Monday, August 3, 2015
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
[ed. See also: This excerpt - Off Diamond Head]
These are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to [the area’s] souls—the things they toddled among, or perhaps learned by heart standing between their father’s knees while he drove leisurely.This capacity for geographical familiarity—knowing exactly where the neighbor’s fence warps slightly—is a visceral kind of knowledge, gained organically, and it atrophies as we age. Learning a place by heart is a luxury rarely afforded to adults, and unless absolutely forced to, one seldom even notices that the ability has been lost.
In his new book, the New Yorker staff writer and veteran war reporter William Finnegan demonstrates the advantages of keeping meticulous mental maps. For him, memorizing a place is a matter of nostalgia, of metaphysical well-being, but also of life and death. Finnegan’s memoir is not about his professional life reporting on blood-soaked Sudan or Bosnia or Nicaragua; it’s about the “disabling enchantment” that is his lifelong hobby.“The close, painstaking study of a tiny patch of coast, every eddy and angle, even down to individual rocks, and in every combination of tide and wind and swell…is the basic occupation of surfers at their local break,” he writes in Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. Surfers, like children, naturally develop sensory affinity for their surroundings: they can detect minor changes in the smell of the sea, track daily the rise and fall of sandbars, are grateful for particularly sturdy roots onto which they can grab when scurrying down bluffs. The environment becomes an almost anatomical extension of them, mostly because it has to.
Unlike football or baseball or even boxing, surfing is a literarily impoverished sport. The reasons for this are practical. It’s not a spectator sport: it is hard to see surfers from the shore. That the best waves are seldom anywhere near civilization makes it an activity especially resistant to journalism, and first-rate writing by surfers is also rare: the impulse to surf—a “special brand of monomania,” Finnegan calls it—is at direct odds with the indoor obligations of writing.
In many ways this is true for any athletic activity—that its very best practitioners will very seldom be the same people who document it—but it’s particularly true of surfing, which demands more traveling, logistical planning, and waiting around than any other athletic endeavor. Even when surfers are not surfing, they’re thinking about it: listening to buoy reports, peering off cliffs with binoculars, preventing themselves from buying new boards.
Though middle school students have worn surfwear-branded clothing for decades now and surfing has become increasingly popular among the billionaires of Santa Clara County, it remains an elusive pastime in the minds of most everyone who has never done it. The reasons for this too are practical. Appropriate beaches are rare; high schools don’t have teams; and while not as prohibitively expensive as skiing, surfing requires roughly the same amount of cumbersome gear and is, if possible, even more physically uncomfortable. There are the damp, mildewed wetsuits; the feet cut by coral; the sunburns and the salt-stung eyes. Pair all this with the specter of Jeff Spicoli (the surfer and pot smoker played by Sean Penn in the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and the easy-to-imitate accent, and you have a hobby that is easy to mock, if not ignore. It’s certainly not a pastime anyone associates with ambition or mental agility.
Which is precisely what makes the propulsive precision of Finnegan’s writing so surprising and revelatory. For over half a century at this point, readers have taken it as a given (and writers as a professional prerogative) that lowbrow culture is deserving of bookish analysis. But unlike so many writhing attempts to extort meaning from topics that seem intellectually bankrupt, Finnegan’s treatment of surfing never feels like performance. Through the sheer intensity of his descriptive powers and the undeniable ways in which surfing has shaped his life, Barbarian Days is an utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing.
“Getting a spot wired—truly understanding it—can take years,” Finnegan writes, continuing, later, to say that “all surfers are oceanographers.” Over the course of a life spent in and out of the water, he has amassed a truly staggering amount of applied knowledge, of marine biology and carpentry and cartography. Surfing requires kinetic intuition, physical fitness, and courage in the face of an indifferent force, but it also demands the sort of mental work we don’t typically associate with extreme sports. Any good writing about an underexamined way of life must be, at least at times, expository, and Finnegan is lucid when it comes to the necessary task of explaining to the uninitiated some of the most basic tenets of surfing: why waves break where they do; how it’s possible to stand on a floating piece of fiberglass, go into a moving tube of water, and emerge looking just as you did upon entry. But despite all this, surfing, as Finnegan renders it, is more than just a fun physical activity: it’s a way of being in the world, with its own private politics and etiquette and benchmarks of success.
by Alice Gregory, NYRB | Read more:
Image: Josh Humbert/National Geographic Creative
Saturday, August 1, 2015
The Raise that Roared
There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade.
Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.
Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.
The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.
What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.
More troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase — despite repeated assurances to the contrary — also left. While dozens of new clients, inspired by Mr. Price’s announcement, were signing up, those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To handle the flood, he has already had to hire a dozen additional employees — now at a significantly higher cost — and is struggling to figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long the bonanza will last.
Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.
Then potentially the worst blow of all: Less than two weeks after the announcement, Mr. Price’s older brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas Price, citing longstanding differences, filed a lawsuit that potentially threatened the company’s very existence. With legal bills quickly mounting and most of his own paycheck and last year’s $2.2 million in profits plowed into the salary increases, Dan Price said, “We don’t have a margin of error to pay those legal fees.”
As Mr. Price spoke in the Gravity conference room, he could see a handful of employees setting up beach chairs in the parking lot for an impromptu meeting. The office is in Ballard, a fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Seattle that reflects the wealth gap that Mr. Price says he wants to address. Downstairs is a yoga studio, and across the street is a coffee bar where customers can sip velvet soy lattes on Adirondack-style chairs. But around the corner, beneath the elevated roadway, a homeless woman silently appeals to drivers stopped at the red light with a cardboard sign: “Plz Help.”
In his own way, Mr. Price is trying to respond to that request.
“Income inequality has been racing in the wrong direction,” he said. “I want to fight for the idea that if someone is intelligent, hard-working and does a good job, then they are entitled to live a middle-class lifestyle.”
The reaction to his salary pledge has led him to think that if his business continues to prosper, his actions could have far-reaching consequences. “The cause has expanded,” he said. “Whether I like it or not, the stakes are higher.”
Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.
Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.
What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.
More troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase — despite repeated assurances to the contrary — also left. While dozens of new clients, inspired by Mr. Price’s announcement, were signing up, those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To handle the flood, he has already had to hire a dozen additional employees — now at a significantly higher cost — and is struggling to figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long the bonanza will last.
Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.
Then potentially the worst blow of all: Less than two weeks after the announcement, Mr. Price’s older brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas Price, citing longstanding differences, filed a lawsuit that potentially threatened the company’s very existence. With legal bills quickly mounting and most of his own paycheck and last year’s $2.2 million in profits plowed into the salary increases, Dan Price said, “We don’t have a margin of error to pay those legal fees.”
As Mr. Price spoke in the Gravity conference room, he could see a handful of employees setting up beach chairs in the parking lot for an impromptu meeting. The office is in Ballard, a fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Seattle that reflects the wealth gap that Mr. Price says he wants to address. Downstairs is a yoga studio, and across the street is a coffee bar where customers can sip velvet soy lattes on Adirondack-style chairs. But around the corner, beneath the elevated roadway, a homeless woman silently appeals to drivers stopped at the red light with a cardboard sign: “Plz Help.”
In his own way, Mr. Price is trying to respond to that request.
“Income inequality has been racing in the wrong direction,” he said. “I want to fight for the idea that if someone is intelligent, hard-working and does a good job, then they are entitled to live a middle-class lifestyle.”
The reaction to his salary pledge has led him to think that if his business continues to prosper, his actions could have far-reaching consequences. “The cause has expanded,” he said. “Whether I like it or not, the stakes are higher.”
by Patricia Cohen, NY Times | Read more:
Image: NY Times
Friday, July 31, 2015
Dynasty Trusts: The Permanently Wealthy
It’s a common-sense notion that society’s wealth shouldn’t be governed by ghosts. “Our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of the dead,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. (Also: “One generation of men cannot foreclose or burthen its use to another.”) But in our new age of inequality—the top 10 percent now own nearly 80 percent of all wealth—old concerns about wealth and inheritance are coming back from the dead.
Americans have, historically, had a simple approach to dealing with wealth after its holder dies: You can do whatever you want with your property, but not for very long. Rich people can disinherit children. They can put extreme conditions on how their successors can inherit, like requiring marriage. They can build monuments to themselves or give everything to their pets. But they can only do it so long. Eventually, time catches up with them and their estates dissolve.
Or at least that’s how it used to be. Remember that the dead can’t actually do any of this themselves because they are, in fact, dead. Instead, a trust is empowered to carry out the last wishes of the deceased. A trust is simply a legal entity that contains property; people tell a trust what they want to do, and the trust acts like a ghost, enforcing their wishes beyond the grave. But there’s a safeguard built in to prevent abuses: Trusts have been governed by something called the rule against perpetuities, which places a roughly 100-year limit on how long they can exist. This prevents people with no connection to the living world from putting restrictions on our country’s wealth.
In recent years, the safeguard of time has been eroded. As the tax expert Ray D. Madoff documents in her 2010 book Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead, we are experiencing a rapid rise of dynasty trusts, which massively expand the power of the dead over the wealth of the living.
To take advantage of a change made to the tax code in the 1980s, states started to radically diminish or outright remove the rule against perpetuities in the 1990s. This resulted in a race to the bottom, with states competing to see which could most effectively restructure their laws to benefit the rich. By 2003, states weakening these rules received an estimated $100 billion in additional trust business. Now, 28 states allow trusts to live indefinitely, or nearly so, creating what are called perpetual dynasty trusts.
Since they’re designed to live forever, dynasty trusts can engage in more controlling long-term activities than normal trusts, which are designed to have an end. Dynasty trusts can also avoid taxes for the term of the trust. A generous multimillion-dollar tax exemption for trusts that skip a generation can be leveraged aggressively. And since the eventual death of the trust isn’t built in, a dynasty trust can buy houses and assets that are retained for descendants, tax-free, by the trust indefinitely. The wealthy can tie up their money, outside of any public obligation or scrutiny, forever.
by Mike Konczal, The Nation | Read more:
Image: Tracy Loeffelholz Dunn
Chambers Bay
[ed. Site of this year's US Open. Way more stunning in person than on tv -- including greens fees starting at $215/round. And no, I didn't pay that, but I did buy a hat.]
images: markk
Seattle's $87.6 Million Dollar Man
[ed. I love Russell Wilson, but... wow. I hope this doesn't compromise contract negotiations for any of the other great players on the team.]
But the Seahawks have reached an agreement on a contract extension with quarterback Russell Wilson this morning, shortly before the team is to begin training camp at the VMAC in Renton, preparing for the 2015 season — and when Wilson’s side had set a deadline to get the deal done or play the season without an extension. Wilson confirmed the news via Twitter.
The contract is said to be a four-year extension worth $87.6 million, according to Peter King of Sports Illustrated, who first had the news.
It is said to include a $31 million signing bonus with $60 million guaranteed. The guaranteed money had been regarded as one of the prime sticking points in the negotiations. That is more than the $54 million guaranteed of Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, whose contract is for $22 million a year, a little more than the $21.9 million of Wilson.
While the average per year is about what it had been said Wilson had been offered all along, the guarantee is higher than a source said the team had initially been offering, and it was that increase that appears to have allowed the deal to get done.
Wilson was entering the final season of his initial four-year rookie contract which would have paid him $1.52 million in 2015.
by Bob Condotta, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Wikipedia
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Power in Numbers
The best historical analogy for the ‘‘hackathon’’ might be the 18th-century custom of the barn-raising. Despite the technological abyss separating the two rituals, they are structurally akin: Each is a social observance in which a lot of people focus their collective will on an undertaking too great for any individual to carry out alone. Though the informal practice of hackathons arose slightly earlier, the first use of the portmanteau name dates to 1999, when Sun Microsystems and the freeware operating system OpenBSD each staged events under that banner to write very specialized pieces of software very quickly.
Over time, the sense of the term has expanded; one count estimates that in 2015 there will be more than 1,500 gatherings branded as hackathons, with this summer alone offering events designed to plan for Australia’s aging population, conserve water in India and streamline the resale of tickets at Wimbledon. There are hackathons for television technologies, life sciences and political causes — the term these days is used anywhere people congregate with the expectation of getting something vaguely machine-oriented done in one big room.
The world’s largest recurring convention of people and their machines is DreamHack, a 72-hour rally that takes place twice a year in the convention center in Jonkoping, Sweden, a lake city about 200 miles southwest of Stockholm. The most recent jamboree hosted more than 23,000 people from at least 55 nations and every inhabited continent; on their 9,500 computers (as well as 14,000 other network-connected devices), the attendees made up what organizers believe to be the largest impromptu LAN, or local area network, assembled anywhere.
DreamHack began in 1994, in the basement of a nearby elementary school, as a small, local subvariant of what was then called a ‘‘copyparty’’ — pre-broadband occasions to share software or demonstrate flashy off-label uses of early home computers. As the event has grown, its enormous ad hoc network has been given over largely to gaming; for far-flung clans of four or five teammates, this can be the only chance they get all year to palaver in person. But participants also use the LAN to collaborate on all manner of projects, from songs to films to digital artworks, all of which are presented to the crowd.
by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Franck Bohbot
Windows 10 is the Best Version Yet—Once the Bugs Get Fixed
I'm more conflicted about Windows 10 than I have been about any previous version of Windows. In some ways, the operating system is extremely ambitious; in others, it represents a great loss of ambition. The new release tries to walk an unsteady path between being Microsoft's most progressive, forward-looking release and simultaneously appealing to Windows' most conservative users.
And it mostly succeeds, making this the best version of Windows yet—once everything's working. In its current form, the operating system doesn't feel quite finished, and I'd wait a few weeks before making the leap.
Windows 7 was a straightforward proposition, a testament to the power of a new name. Windows Vista may have had a poor reputation, but it was a solid operating system. Give hardware and software vendors three years to develop drivers, come to grips with security changes, fix a few bugs, and freeze the hardware requirements, and the result was Windows 7—an operating system that worked with almost any hardware, almost any software. It was comfortable and familiar. Add some small but desirable enhancements to window management and the task bar, and the result was a hugely popular operating system, the high point of the entire Windows family's development.
Windows 8 was similarly easy to understand. With it, Microsoft wanted to make Windows work well on tablets while also wanting an operating system that continued to support the enormous legacy of Win32 applications.
Windows 8 did both of these things—just not at the same time. It contained the basics of a very competent tablet platform, with particularly strong handling of multitasking. It also contained, in most regards, a solid desktop operating system that was very similar to Windows 7. Some things it even made a little better; in Windows 8, for instance, the taskbar finally became multi-monitor aware, ending the need for various third-party hacks.
But these worlds collided in an ugly fashion. The tablet part was never self-contained, with touch users forced to visit finger-unfriendly desktop apps to access a full range of system settings, manage files, and so on. And many desktop users resented being forced to use a full-screen application launcher that, while perfectly functional, was clearly designed for touch users first.
This operating system showcased some of Microsoft's worst habits. Windows has always been a frustratingly inconsistent platform, sporting a mix not just of visual styles but also of user interface elements. It contains, for example, multiple different styles of "menu." While these all do roughly the same thing, they differ both in how they look and in some of the finer points of their behavior. Windows 8 introduced yet another new and very different appearance and set of interface elements to Windows, with no effort to unify and integrate. (...)
Since Windows 8's launch, touch PCs have proliferated, and while there was some initially awkward experimentation, manufacturers today have a decent idea of how to do touch systems. While there's still some skepticism about the value of touch on a desktop PC, on laptops it's an attractive feature, especially when paired with perhaps the best form factor innovation that has come from the Windows 8 experimentation: the 360-degree hinge. As an occasional business traveler sitting in misery in cattle class, the ability to use a laptop in "stand" mode or "tent" mode for watching movies is genuinely useful. Touch makes it practical.
Similarly, devices such as Microsoft's own Surface Pro 3 have found a small but growing audience. Its combination of touch, pen, and keyboard has won plaudits, and, while it's still early days, it looks as if Microsoft is starting to build a small but credible PC hardware business.
Which all means that Microsoft's broad desire with Windows 8 was perhaps not entirely off-base. Touch systems are not some discrete category entirely disjointed from more traditional machines. Rather, there's a continuum of devices, ranging from the dedicated mouse-and-keyboard machine through to the tablet that may occasionally be paired with a Bluetooth keyboard and all the way on to the smartphone, which will almost never use anything but touch. Microsoft continues to want to make Windows an operating system that works across this spectrum—and the dream lives on in Windows 10.
And it mostly succeeds, making this the best version of Windows yet—once everything's working. In its current form, the operating system doesn't feel quite finished, and I'd wait a few weeks before making the leap.
Windows 7 was a straightforward proposition, a testament to the power of a new name. Windows Vista may have had a poor reputation, but it was a solid operating system. Give hardware and software vendors three years to develop drivers, come to grips with security changes, fix a few bugs, and freeze the hardware requirements, and the result was Windows 7—an operating system that worked with almost any hardware, almost any software. It was comfortable and familiar. Add some small but desirable enhancements to window management and the task bar, and the result was a hugely popular operating system, the high point of the entire Windows family's development.Windows 8 was similarly easy to understand. With it, Microsoft wanted to make Windows work well on tablets while also wanting an operating system that continued to support the enormous legacy of Win32 applications.
Windows 8 did both of these things—just not at the same time. It contained the basics of a very competent tablet platform, with particularly strong handling of multitasking. It also contained, in most regards, a solid desktop operating system that was very similar to Windows 7. Some things it even made a little better; in Windows 8, for instance, the taskbar finally became multi-monitor aware, ending the need for various third-party hacks.
But these worlds collided in an ugly fashion. The tablet part was never self-contained, with touch users forced to visit finger-unfriendly desktop apps to access a full range of system settings, manage files, and so on. And many desktop users resented being forced to use a full-screen application launcher that, while perfectly functional, was clearly designed for touch users first.
This operating system showcased some of Microsoft's worst habits. Windows has always been a frustratingly inconsistent platform, sporting a mix not just of visual styles but also of user interface elements. It contains, for example, multiple different styles of "menu." While these all do roughly the same thing, they differ both in how they look and in some of the finer points of their behavior. Windows 8 introduced yet another new and very different appearance and set of interface elements to Windows, with no effort to unify and integrate. (...)
Since Windows 8's launch, touch PCs have proliferated, and while there was some initially awkward experimentation, manufacturers today have a decent idea of how to do touch systems. While there's still some skepticism about the value of touch on a desktop PC, on laptops it's an attractive feature, especially when paired with perhaps the best form factor innovation that has come from the Windows 8 experimentation: the 360-degree hinge. As an occasional business traveler sitting in misery in cattle class, the ability to use a laptop in "stand" mode or "tent" mode for watching movies is genuinely useful. Touch makes it practical.
Similarly, devices such as Microsoft's own Surface Pro 3 have found a small but growing audience. Its combination of touch, pen, and keyboard has won plaudits, and, while it's still early days, it looks as if Microsoft is starting to build a small but credible PC hardware business.
Which all means that Microsoft's broad desire with Windows 8 was perhaps not entirely off-base. Touch systems are not some discrete category entirely disjointed from more traditional machines. Rather, there's a continuum of devices, ranging from the dedicated mouse-and-keyboard machine through to the tablet that may occasionally be paired with a Bluetooth keyboard and all the way on to the smartphone, which will almost never use anything but touch. Microsoft continues to want to make Windows an operating system that works across this spectrum—and the dream lives on in Windows 10.
by Peter Bright, Ars Technica | Read more:
Image: Andrew Cunningham
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Taking It Slow, Until She Took Charge
They didn’t plan for things to turn out this way: both of them well past 50, both living with a parent in the houses they grew up in, never married, no children. Most people don’t.
They thought, growing up where Brooklyn is more snug suburb than freewheeling city, that there would be romance, weddings, independence. She thought she would marry a man she met while working for the Coast Guard, but he was transferred to Los Angeles. He thought he might settle down with a woman who worked at the pharmacy around a decade ago, but a jealous ex-husband got in the way.
Even now, after decades of waiting, Ann Iervolino, 57, and Peter Cipolla, 58, are learning patience.
But love is no less sweet for coming to them late.
Summer 2007: On weekends or after work at American Express, where Ms. Iervolino was an auditor, she would ride her bike from her house in Homecrest, Brooklyn, over to Marine Park, where a swirl of young men blurred the basketball courts and those for whom life had slowed down tarried at the bocce courts. She would stop to chat with a few friends, the wives of the bocce players. Mr. Cipolla would be sitting there on a bench in shorts and a white T-shirt, close-cropped hair paling, a man of no particular outward distinction except that he was the youngest around.
She thought he was a sanitation worker. Then she thought, “Gee, he must be married, and I’m not looking to fool around.”
Not that she was looking for somebody. And anyway, he never talked to her, just sat there watching the balls hop and skid. After long days of work at a Long Island lab, it was his time for letting his mind empty out.
But when she failed to appear a few days running, “I’d say, Where’s the girl on the bike? I don’t know — she had nice legs. I like athleticism,” he explained, in his slow, earnest way. She was good-looking. Dark and petite. Nice body. A good head on her shoulders.
“You know, Ann,” said Terry, one of the park regulars, “you and Peter have a lot in common. You guys should talk.”
The list of parallels was short, pared down to the essentials. They were both single. Both never married. Both taking care of an aging parent. Both Italian.
“Just those things alone,” Terry predicted, “you could probably be in tune with each other.”
The advice fell on skeptical ears. “He’s so frickin’ shy that he doesn’t talk to me,” Ms. Iervolino retorted.
Eight years later, Mr. Cipolla was explaining himself over egg creams. “I’m methodical,” he said recently at the Floridian Diner in Marine Park. “I’m analytical.” She had finished her egg cream in short, deft slurps; his straw was still half-submerged.
He hit on a secret scheme — and, it must be acknowledged, an awfully slow one — for helping things along. She wanted to watch Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but she did not have HBO. She surveyed the Marine Park Bocce Club: Could anyone record it for her?
He volunteered to tape every episode on VHS every Sunday night. He would call her and say, “Ann, is it on HBO or HBO West?” He didn’t need to know. He just wanted to call her. (...)
In September, Ms. Iervolino went by herself to the bocce club’s annual dinner, where she danced with Vito, with Vinny, with Ben.
The others missed nothing. Word on the bocce court was that “Ann was dancing up a storm with these older gentlemen, that Vito really liked her,” Mr. Cipolla recalled. “I didn’t get jealous, but I got a little hot under the collar. I move like a snail.”
He had the advantage in age, he consoled himself. In money. In education. He had a doctorate in forensic anthropology from St. John’s University. “I said, I could beat him out.”
Ms. Iervolino protests to this day that Vito was never in the picture. “Vito’s a nicer, older gentleman,” she said calmly. “He was very cordial. But I don’t want somebody old. I’m not Anna Nicole Smith.”
Even so, things advanced sluggishly. By October, Larry David was off the air, and still no official declarations had been made.
“Now what do I do?” Mr. Cipolla said. “I have to get flowers. I can’t just get any flowers. I go to Marine Florists. They ask, ‘Who are they for?’ I say, ‘A potential girlfriend.’ ”
They asked what he wanted to write on the card.
“I’ve got to remember the saying,” she said at this point in the retelling, though one suspects it would be difficult to forget what he wrote: “I thought I had everything,” the card said, “and then I met you.”
They thought, growing up where Brooklyn is more snug suburb than freewheeling city, that there would be romance, weddings, independence. She thought she would marry a man she met while working for the Coast Guard, but he was transferred to Los Angeles. He thought he might settle down with a woman who worked at the pharmacy around a decade ago, but a jealous ex-husband got in the way.
Even now, after decades of waiting, Ann Iervolino, 57, and Peter Cipolla, 58, are learning patience.But love is no less sweet for coming to them late.
Summer 2007: On weekends or after work at American Express, where Ms. Iervolino was an auditor, she would ride her bike from her house in Homecrest, Brooklyn, over to Marine Park, where a swirl of young men blurred the basketball courts and those for whom life had slowed down tarried at the bocce courts. She would stop to chat with a few friends, the wives of the bocce players. Mr. Cipolla would be sitting there on a bench in shorts and a white T-shirt, close-cropped hair paling, a man of no particular outward distinction except that he was the youngest around.
She thought he was a sanitation worker. Then she thought, “Gee, he must be married, and I’m not looking to fool around.”
Not that she was looking for somebody. And anyway, he never talked to her, just sat there watching the balls hop and skid. After long days of work at a Long Island lab, it was his time for letting his mind empty out.
But when she failed to appear a few days running, “I’d say, Where’s the girl on the bike? I don’t know — she had nice legs. I like athleticism,” he explained, in his slow, earnest way. She was good-looking. Dark and petite. Nice body. A good head on her shoulders.
“You know, Ann,” said Terry, one of the park regulars, “you and Peter have a lot in common. You guys should talk.”
The list of parallels was short, pared down to the essentials. They were both single. Both never married. Both taking care of an aging parent. Both Italian.
“Just those things alone,” Terry predicted, “you could probably be in tune with each other.”
The advice fell on skeptical ears. “He’s so frickin’ shy that he doesn’t talk to me,” Ms. Iervolino retorted.
Eight years later, Mr. Cipolla was explaining himself over egg creams. “I’m methodical,” he said recently at the Floridian Diner in Marine Park. “I’m analytical.” She had finished her egg cream in short, deft slurps; his straw was still half-submerged.
He hit on a secret scheme — and, it must be acknowledged, an awfully slow one — for helping things along. She wanted to watch Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but she did not have HBO. She surveyed the Marine Park Bocce Club: Could anyone record it for her?
He volunteered to tape every episode on VHS every Sunday night. He would call her and say, “Ann, is it on HBO or HBO West?” He didn’t need to know. He just wanted to call her. (...)
In September, Ms. Iervolino went by herself to the bocce club’s annual dinner, where she danced with Vito, with Vinny, with Ben.
The others missed nothing. Word on the bocce court was that “Ann was dancing up a storm with these older gentlemen, that Vito really liked her,” Mr. Cipolla recalled. “I didn’t get jealous, but I got a little hot under the collar. I move like a snail.”
He had the advantage in age, he consoled himself. In money. In education. He had a doctorate in forensic anthropology from St. John’s University. “I said, I could beat him out.”
Ms. Iervolino protests to this day that Vito was never in the picture. “Vito’s a nicer, older gentleman,” she said calmly. “He was very cordial. But I don’t want somebody old. I’m not Anna Nicole Smith.”
Even so, things advanced sluggishly. By October, Larry David was off the air, and still no official declarations had been made.
“Now what do I do?” Mr. Cipolla said. “I have to get flowers. I can’t just get any flowers. I go to Marine Florists. They ask, ‘Who are they for?’ I say, ‘A potential girlfriend.’ ”
They asked what he wanted to write on the card.
“I’ve got to remember the saying,” she said at this point in the retelling, though one suspects it would be difficult to forget what he wrote: “I thought I had everything,” the card said, “and then I met you.”
by Vivian Yee, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Damon Winter
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Somehow Teen Girls Get the Coolest Wearable Out There
Jewelbots are bracelets with programmable plastic flowers made for middle-school girls. They’re also the most interesting wearable I’ve seen this year.
Their creators describe them as “friendships bracelets that teach girls to code.” Compared to a gleaming Apple Watch or even an entry-level Fitbit, the Jewelbot hardware is primitive: a semi-translucent plastic flower charm that slides onto a hair tie–like elastic bracelet. The functionality is basic, too. The charms talk to each other over Bluetooth, and using a Jewelbots smartphone app, youngsters can program their charms to vibrate or light up when their friends are nearby. But despite their apparent simplicity, Jewelbots exhibit some truly fresh thinking about wearable technology. And with a little imagination, they hint at devices far more interesting than today’s computer watches.
Jewelbots was co-founded by Sara Chipps, Brooke Moreland, and Maria Paula Saba. Chipps is a developer and co-founder of Girl Develop It, a nonprofit that teaches women to code. Moreland is an entrepreneur with experience in high-tech fashion products, and Saba is a graduate of NYU’s ITP program, now studying Bluetooth and Arduino as a post-doc fellow. But before Jewelbots was a product, it was a shared ambition. More than any particular feature or function, the group wanted to build something that would get teenage girls interested in programming.
The idea took shape over several years. The group started by looking at products like MySpace and Minecraft that had successfully enticed kids to dabble in code. “We kind of wanted to reverse engineer that,” Chipps says. These examples were reassuring. They proved that if kids are genuinely interested in an outcome or effect—building a unique Minecraft structure, say, or tricking out their Myspace profiles—they won’t shy away from code as a means to achieve it.
That just left the question of the desired effect. Initially, the creators imagined Jewelbots as digital ornament that could be programmed to match girls’ outfits. But the verdict from talking to prospective preteen users was negative. “They were like,’That sounds really stupid, and I would never use that,'” Chipps says. Instead, the girls always returned to two themes: friendship and communication.
The enmities and allegiances that form and dissolve in a single day rival anything that might be taught in European history class. Teens and preteens crave ways to make these connections visible.
This isn’t surprising. As the Jewelbots founders were reminded by company adviser Amy Jo Kim, a longtime researcher of online communities, middle school is an age where everyone is tribal. The enmities and allegiances that form and dissolve in a single day rival anything that might be taught in European history class. What’s more, teens and preteens crave ways to make these connections visible. That settled things. Where other wearables had sought to reinvent the watch, Jewelbots followed a different template: the friendship bracelet.
Using the Jewelbots smartphone app, a girl can assign a friend one of eight different colors. When they’re nearby, both of their charms light up that color. They can assign other friends to other colors; if they’re hanging out in a group, all their Jewelbots bangles turn into pulsing rainbow flair. The charm also doubles as a button which can be used to send haptic messages to friends in a particular color group (the message presumably drafted in accordance with a phenomenally complex code developed by the cohort at an earlier time.) All these features are set up through a smartphone app, but the Jewelbots stay connected through a Bluetooth mesh network, independent of Wi-Fi or cell towers. “The way we designed it is that girls never need their phones,” Chipps says.
There’s much more Jewelbots can do if girls care to figure it out. The smartphone app is meant to be a simple point of entry, but by plugging their charm into their computer, girls can use Arduino software to hook up their Jewelbots to just about anything. Maybe someone wants hers to glow green every time she gets a new follower on Instagram, or to vibrate when her dog leaves the yard. Both possible, and totally doable for a novice coder, Chipps says. With this more advanced use, the Jewelbot becomes a personal node linked up to the greater world of open-source hardware and software. “That’s where we’re really hoping to drive the girls,” Chipps says.
Jewelbots are a thoughtfully constructed Trojan Horse for getting young girls to think about programming. The company’s Kickstarter campaign has raised $90,000. But the bracelets might also have worthwhile lessons for other wearable makers.
Their creators describe them as “friendships bracelets that teach girls to code.” Compared to a gleaming Apple Watch or even an entry-level Fitbit, the Jewelbot hardware is primitive: a semi-translucent plastic flower charm that slides onto a hair tie–like elastic bracelet. The functionality is basic, too. The charms talk to each other over Bluetooth, and using a Jewelbots smartphone app, youngsters can program their charms to vibrate or light up when their friends are nearby. But despite their apparent simplicity, Jewelbots exhibit some truly fresh thinking about wearable technology. And with a little imagination, they hint at devices far more interesting than today’s computer watches.
Jewelbots was co-founded by Sara Chipps, Brooke Moreland, and Maria Paula Saba. Chipps is a developer and co-founder of Girl Develop It, a nonprofit that teaches women to code. Moreland is an entrepreneur with experience in high-tech fashion products, and Saba is a graduate of NYU’s ITP program, now studying Bluetooth and Arduino as a post-doc fellow. But before Jewelbots was a product, it was a shared ambition. More than any particular feature or function, the group wanted to build something that would get teenage girls interested in programming.The idea took shape over several years. The group started by looking at products like MySpace and Minecraft that had successfully enticed kids to dabble in code. “We kind of wanted to reverse engineer that,” Chipps says. These examples were reassuring. They proved that if kids are genuinely interested in an outcome or effect—building a unique Minecraft structure, say, or tricking out their Myspace profiles—they won’t shy away from code as a means to achieve it.
That just left the question of the desired effect. Initially, the creators imagined Jewelbots as digital ornament that could be programmed to match girls’ outfits. But the verdict from talking to prospective preteen users was negative. “They were like,’That sounds really stupid, and I would never use that,'” Chipps says. Instead, the girls always returned to two themes: friendship and communication.
The enmities and allegiances that form and dissolve in a single day rival anything that might be taught in European history class. Teens and preteens crave ways to make these connections visible.
This isn’t surprising. As the Jewelbots founders were reminded by company adviser Amy Jo Kim, a longtime researcher of online communities, middle school is an age where everyone is tribal. The enmities and allegiances that form and dissolve in a single day rival anything that might be taught in European history class. What’s more, teens and preteens crave ways to make these connections visible. That settled things. Where other wearables had sought to reinvent the watch, Jewelbots followed a different template: the friendship bracelet.
Using the Jewelbots smartphone app, a girl can assign a friend one of eight different colors. When they’re nearby, both of their charms light up that color. They can assign other friends to other colors; if they’re hanging out in a group, all their Jewelbots bangles turn into pulsing rainbow flair. The charm also doubles as a button which can be used to send haptic messages to friends in a particular color group (the message presumably drafted in accordance with a phenomenally complex code developed by the cohort at an earlier time.) All these features are set up through a smartphone app, but the Jewelbots stay connected through a Bluetooth mesh network, independent of Wi-Fi or cell towers. “The way we designed it is that girls never need their phones,” Chipps says.
There’s much more Jewelbots can do if girls care to figure it out. The smartphone app is meant to be a simple point of entry, but by plugging their charm into their computer, girls can use Arduino software to hook up their Jewelbots to just about anything. Maybe someone wants hers to glow green every time she gets a new follower on Instagram, or to vibrate when her dog leaves the yard. Both possible, and totally doable for a novice coder, Chipps says. With this more advanced use, the Jewelbot becomes a personal node linked up to the greater world of open-source hardware and software. “That’s where we’re really hoping to drive the girls,” Chipps says.
Jewelbots are a thoughtfully constructed Trojan Horse for getting young girls to think about programming. The company’s Kickstarter campaign has raised $90,000. But the bracelets might also have worthwhile lessons for other wearable makers.
by Kyle Vanhemert, Wired | Read more:
Image: Jewelbots
Patriots QB Tom Brady Has Only Himself to Blame
Up front, long before the air started hissing out of his charmed world, Tom Brady should have taken a knee. He should have confessed his venial football sin and admitted to everyone that his never-ending pursuit of a competitive edge got the better of him.
OK, so maybe he should have waited to confess until sometime after the Super Bowl, just in case Roger Goodell had it in him to bench the big star for the big game. But either way, Brady should have come clean about the improper deflation of his AFC Championship Game footballs and then banked on the American public's unbreakable ability to forgive and (pretty much) forget.
Although he enjoys top-of-the-line legal representation and his lawyers will file a brilliantly written lawsuit, Tom Brady's effort to stop his suspension is doomed.
Many teams, players, coaches and executives have run afoul of the NFL's rules. Check out the most recent examples here.
Alex Rodriguez disgraced himself and his sport in ways Brady never has and never will, and now there are millions of New Yorkers itching to throw the revived and allegedly reformed slugger a parade. Did one of the two greatest quarterbacks of all time really believe his standing among New England Patriots fans -- and among neutral observers worldwide who simply appreciate self-made masters of their trade -- couldn't survive the plain truth about Deflategate?
Bill Belichick survived Spygate; he's up there with Vince Lombardi among the all-timers. Brady is up there with his idol, Joe Montana, and his decision to destroy a cell phone that likely implicated him in a low-rent scheme with two team flunkies doesn't destroy his legacy as a four-time champ.
But it does make Brady look like a liar. A liar in this case, anyway. In announcing his ruling to uphold Brady's four-game suspension, Goodell said the quarterback had his personal assistant do an end zone dance on his phone on or around the same March day Brady met with the investigators who already had asked to see relevant texts and emails on that phone.
Brady didn't reveal he'd effectively deleted nearly 10,000 texts over a four-month period until days before his 10-hour appeal hearing on June 23. According to the NFL ruling, he said the destruction of old cell phones was merely a part of his normal routine, like warming up with Julian Edelman and Gronk. But on page 12 of Goodell's 20-page decision, the commissioner points out that the phone Brady used before the one in question was intact and available for a forensic expert to review. "No explanation was provided for this anomaly," Goodell wrote.![]()
Tom Brady missed an opportunity to save face -- and he has only himself to blame.
Brady hasn't offered a credible explanation in this case from the start, and for good reason: He doesn't have one. The Ted Wells probe turned up enough circumstantial evidence for a common-sense, agenda-free reader to conclude what Montana and Troy Aikman and their combined seven rings and two Hall of Fame busts concluded in the early hours of this mess: Brady had to have known what those two Patriots staffers, or Watergate burglars, were doing to his footballs.
Goodell cited Brady's quarterback-room meeting and numerous cell-phone conversations with John Jastremski after the allegations surfaced; the quarterback had no such meeting or conversations with the equipment assistant during the regular season. Jim McNally, the officials' locker room attendant and the man believed to have taken a 100-second bathroom break with New England's AFC Championship Game balls, also makes a return appearance in the commissioner's decision as the self-described "Deflator."
Of course, we already knew about Jastremski and McNally. We also knew that Wells had offered to allow Brady's agent to screen his phone before turning over texts and emails to investigators, and that Goodell's lieutenant, Troy Vincent, had noted in the May announcement of the quarterback's suspension his refusal to cooperate despite "extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information."
We didn't know Brady had crushed the phone in question like, you know, he'd crushed the Indianapolis Colts.
by Ian O'Connor, ESPN | Read more:
Image: via:
OK, so maybe he should have waited to confess until sometime after the Super Bowl, just in case Roger Goodell had it in him to bench the big star for the big game. But either way, Brady should have come clean about the improper deflation of his AFC Championship Game footballs and then banked on the American public's unbreakable ability to forgive and (pretty much) forget.
Although he enjoys top-of-the-line legal representation and his lawyers will file a brilliantly written lawsuit, Tom Brady's effort to stop his suspension is doomed.Many teams, players, coaches and executives have run afoul of the NFL's rules. Check out the most recent examples here.
Alex Rodriguez disgraced himself and his sport in ways Brady never has and never will, and now there are millions of New Yorkers itching to throw the revived and allegedly reformed slugger a parade. Did one of the two greatest quarterbacks of all time really believe his standing among New England Patriots fans -- and among neutral observers worldwide who simply appreciate self-made masters of their trade -- couldn't survive the plain truth about Deflategate?
Bill Belichick survived Spygate; he's up there with Vince Lombardi among the all-timers. Brady is up there with his idol, Joe Montana, and his decision to destroy a cell phone that likely implicated him in a low-rent scheme with two team flunkies doesn't destroy his legacy as a four-time champ.
But it does make Brady look like a liar. A liar in this case, anyway. In announcing his ruling to uphold Brady's four-game suspension, Goodell said the quarterback had his personal assistant do an end zone dance on his phone on or around the same March day Brady met with the investigators who already had asked to see relevant texts and emails on that phone.
Brady didn't reveal he'd effectively deleted nearly 10,000 texts over a four-month period until days before his 10-hour appeal hearing on June 23. According to the NFL ruling, he said the destruction of old cell phones was merely a part of his normal routine, like warming up with Julian Edelman and Gronk. But on page 12 of Goodell's 20-page decision, the commissioner points out that the phone Brady used before the one in question was intact and available for a forensic expert to review. "No explanation was provided for this anomaly," Goodell wrote.
Brady hasn't offered a credible explanation in this case from the start, and for good reason: He doesn't have one. The Ted Wells probe turned up enough circumstantial evidence for a common-sense, agenda-free reader to conclude what Montana and Troy Aikman and their combined seven rings and two Hall of Fame busts concluded in the early hours of this mess: Brady had to have known what those two Patriots staffers, or Watergate burglars, were doing to his footballs.
Goodell cited Brady's quarterback-room meeting and numerous cell-phone conversations with John Jastremski after the allegations surfaced; the quarterback had no such meeting or conversations with the equipment assistant during the regular season. Jim McNally, the officials' locker room attendant and the man believed to have taken a 100-second bathroom break with New England's AFC Championship Game balls, also makes a return appearance in the commissioner's decision as the self-described "Deflator."
Of course, we already knew about Jastremski and McNally. We also knew that Wells had offered to allow Brady's agent to screen his phone before turning over texts and emails to investigators, and that Goodell's lieutenant, Troy Vincent, had noted in the May announcement of the quarterback's suspension his refusal to cooperate despite "extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information."
We didn't know Brady had crushed the phone in question like, you know, he'd crushed the Indianapolis Colts.
Image: via:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)