Race winner Fernando Alonso celebrates
F1 > German GP, 2005-07-24 (Hockenheim): Sunday race

A paddock beauty
F1 > Hungarian GP, 2005-07-28 (Hungaroring): Thursday

Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya
F1 > McLaren Mercedes MP4-20 shakedown, 2005-02-03 (Circuit de Catalunya): Day 3

Formula 1 Grand Prix Of Hungary 2005. Friday Press Conference
FIA Friday press conference – Hungary


Reproduced with kind permission of the FIA

Technical directors: Sam Michael (Williams), Willy Rampf (Sauber), Gunther Steiner (Red Bull Racing), Geoff Willis (BAR); CEO Formula One: Martin Whitmarsh (McLaren).

Q: Could you give us some sort of idea of progress with V8 engines and/or V8-engined chassis? How are things going – just some sort of indication.
Willy Rampf: We don’t have any experience with the V8s, because we haven’t done any testing with a V8 in our current chassis.
Q: When do you expect to be able to have a V8?
WR: The target is that for the winter testing we prepare one car, an interim car with the V8 engine.
Q: And when can you have that? Early December?
WR: Yes, exactly.
Q: When do expect to get a mock-up V8?
WR: I think we will get a mock-up V8 fairly soon, because we need it to prepare the installation in our current chassis.
Q: What about you Gunther? A bit the same, really?
Gunther Steiner: Maybe a little bit different situation because as we get the Ferrari engine next year, they are doing a lot of the work on the engine. We start with the chassis, we get information data to make the car for it, but the main testing of the engine will be done by Ferrari, and I think they will be running soon with the V8 in a car, and we will get the information.
Q: When will you get your own engine?
GS: We are not sure. We will get our own engine in October, November for our car, but our car will not be ready until the end of the year so we may run at the end of the year or the beginning of next year and that is what we’re working towards.
Geoff Willis: Well, we’ve been working on the V8 for some eight months now, and Honda are very advanced on that programme. As you probably know, we had the V8 in a test chassis in Mugello earlier this year. That was the first prototype; we have a number of steps of prototypes evolving towards the final race spec. They are already on the dyno, several stages and like many people we will be testing the V8 again on the track at the beginning of the winter testing in an intermediate chassis. On the chassis side, there are a number of changes to the overall layout of the car with a much shorter engine, but that said, (it is a) normal chassis design schedule and we are quite a long way through that already.
Martin Whitmarsh: Our V8 is running on the steady state dyno and is moving on to the transient dynos, so it’s early days but I think we are very comfortable as to where that programme is. We are building an interim car which probably in seven or eight weeks’ time will start to run and test. The definitive car will be available during the winter. I think the programme is an interesting one, obviously. I think all the concerns about the sound of them will be unfounded, they sound great, they sound just as exciting as the engines we have today. So I think the V8 engine is, as Geoff said… some of the designers say there are quite a lot of interesting opportunities in the chassis and I am sure in all the teams now the designers are going through all the various situations to find out how they can exploit those extra ninety millimetres.
Sam Michael: We ran the V8 for the first time the last time we were in Jerez a couple of weeks ago. We did a limited programme just over a course of two days. We obviously collected first sets of data and any problems that could occur with that engine.

Q: Which V8?
SM: That was a BMW V8 that we ran two weeks ago.
Q: So you are already testing that engine, even though you may not be running it.
SM: That’s right, yeah. That’s not really finalised yet. All we can say is that we’ve got some good options for Williams’s future and we’re not really in a position where we can talk because we haven’t finished negotiations on that. But in terms of back to your original question which was ‘have we run V8s?’ the answer is ‘yes we have.’

Q: Another slightly controversial subject, that of Jenson Button; what’s your take on that?
SM: From our point of view we have a contract with Jenson for 2006 onwards. We have contracts with quite a lot of drivers for next year in terms of our options, so we are comfortable with what we will end up with and that is all we can say on that at the moment.

Q: And what kind of progress are you making on the current chassis?
SM: On the FW27, we’ve spent a lot of time in the wind tunnels and in the Jerez test again, but particularly the wind tunnels over the last three or four weeks. We have made some good progress, we have got some more parts here again this weekend and we’ve got two or three things coming over the next couple of races. But so far it’s going good, obviously you can’t return to the front overnight as everyone realises but we have got our heads down and we are pushing as hard as we can to get back up there.

Q: Martin, you have had reliability issues recently; is it just fighting fires, are they cropping up all over the place?
MW: Well, I guess motor racing is often about fighting fires. I think it’s disappointing. We’ve got a package which should see us winning quite a lot of races. We’ve won a few but not as many we should have. I think we have to look within our organisation at how we’re performing. I think each incident has been slightly different in its nature, I don’t think it’s an endemic problem. I think last weekend was particularly disappointing, a very minor fault in our procedures caused the failure. But that’s motor racing. I think we’ve got to keep pushing, find performance but obviously work on reliability at the same time.

Q: What about the performance here, it looks very good?
MW: I think it is early days yet. I think the track is still evolving but I think we feel quite strong. We will see what happens. Obviously Kimi has the disadvantage of going out first in qualifying. We’ve got to work around that and I think the cars have got better performance and we will see what happens come Sunday.
Q: Geoff, what are your feelings about the Button situation?
GW: Well, it’s no great secret that BAR Honda really would like Jenson to drive for us next year. But clearly Jenson has got contractual issues with Williams which is something that he has to sort out himself and there’s really nothing much more that BAR Honda or I can say on that at the moment.

Q: Another little story that’s come out today is that you could have a special engine in China, not the Suzuka Special, but a special Special as it is a one-off race. What can you tell us about that?
GW: For certain, the Honda Engine Group will be pushing hard all year and it is, again, very much of a tradition to try to end the year in Suzuka on a high and due to the timing of the races we do have the option for another one-race engine at the end of the year. I think some of the figures of a 1000 horsepower bandied around are somewhat fanciful but I’m sure Honda will carry on, as they have done all year, making small but steady steps all the way through the year.

Q: So you’re expecting something a bit special for the last race.
GW: Every pair of races we get another bit of engine development, steady development from engine to engine and I am sure we will be quicker at the end of the year than we are now.

Q: Gunther, obviously the first year for the Red Bull team. What is the development programme for the team, particularly from now through to the beginning of next season? In terms of personnel, in terms of expansion.
GS: The biggest changes. We employed Mark Smith, who is leading the design of RB2 now. There were a few other people but lower down the ranks. The next big step is to have a second wind tunnel working from September onwards, so we will have two wind tunnels for next year’s car. That means a lot more people in our aerodynamic department. We are on schedule with RB2 and this year’s car – we will now stop all our development. The last package is on for this Grand Prix. Then we concentrate fully on RB2.

Q: So are many more people joining?
GS: No, no. It’s not many more. We want to stabilise what we have got now. You have to get the group to work. There’s no point in bringing in another 50 people and then having them not working together. It’s better that, as a group of people, we know our limits, we are not one of the manufacturer teams. We set our limit at mid-300 people and there we want to work and get the best out of them. For us, we don’t want to employ many more.

Q: What is the policy regarding Tonio Liuzzi and Christian Klien. I think Liuzzi is due to drive in Turkey and then how many more races does he get?
GS: I cannot answer that one because I still do not know, we don’t know what we are doing with Tonio for Turkey or if Christian is driving. We haven’t decided yet. There are a lot of rumours around but I think we have two drivers fighting for a cockpit while Williams and BAR have got two cockpits and one driver wanting to be in each of them, so I think we are in a better situation there. But for Turkey we haven’t decided yet exactly what is happening and we will also see how Christian gets on here.

Q: Willy, first of all, how are things changing at Sauber with the investment of BMW?
WR: First, we speak more German because we have more contacts with BMW. On the investment side? I think it’s more on the organisation side, because we have to know the people in Munich, we are working together in the near future and also to get used to their procedures. I mean how they work, how they make decisions, how we make decisions. I think this is the biggest part. On the investment side, for this year there is no additional investment. We continue with the development of the existing C24, but the main part of the development is to get the C25, the concept of C25, next year’s car, going and so we spend most of the wind tunnel time with C25.

Q: Do you see a big expansion in terms of your side of things or do you see it more taking place in Munich, for instance?
WR: I think there will be a noticeable expansion on our side in Hinwil because the target has to be to run the wind tunnel in three shifts, something which we don’t do yet, we are far away from this. And that needs more people. It’s the same as Guenther said: you cannot just employ people and expect them to work in a good way together. I think it has to grow at quite a moderate rate, that everybody knows what his task is and feels comfortable.

Q: In a way you have a bit of a problem, because Switzerland is a bit of a motor racing desert, you have to import people.
WR: It’s not really like this. We still have a lot of mountains so you should visit us once! So I don’t think that it is a real problem. We have quite a good amount of people from England, experts especially on the aerodynamics side, this is mainly driven by the English people. Overall we have 22 nations in our company so we are used to treating everybody fair and well.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Joe Saward – F1 Grand Prix Special) You guys are all setting out to design cars for next year but we don’t know what the qualifying regulations are yet. Can you explain how you are going to do that?
GW: Good question, because it does actually make a difference, it’s surprising how inter-related the sporting and technical regulations are and specifically the change in qualifying. Well, the discussions about the possible low fuel qualifying will tend to change the normal strategies the teams will want to use. Even a proposal to lower the pit lane speed limit during the races will have an effect on strategies and at the moment, most teams will be having to commit to their chassis geometry, if not already, certainly within the next month or so and so it does make it difficult with the sporting regulations unknown and people will have to take their own stab at what’s the right thing, a trade-off between not having enough fuel capacity to take the sort of strategies that you will want to do next year or, if the regulations don’t change in that direction, the penalty of having a slightly heavier chassis and a slightly longer chassis or wider chassis than you might want so it is difficult. It’s always a problem to try and change the sporting regulations independently of the technical regulations.
Q: So in short, you need a decision when? In the next month?
GW: Last month would have been fine.
MW: I think what’s happening here now is that we have quite a lot of good ideas about 2008 and people have, as you know, put quite a lot of work into the whole format of Formula One, looking at entertainment, looking at the technical regulations and I think naturally, as some of those ideas evolve then there’s a temptation to try and snatch them and use them next year. I think we have got to guard against taking part of the package and not getting it right. I think too many times, Formula One has knee-jerked into changes in qualifying format and I think there are some very attractive and interesting ideas for 2008, it’s been a very fruitful and creative process. But I think we just need to be a little bit careful now that we don’t take some of those elements but not realising that as a package it doesn’t quite work.
SM: I think Geoff is right in saying that a month ago would have been a good time to know but from all the people that you speak to there is definitely an incentive to go back to low fuel qualifying and I think that most teams will be working on that basis, I would have thought. I guess we will know in the next month or so, with a bit of luck, but there are not many people now who still support heavy fuel, from what I hear.
WR: Yes, I can only agree with the comments. You have to take the best guess currently because the decision is already quite late and everyone is working on the concept of the chassis.
GS: I think the judgement, everyone has taken it, because everyone has started the new chassis and if someone has tried to do something they think will happen and get it wrong they will have to pay the penalty. But I think everyone will be included in the discussion on the changes of the qualifying format and the race format and have to voice his opinion. I think we have to wait and see what comes out and if someone has taken some risk then maybe he loses out, but it is again judgement.

Q: (Heinz Pruller – ORF TV) Martin, have you already decided who will drive the third car in Turkey?
MW: No we haven’t, there hasn’t been a discussion, but ordinarily we are alternating and I think both Alex and Pedro are doing a fantastic job for the team and we are keen to be as fair as we can possibly be. Until now, typically, we would have linked the choice of who would be in by the test that had been done prior to that forthcoming race. It is a bit different for Turkey. We will probably put Pedro in on the basis that we alternate, but we haven’t had that discussion yet.

Q: (Heinz Pruller – ORF TV) And Geoff, can I ask about your world speed record attempt with a special engine, chassis and aerodynamics. Can you give any details?
GW: Not very much right now. There will be some announcement a little bit later, but it is a project we are looking at slightly outside normal Formula One work, but we will be able to give more details later.

Q: (Anthony Rowlinson – Autosport) There was an announcement that the new group would be seeing Max Mosley next week. I wonder if you can indicate when you will be meeting Max?
MW: The meeting has happened this morning. Max met with Professor Göschel, as chairman of that group with Ron representing the teams, Mr. Tomita and John Howett from Toyota. It was a very good meeting, I think both sides were able to establish they were much closer to one another than had perhaps been supposed, but I am sure in due course we will see some fruits from it.

Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) Martin, obviously the teams are not an official part of the GPMA but what is the exact relationship between the teams and GPMA?
MW: GPMA is an association of manufacturers. The teams relate to it because they have common interests. I think the manufacturers are taking a very responsible role in trying to help guide the future of Grand Prix motor racing. At the moment nine of the teams, including Red Bull and Jordan, are participating in those meetings and that process. Clearly, in time, we hope all the teams will participate together and take Formula One forward in an appropriate manner, but there is no formal relationship, it stems really from the fact that we have a vested interest in improving the sport and finding a positive way forward in 2008.

Q: (Marc Surer – Premiere TV) Geoff, what do you do with the extra space at the back with the V8 engine? Will we see shorter wheelbase, will we see space, will we have a longer fuel tank, what is the direction?
GW: You have certainly correctly identified a number of the options for it. It is an interesting one because the one other big change with the new engine rules is that there is a limitation on the minimum engine weight and also a limitation on the minimum centre of gravity height, which means we are not suddenly going to see a big step in chassis-side performance from the very much smaller V8 engine. There are a number of different options. The aerodynamic regulations are only changing very slightly for next year, so you will see a lot of the concepts being refined from this year to next year and I am sure a lot of the teams are right at this moment making those decisions, or probably have made those decisions, on what they are going to do with the 90mm or so that they are now going to have free. Some may have shorter rear ends, some may have slightly longer gearboxes. It will depend on their design philosophy and what they feel they need to focus on for their car’s performance improvement.

Q: (Joe Saward – F1 Grand Prix Special) Martin, can you tell us where the meeting was this morning?
MW: It was in Cannes.

Q: Martin, can you tell me what procedures you have put in place to make sure the problem that stopped Kimi in Hockenheim doesn’t happen again.
MW: Clearly if you have a specific issue like that you can check and you can double check, but probably your question is a more general one which is not only how can we stop that particular issue but how can we do it in general? Well, there are no secrets there, we just have to be careful, meticulous, everyone in the company has to do their job, has to do it well and has to do it thoroughly. Human error is a painful thing to happen. Within our team we take the view that all of us from time to time are guilty of human error and therefore we are not after a big witch-hunt, but we just have to make sure that we can double check and put in the process and procedure to stop those things happening.

Q: Geoff, how are you dealing with Taku and the difficult season he is having?
GW: It is very important for the team’s aspirations that we have two drivers capable of getting in the points at every race, getting on the podium at every race, and I think this year has been a bit difficult for Takuma to be able to show that. The first half has not been the easiest season and so what we need to do is to make sure we give the right tools to Takuma for the second half of the season. Fundamentally we are not going to change what we do but as Martin said we need to make sure we are completely reliable all the time, not just in the race but during the sessions. It is just a matter of being professional and trying to give both our drivers the best possible car they can get.

Q: (Thierry Tassin – RTBF TV) The car specification you had in Hockenheim, now we come here it is much hotter, did you make any modification to cool the driver down?
SM: On our side yes, beside the normal cooling exits we have for the engine cooling, we also add a small scoop to the top of the damper hatch so that he takes air from outside. Some teams run them all the time, but it is quite important in this heat for the driver.
MW: It is incredibly hot for all the drivers. I think it is incredibly hot for them in any Grand Prix, it will be very warm in the cockpit, there are some cooling ducts into the chassis but we haven’t done anything special for this event.
GW: Nothing specific for this event. We have had a very hot race earlier in the season in Bahrain and last week we were in Jerez in similar very hot conditions and we have been working on driver comfort to make sure that they can operate, particularly in tests on very long days of 700-plus kilometres. It is a tough environment, the drivers are now quite well acclimatised to it, we are probably looking at the next race being even hotter and we may have to do something a little bit different there.
GS: We are doing nothing special for the drivers here because our drivers are young and fit and there is no problem. As Geoff said, Bahrain was hot and the drivers just prepare themselves with liquids and we are not doing anything specific for the driver.
WR: We have an inlet duct on top of the chassis to let some air into the cockpit.

Q: (Tony Jardine – ITV) Geoff and Martin in particular, I was slightly concerned to hear you talking about aerodynamics pretty much staying as they are for next year and Martin you talked about entertainment. We saw your driver Kimi Räikkönen the front of his car washing away going through Stowe trying to follow Michael Schumacher and drivers have talked about the problems. Hockenheim is a circuit that normally has fantastic overtaking, and so does Silverstone, but it was tough for all of them. Now, you get a lot of aerodynamics back by going higher and all the protrusions. The drivers are telling us that gives even more turbulence when they are following, so surely you are going to have to make dramatic changes to aero for next year, not just so you can overtake but so you can entertain people.
GW: Well, if any technical regulation changes were to be made at this stage of the year they would have to be made with the unanimous agreement of all the teams, I understand. It is quite late to make a big change. It is true that when we discussed the ways of controlling the performance of the cars and we chose the raised front wing, we didn’t expect to make the ability of one car to follow the other noticeably worse. Perhaps that shows that it would have been wiser to have done some more tests before we went in that direction. I think all the teams have learned a lot about the effect of this regulation change. As you can see some teams did a better job early on than others and all the teams are improving, so I am sure that next year the cars will naturally be better at following the other cars because some of the problems associated with following other cars are also problems that the cars suffer in free air, so it will get a bit better, but it would be wrong to suddenly try to make a change at this stage without having done the work to work out what is the right way to go.
MW: I think there is an implied criticism, which is probably fair, that Formula One teams haven’t co-operated and concentrated enough on the issues of how we make closer racing, having aerodynamic studies to look at cars running closely together. There are now some measures being put in place that we do some work, which can hopefully be funded by the manufacturers, and there is always a desire to get an instant result and get that on the cars for next year. I think the sophistication of aerodynamics on Formula One cars, and these guys will know better than I, mean that you can easily get it wrong and knee-jerk into something, while we accept that Formula One has an obligation to seek to improve the show on a continuous basis and I think arguably we haven’t done that in the past. I think that we must make sure we do good homework now, good technical work in the wind tunnel looking at a car running in the wake of another and draw some proper conclusions and use those for the basis of the future. It will be difficult to achieve that by next year, so inevitably people will criticise our priorities. The nature of Formula One teams is that we concentrate on our performance. We are given a set of arbitrary regulations and we try to optimise the performance of the car. We don’t often get to spend time and resource on how we are going to make the show better. We are trying to dosome of that now and I hope in the future we can make a good step forward. But as Geoff said, I don’t think people fully anticipated some of the effects of this year’s rules and there are some extraordinary clever people in aerodynamics that might have been able to foresee it. The fact that they couldn’t leaves me to suppose that it is pretty complex, and therefore to guess a solution would be wrong, we have got to do the work and get proper solutions for the future.

Q: (Thierry Tassin – RTBF TV) Martin, you just said to improve the show. If next year you qualify with low fuel then the fastest car will be at the front and the slowest behind. A lot of the good show we have had this year has been when slow cars at the back were coming through. So how will you improve the show by having low fuel in qualifying and the quickest car at the front?
MW: I think if you recall I was actually trying to sound a note of caution about changing parts of our sporting regulations next year. There are some proposals for 2008 that have different tyre regulations, a completely different format of cars, and there is an attraction for the purity of having qualifying on low fuel, but I think there are quite a lot of arguments at the moment to not change the format much for next season and that was a point I was trying to make. So, you move one goalpost and you may get it wrong. We need to put together a package of regulations that make sure we do actually improve the show and that we don’t inadvertently, as we perhaps have done in the past, make it worse

By Franklin Foer

Judith Miller discusses post-Saddam Iraq on The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.(Photo credit: The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer)

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Mary Blevins, who arrived in New York in 1960 from Saltville, Va., behind the counter at Junior’s restaurant in Brooklyn.

July 27, 2005
43 Years of Tips, Taken and Given
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI

Long before the cheesecake was famous at Junior’s, the Brooklyn restaurant, Mary Blevins was a popular item.

Ms. Blevins, 68, was a waitress at Junior’s for 43 years, sharing a countertop and conversation with visitors like Spike Lee and Mike Tyson, trainloads of tourists and regulars like Betty and Jimmy of Con Edison.

Eight days ago, on July 19, she worked her last shift at her old serving ground.

“Betty got a cup of matzo ball soup and the chicken salad on a roll,” Ms. Blevins said. “Jimmy got the split-pea soup and chicken salad on rye.

“Oh, such good people,” she added. “I’ll miss talking to them.”

The day before she retired, Ms. Blevins was given a farewell party by the staff at Junior’s. Another longtime regular, Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, showed up with proclamation in hand, declaring the past 43 years the “Mary Blevins era.”

“She was more than just a countertop waitress,” said Mr. Markowitz, 60, who grew up in Crown Heights. “Over the years, Mary became a safety net for all of us, an extension of our families.”

In October 1960, Ms. Blevins, then 23 and looking for a steady job, bought a one-way bus ticket in her hometown, Saltville, Va., and headed for New York. In July 1962, nearly two years after settling in Park Slope, Brooklyn, she responded to a newspaper ad from Junior’s, which was looking for help. On the 19th of that month, she began a career feeding people with an appetite for her company.

“All the workers at that time were Jewish, Italian and Irish,” Ms. Blevins recalled. “As soon as they heard my Southern accent, they gave me a hard time, and I was quite sad about that.”

Despite the rough welcome, Ms. Blevins stuck with the job. Dressed in a pink uniform with a white handkerchief folded like a flower and pinned above her broken heart, she worked hard at fitting in, scooting from table to table with trays of steak and lobster dinners.

“You had to show up there looking like a lady, beautifully dressed and with not one hair out of place,” she said. “And when you put that uniform on, you better not have a run in your stocking, or you were out the door.”

At first, Ms. Blevins said, she did not know what pastrami was, let alone gefilte fish. But she began to get comfortable, and when the owner, Harry Rosen, noticed that most days she came to work an hour early, he offered her the early shift, with weekends off. In her new role, Ms. Blevins moved away from food traffic and parked herself behind the horseshoe-shaped countertop, where she would hold court during five decades.

Across a mountain of bagels and a river of coffee, generations of customers came to sit around that counter to discuss everything from their personal affairs to current events. Over time, as her pink dress was replaced by a black tuxedo, Ms. Blevins tackled topics ranging from the assassination of President Kennedy to civil rights, from men landing on the moon to the rise of disco music, from AIDS to “Forrest Gump,” from the Yankees to Monica Lewinsky to 9/11.

Throughout the course of those conversations, Ms. Blevins, personal advice always at the ready, built a reputation as a confidante among her closest customers.

“On many levels, she was an inspiration to a lot of people who walked through those doors,” said Mike Clarke, 51, a longtime regular from Crown Heights. “Mary was an institution; when you sat with her, you sat with family.”

With each torn sheet from the calendar that hangs in the restaurant, a 55-year-old landmark in Downtown Brooklyn – where Ms. Blevins has also served Mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and David N. Dinkins and members of the band U2, as well as the actor John Amos – the country girl developed an attitude more Brooklyn than Saltville.

“In a demanding job like hers, Mary had to be tough as nails,” Mr. Markowitz said. “She began to take on a Brooklyn attitude,” charming and unflinching at the same time.

Harry Rosen’s grandson, Alan, who owns Junior’s with his father, Walter, and his brother Kevin, has known Ms. Blevins since he was 4.

“She was more like my boss,” said Mr. Rosen, who presented Ms. Blevins with a diamond-adorned silver Concord watch at her farewell party and was planning to build a shrine of sorts at her work station that would include her portrait, the proclamation and newspaper clippings so that future generations of customers might enjoy a slice of cheesecake and history in a single sitting.

“Mary has the right attitude, and the right work ethic,” Mr. Rosen said. “And I can’t tell you that I remember her missing a day of work or ever being late.”

This afternoon, Ms. Blevins, a petite redhead with piercing blue eyes, will stop by Junior’s to say goodbye. On Monday, she heads back to Saltville, with another one-way ticket, to catch up with three children, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Four months ago, Ms. Blevins lost her most beloved customer, her husband, Frank Germano, 85, who died of cancer.

“I met Frank at Junior’s, and we fell in love,” she said with an accent that has never abandoned her. “That was way back in 1964.”

One day that same year, 10-year-old Mike Clarke walked into Ms. Blevins’s world for a cheeseburger and fell in love with the service.

“Mary said, ‘Hey, kid, sit over here and talk to me,’ ” Mr. Clarke recalled. “She has been a huge part of my life ever since.”

So huge, in fact, that on the morning of his wedding, he took his bride-to-be to the counter where Ms. Blevins was holding court.

“I wanted her to meet this new woman in my life,” he said. “We sat, we ate, we talked, and once I knew that Aunt Mary approved of her, I went out and got married.”

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The Lavallette Borough, N.J., team defended its title against eight challengers on Monday during the Kemble-Treumuth Lifeguard Tournament in Lavellette.

. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

Lifeguards sprinted to the ocean in one of the seven events in the 30th annual tournament in Lavellette, in Ocean County

G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

Lifeguards sprinted to the ocean in one of the seven events in the 30th annual tournament in Lavellette, in Ocean County

July 21, 2005
Ironmen Who Float
By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI

LAVALLETTE, N.J., July 18 – The chase began last month, when Hayden Quinn and Phil Lloyd left the chilly beaches of their native Australia, chasing the summer of 2005 across two continents.

“Different hemisphere, mate” said Mr. Quinn, an 18-year-old from Sydney. “It’s winter back home, so we get to have another summer here.”

In a constant search for a season with no end, Mr. Quinn and Mr. Lloyd, a 28-year-old from the Gold Coast region of eastern Australia, set sail for the Jersey Shore.

On Monday, they washed up on the steamy sands of Lavallette Borough, in Ocean County, finding a summer resort community famous for million-dollar oceanfront views and a lifeguard competition that brings together the finest and fittest in the business of saving lives.

Lavallette is one of many places along New Jersey’s coast that stage the kind of prestigious lifeguard tournaments that make headlines and appear on local newscasts. The Australian friends, working as lifeguards this summer for Long Beach Township, arrived here with four other teammates, rescue boards and surf boat in tow, to represent their patrol in the 30th annual lifeguard tournament held in Lavallette. .

“The purpose of this is to showcase the versatility of New Jersey lifeguards,” said Jim Cresbaugh, Lavallette’s beach manager and lifeguard captain. “Every event is designed to display the skills they need to perform their daily duties.”

In the minutes leading up to the competition, late-arriving boats, dropped off by pickup trucks, were dragged down the beach, parting a sea of baseball caps and sunglasses, blond ponytails and rubber flip-flops. A cheering section had gathered near a big scoreboard in the sand, which listed the names, and eventually the scores, of each of the nine towns competing in a variety of swim, paddle and rowing events.

On a hazy day beneath rain clouds, suntanned men in Speedos, most carrying water in coolers and with six-pack abs, readied their equipment as an odd symphony of church bells and thunder played in the distance. Each six-member team, made up of lifeguards ranging in age from 16 to 50, settled into a designated lane and waited for the yellow flag to drop, signifying the start of the contest. Many of the 54 participants tugged nervously at their nylon bathing caps, each team wearing a color that matched the flags in their lanes.

Lavallette, last summer’s champion, was now prepared to defend its title against Ortley Beach, Sandy Hook, Barnegat Light, Beach Haven, Island State Beach Park, Surf City, Ship Bottom and a Long Beach Township team with a heavy Australian accent.

“This tournament,” said Bob Tormollan, the Lavallette coach, “means everything.”

The yellow flag dropped, and the individual ironman competition was under way. Lavallette’s Matt Ferreira, a 19-year-old with the body fat of a head of lettuce, dived into an onslaught of five-foot waves and began a furious swim toward the buoy in his lane, which was bobbing some 225 yards from the shore.

Mr. Ferreira, who is also a member of New York University’s swim team, was the first competitor to tag the buoy and return to shore, the first to paddle out to it and return, and the first to row out and around the buoy through breaking surf, sending the small crowd into cheers that drowned out the church bells.

The ironman victory earned Lavallette early momentum and the maximum five points awarded for victory in each of the seven events, which also included a swim relay, an ironman medley, a row out and swim back, a line pull, a paddle relay and a boat relay.

“This feels great,” said Mr. Ferreira, pumping a wet fist into the air after crossing the finish line. “This is what we train for, why we work so hard every morning.”

Midway through the competition, the sun began to peek through the clouds and the haze began to life, offering the early evening’s first glimpse of the giant Ferris wheel turning on the pier in neighboring Seaside Heights.

By now, however, the Lavallette crew had become the main attraction, as all eyes were fixed on the team with the home-surf advantage.

Lavellette had begun to pull away, literally. Coach Tormollan yelled “Pull! Pull! Pull!” into the ear of one of his lifeguards who was reeling in a teammate during the line pull. “Don’t move your feet!”

Lavallette, on its way to 29 points and the victory, won the line pull and the rout was on. But Lavallette, the home team, kept up its intensity, drawing the attention of a competitor from distant shores.

“It’s incredible that they are keeping up that pace,” said Mr. Lloyd, one of the Australians, whose Long Beach team would finish second in the paddle and boat relays to earn 14 points, tying Ship Bottom for second place over all.

“They are incredibly fit,” he added. “And they appear to be competing with a sense of purpose.”

What Mr. Lloyd soon learned is that the Lavallette squad had dedicated its efforts to the memory of Carl Caucino, a 51-year-old lifeguard who died of a heart attack after shoveling snow in February. His younger brothers, Joe, 47, and Jack, 45, have been key members of the team.

The Caucinos grew up on Magee Avenue in Lavallette, a stone’s skip from the beach, and started competing in lifeguard tournaments in the mid-1970′s, continuing a New Jersey shore tradition that dates back to the Atlantic Coast Lifeguard Championships, which began in 1938, and included teams from Wildwood, Belmar and Asbury Park.

“Carl, he led the way for us,” said Joe Caucino, a rush of tears filling his eyes. “He loved us, he loved all these guys, and he would have loved being out here for this.”

When the tournament ended, Sandy Hook and Ortley Beach, Lavallette rivals that stage tournaments of their own, finished behind Long Beach Township and Ship Bottom. The Caucino brothers, breathing hard through long smiles, rounded up their teammates. Standing under shards of a fading sun, hugs and handshakes were exchanged, and the Lavallette lifeguards headed away from the beach, to a place where they would dive into cheeseburgers and beer.

“We’ll be out here about 6:30 tomorrow morning, two hours before the workday begins, practicing these same drills,” Jack Caucino said. “Nobody trains like we do – nobody.”

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Bruce Macpherson

July 21, 2005
Secrets to Good Hard-Drive Hygiene
By GLENN FLEISHMAN

My cousin Steven Cristol should enter the lottery: he’s already beaten seemingly impossible odds by enduring “seven mechanical hard drive failures in five computers,” as he describes it.

One drive failure is unsurprising, but usually after several years of use. Two failures are improbable. Seven puts us into an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

Each brand-name drive failure set him back hours or weeks in his consulting work. His file backups were partial and infrequent.

An electrician could not help him. Banning the house cleaner from his home office – he found she was smashing her vacuum into his running computers – had no effect. The family suggested séances.

His woes ended three years ago with the installation of a belt-and-suspenders data backup system. Every bit written to his main drive is simultaneously copied, or mirrored, to a backup drive. He also regularly copies files to a magnetic tape system.

Creating perfect duplicates of his data allowed my cousin the peace of mind to know that even in a catastrophic failure, he could turn to the mirrored drive or critical files on it and be back to work in minutes.

Ever-increasing quantities of private and family data are kept on home computers. But until the last two years, there was a gap between the ever larger hard-disk drives that came with home computers and affordable methods to archive the gigabytes of documents, e-mail messages, home movies and MP3′s. That gap has closed as consumer backup software has added features to write archives directly to external hard drives and higher-capacity DVD burners.

Which Files?

All mainstream operating systems comprise a mix of kinds of files. Some are needed by the system itself to manage its hardware and software tasks. Others are programs and their help files and plug-ins, documents you create with those programs and settings for how those programs work. Documents can vary greatly in size from a 500-byte e-mail message to a 10-gigabyte movie you transferred from a digital camcorder.

The most comprehensive way to duplicate a computer’s data is to use software that can handle every kind of file, and store the state of those systems as a snapshot in time.

This is a trickier task than it sounds, as some files are hidden or have odd properties. Just dragging a hard-disk icon on the desktop onto a similar hard drive’s icon won’t work because of these arcane files and obscure aspects of how a hard disk and an operating system talk to each other. (Mac OS, up to version 9, had the unique ability to just copy a drive; it was lost with Apple’s switch to Unix underpinnings.)

Picking and choosing which files to back up, like manually copying your document folder to a CD or DVD, allows you to preserve your most critical files – like spreadsheets, photos and word-processing documents.

If you use the pick-and-choose method and suffer a complete drive failure, you would have to reinstall your operating system and any applications you had separately installed, as well as all upgrades released since the time you purchased the system and software.

Which Hardware?

For businesses, streaming magnetic digital tape ruled the backup roost through the 1990′s, while consumers were stuck with slow and occasionally unreliable diskettes and, later, Zip and Jaz cartridges.

Tape drives are expensive, and tapes run from start to finish: special software is necessary to fast-forward through up to 750 feet of tape to reach a particular file. A modern tape drive with the capacity of a home hard drive can cost several hundred dollars. Tapes that hold 25 to 100 gigabytes of data cost $25 to $50 each.

That’s why external hard drives have emerged as the backup medium of choice: their current low price, high speed and high capacity pairs them neatly with a computer’s internal hard drive.

Many users now purchase drives much larger than their internal disk in order to create cumulative archives of files as they change. Backup software creates snapshots so you can choose which version of a file to retrieve, or retrieve the entire data state of your computer at a given point in time.

A 200-gigabyte drive for Mac or Windows is $199 from LaCie USA (www.lacie.com); a terabyte drive (approximately a trillion bytes, or 1,000 gigabytes) costs $949.

Both CD and DVD burners are reliable and cost-effective choices for backup, with blank media costs plummeting. A CD burner can write about 700 megabytes to a single disc. DVD burners can put about 5 gigabytes on one disk, but newer dual-layer recorders can write up to 9 gigabytes. An external dual-layer DVD burner is as little as $119 from LaCie.

Some companies offer even simpler hard-drive backups, bundling software and hardware into a single one-button backup option. Install the software, attach the drive and hit a button on devices from Mirra, Seagate, Maxtor and others, and a backup is made with no intervention.

Software Options

The way to good data hygiene is to establish a routine and stick to it. Backup software makes it possible to schedule your archives – preferably at a time you are not also trying to use the computer.

Consumer backup software can write to hard drives and optical media, and often to any kind of media that can be mounted on the desktop.

Software from Microsoft (included in Windows XP) and Apple (included for .Mac online service subscribers) backs up and restores files on a schedule. More sophisticated software from EMC Dantz (Retrospect Desktop, $129, www.dantz.com) and Symantec’s Norton division (Norton Ghost, $69.95, www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal) offers full disk backup and restore; both packages include CD’s that can be used to start up a computer with a failed operating system but a working hard drive to restore from a backup.

The best packages allow you to archive files as well as back them up; that is, to store multiple versions of the same file over time as it changes. But you can choose to store only the latest version of each file, too.

Restoring Data

There’s often a paradox to restoring data: you need the backup software to restore your backed up files, but it’s stored on your dead or damaged drive.

Unlike software you might purchase and download online, it’s best to buy physical copies of backup software so that you are sure to have the factory-stamped CD’s and other material handy in the event of catastrophe. Don’t forget to have that serial number, too, for reinstallation or phone support. (Phone support is quite expensive, while slower e-mail or online support may be free.)

Backup software creates a file that is a catalog or index of the files it has written and when. It is prudent to store the catalog file or similar data on a separate hard drive or on removable media, or by setting up a backup script within your software to copy the catalog separately as a plain file after your main backup has completed.

To recover single files, you typically run the backup software or insert the media that you have used for storing your files and select the ones to retrieve – exercising care to not overwrite folders or directories that you do not want to change.

As with many things, the best time to make a backup is before you experience a crisis. My cousin learned his lesson, and since his dual regime was put into effect, he hasn’t had to use archived files. The computers knew they were beaten.

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Keith Meyers/The New York Times

The liftoff of the Shuttle Discovery Tuesday morning

July 27, 2005
Shuttle Roars Back to Space After 2½-Year Absence
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and WARREN E. LEARY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 26 –

With a stuttering roar that shook the air for miles around, the shuttle Discovery lifted off on Tuesday morning, carrying seven astronauts on a 12½-day mission to resupply the International Space Station and to try to demonstrate NASA’s renewed commitment to safety.

The launching, at 10:39:00 into a startlingly blue sky, was a milestone for the space agency, which has struggled for two and a half years to find and fix the problems that caused the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven astronauts on Feb. 1, 2003.

In the moments before the final countdown, the launching director, Michael D. Leinbach, told the crew, “Good luck, godspeed – and have a little fun up there.”

Minutes later, the shuttle rose into the sky on a column of fire and smoke that flushed birds out of the surrounding Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and set off car alarms in parking lots across the space center.

In an echo of the liftoff-debris problem that led to the Columbia disaster, NASA officials said experts were studying what appeared to be two images of objects falling away during the Discovery’s ascent. But they added that some debris was expected and that it was too early to know whether it was a serious matter.

One object, about an inch and a half long, appeared to have sheared off an insulating tile over the landing-gear door in the nose, said John Shannon, the space shuttle flight operations manager. Mr. Shannon said it was not yet possible to know the depth of the hole that it left, and added, “Depth is everything when you look at any kind of tile damage.”

The second image is even more mysterious: it shows something falling away from the shuttle about two minutes into the flight, when the shuttle shed the solid rocket boosters that start its ascent into orbit. “The big question is, ‘What is that?’ ” Mr. Shannon asked.

But over all, spirits were high – aboard the shuttle, here at the Kennedy Space Center and at mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. At a news conference an hour after the shuttle reached orbit, Mr. Leinbach said his team here was happy to be able to celebrate an old launching tradition: a simple meal of beans and cornbread “that we haven’t enjoyed in over two and a half years.”

“The mood was just giddy,” he said, though he added, “There will be one thing better than today’s launch, and that will be the landing in 12 days.”

Until then, the crew will be very busy. The Discovery is carrying tons of supplies to the International Space Station; two and a half years’ worth of broken equipment and trash will be carried back in the shuttle’s payload bay.

As the shuttle approaches the space station on the third day of the mission, its commander, Col. Eileen M. Collins, who is retired from the Air Force, will execute a tricky pirouette that rotates the orbiter so its bottom faces the station for a detailed photographic examination by the station crew. The shuttle will then dock with the station.

The shuttle crew will also take part in an inspection of the orbiter’s thermal protection system using a long robotic arm; on the ground, mission controllers will be going over the vast amount of data from liftoff cameras and the in-orbit inspections to see whether the shuttle sustained any damage when it blasted off and whether NASA’s efforts to reduce launching debris have been effective.

Starting on the fifth day of the mission, two astronauts, Stephen K. Robinson of the United States and Soichi Noguchi of Japan, will take three spacewalks of six and a half hours each to test new techniques for repairing the shuttle’s protective panels.

They will install a control gyroscope in the space station to replace one that failed in June 2002 and restore power to another one that has not worked since the failure of a circuit breaker in March. They will also install a large tool cabinet to the outside of the station.

The crew – whose other members are Col. James M. Kelly of the Air Force, the pilot; Andrew S. W. Thomas of Australia; Capt. Wendy B. Lawrence of the Navy; and Charles J. Camarda of the United States – sounded jubilant as they soared high above the Earth.

Later, in an address from space at the end of the crew’s day, Colonel Collins said, “Our flight is the next flight of many in the exploration of the universe” and closed with a tribute to the “the great ship Columbia and her inspiring crew.”

Naming each member of that crew, she said: “We miss, them and we are continuing their mission. God bless them tonight, and God bless their families.”

During the overnight preparations for liftoff, there was no sign of the sensor troubles that bedeviled NASA’s last attempt on July 13. After studying the malfunction for nearly two weeks, mission managers had decided that if the fuel system failed again in the same way, they would launch with only three sensors working. But they did not need to have that discussion because all four worked perfectly.

Of the objects observed falling from the Discovery at liftoff and shortly after, Mr. Shannon said that getting a look at damage from the ascent cameras was a bit of serendipity, and that his team had not expected to see any damage until later in the flight, when full-scale examination would begin.

“We’ve never seen the underside of the orbiter like that,” Mr. Shannon said. “We did not expect to have such clarity.” At the same time, he said, “I fully expected we would see things that we haven’t seen in the past.”

He added that a detailed multistage examination over the next few days would help determine the nature of those two pieces of debris and any other damage that is found. “This is a six-day process,” he said.

The mission managers said they were also surprised to discover that the shuttle’s external tank hit a bird on liftoff. It is not likely, Mr. Shannon said, that the bird did any damage to the tank, though the same cannot be said of what the tank did to the bird.

Outside NASA, there was uniform elation over the return to space.

“It’s good to be flying again,” said John M. Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Dr. Logsdon, who served on the board that studied the Columbia’s disintegration and issued a scathing report on the management failings that led up to it, said he was impressed by NASA’s decision-making approach leading up to liftoff. “This is an essential first step in regaining the forward motion of the program,” he said.

Howard E. McCurdy of American University, a historian who has written extensively about NASA management, noted that the Bush administration had called for phasing out the shuttle fleet, now a quarter of a century old, and redirecting human spaceflight to the Moon and eventually Mars.

“Clearly NASA is trying to push the point that this is the beginning of a new era and the end of the shuttle era,” Mr. McCurdy said.

President Bush, who watched the liftoff in his private dining room next to the Oval Office, called the flight “an essential step toward our goal of continuing to lead the world in space science, human spaceflight and space exploration.”

The first lady, Laura Bush, attended the launching, as did Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and his wife, Columba.

Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Science Committee, watched the launching on television from Washington.

“Our hopes, expectations and prayers were answered by the successful launch,” Mr. Sherwood said in an interview. “So far, so good.”

In Houston, more than 700 NASA employees, contractors and family members packed into an auditorium at the Johnson Space Center to watch the liftoff, with many applauding and some in tears.

“I was here when the last one exploded, so being a witness to this one was very beautiful,” Daniel Campos, 44, an employee of an outside contractor who cleans air-conditioning ducts at the space center, said in an interview in Spanish.

Members of the families of the astronauts killed in the Columbia and Challenger disasters were at Cape Canaveral for the liftoff.

J. P. Harrison, who was married to Dr. Kalpana Chawla, a Columbia astronaut, said in an interview: “We’re very glad to see the shuttle back in the air and the space program back on track, on its feet. Spaceflight is one of the things that defines the United States as a nation – and, in a broad sense, human beings.”

After so many delays and two and a half grueling years of effort, the trouble-free liftoff was uncanny, said William F. Readdy, the associate administrator for space operations.

“Today Mother Nature smiled on us,” Mr. Readdy said, “and I also think that the Columbia crew smiled on us.”

Simon Romero contributed reporting from Houston for this article.

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Press Release Source: Virgin Records

Rolling Stones Title New CD and World Tour “A Bigger Bang”
Tuesday July 26, 10:12 am ET

First All-New Studio Album in 8 Years to Be Released September 6th on Virgin Records


NEW YORK, NY–(MARKET WIRE)–Jul 26, 2005 — The Rolling Stones new CD, “A Bigger Bang,” will be released September 6, 2005, on Virgin Records. Continuing their historic songwriting partnership, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards began the creative process last autumn and were later joined in the recording studio by Charlie Watts and Ron Wood. “A Bigger Bang” features all new songs, and is the first studio album by The Rolling Stones since the 1997 platinum-certified “Bridges to Babylon.” While in the studio recording the album last year, the band came up with the title “A Bigger Bang” reflecting their fascination with the scientific theory about the origin of the universe.
Source: Virgin Records

(click to enlarge)


“A Bigger Bang” is an ambitious, wide-ranging collection of hard-hitting, high-powered rock and blues songs. Running a full sixteen tracks, it is the band’s longest new album since 1972′s “Exile on Main Street.” Key cuts include “Streets Of Love,” the first international single; “Rough Justice,” which will be targeted to U.S. rock radio formats; and “Back Of My Hand,” a raw, rough-edged new song in the classic Rolling Stones blues style. Other titles include “It Won’t Take Long,” “Laugh, I Nearly Died” and “Rain Fall Down” as well as two tracks featuring Keith Richards’ lead vocal, “This Place Is Empty,” and “Infamy.”

“A Bigger Bang” was produced by Don Was and The Glimmer Twins. Was previously co-produced the Rolling Stones studio albums “Voodoo Lounge” (1994) and “Bridges to Babylon” (1997) as well as the new songs included in the greatest-hits collection “Forty Licks” (2002). Was also co-produced the live album “Stripped (1995), and last year’s critically hailed double-CD “Live Licks.”

The release of “A Bigger Bang” follows the August 21st tour kickoff at Fenway Park, in Boston. The Rolling Stones will once again bring fans electrifying performances and state-of-the-art stage production. Ticket sales have reached record highs, with fans already purchasing 97% of all tickets currently available for sale.

A new song from “A Bigger Bang,” “Oh No, Not You Again,” was previewed in the band’s surprise live set on the balcony of New York’s Juilliard School in May, at the announcement of the tour. Following the completion of 35 scheduled dates in U.S and Canada, the band will then tour Mexico, South America, the Far East, New Zealand, Australia, and finally Europe, in the summer of 2006.

The Rolling Stones hold the record for the top 2 most-attended North American tours of all time. The U.S. leg of the Rolling Stones “A Bigger Bang” tour is presented by Ameriquest Mortgage Company. The Rolling Stones’ “A Bigger Bang” world tour is presented by Concert Productions International and produced by WPC Piecemeal Inc.

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Santiago Calatrava S.A.

At about 2,000 feet tall, the Fordham Spire would be the tallest building in the United States when all building elements are counted.