Len Chenfeld’s Outside Shot at Basketball Glory

Abstract: Len Chenfeld is a bright, unimposing high school senior with the slightly spotty skin of a hormone-challenged teenager and the crystalline agenda of a Zen master: a Zen master addicted to basketball. On a recent Tuesday, he was icing his neck in preparation for two hours he lives for: basketball practice at Poly Prep Country Day School in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. Len Chen, as his teammates call him, was projecting a pout above his brand-new Brandeis jersey and Poly Prep shorts. He had a strained neck muscle. But forfeit practice? Not the dogged little point guard who left his sickbed for a second-round playoff game last spring with a 102-degree fever, in a long-sleeve shirt to fend off the chills. That was back when he wore the purple and white of the Hunter College High School Hawks; Len scored 20 points, but his team lost, 54-46, in overtime. “It killed me,” he said. He meant the defeat, not the flu. So, for senior year, Len left Hunter, a prestigious public school on the Upper East Side that sends graduates to the nation’s top colleges, where he had been since prekindergarten and led the team to a division title. He transferred to PolyPrep to raise his basketball I.Q., commuting 19 miles each way from the Upper West Side to the far reaches of Brooklyn and paying $30,000 in tuition for the privilege of playing for Coach Bill McNally, whose trophy case includes two state private school championships, five “coach of the year” titles and 10 league titles over 17 years. He is a Blue Devil. An upgrade. Len notified his Hunter teammates and coach, Neil Potter, via e-mail, just before leaving for Tel Aviv in June to compete in the Maccabiah Games , where his team won a silver medal. “I wanted to tell the coach, but we kept playing phone tag right up until the plane took off,” he said. “Coach Potter is a great guy, but Hunter had never had a guy recruited for basketball before. Coach McNally is a legend. He’s sent guys to Division I, sent a guy to the N.B.A. He knows everybody.” At 5 feet 9 inches and 150 pounds, Len does not imagine himself playing in the N.B.A. or even the N.C.A.A. tournament; he matches his local role model, Nate Robinson of the Knicks, in height and hustle but, alas, cannot replicate his remarkable 43 ½-inch vertical leap. Which means Len does not dunk. But he still harbors hopes of playing pro overseas and is something of a savant. “From the time he could walk, he was bouncing a basketball,” recalled his mother, Chana. The playgrounds and gymnasiums of New York City are littered with hoop dreams, and with the legends of players whose talent triumphed over poverty and broken homes. Kenny Anderson grew up in LeFrak City, Queens, and had an army of recruiters tracking his skills by the sixth grade. Stephon Marbury, raised with six siblings in Coney Island, became “Starbury” and the subject of a book, “The Last Shot,” by the ninth. Both played for powerhouse city high schools (Archbishop Molloy, Lincoln), went to Georgia Tech on scholarship and left college diploma-less for the N.B.A. and its attendant fame and fortune. Len, who is 18, does not fit that template. He is, let’s face it — he has, after all — shorter, whiter and wealthier: Few urban basketball prodigies summer in East Hampton. He is Walter Mitty in Nikes, and his most realistic role model is Ben Rudin, another Jewish point guard, who grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., graduated from Middlebury College and now plays for Kiryat Ata in Israel’s top-level league, Ligat Ha’al. Jesse Shapiro, coach of Fastbreak NYC, the Amateur Athletic Union team that Len has helped take to the national tournament the past two years, called him “hands-down the best white player, and one of the top five point guards, in the city leagues right now.” But after a wildly complimentary article about him appeared in February on Five Boro Sports , a Web site that tracks New York high school and college athletics, Len was denounced on blogs as “the most overrated player ever,” and was warned that nobody would ever “take him seriously playing at Hunter College High School,” which was further ridiculed as being in a “cupcake league.” “You start to read that stuff and it makes you think, ‘Am I overrated? Am I over-hyped?’ ” he said. “I know I wasn’t a big name in New York City basketball, but it’s a little shocking that anybody would care that much to write that stuff about me when they probably haven’t even seen me play. If I’m not worth it, then don’t post it.” Anyhow, no cupcakes at Poly Prep, whose opening game was Friday night, after a month of grueling practices and five scrimmages. Len skipped a sold-out Springsteen concert at Madison Square Garden the weekend before practice began because of that iffy neck — one more sacrifice in a string of them. Years before, he pulled the plug on piano lessons (too time-consuming), quit skiing (for fear of breaking a limb during basketball season) and opted out of competitive chess and tennis despite winning titles and trophies in both (distracting). “My dad really wanted me to see Springsteen with him,” Len said, “but I’ve been waiting for practice to start for months, and I couldn’t risk it.” LEN’S father, Cliff, is his prime enabler: He helped Mr. Shapiro create Fastbreak NYC, and he now manages and helps bankroll the team (though he would not say how much he spends). At the national tournament in Florida last year, he drove the team around in a rented van. “It was ‘Animal House’ meets hip-hop — food fights, you name it,” Mr. Chenfeld recalled. After Len’s sophomore year, Mr. Chenfeld put together an over-the-top video showing off his son’s skills to send to colleges. It ended up on YouTube: embarrassing. “I didn’t have anything to do with making it,” Len said. “It feels unneeded, like it’s arrogant.” Mr. Chenfeld left the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm at age 30 to start a record company with a law school friend; he’s the guy who brought Kidz Bop into the world. Len is the oldest of three boys; the others are pop-rock musicians who, at 15 and 13, already have Webster Hall credentials, CDs and MySpace groupies . “He always tells me how important it is to be passionate about what you do,” Len said of his father. “So if he tried to discourage me from playing ball, he’d be a big hypocrite, right?” The Chenfelds live on West 84th Street, in a sprawling apartment with a bedroom for each boy and one left over just for Ping-Pong. (The youngest, Noah, said Len ruthlessly beats him whenever they play.) Len’s room is decorated with a zillion Sports Illustrated covers, and crammed with trophies and a tennis racquet-stringing machine. A Glenn Ligon portrait of Stevie Wonder dominates the living room. “We heard the Obamas also collect Ligon, but we got there first,” joked Mr. Chenfeld. Len’s mother, Chana, chairwoman of the religious school at Congregation Habonim on West 66th Street, is barely 5 feet tall and weighs less than 100 pounds. (Family joke: Dad hid Mom from the college recruiters scoping out their son for fear her diminutive size would scare them away.) She still cannot quite get her mind around Len’s leaving a school where he had been a superstar athlete and a B student his whole life. Poly Prep did not recruit him. Mr. Shapiro, the A.A.U. coach, said he had been pressuring Len to transfer for the past two years, and Mr. Chenfeld said it was Len’s choice alone. Hunter’s Coach Potter declined to be interviewed for this article; in an e-mail message responding to Len’s announcing his transfer, Mr. Potter said he was surprised Len had not forsaken the school in ninth grade. In interviews, former teammates said they still loved Len, and noted that he is not a ball hog. “To be honest, a bunch of kids are pretty annoyed, but he did what he had to do for college,” said Cole Garson, Len’s best friend on the team. “He has a basketball-trumps-all attitude.” Len acknowledged the move “was selfish in a certain way,” but said he had always been clear “that high school sports was not the end-goal for me.” POLY PREP, founded in 1854, has a sylvan campus a stone’s throw from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and alumni who include Arthur Levitt, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; two of Meryl Streep’s daughters; and, most important to Len, Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls. For nearly two decades, Coach McNally has customized N.B.A.-style plays for high school boys and has served as matchmaker between his locker room and college campuses. “Think of it like a date,” he tells players. “Would you rather be someone’s first choice, or their backup?” “He helps you realize that it’s smarter to get to play at a Division III school and get a great education than to pin your hopes on Division I and wind up not getting to play,” Len said. “I always thought I had the talent to play at the D-I level, and that the only thing holding me back was my size, but now I realize that if I went D-I, I’d end up sitting on the bench, and that would kill me because I’ve never sat on the bench in my life.” The only Division I interest Len attracted was from Columbia, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, hardly basketball powerhouses, and it was lukewarm. “When I call a college coach and say, ‘I’ve got this great 5-foot-9-inch white kid you should take a look at,’ the guard goes up,” said Greg Kristof, a director of Hoop Mountain Basketball, which stages recruiting tournaments. “There’s kind of a reverse discrimination in basketball where, as a short white kid, you’d better be twice as good as anyone else in your position.” For his part, Len said he is ecstatic about applying, early decision, to Brandeis, a nationally ranked Division III program that travels to games via airplane, not bus. But first, senior year at Poly Prep. Day 2 of practice was just as torturous as Day 1. Coach McNally packed 30 drills into a 90-minute session. “The coach here lives for this stuff, which is what you want,” Len said. The trainer ran out of ice bags. One senior got so winded after a sprint that he had to use a paper bag to stop hyperventilating. Len jammed his right index finger against a teammate’s skull; he’s broken it before. Actually, he has broken all 10 fingers before. The trainer took a look and determined the finger had not cracked again, and Len rejoined the lineup. “If you don’t go hard, I’m going to throw you off the team,” thundered Coach McNally. Len goes hard. After practice, more ice — for the finger, that iffy neck and his right knee. Len’s backpack, loaded with books (Advanced Placement English and history, calculus, environmental science and film), threatened to overpower him as he fumbled for the key to his mother’s shiny silver minivan, a vehicle he finds embarrassingly corny to wedge into the student parking lot. Then again, it beats the alternative, a subway ride to the terminus of the R train. After years of waiting for the crosstown bus to Hunter, Len said he finds the new solo commute liberating. “It’s a reverse commute,” he noted, surfing the rap channels on the radio. He ignored his hyperactive BlackBerry — “Sometimes I’ll see someone texting and driving at the same time. That’s just nuts!” — and obeyed the speed limit, though he somehow managed to make the trek home in 26 minutes, a personal record. “If I had my choice, I’d have a Range Rover and a Maserati,” he said as a sedan with New Jersey plates cut him off near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. “And also in an ideal world, I would smack into that guy in front of us.” At Hunter, Len was on a chess team that won five national championships. (“I peaked in third grade,” he said, sounding apologetic. “I think the best I ever did individually at the nationals was 10th.”) In tennis, he twice took the Public School Athletic League’s doubles title. (“I was an aggressor when I played tennis, but I know that’s not going to work for me in basketball,” he said. “My theory is, let the other guy get the technical foul.”) He played hockey, soccer and baseball, too, but dropped everything besides basketball as a junior, the year Hunter students amp up their obsession with the Ivy League. “They’re so self-conscious about their grades and test scores, just so wound up about it, that it’s all anybody talks about,” Len said. “At Poly, it’s a more chilled environment.” IN the playoffs of the IS8/Nike Fall Classic, a late-October A.A.U. event in Jamaica, Queens, Len faced off against an idealized version of himself, Kyrie Irving, a Duke-bound point guard from East Orange, N.J. Kyrie is 6-foot-2 and handles the ball with the élan of a snake charmer; nationally, he is the No. 2-ranked point guard in the Class of 2010, according to ESPN-U. The middle-school gymnasium smelled like sweat even before the game started; the sound system blared Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and a play-by-play guy with an overloud mic announced the start of each quarter with a merciless refrain: “Somebody’s going on vacation.” Unlike Kyrie, whose leather sneakers resembled footwear Fred Astaire might have favored away from the ballroom, Len had no bling, no tattoos, no endorsements, no basketball scholarship and no entourage. (Though he does call Coach McNally “my Ari Gold,” referring to the Hollywood superagent in HBO’s “Entourage,” whose poster hangs in his bedroom.) What he brought to the gym was his competitive nature and a healthy curiosity about just how much game Kyrie Irving had. At the half, set up by a missile from Len, Fastbreak NYC led, 39-38. The lead vanished when Fastbreak lost its cool in the second half; Kyrie maintained his, and his team won, 78-69. Len scored 10 points and was irked that he missed four of five 3-pointers. He might have had 13 had he connected in the game’s waning minutes, when his frustrated father yelled, “Take the 3!” Coach Shapiro screamed at his players during and after the game. “He told us, ‘You blew a big opportunity to beat a team with big-name players on a big stage,’ ” Len said. Later, Mr. Shapiro said of Len: “He would show up to play with one leg and one arm; that’s the kind of kid he is.” The day after the game, Kyrie announced on national television he was headed for Duke. “He’s got speed, and he’s obviously a great passer,” Len said. “He’s better than me. That extra five inches in height is a nice advantage.” “I thought it would be cool to play against a truly top-ranked point guard,” he added. “I mean, I’m going to be seeing that kid on TV next year during March Madness.”

Basketball
Poly Prep Country Day School
Interscholastic Athletics
Brooklyn (NYC)
Athletics and Sports
Chenfeld Len


G.M. Will Also Restate Results for Its Finance Unit

Abstract: DETROIT, March 28 - Two weeks after it increased its 2005 loss by $2 billion, General Motors said Tuesday that it would restate several years worth of results for its financing arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation. The automaker also said it did not know if it would be able to sell a controlling interest in G.M.A.C. because of the complexity of arranging a deal. G.M. put part of the unit up for sale in October in an effort to raise cash for a wide-ranging corporate revamping. Negotiations on the sale of a 51 percent stake in G.M.A.C. had been expected to conclude as early as this week. G.M. said its discussions with possible buyers would continue. General Motors said in November that it would close all or part of 12 plants and eliminate 30,000 jobs through 2008. It is also pushing to make $7 billion in cuts, or about one-sixth of its annual structural costs. Last week, it reached agreement with the United Automobile Workers union on a plan that would offer buyouts to all 113,000 of its hourly workers in the United States and 13,000 workers at Delphi, its former parts unit, which is operating under bankruptcy protection. The latest financial restatement was disclosed as G.M. filed its annual report Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing had been delayed by almost two weeks after the company discovered a number of accounting errors. G.M. increased its 2005 loss by $2 billion, to $10.6 billion, its largest loss since 1992. On Tuesday, as it previously disclosed, it also restated its corporate results for 2002 through 2004. In November, G.M. said it would restate its results for 2001, reflecting improper accounting for payments from suppliers. It warned that further restatements were likely for 2000 through 2005 as a result of an S.E.C. investigation into its accounting practices. After a review of accounting mistakes, G.M. said Tuesday that it would restate results at G.M.A.C. for 2003, 2004 and through the third quarter of 2005, but it did not indicate what G.M.A.C.'s results would be. G.M. said the restatement, which affected the way it accounted for cash, was necessary because of the way it tracked transactions at its residential mortgage operation, the Residential Capital Corporation. "In concluding the review, G.M. determined that the cash flows related to certain mortgage activities were not appropriately classified as either operating cash flows or investing cash flows," it said. G.M.A.C. has consistently been one of the company's most lucrative operations, providing income even when automotive operations lagged. G.M. put part of the unit up for sale last fall in an effort to separate G.M.A.C.'s credit rating from that of the parent company, which has been junk status since May. G.M., which expects to keep 49 percent of G.M.A.C., wants to restore its credit rating to investment grade. In its regulatory filing, G.M. said it was "working to finalize a transaction as rapidly as we can." But it added, "Structuring a G.M.A.C. transaction is a complex endeavor and we cannot predict whether any transaction with respect to G.M.A.C. will occur," nor would it predict "the terms of any transaction, the identity of any purchaser, or whether and over what period a transaction could achieve the principal strategic goals." G.M.'s regulatory filing showed that the company was concerned about the effect of the restatements on its ability to draw from its $5.6 billion standby line of credit, which it could tap if it ran short of cash for operations. While the automaker said it believed that it would be able to make a "good-faith borrowing request" to use the credit line, "in view of G.M.'s recent restatement of its prior financial statements, there is substantial uncertainty as to whether the bank syndicate would be required to honor such a request." Therefore, the company said, "There is a high risk that G.M. would not be able to borrow under this facility." G.M. added that it did not plan to draw from the credit line and was considering amending its terms or replacing it with a new credit line that would be less restrictive. But it also said it had no assurance it would be able to do so. G.M. warned that it faced significant risks, including the possibility of a prolonged strike at Delphi. U.A.W. leaders say they expect Delphi to ask a bankruptcy court on Friday for permission to set aside its contracts and impose less generous wages and benefits. Other risks are a continued deterioration in G.M.A.C.'s credit rating and G.M.'s inability to win concessions from the union in 2007 contract negotiations, the company said. "The occurrence of any one or a combination of these events could severely threaten our liquidity position and threaten the successful implementation of our turnaround plan," it added.

AUTOMOBILES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
GENERAL MOTORS CORP
GENERAL MOTORS ACCEPTANCE CORP
ACCOUNTING AND ACCOUNTANTS
MERGERS ACQUISITIONS AND DIVESTITURES


‘New Media: John O’Donnell: Psychedelic Pantry’ at the New Britain Museum of American Art

Abstract: One sunny morning, John O’Donnell was making coffee when, from the corner of his eye, he was diverted by a ray of light glinting off a pan in his dish drainer. “I was shocked,” he said. “I spent more time than I ever had looking at my dish rack.” That incident was one of the inspirations for “New Media: John O’Donnell: Psychedelic Pantry,” in the New Media Alcove at the New Britain Museum of American Art . Mr. O’Donnell, a multidisciplinary artist in New Haven, has transformed the 56-square-foot space into a fantastical kitchen filled with hallucinatory video, gaudy food packaging and, yes, an illuminated dish rack. The installation highlights the unexpected, poignant and often overlooked occurrences that arise alongside the routines of daily life. “It’s a space where you have experiences that are not about the space at all,” Mr. O’Donnell, 33, said. The exhibition consists of the dish drainer, a countertop one might encounter in a dream, and displays in three wooden cabinet units with their doors flung open. One cabinet is mounted so high that even the artist, who is over 6 feet tall, cannot reach it. Visible inside is a wacky, hemispherical formation covered in Froot Loops , some sprouting plastic blossoms. Image Rainbow illumination from below changes the colors in a dish rack. Credit Melissa Nardiello Oddities like these appear throughout “Psychedelic Pantry,” and Mr. O’Donnell, an assistant professor of printmaking at the University of Connecticut , was happy to expound on the conceptual premises behind them. The Froot Loops sculpture, he said, signifies the disorientation of “discovering something strange in a place where you know it doesn’t belong.” He called the feeling “domestic discombobulation” and indicated another source on the countertop across the alcove: an oversize coffee mug full of spray foam and cereal sitting on one of two stovetop burners. “You see things that you don’t remember doing but you realize you must have done,” he said. “I wanted to recreate that disconnect.” Observant visitors will notice circular mirrors beneath each burner and its false knob. “The mirrors allude to those glimmers and reflections that you catch in your peripheral vision,” Mr. O’Donnell said. There are more mirrors in the cabinet underneath, embedded in a narrow, cavelike environment with peaks of spray foam painted gold. “This represents an alternate reality,” he said, “like when you’re reaching for a colander but your mind is somewhere else.” As for the mirrors, he described them as “bits of metaphysical awareness.” “You might lean down to look into the cabinet and figure out who you really are,” he said. The drainer, placed on a white pedestal, holds a set of glass dishes. From below, a rainbow of oscillating colors shines through them, capturing the beauty of their changing glow. Mr. O’Donnell considers the piece a subtle commentary on class. “I’m taking this boring, ordinary dish rack and making it radiant and elegant,” he said. Image John O’Donnell’s installation forces one to see the ordinary in a new way. Credit Nick Artymiak The exhibition’s most prominent element is the video playing on a monitor in a cabinet hung on the wall. The monitor is framed by snack food boxes adorned with maniacally enthusiastic characters promoting the contents, and bold graphics announcing unsettling combinations of flavors (think cheeseburger macaroni or pizza-flavored chips). The video is a collage of such foods: slow pans over photos of crackers and cookies, neon-colored cereals and goopy macaroni and cheese. The video’s theme, Mr. O’Donnell said, is the deception of consumers by manufacturers. He noted the message “Enlarged to show detail” on many of the boxes, with pictures of the products inside. “They’re tricking you based on the size of the food,” he said. He called it “texture seduction.” Mr. O’Donnell felt the lure of the package while selecting items to include. “I was thinking about which ones went well together,” he said. “I was making choices based on color and design, and then it struck me — this is what people do. They pick the foods they are going to eat based on what the packaging looks like.” Trolling the aisles of the grocery store, Mr. O’Donnell was well aware of the nutritional emptiness of the products he was buying. Their inability to satisfy is embodied in the haunting video soundtrack that pervades the installation, a never-ending note called a Shepard tone that seems to vary in pitch but doesn’t actually ascend or descend. “It could play for hours and you would never find a resolution,” he said. “Just like when you eat a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and you still feel hungry.” The New Media Alcove is part of the William and Bette Batchelor contemporary art gallery, and museumgoers might identify serendipitous connections between “Psychedelic Pantry” and some of the artwork on view nearby. Mr. O’Donnell was particularly taken by an untitled construction by Louise Nevelson hanging opposite his installation. “As I was setting up, I thought, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I’m so close to her work.’ ” He soon realized that she was stacking objects within rectangular forms not unlike his cabinets. “On some level it gave me permission to do the same,” he said. Whether or not visitors decipher all the reasons behind the decisions Mr. O’Donnell made when creating “Psychedelic Pantry,” the artist is pleased that his installation reinterprets a familiar household setting. “Usually when you go to a museum, you see oil paintings and bronze sculptures, and back at home, those things don’t exist,” he said. “Here people see a kitchen. And when they go home, there’s a kitchen there, too. Maybe they will look around and see the patterns and textures that exist in their lives. Maybe they’ll look differently at what’s really in their pantry.”

New Britain Museum of American Art
Art
New Britain CT
John O'Donnell


Cal’s New Confidence Is Homegrown

Abstract: BERKELEY, Calif. — Jared Goff stands high above the University of California’s Memorial Stadium and can see his hometown across San Francisco Bay. He can look down the other way and point to the spot in the stadium where he sat for his ninth birthday party, a place where his family had season tickets. Heading into his junior season, Goff feels right at home at Cal. He plays for the team he has cheered for his entire life, has his family close by, and has an increased comfort in the offense and the art of quarterbacking that was missing earlier in his career. Goff is ready for a breakthrough season that can return the Golden Bears to a contender in the Pacific-12 Conference after years of struggles. “I’m trying to soak it all in,” he said. “It’s still kind of surreal.” How much longer Goff will get to experience the college life remains to be seen. For now, he will enjoy the moments he cherishes, such as interacting with fellow students whom he calls “some of the smartest people in the country”; walking the same campus his parents did; and hearing “Go, Bears!” cheers each day from students eager to witness a winner again. Goff is projected as a first-round pick if he leaves school after this season and is considered one of the top pro passing prospects in the country. That issue remains on the back burner for Goff, who has more immediate goals of getting the Bears to a bowl game, and beyond, after winning just six games his first two years. “I’m not concerned about that right now,” he said. “I need to go out here and get better every day and win games and let that stuff happen when it happens. Now is not the time to make that decision.” Image Goff (16) is projected as a first-round pick in the N.F.L. draft should he leave after this season. “I’m not concerned about that right now,” he said. Credit Ben Margot/Associated Press Goff has strong support from his family, including his father, Jerry, a former big league catcher who played 90 games for Montreal, Pittsburgh and Houston. Jerry Goff always instilled in his son the importance of staying in the moment and having fun, lessons that have not changed — even as the stage has gotten bigger. “His focus just needs to be on winning football games and getting better,” Jerry Goff said. “Everything else will take care of itself. Looking ahead doesn’t work in any sport, anytime, anywhere.” So Jared Goff tunes out talk of the Heisman Trophy, the N.F.L. draft and everything else that does not have to do with becoming a sharper quarterback, an improved leader or a better teammate. At the top of the list for Goff, a player who remembers celebrating big wins at Memorial Stadium and the pain of tough losses as a youngster in the stands, is turning the Bears back into the contender they were a decade ago under Coach Jeff Tedford. The Bears bottomed out in Goff’s first year, winning just one game in the first year under Coach Sonny Dykes as defections and a new system left the team outmatched. There was significant improvement last season, when Cal won five games and had a shot at being a bowl team, except for late losses to Arizona, U.C.L.A. and Brigham Young. “We made so many little mistakes that cost us games,” Goff said. “That happens with an inexperienced team, but talent-wise, we were a six- , seven- or eight-win team if little things go our way. This year, we’re not even being close to that. We want to take it to the next level and blow through the roof.” The numbers Goff has put up in two years in the pass-happy system are staggering. He has completed 61.2 percent of his passes for 7,481 yards and 53 touchdowns, with 17 interceptions. He ranks in the top 10 in completions, yards and touchdown passes since starting college ball. This year could be even bigger because of the increased comfort level in the offense. Most of the players have been in the system for two or three seasons, creating seamless chemistry between quarterback and receivers that should benefit the team on the field. Goff said he is amazed when he looks back and realizes how much he did not know as a freshman, yet knows he will experience that same feeling again in a few years when he reflects on the end of his college career. “I’ll go back and watch film from last year and see something I did that was really dumb or something,” he said. “Just little stuff that is so obvious to me now, I wasn’t noticing last year. It’s just part of the maturation process when you’re a college quarterback.” With that increased knowledge comes increased responsibility. At the start of his career, Goff usually ran the play called by the coordinator Tony Franklin. Now he has the freedom to change things at the line of scrimmage if he thinks a different play would work better against a certain defense. That led to a more efficient offense this spring and has Cal hoping for big things this season. “When you learn to do that as a quarterback, it allows you to execute at a higher level,” Dykes said. “The defense will try to take something away from us, and we want to be able to counter it. When your quarterback makes good decisions and gets in the right play, the offense operates at a higher level.”

Berkeley
Jared Goff
University of California
College football


Wall Street Fastens Its Seatbelt, Preparing for This Week’s Ride

Abstract: After one wild week, Wall Street braced for another. Frazzled traders and money managers spent an angst-filled weekend struggling to fathom the sweeping bailout the Bush administration proposed for financial institutions in the United States and what it will mean for the world’s markets. At big banks, staff members rushed to update trading records before the opening bell sounded on Monday morning in New York. Quants, those math-loving traders who use complex computer models to hunt out investments, tinkered with algorithms. Some hedge fund managers, unsure where the markets will go or what the government will do, sought safety in cash. Securities lawyers sorted through new rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission that will require such funds to disclose their bearish bets on financial companies. And in between, everyone tried to catch up on some sleep. But after the Dow Jones industrial average cartwheeled a dizzying 1,023 points in 24 hours on Thursday and Friday, ending the week virtually where it began, just about the only thing people seemed to agree on was that this ride was not over. Some on Wall Street feared that the explosive rally in the stock market — the Dow soared nearly 3.9 percent on Thursday and then 3.3 percent Friday — would prove fleeting. Others worried that the dollar and Treasuries would weaken further, given the enormous burdens that the bailout will place on the Treasury. And still others argued that the markets were so volatile that the safest thing is to stay out of them. Indeed, the VIX index, a closely watched measure of volatility that is sometimes referred to as the fear index, spiked to its highest level since 2003 last Wednesday. “Sometimes the answer is to do nothing,” said Keith McCullough, the chief executive of Research Edge, an investment research firm. “Just keep your cash in a safe place.” As details of the Bush administration’s rescue proposal trickled out this weekend, money managers were eager to learn more about how the plan would proceed. The administration proposed to give the Treasury authority to buy up to $700 billion in distressed assets from financial institutions to shore up the industry and avert economic upheaval. But many questions remain. Some portfolio managers said they held off working on Saturday and Sunday, hoping more details would emerge Sunday night. “Everyone has to be at their post in the event that we get meaningful details,” said Douglas Peta, market strategist for J.& W. Seligman & Company, an asset manager in New York. “Any details that emerge will importantly bear on what the market’s going to do on Monday.” William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the giant bond firm Pimco, spent Sunday morning on his treadmill and planned to go into the office later in the afternoon. Earlier in the weekend, he and Mohamed A. El-Erian, the co-chief executive of Pimco, sent a single-page, 10-point directive to all Pimco officers about what they should do Monday morning. Mr. Gross said he expected the financial bailout plan to push down the dollar and the price of Treasury notes and bonds, but that it should help rally mortgage securities. That squares with Pimco’s big investment in bonds backed by home loans that are issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “This is a revolutionary move,” Mr. Gross said of the federal plan, “where we now expect and the market expects a transformation of wild, wild west capitalism to hopefully the benevolent fist of government.” Many money managers, particularly hedge funds, were also trying to make sense of the new short-selling rules. On Friday, the S.E.C. temporarily banned short sales of nearly 800 financial stocks. The announcement followed a similar move by financial regulators in Britain. In Australia, the government imposed a 30-day ban on short-selling of all stocks, even those far removed from the financial sector, on Sunday. Short-selling has been blamed by banking executives for contributing to the decline in financial stocks in recent months. Short-sellers borrow shares of companies’ stocks and sell them, hoping to later repurchase them at lower prices and profit from the spread. Over the weekend, traders whose strategies depend on shorting stocks tried to reassess their models. Some quantitative hedge funds execute thousands of split-second trades and use short positions to hedge their risks. The shorting rule on Friday made it more expensive to purchase put options on stocks, which are bets that the stock’s price will fall. “We can’t really trade if we can’t use options,” said Bradley S. Banks, managing partner of Athena Capital Research, a small hedge fund in New York. Mr. Banks added that his fund would adapt to the new rules, but a problem was a lack of clarity over what the permanent rules would be. Many investors in the United States exited their short trades on financial stocks on Friday. Investors will be required to report short positions in such stocks to the S.E.C., beginning in a week. The short-selling rule expires on Oct. 2, but could be extended. James L. Melcher, president of Balestra Capital, a hedge fund in New York that has been bearish on stocks for the last couple of years, said the S.E.C.’s move caught him by surprise. Mr. Melcher said his firm closed about half its short positions on Wednesday because he believed that regulators would aid the financial system, given recent events. “What we have periodically done is we have sold short into the rally,” he said. “When things come down again, we buy. That’s what a lot of hedge fund guys do.” Some of the investing strategies that are in flux because of the rule changes include index futures arbitrage and merger arbitrage. For instance, traders who want to make a bet on whether the merger involving the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch will go through will not be able to use short-selling this week to do so. Some investors say that the pause in short-selling of stocks may create a lack of liquidity in the markets and create volatility. “They’re making the whole body so sick just to get rid of the part they want to address,” said Lee Schultheis, chief investment strategist at AIP Mutual Funds, which operates a fund of funds. Mr. Schultheis suggested that the government might better accomplish its goals of slowing market turmoil by reintroducing the so-called uptick rule, which was repealed 14 months ago. Under that rule, which dated to the 1930s, investors could not short stocks unless there had been a purchase on the upswing first. “The only thing that is predictable for this week is the volatility, which will remain high,” Vidak Radonjic, managing partner of Beryl Consulting Group, which works with hedge funds. “The market is a real mess right now, fundamentals do not count, and fear and greed rules.”

United States Economy
Stocks and Bonds
Banks and Banking


Joseph M. Margiotta, Long Island G.O.P. Leader, Dies at 81

Abstract: Joseph M. Margiotta, who for 16 years ruled the Nassau County Republican Party , once one of the most powerful political organizations in New York State , died Friday in Roslyn, N.Y. He was 81 and lived in Brookville, N.Y. The death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for St. Francis Hospital, where Mr. Margiotta was hospitalized for six days. Mr. Margiotta was chairman of the Nassau Republican Party from 1967 until 1983, when he was forced to resign after he was convicted of federal mail fraud and conspiracy charges in a municipal insurance kickback scheme. He served 14 months. For most of the 20th century, as Long Island was transformed into suburban tracts, the Nassau Republican Party was one of the most potent forces in the daily lives of the growing population. For years, Mr. Margiotta cemented that role, choosing protégés who rose to political prominence while also playing a direct role in shaping even mundane decisions like bridge tolls and cable-television franchises. While Mr. Margiotta was chairman, some residents would call the local Republican committeeman, rather than a county agency, to get a broken streetlight fixed. Over the years, he rewarded loyalty by recommending party supporters for political patronage jobs on municipal payrolls. “Certain people try to, you know, make patronage look as if it’s dishonest or improper,” he told The New York Times in a 1982 interview. “It’s a fact of life. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Among the political leaders whose careers were guided by Mr. Margiotta were former United States Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato; Dean G. Skelos, the current majority leader of the State Senate; and Joseph N. Mondello, the state Republican Party chairman. He was convicted on Dec. 9, 1981, for presiding over a system in which a Hicksville, N.Y., insurance company was coerced into splitting commissions with Republican politicians who did no work for the money. A total of $678,000 was paid to the politicians over 10 years. The federal case rested on the assumption that as Nassau’s pre-eminent political power, Mr. Margiotta exerted such influence on government that he was, in effect, a public official and therefore came under the jurisdiction of federal extortion laws. “I feel that I’ve been convicted because I’ve been a successful political leader,” he said at the time. “I feel that I carried out my responsibilities honestly. I didn’t break any law.” He is survived by his wife, Dorothy; a son, Michael; a daughter, Carol Lynn Charchalis; and three grandchildren. In 1983, Mr. Margiotta told a crowd of 4,600 party members, “For 31 years I have had a love affair with the Republican Party, and I want you to know that love affair is never going to end.”

Republican Party
New York State
Nassau County (NY)
Deaths (Obituaries)


G.E. May Sell Appliance Division

Abstract: General Electric is planning to sell its appliance division, one of the oldest businesses in the conglomerate’s 120-year history, people briefed on the proposal said Wednesday. A sale of the unit, which makes refrigerators, microwaves and washer-dryers, among other items, could fetch at least $5 billion, these people said. G.E. and its investment bank, Goldman Sachs , have been laying the groundwork for an auction over the last few weeks. The sale would mark the end of a brand of household products that made General Electric a fixture in American homes over the last century. Jeffrey R. Immelt , its embattled chief executive, has been trying to refashion General Electric in the face of widespread calls to break up one of America’s largest companies. That mission has taken on greater urgency with the credit squeeze and the slumping economy, which have affected many of G.E.’s businesses. The appliance unit, which helped make G.E. an American icon, may end up in foreign hands. The division, based in Louisville, Ky., has faced increased pressure in recent years from Chinese manufacturers, which have been growing at double-digit rates thanks in part to significantly lower costs. Asian manufacturers are expected to be particularly drawn to the division, seeking to take advantage of G.E.’s widely known brand name as they try to become global businesses. Lenovo, the Chinese electronics company, successfully acquired I.B.M.’s personal computer division in 2004, in part to help establish itself on the world stage. Wall Street bankers are rushing to lay claim to potential bidders for the division. Among the expected suitors are Haier of China, which bid on Maytag two years ago; LG Electronics and Samsung, both of South Korea; Bosch of Germany; Electrolux of Sweden, which makes Sears’s Kenmore line of appliances; and Controladora Mabe, a G.E. partner based in Mexico. As part of a potential sale, G.E. is likely to hand over a license to use the G.E. brand for a short period of time, the people briefed on the proposal said. After the initial license for using the General Electric brand expires, the buyer of the appliance unit would be allowed to continue to use the Monogram and Profile badges. The arrangement is similar to the way Lenovo held onto the I.B.M. badge for several years before using its own. The news was first reported on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal on its Web site. G.E.’s once high-flying stock price has fallen 20.5 percent during Mr. Immelt’s seven-year tenure, and many analysts and investors have called for transformational changes at the corporate behemoth. Last year, it sold its plastics business to Sabic, the big Saudi Arabian industrial company, for $11.6 billion. Mr. Immelt’s critics long have urged him to consider more unit sales, including the appliance unit, NBC Universal and GE Money, the company’s consumer finance unit. The company has focused on higher-growth technology businesses of late, moving out of consumer-oriented operations. G.E.’s light bulbs, however, continue to be made by the company’s lighting division. That critical chorus grew louder and more insistent last month when G.E.’s first-quarter earnings badly missed analysts’ estimates and its own projections. G.E.’s stunning announcement, made more notable by its status as a barometer of the economy, shook Wall Street’s confidence: the company’s shares fell 13 percent that day, its biggest one-day loss in two decades. Even worse, for a company that prided itself on meeting expectations, G.E. was forced to cut its projected earnings growth for this year to 5 percent from 10 percent. The appliance business generated $7 billion in revenue last year, only a small fraction of G.E.’s $173 billion in total annual revenue, but divorcing it from the company would carry great historical import. Begun in 1907 as a maker of cooking and heating appliances, the appliance division has since grown to manufacture a broad range of products. Among its firsts are the room air-conditioner (1930), the combined washer-dryer unit (1954) and the toaster oven (1956). As of last year, the appliances unit had about 13,000 of G.E.’s 327,000 employees.

General Electric Co
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Immelt Jeffrey R
Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated
Home Appliances


N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat

Abstract: WASHINGTON — American officials have long considered Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the United States for fear that the company would create “back doors” in its equipment that could allow the Chinese military or Beijing-backed hackers to steal corporate and government secrets. But even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors — directly into Huawei’s networks. The agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart, according to N.S.A. documents provided by the former contractor Edward J. Snowden. It obtained information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches that Huawei boasts connect a third of the world’s population, and monitored communications of the company’s top executives. One of the goals of the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was to find any links between Huawei and the People’s Liberation Army, one 2010 document made clear. But the plans went further: to exploit Huawei’s technology so that when the company sold equipment to other countries — including both allies and nations that avoid buying American products — the N.S.A. could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if ordered by the president, offensive cyberoperations. “Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products,” the N.S.A. document said. “We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products,” it added, to “gain access to networks of interest” around the world. The documents were disclosed by The New York Times and Der Spiegel , and are also part of a book by Der Spiegel, “The N.S.A. Complex.” The documents, as well as interviews with intelligence officials, offer new insights into the United States’ escalating digital cold war with Beijing. While President Obama and China’s president, Xi Jinping, have begun talks about limiting the cyber conflict, it appears to be intensifying. The N.S.A., for example, is tracking more than 20 Chinese hacking groups — more than half of them Chinese Army and Navy units — as they break into the networks of the United States government, companies including Google, and drone and nuclear-weapon part makers, according to a half-dozen current and former American officials. Image Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, is seen as a Chinese version of Steve Jobs. Credit Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press If anything, they said, the pace has increased since the revelation last year that some of the most aggressive Chinese hacking originated at a People’s Liberation Army facility, Unit 61398 , in Shanghai. The Obama administration distinguishes between the hacking and corporate theft that the Chinese conduct against American companies to buttress their own state-run businesses, and the intelligence operations that the United States conducts against Chinese and other targets. American officials have repeatedly said that the N.S.A. breaks into foreign networks only for legitimate national security purposes. A White House spokeswoman, Caitlin M. Hayden, said: “We do not give intelligence we collect to U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line. Many countries cannot say the same.” But that does not mean the American government does not conduct its own form of corporate espionage with a different set of goals. Those concerning Huawei were described in the 2010 document. “If we can determine the company’s plans and intentions,” an analyst wrote, “we hope that this will lead us back to the plans and intentions of the PRC,” referring to the People’s Republic of China. The N.S.A. saw an additional opportunity: As Huawei invested in new technology and laid undersea cables to connect its $40 billion-a-year networking empire, the agency was interested in tunneling into key Chinese customers, including “high priority targets — Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Cuba.” The documents offer no answer to a central question: Is Huawei an independent company, as its leaders contend, or a front for the People’s Liberation Army, as American officials suggest but have never publicly proved? Two years after Shotgiant became a major program, the House Intelligence Committee delivered an unclassified report on Huawei and another Chinese company, ZTE, that cited no evidence confirming the suspicions about Chinese government ties. Still, the October 2012 report concluded that the companies must be blocked from “acquisitions, takeover or mergers” in the United States, and “cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence.” Slides Describe Mission Involving Huawei Powerpoint slides from 2010 lay out the National Security Agency’s goals in an effort to break into networks of Huawei, the telecommunications giant. Huawei, which has all but given up its hopes of entering the American market, complains that it is the victim of protectionism, swathed in trumped-up national security concerns. Company officials insist that it has no connection to the People’s Liberation Army. William Plummer, a senior Huawei executive in the United States, said the company had no idea it was an N.S.A. target, adding that in his personal opinion, “The irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us.” “If such espionage has been truly conducted,” Mr. Plummer added, “then it is known that the company is independent and has no unusual ties to any government, and that knowledge should be relayed publicly to put an end to an era of mis- and disinformation.” Blocked at Every Turn Washington’s concerns about Huawei date back nearly a decade, since the RAND Corporation, the research organization, evaluated the potential threat of China for the American military. RAND concluded that “private Chinese companies such as Huawei” were part of a new “digital triangle” of companies, institutes and government agencies that worked together secretly. Huawei is a global giant: it manufactures equipment that makes up the backbone of the Internet, lays submarine cables from Asia to Africa and has become the world’s third largest smartphone maker after Samsung and Apple. The man behind its strategy is Ren Zhengfei, the company’s elusive founder, who was a P.L.A. engineer in the 1970s. To the Chinese, he is something akin to Steve Jobs — an entrepreneur who started a digital empire with little more than $3,000 in the mid-1980s, and took on both state-owned companies and foreign competitors. But to American officials, he is a link to the People’s Liberation Army. They have blocked his company at every turn: pressing Sprint to kill a $3 billion deal to buy Huawei’s fourth generation, or 4G, network technology; scuttling a planned purchase of 3Com for fear that Huawei would alter computer code sold to the United States military; and pushing allies, like Australia, to back off from major projects. As long ago as 2007, the N.S.A. began a covert program against Huawei, the documents show. By 2010, the agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit — which breaks into hard-to-access networks — found a way into Huawei’s headquarters. The agency collected Mr. Ren’s communications, one document noted, though analysts feared they might be missing many of them. N.S.A. analysts made clear that they were looking for more than just “signals intelligence” about the company and its connections to Chinese leaders; they wanted to learn how to pierce its systems so that when adversaries and allies bought Huawei equipment, the United States would be plugged into those networks. (The Times withheld technical details of the operation at the request of the Obama administration, which cited national security concerns.) The N.S.A.’s operations against China do not stop at Huawei. Last year, the agency cracked two of China’s biggest cellphone networks, allowing it to track strategically important Chinese military units, according to an April 2013 document leaked by Mr. Snowden. Other major targets, the document said, are the locations where the Chinese leadership works. The country’s leaders, like everyone else, are constantly upgrading to better, faster Wi-Fi — and the N.S.A. is constantly finding new ways in. Hack Attacks Accelerate Chinese state attacks have only accelerated in recent years, according to the current and former intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity about classified information. A dozen P.L.A. military units — aside from Unit 61398 — do their hacking from eavesdropping posts around China, and though their targets were initially government agencies and foreign ministries around the world, they have since expanded into the private sector. For example, officials point to the First Bureau of the army’s Third Department, which the N.S.A. began tracking in 2004 after it hacked into the Pentagon’s networks. The unit’s targets have grown to include telecom and technology companies that specialize in networking and encryption equipment — including some Huawei competitors. For some of its most audacious attacks, China relies on hackers at state-funded universities and privately owned Chinese technology companies, apparently as much for their skills as for the plausible deniability it offers the state if it gets caught. The N.S.A. is tracking more than half a dozen such groups suspected of operating at the behest of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, China’s civilian spy agency, the officials said. Their targets, they noted, closely align with China’s stated economic and strategic directives. As China strove to develop drones and next-generation ballistic and submarine-launched missiles in recent years, the N.S.A. and its partners watched as one group of privately employed engineers based in Guangzhou in southern China pilfered the blueprints to missile, satellite, space, and nuclear propulsion technology from businesses in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia and Africa. And as China strove to make its own inroads on the web, officials said another group of private hackers infiltrated Google, Adobe and dozens of other global technology companies in 2010. Lately, the officials said, that group and its counterparts are also going after security firms, banks, chemical companies, automakers and even nongovernment organizations. “China does more in terms of cyberespionage than all other countries put together,” said James A. Lewis, a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The question is no longer which industries China is hacking into,” he added. “It’s which industries they aren’t hacking into.”

China
Corporate espionage
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Huawei Technologies
NSA
People's Liberation Army
Edward Snowden
Cyberwarfare


Nice Catch: Capturing the Lore of Life on the Water

Abstract: A CARTOON lobster vows he’ll never be caught, even as a real-life lobsterman demonstrates how he sets his traps. Depression-era crowds flock to the newly opened Jones Beach, grateful for a comfortable seaside getaway at virtually no cost. Baymen sing their swan song, recalling the days when oysters, clams and boats filled the Great South Bay. These are a few of the moments captured in 15 films that will be shown in a new festival on Nov. 9 at Stony Brook University . Intended to entertain and to educate, Maritime Film Festival: Tradition at the Crossroads is the first such event to be held locally, said Nancy Solomon, executive director of Long Island Traditions. Her nonprofit group, aimed at documenting and preserving local arts and traditions, is presenting the festival along with New York Sea Grant, a state program that researches and teaches the public about waterways. Panel discussions are part of the mix, and questions from the audience will be encouraged, said Ms. Solomon, who came up with the idea for the festival. People had long called her attention to fishing documentaries on television, she said, so she knew there was interest. “We’re using these films as jumping-off points” for discussions of environmental and other themes or, when the films aren’t local, to explain how they relate to Long Island, she said. A 2005 movie, “Fisher Poets,” focuses on the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, but local poets and fishermen will be on hand to help audiences make the connections. A Mattituck lobsterman, Jim King, will be on a panel discussing “Let’s Go Lobstering!” an educational film (with an animated lobster) made for children and adults by Tim Tonner of Stowe, Vt. Mr. Tonner, a filmmaker and bartender, said he became friendly with Maine lobstermen who taught snowboarding in Vermont during the winter; he would visit them in the summer. In 2002, he said, “We were sitting around in Becky’s Diner in Portland, a landmark, and said, ‘Why don’t we start putting a film together?’ ” It took nearly two years. Ms. Solomon came upon the film two years ago when she met Mr. Tonner (who will speak at the festival) at his bartending job in Stowe. Lobstering thrived on Long Island, she said, until a mysterious die-off in 1999. Several films are historical, including three whose makers will also attend the festival. George Pozderec said he made his 1998 Emmy-nominated film, “Jones Beach: An American Riviera,” because of his own fond memories and because he had read Robert Caro’s book “The Power Broker,” about Robert Moses, architect of the Jones Beach plan. Mr. Pozderec, who lives on the South Shore of Long Island but who grew up in Douglaston, Queens, and later in Huntington, included interviews with Mr. Caro and with the actors Patti LuPone and Daniel Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin, who grew up in Massapequa, recalls visits with his family in the film, saying, “I could be or do anything I wanted when I was at the beach.” Similarly, Glenn Gebhard’s childhood helped inspire his 1999 movie “Baymen.” “My father had a boat, and we would go out on the Great South Bay,” said Mr. Gebhard, who grew up in Merrick. He now lives in Los Angeles but owns a home in Sound Beach. Talking about the baymen, he said, “I would see them out there, and then I didn’t, and I wanted to know what happened to them.” He followed several doing their solitary work. One told him: “I’m one of the last guys here. This is the end of the line.” Tom Garber grew up in Syracuse, but his great-great-grandmother had owned property in Hampton Bays since 1897. In 1990, Mr. Garber moved to the family home there, where he makes maritime documentaries. “Time and Tide: The Maritime Heritage of Hampton Bays,” made in 2004, started with “one gentleman, an old-timer named Capt. Alvin Penny.” Mr. Garber met Captain Al, as he’s known, at the Shinnecock Fishing Station, a bar. “He came dressed in his Navy uniform and sat in a corner and told me what life was like” years ago, Mr. Garber said. The captain wouldn’t appear on camera, though other people did. Two have since died, he said, explaining, “The whole idea was to get them on tape before they went.”

State University of New York at Stony Brook


In a Twitter Post, Malaysia Airlines Sends the Wrong Message

Abstract: BANGKOK — Malaysia Airlines tried to appeal to travelers’ sense of adventure in a year-end promotional campaign. “Want to go somewhere, but don’t know where?” the airline wrote Thursday on Twitter. A day later, it apologized for the tweet, which has been removed, after some users of social media questioned the effectiveness — and taste — of the post by an airline still reeling from the disappearance of Flight 370 over the Indian Ocean this year. One woman suggested on Twitter it was “probably not the best choice of words for an airline that doesn’t know where one of its planes is.” Another said she was not sure she wanted to be on a flight, “going somewhere but don’t know where?” Seriously, what were @MAS thinking?!?! #epicPRfail http://t.co/hzEk25amxe — michelle robson (@mrobson2000) November 28, 2014 Search crews continue to scour a vast swath of seabed off the coast of Australia, the presumed location of Flight 370, which left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8 but took an unexplained turn with 239 people onboard and disappeared . Malaysia Airlines tweeted Friday that its promotional message “was intended to inspire travellers to explore deals offered.” It was not the first time that the airline’s promotions have brought on snide criticism. In September, the company initiated a marketing campaign in New Zealand and Australia titled, “My Ultimate Bucket List.” The campaign invited would-be passengers to submit lists of the destinations they most wanted to visit and offered the possibility of winning tickets. But the name of the competition, inspired by a list of things to do before you die, or “kick the bucket,” prompted complaints that it was in poor taste coming two months after another of the airline’s jets, Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over Ukraine in July, killing all 298 people onboard. The airline, which on Friday announced that its financial losses have deepened, has sought to lure back passengers with a variety of promotional messages and campaigns on social media. It has been tweeting a series of what are meant to be inspirational, greeting-card style aphorisms to the airline’s more than than 645,000 Twitter followers, promising “the possibility of better things ahead is greater than what we leave behind.” In September, using the hashtag “flyinghigh,” the airline tweeted: “If you fell down yesterday, don’t stay down. Get up as quick as you can .” A month later, Malaysia Airlines adopted a new slogan, “keepflying,” and reminded its Twitter followers of the words of Confucius : “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”

Malaysia Airlines
Social Media
advertising,marketing
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Malaysia Airlines 17


P.G.A. Championship 2014: Lee Westwood Overcomes Issues on First Day at Valhalla

Abstract: LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Lee Westwood was having an unlucky day at the 96th P.G.A. Championship. Three times Thursday, his golf ball rolled into a fairway divot or the pitch mark of another player’s ball, a rare trifecta of star-crossed doom given the green, unblemished expanse of Valhalla Golf Club. Westwood, a 41-year-old from England, did not need a reminder that fate has not been his ally in major championships. He has twice finished second and four times finished third. For more than a decade he has heard the backhanded compliment: that he is the best golfer without a major victory. The first time Westwood’s ball came to rest in a divot, he had a double bogey. His score ballooned, and so did his blood pressure. “Everyone knows how frustrating this game can be and how much you can swear,” Westwood said later. It was at this moment that his caddie, Billy Foster, interceded. Image Westwood on the 18th hole during the first round at Valhalla Golf Club. Credit Andrew Redington/Getty Images “He comes in and sort of talks to you calmly and says, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing and it will come,’ ” Westwood said. “Hate those words from him. But he’s right.” The next two times Westwood ended up in an imperfection of the golf course, he made birdie. Those were two of the nine birdies Westwood recorded on his way to a round of 65, his lowest score in a P.G.A. Championship. The score also matched his best in a major, a round at the 2011 United States Open. Westwood’s performance left him atop the leader board after the first round, tied with the Americans Ryan Palmer and Kevin Chappell. While the loudest pretournament chatter focused on the health of Tiger Woods and whether he could salvage a lost year in the season’s final major, for one day, at least, it was another golfer enduring a subpar season who stole the show. The conversation at Valhalla shifted from whether Woods could make the United States Ryder Cup team from far back in the standings to whether Westwood, a Ryder Cup stalwart, could qualify for the European team. One accomplishment at a time, Westwood said. Image Tiger Woods chipped well but putted poorly on Thursday. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times “All I’m thinking about is winning the tournament — this is a major,” he said. “The Ryder Cup comes as a consequence of playing well.” Playing well and staying healthy were the main goals laid out for Woods by Tom Watson, the American Ryder Cup captain. Woods appeared to be unaffected by his recent back injuries and hit several good shots with his driver and short irons. But his putting was dreadful, and he finished with a three-over-par 74. It was his fourth consecutive round of par or worse in a major. In his 79 PGA Tour victories, Woods has never started a tournament with a score worse than two over par. Woods missed numerous birdie putts, and his only birdie came when he chipped in from the edge of the 16th green. Once an almost peerless putter, Woods hit birdie putts short, left and right and had one lip out. “I had plenty of chances to turn around my round, but I couldn’t get the putts in the hole,” said Woods, who did not make his customary trip to the practice range after his round and instead left Valhalla to receive treatment for his balky back. Injury prevention has been on Westwood’s mind, as well, though he was never known for his fitness regimen. Image Bubba Watson hit out of the woods on the second hole. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times “I think when you get to 41, you probably need to do a bit more gym work than I was doing,” Westwood said. “I’ve been working on my flexibility and strengthening certain areas. When I’m doing all that, I’m losing a bit of weight as well. I’m feeling better about myself and it’s had a slight impact.” Westwood is not the only golfer at Valhalla who has improved his fitness. Rory McIlroy, ranked No. 1 in the world, said before the tournament that he had added a few pounds of muscle from a weight-training program. McIlroy charged up the leader board by shooting a three-under 32 in his opening nine holes. But a double-bogey 7 followed at the 10th hole, and then a bogey on the 11th hole. He came back with four successive birdies and finished one stroke behind the leaders. With a five-under 66, McIlroy was tied with Jim Furyk, Edoardo Molinari, Henrik Stenson and Chris Wood. Sharing the top spot with Westwood, Chappell and Palmer were also surprise leaders. Chappell, a 28-year-old from California playing in his second P.G.A. Championship, has had just one top-10 finish on the PGA Tour this season. Palmer has five top-10 finishes this season on the tour, but finished far back or missed the cut in his last three tournaments. Other golfers lurking not far from the top of the leader board included Phil Mickelson, who hit several wayward shots from the tee but also made a series of brilliant recoveries around the green to shoot a 69. Rickie Fowler and Jimmy Walker were also at two under.

Lee Westwood
Golf
Ryan Palmer
Kevin Chappell
Tiger Woods
Professional Golfers Assn
PGA Championship


Irked at Democrats, Firefighters Suspend Federal Contributions

Abstract: The nation’s main firefighters’ union, long a strong supporter of Democratic candidates, announced on Tuesday that it would indefinitely suspend all contributions to federal candidates out of frustration with Congressional Democrats who, union officials say, have not fought harder against budget cuts and antiunion legislation. The union, the International Association of Fire Fighters, said it would focus its contributions and energies on state and local races because many legislatures have sought to curtail collective bargaining or otherwise weaken public-sector unions. Harold A. Schaitberger , the president of the 300,000-member union, said in an interview that he was dismayed with Democrats in Congress for not fighting harder against Republican budget cuts and efforts to weaken unions in more than a dozen state legislatures. “We’re tired that our friends have not been willing to stand up and fight back on our behalf with the same ferocity, the same commitment that our enemies have in trying to destroy our members’ rights,” he said. “Quite frankly, our enemies are trying to kill us as a labor movement and union trying to represent workers and help the middle class.” The firefighters’ announcement is a blow to Democrats, because the union often gives far more to Democratic candidates than Republican ones. It donated $1.9 million to Democratic candidates in national elections during the 2010 campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, compared with $408,500 to Republicans. The union’s endorsement is especially coveted by candidates, because of the firefighters’ stature in many communities, especially since 9/11. Organized labor is a crucial part of the Democratic base, having spent more than $200 million on behalf of the party’s candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. But many union leaders have complained privately about President Obama for his support of trade deals and for not doing more to enact pro-union legislation or block large budget cuts. Nonetheless, most union leaders are standing with Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats, viewing them as a bulwark against what they see as a Republican antiunion agenda. Mr. Schaitberger complained that Congressional Democrats were doing far too little to combat ongoing efforts to weaken public-sector unions in Florida, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee and elsewhere. In Oklahoma, the Republican-led State Senate sent the governor legislation last week that would prohibit the state’s 12 largest cities from bargaining with public-sector unions. The firefighters’ union was disappointed that the Democratic-led Senate and House failed to pass legislation last year that would have given firefighters and police officers nationwide the right to bargain collectively. The union also voiced frustration that Congressional Democrats did not fight harder to prevent cuts in funding for emergency response equipment and training, a move that would have helped prevent the layoffs of firefighters. Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, “House Democrats are deeply committed to fighting for collective bargaining rights of hard-working men and women.” Mr. Schaitberger, echoing several other union leaders, said in an interview, “We’re feeling taken for granted” by the Democrats.

Collective Bargaining
Organized Labor
Campaign Finance
United States Politics and Government
International Assn of Fire Fighters
Democratic Party


Mocking Critics, Donald Trump Says He Can Win Without Republican Unity

Abstract: BURLINGAME, Calif. — Donald J. Trump got a taste on Friday of what his next month of campaigning in California could be like. He was forced to exit his motorcade and walk through a field, climbing an embankment with Secret Service agents helping him, to avoid angry demonstrators on the street. “We went under a fence and through a fence, and oh, boy, it felt like I was crossing the border, actually,” Mr. Trump said when he finally made it to a ballroom to speak at California’s Republican Party convention. For the next 25 minutes, though, Mr. Trump spoke little of California or its June 7 primary. Rather, he wrestled with whether he wanted to begin healing the fractured party he was seeking to lead. Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner in the presidential race, mocked his conservative critics and his current and former rivals as dumb, “disgusting” and losers. He claimed at least twice that he could win even if the party did not come together. And with some conservatives still uneasy about his beliefs, he breezily dismissed questions about his principles. “Folks, I’m a conservative, but at this point, who cares? We got to straighten out the country,” he said at a subdued luncheon of party activists who seemed more curious about seeing a celebrity than enthusiastic about their potential presidential nominee. During the same speech, though, he called for party unity to defeat Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic standard-bearer. Mr. Trump’s remarks offered a vivid illustration of the current state of his campaign: As he edges closer to the nomination, he is under pressure to curb his hard-edged language and exude a more statesmanlike demeanor. But the continuing attacks from other Republicans plainly rankle him, and he appears to have little appetite to make peace with his critics. Image Donald J. Trump’s motorcade was forced to walk after protesters gathered outside the California hotel where he was to speak at the state Republican convention. Credit Reuters Tv/Reuters “Ideally we’re going to be together,” he said. But then he said: “I think we’re going to win even if we’re not together. There are some people I honestly don’t want their endorsement.” At another point, he said, “There should be and there has to be unity,” before adding: “Would I win, can I win without it? I think so.” Mr. Trump singled out Senator Ted Cruz, his most formidable remaining rival in the primary campaign, and Jeb Bush, a onetime foe who emerged this week to again assail Mr. Trump, for harsh criticism. “Does he want to endorse me?” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Bush. “I don’t care. It’s not going to have any impact on whether we beat Hillary Clinton.” He also mocked Mr. Cruz’s newly named potential running mate, Carly Fiorina, for her presidential bid — “I like Carly, but when she left, she had no votes” — and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, whose fading campaign and penchant for eating on camera were subjects of ridicule. (Mr. Trump drew laughter when he said his 10-year-old son had deemed Mr. Kasich’s eating habits “disgusting.”) Mr. Trump likened the insistence of his two remaining Republican opponents to stay in the race to the attitude of children who do not get their way. “I don’t care, Mom: I’m staying here, I’m not leaving,” he said, imitating a pouting child. Mr. Trump’s insults have been a staple of his campaign, and the approach, he said again on Friday, served him well in the course of knocking out a series of Republican governors and senators who had once been seen as stiff competition. Yet as he closes in on the nomination, traditional party leaders are growing nervous that he cannot seem to resist the temptation to lash out at his remaining Republican critics, even as he professes a desire for unity. Video Donald J. Trump said he felt as if he were “crossing the border” after entering the California Republican convention through a back entrance to avoid protesters. Credit Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times “I didn’t think that was particularly helpful,” Marty Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist and California Chamber of Commerce official, said after the speech. But at least for the primary, Mr. Trump may not need the support of the sort of activists who filled the ballroom of a hotel just south of San Francisco. He has shown a capacity to win with little help from traditional Republican leaders. In contrast with his address to the party on Friday, Mr. Trump used a rally that drew a few thousand supporters in Orange County on Thursday night to offer a sharp attack on illegal immigrants. He suggested that the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico had been responsible for the recent crime spike in Los Angeles. He also attracted hundreds of protesters there, and the demonstrations resulted in 17 arrests and at least one injury. The protesters who gathered here on Friday appeared to be smaller in number but equally animated about Mr. Trump. Some waved signs using expletives to denounce him, a group chanted in Spanish while waving Mexican flags, and others burned an American flag. There was also a contingent of topless men and women who repeated, “Make love, not a wall; we want equal rights for all.” Several protesters sat on the pavement, forming a chain that stretched across a street by the hotel. At one point, a group of protesters rushed toward the hotel entrance; police officers with riot helmets and nightsticks hurried to corral them and restore order. It was enough to prompt the authorities to bring the suit-wearing Mr. Trump through some grass and dirt into the building, a scene that was caught by television news helicopters. Before he had finished his speech, Mr. Trump was already thinking of his exit plan. “They’re going to take me under a fence, through a field,” he said at the end of his remarks. “You have no idea the route they have planned to get me out of here.”

Donald Trump
Republicans
California
2016 Presidential Election
Republican National Convention,RNC
Civil Unrest


France: Deportations of ‘Radicals’ Begin

Abstract: French authorities on Monday deported two foreign citizens they identified as “Islamist radicals” and said three others would soon be expelled, in keeping with a pledge by President Nicolas Sarkozy to quash Muslim extremism after a series of killings in the Toulouse region by a man who claimed to be a member of Al Qaeda. An Algerian man previously convicted for terrorist ties was deported, the Interior Ministry said, along with a Malian imam accused of preaching anti-Semitism. Imams from Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Tunisia were also expected to be expelled. Last week, the authorities arrested 19 people suspected of ties to Muslim groups calling for violence; 16 remain in custody.

France
Deportation
Politics and Government
Muslims and Islam
Sarkozy Nicolas


Yankees May Need Rodriguez After All

Abstract: ANAHEIM, Calif. — Speculation has swirled over whether Alex Rodriguez would be healthy enough to return this season from off-season hip surgery, and whether the Yankees even wanted him back. He is owed $28 million this season alone, and the accusations surrounding his reported involvement with a South Florida clinic that has been accused of dispensing performance-enhancing drugs have made him a toxic figure again. But with Kevin Youkilis’s fragile back threatening his season again — he was placed on the 15-day disabled list Friday for the second time this season — and Rodriguez making accelerated progress in his rehabilitation, Rodriguez may be just what the Yankees need, after all. Shortly after the Yankees lost to the Oakland Athletics in 18 grueling innings Thursday, Youkilis stood at his locker discussing two topics he would rather had never come up: his 0-for-7 performance and his chronic bad back. Youkilis said the bulging disk in his back, which already forced him to miss 37 games and is now threatening the rest of his season, felt fine. But he added that after an extremely long and costly game like Thursday’s, the more critical test would come Friday morning when he woke up to see if he had more problems, whether shooting pain or uncomfortable stiffness. He felt neither of those, but something alarming nonetheless. Youkilis said he woke up with a tingling, numb feeling, or “dullness,” in his right foot. He hoped it was a temporary sensation from sleeping in a strange way, but when the feeling lingered for more than an hour, he suspected it was a problem radiating from his spine. He called Steve Donohue, the Yankees’ trainer, and within hours the Yankees placed him on the 15-day D.L., one move amid a flurry of transactions in the wake of what may prove to be a pivotal 18-inning game of attrition. Youkilis said he had an appointment to see Dr. Robert Watkins, a noted back specialist, in Marina del Rey, Calif., on Monday. “I just want to be out there playing,” Youkilis said. “Right now, it stinks. But I’ve really got to worry about my health. You don’t know what stuff can do to you. Sometimes you have something and it can affect you the rest of your life.” Image Third baseman Kevin Youkilis’s problematic back forced a return to the disabled list. Credit Eric Risberg/Associated Press The Yankees also optioned Adam Warren, the long relief pitcher who threw 85 pitches Thursday, to Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, an unkind reward for a job done exceptionally well. Warren pitched six shutout innings Thursday, meaning he would not have been available to the Yankees for another four or five days while waiting for his arm to recover. “I accept it,” Warren said, “but it’s frustrating. No one wants to get sent down, but I understand the logic behind it.” By rule, Warren, who most likely will be recalled in 10 days when he is eligible, has three days to report to the minors. But he said he would go on Saturday to begin preparing for what he believes will be a start for Scranton in four days. “I want to get going and get to work right away, throw my bullpen,” he said. To replace Warren on the 25-man roster, the Yankees called up the right-handed relief pitcher Chris Bootcheck from Scranton and also brought up outfielder Thomas Neal to replace Youkilis. The Yankees had considered sending the rookie David Adams down since he was not getting any playing time, but with Youkilis hurt, Adams’s spot was preserved, although Jayson Nix was the starting third baseman against the Los Angeles Angels on Friday. Youkilis, who was signed in the off-season to a one-year, $12 million contract to fill in for Rodriguez, has had back problems for years. He said that in the past he had felt pain or stiffness down his leg and numbness in his right big toe. But what he felt Friday was more widespread, and he described it as affecting his foot and his calf. “This is something hitting the nerve,” he said, “so hopefully we can get it resolved as quick as possible.” Youkilis first hurt his back on April 20, and he initially missed six games. He thought it was better and played on April 27, but he reinjured it and then went on the D.L. until he came back on May 31. He has played 10 games since then, missing one day when he felt some stiffness in his back, so this could be considered the fourth time the same back issue has forced him out of the lineup this season. But Manager Joe Girardi, during his daily recap of the Yankees’ injuries, revealed that Rodriguez has entered a new encouraging phase of his rehabilitation in Tampa, Fla. “He’s moving more,” Girardi said. “It seems that now each day, what we hear is that he’s moving better. His lower half is freer.”

Yankees
Alex Rodriguez
Kevin Youkilis
Sports injury
Baseball
Therapy


3 More Avoid Prison in Fatal Hazing of a Drum Major

Abstract: ORLANDO, Fla. — For the better part of three years, Pam Champion has repeatedly said a message had not been sent to those charged in the 2011 hazing death of her 26-year-old son, Robert Champion, a drum major at Florida A&M University. With tears trickling from her eyes Friday, she struggled to find words after a judge decided not to imprison the final three men tried for manslaughter and hazing in Mr. Champion’s death. “I need a minute,” she said softly before getting onto an elevator with her husband. Judge Renee Roche sentenced Benjamin McNamee, 24, Aaron Golson, 22, and Darryl Cearnel, 28, to 10 years of supervised probation. She announced her decision in Circuit Court here after a daylong hearing that included testimony from the three men, their character witnesses and Mr. Champion’s parents. Judge Roche said the probation could end early if Mr. McNamee, Mr. Golson and Mr. Cearnel demonstrated a willingness through community outreach to help eradicate hazing. The men had faced up to 20 years in prison after being convicted in April of manslaughter and hazing in the November 2011 death of Mr. Champion, who was from Decatur, Ga. Mr. Champion collapsed and died after being pummeled by other members of Florida A&M’s famed Marching 100 band with fists and instruments during a brutal ritual known as “crossing Bus C.” The hazing occurred aboard a parked bus after a football game. Prosecutors sought a minimum sentence of nine years against the three defendants Judge Roche said she had deviated from that recommendation because of evidence introduced at trial that Mr. Champion willingly participated in the hazing ritual. “Having done this for 20 years, there are a few cases that will stay with you, and this is one of them,” Judge Roche said before imposing her sentence. Fifteen former members of the band were charged in the case. Most were sentenced to combinations of community service and probation for what the previous judge in the case deemed to be minor roles. Only the purported ringleader, Dante Martin, has received prison time. He was sentenced in January to six and a half years. A former band member, Jessie Baskin, was sentenced to 51 weeks in a county jail after entering a no-contest plea to manslaughter. Another former member, Caleb Jackson, has pleaded no contest to manslaughter and is awaiting sentencing. Several character witnesses testified on behalf of the defendants Friday. The three defendants also testified, each expressing remorse directly to Mr. Champion’s parents, who were seated in the courtroom gallery. “Maybe you didn’t mean to, but it was the choice you made,” Mr. Champion’s father, Robert Champion Sr., said on the stand. “Now you have to be held responsible.” Mr. McNamee submitted a file with more than 100 character letters and called Robert Champion “a good friend.” He added that he was “humbled and ashamed” to have participated in the hazing ritual that led to his death. “I am utterly and completely embarrassed to have played any role,” Mr. McNamee said. “The traditions, I now realize, there can be a dark side.”

Hazing
Robert Champion
Florida
Aaron Golson
College
Criminal Sentence
Murders and Homicides


Reaching for Stars When Space Thrilled and Paranoia Ruled

Abstract: It was “Mad Men” meets “Flash Gordon.” The years from 1957 to 1962 were a golden age of science fiction, as well as paranoia and exhilaration on a cosmic scale. The future was still the future back then, some of us could dream of farms on the moon and heroically finned rockets blasting off from alien landscapes. Others worried about Russian moon bases. Scientists debated whether robots or humans should explore space. Satellites and transistors were jazzy emblems of postwar technology, and we were about to unravel the secrets of the universe and tame the atom (if it did not kill us first). Some of the most extravagant of these visions of the future came not from cheap paperbacks, but from corporations buffing their high-tech credentials and recruiting engineering talent in the heady days when zooming budgets for defense and NASA had created a gold rush in outer space. In the pages of magazines like Aviation Week, Missiles and Rockets and even Fortune, companies, some famous and some now obscure, were engaged in a sort of leapfrog of dreams. And so, for example, Republic Aviation of Farmingdale, N.Y. — “Designers and Builders of the Incomparable Thundercraft” — could be found bragging in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine in 1959 about the lunar gardening experiments it was doing for a future Air Force base on the moon. Or the American Bosch Arma Corporation showing off, in Fortune, its “Cosmic Butterfly,” a solar-powered electrically propelled vehicle to ferry passengers and cargo across the solar system. Most Americans never saw these concoctions, but now they have been collected and dissected by Megan Prelinger, an independent historian and space buff, in a new book, “Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962.” It is being published on May 25 by Blast Books. Ms. Prelinger and her husband, Rick, operate the Prelinger Library , a private research library in San Francisco with a heavy emphasis on media, technology and landscape history. In an e-mail message, Ms. Prelinger said she had grown up “on a cultural diet of science fiction and space,” memories of the moon landings and “Star Trek” merging in her mind. “As a result,” she said, “I grew up believing that I was a junior member of an advanced technological society.” The book, she said, was inspired by a shipment of old publications to the library, including Aviation Week & Space Technology and Missiles and Rockets. “I little expected that the advertising in their pages would seize my attention more than the articles themselves,” she writes in the introduction to her book. The ads are chock-full of modernist energy and rich in iconography in ways Ms. Prelinger is happy to elaborate on. The late ’50s were also the years of the Organization Man. The cover illustration, from an insurance ad, shows a man in a gray flannel suit who is a dead ringer for the existentially confused Don Draper of “Mad Men,” floating alarmed and bewildered among the planets and stars. Time and again, the mountains and valleys of the moon, for example, are portrayed as if they were the mountains, canyons and deserts of the American West, making the space program just another chapter in the ongoing narrative of Manifest Destiny. In one illustration, the hands of God and Adam from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling have been transformed into a giant pair of space gloves reaching for each other. In another, the silhouette of a spaceship forms a cross. “These images suggest that the furthest reach of what humankind hoped to find in space was in fact the very essence of infinity,” Ms. Prelinger writes. Leafing through this book is a walk down my own memory lane. I grew up in Seattle , which was a one-company town dominated by Boeing . Almost everybody worked there sooner or later. My best friend’s father helped design the Saturn V rocket that lifted humans to the moon. After limping out of M.I.T. with a physics degree in the late ’60s, I, too, worked there for a year, playing a kind of space war — shooting high-speed aluminum balls at sheets of aluminum arrayed to simulate the structures of aircraft or spacecraft, to see what the damage would be under various conditions. At the end of the day, my desk was buried in piles of sharp dented and charred sheets of aluminum. I had to count all the holes. It’s hard to know what to be more nostalgic about, all those childhood dreams of space opera or the optimism of an era in which imagination and technology were booming and every other ad ended with a pitch to come work for the thriving company of the future. “To advance yourself professionally, you should become a member of one these teams. Write to N. M. Pagan,” reads a typical notice from the Martin Company, now part of Lockheed Martin . You don’t hear that much these days. Back then, you, too, sitting at a drafting table or in a cubicle, designing antennas or self-locking nuts among acres of such boards and cubicles — “Reaching for the Moon, Mr. Designer?” reads a Kaylock ad — could be a space hero. And of course it was almost exclusively men depicted in the ads. One exception was an ad from the National Cash Register Company for a new electronic machine for posting checks. “And what the POST-TRONIC does electronically the operator cannot do wrong — because she doesn’t do it at all!” says the ad showing a woman floating in space at the machine’s console. Naturally, there was a hook to those recruitment ads, as Ms. Prelinger points out. The real business of most of those aerospace companies was not the space program but defense — building fighters, bombers, missiles and other implements of the cold war, not to mention commercial airliners. For many of these places, the space program was more of a hindrance than a boost to the bottom line, a sort of prestigious loss leader to attract cutting-edge talent. Occasionally, as Ms. Prelinger reports, the darker side of this work bled through into the trade press and the ads, like when the Marquardt Corporation, which made small control rockets for satellites, showed a spy satellite aiming its lens down at Earth. If the space fever began in 1957 with Sputnik, it cooled by 1962, when the basic plan for the Apollo moon missions was set and there was no more space for imaginations to run wild. Also, by then NASA’s budget was leveling off. Ms. Prelinger said that during this period about half a million engineers, scientists, draftsmen and other people followed the clarion call to blend their talents into the new age, swelling the ranks of aerospace workers to more than a million. Some of them might have wound up like me. When the “impact mechanics” group was downsized, I was sent to the “weights and measures” group. Our job was to scrutinize rocket blueprints to determine the position and weight of every nut, bolt, washer and any other item on a small upper-stage booster that was to deliver an unknown payload to orbit. The information could be entered into a computer program that would calculate the center of gravity and other dynamical properties of the rocket package. It was essential but brain-numbing work, and I learned a lot about shooting rubber bands from the wars that broke out every day after lunch. But it was men and women like these, working in cubicles, who saved the astronauts of Apollo 13 in 1970, by figuring out how to bring them back from the moon alive in a crippled spacecraft. In the wake of the moon landings and then the end of the cold war, many of those jobs, exciting or not, disappeared, as did many of the companies that advertised them. What has not disappeared in all these years and decades is the yearning and arguing about space. We’re still fighting about what NASA should do as far as human exploration of the universe is concerned, collectively looking more and more like that bewildered advertising man floating in space on the cover of Ms. Prelinger’s fascinating book. The argument has been going on for my whole life. Since those advertisements appeared, the United States invaded Vietnam and left; the Soviet Union crumbled and China rose; the whole nation stopped smoking. We never did find the essence of infinity — at least not yet.