Monday, November 5, 2018
Sunday, November 4, 2018
TSA to Test New Scanning Technology
The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead to test technology that is designed to screen multiple airport passengers at the same time from a distance of up to 25 feet away.
The technology, described as “passive terahertz” screening, is one of several advances that the TSA and airlines hope will help U.S. airports handle the growing demand for air travel that is already creating bottlenecks and frustration at airports across the country.
The TSA has purchased several terahertz screening devices from Britain-based Thruvision to test in a TSA facility near Arlington, Va. If the devices pass the initial tests, they may be used on a trial basis at U.S. airports, said Kevin Gramer, vice president of Thruvision Americas.
The screening device, which is about the size of an old-fashioned PC computer tower and weighs about 50 pounds, reads the outline of people to reveal firearms and explosives hidden under their clothes.
Unlike the TSA’s existing full-body scanners that bounce millimeter waves off of passengers to spot objects hidden under their clothes, Gramer said, the passive terahertz technology reads the energy emitted by a person, similar to thermal imaging used in night-vision goggles.
“It’s 100% passive. There is no radiation coming out of our device,” he said. “You don’t have to stand directly in front of the device.”
As a result, Thruvision boasts that its technology can screen up to 2,000 people an hour and detect a concealed device at a distance of up to 25 feet. Initially, the system can be used in addition to the existing full-body scanners already deployed at airports, but Gramer said the device can eventually replace parts of the TSA’s security screening system.
[ed. If you can't trust TSA, who can you trust. See also: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA (MIT Technology Review)]
The technology, described as “passive terahertz” screening, is one of several advances that the TSA and airlines hope will help U.S. airports handle the growing demand for air travel that is already creating bottlenecks and frustration at airports across the country.The TSA has purchased several terahertz screening devices from Britain-based Thruvision to test in a TSA facility near Arlington, Va. If the devices pass the initial tests, they may be used on a trial basis at U.S. airports, said Kevin Gramer, vice president of Thruvision Americas.
The screening device, which is about the size of an old-fashioned PC computer tower and weighs about 50 pounds, reads the outline of people to reveal firearms and explosives hidden under their clothes.
Unlike the TSA’s existing full-body scanners that bounce millimeter waves off of passengers to spot objects hidden under their clothes, Gramer said, the passive terahertz technology reads the energy emitted by a person, similar to thermal imaging used in night-vision goggles.
“It’s 100% passive. There is no radiation coming out of our device,” he said. “You don’t have to stand directly in front of the device.”
As a result, Thruvision boasts that its technology can screen up to 2,000 people an hour and detect a concealed device at a distance of up to 25 feet. Initially, the system can be used in addition to the existing full-body scanners already deployed at airports, but Gramer said the device can eventually replace parts of the TSA’s security screening system.
by Hugo Martin, LA Times | Read more:
Image: via[ed. If you can't trust TSA, who can you trust. See also: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA (MIT Technology Review)]
The New Canon
What's the most influencial book of the last 20 years?
Each year, more than 15,000 academic books are published in North America. A scant few will reach beyond their core audience of disciplinary specialists. Fewer still will enter the public consciousness.
We invited scholars from across the academy to tell us what they saw as the most influential book published in the past 20 years. (Some respondents named books slightly outside our time frame, but we included them anyway.) We asked them to select books — academic or not, but written by scholars — from within or outside their own fields. It was up to our respondents to define “influential,” but we asked them to explain why they chose the books they did. Here are their answers.
Paul Bloom | Eric Klinenberg | Peniel Joseph | Johanna Hanink | Jackson Lears| Leon Botstein | Sheena Iyengar | Noliwe M. Rooks | G. Gabrielle Starr | Amy J. Binder | Susan J. Douglas | Mari Matsuda | Steven Shapin | Mark Greif | Ashley Farmer | Nakul Krishna | Richard Delgado | Jonathan Holloway | John L. Jackson | Deborah Tannen | Amitava Kumar
The Case for a Better World
To be taken seriously as the “most influential book” written by an academic, a work has to transform the way many of us make sense of the world, and so has to have influence beyond a narrow circle of scholars. If the average reader of The Chronicle Review has never heard of a book, it shouldn’t be a contender. Ideally, then, the candidates would be like On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic. Moving down a tier, there is Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures and Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. Superb and influential books, but written many decades ago.
Maybe influential books of this sort don’t exist anymore. Or maybe we can identify only those books that really have had a major influence after enough time has elapsed; if you’re interested in 1998-2018, ask again in 50 years.
Each year, more than 15,000 academic books are published in North America. A scant few will reach beyond their core audience of disciplinary specialists. Fewer still will enter the public consciousness.
We invited scholars from across the academy to tell us what they saw as the most influential book published in the past 20 years. (Some respondents named books slightly outside our time frame, but we included them anyway.) We asked them to select books — academic or not, but written by scholars — from within or outside their own fields. It was up to our respondents to define “influential,” but we asked them to explain why they chose the books they did. Here are their answers.Paul Bloom | Eric Klinenberg | Peniel Joseph | Johanna Hanink | Jackson Lears| Leon Botstein | Sheena Iyengar | Noliwe M. Rooks | G. Gabrielle Starr | Amy J. Binder | Susan J. Douglas | Mari Matsuda | Steven Shapin | Mark Greif | Ashley Farmer | Nakul Krishna | Richard Delgado | Jonathan Holloway | John L. Jackson | Deborah Tannen | Amitava Kumar
The Case for a Better World
To be taken seriously as the “most influential book” written by an academic, a work has to transform the way many of us make sense of the world, and so has to have influence beyond a narrow circle of scholars. If the average reader of The Chronicle Review has never heard of a book, it shouldn’t be a contender. Ideally, then, the candidates would be like On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic. Moving down a tier, there is Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures and Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. Superb and influential books, but written many decades ago.
Maybe influential books of this sort don’t exist anymore. Or maybe we can identify only those books that really have had a major influence after enough time has elapsed; if you’re interested in 1998-2018, ask again in 50 years.
by Paul Bloom, Chronicle of Higher Education | Read more:
Image: Lincoln Agnew
[ed. One shocking omission: The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein.]
Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order
by The Onion | Read more:
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Friday, November 2, 2018
How to Buy a Used Phone Without Getting Fleeced
Apple, Samsung and Google have all launched their new phones. Everyone in the world is itching to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but not you. You’re a deal hunter, and while everyone else is paying $1,000 or more for a shiny new device, you’re buying a used version of last year’s almost-as-good model for a fraction of the cost. Here’s how to get a deal without getting scammed.
Make sure the phone isn’t blacklisted
Unfortunately, buying a used phone is tricky, said Ben Edwards, chief executive of used-tech marketplace Swappa. “Phones are unique in that their value relies on being able to connect to a cellular network, and their usability can change over time,” Mr. Edwards said. “If you buy a bike on Craigslist, it’s not like the seller can do something a month later that makes the bike not work. But if you buy a used phone, and it’s later reported as stolen, it’ll be blacklisted.”
When a carrier blacklists a device — which can happen if the device is reported as lost or stolen, or if someone sells it while it’s still on a payment plan — it can’t be activated on any carrier. That means you’ll be stuck with a $400 paperweight.
So instead of buying a phone with cash, use a form of payment that comes with some sort of buyer protection. For example, PayPal — which processes payments on eBay, Swappa, Gazelle and many other online marketplaces — provides 180 days of purchase protection, so you can return the device if the phone gets blacklisted within the first few months.
Even then, it’s a good idea to first verify the phone’s status if you can. Swappa does this (among other quality checks) for every phone listed on their site, but if you’re buying on a site with looser restrictions, likeeBay, ask the seller for the IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) number or MEID (mobile equipment identifier). Here’s how to find the IMEI of an iPhone, and here’s how to do so on Android.
Then, punch the number into your carrier’s website (Here are the pages for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) — you can also enter it into Swappa’s all-in-one checker here. It will let you know if the device has been reported as lost or stolen, and if it’s eligible for activation. It will not tell you if a phone is currently under financing, though Mr. Edwards said Swappa performs this check manually for every phone listed on the site, and if a phone is still under financing, the seller won’t be able to list it.
Some sellers may prefer to keep the IMEI private, and that’s fine — as long as you have a return policy and buyer protection, you can check the IMEI after receiving the phone. You’ll just have to go through the hassle of returning it if something goes wrong.
If you’d rather buy locally and hold the device before handing over your hard-earned cash, Mr. Edwards recommends checking the IMEI in person. “When I was buying phones on Craigslist, I would always insist on meeting in a carrier store for the transaction,” he said. “Then the carrier can check to see if it’s blacklisted.”
Again, none of this is foolproof since a phone can be reported lost, stolen or unpaid-for after you’ve purchased it, but it’s a good thing to check before you do.
Buy the right model for your carrier
These days, many phones are compatible with multiple networks. But there are two caveats: You need to make sure the device isn’t software-locked to another carrier, and you need to make sure its hardware is optimized for your carrier.
When you buy a phone directly from Verizon, AT&T or another carrier, it usually comes “carrier locked.” That means that phone will only be usable on Verizon, AT&T or whatever carrier you bought it from unless you ask them to unlock it.
If you’re buying a used phone, you want to make sure it isn’t locked to a carrier other than your own. If you’re on AT&T, you can’t buy a phone that’s locked to Verizon. You’ll either want an AT&T-branded phone or a phone that’s listed as “unlocked” by the seller.
In addition, “some phones have a few different numeric models that work better on some carriers than others,” Mr. Edwards said. “For full and optimal compatibility, you need to pay attention to the specifics.”
That means you shouldn’t just search for “iPhone 7” and buy the cheapest listing that pops up. The iPhone 7 A1660 may look nearly identical to the A1778, but the former works on all carriers, while the latter lacks support for some of the technologies used on Verizon and Sprint. In other cases, you may run into “international” models, which can lack support for certain features (like Samsung Pay, in the case of the international version of the Galaxy S7).
When you punch the IMEI into your carrier’s website, it will tell you if a phone is generally compatible with their network, but it will not tell you if it is optimal for their network. If a certain model is compatible with Sprint’s network but doesn’t support all of its LTE bands, your carrier’s IMEI checker will not tell you — and you may not get the best possible speeds.
If you aren’t sure which model numbers are compatible with your network, check on the manufacturer’s website, or Google around to find out which model your carrier sells; then, search for that on your marketplace of choice.
Make sure the phone isn’t blacklisted
Unfortunately, buying a used phone is tricky, said Ben Edwards, chief executive of used-tech marketplace Swappa. “Phones are unique in that their value relies on being able to connect to a cellular network, and their usability can change over time,” Mr. Edwards said. “If you buy a bike on Craigslist, it’s not like the seller can do something a month later that makes the bike not work. But if you buy a used phone, and it’s later reported as stolen, it’ll be blacklisted.”When a carrier blacklists a device — which can happen if the device is reported as lost or stolen, or if someone sells it while it’s still on a payment plan — it can’t be activated on any carrier. That means you’ll be stuck with a $400 paperweight.
So instead of buying a phone with cash, use a form of payment that comes with some sort of buyer protection. For example, PayPal — which processes payments on eBay, Swappa, Gazelle and many other online marketplaces — provides 180 days of purchase protection, so you can return the device if the phone gets blacklisted within the first few months.
Even then, it’s a good idea to first verify the phone’s status if you can. Swappa does this (among other quality checks) for every phone listed on their site, but if you’re buying on a site with looser restrictions, likeeBay, ask the seller for the IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) number or MEID (mobile equipment identifier). Here’s how to find the IMEI of an iPhone, and here’s how to do so on Android.
Then, punch the number into your carrier’s website (Here are the pages for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) — you can also enter it into Swappa’s all-in-one checker here. It will let you know if the device has been reported as lost or stolen, and if it’s eligible for activation. It will not tell you if a phone is currently under financing, though Mr. Edwards said Swappa performs this check manually for every phone listed on the site, and if a phone is still under financing, the seller won’t be able to list it.
Some sellers may prefer to keep the IMEI private, and that’s fine — as long as you have a return policy and buyer protection, you can check the IMEI after receiving the phone. You’ll just have to go through the hassle of returning it if something goes wrong.
If you’d rather buy locally and hold the device before handing over your hard-earned cash, Mr. Edwards recommends checking the IMEI in person. “When I was buying phones on Craigslist, I would always insist on meeting in a carrier store for the transaction,” he said. “Then the carrier can check to see if it’s blacklisted.”
Again, none of this is foolproof since a phone can be reported lost, stolen or unpaid-for after you’ve purchased it, but it’s a good thing to check before you do.
Buy the right model for your carrier
These days, many phones are compatible with multiple networks. But there are two caveats: You need to make sure the device isn’t software-locked to another carrier, and you need to make sure its hardware is optimized for your carrier.
When you buy a phone directly from Verizon, AT&T or another carrier, it usually comes “carrier locked.” That means that phone will only be usable on Verizon, AT&T or whatever carrier you bought it from unless you ask them to unlock it.
If you’re buying a used phone, you want to make sure it isn’t locked to a carrier other than your own. If you’re on AT&T, you can’t buy a phone that’s locked to Verizon. You’ll either want an AT&T-branded phone or a phone that’s listed as “unlocked” by the seller.
In addition, “some phones have a few different numeric models that work better on some carriers than others,” Mr. Edwards said. “For full and optimal compatibility, you need to pay attention to the specifics.”
That means you shouldn’t just search for “iPhone 7” and buy the cheapest listing that pops up. The iPhone 7 A1660 may look nearly identical to the A1778, but the former works on all carriers, while the latter lacks support for some of the technologies used on Verizon and Sprint. In other cases, you may run into “international” models, which can lack support for certain features (like Samsung Pay, in the case of the international version of the Galaxy S7).
When you punch the IMEI into your carrier’s website, it will tell you if a phone is generally compatible with their network, but it will not tell you if it is optimal for their network. If a certain model is compatible with Sprint’s network but doesn’t support all of its LTE bands, your carrier’s IMEI checker will not tell you — and you may not get the best possible speeds.
If you aren’t sure which model numbers are compatible with your network, check on the manufacturer’s website, or Google around to find out which model your carrier sells; then, search for that on your marketplace of choice.
by Whitson Gordon, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Dmitry Kostyukov
CBD is Everywhere. But is It a Scam?
The coffee shop in my Brooklyn neighborhood has a chalkboard outside. It usually reads something like, “Our soup of the day is coffee.” Recently, though, it’s had a marijuana leaf on it, drawn in green chalk.
Recreational marijuana is not legal in New York state. What the coffee shop is selling is CBD-infused lattes; CBD, which stands for cannabidiol, is a non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant. Out of curiosity, I bought one. It cost $9 and tasted like a latte with that hint of marijuana herbiness you get from a weed cookie. Google research informed me I would not get high but would be calmer, less anxious, maybe a little sleepy. I have no idea if I felt anything at all. Mostly, I felt like I just spent $9 on coffee.
My coffee shop is not unusual in selling CBD products. In New York, and all over the country, you can find CBD oil in convenience stores, CBD vapes in smoke shops, and CBD tinctures and topical creams in beauty stores. You can buy CBD dog treats in Chicago, a $700 CBD couples massage in Philadelphia, and CBD chocolate chip cookies in Miami. CBD is also being combined with ice cream, savory snacks, and cocktails. Even Coca-Cola is reportedly working on a CBD-infused beverage.
CBD exists at the confluence of three huge consumer trends. The first is the herbal supplement boom, a $49 billion-a-year industry that has seen rapid expansion since about 2010. The second is the rise of the anxiety economy, in which all sorts of products, from fidget spinners to weighted blankets, are pitched as reducers of the mild panic of everyday life. And the third is the near-overnight creation of a legitimate cannabis industry, thanks to the spread of marijuana legalization. (...)
Despite this, CBD is something nobody knows much about, and certainly nobody is monitoring it properly. CBD is widely marketed as a supplement, despite the Food and Drug Administration saying it does not qualify as such (this is because it is an active ingredient in drugs which are either approved or under investigation to be approved). CBD goes largely unregulated by the agency; on the FDA’s FAQ page, a vague answer maintains there are “many factors in deciding whether or not to initiate an enforcement action.” The Department of Agriculture handles research grants and pilot programs for hemp, but that’s where its involvement ends.
Research and regulation of cannabis in general is decades behind other crops and drugs because of its long prohibition. We’re in the early stages of a chaos period that will last a decade at minimum — a substance has to be legal in order for scientists to figure out how it works and for the government to figure out how to ensure it’s safe. Clinical trials take years to complete and will have to build on each other to create a competent understanding. Coupled with modern technology’s ability to disseminate truths, half-truths, and complete lies, this means we’re in a phase ripe for scams, intentional and not.
Both researchers who work with CBD and professionals who actually grow the raw material — those who best understand this compound and how it interacts with the human body, the people with the most investment in and knowledge about it — are skeptical to the point of scornful about consumer CBD products.
Esther Blessing is a professor and researcher at NYU who performs and reviews clinical trials on CBD’s effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress, anxiety, substance addiction, and other conditions. Speaking about widely available and unregulated CBD oils, she says, “This is the main scam, snake oil thing going on out there now.”
CBD is about as poorly regulated and understood as a product this popular can possibly be. It’s not accurate to say that CBD, as a whole, is bullshit. From a medical perspective, it’s promising; recreationally, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re buying works.
by Dan Nosowitz , Vox | Read more:
Image:AFP/Getty Images
Recreational marijuana is not legal in New York state. What the coffee shop is selling is CBD-infused lattes; CBD, which stands for cannabidiol, is a non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant. Out of curiosity, I bought one. It cost $9 and tasted like a latte with that hint of marijuana herbiness you get from a weed cookie. Google research informed me I would not get high but would be calmer, less anxious, maybe a little sleepy. I have no idea if I felt anything at all. Mostly, I felt like I just spent $9 on coffee.
My coffee shop is not unusual in selling CBD products. In New York, and all over the country, you can find CBD oil in convenience stores, CBD vapes in smoke shops, and CBD tinctures and topical creams in beauty stores. You can buy CBD dog treats in Chicago, a $700 CBD couples massage in Philadelphia, and CBD chocolate chip cookies in Miami. CBD is also being combined with ice cream, savory snacks, and cocktails. Even Coca-Cola is reportedly working on a CBD-infused beverage.CBD exists at the confluence of three huge consumer trends. The first is the herbal supplement boom, a $49 billion-a-year industry that has seen rapid expansion since about 2010. The second is the rise of the anxiety economy, in which all sorts of products, from fidget spinners to weighted blankets, are pitched as reducers of the mild panic of everyday life. And the third is the near-overnight creation of a legitimate cannabis industry, thanks to the spread of marijuana legalization. (...)
Despite this, CBD is something nobody knows much about, and certainly nobody is monitoring it properly. CBD is widely marketed as a supplement, despite the Food and Drug Administration saying it does not qualify as such (this is because it is an active ingredient in drugs which are either approved or under investigation to be approved). CBD goes largely unregulated by the agency; on the FDA’s FAQ page, a vague answer maintains there are “many factors in deciding whether or not to initiate an enforcement action.” The Department of Agriculture handles research grants and pilot programs for hemp, but that’s where its involvement ends.
Research and regulation of cannabis in general is decades behind other crops and drugs because of its long prohibition. We’re in the early stages of a chaos period that will last a decade at minimum — a substance has to be legal in order for scientists to figure out how it works and for the government to figure out how to ensure it’s safe. Clinical trials take years to complete and will have to build on each other to create a competent understanding. Coupled with modern technology’s ability to disseminate truths, half-truths, and complete lies, this means we’re in a phase ripe for scams, intentional and not.
Both researchers who work with CBD and professionals who actually grow the raw material — those who best understand this compound and how it interacts with the human body, the people with the most investment in and knowledge about it — are skeptical to the point of scornful about consumer CBD products.
Esther Blessing is a professor and researcher at NYU who performs and reviews clinical trials on CBD’s effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress, anxiety, substance addiction, and other conditions. Speaking about widely available and unregulated CBD oils, she says, “This is the main scam, snake oil thing going on out there now.”
CBD is about as poorly regulated and understood as a product this popular can possibly be. It’s not accurate to say that CBD, as a whole, is bullshit. From a medical perspective, it’s promising; recreationally, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re buying works.
by Dan Nosowitz , Vox | Read more:
Image:AFP/Getty Images
Facebook Groups as Therapy
It was Christopher’s therapist who suggested he look for help online. His wife had cheated on him, and he had been struggling since their divorce, but the $25 copays were adding up. His therapist proposed an online support group—free, discreet, available 24/7.
So he went, naturally, to Facebook, where a search turned up multiple private groups for people dealing with a partner’s infidelity. (Christopher had divorced his wife after finding out that their daughter was not his biological child. When I interviewed him, he asked that we withhold his real name.) From there, he got invitations to other support groups on Facebook, more targeted and even more specific: a group for families dealing with misattributed paternity, a group for children learning the same from DNA tests.
The support groups Christopher stumbled into are just a tiny corner of the vast ecosystem of private Facebook groups. Over the past year, the company has been consciously emphasizing groups—part of an effort, per Mark Zuckerberg, to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” These groups cover interests ranging as widely as the human imagination. Many are “closed,” which in Facebook terminology means they are findable, but only members can see their content. Some are “secret” and unsearchable, and membership is by invitation only.
It’s not surprising, then, that Facebook has turned into a gathering place for strangers sharing their deepest secrets. Emotional-support groups have sprung up around topics broad and narrow: diabetes, addiction, egg donation, a specific birth-control device now pulled from the U.S. market, parenting children who might grow up to be psychopaths, rare diseases that affect only a few dozen patients in the whole world. The internet has always promised to connect people by common interest rather than geography, and with its 2-billion-user base, Facebook is where those connections are often being made. “For people searching for support, [Facebook] is a one-stop shop,” says Andrea Downing, a moderator for BRCA Sisterhood, a support group for women who have tested positive for breast-cancer mutations.
Downing carries a mutation for BRCA1, which can raise the risk of breast cancer to more than 70 percent. Finding that out was devastating. “I did not know anybody who was going through the same experience,” she says. “When you can’t even talk to your own friends and family about what you’re going through, just living with that is really hard.” She eventually found out about BRCA Sisterhood on Facebook, where she suddenly found a few hundred women who understood exactly what she was going through. The women, she says, were a “lifeline.” They divulged their anxieties. They shared the latest research. They posted photos of their preventive mastectomies. BRCA Sisterhood has now grown to 10,000 members. (...)
Since Facebook has pivoted to groups, it has added several tools for group admins, including ways to filter membership requests and delete content from banned members. Most important, perhaps, it made the membership of closed groups private. Until earlier this year, nonmembers could see who had joined a group even if they could not see the posts inside. (Secret groups are unsearchable, and their membership lists have always been private.)
This had created obvious problems for support groups, which want to be findable but don’t want to broadcast their members’ private lives. Last year, Catherine St Clair decided to start a support group for people whose DNA tests revealed unexpected biological parents, after meeting another woman in the same situation on Facebook. St Clair created a closed group because she wanted other people to find it. And, of course, she invited the other woman. This was before Facebook made the change, and her membership quickly became public. “When she realized that, she dropped out real fast,” says St Clair. (...)
Anyone can start a Facebook group—including people trying to profit off one. While many founders of support groups are people simply trying to find others like themselves, some have used the groups as extensions of their business. In November 2017, The Verge investigated a prominent group called Affected by Addiction, whose founder was even invited to speak at Facebook’s first Communities Summit earlier that year. The founder, it turns out, was also a marketer for treatment centers that mined the group for potential patients, according to The Verge. The ties had not been disclosed.
Other groups are more up front about selling services. For example, the Infidelity Support Group—20,000 members strong—is run by Bob Huizenga, whose pinned post urges users to sign up for his “FREE Introductory Level of the Infidelity Recovery Center” before pushing additional services that cost as much as $915.
For patient-led groups, money is also a tense topic. Some have entirely banned fund-raising, even for a good cause. “Once it happens, everybody jumps on the bandwagon,” says Downing of BRCA Sisterhood. “We have purposely and carefully kept it out of the group.” Facebook support groups, after all, are full of emotionally vulnerable people trusting strangers on the internet. It’s the kind of access scammers dream of.
So he went, naturally, to Facebook, where a search turned up multiple private groups for people dealing with a partner’s infidelity. (Christopher had divorced his wife after finding out that their daughter was not his biological child. When I interviewed him, he asked that we withhold his real name.) From there, he got invitations to other support groups on Facebook, more targeted and even more specific: a group for families dealing with misattributed paternity, a group for children learning the same from DNA tests.
The support groups Christopher stumbled into are just a tiny corner of the vast ecosystem of private Facebook groups. Over the past year, the company has been consciously emphasizing groups—part of an effort, per Mark Zuckerberg, to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” These groups cover interests ranging as widely as the human imagination. Many are “closed,” which in Facebook terminology means they are findable, but only members can see their content. Some are “secret” and unsearchable, and membership is by invitation only.It’s not surprising, then, that Facebook has turned into a gathering place for strangers sharing their deepest secrets. Emotional-support groups have sprung up around topics broad and narrow: diabetes, addiction, egg donation, a specific birth-control device now pulled from the U.S. market, parenting children who might grow up to be psychopaths, rare diseases that affect only a few dozen patients in the whole world. The internet has always promised to connect people by common interest rather than geography, and with its 2-billion-user base, Facebook is where those connections are often being made. “For people searching for support, [Facebook] is a one-stop shop,” says Andrea Downing, a moderator for BRCA Sisterhood, a support group for women who have tested positive for breast-cancer mutations.
Downing carries a mutation for BRCA1, which can raise the risk of breast cancer to more than 70 percent. Finding that out was devastating. “I did not know anybody who was going through the same experience,” she says. “When you can’t even talk to your own friends and family about what you’re going through, just living with that is really hard.” She eventually found out about BRCA Sisterhood on Facebook, where she suddenly found a few hundred women who understood exactly what she was going through. The women, she says, were a “lifeline.” They divulged their anxieties. They shared the latest research. They posted photos of their preventive mastectomies. BRCA Sisterhood has now grown to 10,000 members. (...)
Since Facebook has pivoted to groups, it has added several tools for group admins, including ways to filter membership requests and delete content from banned members. Most important, perhaps, it made the membership of closed groups private. Until earlier this year, nonmembers could see who had joined a group even if they could not see the posts inside. (Secret groups are unsearchable, and their membership lists have always been private.)
This had created obvious problems for support groups, which want to be findable but don’t want to broadcast their members’ private lives. Last year, Catherine St Clair decided to start a support group for people whose DNA tests revealed unexpected biological parents, after meeting another woman in the same situation on Facebook. St Clair created a closed group because she wanted other people to find it. And, of course, she invited the other woman. This was before Facebook made the change, and her membership quickly became public. “When she realized that, she dropped out real fast,” says St Clair. (...)
Anyone can start a Facebook group—including people trying to profit off one. While many founders of support groups are people simply trying to find others like themselves, some have used the groups as extensions of their business. In November 2017, The Verge investigated a prominent group called Affected by Addiction, whose founder was even invited to speak at Facebook’s first Communities Summit earlier that year. The founder, it turns out, was also a marketer for treatment centers that mined the group for potential patients, according to The Verge. The ties had not been disclosed.
Other groups are more up front about selling services. For example, the Infidelity Support Group—20,000 members strong—is run by Bob Huizenga, whose pinned post urges users to sign up for his “FREE Introductory Level of the Infidelity Recovery Center” before pushing additional services that cost as much as $915.
For patient-led groups, money is also a tense topic. Some have entirely banned fund-raising, even for a good cause. “Once it happens, everybody jumps on the bandwagon,” says Downing of BRCA Sisterhood. “We have purposely and carefully kept it out of the group.” Facebook support groups, after all, are full of emotionally vulnerable people trusting strangers on the internet. It’s the kind of access scammers dream of.
by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Prostock-Studio/Shutterstock
True Stories: How David Byrne Learned to Stop Worrying and Love America
David Byrne is all about cautious optimism these days. Recently, that’s taken the form of an interactive lecture series entitled “Reasons to be Cheerful,” in which Byrne catalogs and champions examples of public policy triumphs large and small from communities around the world. It’s also led to American Utopia, Byrne’s first solo record in 14 years and his artistic reaction to the political and existential fears that radiate daily from the Trump Administration.
In addition to highlighting stories of Paris’ groundbreaking bike-share system, Portugal’s successful drug-decriminalization policies, and investments in clean energy happening in a deep-red Texas suburb, the project also stands as the latest involving one of Byrne’s longest-standing fascinations: how to make America (and the lives of Americans) better.
Byrne’s transformation into pop music’s hippest cultural-critic-cum-philosophy-professor wasn’t a given. As Rob Tannenbaum of The New York Times noted in a recent feature, “At the start of his career, when Mr. Byrne was the singer in Talking Heads, fans turned to him for alienation, not hope.“
Breakthrough records like Talking Heads: 77 and More Songs About Buildings and Food introduced listeners to a very different Byrne, one whose eccentric delivery, autobiographical elusiveness, and obsession with the mundanities of everyday life, allowed him to slip into the role of the bewildered outsider, one who found himself equal parts frustrated and fascinated by the customs of the world where he loved to visit but didn’t want to live.
The songs that made Byrne and the Talking Heads famous during these years dealt directly with this disorientation; their most famous single is anchored by Byrne literally asking, “How did I get here?” On those early records, everything was a possible threat: love was an impossible riddle (“I’m Not in Love”), paradise was a boring trick (“Heaven”), and the comforts of modern society led nowhere but brain death (“Don’t Worry About the Government”). Redemption, when it came at all, did so through art and self-expression, and other people’s problems were theirs alone to solve (“No Compassion”).
However, that kind of paranoid post-punk Byrne wouldn’t remain an impartial (and overly anxious) observer for long. By the mid-’80s, his artistic and lyrical concerns would undergo an evolution and expansion that still informs his work today. As we approach Byrne’s latest reckoning with American culture, it feels important to revisit the place where that reckoning began in earnest.
Perhaps the best document to capture the turning point in Byrne’s innate sense of apartness isn’t an album but a film. Released in 1986, True Stories took Byrne from New York to Texas for his first foray in moviemaking. Taking cues from Errol Morris’ oddball documentary Vernon, Florida, the film explores the inner lives and outer quirks of residents from the fictional town of Virgil, where microchip manufacturer Vericorp is king and the sesquicentennial “Celebration of Specialness” is imminent.
As the film’s nameless narrator and tour guide (as well as its writer and director), Byrne blows into town in a red Chrysler convertible and soon finds himself palling around with all sorts of weirdos, from a woman who refuses to leave her bed and her voodoo-practicing butler to Louis Fyne, a Vericorp employee so desperate to find a wife that he records a television commercial complete with hotline number. In between these meetups, viewers are treated to interludes inspired by the mundane settings of high capitalism; everyday people stage an absurdist mall fashion show set to the haunting “Dream Operator”, a field sobriety test turns into a balletic movement piece, and a nameless security guard sings an operatic solo to no one on the half-built stage he’s tasked with protecting.
Had True Stories been made by Byrne in the ’70s, its promo inspiration (in, what else, an interview with himself, Byrne described his movie as “a project with songs based on true stories from tabloid newspapers” and “60 Minutes on acid”) might’ve resulted in another scathing takedown of quotidian suburban living. After all, this was the same guy who, on More Songs About Buildings and Food standout “The Big Country”, reacted to the everyday goings-on of flyover country with a dismissive “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.”
Eight years later, things were different. Far from being a backhanded compliment, the film’s “Celebration of Specialness” actually feels like, well, a celebration. True Stories goes out of its way to express the (sometimes conflicted) positives at the heart of even the most nondescript town. There are rich inner lives inside each of the Vericorp drones (especially Fyne, whose quest for love is played out with circus-bear sympathy by John Goodman). The mall combines the town square with air conditioning. The prefab metal buildings that line the outskirts of town represent economic growth rather than unchecked sprawl. “Who can say it isn’t beautiful?” Byrne asks over a shot of an unfinished subdivision, thinking more of the lives about to unfold in each empty room rather than the cul-de-sacs on the edge of scrubland.
Most of these cues come from Byrne’s narrator who, instead of collapsing from the tension of being an outsider, replaces ironic distance or jaded worry with curious acceptance. He may not believe that “economics has become a spiritual thing” or that freeways are “the cathedrals of our time,” but he can understand the people who do.
In addition to highlighting stories of Paris’ groundbreaking bike-share system, Portugal’s successful drug-decriminalization policies, and investments in clean energy happening in a deep-red Texas suburb, the project also stands as the latest involving one of Byrne’s longest-standing fascinations: how to make America (and the lives of Americans) better.
Byrne’s transformation into pop music’s hippest cultural-critic-cum-philosophy-professor wasn’t a given. As Rob Tannenbaum of The New York Times noted in a recent feature, “At the start of his career, when Mr. Byrne was the singer in Talking Heads, fans turned to him for alienation, not hope.“Breakthrough records like Talking Heads: 77 and More Songs About Buildings and Food introduced listeners to a very different Byrne, one whose eccentric delivery, autobiographical elusiveness, and obsession with the mundanities of everyday life, allowed him to slip into the role of the bewildered outsider, one who found himself equal parts frustrated and fascinated by the customs of the world where he loved to visit but didn’t want to live.
The songs that made Byrne and the Talking Heads famous during these years dealt directly with this disorientation; their most famous single is anchored by Byrne literally asking, “How did I get here?” On those early records, everything was a possible threat: love was an impossible riddle (“I’m Not in Love”), paradise was a boring trick (“Heaven”), and the comforts of modern society led nowhere but brain death (“Don’t Worry About the Government”). Redemption, when it came at all, did so through art and self-expression, and other people’s problems were theirs alone to solve (“No Compassion”).
However, that kind of paranoid post-punk Byrne wouldn’t remain an impartial (and overly anxious) observer for long. By the mid-’80s, his artistic and lyrical concerns would undergo an evolution and expansion that still informs his work today. As we approach Byrne’s latest reckoning with American culture, it feels important to revisit the place where that reckoning began in earnest.
Perhaps the best document to capture the turning point in Byrne’s innate sense of apartness isn’t an album but a film. Released in 1986, True Stories took Byrne from New York to Texas for his first foray in moviemaking. Taking cues from Errol Morris’ oddball documentary Vernon, Florida, the film explores the inner lives and outer quirks of residents from the fictional town of Virgil, where microchip manufacturer Vericorp is king and the sesquicentennial “Celebration of Specialness” is imminent.
As the film’s nameless narrator and tour guide (as well as its writer and director), Byrne blows into town in a red Chrysler convertible and soon finds himself palling around with all sorts of weirdos, from a woman who refuses to leave her bed and her voodoo-practicing butler to Louis Fyne, a Vericorp employee so desperate to find a wife that he records a television commercial complete with hotline number. In between these meetups, viewers are treated to interludes inspired by the mundane settings of high capitalism; everyday people stage an absurdist mall fashion show set to the haunting “Dream Operator”, a field sobriety test turns into a balletic movement piece, and a nameless security guard sings an operatic solo to no one on the half-built stage he’s tasked with protecting.
Had True Stories been made by Byrne in the ’70s, its promo inspiration (in, what else, an interview with himself, Byrne described his movie as “a project with songs based on true stories from tabloid newspapers” and “60 Minutes on acid”) might’ve resulted in another scathing takedown of quotidian suburban living. After all, this was the same guy who, on More Songs About Buildings and Food standout “The Big Country”, reacted to the everyday goings-on of flyover country with a dismissive “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.”
Eight years later, things were different. Far from being a backhanded compliment, the film’s “Celebration of Specialness” actually feels like, well, a celebration. True Stories goes out of its way to express the (sometimes conflicted) positives at the heart of even the most nondescript town. There are rich inner lives inside each of the Vericorp drones (especially Fyne, whose quest for love is played out with circus-bear sympathy by John Goodman). The mall combines the town square with air conditioning. The prefab metal buildings that line the outskirts of town represent economic growth rather than unchecked sprawl. “Who can say it isn’t beautiful?” Byrne asks over a shot of an unfinished subdivision, thinking more of the lives about to unfold in each empty room rather than the cul-de-sacs on the edge of scrubland.
Most of these cues come from Byrne’s narrator who, instead of collapsing from the tension of being an outsider, replaces ironic distance or jaded worry with curious acceptance. He may not believe that “economics has become a spiritual thing” or that freeways are “the cathedrals of our time,” but he can understand the people who do.
by Tyler Clark, Consequence of Sound | Read more:
Image: True Stories
Thursday, November 1, 2018
How I Learned to Dive
I was fifteen, and he was in his twenties.
I wasn’t coerced, though. I wasn’t tricked or manipulated. I said yes—said it freely—because I wanted something. I wanted sex—or whatever it was that happened between two men. Of course, I wasn’t a man yet.
When I think back on this, I wonder if I can trust my yes, the yes of a child. My body says that I can, but maybe I can’t trust my body to work this out.
I hadn’t thought about the man in a while; my time with him was more than thirty years ago. But lately his ghost has returned—maybe in light of the current debates about sex and power. These conversations have got under my skin, like a virus, making me sick with questions I’d never asked before: Was I manipulated? Was there an imbalance of power?
It’s entirely plausible. I was a small, skinny guy who self-identified as weak, and so shy that I could barely speak in social situations. Often, when required to interact with strangers, I would begin to shake, in a frightening, fit-like manner.
The man—let’s call him Sam—was quite the opposite: muscular, steady, confident, a lifeguard at the beach where I sometimes went with my parents. I had seen him a few times, certain he’d never noticed me. The day of our first encounter, I watched from a short distance as he taught a class to teen-agers—lifeguards in training, I suppose. The students were putting their mouths against a dummy.
I wasn’t old enough to participate; to be a lifeguard, you had to be at least sixteen. And surely you needed more than golf balls for biceps—which, along with freakish, flagpole legs, were the sum of my physique.
Later that day, I saw him again, leaning against his scaffolded throne, eating a nectarine. He caught me looking, and then he was walking toward me. I stared at my feet.
“You were in my class, right?” I heard him say.
“No,” I muttered. “I was just watching.”
When I glanced up, he nodded—and immediately I felt my cheeks burning. Did he know what I’d been watching? His bare chest and tanned legs, the snug black Speedo.
I was trembling by that point, but for some reason when he said, “Walk with me,” I followed him.
For a few minutes, we didn’t talk—which both disturbed and excited me. Our silence seemed to suggest that we agreed on something. It was like a pact.
I followed him to a more deserted part of the beach, and then we were walking away from the ocean, toward some scrubby hills. I reminded myself that a lifeguard was like a policeman—a person you could trust.
“Are you O.K.?” he asked, noticing my jitters, or perhaps hearing how my teeth were chattering in spite of the scorching August sun.
When he finally stopped and turned toward me, we were in a patch of shade, surrounded by larger bushes and even some trees. If my mind said run, my body argued stay. I was locked in place by confusion and desire and a slow-reeling vertigo.
He asked why I was standing so far away.
I shrugged, and when I made a move to leave he approached, and touched my arm. “Don’t.”
He wasn’t rough; he smiled. I could see the blond stubble on his golden chin. His beauty was formidable.
I said that I should probably go, while, below, my arousal contradicted me. He noticed, and drew my attention to the fact that he was experiencing a similar “problem.” As we made small talk—the weather, the waves, my sunburn—the real conversation seemed to be happening between our bathing suits.
Somehow, a few minutes later, we were naked, with our hands going exactly where hands shouldn’t go—or exactly where they should. I was in a limbo, in which there seemed to be no difference between the forbidden and the necessary. The sense of inevitability, of falling, was profound.
I had been with girls before, but we’d only kissed—and never with our clothes off. And those experiences had always felt like rehearsals for desire, ones in which I played my part perhaps too fervently, knowing that I’d been miscast.
But now, as I followed the lifeguard’s lead, I felt that he was pulling me closer to myself. Strangely, this did not feel safe; it felt like drowning.
And then we were both lying on the sand, soaked and winded. For a moment, we stayed knotted together, as if untangling ourselves might prove to be too much effort, or leave too much room for questions and regret.
Finally, I slid away, and as I put on my bathing suit I felt a need to defend myself. I told the man I’d never done anything like that before.
“Me neither,” he said.
I didn’t believe him—he looked like a movie star. But maybe he meant he’d done it only with girls.
When I asked for his name, he told me.
He didn’t ask for mine, and I thought, I’ll never see him again.
But, as I turned to leave, he took a notebook from his backpack and wrote down a number.
“Call me,” he said. “O.K.?”
I wasn’t coerced, though. I wasn’t tricked or manipulated. I said yes—said it freely—because I wanted something. I wanted sex—or whatever it was that happened between two men. Of course, I wasn’t a man yet.
When I think back on this, I wonder if I can trust my yes, the yes of a child. My body says that I can, but maybe I can’t trust my body to work this out.
I hadn’t thought about the man in a while; my time with him was more than thirty years ago. But lately his ghost has returned—maybe in light of the current debates about sex and power. These conversations have got under my skin, like a virus, making me sick with questions I’d never asked before: Was I manipulated? Was there an imbalance of power?
It’s entirely plausible. I was a small, skinny guy who self-identified as weak, and so shy that I could barely speak in social situations. Often, when required to interact with strangers, I would begin to shake, in a frightening, fit-like manner.
The man—let’s call him Sam—was quite the opposite: muscular, steady, confident, a lifeguard at the beach where I sometimes went with my parents. I had seen him a few times, certain he’d never noticed me. The day of our first encounter, I watched from a short distance as he taught a class to teen-agers—lifeguards in training, I suppose. The students were putting their mouths against a dummy.I wasn’t old enough to participate; to be a lifeguard, you had to be at least sixteen. And surely you needed more than golf balls for biceps—which, along with freakish, flagpole legs, were the sum of my physique.
Later that day, I saw him again, leaning against his scaffolded throne, eating a nectarine. He caught me looking, and then he was walking toward me. I stared at my feet.
“You were in my class, right?” I heard him say.
“No,” I muttered. “I was just watching.”
When I glanced up, he nodded—and immediately I felt my cheeks burning. Did he know what I’d been watching? His bare chest and tanned legs, the snug black Speedo.
I was trembling by that point, but for some reason when he said, “Walk with me,” I followed him.
For a few minutes, we didn’t talk—which both disturbed and excited me. Our silence seemed to suggest that we agreed on something. It was like a pact.
I followed him to a more deserted part of the beach, and then we were walking away from the ocean, toward some scrubby hills. I reminded myself that a lifeguard was like a policeman—a person you could trust.
“Are you O.K.?” he asked, noticing my jitters, or perhaps hearing how my teeth were chattering in spite of the scorching August sun.
When he finally stopped and turned toward me, we were in a patch of shade, surrounded by larger bushes and even some trees. If my mind said run, my body argued stay. I was locked in place by confusion and desire and a slow-reeling vertigo.
He asked why I was standing so far away.
I shrugged, and when I made a move to leave he approached, and touched my arm. “Don’t.”
He wasn’t rough; he smiled. I could see the blond stubble on his golden chin. His beauty was formidable.
I said that I should probably go, while, below, my arousal contradicted me. He noticed, and drew my attention to the fact that he was experiencing a similar “problem.” As we made small talk—the weather, the waves, my sunburn—the real conversation seemed to be happening between our bathing suits.
Somehow, a few minutes later, we were naked, with our hands going exactly where hands shouldn’t go—or exactly where they should. I was in a limbo, in which there seemed to be no difference between the forbidden and the necessary. The sense of inevitability, of falling, was profound.
I had been with girls before, but we’d only kissed—and never with our clothes off. And those experiences had always felt like rehearsals for desire, ones in which I played my part perhaps too fervently, knowing that I’d been miscast.
But now, as I followed the lifeguard’s lead, I felt that he was pulling me closer to myself. Strangely, this did not feel safe; it felt like drowning.
And then we were both lying on the sand, soaked and winded. For a moment, we stayed knotted together, as if untangling ourselves might prove to be too much effort, or leave too much room for questions and regret.
Finally, I slid away, and as I put on my bathing suit I felt a need to defend myself. I told the man I’d never done anything like that before.
“Me neither,” he said.
I didn’t believe him—he looked like a movie star. But maybe he meant he’d done it only with girls.
When I asked for his name, he told me.
He didn’t ask for mine, and I thought, I’ll never see him again.
But, as I turned to leave, he took a notebook from his backpack and wrote down a number.
“Call me,” he said. “O.K.?”
by Victor Lodato, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Chris Rush
Is There a New Tiger Versus an Old Tiger?
This past season much was made about Tiger Woods being a changed person. That this latest comeback, from passed out behind the wheel in post-surgical hell to nearly winning majors, has given him "a new lease on life." It seems all the announcers and media have latched on to this narrative. Friendlier, warmer, tastes great and less filling. Well, I think it's a bunch of bull.
Sure, there have been divergences. The old Tiger didn't walk down the range saying hello to rookies, like I saw him do at Tampa. The old Tiger didn't wait around the last green to congratulate the guy who beat him, like he did for Brooks in St. Louis. He wouldn't fight back tears like he did at East Lake.
Certainly, the prospect of never competing again felt scarily real to him at one point. And finally having one's family life in order years after a messy divorce must add perspective. Still, I'm not buying that he's "changed." Because what most people don't know is, Tiger's always been a good guy.
Whatever a man has done or not done in his private life is another matter. All I know is, there are few golfers better to sit down with for lunch and shoot the breeze than Tiger, and it's been that way ever since I was a rookie. In a one-on-one setting, he's a completely different person than the one the world sees in interviews. (...)
I couldn't imagine being him. The moment the locker-room door swings open, his world changes. At the first FedEx Cup event in New Jersey, there must've been 30 people clamoring to snap his picture at the back entrance of the clubhouse, which is a restricted area. I'm thinking, Haven't you people seen someone get into a car before? What are you going to do with a crappy photo like that on your phone, anyway?
Sure, there have been divergences. The old Tiger didn't walk down the range saying hello to rookies, like I saw him do at Tampa. The old Tiger didn't wait around the last green to congratulate the guy who beat him, like he did for Brooks in St. Louis. He wouldn't fight back tears like he did at East Lake.Certainly, the prospect of never competing again felt scarily real to him at one point. And finally having one's family life in order years after a messy divorce must add perspective. Still, I'm not buying that he's "changed." Because what most people don't know is, Tiger's always been a good guy.
Whatever a man has done or not done in his private life is another matter. All I know is, there are few golfers better to sit down with for lunch and shoot the breeze than Tiger, and it's been that way ever since I was a rookie. In a one-on-one setting, he's a completely different person than the one the world sees in interviews. (...)
I couldn't imagine being him. The moment the locker-room door swings open, his world changes. At the first FedEx Cup event in New Jersey, there must've been 30 people clamoring to snap his picture at the back entrance of the clubhouse, which is a restricted area. I'm thinking, Haven't you people seen someone get into a car before? What are you going to do with a crappy photo like that on your phone, anyway?
My Shot: Gil Hanse
Golf course architecture
This morning, Bill Kittleman, one of our design partners and the head pro at Merion from 1963-'96, came out to the 15th green to discuss the finishing touches of our restoration work there. It's always fun being with Bill because his experiences at Merion made him a very wise man with a great eye. One time Bill was helping us on another project here in Philadelphia. The maintenance crew had left early and had taken their equipment with them. Bill, noticing an imperfection along the edge of a bunker, grabbed a stick on the ground and started chopping away at it. After a few minutes he stopped, took a long draw on his cigar and said, "Look at us. We're just a bunch of [bleeping] cave men hacking away out here." Ever since, we've referred to the fine-tuning we do with rakes and shovels—and sometimes our bare hands or soles of our shoes—as "cave-man construction." It's part nonsense, part truth. Some architects really do get down and dirty like that.
I WAS A BABY CAVE MAN. At age 11, my brothers and I built golf holes in the dirt in the back yard of our home in Babylon, Long Island. We didn't just build golf holes, but really intricate dams and levees, using a garden hose. Eventually I got a master's degree in landscape architecture at Cornell and got into course design while I was there. But it all started in my back yard.
EIGHTSOMES, PLAYING BAREFOOT AND LISTENING TO MUSIC. Grandparents playing alongside toddlers. Near-beginners jumping up and down when they hit a green in regulation for the first time. Experienced players playing with only one or two clubs, drinks in hand, laughing, with no pencil touching a scorecard. That's what happens at The Cradle, the nine-hole par-3 course at Pinehurst that opened last year. It might be the most successful of all our designs because we accomplished exactly what we set out to do—grow the game and make it fun. When the U.S. Open returns to Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024, The Cradle will be used as the practice range. But the hope is to shut down the range for a few hours and send the players out there with their children or kids from the community. Similar to the Par-3 Contest at the Masters. How cool would that be?
THE NEXT TIME YOU DESIGN A FEW HOLES IN YOUR HEAD, or imagine how a couple at your course might be redesigned, start with the notion that water flows downhill. Drainage is always first and foremost. Think of the water principle, and your design will get much better because you'll be doing it in the context of solving a problem. And it will provide clues as to why that crazy architect did what he did, and you might decide he wasn't so crazy after all.
GOLFERS LOVE PAR 3S, and architects know it, so we tend to hoard them for later in the front and back nines. We try to put them later, too, because they take the longest to play, and you don't want a backup on a par-3 second hole. I'd go so far as to say we'd never design a course with a par 3 early, except that the second I say it, a piece of land will dictate otherwise. (...)
IN THE BEGINNING, MOST COURSES IN THE U.S. WERE DESIGNED to be very expansive because there was no irrigation to speak of. Certainly that's the case with Oakmont, Winged Foot and Oak Hill, among others. Trees weren't even in the minds of the architects. With the advent of single-row irrigation systems, the fairways got narrower because they couldn't water the entire property. So now they had green fairways that looked out of scale against the brown areas. Greens committees quite understandably added trees to fill in those areas. Trees became the standard. But over time, a lot of downsides emerged. Because trees grow, they eventually limit strategy and shut off opportunities for recovery shots. And they're terrible for grass, period. Tree-removal programs began in earnest. I love trees as much as the next person, but I've learned to take a clinical, unromantic approach to taking them out. Our restoration work at Aronimink, Sleepy Hollow and Winged Foot included significant tree removal. Members think they'll miss them, but I've never heard a single complaint once they're gone.
ARCHITECTS CAN IMPOSE THEIR WILL ON LANDFORMS. They can construct ponds, fill in swamps, create islands and build bunkers. But they can't dominate the weather. Courses built on flood plains are going to get flooded. A sand dune built near a wash, sooner or later is going to wind up in a dump truck. If you take on Mother Nature, you're eventually going to lose that fight. (...)
THE DAYS OF A YOUNG PERSON COMING OUT OF COLLEGE with a landscape-architecture degree and finding work in a top designer's office are long gone. There just aren't enough courses being built. To design a course with your name on it, you're going to have to work for years on the construction side, building up calluses, being super passionate and doing everything you're asked to do. Show one shred of entitlement, and you're going to be weeded out in a hurry. It's a very tough field to succeed in. (...)
I APPLAUD OLD COURSES THAT REFUSE TO ADD LENGTH IN AN EFFORT TO NOT BECOME "OBSOLETE." Adding length separates the proximity of greens to tees, and it changes angles and shot values, often irreparably. A prime example is St. George's Golf and Country Club, a 1917 Devereux Emmet de-sign on Long Island. It is one of the great unheralded courses in America. Everyone who visits there gasps, it's so good. It measures just over 6,400 yards from the blue tees. The people there feel its first iteration is its best iteration.
MARK PARSINEN, OUR CO-DESIGNER AT CASTLE STUART, says, "The defining characteristic of a great course is the perspective of the golfer facing his third shot on a par 4." That's profound, because architects traditionally have focused on the drive, approach and then the green complexes. But Mark's point is that very few golfers hit many greens in regulation. If we can make the recovery scenarios around the greens more interesting—little golf courses in themselves—it turns the whole golf course up a notch. (...)
I FEAR GOLF SIMULATORS ARE GOING TO BECOME MUCH MORE ADVANCED. Technology 30 years from now will provide golf experiences more lifelike than we can imagine. Sights, sounds and climate will be duplicated, rain and temperature included. On every shot, the quality of your lie will be adjusted, the slopes just like the real thing. Wind will be provided. You might be able to walk to your ball. Smells, conversation, bad bounces, they'll have it all. I sincerely believe all of this is inevitable. And I hope I'm dead by the time it happens.
by Gil Hanse, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Finlay MacKay
This morning, Bill Kittleman, one of our design partners and the head pro at Merion from 1963-'96, came out to the 15th green to discuss the finishing touches of our restoration work there. It's always fun being with Bill because his experiences at Merion made him a very wise man with a great eye. One time Bill was helping us on another project here in Philadelphia. The maintenance crew had left early and had taken their equipment with them. Bill, noticing an imperfection along the edge of a bunker, grabbed a stick on the ground and started chopping away at it. After a few minutes he stopped, took a long draw on his cigar and said, "Look at us. We're just a bunch of [bleeping] cave men hacking away out here." Ever since, we've referred to the fine-tuning we do with rakes and shovels—and sometimes our bare hands or soles of our shoes—as "cave-man construction." It's part nonsense, part truth. Some architects really do get down and dirty like that.
I WAS A BABY CAVE MAN. At age 11, my brothers and I built golf holes in the dirt in the back yard of our home in Babylon, Long Island. We didn't just build golf holes, but really intricate dams and levees, using a garden hose. Eventually I got a master's degree in landscape architecture at Cornell and got into course design while I was there. But it all started in my back yard.EIGHTSOMES, PLAYING BAREFOOT AND LISTENING TO MUSIC. Grandparents playing alongside toddlers. Near-beginners jumping up and down when they hit a green in regulation for the first time. Experienced players playing with only one or two clubs, drinks in hand, laughing, with no pencil touching a scorecard. That's what happens at The Cradle, the nine-hole par-3 course at Pinehurst that opened last year. It might be the most successful of all our designs because we accomplished exactly what we set out to do—grow the game and make it fun. When the U.S. Open returns to Pinehurst No. 2 in 2024, The Cradle will be used as the practice range. But the hope is to shut down the range for a few hours and send the players out there with their children or kids from the community. Similar to the Par-3 Contest at the Masters. How cool would that be?
THE NEXT TIME YOU DESIGN A FEW HOLES IN YOUR HEAD, or imagine how a couple at your course might be redesigned, start with the notion that water flows downhill. Drainage is always first and foremost. Think of the water principle, and your design will get much better because you'll be doing it in the context of solving a problem. And it will provide clues as to why that crazy architect did what he did, and you might decide he wasn't so crazy after all.
GOLFERS LOVE PAR 3S, and architects know it, so we tend to hoard them for later in the front and back nines. We try to put them later, too, because they take the longest to play, and you don't want a backup on a par-3 second hole. I'd go so far as to say we'd never design a course with a par 3 early, except that the second I say it, a piece of land will dictate otherwise. (...)
IN THE BEGINNING, MOST COURSES IN THE U.S. WERE DESIGNED to be very expansive because there was no irrigation to speak of. Certainly that's the case with Oakmont, Winged Foot and Oak Hill, among others. Trees weren't even in the minds of the architects. With the advent of single-row irrigation systems, the fairways got narrower because they couldn't water the entire property. So now they had green fairways that looked out of scale against the brown areas. Greens committees quite understandably added trees to fill in those areas. Trees became the standard. But over time, a lot of downsides emerged. Because trees grow, they eventually limit strategy and shut off opportunities for recovery shots. And they're terrible for grass, period. Tree-removal programs began in earnest. I love trees as much as the next person, but I've learned to take a clinical, unromantic approach to taking them out. Our restoration work at Aronimink, Sleepy Hollow and Winged Foot included significant tree removal. Members think they'll miss them, but I've never heard a single complaint once they're gone.
ARCHITECTS CAN IMPOSE THEIR WILL ON LANDFORMS. They can construct ponds, fill in swamps, create islands and build bunkers. But they can't dominate the weather. Courses built on flood plains are going to get flooded. A sand dune built near a wash, sooner or later is going to wind up in a dump truck. If you take on Mother Nature, you're eventually going to lose that fight. (...)
THE DAYS OF A YOUNG PERSON COMING OUT OF COLLEGE with a landscape-architecture degree and finding work in a top designer's office are long gone. There just aren't enough courses being built. To design a course with your name on it, you're going to have to work for years on the construction side, building up calluses, being super passionate and doing everything you're asked to do. Show one shred of entitlement, and you're going to be weeded out in a hurry. It's a very tough field to succeed in. (...)
I APPLAUD OLD COURSES THAT REFUSE TO ADD LENGTH IN AN EFFORT TO NOT BECOME "OBSOLETE." Adding length separates the proximity of greens to tees, and it changes angles and shot values, often irreparably. A prime example is St. George's Golf and Country Club, a 1917 Devereux Emmet de-sign on Long Island. It is one of the great unheralded courses in America. Everyone who visits there gasps, it's so good. It measures just over 6,400 yards from the blue tees. The people there feel its first iteration is its best iteration.
MARK PARSINEN, OUR CO-DESIGNER AT CASTLE STUART, says, "The defining characteristic of a great course is the perspective of the golfer facing his third shot on a par 4." That's profound, because architects traditionally have focused on the drive, approach and then the green complexes. But Mark's point is that very few golfers hit many greens in regulation. If we can make the recovery scenarios around the greens more interesting—little golf courses in themselves—it turns the whole golf course up a notch. (...)
I FEAR GOLF SIMULATORS ARE GOING TO BECOME MUCH MORE ADVANCED. Technology 30 years from now will provide golf experiences more lifelike than we can imagine. Sights, sounds and climate will be duplicated, rain and temperature included. On every shot, the quality of your lie will be adjusted, the slopes just like the real thing. Wind will be provided. You might be able to walk to your ball. Smells, conversation, bad bounces, they'll have it all. I sincerely believe all of this is inevitable. And I hope I'm dead by the time it happens.
by Gil Hanse, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Finlay MacKay
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
If You See This Symbol on Your Favorite Costco Item, Stock Up Now
Big box store members are already smitten with perks like these little-known benefits of having a Costco card. But then there are the products themselves. Not only does Costco have unbeatable prices, but it also carries top-quality options. So when you find a favorite item, it can be devastating to realize it’s no longer carried the next time you stop by.
Part of the reason Costco’s prices are so cheap is that it only carries a limited number of products. Of course, that also means that the store won’t hang onto an item that isn’t selling when it could replace it with something more appealing. Luckily, there’s an easy way to find out if your favorite product is about to be discontinued.
Take a look at the upper right corner of a Costco price tag. If you see an asterisk, that’s a sign that the wholesale store won’t be restocking the item. Maybe the product hasn’t been selling well, or maybe the manufacturer upped its prices. Either way, it could be your last shot to get your hands on that item in-store—at least for now. To start, see if any of these 15 Costco must-buy products have the special price tag.
Even if a product disappears from the shelves temporarily, it might pop up again in the future. For instance, seasonal items like holiday gift wrap or certain foods might not appear until the next year, but they’ll show up again once they’re back in season. Still, if you have your sights on a nonperishable item that you know you’ll use up within a few months, might as well stock up on more to make it through the year. Next, find out the 15 secrets Costco employees won’t tell you.
by Marissa Laliberte, Reader's Digest | Read more:
Image:John Greim/REX/Shutterstock
Part of the reason Costco’s prices are so cheap is that it only carries a limited number of products. Of course, that also means that the store won’t hang onto an item that isn’t selling when it could replace it with something more appealing. Luckily, there’s an easy way to find out if your favorite product is about to be discontinued.Take a look at the upper right corner of a Costco price tag. If you see an asterisk, that’s a sign that the wholesale store won’t be restocking the item. Maybe the product hasn’t been selling well, or maybe the manufacturer upped its prices. Either way, it could be your last shot to get your hands on that item in-store—at least for now. To start, see if any of these 15 Costco must-buy products have the special price tag.
Even if a product disappears from the shelves temporarily, it might pop up again in the future. For instance, seasonal items like holiday gift wrap or certain foods might not appear until the next year, but they’ll show up again once they’re back in season. Still, if you have your sights on a nonperishable item that you know you’ll use up within a few months, might as well stock up on more to make it through the year. Next, find out the 15 secrets Costco employees won’t tell you.
by Marissa Laliberte, Reader's Digest | Read more:
Image:John Greim/REX/Shutterstock
[ed. Be sure to click on the links (which include other links) for additional Costco insights. See also: coupons for additional savings at Costco Insider.]
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
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