O.J. Simpson arrested in Vegas robbery
By RYAN NAKASHIMA, Associated Press Writer
O.J. Simpson was arrested Sunday and faces multiple felony charges in an alleged armed robbery of collectors involving the former football great's sports memorabilia, authorities said.
Prosecutors were planning to charge Simpson with two counts of robbery with use of a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery, burglary with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and coercion, said Clark County District Attorney David Roger.
A conviction on the most serious charge, robbery with use of a deadly weapon, could bring a sentence of three to 35 years for each count, he said.
"He is facing a lot of time," Roger said.
Simpson was being transferred to a detention center for booking, Capt. James Dillon said. Dillon said he did not know whether Simpson would be able to post bail and be released Sunday.
"He was very cooperative, there were no issues," Dillon said.
At least one other person has been arrested and police said Sunday that they were searching for four others in connection with the alleged armed robbery that occurred in a room inside the Palace Station casino-hotel on Thursday.
Police Lt. Clint Nichols said Simpson invoked his right to an attorney immediately after being arrested.
Simpson, 60, has said he and other people with him were retrieving items that belonged to him. Simpson has said there were no guns involved and that he went to the room at the casino only to get stolen mementos that included his Hall of Fame certificate and a picture of the running back with J. Edgar Hoover.
Simpson told The Associated Press on Saturday that he did not call the police to help reclaim the items because he has found the police unresponsive to him ever since his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, were killed in 1994.
"The police, since my trouble, have not worked out for me," he said, noting that whenever he has called the police "It just becomes a story about O.J."
The Heisman Trophy winner, ex-NFL star and actor lives near Miami and has been a tabloid staple since his ex-wife and Goldman were killed in 1994. Simpson was acquitted of murder charges, but a jury later held him liable for the killings in a wrongful death lawsuit.
Police said two firearms and other evidence were seized at a private residence early Sunday.
Walter Alexander, 46, of Arizona, was arrested Saturday night on two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a deadly weapon.
He was released without bail on Saturday night, Dillon said.
Besides the two firearms, police said they seized other evidence during early morning searches of two residences, Lt. Clint Nichols said.
"It was evidence of a crime that was committed," Nichols said. "And I believe we recovered some clothing that the individual was wearing in the commission of the robbery."
Simpson said auction house owner Tom Riccio called him several weeks ago to say some collectors were selling some of his items. Riccio set up a meeting with collectors under the guise that he had a private collector interested in buying Simpson's items.
Simpson said he was accompanied by several men he met at a wedding cocktail party, and they took the collectibles.
Alfred Beardsley, one of the sports memorabilia collectors involved in the alleged robbery, has said he wants the case dropped and that he's "on O.J.'s side."
Nichols said police had a responsibility to investigate how the collectibles were taken, regardless of who they belong to.
"We don't believe that anybody was roughed up, but there were firearms involved in the commission of the robbery," he said.
Simpson's arrest came just days after the Goldman family published a book that Simpson had written under the title, "If I Did It," about how he would have committed the killings of his ex-wife and Goldman had he actually done it.
After a deal for Simpson to publish it fell through, a federal bankruptcy judge awarded the book's rights to the Goldman family, who retitled it "If I Did It: The Confessions of the Killer." On Sunday, the book was the hottest seller in the country, hitting No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.
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Associated Press Writer Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

the spectator
The Return of the Doomsday Machine?
By Ron Rosenbaum
"The nuclear doomsday machine." It's a Cold War term that has long seemed obsolete.
And even back then, the "doomsday machine" was regarded as a scary conjectural fiction. Not impossible to create—the physics and mechanics of it were first spelled out by U.S. nuclear scientist Leo Szilard—but never actually created, having a real existence only in such apocalyptic nightmares as Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.
In Strangelove, the doomsday machine was a Soviet system that automatically detonated some 50 cobalt-jacketed hydrogen bombs pre-positioned around the planet if the doomsday system's sensors detected a nuclear attack on Russian soil. Thus, even an accidental or (as in Strangelove) an unauthorized U.S. nuclear bomb could set off the doomsday machine bombs, releasing enough deadly cobalt fallout to make the Earth uninhabitable for the human species for 93 years. No human hand could stop the fully automated apocalypse.
An extreme fantasy, yes. But according to a new book called Doomsday Men and several papers on the subject by U.S. analysts, it may not have been merely a fantasy. According to these accounts, the Soviets built and activated a variation of a doomsday machine in the mid-'80s. And there is no evidence Putin's Russia has deactivated the system.
Instead, something was reactivated in Russia last week. I'm referring to the ominous announcement—given insufficient attention by most U.S. media (the Economist made it the opening of a lead editorial on Putin's Russia)—by Vladimir Putin that Russia has resumed regular "strategic flights" of nuclear bombers. (They may or may not be carrying nuclear bombs, but you can practically hear Putin's smirking tone as he says, "Our [nuclear bomber] pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life.")
These twin developments raise a troubling question: What are the United States' and Russia's current nuclear policies with regard to how and when they will respond to a perceived nuclear attack? In most accounts, once the president or Russian premier receives radar warning of an attack, they have less than 15 minutes to decide whether the warning is valid. The pressure is on to "use it or lose it"—launch our missiles before they can be destroyed in their silos. Pressure that makes the wrong decision more likely. Pressure that makes accidental nuclear war a real possibility.
Once you start to poke into this matter, you discover a disturbing level of uncertainty, which leads me to believe we should be demanding that the United States and Russia define and defend their nuclear postures. Bush and Putin should be compelled to tell us just what "failsafe" provisions are installed on their respective nuclear bombers, missiles, and submarines—what the current provisions against warning malfunctions are and what kinds of controls there are over the ability of lone madman nuclear bombers to bring on the unhappy end of history.
As for the former Soviet Union, the possible existence of a version of a doomsday machine is both relevant and disturbing.
In the Strangelove film, the Soviet ambassador tells the president and generals in the U.S. war room that the device was designed to deter a surprise attack, the kind of attack that might otherwise prevent retaliation by "decapitating" the Soviet command structure. The automated system would insure massive world-destroying retaliation even if the entire Soviet leadership were wiped out—or had second thoughts. As a result, some referred to it as the "dead hand" doomsday device.
It is Dr. Strangelove himself, the madman U.S. nuclear strategist played by Peter Sellers, who detects the flaw in this plan. After being apprised of the system's existence by the Soviet ambassador, and the likelihood of its being triggered by a U.S. bomber on an unauthorized mission to nuke its Soviet target, Dr. Strangelove exclaims:
Yes, but the ... whole point of the doomsday machine ... is lost ... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?
In other words, a doomsday machine kept secret is no good for deterrence, only for retaliation by extinction.
Did the Soviets actually design a variation on a doomsday device and not tell us about it? And could an accidental or terrorist nuclear attack on Putin's Russia (by Chechens, for instance) trigger an antiquated automated dead-hand system and launch missiles capable of killing tens, maybe hundreds, of millions at unknown targets that might include the United States?
Up until Aug. 10 of this year, I would have thought these questions were best consigned to the realm of apocalyptic film fantasy. But on that day I came upon a startling essay in the London Times Literary Supplement. It was a review (titled "Deadly Devices") of a book recently published in the United Kingdom: Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon by nuclear-age historian P.D. Smith of University College London. (It will be out in the United States in December.)
The TLS reviewer, Christopher Coker (who is on the faculty of the London School of Economics), asserted that the book demonstrates that "only after the Berlin Wall had been breached and ... the Cold War began to thaw did military analysts realize the Russians had actually built a version of the [doomsday] device. The details of this top-secret Soviet system were first revealed in 1993 by Bruce G. Blair, a former American ICBM launch control officer, now one of the country's foremost experts on Russian arms. Fearing that a sneak attack by American submarine-launched missiles might take Moscow out in 13 minutes, the Soviet leadership had authorized the construction of an automated communication network, reinforced to withstand a nuclear strike. At its heart was a computer system similar to the one in Dr. Strangelove. Its code name was Perimetr. It went fully operational in January 1985. It is still in place."
Wait a minute. Still in place?! How is this possible?
In the endnotes of Smith's book (which turns out to be an illuminating portrait of the Doomsday weapon concept and its cultural implications), I found a reference to a further description of the Perimetr system in a 2003 Washington Post op-ed by Bruce G. Blair, the former Minuteman ICBM launch control officer who first revealed the existence of the program. (When he wrote the op-ed, he was a Brookings fellow; he is now head of the World Security Institute in Washington, a liberal think tank.)
The op-ed offers a far more detailed and chilling picture of Perimetr than the brief mention devoted to it in the book and review:
Die-hard [U.S.] nuclear war planners actually have their eyes on targets in Russia and China, including missile silos and leadership bunkers. For these planners, the Cold War never ended. Their top two candidates [i.e., targets] in Russia are located inside the Yamantau and Kosvinsky mountains in the central and southern Urals.
Both were huge construction projects begun in the late 1970s, when U.S. nuclear firepower took special aim at the Communist Party's leadership complex. Fearing a decapitating strike, the Soviets sent tens of thousands of workers to these remote sites, where U.S. spy satellites spotted them still toiling away in the late 1990s.
Blair sources his information on these command bunkers to "diagrams and notes given to me in the late 1990s by SAC [Strategic Air Command] senior officers," men in charge of targeting our missile and bomber forces.
From them, he paints a Strangelovian picture:
The Yamantau command center is inside a rock quartz mountain, about 3,000 feet straight down from the summit. It is a wartime relocation facility for the top Russian political leadership. It is more a shelter than a command post, because the facility's communications links are relatively fragile. As it turned out, the quartz interferes with radio signals broadcast from inside the mountain.
A quartz nuclear-war mountain! Something phantasmal about it, like a satanic big rock candy mountain. But the quartz mountain melts in comparison with the Perimetr dead-hand system at Kosvinsky.
"Kosvinsky," Blair tells us, "is regarded by U.S. targeteers as the crown jewel of the Russian wartime nuclear command system, because it can communicate through the granite mountain to far-flung Russian strategic forces using very-low-frequency (VLF) radio signals that can burn through a nuclear war environment. The facility is the critical link to Russia's 'dead hand' communications network, designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike."
Of course, there's a world of difference between a "semi-automatic" doomsday device and the totally automatic—beyond human control—doomsday device in Strangelove, something that Blair is careful to note. The Soviet facility does require a human hand for the final fatal push of the button. But Blair believes that the human brain behind that hand has not been programmed to suddenly turn peacenik. And the details of the device are far from reassuring.
"This doomsday apparatus, which became operational in 1984, during the height of the Reagan-era nuclear tensions, is an amazing feat of creative engineering." According to Blair, if Perimetr senses a nuclear explosion in Russian territory and then receives no communication from Moscow, it will assume the incapacity of human leadership in Moscow or elsewhere, and will then grant a single human being deep within the Kosvinsky mountains the authority and capability to launch the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal.
"Kosvinsky came online recently," Blair wrote in 2003, "which could be one explanation for U.S. interest in a new nuclear bunker buster."
Blair also suggested that the Bush administration's recurrent interest in funding the development of nuclear "bunker buster" bombs was at least in some respects designed to give them the capacity to destroy the dead-hand device buried deep in a Kosvinsky bunker, an argument that, if true, would suggest the dead-hand doomsday device was still thought to be operational. And perhaps you've heard something about its deactivation, but I haven't found any evidence of it.
Blair, who has written previously on the extremely rickety structure of presidential nuclear decision-making, believes that the current U.S. contingency plan is itself a "doomsday strategy":
President Bush's nuclear guidance doubtless instructs the Pentagon to plan the destruction of Yamantau and Kosvinsky, along with 2,000 other targets in Russia and hundreds more in China. But such targeting requires very high-yield weapons, typically 10 to 100 times more destructive than the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. We are talking about a doomsday plan in which Yamantau and Kosvinsky are struck as part of an all-out nuclear exchange that would kill hundreds of millions of people.
There's some ambiguity in Blair's use of "doubtless": Does it imply that Bush's "nuclear guidance" includes only one all-out, 2,000-target response, or "merely" the capability of it? But shouldn't we know at least that in a genuinely "doubtless" way?
Blair's primary recent concern is not the prospect of a deliberate, ideological, Cold War-type nuclear war, but accidental war caused by the continued deadly presence of all-too-easily triggered Cold War arsenals. In four fascinating papers on the subject (all available online, and well worth reading), Blair describes the "launch on warning" bias built into our nuclear command structure, and foresees the possibility of a doomsday that results from our attempt to pre-empt their doomsday plan, all of which might be touched off by accident, mistake, or malfunction on either side.
Blair is not a wild-eyed Cassandra raising unsupported suspicions. Colleagues in his field regard him as a serious and cautious scholar raising real questions. Stephen M. Meyer, an expert on the Russian military at MIT, told the Times that Blair "requires of himself a much higher standard of evidence than many people in the intelligence community."
Blair's troubling papers, along with his book The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War, serve as a reminder that the illogic, irrationalities, and vulnerability to catastrophic error of our Cold War nuclear war command and control mechanisms were never resolved or fixed, just forgotten when the Cold War ended. His analysis suggests that during the Cold War, we may have escaped an accidental nuclear war by luck rather than policy.
It was Blair who pointed out, in congressional testimony, another continuing problem with nuclear launch posture, this one involving the much-ballyhooed "de-targeting"—a process by which the United States and the former Soviet Union purportedly reduced the risk of accidental nuclear war by insuring that their missiles were—after the fall of the Soviet Union—not still targeted at each other. Blair told Congress that, especially on the Russian side, detargeting was only "cosmetic and symbolic," and easily reversible, implemented in name only.
What drove Blair? I was particularly fascinated by one of Blair's other papers, his more personal "Nuclear Recollections," which might have been called "Memories of a Minuteman Missile Crewman," and describes his period of service in a missile silo at the Malmstrom, Mont., Air Force Base, hundreds of feet beneath the Great Plains.
Especially because I'd been there! Down in one of those silos, under the bleak landscape of the Great Plains (this one in Grand Forks, N.D.), interviewing missile commanders like Blair (for a Harper's story), only a few years after Blair resumed life aboveground and retired.
In the course of talking to Minuteman commanders down in their underground launch capsules, I'd glimpsed what they might be called upon to do. They had the ability to launch from their underground pods up to 50 missiles able to kill 200,000 or 300,000 people each. You do the math.
They certainly had, and it showed beneath their black-humored jokes about coming above ground after a nuclear war and finding "only huge mutant bunny rabbits alive."
They were, thank God, not automatons. As Blair points out, their training system was designed to turn them into automatic button pushers, but the ones I spoke to retained a sharp sense of skeptical individuality. About the gravity of their "mission": killing that many people. And about the sketchy mechanics of it.
One crew member even disclosed to me a flaw in the "command and control" "permissive action" system that was supposed to prevent a madman missile commander from launching his "birds" and starting an apocalyptic nuclear war all by himself. The flaw: the system's susceptibility to the "spoon and string" improvisation.
So much focus has been placed—in film, fiction, and nonfiction—on our supposedly "failsafe" barrier to a lone-madman launch. We'd been told that to launch a missile, two keys must be inserted simultaneously into their slots by two separate launch officers, and that the slots for the keys were located at a sufficient distance from each other that one madman couldn't, say, shoot the other crewman and then use both his arms to twist both the keys simultaneously.
But the missile crewmen I talked to told me they'd figured out a way to defeat that impediment with a spoon and a string. Not that they were planning to do it, but that they knew someone could do it.
You just shoot the other guy and "rig up a thing where you tie a string to one end of a spoon," he told me, "and tie the other end to the guy's key. Then you can sit in your chair and twist your key with one hand while you yank on the spoon with the other hand to twist the other key over."
American ingenuity! Can't beat it for finding a new way to end the world.
I always wondered if I should follow up on what happened after I published this information. (In a piece reprinted in The Secret Parts of Fortune, I assumed the flaw had been fixed somehow, and have long credited myself with saving the world. Kidding!)
I actually turned down an invitation to lecture about such matters from the Army War College in Alabama (because of my peacenik inclinations at the time), and assumed that if they read the article, they must have taken action to save the world from a lone madman with a spoon and string, to whom I'd in effect given instructions for an unauthorized missile launch that could destroy the world. (Hmmm, maybe I'd come close to destroying the world, rather than saving it. Sorry about that.)
But it's clear from Bruce Blair's "Nuclear Recollections" that the experience of holding the lives of tens of millions in his hands when he held those keys left a profound mark on him. I know that when the missile crewmen I was interviewing let me hold the keys, even twist them into the (deactivated) locks, that it had a profound effect on me. The keys to Kingdom Come!
And while I may have abandoned my responsibility for too long, I was grateful that Bruce G. Blair was still on the case, raising the right questions. In fact, he's devoted his subsequent life to raising the alarm about our flawed nuclear alarm and launch system, using what an actual missile commander learned about its dysfunctions and biases.
Blair's work continues and I think it's urgent, now that Putin's "nuclear bombers" are flying again, that Congress re-examine the whole issue and take seriously Blair's warnings about the variations of doomsday we still face.
Pay attention to Blair. You can't count on me to save the world again.

By Ron Rosenbaum

The New Cruiser!
Jay Leno

From The London Times
There are 400 police chases every year in Los Angeles, and here everything stops during a police pursuit. People will watch one for three, four hours on the TV. It’s basically the same chase every day and they all end the same way: the person runs out of gas, they run out, fall on the ground and the cops come and handcuff them. It’s never that exciting but for some reason people think it is. OJ Simpson was the first to make them popular and now it’s become a local phenomenon. The greatest was the guy who stole the tank in San Diego, crushing road signs and vehicles before being stopped. I guess it makes the whole job of being a traffic cop look exciting.
Historically, there’s been quite a difference in police cars, at least here in the States. You always had a couple of types: the slowest was almost certainly the three-wheeled Harley-Davidson Servi-Car. It was technically a motorbike but they called it a car. They used those in the Fifties and early Sixties, mostly for ticket writing and downtown duties like that. They were powered by a flathead V-twin. You didn’t have too much trouble outrunning them!
Then police forces would have one or two high performance cars, like the chief’s car. A lot of them were six-cylinder Fords or the small V8 Fords with a stick shift, no radio, no air-con, no nothing. The most feared police cars, at least when I was a kid, were the ones the “Staties” had. By Staties I mean the Massachusetts state troopers.
They usually ran big Dodges, like the Polara. It had the big 440 (cubic-inch) motor in it and it ran 145mph. In the Sixties and early Seventies it was the fastest police car. Actually, the fastest of almost any American car, with the exception perhaps of the 427 Corvette.
In those days the cops had a two-way radio, a shotgun and sidearm. There would be some flares in the trunk, but that was it. It’s not like today where they carry so much equipment, which makes the cars much more cumbersome. And these Polaras were big, fast cars and pretty hairy to drive. The early ones were mostly drum brakes all the way around. Not much stopping power, then. The rule of thumb was, when the cop got out of the car to come after you, since they had no air-conditioning, if he was all sweaty and you could see the stain on his shirt, you were getting a ticket. Because he’d just worked way too hard to catch you.
When we were kids, if you were stopped by a cop in an air-conditioned car, he would usually just say: “Slow down, take it easy, son.” But when they had to work, forget it. Remember, a lot of these cars had no power steering, no power brakes. It really was, and I know this sounds terribly sexist today, just a man’s car. They really were he-man cars. It took a lot of heft and weight to fling them around. They had the big push bar on the front and they were black and white; they looked pretty macho.
There was a TV show here in America called Highway Patrol, which starred Broderick Crawford. The show always started with this very dramatic music and a voiceover saying: “When the laws of any state are broken, a group of trained men go into action. Sometimes they’re called the militia. Sometimes they’re called the state police. We call them the highway patrol!” And then more dramatic music.
Then the horns would blow and big, fat Crawford would pull up in a 55 Buick and he would slide it in the dirt. And even though it was on dirt you’d hear “screeee”, as the tyres screeched. And he would always pick up the two-way radio and bark something like: “We’ll have this town locked up so tight, a kiddie car couldn’t get through it!”
And of course the criminals are always named Legs Somebody or Mugsy. It was a half-hour cop show that always involved a chase. And if you watch some of the early episodes you get to see a young Clint Eastwood playing a punk trying to outrun Crawford and the highway patrol, which of course nobody could do.
In those days the cop actually had to clock you and had something called a telltale speedometer to give him the evidence necessary to pull you over. I’ve got a 1931 Henderson four-cylinder motorcycle that was a police pursuit bike. What happened was the officer would set the speedometer to zero and when he chased you there were two needles, a red needle and a white needle. They would sweep concurrently, equally. The red needle would stay at the highest speed needed to catch you. So consequently, if you were going 80, the officer would pull you over and you would deny you were going 80. Then he would take you over to his bike and show you the red needle on 80, and that would be his proof.
Most cops, then and now, are pretty good. If you’re not drunk and you’re not belligerent, they’ll cut you a deal. Maybe they’ll knock off a few miles per hour or send you to traffic school or something.
I’ve never had a cop car, so having Dodge’s new Charger police car for a few days has been a hoot. It’s quite fun driving this around because it’s fun to watch other people. On the freeway, if you’re going 70, suddenly everyone around you is doing 65, even though it says Dodge City Police on the side and has a big sign saying “Out of service”. Nobody actually reads the badge on the car. Then they spot me in it and they wave, or give me the finger.
It drives really nicely. It’s tight and feels stable. In the early days, police cars would just have a heavy-duty package. Basically, the same car with heavier springs, stiffer shocks and better brakes.
In the late Sixties, early Seventies, a police cruiser and their civilian equivalent might have got a motor that would have an exemption sticker on it which meant it wasn’t subject to smog restrictions because it had a bigger cam or something like that. So you got an unstrangled version of the ordinary motor.
When my dad bought his Ford Galaxie, unbeknown to him I ordered the police pursuit package with the bigger motor, bigger radiator and no mufflers. When my dad went to pick up the car he started it and it went: “Urrnnghaaa! Urrnghaaa!” And my dad goes: “There’s no muffler! There’s no goddamn muffler on this car!” And they say: “But Mr Leno, you ordered the ‘delete muffler’ pack on your order.” And he says: “Why would I not want my muffler?”
“But Mr Leno, here’s your order. Muffler delete.” My father was so furious.
When we were kids and you bought junk cars out of the junkyard you always tried to buy ex-police because you knew you were getting a big motor. It might be worn out but you could fix that. When we were kids, for $500 you could get a car with a black body and white doors and no numbers or markings on it that would be only two years old with 280,000 miles on it. But they were fun. Just drive them around all day until you blew them up.
The new Charger isn’t as big as the old police cars. They were enormous and were based on the big Chrysler chassis that was in the Chrysler 300 and the New Yorker and all those. In fact I have just taken it to Burbank police station for the officers to check it over and the one comment most of the police had was that it was small. It looks small to them because if you’re carrying a couple of felons and a trunkful of gear you need something that’s a pretty good size. They liked the cupholders and places to stash doughnuts, though.
This one is a pretty good choice for a police car. The Ford Crown Victoria is an old platform and has been around for a long time. By comparison with the current Crown Vic, the Charger is compact, but that’s cars in general. It’s not small. The space inside is better used than a car 20 years old. Other ways have been used to make it more efficient. In the past, cars had the big, high lights up in the roof, which cut about 10-15mph off the thing. Now you have those low bars, which are pretty aerodynamic.
The Charger has got four-wheel disc brakes and handles and stops probably better that any police car in history. It’s just more of a balanced package. In the old days they would increase power to the engine by 75-100% and everything else, including brakes, would be increased by 10-15%.
European cars are not used in the States for police cruisers. But as far as European cars go, any of the big Mercs or Audis would be good. But you don’t really need four-wheel drive in California.
The handling of the Charger seemed pretty good. For a big American sedan it handled well. I think the Charger benefited from the union between Daimler and Chrysler. Obviously they picked up a few suspension tricks from Mercedes. It feels solid and the brakes seem impeccable. The acceleration seemed quite good too. I think it would be a great high-speed pursuit car. It was tempting to flick on the lights and siren.
Even without the light and “whoop whoop” on, it had the desired effect. After a while I sort of forgot I was driving something that looked like a police car. There was one guy across the street that looked sort of like a criminal and he didn’t actually look at the car. He didn’t make eye contact, which I thought was weird. I guess he thought it was a police car and I was a real cop.
You know, this could get addictive.
Vital statistics
Model Dodge Charger Police Package
Engine 5654cc, eight cylinders
Power 340bhp @ 5000rpm
Torque 390 lb ft @ 4000rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic
CO2 n/a 0-60mph: 6sec 148mph
Acceleration
Top speed Price $26,930 (£13,423)

Merv Griffen Is Dead at 82
Nicole Bengiveno / New York Times
The cause was prostate cancer, the statement said, according to the A.P. Mr. Griffin had traded in singing for acting in movies, served as game-show host and filled in for Jack Paar on late-night television when, in 1962, NBC gave him his own show, “The Merv Griffin Show.” It started the same day that Johnny Carson began hosting “The Tonight Show,” and although Mr. Griffin’s reviews were initially better, he quickly faded. The show was canceled in less than a year.
But Mr. Griffin had secured an agreement with NBC to allow him to set up a production company. Never one to wallow in setbacks, Mr. Griffin turned to a game-show idea where the contestants would be given answers and would have to come up with the question, losing money — an anomaly at the time — if they were wrong. “Jeopardy” ran for 11 years, then was revived nearly a decade later.
After “Jeopardy,” Mr. Griffin came up with “Wheel of Fortune,” which has run continuously since 1975, making it the longest-running game show on syndicated television. Most recently, Mr. Griffin has been active in the development of “Crosswords,” a new game show based on his passion for crossword puzzles that is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 10.
Mr. Griffin still was not finished with talk shows, however. In 1965, two years after being cancelled, “The Merv Griffin Show” was revived as a syndicated program sold directly to local stations.
The program was a free-wheeling amalgam of interviews with celebrities who, their lips loosened by backstage cocktails, let down their guard at Mr. Griffin’s deceptively probing questions, and installments focused on sexual and criminal themes that anticipated all manner of talk shows that followed, from Oprah Winfrey to Jerry Springer. The show survived, in various formats, until 1986, when he sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to Coca-Cola for $250 million.
By that time, Mr. Griffin was already an astute investor, having started buying radio stations and other media outlets more than 20 years earlier. Among them was Teleview Racing Patrol, which he built into the leading source of closed-circuit broadcasts of horse racing to off-track betting and inter-track wagering sites in the country.
Mr. Griffin later expanded into hotels and casinos, jousting with Donald Trump and taking over Mr. Trump’s Resorts International property in Atlantic City and the Trump casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. But the deal came with a heavy debt burden that ultimately swallowed much of his investment, and the company was forced into bankruptcy in 1989.
When it emerged, Mr. Griffin began a program of upgrading the properties while also staging public tryouts for game-show contestants in the hotels, which also attracted customers for the casinos. In 1993, he sold much of his casino interests to Sun International.
Mr. Griffin similarly bought and refurbished the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, turning it into a preferred spot for Hollywood awards shows and opening a nightclub, The Coconut Club, modeled after the famed Coconut Grove, where Griffin sang early in his career. He sold the hotel in 2003.
From all those ventures, Mr. Griffin emerged a billionaire, though he maintained that he really didn’t know how much he was worth because if he did, it “would keep me from sleeping at night.”
With his easy smile and low-keyed manner, he seemed always the eternally jovial Irishman; few of those around him, much less his fans, thought of him as the entrepreneur he was. “I was buying things and nobody knew,” he said. “I never told anybody, because I noticed that when you walk down the street and everybody knows you’re rich, they don’t talk to you.”
Mr. Griffin’s life, it seemed, was dedicated to finding things to do that were exciting, using his penchant for entertainment to overcome a pudgy physique that drew taunts in childhood and resulted in large weight swings later in life. Growing up in San Mateo, Calif., a suburb of San Francisco, he organized weekly shows on his back porch, “recruiting kids as either stagehands, actors, or audience — sometimes all three.”
“I was the producer, always the producer,” he said.
Mr. Griffin was born on July 6, 1925, the son of Mervyn Edward Griffin Sr., a successful stockbroker, and the former Rita Robinson. Buddy Griffin, as he was called, showed little interest in sports as a child and instead gravitated to the piano, on which an aunt gave him lessons.
He was interested at first in classical music but concluded that popular music would be more rewarding: playing it enabled him to earn money at weddings, funerals and parties. As a teen-ager, he added singing to his piano playing and kept his hand in the classics by playing organ at his church.
After high school, he attended San Mateo Junior College and then the University of San Francisco but dropped out without getting a degree.
Though he never stopped wanting to be an entertainer, his father talked him into becoming a bank teller. The first day on the job, he learned that the teller working next to him had been there for almost three decades and was still paid a pittance. To his father’s dismay, Mr. Griffin quit immediately. From there, it was nearly all show business.
Years later, show business returned the favor. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys and a similar award from the Museum of Radio and Television. “There really has been no one who has managed to have his type of success in front of and behind the camera,” Stuart N. Brotman, president of the museum, said at the time. “He is a one-man conglomerate, and I can’t think of anyone else who has had that reach.”
Mr. Griffin and his wife, the former Julann Wright, were divorced in 1976. They had a son, Anthony, who survives him. Over the years, he squired many Hollywood actresses, including Eva Gabor, and he was close friends with Nancy Reagan, introducing her to Joan Quigley, the San Francisco astrologer.
But he was also dogged by sex scandals and insinuations that he was gay. In 1991, he was sued by Denny Terrio, the host of “Dance Fever,” another show Mr. Griffin created, for sexual harassment. The same year, Brent Plott, a longtime employee who worked as a bodyguard, horse trainer and driver, filed a $200 million palimony lawsuit. Mr. Griffin characterized both lawsuits as extortion; ultimately, both suits were dismissed.
Mr. Griffin consistently evaded questions about his sexuality. In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, he said: “I tell everybody that I’m a quarter-sexual. I will do anything with anybody for a quarter.”
What he was rarely reluctant to talk about was his success, particularly those ventures that produced significant portions of his wealth. When he was creating “Jeopardy,” he realized the show needed some music to fill the time while contestants were puzzling out a question. Sitting at a piano, he plunked out a few notes, then a repetitive melody, and within about a half hour had the show’s familiar theme music. He retained the rights to the song even after selling the shows, and royalties from the ditty “made me a fortune, millions,” he said in 2005.
How much?, he was asked. “Probably close to $70-80 million.”

For the Love of Xenu; Scientology!
By Mark Oppenheimer Scientology, the controversial religion whose adherents include John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Jenna Elfman, can't seem to stay out of the news. Sometimes the church would rather not have the publicity, as when Germany, which considers Scientology a cult, recently refused to let Tom Cruise shoot scenes for his new movie in government buildings. Other times, Scientologists court the attention—as when the same Mr. Cruise brought his Scientology-influenced anti-psychiatry crusade to the Today show in 2005. Some Americans may consider Scientology perhaps a cult, maybe a violent sect, and certainly very weird. And, like many, I find the Church of Scientology odd, to say the least. But Scientology is no more bizarre than other religions. And it's the similarities between Scientology and, say, Christianity and Judaism that make us so uncomfortable. We need to hate Scientology, lest we hate ourselves. But reaching such a conclusion, as I have discovered, isn't bound to win a religion writer any friends. I recently wrote an article (subscription required) for the New York Times Magazine about Milton Katselas, the acting teacher of Giovanni Ribisi, Anne Archer, Tom Selleck, George Clooney, and many other stars. Katselas is a Scientologist, and there are those in the acting community who steer clear of his school because of its perceived connection to Scientology. (Although, to be fair, Elfman broke with Katselas because he wasn't Scientologist enough.) I also posted a podcast interview with John Carmichael, president of the Church of Scientology in New York. We talked about church founder L. Ron Hubbard, the church's hostility to the psychiatric profession, and Carmichael's own conversion, among other topics. I did not have time to ask him about many of the controversies surrounding the religion, including allegations of financial improprieties and cultlike behavior. (These charges have been aired most extensively in a Rolling Stone article that I found very persuasive, as well as in series in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.) Having decided that I'd failed to air these charges sufficiently in my article or my Carmichael interview, the anti-Scientologists pounced. The podcast, in particular, brought me heaps of scorn, eliciting posts like: "This interview was a complete abomination. … [Y]ou are ... gullible and naive. … [T]he rest of us will pay for these weaknesses," and "This is really an infomercial. You are a two-bit wanna-be entertainer & butt kisser and John Carmichael knows one when he sees one." My podcast and article were not meant to attack Scientology. Not every article about a Catholic mentions the church's pederasty scandals or its suborning of fascism under Hitler and Franco. An article about Yom Kippur observance in Hackensack need not ask Jews for their views of illegal West Bank settlements. All religious groups have something to answer for, but religion writing would be quite tedious, not to mention unilluminating, if every article were reduced to the negative charges against some co-religionists. But when it comes to Scientology, there's a hunger for the negative. I suspect that's because Scientology evinces an acute case of what Freud called the narcissism of small differences: We're made most uncomfortable by that which is most like us. And everything of which Scientology is accused is an exaggerated form of what more "normal" religions do. Does Scientology charge money for services? Yes—but the average Mormon, tithing 10 percent annually, pays more money to his church than all but the most committed Scientologists pay to theirs. Jews buying "tickets" to high-holiday services can easily part with thousands of dollars a year per family. Is Scientology authoritarian and cultlike? Yes—but mainly at the higher levels, which is true of many religions. There may be pressure for members of Scientology's elite "Sea Organization" not to drop out, but pressure is also placed on Catholics who may want to leave some cloistered orders. Does Scientology embrace pseudoscience? Absolutely—but its "engrams" and "E-meter" are no worse than what's propagated by your average Intelligent Design enthusiast. In fact, its very silliness makes it less pernicious. And what about the "Xenu" creation myth anti-Scientologists are so fond of? Scientologists have promised me that it is simply not part of their theology—some say they learned about Xenu from South Park. Several ex-Scientologists have sworn the opposite. Given his frequent conflation of science fiction, theology, and incoherent musings, I think that Hubbard may have taught that eons ago, the galactic warlord Xenu dumped 13.5 trillion beings in volcanoes on Earth, blowing them up and scattering their souls. But I'm not sure that it is an important part of Scientology's teachings. And if Xenu is part of the church's theology, it's no stranger than what's in Genesis. It's just newer and so seems weirder. Religions appear strange in inverse proportion to their age. Judaism and Catholicism seem normal—or at least not deviant. Mormonism, less than 200 years old, can seem a bit incredible. And Scientology, founded 50 years ago, sounds truly bizarre. To hear from a burning bush 3,000 years ago is not as strange as meeting the Angel Moroni two centuries ago, which is far less strange than having a hack sci-fi writer as your prophet. That's not to say that all religions are "equal" or equally deserving of respect. I'm no more a Scientologist than I am a Swedenborgian or a member of the Nation of Islam, and I do have two criticisms of Scientology that one rarely hears from Xenu-obsessed detractors. First, while the introductory Scientology costs are not outlandish (for example, a member may pay about $200 for a dozen sessions of "auditing," to start out), the fees increase as adherents gain new knowledge through advanced course work (going "up the bridge to total freedom," in Scientology-speak)—and it does make the religion resemble a pyramid or matrix scheme. More than one Scientologist explained to me that they don't have the financial resources of the Catholic Church that come from thousands of years of donations. They have to charge. Well, that's not the whole truth. The secrecy surrounding Scientology's higher levels of knowledge has no apparent analog in the Abrahamic faiths, and the steep financial outlay to get higher knowledge seems also unique. Catholicism doesn't charge people to become learned, nor does Judaism. In fact, the greatest scholars in those faiths are often revered paupers: penniless rabbis and voluntarily poor priests, monks, and nuns. Poverty is not Scientology's style, to say the least. That leads me to my second criticism: bad aesthetics! I have never been less religiously moved by ostensibly religious spaces than in Scientology buildings. Whether the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, the New York church off Times Square, or the local branch down the street from my house, Scientology buildings are filled with garish colors, flat-screen TVs showing silly, dull videos, and glossy pamphlets recycling the legend of the overrated L. Ron Hubbard, whom Scientologists revere as a scientist, writer, and seer of the first rank. In my opinion, Hubbard's books are bad, the movies they inspire are bad, and the derivative futuro-techno look that Scientology loves is an affront to good taste on every level. It's a religion that screams nouveau–Star Trek–riche. For those of us who seek mystery, wonder, and beauty in our religions, Scientology is a nonstarter. But good taste, as art critic Dave Hickey says, is just the residue of someone else's privilege. Catholicism has its Gothic cathedrals, Judaism its timeless Torah scrolls. Scientology is brand-new, but it has played an impressive game of catch-up. In its drive to be a major world religion, it will inevitably go through a period when its absurdities and missteps are glaringly apparent. But someday it will be old and prosaic, and there may still be Scientologists. And when some of those Scientologists embezzle, lie, and steal—as they surely will—they'll seem no worse than Christians, Jews, or Muslims who have done

Inmate found guilty in masturbation trial
By ROBERTO SANTIAGO AND JENNIFER LEBOVICH
rsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
A Broward prisoner accused of committing a sex act while he was alone in his jail cell was found guilty Tuesday of indecent exposure.
Terry Lee Alexander, 20, unsuccessfully fought the charge, which had been brought by a female Broward Sheriff's Office detention deputy who saw him perform the sex act in his cell in November.
In reaching the guilty verdict, jurors found that an inmate's jail cell is ''a limited access public place'' where exposing oneself is against the law.
The judge sentenced Alexander, of Lauderdale Lakes, to 60 days in jail, on top of the 10-year sentence he is currently serving for armed robbery.
The sole witness in the case, BSO Deputy Coryus Veal, testified that Alexander did not try to hide what he was doing as most prisoners do. Veal saw him perform the act while she was working in a glass-enclosed master control room, 100 feetfrom Alexander's cell. There was no video tape or other witnesses.
Alexander's attorney argued that the prison cell was a private place and that what Alexander was doing was perfectly normal.
''Did other inmates start masturbating because of Mr. Alexander?'' McHugh asked Veal. ``Did you call a SWAT team?''
''I wish I had,'' Veal answered.
Veal, who has charged seven other inmates with the same offense, insisted that she was not against the act itself -- just the fact that Alexander was so blatant about it. Most inmates, she testified, do it in bed, under the blankets.
Veal said this was the third time she caught Alexander, and she had had enough.
In the end, it took a jury of four men and two women only 45 minutes to find Alexander guilty. Broward County Judge Fred Berman sentenced Alexander to 60 days in jail.
''It was pretty straightforward,'' said juror David Sherman. ``The prosecution's case was clear, and the defense did not dispute any of the major elements.''
Sherman said jurors determined that a prison cell, which is owned and operated by the government, is neither public nor private but is a ``limited access public place.''
He also said that none of the jurors had a problem with the sex act, per se.
The case drew snickers in the courtroom, especially during jury selection, when prospective jurors were quizzed about their own habits.
Defense attorney Kathleen McHugh faced 17 prospective jurors and asked point-blank who among them had never done that particular sex act.
No hands went up.
While most prisons deal with such an offense internally, Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne -- and Miami-Dade Corrections officials -- are hoping to curb the practice among inmates by prosecuting them.
Janelle Hall, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Corrections, said that while no charges have been brought against inmates, the department is working with State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office to discuss prosecution of such ''egregious'' cases in the jail.
''It has been a hot topic so to speak in our department,'' Hall said. ``In those cases that are egregious, where there is some sort of intent to deliberately expose themselves, those cases will be reviewed further in the courts.''
A spokesman for Broward State Attorney Michael Satz said prosecution is warranted when an inmate exposes himself in plain view of the detention staff or others.
''Female detention deputies are human beings, too. Why should they have to view such vulgar and indecent behavior in their place of work?'' said Satz spokesman Ron Ishoy.
Prosecutors filed charges in all seven of Veal's other cases, Ishoy said, but later dropped the charges in one of those cases to allow the defendant to begin his sentence in the state prison system on a more serious, unrelated charge.
Four of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charge of exposure and were sentenced to time served. Charges against two inmates are pending.
The state attorney's office did not have the number of cases involving inmates charged with indecent exposure in BSO jails.
And there was no information on whether similar charges had been brought against female inmates.
''When an inmate exposes [himself], it's up to the deputy's discretion how to handle it,'' said Elliot Cohen, a BSO spokesman. ``It can be a verbal reprimand to the filing of criminal charges.''
Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, said jail inmates there are written up for violating jail rules and subject to internal punishment ranging from loss of visitation privileges to solitary confinement.
Barbera said she is not aware of any cases where criminal charges have been brought against an inmate.

Tammy Faye Messner dies of cancer

HUSTON CHRONICLE
RALEIGH, N.C. — Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then watched it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.
Messner had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs. She died peacefully Friday at her home near Kansas City, Mo., said Joe Spotts, her manager and booking agent.
A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said.
She had frequently spoken about her medical problems, saying she hoped to be an inspiration to others. "Don't let fear rule your life," she said. "Live one day at a time, and never be afraid." But she told well-wishers in a note on her Web site in May that the doctors had stopped trying to treat the cancer.
In an interview with CNN's Larry King two months later, an emaciated Messner — still using her trademark makeup — said, "I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I'm going straight to heaven." Asked if she had any regrets, Messner said: "I don't think about it, Larry, because it's a waste of good brain space."
For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband Jim's infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara, became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s America.
She divorced her husband of 30 years, with whom she had two children, in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions from followers of their PTL television ministries. The letters stood for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."
Jim Bakker said in a statement that his ex-wife "lived her life like the song she sang, 'If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade.'"
"She is now in Heaven with her mother and grandmother and Jesus Christ, the one who she loves and has served from childbirth," he said. "That is the comfort I can give to all who loved her."
Messner's second husband also served time in prison. She married Roe Messner, who had been the chief builder of the Bakkers' Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, S.C., in 1993. In 1995, he was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and he spent about two years in prison.
Through it all, Messner kept plugging her faith and herself. She did concerts, a short-lived secular TV talk show and an inspirational videotape. In 2004, she cooperated in the making of a documentary about her struggle with cancer, called "Tammy Faye: Death Defying."
"I wanted to help people ... maybe show the inside (of the experience) and make it a little less frightening," she said.
More recently, Tammy Faye kept in the public eye via her Web site.
"I cry out to the Lord knowing that many of you are praying for me," Messner wrote in a July 16 post in which she indicated she weighed 65 pounds. "In spite of it all, I get dressed and go out to eat. ... I crave hamburgers and french fries with LOTS of ketchup! When I can eat that again, it will be a day of victory!"
In 2004, she appeared on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life," co-starring with rapper Vanilla Ice, ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and others. She told King in 2004 that she didn't know who Jeremy was when they met and they became friends.
Messner was never charged with a crime in connection with the Bakker scandal. She said she counted the costs in other ways.
"I know what it's like to hit rock bottom," she said in promotional material for her 1996 video "You Can Make It."
In the mid-1980s, the Bakkers were on top, ruling over a ministry that claimed 500,000 followers. Their "Jim and Tammy Show," part TV talk show, part evangelism meeting, was seen across the country. Heritage USA boasted a 500-room hotel, shopping mall, convention center, water-amusement park, TV studio and several real-estate developments. PTL employed about 2,000 people.
Then in March 1987, Bakker resigned, admitting he had a tryst with Jessica Hahn, a 32-year-old former church secretary.
Tammy Faye Bakker stuck with her disgraced husband through five stormy years of tabloid headlines as the ministry unraveled.
Prosecutors said the PTL organization sold more than 150,000 "lifetime partnerships" promising lodging at the theme park but did not build enough hotel space with the $158 million in proceeds. At his fraud trial, Jim Bakker was accused of diverting $3.7 million to personal use even though he knew the ministry was financially shaky. Trial testimony showed PTL paid $265,000 to Hahn to cover up the sexual encounter with the minister.
Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 fraud and conspiracy counts and sentenced to 45 years. The sentence was later reduced, and he was freed in 1994. He said that his wife's decision to leave him had been "like a meat hook deep in my heart. I couldn't eat for days."
While not charged, his then-wife shared during the 1980s in the public criticism and ridicule over the couple's extravagance, including the reportedly gold-plated bathroom fixtures and an air-conditioned doghouse.
There was even a popular T-shirt satirizing her image. The shirt read, "I ran into Tammy Faye at the shopping mall," with the lettering on top of what look like clots of mascara, traces of lipstick and smudges of peach-toned makeup.
In a 1992 letter to her New Covenant Church in Orlando, Fla., she explained why she finally was seeking a divorce.
"For years I have been pretending that everything is all right, when in fact I hurt all the time," she wrote.
"I cannot pretend anymore."
In the end, there wasn't any property to divide, her attorney said. The Bakkers lost their luxury homes in North Carolina, California and Tennessee, their fleet of Cadillacs and Mercedeses, and their vintage Rolls-Royce.
Her autobiography, "I Gotta Be Me," recounts a childhood as Tammy Faye LaValley, one of eight children of a poor family in International Falls, Minn. Her biological father walked out. She was reticent about her age, but a 2000 profile of her in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis said she was born in March 1942.
She recalled trying eye makeup for the first time, then wiping it off for fear it was the devil's work. Then she thought again.
"Why can't I do this?" she asked. "If it makes me look prettier, why can't I do this?"
She married Bakker in 1961, after they met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. Beginning with a children's puppet act, they created a religious show that brought a fundamentalist Protestant message to millions.
A secular TV talk program, the "Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show" with co-host Jim J. Bullock, lasted just six weeks in early 1996. Shortly after it went off the air, she underwent surgery for colon cancer.
She said afterward that she endured bleeding for a year because she was embarrassed to go to a male doctor. And she wore her makeup even in surgery.
"They didn't make me take it off," she said. "I had wonderful doctors and understanding nurses. I went in fully made up and came out fully made up."
Survivors include her husband and her two children, Jamie Charles Bakker of New York City and Tammy Sue Chapman of Charlotte.
Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial service for the coming weeks, but that nothing had been finalized Saturday.

the highbrow

The Croc Epidemic

How a heinous synthetic shoe conquered the world. By Meghan O'Rourke (SLATE)

In the demi-monde of footwear, the term croc was once synonymous with elegance—the reptile skin covering a pair of stiletto sling-backs. Today, it's synonymous with an entirely different—and altogether vegetarian—phenomenon. In just a few years, the exquisitely ugly shoes known as "Crocs" have spread around the world like a Paris Hilton sex tape, giving rise to an epidemic of croc babies and their more egregious counterparts, croc parents. The shoe looks adorable on sun-kissed toddlers, but, alas, the fad did not stop there. For such a modest item (a typical edition sells for $29.99), the Croc has traveled in high places, disgracing the extremities of such celebrities as Mario Batali (who prefers the bright orange variety) and George W. Bush (who paired them with shorts and dark socks).
As fans will tell you, Crocs aren't just footwear; they're the closest thing to religion that the foot has experienced. The company's stock has skyrocketed in value over the past year, and Crocs is now poised to launch a new product line this fall. Yet Crocs are heinous in appearance. A Croc is not a shoe; it is a Tinkertoy on steroids. How did this peculiar shoe-manqué achieve ubiquity—and can it possibly stick around?
In the interest of science and as a defender of fashion, I went to Paragon Sports in New York to buy my first pair of Crocs—the shoes were a bright patch in a sea of sportswear. A woman with petite feet may discover that the smallest size in a popular edition, such as "Cayman" (the Crocs aesthetic is eco-beach), will not fit her; instead, she will have to head to the kids' section—piling ignominy upon ignominy. The Crocs palette tends toward the bold: orange, primary green, bright blue, periwinkle. Having selected a periwinkle pair, I was approached by a young salesclerk, who had noticed my skeptical look. "These styles are very popular," he said reassuringly. "Can I help you with anything?" Yes. Would he be kind enough to reveal if he would ever wear a shoe like this? "Me?" he said, stepping backward. "Nah, they're too ugly. The flip-flop, maybe—but these go too far for me."
A first-time Crocs wearer will indeed find that the shoes are springy and light, as their fans aver, and cushion the feet with what some have called a "marshmallow fluffiness." On a muggy New York day, the holes punched in the toe box allow for a soothing breeze to cool the sweating foot. Even so, the ratio of shame to comfort was extreme. When everyone else on the avenue is garbed in proper footwear—even something as unpretentious as flat sandals or ballet flats—an adult, it seemed to me, must blush at the sight of her bulbous feet. But those who wear Crocs all day long swear that the springy material holds up like nothing else; one painter reported that his chronic shin splints disappeared after he began wearing Crocs. Thus was born what one blogger has labeled the "Croc conundrum": Crocs make you look absurd, but they can change your life.
Comfort and function were always the main Crocs pitch. The shoes' original home was Boulder, Colo. The early Crocs customer was probably a Pacific Northwesterner who liked to boat or garden—this was a niche shoe, after all. He or she was drawn in by the "no slip" grip on the sole, by the aerating holes, and by the featherweight heft of the thing (a pair weighs a mere 6 ounces). The clunky look was not a drawback (this is the region, after all, that brought us grunge), and many customers were pleased that the shoe was made of a proprietary nonplastic resin formula (known as Croslite)—it was, as one testified, "vegan." Because the material is soft, bacteria-resistant, and has a strangely "natural" feel, the Croc fits in with the Northwest's typically green and mildly counterculture ethos. Soon nurses, doctors, cooks, painters, and other workers who stand on their feet all day had discovered Crocs and found them to be life-changing. The company is careful to play up its shoes' supposed orthotic benefits, to the distress of some skeptical podiatrists; a new line for diabetics is in the works.
In the meantime, the company cleverly positioned itself as an eco-conscious no-frills-attached corporation. Crocs was conceived by three friends—Scott Seamans, George Boedecker, and Lyndon Hanson—on a trip in the Caribbean, when Seaman showed his friends the extraordinary slip-resistant clog he was wearing; learning that it was made by a Canadian company called "Foam Creations," the friends spotted an opportunity. Soon they had licensed and were trying to "develop" the shoe (by adding a strap to the back); the name was the first thing that had to go. They realized the tops looked like crocodile snouts from the side. Presto! Crocs was born. In 2002, the company earned a gross profit of $1,000 from sales in America. By 2006, following a series of strategic licensing deals (you can now get NASCAR and Disney Crocs, for example), it was earning more than $200 million a year from sales in 40 countries. (I even spotted knockoffs called Rockies in Jerusalem's Muslim quarter.) Nor have consumers' appetite yet been whetted: During the first quarter of 2007, the company's sales had increased 217 percent from the same period the previous year.
In moving from a niche shoe to widespread wear, Crocs capitalized on its several strengths. The first is that the shoes are ideal for kids, who like their brightness, their lightness, their squishiness, and the strange holes in the front, in which charms can be placed. (Perhaps the only thing uglier than a Cayman Croc is a Croc adorned with "Jibbitz," as the charms are called.) Meanwhile, their parents like that they are dishwasher-safe, waterproof, and odor-free. Their amorphous shape may be an aesthetic crime, but it lends the shoes a jovial quality that appeals to the knee-high and the anti-bourgeois everywhere. (One Slate contributor and early Croc-adopter reports that when she went to her daughter's school dressed in Crocs, the kids all wanted to know why she wore "clown shoes.") And the Croc fad, like the Ugg fad, benefits from the shoe's appropriation of an ethnic look (in this case, the Dutch clog) that one could deem "authentic." Ugly is OK, it would seem, as long as it's imported; then it's considered "practical" and earthy. In a classic cultural inversion, Ugly becomes Good: It represents an authentic critique of the marketing and branding that surround us every day. (Think of Ugly Dolls.) And so Crocs even ran ads in Rolling Stone proclaiming "Ugly can be beautiful." Finally, whereas Uggs were embraced by the fashion world, and became a status symbol, Crocs are a bottom-up brand, embraced by ordinary Americans everywhere. It is a democratic purchase. It looks painful to wear—like something you might find in the rock-bottom bins at Kmart—but is actually soft and high-tech, defeating class-based assumptions.
Footwear has always been particularly susceptible to fads, as the fashion authority Colin McDowell observes in Shoes: Fashion and Fantasy. Shoe fashion tends to swing dramatically on the pendulum from practical to beautiful, largely because shoes are even more utilitarian than clothes—and stylish clothes are rarely as uncomfortable as stylish shoes. Since everyone needs shoes, they are particularly susceptible to the tipping point phenomenon: When enough people are wearing ugly but comfortable shoes, others jump eagerly on the bandwagon, thrilled to be released from the bondage of straps and buckles. And so Crocs represent a kind of rebellion—a vanguard of the comfort movement. As footwear retailers reported this spring, shoe sales are unpredictable this year, with one exception: what retailers call "fashion comfort" styles—including ballet flats, shoes like Geox (which are popular among businessmen), and, of course, Crocs. One retailer called them "a category of their own."
The popularity of Crocs has also led to the inevitable backlash. Croc-mocking is rampant. The Web site Ihatecrocs.com chronicles its proprietors' attempts to destroy Crocs (using fireworks, scissors, and lighter fluid). According to Maclean's, some hospitals have decided to ban Crocs, citing the fact that they do not protect against infection (the toe box has open holes). Meanwhile, there are reports of mysterious "Crocs shocks" shorting out crucial medical equipment; allegedly, the resin formula doesn't just keep out bacteria, it stores electricity. This sounds like urban legend, but one nurse who was skeptical of such accounts did tell Maclean's that when she started wearing Crocs she began giving her patients small electric shocks. Tales have come in from Crocs-haters in Sweden about children whose Crocs melt on escalators or get otherwise stuck in the cracks between steps; the most horrific of these involves a little boy whose toe got "pulled off" when his Crocs got stuck. A crock? Probably.
What is more certain is that some podiatrists are alarmed by their patients' fanatical embrace of Crocs; most Crocs, doctors point out, provide only moderate support. "I'll get people with strained arches because they've been running around in Crocs for five days," said Arnold Ravick, a doctor of podiatric medicine in Washington, D.C., and a spokesman for the American Podiatric Medical Association. "When it comes to shoes, people mistake comfort for support. Comfort is fool's gold—a soft gushy shoe that makes your arches collapse," he told me. "Crocs are popular because they're inexpensive and interchangeable. For people with certain problems, they can be a good shoe. Are they good for your foot, in general? No."
Crocs may be popular, but it's the rare Croc lover who considers them fashionable. As Kim France, the editor in chief of Lucky, the shopping magazine, told me, "Uggs I can make an argument for. Jellies also had their moment of being cute and cool. Crocs are just a pox." The first time she saw a male friend in them, she recalls, she asked him, "Are you really going to make me walk down the street with you?" And so today, the company is at a crossroads. The public's affection for shoe styles is notoriously fickle. (Remember earth shoes?) In June, 50 percent of Croc's shares were sold short by short-seller investors who think that the company's stock will plummet soon. Though the company has made a series of strategic licensing deals and partnerships with subsidiaries, it is still largely dependent on its signature clogs and now flip-flops. Striving to position itself for a fall-off in demand, Crocs plans to launch new clothing and shoe lines this fall that will depart from its signature resin formula and will feature pieces costing between $70 and $100. Who knows whether this strategy will succeed, but at Paragon, one employee was waiting eagerly for the shipment of new flip-flop styles. "I hate the way the old Crocs look," he said. "But they are comfortable."
History suggests that Crocs are more likely to be a passing fad, like Dr. Scholl's, than a true innovation, like the sneaker. The very thing that has made them such a huge hit, after all—their ugly duckling distinctiveness—is also likely to make it hard for the company to go mainstream in any enduring sense. On the other hand, the trademarked Croslite material is an ace in the hole: If the traditional Croc clogs I tried on felt too confining on a summer day, the Croc flip-flops were delightfully springy. The company's sporty Sassari wedge suggests that when it comes to summerwear its designers may be developing at least some aesthetic sense.* But for now, my old platform flip-flops will do.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

A Reprieve for Net Radio
The music industry won't impose higher royalty rates on Webcasters—yet. Stay tuned, though
by Olga Kharif
Web radio will keep playing, rather than play dead, come July 15. The music industry won't impose higher royalty rates, which were to take effect that day, but the good news for Webcasters may prove fleeting.
The reprieve came July 12 when some 20 representatives of music labels, traditional radio networks, and Webcasters met on Capitol Hill, with industry royalty collector SoundExchange agreeing to hold off on the new fees while negotiations continue. The higher rates, approved in March by the Copyright Royalty Board (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/7/07, "The Last Days of Internet Radio?"), are so much higher than those currently paid that many Webcasters claimed that they will be forced out of business.
The music industry, by not sticking firmly to the deadline, appears to be giving credence to that dire declaration. "SoundExchange is in the business of generating revenues, and it's not going to help them if a good chunk of the industry goes out of business," explains Paul Palumbo, research director for AccuStream iMedia Research.
Large-Scale Talks Planned
SoundExchange also agreed to cap a new minimum royalty fee at $50,000 per station per year in place of a $500-per-music-"stream" fee mandated by the CRB, says Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, a customizable online radio station. That marks a huge win for Webcasters because with online radio technology, each individual Web user can create a custom stream.
Webcasters had struck an adamant stance on the issue, refusing for months to respond to compromise proposals issued by SoundExchange. "We weren't going to do any kind of a proposal until that fee was gone," Westergren says, pointing out that Pandora, with more than 7 million registered listeners, would have owed millions of dollars in royalties. With that settled, "we are absolutely committed to figuring out solutions," he says.
SoundExchange and Webcasters are now expected to gather for a large-scale negotiating session early in the week starting July 16, says Westergren, who was present during the July 12 meeting. At the heart of next week's discussions: the exact royalty rates Webcasters will be required to pay.
Devilish Details Remain
The Webcasting side now believes a compromise can be reached, and fast. "Our plan is to come to the negotiating table and be very reasonable," says Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! (YHOO) Music. Rogers says the parties may ax the per-song fee in favor of a revenue-sharing agreement, which would allow the music industry to benefit as Net radio's sales grow. Web radio listening is expected to balloon as wireless broadband technologies such as WiMAX spread, enabling Web radio to become a mainstay in cars.
Alternatively, the two sides could hammer out tiered royalty rates, charging different fees to Webcasters of different sizes, says Dave Van Dyke, an analyst with consultancy Bridge Ratings. Perhaps nonprofit stations would pay different, lower fees as well. Whatever the compromise, if one is reached at all, Webcasters "are still going to have to pay the piper very shortly," Van Dyke says. While the minimum-fee compromise has appeased many large Webcasters, a deal on royalties is critical for smaller stations. "You may still see hundreds, if not thousands, of Webcasters go out of business," he says.
The Net radio business is not yet all that lucrative, generating just tens of millions in ad revenue per year, Palumbo estimates. "The industry is immature in what it can withstand in terms of royalty payments," he says.
Yet even if the talks collapse, just as illegal music sharing persists despite being outlawed, the Wild West of Web radio won't disappear overnight. "There are still a lot of Webcasters who are going to continue to broadcast no matter what," says Tom Webster, an analyst with consultancy Edison Media Research.
Kharif is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

science (SLATE)
Bee Not Afraid The disappearance of the honeybees isn't the end of the world.By Heather Smith

Posted Friday, July 13, 2007, at 3:55 PM ET
When the honeybees disappeared this winter, the thought of losing such a fuzzy and adorable animal inspired dismay. The fact that bees might also be useful drove us to despair. The first official reports of "colony collapse disorder" began to surface in October of 2006; seven months later, USDA officials were calling CCD "the biggest general threat to our food supply," and newspaper columnists nervously joked about the impending "bloody wars not for oil or land or God but over asparagus and avocados." Experts pointed to the $14.6 billion worth of free labor honeybees provide every year, pollinating our crops. With a full quarter of them AWOL, presumed dead, who would make sweet love to the $1.6 billion California almond harvest? More precisely, who would help the almond harvest make sweet love to itself?
Few people realized that the honeybee apocalypse was already over. We may continue to associate them with childhood sugar rushes and chubby-cheeked fertility metaphors, but in real life honeybees have been virtually extinct in North America for more than 10 years, their absence concealed by a rogue's gallery of look-alikes. The stragglers have been kept alive only by the continued ministrations of the agricultural giga-industry that needs them.
It used to be that it was hard to eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich without a honeybee showing up and doing a little dance around your head. Hives (literally) grew on trees until 1987, when a mite called varroa destructor turned up in a honeybee colony in Wisconsin. Even for a parasite, varroa is less than charming. It looks like a microscopic baked bean, with sharp fangs used to slurp tiny droplets of blood from the abdomens of unsuspecting honeybees. Since these bites also transmit disease, like deformed wing virus and acute bee paralysis virus, an infested colony is kaput within four years. By 1994, an estimated 98 percent of the wild, free-range honeybees in the United States were gone. The number of managed colonies—those maintained by beekeepers—dropped by half.
The honeybees may have been especially vulnerable to the varroa epidemic. When the honeybee genome was sequenced a few years ago, researchers discovered fewer immune-system genes than you'd find in other insects. This despite the fact that the honeybee lives in tenementlike conditions, anywhere between 15,000 and 30,000 of them crammed into a hive the size of a filing cabinet. To make matters worse, a weakened hive often becomes the target of honey-raiders from healthier colonies, which only helps the parasites to spread.
It's possible that if the American honeybees had been left to their own devices, they would have died off in epic numbers and then evolved natural defenses against varroa (like more effective grooming), as they did in Asia. But crops had to be pollinated and no one had the time to sit around and wait.
Beekeepers opted to keep their colonies on life support with selective breeding, and by sprinkling them with medicine and insecticides aimed at the invading mites. This was no longer a hobby for amateurs. The only honeybees left—i.e., the ones that started disappearing in October—had become the cows of the insect world: virtually extinct in the wild, hopped up on antibiotics, and more likely to reproduce via artificial insemination than by their own recognizance.
If anything, it's impressive that the honeybee has hung on in America for as long as it has. The commercial hives spend half the year sealed and stacked in the back of 18-wheelers, as they're schlepped down miles of interstate to pollinate crops around the country. During this time, they get pumped up with high fructose corn syrup, which keeps the bees buzzing and lively, but it's no pollen. And if a bee happens to get sick on the road, it can't self-quarantine by flying away from the colony to die. (In the wild, a bee rarely dies in the hive.) Add to the above the reduced genetic diversity resulting from the die-offs in the 1990s, and you have an insect living in a very precarious situation—where a new pathogen, even a mild one, could spell honeybee doom.
So what brought on this recent scourge of colony collapse disorder? Early news reports on CCD listed a plethora of suspects: pesticides, parasites, global warming, chilly larvae, ultraviolet light, not enough pollen, not enough rain, cell phones, and alien spaceships. Given the present state of the honeybee, any or all of these could have been the culprit. (Well, except for the cell phones and spaceships.)
It's even possible the mystery disease has already shown up in years past. An 1897 issue of Bee Culture magazine mentions the symptoms of something that sounds remarkably like CCD, as do a few case studies from the '60s and '70s. Before bees fell victim to varroa and the ensuing stresses of modern life, these afflictions would have been easy to bounce back from. Today, the same causal agent could have more serious effects.
But is CCD such a tragedy? The honeybee may be the only insect ever extended charismatic megafauna status, but it's already gone from the wild (and it wasn't even native to North America to begin with). Sure, it makes honey, but we already get most of that from overseas. What about the $14.6 billion in "free labor"? It's more expensive than ever: In the last three years, the cost to rent a hive during the California almond bloom has tripled, from $50 to $150.
Good thing the honeybee isn't the only insect that can pollinate our crops. In the last decade, research labs have gotten serious about cultivating other insects for mass pollination. They aren't at the point yet where they can provide all of the country's pollination needs, but they're getting there. This year the California Almond Board two-timed the honeybee with osmia ligneria—the blue-orchard bee: Despite CCD, they had a record harvest.
But these newly domesticated species are likely to follow in the tiny footsteps of the honeybee, if they're treated the same way. Varroa mites have already been found on bumblebees, though for the time being they seem not to be able to reproduce without honeybee hosts. And bumblebees used in greenhouse pollination have escaped on several occasions to spread novel, antibiotic-resistant diseases to their wild counterparts. If things keep going like this, we may soon be blaming spaceships all over again. Heather Smith (e-mail) is a writer living in San Francisco.

Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

AYN RAND and ISRAEL

(Jerusalem Post Article)
Anyone who has heard Dr. Yaron Brook lecture on foreign policy would likely call him a militant, unflinching champion of Israel. His loyalty, however, does not derive from his Jewish or Israeli background. He's a proud atheist, who admits to not knowing - or really caring - when the Pessah Seder falls. He relentlessly defends Israel and the West because he puts his faith in the rational, free, individual soul.
Brook is the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, California, an educational institute and resource center entrusted with spreading Objectivism, the formal name of the philosophy of the controversial 20th-century novelist-philosopher.
"We view what happens in Israel as an indicator of what will happen in the rest of the world. To the extent America abandons Israel, it abandons itself. Israel is a beacon of civilization in a barbaric, backward area," Brook said on a recent trip here to visit family with his wife, also an Israeli expatriate, and their two children. "Israel represents, despite its flaws, the values of the West: individual rights, free speech, freedom of the press, equality before the law and the rule of law."
Objectivism upholds values generally associated with Western culture - individualism, reason and science - but its distinctive development is a moral ideal of "selfishness," whereby someone's own happiness is a moral responsibility. The home page of ARI presents Rand's mantra: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
ARI was founded in 1985, after Rand's death, by her intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, to pave the way for a philosophical and cultural renaissance in the US and to reverse what ARI sees as anti-reason, anti-individualism and anti-capitalist trends in today's culture. It concentrates on American domestic issues, but Israel figures prominently in its lectures, essays and editorials.
"Ayn Rand herself commented that Israel was one of the few causes she ever voluntarily supported," Brook said. "The West turning against Israel - which she saw occurring in the late 1960s and early 1970s - was the West committing suicide."
Those familiar with Rand's disdain for religion and socialism might find her sympathy for Israel surprising. "[Rand] said Israel has problems, as all countries, but Israel is still West," Brook said. "It respects individual rights, reason and science. She could separate out essentials from non-essentials. If Israel abandoned all its Western values, it wouldn't deserve support."
BORN ALICE ROSENBAUM in 1905 in St. Petersburg to a secular, middle-class Jewish family, Rand fled to the US from the Soviet Union in 1925 because she saw America as the best model of a free country. The new communist regime had already confiscated her father's pharmacy.
Rand maintained no Jewish affiliation throughout her life and shunned religion because it was based on faith as opposed to reason. At 29, she wrote in her philosophical journal: "I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for suffering." She observed no Jewish holidays, but kept Christmas as an American holiday celebrating life and human productivity. Her only acknowledgment of her Jewish identity came in the face of anti-Semitic remarks, as a retort to racism.
She married an American named Frank O'Conner and deliberately had no children so she could give birth to fictional characters who upheld her vision of a hero. Her trademark character is Howard Roark, the intransigent architect of The Fountainhead, who refuses to bend his architectural vision to society's irrational standards. Her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, dignifies the villain of socialist artists - the industrial capitalist - through a futuristic depiction of a collectivist America. From the 1950s until her death in 1982, she led an intellectual movement based on Objectivism, although some critics have dubbed it a cult. Brook thinks her popularity is now at its highest, with more than 750,000 of her books sold annually.
Historically, American academia has been dismissive of Ayn Rand, but in recent years her work is increasingly being included in mainstream curricula. According to the Ayn Rand Institute, which works to raise her profile in academic circles, more than 30 professors teach Rand in leading American universities, with the number continually growing.
Rand remains an obscure figure in Israeli academia, even though many Israelis read her novels in their teens and 20s, including Prof. Elhanan Yakira, head of the philosophy department at the Hebrew University. "I don't know anyone with us that really teaches her philosophy," he said. "There could be people that deal with her, but I don't really know. Sometimes people mention her name, but not a lot." He can't comment on whether her lack of representation stems from any antipathy to her ideas.
In the 1970s, a capricious philosopher named Moshe Kroy taught Rand's philosophy at Tel Aviv University, but he eventually abandoned rational egoism for Scientology, and later, Indian mysticism, which may have contributed to the perception that her philosophy is a fad. Rand's philosophy is no longer taught at Tel Aviv University.
When asked what he thought of Rand, Joseph Agassi, professor emeritus of philosophy at Tel Aviv University and York University in Toronto, reacted with sharp dislike, calling her a "fool" and her philosophy unserious. "It's very low quality," he said. "It's extreme right, although not religious right."
He'd rather teach someone like Khalil Jibran, a Lebanese-born inspirational philosopher. "He's much more friendly; I just like him more, but I wouldn't teach him either." He adds that Rand's philosophy is generally easy to study independently and doesn't require a university course.
Prof. Noah Milgram, who attended Brook's lecture, would not be surprised if Israeli professors shy away from her. "The socialist bent of many Israeli-born and Israeli-trained academicians is such that if they read Ayn Rand's novels, they'd probably dismiss them as inhumane stories about egoism," said Milgram, dean of graduate studies at the College of Judea and Samaria and professor emeritus in psychology at Tel Aviv University.
Milgram first heard of Rand in the early 1950s, when The Fountainhead was on the reading list of a course on American intellectual thought he took as a student at Harvard. The course was taught by the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Milgram remained an admirer of her works, and his daughter, Shoshana, a professor at Virginia Tech University, does biographic and literary research on the life and work of Rand.
"In America there is more respect for the notion that the goals of individuals are more important than the goals enforced upon him by society," he said. "Admittedly, American universities also have a slant toward liberal and left-leaning thinking, but her ideas are more acceptable in American philosophical and political thought, precisely because they are in accord with the American ideal of the individual acting in accord with his conscience, conquering the frontier and advancing from the log cabin in which he was born to the White House."
Unlike in the US, where there are many campus clubs dedicated to Objectivism and several independent organizations that systematically study and discuss Rand's work, there are few organized outlets in Israel for Rand scholars and admirers. Over the years there have been attempts to create campus clubs and fan networks here, but none of them stuck.
BOAZ ARAD, an Objectivist who runs his own company selling mobile computers and accessories, started a magazine dedicated to Objectivism in 1987. In 2005 it evolved into Anochi.com, the only comprehensive Hebrew Web site dedicated to Rand's ideas and which received the blessing of ARI. ("Anochi" means "I" in archaic Hebrew, as a reference to Rand's virtue of "selfishness.") According to Arad, the site's number of visitors is on the rise, reaching several thousand a month. He estimates there are about 100 Objectivists in Israel and about 1,000 ardent Rand admirers.
Arad developed an interest in Rand after reading The Fountainhead as a teen. He and Brook met in their late teens, united by their interest in Rand's ideas, and it was Arad who organized Brook's lecture.
While the Jewish state may lack serious representation of Rand scholarship, in the US, many leaders of the Objectivist movement are Jewish.
"Most communists are Jewish. Most professors are Jewish. Jews are intellectuals, so they dominate any intellectual movement," Brook commented. "Jews dominate the anti-Zionist movement. I wouldn't be surprised if Jews head up Holocaust denial. Jews are intellectual; they gravitate towards ideas. Why that is, that's a deeper question. I think they'd certainly gravitate towards a set of ideas that make sense." In fact, many of the writers and fellows at the Ayn Rand Institute are Jewish.
Arad said the lack of crossover of Rand's ideas to modern Israel is not terribly surprising. "Israel had very strong leftist roots historically, especially among the intellectuals, and they felt very intimidated by Ayn Rand ideas, but this didn't cancel the fact that many Israelis read and love Ayn Rand and consider her books to be very moving and inspiring. Not as many applied her ideas to their lives and pursued the philosophy behind the books."
He related how he recently received a call from an elderly lady who said she was a fan of Ayn Rand. "She never knew there was any activity related to Ayn Rand, whom she always liked since she was young. I'm sure there are many more like her around."