Conference Crashers Make Contacts, but Don’t Register

Abstract: Justin Gignac wouldn’t miss the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. But he doesn’t pay. Instead, Mr. Gignac, co-founder of an online community where advertising agencies can find creative talent, has for the last two years worked the lobbies and bars during the festival on the French Riviera, meeting advertising executives from around the world to expand his business. Mr. Gignac said he and his business’s co-founder, Adam Tompkins, could not afford a weeklong festival pass, the cheapest of which this year cost 3,252 euros, or about $4,300. “Doing that times two as an owner of a start-up is pretty pricey,” said Mr. Gignac, who is 34 and based in New York. “When you own your own business and your main objective is to meet new clients, your priorities are different.” At Cannes, Mr. Gignac has joined the ranks of striving entrepreneurs who practice what some call lobbyconning, or — pick one — conference-crashing, lurking, hacking or suitcasing. And, for Mr. Gignac at least, lobbyconning has been effective. He and Mr. Tompkins rented a home both summers in Cannes, sleeping and working there during the day, networking at night at restaurants, bars and parties. “We had a lot of clients and friends there,” said Mr. Gignac, who began his community, Working Not Working , in 2012 after stints at ad agencies. “Just by running into them, they introduced us to a bunch of potential new clients.” There is a long tradition of those who simply show up for conferences, wallets closed. But for young entrepreneurs on limited budgets, particularly in the technology field, the importance of the personal introduction has only increased. Just don’t mention the fee. “As conferences proliferate, the cost for some has skyrocketed,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst, who called lobbyconners the equivalent of wedding crashers. “It can cost $1,000 or more for a ticket to attend, plus airfare, hotel and meals. That’s quite a substantial investment.” In 2013, according to the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group, business travelers spent $105.4 billion on meeting, event and incentive travel. Meeting Professionals International, another trade group, estimated global spending on meetings and events, including travel, at $600 billion to $700 billion. Some events, like Internet Week New York, charge a premium for networking: At the conference in May, the cheapest pass, priced at $450, gave buyers access to exhibitions, speeches and workshops, while the most expensive pass, with full access to parties, mixers and networking, was $1,295. Another factor, said David-Michel Davies, president of the Webby Media Group, is that “the information professionals used to get at conferences is now widely available everywhere online all the time,” he said. “If you want to hear Larry Ellison talk, you can go to YouTube and hear five Larry Ellison talks,” he added, referring to the technology billionaire. But the videos cannot replace the networking at conferences, Mr. Davies said. “The value of face-to-face time has gone up,” he said. “Spending time with people is more rare, relationship-building has become much more critical.” Some conference crashers, though, can’t resist trying to finagle their way into sessions. Carrie Meadows Abernathy, who organizes conferences for Practice Greenhealth , an association for health care organizations that are committed to sustainability, estimates that 1 to 3 percent of people at conferences of any sort “walk into the convention center, breeze past the registration area and sneak their way in.” Organizers have turned to technology to cut down on the lobbycon crowd. Systems using bar and QR codes, and even computer chips, have been developed to screen conference attendees’ badges. Ms. Abernathy also uses devices that let attendees digitally exchange contact information and receive exhibitors’ videos, coupons and brochures online. She said these devices, offered only to people who register for Greenhealth’s annual CleanMed conference, make the conference “more valuable.” Still, people continue to lobbycon, for a variety of reasons. Amy Muller, a San Francisco-based executive with Automatic Labs , an auto accessory developer, has gone to Austin during South by Southwest in recent years without registering for the conference. “I didn’t feel the need to spend money on a badge; that’s not why I was going,” she said. “There’s lots of eating, shopping, walking around and meeting up with friends.” Attending South by Southwest this way was “an opportunity to broaden my network, deepen relationships and friendships. It’s not anything I ever got by attending panels,” she added. Jay Hoffmann, co-founder and chief executive of Rocketmiles , a hotel booking website, has attended the last two annual conferences held by PhoCusWright, a travel market research company , without registering; at both, he had six to 12 meetings a day, “in between sessions or at the bar.” “We can certainly afford to register, but we’re not really attending to listen to presentations, which are far less useful than having one-on-one conversations,” he said. The conferences, he added, allow him to have meetings that would otherwise require multiple trips around the country. The conference crashers do not always sit well with those who pay. Rod Cuthbert, chief executive of Rome2Rio , a travel-planning website, and a paying regular at PhoCusWright conferences, disdains those who hang out at them without registering. “It simply wouldn’t be economical to fly all around the globe doing the meetings you can do in three days at a good conference,” he wrote in an email. “That’s why people pay two or three thousand dollars, plus travel expenses, for a conference registration.” Another PhoCusWright conference crasher is Scott Hintz, a co-founder of TripIt, an online travel organizer. Although he said he could afford the conference’s registration fee, “it doesn’t mean you buy everything you can afford. I don’t need to be inside listening to the speakers at PhoCusWright. To me the value of conferences like PhoCusWright is primarily networking.” “Part of me is aware that I’m getting value without really paying anything. However, I think I’m adding value by spreading the word,” said Mr. Hintz, who is now an angel investor. “A lot of people most likely attended the conference because I mentioned it.”

Business travel
Conventions and Trade Shows
Entrepreneurship


News From the Advertising Industry

Abstract: Accounts ¶Esurance, San Francisco, chose Leo Burnett, Chicago, part of the Publicis Groupe, as its new advertising agency of record. Burnett is also the longtime creative agency for Allstate, which is buying Esurance from the White Mountains Insurance Group. The Esurance assignment, with spending estimated at $100 million, had been handled by Duncan/Channon, San Francisco, which took part in a review for the account along with Burnett; Deutsch L.A., also known as the Marina del Rey, Calif., office of Deutsch, part of the Lowe & Partners Worldwide division of the Interpublic Group of Companies; Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group; and Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco. Burnett will form a team separate from its Allstate team to work on the Esurance account; Allstate has said it intends to operate the Allstate and Esurance brands separately. ¶BMW of North America, Woodcliff Lake, N.J., completed a review for the assignments to create campaigns aimed at multicultural consumers for the BMW and Mini Cooper brands. Matlock Advertising and Public Relations, Atlanta, kept the assignment to create BMW campaigns aimed at African-Americans. The assignment to create BMW ads aimed at Spanish-speaking consumers was awarded to Ramona, New York, which will replace Bromley Communications, San Antonio. Ramona is part of the Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners unit of MDC Partners; Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal was chosen last month to create campaigns for BMW to run in the general market. Sanders/Wingo Advertising, Austin, Tex., was named to create campaigns for Mini Cooper aimed at multicultural consumers, an assignment that had previously been handled by Matlock. ¶Mars and its Wm. Wrigley Jr. unit consolidated their media accounts in Southeast Asia and awarded the assignment, with spending estimated at $60 million, to the Starcom division of the Starcom MediaVest Group, part of the Publicis Groupe. The consolidated account covers Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The assignment had previously been divided between MEC, part of the GroupM unit of WPP, for Wrigley, and agencies owned by the Omnicom Media Group unit of the Omnicom Group, for Mars. ¶Ancestry.com, Provo, Utah, selected Duncan/Channon, San Francisco, to develop a campaign that will run in television, print and digital media. Spending was estimated at almost $40 million. Ancestry.com previously worked with Penabrand, San Francisco. ¶General Mills, Golden Valley, Minn., awarded its media account in the Middle East and North Africa regions to MEC Middle East North Africa, part of the MEC unit of GroupM, which is owned by WPP. Billings were estimated at $8 million. The assignment had been handled by Initiative, part of the Mediabrands unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies. People ¶Harold Sogard joined Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, part of the Publicis Worldwide unit of the Publicis Groupe, as chairman, a new post. He had most recently been partner and vice chairman at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group, and before that worked at the Riney predecessor agency, Hal Riney & Partners. The appointment is part of recent efforts by Publicis Worldwide to revive Riney, which included combining its operations with the San Francisco office of Publicis Modem. ¶Antoinette Zel, president at La Comunidad, Miami, is becoming a partner and principal of the agency, taking the new post of president and chief executive. ¶Alex Leikikh, managing partner and director for account service at Mullen, Boston, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, was promoted to president of the Boston headquarters. He succeeds Joe Grimaldi, who had been president and chief executive and now becomes chairman and chief executive. ¶Quentin George, chief digital officer at Mediabrands, New York, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, was named chief innovations officer, a new post. ¶Peter King Hunsinger, vice president and publisher at GQ magazine, New York, part of the Condé Nast Publications unit of Advance Publications, was named president and publisher of the Golf Digest Companies unit of Condé Nast. Two executives of the Golf Digest Companies will now report to Mr. Hunsinger; they are Thomas J. Bair, vice president and publishing director of Golf Digest and Golf World, and Laura Sequenzia, publisher of Golf World. Succeeding Mr. Hunsinger at GQ is Chris Mitchell, who had been vice president and publisher at Condé Nast Traveler magazine. Succeeding Mr. Mitchell at Condé Nast Traveler is Carolyn Kremins, who had been vice president and publisher at a sibling magazine, Brides. Ms. Kremins will be succeeded at Brides by Michelle Myers, who had been vice president and publisher at another Condé Nast magazine, Lucky. Succeeding Ms. Myers at Lucky is Marcy Bloom, who had been associate publisher at GQ. Miscellany ¶Michael Bense, a freelance copywriter, was named the winner of the 14th annual Dead Radio contest sponsored by Oink Ink Radio, New York and Santa Monica, Calif. Mr. Bense’s 60-second script promoted the power of radio advertising by invoking names of make-believe businesses like Ecoli’s Bar and Grill. The contest is intended to give a second chance to scripts for radio commercials that were deemed too risky, too silly or wrong for the client. Among Mr. Bense’s prizes is the production of his script by Oink Ink. ¶Erwin Penland, Greenville, S.C., part of the Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies, is expanding into New York and will be based in the Hill, Holliday office there. (The Hill, Holliday headquarters is in Boston.) The estimated 100 employees of Hill, Holliday New York who had worked on the Verizon Wireless national retail advertising account will become employees of Erwin Penland New York; the two agencies had shared that account. Hill, Holliday New York and Erwin Penland New York will operate separately but share back-office functions. Although there will still be employees of Hill, Holliday New York, working for clients like Novartis, the two top executives of Hill, Holliday New York — Charlene Pletz, executive vice president and managing director, and Lisa Diller, executive vice president and executive creative director — are changing agencies; Ms. Pletz becomes chief implementation officer at Erwin Penland, and Ms. Diller becomes executive vice president and executive creative director at Erwin Penland New York. ¶Art Directors Club, New York, elected Benjamin Palmer as president for a three-year term. Mr. Palmer, chief executive at the Barbarian Group, part of Cheil Worldwide, succeeds Doug Jaeger, president at JaegerSloan.

Advertising and Marketing
Appointments and Executive Changes


More Older Adults Are Struggling With Substance Abuse

Abstract: BEFORE her drinking spiraled out of control, Sylvia Dobrow “drank like a lady,” as she put it, matching her wine to her sandwiches: “Tuna and chardonnay, roast beef and rosé.” But soon she was “drinking around the clock,” downing glasses of vodka and skim milk. “When you try to hide your drinking from your grandchildren, you do whatever you can,” said Ms. Dobrow, 81, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother living in Stockton, Calif. A former hospital educator, Ms. Dobrow’s alcohol consumption became unmanageable after she lost her job and subsequently “lost my identity,” she said. One night in early 2007, after a particularly excessive alcohol binge, Ms. Dobrow fell out of bed and suffered a black eye. That was when her two daughters, one of whom was a nurse, took her to Hemet Valley, a recovery facility in Hemet Valley, Calif., that caters to adults age 55 and older. Ms. Dobrow, who was 73 at the time, stayed for 30 days, which cost roughly $20,000, about $13,000 of which was covered by insurance. When she returned home, she continued with a 12-step program. She has been sober ever since. An estimated 2.8 million older adults in the United States meet the criteria for alcohol abuse, and this number is expected to reach 5.7 million by 2020, according to a study in the journal “Addiction.” In 2008, 231,200 people over 50 sought treatment for substance abuse, up from 102,700 in 1992, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a federal agency. While alcohol is typically the substance of choice, a 2013 report found that the rate of illicit drug use among adults 50 to 64 increased from 2.7 percent in 2002 to 6.0 percent in 2013. “As we get older, it takes longer for our bodies to metabolize alcohol and drugs,” said D. John Dyben, the director of older adult treatment services for the Hanley Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. “Someone might say, ‘I could have two or three glasses of wine and I was fine, and now that I’m in my late 60s, it’s becoming a problem.’ That’s because the body can’t handle it.” Many, although certainly not all, of these older individuals with alcohol problems are retired. Over the course of 10 years, Peter A. Bamberger and Samuel B. Bacharach , co-authors of “Retirement and the Hidden Epidemic,” conducted a study funded by the National Institutes of Health on substance abuse in older adults. They found that the impact of retirement on substance abuse was “anything but clear cut, with the conditions leading to retirement, and the economic and social nature of the retirement itself, having a far greater impact on substance use than simple retirement itself,” said Mr. Bamberger, who is also research director of the Smithers Institute at Cornell University. But events that arise in later life often require coping skills older adults may not possess. Some retirees are lonely and depressed, and turn to alcohol or drugs to quell their anxieties. Others may drink to deal with late-life losses of spouses, friends, careers and purpose. “In retirement there can be depression, divorce, death of a spouse, moving from a big residence into a small residence,” said Steven Wollman, a substance abuse counselor in New York, . “For anyone who’s an addict, boredom’s the No. 1 trigger.” Sandra D., 58, who works in the financial services industry in Toronto, said that her father’s drinking increased so much after he retired that she often took the car keys away from him. “He and his friends meet for cocktails at about 3 or 4 and then he passes out, which he calls a ‘nap,’ ” said Ms. D., who asked that her full last name not be used. “My dad didn’t plan out his retirement well. My mom was very ill for many years before she passed away, and my dad was a caregiver. He was pretty well looking after the house and taking care of her. When she passed away, there was a very big void for him.” Ms. D. said her father, an 82-year-old former maintenance worker, doesn’t believe he drinks too much, a common perception among many seniors. “People are really good at redefining things,” said Stephan Arndt, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa and director of the Iowa Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Evaluation. “They say, ‘I don’t have a problem, I just like to drink.’ Or, ‘I’m a big guy, I can handle it.’ In the case of prescription drugs, it’s, ‘Well, I got it from my doctor, and it’s for my pain. It’s medication.’ Consequently, they don’t seek help.” Physicians often aren’t trained to talk to their older patients about chemical dependency — or, perhaps more pointedly in an era of managed care, they often don’t have the time to thoroughly screen a patient. Also, many signs of chemical dependence like memory loss and disorientation resemble normal symptoms of aging. “Is this person confused because they’re messing up their meds, or is it dementia?” said Brenda J. Iliff, the executive director of Hazelden, a residential treatment center in Naples, Fla., that offers special programming for baby boomers and older adults for about $21,000 a month. “Is their diabetes out of control, or did they fall and break their hip because they were woozy from Ativan?” Another misconception is that older adults don’t benefit from treatment. “There’s this lore, this belief, that as people get older they become less treatable,” said Paul Sacco, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, who researches aging and addiction. “But there’s a large body of literature saying that the outcomes are as good with older adults. They’re not hopeless. This may be just the time to get them treatment.” Pamela Noffze was 58 when she arrived at Hazelden‘s center in Naples for treatment. At her worst, she was drinking a case of light beer a day, but she didn’t think she had an issue until her daughter threatened to ban her from seeing her grandsons again unless she sought help. “That’s when I knew I had to do something,” said Ms. Noffze. On her first night at Hazelden, she discovered that she was also addicted to Klonopin, an anti-anxiety medication that her psychiatrist had prescribed in 2009 to help her cope with a divorce. Weaning herself off prescription medications was harder than stopping drinking, she said. Still, she has not had a sip of alcohol or any pills since rehab. Ms. Noffze, now 61, who lives in Naples and is unemployed, regularly attends 12-step meetings. She said she was astonished at the number of people who “have their cocktails every night, and the next thing they know they find themselves addicted because some doctor gave them Ambien to sleep or they were on pain pills for arthritis or whatever,” she said. “You put those two together and you put yourself over the edge.” As for Ms. Dobrow, she was so emboldened by her recovery that in 2010 she went back to school to get a credential as a substance abuse counselor. She now works part time counseling older adults at Hemet Valley. “Losing your purpose in life is the singular thing that hurts people,” said Ms. Dobrow. “We involve so much of our ego in our career, but these last seven and a half years have been the most fulfilling of my life, because I can help people. What is when people used to wear a sandwich board and walk around in a commercial? I feel that mine says ’Hope’ on the front and on the back.”

Alcohol abuse
Retirement
Drug Abuse
Old age,elderly,senior citizens


Deadline Trade Provides Bounce for the Flames

Abstract: N.H.L. teams geared up for the stretch run and the playoffs in the days leading up to last Wednesday’s trade deadline, and no team improved more than Calgary. The Flames were a good club before, but they were not in the class of Detroit and San Jose, the best teams in the Western Conference. By adding one of the best players to change teams, center Olli Jokinen and a good puck-moving defenseman in Jordan Leopold, the Flames repositioned themselves as a serious Stanley Cup contender. Their new players paid immediate dividends — Jokinen with two goals, Leopold with one — in the Flames’ first game after the deadline, a 5-1 victory on Thursday at Philadelphia. General Manager Darryl Sutter surrendered the only first-round draft pick of the day in the package for Jokinen, who was acquired from Phoenix. “It was the first time we’ve been able to put ourselves in a position to trade draft picks for top players,” Sutter told reporters after the deal. Trading draft picks goes against salary-cap-era trends, since teams want entry-level players with low salaries to offset high-priced stars. Jokinen, who has the unfortunate distinction of holding the N.H.L. record for playing the most regular-season games without appearing in the playoffs — 782 through Friday — was with Florida last season. Sutter tried to acquire him then as well. “We worked really hard on it last summer too, but we didn’t have what they wanted,” Sutter said. The Panthers are the Eastern Conference team that looked like the biggest winner after the deadline, but for something they did not do. They did not trade the pending free agent Jay Bouwmeester, a highly coveted defenseman, whom the Panthers judged as the key to their playoff hopes. But if they miss the playoffs and Bouwmeester signs elsewhere, it will be disappointing. General Manager Jacques Martin said he would surrender Bouwmeester only if he could improve his team, and no club offered enough. Another Eastern club that seemed a sure winner was Pittsburgh, suddenly back in the playoff hunt. The Penguins grabbed two wings — Chris Kunitz from Anaheim and Bill Guerin, the Islanders’ captain — to play alongside Sidney Crosby. In their first game, the newcomers set up a goal by Crosby. Trade Deadline Losers Some teams made out poorly at the deadline. Minnesota seems to have done the worst in the West, since it could not move the talented forward Marian Gaborik, who will probably leave as a free agent this summer. Gaborik has become injury prone and has played only six games this season. The Wild was able to re-sign its fine young goaltender, Niklas Backstrom, however. In the East, the Philadelphia Flyers did not address their chronic problems in goal. They weakened themselves at forward by sending Scottie Upshall to Phoenix for Daniel Carcillo, and nullified a trade with San Jose for a diminished Kyle McLaren when he failed his physical. They missed out on Bouwmeester and Derek Morris, a defenseman who went to the Rangers. Upsets in Europe After enduring a tumultuous season and barely sneaking into the postseason as the No. 16 seed, Avangard Omsk and its star player, Jaromir Jagr, pulled off a huge upset in the Russian Continental Hockey League playoffs last week. Avangard eliminated the No. 1 seed and defending champion, Salavat Yulaev Ufa, three games to one. Avangard’s regular-season winning percentage, .464, was far inferior to Salavat’s .768. Jagr had a goal and two assists in the series. Salavat’s biggest signing from the N.H.L., the former Nashville Predator Alexander Radulov, was held to two assists. There was another big upset last week, in the Swiss quarterfinals. ZSC Lions, who won the European club championship in January, were swept in four games by lightly regarded Fribourg-Gottéron. The Lions were 12 seconds from salvaging Game 4 when Julien Sprunger, a 23-year-old Fribourg native, scored his second goal of the night to make the score 2-2. That sent the game to overtime, during which Sprunger scored again, sending the hometown crowd into a frenzy and the Lions into a bitter off-season. The Joseph Watch Perhaps the silliest hockey statistic is the goalie won-lost record, a figure that was not kept until the mid-1980s, during a period when the N.H.L. was adopting terminology from baseball and other American sports. But silly or not, Curtis Joseph of the Toronto Maple Leafs is on the brink of setting a standard — most career losses by an N.H.L. goalie. Joseph, 41, has been on the losing side in 349 games during his 19 N.H.L. seasons. That gives him a chance to surpass the record of 352, held by the Hall of Fame goalie Gump Worsley. Of course, a goalie has little to do with the number of goals his team scores or even the number of shots he faces, which makes the idea of wins and losses even more artificial than it is for a baseball pitcher. But Joseph can take solace in having won 451 games — the N.H.L.’s fourth-highest career mark, behind Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur and Ed Belfour.


Katie Ledecky Dominates in Texas

Abstract: Katie Ledecky dominated an impressive field in the women’s 200-meter freestyle at the Arena Pro Swim Series event in Austin, Tex. Ledecky, 18, the 2015 world champion, finished in a personal best of 1 minute 54.33 seconds to beat Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden, who had the fastest time in the world last year. Katinka Hosszu of Hungary won the women’s 400 individual medley in 4:36.27. Hosszu, who won the 2015 world championship, holds four of the top 10 times in history. The American Ryan Lochte won the men’s 400 individual medley in 4:12.66, and Michael Phelps, who this summer will try to qualify for his fifth Olympics, finished fourth in the men’s 200 freestyle.


Brother of Karzai Denies Links to Heroin

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The brother of Afghanistan’s president denied any involvement in the heroin trade at a news conference on Monday, saying accusations linking him to heroin shipments were “baseless” and represented political pressure on the president after his criticism of a recent American airstrike that Afghanistan maintains killed scores of civilians. The brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was challenging an article in The New York Times on Sunday, which examined the concerns of top American officials that he might be involved in heroin shipments, and that in any case, widespread perceptions that President Hamid Karzai might be protecting him were damaging the government’s credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress it. In the article, President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, dismissed the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes. In a telephone interview after the news conference on Monday, Ahmed Wali Karzai addressed a 2004 episode described in the article, in which Afghan security forces found a cache of heroin in a tractor-trailer in Kandahar but, according to notes taken by American investigators, were told by a presidential aide to release the drugs and the vehicle. Ahmed Wali Karzai said that some of the security forces, including the Kandahar police commander, Habibullah Jan, were political opponents of President Karzai’s and that they were disgruntled over programs that cost them arms and influence. Habibullah Jan was shot dead by gunmen in July in Kandahar. President Karzai has increased his criticism of foreign forces in Afghanistan as civilian casualties have mounted in operations meant to strike at insurgents. The United States military is investigating an assertion by villagers in western Afghanistan that about 90 people, most of them children, died in a missile attack on Aug. 22. The Afghan government and a United Nations investigation have backed that assertion, but American officers have said that fewer than 10 civilians were killed in the strike. “Whenever anything happens between the international community and President Karzai, there has been an article about me,” Ahmed Wali Karzai said at the news conference, “as if I am a boxing bag for their training.”

Heroin
Afghanistan
Karzai Ahmed Wali
Karzai Hamid
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Drug Abuse and Traffic


Max Hall and B.Y.U. Hope to Silence Their Doubters

Abstract: Brigham Young dropped three spots in the Associated Press poll after its controversial win at Washington last week. The Cougars had blocked an extra point as time expired to win, 28-27, but the focus was on a controversial excessive celebration call against the Huskies that set up a long extra-point attempt. It is hard to doubt the Cougars now. Their 59-0 victory against U.C.L.A. on Saturday bumped them up four spots to No. 14 in the poll, thrust Max Hall into the Heisman Trophy race and put an exclamation point on a weekend in which Mountain West teams were 4-0 against the Pacific-10 Conference. “We wanted to make sure it wasn’t close this time, so no one could have any complaints,” Hall said in a telephone interview Sunday. Hall played brilliantly, tossing six of his seven touchdown passes in the first half. He threw for scores to four different receivers, including two each to Dennis Pitta, Austin Collie and Harvey Unga. “That was probably one of the most fun games I’ve ever been a part of,” Hall said. “It almost seemed at some points like my job was easy.” And with a 77.8 percent completion rate, 12 touchdowns with 2 interceptions, and 1,095 passing yards through three games, Hall has entered the Heisman Trophy conversation. Much like Alex Smith of Utah and Colt Brennan of Hawaii before him, Hall appears poised to be in contention for the award as long as his team keeps winning. “It’s an incredible thing to even be mentioned and considered for that award,” Hall said. “Most of the credit should go to my teammates and coaches for giving me the opportunity to excel. It’s a long season, and anything can happen. It would be a lot better to be mentioned at the end of the season. That would be nice.” Hall and Brigham Young now have to navigate a rejuvenated Mountain West. With B.Y.U. and Utah (No. 20) ranked and with Texas Christian just outside the top 25, the Mountain West appears to be the toughest it has been in years. “Hopefully, it shows that teams in the Mountain West can play with Pac-10 schools or anyone in the nation,” Hall said.

Heisman Trophy
Brigham Young University
Hall Max
College Athletics


After 4 Years, Florida Police Are Cleared in Shooting

Abstract: MIAMI — After a four-year investigation, Miami-Dade prosecutors said on Tuesday that they would not charge 12 police officers who unleashed more than 100 bullets at a reckless driver who crashed into several cars in Miami Beach, drove on a sidewalk and nearly ran over several officers on bicycles. The police officers were legally justified in shooting the driver, Raymond Herisse, 22, who died at the scene, because Mr. Herisse was dangerous and “fleeing from the commission of multiple felonies,” an 87-page report by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office said. By refusing the police orders to turn off his car and then knocking over an officer, Mr. Herisse, who was legally drunk and driving with a suspended license, committed an “aggravated assault,” the report said, adding that this had turned Mr. Herisse into a “fleeing felon.” Mr. Herisse was shot 16 times. Three bystanders were wounded in the hail of bullets as the police officers fired repeatedly at the car. The shooting, which involved Miami Beach and Hialeah police officers who were out in full force that weekend, took place on May 30, 2011, during the annual Urban Beach Weekend on Miami Beach, a music festival that draws large crowds. After the shooting was captured on video and posted on YouTube, Mr. Herisse’s death garnered national attention, angering civil rights activists who said the police had overreacted. Police officers told prosecutors that they had thought Mr. Herisse, whose car had finally stopped, was reaching for a gun. Mr. Herisse’s hands contained no gunshot residue, the report said. Two days after the car was impounded, the police said they had found a stolen gun wrapped in a T-shirt on the floor behind the passenger’s seat of the car. The report said Mr. Herisse had been driving so recklessly that he was a danger to those around him. It added that he had disregarded several orders to stop and get out of the car. The Miami Beach Police Department changed its policy after the shooting, making it a violation for an officer to shoot at a moving vehicle. Marwan Porter, Mr. Herisse’s lawyer, said the decision not to charge the officers was expected. Florida law grants police officers broad discretion in using lethal force on duty. Miami-Dade prosecutors have not charged a police officer since 1989. Mr. Porter, who has filed a lawsuit on the Herisse family’s behalf, said the report made several crucial points: Mr. Herisse did not fire a gun, he did not run over a police officer and his car was at a standstill when the largest barrage of bullets was fired at him. The police were frightened, he said, because they heard the gunshots coming from other police officers, not from Mr. Herisse. “Obviously we are disappointed about the decision not to prosecute,” he said. “But the family finally has answers to many questions and some level of closure.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China

Abstract: CHENGDU, China — One day last summer, Pu Xiaolan was halfway through a shift inspecting iPad cases when she received a beige wooden chair with white stripes and a high, sturdy back. At first, Ms. Pu wondered if someone had made a mistake. But when her bosses walked by, they just nodded curtly. So Ms. Pu gently sat down and leaned back. Her body relaxed. The rumors were true. When Ms. Pu was hired at this Foxconn plant a year earlier, she received a short, green plastic stool that left her unsupported back so sore that she could barely sleep at night. Eventually, she was promoted to a wooden chair, but the backrest was much too small to lean against. The managers of this 164,000-employee factory, she surmised, believed that comfort encouraged sloth. But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say. Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats. The changes also extend to California , where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed. Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates , device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk. “The days of easy globalization are done,” said an Apple executive who, like many people interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “We know that we have to get into the muck now.” Even with these reforms, chronic problems remain. Many laborers still work illegal overtime and some employees’ safety remains at risk, according to interviews and reports published by advocacy organizations. But the shifts under way in China may prove as transformative to global manufacturing as the iPhone was to consumer technology, say officials at over a dozen electronics companies, worker advocates and even longtime factory critics. “This is on the front burner for everyone now,” said Gary Niekerk, a director of corporate social responsibility at Intel, which manufactures semiconductors in China. No one inside Intel “wants to end up in a factory that treats people badly, that ends up on the front page.” The durability of many transformations, however, depends on where Apple, Foxconn and overseas workers go from here. Interviews with more than 70 Foxconn employees in multiple cities indicate a shift among the people on iPad and iPhone assembly lines. The once-anonymous millions assembling the world’s devices are drawing lessons from the changes occurring around them. As summer turned to autumn and then winter, Ms. Pu began to sign up for Foxconn’s newly offered courses in knitting and sketching. At 25 and unmarried, she already felt old. But she decided that she should view her high-backed chair as a sign. China’s migrant workers are, in a sense, the nation’s boldest risk-takers, transforming entire industries by leaving their villages for far-off factories to power a manufacturing engine that spans the globe. Ms. Pu had always felt brave, and as this year progressed and conditions inside her factory improved, she became convinced that a better life was within reach. Her parents had told her that she was free to choose any husband, as long as he was from Sichuan. Then she found someone who seemed ideal, except that he came from another province. Reclining in her new seat, she decided to ignore her family’s demands, she said. The couple are seeing each other. “There was a change this year,” she said. “I’m realizing my value.” An Inspector’s Push “This is a disgrace!” shouted Terry Gou, founder and chairman of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer and Apple’s most important industrial partner. It was March of this year and Mr. Gou — seen by activists as a longtime obstacle to improving conditions inside his factories — was meeting with his top deputies in Shenzhen , China. In 2011, The New York Times began sending Apple and Foxconn extensive questions about working conditions in factories manufacturing Apple products. The resulting articles in late January detailed problems ranging from excessive overtime and under-age workers to sometimes deadly hazards, such as workers’ using a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens at another manufacturer, and an explosion in Ms. Pu’s Foxconn plant that killed four workers. In January, Apple publicly released the names of many of its suppliers for the first time. Additionally, the company made the unusual move of joining the Fair Labor Association , one of the largest workplace monitoring groups. Auditors from that association were soon inspecting Apple’s partners in China, starting with Foxconn. Now, Mr. Gou was learning the results of those examinations. Foxconn was still failing to stop illegal overtime, the association’s lead inspector told Mr. Gou and his lieutenants, according to multiple people with knowledge of the meeting. The company was failing to keep student interns off night shifts. Foxconn had not put sufficient safety policies into practice and had exposed potentially hundreds of thousands of workers to at least 43 violations of Chinese laws and regulations. “The world is watching!” Mr. Gou yelled, according to multiple people. “We are going to fix this, right here!” But the inspector was not done. He turned to the only Apple executive in the room, the senior vice president for operations, Jeff Williams. Apple needed to change as well, the inspector said. Apple, to its credit , had been working for years to improve conditions in overseas factories, but the company was treating such problems too much like engineering puzzles, the inspector said. “Long-term solutions require a messier, more human approach,” that inspector, Auret van Heerden of the Fair Labor Association, told Mr. Williams. Instead of concentrating on writing more policies, Apple needed to listen better to workers’ complaints and advocacy groups’ recommendations. Some of those suggestions surprised Mr. Williams, say people who worked with him. Since 2007, Apple had built one of the most extensive auditing programs in the electronics industry, inspecting over 800 facilities. It was a point of pride for both Mr. Williams and the company’s top leadership. When Mr. Williams, who declined to comment for this article, returned from that March meeting to California, changes began. Among them, say people with firsthand knowledge, was the hiring of roughly 30 professionals into Apple’s social responsibility unit in the last year, which tripled the size of that division and brought high-profile corporate activists into the company. Two widely respected former Apple executives — Jacky Haynes and Bob Bainbridge — were recruited back to help lead the unit, reporting ultimately to Mr. Williams and the chief executive, Timothy D. Cook . “Everyone knows Bob and Jacky,” said a former Apple executive. “It sends a message that Jeff and Tim expect everyone to get on board.” Moreover, the company has reached out to advocates it once rebuffed. In late April, Apple allowed the first in a series of pollution audits by Ma Jun , a Chinese environmental advocate who works closely with dozens of other multinationals but whom Apple had refused to speak with until last year, according to Mr. Ma. In September, the company joined the Sustainable Trade Initiative , an advocacy group based in the Netherlands . “They know now if they don’t participate, it is the same as saying nothing,” Mr. Ma said. Foxconn has also shifted. After the meeting with the Fair Labor Association, Foxconn announced that by July 2013, no employee would be allowed to work more than an average of 49 hours a week — the limit set by Chinese law. Previously, some Foxconn employees worked schedules that approached 100 hours a week. No other major manufacturer has pledged to abide by China’s work-hour laws in such a public manner. Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan , also promised to increase wages, so employees’ total pay would not decline despite fewer hours — the equivalent of a 50 percent raise for many workers, analysts say. With 1.4 million employees in China — the most of any private company — Foxconn is setting a bar that all manufacturers will be judged against, say executives at other companies. “When the largest company raises wages and cuts hours, it forces every other factory to do the same thing whether they want to or not,” said Tony Prophet, a senior vice president at Hewlett-Packard. “A firestorm has started, and these companies are in the glare now. They have to improve to compete. It’s a huge change from just 18 months ago.” Foxconn, in a statement, said that it was “committed to ensuring that we provide a safe and healthy working environment for all our employees,” and that the company had regularly increased wages over the last three years. Secrecy and Transparency Despite those reforms, however, worker advocates inside Apple and with outside groups say the electronics industry’s problems will not genuinely diminish until Apple — the world’s most valuable company — starts filling a public leadership role similar to that of companies in other industries with overseas problems, like Nike in footwear manufacturing and Patagonia in apparel. Such public leadership and transparency can run counter to a culture of secrecy that pervades Apple. Employees often don’t know what their lunch companions or next-door office mates are working on. This secrecy has helped Apple stay ahead of competitors, but has been a problem when it spills into the broader corporate culture, say past executives. “It’s remarkable how the paranoia in Silicon Valley prevents companies from cooperating, even on something like corporate social responsibility,” said Mr. van Heerden of the Fair Labor Association, who added that his work with Apple, Foxconn and other companies was confidential. While Apple is the only electronics company to join Mr. van Heerden’s monitoring group, it has not opened up in some other ways. Apple has declined to release audit reports on the hundreds of facilities the company has inspected. After two factory explosions last year, Apple did not share investigative reports with other companies so they might avoid similar accidents. Apple does not, in general, publicly identify terminated suppliers or factories that have violated Apple’s supplier code of conduct. Moreover, Apple’s growing team of safety and corporate responsibility experts are typically prohibited from sharing their findings at conferences, in academic journals or other forums where their insights could be absorbed by other companies, according to former members of that team. “Apple is scared that if we open the kimono too wide, it will ruin what has made Apple special,” said one former company official. “But that’s the only way to really improve things. If you don’t share what you know, then no one else gets a chance to learn from your mistakes and discoveries.” Apple declined requests for interviews. In a statement, it said the company embraced its “unique position to lead” and had taken working conditions very seriously for a long time. “No one in our industry is doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people as we do. Through years of hard work and steadfast commitment, we have set workplace, dormitory and safety standards, sought help from the world’s leading experts, and established groundbreaking educational programs for workers.” “We have been upfront about the challenges we face and are attacking issues aggressively,” the statement continues. “We believe deeply in transparency and have demonstrated this through reporting our shortcomings and exposing violations.” At a conference in May, Mr. Cook, the chief executive, said that the company was “going to double down on secrecy on products.” He added, however, that “there’s going to be other things that we do that we’re going to be the most transparent company in the world on. Like social change. Supplier responsibility. On what we’re doing for the environment. We’re going to be the most transparent, because we think that transparency is so important in these areas, and that if we are, other people will copy what we’re doing.” This year, Apple began publishing monthly summaries of suppliers’ compliance with overtime standards. In October, Apple hosted other technology companies for a private discussion on responses to excessive work hours overseas. While Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports do not contain details on specific factories, they are still among the most thorough in the electronics business. But Apple has not sought the high-profile leadership opportunities that have set off transformations in other industries. Nike, for instance, has convened public meetings of labor, human rights, environmental and business leaders to discuss how to improve overseas factories. The clothing retailer Gap Inc. has invited outside organizations to critique its purchasing practices and publish their findings. Patagonia shares its factory audits with competitors and has been a vocal supporter of a centralized audit report clearinghouse that lets companies share information. “That’s the standard Apple has to meet,” said a former Apple executive. “That’s how a leader transforms an industry.” A More Human Touch Almost 200 miles southeast of the factory where Ms. Pu received her new chair is another plant that is experimenting with improving workers’ quality of life — and shows the trade-offs of such gains. The factory, in Chongqing, makes computers for Hewlett-Packard, a company with little of Apple’s glamour. It is operated by Quanta, a little-known Taiwanese manufacturer. Inside the plant, amid thousands of workers in bright white uniforms, are occasional flashes of pink worn by people like Zhang Xuemei, a bubbly 19-year-old with glinting earrings whose sole job is to chat with co-workers. For eight hours a day, Ms. Zhang collects complaints about the factory’s free meals and dorms. She listens to workers who are divorcing, homesick or arguing with managers. When she finds someone suffering, she refers them to the company’s full-time doctor or professional counselors. Quanta’s 10-story dormitories feel like a college campus. There is a free movie theater, television rooms, a large martial arts gym, two spacious karaoke bars, a huge cafeteria and an aerobics hall playing a Chinese remix of “Gangnam Style.” Neither Quanta nor Hewlett-Packard claims it has solved every labor woe. And the amenities are partly selfish: one of the biggest problems for Chinese factories is that workers are constantly leaving. Hewlett-Packard hopes that by improving living conditions, turnover and training costs will fall. “You can tweak the line and get one second out of the process, but if the people turn over every three months, think what that does to your quality,” said Mr. Prophet, the Hewlett-Packard executive. Last year, a worker advocacy group criticized another Quanta plant, in Shanghai , for harsh working conditions found at many factories, including extensive overtime and poor food. In Chongqing, Hewlett-Packard has agreed to pay slightly higher prices initially so that Quanta can offer workers a better quality of life. Such payments are the price all companies should bear for more humane factories, say Hewlett-Packard executives. There are costs for workers, too. Quanta’s employees earn slightly less than their peers at Foxconn. What’s more, Quanta’s emphasis on hours that are easier on employees means they are prohibited from overtime shifts that advocates say are abusive, but which some workers insist they want. Zhang Jiang, a slim 21-year-old, previously assembled laptop computers at another company in Shanghai. Each week, he sent the bulk of his pay home so his younger brother could stay in school. Overtime was like a blessing, he said. But last summer, fed up with the 25-hour train trip to see his family, Mr. Zhang moved to Chongqing and joined Quanta. He enjoys the better facilities and dorms. He frequently visits his parents’ home. But his take-home pay has fallen by nearly a third and the thought that his brother may have to drop out of school so he can help the family gnaws at Mr. Zhang. Instead of working in the factory each night, he spends hours playing an online game, Dungeon Fighter. “I’d like to work 80 hours a week,” he said. Change Is Hard Hewlett-Packard also makes products at Foxconn factories, as does almost every major electronics firm. Foxconn, more than any other company, has proved that Chinese plants can deliver obsessive attention to quality. The company has helped make China into a manufacturing juggernaut through strict discipline that is visible everywhere, even in the salutes managers give visiting executives. That discipline, say former Apple executives, is one reason every iPhone is put together so well. It is also one reason the reforms enjoyed by employees like Ms. Pu — who received the new chair — have not spread quickly. Though Foxconn has trained managers to treat employees more gently, foremen still use profanity and intimidation, workers say. “The managers speak in a manner that often feels like a threat,” said Mou Kezhang, who works in iPad quality assurance at the Foxconn factory in Chengdu. Foxconn, in a statement, said it had “always been among the fastest to adopt change and reform.” Its policy, the company said, is “to treat employees with respect and if we find any transgressions, they are immediately investigated and addressed.” In the last two years, Hewlett-Packard has increasingly moved its manufacturing to Quanta. Foxconn has not fought particularly hard to win that business back, according to Hewlett-Packard officials. Often, the quality-of-life improvements requested by Western electronics executives come at the cost of a supplier’s bottom line. Even within Apple, tensions erupt because executives often believe improvements should be financed by suppliers, whereas suppliers say changes are not feasible unless Apple pays more. And ultimately, some workers themselves resist reforms. In March, when Foxconn announced that workers’ hours would be reduced to China’s legal limits, employees began complaining. “Absolutely I’d like to do overtime to work more than 60 hours, but now there’s a ceiling on it,” said Ma Changqiao, a 23-year-old at Foxconn’s Chongqing factory. Change is hard, say officials at multiple companies. Reforming labor conditions in a country as large as China will probably take decades, and labor abuses are an ever-evolving problem without just one right answer. In September, six months after Foxconn agreed to a Fair Labor Association request for new internship rules, two worker advocacy groups found that students in nonmanufacturing courses were being improperly forced to work at a Foxconn plant in north central China. One student studying preschool education said she was prohibited from quitting her internship and was compelled to work night shifts. Afterward, Mr. Gou of Foxconn issued apologies to wronged interns and the responsible official was fired. Today, Foxconn’s internship program continues — a testament, executives say, to Foxconn’s commitment to a program that can benefit thousands of students, even when making improvements is hard and stumbles are inevitable. Changing the company’s culture is slow going. But the needed reforms, executives at Apple and Foxconn hope and believe, are falling into place.

China
Apple
Manufacturing
Hewlett-Packard
Jobs
Foxconn Technology


Four Are Finalists for FIFA Presidency

Abstract: Three men remain in contention to challenge Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency. FIFA’s election oversight panel confirmed that Blatter and three rivals — Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, Michael van Praag of the Netherlands and the former Portugal great Luis Figo — were being vetted to become formal candidates after the close of nominations. ■ The Australian midfielder Tim Cahill, 35, said he was leaving the Red Bulls and Major League Soccer after two years to become a free agent. He scored 14 M.L.S. goals and has been linked to clubs in China and the United Arab Emirates.

FIFA
Sepp Blatter
Ali bin al-Hussein
Michael van Praag
Luis Figo
Soccer


AOL Moving to Increase Revenue It Gets From Search Ads

Abstract: AOL plans to introduce a service Monday to sell ads that will appear next to its search results, which are powered by Google ’s Internet search engine. The service, called AOL Search Marketplace, was contemplated as part of a December 2005 deal between the companies in which Google paid $1 billion for a 5 percent stake in AOL, a unit of Time Warner. Until now, Google has been selling all the ads displayed alongside searches made on AOL’s sites. With the new service, some portion of those ads will be sold by AOL, fed into Google’s advertising system and displayed next to the search results viewed by AOL users. AOL said the service would allow marketers to target its users and deliver ads that are more relevant to them. With the new service, AOL said that it would also become more attractive to marketers that already buy display ads and other online ads from AOL. “We’ve been missing the ability to match search advertising and display advertising campaigns,” said Michael J. Kelly, president of AOL Media Networks. “In a world where advertising market share is increasingly important this gives us an opportunity to tap into budgets that we couldn’t tap.” Mr. Kelly said that AOL had been testing the service with about 30 advertisers and would open it to the company’s entire advertising base on Monday. Google and AOL share revenue from ads displayed alongside AOL search results. They will continue to do so for ads sold by AOL, though according to a different formula. Neither AOL nor Google would give details of the formula, but Mr. Kelly said: “If you sell the ad yourself, you typically keep more.” Still, the move does not necessarily mean that Google will earn less from its relationship with AOL. If AOL brings more advertisers to the system, the prices that advertisers bid to be listed alongside searches could go up. Additionally, if ads are more relevant, users are likely to click on them more frequently, and because advertisers only pay when a user clicks on an ad, overall revenues would increase. But analysts said the deal was an indication of the kinds of concessions Google had to make to edge out Microsoft, which in 2005 was also bidding aggressively to become AOL’s search and advertising partner. “On the surface, this is simply AOL offering something that its advertiser base asked for,” said Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence. “But Google is doing something a bit uncharacteristic to accommodate a large partner.” AOL has been trying to increase its advertising revenue since it decided last year to offer most of its services free; until then they required subscriptions. The company said that advertising revenue climbed 41 percent last year, to about $2 billion.

America Online Inc
Google Inc
Advertising and Marketing
Computers and the Internet


Staten Island Borough Has City’s Worst Smog

Abstract: New Yorkers who moved to Staten Island to escape congestion and pollution will be disappointed to hear that while air quality deteriorated in all five boroughs over the past year, it is worst in Staten Island, according to the eighth annual air pollution report by the American Lung Association. The report, which is scheduled to be released today, found that ozone pollution — or smog — is highest on Staten Island. And particle pollution, usually known as soot, has become substantially worse there, as well as in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Louise A. Vetter, chief executive of the American Lung Association of the City of New York, said that among the factors that contribute to Staten Island’s pollution are the heavy volume of vehicular traffic and diesel exhaust from ferries and barges in New York Harbor. Prevailing winds and other meteorological phenomena may also cause pollution from other states to hover over Staten Island, Ms. Vetter said.

Air Pollution
Staten Island (NYC)
Environment


The Intelligent-Life Lottery

Abstract: Almost 20 years ago, in the pages of an obscure publication called Bioastronomy News, two giants in the world of science argued over whether SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — had a chance of succeeding. Carl Sagan, as eloquent as ever, gave his standard answer. With billions of stars in our galaxy, there must be other civilizations capable of transmitting electromagnetic waves. By scouring the sky with radio telescopes, we just might intercept a signal. But Sagan’s opponent, the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr , thought the chances were close to zero. Against Sagan’s stellar billions, he posed his own astronomical numbers: Of the billions of species that have lived and died since life began, only one — Homo sapiens — had developed a science, a technology, and the curiosity to explore the stars. And that took about 3.5 billion years of evolution. High intelligence, Mayr concluded, must be extremely rare, here or anywhere. Earth’s most abundant life form is unicellular slime. Since the debate with Sagan , more than 1,700 planets have been discovered beyond the solar system — 700 just this year. Astronomers recently estimated that one of every five sunlike stars in the Milky Way might be orbited by a world capable of supporting some kind of life. That is about 40 billion potential habitats. But Mayr, who died in 2005 at the age of 100, probably wouldn’t have been impressed. By his reckoning, the odds would still be very low for anything much beyond slime worlds. No evidence has yet emerged to prove him wrong. Maybe we’re just not looking hard enough. Since SETI began in the early 1960s, it has struggled for the money it takes to monitor even a fraction of the sky. In an online essay for The Conversation last week, Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, lamented how little has been allocated for the quest — just a fraction of NASA’s budget. “If you don’t ante up,” he wrote, “you will never win the jackpot. And that is a question of will.” Three years ago, SETI’s Allen Telescope Array in Northern California ran out of money and was closed for a while. Earlier this month, it was threatened by wildfire — another reminder of the precariousness of the search. It has been more than 3.5 billion years since the first simple cells arose, and it took another billion years or so for some of them to evolve and join symbiotically into primitive multicellular organisms. These biochemical hives, through random mutations and the blind explorations of evolution, eventually led to creatures with the ability to remember, to anticipate and — at least in the case of humans — to wonder what it is all about. Every step was a matter of happenstance, like the arbitrary combination of numbers — 3, 12, 31, 34, 51 and 24 — that qualified a Powerball winner for a $90 million prize this month. Some unknowing soul happened to enter a convenience store in Rifle, Colo., and — maybe with change from buying gasoline or a microwaved burrito — purchase a ticket just as the machine was about to spit out those particular numbers. According to the Powerball website, the chance of winning the grand prize is about one in 175 million. The emergence of humanlike intelligence, as Mayr saw it, was about as likely as if a Powerball winner kept buying tickets and — round after round — hit a bigger jackpot each time. One unlikelihood is piled on another, yielding a vanishingly rare event. In one of my favorite books, “Wonderful Life,” Stephen Jay Gould celebrated what he saw as the unlikelihood of our existence. Going further than Mayr, he ventured that if a slithering creature called Pikaia gracilens had not survived the Cambrian extinction, about half a billion years ago, the entire phylum called Chordata, which includes us vertebrates, might never have existed. Gould took his title from the Frank Capra movie in which George Bailey gets to see what the world might have been like without him — idyllic Bedford Falls is replaced by a bleak, Dickensian Pottersville. For Gould, the fact that any of our ancestral species might easily have been nipped in the bud should fill us “with a new kind of amazement” and “a frisson for the improbability of the event” — a fellow agnostic’s version of an epiphany. “We came this close (put your thumb about a millimeter away from your index finger), thousands and thousands of times, to erasure by the veering of history down another sensible channel,” he wrote. “Replay the tape a million times,” he proposed, “and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life.” Other biologists have disputed Gould’s conclusion. In the course of evolution, eyes and multicellularity arose independently a number of times. So why not vertebrae, spinal cords and brains? The more bags of tricks an organism has at its disposal, the greater its survival power may be. A biological arms race ensues, with complexity ratcheted ever higher. But those occasions are rare. Most organisms, as Daniel Dennett put it in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” seem to have “hit upon a relatively simple solution to life’s problems at the outset and, having nailed it a billion years ago, have had nothing much to do in the way of design work ever since.” Our appreciation of complexity, he wrote, “may well be just an aesthetic preference.” In “Five Billion Years of Solitude,” by Lee Billings, published last year, the author visited Frank Drake, one of the SETI pioneers. “Right now, there could well be messages from the stars flying right through this room,” Dr. Drake told him. “Through you and me. And if we had the right receiver set up properly, we could detect them. I still get chills thinking about it.” He knew the odds of tuning in — at just the right frequency at the right place and time — were slim. But that just meant we needed to expand the search. “We’ve been playing the lottery only using a few tickets,” he said.

Carl Sagan
Ernst Mayr
SETI Institute
Stephen Jay Gould
Frank Drake
Extraterrestrial life
Space


Ohio State Fans Take an Informal Rutgers Pop Quiz

Abstract: COLUMBUS, Ohio — Despite warnings from Coach Urban Meyer not to take this week’s Big Ten opponent lightly, the Ohio State football community flunked its Rutgers pop quiz late Thursday afternoon. Some test scores were zero. “It’s in New Jersey? I didn’t know, sorry,” said Adrienne Hennessy, a junior who added she would, as always, be in the student section Saturday at Ohio Stadium, known as The Horseshoe, for the Buckeyes’ first-ever meeting with Rutgers. Her face would be painted with her school’s colors, scarlet and gray. Speaking of which, did she want to take a shot at the Rutgers’ team nickname? “Um, is it the Nuggets?” Scarlet Knights? What a coincidence. Hennessy was sitting on a bench outside College Traditions, an Ohio State apparel store, where a bronze statue of Woody Hayes loomed over West Lane Avenue and the university’s fight song played outside on a loop. Inside the store, behind a counter, Jamie Thivener, a freshman, said, “To be honest, I’d never heard of Rutgers until I got my season tickets.” An older co-worker was of no help. “I’m an Ohio State fan, glad you’re asking her the questions,” she said. Thivener decided maybe it was “a girl thing” and the guys would have better luck at distinguishing Rutgers from Valdosta State. But back outside, hit with the nickname question, Josh Paulus, a junior, said, “I’d guess the Bulldogs.” Image Rutgers’s fans cheered last season’s victory against Temple, a more familiar opponent than Big Ten teams. Credit Cal Sport Media, via Associated Press Images Try again, he was told. He shook his head. “I just don’t think the majority of Ohio State fans know anything about Rutgers,” he said. “We haven’t played them. They were in that other conference, the, you know ...” Yes, the Big East, until it broke up and became a basketball league. Out here, there was never anything big about college football in the East. At least Steven Politowicz, a senior, had a wider historical view. “Isn’t Rutgers like one of the oldest collegiate programs?” he said. He nodded when told that it had played in what has been considered the first collegiate football game, in 1869 against Princeton. But asked if he could name a single Rutgers athlete — in football or any sport — he shrugged. More than a few have played in the N.F.L., but offered a hint about recent infamy inside an elevator, he brightened and said, “Ray Lewis.” Hooray, close enough (to Ray Rice). Granted, this was a random sampling, about 20 people, most of them students from Ohio. Rutgers is much better known in State College, Pa., where the Big Ten’s Penn State draws many students from neighboring New Jersey. And to their credit, the Buckeyes’ fans were more sheepishly than derisively uninformed about this new conference foe. A few mentions of Paul Robeson, the African-American actor and activist who was an all-American football player at Rutgers in the early 20th century, were met with blank stares. Thankfully, nobody took a wild guess with the name-one-athlete question and figured Chris Christie for an old offensive tackle. Next door to College Traditions, inside the popular Varsity Club bar and restaurant, a quintet of Rutgers fans, newly arrived from New Jersey for Rutgers’ first Big Ten road game, showed little resentment, more resignation. Image Paul Robeson, left in 1917, was an all-American football player at Rutgers. Credit Associated Press “When we played Auburn a few years ago, I went down there and it wasn’t even, ‘Where is Rutgers,’ it was, ‘What’s a Rutgers?’ ” said Rick Geiger, 61. “My favorite is when they ask, ‘Isn’t it one of those fancy Ivy League schools?’ But should we even care what they think?” His son, also named Rick, 38, recalled youthful days of sneaking in to watch Rutgers football when it did play the fancy schools before surrendering to national profile temptations, for better or (as many taxpayers in New Jersey have argued) worse. “I have all these pins that say, ‘Beat Colgate,’ ” the younger Geiger said, essentially asking how much these Ohioans should be expected to know about a program that for decades didn’t exactly treat football like the cult it is here and has had only marginal success since converting. Mark Creighton, 36, said: “We’re going to have to beat one of these big-name schools on the road for people to know us. If we win here, it’ll be unbelievable. Honestly, I’m just hoping for a close game.” Rutgers is a huge underdog, but on his local radio show Thursday, Meyer called the Scarlet Knights “probably the most improved team in the country,” one blown late coverage in the secondary against Penn State from being 6-0. And Ohio State’s Eli Apple, a redshirt freshman cornerback from Voorhees, N.J., said in a telephone interview he has been warning teammates, “Rutgers is going to come out here with a chip on their shoulder because a lot of people outside of New Jersey don’t even know they’re a Division I program.” Apple was heavily recruited by Rutgers, but had been attending Ohio State camps since seventh grade. Asked if he thought Rutgers was compromised because the name did not reflect location, he said, “I never thought about that, but it could be that people just don’t know where it is.” Stepping out of the Ohio State R.O.T.C. building, James Funk, who had driven into town from 40 miles north for a Navy League meeting, said he wasn’t a rabid football fan but knew Rutgers was in the Big Ten “for the New York market.” Hence, the conundrum: Rutgers’ identity is tied to a place it is only wishfully connected to. Walking across the street from the football stadium, Mark Bechtel, a medical school faculty member, said he was familiar with Rutgers because, growing up in a small farming community in northern Indiana, his neighbor earned his Ph.D. there. But did he know where “there” actually was? “I do not,” said Bechtel, who appreciated being informed that Rutgers’s main campus was in New Brunswick. We left it at that. The question of Piscataway, where the Scarlet Knights play home games, is years away from being part of the quiz.

Ohio
Ohio State
Rutgers
Urban Meyer
College football
Big Ten Conference


Times Video Presents: ‘To Kill a Sparrow’

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Nine years before an Afghan girl named Soheila was born, her half brother Aminullah eloped with a woman who had been betrothed to his cousin, an event that led to years of violent feuding between two sides of their family in Nuristan. Soheila’s mother died while giving birth to her. Her father, Rahimullah, then bartered his daughter’s future for family peace, betrothing Soheila at the age of 5 to the aggrieved cousin, a man her father’s own age. The practice is known as baad, in which young girls are traded between families to resolve disputes. Although illegal, baad is still widely practiced, especially in remote areas of Afghanistan. Once of legal age, 16, Soheila would become the fourth wife of an elderly man. Fast-forward to late last month, when Soheila, who uses only one name and is now 24, sat in the offices of the advocacy group Women for Afghan Women and for the first time watched her own story unfold on screen. Wide-eyed, she watched the documentary “To Kill a Sparrow,” a half-hour-long piece by the Iranian filmmaker Zohreh Soleimani that showed Soheila’s long struggle to escape the destiny her father had intended for her. Much of the documentary, which was filmed over about a year and a half, took place while Soheila was in the women’s shelter run in Kabul by Women for Afghan Women , which is the largest private organization in Afghanistan operating shelters and other facilities for women in crisis. It is where she spent much of the past four years as the group’s lawyers worked to resolve her case. “I grew up in here,” Soheila said, embarrassed and hiding her face for a moment as she sat between her former social worker and her former lawyer, both W.A.W. employees. “Look how young I was. I was so skinny then.” “You were too skinny then,” one of the women said, laughing with her. Soheila discovered her betrothal when she turned 13, and she soon worked out that her white-bearded fiancé would be 67 when she reached age 16. On the eve of her wedding ceremony, she fled to her maternal uncle’s house, but it was clear she would be returned by him in the morning. In desperation, she begged her cousin Niaz Mohammad, who is a decade or so older than she, to help her escape, and he did. In the course of their flight, the two runaways fell in love and then married each other. Even though she had escaped with the man she loved, she was not free: Her family members still considered her married to the older man based on the earlier agreement. They pursued her and had her and her new husband thrown in jail, accused of adultery, conceiving a child out of wedlock and bigamy. The striking thing about the video is the success of Ms. Soleimani in persuading Soheila’s family members to cooperate, and drawing out of them their full-throated justification of practices like baad, and the absolute right of men to determine whom their sisters and daughters should marry. As Soheila watched the video, she came to the part where her father visits her in prison, and plays in an apparently loving and grandfatherly way with her toddler, Mr. Mohammad’s son, who was born after Soheila and Mr. Mohammad were both imprisoned. Soheila burst into tears, and covered her face with her veil, then peeked out again at the image of her father in a moment of seeming kindness. Ms. Soleimani first found Soheila in prison, but soon afterward Women for Afghan Women took up her case, and she was transferred to the group’s Kabul shelter as they successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to grant her a divorce from her first husband on the grounds that it was the illegal outcome of the abusive custom of baad. While she waited for her husband’s case to be resolved, she asked to return to her family. She said her father told her that he would accept her home on one condition: “Kill your son.” As the video continues, Ms. Soleimani interviews both the father and the half brother, Aminullah, whose own long-ago elopement was the offense that led to the bartering of Soheila’s life. Her father, who lives by traditions that have often been overtaken by laws, at least once seems confused by the goings-on in Kabul, saying for instance that the government keeps Soheila in the shelter and would not let her return to him, even though the government does not run the shelter. When Soheila saw Aminullah and her father sitting together, explaining themselves in the documentary, she pushed the screen aside and said, “I won’t watch them, I hate them both.” On camera, both men soon become frankly homicidal toward her. “Me, or a relative from my tribe, someone will find her — even if she goes to America we will find her,” Rahimullah says. “Wherever she is found, she will be killed.” He then cites the Quran as justification, and adds a prayer, “God, kill both of them.” “If she runs away, unh,” adds Aminullah, making a gesture like a finger pulling a trigger. “We are not afraid of dying, we are not afraid of beating, we are not afraid of killing, for us it’s like killing a sparrow. If she is not coming back to us and goes with that donkey of a man, she will be killed.” There are some happy postproduction addenda to the story in the video. Mr. Mohammad’s case was also resolved by W.A.W., and after four years in prison, he was finally released. Her divorce from the old man final, Soheila was required by Afghan law to wait four more months before remarrying, but then last month she was released from the shelter and the couple were married formally, in a ceremony with just a few of his family members present. It is still a long way from a happy ending. Mr. Mohammad contracted hepatitis in prison, and now suffers from diabetes as well; he is jobless and too ill to work. Soheila’s half brother Aminullah often telephones her and threatens her life, she said, although now she records the calls and takes the recordings to the police. According to officials at Women for Afghan Women, Aminullah’s own daughter eloped recently as well, breaking the engagement that he had made for her when she was only three days old — an engagement he had boasted about on camera. “Yes, three days old: one, two, three,” he said to the incredulous Ms. Soleimani. “He blames me for all their problems,” Soheila said when interviewed recently, suggesting that her half brother might now be looking for a baad settlement from the family of the man who took his own daughter. “It just goes on and on,” Soheila said, “It will keep going on, until they kill me.”

Afghanistan
Women for Afghan Women
Documentaries
Zohreh Soleimani
Women's rights,Feminism
Movies
Women and Girls


Banks Fail, and So Can Bailouts

Abstract: Trust is a precious thing, and the banks still don’t have much of it. Not from the public, and not from one another. The government’s latest bailout plan — to invest $250 billion in banks with few strings attached — could help restore that trust. But it will succeed only if the government is able to make it clear that those investments confer a sort of “Good Bookkeeping” seal of approval. That will depend on whether the government makes sure that the cash goes only to banks that are in decent shape, or at least will be after they get the cash. By committing half the money to nine large banks, the Treasury Department presumably has taken care of most, if not all, of the banks whose failure would threaten the system. Now it has the chance to carefully go over the books of banks that apply to join the bailout club. The signs of possible distress that the government should look for go far beyond toxic mortgage securities and credit-default swaps . Many smaller banks were not invited to those parties, and therefore suffer no hangover from them. But real estate construction loans, both for homes and commercial buildings, were far more prevalent in banks all around the country. Credit card losses are looming as unemployment rises. It will take weeks, if not months, for the government to prove that it will invest the money wisely. But so far, it has not even made clear that it is determined to leave out the bad banks. Treasury officials say they have not made any decisions on what criteria will be used to decide which banks are allowed into the program, other than to consult with regulators. That is probably true; the government’s frantic efforts to halt the slide in recent weeks have had a “ready, fire, aim” feel to them. Or, in the gentler words of the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, “Our strategy will continue to evolve and be refined as we adapt to new developments and the inevitable setbacks.” When a government official talks about “inevitable setbacks,” you know he is nervous. What the government should do is look over bank assets with a jaundiced eye. It now has Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nationalized agencies, buying toxic mortgage securities, and should take advantage of that by drafting experts there to weigh in on security valuation. Banks that are loudly demanding that mark-to-market rules be suspended should receive special attention, for the same reason that the police are suspicious of people who hurriedly hide something as a cop approaches. Banks that want government cash should have to prove they are providing accurate market values of the assets they own. If the government does that — and everyone knows it did that — then the Good Bookkeeping seal of approval could become a valuable thing. Bank failures among institutions not in the program could even be a confidence booster, providing evidence that membership in the bailout club is a mark of quality. But if it appears that most any bank can qualify, if well-known walking corpses are allowed in to delay the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation having to produce the cash from its depleted insurance fund, then the opposite could happen. The bailout club needs to be a group that banks wish they were in, not one they fear to be in. There was a rush of banks this week proclaiming that they did not want to be in the club. Some of that may be reminiscent of the Groucho Marx line that he would not want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. It is certainly better public relations for a bank to be thought to have scorned the money than it is to be known as one that was denied the cash. Last weekend’s international agreement to save the financial system — by means that were up to each government — provided temporary reassurance to investors. But the banks still are worried. The Libor rate — the rate at which banks lend to each other — slipped this week, but remained far above where it was before Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. Even government guarantees on new bank borrowings have not restored the banks’ confidence. And if they don’t trust themselves, why should we trust them? There is a growing realization that the American recession has spread to Europe and Japan, and is threatening the emerging markets that are going to export less to countries that are buying less. The American economy is in for a rough stretch and a deep recession even if the financial system gets going again. If it doesn’t, the downturn will be deeper and longer. It will help if the government can persuade us that the banks in which it is investing are the good ones, and that it knew enough to avoid the banks that are doomed to fail. On the other hand, it will not help if the government responds to the pressure being applied by banks and some politicians to let the banks go on making up values for their weakened assets — values that will be justified by estimates of future cash flows coming from the very same people who created this junk, but now refuse to buy it for what they claim it is worth. The Securities and Exchange Commission caved in to the banks on one fairly technical accounting issue this week, in the process saying that the opinions of the major auditing firms could be sidestepped. If it does the same on the far more important issue of mark-to-market accounting, don’t be surprised to see this bailout fail. If the regulators think the truth is too scary for the public to see, then perhaps it is.

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008)


Knicks Better, but Miami Game Demands Their Best

Abstract: For perhaps the first time this season, a sane person could argue that things are heading in the right direction for the Knicks. After winning two of three games on a trip to Texas, a swing that is usually brutal, the Knicks handled the Detroit Pistons, 89-85 , at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night, punctuating their best stretch of the season. All wins show up the same way in the standings, but the Knicks’ victory over the Pistons makes it difficult to extrapolate their recent success too far into the future. The Knicks will play LeBron James and the Miami Heat at the Garden on Thursday night. They will have to play nearly perfect basketball to overcome Miami’s overwhelming offense. The mistakes the Knicks routinely made against the Pistons will doom them against better competition. Perhaps the most pressing question in the matchup with Miami will be whether the Knicks can shore up their leaky transition defense. The Pistons’ offense is loaded with dangerous frontcourt players but offers almost no outside shooting, so it struggles to score in the halfcourt. But the Knicks repeatedly allowed the Pistons to establish early offense, whether finding Greg Monroe with deep post position or letting Josh Smith attack the rim. Every team gives up a fast-break bucket or two, but the Pistons were able to run after routine misses, and even baskets, by the Knicks. The Knicks lack organization in transition defense; Andrea Bargnani is often the first player back but is a poor communicator of his teammates’ responsibilities. In the scramble to pick up sprinting Pistons, the Knicks allowed the easy post-up opportunities that let the Pistons hang around. The Knicks appear to be making progress on offense, though. The ball moved quickly around the perimeter, especially in the first half. Raymond Felton made drives that contracted the defense, then he passed to open shooters on the opposite wing. Felton, who returned to action after missing two weeks with a groin injury, did smart work to keep everyone involved. His drives to the basket propelled the Knicks’ offense and prevented it from stalling in repetitive isolation plays for Carmelo Anthony and J. R. Smith. When he ran out of gas in the second half, so did the Knicks. Iman Shumpert said the increase in passing and movement benefited all phases of the game. “When everybody feels like they’re involved — hard cuts, ball movement, making things easier for the next man — I think that brings a trust along to the defensive end,” he said. Shumpert also credited a general increase in energy for the Knicks’ recent surge. But that energy evaporated when the fourth quarter arrived — a problem that has plagued the Knicks throughout the season. Though they pulled out two close wins in Texas, over the Spurs and the Mavericks, the Knicks nearly gave away a game to the lowly Pistons by once again switching strategies in the fourth quarter. Instead of staying with crisp ball movement and team play, the Knicks tried to run out the clock with longer possessions that forced the ball to Anthony. “In the fourth quarter, you want to milk possessions when you got the lead,” Shumpert said. “The ball’s not going to move as much, but you want to get your heavy hitter the ball, sort of just make plays off that.” There is a logical conservatism here: Anthony rarely turns the ball over and often makes an effective attempt at the rim. But it also reflects a teamwide lack of faith in what really works for the Knicks: lots of passing and equal-opportunity 3-point shooting. There is also a paradox at work: Anthony plays like a superstar when the Knicks consciously push the action away from him. When open, he is a superb shooter — he was 6 for 7 on 3-pointers Tuesday — and a nightmare to defend off the dribble. But when they force the ball to him, as they often do in the fourth quarter, he becomes far less effective. Felton acknowledged that the Knicks played differently in tight games. “We got to learn from the fourth quarter,” he said. “Got to do what we did in the first. It’s kind of hard to keep that pace up the whole game.” On Tuesday, the Knicks let a 15-point fourth-quarter lead dwindle to 1. Purpose and verve departed the second unit as Smith mangled possessions with indiscriminate shot selection and wild passes. In one late sequence, the Knicks committed three straight turnovers without making a pass in the halfcourt. The Knicks have sorted out a few things. Toure’ Murry is useful off the bench as a sorely needed spark of athleticism and ball handling. Amar’e Stoudemire has settled into a consistently productive role with the second unit, operating off the left block. Still, the core issues facing the team persist: the overreliance on Anthony, Smith’s flights of foolishness, Felton’s questionable fitness and ability to pressure defenses off the dribble, and Tyson Chandler’s health. The Knicks’ play in 2014 suggests they are plugging holes, defining repeatable ways to soar with their strengths. The Pistons are good fodder for a team still figuring out some basics. A team like Miami may expose that these holes are not filled so much as papered over.

Knicks
Pistons
Miami Heat
Basketball
Raymond Felton
Carmelo Anthony
Iman Shumpert
J R Smith


After a Stirring Introduction, Chase Headley Hopes for a Steady Follow-Up Season

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — As Alex Rodriguez stood a few feet away and signed autographs for dozens of clamoring fans on Thursday, Chase Headley skipped down the steps of the dugout, deposited his bat and helmet, and grabbed a glove before heading to the outfield. He did so all but unnoticed. This crossing of Yankees third basemen was, in a sense, a passing of the torch. Everything that Rodriguez has been in recent years — a magnet for attention, a sometimes-feared anchor to the lineup, an increasingly immobile fielder — Headley is not. Since he was acquired before the trade deadline last July, Headley has provided several game-turning plays in the field and a reliable bat. Words like leader, sincere and disciplined follow him. “A real grinder,” said General Manager Brian Cashman, who compared Headley to Scott Brosius, the third baseman who won three World Series with the Yankees. For Headley, who signed a four-year, $52 million contract after becoming a free agent at the end of last season, the decision to rejoin the Yankees was not difficult. Coming to New York after spending his entire career in San Diego, with Petco Park’s cavernous dimensions, its sleepy atmosphere and the Padres’ limited payroll was a liberation. And when the Yankees told him he would begin the season as their third baseman, with Rodriguez being shifted to designated hitter and backup corner infielder after a yearlong suspension, it was not much of a decision for Headley, who worked alongside Rodriguez during the team’s first full-squad workout. “I felt like I fit in right from the beginning,” Headley said, praising the Yankees’ staff and their care for his family. “This is just a special place. When you look back at the history of talent, of expectations, of class — there’s a whole hodgepodge of things that, when you put on that jersey, you feel different. It’s something I haven’t felt in my career — that pride, that responsibility.” When it was suggested that he sounded like a propagandist, Headley smiled. Growing up in Fountain, Colo., about 80 miles south of Denver, Headley despised the Yankees. He recalled a conversation with Jerry Hairston Jr., a former teammate in San Diego who had played for the Yankees. “I said I hate the Yankees and he looked at me and said, ‘You’d love playing for them, though.’ ” Headley said. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know if I would or not.’ And then you get here and you see what he meant.” Headley had a stirring introduction to New York. The Yankees completed a deal with San Diego in the afternoon on July 22, and Headley landed at La Guardia Airport less than an hour before the Yankees’ game against the Rangers. Headley was in the dugout by the second inning, entered the game in the eighth and ended it with a game-winning single in the 14th . Though the Yankees were interested in acquiring Headley in 2013 when Rodriguez was injured, his audition in New York cemented their desire to re-sign him. “There wasn’t anything that didn’t turn us on about him,” Cashman said. “But until you get to see him and see him in New York, you don’t always know. Some players come here and the totality of New York can constrain somebody from being what they’re capable of being. He seemed like he’d been here a long time.” The Yankees expect that Headley and the newly acquired shortstop Didi Gregorius will drastically upgrade the left side of their infield defense by replacing Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, whose range had declined in recent years. How much the Yankees will get from Headley at the plate is more uncertain. He seemed poised to become a star in 2012 when he complemented a Gold Glove performance in the field with a breakout offensive season, hitting .286 with 31 home runs and 115 R.B.I., which helped him finish fifth in the National League’s Most Valuable Player voting. But Headley regressed the last two seasons, something he attributed to a slip in mechanics that he is now trying to correct. What impressed the Yankees was that after they acquired him, the right-handed-hitting Headley managed to get on base and drive the ball, his .768 on-base plus slugging percentage leading all Yankees with at least 150 at-bats. “Whether that was my career year, who knows?” Headley said of 2012. “I’m not going to say that’s a year that should happen every year, but driving in 75 runs and hitting 18 to 20 home runs should be a standard year. That’s the challenge — I haven’t been able to consistently do that.” Somewhat counterintuitively, Headley said the Yankees’ environment was more conducive to relaxing at the plate than the Padres’ had been. Not only is the park more hitter-friendly, but in a lineup including Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran, Brett Gardner and Rodriguez — if they are healthy and reasonably productive — Headley can be just another cog. In San Diego, it was at times a burden to be the biggest bat in an often-anemic lineup. “You try not to think like that, but you’re struggling as an offense and you’re a veteran guy, and you’ve had success in the past, you want to be the guy that helps, that gets the big hit,” Headley said. “Sometimes that gets in the way. Trying harder and wanting more is not always beneficial in our game.”

Chase Headley
Alex Rodriguez
Yankees
Baseball


Some Television Writer-Producers Side With Guild

Abstract: LOS ANGELES, Nov. 6 — Hollywood writers and the studios that produce the most popular programs on television began tightening the screws on each other Tuesday, the second day of the first industrywide strike in nearly two decades. On the writers’ side, some prominent show runners — the writer-producers who fill multiple roles at the helm of television programs — said publicly that they did not intend to perform any of their duties while the writers’ strike continued. Among the more prominent writers taking such a stand was Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of two of ABC’s biggest hits, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice,” who sent an e-mail message to other Writers Guild members saying that she would “choose not to render my services as a producer” during the writers strike. Shawn Ryan, the executive producer of “The Shield” and “The Unit,” said much the same thing in an e-mail message. “The only thing I can do as a show runner is to do nothing,” Mr. Ryan wrote. “I obviously will not write on my shows. But I also will not edit, I will not cast, I will not look at location photos, I will not get on the phone with the network and studio, I will not prep directors, I will not review mixes.” Most of the large television studios, meanwhile, said they had begun informing writers who have contracts to develop new series but who are not currently attached to programs that they would not be paid. Invoking a “force majeure” clause in those contracts that allows for their termination in the case of a strike, studios including Fox, ABC Studios and CBS Paramount have begun sending such notices to some writers, according to people close to the studios and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the producers in this labor struggle. Spokesmen for both the writers and producers said there was still no plan to resume talks. Picketing continued on both coasts, and the Writers Guild of America East scheduled a membership meeting for Wednesday night at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Manhattan. After the acrimonious breakdown of last-minute bargaining Sunday night, both sides have become preoccupied with the logistics of the strike, and neither appeared eager to alter its stance in the early days of a walkout. One major impasse is how much the writers will be paid for their work appearing on the Internet or in other new media. The strike’s fallout has landed first on late-night talk shows, prompting programs like “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” to immediately revert to repeats. At least a half-dozen series have stopped production this week, most of them half-hour comedies that are filmed in front of a studio audience. The new Fox series “Back to You,” was scheduled to return from a short hiatus on Wednesday to produce a new episode, but instead will join “Two and a Half Men,” “ ’Til Death,” “Rules of Engagement” and “The New Adventures of Old Christine” on the list of comedy programs that have suspended production. While most prime-time series are likely to have enough new episodes filmed or in production to allow the networks to broadcast new episodes into January, ongoing work on the set of many productions is not expected to last more than a week or two. By that time, the supply of most of the scripts written in advance of the strike will be exhausted. Representatives of the television studios affiliated with some of the four major networks said Tuesday that work had already slowed on some series. A CBS official said filming of an episode of “Cane” at a site away from the CBS Paramount studio lot was briefly interrupted on Monday by noise from chanting strikers. And an NBC official said producers were not able to complete all of their planned tasks this week on the set of “The Office” after the show runner, Greg Daniels, and some of the actors who also work as writers did not show up for work. Mr. Daniels, who could not be reached for comment, was quoted by the trade publication Television Week as saying that his aim was “to shut down” production. Because most series have nonwriting producers on their staffs, those decisions will not lead to an immediate halt in production of most prime-time dramas. But such a stance might put some show runners in violation of their contracts. Studio representatives said on Tuesday that they had not yet invoked such a right, and that they thought that some show runners were continuing to perform producing duties at their homes or offices after making an appearance on the picket lines.

Television
Strikes
Writers Guild of America
Writing and Writers