I’m off to Mexico for a couple of days, so the blog will be quiet. But thought I’d leave you with this pic of Neil Finn and the rest of Crowded House playing on Monday night….
Today is the first day of the “Monster Shark Tournament”—copyrighted—in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard.
“I think the bottom line is it’s fun,” said [participant Matt] Philips….
Unless you’re a mako shark, one of the sharks the fishermen are allowed to kill, which are one of the planet’s most endangered species.
Someday the people of that beautiful island—aesthetically, if not spiritually—will look back and wonder, What were we thinking?
Let’s hope there are still some sharks around when it happens.
By showing it how to make money….
…ought to be livid about Jeffrey Epstein.
The Harvard-donating billionaire finished a year of house arrest yesterday, and he’s a free man—which only goes to show you that, when it comes to having your way with the law, money is even more powerful than celebrity.
According to Conchita Sarnoff on the Daily Beast,
• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.
• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.
The Palm Beach police department located 17 reportedly underage girls who allegedly had sexual contact with Epstein after he had them brought to his house to give “massages.”
The FBI put that number, including girls at other locations, at around 40.
For Epstein’s birthday one year, according to allegations in a civil suit, he was presented with three 12-year-old girls from France, who were molested then flown back to Europe the next day. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein’s sexual pleasure. According to a former bookkeeper, a number of the girls worked for MC2, the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein’s. Brunel received $1 million from the billionaire around the time he started the agency.
One reason these matters never went to criminal trial? Because the victims were intimidated by Epstein’s high-priced legal team, including Allan Dershowitz.
When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective Joe Recarey’s report, Dershowitz began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels. Reiter’s deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background checks on both the police chief and Det. Recarey.
Dershowitz has denied those allegations, and some of the victims may have had credibility issues—there could have been a Crucible-esque situation going on.
Still, Sarnoff’s piece, which is based on real reporting, raises disturbing questions about American justice.
The Columbia president has been named chair of the New York Fed board of directors.
The Wall Street Journal doesn’t like that idea.
But given the recent New York State Court of Appeals decision to allow the use of eminent domain in Columbia’s expansion into Harlem, you’d have to say the Columbia president–who was passed over for the Harvard job in favor of Larry Summers—is on a roll.
Even as Amazon announces that it’s now selling more ebooks than physical books, “usability specialist” Jakob Nielsen reports that it takes you longer to read an ebook than a paper one: about 6% longer on an iPad, almost 11% longer on a Kindle.
Now that’s ironic.
Nielsen set his subjects down in some nice comfy chairs with good lighting. They read a story in print, then on a PC, iPad, and Kindle. Although there was a difference in how long it took to read in different platforms, Nielsen says, there was no difference in reading comprehension.
This is not a very scientific approach—maybe it takes you longer to read something a 3rd time than a 1st because you’re bored?—and the sample size isn’t nearly large enough to be meaningful. I’d be curious to hear the thoughts of people who actually are using these devices.
As for the Amazon number, there are caveats there as well. Ebooks are cheaper, of course. And Amazon is pushing the Kindle incredibly hard; if it pushed paper that hard, it’d sell a lot of physical books. And finally, there’s the novelty effect; we all remember downloading lots of songs from iTunes when we got our first iPod.
What I’d really like to know is, What percentage of those electronic books actually get read by their buyers? Or do they download because it’s fun and easy, but never actually get around to reading them?
Wired has a fascinating piece on the rocky relationship between Apple and AT&T.
The two corporations have argued about almost everything. Jobs has been apoplectic about the state of AT&T’s network and what he views as its slow-footed upgrade efforts almost since launch day three years ago. One Apple source says that Jobs has discussed dropping AT&T at least half a dozen times.
AT&T executives aren’t so crazy about Jobs, either. They complain that Apple hasn’t accepted its fair share of the blame. They say — and Apple sources confirm — that the software running the iPhone’s main radio, known as the baseband, was full of bugs and contributed to the much-decried dropped calls. …
Fascinating stuff. But for all the hullabaloo about the new iPhone, and the way Apple’s image has taken a hit, it’s still an astonishing product, and mine has worked brilliantly.
But is it water-resistant?
________________________________________________________________________________________________
*By Lawrence K. Altman in today’s Times.
This is actually a fascinating story:
Mr. Cheney’s [device] is about the size of a D battery and leaves most recipients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart’s own pulsatile beat. Most such pulse-less patients feel nothing unusual. But they are urged to wear bracelets or other identifications to alert emergency room doctors as to why they have no pulse.
Dick Cheney living without a pulse—I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.
The Washington Post reports that Facebook has hired Harvard alum Marne Levine as its new vice-president of global public policy, a term which appears to mean “Washington-based lobbyist.”
She will be based in Washington, just as the firm builds its local policy and lobbying team to address growing interest by lawmakers and regulators on how the social networking giant is dealing with issues such as copyright, security of children online, and privacy.
Levine will also help the firm build its policy teams in Asia, the Americas and Europe, the company said.…
So building policy teams in Asia, the Americas and Europe is…a part-time job?
What appears to have happened here is that Facebook has hired a Washington hand with very close connections to Larry Summers (more on this in a second) but wants to downplay the impression of a revolving door between the White House and lobbying. Thus, the v-p of global policy title even though that’s only an “also” part of Levine’s job description.
That may be why the next day Facebook seems to have gotten on message. In a June 25th report—the Post’s was 6.24—a website called InternetNews.com reports [emphasis added]:
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told InternetNews.com that Levine’s primary focus will be international development, working with foreign governments and NGOs as the company expands in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Glad we got that straight.
Now, what’s the Harvard-Facebook connection? (Other than the obvious one.)
Well, Levine helped broker a secret meeting between Summers and HMS grad Sheryl Sandberg, another former chief of staff of his who was then a v-p at Google. That meeting led to Harvard’s controversial but—before Summers made the decision—little-debated decision to participate in the Google books project.
Guess who now works for Facebook?
Sheryl Sandberg, of course….
Levine and Sandberg are friends; according to Vogue, Levine attended Sandberg’s wedding, and I’m guessing vice-versa as well.
There’s nothing illegal in all this, of course. But it does provide illustration into the cozy world of Washington access-peddling. This is how elites shape public policy about the world’s most powerful companies behind closed doors…
The Yale Alumni mag asks a bunch of Yale profs what they’re reading—and the answers are surprisingly normal!
Jonathan Spence is reading Wolf Hall. (Makes sense, if you think about it.) Stephen Carter is reading E.L. Doctorow. (Ditto.)
But…wait: History professor Abbas Amanat is reading “Shahnameh (The Persian Book of Kings) by the Persian poet Ferdowsi.” Deep. And psychology professor Paul Bloom is reading “Rebecca Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.” Which actually sounds kind of interesting.
I’m reading the 3rd Stiegg Larsson novel—”The Girl Whose Hair Caught on Fire,” I believe it’s called. And you?