Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and FELICITY BARRINGER NY TIMES
To change the bulbs in the 60-foot-high ceiling lights of Buckingham Palace’s grand stairwell, workers had to erect scaffolding and cover precious portraits of royal forebears.
So when a lighting designer two years ago proposed installing light emitting diodes or LEDs, an emerging lighting technology, the royal family readily assented. The new lights, the designer said, would last more than 22 years and enormously reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions — a big plus for Prince Charles, an ardent environmentalist. Since then, the palace has installed the lighting in chandeliers and on the exterior, where illuminating the entire facade uses less electricity than running an electric teakettle.
In shifting to LED lighting, the palace is part of a small but fast-growing trend that is redefining the century-old conception of lighting, replacing energy-wasting disposable bulbs with efficient fixtures that are often semi-permanent, like those used in plumbing.
Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. A recent report by McKinsey & Company cited conversion to LED lighting as potentially the most cost effective of a number of simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology.
LED lighting was once relegated to basketball scoreboards, cellphone consoles, traffic lights and colored Christmas lights. But as a result of rapid developments in the technology, it is now poised to become common on streets and in buildings, as well as in homes and offices. Some American cities, including Ann Arbor, Mich., and Raleigh, N.C., are using the lights to illuminate streets and parking garages, and dozens more are exploring the technology. And the lighting now adorns the conference rooms and bars of some Renaissance hotels, a corridor in the Pentagon and a new green building at Stanford.
LEDs are more than twice as efficient as compact fluorescent bulbs, currently the standard for greener lighting. Unlike compact fluorescents, LEDs turn on quickly and are compatible with dimmer switches. And while fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, which requires special disposal, LED bulbs contain no toxic elements, and last so long that disposal is not much of an issue.
“It is fit-and-forget-lighting that is essentially there for as long as you live,” said Colin Humphreys, a researcher at Cambridge University who works on gallium nitride LED lights, which now adorn structures in Britain.
The switch to LEDs is proceeding far more rapidly than experts had predicted just two years ago. President Obama’s stimulus package, which offers money for “green” infrastructure investment, will accelerate that pace, experts say. San Jose, Calif., plans to use $2 million in energy-efficiency grants to install 1,500 LED streetlights.
Thanks in part to the injection of federal cash, sales of the lights in new “solid state” fixtures — a $297 million industry in 2007 — are likely to become a near-billion-dollar industry by 2013, said Stephen Montgomery, director of LED research projects at Electronicast, a California consultancy. And after years of resisting what they had dismissed as a fringe technology, giants like General Electric and Philips have begun making LEDs.
Though the United States Department of Energy calls LED “a pivotal emerging technology,” there remain significant barriers. Homeowners may balk at the high initial cost, which lighting experts say currently will take 5 to 10 years to recoup in electricity savings. An outdoor LED spotlight today costs $100, as opposed to $7 for a regular bulb.
Another issue is that current LEDs generally provide only “directional light” rather than a 360-degree glow, meaning they are better suited to downward facing streetlights and ceiling lights than to many lamp-type settings.
And in the rush to make cheaper LED lights, poorly made products could erase the technology’s natural advantage, experts warn. LEDs are tiny sandwiches of two different materials that release light as electrons jump from one to the other. The lights must be carefully designed so heat does not damage them, reducing their lifespan to months from decades. And technological advances that receive rave reviews in a university laboratory may not perform as well when mass produced for the real world.
Britain’s Low Carbon Trust, an environmental nonprofit group, has replaced the 12 LED fixtures bought three years ago for its offices with conventional bulbs, because the LED lights were not bright enough, said Mischa Hewitt, a program manager at the trust. But he says he still thinks the technology is important.
Brian Owen, a contributor to the trade magazine LEDs, said that while it is good that cities are exploring LED lighting: “They have to do their due diligence. Rash decisions can result in disappointment or disaster.”
At the same time, nearly monthly scientific advances are addressing many of the problems, decreasing the high price of the bulbs somewhat and improving their ability to provide normal white light bright enough to illuminate rooms and streets.
For example, many LEDs are currently made on precious materials like sapphire. But scientists at a government-financed laboratory at Cambridge University have figured out how to grow them on silicon wafers, potentially making the lights far cheaper. While the original LEDs gave off only glowing red or green light, newer versions produce a blue light that, increasingly, can be manipulated to simulate incandescent bulbs. And researchers at dozens of universities are working to make the bulbs more usable.
“This is a technology on a very fast learning curve,” said Jon Creyts, an author of the McKinsey report, who predicted that the technology could be in widespread use within five years.
So far, the use of LEDs has been predominantly in outdoor settings. Toronto, Raleigh, Ann Arbor and Anchorage — not to mention Tianjin, China, and Torraca, Italy — have adopted LEDs for street and parking garage lighting, forsaking the yellow glow of traditional high-pressure sodium lamps. Three major California cities — Los Angeles (140,000 streetlights), San Jose (62,000) and San Francisco (30,000) — have embarked on some LED conversions.
Ann Arbor adopted the technology early, working with Relume Technologies, of Oxford, Mich., to design LEDs that would fit the globes of downtown fixtures. The $515 cost of installing each light will be paid back in reduced maintenance and electrical costs in four years and four months, said Mike Bergren, the city’s field-operations manager.
Because the light from LEDs can be modulated, in Ann Arbor they have been programmed to perform various useful tricks — to become brighter when someone walks under a light or to flicker outside of a home to guide paramedics to an emergency. And because they do not emit ultraviolet light, they attract no bugs.
People who live around Carolina Pines Park in Raleigh say they are pleased with the park’s new LED lights because they can be directed downward, away from home windows.
The lights are also rapidly moving indoors, where they could have an enormous effect on climate change. About 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions associated with buildings in the United States and the United Kingdom are related to indoor lighting; in some houses the number is as high as 40 percent.
This month, LED lights were for the first time the centerpiece at two of the world’s major trade shows for lighting, Lightfare International in New York and EuroLuce in Milan. A growing number of builders are starting to fit them into public buildings, offices and homes.
Ted Van Hyning, director of event technology at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland, said the new LED lights in the hotel’s conference rooms use 10 percent of the electricity of the fluorescent lights they replaced. And maintenance costs are far lower: A fluorescent bulb might last 3,000 hours while an LED fixture lasts more than 100,000 hours, Mr. Van Hyning said, adding: “We have six-figure energy costs a year, and these lights could represent a huge saving. Besides, they’re cool and sexy and fun.”
Buoyed by the improvements in the technology, Peter Byrne, a lighting designer and energy consultant for Buckingham Palace, installed the 32,000 custom LEDs in the ceiling of the grand stairwell when older fixtures wore out.
Mr. Byrne recognizes that Buckingham Palace is not the average home. “They need high-quality light — they have a lot of gold,” he said, “and gold tends to look silver if you light it poorly.”
Still he has started using the technology in other projects, for their light and their environmental benefit. He estimates that half of lights in homes, and particularly those in offices and stores can already be replaced by LEDs.
“At this point, LEDs can’t be used in all lights but that’s changing every month,” Mr. Byrne said. “If you go into Wal-Mart, and look at all those twin 8-foot fluorescents above every aisle, you realize that the potential is enormous.”

Brain PowerAt the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age

By BENEDICT CAREY (NY TIMES)
LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. — The ladies in the card room are playing bridge, and at their age the game is no hobby. It is a way of life, a daily comfort and challenge, the last communal campfire before all goes dark.
“We play for blood,” says Ruth Cummins, 92, before taking a sip of Red Bull at a recent game.
“It’s what keeps us going,” adds Georgia Scott, 99. “It’s where our closest friends are.”
In recent years scientists have become intensely interested in what could be called a super memory club — the fewer than one in 200 of us who, like Ms. Scott and Ms. Cummins, have lived past 90 without a trace of dementia. It is a group that, for the first time, is large enough to provide a glimpse into the lucid brain at the furthest reach of human life, and to help researchers tease apart what, exactly, is essential in preserving mental sharpness to the end.

“These are the most successful agers on earth, and they’re only just beginning to teach us what’s important, in their genes, in their routines, in their lives,” said Dr. Claudia Kawas, a neurologist at the University of California, Irvine. “We think, for example, that it’s very important to use your brain, to keep challenging your mind, but all mental activities may not be equal. We’re seeing some evidence that a social component may be crucial.”

Laguna Woods, a sprawling retirement community of 20,000 south of Los Angeles, is at the center of the world’s largest decades-long study of health and mental acuity in the elderly. Begun by University of Southern California researchers in 1981 and called the 90+ Study, it has included more than 14,000 people aged 65 and older, and more than 1,000 aged 90 or older.

Such studies can take years to bear fruit, and the results of this study are starting to alter the way scientists understand the aging brain. The evidence suggests that people who spend long stretches of their days, three hours and more, engrossed in some mental activities like cards may be at reduced risk of developing dementia. Researchers are trying to tease apart cause from effect: Are they active because they are sharp, or sharp because they are active?

The researchers have also demonstrated that the percentage of people with dementia after 90 does not plateau or taper off, as some experts had suspected. It continues to increase, so that for the one in 600 people who make it to 95, nearly 40 percent of the men and 60 percent of the women qualify for a diagnosis of dementia.

At the same time, findings from this and other continuing studies of the very old have provided hints that some genes may help people remain lucid even with brains that show all the biological ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. In the 90+ Study here, now a joint project run by U.S.C. and the University of California, Irvine, researchers regularly run genetic tests, test residents’ memory, track their activities, take blood samples, and in some cases do postmortem analyses of their brains. Researchers at Irvine maintain a brain bank of more than 100 specimens.

To move into the gated village of Laguna Woods, a tidy array of bungalows and condominiums that blends easily into southern Orange County, people must meet several requirements, one of which is that they do not need full-time care. Their minds are sharp when they arrive, whether they are 65 or 95.

They begin a new life here. Make new friends. Perhaps connect with new romantic partners. Try new activities, at one of the community’s fitness centers; or new hobbies, in the more than 400 residents’ clubs. They are as busy as arriving freshmen at a new campus, with one large difference: they are less interested in the future, or in the past.

“We live for the day,” said Dr. Leon Manheimer, a longtime resident who is in his 90s.

Yet it is precisely that ability to form new memories of the day, the present, that usually goes first in dementia cases, studies in Laguna Woods and elsewhere have found.

The very old who live among their peers know this intimately, and have developed their own expertise, their own laboratory. They diagnose each other, based on careful observation. And they have learned to distinguish among different kinds of memory loss, which are manageable and which ominous.

A Seat at the Table

Here at Laguna Woods, many residents make such delicate calculations in one place: the bridge table.

Contract bridge requires a strong memory. It involves four players, paired off, and each player must read his or her partner’s strategy by closely following what is played. Good players remember every card played and its significance for the team. Forget a card, or fall behind, and it can cost the team — and the social connection — dearly.

“When a partner starts to slip, you can’t trust them,” said Julie Davis, 89, a regular player living in Laguna Woods. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s terrible to say it that way, and worse to watch it happen. But other players get very annoyed. You can’t help yourself.”

At the Friday afternoon bridge game, Ms. Cummins and Ms. Scott sit with two other players, both women in their 90s. Gossip flows freely between hands, about residents whose talk is bigger than their game, about a 100-year-old man who collapsed and died that week in an exercise class.

But the women are all business during play.

“What was that you played, a spade was it?” a partner asks Ms. Cummins.

“Yes, a spade,” says Ms. Cummins, with some irritation. “It was a spade.”

Later, the partner stares uncertainly at the cards on the table. “Is that ——”

“We played that trick already,” Ms. Cummins says. “You’re a trick behind.”

Most regular players at Laguna Woods know of at least one player who, embarrassed by lapses, bowed out of the regular game. “A friend of mine, a very good player, when she thought she couldn’t keep up, she automatically dropped out,” Ms. Cummins said. “That’s usually what happens.”

Yet it is part of the tragedy of dementia that, in many cases, the condition quickly robs people of self-awareness. They will not voluntarily abandon the one thing that, perhaps more than any other, defines their daily existence.

“And then it’s really tough,” Ms. Davis said. “I mean, what do you do? These are your friends.”

Staying in the Game

So far, scientists here have found little evidence that diet or exercise affects the risk of dementia in people over 90. But some researchers argue that mental engagement — doing crossword puzzles, reading books — may delay the arrival of symptoms. And social connections, including interaction with friends, may be very important, some suspect. In isolation, a healthy human mind can go blank and quickly become disoriented, psychologists have found.

“There is quite a bit of evidence now suggesting that the more people you have contact with, in your own home or outside, the better you do” mentally and physically, Dr. Kawas said. “Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what it’s all about.”

And bridge, she added, provides both kinds of stimulation.

The unstated rule at Laguna Woods is to support a friend who is slipping, to act as a kind of memory supplement. “We’re all afraid to lose memory; we’re all at risk of that,” said one regular player in her 90s, who asked not to be named.

Woody Bowersock, 96, a former school principal, helped a teammate on a swim team at Laguna Woods to race even as dementia stole the man’s ability to form almost any new memory.

“You’d have to put him up on the platform just before the race, just walk him over there,” Mr. Bowersock said. “But if the whistle didn’t blow right away, he’d wander off. I tell you, I’d sometimes have to stand there with him until he was in the water. Then he was fine. A very good swimmer. Freestyle.”

Bridge is a different kind of challenge, but some residents here swear that the very good players can play by instinct even when their memory is dissolving.

“I know a man who’s 95, he is starting with dementia and plays bridge, and he forgets hands,” said Marilyn Ruekberg, who lives in Laguna Woods. “I bring him in as a partner anyway, and by the end we do exceedingly well. I don’t know how he does it, but he has lots of experience in the game.”

Scientists suspect that some people with deep experience in a game like bridge may be able to draw on reserves to buffer against memory lapses. But there is not enough evidence one way or the other to know.

Ms. Ruekberg said she cared less about that than about her friend: “I just want to give him something more during the day than his four walls.”

Drawing the Line

In studies of the very old, researchers in California, New York, Boston and elsewhere have found clues to that good fortune. For instance, Dr. Kawas’s group has found that some people who are lucid until the end of a very long life have brains that appear riddled with Alzheimer’s disease. In a study released last month, the researchers report that many of them carry a gene variant called APOE2, which may help them maintain mental sharpness.

Dr. Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has found that lucid Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians are three times more likely to carry a gene called CETP, which appears to increase the size and amount of so-called good cholesterol particles, than peers who succumbed to dementia.

“We don’t know how this could be protective, but it’s very strongly correlated with good cognitive function at this late age,” Dr. Barzilai said. “And at least it gives us a target for future treatments.”

For those in the super-memory club, that future is too far off to be meaningful. What matters most is continued independence. And that means that, at some point, they have to let go of close friends.

“The first thing you always want to do is run and help them,” Ms. Davis said. “But after a while you end up asking yourself: ‘What is my role here? Am I now the caregiver?’ You have to decide how far you’ll go, when you have your own life to live.”

In this world, as in high school, it is all but impossible to take back an invitation to the party. Some players decide to break up their game, at least for a time, only to reform it with another player. Or, they might suggest that a player drop down a level, from a serious game to a more casual one. No player can stand to hear that. Every day in card rooms around the world, some of them will.

“You don’t play with them, period,” Ms. Cummins said. “You’re not cruel. You’re just busy.”

The rhythm of bidding and taking tricks, the easy conversation between hands, the daily game — after almost a century, even for the luckiest in the genetic lottery, it finally ends.

“People stop playing,” said Norma Koskoff, another regular player here, “and very often when they stop playing, they don’t live much longer.”

His Kind of Shell-Shocked Town
By ANTHONY DeCURTIS NY TIMES
As cutbacks loom in every sector of New York City’s economic life, the specter of the 1970s, with all of its deprivations and depredations, seems increasingly near as well. This being New York, of course, those days of near bankruptcy, graffiti-scarred subway cars, escalating crime rates and a dwindling population as the faint of heart fled to easier climes, evoke a fond nostalgia for some.
In the June issue of Vanity Fair, for example, the critic James Wolcott, who is working on a memoir of the decade, gleefully recalls a time when real New Yorkers could walk the streets with bravado while “the tourists looked scared. Getting back to their hotel alive was one of the main items on their checklists.”
Interestingly, that shell-shocked town is where John Lennon chose to make his home with his wife, Yoko Ono, in August 1971, as “John Lennon: The New York City Years,” an exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex in SoHo, documents. “New York is the greatest place on earth,” Lennon insisted with the enthusiasm of an out-of-towner who has just unhinged his jaw to chomp his first deli sandwich. For all his worldliness as an artist, Lennon had led a sheltered life as a member of the Beatles, shuttling from hotels to concert halls to airplanes when the band was on tour, and living isolated in the suburban “stockbroker belt” outside London when in England.
So he embraced the heady freedom New York offered, leaving his mop-top past behind like a new arrival from a small town, eager to become who he wanted to be. New Yorkers, in turn, saw the city anew through his wide, endlessly appreciative eyes. Sadly, such open-heartedness would prove his undoing in a town that proved tougher than he ever imagined it could be.
In a way that would be unthinkable now for one of the most famous men in the world, Lennon and Ono rented a two-room apartment on Bank Street in the West Village when they settled here, and bought bicycles to get around town. As a student at Sarah Lawrence and an avant-garde artist in New York in the 1950s and ’60s, Ono was intimately familiar with the city. “She made me walk around the streets and parks and squares and examine every nook and cranny,” Lennon said. “In fact you could say I fell in love with New York on a street corner.”
His proximity to the docks and the meatpacking district reminded Lennon of his hometown port city of Liverpool, as did the characteristic gruffness of New Yorkers. “I like New Yorkers because they have no time for the niceties of life,” he said. “They’re like me in this. They’re naturally aggressive, they don’t believe in wasting time.”
When the Nixon administration used a minor drug conviction in England as a pretext for kicking the politically outspoken Lennon out of the country, the city rallied behind him. The Hall of Fame exhibition includes a letter from Mayor John V. Lindsay to the Immigration and Naturalization Service recounting Lennon’s charitable and artistic contributions to New York and requesting that he be permitted to stay.
Lennon and Ono broke up for a time in 1973, after which he mostly lived in Los Angeles. In 1975, after the couple had reunited, the government dropped its case and Lennon got his green card (also on display in the exhibition). And after three miscarriages, Ono gave birth to their son, Sean, that year. “I feel higher than the Empire State Building,” Lennon declared.
By this time, the family was living in the Dakota on 72nd Street and Central Park West, a step up from Bank Street but hardly as posh then as it would eventually become. As the city struggled to recover from its economic crisis, Lennon established a domestic life. He stopped making albums, turned over his business affairs to Ono, and famously baked bread and cared for Sean.
By the time the couple began working on the album “Double Fantasy” in 1980, life in New York seemed to be on firmer — and safer — footing, though it was still raw enough that in 1979 Lennon and Ono donated $1,000 to purchase bullet-proof vests for the city’s police force.
Lennon was eager to return to public life, and he was still singing the praises of his adopted city. “I can go right out this door now and go in a restaurant,” he told a BBC reporter on Dec. 6, 1980, in an interview to promote the album’s release. “You want to know how great that is?”
Two days later, Lennon was shot to death outside the Dakota. He was 40 years old. He had just returned home from a recording session with Ono and, rather than have their car pull directly into the Dakota’s driveway, he got out at the curb so that he could greet the fans waiting outside. It was an emotionally generous gesture, maybe even a naïve one: trusting the city too much, underestimating its dangers.
Mick Jagger, a far more jaded New York transplant, couldn’t believe his friend used to take cabs, which is “probably to be avoided if you’ve got more than $10,” as he said years later.
In the nearly three decades since Lennon’s death, New York has often seemed like two cities: one where the famous and wealthy played in a luxurious bubble, and the other grittier world where everybody else lived. During his time in the city, John Lennon tried to act as if those worlds could be bridged. New York is safer now, statistics say. But underestimating the dangers ahead may still prove a fatal mistake.

From CraigsList

men are discontent & hard to please - m4m - 28 (tenderloin)
The one whose flattery is a neverending string of empty-promise emails; the married straight man who everyone knows is gay; the type who only email you to furnish a pathetic list of reasons why they're not what you're looking for, which leaves you wondering why they even bother since denying interest without being asked obviously shows that they are interested; the jerks...the ones who email you, a perfect stranger, only to mock you and tell you how badly-written your personals ad was, and to call you maudeline and pitiful just for being a single adult looking for love; the one who always talks about wanting to go out on a date, but is too cowardly to actually ask; the one who actually asks, but then unfairly judges every facet of you based on first-date jitters, not even giving you the credit of a more relaxed second-date; the occasional preacher type who responds to your personals posting to tell you about Jesus and how he can help you to "see the light;" then, ahh yes, there are the sociopaths who pretend to assume the transparent identity of being exactly what your ad says you're looking for, when all they're really after is first-date sex; and then there are the annoying types who do one of two things: they write to you, only to later on ~ after having picqued your interest in them ~ say that they're just not ready for a relationship because they dare to compare you to their rotten exes, or, they types who write to you, get you kind of excited and giddy about them, and then he confesses he's already seeing someone, but "best of luck to you."

Believe me, I've met them all...well, maybe not "met" per se; rather, they're all emailed me at some point or another. I've come to the inevitable conclusion that men simply don't know what they want. Now granted, a lot of the men out there know what they want out of life, in a career, etc., but nearly none of them really truly know what they want as far as relationships are concerned, with the exclusive exception of being certain of their sexual orientation.
But I say that most men, if not all men, don't know what they really want because it seems that most men are always emotionally restless...we, as men, are wired to always be looking for something better to come along, no matter how good of a thing we've got going at the present time; that "sure thing," as they used to say. Men are, especially while IN A RELATIONSHIP, usually the FIRST ONES to feel lonely, even while still with their partners. And yet, whether they choose to look for that "sure thing," that "something better," secretly hiding their extracurricular proclivities from their significant others, or whether they choose the lesser of two evils and breakup with who are they're with on the premise that they're not right for each other, almost all men find reasons to shoot-down the guys they date, even when they seem right. Why? Who knows. One guy told me I was perfect for him, except that he only date men who are blonde-haired and blue-eyed...what a nazi. ROFLMAO:) Jeez, right?! Sheesh man...for some guys, it's all about looks and hey, if you look like a guy who stepped right out of the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, then you're first on their list. Some guys, it's a little about looks, but mostly about body type. For others, it's about age. For the eccentric gay man, it doesn't matter how much you have in common or how well you get along...you're an Aquarius and they're a Scorpio: "Honey, I just DON'T DATE Aqauarians." (Ohhhh-kaaaay)

What is for me, that I go off of most? Usually whether or not we're close enough in age, distance, and whether or not we click. Typically my line is drawn is at no one 10 yrs. - or 10 yrs. + than me, but I've been known to stretch it for the rare exceptions. Body type doesn't matter as much to me as does if he respects his body and takes good care of himself. Other deal-breakers for me are simple: If he does drugs; if he's HIV+; if he's married, straight, or otherwise in some kind of relationship. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I could go on and on, but the point is, I'm into giving people a chance. Are you?

My name is Micah...talk to me:)

From The London Times

Barack Obama: the first Vulcan in the Oval Office?
Debate rages over whether the President is a nerd, a geek or a dweeb
Chris Ayres

America used to be one nation under God. As of last weekend, it is one nation under Spock. With the new Star Trek movie at No 1 in the box office rankings, the US media has been falling over itself to compare the mixed-race President Obama with the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer of the USS Enterprise (“Obama is Spock: It's Quite Logical,” declared one headline).
The comparison is immensely tempting and, in many ways, reassuring. Both are cool, analytical and able to dispatch rivals with no more than a sarcastically quizzical eyebrow. Both are part of a rather annoyingly New Agey organisation (Star Fleet and the Democratic Party respectively). And both are greatly concerned with exploring new sources of energy: for Spock, it's dilithium crystals (needed for warp drive); for Barack Obama, it's lithium ion batteries (needed for plug-in hybrid drive).
But if Obama has given America its first Star Trek presidency, I don't think it's because of his Spock-like characteristics. Rather, it's because of the brain-meltingly implausible equations that have so far allowed the President to steer the USS Uncle Sam clear from a fate worse than a Romulan photon torpedo - a “deflationary spiral” (in layman's terms, a vicious economic cycle of falling wages and prices).
On Monday the cost of this evasive action was revealed to be a 2009-10 deficit in the region of $1.84trillion. Talk about science fiction! Would anyone have believed such a feat was possible only a couple of years ago? Meanwhile, below deck at the Federal Reserve, Ben “Scotty” Bernanke is keeping the ship's engines set to Quantitative Ease, thus beaming even bigger deficits several light years into the future.
All things considered, I'm not sure which I find more implausible: the alleged sexual tension between Spock and Lieutenant Uhura, or Obama's promise that most of this money will be paid back by the end of his first term.
Nevertheless, if the success of Star Trek over the weekend says anything about this country as it tries to zap its way out of the Great Recession, it is that Americans are more than willing to suspend their disbelief when presented with a glossy enough production. In that respect, the movie and the Obama Administration are one and the same. I just hope that the wilful gullibility of the general public lasts - and that we're out of this mess before everyone realises that the technology being employed to keep us from obliteration amounts to little more than a cardboard cut-out spaceship dangled from an old piece of string.
A nerdish debate
The President openly admits he's a Trekkie. But there remains some debate over whether he is, in fact, a fully qualified nerd. The evidence is persuasive. As a child, Obama collected Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comic books; his website used to feature a photograph of him posing nerdishly in front of a Superman statue; and he once made a joke at an after-dinner speech about coming from the planet Krypton. And then there is his BlackBerry fixation, his iPhone app and his boffin-friendly campaign pledge to appoint a Cabinet-level “chief technology officer”. From what I can tell, the only evidence to the contrary is that the President is a talented basketball player - whereas a true nerd would surely be happier at home with his computer, fiddling with an Air Force One flight simulator. Still, this is a man who once “joked” to his wife (within earshot of a Newsweek reporter) that her belt looked as though it were studded with dilithium crystals (see above). The future First Lady responded as most attractive women do when exposed to close-range nerdishness. She rolled her eyes.
Genre-bending
Nerds themselves are split on the issue. Some claim that Obama is a geek, not a nerd, because nerds, unlike geeks, are socially awkward and therefore wouldn't be able to run for President. Nerds themselves find this offensive, arguing that, on the contrary, it is dorks and dweebs who are socially awkward, not nerds. Over recent months, however, a consensus appears to have emerged. The verdict?
Obama is not a nerd. He is simply “nerd-adjacent”.
Hands up
If anyone can settle the debate, it is Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr Spock in the original Star Trek.
And that is exactly what he has done.
“About a year and a half ago, I was at a political event,” he disclosed on a recent episode of the National Public Radio show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! “One of [the candidates] for the office of President of the United States saw me, and as he approached, he gave me the Vulcan hand signal.”
Was it Obama? Nimoy didn't say. He did, however, reveal that “it wasn't John McCain”.

From The London Times
UP!
Inside the Pixar dream factory: going Up at Cannes

Dominic Wells
Critics will love Pixar’s latest brilliantly realised animation, but will children be drawn in, too?
Dominic Wells Next Wednesday, when the Cannes Film Festival rolls out its red carpet for the grand opening film, no actress will flash her megawatt smile. For the first time in its 63-year history, it has chosen to open with . . . a cartoon. Mon dieu! And not just a cartoon, but an American cartoon — in 3-D. Quelle horreur! Has this most intellectual and auteur-orientated festival lost the plot?
Courage, mes braves, this is the tenth animated film from Pixar, the computer-animation studio that seemingly can do no wrong. Its previous releases, from Toy Story to WALL-E, have grossed nearly $5 billion. Critics love them as much as parents. Up, an unlikely fable about a 78-year-old grouch who fulfils a childhood dream by attaching balloons to his house and floating it to Peru, should be no exception.
Up is a perfect opening film,” says Thierry Frémaux, the festival’s artistic director. “Light, moving, innovative, often funny, a good way to start a festival in a year of world crisis. That it’s an animated film is noteworthy because it’s the first time, but the important thing is that it’s an excellent film in its own right.” “There is a feeling,” says one French film journalist, “that recently the festival has made some poor artistic decisions for the sake of headlines — The Da Vinci Code? But the French media is very happy with this choice. Pixar films are real auteur films.”
Auteur films? Each Pixar flick now requires about $150 million and years of teamwork from hundreds of people. Can they really be bracketed with Truffaut and Godard? And even if so, what of the Disney deal? Pixar was bought three years ago by Disney for $7.4 billion. Won’t this destroy the magic? Only one way to find out.
To get to Pixar Studios you need either to attach 15,000 balloons to your house or cross the Oakland Bay bridge from San Francisco. To your left, the old island prison of Alcatraz rises from the fog. Beyond it, the Golden Gate. Ahead, the dream factory that is as rare to gain access to as Willie Wonka’s, and just as thrilling.
The front gates still carry a giant Pixar logo — no mention of Disney. A 15ftsculpture of Pixar’s mascot stands guard: it’s Luxo, the white Anglepoise lamp that won an Oscar nomination for Pixar’s first (1986) short, and announced that the cinematic landscape was about to change for ever.
Grinning replicas of Mike and Scully, the stars of Monsters, Inc, welcome visitors inside. Mike is 7ft tall, with big blue eyes and blue fur. Scully is a cyclops: he must be baffled by the 3-D revolution. A tropical waterfall has been built in the centre of the huge atrium, in honour of Up. A little toy house floats overhead, borne this way and that by multicoloured balloons.
You’ve heard stories about working life at Pixar: how it has its own pool, football field and yoga classes; how screenings of rare films are held in its own theatre; how workers in Hawaiian shirts roll from meeting to meeting on scooters. It’s all true, and more: almost everyone you interview in connection with Up has been with Pixar for more than a decade.
“Why would you ever want to move on?” asks Scott Clark, the supervising animator. “I just saw a great film by a bunch of New York students in our screening theatre. Yesterday a group of animators all shaved their heads into mohicans. Kind of a spontaneous group bonding thing, I guess. On Ratatouille there was a moustache-growing contest. It feels here like the old Disney, or like Termite Terrace at Warner Brothers — where all the animators would play jazz together in a band, and Chuck Jones and the guys would play tricks on each other. But though it looks like we’re just playing, it still is work. We’re very serious about making fun things.”
That could be Pixar’s official motto: “serious about fun”. Over two busy days, story-boarders and animators, techno-boffins and gag-writers eagerly lay bare the secrets of Pixar’s toy cupboard. It’s fascinating to see how a rough sketch becomes finished film. A four-second sequence typically takes two weeks to animate, but that’s only after the script has been written (up to three years of development) and the characters designed (another year).
For Up they had to invent a new feather system for a mythical 13ft Peruvian bird called Kevin, and work out how to make 15,000 balloons, each with its own string, interact believably. But more importantly than that, much more importantly, they had to work out how to make the story resonate emotionally with an audience.
The film, finished three weeks ago, is shown in the Pixar screening theatre. When the room goes dark, the ceiling lights resemble stars. With typical attention to detail, some begin to move — shooting stars. Ten minutes in, at the close of a wordless montage of scenes from the old man’s life, you are in tears. For an animated film to carry such a kick is quite extraordinary. Without giving too much away before the Cannes premiere, it absolutely makes you believe the fantastical premise that this pensioner would float his house off to Peru.
Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, who co-wrote and directed the film, are as surprised as anyone at how it’s turned out. The film began as a visual image — a sad old man holding a colourful balloon — and an inchoate yearning to escape society. It took years of brainstorming before the plot emerged, which now includes an eight-year-old stowaway, a dog with a collar that gives hilarious voice to his thoughts, a crazed explorer and his lethal pack of hounds, and that mythical bird named Kevin. More Miyazaki than Disney, it is surreal but believable, hilarious and sweet.
“Animation can capture life,” explains Docter, who resembles a cartoon character himself: two perfectly semicircular ears sprout at right angles from a rectangular head. “But it can be more than life. Like in a restaurant, where you get a reduction sauce: animation can be so pure and concentrated that it speaks louder than life.”
So, after Pixar had spent the past two decades making computer animation more and more realistic, Docter had them chuck it all out and start again. Old man Carl is very stylised and made of squares. His portly young stowaway is essentially a circle. “It’s a film where a house floats into the sky,” Docter says. “You want an animation style that’s simple and poetic.”
Or, as art director Ricky Nierva puts it: “If you want photo-realism, just go make a live-action film. It’s not about being realistic, it’s about making this world believable.”
The result is an artistic triumph, but its commercial success is less assured. However off the wall previous Pixar projects have been, their premise has been easy to market. Toy Story? Yes, on one level it’s a poignant existential meditation on the nature of identity, but it’s also, you know, a story about toys. Monsters, Inc? A company of monsters, generating power from screams. Cars? You guessed it: talking cars. But Up resists the simple sell. “It’s an action-adventure starring a 78-year-old man,” says the producer, Jonas Rivera, when pressed. You can see the problem. You want auteur? This may indeed be the world’s first $150 million art movie. Word of mouth will make or break it.

According to The New York Times, Wall Street has the jitters after one Up-sceptic analyst downgraded Disney shares. Thinkway Toys, a longstanding merchandiser of Pixar spin-offs, is not producing a single item from Up. Does it matter? Consider this: Cars attracted the only poor reviews in Pixar’s history, yet made $5 billion in merchandising. That’s a lot to sacrifice for art.
“We don’t have to worry about all that,” Rivera insists. “John Lasseter [the founder of Pixar] always says, ‘Just make a movie you’d be proud to show your family’. ”
But if Rivera need not worry, Lasseter must. When Disney bought Pixar, Lasseter was appointed creative director over both companies. The stakes are tremendous: with rival studios stuck in a funny-animal groove, it’s not just Disney/Pixar’s future that hangs in the balance, but the soul of animation itself.
“Quality is the best business plan,” booms Lasseter down the phone from his second office at Disney’s animation studio, 400 miles and a whole world away in Los Angeles. “I believe so strongly that if you do it right, our movies last for ever. They continue to do well on DVD, and what I love about Disney is they have so many ways to keep movies alive — theme parks, publishing, the online world, video games.”
He sounds remarkably unruffled for a man who, as one Pixar employee ruefully observed, is now harder to get an audience with than the Pope. Lasseter began as a Disney employee, but the company didn’t share his enthusiasm for computer graphics. (Tim Burton, a contemporary, was also too far-out for Disney’s taste.) Instead Steve Jobs, the recently ousted founder of the computer giant Apple, believed Lasseter was the future, and Pixar was born.
Lasseter’s staff speak with reverence of his managerial style: he favours Hawaiian shirts over ties (he will make a rare exception for Cannes, about which he is “beyond thrilled”), and although he encourages comments and criticism from all, he gives the director enormous creative freedom. The home of Mickey Mouse, meanwhile, became so unpleasant to work in that it was nicknamed “Mauschwitz”. Aside from a brief renaissance in the early 1990s under Jeffrey Katzenberg, before boardroom squabbles led him to set up the rival Dreamworks, Disney was creatively bankrupt.
“I’m so proud to be back,” Lasseter says. “I’ve wanted to work at Disney since I was a kid. But a studio is not the building, it’s the people. The one thing we brought from Pixar is that it’s film-maker-led, not executive-led. Pixar was the only one, and now Disney is the second.”
Lasseter set up sweet and cereal dispensers in Disney’s central atrium to help animators to mingle. More practically, he hired and fired, and introduced a policy of “no mandatory notes” — notes being the soul-destroying changes demanded by any one of a dozen executives, sometimes with little real understanding of the script or desire to do anything other than justify their existence. Disney’s notes, he maintains, at one point nearly derailed Toy Story.
“Even the notes that I give aren’t mandatory,” he insists. “Film-makers in that environment lose their compass, all they’re worried about doing is fulfilling the notes. But these executives, few of them are trained in story or animation or directing. They’re lawyers, or accountants.
“I mean, would you get on a plane and fly to Japan, or would you go to a hospital and get an operation, knowing the doctor was an agent who through politics got control of the hospital? Why would you let these people make creative decisions?”
Lasseter has vision all right, but he has smarts, too. He has stepped up production to one film every year, and will alternate new experiments with dependable sequels. His slate includes Toy Story 3 in summer 2010, Newt in 2011, and after that Cars 2 and a fairytale, The Bear and the Bow. Lasseter has also embraced the 3-D technology that Disney has been developing. He ordered the Up team to go 3-D halfway through production, and has remastered the first two Toy Story films as a 3-D double-feature for October.
There are sound business reasons: 3-D movies can’t be pirated with a camcorder, and it’s a cinema-only flourish that competes with the plasma screen in your home. But animators worry that it’s gimmicky.
“Yes, there are good business reasons,” Lasseter says, “but for me? Yay. I love 3-D.” His wedding photos (he has five children) were in 3-D; so was his 1989 short, Knick Knack. “I couldn’t even watch it for about 16 years because there weren’t cinemas with the equipment.” Thierry Frémaux is another fan: “3-D films are the next adventure. I like to have Cannes always connected with its times, and it’s good to send a sign like that for the opening night.”
So far 1,000 US screens and 100 in the UK have been fitted for 3-D, and 3-D films are busting out all over. The trend works especially well for Pixar. “We pioneered holography and lenticular imagery,” says Lasseter, “and always felt we were building a 3-D environment inside the computer and it was a shame viewers could look at it only in 2-D. But in the end, it’s just another tool. It’s never the technology that entertains the audience, it’s what you do with it.”
In other words, Pixar fans can rest easy. It’s not the Cannes opener that counts, but what’s inside the tin.

Hubble: From cosmic joke to cherished eye in space
By SETH BORENSTEIN
WASHINGTON (AP)

Using the power of pictures, the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped away at the mystery of the universe.
For 19 years, Hubble has shown the epic violence of crashing galaxies, spied on the birth and death of stars, taught cosmic lessons, and even provided comic relief.
In Hubble's photos, believers witness the hand of God, nonbelievers see astronomy in action, and artists discover galaxies worthy of galleries.
Now, Hubble is set to get its fifth and final fix-up. If all goes as planned, space shuttle Atlantis will lift off Monday on a flight to the orbiting telescope 350 miles above Earth. In five painstaking spacewalks, astronauts will repair and replace broken instruments, add a new long-gazing camera, and then say goodbye forever to Hubble. If it all works, Hubble will get another five to seven years of life, before it is remote-control steered into a watery grave.
Hubble doesn't just illustrate the story of the universe. It has its own story, complete with failure and redemption.
Senior Hubble scientist Mario Livio rhapsodized about the drama of Hubble's own story, "turning something that could have been the biggest scientific fiasco to the biggest scientific success."
After its launch into space in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was stuck with blurry vision because its mirror wasn't quite right. It was the butt of jokes by late night comics; an editorial cartoon said its designer was Mr. Magoo, a nearsighted cartoon character. It seemed like a massively overbudget screw-up.
But once it was fixed three-and-a-half years later with a new set of glasses, Hubble shed its myopic reputation. It began producing far-sighted images of space that seemed more art then astronomy.

Hubble helped pinpoint the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years, explain what's in it, and show where it is going. Its photos hinted that as a planet, Earth may not be alone. Just one picture of warped distant galaxies provided visual proof of Einstein's general relativity theory.
"Hubble actually allows our human minds and spirits to travel light-years, even billions of light-years," said NASA sciences chief Ed Weiler. The photo "Hubble Ultra Deep Field" views a time when the universe was about 700 million years old, so the stars in it are 13 billion light-years away. One light-year is 5.9 trillion miles.
A new camera to be installed in this flight should enable astronomers to look an extra 200 million light-years farther back, said Hubble chief scientist David Leckrone. He said if everything goes well with the repair mission, Hubble will be at its sharpest ever.
It was a Hubble image in 1995 that forever restored the telescope's tarnished early reputation. The picture was Eagle Nebula. It was stunning, with beautiful colors and dramatic clouds where stars formed. NASA called it "the pillars of creation."
And the public, which once snickered at Hubble, now was smitten.
Hubble has snapped 570,000 pictures, and while some catch the birth of stars and planets, others capture the other end of life — death and violence on a cosmic scale.
"We have 20 gorgeous images of stars like our sun dying," said Hubble astronomer Frank Summers. "They are just amazing. It boggles the mind to think that stars that are so similar can die in such different ways."
When age finally caught up with Hubble — it was designed to last 10 to 15 years — NASA first decided the telescope would just have to slowly die. An astronaut repair mission was deemed too risky during the time period shortly after the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster, which claimed seven astronauts. But ultimately, public opinion and politicians persuaded NASA to change its mind. Sentiment and the promise of more stunning images beat out calculations of risk and cost.
"It has truly become an icon of American life," said Weiler, the public face of Hubble since its launch.
While the public loves Hubble from afar, those who know it up close find it has a personality.
"It's almost impossible not to start feeling like Hubble is a living being," said astronaut John Grunsfeld who has repaired the telescope twice already and is slated to get under Hubble's hood a third time. "It's just another satellite, but once you've worked in the program and are smitten with it, it is very easy to start adding personality to Hubble.
"I do feel like ... I'm going to visit an old friend that I haven't seen in a long time that will be a little bit weathered, a little bit older," Grunsfeld said in a news conference last fall. NASA hasn't visited Hubble for seven years and is expecting many signs of wear and tear, including holes from space junk.
The telescope has been anything but cheap. NASA thought it could build Hubble for $300 million, but it actually cost more than five times that. With all the fixes and upgrades and decades of use, the total cost will be close to $10 billion by the time it dies, but no one is complaining about that pricetag, Weiler said. Astronomer Livio said certain pictures remind him of abstract paintings. The colors — added in once they reach the ground because the cameras only shoot black-and-white — can be garish. But then so is the universe.
"This is art on a grand scale," astronomer Summers said.

A Franchise Goes Boldly Backward

by MANOHLA DARGIS (NY TIMES)
A bright, shiny blast from a newly imagined past, “Star Trek,” the latest spinoff from the influential television show, isn’t just a pleasurable rethink of your geek uncle’s favorite science-fiction series. It’s also a testament to television’s power as mythmaker, as a source for some of the fundamental stories we tell about ourselves, who we are and where we came from. The famous captain (William Shatner, bless his loony lights) and creator (Gene Roddenberry, rest in peace) may no longer be on board, but the spirit of adventure and embrace of rationality that define the show are in full swing, as are the chicks in minis and kicky boots.
Initially appearing in 1966, the original “Star Trek” is a utopian fantasy of the first order, a vision of the enlightened future in which whites, blacks, Asians and one poker-faced Vulcan are united by their exploratory mission (“to boldly go”), a prime directive (no intervention) and the occasional dust-up. An origin story directed with a sure touch and perfect tone by J. J. Abrams, the fully loaded film — a showcase for big-studio hardware, software, muscled boys who can act and leggy girls who aren’t required to — turns back the narrative clock to the moment before the main characters first assembled on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a sleek spacecraft that invariably sails into intergalactic storms. Even utopia needs a little bang.
Apparently so do franchise reboots, which explains why the movie opens with a loud, somewhat chaotic scene filled with fireballs, airborne bodies, heroically clenched male jaws and a squawking pregnant woman about to pop out the future James Tiberius Kirk. Born in space (well, a shuttle craft), Kirk is destined to return to its embracing darkness. (Future “Trek” scholars will be working the Oedipal angle hard.) But this being an origin story, first there’s a peek at a boy (Jimmy Bennett as the young Kirk) tearing down an Iowa highway in a stolen hot rod, a paradigmatic character moment that’s juxtaposed with images of a young brainiac (Jacob Kogan as the wee Spock) problem-solving with intelligence and a few punches.
Kirk and Spock don’t meet in person until they’re adults — now played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto — at Starfleet Academy, which, in keeping with the show’s liberal leanings, is in San Francisco. At school Kirk flirts with Uhura (Zoë Saldana), a hot number who coolly brushes him off and makes friends with a doctor, Leonard McCoy, a k a Bones (Karl Urban, wild-eyed and funny). Kirk also comes smack up against Spock, an officious instructor. In the tradition of many great romances, the two men take almost an instant dislike to each other, an antagonism that literalizes the Western divide between the mind (Spock) and body (Kirk) that gives the story emotional and dramatic force as well as some generous laughs.
Those laughs never slide into mockery. Mr. Abrams doesn’t treat “Star Trek” as a sacred text, which would be deadly for everyone save the fanatics. But neither does he skewer a pop cultural classic that, more than 40 years after its first run, has been so lampooned (it feels like there are more “South Park” parodies than original episodes) it was difficult to see how he was going to give it new life. By design or accident, he has, simply because in its hopefulness “Star Trek” reminds you that there’s more to science fiction (and Hollywood blockbusters) than nihilism. Mr. Abrams doesn’t venture into politics as boldly as Mr. Roddenberry sometimes did, though it’s worth noting he does equate torture with barbarism.
The barbarians here are the Romulans, who at one point in television time used to look a lot like Spock, but here resemble a Maori motorcycle gang complete with facial tattoos and Goth threads. Led by the glowering psychopath Nero (Eric Bana, an actor who knows how to take villainy seriously), the Romulans are mainly on hand to provoke the Starfleet cadets into space. There Mr. Abrams shows off some expensive-looking special effects, including an enemy warship that, with its enormous, grasping tendrils, by turns resembles a monstrous jellyfish and a malignantly blooming flower. The film comes down on the side of hope, but its apocalyptic interludes, including the image of a planet imploding into gray dust, collapsing like a desiccated piece of fruit, linger.
Despite these visions, the flashing lasers and latex aliens, “Star Trek” is fundamentally about two men engaged in a continuing conversation about civilizations and their discontents. Hot and cold, impulsive and tightly controlled, Kirk and Spock need each other to work, a dynamic Mr. Abrams captures with his two well-balanced leads. Mr. Quinto lets you see and hear the struggle between the human and the Vulcan in Spock through the emotions that ripple across his face and periodically throw off his unmodulated phrasing. Mr. Pine has the harder job — he has to invoke Mr. Shatner’s sui generis performance while transcending its excesses — which makes his nuanced interpretation all the more potent. Steering clear of outright imitation, the two instead distill the characters to capture their essence, their Kirk-ness and Spock-ness.
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the story has plenty of chatter, but Mr. Abrams keeps the talk moving, slowing down only intermittently, as when Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) or the wryly smiling Leonard Nimoy (!) unload some paternalistic advice on Kirk. A television veteran (“Lost”), Mr. Abrams handles the action scenes better than he did in his only other big-screen outing (“Mission: Impossible III”), largely by not lavishing too much time on them. By far his finest moments take place on the brightly lighted deck of the Enterprise, where against the backdrop of limitless space, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the young crew fumble with roles that — much like the young actors playing them, including Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu — they ultimately and rather wonderfully make their own.
“Star Trek” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some intense but bloodless action.

Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press
By BRAD STONE (NY TIMES)
The iPod stemmed losses in the music industry. The Kindle gave beleaguered book publishers a reason for optimism.
Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor, in the form of portable reading devices with big screens.
Unlike tiny mobile phones and devices like the Kindle that are made to display text from books, these new gadgets, with screens roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper, could present much of the editorial and advertising content of traditional periodicals in generally the same format as they appear in print. And they might be a way to get readers to pay for those periodicals — something they have been reluctant to do on the Web.
Such e-reading devices are due in the next year from a range of companies, including the News Corporation, the magazine publisher Hearst and Plastic Logic, a well-financed start-up company that expects to start making digital newspaper readers by the end of the year at a plant in Dresden, Germany.
But it is Amazon, maker of the Kindle, that appears to be first in line to try throwing an electronic life preserver to old-media companies. As early as this week, according to people briefed on the online retailer’s plans, Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle wireless device tailored for displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.
An Amazon spokesman would not comment, but some news organizations, including The New York Times, are expected to be involved in the introduction of the device, according to people briefed on the plans. A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said she could not comment on the company’s relationship with Amazon.
These devices from Amazon and other manufacturers offer an almost irresistible proposition to newspaper and magazine industries. They would allow publishers to save millions on the cost of printing and distributing their publications, at precisely a time when their businesses are under historic levels of pressure.
“We are looking at this with a great deal of interest,” said John Ridding, the chief executive of the 121-year-old, salmon-colored British newspaper The Financial Times. “The severe double whammy of the recession and the structural shift to the Internet has created an urgency that has rightly focused attention on these devices.”
Perhaps most appealing about this new class of reading gadgets is the opportunity they offer publishers to rethink their strategy in a rapidly evolving digital world. The move by newspapers and magazines to make their material freely available on the Web is now viewed by many as a critical blunder that encouraged readers to stop paying for the print versions. And publishers have found that they were not prepared to deal with the recent rapid decline of print advertising revenue.
Publishers could possibly use these new mobile reading devices to hit the reset button and return in some form to their original business model: selling subscriptions, and supporting their articles with ads.
The current version of the Kindle has proved in a limited way that this is possible. Even though its six-inch black-and-white screen is made for reading books, Amazon offers Kindle owners subscriptions to more than 58 newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. (The Journal subscription costs $9.99 a month, The Times is $13.99 a month and The New Yorker is $2.99 a month.)
Subscribers get updates once a day over a cellular network. Amazon and other participating publishers say they are satisfied with the results, although they have not released data on the number of subscriptions that have been sold.
For the all the hope publishers are placing in dedicated electronic reading devices, they will be encumbered at the start with some serious shortcomings. Most use display technology from E Ink, a company in Cambridge, Mass., that was founded in 1997 based on research started at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology M.I.T. Media Lab to develop thin electronic displays capable of mimicking the readability of regular paper, while using a minimum amount of battery power.
The screens, which are currently in the Kindle and Sony Reader, display no color or video and update images at a slower rate than traditional computer screens. That has some people in the magazine industry, in particular, keeping their hopes in check until E Ink evolves.
“I don’t think we would be anywhere near as excited about anything in black and white as we would about high-definition color,” said Tom Wallace, the editorial director of Condé Nast, publisher of glossy magazines like Vogue and Wired. “But technology changes at a pretty high clip these days, and if we are now in the Farmer Gray days, it will be only a very short while until we are in the video game era.”
Another hitch is that some makers of reading devices, like Amazon, want to set their own subscription prices for publications and control the relationship with the subscriber — something media companies like Condé Nast object to. Plastic Logic and Hearst have said publicly that they will take a more open approach and let media companies deal directly with readers and set their own prices.
Then there is the looming presence of Apple, which seems likely to introduce a multipurpose tablet computer later this year, according to rumor and speculation by Apple observers. Such a device, with a screen that is said to be about three or four times as large as the iPhone’s, would have an LCD screen capable of showing rich color and video, and people could use it to browse the Web.
Even if such a device has limited battery life and strains readers’ eyes, for many buyers it could be a more appealing alternative to devices dedicated to reading books, newspapers and magazines.
Such a Web-connected tablet would also pose a problem for any print publications that hope to try charging for content that is tailored for mobile devices, since users could just visit their free sites on the Internet. One way to counter this might be to borrow from the cellphone model and offer specialized reading devices free or at a discount to people who commit to, say, a one-year subscription.
Then there is the possibility that all these devices from Amazon, Apple and the rest have simply not appeared in time to save many players in the troubled realm of print media.
“If these devices had been ready for the general consumer market five years ago, we probably could have taken advantage of them quickly,” said Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at the University of Missouri, Columbia. “Now the earliest we might see large-scale consumer adoption is next year, and unlike the iPod it’s going to be a slower process migrating people from print to the device.”
“And all of us are very worried about how newspapers are going to survive in the next few years if we don’t see any turnaround in the economy,” Mr. Fidler said.
Whether or not the situation is hopeless, newspapers and magazines now find themselves weighing offers of aid from outsiders. When asked at the debut of the Kindle 2 in February whether the Kindle could help the print media, Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, said he thought there were “genuine opportunities” to save journalism.
“And we’re excited about helping with that,” he added.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

A life of tension, fear for sexual predators living under Miami bridge
BY ROBERT SAMUELS (Miami Herald) On an ever-shrinking patch of sand at the underbelly of the Julia Tuttle Causeway, tents and shacks are filling with those who have raped, touched and fondled. A colony of convicts who can do little more than create a community of their own.
There are 66 here now -- three times as many sex offenders as just a year ago.
''People call this place a camp, like it's pretty and fun,'' said Osvaldo Castillo, 29, who was convicted of molesting a 6-year-old boy. ``It's not fun at all. We are living like animals and trying to make the best of it.''
There have been breakdowns, suicide attempts, heart attacks. All set to the backdrop of gentle Biscayne Bay and the evolving Miami skyline, a luxury teasing them as much as the address posted for them in the state registry: ``Transient.''
The 65 men and one woman living here are anything but transient. They are replacing tents with wooden structures. A solitary weight bench is now a bench among benches. They've added a fridge, a sofa, a football.
When morning arrives, men embrace their wives -- some of whom arrive by car overnight -- and begin the day. The men must be back at night or face being sent to prison for violating parole.
OUTCASTS, BY LAW
In 2005, the Miami-Dade County Commission became one of many Florida cities to pass an ordinance turning sex offenders and predators into outcasts. They barred them from living within 2,500 feet of places children congregate. Deputy County Manager Pete Hernandez told commissioners there would be no developed place left for the offenders to live -- except wealthy Pinecrest. There were a few other choices: squat at the airport, camp in the Everglades or congregate under the Julia Tuttle Causeway bridge linking Miami Beach to the mainland.
Or they could leave Miami-Dade. Except that Palm Beach County and, just this month, Broward, passed similar ordinances.
With so few options, sex offenders began registering addresses under the bridge -- with the knowledge of their probation officers.
About seven were there three years ago, but the number kept growing. Challenges to the living restrictions by civil rights lawyers have failed thus far, and so life on the sand under the bridge took on a permanence.
''Now, we gotta be our own city,'' said Juan Carlos Martin, convicted of exposing himself to a 15-year-old girl. ``Every attempt we've made to fight this has failed, so we have to make this work.''
DAY IN AND DAY OUT
A city must have social mores: Most residents must be home by 10 p.m. They have to carry GPS tracking devices, and missing curfew could mean a trip back to jail. The place usually goes quiet by 1 a.m so people can sleep. No one can leave until 6 a.m. During the day, people are free to come and go.
Once a week or so, everyone gives Patrick Wiese, convicted of molesting a 9-year-old girl, two dollars to help pay for gasoline for the generator. In return, the bigger guys built the scrawny Wiese his own wooden shanty.
Wiese's shanty features a lofted twin bed, a DVD player and a 13-inch television. Sometimes, he and Martin gather for Family Guy.
Outside, Hector Alvarez and Roberto Garcia fish on a dock they've built themselves. Each day, for the past five months, they've hopped into their gray van and scoured the streets looking for wood.
Alvarez's wooden duplex has three hot plates, a TV and a shower (consisting of a plastic jug they fill with water from the bay, heat up and pour over themselves). One day, they dream of finding enough pipes to install indoor plumbing.
Family bought Alvarez a small red boat for fishing. It stands on the front porch facing the bay.
''My granddaughter thinks I'm a monster,'' said Alvarez, who pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to his friend's children.
''I have nothing to live for,'' said Garcia, who pleaded guilty to inappropriately kissing a 10-year-old girl.
The future looks much like today and yesterday. There is no public clock, so 10 minutes can seem like an hour. Most residents work odd jobs or around the house for their families. Few employers want to risk hiring them.
''Yes, we drink to ease the pain,'' said Martin, holding a 40-ounce Miller High Life. There are three long, thin scars on his left arm from his suicide attempt. Above that is tattooed the word ''Outlaw.'' The right arm is filled with hearts, a bow and arrow with the name of his mom.
''But if we are monsters, how could we [make] this?'' he asked, pointing to the wooden structures being built. ``Now there is little for us to do for but swim, fish and fight.''
THE ONE AND ONLY
Voncel Johnson prefers spades. She plays whenever her favorite relative, Auntie Sophie, comes to visit her from Brownsville. It helps to create a semblance of normalcy on this patch, where Johnson is truly an island.
In March, Johnson became the only female resident of the colony of sex offenders.
She says she grew up watching family and friends be raped. Her boyfriend forced her into having sex with his friends at once, she says. She distrusted men, which is why she found love in a woman's embrace.
She pleaded guilty to exposing herself to a girlfriend's children while playing strip poker. The charge, she said, came after they broke up.
The day she got out of jail, she said, her probation officer gave her two options: Move here, or go back behind bars.
The first day she arrived, she said she broke into fits of tears.
As she wept, another woman approached her. It was a woman who, many nights, sleeps next to her husband inside a Camry. She promised to look out for her, and that everything would be OK.
One of the neighbors offered his camper. She stayed there, but eventually chose to live in a tent. She didn't feel like owing anyone anything. Still, she uses its bathroom so she doesn't have to go to the outhouse. Not a place for a lady.
''They treat me like I'm their sister,'' Johnson said. ``The guys, they know not to touch me because they don't want to go to jail. And they know I'm not looking for a boyfriend. Here, I've learned that not all men are bad.''
Her GPS monitoring device beeps. ''Stand outside,'' it commands.
''Outside?!'' she laughs. ``I am outside.''
HOPE RUNS THIN
They used to hope they'd get more secure housing. The American Civil Liberties Union and the public defenders say they're still working on it. Social services have been out at least a dozen times in the past month -- but have only been able to find housing for one person.
''All these people have stopped by saying they want to help,'' Martin said. 'They come and say, `Oh, this is horrible.' Three months later, you still never hear from them. No one wants to help a sex offender. They think we're all baby bangers.''
One night, about 9 p.m., a pastor walks around the community. His name is Vincent Spann, and he runs a boot camp for the homeless and addicted in Liberty City.
Spann tells Martin he has found a warehouse at the edge of the city of Miami that can hold 50 people -- and is lobbying the county for $230,000 to transform the facility into a haven for the offenders. A local reporter follows him with a camera, which Spann uses as an opportunity for a taped interview.
Martin puts his hands behind his back and stands with his legs shoulder length apart as Spann asks him questions.
``How long you've been here?''
``Three years.''
``What's the oldest person who's lived here?''
``The oldest person is 83 years old, sir.''
''Well, I want to help you,'' Spann tells him. ``I could see a man going crazy here.
``This reminds me of in the Bible, when people had leprosy . . .''
''You've done your time and should be integrated into society,'' he says to no one in particular.
About 15 minutes later, Spann and his entourage walk back to his Expedition -- which is curiously still full of women and children.
Martin says he hasn't heard from Spann since.
''Just like all the others,'' Martin said.
TEMPTATION TO FLEE
The State Department of Corrections sees no benefits to concentrating offenders under the bridge, says its spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff. As of mid-April, the department was supervising 43 of the 66 people there.
So far, they've lost track of eight who have run away. They still can't find three of them.
A large muscular man who only goes by the moniker ''Baldhead'' has seen it happen: People became so fed up at the squalid conditions, they allowed their tracking device to run out and then ran away. He says he might do it, too.
It's only a matter of time before something terrible happens, Baldhead said. Last month, as he was walking to the mainland, someone threw a bottle at him and yelled ``f---ing child molester!''
''I'm no child molester,'' he says, emphasizing he was hardly older than his victim.
Under the bridge, there is a hierarchy of shame. Those who have raped or fondled teenagers look down on those who have touched children. Those who have touched little girls are disgusted at those who might have touched boys. At least one of the offenders is openly gay, and he sleeps in his truck in a grassy area away from the campers and doesn't want to talk about his life.
Baldhead tries not to get involved in the drama of the community. In January, one member was arrested and charged with murder. In March, another was charged with fondling a 7-year-old at a friend's home.
Right now, Baldhead spends his time inside his tent -- a carpeted one -- reading a science fantasy novel, The Winds of Fate.
A JUDGE'S HARD ADVICE
The winds ruffled Angel Blanco's tent the morning he prepared for the judge. He shaved using a flashlight, wiggled into a green T-shirt and jeans, slipped on a dirty pair of road gloves. Then he slid out of his camper and into his wheelchair.
He rolled himself out of the camp, along the dirt path to the cars whizzing past on the morning commute. The journey took him an hour.
His wife, he said, was set to pick him up so he could reason with the judge that the place was unsuitable for a disabled man.
When he returns, he reports that the judge told him to file a lawsuit. So Blanco began raising money. He spent the rest of the day moving to nearby convenience stores and asking for bottled water. He resold them in the middle of Flagler Avenue near the courthouse.
''I don't have the money for a lawyer,'' he said. ``I guess I will be here for a while.''
At the edge of the rocks, four children are playing near the water.
They are gone by 10 p.m., the hour everyone needs to return.
AT DAY'S END
Blanco is wheeling around asking for cigarettes. Johnson is on a bench talking to Auntie Sophie about the next time they can play spades.
Castillo is talking to the man who owns the most elaborate shack. It's painted turquoise on the outside. Inside are a red sofa and love seats. He even installed tiles on the floor.
But there's not much time to talk. Along the embankment, three men are starting the nightly dominoes game. And they need a fourth.
The cars' roaring from above echoes in the ear drums of the residents below. The game ends. Doors close, tents zip up, lamps turn off and the place gives way to darkness. But the sound always continues. The next morning, so does life.