Cop Caught On Camera Beating Special Education Student Marshawn Pitts (WATCH)

Cop Caught On Camera Beating Special Education Student Marshawn Pitts (WATCH)

A south suburban Chicago police officer was caught on a security camera beating up a high school special education student, CBS2 reports.

Marshawn Pitts, 15, was walking down his school hallway when he says a Dolton, Ill. police officer went from berating him for his untucked shirt to slamming him to the ground and beating him.

“The officer was in his face because he didn’t have his shirt tucked in,” Pitts’ attorney told CBS 2’s Davis Savini. “That’s the officer put in that school to protect these kids, and instead of doing that, this officer is literally assaulting this kid.”

Neither school nor Dolton officials responded to CBS 2 about the story.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/marshawn-pitts-cop-caught_n_312354.html

Too much radiation for astronauts to make it to Mars

• 16 September 2009 by David Shiga
• Magazine issue 2726. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
• For similar stories, visit the Solar System , Spaceflight and Exploring Mars Topic Guides

FORGET the risk of exploding rockets or getting sideswiped by a wayward bit of space junk. Radiation may be the biggest hurdle to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and could put a damper on a recently proposed mission to Mars orbit.

A panel tasked by the White House with reviewing NASA’s human space flight activities (New Scientist, 22 August, p suggests sending astronauts to one of Mars’s moons, Phobos or Deimos, among other possibilities raised in its report released last week (http://tinyurl.com/mbajav).

From such a perch, astronauts could use remote-controlled robots to explore the Martian surface and retrieve samples – from the planet as well as the moon itself – for later close-up study on Earth. This would avoid the need to develop expensive hardware to land humans on a body with substantial gravity, like Mars.

“I, for one, would go to Phobos or Deimos in a heartbeat, even without any hope of landing on Mars,” says planetary scientist Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute, a California-based research organisation.

But the insidious threat of space radiation in the form of galactic cosmic rays could keep astronauts confined much closer to home.

The rays are actually speeding protons and heavier atomic nuclei that rain onto our solar system from all directions. They can slice through DNA molecules when they pass through living cells and the resulting damage can lead to cancer.

People on the ground are protected by our planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field, which also provide some protection to astronauts on the International Space Station. Lunar missions are short enough to keep radiation risks low, and the moon itself blocks half of the incoming particles. Crews on long journeys beyond low-Earth orbit would have no such protection.

Relatively lightweight aluminium or plastic shielding can block charged particles from the sun. But it would take impractically thick and heavy shields to stop the higher-energy galactic cosmic rays. “Shielding is not a solution to the risk problem,” says Frank Cucinotta, chief scientist for radiation studies at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

It would take impractically thick and heavy shields to stop high-energy galactic cosmic rays

Alternative technologies – which would generate bubbles of plasma that could protect spacecraft without adding much weight – are still at an early stage of development.

So how dangerous would a trip to Mars orbit be? Estimates of how much a given dose of space radiation increases the risk of cancer are fraught with uncertainty. But calculations by Cucinotta and his colleagues suggest the trip would not meet NASA’s existing rules, which aim to keep each astronaut’s lifetime risk of fatal cancer from space radiation below 3 per cent.

For journeys outside Earth’s magnetic field, astronauts could reach that limit in less than 200 days in a spacecraft with aluminium walls nearly 4 centimetres thick, according to worst-case scenario estimates (Radiation Measurements, DOI: 10.1016/j.radmeas.2006.03.011).

But the White House panel expects a round-trip mission to a Martian moon would take four times as long, lasting 750 days. Since such trips would expose astronauts to more radiation than is currently allowed, the panel asked NASA if it would consider simply accepting higher risks for the missions. Steven Lindsey, head of NASA’s astronaut office, thinks most astronauts would probably be open to the idea. “It depends on the individual,” he says. “I’ve got crew members that will fly on anything.”

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Think About the Future, Think about Homes in Sanibel Florida

Think About the Future, Think about Homes in Sanibel Florida

Sanibel Real Estate

Close your eyes and place yourself in a state of relaxation. After which, imagine yourself lying on a warm blanket spread across the sand. If you prefer a seat with an umbrella stand shielding you from the sun’s rays then by all means include it in your vision. The waters stretch out into the horizon. You can hear waves crashing into the shore as people frolic in the surf. It’s not overcrowded but it’s not too empty either. You could have this picture as a real part of your life if you purchase a home in Sanibel, Florida.

The beach here is perfect. There have been too many tourists and guests who have left contented and happy with their stay. In fact, they are so beautiful that many of those visitors chose to take a piece of Sanibel with them when they left! Sanibel is home to a rich deposit of sea shells and other fruits of the sea. Many families and their children scour the landscape looking for that special shell which they could take home with them.

In truth Sanibel welcomes all types of people who want to stay in the area. It’s home to a number of retired individuals who want to enjoy their twilight years in the peace and calm of the waves and beautiful sunsets. It’s also home to pumped up teens that are into sports and other physically oriented activities. It’s no wonder why you’d often find at least a group playing beach volleyball, Frisbee, or swimming at almost every hour of the day. This also provide a different sport, people watching.

Purchasers wanting to buy homes in Sanibel Florida want to because it places you in the middle of all the activity. But if you feel tired then there are also places to go where you can relax and unwind.

As a tourist destination, Sanibel offers a lot of recreational activities and enterprises that specialize in such service. It’s common to find bikes, boats, kayaks, canoes, and cruise rentals just by the marina. You could also play golf, tennis, and fish as you bask under the radiance of the sun.

There is always a fresh catch of fish that you savor through a freshly cooked meal. Most of the restaurants in the area feature the freshest and tastiest local dishes from the variety of fish caught. Or if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you could also experiment with your own unique dish after having caught a fish yourself. You never know, it could open the way towards a sparkling culinary career.

After a long hard day or a hectic week, you can schedule a relaxing spa day for yourself in any of the reputable resorts in the area. Spend the day easing off the tension from work and feel the blood circulating in your system.

Homes in Sanibel Florida are simply the best if you want to live in an environment that has it all. Whatever kind of life you want to live, you can do it here.

Naples Florida Homes for Sale: The Real Deal

Naples Homes For Sale

If balmy midsummer evenings and stunning beaches are what you are yearning for, you may want to think about buying property in Naples, Florida. The area is filled with communities, shopping malls, and restaurants for casual or formal dining. Just within reach of everything, Naples is a staple of every vacationer’s dreams. Packed with diverse types of homes that one can easily acquire, Naples Florida homes for sale can be found across the city to suit all budgets.

Naples is an area that continues to thrive and develop within the years, despite the problems of the wider country. People find lots of activities to take part in. Naples holds occasional festivities every month and it is usually celebrated with fun and games under the sun, fresh seafood dining, and sports activities. It is difficult not to delight yourself while you are in bliss and most locals know this. Travelers are starting to grasp the many things that Naples has to offer. So to partake in its laidback environment, many often stay a bit longer or buy a second home in the area.

So if you are looking for Naples Florida homes for sale, it is essential that you are acquainted with the types of properties you like and can afford. There are a variety of properties that buyers might be interested in, ranging from office blocks, retail buildings, and homes.

Residential sales make up a lot of the property market in Naples, between single-family, condos and luxury homes. If you want a four-poster bed with en-bathroom, fully loaded kitchens, and a swimming pool, it is probable that you can find these amenities in a luxury home in Naples. Not what you are craving for? There are scores of mobile homes on the market as well villas, town houses and others. You can also purchase plots of land even if you do not want to build anything on it, just for the investment potential.

Also note that land brokerages cover golf course and communities, resort properties, waterfront residences, industrial parks, and tracts of land. Waterfront retreat homes in Naples are limited by the small quantity of undeveloped land, so the majority of them are high-rise condominiums commanding a gorgeous view of Pelican Bay. Some of the condo units have excellent private beaches and boat docks with trouble-free access to the beautiful waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

There is such a diverse assortment of homes and properties available in Naples. Like the those mentioned that you can choose anything that would go with your tastes. Single family houses, expansive beach front mansions, picturesque beach homes, contemporary loft spaces, condos, and golf course gated communities. It really does not matter what type of home you wish for because you will be able to find it in this beautiful seaside area. The limit isn’t the amount or type of home available, but how much you have to spend on one!

American Graduates Finding Jobs in China

Daniel Saltman

Mick Zomnir, 20, a rising junior at M.I.T., landed a summer internship at JFP in Beijing.

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By HANNAH SELIGSON

Published: August 10, 2009

BEIJING — Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home.  

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Joshua Arjuna Stephens, a 2007 graduate of Wesleyan University, works in Beijing for XPD Media, which makes online games.

Readers’ Comments

Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

“I’ve seen a surge of young people coming to work in China over the last few years,” said Jack Perkowski, founder of Asimco Technologies, one of the largest automotive parts companies in China.

“When I came over to China in 1994, that was the first wave of Americans coming to China,” he said. “These young people are part of this big second wave.”

One of those in the latest wave is Joshua Arjuna Stephens, who graduated from Wesleyan University in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in American studies. Two years ago, he decided to take a temporary summer position in Shanghai with China Prep, an educational travel company.

“I didn’t know anything about China,” said Mr. Stephens, who worked on market research and program development. “People thought I was nuts to go not speaking the language, but I wanted to do something off the beaten track.”

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Two years later, after stints in the nonprofit sector and at a large public relations firm in Beijing, he is highly proficient in Mandarin and works as a manager for XPD Media, a social media company based in Beijing that makes online games.

Jonathan Woetzel, a partner with McKinsey & Company in Shanghai who has lived in China since the mid-1980s, says that compared with just a few years ago, he was seeing more young Americans arriving in China to be part of an entrepreneurial boom. “There’s a lot of experimentation going on in China right now, particularly in the energy sphere, and when people are young they are willing to come and try something new,” he said.

And the Chinese economy is more hospitable for both entrepreneurs and job seekers, with a gross domestic product that rose 7.9 percent in the most recent quarter compared with the period a year earlier. Unemployment in urban areas is 4.3 percent, according to government data.

Grace Hsieh, president of the Yale Club in Beijing and a 2007 graduate, says she has seen a rise in the number of Yale graduates who have come to work in Beijing since she arrived in China two years ago. She is working as an account executive in Beijing for Hill & Knowlton, the public relations company.

Sarabeth Berman, a 2006 graduate of Barnard College with a major in urban studies, initially arrived in Beijing at the age of 23 to take a job that would have been difficult for a person her age to land in the United States: program director at BeijingDance/LDTX, the first modern dance company in China to be founded independently of the government.

Ms. Berman said she was hired for her familiarity with Western modern dance rather than a knowledge of China. “Despite my lack of language skills and the fact that I had no experience working in China, I was given the opportunity to manage the touring, international projects, and produce and program our annual Beijing Dance Festival.”

After two years of living and working in China, Ms. Berman is proficient in Mandarin. She travels throughout China, Europe and the United States with the dance company.

Willy Tsao, the artistic director of BeijingDance/LDTX, said he had hired Ms. Berman because of her ability to make connections beyond China. “I needed someone who was capable of communicating with the Western world.”

Another dynamic in the hiring process, Mr. Tsao says, is that Westerners can often bring skills that are harder to find among the Chinese.

“Sarabeth is always taking initiative and thinking what we can do,” he said, “while I think the more standard Chinese approach is to take orders.” He says the difference is rooted in the educational system. “In Chinese schools students are encouraged to be quiet and less outspoken; it fosters a culture of listening more than initiating.”

Mr. Perkowski, who spent almost 20 years on Wall Street before heading to China, says many Chinese companies are looking to hire native English speakers to help them navigate the American market.

Boulders against bottom trawling

12 August 2008 – By Daniel Saltman

Bottom-trawling boats drag fishing gear weighing several tonnes across the sea bed, destroying fragile underwater ecosystems and decimating fish stocks.

International — The fishing industry seems determined to catch every last fish in the North Sea. The governments of the region and the EU have done little to stop them, but they may soon hit a few snags: a team from Greenpeace Germany and Greenpeace Netherlands has sailed into the German North Sea and begun placing 150 granite rocks on the seabed. They are hoping that the rocks, each weighing 2-3 tonnes and measuring one square cubic metre, will prevent fishing boats from bottom trawling on the Sylt Outer Reef. This highly destructive fishing method involves a net being dragged across the seabed indiscriminately catching everything in its path.

Bottom trawling not only decimates stocks of popular fish, such as sole and plaice, but it also results in a large amount of bycatch – which is thrown back into the sea either dead or dying.

Greenpeace Netherlands and Greenpeace Germany are taking direct action to protect the fragile rocky reef and sandbank habitats and the many species that are dependent on them. The German Government and fishing industry are unwilling to address the ongoing destruction of vulnerable marine habitats and the imminent collapse of North Sea fish stocks.  We hope that fishermen will now steer clear of the Sylt Outer Reef and respect it as a marine reserve.

Globally, fish stocks are in free fall with around 90 percent of predatory species, like tuna, having been wiped out since the 1950s. If we carry on with business as usual, very soon there will be no fish left and no future for the industry. Only in June, scientists warned that cod stocks in the North Sea are so depleted that fishing must be halted altogether.

Incredibly, these warnings have been ignored. Rather than establishing a marine reserve to allow the North Sea to recover, European Ministers continue to bury their heads in the sand and vote to increase catch quotas year after year.

Even in areas recognised for their high ecological importance, such as the Sylt Outer Reef, the destruction continues. Not only is fishing allowed, but also industry extracts vast quantities of sand and gravel, with devastating consequences for marine habitats.

On paper these types of activity shouldn’t be happening. The Sylt Outer Reef is protected under European law – designated as a ‘Special Area of Conservation’ under the EU Habitats Directive. But in reality this protection is worth little more than the paper it is written on.

We are demanding that the German government push the European Commission to put in place new measures to enforce a ban on fishing in the area by the beginning of next year at the latest. We also want the Dutch, Danish and UK governments to support this.

And we want the German government to immediately put a stop to the industrial extraction of sand and gravel in the area by ensuring no new licences are issued.
Ultimately, governments need to establish a global network of fully protected marine reserves covering 40 percent of the world’s oceans, including the North Sea.

Video: Erick Talks Microsoft/Yahoo On Charlie Rose

//

by Daniel Saltman on July 31, 2009

TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld appeared on Charlie Rose last night to discuss the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal alongside Steven Levy of Wired and Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal.

The group talked about the initial deal Microsoft offered Yahoo last year to buy Yahoo outright, the complicated nature of this new deal, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo walking away from the search fight rather than engaging, how this was the worst of the deals that Microsoft had offered so far, the Bartz/Ballmer reaction, what this means for Microsoft versus Google now, and the possible antitrust implications of all of this.

Watch the part of the show that featured the discussion below.

And here’s the transcript:

CHARLIE ROSE: Microsoft and Yahoo! announced yesterday a partnership in the search and advertising business. Under the deal, Yahoo!`s websites will be powered by Microsoft new search engine, Bing. Yahoo! will get 88 percent of the ad revenue from searches on its sites for the first five years. With the partnership, the two hope to take on Google, which currently commands about 65 percent share of the U.S. market. The agreement follows Microsoft`s failed takeover bid for Yahoo! and shows the continuing importance it is placing on search.

Joining me now from Redmond, Washington, is Nick Wingfield of the “Wall Street Journal.” Here in New York with me, Steven Levy of “Wired” magazine and Erick Schonfeld, co-editor of TechCrunch blog. I am pleased to have all of them here.

Nick, tell me how this deal happened, first.

NICK WINGFIELD: It started last year with the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, making an unsolicited bid for close to $48 billion to acquire Yahoo!. Never happened, Yahoo! resisted the offer. It fell apart.

Fast forward to about January. Yahoo! has a new CEO, Carol Bartz, and Microsoft and Yahoo! start talking about a more limited deal, not a full-blown acquisition, in which Microsoft basically take over the search operations, handle the search operations on Yahoo! in exchange for some value. And the deal went through all sorts of fits and starts, and finally arrived at the deal you described a moment ago.

All of this being designed to improve Microsoft`s fairly poor position in search right now, which is a highly lucrative market, the online advertising market that accompanies search, and one that Microsoft really has not had much success in on its own.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is this a good deal for just Microsoft or good deal for Microsoft and Yahoo!?

NICK WINGFIELD: Well, the shareholders of both companies seem to think it`s a better deal for Microsoft than it is for Yahoo! The stock of Microsoft went up a bit yesterday and up a bit today. Yahoo! is down.

One of the problems Yahoo! has is that they had sort of almost set expectation that they were going to get a big check, a multi-billion dollar check from Microsoft in exchange for a deal of this sort. And that didn`t end up happening. Instead, what Yahoo! is getting is very high percentage of the ad revenue from advertising sold on searches that Microsoft delivers. So, both parties argue that it`s better for Yahoo! to get this, because they`re getting more — a bigger chunk of the share of ad revenue on an ongoing basis, but there is no big upfront check, and that seems to disappoint people.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, what`s the judgment of people who are looking at it in terms of whether Yahoo! would have been better to take the original deal that Ballmer offered or take the deal they have now?

NICK WINGFIELD: Well, I don`t think there`s any question that Yahoo! shareholders would be better off if they had accepted the original $48 billion deal. I don`t know what Yahoo!`s latest market capitalization is, but they`re down a lot.

So, I don`t think Microsoft, though, regrets not acquiring all of Yahoo! I think they`re fairly happy with the position that they`re in. They also have managed to improve their own home-grown search engine, which is now called Bing, and have started to inch up a little bit in market share. So I think Microsoft probably comes out a little bit ahead here, but still, both parties argue that Yahoo! is going to thrive as well because they no longer have to invest in search, so they can be a lot more profitable.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is this going to work?

STEVEN LEVY: It has a lot of hurdles. I think the upfront money really isn`t the key to Yahoo! The key is, Yahoo! is disbanding their search team, their engineering, and disbanding the team which built their advertising engine to sell ads on search. Now, these happen to be some of the most important aspects of engineering at a company there. And really, if Yahoo! wants to be a top Internet company, it has to have the engineering chops to keep doing that.

So, it`s going to miss out on that. And it will save money by not hiring — having those people to pay, but those are the people you want in your company.

Also, this deal is a little complicated. Yahoo! actually is going to sell some of these ads to the premium customers. A lot of customers, those in the long tail, they just go on the website and buy the ads just straight there like you buy something from Amazon. But a big customer needs someone to work with them and tell them what words to buy. It`s very complicated in how much to bid, because these things are all done by bids. And Yahoo! is doing that part, and Microsoft has the technology, which means those people who work for Yahoo! are really going to have to go back and forth to Redmond and talk to a lot of people to be familiar with how that works there. So there`s a little complication in how they`re going to be able to do that, which is going to make it a little more difficult for Microsoft`s big task, which is to take on Google and build up its ad share to something beyond even what it has combined with Yahoo!

CHARLIE ROSE: Did Bing make a difference here at all, the fact that Bing has gotten — the Microsoft search engine has gotten good reviews?

ERICK SCHONFELD: I think Bing made a big difference, because Yahoo! was in a tough position. It was seeing market share eroding from the top, from Google, and now the prospect of market share erosion from the bottom, from Bing. Bing has only been out for two months, but it`s made a little bit of a gain in share, .4 percent. Is that going to last over time? Who knows. But Yahoo! didn`t want to find out. Right?

And the big problem here is that Yahoo! really — they kind of walked away from the most interesting fight on the Internet right now, which is search. And they handed it over to Microsoft for less than any of the previous deals that were on the table. The four real deals that were on the table going back to the $45 or $48 billion offer in February of 2008, the revised search deal that Microsoft offered, which included $8 billion to buy 16 percent of Yahoo! and $1 billion payment for the search part of the business. The Google deal that got squashed, that guaranteed $800 million in revenues.

This deal was the worst of all the deals. And as Steve mentions, the deal introduces a lot of complexity, right? So now you`re going to have Yahoo! sales people selling Microsoft`s search product. So Yahoo! sales people already have enough problem talking to Yahoo! engineers. Now they have to talk to Microsoft engineers. And what if something goes wrong? Who are they going to yell at? Are the Microsoft engineers going to like that, being yelled at by Yahoo! sales people?

CHARLIE ROSE: Nick, you`re in Redmond. What does this do for Steve Ballmer?

NICK WINGFIELD: Well, it gives him a real fighting chance in a market that he said is strategic to the company. They have about 8.4 percent market share on their own with Bing. With Yahoo!`s market share, they could go to 30 percent of shares — 30 percent of searches in the U.S., and that`s significant.

Now the question is, does it decline from there? Can they increase it? If they do that, you know, how much money do they make off of it? Because of course, Microsoft is losing money in its Internet search business right now. But they just want to gain the share. They argue once they gain the share, they get eyeballs. Search is a scale business, that they will start to improve the quality of the search, because they can do all sorts of things, make ads more relevant. And if they do that, they think they can have a flywheel effect and start really eating into Google`s share.

The other thing that this lets them do is, Google is not only strong in search with 65 percent plus share, but Google is also moving into these other areas that are quite threatening to Microsoft. They`re using their profits in search to get into operating systems, into online applications that are free, that threaten these cash-cow businesses like Office and Word and Excel. And they just recently announced that they`re going to be doing an operating system for laptops. They already have one for mobile phones. And I think Microsoft wants to gain share in search in part to help alleviate that threat.

CHARLIE ROSE: And what about the leadership of Yahoo!? Carol Bartz?

STEVEN LEVY: Well, she felt she had to do something. But I think in this case, by targeting the search team and taking it away, some people wonder whether that`s going to really take the glue, which keeps her portal together there.

The search that Yahoo! did had, you know, about three times the size of what Microsoft search, mainly because so many people come to Yahoo! and they search there. So it really was an opportunity for Yahoo! to grow out there and do more.

She says this is going to enable them to concentrate on the other things that they do. But having a very strong search team and engineering that comes with that search, and with the really complicated engineering you have to do to be able to sell ads on searches, that`s very complex. And you know, for reasons we can get into, it really helps if your share grows. Not having that, those engineers aren`t going to be able to filter through the rest of the company to help you do these other things there. If you look at the team now, gee, what are they going to do? It`s going to take well over a year for this to come to fruition with this deal there. So if I`m working as an engineer for Yahoo! now, what`s my future?

CHARLIE ROSE: That`s — and losing talent is the big issue so much, because they`re creating the new software and building on the old.

STEVEN LEVY: And who is one of the most talented people at Microsoft, the one they all talk about there, is Qi Lu, the guy who came from Yahoo!, and went to Microsoft. He`s now the big technology leader, the bright guy who is leading Microsoft search.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. What about AOL? What`s going to happen to AOL?

ERICK SCHONFELD: So, I think AOL is a great example here, because you`ve got Tim Armstrong, who came from Google, who is now the new CEO of AOL, and he took what was really a hobbled company, and is taking it in a new direction, away from the sweet spot that Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft already dominate in. He`s hiring hundreds of journalists, which as you know from your Politico piece, that you know, they are very, very valuable assets. And is kind of creating — that`s just one part of his business — is creating this sort of new newsstand online. And is doing a lot of interesting things.

And so why didn`t Carol Bartz do that? Why didn`t she double down? You can make the argument that you know, ultimately she had to do something, because she doesn`t have Microsoft`s Windows money and she doesn`t have Google`s search money. So ultimately search is an expensive game and maybe she has to get out of that business, ultimately.

But Microsoft needs her search volume. Why not double down, invest in search, and get a better deal down the line? Or merge with AOL when they become public?

CHARLIE ROSE: Speaking of one final issue, anti-trust, Nick. Is Google worried about anti-trust ramifications of its market share? Will this deal be subject to anti-trust implications, questions?

NICK WINGFIELD: Well, Google is I think worried, yes, about their future in anti-trust. In this particular case of Microsoft and Yahoo!, they argue that together they have 30 percent of the market, compared to Google`s 65 percent. And so they think they are going to have a pretty strong case with the anti-trust regulators. They are definitely going to face some tough scrutiny. They`re prepared, I think, to really fight with Google, but it`s unclear what Google is going to do. There was some talk today at this Microsoft meeting I was at of Google employing sort of third-party advocacy groups to fight the deal. But Google really is the big gorilla here. So it`s a little challenging for them to make an argument that this is going to be anti-competitive. Google has…

(CROSSTALK)

STEVEN LEVY: There`s a really delicious irony here, because last year, when there was the threat of Microsoft buying Yahoo!, Google wanted to make a deal with Yahoo! for the search. It was not on the scale of this, and Microsoft complained about it, and said to the Justice Department, successfully argued that, hey, we can`t do this, because Yahoo! would end its search team. There would be less competition in there. Guess what?

CHARLIE ROSE: They`ll take over their search team. Yes.

Is there a feeling with the search — Bing getting good marks and now this deal, that Microsoft is back and that Microsoft can deliver a lot more than people, or may be much stronger than people assumed it was, say six months ago, when the effort to buy Yahoo! came to nothing?

NICK WINGFIELD: Well, there definitely is a feeling that they are on an upswing in terms of the quality of their products. Windows 7 is coming out, which they hope will erase the sort of disdain of Windows Vista, which was a very troubled operating system for them with some technical problems. Bing is doing well. They have done some innovative stuff in games. But they`ve also got some real challenges. For example, some people think that they have placed too much emphasis on search and neglected mobile phones. They have a pretty poor offering there. And Apple`s got the iPhone and others are doing very well in that category. So they`ve got some big challenges in other areas as well.

ERICK SCHONFELD: Microsoft no doubt is better off today in search than it was before. But we shouldn`t overestimate what their advantage is. Even if they have 30 percent of the search market share, they don`t have 30 percent of the revenues, because they`re giving 88 percent of that back to Yahoo!

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. Nick Wingfield, “Wall Street Journal” here. Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch and Steve Levy from “Wired,” thank you all.

Let’s Break up the Fed

BY: Daniel Saltman

The Obama administration’s plan to increase the powers of the Federal Reserve, says one critic, is like giving a teenager “a bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon.” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner disagrees. He argues that the Fed is “best positioned” to oversee key financial companies, and that the Obama plan would give the Fed only “modest additional authority.”

Mr. Geithner is right about one thing: The Fed’s power is already vast.But it wasn’t even well-positioned to supervise the likes of Citicorp. Broadening the Fed’s responsibilities won’t help. Instead, we should think of how best to dismantle an overextended Fed.

Though advanced economies like ours require organizations capable of taking on a wide range of activities, there are limits. As Frank Knight, the great Chicago economist, pointed out in his 1921 classic “Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit,” individuals who control large organizations have to delegate many decisions to subordinates. Entities like hedge funds, where individuals such as George Soros make most of the consequential choices, are exceptions.

Therefore, good judgments about people—picking the right subordinates, refereeing staff conflicts, evaluating performance, and so on—are crucial.

Good judgment requires experience, not just exceptional intelligence or raw ability. Although many lessons about managing people can be applied to different fields, good judgment also requires some specific expertise. You can’t manage plumbers without knowing something about plumbing.

Unfortunately no one can learn everything about everything. Yes, Lou Gerstner turned around IBM without any prior experience in the computer business. But he had decades of general management experience, was an exceptionally quick study, and had to come up to speed in just one industry. Individuals who can learn how to effectively lead conglomerates, especially during periods of transition, are exceedingly rare.

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This mismatch between what even the most talented minds can learn and the challenges of controlling widely disparate businesses has helped bring our financial system to the brink of collapse. The great names in finance once had distinctive identities and capabilities: Salomon Brothers was the champion in bond trading; Merrill Lynch’s thundering herd was tops in retail brokerage; Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan’s white-shoe bankers built formidable blue-chip client lists; and Bear Stearns’s PSDs—poor, smart and driven staff—cultivated scrappy entrepreneurs. Willy-nilly diversification turned these focused outfits into highly leveraged, unwieldy agglomerations of unrelated fiefdoms.

Likewise, the Fed has been incapacitated by its transformation into an omnibus enterprise with responsibilities ranging from boots-on-the-ground regulation to high-level monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which created the Federal Reserve System, did so to forestall financial panics rather than pursue macroeconomic policies. The gold standard defined monetary policy. The Fed was merely meant to “provide an elastic currency” by serving as lender of last resort in times of crisis. The Act also assigned the Fed routine responsibilities for maintaining and improving the financial system—examining banks, issuing currency notes, and helping clear checks.

The adoption of Keynesian and monetarist ideas by central bankers and elected officials subsequently cast the Fed in a proactive macroeconomic role. William McChesney Martin, who served as chairman from 1951 to 1970, said that the job of the Fed was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” This might have been wise in theory, but it wasn’t mandated by the law. In 1977, an amendment to the 1913 Act explicitly charged the Fed with promoting “maximum” employment and “stable” prices. The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act that followed in 1978 mandated the Fed to promote “full” employment and while maintaining “reasonable” price stability.

Legislation also has increased the Fed’s responsibilities for overseeing the mechanics of the financial system. The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 gave the Fed responsibility over holding companies designed to circumvent restrictions placed on individual banks. It was tasked with regulating the formation and acquisition of such companies.

Congress further tasked the Fed with enforcing consumer-protection and fair-lending rules. The Fed was made the primary regulator of the 1968 Truth in Lending Act that required proper disclosure of interest rates and terms. Similarly, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 forced the Fed to address discrimination against borrowers from poor neighborhoods.

The expansion of bank holding companies into activities such as investment banking and off-balance-sheet exposures to complex instruments such as credit-default swaps also required the Fed to increase the scope of its supervisory capabilities.

In principle, an exceptionally talented theorist might capably run a Fed focused just on monetary policy. Setting the discount rate and regulating the money supply are centralized, top-down activities that do not require much administrative capacity. But without deep managerial experience and considerable industry knowledge, effective chairmanship of a Fed that relies on far-flung staff to regulate financial institutions and practices is almost unimaginable. The vast territory the Fed covers would challenge the most exceptional and experienced executives.

As it happens, the Fed has been led for more than 20 years by chairmen who had no senior management experience. Prior to running the Fed, Alan Greenspan started a small consulting firm and Ben Bernanke was head of Princeton’s economics department. Given their understandable preoccupation with monetary and macroeconomic matters, how much attention could they be expected to devote to mastering and managing the plumbing side of the Fed? While the record of the Fed’s monetary policy has been mixed, its supervision of financial institutions has been a predictable and comprehensive failure.

The Fed’s excessively broad mandate also has thwarted accountability. The CEOs of Citibank, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman and Countrywide are all gone—albeit with too much delay and with no clawback of unmerited compensation. At the Fed, no high-level heads have rolled. Mr. Geithner was promoted to treasury secretary. Mr. Bernanke is treated with great deference as he solemnly testifies that if it weren’t for the Fed, the crisis would have been much worse. But then, how can anyone be held responsible for failing at a job no human could do?

At the very least we should split the monetary policy and regulatory functions of the Fed, as was done through the Maastricht Treaty that established the European Central Bank. What we need now is a debate about how to break up the Fed—and some of the sprawling financial institutions it supervises—in order to make both the regulator and the regulated more manageable and accountable.

Apes of war… is it in our genes?

Apes of war… is it in our genes?

Research into the aggressive behaviour of male chimpanzees, our closest biological ally, suggests that the urge to go to war is in our DNA and that only women can stop it, says Sanjida O’Connell

Martin Muller is as broad shouldered and tall as an England rugby forward, yet he was frightened. It was August 1998 in Uganda. He heard screams and the sound of something being pounded. He ran through the forest towards the noise; when he burst into a clearing he saw 10 chimpanzees had captured and killed another.

“The pounding that they were doing was on his body. The front of the chimpanzee was covered with 30 or 40 puncture wounds and lacerations, the ribs were sticking up out of the rib cage because they had beaten on his chest so hard. They had ripped his trachea out, they had removed his testicles, they had torn off toenails and fingernails. It was clear that some of the males had held him down, while the others attacked.”

In spite of his experience studying chimps, Dr Muller, a post-graduate primatologist at Michigan University, says: “It was chilling because when you are studying them in the wild you spend months following and getting to know them as individuals. When you see something like this, you suddenly realise that they are killers. After that it’s always in the back of your mind they could do this to you at any time – there is no way I could defend myself.”

For years many of us, even those who studied chimpanzees in their natural habitat, considered them to be peaceful apes enjoying an idyllic life in the forest. Now, not only have researchers proved that they have a dark side, one scientist has also developed a theory that shows how our lust for war was born in an ancestral and bloody past shared with chimps.

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Hunter-gatherer societies, rather than being noble “savages”, frequently fight their neighbours for food and females. Our ancestors may have fought in the same manner; since then the human male psyche has changed little and we have taken that instinct into the realm of modern warfare – with disastrous consequences.

It was a four-year “war” witnessed by Dr Jane Goodall, and Dr Muller’s PhD supervisor, Richard Wrangham, a professor of primatology from Harvard University, Boston, that put an end to our cosy ideas.

In the Seventies, Prof Wrangham and Dr Goodall watched a group of chimpanzees split into two factions. One group killed every male and some of the females in the other group. The victims had recently been their companions.

Although Dr Goodall was the first to suggest it, Prof Wrangham went on to develop a theory that would explain human violence based on the aggression he had witnessed. As he points out, we are hardly a peaceful species. In Britain, men are 24 times more likely to kill or assault another person, and 263 times more likely to commit a sexual offence than a woman.

Prof Wrangham’s theory is called the Demonic Male Hypothesis. He argues that human males and chimps share a tendency to be aggressive with our closest common ancestor. Chimpanzees and humans have many attributes in common: we share approximately 98.5 per cent of our DNA, we both hunt and males show a strong desire to form alliances against other males while jockeying for status. Male chimpanzees are hostile towards other groups of chimps; you don’t even have to go to Arsenal to know that men are not dissimilar.

Our last common ancestor, which lived about six million years ago, is thought to have been chimp-like, leading Prof Wrangham to suggest that shared traits evolved before the two species separated. “We think about this as being demonic male behaviour because, of course, females don’t do it,” he says. His theory encapsulates not only violence but war itself.

Anthropologists have always thought that war was uniquely human and sought explanations in horticulture, high population densities, or the development of tools as weapons. But chimps show behaviour equivalent to primitive human warfare, which indicates that you don’t need to grow vegetables or fashion a spear in order to kill.

A group of chimpanzees setting off to attack a neighbouring male show a very particular pattern of behaviour: unlike their usual noisy deportment, they walk silently through the jungle in single file. So reminiscent is this of soldiers that primatologists refer to it as a “Border Patrol”. The actual killing is a “Lethal Raid”: a number of males will murder one male.

Chimpanzees are thought to kill males in other groups to gain access to food in their territory. Eliminating these males also prevents them from mating with their females. Sometimes they “persuade” females whose males they have killed to join their group.

The situation in our evolutionary past was no different, according to Prof Wrangham. Even today, hunter-gatherer tribes fight for food, women and status. The key aspect of a lethal raid is that it affords men these advantages at a low risk to themselves. For example, the Yanomamö tribe who live in the Amazon basin are renowned for their aggression: the men call themselves waiteri, which means fierce. Forty per cent have undergone a ritual purification, which occurs when they have killed or participated in killing. A third of their young men die violently.

Although one might consider the Yanomamö exceptional, Prof Wrangham argues that many hunter-gatherers follow a similar pattern: out of 31 hunter-gatherer societies, 64 per cent engage in warfare every two years and only 10 per cent do not fight their neighbours.

However, not everyone agrees with Prof Wrangham’s hypothesis. First, it is based on chimpanzee behaviour, but not all chimp populations are alike. Christophe Boesch, a professor in evolutionary anthropology at the Max-Planck-Institut, Leipzig, Germany, studies chimps on the Ivory Coast of Africa. His male chimps have never killed another male.

Other people argue that human warfare cannot be compared to that of chimps. David Watts, a professor of primatology at Yale University, Connecticut, says that political, cultural, linguistic, historical and economic reasons for warfare are far too complex to be reduced to such a simplistic level.

There is also the matter of why we would share this behaviour with chimps. We are the result of millions of years of evolution since our common ancestor and, arguably, chimps have evolved considerably, too. Is it really likely that both species could have retained a propensity towards thuggishness tending towards cruelty?

Professor Robert Sussman, a primatologist from Washington University, St Louis, believes not. “The Demonic Male Hypothesis is basically a speculative idea about how the relationship between chimpanzee and human behaviour might have evolved, and I think it’s wrong. Saying that humans and chimps have a propensity for aggression is saying very little, because all animals have a propensity for aggression given different circumstances.”

Yet there is no denying that both chimpanzees and humans do have a capacity for violence. Moreover, there seems to be a difference between the sexes. Only three per cent of same sex murders in Britain, Canada and America are committed by women.

Prof Wrangham has been influenced by an experiment that was developed to understand how leaders would respond to a political crisis but ended up showing how the sexes differ. Two students, who didn’t meet until after the experiment, had to play at being the president of a nation. Near their countries was an island whose ownership had never been agreed and then oil is discovered there.

Scientists found that when two men played, they both wanted to win and routinely took their countries into decades of debt to finance immense military build-ups.

When men and women played each other, the men were four times more likely to threaten the other leader. The game would end in war, though the women often lost.

When two women played each other, they negotiated, divided the oil, avoided spending money on arms and suggested they meet to discuss their experience over a glass of Chardonnay.

Prof Wrangham suggests that since we cannot escape our violent heritage, we should harness both male and female strengths to address global conflicts. “I fantasise about a world in which countries have two legislative houses, one of men, one of women, and sanctioning war only if approved by both houses. It would take us one useful step away from ape biology and the mayhem men cause.”

FBI to watch police inquiry

FBI to watch police inquiry
Sarasota seeks agency’s help to address concerns of integrity

By Todd Ruger

Published: Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, July 17, 2009 at 10:42 p.m.

SARASOTA – The FBI has agreed to monitor the criminal investigation of a Sarasota police officer who was recorded on a surveillance video kicking a handcuffed suspect.

City officials asked for the FBI’s help on Friday to address questions about the integrity of the investigation into excessive force in the June 26 arrest of Juan G. Perez.

The announcement came the day the Herald-Tribune reported that the detective conducting the criminal investigation of the officer had also brokered an unusually quick agreement for Perez to waive his right to sue in exchange for $400.

Also Friday, the city released an audio recording of the meeting in which the detective, Sgt. Ken Castro, and a city official made the deal. In addition to the $400, the detective offered Perez the department’s help in keeping him out of jail if he signed a release.

A Stetson University law professor said Friday he was sickened that police officials thought it would be OK for the detective to be involved in both the settlement and the criminal investigation.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Bruce Jacob, an expert in criminal procedure. “You wonder what’s going on in the police department, what kind of guidelines they are following, if any.”

It was Police Chief Peter Abbott who arranged the meeting between the detective, Perez, and a city risk management employee.

“I thought there was possibly some litigation that could come down the pike,” Abbott said Friday in a conference call with a reporter and City Manager Robert Bartolotta.

“The city put Castro in a position to wear two hats, but it was a matter of convenience. We had an officer that spoke Spanish,” Bartolotta said. “In retrospect, that was a mistake.”

The risk management worker, Larry Hobbs, came up with the amount of $400 because he figured it was about a week’s pay for Perez, a kitchen worker at an Italian restaurant, city officials say.

The city manager and city attorney both said they had no involvement in the settlement offer, and did not know about it until after it had been made.

Initially Friday, Bartolotta said that the city was going to continue to handle the investigation.

Later, he clarified, saying the FBI will be brought in “in a spirit of transparency” and could initiate its own investigation if necessary, said Bartolotta.

“It’s real important the public understand,” Bartolotta said. “They’re going to be monitoring the investigation. They were in the building this afternoon.”

Saturday settlement

The police department opened its criminal investigation of Officer Christopher Childers on Friday, and Castro got a statement from Perez.

The next morning, the risk management employee, Hobbs, got a surprise call from Abbott. The chief said Perez was ready to sign away his right to sue.

The detective, Hobbs and Perez met about noon at the federal building downtown.

The recording released by the city shows that the meeting was marked by translation problems and a confused Perez.

Perez, who is from Guatemala, speaks mainly in a dialect from that country, though he understands some English and speaks Spanish.

Castro did most of the talking and all the translating, starting with a summary of what happened on June 26, when Perez was arrested on charges of disorderly intoxication and obstruction without violence.

“When he tried to put the cuffs on you, you fought a little and he charged you with obstruction,” Castro said in Spanish.

And when they arrived at the jail, the officer “hit you with his foot. He didn’t do that hard, like you said,” Castro told Perez.

“That is not professional,” Castro said. “The city knows that.”

And Castro continued.

“Sometimes in cases like this, attorneys and such, fight with the city to do things against the city, understand? In this situation, they’re going to say listen, the person Juan Perez has no bad intentions and he says they treated him good. He was drunk, he barely remembers anything. But we know that that officer hit him with his foot. It’s not good, so we’re going to offer him money.

“OK. These papers say they’re going to give you money, in consideration for this money, you’re not going to put any charges or case against the city or against the officer. Everything is going to end here. Understand. Are you good with that, yes or no?”

Perez had misunderstood. He said he did not have $400, with all the court trouble coming up.

Castro tried to explain it again, so Perez understood that the city was offering him the $400.

“We want to offer you $400 and sign this paper and say in this day and days in the future, this case is done. I’m not going to get anything legal against the city and I’m done with that. All of the fees you have are done with this and the case is done.”

Castro also offered the department’s help in the disorderly intoxication case against Perez.

“Another thing we can’t promise in this case, but my boss told me possibly we can talk to the state attorneys and we can take this case and give you time served for when you were in the jail and that ends with nothing more,” Castro told him in Spanish.

At the end of the 30-minute meeting, Perez signed the paper. The check was due to arrive this weekend, the $400 drawn from a city law enforcement liability fund.

But the city did not wait for the mail.

On Thursday, Castro hand-delivered the check to Perez and drove him to the bank to cash it.