Thursday, June 6, 2013
Government Phone Surveillance for Dummies
[ed. See also, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans]
And, this from Amy Davidson with the New Yorker:
As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says…
And, from Megan Garber at The Atlantic:
How is the Obama Administration explaining and trying to justify all this?
This way, according to talking points sent to Marc Ambinder:
Yes. And it might well be an extension of those policies.
Okay, but ... seriously, how is this not a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
So the Fourth Amendment generally requires that the government obtain a warrant when it's seeking private information about individual citizens. And the warrant, in turn, should be granted based on probable cause. There's a slight exception to that broad approach, though. Many Supreme Court rulings have held that you don't have a reasonable to privacy when it comes, specifically, to information you share with a third party.
And the courts have now applied that standard to other areas. Which generally makes sense, except for one substantial tension. As David Cole, a Georgetown law professor who focuses on national security and constitutional law, told me: "Basically, everything you do now shares information with a third party." The numbers you dial on the phone, the amount of time you spend on the phone, the location from which you make a phone call -- all of that, because of how our technologies and businesses are structured, is de facto shared with the third party that is your phone company.
And the rub, as Cole explains it, is that the Fourth Amendment doesn't limit the government's ability to obtain any of that third-party information. Bank records, credit card records, Internet searches: none of that, on its own, has protection under the Constitution.
How is it that a FISA court -- a court established under the auspices of the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" -- is authorizing the government to monitor metadata from domestic calls?
This is where things get dicier. FISA, which was adopted in 1978 and has been amended several times since then, permits the U.S. government to obtain records that are related to a target of a foreign intelligence investigation. While "foreign" can be defined fairly broadly, it's notable -- and legally questionable -- that the FISA court order, in this case, includes purely domestic surveillance.
Furthermore, FISA, as it's been widely understood, has allowed governments to gather third-party information in response to investigations into individuals'actions. It's unclear in this case how that translates, legally, to the kind of collective surveillance the NSA seems to be engaged in.
I keep reading about the PATRIOT Act. How does that fit into all this?
A section of the PATRIOT Act -- section 215, to be precise -- is what's ultimately guiding the legal affordances here, at least as the Administration is interpreting them. (You may know the section as the "library records" provision, named that way because of the breadth of personal information that can be investigated under its auspices.) Section 215, following the terror attacks of September 11, expanded the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the court that, in this case, issued the Verizon order). It established a process, through that court, for compelling businesses to turn over records that may be relevant to the gathering of foreign intelligence or the prevention of international terrorism.
Here's the section language as it currently reads:
Yes.
And, this from Amy Davidson with the New Yorker:
As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says…
And, from Megan Garber at The Atlantic:
How is the Obama Administration explaining and trying to justify all this?
This way, according to talking points sent to Marc Ambinder:
* On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call.
* Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.
* As we have publicly stated before, all three branches of government are involved in reviewing and authorizing intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act and is regularly and fully briefed on how it is used, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizes such collection.So this would seem to be a continuation of Bush-era surveillance policies.
Yes. And it might well be an extension of those policies.
Okay, but ... seriously, how is this not a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
So the Fourth Amendment generally requires that the government obtain a warrant when it's seeking private information about individual citizens. And the warrant, in turn, should be granted based on probable cause. There's a slight exception to that broad approach, though. Many Supreme Court rulings have held that you don't have a reasonable to privacy when it comes, specifically, to information you share with a third party.
And the courts have now applied that standard to other areas. Which generally makes sense, except for one substantial tension. As David Cole, a Georgetown law professor who focuses on national security and constitutional law, told me: "Basically, everything you do now shares information with a third party." The numbers you dial on the phone, the amount of time you spend on the phone, the location from which you make a phone call -- all of that, because of how our technologies and businesses are structured, is de facto shared with the third party that is your phone company.
And the rub, as Cole explains it, is that the Fourth Amendment doesn't limit the government's ability to obtain any of that third-party information. Bank records, credit card records, Internet searches: none of that, on its own, has protection under the Constitution.
How is it that a FISA court -- a court established under the auspices of the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" -- is authorizing the government to monitor metadata from domestic calls?
This is where things get dicier. FISA, which was adopted in 1978 and has been amended several times since then, permits the U.S. government to obtain records that are related to a target of a foreign intelligence investigation. While "foreign" can be defined fairly broadly, it's notable -- and legally questionable -- that the FISA court order, in this case, includes purely domestic surveillance.
Furthermore, FISA, as it's been widely understood, has allowed governments to gather third-party information in response to investigations into individuals'actions. It's unclear in this case how that translates, legally, to the kind of collective surveillance the NSA seems to be engaged in.
I keep reading about the PATRIOT Act. How does that fit into all this?
A section of the PATRIOT Act -- section 215, to be precise -- is what's ultimately guiding the legal affordances here, at least as the Administration is interpreting them. (You may know the section as the "library records" provision, named that way because of the breadth of personal information that can be investigated under its auspices.) Section 215, following the terror attacks of September 11, expanded the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the court that, in this case, issued the Verizon order). It established a process, through that court, for compelling businesses to turn over records that may be relevant to the gathering of foreign intelligence or the prevention of international terrorism.
Here's the section language as it currently reads:
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. ``(2) An investigation conducted under this section shall-- ``(A) be conducted under guidelines approved by the Attorney General under Executive Order 12333 (or a successor order); and ``(B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
`(b) Each application under this section-- ``(1) shall be made to-- ``(A) a judge of the court established by section 103(a); or ``(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and (2) shall specify that the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.So am I reading right that it's basically one judge who makes the ultimate decision about the legality of proposed surveillance?
Yes.
by Megan Garber, The Atlantic | Read more:
Intro link: Amy Davidson, New Yorker
Image via:
Wi-Fi-Enabled Windows
[ed. I've always thought something like this was coming. But why stop here? Pretty soon it should be possible to project any view you want -- on your windows or on micro-thin, transportable wall coverings.]
Northern California startup SONTE has designed a high-tech alternative to traditional window coverings: it's a Wi-Fi-enabled window film you put on existing windows that can switch from clear to opaque via a smartphone app. This means you can enjoy the view through a window when you want and then get privacy when you need it.
SONTE film can be retrofitted on your existing windows through a do-it-yourself installation. You measure your window, cut the film to size and, using the film's self-adhesive, stick it on the glass. You then add special conducting clips on the film and plug it into the Wi-Fi-enabled transformer. After downloading the companion app (iOS and Android), you can control the film's transparency. SONTE says the film can turn solid by an electric current moving through, changing transparency within a second.
by Vignesh Ramachandran, Mashable | Read more:
Image: SONTE
The Amish Are Getting Fracked
Their religion prohibits lawsuits—and the energy companies know it.
It was late 2010 when a chipper agent for Kenoil, Inc., a drilling company in Eastern Ohio, drove to the nearby hamlet of Millersburg to visit Lloyd Miller. His car slithered down the hill overlooking the Millers's home and white farm buildings, past a set of pine green drums, pipes, and gauges—a shallow oil well that Kenoil had drilled on the Millers’s property many years ago—and stopped in front of the aluminum barn where the family, who are Amish dairy farmers, lodges its horses and buggy. The agent had an unexpected business proposition for Lloyd and his wife, Edna: Kenoil wanted to lease the right to drill on the Millers's land for shale gas. And for a lease of five years, he could offer them $10 an acre that same day.
The timing felt providential. The couple, who have several young children, were still paying off a 2006 loan they’d used to buy a small farm adjoining theirs. Gazing in the direction of his 158 acres, as he talked with me at his kitchen table in March, Miller said, “We thought, ‘Hey, that’s $1,500 we didn’t have.’” Still, he asked the agent about rumors of farmers who’d been given much larger signing bonuses in similar deals. He remembered the agent grinning dismissively as he said farms in the area were not leasing for more than what was offered. Miller, 46, considered the Kenoil well on the hill, and the years of good relations he had enjoyed with the company. “I just trusted him,” he said. The Millers signed the lease.
It was maybe two weeks, Miller figured, before they realized the enormity of what they’d done. First, their local paper, TheBargain Hunter, carried a front-page story advising farmers their land could be worth hundreds per acre to oil and gas companies. He compared notes with landowners nearby while on trips to the sale barns where farmers trade livestock, and when other farmers delivered hay for his cows. Miller is physically imposing—stout and broad-shouldered—but also painfully timid. When pressed on what his neighbors had earned, he gazed for a long time at Edna, who, with one of their daughters, was chalking the outline of a man’s pantleg onto a bolt of wool rolled out on the table. “My wife and I took turns kicking each other in the butt.” He paused for a long while. “Our ten dollars an acre compared to $1,000.”
Indeed, many area farms had leased for thousands. Even by a conservative calculation, the couple said they had missed out on a $79,000 signing bonus. (Kenoil declined to comment). Several times, they have felt the sting of their mistake, as during last year’s drought, when a decimated corn crop forced them to buy extra feed for the milking cows, costing thousands of dollars. The Millers have also tried to undo their misstep. Around the beginning of 2011, Lloyd presented his lease and his story to a lawyer, who said that by telling the Millers that $10 an acre represented the best deal available to them, the agent had committed fraud. He told Miller he could take Kenoil to court. “But I said, ‘Hey, that’s something we don’t do,’” Miller said. “He’s got to live with his conscience.”
Miller means that literally. The Amish interpretation of the Christian bible prohibits the use of the courts: Except in rare circumstances, the Amish do not sue. This has created a unique problem in the region. Home to the largest Amish community in the world, Eastern Ohio sits squarely on top of the Utica and Marcellus Shale formations, which contain billions in oil and gas recoverable through advances in hydraulic fracturing technology, or fracking. From the portions of the Utica Shale play that underlie Ohio alone, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has estimated that companies may be able to extract up to 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon has estimated the value of the Utica’s resources at $500 billion.
Accordingly, extraction companies are buying up the rights to drill on private property with unprecedented speed. At stake are geysers of money. And in the thousands of cases in which the landowner is of the Amish faith, their business partner would never dream of taking them to court should things go awry. This, obviously, has enticed some companies to take advantage of Amish farmers—who are finally figuring out how to fight back.
It was late 2010 when a chipper agent for Kenoil, Inc., a drilling company in Eastern Ohio, drove to the nearby hamlet of Millersburg to visit Lloyd Miller. His car slithered down the hill overlooking the Millers's home and white farm buildings, past a set of pine green drums, pipes, and gauges—a shallow oil well that Kenoil had drilled on the Millers’s property many years ago—and stopped in front of the aluminum barn where the family, who are Amish dairy farmers, lodges its horses and buggy. The agent had an unexpected business proposition for Lloyd and his wife, Edna: Kenoil wanted to lease the right to drill on the Millers's land for shale gas. And for a lease of five years, he could offer them $10 an acre that same day.The timing felt providential. The couple, who have several young children, were still paying off a 2006 loan they’d used to buy a small farm adjoining theirs. Gazing in the direction of his 158 acres, as he talked with me at his kitchen table in March, Miller said, “We thought, ‘Hey, that’s $1,500 we didn’t have.’” Still, he asked the agent about rumors of farmers who’d been given much larger signing bonuses in similar deals. He remembered the agent grinning dismissively as he said farms in the area were not leasing for more than what was offered. Miller, 46, considered the Kenoil well on the hill, and the years of good relations he had enjoyed with the company. “I just trusted him,” he said. The Millers signed the lease.
It was maybe two weeks, Miller figured, before they realized the enormity of what they’d done. First, their local paper, TheBargain Hunter, carried a front-page story advising farmers their land could be worth hundreds per acre to oil and gas companies. He compared notes with landowners nearby while on trips to the sale barns where farmers trade livestock, and when other farmers delivered hay for his cows. Miller is physically imposing—stout and broad-shouldered—but also painfully timid. When pressed on what his neighbors had earned, he gazed for a long time at Edna, who, with one of their daughters, was chalking the outline of a man’s pantleg onto a bolt of wool rolled out on the table. “My wife and I took turns kicking each other in the butt.” He paused for a long while. “Our ten dollars an acre compared to $1,000.”
Indeed, many area farms had leased for thousands. Even by a conservative calculation, the couple said they had missed out on a $79,000 signing bonus. (Kenoil declined to comment). Several times, they have felt the sting of their mistake, as during last year’s drought, when a decimated corn crop forced them to buy extra feed for the milking cows, costing thousands of dollars. The Millers have also tried to undo their misstep. Around the beginning of 2011, Lloyd presented his lease and his story to a lawyer, who said that by telling the Millers that $10 an acre represented the best deal available to them, the agent had committed fraud. He told Miller he could take Kenoil to court. “But I said, ‘Hey, that’s something we don’t do,’” Miller said. “He’s got to live with his conscience.”
Miller means that literally. The Amish interpretation of the Christian bible prohibits the use of the courts: Except in rare circumstances, the Amish do not sue. This has created a unique problem in the region. Home to the largest Amish community in the world, Eastern Ohio sits squarely on top of the Utica and Marcellus Shale formations, which contain billions in oil and gas recoverable through advances in hydraulic fracturing technology, or fracking. From the portions of the Utica Shale play that underlie Ohio alone, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has estimated that companies may be able to extract up to 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon has estimated the value of the Utica’s resources at $500 billion.
Accordingly, extraction companies are buying up the rights to drill on private property with unprecedented speed. At stake are geysers of money. And in the thousands of cases in which the landowner is of the Amish faith, their business partner would never dream of taking them to court should things go awry. This, obviously, has enticed some companies to take advantage of Amish farmers—who are finally figuring out how to fight back.
by Molly Redden, TNR | Read more:
Image: Mladen Antonov/AFP
Welfare for the Wealthy
The legislation costs around $100 billion annually, determining policies on matters that are strikingly diverse. Because it affects foreign trade and aid, agricultural and nutritional research, and much more, it has global implications.
The Farm Bill finances food stamps (officially SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the subsidies that allow industrial ag and monoculture — the “spray and pray” style of farming — to maintain their grip on the food “system.”
The bill is ostensibly revisited, refashioned and renewed every five years, but this round, scheduled to be re-enacted last year, has been in discussion since 2010, and a final bill is not in sight. Based on the current course of Congress it seems there will be an extension this fall, as there was in 2012. Extensions allow funding changes for individual “titles,” as programs are sometimes called; last year’s extensions didn’t do much damage, but this year’s threaten the well-being of tens of millions of Americans. (...)
The current versions of the Farm Bill in the Senate (as usual, not as horrible as the House) and the House (as usual, terrifying) could hardly be more frustrating. The House is proposing $20 billion in cuts to SNAP — equivalent, says Beckmann, to “almost half of all the charitable food assistance that food banks and food charities provide to people in need.”
Deficit reduction is the sacred excuse for such cruelty, but the first could be achieved without the second. Two of the most expensive programs are food stamps, the cost of which has justifiably soared since the beginning of the Great Recession , and direct subsidy payments.
This pits the ability of poor people to eat — not well, but sort of enough — against the production of agricultural commodities. That would be a difficult choice if the subsidies were going to farmers who could be crushed by failure, but in reality most direct payments go to those who need them least.
Among them is Congressman Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee, who justifies SNAP cuts by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”
Even if this quote were not taken out of context — whoever wrote 2 Thessalonians was chastising not the poor but those who’d stopped working in anticipation of the second coming — Fincher ignores the fact that Congress is a secular body that supposedly doesn’t base policy on an ancient religious text that contradicts itself more often than not. Not that one needs to break a sweat countering his “argument,” but 45 percent of food stamp recipients are children, and in 2010, the U.S.D.A. reported that as many as 41 percent are working poor. (...)
Fincher is not alone in disgrace, even among his Congressional colleagues, but he makes a lovely poster boy for a policy that steals taxpayer money from the poor and so-called middle class to pay the rich, while propping up a form of agriculture that’s unsustainable and poisonous.
Knowing that direct subsidy payments are under the gun, our clever and cynical representatives are offering a bait-and-switch policy that will make things worse, and largely replace subsidy payments with an enhanced form of crop insurance — paid for by us, of course — which will further reduce risks for commodity farmers. As Craig Cox explained, “The proposed crop insurance would allow — no, encourage — big farmers to plant corn on hillsides, in flood-threatened areas, even in drought-stricken areas, with subsidized premiums and deductibles, and see a big payout if” — should we say “when”? — “the crop fails or is damaged.”
You should get such a deal on insurance: the premiums and deductibles are subsidized and there’s no limit to what can be paid, so bigger farms and bigger risks reap bigger rewards in the event of failure, even if that was a failure of judgment.
Even without boosting the program, crop insurance payments came in at a whopping $17 billion last year. That was unusually high because of the drought, but only a climate-change denier believes that was the last drought we’re going to see. And if you think any of this can be justified because it supports the insurance industry and creates American jobs … well, no: most of the subsidized insurance providers are based offshore.
by Mark Bittman, NY Times | Read more:
Image via: The Atlantic
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
A Red-Sauce Joint Steals the Show
[ed. Even with the departure of Sam Sifton, the dining section of the NY Times is in good hands with Pete Wells (especially after this classic.]
This being 2013, and the two chefs, Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone, being former lieutenants of Mario Batali and Daniel Boulud, Carbone is infinitely more self-conscious than those old restaurants. It is a fancy red-sauce joint in Greenwich Village as directed by Quentin Tarantino, bringing back the punch-in-the-guts thrills of a genre that everybody else sees as uncultured and a little embarrassing, while exposing the sophistication that was always lurking there. Carbone has a technical prowess that can make you giddy; a lust for excess that can, at times, make you a little queasy; and an instinct for sheer entertainment that makes a lot of other restaurants seem like earnest, unimaginative drones.
There are, in the Tarantino style, fanboy film allusions: the tile floor from “The Godfather,” the narrow passageway into the back dining room that makes you feel like Ray Liotta handshake-tipping his way into the Copacabana.
There are the songs that make you think, “Oh, no,” followed by “I forgot how great this is,” as people with open bottles of Gaja on the table drum their fingers to “We Open in Venice.”
Like Tarantino’s love letters to pulpy exploitation films, Carbone affectionately picks up the clichés of its genre, twirls them, then hurls them at your head. Our captain wears a B-movie smile and a tuxedo in a shade of maroon last seen at Liberace’s estate sale. Bearing a hollowed-out wheel of Parmesan, he stabs a nugget of cheese and slides it on to my plate. It tastes young, milky and uninteresting, but next come papery slices of smoky and complex aged country ham, Kentucky serving as a stunt double for Parma, and a stack of “grandma bread,” a no-cheese Sicilian pizza with oregano and a shadowy, sweet pulp of tomato sauce. Both make me smile.
More unbidden genre tropes are on the way: tart giardiniera in oil, amazing garlic bread, fried ribbons of dough under powdered sugar, suave fig grappa, and delicate house-made limoncello in a bottle furry with frost. I don’t love every one of these extras, but I love the way they make me abandon any hope of quiet moderation.
Nearly the entire menu at Carbone is a quotation, starting with the $50 veal parm, which is larger than some fancy brick-oven pizzas and looks like one, too, with ovals of browned buffalo mozzarella and a bright red, summer-fresh, barely cooked tomato sauce. Served with a fried shaft of bone, it’s a shock-and-awe dish, and the most shocking thing about it is that there is no real revisionism here; it is a veal parm, the way you always hoped it would be.
More often, the old tropes get an injection of technique that acts like a syringe of epinephrine plunged into the heart. The two-and-a-half pound lobster fra diavolo is both brash and polished, the huge portion galvanized by Calabrian chiles and soothed by Cognac. No shrimp scampi has been handled as gently or luxuriously as Carbone’s chorus line of langoustines, claws extended, bodies split and slick with butter that implies garlic without coming right out and saying it.
Concentrated shellfish stock is the foundation a zuppa di pesce so deeply fragrant, you know it’s coming before it’s on the table.
Facebook Piece
[ed. The experiment from Hell.]1. Reactivate dormant account Robert Horning and reset privacy settings to their defaults
2. Remain logged in to Facebook on personal computer and smartphone
3. Every day, perform the following 20 actions on Facebook or through Facebook’s Open Graph API
- Submit five friend requests to profiles suggested by Facebook’s “People You May Know” algorithm
- Post one photograph of myself
- Post one photograph I’ve taken of anything but myself
- Post one photograph found elsewhere on the Internet
- Post one update about something I listened to that day
- Post one update about something I read that day
- Post one update about something I wrote
- Like three things in my Newsfeed
- Like three things on the Internet at large
- Comment on two Newsfeed items
- Click on one sponsored ad
5. Obey any requests for information generated automatically by Facebook’s interface
6. Continue until account has reached maximum or minimum number of friends
by Rob Horning, TNI | Read more:
Image via:
REI Limiting Returns
For years, REI’s generous return policy has earned it the nickname “Rental Equipment Inc.”
An Internet search of REI’s “100% Satisfaction Guarantee” turns up all kinds of stories about overused merchandise returned for a full refund or store credit.
There’s the mom who returned a stroller for no other reason than her children simply had outgrown it. Or the dad who took back an old bike rack because it clashed with his new car.
Starting Tuesday, REI will try to discourage customers from “renting” equipment for as long as they like by ending its policy of no time limits on returns. Customers will be allowed to take back store items for one year after purchase. The deadline for returning outlet merchandise bought on REI.com will be 30 days.
Kent-based REI, which actually stands for Recreational Equipment Inc., made the change after noticing a sharp uptick in returns of merchandise more than a year old, said Senior Vice President of Retail Tim Spangler.
“We’ve always taken back products more than a year old, but to see that growing disproportionately caused us to ask some questions,” Spangler said in an interview last week at REI’s Tacoma store.
“What we found is that small group of folks who are probably extending the policy beyond its intent, is getting bigger. And It’s not a sustainable thing long-term if we want to maintain this fantastic policy,” he said. “It’s something we have to put some clarification around.”
REI’s sales rose less than expected last year to $1.9 billion, a 7 percent increase, while its profit dropped 4 percent to $29 million. The outdoor-gear chain laid off an undisclosed, “limited” number of employees in March, citing changing business needs.
To reduce dubious returns, REI also has stopped accepting returns without question and is more insistent that there be proof of purchase. Some REI stores had been known to give store credit, if not money-back refunds, to customers without a receipt, leading to the retailer’s other nickname, “Return Everything Inc.”
Climber Leif Karlstrom, in an article published online last fall by Outside magazine, recalled taking advantage of REI’s return policy as a broke college student.
“A climbing buddy came back from China with a bunch of knockoff REI gear. We returned it fraudulently to the store in Eugene, Ore., which gave us cash,” Karlstrom said. “REI didn’t even make some of the gear returned, but the store took it because the logo was on it. After that we couldn’t stop.”
An Internet search of REI’s “100% Satisfaction Guarantee” turns up all kinds of stories about overused merchandise returned for a full refund or store credit.There’s the mom who returned a stroller for no other reason than her children simply had outgrown it. Or the dad who took back an old bike rack because it clashed with his new car.
Starting Tuesday, REI will try to discourage customers from “renting” equipment for as long as they like by ending its policy of no time limits on returns. Customers will be allowed to take back store items for one year after purchase. The deadline for returning outlet merchandise bought on REI.com will be 30 days.
Kent-based REI, which actually stands for Recreational Equipment Inc., made the change after noticing a sharp uptick in returns of merchandise more than a year old, said Senior Vice President of Retail Tim Spangler.
“We’ve always taken back products more than a year old, but to see that growing disproportionately caused us to ask some questions,” Spangler said in an interview last week at REI’s Tacoma store.
“What we found is that small group of folks who are probably extending the policy beyond its intent, is getting bigger. And It’s not a sustainable thing long-term if we want to maintain this fantastic policy,” he said. “It’s something we have to put some clarification around.”
REI’s sales rose less than expected last year to $1.9 billion, a 7 percent increase, while its profit dropped 4 percent to $29 million. The outdoor-gear chain laid off an undisclosed, “limited” number of employees in March, citing changing business needs.
To reduce dubious returns, REI also has stopped accepting returns without question and is more insistent that there be proof of purchase. Some REI stores had been known to give store credit, if not money-back refunds, to customers without a receipt, leading to the retailer’s other nickname, “Return Everything Inc.”
Climber Leif Karlstrom, in an article published online last fall by Outside magazine, recalled taking advantage of REI’s return policy as a broke college student.
“A climbing buddy came back from China with a bunch of knockoff REI gear. We returned it fraudulently to the store in Eugene, Ore., which gave us cash,” Karlstrom said. “REI didn’t even make some of the gear returned, but the store took it because the logo was on it. After that we couldn’t stop.”
by Amy Martinez, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Steve Ringman
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi
North Korea is a mythically strange land, an Absurdistan, where almost nothing is known about the people or, more important, their missile-launching leaders. There is, however, one man—a humble sushi chef from Japan—who infiltrated the inner sanctum, becoming the Dear Leader's cook, confidant, and court jester. What is life like serving Kim Jong-il and his heir? A strange and dangerous gig where the food and drink never stop, the girls are all virgins, and you're never really safe. We sent Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson to meet the man who survived all the craziness
The sushi chef was leaving his apartment when he noticed the stranger outside. He could tell by the man's suit—black and badly made—that he was North Korean. Right away, the chef was nervous. Even in his midsixties, the chef is a formidable man: He has thick shoulders, a broad chest; the rings on his strong hands would one day have to be cut off. But he'd long since quit wearing his bulletproof vest, and the last time a North Korean made the journey to visit him in Japan, a decade ago, he was there to kill him.
The chef's name, an alias, is Kenji Fujimoto, and for eleven years he was Kim Jong-il's personal chef, court jester, and sidekick. He had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto's job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredients—to Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader's yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald's, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go.When he finally escaped, Fujimoto became, according to a high-level cable released by WikiLeaks, the Japanese intelligence community's single greatest asset on the Kim family, rulers of a nation about which stubbornly little is known. We don't know how many people live there. (Best guess: around 23 million.) It's uncertain how many people starved to death during the famine of the late '90s. (Maybe 2 million.) Also mysterious is the number of citizens currently toiling their way toward death in labor camps, places people are sent without trial or sentence or appeal. (Perhaps 200,000.) We didn't even know the age of the current leader, Kim Jong-un, until Kenji Fujimoto revealed his birth date. (January 8, 1983.)
What we know of North Korea comes from satellite photos and the stories of defectors, which, like Fujimoto's, are almost impossible to confirm. Though North Korea is a nuclear power, it has yet to build its first stoplight. The phone book hasn't been invented. It is a nation where old Soviet factories limp along to produce brand-new refrigerators from 1963. When people do escape, they tend to flee from the countryside, where life is more dangerous. Because people rarely defect from the capital, their stories don't make it out, which leaves a great mystery in the center of an already obscure nation. Which is why Fujimoto's is the rarest of stories.
This winter, I flew to Saku for a series of interviews with Fujimoto. I had spent six years researching North Korea for a novel, and in that time I had spoken with experts, aid workers, defectors—everyone with a story to tell about life there. Yet I hadn't spoken to Fujimoto. It was December when I arrived, and a dusting of snow blew through the town's car lots and bare-limbed apple orchards. Here, Fujimoto's friend owns a battered five-stool karaoke bar, and this is where we met. Inside, it was cold enough to see your breath. The toilet was a hole in the floor where urine, billowing steam, disappeared into darkness before freezing.
Fujimoto made us coffee, which helped, and through an interpreter I asked him what he knew about North Korea when, in 1982, he signed a one-year contract to teach sushi-making skills to young chefs in Pyongyang.
"I didn't know much about it," he said. "I knew that Kim Il-sung was the leader of the country. I knew about the thirty-eighth parallel. That's about it."
He couldn't recount ever having met a Korean. Still, he was restless at home, and the pay was good. So packing only his knives and clothes, he left his wife and daughters in Japan and flew to Pyongyang.
by Adam Johnson, GQ | Read more:
Image: Jungyeon Roh
Ben S. Bernanke: Baccalaureate Ceremony at Princeton University - The Ten Suggestions
I'll extend my best wishes to the seniors later, but first I want to congratulate the parents and families here. As a parent myself, I know that putting your kid through college these days is no walk in the park. Some years ago I had a colleague who sent three kids through Princeton even though neither he nor his wife attended this university. He and his spouse were very proud of that accomplishment, as they should have been. But my colleague also used to say that, from a financial perspective, the experience was like buying a new Cadillac every year and then driving it off a cliff. I should say that he always added that he would do it all over again in a minute. So, well done, moms, dads, and families.
This is indeed an impressive and appropriate setting for a commencement. I am sure that, from this lectern, any number of distinguished spiritual leaders have ruminated on the lessons of the Ten Commandments. I don't have that kind of confidence, and, anyway, coveting your neighbor's ox or donkey is not the problem it used to be, so I thought I would use my few minutes today to make Ten Suggestions, or maybe just Ten Observations, about the world and your lives after Princeton. Please note, these points have nothing whatsoever to do with interest rates. My qualification for making such suggestions, or observations, besides having kindly been invited to speak today by President Tilghman, is the same as the reason that your obnoxious brother or sister got to go to bed later--I am older than you. All of what follows has been road-tested in real-life situations, but past performance is no guarantee of future results.
1. The poet Robert Burns once said something about the best-laid plans of mice and men ganging aft agley, whatever "agley" means. A more contemporary philosopher, Forrest Gump, said something similar about life and boxes of chocolates and not knowing what you are going to get. They were both right. Life is amazingly unpredictable; any 22-year-old who thinks he or she knows where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination. Look what happened to me: A dozen years ago I was minding my own business teaching Economics 101 in Alexander Hall and trying to think of good excuses for avoiding faculty meetings. Then I got a phone call . . . In case you are skeptical of Forrest Gump's insight, here's a concrete suggestion for each of the graduating seniors. Take a few minutes the first chance you get and talk to an alum participating in his or her 25th, or 30th, or 40th reunion--you know, somebody who was near the front of the P-rade. Ask them, back when they were graduating 25, 30, or 40 years ago, where they expected to be today. If you can get them to open up, they will tell you that today they are happy and satisfied in various measures, or not, and their personal stories will be filled with highs and lows and in-betweens. But, I am willing to bet, those life stories will in almost all cases be quite different, in large and small ways, from what they expected when they started out. This is a good thing, not a bad thing; who wants to know the end of a story that's only in its early chapters? Don't be afraid to let the drama play out.
by Ben S. Bernanke, Federal Reserve | Read more:
Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife
PD-1
The early success of a new class of cancer drugs, revealed in test results released here over the last several days, has raised hope among the world’s top cancer specialists that they may be on the verge of an important milestone in the fight against the disease.
The excitement has spread to Wall Street. Shares of Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which are developing such drugs, rose more than 3 percent on Monday after data from their studies was presented over the weekend at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
The drugs, still generally in early testing, work in an entirely new way, by unleashing the immune system to attack cancer cells much as it attacks bacteria. That could be an alternative to often-debilitating chemotherapy.
Finding ways to use the body’s own defenses has been a goal since the late 1800s, when a New York surgeon named William B. Coley noticed that cancer disappeared in a patient who had a severe bacterial infection.
He then began injecting bacteria into cancer patients to rev up their immune systems. His claims of success were disputed and most attempts since then to harness the immune system have not worked.
The new drugs work by disabling a brake on the immune system called the programmed death 1 receptor, or PD-1. And although the data presented at the meeting was from the earliest stage of testing only, the drugs were the center of attention here, with some doctors predicting that cancer treatment was about to shift.
“If you look five years out, most of this meeting will be about immunotherapy,” said Dr. Mario Sznol, a professor of medical oncology at Yale.
Analysts, who predict billions of dollars in sales, are trying to determine which of the three front-runners — Merck, Bristol-Myers and Roche — have the best drug and how soon the drugs could reach the market. Some think it could be as early as a year and a half from now.
“I think all of you recognize this is a very special moment in oncology,” Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, head of research and development at Merck, told analysts Sunday at a standing-room-only meeting.
Harnessing the immune system is appealing for several reasons. It might be applicable to many different types of cancer. It might produce longer lasting remissions than can be achieved by chemotherapy or the newer targeted drugs. And it seems somehow more natural and holistic.
“It seems the right thing to do to stimulate our body’s defense rather than take some kind of poison,” said Therese Bocklage, a cancer patient and pathologist from Albuquerque.
The excitement has spread to Wall Street. Shares of Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which are developing such drugs, rose more than 3 percent on Monday after data from their studies was presented over the weekend at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.The drugs, still generally in early testing, work in an entirely new way, by unleashing the immune system to attack cancer cells much as it attacks bacteria. That could be an alternative to often-debilitating chemotherapy.
Finding ways to use the body’s own defenses has been a goal since the late 1800s, when a New York surgeon named William B. Coley noticed that cancer disappeared in a patient who had a severe bacterial infection.
He then began injecting bacteria into cancer patients to rev up their immune systems. His claims of success were disputed and most attempts since then to harness the immune system have not worked.
The new drugs work by disabling a brake on the immune system called the programmed death 1 receptor, or PD-1. And although the data presented at the meeting was from the earliest stage of testing only, the drugs were the center of attention here, with some doctors predicting that cancer treatment was about to shift.
“If you look five years out, most of this meeting will be about immunotherapy,” said Dr. Mario Sznol, a professor of medical oncology at Yale.
Analysts, who predict billions of dollars in sales, are trying to determine which of the three front-runners — Merck, Bristol-Myers and Roche — have the best drug and how soon the drugs could reach the market. Some think it could be as early as a year and a half from now.
“I think all of you recognize this is a very special moment in oncology,” Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, head of research and development at Merck, told analysts Sunday at a standing-room-only meeting.
Harnessing the immune system is appealing for several reasons. It might be applicable to many different types of cancer. It might produce longer lasting remissions than can be achieved by chemotherapy or the newer targeted drugs. And it seems somehow more natural and holistic.
“It seems the right thing to do to stimulate our body’s defense rather than take some kind of poison,” said Therese Bocklage, a cancer patient and pathologist from Albuquerque.
by Andrew Pollack, NY Times | Read more:
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Monday, June 3, 2013
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