Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The High Road
by Jim Heintz and Karl Ritter
OSLO, Norway (AP) — Norway will never be the same after last week's bombing and mass shooting but it shouldn't change the way the suspect wants it to, the prime minister said Wednesday. He called on his country to react by more tightly embracing, rather than abandoning, the culture of tolerance that Anders Behring Breivik said he was trying to destroy.
"The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg insisted at a news conference.
Friday's bombing outside Stoltenberg's offices in Oslo and the shooting that followed at a camp organized by the youth wing of his Labor Party killed 76 people and battered the psyche of a nation that prides itself on openness. Breivik confessed but has pleaded not guilty, claiming the attacks were necessary to fight what he called Muslim colonization and multiculturalism.
"I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22," Stoltenberg said. "But I hope and also believe that the Norway we will see after will be more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before."
Stoltenberg strongly defended the right to speak freely — even if it includes extremist views such as Breivik's.
"We have to be very clear to distinguish between extreme views, opinions — that's completely legal, legitimate to have. What is not legitimate is to try to implement those extreme views by using violence," he said in English.
Stoltenberg's promise in the face of twin attacks signaled a contrast to the U.S. response after the 9/11 attacks, when Washington gave more leeway to perform wiretaps and search records.
Read more:
OSLO, Norway (AP) — Norway will never be the same after last week's bombing and mass shooting but it shouldn't change the way the suspect wants it to, the prime minister said Wednesday. He called on his country to react by more tightly embracing, rather than abandoning, the culture of tolerance that Anders Behring Breivik said he was trying to destroy.
"The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg insisted at a news conference.
Friday's bombing outside Stoltenberg's offices in Oslo and the shooting that followed at a camp organized by the youth wing of his Labor Party killed 76 people and battered the psyche of a nation that prides itself on openness. Breivik confessed but has pleaded not guilty, claiming the attacks were necessary to fight what he called Muslim colonization and multiculturalism.
"I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22," Stoltenberg said. "But I hope and also believe that the Norway we will see after will be more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before."
Stoltenberg strongly defended the right to speak freely — even if it includes extremist views such as Breivik's.
"We have to be very clear to distinguish between extreme views, opinions — that's completely legal, legitimate to have. What is not legitimate is to try to implement those extreme views by using violence," he said in English.
Stoltenberg's promise in the face of twin attacks signaled a contrast to the U.S. response after the 9/11 attacks, when Washington gave more leeway to perform wiretaps and search records.
Read more:
Need Not Apply
by Liz Godwin
Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.
The New York Times' Catherine Rampell said she found preferences for the already employed or only recently laid off in listings for "hotel concierges, restaurant managers, teachers, I.T. specialists, business analysts, sales directors, account executives, orthopedics device salesmen, auditors and air-conditioning technicians." Even the massive University of Phoenix stated that preference, but removed the listings when the Times started asking questions.
The concerted shunning of unemployed Americans by prospective employers was a common theme that cropped up in the thousands of responses that poured in when we asked Yahoo! readers to share their experiences of unemployment for our "Down But Not Out" series.
Read more:
Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.
The New York Times' Catherine Rampell said she found preferences for the already employed or only recently laid off in listings for "hotel concierges, restaurant managers, teachers, I.T. specialists, business analysts, sales directors, account executives, orthopedics device salesmen, auditors and air-conditioning technicians." Even the massive University of Phoenix stated that preference, but removed the listings when the Times started asking questions. The concerted shunning of unemployed Americans by prospective employers was a common theme that cropped up in the thousands of responses that poured in when we asked Yahoo! readers to share their experiences of unemployment for our "Down But Not Out" series.
Read more:
That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner
by Julia Moskin
LAST week in Chelsea, Mich., as people wilted and vegetables flourished in the intense heat, Anne Elder ran through some of her favorite summer ingredients: pearly garlic “rounds” that flower at the top of the plant in hot weather, the spreading leaves of the broccoli plant, yellow dandelion flowers that she dips whole into batter and deep fries.
“When kids visit the farm, we give them cornstalks to chew,” she said. Like sugar cane, the stalks contain sweet juice.
For Ms. Elder, who runs the Community Farm of Ann Arbor, the edible vegetable begins with the sprouts and does not end until the leaves, vines, tubers, shoots and seeds have given their all.
If home cooks reconsidered what should go into the pot, and what into the trash, what would they find? What new flavors might emerge, what old techniques? Pre-industrial cooks, for whom thrift was a necessity as well as a virtue, once knew many ways to put the entire garden to work. Fried green tomatoes and pickled watermelon rind are examples of dishes that preserved a bumper crop before rot set in. “Some people these days are so unfamiliar with vegetables in their natural state, they don’t even know that a broccoli stalk is just as edible as the florets,” said Julia Wylie, an organic farmer in Watsonville, Calif. The produce she grows at Mariquita Farm is served at Bay Area restaurants like Delfina, Zuni Cafe and Chez Panisse.
At some large farms, she said, only the florets are processed for freezing or food service; the stems are shredded into the chokingly dry “broccoli slaw” sold in sealed bags at the supermarket.
(A much better way to treat broccoli stalks: cut off and discard the tough outer peel, shave what remains into ribbons with a vegetable peeler, scatter with lemon zest and shards of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese: all the pleasure of raw artichoke salad with half the work.)
Mariquita Farm also runs a flourishing Community Supported Agriculture (C.S.A.) program and sells at farmers’ markets, where, Ms. Wylie said, she has become expert at holding shoppers’ hands when it comes to stem-to-root cooking. She reminds them that even the thick ribs of chard, beets and other greens soften with braising (most kale stems, though, are too fibrous to eat). She encourages them to cook the leaves that sprout from the tops of radishes (they have a delicious bitterness) and offers a traditional French method of baking fish at high heat on a bed of fennel stalks.
Among her favorite neglected greens are the big, sweet leaves that grow around heads of cauliflower — leaves that supermarket shoppers never see and recipes never call for. She cuts them across the ribs, then sautés them with minced onion.
“It’s like a silky version of a cabbage leaf, with a hint of cauliflower,” she said.
Read more:
Portland and Booklyn
by Adrianne Jeffries
On a cold day in late January, Paul LaRosa, an author and CBS producer, and his wife, Susan, were shopping for cheese at the Park Slope/Gowanus Indoor Winter Farmer’s Market at Third Avenue and Third Street when they struck up a conversation at one of the stands with a tall, clean-cut yoga instructor who had just returned from studying meditation in Thailand.
He had discovered the most marvelous cocoa there, he enthused, and offered them a tiny, wrapped sample of stone-ground, small batch “virgin” chocolate, which he sells in four flavors including Blueberry Lavender and Vanilla Rooibos.
“I had just seen Portlandia,” Mr. LaRosa told The Observer, referring to the indie sitcom. “And as this nice guy began telling us all the trouble he’d gone to to make this chocolate, my head went straight to the first episode, where a young couple cannot order the chicken on the menu without knowing the chicken’s name and whether it had any friends.
“In his eyes it wasn’t a simple chocolate bar, it was this whole thing, it was all wrapped up in Thailand and meditation and yoga and beautiful paper,” Mr. LaRosa went on. “This is a guy you could imagine would be a young Wall Street exec or something but he’s making artisanal chocolate bars in Brooklyn.”
Earlier that month, Brooklynites were passing around a clip of Brian Williams riffing on the ironic glasses frames, homemade beads, shared apartments and gourmet grilled cheeses of their home borough, and the New York Times’s marveling at them. “I’m leaving here to get to an artisanal market that just opened up today!” the anchorman snarked. “It’s a flash artisanal market! The newest thing!”
How often the Connecticut commuter actually gets to the better borough is unknown, but the bit killed. “It was dead on,” said Eric Cunningham, a Carroll Gardens-based comedian, who was inspired to start a website calling on Mr. Williams to run for president.
Heroic though it was, Mr. Williams’s intervention may have been too little too late. Brooklyn’s overwrought mustaches and handmade ice cream in upcycled cups are now well-established facts of life. It’s as if the tumor of hipster culture that formed when the cool kids moved to Williamsburg had metastasized into a cluster of cysts pressing down on parts of the borough’s brain. Around the militantly organic Park Slope Co-op, for example, or Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, where you can buy rings glued to typewriter keys as well as used, handmade, vegetable-dyed, vintage Oriental rugs for $1,000. Brooklyn is producing and consuming more of its own culture than ever before, giving rise to a sense of Brooklyn exceptionalism and a set of affectations that’s making the borough look more and more like Portland, Oregon.
“Would you like one of my cool little bags?” the chocolate vendor asked after Mrs. LaRosa bought a few bars to use for baking. No thanks, she said.
So it wasn’t until later, when he passed by again, that Mr. LaRosa noticed a sign above the bags. He took a picture because he was afraid he wouldn’t be believed: “Raaka’s packaging is designed by his friends and printed with soy inks on 100 percent postconsumer-recycled, chlorine-free, processed paper that was made from wind-generated energy.” He put the picture on his blog in a post titled “Brooklandia?”
Portland was “Brooklyn before Brooklyn was Brooklyn,” as NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro once quipped. His colleague Kurt Andersen, host of the public radio show Studio 360 and co-founder of Spy, put it more starkly: “Brooklyn without black people.”
Mr. Andersen co-founded the Portland Brooklyn Project, a “loose sister-cityish entity” to unite what the organization calls “creators of culture … with an interest in the connection between Portland and Brooklyn,” in 2010; it’s since changed hands. “Both suffered from an urban inferiority complex that during the last decade or so has become a superiority complex,” he explained in an email. “Brooklyn at its best today is in lots of ways probably like Manhattan at its best in the middle third of the 20th century, although with less hard-core, playing-for-keeps, drunken, druggy, up-all-night Bohemianism.”
I lived in Portland for two years after college. It’s a delightful place with plenty of drunken, druggy Bohemianism. But, dear Brooklyn, you do not want to go there.
Read more:
On a cold day in late January, Paul LaRosa, an author and CBS producer, and his wife, Susan, were shopping for cheese at the Park Slope/Gowanus Indoor Winter Farmer’s Market at Third Avenue and Third Street when they struck up a conversation at one of the stands with a tall, clean-cut yoga instructor who had just returned from studying meditation in Thailand.
He had discovered the most marvelous cocoa there, he enthused, and offered them a tiny, wrapped sample of stone-ground, small batch “virgin” chocolate, which he sells in four flavors including Blueberry Lavender and Vanilla Rooibos. “I had just seen Portlandia,” Mr. LaRosa told The Observer, referring to the indie sitcom. “And as this nice guy began telling us all the trouble he’d gone to to make this chocolate, my head went straight to the first episode, where a young couple cannot order the chicken on the menu without knowing the chicken’s name and whether it had any friends.
“In his eyes it wasn’t a simple chocolate bar, it was this whole thing, it was all wrapped up in Thailand and meditation and yoga and beautiful paper,” Mr. LaRosa went on. “This is a guy you could imagine would be a young Wall Street exec or something but he’s making artisanal chocolate bars in Brooklyn.”
Earlier that month, Brooklynites were passing around a clip of Brian Williams riffing on the ironic glasses frames, homemade beads, shared apartments and gourmet grilled cheeses of their home borough, and the New York Times’s marveling at them. “I’m leaving here to get to an artisanal market that just opened up today!” the anchorman snarked. “It’s a flash artisanal market! The newest thing!”
How often the Connecticut commuter actually gets to the better borough is unknown, but the bit killed. “It was dead on,” said Eric Cunningham, a Carroll Gardens-based comedian, who was inspired to start a website calling on Mr. Williams to run for president.
Heroic though it was, Mr. Williams’s intervention may have been too little too late. Brooklyn’s overwrought mustaches and handmade ice cream in upcycled cups are now well-established facts of life. It’s as if the tumor of hipster culture that formed when the cool kids moved to Williamsburg had metastasized into a cluster of cysts pressing down on parts of the borough’s brain. Around the militantly organic Park Slope Co-op, for example, or Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, where you can buy rings glued to typewriter keys as well as used, handmade, vegetable-dyed, vintage Oriental rugs for $1,000. Brooklyn is producing and consuming more of its own culture than ever before, giving rise to a sense of Brooklyn exceptionalism and a set of affectations that’s making the borough look more and more like Portland, Oregon.
“Would you like one of my cool little bags?” the chocolate vendor asked after Mrs. LaRosa bought a few bars to use for baking. No thanks, she said.
So it wasn’t until later, when he passed by again, that Mr. LaRosa noticed a sign above the bags. He took a picture because he was afraid he wouldn’t be believed: “Raaka’s packaging is designed by his friends and printed with soy inks on 100 percent postconsumer-recycled, chlorine-free, processed paper that was made from wind-generated energy.” He put the picture on his blog in a post titled “Brooklandia?”
Portland was “Brooklyn before Brooklyn was Brooklyn,” as NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro once quipped. His colleague Kurt Andersen, host of the public radio show Studio 360 and co-founder of Spy, put it more starkly: “Brooklyn without black people.”
Mr. Andersen co-founded the Portland Brooklyn Project, a “loose sister-cityish entity” to unite what the organization calls “creators of culture … with an interest in the connection between Portland and Brooklyn,” in 2010; it’s since changed hands. “Both suffered from an urban inferiority complex that during the last decade or so has become a superiority complex,” he explained in an email. “Brooklyn at its best today is in lots of ways probably like Manhattan at its best in the middle third of the 20th century, although with less hard-core, playing-for-keeps, drunken, druggy, up-all-night Bohemianism.”
I lived in Portland for two years after college. It’s a delightful place with plenty of drunken, druggy Bohemianism. But, dear Brooklyn, you do not want to go there.
Read more:
Banks Shared Clients’ Profits, but Not Losses
by Emily Lambert
JPMorgan Chase & Company has a proposition for the mutual funds and pension funds that oversee many Americans’ savings: Heads, we win together. Tails, you lose — alone.
Here is the deal: Funds lend some of their stocks and bonds to Wall Street, in return for cash that banks like JPMorgan then invest. If the trades do well, the bank takes a cut of the profits. If the trades do poorly, the funds absorb all of the losses.
The strategy is called securities lending, a practice that is thriving even though some investments linked to it were virtually wiped out during the financial panic of 2008. These trades were supposed to be safe enough to make a little extra money at little risk.
JPMorgan customers, including public or corporate pension funds of I.B.M., New York State and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, ended up owing JPMorgan more than $500 million to cover the losses. But JPMorgan protected itself on some of these investments and kept millions of dollars in profit, before the trades went awry.
How JPMorgan won while its customers lost provides a glimpse into the ways Wall Street banks can, and often do, gain advantages over their customers. Today’s giant banks not only create and sell investment products, but also bet on those products, and sometimes against them, putting the banks’ interests at odds with those of their customers. The banks and their lobbyists also help fashion financial rules and regulations. And banks’ traders know what their customers are buying and selling, giving them a valuable edge.
Some of JPMorgan’s customers say they are disappointed with the bank. “They took 40 percent of our profits, and even that was O.K.,” said Jerry D. Davis, the chairman of the municipal employee pension fund in New Orleans, which lost about $340,000, enough to wipe out years of profits that it had earned through securities lending. “But then we started losing money, and they didn’t lose along with us.”
Read more:
JPMorgan Chase & Company has a proposition for the mutual funds and pension funds that oversee many Americans’ savings: Heads, we win together. Tails, you lose — alone.
Here is the deal: Funds lend some of their stocks and bonds to Wall Street, in return for cash that banks like JPMorgan then invest. If the trades do well, the bank takes a cut of the profits. If the trades do poorly, the funds absorb all of the losses.The strategy is called securities lending, a practice that is thriving even though some investments linked to it were virtually wiped out during the financial panic of 2008. These trades were supposed to be safe enough to make a little extra money at little risk.
JPMorgan customers, including public or corporate pension funds of I.B.M., New York State and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, ended up owing JPMorgan more than $500 million to cover the losses. But JPMorgan protected itself on some of these investments and kept millions of dollars in profit, before the trades went awry.
How JPMorgan won while its customers lost provides a glimpse into the ways Wall Street banks can, and often do, gain advantages over their customers. Today’s giant banks not only create and sell investment products, but also bet on those products, and sometimes against them, putting the banks’ interests at odds with those of their customers. The banks and their lobbyists also help fashion financial rules and regulations. And banks’ traders know what their customers are buying and selling, giving them a valuable edge.
Some of JPMorgan’s customers say they are disappointed with the bank. “They took 40 percent of our profits, and even that was O.K.,” said Jerry D. Davis, the chairman of the municipal employee pension fund in New Orleans, which lost about $340,000, enough to wipe out years of profits that it had earned through securities lending. “But then we started losing money, and they didn’t lose along with us.”
Read more:
British Women Golfers in the Rough
by Karen Crouse
No amount of sideways rain at Royal St. George’s could obscure the view that the sun is shining on the British empire. The British Open began with three men from the British Isles among the top four golfers in the world and ended with a fourth, Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland, clasping the champion’s Claret Jug.
Lost in all the buzz about how Britain’s talent is rising like clotted cream to the top of the world golf rankings was the fact that, like many celebrated British courses, it is exclusionary. To celebrate the resurgence of British golf is to ignore that the women are lagging far behind their male counterparts.
Heading into the Women’s British Open this week at Carnoustie Golf Club, the highest-ranked women from the British Isles are Catriona Matthew of Scotland (36), Melissa Reid of England (39) and her compatriot Laura Davies (68).
The absence of Britons at or near the top is all the more glaring given Britain’s rich golfing history, one in which players of both sexes have figured prominently. In the 1920s, when the sport was ruled by amateurs, the women’s game was the domain of Joyce Wethered, who won five English Ladies Championships, four British Ladies Amateurs and the esteem of Bobby Jones, the legendary American star, who described her as the finest golfer, male or female, that he had ever seen.
Among professionals in Britain, the women’s standard-bearer is Davies, a four-time major winner from Coventry, England, who was the L.P.G.A.’s leading money winner in 1994 and the Player of the Year in 1996.
Those who play and follow the sport suggest golf’s patrician roots in Britain have constricted the women’s professional progress. Neil Squires, who covers golf for the Manchester Evening News, estimated that 90 percent of the country’s golfers are men. There remain clubs, he said, where women are invisible by design.
“Historically, there’s always been an issue with golf and all-male clubs,” Squires said, adding that until recently there was a sign displayed at Royal St. George’s that reflected the prevailing attitude.
“It read ‘No Women, No Dogs in the clubhouse,”’ he added. “If you’re a woman wanting to take up golf or even a guy with daughters wanting to take up golf, would you take your daughter along to a place like that?”
Reid, 23, is a two-time winner in Europe who aspires to be the female version of Rory McIlroy, the 22-year-old wunderkind from Northern Ireland who rose to No.4 in the rankings after his victory in the U.S. Open in June.
“The blokes are doing pretty good,” Reid said this month during the U.S. Women’s Open. “Can we reach that level of success? I think so. For it to happen, we need someone like myself to take the golf world by storm. That would make golf more attractive to young girls.”
Reid accepts there are obstacles she must overcome that McIlroy never had to hurdle. To get ready for Carnoustie, for example, Reid could practice at Holywell Golf Club in Wales, near where she lives, but not on any given Saturday.
“There are no women allowed on the course on Saturdays,” Reid said, adding, “Unfortunately, it’s just the way the world is.”
Reid, a willowy blonde who has gotten more press in England for her good looks than her game, added: “I completely understand golf tradition in Britain. I love the tradition but…” Her voice trailed off.
Read more:
No amount of sideways rain at Royal St. George’s could obscure the view that the sun is shining on the British empire. The British Open began with three men from the British Isles among the top four golfers in the world and ended with a fourth, Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland, clasping the champion’s Claret Jug.
Lost in all the buzz about how Britain’s talent is rising like clotted cream to the top of the world golf rankings was the fact that, like many celebrated British courses, it is exclusionary. To celebrate the resurgence of British golf is to ignore that the women are lagging far behind their male counterparts. Heading into the Women’s British Open this week at Carnoustie Golf Club, the highest-ranked women from the British Isles are Catriona Matthew of Scotland (36), Melissa Reid of England (39) and her compatriot Laura Davies (68).
The absence of Britons at or near the top is all the more glaring given Britain’s rich golfing history, one in which players of both sexes have figured prominently. In the 1920s, when the sport was ruled by amateurs, the women’s game was the domain of Joyce Wethered, who won five English Ladies Championships, four British Ladies Amateurs and the esteem of Bobby Jones, the legendary American star, who described her as the finest golfer, male or female, that he had ever seen.
Among professionals in Britain, the women’s standard-bearer is Davies, a four-time major winner from Coventry, England, who was the L.P.G.A.’s leading money winner in 1994 and the Player of the Year in 1996.
Those who play and follow the sport suggest golf’s patrician roots in Britain have constricted the women’s professional progress. Neil Squires, who covers golf for the Manchester Evening News, estimated that 90 percent of the country’s golfers are men. There remain clubs, he said, where women are invisible by design.
“Historically, there’s always been an issue with golf and all-male clubs,” Squires said, adding that until recently there was a sign displayed at Royal St. George’s that reflected the prevailing attitude.
“It read ‘No Women, No Dogs in the clubhouse,”’ he added. “If you’re a woman wanting to take up golf or even a guy with daughters wanting to take up golf, would you take your daughter along to a place like that?”
Reid, 23, is a two-time winner in Europe who aspires to be the female version of Rory McIlroy, the 22-year-old wunderkind from Northern Ireland who rose to No.4 in the rankings after his victory in the U.S. Open in June.
“The blokes are doing pretty good,” Reid said this month during the U.S. Women’s Open. “Can we reach that level of success? I think so. For it to happen, we need someone like myself to take the golf world by storm. That would make golf more attractive to young girls.”
Reid accepts there are obstacles she must overcome that McIlroy never had to hurdle. To get ready for Carnoustie, for example, Reid could practice at Holywell Golf Club in Wales, near where she lives, but not on any given Saturday.
“There are no women allowed on the course on Saturdays,” Reid said, adding, “Unfortunately, it’s just the way the world is.”
Reid, a willowy blonde who has gotten more press in England for her good looks than her game, added: “I completely understand golf tradition in Britain. I love the tradition but…” Her voice trailed off.
Read more:
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Neverware Revives Old Computers to Power a Better Future
by Courtney Boyd Myers
“Do you think computers are meant to crash every three to four years?” I asked Jonathan Hefter, the CEO of Neverware, a start-up based in New York City.
He digs under his desk, laughing and pulls out a pair of lady’s pantyhose. “There are two things in this world planned for obsolescence. Computers and pantyhose. They are designed for the dump.”
While an undergrad at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, Hefter studied economics. Not wanting to go into finance after graduating in 2009, he spent a year tinkering in his parent’s lonely basement in Englewood, NJ. While he’d never taken a computer class before, the concepts of networks came naturally to Hefter. While hashing out his dream to create sustainable computing, he successfully developed the world’s first “juicebox.”
In early 2010, he set up two technology pilots in area schools, which proved to himself and others that the concept could work. In the spring, at the Kairos Society’s Annual Summit he was approached by Polaris Partner Peter Flint, who invited him to become a resident of Dogpatch Labs.
In May 2010, Hefter, now age 25, founded Neverware, a company that is akin to the fountain of youth for computers and moved into NYC’s Dogpatch Labs. The company’s flagship product, the JuiceBox a100 is a single server appliance that, when added to a network, will power up to one hundred old desktops with Windows 7. Under Hefter’s desk is a 10-year old Pentium 3 computer, your typical “general piece of crap computer,” with a missing hard drive (pictured above right). Using his college laptop as a monitor, Hefter demos Neverware’s power.
A Note to Readers
Hello. I don't step out from this side of the curtain too often, but I wanted to make regular readers of this blog aware of a slight change in format going forward. Yesterday I received a notice from Google regarding possible copyright infringement for something I had posted several weeks ago. After reading the notice, examining the post and spending time on the chillingeffects.org web site I have to assume the issue involves reproduction of an original article in greater length than the originating source intended (although this is never explicitly stated).
I've posted articles like this before (not being clear on the finer details of copyright law), hoping to enhance continuity and readibility, and to help readers avoid having to contend with different formats, typefaces and sometimes even inoperative urls. Sources are always credited with a link at the end of each post so that interested readers can see an article in its original context - along with other stories, charts, tables, pictures, etc. that might not have been included due to my limited formating abilities.
However, in terms of copyright liability those efforts appear to be insufficient. So, from now on only a portion of an article will be displayed, along with a link to the "heart" of the article as it appears at it's original source (although, what constitutes "heart" is also very much a subjective matter). Hopefully this will keep everything safe and above board and not be too much of an inconvenience.
If anyone is interested, I encourage you to visit the chillingeffects.org website and examine the copyright FAQ in detail. And, if there are any copyright lawyers in the Duck Soup community that can shed further light on this matter, please feel free to contact me. Even with the format change, I hope you will continue to stop by and enjoy this blog. Your visits mean a lot to me (and, I hope, the sources that contribute so much to our understanding of the world we live in). Thank you.
markk
I've posted articles like this before (not being clear on the finer details of copyright law), hoping to enhance continuity and readibility, and to help readers avoid having to contend with different formats, typefaces and sometimes even inoperative urls. Sources are always credited with a link at the end of each post so that interested readers can see an article in its original context - along with other stories, charts, tables, pictures, etc. that might not have been included due to my limited formating abilities.
However, in terms of copyright liability those efforts appear to be insufficient. So, from now on only a portion of an article will be displayed, along with a link to the "heart" of the article as it appears at it's original source (although, what constitutes "heart" is also very much a subjective matter). Hopefully this will keep everything safe and above board and not be too much of an inconvenience.
If anyone is interested, I encourage you to visit the chillingeffects.org website and examine the copyright FAQ in detail. And, if there are any copyright lawyers in the Duck Soup community that can shed further light on this matter, please feel free to contact me. Even with the format change, I hope you will continue to stop by and enjoy this blog. Your visits mean a lot to me (and, I hope, the sources that contribute so much to our understanding of the world we live in). Thank you.
markk
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Kingdom and the Paywall
By Seth Mnookin
Two weeks ago, I went to the New York Times’ gleaming, modernist, Renzo Piano–designed headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan to discuss some good financial news with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher and the chairman of the New York Times Company. Good news has been in short supply in the world of dead-tree media, and for the Times in particular.
For much of Sulzberger’s nineteen-year tenure, the paper that his family has controlled for more than a century has been embroiled in one crisis or another, ranging from the Jayson Blair fiasco, which led to the overthrow of Howell Raines, the hard-charging editor who had been handpicked by Sulzberger, to the paper’s reporting on the phantom WMDs in Iraq, which some believed had even helped propel the U.S. into war.
Then there were the paper’s financial troubles, which appeared to have pushed it to the brink of extinction. For well over a decade, the Internet had been relentlessly consuming the paper’s business model. On the web, the saying went, information wants to be free; this left institutions like the Times, which invest huge sums in reporting the news, in an existential quandary. In the months after the collapse of the credit market in the fall of 2008, the company was forced to take drastic measures to stay afloat: In January 2009, it granted Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú purchase warrants for 15.9 million shares of Times Company stock for the privilege of borrowing $250 million at essentially a junk-bond interest rate of 14 percent. Two months later, in a move redolent with uncomfortable symbolism, the company raised another $225 million through a sale-leaseback deal for its headquarters—which had been built only two years earlier and which, in its understated, environmentally conscious, progressive, user-friendly way, was supposed to be the emblem of the paper’s 21st-century identity. Add on double-digit declines in both circulation and ad pages and the trend lines looked increasingly clear: The New York Times was doomed.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. Though the Times’ circulation dipped during the crash years, much of the lost revenue was made up for by doubling the newsstand price, from $1 to $2—evidence, the paper insisted, that its premium audience understood the value of a premium product. In March, after several years of planning and tens of millions in investments, the Times launched a digital-subscription plan—and the early signs were good. In fact, less than 48 hours before my interview, the Times announced it would finish paying back the Carlos Slim loan in full on August 15, three and a half years early. When they were released last week, the company’s second-quarter financial results showed an overall loss largely owing to the write-down of some regional papers, but they also contained a much more important piece of data: The digital-subscription plan—the famous “paywall”—was working better than anyone had dared to hope.
Meanwhile, a phone-hacking scandal was engulfing Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. This was not in itself relevant to the Times, but it carried its own symbolism. Murdoch had made a point, after his purchase of The Wall Street Journal, of suggesting that the Times was vulnerable. “Let the battle begin,” he wrote in a note to Sulzberger. Sulzberger would not be quite human if he didn’t take some satisfaction in his rival’s troubles, especially because an aggressively reported investigation the Times published in its magazine last September was critical in bringing the scandal to light.
The bottom line for the paywall is more than the bottom line: The Times has taken a do-or-die stand for hard-core, boots-on-the-ground journalism, for earnest civic purpose, for the primacy of content creators over aggregators, and has brought itself back from the precipice. And if that does indeed end up being the case, there’s one unlikely person who deserves most of the credit: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.
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Two weeks ago, I went to the New York Times’ gleaming, modernist, Renzo Piano–designed headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan to discuss some good financial news with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher and the chairman of the New York Times Company. Good news has been in short supply in the world of dead-tree media, and for the Times in particular.
For much of Sulzberger’s nineteen-year tenure, the paper that his family has controlled for more than a century has been embroiled in one crisis or another, ranging from the Jayson Blair fiasco, which led to the overthrow of Howell Raines, the hard-charging editor who had been handpicked by Sulzberger, to the paper’s reporting on the phantom WMDs in Iraq, which some believed had even helped propel the U.S. into war. Then there were the paper’s financial troubles, which appeared to have pushed it to the brink of extinction. For well over a decade, the Internet had been relentlessly consuming the paper’s business model. On the web, the saying went, information wants to be free; this left institutions like the Times, which invest huge sums in reporting the news, in an existential quandary. In the months after the collapse of the credit market in the fall of 2008, the company was forced to take drastic measures to stay afloat: In January 2009, it granted Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú purchase warrants for 15.9 million shares of Times Company stock for the privilege of borrowing $250 million at essentially a junk-bond interest rate of 14 percent. Two months later, in a move redolent with uncomfortable symbolism, the company raised another $225 million through a sale-leaseback deal for its headquarters—which had been built only two years earlier and which, in its understated, environmentally conscious, progressive, user-friendly way, was supposed to be the emblem of the paper’s 21st-century identity. Add on double-digit declines in both circulation and ad pages and the trend lines looked increasingly clear: The New York Times was doomed.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. Though the Times’ circulation dipped during the crash years, much of the lost revenue was made up for by doubling the newsstand price, from $1 to $2—evidence, the paper insisted, that its premium audience understood the value of a premium product. In March, after several years of planning and tens of millions in investments, the Times launched a digital-subscription plan—and the early signs were good. In fact, less than 48 hours before my interview, the Times announced it would finish paying back the Carlos Slim loan in full on August 15, three and a half years early. When they were released last week, the company’s second-quarter financial results showed an overall loss largely owing to the write-down of some regional papers, but they also contained a much more important piece of data: The digital-subscription plan—the famous “paywall”—was working better than anyone had dared to hope.
Meanwhile, a phone-hacking scandal was engulfing Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. This was not in itself relevant to the Times, but it carried its own symbolism. Murdoch had made a point, after his purchase of The Wall Street Journal, of suggesting that the Times was vulnerable. “Let the battle begin,” he wrote in a note to Sulzberger. Sulzberger would not be quite human if he didn’t take some satisfaction in his rival’s troubles, especially because an aggressively reported investigation the Times published in its magazine last September was critical in bringing the scandal to light.
The bottom line for the paywall is more than the bottom line: The Times has taken a do-or-die stand for hard-core, boots-on-the-ground journalism, for earnest civic purpose, for the primacy of content creators over aggregators, and has brought itself back from the precipice. And if that does indeed end up being the case, there’s one unlikely person who deserves most of the credit: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.
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The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling
by James Fallows
It's based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who's "to blame" for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.
An additional significance of the chart: it identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks -- like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama's first two years than during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up - partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock.
The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That's why we call them "shocks." Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it ("deficits don't matter" etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position.
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It's based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who's "to blame" for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.
An additional significance of the chart: it identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks -- like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama's first two years than during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up - partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock.
The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That's why we call them "shocks." Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it ("deficits don't matter" etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position.
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