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Winter 2012
Mascolini: For whom should US clinicians prescribe PrEP?
Grant: Broadly speaking, PrEP is for people potentially exposed to HIV infection. In the United States one key group consists of young men of color in urban centers that have an identified epidemic. PrEP candidates also include their partners, who may be women, and other people potentially at risk for acquiring HIV.
I think the most important point is that PrEP is for people who want it. Anyone who comes forward and says they're interested in finding new ways to protect themselves and their partners from HIV should receive prevention services, regardless of whether we can easily identify a risk factor. I say that because most of the language that we use about "risk groups" and "risk factors" is stigmatizing, off-putting, and insulting. It seems to me that if someone has come forward and says, look, I want PrEP, or I want to explore this, the answer should be yes. If anyone says, I want to find ways of keeping myself free of HIV, the answer should be yes.
Mascolini: Are you saying that if a man or a woman seeing a healthcare provider says they want PrEP, the provider shouldn't say, well, how many sex partners do you have, or do you use condoms consistently?
Grant: It's fine to explore these issues and to engage in such a conversation. But I think many clinicians are not prepared to have a nonjudgmental discussion about numbers of partners and sexual practices and similar issues. Clinicians need to think seriously about whether they're prepared to have a nonjudgmental conversation with a patient. If they are prepared, then by all means that kind of conversation can be useful.
This field is evolving rapidly. I think we need to help healthcare providers learn more about sexual health and ways of promoting sexual health in nonjudgmental ways. That process takes some time. In the meantime, when someone asks for prevention services, the answer should be yes.
Mascolini: Do you think heterosexual men and women with some risk of HIV infection are going to use PrEP in the United States?
Grant: Yes, I think they will sometimes. Certainly for heterosexual couples with one negative and one positive partner who desire pregnancy, PrEP is a very attractive option. Another alternative is suppressive therapy for the infected partner, which is also highly effective in preventing transmission.2 But sometimes the negative partner may not have complete faith in their partner's ability to take antiretroviral therapy in a fully suppressive way. In those cases PrEP becomes an additional safeguard to allow intimate sex and pregnancy while lowering the risk of HIV transmission.
Identifying heterosexuals who need HIV prevention services has been a challenge in the United States. Again, I think that if we can find less stigmatizing ways of talking about HIV and sex, people will be more willing to come forward and ask for prevention services if they need them.
Mascolini: So far PrEP clinical trials that enrolled heterosexuals took place in Africa.3-5 Can US and European clinicians be sure PrEP will work in heterosexual men and women outside Africa?
Grant: Yes. The Partners PrEP study3 and the TDF2 study4 both demonstrated that oral TDF/FTC is highly effective in heterosexual populations. Both of those studies were done in Africa, but the biology of heterosexual transmission is very similar around the world. I think that in heterosexual populations, as with gay men, adherence to PrEP is very important. It will not work if it is not used, and we've seen that in our research.1,3-5 PrEP will fail if it's not used sufficiently to attain detectable drug levels in the body.
Mascolini: iPrEx had a small contingent of transgender participants, and your iPrEx abstract for the 2011 IAS meeting showed no protection of transgender participants.6 Should clinicians consider PrEP for male-to-female transgender people?
Grant: I think they can consider it. In iPrEx we found that transgender women had detectable drug in their blood less frequently than other subgroups. We believe the trans subgroup in our study had more difficulty with adherence and that likely explains the lack of protective effect in that subgroup.
Importantly, there were insufficient numbers of trans women in iPrEx to know whether PrEP can work for them, so we're not sure yet whether PrEP efficacy is similar in trans women compared with gay men. But I think PrEP with tenofovir/emtricitabine [TDF/FTC, Truvada] is an option for trans women. Certainly, they should be aware that there's less information available about how well it works for them and that adherence was particularly challenging for trans women in iPrEx, we think for social reasons.
Everyone should realize that PrEP is highly effective if taken, but it is harder to take than people imagine. It does require taking a pill a day. People have to be organized to build that into their lives. They have to have an ongoing relationship with their healthcare provider.
Mascolini: Do you have a sense of whether many clinicians are starting to prescribe PrEP in the United States?
Grant: I think it's just beginning. As I go around the United States giving talks, typically there's one clinician in every room in virtually every city I've visited who is currently prescribing PrEP. But it really hasn't taken off as a common practice. I think providers are still trying to learn how best to use it and how best to inform people's decisions about whether PrEP is right for them.
Mascolini: When you give these talks around the country, what are the primary PrEP concerns your audiences ask about?
Grant: They're concerned about who should be offered PrEP, and I usually emphasize that people who want it should be offered PrEP. People's initiative is really the key thing to nurture at this point. We're trying to build a prevention initiative across the country so that we can see an AIDS-free generation.
Clinicians are interested in long-term as well as shortterm side effects, as well as tolerance issues. They want to know when to start and when to stop PrEP. Does it have to be taken daily? Are there alternative regimens that are just as good? And then the practical questions: Who's going to pay for it and how can it be made available within our existing healthcare system?
Mascolini: Are third-party payers paying for PrEP?
Grant: I believe they are all paying for it. The payers in the United States have decided not to require HIV testing results before paying for antiretroviral medications, and they do realize this means they are paying for PrEP. Preventing HIV infection potentially saves 40 years or more of antiretroviral therapy costs. People who are taking antiretroviral therapy for infection still have an excess risk of cancer and heart disease, which obviously cause a lot of suffering, but they're also very expensive conditions to treat.
Insurance companies are very happy to see money spent on HIV prevention -- it saves them money in the end. So generally they've been supportive of PrEP. The payers are not advertising that they have positive policies regarding PrEP, but they certainly have decided to pay for it the way they have been so far.
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First Years, Second Impressions
November 1, 2009
Ford, Hart, Bell and the Von Kleinsmid Center
Lately I've been revisiting The Paper Chase, the ensemble drama about law students and their demanding, terrifying mentor Professor Kingsfield, which debuted on DVD earlier this year. The show had an unusual history. Cancelled after a single season on CBS, it resurfaced nearly five years later (after some success in syndication) on Showtime, which produced close to forty new episodes. It's an early, outlying instance of the now nearly complete migration of worthwhile television programming from the major networks to niche cable channels.
I hadn't seen The Paper Chase in over twenty years, and while its edges are a bit rougher than I remembered, I still consider it one of the best American TV dramas. It's an important enough series that I hope to revisit it more thoroughly in the near future. In the meantime, here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I watched the first dozen episodes.
1. The title song, "The First Years," is a soft-rock classic, a beatific, even goofy little ditty performed by Seals and Crofts but written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel. Gimbel, who received an Emmy nomination for his lyrics, wrote a slew of big-time pop songs in the seventies: "Killing Me Softly With His Song," "I Got a Name," the English lyrics to "The Girl From Ipanema," "It Goes Like It Goes" from Norma Rae, the Laverne and Shirley theme.
But shouldn't it be "The First Year," singular? Because the show places a great deal of importance on the fact that its main characters are all "1Ls," newbies who are struggling to learn the ropes of the hugely challenging post-grad education they're beginning. Their status would change quite a bit from year to year. (The Showtime version would track this matriculation with some precision). And since law school only lasts for three years anyway, it's kind of meaningless to distinguish the first two from just the final one. I guess the first line ("The first years are hard years") wouldn't work in the singular, but the final stanza ("Then one day, we'll all say / Hey look, we've come through / The first years") could have dropped that final "s" and brought the song more in line with the content of the show.
2. Last year I wrote, briefly, about my own personal connection to the series; about how I adored The Paper Chase as a young teenager because I thought it showed what college would be like (wrong), and how when I went to college, I discovered that my own campus (the University of Southern California) was the same one where The Paper Chase had been filmed. This created a weird kind of disjuncture. I wasn't having much fun as an undergraduate, and I resented the geographical overlap with my earlier, idealized, pop-culture version of how higher education should be.
When I wrote that, I remembered USC as the setting for Showtime's Paper Chase episodes, but I wasn't certain whether the same campus had been used in the first season. I thought that perhaps the bigger CBS budget had permitted for some location exteriors at a real New England university. (Coyly, The Paper Chase never says what school it's depicting, although it's based on Harvard grad John Jay Osborn, Jr.'s autobiographical novel, so you're supposed to do the math.) But, nope. The first season of The Paper Chase was filmed at USC, and while the campus has been seen in a ton of movies and TV shows, I doubt that any project before or since made such extensive use of it. Alumni will have a blast watching this show unless, like me, they are still kind of sick of the place.
Although I spotted other locations as well, most of the filming seems to have been confined to the area in between three major buildings in the center of the campus: Bovard Auditorium (home to Professor Kingsfield's lecture hall and office, although the real building does not house any regular classrooms), the imposing Doheny Library, and the more modern Von Kleinsmid Center. Most of this area looks the same now as it did then, although it's fascinating to see Trousdale Parkway, the street between Bovard and Doheny, before it was paved over and closed to vehicular traffic. And the fountain in front of Doheny never seems to be turned on in the early episodes. I wonder if Los Angeles was in the midst of one of its periodic, very un-New England droughts during the summer of 1978.
If you stop and think about it, none of this looks at all like an Ivy League school, but of course, it's television and hardly anyone ever stops to think about things like that.
3. The quality that makes The Paper Chase singular within television history, and disproportionately valuable today, is its celebration of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Not even other shows in the "inspiring teacher" genre, like Mr. Novak or Boston Public, have focused primarily on this idea. The law students of The Paper Chase sacrifice fashion and even hygiene, not to mention social lives and sex, in order to give themselves over entirely to their coursework. Though they register the stress and the monotony of their work, they don't cheat or take shortcuts (or if they do, the show depicts them as having failed to live up to an important standard). In a gesture that was probably idealistic even for the seventies, The Paper Chase rarely mentions careerism or money as reasons behind its protagonists' interest in the law.
Unlike many of my real-life teachers who tried to "make learning fun," The Paper Chase succeeds in passing along its enthusiasm for knowledge to the viewer. Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman) roots his lectures in the Socratic method. The scenes in his classroom, almost always the best in each episode, mine suspense from whether the characters will know the answers or not; whether they will express themselves eloquently; whether they will impress their teacher or disappoint him. The classroom sequences have an echo in the students' study group meetings, where they typically discuss not their own personal problems (even if those problems form the thrust of that week's plot), but the technical and moral intricacies of the law. Many scripts weave actual cases common to law school curricula into the storyline (Hawkins v. McGee in the pilot, the Speluncean explorers hypothetical in "The Seating Chart"). The resolutions to these cases, even though they are conveyed entirely through talk rather than action, often prove as compelling as the actual stories.
The Paper Chase characterizes Bell (James Keane), the comic relief law student, as a fat, pizza-gobbling slob, but I doubt that contemporary viewers would make much of a distinction between Bell and Hart (James Stephens), the chief protagonist, who is pale, sunken-chested, bespectacled, and generally unkempt. And yet Stephens manages to remove his shirt in most of the first half-dozen episodes. I think The Paper Chase was positioning him quite deliberately as a sex symbol in the sensitive-New-Age-guy mold (think Alan Alda or Woody Allen). What I like most about Stephens (and Hart) is his avidness, which contrasts strikingly with the kind of image-conscious nonchalance that nearly every modern TV hero projects. "How do you do it?" he blurts out beseechingly after he meets the have-it-all-career-girl Law Review editor (Darleen Carr) in the episode "A Day in the Life…" Hart doesn't care whether anyone thinks he's cool.
I bring this up because many of these notions, which were central to The Paper Chase, have no currency within our culture any more. The Bush II era codified anti-intellectualism as a legitimate approach to national leadership, one which may have been ratified at the polls. (Recall the "which candidate would you rather have a beer with?" factor in the 2004 election). And it's very difficult to find anyone on television now who doesn't appear to have stepped out of a fashion magazine; even "nerds" (like Adam Brody of The O.C. or Zachary Levi of Chuck) have a six-pack and a stylish haircut.
When I was a kid, I picked up the ideas (from shows like The Paper Chase, but also from the adults who surrounded me) that enlightenment meant developing the mind more than the body, and that obsessing over one's personal appearance was vain and shallow. I still live by those ideas, but they seem rather lonely within the public and private discourse I encounter these days. I didn't expect to be old-fashioned before I was thirty-five, but it seems to be working out that way.

subset: commoncrawl


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REDWOOD CITY — Oracle (ORCL) said Friday that it will buy San Bruno-based Responsys for about $1.5 billion to further bolster its cloud-based marketing efforts.
The sale, for $27 a share in cash, is expected to close in the first half of 2014 and was unanimously approved by Responsys' board of directors. The announcement pleased Wall Street analysts and came almost a year after Oracle purchased Eloqua, which specializes in business-to-business cloud-based marketing.
Analysts said Oracle's acquisition of Responsys, which specializes in allowing customers to create and manage marketing campaigns via email, mobile and social marketing, will complement Oracle Eloqua's marketing efforts.
"For Oracle this acquisition makes sense given the Eloqua acquisition that closed in February this year," Raimo Lenschow of Barclays wrote in a note to investors.
Oracle stock was up Friday after the announcement and closed at $36.37, down 0.63 percent, before rebounding in after-hours trading. Shares of Responsys closed at $27.40, up about 40 percent, and dipped slightly in after-hours trading.
Five-year-old Responsys, with about 1,000 employees who will become part of Oracle, represents more than 450 customers, including Nordstrom, LinkedIn, Lego, Southwest Airlines and United Healthcare.
Responsys generated $163 million in revenue in 2012 and is on schedule to deliver $200 million this year, representing growth of 20 to 25 percent, Lenschow said.
In a note to clients, Daniel Ives of FBR Capital Markets said Oracle's purchase of Responsys will set off a new era of software consolidation.
"In our opinion the stage is set for massive consolidation to take place (in 2014) as we continue to believe larger vendors will look to acquire their way into more fertile growth areas of the tech food chain, while smaller vendors continue to look at strategic technology-driven acquisitions," Ives wrote.
In a statement, Oracle President Mark Hurd said the purchase of Responsys "signifies Oracle's overwhelming commitment to winning and serving the (chief marketing officer) better than any other software company in the world."
In a letter to customers, Responsys Chairman and CEO Dan Springer said Responsys will operate as part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud where it plans "to leverage the vast resources of one of the largest software companies in the world, which can only accelerate our innovation and your success. … We couldn't be more excited about what this means for our customers and employees."
Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/dannakaso.
Specializes in helping customers create and manage marketing campaigns via email, mobile and social marketing
Founded: 1998
Located: San Bruno
Clients: Nordstrom, LinkedIn, Lego, Southwest Airlines among more than 450 others
Revenue: $163 million in 2012, estimated to generate $200 million in 2013


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European Commission
Strasbourg, 4 February 2014
Statement by Vice-President Reding and Commissioner Barnier on European Parliament's vote to approve criminal sanctions for market abuse directive
The European Commission has welcomed today's vote by the European Parliament's plenary to approve the Commission's proposal for a Directive on criminal sanctions for market abuse (IP/11/1218). The vote follows the political agreement reached with the Council in the trilogue on 10 December 2013, which was confirmed by COREPER on 20 December (IP/13/1299).
The adoption of the Directive by the European Parliament demonstrates Europe's commitment to counter insider dealing and market manipulation in its financial markets through strict and effective criminal sanctions. Member States will have to make sure that such behaviour, including the manipulation of benchmarks, is a criminal offence, punishable with effective sanctions everywhere in Europe.
Vice-President Viviane Reding, the EU's Justice Commissioner and Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said: "Today the European Union is sending a clear signal: there must be zero tolerance for manipulators in our financial markets. The EU's new market abuse framework will ensure that those who commit market abuse will face huge fines or jail across Europe. We would like to thank the European Parliament, especially the rapporteur Arlene McCarthy, for its hard work which made the adoption of this important legislation possible."
Next steps: After publication of the Directive in the Official Journal, expected in June, Member States will have two years to implement the Directive in national law.
The adoption of the Directive means that:
Investors who trade on insider information and manipulate markets by spreading false or misleading information can currently avoid sanctions by taking advantage of differences in law between the 28 EU Member States. Some countries' authorities lack effective sanctioning powers while in others criminal sanctions are not available for certain insider dealing and market manipulation offences. Effective sanctions can have a strong deterrent effect and reinforce the integrity of the EU's financial markets.
That is why the European Commission on 20 September 2011 proposed EU-wide rules to ensure minimum criminal sanctions for insider dealing and market manipulation (IP/11/1218). In July 2012 the Commission presented amendments to its original proposal in order to clearly prohibit the manipulation of benchmarks, including LIBOR and EURIBOR, and make such manipulation a criminal offence (IP/12/846).
Proposing these rules, for the first time, the European Commission used new powers under the Lisbon Treaty to enforce an EU policy through criminal sanctions. The Directive requires Member States to take the necessary measures to ensure that the criminal offences of insider dealing and market manipulation are subject to criminal sanctions. Member States will also be required to impose criminal sanctions for inciting, aiding and abetting market abuse, as well as for attempts to commit such offences. The Directive complements a separate proposal for a Regulation on Market Abuse, endorsed by the European Parliament on 10 September 2013 (MEMO/13/774), which improves the existing EU legislative framework and reinforces administrative sanctions.
More information
Market Abuse Regulation – Frequently Asked Questions:
European Commission - Market Abuse
European Commission – criminal law policy:
Homepage of Vice-President Viviane Reding, EU Justice Commissioner:
Homepage of Commissioner Michel Barnier, EU Internal Market and Services Commissioner
Follow the Vice-President on Twitter: @VivianeRedingEU
Follow EU Justice on Twitter: @EU_Justice
Follow Commissioner Barnier on Twitter: @MBarnierEU
Follow EU Internal Market on Twitter: @EU_Markt
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What a serial number can and can't tell about your Gibson
Last July we posted an article entitled "When Was Your Gibson Made?", taken from the excellent Backstage Pass area of the Gibson site. But that related only to Gibson guitars made from 1975 to Present. But, with more than 75 years of shipping records in the Gibson books, and dozens of variations on numerical schemes used over the years, serial numbers sometimes do little to shed light on the origin of a mysterious Gibson. Here's some more about Gibson Serial Numbers...
[Originally from Gibson Backstage Pass, Ellen Mallernee, July 17, 2007] - "Serial numbers can be extremely tricky," says Gibson Customer Service Manager Jason Davidson, whose team fields calls and emails regarding every Gibson division. "Some can tell you a lot about a guitar, and some don't really tell you anything. Gibson has had so many different schemes over the years, and now we're using reissue serial numbers that look like the old serial numbers."
In line with Gibson's adherence to tradition, the guitars that come through Gibson's USA plant are impressed with a serial number from the original stamp used at Gibson's early Kalamazoo, Michigan plant. That's not the only bit of history transplanted from Kalamazoo to Gibson's Nashville, Tennessee headquarters.
Inside a locked closet just outside Davidson's office are some of Gibson's most enduring written materials—shipping records dating from 1936 to 1970. With vintage Gibsons selling at auction for as much as half a million dollars, Davidson will sometimes roll up his sleeves and poke around in the ledgers, but only as time allows. The earliest volumes contain hundreds of yellowed pages covered front and back with rows of handwritten numbers. It can take Davidson several hours to locate a specific serial number, if he can find it at all. Even then, there may be four other guitars—of all different models—with the same number sequence.
When faced with a question about a guitar's date, Davidson most always refers to his beyond-dogeared copy of Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars.
"At least a quarter of the calls that Gibson's Customer Service team gets are related to the dating and IDing of guitars," Davidson says. "We make sure all the guys have a copy of Gruhn's Guide."
Davidson also recommends the Blue Book of Electric Guitars.
Another resource for IDing and dating guitars is Gibson's computer database, which catalogues scores of serial numbers from 1987 on through the present.
"It doesn't always date the guitar," says Davidson. "A lot of people think you can just dump these formats into a database where you can pull up the date, but there's so much more to it. Serial numbers can pull up multiple guitars from multiple years."
To illustrate his point, Davidson types in a serial number from memory and it quickly pulls up three different guitars—an SG, a Steinberger, and a Les Paul.
"Sometimes I'll literally pull up 10 guitars, and five of them will be so similar you're not going to know what the customer has. The ship date can help us, but if it's a weird serial number, we'll ask for photos."
Today, Gibson USA takes great pains not to recycle serial numbers. To combat the problem, the company upped its serial number sequence last year from eight digits to nine.
"We added another digit to reflect the batch of the day," says Gibson USA Support Coordinator Eric Marlow. "We were getting close to having so many guitars come through the factory that the serial number would probably lapse in a day and then start repeating itself so we added that extra digit."
With consumers and collectors as attentive as Gibson's, even miniscule changes in design and manufacturing can translate into a chorus of ringing phones in Gibson's Customer Service department. That's exactly what happened following a recent modification in the font size of the serial numbers used on the new Les Paul Classics.
"We're always trying to get things more accurate," explains Marlow, "so we changed the Les Paul Classic font because we found a stamp as close to the '60s version as we could."
Davidson is quick to point out that consumers have good reason to be alarmed by real or perceived discrepancies on Gibson models.
"We get calls from pawn shops and used music stores every day, and a lot of the guitars that people ask us about end up being fake Gibsons," he says. "A lot of the counterfeiters are using the standard eight-digit series. For the most part, it looks real. But there are some obvious indicators—if it starts with a five, for instance. We don't start any eight-digit serial numbers with a five. Or it might be an eight-digit serial number that indicates it was built on the 700th day of the year. In a case like that, we're clearly dealing with a fake guitar."
Davidson is referring to Gibson's system—in effect since 1977—of including a guitar's build date within the serial number sequence.
On today's new models from Gibson USA, Memphis, and Acoustic, the first and fifth number in the sequence signify the year a guitar was built, and the second, third, and forth number identify the day of the year.
"You get the hang of it, where you can see the date immediately," says Davidson. "It may be confusing at first, but the reason we do our serial numbers this way is a tradition. Our customers want serial numbers to be formatted a certain way—like they used to be."


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A seven-seat SUV concept will be revealed by Volkswagen at the 2013 Detroit auto show. It will fit with the Tiguan and Touareg (shown) utes in the VW lineup.
Volkswagen to reveal SUV concept at Detroit auto show
October 23, 2012
Senior Volkswagen officials have confirmed plans to reveal a seven-seat SUV concept at the 2013 Detroit auto show.
Speaking to Autoweek at this week's Sao Paulo auto show, a Volkswagen manager who asked not to be identified said the German carmaker was preparing to take public a new concept that presages an upcoming Passat-based SUV to be produced at the company's Chattanooga production plant in Tennessee.
Set for launch in 2014, the new SUV has been conceived to rival the Toyota Highlander, Ford Edge, Chevrolet Equinox and Honda Pilot.
The upcoming ute will slot into the Volkswagen lineup between the existing Tiguan and Touareg models. It is likely to offer the choice of either gasoline or diesel power along with front- or all-wheel drive and an optional third row of seats to provide accommodation for up to seven adults.


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Then 19 years old, Ryan McFadyen, a six-foot-five defenseman on the Duke lacrosse team, remembers that March 13, 2006, was one of those gorgeous, sunny North Carolina spring days. At lacrosse practice that morning, Coach Mike Pressler had a pile of cash to hand out to the players for "meal money"—$30 a meal, per player for the eight days of spring break. "Coach Pressler said, 'Yeah, here's 500 bucks. Here's 500 bucks. Here's 500 bucks,'" McFadyen recalls. Afterward, McFadyen got a voicemail from David Evans, one of the team's four co-captains, who lived off Duke's East Campus at 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, in Durham. "I remember the message he left," McFadyen says. "'Hey, we're having a barbeque over at 610. Get yourself and the sophomore guys over here. I need a six-foot-five hunk of meat in my backyard right now.'"
With cash in their pockets, the idea was just to have some fun at the house, while the rest of the Duke students were away on spring break. McFadyen got to the party at around two in the afternoon. "Guys were drinking," he says. "We were hanging out. I don't think I had any beers yet, because I know I went back to eat and went to the gym and worked out again." Then he got a ride back to the party. "We were there all day, grilling, having beers, playing washers, beer pong, just having a good time, playing some music . . . Everyone was drinking and someone said, 'Oh, let's go to the strip club.' Then someone's idea was, 'Let's just have dancers come to the house, as opposed to risking people going out and getting in trouble. We'll just order dancers to come here—a very common occurrence on campus."
After finding the phone number of the Allure Escort Services, Dan Flannery, another co-captain who shared the house with Evans, called and discussed the hourly rate for each stripper ($400), whether they could choose the girls on the basis of traits they preferred, and if there was a maximum partier-to-stripper ratio. He gave the woman a fake name—Daniel Flanigan—but his real cell-phone number. "She called me back 20 to 25 minutes later, telling me that she had two girls," Flannery recalled in a subsequent written statement.
When McFadyen returned to the party, "People were collecting money, like, 'Hey, we've got dancers coming. Instead of going to Teasers, they're coming here.'"
As McFadyen remembers it, when the dancers arrived, Flannery announced, "'Hey, both girls are here, and they're chocolate.'" "'Hell yeah, bring them in,'" replied Devon Sherwood, the team's only black player. (Sherwood says he made no such comment.)
Around midnight, McFadyen and some of his younger teammates went back to their dorm rooms at Edens, on Duke's West Campus. "Hung out for a bit. I wrote my e-mail. I go to sleep, " McFadyen remembers. The e-mail he is referring to, he says, was a riff on the Bret Easton Ellis novel *American Psycho,*which was required reading in some Duke literature courses. The book and the 2000 movie based on it were favorites of McFadyen's. "To whom it may concern," his e-mail began, "tomorrow night, after tonights show, ive decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome.. however there will be no nudity. I plan on killing the bitches as soon as the[y] walk in and proceding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex . . all in besides arch and tack [two of his teammates] please respond"
Then he went to bed.
The entire Duke-lacrosse criminal case, from the night in question to the dismissal of the criminal charges against three players—Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann, and David Evans—took 13 months. In that time, lacrosse coach Mike Pressler was forced to resign; the remainder of the team's promising 2006 season, for which Duke returned six All Americans, was canceled; and nearly the entire nation, including many of the players' own professors, presumed their guilt. Pressler would eventually settle with the university for an unknown amount, and Finnerty, Seligmann, and Evans are thought to have received as much as $20 million each in a confidential settlement with Duke. If that is correct, then between legal fees, settlements, and other public-relations fees, the party on the night of March 13, 2006 may have cost Duke $100 million. For what was subsequently adjudged to be his many shortcomings in the handling of the Duke lacrosse case, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was fired from office, was disbarred and was sentenced to one day in jail—the only person who spent any time in jail in connection with the case. Faced with the prospect of $180 million worth of lawsuits filed against him by the Duke players, he also filed for personal bankruptcy.
For Ryan McFadyen, however, there was no multi-million-dollar settlement and no public apology. (A lawsuit he filed, along with two of his teammates, against Duke and others is still pending.) For him what has lasted is that e-mail—sent on a whim, at two in the morning—which encouraged much of the country to believe that the narrative put forth by Crystal Mangum, the "victim/accuser," as she became known, might actually be true. It is a cautionary tale about one of the still-evolving dangers of our new, all-encompassing digital era: how the dispatching of a single, flippant e-mail to a select group of friends after a night of partying can change your life forever.
Initially, the only reaction to the e-mail McFadyen received came from his teammate Erik Henkelman at practice the next morning. "I distinctly remember Erik Henkelman getting my joke," McFadyen recalls. "I walked in, and he was like, 'Dude, that e-mail was so funny.'" Afterward, "We're walking towards East Campus, and there's a cop car parked in front of 610," McFadyen says, and the police were talking to some of his teammates. "Apparently, that stripper [Mangum] called the cops or something." It would be another day or two before Coach Pressler told players that Mangum was claiming she had been raped.
At first, according to McFadyen, the players did not think it was a big deal to give DNA samples to the Durham police. "We were so convinced that nothing happened," he recalls. "The cops were like, 'You give it and nothing matches, it'll be over.' O.K., well, nothing is going to match. Take our DNA. Just take what you need." He said the police took a mouth swab, some of his hair and fingernails. Since Mangum had told investigators that she had viciously scratched her attacker, the police were also looking for evidence of scratches on the players' bodies. At the Durham police station, the 46 white lacrosse players on the Duke team stripped down to their boxers. "We all got basically naked and they took pictures of our bodies," McFadyen says. "I mean, we're lacrosse players. We're young, 20-year-old guys. We're covered in bruises. We're scratched up. I remember Reade [Seligmann, a sophomore midfielder] had a—because we beat the shit out of him in practice—had a bruise down his arm. 'Oh my god,' they said, 'take a picture of this,' and they're documenting his arm."
On March 27—two weeks after the party—Durham police officers Mark Gottlieb and Benjamin Himan were in a training class when Police Corporal David Addison summoned Gottlieb to step outside to see a "disturbing message": Ryan McFadyen's e-mail. The officers agreed it "was written in a manner that indicated the possibility of two or more people may have conspired to kill someone," according to Gottlieb, the lead police investigator on the lacrosse case. The e-mail—which found its way to investigators through CrimeStoppers, a community-oriented program coordinated by Addison—had been sent by one Ryan McFadyen, just before two A.M. in the early morning hours of March 14, some 90 minutes after the party at 610 North Buchanan had ended.
After the officers reviewed the e-mail, they went to see Nifong, the Durham County D.A., at the Durham courthouse. Nifong authorized Gottlieb and Himan to pursue a warrant to search McFadyen's dorm room, even though Mangum had previously ruled out McFadyen as one of her attackers.
To the original five crimes—first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree sexual offense, common-law robbery, and "felonious strangulation"—that the officers believed were committed in the house on the night of March 13, they now added a sixth: conspiracy to commit murder. Durham Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens granted Nifong and the officers the search warrant they were seeking, but he ordered it sealed indefinitely, meaning that it could not be made public until the court chose to do so.
Six police officers, accompanied by a member of the Duke University police force, began the search of McFadyen's dorm room at 6:01 P.M. Gottlieb and Himan led the team. After knocking on the door to McFadyen's room and announcing he was a police officer, Himan served the warrant on Brad Ross, a sophomore midfielder and McFadyen's roommate. While in their reports Gottlieb and Himan described a calm scene, there was at least one other perspective. According to a court document filed by Robert Ekstrand, a Durham attorney and Duke graduate who represented many of the lacrosse players in the months to follow, "Gottlieb, in particular, was in a rage. The officers destroyed furniture, and needlessly threw clothes, papers, cords, and books everywhere." Gottlieb left before the search concluded. But before he did, Gottlieb noted that "inside the room were a number of hand drawn penises on the wall with team member's nicknames, jersey numbers, and questionable racial/ethnic things written on same."
At 7:15, McFadyen returned to his room to find the search still underway.
In many ways, McFadyen was a typical Duke student-athlete: tall, strapping, handsome—an unmistakable presence when he entered a room. Bright but not bookish or intellectual, he grew up in Mendham, New Jersey, and attended the Delbarton School, a Catholic all-boys school, where he had played lacrosse. He was good but not a standout, making the second all-county team. His father was a homebuilder, and as a teenager McFadyen had worked for him during summers. "My dad is blue-collar, old school," McFadyen says. "I think he has said, 'I love you,' to me four or five time. . . . He shows his affection in other ways, and I know that."
McFadyen has three younger sisters and a very strong-willed mother. "You know: 'No means no' and 'Respect women,'" he explains. "I always told my dad if I had a brother I'd probably be in the N.F.L., but I had three sisters, which has also been a good thing because I understand women and I'm in touch with my emotions more than the average guy."
McFadyen was, indeed, emotional when he arrived back at his dorm room from the Duke library. He walked upstairs and saw four police officers in the hallway outside his room and another three in his room. "They're just tearing through everything. Tearing it apart," he says. "They don't have a copy of the search warrant for me. I'm like, 'What? Are you kidding me?'"
An officer eventually produced one. "Flipping through pages, I see my name: 'What the fuck is this? Are you kidding me?' Then I see the charge: conspiracy to commit murder. My fucking heart drops."
McFadyen recalls the ensuing conversation as follows:
"'Are you fucking kidding me? You really think—?'
'Sir, we have to take every threat as credible. We have to take it seriously.'
'This is a fucking joke. It's a reference to a fucking movie.'"
It's just my single e-mail, singled out, nothing following it, nothing preceding it, and that's it." Ekstrand's paralegal Stefanie Sparks, a former lacrosse player at Duke, had arrived by this time. She advised McFadyen to cooperate.
Between his dorm and his car, officers found and confiscated: three $20 bills, two laptops, an external hard drive, a "memory card" and two DVDs, a disposable camera, a piece of paper with "suckie, suckie $5" written on it, some penis drawings, and a Duke backpack with McFadyen's [jersey] number, "41," on it.
Later that night, having calmed down a bit, McFadyen called his parents. "I think it was the first time I even brought up that there was an investigation, that we'd given DNA, or anything like that," he says.
"'I'm being investigated for conspiracy to commit murder,'" he said to them. "I remember just saying that, like, Holy shit. How do you tell your parents that?"
He told them about the e-mail. "They said, 'In hindsight, maybe you shouldn't have sent it.'"
Within weeks of the party, McFadyen was in his history-of-labor-relations class. At the start of the class, the professor and McFadyen's advisor, Reeve Huston, addressed the allegations. According to McFadyen, "He got up and said, 'I just want to take the first couple minutes of class to discuss a few items that are hot in the news. I want to talk about the alleged Duke rape case.'" In the class of about 15, eight students were on the lacrosse team. "'Three things are identified to be fact," the professor continued, according to McFadyen. "'One: there was definitely intercourse that night. Two: a condom was most likely used, as cited by . . . '"
Casey Carroll, a junior defenseman who had not been at the party, decided he had heard enough. "I remember Casey just getting up in the middle of class and just walking out," McFadyen says. "He said, 'I'm not going to sit here and have you berate me with what you've established to be facts.'" McFadyen and the other players followed him.
On March 29, more than 500 students, faculty members, administrators, and Durham residents marched across Duke—starting at the Marketplace on East Campus and ending more than a mile later at the Duke Chapel on West Campus—a "Take Back the Night" protest that was coincidentally part of a long-planned Sexual Assault Prevention Week on campus. The protesters distributed printed chants and the names and pictures of the lacrosse players, as well as the phone numbers for police officers to be contacted. During speeches and the reading of poetry, some people defaced the players' photos.
In the crowd, a reporter from The Chronicle, the school's daily newspaper, found McFadyen. "I completely support this event and this entire week," McFadyen told her. "It's just sad that the allegations we are accused of happened to fall when they did."
McFadyen, along with teammates Collin Finnerty, a sophomore attack, Kevin Mayer, a sophomore defenseman, and a couple of others, met up at the dorm and turned on the television to watch ESPN. The media coverage of the alleged rape had exploded. "All of a sudden, I'm quoted on ESPN," McFadyen recalls. "'Sophomore Ryan McFadyen said it's unfortunate these incidents occurred, while attending Take Back the Night.' And I was like, 'Are you kidding me?' The kid who I casually knew from a class . . . had taken a quote that was innocent [out of context]." (The student reporter maintains that she did identify herself as a reporter, but concedes that her approach "may have caught Ryan off guard.") He and his teammates stared at each other in disbelief. "We're kind of looking at each other, like, 'Holy fuck.'"
On April 5, Durham court officials unsealed the warrant that had authorized the search of McFadyen's dorm room nine days earlier. Not only was the fact that police had searched McFadyen's room now public but so was McFadyen's e-mail. Why Judge Stephens chose this moment to unseal the warrant, and at whose request, is not known for certain. (The Durham Herald-Sun claimed credit in an article the next day; Judge Stephens, now retired, did not return a phone call seeking clarification.) In short order, all hell broke loose. Almost immediately, John Burness, Duke's director of communications, found McFadyen's e-mail on the Web site of The News & Observer, the Raleigh newspaper, and took it directly to the university's president, Richard Brodhead. "That's where I first read this e-mail, and I have to say, when I read it, I was sickened," explained Brodhead. "I found it repulsive."
That morning, McFadyen went to Spanish class and then headed to the library to write a five-page history paper due later that day. By then, word was out. Ekstrand called McFadyen to tell him his e-mail had gone viral. "We need to prepare a statement," Ekstrand told him. McFadyen then went to the library and drafted a passionate defense of his actions.
At noon, standing in front of the Duke Chapel, a local television reporter read from the unsealed warrant and the e-mail, without mentioning—or likely knowing about—its reference to American Psycho. After watching the broadcast, Coach Pressler's first instinct was to find McFadyen. "I was worried that they had shown his picture and in the craziness that something could happen to him," he recounted in the book he later co-authored about the case. When Pressler met McFadyen at Ekstrand's office, he recalls that McFadyen was scared. "He started to explain the e-mail," Pressler said, "but I let him know that wasn't important. His well-being was the priority."
Ekstrand turned on the TV and pulled up the stories about McFadyen online. "Things have gotten real serious," Ekstrand told him. "It's probably not safe for you to go back to your dorm, so we're going to keep you at [Stefanie Sparks's] apartment for this afternoon. We'll get you some food. Just hang out there until we figure out what's going on." Ekstrand asked to hear McFadyen's statement about the e-mail. He read it aloud—it was an angry rejoinder—and Ekstrand said, "'No, we're not reading that,'" recalls McFadyen.
McFadyen's hours at Sparks's apartment in Durham were wrenching and chaotic. He spoke with his parents again. "I'm coming down to get you," his father told him, before he flew down to Raleigh. That same day, the dean of students, Sue Wasiolek, informed McFadyen he was being put on interim suspension. "'You didn't do anything wrong,'" McFadyen says she told him. "'It's only temporary.'" At 4:30 P.M. President Brodhead held a press conference to announce the forced resignation of Coach Pressler and the end of the lacrosse season for the Duke team. He also announced McFadyen's suspension.
"April 5, 2006," McFadyen says solemnly. "I wanted to get that tattooed on my body, because that moment has changed my life forever. I think about it every day. I got Coach Pressler fired. I'm responsible for my teammates having the season canceled. I take responsibility. Over a year, over two years, I've told Coach Pressler. He said, 'It's not your fault.' I still get teary thinking about it right now."
Before the day was out, McFadyen had packed up his things and left Duke. In the car, he sat silently while his father considered their options. "Let's get on the horn," John McFadyen told his son. "Let's start getting in touch with other college coaches. Obviously, you're not going to graduate from Duke." Ryan wondered if he could ever go back to Duke and, if he did, what his friends and classmates would think of him. Would he always be "the kid who wrote this completely repulsive e-mail," who "must be a sociopath" and "unstable?" But he was also frustrated. "Nobody ever gave me any opportunity to explain myself," he says. He spent the car ride back home thinking about his father's advice. "We drive through the night. We get home, like, six A.M. the next day."
By the time they arrived back in New Jersey, a horde of television trucks and newspaper photographers were lined up in front of their house. "We pull into the house, walk up, and my three sisters and my mom are all pretty teary-eyed watching the news," McFadyen recalls. "The news anchor was just like, 'What a sick, twisted kid. This kid's parents must really be ashamed,' or something like that. And I'm with my parents, and all my little sisters are there. I just remember it being, like, the heaviest moment of the whole, entire experience. . . . I remember really feeling like I let my parents down and, more importantly, like I somehow affected my sisters."
It would take two months for Duke to sort out what McFadyen had been thinking when he wrote the e-mail and to reinstate McFadyen at the university. He graduated from Duke in 2008 and earned a master's degree in liberal studies from the university in 2010. (His thesis was on Russia's economic system.) But through it all, his e-mail continued to haunt him. He had a difficult time landing a job because a Google search of his name would immediately reveal it. Like many of his teammates, he had hoped to get a job on Wall Street. He got far down the road with a San Francisco–based venture-capital firm, but then his e-mail popped up and that was that. He eventually worked as a junior analyst at W. R. Huff Asset Management, in Morristown, New Jersey, and as an intern at Guerrilla Fitness CrossFit, also in Morristown. Recently, he changed his name to John, like his father's. "I figured, if I could get in front of people—they would look at a résumé and say, 'He's good enough; bring him in'—I can speak to them and they'll see that I'm not what the Internet makes me out to be," he says. "I'm not the kind of monster that a lot of people preconceive me to be." Since April 2012 he has been an associate at Post Road Residential, in Fairfield, Connecticut, a developer of multi-family residential homes started by the father of one of his teammates.
McFadyen explains the context of the notorious e-mail: "It was locker-room talk. It was digital locker-room talk, you know? That e-mail was just one of a lot I had sent that year. I thought of myself as a funnier kid on the team. I made a lot of jokes, and definitely I still do that with some e-mail chains. Obviously now I second-guess everything. . . . I was making a joke, and I happened to make a dark joke referencing a movie about a serial killer who kills strippers and homeless people and prostitutes, and that tied in perfectly to the storyline of the mostly-white team raping a poor black girl from Durham."
He continues: "I've been through a lot. I put most of it behind me, but I don't think anybody can really comprehend, because to really understand what happened to me, how it affected me—I'm still not fully realizing what I've been through six years down the road. There's still things that are coming out that I'm realizing, 'Wow, this is how I live my life now because of what happened in 2006 and the two or three years after that.' . . . I look at things a lot differently than a lot of other people and go about life in similar circumstance, whether it's just personal relationships, professionally, the way I behave in an office, or meeting other people. It's different."


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DES MOINES, Iowa - McCormick International USA has announced more additions to its line of tractors as the company continues to work to meet its goal of joining the ranks of major farm equipment manufacturers for the U.S. market.
The latest McCormick offering is the C-Max Series, a new range of utility tractors that it says meets the requirements of price-conscious acreage and small farm owners. The company has also introduced its entry in the loader market with the McCormick L700, L900 and L1000 series loaders.
"The C-Max Series offers customers a utility tractor that can be customized to their needs," said Chad Huyser, marketing manager for McCormick USA, speaking at a media briefing in Des Moines, Iowa.
"Our dealers are telling us to keep the product simple, and the C-Max Series accomplishes that," he noted. "We've heard dealers for other manufacturers say they have so many options they have no idea what to stock."
Huyser told ag journalists that 2004 has been a very strong year for McCormick, which like other companies has seen sales increases on the heels of last year's sharply higher prices for corn and soybeans.
"As we have said before, we are continuing to build the company on our three pillars – quality products, good dealer support and the 107-year-old heritage behind the McCormick brand," he said. "We are continuing to introduce new products, and this spring we will have even more."
The McCormick brand actually dates back to the early 1800s when Cyrus McCormick developed the first McCormick reaper. McCormick International USA Inc. purchased the McCormick brand name and some of its tractors a few years ago and set about building a new company.
It started with tractors in the 60 to 120-horsepower range and then introduced larger tractors to fit the large farmer market. Now it's going back to mid-size tractors with the C-Max Series to fit that need.
The C-Max Series features five models ranging from 59 to 99 engine horsepower that utilize the latest generation of three- and four-cylinder Perkins 1100-Series engines, according to Huyser. The 3.3L and 4.4L engines not only meet Stage 2 Tier II emission levels, but also run more quietly, reducing bystander noise levels.
The engines feature a cross-flow cylinder head with the intake and exhaust manifolds on opposite sides of the engine to ensure no pre-heating of the inlet air. This results in a combustion process that is more efficient since the inlet air is cooler.
Both the three- and four-cylinder models use a rotary-type fuel injection pump.
"Lower running costs are an additional benefit across the C-Max Series as the Perkins 1100-Series engines promise more economical fuel use," said Huyser. "The new C-Max Series also offers lower maintenance costs by having oil and filter changes at 500-hour, rather than 300-hour, intervals or annually, whichever comes first."
Customers can choose between three transmission options, 12+12, 24+12 with creep and 24+12 with overdrive. All feature a dry-clutch synchronized shuttle to ensure easy operation of directional change.
The shuttle lever incorporates a neutral position, ideal for operations that require periodic pauses. "If the tractor is fitted with either an overdrive or creep transmission, selection is also made using this lever," said Tom Ogle, product manager for McCormick International USA. "Creep speed reduces the standard speeds by 80 percent, allowing travel speeds to go as low as 0.19 miles per hour at rated engine rpm."
The C-Max Series open-center hydraulic system delivers 14 gallons per minute of flow at the standard remote. Customers may choose up to four auxiliary remotes for maximum flexibility. Two individual levers and an optional joystick control operate the valves.
The joystick is dedicated to control two valves and is ideal for operating attachments such as front-end loaders. The C-Max features Category II linkage with mechanical top link hydraulic sensing that provides a maximum lift capacity of 5,292 pounds or up to 8,159 pounds with twin assistor rams.
The new line features a choice of 540- or 1000-rpm PTO with mechanical engagement and an independent multi-plate dry clutch. An interchangeable PTO shaft allows the 6-spline shaft to be replaced quickly by the 21-spline shaft. Ground speed PTO is standard on all models. "Ground speed PTO is useful with PTO-driven spreaders, sprayers and other implements where it is important to keep a proportional PTO to forward speed," said Ogle.
The four-wheel-drive is a simple mechanical engagement to provide additional traction requirements, he notes. A 55-degree steering angle ensures good turning radius of 13 feet when equipped with 4WD.
Working in conjunction with the rear brakes, the C-Max Series also can be equipped with a front-axle IBS system fitted on all the 4WD models as standard. The "Integral Braking System" incorporates four wet disks within the front axle housing. The C-Max Series is also available in a 2WD configuration when 4WD is not required.
The operator platform sits on four "silent bloc" mounting points. Enhancing driver comfort and reducing vibration and noise. A shallow transmission tunnel allows convenient access, while providing a spacious operating environment. A foldable two-post ROPS frame is standard equipment and can also be fitted with a canopy.
A new cab design is available that incorporates rear hinged full-length doors which not only offer excellent visibility, but wide open access. The cab models will feature air conditioning and a well-designed layout with controls in logical, easy-to-reach positions.
McCormick's new line of loaders features nine models designed for the McCormick C, C-Max, CX, MC and MTX tractors. (The C line ranges from 73 to 102 horsepower; C-Max, 58 to 98; CX, 73-102; MC, 90-132; and MTX, 115 to 195.)
"The loaders come with features such as n integrated joystick control, quick-attach mountings and fast-fit attachment couplings to make them convenient and easy to use," says Ogle.
"These loaders have been developed with livestock and acreage owners in mind," he said. "These heavy duty loaders will handle an material-handling job on the farm and can be outfitted with a broad variety of loader attachments."
The L700 series and L1005 loader feature a rugged, non-self-leveling design, while the L900 series and L1000 loader offer a parallel linkage design to automatically keep the bucket level and prevent spillage of loose loads. A standard level indicator gauge helps keep track of the implement's angle in relationship to the ground.
The L1000 series loaders for the McCormick MC and MTX Series tractors feature the patent-pending "Lock and Go" system that allows the operator to simply attach the loader unit to the tractor without leaving the operator's platform. To disconnect the loader, the operator simply pulls out and turns a locking wheel on the loader frame.
All McCormick loaders offer the optional SoftDrive, which reduces the more violent jolts and considerably reduces the stress on the tractor and loader. With SoftDrive, the loader becomes a stabilizing factor and a shock-absorbing counterweight. It also provides even weight distribution when working.
Each model is equipped with a Euro Tool Carrier enabling quick installation of a broad range of loader implements, says Ogle. "Euro brackets are the most common loader linkage in the world. The operator simply hooks the implement top brackets with the tool carrier, rolls the implement completely back, and the release lever is automatically released to secure the implement in place."
Hydraulic latching and release of implements from the operator platform is also an option. Implements for the McCormick loaders include multiple bucket sizes in both standard and high volume styles, two styles of buckets with grapples, bale spike and fork, pallet fork and wrapped bale handling equipment. These implements are specifically designed to work with the loaders and offer Euro-style quick-attach mounts.
The full-strength sub-frame is wider, larger, and stronger to provide all-around strength and stability by placing the linkage between the loader and tractor as far to the rear of the tractor as possible. This helps maintain good weight distribution and guarantees the tractor and loader become a perfect operational unit.
The L700 and L1005 loaders lift 3,300 pounds to 5,500 pounds from the ground, to a maximum lifting height from 138 inches to 157 inches. The L900 and L1000 loaders lift 3,850 pounds to 5,950 pounds from the ground, to a lifting height of 138 inches to 181 inches. All loaders offer the capacity to load feed wagons and high-sided manure spreaders, and to load and unload heavy round bales. Bucket dump angle at maximum height ranges from 48 degrees to 56 degrees; and the roll-back force at a 59-inch lift height ranges from 3,300 pounds to 6,400 pounds.
For more information, click on www.mccormickusa.com.


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Are you "trustable"?
Book Review: Trustworthy isn't enough in the social age
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- Written by Michelle Rogan
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- Comments: DISQUS_COMMENTS
Extreme Trust is an eye opening read, proposing and supporting the premise that only those companies that truly appreciate the customer and have the customer's best interest at heart will thrive well into the future.
Banks, especially community banks, depend on trust to do business. The authors contend that simply being trustworthy, doing the right thing, is not enough. A company must have "trustability."
Defining the new level of trust
Trustability, according to Peppers and Rogers, is defined as "nothing short of 'proactive trustworthiness'." It will no longer be enough for companies to do what they promise to do. They must take service a step further and go out of their way to protect customers from doing something that would not be in their best interest.
For example, on Amazon, if a customer tries to make a purchase of the same item more than once a message will pop up and tell the customer it has been purchased in the past. Imagine being a customer having a company actually look out for your pocketbook, as in this case. The result, a loyal customer.
Another example cited concerns Royal Bank of Canada:
"RBC uses its superior insight to extend automatic overdraft protection (with no fee!) to low-risk customers (that is, most customers). That way, the customer gets a break—and so does the bank; instead of having to pay a service rep to handle a call from a reliable customer who demands the fee be rescinded, the bank choses instead to send a note explaining 'this one's on us' and how to avoid this in the future, reducing their own costs in the process. Rather than incurring costs and resentment, and then netting no fee anyway, the bank saves the costs, builds goodwill, and then nets no fee. During the first ten years after instituting this approach, RBC increased per-customer profitability by 13%."
The banker-reader should be warned that the authors don't spare the industry in their clear dislike of some practices. They also tend to generalize about the banking industry, even when saying that they aren't. However, if you can get past such criticisms—you've read them all before elsewhere, anyhow—Extreme Trust has important lessons to teach bankers.
One such lesson is the authors' contention that while profitability is clearly important, those companies that have embraced trustability will forego higher profits in the short term to secure long-term customer relationships. If a customer is happy they will make referrals and generate more future revenue for the company.
Indeed, the book's first chapter opens with a case study, holding up the insurance and banking company USAA as an example of trustability going back to the 1990s. At that time, the company refunded auto insurance premiums for military members on active duty in the first Persian Gulf War, on its own initiative. The company had reasoned that since they were off serving their country, they couldn't very well be home driving their vehicles.
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"USAA consistently comes out as the most trusted financial services organization in the United States, and customers believe USAA will always do what's right for them..." the authors state.
What's amazing is that over 2,000 customer-members of USAA sent the checks back.
Social platforms can launch bank brands higher
One of the factors that has accelerated this paradigm shift of proactively looking out for the customer has been social media. Anti-customer behavior rises to the surface, to be seen by all, in today's competitive, socialized arena.
Social media forces transparency, the authors point out. It is no longer an option for companies to choose to disclose or let consumers into their business. Social media gives everyone a potential voice, the chance to express an opinion that can make or break a company, with power far beyond old-time word of mouth.
One proactive social media effort cited was Best Buy's 2009 launch of "Twelpforce," a service that responds to customer questions and problems via Twitter. In its first year of operation Twelpforce responded to nearly 30,000 inquiries—which has not only improved customer service but also helped educate and motivate the associates who participated. (Today Twelpforce has more than 47,000 followers.)
Companies that accept the fact that social media and technology are here to stay and make the customer "king" again will likely be successful and trustable in the long run. Peppers and Rogers state, "We're headed for a world in which all our e-mails and phone calls will be as public as Facebook. There will be no more closed-door meetings unless the doors are made of glass. In such a world, no matter what actions we ultimately agree to take, and regardless of how we 'position' ourselves in the media, our intentions are likely to become visible as well. This is the reality of transparency, and it is technologically inevitable."
The mere fact that in literally seconds an unhappy customer can tweet, text, Facebook, etc., how they feel about something has given consumers some of their power back—in spades.
Peppers and Rogers describe the role of empathy and trust in this way: "Normal, empathetic people crave social connection and trust so much that they become upset, irritated, and sometimes outraged when confronted with what they perceive as lack of empathy in others, in the form of unfair or unjust actions."
(Editor's note: Compliance officers will note with interest the advent of this thinking in an age of the new UDAAP, and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that encourages, and maintains public records of, consumer complaints about financial institutions.)
The response to any negative feedback in any social media is imperative and forces companies to let their actions speak as loud as their words.
Parsing the trustability technique
Trustability relates back to three basic principles, according to the authors:
1. Do things right.
2. Do the right thing.
3. Do both of these proactively.
Tying these together, the authors advise that businesses make their actions more transparent, honest, and less self-interested. There are trustability tests at the end of each chapter, which are very helpful in keeping track of a company's progress in trying to achieve trustability.
Such tests include questions pertaining to:
• A company's products and services and how they measure up relative to its competitors.
• How management is responding to social media blasts, particularly negative blasts.
• Whether data about customers is being tracked and analyzed on a regular basis.
• How well a company stays in touch with its customers. Customers like contact and want to be connected.
Moving towards a trustability mindset online
The E-Social world has created a new outlet for companies to reach customers. In order to become seen as trustable, companies need to know how to gain traction in the e-social world. Among the authors' recommendations:
1. Think long term. Building customer relationships take time, commitment, and resources.
2. Share. People want to contribute and share with others. If you want your business to be trustable, then you'll find ways to share, too. Make your company accessible. This will help build trust.
3. Show a "human face." No one is perfect, and this goes double for business. Empathy is a powerful human emotion and if you want to show your human side, it means being able to understand and reveal the truth even if you have been wrong.
So accept your vulnerability. Your business depends upon it.
4. Rely on evidence. Don't ignore judgment and intuition, but pay attention to the numbers and data.
Trustability, transparency, and honesty all go hand in hand in gaining and retaining customers' respect and trust. As children we are taught to be honest, do the right thing, and treat others as we want to be treated—the "Golden Rule." Companies are now expected to do the same and will be held accountable—with consequences.
Extreme Trust is an excellent resource for any type of business and a refreshing read to gain a perspective on how to keep customers for a very long time.
If you'd like to review books for our online book column, or have recently read a book that you found helpful that we haven't already reviewed, please e-mail [email protected]
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Sioux Falls Bans Ticket Scalping, Sort Of
The city council voted to ban ticket scalping in Sioux Falls. But before you get all up in arms about it, keep calm, scalp on.
The ordinance would only ban the resale of tickets above face value within a half mile of the venue. That means you can still sell them outside the venue for face value or less.
The ordinance does nothing to keep you from gouging people on eBay for a hot pair of tickets.
The city didn't even want to do it. The most behind the times organization in the world, the NCAA, will not schedule big events in cities that don't have this minimum statute on the books to prevent scalping. The NCAA obviously has not heard of Stub Hub or the website's massive section devoted to the buying and selling of NCAA basketball tournament tickets.
So Sioux Falls now has a scalping ordinance. Hooray! Now lets get back to the business of enforcing that texting while driving ban. Ha!


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Pope Benedict XVI will place a three-cornered red biretta on the heads of 21 new cardinals on Feb. 18, a traditional gesture in a ceremony that will differ slightly from previous ceremonies. In early January, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, reported, "The rite used up to now has been revised and simplified with the approval of the Holy Father," in part to avoid any impression that becoming a cardinal is a sacrament, like ordination.
At this consistory for the "creation" of cardinals by the pope, red remains the color of the day to remind the new cardinals that they are called to give their lives to God and the church, even to the point of shedding their blood. Tradition and innovation, solemnity and festivity, high honor and a call to sacrifice are key parts of the ritual. The hushed moment when a churchman kneels before the pope and receives his red hat as a cardinal contrasts sharply with the mood later that same evening when the public is allowed to swarm up the Scala Regia—the royal stairway—and into the Apostolic Palace to meet the new cardinals.
Immediately after the new cardinals are created, all the "princes of the church" are scheduled to vote on the canonization of several new saints, including Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai and Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha.
This will be the fourth time Pope Benedict has created new cardinals and will bring his total to 84 cardinals, of whom 79 are still alive; 63 of his appointees in the College of Cardinals will be under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.
According to church law, new cardinals must have been ordained at least to the priesthood and should be ordained bishops before entering the College of Cardinals. In recent decades, however, many of the elderly priests named to the college as a sign of esteem and gratitude for their service to the church have requested and received an exemption from episcopal ordination. In keeping with the Jesuits' promise not to strive for promotion in the church, Karl Josef Becker, S.J., an 83-year-old retired professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, will become a cardinal without first becoming a bishop.
Another small change made to the consistory this year involves timing. The prelates will receive their cardinals' rings from Pope Benedict during the consistory, rather than at a Mass concelebrated with the pope on Feb. 19. And as is customary, during the consistory they also will receive their assignments to a "titular church" in Rome, which makes them formally members of the clergy of the Diocese of Rome, as were the church's first cardinals.
Once the new cardinals are created, the College of Cardinals will have a record-high number of members. The total number of princes of the church will reach 213, surpassing the total of 203 reached with the consistory in 2010. As recently as 2001, the total number of cardinals dipped to 139, just before Pope John Paul II named a record 44 cardinals at once.


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The Wanted Wear Christmas Sweaters, Play With Presents in Esquire Behind-the-Scenes Video
The well-dressed Wanted got into the holiday spirit for their shoot for the January 2013 issue of Esquire. In this behind-the-scenes video, the boys wear stylish Christmas sweaters and cardis -- do such things exist? Uh, yeah they do, only when they the yummy Jay McGuiness, Max George and Co. are wearing them.
The boys hold a turkey, throw brussell sprouts, balance packages and Christmas decorations like gilded reindeer on their heads, wear tinsel and garlands and generally look sexier than a lingerie catalog. The Wanted are hotter than the heat of a thousands blazing suns.
Their falsetto disco song 'I Found You' serves as the soundtrack to Siva Kaneswaran eating a candy cane and mop-haired cutie McGuiness reading a copy of the mag while George hops in the makeup chair to get a touch up. The powder is used to buff off the shine that inevitably happens under the bright lights of photo shoots. Yeah, we know this stuff.
If you've not fallen in love with the Wanted yet, well, this festive video should help do the trick and seal the deal.
Someone needs to broker a peace treaty between the Wanted and their fellow U.K.'ers in One Direction. They've been beefin' a little and we don't like it. PopCrush is up for the job of creating a peace accord. It's a tough gig, but we're professionals and we're qualified!


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What are the Guidelines?
The Guidelines are recommendations addressed by governments to multinational enterprises operating in or from adhering countries (the 34 OECD countries plus 8 non-OECD countries: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Peru and Romania). They provide voluntary principles and standards for responsible business conduct, in a variety of areas including employment and industrial relations, human rights, environment, information disclosure, competition, taxation, and science and technology.
Although many business codes of conduct are now publicly available, the Guidelines are the only multilaterally endorsed and comprehensive code that governments are committed to promoting. The Guidelines' recommendations express the shared values of governments of countries that are the source of most of the world's direct investment flows and home to most multinational enterprises. They aim to promote the positive contributions multinationals can make to economic, environmental and social progress.
The Guidelines have several distinguishing features that helped them gain acceptance and continue to ensure they are supported. First, observance of the Guidelines is voluntary. Their non-binding nature, however, does not imply less commitment by Adhering Governments to encourage their observance. The active system under which the Guidelines are promoted and implemented attests to the importance Adhering countries give the Guidelines.
Also, the Guidelines' basic approach is balanced. The assumption is not that enterprises need to be "controlled" but that internationally agreed guidelines can help prevent misunderstandings and build an atmosphere of mutual confidence and predictability between business, labour and governments. A continuing, pragmatic approach has characterised the Guidelines process and helped make them work.
Although they are addressed to enterprises, the Guidelines need the support of the business community, labour representatives and non-governmental organisations in order to be effective. The countries adhering to the Guidelines will work with all of these actors and there is every reason to believe that constructive collaboration will develop that helps the business community define and achieve appropriate standards of conduct. In addition, the post-Review period is likely to be one of expanding adherence to the Declaration of which the Guidelines is an integral part. Several non-OECD members have already adhered to the Guidelines and others that are willing and able to meet the disciplines in the Declaration would be welcome too.
What is the role of the Guidelines relative to other OECD investment instruments?
The Guidelines are part of a package. They are one part of the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, a broad political commitment adopted by the OECD Governments in 1976 to facilitate direct investment among OECD countries.
The Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises promotes a comprehensive, interlinked and balanced approach for governments' treatment of foreign direct investment and for enterprises' activities in Adhering countries. The OECD instruments on international investment and multinational enterprises are one of the main means by which the OECD assists Adhering countries in working towards a liberal regime for foreign direct investment, while at the same time ensuring MNEs operate in harmony with the countries where they are located.
The Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises comprises four instruments for international cooperation:
How do the Guidelines fit with private initiatives to achieve appropriate of business conduct?
Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are widely accepted as an integral part of the international economy, as agents for beneficial flows of investment capital and managerial and technological know-how, as creators of high quality, well paid jobs, and as an important source of tax revenues. MNEs thus contribute in many ways to promoting progress toward sustainable development.
At the same time, public concerns remain about the social, economic and environmental impacts of their activities. The ability of MNEs to organise their operations beyond national boundaries gives rise to concerns about possible conflicts with national policies and about concentrations of economic and political power. These concerns may have been accentuated by the organisational complexity of some MNEs, which can make it difficult to follow and discern their activities.
Many MNEs have taken steps to respond to these public concerns and to help create an atmosphere of public confidence. They have improved the management controls and practices they use to achieve appropriate standards of business conduct in their day to day operations. Businesses are working with other actors -- especially with unions and non-governmental organisations -- to improve their policies and management and reporting practices in the economic, social and environmental fields. The Guidelines seek to reinforce and to complement these private efforts by providing a common frame of reference and by providing an institutional home for international efforts to encourage progress in these fields.
What is the institutional mechanism for implementing the Guidelines?
The institutional set-up for promoting and implementing the Guidelines is described in the OECD Council Decision and its Procedural Guidance . It consists of three main elements: the list of National Contact Points ; the OECD Investment Committee; and the advisory Committees to the OECD of business and labour federations, the Business and Industry Advisory Committee and the Trade Union Advisory Committee respectively.
For the first time, the 2000 Review extended consultations to other non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The OECD has also committed itself to periodically inviting BIAC, TUAC, and other NGOs to express their views on matters covered by the Guidelines in the future.
What are National Contact Points?
National Contact Points are government offices responsible for encouraging observance of the Guidelines in its national context and for ensuring that the Guidelines are well known and understood by the national business community and by other interested parties. The National Contact Point:
Because of the central role it plays, the effectiveness of the National Contact Point is a crucial factor in determining how influential the Guidelines are in each national context. While it is recognised that governments should be accorded flexibility in the way they organise National Contact Points, it is nevertheless expected that all National Contact Points should function in a visible, accessible, transparent and accountable manner. These four criteria should guide National Contact Points in carrying out their activities. The recently concluded review has enhanced the accountability of National Contact Points by calling for annual reports of their activity, which will serve as a basis for exchanges of view on the functioning of the National Contact Points among the adhering governments.
The list of National Contact Points is updated regularly on this site.
What is the Investment Committee?
The OECD Investment Committee, comprising all OECD member countries and observers, is the OECD body responsible for overseeing the functioning of the Guidelines and it is expected to take steps to enhance their effectiveness. This responsibility applies not only to the Guidelines but to all the elements of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. Regarding the Guidelines, its responsibilities include:
The non-binding nature of the Guidelines precludes the Committee from acting as a judicial or quasi-judicial body. Nor should the findings or statements made by a National Contact Point (other than interpretations of the Guidelines) be questioned through a referral to the Committee.
What role do business, labour and civil society representatives play?
As the Guidelines are addressed to enterprises, business, labour and civil society input is especially important. The Investment Committee regularly consults with the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) and OECD Watch, an international network of civil society organisations, on matters relating to the Guidelines and on other issues concerning international investment and multinational enterprises.
BIAC, TUAC and OECD Watch may request consultations with the National Contact Points on issues related to the Guidelines. They can also raise such issues directly with the Investment Committee. In addition, they are responsible for informing their member federations about developments in the Guidelines and for seeking their members' inputs in Guidelines implementation procedures. They may also participate in promotional activities organised by the National Contact Points or by the Committee on a national, regional or multilateral basis.
In addition, they actively participate in various other OECD activities on foreign direct investment, and comment on papers and studies on foreign direct investment, as well as participate in other OECD programmes of interest to them.
What part do non-governmental organisations play?
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were first involved in the Guidelines process on the occasion of the 2000 Review of the Guidelines. As provided in the Procedural Guidance of the Council Decision on the Guidelines, NGOs may request consultations with the National Contact Points on issues related to the Guidelines. They may also participate in promotional activities organised by the National Contact Points or by the Committee on a national, regional or multilateral basis.
How are the Guidelines implemented?
The OECD Council Decision and Procedural Guidance describe the various manners by which the governments of Adhering countries have agreed to promote the implementation of the Guidelines by enterprises operating in or from their territory.
How are information and promotion carried out?
Although the Investment Committee itself may organise promotional activities like symposiums, seminars or other conference, information and promotion of the Guidelines is essentially the role of National Contact Points. The National Contact Points' functions associated with information and promotion are fundamentally important to enhancing the profile of the Guidelines.
National Contact Points are required to make the Guidelines better known and available by appropriate means, including in national languages. Online information may be a cost-effective means of doing this. English and French language versions will be available from the OECD, and website links to the OECD Guidelines website are encouraged. As appropriate, National Contact Points will also provide prospective investors, both inward and outward, with information about the Guidelines. In their efforts to raise awareness of the Guidelines, National Contact Points will co-operate with a wide variety of organisations and individuals, including, as appropriate, the business community, employee organisations, other non-governmental organisations, and the interested public.
How are the Guidelines implemented in specific instances?
When issues arise concerning implementation of the Guidelines in relation to specific instances of business conduct, the National Contact Point is expected to help resolve them. Generally, issues are dealt with by the National Contact Point in whose country the issue has arisen, but further contacts at the bilateral level may be pursued between National Contact Points in adhering countries.
After making an initial assessment of whether the issues raised merit further examination, the National Contact Point will offer its good offices to help the parties involved to resolve the issues. Where no agreement can be reached on the issues raised, the National Contact Point will then issue a statement or make recommendations as appropriate.
Any person or organisation may approach a National Contact Point to enquire about a matter related to the Guidelines.
What are "clarifications"?
As the Guidelines are drafted in general terms, so as to apply in all adhering countries with their diversity of legal systems and practices, "clarifications" of the meaning of the Guidelines may be necessary in specific circumstances. The purpose of the clarification is to provide additional information about whether and how the Guidelines apply to a particular business situation. Although clarifications may arise in connection with the activities of a specific enterprise, they are not intended to assess the appropriateness of that enterprise's conduct.
The Guidelines clarification procedure works as follows. If a party is uncertain about the Guidelines' applicability in a particular context, that party should approach the National Contact Point. Enterprises, business and labour organisations and any other interested party may raise such issues. If an enterprise is directly concerned, then the National Contact Point should contact the enterprise to inform it that an issue related to the Guidelines has been raised. The National Contact Point, business and labour representatives and other interested parties then try to clarify the matter. It might be appropriate for the National Contact Point to contact other National Contact Points if the issue under consideration concerns more than one adhering country.
Whenever a National Contact Point gives its opinion as to the relevance of the Guidelines in specific instances, it keeps in mind the international character of the Guidelines and the need to avoid conflicting national interpretations. Where there is any doubt or where there are divergent views, the matter should be brought to the attention of the Investment Committee before the NCP gives a final answer. Final responsibility for clarifications lies with the Committee , but it relies on the National Contact Points to assume as much as possible of the task of ensuring that the meaning of the Guidelines is clear in each national context.
A request for clarification may be referred to the Committee by government authorities or by TUAC or BIAC. The Committee discusses the matter, and consults with BIAC and TUAC. If an enterprise is directly concerned, it also may express its view to the Committee orally or in writing or through BIAC. After these deliberations, the Committee may provide a clarification of how the Guidelines apply in a situation like the one in question. However, the Committee's examination of the need for, and eventual provision of a clarification concerns the application of the Guidelines to the issue raised. The clarification is not a judgement on the behaviour of an individual enterprise -- hence, clarifications that arise in connection with individual firms do not refer to them by name.
Download the clarifications .
What is the situation in non-adhering countries?
The 2000 Review of the Guidelines recommends observance of the Guidelines by enterprises wherever they operate, and not only in the OECD area. Hence, the Council Decision and Procedural Guidance also provide for implementation of the Guidelines in non-Adhering countries.
For instance, with regard to information and promotion, National Contact Points are expected to respond to enquiries from governments of non-Adhering countries.
In the case of specific instances arising in non-Adhering countries, the 2000 Review recognises that effective implementation of the Guidelines in such circumstances may be more difficult. Nonetheless, National Contact Points are encouraged to take steps in order to develop an understanding of the issues at stake, for instance through contacts with the management of the firm in the home country or with government officials in the non-Adhering country.
What was the importance of the 2000 Review of the Guidelines?
In undertaking the Review, the OECD responded to the need for a thorough consideration of the Guidelines so as to ensure their continued relevance and effectiveness in the rapidly changing global economy. New issues have gained prominence since the Guidelines were first issued in 1976 and the international consensus on appropriate business conduct is evolving rapidly, spurred in no small part by the efforts of multinational firms to define standards for themselves.
Public concerns about the impact of deepening globalisation on home and host societies meant that the 2000 Review was conducted in a context of growing interest and visibility. The Review benefited from consultations with the business community, labour representatives, non-governmental organisations and non-member governments. Postings of the draft text on the Internet and solicitation of public comment further increased the transparency and openness of the Review process. These sources all provided essential inputs to the development of the revised recommendations and procedures to enhance implementation.
While recognising the value of stability in the text and implementation procedures, the Investment Committee responded to the need for a thorough consideration of the Guidelines so as to ensure their continued relevance and effectiveness in light of the changing needs of the global economy. Many features of the Guidelines were maintained -- observance by firms is still voluntary; the institutional structure of the follow-up procedures is broadly unchanged; and the Guidelines remain an integral part of the OECD Declaration.
What changed in the text?
In comparison with earlier reviews (1979, a "mid-term review" in 1982, 1984 and 1991), the changes to the text are far-reaching and reinforce the core elements - economic, social and environmental-of the sustainable development agenda.
With the addition of recommendations relating to the elimination of child and forced labour, all internationally recognised fundamental principles and rights at work are now covered by the Guidelines.
The environment section now encourages enterprises to raise their environmental performance, through such measures as improved internal environmental management, stronger disclosure of environmental information, and better contingency planning for environmental impacts.
A recommendation on human rights has been introduced. New chapters on combating corruption and on consumer interests have also been added. The chapter on disclosure and transparency has been updated to reflect the OECD Principles on Corporate Governance and to recognise and encourage progress in enhancing firms' social and environmental accountability.
What changed regarding the implementation?
The revisions to the implementation procedures maintain the focus on the National Contact Points, as the key government institution responsible for furthering effective implementation of the Guidelines. The National Contact Points will continue to undertake promotional activities, handle enquiries on the Guidelines, and discuss matters covered by them, including implementation in specific instances. However, the Review provides more guidance to National Contact Points in fulfilling their role. The main revisions are:
The Review also clarified the Committee's broad oversight role. The Committee will continue to provide clarifications of the meaning of the Guidelines, as necessary, in specific instances and in response to requests or queries from Adhering Governments, BIAC or TUAC. It will serve as a forum for addressing all matters covered by the Guidelines and will oversee their implementation. The new Procedural Guidance attached to the Council Decision also provides guidance for exchanges of views on the activities of National Contact Points and for calling on experts to assist in any matter covered by the Guidelines.
Finally, with regard to non-adhering countries, the revised Guidelines make clear that the recommendations represent good practice wherever enterprises operate, not just within the OECD area. The Review recognises, however, that the particular circumstances of individual host countries need to be taken into account and that the implementation procedures need to be adapted to the greater difficulties that arise for National Contact Points when looking into matters covered by the Guidelines in non-adhering countries.
Related Documents


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We're going to veer a little off topic from our usual Sunday chatter about men's fashion - with the news that you must get yourself to the theater . . . if only to see the intoxicating new Joe Wright film Anna Karenina.
Keira Knightly has never been more radiant . . . and more spectacularly beautiful . . . as the tragic heroine of Russian literature in this tale of aristocracy and infidelity . And the costumes from Jacqueline Durran are amazing. Though based on period details, many of the ensembles in the film could easily walk down the runway of any current couture designer.
Take a quick peak at the trailer . . .
I'll get the popcorn. And you get some M&M's . . . and we can meet in the back row.


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Codice Software has announced that the newest Plastic SCM release (3.0.13) now includes a feature for method-based history.
Using the software configuration management tool, you can now select a method within Visual Studio, right click to show the context menu, and select "method history." Plastic SCM will go through the file history and analyze the evolution of that specific method.
According to the official Plastic SCM blog, "We have the impression that 95% of the time that you go through a file's history, the reason is to check a specific method. That's why we came up with this new feature. In fact "method history" is one of those things we've always wanted to implement, but of course we had to cover the SCM basics first. But, finally, it is here ... 'Method history' is our first step into a 'programming language aware SCM': a path we will be walking during the next months. We have a bunch of ideas to combine the 'method history' parsing technology with XDiff and XMerge, to come up with a new line of Plastic SCM functionality in 2011."