Remembering a Vile Civil War Act, on Fifth Avenue

Abstract: Were more hateful words ever howled by a mob in New York history? “Burn the niggers’ nest.” This was one of the cries taken up by a crowd that descended on the Colored Orphan Asylum during the first night of the draft riots in July 1863. The sentiments left no doubt about the attackers’ goal: to kill African-American children. Providence and quick thinking spared the 233 youths from death or injury, though the riots would claim more than 100 lives. But the asylum, a Greek Revival building that sat prettily atop a hillock off Fifth Avenue, between West 43rd and 44th Streets, was destroyed by the mob. “Some 500 of them entered the house,” the asylum managers reported on July 25, 1863, in a record book now kept at the New-York Historical Society. “After despoiling it of Furniture, Bedding, Clothing, &c. &c. — they deliberately sat fire to it, in different parts — simply because it was the home of unoffending colored Orphan Children.” It has always been painful to contemplate the sack of the orphanage. It is difficult even to picture it, at what is now a busy intersection in Midtown Manhattan, next to the Century Association clubhouse and across West 43rd Street from a Joe Fresh store and an Elie Tahari showroom in the former Manufacturers Hanover bank, a landmark of the International style. Image “Infant School, Colored Orphan Asylum,” circa 1860. Credit The Jeffrey Kraus Collection For now, however, the south half of the asylum site is vacant, nothing more than a 10,625-square-foot lot strewn with rubble, including brick fragments. Many brick fragments. So many brick fragments that you begin to wonder: Could any of these have been used to build the asylum? If so, could there be artifacts strewn among them, plowed under the charred rubble long ago? A broken hair comb? An inky pen nib? A small shoe buckle? The moment has come to ask such questions because the developer Louis Ceruzzi plans to redevelop the site with a tower more than 70 stories tall that will certainly have retail space at the base and is likely to include a mix of hotel rooms and apartments above. An opportunity is at hand to examine the site closely in the hope of finding some tangible remnant of the asylum. Even if there are no archaeological finds, there is certainly a chance to commemorate the asylum and memorialize its pillage in some form at the new building. The New-York Historical Society has a trove of documents from the Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans , founded in 1836, including admissions records that would make it possible to create a roster of the children who were living in the asylum at the time of the draft riots. Image A developer plans to redevelop the site where the asylum stood, on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets, with a tower more than 70 stories tall that will certainly have retail space at the base and is likely to include a mix of hotel rooms and apartments above. Credit Byron Smith for The New York Times There was, for instance, Lucinda Ann Brown , 7, who had been brought to New York from New Orleans by one Catherine Flint. Lucinda’s father was dead at the time. Her mother, though alive, had remained in Louisiana. Lucinda was admitted on May 16, 1863. Sarah Jones was admitted to the asylum 13 days later, on her seventh birthday. Because her adopted mother was working as a stewardess aboard the steamship Ocean Queen, which traveled to Colón, Panama, Sarah was institutionalized by the Commissioners of Public Charities. Nine-year-old Irving R. White ; his younger sister, Martha Ann White; and their younger brother, Robert Cooper White, were all admitted on June 2. Their mother was dead and their father was in a temperance house in Albany run by Edward C. Delavan . Then, on July 6, just a week before the riot, came William H. Judson , age and circumstances unrecorded. Lucinda, Sarah, Irving, Martha, Robert and William were all presumably there when mobs protesting the inequitable military draft began to vent their fury on any African-American unlucky enough to be in their way. Soon enough, the rioters chose a target where they must have known resistance would be unlikely: an orphanage. Image An untitled tinted view of a playroom with boys and girls at the asylum, circa 1860. Credit The Jeffrey Kraus Collection “The destruction of this Asylum, supported, as it was, solely by charity, is certainly one of the worst and wickedest of crimes that were perpetrated during this memorable day,” The New York Times said two days later , “and clearly shows that resistance to the draft is but a cry raised to cover the most atrocious crimes that human nature is capable of committing.” All that is believed to have survived intact is a Bible that an 8-year-old girl rescued by returning to the burning building. It, too, is in the hands of the New-York Historical Society. Having been sheltered in a police precinct house, the children were removed safely to Blackwells Island (now Roosevelt Island). Though the institution’s mission, name and location have changed since the Civil War, its work is continued today by the Harlem Dowling-West Side Center for Children and Family Services . To judge from his blog, Mr. Ceruzzi is fascinated by New York City history . Whether that translates to support for an archaeological dig and permanent memorial at 520 Fifth Avenue is another question. He did not respond to emails for comment. The Landmarks Preservation Commission said through a spokeswoman that it had reviewed the site in 2008 and determined that it was “unlikely to contain intact archaeological resources.” But 35 years of covering — and uncovering — the layers of New York City history have taught me that traces of the past are seldom eradicated entirely . And the story of the Colored Orphan Asylum seems too important to forget.


Paterno’s Death Adds to Anguish After Tumultuous Events at Penn State

Abstract: STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — They crunched across the snow-blanketed campus Sunday to lay flowers at his statue, to gather for a candlelight vigil outside the Old Main administration building and to simply glance at his home while they walked past. Waves of students, alumni and fans were paying their respects to the man they knew as JoePa. The Penn State community went into a state of mourning after Joe Paterno , the football coach from 1966 until 2011, died Sunday morning from lung cancer. Paterno shepherded Penn State and its football program into national prominence over nearly half a century before being fired Nov. 9 in the wake of a child sexual-abuse scandal involving the former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. But to many here, Paterno was more than just a football coach, and the hurt they experienced was raw and palpable. “He was the heartbeat of Penn State,” Linda Watach, 58, said while wiping away tears. “And now I just feel like that’s gone.” On Sunday night, hundreds of students gathered on the lawn at the Old Main building for a candlelight vigil that lasted about 40 minutes. Many were draped in blankets to fight off the cold and windy conditions. One at a time, current and former football players like quarterback Matt McGloin and the former offensive lineman Stefen Wisniewski stepped to a microphone at the top of the building’s steps to say words about Paterno. The mood was somber and, considering the amount of people gathered, the scene was remarkably silent. To end the vigil, the Penn State marching band played “Amazing Grace” and many of those gathered locked arms and swayed while singing the alma mater. Earlier in the day, the statue of Paterno outside of Beaver Stadium served as the main gathering point, with groups of solemn visitors standing in silence to pay their respects. They left bouquets, baseball caps and T-shirts at the statue’s feet, and roughly a dozen signs ringed the area, including one that read, “Thank You Joe.” Some people wept. Rick Porambo, who graduated from Penn State in 1988, drove about three hours from his home in Collegeville, Pa. He came alone, and was unsure exactly what compelled him to do so. “The things he’s done for the university, it’s a lot more than just football,” Porambo, 47, said while standing at the statue. “It’s kind of hard to describe how I feel. It’s sad. It’s just hard to really describe.” Emma Gregory, a 19-year-old sophomore, grew up about two miles from the Penn State campus. She said that her family still had several special-edition Wheaties boxes from 2003 that featured Paterno’s likeness. “It’s been this part of my vocabulary my whole life,” Gregory said of Paterno and Penn State football. “I’ve had a tremendous sense of pride being from the community that he’s given so much to.” There was an outpouring of reaction to Paterno’s death from around the country, with public figures from former President George H. W. Bush to Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer issuing statements. Penn State’s president, Rodney A. Erickson, and the Board of Trustees also issued a joint statement that said the university would honor Paterno. “We grieve for the loss of Joe Paterno, a great man who made us a greater university,” the statement said. “His dedication to ensuring his players were successful both on the field and in life is legendary, and his commitment to education is unmatched in college football.” Penn State’s Board of Trustees fired Paterno in part because of his failure to report to the police what he had been told about an alleged sexual assault of a young boy in 2002 by Sandusky. Paterno, who was never charged in the case, said that he was unsure how to handle the matter. Sandusky has been charged with more than 50 counts of sexual abuse against boys, though he has maintained his innocence. Sandusky, who was not a close friend of Paterno’s despite being a longtime member of the Nittany Lions ’ coaching staff, issued a statement through his lawyer, Joseph Amendola. “Joe preached toughness, hard work and clean competition,” said Sandusky, the defensive coordinator from 1977 until 1999. “Most importantly, he had the courage to practice what he preached. Nobody will be able to take away the memories we all shared of a great man, his family and all the wonderful people who were a part of his life.” Over the years, Paterno became synonymous with Penn State and State College. His likeness could be seen in the windows of storefronts downtown. Visitors to the campus could get a scoop of Peachy Paterno at the Creamery, the university’s renowned ice cream shop. Students camped out for the best seats at football games in a tent city dubbed Paternoville. Paterno, who turned down N.F.L. coaching jobs earlier in his career, lived in a modest home near campus for years. The home was quiet Sunday. While Paterno’s coaching career ended in a stunning and humiliating fashion, those that gathered chose to remember him for his positive contributions to Penn State, on and off the field. Paterno and his wife, Sue, donated more than $4 million to the university, including for the library that now bears their name. “More than anything, I think what I’ll remember most about him is all the money he’s donated to the university and everything he’s done for this university,” said Matthew Hunt, a 21-year-old student from Lansdale, Pa. “His name is right there on the library, and it’s kind of hard to miss. So that will be a nice way to remember him.”

Football
Paterno Joe
Detroit Lions
Coaches and Managers
Colleges and Universities
College Athletics
Football (College)
Pennsylvania State University


Debate Grows Over How to Protect Young Pitching Arms

Abstract: For decades, it has been an article of faith for parents of young pitchers: Do not let them throw curveballs. The reason was simple. Contorting elbows — all in the service of ever more competitive baseball at ever younger ages — puts more strain on the joint than arms can handle. But as the research into the biomechanics of pitching has evolved, the debate has grown more robust, and more perplexing. A recent major study shows curveballs pose no greater risk than that of other pitches. And many studies lately have shown that the greatest threat to young arms is not throwing curves but making too many pitches of any kind. “Science is banging heads with intuition and gut instinct,” said Glenn Fleisig, the research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute, who has conducted studies on breaking balls and young arms since 1996. “For years, we told people that curveballs were bad. Then we set out to prove it. We did not prove curveballs are safe, but we could not prove they were dangerous.” Like a pitcher and a catcher disagreeing on pitch selection, the opposing sides in the debate could not be more closely allied. Dr. James Andrews, the orthopedic surgeon to many athletes, is a founder of the American Sports Medicine Institute and has written with Fleisig some of the studies that have failed to prove that curveballs are hazardous to young arms. It has not stopped Andrews from challenging the results. “What we found out in the lab is true,” Andrews said. “For pitchers with proper mechanics, the force of throwing a curveball is no greater than for a fastball. But that’s not what happens in reality on the baseball field. Many kids don’t have proper mechanics or enough neuromuscular control, or they are fatigued when throwing curveballs. Things break down. “Those are the kids I’m seeing every day in my operating room.” Little League Baseball imposed strict per-game pitch limits five years ago, but Andrews said he performed about seven times the number of arm operations on young pitchers that he did 15 years ago. Last year, the findings of a study conducted on more than 1,300 pitchers from 8-year-olds to college students, were released by Little League Baseball, which had commissioned it with USA Baseball. Three University of North Carolina researchers surveyed the pitchers over five years, annually assessing multiple factors: number of innings pitched, kinds of pitches thrown, number of teams played for and any arm pain or injuries experienced. The answers were analyzed to judge which factors influenced injury risk. The test group included 410 Little League pitchers. “There was no association between throwing curveballs and injuries or even arm pain,” said Johna Mihalik, who wrote the study. “It was surprising in a sense because of the conventional thinking about curveballs, but we were well aware that the studies by Dr. Andrews and Glenn Fleisig had come to similar conclusions. That’s what fueled our study.” Stephen D. Keener, the president and chief executive of Little League International, said that deliberations among youth baseball leaders about banning, by rule, all breaking pitches had led to the commissioning of the study. When the findings did not link curveballs to injury, he said, Little League felt compelled to maintain the status quo. “It doesn’t mean we’re advocating throwing breaking balls,” Keener said. “We don’t promote it. We just think it’s very difficult to regulate it out of the game, and there is no data to show that throwing breaking balls is at the root of arm injuries.” Dr. Timothy Kremchek, an Ohio orthopedic surgeon who is the Cincinnati Reds’ physician and whose practice frequently treats youth pitchers, called Little League’s stance irresponsible. “They have an obligation to protect these 12-year-old kids and instead, they’re saying, ‘There’s no scientific evidence curveballs cause damage, so go ahead, kids, just keep throwing them,’ ” Kremchek said. “It makes me sick to my stomach to watch the Little League World Series and see 12-year-olds throwing curve after curve. Those of us who have to treat those kids a few years later, we’re pretty sure there is a cause and effect.” Kremchek said he performed 150 elbow ligament reconstructions a year, a complex operation named after the former major league pitcher Tommy John, who had the surgery when it was developed in the 1970s. “Seventy percent of those surgeries are pitchers who haven’t hit college yet,” Kremchek said. “I ask each one the same question: when did you start throwing curveballs? And they say: ‘I was 10. I was 11.’ Sometimes, it’s 9.” Kremchek coaxed about eight Ohio youth leagues to prohibit breaking pitches. The umpire issues a warning the first time he suspects a pitcher has thrown a curveball, slider or other breaking pitch. A second offense means the player must stop pitching. “The mothers in those leagues are the biggest fans of those rules,” Kremchek said. “It’s not a hard call for the umpires. A 12-year-old trying to throw a breaking ball is pretty demonstrative as he does it. You can tell.” But Keener said that rule, if enacted by Little League, would be hard to enforce across its more than 7,000 leagues. “I applaud people for trying to do it,” Keener said. “But we often have volunteer umpires in a Little League trying to make balls-and-strikes calls and basepath calls, and it would be a very hard thing to ask them to also decide if a pitcher intentionally tried to throw a breaking pitch. What if that pitcher just has natural movement on his fastball?” One aspect of the curveball debate, and the studies it has spawned, that everyone agrees on is that throwing too many pitches of any type is the biggest danger. As surprised as Mihalik might have been about her study’s findings on curveballs, what alarmed her most was the number of pitches thrown. “So many were playing for three teams at once,” she said. “And the data was extremely clear that overuse led to injury more than any other factor.” That, too, is consistent with the findings of more than 15 years of research at the American Sports Medicine Institute, and similar studies around the country. “Maybe asking whether the curveball is safe is the wrong question,” Fleisig said. “Maybe the question should shift to this: Are you overdoing it? Because there is no question, scientifically or anecdotally, that too much throwing leads to injury, and often it’s serious injury.” Little League instituted pitch limits based on research conducted by Andrews and Fleisig. This season, the limits are 85 pitches a day for 11- to 12-year-olds and 75 pitches for 9- to 10-year-olds. Rules also mandate days off between pitching appearances. Other recommendations by Andrews, who is on Little League’s board, and Fleisig, who acts as a Little League adviser, include a break of months from overhand throwing and competitive pitching, a 100-inning annual limit, avoiding radar guns and barring pitchers from playing catcher. In 2007, the first year of the Little League pitch restrictions, Tyler Richards and Kyle Cotcamp logged many innings as their Hamilton, Ohio, team reached the World Series. They also pitched for a travel team. Two years later, Richards had Tommy John surgery. Kremchek performed the operation, as he did for Cotcamp last year. “I just pitched way too much,” said Richards, now a high school junior who has resumed pitching. He added: “I should have just said no. I should have rested my arm.”

Baseball
Research
Little League Baseball and Softball
Children and Childhood
Sports Injuries


Top N.Y. Boxing Official, Melvina Lathan, Supports M.M.A.

Abstract: Melvina Lathan, the chairwoman of the New York State Athletic Commission, has a passion for boxing that “began in vitro,” she says, and would lead her to be a judge of 83 championship fights around the world. But she appreciates mixed martial arts enough to want the State Legislature to legalize the sport it banned. “It’s not something I rush home to see, but I recognize its athleticism,” she said. “I like the intelligence needed to get out of holds where so many disciplines are used. When they’re grappling, I grab the edge of my chair.” Her three grownup sons, one of whom was a ringside doctor for the Golden Gloves amateur boxing tournament, and her husband, once the medical director of the athletic commission, gather occasionally to watch mixed martial arts videos. “My sons know all the guys and their moves,” she said during a recent interview in the Manhattan office of her boss, Lorraine A. Cortes-Vazquez, New York’s secretary of state. “They say, ‘We’ll do this in New York, huh?’ ” Legalization may come soon, 13 years after Gov. George E. Pataki scorned the sport as too dangerous and it was banned by the Legislature. In his proposed 2010-11 budget, which has an April 1 deadline, Gov. David A. Paterson included legislation to repeal the ban, a maneuver that is designed to accelerate approval and help raise tax revenue for the deficit-strapped state. Assemblyman Bob Reilly, an upstate Democrat and a vocal critic of repeal, said, “The question is whether my colleagues who are opposed to M.M.A. on merit will succumb” to the idea of generating additional revenue. A study for the state said that one mixed martial arts show in Buffalo and one in Manhattan would generate $1.2 million in state and local taxes. Lathan said the study underestimated the economic impact of legalization, which would almost certainly lure New York fans who are attending combat cards held in states where the sport is legal. “Those are our revenues going outside the state,” she said. But she said her enthusiasm for repeal was focused largely on improving safety for the fighters and to limit — or eliminate — illicit shows around the state. “You don’t want underground smokers,” she said. “There is no pre- and postfight examination or on-site ambulance. They can get knocked out today and fight tomorrow.” Ron Scott Stevens, whom Paterson dismissed as the head of the athletic commission two years ago in favor of Lathan, then one of the commissioners, disagreed. “Over time,” he said, “New York will find out that the injuries these people sustain will be very costly, not only financially, but to the human condition.” The seriousness of injuries in M.M.A. — which combines disciplines like karate, judo, jujitsu, boxing, wrestling and tae kwon do — has long been a subject of debate. The sport has distanced itself from the no-holds-barred bloodlust of its early days and now rivals boxing as a television and spectator attraction. Lathan agrees with the sport’s proponents, notably the dominant organization in the sport, the Ultimate Fighting Championship , that the worst harm is orthopedic, not neurological, as it is in boxing. She insisted that New York would have the nation’s strictest M.M.A. regulation. “It’s nice to have an ally in the commissioner,” said Marc Ratner, the vice president for regulatory affairs for Zuffa, the company that owns the U.F.C. Ratner, who assigned Lathan to judge bouts in Nevada when he was executive director of the state’s athletic commission, said he knew she favored repeal “from our discussions” before she became the commissioner in 2008. Lathan grew up in a family that watched boxing on television together. When she was 4 or 5 years old, she said, her grandmother introduced her to a renowned boxer as they were walking in Harlem. “This African-American man was leaning on a pink car and said, ‘Hi, baby,’ ” she said. “And she said, ‘Hi, Sugar, this is my granddaughter.’ She later told me it was Sugar Ray Robinson.” As a teenager on her way home from a job interview, she said, Sonny Liston invited her into a gym when he saw her wiping away frost from the window to peek at the boxers at work. She said she was less afraid of Liston and his fearsome reputation than her mother’s anger for coming home late. “I have a picture of my hand in Sonny’s,” she said. “My hand fit into his palm. My father keeps it in his dresser drawer.” She would marry, raise her four children (three sons and a daughter), design costumes and work in hospitals as a hematologist. She began judging amateur fights in 1988 and professional bouts in 1991. Randy Gordon, a former state athletic commissioner who trained Lathan, called her a great judge “whose fight cards were hardly ever questioned.” He said that one standard to assess her effectiveness was that “she was rarely on the short end of a split decision — and when she was, she was probably right.” Gordon, once a foe of mixed martial arts, is a convert who hosts a Sirius XM radio show on the sport. “I’ve known for years that she liked M.M.A.,” he said. If the ban on the sport is lifted, it will be in part the result of a long lobbying and public-relations campaign by the U.F.C., which has spent tens of thousands of dollars to convince legislators that mixed martial arts has changed. It is legal in 43 states. Lathan said she has not joined the strategists’ efforts. But she is in their corner. “Everyone at some point who was against M.M.A. says it’s entirely different now,” she said. “People change their minds. Governor Pataki did. Randy did.” She added: “We’ve learned a lot. We’re trying to make the law ours. It’s a good thing we’d be one of the last ones to join the show.”

Boxing
New York State
Mixed Martial Arts
State Legislatures
Lathan Melvina
Law and Legislation


Zack Greinke Says He’s Been Better, but Hitters May Disagree

Abstract: CINCINNATI — Before he would trust the scouting acumen of Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke had to test him. Greinke, the National League’s starting pitcher in the All-Star Game on Tuesday, does not need to evaluate amateurs to earn his paycheck from the Los Angeles Dodgers. But he takes his hobby seriously, and even a teammate as accomplished as Kershaw might not have an eye for talent. “He showed me different left-handed pitchers,” Kershaw said, “and asked what I thought about them — before knowing where they were supposed to be drafted — just to see if my opinion was worth his while. I think I did O.K.” Scouting the skills at Great American Ball Park will be elementary. Greinke will throw the first pitch of the game to Mike Trout, the reigning American League most valuable player, and will then face Josh Donaldson and Albert Pujols. His catcher will be Buster Posey, and his bullpen will include Kershaw and a dozen others. But Greinke, perhaps, stood out above the rest in the first half of the season. His earned run average, 1.39, is the lowest before the All-Star break since 1968 (minimum 100 innings). He has a scoreless streak of 352/3 innings, and with another sterling performance or two, he could threaten the major league record of 59, set by Orel Hershiser of the Dodgers in 1988. Greinke said he thought he had pitched better with Kansas City in 2009, even though he never had a scoreless streak like this. “I thought it was more impressive then,” he said. “But now I’m just making good pitches. The last two games, I think, I got kind of lucky.” By that, he meant that the last two lineups he had faced were missing prominent hitters; he faced Miami without Giancarlo Stanton and Philadelphia without Chase Utley. On this kind of roll, though, the caliber of hitter hardly matters. “He can throw any pitch in any count,” said Joe Panik, the San Francisco Giants’ All-Star second baseman, who is 1 for 9 against Greinke. “You could be in a 2-1 or 3-1 count, and here comes a changeup or backdoor curveball. As a hitter, when a guy’s not predictable, it’s hard to have a game plan.” Image The Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser during the 1988 N.L.C.S. That year, he set a major league record with 59 straight scoreless innings. Credit Doug Pizac/Associated Press Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly, an All-Star coach, said facing Greinke now must be similar to how it was for Mattingly to face the young Roger Clemens in the 1980s. Clemens could locate his fastball to both sides, and elevate it, while mixing in curveballs, hard sliders and, before long, splitters. Greinke carves up hitters with fastballs, curveballs, sliders and changeups. “I can’t cut him up into one or two pitches, or one side of the plate — he can use everything,” Mattingly said, describing how he would approach Greinke. “So as a hitter, I’ve got to try to pick a side of the plate I want to use and try to take that from him, take maybe one pitch or two pitches from him and give him the others. You can’t cover the whole thing with him.” Greinke, 31, was an elite athlete growing up in Florida, mastering tennis before dropping it at age 8 when it was no longer fun. He became a power-hitting shortstop but switched to starting pitcher as a high school senior and was drafted sixth over all by Kansas City in 2002. He is an eager student of pitching who takes pride in his evolution. “I’ve probably changed more than anyone else in baseball over the past 10 years,” he said. “There have been a lot of changes — going from control pitcher to power pitcher to power pitcher that wasn’t very good to control pitcher that was O.K. I’m kind of a mix right now.” Image Greinke's E.R.A., 1.39, is the lowest before the All-Star break since 1968, among pitchers with at least 100 innings. Credit Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press Greinke’s array of pitches, and his curiosity about his craft, could make him a good bet to age well. He has three years and $71 million remaining on his contract but could opt out this winter. He would not address that topic Tuesday but said he was happy in Los Angeles, where the team is strong, the beach is close, and he is Don Drysdale to Kershaw’s Sandy Koufax. Kershaw, who has won three Cy Young Awards to Greinke’s one, ran off 41 consecutive scoreless innings in the first half of last season. But he said Greinke’s streak was different, capped by a one-hitter over eight innings in his last start. “I don’t think he sweats,” Kershaw said. “For me, I felt like there was effort involved. The last game was the epitome. I think he gave up one jam-shot hit, and he could have gone nine easily if we needed him to. It’s just so easy, doing whatever he wants with a pitched ball. I know it’s probably not easy for him, but the way he makes it look is pretty amazing.” Greinke’s charmed standing in the game was hard-earned. He was so overcome by anxiety that he considered retiring from the Royals at 22. He took a leave and was found to have social anxiety disorder; Zoloft has helped. Baseball Intermission Report Assessing the best and the worst of baseball at the midway point of the season. Greinke may seem uncomfortable in public, but teammates adore him — “He’s the coolest dude ever,” said Texas’ Prince Fielder, who played with Greinke in Milwaukee — and he may stay in baseball long after he leaves the field. As Molly Knight details in “The Best Team Money Can Buy,” a portrait of the Dodgers to be released Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, Greinke hopes to join a front office someday, perhaps as a general manager, to put his scouting eye to work. But he told Knight of his backup plan in case he changed his mind. “I could be in the lawn business, mowing grass,” Greinke said. “I could probably do whatever I want, not needing to get a salary involved. It could be fun. You could be outside a bunch, and if you’re running your own business, you could make your own hours. Like if you needed a day off sometimes, you could take a day off pretty easily.” It is hard to imagine another All-Star making that statement in quite that style. Greinke, in many ways, is in a class by himself.


Judge Won’t Let Ex-Senator Withdraw Guilty Plea

Abstract: A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Thursday that former State Senator Efrain González Jr. could not withdraw a guilty plea to fraud and conspiracy charges, saying his claim that he had been coerced or pressured into entering the plea was “preposterous.” Mr. González, 61, faces a possible sentence of seven to nine years for using hundreds of thousands of dollars in state money to pay for personal expenses, including rent for an apartment in the Dominican Republic, jewelry, college tuition for his daughter and Yankees tickets. Mr. González originally pleaded guilty on May 8, telling Judge William H. Pauley III that he had fully discussed the case with his lawyer at the time, Murray Richman — a friend for more than 40 years — and was satisfied with his work. When the judge asked questions to establish that he was pleading voluntarily and of his “own free will,” Mr. González said he was. But Mr. González, who was later given a new lawyer after he complained about disagreements with Mr. Richman, said in an affidavit that he had always wanted to prove his innocence. He said he succumbed to “tremendous pressure” from Mr. Richman to plead guilty just before the hearing last May. He also felt pressured, he wrote, to keep answering “yes” when the judge questioned him during his plea. Mr. Richman has declined to comment on Mr. González’s affidavit; prosecutors have called the account “a near-total fabrication.” Judge Pauley said Mr. González’s request to withdraw his plea “presents the paradigm of the defendant who attempts to undermine the integrity of the judicial process.” “The notion that the free will of a longtime New York state senator was overridden by the imminence of trial, coercion by his attorney, or pressure from this court is preposterous.”


So Many Rackets, So Little Time

Abstract: WHEN I have to kill a guy in New Jersey or go to an important mob meeting in Brooklyn, I tend to run late. I tell myself I'll just hot-wire a roadster and speed right over, but then I see some florist shop or nightclub that isn't paying my family protection money, and I just have to stop and have a chat with the owner. No matter how busy you are, there's always time for a shakedown. In the Electronic Arts action game The Godfather, it is easy to become distracted from the game's central story, wandering off to rob a bank, buy a shady business or steal a rival mob's truck. Based on the movie, the game is done in the style of the Grand Theft Auto video games, with the same mix of shooting and driving in a large, open environment. While the "Godfather" movie and Grand Theft Auto 3 are considered significant works in their respective fields, I consider both overrated, so I was surprised to find myself tremendously entertained by this game. The Godfather begins in 1936 as the player takes on the role of a low-level Mafia thug working for the Corleone family. To make money for the family, you need to get local shop owners to pay protection. Some will agree if you just ask politely, but most need convincing. You can scare them into submission by throwing them through windows, breaking up their stores, aiming a gun at their sensitive points or killing their customers. Most of the shops are already protected by one of the rival families, and threatening a shop owner can result in prompt action from nearby thugs. Before I started my negotiations I would generally steal a car and run down any mobsters standing guard outside, then take out the rest in a blaze of bullets. Sometimes I would be able to sneak up behind a thug lurking in an alley and garrote him. A room full of enemies could be cleared with a stick of dynamite or a Molotov cocktail. When I could tear myself away from welcoming businesses into the Corleone fold, I would be assigned to recreate hits from the movie or to cause other mischief, like leaving a horse's head in an uncooperative movie producer's bed. (Fortunately the player does not personally have to kill and decapitate the horse, but stands guard outside while a companion does the deed.) The game is entertaining on its own merits, but undoubtedly is the most fun for fans of the movie who get to take orders from characters voiced by actors from the movie, including James Caan and Marlon Brando (who recorded some of the dialogue shortly before his death, the rest being done by an impressionist). The rise from thug to made man involves outrunning cops, bribing F.B.I. agents, flirting with party girls and throwing mobsters off roofs or into bakers' ovens. Success gains you citywide respect, and the pedestrians who at first insult you as you pass by will later nod pleasantly and even apologize when you bump into them. The game's attempt to create a vast, thriving city is undercut by a lack of variety. The Godfather's New York apparently has only a single architect: when you've seen one nightclub or butcher shop, you know how all the others will look. And while the game focuses heavily on driving, there are only seven models of cars. While The Godfather's limitations quickly become apparent, the same cannot be said of Bethesda Softworks' action role-playing game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a game so vast and varied that it would probably take hundreds of hours of play to see and experience everything, if that is possible at all. Oblivion takes place in a standard fantasy universe of elves and orcs where you have been imprisoned for unexplained reasons. You are soon freed by an emperor who needs access to a secret passage in your cell, and when he is assassinated you are charged with the task of finding his long-lost son. As with The Godfather, it is easy to be sidetracked. The countryside has such irresistible distractions as an old mine populated by bandits or a cave full of treasure and monsters. Armed with swords, bows and magical spells, you can spend hours exploring and fighting. The game lets you develop your own approach to combat; I would generally conjure up skeletons or fire-breathing imps to fight enemies up close while I stood back and riddled them with arrows. There is even more to do in the game's cities. You can help shopkeepers discover how a competitor is underselling them, locate a missing sorcerer or investigate the recent killing of a vampire. (It is possible, incidentally, to become a vampire if you wish; you'll be stronger but also repulsive and flammable.) In terms of story and character, Oblivion is unexceptional. The game is full of the stilted dialogue typical of fantasy games, and when characters speak they stand stiffly and stare at you as they stolidly recite their lines like students in a high school production of "Camelot." Oblivion draws you in not through story or character, but through event. When you meet someone at a bar and he tells you to sit down and watch a spy in the corner, or you have to shadow a suspicious character or find a secret message in a religious tome, you feel that you are not just playing a game but actually living through an epic adventure. The cities are varied, large and beautiful, the wilderness is riddled with secret caverns and the campsites of thieves, and any conversation may lead to yet another undertaking. Other role-playing games have sought to create a fully realized world that offers so many choices that each player's experience feels unique; Oblivion does this better than any other game I have played. I loved being a criminal in The Godfather, so when I started playing Oblivion I played as a thief, breaking into houses, picking pockets, fencing stolen goods. Later I turned over a new leaf, concentrating instead on my magical spells and joining the Mages Guild. This is much of what makes Oblivion such a great experience: as in life, what you are is a result of your own choices. Filled with action, puzzles, exploration, thievery, heroism and a large cast of characters, Oblivion is astounding and sometimes overwhelming in scope. There is so much to do that one is not only distracted from the main story by various tasks but is also distracted from those tasks by others. Oblivion itself is the ultimate distraction, a game that offers so much to do that it is easy to forget about everything else. At the rate I'm going, I may never get around to killing that guy in New Jersey. THE GODFATHER Developed and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows 2000/XP; for ages 17 and up; $40. ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION Developed by Bethesda Softworks and published by Take 2 Interactive for Xbox 360 ($60) and Windows 2000/98/ME/NT/XP ($50). For ages 13 and up. GAME THEORY E-mail: Herold@nytimes.com

ELECTRONIC ARTS
BETHESDA SOFTWORKS
TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE INC
MICROSOFT CORP
SONY CORP
MOTION PICTURES
COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES
ELDER SCROLLS IV (VIDEO GAME)
GODFATHER THE (MOVIE)
GODFATHER THE (VIDEO GAME)


Social Networks Come Together on Your Cellphone

Abstract: For most people, a quick glance at Facebook, Twitter or MySpace is enough to get up to speed on one’s social circle. So why would you need to haul yourself to a computer just to do that? You don’t. As long as you’ve got the right phone. Cellular networks, in their endless quest to make the phone the center of the information-gathering universe, are making it easier to retrieve updates from online social networks. And some are going to the extreme of bundling all the big sites on one screen, as if to create one giant social hub. (MyTwitBook, anyone?) The trend is being advanced by Helio, the niche cellular network that made a name for itself as a carrier of cool phones and services and was purchased this year by Virgin Mobile USA. Virgin Mobile said it would announce on Thursday a new service, Helio Connect, which delivers updates from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube on a single page. The service, which eats up part of your mobile data allowance unless you’re on an unlimited plan, will be introduced to Virgin Mobile’s users early next year. In the meantime, Helio users will have a leg up on other social-networking aficionados. From the Connect application, which will appear on the home screen of Helio’s mobile Web browser starting Thursday, users can enter their Facebook and Twitter account information, for instance, and give Helio permission to save that information and pull updates from the sites. Entering text was easy using a Helio Ocean ($129 after rebates), a fairly slick but older phone scheduled for an update next year. From there, each time I opened Connect, the service offered up two pull-down menus — one to choose a social network, the other to choose which kinds of updates I might like to see. This in itself is not such a revolution for people with smartphones like the iPhone on AT&T, the G1 from T-Mobile or the Rant from Sprint, which offer applications dedicated to Facebook or MySpace. Those services are great if your social networking tends to revolve around one or two services, but for a growing number of people, that’s not the case. On those other phones, you need to head to the Web browser to check other services, or try to download another social networking hub (which we’ll get to in a moment). But on Helio’s Connect service, you need log on only once and all of your updates will appear on the same screen, in chronological order. The service was not problem-free, at least in its trial stage last week. At least once, the phone’s screen froze, and I had to pull the battery from the Ocean to restart the device. (Helio could not explain the glitch.) The only other drawback to the service is that it exists only on Helio, at least at the moment. Helio piggybacks on Sprint’s network, so you’ll want to check that carrier’s coverage map to see if that would work for you. Helio also offers a meager selection of phones (four, to be exact), and has been slow to release new ones. The fact that Virgin Mobile, a prepay-only carrier, will also offer Connect next month is a boon to those who hate usage contracts. Virgin has not yet said what it will charge users for Connect, but a Virgin-specific social network now costs 15 cents a day, and Connect’s charges could be in that range. For those who want to stick with their existing carriers, there is an alternative to Connect, but there will be a fee. Intercasting, a San Diego-based company, offers its Anthem mobile hub for social network fans on Verizon, Sprint and AT&T. On Verizon, the service is called SocialLife, and it costs $1.50 monthly. On AT&T, it is called My Communities, costing $3 a month, and on Sprint it goes by the name Social Zone, for $3. (T-Mobile is testing the service on a handful of devices; pricing is not yet set.) As with Helio Connect, this service gives mobile users a quick way to check for updates on their favorite social networks, as long as these users are among the few people who are not on Facebook. The company says it is working toward adding Facebook, but in the meantime, subscribers will have to satisfy themselves with updates from MySpace, Asian Ave, Xanga and nine other services. There are few differences among the services across the various carriers, an Intercasting spokeswoman said. But the Anthem service is not available on all phones — and the list of phones is often the opposite of what you’d expect. On Sprint, for example, service is available on the Samsung Instinct and the Rant, but many other smartphones, including Blackberrys, are shut out, for now. Other so-called feature phones, however, can use it. That’s strange, because smartphone users are the high-tech information addicts you’d expect to use Anthem most avidly. But Anthem has not released a version for the software platforms that power the current array of popular smartphones. And speaking of exceptions, iPhone users also cannot use Anthem. Instead, subscribers can download Yahoo’s OneConnect application, which made its debut in September. OneConnect is similar to Helio’s Connect service, in that iPhone users (and only iPhone users — the application is exclusive to Apple’s smartphone) get a single hub to view all the major social networks. Another interesting feature to come is OneConnect’s social-location ability: the company said it is working on a function that would import your contacts from each network and show you where they are on a map (assuming they subscribe to a location-based service). But that’s for another column. Quick Calls It hasn’t taken long for Google’s new voice-search application for the iPhone to generate competition. Vlingo, a voice-activation technology for mobile phones, released its own free iPhone application on Wednesday. With Vlingo, you can speak a Google search into the phone, but this application also lets you search Yahoo. You can also tell the phone to call one of your contacts, find an address or change your Twitter or Facebook status. ... Feel squeamish about completing financial transactions on your mobile phones? PayPal customers can now sign up to receive security codes, via text message, before they log into their accounts. The code is randomly generated for each use, and the service is free at paypal.com/securitykey . ... If you love (or hate) the food at that new pizza joint and want to share your feelings with the world, you can do it from your tableside. Citysearch.com has released a mobile application that makes it easier to upload reviews. The free application will also detect the type of phone you have and, the company says, offer pages tailored to that device.

Cellular Telephones
Social Networking (Internet)
Computers and the Internet


Paterno Family Questions Inquiry of Penn State’s Role in Scandal

Abstract: Days before the release of a widely anticipated report on Penn State ’s role in the child abuse case involving the former football assistant Jerry Sandusky , the family of Joe Paterno released a statement Tuesday questioning the integrity of the inquiry and saying that because it had not been allowed to review the findings, its viewpoint would not be properly reflected. A group led by Louis J. Freeh, a former director of the F.B.I., is evaluating Penn State’s response to the events that led to Sandusky’s conviction last month on 45 counts of child abuse. The investigation was ordered by the university’s board of trustees, and the report will be released Thursday morning. “The hiring of the Freeh Group is the single most important action the board of trustees has taken,” the family’s statement said. “Joe supported this decision with the hope that it would result in a thorough, balanced and thoughtful assessment of the Sandusky tragedy. Unfortunately, recent events have raised questions about the fairness and confidentiality of the investigative process.” The Paterno family was referring to reports about e-mails that appeared to show that Paterno played a greater role than previously thought in Penn State’s handling of a 2001 report that Sandusky sexually assaulted a boy in a shower at a university athletic facility. Sandusky, who is expected to be sentenced in September, was convicted of sexually assaulting 10 young boys, at least one of them in a Penn State athletic facility. That assault, in 2001, was witnessed by the graduate assistant Mike McQueary, who told Paterno that he had seen Sandusky sexually attacking the boy. Paterno then told university officials. However, top officials of the university at the time did not report the case to the police outside the university. It was reported last month that e-mail correspondence among senior Penn State officials at the time suggested that Paterno, who died in January, played a role in the university’s decision not to formally report the accusation against Sandusky to child welfare authorities, according to a person with knowledge of aspects of Freeh’s investigation. The e-mails reportedly cover discussions between Graham B. Spanier, then the university president; Tim Curley, then the athletic director; and Gary Schultz, who was in charge of the campus police, as well as Paterno. Curley and Schultz have been charged with failing to report the matter to the authorities and then lying about it under oath. The family disputed the notion that Paterno tried to protect Sandusky. “Joe Paterno did not cover up for Jerry Sandusky,” the family’s statement said. “Joe Paterno did not know that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile. Joe Paterno did not act in any way to prevent a proper investigation of Jerry Sandusky. To claim otherwise is a distortion of the truth.” Lawyers representing Spanier confirmed Tuesday that he was interviewed last Friday in Philadelphia by investigators. Spanier was removed as Penn State’s president last November. “At no time in the more than 16 years of his presidency at Penn State was Dr. Spanier told of an incident involving Jerry Sandusky that described child abuse, sexual misconduct or criminality of any kind, and he reiterated that during his interview with Louis Freeh and his colleagues,” the lawyers said in a statement.

Paterno Joe
Sandusky Jerry
Pennsylvania State University
Sex Crimes
Colleges and Universities
Child Abuse and Neglect


To Find the Next Nicklaus, Don’t Look to a Nicklaus

Abstract: DUBLIN, Ohio — At 21, Jordan Spieth is younger than a few of the golfers on the Louisiana State and University of Southern California teams that squared off Wednesday in the N.C.A.A. Division I match-play final. Spieth, one of the marquee players in this week’s Memorial Tournament, is the closest pursuer to the world No. 1, Rory McIlroy, who last month turned 26, leading Jack Nicklaus, the Memorial host and 18-time major champion, to observe, “The game of golf is in pretty good hands.” That is one way of framing it. But a quick look at a photograph of the extended Nicklaus clan reveals a different picture. Nicklaus’s heirs did not inherit the Golden Bear’s love for the game. Of his 22 grandchildren, Nicklaus said, only one, Gary Thomas Nicklaus, has tried competitive golf. The most naturally gifted golfer in the group, Nicklaus said, is Nick O’Leary, who at age 12 posted a score of five-over-par 77 from the men’s tees at the Bear’s Club in Jupiter, Fla., in his first-ever round. Ten years later, O’Leary was selected in the sixth round of last month’s N.F.L. draft by the Buffalo Bills after a standout career as a tight end at Florida State. “Nick will shoot in the 70s most of the time,” Nicklaus said. “But he’s more interested in a little different shaped ball.” Nicklaus’s grandchildren are crazy about lacrosse. “Lacrosse has taken over,” Nicklaus said. Almost since he could walk, Tiger Woods, a 14-time major champion, has been chasing Nicklaus’s many records, but Woods’s two children, daughter Sam Alexis, 7, and son Charlie Axel, 6, may go in different directions. Both are avid soccer players, though Woods’s son has a golf swing that stops grown men in their tracks on the range because of its beauty. “He’s got some parts in his swing that I’m trying to do,” Woods said with a laugh. “It’s a little frustrating at times.” If Nicklaus and Woods, whose careers stand as perhaps the greatest endorsement of the game, cannot sell golf to the youngsters in their midst, how is the sport going to grow? “The game of golf is too slow, it’s too expensive and it’s too difficult,” Nicklaus said. “Those are the three elements that I see that are the problem.” Aside from Spieth, the biggest attraction at his hometown tournament last week outside Dallas was a contraption created to make golf faster and more fun. A golfboard, the brainchild of the surfer Laird Hamilton and the Bally’s Fitness founder Don Wildman, was available for spins in front of the Byron Nelson statue on the TPC Four Seasons Resort grounds. The one-person golf cart, which looks as if it were pieced together from parts after a collision of a skateboard, a scooter and a pull cart, gives golfers a thrill ride similar to snowboarding, surfing or skateboarding and speeds up rounds. It is a creative solution to one roadblock to growing the game. To make a difficult game seem less daunting to beginners, Woods recommends his father’s stroke of genius, the elastic par. When he was starting out, Woods said, his father, Earl, created a “Tiger par” on each hole that was higher than the numbers on the scorecard. “Every time I would play the hole, whatever shots it took me to reach the green, reasonably, plus two, was par,” Woods said. “So sometimes it was a par 12. And as I got older and I got bigger it became like a par 10, par 9, it kept dropping.” Woods has used the same approach with his son at their home course, the Medalist, a marshy, 7,186-yard layout. “Forget the number, it’s about them enjoying the feeling of trying to get to par,” Woods said, adding, “What my dad did was genius because it kept me interested.” In 14 starts in this event, Woods has played the Nicklaus-designed course as if it were made for him. He has won five times, most recently in 2012, and recorded three other top-five finishes. He played his pro-am Wednesday in front of several hundred fans, many of whom were snapping smartphone photographs as he made his way around the course. After he was done, he conducted a mass interview in front of a group that included 10 video cameras. Everywhere he goes, Woods attracts the kind of attention reserved for visiting royalty. Is it any wonder he has no appetite for stepping in front of cameras in his down time? In the current issue of Time magazine, Doug Ellin, the writer and director of the new movie based on the HBO series “Entourage,” said of the cameo-enriched cast, “We can get almost any athlete besides Tiger.” Even LeBron James has taken his talents to the big screen. He’ll play himself in “Trainwreck,” a movie coming out this summer, after the Cleveland Cavaliers play the Golden State Warriors in the N.B.A. finals. Woods joked Wednesday that he has never made himself available for a movie cameo because “I don’t like cameras.” He said he turned down the chance to appear as himself in the 2002 movie “Men in Black II” because filming even a single scene required more of a time commitment than his schedule allowed. Someday, Woods said, he would like to lend his voice to an animated film or series. For now, he wants to devote all his time to entertaining, to captivating the imaginations of a young crowd, including his own children, the best way he knows how — through golf.

Jordan Spieth
Golf
Rory McIlroy
Jack Nicklaus
Tiger Woods


The Hat Trick That Didn’t Happen

Abstract: WITH the arrival of mittens and mufflers comes the inevitable onslaught of year-in-review columns. Certainly there have been plenty of media milestones this year — from the march of Google and the explosion in online video to the turmoil in the newspaper industry, led by the disappearance of Knight-Ridder and the upheaval at the Tribune Company . Then there was Sumner M. Redstone’s banishing of the Toms (Cruise and Freston) and Rupert Murdoch’s fiasco with O.J. But we’ll leave the highlights and lowlights to others. What we’re really interested in is the year that wasn’t: the trends that seemed as if they would change the world but instead reminded us that behind the frenzy — and there’s no better word for it — the wheels of change turn more slowly than we think. So here, with 2006 all but over except for the bonuses, are three contenders for the year that wasn’t: HIGH DEFINITION It sure looked as if this would be hi-def’s year, with sleek flat-panel televisions flying off of store shelves, new formats for watching DVDs with crystalline pictures and even a new kind of radio that borrowed the term. Sure, this was the first year when sales of digital TVs were supposed to outstrip sales of analog sets. But it turns out that there is a big difference between owning a high-definition flat-panel display and using it to watch high-definition programs. According to a recent survey by Frank N. Magid Associates, the number of people buying these sets who are looking forward to watching television shows in hi-def format has actually declined, to 47 percent from 63 percent two years ago. And while nearly half of current owners of HDTV sets said that their main reason for buying one was to watch programs in HD, only 25 percent of those now shopping for the sets feel that way. The reason for this lack of enthusiasm is pretty clear in my own home. For one thing, plenty of shows on the high-definition channels I receive with my digital cable package appear with big black borders — because of the aspect ratio or somesuch — and I can’t figure out whether this is my doing or the cable company’s or the broadcaster’s. Moreover, it requires yet another cash outlay to gain access to premium HD fare like Dan Rather’s new crystal-clear newscasts on Mark Cuban’s HDNet. High-definition, or digital, radio is a vastly more mysterious phenomenon, with very few receivers in homes but some 1,000 new radio channels beaming around the country like space probes searching for alien life. This industry is very much in its infancy and new, less-expensive players are about to hit the market. Digital radio does have a few things going for it, including the fact that it’s free — once you buy a receiver — and could be an interesting alternative to the niche and ad-free channels that have drawn attention and listeners to satellite radio. That said, HD Radio in the near term faces a huge marketing challenge to convince people that they should invest in yet another gadget. As for high-definition DVDs, there are two new but incompatible, and thus warring, formats: the Sony -led Blu-Ray and the Toshiba -led HD-DVD. That bodes well for just about anything but DVD sales. MOBILE MEDIA There were many nifty product and service introductions this year among phone and media companies, including content developed just for the tiny screen. Yet some things — like an ESPN-branded phone — have already come and gone for lack of traction. But even for all the clips and whatnot that have come to market, mobile has not yet amounted to a meaningful new media business — and for two vexing reasons. The first is logistics. On its face, the beauty of mobile is that you should be able to do anything with it that you can on the Web — only while on the move. Simple, right? The problem is that, unlike the Web, cellular networks are privately owned and most things that media companies are trying to do require — at the very least — technical clearances from the cellphone operators to push material through their networks. By the way, there are 20 phone carriers and 400 models of handsets to work with. The bigger holdup also relates to the mobile- qua -Web notion. The big thing right now online is business models based on giving people things free with advertising rather than having them pay. (Think AOL’s big strategy shift or free reruns of episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” online.) However, the idea of putting ads of any kind on cellphones — whether 30-second spots or pop-ups or spam — is a can of worms. Better luck next year. THE AVATAR Finally, I had great hopes that 2006 would be the Year of the Avatar. After all, few things are more curious and compelling than the growing popularity of virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com . Millions of Yahoo users have created avatars — digital renderings that may or may not resemble their real-life selves, in appearance or action; the avatars are used on e-mail and instant messages and on its Yahoo Answers site, among other places. This summer, IAC/InteractiveCorp got into the game by starting Zwinky.com , a Web site for creating avatars that can be used to hop around to various destinations on the Internet and to interact with others. Last week, CBS even announced an avatar-based game for mobile phones. It all sounds good, but critical mass is still far away. For one thing, most people over 30 have a bit of difficulty grasping the concept of why you’d want a digital version of yourself online. (Fair enough.) But the bigger issue is what you do with your other self. In the case of Second Life, the virtual world saw its “population” grow to more than one million, but a large number of folks never make it past their first visit. It turns out that navigating a second life can be as complicated as living the first one. ENOUGH about 2006. Any of these near misses may break through soon, or, who knows, the new year may herald something completely different. What do you think 2007 will be “the year of,” when it comes to media? In the spirit of the season of inclusiveness, I invite you to share your visionary predictions with me at frenzy@nytimes.com .

Television
Computers and the Internet
Wireless Communications


Bond Yields Rise as the Fed Stands Pat

Abstract: Bond prices fell and stocks were slightly higher on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve said it was continuing its bond purchases because the recovery was continuing at a rate that has been insufficient to lower unemployment. While a stronger-than-expected retail sales report gave shares a lift early in the day, the market indexes lost ground after the statement by the Federal Reserve policy makers. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 47.98 points, or 0.42 percent, to 11,476.54. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 1.13 points, or 0.09 percent, to 1,241.59 and the Nasdaq composite index added 2.81 points, or 0.11 percent, to 2,627.72. Yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond rose sharply, hitting 3.49 percent in intraday trading. The yield fell to 3.47 percent late Tuesday, up from 3.27 percent Monday. The price of the 10-year note rose 1 19/32, to 92 30/32. “The shift from safe haven investments to equity markets is full on,” said Tom di Galoma, head of fixed-income rates trading at Guggenheim Partners. Monday’s equities market seemed to set the tone for the week by edging slightly higher, when the broader index gained a fraction of a point, as the Fed meeting and the Senate vote on extending the Bush tax cuts held traders at bay. Economists said that the Fed statement had few surprises for a market that had been pricing in expectations for what it might say about its $600 billion bond buying program. “It was almost verbatim with what they had last month,” said Daniel J. Cook, chief executive of IG Markets. “As far as the markets were concerned we have seen a little bit of a whipsaw back and forth.” “As far as heading into the end of the year this definitely is not a game changer,” Mr. Cook said. The Fed statement said the central bank had “decided today to continue expanding its holdings of securities as announced in November,” while the committee did not close the door to re-evaluating the program. The bond market has continued to feel the fallout from a volatile week with a sell-off in Treasuries, partly as investors anticipated the effect of the tax cut deal, which was expected to help stimulate the economy yet increase the federal deficit. The Senate voted late on Monday to advance the $858 billion tax-cut package, assuring they would approve it and send it to the House. Jeffrey N. Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial, said it was too soon after the Fed started the program to expect it to change. But a “minority view” expected the Fed to take into account the impact of the tax deal on the deficit. “Some investors were disappointed that the Fed didn’t increase the size of its purchases to offset the tax deal,” Mr. Kleintop said. Mr. di Galoma said that the Fed “did not talk about any additional purchases.” Economic reports released on Tuesday showed improvements in retail sales. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.8 percent in November, the fifth consecutive monthly increase, and exceeding analysts’ forecasts. Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank, said “the main spotlight” will be off the Fed after Tuesday’s meeting, the last of the year, and traders will probably focus more on examining such economic data. “Retail sales clearly seem to look a bit more positive, and once they quit worrying about what the Fed will say they may return to the fundamentals,” Mr. McCain said. “Beyond today we are getting to the point where the markets are showing some signs of being a little overextended.” Analysts said the retail sales data were a good indicator of the start of the holiday shopping season and seemed to confirm a generally upbeat trend in economic data in recent weeks. The National Retail Federation on Tuesday revised its holiday forecast to a 3.3 percent increase from last year’s shopping season. The previous forecast was for a 2.3 percent gain. “The start to the holiday season has surpassed all expectations,” said the trade group president, Matthew Shay. “While employment data is still a concern, we are starting to see improvement in other economic indicators that support an increase to our forecast. In order to sustain this momentum for retailers and the U.S. economy, there must be a renewed focus on jobs as we enter the new year.” Still, many economists couch their responses with questions about sustainability, given the continued pressures in the job market. “The holiday shopping season appears to have got off to a very good start, suggesting that fourth-quarter consumption growth will be strong,” Capital Economics wrote in a research note. “But without a meaningful acceleration in real income growth, this tentative consumer revival cannot last.” Steve Blitz, a senior economist for ITG Investment Research, said the data showed signs that the housing market was struggling with sales of furniture and appliances continuing to decline. “The question is whether, after the holidays are over and gift card balances are down to zero, consumers put their hands back in their pockets,” he said. “My guess is that they will — given the still considerable shortfall in employment and wages from the prerecession high and the need to rebuild household balance sheets.” Other economic data on Tuesday showed that wholesale prices as measured on the Producer Price Index rose 0.8 percent in November. The core index, which excludes food and energy, edged up 0.3 percent, reflecting an economy that is still struggling. The Commerce Department said in a separate report that business inventories in October rose 0.7 percent, compared with a 1.3 percent rise in revised figures for September. Analysts had forecast a 1 percent rise.

Sales
United States Economy
Credit and Debt
Shopping and Retail


The Paradox of Privacy

Abstract: PARIS — Maintaining privacy is on many people’s minds these days, but sometimes that’s the last thing they do. Allegations last week that two British tabloids, The Sun and The News of the World, had employed high-technology snoops to listen in on the mobile phone messages of public figures highlighted fears of what can happen when digital data fall into dubious hands. The reports came only days after another privacy debacle, this one self-inflicted. Photos and family information about Sir John Sawers, soon to be Britain’s chief spy, appeared in another newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, after his wife posted them on Facebook. While attitudes toward privacy can appear paradoxical, the seeming contradiction is really about something else: control. When people bare their bodies on Facebook or their souls in the digital confessional of Google’s search engine, they feel as if they are in charge. Not so, when the private embarrassments come to light unexpectedly. The subtle relationship between privacy and control has complicated things for marketers, too. Advertisers talk about having to move away from analog-era “push” tactics and embracing digital-age “pull” strategies, in which consumers are enticed into seeking information about a product or brand, rather than having ads foisted on them. On the Web, “pull” seems to work best in environments like social networks or blogs. Aside from advertising linked to search engine results, paid online ads have been less successful, with only tiny fractions of consumers actually clicking on them. To try to improve the effectiveness of online ads, agencies and Internet companies have been working on ways to tailor them for individual Web users. But that has raised fears of a loss of privacy or control, or both. A recent Microsoft-sponsored study found that so-called behavioral targeting can lift advertising “click-through” rates more than sixfold. But the results are often imprecise: No, I’m not interested in buying a house in Sydney or acquiring a U.S. green card, two targeted offers that have just come my way. Internet service providers thought they might have found a way to improve online advertising — using systems that track consumers’ actual Web browsing histories and other Internet data, rather than the sketchy profiles they currently rely on. Though these services promise to “anonymize” the data, they have run afoul of the complicated interplay between privacy and control. Last week, the British telecommunications company BT said it had set aside plans to employ one of these technologies, from a company called Phorm. BT said it was too busy with other projects, but privacy advocates, who have compared the technology with malicious spyware, claimed victory. A U.S. company called NebuAd recently went out of business after its tests of similar technology alarmed privacy groups. Regulators and lawmakers in the United States and in Europe are looking into the privacy implications of many kinds of behavioral targeting. American advertising groups have moved to try to head off restrictions by proposing a self-regulatory code for the practice. When asked about ad targeting in surveys, consumers often say they would be willing to hand over some personal information in exchange for receiving more relevant advertising, as well as the free online content it could support. Yet behavioral targeting is, in some ways, “push” marketing carried to its extreme, with the advertiser controlling not just the content of its message but also the audience for it. Even if privacy concerns are overcome, can targeting work once consumers realize they are being “pushed”? Norm Johnston, London-based head of the digital business at MindShare, a media-buying agency, said the aim, through behavioral targeting and other techniques, was to develop “push so good it feels like pull.” Other people are not so sure. Ad targeting, said Karin Von Abrams, an analyst at eMarketer, a research firm, “may not be the panacea we hoped it would be.”

Privacy
Advertising and Marketing
Social Networking (Internet)


In Audi’s Virtual Cockpit, Technology Is Your Co-Pilot

Abstract: THE video game experience has arrived in the automobile. It’s called the virtual cockpit and, starting with Audi, it will become a more common feature in cars in the not too distant future. Gone are the traditional mechanical dials — the speedometer, the tachometer, the various gauges and pointers — and in their place is a 12.3-inch LCD screen that houses an animated instrument cluster. The high-resolution screen, which lights up behind the steering wheel, directly in the driver’s line of sight, can be programmed to show several functions — for navigation, a cellphone, radio and media, Google Earth 3-D graphics, and traffic data. That is in addition to the usual functions of showing speed, engine revolutions, outside temperature and the gas level. By any standard, it’s an abundance of information, all on one screen. But it also has some drivers and experts asking: How much is too much, and will consumers understand it? Paul A. Green, a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, expressed concern over displays. “One of the principles here is that displays that people use while driving generally should not be dynamic,” said Mr. Green, who said that he had not spent any time auditioning the system. “It becomes like a movie that you’re watching, and anything that adds even a half a second or so is problematic.” Audi said that a central objective in designing the virtual cockpit was simplicity. “If you look at the virtual cockpit and notice something different, we’ve failed,” said Justin Goduto, a spokesman for Audi. “How can we achieve a functional operation in as few steps as possible?” The on-screen menus are designed to allow access to items with a single click of the steering wheel buttons, Mr. Goduto said. “We don’t want people having to dive down.” The heart of the virtual cockpit is a powerful computer processor made by Nvidia. Nvidia said that precision and safety were two important goals of the virtual cockpit. “Driver distraction is a big issue, and if you have graphics that don’t look good, poor-quality maps that lag, that are hard to read, it becomes a distraction,” said Danny Shapiro, senior director for automotive development at Nvidia. The virtual cockpit does have its adherents. Michael Wong test-drove a new Audi Q7 with and without the system, and wound up ordering the vehicle with the virtual cockpit. “If it was a feature to sell Audis, they’ve accomplished their mission,” he said. “I’d rather have the luxury of having those functions than not,” said Mr. Wong, who lives in Stamford, Conn., and is in the Army Reserve. He allowed that duplicating the information on the virtual cockpit and the center screen might be overkill. He also noted that having dueling information available can be distracting, but added, “Picking up a phone call can be distracting. You got to pick your poison.” Because the Audi technology is so new and integrated into only a few of the brand’s vehicles — the 2016 TT and the 2017 A4 sedan, Q7 sport utility vehicle and R8 sports car — mass-market reaction has been limited. Image A rearview mirror in a Cadillac CT6 shows images from a camera mounted atop the car. Credit General Motors But a study about to be made public raises concerns about how challenging it is to use Audi’s Virtual Cockpit 1.0, said Kristin Kolodge, executive director of driver interaction at J. D. Power, the research firm. The study, which asked about buyers’ attitudes toward the system in the Audi TT two-seater coupe, found that the TT’s virtual cockpit presented a “complex system with a number of layers,” she said. “It’s going to take a significant amount of time for the consumer to learn it,” said Ms. Kolodge, who declined to divulge specific data from the study before it was released. The virtual cockpit is not a standard feature in base models. To add it to the A4 Premium Plus model requires buying a $3,250 technology package option. But to Aadel Khan, it’s worth it. He bought the system for his two-month-old Audi Q7, which cost $73,000. “It’s one of the reasons I bought the car,” said Mr. Khan, who works in auto performance tuning in Houston. “I love being able to toggle the gauges from larger to smaller,” Mr. Khan said. “Hey, do you need your speedometer to be big? You just need a digital readout to tell you how fast you’re going. And having the map right in front of you is nice, because you’re only glancing up and down, and you don’t have to look to the right.” Mr. Shapiro of Nvidia said that his company was working with several other manufacturers, including Tesla, Honda, the Volkswagen group (Audi is part of that family) and Mercedes-Benz, which last year showed its own system that incorporates an array of digital displays in and around the dashboard. Not all automakers, including General Motors, agree with the approach, however. “We recognize the need to push the tech, but we have different philosophies in how we present the information to the driver,” said Nick Richards, a spokesman for General Motors. “We have a belief that information should be displayed in multiple locations.” He added, “There are some functions you want to have redundant on a nice big beautiful display in the center.” G.M. is also taking another view at cockpit display technology: the rear view. Cadillac’s CT6 sedan offers a feature called the “full display mirror,” which transforms the inside rearview mirror into a high-resolution digital display that is fed images from a backward-facing camera mounted atop the car. The device, developed by Gentex Corporation, is a hybrid as well, with a toggle to revert to a conventional mirror if the electronic display fails. “It is a mirror first and foremost, because there are cases when the drivers want to look at the people behind them during conversations,” said Neil Boehm, vice president for engineering at Gentex. “On the other hand, with passengers in the back, or luggage piled up, or you’re bringing the kids home from school, by having the display you still have a great view of what’s behind,” he said. Gentex’s mirror will be offered in the coming Chevrolet Bolt and by other manufacturers in coming months, Mr. Boehm said.

Cars
Audi Division of Volkswagen
Virtual reality


General Mills and 7-Eleven Join the Venture Capital Crowd

Abstract: At first glance, the maker of Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs might not fit the image of a cutting-edge venture capital investor. But with the food business moving to healthier offerings and online distribution, General Mills has created a venture capital unit that recently led a $3 million investment in Rhythm Superfoods, a specialty start-up that makes kale chips and broccoli crisps. General Mills, based in Minneapolis, is part of an increasing number of old-economy companies, including the convenience chain 7-Eleven and the Campbell Soup Company, that have joined a crowd of technology companies to create venture capital funds. Through them, they scout for new products or services and promising potential business partners. Their moves have accompanied a surge and recent crest in the valuations of many venture capital-backed start-ups. Critics say the corporate-run funds have contributed to inflated valuations for start-ups, and some funds have begun selling stakes even as they face reduced valuations on some holdings. Reports recently surfaced that Intel’s fund, the largest of its kind, might sell up to $1 billion of its holdings as it narrows its strategy under its chief executive, Brian M. Krzanich. With valuations of many young, private companies faltering as interest in initial public offerings of stock has waned, corporate venture investing faces a test. “I think some of the corporate V.C. will get a little less enamored as the venture market goes from euphoria into a little more normal period,” said J. Sanford Miller, a general partner at Institutional Venture Partners in Menlo Park, Calif. Since 2011, the number of companies making venture capital investments has risen 79 percent, to 801 globally, according to Global Corporate Venturing, a data provider. The ranks include Verizon Ventures, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Chevron Venture Capital, Pfizer Venture Investments and Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Partners. Even as total venture capital investment more than doubled from 2011 to 2015, to $58.8 billion, the amount invested by corporate venture funds quadrupled to $7.6 billion in the same period, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Corporate funds make up 12.9 percent share of the total, the highest since 2000. As a sign of how start-up valuations have waxed and waned, the size of the median late-stage fund-raising roughly tripled from 2012 to 2015, but it has fallen by 23 percent so far this year, according to Global Corporate Venturing. For many company funds, financial gain is less important than finding the next big idea. Arvind Sodhani, who led Intel’s venture unit for 10 years, until mid-2015, said corporate venture investing has grown partly because of interest by chief executives. “C.E.O.s who are worried they’re going to get disrupted want to have an outpost in Silicon Valley to discern where the disruption is coming from,” he said. Such corporate funds have “clearly been driving up valuations,” he added. For General Mills, which has also invested in the plant-based food maker Beyond Meat and two other start-ups, the venture capital fund is a way to keep pace with the growing number of small food brands that have found consumer success, especially online. “The traditional consumer packaged goods model of big advertising budgets, trade leverage and scale — a lot of those factors have been neutralized by these small brands,” said John Haugen, who heads the General Mills venture fund after managing brands such as Nature Valley, Yoplait and Hamburger Helper. Emerging brands, he added, “have alternative pathways to market online.” Technology companies pioneered corporate venture funds 30 years ago, followed by media, finance and health care companies. The two giants of the field are Intel, with stakes estimated by outsiders of more than $5 billion in more than 400 companies, and Google, now Alphabet, which has a $2.4 billion venture fund called GV with more than 300 investments. Comcast Ventures invests in companies it can later introduce to its cable and broadcast television customers. In 2009 and 2011, it took stakes in iControl Networks, a broadband home security and energy management service, and it later offered it to its customers through Xfinity Home. Comcast’s portfolio also includes stakes in DocuSign, Birchbox and TiVo, as well as FanDuel, the fantasy sports betting site. Comcast introduced FanDuel to its NBC broadcast TV unit and its large customer base of sports fans. Other corporate venture funds acknowledge that their growing ranks have pushed up private company valuations. “In the last few years, there has been more and more corporate V.C. money coming in, and I do think that’s had an impact on valuations,” said Rob Salvagno, head of corporate development at Cisco Investments, which has $2 billion of stakes in 100 companies and 40 venture funds. Some funds have had bubble-style returns — as well as bubble-style losses. Qualcomm, a maker of chips for mobile phones, participated in a $25 million early-stage funding round for Waze, a crowd-sourced traffic application, in 2010. When Waze was acquired by Google for about $1 billion in 2013, Qualcomm’s return was 10 times its investment. But some of Qualcomm’s investments have struggled, too. It invested $5 million in the fitness device maker Fitbit in 2013 and had a paper profit of about 20 times its cost after Fitbit’s initial public offering in mid-2015. However, Fitbit shares have since come back to earth, falling 67 percent from their post-I.P.O. peak in August. Qualcomm is prepared to invest through downturns because such stakes offer a ringside seat for “the next generation of disruptive innovation around our mobile core,” said Brian Modoff, who oversees strategy, mergers and acquisitions and ventures for the company. Microsoft is renewing a venture investing push, hiring Nagraj Kashyap, the former head of Qualcomm Ventures, in January. The software giant was a big investor in tech and telecommunications companies in 1999 and 2000, but after losing about $5 billion from such investments in the three years that ended in mid-2003, it curtailed the effort in favor of more acquisitions. Venture investments have mushroomed recently at Salesforce, a maker of customer relations software, which began investing in 2009. Since 2011, Salesforce has increased its investments to $505 million, from $27 million. Five of its 150 companies have had I.P.O.s, and another seven or eight are waiting in the wings. Salesforce was one of five named participants in a $350 million investment in the cloud-storage start-up Dropbox in January 2014 that valued the company at $10 billion. Recently, however, one mutual fund investor that was part of the same investor group cut its valuation of Dropbox to less than $5 billion. John Somorjai, executive vice president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce, said that he did not agree that corporate venture funds have helped inflate valuations. Prices for most investments are set by the traditional venture capital firms that lead the deals, not by the corporate participants, he said. As for Dropbox, Mr. Somorjai called it “a very small investment.” Salesforce does try to reflect such fluctuations in valuing its holdings, but “no single investment is going to move the needle,” he added. Sue Siegel, the chief executive General Electric’s GE Ventures, said the company got into venture investing in 2013 to identify up-and-coming entrepreneurs in the health care and energy industries. She added that G.E. planned to stick with venture investing in the current valuation downturn. “When you have these down cycles, it’s a wonderful time for us to look.”

General Mills
7-Eleven
Venture capital
Intel
Entrepreneurship
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Salesforcecom


Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices , Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet. That has been the response, basically, of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in this country, who are angry at statements by top United States officials that India’s rising prosperity is to blame for food inflation. The debate has sometimes devolved into what sounded like petty playground taunts over who are the real gluttons devouring the world’s resources. For instance, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International, an independent research institute based here, said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.” He added, archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims. Mr. Mehta’s comments may sound like the macroeconomic equivalent of “so’s your old man,” but they reflect genuine outrage — and ballooning criticism — toward the United States in particular, over recent remarks by President Bush. After a news conference in Missouri on May 2, he was quoted as saying of India’s burgeoning middle class, “When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.” The comments, widely reported in the developing world, followed a statement on the subject by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had upset many Indians. In response to the president’s remarks, a ranking official in the commerce ministry, Jairam Ramesh, told the Press Trust of India, “George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,” and the remarks proved again how “comprehensively wrong” he is. The Asian Age, a newspaper based here, argued in an editorial last week that Mr. Bush’s “ignorance on most matters is widely known and openly acknowledged by his own countrymen,” and that he must not be allowed to “get away” with an effort to “divert global attention from the truth by passing the buck on to India.” The developing nations, and in particular China and India, are being blamed for global problems, including the rising cost of commodities and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, because they are consuming more goods and fuel than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister’s office on down frequently point out that per capita, India uses far lower quantities of commodities and pollutes far less than nations in the West, particularly the United States. Explaining the food price increases, Indian politicians and academics cite consumption in the United States; the West’s diversion of arable land into the production of ethanol and other biofuels; agricultural subsidies and trade barriers from Washington and the European Union; and finally the decline in the exchange rate of the dollar. There may be some foundation to Indians’ accusations of hypocrisy by the West. The United States uses — or throws away — 3,770 calories a person each day, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization collected in 2001-3, compared with 2,440 calories per person in India. Americans are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of the most energy-intensive common food source, beef, the Agriculture Department says. And the United States and Canada lead the world in oil consumption per person, according to the Energy Information Administration, an Energy Department agency. When it comes to trade, Western farming subsidies undercut agricultural production in fertile areas of Africa, India’s commerce minister, Kamal Nath, said in a telephone interview, repeating the point that Americans waste more food than people in many other countries. The United States is responsible “many times more” than India for the world food crisis, said Ramesh Chand, an economist with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which advises the government on farm policy. The Bush administration has called for a truce. President Bush is a “great friend and admirer” of India, the United States ambassador here, David C. Mulford, said last week. He added that “this is a time for increased cooperation among nations to solve this problem and that hostile political commentary is not productive.” A White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said, “We think it is a good thing countries are developing, that more and more people have higher standards of living.” Some economists argue that blaming India’s growth is not only unfair, but makes little sense. Food prices have not been rising continually as developing nations grew, said Ramgopal Agarwala, a former World Bank economist and senior adviser at RIS, a research institute in New Delhi. “They were static until 2006, then in 2007 and 2008 there was a sudden spark,” he said. But India has been growing for the last decade. This is “not last year’s phenomena,” he said. “I don’t know who advised the president” on his recent comments, Mr. Agarwala added, but his analysis is “subprime.” Mr. Mehta of the research institute conceded that his remarks on liposuction were meant to be tongue in cheek, but that “politically incorrect” attitudes like President Bush’s and Ms. Rice’s needed to be challenged. Rather than blaming India, Mr. Mehta said, the West should be adjusting to a changing world. “If the developing world is going to develop, demand is going to go up and there are going to be new political paradigms,” he said.

India
Food
United States
Weight
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
International Trade and World Market


A Small Business Finds a Catch in Federal Aid

Abstract: When Barbara Wright learned last year of a federal program to aid struggling small businesses like her South Side uniform company, she jumped at the chance to apply for the Small Business Administration loan. “I thought I could use the loan to help my cash flow,” the soft-spoken Ms. Wright said as she pointed toward racks of uniforms at The Wright Fit, her store at 1805 West 95th Street. “You know you have to pay for this, and when your customers are taking 30 to 120 days to pay their invoices, things can get tight.” So she went to her bank, ShoreBank, which helped prepare the paperwork, and she sent in her application. It was approved, and Ms. Wright borrowed $35,000, the maximum allowed under a special Obama administration 2009 economic stimulus program for small businesses. She thought she could use the money to meet her cash needs, but she soon learned that the loan had a catch: It could not be used for operations. In fact, the money could be used only to help pay off a previous loan of $50,000 from ShoreBank. Federal officials and Congress structured the loan program to help banks as much as to help their customers. The loan to Ms. Wright provided enough money for her to meet her loan payments, but not enough for her to avoid making further cutbacks to her business. “Things are still tight here,” she said. “The loan really helped the bank, but what about me?” Ms. Wright is one of many Chicagoans who own struggling small businesses, the kind of companies that create most new jobs around the country. She is among the entrepreneurs that economists and President Obama hope will resume hiring and rescue the economy from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression . In fact, Ms. Wright is one of the lucky ones. Thanks to a federal guarantee that her lender will be repaid, she borrowed the $35,000 and appreciated the help. Thousands of other small-business owners say banks will not lend them money at any price — particularly in troubled industries like home building, where credit is crucial and jobs are particularly important to the South Side and other black neighborhoods. “Getting a loan in this area has been hard for quite a while, and getting a construction loan is nearly impossible,” said William Wolk, president of Team 4, a contractor and real estate development consultant who often works on the South Side. But Ms. Wright’s mixed fortune at ShoreBank also suggests why the government’s current efforts to prime the pump are sputtering despite record low interest rates and federal spending financed by huge budget deficits. While multibillion-dollar loan programs may sound like a boon to the economy, Ms. Wright’s experience shows they have been structured so they help the people who do the hiring as much as the ones who make the loans. Ms. Wright has been in business for 14 years, employing a small staff and supplying uniforms to schools, businesses and institutions. For most of those years, business was good. Things started to change in 2008 as it became clear that the nation’s banks had gone on a credit binge that seeded many bank portfolios with toxic loans. As bankers and economists tried to figure out the severity of the problem, many banks slashed credit. Business conditions deteriorated as credit tightened, unemployment soared and many consumers were unable to keep up with their mortgages. A wave of foreclosures on the South Side showed that blacks in particular were struggling, and small businesses based in mostly black areas have tended to suffer along with them. Mr. Wolk said subprime loans, those with more onerous terms, and Alt A mortgages, ones with more flexible borrowing conditions, accounted for nearly half the home loans in some South Side neighborhoods. As troubles with those mortgages mounted, layoffs in the construction and manufacturing industries hit black neighborhoods particularly hard. An economic-hardship report by the Metro Chicago Information Center shows that unemployment rates in predominately black South Side neighborhoods like Englewood, Chatham, Auburn, Gresham and South Shore are now two to three times higher than the average in other areas of the city. Some government reports estimate that the unemployment rate now stands at 20 percent to 25 percent in parts of the South Side. Like many other businesses surrounded by neighborhoods of foreclosed homes, unemployed workers and shuttered storefronts, The Wright Fit felt the economic pain. Ms. Wright said she cut back to only part-time employees about a year ago and started trimming expenses. “My big customers started bundling,” she said, a practice in which companies consolidate their purchase orders and tap one uniform company in hopes of winning a better price with a large order. “I started partnering with others to keep part of that business,” she said. But her customers started taking longer to pay her. Last summer she read about the loan program on the Small Business Administration’s Web site. Ms. Wright contacted ShoreBank, which has a national reputation for operating profitably in low-income neighborhoods, and bank officials helped her apply with the S.B.A., which was one of the few programs the bank could turn to for aid. At the time, federal and state bank regulators, worried about the struggles confronting ShoreBank’s customers, told the bank to improve its financial footing by trimming its loan portfolio and bolstering its capital. Both steps require ShoreBank to curtail lending. Under the American Recovery Capital Loan Program, the S.B.A. guaranteed that the bank’s loan to Ms. Wright would be repaid. Ms. Wright said she was disappointed that her $35,000 loan could not be used to help boost her working capital and ease the pressure from her store’s day-to-day needs. But using it to repay her ShoreBank loan did help her reduce costs. “Look,” she said, “it’s $1,000 a month that I no longer have to worry about.” Brian Berg, ShoreBank’s vice president for marketing, said the American Recovery Capital program required that the proceeds of Ms. Wright’s loan be used to pay the principal or interest on existing bank loans. The recovery capital program is only one of numerous S.B.A. loan programs, but the agency promoted it as one that would help small businesses weather the downturn and ease cash problems. David Schroeder, vice president of federal relations at the Community Bankers Association of Illinois did not know the specifics of Ms. Wright’s case, but said it illustrated a broader problem that Congress needed to consider as its took up the far larger $30 billion small-business program that Mr. Obama proposed in his recent State of the Union message to help create jobs. “You have the Congress and the administration saying, Lend, lend, lend, and you have the regulators saying, Tighten your underwriting and strengthen your capital,” Mr. Schroeder said. The latter two steps tend to discourage lending. As for Ms. Wright, in early February she moved her store across the street to a space that is half the size of her former location. “I cut my rent and utilities in half,” she said as she searched her new space for room to store her inventory. Her work force is down to her, her sister and a couple of part-time employees, but she said the economic situation was still tough. “People are just scared to spend money,” she said. “Many come in here, and it’s like a bargain basement. They want a low price.” She said her customers were worried that they would lose their jobs. You must get creative, Ms. Wright said, and she is building her Web site to see whether she can use it to market her uniforms more effectively. She will survive, she said, adding, “I don’t have any other choice.”