Month: October 2006

  • North Korea,Medical Device, Different Faith Marriage, Google Law Suits Plague,New Notes on Camp. (Cu

    The Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea

        
    Jason Reed/Reuters

    A Department of Defense satellite image of the Korean Peninsula showing wide illuminated areas in South Korea and the relative darkness of the North.
    October 23, 2006
    Link by Link

    The Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea

    By TOM ZELLER Jr.

    THE tragically backward, sometimes absurdist hallmarks of North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-il, are well known. There is Mr. Kim’s Elton John eyeglasses and strangely whipped, cotton-candy hairdo. And there is the North Korean “No! Yeeesssss … No! O.K. Fear the tiger!” school of diplomacy.

    A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month — a nuclear weapon test that has had the world’s major powers scrambling, right up through last week, to develop a policy script that would account for Mr. Kim’s new toy.

    But whatever the threat — and however lush the celebrations broadcast on state-controlled television from the streets of Pyongyang in the days afterward — the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple satellite image over the shoulder of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during an Oct. 11 briefing. The image showed the two Koreas — North and South — photographed at night.

    The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights, but that other, arguably more bedrock utility of the modern age — information — was pulsating through the population.

    The North was black.

    This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are hard-wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned outright in 2004. In May, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York ranked North Korea No. 1 — over also-rans like Burma, Syria and Uzbekistan — on its list of the “10 Most Censored Countries.”

    That would seem to leave the question of Internet access in North Korea moot.

    At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.

    While other restrictive regimes have sought to find ways to limit the Internet — through filters and blocks and threats — North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.

    Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group which tracks censorship around the world, put it more bluntly. “It is by far the worst Internet black hole,” he said.

    That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.

    As far back as 2000, at the conclusion of a visit to Pyongyang, Madeleine K. Albright, then secretary of state, bid Mr. Kim to “pick up the telephone any time,” to which the North Korean leader replied, “Please give me your e-mail address.” That signaled to everyone that at least he, if not the average North Korean, was cybersavvy. (It is unclear if Ms. Albright obliged.)

    These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix, “.kp” remains dormant, but several “official” North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) — although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.

    Mr. Kim, embracing the concept of “distance learning,” has established the Kim Il-sung Open University Web site, www.ournation-school.com — aimed at educating the world on North Korea’s philosophy of “juche” or self-reliance. And the official North Korean news agency, at www.kcna.co.jp, provides tea leaves that are required reading for anyone following the great Quixote in the current nuclear crisis.

    But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few other lucky souls have access to computers, these are linked only to each other — that is, to a nationwide, closely-monitored Intranet — according to the OpenNet Initiative, a human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Oxford Universities in Britain.

    A handful of elites have access to the wider Web — via a pipeline through China — but this is almost certainly filtered, monitored and logged.

    Some small “information technology stores” — crude cybercafes — have also cropped up. But these, too, connect only to the country’s closed network. According to The Daily NK, a pro-democracy news site based in South Korea, computer classes at one such store cost more than six months wages for the average North Korean (snipurl.com/DailyNK). The store, located in Chungjin, North Korea, has its own generator to keep the computers running if the power is cut, The Daily NK site said.

    “It’s one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford.

    The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, Professor Zittrain said, because its “comprehensive official fantasy worldview” must remain inviolate. “In such a situation, any information leakage from the outside world could be devastating,” he said, “and Internet access for the citizenry would have to be so controlled as to be useless. It couldn’t even resemble the Internet as we know it.”

    But how long can North Korea’s leadership keep the country in the dark?

    Writing in The International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea’s ban on cellphones was being breached on the black market along China’s border. And as more and more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, that might mean that a growing number of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, would be quietly raising digital periscopes from the depths.

    Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer nuclear arms or Internet access (or food, or reliable power), but given Mr. Kim’s interest in weapons, it is a safe bet it would not matter.

    “No doubt it’s harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network,” Mr. Pain said. “It’s all a question of priority.”


     

    Medical Views of 9/11’s Dust Show Big Gaps

    Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

    Joseph Jones, whose wife, Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, a lawyer, worked near the twin towers, leaves flowers at the 9/11 memorial on Staten Island.

    October 24, 2006

    Medical Views of 9/11′s Dust Show Big Gaps

    By ANTHONY DePALMA

    In 2004, Kenneth R. Feinberg, special master of the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, awarded $2.6 million to the family of a downtown office worker who died from a rare lung disease five months after fleeing from the dust cloud released when the twin towers fell. That decision made the worker, Felicia Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old lawyer, the first official fatality of the dust, and one of only two deaths to be formally linked to the toxic air at ground zero.

    The New York City medical examiner’s office, however, has refused to put her on its official list of 9/11 victims, saying that by its standards there was insufficient medical evidence to link her death to the dust.

    Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s case shows how difficult it can be to prove a causal connection with any scientific certainty — and how even government agencies can disagree. With thousands of people now seeking compensation and treatment for dust exposure, the debate about the relationship between the toxic particles and disease will be a central issue in the flood of Sept. 11-related lawsuits. Health experts are starting to document the connections, but any firm conclusion is still years away.

    Most of the suits involve workers who spent weeks and months on the pile at ground zero and say the city and other agencies failed to protect them from the toxic dust. Others involve residents who say they were made sick by dust that settled in their homes. Mrs. Dunn-Jones was among those downtown office workers caught in the initial fallout.

    The question that arises in all these cases is straightforward: Can a link between the dust and disease be proved with scientific certainty? The answer is anything but simple.

    “Certainty is a word we always dance around,” said Joseph Graziano, associate dean for research at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. For him, searching for the cause of disease is like developing film. “At first you see a faint image of what the real picture is,” Dr. Graziano said, “and then, over time, you see it with much more clarity. In these relatively early times, the image is still faint.”

    It can take decades to approach any degree of certainty. For instance, only after years of observation did doctors agree that there was a strong link between asbestos and diseases like asbestosis and mesothelioma.

    In legal cases, “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” is considered the gold standard in making a causal connection. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for thousands of workers’ lawsuits to go to trial. When the cases are heard, any proof that does not meet that legal standard is likely to be challenged.

    But outside the courtroom, scientists say, even a less rigorous link could be sufficient to warrant expanding the range of illnesses covered by treatment programs, and to serve as the basis for issuing cautions to people in high-risk groups. When the health effects are too new or the evidence is too vague for a strong link, lesser indicators like the concurrence of different studies have to be relied on.

    For example, nearly every ground zero study shows that workers and residents exposed to the dust in the hours after the collapse have suffered the worst health problems. The consistency in that data has helped doctors monitor and treat people since Sept. 11.

    And it may also help explain why Mrs. Dunn-Jones, a dynamic civil rights lawyer with the United States Department of Education, became so sick so quickly. As she was swallowed by a whirling dust plume filled with asbestos, benzene, dioxin and other hazards when the first tower fell, all she could do was cover her nose and mouth as she fled from her office one block north of the World Trade Center.

    It was night by the time she got home to Staten Island. “She was in a state of shock,” her husband, Joseph Jones, recalled. Her clothes were still dusty, but he didn’t pay much attention. “I was just so happy to see her,” he said.

    For the next few months, life returned to normal, until Mrs. Dunn-Jones developed a cough. In January 2002, the cough grew worse. On Feb. 10, she suddenly stopped breathing and died.

    Mr. Jones, 54, an assistant manager at a Brooklyn pharmacy, was stunned. Then, when he received the official death certificate months later, he was shocked to see an unfamiliar word — sarcoidosis.

    “Even though I was in the medical field, I had never heard of it,” he said.

    After reading several medical reports on sarcoidosis — including one by Dr. David J. Prezant, deputy chief medical officer of the New York Fire Department — Mr. Jones and his lawyer, Richard H. Bennett, wondered if Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s mysterious death could be linked to 9/11 dust because sarcoidosis, which produces microscopic lumps called granulomas, on vital organs, is often associated with exposure to environmental hazards.

    They took the case to Mr. Feinberg and the victim compensation fund, which gave $7 billion to the families of those killed or injured on 9/11.

    Mr. Feinberg initially expressed doubts about the claim and demanded to see definitive medical evidence linking Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s sarcoidosis to the dust.

    Dr. Prezant, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was one of two experts who testified at a hearing conducted by Mr. Feinberg. In the first four years after 9/11, he found 20 cases of sarcoidosis in the Fire Department, a rate of 80 per 100,000 in the first year (with treatment, all are now stable), compared with a national rate of fewer than 6 per 100,000, according to the American Thoracic Society.

    The other expert was Dr. Alan M. Fein, a clinical professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. He, too, was skeptical at first, but he said he changed his mind after reviewing Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s medical record, including the autopsy report. “I’m comfortable saying her death was caused by exposure to the dust,” Dr. Fein said in an interview.

    In March 2004, Mr. Feinberg agreed, making Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s death the only dust-related fatality recognized by the fund. Only one other death has been formally linked to the dust: In April, a New Jersey coroner determined that James Zadroga, 34, a New York City police detective, had died of a disease similar to sarcoidosis, also caused by his exposure to ground zero dust.

    Mr. Jones welcomed the settlement from the victim compensation fund, and believes that his wife was a 9/11 victim as surely as if she had died in the towers. He sent Mr. Feinberg’s decision to the city’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, and asked that his wife be put on the official list so that her name could be read on Sept. 11. Dr. Hirsch refused, a spokeswoman said, because the available evidence did not prove the connection “with a reasonable degree of medical certainty”— the highest medical standard generally used in legal cases.

    Mr. Feinberg’s decision had been based on a different standard: a preponderance of medical evidence.

    That was proof enough for the Staten Island Memorial Commission, which has engraved Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s name on the bone-white memorial on the island’s north shore.

    Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, who has fought to get medical care for 9/11 victims, said the contradictory conclusions about Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s death underscored the importance of deciding who has the final say on causal links. “They should be medical decisions, not political ones,” she said, suggesting that city officials may have a conflict of interest in making such determinations since the city is a defendant in the ground zero workers’ lawsuits.

    She has introduced a bill to reopen the federal compensation fund to people whose illnesses became known after the original eligibility period ended in 2003.

    In the effort to collect definitive data, Dr. John Howard, the federal government’s 9/11 health coordinator, recently circulated a draft set of autopsy protocols that directs pathologists to use a standard of proof that establishes both biological plausibility and unequivocal evidence of a causal connection to the dust. But doctors and elected officials have said those standards are so restrictive that almost no death could be linked to the dust for years to come. A spokesman for Dr. Howard said the guidelines were being refined.

    In another effort, the Mount Sinai Medical Center, which has screened thousands of ground zero workers, has begun a long-term study of the incidence of diseases to identify any rates that exceed national averages.

    “Right now we’re in the process of confirming every case of interstitial lung disease, every cancer, every sarcoidosis that has been reported to us by responders in their visits,” said Dr. Jeanne M. Stellman, director of the public health program at Columbia University, is leading the data collection project.

    “We are actively trying to determine whether Detective Zadroga and Mrs. Dunn-Jones are alone,” she said. “And we are trying to find a way to do this that is scientifically correct while also being responsive to the needs and fears of the communities involved.”


     

    When a Relationship Carries the Weight of History

    David Chelsea
     
    October 22, 2006
    Modern Love

    When a Relationship Carries the Weight of History

    By LAUREN FOX

    I USED to have an imaginary Jewish boyfriend. I dreamed him up several years ago. He was a nice guy named Jeff who was a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., played classical guitar and wanted to have three kids. One year this imaginary Jewish boyfriend even accompanied me to Yom Kippur services, while my actual, Protestant-raised but nonbelieving Irish boyfriend stayed home and ate — this is true — a ham sandwich.

    “What are you doing?” I asked my actual boyfriend over the phone, after I had returned home from temple.

    “Eating a ham sandwich,” he said. “And watching soccer. Want to come over?”

    It was the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. I was supposed to be fasting and asking God for forgiveness. Instead I drove over to my boyfriend’s apartment, where I swallowed my guilt with the potato chips he shared with me.

    I was raised Jewish, but in some fundamental way, it didn’t take. I wanted it to. I tried. When I lived in Minneapolis during my 20′s, I attended High Holy Day services at practically every synagogue in the area, hoping to find one that would speak to my heart, but I always left feeling empty, more confused than before I had gone.

    All the talk of God bothered me. I was not sure if I believed, but even in the most liberal of synagogues, even on the weirdest left-wing fringe of Judaism, where you met in a basement and sang songs about ending world hunger, it seemed as if you couldn’t get around God if you wanted to be Jewish. God is everywhere! So I tried to uncover a latent faith in a higher power, but all I have ever found, deep down, at my spiritual core, is a well-developed sense of guilt and a craving for Ho Hos.

    I suppose this is, in some part, how I ended up with an irreverent Irish atheist for a boyfriend. Andrew and I met when we were graduate teaching assistants at the University of Minnesota. He marched into my office one day, sat down at my desk and started chatting to me in a fake New Jersey accent — a ridiculously bad accent, attempted through the filter of his real (and much sexier) Dublin accent. I impressed him with my ability to write backward and forward at the same time.

    For our first date, he took me to a reading at a St. Paul bookstore. In the middle of the hushed proceedings, he suddenly panicked that he had lost his wallet (he had not), and, in his frenzy to search his pockets, he tipped over backward in his chair.

    We both started laughing so hard we were practically hyperventilating and had to leave the reading. We hurried out, hooting, as people shot disapproving glares our way. It was clearly the start of something special.

    Around this time, I discovered a shoebox full of old letters in my parents’ basement. Dated from 1938 to 1941, they were letters that my great-grandmother, in Germany, had sent to my grandmother in America, who had fled with her husband and young daughter. I knew that my mother’s family had come from Germany — she speaks German as fluently as English — but I was never told much about our past. Like many Jewish immigrants whose families were decimated by the Holocaust, my relatives didn’t talk about it.

    As I ran my fingers over the fragile onionskin paper and peered at the incomprehensible script, I knew right away that the letters I had found were the key to an important piece of my history. I set about having them translated, and I began writing about and researching my family: it became my master’s thesis and my fascination.

    At first, I didn’t connect the things I was learning about my German Jewish family with the life I was living, a life whose emotional center was fast becoming my Irish boyfriend, a man from a country that claims all of 1,800 Jews, a man who once exclaimed happily, upon finding a box of matzos in my cupboard, “Oh, great, you bought crackers!”

    But gradually, as the content of the letters emerged, I began to feel like I was being hit over the head by something heavy, sharp and unwieldy. It was History with a capital H.

    August 11, 1938

    I can’t put into words how much I miss you and the dear child. I have always imagined how she looked with her curly hair. I miss you all so much … but in spite of everything I would not wish that you were here. …

    For today let me give you a thousand greetings and a thousand kisses from your oma who loves you more than anything in the world. Perhaps we will one day have the pleasure of being together again.

    THEY wouldn’t have the pleasure. They died in Germany — my great-grandmother slowly, at age 61, of what I imagine was a broken heart; her husband a few months later, on a train to Auschwitz.

    The letters permeated my life. The translation process was intimate and intense: my great-grandmother wrote in an archaic script that very few people could still read, but I found a professor at the university who could help. Every Friday I would go to his office with a few letters and a tape recorder, and he would translate, reading out loud. Later, I would transcribe the tapes.

    My great-grandmother’s words echoed in my thoughts, nudging at the corners of my daily life. Sometimes I would come home and almost expect to see a letter from her in my mailbox. I was given the weight of this history, the fact of it, the burden. This was my family tree, cut off at the roots. It seemed like the only conclusion I could draw was the obvious one: I would need to find a Jewish husband, raise a Jewish family, to defy genocide in this small but significant way.

    Andrew would never become Jewish — possibly because he grew up in Ireland in the 1970′s and 80′s, where the only sane response to religion was to disdain it altogether, or perhaps because of the specific contours of his kind but skeptical heart. It was a point of understanding between us that I would never ask him to convert. So he would have to be my sacrifice. My loss would be a small hole in my heart compared with the crater that took up space in the center of my family.

    On one of our first dates, Andrew told me a story about cat-sitting for a professor while she was away, and of accidentally taking care of the wrong cats. He had been caring for the neighbor’s cats who had wandered in; the professor’s pets, he told me with a sheepish smile, actually had been trapped in the linen closet for two days.

    From another man, on another occasion, this particular story might have been my reason for refusing a third date. From Andrew, it seemed like a brave and funny confession, his admission that he wasn’t perfect, but that he was willing to learn how to tend to things more carefully. I wanted to hear more.

    My mother used to tell me, jokingly but also, I suspected, kind of seriously: “It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.” But it’s not easy to fall in love at all. And now that I had, I didn’t want to give it up, even to the hungry mouth of History.

    November 29, 1939

    I live constantly in my thoughts with you, my dear ones. If only I could embrace all of you and hold you close to my heart. When will this happen?

    ONE night, after the last of the letters had been translated and I was near the end of my project, I sat outside with some friends at an informal Sabbath gathering. Andrew was somewhere else that night, and again I wondered what my life would be like at such a ceremony with a Jewish boyfriend sitting next to me, echoing the blessing over the challah.

    My friends and I were talking about love, about looking for it, finding it. Elana, who was single (and Jewish), announced with utter conviction that she would never be able to live with someone who wanted a Christmas tree in his house. Others nodded in agreement. I thought about how Andrew bought a tree every year, how he said that it reminded him of home, of the happy Christmases of his childhood in Dublin. Who was I to argue with a homesick immigrant’s private, complicated sorrows? But my friend had a point: a Christmas tree is the last lost battleground of the secular Jew.

    I slipped into one of my familiar uncomfortable reveries: Andrew and I are sitting in the living room of a house, maybe ours, on some Christmas morning in the future, and I am watching our little girl tearing through presents, our little girl who may not even know what loss she inherits or what slips through her fingers as she tosses crumpled wrapping paper across the floor. I looked at Elana, envious of her certainty.

    March 6, 1941

    When yesterday morning the letter arrived with a sweet photo, I was no longer able to hold myself. I cried all day because of joy and also of sorrow.

    Someone lighted the Sabbath candles and began the blessing: Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech haolam. The candles flickered in the warm wind. The words of the blessing were as intimate and as foreign to me as German, the language of my childhood that I never fully understood.

    My life feels inextricable from this history. Yet letting go of Andrew couldn’t have defied genocide or undone sorrow. It would have only defied our love and undone the possibility of the happy life he and I now share with our little girl, in whom I try to instill both my history and my hope.

    Lauren Fox lives in Milwaukee. Her first novel, “Still Life With Husband,” will be published by Knopf in February.

     

    We’re Google. So Sue Us.

    Jessica Brandi Lifland for The New York Times

    Michael Kwun, left, and Alex Macgillivray, two of Google’s lawyers, are working to establish a body of legal interpretation that favors the company.

    October 23, 2006

    By KATIE HAFNER

    SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 19 — Google attracts millions of Web users every day. And, increasingly, it’s attracting the attention of plenty of lawyers, too.

    As Google has grown into the world’s most popular search engine and, arguably, the most powerful Internet company, it has become entangled in scores of lawsuits touching on a wide range of legal questions, including copyright violation, trademark infringement and its method of ranking Web sites.

    Any company that is large and successful is going to attract lawsuits, and Google’s deep pockets make it an especially big target. But as it rushes to create innovative new services, Google sometimes operates in a way that almost seems to invite legal scrutiny.

    A group of authors and publishers is challenging the company’s right to scan books that are still under copyright. A small Web site in California is suing Google because it was removed from the company’s search results. And European news agencies have sued over Google’s use of their headlines and photos in Google News.

    In these cases and others, potential legal problems seem to give the company little pause before it plunges into new ventures.

    “I think Google is wanting to push the boundaries,” said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University.

    “The Internet ethos of the 90′s, the expansionist ethos, was, ‘Just do it, make it cool, make it great and we’ll cut the rough edges off later,’ ” Professor Zittrain said. “They’re really trying to preserve a culture that says, ‘Just do it, and consult with the lawyers as you go so you don’t do anything flagrantly ill-advised.’ “

    Now, with its planned $1.65 billion acquisition of the video site YouTube, which contains not just homemade videos but also copyrighted clips that users upload without permission, some observers say Google is exposing itself to a new spate of lawsuits.

    Along with YouTube’s 34 million viewers, Google will inherit a lawsuit filed last summer against the company. Robert Tur, who owns a video from the 1992 riots in Los Angeles that shows a trucker being beaten by rioters, is suing YouTube, accusing it of copyright infringement.

    “Clearly, we investigated that whole issue,” said David C. Drummond, Google’s general counsel and senior vice president of corporate development. Mr. Drummond pointed to the “safe harbor” provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A number of courts have held that under this provision, Web sites are not liable for copyrighted content posted by users, as long as they promptly remove it when it is pointed out to them.

    “We rely on the same safe harbor that YouTube relies on, so we’re fairly familiar with the issues,” Mr. Drummond said. “If you look at it, it’s somewhat illustrative of the kinds of lawsuits we face.”

    Google has been known to settle, but for the most part it aggressively fights litigation — so far with a good deal of success.

    Over the last few years, the company has spent millions in legal fees and hired a small army of bright young lawyers, many of them technically proficient and experts in the field of intellectual property.

    The company’s legal department has grown from one lawyer in 2001 to nearly 100 lawyers now, not just at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., but also overseas. The company has also retained counsel at many outside law firms.

    Many of the lawsuits Google is facing carry little weight. Yet it has a vested interest in fighting all of them, even those of questionable merit, and seeing that they are resolved quickly. In part, this is because any lawsuit that reaches the discovery, the pretrial fact-finding phase, poses the danger of revealing too much about Google’s proprietary technology. Google also has an interest in establishing a solid body of legal interpretation in its favor.

    Many of the plaintiffs are asking for damages, but money is not always the issue. There are several cases, focusing on questions of intellectual property and trademark protection, that challenge Google’s whole way of doing business. These plaintiffs are suing Google to protect their well-established practices; their interest is not so much in remuneration as it is in getting Google to change its approach.

    Peter S. Menell, a professor at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, said that although Google’s well-established core search functions are not at risk, “there are a number of areas now in which new and exciting business models are being threatened.”

    Cases addressing trademark protection in Google’s ad system could hurt its bottom line, as the company’s revenue comes mainly from advertising sales, said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

    In one of the most important such cases to date, last year a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., dismissed a claim by Geico, the auto insurance company. Geico said that a Google policy of permitting Geico’s competitors to buy advertisements tied to searches for the keywords “Geico” and “Geico Direct” confused Web surfers looking for the company’s site. The two companies settled the case before the judge reached a full decision on the other issues involved.

    “This is Google’s cash cow,” Professor Goldman said. “If they can’t sell keywords freely, they’re not worth their market valuation.”

    Michael Kwun, a senior litigation counsel at Google, agreed that “the Geico case was very important.” Mr. Kwun said that establishing a body of precedent was a priority for Google, especially as legal interpretations continued to evolve. “If we don’t at least litigate to the point where we get rulings on the issues that matter to us, we’re left with less clarity in the law,” he said.

    Yet in the course of a long run of legal triumphs there have been a few bumps, and Google is facing some uncertain outcomes in the coming months.

    Copyright challenges are at the center of the uncertainty. In one case that could have large ramifications, Perfect 10, a publisher of pornographic magazines and Web sites, sued Google for using thumbnail-sized reproductions of photos in its image search results, among other things.

    Earlier this year, a Federal District Court judge in California said Google had violated copyright because it had undermined Perfect 10′s ability to license those images for sale to mobile phone users, and he issued a preliminary injunction. Google appealed the decision, and oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit are scheduled for next month.

    Google’s use of snippets of copyrighted works has also raised the ire of news outlets.

    Last month, a Belgian court ordered Google to stop publishing headlines from Belgian newspapers without permission or payment of fees. And in a case pending in a Federal District Court in Washington, Agence France-Presse is suing Google, accusing it of violating its copyright by using its headlines, photographs and story fragments in Google News.

    Google is arguing that news headlines and short phrases are not copyrightable.

    “From our perspective, these are simple issues that were decided a long time ago,” said Alex Macgillivray, 34, whose title at Google is senior product counsel.

    The company is making the same argument in cases pending against its book search service. Representatives of publishers and authors are challenging the company’s practice of scanning books that are still under copyright. They argue that because Google must copy an entire book to make it searchable, it is violating the copyright of the author or publisher if it does so without permission.

    Google has offered to let publishers opt out of the book search program but has refused to ask permission to make the copies in advance.

    Google has been known to settle cases. But in general it mounts a vigorous defense, Mr. Goldman said. “If they get sued, they turn the tables on the plaintiff and file motions to get the upper hand in the case,” he said.

    Last spring, KinderStart, a small search engine in Southern California that focuses on information for parents of young children, sued Google after it noticed that its site had been removed from Google’s search results — leading to a loss of traffic and revenue for the company.

    Google said in court filings that an area of the site that permitted visitors to add links had been full of pointers to low-quality or pornographic sites, indicating that it was poorly maintained or was an effort to manipulate Google’s search results. KinderStart said the removal was unfair and unjustified and that Google’s guidelines on ways to avoid such punishment were too vague.

    A federal judge in San Jose dismissed the first version of the complaint, in essence agreeing with Google that the company is free to shape its search results in any way it chooses. KinderStart has filed a second, amended complaint, which is scheduled to be heard by the same judge on Friday.

    “We’re not against innovation at all,” said Gregory J. Yu, a lawyer for KinderStart. “But Google should not dictate what we should or should not see and find on the Web. They can knock off these small Web sites and there’s nothing the small Web sites can do.”

    In the KinderStart case, Google was quick to take the offensive. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed last spring, Google responded with a motion that, if granted, would throw out several of KinderStart’s claims and require KinderStart to cover Google’s legal fees. The judge deferred consideration of the motion.

    Professor Zittrain of Oxford said Google’s corporate mantra — “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible” — gives some insight into its approach.

    “They actually see that as Promethean,” Mr. Zittrain said. “They think of it as bringing fire to humankind. And it may even cause them to be bolder than other companies.”

    Google’s legal muscle and shrewdness are not lost on those on the other side of the fights.

    “We’ve got a formidable legal team, but obviously it’s nowhere near the unlimited resources of Google,” said David A. Milman, the chief executive of Rescuecom, a nationwide computer repair company that sued Google on trademark infringement grounds similar to Geico’s — and quickly lost. The company said that it would appeal the decision.

    “People say you can’t fight the government,” Mr. Milman said. “Google, in this case, is very similar to the government. They’re the government of the Internet.”


     

  • To Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key to Mission

    To Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key to Mission

    Jim Wilson/The New York Times

    Capt. Richard Low, right, talking with members of the Iraqi National Police recently. Two Iraqi officers, from different checkpoints in Baghdad, discovered that their radios did not have matching frequencies

    October 23, 2006
    Military Analysis

    To Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key to Mission

    By MICHAEL R. GORDON

    BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 — After three years of trying to thwart a potent insurgency and tamp down the deadly violence in Iraq, the American military is playing its last hand: the Baghdad security plan.

    The plan will be tweaked, adjusted and modified in the weeks ahead, as American commanders try to reverse the dismaying increase in murders, drive-by shootings and bombings.

    But military commanders here see no plausible alternative to their bedrock strategy to clear violence-ridden neighborhoods of militias, insurgents and arms caches, hold them with Iraqi and American security forces, and then try to win over the population with reconstruction projects, underwritten mainly by the Iraqi government. There is no fall-back plan that the generals are holding in their hip pocket. This is it.

    The Iraqi capital, as the generals like to say, is the center of gravity for the larger American mission in Iraq. Their assessment is that if Baghdad is overwhelmed by sectarian strife, the cause of fostering a more stable Iraq will be lost. Conversely, if Baghdad can be improved, the effects will eventually be felt elsewhere in Iraq. In invading Iraq, American forces started from outside the country and fought their way in. The current strategy is essentially to work from the inside out.

    “As Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq,” observed Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, who commands American forces throughout Iraq.

    Many ideas — new and not so new — are being discussed in Washington, like a sectarian division of Iraq (which the current government and many Iraqis oppose); and starting talks with Iraq’s neighbor, Iran (which the Iraqi government is already doing, but the United States is not). Some of these ideas look appealing simply because they have not been put to the test.

    However the broader strategy may be amended, nothing can work if Baghdad becomes a war-torn Beirut. Baghdad security may not be a sufficient condition for a more stable Iraq, but it is a necessary condition for any alternative plan that does not simply abandon the Iraqis to their fate.

    It is hard to see how any Iraq plan can work if the capital’s citizens cannot be protected.

    The current operation is called Together Forward II, the second phase of an effort begun in July to reduce violence in Baghdad. The name reflects the core assumption that the Iraqi government is to be an equal partner in regaining control of its capital. Necessarily, the security plan requires an integrated political and military approach, since its goal is not to vanquish an enemy on a foreign battlefield but to bring order to a militia-and-insurgent-plagued city.

    But the early returns have raised searching questions as to whether the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is truly prepared to tackle the mission.

    “It is a decisive period,” said Maj. Gen. J. D. Thurman, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division and the senior commander of the American forces in Baghdad.

    “They either seize the opportunity or they don’t,” he said. “If they don’t, then our government is going to have to readjust what we are going to do, and that is not my call.”

    Since it would take several months to secure and begin reconstruction in the dozen or so strife-ridden neighborhoods that are the focus of the plan, American commanders said the viability of the strategy could not be properly assessed before the year’s end. So far, however, the plan has been short on resources as well as results. The Iraqi Defense Ministry has supplied only two of the six Iraqi Army battalions that General Thurman has requested.

    That is not just a question of numbers. Some American military officers say they believe the Iraqi Army may be more effective than the Iraq police, and more trusted by local citizens. Yet several Iraqi battalions have deserted rather than follow orders to go to Baghdad, according to American military officials. In the case of these units, summoning them to the Iraqi capital was tantamount to demobilizing them.

    Some of the Iraqi police forces the Americans must work with have been infiltrated by militias. One Iraqi National Police unit has already been withdrawn from the streets and a training program has been instituted to improve the others. The Americans are carefully monitoring a number of police stations that they say have made common cause with some of the militias and intend to report them to the Iraqi government.

    The original concept behind the plan was that American forces were to hold cleared areas for 60 to 90 days, during which the process of economic reconstruction would begin. Then American forces would turn the sectors over to Iraqi police and army units, freeing up American troops to tackle security challenges elsewhere in the city. Without sufficient Iraqi forces, however, this process has been hampered and it has been more difficult to prevent militias and insurgents from sneaking back into cleared areas.

    “What takes the combat power is the holding piece,” said General Thurman. “We can do the clearing. But once you clear if you don’t leave somebody in there and build civil capacity in there then it is the old mud-hole approach. You know the water runs out of the mud hole when you drive through the mud hole and then it runs back in it.”

    Delays in Iraqi government programs to improve electrical, sewage, water and health facilities have also hampered the effort. It had been expected that such Iraqi programs would begin before Ramadan, the monthlong holiday that is about to end. But the programs are now projected to start in November. In the absence of large-scale Iraqi programs, the Americans have sponsored some smaller efforts to improve sanitation and repair services, programs that have generated jobs and helped lower the unemployment rate in the city.

    While the sectarian violence would be far worse if not for the American efforts, the number of murders in the Baghdad area has not decreased as hoped. Fifty-two bodies were found in General Thurman’s sector, which includes Baghdad and large swaths of territory north and south of the city, during the first week of August, when the security operations began. During the week that ended Oct. 14, the body count was 176. For the week that ended Oct. 21, the body count was 143, a noteworthy decline but still more than at the start of the operation.

    There are a number of ideas being discussed in private to fix the plan. Americans still hope to receive additional Iraqi Army forces next month. They also hope to persuade the Iraqi government to purge police stations infiltrated by militias. Iraqi deployment areas may also be realigned.

    American forces have already shifted some forces to new high-violence sectors and may make further adjustments. Shrinking the military zone controlled by the American Baghdad-based division, which now extends south to the cities of Najaf and Karbala, has also been discussed as a way to increase the density of American troops in the capital.

    Erecting more barricades to section off parts of the city has been proposed by some officers. So has legitimizing some neighborhood watch organizations. That idea cuts against the policy to abolish militias but has been advocated by some military officials as a useful expedient.

    Keeping the Army’s Fourth Division in place in Baghdad instead of rotating it home when it is to be replaced by the First Cavalry Division would substantially increase the number of American troops in the city. But there have been no indications that such an idea is under serious consideration.

    In the final analysis, American officers say, much is in Iraqi hands. The American military is looking toward the Maliki government to finally disband the militias and reintegrate them into Iraqi society. It is not clear if the Iraqi government will follow through on such a step since some senior Iraqi officials have said the militias cannot be broken up until the Sunni-based insurgency is brought to heel.

    American officials also say that the Iraqi government needs to more strictly enforce bans on the possession of illicit weapons and accelerate its reconstruction and job creation programs.

    “Part of our problem is that we want this more than they do,” General Thurman said, alluding to the effort to get the Iraqis to put aside sectarian differences and build a unified Iraq. “We need to get people to stop worrying about self and start worrying about Iraq. And that is going to take national unity.”

    “Until we get that settled I think we are going to struggle,” he added.


  • The Resume Mocked ‘Round the World

     

    Oct. 19, 2006
    7:25 pm

     

    With his name and image appearing on the “Today” show, in The New York Post and all over the Web site Gawker, Aleksey Vayner may be the most famous investment-banking job applicant in recent memory.

    But he says his new celebrity is less blessing than curse.

    “This has been an extremely stressful time,” Mr. Vayner, a senior at Yale University, told DealBook over steak in a northern New Jersey restaurant Thursday.

    It was his first face-to-face meeting with a reporter since an 11-page resume and elaborate video clip that he submitted to securities firm UBS showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread to every corner of the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner’s athletic prowess, flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. And the overwhelming reaction was mocking laughter.

    Mr. Vayner is not amused. Instead, he said he feels like a victim. The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in certain cases, threatening him. Since the video surfaced on the Internet, Mr. Vayner said he has deleted at least 2,000 pieces of e-mail.

    It was Mr. Vayner’s highly produced video that appears to have make his job application such a viral sensation.

    A Zen-like koan — “Impossible is nothing” — introduces the seven-minute clip, which shows Mr. Vayner performing various feats of physical strength and skill, interspersed with inspirational maxims. Viewers are presented with images of Mr. Vayner bench-pressing weights (a caption suggests it is 495 pounds), playing tennis (firing off what is said to be a 140 mile-per-hour serve) and performing martial arts (he breaks seven bricks with his palm).

    The tone of the video seems too serious to be parody, yet too over-the-top to be credible. After sharing the clip, fellow students at Yale began to share their favorite Aleksey-style tall tales, notably involving reminiscences of bare-handed killings and nuclear waste.

    And then there were Mr. Vayner’s claims about running a charity, the legitimacy of which is now in question.

    In person, Mr. Vayner is much as he appears in the video. Tall, with gelled-back hair and a navy pinstriped suit, Mr. Vayner — along with his sister, Tamara, and his lawyer, Christian P. Stueben — met with DealBook on Thursday afternoon. Throughout the interview, Mr. Vayner was reserved, speaking deliberately, sometimes peering at what appeared to be notes in his Yale University portfolio.

    Mr. Vayner, 23, said he has been interested in finance since he was 12 years old, when he was creating financial data models. So Mr. Vayner, who is registered in Yale’s class of 2008, decided a few weeks ago to look for a job at a Wall Street firm. He thought that making a video would help him stand out in the often cutthroat competition for investment-banking positions. By emphasizing his various athletic pursuits, which he listed as including body sculpting, weightlifting and Tai Chi, as well as brief stints on Yale’s polo and varsity tennis teams, Mr. Vayner said he could show that he had achieved success in physical endeavors — success that could carry over to the financial world.

    “I felt demonstrating competency in athletics is a good way to stand out, because the same characteristics are the same in business,” said Mr. Vayner, who legally changed his name from Aleksey Garber when he was 18. “The need to set and achieve goals, to have the dedication and competitive drive that’s required in business success.”

    Despite all the mockery that the video has inspired, he still speaks proudly of his athleticism. Nearly all the feats in the video are his, he said, and they are real. (The only doubt in his mind lies in the skiing segment, which he says is probably him.) When asked about a posting Mr. Vayner had placed on the classifieds site Craigslist soliciting skiing videos — a posting that was reproduced on a blog that questioned whether the skier was him — Mr. Vayner said he was simply looking for the cameramen who shot his ski-jump efforts.

    Much of the other Internet chatter about him, mentioning studies in Tibet under the Dalai Lama and a “Blood Sport”-type tournament in Thailand, is false, he said. Such claims stem from what he described as a satirical article in Yale’s tabloid, the Rumpus, detailing outsized claims from him when he was still a pre-freshman. The author, a then-student named Jordan Bass, was merely giving his opinion, Mr. Vayner said, and did not directly interview him for the article. In a piece in this week’s New Yorker magazine, though, Mr. Bass said that he was merely reiterating what Mr. Vayner had told him.

    In the end, though Mr. Vayner said he is less concerned about the mockery — “One mark of success is the ability to handle mass amounts of criticism,” he said — than about what appears to have been a leak of his application materials from UBS. Mr. Vayner and his lawyer, Mr. Stueben, confirmed that they are exploring legal options against the investment banks to which he sent the application.

    A UBS spokesman said in a statement: “As a firm, UBS obviously respects the privacy of applicants’ correspondences and does not circulate job applications and resumes to the public. To the extent that any policy was breached, it will be dealt with appropriately.”

    However the job materials landed on the Internet, the scrutiny has raised several questions about Mr. Vayner’s claims.

    On Wednesday, the blog IvyGate posted excerpts from Mr. Vayner’s self-published book, “Women’s Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust,” which until recently was available on the Web site of Lulu Press. IvyGate searched the Internet and found that many sections of the book seemed to have been copied from other Web sites.

    Asked about the similarities, Mr. Vayner said Thursday that the text on Lulu’s Web site was a “pre-publication copy” based on an earlier draft. The final version was worded more carefully, he said.

    On his resume, Mr. Vayner cites his experience as an investment adviser at a firm called Vayner Capital Management and his charity work at an organization called Youth Empowerment Strategies, of which he was the founder and chief executive. Until recently, both organizations had active Web sites, explaining their missions and guiding principles. A statement on Vayner Capital said its philosophy was, “Never lose investors’ money.” Youth Empowerment Strategies featured a four-star banner said to be from Charity Navigator, an evaluator of nonprofit charitable groups.

    Asked about Youth Empowerment Strategies, however, a representative of Charity Navigator said it had not the group a coveted four-star rating. Instead, it had referred Mr. Vayner’s organization to the New York attorney general’s office, saying it should be investigated for potentially posing as a fraudulent charity.

    Mr. Vayner said Thursday that he had filed the necessary paperwork for the charity in August. Furthermore, he said that he had outsourced the design of his charity’s Web site to companies in India and Pakistan and had no role in placing the Charity Navigator banner on it. Mr. Vayner told a reporter that he had the banner taken down immediately when he learned that the group had disclaimed the banner, some time around Sept. 15. When a reporter then told Mr. Vayner that the banner was still on the site as of last week, Mr. Vayner clarified that he had sent notification to take down the banner.

    Mr. Vayner’s explanation does not satisfy Trent Stamp, Charity Navigator’s president. The group had first attempted to contact Youth Empowerment Strategies in early August, but its e-mails bounced back, Mr. Stamp told DealBook. After learning Mr. Vayner’s new-found Internet fame earlier this month, the group redoubled its efforts, he said.

    “I’m not on the governing board of Yale, but it seems to me that someone who committed massive charity fraud with intent to deceive people shouldn’t be able to receive an Ivy League degree,” Mr. Stamp told DealBook.

    A Yale spokeswoman declined to comment.

    Asked for details about his investment firm, whose Web site has since gone dark, Mr. Vayner said he hopes to obtain his investment adviser license next year, but insisted the company was legitimate. He also stood by Vayner Capital’s stated mission of never losing money. It was not a promise, he said, but merely a philosophical polestar.

    “I have two rules,” he said. “One, I will never lose your money. And two, when in doubt, refer to rule No. 1.”

    For now, Mr. Vayner said he is camping out at his mother’s residence in Manhattan, having taken a short leave of absence from Yale when his video hit the Internet. He said he may have lost his chance to work on Wall Street, and added that he may not succeed in securing a financial job at all.

    Real estate development is an option, he said, but for now his future is unclear.

    In the meantime, he plans on taking his midterm examinations next week.

    – Michael J. de la Merced

    All photos by Emile Wamsteker for The New York Times

    Link to ThisComments (127) 
              E-Mail This

  • Brazilian Grand Prix 2006,Tarnished Ivy League Image,Alcohol and Death by Auto, Murder?Schumacher Re

    Michael Schumacher Arrives at The Track For The Last Time. Brazilian G.P. 2006

    Schumacher Arrives at the Track For The Last Time

    Michael Schumacher arrives at the circuit
    F1 > Brazilian GP, 2006-10-22 (Interlagos): Sunday pre-race

    Michael Schumacher, seven time World Formula one Driving Champion, arrives at the race circuit in Brazil for the very last time as a competitive driver.

    He is retired now, and it will be marked as the end of an era in Formula 1 history. There will be volumes published about his life and times, as well as documentary movies and countless articles in all manner of publications.

    One thing that I feel is most important…

    WE cannot overlook the fact that today also marks the crowning of Fernando Alonso as World Champion of Formula 1 for the second consecutive year. There is nothing in the retirement story of Mr. Schumacher that can overshadow the most amazing repeat performance by Alonso and The Renault Team.

    Congratulations Fernando, to you and everyone at Renault. You have proven yourselves to be World Class thru and thru. You have won a second  World Championmship, one that you so richly deserve and achieved as participants in  highly competitive races through out this year.

    Thank you from all Formula One fans who have enjoyed a season where the excitement has been restored to the greatest motor racing series in the world.

    Michael Schumacher! God Bless You and All of your Loved Ones. You have been a mainstay of this sport for twenty years. There is very little that anyone can really write or say that would do justice to the accomplishments and contribution that you have left in your wake in the world of Grand Prix Formula One racing.

    Only we will wish all of the great good health, love, joy and well deserved pleasure of having your life to share with your young family, who have shared the greater part of you for these many years with your life as the most commited driver in Formula One History.

    Thank You Michael, for all of the memories too many to even recall.

    God Bless you, With Love and Prayers for you and your Loved Ones.

    MIchael P. Whelan

    Las Vegas, Nevada, October 22, 2006

     

    Alcohol, a Car and a Fatality. Is It Murder?

    Jack Healey for The New York Times

    CRIME SCENE This Long Island crash led to a murder conviction.

    October 22, 2006

    Alcohol, a Car and a Fatality. Is It Murder?

    By PAUL VITELLO

    DRUNKEN drivers who kill people with their vehicles are almost never charged with murder.

    Even the usual terms of criminal prosecution, vehicular manslaughter or reckless homicide, which carry far lesser degrees of punishment, are felony charges that until 25 years ago were only lightly used by prosecutors. When a presidential task force tallied the numbers of victims from various crimes in 1981, drunken driving was not even on the list.

    Times have changed. “Reckless homicide” and then “manslaughter” became common charges brought against drunken drivers after advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving began campaigning in the early 1980′s. But now even those terms are considered gentle euphemisms by some advocates against drunken driving — as in, words that shelter people from looking too closely at the ugliest of realities.

    So, many advocates were cheered when a Long Island, N.Y., jury last week convicted Martin R. Heidgen, 25, of murder for killing two people in a head-on collision with a limousine on July 2, 2005. Still, it was such a rare event that advocates, prosecutors and defense lawyers are still trying to figure out its implications.

    Will murder charges help deter drunken driving? Will juries convict these drivers, knowing that they will be in prison for a long time? And is it fair?

    The Heidgen jury, which took five days to reach its verdict, seems to have had difficulty confronting these questions. In a way, the confrontation was forced on them — in part by a newly installed district attorney elected on an anti-drunken driving platform and in part by a grieving mother.

    The facts of the case were never in dispute: Mr. Heidgen, an insurance salesman returning home from a party, was very drunk, his blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit. He was driving the wrong way on a highway when he plowed head-on into the limousine carrying the family of Neil and Jennifer Flynn home from a wedding. He killed the chauffeur, Stanley Rabinowitz, and Katie Flynn, 7.

    The girl’s mother used no euphemisms in describing the accident. “As I crawled out of the car, the only thing that was left of Kate was her head,” Mrs. Flynn, 36, said two days after the crash. “And I took her, just like that, and sat on the side of the Meadowbrook and watched at the horrendousness going on around me. I want everybody to know that.”

    There is no official count of how many times drunken drivers involved in fatal accidents have been charged or convicted of murder. But of the more than 13,000 alcohol-related driving deaths last year in the United States, prosecutors are aware of only a few murder cases each in Texas, California and New York. So there seems to be at least a bit of ambivalence about whether drunken drivers who kill people should be subject to the same legal penalties as gunmen who kill people.

    “There is a certain psychological barrier there,” said Marcia Cunningham, director of the National Traffic Law Center, an agency of the National District Attorneys Association, in Alexandria, Va. Americans spend an enormous amount of time in their cars, she noted, and at one time or other just about everyone has had too much to drink. “The combination of these two familiar activities makes for a certain, what have you, difficulty with the word ‘murder.’ “

    Nonetheless, she said, it is murder, no different from “carrying a loaded gun around, pointing it at people walking down Fifth Avenue, and having a few shots go off, killing them.”

    Steve Oberman, a lawyer in Knoxville, Tenn., who defends drunken drivers and who is the co-author of “Drunk Driving Defense,” a textbook widely used by lawyers in the field, said the situation is usually much more ambiguous.

    “The terrible part about intoxication is that once you become intoxicated you lose the ability to know that you should not be doing certain things, including driving,” Mr. Oberman said. “It doesn’t make it any easier on the family of the victim. But people do make mistakes.”

    The jurors in the Heidgen case apparently considered that. Twice they sent the judge a note saying they were deadlocked. After the fourth day of deliberations, an 8-to-4 majority in favor of a murder conviction became 10 to 2, according to the jurors. In the fifth day, the last two holdouts joined the majority. But one of those two, the jury forewoman, said later that she had felt unbearably pressured by other jurors. She said she was still convinced that Mr. Heidgen was guilty of manslaughter, not murder.

    Kathleen Rice, the district attorney, said the jury reached the right verdict, regardless of any second thoughts by any of its members. “We hope that this verdict sends a message that if you drink and drive and kill somebody you will be prosecuted for murder,” she said.

    Since the early 1980′s, when grassroots groups like MADD began a campaign against drunken driving, the rate of traffic fatalities linked to alcohol has dropped by about half, according to federal highway statistics.

    But progress has stalled, said Chuck Hurley, chief executive of MADD. “The numbers have not moved substantially in 10 years,” he said. “The country has gotten used to MADD, and gotten used to increased law enforcement, and the result is that every month in this country another 1,000 families get a knock on the door with very bad news because of drinking and driving.”

    But he added: “Is every drunk driver who kills someone a murderer? “We don’t advocate that.”Instead, MADD has campaigned successfully to lower the legal blood-alcohol level for drivers to .08 from .10 — now the standard in every state. Ignition-interlock devices, which prevent drunken drivers from starting their cars, have been installed in the vehicles of about 100,000 people serving probation for drunken driving offenses around the country, he said.

    “We are hopeful that the Flynn-Rabinowitz case will mark a new turning point in public awareness,” Mr. Hurley said, referring to the Long Island limousine victims. “But we are not sure how much we can depend on that. For now, we are putting our hopes in technology.”

    Better to save lives before the fact, he said. “A murder trial will not bring anyone back.”


     

    Marie Antoinette, Citoyenne

    Leigh Johnson/Columbia Pictures


    MAKEOVER Depictions of the queen takes her out of her shoes and puts her in ours.

    October 22, 2006
    A Looking Glass

    Marie Antoinette, Citoyenne

    By ERIC KONIGSBERG

    SHE may never have said the words that got her in Bartlett’s — “Let them eat cake” — but she might as well have. Nevertheless, the image of Marie Antoinette — dauphine, villain, tea-party thrower in shepherdess garb — is in the midst of an extreme rehab.

    What with Sofia Coppola‘s movie, two sympathetic books (“Queen of Fashion,” a biography by Caroline Weber, and “Abundance,” a work of historical fiction by Sena Jeter Naslund); and a PBS documentary, we’re having a Marie Antoinette moment. And she doesn’t even have a publicist.

    The question, then, might be less a matter of what to make of Marie Antoinette, than of why the makeover, and why now? Of all the victimizers in history, why are we suddenly flooded with these new narratives that show us Marie Antoinette — vain, selfish, solipsistic and venal — as a victim?

    The simplest answer may be that most Americans don’t have even the flimsiest grasp of who she was.

    “Never underestimate our historical illiteracy,” says the historian Ron Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton explored the Founding Fathers’ disagreements over the excesses of the French Revolution. “Unburdened by an existing context through which to view her life, it becomes much easier to see her simply as a captive of the monarchy and a captive of her own celebrity.”

    Even in the packaging, the current depictions paint Marie Antoinette — the most significant target of a most significant populist revolt — as herself a revolutionary.

    “Her required wardrobe included 12-foot wide hoopskirts,” reads the jacket copy of Ms. Weber’s book. “But when she became queen, Marie Antoinette rebelled, seeking to establish her own royal style as a way to seduce the public (and distract attention from her failure to conceive).”

    The cover flap of “Abundance” describes her as “a heroine of inspiring stature, one whose nobility arises not from the circumstance of her birth but from her courageous spirit.” And the lettering on the advertisements for Ms. Coppola’s movie — on crudely cut hot-pink banners — recall the cover of the Sex Pistols’ album “Never Mind the Bollocks.” (God save the Queen, anyone?)

    Americans’ relationship to rebellion, in any case, is more complicated than you might think. “It was thought of as an attractive concept through much of the 20th century,” Mr. Chernow says. “But at the moment, we’re living in the aftermath of many failed revolutions — Communism and Fascism come to mind — and with the conspicuous exception of the jihadists, people are more attuned to the excesses of revolution.”

    Robert H. Frank, the Cornell economist whose books include “Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess,” says that although the gap between the rich and the rest of us has only widened over the last 35 or 40 years, “Americans aren’t known for great class resentment toward the wealthy.

    “It’s not that the extra spending of the rich hasn’t caused problems for the middle class — it has, particularly in the housing market,” Professor Frank says.

    But to be angry about that, Professor Frank says, is too complicated. “People in the U.S. don’t look at what the people at the top have and say, ‘That’s making life more difficult for me.’ They watch and say, ‘That’ll be me someday. So, I’d better vote to abolish the estate tax, because you never know what the future may bring.’ “

    In other words, there are many Americans who see themselves — accurately or not — in Marie Antoinette (just as there are people who spend their Sundays at open houses for $10 million dollar co-ops on Fifth Avenue, even though they’re raising a family in a cramped two-bedroom where the oven doubles as a china closet).

    On another level — one of personal experience, rather than socioeconomic station — we’re an entire nation of Marie Antoinettes.

    “I meet these people all the time: binge consumers, intentionally oblivious young people who see amassing a great shoe collection as their purpose in life,” says Richard Florida, the author of the books “The Rise of the Creative Class” and “The Flight of the Creative Class.”

    “As our whole society is fundamentally challenged — war, terrorism, globalism — there is a large segment whose measured response has been self-expression through shopping and partying,” he says. “They’re constructing their own fantasy world, a bubble to seal themselves off from the trauma of our times.”

    Even in France, the revisionism has taken hold. It was only last May that Antonia Fraser’s 2001 biography, “Mary Antoinette: The Journey” (on which Ms. Coppola’s film is based), was finally translated into French and published by a French house.

    “And when it finally happened, they refused to put the subtitle,” Ms. Fraser says. “I was interested in the journey, her development. The French seemed not to want to acknowledge that.”

    On the other hand, and despite the fact that the movie was booed when it made its debut at Cannes, the American novelist Diane Johnson says over the phone from Paris, where she is currently residing, that the French also have their “Marie Antoinette mania.”

    She cites “My Name Was Marie Antoinette,” a play in Paris, at the end of which audience members were asked to vote on the Queen’s ultimate fate. “The audience generally votes to let her live,” she says. Today, she says, “in the stores, you see a lot fashion that’s been very much influenced by her new popularity.”

    This has taken the form of taffeta gowns by Alexander McQueen, new shoes by Manolo Blahnik and dresses by John Galliano for Dior Couture.

    “I guess you could call that tie-in merchandise,” Ms. Johnson says. “If it were a Disney film, of course, they’d have made plastic figures.”


     

    Fighting and Arrests Tarnish Ivy League’s Refined Image

    Mia M. Malafronte/Associated Press

    Yale tailback Mike McLeod, left, and a teammate were arrested on Oct. 1 after a fight outside a New Haven restaurant

    October 21, 2006

    Fighting and Arrests Tarnish Ivy League’s Refined Image

    By MICHAEL WEINREB

    What actually happened last Saturday afternoon on a football field in Hanover, N.H., may forever remain a matter for public debate. There was no television coverage of the Dartmouth-Holy Cross game, which ended with a field goal in overtime and a celebration by the visitors on the “D” at Dartmouth’s 50-yard line.

    A fight ensued, but by the time a videographer had turned his camera back on, the fracas was nearing its end. The altercation had lasted either 10 minutes, with “punches and even crutches” flying, according to Dartmouth’s student newspaper, or two minutes, according to several witnesses.

    Dartmouth’s athletic director, Jo Ann Harper, issued a statement Thursday in which she said she had been “unable to determine individual responsibility.” The sports information director, Kathy Phillips, said that while the police were investigating, no disciplinary action had been taken and none would be taken unless any of the players involved stepped forward with further information.

    So perhaps, as Phillips said, the fight was merely a matter of bad timing, its significance raised because it occurred the same day a brawl between players at the University of Miami and Florida International became a YouTube sensation.

    “I think it’s easy for people to assume this was at the Miami level,” said Phillips, who viewed the fight from the press box. “But I’ve seen worse at a hockey rink. If I had to give a deposition, I couldn’t say that there were punches thrown.”

    The Dartmouth fight, however, was merely the most public in a series of ethical and legal issues in the Ivy League this fall. At Harvard, a series of incidents led Coach Tim Murphy to dismiss two football players and suspend another. At Yale, the starting quarterback and tailback were implicated in a fight outside a local restaurant, although the charges have been dropped. And on Wednesday, The Dartmouth, the student newspaper, reported that the Big Green’s co-captain, defensive tackle Mike Rabil, had been charged with misdemeanor battery after an altercation in Chicago in July.

    “I spoke with an Ivy League sports information director from the 1970′s and asked him whether this kind of thing took place at that time,” said Bruce Wood, who runs Big Green Alert, an independent Web site that covers Dartmouth athletics. “He couldn’t remember having to manage a crisis of that type.”

    Today, Harvard (5-0, 2-0), ranked 15th in N.C.A.A. Division I-AA, will face Princeton (5-0, 2-0), ranked No. 22, in one of the biggest matchups in the Ivy League’s recent history. Yet for a league that does not award scholarships, does not allow its teams to compete in the playoffs and prides itself on sportsmanship, the incidents have raised questions as to whether Ivy League teams can emphasize winning and still maintain their pristine image.

    “People do focus a little harder when you have a couple of incidents like this,” said Jeffrey H. Orleans, executive director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents. “But unless I saw some evidence that there was something that linked them, I don’t have any reason to believe there’s anything that relates these things.”

    But the repercussions have rippled through all eight Ivy League institutions, prompting discussion about what constitutes fair or unfair treatment of student-athletes and whether the league is overemphasizing its athletics programs. A columnist at The Daily Pennsylvanian suggested the Ivies should either “embrace what Division I athletics means today” and begin awarding scholarships, or “drop to Division II or III — or even out of the N.C.A.A. altogether.”

    Officials at Harvard, including Murphy, have remained tight-lipped about the problems there, including the dismissal of a team captain and all-Ivy League linebacker after he was charged with domestic assault; a suspension of last year’s starting quarterback for five games for an undisclosed violation of team rules; and the dismissal of a wide receiver after what his coach deemed a “disgusting” performance at the team’s annual “Skit Night.”

    “In some cases, there’s a segment of the public that doesn’t mind seeing elite or prestigious schools knocked down a peg,” said Chuck Sullivan, Harvard’s director of athletic communications. “If Donald Trump went bankrupt tomorrow, certain people would take pleasure in that. At times, the Ivies can be an easy target for things.”

    Within the league, however, opinions vary. At Yale, Coach Jack Siedlecki received widespread criticism after he chose not to suspend quarterback Matt Polhemus and tailback Mike McLeod after their arrests on Oct. 1, along with three Yale hockey players, following an altercation outside the Gourmet Heaven restaurant in New Haven that resulted in a broken window.

    Why, some students wondered, had the Harvard coach been so stern and the Yale coach taken his players, both key starters, at their word?

    “I was born in the United States, not Russia,” Siedlecki said. “I know not everybody agrees with me on this, but my loyalty is with the players first. I think each individual case deserves to be judged on its own. And I don’t think these kids deserve to be suspended in any way.”

    After a mediation session, the charges against Polhemus and McLeod were dropped, and the arrests were removed from their records.

    “Kids are kids, and things happen,” Siedlecki said. “We’re not immune from that at all. But our society’s really changed. We are very negative, very vindictive people.”


     

    Brazilian Grand Prix 2006

    Massa wins Brazilian GP, Alonso is champion

    Racing series  F1
    Date 2006-10-22

    By Nikki Reynolds – Motorsport.com

    –> –>Ferrari’s Felipe Massa became the first Brazilian since Ayrton Senna in 1993 to win his home race when he took the chequered flag at Interlagos for his second victory of the season. Massa led the Brazilian Grand Prix from pole to flag and Renault’s Fernando Alonso became the youngest back-to-back world champion with second place. Renault also claimed the constructors’ title for the second consecutive year.

    See large picture
    Podium: race winner Felipe Massa with 2006 World Champion Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Ross Brawn. Photo by xpb.cc.

    Honda’s Jenson Button had a strong drive from 14th on the grid to come home in third, while Michael Schumacher’s final race was an eventful one. An early puncture dropped the German way down the field but he fought back in superb fashion, his determination taking him over the line in fourth place. Less than he had hoped for, perhaps, but Schumacher’s performance was a memorable one to end his career.

    It was fine and dry for race day, the conditions warmer than expected with a track temperature in the mid forties. The top seven held formation off the line: Massa, McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, Toyota’s Jarno Trulli, Alonso, Honda’s Rubens Barrichello, Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella and Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher. Michael shot off from 10th to battle with the BMW Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica.

    Meanwhile, it was to be a short and less-than sweet end to Williams’ year. Nico Rosberg hit the back of Mark Webber at the first corner, Webber losing his rear wing. Webber headed to the pits to retire and Rosberg had a big shunt shortly afterwards. It seems some damage from the contact with Webber sent him spinning off just before the entry into the pit straight. The Williams hit the barrier hard and was badly damaged.

    Rosberg appeared unscathed and was out of the car quickly. “I was pushing hard to make up some places and Mark braked very late and I hit him,” he said of the initial incident. “It’s disappointing for the team as it’s not a good way to finish the season. I felt the front wing was wrong and had understeer then something broke.”

    The safety car was deployed as the Williams had spun back onto the track after the impact. Prior to the crash Fisichella had got past Barrichello for fifth and had Michael behind him. The BMWs had been squabbling with Ralf and there was possibly some contact there but all three seemed to survive, Ralf in eighth and Kubica and Button making up the top 10.

    The safety car went in after four laps and Massa and Raikkonen shot away at the front. Michael was all over Fisichella’s rear wing and had a look at the first corner but didn’t go for it. Likewise Alonso was measuring up Trulli’s Toyota but biding his time. Michael attacked round the outside of Fisichella into the pit straight but it went pear-shaped.

    There didn’t appear to be any contact but Michael suffered a left rear puncture and the rest of the pack went streaming past as the Ferrari slowed and began the long, precarious trek back to the pits. Bridgestone later said they believed that debris had cut the tyre. Michael finally got in for the tyre change and rejoined way down in 17th.

    At the front Massa had pulled away from Raikkonen and was going some two seconds a lap faster than the Michelin runners behind. The next unexpected events were Ralf pulling into the pits to retire and Trulli mysteriously dropping to 10th then following his teammate’s lead and trundling to the pits to retire. A suspected suspension gremlin was the culprit.

    “We’re not sure,” Ralf said about what happened. “Something was wrong at the back of the car, it seems to be the same on both cars.” Trulli concurred and explained a little further. “Both cars had the same problem, a central component on the rear suspension,” was the Italian’s summing up of the situation.

    That meant Buton was up to sixth, Kubica to seventh and the McLaren of Pedro de la Rosa to eighth. The Red Bull of David Coulthard was another retiree not long afterwards. “It was a gearbox problem again,” Coulthard commented. “I initially thought it was the clutch but the gear disengaged and I lost fourth.”

    By then Heidfeld was ninth and closing on de la Rosa, while Toro Rosso’s Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi were 10th and 11th. Super Aguri’s Takuma Sato was going well in 12th, followed by the Spyker MF1 of Christijan Albers, the second Super Aguri of Sakon Yamamoto, Red Bull’s Robert Doornbos, Tiago Monteiro’s Spyker MF1 and Michael about to begin his fight back.

    Raikkonen, Barrichello and Fisichella all dived into the pits together for the first time, Barrichello nearly hitting Fisichella on the way out. Massa was 13 seconds ahead of Alonso, up to second, and belting out fastest laps at the front. The Brazilian was next to pit and Alonso took over until his stop and he got ahead of Raikkonen when he rejoined.

    Button managed to jump both Fisichella and Barrichello is his first visit to the pits and then homed in on Raikkonen and dispatched the McLaren into the pit straight. Kubica and Speed had a brief coming together with a little damage to Kubica’s front wing but they both continued. It wasn’t really clear what happened or who was at fault.

    De la Rosa in second was on a one-stopper and had not yet pitted, collecting quite a train of cars behind him. Fisichella made an error at turn one which allowed Barrichello to close in, while Button was harassing the other Renault of Alonso. De la Rosa finally took his stop and Heidfeld and Michael moved up to eighth and ninth.

    Michael slipstreamed the BMW into the pit straight and whipped past, then started setting fastest laps. Massa was forging ahead in front and picking his way through the backmarkers. Heidfeld pitted and got a new front wing — the reason for the change was not clear but during the safety car period he had said on the radio the front of the car didn’t feel right.

    Michael was then homing in on Kubica and got past at turn one for seventh but then the Ferrari wobbled a bit and slowed. Surely not another problem for the German? That would be too much. However, it seemed it was just a mistake on Michael’s behalf as he soon picked up the pace and had to pass Kubica all over again, which he duly did.

    The second round of pit stops began circulating through, Barrichello and Michael first then Fisichella. Michael rejoined behind Barrichello and set about harassing his former teammate, overtaking him down the pit straight and into turn one for sixth. Raikkonen, Alonso and Massa took their second stops and Alonso rejoined ahead of Button for second.

    The points order was then Massa, Alonso, Button, Raikkonen, Fisichella, Michael, Barrichello and de la Rosa. Albers had a brief trip across the grass but recovered and Doornbos was late to take his second stop with only about a dozen laps to go. Kubica was ninth and Sato hanging in there in fine style in 10th.

    Michael and Fisichella were locked in battle, the Ferrari piling the pressure on through corner after corner. Many times Fisichella held him off but eventually the Italian locked up at turn one and skipped across the grass which gave Michael a wide open door to fifth. With about eight laps to go there was more drama.

    Heidfeld’s BMW snapped into an abrupt spin towards the end of the pit straight and crashed into the barrier at turn one. It looked like some kind of car failure but the German appeared to escape unscathed from the impact. Yellow flags came out while the track was cleared, which deprived Michael of his favourite overtaking spot.

    He had homed in on Raikkonen, the man who will replace him at Ferrari next year, but couldn’t go for it at turn one. Undeterred Michael harassed the McLaren all around the lap and they battled down the pit straight but Raikkonen held. But the Finn seemed to struggle through the twisty middle part of the circuit and next time they were side by side through turn one, then free of yellow flags.

    Michael made it stick and claimed the fourth place; it was very close and they were wheel to wheel but it was fine driving from both men. With two laps to go Button was on Alonso’s rear wing and Alonso put a little space between them; with Massa leading and Michael fourth the Spaniard couldn’t afford any sort of clash with Button.

    And that was it, the final race of 2006 and Massa took the chequered flag to the delight of the roaring crowds. It was a deserved win for the Brazilian; he has improved immeasurably this season and he and Raikkonen promise to be a very interesting paring at Ferrari next year. Brazil will be partying tonight.

    It’s never over until it’s over and there was always room for something to befall Alonso and prevent his second title. However, the odds were in his favour today and he has proved his worth for the second year in a row. There are those that will detract from his achievement for one reason or another but Ferrari’s shortcomings and misfortunes are not his fault and he fought hard for this title.

    Button did a good job to get home third and the Honda showed some good pace at Interlagos. Too little too late for this year, and there’s a long way to go before the start of next season, but the team finished 2006 on an upward trend. Barrichello no doubt hoped for more than seventh but at least it was points and considering his track record in Brazil that’s not too bad.

    What to say about Michael Schumacher? In his last race he reminded us just what F1 will be missing with his absence. After his bravado performance today some are bewildered as to why he is retiring — he drove with the utter commitment he’s always shown at his best. Maybe that is why he’s retiring; leaving at the top of one’s form is perhaps the best way to go.

    McLaren didn’t think it could keep up with Ferrari’s pace but as it happened it wasn’t up to Renault or Honda either. Raikkonen’s fifth was damage limitation and de la Rosa’s eighth was not particularly spectacular. Fisichella was also a little lacklustre in sixth but his and Alonso’s efforts were enough to retain Renault’s constructors’ title.

    BMW finished the season fifth in the standings behind Honda, just one point ahead of Toyota. It was more than BMW had expected in its first year but today was a lost chance to pick up points after both cars started in the top 10. Kubica crossed the line ninth and Heidfeld was classed 17th despite his premature end to the race.

    Sato delighted Super Aguri with 10th and teammate Yamamoto was 16th. Speed was the best of the Red Bull owed-outfits in 11th, with Doornbos 12th and Liuzzi 13th. Both Spykers made it to the flag, Albers 14th and Monteiro 15th. Brazil was a good race and although not everyone will be happy, it was a fair and decent fight at the end of the season. Final top eight classification: Massa, Alonso, Button, M. Schumacher, Raikkonen, Fisichella, Barrichello, de la Rosa. 


    Photos for Brazilian GP
    Discuss this article in the Motorsport.com Forums channel: F1 
    More news about Brazilian GP:
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

						
							

  • 
	
    
		
    Mother of All Heists,Dixie Chicks,Anita Pallenberg,$139 million Picasso ripped,L’Wren Scott,Googling
    
		
    
						
    
				
    More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen 

    The Mother Of All Heists
    Oct. 22, 2006 
    (CBS) More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country’s Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators. 

    Iraq’s former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country. The 60 Minutes investigation also turned up audio recordings of a suspect who seems to be discussing the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the interim defense minister. 

    Correspondent Steve Kroft reports on this mother of all heists. 

    “We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the U.K. or any of the surrounding Arab countries,”" says Ali Allawi, who was confronted with the missing funds when he took over as Iraq’s finance minister last year. 

    He thinks he knows why Iraqi investigators have gotten little help. “The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar,” says Allawi, who left his post when a new Iraqi government was formed earlier this year. “And if they are brought to trial, it will cast a very disparaging light on those people who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and authority,” he tells Kroft. 

    One of the people praised in former U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer’s memoirs is a major suspect in the case. Ziad Cattan was in charge of military procurement at a time when the ministry of defense went on a $1.2 billion buying spree. Allawi estimates that $750 to $800 million of that money was stolen. Judge Radhi al-Radhi, head of Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity, which investigates official corruption, tells Kroft that a lot of the money that wasn’t stolen was spent on outdated, useless equipment. 

    “It isn’t true,” says Cattan, whom 60 Minutes found in Paris and who was recently convicted in absentia in Iraq for squandering public funds. He showed Kroft documents and pictures of equipment that he says is now in Iraq. An official from Jane’s, one of the world’s foremost experts in military hardware, says the documents Cattan provided were too vague to prove anything. 

    Audio recordings obtained by 60 Minutes reveal Cattan talking to an associate in Amman, Jordan, in 2004 about the distribution of Iraqi funds. According to two independent translations, he is discussing payoffs to Iraqi officials. 

    One possible payoff the recordings allude to is the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the defense minister, a man who is also identified on the recordings as a representative of the president and the prime minister of the interim government. Cattan acknowledged his own voice was on the recordings. Three translators say he specifically mentions “45 million dollars,” but he disputes the translation. “I don’t say dollars,” he tells Kroft. “I don’t remember what the matter was.” 

    Cattan maintains that U.S. and coalition advisors at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense approved everything he did and says the recordings have been doctored. Audio experts consulted by 60 Minutes could not find any evidence of that. Judge Radhi also has a copy of the recordings and says a former employee of the ministry of defense confessed after hearing them. 

    60 Minutes has learned that Cattan is building himself a villa in Poland. Another suspect, Naer Jumaili, principal in a middle-man company that handled much of the $1.2 billion in Iraqi military contracts, is said to be buying real estate in Amman, Jordan, and building himself a large villa, even though he is wanted by Interpol. Judge Rahdi believes the fugitive suspects are bribing their way to freedom and says countries like Jordan and Poland have been “no help at all” in apprehending the suspects or recovering the money. 

    The case is one of 2,000 Iraqi government corruption cases the judge’s commission is handling that, all told, involve $7.5 billion. 

    No one in the U.S. government would speak on camera about the case. But U.S. officials say this was Iraqi money spent by a sovereign Iraqi government and therefore is the Iraqis’ business.


    Produced by Andy Court and Keith Sharman
    ©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.    .. 
     
    THE Dixie Chicks’ biggest detractor 
    New York Post 

    DIXIE DODGER 
    October 9, 2006 — THE Dixie Chicks’ biggest detractor, FreeRepublic.com founder Jim Robinson, declined to appear in their documentary, “Shut Up and Sing.” Now Ken Sunshine, who reps the George Bush-bashing Chicks, calls him “a coward. A real man would put his money where his mouth is, but this Robinson guy, he’d rather hide behind his keyboard than have a real discussion about his ideas . . . he’s just a chicken[bleep] fraud.” Robinson’s rep, Kristinn Taylor, confirmed he ducked the interview: “He told me to go ahead and do it.” 
     
    Anita Pallenberg, October 24, 1973 
    Anita Pallenberg, October 24, 1973
    Girlfriend of founding Rolling Stone, Brian Jones, infatuation of Mick Jagger, & the Mother of two surviving children of Keith Richards; Marlon & Dandelion (Angela). Richards and Pallenberg lost a son, Tara at the age of 10 months. He was born March 26, 1976. Anita was an actress in “A Degree Of Murder”, “Der Rebel”, “Barbarella”, & “Performance”.
     
    Casino mogul Steve Wynn ripped a hole through his $139 million Picasso 
    I Punched a Hole in My Picasso!
    Now what do I do?
    By Daniel Engber
    Posted Thursday, Oct. 19, 2006, at 7:03 PM ET
    –> –>
    Casino mogul Steve Wynn ripped a hole through his $139 million Picasso painting while gesticulating at a cocktail party, reports the New York Post. Nora Ephron gave her own first-person account of the damage: It was “a black hole the size of a silver dollar … with two three-inch long rips coming off it in either direction.” Wynn had just agreed to sell the painting; now, the deal is off. Is there any way to fix the ripped Picasso?
    Yes, but it will be slow and tedious work. The torn ends of the canvas can probably be lined up, and conservators can identify matching fibers on either side of the rip by inspecting them under a microscope. In general, you can expect the wefts in the fabric—that is, the crosswise yarns of the weave—to split at the site of the impact. The lengthwise warps tend to get stretched out, but they may not break.
    The rip itself can be mended in a few different ways. First, the conservator can line up the torn ends and affix them to a new piece of fabric that lines the back of the painting. She might also try to attach the torn ends to each other using a method called Rissverklebung, in which individual fibers are rewoven back into place.
    To reweave the warps and wefts, you have to figure out the proper placement of each individual fiber. Bits of paint that are stuck to the fibers must be glued in place or removed until the reweaving is complete. (Conservators map out the location of each paint flake they remove so it can be replaced in precisely the right spot.) Because an accident will stretch out some fibers and fray others, you sometimes have to tie off and shorten some threads while attaching new material to lengthen others. Threads attached to the back of the canvas will reinforce the seam.
    Closing the tear is only the first part of the process. An accident like Wynn’s can damage the painting in other places by stretching the fabric and distorting the image. To correct for these planar distortions, the conservators try to change the lengths of individual fibers or small patches of the canvas. Applied humidity can make a fiber expand across its diameter and shrink across its length—and tighten up distended parts of the weave. 
    Bits of paint that have fallen off the painting must also be replaced. Wynn might have surveyed the scene of the accident and saved any stray bits of paint for the conservators in a petri dish. (Chance are he didn’t strip much off the canvas—Ephron says he was wearing a golf shirt, which suggests a bare-elbow blow. An elbow covered with rough fabric would probably have done more damage.) Conservators have to touch up spots of missing paint with fresh material, color-matched to the surrounding area.
    One more thing: Conservators always try to make their repairs reversible. That way, you won’t cause any permanent damage to the work if you screw up, and someone can always try to improve on your work in the future. 
    Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.
    Explainer thanks Carolyn Tomkiewicz of the Brooklyn Museum.
    Daniel Engber is a regular contributor to Slate. 
     
    L’Wren Scott 
    L’Wren Scott
    Born, Luann Bambrough she is a former model and now a fashion stylist who lives in Hollywood. She is Mick’s current “main person of interest” for the past few years. This shot from the Grammy’s January 16, 2005.
     
    Live From Reykjavik, Part III: An Insider´s Look at Iceland Airwaves 2006 
    Megan Pillow 
    Bio 
    		Blog Index RSS 
    10.22.2006 
    Live From Reykjavik, Part III: An Insider´s Look at Iceland Airwaves 2006 
    READ MORE: 2006 
    It´s Sunday, the final day of Airwaves, and Reykjavik has emptied of tourists as quickly as water poured from a pitcher. The streets are all still today, the shops shuttered and dark, and, after a week of loud music, crowded venues, and late late nights, it seemed only natural that my friend and I chose to get out of town and see some of the countryside.
    –> begin ad tag (ptile=2) 300×250–> –> End ad tag –>
    There are a few more performances tonight by local bands, but it is our last full day in Iceland, and in our opinion, nothing could compare to the caliber of last night´s performances. 
    Saturday night in Reykjavik was perhaps a hair less harrowing than Friday night, or, perhaps I simply got used to the furor. Two venues promised great shows – at club NASA, the UK´s Fields and the U.S. band Brazilian Girls, and at the Reykjavik Art Museum, The Cribs and the Kaiser Chiefs were playing, both UK bands as well. It was a tough call, but we decided to wait it out at the art museum – we knew we´d have a chance to catch the Brazilian Girls once back in the U.S.
    As always, we arrived early and grabbed a spot at the front of the venue. First up was a series of four Icelandic bands – Daniel Agust, Petur Ben, Biggi, and Leaves. The best of the bunch was unquestionably Daniel Agust, whose complex melodies and well-crafted lyrics complemented his powerful vocals. 
    Next up was The Cribs, a band who I´d eagerly been anticipating – after picking up one of their albums, I was thrilled to get the chance to see them in concert. Unfortunately, the performance was merely mediocre, which had to do somewhat with the band´s laissez-faire attitude. Much of the fault, however, should be placed with the audience, who weren´t as engaged by the band´s clever, catchy music as it well deserves. 
    When the Kaiser Chiefs took stage, however, all of the crowd´s lethargy disappeared. The credit for the tranformation rests on the shoulders of lead singer Ricky Wilson, whose performance was nothing less than stellar. Wilson´s vocals and his intoxicating ability to make each member of his audience feel like the only person in the room prove him a better frontman even than Mick Jaggar, and when backed by a band fueled by tremendous talent and instinct, the combination moves the performance from mere music into the realm of artistry. 
    If you can, pick up the Kaiser Chief´s album, Employment, but realize that it does not nearly do them justice. More importantly, if you have the chance to see them live, do so. It´s an experience you´ll never forget. 
    After an uneventful return to our hotel and a good night´s rest, my friend and I got up this morning and decided to rent a car, get out of the city, and take in a few of Iceland´s scenic sites. Reykjavik is relatively close to the country´s three largest tourist attractions, called the Golden Circle, and so we decided we had time enough to tackle them before heading home. 
    Luckily, driving in Iceland is relatively easy – Americans staying less than 90 days don´t need an international driver´s license, and Icelanders drive on the right side of the road just as we do. The only precaution that drivers are urged to take is to rent an appropriate vehicle – if you are planning to travel anywhere that is toward the interior of the country well off the Ring Road, the highway that traverses the entire circumference of the island, you would be foolish to rent anything other than an SUV with four wheel drive. 
    For our purposes, however, a Toyota Yaris was sufficient, and so we set out in search of the first stop on our excursion – Thingvellir, where Iceland´s first settlers held their national assembly, the Althing, in 930. The site was blessed with a beautiful view and massive rock fissures courtesy of the earthquakes that have occurred there as the American and European tectonic plates that are joined there gradually separate and Iceland itself slowly splits apart. 
    Once outside of Reykjavik, the landscape quickly transformed from merely beautiful into absolutely breathtaking. The countryside in Iceland is vast and unflinching, miles and miles of empty fields, rocky crags, and snow-capped mountains. The land is dotted with houses and buildings here and there, but little, it seems has changed since the time of the Vikings. It is picturesque, desolate and somehow supremely frightening; as we drove toward our second stop, Iceland´s well-known Geysir, we moved from a divided highway to a narrow paved road to a dirt and gravel pathway, across land that, if not so bone-chillingly cold, could have easily been mistaken for desert. For kilometers, there was not a building or a human in sight. It was easy to imagine how American pioneers felt as they traveled west, into both an unknown land and unknowable future. I shivered at the thought of getting caught here after dark, and my friend and I joked about how perfect a setting it would make for a horror movie. 
    After our brief stop at Iceland´s Geysir, where we weaved our way through steam and boiling pools of water to the largest spout Strokkur, which shot water nearly seventy feet into the air, we made our way ten kilometers down the road to Gullfoss waterfall where, even from the top of the cliff, we could feel the water from the roaring falls hundreds of feet below spray against our faces. Finally, it was time to backtrack to Reykjavik, and as we headed down the stretch of gravel road that lead to Thingvellir, Iceland offered us another surprise: the landscape that had before seemed so desolate was, in the dying light of the sunset, alive with color. The gray-green moss capping the rocks suddenly glowed emerald; straw-colored brush glimmered slim and golden. It was as if we were driving through a completely different landscape, and all of sudden, I realized how much I will miss this terrible, wonderful place. 
    Leaving Reykjavik tomorrow will in some ways be a blessing; I will be ready to go home, finish my book, resume my normal day-to-day life. But some small part of me will wish I could stay here a while longer, take apart and analyze more of the country´s problems, understand its successes, and relive Airwaves all over again. There are many cities and many music festivals out there, some more organized, others more successful than this one. But there is nothing quite like this month, in this city, in this country, at this festival, and because of that, I plan to tell everyone I know that they should not miss it. 
    Somehow, someday, I will come back. Perhaps I´ll see you when I do. 
    Read Part I and Part II of the series.

    Send to a friend
    Post a Comment
    Print Post
    Read all posts by Megan Pillow
     
    Related News Stories
    Related Blog Posts
     
    Live from Reykjavik, Part II: An Insider´s Look At Iceland Airwaves 2006 
    Megan Pillow 
    Bio 
    		Blog Index RSS 
    10.21.2006 
    Live from Reykjavik, Part II: An Insider´s Look At Iceland Airwaves 2006 (2 comments ) 
    READ MORE: 2006 
    By day, the city of Reykjavik, Iceland is quiet, almost ruminative, going about its business with a dutiful and elegant sense of purpose. Tourists stroll the streets sipping coffee, swinging their shopping bags like children; stoic natives thread through them, intent on getting to work. 
    Under a bright blue sky and the forgiving light of a mid-day October sun, the city stretches 
    –> begin ad tag (ptile=2) 300×250–> –> End ad tag –>
    out like a langorous cat, spreading its limbs toward the sea, and in that moment, there is not in the world a more beautiful, more fascinating place to be. 
    But come night, that scene disappears behind a curtain of darkness, and another scene is lit, this one revealing a nightlife that is, at some times merely strange, at others sinister, but always wholly out of control. 
    It´s day four of the 2006 Iceland Airwaves festival, and I´m beginning to feel it. The last few nights in this dynamic and totally demented town are beginning to wear on me. Every muscle in my body aches, my feet hurt, and I have brusies on my rib cage and hipbones. This is seems, is the price of fun, and I´m more than willing to pay it, if I can, at least, avoid a repeat of what happened last night. 
    My friend Elise and I had been looking forward to the Friday night bands, in particular the Canadian band Wolf Parade, and we were determined to be at the very front of the venue. We realized after our experience at We Are Scientists that we had to take a tactical approach to this festival: choose the bands we most wanted to see, get there early, and hold our ground. 
    Our strategy was successful on Thursday night at the Reykjavik Art Museum, where we were front and center for the sweet and sultry U.S. band Mates of State, UK rockers Hot Club de Paris, whose unique blend of clever barbershop ballads and solid punk riffs were as appealing as their sexy Liverpool accents, and the Omaha, Nebraska-based Tilly and the Wall, a must-see because of their pure innovation – the six-member band´s percussion is performed by tap-dancer Jamie and the band´s two lead singers, Neely and Kianna, are uniquely appealing – one gifts the audience with a gorgeous voice and a Veronica Lake smile and the other channels Pat Benetar into a performance full of joyful anger and prodigious talent. 
    By far the standout performance on Thursday, however, was at club NASA from the Canadian band Metric, which was preceded by an athletic performance by the hardcore Icelandic band Reykjavik! Metric produces dark and mesmerizing music laced with lyrics possessed of a biting wit, and lead singer Emily Haines is unforgettable, blessed with the airy vocals and angry passion of Tori Amos and PJ Harvey and an uncanny repoire with both her band and her audience that gives her one of the most powerful stage presences in the business. 
    After Thursday´s tremendous success, we were looking forward to Friday. We reluctantly decided to forgo a performance by Canada´s Islands at the Reykjavik Art Museum in favor of staking out a good space for the night´s headliner Wolf Parade, so again, we headed into club Gaukurinn and found a spot at the front of the venue. 
    Through a couple of the night´s first performances, the crowd was manageable. By the time Norway´s 120 Days, a powerful band with a passing resemblance to early U2 fueled by electronica, hit the stage, the room was full, and as the young Icelandic band Mammut and the popular Jeff Who! made their appearances, the room became not a collection of people, but a living, breathing organism all its own. We were packed in so tightly that I could feel the barrier rubbing against my ribs, the sweat of my neighbors running down my back, someone´s elbows in my shoulder and neck. I had to grab hold of a metal pole running down the front of the barrier in order to simply stay standing up and in place. 
    When Wolf Parade hit the stage, however, the room erupted into utter chaos. People jumped when there was no place to jump. They screamed into their neighbor´s ears. And all of them tried to get to the front of the room, which meant that all of us at the front had to engage in gladiator-style heroics just to keep our place. I´ll admit it – I shoved people, I elbowed them, I butted them out of the way. I waited nearly three hours for this, and I wasn´t leaving. 
    Wolf Parade´s performance was simply brilliant, despite some inconsistencies in the sound mix. I have a feeling that, someday, it will be the kind of performance that I will be able to tell people ‘I was there.´But what I will remember most about last night, I think, is not what the band sounded like, althought that will stay with me, too. What I will remember will be the constant roar of the crowd, the thousand people that threw their hands in the air in response to a song, the looks on the faces of the people around me and on the faces of the other well-known Airwaves bands who snuck in the side door just to see them. 
    Despite being soaked in sweat and not being able to feel my feet, I was happy when we left the club, knowing I´d seen something memorable, and at 1:30 in the morning, I was ready to tackle nightlife in Reykjavik. 
    I had no idea what I was in for. 
    When we walked out of the club, the city was a changed place. Gone were the relatively empty streets and the clutches of tourists. Instead, the streets were filled with young Icelanders dressed to the nines, shouting to one another, heading into clubs and bars. 
    Needless to say, the rumors about Reykjavik nightlife are all true – in essence, on the weekends it is Tortuga as depicted in the Pirates of the Caribbean, the island of chaos where Jack Sparrow seeks refuge. Last night, I saw groups of men standing on corners with their pants around their ankles, people launching themselves through the air and rolling down the street, full beer bottles hurled against the sidewalks like rice at a wedding. I was manhandled by at least three men in an Icelandic bar, and had my rear end smacked by another on the city´s main street by another. In fact, I´ve felt more comfortable walking down 125th street in Harlem at 3 a.m. than I did walking through Reykjavik last night. 
    But that doesn´t mean I won´t be going out tonight. Instead, I´ll just have my guard up, my friend by my side, and I certainly won´t be making any more trips into Icelandic bars, unless I have mace and perhaps a tire iron in my possession. Tonight, my friends, the UK bands The Cribs and the Kaiser Chiefs are playing, and I won´t miss them. My time here is growing short, and though it took me a while to learn it, it seems like the key to surviving Reykjavik and the Airwaves festival is wit, determination, and a good offense. 
    Wish me luck. 
    Send to a friend
    Post a Comment
    Print Post
    Read all posts by Megan Pillow
     
    Related News Stories
    Related Blog Posts
    Comments : 
    Isn’t it true that the ratio of women to men in Iceland is something like 10 to 1?

    I feel sorry for the gay men of Iceland. They must be BORED OUT OF THEIR MINDS. 
    By: situationcritical on October 21, 2006 at 11:54am 
    Flag: [Flag: [Send to a friend
    Post a Comment</DIV> 
    Print Post
    Read all posts by Megan Pillow
     
     
    Live from Reykjavik: An Insider´s Look at Iceland Airwaves 2006 
    Megan PillowMegan Pillow 
    Bio 
    		Blog Index RSS 
    10.19.2006 
    Live from Reykjavik: An Insider´s Look at Iceland Airwaves 2006 (4 comments ) 
    READ MORE: 2006 
    It´s 10:30 p.m., and I´m packed into a club called Gaukurinn on the west side of town, cheek to cheek with hipsters in skinny pants and ruddy-faced fans screaming for the next band, and I feel like by getting here, I´ve accomplished the social equivalent of tackling Everest. The line to get in still snakes all the way around the side of the building, and it took me nearly half an hour to get to where I am now, center stage in the middle of the room, where we´re packed in so tight that I can feel the ribs of the person next to me pressing against my arm and I can see the flecks of gold in his green eyes even in the dim light.
    –> begin ad tag (ptile=2) 300×250–> –> End ad tag –>
    In any other circumstance, this would qualify as a date, but here, it´s just what you have to do to get to the music.

    This isn´t some club in Soho, though, or even L.A. or Miami. Instead, it´s one of approximately a half dozen venues in Reykjavik, Iceland, where, for the next five days, nearly 200 bands, solo artists, and DJs from Iceland, the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Britian, and more will perform from Oct 18-22 as part of Iceland Airwaves 2006. For five days, every night from 7 p.m. until 2 or even 3 a.m., there are approximately a dozen hot spots around the city where you can crowd in with other music fans and be the first hear the music that´s almost certain to already be working Europe into a frenzy, and almost equally certain to be doing the same thing to America in the next six months – bands like Canada´s Islands and Wolf Parade, the U.S.´s We Are Scientists and Brazilian Girls, and the UK´s Kaiser Chiefs and The Cribs. All you need is the trademark red wristlet that marks you as an Iceland Airwaves participant. 

    The Airwaves festival has been one of Europe´s hottest since its inception in 1999, where the first was played in a Reykjavik airplane hangar. Since then, however, the festival has garnered a great deal more cool and cache by making Reykjavik´s city centre the festival setting and by attracting artists and bands like Bjork, FatBoy Slim, and others on their way to fame. In part as a result, Reykjavik itself has earned a reputation as one of Europe´s party capitals, and the festival itself has routinely attracted lots of fans from across Europe. On the whole, however, because of the predominance of European music acts, it has still flown under the radar of American music fans.

    This year, however, just might be the year that changes all that. 

    That might be, in part, because of the festival´s increasing visibility. Myspace is hosting a stage at the National Theatre Basement, beginning today through Saturday, Oct. 21, which will feature artists like Sweden´s Jenny Wilson, Germany´s Trost, and Canada´s Patrick Watson, all of whom are beginning to make a name for themselves. The site has a festival page, complete with pictures, interviews, and a festival lineup, which, given Myspace´s popularity in America, may well get some attention from the many young Americans whose staple is a daily visit.

    In addition, America is becoming a growing presence among the long lineup of festival performers, which may well begin to pique American interest in the festival. Artists like We Are Scientists, a rock band that got its start in L.A. but now call New York home, are making their first appearance this year, and members Chris Cain, Keith Murray, and Michael Tapper say they hope to return. This year, Reykjavik is just a brief stopoff for the band – they were only able to stay in town for a day, just long enough to take in a tour of the city, attempt to track down one of Iceland´s famous hot dogs, and play last night at Gaukurinn before hopping on a plane first thing this morning to begin preparations for their three week tour in the UK. 

    The band, who is becoming increasingly known both for their infectious music and their wit, recently released an album that has, overall, been more popular in Europe and the UK than in America. Murray said that, after being on tour a year and half, an appearance at Airwaves was hard to quantify, but, he said, of all the places they´d been, it was most like Edinburgh – cold, northerly, and also possessed of a haunted tour of the city, one of the few things the band had time to take in before leaving. 

    Cain said that more Americans should tackle festivals like Airwaves, but was skeptical about whether or not they´d actually do it. “Given that Americans can´t support their own festivals, I don´t know,” he said. Tapper, however, said that, after experiencing Airwaves, the band, at least, wanted to come back to Reykjavik. “I´d like to do more than one day. I´d like to do the whole thing,” he said. Perhaps, he said with a smile, if more American celebrities came and did something crazy while at the festival, it would become more well-known.

    For now, however, Reykjavik seems like one of the few places left where almost anyone can find anonymity. Like most cities and towns in Iceland, Reykjavik is perched at water´s edge and framed by snow-capped mountains and spare, volcanic acreage, and it is possessed of the simultaneous and somewhat startling charm of a melding of both ancient and modern culture. Historic houses are situated on the same block as modern Scandanavian designs; on the main shopping street, Laugavegur, throngs of tourists weave in and out of designer boutiques and coffeehouses, while Icelandic women leave their carriages containing coat-clad babies on the sidewalks while they step inside to shop.

    The city´s small population – approximately 115,000 people – , its isolation from mainland Europe, and its traditionally low crime rate make it an appealing getaway destination. Ít´s a place where even American celebrities can stroll down the streets in relative obscurity. Today, I passed Harrison Ford and a friend as they strolled down Laugavegur. Most of the passersby seemed to glance at him but left him alone, with the exception of one young Icelandic women, who did a double take, turned, and ran after him, calling “Robert Redford! Robert Redford!” Ford turned, smiled, and then went on his way, strolling off down a side street and slipping into a bar, and in seconds, the spectacle was forgotten. I can´t think of many other places in the world where a celebrity like Ford would be both so blessedly misidentified and could disappear so effectively. 

    If anonymity is what you want, Reykjavik can certainly offer it, but Airwaves itself is an intimate experience – the bands stay in the same hotels and go to the same clubs and bars as the fans before and after the show, and in a city centre as compact as this one, the population of the city and the festivalgoers soon all become familiar faces, even after just a day. This morning, as my friend and I headed back to our hotel at 3 a.m., after hearing five bands, including We Are Scientists and the ambitious, entertaining, and unquestionably danceable The Handsome Public, who whipped their crowd, composed of mellow mods and frenzied schoolboys, into near-ecstacy, we lamented how many bands we had missed. Tonight, we promised ourselves, we´ll do even better, even though, as we collapsed into our beds, we felt as if we´d done enough to last a week.

    Stay tuned, everyone – five bands, one interview, a hundred shops, a whirlwind tour of the city, and a chance encounter with Harrison Ford, and that´s just day one. The festival´s just getting started.
     
    Writing a biography in the digital age. Googling My Mother 
    My mom with JFK just after his inauguration
    An undated photograph from the late 1950s
     
     
    In 1970 in her arms at age 2
     
    Googling My Mother
    Writing a biography in the digital age.
    By John Dickerson
    Posted Friday, Oct. 20, 2006, at 6:39 PM ET
    –> –>
    One morning, my mother’s grave appeared in my inbox. The grass had grown back around it after the burial. The stone looked pinker than I remembered. The “Beloved Wife and Mother” written on it struck me as odd. Was that inscription always there? It seemed antiquated, like something you’d see in a small town cemetery, and, in my mother’s case, also a little limiting. These are the details you seize on when you’re suddenly confronted by Section 3, Grave 1316-A-LH before your first cup of coffee.
    I had asked for it. I was writing On Her Trail, a book about my mother, Nancy Dickerson, which was published this week. Early in the process, I instructed a few Internet search engines to make a daily pass of the Web and to e-mail me whenever they found something. Mom had been a famous reporter, so I knew I’d get some responses. That day, she was discovered on a Web site dedicated to those buried at Arlington Cemetery. (My stepfather, John Whitehead, was a commander in the Navy.) 
    I was writing the book to figure out who my mother was, which might have seemed like a silly enterprise, since when I was growing up it seemed like everyone knew who my mother was. She was the first female network correspondent for CBS and the first woman star of the Washington TV-news corps. But I missed most of my mother’s career. I was born when Mom was 41, and by the time I was old enough to know what the news was, she had left the network and her stardom had faded. There were no videotapes of her newscasts during the ’60s and ’70s, just pictures of her with Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon on the piano. (Now, in the age of TiVo, my children can’t miss my appearances on even the lowest-rated cable show. Plus, I give them candy to watch).
    I also missed most of my mother’s career because I didn’t care about it. Mom and I were enemies for the first part of the 27 years we knew each other. I moved out of our house at age 14 when my parents divorced, and I never lived with her again. But our cold war ended soon after I found myself joining her profession in 1993. We became pals and, for a few years, traded gossip every day. We didn’t talk about the past but the news in front of us, as if we were colleagues. Then, in January 1996 she had a brutal stroke. A year and a half later, it killed her. 
    The initial basket of Internet search results brought back a host of items I’d never seen—footage of Mom narrating the return of John Kennedy’s body as it was brought back to Andrews Air Force Base and an account of a Nixon interview. The eBay alert found copies of her autobiography, her NBC portrait, and a 1964 Saturday Evening Post article published four years before I was born. (Her Supersister trading card I did recognize. As a 10-year-old, I found it disappointing because it didn’t come with bubble gum and I couldn’t trade it for Pete Rose’s rookie card.)
    The bulletins from the Web slowed to a few each week. New deliveries meant someone had just referred to her in the newspaper or, more often, an old posting that had been missed in the initial trawl, like the picture of her childhood home or a 1960 profile from her college alumni magazine. I knew the delay came from a quirk in the software, but these finds felt special and hard-won, as if they’d been unearthed from behind an old can of nails in the back of someone’s musty garage.
    Mom herself kept a lot, though she was too glamorous for garages. After she died I received 20 boxes of her journals and newspaper clippings and photographs. She saved the rice from Luci Johnson’s 1966 wedding and the 800-page report she’d worked on in 1956 as a clerk for the Senate foreign-relations committee. She was a C-SPAN bag lady. 
    But what you keep about yourself is different from what other people keep about you. The little automated e-mail scouts were a way to screen for what might have been enduring about what she achieved. She’d been famous, but was any of it real? An old news clipping from 1961 named her among the best coifed women in America. That was hardly worth editing the tombstone for. Judith Shellenberger’s story, though, might be. In November of 2005, the foundation director attended a White House youth conference and breakfasted with Laura Bush. In an article about the trip, Shellenberger looked back on her career and said Mom had been her inspiration. “I wanted to be Nancy Dickerson,” she told her local paper. I read this and wrote her to ask what she meant. “Nancy Dickerson changed my whole life by inspiring me to pursue my dreams,” she replied. “My whole career has centered on the motivation your mother gave me. The fact that I too could be a strong career woman.”
    I had heard this sentiment before but never really believed it. It wasn’t just that I’m an oafish male unwise to the struggle of the sisterhood. I’d heard the tribute too many times. So many women had told me that Mom’s pathbreaking career was their inspiration that the praise had become rote. Growing up in Washington, I was too used to hearing meaningless compliments dished out in earnest tones. It’s our folk language. But when Schellenger’s story came in over the transom, it seemed more authentic and objective for having been unsolicited. Suddenly, I was struck by the tonnage of the similar stories I’d heard but never listened to.
    The Internet’s long tail was working for me. Joyce Ladner, a former president of Howard Univeristy, remembered meeting Mom at Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. Lew Goodman of Parkchester, N.Y., remembered the day Mom announced that the Beatles had arrived in America. As archived newspapers started to go online, Mom’s history came back. Almost 300 of them mention Nancy Hanschman, her maiden name, which she used when she first went on air. The new data were almost always surprising, but what was most powerful was how they arrived. I’d never written a book before, but I’d written plenty of profiles. Doing so meant sitting down with my pile of books and papers and interview notes and following a thread until I’d forced it into squeaky shape like a balloon animal. You know what you’re looking for, or at least you know that you’re looking. You occupy a confined intellectual and physical space. But these alerts didn’t work like that. They were off fishing for me, and the minute they hooked something, they brought it back and served it up without a filter and on their own time. Since I carry a BlackBerry (or it carries me), they were with me on the ride to work or blinking just before I put out the bedside light. 
    I had shoved away my mother and her fame during the ugliest time in my adolescence. Her every letter and phone call had been an outrageous interruption. Now I was calling for her intrusions. Almost everything that arrived came from the period of her life I never experienced. Combined with my methodical slog through the materials she left me, the woman who was interrupting me on my BlackBerry became more real than the woman who had pasted back my cowlick and taken me to the doctor. She was authentic and natural, qualities I hadn’t seen much with my own eyes.
    Though she had been dead for eight years, I couldn’t shake the impulse to ask my mother about what I was discovering. This had the nagging effect of producing a recurring dream of being able to fill out an online form to ask her questions that she could answer through e-mail. (I think Google’s working on a purchase of Séance.net after they get that YouTube thing worked out.)
    Now that the book is done, the alerts continue, but oddly, they’ve turned into vanity events, letting me know about reviews and reactions to the book—to my mother, but as I have presented her. They’ve lost their magic. Still, the parallels of our two lives, now wound together in this book, continue to surprise me. Though no one planned it this way, the final deadline for my manuscript fell on my birthday. This week, the book hit the newsstands, and I saw Mom’s tombstone again, this time in person, on the ninth anniversary of her death.
    A version of this piece appears in the Washington Post Outlook section.
    John Dickerson is Slate‘s chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at .
     
    Keith Richards’ Wife Patti Hansen & Their Children 
     
    Keith Richards’ Wife Patti Hansen & Their Children:
    Theodora (left) & Alexandra (right)
    Patti Hansen was born in Staten Island New York, and was a model for Calvin Klein and Revlon. Patti was “discovered” at a Rolling Stones concert in 1975. She met Richards around 1980 and is also known for keeping the company of Anita Pallenberg. Richards and Hansen were married on December 18, 1983 (Keith’s 40th birthday) in Cabo San Lucas at the Finisterra Hotel. The ceremony was filmed by Julien Temple.
     
    Keith RichardsAs I View Him 

    		 
     
    Yup. Keith Richards definitely looks like Jack Sparrow's dad.
    Yup. Keith Richards definitely looks like Jack Sparrow’s dad.
    Photograph by : Jason Payne, The Province
     
     
    I have had the distinct pleasure of being in this man’s company on more than one occasion. He is real, he is cool, he is generous with his time when people request autographs or photographic opportunities he does oblige with complete enthusiasm. 
     
    It is amazing to see how people will approach him, and how he will respond. Often times they act like they know him and approach in a quite forward demeanor. Nothing rankles Richards, he throws his arm around one of the “blokes” and hangs on the chap like he is his long lost best pal.
     
    On one memorable afternoon and evening we shared a jet flight returning to New York from the island of Antigua. It so happened our seats were in close proximity. Along to my Right hand side was Keith’s Mother in Law, Mrs. Hansen, and as this was in the late 80′s, his daughters were toddlers.His wife Patti was also there in the same group of seats. Keith was deeply absorbed in reading some rather heavy philosophical treatise, along the lines of probably “The Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes…in front of him were always one Heineken and a brandy. 
    When we arrived in New York and disembarked I distinctly remember Dad emphasizing to the little ones that they must carry some of their belongings because he was not going to carry it all. As kids always have, at least in those pre 9/11 days, ample supplies of toys and must have items.
     
    As we approached the Customs area, everyone except Keith went under the portal that was indicated for U.S. Citizens. Patti Hansen, her Mom and the two little ones, Theodora and Alexandra and myself went through the U.S. gate. We met up with Keith on the other side by the baggage carousel.
     
    This is the most telling part of this otherwise rather unexciting vignette.
     
    As the carousel was beginning to disgorge the various pieces of luggage, Keith was intently conversing with a middle aged woman in a wheel chair who seemed to be perplexed and anxious as to how to recover her luggage and Keith was carefully explaining how it worked and looking for the bags she had described.  I distinctly recall thinking that this woman had no real idea who Richards was, but there were at least half a dozen other travelers who could not resist the moment to have a photo taken with a living legend. He obliged one and all, autographs, and even those that were obviously acting in a way under the effects of long flights with many cocktails. He was extraordinarily patient and cordial. 
     
    After everyone had their luggage, some people from the airline appeared to ask Keith if everything was OK, and he explained to me that they do that because he is always flying in and out of there, Kennedy International. I guess..so. Mrs. Hansen hads remarked more than once on the flight how incredibly hard working her son in law was, and how he was constantly having to travel. She said she had no idea at all how he keeps up his non stop pace. 
     
    Finally, Keith made it absolutely clear to me that he had several transports at his disposal outside of the terminal, and if I was in need of transportation into the city, I should simply jump in and ride along into Manhattan. 
    I explained to Keith that my sister was there to collect me, but his entire vibe was sincere and humble and normal, his shoes were beat up and wearing through, kind of pointed toe half boots. 
     
    The only concession to affluence , if you will, would have been a killer solid gold Cartier Panther Watch, and a bracelet on the other wrist. And finally, the signature ring of human skull sitting rather unmistakably large on his finger.
     
    This guy is a musician thru and thru from beginning to end. 
     
    He lives his life with what I observed to be a very sincere concern for people around him. 
     
    The Rolling Stones tour because they love to entertain, and I would suggest that in many ways the group derives every bit as much from going out on stage every nite as their audiences do from watching them perform.
     
    Keith Richards is one of a kind, someone I admire and respect. He is in a class by himself in so far as survivability is concerned. His life has progressed through so many levels and so many distinct forms of cultural and historical periods, that I believe he has been born with an innate ability to distill it all down to a point where now he would be amazing as a philosophy professor at one of any number institutions of higher learning.
     
    As for now his record setting tour and music will serve as an awesome demonstration of the power, talent, gifts and strength of one of the greatest entertainers of modern times. And moreover, a loving, kind , gentle and generous man. 
     
     
    God Bless You Keith, May you Live Forever.
     
     
    Michael P. Whelan 
    Las Vegas, October 22, 2006
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

						
							

  • 
	
    
		
    
		
    
						
    
				
    Wired Travel Guide: Second Life Oct 18, ’06 6:44 PM
    for everyone
     
        –> –> 

    Wired Travel Guide: Second Life  

    Taking a trip to the coolest destination on the Web? Our guide tells you where to go, what to do – and how to buy sex organs.
    So you’ve decided to take a trip to Second Life. Good choice! Whether you’re coming for the uninhibited nightlife or the affordable jetpacks and rocket ships, you’re sure to have a memorable stay. Don’t bother with a suitcase – everything you could possibly want is obtainable here. But be sure to bring your imagination: Second Life is a world of endless reinvention where you can change your shape, your sex, even your species as easily as you might slip into a pair of shoes back home.
    The vision of former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale, Second Life emerged from beta just three years ago. Rosedale was convinced that the increasing adoption of broadband and powerful processors made it possible to create a 3-D virtual world similar to the metaverse Neal Stephenson described in his sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Rosedale and his team at Linden Lab govern Second Life and rent property to the steady stream of fresh immigrants, but beyond establishing a few basic protocols, they pretty much stay out of the way. Almost everything you’ll see has been built by the locals, from the swaying palm trees at the Welcome Area to the pole-dancer’s dress at the XXX Playground.
    Today, Second Life is second home to half a million people, and everyone from Duran Duran and Wells Fargo Bank to the Department of Homeland Security has funded real estate here. The national currency of Linden dollars is freely convertible to US dollars (and the exchange rate is quite favorable at the moment!), and an increasing number of residents are ditching their jobs back on Earth to make their living entirely within Second Life’s economy. But this exotic realm can seem bewildering and strange to first-time visitors (affectionately known as “noobs” in the native parlance). Let Wired be your guide.
    Getting There 
    Make your way to Secondlife.com and download the required software for free. No passport necessary, but you do need a credit card or PayPal account if you want to buy local currency. Your stay begins on Orientation Island, a secluded area designed to familiarize you with the interface. Then you can beam down to Help Island to let volunteer mentors assist you, or you can proceed straight to the bustling Welcome Area [above]. As with any port, this place is crowded with cheerful, often eccentric locals eager to tell you about their home. But beware of hucksters looking to separate you from your Linden dollars or entice you into the red-light districts.
    Continue to: 
    Second Life: Facts for the Visitor
    Second Life: Entertainment
    Second Life: Destinations
    Second Life: Shopping
    Wired in Second Life
     
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

						
							

  • 
	
    
		
    Net Neutrality
    
		
    
						
    
				
    Net Neutrality on PBS: Tune In and Log On (2 comments ) 
    READ MORE: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 2006 
    Tune in to PBS tonight to see the SavetheInternet.com Coalition featured in “The Net at Risk,” a documentary produced by award-winning journalist Bill Moyers. 
    Joined by journalist Rick Karr, Bill Moyers examines how promises by the big telco companies of a super high-speed Internet in return for deregulation and tax breaks have gone unfulfilled while the public has paid the price. –>
    “The Net at Risk” airs at 9 p.m. in most cities (check local listings). Immediately following the East Coast broadcast, PBS.org will host a live Internet debate between Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott and phone industry flack Mike McCurry. 
    This discussion will no doubt show — once again — that the arguments of phone company lobbyists and shills crumble in the face of a vocal and well-organized public. 
    Anyone can be a part of this online debate at 10:30 pm Eastern / 7:30 pm Pacific by logging in at Moyers’ PBS site. 
    In the six months since the SavetheInternet.com Coalition was launched, millions of Americans have joined the campaign, spoken out for Internet freedom, and put Congress and the phone companies on notice. 
    SavetheInternet.com’s grassroots success has been covered in the pages of nearly every major U.S. newspaper and on innumerable blogs. According to a recent article at Salon.com, our “ragtag army” has Congress and phone lobbyists on the run.
    Tonight’s program could make millions more aware of this issue. They need to hear real voices not spin by industry mouthpieces.
    http://www.pbs.org/moyers 
    Send to a friend
    Post a Comment
    Print Post
    Read all posts by Josh Silver
     
    Related News Stories
    Related Blog Posts
    Comments : 
    The whole “Net neutrality” issue provides a good opportunity to reach out to otherwise right-leaning techie types. They need to be made to see that the Republicans want to ruin their precious Internet, and that Democrats are fighting the corporate agenda. 

    But to use this issue to reach out to the general public, progressives need to explain it in much simpler terms than is being done now. Then they could see it as an example of how Republican pro-corporate policy impacts their lives in a negative way. 

    If we don’t do the explaining, then guys like Ted “Series Of Tubes” Stevens will.

    BigCynic.com

    Read “Bushian loyalty is no virtue–it’s the loyalty of thieves”:
    http://www.bigcynic.com/2006/10/bushian_loyalty.html… 

    Read “Why Bush won’t attack North Korea–but Iran may still have “freedom” in its future”:
    http://www.bigcynic.com/2006/10/why_bush_wont_a.html… 
    By: bigcynicdotcom on October 18, 2006 at 06:18pm 
    Flag: [Flag: [Send to a friend
    Post a Comment
    Print Post
    Read all posts by Josh Silver
    –>
    Top Posts Top News Sources 
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	



						
							

  • 
	
    
		
    Hawaii Earthquake
    
		
    
						
    
				
    Bloggers Discuss 6.7 Magnitude Hawaii Earthquake

    Bloggers are discussing the recent earthquake that caused damage to homes, business and roads in Hawaii — especially on the Big Island which was closest to the epicenter. The USGS has now bumped the earthquake up to a 6.7. Fortunately, there appear to be no deaths caused by the quake and injuries appear to be light. The blogging has picked up now that some bloggers from Hawaii have their electricity back on. There are also videos appearing on YouTube.com and photos on Flickr. 

  • Hawaiirama has been providing updates on the earthquake situation including a list of hotels that have sustained damage. 
  • Metroblogging Hawaii has a couple posts here and here about the earthquake including a picture of people waiting for ice. 
  • Carolyn Gebbie: “What a terrifying experience. We had planned on a doing a 10km fun run this morning and had just parked at the local library and picked up our race packet and were pinning on our race numbers on the trunk of the car when the rumbling and shaking began. The cars in the parking lot were literally bouncing in their spots – looked like they were jumping jacks. The rumbling lasted for maybe 20 seconds – we had run into the middle of the lot away from cars, buildings, trees etc.” 
  • It was Dr. Drew’s first earthquake: “October is fast becoming my least favorite month. The second anniversary of the Manoa Flood is coming up in two weeks, but today’s natural disaster was a 6.6 earthquake on the Island of Hawaii. The tremor woke me up shortly after 7:00 this morning. After a second tremor, six minutes later, I sought shelter under my desk. The violent shaking stopped shortly thereafter.” 
  • Kona Hawaii Scuba Diver Babbles On: “The earthquake made for an interesting morning here in South Kona, but was far more of an event up Kohala and Hamakua direction. One of Pat’s co-workers who lives up north apparently had major home damage, as in the roof fell in and windows blew out. I’m sure we’ll be hearing lots more stories of more serious damage tomorrow. Hopefully the first reports that nobody was seriously hurt hold up.” 
  • Matt Denlter blogs that the Louis Vitton Hawaii International Film Festival is still on schedule. There is also a post here from the film festival’s blog. 
  • Hawaii Web Consulting is grateful for backups and generators. 
  • Ono Kine Grindz is OK: “Power went out shortly thereafter and contrary to the reports you may have heard, electric power was restored just this very second (about 16 hours later!).” 
  • Larry O’Brien at Knowing.net writes, “This morning’s earthquake, which occurred pretty much directly offshore from us, was several factors more severe than anything I experienced while living in California. I was in the city of San Francisco for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and I compare that experience to a bumpy subway ride like Boston’s ‘T.’ The experience of this was akin to what you experience on a wooden roller coaster.” (thx Incremental Blogger) 
  • Great Solutions to Team Challenges: “It sounded like a freight train was driving through the house and the shaking – oy. When we lived in California the Loma Prieta quake rolled like a wave. This was violent, violent shaking. Never felt anything like it!” 
  • David Sohigian: “I guess the Goddess Pele heard that we were headed to the islands and she was not pleased.” 
  • Susan Souter at Maui Wedding Planner describes the jolt: “At 7:07 a.m. today, we were jolted in bed by an earthquake that they’re now saying it had a magnitude of 6.5 or 6.6. After it continued for several moments, I jumped up and ran to the archway door frame leading out of our bedroom and John grabbed the swaying big screen TV perched on its stand. In a few moments it stopped and we realized we had no power.” 
  • The fish knew something was coming. “Fish in a lagoon at a Hawaiian resort began to jump out the water like they were being jolted with electricity minutes before a 6.6 magnitude earthquake rattled the islands, causing blackouts and landslides, according to Local 6′s Erik von Ancken, who is vacationing in the area.” 
  • A first person account from Directions Magazine: “I was standing outside my hotel at the time, having just finished a morning run when what sounded like a low flying 747 rocked the area. Except this was more like 10 jumbo jets at one time. The building was rocking as I saw the windows bow in and out. Paintings fell from the walls, power was cut, and a nearby gas line was leaking.” 
  • Dots and Dashes managed to survive 24 hours without a computer. Although he is mad at the power company HECO for not providing more information. 
  • Linkmeister points to a couple earthquake damage photo resources today after describing what the earthquake felt like yesterday in a post titled “Yowzer.” 
  • Geek News Central (in Honolulu) was able to connect to the Internet shortly after the quake using a Spring Ev-Do card. “Within 5 minutes I had responded to the e-mail I was expecting and went off line so as not to tie things up to long.” 

    Here’s a list of some other resources:
  • Flickr Photos 
  • YouTube videos 
  • West Hawaii Today 
  • The Hawaii Channel 
  • The Honolulu Advertiser 
  • Honolulu Star-Bulletin 
  • MSNBC.com: Your Stories 
  • Hawaii Tribune Herald 
  • Topix.net Hawaii News 

    Posted on October 16, 2006
    Permalink | Blogs linking to this post: Bloglines | BlogPulse | IceRocket | Technorati 
    • 
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    


						
							

  • 
	
    
		
    Perspective on World Formula One Driving Championship from Michael Lawrence
    
		
    
						
    
				
     
    Many sections of the media are taking it as read that Fernando is World Champion bar an unfortunate incident. At Suzuka, Michael seemed to have ten points in the bank, then suffered an unfortunate incident. Not many people thought that Schumacher could claw back 25 points over the second half of the season and go to Suzuka at the top of the table. 
    Maybe, just for once, the fat lady could be persuaded not to sing. I’ve never met anyone who wanted the fat lady to sing.
    Regardless of what happens in Brazil, we have been witnessing something truly remarkable. You would not have thought, by he way has been driving recently, that Michael had announced his retirement. It is rare that a driver who has actually announced his retirement has been driving like Michael has. There have been drivers who have made the decision, Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart among them, who have still taken wins. Mika Hakkinen won the US GP in 2001, but he had not finally renounced F1. There was the possibility he would take a sabbatical, instead he went to DTM.
    Tazio Nuvolari once announced his retirement then went on holiday to America. While he was on the boat, an offer came from Auto Union and he caught the next boat back.
    When Mario Andretti, whom I regard as one of the greatest of all drivers, announced his retirement, he had past his best and his final season was labelled Arrivederci Mario. It was a sentimental farewell with nobody expecting him to be running near the front. It was also an opportunity for fans to pay tribute, which is a rare occasion in motor racing. 
    Americans are very good at that sort of thing and I think it comes down to migration to America. People came from all over and a common language took time to sort out, so promoters put on shows that everyone could understand. When Phineas T. Barnum exhibited ‘Jumbo’, the largest elephant in captivity (he made London Zoo a good offer) regardless of where your parents came from, or what language you spoke, you thought, That is one big beast.
    AJ Foyt could hardly walk when he made his last appearance in the Indianapolis 500, a race he had won four times. There was no way he was race fit, but he started his last 500 from the front row. I may not be the only person to remember that CART turbo engines were regulated by a standard ‘pop off’ valve chosen at random. I bet that most teams chose from one set of valves and AJ chose from another set, of one.
    Indianapolis honoured one of its greatest drivers, who had to retire after a couple of laps, but nobody protested his ‘pop off’ valve, not even the guy who was one place outside of qualifying. The crowd did not think it had been short changed, either. There’s No Business Like Show Business.
    When it came to media attention, in his final season, Mario Andretti upstaged everyone else on the grid, even though nobody thought he would win a race. I bet his sponsors reckoned they got a fair return for their investment. 
    Some commentators have wondered if the promoters of F1 secretly hope that Alonso will take the title so that Michael does not take what they like to call ‘the coveted No. 1′ (race number) into retirement with him. This is just media froth, it’s been a good ten years since numbers on most cars have been visible on television, space on a car is too valuable to waste on numbers.
    I’d like to say this just once for the benefit of media numbnuts, there never has been a ‘coveted No. 1′. There was a time when Ferrari drivers wanted to have ’27′, which had been Gilles Villeneuve‘s number, hardly anyone has give much thought to numbers. 
    Most commentators have missed the fact that Michael goes into retirement at the top of his game, I cannot remember him driving better, and Fernando has matched him. There is a seamless passing of the torch, and this has not always been the case.
    There have been many occasions in Grand Prix history when that has not been the case. Prewar, Rudolf Caracciola and Tazio Nuvolari rarely raced together for years. Nuvolari, with Alfa Romeo, mainly raced in Italy while Mercedes Benz entered Caracciola in the European Mountain Championship. Stirling Moss’s accident in 1962 must have robbed us of epic battles with Jim Clark, and not only in F1. Clark’s death robbed us four or five years of battles against Jackie Stewart.
    Ascari and Fangio did not often meet on equal terms and by the time Moss came to the fore, Fangio was getting a little long in the tooth. Fangio was anyway a single seater specialist while Moss could drive anything at a time when sports car racing held equal status to Formula One.
    What we have seen this year has been two fabulous drivers locking horns in roughly equivalent cars. They have been on different tyres, sure, and Renault faltered when its ‘mass damper’ system was barred. Michael can still win the title, but that will take nothing away from Fernando, the torch will be passed from one great driver to another.
    In the case of Moss and Clark, Stirling has told me he was getting anxious about Jimmy, but Clark had not established equality when Stirling had his accident. Jimmy never had the standard by which he could measure himself though, of course, he became the one who set the standard.
    Regular readers may know that I regard Moss as the greatest driver of all, so let me make an argument for Clark. Some people think that Clark had an advantage with the Lotus 25, but nobody else won with it, it was only Jimmy who won with a Lotus 25. Lotus had the same V8 Coventry Climax engines as Cooper and Brabham, but Jimmy won almost all the races for Climax V8s, including non Championship events, even when Brabham fielded better chassis. Clark had fewer breakdowns than anyone and preservation of the engine was part of the driver’s craft whereas, today, engineers set the limit while drivers stretch what they are given.
    I do not look back to some imagined Golden Age, there never was one. There have been times when drivers have been able to work on a broader canvas, when the star could appear to make a big difference. Much of that is a myth and stems from the time when components such as wishbones were welded on jigs. There were limits of tolerances, but the star got the best bits, no two chassis or engines were the same. These days, components are identical which is why drivers in the same team are so much closer. One may be quicker than the other, but it is the driver who is making the difference, not a fabricator making wishbones with a welding torch. 
    I doubt whether there has ever been more driver talent on a Formula One grid than there is today. There are drivers chosen for seats because they chime in with the aspirations of the team’s sponsors, but they are not ‘pay drivers’ in the sense that once existed when some organisers would pay teams to run a third car for a local hero, who maybe did only that one F1 race in his entire career. You can no longer buy a secondhand car and hope to negotiate an entry.
    When TV directors remember that there are 22 cars in a race, one thing which has impressed me is the commitment of the entire field. We know that not all drivers are equal, even in the same car, but they are all competing. There have been times when a large chunk of an F1 field were turning up for a fun weekend.
    I do not think that the standard has ever been higher, but that drivers have to operate within a more narrow band to make a difference than when Nuvolari was able to spend a lot of his time going sideways. Nuvolari, incidentally, upset the Alfa Romeo’s chief designer, the remarkable Vittorio Jano, because Jano thought Nuvolari was an utter hooligan to be doing that to his cars.
    Over the Winter we can discuss Alonso’s retirement at Monza and Schumacher’s blatant cheating in Monaco at the end of qualifying, we can pick over the bones of any season. The important thing for the sport is that Michael is not leaving a vacuum, regardless of the outcome in Brazil. It is not often that we have been left without a vacuum.
    We have a foundation on which to discuss next season. We have the musical chairs, with Alonso going to McLaren and Raikkonen to Ferrari. Felipe Massa has surprised me, not so much by his pace, but by his maturity. There’s Red Bull with Adrian Newey, Williams with Toyota engines, and Ferrari while Ross Brawn goes fishing. There’s the speed of Robert Kubica, Spyker with what appears to be sensible funding, and Jenson Button looking like a really serious prospect.
    Michael Schumacher‘s incredible record will always be there to aim at and the sad thing is that, not long into 2007 he will be ‘yesterday’s man’. That will inevitably come, but right now he is very much the man of today. He has never driven better than in his last few races. 
    One thing that impressed me is that, after his retirement, which must have been a terrible disappointment, Michael made a point of thanking every single member of the team. I can think of drivers who would have disappeared into the motor home and later issued a statement.
    Denis Jenkinson once said that if a driver was a natural winner, the odd retirement did not upset him, because it was unnatural. The fact that Michael was able to go to every member of his ‘family’ and thank them, even though the car had let him down, shows what a great champion he is. I have not always been enthusiastic about his tactics, but I have to say that gesture impressed me.
    My dream result in Brazil would be a dead heat between Schumacher and Alonso. It would give Fernando the title, it would give Michael a last win, and it would establish a base line for the future.
    Michael made his debut in F1 in 1991. Forget motor racing, what were you doing in 1991? Everyone has a different story, but a lot has happened to us all in fifteen years, some committed fans were not even born. In real terms, you have to be in your twenties not to have known Formula One without Michael Schumacher. 
    I hope that Formula One can find an appropriate way to bid farewell to Michael Schumacher in Brazil. Maybe Bernie could make a few trans Atlantic phone calls because there is no way that Americans would let such a great champion just walk away.
    ‘Jumbo’ was just the name given to an elephant in London Zoo, it meant nothing, and that was the point, it could have been called ‘Roderick’, or anything. Phineas T. Barnum made ‘Jumbo’ mean something and we do not take trips on a Roderick jet.
    England gave the world Shakespeare, but it had to be America which gave the world a silent version of Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew (1929) with the immortal credit, it was a silent movie, remember, ‘additional dialogue by Sam Taylor’.
    There’s No Business Like Show Business…
    Mike Lawrence 
    mike@pitpass.com 
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

						
							

  • 
	
    
		
    More U.S. Deaths in Iraq
    
		
    
						
    
				

    Iraqi police officers secure the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad. 
    Iraqi police officers secure the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad. Photograph: Samir Mizban/AP
    Sharp rise in US death rate in Iraq 
    Associated Press 
    Wednesday October 18, 2006
    Guardian Unlimited
    The US military confirmed today that nine troops had been killed in fighting and bombings in Iraq yesterday, raising this month’s death toll for American forces to 67. 
    If the rate of US fatalities continues at the same level throughout this month, it will make October the deadliest for coalition forces since January 2005, when 107 US troops died. 
    In more violence today, a roadside bomb killed a provincial police intelligence chief in southern Iraq and four of his bodyguards, police said. 
    Ali Qassim al-Tamimi, head of intelligence for the Maysan provincial police force, and the bodyguards were killed by a bomb planted on the main road between the cities of Amara and Basra. Two car bombs also exploded in Baghdad, injuring at least eight people, police said. 
    In the city of Balad, about 50 miles north-east of the capital, local Sunni and Shia leaders were meeting in an attempt to resolve the fate of a group of people who have apparently been kidnapped. 
    More than 40 people have been missing since their 13-car convoy was waylaid at a checkpoint on Sunday outside Balad, where almost 100 people have been killed in five days of sectarian fighting. Police said the hijacked cars had been diverted to the nearby Shia militant stronghold of al-Nebaiyi on Balad’s outskirts. 
    A brief statement from the US military today said four US troops died early yesterday, when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle west of Baghdad. 
    Three US soldiers were killed and one wounded during combat in Diyala province, east of Baghdad. Another US soldier was killed when suspected insurgents attacked his patrol in northern Baghdad. 
    A US marine also died from injuries sustained during fighting in al-Anbar province. 
    The fighting in Balad forced US troops to return to patrolling the streets of the predominantly Shia city after Iraq’s best-trained soldiers proved unable to stem a series of revenge killings sparked by the murder on Friday of 17 Shia construction workers. 
    The US military had turned over control of the surrounding province north of Baghdad to Iraq’s 4th Army a month ago, and American forces apparently did not redeploy there until Monday, when the worst of the violence had ended. 
    Minority Sunnis, who were the focus of most of the violence in the city of around 80,000 people, have been fleeing across the Tigris river in small boats. 
    On the outskirts of the city, two fuel trucks were attacked and burned and Shia militiamen clashed with residents of Duluiya, a predominantly Sunni city on the east bank of the Tigris. 
    Shia militants have been blocking food and fuel trucks from entering Duluiya. 
    Some commentators said the violence in the area was an omen for the level of hostilities if Iraq was divided into three federal states – controlled by Shias in the south, Sunnis in the centre and Kurds in the north. 
    Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
    
							
    
					
    
		
    
			
		
    
	
    

    • 

						
							
	
									
			
    
		
    

	
    

     	

     

		
    			
		
    
			
    
				vegasmike433