Dragon's Dogma – review | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 

That's why so many developers and publishers have recently opted to play things safe by making low-budget mobile, social or download games. So Capcom deserves all the plaudits known to mankind – it's difficult to imagine how it could have undertaken a riskier project than Dragon's Dogma. Not only is it a full-blown, open-world RPG (and therefore eye-wateringly expensive to develop), but it's the Japanese developer-publisher's first, which partly explains why it is arriving in such an unheralded manner. Luckily – and a tad unexpectedly – it's shot through with quality, and surely destined to become a cult classic. Dragon's Dogma starts in time-honoured fashion, as far as RPGs are concerned, with an extensive character customisation phase, the ability to choose your sex and character class (warrior, mage, ranged-weapons specialist and all the usual suspects are available) and a typically mediaeval setting. The intro shows a dragon arriving to terrorise your sleepy seaside town; you take up arms against it, but it singles you out and rips your heart out. However, you miraculously survive, and find yourself lionised as The Arisen (and not the first Arisen, you learn, in the land of Gransys). So you embark on a quest to find the dragon that stole your heart, saving Gransys from the forces of evil in the process. So far, so bog-standard, you might think. But the whole Arisen thing has a point beyond adding a layer of back-story. Your semi-undead status means that so-called pawns will follow you: also semi-undead, they won't act autonomously, but otherwise seem like perfectly normal beings. So, you get to pick a main pawn, who stays with you throughout the whole game and levels up as you do, plus two other pawns, thus generating a full questing group. As you play, you encounter countless supplementary pawns, who you can hire on the spot. It's crucial to do just that, since not only can you adjust your party's skill-base that way (if, say, you need to draft in an extra mage), but you can find replacement pawns with better skills and stats than your current ones. You can also hire and fire pawns at rift-stones, found it most settlements, forts and the like. The pawn system works beautifully as, indeed, do most other aspects of Dragon's Dogma. It looks pretty good – something like a cross between Skyrim and Dark Souls. The crucial battle system is exemplary: as you learn new attacks, you can assign them to your button of choice, and you can acquire stat and skill-enhancing perks. Early on, you learn the importance of your kit. If you're a warrior, for example, a better sword makes your attacks way more effective – and there are three upgrade levels for each item of your equipment (upgrading requires workmen, money plus raw materials). It's tempting to pick up every item you come across, but too much kit makes you awfully sluggish, so you learn to store inessential kit and distribute the rest among your pawns. Again, the inventory system is pretty well designed. All Dragon's Dogma's processes, then, are nicely designed, as you would expect with competitors such as Skyrim out there. But it could still fall into the trap of being generic. Happily, it doesn't – indeed, it has loads of character, and plenty of the quirkiness for which Japanese games are renowned. There are some superb, mythology-inspired enemies to fight, such as griffins and chimeras, which are part-serpent, part-lion and part-goat. And, taking a cue from Shadow of the Colossus, you can grab onto them and climb towards their weak spots – hacking away at them, for example, in mid-air. While there are countless sub-quests to perform (such as eliminating bands of thieves, clearing mines of ogres, shadowing cultists and so on), the main storyline sees you increasing your renown until the Duke invites you into his castle, at which point things really begin to take off. Typically, your first encounter with the Duke sees you wearing a jester's hat, and being caught in the Duchess's bedchamber lands you with a spell in the dungeon. It isn't, of course, perfect: like all open-world RPGs, you will encounter the odd bug and moment of raggedness. You can lose something like half an hour's play if, say, you encounter a major enemy unexpectedly at night having forgotten to save for a while; and your pawns can annoy you with their repetitive banter (although you can actually influence your main pawn's conversational skills). But those are minor gripes in the grand RPG scheme of things, and Dragon's Dogma has everything that RPG-heads crave – you can lose yourself in tinkering around, collecting items, finding arcane quests and seeking random enemies for days. It's reassuringly complex, and astonishingly well-executed given that this is Capcom's first attempt at such a game. It may apparently have come from nowhere, but Dragon's Dogma has the wherewithal to go places. If you've extracted all you can from Skyrim, this will fill the resulting void in your life.

Max Payne 3 – review | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 

As soon as the action kicks off, Dan and Sam Houser – the enigmatic siblings who run the Rockstar behemoth and steer its creative output – bring their obsession with genre cinema to the fore. Crammed into this story of a fallen cop seeking redemption as a bodyguard in the crime-ridden mega-city of Sao Paulo, there are snatches of Heat, Carlito's Way, Elite Squad and most obviously Man on Fire, Tony Scott's homage to bruised masculinity and doomed heroism. Indeed, Scott's entire ouvre is here; it's in the agonised self-loathing of the lead character, the brutality of the choreographed set pieces and the hallucinogenic lighting that floods every scene with woozy oranges and yellows. But here, this isn't just about style, it's about subjectivity. Payne is a drunken wreck, delirious with grief over the murder of his wife and daughter a decade ago. His battered state of mind is constantly communicated via a barrage of effects – from blurred, doubled graphics to saturated colours blooming over the screen like migraine flashes. It is a sustained conceit that, in less assured hands, could have become tiring and off-putting very quickly. Here, it's the most enthralling hangover you'll ever have. Because whatever else Max Payne 3 is, at its heart it's a blisteringly entertaining third-person shooter. Recruited as a private security contractor by an old police academy colleague, our hero is supposed to be looking after Rodrigo Branco and his brothers, a degenerate bunch of property magnates and party monsters, living the high life as the poverty piles up against their ultra secure apartment block. It all goes to hell when a street gang attempts to kidnap Rodrigo's trophy wife, and we're quickly drawn into a bloody war between drug runners, right-wing vigilantes and covert police forces who constantly clash and collude amid the squalor. This is a breathless hair-trigger blast-'em-up that veers thrillingly between high-class clubs and low-life strip joints, from million-dollar yachts to the tumbling corrugated iron shacks of the nightmarish favelas. Through 14 chapters, the memorable set-piece encounters pile on top of each other; a messy hostage exchange in a football stadium; a tense escape from a crowded bus station, a jail break that makes Oz look like Prisoner Cell Block H. It is relentless, pulverising stuff. The key to the game is the pitch perfect control system. A customisable auto-targetting system lets players select between hard or soft auto systems, the latter subtly guiding your reticule rather than aggressively yanking it toward specific enemies. Both are smart, seamless and intuitive, allowing newcomers to acclimatise to the turbo-charged pace. There's also a free aim system for veterans, happy to do their own thing with the rather sensitive cross hairs. Manoeuvering within the environment is super slick too. Hitting "X" gets you into cover from which you can easily target enemies, or blind shoot for a more cautious spray-and-pray approach. Disengaging just takes another tap on "X", while pressing "A" gets you to roll out of cover, allowing Max to speedily traverse an environment without providing too much of a target. Eventually, you start reading locations in micro-seconds, working out how to strafe the floor plan from object to object; enjoying the feel of it. You know you're in good hands when merely getting in to cover feels fun and expressive. At the core however are bullet time and shootdodge; the twin engines in Payne's brutal, hyper-stylised combat machine. Essentially, they're tweaked updates on the standard recipe – get kills to fill the meter, then press right analogue to go into slow-mo bullet mode, allowing our anti-hero to take out multiple targets while the enemies are still getting their bearings. These have always been the signature components of the Payne experience, but here, within a series of hugely complex environments, and powered by Natural Motion's advanced character animation physics, they lead to moments of absolutely thrilling action, which perfectly blend the interactive and the cinematic. There's a possibility it ought not be this utterly satisfying to dive headfirst down a stairwell, firing twin Uzis at a roomful of coke-frazzled gang members, but you feel it every single time. Even when you crash into a table (I've done this a lot), or accidentally leap off the side of a boat (this too). We have been promised an interactive tribute to those balletic John Woo sequences for years, and now we have it. Unlike most Rockstar titles, Max Payne 3 is an entirely linear experience – there is some room to explore certain sections, but we're locked into a narrative corridor and rocketing toward a single inescapable conclusion. While that's hugely restrictive compared to the open worlds of GTA and Red Dead, it has also allowed Rockstar to sharpen its narrative skills – the labrynthine plot, while hardly revolutionary, is involving and carefully delivered, and there are several engaging little side-stories, from unrequited love affairs to the tragic tale of a much-loved local footballer who fails to escape the violence of the favela. Together with snatched news reports and plenty of discoverable clues, these add some depth to the chaotic through-line, and give us sense of this vast, corrupt universe operating just out of Max's field of vision. Holding all this together is James McCaffrey's masterful performance as Max. His gruffly delivered mental monologue is a world-weary, Picaresque diatribe – part-classic Noir voice-over, part-raging suicide note. There's plenty of pitch dark humour in there, of course, but the over-riding subtext of loss and hopelessness is Rockstar at its indulgent, nihilistic best. On top of the 10-hour(ish) campaign, there's an arcade mode, split into two options: Score Attack gets you to re-attempt any chapter you like for the highest score possible, adding multipliers to consecutive or stylish hits; New York Minute is all about finishing missions as quickly as possible, earning extra time from kills. Both have global high score tables, but players can also compare scores against their friends, which should keep competitive Payne fanatics amused from sometime.

German Reunion Pains Inform Attitude Toward Greece - NYTimes.com

 

To an extent not often appreciated by outsiders, the lessons provided by that experience — with the nation pouring $2 trillion or more into the east, by some estimates, to little immediate benefit — color the outlook and decisions of policy makers and the attitudes of voters, a majority of whom would like to see Greece leave the euro zone, polls show. Most economists agree that Germany could do more to help revive growth throughout the euro zone, and there are reports that Chancellor Angela Merkel is preparing to propose a major European Union plan to accomplish that. But the German reluctance to underwrite the economies of Greece and other struggling countries is not just a matter of the parsimonious Germans hoarding their funds, as it is so often portrayed, but a sense that subsidies do not breed successful economies. “Money alone doesn’t help,” said Simon Huber, 44, out for a stroll recently near Sendlinger Gate here. “You’re only saved when you save yourself.” Though regularly lectured by their colleagues across the Atlantic about the need for stimulus measures to reverse the sagging fortunes of countries like Greece and Portugal, German experts believe they have a lot more experience trying to revive uncompetitive economies locked in currency regimes after nearly 23 years of dealing with the former East Germany. “We performed a real-life experiment,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research here. While unemployment in the former West Germany is 6 percent, it remains stubbornly higher, at 11.2 percent, in the east. In 2010 gross domestic product per capita was more than $40,000 in the former West and just under $30,000 in the former East, compared with 1991 figures of $27,500 in the West and about $12,000 in the East. But much of the narrowing in the gaps between east and west, experts say, is attributed to the migration of job seekers westward as much as to any significant improvement in the east. There have been success stories in the revival of cities like Dresden and Leipzig, and some regions, especially on the southern edge of the former East Germany, are doing better. But the eastern part of the country today is known for perfectly rebuilt town squares that sit empty for much of the day and new stretches of autobahn with few drivers on them. “Germany made huge investments in infrastructure in East Germany,” said Klaus Adam, a professor of economics at the University of Mannheim. “The hope that the rest would follow has not been fulfilled. You need to get the productivity figures up.” While much of Europe follows the lead of President François Hollande of France in calling for jointly issued debt, or euro bonds, as the solution to Europe’s troubles, a vast majority of Germans reject the idea. To German ears, the demand for euro bonds sounds less like a technical solution to the crisis than a way to use Germany’s good credit rating to push off difficult but necessary reforms. “You don’t entrust your credit cards to anyone if you can’t control the spending,” said Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, in an interview Friday with the French newspaper Le Monde. “Pooling debt is not the right tool for growth,” said Mr. Weidmann, a former economic adviser to Chancellor Merkel. “This would pose both legal and economic problems. I don’t think we’ll be successful in trying to resolve the debt crisis with more debt outside the regular budgets.” Ms. Merkel dominated the political decision-making in Europe for much of the crisis, culminating in the signing in March of the fiscal pact to reduce budget deficits by 25 of the 27 European Union countries. But countries like Greece and Spain have underperformed economically and been unable to rein in their deficits as quickly as promised. 1 2 NEXT PAGE » Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – review | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 

GR:FS adopts a close up third-person perspective, but plays very much like an FPS, packed with in-your-face action right from the offset – something that might surprise fans of the series. With four acts – set in Africa, Pakistan, Russia and Norway – GR:FS fits so much into its generic 14-mission campaign it can feel a bit rushed. There are obvious debts to Crysis 2 and Deus Ex, particularly with futuristic gear such as the camoflage suit offering ghostly protection provided you don't move too fast or fire a weapon. But some ideas are both original and superbly realised. Take the Sync Shot, where you can paint up to four targets for team mates to establish line of sight for a coordinated kill. It's a great idea that's bound to be copied by others, as will some of the gadgets. From the brilliant Warhound mobile artillery platform that launches mortars or sidewinder missiles according to remote commands, to the portable UAV's that hover above the battlefield picking out targets, GR:FS has the kind of gadgets James Bond would kill for. And although we're used to seeing intelligent HUDs these days, GR:FS has one of the best – including a super sharp Magnetic View mode, which picks out armed enemies and other metal objects such as landmines. GR:FS also keeps the gun club happy with a massive selection of more than 50 weapons – each of which can be customised – in seven categories with more than 600 separate components. From sniper scopes to armour-piercing rounds, custom stocks and retractable undercarriages, there are so many choices it's tempting to keep replaying levels until you find your ultimate combo. It's fun to play too, with a learning curve that tempts you with new gadgets every few levels and some decent squad AI to back you up. And although making progress is heavily geared towards finding and taking cover, it makes this easier with a cover-dash command that lets you sprint between them by holding down the X key. However, there are some problems. For starters, the engine is far better at depicting gizmos than environments, with largely flat textures, cramped locations and occasional graphical glitches throughout – even in cutscenes. It's also ironic that most of the eye-catching moments – the sandstorms and blizzards or the way the screen shakes when under suppressing fire – are also ones that reduce your visibility to near zero. GR:FS is also very linear, with each level providing a single objective and only additional challenges for, say for killing 15 enemies in Magnetic mode. Admittedly, giving total player freedom would undermine the squad-based ethos, but without being able to issue movement commands, straying from a narrow focus risks losing sensor lock and a return to the last checkpoint. Speaking of which, although most of the cut-scenes are forgettable, they're also un-skipable, meaning you may see them repeatedly after restarts. Luckily, when the single player game is done, there's plenty more to get on with. GR:FS multiplayer is very much a work in progress, and there are some stability, balancing and lobby issues with U-Play still to be sorted, but it's clear the developers have been busy since their recent 600,000-player beta test. The original three multiplayer modes – Conflict, Saboteur and Guerilla – have been boosted with 3 more: Decoy, Siege and a split-screen Co-Op Campaign. Conflict has two teams competing to see who can fulfill the most objectives in 15 minutes. Saboteur is a race to carry a bomb to the rival team's detonation area. Decoy and Siege are best-of-three modes; the first a slightly confusing one involving one real objective and two decoy traps, the second with no respawns and both teams up against the clock to claim or defend a base. Finally, Guerilla is a Horde variant where your team has to withstand 50 waves of increasingly hostile enemies. With character classes that owe a clear debt to Battlefield 3, you get a choice of three to start with and two more unlocked on reaching level 50. Scouts are basically snipers, fleet footed and supported by camo suits. Engineers can hack enemy scanners for intel, but are also useful in close combat. Finally, there's Riflemen, who can lay down suppressing fire and soak up more damage. Whichever character or mode you choose, GR:FS is unashamedly team focused, with frantic battles best won by supporting your colleagues and additional bonuses, upgrades and kill-streaks awarded for objectives solved by teamwork. This won't please lone snipers or last-man-standing fans, but when it works with the right compadres, GR:FS is a refreshing alternative to the usual FPS machismo. However, with only two maps for each multiplayer mode and four for Guerilla, Ubisoft is not exactly splashing out on content. This may be due to a premium DLC pack coming in July with more maps, weapons and upgrades, but including a few more maps would have been a nice reward for a patient Ghost Recon community that now risks being divided between DLC haves and have-nots. GR:FS is so nearly a landmark game. It's busting with great gadgets, challenging and unusual to play and committed to a true co-op spirit that most rivals have long since abandoned. If only it looked a little better, had a few more maps and U-Play made it easier to find a quick online match-up with your mates. Even so, it's a worthy alternative to any FPS and puts the Ghost Recon franchise right back at the cutting edge

With Confession in the Patz Case, the Difficult Work Begins - NYTimes.com

 

It should be a detective’s dream come true. The police have their man, their investigation sewn up with a tidy bow of his own damning words. Far from it, for now the police must try to prove that he did what he said he did. And in the case of the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, and the boy, Etan Patz, that is not going to be easy. In many ways, this confession is a worst-case scenario of corroboration, starting with the body. The police said Mr. Hernandez confessed to strangling Etan in the basement of the SoHo bodega where he worked in 1979 and dumping the body in a bag with the garbage on the street. Had he buried it in a lot someplace, the police could dig, but Mr. Hernandez’s version of events renders the haystack too big, the needle almost certainly gone for good. The prosecution of Mr. Hernandez ground forward on Friday, with his arraignment on second-degree murder charges. At the same time, officers tried to return to the past, stepping down into the basement of what is now a boutique eyeglasses shop to document its current appearance, not even pretending to believe there are any clues to be found. The modern training that detectives receive goes out the window here: video from street cameras; incriminating e-mails; MetroCard swipe data; cellphone logs. “Time is an enemy here,” said Vernon J. Geberth, a retired New York City police lieutenant commander in the Bronx. He said he was struck by the absence of corroborating details in the news accounts of Mr. Hernandez’s confession. “I have to ask myself a question, do they have something they’re not telling us?” he said. So how do you corroborate Mr. Hernandez’s story? A New York detective and an assistant district attorney, both veterans and both speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not involved in the Patz case, spoke of ways to tackle such a difficult case. “Usually, there is a scene, usually there is a body,” the prosecutor said. “If you don’t have physical evidence that points to your guy, you go into your guy’s background. How did his mother treat him? Why this? Did his brother die? So, he wanted revenge? You look for family members, you look for relatives, you look for teachers. Why would he do such a thing?” “You want to make sure he’s not a chronic confessor,” the detective said. Many books are about those who confessed to crimes they did not commit. Detectives have most likely returned to Mr. Hernandez’s story. “You always go back for more detail, more detail, more detail,” Mr. Geberth said. “The confession is usually devoid of a lot of facts. They just want to get it out. Once it’s out, the barrier has been crossed.” The need to confess behind him, the suspect may relax. “Get him something to eat, something to drink. ‘By the way, did you speak to anybody? Did you go to work the next day, or take the day off?’ Important things.” The police know who worked at the bodega in 1979 because several employees were interviewed when Etan disappeared. Did Mr. Hernandez say or do anything strange at that time? Mr. Hernandez’s family said he spoke of having done “a bad thing and killed a child in New York,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Thursday night. The detective I spoke with said he would return to those people, and find others. “What he said to them, when he said it, what details he gave. What was his demeanor? Has he ever admitted to doing anything else?” He would try to find other people with whom Mr. Hernandez spoke about the boy. “Interview people who haven’t come forward.” The detective said he would have revisited the scene with the suspect as it was in 1979, in a room with photographs from that time. “I would take the photographs and say, ‘Point to where you met him. Point to where he was,’ ” the detective said. “I’d have him put an ‘X’ on it with a Magic Marker and sign it.” Why? “Great evidence in court,” he said. “When you go to court, you not only have his statement saying that’s what happened, but you have evidence for jurors to see.” Jurors. That there are 12 people walking around who may one day sit in judgment of Mr. Hernandez is what has the police hunting for proof and for the holy grail — motive, the prosecutor said. “Corroboration is such a legal thing, it’s a thin requirement,” he said. “The question is, do you get the jury to believe this is the real thing?” Jurors, he said, “care about why.” E-mail: crimescene@nytimes.com Twitter: @mwilsonnyt

Hideo Kojima: video game drop-out – interview part 2 | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 

On the 25th anniversary of the genesis of his game series Metal Gear, creator Hideo Kojima reflects on a career spent battling the stigma of working in video games in the second of a two part interview feature, exclusive to the Guardian Share 42 Email Solid Snake ... Kojima named his lead character after Snake Plissken, who was played by Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter film Escape From New York Despite finding like-minded individuals at Konami, Kojima's first couple of years at the studio were far from easy. For one, his directorial ambition was fiercely at odds with its orthodox Japanese institutional hierarchy. "Lost World was the first project I was assigned to and the game was cancelled after six months," he says. "It was a serious blow to all of us on the team. I couldn't believe it. After that I began to work on Metal Gear. Konami wanted a war game, because they were incredibly popular at that time. But I didn't want to make the same as everyone else so I started thinking of ways in which I could subvert the genre." It was at this point that Kojima's love for film came into play. "I remembered the film The Great Escape and thought this would be a good approach for something distinct. My first concept was for a game in which you were a prisoner of war and simply had to escape. If you were caught you'd be brought back to the prison. The idea was for a non-combat game. "But I had such a hard time convincing people. I had so many things going against me at that time. For one, my first game had been cancelled, so I hadn't released anything yet. Then I was working in quite a large creative group, and I was the youngest. Finally, the type of game I wanted to make didn't exist at that time. The odds were stacked against me and it was very hard to earn the trust of the team." After a few months of failing to make his voice heard, Kojima managed to convince the most senior member of the team to meet with him. "He listened to my frustrations," Kojima says, "and then approached one of the higher-ups in the company who must have seen something in me as he invited me to pitch my ideas for Metal Gear in front of everyone. Everyone in the team saw that it was a revolutionary idea, I think, and from then on, I had their support." The first Metal Gear was developed for the MSX, a home computer format that enjoyed a fraction of the market share of Nintendo's inaugural games console, the Famicom. While many would have seen being told to make a game for underdog technology as a drawback, Kojima turned it to his advantage. "The MSX audience was more technologically savvy than the Famicom audience and as such the game had a much wider influence than it perhaps might have if it had just released on Nintendo's hardware. "We spent a long time working on animations that wouldn't have been possible on the Famicom. I would go so far to say that, had I been working in the Famicom department from the beginning I probably wouldn't have come up with the idea for Metal Gear. The features of the systems are so different. And the game concept wouldn't have passed Konami's internal processing, which required more mainstream, family-friendly titles for the Famicom." Following the success of the game Konami commissioned a sequel, this time for the Nintendo hardware. As Kojima had been hired to work in the MSX division, he was kept separate from the Famicom team, only hearing about the project second hand. "I heard about Snake's Revenge through rumours, initially," he says. "I was quite new at the company and had no influence on the other departments. "Then one day I met someone on the train who worked in the Famicom department. He used to work for me and was now working on the sequel. He said: 'I don't think this is a true sequel. I think you should make the true sequel.' So on my way home I began to think about what that might look like. Without that encounter I probably wouldn't have pursued a proper sequel, and there might never have been a Metal Gear Solid." Kojima was merely a game designer at that time, and had no detailed knowledge of the budgets involved, but the trust he had gained from the first game caused Konami to pour more money into his sequel. "Because we were making a war game, Konami wanted the experience to be authentic, so every week they paid for us to visit a forest in the mountains nearby. We would dress up in military uniform and play games there. It was a good time." Even at this early point in his career, Kojima's directorial flair was irrepressible, and, without programming knowledge, he found himself frustrated by having to rely on programmers to bring his vision to life. "I would tell the programmers what I wanted to show on screen, when I wanted the dialogue to display, or a music cue to sound," he says. "But they wouldn't do it how I wanted. They would change it slightly to what they thought was best. "It was hugely frustrating making games at that time for me. I wanted to control everything. So, after the second Metal Gear launched, I developed my own scripting engine and decided to work on adventure games so that I could have complete control over when the animation played or when the music triggered. That's when I developed Snatcher and Policenauts. It was a way to take creative control back from the programmers." But by 1998, Kojima had been promoted to a managerial role at Konami, and enjoyed autonomy to choose the people he wanted on the team – staff who would complement his vision. One such hire was Yoji Shinkawa, an artist that Kojima hired straight out of college in 1994. "Shinkawa was born to be a video game artist," says Kojima. "As soon as I knew I was to be making Metal Gear Solid, I asked Shinkawa to join the team and his work, as much as anything, defined the series from there on." Metal Gear Solid's development coincided with a technological shift in the medium, that brought with it creative challenges: the move from 2D graphics (and the accompanying gameplay) to the third dimension. Kojima's team developed a 3D engine from scratch for the game and Shinkawa would work from home for months at a time creating the 3D models that would populate the game. "Yoji created real life 3D plastic models of all of the game's vehicles and as he used so many chemicals, he had to work from home as the fumes were harmful to the rest of the team," Kojima says. "I would visit his apartment every day to check that he was OK. The first time I went there the floor was covered in plastic parts." The game launched to critical acclaim and commercial success. Its brilliance was in the packaging of the idea, couching the hide-and-seek act of creeping through the shadows in a tight, carefully orchestrated scenario in which one man must infiltrate a radioactive waste facility armed with little more than a radio, a bandana and a packet of cigarettes. Despite the one-man army set-up, Metal Gear Solid's narrative offers more layers of complexity than a Rambo or a Bond movie, Kojima shying away from a chance for a character to soliloquise on the nature of warfare, or the role of solider pawn, those very same figures controlled by the player, on the battlefield. I ask whether the reaction to the game surprised him, or whether he knew he had created something special. "We worked so hard on that game that there wasn't even time to think about how it might be received," he says. "We were just making the game that we wanted to play and I don't think I had any expectations that it was going to be a big game. So when I heard it was selling well in America it didn't feel real. "I think the first time the game's success struck me was when I came to London in 1999. We visited Forbidden Planet to promote the game. I walked in and the shopkeepers knew about me. I couldn't believe it. It was the most surprising moment in my life." Despite this success, Kojima was most interested in impressing the woman who had supported him from the very beginning: his mother. "About that time I heard that my mother had stopped telling her friends what I did for a living," he tells me. "She was hugely supportive in the beginning. But after a decade or so her friends' sons and daughters all had high positions in big companies. I think she felt a little awkward about what I did by this point." But Metal Gear Solid's success convinced Konami to plough a huge amount of money into its sequel, developed for Sony's PlayStation 2. "We had so much more budget so we were able to go to Hollywood and hire a composer [Harry Gregson-Williams]," he says. "That was a huge moment for me, made all the better because Harry had heard of my games." Following Metal Gear Solid 2's release, Kojima was listed by Newsweek as one of the 'Top 10 People To Watch In 2003'. "After that, my mother began to tell all of her friends about what I did," says Kojima, laughing. "It was sweet. By that time she was 70 years old. But she decided that she was going to play through my games. "It took her an entire year to complete Metal Gear Solid 3. She would get her friends to help her. When she defeated The End [a character the player faces off against in one of the game's final missions] she called me up and said: 'It is finished'." Today, there is little that Kojima would change about his career, and he has no regrets: "Looking back, I am thankful that I didn't go into the film industry," he says. "If I had joined that industry I wouldn't have been able to make the kind of films I wanted to, and I really enjoy the games I make now." Indeed, Kojima has lost none of his infectious energy and drive to create. He arrives to work at 6.30am each day, and spends an hour meditating on his life before heading into the business of the day, which is split equally between managerial responsibilities and creative ones. "I wouldn't have taken the managerial role if I wasn't heavily involved in the creative process too," he says. "I have to have a creative role otherwise I simply wouldn't come into work. I try to always have a game design role as part of my responsibilities at any one time. If I didn't have this, I wouldn't be able to do what I do." One part of his daily ritual stems from even earlier than his formative days working as a game designer for the MSX. Now 48, Kojima's father's influence on him is still very apparent in his routine. Every day, no matter how busy his schedule, the designer takes 90-odd minutes to watch a film at his desk. "It's part of my ritual to watch a new film every day, no matter what," he says. "It's important to me." Sensing that the habit is as much a tribute to his father's demand that the family watch a film a day as it is a way to draw creative inspiration from another medium, I venture the question: "Do you think your father would have been proud of what you do?" "I don't think..." he says, quietly. "I mean. If he was still alive… Well, I don't think he would be unhappy about my choice."

Regulators’ Role at Chase Scrutinized - NYTimes.com

 

Roughly 40 examiners from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 70 staff members from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are embedded in the nation’s largest bank. They are typically assigned to the departments undertaking the greatest risks, like the structured products trading desk. Even as the chief investment office swelled in size and made increasingly large bets, regulators did not put any examiners in the unit’s offices in London or New York, according to current and former regulators who spoke only on condition of anonymity. Senior JPMorgan executives assured the bank’s watchdogs after the financial crisis that the chief investment office, with hundreds of billions in investments, was not taking risks that would be a cause for concern, people briefed on the matter said. Just weeks before the trading losses became public, bank officials also dismissed the worry of a senior New York Fed examiner about the mounting size of the bets, according to current Fed officials. The lapses have raised questions about who, if anyone, was policing the chief investment office and whether regulators were sufficiently independent. Instead of putting the JPMorgan unit under regular watch, the comptroller’s office and the Fed chose to examine it periodically. The bank pushback also suggests that JPMorgan had sway over its regulators, an influence that several said was enhanced by the bank’s charismatic chief executive, Jamie Dimon, long considered Washington’s favorite banker. Now, as regulators scramble to determine whether the chief investment office took inappropriate risks, some former Fed officials are asking whether the investigation should be spearheaded by the New York Fed, where Mr. Dimon has a seat on the board. Some lawmakers and former regulators also have reservations about the comptroller’s office, which is investigating the trade and was the primary regulator for JPMorgan’s chief investment unit. “The central question is why Jamie Dimon was able to so successfully convince both its regulators that there was nothing to see at the chief investment office,” said Mark Williams, a professor of finance at Boston University, who also served as a Federal Reserve Bank examiner in Boston and San Francisco. “To me, it suggests that he is too close to his regulators.” Regulators, for their part, say they cannot micromanage a bank or outlaw its risk taking and did not bow to bank pressure when assigning examiners. William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, has said that JPMorgan’s losses did not pose a threat to the bank’s viability. In a statement on Friday, the comptroller of the currency, Thomas J. Curry, said, “I am committed to ensuring this agency provides strong supervision for all of the institutions we oversee.” Regulators are not typically stationed at divisions like JPMorgan’s chief investment office, which are known as Treasury units. The units hedge risk and invest extra money on hand, and tend to make short-term investments. But JPMorgan’s office, with a portfolio of nearly $400 billion, had become a profit center that made large bets and recorded $5 billion in profit over the three years through 2011. Officials of JPMorgan declined to comment on its relationships with regulators. Long before the recent trading blunder, JPMorgan had a pattern of pushing back on regulators, according to more than a dozen current and former regulators interviewed for this article. That resistance increased after Mr. Dimon steered JPMorgan through the financial crisis in better shape than virtually all its rivals. “JPMorgan has been screaming bloody murder about not needing regulators hovering, especially in their London office,” said a former examiner embedded at the bank, adding, in reference to Mr. Dimon, “But he was trusted because he had done so well through the turmoil.” Even now, executives at JPMorgan disagree with some regulators over how quickly the bank should unwind the soured trade, according to people briefed on the negotiations. JPMorgan would like to be done with the bad bet that has resulted in at least $3 billion in losses already, but senior executives argue it is a delicate process, especially as traders and hedge funds on the opposite side of the trade seize on the fact that JPMorgan is under pressure to exit the position.

Man charged in Etan Patz killing has mental health issues - latimes.com

 

NEW YORK — A man who claims to have abducted and strangled Etan Patz, who vanished 33 years ago Friday, has suffered from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and hallucinations, his attorney said as the man had his first court appearance since making his surprise confession a day earlier. Pedro Hernandez, 51, did not enter a plea to a second-degree murder charge filed earlier Friday. He also did not speak during a hearing that lasted just a few minutes. As his court-appointed attorney, Harvey Fishbein, outlined what he called Hernandez's "long psychiatric history," Hernandez sat slumped in a chair, clad in an orange jumpsuit, his hands manacled behind his back. Hernandez has been held at New York's Bellevue Hospital because of his apparent mental instability, and he and Fishbein appeared via a video linkup to a Manhattan courtroom shortly after Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance Jr. announced the charges. "This is the beginning of the legal process, not the end," Vance said in a statement that reflected the challenges of prosecuting a case in which there is no body, no physical evidence linking Hernandez to the crime, and a defendant with an apparent history of mental illness. "There is much investigative and other work ahead." Even though Hernandez says he committed the murder, his motive remains unclear. Patz's parents and at least one investigator became convinced years ago that a convicted pedophile serving time on an unrelated charge was the culprit. In 2004, a civil court ruled the man, Jose Ramos, responsible for Etan's death. Ramos denied involvement. Hernandez was not asked to enter a plea, and Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. ordered a psychiatric examination for him. Assistant Dist. Atty. Armand Durastanti also said no bail should be considered, and none was requested. "It has been 33 years and justice has not yet been done in this case," Durastanti said, noting the haste with which Etan's life was ended on May 25, 1979, as he made the short walk from his Manhattan apartment to his school bus stop. "This is approximately 110 yards. He has not been seen or heard from since." The hearing coincided withNational Missing Children's Day, which President Reagan proclaimed in 1983 in honor of Etan. He was the first child to have his picture appear on a milk carton, part of the nationwide awareness movement that ensured his face would be familiar to anyone buying milk. His disappearance — on the first day his parents, Stan and Julie Patz, had let him walk to the school bus alone — also is seen as marking the end of an era when it was not unusual for young children to walk to school or go out to play without parents by their sides. For decades, the case haunted the street in the now-trendy SoHo neighborhood where Etan's parents, Stan and Julie Patz, still live. Neither parent has spoken out about Hernandez's sudden confession, which came a month after the FBI and New York police dug up the basement of a nearby building in search of Etan's remains. None was found. But the renewed publicity about the case from that dig apparently nudged someone close to Hernandez to tip police that he might be involved in Etan's disappearance. At the time the boy vanished, Hernandez was an 18-year-old stock clerk at a corner grocery store near the Patz home. He moved to New Jersey shortly after Etan vanished, and he had told some people over the years that he had "done a bad thing and killed a child in New York," New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in announcing Hernandez's arrest on Thursday. Kelly said Hernandez was brought in for questioning on Wednesday and told police he had lured Etan into the store with promises of a soda, taken him into the basement, strangled him, and put the body into an alley with the trash. The body never was found, and Kelly said he didn't expect to find any physical evidence to corroborate Hernandez's confession. But he said Hernandez was able to provide enough details of the crime to convince police he was telling the truth. Neither the Patz family nor Hernandez's appeared at the Friday court hearing, and Hernandez's wife has not commented on her husband's arrest. According to the Associated Press, the Rev. George Bowen Jr., the pastor at Hernandez's church, said that Hernandez's wife and daughter visited him Thursday after he was in custody. "They were just crying their eyes out," AP quoted Bowen as saying. "They were broken up. They were wrecked. It was horrible. They didn't know what they were going to do."

John Edwards trial judge meets with attorneys on 'juror matter' - latimes.com

 

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The federal judge in the John Edwards trial closed her courtroom Friday afternoon to deal with what she called a "juror matter," and then sent the jury home for the Memorial Day weekend with no verdict reached. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles did not disclose what she and lawyers for both sides discussed during the 35 minutes the courtroom was closed to reporters and spectators. Jurors will return for a seventh day of deliberations Tuesday morning. Before deliberations began on May 18, the jury foreman, a financial consultant, told the judge that he might have an upcoming scheduling conflict. On Friday, Eagles told lawyers for both sides to arrive early Tuesday in case she needs to discuss a juror matter with them. As she does at the close of each session, Eagles reminded jurors not to discuss the case with anyone — even fellow jurors — outside the jury room, and to avoid all media reports about the trial. The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether $925,000 in payments from two wealthy patrons were illegal campaign contributions during Edwards' failed race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Edwards contends the payments were private gifts not directly related to the campaign. After a sixth day of deliberations, it was not possible to determine whether the jury was divided over guilt versus acquittal, or merely being thorough and meticulous. The longer deliberations drag on, the greater the likelihood of a split verdict or, if disagreements cannot be resolved, a hung jury. Jurors have asked to review more than 60 trial exhibits focusing on payments made to hide Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter, whom he had hired as a campaign videographer. The jury has met for about 34 hours over six days, after having listened to 31 witnesses and examined hundreds of exhibits during the monthlong trial. Jurors troop in and out of the wood-paneled courtroom a couple of times a day, a collection of ordinary citizens in jeans, slacks and summer dresses. Some looked weary Friday. Others appeared restless. The faces of one or two jurors suggested mild annoyance. Edwards, 58, unfailingly neat and trim in a dark suit, has studied jurors closely during their brief courtroom appearances over the past week, appraising their demeanor from his regular seat at the defense table. The former U.S. senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee is charged with six counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted and sentenced to maximum penalties. Jurors' requests for exhibits this week indicate they have plowed through the first two counts, which involve $725,000 in checks from billionaire heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, an ardent Edwards supporter. Jurors now appear to be finishing up deliberations over the next two counts, involving payments from the late Fred Baron, a wealthy Texas lawyer who was Edwards' national finance chairman. Prosecutors say Edwards orchestrated the payments to cover up the affair and prevent his campaign from collapsing in scandal. The defense says the payments were intended to hide the affair from Edwards' wife, Elizabeth Edwards, who had grown increasingly suspicious of her husband. The other two counts against Edwards accuse him of causing his campaign to file false finance reports and conspiring to accept and conceal illegal contributions through "trick, scheme or device." The jurors must reach a unanimous decision on each count to convict. Eagles has instructed them that prosecutors don't have to prove that the sole purpose of the payments was to influence the election — only that there was a "real purpose or an intended purpose" to do so. However, Eagles also told the jurors: "If the donor would have made the gift or payment notwithstanding the election, it does not become a contribution merely because the gift or payment might have some impact on the election." david.zucchino@latimes.com

Wilborn Hampton: "The Common Pursuit": Halls of Poison Ivy

 

At what point does the zeal of youthful idealism wear off? In Simon Gray's play The Common Pursuit, now in a rather prosaic revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company, it erodes slowly over time until dreams become a distant mirage and betrayals, professional and personal, turn the erosion into a landslide. For the sextet of Cambridge students - five young men and the girlfriend of one - who set out to start a new literary magazine in the 1960's, the years take an exceptionally heavy toll. Compromise and infidelity, both to scholarly standards and to one another, alter the landscape and lower expectations. Each in his way becomes the thing he once most despised. The magazine, to be named Common Pursuit, is the brainchild of Stuart Thorne. It will be dedicated solely to literary excellence, focused on poetry, and Stuart has recruited four other students to join him in the enterprise. To the suggestion that his criteria might be elitist, he responds "well, someone has to be elitist." The group he brings together is a cross-section of collegiate types. There is Humphry Taylor, a poet-philosopher who is the brightest of the lot and, at the outset, a closet gay; Nick Finchling, a chain-smoking, incipient alcoholic whose flamboyance is matched only by his egotism; Peter Whetworth, a sexoholic history major nicknamed Captain Marvel for his prowess between the sheets; Martin Musgrove, a moneyed and enthusiastic outsider whose essay on cats is rejected for the first issue; and Marigold Watson, Stuart's devoted girlfriend and a sort of cheerleader for the project. Lest anyone doubt Stuart's passion for poetry, we see him in the opening scene leap from Marigold's embrace - coitus quite literally interruptus - to recruit Cambridge's leading poet into contributing some verse to the fledgling magazine. Back in his rooms, the others argue over whether they are listening to Vivaldi or Bach and indulge in the old undergraduate pastime of denigrating the literary merits of their peers. Fast forward nine years and disillusion has already set in. The past two numbers of the magazine have failed to appear, the printers haven't been paid, and eviction notices on its office have been issued. On top of it all, Marigold is pregnant. Only the London Arts Council can save Common Pursuit from going under and Stuart learns he may not be the final arbiter on literary merit after all. One man's poetry may be another's doggerel and vice versa. If there is any fizz left in this bubbly and ultimately sad play, it has gone flat in the current revival. The exuberance of the opening scene is forced and any humor is mostly lost in the rushed delivery of some of the lines. The acerbity of the zingers with which the individual characters skewer their literary rivals - vitriol being a Gray trademark - is oddly diluted. And while there is a sense of sorrow over the treachery inflicted among these onetime friends, it is more gloomy than poignant. Gray, who died in 2008, made a career of writing plays set in academia, and was himself a university lecturer. Among his more frequently revived plays are Butley (1971) and Quartermaine's Terms (1981). The Common Pursuit was first produced in 1984, directed by Harold Pinter, and revised by Gray a few years later. The Roundabout revival, directed by Moises Kaufman, never quite finds either the passion with which the magazine is launched or the depth of disappointment at the duplicity that follows. Some of the roles are miscast. Kristen Bush is consistently convincing as Marigold. Josh Cooke and Jacob Fishel have their moments as Stuart and Martin, respectively, and Tim McGeever is stoic as Humphry.

Mt. Everest climber skips summit to rescue fellow hiker - NY Daily News

 

ISTANBUL (AP) -- An Israeli who rescued a distressed climber on Mount Everest instead of pushing onward to the summit said Friday that the man he helped, an American of Turkish origin, is like a brother to him. Nadav Ben-Yehuda, who was climbing with a Sherpa guide, came across Aydin Irmak near the summit last weekend. In that chaotic period, four climbers died on their way down from the summit amid a traffic jam of more than 200 people who were rushing to reach the world's highest peak as the weather deteriorated. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Ben-Yehuda, 24, appeared proud that Irmak, 46, had made it to the summit, noting that he is one of a small number of "Turkish" climbers to reach the top. Irmak left Turkey for New York more than two decades ago, but remains proud of his Turkish heritage. The friendship stands in contrast to the political tension between Turkey and Israel, which were once firm allies. "Aydin, wake up! Wake up!" Ben-Yehuda recalled saying when he found his friend in the darkness. The American, he said, had been returning from the summit but collapsed in the extreme conditions, without an oxygen supply, a flashlight and a rucksack. Ben-Yehuda, who developed a friendship with Irmak before the climb, had delayed his own ascent by a day in hopes of avoiding the bottleneck of climbers heading for the top. There have been periodic tales of people bypassing stricken climbers as they seek to fulfill a lifelong dream and reach the summit of Everest, but Ben-Yehuda said his decision to abandon his goal of reaching the top and help Irmak was "automatic," even though it took him several minutes to recognize his pale, gaunt friend. "I just told myself, `This is crazy.' It just blew my mind," Ben-Yehuda said. "I didn't realize he was up there the whole time. Everybody thought he had already descended." The Israeli carried Irmak for hours to a camp at lower elevation. Both suffered frostbite and some of their fingers were at risk of amputation. Ben-Yehuda lost 20 kilograms (44 pounds) in his time on the mountain, and Irmak lost 12 kilograms (26 pounds), said Hanan Goder, Israel's ambassador in Nepal. Goder had dinner with the pair after their ordeal. "They really have to recover mentally and physically," Goder said. "They call each other, `my brother.' After the event that they had together, their souls are really linked together now." The ambassador said the rescue was a "humanitarian" tale that highlighted the friendship between Israelis and Turks at a personal level, despite the deteriorating relationship between their governments. One of the key events in that downward, diplomatic spiral was an Israeli raid in 2010 on a Turkish aid ship that was trying to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish activists and a Turkish-American. The Jerusalem Post, which reported that Ben-Yehuda would have been the youngest Israeli to reach Everest's summit, spoke to Irmak by telephone during the dinner that Goder hosted. "I don't know what the hell is going on between the two countries," the newspaper quoted Irmak as saying. "I don't care about that. I talked to his (Ben-Yehuda's) family today and I told them you have another family in Turkey and America." Ben-Yehuda, who spoke to the AP just before leaving Nepal for urgent medical treatment in Israel, said he could not say with certainty how he would have reacted if he had come across a stricken climber he did not know. Oxygen is in such short supply and the conditions are so harsh, he said, that people on the mountain develop a kind of tunnel vision. "You just think about breathing, about walking, about climbing," he said. According to Ben-Yehuda, the fundamental questions going through the mind of a climber heading for the peak are: "Are you going to make it?" and "When is the right time to turn back?" And once a climber begins the descent, the all-embracing question becomes: "How fast can I go down?" Ben-Yehuda said his military training in Israel helped shape his reflexive dec

lot to learn when it comes to being a responsible adult. It is being reported that Bristol Palin’s ex and father of their three-year-old son Tripp, squandered away more than $1 million on toys - and not for his son. A source tells Us Weekly that Johnston, 22, spent his money on guns, boats, and four-wheelers, and as a result he is now broke and living at home with his mother in Alaska. Johnston’s reported spending habits are being highly criticized as in insider reveals to Us that he has continually failed to pay child support for his son. “Levi hasn’t paid child support in nearly two years,” the insider said. “And he has little contact with Tripp.” The onetime mayoral hopeful, who is also currently expecting a child – a girl – with girlfriend, Sunny Oglesby, 20, has garnered an unflattering reputation as an absent father and the Daily Mail reports that he has amassed a debt of $38,000 in backed child support. However, a former rep for Johnston, Tank Jones, is attempting to dispel allegations of his former clients’ financial trouble by claiming that the severing of his professional relationship with Johnston was a mutual decision and not due to Johnston's finances or lack thereof. “I wanted work on other projects. This was a mutual decision,” Jones told Us. “I would think he would want to do some different things too. I would never leave him at a low point.” Only Johnston and his accountant know the real truth about his finances but one can only hope that he will have everything sorted out before bringing another child into the mix. INFDaily 0 No votes yet Poor Okay Good Great Awesome Your rating: None Share on twitter|Share on deliciousShare on diggShare on redditShare on stumbleuponShare on emailShare on aimShare on pinterest8 More Articles By Jillian Claybrook Did Ted Allen 'out' Food Network star Anne Burrell? 'American Idol' finalist Brooke White is a new mother Prince William: Queen Elizabeth II is just my grandmother Get all the details on the engagement ring Mark Zuckerberg gave to Priscilla Chan Nicole Kidman sent sexy photos to Lee Daniels to get role in 'Paperboy' more Featured Links Godiva Coffee Prize Pack Win an Amazon Kindle Fire and a copy of Shark Dash Father's Day 'Thrill Your Grill' Giveaway Top 10 Beastie Boys Songs: In memory of Adam 'MCA' Yauch (Videos) Everybody seems to be talking about the Gotye song, "Somebody That I Used To Know," but what you might not realize is that the video has inspired literally dozens upon dozens upon dozens of covers. Over the years, Disney films have certainly been popular at the box office, but have also greatly influenced our culture today. Is anybody famous born on your birthday? How are your Trivia Skills? We Recommend Nude picture of Tori Spelling accidentally posted by husband Paris Hilton storms off the set of 'The View' Robin Thicke calls 'Duets' a 'huge opportunity' to reach a broader audience Keane - 'Strangeland' Review 'The Daughter Trap' by Laurel Kennedy From Around the Web Mary Kennedy’s Last Days: Distress From RFK Divorce, New Girlfriend (The Daily Beast) Behind The Row: Meet Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (Vogue) The Oscar Curse: Are Successful Women Unlucky in Love? (You Beauty) [

A Good Day for Elon Musk

 

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has had his tough days; on Saturday, for example, an attempted launch of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, the first commercially developed flight to attempt to connect with the International Space Station, never got off the ground; flight computers aborted it during the countdown. But today definitely was a good day for Musk. A really good day. Early this morning, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying the unmanned Dragon capsule blasted off successfully; Dragon is due to rendezvous with the Space Station in a couple of days. A jubilant Musk tweeted “Falcon flew perfectly!! Dragon in orbit, comm locked, and solar arrays active!! Feels like a giant weight just came off my backJ” And good news came out of Tesla Motors today as well, good for the company, as well as for buyers of the company's second model, the Model S sedan. Tesla announced on its corporate blog that manufacturing for the Model S is a few weeks ahead of schedule and delivery to customers will begin June 22. This announcement followed late yesterday's tweet by Musk, “Major Tesla milestone: All crash testing is complete for 5* (max) safety rating. Cars can now be built for sale to the public!!”   The company also announced that the car’s regenerative braking, which feeds energy back to the battery and slows the car down, will be adjustable (some people find the resistance from regenerative braking disturbing, and would be willing to sacrifice range to avoid it). Musk, interviewed yesterday by Spaceflight Now, an online publication, may be treated a bit like a tech pop star, but he still talks like the engineer that he is. Asked how he expected to feel today, he responded, “Either really happy or really sad. It's just one of those things that has a bimodal outcome.” Safe to say that today he’s feeling really happy. Above: Video of today’s Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral. To hear Elon Musk talk about his career and his long term goal of making life multiplanetary, listen to my 2009 interview with Musk.

Fleet Week 2012: Coast Guard's staged rescue thrills Staten Islanders

 

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Hundreds gathered yesterday at The Sullivans Pier to tour six powerful warships docked at the former home port for Fleet Week celebrations. But what really caught their attention was a surprise Search And Rescue (S.A.R.) demonstration by the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard executed the drill in New York Harbor to show the crowd what it does best -- rescuing victims at sea. It commenced at 2 p.m., when a Coast Guardsman, playing victim, jumped about 20 feet from a helicopter, treaded water and raised his right hand to signal for help. Another Coast Guardsman, playing rescuer, jumped into the water to secure his comrade. The two were lifted to safety by a rope. Patrick Murphy, 15, of Westerleigh, said he and his family enjoy the Fleet Week festivities each year. The S.A.R. demonstration, however, was a new experience for him. "My favorite part was probably when the guy just fell out of the chopper! At first I was a little confused, but then I realized it was a drill and that it wasn't so serious." Tourists were not the only ones who enjoyed the Coast Guard demonstration. Sailors dressed in their summer whites, black and tans, and Navy working uniforms watched with the crowd, offering details about the operation. Margo Miscatel of Dongan Hills said she was impressed by the sailors' accessibility and knowledge. Staten Island Advance/Irving Silverstein Caitlyn Hearn of Eltingville and Nicole Clark of Grymes Hill learn about the helm of the USS San Jacinto from sailor Isaiah Riddick. "The staff took their time to explain to us what was going on and how the drill worked. I thought it was fantastic. It really shows what they can do and how skilled they are." But fans of Staten Island Fleet Week -- which continues in Stapleton through Tuesday -- almost missed their opportunity to witness a genuine S.A.R. demonstration, which was scheduled for noon. "We delayed due to the cloud coverage. In these situations, the question is always whether the ceiling is safe enough to conduct any demonstration," said Charlie Rowe, a civilian U.S. Coast Guard public affairs officer who helped organize the event. According to the U.S. Navy Staten Island Command Center stationed at the pier, compromised visibility often forces helicopter pilots to hover close over the water's surface. This poses several dangers, requires consulting radar technology and is done only in an actual emergency situation. But by 2 p.m., the skies cleared and the demonstration began. Earlier in the day, Borough President James P. Molinaro hosted a "captain's call" at Borough Hall for the commanders of the four American ships stationed at The Sullivans Pier, including the USS San Jacinto, USS Mitscher, the USS Donald Cook and the USS Gonzalez. "I am pleased to welcome the commanding officers to Staten Island and I would like to express our gratitude to the fine men and women who defend our country and protect the liberties we enjoy. I hope they have a wonderful time as guests in our great city," Molinaro said in a statement. Visitors to The Sullivans Pier can tour the Navy ships from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Tuesday or attend the Annual Splash Music Festival today and tomorrow from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Free tours of the Ships, also including KRI Dewaruci of Indonesia and the Cisne Branco of Brazil, are available today, tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free shuttle transportation from the south parking area, between Edgewater Street and Canal Street, to the front gate is available today, tomorrow and Monday from 12 to 5 p.m.

Rolling Thunder rolls in to commemorate Memorial Day

 

WASHINGTON - It's time to get ready to hear the rumble of Rolling Thunder. Hundreds of thousands of motorcycle riders are converging on D.C. this weekend for their 25th Memorial Day ride. Riders have already begun arriving for the weekend of events to remember prisoners of war and those missing in action. "I have a brother I lost in Vietnam in 1968," says Mark Given, a Desert Storm veteran. He joined Rolling Thunder to make sure the sacrifices of people like his brother are not forgotten - especially on Memorial Day. Given was one of about six riders from Rolling Thunder on Friday morning who laid wreaths at historic Congressional Cemetery in Southeast, paying tribute to the fallen as a bugler played taps. Given's 12-year-old son, Martin, came with him from New Jersey this year. The youngster is named after Given's brother, "I carry his name on for who he was and for serving our country," he says. At the grave of an unknown soldier, Carlos Hollifield says laying a wreath is appropriate. "Our mission is to ensure that in the future we have no unknowns." Hollifield says there are still more than 100,000 Americans from all wars still unaccounted for. "We work to make sure that political leaders and citizens never forget our prisoners of war and our missing in action." The riders also placed a wreath at the gravesite of several War of 1812 veterans. Congressional Cemetery was the first national cemetery established in 1807.

Chernobyl Diaries’ is a disaster of a horror film

 

Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films. Marion Crane decides to take a shower at the Bates Motel. People on Amity Island continue to swim in sharky water. The kids on Elm Street can’t stop falling asleep. All that appears to be motivating anybody in “Chernobyl Diaries” to do anything is paltry screenwriting. Chris and Amanda and Natalie visit Chris’s brother, Paul, in Kiev. The plan is to go to Moscow, but Paul thinks it would be fun to pile inside a stranger’s van and head to the site of a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986. Movie Review CHERNOBYL DIARIES Directed by: Bradley Parker Written by: Shane Van Dyke, Carey Van Dyke, and Oren Peli Starring: Jonathan Sadowski, Jesse McCartney, Olivia Dudley, and Devin Kelley At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs Running time: 88 minutes Rated: R (violence, some bloody images, and pervasive language) There are scraps of interest. Four or five people in the audience might see these guys wandering around big, vacant, Soviet-era structures and wish to quench an urge to watch something by Andrei Tarkovsky. But they won’t say anything because that observation would be more interesting than what they are actually watching. There’s also the matter of style. The movie has been shot with a hand-held camera that suggests that someone in the group is a cinematographer. It looks like the found footage in stuff like “Chronicle” and “Project X” but with reverse shots, shifting point-of-view shots, and competent editing. When three characters find the cellphone of two missing characters, the explanatory video one of them made is actual found footage. We’re supposed to understand this is just nominally creepy camerawork. Anyway, it’s all assembled from a kit. Something is still alive — and it’s not the bear that jogs by them in an empty apartment complex or the dogs that might have ripped up Chris’s leg. The movie wants us to find this frightening, but there’s no suspense, no terrifying images. (There’s no diary, either!) No one runs for dear life. They just inch into one small, dark room after the next. There is a pitiful attempt to bring the nuclearness of things in on the action and a worse attempt to end it all. The plot twist has arthritis. The actors playing the four Americans — Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Olivia Dudley, and Devin Kelley — have natural enough rapport. They could be improvising. So could the two people playing the hippie couple that joins the tour. But the real stars of the movie are the tired devices and plot points. They’re famous, but they’re as old as Betty White: The Guide Is Dead, The Van Won’t Start, Her Shirt Has a Plunging Neckline, Don’t Go in There. That last one doesn’t happen for us this time. It’s more like: Please. Go in there. We want to go home.

Lolo Jones and Tim Tebow: Match made in heaven?

 

U. S. Olympics track and field star Lolo Jones said she is looking for a special bond, and cleared up her status on Twitter in March. According to the Sporting News, she wrote, "Yes I'm a virgin. #1 reason why I'm single bc guys deuce out when I won't put out. I do so to honor God & future husband." Jones will compete in the women's 100-meter hurdles. She called herself a “professional shoplifter” by the time she was in sixth grade. She said she took frozen dinners for her family, and she lived in the basement of a Salvation Army for a time, according to USA Today. HBO's "Real Sports" with Bryant Gumbel reported that the 29-year-old said she has tried dating services and Twitter to find a prospective boyfriend. She said it’s been difficult maintaining her virginity until marriage. Jones said, according to the Los Angeles Times, "If there are virgins out there, I'm going to let them know, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life — harder than training for the Olympics and graduating from college.” "I've had guys tell me, ‘If you have sex, it will help you run faster,'" she added. Jones runs fast enough. She was leading the100-meter hurdles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but tripped on the next-to-last hurdle and finished seventh. Meanwhile, a guy with similar morals to Jones named Tim Tebow has recently heard some chants of “Lo-lo!” from his teammates. Jones gave her thoughts on the matchup with Tebow on Twitter, according to an Associated Press report in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Ask Tebow if he wants a glass of milk. If he says yes, ask him if he prefers chocolate. If he says no, then no more Tebow date suggestions.”

RapFix – Pusha T Drops ‘Exodus 23:1′ Video Teaser Clip

 

On Wednesday night Pusha T shook things up with his new single "Exodus 23:1," which includes a feature from The-Dream. The track caught the attention of Lil Wayne, who tweeted a pretty blunt message in reply, and today the G.O.O.D. Music rapper has released a 30-second teaser clip for the song's full video titled "My Life is Real." Check out the video above. Pusha T Teams Up With The-Dream For Debut Album Pusha debuted the new single on Wednesday night (May 23) from Cannes, France, where he tweeted about the premiere of Kanye West’s new short film “Cruel Summer. A few lines in particular seemed to be aimed at Drake and YMCMB ("Contract all f---ed / Explain up I guess that means you all f---ed up / You signed to one ni--- that signed to another ni--- that's signed to three ni--- / Now that's bad luck") but Wayne’s tweet was still a surprisingly blunt reply to the new track. This wouldn’t be the first time that the two MCs have had issues with each other, although in 2011 it seemed that all was well between the two camps.

NOLA's 'Times-Picayune' to cut paper to 3 days a week

 

The changes announced Thursday were combined with similar moves at three major Alabama daily newspapers also owned by the Newhouse family group's Advance Publications. The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile and The Huntsville Times will switch to publishing three days a week as part of a new focus on online news. At all four papers, there will be unspecified staff cuts. All four papers will continue to publish continuously on their websites, and online access will remain free. Newspapers have struggled in recent years as consumers increasingly get their news online. Print advertising declined as the economy went into recession, and newspapers have yet to learn how to make online advertising as profitable as its printed counterpart. "For us, this isn't about print versus digital, this is about creating a very successful multi-platform media company that addresses the ever-changing needs of our readers, our online users and our advertisers," said Advance Publications' president of local digital strategy, Randy Siegel, in an interview with the Associated Press. "This change is not easy, but it's essential for us to remain relevant." Siegel didn't say how much money the reduced print runs in Louisiana and Alabama would save, nor how many staff members would be laid off or hired in the new online units. "To get good quality information is not cheap," said Jennifer Greer, chair of the journalism department at the University of Alabama. "What you are seeing is people trying to figure out a business model that works in a digital age." The decision was met with sadness by some residents in New Orleans, where The Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Staffers continued reporting despite being forced out of the newspaper's offices amid widespread flooding and power outages. The storm drove away thousands of residents, some of whom never came back. The city — and its newspaper — struggled to recover in the years since. The paper was a lifeline for the Southern, working-class city, providing government announcements, obituaries, Carnival and scoops on local corruption, said Cheron Brylski, a 53-year-old New Orleans-based political consultant. Not having the paper every day is like losing a sports team, she said. "Where is New Orleans headed since Katrina? This is not something that helps our recovery," she said. The papers in Alabama also have long histories. The Mobile paper has roots to 1813 with the founding of the Mobile Gazette and became a daily in 1832, according to a history of the publication on al.com. And in 2007, the Birmingham News won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on corruption in Alabama's two-year college system. Birmingham News employees were told during morning meetings that longtime Editor Tom Scarritt will retire this fall when the new companies are created, according to two reporters who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the changes for the company. In New Orleans, a new company, the NOLA Media Group, would be created to oversee both The Times-Picayune and its affiliated website, NOLA.com. The announcements mirror changes Advance Publications made in Michigan. In 2009, the company shut the Ann Arbor News but created AnnArbor.com, a news website that still publishes print editions on Thursday and Sunday. In February, it launched the MLive Media Group, which runs MLive.com, to focus its efforts in Michigan digitally. Meanwhile, all of its eight other newspapers in the state offer three days of home delivery with newsstand sales from three to seven days a week. Newspaper analyst Ken Doctor, who writes the Newsonomics blog, said the company is trying to hold on to declining print ad revenue for a few more years, and expects Advance to eventually cut print runs at its other newspapers in New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio and elsewhere. The company owns The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.; The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; and The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. "It's a big bet to retain profitability and hope that in the shock therapy, there are profits on the other end," he said. Print circulation has been dropping steadily over the years at the four newspapers affected by Thursday's announcement, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. On average, the four papers' circulation in the half year through March fell about 6% from a year ago. Nonetheless, TheTimes-Picayune remains one of the nation's most successful newspapers. Of the top 50 large-sized markets, the newspaper has the highest rate of readership of its daily edition in the U.S., according to Austin, Texas-based Scarborough Research, a firm that tracks the industry. The Times-Picayune's average paid circulation was 133,557 in the six months through March, down 49% compared to March 2005, a few months before Hurricane Katrina hit. The Birmingham News' circulation of 103,729 is down 29% from five years ago; the Press-Register's of 82,088 is down 18%; and The Huntsville Times' of 44,725 is down 15%. Die-hard supporters and even Mayor Mitch Landrieu pledged to make sure the newspaper remained a part of New Orleans culture. "Through wars and floods, the 'Aints and a Saints Super Bowl victory, the TP has been and remains an integral part of our daily routine and our culture," Landrieu said. Anne Milling, a longtime member of the advisory board to The Times-Picayune, said an online-focused model wouldn't work in New Orleans. She said she and other supporters were exploring bringing in new owners committed to a daily paper, or even starting a new daily publication. "We always do things differently," she said. "It's part of our tradition: You wake up with a cup of chicory coffee and read the newspaper."

The Bodega: A Brief History of an Urban Institution

 

In some parts of America, it’s called a “party store.” In others it’s called a “corner store.” And elsewhere it’s a “grocery”. In New York City, the term for a small, local retailer that sells everything from beer to diapers  is “bodega,” and it was in the stockroom of one of these stores that 6-year-old Etan Patz lost his life 33 years ago today. On Thursday, a former bodega employee named Pedro Hernandez told police that on a sunny morning in 1979, he had lured the boy into the basement of a store in Manhattan’s SoHo district, choked him to death and then hidden the body in a trash bag. He is accused of second-degree murder. (MORE: Are We Witnessing the Death of the Big-Box Store?) While most local outlets went ahead and called the crime scene a bodega, TIME refrained from using the term in our story on Etan today;  not everyone in the country is familiar with the Nuyorican, Caribbean or Noo Yawk patois that spawned the term. The word is from the Spanish la bodega — grocery store — and years ago, referred primarily to those found in Spanish speaking neighborhoods in the city, where the shops sprang up on streetcorners in residential neighborhoods, as opposed to the more established retailers along major avenues. But the convenience of having a convenience store within arms reach of one’s apartment appealed more and more over the years to New Yorkers. Delis, Korean groceries and bodegas — the terms are fairly interchangeable, no matter what neighborhood you’re in –  now number number more than 13,000 in New York City alone, many still owned by Puerto Rican and Dominican retailers. “In Central and South America and the Caribbean, they have bodegas on every corner to serve the poor,” said Fernando Mateo, spokesman for the Bodega Association of the United States. The term is used in cities with large Spanish-speaking populations elsewhere, of course; but it’s taken firmer root in the Big Apple than anywhere else. “New York City is basically the largest urban community in the world. Bodegas serve people who are used to that service in their native countries.” Mateo explained that bodegas have traditionally served a need in the inner city because where a large retailer will charge $5 for a gallon of milk, a bodega owner might charge $1.50 for a quart; someone who has an immediate need will go for the more convenient option several times a week. “But also they become a place where people get together and go over their daily news, and people become part of their communities,” he said. “It’s unique that supermarkets have not been able to put the bodega owner out of business.” (VIDEO: Extreme Couponers Get Groceries for (Almost) Free) But because the bodegas have also been the targets of armed robberies and complaints about food choices, the stores are not without their detractors. In 2002 the city launched an initiative to install security cameras in many of the stores after 12 bodega owners were killed in stickups. The city, adopting the term itself, launched its “Healthy Bodega Initiative” to help owners offer healthier alternatives for their customers. Politics, however, have found their way into bodegas as well. Mateo disagrees with what city health officials are trying to do. “It’s a political initiative, not a real initiative,” he says. “You’re not going to change the habits of people who are used to eating a certain kind of food.”

First Cup: Friday - TrueHoop Blog - ESPN

 

Greg Cote of The Miami Herald: This series was never about the easy storylines and ancillary noise. It wasn’t about what team was tougher or which was “soft.” Was never about who was flopping or who was more physical. Wasn’t even about the flagrant fouls, suspensions, trash talking or dripping blood. Peel away all that static and distill to the essence and this Heat-Pacers second-round playoff series was about what Thursday night’s deciding Game 6 here was about. Just this: Miami was better. Was all along, and showed it. Miami was the team missing major players Chris Bosh to an injury and Udonis Haslem to a suspension, and playing on the hostile road against an utterly desperate opponent — and still Miami was better. Why? Simple. No over-analysis needed. Miami was the team that had the best player in this series — the best player in the entire NBA. Except LeBron James isn’t always even the best player on his own team. Sometimes that is Dwyane Wade. This time, when it mattered most, it was Wade. Man, was it ever. Brilliantly, emphatically, it was Wade. “He was spectacular,” James said. Ethan J. Skolnick of the Palm Beach Post: It came after the ball left Mario Chalmers' hands, just before the buzzer. It came as the ball fell through the net, with Wade already sliding down the baseline, cocking his fist. Punching the air. That was the punch-out of the pugnacious Pacers, for all intents and purposes, putting the Heat ahead 10 on the way to a 105-93 victory. Indiana tightened it some in the fourth quarter, pulling within six with 2:28 remaining, before LeBron James drove in for an easy layup, then swept in for a much tougher one, then drained a 20-foot step back jumper. So, yes, James (28 points) did plenty in this close-out contest, one that advanced the Heat to the Eastern Conference finals for a second straight post-season - Miami will face the winner of Saturday's Game 7 between Boston and Philadelphia, starting Monday. But James ranked second on this night to No. 3, who entered and left the arena in hot pink pants. "They're just mad they can't pull this off," Wade said of getting mocked in the ESPN studios. And, no, the Pacers couldn't pull off an upset. Simply, they got too much Wade. Too much 2006 Finals Wade. Took much 2008-09 should-have-been-MVP Wade. Too much splitting of double teams, too much slithering through the smallest crevices, too much banking in shots while drawing fouls. Forty-one points, on 17-of-25 shooting. Mike Wells of The Indianapolis Star: The Pacers have nothing to hold their heads down about. Did they beat themselves on Thursday? Absolutely. You can’t turn the ball over 22 times and expect to beat a team as good as the Heat. That’s not going to happen. Still, Pacers fans should happy about the season.I constantly got asked this season about whatI thought about this year’s team talent wise, likeability, etc. Thursday wrapped up by ninth full season of covering the NBA. The 2011-12 Pacers are the second best team overall that I’ve covered, not that far behind the 2003-04 Minnesota Timberwolves. This Pacers team was seriously a team. There weren’t any cliques inside the locker room. Players hung out together off the court, often going to dinner on the road. As I made my way out of Bankers Life Fieldhouse at about 12:15 a.m. early Friday, I walked by the hallway that leads to the locker room and sitting outside of it was Paul George, Danny Granger and Dahntay Jones with their families. Nobody was in the rush to leave. They were laughing and joking. Jones said they were simply hanging out. This franchise is headed in the right direction. Of course they’ve got some work ahead of them to improve the roster if they expect to close the gap between them and the Heat. But that’s something to talk about down the road. For now, though, take pride in knowing that the Pacers are a franchise you should be proud of again. Ron Borges of the Boston Herald: Basketball is in many ways a simple game, and it doesn’t get any simpler than this for Kevin Garnett: Do you want to win the game or not? If you do, you won’t finish the night with fewer shots in the paint than a guy a foot shorter than you are. Certainly Rondo is someone who slashes to the basket. He is not a jump-shooting point guard. He most often scores, when he scores, by driving to the basket and creating both openings and chaos, but that doesn’t mean he belongs in the paint more often than Kevin Garnett. There is no question Garnett can hit the jump shot. The question is can his team beat the Philadelphia 76ers if he insists on obsessing over it? The answer, quite frankly, is probably no. So what’s a 6-11 guy supposed to do? That’s not up to Rajon Rondo or Doc Rivers to decide. It’s up to Kevin Garnett. Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News: Zero. Ofer. Nada. Those are numbers that hung around the neck of Boston Celtics center Kevin Garnett after the 76ers’ 82-75 series-tying win on Wednesday at the raucous Wells Fargo Center. Garnett scored 20 points and made nine field goals. But none of the points was scored from inside the lane, nor did any of his 20 attempts come from there. It was a concerted effort by the Sixers’ defense, orchestrated by coach Doug Collins and associate head coach Michael Curry. The plan was to have the big bodies, Spencer Hawes, Elton Brand and Lavoy Allen, push Garnett off the low blocks as much as possible. If he should get the ball there, double him and force him to throw it out to the non-shooters on the Celtics. In Wednesday’s win, the strategy worked. Garnett instead resolved to take his 6-11 frame to the perimeter, where getting offensive rebounds is impossible. ... When Garnett settles outside the lane, Boston’s offense looks like the Schuylkill Expressway at rush hour. With Paul Pierce looking for his shot and Ray Allen trying to run off picks for his and Rajon Rondo not driving because there is no one in the lane to dish to, the Sixers are in an ideal defensive position. Dan Duggan of the Boston Herald: On Tuesday, 76ers coach Doug Collins showed his young team footage of the 1982 Eastern Conference finals, complete with images of Celtics fans adorned in white sheets to represent the ghosts of Boston Garden. While many of the players had never seen anything like it, the image was all too familiar to Hall of Famer Julius Erving, who starred for the Sixers from 1976-87. The teams met in five playoff series during Erving’s career, with Philly prevailing three times. With the current editions of the Celtics and Sixers reviving the rivalry with Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals tomorrow at TD Garden, memories have come flooding back to Erving. “It brings back all the memories because it seemed like it always came down to that,” said Erving, who recently was hired by the team to serve as a part-time adviser. “At least probably seven of the 11 years I played here it was always who was coming out of the East, Boston or Philly?” The stakes aren’t quite as high with this matchup, but Erving sees traces of the old rivalry developing. “It’s different. These two are probably not the two best teams in the NBA right now, but of the six teams that are left, they’re still here and they’re still competing and they still want it,” Erving said. “They feel like, ‘I’ve got to take this one game at a time but my goal is to try to win a championship.’ ” Erving hasn’t decided if he’ll attend Game 7, but he knows what the atmosphere will be like. "It will be very intense,” Erving said. Bob Ford of The Philadelphia Inquirer: Since the team moved from Syracuse, the Sixers have been involved in a Game 7 a total of 11 times, winning five and losing six. On the road in Game 7, they are 1-5, with the lone win coming on a memorable afternoon in 1982 in the old Boston Garden when Andrew Toney scored 34 points in the conference championship game and the Celtics fans chanted "Beat L.A., Beat L.A." to the Sixers because they knew it would make them sound cool and classy and people would still talk about how cool and classy they were years later. The Sixers, alas, did not Beat L.A., but they did beat Bird, Parish, and McHale in that Game 7, which was pretty impressive. The second-generation Big Three that the Sixers will face Saturday don't present as daunting a task since they were never quite that big, and since they appear to be shrinking as the series continues. On the other hand, the Sixers don't seem to have an Andrew Toney on the roster, and if they win, it probably won't be by strangulation but with their preferred method of death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts. So, those are the numbers and the history, and this is the point of the column where it is worth mentioning that it's all a load of hooey. If we have learned anything about the current Sixers - other than their general disdain for getting to the free-throw line or making free throws once there - it is that numbers mean nothing when it comes to this team. Nothing. Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News: Game 1 of the Western Conference finals will mark the first time Manu Ginobili has faced Oklahoma City this season. The oft-injured Spurs guard missed the first two meetings, Jan. 8 and Feb. 4, with a fractured left hand. Ginobili was inactive for the March 16 game for rest reasons. The Spurs went 2-1 against the Thunder without him. Ginobili believes his lack of court time against Oklahoma City could make a difference early in the series. “You don’t get a feel for how they guard you or what they do on pick-and-rolls and stuff,” Ginobili said. “The first game will be very important for me to understand what is going on.” Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman: Kevin Durant has some advice for Thunder coach Scott Brooks. "One thing Scotty needs to do is just shut up,” Durant said. About the team's turnovers, that is. So far this postseason, Brooks' silence has been golden. According to guard Russell Westbrook, the Thunder was terrible at taking care of the ball when its coach harped on it during the regular season. But when Brooks piped down in the playoffs, Oklahoma City immediately enjoyed better ball security. Which explains why Durant playfully suggested for his coach to put a sock in it. “We'll probably be a better team,” Durant joked. Brooks is on board with his two All-Stars. “Usually, I don't agree with either of those guys much, but they're telling the truth. I haven't mentioned the turnovers at all,” Brooks said. “But I haven't mentioned it because we haven't turned it over. Trust me, if we're turning it over 25 times I'm on 'em and showing every clip and why we're turning it over because of bad spacing and so forth.” No need. Brooks hasn't had to play bad cop because the Thunder has had a turnover turnaround. After leading the league with 16.3 turnovers during the regular season, the Thunder now heads into the Western Conference Finals against San Antonio averaging a postseason-low 10.7 turnovers.

President Obama Accuses Mitt Romney of ‘Cow-Pie Distortion’ on Debt, Deficits

 

DES MOINES, Iowa –  On his first visit back to the Iowa state fairgrounds since the 2008 campaign, President Obama tonight used a grassroots rally to launch sharp new attacks against rival Mitt Romney over the debt and deficit and vigorously defend his own handling of the same. The venue holds symbolic value for Democrats because it was here, in August that Romney made his now-famous declaration that “corporations are people, my friend.” Obama thrust the Republican candidate’s unflattering moment front and center early on. “The worldview that Gov. Romney gained from his experience as a financial CEO explains something. It explains why the last time he visited these same fairgrounds, he famously declared ‘corporations are people,’” Obama said, drawing loud boos from the crowd of 2,500. “That’s what he said, that’s what he called them,” Obama added. “It also explains why, when a woman right here in Iowa shared a story of her financial struggles, he gave her an answer out of an economics textbook.  He said, ‘Our productivity equals our income.’  Let me tell you something: We believe in the profit motive. We believe that risk-takers and investors should be rewarded. That’s what makes our economy so dynamic. But we also believe that everybody should have opportunity.” Ahead of the event, Obama’s re-election campaign circulated a video of Romney’s Iowa State Fair remarks, all aimed at bolstering their claim that the former private equity executive was a wealth-seeker who put investors’ interests ahead of the middle class.   Several of the campaign’s major, multi-state TV ad buys – each of which have included Iowa – have touched on the same theme. Obama offered his most spirited attacks on Romney over his claims about the burgeoning federal debt and record-high deficits that have been incurred over the past three and a half years. “They’ve got the nerve to go around saying that they’re somehow going to bring down the deficit,” he said, referring to Romney’s budget blueprint. “Economists who’ve looked at his plan say it would swell our deficits by trillions of dollars, even with the drastic cuts he’s called for [on] things like education, agriculture and Medicaid. “He promises to do that on day one,” Obama added, referring to the new Romney TV ad by the same name.  “We don’t need that. That’s going backwards. We’re going forwards.”  “Forward” is Obama’s re-election campaign slogan. Romney, on his most recent visit to Des Moines earlier this month, argued that Obama has presided over a “prairie fire of debt,” and told voters, “Every day we fail to act we feed that fire with our own lack of resolve.” His campaign and the Republican National Committee have also stressed that during Obama’s first term, $5 trillion was added to the debt, which now exceeds $15.6 trillion. “A president who broke his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term has no standing when it comes to fiscal responsibility. By the end of this year, President Obama will have presided over a record-shattering four consecutive trillion-dollar deficits and added an historic amount to our national debt,” said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. “When you listen to President Obama’s campaign speeches, it’s as if he’s forgotten that he’s been president for nearly four years and has a record to defend. President Obama has proven beyond all doubt that he is not serious about fixing our country’s spending problem.” Offering a rebuttal tonight, Obama said that his administration has taken fiscal issues seriously, attributing high deficits to the “depth of the recession.” He said Romney’s claims were divorced from reality. “I know Gov. Romney came to Des Moines last week worried about a ‘prairie fire of debt.’ That’s what he said: ‘Prairie fire,’” Obama said. “But, you know, he left out some facts. His speech was more like a cow-pie distortion.” “I don’t know whose record he twisted the most, mine or his,” he added. Obama argued that the pace of federal government spending during his tenure has been the slowest of any president in 60 years. “By the way, it’s like the Republicans run up the tab and then we’re sitting there and they’ve left the restaurant,” he said. “Why did you order all those steaks and martinis?” The president said Romney’s budget – which includes new tax cuts for wealthier Americans – would not be the deficit slayer he claims it would be. “Oh, by the way, something else he hasn’t told you is how he’d pay for a new $5 trillion tax cut,” Obama said.  “That’s like trying to put out a prairie fire with some gasoline.” Obama claims his plan would cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes. SHOWS: World News