Florida Election a Crash Course for Midterm Races

Abstract: MADEIRA BEACH, Fla. — Pinellas County, with its off-the-clock retirees and gentle Gulf Coast beaches, cultivates a life of flip-flops and easy breathing. But with just days to go before a special election that will kick off the high-stakes battle for the control of Congress, serenity is not easy to come by for anyone with a television, mailbox or phone. Both parties and their surrogates have swooped into this laid-back House district, which was overseen by Representative C. W. Bill Young, a Republican, for four decades until his death last year, and shaken it up like a dime-store sand globe. Outside groups have dumped millions of dollars into mostly acrimonious messages meant to fire up voters and test the potency of the Affordable Care Act as an election issue. That snarling tone has rubbed off on the two major candidates, both relative moderates: Alex Sink, a Democrat and Florida’s former chief financial officer, and David Jolly, a Republican, former lobbyist and former aide to Mr. Young. They have traded accusations over a wide variety of issues, including immigration reform and Social Security. The third candidate in the special election on Tuesday, Lucas Overby, a Libertarian, has mostly stayed out of the fray. The barrage of salvos and slogans, many filled with half-truths, is largely paid for by outside groups hoping to influence voters in this quintessential swing district, where independents make up a quarter of registered voters. So many nasty political advertisements, fliers and robocalls about President Obama’s health care law, Social Security, lobbying and abortion rights have hit the airwaves that many voters say it feels as though a presidential election somehow sneaked up on them. More than 105,000 residents have already submitted absentee ballots in a county that prefers early voting. “I think it is way too much,” said Amy Verdensky, a Republican who supports Mr. Jolly and is a board member for the Old Salt Fishing Foundation in Madeira Beach. She called the messages “propaganda” and a “waste of time.” “I don’t put a whole lot of stock in anything I see in a commercial,” she said. “Everyone is bashing each other.” The intensity of the ad wars is a testament to the importance that both parties are placing on a victory in this tight race. Even if the bragging rights outweigh the tangible impacts of one congressional race, the two sides see the contest as a potential harbinger, particularly on the health care law. The stakes are particularly high for Democrats, who are on the defensive nationwide over the issue, and who put forward a strong candidate in Ms. Sink, an early favorite in this race. The district, which includes Clearwater and most of St. Petersburg, is 87 percent white and has a high proportion of older voters. Dodging the blizzard of political messages is no longer an option. One moment, a flier pillories Ms. Sink as “not one of us” and a narrator on television calls her a lackey for President Obama and his health care law, which will lead to “canceled health plans, higher premiums, Medicare cuts,” according to an ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The next moment, an ad from a Democratic political action committee shows an office in Washington, where “David Jolly lobbied for a special interest that wanted to privatize Social Security,” and adds that he “still says privatization should be on the table.” Neither position is wholly accurate. Ms. Sink, 65, supports the Affordable Care Act but has said she would work to fix it rather than repeal it. And Mr. Jolly, 41, said that while he and his firm, Three Bridges Advisors, lobbied in 2009 for Free Enterprise Nation, a group dedicated to controlling “unsustainable” government spending, he did not lobby on that issue. The group’s chief executive, James MacDougald, a businessman, is a strong advocate for privatizing Social Security and co-chairman of Mr. Jolly’s finance team. Mr. Jolly said the program should remain untouched for workers who have paid in at least 10 years but must be re-evaluated for the rest, with all options on the table, including allowing private accounts. Image Residents of the Palms of Largo assisted-living center waited for an appearance by Ms. Sink. The race is seen as a test of the Affordable Care Act as a campaign issue. Credit Brian Blanco for The New York Times So far, conservative groups have outspent liberals in an attempt to blunt Ms. Sink’s considerable fund-raising advantage, spending $5 million on ads that oppose her, compared with $3,7 million by liberal groups, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the past six weeks, Ms. Sink has raised $1.3 million, a prodigious sum for a special election and double the amount raised by Mr. Jolly. Mr. Jolly’s lackluster fund-raising and at times uncertain campaign — he was not the first choice of party leaders looking for a candidate to take on Ms. Sink — have left some Republicans nervous about his chances. Still, polls show that the race has tightened. Ms. Sink, a former bank executive, was narrowly ahead, but Republicans usually turn out in higher numbers for special elections, something that Ms. Sink has tried to diminish with an intense absentee and early-voting effort. Ms. Sink, who lost the governor’s race in 2010 to Gov. Rick Scott by one percentage point, is well known throughout the state. And while her moderate stances and business background are a boon in the district, her low-key nature does not tend to rev up a room. Still, many see her as genuine, and she has made efforts to reach out to older voters. “She has the brains and the integrity,” said Helen Emrick, 89, part of a group that gathered to support Ms. Sink at the Palms of Largo, an independent- and assisted-living center. “Jolly has the charisma and the good looks,” Ms. Emrick added, but “he’s a politician. She’s a real person.” As Ms. Sink mingled with residents at the center, complimenting one woman’s jacket and thanking another for her support, she emphasized her traditional upbringing on a farm in North Carolina. Then, with her twang, she homed in on Social Security. “Social Security is not an entitlement program,” Ms. Sink told the senior citizens, a group she is assiduously wooing. “We earned it. We paid into it.” Not too far away, on Madeira Beach, Mr. Jolly squinted into the sun on a dock with charter fishermen looking on and argued for less fisheries regulation. “This is about protecting the quality of life in Pinellas and growing our economy,” he said. Image Mr. Jolly during a campaign stop in Madeira Beach in Florida’s 13th Congressional District. He has shifted to the right on some issues, while his opponent Ms. Sink has reached out to older voters. Credit Brian Blanco for The New York Times Mr. Jolly, who had been a senior aide to Mr. Young, is campaigning heavily as Mr. Young’s natural successor. His smooth style and grasp of the issues have helped bolster his standing in the polls. “He’s articulate, he’s smart and runs a great campaign,” said Fred Piccolo Jr., a Republican political consultant who grew up in the district. “His Achilles’ heel is that he was lobbying for as long as he was.” But Mr. Jolly has shifted to the right on some issues, a potential problem in this moderate district, political analysts said. During one debate, he said he would advocate the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Questioned about Syria, he responded that Mr. Obama should have intervened, a contentious position in an area with so many veterans. “It surprised a lot of people how conservative Jolly went in the debates, and it gave Sink an opening,” Mr. Piccolo said. For the most part, though, Mr. Jolly and Republicans have focused on the Affordable Care Act, with few other issues gaining as much traction against Ms. Sink, Mr. Piccolo said. Mr. Jolly’s depiction of Ms. Sink as a carpetbagger may have done some damage, too; Ms. Sink moved to Pinellas from a neighboring county several months ago. Questions have also been raised about the depth of Mr. Jolly’s ties to the district. Although not nearly as visible, Mr. Overby, 27, the Libertarian candidate, may pose problems for both Ms. Sink and Mr. Jolly. A commercial diving supervisor, he could lure enough discontented voters away to make a difference. “He a candidate of the future for young people,” said Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida. “We just don’t know how much he is going to drain off.” No matter who wins, there will be little time to celebrate. The next election is eight months away. “This is the warm-up,” said David Beattie, a Democratic pollster. “Whoever wins is going right back in, whether it’s the same opponent or not.”

Florida
David Jolly
Lucas Overby
House races
Congressional elections
Adelaide Alexander Sink
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act


Mets’ Hefner Appears Headed for Tommy John Surgery

Abstract: Jeremy Hefner traveled a circuitous route before becoming a key member of the Mets’ starting rotation this season. This week, his professional path presented another sharp, perilous turn. Hefner, 27, confirmed on Wednesday morning that he would probably follow the recommendation of Dr. David Altchek, a team physician, and have Tommy John surgery to repair a partly torn medial collateral ligament in his right elbow. Hefner was granted permission to seek a second opinion, and he is scheduled to visit Dr. James Andrews, an orthopedic surgeon, on Monday. “I kind of knew it was coming,” Hefner said before the Mets played the Atlanta Braves at Citi Field. “I had some time to process it, too, before they told me. I’ll see what the second doctor says, and go from there.” But Hefner said the visit would simply be a way for him to cover all bases. Though he could hypothetically decline to have the operation, rest the elbow and try to come back next spring, there would be a danger of tearing the ligament completely. He seemed fairly certain that he would eventually have the procedure. “I’m disappointed,” Hefner said. “But I did have a good year, except for the last two starts. So I’ll always look back to that, especially when I’m going through my rehab and stuff. I’ll revert back to those good times in June and stuff, and look forward to next year and hopefully come back stronger.” Hefner became a surprise success story during the season’s first half. The Mets claimed Hefner off waivers after the 2011 season, and he was a club Everyman, working from the bullpen, making spot starts. There were rocky times and low points, like the Mets’ 16-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies last summer, when he started and was removed after facing seven hitters and failing to record an out. He began the 2013 season as a fringe starter but was called into action as the rotation was hobbled by injuries. Gradually, he found an unexpected groove, riding improved mechanics and heightened self-belief. During an eight-game stretch, from June 4 to July 12, he had a 1.76 earned run average and held hitters to a .216 batting average. For two months, he was the Mets’ most reliable starter. But the All-Star break appeared to derail him. From his first start back from the break on July 19 through his last outing on Aug. 9, Hefner compiled a 9.13 E.R.A., and opposing players hit .356 against him. All that time, Hefner said, through the good stretches and the bad ones, he was pitching injured. “I wanted to play, and I was doing well,” he said. “Back when I was doing well, I was hurting then, too.” He added: “But then, when I started to struggle, I was really hurting the team. So that was the decision to eventually say something.” It is a daunting road ahead for Hefner. Though Tommy John surgery has become a fairly common procedure, the operation still involves about a year of recovery. Hefner said he would also have bone spurs removed from the same elbow — a problem he said had also been plaguing him since early this season. Hefner said pitching while hurt might have worsened his condition. But having found his place on the team, he was not going to concede it easily. He said he would now use similar mettle to make his return, whenever it is. “I look at it as another challenge in my career,” said Hefner, who has overcome a number of them already.


Catherine M. Abate, 66, a State Senator and Corrections Chief, Dies

Abstract: Catherine M. Abate, a former New York state senator and commissioner of New York City’s Correction Department whose campaign for attorney general was derailed by questions about her father’s connection to organized crime, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 66. The cause was cancer, her family said. Ms. Abate (pronounced ah-BOT-eh) was known for her commitment to human rights and gained the notice of the political establishment as a young lawyer at the city’s Legal Aid Society. In 1986, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo appointed her executive deputy commissioner of the State Division of Human Rights. The move surprised many in Albany who expected Liz J. Abzug to be named to the post. Ms. Abzug was the daughter of Bella S. Abzug, an outsize figure in New York politics who served in Congress. Ms. Abate continued her swift rise, and in 1988, she was named to head the state’s Crime Victims Board. However, when she was appointed correction commissioner by Mayor David N. Dinkins in 1992, questions were raised about her father’s possible involvement in organized crime. She not only denied that her father was involved with the Mafia but also told supporters that any suggestion otherwise was the result of bias against Italian-Americans. The matter seemed to fade into the background, and after leading the Correction Department for several years, she ran for State Senate in 1994, representing Greenwich Village. She served until 1998, when she ran for attorney general. One of her main rivals for the Democratic nomination was Eliot L. Spitzer, who went on to become governor and resigned in disgrace after a scandal involving his association with prostitutes. His aides provided reporters with information about her father, Joseph M. Abate, linking him to the Lucchese crime family. Mr. Spitzer, who apologized for his aides’ actions, said they were only responding to requests from reporters. Image Ms. Abate in 1992. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times But in contrast with her response in 1992, Ms. Abate did not issue a blanket denial. Instead, for the first time, she acknowledged that the allegations might be true, based on recent newspaper articles. “I don’t want to believe them, I just don’t want to believe them,” Ms. Abate told The New York Times . “These are still allegations, I can’t prove or disprove them. I’ll never know the truth. The allegations don’t describe the father I knew.” It was a stunning reversal that damaged her candidacy and forced her to confront details about her family’s history that she said she could not bring herself to contemplate. She added that she regretted her denials in 1992. Ms. Abate’s father died in 1994, and she said she could never know the details of his life or the truth of the charges leveled against him. She had acknowledged that her father was arrested in 1938 for bootlegging. But Ms. Abate said that as a child, growing up in Margate, N.J., where she was born on Dec. 8, 1947, she never knew that he was anything other than what he said he was: the head of a company that manufactured military uniforms for the government. In the 1960s, the family fell on hard times, she recalled. Even so many years later, she said, it was hard for her to tell the world that her father had struggled financially. Ms. Abate lost her bid for attorney general and went on to work in health care, becoming the president and chief executive of Community Healthcare Network. For the last 15 years of her life, she worked to bring programs related to reproductive health to teenagers, to provide services for people with multiple chronic diseases and to help deliver medical care to the uninsured and the poor. Ms. Abate is survived by her husband, Ron Kliegerman; a son, Kyle Kliegerman; a stepson, Kip Kliegerman; a brother, Joseph; and three stepgrandchildren. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who worked with Ms. Abate during Mr. Dinkins’s 1989 campaign for mayor, issued a statement praising her work on behalf of the city and the state. “She never shied from a good cause and a good fight,” he said.

Organized crime
Catherine Abate
Joseph M Abate
Obituary
Luchese Crime Family
Correction Department NYC
State legislature
Eliot L Spitzer


Georgia’s Leader Escapes Damage in Biden Visit

Abstract: TBILISI, Georgia — This weekend, after the brass band had gone home and workers had taken down the American flags fluttering all over town, this much was clear: President Mikheil Saakashvili had survived. Pundits were writing his political obituary through much of the past year. Former loyalists defected from his administration to join the opposition, Western allies blamed him for starting the war with Russia last August, and Russian leaders publicly menaced him, calling him a “political corpse.” It was a worried man who greeted Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last Wednesday. Mr. Saakashvili went beyond friendly to pushy in his quest for support, telling his guest, mid-banquet, that “there is no free dinner in Georgia.” At first — as Mr. Saakashvili welcomed “my dear Joe” and Mr. Biden responded with a prim “Mr. President” — it was not clear what the American response would be. But apparently Mr. Saakashvili got the signal he needed. Mr. Biden did not criticize Mr. Saakashvili, at least in public; on the contrary, he focused the brunt of his anger on Russia. On Friday, the police quietly removed the makeshift prison cells that were erected four months ago, when opposition leaders vowed to fill the streets until Mr. Saakashvili resigned. It now seems clear that unless something extraordinary happens, he will serve out his term. “It’s nothing less than miraculous,” said Lawrence Scott Sheets, the Caucasus program director for the International Crisis Group , an independent organization that focuses on conflict resolution. “He does have this Houdini-like capability. A lot of politicians would have folded their cards. He just said ‘no.’ ” Indeed, Mr. Saakashvili has shown a remarkable ability to recover from his frequent mistakes. Less than two years ago, his popularity plummeted after the police used tear gas, water cannons and clubs to clear an antigovernment demonstration on Nov. 7, 2007, leaving 500 people wounded. After the crackdown, government troops entered and closed down Imedi, an independent television station. Mr. Saakashvili said he acted to prevent a Russian-backed coup, but his image as a model reformer was shattered. That time, Mr. Saakashvili recovered with a risky tactical move: he offered to resign and run for re-election. He eked out 52.8 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a second round of voting, though far less than the 96 percent he won in 2004, when the so-called Rose Revolution brought him to power. He had barely recovered from the re-election gamble when the tinderbox of South Ossetia exploded. Routing Georgia’s Army in a matter of days, Russia took control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, bringing relations between Russia and the West to a post-cold-war low. Though Mr. Saakashvili said he had no option but to order his attack on Tskhinvali, the separatist capital of South Ossetia, his critics said he led Georgia into an unnecessary, and disastrous, war. Mr. Saakashvili is keenly aware of eroding support in Western Europe, said Alexander Rahr, a Russia specialist at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “I remember him going from one country to another asking for money, asking for acceptance to NATO,” Mr. Rahr said. “He was touring the world. Since this war, he has not been in any Western capital. He is going to Latvia, Lithuania. He isn’t traveling to the West, because he understands he is not welcome.” Almost immediately, political figures began positioning themselves to take his place. Nino Burjanadze, Mr. Saakashvili’s partner in the Rose Revolution, emerged in October with a sharp critique of the war; in December, Irakli Alasania stepped down as Georgia’s envoy to the United Nations. They joined a crowded field of 10 opposition parties. “Every leader of the opposition managed to come to Washington in the last year,” said Nikolai Zlobin, a defense analyst at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. “Everyone was saying, ‘I’m the guy, I’m the girl, I can overcome, just help me.’ Washington was quite amazed by the parade of Georgian opposition.” But mass protests — the kind that swept Eduard Shevardnadze out of power and replaced him with Mr. Saakashvili — dropped off after a few weeks. The opposition was leaderless and split over tactics, and the government took care not to repeat the mistakes of Nov. 7. By the time Mr. Biden arrived, the movement had dwindled away to a handful of mock cells in front of Parliament. And then even they disappeared. “One could call it coincidence or not, but his visit completed the political cycle,” said Ghia Nodia, a leading analyst of Georgian politics. “The mock cells were gone on the day of his arrival. So that’s the end of the cycle.” Mr. Biden’s visit aroused wistful memories of 2005, when a loose, affectionate President George W. Bush shimmied to Georgian folk music and told a crowd, “Sakartvelos Gaumarjos,” or “Georgia forever.” Mr. Saakashvili’s staff members pushed for Mr. Biden to participate in an unscripted event, in hopes of projecting some personal warmth. They got it in an informal meeting with refugee children from South Ossetia. Mr. Biden’s reserve melted, and he spoke in raw, plain terms about his anger at Russia. As he returned to the United States, he leveled blistering criticism at Russia in an interview with The Wall Street Journal — infuriating Russian officials, and delighting Georgian ones. Anyone expecting Mr. Biden to criticize Mr. Saakashvili, or reinvigorate this spring’s protests, was disappointed. “Everyone in Georgia was thinking America would try to create a new king,” said Kakha Katsitadze, a military expert who has been allied with the opposition New Rights Party . “What he did was much better. Now every Georgian understands that our fate is our responsibility.” The anger that emerged over the spring has not gone away, Mr. Nodia warned. But the political center of gravity has shifted to mayoral elections, which Mr. Saakashvili rescheduled from October to May as part of a package of reforms intended to placate the opposition. Many are looking to the race in Tbilisi — the heart of antigovernment opposition — as an indicator of who might run to succeed him when his term ends in 2013. That is not to say that Mr. Saakashvili’s troubles are over; the $1 billion pledged by Washington in the aftermath of the war has been disbursed or earmarked, and the unemployment rate has climbed to 17 percent. Nugzar Zurashvili, 43, who was selling belts on Rustaveli Avenue, rolled his eyes at questions about Mr. Biden’s impact on Georgian politics, and said Mr. Saakashvili should pay less attention to the opinion of the West. He went on to complain about health care and high electricity and gas bills. “He has to look after ordinary people if he wants to survive,” Mr. Zurashvili said. “He has four years to survive.”

Saakashvili Mikheil
Georgia (Georgian Republic)
Politics and Government


When Referees Err, No Divine Solution

Abstract: LONDON — How does it help sports if referees admit their errors on the field? In Germany over the weekend, an experienced FIFA official, Wolfgang Stark, admitted to journalists waiting outside his dressing room after the match that he got it wrong when he gave a penalty and ordered off Dortmund defender Marcel Schmelzer during the first half. The decision changed the game. The mea culpa changed nothing. Borussia Dortmund, unbeaten in its previous 12 games in the Bundesliga, the German Cup and the Champions League, lost, 3-2, at home to Wolfsburg. And Dortmund, Germany’s champion for the past two seasons, has now quite possibly lost its title to the resurgent Bayern Munich. While that controversy was going on in the Bundesliga, Arsenal benefited from two penalties in winning its home game, 2-0, against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday. Both penalties were dubious calls. Even Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, called one of them “a little bit lucky.” And that, from Wenger — or from most modern coaches — is rare. The referee at Arsenal, Mike Jones, did what referees in the Premiership are advised to do. He kept silent. But the status quo between players, managers and match officials in the global game has become a Faustian pact. It is built on distrust. Players, we know, will swear that they never touched the ball with their hand, never touched an opponent. And players will go down in the penalty box, touched or not, if they think they can deceive the arbiter and gain an unwarranted penalty kick. What they all know — players, officials and managers alike — is that every league match is televised these days. And every incident will have TV replays giving angles and perceptions the human eye cannot always see at full speed. The postgame hiatus comes down to this: Was Stark wise to admit his oversight in Dortmund, or was Jones wiser to purse his lips and walk on by the waiting media pack? Either way, the decisions are not redeemable. The first, and last, rule in the book is that the referee’s decision is final. FIFA, however, can do something about the diktat that amounts to triple jeopardy for a defender in Schmelzer’s situation. He was deemed to have handled the ball on his goal line. That, under the current rules set by FIFA and the international board, is a compulsory red card, a penalty, and an automatic one-match ban. Schmelzer may not suffer the third part of that punishment because the Bundesliga will, in the light of Stark’s confession of error, rescind the ban. However, he still missed two-thirds of the game Saturday, he still suffered an erroneous penalty that tied the score, and he had to watch as his team, so totally dominant in the opening half hour, wearily suffered a loss that changes its season. There were 80,000 judges on the ground, overwhelmingly Dortmunders, who did not see what Stark thought he saw in that 36th minute. There were at least 14 TV cameras, and it took only one of those to show in slow motion close-up that Schmelzer stopped the ball with his thigh. True, the ball did then rebound to slightly brush his hand. But that was involuntary, as the referee later admitted. “I’ve looked at it again,” Stark told reporters. “It was an error of perception on my part. “I’m sorry, that should not happen,” he said. “The penalty and the red card were a mistake on my part. That’s annoying.” Annoying, too, was the way in which every Wolfsburg player within shouting distance of the referee called for the penalty, and the expulsion. Some, perhaps, were as fooled by the moment as Stark was. Others probably were not, and the lack of a handshake between the team’s coaches at the end suggested the ill feeling that emanated from that instant. That is another manifestation of modern times. Players do not arbitrarily cheat on one another, on the opponents, on the officials. They are coached to do it. Wenger is often a coach, and sometimes a television commentator, who laments the inherent dishonesty of players who simulate fouls against them, and he is a ferocious complainer against deliberate foul play. That is because, usually, Wenger is a champion of the beautiful style he preaches. Arsenal, however, is having a difficult season. Its team is struggling, and its own fans are questioning the coaching philosophy after Wenger’s 17 years at the club. So, doubtless he was relieved and grateful for the two-goal victory over West Bromwich Albion. But the first penalty in the game looked more than suspicious. Santi Cazorla, the little Spaniard whose quick feet and quick thinking have given Arsenal much pleasure even amid the struggle of past weeks, was the culprit. He darted into the penalty box, he tumbled spectacularly, and he “won” a penalty that his countryman, Mikel Arteta, struck straight down the middle of the goal. The problem was that nobody had touched Cazorla. Steven Reid, the nearest defender, had been careful not to tackle him. The referee, Jones, was fooled by the fall to ground. “Cazorla told me he was touched,” Wenger said after the game. “I don’t know, I haven’t analyzed it yet. But we deserved to win this match, we created chances.” Created, and missed. The second penalty came when Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was definitely fouled. However, the Arsenal winger had pushed over an opponent to win the ball before he got into the box. Some years ago, UEFA invited a journalist to a conference with elite referees. Should referees, like players and coaches, give postgame interviews? After a mock question and answer session in which the reporter asked questions based on views the refs had not seen, it was decided that referees had nothing to gain from cross-examination. I was that journalist.

International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)


Florida and L.S.U. Win N.C.A.A. Track and Field Titles

Abstract: The Florida men took home their first outdoor national and the Louisiana State women won their 15th in 31 years at the N.C.A.A. track and field meet in Des Moines. The SEC sweep snapped a three-year title run by Texas A&M. ¶ The reigning world marathon champion Edna Kiplagat of Kenya won the New York Mini 10K race in Central Park. Kiplagat, who won the 2010 New York City Marathon , surged at the 4-mile mark to finish in 32 minutes 8 seconds on Saturday. Aheza Kiros of Ethiopia was second in 32:18.

Track and Field
College Athletics
Louisiana State University
University of Florida


Different Leaders, Different Approaches

Abstract: Here is how some governors in the East handled Hurricane Irene . North Carolina GOV. BEV PERDUE, DEMOCRAT ELECTED: 2008 BAD STORM MEMORY: April tornado response, which was delayed because she was on vacation in Kentucky. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Ms. Perdue faces an uphill battle to re-election in 2012, with popularity ratings for both her and President Obama sagging. IRENE RESPONSE: After early stumbles — it took her staff almost a full day to notify the public that she had declared a state of emergency the night before — Ms. Perdue’s early warnings and “no nonsense” approach won praise from The Raleigh News & Observer. Unlike many of the other Twitter accounts for governors that were used to post warnings and updates, Ms. Perdue’s account mostly sent out press releases, while the emergency management agency took the lead with its feed. NUMBER OF LIVE BRIEFINGS: 12 over eight days, according to her staff. Virginia GOV. BOB MCDONNELL , REPUBLICAN ELECTED: 2009 BAD STORM MEMORY: Hurricane Isabel in 2003, when “half of the deaths actually occurred after the storm had passed,” he said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Mr. McDonnell succeeded Gov. Rick Perry of Texas as head of the Republican Governors Association and has been working to raise his national profile. Virginia governors are limited to a single term. IRENE RESPONSE: Mr. McDonnell was a fixture on mainstream and social media, with appearances on shows like CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” and CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” and prolific Twitter updates from two accounts, including pictures posted as he surveyed damage from a helicopter. More recently, Mr. McDonnell has distanced himself from calls by a fellow Virginia Republican, the House whip Eric Cantor, for Congress to settle on spending cuts to offset any disaster aid before dispensing it to the states. NUMBER OF IRENE-RELATED UPDATES, BETWEEN AUG. 24 AND AUG. 31: @bobmcdonnell: 91, @GovernorVA: 84 Maryland GOV. MARTIN O’MALLEY , DEMOCRAT ELECTED: 2010 (second term) BAD STORM MEMORY: Hurricane Gloria in 1985, which forced an earlier evacuation of Ocean City, Md., and wrecked the city’s boardwalk. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Mr. O’Malley, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, won a second four-year term with 56 percent of the vote last year, and he is seen as a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. IRENE RESPONSE: Mr. O’Malley has tried to portray himself as deeply involved, conducting interviews from the Maryland Emergency Management Agency’s operating center in Reisterstown and wielding an iPad to check power failures on a new Web tool his staff made available to the public as Irene approached. He has also been a top cheerleader for the administration, telling The Towson Patch, “I think FEMA’s a thousand percent improved over Katrina.” TOTAL HOURS SPENT AT MARYLAND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY HEADQUARTERS , AUG. 26-29: more than 36, including overnight on Saturday, according to his staff. Vermont GOV. PETER SHUMLIN, DEMOCRAT ELECTED: 2010 BAD STORM MEMORY: Vermonters have seen plenty of bad storms, but they generally pride themselves on their ability to weather the elements, especially harsh winters. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Vermont holds elections for governor every two years, so Mr. Shumlin, who narrowly won the office in 2010, is up again in 2012. IRENE RESPONSE: While some Vermonters have complained that rescue workers gave them minutes of warning instead of hours as the waters were rising, leaving 13 towns isolated, few appear to be taking it out on Mr. Shumlin. In addition to traveling to ravaged areas and posting frequent updates on Twitter, Mr. Shumlin is using the rare national spotlight to call attention to climate change , which he said was a factor in the torrential rains that flooded the state. TWITTER FOLLOWERS ON AUG. 1: 1,828 TWITTER FOLLOWERS ON SEPT. 1: 2,789 Sarah Wheaton

Hurricane Irene (2011)
Shumlin Peter
Perdue Beverly E
McDonnell Robert F
O'Malley Martin J
Governors (US)


For a Just-So Picture, Today's Knob Twisters Call It Calibration

Abstract: On a typical day, Chris Baker, a senior technician at Crutchfield, the electronics retailer, takes five calls from angry customers who say their televisions are not delivering the picture they paid for. In most cases, they are right. Take the customer with a new $1,500 26-inch Aquos high-definition television who called the company's headquarters in Charlottesville, Va., last month. "He was disappointed with how most everything looked," Mr. Baker said. It turns out the customer's set had been hooked up to a standard-definition cable box, and with a low-grade cable at that. Mr. Baker gave him instructions on how to tune in a high-definition broadcast over the air. When a PBS show about polar bears appeared on the screen, "he had one of those 'Oh my God!' moments," Mr. Baker said. For consumers puzzled about the lackluster picture on their new TV's, the problem is rarely a defect in the set. Many high-definition TV owners don't know they need a special cable box or satellite receiver to view HD programs. "I have friends who say, 'Look at my display. Doesn't it look great?' And I say, 'It would look better in high definition,' " said Kevin Zarow, vice president for marketing and product development at Marantz, a maker of home entertainment equipment. It's not just new HD sets that can have less-than-optimal images. Owners of standard sets often fail to make the few simple adjustments that can make their TV pictures more true. Virtually every TV comes from the factory with the color levels set incorrectly. Sometimes the necessary cables are not included in the packing box. And sometimes additional equipment may be required. Still, most improvements can be made easily, often at little or no cost. A picture may be poor because the set is hooked to the wrong kind of cable input. Although some TV's can get a signal through any of seven types of cables, only three of them -- component, DVI and HDMI cables -- carry high-definition signals. A common mistake is using an S-video cable from a conventional TV on an HD set. The quality of the cable also matters. New gear often comes with cheap ones that can make the picture fuzzy or snowy. Cables should be heavy enough to carry an unrestricted signal, shielded from interference, and have sturdy plugs. Adjusting the color is crucial because manufacturers usually set the colors to high brightness to grab attention in the store. They adjust the set "so it will scream at you when you come in the door," said Joe Kane, a consultant to the television industry. "They make the gray scale blue, they make the light output as high as it will go, and they quite often use edge enhancement so that when you are far away it appears to have detail." Experts call this "torch mode," which may be effective on the salesroom floor but is painful for home viewing. Most new TV's have options in the on-screen menu that can improve color fidelity. Dedicated settings like "sports," "cinema," or "vivid" alter color and brightness for specific viewing conditions. Sports mode usually emphasizes greens, to make fields look spectacular. Vivid usually pumps up colors and brightness for watching in bright rooms. Movie or cinema mode is usually the closest to studio standards. But even these settings do not necessarily produce the truest color. For that, you have to do the calibration yourself. The simplest and least expensive way to calibrate a TV is to use the free THX Optimizer on any THX-certified DVD, like "The Incredibles" from Pixar. The DVD offers instructions on how to set color, tint, contrast and sharpness with on-screen tests. "The procedures are basically the same we do on the master display monitor at the studio," said Rick Dean, vice president for technology development of THX, which has created certification standards for sound and picture in theaters and consumer electronic equipment. The optimizer works best with a $2 pair of blue-lens glasses available from the THX Web site (www.thx.com). Sound & Vision magazine offers Home Theater Tune Up, a DVD with step-by-step instructions, tips and test patterns for adjusting the picture (www.soundandvisionmag.com, $21.95). But because it was produced in 2000, some of its advice might be outdated. The Monster Cable I.S.F. HDTV Calibration Wizard (to be available this month at www.monstercable.com, $29.95) is even simpler to use. Instead of using test patterns, viewers watch video clips for adjustments. For instance, the viewer adjusts the black level until the lapel of a dark jacket onscreen is distinct from the dark shirt beneath it. Another option, Joe Kane's Digital Video Essentials (www.videoessentials.com, $24.99), is up to date, but requires you to sit through lengthy explanations of how the tests work before you can use them. The Avia Guide to Home Theater (www.ovationmultimedia.com, $49.99) has a great deal of information arranged in detailed menus so you can get an overview of a home theater setup, deeper information from submenus or skip right to the comprehensive collection of tests. For the highest degree of picture accuracy, technicians certified by the Imaging Science Foundation use electronic color analyzers to adjust a TV to industry standards. The I.S.F. Web site, www.imagingscience.com, offers a list of technicians around the country who can perform this service. Even after you have your TV calibrated properly, settings can drift over time, requiring readjustment. And sometimes a calibrated TV looks a little dull to viewers accustomed to torch mode. "Live with it a few weeks," Mr. Kane said, "then go back to what you used to watch. In most cases you'll say, 'Wow, this is awful.' " The various devices that are hooked up to most TV's also affect picture quality. The cable box, DVD player, TiVo or digital video recorder -- in addition to the TV -- all have computer chips that process the video image on your screen. The problem is these chips are not perfect, and each round of processing can add errors that diminish or distort the picture. The goal is to have the best-suited chip handle the processing, but how do you know which is best? Only trial-and-error testing will tell. In most cases, the TV set has the best chips, but there are exceptions. To ferret out the superior chip you have to try various settings and connections. For instance, you can connect a DVD player to your TV using a component cable. Component cables send an analog signal, which lets the TV do the bulk of the processing. Then for comparison, you can connect the same DVD player, set to progressive scan, using an HDMI or DVI cable, which transmits a digital signal largely processed by the player. Decide which connection gives you the better picture. If it's too close to call, you can use the HQV Benchmark DVD from Silicon Optix (www.hqv.com/benchmark.cfm, $30), which has tests that reveal signal processing differences that may be subtle. And if fine-tuning your set sounds too complicated, fear not. Even professionals like Scott Jordan, a home theater consultant with Electronics Design Group, say just about anyone can do it. "For the few hours it takes," Mr. Jordan said, "you'll have years of better TV."


Judge Says Governor Can’t Be Tried in Office

Abstract: FRANKFORT, Ky., Aug. 11 (AP) — A judge ruled Friday that Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who is embroiled in a hiring scandal, is protected by executive immunity and cannot be prosecuted while in office. Mr. Fletcher, Kentucky ’s first Republican governor in three decades, was indicted in May on charges that his administration rewarded political supporters with protected state jobs. He has accused the state’s attorney general, Greg D. Stumbo, a Democrat, of conducting a politically motivated investigation. The judge, David E. Melcher, essentially stayed the case until Mr. Fletcher’s term expires, or unless he is removed through impeachment by the Legislature. He did not dismiss the case, though, as Mr. Fletcher’s lawyers had requested. Vicki Glass, spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said prosecutors were pleased that the motion to dismiss was denied. Mr. Fletcher said in a written statement Friday that he was pleased with the ruling. He has said he will seek re-election in 2007, and the ruling was considered pivotal to his campaign.

Kentucky
Fletcher Ernie
Decisions and Verdicts


His Strength Sapped, Top Marathoner Ryan Hall Decides to Stop

Abstract: REDDING, Calif. — Sprinting seven miles down a 9,000-foot mountain and then running back up to do it again may not appeal to even the most self-punishing of athletes, but Ryan Hall believes it is the kind of “experimental workout” that transformed him into the fastest American distance runner in history. It is also the kind of extreme training that is now driving him to abruptly retire, two decades into an audacious career that produced national milestones — his time of 2 hours 4 minutes 58 seconds at the 2011 Boston Marathon is by far the fastest for an American runner — but never a victory in a major race. Hall, 33, who was one of the last remaining hopes for an American front-runner in this summer’s Olympic marathon, is succumbing to chronically low testosterone levels and fatigue so extreme, he says, that he can barely log 12 easy miles a week. “Up to this point, I always believed my best races were still ahead of me,” said Hall, who has faced a series of physical setbacks since the 2012 London Olympics. “I’ve explored every issue to get back to the level I’ve been at, and my body is not responding. I realized that it was time to stop striving, to finally be satisfied and decide, ‘Mission accomplished.’ ” Testosterone is vital for optimum athletic performance, but that hormone’s levels can drop over time with extreme training, similar to how some female runners or gymnasts experience decreased estrogen levels. Hall, who at 5 feet 10 kept his weight consistently at a spry 130 to 140 pounds, said he learned of his low testosterone levels when he turned professional after college, and initially managed to hit top times nonetheless. Image Ryan Hall placed fourth in the 2011 Boston Marathon, running the race in 2 hours 4 minutes 58 seconds. It is the fastest marathon time by an American, although not an official record. Credit Steven Senne/Associated Press Supplemental testosterone is a banned substance, but Hall would be eligible for a medical waiver if he wanted to try to boost his levels. He said he had decided against that because of potential side effects (including dependency and infertility) and ethical concerns (some athletes use testosterone illicitly as a performance-enhancing drug). Natural remedies like the altering of his diet and lifting weights have not restored his strength, he said. “As an elite athlete, when you get a bummer diagnosis about your physiological limits, you have two choices,” said Lauren Fleshman, Hall’s teammate when they were college track champions at Stanford. “You can adapt your approach, or forge ahead as usual, hoping this time the giant chink in your armor gets missed by all the swords.” Hall has generally forged ahead, aggressively, keeping his weekly mileage steadily above 100 miles and constantly pushing the boundaries of sustainability. In retiring, he leaves behind an American track and field establishment in tatters from chronic allegations of widespread doping and internecine politics. There is a dearth of emerging talent. The top contender heading into the United States Olympic marathon trials is Meb Keflezighi, who is 40. It is a striking contrast to 2001, when Hall was at the fore of a promising crop of high school runners , including Dathan Ritzenhein and Alan Webb, whose sub-four-minute-mile record in high school still holds . They were heralded as the future of American distance running. Image The Hall family at home in Redding, Calif. Hall said fatherhood would be a major priority for him, along with helping coach Sara, who will be seeking her first Olympic spot at the United States marathon trials next month. Credit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times “The three of them changed Americans’ expectations for our capacity to compete at the highest level of sport,” said Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of Virgin Sport and former race director of the New York City Marathon . “Their rise coincided with the groundswell of interest in cross-country and track that resulted from the explosion of the Internet and the first class of high schoolers that could really watch each other online, and not have to wait till results were in print. Kids across the country were talking about these guys; they wanted to be them.” Hall handled his career differently from many professional runners, avoiding Internet forums rife with gossip and critiques, which he dismissed as distractions from practicing and excelling at his sport. His wife, Sara, also a professional runner and former teammate at Stanford, handles his social media accounts and helps serve as a filter between Hall and the world outside. “Ryan’s identity is secure,” she said. “Others might be running because they want fans and praise. But his approach is natural, similar to earlier running in this country, when the top runners were training hard and racing in isolation — they were running for the passion, not the recognition. And they were excellent.” An Immediate Standout Hall began running when he was 13 and immediately stood out. He was a national champion in the 5,000 meters at Stanford and then flouted traditional career progressions by moving up to the marathon and its attendant high training loads almost right away, with characteristic bravado. Image Hall, left, finishing second to Meb Keflezighi at the 2012 Olympic marathon trials. Keflezighi, 40, is the top contender heading into the 2016 trials. Credit David J. Phillip/Associated Press “When I was getting into the sport, jumping into the marathon, people told me to wait and hold out — I needed to work up to it,” he said. “I said: ‘Whatever, that’s not true. I’ve been running 100 miles a week since I was 17, in high school, and I’m ready.’ But training at that level for so long takes a toll on your body for sure.” He achieved early success, setting the American record for a debut marathon at London in 2007 with a time of 2:08:24. He attributes his current fatigue problems to that early training load and to unconventional training strategies throughout his pro career. Before the 2012 London Olympics, for instance, he did three weekly workouts at world-record marathon speed — a 4:42 pace per mile — pushing each session for as long as he could. It is impossible to know for sure whether Hall’s extreme approach helped or hurt his performance. Would he have run even better times if he had not demanded so much from his body? Or did he have to train that way to find his peak? Regardless, he was the rare American marathoner who challenged the sport’s dominant athletes from East Africa. His landmark time for an American runner was achieved in an uncommonly fast Boston Marathon field. On a course ruled ineligible for an official record, he led most of the race at blistering speed until he was beaten at the end and finished fourth. “I remember Wesley Korir telling me after that race that the Kenyans were afraid of me, and I thought that was ironic; I’d never heard of a Kenyan being afraid of a white person before in the race,” Hall said. “I think it showed the level of respect they have for me. I love that it ruffles feathers with them, but I don’t see any difference between them and me. White people can race Africans.” A Respectful Rivalry Hall and Keflezighi established themselves as the best American marathoners of their generation. Training together in California, they developed a respectful rivalry. Image Ryan and his wife, Sara, with their children, from left, Mia, Hana, Jasmine and Lily, praying before brunch at home. Credit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times “We’ve always been different runners,” Keflezighi said. “Ryan’s a time guy and I’m a championship guy. But he has called me his older brother, in terms of guiding him. I told him my secrets, helped him to do the best he could. And I’m proud of what he’s accomplished.” In the 2014 Boston Marathon, when Keflezighi pulled away about 10 miles from the finish in what became a historic American victory the year after the Boston bombings, Hall said he worked with his fellow American Nick Arciniaga to slow the chase pack of East Africans, which could not catch Keflezighi in the final miles. “Before that race, I said, ‘Some American needs to do something special here today,’ ” Hall said. “At the starting line, I hoped it would be me. But when I realized it wasn’t my day, I said, ‘Hey, let’s get out of the lead; if they want to stay close to Meb, they have to do the work to do it.’ And they didn’t do the work.” He added: “In Boston, I felt like I shared that success. You can share in other people’s victories, but Americans don’t usually think like that. We’re more independent.” Hall faded to 20th place, in the last major marathon he finished, but said he embraced any consequences of risk in racing. Image Hall’s unwashed race jerseys and bibs from the 2008 London Marathon, in which he ran a 2:06:17; the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials; and the 2008 Olympic trials, which he won. Credit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times “I’ve failed over and over and over again throughout my career,” he said. “I know what it’s like to fail at the biggest stage, like the Olympics. It’s a bummer; I don’t want to go through it, but I’m not afraid of it. And if you’re not afraid to fail, you’re not afraid to run against the best guys, and you’re not afraid to lose. I have so many failures throughout my career. But I needed them to have the success.” Faith-Based Training For the last five years, Hall has lived as an Olympian hermit, tucked away in a valley in the mountains of Northern California with his family, where they can be close to their church, a charismatic evangelical Christian fellowship. Still supported by Asics, he withdrew from formal coaching and team training altogether, beginning instead what he referred to as faith-based training. The approach has drawn skeptical respect from his peers. “All elite athletes are hypothetically tasked to single-mindedly pursue their potential; his approach to his faith gives him the ideal setup to really do it,” said Fleshman, Hall’s former Stanford teammate. “And it also destroys him, repeatedly, like Job. Glory in suffering and all that.” After initial success — he ran his fastest marathon right after starting faith-based coaching — Hall has finished short of his best times in every other race he has run since adopting the new training regimen. But he credits his strong religious faith with helping him endure the pain of athletic setback and, now, with easing his transition to retirement. “If it wasn’t for faith-based coaching, I would have retired long ago,” he said. “And now I’ve reached a point in my career where God told me to take another path. I just want to be a good husband, a good dad, a good coach.” In October, the Halls adopted four sisters, ages 5 to 15, from an orphanage in Ethiopia, where they spent several months training last year. The girls did not speak English, so to prepare for the adoption, the Halls took Amharic lessons, practicing the language with their Ethiopian running partners. “We met them and fell in love, and decided to adopt all four girls in a week,” Sara said. “It was a step of faith. Not many kids get chosen by their parents, and older children have a difficult time finding homes — it’s even harder for them to stay together. We asked them if they wanted to join our family, and they all said yes.” The Halls let the girls pick English names, then enrolled the children in a small Christian school and supplemented their education with home tutoring. The girls had been raised Protestant, and so were already in sync with the religious patterns of the Hall household. Sara said they wake up a half-hour before school to pray on their own, a practice they learned in the orphanage. “It’s crazy to me,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t even want to get up and do that.” The girls already share their parents’ passion for Muscle Milk teff pancakes , made with a sponsor’s protein powder, an Ethiopian grain, baking powder and water. “They’re like a healthy brownie, a molten lava cake,” Hall said. “Every night when I go to bed, I can’t wait to get up and have my pancake.” Hall said fatherhood would be a major priority for him, along with volunteering for the Steps Foundation, a nonprofit he started with Sara, which engages the running community to fight global poverty by improving health. For now, his main pursuit is coaching Sara, along with her other coach, Steve Magness, as she seeks her first Olympic spot at the marathon trials next month. He also hopes to let his body recover from a lifetime of strain. (Since slowing his training, Hall has gained 20 pounds.) “I started running when I was 13, in puberty,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever let my body come to baseline. I don’t even know what baseline is.” When Hall spoke of his retirement, he displayed his race jerseys, all immaculately preserved on hangers, unwashed, and with their racing bibs still attached. He looked triumphant as he assembled them, but then his mood seemed to shift. “This is the first time I’ve gotten a little bit sad through the whole process,” he said. “But it’s not a sad moment like I’m making a mistake. It felt like I was reliving a great race, one that you want to relive. But you can’t.”


Canada: Conservatives in Contempt

Abstract: The speaker of the House of Commons found the Conservative government in contempt of Parliament on Wednesday for refusing to provide cost estimates for a new anticrime program and because of potentially misleading remarks from a cabinet minister . It was the third such finding against the government in about a year. After a review by a parliamentary committee, there is a remote possibility that the decision might ultimately jeopardize the ruling Conservative government’s hold on power.


Levity Amid Competition as U.S. Takes a Slim Lead

Abstract: DUBLIN, Ohio — Jason Day stood over a 20-foot birdie attempt with a 2 ½-foot break Thursday, his confidence buoyed by having struck the same putt dozens of times in the scores of rounds he has played at Muirfield Village, his home course. What made the putt hard to read, for the fans gathered around the 18th hole, if not for Day, was that if it dropped, the visitors from the International team would earn their second point of the Presidents Cup. Day is from Australia, but he has made this area his home since marrying an Ohioan four years ago. Several of the Americans in the gallery Thursday were among his closest friends. So when the putt fell, to give Day and his partner, Graham DeLaet of Canada, a 1-up victory over Hunter Mahan and Brandt Snedeker, the crowd’s response was almost as warm as if he had been wearing red, white and blue. The United States squad took a 3 ½-2 ½ lead against an International team of the best non-Europeans in an opening day that was as mellow as a lullaby next to the heavy metal Ryder Cup. The only discordant note was struck by Mother Nature. An afternoon electrical storm caused a weather delay of 1 hour 22 minutes, slowing the American steamroller. When play resumed in bright sunshine, the American team’s momentum had evaporated. At the time of the stoppage, the Americans led in five matches, and the sixth, featuring Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley against Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, was all square. Oosthuizen and Schwartzel are good friends and fellow South Africans, and they brought to the unenviable task of slaying the stoutest United States pairing a levity that made it possible for them to swing their clubs freely. Earlier in the week, both had agreed to have their hair trimmed by a barber, who tended to their scalps as if he were cutting the greens. By the time the barber was through, Oosthuizen and Schwartzel looked as if they were ready to report for military duty. “It didn’t work out as well as we thought,” Oosthuizen said. Schwartzel said, “Only time is going to heal this problem.” Image Steve Stricker at the 18th hole. He and Jordan Spieth won their four-ball match, 1-up. Credit David Cannon/Getty Images He and Oosthuizen received so much razzing about their hair that they were determined to get the last laugh, which explains why they arrived at the first tee wearing wigs that Oosthuizen’s wife bought for the occasion. Schwartzel looked like Alice Cooper, circa 1973, while Oosthuizen resembled Harpo Marx. Mickelson grinned when he saw them, but he was not smiling a few hours later, after the South Africans shot a combined nine under to earn a 2 and 1 victory. “I had a good rhythm early on,” Mickelson said, “and when we went back out, I was just a little bit tight and didn’t make very good swings.” Mickelson made three birdies before the delay and one after. He and Bradley failed to win a hole after play resumed. Bill Haas and Webb Simpson, both former Wake Forest stars, halved their match against Adam Scott and Hideki Matsuyama, a Presidents Cup rookie. Jordan Spieth, a 20-year-old United States rookie, teamed with 46-year-old Steve Stricker for a 1-up victory over the South Africans Ernie Els and Brendon de Jonge. Zach Johnson and Jason Dufner beat Branden Grace and Richard Sterne, 5 and 3. Tiger Woods and Matt Kuchar handed Ángel Cabrera and Marc Leishman a 5 and 4 defeat while resurrecting the handshake made famous on the 1990s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” The funky high-five was the inspiration of Kuchar, who said, “We had some fun out there.” He added, “It’s awfully fun partnering up with the No. 1 player in the world.” The Americans acquired a mascot during the round when a baby squirrel adopted Davis Love III, a United States assistant captain who started feeding it. The squirrel made itself comfortable on Love’s lap but soon felt love from all around. Woods was seated on a side hill watching his teammates finish at No. 18 when his girlfriend, Lindsey Vonn, set the squirrel on his shoulder, causing him to flinch. She petted it as he returned his attention to golf.

Jason Day
Presidents Cup
Phil Mickelson
Louis Oosthuizen
Tiger Woods
Golf


Finding Treasures in a City’s Disappearing Past

Abstract: BEIJING — The destruction of this 800-year-old city usually proceeds as follows: the Chinese character for “demolish” mysteriously appears on the front of an old building, the residents wage a fruitless battle to save their homes, and quicker than you can say “Celebrate the New Beijing,” a wrecking crew arrives, often accompanied by the police, to pulverize the brick-and-timber structure. But before another chunk of ancient Beijing disappears entirely, a hospice administrator named Li Songtang can often be found poking around the rubble, looking for remnants that honor what was among the world’s best-preserved metropolises until a merciless wave of redevelopment gained the upper hand. Since the 1970s, when Mao inspired his Red Guards to pummel every “reactionary” Confucius temple and Ming Dynasty statue they could find, Mr. Li has been salvaging architectural remnants and stowing them away, sometimes at considerable risk. Manchu hitching posts. Ornate wooden doorways. A giant granite horse that graced an emperor’s palace. These and thousands of other objects fill Mr. Li’s warehouse and spill across the grounds of the hospice he runs in Beijing’s eastern suburbs. Every item has a tale. That Song Dynasty lintel etched with a frenzy of folk scenes? Pulled from a pig sty. The lacquered screen that tells the history of a clan of scholars? Fished from the burn pile. The most historically significant items are displayed in his private museum, where every Sunday he can be found leading tours and exhorting people to cherish the old before it is too late. “For 50 years I’ve been watching the destruction of this magnificent city,” he’ll say in admonishment. “We’ve been treating history like garbage.” It is difficult to overstate how much of China ’s old imperial capital has disappeared in recent years. When the Communists took power in 1949, they inherited a city marbled with 7,000 alleyways, or hutong, a Mongol word that referred to the space between tents. In Old Beijing, hutong were the capillaries that fed the walled compounds where most people lived. Even if the Communists forced aristocratic families to share their courtyard homes with scores of working-class families, the structures, and their stone-and-wood artistry, remained largely intact. Monument-building and road-widening claimed swaths of the old city in the 1950s and ’60s, and more damage was done during the Cultural Revolution, but the pace surged in the 1990s, when China’s embrace of market economics fueled a redevelopment juggernaut. In the years leading up to the Beijing Olympics in August, the destruction took on a manic pace. According to Unesco, more than 88 percent of the city’s old residential quarters are gone, including many government-designated heritage zones whose protections existed only on paper. Today, just 1,300 hutong remain, and many more neighborhoods, like the colorful Qianmen district just south of Tiananmen Square, are scheduled for renewal. Michael Meyer, who documents Qianmen’s hutong life in his book “The Last Days of Old Beijing,” says most residents are not terribly nostalgic about the old city. For them, a freshly painted facsimile of a 500-year-old Buddhist temple is just fine. “Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that Chelsea, then Greenwich Village, have been replaced by malls,” he said. “Those who are trying to preserve a bit of the city’s legacy are increasingly isolated and powerless.” One of Mr. Li’s earliest childhood memories is of the destruction of his family’s courtyard house. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, he watched neighbors burn their own books and smash heirlooms. “People were so afraid that the Red Guards would find antiques in their home, they would toss them into the river at night so no one would see,” said Mr. Li, who came from a family of doctors and teachers. Like many from the educated classes, Mr. Li was ridiculed, beaten by classmates and then sent to the countryside, where he toiled alongside farmers for nine years. After returning to the city, he devoted himself to rescuing whatever scraps of history he could find. His efforts have sometimes attracted the attention of officials, who have accused him of stealing and obliquely criticizing government policies. He acknowledges he never paid for anything, although he might give demolition workers a few dollars to cart away a heavy object. “I came to realize that so much of Beijing was destroyed because no one was willing to pay these men for overtime” to haul away relics, he said, half-jokingly. Mr. Li’s struggle to open his Songtangzhai Museum is a tortured tale that involved five years of kowtowing, cajoling and a “gift” of 148 prized items to the Culture Ministry. The $4.50 entrance fee to his museum, which occupies an 18th-century house, does not cover the cost of operations, so Mr. Li subsidizes it from his own pocket. He says he has never sold any artifacts. “I have 1,000 stories that I can never tell,” he said conspiratorially, and then offered a few choice words to describe those who blocked his way — and those who have promoted the demise of Old Beijing. But then he corrected himself. “The Communist Party has improved Beijing immeasurably,” he said with a taut smile. “They are doing a wonderful job.”

Architecture
China
Antiques
Demolition
Beijing (China)
Historic Buildings and Sites
Travel and Vacations


Virginia Sues Trinity Industries Over Potentially Risky Guardrail

Abstract: Virginia is suing the guardrail maker Trinity Industries , saying that it sold the state thousands of pieces of potentially dangerous, improperly tested and unapproved products. The suit makes Virginia the first governmental entity to participate in whistle-blower suits against Trinity, which is based in Dallas. The suits were brought on behalf of state and federal governments, but none of those entities, until now, have been plaintiffs. In October, a jury found that Trinity had defrauded the federal government when it did not inform the Federal Highway Administration of changes it made to the guardrail, the ET-Plus, in 2005. The company sold the guardrails to state governments, which, in turn, received federal reimbursement. The jury returned with a verdict for $175 million , which will, by law, be tripled, to $525 million. The highway agency did not participate in the federal case. On Thursday, Mark R. Herring, the attorney general of Virginia, filed a complaint in Richmond Circuit Court, seeking civil penalties and the recovery of costs if tests show that the products are unsafe and must be replaced. The tests began this week in San Antonio in conjunction with the highway administration. “It is shocking that a company would think they could secretly modify a safety device in a way that may actually pose a threat to Virginia motorists,” he said. “Trinity had an obligation to test and seek approval for its equipment, but instead, they sold the commonwealth thousands of unapproved products that had not been properly tested to ensure they would keep motorists safe.” Trinity said it would defend itself against Virginia’s lawsuit. “Trinity did not commit fraud against the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Jeff Eller, a spokesman for Trinity. He said it was “conducting the eight tests requested by the F.H.W.A., which includes the two tests specifically requested by Virginia,” and had “given them all the data they have requested.” In addition to the Virginia case, a separate lawsuit was filed by counties in Illinois. Prosecutors in Hamilton and Macon counties sued Trinity in federal court on Nov. 26 on behalf of all Illinois counties, accusing the company of a “fraudulent cover up” and deceptive trade practices, court records show. Eric Holland, a special assistant state’s attorney assigned to the case, said the ET-Plus represents a pressing public safety issue, and he expected that other jurisdictions would also take action. “I think any public entity that has this particular guardrail on their property has concerns,” Mr. Holland said. Image A Trinity Industries guardrail in tests this week that were sought by the federal highway agency. Mr. Eller declined to comment on the Illinois case, but said the company was reviewing it. Virginia and more than 30 other states have banned the guardrail products, which are suspected of having a defect that could make them jam. When that happens, the rail can pierce a vehicle. More than a dozen other private lawsuits blame the guardrails for five deaths and more injuries. In October, after the federal jury verdict, Virginia’s Transportation Department threatened to remove the guardrails if Trinity did not do more tests. Soon after, the federal highway agency required further testing. The rail head is the flat piece of steel at the front of the guardrail that, on impact, is supposed to glide along the rail and push the metal safely out of the way. In 2005, without notifying the highway agency, Trinity narrowed the channel behind the head to four inches from five, possibly causing the mechanism to malfunction, state officials have said. Highway administration authorities said they learned about Trinity’s design changes in 2012 from Joshua Harman, a competitor of Trinity. Mr. Harman discovered Trinity’s undisclosed redesign during litigation in 2011 and subsequently filed the federal lawsuit against the company on behalf of the highway agency under the False Claims Act. Though he is a competitor, he is a whistle-blower under the law. The day after the jury returned the fraud verdict in the federal case, the highway agency called for Trinity to do more guardrail tests. The agency had defended the guardrail unit for more than two years, even after learning that Trinity had not disclosed the design change. The agency declined to comment. On Wednesday, Trinity did the first of eight initial tests overseen by the agency. A second test, set for Thursday, was delayed until Friday because of weather. The test involved a pickup truck crashed into an ET-Plus at a 15-degree angle. Tony Furst, the federal agency’s associate administrator for safety, stressed that the initial testing was only “one step of many,” and that the agency’s goal was to first “re-baseline the device” by ensuring the original new-to-market tests done by Trinity in 2005 were conducted properly, after concerns were raised over their soundness. The federal agency could still order more targeted testing aimed at investigating the alleged defect. Mr. Furst said federal officials have also begun analyzing information on ET-Plus incidents from around the country, including records from individual victims’ accidents, which he said had been provided by lawyers for the federal whistleblower. Until recently, the agency had yet to examine such evidence. Virginia officials attended Wednesday’s test, but Trinity did not allow them to inspect the ET-Plus test unit before the crash. Only federal officials were provided such access, according to a company spokesman. Virginia had also originally asked that Trinity test guardrail units that were actually installed on roads, being used in service. The units used in Wednesday’s test, and planned for the next seven crash tests, came from the inventory of the California Department of Transportation, not from the state’s roads, Mr. Furst said Wednesday.

Virginia
Trinity Industries
Lawsuits
Transportation
Car Crash
Product Testing


A Facebook Project to Beam Data From Drones Is a Step Closer to Flight

Abstract: MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has moved several steps closer to fulfilling its grand ambition of building an Internet network in the sky , announcing on Thursday that it has built its first unmanned drone and found a way to vastly increase the capacity of the lasers that will eventually beam data between the drone network and the ground. A team in Britain has been working on building the solar-powered drone, known as Aquila, for about 14 months. Now the company says that the unmanned aerial vehicle, made of ultralight composite materials and weighing 880 pounds, is ready for in-flight tests in the upper atmosphere, most likely in the United States. “We have completed plane No. 1,” Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president for global engineering and infrastructure, said at a news conference at the company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. Facebook, whose primary business is operating the world’s largest social network, has been working on a range of projects to extend Internet access to the four billion or so people who don’t have it, including teaming with phone carriers to offer free access to Facebook and other basic services in developing countries through its Internet.org app. The drones are part of a long-term project intended to deliver the Internet to people who live far away from cell towers and fiber optic lines. Although Facebook is designing the drones and the network as well as solving technical problems, it says it will share its knowledge with partners and hopes to enlist telecommunications companies, aircraft manufacturers and perhaps governments in the actual construction and operation of the system. Google, Facebook’s rival for the attention of Internet users, is pursuing its own plan, called Project Loon, to provide Internet access through a network of drifting high-altitude balloons. Sri Lanka said this week that it had signed a pact to eventually bring the Loon project to that country, although Google said many details remained. In Facebook’s vision, hundreds of drones will be lifted into the sky by helium balloons and left to circle at altitudes of 60,000 to 90,000 feet — far above commercial airliners and weather systems. The network would be supplemented by satellites orbiting even higher up. However, there remains a significant amount of work to do on the technology required to make the system a reality, including devising better batteries that can keep each plane aloft for three months and building lasers for data transmission that can track a moving receiver the size of a dime from 11 miles away. Like a watch, “there are a lot of moving parts here that need to move in concert to make the network work,” Yael Maguire, director of engineering at Facebook’s connectivity lab, said at the news conference. Mr. Maguire said that under the leadership of Hamid Hemmati, a former NASA laser scientist, Facebook has figured out how to transmit data using lasers at a speed of tens of gigabits per second — roughly 10 times as fast as previous technologies allowed. Facebook is approaching its drone program almost as it would a software “hackathon.” Teams working on issues like battery power and lasers are exchanging ideas with other people working on artificial intelligence and Facebook’s data centers. That is one reason, the company says, that it has been able to make so much progress in 14 months. Facebook also hopes to speed development by making available much of its research and many of its discoveries without cost. The arrangement is similar to an open-source software project, where anyone can draw on a core of publicly available code but is obligated to share improvements with the community. Facebook has already used this method in building computer servers. The drone network is a much bigger project, however, and would most likely involve discoveries in a broader range of fields. “Getting people to adopt the Internet faster is our end goal,” Mr. Parikh said in an interview. “If this gets used by car companies, and that comes back and helps us with batteries for drones, great.” Mr. Parikh said Facebook would even be willing to share information with Google to help both companies’ data-in-the-sky efforts. “We would love to collaborate,” he said.

Facebook
Drones
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry


As a Tower Tilts, Coney Island Pauses

Abstract: The Fourth of July is one of the busiest days of the year on the Coney Island Boardwalk, but all was not business as usual on Thursday. During the morning and early afternoon, vacationers stood at a metal barricade on the Boardwalk and looked up at two iconic attractions that stood silent and still: the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone roller coaster. Nearby, workers were dismantling a former ride that had not carried passengers in years and whose dangerous swaying had shut down part of Luna Park and the Boardwalk. Shortly before 3 p.m., that ride, the Astrotower, had lost 53 feet and 44,000 pounds, the park had opened fully and riders were screaming on the Cyclone again. The fate of the rest of the tower has not yet been decided, although several more pieces will go, said Robert LiMandri, the commissioner of the Buildings Department. “Currently it is at a safe, reliable height, but we do know that we still need to keep going, because there is no need for it to be this tall,” he said. Work was to continue on the tower during the night and in the early morning on Thursday and Friday, when the amusements and shops are closed, so the construction will not disrupt revelers and businesses. Fourth of July Across the City 18 Photos View Slide Show › Image Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times The reopening was welcome news for Coney’s Cones and the Famiglia and Paul’s Daughter restaurants, which were in the closed section of the Boardwalk and missed out on their morning and early afternoon business. The holiday was the first trip to Coney Island for Randy Morrison, 51; his wife, Barbara, 49; and his granddaughter, Olivia Morrison, 12. Mr. Morrison arrived in the morning from McVeytown, Pa., with plans to ride the Cyclone, but he found it closed. “It’s kind of a bummer,” he said. The Austin family came from the other side of the world to experience their first Fourth of July in the States. John Austin, 31, and Anne-Marie Austin, 26, came from Australia with their 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter and were disappointed to find that the Cyclone and the children’s rides were closed. The Austins decided to go back to their Midtown hotel and cool off before heading to the Hudson River for the fireworks show. Geno Sosnovskiy, 25, from Bensonhurst, said he had been deciding between watching fireworks explode over the Hudson River that night and watching men and women scarf down as many hot dogs as they could at the Nathan’s hot-dog eating contest on Coney Island during the day. He chose the hot dogs. “To call yourself a New Yorker, you have to go to this event,” he said, calling his trip a “Brooklyn inauguration that’s been 20 years in the making.” Although this was Mr. Sosnovskiy’s first time watching the Nathan’s challenge, he said he won second place a few years ago at a contest at Brooklyn College by eating 14 ¼ hot dogs. Carol Cuprill, 54, of East Harlem, said she was upset when she heard on Wednesday that Luna Park was closed, but the timing of the reopening was perfect for her. She and three young grandchildren enjoyed the beach in the morning and early afternoon and were ready to ride by the time the gates were unlocked. Every year, she said, she takes her granddaughter, who turned 4 on Thursday, to Coney Island for her birthday. “Her mother and I saved money so she can get all the cotton candy and rides she wants.”

Roller coaster
Coney Island Brooklyn
Amusement park
July 4th


An Exotic Technology May Be a Big Leap for Cellphone Cameras

Abstract: MENLO PARK, Calif. — Mobile photographers could soon have much better cameras on their cellphones, thanks to technology known as quantum dots. InVisage Technologies, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has spent more than three years trying to build a proprietary film that coats the image sensors used in cellphone cameras and allows them to capture more light. The film stands as a rare commercial use of an exotic semiconductor material called a quantum dot. Jess Lee, the chief executive of InVisage, said the company’s lab tests had convinced him that within two years cellphone companies would be able to offer cameras that work about four times better than today’s cameras, particularly in low light. The image sensors in cellphone cameras now use silicon to capture light, which is then processed to create a picture. Companies making these sensors have run into problems as they keep shrinking and tweaking the innards of the devices so that they can absorb more light. The limitations of cameras based on this technology often appear when people try to take photos in low light, resulting in a blurry image. “With the current techniques, you might have technology that’s 10 percent better two years from now,” Mr. Lee said. “The big guys have hit a brick wall, and it will only get harder and more expensive for them to fight it.” Rather than trying to refine the silicon technology, InVisage turned to quantum dots to build what it calls Quantum Film, a layer of semiconductor material that gathers light better than silicon, Mr. Lee said. Researchers have spent years working on quantum dots with little success. They are essentially semiconductor particles about a nanometer — or a billionth of a meter — in size. Technologists want to control the physical properties of the quantum dots to make them behave a certain way. Typically, researchers must build the quantum dots with exotic materials and then struggle to control their properties in a repeatable fashion. Morry Marshall, the vice president for strategic technologies at the chip consulting firm Semico Research, said that if InVisage had figured out how to use quantum dots effectively, it could mean a huge leap in camera performance. “I don’t know of any technology right now that is even close,” Mr. Marshall said. Mr. Lee declined to reveal what materials InVisage had used to build its dot, calling it the company’s secret recipe. He did, however, show off vials of the quantum dots suspended in a liquid. The liquid is spread across the top of an image sensor. Mr. Lee expects that companies producing image sensor chips could use the film without substantial changes to their existing equipment. Rather than licensing the film to companies like Sony, Toshiba or Aptina, InVisage plans to make its own sensors and sell them directly to cellphone companies. “We expect to start production 18 months from now,” Mr. Lee said. With such technology, the current three-megapixel camera found in the Apple iPhone could be turned into a 12-megapixel camera that works better in varying light conditions, Mr. Lee said. Ken Salsman, the director of new technologies at Aptina, a major manufacturer of image sensors for cellphones, conceded that silicon-based sensors had proved tough to advance. But he said that Aptina had managed to improve its technology through some novel techniques, and that InVisage might be “in for a very rude surprise.” Still, Mr. Salsman commended InVisage for trying something new in this field. “I am very excited to see what they’ve got,” he said. “Having a true change in performance never hurt the industry.”

Cameras
Sensors
Cellular Telephones
Photography
Science and Technology


Tammany Hall’s Auditorium, Where Politics Once Took Center Stage, Will Be Demolished

Abstract: Independence Day 1929 was a great one for Tammany Hall . Tammany was not just an institution, synonymous with the Democratic machine in New York City; with patronage, self-dealing, mendacity and corruption. It was also a place: a handsome red brick and limestone auditorium on Union Square in Manhattan, with offices for the powerful Tammany Society political organization. The building was designed in a neo-Georgian style that was intended to conjure (misleadingly or not) the rectitude of the early republic, when the society was founded. On July 4, 1929, not long before he began starving Tammany of its influence, Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Union Square to help dedicate its new hall. The holiday, the dedication and the 100th birthday of its grand sachem, John R. Voorhis , amounted to a “ triple celebration for Tammany ,” The New York Times reported. Image Liberty Theaters L.L.C., which owns the building, used the auditorium until January as the Union Square Theater. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Independence Day 2016 will be the last for the old Tammany auditorium. Liberty Theaters L.L.C ., which owns the building and used it until January as the Union Square Theater, is reconstructing the four-story hall as a six-story office building, marketed by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank as 44 Union Square . The auditorium space will be demolished. A two-and-half-story glass dome will be erected on the rooftop. The project, designed by Todd Poisson of BKSK Architects , is to be completed in two years for $50 million. The exterior of the building, which has landmark status (but the auditorium does not), will be preserved as part of the project. Memories of Tammany will survive in decorative details like a limestone medallion of Chief Tamanend, for whom the society was named, and a red, blue and gold liberty cap, made of terra cotta, on the front pediment. But almost no traces will remain of the auditorium or its grand, coffered ceiling dome. “We tried to preserve the theater,” Margaret Cotter , the president of Liberty Theatres, said on a recent tour of the auditorium, under a ghost light. “But we couldn’t come up with a program that was economically viable.” Image A stairway in the building. The exterior of the building, which has landmark status, will be preserved as part of the project. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “We have two other Off Broadway theaters, so we’re still in business,” she said. These are the 347-seat Orpheum Theater in the East Village and the 391-seat Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Though the chandeliers and brass sconces were salvageable, decorative plasterwork crumbled when work crews tried to remove it. “It’s like a movie set,” said Michael Buckley, a principal in Edifice Real Estate Partners , which is serving as the owner’s representative for Liberty Theatres in the redevelopment. Image A limestone medallion on the building depicts Chief Tamanend, for whom the Tammany Society was named. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times On its first day as Tammany Hall, in 1929, the auditorium was filled beyond overflowing and “ablaze with color,” The Times said, because of the many flags on display. Roosevelt shared the stage with former Gov. Alfred E. Smith , who represented the best of Tammany, and Mayor James J. Walker , who symbolized just about the worst — if you do not count Boss Tweed . In his speech, Roosevelt warned that corporate mergers were concentrating too much wealth in the hands of too few people. “They are becoming increasingly more powerful in the influence they are building in state and nation, an influence that someday will have to be met,” he said. Tammany would feel Roosevelt’s antipathy, too, as he and Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia cut the organization off from the patronage jobs it once doled out. Reduced to a wisp of itself by 1943, Tammany sold its headquarters to Local 91 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union . Image The third floor of the building. Holes were cut in the walls and floors as an investigative precaution before the renovation began. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times The union reopened the hall in 1947 as the Roosevelt Auditorium . It became an important meeting place for organized labor. It was reborn again twice as a 499-seat Off Broadway playhouse: the Roundabout Theater in 1984 and the Union Square Theater in 1994 . After a decades-long campaign by the Union Square Community Coalition , the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Tammany Hall an official landmark in 2013 . The New York Film Academy moved out in October 2015, leaving behind classrooms like Kubrick 202 and Hitchcock 304. The Union Square Theater closed after the Jan. 3 performance of “39 Steps,” a revival acclaimed by Ben Brantley of The Times. Frank’s Wines and Liquors endured nine days longer. “I let them stay until they sold their last bottle,” Ms. Cotter said. Without the hodgepodge of tenant signs, Tammany Hall already looks a lot better. Inside can be tricky, however. Mr. Buckley, the owner’s representative, was pointing out holes that had been cut in the walls and floors as an investigative precaution before renovation began. Naïvely, I asked whether any “as-built” drawings survived that would show conditions exactly the way they were constructed. “Do you think Tammany Hall would have filed ‘as-builts’ as built?” Mr. Buckley answered. “What are the odds of that?”


Now With the Mets, It’s All Come Into Focus for Tyler Clippard

Abstract: Tyler Clippard cannot remember the exact moment when he decided to see the eye doctor. He might have been standing on a mound in Columbus, Ohio, squinting at the sign in the shadows between the catcher’s legs. That happened often during the summer of 2008. Clippard also squinted when he was in the clubhouse, or looking at the television. His teammates teased him endlessly. Clippard was 23 years old and in his sixth year in the minors. He did not have overly powerful stuff or great statistics. He did have some brief experience in the majors, but it was still unclear what would become of him. He thought he could get by squinting. He went to the eye doctor, in part, because he had nothing to lose. But once he did, and was given prescription glasses, his career — coincidentally or not — began to take off. Clippard, who had made his major league debut with the Yankees in 2007, eventually made two All-Star teams for the Washington Nationals and became one of the better relievers in baseball. And the glasses became part of his look, a feature that fit with his funky delivery and what his friends describe as an offbeat personality. Image Tom Henke with the Blue Jays in the 1992 World Series. Credit John Swart/Associated Press When the Mets acquired Clippard, now 30, days before the trade deadline last month, one of his first orders of business was contacting Nike to get a new pair of glasses, with frames colored Mets blue. With them, he will stride to the mound late in games in the remainder of August and then in September, often trying to protect a lead, as the Mets make a run at the playoffs after six straight losing seasons. Clippard will often be the guy on the mound in the eighth inning. He will also be the one in the spectacles, setting him apart from a whole lot of other major leaguers. “The glasses just make him,” said Aaron Barrett, a former teammate with the Nationals. Just watch the way the 6-foot-3 Clippard walks, Barrett added. Clippard moves with a distinct bounce in his step, as if he has springs in his shoes — another thing he is teased about. Drew Storen, once Clippard’s bullpen mate on the Nationals, tells an illuminating story about his fellow right-hander. They took a cruise together with their girlfriends one off-season, and Clippard inadvertently entered a karaoke contest among the passengers. He sang Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” and Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places,” charmed the crowd and finished in second place. “He should’ve won,” Storen said. Back to the glasses: Clippard wears them only in certain situations off the field. He does not wear them in the clubhouse, where he can get around without them. He does use them when he goes to the movies and when he golfs. He golfed competitively growing up and once thought about trying to make a living at the sport. He still plays a round about once every road trip and, earlier this year, shot a 72 at Pebble Beach. “He can hit it a mile,” Storen said. Clippard also tried using contacts once, but he said that his eyes were too dry and that the lenses would pop out on the field. So glasses it is, including a pair he reserves for formal occasions. Image Kent Tekulve with the Pirates in the 1979 World Series. Credit Associated Press But even if he did not wear glasses, only a true athlete would be able to excel using the type of delivery Clippard does. He rocks back; raises his glove high, as if he is reaching for something on a shelf; and then unfurls himself toward the plate. Manager Terry Collins describes it as a blur of arms and legs. And for the most part, it works. From 2009 until 2014, he recorded a 2.64 E.R.A. for the Nationals and routinely posted high strikeout numbers. He served as their closer in 2012 and converted 32 saves in 37 chances. He has been just as steady for the Mets, who acquired him from Oakland, where he was serving as the closer. Actually, in wearing glasses, Clippard is carrying on a long tradition of bespectacled relievers. Ryne Duren, a member of the 1958 champion Yankees, scared opponents with his hard fastball and his notoriously poor vision: He wore Coke-bottle glasses. Tom Henke, the closer on the 1992 champion Toronto Blue Jays, wore wire-rimmed glasses and was nicknamed the Terminator. Image Dom DiMaggio, right, with his brother Joe, left, and Ted Williams in 1942. Credit The New York Times Kent Tekulve, a Pittsburgh Pirates closer who was a key member of the 1979 championship club, wore big, aviator-styled glasses that added to his persona, too. He was tall and rail-thin, and he threw with a submarine motion. His teammates would sometimes hide his glasses while he was in the shower and watch him bumble around the clubhouse half-blind. “They made me look dorkier than I already did,” Tekulve said of his frames. “They may have been ugly. But you were going to have to look at them in the ninth inning.” Glasses can make pitchers look a little professorial, and Clippard, in some ways, acts that part, too. He spends the first inning of a game watching on TV in the clubhouse, studying opposing hitters, the way the starting pitcher is attacking them, and what that day’s strike zone looks like. When he goes to the bullpen, he continues to take mental notes. Image Ryne Duren in 1958 when he won the World Series with the Yankees. Credit Associated Press All that preparation just builds his self-confidence. Storen, who has lost his job as the Nationals’ closer on multiple occasions, found Clippard to be a calming influence when they played together. The Mets have leaned on him, too. He is among their few relievers with postseason experience. “He’s probably one of the most consistent relievers I’ve ever been around,” Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman said. “He knows what he’s good at, and he’s been doing it for years. If you’re going to beat him, you’re going to have to beat him at his strengths. I almost wish more guys would do it that way. He’s almost stubborn. He knows what works.” After the Mets acquired Clippard, he quickly told writers who cover the team that the Nationals were beatable. Since then, the Mets have surged past them to claim first place in the National League East. Even if the Nationals would not admit it publicly, the Mets have taken them by surprise, playing with confidence, pitching like demons. But the real test will be whether the Mets can now hold off the Nationals for six more weeks. “We’ve made up so much ground so fast on them, and now we’re trying to separate ourselves a bit,” Clippard said. “They know they’re in for it.” When Clippard takes the mound, his warm-up music serves as a warning for opposing hitters and, perhaps, the Nationals, too. It is a Fugees song he has used for years. A soft melody slowly builds and the lyrics start: “Ready or not, here I come. You can’t hide.” And then Clippard, glasses firmly affixed, peers in for the sign.

Mets
Tyler Clippard
Glasses
Baseball
Eyes and Eyesight


Jazz Lose Enes Kanter to Shoulder Injury

Abstract: Utah Jazz center Enes Kanter will have surgery to repair damage on his dislocated left shoulder and will miss the rest of the season. Kanter, 20, was injured March 27 when the Suns’ Hamed Haddadi fell on him in a battle for a loose ball. The Jazz are fighting to hold on to the eighth playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Enes Kanter
Utah Jazz
Basketball
Sports injury