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Real estate activity revives, but full recovery elusive, IPD conference hears
Pockets of the real estate sector are reviving but there is still a long way to go to regain pre-crisis highs, according to asset experts at the latest annual IPD conference.
Pockets of the real estate sector are reviving but there is still a long way to go to regain pre-crisis highs, according to asset experts at the latest annual IPD conference.
IPD's annual event addressed the question of a "new paradigm" for the real estate sector, an acknowledgement that a full return to the heady days before the global financial crisis is unlikely. Opportunities for domestic and global investors are available, but extreme care and rigour are required to avoid remaining hazards.
Thierry Malleret, founder of the IPD Monthly Barometer, told the forum that the future of the real estate sector will be defined by four forces: Interdependence, complexity, velocity and transparency. The volatile combination of these factors will result in confusion, weak signals, asymmetry and a global governance vacuum.
He identified six global mega-trends set to change the economic landscape: Unfavourable demographics, Resource scarcity, Climate change, Geopolitical rebalancing, Indebtedness and fiscal issues and Rising inequalities. In the current market, risks and adverse shocks are contagious, he warned. Changes tend to happen dramatically, not gradually, and risks spread very fast, with small causes sometimes producing major effects.
Investors face the challenge of balancing risk appetite with a search for certainty. Most risks cannot be priced, but tail risks - the one-off, unknown events that can derail planning and projections - are increasingly relevant, he noted. Markets are being driven by sentiment and liquidity, rather than fundamentals, and very few investors have strong macro convictions.
The implications are that as in other sectors, there will be both fragmentation and polarisation, resulting in a "winner-takes-all" result. The cities and locations set to thrive are those which combine diversity and connectivity with a "holistic" security (physical, environmental etc.).
For investors able to sacrifice liquidity, the current environment offers great opportunities with respect to direct investment. Malleret calls for investors to be prudent, humble, aware of cognitive biases and imaginative. Success will depend on acting quickly and decisively, and "combining trust with discernment", he said.
Roger Urwin, global head of investment content at Towers Watson, told the conference real estate is supported by a "reach for return" environment, but is "challenged by the opacity of its value proposition". Its structures are improving, but many are "still clunky and poorly integrated with the mainstream investment world" and must respond to changing investment models and more demanding investment governance.


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(Reuters) - The following are key events in General Motor's history, including major deals and alliances by the No. 1 U.S. automaker.
1908 - GM founded in Flint, Michigan.
1919 - GM creates captive finance arm, GMAC.
1929 - GM buys 80 percent stake in European Adam Opel AG.
1937 - After a bitter strike, GM recognizes the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the bargaining representative for its hourly workers.
1971 - GM buys 34.2 percent of Isuzu Motors Ltd. GM raises stake to 49 percent in 1998 and later sells it.
1981 - GM buys about 5 percent of Suzuki Motor Corp. It raises the stake to 20 percent in 2000 and later sells all but 3 percent.
1981 - GM and Toyota Motor Corp form a joint venture, known as NUMMI, to build cars in Fremont, California.
1986 - GM acquires British sports car maker Lotus. It sold Lotus in 1993.
1990 - GM buys a 50-percent stake in Sweden's Saab and purchases the remaining half a decade later.
1990 - GM launches Saturn.
1998 - A 56-day strike at GM's Flint stamping operations shuts all of GM's North American assembly plants.
1999 - GM buys 20 percent of Subaru-maker Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. GM later sells all of the stake.
1999 - GM spins off parts maker Delphi Corp. Delphi's U.S. operations enter Chapter 11 reorganization in 2005, where they remain.
2000 - GM decides to kill the Oldsmobile brand.
2000 - GM buys 20 pct of Italy's automaker Fiat for $2.4 bln in GM stock. The deal includes a "put" option that gives Fiat SpA the right to force GM to buy the remainder of the Italian automaker.
2002 - GM signs deal to buy most of Daewoo Motor Co.
2005 - GM pays $2 billion to Fiat to cancel "put" option under its deal and buy its way out of the alliance.
2007 - GM signs deal with the UAW, which includes shifting GM's retiree health care liabilities to an independent trust.
June 2008 - GM puts Hummer brand on review, ahead of a possible sale.
July 2008 - GM announces plans to cut costs by $10 billion and raise $5 billion through borrowing and asset sales.
Sept 2008 - GM and Chrysler holds talks to combine companies. GM sets aside talks in November to focus on preserving cash.
Nov 2008 - GM warns its liquidity will fall short of the minimum needed to run its business by the first half of 2009.
Dec 2, 2008 - GM seeks U.S. government aid of up to $18 billion.
Dec 19, 2008 - GM and Chrysler granted $17.4 billion in government loans.
Jan 21, 2009 - Toyota Motor Corp surpasses GM as the world's largest automaker for the first time.
Feb 5, 2009 - GM announces plan to slash its global salaried workforce by about 10,000, or 14 percent, and cut the pay of most remaining white collar U.S. workers.
Feb 17, 2009 - GM raises U.S. funding request to a total of $30 billion, announces plans to cut global workforce by 47,000 and close five U.S. plants by 2012.
Feb 26, 2009 - GM posts 2008 loss of $30.9 billion.
March 5, 2009 - GM's auditors raise "substantial doubt" about its ability to survive outside bankruptcy.
March 30, 2009 - GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner ousted by U.S. government, replaced by Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson. Company given 60 days to develop new restructuring plan.
April 17, 2009 - GM says readying detailed plans for bankruptcy filing as it races to complete a business plan under federal oversight.
April 22, 2009 - GM says unlikely to make a $1 billion debt payment due June 1.
April 27, 2009 - GM offers final plan to reorganize outside bankruptcy by slashing bond debt, cutting over 21,000 more U.S. jobs and emerging as a nationalized automaker. GM warns it would file for bankruptcy if an offer to exchange bonds for company equity failed to cut $27 billion in debt by about 90 percent of bondholders.
May 5, 2009 - GM details plans to all but wipe out the holdings of remaining shareholders by issuing up to 60 billion new shares in a bid to pay off debt to the U.S. government, bondholders and the UAW.
May 7, 2009 - GM posts a first-quarter net loss of $6 billion and a cash burn of $10.2 billion.
May 15, 2009 - GM announces plans to drop 1,100 of its smaller, less-profitable dealerships.
May 21, 2009 - GM announces a new cost-saving labor agreement with the UAW, under which UAW-aligned healthcare trust will receive half of the $20 billion debt GM owes the fund in the form of stock and new debt, instead of cash.
May 22, 2009 - GM borrows another $4 billion from the U.S. Treasury and reaches deal with Canadian auto workers.
May 27, 2009 - GM's offer to exchange $27 billion in bond debt for a 10 percent stake in a reorganized company fails.
May 28, 2009 - GM and the U.S. Treasury make new equity exchange offer under which bondholders would be offered 10 percent of a reorganized company and given warrants to purchase another 15 percent.
* GM reveals it may file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 and pursue a sale under Section 363(b) and the automaker would be split into two companies: Old GM and New GM.
* The common equity of New GM would be: 72.5 percent to the U.S. Treasury, 17.5 percent to New VEBA, 10 percent to Old GM.
Reporting by Soyoung Kim, additional reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Andre Grenon

subset: commoncrawl


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Who'd be a World Press Photo winner? Or even a juror? In recent times it's become something of a tradition to attack both the winning photo and the contest: this year did not disappoint.
Martijn Kleppe has an excellent and growing collection of links to various articles on this year's WPP results; two that have gained considerable attention are hit pieces by Joerg Colberg at Conscientious, and James Johnson at Politics, Theory & Photography. It's worth noting that neither Colberg nor Johnson are press photographers: the former is an astrophysicist, fine art photography curator and writer, the latter a professor of political theory at the University of Rochester. Nor does either claim any special knowledge of Islam and the Arab world. So while Colberg and Johnson are entitled to their opinions, they don't appear to possess any specialist skills or insights that render those opinions particularly valuable.
The heart of their objections is the apparent resemblance of Samuel Aranda's winning photo to the Christian imagery of the Pietà, most famously by Michelangelo. Almost inevitably, this resemblance has led some to claim that Aranda faked the photo: the most extreme version of this is the theory that the whole thing was a put-up job by American imperialists.
Fortunately neither Colberg nor Johnson go quite that far. Rather, they argue that it was wrong to award a photograph that appears to reference – even inadvertently – Christian iconography; that in doing so WPP reveals its own inherent bias; and that the award also serves to obscure the political background to the image. Here's a taste:
Joerg Colberg:
"If you have followed the news over the past decade even just tangentially, you might realize that using a visual language that could not be more Christian to depict an event in a Muslim country might pose a problem."
James Johnson:
"Not only does it reduce politics to the personal, it does that by assimilating the stereotypical burka-clad woman to deeply Christian iconography. We don't even get universal humanism here. We here in the west are encouraged not to appreciate the realities and particularities of another world. Instead we are encouraged to see others as essentially just like 'we Christians.' Aranda's image – presented as the 'photo of the year' – seem to me to divert understanding, to make it more difficult."
The problem with these criticisms and others is that they're not really so much about Aranda's photo as the authors' own underlying prejudices and obsessions. But this year there was a twist to the criticisms. No sooner had Western political theorists and academics finished complaining about the blinkered Western nature of World Press Photo than another group of commentators emerged: people from the actual country where the photo has been taken, and most crucially, the two people in the photo. And those people all offer a rather different assessment of both the photo and the jury's decision:
Nadia Abdulla, Yemeni photographer:
"We feel proud of this photo because it is very important for the world to have a new impression of Yemen. The foreign media has been presenting Yemenis as terrorists but this is the first time Yemen's beautiful and expressive side has been shown."
Afrah Nasser, a Yemeni blogger:
"It sums up what the Yemeni nation and the rest of Arab [and non-Arab] revolutionary nations have gone through in pursuit of democracy and freedom."
Zayed Al-Qawas, the 18 year old man in the photo, who had been tear-gassed by government forces:
"It is a real support to the revolution. It demonstrates that Yemenis are not extremists. The picture explains everything. The picture really explains the love of the mother, and the wounded son, and what happened on that day in Yemen."
Fatima Al-Qawas, Zayed's mother, seen holding him in the photo:
"It makes me very happy to see this picture, to see also that it has won such a prestigious award. It makes me happy and very proud: proud for being a woman, proud for being a mother, and also for being a Yemeni woman. I'm very proud that this photo is going around the world and many people have seen it and will continue seeing it. And especially it makes me even happier because it's Western people who have chosen that picture for the award."
So what was the problem with the photo again?
The Shop Till You Drop Award [sponsored by Adobe]
The Robotog Award For Photography And The Law
The Uncle Bob Award For Wedding Photography
The Susan Sontag Award For Writing On Photography
Photo Caption Of The Year
The Enron Award For Business Management
Quote Of The Year
Photo Product Of The Year
The Remix Award For Plagiarism
Grand Prix de Folie Photographie
The most talked about photo from last week – and indeed for some time – was Richard Lam's riot kiss in Vancouver. Naturally many wannabe image experts made fools of themselves by instantly branding the picture a fake. Esquire went to the opposite extreme, declaring it not just the best photo of the night, but "maybe of all time". Ten reasons why they're wrong:
1. Digital Photography Review Expert Analysis™ identifies multiple technical failures: burned-out highlights, incorrect white balance and poor composition.
2. The photographer neglected to use the World Press Photo recommended formula: convert to b/w, burn down 2 stops, add 100% contrast, run Tunnel Vision™ vignette plug-in, re-crop with 20 degree angle and constrain to wrap.
3. The image clearly fails Alamy's industry standard quality control: "contains excessive noise, and soft or lacking definition".
4. Shot by a photographer in his own town, the image fails the photojournalism travel test. Greatest-ever photos are invariably taken far from home, most often in Africa, the Middle East or Haiti. Never in Canada.
5. Not shot on a leicaPhone, the classic camera for all serious reportage.
6. No use of Hipstamatic, HDR or tone mapping: the image relies solely on content and sorely lacks post-processing gimmickry.
7. Not copied from Google Street View.
8. Ignores many of photography's most basic tenets, including the vital rule of thirds, all of which are freely available on the Internet. Additionally displays shockingly poor bokeh.
9. Fails the flickr content test: image contains no sunsets or kittens.
10. It's not even the best riot kiss photo ever.
It used to be you won an award and people would say nice things, at least to your face; now it's an excuse for a mob to take to the Internet and vilify you. In the week since Jodi Bieber's portrait of Bibi Aisha, a young Afghan woman disfigured by her family – who may or may not have been members of the Taliban – arguments have raged over World Press Photo's decision to award their premier prize to the image.
Of course there's always an argument about the WPP winner: what made this different was that it was not the usual "wrong choice" wrangle. Instead the controversy had its roots in Time Magazine's previous use of the image to support the US military presence in Afghanistan. WPP had judged the image, but Bieber's critics were focused on the use of that image and her part in its use: as a result discussion rapidly descended into a de facto personal attack on Bieber.
The debate's current terms of engagement were set in World Press Or Propaganda?, a post by Ben Chesterton at DuckRabbit:
1: Jodi Bieber won the World Press Award for an important and eloquent photograph that has done much to highlight the abuse of women and their resilience in the face of unspeakable barbarism.
2: The photograph that won the World Press was used as propaganda that helps justify the billions of pounds of profit made from war. Bieber is not to blame for this and this should not be a consideration in the jury's mind.
3: The photograph that won the World Press was used as propaganda that helps justify the billions of pounds of profit made from war. Bieber is complicit in the way the image of Aisha has been (ab)used.
If the answer is 1 then we should all be celebrating the award going to Bieber but if it is 2 or 3 then we should be worried.
Logically the World Press jury would opt for 1 or 2; indeed it's a reasonable assumption that most well informed people would. What drove the DuckRabbit discussion off the rails was that pretty much everyone went for option 3.
The thinking employed was simple in every respect. Bieber photographed Aisha; Time used the Bieber photo for propagandistic war mongering; therefore Bieber is a warmonger. The clincher, so far as the accusers were concerned, is that Bieber has the Time cover on her website; it didn't seem to occur to them that it would be a very rare photographer indeed – show of hands anyone? – that made a Time cover and didn't display it in such a way.
The other elementary fact of life that posters seemed unaware of is that neither Time, nor any other publication, gives freelance photographers the power of veto over cover headlines. You deliver the images and…that's it. You have no further control over the production process. You may not like that. You may think it's wrong. But none of that matters: that's just the way it works. Ironically, at the same time that people were attacking Bieber on DuckRabbit, David Campbell was making this very point with an earlier quote from Bieber herself:
'What Campbell said about our lack of control was quite obvious and very true. As soon as you hand over your work its not yours anymore.' This means when Bieber's portrait of Aisha appeared on the 9 August 2010 cover of Time, with the headline 'What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan,' its form was beyond her control.
Bieber – probably sensibly – has remained silent, but eventually photographer Maggie Steber intervened at DuckRabbit with some common-sense home truths. Steber's cry of witch-hunt was pretty much on the mark, but she could have selected a better target than DuckRabbit. A more appropriate choice might have been Bieber's chief vilifier Jim Johnson, who describes himself as "a political theorist with neither experience as, nor any real aspiration to be, a photographer." That's a useful confession since it at least tells us upfront that when it comes to photojournalism Johnson doesn't know what he's talking about.
Ignorance however hasn't prevented Johnson developing something of an obsession with the Bieber/Aisha photo: in the little over 6 months since the Time cover he's churned out no less than four lengthy blog posts of several thousand words on the subject. Along the way he's made some interesting discoveries: like if the text accompanying a photograph is changed [see above] then the viewer's perception of the photograph's meaning is also changed. Thanks for that Jim: photographers would never have guessed.
Many of the concerns expressed at DuckRabbit were valid, but the subject of people's ire should have been the Time editors, not the photographer; and using Bieber as target practice to express those concerns was simply cowardly. As for Johnson, on his Facebook page he describes his political views as "extreme and more or less unforgiving". Just like the Taliban then.
Another World Press Photo contest, another World Press Photo controversy. It's become a tradition for WPP jury decisions to come under attack within minutes of the awards announcement. Past rows have included the veracity of certain images, a perceived bias toward death and destruction, and the question of whether the contest itself retains any relevance in a rapidly changing media landscape.
But this year the jury raised the controversy bar – or lowered it, depending on one's point of view – with an Honorable Mention in the Contemporary Issues section to Michael Wolf's A Series Of Unfortunate Events. The award, for a series of screenshots from Google Street View, is such a shining example of imperial wardrobe malfunction that it's tempting to simply point and laugh at the naked jurors. "Unf*cking believable", "are you joking?" and "I'm putting my money on traffic cameras next year" were among the immediate reactions from photographers.
In an interview with Wolf the British Journal of Photography asked: "is Google Street View photojournalism?" The answer is so obvious that the question is barely worth putting: entirely lacking even the basic who, what, where, when or why, the series comprehensively fails every journalistic standard. And despite Wolf's insistence that the images are not screenshots but real photographs, he is only correct in the most banal and literal sense: to paraphrase Cartier-Bresson, they are simply what comes out of a camera when a camera works.
None of which makes ASOUE worthless. Viewed as art the series may be successful, although arguably they would be more so if Wolf had staged photographs and then passed them off as genuine Google Street View images. It's notable that Wolf has not regarded himself as a photojournalist for some years now, and supporters of the jury decision tend to take the world of art, rather than journalism, as their reference point in the debate.
So what were the images doing in a photojournalism contest? Wolf describes his decision to enter the set as a provocation; a better interpretation would be that he was having a laugh. To be effective such provocations need a punter mug enough to take the bait, and the WPP jury duly obliged. A cynic might speculate that the jury decision is nothing more than a publicity wheeze to make WPP appear edgy and relevant. A more likely explanation is that faced with ASOUE the jury simply forgot photojournalism's most basic functions, such as to inform and enlighten; not to mention the fact that photojournalists generally create new images, rather than simply curate – Wolf's own description – images that already exist.
Wolf has characterised the jury decision as progressive, but he would say that. A more accurate assessment would be "destructive", since the decision is bound only to undermine WPP's credibility as a standard-bearer for photojournalism. Whether that matters outside the arcane world of photo contests is open to question, but WPP may want to refer future juries to their mission statement before judging begins. Alternatively they could learn from the admission requirements at Visa Pour L'Image: "We are an international festival of photojournalism focusing on news and current affairs. Please, NO art photography."


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Sunday, August 7, 2011
eBay Math Problem
Image Source: http://topnews.net.nz
A friend recently asked me how to set up a "Buy it Now" price for an item on eBay, so that they would not lose any money selling the item.
They did not care if they made any money on the sale, they just wanted to unload their unwanted item without incurring a loss.
Here is their original question:
"Okay Mathematics Brainiac - Here is a real life example of why we should pay attention to our maths teachers at school.......
I have something I want to sell on ebay but am not looking to make a profit (or a loss!). The item cost me $117.79, and ebay charge a flat-rate "insertion fee" of $2.50 and also a "final value fee" (based on the closing price) which is 5.25% of the first $75 and 2.75% for every dollar over $75. I have run this so many times and keep getting the incorrect answer.... it's the rolling "final value fee" that's getting me. Any help would be greatly appreciated!"
Here is how to work it out.
To make zero profit, Sell Price = Cost of Selling Price
Let d = the missing dollar amount of mark up that we need to determine.
Sell Price = 117.79 + 2.50 + (5.25% of 75) + d
SP = 124.23 + d
Cost Price = 124.23 + (2.75% of (124.23 + d - 75)
Cost Price = 124.23 + 0.0275x49.3 + 0.0275d
CP = 125.59 + 0.0275d
Now set SP = CP for zero profit and solve:
124.23 + d = 125.59 + 0.0275d (Now subtract 0.0275d both sides)
0.9725d = 125.59 - 124.23
0.9725d = 1.36 (Now divide by 0.9725 both sides)
d = $1.40
So SP = 124.23 + d (Now substitute in our answer for d)
Check this Answer:
The Original 117.79 should be left when we take away all the charges
125.63 - 2.50 - (5.25% of 75) - (2.75% of (125.63 - 75) = $117.80
So due to rounding off errors introduced while doing this problem, there will be a 1 cent profit.
If we try to sell for 125.62 we will have:
125.62 - 2.50 - (5.25% of 75) - (2.75% of (125.63 - 75) = $117.79.
$117.79 is how much the item cost, and so the cost of buying the item will be recovered and no loss incurred.
We did do some Googling to see if we could find an Online Calculator that could work all of this out in a computer program, but could not find anything useful.
So there you go. There is not always on Online Calculator for everything. Learning High School Algebra can be useful in later life!
Big Passy Wasabi
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Science communication
- The Open Notebook, a science-journalism-focused site described as a "non-profit organization that provides unique tools and resources to help science journalists at all experience levels hone their craft", is introducing a series of short videos featuring prominent science writers giving advice. First up is the esteemed Deborah Blum. Watch the video: the point she makes about being able to distill things down to a sentence is a good one. It extends beyond journalism, too--can you sum up your one-hour research seminar in a sentence? How about your journal club article?
- Physics professor and blogger Chad Orzel has some recommendations about science blogging. First and foremost: enjoy it.
- Illustrator Glendon Mellow points out some ineffective or just plain bad uses of imagery in pro-vaccination science communication. He uses this as a case study of why science communicators need to be mindful of the images they use and why using illustrations/photos can be beneficial to reaching an audience.
- Maryn McKenna brings some results from ScienceOnline to the internet, discussing what science writers can learn from genre novels.
Denialism, chemophobia, and fraud
- Last week I included a link to a chemophobic, medically-related New York Times piece accompanied by a commentary/analysis by Michelle Francl at The Culture of Chemistry. This week, Francl has taken her argument to Slate magazine with an excellent, pointed piece. The second page, especially, contains an effective argument against blind naturophilia.
- At Forbes, Emily Willingham provides recommendations for fighting denialism via a social-networking, almost grassroots approach. She also recommends not calling denialism "denialism". I think her points are good, and I would suspect they are empirically more effective than a Dawkins-style mind-clubbing.
- Derek Lowe points out a frightening example of a post at Retraction Watch being taken down after a fraudulent DMCA notice was filed against the blog. This kind of thing is a threat to scientific integrity and is illustrative of how 'reputation companies' and others can stifle important communication.
Chemical education & academia
- Glen Ernst writes skeptically of the concept of a "10K BA" (i.e. radically cheap, cost-effective degree) in the context of undergraduate chemical education. It's hard to imagine being able to support effective lab facilities for that amount.
- Educators: Don't miss grad-student and educational specialist Michael Evans' thoughtful and thorough chemical education roundup.
- At Fragments of Truth, we find a tongue-in-cheek 'story' proposing "erase undesirable data" coupons in order to accelerate PhD student publication and graduation.
- Kate Clancy and Chris Chambers provide a response to "pseudoscience and stereotyping" in regards to how to increase involvement of girls in science. At Brain Flapping, Dean Burnett provides a parody of stereotypes with some amusing "recommendations" for making boys more interested in science.
- From C&EN comes news that the director of the NSF, Subra Suresh, has stepped down to accept a job as the president of Carnegie Mellon University.
Public policy
- The abundance of over-used or inappropriatedly-used antibiotics in agriculture is an important topic for public health. This brief piece in Wired, with accompanying infographics, shows that the problem is indeed bad. Some highlights: 80% of antibiotic use in the US is for livestock; also, Salmonella isolates from poultry are increasingly showing multidrug resistance. The piece also questions the efficacy of the FDA's policy of "voluntary" antibiotic regulation/reporting.
- Scot Huler points out that North Carolina's new leader of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources is a climate-change denier who considers oil to be a renewable resource.
- A little feature by Colorado State University explores the role one faculty member, an expert in plant-pathogen intereactions, is playing in biosecurity and public policy. It's a cool example to illustrate the importance of "beyond-the-lab" science impact.
- The American Institute of Physics (AIP) provides a summary of a the first House Science Committee meeting of this Congressional term. It seems favorable; topics of discussion included how to increase numbers in STEM education (including improving K-12 STEM education), how to maintain R&D tax credits for businesses, and how to improve immigration policies to retain international STEM graduates. The chemistry job market was absent.
- B.R.S.M. points out an interesting paper that is decidedly not gluten-free.
- At ChemBark, Paul (and commenters) point out some highly-cited chemistry papers, comparing the Sanger sequencing paper to KCN's entire career. There's a 1.4:1 ratio of citations in that case, which isn't really fair: Sanger sequencing is at least one or two orders of magnitude more important than KCN's career.
- Chemjobber describes a (somewhat) large-scale industrial use of C-H activation. This area of chemistry is the basis of many high-profile academic groups, so it's nice to see examples adopted in what some would call the 'real world'.
- See Arr Oh scribes an open letter homage to R.B. Woodward. Also included is a link to open-access PDFs of R.B. Woodward's doctoral (and bachelor's) theses from MIT. It's really quite fascinating to be able to see how the nature of chemical writing has (and hasn't) changed since 1937. My favorite sentence so far: "When the reaction was complete, the dark brown oil was washed several times with water dried over a small amount of anhydrous sodium sulphate and distilled in a gigh vacuum" (sic).
- Derek Lowe discusses a recent HR-geared report on pharma employment. A heavy implication of the report is that management is having a difficult time finding qualified employees, which Derek disagrees with.
- This New Yorker profile of Amy Bishop--the scientist who shot six of her colleagues in a faculty meeting--is a long, long read, but it's well-done and illustrates the complexities of what the media (and others) tend to simplify as either a problem with the pressures of academia or purely a case of poor mental health.
- Ewan Birney of The Guardian brings us a set of short vignettes about the role emotions play in science. It's interesting to read and be mindful of, especially given public perception of scientists (as well as scientist perception of scientists).
- This Scientific American blogpost by Samuel Arbesman discusses a new metric for determining the ideal impact-to-cost ratio when selecting an open-access journal.
- I liked this story at The Crux (Discover Magazine) about the role of microbes in shaping biodiversity.
- Cassandra Willyard (The Last Word on Nothing) writes about a classical music album in the 1960s that was produced as an advertisement for a sleep aid. The album's liner notes include the chemical structure for the drug.


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1976 – Lauda's Monaco joy short-lived
Niki Lauda took his fourth win of the season in Monte Carlo which looked to give him an unassailable position at the top of the F1 drivers' standings.
The Austrian took pole ahead of team-mate Clay Regazzoni and was never headed. Ronnie Peterson's March got up to second, ahead of the second Ferrari and allowed Lauda to pull away.
At one-third distance Regazzoni shot down an escape road due to oil on the track and Peterson spun off and crashed on the next lap due to the same reason.
This left the Tyrrell-pair of Jody Scheckter second and Patrick Depailler third but Regazzoni charged back through the field to take third.
But he crashed out on lap 73 with five laps left while hunting down Scheckter, thus ensuring that both the six-wheeled cars were on the podium behind Lauda.
Following the race Lauda had a massive 33-point lead in the championship (an era where race wins were worth nine points) over Regazzoni and Hunt who had retired early with an engine failure.
Sadly for the Austrian he was unable to retain his first world title he won in 1975 because of a near-fatal crash at the Nurburgring in August.
Miraculously he returned six weeks later to race in Italy – it was such a surprise that Ferrari had to run a third car to accommodate him.
But sadly the fairytale was not realised as James Hunt beat him to the 1976 F1 crown in Fuji during horrendous conditions. Lauda was one of four drivers who withdrew in the first nine laps as he felt it too dangerous to race.
The Austrian went onto to win the title the following year and again with McLaren in 1984.


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Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Today I tried out my InkLingo Shape Collection 2 and printed out teeny little quarter square triangles. Linda Franz, author of Quilted Diamonds and Quilted Diamonds 2, is the creative genius behind this innovative idea of printing your stitching lines directly onto your fabric using your computer printer. The shapes are then ready to sew either by hand or machine. I wanted to use my sewing machine today and the results were pretty good for my first try.
Saturday, Jim and I went to Oakville, Ontario. He spent Saturday chasing down bargains at area garage sales while I visited with quilters from around Canada and two from Maryland at Ginny's Quilt Shop (formerly Jillybeans). The date was 7/7/07 and this was the seventh reunion at that location of quilters who were making baby Jane quilts from the book Dear Jane by Brenda Papadakis. The reunion included some InkLingo veterans who had wonderful quilts to share with everyone. Linda brought so many gorgeous samples from her next book and cd that it made my head spin. The possibilities are endless. It is fast and precise and fun. Has anyone else tried it?
12 comments:
- Sweet P said...
I've seen InkLingo and would like to get it, but she doesn't have an Apple version. :(
Your block is adorable. Thanks for showing it next to a quarter so you can tell the real size of it.
- July 10, 2007 at 8:15 PM
- Pieces From Me said...
Oh my gosh! That is a teeney tiny block...and on the machine? I will have to check that program out. I had never heard of it before, but I am out of the loop when it comes to new quilt gadgets (even hi tech ones).
- July 10, 2007 at 11:04 PM
- Kim said...
So do you love it????She's going to our guild speaker in Oct - have to check it out :)
- July 11, 2007 at 8:07 AM
- Darlene said...
My goodness that block is teeny tiny. I've never heard of Inklingo - thanks for enlightening me. I'll have to watch the video on the site later.
Enjoy - I can't wait to see more!
- July 11, 2007 at 8:40 AM
- Connie said...
Hi, Jeanne, never heard of this before but it sure makes a lot of sense. I'm planning a DJ quilt, have the 'stuff' to do it, but no time yet...hope to get started though. I enjoy reading about the DJs of others.
- July 11, 2007 at 11:45 PM
- Meredith said...
I watched teh video on her web site but I do not own it. I was concerned about the ink and teh fabric. I guess most of it gets cut off teh edges when you slice it up. Your block is lovely.
- July 12, 2007 at 7:23 AM
- Kathy Wagner said...
We had Linda Franz speak at our guild meeting in June. She was wonderful and has so many great ideas. One of the things I really liked about her presentation is that she brought 2 full size quilts made of these tiny blocks, and a zillion other little samples layed out on a table for us to see. I did get a CD at that meeting but haven't had any time to work with it. I hope to have time once the kids are back in school!
- July 12, 2007 at 10:32 AM
- Libby said...
Well, that is just pretty darned nifty - what will they think of next? *s*
- July 12, 2007 at 2:33 PM
- Bea said...
I haven´t heard about Inklingo before - an interesting way to sew. Thanks for sharing. You´ve sewn a very lovely block.
- July 12, 2007 at 4:21 PM
- Yvonne said...
I have the first CD but I haven't tried any yet. Sounds like you had a wonderful day. I would love to meet Linda someday...she's such a sweetheart of a person.
- July 12, 2007 at 5:21 PM
- Marcie said...
Your Dear Jane is awesome! That Inklingo thing looks neat. It would be fun to learn that. Nice going!
- July 15, 2007 at 12:24 PM
I have heard of Inklingo but have never tried. Let us know how well you like it as you continue to use it.
- December 12, 2010 at 9:50 AM


text:
Richard Simmons is closing his iconic exercise studio in Los Angeles
Richard Simmons' iconic Beverly Hills, California, exercise studio, Slimmons, is officially closing its doors.
The 68-year-old fitness guru's longtime manager, Michael Catalano, confirmed the news to ET on Friday.
WATCH: Richard Simmons Returns Home from Hospital, Says He's 'Feeling Great'
"He just hasn't taught there in over two years," Catalano said, also telling ET that it was Simmons' idea to close the studio for good.
The last day of classes will take place on Nov. 19.
The news comes just four months after Simmons -- who Catalano says is "doing great" -- was hospitalized for bizarre behavior. At the time, the Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed to ET that they responded to a call at 11:52 p.m. at Simmons' home. He was then transported to the hospital via ambulance.
"Thank you to everyone who has reached out with love and concern after hearing I was in the hospital," Simmons later told ET in a statement. "I was dehydrated and needed some fluids and now I am feeling great! Summer is here -- drink plenty of liquids. Big hugs and kisses for caring."
WATCH: Richard Simmons Thanks Fans for Support After Clarifying He Has Not Been 'Kidnapped'
Back in March, ET spoke with Simmons over the phone, where he explained why he had not been seen in public in more than two years.
PHOTOS: Richard Simmons most recently
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"I am not kidnapped," he said. "I am just in my house right now."
"No one should be worried about me," he added. "The people that surround me are wonderful people who take great care of me."
As ET previously reported, the conversation took place one day after the New York Daily News published a "very hurtful" article about the Sweatin' to the Oldies creator, claiming he was "being held against his will inside his Hollywood Hills mansion" and that his former friends had become concerned. His last public appearance was on Dec. 13, 2013, at SPARKLE: An All-Star Holiday Concert at L.A.'s ACME Comedy.
WATCH: Richard Simmons Speaks Out: 'No One Should Worry About Me'
Simmons explained that this is how he wants to live his life right now, urging people not to worry about him. "If I was in any trouble, if I was hurting in any way, I would reach out," he assured ET. "It is time right now for Richard Simmons to take care of Richard Simmons."
PHOTOS: Richard Simmons through the years
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File Size: 200 MB
Original Language: None
Length: 7 minutes
New to the Erika Lust Store due to popular demand! Enjoy this erotic short directed by Erika Lust as a sequel to the acclaimed Handcuffs. You can either stream the video for free, or own it as a digital file so it's always at your fingertips!
To celebrate it's opening, Barcelona's Camper Hotel invited six Spanish filmmakers to shoot a 7 minute film in the hotel over 24 hours. There was one condition – total freedom on the part of the director. Transforming this plush Spanish location into a dreamy Love Hotel, Room 33 is about the sexiness of travel, intimacy and complete strangers, and the allure of what happens behind closed doors.
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They were all there—the Agnellis, Caracciolos, Borgheses, Viscontis, and Pasolinis—some 40 members of Italy's grandest clans, gathered together at a family compound in southern Tuscany on a chilly morning last December to bury one of their own. The dearly departed was Carlo Caracciolo, Prince of Castagneto and Duke of Melito; co-founder of L'Espresso and La Repubblica, the country's most influential newsweekly and leading leftist newspaper; brother-in-law of its most famous industrialist, the late Gianni Agnelli; and Public Enemy No. 1 of its out-of-control head of government, Silvio Berlusconi. The day before, some 600 mourners—everyone who was anyone in Italian media, politics, and society (except Berlusconi)—had packed the Basilica of San Bartolomeo, on Rome's Isola Tiberina, for Caracciolo's funeral Mass. Now his family and closest friends waited for the hearse to arrive at Garavicchio, the Caracciolos' 500-acre country estate an hour and a half north of Rome. There were Carlo's younger sister, Marella Agnelli, Gianni's widow, at 81 still very much the elegant doyenne of international high society, and his younger brother, Nicola Caracciolo, a distinguished director of historical documentaries for Italian television, as well as his half-brother, Ettore Rosboch, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune from his Austrian mother. The next generation was represented by Marella's daughter, Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen; Nicola's daughter, Marella Caracciolo Chia, who was with her husband, the well-known artist Sandro Chia; and Nicola's son, Filippo. Also present were Margherita's three children from her first marriage, to the writer Alain Elkann: Fiat vice-chairman John Elkann, style entrepreneur Lapo Elkann, and Ginevra Elkann Gaetani, the vice president of the Agnellis' private art museum, in Turin.
Very much in charge of both Garavicchio and the funeral arrangements was the deceased's principal heir, Jacaranda Falck Caracciolo, a 37-year-old dynamo who Carlo is said to have known was his daughter from the moment she was born, to his then lover Anna Cataldi, the wife of the Milanese steel tycoon Giorgio Falck, and whom he had officially adopted 12 years earlier, on the eve of her wedding, to Prince Fabio Borghese, a scion of a Roman dynasty that has a Pope among its ancestors. Also at Garavicchio that morning were the three children of Caracciolo's late wife, Violante Visconti (of the ducal family that once ruled Milan), from her first marriage, to Count Pier Maria Pasolini; Caracciolo had married Violante, the longtime love of his life, in 1996, at the same time he adopted Jacaranda—when Violante was already suffering from incurable ovarian cancer. Over the years there have been persistent rumors that two of the Pasolini children had also been fathered by Caracciolo, but they emphatically deny it. As if all of this were not sufficiently complicated, standing on the sidelines at Garavicchio that day were Carlo Revelli Jr. and his sister, Margherita Revelli Rebecchini, who two months earlier had filed court papers to disavow the paternity of the late Carlo Revelli Sr., the man who they had thought was their father until, they claim, their mother told them he wasn't, so that they could then be legally recognized as the children and heirs of Carlo Caracciolo. His estate, including 11.7 percent of the company that controls L'Espresso and La Repubblica and 30 percent of the Paris daily Libération, is reportedly worth $200 million.
This rarefied assembly was clustered outside the family chapel, where Carlo Caracciolo's father, Prince Filippo Caracciolo, and mother, the American whiskey heiress Margaret Clarke, were entombed, as was Violante Visconti. Sandro Chia recalls the scene that ensued: "We were all waiting for the hearse to bring the coffin. Finally it arrived. They opened the back of the hearse, and a little box came out. I asked, 'What's that?' Someone—I don't remember who—said, 'Oh, Jacaranda cremated Carlo's body overnight.' It was a scandal. People were crying. People were outraged. Jacaranda said, 'This was his will.'"
"The first person who heard about the cremation was my wife," says Ettore Rosboch, Carlo's half-brother. "She had had breakfast with Jacaranda and told her, 'Why don't you make an agreement with the Revellis? I understand how you feel, because it's not easy to discover that you have a brother and sister and that your father hasn't told you. But what's important is keeping peace in the family.' Jacaranda said, 'I'm sorry, but it's impossible to know that they are my siblings.' My wife said, 'Why don't you do the DNA test, then?' Jacaranda said it was impossible. My wife asked why. Jacaranda said, 'Because he's not here anymore.' Nicola and I were completely stunned. It's not so much what she did or why she did it, but why didn't she tell the family?"
"It was so gruesome, so strange, so confusing," says Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen, Carlo's niece. "We were there to be close to Zio [Uncle] Carlo, but he wasn't there. There were so many questions. Why was he incinerated? Doesn't that usually take three weeks? My mother, who was very upset about the loss of her brother, went for a walk around the garden. At some point my daughter, Ginevra, went and told her that he had been incinerated. Eventually we went on with the service—a real funeral Mass, gloomy as gloomy could be. There was a lunch afterward. I didn't attend. I had a knot in my stomach."
One family friend who was at the lunch says, "There was a clear separation of the camps. In one there was Jacaranda with Fabio, and in the other were all the rest."
The Publisher Prince
'Only the parking attendants call me Prince," Carlo Caracciolo told a reporter in his last interview, in October 2008. "But they call everyone Prince." He also dropped a line he often used to downplay his genealogy: "Caracciolos and trash are never lacking in Naples." In truth, the Caracciolos date back to the 10th century and are the former royal family of Naples.
"Ultimately, Carlo was a prince in the real sense," Alain Elkann says. "And he didn't dislike at all being a prince. He was a passionate publisher, very faithful to his work, but with all the leisure and pleasures of an aristocratic person."
"Carlo had a very clear and evident charisma," says Sandro Chia. "The first time I met him, I was impressed by his elegance, his natural way of moving, the tone of his voice. You really had the idea of a superior being."
"If you talk to 10 different people, you'll be talking about 10 different Carlo Caracciolos," says Countess Marina Cicogna, who has been close to the Caracciolos and the Agnellis all her life. "He liked to be mysterious. He was very laid-back, very cynical, very intelligent—and very good-looking. He was also very spoiled."
Tall, lanky, with a steady gaze and a full head of blond hair, habitually turned out in tweed suits from the Milanese tailor Caraceni, Caracciolo looked like a cross between Samuel Beckett and Clint Eastwood. He was born on October 23, 1925, in Florence. His mother was the daughter of Charles Clarke, a mayor of Peoria, Illinois, and an owner of Clarke Brothers Distilling there, and Alice Chandler Clarke, who moved to Italy after World War I, following her husband's death. According to Nicola Caracciolo, Margaret Clarke was "a nonconformist who liked reading about Buddhism. My father was much more worldly. He liked women, and with an American wife this created more trouble than it would with an Italian wife. But they were very attached. My mother lost quite a bit of her money in the crash of 1929, so my father started working. He went into diplomacy." The Caracciolo children—Carlo, Marella, and Nicola—grew up in Rome and Turkey, speaking Italian, French, and English. During the Second World War, the 18-year-old Carlo dropped out of his lycée in Lugano, Switzerland, where his father was the Italian consul, and went to fight with the anti-Fascist Resistance in the mountains of Northern Italy. Captured and sentenced to death, he was released in a prisoner exchange. After studying law in Rome and at Harvard, he went to work in New York at the white-shoe firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. Nicola says he got the job through Allen Dulles, who had been head of American intelligence in Switzerland and would soon be made director of the C.I.A. by President Eisenhower.
In 1951, Caracciolo moved to Milan, where he worked at a trade publication for the packaging industry. In 1955, with the backing of Adriano Olivetti, the typewriter king, he launched L'Espresso. "The promoters of this newspaper," an editorial in the first issue declared, "maintain that the absolute independence of the press is the most solid foundation of democracy." From the start L'Espresso was aggressively secular and highly critical of the dominant Christian Democratic Party, while more or less keeping its distance from the Communists, the largest party on the left. Less than a year into L'Espresso's existence, Olivetti was told that the government would stop buying his typewriters if he didn't tone the paper down. His solution was to sell his majority share to Caracciolo for a token sum. In 1963, Carlo hired as chief editor Eugenio Scalfari, who would remain his closest collaborator for the rest of his life. "Scalfari was the opposite of Carlo," says Marco Benedetto, the retired C.E.O. of Caracciolo's publishing company. "He was middle-class, and his emotions flowed free and far." L'Espresso's circulation soared in 1974, when Scalfari redesigned it as a magazine in the mold of Time. It spearheaded the campaigns for the referendums to legalize divorce and abortion, and exposed the Italian government's involvement in the Lockheed bribery scandal, which led to the resignation of President Giovanni Leone, in 1978.
Carlo's sister, Marella, had in 1953 married into the Agnelli family, the owners of Fiat, Italy's biggest manufacturer of cars. By most accounts Carlo and his brother-in-law, Gianni Agnelli, got along well, and Marella and Carlo spoke on the phone three or four times a day. Lee Radziwill recalls being on the Agnellis' yacht with Carlo in the late 1950s and early 1960s. "He looked identical to Marella," she says. "She thought he was God." In 1972, Caracciolo and Agnelli went into business together, forming a publishing group called Editoriale Finanziaria, which was half owned by Carlo and half owned by I.F.I., the Agnelli-family holding company. Once again, however, politics undid the partnership. Although L'Espresso was not part of Editoriale Finanziaria, "everybody thought Agnelli was the real owner of it," says Marco Benedetto. "The consequence was that, with inflation at 20 percent and prices controlled by the government, Fiat was not allowed to raise its prices for over a year and a half and almost went bankrupt." Agnelli, says Benedetto, "was asked to part company with Caracciolo. So they split. Carlo got the money and I.F.I. kept the company. It was a very dramatic moment in the history of Italy, and also in Carlo's life, because he was pushed away by Agnelli." Nicola Caracciolo adds, "Marella made peace between Gianni and Carlo, but there was never the same strong feeling of mutual collaboration."
With his payout from I.F.I., Caracciolo established La Repubblica in 1976 in partnership with the Mondadori publishing house and made Eugenio Scalfari editor of the new daily in addition to L'Espresso. La Repubblica was like no other paper in Italy—a politically provocative, smartly designed tabloid with extensive cultural coverage and first-rate reportage. Before long it was the main competitor of the country's leading broadsheet, Corriere della Sera, with a circulation of around 320,000. In 1984, Caracciolo had an initial public offering for his company, which by then included 14 regional newspapers. Five years later, he merged it into Mondadori, creating the largest book-magazine-and-newspaper publishing company in Italy.
"At that point Caracciolo became rich, and Scalfari too," says Benedetto, who believes they were paid about $260 million for their shares. Caracciolo was now heading the expanded Mondadori publishing empire, but he soon found himself in the battle of his life, with Silvio Berlusconi, the brash media tycoon who was one of Mondadori's major shareholders. The others were Caracciolo's friend the billionaire financier Carlo De Benedetti and the daughters of Mondadori's founder, who were expected to sell their shares to De Benedetti. "For some reason, during the summer of 1989, the two daughters changed sides and sold their shares to Berlusconi," says Marco Benedetto. "But Berlusconi underestimated Carlo." After several months of boardroom skirmishes and legal wrangling, Caracciolo enlisted the help of an unlikely ally, Giuseppe Ciarrapico, an openly Fascist politician who was close to Giulio Andreotti, the all-powerful Christian Democratic prime minister. The end result was the division of Mondadori, with Berlusconi keeping the company's original assets and Carlo De Benedetti gaining control of a new company called Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, consisting of La Repubblica, L'Espresso, and the regional newspapers. Caracciolo became a minority shareholder in the group, retaining the title of chairman until his retirement, in 2006. Berlusconi was elected to the first of three stints as prime minister in 1994, and ever since then La Repubblica has dedicated itself to exposing his every political, financial, legal, and sexual misstep.
Carlo and the Ladies
Unlike his nemesis Berlusconi, Carlo Caracciolo was not known to consort with starlets and models, but in his discreet way he was one of the great ladies' men of his time. He usually stuck to women of his own class, often married ones. "Carlo inseminated half of Italian high society," Isabel Rattazzi, a relation by marriage, says jokingly, referring to rumors that he had as many as a dozen children by several women. "Carlo was very free in his love life," says former senator Mario d'Urso, a longtime family friend. "He would switch around. I don't say he was unscrupulous, but he did what he wanted."
Caracciolo didn't marry until he was 70, and then it was to the woman who had been in love with him since she was a teenager, Violante Visconti, the niece of the film director Luchino Visconti and a great beauty. As her cousin the decorator Verde Visconti recalls, "She was dreaming of getting married to Carlo Caracciolo all of her life." Italian journalist Mario Calvo-Platero adds, "She wanted to marry him and he didn't. So she married Pier Maria Pasolini to spite him—he was one of Carlo's best friends and had been pursuing her. But when they got married, Carlo was sort of provoked, and he continued the affair." According to V.F. contributing editor Beatrice Monti della Corte, who owned an art gallery in Milan in the 1960s and 70s, "Poor Pasolini was in love with Violante, but it was so evident she was having an affair with Carlo. The whole world knew. But at the same time, Carlo had other affairs. For example, he went to bed with Mrs. Falck."
"Every woman had to be in love with Carlo Caracciolo," says the publisher Alexis Gregory, who had an apartment in Milan. "I saw a lot of him when he was Anna Falck's lover. She was still married to Giorgio Falck, who was very attractive and unbelievably rich. Anna had this baby, Jacaranda, with Carlo—pretty much everyone knew it was his. We used to have lunch at Carlo's apartment—Anna, Carlo, the baby, and me. One day when I was lunching with Carlo, his Abyssinian butler came into the dining room and said, 'Signore Principe, Mr. Falck is at the door and wants to see you.' I thought, My God, I'm going to be in the middle of a murder. Carlo said, 'Excuse me,' and came back in 15 minutes. Giorgio had come over to have an explanation. He was furious and later threw Anna and Jacaranda out."
Anna Cataldi Falck had not been born into the world of the Agnellis and Caracciolos. She came from a middle-class family outside of Turin, but, as Mario d'Urso says, "she was first-class intellectually." She was living in Lausanne, Switzerland, when Giorgio Falck met her. They had two children, Giovanni and Guya, in the mid-1960s, before Jacaranda was born, in 1972. "My mother gave me this name," Jacaranda tells me as she drives us from Garavicchio to nearby Porto Ercole to spend the afternoon on a friend's yacht. "She had been traveling around South America, and she fell in love with the beautiful jacaranda trees with the purple flowers. I was always glad I had this name, because it's so unusual that it always gave me my own identity. I didn't need to be Falck or Caracciolo."
Jacaranda was three when her mother and Giorgio separated. Anna, Jacaranda, and a nanny moved into an apartment in Milan, and Jacaranda's earliest memories include visits from Carlo Caracciolo. As Alexis Gregory recalls, "Anna was insisting that Carlo marry her. I could understand her position, because she had been kicked out by Giorgio and wanted her child to be legitimized." In 1975, Carlo had a heart attack, and not long after Anna took off with Jacaranda for Africa, first to Sudan, then to Kenya. In Nairobi they met up with Anna's American friend the photographer Peter Beard, who turned her on to the work of Isak Dinesen. She was so inspired that she wrote a treatment for a film based on Dinesen's Out of Africa, which she later sold to Columbia Pictures. They moved back to Milan when Jacaranda was seven. She was enrolled in a Montessori school and would have dinner once a week at Giorgio's house, where her brother and sister lived, and would spend every other weekend at his villa, in Portofino. She also traveled with her mother—who had started writing for Panorama magazine and would eventually be appointed a U.N. Messenger of Peace by her friend Kofi Annan—to their homes in Gstaad, Sardinia, and New York.
In Milan, Carlo Caracciolo continued to visit. Did her mother ever give her any idea that he was her father? "No. My brother and sister would whisper, but no one ever told me," says Jacaranda. "I think I guessed. He was very nice to me. So I thought either he was my father or he was someone who loved my mom so much that he loved me as if I were his daughter." She adds, "Giorgio remarried when I was seven or eight years old, to an actress named Rossanna Schiaffino, and she was very mean to me and my brother and sister."
At 16, Jacaranda graduated two years early from a Swiss boarding school and enrolled in the University of Milan. After a year she transferred to the University of Pavia, where she began working for the local newspaper, which was part of Caracciolo's chain. When she turned 18 she was given a job at L'Espresso's office in Milan, where Carlo, who was based in Rome, spent two days a week. "We were both early birds," Jacaranda says, "so I would arrive at the office at 8:45 and we would have coffee together. In Milan, Carlo lived five minutes from our apartment, with Violante." According to Benno Graziani, the famous Paris Match photographer and a close friend of the couple's, "Violante had divorced Pasolini thinking Carlo would finally marry her. But Carlo always said he was married to his newspapers."
Jacaranda had no problem accepting Carlo's relationship with Violante. "Carlo was not a faithful man, of course," she says, "but they shared something that was beyond love, I think. They both loved a certain kind of life—they loved gardens, they enjoyed going to exhibitions and the theater together. I think she was one of the only women in Carlo's life with a deep understanding of him. And she loved him, with all his faults."
Nicola Caracciolo's daughter, Marella Caracciolo Chia—whom everyone calls Marellina—says, "Violante has been in the family as long as I can remember. All my life it was Violante and Carlo, Carlo and Violante." She points out that Carlo even gave Violante's children by Pasolini land at Garavicchio on which they built vacation houses. Marellina also recalls Jacaranda's presence at Garavicchio, starting when she was 17 or 18. "One day she arrived for lunch—it was Easter, I remember. She didn't know us. We didn't know her. Someone told me, 'You know, she's Carlo's daughter.'" When I ask Jacaranda how Carlo explained her visits to the family compound, she answers, "He would never say. He would say, 'Ah, here is Jacaranda!'"
Jacaranda's Wedding
'I've known Jacaranda all my life," says Prince Francesco "Chicco" Moncada. "She was always Jacaranda Falck. So when the invitation to her wedding came and it said, 'Jacaranda Falck Caracciolo,' everyone was stunned. 'What is this?'"
Jacaranda had been dating Fabio Borghese for three months in 1996 when they decided to get married. "I went to Carlo," says Jacaranda, "and told him, 'I'm going to get married, and I'd like to have the party at your house.' He said, 'O.K. It might be a nice time to have the opening of Torrecchia.'" Carlo had bought the vast estate known as Torrecchia a few years earlier, sight unseen, from a financially strapped relative of his brother Nicola's wife. Violante was enchanted by the property, located an hour south of Rome, and Carlo had let her spend a fortune creating a fabulous garden around its restored castle, granary, and small village. Jacaranda continues, "But the opening of Torrecchia was delayed, so Carlo said, 'Let's have the party at Garavicchio.' Four months before the wedding was to take place, Carlo came to me and said, 'How are we going to phrase the invitation? Carlo Caracciolo is inviting for Jacaranda Falck?' Then he said, 'Maybe the good thing would be if I adopted you.' I said, 'How are we going to do that? We need Giorgio's permission, and I'm not on speaking terms with him, because he lives with that woman.' I was kind of panicky. Then one night I was having dinner with Fabio in my apartment and the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and Giorgio was standing there with a big bunch of red roses. He said, 'I just escaped from home. I hate that woman. I've realized how I spoiled your life.' I was shocked. I mean, you're sitting there with your fiancé, who has never seen this man. Then Giorgio said, 'Let's have the wedding in Portofino!'"
Over lunch the next day, Jacaranda explained to Giorgio that Carlo was not only hosting the wedding but also adopting her. "Giorgio said, 'You know, I'm not sure you're not my daughter. People always said that, and your mother was in love with Carlo, but we never had a DNA test. And I don't want to have it. I don't want to know.'" Jacaranda says she told him, "I don't want to know, either. In certain ways I love you, and in certain ways I love Carlo. You're both part of my life—I can't erase that." As it worked out, Giorgio Falck gave her a huge party in Milan for all his friends, the Borghese family hosted a dinner at Rome's most exclusive private club, Circolo della Caccia, and Carlo received 500 guests at Garavicchio for the wedding reception. For her part, Anna Cataldi had her pals Gianni Quaranta, the Oscar-winning set designer, do the décor, and Piero Tosi, Federico Fellini's costume designer, create the bride's gown. Although Giorgio Falck's mother was Jacaranda's witness, Giorgio himself did not attend the wedding. "It wasn't because he didn't want to see Carlo," Jacaranda explains. "I think he didn't want to see my mother. They hadn't seen each other since they divorced."
A week before the wedding, Carlo quietly married Violante at Torrecchia. "In one go," says Marina Cicogna, "he suddenly had a wife, a daughter, a family." However, the Caracciolos and Agnellis were not quite as thrilled as the Falcks and Viscontis. Nicola Caracciolo had not even been told Jacaranda's wedding was taking place on the property he owned with his brother. He says, "Carlo was a poker player and didn't like to show his hand. Never. For instance, I had heard that he was going to marry Violante. So I asked him, 'Is it true?' He said, 'Look, I want to tell you the truth, but please don't tell anybody. I think I'm going to marry Violante. But this is a very important secret.' The wedding announcement was already in the mail. I received it two days later. He didn't want people to know what his next move would be. He also had a feeling that if people started to talk they would make a mess." Nicola's wife, Rossella, adds, "The only thing I remember is that Carlo once told Nicola, 'Don't worry, I have no children.'"
Trouble at Garavicchio
'My grandfather bought Garavicchio in 1960 and left it to my father and my uncle, so everybody in the family was always welcome," says Marellina Caracciolo Chia. "And even though it technically wasn't [Aunt] Marella's, my cousins Edoardo and Margherita came. And Ettore came—his daughter, Lili, had her baptism there. We all had a room there, and if you weren't there, someone else would use your room. Even Carlo would allow his room to be used. It was pleasant, open, communal. And I must say, Jacaranda changed things very much. Because when she arrived with Fabio, suddenly it was, like, private rooms, private property. Edoardo was made to feel unwelcome. Margherita was made to feel unwelcome. I grew up in that house. I had a right to be in the house just as much as Jacaranda did."
Marellina, an Oxford graduate and author, describes Garavicchio in the introduction to an upcoming book on the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who was commissioned by Carlo Caracciolo in the late 70s to create the Tarot Garden, a grouping of some 22 giant sculptures on the property: "Garavicchio is a yellow house on top of a hill surrounded by olive groves and overlooking a vast piece of land that stretches unevenly all the way to the sea. It is somewhere in between an old farmhouse and a very unpretentious villa."
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen also feels a very strong attachment to Garavicchio. In fact, the chapel is decorated with a fresco that she painted, entitled The Resurrection. "Garavicchio was a family home, meaning the home of Zio Carlo, Zio Nicola, and my mother," she says. "We used to spend summer holidays there, Easter holidays, even Christmas sometimes. In the 90s, I would come for the month of July with my eight children and sort of colonize the place, and Zio Carlo used to come on weekends—we were very close. My brother, Edoardo, also had a very close relationship with Zio Carlo. The relaxed life at Garavicchio was a nice balance from the more severe life we had in Turin. We felt so lucky to have this wonderful, cozy, kind, loving uncle. We were his children, 'we' being Marellina, Filippo, Edoardo, and I. So when Jacaranda arrived, she was not part of our family, as she was not brought up with us. She took our rooms, and she didn't even discuss it with us. My children were thrown out of their rooms. Zio Carlo very awkwardly said, 'I'm sorry things have to be this way.' It was a very sad situation, so I stopped going there in 1998."
"I tried to get along with the family," Jacaranda says, "but they didn't make me feel welcome. I understand it was not easy for them to change the way things had always been at Garavicchio. But when they were terrible to me, I fought back. And having had a hard life, I know how to fight." As she and Fabio started to raise a family—they have three children, Alessandro, Sofia, and India—the problems increased. "I did take up two rooms, one for me and one for the babies, as Carlo had told me to do. If someone got offended, I am sorry. But probably they should go to a therapist to discuss why they were so jealous of an uncle and could not bear the thought that someone else got close to him. Carlo always told me how happy he was that I felt at home in Garavicchio, and he would tell his friends how proud he was of how well the estate was run."
For a young mother, the presence of the bearded, unstable Edoardo Agnelli had to be disconcerting. Edoardo, who struggled with heroin addiction for years and committed suicide by leaping off a bridge in 2000, would show up at Garavicchio and stay for long periods. He found in his Uncle Carlo a nonjudgmental father figure. "Edoardo called him every single morning, even the morning he died," says Marellina. "Carlo used to say, 'He always calls when I'm brushing my teeth.'"
Family friends point out that, if Jacaranda hadn't come along and been adopted, Carlo's siblings and their children stood to inherit Garavicchio and almost everything else. Meanwhile, Carlo had started spending more and more time at Torrecchia with Violante, thus conveniently avoiding the simmering conflict at Garavicchio. As Jacaranda ensconced herself in the big house, Ettore followed his half-brother to Torrecchia.
In 1998, Nicola decided to stop pretending that they were one big happy family. "We divided Garavicchio at my request. Since Carlo had married and adopted a daughter, we had different heirs. I took 20 percent of the land, the house that Rossella and I live in, and several agricultural buildings that could be transformed into houses for Marellina and Filippo. I said to Carlo, 'I want a separation. It's wiser.' And, given the proclivity in the family to have legal troubles between heirs—Margherita and Jaki [John Elkann], Jacaranda and the Revellis—I think I did very well."
While Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen's recent legal battles involving her son John Elkann and her father's advisers have been well covered in the press (see Mark Seal's article "The Woman Who Wanted the Secrets," in V.F.'s August 2008 issue), the Revellis' claims and Jacaranda's reaction to them had remained largely a private matter until the day of Carlo Caracciolo's cremation. "The burning of the body—everything started there," says Jas Gawronski, a member of the European Parliament and a poker-playing buddy of Carlo's. "It's a pity, because that's the only thing that one has against Jacaranda, really."
In fact, in all the glowing obituaries and the extensive coverage of the wake and funeral in the press and on television, there was no mention of Carlo Revelli Jr. and Margherita Revelli Rebecchini. Jacaranda was identified as Carlo's only child and principal heir. In that week's L'Espresso, Gianluigi "Gigi" Melega, the veteran journalist who was Carlo's best friend, painted a picture of perfect harmony at Garavicchio: "And thus, surrounded by a pack of relatives and grandchildren, in the little chapel that looks out to the calm Tyrrhenian Sea, his remains will stay, embraced by the memories of those who were near."
But within hours of the arrival of Carlo's ashes at Garavicchio, someone leaked the news of the surprise cremation to Dagospia, the Web site of Roberto d'Agostino, a prime source of inside social and political gossip in Italy. According to Marellina, Jacaranda accused her of being the leaker. "She went to my father a week later—because my father was very upset about the whole thing—and said, 'I'm sorry I had to do the cremation and not tell anybody.' And then she told my father that I was the person who talked to Dagospia. I swear that I never did. That was trying to divide, trying to create tension."
Jacaranda doesn't deny having had that conversation with Nicola about Marellina. "It's exactly what I think," she affirms. As for the family's bad feelings about the cremation, she says that Carlo Caracciolo expressed his wishes to "three of his best friends": Marco Benedetto, Intesa Sanpaolo bank C.E.O. Corrado Passera, and the lawyer Vittorio Ripa di Meana. "The three men confirmed this through three letters, which have been deposited in a safe box," she explains. "Apart from that, I don't understand why they all got so upset about the cremation. Cremation is recognized by the Catholic Church as another form of burial. Violante was cremated. It's not a monstrosity." But why didn't she inform Carlo's brothers and sister? "It was not up to me to inform anyone. My father had plenty of time to inform the people he loved. For the past 12 years, I was the one to sit next to Carlo when he was in the hospital. We took together, just the two of us, every medical decision. When he wanted my advice, he asked for it. When he didn't, he went his own way."
Enter the Revellis
The Revellis came into Caracciolo's life three years before he died. "My mother had never spoken about Carlo Caracciolo," Carlo Revelli Jr. tells me. "One day at the end of 2005, she told me that by chance she had run into a friend she had not seen for years. During her conversation with Carlo Caracciolo, she tried to explain AgoraVox, the citizen-journalism Web site that I had recently launched in France. The notion of meeting one of the greats of Italian publishing did not elate me, because I considered citizen journalism to be antagonistic toward traditional journalism. But my mother called him and passed the phone to me. I tried to explain what I did. The conversation lasted 10 or 15 minutes, and he told me to call him in January. I waited around three months before I called. I was so nervous that I asked if I could bring my friend and business partner, Sigieri Diaz Pallavicini."
"Carlo was pushed by his mother," says Pallavicini, a member of one of the five noble families with titles that go back to the Roman Empire. "We went to see Carlo Caracciolo at his office in Rome. He was very elegant, with a brown jacket and a vest, but with gym shoes and no tie—very young, à la mode. We discussed AgoraVox for about an hour, and then he invited us to his home in Trastevere for lunch. It was a penthouse with a beautiful view of the Tiber, nice, like a bachelor apartment. There was a bit of old furniture, and I remember pictures of Gianni Agnelli and the family all around. At the time, I did not see any kind of special feeling between Carlo Caracciolo and Carlo Revelli. In this story, it seems everyone is called Carlo, including Carlo's father."
Carlo Revelli Sr., a well-respected stockbroker, had died in 2002. He and his wife, Maria Luisa, had a daughter and two sons between 1950 and 1960; nearly a decade passed before the births of Carlo junior and Margherita, in 1969 and 1971, respectively. (Jacaranda was born 10 months after Margherita Revelli.) Pallavicini recalls, "I always said to Carlo, 'You know, your mother and father are [virtually] divorced.' Because they lived on separate floors in the same villa and would meet for meals."
In January 2007, after several more business meetings during which the possibility of Caracciolo's investing in AgoraVox was discussed, Caracciolo visited the Web site's headquarters, in Paris. He had with him Carlo Perrone, the French-Italian publisher and art collector. The two men were in the process of buying one-third of Libération, the ailing leftist daily co-founded by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1973. "At the end of that meeting, I had [Caracciolo] sign his autograph in my copy of his book, L'Editore Fortunato [The Lucky Publisher]," recalls Carlo junior. "Business plans went ahead, even though we were not in agreement about everything. But the opportunity for investment slowed down when I decided, in June 2007, to transform AgoraVox into a nonprofit organization. They didn't understand my decision, but the relationship was good. At the time, I had not yet understood who Carlo Caracciolo really was."
Carlo and his sister say the truth came out in October 2007. "It was an aunt who convinced my mother to tell us, after hearing that I was in contact with our father without knowing who he was," says Carlo. "I think our mother would never have told us willingly. She always wanted to respect the pact that she had made with Carlo Caracciolo to keep this hidden from us forever. The aim was to preserve our Revelli family. I still don't know how she could have kept something like this to herself for almost 40 years, without ever asking for help, financial or any other type, from Carlo Caracciolo. I discovered that they had kept up excellent relations and were united by a deep friendship. She also had a wonderful relationship with Carlo Revelli, to the very end. And I never had any suspicions, because he always treated us the same way as he did our three other siblings."
Two or three days after his mother's revelation, Carlo junior says, he confronted Caracciolo in Paris. "I'm not sure whether my mother had warned him or not, but he didn't seem surprised." Pallavicini adds, "Carlo told me that when he asked him the question Carlo Caracciolo did not say yes or no. He smiled and said, 'Ah, we look alike.' "
Pallavicini says that his friend had been shocked by his mother's revelation. "He put together a little album of pictures—let's say of Carlo Caracciolo on a boat with Kissinger, next to one of himself on a boat with me. As I turned the pages, I said, 'Oh, my God, what is this?' "
"This news came at the worst moment in my life," says Margherita Revelli Rebecchini. "I was pregnant and had to stay in bed for eight months, so I was already sick and upset." Her husband, Fabiano Rebecchini, the owner of a construction company, adds, "It was an emotional revolution for us. When Margherita told me, I said, 'It's bullshit. Don't say stupid things.' And then her brother sent her the photographs, and I couldn't say anything." Rebecchini goes on, "So Carlo Caracciolo came and visited Margherita a couple of times, and they started to speak about adoption. But then Carlo's lawyer pointed out that it's not legal to adopt somebody who is your natural child. He suggested that the best thing is recognition. That takes much longer and is much more complicated, but it is the legal way." According to Italian law, which is known both for its byzantine complexity and for being routinely ignored, in order to be recognized by one's newly discovered biological father, one must first disavow, or disprove, the paternity of the previously acknowledged father. Furthermore, this process must be initiated within a year of the discovery of the facts. This last point would turn out to be of crucial significance in this case.
'Carlo told me about these kids in October 2007," says Marellina Caracciolo Chia, who has been working on a history of the Caracciolo family in modern times. "I'd started doing it with Carlo, and in his last year I went to see him nearly every week. He told me about the whole problem he was having. He told me that he wanted to adopt them. But Jacaranda refused—under Italian law she can say no. So he decided to recognize them. And he started that whole process. He even wrote a letter for them, saying they were his children. I'm sure he would have done it in such a way as to protect Jacaranda. After all, she had been around much longer, and he loved her much more." (Jacaranda counters, "I told him four months before his death that if he wanted I would sign anything that made him happy.")
According to Marellina, her uncle also discussed revising his will with her and her brother and with Ettore. In Italy, a certain portion of an estate must be equally divided among the deceased's spouse and children, and the remainder—called the disponibile—can be left to whomever one wishes. In Carlo Caracciolo's case, with his wife dead and only one legal child, he was required by law to leave 50 percent of his estate to Jacaranda. In the will he signed in August 2006, he left $700,000 each to Nicola, Ettore, Gigi Melega, and Marco Benedetto, $300,000 to his niece Lili Rosboch, and substantial sums to his longtime administrative accountant, butler, valet, and cook. The remainder went to Jacaranda. But in his last months, Marellina says, Carlo decided to leave his stake in the L'Espresso group to five heirs—Jacaranda, Marellina, Filippo, Carlo Revelli, and Margherita Revelli Rebecchini. "But Carlo told me that Jacaranda wanted the 50 percent disponibile to go entirely to her," Marellina explains. "Because if he recognized the two Revelli children, she would be legally required to share the other 50 percent with them. So what he wanted to do was very complicated, and it took him a long time to work it out. He made a new will, but he never signed it."
Jacaranda tells a different story: "I never in my life talked with Carlo about money. The only thing I told him, once, was that if he believed he had any natural children and wanted to do something about it he would have to change his will immediately so as to include them. Otherwise he would be leaving a mess." She adds, "My lawyer and I asked Carlo to prepare a new will several times, but he always refused to even look at it. The day before he fell into a coma in Rome, Marco Benedetto had made an appointment with a notary to look at the will, but Carlo canceled the appointment."
Carlo Revelli says that in the spring of 2008 he was informed that Caracciolo was making changes in his will. "Carlo and I never spoke about this directly, because we never spoke of these things. Instead, his lawyer Vittorio Ripa di Meana, now deceased, spoke to me about it, at a meeting that took place in his home. My sister and the executor of Carlo's will, the attorney Maurizio Martinetti, were present. Ripa and Martinetti told us that Carlo was modifying his will so that we would be automatically recognized as his children. Therefore, there would be nothing to worry about." (Martinetti could not be reached for comment.)
Caracciolo had signed the 2006 will at Torrecchia, shortly after undergoing high-risk surgery in Paris to control the intestinal cancer he had been fighting for nearly a decade. There had been two previous operations, the latter after a checkup in Switzerland in 2000, performed in the same hospital where Violante lay dying. "It was always a fight between him and cancer," says Carlo Perrone. "The cancer would advance, and he would manage to escape it. Then the cancer would catch up, but he would manage to escape again. In the end, he didn't manage to escape anymore." Perrone adds, "Jacaranda was fantastic. In his last years, Carlo was treated more in Paris than in Rome, and in Paris he stayed at my house. So I could see how helpful Jacaranda was to him." Even Marellina says, "She was really close when he was sick."
In May 2008, Caracciolo had another heart attack. That month the Italian gossip magazine Diva e Donna ran a highly unflattering article revealing that the Revellis were seeking to be adopted by Caracciolo and casting doubt on their claim. The fact that the publisher of Diva e Donna, Urbano Cairo, happened to be an ex-husband of Anna Cataldi's made the Revellis suspicious of the source for the story. (Jacaranda denies that she or her mother had anything to do with the article.)
About the same time, though, Revelli says, Caracciolo offered him a seat on the board of Libération. (The acquisition had been completed in January 2007.) "He was still recovering in the clinic, and he called me to ask me to meet with his trusted collaborator Gigi Melega. Melega gave me various documents to review before making an appointment with Carlo Perrone. We are now in July 2008. Perrone said he had already notified the directors of Libération. I wrote Carlo Caracciolo a detailed memo on some of the newspaper's weaknesses, and he thanked me profusely. Then, strangely, nothing happened. But the last time I saw Carlo, in Paris in November 2008, I asked him out of curiosity if he had changed his mind. He was very surprised that I still wasn't on the board."
"The day before Carlo went into a coma," says Ettore, "he asked me to make a phone call to Carlo Perrone, saying, 'I don't understand why my son, Carlo Revelli, is not on the board of Libération.' I said, 'Carlo, if you want to put him on, you have to take somebody off, which takes time. I think Carlo Perrone is doing his best.' He said, 'No, no, call him.' So I dialed the number and I passed him Carlo."
When I asked Perrone if Caracciolo had wanted to put Revelli on the board, he answered, "Probably that was one of his ideas. … Probably, I would say." Like many of Caracciolo's social friends and business associates, Perrone has been put in a difficult position. He is close to Jacaranda and admires her, but he and Ettore are also close—they took their families on vacation together to Namibia and South Africa last summer.
Carlo as a Father
By June 2008, Carlo Caracciolo was well enough to host a lunch at his apartment in Rome to introduce Carlo Revelli and Margherita Revelli Rebecchini to his family. It was Ettore's birthday, and his wife, Lilia, was there, along with Marellina, who recalls, "He talked about them as his children. He was joking with Aunt Marella about how many grandchildren he had now, and Marella was counting and saying, 'I beat you. I still have more grandchildren than you do.' "
In September, Caracciolo attended the baptism of Margherita and Fabiano Rebecchini's son Brenno—which some saw as not only a gesture of familial loyalty but also an act of political bravery. In 1956, Fabiano's late grandfather, Salvatore Rebecchini, had been hounded out of office as mayor of Rome in part due to a campaign by L'Espresso, which accused him of graft and characterized his administration as "the Sack of Rome." Although he was never officially charged, and the Rebecchini clan would remain prominent in Christian Democratic politics, the family always blamed L'Espresso for unfairly sullying their reputation. "Carlo was very amused to be in the Rebecchinis' house," says Carlo Revelli. "He spoke at length with Fabiano's father, Gaetano, and I remember that he came with a few of his family members—Marellina Caracciolo; Ettore Rosboch and his daughter, Lili; and Ginevra Elkann. We had also invited Jacaranda, but unfortunately she could not come."
To some, it seemed as if Caracciolo was delighted to have his purported newfound offspring in his life. "All of a sudden he started talking about them," recalls Jas Gawronski. "And Carlo was extremely discreet about his personal life. Even to us, the friends he played poker with, he never opened up about women, girls, or anything like that. I was rather surprised when he started talking about those two as 'my son, my daughter.' Once, he asked me to stay, because the Revelli boy was coming—'so you will meet my son.' "
"From what I've seen, Carlo was fascinated by Carlo junior," says Sigieri Pallavicini. "It's strange, no? Your son, your only genetic son—you don't even know him, you've never met him—looks like you. I was told by Maria Luisa Revelli, the mother of Carlo and Margherita, that he met them in a park when they were two or three years old—just to look at them, you know. After that they never had any contact with this man, although he continued to see their mother for many years."
"My mother and Carlo Caracciolo were always in touch," says Margherita Revelli Rebecchini. "He showed me this photo of me when I was small, at the seaside, which my mother had given him and which he kept near his bed always. And when he saw me for the first time, he said I resembled his mother, Margaret Clarke."
In October 2008, precisely one year after they say their mother made her disclosure, the Revelli children began the process of disavowing Carlo Revelli Sr. before a judge in Rome. As proof, they submitted DNA-test results, revealing genetic disparities between them and their three older siblings, and medical records of Revelli senior, indicating that he had been unable to sire children after 1968. At the same time, with the letter from Carlo Caracciolo affirming his paternity in hand, they requested a hearing to begin the recognition process, which the judge granted them, setting a date for the following February.
In November, however, Caracciolo was hospitalized again in Paris. His niece Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen visited him there on the weekend of November 29–30. "I spoke to him about my son Peter and his studies. And he said, 'I have a son, called Carlo Revelli, whom I would like Peter to meet.' And he literally lit up. I told him I knew, because I had heard about the lunch where he had introduced the Revellis. He wanted to see Peter on Sunday, but then he checked out of the hospital and left for Rome. He had an operation there. Then all of a sudden he was taken back under the care of a French doctor. Jacaranda was supervising everything."
After falling into a coma, Caracciolo was brought home, where he lingered for four days. He died on December 15, 2008.
'Strangely enough, there was a good atmosphere at home during those last days, even with the Revellis and Jacaranda," recalls Marellina. "We were all sitting around on sofas, and the Pasolinis—Violante's children—would drop by, Marella would come and go, and Jaki, Lapo, Ginevra. It was the first time in a very long time that we were all together. It was very cozy, very intimate, in that small apartment of his. Even his girlfriend arrived. They had had an affair going on for some years, after Violante died, but it was clandestine. She was about 50, and she was living with a much older man, who was sick. I was so happy that we were all getting along, and everybody said you could really feel Carlo's spirit."
There were discussions about the wake. Most of the family favored having a twoday public event at the Campidoglio, the site of Rome's city hall. Jacaranda preferred a private, one-day service, at the tiny church of Saint Benedict, across the square from Carlo's apartment. "John Elkann and I went to Jacaranda and Fabio," says Ettore. "We said, 'Carlo was an important public figure. He doesn't belong only to the family. You can't do things like this.' But they said, 'No, no, this is the way he wanted it.' " Jacaranda confirms this account, but she maintains, "Carlo was not a celebrity the way L'Avvocato [Gianni Agnelli] was, so I felt that being at the Campidoglio was something he would not have liked. In the end, they fully agreed with me."
As Marellina recalls, Carlo Revelli asked Jacaranda directly if she was planning to have Caracciolo cremated, and she told him she wasn't. When I asked him to confirm this exchange, he replied, "Everyone in the family, without exception, whom I asked if there was a possible cremation, completely excluded this from taking place." Jacaranda doesn't recall such a conversation with Carlo Revelli. "I had been sitting next to my father's bed for 10 days without sleep. When he died, my thoughts did not go to practical details. I was devastated by grief."
Conflicting Claims
'Exactly one month after the death of Carlo Caracciolo an inheritance storm has exploded in one of the first families of Italy, and what had been whispered until now has become public gossip." So began a story in Corriere della Sera on January 16, 2009, the day after lawyers for the Revellis and Jacaranda had appeared in court. "On one side: the daughter who was adopted in life and very loved, Jacaranda Falck Caracciolo. Behind her: a family and an entourage of friends that are embarrassed and saddened." Senator Luigi Zanda declared himself "really disgusted by the fact that there are post-mortem judicial initiatives that have to do with Carlo." Chiara Beria d'Argentine, a journalist who had mentored Jacaranda at L'Espresso, confided, "She is suffering so much. She really is in a bad way. It's an upheaval for her to find herself dragged into court two days after her father's death in a style that is completely foreign to Carlo and the family."
But Nicola Caracciolo told the paper that if the DNA test of Carlo's "biological material" requested by the Revellis on December 19, 2008—four days after his death—"will help to understand the truth, then let's accept it." (The Revellis had secured a blood sample from a clinic at which Caracciolo had been treated; Jacaranda asserts that Caracciolo had been asked to provide his DNA many times and had always refused.) Marellina Caracciolo Chia informed the paper about the lunch her uncle had given to introduce "his children" to his family. Corriere della Sera reported, "Jacaranda says that never happened: '[Marellina] is the only one who says that. It's sad that family members who had been excluded in life by Carlo now take such positions.' "
"I had to say what I knew," Marellina tells me. "How could Jacaranda think that I would lie? I didn't set out against her, but from that point on things became very difficult." Ettore notes, "Jacaranda thinks if you are not completely on her side, you're against her. She always feels under attack by everybody. We are not on the Revellis' side. We are on Carlo's side. We only want his wishes to be done."
"I have learned not to spend time worrying about who hates you," Jacaranda tells me. "I have a great relationship with my cousin Filippo and his wife. I care a lot about Nicola and Rossella. As for the rest, I think they are not my family."
According to Corriere della Sera's coverage of the court proceedings, the Revellis' lawyers pressed the case for disavowing the paternity of Carlo Revelli Sr., while "Jacaranda's lawyers pushed to invalidate everything, claiming that the news of the real paternity was known by the two Revellis for at least two years, [and] according to Italian law, it is not possible to continue the disavowal process beyond a year of discovery." The judge put off a decision on whether to admit Jacaranda's objection until the next hearing, which was set for April. He also left the matter of testing Carlo's DNA in limbo, declaring that the recognition process could not go forward until the disavowal issue had been resolved.
And that's where matters remained for the next eight months. The April hearing was postponed until the fall. The two sides nearly reached a settlement in July, only to have it fall apart in August. Meanwhile, in Rome the chatter goes on, and at Garavicchio the tension mounts. The week after I visited, in July, Jacaranda put on an exhibition of sculptures by Carla Milesi, a rich Milanese friend of her mother's. Marellina says she was not invited to the opening, "even though we have to look at these big ugly nudes made of cement, because she has them on the joint property around the driveway and chapel." Jacaranda says that, as Marellina has not spoken to her since Carlo's death, she didn't think she'd want to be included.
More seriously, acting on an anonymous tip, the authorities recently notified Nicola, Marellina, and Filippo Caracciolo that local regulations prohibit the construction of houses near burial grounds. Therefore, they would have to either pay a substantial fine and risk having to tear down their homes at Garavicchio or exhume the remains of Prince Filippo and Margaret Clarke and have them cremated before returning them to their resting place in the family chapel. Marellina says they felt they had no choice but to do the latter.
Shortly after the exhumation in October, the Revellis received the results of a comprehensive test that compared the DNA of Carlo Revelli Jr. and Margherita Revelli Rebecchini with that of their mother and Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen and Marellina. According to Vincenzo Pascali, the forensic scientist who performed the test, it is undeniable that Carlo Revelli Sr. is not the father of the Revelli siblings, and that Carlo Caracciolo is.
None of this seems to faze Jacaranda. Although Caracciolo's assets are frozen, she behaves as if she's ready to take charge. She tells me that she meets twice a month with Carlo De Benedetti, the chairman of the L'Espresso group, and that she would like to be involved with the publications. I ask if she agrees with their left-wing slant. "I think for people of Carlo's generation being left or right had a much different meaning than it has for people of my generation. For us, it's not so much a matter of being left or right but of finding new politicians who are less corrupt and who can represent us properly. If I have to choose, I'm more left than right." What does she think about Berlusconi? "I am not a fan. But I know him very well, because he was a boyfriend of my mom."
Jacaranda has her defenders, starting with her husband, Fabio Borghese. "Carlo only loved two women," he says, "his wife and his daughter—Violante and Jacaranda." Fabio's sister Princess Alessandra Borghese points out that they had their father cremated within a day of his dying: "Let's get real—in Italy, Caracciolos and Borgheses don't wait in line."
Marco Benedetto backs up Jacaranda's contention that the Revellis were told about Carlo Caracciolo earlier than they say, recalling a scene he says happened in April or May 2006. "As I was going to Carlo's office, he came out with a couple of young men—tall, elegant, kind of what we call 'suits.' He goes to the elevator to say good-bye to them. He comes back and tells me, 'One of them says that he's my son.' " (Carlo Revelli responds: "I believe that Benedetto must have been confused. There are many depositions which contradict this version.")
The banker Corrado Passera is also firmly behind Jacaranda: "She's capable, bright, smart, and very vital." As for the Revellis, he says, "Carlo had more than a year to take a position, as he did with Jacaranda. But he didn't, probably because he had a lot of doubts about the real situation."
"In my personal opinion, Carlo was saying one thing to the Revellis and another thing to Jacaranda," says Sigieri Pallavicini, who is friendly with both sides and who has tried to mediate between them. "This is what we men tend to do, especially if we are a bit selfish, and a bit irresponsible, and a bit Italian. If you have managed all your life to have so many women at the same time, you know how to say different things to different people. I think this man basically loved himself and his success, his power. He was a manipulator. He did not like confrontation. I said to my friend Carlo junior, 'It's not Jacaranda, it's him. In the end, he could have fixed everything.' "


text:
Sophie Monk Breaks Down Following Dumping Of James
When you watch a show like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, it's very easy to follow along and fall in love with people they see on the telly.
We get it - and that's what the show producers want.
So when a crowd favourite leaves the show, heartbreak ensues. However, what we need to remember is there are real people and real hearts involved in all of this - and no matter how invested you are, you have to remember that.
So after James went home last night, social media went into a frenzy, wanting to express their concern and their love for James.
Sophie called the show this morning and wanted to express how upset she was about letting him go.
She broke down as soon as she spoke to Kyle and Jackie O.
You can't help but feel sorry for her, because she's just following her heart, and as she says, 'she has to pick one person - and she can't make everyone else happy - she has to make herself happy.'
Good luck to you Sophie, we love you!