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In this summary of her study, Connie Celum, M.D., of the University of Washington at Seattle, discusses surprisingly disappointing results from a study examining whether the use of acyclovir to treat herpes simplex virus type-2 infection can, in turn, help reduce a person's risk of HIV acquisition.
Connie Celum: This was a trial of 3,277 participants who were HIV negative, and HSV-2 seropositive, who were enrolled in a trial to ask the question: If you suppress genital herpes, using the standard dose of drugs that are commonly used (acyclovir 400-mg, twice a day), could we show that we could reduce HIV acquisition?1 We had 139 people who became infected in the trial, 75 of whom were in the acyclovir arm, 64 in the placebo arm. And the difference between the two arms was not statistically significant.
Connie Celum, M.D.
I think there were a couple of surprises that came out of the study. Even though, when you look at a trial like this and you look at its so-called integrity, in terms of did it not only meet its enrollment targets; it's really important in a study like this to also ask: Did people actually take the drug? And did we have any evidence that there was differential loss to follow by arm.
So, of the pills that were dispensed, adherence was very high: 94% of pills that were dispensed were taken. And so, at least at the present time, we can't say that adherence is a reason why it did not work. However, we will do some additional work to look at that.
There were a couple of surprises. I think that we went into the trial expecting from past studies that you might see up to an 80% reduction in genital ulcers. We saw a 37% reduction. And there were differences by region. For example, there was like a 50% reduction among gay men in the U.S., and about 32% among women in Africa.
So I think it also is important for us to consider biologic reasons why we did not see a bigger effect. And we will be exploring those. So was the drug metabolized in the way that we expected it to, from past studies? And also, just to make sure that the viruses, the herpes viruses, were susceptible to the acyclovir. So there is more work for us to be done. We just received these results very recently.
I think the question is, many people thought this was going to be a slam-dunk. If you really look at the epidemiologic data, it was very consistent, very compelling, showing a two- to three-fold higher risk of becoming HIV infected if someone had HSV-2 antibodies. So I think the question here is just: Is it that the strategy didn't work? That the standard dose of acyclovir, 400 b.i.d. twice daily, taken with high adherence, as best we can tell, based on pill count and self-report. Why didn't we have an effect on HIV at all? And why did we have a lesser effect than expected on genital ulcers? So those are really important questions.
I want to just finish by reminding people that there are two sides of the coin between the interactions between herpes and HIV, and this trial focused on a wealth of epidemiologic data and some biologic plausibility data that said herpes simplex type 2, the main cause of genital herpes, increased susceptibility to becoming HIV infected. There's also quite a substantial body of data that suggests that herpes makes people who are already HIV infected more infectious. And we have another trial ongoing, called Partners In Prevention, that is asking that question. It's a very challenging trial in 3,400 HIV discordant couples. So we do not know the answer to that question yet, and we should within a year. I just want to make it really clear that there are two different ways in which herpes may affect HIV transmission and acquisition. This study asked about acquisition. And within a year, we'll have data on HIV transmission, as well as whether herpes influences HIV disease progression. So stay tuned.
Reporter #1: Dr. Celum, did you do blood levels to see if they really took the medications, as opposed to took the pills?
Connie Celum: We have not. And part of the reasons for not having done that is that acyclovir has a short half-life of about four hours. And so, really, we would have a lot of imprecision in knowing much about adherence. But it would basically tell us: Did they take the last dose at the time they should have prior to this visit? Which is not, in our opinion, all that informative.
Reporter #2: Connie, do we know anything about host variability, genetic variability, in terms of both vulnerability to HSV and metabolism of acyclovir?
Connie Celum: My colleague, Anna Wald, is in the audience. And if you're interested in this particular area of genetics and HSV-2 expression, I think there's some data suggesting toll-like receptors are important, in terms of frequency of reactivation. But if you're asking about, do we know sort of pharmacogenetics of acyclovir; I think that is not, to my knowledge, an area that anyone has explored. Nor has there really been enough characterization of absorption in different populations.
What we do know, just from the data from prior PK studies, is that acyclovir is not very well absorbed. Orally, it's 15% to 20% absorption. And there is variability between persons. But in large studies of herpes suppression, even with that variability, you can achieve an 80% reduction in genital ulcers.
Reporter #3: Dr. Celum, on the study, there were different arms in Peru and Africa, and in the United States. Were your results consistent across all the arms? And how consistent were they?
Connie Celum: It's in the abstract. I just, for time, didn't go into it. But we looked at various aspects of homogeneity of the results, if you will, across various factors. And there really was no significant difference by gender or region, in terms of HIV acquisition. There was, as I showed in the slides, a difference in terms of incidence of genital ulcers and HSV detection, yes/no detection, as well as quantity by the different regions. So in the herpes outcomes, there were some differences by region and site.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
- Celum C, Wald A, Hughes J, et al, and HPTN 039. HSV-2 suppressive therapy for prevention of HIV acquisition: Results of HPTN 039. In: Program and abstracts of the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections; February 3-6, 2008; Boston, Mass Abstract 32LB.


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(615) 963-1361
Vicmari Prospero is entering her ninth season on the Tennessee State University volleyball coaching staff in 2019. After serving as a graduate assistant for the Tigers in 2011 and 2012, Prospero was elevated to assistant coach prior to the 2013 season, and she is currently in her seventh year in her current position.
Propero joined the TSU coaching staff at her alma mater in August of 2011 after a stellar playing career for the Tigers.
Prospero competed two years for the Tennessee State volleyball team. During her career with the Tigers, she led the team in hitting percentage in 2010 and 2011. As a senior, she finished the season hitting .317, second-best in the OVC. She tallied 228 kills, ranking third on the team, averaging 2.1 kills per set.
Prospero is a native of Santurce, Puerto Rico. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Human Performance and Sports Sciences in May 2011. Prospero completed her master's degree of Arts in Education with a Major of Human Performance and Sports Science with a concentration in Sports Administration in 2013.

subset: commoncrawl


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Online Shop
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50 Golden Yer's
It is a story a fiction writer would have difficulty conjuring up. Take 3 young erks from a Dorset village with no musical background and set them out on a career of TV, radio, recordings and gold discs plus tours around the globe and performances in front of royalty and presidents. It's been great and I will be eternally grateful for those who helped us on our way.
A Weekend at Halsway Manor
For a great many years The Yetties have hosted a weekend gathering in February. This hardy bunch of enthusiasts subject themselves to a weekend of wall to wall entertainment, including three dances, a concert, musical workshops, lectures/talks and of course, singalongs in the bar! So, if youve ever wondered what all the fuss is about then this DVD provides the answers.
Dorset - Along the River Piddle
The third programme in our river series includes more real Dorset gems - Piddles & Puddles, Plush, Shitterton and Bere Regis to name just a few.
Dorset Airlines
Collection of Bonny Sartin's writings plus songs he just loves to sing
Perfection's Hard To Come By (and other poems)
Poems by Bonny Sartin
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The pigeons are causing a stink near the Bridge of Lions, and they're bringing the rats with them.
The St. Augustine Police Department is asking people to help stop the problem by no longer feeding the birds.
According to the department, people have been putting bags of bird feed on the sidewalk near the Bridge of Lions. Those good intentions are causing a problem.
The pigeons eat the seeds, the seeds gets wet, and the pigeon waste mixes with the seed.
It's a stench and a health problem, the report said.
Not only that, but rats have joined in. They have been flocking from the sea wall to feast on the seed.
City of St. Augustine employees have been forced to go to the bayfront to clean up the stinky mess every week.
"Any consideration in stopping this activity would go a long way," the report said.


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I love a lot of natural companies out there, but Naturopathica really brings it all together for me – a holistic approach to skin care, artisanal sourcing of ingredients, incredible natural scents, and visible as well as therapeutic benefits.
I added a few natural beauty products to my regime recently and Naturopathica's Sweet Cherry Brightening Enyzme Peel was one of them. Let me just say that ever since I tried a peel, I've been in love. Reason number one being that it's so much easier to get off than a mask. And number two being that a good peel, like this one, just seems to make your skin effortlessly refined and glowing almost immediately. Don't get me wrong, when it comes to cleaning pores, I swear by masks that are usually green, hard, and positively enraging at times to remove (example: Aztec Indian Healing Clay). But masks like that really feel like work. Not this one.
This peel by Naturopathica smells and looks like they just mashed up the cherries yesterday – it's simply amazing (if you like cherries, you'll really be in heaven). There are sweet benefits to go with that sweet scent – cherries' are high in Vitamin C and Beta Carotene and when applied topically they refine skin, decrease inflammation, as well as prevent skin discoloration. After just 3-5 minutes (1-2 times/week), you can remove the fruity blend to reveal a fresher faced version of yourself. That's only 10 minutes tops per week!
Originally being from Long Island, I love that this company is based in East Hampton. It's always nice to see a great company come out of your neck of the woods. I also love the packaging – blue glass is my fav, not only because it's so pretty, but also because it's excellent for maintaining the integrity of products containing essential oils.
Now there's only two things I want to do after trying this mask: (1) Try every single product made my Naturopathica; (2) Take a trip to East Hampton asap to experience their spa, which includes an Apothecary Bar (the "destination for custom blended beauty products and remedies") I can barely describe how incredible that sounds to me… like heaven, especially if I could have the chance to get behind that bar!


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Sant Josep de sa Talaia
Cala de Badella en Sant Josep de sa Talaia
- Autonomous region: Balearic Islands
- Province/Island: Ibiza
The main attractions in this part of Ibiza are the quality of its beaches and coves, its beautiful rural landscapes, and its cultural heritage.
San Josep de sa Talaia is in inland Ibiza, just 15 kilometres from the capital, Eivissa. Its name comes from Sant Josep mountain, the island's highest. It reaches 475 metres above sea level and is a spectacular viewpoint. The municipal area has more beaches and coves than any other in Ibiza, with 80 kilometres of coastline. They include famous coves such as Cala Comte, Cala Bassa and Cala Vedella, with crystal clear waters, surrounded by pine groves that reach right to the beachfront.
It is well worth exploring the typical Mediterranean landscapes of the inland area, where small white houses with traditional regional architecture abound. Here you will find both of the island's nature reserves: Ses Salines and Cala d' Hort. Sant Josep's heritage is also very interesting, with many medieval churches to see; there are archaeological sites such as the Phoenician village of Sa Caleta, which has the UNESCO World Heritage designation, as well as defensive towers to be found along the coast. Be sure to visit Cova Santa cave, a beautiful natural grotto. Sant Josep is, in short, a perfect place to enjoy the beach, and to go on outings on foot, by bike, or, if you prefer, on horseback - there are several riding schools in the area. Also worthy of mention are its traditional folk dances, such as the "ball pagés", which is as spectacular as the traditional costumes worn when it is performed.
- See all the information on the destination at:
- http://www.santjosep.net/en/
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1965 Chevy C10 Pickup Truck - A Marine, In Memoriam
David And Pattie Barnett's Tribute To Their Son
When David and Pattie Barnett spotted and subsequently purchased this '65 Chevy C10, they never imagined that day would be one that would so dramatically change their lives. But it wasn't the purchase of the Chevy hauler that would impact the Centerville, Indiana family so profoundly, but the news that the United States Marines were to deliver later that fateful day. March 14, 2002 etched itself into the hearts of the Barnett family for that was the day they were notified that their son, David Marvin Barnett had been murdered while stationed at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina. Reeling from the loss of their son, the Barnett's decided to use their newly purchased truck as not only a form of therapy, becoming completely immersed in every aspect of the build, but also as a rolling dedication to their beloved son.
The first task at hand was to sort out the chassis and create the foundation for the rest of the build. David started by installing a Ford 9-inch rearend out back to replace the stock GM component on the stock parallel leaf springs. The front suspension was rebuilt using 2-inch dropped spindles and GM disc brakes while a power steering box from a '72 pickup was swapped for the stock steering box. A set of Colorado Custom wheels were then bolted up, 17x8s up front and 17x10s out back shod in Sumitomo low-profile, ZR-series rubber. With the rolling responsibilities handled, David then turned his attention to the drivetrain. A GM ZZ4 small-block was equipped with a Holley 650-cfm four-barrel carb and topped with a custom air cleaner fabricated by David's son-in-law Jeremy Isaacs to mimic the shape of the C10's hood. A 700-R4 transmission was bolted up behind the motor, giving the truck an overdrive Fourth gear to make highway cruising a more economical venture before the two were slipped into place between the C10's framerails. A serpentine belt system was installed to drive the A/C compressor, alternator, and power steering pump while an aluminum radiator mated to a puller electric fan ensures the mighty mouse motor maintains its cool.
Motivation for the C10 complete, David then requested the help of his buddies Herb Kuhner and Tommy Callahan to pitch in fitting the body panels and blocking them out nice and smooth. Once the fit and finish of everything was up to par, David hired Todd Weatherly to spray the Maroon and Pearl White finish over every square inch of the pickup. Reassembled, the crew then installed the oak bed wood kit and bolted up all the chrome and stainless goodies. A Ron Francis wiring kit was then strung up the length of the truck to connect all the lights and electrical circuits to a main panel under the dash.
With the majority of the build complete, the truck was then sent across town to Rick Holiday who stitched up the maroon and white leather over the split bench seat and maroon wool carpet. Jeremy Isaacs chipped in again, fabricating a pair of kick panels that house speakers on either side of the cab. A chrome tilt steering column was topped with a Colorado Custom wheel and below it a sub-dash was fabricated to house a trio of A/C vents and a pair of courtesy lights. A billet aluminum dash panel was installed in the stock location and filled with a sextet of VDO Heritage Gold Series gauges.
Since completed in under three years, the Barnett's have won numerous Best of Show and Best Truck awards over the past two years, and have shared many memories together, harking back to their younger days when David was courting a young Pattie in a '64 Chevy C10 some years back. But as the memories pour on, it's hard to not think about their young son who was taken away from them at such an early age. But not thinking about David Marvin is exactly what their plan with their C10 is intended to prevent. Given the circumstances that surround the procurement of the truck, it only made sense to build the pickup as a dedication to David Marvin, a rolling memorial to a young Marine, to guarantee that his life was not in vain, nor will his memory ever be forgotten.


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* Change from 1996–1997 is statistically significant at the 5% level.
Source: Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), Foreign Language Teaching in U.S. Schools: Results of a National Survey (Washington, DC: CAL, 2010), 23 fig. 2.
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SAVE UP TO £140: Flamingo Land 2018 annual pass exclusive limited reader offer
Christmas has just arrived early with our exclusive Flamingo Land annual pass offer - saving you up to £140.
But hurry. This is a limited reader offer, subject to availability.
And the quicker you buy the more time we are giving you to enjoy one of the UK's top family destinations.
Buy now and you don't just get entry throughout 2018 - you can use your pass from Saturday, November 25, 2017...with some great festive attractions before the end of the year. See below.
Also, just imagine what you can buy for Christmas with all the money you will be saving.
This is a fantastic Christmas present for all the family and a gift that keeps on giving - remember you can use it all next year, until December 31, 2018.
It includes unlimited entry to the daily Winter Zoo as well as main season. A pass holder also enjoys a 20 per cent discount at selected catering outlets within the park.
SAVE £140: Buy a Flamingo Land family annual pass, valid for two adults and two children, or one adult and three children, for just £270 - normally £410.
SAVE £40: Buy a single annual pass for Flamingo Land from us for just £80 - normally £120.
GET YOUR ANNUAL PASS TODAY: To purchase a Flamingo Land annual pass that's right for you simply fill in our online form with your name, address and telephone numbers for us to call you back within 24 hours, to take your card payment details - CLICK HERE.
All annual passes includes unlimited entry to the daily Winter Zoo as well as main season. A pass holder also enjoys a 20 per cent discount at selected catering outlets within the park. Terms and conditions apply. See below.
But hurry.
The deadline for this special offer - subject to availability - is Christmas Eve, December 24, 2017. We also only have a limited number of passes, so get yours now.
Yorkshire's Flamingo Land, recently named one of the UK's top paid-for attractions, is a zoo, a theme park - with over 100 rides, attractions and lots of shows - plus a resort. See official web site at www.flamingoland.co.uk.
There's so much to do and so many reasons to keep going back. An annual pass is what you really need for all-year round family fun.
Thrill seekers will find plenty to keep them amused, along with a great selection of family rides.
Take your seats at the African acrobat show, see the sea lion and bird shows and visit some of the world's most amazing creatures in the zoo, including giraffes, African lions, hippos and rhinos. There's even a new born tiger cub.
The amazing animal collection is open daily - except Christmas Day and Boxing Day - and there is additional winter entertainment at weekends and during the main school holidays.
As well as the zoo, there are five rides for small children, with sea lion and bird shows included for a small additional cost.
The theme park area itself re-opens after a winter break from April 1.
Flamingo Land, in Kirby Misperton - a short drive between Scarborough and York - is handy for repeat visits from all over the region.
It is just over an hour from Leeds and less than two hours from Sheffield.
Last year it was one of the UK's top paid-for attractions, according to figures from Visit England.
That means it is right up there alongside the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, the Royal Botanical Gardens, London Zoo, Chester Zoo and Stonehenge.
Whilst the theme park attractions are closed now until mid March 2018, its award-winning zoo will be open to visitors every day, except Christmas Day.
Flamingo Land Zoo will be open from 10am until 4pm, allowing you to enjoy over 140 species of reptiles, mammals, fish, amphibians and birds. This extends to Peter Rabbit and Lily Bobtail's playgrounds, Children's Planet, Reptile River, Muddy Duck Farm, Treetop Walkway and The Aquarium.
The lemur and lorikeet aviary walk throughs will be open from midday until 2pm. These provide truly unrestricted views and the opportunity for up-close encounters. You can visit the Wallaby Walkway between 10am and 4pm.
Access to the sea lion area will is available from 12.30pm until 2pm each day.
There will be Keeper Talks too, plus Meet a Creature sessions in the Education Centre at 3:15pm.
On Saturday, Sunday and throughout the school holidays bosses will be adding further attractions and events to the weekday offer. These include a Sea Lion Show at 2pm and a Bird Show at 12pm.
Peter Rabbit and Lily Bobtail characters will also be out and about, with two meet and greet sessions available each day, at the Peter Rabbit Adventure playground, at 12pm and 2pm
A small selection of rides for younger children will be available too, including the Muddy Duck Tractors, Jungle Carousel, Mischief Mansion and Wacky Races.
Festive season highlights at Flamingo Land also includes the return of Story Time with Santa, with The Exploratorium turned into a spectacular Grotto, complete with its very own reindeer, for 45-minute sessions, which run on 15 days, November 25 and 26, December 2, 3, 9, 10 and 16 to 24, at 11am, 1pm and 3pm.
Every child gets to meet Santa and his elves, with the opportunity for a photograph and a special age and gender appropriate gift.
Story Time with Santa is available for £10 per child, in addition to Winter at Flamingo Land general admission. A parent or guardian will be welcome to accompany each child during Story Time with Santa at no additional charge.
Terms & Conditions: Limited availability on a first come, first served basis All tickets must be sold before 24th December. Proof of ID must be shown upon first visit to Flamingo Land. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.


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Breaker stacks
Handling misalignment and expansion for improved reliability
Like most applications in a paper machine, breaker stack rolls are subject to misalignment and axial expansion of the shaft, which the bearings must accommodate.
Often this is an area that has significant static electricity which can subject bearings to electrical etching.
SKF can help
SKF solutions for breaker stacks can help increase bearing performance and life and reduce maintenance costs.


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Eastbay Campground is located on the east shore of beautiful Devils Lake, a short 15 miles east of the town of Devils Lake, ND. Established in 1998, the campground offers our guests a great facility and friendly service, while continually improving and upgrading the amenities.
Whether you are fishing for recreation, using a professional guide, or just spending a day on the water, Devils Lake is known for some of the world's best walleye, northern pike, white bass, and perch. The Eastbay of Devils Lake offers anglers superb opportunities to catch that trophy fish. Whether you come to enjoy the relaxing atmosphere or come for epic fishing, Eastbay Campground has plenty to offer you and your family!
Bill or Valerie Wood
3892 Eastbay Road
Warwick, ND 58381


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PHILADELPHIA (AP) Marc Gasol scored a season-high 27 points and Rudy Gay had 26 to lead the Memphis Grizzlies to a 103-100 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night.
Jerryd Bayless scored a season-high 21 points to help the Grizzlies win without point guard Mike Conley, out with a sprained left ankle.
The Grizzlies rallied from 17 down to take control late in the fourth. Bayless missed a jumper, Gay grabbed the rebound and made it 101-100 on a bucket with 13.3 seconds left. Philadelphia's Thaddeus Young missed a short attempt in front of the basket and the Grizzlies grabbed the rebound.
Gay was fouled and made both free throws for a three-point cushion.
Nick Young couldn't get the tying shot off at the buzzer for the Sixers.
Evan Turner scored a season-high 27 points, Thaddeus Young had 23, and Jrue Holiday added 18 points and 10 assists.


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Notes (PDF) | Schedule (PDF) | Seeds
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The Harvard heavyweight crew will compete in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges Sprints Championships Sunday, May 15 on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass. Racing begins at 8:20 a.m., as the Crimson, with four undefeated and top-seeded boats, seeks its second straight Sprints varsity and team titles.
Follow From Home
The ECAC will be running a beta test of a live video stream, which can be viewed here. Live audio is available here.
Team Strength
Of the six events that contribute to the Sprints team competitions (heavy and light varsity, second varsity and freshman eights), Harvard enters with a perfect dual record in five events and a combined 38-4 dual-racing record.
Sprinting to Success
Harvard has more Sprints titles than any other school. Adding up the six major divisions at Eastern Sprints, Harvard crews have combined to win 136 titles, including 50 at the varsity level (26 heavyweight, 24 lightweight).
Last Season at Sprints
The Harvard heavyweights won four grand finals, including in the varsity and freshman eights, and took home the Rowe Cup as team champion. Each of the Crimson's six entries raced in a grand final, with the fourth varsity eight and second freshman four also winning and the third varsity eight placing third. The varsity eight finished 2.5 seconds ahead of the field, and the freshmen sprinted past Princeton to win by less than a half-second.
Quest for the Cup
Harvard's team victory last season brought the Rowe Cup to Newell Boathouse for a league‑high 30th time. Six of those wins have come in the last nine years. Since 2002, the Harvard heavy and lightweights have won a combined nine team trophies.
Seeing Double
On 12 occasions, most recently in 2005, both the Harvard heavyweight and lightweight varsity eights won Sprints gold medals, a feat that has only been accomplished four times by non‑Harvard crews. The Crimson won both divisions in 1947, '59, '66, '68, '69, '74, '75, '77, '80, '88, '89 and 2005.
Gold Standard
Only 11 times in the 64-year history of Sprints and on just six occasions since 1957 has Harvard failed to win at least one major grand final in either the heavyweight or the lightweight division. In one of those seasons (1981), the Crimson did not compete due to final exams. In two others (heavyweight in 1992, lightweight in 2009), Harvard has won a team cup despite not coming away with a gold medal.
Ivy Implications
The top-finishing Ivy League varsity eights in the heavy and light divisions will win the Ancient Eight title. The Harvard heavyweights have earned 26 Ivy crowns since 1957, while the lightweights have won 23.
National Aspirations
A top-nine heavyweight varsity finish or top‑seven lightweight showing is needed to land an EARC crew in the 109th IRA National Championships June 2-4 on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J. Harvard has won three IRA heavyweight titles in the last eight years and seven IRA lightweight crowns.
Dual Season Recap
The Crimson heavyweight crew enters its championship season having won each of the 20 races in which it has entered an eight. In a season characterized by difficult racing conditions, Harvard has repeatedly come out on top, starting with an 18.1-second victory against visiting Cornell.
In the matchup between the last two Sprints varsity champions, Harvard swept five races from Brown, taking the varsity race for the Stein Cup by 2.6 seconds. The race was even tighter in the race for the Compton Cup at Princeton, where the Crimson outlasted the Tigers by 1.2 seconds, while the lower boats won by wide margins.
As part of a five-race sweep of Navy and Penn on the Schuylkill River, the Harvard varsity beat the Midshipmen by four seconds and the Quakers by 15.6. The Harvard freshmen faced their toughest test so far against neighboring Northeastern, winning by 1.2 seconds. The varsity, meanwhile, pulled away to a 14.7-second victory for the Smith Cup.
Records and Rankings
Harvard owns the top-seeded varsity eight (6-0), second varsity eight (5‑0), freshman eight (7-0) and third varsity eight (5-0) in the East. The fourth varsity is 1-0 in fourth-varsity competition and also defeated Princeton's third varsity. The Crimson freshman four is 1-1. The varsity has been ranked third nationally, behind Washington and California, all season. A full listing of seeds is available here.
Probable Lineups
Varsity Eight
Cox: Chris Kingston, 8: Patrick Lapage, 7: Jason Phillips, 6: Nick Jordan, 5: Matthew Edstein, 4: Anthony Locke, 3: Michael DiSanto, 2: Josh Hicks, 1: James O'Connor
Second Varsity Eight
Cox: David Fuller, 8: Peter Scholle, 7: Justin Mundt, 6: Benjamin French, 5: Elihu Reynolds, 4: Phil Matthews, 3: David Wakulich, 2: Parker Washburn, 1: JP Hogan
Third Varsity Eight
Cox: Alex Sopko, 8: Jack Morrissey, 7: Conner Griffith, 6: Mihailo Malowany, 5: Alex Soutter, 4: Alex Macintosh, 3: Andrew Hamm, 2: Andrew Stein, 1: David Paresky
Fourth Varsity Eight
Cox: Colby Wilkason, 8: Matt Vincent, 7: Eli Shikaloff, 6: William Polachek, 5: Nolan Pollock, 4: Nigel Munoz, 3: Andrew Safir, 2: Edward Winters Ronaldson, 1: Tom Hanson
Freshman Eight
Cox: William Hakim, 8: Andrew Holmes, 7: Jake Sobstyl, 6: Caspar Jopling, 5: Gregory Edwards, 4: Max Monfared, 3: Andrew Reed, 2: Ben Lynton, 1: Jamie Law-Smith
Freshman Four
Cox: Brittanie Maxwell, 4: Patrick Duffy, 3: Nick Jaroszewicz, 2, Daniel Ranard, 1: Patrick Galvin
The Harvard heavyweight varsity eight has defeated its last 12 and 27 of its last 28 dual opponents, with the lone loss coming last season at Brown. The Crimson has defeated its last 18 dual opponents when racing at home on the Charles River and has beaten 40 of its last 41 home dual opponents. Harvard's last home loss was April 15, 2006 against Princeton. The Harvard freshman eight has defeated 34 straight dual opponents.
Coaching Staff
Harry Parker, the Thomas Bolles Head Coach for Harvard Men's Crew, is in his 49th season. He has guided the Crimson to 22 varsity Sprints titles, most recently in 2010, and 17 second varsity crowns. Parker's dual coaching record is 304‑44-1, and his varsity has gone undefeated 20 times. The third and fourth varsities are led by assistant coach Boris Kusturic.
Harvard's freshman coach, in his 13th season, is Bill Manning. He has directed the Crimson rookies to the 1999, 2001, '02, '04, '08 and '10 Sprints titles. A Harvard freshman win against Yale would give Manning his fifth straight perfect dual season.
Crimson Captain
The Harvard heavyweights are captained by senior Anthony Locke (Isle of Wight, England), who has rowed in the varsity eight in every spring race the last three seasons. He has earned bronze medals as part of the Great Britain eight in each of the last two World Rowing Under 23 Championships regattas and won gold at the 2006 World Rowing Junior Championships.
The Varsity Eight
Each oarsman in the Harvard varsity eight won gold at Sprints last season, including five in the varsity eight: senior Anthony Locke and juniors Patrick Lapage (Shrewsbury, England), Nick Jordan (Princeton, N.J.), Matthew Edstein (Sydney, Australia) and Michael DiSanto (Boston, Mass.).
The remaining three rowers were part of the gold-winning Crimson freshman boat last year: Jason Phillips (London, England), Josh Hicks (Waterford, Australia) and James O'Connor (Christchurch, New Zealand). Coxswain Chris Kingston (Bedford, England) guided the varsity to a runner-up Sprints finish in 2009.
Four of the nine varsity athletes are English, and another, Nick Jordan, was schooled at Eton College before coming to Harvard.
Local Ties and Family Ties
South High graduate Patrick Duffy (Worcester, Mass.) strokes the Harvard freshman four. There are two sets of brothers on the Crimson heavyweight squad: James and Sam O'Connor (Christchurch, New Zealand), who is out injured, and twins Alex and Lachlan Macintosh (Cobble Hill, B.C.).
A Winning Boat
The Harvard varsity eight races in the same shell that Malcolm Howard '05 and the Canada men's eight rowed to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The boat was dedicated in Howard's honor last season.
Harvard's Major Heavyweight Sprints Championships
Varsity eight
1947, '48, '49, '59, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '69, '70, '74, '75, '76, '77, '80, '83, '85, '88, '89, '90, 2003, '04, '05, '07, '10.
Second varsity eight
1947, '49, '64, '65, '66, '69, '72, '73, '74, '75, '78, '85, '86, '90, '93, 2002, '03, '04, '05, '06.
Freshman eight
1949, '50, '55, '58, '63, '65, '67, '72, '76, '80, '83, '84, '85, '86, '90, '99, 2001, '02, '04, '08, '10.
Rowe Cup
1947, '48, '49, '51, '59, '64, '65, '66, '67, '69, '70, '72, '73, '74, '75, '76, '78, '80, '83, '85, '86, '88, '90, '92, 2002, '03, '04, '06, '07, '10.
On a Roll
Harvard has won the Eastern varsity title in five of the last eight years and is seeking to win back-to-back Sprints crowns for the 16th time. Yale, which has won six outright Sprints titles and shared the gold with Penn in 1962, ranks second in championships won, behind Harvard's 26. Princeton's seven Rowe Cup titles rank second to Harvard's 30.
More History
Harvard has swept the three major heavyweight divisions at Eastern Sprints five times (1945, '65, '85, '90, 2004). Only three other times has one school swept all three races: 1952 (Navy), '79 (Yale) and '94 (Brown). Harvard has won two of the three races on 15 occasions. The Crimson has advanced to the varsity grand final in 61 of its 65 years racing at Sprints.
Still Ahead
Before competing for a national title, the Crimson heavyweights will face the rival Bulldogs in the 146th Harvard-Yale Regatta, America's oldest intercollegiate sporting event, May 28 in New London, Conn.


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Prosence: Federal Highway Administration should be abolished
Retired district engineer, CDOT
It is totally ironic that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has added thousands of miles to the so-called "National Highway System" when they are currently unable to properly fund modernization of thousands of miles of obsolete roads. The only highways of "national interest" are on the interstate highway system. The others are primarily of local or regional interest only.
FHWA is a federal agency that should be abolished, or at least, drastically reduced in authority. When I went to work for their predecessor, Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), in 1948 they were playing a valuable role in highway development in our country. They were leaders in research, development of highway standards and coordination between state highway departments. Now their major role is dispensing federal gas tax money collected in the states back to the states and spending billions of dollars in this process. Their responsibilities should be limited to research and advice.
The time has come to abolish the federal gas tax. States would have the prerogative of raising their gas tax to make up for lost revenue. State transportation agencies are staffed with professionals capable of directing highway design, construction and maintenance in their state. They do not need a federal agency looking over their shoulders.
Apparently, adding many miles to the National Highway System would beef up the role of FHWA and allow them to continue the waste of taxpayer dollars.
Dick Prosence, Meeker
Retired district engineer, CDOT
Start a dialogue, stay on topic and be civil.
If you don't follow the rules, your comment may be deleted.


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"We do things a certain way, not to impress or differentiate, but because that is what is required to achieve perfection."
Sven Baacke, Head of Design, Gaggenau
Working with professional chefs, we note what delights and frustrates them. Their equipment needs to be intuitive and enabling, focussed and robust: the chef needs to devote themselves to the dish, not the oven. And while appearance is not so vital in the workplace, it matters in the home.
The life between work increasingly revolves around cuisine. Preparing, enjoying, discussing it, all occurs increasingly in one room. And if the kitchen is the heart of the home, then Gaggenau is the soul of the kitchen.
The professional kitchen principle is our foundation. Professional equipment, much like ingredients, must be of the highest quality and add something to the final dish. We use the same approach for the private kitchen, but with the added aesthetic consideration. Given these means and the passion, the private chef can produce professional results, time and again.
"The only way to keep one side of the oven door perfectly cool while the other is at 485˚C is through insulation. The oven 400 series door is made up of five layers of very special glass."
Tania Goetzmann, Product management


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Rock Landmarks
(iOS, £1.19)
A treasure trove of addresses where rock history was made, Rock Landmarks is like a pocketable blue plaque guide to the venues and houses where modern music was forged. There are maps, pictures and more music trivia than a Never Mind the Buzzcocks box set.
Little Black Songbook series
(iOS, £5.99)
Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Eric Clapton and Leonard Cohen are the first artists in this series of apped-up fake books for the jobbing (or bedroom) strummer. Chords, words, biographies… all you need to do is call the Gaslight Café and book yourself a gig.
This Day in Led Zeppelin
(iPad, £tba)
So bleeding edge it's not even out until next week, this Zep-head compendium of tour dates, albums, tracks, trivia and pictures also has ringtones, wallpaper and a quiz (just to check you've taken all the above on board). [coming soon]
Blues Writer
(iOS, £1.19)
Pick a backing track, write some lyrics that start "Woke up this morning" (with a little help from the on-board rhyming dictionary) and record your foot-stomping Chicago blues classic. Then share it with the world and wait for Chess Records to come calling with your contract.
AmpliTube Fender
(iOS, £tba)
You may remember the AmpliTube iRig which allowed you to plug your Strat straight into your iDevice. Now the same outfit invites you to turn your phone or tablet into one of five classic Fender amps, including the '65 Twin Reverb and the '59 Bassman.
Rock Band Reloaded
(iOS, £2.99)
It's not new, but it is big and clever, and you don't need to learn how to play an instrument. EA's creditable reinvention of the console hit for iPad is your invitation to rock virtual stardom, albeit minus the sex and drugs. Yup, not even the virtual type.
Ultimate Guitar Tabs
(Android, £1.88)
Standing in for your local pub band's guitarist? You have two options – sweat it and see if you can still style out the eighties headband look, or boot up Ultimate Guitar Tabs and get transcriptions of the songs you're expected to play. And we don't see the headband look coming back any time soon.
The Muppets Animal Drummer
(iOS, £1.19)
It may not be the best advice, but this app encourages you to do as unibrowed Muppet drummer Animal does. You can even drum along to stuff on in your iTunes library. As long as it's not The Carpenters. Animal wouldn't like that.
(iOS, free)
Going on the road? Pack Gibson's nifty app that combines a guitar tuner, metronome, video tutorial and chord chart. It's not guaranteed to turn your Les Paul noodlings into Slash-esque power solos, but you probably haven't got the hair for it anyway.
(iOS, £1.19)
Previous touchscreen guitar emulators have taken a prosaic approach to the conversion, and were impossible to play as a result. RIFF's fingerboard looks nothing like a conventional guitar's, but sounds great, lets you bend or apply vibrato and presents you with a pentatonic scale-based note choice so you don't have to know what you're doing. Has to be played to be believed.
See also
Rumour Mill – iPad 2 shapes up
Rumour Mill – iOS4.3 for iPad and iPhone
CES 2011 Hot Stuff Award winners announced


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Celtics fans, including the world's most famous Celtics fan, truly believe that the NBA is rigged and/or biased for Miami and against Boston. To do their best to give David Stern an aneurism, there's a campaign to print out and wear masks of everyone's favorite crooked ref Tim Donaghy. This is the best possible way to win the nation's hearts and bias the refs against the Cs for game 3, both at the same time.
If this sounds like one of those talk radio stunts mostly done to bring attention to the show, that's because it is. It's the work of Toucher and Rich, who as we told you yesterday weren't even doing sports until a couple years ago. Seems like they've figured out the game pretty quickly.


text: Kansas Department of Wildlife 'Double Up' for Ducks Ducks Unlimited campaign aims to show Congress that hunters and others support an increase in price of waterfowl stamp Ducks Unlimited (DU) is asking duck hunters and other waterfowl enthusiasts to "double up for the ducks" by purchasing two federal duck stamps this year. WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ducks Unlimited (DU) is asking duck hunters and other waterfowl enthusiasts to "double up for the ducks" by purchasing two federal duck stamps this year."The federal duck stamp has been an important tool in waterfowl habitat conservation for 77 years, but its ability to purchase and conserve important waterfowl habitat has been greatly diminished by inflation and rising land prices," DU chief executive officer Dale Hall said, in announcing the campaign. "The purpose of the 'Double Up for the Ducks' campaign is to show that hunters support the duck stamp program and are willing to pay more for the duck stamp in order to conserve waterfowl habitat. We view the duck stamp as an investment in conservation, not as a tax on hunters."This effort is part of a larger campaign currently being led by DU to increase the price of the stamp. Since 1934, the Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, commonly known as the federal duck stamp, has added more than 5.3 million acres of waterfowl habitat to the National Wildlife Refuge System. The program is a highly efficient way for waterfowl hunters to invest in the future of their sport by conserving habitat; 98 cents out of every dollar is spent to acquire land and protect waterfowl habitat. Additionally, acquiring land under the National Wildlife Refuge System not only expands habitat protection but also expands hunting opportunities and access.While the federal duck stamp has proved a valuable conservation tool, its buying power has not kept pace with inflation. The cost of the stamp has not increased since 1991 — 20 years — marking the longest period in the program's history without a price increase. Simply put, $15 is not what it used to be. Based on the Consumer Price Index, the stamp would need to cost $24.26 today to have the same buying power that $15 had in 1991. The total buying power of the duck stamp has decreased by 64 percent since 1991. In 1991, revenue from the duck stamp enabled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to acquire 89,000 acres of habitat for the National Wildlife Refuge System at an average cost of $306 per acre. In 2010, the USFWS was able to acquire only 32,000 acres because land values had tripled to an average of $1,091 per acre. Ducks Unlimited supports efforts to ensure that the investment waterfowl hunters have made to protect waterfowl habitat over the last 77 years is sustained. And it is up to duck hunters and all who enjoy wetlands and waterfowl to continue the conservation legacy of the federal duck stamp. For these reasons, Ducks Unlimited supports legislation that would immediately increase the price of the stamp from $15 to $25, which would allow the program's revenues to keep pace with inflation."Increasing the price of the duck stamp will take an act of Congress," DU Chief Conservation Officer Paul Schmidt said. "To get Congress to act, waterfowl hunters must show their elected officials that their constituents care about conservation issues. The increased sales that will occur when hunters 'double up' on duck stamps will help conserve more habitat and also show Congress that hunters are serious about this issue."For more information, visit the DU website, www.ducks.org. GET THE NEWSLETTER Join the List and Never Miss a Thing. Sign Me Up


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>News and Announcements>Facebook Integration
Marquess of Utopia
IMKY13 finish!!
Fitness/weight goals for 2014
2) Get to 189 lbs by the end of July 2014...and stay there (as of 4-25-14 was at 203 lbs)
3) Complete Ironman Chattanooga in under 14 hours
4) Break 4 hours in a stand alone marathon (Goal race=Rocket City 12/13/14)
5) 4,500 total overall miles for the year:
Swim: 100 miles
Bike: 3,000 miles
Run: 1,400 miles
Lazy idiot
Tick tock
It the preferences of the app you an choose to publish your notes. But, that is all I have seen as far as choosing what can be published. I would like to change the default graph; maybe have it default to the graph in my summary.
EDIT: You can tell it to publish none of your activities, races, or workout plus races.
Flat footer
I ran a mile and I liked it, liked it, liked it. email@example.com
Options,Account, Forums
I find myself wanting to comment on other people's runs. I wonder what that might look like...
It's a 5k. It hurt like hell...then I tried to pick it up. The end.


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America discovers Linssen...
The Linssen Yachts representative in the United States is:
Discovery Yachts
Agent for United States of America
Tel. +1 206-285-1096
Linssen Yachts in Canada:
NW Explorations
Port Sidney Marina
9835 Seaport Place
Sidney, BC V8L 4X3
Phone: (236) 237-6939
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Linssen Yachts' traditional market was 'restricted' to Europe. Today, however, the Dutch built yachts by Linssen are suitable for all waters. Ranging from 28 - 58 feet, the Linssen Grand Sturdy series, the Grand Sturdy 9 series and the Classic Sturdy series attract people from everywhere. The American market is very appreciative of European quality products and in particular of the craftsmanship of Dutch yacht builders. Designers like Willem de Vries Lentsch and Don Shead have excellent reputations in the US. The overall high quility finish and high technical specifications of a Linssen are a hit with experienced American mariners. Sailors are also impressed by the incredible ease with which they can operate the Linssen Variotop®... a patented cabriolet system available on yachts from 36 - 58 feet
European built Linssen boats setting sail for America....
The prestigious American magazine PassageMaker devoted no less than 18 pages of its 2001 June issue and a cover photograph to Linssen Yachts. The magazine's editor spent several days at the Linssen boatyard in January after attending the Düsseldorf Boat Show. The result was a splendid article about the history, production and products of Linssen Yachts.
(click the magazine cover to download the article)
Upon request we will send you the complete article.
"...Linssen showroom is not typical of your average boat builder.
A more pleasant way to shop for a boat is hard to imagine..."
"...Flawless finish on a steel boat. Note the hull chines, and welded seams below the waterline..."
Linssen Yachts is a brand that stands for quality. The inviting showroom, as part of the boatyard complex is another exponent of this quality. From the spacious Upper Deck, you have an excellent view of the showroom.
Most of our pre-owned Linssen yachts are displayed in our Collection & Brokerage showroom. Here, you can inspect the yacht of your choice at your leisure come rain or shine.
Six days a week you can view a selection of current models from the Linssen Yachts range at your leisure. Make an appointment with your Linssen regional representative. He will be delighted to accompany you to Maasbracht on your journey of discovery into the world of steel yacht building.
The Linssen Yachts showroom … as unique as the brand itself.
Opening hours:
Weekdays: 8 AM - 5.30 PM
Saturday: 10 AM - 4 PM
Sunday: by appointment only
Linssen Yachts B.V.
Brouwersstraat 17, NL-6051 AA Maasbracht
Postbus 7172, NL-6050 AD Maasbracht
firstname.lastname@example.com | www.linssenyachts.com
Tel. +31 (0)475 - 43 99 99
Fax +31 (0)475 - 43 99 90
Articles on Linssen yachts in America±
Linssen yachts on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway


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Media Contacts
Writing an article, or reviewing our products? We'd love to talk to you and provide you with specific information!
Company VideosSee why we are so passionate about serving our members and the communities in which they live.
VIDEO: A Mission to Serve
VIDEO: My Story: Jeremy Lucas, WellCare Member
VIDEO: My Story: Gloria Owens, WellCare Member
VIDEO: My Story: Brandi Logan, WellCare Member
VIDEO: My Story: Moise Brutus, WellCare Member
WellCare Media Relations813-290-6208


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Member Since:
Mar 20, 2007
Goal Type:
Boston Qualifier
Running Accomplishments:
Short-Term Running Goals:
Long-Term Running Goals:
Maintain my health and continuously seek to improve my fitness. Maybe someday get under 3:00 for marathon. More importantly, I'd like to figure out what my maximum ability is and reach that.
I'd also like to find the right balance in life and use running to enhance and improve myself.
Dad of two awesome kids.
Also, have one wonderful brown dog named Sammy and just added a grey tiger cat whose life started out rough but now has a better home.
I've recently started another blog so I can easily add lots of pictures and so other non-FRB users can leave comments:
Forward Progress!
Also, for 2012 I started a blog to write down each day one thing that I am grateful for
Grateful Blog
Love living in Florida but love to travel and see the country and rest of the world.
Favorite Blogs:
8.17 mi, 1:16:09, 9:19 avg
Ran with Jamie in the nbhd, just over 6 miles, easy pace with a little bit faster toward the end. Stopped in at the house to wake up the boys then ran another loop so I'd get at least 8 miles. Nice, chilly but not cold morning today.


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CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The Harvard heavyweight crew faces Princeton, its fastest Eastern competitor over the past two seasons, as well as local rival MIT in Saturday's Compton Cup regatta on the Charles River. The Crimson and Tigers have placed first and second, respectively, at each of the last two Eastern Sprints and were separated by just 1.2 seconds in last season's dual matchup.
Watch From Home
Live video of all Harvard and Radcliffe racing Saturday is available for free at the Crimson Central portal.
Harvard/Radcliffe Racing Schedule
7:06 a.m. - Heavyweight men: Harvard, Princeton - Third varsity eight
7:30 - Heavyweight men: Brown, Harvard - Fourth varsity, second freshman eights
7:54 - Heavyweight men: Harvard, MIT, Princeton - Freshman eight
8:18 - Heavyweight men: Harvard, MIT, Princeton - Second varsity eight
8:42 - Heavyweight men: Harvard, MIT, Princeton - Varsity eight (Compton Cup)
8:54 - Heavyweight women: Dartmouth, Radcliffe, Syracuse - Varsity eight (O'Leary Cup)
9:06 - Lightweight men: Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT - Varsity eight (Biglin Bowl)
9:18 - Heavyweight women: Dartmouth, Radcliffe, Syracuse - Second varsity eight
9:30 - Lightweight men: Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT - Second varsity eight
9:42 - Heavyweight women: Dartmouth, Radcliffe, Syracuse - Varsity four A
9:54 - Lightweight men: Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT - Freshman eight
10:06 - Heavyweight women: Dartmouth, Radcliffe, Syracuse - Varsity four B
10:18 - Lightweight men: Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT - Varsity fours
10:30 - Heavyweight women: Dartmouth, Radcliffe, Syracuse - Varsity four C
10:42 - Lightweight men: Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT - Second freshman eight
Last Time Out
The Crimson (2-0) overcame tough conditions on the Seekonk River to edge host Brown by three-fifths of a second last weekend. Harvard totaled four victories in six races, with the second varsity, freshman and second freshman eights also winning.
Last Season
Harvard won three races by comfortable margins before edging Princeton by 1.2 seconds to keep the Compton Cup and complete a sweep of the day's action last season on Lake Carnegie. The Crimson second varsity eight won by 10 seconds, and the freshman beat the Tigers by nearly six seconds.
History Lesson
Harvard has won the Compton Cup in each of the last five and nine of the last 10 seasons. Princeton claimed the first four cups in the series, starting in 1933, and has won 14 total, while Harvard has captured the trophy 59 times and MIT once. Princeton last won in 2006, and MIT's lone victory came in 1962. The cup is named for the late Dr. Karl T. Compton, former MIT president.
Scouting the Opposition
The Princeton varsity (4-0) remained unbeaten with a 13.3-seconds win against Penn and Columbia in last weekend's Childs Cup regatta. The Tigers' second varsity and freshman boats were also victorious, while the second freshmen fell to the Quakers. A week earlier, Princeton opened the spring with a four-race sweep of Syracuse and Georgetown. The MIT varsity (0-6) has finished fourth in a pair of four-team regattas so far. The freshman eight placed second last week, behind Trinity but nearly 16 seconds ahead of Boston College.
Harvard Lineups
Varsity Eight
Cox: David Fuller, 8: Patrick Lapage, 7: Michael DiSanto, 6: Sam O'Connor, 5: Parker Washburn, 4: Caspar Jopling, 3: Josh Hicks, 2: Andrew Holmes, 1: James O'Connor
Second Varsity Eight
Cox: Alex Sopko, 8: Peter Scholle, 7: Ben Lynton, 6: Matthew Edstein, 5: Nick Jordan, 4: Andrew Reed, 3: Elihu Reynolds, 2: Jack Morrissey, 1: Max Monfared
Third Varsity Eight
Cox: William Hakim, 8: Matthew Vincent, 7: Justin Mundt, 6: Jamie Law-Smith, 5: Nolan Pollock, 4: Alex Macintosh, 3: David Paresky, 2: Andrew Stein, 1: Andrew Hamm
Fourth Varsity Eight
Cox: Brittanie Maxwell, 8: Mihailo Malowany, 7: Eli Shikaloff 6: William Polachek, 5: Andrew Crown, 4: Nick Jaroszewicz, 3: Daniel Ranard, 2: Patrick Galvin, 1: Edward Winters Ronaldson
Freshman Eight
Cox: Jack Smith, 8: Charles Risbey, 7: James Medway, 6: Ed Rippon, 5: Andrew Emmett, 4: Josh Bernstein, 3: Max Meyer-Bosse, 2: Alexander Uruchurtu, 1: Lachlan Hanbury-Brown
Second Freshman Eight
Cox: Jessi Izhakoff, 8: Ryan Furey, 7: Owen Prunskis, 6: William Locke, 5: Daniel Hilhorst, 4: James Briggs, 3: Jan-Peter Bockstiegel, 2: Jack Freese, 1: Matt Weinstein


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Michael Festa
Class of 2015
Michael is a Junior from Newton, PA. An Economics major, minoring in Political Science and Accounting/Finance, he is also a member of the WAC Baseball team, the WAC Wall Street Program, and Enactus. This is his third year working at GIS. He has worked on the Chestertown 3D Project, but this year he is a member of the marketing team.


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Iraq Sarin Find Worries U.S.
U.S. soldiers found a roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent in Baghdad, the military said Monday. The device, which partially detonated, was apparently a leftover from Saddam Hussein's arsenals. It was unclear whether more such weapons were in the hands of insurgents.
Soldiers who removed the bomb experienced symptoms consistent with low-level nerve agent exposure, U.S. officials said. No one was wounded in the partial blast Saturday, and the dispersal of sarin from the bomb was very limited, the military said.
If confirmed in subsequent testing, the discovery would be the first evidence of a banned weapon in Iraq since the war began. The Bush administration based its case for the war on the existence of such weapons.
Earlier this month, some trace residue of mustard agent, an older type of chemical weapon, was detected in an artillery shell found in a Baghdad street, a U.S. official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The shell was believed to be from one of Saddam's old stockpiles and was not regarded as evidence of recent weapons of mass destruction production in Iraq.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cautioned that the sarin results were from a field test, which can be imperfect and more analysis needed to be done.
"We have to be careful," he told an audience in Washington Monday afternoon. Rumsfeld said it many take some time to determine precisely what the chemical was, what its presence means in terms of risks to U.S. forces and other implications.
U.S. troops have announced the discovery of other chemical weapons before, only to see them disproved by later tests. Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said "the jury is still out" on whether chemical or other weapons of mass destruction remained in Iraq.
The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, said it was possible the shell was an old relic overlooked when Saddam said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-1990s.
Kay, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said he doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a hidden stockpile, although he didn't rule out that possibility.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, speaking to the AP in Sweden, agreed the shell was likely a stray weapon scavenged from a dump and did not signify that Iraq had large stockpiles.
Numerous arsenals and weapons depots were looted in the turmoil following the collapse of the regime last April. Some depots are still only lightly guarded. Many of the materials used for roadside bombs were believed to have been looted.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said he believed that insurgents who planted the explosive did not know it contained the nerve agent. The 155-mm shell did not have markings to indicate it contained a chemical agent, a U.S. official said.
He said a U.S. military convoy discovered the round, which had been rigged as an explosive device. A detonation took place before soldiers could make the bomb inoperable, producing "a very small dispersal of agent."
U.S. officials believe, based on evidence, that the shell was an experimental munition produced before the 1991 Gulf War, called a binary type — a bomb carrying two separate chemicals that when combined in an explosion, produce sarin.
Dispersal would be far more effective if a shell containing nerve agent were fired from an artillery piece, Kimmitt said.
Even so, it appears that two components in the shell that exploded Saturday did not properly mix upon detonation, the U.S. official said.
Blix, whose inspection team didn't make any significant weapons finds during months of searching Iraq before the war, said he and his team found 16 warheads that were tagged as used for containing sarin but were empty.
Saddam's government had disclosed binary sarin testing and production after the 1995 defection of Iraqi weapons chief Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam's son-in-law. But Saddam's government never declared that any sarin or sarin-filled shells still remained.
Iraq used the chemical during its war with Iran in the 1980s and is believed to have used it against Kurdish Iraqi civilians. According to U.N. weapons inspectors, sarin-type agents constituted a significant part of Iraq's chemical weapons arsenal — about 20 percent of all chemical weapons agents that Saddam's government declared it had produced.
Nerve gases inhibit key enzymes in the nervous system, blocking their transmission. In large enough doses, sarin causes convulsions, paralysis, loss of consciousness and potentially fatal respiratory failure. Small exposures can be treated with antidotes, if administered quickly.
In 1995, Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult unleashed sarin gas in Tokyo's subways, killing 12 people and sickening thousands. In February of this year, Japanese courts convicted the cult's former leader, Shoko Asahara, and sentenced him to be executed.
Developed in the mid-1930s by Nazi scientists, a single drop of sarin can cause quick, agonizing choking death. There are no known instances of the Nazis actually using the gas, but that didn't stop other nations from stocking it.
While the finding an artillery shell designed to disperse the nerve gas sarin is notable, it would take an arsenal of such weapons to pose a meaningful military threat, arms policy experts said.
"You would fire hundreds of these shells on the battlefield to have any significant effect," said Jonathan B. Tucker, a senior researcher at the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington.
In that way "you try to saturate an area" containing enemy troops, said Michael Powers, a senior fellow at the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington.
U.S. military officials in Baghdad said the Iraq Survey Group, a U.S.-led organization whose task was to search for weapons of mass destruction after the ouster of Saddam, confirmed the presence of sarin.
The team has run into a number of dead ends. In January, for example, field tests on discovered mortar shells near Qurnah in southern Iraq indicated a blister agent was in the shells. But follow-up tests indicated that the munitions did not contain the agents, though U.S. officials said Saddam had such agents in the early to mid-1990s.
Officials say there are chemicals associated with certain munitions, such as phosphorous, that can produce false positives. Some field tests are designed to favor a positive reading, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers.
(c)MMIV, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed


text:
"I want you to imagine a household funnel," Steven Gluckstern said, launching his sales pitch for the American Dream. He often begins by brandishing a zinc funnel from Home Depot, but on this October afternoon he was selling over the phone from the parking lot of an In-N-Out Burger. Gluckstern, the chairman of a San Francisco-based group called Mortgage Resolution Partners, was in the midst of a tour of Southern California. In between hasty meals, he raced his rented Mercedes to meetings with mayors and activists and real-estate agents and developers, trying to interest them in his company's sole product: a plan for cities battered by the foreclosure crisis to keep their citizens in their homes. It's a tool so ingenious that Wall Street—font of the ingenious tools that created the crisis—treats it as the gravest threat to civilization since the breakfast burrito.
Gluckstern was on the phone with Jyl Lutes, a councilwoman in Salinas, a city of a hundred and fifty thousand people in central California which was once home to John Steinbeck. Thirty-six per cent of its homeowners with mortgages are "underwater," owing more in principal than the house is worth. (In the relatively stable New York metropolitan region, the figure is twelve per cent.) Salinas's mayor, Dennis Donohue, was eager to try Gluckstern's plan; he told me, "Washington and Wall Street aren't helping us, so we'll take a crack." But the city council had seven members, and Gluckstern needed three more votes.
Before he explained how Salinas could save itself, he had to establish some context. Hence the funnel. "During this crisis," he told Lutes in his assertive tenor, "four million families have passed through the foreclosure funnel."
"It's scary!" she agreed.
"But," he continued, "but, we also have 3.5 million families in the funnel right now, in default or foreclosure."
"Oh, sheez!"
"And now look above the funnel"—he raised his eyes—"where eight million families are underwater and circling the lip in a death spiral."
"Oh, my God!" Lutes said. Gluckstern's numbers can be aggressive; most experts put the number of coming foreclosures between one and five million. Yet even as home prices have risen for six of the past seven months, twenty per cent of America's homeowners remain underwater. It's a national problem that's concentrated in a few locales, most notably California, which in 2011 boasted ten of the nation's top twenty municipal-foreclosure rates. For much of the last decade, California was the Barbary Coast of loan originators. The most infamous lender, Countrywide Financial, pushed a program known as the Hustle, which was designed to herd anyone and everyone into dubious subprime mortgages, which were then off-loaded, even more dubiously, to the housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Three weeks ago, Bank of America, which bought Countrywide, agreed to pay Fannie Mae more than eleven billion dollars.)
In Salinas, Gluckstern explained, the homeowners who are underwater would need their houses to appreciate an average of forty per cent to regain the value of their mortgage. "They pay for eight, nine more years and they'll still be underwater," he said. "So they'll make a rational decision and default."
"It's not about one family losing its home," Lutes said, trying to expand the narrative. "The crisis is about community."
"You don't hire the handyman, you don't buy a new dishwasher, you're much more likely to commit suicide," Gluckstern agreed. But to solve these ramifying problems, he went on, "you don't even need any money—all you need is the courage of your convictions!"
"O.K.," Lutes said cautiously.
"So here's how it works." Ordinarily, trying to absorb the details of the mortgage mess is like taking a fistful of Ambien. But Gluckstern is good at simplifying complex problems. At sixty-one, he has extensive experience handicapping risk propositions on Wall Street; he worked for Warren Buffett, helped reshape the reinsurance business, and oversaw some three-quarters of a trillion dollars for Zurich Financial Services. And though he looks the part of the wealthy liberal entrepreneur he has become—the Hemingway beard, the Telluride Film Festival cap—he was once a middle-school science teacher, and he retains his zeal for the teachable moment. He explained to Lutes that homeowners are much less likely to default if you reduce a loan's principal than if you extend its term or lower its interest rate. (A rule of thumb is that a mortgaged house becomes a home, rather than a form of foredoomed rental, once the owner is less than fifteen per cent underwater—that is, once he believes he'll soon have equity in it.) So banks have begun doing just that, in the knowledge that they'll earn a lot more from a borrower who makes smaller payments than from selling a house in foreclosure, which typically nets less than half the loan's unpaid balance.
Yet, in places like Salinas, a large part of the problem is not the loans that are held by banks. It's the ones that were pooled in "private-label securitizations"—bonds stuffed with almost all of the nation's "exploding" and "suicide" loans, made to those with doubtful credit. Of the $10.5 trillion in mortgages in America, Gluckstern said, about a trillion is in the P.L.S. sector, and these mortgages are three times as likely as other kinds to default. If you want to stabilize a crumbling community, these would be the ideal mortgages to modify—only, as Gluckstern observed, "the way these trusts are structured there is no way to modify the loans to write down the principal."
P.L.S. trusts, a product of the free market at its most irrationally exuberant, were designed to spin off payments as housing prices rose forever. In a down market, though, they turn out to be almost insurmountably difficult to restructure. They're like a pod of zombies: already dead yet still lurching about, intent on eating up the surrounding community, impossible to negotiate with except by means of a baseball bat. One reason for the problem is that a loan has to be modified by its owner—and, with a P.L.S. loan, it's very hard to figure out exactly who that is. In San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, the thirty-five hundred P.L.S. mortgages that Mortgage Resolution Partners wants to fix are held in some two thousand trusts, and those trusts, in turn, have issued seventeen thousand trust certificates to investors. The loans are managed by a servicer, very often a bank, that can usually modify them only if they're in imminent danger of default—and that often gets paid more not to fix them. Thus, the structure of the loan encourages the servicer to ignore the borrower's pleas for help—until he stops paying. Because the loans have been split into countless pieces and made into bonds, the investors who own them have no way to speak collectively to tell the servicer to modify them. And the entity legally responsible for the loans, the trustee, is usually another bank entirely. The problem is not "too big to fail" so much as "too fucked up to fix."
When Jyl Lutes asked, "Can the federal government do anything for us?," Gluckstern just snorted. "What we can help you with is restructuring the two thousand P.L.S. mortgages in Salinas," he said. Having made a case that the problem was that no one really owns these underwater mortgages, he teed up the solution: getting someone to take definitive ownership. And that someone would be the city of Salinas. "You simply use your police powers of eminent domain, which you're using every day whenever you build a road and need someone's land, and you condemn the mortgages and restructure them."
"That's just bizarre!" Lutes said, with an embarrassed laugh.
Eminent domain is controversial—it engenders notorious court battles, which drag on for years and always seem to pit a grandmother clinging to her cottage against a prospective big-box store—so Gluckstern saves it for later in the conversation. "The courts have repeatedly found that intangible forms of property, such as stocks, can be taken through eminent domain," he said, blithely.
"You take the mortgage with the approval of the homeowner, right?" "Well, yes and no," Gluckstern said, meaning "No." "You actually condemn the mortgage first in court—you buy it. No money out of your pocket, it comes from our investors." M.R.P. says that it has lined up four hundred million dollars in hedge-fund capital—enough to buy all the P.L.S. loans in Salinas. Under Gluckstern's plan, the city would seize a homeowner's mortgage in court, pay off the bondholders, then arrange a new mortgage for the homeowner at a price much closer to what the home is actually worth. "They could be going from a three-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage to a new one at a hundred and ninety thousand dollars," he said. "Right now, what you've got in Salinas is the next installment of 'The Grapes of Wrath.' But, with today's lower interest rates, getting your homeowners into a new mortgage would mean seven hundred dollars a month less in payments—which could be the difference between life and death!"
"Yes!" Lutes said, and she agreed to bring two of her colleagues to meet him that Sunday at a Starbucks in Salinas to hear more.
Gluckstern's plan has stirred grassroots passion in an impressive range of constituencies—which all hate it. One skeptical developer in Southern California asked him, "Did your Jewish background lead you to want to heal the world?" Most of the plan's critics—which include the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Realtors, and a phalanx of bond managers—have essentially repeated a version of Woody Allen's complaint: not only is the idea awful but their payoff is too small.
The math in question is beguilingly counterintuitive. If a house has a mortgage of three hundred thousand dollars and is now worth only two hundred thousand, under Gluckstern's proposal the bondholders would be paid off at eighty per cent of the current value—a hundred and sixty thousand dollars—and the city would then arrange a new mortgage of a hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Of the thirty-thousand-dollar profit, a third would go to the city, a third to the investors, and forty-five hundred dollars to M.R.P. The remainder would pay the closing costs. M.R.P. has enticed its investors with the expectation of at least a twenty-per-cent return—exactly the amount by which a leading mortgage-securities analyst (whose clients oppose the plan) says that Gluckstern's plan stiffs the bondholders.
Part of the disagreement is, in a sense, a matter of temperament: people who are still invested in mortgage-backed securities have never lost their irrational exuberance. Pointing to the roughly one and a half million homeowners who bobbed back above water last year, they argue that, if the economy keeps improving, many borrowers may never default, and the bonds' value will only increase. In the meantime, the bonds are kept afloat by borrowers of exactly the sort that M.R.P. has targeted: those who are still current on their payments, and paying high interest rates because they're unable to refinance.
Gluckstern argues that his proposed payoff is a boon to the bondholders. At about eighty cents on the dollar of what the properties are now worth, his valuation mirrors Fannie Mae's valuation of its own P.L.S. holdings (at least according to his analysis of the housing giant's abstruse S.E.C. filings). Gluckstern's point is that his proposal merely crystallizes losses that are already reflected in the market. And the payoff insures for bondholders a better return than they would get in foreclosure—where, analysts project, as much as half the homes under discussion will end up. In any case, he adds, a judge would have to approve the payoff as fair. But Scott Simon, a managing director at Pimco, the nation's largest holder of mortgage-backed securities, told me, "If we were going to make a ton of money on this, rather than getting our faces torn off, we wouldn't be going insane to make it stop."
M.R.P.'s plan does seem to outrage common sense. How do you make a thirty-thousand-dollar profit by selling a mortgage at a hundred-and-ten-thousand-dollar loss? Yet it was precisely that sort of legerdemain—tapping a dicey loan with the magic wand of financialization—which built the mortgage-securitization industry to begin with. The idea was that when you dissolved illiquid loans into a large pool, then sold off various depths of the pool in risk tranches, all those newly liquid assets were suddenly worth more. The man who securitized mortgage bonds on a large scale, the Salomon Brothers trader Lewis Ranieri, claimed in 1984 that his trading desk "made more money than all the rest of Wall Street combined." Two decades later, drunk on this liquidity, Wall Street made securities of securities of securities—a fearless venture into hypothesis known as "collateralized debt obligations cubed"—and hedge funds leveraged their investments fifteen times.
During the long and crapulous hangover, mortgage-backed securities sometimes traded at a quarter of face value. In the savings-and-loan crisis of the early nineties, the government established the Resolution Trust Corporation, which alleviated the problem by auctioning off the distressed assets; here the government had created no such agency. That colossal inefficiency vexed a man named John Vlahoplus, a former Rhodes Scholar who devised complex financial products for Credit Suisse. Vlahoplus had a carpenterial way of working through problems, and in late 2010 he hit on the solution: "Buy the toxic loans out of the P.L.S. trust, and then go fix them." He had a law degree, so he knew that eminent domain was the lever he needed, and he believed that city governments were best suited to deploy it: "Not only because underwater mortgages aren't a problem everywhere but because the federal government is dysfunctional."
Others had suggested using eminent domain to seize mortgages—three years ago, twenty-seven Democrats in Congress urged the Treasury to institute a national program—but, because it seemed to require a huge government effort, no one had tried to put condemnation into action. Vlahoplus knew he'd need a passionate advocate, so he called Gluckstern, for whom he'd worked twenty years earlier. By the time of Vlahoplus's call, Gluckstern, having made a packet on Wall Street, and bought and sold a half-interest in the New York Islanders, had moved to San Francisco and was running Ivivi Health Sciences, which makes electronic medical equipment to speed the healing of cuts and bruises. (For fifteen minutes a night, he wears one of the company's SofPulse halos on his brow, in the non-F.D.A.-approved belief that it will forestall Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.)
Gluckstern was skeptical at first that Vlahoplus's idea was a practical solution to the underwater problem. Certainly, there was plenty of activity surrounding the issue: to shore up the housing market, the federal government underwrites ninety per cent of all new housing loans, and it has established any number of homey-sounding rescue programs. Yet the largest, the Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP, has helped only 1.9 million people modify their loans—a third of the promised number. The Federal Housing Administration's short refinance program, which received $8.1 billion in bailout funds, has disbursed only sixty million dollars. Since the crisis began, only something on the order of one per cent of underwater loans have had their principal reduced. And while three bills have been introduced in Congress to further aid homeowners, one is for Fannie and Freddie loans only, and the two others have conditions that exclude P.L.S. borrowers who are more than forty per cent underwater—which describes a lot of people in places like Salinas.
Gluckstern told me, "The more I read, the more I realized how fucked up it all was." In 2011, Gluckstern raised five million dollars and he and Vlahoplus launched M.R.P. The goal was to do good by doing well—to use their financial fluency to restore millions of people's balance sheets. Vlahoplus also secretly hoped that he could prevent a few small children from drowning in untended pools in the back yards of needlessly foreclosed homes. "If there was any other tool, of course we would have used it," Gluckstern said. "Because we knew going in that everyone would jump to the 'municipalities using police powers to seize assets from Wall Street' part—the asinine-sounding part."
M.R.P. started its campaign in San Bernardino County. Famous for its "cheap dirt," San Bernardino is a sprawl of bedroom communities for people who work in Los Angeles and in Orange County, a vast desert parking lot short on the glue of community. After housing prices in the area tripled between 2000 and 2006, the subsequent plunge cut them by more than half, leaving fifty-seven per cent of the county's mortgages underwater. The ebb tide left only the shells of broken subdivisions; the area's linchpin city, San Bernardino, declared bankruptcy in August. Its homicide rate rose more than fifty per cent last year, and the city attorney advised residents to "lock your doors and load your guns." Michael Tahan, a councilman in the nearby city of Fontana, told me, "On my street, only me, Javier, and Jose are still there—everyone else has moved out or is renting." Acquanetta Warren, Fontana's mayor, is a hundred and seventy thousand dollars underwater and says that her whole neighborhood is dislocated: "You've been downsized on your job, your house is upside down, and your family has been widesized"—as relatives who've lost their own homes move in.
In the fall of 2011, Gluckstern called up the county's C.E.O., Greg Devereaux, a banty and capable civil servant. After they met, Devereaux said, "O.K., let's pursue this." He told me, "We've got a hundred and sixty-eight thousand homes upside down here, and it could be two decades before we work out of that—and we don't have any money to fix it, or the knowledge, frankly." In June, the county and the cities of Fontana and Ontario established a "joint powers authority" to examine M.R.P.'s plan, as well as other ideas. Gavin Newsom, California's lieutenant governor, was an early champion of the proposal. "I've refi'd three times since 2007 on my home in the Bay Area," he says, "but people in places like San Bernardino still can't. And, until I heard Steven's idea, all I had for them was my pitch about 1-800 numbers and loan counsellors—which was a total joke."
The foes of eminent domain rose up almost instantly, assailing the plan from the crankier reaches of the desert and the cushier cabins of inbound flights. "I never thought we'd be threatened so much just for considering an idea," Devereaux said. A coalition of twenty-six financial-service and real-estate groups sent a letter threatening lawsuits. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or SIFMA, announced that any locality that used eminent domain to restructure loans couldn't trade in its standard market. And the Federal Housing Finance Authority warned that such localities could find their mortgage markets jeopardized. David Stevens, the president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, told me that using eminent domain would "place a scarlet letter on every home in the community"—making it impossible for the local housing market to regain value.
Janice Rutherford, one of San Bernardino County's supervisors, believes, like many conservatives, that eminent domain is a governmental overreach. But she also felt that the securitization industry, after ignoring San Bernardino, had itself reacted to the threat with an overreach. When one group of financiers flew in to lobby her, she recalls, "a guy from Boston said, 'If you do this, I'm going to look at all the tranches in a securitization from now on, and if I see San Bernardino in the address I'm not buying that tranche.' I got a little snippy with him and said, 'If you had been that careful about which loans you bought a few years ago, we might all have avoided this huge mess!' "
The opposition often invoked what's known as the "moral-hazard argument": if you reward people for risky behavior—like buying the dubious loans you sold them—they'll just do it more. Last summer, Edward DeMarco, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's regulator, scuppered the White House's plan to write down principal for half a million homeowners who'd fallen behind on payments, listing among his reasons that it would encourage others to stop paying. It was an argument of principle over principal: DeMarco's own analysis showed that the White House plan could save $3.6 billion.
Similarly, the lobbyists who arrived in San Bernardino didn't seem to believe that anyone might have bought an overpriced home simply because those were the only homes available. Timothy Cameron, a SIFMA managing director, says, "We told Greg Devereaux, 'Drill down and look at who these people are—did they take out a second loan that got them underwater? Did they put in a pool?' " Devereaux, his dander up, says, "I didn't hear that same level of concern from these sectors when G.M. or Bank of America got bailed out. And I guess none of those people had expensive cars sitting in their driveways or took international vacations!"
When a group of bankers and bond managers met with Devereaux in August, they proposed an alternate solution: San Bernardino should have "self-help" days to educate homeowners, and it should tap the Hardest Hit fund, a federal kitty of $7.6 billion allotted to the eighteen states most affected by the crisis. But a loan servicer would need the investors to approve any loan modifications under the program—the nearly insuperable obstacle with P.L.S. loans—and the funds are intended for only the most desperate cases, which leaves out the majority of responsible homeowners. Vince Fiorillo, the president of the board of the Association of Mortgage Investors and the organizer of the August meeting, acknowledges, "Servicers aren't going to write down principal for the guy who bought a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house and is underwater but hasn't lost his job. The only two ways for him to fix the problem are (1) sell the house and write a check"—to make up the difference still owed the bondholders—"and (2) call his servicer and say, 'Let's do a cash-for-keys trade.' " That is, try to wangle a few thousand dollars in exchange for vacating his house.
The battle over the wisdom of eminent domain ultimately turns on how you perceive a house. Is it a home, hallowed ground for the tooth fairy and for neighbors who assemble for Fourth of July potlucks, the keystone of a well-ordered, tax-paying society—or is it merely a commodity with aluminum siding? Wall Street's argument is that those who took out patently gimcrack mortgages bought the subprime narrative, in which a home wasn't a primary residence but a primary investment. So why should those investors and M.R.P.'s investors benefit at the expense of Pimco's? Particularly when Pimco represents the stakeholders in America's pension funds: the family next door to the family with the P.L.S. mortgage?
The difficulty with finding a satisfying scapegoat in the mortgage crisis is that people don't just own their own homes anymore; they also own slices of lots of other people's homes. It might seem that this would knit a nation together, but in practice it does just the opposite.
By the time Gluckstern visited the San Bernardino area, last fall, he was a marked man. One afternoon, the California Association of Realtors hosted a panel discussion at the Marriott hotel in Anaheim, where many of the two hundred Realtors present lined up at the mike to pillory him. Gluckstern was told, "Who are you to pick winners and losers?," and warned that borrowers whose mortgages were seized would take a huge hit to their credit rating, and urged to let the crisis take its natural course, and accused of "cherry-picking" the best loans simply to make a profit. One man sputtered in wordless fury and finally just yelled, "This thing stinks!" Applause rolled through the room.
After Gluckstern presented his plan—interrupted periodically by the pealing of his ringtone, "What a Fool Believes"—his interlocutor on the panel, Richard A. Dorfman, a managing director at SIFMA, declared that the proposal was unconstitutional, that it would "blow up the bridge" between "America and vast trillions of dollars from around the world," and that it would destroy the securitization market (a market already on life support). Soon, he predicted, M.R.P. would expand its avaricious reach to loans backed by banks and by the government. It "will treat the mortgages of America" like someone "going into Walmart and saying, 'I want this one and this one and this one!' "
Gluckstern finally glared at Dorfman and asked, "If eminent domain is not the solution, then what is?"
"That has absolutely nothing to do with the use of eminent domain."
"There's the answer!" Gluckstern cried. "They don't have a solution!"
Afterward, the crowd gathered around Dorfman. When one Realtor observed, "He's just stealing from you to give to them," Dorfman nodded funereally. "I have the terrible feeling," he said, "that this is a man who walks through the terminal ward, selling a medicine he knows is worthless."
When Gluckstern dropped by Greg Devereaux's office, the county C.E.O. ruefully acknowledged that the opposition had gummed up M.R.P.'s plans. The joint-powers authority postponed a meeting on the mortgage issue from October to late January, and it seemed increasingly possible that it would eventually just stand down. "We think the idea is functionally dead in San Bernardino," Scott Simon, of Pimco, told me. "I feel bad for Devereaux. If you're drowning, and somebody throws you a toilet, you're going to grab it, but it won't help you."
Without quite conceding in San Bernardino, Gluckstern began stealthier campaigns, in Michigan, Maryland, and southern Florida, and established a "local solutions" Web site that downplayed eminent domain and didn't mention M.R.P. at all. Meanwhile, M.R.P. began offering to work for free with cities to help them choose from a menu of mortgage-repair options, including but not limited to eminent domain. In an acknowledgment that the new strategy would be costlier and more time-consuming, the firm also began raising another one to two million dollars.
The nation's biggest prize is the city of Los Angeles, where twenty-two per cent of mortgages are underwater. So in the final pitch of Gluckstern's Southern California swing he dropped by the Brentwood office of Austin Beutner, a former deputy mayor and "jobs czar" of Los Angeles, and a founder of Evercore, a bank that was hired by M.R.P. to find investors. Beutner, trim and focussed, rapidly grasped the problem and the opportunity. After asking a few probing questions, he said that he might be interested in getting involved, but only if M.R.P.'s idea would "move the needle. I've been talking to Treasury, and HAMP and HARP"—the Home Affordable Refinance Program—"don't move it." (In the following weeks, Beutner canvassed friends in finance to try to understand, as he put it to me, "Are there real structural issues with the idea, or are we just talking price? Because, if we're just talking price, it'd be a shame not to pursue this.")
Gluckstern had always believed that his most vocal opponents, the bondholders, really cared only about two things: what they got paid, and how much control they had over the process that led to a payoff. Now, sensing a kindred soul in Beutner, he confided his hope that the threat of eminent domain would scare the bondholders into co-opting his idea: "I tell my investors we'll do five hundred thousand loans, but I really think we'll do a hundred thousand and then—"
"—the bondholders will start doing it themselves."
"Exactly!" Gluckstern said. "Why give me forty-five hundred dollars and the city ten thousand dollars when they can just modify the principal themselves and save all that money? Bad for me as an entrepreneur, but great as a problem solver!"
The next phase of Gluckstern's campaign would be to convince the opposition that the campaign was going to continue. "If we can get Austin to help," he told me, "and if Los Angeles will tell people they're going to condemn mortgages, that's as important as if they actually condemn mortgages." He hoped that the threat would lure bondholders to the table, avoiding a long court battle over eminent domain's legality. Otherwise, a senior federal official conversant with housing observed, "If this does happen, it will be in a few California cities, three to five years from now, and it will be a boutique solution to a much, much larger problem."
Although M.R.P. had intended to bypass the federal government, it was beginning to seem that the only way to help people locally was to work out a national grand bargain between cities and P.L.S. bondholders, such as a template for prepackaged eminent-domain condemnations. Failing that, the guerrilla warfare—the fighting literally house by house—wouldn't resolve itself fast enough to keep people in their homes. Officials in housing and at the Treasury, the natural neutral arbitrators between the warring parties, cautiously signalled that they'd play such a role, if asked. The senior federal official says, "The very factors that caused this crisis—nobody in charge, confusion about who's on the hook for losses, conflicting incentives—make it extremely hard to put Humpty Dumpty together again. So you need to force it to happen."
With all the feints and all the pre-negotiating about potential negotiations, it was easy to forget that even small-scale relief, at the level of the struggling local homeowner, remained a good ways off. In December, when the Salinas council voted on whether to engage M.R.P. as a free consultant, a representative of the Monterey County Association of Realtors arrived to sound the tocsin about eminent domain's "frightening, literally frightening" effect on "our already struggling housing recovery." Clearly nervous about what M.R.P.'s plan would entail, five of the seven council members, including Jyl Lutes, voted to table the question for six weeks, to let the incoming council deal with it.
"Salinas has had better civics days," the outgoing mayor, Dennis Donohue, told me afterward, dejectedly. The outgoing councilman Sergio Sanchez, who'd voted with Donohue to engage M.R.P., warned his colleagues that there were human consequences to their decision. Just that day, two families in his district had been foreclosed on. "I know this whole council is going to go home to their warm homes," he said, "and those two families—we still don't have a place for them to stay tonight. So I leave that for your conscience." ♦


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Add this American Profile article to the many Jack LaLanne features we've seen over the last several weeks. (Thanks to Stephanie's aunt for sending her the print version!) This feature was not unlike many profiles of LaLanne. We definitely took a decidedly fitness club focus with our feature in our October issue, but all in all, his story checks out.
When many people write about Jack LaLanne, they sometimes mention a phrase that goes something like, "Before there was Richard Simmons, before there was Jane Fonda…there was Jack LaLanne." Speaking of Jane Fonda, the 72-year-old has a new DVD in the works aimed at exercise for older women.
There are other less-famous fitness enthusiasts who are "still gettin' it done," as David Letterman would say. How about this Pennsylvania man who still loves to work out at 95? (Same age as Jack.) There's also a YMCA volunteer in California who is teaching rock climbing at 73. (This man simply does NOT look like he's 73.)
Kudos to all for keeping fitness in the forefront after all these years.


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Thanks God!
This is how my mother says "Thank God!" It happens a lot with the immigrant China people. They pluralise inappropriately and have problems with conjugation and adjectives and adverbs. Like she'll often say – I'm so exciting! when what she means of course is that she's so "excited" . I have never bothered to correct her because, frankly, it's hilarious.
Anyway, thanks God indeed.
Because it's been a dark few days.
And we needed some cheering Mimi cheese styles.
And finally she has emerged, full of cheese, with her dog Jack, to lift us, temporarily, from the sh-ts.
Mimi is shooting a video today in New York. Check out the way she exits her Bentley. How she eats up all the adulation. And the posing. Don't you love the posing? My favourite is the Over the Shoulder pout. I also really enjoy the Pretend to Look Off Into the Distance option. It reminds me of those hideous grad photos they make you take after university "embracing the future".
Let us always be grateful for Mariah Carey. The world without her would be so unimaginably dull.
Photos from Mejia / Asadorian / Splashnewsonline.com