Air travel has become so common that traversing miles of air distance hardly evokes the awe and wonder of a previous age. I remember getting into Seoul's Gimpo (formerly Kimpo) Airport long ago when the place invariably and without apology exuded the spicy aroma of kim chee land. Less obtrusive but also assertive of its local uniqueness was Haneda in Tokyo, and Hongqiao in Shanghai. Now, Seoul international is in Incheon, Tokyo's is in Narita, and Shanghai's is in Pudong.
Incheon's global ambience has become so blandly unobtrusive that the only whiff of kim chee one gasps is in what emanates from the kim chee plate at the kiosk, its scent sucked quickly into the ventilation system that drives the distinctive aroma away from those who take offense from the odiferous offering!
In 1965, we sailed from Manila to San Francisco in one of the President Lines' ships and the voyage took 20 days. It took only 10 actual flying time to travel from Shenyang to Honolulu via Incheon. When we sailed, the diversity in the passenger manifest showed American students who came to Asia for summer, while the Asian students were heading to schools and universities for the fall. Being the last voyage before the fall semester, the sea lanes heard many student songs.
The polyglot at the airports was just as noticeable even in the regional hub of Shenyang. Ethnic diversity among flyers is a reality in all of the hubs with the only difference being the ethnicity of the terminal's vendors who tend to be predominantly local. Waiting for my connecting flight in Incheon, the family on my left spoke various shades of Pinoy while the African couple on my right spoke French. Directly in front were sub-Asians of Urdu and Tamil tongues, and the ones behind spoke Arabic. My plane seatmates onward to Honolulu claimed to speak primarily Guangdonghua!
Unless one takes the mid-Pacific route to America via Guam, Saipan passengers connect through Incheon or Narita for the arctic route to the continent. We had a few Chamorro hafa tots running around our terminal wing.
On board Korean Air, stewards and stewardesses clothed their service with hospitable and gracious smiles, in stark contrast to the cold precision of disciplined efficiency often cadenced on airlines of our familiarity from the West. Korean Air prepared us for the Aloha ways of the land of the rainbow connection in Hawaii. The Hangguel saram (Koreans) constitute a substantial portion of the Hawaiian population, and they no longer need to have a visa before alighting on a flight to the United States.
The fast track down O'ahu way is a bit schizoid, following the demand of punctuality that contemporary Western commercial style requires in time and attire with the laidback coconut time of the islands that tend to wait for the fruit to ripen before it falls. The image of tranquility in paradise after all is that of a surfer on firm foothold in the hollow of a wave as it crashes on the beach and the surfer avoids tumbling into the shore. Tranquility in the Pacific is hardly without tension. It is rather about standing at the pivot point of the yin-yang while it swirls to balance life's natural contradictions.
In a nation that had turned Reagan's lighthearted “trust and verify” advice to the solemn and serious “suspect, defend, and verify” of current DHS culture, the Hawaii of our familiar has become a state under siege by phantom elements that people official (a close associate works for Corrections and his eyes blazes with suspicion) and fear brainwashed citizens' imagination. It is well for the visitor to decide when it is appropriate to follow which style. Many a Hawaiian vacation hinges on this awareness.
We are on the hula palm sway to visit 92-year-old mother convalescing at a nursing home after a fall in the fall. Having caught a cough in the prolonged cold of winter up Dong Bei (Manchuria) way whose carbon-laden skies had seen blue only twice in the last 30 days, we self-quarantined ourselves from visiting the nursing home so as not to expose the residents to additional possible intruders now that the flu has been seen to be rampant across the country. Mother's attending physician exuded gratitude upon learning of our intermediate decision.
Mother Nature is not as tranquil. The overcast sky above the famed Ala Moana skyline (taken from the Pagoda Hotel where CNMI medical referrals are usually billeted) has yet to clear since we arrived. Hearing of the tornado watches and path wreckages in the Midwest, along with the rain undrained in unabated floods elsewhere, and the droughts where a drop of rain could sustain life heading toward oblivion, makes us wonder if Gaia has reached her nerves' end.
On two occasions, tornadoes have ripped through the Daiki Corp. steel manufacturing plant that employs more than 90 people in this small community. Both times, everyone inside escaped serious injury.
The sprawling facility won't be reopening anytime soon after the storm that hit Wednesday, however: Most of it has been reduced to a pile of rubble, little more than mangled beams and twisted steel. The first time, in 2002, a tornado tossed the roof into the parking lot. Ventilation fans, ductwork and wiring were torn away.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
The Hershey Management Discusses
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to The Hershey Company's Fourth Quarter 2012 Conference Call. J.P. Bilbrey, President and CEO; Bert Alfonso, Senior Vice President and CFO; and I will represent Hershey on this morning's call. We also welcome those of you listening in on the webcast.
Let me remind everyone listening that today's conference call may contain statements, which are forward-looking. These statements are based on current expectations, which are subject to risk and uncertainty. Actual results may vary materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements because of factors such as those listed in this morning's press release and in our 10-K for 2011 filed with the SEC. If you have not seen the press release, a copy is posted on our corporate website in the Investor Relations section. Included in the press release is a consolidated balance sheet and a summary of consolidated statements of income prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Within the Notes section of the press release, we have provided adjusted pro forma reconciliations of select income statement line items quantitatively reconciled to GAAP. The company uses these non-GAAP measures as key metrics for evaluating performance internally. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to replace the presentation of financial results in accordance with GAAP, rather the company believes the presentation of earnings, excluding certain items, provides additional information to investors to facilitate the comparison of past and present operations.
Thanks, Mark, and good morning to everyone on the phone and webcast. I'm pleased with Hershey's fourth quarter and full year financial and marketplace results, which represent a solid end to another good year. We accomplished our 2012 objectives while growing adjusted EPS 14.5%, our fourth consecutive year of double-digit percentage increases. We continue to build and execute our consumer-centric business model and are creating a virtuous cycle that is delivering predictable, profitable and sustainable results. We've accelerated profitable organic sales growth, increased our leadership position in the U.S. marketplace, boosted margins and returns and delivered record profitability. Outside of the U.S. and Canada our businesses continue to grow and, barring any dramatic changes related to foreign currency, we're on a path to achieve net sales of $1 billion in these markets by the end of 2014. We're operating from a position of strength. We believe there are far more opportunities ahead than successes behind us because at The Hershey Company, the future is not where we're headed but what we're creating.
Now for an overview of the U.S. candy, mint and gum category. Growth was solid in 2012 and within the 3% to 4% historical growth rate. As has been the case for the last few years, the gum category has been challenged. Excluding a decline of minus 5.5% for the gum category this year, chocolate, sweets and refreshment grew a combined 5.2% in 2012. This increase outpaced other snack alternatives such as salty snacks, cookies and crackers.
Promoters of the $38 billion Severn Barrage tidal energy project in the UK are ramping up their lobbying for the scheme, saying it would require smaller subsidies than those afforded to wind energy, and probably around the same level as nuclear, Bloomberg reports. Gregory Shenkman, chairman of Hafren Power, told a hearing in the House of Commons in London that the project – which involves a dam-like structure spanning the 18km width of the Severn River and 1,026 turbines – would be economically viable. “We plan to finance this project entirely from private sources, and it’s taken five to six years to get here so far, said Shenkman.
However, he said the project would need 30 years of support through subsidies. Across its 120 year life span, the project could produce power at about $70/MWh, nearly half the cost of nuclear. Bloomberg said the project has yet to have an environmental impact assessment. An earlier tender for a Severn power plant was ditched in 2010 because the governments said it would rely too heavily on public funds. It is estimated that it could provide 5 per cent of the UK’s energy requirements.
Meanwhile, French energy supply giant Alstom has completed the acquisition of ocean turbine maker Tidal Generation for around $78 million. The deal gives Alstom access to a 1MW turbine installed this month at the European Marine Energy Center in the Orkney Islands. Alstom says the machine has a rotor diameter of 18m, a 22m metres long nacelle and weighs 150 tonnes. It has three pitchable blades, and operates at a water depth of 40 meters, by rotating to face the incoming tide at an optimal angle, to extract the maximum energy potential.
Last week, French engineering group DCNS paid $176 million for majority stake in OpenHydro. Alstom also bought 40 percent of AWS Ocean Energy in 2011 and is working with UK utility SSE to use wave-power systems at a 200MW project off northern Scotland. Alstom also makes turbines for offshore wind farms, Bloomberg reports.
Let me remind everyone listening that today's conference call may contain statements, which are forward-looking. These statements are based on current expectations, which are subject to risk and uncertainty. Actual results may vary materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements because of factors such as those listed in this morning's press release and in our 10-K for 2011 filed with the SEC. If you have not seen the press release, a copy is posted on our corporate website in the Investor Relations section. Included in the press release is a consolidated balance sheet and a summary of consolidated statements of income prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Within the Notes section of the press release, we have provided adjusted pro forma reconciliations of select income statement line items quantitatively reconciled to GAAP. The company uses these non-GAAP measures as key metrics for evaluating performance internally. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to replace the presentation of financial results in accordance with GAAP, rather the company believes the presentation of earnings, excluding certain items, provides additional information to investors to facilitate the comparison of past and present operations.
Thanks, Mark, and good morning to everyone on the phone and webcast. I'm pleased with Hershey's fourth quarter and full year financial and marketplace results, which represent a solid end to another good year. We accomplished our 2012 objectives while growing adjusted EPS 14.5%, our fourth consecutive year of double-digit percentage increases. We continue to build and execute our consumer-centric business model and are creating a virtuous cycle that is delivering predictable, profitable and sustainable results. We've accelerated profitable organic sales growth, increased our leadership position in the U.S. marketplace, boosted margins and returns and delivered record profitability. Outside of the U.S. and Canada our businesses continue to grow and, barring any dramatic changes related to foreign currency, we're on a path to achieve net sales of $1 billion in these markets by the end of 2014. We're operating from a position of strength. We believe there are far more opportunities ahead than successes behind us because at The Hershey Company, the future is not where we're headed but what we're creating.
Now for an overview of the U.S. candy, mint and gum category. Growth was solid in 2012 and within the 3% to 4% historical growth rate. As has been the case for the last few years, the gum category has been challenged. Excluding a decline of minus 5.5% for the gum category this year, chocolate, sweets and refreshment grew a combined 5.2% in 2012. This increase outpaced other snack alternatives such as salty snacks, cookies and crackers.
Promoters of the $38 billion Severn Barrage tidal energy project in the UK are ramping up their lobbying for the scheme, saying it would require smaller subsidies than those afforded to wind energy, and probably around the same level as nuclear, Bloomberg reports. Gregory Shenkman, chairman of Hafren Power, told a hearing in the House of Commons in London that the project – which involves a dam-like structure spanning the 18km width of the Severn River and 1,026 turbines – would be economically viable. “We plan to finance this project entirely from private sources, and it’s taken five to six years to get here so far, said Shenkman.
However, he said the project would need 30 years of support through subsidies. Across its 120 year life span, the project could produce power at about $70/MWh, nearly half the cost of nuclear. Bloomberg said the project has yet to have an environmental impact assessment. An earlier tender for a Severn power plant was ditched in 2010 because the governments said it would rely too heavily on public funds. It is estimated that it could provide 5 per cent of the UK’s energy requirements.
Meanwhile, French energy supply giant Alstom has completed the acquisition of ocean turbine maker Tidal Generation for around $78 million. The deal gives Alstom access to a 1MW turbine installed this month at the European Marine Energy Center in the Orkney Islands. Alstom says the machine has a rotor diameter of 18m, a 22m metres long nacelle and weighs 150 tonnes. It has three pitchable blades, and operates at a water depth of 40 meters, by rotating to face the incoming tide at an optimal angle, to extract the maximum energy potential.
Last week, French engineering group DCNS paid $176 million for majority stake in OpenHydro. Alstom also bought 40 percent of AWS Ocean Energy in 2011 and is working with UK utility SSE to use wave-power systems at a 200MW project off northern Scotland. Alstom also makes turbines for offshore wind farms, Bloomberg reports.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Obama's Climate Push to Benefit Energy-Saving Companies
President Barack Obama's promise to attack climate change is likely to light a fire under federal agencies slow to comply with a mandate to cut energy use - which could be very good news for companies that specialize in systems that save power.
Waiting in the wings are the likes of Honeywell International Inc, Johnson Controls Inc and Ameresco Inc that are ready to carry out heating and cooling system upgrades, lighting retrofits and similar projects in some of the government's 500,000 buildings.
Efficiency projects, according to many, are a key way the government can reduce its own energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without seeking additional funds from Congress.
Many of these projects are implemented under so-called energy savings performance contracts in which a company develops, installs and arranges financing for improvements to boost energy efficiency and lower costs. The energy service company guarantees the project's energy savings and services are repaid through those savings.
In late 2009, Obama mandated that federal agencies make significant reductions in energy consumption. The aim was for the government to "lead by example" by upgrading many of its facilities. Two years later, the administration tried to jumpstart that work by setting a goal for federal agencies to enter into at least $2 billion of energy efficiency projects within two years.
"There is a lot more potential in the program than what's been done today," said Adam Procell, executive vice president at Lime Energy Co, which works with larger companies such as Johnson Controls to design and install energy efficiency projects for federal customers.
With Obama renewing his commitment to combat climate change in his second inaugural address this week, some expect to see more pressure on agencies to get going on those projects.
"If President Obama was to let all of his administrators know that this was an important priority of his, you could see reacceleration of this market in a relatively short period of time," said Wedbush Securities analyst Craig Irwin, who follows energy efficiency companies.
With less than a year left to reach the $2 billion goal, major efficiency companies have been working to develop project proposals and expect a string of contracts to be awarded this year.
"In the last six months, federal government activity has heated up," Paul Orzeske, president of Honeywell Building Solutions, said in an interview. "That's going to step up as the year goes on."
In October, Honeywell won an $80.6 million project to improve energy efficiency at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the largest such project ever awarded by the federal government, according to Orzeske. Most such projects are in the $10 million to $15 million range, he added.
The upgrades are expected to save more than $170 million over 20 years, guaranteed by Honeywell through the contract.
Other energy service companies poised to benefit from federal project awards include Ameresco and United Technologies Corp's Noresco unit, both of which have been active in the federal market in recent years. Other companies that have done federal projects in the past include Clark Energy Group LLC, Siemens AG and Schneider Electric SA.
The U.S. market for energy efficiency and services topped $5.1 billion in 2011, according to Pike Research, and is expected to reach $16 billion in sales by 2020. The market is dominated by municipal, university, school and hospital projects, but demand from federal agencies has increased because of the Obama administration's mandate and economic stimulus programs, the report said.
Johnson Controls Building Efficiency's vice president of government relations, Mark Wagner, said the government has not yet addressed what will happen once it meets its $2 billion goal, but he was encouraged by Obama's renewed pledge to address climate change.
"The budget is going to be tight in the federal government for the foreseeable future," Wagner said. "If government agencies want to make their facilities more efficient, performance contracting is the way to address their needs and to address climate change."
Johnson Controls won a $16 million contract in late 2011 to put in a solar energy installation and make other efficiency improvements at Fort Bliss, the nation's largest military installation.
Smaller companies that supply equipment or software to the project developers could also see a boost from federal projects, according to Aditya Ranade, who leads the sustainable building materials team at technology research firm Lux Research.
Specifically, Ranade called out LED and lighting systems companies Acuity Brands Inc and Digital Lumens and Optimum Energy LLC, which uses software and cloud computing to optimize heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as companies that could see a boost in orders from federal contracts.
Waiting in the wings are the likes of Honeywell International Inc, Johnson Controls Inc and Ameresco Inc that are ready to carry out heating and cooling system upgrades, lighting retrofits and similar projects in some of the government's 500,000 buildings.
Efficiency projects, according to many, are a key way the government can reduce its own energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without seeking additional funds from Congress.
Many of these projects are implemented under so-called energy savings performance contracts in which a company develops, installs and arranges financing for improvements to boost energy efficiency and lower costs. The energy service company guarantees the project's energy savings and services are repaid through those savings.
In late 2009, Obama mandated that federal agencies make significant reductions in energy consumption. The aim was for the government to "lead by example" by upgrading many of its facilities. Two years later, the administration tried to jumpstart that work by setting a goal for federal agencies to enter into at least $2 billion of energy efficiency projects within two years.
"There is a lot more potential in the program than what's been done today," said Adam Procell, executive vice president at Lime Energy Co, which works with larger companies such as Johnson Controls to design and install energy efficiency projects for federal customers.
With Obama renewing his commitment to combat climate change in his second inaugural address this week, some expect to see more pressure on agencies to get going on those projects.
"If President Obama was to let all of his administrators know that this was an important priority of his, you could see reacceleration of this market in a relatively short period of time," said Wedbush Securities analyst Craig Irwin, who follows energy efficiency companies.
With less than a year left to reach the $2 billion goal, major efficiency companies have been working to develop project proposals and expect a string of contracts to be awarded this year.
"In the last six months, federal government activity has heated up," Paul Orzeske, president of Honeywell Building Solutions, said in an interview. "That's going to step up as the year goes on."
In October, Honeywell won an $80.6 million project to improve energy efficiency at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, the largest such project ever awarded by the federal government, according to Orzeske. Most such projects are in the $10 million to $15 million range, he added.
The upgrades are expected to save more than $170 million over 20 years, guaranteed by Honeywell through the contract.
Other energy service companies poised to benefit from federal project awards include Ameresco and United Technologies Corp's Noresco unit, both of which have been active in the federal market in recent years. Other companies that have done federal projects in the past include Clark Energy Group LLC, Siemens AG and Schneider Electric SA.
The U.S. market for energy efficiency and services topped $5.1 billion in 2011, according to Pike Research, and is expected to reach $16 billion in sales by 2020. The market is dominated by municipal, university, school and hospital projects, but demand from federal agencies has increased because of the Obama administration's mandate and economic stimulus programs, the report said.
Johnson Controls Building Efficiency's vice president of government relations, Mark Wagner, said the government has not yet addressed what will happen once it meets its $2 billion goal, but he was encouraged by Obama's renewed pledge to address climate change.
"The budget is going to be tight in the federal government for the foreseeable future," Wagner said. "If government agencies want to make their facilities more efficient, performance contracting is the way to address their needs and to address climate change."
Johnson Controls won a $16 million contract in late 2011 to put in a solar energy installation and make other efficiency improvements at Fort Bliss, the nation's largest military installation.
Smaller companies that supply equipment or software to the project developers could also see a boost from federal projects, according to Aditya Ranade, who leads the sustainable building materials team at technology research firm Lux Research.
Specifically, Ranade called out LED and lighting systems companies Acuity Brands Inc and Digital Lumens and Optimum Energy LLC, which uses software and cloud computing to optimize heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as companies that could see a boost in orders from federal contracts.
Mint Announces Signing of Agreement with Arab Link Money Transfer
Arab Link provides a comprehensive range of currency exchange and money transfer services for individuals and businesses. A formal Remittance Product Agreement ("RPA") will be developed and executed over the next 30 days. Mint and Arab Link will then begin to offer Money Transfer services to Mint's payroll cardholder base in UAE for sending money home.
Mint payroll cardholders will be able to access money remittance services through Mint ATMs, Mint POS machines, mobile remittance and directly through Arab Link. Beneficiaries of funds will be able to receive funds as cash over-the-counter, credit to their bank account and door-to-door delivery where available.
Nabil Bader, Mint CEO, said today, "Mint recently announced a change of course in respect to our money remittance delivery strategy. This is a very fast moving business with new technologies and service providers entering the space all the time. Mint is a very large customer for any of these providers. Our partnership with Arab Link is a low risk, lower reward strategy than the previously announced acquisition but one we are now more comfortable with following completion of the Arab Link negotiations. Mint and Arab Link have agreed a revenue share arrangement on a per transaction basis."
Chris Hogg, Mint Executive Chairman, said today, "Changing course is part of building a dynamic business model in a very fast growing market. We have to be ready to respond. We are delighted with the potential of this new relationship with Arab Link which enables us to now complete our value added services offering in addition to our existing mobile top up and micro finance business units."
"The UAE remittance market continues to grow and our partnership with Mint is aimed at capturing a sizable share of this market, whilst simplifying the money transfer process, making it more convenient, quicker and less costly for customers," said Rob Groombridge, CEO of Arab Link.
Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking" statements. These statements relate to future events or our future performance. All such statements involve substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results to vary from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including the risk that the Company may not receive all necessary approvals to proceed with those transactions. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, they should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and they will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of Mint believes are reasonable assumptions on the date of this news release, Mint cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and Mint disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities regulations.
Yesterday, Travis reported on Baltimore Ravens safety Bernard Pollard’s prediction that in 30 years, the National Football League will die because making necessary changes to improve the safety of the game will produce a sport that no one wants to watch. I think both that scenario and the one that Travis himself lays out are not unrealistic. But it’s also worth remembering that the NFL’s life or death won’t happen in a closed surgical theater. There are people other than the players and owners, and in college, the athletics programs and fundraising departments, with a vested interest in keeping football alive and immensely popular.
Significant among those interests? Broadcast television and ESPN. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, the League is touting the performance of football on television. 55 percent of the television broadcasts since September 1, 2010, that averaged at least 20 million viewers were of NFL football games, or 135 out of 247 broadcasts. The next-closest program? American Idol, with 39 broadcasts, followed by the London Olympics, with 18. The first scripted program on the list is NCIS, with 11 broadcasts that hit 20 million. There’s no wonder broadcast nets pay big for the games they air: Sunday Night Football is part of what’s helped NBC rebound from fourth place to first in the ratings.
Some of that’s an indication of the increasing weakness of broadcast television, which has had a tremendously difficult time launching scripted programming that finds an audience anywhere near that large, and which has seen the numbers on big reality programs, like Idol and Dancing With The Stars decline. But that weakness means the value of football is two-fold. Football broadcasts prop up television’s advertising revenue model. And they provide a potential launching platform for new programming. That’s one of the reasons the Super Bowl rotates from network to network every year: it’s such a critically important platform for showcasing existing programming to one of the largest audiences that assembles in front of the television anymore.
And that’s just on broadcast: football’s even more important to both cable networks and the cable business model. People who oppose cable bundling frequently complain about the price of sports channels, but access to lots and lots of football is one of the reasons sports make cable seem like a good deal for the more than 100 million American households who subscribe to it. The death of football through formal dismantlement or a rising disinterest and distaste would make bundled cable television seem less valuable.
Television, in other words, badly needs the NFL to stay healthy. What that means the industry can, and will, do remains an open question. But football and television’s futures are deeply intertwined, and at a time when the content television is creating for itself is having trouble finding an audience, those ties are tighter than ever.
Mint payroll cardholders will be able to access money remittance services through Mint ATMs, Mint POS machines, mobile remittance and directly through Arab Link. Beneficiaries of funds will be able to receive funds as cash over-the-counter, credit to their bank account and door-to-door delivery where available.
Nabil Bader, Mint CEO, said today, "Mint recently announced a change of course in respect to our money remittance delivery strategy. This is a very fast moving business with new technologies and service providers entering the space all the time. Mint is a very large customer for any of these providers. Our partnership with Arab Link is a low risk, lower reward strategy than the previously announced acquisition but one we are now more comfortable with following completion of the Arab Link negotiations. Mint and Arab Link have agreed a revenue share arrangement on a per transaction basis."
Chris Hogg, Mint Executive Chairman, said today, "Changing course is part of building a dynamic business model in a very fast growing market. We have to be ready to respond. We are delighted with the potential of this new relationship with Arab Link which enables us to now complete our value added services offering in addition to our existing mobile top up and micro finance business units."
"The UAE remittance market continues to grow and our partnership with Mint is aimed at capturing a sizable share of this market, whilst simplifying the money transfer process, making it more convenient, quicker and less costly for customers," said Rob Groombridge, CEO of Arab Link.
Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking" statements. These statements relate to future events or our future performance. All such statements involve substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results to vary from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including the risk that the Company may not receive all necessary approvals to proceed with those transactions. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, they should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and they will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of Mint believes are reasonable assumptions on the date of this news release, Mint cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and Mint disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities regulations.
Yesterday, Travis reported on Baltimore Ravens safety Bernard Pollard’s prediction that in 30 years, the National Football League will die because making necessary changes to improve the safety of the game will produce a sport that no one wants to watch. I think both that scenario and the one that Travis himself lays out are not unrealistic. But it’s also worth remembering that the NFL’s life or death won’t happen in a closed surgical theater. There are people other than the players and owners, and in college, the athletics programs and fundraising departments, with a vested interest in keeping football alive and immensely popular.
Significant among those interests? Broadcast television and ESPN. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, the League is touting the performance of football on television. 55 percent of the television broadcasts since September 1, 2010, that averaged at least 20 million viewers were of NFL football games, or 135 out of 247 broadcasts. The next-closest program? American Idol, with 39 broadcasts, followed by the London Olympics, with 18. The first scripted program on the list is NCIS, with 11 broadcasts that hit 20 million. There’s no wonder broadcast nets pay big for the games they air: Sunday Night Football is part of what’s helped NBC rebound from fourth place to first in the ratings.
Some of that’s an indication of the increasing weakness of broadcast television, which has had a tremendously difficult time launching scripted programming that finds an audience anywhere near that large, and which has seen the numbers on big reality programs, like Idol and Dancing With The Stars decline. But that weakness means the value of football is two-fold. Football broadcasts prop up television’s advertising revenue model. And they provide a potential launching platform for new programming. That’s one of the reasons the Super Bowl rotates from network to network every year: it’s such a critically important platform for showcasing existing programming to one of the largest audiences that assembles in front of the television anymore.
And that’s just on broadcast: football’s even more important to both cable networks and the cable business model. People who oppose cable bundling frequently complain about the price of sports channels, but access to lots and lots of football is one of the reasons sports make cable seem like a good deal for the more than 100 million American households who subscribe to it. The death of football through formal dismantlement or a rising disinterest and distaste would make bundled cable television seem less valuable.
Television, in other words, badly needs the NFL to stay healthy. What that means the industry can, and will, do remains an open question. But football and television’s futures are deeply intertwined, and at a time when the content television is creating for itself is having trouble finding an audience, those ties are tighter than ever.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
‘We didn’t throw things at each other…’
Writing about a writer is difficult, and writing about the author of a book that changed the literary landscape forever is nothing short of terrifying. Happily, Salman Rushdie is remarkably easy to talk to and extremely matter-of-fact about the alchemy that creates those dizzying staircases of words on which he takes the reader on magic, swirling trips.
So there we were on blistery, bright afternoon in Bangalore with actor Shriya Saran, director Deepa Mehta and super-articulate Salman talking about the film version of his adamantly unfilmable baap of Bookers, Midnight’s Children.
“Really easy, I just took out chunks,” Salman says with a laugh. “The script began at more than double the length. The first version was 250 pages, which was obviously ridiculous. It would have been a four-and-a-half-hour film! It was just a process of finding what was essential and what was not. The novel is deliberately digressional. I think some of the stories are quite interesting, but in a movie you have to find that true line that will grab you at the beginning,” he says.
About the collaboration, Salman says with a laugh, “We didn’t throw things at each other; it is difficult to throw things from New York to Toronto! It was oddly civilised. We would disagree, but then we would just argue it out.” “It was always about the film,” adds Deepa. “It wasn’t about the ego.”
Salman admits to the challenge of presenting magic realism on screen. “In a film that basically looks naturalistic, how do you integrate magic into the real world without it looking stupid? The effects were some of the hardest things to get right.”
A case of the book being the canvas of the mind while a film is on a canvas of celluloid. “Film, in general, has a problem with interiority,” Salman says. “Film is all ‘do’. You have to understand the interior life through exterior action. Here is something that is happening inside the character’s head. How do you represent that?”
The film has done the festival circuit, and Salman talks of “two of the funniest comments we heard. There was this person who said, ‘it is like Forrest Gump with brown people! I wanted to say this book was written a long time before Forrest Gump, so maybe Forrest Gump is like Midnight’s Children with white people! And someone else compared it to X-Men — you know people with magical powers!”
The author admits to enjoying his new space — promoting a film rather than a novel. “The fun thing is other people can do some of the talking! I spent most of my life sitting in a room with myself, scribbling. Suddenly to be working with other people was a very new and nice thing for me. After all these years of writing novels, I have been working on three projects, and none of them has been a novel — my book which is non-fiction, the screen play, and I am in the relatively early stage of developing a TV series. I am now sort of itching to get back into the room by myself.”
About the TV series he is working on, Salman says: “It is a bit of science fiction and a bit of politics and very, very weird. Weird is what does best in cable television drama. Nobody wants another police detective story. But a detective who is a serial killer in his spare time is good. I guess they came to me because they thought here is somebody who can do weird!”
The film has several languages, including “Kashmiri, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, some Hindi and some English”, says Salman. “There is a scene at the end of the Bangladesh war where the Pakistani general has to surrender to his Indian counterpart. In that generation, they’d all have gone to Sandhurst, and would be whiskey-soda guys, speaking whiskey-soda English—‘bad show old sport’ kind of thing. While the film is primarily in English, it is adulterated with other languages.”
Subtitles, Salman says “are not a problem anymore, thanks to Slumdog Millionaire. It showed the American distributors that subtitles don’t matter. Where possible, the subtitles are very close, if not exactly like the dialogue in the novel. So it was another way of having the flavour of the novel in writing on screen. When the Kashmiri boatman says ‘that is a nose to start a family on’, he is saying it in Kashmiri, but the subtitles use the actual line from the book.”
Harper's government claims the revamped law will enhance property ownership and economic growth in designated Aboriginal lands that are hurting economically. Of course, the methods they want to employ are based on the same philosophy that has oppressed native people since Europeans first arrived on American shores and First Nations people have not been consulted with in the whole ramming through of Bill C-45 in the Canadian Parliament.
They want to ease federal regulations to make it easier for big corporations and (compliant?) Canadian provincial governments to promote economic growth, but based on rules that pay no attention to sustainability, that trample native fishing rights, and that are based on artificial map boundaries that bear no relation to the fragile reality of ecosystems.
What's also so disturbing about what's happening in Canada is that those in power are, once again, pitting native Aboriginal groups against each other in the quest to achieve goals that most certainly are not focused on the welfare of those First Nations people. Of course, this tried and true strategy has worked throughout the ages when the powerful seek to take from the less powerful. Keep them impoverished, then promise them good-paying jobs and thriving, rich communities if they just...allow a corporation to come in and rape the landscape. Be really nice to the tribal people based upstream and "share" the riches from the minerals or oil extracted there, but ignore those that are downstream and who will be (literally) pissed on when polluted waters kill their fish and destroy their drinking water.
And that brings us to another typical aspect of this proposal in Ottawa. It's one that is very familiar here in the U.S. Neoliberal policies are completely wedded to, and happily ever after with, the practice of displacement of costs.
The Harper government wants to give more power to Provincial governments by weakening federal environmental regulations, which is the same game that's been played for decades by right-wingers here in the United States. Promise the high-paying jobs in one community and to hell with the town...or province...or other country...and any ecosystems that are downstream. Play them off against each other and laugh all the way to the bank while the planet dies and those that you exploit are fighting amongst themselves. All the while, get the compliant, mainstream media to play your tune to the masses and keep them ill-informed, distracted, and divided.
The divide and conquer approach by the powers-that-be has been applied repeatedly throughout the world so corporate interests benefit economically at the expense of the environment and poorer people (the 99%, in their world view). Here in the U.S., this strategy is currently in overdrive with the Keystone pipeline issue, pitting small farmers, environmentalists, tribal people, and others against labor unions. It's also happening with mountaintop removal in West Virginia and other states, and with the proposed "coal trains" that are intended to ship mountains of coal to China by ferrying the material across the west- and Pacific-coast states to various ports. Locals who are desperate for work in an economy that is being held hostage by corporate interests and their puppets in the U.S. government are pitted against others who are adversely affected by that economic development that benefits the first group.
As Idle No More and other grassroots movements such as Occupy Wall Street emphasize again, it's all about an economic/political system with "values" that do not focus on the future or the common good, but only on short-term gain (for a few). These movements remind that if those in power prioritized sustainability and renewable energy resources, for instance, that we would all benefit. The planet can be protected and sustainable jobs created as well. But the few who benefit massively from the predominant, neoliberal model would be deprived of their massive, short-term profits, especially those in the extraction industries.
Therefore, in the instance of Bill C-45 and the native people in Canada, the latter must be forced to speak the English of that economic system, ostensibly for their own good. It's just another example of the same old arrogance and paternalism of the western European model that's always been shoved down the throats of native people.
The Idle No More effort is also a stark reminder that no country is immune from the ravages of the neoliberal, corporate global rule model. For many progressives in the United States, for instance, Canada has been perceived as the "kinder, gentler" nation, where the common good has always been recognized as an essential part of the culture. This is the land where draft evaders could flee the U.S. during the Vietnam War and many fantasized about moving to during years of the far-right swing under George W. Bush.
Apparently, that's no longer the case, under Harper. This became clear when Canada began shipping back Iraq war evaders and is more apparent now with the Harper government's policies that display contempt for anything "environmental."
Maybe that's a good thing. So now the global emperor is even more without clothes and a wake-up call has been issued to us all. While the powers-that-be want to tear down boundary lines for the purposes of their making big profits, such as through "free" trade deals, they don't want to extend that philosophy to the 99% if it means environmental protections or labor rights. And they most certainly don't want movements such as Idle No More to begin transcending the boundaries that they have established to keep us all divided and conquered.
So there we were on blistery, bright afternoon in Bangalore with actor Shriya Saran, director Deepa Mehta and super-articulate Salman talking about the film version of his adamantly unfilmable baap of Bookers, Midnight’s Children.
“Really easy, I just took out chunks,” Salman says with a laugh. “The script began at more than double the length. The first version was 250 pages, which was obviously ridiculous. It would have been a four-and-a-half-hour film! It was just a process of finding what was essential and what was not. The novel is deliberately digressional. I think some of the stories are quite interesting, but in a movie you have to find that true line that will grab you at the beginning,” he says.
About the collaboration, Salman says with a laugh, “We didn’t throw things at each other; it is difficult to throw things from New York to Toronto! It was oddly civilised. We would disagree, but then we would just argue it out.” “It was always about the film,” adds Deepa. “It wasn’t about the ego.”
Salman admits to the challenge of presenting magic realism on screen. “In a film that basically looks naturalistic, how do you integrate magic into the real world without it looking stupid? The effects were some of the hardest things to get right.”
A case of the book being the canvas of the mind while a film is on a canvas of celluloid. “Film, in general, has a problem with interiority,” Salman says. “Film is all ‘do’. You have to understand the interior life through exterior action. Here is something that is happening inside the character’s head. How do you represent that?”
The film has done the festival circuit, and Salman talks of “two of the funniest comments we heard. There was this person who said, ‘it is like Forrest Gump with brown people! I wanted to say this book was written a long time before Forrest Gump, so maybe Forrest Gump is like Midnight’s Children with white people! And someone else compared it to X-Men — you know people with magical powers!”
The author admits to enjoying his new space — promoting a film rather than a novel. “The fun thing is other people can do some of the talking! I spent most of my life sitting in a room with myself, scribbling. Suddenly to be working with other people was a very new and nice thing for me. After all these years of writing novels, I have been working on three projects, and none of them has been a novel — my book which is non-fiction, the screen play, and I am in the relatively early stage of developing a TV series. I am now sort of itching to get back into the room by myself.”
About the TV series he is working on, Salman says: “It is a bit of science fiction and a bit of politics and very, very weird. Weird is what does best in cable television drama. Nobody wants another police detective story. But a detective who is a serial killer in his spare time is good. I guess they came to me because they thought here is somebody who can do weird!”
The film has several languages, including “Kashmiri, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, some Hindi and some English”, says Salman. “There is a scene at the end of the Bangladesh war where the Pakistani general has to surrender to his Indian counterpart. In that generation, they’d all have gone to Sandhurst, and would be whiskey-soda guys, speaking whiskey-soda English—‘bad show old sport’ kind of thing. While the film is primarily in English, it is adulterated with other languages.”
Subtitles, Salman says “are not a problem anymore, thanks to Slumdog Millionaire. It showed the American distributors that subtitles don’t matter. Where possible, the subtitles are very close, if not exactly like the dialogue in the novel. So it was another way of having the flavour of the novel in writing on screen. When the Kashmiri boatman says ‘that is a nose to start a family on’, he is saying it in Kashmiri, but the subtitles use the actual line from the book.”
Harper's government claims the revamped law will enhance property ownership and economic growth in designated Aboriginal lands that are hurting economically. Of course, the methods they want to employ are based on the same philosophy that has oppressed native people since Europeans first arrived on American shores and First Nations people have not been consulted with in the whole ramming through of Bill C-45 in the Canadian Parliament.
They want to ease federal regulations to make it easier for big corporations and (compliant?) Canadian provincial governments to promote economic growth, but based on rules that pay no attention to sustainability, that trample native fishing rights, and that are based on artificial map boundaries that bear no relation to the fragile reality of ecosystems.
What's also so disturbing about what's happening in Canada is that those in power are, once again, pitting native Aboriginal groups against each other in the quest to achieve goals that most certainly are not focused on the welfare of those First Nations people. Of course, this tried and true strategy has worked throughout the ages when the powerful seek to take from the less powerful. Keep them impoverished, then promise them good-paying jobs and thriving, rich communities if they just...allow a corporation to come in and rape the landscape. Be really nice to the tribal people based upstream and "share" the riches from the minerals or oil extracted there, but ignore those that are downstream and who will be (literally) pissed on when polluted waters kill their fish and destroy their drinking water.
And that brings us to another typical aspect of this proposal in Ottawa. It's one that is very familiar here in the U.S. Neoliberal policies are completely wedded to, and happily ever after with, the practice of displacement of costs.
The Harper government wants to give more power to Provincial governments by weakening federal environmental regulations, which is the same game that's been played for decades by right-wingers here in the United States. Promise the high-paying jobs in one community and to hell with the town...or province...or other country...and any ecosystems that are downstream. Play them off against each other and laugh all the way to the bank while the planet dies and those that you exploit are fighting amongst themselves. All the while, get the compliant, mainstream media to play your tune to the masses and keep them ill-informed, distracted, and divided.
The divide and conquer approach by the powers-that-be has been applied repeatedly throughout the world so corporate interests benefit economically at the expense of the environment and poorer people (the 99%, in their world view). Here in the U.S., this strategy is currently in overdrive with the Keystone pipeline issue, pitting small farmers, environmentalists, tribal people, and others against labor unions. It's also happening with mountaintop removal in West Virginia and other states, and with the proposed "coal trains" that are intended to ship mountains of coal to China by ferrying the material across the west- and Pacific-coast states to various ports. Locals who are desperate for work in an economy that is being held hostage by corporate interests and their puppets in the U.S. government are pitted against others who are adversely affected by that economic development that benefits the first group.
As Idle No More and other grassroots movements such as Occupy Wall Street emphasize again, it's all about an economic/political system with "values" that do not focus on the future or the common good, but only on short-term gain (for a few). These movements remind that if those in power prioritized sustainability and renewable energy resources, for instance, that we would all benefit. The planet can be protected and sustainable jobs created as well. But the few who benefit massively from the predominant, neoliberal model would be deprived of their massive, short-term profits, especially those in the extraction industries.
Therefore, in the instance of Bill C-45 and the native people in Canada, the latter must be forced to speak the English of that economic system, ostensibly for their own good. It's just another example of the same old arrogance and paternalism of the western European model that's always been shoved down the throats of native people.
The Idle No More effort is also a stark reminder that no country is immune from the ravages of the neoliberal, corporate global rule model. For many progressives in the United States, for instance, Canada has been perceived as the "kinder, gentler" nation, where the common good has always been recognized as an essential part of the culture. This is the land where draft evaders could flee the U.S. during the Vietnam War and many fantasized about moving to during years of the far-right swing under George W. Bush.
Apparently, that's no longer the case, under Harper. This became clear when Canada began shipping back Iraq war evaders and is more apparent now with the Harper government's policies that display contempt for anything "environmental."
Maybe that's a good thing. So now the global emperor is even more without clothes and a wake-up call has been issued to us all. While the powers-that-be want to tear down boundary lines for the purposes of their making big profits, such as through "free" trade deals, they don't want to extend that philosophy to the 99% if it means environmental protections or labor rights. And they most certainly don't want movements such as Idle No More to begin transcending the boundaries that they have established to keep us all divided and conquered.
William Scott Retrospective Opens At Tate St Ives
Scott moved effortlessly between abstraction still-life and figuration with equal confidence creating works of an international standard. Born in 1913 in a career spanning six decades, Scott produced an extraordinary body of work that has secured his reputation as one of the leading forces in British painting from the 1950's right through to the 1970's. Exhibiting in America and Europe from the early 1950s, Scott is renowned for his powerful handling of paint, his exploration of colour and the unstable boundaries between subjective form and abstraction. This exhibition is the first major showing of the artist in the UK for over 20 years.
In 1953 whilst in New York William Scott met Mark Rothko, the first British artist to do so. They became close friends and when Rothko came to Britain in 1959 he stayed with William Scott's family in their cottage in Somerset. Photographs taken by James Scott during this stay and letters between William Scott and Mark Rothko held at the William Scott foundation shed light on the profound influence Rothko had on Scotts mature paintings.
To mark the achievements of this internationally acclaimed modern painter, Tate St Ives, in association with Hepworth Wakefield and Ulster Museum, Belfast, are showcasing an important retrospective exhibition. Beginning at Tate St Ives 26 January with a series of thematic rooms the exhibition will evolve as it travels to Hepworth Wakefield, before expanding into a survey exhibition at Ulster Museum, Belfast. In collaboration with the William Scott Estate, which is currently finalising a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings, the works will be drawn from major collections across the UK and Ireland.
Working across the genres of still life, landscape and the nude, Scott developed a unique language that pushed the boundaries of abstraction and figuration, leaving an influential legacy of work which mediates important developments in mid-twentieth century European and American painting. His work is often charged with a sensuality emanating from his dynamic compositions as well as the vitality of his paint surfaces. Consequently the works have an enduring human quality that continues to be as fresh and relevant today as it was over fifty years ago.
The project is led by Sara Matson, Curator at Tate St Ives with Chris Stephens, Lead Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain, Frances Guy, Head of Exhibitions at Hepworth Wakefield and Anne Stewart, Curator of Fine art at the Ulster Museum.
A new book on William Scott by Sarah Whitfield will be published by Tate to mark the centenary and exhibition. This will be followed by a catalogue of the exhibition produced in collaboration with the William Scott Foundation, encapsulating the tour, in its final manifestation in Belfast.
For most of the five-hour trek, I’m followed by stalker hawkers. That’s what I call them. Locals wearing casual attire and flimsy slippers, and each hefting a heavy bag loaded with bottled water, souvenir books, postcards, and T-shirts and hats emblazoned with such mottos as: “It takes a great man to climb the Great Wall.” n I try to ignore the first woman who matches my pace, stopping, resting, slowing down and speeding up for great distances. I hope she’ll tire — no chance. Then I hope that once I stop for lunch in one of the myriad watchtowers, she’ll become bored and move on. Instead, she pulls out her lunch box and sits nearby. Finally, I’m resigned and end up buying a T-shirt.
By the time she and several others over the course of the rigorous route follow and eventually take leave of me, my backpack is stuffed with bottles of water, half a dozen postcards and a couple of T-shirts. My take-away lesson from hiking the Great Wall turns out to be one of patience and acceptance.
My hike is a steep scramble on all fours, up and down the dilapidated, narrow stone path where weeds poke through and shrubs grow. The brick stairs that rise and fall are loose or missing, with gaping holes in places. Even when they’re functional, the risers stand a couple of feet high and can barely accommodate the length of a human foot. Resorting to crawling becomes the routine.
Whenever I stop — which is often — and gaze about, the sweeping vistas resemble a virtual Chinese brush painting: misty forested hills and lush valleys, and the ever-present serpentine wall, dotted with towers, winding in both directions over the undulating peaks. It’s these views that make the effort worth every step.
Following China’s rugged Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai is like a test of endurance at times. I’m either climbing up or down the symbolic dragon’s back, carefully watching each step for fear that a misplaced foot will mean falling into a hole or careening off the Great Wall itself that perches over a precipitous landscape.
On this eastward seven-some-mile trek, the first and last parts are restored sections, where I can easily enter one of the multistoried watchtowers and imagine the soldiers scanning the broad landscape, sending black smoke signals or lighting fires to alert others to an impending attack.
Severing the alliance reflects the initiative of the museum’s newly hired executive director, Malcolm Warner, who is pushing the museum to add breadth to its California art focus by paying attention to other nature-based art.
“We’re not turning our back on celebrating landscape plein air painters; we want to open up to a celebration of art that engages natures,” said Warner, who sketched out a still evolving plan to replace the invitational with a conference or festival that involves scientists, environmentalists and artists that work with natural phenomenon. Hosting LPAPA’s fall invitational was “too much effort in support of one genre,” said Warner, whose decision was endorsed by the museum’s board on Jan. 8.
The museum, of course, owes its founding to the town’s early Impressionist landscape artists, such as Anna Hills and Edgar Payne. Even so, the Plein Air Painters Association intends to carry on that legacy independently and in a permanent venue that will display its members works, long-term goals of the art organization founded in 1996 by local landscape artists. Previously, the group held temporary exhibitions at various galleries.
Carrying out the upcoming 15th invitational, where 40 painters from across the country are invited for a week-long on-location painting competition, will be a challenge, said Greg Vail, the group’s president. “I’m hoping supporters will help us,” he said, figuring catering, prize money, accounting, credit card processing and other miscellany at about $160,000. Previously, revenue from paintings sold at the contest was divvied up, with most going to the artist and the remainder between LPAPA and the museum, which provided support staff and the venue. “Now we will be sharing equally with the artist,” said Vail, who was promised use of the venue for the invitational without cost.
“It’s an ideal solution for LPAPA; they’ve done something impossible up to now,” said Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum, referring to the organization’s lack of a physical home. Though the event will lose some of its historical luster by decamping from its ancestral home, it continues to reinforce Laguna’s legacy as a city founded by artists, said Stern, who served as judge of LPAPA’s last invitational, a task he’s performed at similar events around the country.
“They see a real strategic value in having Laguna’s cultural legacy in their midst,” Vail said of the expected new owners of the 85-acre nine-hole golf course and 62 aging suites. He described a hand-shake deal with one of the principals involved in the pending transaction with Aliso Creek Properties LLC, which also owns the nearby Montage resort. Joan Gladstone, a spokeswoman for the owners, said she could not provide any projection as to when the sale will close.
The principal, who Vail declined to identify, described informal plans for updating and expanding the venue’s meeting space. “There’s a strong business case for doing this,” said Vail, who for two years previously worked for the Inn’s current owners on a redevelopment plan that was ultimately shelved.
In 1953 whilst in New York William Scott met Mark Rothko, the first British artist to do so. They became close friends and when Rothko came to Britain in 1959 he stayed with William Scott's family in their cottage in Somerset. Photographs taken by James Scott during this stay and letters between William Scott and Mark Rothko held at the William Scott foundation shed light on the profound influence Rothko had on Scotts mature paintings.
To mark the achievements of this internationally acclaimed modern painter, Tate St Ives, in association with Hepworth Wakefield and Ulster Museum, Belfast, are showcasing an important retrospective exhibition. Beginning at Tate St Ives 26 January with a series of thematic rooms the exhibition will evolve as it travels to Hepworth Wakefield, before expanding into a survey exhibition at Ulster Museum, Belfast. In collaboration with the William Scott Estate, which is currently finalising a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings, the works will be drawn from major collections across the UK and Ireland.
Working across the genres of still life, landscape and the nude, Scott developed a unique language that pushed the boundaries of abstraction and figuration, leaving an influential legacy of work which mediates important developments in mid-twentieth century European and American painting. His work is often charged with a sensuality emanating from his dynamic compositions as well as the vitality of his paint surfaces. Consequently the works have an enduring human quality that continues to be as fresh and relevant today as it was over fifty years ago.
The project is led by Sara Matson, Curator at Tate St Ives with Chris Stephens, Lead Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain, Frances Guy, Head of Exhibitions at Hepworth Wakefield and Anne Stewart, Curator of Fine art at the Ulster Museum.
A new book on William Scott by Sarah Whitfield will be published by Tate to mark the centenary and exhibition. This will be followed by a catalogue of the exhibition produced in collaboration with the William Scott Foundation, encapsulating the tour, in its final manifestation in Belfast.
For most of the five-hour trek, I’m followed by stalker hawkers. That’s what I call them. Locals wearing casual attire and flimsy slippers, and each hefting a heavy bag loaded with bottled water, souvenir books, postcards, and T-shirts and hats emblazoned with such mottos as: “It takes a great man to climb the Great Wall.” n I try to ignore the first woman who matches my pace, stopping, resting, slowing down and speeding up for great distances. I hope she’ll tire — no chance. Then I hope that once I stop for lunch in one of the myriad watchtowers, she’ll become bored and move on. Instead, she pulls out her lunch box and sits nearby. Finally, I’m resigned and end up buying a T-shirt.
By the time she and several others over the course of the rigorous route follow and eventually take leave of me, my backpack is stuffed with bottles of water, half a dozen postcards and a couple of T-shirts. My take-away lesson from hiking the Great Wall turns out to be one of patience and acceptance.
My hike is a steep scramble on all fours, up and down the dilapidated, narrow stone path where weeds poke through and shrubs grow. The brick stairs that rise and fall are loose or missing, with gaping holes in places. Even when they’re functional, the risers stand a couple of feet high and can barely accommodate the length of a human foot. Resorting to crawling becomes the routine.
Whenever I stop — which is often — and gaze about, the sweeping vistas resemble a virtual Chinese brush painting: misty forested hills and lush valleys, and the ever-present serpentine wall, dotted with towers, winding in both directions over the undulating peaks. It’s these views that make the effort worth every step.
Following China’s rugged Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai is like a test of endurance at times. I’m either climbing up or down the symbolic dragon’s back, carefully watching each step for fear that a misplaced foot will mean falling into a hole or careening off the Great Wall itself that perches over a precipitous landscape.
On this eastward seven-some-mile trek, the first and last parts are restored sections, where I can easily enter one of the multistoried watchtowers and imagine the soldiers scanning the broad landscape, sending black smoke signals or lighting fires to alert others to an impending attack.
Severing the alliance reflects the initiative of the museum’s newly hired executive director, Malcolm Warner, who is pushing the museum to add breadth to its California art focus by paying attention to other nature-based art.
“We’re not turning our back on celebrating landscape plein air painters; we want to open up to a celebration of art that engages natures,” said Warner, who sketched out a still evolving plan to replace the invitational with a conference or festival that involves scientists, environmentalists and artists that work with natural phenomenon. Hosting LPAPA’s fall invitational was “too much effort in support of one genre,” said Warner, whose decision was endorsed by the museum’s board on Jan. 8.
The museum, of course, owes its founding to the town’s early Impressionist landscape artists, such as Anna Hills and Edgar Payne. Even so, the Plein Air Painters Association intends to carry on that legacy independently and in a permanent venue that will display its members works, long-term goals of the art organization founded in 1996 by local landscape artists. Previously, the group held temporary exhibitions at various galleries.
Carrying out the upcoming 15th invitational, where 40 painters from across the country are invited for a week-long on-location painting competition, will be a challenge, said Greg Vail, the group’s president. “I’m hoping supporters will help us,” he said, figuring catering, prize money, accounting, credit card processing and other miscellany at about $160,000. Previously, revenue from paintings sold at the contest was divvied up, with most going to the artist and the remainder between LPAPA and the museum, which provided support staff and the venue. “Now we will be sharing equally with the artist,” said Vail, who was promised use of the venue for the invitational without cost.
“It’s an ideal solution for LPAPA; they’ve done something impossible up to now,” said Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum, referring to the organization’s lack of a physical home. Though the event will lose some of its historical luster by decamping from its ancestral home, it continues to reinforce Laguna’s legacy as a city founded by artists, said Stern, who served as judge of LPAPA’s last invitational, a task he’s performed at similar events around the country.
“They see a real strategic value in having Laguna’s cultural legacy in their midst,” Vail said of the expected new owners of the 85-acre nine-hole golf course and 62 aging suites. He described a hand-shake deal with one of the principals involved in the pending transaction with Aliso Creek Properties LLC, which also owns the nearby Montage resort. Joan Gladstone, a spokeswoman for the owners, said she could not provide any projection as to when the sale will close.
The principal, who Vail declined to identify, described informal plans for updating and expanding the venue’s meeting space. “There’s a strong business case for doing this,” said Vail, who for two years previously worked for the Inn’s current owners on a redevelopment plan that was ultimately shelved.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Honeywell Introduce New Pressure Switches
The HPS Series are durable, reliable electromechanical gauge pressure on/off switches that are available with either single pole single throw (SPST) normally open or normally closed circuitry, or single pole double throw (SPDT) circuitry. They are designed for use in rugged transportation and industrial applications that require the making or breaking of an electrical connection in response to a pressure change of the system media., configurable pressure switch
“The High Pressure Premium is the first in a new portfolio of configurable pressure switches that are designed utilizing a building block approach that enables easy, rapid assembly,” said Wade Tollison, senior global product marketing manager for Honeywell Sensing and Control. “This method allows Honeywell to quickly provide sample and production units to our customers, meet our customers’ design requirements without incremental tooling charges, reduce our customers’ production costs, and reduce design and implementation costs of our customers’ end product. Additionally, the HPS Series’ reliability and durability allow our customers to increase productivity while reducing field failures and service costs.”
Potential transportation applications include heavy duty construction machinery, agricultural machinery, and material handling machinery. Potential industrial applications include CNC machines, compressors, boilers, fracking equipment, mud pumps, presses, punches, pressure washers, trash compactors, water jet cutting machines, and any machinery that use high pressure hydraulic fluids.
The HPS Series switches feature a switching point accuracy of up to ±2%, providing efficient operation of equipment. Their switching capability of 5 mA to 5 A allows for potential use in a wide range of applications, from heavy loads to those connected to an electronic control unit. Additionally, Honeywell’s global presence offers customers immediate product and application support throughout the development cycle, from design to global manufacturing.
Honeywell International is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader, serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; turbochargers; and specialty materials. Based in Morris Township, N.J., Honeywell’s shares are traded on the New York, London, and Chicago Stock Exchanges.
This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements, other than statements of fact, that address activities, events or developments that we or our management intend, expect, project, believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s assumptions and assessments in light of past experience and trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other relevant factors. They are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results, developments and business decisions may differ from those envisaged by our forward-looking statements.
In September, Tubb was chosen to be plastered and cast for a new statue which will be debuted this weekend at Arlington National Cemetery. The statue of Tubb's likeness will represent one of ANC's most recognizable figures -- a service member blowing taps. That life-sized likeness of Tubb will be officially unveiled Jan. 20, during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery visitor's center.
Tubb traveled to New York City four months ago for the casting session, which lasted between two and a half and three hours.
"I took the train up at 5 a.m. in the morning, did the casting and was back home by 6 p.m.," Tubb remembered of the trip to cast the statue. "They cast me in three sections. They did my head first, and they completely encase it. It took about 15 minutes. Then they did the lower body and the upper body.
"It was pretty cool," Tubb said of the initial process. "When the head was done, [there] was complete sensory deprivation. They cleared away two little spots for the nose [to breathe] and that's all I had. They put this seaweed composite material [on me], and then it got wrapped in plaster strips."
A support team of 15 to 20 workers coached and encouraged Tubb through the claustrophobic steps toward making a mold for the statue.
As for his feeling of being chosen to represent one of ANC's most iconic figures, Tubb mentioned that piece of information needed some time to be mentally absorbed.
"It took a while to sink in," Tubb admitted. "At first, I thought this will just be a cool little statue down there. But then I found out this will be in the center of the visitors center. When people walk in, it will be the first thing they see."
The staff sergeant's extended family from Ohio will be by his side for the unveiling. Before that, Tubb will have the opportunity to inspect the finished project. He also noted the statue is to be encased -- humorously mentioning he is relieved the figure will be surrounded by a protective cover.
“The High Pressure Premium is the first in a new portfolio of configurable pressure switches that are designed utilizing a building block approach that enables easy, rapid assembly,” said Wade Tollison, senior global product marketing manager for Honeywell Sensing and Control. “This method allows Honeywell to quickly provide sample and production units to our customers, meet our customers’ design requirements without incremental tooling charges, reduce our customers’ production costs, and reduce design and implementation costs of our customers’ end product. Additionally, the HPS Series’ reliability and durability allow our customers to increase productivity while reducing field failures and service costs.”
Potential transportation applications include heavy duty construction machinery, agricultural machinery, and material handling machinery. Potential industrial applications include CNC machines, compressors, boilers, fracking equipment, mud pumps, presses, punches, pressure washers, trash compactors, water jet cutting machines, and any machinery that use high pressure hydraulic fluids.
The HPS Series switches feature a switching point accuracy of up to ±2%, providing efficient operation of equipment. Their switching capability of 5 mA to 5 A allows for potential use in a wide range of applications, from heavy loads to those connected to an electronic control unit. Additionally, Honeywell’s global presence offers customers immediate product and application support throughout the development cycle, from design to global manufacturing.
Honeywell International is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader, serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; turbochargers; and specialty materials. Based in Morris Township, N.J., Honeywell’s shares are traded on the New York, London, and Chicago Stock Exchanges.
This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements, other than statements of fact, that address activities, events or developments that we or our management intend, expect, project, believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s assumptions and assessments in light of past experience and trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other relevant factors. They are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results, developments and business decisions may differ from those envisaged by our forward-looking statements.
In September, Tubb was chosen to be plastered and cast for a new statue which will be debuted this weekend at Arlington National Cemetery. The statue of Tubb's likeness will represent one of ANC's most recognizable figures -- a service member blowing taps. That life-sized likeness of Tubb will be officially unveiled Jan. 20, during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery visitor's center.
Tubb traveled to New York City four months ago for the casting session, which lasted between two and a half and three hours.
"I took the train up at 5 a.m. in the morning, did the casting and was back home by 6 p.m.," Tubb remembered of the trip to cast the statue. "They cast me in three sections. They did my head first, and they completely encase it. It took about 15 minutes. Then they did the lower body and the upper body.
"It was pretty cool," Tubb said of the initial process. "When the head was done, [there] was complete sensory deprivation. They cleared away two little spots for the nose [to breathe] and that's all I had. They put this seaweed composite material [on me], and then it got wrapped in plaster strips."
A support team of 15 to 20 workers coached and encouraged Tubb through the claustrophobic steps toward making a mold for the statue.
As for his feeling of being chosen to represent one of ANC's most iconic figures, Tubb mentioned that piece of information needed some time to be mentally absorbed.
"It took a while to sink in," Tubb admitted. "At first, I thought this will just be a cool little statue down there. But then I found out this will be in the center of the visitors center. When people walk in, it will be the first thing they see."
The staff sergeant's extended family from Ohio will be by his side for the unveiling. Before that, Tubb will have the opportunity to inspect the finished project. He also noted the statue is to be encased -- humorously mentioning he is relieved the figure will be surrounded by a protective cover.
Thermoplastic key to new water treatment design
Acute gastrointestinal illness has been linked to public drinking water systems in the U.S., which has driven the development of new microbiological test methods. Currently, typical laboratory water vial testing samples can take up to two weeks of processing for final results of clean water free of harmful E.coli and Total Coliform bacteria contamination.
A turnkey, single-use, water test cartridge and automated monitoring system has been developed to reduce testing to within 2-18 hours, depending on the level of contamination. The cartridge incorporates overmolded rigid plastic and optical grade LSR (liquid silicone rubber). The test cartridge leverages a 2-shot mold and subsequent robotic transfer into an integrated assembly cell to complete six processes outside of the molding area, and then put in a box ready to ship.
The cartridge system created and designed by Roembke Mfg. & Design, Inc. (Ossian, IN), ENDETEC (Kingston, ONT), and Engel Machinery North America (York, PA) initially focused on materials, which had to be clear to see the fluid inside the cartridge and pass gamma sterilization processing. Then engineers focused on eliminating inhibitors in the chosen plastic, to get an optimal seal with the LSR. Finally, the materials could not interfere with the microbiological growth that takes place during the test process.
The plastic selected was a modified polypropylene and the LSR was an optically clear 1003-grade silicone. The materials were finalized by tweaking the thermoplastic process to figure out estimated cycles, temperatures of the mold, sealing, and so on.
ENDETEC’s TECTA automated microbiological testing system for E.coli monitoring used a built-in incubation, optical system, integrated user interface with interpretive software, and a special test cartridge for the detection of E.coli and total coliforms. Key design elements in the cartridge include a plastic vial with a living hinge and cap, coupled with an optically clear LSR plug/nub at the bottom of the vial for testing the water through the optical system.
ENDETEC worked on the seal design between the plastic and LSR materials and determined that there could be no chemical bonding agent between them, giving rise to another reason for choosing the special optical grade LSR. To meet the required temperatures, focus was directed to thermoplastics. This was done to produce an effective seal that would not leak fluid between the materials. The set-up was for pre-production testing and designed with the capability to eventually expand to higher cavities (4+4) once the production process was proven out.
The next decision was whether to mold the materials separately and assemble them or to overmold them. Roembke and Engel worked together in developing the 2-shot molding cell and LSR tooling prototypes. Testing these prototypes consisted of seven injection molding presses ranging from 35 tons to 200 tons.
Engel addressed the first stage of automation in the prototyping by enlisting Pro Systems (Churubusco, Indiana), to integrate the turnkey automation into the machine. Due to operating height restrictions, a 6-axis robot was used for the final assembly, completing six processes outside of the molding area. This process also included placing a water-soluble pouch containing pre-measured amounts of growth media that support the enrichment of any target bacteria present in the sample for each water test cartridge.
A series of pre-production testing, prototype tools were modified for the plastic vial and LSR component to complete the 2-shot mold/press process. One press was used to mold the plastic vials, which then moved to the second press to apply the LSR tool. The primary machine used was Engel’s Victory 200H/80L/160 Combi. This 160-ton single cavity machine with wide platens equipped with two injection units was used to run the two separate materials. The primary (200H) was for thermoplastics and the secondary (80L) was for LSR.
Ultimately, the Roembke mold was a single drop cold deck with a standard LSR valve gate design featuring side injection versus back injection for the plastic. The final Engel machine was a standard 2-component machine that incorporated the smallest diameter screw possible (12 mm) on the injection unit. The wide platen machine leveraged a special ejector pattern for the tool design centered behind each application for the thermoplastic and LSR. Servo valves were used on both ejection units with valve controls used for optimal speeds and pressures.
Thank you, Steve, and good morning to everybody and let me wish everyone on the call a happy New Year as well. And perhaps you could now turn to Page 3. Prior to giving you an overview of our results by market, I'd like to give you a quick high-level summary of the key points that resulted from this quarter. As you now know, we reported record revenues for the quarter, and we were pleased to see such strong growth in an uncertain operating environment. Our record revenues were driven primarily by new product launches. In recent years, the economic cycle has overwritten the normal seasonal pattern that we see for orders. However, this year, we did see a normal seasonal slowdown in orders, particularly in the consumer and mobile sectors. The bookings pattern, frankly, continues to be very volatile on a day-to-day basis, and it's very difficult to predict the overriding trend in the market. We still believe that there are growth opportunities as we move into calendar year '13 and during the last quarter, we completed a number of investments that we think will help our future growth. As I said in the release, we are, however, waiting until the post-Chinese New Year period before, we believe, we can get a stronger fix on how calendar year '13 will turn out.
The investments we have made in the last quarter include completing our Affinity Medical acquisition, which is doing very well and reported record results in its first couple of months, and CapEx for our new plants in the Philippines and a new facility in Korea, clearly a high-growth market. In addition, we continue to invest in R&D, particularly in high-speed, high power and microminiature products.
During the quarter, we completed the due diligence on a couple of acquisitions that we decided not to move forward with at this time. As we've stated in prior calls, our acquisition focus will continue to be on the industrial, medical and value-added areas. Despite a challenging environment, our organization continues to operate extremely well. For the quarter, we reported record on-time delivery performance and record quality metrics. We believe that these outstanding levels of customer service will continue to help us win business and key customers.
A turnkey, single-use, water test cartridge and automated monitoring system has been developed to reduce testing to within 2-18 hours, depending on the level of contamination. The cartridge incorporates overmolded rigid plastic and optical grade LSR (liquid silicone rubber). The test cartridge leverages a 2-shot mold and subsequent robotic transfer into an integrated assembly cell to complete six processes outside of the molding area, and then put in a box ready to ship.
The cartridge system created and designed by Roembke Mfg. & Design, Inc. (Ossian, IN), ENDETEC (Kingston, ONT), and Engel Machinery North America (York, PA) initially focused on materials, which had to be clear to see the fluid inside the cartridge and pass gamma sterilization processing. Then engineers focused on eliminating inhibitors in the chosen plastic, to get an optimal seal with the LSR. Finally, the materials could not interfere with the microbiological growth that takes place during the test process.
The plastic selected was a modified polypropylene and the LSR was an optically clear 1003-grade silicone. The materials were finalized by tweaking the thermoplastic process to figure out estimated cycles, temperatures of the mold, sealing, and so on.
ENDETEC’s TECTA automated microbiological testing system for E.coli monitoring used a built-in incubation, optical system, integrated user interface with interpretive software, and a special test cartridge for the detection of E.coli and total coliforms. Key design elements in the cartridge include a plastic vial with a living hinge and cap, coupled with an optically clear LSR plug/nub at the bottom of the vial for testing the water through the optical system.
ENDETEC worked on the seal design between the plastic and LSR materials and determined that there could be no chemical bonding agent between them, giving rise to another reason for choosing the special optical grade LSR. To meet the required temperatures, focus was directed to thermoplastics. This was done to produce an effective seal that would not leak fluid between the materials. The set-up was for pre-production testing and designed with the capability to eventually expand to higher cavities (4+4) once the production process was proven out.
The next decision was whether to mold the materials separately and assemble them or to overmold them. Roembke and Engel worked together in developing the 2-shot molding cell and LSR tooling prototypes. Testing these prototypes consisted of seven injection molding presses ranging from 35 tons to 200 tons.
Engel addressed the first stage of automation in the prototyping by enlisting Pro Systems (Churubusco, Indiana), to integrate the turnkey automation into the machine. Due to operating height restrictions, a 6-axis robot was used for the final assembly, completing six processes outside of the molding area. This process also included placing a water-soluble pouch containing pre-measured amounts of growth media that support the enrichment of any target bacteria present in the sample for each water test cartridge.
A series of pre-production testing, prototype tools were modified for the plastic vial and LSR component to complete the 2-shot mold/press process. One press was used to mold the plastic vials, which then moved to the second press to apply the LSR tool. The primary machine used was Engel’s Victory 200H/80L/160 Combi. This 160-ton single cavity machine with wide platens equipped with two injection units was used to run the two separate materials. The primary (200H) was for thermoplastics and the secondary (80L) was for LSR.
Ultimately, the Roembke mold was a single drop cold deck with a standard LSR valve gate design featuring side injection versus back injection for the plastic. The final Engel machine was a standard 2-component machine that incorporated the smallest diameter screw possible (12 mm) on the injection unit. The wide platen machine leveraged a special ejector pattern for the tool design centered behind each application for the thermoplastic and LSR. Servo valves were used on both ejection units with valve controls used for optimal speeds and pressures.
Thank you, Steve, and good morning to everybody and let me wish everyone on the call a happy New Year as well. And perhaps you could now turn to Page 3. Prior to giving you an overview of our results by market, I'd like to give you a quick high-level summary of the key points that resulted from this quarter. As you now know, we reported record revenues for the quarter, and we were pleased to see such strong growth in an uncertain operating environment. Our record revenues were driven primarily by new product launches. In recent years, the economic cycle has overwritten the normal seasonal pattern that we see for orders. However, this year, we did see a normal seasonal slowdown in orders, particularly in the consumer and mobile sectors. The bookings pattern, frankly, continues to be very volatile on a day-to-day basis, and it's very difficult to predict the overriding trend in the market. We still believe that there are growth opportunities as we move into calendar year '13 and during the last quarter, we completed a number of investments that we think will help our future growth. As I said in the release, we are, however, waiting until the post-Chinese New Year period before, we believe, we can get a stronger fix on how calendar year '13 will turn out.
The investments we have made in the last quarter include completing our Affinity Medical acquisition, which is doing very well and reported record results in its first couple of months, and CapEx for our new plants in the Philippines and a new facility in Korea, clearly a high-growth market. In addition, we continue to invest in R&D, particularly in high-speed, high power and microminiature products.
During the quarter, we completed the due diligence on a couple of acquisitions that we decided not to move forward with at this time. As we've stated in prior calls, our acquisition focus will continue to be on the industrial, medical and value-added areas. Despite a challenging environment, our organization continues to operate extremely well. For the quarter, we reported record on-time delivery performance and record quality metrics. We believe that these outstanding levels of customer service will continue to help us win business and key customers.
Monday, January 21, 2013
New Mortgage Disclosures Can Help Borrowers Save
If you’re buying a new home or refinancing your current mortgage in the next few months, you’re going to see a new mortgage disclosure form. The new, easy-to-to understand closing form from will disclose virtually every cost involved in taking out a mortgage or buying a home. The new form will show costs ranging from property taxes to closing costs required at settlement.
For the first time, mortgage transaction costs will be listed in a single disclosure for easier comprehension. Lenders are required to provide estimates not only for costs they will charge borrowers, but also estimates for services provided by third parties like title insurance and settlement fees. These are called “good faith estimates” because the final cost charged to borrowers cannot exceed the lender’s good faith estimates by more than 10 percent or lenders are liable to pay the difference.
Lenders must provide a borrower a good faith estimates within three days of receiving his or her application for a mortgage. Knowing all closing costs well in advance of settlement ensures there are no unpleasant surprises at the settlement table, which is why the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau calls the new forms “know before you owe”. However the new form for closing services, called a Loan Estimate, does more than keep borrowers informed. It also actually empowers borrowers to save money on closing costs— as much as several thousand dollars—by shopping for services on their own to find costs below their lenders’ good faith estimates.
There are only a limited number of mortgage services that a borrower has control over, but shopping for the best rates can still result in significant savings. All the costs are clearly shown on the Loan Estimate form, which separates the costs the borrower will pay for the loan into several categories: Origination Charges, Services You Cannot Shop For, and Services You Can Shop For.
Some of the services that borrowers have no control over are provided by third parties and ordered by lenders. These include the costs of appraisals and credit reports. Lenders are now required to provide borrowers a copy of the appraisal, but the borrower has no say over which appraiser to use and how much the appraisal will cost.
Two costs that borrowers control are title insurance and settlement fees. Shopping the quotes for these services can result in significant savings. Costs charged by title insurers and settlement providers can vary by several thousand dollars. Estimated charges and terms must be good for at least ten business days from the time the GFE is provided to give the borrower a chance to compare other vendors. In some cases, a borrower may decide that he will use the lender’s provider, and should notify the lender within the ten day time period in order to lock in the estimate.
Lenders are only required to provide good faith estimates for closing services that are required for the loan. Borrowers may incur other costs in the closing process. At the time of closing, they are listed as Other Costs on the Closing Disclosure form, which is another new disclosure form that will be in use soon. These optional closing services include home inspection, surveys, mold inspection, HOA dues, home warranty, and radon inspection.
In 2012 Bankrate found that the average cost to close on a $200,000 mortgage in the United States is $3,754, down from $4,070 in 2011 and about the same as $3,741 in 2010, when good faith estimates took effect. By doing a good job of using the new form to shop for services where possible, borrowers can reduce the cash they will need to spend at closing.
There was the three-person film crew behind and on the side of him, recording every swing that the Hunterdon Central senior took. On the far side of the cage sat three of Russomagno's teammates from the Diamond Nation Super 17 team, as well as their parents. A few Diamond Nation executives came and went to check in on the progress.
"I've heard from guys who have had a lot of time in the major leagues, guys who have a lot of experience in the game but nothing like Kevin," said Russomagno, a Yankee fan who has committed to playing baseball at the U.S. Naval Academy next year. "He's working with us, and then after us, it's (Robinson) Cano or (Derek) Jeter. It's really cool to see how he translates the information he gives them to us."
Long was in Flemington this past weekend to film segments for Club Diamond Nation, an interactive website for baseball players, parents and coaches. After Saturday's filming was completed, Long held a pair of hitting clinics, one for 10-12- year-olds and another for 13-18-year-olds.
Just because Long works most often with hitters like Cano or Alex Rodriguez, he does not try to mold young hitters after any Yankee.
"There's so many different styles to hitting and I think it's unfair to teach everyone like Cano or everybody like A-Rod or Jeter," he said. "They are all very unique in their styles and what they do. What I like to do is work within a kid's scheme."
Players at Long's clinics may not get taught how to hit like their favorite Yankee, but they will get a lot of the same drills that Long uses with Yankee players.
"I don't vary too much," Long said. "Maybe a little more thorough on how to execute the drill (with the younger players), but we do a lot of tee work, we do a lot of flips, over-hand toss, (batting practice). But basically the same drills I use on an every-day basis with the Major League guys, I'm using those drills with our young kids."
At Saturday's clinic for the younger players, Long started with the basics of how to properly hold a bat and get into a good batting stance. For older players, Long said he would get more into the mental approach to hitting, as well as working on the more finite skills of hitting.
In Long's six years as Yankees hitting coach, New York has led the majors in runs scored three times and nearly finished on top of that category again last year, falling four runs shy of Texas' 808.
At the end of last year, he wasn't the most popular of Yankee coaches after the team's offensive struggles in the playoffs against Detroit. But come Feb. 10, Long will be in Tampa, Fla., to start spring training and said that he hoped the players have moved on from last year's disappointment.
"It was a tough pill to swallow, but this is a new year," Long said. "You have to move forward and I think they've all had their talks with themselves and maybe what they can do better."
Despite the losses of a couple of outfielders and catcher Russell Martin, the majority of the Yankee team remains the same from last year. The only major free-agent signing for the Yankees was infielder Kevin Youkilis, who will help fill-in while Rodriguez recovers from hip surgery. The Yankees will also look for one of three in-house options to fill Martin's void.
All of that consistency in the lineup has helped Long because he gets to know each player's swing. It also helps cut down on his off-season travel, since he does not have to go visit each player.
"I'll be in touch with them and have contact with them," Long said. "Some guys will utilize me a little bit more as far as what they need to do in their off-season program. But I'm not traveling all across the country."
For the first time, mortgage transaction costs will be listed in a single disclosure for easier comprehension. Lenders are required to provide estimates not only for costs they will charge borrowers, but also estimates for services provided by third parties like title insurance and settlement fees. These are called “good faith estimates” because the final cost charged to borrowers cannot exceed the lender’s good faith estimates by more than 10 percent or lenders are liable to pay the difference.
Lenders must provide a borrower a good faith estimates within three days of receiving his or her application for a mortgage. Knowing all closing costs well in advance of settlement ensures there are no unpleasant surprises at the settlement table, which is why the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau calls the new forms “know before you owe”. However the new form for closing services, called a Loan Estimate, does more than keep borrowers informed. It also actually empowers borrowers to save money on closing costs— as much as several thousand dollars—by shopping for services on their own to find costs below their lenders’ good faith estimates.
There are only a limited number of mortgage services that a borrower has control over, but shopping for the best rates can still result in significant savings. All the costs are clearly shown on the Loan Estimate form, which separates the costs the borrower will pay for the loan into several categories: Origination Charges, Services You Cannot Shop For, and Services You Can Shop For.
Some of the services that borrowers have no control over are provided by third parties and ordered by lenders. These include the costs of appraisals and credit reports. Lenders are now required to provide borrowers a copy of the appraisal, but the borrower has no say over which appraiser to use and how much the appraisal will cost.
Two costs that borrowers control are title insurance and settlement fees. Shopping the quotes for these services can result in significant savings. Costs charged by title insurers and settlement providers can vary by several thousand dollars. Estimated charges and terms must be good for at least ten business days from the time the GFE is provided to give the borrower a chance to compare other vendors. In some cases, a borrower may decide that he will use the lender’s provider, and should notify the lender within the ten day time period in order to lock in the estimate.
Lenders are only required to provide good faith estimates for closing services that are required for the loan. Borrowers may incur other costs in the closing process. At the time of closing, they are listed as Other Costs on the Closing Disclosure form, which is another new disclosure form that will be in use soon. These optional closing services include home inspection, surveys, mold inspection, HOA dues, home warranty, and radon inspection.
In 2012 Bankrate found that the average cost to close on a $200,000 mortgage in the United States is $3,754, down from $4,070 in 2011 and about the same as $3,741 in 2010, when good faith estimates took effect. By doing a good job of using the new form to shop for services where possible, borrowers can reduce the cash they will need to spend at closing.
There was the three-person film crew behind and on the side of him, recording every swing that the Hunterdon Central senior took. On the far side of the cage sat three of Russomagno's teammates from the Diamond Nation Super 17 team, as well as their parents. A few Diamond Nation executives came and went to check in on the progress.
"I've heard from guys who have had a lot of time in the major leagues, guys who have a lot of experience in the game but nothing like Kevin," said Russomagno, a Yankee fan who has committed to playing baseball at the U.S. Naval Academy next year. "He's working with us, and then after us, it's (Robinson) Cano or (Derek) Jeter. It's really cool to see how he translates the information he gives them to us."
Long was in Flemington this past weekend to film segments for Club Diamond Nation, an interactive website for baseball players, parents and coaches. After Saturday's filming was completed, Long held a pair of hitting clinics, one for 10-12- year-olds and another for 13-18-year-olds.
Just because Long works most often with hitters like Cano or Alex Rodriguez, he does not try to mold young hitters after any Yankee.
"There's so many different styles to hitting and I think it's unfair to teach everyone like Cano or everybody like A-Rod or Jeter," he said. "They are all very unique in their styles and what they do. What I like to do is work within a kid's scheme."
Players at Long's clinics may not get taught how to hit like their favorite Yankee, but they will get a lot of the same drills that Long uses with Yankee players.
"I don't vary too much," Long said. "Maybe a little more thorough on how to execute the drill (with the younger players), but we do a lot of tee work, we do a lot of flips, over-hand toss, (batting practice). But basically the same drills I use on an every-day basis with the Major League guys, I'm using those drills with our young kids."
At Saturday's clinic for the younger players, Long started with the basics of how to properly hold a bat and get into a good batting stance. For older players, Long said he would get more into the mental approach to hitting, as well as working on the more finite skills of hitting.
In Long's six years as Yankees hitting coach, New York has led the majors in runs scored three times and nearly finished on top of that category again last year, falling four runs shy of Texas' 808.
At the end of last year, he wasn't the most popular of Yankee coaches after the team's offensive struggles in the playoffs against Detroit. But come Feb. 10, Long will be in Tampa, Fla., to start spring training and said that he hoped the players have moved on from last year's disappointment.
"It was a tough pill to swallow, but this is a new year," Long said. "You have to move forward and I think they've all had their talks with themselves and maybe what they can do better."
Despite the losses of a couple of outfielders and catcher Russell Martin, the majority of the Yankee team remains the same from last year. The only major free-agent signing for the Yankees was infielder Kevin Youkilis, who will help fill-in while Rodriguez recovers from hip surgery. The Yankees will also look for one of three in-house options to fill Martin's void.
All of that consistency in the lineup has helped Long because he gets to know each player's swing. It also helps cut down on his off-season travel, since he does not have to go visit each player.
"I'll be in touch with them and have contact with them," Long said. "Some guys will utilize me a little bit more as far as what they need to do in their off-season program. But I'm not traveling all across the country."
That Was Fast
Everyone claims to hate Girls, but everyone watches it, even my commie boyfriend. So I figured the above title was appropriate. Like any young, politically minded, Brooklyn-dwelling female, I have a semi-fraught relationship with the show, but I also love it immensely, so let’s dive in.
Elijah tells George he “fucked” Marnie, hence ending their relationship, but he won’t tell Hannah because he knows it would upset her. What this says to me is that he likes to have drama in his love life but not with his friends. Or, conversely: he cares about Hannah more than he cares about George. Or possibly: he thinks Hannah is way more fragile. Did it even really count as sex? He wears it like a weird badge of pride, like being bi would make him special and exciting.
Even though I generally find her to be an exhausting, uptight bitch who hates her friends and tries too hard to fit some preconceived mold of what it means to be a grown-up, I feel kind of bad watching Marnie be told by the worst potential boss ever that she is too square for the art world. Then again: she could stand to stop buying suits the same place as my mom, who only wears them because she is a lawyer and has to.
Can we give Shoshanna and Ray a medal for Best TV Couple Of All Time? Their conversation about bathing a pig is just amazing. And the way they deflate Marnie’s looming ego re: actually being a model vs. having a “pretty person job” is aces.
Jessa is supposed to be a beautiful, flighty fool, yet she’s by far the smartest of the group politically. She accurately fingers Bill Clinton for precipitating the financial crisis by killing the Glass-Steagal Act in one breath, then says some dumb shit about astrology the next. In a previous episode, she had the “crazy” idea to unionize New York’s nannies (which would actually be a very positive development if anyone could pull it off), right before losing a whole child. Is this Lena Dunham’s way of getting radical politics onto a mainstream show via their only acceptable vehicle? Or are we supposed to think Jessa’s ideas are naive? Dunham’s widely known to be a bougie Obama liberal, so I’m guessing the latter, but who knows?
And then Jessa says something like “Thomas John looks at my paintings the moment I show them to him,” and all is lost in a sea of mean laughter. It is supposed to be the latter, isn’t it?
Yes, Sandy’s politics suck. But Hannah has no clear idea why, and this isn’t about that, anyway. It’s about the fact that he didn’t like her essay.
Sandy accuses Hannah of exoticizing him because he’s black, and she says several things in a row that basically amount to “you scan as white to me,” hence making things worse. The line “I don’t live in a world that is separated like that” especially makes me laugh, because duh, yes you do, it’s just more along class lines than color lines, and also, that is something that Stephen Colbert says, in character, to make a point about conservative hypocrisy.
And then Hannah says “you look like a slutty Von Trapp child” to Marnie, and we remember why we put up with her. And then Elijah says “you look like a slutty Von Trapp child” to Marnie, and we wonder how he could ever be confused about his sexuality.
Now that we’ve talked about race, it’s time for Hannah to demonstrate her shitty brand of Liz Lemonism! Marnie has gone and gotten herself a pretty person job, because what young and attractive person in New York city hasn’t wanted to make a ton of money in the service industry, and Hannah is jealous and judgy. Like many “liberal” feminists, she blames the individual women who use their sex appeal to survive in a patriarchal society for bringing all women down, as opposed to a more systemic critique that blames the patriarchy itself. This is painfully, myopically wrong. Maybe she has more in common with Sandy and his Ayn Rand-reading ways than she thinks.
But enough talk about politics, for Adam is back and being murder-y in a sexy way. Sure, he was not that nice to Hannah when they were dating, and sure, he should respect her wishes and leave her alone. But to let himself into the house, speak the line “as a man living my man life, my desire for you cannot be repressed,” and then demand a glass of milk before he goes? I can see why Hannah loves this weirdo. Maybe someday they’ll get over themselves enough to feel the same thing at the same time.
"Even coming into spring, I had a couple knee issues," he said. "I had a couple surgeries coming into spring. I was trying to push the fast-forward button, making sure I was catching up and able to do everything I wanted to. This year, I've had a very productive offseason. I'm just excited coming in and being 100 percent and firing on all cylinders coming into spring right away."
"I was confident that I'd be back here," he said. "I thought I developed a good relationship with the coaches and the team. It's not as cut and dried as everyone thinks, but I really thought that I had a good place here with the team and I'm excited to be back, for sure.
"It's another chance to play in the big leagues and I'm excited. I understand the landscape of the team and what Matt Wieters' role is with the organization. It's always a blessing to be in the big leagues and my job is to just play the best that I can whenever that opportunity is. I'm happy to be playing here with Matt Wieters and to be playing on a winning team."
"Ultimately, you want to be an everyday guy and be an All-Star and all those things, but sometimes the chances aren't as often as you think," he said. "It's tough. So many teams have No. 1 catchers. That's kind of the mold teams would like, to have a No. 1 catcher and a No. 2 catcher who plays 40 games, somewhere in that ballpark, but a lot of teams are built differently. A lot of teams split time. As for right now, I'm happy to be part of a winning team and we'll see what happens in the future."
Elijah tells George he “fucked” Marnie, hence ending their relationship, but he won’t tell Hannah because he knows it would upset her. What this says to me is that he likes to have drama in his love life but not with his friends. Or, conversely: he cares about Hannah more than he cares about George. Or possibly: he thinks Hannah is way more fragile. Did it even really count as sex? He wears it like a weird badge of pride, like being bi would make him special and exciting.
Even though I generally find her to be an exhausting, uptight bitch who hates her friends and tries too hard to fit some preconceived mold of what it means to be a grown-up, I feel kind of bad watching Marnie be told by the worst potential boss ever that she is too square for the art world. Then again: she could stand to stop buying suits the same place as my mom, who only wears them because she is a lawyer and has to.
Can we give Shoshanna and Ray a medal for Best TV Couple Of All Time? Their conversation about bathing a pig is just amazing. And the way they deflate Marnie’s looming ego re: actually being a model vs. having a “pretty person job” is aces.
Jessa is supposed to be a beautiful, flighty fool, yet she’s by far the smartest of the group politically. She accurately fingers Bill Clinton for precipitating the financial crisis by killing the Glass-Steagal Act in one breath, then says some dumb shit about astrology the next. In a previous episode, she had the “crazy” idea to unionize New York’s nannies (which would actually be a very positive development if anyone could pull it off), right before losing a whole child. Is this Lena Dunham’s way of getting radical politics onto a mainstream show via their only acceptable vehicle? Or are we supposed to think Jessa’s ideas are naive? Dunham’s widely known to be a bougie Obama liberal, so I’m guessing the latter, but who knows?
And then Jessa says something like “Thomas John looks at my paintings the moment I show them to him,” and all is lost in a sea of mean laughter. It is supposed to be the latter, isn’t it?
Yes, Sandy’s politics suck. But Hannah has no clear idea why, and this isn’t about that, anyway. It’s about the fact that he didn’t like her essay.
Sandy accuses Hannah of exoticizing him because he’s black, and she says several things in a row that basically amount to “you scan as white to me,” hence making things worse. The line “I don’t live in a world that is separated like that” especially makes me laugh, because duh, yes you do, it’s just more along class lines than color lines, and also, that is something that Stephen Colbert says, in character, to make a point about conservative hypocrisy.
And then Hannah says “you look like a slutty Von Trapp child” to Marnie, and we remember why we put up with her. And then Elijah says “you look like a slutty Von Trapp child” to Marnie, and we wonder how he could ever be confused about his sexuality.
Now that we’ve talked about race, it’s time for Hannah to demonstrate her shitty brand of Liz Lemonism! Marnie has gone and gotten herself a pretty person job, because what young and attractive person in New York city hasn’t wanted to make a ton of money in the service industry, and Hannah is jealous and judgy. Like many “liberal” feminists, she blames the individual women who use their sex appeal to survive in a patriarchal society for bringing all women down, as opposed to a more systemic critique that blames the patriarchy itself. This is painfully, myopically wrong. Maybe she has more in common with Sandy and his Ayn Rand-reading ways than she thinks.
But enough talk about politics, for Adam is back and being murder-y in a sexy way. Sure, he was not that nice to Hannah when they were dating, and sure, he should respect her wishes and leave her alone. But to let himself into the house, speak the line “as a man living my man life, my desire for you cannot be repressed,” and then demand a glass of milk before he goes? I can see why Hannah loves this weirdo. Maybe someday they’ll get over themselves enough to feel the same thing at the same time.
"Even coming into spring, I had a couple knee issues," he said. "I had a couple surgeries coming into spring. I was trying to push the fast-forward button, making sure I was catching up and able to do everything I wanted to. This year, I've had a very productive offseason. I'm just excited coming in and being 100 percent and firing on all cylinders coming into spring right away."
"I was confident that I'd be back here," he said. "I thought I developed a good relationship with the coaches and the team. It's not as cut and dried as everyone thinks, but I really thought that I had a good place here with the team and I'm excited to be back, for sure.
"It's another chance to play in the big leagues and I'm excited. I understand the landscape of the team and what Matt Wieters' role is with the organization. It's always a blessing to be in the big leagues and my job is to just play the best that I can whenever that opportunity is. I'm happy to be playing here with Matt Wieters and to be playing on a winning team."
"Ultimately, you want to be an everyday guy and be an All-Star and all those things, but sometimes the chances aren't as often as you think," he said. "It's tough. So many teams have No. 1 catchers. That's kind of the mold teams would like, to have a No. 1 catcher and a No. 2 catcher who plays 40 games, somewhere in that ballpark, but a lot of teams are built differently. A lot of teams split time. As for right now, I'm happy to be part of a winning team and we'll see what happens in the future."
Thursday, January 17, 2013
American Horror Story
Before I even start this recap, I should point out that I’ve now written over 30,000 words on this season of American Horror Story, and other than the fact that that qualifies me for admission to Briarcliff asylum, it means that I have very high standards for the parabolic plot arcs of this show. That’s why I'm totally flummoxed and disappointed by certain aspects of last night’s episode, namely the fact that Kit Walker (Evan Peters) had the unbelievable bad luck to cohabitate with two ax murderers. Ax murdering is not contagious: It is not the flu, it is not the herpes virus, it is not even AIDS. What a screwy, evil-mustachioed red herring to throw into the penultimate installment of your awesome torture-porn show, Ryan Murphy. Why do you play me thus? I already ate Catfish last night. I didn’t want to swallow the entire contents of the narrative ocean.
We dive right in: Evening, chez Walker. Inside Kit’s house are twin high chairs, a pair of whimsical-print dish rags, and a calendar telling us it’s 1967. Photographs on the wall of Kit with Alma (Britne Oldford) and Grace (Lizzie Brocheré) reveal that he’s now living an idyllic-looking polygamist lifestyle and raising a child by each woman. Unfortunately, Kit is huffing and puffing as he strains to dislodge an ax from a body on his living room floor. He steps into frame in underpants, splattered with blood, and plops down next to a stuffed sheep as a child calls from offscreen, “Daddy?” Kit tells the kid that he’ll be there in a minute and allows a single tear to slide down his cheek. He’s thinking, “I hope Grace, the known ax murderer, did this, because otherwise this will be an unfair manipulation of the viewers at home.”
After the credits, we find ourselves in the warm paisley afghan of Sister Wife life, pre-murder: Grace is at the table making charcoal doodles of the aliens who resuscitated her and gave her fertility treatments years ago, Alma is gathering produce from the garden and trying to wrangle their alien lovechildren, Julia and Thomas, and everyone’s wearing less flattering clothes than they were three years ago. Alma’s trying to plan their suburban farm, but Grace is completely absorbed in her creepy artwork and wants Alma to verify the praying mantis face of “the doctor” alien. “I don’t know if those were his mandibles! He was wearing a surgical mask!”
Kit enters, looking like he’s back from an audition for Godspell, all jazzed about the hippie march he wants everyone to attend as a family. Unsurprisingly, his ladies have reservations, and not just because they’re biracial polygamists with outer-space babies: toddlers at a march! So far from the potty chair? Alma asks Kit if Grace’s drawings might be “too much for the kids,” and later, as Kit makes a move on her, advises him to spend more time hooking up with his other baby mama because her preoccupation with the grays might be indicative of lingering ennui and romantic neglect. Grace is fragile — I mean, she murdered her family — so it makes sense that Alma, who seems comparably sane (cough) though she prefers to pretend the whole thing never happened, would be willing to give up her coital night to ensure that Grace doesn’t go bananas on the family unit.
Kit assents and brings his new sideburns into bedroom number dos, where Grace is still hunched over her sketchbook. She explains that the artist’s renderings are “for our children, [who] need to know where they came from.” She’d rather dwell on the alien experience than her own past, because she’s still haunted by “the memories of that black night — those feelings, when [she] lost control” of herself. Kit consoles her by telling her she’s a different person now, then rails her tenderly as Alma listens on the other side of the wall (a terrible design for living with multiple partners). Suddenly, the lights flicker, which as everyone knows is how aliens ring the doorbell. There’s a boom and a flash of bright lights, which causes Alma to lose her shit because she thinks she’s about to be stuffed full of more extraterrestrial fetuses. She screams for Kit — “don’t let them take me!” — but Grace comes to her first and they start to make their way toward the nursery while Kit grabs his gun. The curtains are on fire and a truck is screeching away from the scene, so it appears it wasn’t aliens after all, just another human hater taking issues with the Walker lifestyle.
When the cops arrive, Kit fingers “Billy and his friends,” the same gaggle of goons who cast shade on him for marrying Alma way back at the beginning of this weird saga. The police, however, think that Kit’s domestic situation is too weird to merit arresting anyone on his behalf. Alma’s “inconsolable” after the incident, but Grace remains unruffled, reminding Kit that she’s “strong” and only looking mildly wistful when he leaves her to tend to Alma. In the morning — or some morning thereafter — Grace is simultaneously teaching her son French while drilling him on his conception, which really needles Alma. “I’m done with the alien talk,” she tells Grace. “It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and you act like it’s a religious experience.” Grace, in the ugliest pants ever, confirms that for her, it was. The aliens gave them their super-amaaaaazing love-crowded life, their incredible children, and something to doodle about for decades. They bicker — Alma’s hung up on the painful metal probes she was raped with, Grace is still mooning over the aliens’ scientific advancement — while we keep cutting away to Kit hacking at some lumber in the yard. With an ax. Even though smart people who live with violent criminals usually just order a cord of that shit for, like, $15.
Grace pushes her fantasy that the aliens are coming back for Kit, Very Special Kit with his Very Open Mind, which triggers Alma to remind her that she and Kit had a pretty dandy life living together as a regular couple before he brought home a murderer from the insane asylum. Oh, yeah? Grace counters, “at least I wasn’t the one locking myself away. Is that how [she] wants Julia to grow up? Ashamed of who she is?” Alma smacks Grace, immediately following it with an apology that doesn’t stop Grace from slamming a bunch of noisy kitchen instruments to the ground. Kit walks in with his wood and, seeing the plumes of bitchfight-smoke still hanging in the air, suggests a family meeting, which everybody declines. That night, he sneaks out from bed next to Alma and joins his more artistic lover in the living room. They’ve got the rainbow asylum connection and bond over the time wasted behind bars; Grace oozes treacly joy over their “miracle babies,” their precious life, and her love for Kit and Alma, but she wants to “embrace” the future, and that means that Alma needs to open her mi— GLUG.
Alma sinks it to her a few more times before Kit pins her to the ground, but it’s obviously too late (because, you know, axes). Alma cries that she couldn’t have the aliens return as their rude houseguests, and entreats him to hide with her from the little green men as Grace expires bloodily on the carpet. Now we’re back where we began, which is very tidy other than the fact that it makes no sense. Alma may have been in denial, she may have been sort of a closed clam about her emotions, and I wouldn’t have even put it past her if she wanted to poison Grace just a little, but I needed hella more buildup to this event. I can not only see the wizard behind the curtain here, I see the wizard up at 2 in the morning draining his millionth Corona and saying, “You know what, fuck it. I can’t keep writing dialogue for these three.”
How’s about we just skip forward to 1968 and beam ourselves into the Briarcliff common room, where Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) is playing Candyland with Pepper (Naomi Grossman) and a Whitman’s sampler of other, unfamiliar patients. As if to prove that it’s really 1968, the television is playing a news broadcast of a press conference announcing Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. Monsignor Timothy (Joseph Fiennes) enters the ward and addresses Jude, who informs him that “Jude is dead” — and though she’s not dead, she’s dominating Gum Drop Mountain, she does have a death certificate, as Monsignor Timothy previously informed Lana (Sarah Paulson) when she arrived to spring Jude from the joint. Jude has been renamed Betty Drake, she bitterly reminds the Monsignor, but eventually submits to leaving the card table to talk with him in a no more private corner of the room.
He tells her that he’s leaving Briarcliff to accept an appointment as Cardinal of New York, and that the church has donated Briarcliff to the state for use as an “overflow facility.” He also mentions that he’s getting her out of Briarcliff, and that “the cruelty ends here.”
“The cruelest thing of all, Timothy, is false hope,” counters Jude, but he puppy-dog-eyes her into believing that he’s sincere. Optimistic, Jude is smiling over her brioche station when some of the aforementioned overflow arrives, but her good humor is ruined and replaced by the willies when she sees that one of the new patients is a very handsome — while at the same time extremely evocative of Roy Orbison — Angel of Death (Frances Conroy). The Angel of Death doesn’t seem to know that she’s the Angel of Death, but Jude is sure of it and really unhappy at the prospect of meeting her demise right before she gets a taste of freedom. Even though they’re speaking different languages, her obvious fear makes it pretty easy for the Angel of Death Doppelg?nger to pin her as her personal bitch. Rattled, Jude tells Pepper “there are storm clouds brewing” and hopes that the Monsignor will get her out fast, but Pepper isn’t so sure, mostly because the Monsignor is a lousy person, and rarely does anyone return to Briarcliff to accomplish what they promised when they left. Alma shuffles in the front door with her state-issued toothbrush, because we had to do something with her character, right?
When Jude enters her cell for the night, she sees her new roommate, the Angel of Death Doppelg?nger, luxuriating on the top bunk. Jude’s dismay is profound: She doesn’t want to die, plus (like all terrible roommates) the AoDD has pilfered her smokes. “Everything in this cell belongs to me, and that includes you,” says the AoDD, which means that Jude’s got to really watch her leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory and her expensive shampoo. Roommates, amirite? She tells the AoDD that she wants nothing to do with her, to which the AoDD responds, “You’ll change your tune.” The AoDD attempts to seduce Jude, who declines and retreats to her crappy bottom bunk to turn into a human rock of tensed muscle until their joint lease runs out.
We dive right in: Evening, chez Walker. Inside Kit’s house are twin high chairs, a pair of whimsical-print dish rags, and a calendar telling us it’s 1967. Photographs on the wall of Kit with Alma (Britne Oldford) and Grace (Lizzie Brocheré) reveal that he’s now living an idyllic-looking polygamist lifestyle and raising a child by each woman. Unfortunately, Kit is huffing and puffing as he strains to dislodge an ax from a body on his living room floor. He steps into frame in underpants, splattered with blood, and plops down next to a stuffed sheep as a child calls from offscreen, “Daddy?” Kit tells the kid that he’ll be there in a minute and allows a single tear to slide down his cheek. He’s thinking, “I hope Grace, the known ax murderer, did this, because otherwise this will be an unfair manipulation of the viewers at home.”
After the credits, we find ourselves in the warm paisley afghan of Sister Wife life, pre-murder: Grace is at the table making charcoal doodles of the aliens who resuscitated her and gave her fertility treatments years ago, Alma is gathering produce from the garden and trying to wrangle their alien lovechildren, Julia and Thomas, and everyone’s wearing less flattering clothes than they were three years ago. Alma’s trying to plan their suburban farm, but Grace is completely absorbed in her creepy artwork and wants Alma to verify the praying mantis face of “the doctor” alien. “I don’t know if those were his mandibles! He was wearing a surgical mask!”
Kit enters, looking like he’s back from an audition for Godspell, all jazzed about the hippie march he wants everyone to attend as a family. Unsurprisingly, his ladies have reservations, and not just because they’re biracial polygamists with outer-space babies: toddlers at a march! So far from the potty chair? Alma asks Kit if Grace’s drawings might be “too much for the kids,” and later, as Kit makes a move on her, advises him to spend more time hooking up with his other baby mama because her preoccupation with the grays might be indicative of lingering ennui and romantic neglect. Grace is fragile — I mean, she murdered her family — so it makes sense that Alma, who seems comparably sane (cough) though she prefers to pretend the whole thing never happened, would be willing to give up her coital night to ensure that Grace doesn’t go bananas on the family unit.
Kit assents and brings his new sideburns into bedroom number dos, where Grace is still hunched over her sketchbook. She explains that the artist’s renderings are “for our children, [who] need to know where they came from.” She’d rather dwell on the alien experience than her own past, because she’s still haunted by “the memories of that black night — those feelings, when [she] lost control” of herself. Kit consoles her by telling her she’s a different person now, then rails her tenderly as Alma listens on the other side of the wall (a terrible design for living with multiple partners). Suddenly, the lights flicker, which as everyone knows is how aliens ring the doorbell. There’s a boom and a flash of bright lights, which causes Alma to lose her shit because she thinks she’s about to be stuffed full of more extraterrestrial fetuses. She screams for Kit — “don’t let them take me!” — but Grace comes to her first and they start to make their way toward the nursery while Kit grabs his gun. The curtains are on fire and a truck is screeching away from the scene, so it appears it wasn’t aliens after all, just another human hater taking issues with the Walker lifestyle.
When the cops arrive, Kit fingers “Billy and his friends,” the same gaggle of goons who cast shade on him for marrying Alma way back at the beginning of this weird saga. The police, however, think that Kit’s domestic situation is too weird to merit arresting anyone on his behalf. Alma’s “inconsolable” after the incident, but Grace remains unruffled, reminding Kit that she’s “strong” and only looking mildly wistful when he leaves her to tend to Alma. In the morning — or some morning thereafter — Grace is simultaneously teaching her son French while drilling him on his conception, which really needles Alma. “I’m done with the alien talk,” she tells Grace. “It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and you act like it’s a religious experience.” Grace, in the ugliest pants ever, confirms that for her, it was. The aliens gave them their super-amaaaaazing love-crowded life, their incredible children, and something to doodle about for decades. They bicker — Alma’s hung up on the painful metal probes she was raped with, Grace is still mooning over the aliens’ scientific advancement — while we keep cutting away to Kit hacking at some lumber in the yard. With an ax. Even though smart people who live with violent criminals usually just order a cord of that shit for, like, $15.
Grace pushes her fantasy that the aliens are coming back for Kit, Very Special Kit with his Very Open Mind, which triggers Alma to remind her that she and Kit had a pretty dandy life living together as a regular couple before he brought home a murderer from the insane asylum. Oh, yeah? Grace counters, “at least I wasn’t the one locking myself away. Is that how [she] wants Julia to grow up? Ashamed of who she is?” Alma smacks Grace, immediately following it with an apology that doesn’t stop Grace from slamming a bunch of noisy kitchen instruments to the ground. Kit walks in with his wood and, seeing the plumes of bitchfight-smoke still hanging in the air, suggests a family meeting, which everybody declines. That night, he sneaks out from bed next to Alma and joins his more artistic lover in the living room. They’ve got the rainbow asylum connection and bond over the time wasted behind bars; Grace oozes treacly joy over their “miracle babies,” their precious life, and her love for Kit and Alma, but she wants to “embrace” the future, and that means that Alma needs to open her mi— GLUG.
Alma sinks it to her a few more times before Kit pins her to the ground, but it’s obviously too late (because, you know, axes). Alma cries that she couldn’t have the aliens return as their rude houseguests, and entreats him to hide with her from the little green men as Grace expires bloodily on the carpet. Now we’re back where we began, which is very tidy other than the fact that it makes no sense. Alma may have been in denial, she may have been sort of a closed clam about her emotions, and I wouldn’t have even put it past her if she wanted to poison Grace just a little, but I needed hella more buildup to this event. I can not only see the wizard behind the curtain here, I see the wizard up at 2 in the morning draining his millionth Corona and saying, “You know what, fuck it. I can’t keep writing dialogue for these three.”
How’s about we just skip forward to 1968 and beam ourselves into the Briarcliff common room, where Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) is playing Candyland with Pepper (Naomi Grossman) and a Whitman’s sampler of other, unfamiliar patients. As if to prove that it’s really 1968, the television is playing a news broadcast of a press conference announcing Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. Monsignor Timothy (Joseph Fiennes) enters the ward and addresses Jude, who informs him that “Jude is dead” — and though she’s not dead, she’s dominating Gum Drop Mountain, she does have a death certificate, as Monsignor Timothy previously informed Lana (Sarah Paulson) when she arrived to spring Jude from the joint. Jude has been renamed Betty Drake, she bitterly reminds the Monsignor, but eventually submits to leaving the card table to talk with him in a no more private corner of the room.
He tells her that he’s leaving Briarcliff to accept an appointment as Cardinal of New York, and that the church has donated Briarcliff to the state for use as an “overflow facility.” He also mentions that he’s getting her out of Briarcliff, and that “the cruelty ends here.”
“The cruelest thing of all, Timothy, is false hope,” counters Jude, but he puppy-dog-eyes her into believing that he’s sincere. Optimistic, Jude is smiling over her brioche station when some of the aforementioned overflow arrives, but her good humor is ruined and replaced by the willies when she sees that one of the new patients is a very handsome — while at the same time extremely evocative of Roy Orbison — Angel of Death (Frances Conroy). The Angel of Death doesn’t seem to know that she’s the Angel of Death, but Jude is sure of it and really unhappy at the prospect of meeting her demise right before she gets a taste of freedom. Even though they’re speaking different languages, her obvious fear makes it pretty easy for the Angel of Death Doppelg?nger to pin her as her personal bitch. Rattled, Jude tells Pepper “there are storm clouds brewing” and hopes that the Monsignor will get her out fast, but Pepper isn’t so sure, mostly because the Monsignor is a lousy person, and rarely does anyone return to Briarcliff to accomplish what they promised when they left. Alma shuffles in the front door with her state-issued toothbrush, because we had to do something with her character, right?
When Jude enters her cell for the night, she sees her new roommate, the Angel of Death Doppelg?nger, luxuriating on the top bunk. Jude’s dismay is profound: She doesn’t want to die, plus (like all terrible roommates) the AoDD has pilfered her smokes. “Everything in this cell belongs to me, and that includes you,” says the AoDD, which means that Jude’s got to really watch her leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory and her expensive shampoo. Roommates, amirite? She tells the AoDD that she wants nothing to do with her, to which the AoDD responds, “You’ll change your tune.” The AoDD attempts to seduce Jude, who declines and retreats to her crappy bottom bunk to turn into a human rock of tensed muscle until their joint lease runs out.
Manti Te'o in his own words
On Sunday, Sept. 23, I sat down with Manti Te'o for a story that was due two hours after the interview concluded and would appear on SI's cover later that week. The detail he provided me about Lennay Kekua, who he said had died 10 days earlier -- six hours after his grandmother passed away -- was staggering. He said that they met through his cousin nearly four years ago and started "dating" on Oct. 15, 2011. Te'o told me she graduated from Stanford, lived in Carson, Calif., had family roots in Hawaii and helped take over part of her dad's job in the construction business, though her passion was to work with children and she'd traveled as far as New Zealand to do so. He said she got hit by a drunk driver on April 28, 2012, discovered that she had leukemia while recovering, and received her cancer treatment at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Calif. He never specified that he'd met her in person, and I didn't ask. Why would you ask someone if he'd actually met his girlfriend who recently died?
Last night I went through about six hours of interviews from the five days I spent at Notre Dame reporting the Te'o story. Father Paul Doyle, the rector of Dillon Hall, where Te'o lived for three years, told me, "I think I had met the girlfriend. I think she had been here visiting the year before." (He gave Te'o a prayer card that said the men of Dillon Hall were praying for his loss.) Coach Brian Kelly, defensive coordinator Bob Diaco and teammates such as Theo Riddick, Robby Toma and Cierre Wood described in painstaking detail Te'o's emotions on the day he got the call in the locker room that Kekua had died. I was told by teammates and coaches that Te'o had been on the phone with her while getting his ankles taped and for weeks after her death he stayed in close communication with her supposed family.
Before I went to campus, I had conducted lengthy interviews with Brian Te'o, Manti's dad, and Dalton Hilliard, a close friend from Punahou High in Honolulu who played at UCLA. Both said they were in frequent communication with Kekua; Brian Te'o told me he had received a condolence text from her after his mother died. They also spoke on the phone at length, as he did with Lennay's brothers after her "death." Hilliard said he received frequent texts and tweets from her.
"She was a very supportive, loving passionate individual," Hillard said. "She was all about God and prayer and being able to have faith. Me and her never met in person. But I felt like this was a testament to who she was. She would still text and tweet me before my games."
He added, "It was a pleasure for me to know her. The fact she made my best friend such a happy man, it's something that made me a happy man as well."
When I arrived in South Bend, Ind., that Wednesday morning, Te'o, his team and an entire campus talked openly about mourning Kekua. I had little reason to believe that she didn't exist.
But in retrospect there were some red flags. When I checked Lexis Nexis to find out more about Kekua, I couldn't find anything, though that's not uncommon for a college-aged student. Nor was there anything on her supposed brother, Koa. I was unable to track down any obituaries or funeral notices, but that might be explained by the fact that she had three recent places she called home, or by her family not wanting publicity.
I called Mike Eubanks at Stanford to check Kekua's graduation year. Te'o wasn't sure if it was 2010 or 2011. Eubanks is an assistant athletic director for football and he coordinates on-campus recruiting visits. He knew Te'o from Stanford recruiting him in 2008 and '09 -- Stanford had gone after him hard. Eubanks, who directed Stanford's football media relations this season, couldn't find her in the alumni directory and thought it was odd that, on such a small campus, he'd never heard of a student dating Te'o. This was the most glaring sign I missed. I thought that maybe she didn't graduate, so we took any reference to Stanford out of the story.
We searched for details about the car crash. Brian Te'o told our fact checker and Manti told me that a drunk driver had hit her. We couldn't find any articles about that accident and took the drunk driving reference out. It was just a car accident.
For the interview on Sunday afternoon Te'o and I sat in the linebacker meeting room in Notre Dame's football facility and he looked straight at me as he spoke. His eyes welled up at times. The only time he didn't speak with confidence was when I asked how they met. I didn't press him, as it was clearly something he didn't want to share. I suspected they may have met online, understood he wouldn't have wanted that public and moved on.
On April 28 [my girlfriend] got in a bad accident and was hit by a drunk driver. Ever since April 28 she's been in the hospital. She recovered from the accident but we were always wondering why some days she would be doing well and the next day she would be down in the dumps and complaining about pain in her back. It was then that we found out she had leukemia.
She was actually getting better to the point where she was cleared to fly and was sent home. She was doing better. So I woke up in the morning and my parents woke me up and they told me about my grandma. And my girlfriend was just someone who was so loving and caring and cares for others. She really loves my parents and my parents love her. She called and she offered her condolences on behalf of her and her family and she was telling them that she loves him and how they're thinking and praying for us.
And then I remember I went to class and went to workouts and after workouts, right before I was about to come into meetings, I got a text message from her phone but it was her brother. Every time her brother texts me he just says, "Bro." I was like, "Why is her brother texting me?" Then I get a phone call from her older brother's phone. He's just crying. And immediately I felt like, "Oh my Gosh, what just happened." And then he told me, "She's gone bro."
I knew for me that my girlfriend and my family would want me to be out there. They wouldn't want me to be sulking over things. I knew for me, the best way to show them that I loved them was to play the best game of my life on Saturday. In order to do that, I needed to be out there practicing no matter what I was going through. I needed to just suck it up and get out there and get my work done and be ready to represent them the best way I know how on Saturday. When I got out there, it was hard. But I just brought my team up. Coach brought my team up. He had them come out and explain to them what happened. I told them I love each and every one of you. I lost my grandmother the night before and found out this morning that I just lost my girlfriend six hours later. Never in my life has family been pushed to the forefront. My goal is now, and has been, but there's more to it now. Just to make sure I see my family and loved ones again. I told them, this is my family. You guys are my family. I love each and every one of you. Stick together. And I told them, my girlfriend always told me, "Send roses while they still can smell them, tell them they love you (sic) while they still can hear it." I told them to make sure you tell your family members you love them every single day.
It was harder than it was the previous week. I was rolling. The feeling of it settling in that, she's not physically here no more. You just can't call her. I talked to my girlfriend every single day. I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going though chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn't sleep. She would say, "Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep." I slept on the phone with her every single night.
She didn't get out. She went from there. Remember she got in the accident and she was in a coma. We lost her, actually, twice. She flatlined twice. They revived her twice. It was just a trippy situation. It was a day I was flying home from South Bend to go home for summer break. It was May. Mid-May. That was the day where they said, "Bro, we're going to pull it. We're going to pull the plug." I remember having this feeling like everything is going to be OK. They were telling me, "Say your goodbyes." From April 28 to around mid-May, I was always talking to my girlfriend who was on a machine.
No. She could only breathe. One of the miraculous things was when I talked to her and she would hear my voice her breathing would pick up. Like quickly, and then she would start crying. But her breathing would quicken, and she would start crying. So her brother was in the room with the nurse. They were monitoring her. She said, "Who is she on the phone with?" Her boyfriend. She was like, "That's amazing. She doesn't do that with anybody else." So that happened. And then she flatlined and we were losing her.
The day I went home, that was the day they were going to pull it. They were saying their goodbyes and all that. I said, "Babe, I'm never going to say goodbye to you. If you really want to go, she really missed her dad, so I said, "If you want to go, be with dad, go. Just know that I love you very, very much." I had this very positive feeling that everything was going to be OK. I landed in Hawaii. By the time I said my goodbyes. Not my goodbyes, my I love you, I'll see you later, that kind of thing, I jumped on the airplane to go to Hawaii. They were scheduled to pull the plug while I was in the air.
So right when I landed, I was expecting to get a voicemail saying she's gone. So I landed and I had a voicemail from her brother saying, "Brother, call me back right now." So you can imagine what's going through my head. I was like, "What am I going to do? How am I going to take this?'"And so I called him back, the doctor came in and he saw something and he wants to try some treatment on her to see if it works. From there she slowly started to get better. Slowly. Eventually she came out of her coma and she started having memory problems and she couldn't remember because of the accident. That's how much damage she had to her frontal lobe. She had memory problems. I was actually the first person that she talked to. She was breathing, breathing. When I talked to her, I would say, "Babe, do you know who this is?" I knew she knew who it was because her breathing would pick up. I was like, "Relax, chill. Breathe slowly. Breathe slowly." And then, that was when she first started to speak was that conversation. I was like, "Babe, I love you. I love you." Very slightly she said, "I love you."
Last night I went through about six hours of interviews from the five days I spent at Notre Dame reporting the Te'o story. Father Paul Doyle, the rector of Dillon Hall, where Te'o lived for three years, told me, "I think I had met the girlfriend. I think she had been here visiting the year before." (He gave Te'o a prayer card that said the men of Dillon Hall were praying for his loss.) Coach Brian Kelly, defensive coordinator Bob Diaco and teammates such as Theo Riddick, Robby Toma and Cierre Wood described in painstaking detail Te'o's emotions on the day he got the call in the locker room that Kekua had died. I was told by teammates and coaches that Te'o had been on the phone with her while getting his ankles taped and for weeks after her death he stayed in close communication with her supposed family.
Before I went to campus, I had conducted lengthy interviews with Brian Te'o, Manti's dad, and Dalton Hilliard, a close friend from Punahou High in Honolulu who played at UCLA. Both said they were in frequent communication with Kekua; Brian Te'o told me he had received a condolence text from her after his mother died. They also spoke on the phone at length, as he did with Lennay's brothers after her "death." Hilliard said he received frequent texts and tweets from her.
"She was a very supportive, loving passionate individual," Hillard said. "She was all about God and prayer and being able to have faith. Me and her never met in person. But I felt like this was a testament to who she was. She would still text and tweet me before my games."
He added, "It was a pleasure for me to know her. The fact she made my best friend such a happy man, it's something that made me a happy man as well."
When I arrived in South Bend, Ind., that Wednesday morning, Te'o, his team and an entire campus talked openly about mourning Kekua. I had little reason to believe that she didn't exist.
But in retrospect there were some red flags. When I checked Lexis Nexis to find out more about Kekua, I couldn't find anything, though that's not uncommon for a college-aged student. Nor was there anything on her supposed brother, Koa. I was unable to track down any obituaries or funeral notices, but that might be explained by the fact that she had three recent places she called home, or by her family not wanting publicity.
I called Mike Eubanks at Stanford to check Kekua's graduation year. Te'o wasn't sure if it was 2010 or 2011. Eubanks is an assistant athletic director for football and he coordinates on-campus recruiting visits. He knew Te'o from Stanford recruiting him in 2008 and '09 -- Stanford had gone after him hard. Eubanks, who directed Stanford's football media relations this season, couldn't find her in the alumni directory and thought it was odd that, on such a small campus, he'd never heard of a student dating Te'o. This was the most glaring sign I missed. I thought that maybe she didn't graduate, so we took any reference to Stanford out of the story.
We searched for details about the car crash. Brian Te'o told our fact checker and Manti told me that a drunk driver had hit her. We couldn't find any articles about that accident and took the drunk driving reference out. It was just a car accident.
For the interview on Sunday afternoon Te'o and I sat in the linebacker meeting room in Notre Dame's football facility and he looked straight at me as he spoke. His eyes welled up at times. The only time he didn't speak with confidence was when I asked how they met. I didn't press him, as it was clearly something he didn't want to share. I suspected they may have met online, understood he wouldn't have wanted that public and moved on.
On April 28 [my girlfriend] got in a bad accident and was hit by a drunk driver. Ever since April 28 she's been in the hospital. She recovered from the accident but we were always wondering why some days she would be doing well and the next day she would be down in the dumps and complaining about pain in her back. It was then that we found out she had leukemia.
She was actually getting better to the point where she was cleared to fly and was sent home. She was doing better. So I woke up in the morning and my parents woke me up and they told me about my grandma. And my girlfriend was just someone who was so loving and caring and cares for others. She really loves my parents and my parents love her. She called and she offered her condolences on behalf of her and her family and she was telling them that she loves him and how they're thinking and praying for us.
And then I remember I went to class and went to workouts and after workouts, right before I was about to come into meetings, I got a text message from her phone but it was her brother. Every time her brother texts me he just says, "Bro." I was like, "Why is her brother texting me?" Then I get a phone call from her older brother's phone. He's just crying. And immediately I felt like, "Oh my Gosh, what just happened." And then he told me, "She's gone bro."
I knew for me that my girlfriend and my family would want me to be out there. They wouldn't want me to be sulking over things. I knew for me, the best way to show them that I loved them was to play the best game of my life on Saturday. In order to do that, I needed to be out there practicing no matter what I was going through. I needed to just suck it up and get out there and get my work done and be ready to represent them the best way I know how on Saturday. When I got out there, it was hard. But I just brought my team up. Coach brought my team up. He had them come out and explain to them what happened. I told them I love each and every one of you. I lost my grandmother the night before and found out this morning that I just lost my girlfriend six hours later. Never in my life has family been pushed to the forefront. My goal is now, and has been, but there's more to it now. Just to make sure I see my family and loved ones again. I told them, this is my family. You guys are my family. I love each and every one of you. Stick together. And I told them, my girlfriend always told me, "Send roses while they still can smell them, tell them they love you (sic) while they still can hear it." I told them to make sure you tell your family members you love them every single day.
It was harder than it was the previous week. I was rolling. The feeling of it settling in that, she's not physically here no more. You just can't call her. I talked to my girlfriend every single day. I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going though chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn't sleep. She would say, "Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep." I slept on the phone with her every single night.
She didn't get out. She went from there. Remember she got in the accident and she was in a coma. We lost her, actually, twice. She flatlined twice. They revived her twice. It was just a trippy situation. It was a day I was flying home from South Bend to go home for summer break. It was May. Mid-May. That was the day where they said, "Bro, we're going to pull it. We're going to pull the plug." I remember having this feeling like everything is going to be OK. They were telling me, "Say your goodbyes." From April 28 to around mid-May, I was always talking to my girlfriend who was on a machine.
No. She could only breathe. One of the miraculous things was when I talked to her and she would hear my voice her breathing would pick up. Like quickly, and then she would start crying. But her breathing would quicken, and she would start crying. So her brother was in the room with the nurse. They were monitoring her. She said, "Who is she on the phone with?" Her boyfriend. She was like, "That's amazing. She doesn't do that with anybody else." So that happened. And then she flatlined and we were losing her.
The day I went home, that was the day they were going to pull it. They were saying their goodbyes and all that. I said, "Babe, I'm never going to say goodbye to you. If you really want to go, she really missed her dad, so I said, "If you want to go, be with dad, go. Just know that I love you very, very much." I had this very positive feeling that everything was going to be OK. I landed in Hawaii. By the time I said my goodbyes. Not my goodbyes, my I love you, I'll see you later, that kind of thing, I jumped on the airplane to go to Hawaii. They were scheduled to pull the plug while I was in the air.
So right when I landed, I was expecting to get a voicemail saying she's gone. So I landed and I had a voicemail from her brother saying, "Brother, call me back right now." So you can imagine what's going through my head. I was like, "What am I going to do? How am I going to take this?'"And so I called him back, the doctor came in and he saw something and he wants to try some treatment on her to see if it works. From there she slowly started to get better. Slowly. Eventually she came out of her coma and she started having memory problems and she couldn't remember because of the accident. That's how much damage she had to her frontal lobe. She had memory problems. I was actually the first person that she talked to. She was breathing, breathing. When I talked to her, I would say, "Babe, do you know who this is?" I knew she knew who it was because her breathing would pick up. I was like, "Relax, chill. Breathe slowly. Breathe slowly." And then, that was when she first started to speak was that conversation. I was like, "Babe, I love you. I love you." Very slightly she said, "I love you."
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Juniper to build its own software-defined networking stack
Juniper Networks is not, it turns out, all that enthusiastic about the OpenFlow technology that is at the heart of a lot of software-defined network (SDN) strategies these days. But don't be confused. That does not mean that Juniper doesn't believe in SDN or has not been quietly putting together its own SDN battle plan to take on Cisco, which has its own ideas about SDN, just like other OpenFlow enthusiasts who are trying to break up the network control and forwarding planes and make them more malleable and manageable.
Juniper has been Cisco Systems' main threat in switching, routing, and security appliances for so long that it is hard to remember them not fighting. And the two companies, which have a lot at stake in preserving the current state of the network, are not moving particularly fast in embracing various kinds of software-defined networking (SDN) technologies, particularly the OpenFlow protocol.
And there's a good reason why. Both Cisco and Juniper, as we learned on Tuesday at the company's partner conference in Las Vegas, think they have a better approach to SDN than just slapping OpenFlow inside their physical switches, adding virtual switches to hypervisors, and parking an OpenFlow controller out-of-band to manage the shape-shifting of network traffic.
During his Global Partner Conference keynote address, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson – formerly a Microsoft big shot – was joined onstage by Bob Muglia, also a former Microsoftie and now executive VP in charge of Juniper's software solutions division. They talked about the broader issues around SDN and how Juniper would spend the next several years transforming its switches and routers, and also break up the network stack even more than the OpenFlow approach does and spread it across a wider variety of devices, including in-house x86 servers and public clouds where this makes sense.
"There's been a lot of hype around software-defined networks, and in fact some people have said that Juniper has been relatively quiet over the past six months," said Johnson. "But behind the scenes, we have been working very hard. We've had our top engineers and our top technical thought-leaders focus on this topic."
The problem with networking is that switches are too brittle. You configure them manually, usually through a command-line interface, and once you get it all working with a device moving traffic from hither to yon, you are really loathe to change it – even if traffic on the network is changing.
Instead, you just put up with poor network performance and overprovision your networks like crazy so you can get decent performance most of the time and take angry phone calls when the network gets slow.
With OpenFlow and other SDN approaches, the idea is to pull the control plane out of the switch and put it on an external controller so that as traffic changes on the network, you can reconfigure the forwarding tables on the fly to shape the network to fit the traffic.
The problem with current OpenFlow technologies, explained Muglia, is that the switches and routers that are managed by OpenFlow still own the gold images of these forwarding tables. And when Juniper gets its software stack out, the table settings stored in its own homegrown controller – which will not support the OpenFlow protocol – will be the masters and the copies active in the switches and routers will be the slaves.
For Juniper, SDN is about peddling specialized networking hardware with ASICs that can run certain functions on a network device such as a switch or router at least an order of magnitude faster than you could do that function from inside of a virtual machine running on a generic x86 server with a hypervisor.
But, in the cases where you need that functionality to scale independently of the hardware's capability – Muglia gave the example of a switch with intrusion detection, which has plenty of oomph for doing the switching job but loses a lot of its bandwidth to forward packets when intrusion detection is turned on – then maybe you might want to run bits of the network stack on the switch or router and other bits on generic x86 servers or even cloudy infrastructure.
Juniper's approach to SDN, explained Muglia, will break the monolithic software stack inside of switches and routers – for campuses, branches, and service providers and not just for data centers – into four different planes: management, services, control, and forwarding.
By breaking the network into even smaller bits than OpenFlow does, Juniper says it will be able to further optimize these layers by letting customers decide where to deploy them when they are running.
Some of the parts of the Juniper SDN stack will be centralized, such as the management layer where device configuration will be done and analytics will be done in real time on traffic. But other areas, such as the forwarding plane, will continue to be distributed, because this is the best way to make a network responsive on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis to shifting patterns in traffic.
This malleability is key to lowering the cost of network configuration and allowing for automated control of network devices.
"We think that the main benefit of SDN will be more agility and lower OpEx for networks," explained Pradeep Sindhu, cofounder and CTO at Juniper, in a question and answer session after the keynotes. Sindhu added that for most customers, the operating expenses for running their networks are anywhere from two to seven times higher than the outlay they have for switching hardware and software. Muglia piped in that SND would enable the "shift from repetitive manual functions to more process automation" in networks.
But this is not magic, any more than server virtualization was. Sindhu joked that there was a common misconception that SND would commoditize networking and that some people were talking as if "the controller in the sky" would replace their networks and that all network devices would disappear and "packets would travel over the ether."
The reality is that there will still be switches and routers, and Juniper will be selling them as well as software that runs on them. In fact, the Junos operating system will continue to be bundled on Juniper's switches and routers.
Other software, however, will be broken free of the switches and will be available with utility-style pricing based on a certain amount of throughput over a certain period of time, much like cloud computing and storage capacity is. And to that end, Juniper will change its networking software pricing through a program called Software Advantage to offer consistent pricing per unit of bandwidth on its switches and routers as well as on x86 servers or cloud capacity set up to run it externally from the switches.
Juniper has been Cisco Systems' main threat in switching, routing, and security appliances for so long that it is hard to remember them not fighting. And the two companies, which have a lot at stake in preserving the current state of the network, are not moving particularly fast in embracing various kinds of software-defined networking (SDN) technologies, particularly the OpenFlow protocol.
And there's a good reason why. Both Cisco and Juniper, as we learned on Tuesday at the company's partner conference in Las Vegas, think they have a better approach to SDN than just slapping OpenFlow inside their physical switches, adding virtual switches to hypervisors, and parking an OpenFlow controller out-of-band to manage the shape-shifting of network traffic.
During his Global Partner Conference keynote address, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson – formerly a Microsoft big shot – was joined onstage by Bob Muglia, also a former Microsoftie and now executive VP in charge of Juniper's software solutions division. They talked about the broader issues around SDN and how Juniper would spend the next several years transforming its switches and routers, and also break up the network stack even more than the OpenFlow approach does and spread it across a wider variety of devices, including in-house x86 servers and public clouds where this makes sense.
"There's been a lot of hype around software-defined networks, and in fact some people have said that Juniper has been relatively quiet over the past six months," said Johnson. "But behind the scenes, we have been working very hard. We've had our top engineers and our top technical thought-leaders focus on this topic."
The problem with networking is that switches are too brittle. You configure them manually, usually through a command-line interface, and once you get it all working with a device moving traffic from hither to yon, you are really loathe to change it – even if traffic on the network is changing.
Instead, you just put up with poor network performance and overprovision your networks like crazy so you can get decent performance most of the time and take angry phone calls when the network gets slow.
With OpenFlow and other SDN approaches, the idea is to pull the control plane out of the switch and put it on an external controller so that as traffic changes on the network, you can reconfigure the forwarding tables on the fly to shape the network to fit the traffic.
The problem with current OpenFlow technologies, explained Muglia, is that the switches and routers that are managed by OpenFlow still own the gold images of these forwarding tables. And when Juniper gets its software stack out, the table settings stored in its own homegrown controller – which will not support the OpenFlow protocol – will be the masters and the copies active in the switches and routers will be the slaves.
For Juniper, SDN is about peddling specialized networking hardware with ASICs that can run certain functions on a network device such as a switch or router at least an order of magnitude faster than you could do that function from inside of a virtual machine running on a generic x86 server with a hypervisor.
But, in the cases where you need that functionality to scale independently of the hardware's capability – Muglia gave the example of a switch with intrusion detection, which has plenty of oomph for doing the switching job but loses a lot of its bandwidth to forward packets when intrusion detection is turned on – then maybe you might want to run bits of the network stack on the switch or router and other bits on generic x86 servers or even cloudy infrastructure.
Juniper's approach to SDN, explained Muglia, will break the monolithic software stack inside of switches and routers – for campuses, branches, and service providers and not just for data centers – into four different planes: management, services, control, and forwarding.
By breaking the network into even smaller bits than OpenFlow does, Juniper says it will be able to further optimize these layers by letting customers decide where to deploy them when they are running.
Some of the parts of the Juniper SDN stack will be centralized, such as the management layer where device configuration will be done and analytics will be done in real time on traffic. But other areas, such as the forwarding plane, will continue to be distributed, because this is the best way to make a network responsive on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis to shifting patterns in traffic.
This malleability is key to lowering the cost of network configuration and allowing for automated control of network devices.
"We think that the main benefit of SDN will be more agility and lower OpEx for networks," explained Pradeep Sindhu, cofounder and CTO at Juniper, in a question and answer session after the keynotes. Sindhu added that for most customers, the operating expenses for running their networks are anywhere from two to seven times higher than the outlay they have for switching hardware and software. Muglia piped in that SND would enable the "shift from repetitive manual functions to more process automation" in networks.
But this is not magic, any more than server virtualization was. Sindhu joked that there was a common misconception that SND would commoditize networking and that some people were talking as if "the controller in the sky" would replace their networks and that all network devices would disappear and "packets would travel over the ether."
The reality is that there will still be switches and routers, and Juniper will be selling them as well as software that runs on them. In fact, the Junos operating system will continue to be bundled on Juniper's switches and routers.
Other software, however, will be broken free of the switches and will be available with utility-style pricing based on a certain amount of throughput over a certain period of time, much like cloud computing and storage capacity is. And to that end, Juniper will change its networking software pricing through a program called Software Advantage to offer consistent pricing per unit of bandwidth on its switches and routers as well as on x86 servers or cloud capacity set up to run it externally from the switches.
HMV's travails show the need for citizens to reclaim town and city space
In my city, you'll find the HMV shop at the junction of two streets, Fargate and High Street. It's a handy spot. It's just across the way from Coles Corner, where lovers traditionally met, as immortalised by the singer Richard Hawley. Perhaps more importantly to many, it's by a bus stop.
Head downhill along High Street towards the tram bridge at Park Square and you'll pass through Commercial Street. On the left is where Jessops is. Sorry, was.
In all likelihood HMV will soon be a 'was' too. Both companies have called in administrators. Both have been struggling for ages, priced out of the market by the likes of Amazon, which can sell photographic and audio goods both more cheaply and more conveniently.
There has been no end of comment about the significance for our high streets of the demise of Jessops and HMV. Many have pointed out that their business model was broken: they simply couldn't compete with online retailers.
Some have muttered darkly about the unfair advantages enjoyed by distributors like Amazon, which not only find ways of slithering around corporation tax, but pay business rates far lower than town centre retailers (44 per square metre for a fulfilment centre in Doncaster, compared with more than 1,000 per square metre for a town centre unit in Rochdale, according to Guardian Northerner regular Paul Turner-Mitchell).
Others, such as Michael Bywater in the Independent, have turned to self-blame: we, the consumers, are the problem. We didn't value the high street, and now we're losing it.
All three points are valid. Retail is changing, and some companies are unable to keep up. Business taxation is unbalanced, and for all its bluster about helping the high street, the government has turned down the opportunity to tackle the problem. And the way the places we live in are managed or mismanaged is perhaps the biggest issue of all.
I used to pop into Jessops now and again. I haven't shopped at HMV for years – if I want to explore music, independent shops like Sheffield's Record Collector are far more enjoyable places to visit. I can find other retailers that can give me what Jessops and HMV did.
But there's still a sense of loss. Something familiar is disappearing: Sheffield city centre won't be the same. It's significant that much of the commentary on Jessops and HMV has referred to how long they've been there: Jessops, the family business started in 1935 or HMV, in our high streets since the first shop opened in 1921. We're reminded of Box Brownie cameras and ancient vinyl 78s that weigh a ton and are as faithful as Nipper the dog himself.
The loss of that familiarity changes the place and reminds us, in just the slightest whisper, of our own transience. It's not the disappearance of the individual shop but the sense of loss to the whole place that's disturbing. But as well as being a warning, it's an opportunity to remake and rethink and to replace what's lost with something new.
In a world where large-scale commercial property ownership depends on high rates of return in order to satisfy investors and cover costs (including the cost of taxation), the opportunities to make anew are restricted. Properties stand empty because it is not deemed commercially viable to fill them. Those who might want to do so but who don't have the track record or financial standing of bigger businesses are pushed to the margins.
Michael Bywater got it right: 'In the end, it's about public space: what it is, who owns it, how we negotiate it and what it's for.' What's broken isn't just the retail model of HMV or Jessops, or the business rates system, or city centre parking, or any of the individual bugbears blamed for the demise of the high street. What's broken is our own ability as citizens to share in the ownership, management and use of the spaces we occupy. It's about the whole place, not just the shops.
Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl announced a "blitz" of police, firefighters and building inspectors during peak trouble hours on the South Side, the first part of a larger plan to address problems in the city's entertainment districts based on a consultant's report.
"It's clear that the South Side area needs attention and it needs it now," Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said during a frigid press conference held in the middle of 16th Street. "It's going to require an all-hands-on-deck strategy ... It involves an aggressive approach to public safety."
Mr. Ravenstahl said he would order a saturation patrol to cite out-of-control revelers with public drunkenness and public urination. And roving DUI patrols would be deployed occasionally to catch impaired drivers and police would receive special training on crowd control and management.
The mayor would not say how many extra officers, inspectors and firefighters would be deployed, characterizing it as "significant."
Police chief Nate Harper, who stood beside the mayor, shook his head when asked to comment on the special crowd-control training police would receive.
East Carson Street was the site of a police-involved shooting early Sunday when five off-duty officers fired on a car that sped away from police in neighboring Homestead and crashed into parked vehicles.
The officers had to manage gathering crowds leftover from a typically busy Saturday night as they tried to stop the driver.
The officers wounded the driver, 32-year-old Donald Burris of Carnegie, and his mother, 49-year-old Lena Davenport.
Police today charged Mr. Burris with aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and fleeing or attempting to elude police.
The blitz is the first leg of the Pittsburgh Sociable City Plan, which came out of a report from the California-based Responsible Hospitality Institute.
The city paid the institute $100,000 to study its entertainment districts. In December, the institute released recommendations to address the problems that chronically plague some of the city's nighttime destinations, particularly the South Side.
Among other things, the report's authors urged the city to establish task forces to address hospitality and public safety, sending more officers into entertainment districts and the creation of "an efficient system for data collection to monitor risk."
They also recommended creating off-site parking for employees and patrons of the South Side, create pedicab regulations and a social marketing campaign for traffic and pedestrian safety.
Head downhill along High Street towards the tram bridge at Park Square and you'll pass through Commercial Street. On the left is where Jessops is. Sorry, was.
In all likelihood HMV will soon be a 'was' too. Both companies have called in administrators. Both have been struggling for ages, priced out of the market by the likes of Amazon, which can sell photographic and audio goods both more cheaply and more conveniently.
There has been no end of comment about the significance for our high streets of the demise of Jessops and HMV. Many have pointed out that their business model was broken: they simply couldn't compete with online retailers.
Some have muttered darkly about the unfair advantages enjoyed by distributors like Amazon, which not only find ways of slithering around corporation tax, but pay business rates far lower than town centre retailers (44 per square metre for a fulfilment centre in Doncaster, compared with more than 1,000 per square metre for a town centre unit in Rochdale, according to Guardian Northerner regular Paul Turner-Mitchell).
Others, such as Michael Bywater in the Independent, have turned to self-blame: we, the consumers, are the problem. We didn't value the high street, and now we're losing it.
All three points are valid. Retail is changing, and some companies are unable to keep up. Business taxation is unbalanced, and for all its bluster about helping the high street, the government has turned down the opportunity to tackle the problem. And the way the places we live in are managed or mismanaged is perhaps the biggest issue of all.
I used to pop into Jessops now and again. I haven't shopped at HMV for years – if I want to explore music, independent shops like Sheffield's Record Collector are far more enjoyable places to visit. I can find other retailers that can give me what Jessops and HMV did.
But there's still a sense of loss. Something familiar is disappearing: Sheffield city centre won't be the same. It's significant that much of the commentary on Jessops and HMV has referred to how long they've been there: Jessops, the family business started in 1935 or HMV, in our high streets since the first shop opened in 1921. We're reminded of Box Brownie cameras and ancient vinyl 78s that weigh a ton and are as faithful as Nipper the dog himself.
The loss of that familiarity changes the place and reminds us, in just the slightest whisper, of our own transience. It's not the disappearance of the individual shop but the sense of loss to the whole place that's disturbing. But as well as being a warning, it's an opportunity to remake and rethink and to replace what's lost with something new.
In a world where large-scale commercial property ownership depends on high rates of return in order to satisfy investors and cover costs (including the cost of taxation), the opportunities to make anew are restricted. Properties stand empty because it is not deemed commercially viable to fill them. Those who might want to do so but who don't have the track record or financial standing of bigger businesses are pushed to the margins.
Michael Bywater got it right: 'In the end, it's about public space: what it is, who owns it, how we negotiate it and what it's for.' What's broken isn't just the retail model of HMV or Jessops, or the business rates system, or city centre parking, or any of the individual bugbears blamed for the demise of the high street. What's broken is our own ability as citizens to share in the ownership, management and use of the spaces we occupy. It's about the whole place, not just the shops.
Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl announced a "blitz" of police, firefighters and building inspectors during peak trouble hours on the South Side, the first part of a larger plan to address problems in the city's entertainment districts based on a consultant's report.
"It's clear that the South Side area needs attention and it needs it now," Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said during a frigid press conference held in the middle of 16th Street. "It's going to require an all-hands-on-deck strategy ... It involves an aggressive approach to public safety."
Mr. Ravenstahl said he would order a saturation patrol to cite out-of-control revelers with public drunkenness and public urination. And roving DUI patrols would be deployed occasionally to catch impaired drivers and police would receive special training on crowd control and management.
The mayor would not say how many extra officers, inspectors and firefighters would be deployed, characterizing it as "significant."
Police chief Nate Harper, who stood beside the mayor, shook his head when asked to comment on the special crowd-control training police would receive.
East Carson Street was the site of a police-involved shooting early Sunday when five off-duty officers fired on a car that sped away from police in neighboring Homestead and crashed into parked vehicles.
The officers had to manage gathering crowds leftover from a typically busy Saturday night as they tried to stop the driver.
The officers wounded the driver, 32-year-old Donald Burris of Carnegie, and his mother, 49-year-old Lena Davenport.
Police today charged Mr. Burris with aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and fleeing or attempting to elude police.
The blitz is the first leg of the Pittsburgh Sociable City Plan, which came out of a report from the California-based Responsible Hospitality Institute.
The city paid the institute $100,000 to study its entertainment districts. In December, the institute released recommendations to address the problems that chronically plague some of the city's nighttime destinations, particularly the South Side.
Among other things, the report's authors urged the city to establish task forces to address hospitality and public safety, sending more officers into entertainment districts and the creation of "an efficient system for data collection to monitor risk."
They also recommended creating off-site parking for employees and patrons of the South Side, create pedicab regulations and a social marketing campaign for traffic and pedestrian safety.
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