an eminent Mauritanian musical family, and her husband and partner Jeiche Ould Chighaly had an idea: Instead of just showing up together, with their traditional stringed instruments or Jeiche’s guitar, why not bring their friend and houseguest, American musician Matthew Tinari, and his drum kit?
They rounded out the group with bassist Ousmane Touré, and in this four-person format — the first time in this combination for Noura’s group, which draws on a fluid mix of musicians and Western and traditional instruments depending on performance setting — they heard in themselves something they knew was worth developing.
“That was a turning point,” says Tinari, who is based in Dakar, Senegal, and has worked with Noura and Jeiche for several years after meeting them when all were playing at the same festival. “Something happened. It was like, suddenly Jeiche was uncovered. I could really hear what he was doing.”
The fresh balance of charismatic, deep-voiced singer Noura and her ardine, a 9-string harp that only women play, and Jeiche’s guitar, with aggressive, rock-inspired arrangements of traditional songs built around an ancient modal system that defines Mauritanian music, opened fresh horizons for the group.
In short order, they recorded an EP in Nouakchott that Tinari mixed in Dakar; the recording scored their first US tour, last year; during the trip they recorded another EP, in Brooklyn; and they return this summer with a full-length album, “Tzenni,” that collates the two recordings and comes out in June.
They play outdoors at the Museum of Fine Arts on July 30.
Mauritania receives little attention on the world music market. With just over 3 million inhabitants, the land where the Sahara Desert edges right up to the Atlantic Ocean is relatively isolated, best known to political analysts for its history of coups and complex relations between the light-skinned “Moorish” ruling class and the sub-Saharan ethnic groups of the south, and to economists for its production of iron ore and fisheries.
But the country has a rich history woven into the trans-Saharan trade and the flux of medieval empires, French colonial rule, and independence since 1960. Its music is kin to Arabic music, with a modal system that governs song sequence and development, and to music of Senegal and Mali, with musicians from the griot caste, responsible for praise-singing and recounting history, and in which knowledge passes down through families.
Noura grew up in one such family, the daughter of Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall, an important cultural figure who, among other things, pioneered Moorish musical notation.
“My father was a griot, an artist, a professor of music and a very recognized composer, and his own mother was a great diva,” Noura says on the phone from Nouakchott. And her stepmother, Dimi Mint Abba, was a celebrated singer who made frequent appearances overseas before her untimely death in 2011. “I did a lot of things with her, a lot of concerts as her backup singer,” Noura says – beginning from age 13, which gave her early exposure to performance, travel, and virtuosity.
“Her family and entourage encouraged her a great deal,” says Jeiche, taking the phone after Noura’s French peters out. The two have been married many years; they have long played traditional gigs, Noura on her ardine and Jeiche on its male counterpart, the tidinitt, or on guitar. They formed their first modern, or fusion-oriented, band in 2004.
“We play a lot of weddings, and we also have people come to our house, drink tea, and hear us play for two or three hours,” Jeiche says. “There’s always some kind of atmosphere. People still like traditional music the best, and the young people are more interested in hip-hop. But the modern approach is growing.”
“Tzenni” epitomizes the new direction with its “rock-band feel,” as Tinari puts it, the Western bass and drums building musculature beneath Jeiche’s vivid, circular guitar motifs and Noura’s voice, which is at once gruff and ecstatic. In concert, many songs begin with the two leaders developing the theme before the beat drops.
The songs themselves are message-driven, says Jeiche. “Some speak to the youth, some give advice for living, or for illness, or against war; some praise the Prophet.”
In various lineups, Noura and her band have played multiple festivals and events across Europe and from Egypt to the Festival in the Desert in Mali. But they hope “Tzenni” will open new horizons, both for their own careers and with the aim to share Mauritanian culture.
“We’re happy for the chance to tour, and also so that our country can become known a bit in the world,” says Jeiche. “Mauritania may be far, but music brings us closer.”
MORE: The Summer Arts Preview section. | Siddhartha Mitter talks to Mauritanian singer Noura Mint Seymali, whose group plays rock-inspired takes on traditional songs built around an ancient modal system that defines Mauritanian music. She comes to the MFA on July 30. | 25.85 | 0.8 | 5.1 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/17/for-buyer-for-retail-chain-all-about-timing/ffEqU0AZ9hoRBK9gSYcLIL/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140523060317id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/05/17/for-buyer-for-retail-chain-all-about-timing/ffEqU0AZ9hoRBK9gSYcLIL/story.html | For buyer for retail chain, it’s all about timing | 20140523060317 | As a buyer at The Paper Store, the specialty gift shop chain based in Acton, Meg Anderson Lavoie selects merchandise she hopes will offer a one-stop shopping excursion, including collectibles, fashion accessories, stationery, books, gourmet foods, home decor, toys, and games.
“It’s all about timing — getting the right product at the right time, said Lavoie. She grew up watching her father, Bob Anderson, build the business from a single stationery store to a chain of 42 outlets in New England.
How do you manage such a diverse retail collection of products?
We carry familiar brands like Vera Bradley and Hallmark, but we layer these with third-party unbranded products as well as proprietary products developed over time. We set up our shops so we can execute in a very nimble way.
The typical shopper is a 35- to 65-year-old woman, probably a busy mom or working professional who wants to get some errands done and would rather not get stuck in a mall. Our stores do best when they’re located near a grocery store — it’s a convenience issue.
What drew you to this family business?
My sister and I are both buyers, with my brothers handling development, IT, e-commerce, and other aspects. I like to joke that my dad somehow got us all involved by asking us to help out for “just a couple of weeks.” I started in the books department and then began traveling to gift shows with my mom, who was also helping to manage the business.
What’s an example of how trends come and go?
There was a time when Webkinz — those toy stuffed animals with a playable online counterpart — were huge. But we had Webkinz too early and got out of them. Then sources started telling us to get back into it, so we did, and this time, sales were awesome.
Everyone guesses wrong. What did you think would be hot and busted?
Remember the rubber band craze last year, Silly Bandz? They were the fastest overnight hit, and we had fluorescent ones, animals, alphabet shapes, and more. Then all of a sudden schools started banning them, summer came, and the fad just hit the brakes. I’ve never seen anything die so fast.
People who love shopping would say you have a dream job. Do you agree?
A lot of people think being a buyer is just picking out the products, but it’s a lot of numbers and analysis. They’re shocked at the level of work we need to do.
I like to say that retail chooses you; you don’t choose retail. | As a buyer at the The Paper Store, the specialty gift shop chain headquartered in Acton, Meg Anderson Lavoie selects merchandise she hopes will offer a one-stop shopping excursion. | 15.323529 | 0.970588 | 12.676471 | low | high | extractive |
http://time.com/109853/wikileaks-afghanistan-under-nsa-surveillance/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140523232754id_/http://time.com/109853/wikileaks-afghanistan-under-nsa-surveillance/ | WikiLeaks Names Afghanistan Mystery Country Under NSA Surveillance | 20140523232754 | The National Security Agency records every cell phone call in Afghanistan, claims the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which named the country despite the fact that other news organizations did not out of concern that doing so could lead to violence.
WikiLeaks cannot be complicit in the censorship of victim state X. The country in question is #Afghanistan. wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-stat… #afpak— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 23, 2014
The Intercept, a media organization founded by journalists with access to classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, reported Monday that the NSA records all cell phone calls in the Bahamas and one unnamed country. The Intercept chose not to release the name of the country, the outlet said in its report, due to “credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence.” WikiLeaks responded to The Intercept’s report by criticizing the decision to redact the country’s name and said it would do so itself 72 hours later.
That threat led many to wonder if it meant WikiLeaks has obtained access to documents leaked by Snowden or if someone with access to the documents gave someone at WikiLeaks the name of the country in question. As the leak site Cryptome noted earlier, it may be that WikiLeaks simply believes that the mystery country is Afghanistan given the already-public information available.
An earlier report on the documents from The Washington Post did not name any of the countries involved. | The secret-spilling group says Afghanistan is the country The Intercept declined to name out of concern that doing so could stoke violence | 11.166667 | 0.791667 | 2.708333 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/06/18/mass-food-plant-cited-osha-after-worker-death/XXhtewKCpLa20RRjpbWHXP/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140527070055id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2012/06/18/mass-food-plant-cited-osha-after-worker-death/XXhtewKCpLa20RRjpbWHXP/story.html | Mass. food plant cited by OSHA after worker death | 20140527070055 | A Taunton-based hummus plant where a worker was killed is reviewing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s citations for nearly 20 alleged safety violations.
A spokeswoman for Tribe Mediterranean Foods, Inc. said on Monday that the company ‘‘deeply regrets’’ the December accident where 28-year-old plant worker Daniel Callazo was killed after he was pulled into a machine he was cleaning.
She said the company remains committed to the health and safety of its employees.
The Department of Labor announced OSHA’s investigation of the company found it failed to train the worker and six others on hazardous-energy control procedures, which shut down machines before maintenance or cleaning.
The company faces more than $700,000 in proposed fines and has 15 business days to contest the findings before an independent review commission. | The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited a Taunton-based food plant with nearly 20 alleged safety violations, following the death of a worker.The Labor Department announced Monday that OSHA’s investigation of Tribe Mediterranean Foods found the company failed to train the man who was killed and six other workers on hazardous energy control procedures, which shut down machines before maintenance or cleaning. | 2.111111 | 0.861111 | 4.333333 | low | medium | mixed |
http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-rookie-receiver-Bruce-Ellington-was-born-to-5536721.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20140608140518id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-rookie-receiver-Bruce-Ellington-was-born-to-5536721.php | 49ers rookie receiver Bruce Ellington was born to run | 20140608140518 | Even before Bruce Ellington could walk, his mother was struck by her baby's ability to move.
"Oh, Bruce squirmed and he squirmed a lot. It was actually hard to carry him," Gwen Ellington said, laughing. "I had to quit work and stay home because Bruce moved so much."
Over the next two decades, Bruce's coaches and teammates came to realize what Gwen already knew: The kid is in constant motion.
Before the wide receiver was selected in the fourth round by the 49ers last month, Ellington's energy - and athleticism - allowed him to cram two careers into his four years at South Carolina. He was the starting point guard on the basketball team for three seasons and played three more on the Gamecocks' football team, earning first-team all-SEC honors in 2013.
The academic all-conference pick also graduated in 3 1/2 years with a sociology degree.
"Most of us in college athletics experience athletes who give us everything they've got in one sport," said South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin. "Bruce did that in two sports. He never ran out of enthusiasm, and he could run until the cows come home. He has unbelievable ability to sustain effort. How his body did not break down, I don't know."
How rare is it for a Division I athlete to excel in the NCAA's two highest-profile sports? South Carolina wide receivers coach Steve Spurrier Jr. got some idea when he did investigative work last year.
In 2011 and 2012, Ellington left the football team after its final regular-season game, joined the basketball team for a few weeks and returned to the gridiron when the Gamecocks began bowl-game practices. In 2011, for example, Ellington scored a game-high 17 points in a home win over Wofford, took a red-eye flight to Orlando and participated in a Capital One Bowl practice hours later.
In December, Spurrier wondered if this breakneck pre-bowl schedule was such a good idea. There were 69 other teams playing in a bowl, and he wanted to speak with coaches at other football programs. What kind of schedule did they map out for their two-sport athletes?
The problem: Ellington was in a class by himself.
"I couldn't find another team - I couldn't find another player in the country that also played basketball that was about to play in a bowl game," Spurrier said. "So we just let him go."
Ellington, who scored 17 points in three basketball games before returning to football, didn't get exhausted by his two-sport demands: In a tribute to his tirelessness, he had six catches for 140 yards and two touchdowns and also threw a 9-yard scoring pass in a 34-24 win over Wisconsin in the Capital One Bowl.
After that Jan. 1 game, Ellington left the basketball team to focus on training for the NFL draft, meaning his performance capped a rare college career that included 1,586 receiving yards, 993 return yards, 148 rushing yards, 17 touchdowns, 893 points, 238 assists and 218 rebounds.
Not included in those stats: The number of times Ellington, 5-foot-9 and 197 pounds, waved off coaches suggesting he slow down.
In the sweltering Columbia, S.C., summers, Ellington routinely performed his personal two-a-days: He attended back-to-back running and weight-lifting sessions with the football and basketball teams. His only break came when he drove to the gym.
Niners running back Marcus Lattimore, his teammate at South Carolina, was amazed by Ellington's double duty. Spurrier was also wowed - and worried: "I'd be like, 'Bruce, what are you doing?' But he'd always say, 'I'm fine. Don't worry about me.' What could you do? He never showed signs of fatigue, weakness or injury."
Ellington, who ran track and played football, basketball and baseball as a senior at Berkeley High in Moncks Corner, S.C., never worried his body would betray him. And his confidence came from knowing what it had allowed him to do in the past.
He was rated the No. 12 high school point guard in the country by Scout.com and was a finalist for Mr. Football in the state as a senior when, as a quarterback, he led the team to a state championship by collecting 2,878 all-purpose yards and accounting for 29 touchdowns.
In the gym, he used his 39-inch vertical jump to do 360-degree dunks. In the weight room, he squatted 600 pounds as a 180-pound junior.
"I felt like I knew what my body could handle in college," Ellington said. "It's my body, so I'm good. I'm not feeling aches and pains. I didn't really listen to what other people said. It's not their body, so I just went after it. I really think it's a mind thing. I think if you say, 'Man, I'm tired. My legs hurt,' that's not good. So I always just said, 'I don't get tired.' "
His stamina was on display in the 2009 state championship football game, when Berkeley entered the fourth quarter trailing by 10 points. In response, Ellington, who ran a 4.45-second 40-yard dash at this year's NFL combine, did what he's always done best: run. He finished with 191 rushing yards and four touchdowns.
"In the fourth quarter we ran two plays, and they were both basically about giving Bruce the ball: triple option and quarterback counter," former Berkeley coach Jerry Brown said. "We won by nine points. ... I probably should have done that earlier."
Brown, a 43-year coaching veteran who has mentored seven other NFL players, a list that includes Ellington's cousin, Cardinals running back Andre Ellington, counts his former quarterback as the "most dominating" high school football player he's seen.
However, despite his football prowess - and 5-foot-9 stature - Ellington arrived at South Carolina determined to pave a path to the NBA. As a freshman, he didn't play football. Instead, he led the Gamecocks' basketball team in scoring and was named to the SEC All-Freshman team.
Spurrier had unsuccessfully recruited Ellington in high school, but it was Lattimore who eventually wooed him to the football team in 2011.
Three years later, Lattimore, an in-state high school legend who had beaten out Ellington for Mr. Football honors, is eager to see what his friend can accomplish when finally focused on one sport. Ellington, who was also a running back in high school, has played only wide receiver for three seasons.
However, his mom would offer he's been playing the position since childhood when he often spent hours alone throwing a football from one end of the backyard to the other.
"He tried to beat the football to the other side," Gwen Ellington said.
"Oh yeah, he could always run and catch it," she said. "He's always wanted to just run and run and run. Once he found out he can run, he's just never stopped."
Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_Branch | "Most of us in college athletics experience athletes who give us everything they've got in one sport," said South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin. South Carolina wide receivers coach Steve Spurrier Jr. got some idea when he did investigative work last year. In 2011 and 2012, Ellington left the football team after its final regular-season game, joined the basketball team for a few weeks and returned to the gridiron when the Gamecocks began bowl-game practices. In 2011, for example, Ellington scored a game-high 17 points in a home win over Wofford, took a red-eye flight to Orlando and participated in a Capital One Bowl practice hours later. Ellington, who scored 17 points in three basketball games before returning to football, didn't get exhausted by his two-sport demands: In a tribute to his tirelessness, he had six catches for 140 yards and two touchdowns and also threw a 9-yard scoring pass in a 34-24 win over Wisconsin in the Capital One Bowl. [...] Jan. 1 game, Ellington left the basketball team to focus on training for the NFL draft, meaning his performance capped a rare college career that included 1,586 receiving yards, 993 return yards, 148 rushing yards, 17 touchdowns, 893 points, 238 assists and 218 rebounds. Niners running back Marcus Lattimore, his teammate at South Carolina, was amazed by Ellington's double duty. Ellington, who ran track and played football, basketball and baseball as a senior at Berkeley High in Moncks Corner, S.C., never worried his body would betray him. Brown, a 43-year coaching veteran who has mentored seven other NFL players, a list that includes Ellington's cousin, Cardinals running back Andre Ellington, counts his former quarterback as the "most dominating" high school football player he's seen. Ellington, who was also a running back in high school, has played only wide receiver for three seasons. [...] his mom would offer he's been playing the position since childhood when he often spent hours alone throwing a football from one end of the backyard to the other. | 3.498783 | 0.963504 | 34.476886 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/high-school-reunion-shooting-peoria-illinois | http://web.archive.org/web/20140618130639id_/http://www.people.com/article/high-school-reunion-shooting-peoria-illinois | Man Shoots Ex-Wife and Her New Boyfriend at Their High School Reunion | 20140618130639 | 06/17/2014 at 07:30 PM EDT
Lori Moore and Lance Griffel
Lori Moore arrived at her 15-year high school reunion eager to introduce classmates to her new boyfriend, Lance Griffel.
It seemed like it would be a great night: the East Peoria High class of 1999 had selected Fifth Quarter Sports Bar and Pizzeria in as their venue. Turnout was high and the bar was full of thirtysomethings in their best dressy casual outfits.
"It was really crowded," a patron tells PEOPLE, "It was really easy to tell who was there for the reunion, because they came really dressed up. Everyone was hugging each other and telling each other how good they looked. It was really loud, actually, but in a good way."
But what should have been an evening of fond recollection turned deadly around 8 p.m. That's when, police say, Lori Moore's ex-husband, 40-year-old Jason Moore, calmly entered the bar and pulled out a gun, shooting Moore and Griffel in the head, killing them. They both crumpled to the ground as the busy sports bar erupted in chaos.
"I heard a bang, and then another bang," says the patron. "I couldn't see the gun, but everyone was screaming and jumping under the table. I was with my husband and we both hit the floor. I was looking at a window and wondering whether to try to smash it and get out. I didn't know if it was going to be a mass shooting. Everyone was screaming."
Seconds later, another shot rang out, but it was not from Jason Moore's gun. According to police, an off-duty FBI agent happened to be in the crowded bar. The unidentified officer drew his gun and shot Moore once in the head, killing him instantly.
According to court records, Lori Moore had filed for divorce from her husband in March of 2013; the marriage was dissolved two months later. They had a son, Kaydin, and a daughter, Callie. A
page has been set up for the children.
It's unclear what Moore's intentions were after shooting his ex-wife and her boyfriend, but police speculate that he might have continued shooting other patrons.
"I think it's pretty clear in his case that the presence of this officer and his ability to take very quick and decisive action prevented a further tragedy," East Peoria Police Chief Dick Ganschow told the
When authorities arrived, they took the statements of more than 100 witnesses. "They wanted to know what we saw," says the patron, "but I don't think my husband or I were much help. We had our faces covered. It was a terrifying night." | After Jason Moore opened fire in a crowded bar, an off-duty FBI agent shot him | 29.666667 | 0.888889 | 3.555556 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/06/22/using-radio-signals-internet-startup-takes-cable-giants/rWzEaNHNfoBy89hDo9OG0J/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140626015309id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/06/22/using-radio-signals-internet-startup-takes-cable-giants/rWzEaNHNfoBy89hDo9OG0J/story.html | Using radio signals, an Internet startup takes on the cable giants | 20140626015309 | Brough Turner’s audacious scheme to bringa high-speed broadband network to Boston to rival those of the Internet giants rests on a technology from the 19th century: radio airwaves.
Using unlicensed radio frequencies — the same spectrum used for Wi-Fi hot spots and garage door openers — Turner is beaming access to the Web from a thicket of radio antennas he has installed on the 61st floor of the John Hancock Tower to a network of receivers on rooftops around Boston.
Some 200 business and residential customers of Turner’s company, netBlazr Inc. — from tech startups in West Cambridge to residents in the South End — enjoy Internet connections starting at 15 megabits per second for as little as $40 a month.
For businesses that demand more bandwidth, netBlazr offers speeds of up to 500 megabits per second, or enough to support a big company with hundreds of employees.
“I was a little skeptical,” said Walter Ferme, the owner of CAJ House, which rents out corporate housing in Boston.
At first, he used netBlazr as backup Internet service for his properties, but made it his primary provider when it proved reliable.
“Go local — that’s what I always tell people,” Ferme said.
Turner and his cofounder, netBlazr chief executive Jim Hanley, are veterans of the computer networking and communications industry, with several successes under their belts. They started the company in 2010 on the assumption that consumers in the Boston area were hungry for low-cost, high-speed Internet service, without long-term contracts or the confusing bundles offered by the big providers.
For all of Boston’s acclaim as a hotbed of technology, local entrepreneurs complain they do not have that many low-cost options for fast Web access.
Verizon Communications, for example, does not offer its high-speed FiOS service in the city. Comcast Corp. does have some lower-cost offerings, but if cable is not already in the building, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to wire up an office. The one erstwhile challenger, RCN Corp., is only in select city neighborhoods.
Other companies that offer super-fast connections, such as Cogent Communications and Lightower Fiber Networks, often start at about $1,000 a month.
Delivering Web access via radio waves is not all that new. A handful of companies around the country offer a service similar to netBlazr’s. But only recently have high-powered antennas capable of transmitting the Web over several city blocks become affordable, a few hundred dollars each for the off-the-shelf antennas that netBlazr uses.
“We don’t have to dig up the streets or hang things on poles,” Turner said. “Basically what we are building around Boston is a network of antennas.”
The antennas netBlazr uses can beam Internet connections as far as 15 miles without reductions in speed, Turner said, so long as they do not encounter interference. But in a busy city, those waves can be interrupted by Wi-Fi signals, baby monitors, even cordless phones. To preserve fidelity, netBlazr closely spaces its antennas, usually at less than one mile apart, with many of them 500 yards of each other.
What has also helped netBlazr establish a foothold is a set of conditions unique to cities such as Boston where there are still older buildings that have not been rewired for the modern Internet. Those buildings, in Chinatown, the Leather District, and other neighborhoods, have drawn tech startups for their cheap rents and period charm. Yet if there is no cable Internet already in the building, businesses may face hefty construction costs to bring the service in from nearby streets.
“The problem they are trying to tackle is that decent Internet can be expensive and sometimes not available,” said David Abrams, a former tech executive who teaches courses on the Internet and law at Suffolk University Law School.
From his turn-of-the-century office building near Downtown Crossing, Ben Einstein paid $1,000 a month for a feed from Verizon running at 10 megabits per second, barely fast enough for two people in his office to video conference at the same time.
“My cellphone is faster than that,” Einstein said. “I literally had to walk to the coffee shop to do Skype calls.”
He found netBlazr by searching the Web. Einstein now pays $70 a month for a 40-megabit connection, plenty fast enough for his firm, Bolt, which provides tech startups with early-stage funding and work space.
The big providers do not seem fazed by netBlazr. Verizon spokesman Phil Santoro had not even heard of the company until contacted by the Globe.
“This is yet another demonstration of the highly competitive and dynamic nature of the broadband marketplace,” he said.
So far, netBlazr’s service is confined to neighborhoods around downtown Boston and parts of Cambridge and Allston that are dense enough for its network to function. But it is adding about 30 customers a month and has antennas on some 35 buildings, where they also act as relay points to extend the network. In addition to the Hancock Tower, netBlazr taps directly into fiber connections in Brighton and North Cambridge.
NetBlazr has some of the same challenges as its bigger rivals. For example, installation fees run about $200 for an apartment building and start at $300 for businesses, depending on the configuration and conditions. Comcast, by contrast, sometimes will bring its cable connections into a building for free if there are enough businesses or tenants willing to sign up.
Comcast, Verizon, and other traditional providers do not have to worry about trees, either. A major limitation facing netBlazr’s expansion to outlying neighborhoods is that trees interfere with radio waves, which means the company has to be selective about where it expands.
“It gets a lot harder when you get out to West Roxbury or Newton,” Turner acknowledged.
One of its first customers was Carbonite, the provider of computer backup services in the Back Bay. It first used netBlazr in 2012 as a backup to its main service from Verizon.
After netBlazr “ran months and months and months without a hiccup,” Carbonite’s chief executive, David Friend, elected to drop Verizon and use the radio waves for the company’s main Internet service.
Friend is a fan in every possible way. He started using it at his Commonwealth Avenue home, and persuaded his neighbors to sign up, too.
“The people in my building got it because I got it, and they figure if it doesn’t work, they can yell at me,” Friend said.
Friend has also become an investor in netBlazr and holds a seat on its board.
NetBlazr may not always be the cheapest option for fast Internet, though. Bigger customers may be able to negotiate lower prices directly from the fiber-optic providers that netBlazr uses to connect to the backbone of the Internet.
Because of the way the big providers package their services, it is not easy to compare Verizon or Comcast to netBlazr; most plans do not have the same speeds for downloading and uploading information, as netBlazr does.
For example, on the closest Comcast plan upload speeds are 5 megabits per second, compared with 15 megabits for netBlazr’s entry-level plan. The base price for that Comcast plan is $40 a month in the first year and $55 after the first year.
What’s more, for a base price of about $80 a month, Comcast cable subscribers also get more than 200 TV channels.
With netBlazr, it is just the Web. But that seems to be just fine with its customers, said Jim Hanley, chief executive. “All they want is a superfast, affordable Internet connection.” | For a guy trying upend the Internet delivery business, Brough Turner spends a lot of time tinkering with century old technology: the radio antenna. But that’s exactly what Turner and his fledgling startup, netBlazr Inc., are using to build a new kind of broadband network around Boston and Cambridge as an alternative to giants Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. “I’m looking for ways to build a business that someday could be a serious competitor to Comcast and Verizon,” said Turner. “I’m looking to do an end run around the monopolies.” That may seem like a lot of bluster. But netBlazr has a fast growing cadre of loyal customers who are spreading the word about its service. And even though it’s still little known, the company has become the No. 1 rated local internet service provider on Yelp, garnering a collective five stars. That’s a rarity for any company, let alone one in an industry that typically ranks at the bottom of consumer satisfaction surveys. “It’s a David and Goliath story,” said Jim Hanley, netBlazr’s chief executive officer. But, he said, “we want to be the best Internet provider in Boston.” NetBlazr is beginning to pick up steam. It is adding about 30 new customers a month and its subscribers range from South End residents to downtown tech startups to one of the one of the country’s largest seafood importers. | 5.585185 | 0.777778 | 1.318519 | low | low | abstractive |
http://www.people.com/article/aaliyah-biopic-loses-zendaya-coleman | http://web.archive.org/web/20140630173712id_/http://www.people.com/article/aaliyah-biopic-loses-zendaya-coleman | Zendaya Coleman Drops Out of Aaliyah Biopic | 20140630173712 | 06/30/2014 at 01:00 PM EDT
Only two weeks after announcing she'd be playing
in a TV movie about the late star,
has decided to pull out of the role.
The Lifetime network confirmed Coleman's departure from the project by posting on
on Sunday, announcing, "Production is currently on hold."
Coleman, 17, told reporters at the
in Los Angeles on Sunday that she felt uneasy about the production.
"I felt like something with the production [wasn't] all the way there, the project wasn't all the way there," she said. "If I'm going to do something for someone I care about so much, I have to do it the right way."
"I just felt that because I love her, and because I respected her so much as an artist, I don't want to do anything that's half or anything that's less for her," Coleman said.
After the biopic was announced, Aaliyah's family was
Coleman says she is still open to playing Aaliyah in the future.
"By all means, when the right project comes along, and it's done the right way, I'll be the first person ready to play Aaliyah. But, this wasn't the right one for me," she told
The film was originally set to premiere this fall. | The actress says, "If I'm going to do something for someone I care about so much, I have to do it the right way" | 9.275862 | 0.965517 | 18.482759 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/06/26/high-five/XEvezVMSB1mcbU4bsVlHdJ/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140703011827id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/music/2014/06/26/high-five/XEvezVMSB1mcbU4bsVlHdJ/story.html | High Five - Music - The Boston Globe | 20140703011827 | “Hebrews,” the sixth studio album by alternative-rock/pop-punk band Say Anything, is an ambitious release. A departure from the band’s earlier sounds, the album — which came out earlier this month — was self-produced by frontman Max Bemis, and its 12 tracks feature zero guitars, substituting orchestral string arrangements for typically guitar-laden riffs. With a multitude of guest musicians and vocalists, including his wife, Sherri DuPree Bemis, “Hebrews” also reflects the band’s collaborative nature. In anticipation of bringing Say Anything’s music to House of Blues Sunday, Bemis shared five notable collaborators.
1. Sherri DuPree Bemis “We’ve collaborated on so many things. We met through a collaboration for a Two Tongues record. I was a huge fan of her music, but I also wanted to talk to her, so [getting her to do guest vocals] was a win-win. We kept doing it, and it has been a purely joyful experience. It’s just really amazing to be married to someone you can collaborate with.”
2. Jeremy Bolm of Touché Amoré “I’m a huge fan. I worked with him on my last record and at the time I didn’t really know him, but he really pushed me to do something unexpected and creative on [the song “Lost My Touch”]. It turned 100 times cooler than I expected.”
3. Chris Conley of Saves the Day and Two Tongues “He’s always been my favorite songwriter. We were brought together right when he was getting into Say Anything, so there’s a mutual respect there, but I still sort of dork out. We’ve sang on each other’s records as well as doing Two Tongues together, and we get along really well. He’s my closest collaborator.”
4. Tim O’Heir and Brad Wood “This one’s a tie. They’re both producers who produced our first and second records, respectively, but they have very different styles. They really taught me so much and pushed me to think outside the box. They’re both geniuses.”
5. Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou “I’ve been friends with him for awhile, and he’s very self-deprecating. He doesn’t realize how good he is. He was nervous to do a track for ‘Hebrews,’ so I told him I’d write all the lyrics for it. But once he got in the studio, he wrote this long poetic thing — it is such a beautiful part, it’s really powerful.”
Say Anything performs with the Front Bottoms, the So So Glos and You Blew It! on Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets: $27-$44. 888-693-2583, www.houseofblues.com/boston | As alt-rock band Say Anything comes to town on the heels of its ambitious new “Hebrews,” leader Max Bemis singles out five significant collaborators. | 17.733333 | 0.733333 | 1.533333 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/10977682/Britain-and-America-implicate-Russia-in-Flight-MH17-missile-attack.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140721021951id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/10977682/Britain-and-America-implicate-Russia-in-Flight-MH17-missile-attack.html | Britain and America implicate Russia in Flight MH17 missile attack | 20140721021951 | - Mr Putin was accused of avoiding phone calls from world leaders including Mr Cameron;
- America was last night considering imposing further sanctions as Mr Obama warned that he was prepared to “increase the costs” to Russia;
- Footage emerged of a Buk anti-aircraft missile launcher being driven into rebel-held Torez in eastern Ukraine just two hours before the crash.
- Video and audio emerged purporting to contain footage of Russian-backed, rebels saying they had mistakenly shot down the jet.
- Mr Putin categorically denied any link to the attack and suggested that Ukraine was partly responsible. “This tragedy would not have happened if there was peace in the country,” he said.
- Britain sent air accident investigators to Ukraine along with specialist police to retrieve and repatriate corpses.
At the White House, Mr Obama suggested that the missile launcher used to shoot down the plane was from Russia, and that those who fired it may have been trained in Russia.
He said: “Nearly 300 innocent lives were taken, men, women, children, infants who had nothing to do with the crisis in Ukraine. Their deaths are an outrage of unspeakable proportions.
“A group of separatists can’t shoot down military transport planes without sophisticated equipment and sophisticated training, and that is coming from Russia.”
Challenging Mr Putin to stop supplying the arms to the separatists, he said: “The violence that is taking place there is facilitated in large part because of Russian support and they have the ability to move those separatists in a different direction. If Mr Putin makes a decision that we are not going to allow heavy armaments and the flow of fighters into Ukraine across the Ukrainian-Russian border then it will stop.”
Mr Cameron said: “It is an absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident that has taken place. We have got to get to the bottom of what happened, and how this happened. If as seems possible this was brought down then those responsible must be held to account. We must lose no time in doing that.”
Sir Kim Darroch, the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, chaired an emergency meeting with officials from across Whitehall, including police and representatives from the intelligence agencies, to assess the situation.
A No 10 spokesman said: “While it is too early to be categoric about the cause of the disaster, the growing weight of evidence suggests that MH17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile and that this was fired from near Torez, in territory controlled by the separatists.”
According to reports, a unit of heavily armed rebels has cordoned off a large section of the crash site and is denying access to international investigators.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “This investigation must be swift, transparent and credible. Six investigators from the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch will arrive in Kiev tomorrow to provide assistance.”
Mark Lyall Grant, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, said: “We urge Russia to reflect on the situation it has created, of destabilising a neighbouring country. Let us hear today a clear and unequivocal condemnation from Russia of these armed groups.” | Both David Cameron and Barack Obama call for Mr Putin to allow the crash site to be 'properly investigated' amid reports separatists were denying investigators access | 20.5 | 0.6 | 1.066667 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/07/24/personal-touch-family-feel-won-workers-loyalty-market-basket-grocery-chain/Y21o2OT2qwr2Dzwf588iHK/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140727200251id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/business/2014/07/24/personal-touch-family-feel-won-workers-loyalty-market-basket-grocery-chain/Y21o2OT2qwr2Dzwf588iHK/story.html | Personal touch, family feel won workers’ loyalty at Market Basket grocery chain | 20140727200251 | It’s no wonder that the recent protests staged by employees of the Market Basket grocery chain resonate with so many people. From the characters to the setting, it is a quintessential American drama.
At Market Basket, the same folks have been dishing out cold cuts, stocking the produce aisles, and running the checkout counters for years. Some employees met their spouses there, and children follow parents into the business. Employees identify with the company’s family culture. To customers, they’re neighbors or friends, even relatives.
Moreover, Market Basket represents an increasingly rare business culture, one where workers are unusually well paid and willing to put their jobs on the line to force the reinstatement of a beloved boss who made them feel valued. All this at a time when most workers fret about job security and don’t know who owns their companies.
“We have a corporate culture in the US where most workers are living somewhere between anxiety and boredom,” said Erik Gregory, who directs the organizational and leadership psychology program at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. “Demoulas has created a family environment, and they want to hold on to that. It’s important today, when a lot of companies don’t appear to have your back.”
So we have the unusual scene of rank-and-file employees staging picket lines outside Market Basket stores, and urging customers to spend their money at the competition until the board of directors reverses the firing of Arthur T. Demoulas. Demoulas was forced out as president in June by members of his own feuding family, including archrival cousin Arthur S. Demoulas.
The boycott has nearly paralyzed the 71-store chain, enlisting the backing of thousands of loyal customers who are passionate about Market Basket’s low prices — and willing to join the boycott if it helps the employees who oversee it all.
So why, exactly, is a group of middle-class workers risking or sacrificing their livelihoods for a multimillionaire executive who will suffer no great hardship in unemployment? The most common refrain heard from employees concerns some small kindness from Arthur T. Demoulas.
Steve Paulenka, one of eight managers fired for participating in the protest, talks about the interest Arthur T. Demoulas took in his autistic son, Joe, after the boy broke two front teeth and needed reconstructive surgery. For weeks after the accident, Demoulas would ask about the boy whenever he saw Paulenka.
“Not, ‘Who is making payroll?’ but, ‘How’s Joe?’ ” recalled Paulenka.
Larry Frost, a cashier at a Billerica Market Basket, wore black tape on his badge last week, saying he is mourning the ouster of Arthur T. Demoulas
But there is another important factor: The pay is generous enough that managers and supervisors can easily make into the six figures as they advance up the corporate ladder.
The pay for hourly workers is hardly extravagant, but high by supermarket standards — more than $40,000 for experienced cashiers, while full-time clerks start at $12 an hour, well above the minimum wage.
Most workers can also regularly count on receiving tidy bonuses, typically doled out four times per year, that can amount to an extra six to eight weeks of pay.
In the grocery industry, “typically there are no bonuses for clerks,” said Kevin Griffin, publisher of the Griffin Report of Food Marketing, a trade publication for the food industry. “Do you get a bonus every quarter? Nobody does. But at Market Basket, everybody does.”
Market Basket also contributes an amount equivalent to 15 percent of each employee’s pay to a retirement plan, and some longtime workers retire with more than $1 million in savings.
Solid pay. A boss who cares. It’s not exactly a magic formula.
“We must ask whether the workers’ grievances are about much more than reinstating a popular CEO,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. “If you peek behind the large signs and pictures of Arthur T., you might see that the underlying problem — one of workers’ resentment and insecurity [without him] — is the real issue.”
Indeed, employees’ impassioned speeches exhorting Market Basket to bring back Demoulas are laced with unease about their own futures. Among the fears is that his relatives will cut wages and benefits in order to pay themselves even more or, worse, sell to some soulless chain that will turn Market Basket into just another indifferent employer.
“Market Basket employees think that without Arthur T., they won’t be able to hold on to their values and will fall into a vicious cycle,” said Zeynep Ton, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who visited the picket lines this week. “I don’t blame them for fighting to keep the integrity of their business.”
The company’s board, which includes representatives of the two warring factions of the Demoulas family, will meet Friday afternoon at the Prudential Center in Boston. Workers plan to present a petition with more than 40,000 signatures in support of “Artie T,” as they affectionately call him. Another large rally is scheduled for 9 a.m. in Tewksbury, where Market Basket is based. | It’s no wonder that the recent protests staged by employees of the Market Basket grocery chain resonate with so many people. From the characters to the setting, it is a quintessential American drama. | 27.135135 | 1 | 37 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2014/05/10/berklee-tower-required-designers-think-outside-very-cramped-box/GQZlpkZQgLW43MGtvbLLAL/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20140729034551id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/theater-art/2014/05/10/berklee-tower-required-designers-think-outside-very-cramped-box/GQZlpkZQgLW43MGtvbLLAL/story.html | Berklee tower required designers to think outside a very cramped box | 20140729034551 | Designing a building is a game an architect plays and sometimes wins, sometimes loses. That’s one way of looking at it, anyway. A good example is the new addition to the Berklee College of Music.
Berklee’s 16-story building stands on Massachusetts Avenue just a few steps from the corner of Boylston Street. It goes by the boring name of 160 Mass. Ave., at least until some donor seizes the “naming opportunity,” which is available for $25 million. Although it opened in February, it’s still not quite finished.
160 Mass. is a very good building, and I’ll talk about some of its virtues. But what’s especially fascinating about it is the way the design game was played. 160 Mass. offers a kind of lesson in the process of designing a building.
The architect is William Rawn Associates, a Boston firm best known locally for the new Cambridge Public Library, Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, and Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. Berklee’s president, Roger Brown, worked with Bill Rawn in what both of them say was a close collaboration.
You can think of 160 Mass. as a chess problem. Rawn and his team started with a number of different pieces, and they had to figure out some way to arrange them on the board — meaning the site — so that they’d fit together and not get in one another’s way.
The pieces for this game were many and big. First, there would be a dorm for 370 students. Second, an area of 14,000 square feet (that’s almost a third of a football field) of music labs and studios. Third, a cafeteria with 400 seats. Fourth, a stretch of retail space along the Mass. Ave. sidewalk. Plus lots of scattered rehearsal and social spaces and a health club.
The site on which this pile of diverse uses had to be fitted somehow was a small, weirdly shaped piece of real estate, tightly boxed in by older buildings.
No game, of course, is fun without challenges. To make things more difficult, it was decided early on that the Mass. Ave. sidewalk in front of the building should be widened. Students call their stretch of sidewalk the “Berklee Beach” — it gets a lot of afternoon sun — and they like to hang out there. But widening their “beach” made a small site even smaller.
Worse still, it was believed at first that 160 Mass. could be no higher than maybe eight or 10 stories, because of fears that the city or the neighbors would veto anything taller.
Cramming all the parts of the building behind that wide sidewalk and under that height limit would produce a fat, and probably ugly, piece of architecture. The design game appeared to be a stalemate.
Not quite. Rawn and Brown started moving the pieces. They took the risk of asking permission for a taller structure and found that, in fact, nobody really objected. So they put the dorms in a slim 16-story tower. The music labs, which don’t need windows, ended up on two basement levels where they could be acoustically isolated from traffic noise (a firm that specializes in music technology, called WSDG, planned and designed these interiors).
At some point the design clicked shut like a Rubik’s Cube. Suddenly, all the pieces were in the right place. The skill with which the game was played speaks well for the value of a good architect (and a good client). It’s easy to imagine how, in other hands, a shapeless urban pileup could have been the result.
The building has many other virtues. It confronts the city with a glass wall three stories high, a huge window that blazes with light and activity at night. Looking through the glass from outside, you see a big double-height interior space known as the Caf. The Caf is a bit like an urban aquarium because everything happens behind glass, and you can see it all from the street. Several nights a week, there’s some kind of musical performance here, often one cooked up on the spur of the moment by students.
The Caf is called the Caf because it’s the cafeteria but, in another clever move by Rawn and Brown, it doubles as a performance hall. After the eating is done, the tables get shoved aside, and you may notice for the first time that certain parts of the cafeteria are shaped as a stage and a balcony.
Rawn says that the key to the Caf was to design it as an auditorium that can also be a cafeteria, not as a cafeteria that can double as a not-very-good auditorium. At Berklee, music comes before food. As of now, at least — you can’t always trust the security gurus — the Caf is open to the general public.
I’m mixing metaphors, but you can also think of the Caf’s glass wall as a billboard to the city. Every work of architecture broadcasts a message about the values of the people who created it. The message of 160 Mass. is about the excitement, the joy, the youthful vitality, and the vivid life of art in the city.
An interior space known as the Caf, which is both a cafeteria and a performance hall.
Finally, of course, 160 Mass. is a home. It’s a place for human habitation that’s safe and sanitary. In today’s Boston, as revealed by a recent Globe series, off-campus housing for college students is too often filthy, overcrowded, and dangerous. Students come to Boston in such numbers that they flood the housing market, driving up the cost of rentals. But Berklee can now house all incoming freshmen and all women on campus. Most of the rooms are doubles, each with a large window that Rawn hopes will give the space the feeling of a loft.
Seen from outside, the dorm tower is a modest gray presence that, unlike the Caf, seems to avoid being noticed. For groupies of Boston urban design, it’s worth noting that the tower fits the concept of the High Spine. This is the principle, now more than a half-century old, that high-rise growth should be limited to a strip running from downtown through the area between the Back Bay and the South End. The Spine gives Boston a shape and order, and allows for density without invading historic neighborhoods.
My only problem with 160 Mass., through no fault of the college, is that it’s yet another institutional presence in one of the last Boston neighborhoods you can call funky. There are attempts at giving it some of that kind of screwy charm, for instance in the rhythmic way the great glass wall folds back and forth like origami, or the way the aluminum window frames (if you look hard) are tinted pink. At night, it looks great, but in daylight it’s a little timid. I’d rather have seen the inventiveness of another recent student dorm, the marvelous “Tree House” at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Maybe Berklee’s students will find a way to make 160 Mass. feel a little crazier. A lot of the success of the building as streetscape is going to depend on who leases the retail frontage. Today, that’s a dead wall along the sidewalk.
A public billboard, a glass performance palace, a student dwelling, a cutting-edge music lab — 160 Mass. Ave. packs a lot into its tough urban site. Gripes aside, it’s the result of a game that’s been well played and won. | The footprint for Berklee College of Music’s new 16-story tower on Massachusetts Avenue was small and weirdly shaped, presenting big challenges to the building’s designers. | 51 | 0.896552 | 1.724138 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/katy-perry-diplo-partying-las-vegas-xs-andreas-at-encore | http://web.archive.org/web/20140802022236id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/katy-perry-diplo-partying-las-vegas-xs-andreas-at-encore | Katy Perry and Diplo Party Together in Las Vegas | 20140802022236 | truly goes all out for birthdays.
The "Dark Horse" singer and an entourage of close friends partied in Vegas Monday night at XS nightclub to celebrate a pal's birthday.
spinning at the deejay booth, Perry, 29, went incognito in a black handkerchief mask, sipping cocktails and dancing with her pals.
"Even though she was on stage, most people didn't know she was there," says a source. "She was twerking really hard ⦠and Diplo played 'Dark Horse.' "
Earlier in the evening, the pop star – in a blue and purple-colored cocktail dress – sipped on Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label with Diplo and 14 friends at Andrea's at Encore.
Kicking off the night's festivities, the group shared Wagyu beef and sushi and finished their meal with an ice cream flight and a flaming Mt. Fuji dessert. | The "Birthday" singer and the DJ celebrated a friend's special day on Monday night | 10 | 0.705882 | 1.294118 | low | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/07/31/us-economy-brightens/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140803011033id_/http://fortune.com:80/2014/07/31/us-economy-brightens/ | U.S. economy finally approaches cruise control | 20140803011033 | If you had to choose one word to describe America’s economic expansion, now in its fifth year, you should go with “halting.”
Economic growth and job gains impress one day and then disappoint the next. The upshot: growth that might be considered acceptable during normal times has instead appeared painfully slow for a recovery from the deepest recession in generations.
The mixed messages in the data has prevented analysts, market participants, and the rest of us from getting a handle on what is going on with the economy. Consider the whipsawing of GDP data in recent quarters. The second half of 2013 yielded the strongest six-month growth since the recession, and then the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the economy shrank by nearly 3% in the first quarter of 2014.
That kind of drop in output in the middle of an economic expansion is nothing short of unprecedented. It only occurred one other time in history, and that took place during the very same weak expansion—back in 2011.
At the same time, job growth has continued to accelerate, averaging 207,000 new jobs over the past 12 months—the largest 12-month average at any point since the recovery began.
Simply put, you can’t have job growth without commensurate economic growth, and vice versa. Well, this week the other shoe finally dropped, with a slew of data showing that the U.S. economy is settling into cruise control rather than heading towards a ditch.
First, we had Case-Shiller data released Tuesday, which showed that home price increases are slowing but strong, just as one would expect as the housing market normalizes. That was followed by a release in consumer confidence index data from the Conference Board, which showed an increase from 86.4 in June to 90.9 in July. By comparison, the average reading in 2013 was 73.2, and it was at 67.1 in 2012.
Then, on Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 4% in the second quarter, and that it shrank in the fourth quarter by 2.1% rather than the previously reported 2.9%. So, we have had above-trend economic growth in three of the past four quarters, making the continued growth in employment seem much more understandable and giving some credence to the explanation that poor weather led to the first-quarter economic contraction.
The Federal Reserve followed all of this data with an announcement that it would cut its monthly purchases of mortgage and U.S. government debt by $10 billion per month. The Fed is now buying just $25 billion per month in bonds and preparing to end its quantitative easing stimulus program in October of this year. The Fed’s statement gave a nod to the improvement in economic data, acknowledging that “inflation has moved somewhat closer to the Committee’s longer-run objective” of 2%, but stressing that the labor market was still a long way from its full-employment goal of 5.2% to 5.6%.
In other words, the Fed is still on course to end QE, but it sees no reason to raise short-term interest rates in the near future. Inflation is low, below the Fed’s target even, while unemployment is falling and the economy is in position to achieve consistent growth in the next couple of quarters. While no one can predict the future, the data is hinting at the coming of rosier days, more so than at any point in the past five years. | We might be not be in the fast lane, but at least we know where we're going. | 33.55 | 0.65 | 0.95 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/mercury-cruise-past-sparks-for-16th-straight-win-072914 | http://web.archive.org/web/20140803020131id_/http://www.foxsports.com:80/arizona/story/mercury-cruise-past-sparks-for-16th-straight-win-072914 | Mercury cruise past Sparks for 16th straight win | 20140803020131 | Updated JUL 30, 2014 11:57a ET
PHOENIX -- Facing a short-handed Los Angeles Sparks team playing for the second straight night, the Phoenix Mercury needed a half to get going before cruising to their 16th straight win.
Diana Taurasi had 17 points and four assists as Phoenix beat Los Angeles 90-69 on Tuesday night, giving the Mercury the second-longest winning streak in league history. Phoenix (22-3) passed the Houston Comets' 15-game run in 1998 and moved two games shy of the WNBA mark of 18 straight by Los Angeles in 2001.
The Mercury also won their 11th straight at home, tying a franchise mark set in 1999.
Los Angeles played for the second consecutive game without leading scorer Candace Parker, who remained in California nursing a left knee strain. Despite her absence, the Sparks led by five in the first half and trailed by just three at the break.
"When their best player, you know that she's out, it's just a natural thing to take your foot off the pedal," Mercury coach Sandy Brondello said. "I've seen it happen so much as a player, and obviously coaching experiences all around the world. So we didn't have the right energy coming out."
Candice Dupree had 16 points and nine rebounds while Brittney Griner added 14 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots for the Mercury. Taurasi and Griner both sat out the fourth quarter.
"We kept ourselves down for 20 minutes but we got going again, that's the main thing, as long as we can change it within the game," Brondello said.
Nneka Ogwumike had 18 points and nine rebounds for the Sparks (12-15), who are now 2-3 since general manager Penny Toler took over as coach during the All-Star break. Los Angeles has lost four of six overall.
Kristi Tolliver added 14 points and seven assists for the Sparks, who kept it close for more than a half.
"Whenever a team comes in without their best player, other players pick up the slack and do a little bit more," Taurasi said. "They showed what kind of team they are. They have a lot of heart and a lot of character, and they played really well for most of the game."
Phoenix used a third-quarter run to break open a three-point game at halftime. The Mercury scored 12 straight points, using its break and scoring twice off of steals, to take a 62-45 lead with 3:08 left in the period.
"The crowd got in it and we got a little rattled," Toler said. "When we got rattled, I think they might have outscored us 14-2, but like I told them, from that moment, as a team and as players you get better, come down, slow the ball down and let's execute. We didn't execute in that stretch."
Phoenix led 66-51 going into the fourth quarter and did not allow Los Angeles to get any closer than 11 points.
The Mercury, who lead the league in scoring and hold opponents to the fewest points, were 39.5 percent from the field while allowing Los Angeles to shoot 58 percent although Phoenix still led 42-39 at the break.
"It was a mess," Dupree said. "It was a mess on both ends of the floor. We lacked energy, missing shots, bad defense, wasn't pretty.
"It's just defense, being able to shut them down," she added. "They were killing us off the pick-and-roll. We kind of eliminated that in the second half. So when we are playing good defense, we are at our best, leads out to buckets in transition, moving the ball a lot better in the second half, just good-looking basketball."
Phoenix held Ogwumike to 2-of-9 shooting in the second half after she made 7-of-8 in the first half, scoring 14 points and grabbing five rebounds.
Reserve Shay Murphy added a second-half spark, scoring 10 points and getting three assists, mostly in the second half.
Los Angeles scored eight straight points in the first quarter to take a 24-20 lead. The Sparks held the league's best offensive team to 7-for-21 shooting. However, Taurasi and Murphy hit 3-pointers during a 10-0 run that gave Phoenix a 32-27 lead with 6:20 left in the first half.
Phoenix has beaten Los Angeles in its previous three meetings earlier this season. | Diana Taurasi scored 17 points to help the Mercury cruise to their 16th straight win, 90-69 over the Los Angeles Sparks. | 35.64 | 0.92 | 2.44 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/08/02/09/02/rolf-harris-spat-at-in-prison | http://web.archive.org/web/20140804212849id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2014/08/02/09/02/rolf-harris-spat-at-in-prison | Disgraced Australian entertainer Rolf Harris 'spat at' in prison: report | 20140804212849 | July 02, 2014: Footage has emerged of disgraced British entertainer Jimmy Savile joking with convicted Australian abuser Rolf Harris during an interview in the 1970s.
Rolf Harris has reportedly been spat at in prison as he prepares to apply for permission to appeal against his convictions for a string of indecent assaults.
The 84-year-old Australian was reportedly targeted during an incident at Bullingdon's mens prison in Oxfordshire.
"Someone did aim a spit at him but he was not spat on and was not physically hurt," a source said.
News of the incident came as it was announced Harris has applied for permission to appeal against his convictions for a string of indecent assaults.
A spokesman for the Judicial Office confirmed lawyers had lodged papers at the Court of Appeal this week.
Harris was convicted of 12 indecent assaults on June 30 at Southwark Crown Court - one on an eight-year-old autograph hunter, two on girls in their early teens and a catalogue of abuse of his daughter's friend over 16 years.
July 7, 2014: A Victorian hardware store owner has put the paint roller to the 'evil' he says is now represented by a mural completed by convicted child sex offender Rolf Harris in 1990.
The court will now consider whether to grant permission for him to continue with his appeal bid.
Harris, a family favourite for decades, was finally unmasked as a predator who was fixated with under-age girls during his trial, with jurors told how his 16-year campaign of sex abuse against his daughter's friend "haunted" her and made her abandon her dreams as he continued to be adored by millions of fans worldwide.
His fall from grace was underlined as he was stripped of a Bafta fellowship and accolades in Australia were removed, and he faces losing his prestigious CBE.
The performer's multi-million pound fortune is also at risk from potential compensation claims.
Harris was jailed for five years and nine months for the sex abuse, so he is due to serve just under three years for the crimes, which occurred between 1968 and 1986.
Earlier this week, the Attorney General's Office confirmed the sentence would not be referred to the Court of Appeal for being unduly lenient.
July 08, 2014: A 1980 comedy sketch featuring British comedian Rowan Atkinson shows kids being snatched and loaded into a van bound for a Rolf Harris children's TV show.
Do you have any news photos or videos? | Rolf Harris has been spat at in prison and has applied for permission to appeal against his convictions for a string of indecent assaults. | 19.04 | 1 | 11.64 | medium | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/08/06/schiresons-resignation-post-is-a-giant-leap-forward-for-women-execs/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140806193834id_/http://fortune.com/2014/08/06/schiresons-resignation-post-is-a-giant-leap-forward-for-women-execs/ | Schireson’s resignation post is a giant leap forward for women execs | 20140806193834 | When Matt Lauer sat down with General Motors’ GM CEO Mary Barra in late June, he asked the automaker’s first female leader:
You said in an interview not long ago that your kids said they’re going to hold you accountable for one job, and that is being a mom. Given the pressure at General Motors, can you do both well?
Barra graciously answered the question, telling Lauer that she has a great team, a wonderful family and a supportive husband. Notably, she didn’t turn that question back on Lauer to ask how he handles his demanding work schedule at NBC and still manages to be a good father.
Male executives almost never hear that question. MongoDB’s now-former CEO Max Schireson can attest to that.
The head of the database company decided to step down Tuesday after asking himself how he can balance the dual demands of fatherhood and running a company.
“As a male CEO, I have been asked what kind of car I drive and what type of music I like, but never how I balance the demands of being both a dad and a CEO,” wrote Schireson in a blog post explaining why he decided to step down as the chief executive for MongoDB.
Women are still the focus of the “having it all” debate and questions of whether or not they can be wildly successful at both a high-powered job and day-to-day parenting. Now their male counterparts are asking the same question of themselves.
Schireson, who helped grow the database company into a billion-dollar business, is on pace to fly 300,000 miles this year between the normal CEO travel duties and commuting from his home in Palo Alto, Calif. to the company’s New York City office.
All that time on the road adds up to many hours and days away from his family, including three kids.
“During that travel, I have missed a lot of family fun, perhaps, more importantly, I was not with my kids when our puppy was hit by a car, or when my son had (minor and successful, and of course unexpected) emergency surgery.”
He credits his wife for helping to pick up the slack when he was away. Not an easy task considering her high-pressure role as a doctor and Stanford professor.
“Friends and colleagues often ask my wife how she balances her job and motherhood,” Schireson wrote. “Somehow, the same people don’t ask me.”
Questions like these have gnawed at women, who openly debate the value of work and family. Sheryl Sandberg has encouraged women to “lean in.” Cover articles in national magazines have delved into the minutiae of making the right choice as a mom and a professional, not to mention the countless blog posts in response to both.
While it’s enviable that Schireson can step down as CEO to simply work “normal full time” as vice chairman, the fact that a male CEO is asking the same questions that a female CEO might ask is an important step towards leveling the playing field for top executives, regardless of their gender.
It’s time for the “having it all” debate to move beyond gender. The math is the same, as Schireson concludes, whether you’re male or female:
Will that cost me tens of millions of dollars someday? Maybe. Life is about choices. Right now, I choose to spend more time with my family and am confident that I can continue to have an meaningful and rewarding work life while doing so. | MongoDB's Max Schireson knew he couldn't have it all, and so he resigned from his CEO position. | 32.857143 | 0.714286 | 1.095238 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/08/06/teslas-gender-gap-among-senior-leaders-narrows-but-just-a-little/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140807003614id_/http://fortune.com/2014/08/06/teslas-gender-gap-among-senior-leaders-narrows-but-just-a-little/ | Tesla’s gender gap among senior leaders narrows - but just a little | 20140807003614 | The gender gap within Tesla Motors’ leadership ranks is more like a canyon. All top executives and board members are men.
But that’s about to change after Tesla on Wednesday appointed Robyn Denholm, chief financial officer at Juniper Networks, to its board. She will be the only woman in a senior role at the electric car maker, which is known for innovation – just not when it comes to solving Silicon Valley’s gender imbalance.
The technology industry has been widely criticized for its lack of women long with a shortage of blacks and Hispanics. Over the past few weeks, major tech companies made that abundantly clear by publishing a series of workplace diversity reports that show the skewed demographics within their companies.
Only 30% of workers at Google, Twitter and Facebook are women, for example. Among executives, women fill just over 20% of the positions.
Tesla has not said whether it would also publish a diversity report.
Denholm, who officially joins Tesla’s board on Monday, will serve alongside seven men. She will be the second female board member in the company’s six-year history. The other one, Laurie Yoler, served from 2008 to 2013. Meanwhile, all of Tesla’s 10 top executives are men.
For those counting, that’s means there will be 17 men in leadership positions at Tesla, and just one woman. Clearly, the company has a long way to go to reach anything close to gender balance.
In a statement, Tesla TSLA ignored questions about the shortage of women in the company’s top ranks and instead praised itself for a job well-done.
“We have built a company that draws on diverse, exceptional talent from all over the world,” the company said. “Diversity is one of the many factors we consider when hiring and recruiting, and we are fortunate to benefit from a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas from our employees. This diversity will remain a key feature of work life at Tesla going forward.”
A spokeswoman said Denholm was unavailable for an interview.
Typically, technology companies point to a deficit of women who pursue technical studies in college in explaining their gender imbalance. It’s true, to a point. Only 18% of computer science undergraduates are women, according to the Anita Borg Institute, an organization that encourages women to take up careers in technology.
But many top jobs within tech companies don’t require a background in programming. And board members are almost never asked to fill in for data scientists.
In fact, a handful of tech companies like Hewlett-Packard HPQ , Yahoo YHOO and Netgear NTGR manage to find more than a woman or two for their leadership ranks. So have auto makers like General Motors. If they can do it, why can’t the rest? | Electric car maker adds a little diversity to its otherwise all-male leadership team by appointing a woman to its board. | 23.73913 | 0.73913 | 1.695652 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/jane-fonda-ryan-gosling-chair | http://web.archive.org/web/20140810014851id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/jane-fonda-ryan-gosling-chair | Jane Fonda Snaps Up Furniture with Actor's Face : People.com | 20140810014851 | Jane Fonda with her Ryan Gosling chair
Hey, girl – wanna take a seat with me?
fangirl phenomenon could be multi-generational.
looks to have joined the actor's swooning throngs of admirers, many deeply invested in the soon-to-be
Fonda, 76, was snapped carrying the sold-out Gosling chair, which features the screen heartthrob's sultry image on the seat cover, into a house in Malibu. The actress was on the set of her upcoming Netflix comedy series
, in which she stars alongside
– a reunion, of sorts, from their
days. (The actresses play rivals whose husbands fall in love with one another.)
Sadly, the Gosling chair is
, where it sold for $299. It's actually part of a "face chairs" collection, which includes other celebs like
Perhaps the Gosling chair will help Fonda's character Grace get over her heartbreak? | The actress is seen toting a chair with the actor's face on the seat | 12.066667 | 0.866667 | 1.8 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2010/07/30/steve-ballmer-on-the-ipad-the-transcript/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140817100930id_/http://fortune.com/2010/07/30/steve-ballmer-on-the-ipad-the-transcript/ | Steve Ballmer on the iPad: The transcript | 20140817100930 | No, those aren’t the notes of a reporter who couldn’t keep up. That “blah, blah, blah, blah” — taken from the official transcript of Microsoft’s MSFT annual financial analysts meeting Thursday — is how Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer introduced what he said was one of the top issues on his mind: the competitive threat of Apple’s AAPL iPad.
But to get the full flavor of the train wreck that is Steve Ballmer in 2010 — a salesman whose only answer to technological change seems to be the operating system he inherited from Bill Gates — you might want to hear the quotes in context. The webcast of his performance is available here. We’ve taken the 12 iPad-related paragraphs from the transcript and pasted them below:
STEVE BALLMER: Now, we’ve got some other competitive actions coming back, and we’ll talk about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah….
Today, kind of I’d say one of the top issues on my mind, let alone on your minds, one of the top issues on my mind, is, hey, there is a category that we’ve had Windows on for actually a long time. We’ve had Windows 7 on, tablets and slate machines now for a number of years, and Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a synthesis and putting a product out, and in which they’ve — they sold certainly more than I’d like them to sell, let me just be clear about that. We think about that. We think about that in competitive sense. And for us, then, the job is to say, Okay, we have a lot of IP, we have a lot of good software in this area, we’ve done a lot of work on ink and touch and everything else — we have got to make things happen. Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we’ve got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates. And we are in the process of doing that as we speak. We’re working with our hardware partners, we’re tuning Windows 7 to new slate hardware designs that they’re bringing them to market. And, yeah, you’re going to get a lot of cacophony. There will be people who do things with other operating systems. But we’ve got the application base, we’ve got the user familiarity. We’ve got everything on our side if we do things really right.
We’ll get a boost sometime after the new year when Intel brings its new Oak Trail processor to market. Oak Trail is designed to be lower power. Lower power is good in a lot of ways. It leads to longer battery life, no fan, lower kind of noise levels, a lot of less weight — a lot of things that people like. And as focused as we are on this category, our partners are also focused in on delivering the systems and the chips that will enable kind of our architecture to continue and our software product to continue to move on.
So, we think about these devices and I don’t think there really is one size that fits all. I don’t think everybody wants a slate. I’ve been to too many meetings with journalists who’d spend the first 10 minutes of the meeting setting up their iPad to look like a laptop.
Laptops actually are well designed for a lot of things. I notice they are all light. In fact, if you look around this room, they all weigh zero pounds, because they’re just sitting on the table, you are not holding them and you don’t set them up when you want to type, and they prop up — they have good attributes. But some people are going to want that form factor. Some people are going to want probably a screen that they take with them and maybe they throw it back into the keyboard. Some people are going to want a device that is screen and keyboard that spins around for inking purposes. Some people are going to want things very light or very cheap or very expensive or very powerful. All of those things are going to be important, and we’ve got a push right now — right now — with our hardware partners.
Some of you will say, well, when? When? And I say, As soon as they’re ready. They’ll be shipping as soon as they are ready. And it is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch. And so we are working with those partners, not just to deliver something, but to deliver products that people really want to go buy…
SARAH FRIAR: Sarah Friar from Goldman Sachs. I really appreciate the format and I like the questions on the board, and I think you have gone a long way to answering a lot of them. But I know you have been bombarded all day with questions about tablets and the iPad, and I still don’t feel we’re hearing a clear articulation of what is Microsoft’s strategy to address that impact. So, is it a third way, a new operating system, that will go to that? Are you going to support our architectures different? You did the architectural license a few weeks back. I mean, it feels like right now you’re not completely clear, which is why we’re not hearing that message. Or I just want to give you another chance to maybe give a succinct, “Here’s our response.”
STEVE BALLMER: No, that’s actually helpful. I would have said I thought we were completely clear. We’re coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows. No — there’s — let me be unambiguous. A new Windows Phone for screen sizes that, let me just say, are, you know, sort of bigger than three or four inches — the answer is Windows Phone. We are in the game. We’re all in the game today with Intel architecture machines. We’ve got improvements coming from Intel. We’re driving forward. We’re unambiguous about that. Now, where we’ll go and what’s going to matter — I said also in my remarks that in no way will we allow hardware to be the impediment. We will embrace what we need to embrace over time in terms of hardware evolution.
But you say to me are we going to see slate? Yes. What processor are they going to have? They are going to have an Intel architecture processor at least in any foreseeable future. Are they going to run Windows? Yeah. Will it be tuned? Yes! And we are going to sell like crazy. We are going to market like crazy. We have devices that will run more applications, that have as much content, that have anything you want on the planet. And we have an ecosystem of developers that know how to write applications for that thing. Believe me, as I think everybody knows, you can buy two PCs for the price of one iPad — two netbooks today for the price of one iPad. So, people are sitting there over-celebrating bomb costs and blah, blah, blah. We and Intel can get our job done and know how to make money. There’s good money for everybody in the ecosystem to go make. I talked about power. We’ve got work we have to do with hardware partners, with Intel. There’s certainly some work to be done there. And over time where we go is where we go. But at least in the timeframe that which anybody does these models, for example, let’s go. Let’s go and we’ll be in market as soon as we can with new devices, whether that’s, you know, really, really soon or just really pretty soon. I’m going to wait until I have the device that I want to hand you and tell you to go use, or a collection of devices. I think that would be the appropriate time to say it is time. But it ain’t a long time from now. Pardon my English…
On the netbook, nor the slate, if it’s two weeks one way or the other, or it’s a month, I mean, let’s not speculate, let’s merely say when you get your Windows 7 machine, it will print. Let’s just start with that. I mean some people actually like to print every now and then. Ours will print. I’m not trying to say that other guys aren’t doing good work. I’m not saying that. We’ve got to ‑‑ come on, every day. Every day you come to work you have to prove yourself, prove yourself, prove yourself. We’ll prove ourselves. …
I relish the competition. I relish holding up those couple of machines today that I wanted to hand you. It’s not today. I’ll relish doing it tomorrow. Bring on ‑‑ particularly if with the application base, with the tools that we have, with the user understanding and momentum and everything going on, we can’t compete with ‑‑ particularly whatever the weird collection of Android machines is going to look like, shame on us.
Apple is Apple. They’re always a little tougher to compete with. They’re a really good competitor, and tend to be a really high-priced competitor. People worried a little bit about our bottom costs. They’ve got a lot of margin in those devices, which creates a lot of room in which to operate. Okay. We’ve competed with Apple before. I talked about that.
We’ve been competing with Macs, and I notice in this audience you get one profile for the 93 percent of people almost who agree with us every day about laptops. We’re going to have things that should be interesting to them. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to be exciting. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to pay attention to shareholders. It certainly means we’ve got to pay attention. But, at the end of the day kind of what makes life kind of interesting, kind of fun, and you’re going to see very interesting things. | "We'll talk about about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah." No, those aren't the notes of a reporter who couldn't keep up. That "blah, blah, blah, blah" -- taken from the official transcript of Microsoft's annual financial analysts meeting Thursday -- is how Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer introduced what he said was one… | 27.191781 | 0.863014 | 6.835616 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Cabanatuan-BART-VTA-to-the-stadium-dead-last-at-5694399.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20140818072159id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Cabanatuan-BART-VTA-to-the-stadium-dead-last-at-5694399.php | Cabanatuan, BART/VTA to the stadium: dead last at 2:16 | 20140818072159 | 9:30 a.m.: After fueling up on eggs and toast, I drive from my Albany home to the El Cerrito Plaza BART Station in seven minutes. Parking lot, always full on weekdays, empty. No 49ers fans in sight.
9:42 a.m. [START TIME]: Fremont train arrives on schedule, small crowd boards. Settle in for the 56-minute ride.
10:05 a.m.: After MacArthur Station, take a stroll through train. Find my first 49ers fans. Bob Anderson and Shirley Croft, both 73, drove to Orinda, took BART and planned to hop a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority express bus to the stadium.
10:20 a.m.: BART rolls past O.co Coliseum, home of that other Bay Area NFL team that has a truly transit-friendly, if outdated, stadium.
10:40 a.m.: Train reaches end-of-the-line Fremont Station a couple of minutes late and crowd of 50 to 60 49ers fans heads down through the gates to get on three red, brand-spanking-new VTA Express buses. Buses board slowly - some fans don't have exact change or aren't used to using Clipper cards.
10:59 p.m.: Fully loaded, bus takes off through Fremont to Interstate 880. Has cushioned seats, reading lights, luggage racks. "This definitely isn't Muni," said a fan. "This is one nice bus." Traffic on I-880 nearly nonexistent. Bus speeds along, sure to get us there well before kickoff.
11:28 a.m.: On Highway 237 traffic becomes stop-and-go about a mile from Great America Parkway exit, the main off-ramps to the stadium. As the ramp approaches, traffic crawls. The driver has to slam on the brakes several times as drivers unfamiliar with the area cut in front.
11:40 a.m.: Finally, bus exits freeway and makes its way slowly down parkway. Traffic picks up as drivers begin pulling into parking lots. And just in time. Some passengers beginning to grumble and wondering if they can get out and walk.
11:48 a.m. [END TIME]: At last, express bus, which is supposed to take about a half hour, arrives at Tasman and Great America Parkway, a short walk to the stadium.
11:58 a.m.: I reach the metal detectors outside Intel Gate A. Journey is over. Learn later I was DSL: dead stinking last at two hours, 16 minutes.
Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan | 9:42 a.m. [START TIME]: Fremont train arrives on schedule, small crowd boards. Bob Anderson and Shirley Croft, both 73, drove to Orinda, took BART and planned to hop a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority express bus to the stadium. 10:20 a.m.: BART rolls past O.co Coliseum, home of that other Bay Area NFL team that has a truly transit-friendly, if outdated, stadium. Train reaches end-of-the-line Fremont Station a couple of minutes late and crowd of 50 to 60 49ers fans heads down through the gates to get on three red, brand-spanking-new VTA Express buses. Has cushioned seats, reading lights, luggage racks. [...] bus exits freeway and makes its way slowly down parkway. | 3.198675 | 0.960265 | 28.536424 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Linebacker-Chris-Borland-makes-strong-bid-for-5720466.php | http://web.archive.org/web/20140829131937id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Linebacker-Chris-Borland-makes-strong-bid-for-5720466.php | Linebacker Chris Borland makes strong bid for starting job | 20140829131937 | Houston -- Two days before Thursday's preseason finale, 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio left the door open a crack for rookie inside linebacker Chris Borland to win a starting job.
And Borland followed by attempting to kick down the door.
The third-round pick capped the exhibition season with the best performance of his fledgling NFL career in a 40-13 win over the Texans. Borland had a 34-yard interception return for a touchdown in the third quarter - his first score since his senior year in high school - and contributed a team-high six tackles in a 40-13 win over the Texans.
Still, he figures Michael Wilhoite, who has taken the first-team snaps this summer and has two games of starting experience, will open the season as the fill-in for NaVorro Bowman. Wilhoite was tied for first in the NFL in preseason tackles entering the game, but was one of 10 defensive starters who didn't play.
"Mike's had a tremendous camp," Borland said. "I think he's got a great shot. "Whatever happens, I'm just going to continue to work."
Change of plans: Head coach Jim Harbaugh had said Colin Kaepernick would start, but the quarterback was one of 19 starters who didn't play. Harbaugh changed his mind partly because of the short turnaround after a 21-7 win over San Diego on Sunday.
Game balls: Tight end Kyle Nelson, who had touchdown catches of 5 and 2 yards, and wide receiver Kassim Osgood received game balls.
Osgood, 34, is attempting to make the final roster as a core special-teams player. A three-time Pro Bowler as a special teamer, Osgood might have helped his chances by blocking a punt in the fourth quarter that rolled out of the back of the end zone for a safety.
Briefly: TE Derek Carrier exited the game with a hamstring injury after he missed the third preseason game because of his hamstring. ... Harbaugh said WR Brandon Lloyd told him he wasn't healthy enough to play. Lloyd missed the final two preseason games with an undisclosed injury.
Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. | Two days before Thursday's preseason finale, 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio left the door open a crack for rookie inside linebacker Chris Borland to win a starting job. The third-round pick capped the exhibition season with the best performance of his fledgling NFL career in a 40-13 win over the Texans. Borland had a 34-yard interception return for a touchdown in the third quarter - his first score since his senior year in high school - and contributed a team-high six tackles in a 40-13 win over the Texans. A three-time Pro Bowler as a special teamer, Osgood might have helped his chances by blocking a punt in the fourth quarter that rolled out of the back of the end zone for a safety. | 2.930556 | 0.979167 | 35.520833 | low | high | extractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/feb/07/art1/print | http://web.archive.org/web/20140831171452id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/feb/07/art1/print | How surrealism inspired horror films | 20140831171452 | Artists never betray their insignificance so fatally as when they take on the inexhaustible resources of Hollywood. Perhaps Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, with its stupendous sense of spectacle, will gradually influence narrative cinema. Until it does, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's 1929 masterpiece, Un Chien Andalou, and its 1930 successor, L'Age d'Or, will remain the only art films to change the way most of us see and think about cinema.
They are the only avant-garde productions by artists, in more than a century of cinema, that have seriously impinged on the mainstream. The story of avant-garde cinema, from the experiments of Fernand Léger and Man Ray in the 1920s to the American underground and contemporary video, is, as far as the consequences for the films we pay to see in cinemas goes, a disaster.
By contrast, Un Chien Andalou has gripped film-makers and the public alike from its first showing in Paris in June 1929. It was popular enough to get an eight-month run in a Paris art-cinema when it opened and has been revived many times since. When it was re-released in Paris in 1960, Buñuel, who at the premiere had stood behind the screen alternating tango records with Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, supervising the addition of music to the silent print. He had stones in his pockets ready to throw if there was a riot (instead there was applause). Another revival a few years ago paired it with Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. The Russian revolutionary classic was shown first and Un Chien Andalou felt like a hilarious reward.
Fifteen years after Dalí first collaborated with Buñuel on this little film - it is only 17 minutes long and was made in six days - he was working in Hollywood with Alfred Hitchcock, who wanted a surrealist sequence in Spellbound, the thriller starring Gregory Peck as a mental patient and Ingrid Bergman as his doctor.
In the dream architecture Dalí created for Hitchcock (his original paintings, such as 1944's The Eye, demonstrate how much passion he put into the project), there is a nightclub with baroque draperies consisting of a canopy of giant eyes. We see a pair of outsized scissors cutting through the painted eyes - a direct quotation of the most notorious image in Un Chien Andalou.
Did Hitchcock ask specifically for this quote? He was a lifelong fan of Buñuel - including later films such as Tristana - as well as Dalí. In any case, the presence of this quotation in Spellbound is astounding. There could scarcely be better proof that, by 1945, surrealism had entered the lifeblood of cinema.
This is what is significant about the youthful films of Dalí and Buñuel (Dalí was 25, Buñuel 29 when they made Un Chien Andalou; they had been close friends since college days in Madrid): they add something to narrative cinema's vocabulary even though they are not themselves narrative films.
Buñuel famously said that he and Dalí wrote the film by telling one another their dreams. And yet, the something they brought to narrative cinema was less the cliched idea of dream imagery than an eroticism of the physical world, of the relationships between objects and people as opposed to between people and people.
In narrative cinema, conventionally, the audience's desires and terrors are projected into empathy or hatred for the characters in the film. Surrealist cinema instead displays a sequence of objects - from eyeballs to donkeys - whose vicissitudes create horror and comedy. This macabre anti-cinema has poisoned film ever since, not just in art movies, but in thrillers, horror films, comedy. Instead of props, actors in surrealist cinema relate obsessively to fetishes.
Previous art films had also played with objects - most famously in Léger's Ballet Mécanique - but it was abstract, unemotional. The opening sequence of Un Chien Andalou is scarcely that. It begins with a man sharpening his cut-throat razor. He looks at the night sky, where a long thin cloud approaches the white disc of the moon. A woman sits still while a man's hand holds a razor to her face. The thin cloud cuts across the moon. The razor slices through the woman's eyeball. No one can avoid flinching - it's such a basic attack on you, the viewer, watching in the dark with your eyes supposedly free to look, to see an eye destroyed, the jelly pouring out of it as its membrane is pierced.
There are characters in the film - a man and a woman - but we do not, at this point, know what their relationship is. Nor do we ever really know. What we see is a drama of physical things: the moon and a cloud, a razor and an eye. It's not symbolic, but instantly visceral and upsetting for reasons that have nothing to do with moving a story forward.
There is never any explanation for, or development from, this image. Instead, other equally perturbing encounters take place between people and objects. A woman in contemporary 1920s dress, stands in the street, prodding a severed hand with a stick. The screenplay describes the film's most elaborate image: "Long shot down room over keyboards and lids of two grand pianos, side by side, the lid of each propped open by a dead donkey with its head on the keyboard, seemingly attached to the ropes leading on to the male in the right background ..."
Finally, a pair of lovers joyously walk on the beach. A caption reads, "In the spring ...", and we see the couple buried to their waists in sand, rotting.
To tell a story on screen, you create a physical world that serves your purpose. But in Un Chien Andalou, the physical world is thicker, more resistant, more alive (and more dead). Instead of smoothly setting off the characters' desires and fears, it becomes an opaque field of desire and terror in itself. The events that can happen in such a world are full of passion, comedy, horror; it's just that they never get resolved and tidied up by narrative explanations. There are people in the film, but it is not "about" them - it is about us, our reactions, our disgust and perversity.
It's the cloacal, bloody texture of this film that makes it utterly different from the ethereal unreality of Hollywood. And that also makes it different from the playful lightheartedness of earlier abstract films. A Spanish sense of the tragic and the extreme animates it. Perhaps there is as much tragedy as humour.
Buñuel and Dalí were intensely interested in audience reaction. How much is demonstrated by a letter Dalí wrote when they were planning L'Age d'Or. He had an idea that he said would create even more "horror" than the eye sequence in Un Chien Andalou - and he talks about horror as in a horror film, a trashy, popular effect.
Buñuel took far more of a directorial role in L'Age d'Or and had the final say about what went in it; but his later claims that Dalí contributed little were self-aggrandising falsehoods. It was still a collaboration, and the best bits are the most Dalínian, as when the heroine sucks a statue's toe. Other sequences anticipate Buñuel's later films, especially when a hunter shoots a little boy, and there's a Pythonesque quality to it all. But in the end, it doesn't have the sustained imaginative intensity of Un Chien Andalou.
What both films do share is a conviction that people can enjoy seeing something more macabre and funny than the bland fodder of mainstream entertainment. David Lynch is contemporary cinema's most devout student of Un Chien Andalou - the severed ear that Kyle MacLachlan finds on a lawn at the beginning of Blue Velvet is a direct allusion to that eye.
Without surrealist cinema, we wouldn't have the concept of weirdness as an aesthetic; that inexplicable vein of cinema in which the physical world is violent, erotic and so shocking that you don't need a coherent story. Lynch is Dalí's heir. But you also see this thickening of texture, this ripeness of things, in the trashiest horror, with its putrefying zombies and baths full of flesh soup.
· Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or are re-released on Friday. | The surrealists paved the way for the horror film - as demonstrated by the rotting corpses in Un Chien Andalou | 80 | 0.85 | 1.95 | high | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2014/05/14/sony-expects-more-losses-vows-deeper-restructuring/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140902093534id_/http://fortune.com/2014/05/14/sony-expects-more-losses-vows-deeper-restructuring/ | Sony expects more losses, vows deeper restructuring | 20140902093534 | FORTUNE — The coming year will likely be another difficult one for Sony Corp SNE .
According to an earnings release, the Japanese electronics company is expecting it will lose ¥50 billion ($489 million), defying analysts initial projections that the company would turn a profit of ¥59 billion.
The Japanese technology giant also said it will step up its restructuring plan this year and will leave some unprofitable segments.
Sony announced it had lost $1.25 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014. Next year’s losses will mean the firm has posted losses in five out of six years. For the fiscal year ending in 2013 Sony posted earnings of ¥41.5 ($406 million).
MORE: Car buyers are still waiting for the no-haggle revolution
The company’s stock price was down nearly 5% before the market opened.
The downturn in Sony’s fortunes can be attributed partially to the downturn in sales of its consumer products, such as televisions. Strong sales of smartphones and the Playstation 4 gaming console helped, buts were not nearly enough to make up for other losses.
The devaluation of the yen has also helped Sony’s results over the past two years, the Journal noted. Other Japanese multinational corporations have also benefited from the weaker yen, but with the currency now stabilizing, that strength will no longer be available. | Slower consumer sales create problems for the Japanese electronics behemoth. | 24 | 0.636364 | 1 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/09/03/samsung-announces-new-products-ahead-of-rival-apple-event/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140903165922id_/http://fortune.com/2014/09/03/samsung-announces-new-products-ahead-of-rival-apple-event/ | Samsung announces new products ahead of rival Apple event | 20140903165922 | Samsung announced Wednesday three new products, including the Galaxy Note Edge, a phone with a side display to give users easy access to Twitter, news, heavily used apps and more. The company also unveiled an updated, but less premium version of their Note series of phones, the Galaxy Note 4, and a virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR.
The new products were announced a week ahead of a September 9 Apple event expected to feature the much-anticipated new iPhone.
As the world’s largest smartphone maker, South Korea’s Samsung appears to be seeking innovative ways to expand its lead in the competitive mobile business. The unveiling on Wednesday comes a week after Samsung announced it Gear S, a wristwatch, that will allow users to make calls without a smartphone.
There were no specific prices or release dates given for the new products, although The Wall Street Journal cited a company spokeswoman as saying that the new Note 4 phone would be available in October. The headset and the Edge are expected after that.
The new Note 4, meanwhile, will feature improvements including better screen resolution, pixel density and an optical image stabilizer for the phone’s camera — apparently a first for a smartphone, according to the company. The Edge, meanwhile, will feature a signature curved 5.6-inch screen on the side and is expected to sell for a higher price.
The Note devices will also be made with a metallic frame, like the recently announced Galaxy Alpha. In the past, the phones have been criticized for being made from plastic, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The virtual reality headset features a head strap for customers to mount the Galaxy Note in front of their eyes for movie-watching and gaming. | As Samsung seeks to differentiate itself from competition, it unveiled three new products Wednesday, including a phone with a curved screen. | 13.958333 | 0.833333 | 1.666667 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2011/08/29/venture-capital-deals-16/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140904161601id_/http://fortune.com/2011/08/29/venture-capital-deals-16/ | Venture Capital Deals | 20140904161601 | ViewRay, a Cleveland-based developer of MRI-based oncology radiation therapy technology, has raised $10.3 million in new VC funding. Backers include Kearny Venture Partners, OrbiMed Advisors, Fidelity Biosciences, Siemens and Aisling Capital. www.viewray.com
Baseclick GmbH, a BASF spinoff whose technology lets users label multiple dye molecules on DNA strands in a sequence-specific manner, has raised €1.2 million in second-round funding from BASF Venture Capital and individual angels. www.basecklick.eu
Restaurant Revolution Technologies, a developer of restaurant order management technology, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from BR Venture Fund, an MBA-run VC group at Cornell University. www.rrtusa.com
NeuroPace, a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of implantable devices for treating epilepsy, has secured $49 million of a VC funding round that could reach $60 million, according to a regulatory filing. VentureWire reports that return backers include New Enterprise Associates, InterWest Partners, Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, MedVenture Associates and Technology Venture Partners. Domain Associates has not yet re-upped. www.neuropace.com
Ardelyx Inc., a Fremont, Calif.-based developer of non-absorbed small molecules, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Amgen Ventures was joined by return backers like New Enterprise Associates and CMEA Ventures. www.ardelyx.com
Ebuzzing (f.k.a. Wikio), a Luxembourg-based provider of online video distribution solutions via social media, has raised $25 million in second-round funding. GIMV led the round, and was joined by return backers Lightspeed Venture Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. www.ebuzzing.com
Shocking Technologies Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based maker of nano-composites for protecting electronic products from electrostatic discharge, has raised $15.2 million in new VC funding. Backers include Littelfuse Inc. (Nasdaq: LFUS), Arch Venture Partners, ATA Ventures, Balch Hill Capital, Skylake Incuvest and Vista Ventures. www.shockingtechnologies.com
Mocana Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of mobile and smart device security solutions, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Intel Capital. www.mocana.com
RootMusic, a San Francisco-based provider of the BandPage platform for musicians on Facebook, has raised $16 million in Series B funding. GGV Capital led the round, and was joined by Northgate Capital and return backer Mohr Davidow Ventures. www.rootmusic.com
Danotek, a Canton, Mich.-based developer of permanent magnet generators that deliver wind energy to the power grid, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. Backers include Khosla Ventures, CMEA Capital, GE Energy Financial Services and Statoil Technology Invest. www.danotekmotion.com
SMS GupShup, an Indian social network and group messaging provider, has raised $10 million in Series E funding. Tenaya Capital led the round, and was joined by return backers Globespan Capital Partners, Helion Ventures and Charles River Ventures. The company previously raised $37 million. VentureWire reports the new round was done at a valuation of nearly $200 million.www.smsgupshup.com
Innovid, a New York-based provider of interactive video advertising solutions, has raised $9.5 million in new VC funding. Sequoia Capital led the round, and was joined by return backers Genesis Partners and T-Venture. www.innovid.com
Woozworld, a Montreal-based massive multiplayer user-generated social game for tweens, has raised C$6 million in new VC funding co-led by Telesystem and iNovia Capital. www.woozworld.com
DoubleVerify, a New York-based provider of online media verification and compliance solutions, has raised $33 million. JMI Equity and Institutional Venture Partners co-led the round, and were joined by return backers Blumberg Capital and First Round Capital. www.doubleverify.com
Project Frog, a San Francisco-based developer of sustainable modular buildings and building materials for educational and other institutions, has raised around $22.4 million in new VC funding, according to a regulatory filing. Backers include Claremont Creek Ventures and Rockport Capital Partners.www.projectfrog.com
MapR Technologies Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based provider distribution solutions for Apache Hadoop, has raised $20 million in Series B funding. Redpoint Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Lightspeed Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates. www.mapr.com
Affinium Pharmaceuticals, an antibiotics developer with offices in Texas and Canada, has raised US$15 million in Series B funding. The Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund was joined by return backers SV Life Sciences, Genesis Capital Partners and Forward Ventures. www.afnm.com
Metabolon Inc., a Durham, N.Y.-based developer of biochemical profiling technology, has raised $13.1 million in Series D funding. Keating Capital led the round, and was joined by return backers Sevin Rosen Funds, Aurora Funds, Harris & Harris Group, Syngenta Ventures, Fletcher Spaght and Fulcrum Financial Partners. www.metabolon.com
Scientific Conservation Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of predictive diagnostics and analytics for energy efficiency, has completed its previously-announced acquisition of energy management and demand response company Servidyne Inc. (Nasdaq: SERV). The deal was valued at around $13 million in cash, or $3.50 per share. Scientific Conservation also announced that it has raised $9.6 million in new VC funding from existing shareholders DFJ, Intel Capital, GE, Triangle Peak Partners and Westly Group. It previously raised around $28 million. www.scientificconservation.com
Taboola.com Inc., a New York-based provider of online video recommendation solutions, has raised $9 million in Series B funding. Crescent Point led the round, and was joined by return backer Evergreen VC.www.taboola.com
Lantos Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of an intra-aural 3D scanner, has raised $4.1 million in Series B funding. Excel Venture Management led the round, and was joined by fellow return backers Catalyst Health Ventures and Mass Medical Angels. www.lantostechnologies.com
E la Carte, a developer of customer-facing tablet computers for restaurants, has raised $4 million in VC funding from Lightbank. It previously raised over $1 million in seed funding led by SV Angel. www.elacarte.com
Kenandy, a Redwood City, Calif.-based provider of cloud-based software for managing manufacturing operations, has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the deal, and was joined by Salesforce.com and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. www.kenandy.com
Zeebo Inc., a San Diego-based developer of a wireless gaming consoles, has raised $17 million in new VC funding, according to a regulatory filing. The company previously raised funding from Qualcomm Ventures. www.zeebo.com
Quixey, a search engine for apps, has raised $3.8 million in Series A funding. U.S. Venture Partners and WI Harper Group co-led the round, and were joined by Webb Investment Network and existing seed backer Innovation Endeavors. www.quixey.com
Appirio, a San Mateo, Calif.-based provider of cloud solutions for the enterprise, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from existing backers GGV Capital and Salesforce.com. www.appirio.com
Go here for last week’s Venture Capital deals | ViewRay, a Cleveland-based developer of MRI-based oncology radiation therapy technology, has raised $10.3 million in new VC funding. Backers include Kearny Venture Partners, OrbiMed Advisors, Fidelity Biosciences, Siemens and Aisling Capital. www.viewray.com Baseclick GmbH, a BASF spinoff whose technology lets users label multiple dye molecules on DNA strands in a sequence-specific manner, has raised €1.2 million… | 17.68 | 0.973333 | 35.88 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/09/02/15/55/wa-man-in-indonesia-court-over-fatal-crash | http://web.archive.org/web/20140905055712id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2014/09/02/15/55/wa-man-in-indonesia-court-over-fatal-crash | WA man 'speeding' before Indonesia crash | 20140905055712 | Jake Drage arrives at Indonesian court.
A West Australian man was speeding when his motorbike collided with another in Indonesia, killing a local mother, a court has heard.
Jake Drage, 23, has appeared in court for the first time since the June 30 crash and says he has converted to Islam while in custody.
The former personal trainer is charged with "reckless" driving causing the death of a West Java woman who was riding pillion on a motorcycle with her teenage daughter.
A smiling Drage arrived at court on Tuesday, clean shaven and wearing black pants and a white shirt.
He told reporters he felt fine, and thanked them for paying attention to his case.
Asked to state his religion by the judge, Drage answered in Indonesian: "Learning Islam."
Prosecutor Eka Aryanta is pressing charges that could see the Australian spend up to six years in jail if he's found guilty.
He told the court Drage was heading for a surf when his speeding bike collided with the other motorcycle.
"Because of the high speed, the accident was unavoidable," the prosecutor said.
"The victim was thrown and hit the asphalt, and there was blood everywhere.
"Jake screamed, `Oh my God!' while the victim was helped by bystanders."
Drage's family has said he will plead not guilty.
His mother, Tiena Drage, who rushed to her son's side soon after the crash, was in court on Tuesday.
Drage's lawyer, Michael Hartono, told reporters his client had converted to Islam during his long detention in the police cell and attended weekly Koran recitals.
"His family, in this case his mother, hasn't made a big deal of Jake becoming a Muslim," he said.
"What matters most is that he's healthy, he's fine and he's on the right path.
"Regarding the case, Jake tells me that he just wants this to be over soon."
The trial continues next week with the prosecution calling its witnesses.
A spokesman for the Drage family, Chris Gabelish, says Jake is doing well despite the long ordeal.
The family is happy that the matter is now before the court, given the time it has taken to get to this stage," he said in a statement.
"We look forward to Jake having the opportunity to present his case.
"Jake sends his thanks to the many people who have sent him love and support."
Do you have any news photos or videos? | West Australian man Jake Drage is finally having his day in court after his arrest in June over a fatal motorbike crash in Indonesia. | 20.08 | 0.84 | 1.32 | medium | medium | abstractive |
http://www.9news.com.au/World/2014/08/30/15/42/Nicaragua-miners-rescued-after-collapse | http://web.archive.org/web/20140907210133id_/http://www.9news.com.au/World/2014/08/30/15/42/Nicaragua-miners-rescued-after-collapse | Nicaraguan miners rescued 24 hours after cave-in | 20140907210133 | Miners have been rescued 24 hours after a cave-in left them stranded. (Getty)
Emergency workers in Nicaragua have rescued 20 miners who had been trapped deep underground for more than 24 hours after a cave-in at an unlicensed gold mine, but five more workers are still missing.
"We give thanks to God our Lord and the Virgin Mary for having saved from death 20 artisanal miners," First Lady Rosario Murillo, the government's official spokeswoman, told reporters.
Using a pulley system rigged through a narrow tunnel, the emergency crews first rescued two miners named Roger Darse and Abel Herrera, according to a broadcast of the official TV channel 8 from the site of the collapse.
There had been 28 "guiriseros," or informal gold miners, working in the shaft when the mouth of the mine caved in because of a landslide triggered by heavy downpours, early Thursday morning.
Two workers buried near the surface had earlier managed to dig their way out after the collapse in the remote village of El Comal in northeastern Nicaragua, according to the local disaster prevention committee.
Several of the Nicaraguan miners are still missing. (Getty)
But some 20 more became trapped in the mine shaft 800m underground, said Ms Murillo, after being briefed by officials coordinating the desperate rescue effort.
Authorities had said they were trying to confirm whether any miners had died, noting that the incident happened in a hard-to-reach area with poor communication.
Police, soldiers and other miners were taking part in the operation, using rescue dogs to help locate the victims.
Rescuers began trying to rig up the pulley system Friday night, deputy interior minister Carlos Navas said.
Another official said the rescue process had been severely hampered by the "very shaky ground," and President Daniel Ortega warned rescuers to be careful to avert a second tragedy.
The miners were taken to hospital after the rescue. (Getty)
The accident happened at an artisanal mine near the town of Bonanza, which is perched on the side of a hill, in a region that is home to Nicaragua's biggest gold mines.
Desperate relatives initially tried to dig through to the trapped miners before being stymied by the unstable terrain, news reports said.
Word of the collapse only emerged late Thursday because the site is so remote, Lagos said.
Ortega "is following the rescue operation" and suspended an event Saturday to inaugurate a new bridge, his spokeswoman said.
Business has boomed over the past decade for Nicaragua's "guiriseros" as the price of gold has risen from less than $400 an ounce to more than $1200.
They descend into old shafts that have been abandoned by conventional mining companies and look for remaining gold or dig even deeper to find new veins.
But the work can be perilous.
The scene of the collapse "is very high-risk and only they know the site because as the superficial veins of gold run out, they have to dig deeper and deeper in underground tunnels," said Lagos.
Informal gold mining is the main source of employment in Bonanza, where officials estimate there are 6,000 "guiriseros."
Many of them have migrated there from other parts of the country in a modern-day gold rush.
Bonanza's population has jumped in the past decade from around 8,000 people to 40,000, said Lagos.
Locals can earn $1500 to $3000 a month selling gold to foreign mining companies -- a relative fortune in Nicaragua.
Some informal miners work independently, while others are organized into officially authorized cooperatives.
Bonanza forms one point of the Central American country's so-called "mining triangle" in the remote Autonomous North Atlantic Region.
The latest accident comes four years after 33 workers were trapped deep inside Chile's San Jose copper and gold mine for more than two months, a drama that captured worldwide attention.
It took rescuers 17 days to drill a small shaft to establish contact, and more than two months of painstaking effort to open a passage wide enough to pull them out one by one.
Do you have any news photos or videos? | Rescuers in Nicaragua have rescued 20 miners who had been trapped deep underground for more than 24 hours after a cave-in at an unlicensed gold mine, but five more workers are still missing. | 21.810811 | 1 | 35.054054 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/mar/05/saatchigallery.art | http://web.archive.org/web/20140910195756id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/mar/05/saatchigallery.art | Saatchi's £250,000 sculpture gift | 20140910195756 | Jordan Basemen's Based on Actual Events (top) and Paul Finnegan's Untitled: two of the works to go to the Arts Council collection
The millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi gave modern sculptures worth an estimated £250,000 to the British public yesterday, via the Arts Council.
In his second round of benevolence within four years, the advertising guru announced he would hand over 34 works by 18 British artists active in the 1990s.
The sculptures - which include a full-size caravan giving birth to a trailer and a model of teeth with Dracula-sized fangs - are to go to the Arts Council Collection. Next June they will join nearly 500 other works at the new Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield. Many are expected to be lent for show in galleries all over Britain and abroad.
In early 1999 Saatchi gave 100 pieces by 64 young British artists to the collection. That gift, calculated to be worth £500,000, was welcomed as adding new gold dust to his reputation as the art world's fairy godmother, although analysts noted that none of the works was a topseller.
Yesterday's bounty brought him gratitude and admiration. It includes John Frankland's Untitled Shed, 1994, a full-size lacquered shed inside another shed; Siobhan Hapaska's Far, 1995, described as an opalescent fibreglass cloud; Marc Quinn's I Need an Axe to Break the Ice, 1992, a latex balloon cocooned in glass; Richard Wilson's Facelift, 1991, showing the caravan and trailer; and Gary Webb's Lovers, 1998, two Cupid's arrows in a broken ring with tips of red fletching.
The fangs, made of dental acrylic, are in Jordan Baseman's sculpture entitled Based on Actual Events, 1995.
Susan Brades, director of the Hayward Gallery which runs the collection, said the gift was a mix of well-known, respected artists such as Wilson and Quinn and "very hot, up and coming people" such as Webb.
This reflected the traditions of the collection in spotting talent for the future. It had been buying Francis Bacon in the 1950s and David Hockney in the early 1960s.
Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, Arts Council visual arts director, said: "Charles Saatchi has done more than almost any other art patron to introduce the work of young British artists to a wider public.
"His second gift is especially welcome. It brings a new perspective to the 1990s artists represented in the collection".
Saatchi said his act would "give these artists a chance to be seen more widely across the country.
"I greatly admire the Arts Council Collection's ongoing support over the years for young artists.
"No institution does more than the Hayward Gallery on the council's behalf to make contemporary art accessible through national touring exhibitions and loans to galleries and museums."
The council chairman, Gerry Robinson, said: "Some of these artists have been shown abroad and are already international names. Now their work can be seen at home." | Millionaire advertising guru donates 34 modern works by British artists to the Arts Council. | 38.733333 | 0.933333 | 2.4 | high | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/07/17/the-most-important-distinction-bernanke-still-needs-to-make/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140914051018id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/07/17/the-most-important-distinction-bernanke-still-needs-to-make/ | The most important distinction Bernanke still needs to make | 20140914051018 | FORTUNE — Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony to Congress on Wednesday was a masterful attempt to make distinctions that economists rightly value but markets repeatedly blur. Expect him to continue to press them as he tries to prepare the economy for an eventual reduction in exceptional support from the Federal Reserve. Yet one of the most important distinctions of all remains unanswered.
Bernanke went to great pains again on Wednesday to remind us all that Fed tapering does not mean Fed tightening — a distinction that he highlighted a few weeks ago by contrasting an easing off a car’s accelerator with a tap of the brakes.
He also stressed that the tweaking of Fed policy tools (including experimental market purchases of securities, very low policy rates, and aggressive forward policy guidance) are subject to different timetables. Moreover, there was nothing “preset” about the Fed’s policy intentions. Indeed, the institution “would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase [my emphasis] in the pace of purchases for a time.”
MORE: Why the threat of a ‘currency war’ is dead
Adding to his message of responsive policy accommodation, Bernanke highlighted the difference between the operational notion of policy “triggers” and the less severe notion of “thresholds.” The former would imply an immediate and automatic tightening of monetary policy. That is not what the Fed is pursuing. Instead, it is focused on thresholds which would “lead the [Fed’s policymaking] Committee to consider whether the [economic] outlook … justified such an increase.”
Finally, Bernanke distinguished between stronger data (such as the decline in the unemployment rate since September and the related average monthly job gains of 200,000 this year) and the overall assessment of the health of the economy. On the latter, he rightly noted that “the jobs situation is far from satisfactory.” Also, when it comes to the other part of the Fed’s dual mandate, the challenge could well be “very low inflation” rather than high inflation.
These distinctions are aimed at reducing the inclination of investors to prematurely push market interest rates to their normalized “terminal values” — and understandably so.
As illustrated by the dislocations that followed the more hawkish Bernanke comments of May 22nd and June 19th, a premature tightening of financial conditions would do more than expose the underlying fragility of capital markets and financial intermediation; it would also undermine what remains a fragile process of economic healing and recovery in the United States and beyond.
MORE: Interest rates 101: Why the party is over
Have no doubts, Bernanke is signaling that the Fed is both willing and able to remain accommodative for a long time. Indeed, unlike some prior statements from Fed officials, Wednesday’s testimony essentially bypassed what Bernanke had repeatedly referred to earlier as the “costs and risks” of the unconventional monetary policy. In the process, he left open the most important distinction of all.
One of the most difficult questions facing the U.S. (and the global) economy relates not to policy willingness/ability but, rather, policy effectiveness. In essence, it remains to be seen whether the expected benefits of all these unconventional monetary measures will materialize, and will do so before the risk of collateral damage becomes too large.
Unfortunately, policy effectiveness is not an outcome that central banks are able to secure on their own. Given the triple challenges facing western economies — namely, insufficient aggregate demand, lagging structural reforms, and residual pockets of excessive leverage and debt overhangs — what central banks are doing could well be necessary but certainly is not sufficient.
To succeed, central banks need the support of politicians and other policy-making entities. Here, unfortunately, most western economies are still nowhere near meeting the required duo of willingness and ability, let alone get to effectiveness.
Mohamed A. El-Erian is the CEO and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO. | Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke tells Congress he's willing to continue loose monetary policy if necessary. But what about policy effectiveness? | 31.375 | 0.791667 | 1.375 | medium | medium | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/05/16/how-blackstone-can-save-the-cosmopolitan/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140916192440id_/http://fortune.com/2014/05/16/how-blackstone-can-save-the-cosmopolitan/ | How Blackstone can save The Cosmopolitan | 20140916192440 | FORTUNE — Blackstone may have just hit the jackpot with its $1.73 billion acquisition of The Cosmopolitan Hotel of Las Vegas. Not only did the private equity firm nab the hip hotel and casino from owner Deutsche Bank at a considerable discount to its development costs, it did so just before the hotel appears set to finally generate some real profits.
But nothing is a sure bet when it comes to the cutthroat Vegas hotel market. In order for Blackstone BX to achieve the sort of strong returns its investors expect, the firm’s real-estate team will need to trim costs and boost profitability at the Cosmo’s floundering casino business. While Blackstone lacks relevant experience in the casino space, some out-of-the box thinking on its part, combined with an experienced management team poached from a rival resort, could be the winning ticket to permanently move the Cosmo from red to black.
At first blush, it seems as if Blackstone may have overpaid for its first piece of the Las Vegas Strip. That might sound odd considering that the purchase price works out to a whopping 60% discount to the $4.3 billion Deutsche Bank DB ended up sinking into the project. Cosmo’s trailing 12-month Ebitda (which is what it earned last year, before taking into account interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization expenses), based on its latest quarterly filing, works out to around $115 million. As such, the $1.73 billion purchase price implies an enterprise value (ev/ebitda) multiple of 14.8. That compares with rival MGM Resorts International MGM , owner of such Las Vegas mega hotels as the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, and the MGM Grand, which has a trailing ev/ebitda multiple of around 11.8. This suggests that the Cosmo’s valuation at the moment is a bit rich compared to the valuations of its peers.
MORE: With Alibaba stake, SoftBank readies for U.S. invasion
But those metrics are backwards looking, so they don’t really paint an accurate picture of the hotel’s potential profitability. For example, the company’s Ebitda growth rate has accelerated rapidly quarter over quarter, doubling in the last year alone. As Vegas recovers from its post-recession slump, so too will the Cosmo’s dismal earnings.
But despite its expensive rooms, which average around $300 a night; pricey hotel bars where cocktails average around $15 a pop (before tip, of course); and profitable nightclub venues, where bottle service can set you back thousands of dollars; the Cosmo still doesn’t make money. It isn’t because people aren’t sleeping, drinking, and playing at the resort — it is actually sold out on most weekends and even during the week while big conventions are in town. No, the Cosmo has two big problems — its expenses are out of control and its casino isn’t pulling its weight.
General and administrative expenses at the hotel rose 3% in the first three months of the year compared with the same time last year to a whopping $25 million, or around 14% of revenues. Meanwhile, G&A expenses at rival MGM was at around 12% of revenues. If the Cosmo’s expenses were on par with the MGM this past quarter on a revenue basis, it would have saved around $3 million. That’s around 25% of the $12 million net loss it posted for the quarter.
G&A expenses don’t include sales and marketing expenses, which, for the first quarter of the year, came in at around $20.7 million for the Cosmo. This is Vegas, and while it is understood that hotels need to spend big bucks to make money, there must be a point of diminishing returns. A marketing and sales budget of around 11% of revenue may be overkill. Trimming the budget even 5% would save the Cosmo around $1 million per quarter.
Blackstone can cut all it wants, but the battle for profitability will ultimately be decided by what happens to the top line. If it doesn’t boost revenue, chances are the hotel will continue to struggle. How Blackstone intends on achieving this feat remains to be seen. It could take a page out of its recent successful leveraged buyout of Hilton Hotels and try to expand the Cosmopolitan brand as it did with the Waldorf-Astoria and Conrad luxury brands. Rebranding top Hilton resorts as Cosmopolitans in major cities would create greater brand recognition and could build a loyal following, something the hotel currently lacks.
The casino is the Cosmo’s weakest link. While the casino makes money, it doesn’t make enough to cover the high taxes and fixed costs associated with running a massive resort. Blackstone may try to tackle this conundrum in a few different ways. It could first lower the house odds, drawing in customers and getting them hooked on the Cosmopolitan “lifestyle.” That’s a risky ploy, which could end up backfiring on the hotel if doesn’t monitor tables like a hawk.
But it does present an opportunity to bring in new and younger customers to the tables who may be apprehensive playing against an unbeatable house. While the Cosmo’s young clientele spends a great deal of cash on booze and food, they tend to walk past the tables and slot machines on their way up to the second floor clubs and bars. Monetizing clientele already in the building is always easier than trying to draw in new people off the street. Incentives that link entry to the exclusive lounges with play time could draw in a whole new set of customers for the Cosmo’s hungry casino.
Bringing in younger players is a good start, but it probably won’t be enough to ensure the property’s long term potential. For that, Blackstone needs to target high rollers at other casinos, most of whom tend to be older with deeper pockets. This can be done by poaching management from rivals that have personal relationships with high net worth gamblers.
MORE: The big funds on Apple: Who bought, who sold last quarter
But the biggest trouble with the Cosmo and its casino is that it may be too unique. A high roller at the Bellagio will be treated like a king at all of MGM’s 15 properties in both Vegas and Macau, the gambling mecca of Asia. The MGM’s MLife loyalty program keeps a large chunk of clients out of the Cosmo’s casinos. Sure, these high rollers might go for a drink at the Marquee nightclub at the Cosmo, but they won’t be hitting the casino floor. Figuring out a strong loyalty program is essential for the Cosmo to win over the “whales,” those gamblers who drop millions in a night of obsessive gambling. Blackstone could gain some customers by connecting the hotel with Hilton’s loyalty program, but it really needs to align with another casino.
Besides the casino, Blackstone can do a number of things right away to pump up profits quickly. For example, The Cosmopolitan isn’t really using its presence on the Strip very well — actually, it isn’t using it at all. It could gain more foot traffic and lure more potential gamblers to its floor if it actually does something with that space, like new retail and restaurant options. And the top four floors of in its two towers remain empty — devoid of anything. That space could be sold off as exclusive condos or turned into a nightclub. It could also be an exclusive high rollers-only gambling paradise.
There is no denying that the Cosmo has enormous upside potential for Blackstone. It still has the cache of being the newest big hotel on the strip — a distinction it has milked for all its worth. Based on the way the economy is improving, there isn’t much that Blackstone has to do for the Cosmo to post modest profits. But the Cosmo is right on the cusp of making big money. It just needs a good push. | While Blackstone lacks relevant experience in the casino space, out-of-the box thinking combined with an experienced management team poached from a rival resort could be the winning ticket to permanently move the Las Vegas hot spot from red to black. | 32.869565 | 0.956522 | 8.26087 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/dec/06/architecture | http://web.archive.org/web/20140917093655id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/dec/06/architecture | Lammers and Zeisser's accordion cabin | 20140917093655 | A house that pokes its horned and scaly head out of its shingly shell deep in a forest as if foraging for food sounds like the stuff of dingly dell dreams or Hobbity nightmares: a home that might be a den for elves or some child-eating witch. It is quite a sight, this unexpected log cabin emerging from beside a stream in the lakeland depths of southern Sweden's Glaskogen nature reserve. It almost seems to be alive: if you stop and listen hard, you can almost hear it breathing. But, no, it's only the winter wind whispering through the silver birches.
The cabin is, in fact, a summer escape for Maartje Lammers and Boris Zeisser, principals of the Rotterdam-based practice 24H Architecture, and their eight-year-old daughter. They bought an 18th-century fisherman's cottage in the Arjangs Commun, Varmland, four years ago, and set about transforming it.
There was, though, one small problem: local bylaws meant they could only extend the cabin by 30 square metres, to prevent over-development in a sensitive area invaded by Dutch and German families in the summer. Not that you see many Dutch, Germans or anyone else in the forest at this time of the year. Nature keeps its own season here, leaving the Lammers-Zeisser cabin to fend for itself.
To gain the extra space needed to make the cabin a decent size, and to take full advantage of the view over the adjacent stream, Lammers and Zeisser hit on the idea of an extending house. The original cabin is now the bedroom, while the turtle-like 30 sq-metre extension can be expanded using pulleys and a retracting steel frame mounted on roller-bearings. In this way, the living room can be projected over the stream without breaking building laws because this part of the house has no foundations and stands clear of the ground.
The family can open the windows of the cabin's head wide and sit above the meandering stream. When they return south in the winter, they pull the head back in, and the cabin is, once again, no bigger than is allowed.
The architects call their unusual summer home the Dragspelhuset, or "accordion house", and, although this is the place they go to escape the rest of the world, the cabin has caught the eye of the international architectural media. The clever thing about this house is that it is a game played by knowing architects. It bubbles with references to the work of organicists such as Bruce Goff, Antoni Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright and Imre Makovecz, as well as to the joyous pranks of Frank Gehry. And yet it feels as if it could belong nowhere else in the world but beside this stream in the vastness of a Swedish nature reserve.
Its environmental footprint is small: cooking is by propane gas; heating by a wood-fuelled stove, whose chimney sticks out of the house's retracting head; and the lavatory is a hut, without so much as a septic tank, reached via a path through the trees. The stream feeds a hot-tub and is used for bathing. If the Lammers-Zeissers are serious about spending more time here in winter, they will surely need to build a wooden sauna.
The red cedar shingles that form the lizard-like skin of the cabin have been imported from Canada. This might sound odd in a land where trees stretch out as far as the eye can see, but the local timber is soft and needs to be repainted pretty much every year to keep it in good condition. Understandably, Lammers and Zeisser, did not want to spend their summers bogged down by DIY. Whether lashed by rain or covered in snow, the cedar skin of the cabin will emerge resplendent each summer.
If the exterior is eye-catching, the interior is a delight, its sinuous walls lined with silver birch laths, and draped, like a Sami tent, with reindeer skins. The furniture is lightweight and modern, the lighting powered by solar panels, and the sense of space far greater than you might imagine.
It is delightful to see what urbane architects can do with a primitive cabin in a rural setting and without recourse to sophisticated technology. But, then, between them, Lammers and Zeisser have worked for one of Holland's top architectural practices, Erick van Egeraat, for the inventive firm Mecanoo, and the endlessly self-reinventing Dutch globalist, Rem Koolhaas.
Here, in Sweden, they are showing how architecture is both a serious exercise and a happy game to play. Children of all ages will fall in love with a house like this: it is a magical place. Houses normally only come alive, or appear to express emotions, in fairytales or stories by Edgar Allan Poe, yet this one does both, while the fact that it tucks its head in when the temperature drops and hibernates under the snow in winter makes it all the more enchanting.
There is, too, an honourable tradition of architects building escapist cabins for themselves. The most famous, perhaps, is Le Corbusier's tiny cabin at Roquebrune on the Côte d'Azur. It might be modest, yet it expresses many of the fundamentals of this epoch-making architect's work.
While they were making the "accordion house", Lammers and Zeisser began thinking of how they might apply the same technique elsewhere. Could larger, commercial buildings transform themselves overnight from one function to another? These are early days, but the principle is intriguing, and especially so in Holland where space, unlike Sweden, is at a premium. Imagine if city houses and apartment blocks could expand and contract when necessary to allow a guest room, or if they could sprout balconies in summer that could be retracted in winter, or if we could rearrange the plan of our homes when we got fed up with them.
There are so many possibilities for a Swedish "accordion house" style of building: Lammers and Zeisser have only just begun to scratch the surface. | It grows in summer and retreats into its shell in winter. Jonathan Glancey visits Sweden's 'accordion' cabin. | 53.090909 | 0.636364 | 0.909091 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/feb/23/artspolicy.regeneration | http://web.archive.org/web/20140917184614id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/feb/23/artspolicy.regeneration | Think tank: Cultural diversity breeds creativity | 20140917184614 | If ever a city was shaped by one man it is Bristol. Britain's greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel left an indelible mark on the place, with the Great Western Railway, the SS Great Britain, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and the 'Floating Harbour'.
Everyone recognises Brunel's achievement but less thought has been given to the source of his genius. Could it in part be attributable to the fact that he was a child of mixed heritage with an English mother and a father who came to Britain a refugee from revolutionary France?
He later returned to the land of his father to train in the superb French system of engineering schools, but found in Britain the economic dynamism and the spirit of openness which allowed him to bring his brilliant but risky projects to fruition.
Brunel is a classic example of what we would call "intercultural innovation", the notion that when you bring strange or different elements together you have the ingredients for a divergent way of thinking, the prerequisite of inventiveness.
Great cities throughout history have held an attraction for outsiders drawn by both the urges to make something of their lives and the freedom to lose themselves in the crowd, and it is from these restless, marginal groups that many of the social, economic and cultural breakthroughs that shape our life have emerged.
But how much do cities themselves know and understand of this phenomenon? Too little, we would say, which is why Comedia, with the backing of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has launched a major piece of international research - The Intercultural City: Making the Most of Diversity. Over the coming year, we will be trying to get under the skin of a selection of British and international cities including Bristol, Newcastle, Oslo, Auckland and Melbourne to try and find out the extent to which their growing cultural diversity is, or might become, a source of creativity, innovation and ultimately competitive advantage.
It is an issue we feel is not getting the attention it deserves, particularly from the people with the responsibility for the future of Britain's cities. The current debate around cultural diversity seems to be dominated by those concerned with its costs whilst many of the arguments in support of its benefits seem a little tired and dated. The questioning of the prevailing creed of "multiculturalism" by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has opened up a valuable space for fresh thinking and it is into this that we have launched The Intercultural City. From multiculturalism, which, however unintentionally, seems to have institutionalised separation based at best on benign indifference, we argue for a system which recognises an emerging reality of people with mixed cultures and heritage, and which incentivises cultural interchange.
For our cities, this is not simply a pious call for more understanding, but a driving economic imperative. Based on his experience of many blue chip companies who are now rapidly diversifying their workforce because it raises their performance and keeps them ahead, our US collaborator Gregg Zachary has said the choice for the future will be "mongrelise or die".
Companies are recognising the "diversity advantage" but what of our cities? Being open and cosmopolitan surely has to mean more than a few festivals and an exotic collection of restaurants. If, as US academic Richard Florida says, cities are now locked into a competition to attract the world's talent and hold on to their own, how prepared are British cities? How open are they to new people and ideas? What are the key networks and "intercultural change-agents" who bring people together and make things happen?
Which brings us back to Bristol, a historic port city which knows the value of trade in goods, ideas and, sadly, also people. In 2007 the city will make a powerful statement by commemorating the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade. It will lay to rest a grizzly chapter in its past and embrace a future with diversity and intercultural exchange set at the heart of its mission as a city. Bristol will be the first of a series of case studies through which Comedia will seek answers to exactly what it means to be an intercultural city. Andrew Kelly, head of the city's cultural development partnership believes Bristol's future lies in the marriage of science, art, technology and cultural diversity. He hopes the project will help find the new Brunels and advise the city on how to give the intercultural innovators of the future the right conditions to thrive.
And intercultural innovation can be found in many places. It could be amongst the software engineers or film and animation industries that have made Bristol their home but also amongst unsung social entrepreneurs and community activists. Over coming months, Comedia will profile 30 intercultural innovators from Bristol's past, 30 from the present and 30 who may shape its future.
The omens are good. A decade ago, "the Bristol Sound" shot to critical acclaim. Comprising a collection of bands including Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and Roni Size, their music grew out of a remarkable network of multi-ethnic musicians. They turned their diverse experiences into something very new and influential.
· Phil Wood is a partner in Comedia, a think tank on intercultural cities | Our cities can profit from the creativity that cultural diversity brings, says Phil Wood. | 62.5625 | 0.9375 | 1.4375 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/twitter-plays-defense-in-first-earnings-call/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140917230618id_/http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/twitter-plays-defense-in-first-earnings-call/ | Twitter plays defense in first earnings call | 20140917230618 | FORTUNE — In its first quarterly earnings report as a public company, Twitter’s TWTR CEO Dick Costolo was on the defensive. The company, which has not yet turned a profit, reported strong top line revenue growth with widening losses.
Twitter Wednesday reported fourth-quarter earnings of $243 million, an increase of 116% over the same period last year. The company reported a loss of $3.41 in earnings per share. For the full year, Twitter earned $665 million in revenue, an increase of 100% over last year. The company lost $1.41 in earnings per share in 2013.
But the widening loss is not what sent Twitter’s stock down by 17% in after-hours trading.
Analysts, the press, and the tweeting echo chamber are all concerned with Twitter’s user growth. The company reported 241 monthly active users last quarter, which is only 9 million more than it had last quarter — a 3.8% increase.
Both Twitter and Facebook FB have experienced slowing user growth (Facebook’s sequential user growth was 3.4% last quarter), but the difference is that, with 1.2 billion monthly active users, Facebook already has almost half of the world’s Internet users on its service. Twitter has a much smaller audience to sell to advertisers. The company’s $36 billion valuation was based on the idea that Twitter would grow to Facebook-like size and eventually earn Facebook-like profits.
On its earnings call Wednesday, Costolo and CFO Mike Gupta dedicated a lot of airtime to Twitter’s plans for reversing the stagnating user growth. In order to attract new users, re-engage the ones who abandoned the platform, and keep its existing users happy, Twitter needs to be accessible to the average person, not just power-user media junkies who speak in a bizarre language of hashtags, abbreviations, and inside jokes.
MORE: How Josh James landed $125 million in funding from his hospital bed
Costolo pointed out that Twitter has massive awareness levels. Everyone knows what Twitter is. But not everyone who knows about Twitter has signed up for the service, and those that do are often confused by it. Solving that, Costolo argued, is “about making it easier for people who first come to the platform to ‘get it’ more quickly.”
As such, Twitter launched a number of improvements to its service, including a better onboarding experience for mobile users, more photos and videos in the stream of Tweets, and better direct messaging and conversation tools, all of which started to “get that flywheel of increased interaction happening,” he said. These initiatives, introduced last quarter, had positive results, giving Costolo the confidence that Twitter will be successful in attracting more users, he said. “Those additive changes … will start to change the slope of that growth curve going forward,” he said. “We simply need to make Twitter a better Twitter.”
No matter the positive spin, analysts were fixated on the growth issue, repeatedly broaching the topic during the earnings call as Costolo defended Twitter’s efforts. (One analyst apologized for “beating a dead horse.”)
This is, surprisingly, the first time Twitter has actually put any effort into user growth. “Up until last year our growth has been viral and organic. Growth was something that happened to us,” Costolo said. Now, it’s up to him to make it happen. | To attract more users, “We simply need to make Twitter a better Twitter,” says CEO Dick Costolo. | 30.318182 | 0.954545 | 5.772727 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/aug/07/photography.art | http://web.archive.org/web/20140919085718id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/aug/07/photography.art | The king of kinky | 20140919085718 | In 1966, just as the Sixties started swinging, Helmut Newton shot a series of photographs for the now defunct high-fashion magazine, Queen. As the images were being laid out for publication, Jocelyn Stevens, the owner of Queen, paid a surprise visit to the office. In his lively memoir, Autobiography, Newton takes up the story.
'Jocelyn sees the layouts ... picks them up, throws them on the floor, and screams: "What are these masturbating women doing in my magazine, lying on the floor, while phallic symbols are exploding outside the windows?"'
So incensed was Stevens that he tore a telephone out of the wall and hurled it through the window. 'One never knows the reaction pictures will provoke among the higher echelons at magazines,' writes Newton dryly, his Germanic poise as unruffled then as it was in the decades that followed, when his consistently sexual provocations constantly made him the photographer that feminists loved to hate.
Looking now at the cream of Newton's fashion photography, collected in a new book by his widow, June, and called, with typical Newtonian candour, A Gun for Hire, it is difficult to see what all the fuss was about. Until, that is, you realise how far ahead of his time the cavalier snapper was in his depiction of style as an expression of ritualised sexuality, and fashion as a fetishistic pursuit.
Way back before the likes of Terry Richardson blurred the lines between fashion and hardcore pornography, making explicit the link between the two, Helmut Newton was doing a similar kind of thing for soft porn, albeit in a more stage-managed and highly symbolic way. For nigh-on 40 years after he outraged his employer at Queen, Newton remained the undisputed king of kinkiness. Right up until his sudden death last year, aged 82 - his car slamming into a wall on Sunset Boulevard after he suffered a heart attack while leaving the Chateau Marmont Hotel - he specialised in a kind of obsessively stylised sexual voyeurism that he constantly refined, but never diluted.
Newton was a photographer who never saw the point of not overstating the obvious: in one infamous shoot, he placed a horse's saddle on a beauty posing in riding jodhpurs on a bed on all fours; in another the women sported medical corsets and braces as Cronenbergian sexual accessories. 'I hate good taste,' he once famously remarked. 'It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person.'
And yet, for all his provocation, his photographs were seldom vulgar. Sometimes, though, there is something oddly old-fashioned about Newton's fashion-fantasy world, something a bit James Bond, and, sometimes, even a bit Milk Tray. It seems no accident that he ended up living in Monte Carlo, that semi-mythical haunt of playboys and gamblers.
'Like all truly great photographers, he sometimes took bad pictures,' attests David Bailey, who knew and admired Newton. 'Many fashion photographers today are just illustrators, who illustrate someone else's ideas. It's photography by committee. I call it perfected mediocrity. The great fashion photographers would never work like that; they need to take risks, to push the boundaries, and Helmut was always pushing the boundaries.'
Newton, however, never made any great claimson behalf of his work. 'Some people's photography is an art,' he once said. 'But mine is not... I'm a gun for hire.' Later, he told an interviewer: 'Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine-art crap is killing it already.' And yet, the strictly formalised nature of his best images meant he was more often compared to Surrealist painters than to other photographers.
Over five decades, Newton created a recognisable world of the imagination, a kind of Newtonian universe people by Amazonian women engaged in odd, often seemingly meaningless pursuits against backgrounds that belonged in a Bond movie. Invariably, the women wore little or no clothing, tended towards the Teutonic in stature, and fetishistic in demeanour. Perhaps because of his relentless objectification - and worship - of the female form, feminist critics viewed his work with contempt, while art critics avoided it all together.
Revealingly, certain like-minded obsessives saw in it a dark, perverse imagination unbound by either good taste or aesthetic elitism. His photographs were best described by the dystopian novelist JG Ballard, as 'stills from an elegant and erotic movie, perhaps entitled 'Midnight at the Villa d'Este' or 'Afternoons in Super-Cannes', a virtual film that has never played at any theatre, but has screened itself inside our heads for the last 40 years'.
I ask David Bailey where he would place the late photographer in the grand scheme of things. 'He was really important because he redefined the nude. He was the first person to do that since, I suppose, Edward Weston, who did the nudes in the sand.'
What, though, of the purely commercial work, the fashion photography which he seemed to approach with the same seriousness of application as his personal projects? In her introduction to A Gun for Hire, June Newton, a renowned photographer herself, working under the name Alice Springs, insists that: 'The same creative process and energy have imbued all aspects of his work. He welcomed and respected the restrictions and requirements of his clients.'
The model and erstwhile Mrs Bailey, Marie Helvin, who was once tied to the mast of a sailingship by Newton, also attests to the crossover between his commercial and personal work.
'A lot of the shoots he did progressed from a fashion shoot to a nude shoot,' she laughs. 'He would finish taking the fashion shots then make the model strip and do a nude shoot in the very same set of poses. You can look at several of his nude photographs side by side with his magazine work and all that is different is the absence of clothing. The poses are exactly the same. He worked an idea for all he could get out of it, and they were such great ideas to begin with that he always got away with it.'
Though he genuinely seemed to hate the very notion of art photography, Newton was indeed a master of the high-concept idea. In the Eighties, his commercial work came into its own, a shoot for Thierry Mugler nodding to the Surrealists, film noir, German expressionist cinema and the ever-present iconography of S&M. 'He was so knowledgeable and such a storyteller,' continues Helvin, 'and he possessed an old-fashioned charm which immediately put you at ease. He had none of the aggression that often goes hand in hand with the job, but he was a master of the highly stylised shoot, where you had to hold a pose for ages, keep your fingers in exactly the same place. It is easy for that sort of photographer to forget that the person they are shooting is not simply an object, but he was never unpleasant or hectoring. A little gruff, maybe, but that's all.'
June Newton, though, who Helvin insists was the real agent for provocation in their romantic and professional double act, remembers 'the absolute torture' some of the girls had to go through for his art: 'There was one model who had to stand in stiletto heels with one foot on a car for ages. She was in agony, and, all the while, Helmut is shouting: "Don't dare move!" The models were the raw material he worked with, the bodies he moulded into the images he saw in his head. That's why he seldom worked with well-known models. He needed his own raw material in order to transform it into something unique.'
One wonders, of course, what unconscious forces were at work in all this manipulation and provocation. Newton's very first photograph, taken on a cheap box camera bought in Woolworths in 1932, when he was just 12, was of a local Berlin radio mast, toweringly phallic. His highly entertaining and beautifully written Autobiography, published in 2003, is a veritable cornucopia of sexual adventures - at least until he meets June.
As a youth, he was a keen swimmer and an even more keen masturbator, and writes with relish of the 'great roundness' and 'great beauty' of the taut swimmer's body. Likewise in his pre-pubescent fetishising of the girls' 'regulation black swimsuits', which he describes as 'not revealing at all, but that didn't stop them from being seductive. The suits were made of thin wool, which clung to the girls' bodies and dried very slowly. Because the suits stayed wet for a long time - particularly across the chest where there was an extra thickness of wool - the girls' nipples would stay erect.'
Even a cursory leaf through A Gun for Hire reveals a man in thrall to his formative desires. Here is an oiled Amazonian model in a shiny PVC swimsuit and what looks like a mourning veil. She is shot, like many of his subjects, from below, her bare thighs as taut and toned as any Olympianswimmer. Here is a blond, pigtailed Heidi in shiny black stilettos, sheer stockings and fitted black minidress, towering above the tower blocks in the middle distance. The models are implausibly fresh-faced, but Amazonian in their dimensions and Aryan in their hauteur. Even at their most innocent, they are strikingly sexualised. Was he, I ask June Newton, as diplomatically as possible, a sexual obsessive, a voyeur with a camera?
'Oh no, he wasn't nearly as dark as his photographs suggest,' she laughs. 'But he did have a dark side. We all do. But he was also quite thoughtful about his work. When he did the medical portraits, the models in surgical corsets, he thought that maybe he had gone too far. I was the one who said: "No, you must finish it."'
Sometimes, though, there is something altogether spookier in the scenarios these implausibly beautiful mannequins act out - a kind of deadness. The French philosopher Roland Barthes saw the photograph as a little death, a still life that freezes the present moment into an eternal past, and prefigures the stillness of the corpse. Even in Newton's most sexual images, you can catch glimpses of this lifelessness. Here is another towering beauty, her eyes glazed as if sleepwalking, her face and breasts veiled in diaphanous white silk, her curves constricted and exaggerated by a tight white corset. A doomed bride? A sacrificial virgin? A drugged plaything?
Interestingly, Ballard places Newton firmly in the Surrealist tradition of Delvaux or Magritterather than August Sander or Cartier-Bresson, and certainly his models constantly seem lost, surprised, or entranced, his exotic backdrops oddly incongruous, as if we are suddenly being afforded a glimpse of a bigger narrative whose contours we can only guess at. That narrative, as Ballard points out, takes place first of all inside Newton's head, and is then passed over to the viewer, who transposes their own version on to it, the process of association as mysterious as the unconscious itself.
'Helmut always had these often complex ideas long before he found his people,' elaborates June, 'and he would carry the ideas around as if letting them gestate in his head. I remember him discussing the Arthur Schnitzler novel Dream Story, on which Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is based, and saying, "Don't forget, everything that happens is in the head." That, I think, was the key to how he worked.'
I ask June if she has a favourite Helmut Newton photograph. 'I suppose it has to be Self-Portrait With Wife and Model,' she says, though I was hoping she would choose my own personal favourite, which is an effortlessly erotic portrait of her, baring her breasts and exhaling a cloud of smoke. His erotic photographs of his wife often possess a tenderness that is absent in the more Teutonic nudes. Was she ever jealous of his models or his extravagant sexual fantasies that they enacted? 'No. Not at all. He always said: "You can fuck the models, or you can work with them, but not both at the same time."'
Would it be fair to say he was in awe of the oppositesex, and that is why they invariably appeared as Amazons, as larger-than-life creations?
'No, I'd say they were in awe of him on the whole. The only woman he was in awe of was Margaret Thatcher. There are always exceptions,' she laughs.
He was, attests Helvin, a very funny guy, though disarmingly vague at times, as if his thoughts were constantly elsewhere. 'Once he was dining at Mr Chow's in LA, where all the hip people hung out, and I walked in with Warren Beatty. He shook hands with Warren, and said: "I can't place you, but know your face from somewhere." I mean, of all people...'
Bailey, too, attests to the humour. 'He never bloody paid for anything. It was a standing joke, like that awful little white scarf he wore. It became part of his act. He reminded me of Billy Wilder, the great director, in that he was great fun to be around but you always learnt so much, and heard such great stories.'
The funniest series in A Gun for Hire is a shoot for US Vogue, where he couples a towering and statuesque blonde with a diminutive, nerdy-looking guy, perhaps poking fun at himself. 'He was intrigued by what he called "the upset of scale",' says June, 'and he loved stuff like the Doctor Cyclops film, where an evil scientist shrinks people. His sense of humour was always there in the photographs, though the critics never seemed to pick up on it. At one point,' she laughs, 'he wanted to call the Domestic Nudes series "Housewives in Bondage". That was pure Helmut.'
It sounds, I say, like they had a lot of fun together. 'Oh, yes, we had fun,' she laughs, 'and we truly enjoyed being together, just as we enjoyed our solitude. I'm not enjoying it any more, though,' she adds, and you can sense the absence that this larger-than-life man left behind. 'The thing is,' she says, getting close to the essence of Helmut Newton, and his self-styled role as photographic provocateur, 'he never stopped to consider what he was other than a photographer, and as a photographer, he was free to do whatever he wanted to do.'
· Helmut Newton:A Gun for Hire is published by Taschen at £19.99. To order a copy for £18.99 with free p&p, call the Observer Books service on 0870 836 0885 or go to observer.co.uk/bookshop | Feminists hated him. Critics called him a genius, whose use of Amazonian models and fetishistic imagery embraced sex and Surrealism. Now, with her new book celebrating Helmut Newton's 70-year career, his widow Alice Springs tells Sean O'Hagan how her husband redefined fashion photography. | 58.86 | 0.72 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/mar/11/photography | http://web.archive.org/web/20140921190627id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/mar/11/photography | Excellent shot, sir! | 20140921190627 | In 1955 an ambitious exhibition of photographs from all around the world titled The Family of Man was mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Visitors would find Robert Doisneau's chic young Parisian lovers displayed next to photographs of tribal people rubbing noses in New Guinea, or a woman and her baby in the Congo jungle hung alongside Irving Penn's photo of a socialite mother taken for Vogue. The aim of the show was to act as "a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world".
The essential oneness of mankind was not very much in evidence in the US States at the time: that same year, Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger led to the birth of the modern civil rights movement. It was even less evident in 19th-century Europe when photographers first set off for distant lands with their recently invented cameras, and an intriguing exhibition at the Shapero Gallery in London provides examples of the west's early fascination with ethnic difference.
For over a year the curator, Roland Belgrave, has been haunting auctions and fairs seeking out photographic portraits taken in remote regions between 1850 and 1900. The resulting exhibition of 460 images has been given the nicely resonant title Face to Face. Early photographers tried to bring Europeans face to face with other races and cultures, but the encounter between those wielding the camera and their chosen subjects was rarely as balanced as this term suggests. Photography developed in tandem not only with tourism (Thomas Cook first organised trips abroad in the early 1860s), but also with anthropology and imperialism.
Anthropologists soon recognised that photography could be a very useful tool in their attempts to catalogue the different peoples of the world. Artists previously employed to provide illustrations tended to pay more attention to clothes than to facial features, with the result, one anthropologist complained, that "native races from different parts of the world ordinarily resemble Europeans accoutred in queer costume, and besmeared with yellow, brown, black". The camera would provide a more accurate record. Subjects were sometimes set against improvised rulers, the easier to take measurements, but Belgrave has avoided such images because his interest is aesthetic rather than anthropological.
Photography was also used to provide a record of empire. The Bombay Photographic Society was founded (by and for Europeans) as early as 1854, and one of its members, a civil servant called William Johnson, published a photographic record of The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay in 1863. The camera was used less for strictly anthropological reasons than to catalogue possessions, namely the various peoples acquired by the British Crown from the East India Company in 1858. The Indian Office subsequently published an eight-volume gazetteer of The People of India (1868-75), sheets from which are included in the exhibition. Although the book was undertaken at the request of Lord Canning, who wanted a souvenir of his time in India as governor-general, the text accompanying the photographs suggests a more practical motive. There are some distinctly unscientific observations about the character and habits of different races - their loyalty and biddability, for example - while others are recommended for their services to the Raj. The Mochis, for example, are described as "the very lowest caste of Hindoos", but are nevertheless "very useful members of the community" since they supply sahibs with "excellent shooting gaiters".
India is strongly represented in the exhibition, but it also includes ethnological photographs and formal portraits from China, Tibet, Japan, Africa, the Middle and Far East, the Americas, Oceania, and even Europe. Identifying these subjects is not always easy. A cloaked tribal chief staring out fiercely from beneath Beardsleyesque facial tattoos is clearly a Maori, but what about the row of small black boys in suits and top hats, identified merely as "Premieres Communicants"? And would you be able to place the spectacularly robed woman whose head-dress appears to incorporate a maypole? "Femme Druse" is written on the mount, possibly by one of the Bonfils family who set up a photographic company in Beirut in 1867 and eventually had branches all over the Middle East.
We rarely know the names of the sitters, but those who took the photographs are also sometimes difficult to identify with any degree of certainty, partly because many of them were amateurs and they tended not to sign their work. Major names are, however, well represented. The earliest photographs on display were taken in Madagascar by the Reverend William Ellis (1794-1872) of the London Missionary Society.
Something of a polymath, Ellis set up the first printing press in Tahiti, collected specimens for the Royal Botanical Gardens, and crossed swords with Byron in the Quarterly Review on the subject of missionary work in Hawaii, where he had baptised the Hawaiian king's mother. Ellis set off with his camera and Bible, returning with a large number of albumen prints to use as the basis for the woodblock illustrations for his Three Visits to Madagascar (1858). Unlike other 19th-century photographers, who tended to home in on the decorative otherness of their subjects, Ellis wanted to showcase the achievements of missionary work. Unregenerate savages were of little interest to him as a photographer, however exotic or picturesque they might be, and his preferred subjects were those Malagasy who had benefited from the civilising influence of Christianity, attired in western dress and ideally doing needlework or attending Bible-reading classes.
Many of the Malagasy seem happy enough to pose in their European finery, and few of them look as despondent as some of the Australian Aboriginals taken by the German photographer JW Lindt (1845-1926). Born in Frankfurt, Lindt ran away to sea at the age of 17 and ended up in Australia, where after a brief career tuning pianos in the outback he apprenticed himself to a photographer. His photographs were awarded a gold medal at the Philadelphia International Exhibition in 1876 and rarely come on the market. The one in Face to Face depicts a group of three Aboriginal men artfully arranged against a painted studio backdrop of lakes and mountains. One holds a spear in a most unwarrior-like attitude; another, sitting on the floor, drapes a hand protectively over the torso of a third, who lies beside a clump of grass and stares balefully at the photographer.
This is a faintly disturbing picture to look at in the 21st century, and a similar sense of unease may be felt while contemplating some of the images of African women, who stand awkwardly with their arms folded over their naked breasts. It is as if they are aware they have become exhibits and this has made them self-conscious in a way they would not be while going about their daily business. Compare this, however, with the elegant Chinese opium smoker who regards the photographer with a glazed indifference; or the large group of Maoris, where the formal posture adopted by the adults (even the one who has moved) is in marked contrast to the casual poses of the small boys who loll nonchalantly against a hut and look as if they will scamper happily back into their lives as soon as the long exposure has been made.
Early photographic equipment could be both cumbersome and fragile, and chemicals, plates and paper could be disastrously affected by extremes of temperature and humidity. While photographing India in the 1860s, Samuel Bourne (1834-1912) needed 30 or more bearers in his train and sometimes had to work in a developing tent at temperatures of 54C. Bourne himself was not greatly interested in photographing people, whom he tended to introduce into his compositions merely to provide scale, but the company he formed with the established photographer John Shepherd in 1863 became famous for its portraits. Bourne and Shepherd started in Simla, then acquired premises in Calcutta, and they were soon recognised as the leading studio in India. Customers could order up prints from stock and have souvenir albums of local scenes and "Native Characters" assembled to take back to England. Bourne and Shepherd also became official photographers for the durbars, producing lavish commemorative volumes filled with portraits of maharajahs, nizams and nabobs.
Tourist photos were also popular in Japan, where perhaps the best known practitioner was the Italian-born Felice Beato (1825-1903). Having honed his craft in the Crimean war, Beato sailed to China with the British expeditionary force in the second opium war. Later, he set up a studio in Yokohama in 1863 to produce exquisite photographs of Japanese "types": geishas, musicians, peddlers, armour-clad warriors, and so on. Indigenous photographers soon set up shop alongside the western pioneers, notably Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934), whose work is of similar quality. Unlike photographs from other countries at this period, the Japanese ones were often beautifully hand-coloured, usually by local painters who had worried that photography would make them redundant.
Many of the finest portraits come from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where Charles Scowen & Co and WL Skeen & Co provided a service similar to that of Bourne and Shepherd in India. While Skeen's photograph of a beautiful young "Kandian Woman" may be generic, however, it seems also to be portraying an individual, perhaps because of the skilful way she has been posed and lit. Unlike some of the more straightforwardly ethnographic portraits, this is a picture that captures a personality rather than a mere type.
We undoubtedly look at these photographs in a way that those who took them could not imagine. Prints of the Singhalese woman were sold to tourists who had no interest in who the sitter was or what sort of life she led. Accustomed now to travel, and to meeting foreigners on more equal terms than our Victorian forebears did, we recognise the exoticism, but we also acknowledge a kinship. We like to imagine that our relationship with the sitters, even at the remove of well over a century, is more involved than that of the original photographer.
· Face to Face: 19th-century Portrait Photographs 1850-1900 is at the Shapero Gallery, London W1, until March 18. Details: 020-7493 0876. | Victorian photographers thought they were capturing exotic cultures on film - but their pictures tell us more about their own attitudes. Peter Parker reports. | 75.115385 | 0.615385 | 0.769231 | high | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2013/10/31/a-new-french-tech-revolution/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140927202956id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/10/31/a-new-french-tech-revolution/ | A new French (tech) revolution? | 20140927202956 | A tall, middle-aged man is propped against a wall inside a building on the gritty northern edge of Paris. He’s deep in discussion with a young woman sporting bright-green hair tied in pigtails; she’s sucking on a neon-blue lollipop and driving home a point to him with her hands.
The man listening intently to the artsy-looking twentysomething isn’t a talent agent or even a college professor — though he’s keenly interested in education. He is Xavier Niel, one of the richest people in France (estimated net worth: $7.8 billion), who achieved his wealth by disrupting his country’s telecommunications industry. Now Niel, 46, wants to upend another French institution: its notoriously rigid education system.
In September he opened a programming school called 42, a name derived from the 1970s classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the answer to life’s mysteries is always 42. The school, in northern Paris (where Fortune found Niel chatting with students), breaks almost every rule of French matriculation: Tuition is zero. So, too, are prerequisites. Of the 70,000 young French who took 42’s application test, about 40% were high school dropouts. To underscore the school’s edgy feel, Niel (pronounced “nee-el”) had a pirate flag hoisted outside the building.
Niel says he was inspired to start his school not only because French companies report a chronic shortage of high-tech talent to hire, but also because some 200,000 youths drop out of school each year. Many, including Niel, believe that is because French education focuses on formalized, nationally controlled testing that favors workhorses over creative geeks and maverick innovators. The country that once churned out geniuses such as painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and composer Claude Debussy has struggled to create a Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.
Niel sees technology skills as a way to even the playing field in France, not just for disadvantaged kids but also for middle-class and elite students who want to explore different career paths. “There’s a lack of social mobility,” he says. “If you are the son of a doctor, you will be a doctor.” By contrast, his new school is “a little subversive,” he says with a delighted grin.
Niel knows all about being subversive. He was raised in the modest suburb of Créteil, a far cry from Paris’s majestic avenues. And while the great majority of French CEOs come out of the grandes écoles, the equivalent of the Ivy League, Niel skipped college altogether and holed up at home with his computer, coding. “I started literally in a garage, alone,” he explains. “I had some luck.”
Niel developed sex-chat software (he was 18, after all) and other communication tools, which he sold to tech companies that provided content for France Telecom’s groundbreaking Minitel online service. At 26, he created France’s first ISP, WorldNet, and sold it for about $55 million in 2000. In 1991 he launched Iliad, the first French company to offer a “triple play” TV-phone-Internet service, naming it (in English, no less) Free. Last year Niel won the bid for France’s fourth mobile service and launched Free Mobile, offering a floor-smashing €20 (about $28) monthly plan for unlimited calls, far cheaper than other French services.
His competitors cried foul, but Niel couldn’t have cared less. Iliad’s market cap has ballooned 11-fold over the decade, to €9.8 billion ($13.5 billion), making Niel, who owns 55.3% of Iliad, immensely rich. Yet despite that (and even though he now owns a sizable chunk of France’s ultimate establishment newspaper, Le Monde), Niel retains his outsider image among French execs, having smashed his way into the elite. Niel is smart enough to know that image works to his advantage, as he throws his energies into new projects; his other company, Kima Ventures, invests in 100 startups a year.
“He is very un-French, but maybe that is why he has succeeded,” says Christophe Roquilly, a professor at EDHEC Business School in Lille. “He doesn’t accept the establishment’s state of mind.”
An antiestablishment culture pervades Niel’s school. During a recent boot camp for about 3,000 programmers, the floor was littered with inflatable mattresses and soda cans from students who’d hopped trains to Paris from the hinterlands and bunked there for weeks. About 1,000 will make the cut for a three-year programming course that begins in mid-November. Even then there will be few teachers or classes. Students sit in warehouse-size rooms at Apple computers, creating whatever program they dream up, in a kind of giant hackathon.
Not everyone is sold on the idea. Government rules dictate that since 42’s students need no high school diploma, the three-year courses will not have degree status. Wannabe students seem unconcerned. “I’ve been earning the SMIC [minimum wage] in different jobs for years,” says Clément Aupetit, 26, who did not finish high school. “This might open doors.” Conservative French corporations could be wary of recruiting Niel’s new army of coders. “Opening themselves to different profiles will be a big leap for them,” wrote one blogger on the French site Rude Baguette. Niel has not exactly ingratiated himself with France’s elites. He was once an investor in a chain of sex-toy shops; he spent a month in jail in 2004 on charges that he brokered prostitutes from his stores. The charges were later dropped.
But Niel is optimistic. If just a few students make it, he says, his investment — about €70 million ($96 million) so far — will be worth it.
And besides, Niel is already at work creating his next project, 1000Startups, which he claims will be the world’s biggest incubator and will open in 2016. “We don’t think we can change everything in France,” he says. “But we’ll have some impact.” There seems no better person to make that happen.
On students: “When these students ask, ‘Can you help me?’ we say, ‘No, you have to find the information yourself. You have it all here.’ ”
On France: “We [in France] had the competitive edge in digital education, but each year France’s digital ranking drops.”
On his school and investments: “You have to set up an ecosystem. We try to help all which is Internet related.”
This story is from the November 18, 2013 issue of Fortune. | Telecom entrepreneur Xavier Niel wants to shake up his home country's education system. | 87.666667 | 0.8 | 1.466667 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/02/27/10-biggest-patent-troll-targets-in-business/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20140929201502id_/http://fortune.com:80/2014/02/27/10-biggest-patent-troll-targets-in-business/ | 10 biggest patent troll targets in business | 20140929201502 | FORTUNE — Wireless carrier AT&T T was the top target of so-called patent trolls in 2013, having been sued more than 54 times by them in 2013—more than once a week. This year’s list of top ten patent troll targets was published today in a Fortune magazine feature story about RPX Corp.(RPXC), which compiled the statistics.
The article, called “Taking on the Trolls,” states: “AT&T is no anomaly. Google (GOOG) was hit with 43 [such] suits last year; Verizon (VZ), 42; Apple (AAPL), 41; Samsung (SSNLF) and Amazon (AMZN), 39 each; Dell and Sony (SNE), 34 each; Huawei, 32; Blackberry (BBRY), 31. Every brand on this unenviable top-ten list was sued by [a patent troll] at least once every 12 days.”
“Patent troll” is a pejorative term. A more neutral term, and the one that RPX uses, is “non-practicing entity,” or NPE. An NPE is a company that sells no products or services of its own. In their most controversial form, NPEs purchase patents on the open market and then assert them against operating companies, like AT&T and Google, seeking licensing fees and, often, suing to get them.
RPX is what’s known as a defensive patent aggregator. In exchange for a subscription fee—currently paid by some 168 companies, including Google, Verizon, and Samsung—it attempts to buy up potentially problematic patents on the open market, before NPEs can get their hands on them.
According to RPX’s statistics—which have been relied upon by academics and government agencies—NPEs filed 3,608 new suits in 2013, up 19% from the 3,042 they filed in 2012, and their suits named 4,843 total defendants, up 13% from the 4,282 sued a year earlier. NPE suits accounted for 67% of all new patent cases filed last year, and 63% of all new patent defendants, according to the figures RPX shared with Fortune.
When one takes into account NPE cases filed in previous years and still unresolved as of December 31, 2013, the top NPE target was Google, which was fighting 72 active cases as of that date. The next nine companies in line after it were AT&T (70), Apple (68), Samsung (63), Sony (58), Amazon (54), Verizon (46), HTC (42), LG Electronics (42), and Dell (41). (The figures for Google include suits against its Motorola Mobility unit, which Google announced last month that it is selling to Lenovo (LNGVY).)
NPEs have their defenders, as the Fortune story explains: “These argue that giant tech corporations routinely pilfer innovations dreamed up by independent inventors, and that NPEs simply give these powerless individuals the financial support and litigation muscle they need to vindicate their rights. NPEs therefore serve not only small inventors, the argument continues, but also society at large, by preserving the incentive systems that our Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution to ensure that the Thomas Edisons of the world would be motivated to provide the rest of us with the maximum possible benefit from their genius.
”Still, the sheer numbers have many people skeptical. Is AT&T really stealing breakthrough ideas from various Edisons at a rate of more than once a week?” | Patent trolls filed 19% more lawsuits in 2013 than in 2012. | 51.307692 | 0.923077 | 1.538462 | high | medium | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/feb/25/architecture1 | http://web.archive.org/web/20141002172745id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/feb/25/architecture1 | Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1 | 20141002172745 | Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1
There used to be a hotel in Milan next door to La Scala. In the lucky bedrooms, you could enjoy rehearsals through the walls. You can now get a similar effect in Commercial Street, London E1. I enjoyed a little basso buffo, or perhaps it was a tragic B flat lament, from Die Entfuhrung, only muffled by new Crittall W20 hot-dipped galvanised transom windows with low E coating and inert Argon gas in the double-glazing cavity.
I was in the newly refurbished Toynbee Studios, latest evolution of the charmingly muddled, architecturally undistinguished but culturally fascinating Toynbee Settlement. This remote colony of High Victorian virtue was established in the Jewish and Irish ghettos of Whitechapel, east London in 1884. A 'university settlement', the idea was that pioneers from the educated middle classes should penetrate the badlands and, by example, provide inspiration for exotic Ashkenazim and bibulous Paddies.
Founders Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, do-gooders of Homeric aspect and ambition, named their project after historian and philanthropist Arnold Toynbee who gave the world the expression 'industrial revolution'. It was this revolution's social fallout that the Barnetts aimed to improve through arts-based sympathetic magic. Their Toynbee Hall was designed by the obscure Elijah Hoole in vicarage-gothic style. Here, craftsman Charles Robert Ashbee, son of erotomaniac Henry Spencer Ashbee, soon created his Guild of Handicraft which, more or less directly, led to the founding of the neighbouring Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Other Toynbee Settlers included RH Tawney, Clement Attlee, Giuglielmo Marconi, Lenin and William Beveridge. The WEA was founded here in 1903. The Citizens' Advice Bureau and Child Poverty Action Group emerged from Toynbee inspirations in 1949 and 1965, respectively. It is a Valhalla of Labour aristocracy, but all goes to show that resonantly mediocre architecture need be no impediment to social progress.
The new studios have been quietly inserted by Levitt Bernstein into a 1938 building designed by Ramsay MacDonald's son, Alister, who made a living out of cinemas (then, let us not forget, cutting-edge new media). To Nikolaus Pevsner, they were 'resolutely modernist', but this did not prevent crypto-fascist architect Reginald Blomfield, author of the scurrilous Modernismus (1934), from being a Toynbee supporter at the time.
The original idea of a collective with mixed resources has been maintained by Artsadmin, the clients for this £6m refurbishment, although 1938's 'darkrooms' have matured into 'digital media units' and the rooftop sports area has now become a generously glazed dance studio. A 280-seat theatre has been lightly titivated. On the first floor remains a decommissioned juvenile court, London's first, its cruise-liner panelling mocking, now as then, the troubled state of proletarian youth. There is a new staircase, subterranean creative hutches, a reworked foyer, obligatory caff and those handsome new windows.
If you think art is about defiance, theft and rebellion, not matched funding or local authority initiatives, there is a temptation to see Toynbee Studios as a template, designed not for real needs, but to tick administrative boxes. But, no. It is more subtle. Considerably more subtle than the Bilbao Guggenheim, for example. Almost nothing is visible from the street. Marvellously, the furniture has been bought off eBay: chapel chairs at a fiver each. Artsadmin bravely told me it wanted as little design as possible.
Are the Toynbee Studios a revival or a survival? What would Henrietta Barnett think? Soon after she built Toynbee Hall, she planned Hampstead Garden Suburb in its meeting room. The flash money of the City has still not reached gritty Commercial Street. At least Toynbee Studios stay true to old principles of urban improvisation... while the Barnetts' ghosts are in the suburbs.
· Artsadmin opens on Friday with 'Guerilla Girls on Tour' | Architecture: Founded by social reformer Henrietta Barnett, the latest take on Toynbee Hall mixes high ideals and pragmatism, says Stephen Bayley | 31.25 | 0.666667 | 1 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/10/07/innovation-failure/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141007183631id_/http://fortune.com/2014/10/07/innovation-failure/ | Why most innovations are great big failures | 20141007183631 | If you had to guess, what percentage of ideas for groundbreaking new products or services would you say are marketplace flops, or just never see the light of day? 50%? 80%? According to Mark Payne, it’s closer to 90%—and he’s had a ringside seat for many of them, since his firm, Fahrenheit 212, often gets called in to figure out why someone’s brilliant plan just isn’t working.
Payne and his team are behind a string of winning innovations at companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Citibank, Mattel, and American Express. In How to Kill a Unicorn, Payne sets out to explain in detail, with colorful case studies, why some new ideas take off like rockets while others fizzle.
First off, he’s no fan of the group brainstorming that most companies use to jump-start creativity. “Anyone who has bought into the happy-go-lucky myths about what a great creative process feels like would be puzzled by the way we come at it, if not downright mortified,” Payne writes. “Joyful romps where every idea is celebrated tend to fill rooms with Post-It notes rather than real value, so you won’t find them here.”
Instead, at Fahrenheit 212, each member of a team goes off on his or her own to think separately about the task at hand, and then meets with others to defend the results against everyone else’s skepticism.
It can get rough, and for a down-to-earth reason. “Ideas are treated not as precious pearls to be polished, but as sparks born of friction”—because “exposing fledgling innovation ideas to the tough love of tough questions … ensures those ideas can survive in the real world of real companies placing real bets with real money.”
By Payne’s lights, most innovations fail because their creators didn’t ask tough questions at the outset. He calls the problem “putting the ‘wow’ before the ‘how.'” “The number of innovation projects that achieve a ‘wow’ but get fatally lanced on the ‘how’ is pretty staggering,” he writes. Especially with unusually complex ideas, Payne recommends figuring out the most difficult practical details first, “even if it means teeing up the issues that will kill a project now, rather than discovering them later.”
Even legendary innovators can get dazzled by an idea only to find out the hard way that it just isn’t workable. Take, for example, Google GOOG and what Payne calls its “rare and expensive misfire,” Google Wallet. Intended as both a new convenience for consumers and a way to harvest more customer data to drive targeted advertising, the product was designed to replace your old leather billfold with an all-digital phone-based app.
Google Wallet had plenty of “wow” but the “how” has been its downfall. For one thing, it involves digitizing credit cards, and the card companies demanded such big fees for participating that Google reportedly lost money on every transaction. Phone companies, seeing Google Wallet as a competitor in the potentially lucrative mobile-payments business, blocked the service. Meanwhile, most phone manufacturers and retail merchants have dragged their feet in installing the near-field communication (NFC) technology Google needed to make Wallet work. It all meant that “you would still need your old wallet to make it through the day,” Payne observes.
The debacle has so far cost Google at least $300 million, and the executives who led the team have left the company. “Google Wallet is perhaps an idea ahead of its time, though some of the structural factors impeding its success will be hard to ever overcome,” Payne writes. “But for now, it’s a great case study in what can go wrong” with any company’s world-beating idea when too many tough questions go unanswered—or unasked—at the start. | Companies usually come up with new ideas for products backward, dealing with the tough issues last. | 42.722222 | 0.777778 | 1 | high | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/10/07/66-of-female-restaurant-workers-report-being-harassed-by-managers/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141007210900id_/http://fortune.com/2014/10/07/66-of-female-restaurant-workers-report-being-harassed-by-managers/ | Two-thirds of female restaurant workers report being harassed by managers | 20141007210900 | This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.
A large majority of restaurant workers say they face consistent sexual harassment at the hands of customers, co-workers and managers, according to a new advocacy group survey.
Researchers at the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United, a nonprofit which advocates for low-paid service industry workers, interviewed 688 current and former restaurant employees from 39 states, and reported a number of findings:
Examples of sexual harassment given by respondents ran from sexual jokes to explicit advances and groping. In general, women reported a higher volume of harassment than men.
ROC United also said reports of sexual harassment increase in restaurants which give employees a base pay of $2.13 an hour—forcing waitstaff to rely on tips from customers—rather than offering minimum wage.
“When a guest does it, then I feel a lot more powerless,” a participating Houston server told ROC United. “That’s when I’m like, man, that’s where my money’s coming from.”
Women making $2.13 an hour reported getting sexually harassed twice as much as women working in states that pay minimum wage to all workers, and they were three times as likely to be told by management to wear “sexier” clothes, they said.
Several survey participants said that management not only dismissed harassment at the hands of customers, but encouraged them to play along.
“I was kind of surprised,” said a respondent. “He said, ‘Well, those people pay a lot of money for our services and, I mean, would it hurt to smile a little bit, be a little bit more friendly to them?’ And I was blown away.” | Examples of sexual harassment reported in a new survey run from sexual jokes to explicit advances and groping. | 17.842105 | 0.947368 | 5.473684 | medium | high | mixed |
http://www.people.com/article/george-clooney-comic-con-tomorrowland | http://web.archive.org/web/20141011095127id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/george-clooney-comic-con-tomorrowland | George Clooney Promotes Tomorrowland at New York Comic Con : People.com | 20141011095127 | 10/09/2014 AT 03:15 PM EDT
say the honeymoon would be short!
on Sept. 27 in Venice, was back at work on Thursday to promote his upcoming sci-fi adventure,
Clooney, 53, appeared as a surprise guest at New York Comic Con, where he joined other cast members from the Disney film, about a girl (Britt Robertson) who catches a glimpse of an idyllic futuristic land and seeks to return to it with the help of a mysterious failed inventor (Clooney).
Introduced by costar Hugh Laurie, Clooney walked onstage to loud cheering: "It is not lost on me that I am spending my honeymoon" at Comic Con, he said, joking, "I think since my
, I was disinvited from Comic Con. I see the comment sections on all you guys." It was his first Comic Con, he said, "on top of it being my honeymoon."
) "has a beautiful vision of the film he wants to make," Clooney added. It was fun for all of us to play in this giant toy box with him.... Hugh and I got to get into trouble in the Bahamas. That was fun. Two former television doctors – we'll take them all on!"
. "You can see the wheels turning in his eyes, and he reads as somebody who is very principled. He seems like a very pragmatic guy who also dreams, but he's not flighty. There's an integrity to him that you feel."
is scheduled for release on May 22, 2015. Watch the trailer below. | The recent groom turns up to promote his upcoming sci-fi film, Tomorrowland | 20.666667 | 0.666667 | 3.6 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/12/eric-fischl-america-art-expensive-toys | http://web.archive.org/web/20141013000813id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/12/eric-fischl-america-art-expensive-toys | Eric Fischl: ‘What America wants is artists who are doing very expensive toys’ | 20141013000813 | ‘I’d always avoided art fairs like the plague,” Eric Fischl is telling me in his studio on Long Island, New York, surrounded on all sides by his own larger-than-life paintings of art fairs. “Now I have been I still think they are the plague,” he says. “It’s like every single reason for art to exist does not exist in those places.”
Fischl, perhaps the best narrative painter of his American generation, is 66. He remembers how the plague spread. It was subtle at first. One biennial led to another. There was a sudden rash of Expos. It was one of those things that friends thought would be a fad, he suggests, but after the millennium dotcom crash and the collapse of the art market, the pandemic spread as the art world panicked and desperately tried to resuscitate itself as an asset class.
There are now 50 or more international shows, from Dubai to Shanghai to São Paulo, one for every week of the year, following the money, flogging product. Fischl steered clear of all of them for a long while, but finally went to the shiniest of the lot, Art Basel Miami Beach, a couple of years ago, at the request of New Yorker magazine, for an interview. He became grimly fascinated by the spectacle, took a camera with him there and subsequently to Frieze New York, and to the fair in Southampton up the road from his home in Sag Harbor, Great Gatsby country.
Fischl then made Photoshop collages of his hundreds of photos, creating scenes that might have happened. He gestures to the fabulous painting behind me. “The big sneakers here are from a show of Claes Oldenburg’s. The guy with his back to us was a guard at that show. She on the left was from an art fair at Southampton. That guy was from Miami. I mix and match. Same crowd, different clothes. But always the same experience.”
An exhibition of Fischl’s art-show paintings (priced between £200,000 and £400,000) will open at the Victoria Miro Gallery, in London, this week, to coincide with the Frieze art fair. He hopes that people can go to Frieze and then come to his show and see what they looked like at Frieze.
If you have never been to Frieze, his paintings capture much of its dead-eyed atmosphere, its comic and dispiriting juxtapositions. In Fischl’s Art Fair: Booth #4 The Price, a distracted crowd of buyers cluster around an amorphous Ken Price sculpture, not looking. Behind them, an enormous intimate self-portrait by Joan Semmel goes unremarked. “The big collectors do this kind of speed-dating thing,” Fischl says. “They try to get in and out before anyone buys what they are after and certainly before the hoi polloi gets to look. And then you’ve got people who are just there for the social scene. So you have people texting or not paying any attention at all. It is as if the art is not there, or that they think it has no effect on them. But when you stop the moment you can see this weird world that is taking place. They are being regarded and judged by the work itself in some ways.”
In my experience, I suggest, Frieze provides exactly the enervating experience of a Saturday afternoon at Brent Cross shopping mall, except some of the stuff on sale is priced in the millions. Wealth becomes the spectacle, not art.
“If you start with the premise,” Fischl says, “and I know it is a romantic and naive premise, but I none the less think it is true, that artists are looking for love, and they are expressing love in their commitment to what they have made. An art fair is designed so they never get any in return.” He speaks languidly and laughs broadly. “Love is complicated, obviously. But the reason artists do what they do on some level is to say: ‘Don’t look at me, look at this thing I made and you will know the true me.’”
Fischl himself developed that particular faith as a young painter in the 1970s when he started to try to express himself on canvas, first at CalArts, the Disney-funded art college outside Los Angeles, and later in Nova Scotia, where he took a teaching job and met his wife, the celebrated landscape artist April Gornik, and finally in New York. In a world of abstract expressionism and conceptualism he became part of that endangered species, a figurative painter, a storyteller. Despite this self-imposed handicap, by 1985 Andy Warhol was describing Fischl in his diary as “the hot new top artist”; he was the subject of a long Vanity Fair profile entitled “Bad Boy of Brilliance” which compared him favourably to celebrity artist peers such as Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat; and his paintings were suddenly selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To understand how Fischl found himself at the centre of that world, a version of which he now satirises 30 years on, you have to understand where he came from. The paintings that made Fischl’s name were drawn from an adolescence spent up the road from where he now lives, in a town called Port Washington. His father went into New York City every day selling promotional films to corporations in the days before video. His mother, spirited and beautiful, was also an out-of-control alcoholic, the “unspeakable” open secret that Fischl, his brother and two sisters did all they could to contain in their suburban idyll.
Fischl’s early paintings exhibited a disturbing kind of voyeurism, in scenes that might have been written by John Cheever or John Updike. The two defining paintings of that period — Bad Boy, which depicts a young boy standing before a woman, perhaps his mother, sprawled naked on a bed, while he feels for her handbag; and Sleepwalker, in which a teenager masturbates in a paddling pool, bathed in Edward Hopper light – were representative of the uncertain boundaries, the disquieting taboos, that became his constant theme.
Fischl depicted the fallout of early 1960s America at war with inhibition, and deeply troubled by that fact. In his recent memoir, also entitled Bad Boy, he recalls a youth in which his parents talked openly about their sex life and “lounged around their bedroom – where we’d visit after dinner to watch TV – completely naked”. When his mother was drinking, which was often, “her whole face seemed pinched and pulled back. Her artificial expression, a Kabuki-like mask, reminded me of a terrifying drag queen. It was impossible to predict what she might do… ”
Impossible, that was, until the day, not long after he had started art school, when Fischl was called to say his mother was critically ill in hospital after driving her car into a tree, an act of suicide. Fischl got back home just before she died and was overwhelmed by the fact he had “not been strong enough, smart enough” to save her from herself. He subsequently became a painter of what had been “unspeakable” because, he wrote, on “some level I wanted to make her life good”. What did he mean by that?
“It was a thing my therapist spent many years trying to get me past,” he says. “The tragedy of her life was that she was creative and intelligent and stimulating, and if she had channelled that in a different way she could have been amazing. She tried art but she lacked the stubbornness to do it. She couldn’t get past the self-critical thing we all have and she would destroy it or fuck it up or not finish it. When she killed herself, I felt I was making art for her. I thought I could make her pain less by succeeding at this thing where she had failed. Which of course makes it pretty hard to own your own success… ”
It took him many years of messing about with abstraction, and other strategies, to realise he had to confront those experiences head on.
“I actually found it harder to paint a specific chair in a scene than to paint the woman passed out on the floor. Somehow the woman passed out on the floor could have been any woman. The chair became something closer to my particular experience. The first brave step was doing that.”
“It was empowering ultimately,” he says. “I suppose if I had gotten crushed by the critical reception the way I feared when I started to make these paintings I wouldn’t have continued. When the pictures were embraced, however, I went further and further into it.” The breakthrough was Sleepwalker. “I started to try to paint in a representational manner,” Fischl says, “and it was a stretch because I had never been trained that way. My drawing skills were iffy. Trying to render flesh. I was learning in this painting and people tried to persuade me off it. I was being told: ‘You have to find a way of making it look more contemporary.’ I went through a thousand possible ways to do that but it was always everybody else’s idea. In the end I was left with myself. That is something that all artists ultimately have to find: the thing that they can do that doesn’t look like art.”
It seems strange to be talking to a contemporary artist about emotional authenticity, about representation, and about the influence of Degas and Manet rather than Warhol and Joseph Beuys. “There are two kinds of painter, if you like,” Fischl says at one point. “One is somebody like Hopper who creates an image that burns on your retina and you never forget it. You can see it, walk away and still see it. [With] the other kind you are caught up in the authenticity of the energy. The believable moment. Jackson Pollock, you are right there with him. I am essentially the Hopper artist trying to create a frozen moment. The truth about how it actually was.”
Despite that commitment, or because of it, Fischl found himself co-opted into the wild and whirling art world of 1980s New York – his first experience of the milieu he has lately been documenting. Warhol visited his studio, and offered his blessing. “He sought out youth, he was always curious about what was going on,” Fischl recalls. “Most of the artists we admired wanted to be outside society looking in. Warhol wanted to be right at the centre of high society and still be radical. It was as if he wanted to infect it from the inside out.”
Looking back on what quickly became a frenzy of parties and gallery openings and cocaine and booze and money – which had little to do with his original change-the-world ambitions for his art – Fischl admits it was nevertheless “all incredibly exciting. It was like a spinning world, it had real centrifugal force. Traditional art magazines couldn’t keep up so the dailies took their place. Artist’s photographs were appearing in the arts and entertainment pages next to those of rock stars and film stars. It was like a wave had picked us up.”
Fischl was beached not long after just as surely. After one bender too many, after the opening of a solo New York show, and a near car crash, he knew he had to remove himself from the centrifugal world he found himself in. He has a sense that he inherited his mother’s addictive gene, and that he had welcomed the self-destructive aspect of it in some way “in order to survive it, to prove it could be done”. With premonitions of an art world about to finally sell its soul he packed up his studio in New York, moved with April Gornik the two hours out here – following an artists’ path trodden by Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and others — and swapped his previous narcotic highs for more life-affirming ones.
Fischl counts Steve Martin and John McEnroe among his closest friends. After McEnroe opened a gallery in New York on his retirement, Fischl tutored him in art history in return for tennis lessons. He plays most days, sometimes with McEnroe himself, and likes to make connections between his game and his work (“both are performed in a rectangle, and are about gesture and reach and executing an intention, resistance”). He and Gornik bought some land and built their beautiful, brutal 10,000 sq ft minimalist home on the edge of a salt marsh, complete with matching studios. They moved in on millennium eve and Fischl entered what he calls, with a laugh, “his long mid-career period”.
From this vantage, Fischl believes himself to be an outsider to the kind of world he describes in his art-show paintings. His work has continued to sell – his record for a single picture was the $1.9m paid for his painting Daddy’s Girl in 2006 – and he has moved on from adolescent angst to document and interpret the worlds he now inhabits. He has cast, for example, his unnerving eye over the plutocrats at play in St Tropez as well as the Hamptons.
He is surprised at the way his career has gone. “I had this idea that I was making work that would be shown in museums but that nobody would really want to live with,” he says. “I mean who the fuck wants to wake up and have breakfast with somebody jerking off in a pool? I overestimated museums, though. They were the ones that wanted to put up warning signs in front of the work, whereas the private sector bought it. I would have liked it to be more a public art.”
That particular frustration has crystallised recently around two projects, which were the real cause of his decision to turn his painter’s eye to the art world itself. Both projects were made in response to what he saw as the fracture in US culture after 9/11, and the inability of the art world to address it.
In 2002 Fischl, who has been working more and more in sculpture since he moved to Long Island, made a public statue, Tumbling Woman, which was to be a permanent fixture at the Rockefeller centre in New York. The life-size bronze sculpture – he has a smaller version outside his studio – shows a human figure apparently in free fall, just above the ground, as if in suspended animation.
“9/11 was so profoundly shocking – that we could be that vulnerable, that powerless,” Fischl says. “And it was combined with something really freaky: 3,000 people died and there were no bodies. How do you process the mourning? It was like a surreal disappearance. The only way we knew how horrific it had been was in the images of the people who jumped out the windows, that they would choose to die that way. Right away though, the media self-censored and got rid of those images. I thought that was wrong.”
When Fischl’s simple human sculpture was unveiled, there was an outcry. A New York Post columnist suggested it was a cruel and self-serving image and accused him of “riding on the backs of those who had suffered grief and loss in an effort to revive a moribund career”. After that he became public enemy number one.
“Nobody. My dealer tried to protect me a bit from the hysteria. Friends in the press said I should let it drop. The guy who owned Rockefeller Centre, a big art patron in the city, removed the sculpture. He told me he was getting bomb threats and he couldn’t take the risk.” Fischl laughs bleakly. “I told him: ‘No one is going to bomb you over a statue.’ But that is the world we live in.”
Nearly a decade later, in another effort to use art to help communities come together around an idea of America, he laid plans for a touring art show, a basis for a national conversation called “Now and Here”. The idea was to have the nation’s leading artists and poets and musicians make a travelling event that would offer an alternative to the tribal and polarised nature of political debate. “We have been screaming and yelling at each other for years. Still are. I believed art could provide images as a starting point for dialogue. I thought the hard part would be getting the artists with these huge international reputations to get together and think about the same thing at the same moment for once,” Fischl says. “But of course it turned out to be the opposite. The artists were easily persuaded but the money – we tried for funding from corporations and billionaires – never was.”
Fischl was told again that his idea was just a careerist strategy, as if that was the only reason any artist might do anything. “Instead of any grown-up conversation, what we have instead, what America apparently wants, is artists who are doing very expensive toys,” he says. “Jeff Koons is a good example. What kind of culture expresses itself only in childlike behaviour? Shit jokes and childish humour – and is greeted with huge popularity.”
Fischl’s art-show paintings, for all their cool comic appeal, were made to portray the emptiness of that compact. “That world has just become a celebration of money-making,” Fischl says. “I went to a fair a few weeks ago and in the middle of this thing was a De Kooning painting. I thought ‘Wow!’ It turned out it was in a booth for a real estate company. They had this De Kooning for sale as well as the $40m homes. You could buy the house and get the painting for an extra $5m or whatever. The barriers have collapsed between the commercial and the art world. It is not irony – it is just cynicism. The work is not intended to have you look and think twice, which is what irony does. It’s cynical in that they couldn’t give a shit whether you get it or you don’t get it.”
Some of the people in his paintings are clearly recognisable, though he is not interested in putting names to faces. Has he had any response?
“I did have one experience where a girl in one of the paintings saw it at the New York Frieze show and called me the next day to say she believed she was in my painting. She was really thrilled of course. The thing is we don’t see ourselves as characters – so I think people will look and not always see themselves. And anyway, 10 years from now no one will know any people in it.”
Does he believe that all those who recognise themselves as faces in the art crowd see it as a form of flattery?
“I don’t really care, to be honest,” he says. “For me it is more like an admission that this is my world and this is what it looks like.”
Eric Fischl: Art Fair Paintings is at Victoria Miro, London, from Tuesday until 19 December at the Victoria Miro gallery, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 | The American painter famed for disturbingly voyeuristic scenes of suburban life has turned his gaze to the cynical world of the international art fair. Tim Adams met him | 129.689655 | 0.793103 | 1.137931 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/12/rembrandt-national-gallery-late-works-london/print | http://web.archive.org/web/20141013134955id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/12/rembrandt-national-gallery-late-works-london/print | Rembrandt: The Late Works review - triumph in master’s tragedy | 20141013134955 | Rembrandt is so high in the ranking of great artists that our amassed reverence has sunk like syrup into the brown and gold surfaces of his paintings.
There he is in the first room of this startling exhibition, gazing back from his self-portraits, a sage and infinitely gentle soul: Rembrandt the master. Then the curators pull a hidden lever and the floor disappears.
This brilliant, brave blockbuster reveals the true Rembrandt – a man at the end of his tether. It is a shocking and cathartic journey through the tragedy of his fall. By exposing that, it reveals his ultimate triumph. It is like seeing a great actor play King Lear and Prospero as a double bill.
In the second room hangs one of Rembrandt’s most bizarre and disturbing works, The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis. This mad history painting was commissioned in 1660 for Amsterdam town hall. Rembrandt was one of several artists hired to decorate its interior with noble scenes glorifying the Dutch republic.
He portrayed the rebellion of the ancient Batavians, a favourite patriotic legend of a republic that had recently freed itself from Spain. But he changed it into an image of madness and desolation.
Tradition had it that the rebel leader Claudius Civilis had only one eye. Instead of concealing or ennobling this lack as a conventional history painting might, Rembrandt homed in on it with morbid fascination. The empty eye socket of Claudius Civilis becomes the focal point of this painting of blind faith and blind courage – a desperate, scary drama of suicidal heroism.
This vision of extreme, amoral bravery with its dark suggestion that war, freedom and nation are empty myths was quickly taken down from the town hall.
The censorship of one of his most ambitious paintings was a further humiliation for Rembrandt. For the man we meet here was a failure. In the 1650s, in his mid 40s, Rembrandt went bankrupt. He had to sell all the jewels and art he had collected in his wealthy years. The luscious gold-spun clothes and jewellery in his 1665 masterpiece The Jewish Bride, one of this exhibition’s most incandescent marvels, are imaginary replacements for the material possessions he lost.
As a bankrupt he depended on his son Titus and his housekeeper and lover Hendrickje Stoffels to do business on his behalf. For her pains, Stoffels was excommunicated from church for “practising whoredom with the painter Rembrandt”.
Love and sex are among the great themes of Rembrandt’s late art, as he insists on the beauty of the human stuff Christianity condemned. In one erotic etching he portrays a black woman naked. He loves her difference. But his most frequent model was Stoffels, who poses for him stepping into a stream or as the Roman heroine Lucretia choosing death over shame.
These portraits are both sexual and full of pathos. He wants to show the world – show history, show us – that she is no “whore” but his dignified and serious beloved.
She poses most poignantly as Bathsheba, who in the Old Testament was summoned to sleep with King David, simply because he wished it. A servant washes Bathsheba’s feet while she sits gravely meditating on David’s letter. Rembrandt hails the grandeur of her nakedness – and her sorrow, as she endures the burden of a king’s desire.
So many sorrows, so many souls. They look at you from Rembrandt’s great group portrait, The Syndics (1662) – faces that suddenly seem alive and self-conscious, returning the beholder’s gaze with a kind of intimate pity. We are all in this together, they sadly, silently say.
Rembrandt’s compassionate drawings of a young woman hanging from a gibbet are among the show’s many shocks. She and the Syndics – even though the girl is an outcast, an executed criminal, and the Syndics are pillars of Amsterdam society – are somehow the same.
For they and we are headed to the same undiscovered country as the horribly cut-up corpse that Rembrandt portrays with eerie attentiveness in The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joan Deyman. A student holds the sawn off top of the dead man’s skull, as if it were a cup. The exposed brain is a labyrinth of pink goo.
Rembrandt learned so much from his failures, his humiliations. He learned that we are all equal. The shadows of death gather around us like the black ink that overwhelms his etching of the crucifixion – but we can be heroes in love, in truth.
Here is the human condition laid bare by a man who never painted to reassure. No artist has ever been more modern than Rembrandt, if modernity means looking with total frankness at the darkness and the light. | National Gallery, London This brilliant, brave journey through the tragedy of his fall reveals the true Rembrandt – a man at the end of his tether | 31.172414 | 0.862069 | 5.206897 | medium | medium | mixed |
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/14/giovanni-battista-moroni-royal-academy-tailors-favourite-artist | http://web.archive.org/web/20141014141926id_/http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/14/giovanni-battista-moroni-royal-academy-tailors-favourite-artist | Suits you: tailors’ favourite artist Moroni cuts to Royal Academy | 20141014141926 | Tailors love the 16th-century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Moroni, as the Royal Academy – situated halfway between the bespoke shirt and made-to-measure pinstripe superhighways of Jermyn Street and Savile Row – has discovered.
The academy is about to launch the first major exhibition in the UK of the painter whose best known work shows a tailor in action, gathering together rare loans including his late religious paintings and altarpieces that have never left Italy before, and one portrait only identified as his work last year by the curators of this show.
The tailor, who has been in the Natonal Gallery collection since the 19th century, is the earliest known portrait of a craftsman engaged in manual labour, pausing to look enigmatically at the viewer, shears in hand and about to tackle a length of costly black fabric already marked up in chalk before him.
It’s not surprising that tailors love it: it shows a confident and immensly dignified man doing a skilled and well-paid job, rather than one who has done well enough to pay an artist to immortalise him as an aspirant aristocrat. Moroni’s tailor obviously has done very well, wearing a gentleman’s sword belt, a gold ring, and quietly costly clothing including frills of lace at his wrists and throat.
This was unique, curator Arturo Galansino said: “It had never been done before. The tailor is one of the most revolutionary portraits in all of art history.”
The painting was already well known by the 17th century in Venice, the luxury capital of Europe. Moroni was acclaimed, somewhat grudgingly, for the striking realism of his portraits.
One anecdote has a Venetian official based in Bergamo coming to Venice to try and commission a portrait from the most famous painter of the day, Titian. The master tells him to go back to Bergamo, where there is the best portrait painter famous for his naturalism.
This, Galansino says, was a double-edged compliment: naturalistic portraiture – although Moroni’s work is believed to have heavily influenced the young genius Caravaggio – was the least regarded rung on the artistic ladder, far inferior to bombastic history paintings or symbolism overloaded allegories.
However, Galansino points out that many of his other portraits are fashion and textile-history treasures, showing the quality of fabrics and the details of the construction of garments in pristine detail, as well as recording fashions which changed so fast that the gowns of two magnificently dressed young women changed completely inside five years. Isotta Brembati, coming on loan from a museum in Bergamo, where Moroni lived and worked for many years, was painted in about 1555. She is wearing a green and gold velvet gown, with the low-cut neckline grazing her nipples. Five years later another portrait shows an equally expensively dressed woman in pink silk brocade buttoned up to the throat, with a high lace-edged ruff.
Many of Moroni’s subjects, though magnificently and fashionably dressed – particularly men in the sobre blacks that were actually the most expensive colours because they took so much costly dye – have rough outdoor complexions, far from the waxy smoothness of many Venetian portraits.
“There is no doubt that Moroni is the greatest at showing you the person he is standing in front of, and not just the outer appearance but the inner man,” Galansino said. “But people would not have thought this was his most important work, and he would not have thought so himself.”
Relatively little is known about the artist, despite the curators’ attempts to draw together every scrap of recorded information. He was born in Albino in the province of Bergamo, found local civil and religious patrons, and is not recorded as travelling outside Lombardy though he is assumed to have gone to Venice. He died relatively young, in his 50s, and is said to have worked himself to death, completing all his commissions alone without studio assistants or pupils.
It was Moroni’s bad luck (and this, curators believe, explains why he isn’t a household name today) that his contemporary Giorgio Vasari never came to Bergamo and so didn’t know his work. Vasari’s pioneering work, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, which combined descriptions and criticisms of artwork with gossipy anecdotes about their makers, misses out Moroni completely.
He stands or falls by his work: Galansino thinks the exhibition will be revelatory.
• Giovanni Battista Moroni is at the Royal Academy, London, 25 October to 25 January 2015 | First UK exhibition devoted to ‘revolutionary’ Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni will include portraits never before seen outside Italy, reports Maev Kennedy | 36 | 0.666667 | 0.916667 | high | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/10/17/un-foundation-ceo-on-the-3-things-missing-from-the-medias-ebola-coverage/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141017113808id_/http://fortune.com/2014/10/17/un-foundation-ceo-on-the-3-things-missing-from-the-medias-ebola-coverage/ | UN Foundation CEO on 3 untold Ebola stories | 20141017113808 | On Wednesday, Kathy Calvin was late for our scheduled phone interview, but she had a good excuse. Calvin, the CEO and president of the United Nations Foundation, was just getting off the other line with Dr. David Nabarro, the man leading the UN’s fight against Ebola.
The UN Foundation, which serves as an advocate for the UN and a platform for ideas and resources to help the organization solve global problems, is focused on delivering accurate information to communities around the world about what exactly is happening on the ground. The foundation has also set up a fund for people who want to make a taxable donation to UN operations working to halt the Ebola outbreak.
Yet as the U.S. combats its first domestic cases of Ebola, Calvin says there are still a few key story lines that are getting left out of the discussion.
“They are being told, but they are hard to compete against a nurse getting Ebola in Texas,” Calvin said. “It’s just the way of storytelling.”
Here are three stories that Calvin says are missing from mainstream Ebola coverage:
To subscribe to Caroline Fairchild’s daily newsletter on the world’s most powerful women, go to www.getbroadsheet.com. | Kathy Calvin spoke with Fortune about what the UN is seeing on the ground, but is missing from the headlines. | 10.545455 | 0.818182 | 1.545455 | low | medium | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/11/01/wells-fargo-now-most-profitable-bank-in-u-s/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141018062431id_/http://fortune.com:80/2013/11/01/wells-fargo-now-most-profitable-bank-in-u-s/ | Wells Fargo now most profitable bank in U.S. | 20141018062431 | FORTUNE — In another sign of the huge changes within the banking business since the financial crisis, Wells Fargo WFC is on pace to make more money this year than any other bank in the U.S.
Analysts expect the San Francisco-based bank to make $20.8 billion for 2013. That’s more than Bank of America BAC , Goldman Sachs GS , and Morgan Stanley MS are expected to earn combined this year. And it’s $3.5 billion more than Wells’ closest profit rival, JPMorgan Chase JPM , which had held the largest profit title for three years in a row.
But JPMorgan’s legal woes have cleared the road for the Wells Fargo wagon to take the lead in the profit race. JPMorgan is in the process of negotiating a $13 billion settlement with regulators related to the bank’s mortgage business.
MORE: New bank meme: Too connected to fail
For a long time, the traditional business of taking deposits and making loans was seen as the less desirable part of the financial industry. The banks wanted to be on Wall Street, where Goldman and others were making big profits on investment banking and trading. But an increase in regulations and diminished demand for Wall Street’s riskier investments have flipped that equation. That’s benefited Wells Fargo, which largely stuck with its traditional banking business as others were reaching for profits on Wall Street.
What’s more, Wells has used the financial crisis to solidify its lead in mortgage lending as rivals BofA and Citigroup C have had to tend to their wounds from the financial crisis, and others disappeared completely. Wells is now by far the nation’s largest mortgage lender, issuing roughly a third of all home loans. That paid off last year and in the first half of this year, as low interest rates sparked a refinance boom.
Bank investors and analysts say return on equity, or ROE, is a better measure of a bank’s profitability, because it adjusts for size and how much capital is being deployed to produce earnings. But even on that measure, Wells is racing ahead of its rivals. So far this year, Wells ROE has averaged nearly 14%. Compare that to 11% and 10% at Goldman and JPMorgan, respectively. Before the financial crisis, Goldman routinely had an ROE that topped 20%.
MORE: it’s time for European banks to shrink
On an ROE basis, Wells trails U.S. Bank USB , which has also shunned Wall Street businesses. That bank had an ROE of 16% in its most recent quarter.
It’s been quite a while since any U.S. bank ranked as the most profitable in the world. That distinction goes to China’s largest banks, though bad loans appear to be piling up there.
And even in the U.S., analysts don’t expect Wells to stay the most profitable (in net income terms) for long. The title is expected to return to JPMorgan next year. So Wells, enjoy it while it lasts. | The Wells Fargo wagon is pulling into profit town. It won't stay for long, though. | 30.052632 | 0.736842 | 1.578947 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/blues-roll-past-coyotes-101814 | http://web.archive.org/web/20141020230445id_/http://www.foxsports.com:80/arizona/story/blues-roll-past-coyotes-101814 | Blues roll past Coyotes | 20141020230445 | Updated OCT 19, 2014 11:04p ET
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Jaden Schwartz put the exclamation point on a dominant night for the St. Louis Blues.
Schwartz completed his first NHL hat trick with 3 seconds remaining to cap the Blues' 6-1 rout of the Arizona Coyotes on Saturday night.
"It was just one of those nights," he said. "I was in the slot and the puck was just kind of finding me. Everybody has those games every once in a while and tonight was one of them for me."
Jake Allen was strong in goal in his first NHL start in two seasons, finishing with 24 saves.
St. Louis' Jori Lehtera scored his first career goal and had two assists.
David Backes and Alexander Steen each had a goal and an assist, and Vladimir Tarasenko assisted on three goals. Lauri Korpikoski ruined Allen's shutout bid with 9:32 left.
Backes' goal, Lehtera's goal, and two of Schwartz's scores came on power plays. St. Louis scored on all four of its power play opportunities.
"I like the fact we stayed with it right to the end," Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. "We kept coming. That's the way we have to play. We're a much better team when we don't absorb, we initiate, and I thought we kept initiating the whole game."
Schwartz, who also had an assist, made a shot from the point just before the game ended.
"I didn't think that was going to happen at all," he said. "My teammates wanted me to stay on the ice and try to get it. I never had a hat trick, so it was pretty special."
Allen had a big game two nights after regular Blues goalie Brian Elliott shut out Los Angeles in a 1-0 shootout loss.
"We've had really good goaltending every game we've played so far this year," Hitchcock said. "That's really a good sign. They give us a chance to win every night."
Beleaguered goalie Mike Smith had 30 saves for Arizona and has allowed 15 goals in his three games.
"We didn't move quick enough, move the puck quick enough, check quick enough, all the above," Arizona coach Dave Tippett said. "It was a test against a real good team and we did not fare very well."
Allen, the AHL's top goalie last season, made his first NHL start since April 21, 2013.
Both teams lost key players to injury.
St. Louis' Paul Stastny, who had four points in three games before Saturday, left with an upper-body injury early in the second period. He was holding his left wrist as he left the ice. Hitchcock said Stastny would not play in Sunday night's game at Anaheim.
The Coyotes lost Martin Hanzal to a lower-body injury with 13:21 left in the second period. The Arizona center had to be helped from the ice.
Smith withstood a flurry of St. Louis shots before Arizona's Oliver Eckman-Larsson was called for interference, the game's first penalty, with 2:36 left in the first period. Eighteen seconds into the power play, the puck was free in front of the Coyotes' net when it glanced in off Backes' left skate.
After a video review, the goal was upheld, officials ruling that it was not a distinct kick as required to nullify the goal.
It was Backes' second goal of the young season and the first power-play goal allowed by Arizona. The Blues had a 15-7 advantage in shots in the first period.
Backes had another great chance at a goal in the second period when St. Louis had a 3-on-0 advantage, but his wide-open shot missed the net far to the left.
No matter. St. Louis got two later in the period, on goals by Steen and Schwartz. Schwartz netted his second goal in the third period to make it 4-0.
NOTES: Arizona was 10 for 10 on penalty kills before Saturday night. ... The Coyotes have allowed nine first-period goals in their first four games. ... St. Louis has won five straight in Arizona and nine of 11 against the Coyotes. ... Since 2008-09, Backes is the only NHL player with over 300 points and 1,300 hits. ... The Blues played at Los Angeles on Thursday before going to Arizona for Saturday's game. They will head back to Southern California to face the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday. | Jaden Schwartz completed his first NHL hat trick with 3 seconds to play as St. Louis dominated Arizona 6-1 on Saturday night. | 35.68 | 0.96 | 4.8 | high | high | mixed |
http://fortune.com/2013/12/10/more-americans-are-stuck-in-housing-purgatory/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141021230147id_/http://fortune.com/2013/12/10/more-americans-are-stuck-in-housing-purgatory/ | More Americans are stuck in housing purgatory | 20141021230147 | The wealth of Americans reached a nominal record high during the summer, the Federal Reserve reported Monday. Driven largely by surging stock prices and rising home values, net worth in the U.S. rose 2.6% to $77.3 trillion from July through September. That represents the highest level since such records started to be kept in 1945.
This is positive news, but likely only for the richest Americans. The improvement masks the fact that wealth is unevenly distributed among the affluent, who tend to own stocks. For most less-affluent Americans, their biggest asset is their home. And while property prices have been recovering, many homeowners were disproportionately hurt by the 2007 crash of the housing market; it may be a while before they feel any wealthier.
Just take a look at the market for rentals: It used to be that those who couldn’t afford to buy would rent. Now, however, more Americans are finding that renting isn’t a more affordable alternative, according to a study released Monday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
MORE: Lululemon picks its new CEO
A shortage of apartments, especially cheap ones, has been an ongoing problem for years. The recession made it worse, as record foreclosures led to an increased demand for rentals of an already limited pool of properties, driving prices even higher. Demand also came from many who couldn’t get approved for a mortgage, as banks tightened lending standards.
True, the housing crash created a glut of empty homes ripe for renting. Remarkably, however, “soaring demand was more than enough to absorb the 2.7 million single-family homes that flooded into the rental market after 2007,” the study found.
Add to that more than a decade’s worth of stagnant incomes, and it’s easy to see why New York City political activist Jimmy McMillan proclaimed during the state’s 2010 governor’s race (over and over, mind you), “The rent is too damn high.”
In 1960, about one in four renters nationwide spent more than 30% of their income on housing, the traditional measure of affordability. Today, one in two are cost-burdened.
The squeeze has been felt most by renters who make less than $15,000 a year. But middle-income Americans make up the biggest increase among renters feeling the pinch. The share of cost-burdened renters with incomes between $30,000 and $44,999 was 44 % in 2011, up 11 percentage points from 2001. And the share with incomes of $45,000 to 74,999 was 19%, up 9 percentage points during the same period.
“Incomes just aren’t keeping up,” says Eric Belsky, director of Harvard’s joint center for housing studies. He adds the trend will get worse in the coming years before it gets better.
MORE: Don’t cut up your credit card (yet)
Throughout the economic recovery, housing experts thought higher prices for rentals was a positive sign. The hope was that renting would eventually become too expensive and it would make more financial sense to buy. While that might be true, and new home sales have been rising, it’s hard to see how many more renters can sock up enough savings for a down payment to buy when more are spending a bigger share of their income on rent.
Renters are missing out on one of the cheapest times to buy. And as more are finding it harder to pay rent, they’re missing out on years of building equity for themselves and their families. | As rent rates rise and incomes remain stagnant, Americans are feeling the squeeze. | 45.533333 | 0.8 | 1.066667 | high | medium | abstractive |
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/10/18/martin-parr-and-all-things-english/VwzYBz6Shn8aWt6SgH822L/story.html | http://web.archive.org/web/20141022004703id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/arts/movies/2014/10/18/martin-parr-and-all-things-english/VwzYBz6Shn8aWt6SgH822L/story.html? | Martin Parr and all things English | 20141022004703 | Best known as a still photographer, Martin Parr has also made documentaries for the BBC that wryly analyze all things English. They are anthropological studies of the strange world of latter day British capitalism and the Monty Python-like perseverance of the consumer class.
Two of these films will screen Oct. 24-25 at the Harvard Film Archive in their program “Martin Parr, Filmmaker.” In “Think of England” (1999), Parr’s roving camera confronts locals with the question of what it means to be English (faces painted with football team colors and snobby fetes serving poached salmon feature prominently). In “Turkey and Tinsel” (2014) Parr tags along with a group of oldsters visiting an off-season seaside hotel that offers special Yuletide programs. Among the attractions are a randy Elvis impersonator and an Elton John lookalike who does lap dances.
Parr will attend the 7 p.m. screening of “Turkey and Tinsel” on Oct. 25. The Harvard Film Archive is in the Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge.
For more information, go to www.hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2014sepoct/parr.html.
The recent headlines about athletes and other celebrities involved in spousal abuse merely underscores the war against women plaguing our society. As Cynthia Hill’s infuriating but essential documentary “Private Violence” points out, four women are murdered every day by current or ex partners. The film brings home the reality of such statistics by showing the torment of victims and their dogged efforts to achieve security and justice through a flawed legal system.
Newport Film will be showing “Private Violence” on Oct. 20 at 6 p.m. at the Jane Pickens Theatre, 49 Touro St., Newport. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with domestic violence professionals. Admission is free.
For more information, go to www.newportfilm.com/film-events/films/private-violence.
Another thing to worry about
While fretting about ISIS, Ebola, and the feeble Bruins offense, we can thank the people at PBS for reminding us about another problem we can’t do anything about. On Oct. 21 they will be releasing the DVD of Kate Dart’s “Nova: Rise of the Hackers” ($24.95), which documents the desperate struggle between cryptographers, scientists, and other security experts who try to keep up with those anonymous creeps who steal identities, break into corporate data banks, threaten to hack the Defense Department, and jam your inbox with spam.
For more information, go to www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/rise-of-the-hackers.html.
The next best thing to hanging out at Irish pubs is watching a documentary about them. Alex Fegan’s “The Irish Pub” takes a look at “the greatest institution in Irish society” (their words, not mine). Unfortunately the Guinness is on the screen and not on tap, but at least you don’t have to worry about driving home. It opens Oct. 24 at the Kendall Square Cinema, but you can see it for free if you register for the Oct. 23 Globedocs screening (www.bostonglobe.com/globedocs) which will feature a discussion with the filmmaker, moderated by Globe columnist Kevin Cullen. For more information, go to www.landmarktheatres.com/market/boston/kendallsquarecinema.htm. . . . Mention the word “economics” and watch most people’s eyes glaze over. Too bad such an abstract concept more or less rules our lives. Morgan Spurlock tries to make it easier to follow with his new series of short films called “We the Economy.” Get a sneak peek at a special screening at the Kendall Square Cinema on Oct. 20. For more information, go to www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=144023 | Best known as a still photographer, Martin Parr has also made documentaries for the BBC that wryly analyze all things English. Two of these films will screen Oct. 24-25 at the Harvard Film Archive in their program “Martin Parr, Filmmaker.” | 13.895833 | 1 | 24.041667 | low | high | extractive |
http://fortune.com/2010/08/23/how-big-companies-can-stop-the-brain-drain/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141022050734id_/http://fortune.com:80/2010/08/23/how-big-companies-can-stop-the-brain-drain/ | How big companies can stop the brain drain | 20141022050734 | Across all industries, the best and brightest are striking out on their own to escape corporate bureaucracy. That need not be the case. Here’s how big institutions can re-imagine themselves as centers of innovation
By John Hagel III and John Seely Brown
People are increasingly pursuing the jobs and endeavors for which they have the most passion. It is not a surprise then that many of the most passionate and talented individuals are leaving their corporate homes and striking out on their own.
Passionate individuals are fleeing the institutional environs that constrain, rather than amplify, individual passion and creativity. They can no longer abide being a passive cog in a highly scripted and often stultifying corporate machine.
But the flight from big institutions will be a temporary, transitional phenomenon if those institutions are able to reimagine how they organize themselves and conduct their operations. Once they do, they’ll become a natural home for passionate individuals. Here’s how they’ll do it.
The challenge for institutional leaders in the near term is to find and motivate talented individuals to engage in the task of transforming institutions rather than fleeing them. To attract these passionate individuals, leaders first have to identify them. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tara Lemmey has a useful way to identify questing, passionate individuals. In general, she’s looking for people who can thrive in different kinds of cultural environments and cross-pollinate ideas and practices among them.
To find out whether an individual has these qualities, Tara takes a job candidate out to lunch, and then, once the food arrives, offers to share a bite of hers. “People who won’t share food don’t do well with us,” says Lemmey. “It’s a brutal indicator. People who share food tend to be less territorial. They’re more likely to say, ‘Hey, what’s the table ordering? I want to try a little of everything.’ Those folks tend to have a lot more ease in our working process.”
To attract these kinds of people, leaders should articulate a new rationale for the firm that can appeal directly to the passionate and offer them the promise of more rapid development of their talents. If companies take talent development seriously, they begin to realize that, in the words of Silicon Valley icon Bill Joy, “There are always more smart people outside your company than within it.” If firms are serious about developing their talent, they must find more ways to connect and collaborate with all of those smart people outside the organization. Even more important, they should aggressively create opportunities for people within the organization to work with leading-edge talent outside it.
2) Be a leader on growth
Institutional leaders must resist the instinctive tendency when under pressure to batten down the hatches and assume a defensive posture, the better to protect the core that generates the cash. Instead, the leaders of today’s big corporate institutions must begin to pursue major new sources of growth.
Talent thrives when it has new challenges and opportunities to pursue. Institutions that are on the defensive with low-growth strategies simply cannot offer the same level of talent development to their employees. When such institutions are at their worst, a vicious cycle takes hold. As the firm goes on the defensive, the most creative talent becomes more vulnerable to offers from higher-growth firms. Performance deteriorates further as talent flees, and finally, the institution settles into its defensive posture and another wave of the talent exodus begins.
This is where leadership is desperately needed. Institutional leaders must provide compelling motivation for people in the core of the business to venture out to relevant edges—whether those edges are geographic, demographic, or between companies—in search of major new growth opportunities. This means putting a premium on strategies that move beyond straight-line growth within the core and that motivate investment in new growth options. Such a shift in strategic focus will inexorably pull the organization toward promising edges where growth potential is the highest—indeed, that’s virtually the only place where major new growth options can be found.
3) Leverage your risk takers
Redefining the rationale of the firm will begin to attract a critical mass of passionate individuals from all parts of the company, but especially from the periphery, where many of the people with the greatest passion tend to congregate. These areas tend to attract risk-takers, people who seek out new challenges and opportunities to drive their own performance to new levels, people who are not only more passionate than those at the core but who tend to have new approaches, practices, and dispositions.
Here’s how to find these risk-takers, while at the same time leveraging the strengths that big organizations offer:
Pull people out of the core. Questing explorers are likely to be in short supply. That’s why institutional leaders must find ways to motivate the more risk-averse employees in the core of the business—who are likely to be the vast majority of employees— to venture out and connect with their more passionate, questioning colleagues on the edge. These questing explorers need access to the core of the firm and the ability to mobilize their colleagues so that they can scale the emerging growth opportunities that they tend to see and embrace first.
Provide leverage through focused initiatives. As groups of questing individuals coalesce both within and across the boundaries of the firm, they can begin to launch low-risk, high-reward initiatives. Rather than seeking the journey’s end in one massive bound, it’s best for these groups to recognize that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, followed by another, and another. Starting slowly, below the radar, gives the champions of change opportunities to have small successes and gain strength while gradually neutralizing the inevitable resistance of entrenched interests.
Provide leverage through pull platforms. One of the most powerful ways to drive leveraged growth is to design and deploy scalable pull platforms that reach well beyond the boundaries of the firm to access and attract relevant talent wherever it resides. Rather than trying to specify the activities in processes in great detail, orchestrators of pull platforms specify what they want to come out of the process, providing more space for individual participants to experiment, improvise, and innovate. This kind of modularity—in which the outputs are specified but not the inputs— is powerfully motivating for passionate individuals. In a similar way, instead of dictating precisely how to do their jobs, legendary coach and general manager Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders used to tell football players: “Just win, baby.” That’s also good advice for anyone in business today.
– John Hagel III, co-chairman, and John Seely Brown, independent co-chairman, of the Deloitte Center for the Edge, have a passion for communicating world-changing ideas in ways that get executives to change what they do and realize significant performance benefits. Their books include The Power of Pull , The Only Sustainable Edge, Out of the Box, Net Worth, and Net Gain. | Across all industries, the best and brightest are striking out on their own to escape corporate bureaucracy. That need not be the case. Here's how big institutions can re-imagine themselves as centers of innovation By John Hagel III and John Seely Brown People are increasingly pursuing the jobs and endeavors for which they have the… | 21.854839 | 0.967742 | 17.83871 | medium | high | extractive |
http://www.people.com/article/kat-dennings-goth-wednesday-addams-conan | http://web.archive.org/web/20141025172123id_/http://www.people.com:80/article/kat-dennings-goth-wednesday-addams-conan | Kat Dennings Idolized Wednesday Addams Growing Up : People.com | 20141025172123 | 10/23/2014 AT 11:15 AM EDT
may be a well-adjusted woman now, but growing up, she had some unusual fixations.
For starters, she wanted to be Wednesday Addams.
Wednesday night that she idolized Charles Addams's Goth forerunner growing up, to the point that she'd introduce herself as the character and sleep in the classic arms-folded "vampire" pose.
But Dennings said her parents "didn't care."
"I was their fifth child!" the
actress exclaimed, commiserating with host
(one of six children) about the apathy facing children in large families.
She also shared a picture of herself in her best all-black outfit, which featured her wearing an appropriately serious facial expression.
premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. Check out the full clip from her interview with O'Brien below. | The 2 Broke Girls actress even introduced herself as the character as a child | 11.928571 | 0.642857 | 1.5 | low | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/10/26/why-qvc-and-rite-aid-are-blocking-apple-pay/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141026171825id_/http://fortune.com/2014/10/26/why-qvc-and-rite-aid-are-blocking-apple-pay/ | Why QVC and Rite Aid are blocking Apple Pay | 20141026171825 | I drove my iPhone 6 to Walgreens last week to buy a tube of toothpaste.
I usually buy that kind of stuff at CVS, which is closer and open 24 hours a day. But Walgreens had Apple Pay, and I was eager to give Cupertino’s new swipe-and-pay system a whirl.
Turns out I could have gone to CVS that day. They weren’t part of Apple’s rollout, but according to team Re/code, Apple Pay worked like a charm on CVS’ checkout scanners too.
Or it did until CVS, Rite Aid and a host of other retailers turned their scanners off.
They are part of a Walmart-led consortium called MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange) that’s backed a different technology: Not the NFC (near-field communications) system Apple adopted, but those square QR (quick response) codes that look like the fingerprints a robot might leave.
Think about what they’re doing.” wrote Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on Saturday. “They’re turning off NFC payment systems — the whole thing — only because people were actually using them with Apple Pay. Apple Pay works so well that it even works with non-partner systems. These things have been installed for years and so few people used them, apparently, that these retailers would rather block everyone than allow Apple Pay to continue working.”
What makes the Apple Pay boycott seem destined to fail is that the technology MCX has backed — those funky QR codes — are relatively easy to hack. Alipay, a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba, pioneered the use of QR code payments for smartphones in China until hackers started inserting malicious Trojan horses into the codes. The Chinese central bank stepped in last March and ordered Alipay to stop using the technology.
“I don’t know that CVS and Rite Aid disabling Apple Pay out of spite is going to drive customers to switch pharmacies” writes Gruber. “But I do know that CurrentC is unlikely to ever gain any traction whatsoever.”
Josh Constine gave CurrentC a close look in Techcrunch yesterday and came to the same conclusion. It’s not a system designed not to make consumers’ lives easier, but to do an end run around the credit card companies. The killer quote, attributed to former Walmart CEO Lee Scott:
I don’t know that MCX will succeed and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers.”
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed. | They're locked -- for now -- into a Walmart-backed system based on QR codes. | 27.5 | 0.666667 | 1.111111 | medium | low | abstractive |
http://fortune.com/2014/10/29/will-the-workplace-lead-wearable-technology-adoption/ | http://web.archive.org/web/20141029140657id_/http://fortune.com/2014/10/29/will-the-workplace-lead-wearable-technology-adoption/ | Will the workplace lead wearable technology adoption? | 20141029140657 | Consumer adoption of devices such as smart watches, eyeglasses, or fitness monitors is far from mainstream, at least from a global view. Still, almost three-quarters of the 9,100-plus people surveyed last month by Harris Interactive see potential benefits in workplace efficiency, productivity, and safety. Positive sentiment is especially high in Mexico, India and China.
The research was conducted on behalf of the Workforce Institute at human resources software and services company Kronos. The online poll during early September (right around the time of the Apple Watch launch) reached 9,126 adults ages 18 or older in Australia, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Mexico, and the United States.
“There’s a strong belief that wearable technology will take off in the workplace before the home because devices such as smart watches, intelligent ID badges, and fitness and health monitors can provide organizations with uncharted data collection points to greatly improve safety, productivity, collaboration, and overall workplace effectiveness,” says Workforce Institute director Joyce Maroney, in a statement about the findings.
She notes: “And while more and more types of wearable technologies have hit the market, the concept of wearables at work isn’t new. Workers have been wearing uniforms, safety gear, ID badges, communications headsets, and so on for years to do their jobs better.”
As a whole, U.S. adults were the least optimistic respondents. For example, only 48% saw a workplace benefit from wearables, versus almost 96% in Mexico, 94% in China and 91% in India. Approximately 13% of the U.S. respondents used wearables in their personal lives, compared with 73% of those from China.
The U.S. prospects for wearables in the workplace look far brighter if you look at responses from just those classified as students: almost 72% could cite at least one business benefit (compared with 48% of all U.S. respondents).
That finding echoes separate survey results released last week by PricewaterhouseCoopers that suggest 53% of Millennials are “excited” about the future of wearables, particularly in retail, entertainment, and personal healthcare applications.
To that end, it’s worth noting that data generated by wearables, particularly fitness bracelets that monitor exercise and health vitals, is fast becoming a must-have component of products and services offered by weight-loss businesses.
On Tuesday, Medifast disclosed a partnership with Fitbit and joined competitors Weight Watchers and Nutrisystems in launching apps for tracking nutrition, weight, sleep patterns and other data integral to gauging progress. “Studies show that people who use journaling and tracking systems have far greater success with healthy weight management than those who do not,” said Medifast CEO Mike MacDonald, in a statement.
Whether the weight-loss industry is getting ahead of itself remains to be seen. Then again, there could be 130 million wearable devices on people’s wrists, heads and bodies by 2018—an adoption rate akin to those for tablet computers.
Next, read ‘Search: How do I punch this rivet hole?’, our story about business wearables from the Oct. 27, 2014 issue of Fortune magazine.
This item first appeared in the Oct. 29 edition of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology. Sign up here. | Experts say adoption of wearables at work will outpace it at home thanks to improved safety, productivity, and collaboration. | 28.636364 | 0.772727 | 1.681818 | medium | low | mixed |
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/10/28/08/20/sacked-canadian-radio-host-says-he-likes-rough-sex | http://web.archive.org/web/20141030090546id_/http://www.9news.com.au:80/world/2014/10/28/08/20/sacked-canadian-radio-host-says-he-likes-rough-sex | Sacked Canadian radio host sues over 'rough sex firing' | 20141030090546 | Sacked Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi. (Facebook)
A Canadian radio host who claims he was fired after details of his rough sex romps went public has taken legal action against the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Lawyers for Jian Ghomeshi, who was fired on Sunday, said that their client will sue the firm for $50 million in damages for "breach of confidence and bad faith", the National Post reports.
A short time after announcing the case the former radio host published a lengthy confession on his Facebook page about his sexual preferences and his thoughts on why he was fired.
"I've been fired from the CBC because of the risk of my private sex life being made public as a result of a campaign of false allegations pursued by a jilted ex-girlfriend and a freelance writer," Ghomeshi wrote.
He said he started seeing a woman in her 20s about two years ago and they had "adventurous forms of sex that included role-play, dominance and submission".
"We talked about using safe words and regularly checked in with each other about our comfort levels," Ghomeshi wrote.
"She encouraged our role-play and often was the initiator. We joked about our relations being like a mild form of Fifty Shades of Grey or a story from Lynn Coady's Giller-Prize winning book last year."
He wrote that went the pair broke up it led to "a campaign of harassment, vengeance and demonisation" and "categorically untrue allegations" that he was abusive.
He said that while others may not like his "tastes in the bedroom" it was his "private life".
" That is my personal life. And no one, and certainly no employer, should have dominion over what people do consensually in their private life," he wrote.
In the wake of Ghomeshi's confession the Toronto Star published details from three women who said that the broadcaster had been violent to them without their consent.
The women's identities have not been revealed and it is unclear how their allegations and Ghomeshi's own confession will affect his litigation.
Do you have any news photos or videos? | A Canadian radio host who was controversially fired after details of his romps went public has defended himself on Facebook by saying that he likes consensual "rough sex". | 13.516129 | 0.806452 | 2.677419 | low | medium | mixed |
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