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This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. In 2003, police in Somerset County, New Jersey arrested a hospital nurse named Charlie Cullen who was suspected of injecting patients with lethal doses of a variety of medications. Cullen would turn out to be one of the nation's most prolific serial killers, murdering dozens, perhaps hundreds of people in nine hospitals over a 16-year period.
Our guest, journalist Charles Graeber, spent six years investigating the Cullen case and is the only reporter to speak to Cullen in prison. Graeber's new book, "The Good Nurse," focuses not only on Graeber's tortured life and crimes but on why it took so long to stop him despite plenty of evidence he was harming patients.
In case after case, Graeber writes, hospital staff believed Cullen was harming patients and pressured him to leave, but failed to alert state regulators or take other steps that might have ended his killing spree. Charles Graeber has written for Wired, GQ, New York Magazine and other publications. "The Good Nurse" is his first book. He spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies.
Well, Charles Graeber, welcome to FRESH AIR. This is a remarkable story both of a serial killer and what drove him to commit these crimes, but also one about the health care system and its vulnerability to someone who abuses patients. And I want to start with one of his - maybe his earliest employment at the Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey.
And you write that in 1991, he'd been there a few years, and some of the staff noticed some weird stuff. What did they find?
CHARLES GRAEBER: Right. Well, he'd been there since '87. It was his first job out of nursing school. He started there right out of his honeymoon. And on the ICU ward and CCU wards, they started finding that patients were mysteriously crashing. They would hook a patient up to an IV that was supposed to have saline or something of the like, and the patient became a magical diabetic and where they were on this terrible diabetic roller-coaster ride, woozing(ph) in and out of consciousness and burning through sugar, and they couldn't out-feed the fire.
And then eventually they'd get so bad that they'd unhook them from the lines and rush them in for more emergency procedures, and once they unhooked the lines, everything changed. They were fine again.
DAVIES: That's the line connected to an IV bag, right?
GRAEBER: Correct, correct. So once they unhooked them from the IV, they were OK, and trial and error, a few of these on the ward, and they started questioning the IV bags themselves and brought them in and found that in fact they'd been compromised. There were extra pinpricks in them, and when they analyzed the IV bags, they found that instead of containing saline, the IV bags that had been stored in the medical closet also contained insulin.
DAVIES: So it appeared someone had taken a hypodermic needle with insulin and injected them into the IV bags, leaving virtually no trace, and then causing catastrophic consequences for the patients.
GRAEBER: Exactly, and it was the only conclusion anyone could come to. But it was beyond thinking, because why would anyone do that, who would do that. Suspicion immediately fell to somebody with a specific vendetta, some sort of family member or - you know, it was really very abstract. The hospital had never dealt with anything like this before.
And eventually nurses were cross-indexed, shifts were cross-indexed, and a few names came together, and one name finally stood out more than any, at least according to the head of security there, Thomas Arnold(ph). And that name was Charles Cullen.
DAVIES: And he was the nurse at the center of this. Did some of these folks die?
GRAEBER: People died at Saint Barnabas. It's very difficult to say who died of what. Saint Barnabas is so long ago, and at the time they didn't catch him. I mean, they had him. They strongly suspected him. Tom Arnold said he knew Cullen was dirty, but could they prove it? So it was very difficult to sort out Cullen's personal death toll from the cadence of mortality at a hospital.
Later, speaking to Essex County detectives, the county that Saint Barnabas is in, Cullen said that he was dosing people and with the intent of killing them two or three times a week, not knowing where those bombs went out. And to date, they've only been able to identify one person from the five years definitively that died during his Saint Barnabas time.
So obviously there's a huge fog of time, five years times two or three a week, that's totally unaccounted for.
DAVIES: Right but enormous damage, no doubt. So the investigation focuses on him. What happens?
GRAEBER: Well, he's investigated, pressured, interviewed, tells them essentially there's nothing you can do, you can't hold me, you don't have anything on me, you're just picking on me; leaves, is contemptuous, which really riles the detectives, former cops. They go to the chief of police in the town of Livingston, and the chief, for whatever reason, bounces it right back to the hospital and says this is internal, you guys deal with it, you figure out what happens.
And they don't figure out what happens. Cullen ends up as a floater. He's basically working at the hospital fulltime, but he's staffed by an outside but wholly owned staffing agency of the hospital, which makes tying him to the hospital and specific shifts all the more difficult. And they're still investigating when suddenly they stop giving him shifts.
It's not technically being fired; he's just no longer on the list, and he moves on. And their problems move on with him.
DAVIES: And it's interesting. He doesn't exactly deny it in the interviews.
GRAEBER: No, no, he doesn't - he very rarely denies anything, except during polygraphs, which he passes.
DAVIES: Right, we can get to that. He was good at that. What's fascinating is he goes down to the next job, and when they ask about previous employment, he lists Saint Barnabas, the place where they'd discovered him effectively killing people.
GRAEBER: Sure.
DAVIES: And any impact?
GRAEBER: No, I mean, in fact it worked out really well because they fired him in the beginning of January, and he managed to get over to applying to his next hospital, which was Warren Hospital, at the end of January of 1992. And so he was able to say dates of employment, X date to January 1992, which made it look like he was currently employed and simply wanted a change, rather than having been canned.
And he was given neutral references, which was the norm and the pattern over and over again. And during a nursing shortage with neutral references, seemingly, you know, a nurse that was willing to work nights and weekends and holidays and seemed to bring extra energy with every shift and a lot of experience, that was a nurse worth hiring.
DAVIES: Now I have to note that this happened in 1991, 12 years before the investigation that ultimately caught him. This was - clearly he'd been doing enormous damage, possibly killing patients, and he moves on, works at another seven hospitals, right?
GRAEBER: Yeah, well total of nine, yeah.
DAVIES: Right, OK, so another eight, then. And in case after case, I mean, this is not the only time in which his conduct is suspicious, and supervisors noticed, and he gets questioned, and he moves on and again and again gets new jobs, accurately listing his previous employers as references. Did you ever find a single case of an employer who warned somebody, stay away from this guy?
GRAEBER: Well interestingly enough, the employers that did that were the ones that were most in the wrong for it. At Saint Luke's Hospital in Pennsylvania, some years later, tending towards 2000 almost, he was fired after being caught trashing medicine, basically had been taking good meds and throwing them in the sharps bin of the medical closet.
And upon examination, many of those meds were dangerous meds, and many of them were, in fact, empty, and there'd been no prescriptions for those medications in question.
DAVIES: So it appeared he might have been stealing them for future use?
GRAEBER: Stealing them, stockpiling them for future use, or the suspicion at the time was using them on patients on the ward. And in fact he was doing the latter, and he was caught. Outside counsel was brought in that night, he was grilled. He was moved on. He was offered neutral references and took them and removed from the building, but the hospital administrators called their peers in the immediate circle asking for more information about Charles Cullen and also informing them that Charles Cullen was not considered for rehire at their hospital and shouldn't be at theirs, either.
A judge found later, when this secret behavior came to light, that - well, his issue was that it was the ultimate tyranny, deciding that these administrators had decided who would live and who would die by which hospitals they called and which they did not. A hospital they did not call, for example, was Somerset Medical Center, where Charles Cullen moved on and killed at least another 16 patients that we know of.
DAVIES: Now was there any requirement that hospitals report this stuff to the state health department or an agency that regulates nursing?
GRAEBER: Yeah, you really have to look at that case by case, and that's one of the reasons I took on this book and the reason it took as many years as it did. Some incidents, sentinel events, events that result in actions that are of potential harm to patients, are supposed to be reported to the state nursing board. Other incidents, such as medication errors that are more routine, he had a lot of those, as well, and it's again difficult to sort out which were legitimate mistakes and which were simply the MO of murder. And more of those should have been reported.
Very few were, and the question time after time is: Should more have been reported? Yes, absolutely. And you have to go hospital by hospital, case by case, and really look at which incidents should have been reported. It's also - one needs to be careful, at least I certainly need to be careful. I wanted the reader to be able to put the facts together.
The facts had been buried for a long time. No one was speaking. Charles Cullen speaks only to me. He'd never spoken to any other media. He is not happy that this is coming out. The hospitals have not spoken at all except to give a very basic story about, you know, having been duped and then the last one having caught him.
And the detectives were largely unavailable for comment, as well. So this story, laying it out so that a reader can see the facts laid side by side and decide for themselves the culpability of the hospitals, what they knew, when they knew, what they should have done. And certainly laws have changed in the wake of this.
DAVIES: Right, I want to move on to talk about Charlie Cullen in a moment here, but, I mean, an obvious motive for a hospital to be careful about telling anybody else that they had somebody in their system who harmed or killed patients is fear of lawsuits, right?
GRAEBER: Absolutely, and that's a legitimate fear. Hospitals get sued all the time. They have to carry huge insurance burdens, as do doctors. Their first instinct is to cover themselves, and I don't mean to confuse that with a cover-up, I don't know that that was always the case. It is beyond the imagination of most people, most hospital administrators, to ever think that their staff are killing their patients. They're really there to do the opposite.
So it does take a leap of imagination. I do know that the first actions you see time and time again in these hospitals is a legal action rather than an effective investigative reaction. And oftentimes you'll find that comes in - certainly in retrospect to be a real burden of evidence against one guy, Charles Cullen, even before they can say for sure what he's doing, when it starts to really look like this guy is dirty, that's the time he gets moved on. One way or the other, he's pushed out or pressured out.
So did the hospitals know? That's a question a reader needs to ask, and I think I've provided enough evidence that they'll be able to draw that conclusion. But certainly he should have been stopped before he was, and because he wasn't, he killed a lot more people.
DAVIES: We're speaking with investigative journalist Charles Graeber. His new book about serial killer Charlie Cullen is called "The Good Nurse." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and our guest is investigative journalist Charles Graeber. He has a book about Charles Cullen, who was a nurse who killed an untold number of people over many years at hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Graeber's new book about the case is called "The Good Nurse."
Let's talk about Charlie Cullen. Very troubled childhood, right?
GRAEBER: Yeah, he describes it as miserable. This is a really dark period not only for Charlie but also for anyone investigating Charlie Cullen. It's a land of shadows, a world he doesn't talk very much about. It's a world that if you were to ask him straight about his childhood, you would not get very much. You tend to learn more about his childhood talking about other topics and then hearing echoes of his childhood, references.
He grew up the youngest of eight, the youngest by a long shot, sort of an unexpected child. His father died only months after his birth. His mother survived largely on sewing and charity. There was a sickly aunt that had moved in with them. He had two brothers with chemical abuse problems and a host of sisters that came in and out of the house, and he - he felt extremely close to his mother. His mother was the figure that protected him.
But the darkness in that house and exactly what happened in that house set the tone for the rest of his life.
DAVIES: Darkness meaning like drug addicts coming in, doing who knows what in rooms, abusing him in some cases?
GRAEBER: It's really hard to say. When asked directly about abuse of that sort in the house, he gets very angry. He's gotten very angry with family members, with ex-wives when they've tried to get him to seek counseling, when they've tried to take him aside, because the pattern - it certainly seems to fit the pattern. He won't say.
But he felt unsafe. There were strange men in and out of that house. He had a brother-in-law that came to live with one of his sisters when his sister was pregnant. There was a lot of domestic violence surrounding that. Exactly what happened to the child is not clear. But eventually the sister ran away, but the brother-in-law stayed, and he and Charlie had a tortured relationship that Charlie had reported to at least one, if not two, of his later lovers that he had tried to poison that brother's drink with - he put lighter fluid in the vodka, which is sort of an early example of what would become his pattern for life, a way of passively dealing with things.
DAVIES: He serves in the Navy. There are a number of examples of bizarre behavior there and apparent suicide attempts. You talked to him a lot of times. Did you feel like you got a sense of what his issues were? Is there a psychiatric diagnosis of Charlie Cullen?
GRAEBER: Yeah, well, he's not crazy in the sense that clinicians use that term. Well, clinicians don't use that term. He's oftentimes very funny, seems to have great self-humor. When I say funny, he's not cracking jokes and being crass. It's quite the opposite. It's self-deprecating, insightful, sardonic and seems quite with it, and you can understand why he was able to succeed, why he was charming, why, you know, he had no romantic - you know, he had no problem finding romantic partners and the like.
Other times his thinking is circular, quite narcissistic, and then the question is how far does that narcissism go? Is it sociopathic? And the answer to that lies somewhere in - well, you have to ask yourself what sort of a person can kill someone and be there as they die and not have it seem to really affect their day at all or in fact affect their future behavior in any negative fashion for 16 years.
You know, he started - he entered nursing in 1987. He said he killed his first patient in 1987. So, you know, this is a lifelong condition. It's almost a compulsion. And what it meant to him I guess is the real question of that, and I don't think it meant that much.
DAVIES: When he was in the hospital and injecting patients with a whole variety of drugs and killing some, you know, this isn't a case of suffering patients who died peaceful deaths, right. I mean, some of these were pretty horrific.
GRAEBER: Yeah, he's often misunderstood - to the extent that anyone knows him at all, he's often called a mercy killer. They called him an angel of death, and that's what that refers to. And the point here is that it was never about the patients. It was never about what the patients needed or even - or wanted, regardless of how appropriate. It was always about what Charlie Cullen wanted and what Charlie Cullen needed.
And if that meant - well, if that meant putting a man with a broken neck and a halo device into insulin shock, that's what happened. If it meant going back and trying time and time again on a patient that he really had his eye on and sending them into atrial fibrillation, over and over again, and, you know, forcing them to be shocked and paddled and coded, time and time again, that's - that was considered fair game.
Whether that was his goal - he would deny that that was his goal, adamantly. But he's also - he's a smart guy and doesn't want to be seen as - well, he doesn't want to be seen as I see him.
DAVIES: One more thing about Charlie and the killings. I mean, hospitals have what are called code teams, that is to try and resuscitate patients who go into cardiac arrest. They call it a code, right?
GRAEBER: Right.
DAVIES: And Charlie was always among the most active members of that. And in a lot of cases, you write, went in to try and resuscitate patients who were in cardiac arrest very likely because of, you know, medications he had secretly administered to them. And it made me wonder, is - was part of the motivation here, that he wanted to be the hero, the very best guy, very best member of the code team, and demonstrate that by creating these incidents and then rushing in to be the hero?
GRAEBER: Yeah, that's absolutely part of it. Sometimes that's what worked for him. He knew what was wrong with the patient when no one else did. He could be the first to go in there. The other residents remember him jumping on the chest of the patient in just sort of the most dramatic fashion and working - they appreciated his enthusiasm and his passion, but it seemed a little over the top. But the truth was he did what others could not do, and he did receive praise for that - elevated status.
And so there was absolutely an element of ego in the murder, and he was anonymous, but this is a way of actually still claiming coup for some of that - for some of the crime he committed under anonymity.
DAVIES: And he knew how to beat a polygraph test?
GRAEBER: Yeah, I don't - he doesn't speak to that. I know that he did beat a polygraph test. He beat two polygraph tests. And in both cases, he was lying. He also was, you know - again the best I can do with this sort of journalism when you can't see everything, you can't see behind every wall, and not everyone says everything you need that - in order to put the story together fully.
But I can just put the facts next to each other, and the facts next to each other are that here's a guy that worked on cardiac wards administering drugs that regulated heart rhythm and stress levels, and everything else, and also very possibly didn't genuinely feel the sorts of wild winging emotions that you and I might feel thinking back on murder.
And put those things together, and you end up with a guy who doesn't register on a polygraph.
GROSS: Charles Graeber will continue his interview with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies in the second half of the show. Graeber's new book is called "The Good Nurse." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies recorded with Charles Graeber, author of the new book "The Good Nurse." It's the story of Charlie Cullen, a nurse who became one of the nation's most prolific serial killers, murdering dozens - perhaps hundreds - of patients in nine hospitals over a 16-year period by injecting them with lethal doses of medications. In case after case, hospital staff believed Cullen was harming patients, but failed to take the steps that could have stopped him.
DAVIES: So, how did it all finally come apart? What did Charlie do that finally led to the criminal investigation that put him away?
GRAEBER: Nothing that he hadn't done before. It did finally catch up with him. There was a gathering steam of evidence behind him that, you know, you can only have so many investigations, especially in the age - the mounting age of computers and linked databases to not be able to connect the dots. But what happened was he was at Somerset Medical Center. A number of patients were coding mysteriously. Most were digoxin deaths, digoxin being a heart drug like foxglove; it regulates heart rhythm. Others were insulin deaths. They were on the same ward. They were in multiples.
The hospital noticed it. They had a number of meetings. They asked an assistant pharmacist to call the poison control people to see if they could get help figuring out the math of the chemistry, figuring out when a patient would have to be injected with how much dig - dig, which is digoxin, short for digoxin - how much dig a patient would need to be injected with and when in order to start showing these numbers at, you know, X hour. And in the process of asking for help with the math, of course, they saw in the details, the facts of this started to come out, and alarm bells naturally started to ring.
Outside of the hospital, at New Jersey Poison Control, it was Dr. Bruce Ruck who first was alerted, and he alerted his boss, Dr. Steven Marcus. And Marcus very bluntly took it to the administration of Somerset and said, if you're slow rolling this, you're going to look terrible with your pants down. It looks like, you know, it looks like someone's killing patients in your medical center, and if you don't call, I'm going to call. And, by the way, I've got this on tape.
DAVIES: Yeah. This is fascinating, because you - we have these conversations in your book verbatim, because the Poison Control, I guess, routinely tapes calls like this.
GRAEBER: Yeah. They tape their incoming calls, and these were incoming calls.
DAVIES: So a call that the hospital pharmacist thought was a request for information in - I mean, soon leads to this Dr. Bruce Ruck saying, listen, you have a police problem. Do you hear me? And you have to wonder, if it hadn't been for that interaction, if it wouldn't have been a criminal investigation. I guess you can't know.
GRAEBER: You can't know. Certainly, the hospital - hospitals have a tendency to do everything by committee. They move very slowly. Again, it takes a huge leap of imagination - although, it seems fairly clear here, but it does take a huge leap of imagination and a great large amount of acceptance to ever believe that someone, you know, on staff somewhere in your hospital killing other people in your hospital. You know, that's not why you're there.
So having said that, they retained outside counsel. They had been aware of this problem for months at this point. Charles Cullen was killing people for months. He'd been spoken to about related issues, some of the means by which he was getting his drugs. He was questioned about those means by an outside attorney that the hospital had hired. So this was an ongoing issue at the hospital. It got pushed to the forefront, certainly, by an outside entity refusing to allow that internal process to continue to drag on. And it's terrifying to speculate as to what would've happened if - had he - had Dr. Marcus, Dr. Ruck not pushed it.
DAVIES: So the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office launches an investigation, and this is not the kind of thing they're used to doing. They don't have a lot of heavy-duty murders there, anyway, and this is a very specialized kind of crime. Two detectives, Tim Braun, Danny Baldwin get assigned. And, of course, they know that, you know, that most of the information is going to be at the hospital. They approach the hospital. What do they get?
GRAEBER: Right. These guys, Tim and Danny, I spent a lot of time with them. They're really great guys, interesting characters, and were really blunt with me. They came from Newark, which was the murder capital of the world when they were there, Newark Homicide. And as Tim put it, me and Danny, you know, we're street guys. We're blood-and-guts guys. You know, give me a - I've got to delete half the words here but, you know, give me a good old-fashioned street murder, as opposed to this Latin stuff. Because what they were presented with was they weren't even sure if they had a murder. They thought maybe it was just a well-connected guy and some sort of a litigious situation where they couldn't figure out where inappropriate drugs had come from or gone to and...
DAVIES: A well-connected victim trying to make something of it. Right. Right.
GRAEBER: Exactly. A well-connected victim, because it was a - it's a wealthy county, one of the more wealthy counties in America, and as you say, not a lot of murder there. And they proceed because they have to. They've got stacks of medical charts, which apparently the hospital themselves had already gone through. You know, as they would put it, guys with letters after their name had already looked at this stuff for four months, and they didn't find anything. Now they're handing it to us like we're going to, you know, trace this thing like a bullet. They were completely confused.
DAVIES: But here's what's fascinating. So they give - the hospital people, having conducted their own investigation, having spoken to many, many nurses and other staff, give these detectives I think a four-page document, which is not very informative, and then tell the detectives they did not take notes in their interviews of the nurses and other staff, which just seems completely unbelievable, doesn't it?
GRAEBER: It did to them.
DAVIES: Yeah.
GRAEBER: They were really upset. Tim and Danny, the detectives, were very upset. It didn't strike them as being true or helpful.
DAVIES: Right. Now, there was another thing. There was a technical system that the hospital had for dispensing medication, which keeps a record when a nurse has to log in to either - to request and withdraw medication, or to cancel a previous request. And so there is data on which nurses have requested which medications, date and time, right?
GRAEBER: Right.
DAVIES: And when the detectives ask for that data about these nurses in the patients in question, they are told what?
GRAEBER: Right. It's called a Pyxis machine, and they asked for the records. It would be like asking for all the receipts for the last, you know, period of time that, you know, you say these victims died over this period of time. Can we see everything that happened to them? And they are told flatly that all those records are erased from the system two months after, within two months, which would mean that every single victim that they're looking at has no medication records.
DAVIES: And then when they check with the company that makes the system, they discover what?
GRAEBER: Yes. Quite a few steps later, when they're beating their heads against the wall, saying how do we solve a maybe murder with no evidence whatsoever, not even a paper trail - in fact, they're questioning whether they're even murders and contemplating early retirement - they do call the company that owns the thing. And the immediate response is no, of course. It's all the - the data is stored forever. Why would it dump data every two months? That doesn't make any sense. Are you having a problem with your machine? And that creates a whole new dynamic. That really is what cracks the case. It also really pisses off the detectives.
DAVIES: Right. And I have to say, I mean, when I read the book, I am as horrified by what hospital administrators do and don't do as I am by what Charlie Cullen does in a lot of cases here. And you have a case here where Charlie Cullen had clearly been doing some very, very scary stuff, and the hospital had investigated it. And not only did they not volunteer the information to law enforcement, not only did they not share it with law enforcement, they told them things that were untrue, which, by any common understanding of the term, impeded the investigation. Am I missing something here?
GRAEBER: No.
DAVIES: Right. All right. I have to just get that out and make it clear. And I also want to note that you did - as you write in the book - contact each of the hospitals where Charlie Cullen had worked and done stuff. And Somerset Medical Center gave you a statement, which I think we should read here in full. It said: (Reading) Somerset Medical Center fully cooperated with all interested parties and agencies throughout the course of the Cullen investigation. At this time, we are devoting the full extent of our resources and efforts on delivering the highest quality of care to the members of our community.
That's the beginning and end of what you got from them?
GRAEBER: I received one more communication. The risk manager, who had been the point person for those communications about the medical records and the like, that was obviously someone that I was very interested in speaking with. And that person was, I was informed, not going to be available to be spoken with. But no change in the bottom line.
DAVIES: All right. And we should say that there were never any actions, any official or criminal actions taken against hospital administrations for any of these events, right?
GRAEBER: That's correct.
GRAEBER: As far as I know, that is correct.
DAVIES: So what does Charlie Cullen stand convicted of? And do we know how many people he may have actually killed?
GRAEBER: We'll never know how many people Charlie Cullen ultimately killed. Charlie Cullen doesn't know how many people he killed. He initially could recall 40, and also said there was a large part of his life that was a fog, during which he would have no ability to recall. But during that fog - those fogs lasted years, and he said that there were probably multiples a week to other detectives.
He was convicted of at least 29, and then civil court, another, I believe, eight. The specifics are confusing, because the further back you go, the fewer records there are. There are no medical records, really, that come out of St. Barnabas. There are very few records of that initial investigation. There are no bodies that one could look at. There was no Pyxis. And so during that five years, you've got one murder, even though he - Cullen himself has said there are far more...
DAVIES: That's the first hospital where he worked in the burn unit and was so active. Right. Right.
GRAEBER: Exactly. So, but fast forward 16 years and look at the last six months, right before he's caught, where there are bodies in the ground that can be autopsied, there are medical records they discover, both the patient charts and, you know, all the machines, everything computerized, everything available they discover finally, and you've got 16 murders in the last six months. So we'll never know exactly...
DAVIES: It could be hundreds.
GRAEBER: According to some psychological profilers that have intimate knowledge of this case, it's likely hundreds.
DAVIES: Well, Charles Graeber, thanks so much for speaking with us.
GRAEBER: Thank you, Dave.
GROSS: Charles Graeber spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies. You can read an excerpt of Graeber's book, "The Good Nurse," on our website, freshair.npr.org.
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subset: commoncrawl


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And then came the awkward silence...
So I asked - nay, demanded - that you all come out of the virtual woodwork and introduce yourselves, insisting that this whole virtual salon/discussion-circle/cocktail-party blog thing will be oh so much more fun if I know who you are, if we're all just a little bit more acquainted, and you all (most of you - yes, I see you black-clad, anti-social lurkers over there in the corner smoking your cigarettes and trying to be invisible) gamely stepped forward and submitted to the cute-but-sort-of-annoying little party game that was National Delurking Week, and then what?
I, your hostess in the HBM-corner of this big blog-party, have nothing to say. And now we're all just standing around uncomfortably, the big hey-how-are-ya! grins plastered awkwardly on our faces and I'm supposed to say something, post something, anything, to keep this conversation going but whaddya know? I got nothin.'
OK, maaaybe I've got a Gratuitous WonderBabyPhoto 'round here somewhere...
To be more precise, I've got nothing that I can summon the energy to offer. Tell a story? Share an anecdote? Make an impassioned/reflective/pedantic argument about life, the universe and everything? Sorry. Can't. I've got plenty that I could talk about, but we've been following a strict no-sleep regimen around here (the better to keep up with the short-burst baby races and the long-distance speed-toddling and the free-style table climbing and all the other events that fill our napless days) and I'm really only capable of sotto voce cursing and muttering and, for variety, threatening my husband. Motherhood - or what seems to me to be extreme motherhood - is, at the moment, turning me into a cranky, sloppy, sleep-deprived bitch.
And nobody likes a bitch. At least, not up close.
So I'll spare you. I'm going to excuse myself from the party for a night or two to (try to) catch up on my sleep. While I'm gone, discuss amongst yourselves one or two or all of the following:
1) Tried and true methods for getting turbo-charged babies/toddlers to a) nap, b) sleep through the night, or c) both;
2) Tried and true methods for getting Mommy back to sleep after baby has woken at 1am and demanded, successfully, to be moved into the parental bed and is kicking Mommy in the head with restless baby feet and/or is thumping Mommy on the head with grotty stuffed frog and/or is yelling Hi! Cat! Hi! Cat! at Daddy's hairy feet;
3) Warm milk/hot bath, liquor or sleeping pills?
4) Britney Spears: comedy or tragedy?


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The government shutdown has taken a toll on the nation's economy and despite a deal that sidesteps a debt default and restarts the government (at least for a few months), growth forecasts for the last quarter of the year are being scaled back.
Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics has shaved his gross domestic product forecast from a 2.6 percent annualized rate to 2.1 percent for the last three months of the calendar year.
"If the Treasury fails to make payments to Social Security recipients and Medicare providers, to bondholders, whoever that may be, it would clearly undermine [investor] confidence and would lay the foundation for the economy going back into recession," Zandi says. "And if this would extend for any length of time, into November, I think the recession we would see would be severe, on par with the Great Recession, the downturn we just went through."
Standard & Poor's says the 16-day partial shutdown cost U.S. taxpayers $24 billion. It reduced its projected fourth-quarter growth rate from 3 percent to 2.4 percent.
"Even with the shutdown of the United States government and the threat of a default coming to an end, the cost of Congress's gridlock has already run well into the billions, economists estimate. And the total will continue to grow even after the shutdown ends, partly because of uncertainty about whether lawmakers might reach another deadlock early next year.
"A complete accounting will take months once the government reopens and the Treasury resumes adding to the country's debt. But economists said that the intransigence of House Republicans would take a bite out of fourth-quarter growth, which will affect employment, business earnings and borrowing costs. The ripple from Washington will be felt around the globe."
AndThe Washington Post writes:
"[The] the biggest failure of the agreement, analysts say, is that it keeps the government operating for only a few months, with a new need to fund agencies and raise the debt ceiling coming in the first five weeks of 2014.
"As a result, economists say, consumers and businesses are likely to hold back on spending and investment during the important holiday season, knowing that a similarly economy-shaking political showdown might be right around the corner.
" 'If people are afraid that the government policy brinkmanship will resurface again, and with it the risk of another shutdown or worse, they'll remain afraid to open up their checkbooks,' Standard & Poor's U.S. chief economist Beth Ann Bovino said in an analysis. 'That points to another Humbug holiday season.' "
In the Federal Reserve's monthly Beige Book report, released Wednesday, the central bank cited fears that the shutdown would have an impact on consumer and business confidence.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Amid all the excitement about Mainz's exhilarating start to the new German season, Borussia Dortmund's surge into second place in the Bundesliga, winning seven of their first nine matches, including the impressive disposal of fierce local rivals Schalke 04 in the Revierderby, has gone largely unnoticed, even though Jürgen Klopp's young, athletic team puts on show a similar brand of aggressive, attacking football.
These impressive displays provide the most tangible evidence yet that Borussia have largely recovered from their financial difficulties of 2005 when they flirted with bankruptcy. Since then, the club has been languishing in the football doldrums, but has made considerable progress in the last three seasons. From the mid-table obscurity of 13th position in 2008, they improved to 6th place in 2009 and managed to qualify for the UEFA Europa League last season by finishing in a very creditable 5th.
Although the club's 2009 annual report boasted, "BVB is back", it is still too early to say whether Borussia Dortmund have enough strength in depth to maintain their challenge for the Bundesliga. What we can declare with more confidence is that this team still has a long way to go to emulate the glory days of their legendary counterparts from the golden era of the mid-90s.
"Glory Days"
During this magical period, Ottmar Hitzfeld's team won successive Bundesliga titles in 1995 and 1996, with combative midfielder Matthias Sammer being named European Footballer of the Year, before triumphing in the 1997 UEFA Champions League, when two goals from Karl-Heinz Riedle and one from local hero Lars Ricken sealed a 3-1 win against a Juventus side that included Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro Del Piero.
In fact, Borussia Dortmund is a club steeped in history, celebrating its centenary last year with a friendly match against Real Madrid. It is one of the most successful, well known and popular German football clubs, having won the Bundesliga six times, the German (DFB) Cup twice and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1966 – when they were the first German team to secure a European title, beating Liverpool 2-1 in the final.
However, more recently, Borussia's sights have been set somewhat lower with the club happy to merely qualify for the UEFA Cup in 2008 by the back door, after losing the DFB Final to a Bayern Munich side that had already secured a Champions League spot by winning the German championship. In fairness, this did mark a step forward, given that it was the first time the club had qualified for Europe since 2004. Furthermore, the previous season had seen the club involved in a relegation battle, that provoked two changes in management, when Bert van Marwijk was replaced in the winter break by Jürgen Röber, before a run of six defeats in seven matches resulted in yet another new coach in the shape of former German national, Thomas Doll.
"Nuri Sahin - Turkish delight"
Terrible times, but since Jürgen Klopp arrived in May 2008, the team has gone from strength to strength, keeping the incoming coach's promise of showing supporters "full-throttle football with passion." The club's philosophy entails building up a very fit team of young, ambitious and talented players, backed up by experienced "pillars", which allows them to apply an energetic, pressing game that is much appreciated by their huge crowd. The jewel in the crown is the 22-year old Turkish playmaker Nuri Sahin, who first played in the Bundesliga at just 16, but Borussia's youngsters have also been recognised by the German national team with attacking midfielder Kevin Großkreutz and central defender Mats Hummels making their debuts this year.
The club's focus on youth looks likely to benefit the Nationalmannschaft for years to come, following the emergence of other young stars such as Mario Götze (18 years), Sven Bender (21) and Marcel Schmelzer (22), but Borussia's roster also includes a very impressive collection from a variety of other nations, including the imposing Serb defender Neven Subotic (21), the exciting Japanese midfielder Shinji Kagawa (21) and the Polish internationals, Robert Lewandowski (22) and Jakub "Kuba" Blaszczykowski (24).
The experienced backbone is provided by captain Sebastian Kehl, goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller and defender Patrick Owomoyela, who have over 600 appearances in Germany's top division between them.
"Shinji Kagawa - turning Japanese"
To some extent, Borussia have had to make a virtue out of necessity following the constraints imposed by their economic meltdown a few years ago. The club's difficulties first became apparent in 2002, when poor financial management resulted in an unmanageable debt load that meant the club had to sell its famous Westfalenstadion to a real estate trust. All the funds raised from their flotation on the German stock exchange two years before (the first and to date only listing of a German football club) had effectively been squandered.
Worse was to come in 2005 after the club spent heavily on expensive signings and high wages in the pursuit of further European glory. In a scenario horribly reminiscent of Leeds United's misguided strategy, Borussia effectively gambled on competing regularly in the Champions League to fund their spending. Although they managed to avoid relegation, the club's record losses and massive debts put them in a "life-threatening situation."
The approach of trying to buy success was far too ambitious for a club of Borussia's relatively limited means and its spectacular failure meant that the old regime, which had been in charge for nearly 20 years, had to be replaced. The new chairman, Hans-Joachim Watzke, summed up the reasons for their downfall, "We have problems, because our success was not as we hoped. Perhaps we spent money that we don't have. We thought that we could be in the Champions League for many years." The line between success and failure in the world of football is indeed a thin one.
"Neven Subotic - in demand"
However, football clubs can always count on the "never say die" spirit of their supporters and in their moment of need the BVB fans did not let their club down. Their "We are Borussia" campaign resulted in Dortmund's community of citizens, companies and public authorities combining to help save the club, so much so that in 2008, the club's annual report could proudly announce, "Three and a half years after facing the very real threat of insolvency, Borussia Dortmund has regained a solid economic foothold and is so sound that we no longer need to worry about financial problems, not to mention problems that would threaten our continued existence."
Having said that, it is doubtful whether the club could have carried on in 2005 without some very understanding creditors and bank managers, who deferred stadium rent and interest payments until 2007. The club also had to take out yet another loan to help pay the players' salaries, while they were forced to shore up the balance sheet in 2006 with significant capital increases that reduced liabilities and improved the equity position from €15 million to €61 million. The funds raised enabled the club to achieve a more manageable debt maturity structure and obtain improved interest rate terms.
At least they avoided the potential ignominy of accepting help from their rivals Bayern Munich in order to bolster its ailing finances, which looked like a distinct possibility at one stage. The club also rejected a sponsorship offer from Beate Uhse, a chain of sex shops. It's not clear which would have been the bitterer pill to swallow for BVB fans.
"The most beautiful stadium in the world?"
Instead, in 2006 the club took out a 15-year loan of €79 million with Morgan Stanley, thereby laying the foundations for the long-term stabilisation of the company. They used €57 million to buy back the remaining 51% of the shares in their stadium from the Molsiris real estate investment fund, thus reducing the high rental expenses and giving them more room to manoeuvre. The remaining €22 million was used to reduce and refinance existing liabilities, which enabled the creditors' agreement of March 2005 to be annulled in June 2006.
The restructuring process was completed two years later, when €50 million of cash received after signing a new 12-year marketing agreement with Sportfive was used to fully repay the Morgan Stanley loan many years ahead of schedule. The club promised that this move would not only further reduce its liabilities, but would free up funds to improve its sporting competitiveness over the next few years. The advancement in league position in the last couple of seasons would indicate that the club has been true to its word.
That improvement has also been reflected in the club's financials. Following the club's annus horribilis in 2005 with an enormous €55 million loss, the club instigated some drastic cost cutting, slashing the wage bill by €10 million and reducing player amortisation by €13 million over the next two years. Allied with an increase in the Bundesliga TV deal, the sale of David Odonkor to Betis and money distributed after the 2006 World Cup (held in Germany), this produced a remarkable €15 million profit in 2007.
In each of the last two years, Borussia Dortmund have reported a loss of about €6 million, though they have just about broken even at the operating level (before interest payments). That's not too bad in the current economic climate with the club "unable to completely sidestep the fallout from this crisis", especially in the absence of major European competition to boost revenues.
This year's results were also impacted by lower profits from player sales and would actually have shown an improvement on the prior year if Nelson Valdez's €4 million summer transfer to newly promoted La Liga side Hercules had taken place a few week earlier. Like all other clubs, Borussia's results were affected by the World Cup in South Africa, which pushed back most transfer activity to beyond the closing of their accounts at end-June. Having said that, over the years, player trading has not contributed a great deal to Borussia's profits (never higher than €5 million), even when their finances forced them to offload a number of players.
Even though Borussia Dortmund achieved their highest position in the Deloittes Money League in 2009 since 2003, the reality is that their revenue is a long way short of most major European clubs. Their 18th place with revenue of €103 million is the lowest of the five German teams in the Money League, behind Bayern Munich €290 million, Hamburger SV €147 million, Schalke 04 €124 million and Werder Bremen €115 million. In fact, Bayern's revenue is almost three times that of Borussia, while Real Madrid and Barcelona generate almost four times as much as them.
What is immediately apparent is the very low income from match day and television (with no Champions League boost), though the commercial revenue is surprisingly high – more than teams like Arsenal, Lyon, Juventus and Inter. In fact, commercial revenue contributes the highest percentage of total revenue of any of the teams in the Money League at 57% with only fellow German clubs Bayern (55%) and Schalke (49%) coming anywhere near that astonishing figure.
Revenue has risen 42% since the dark days of 2005, largely through the advances on the commercial side, which is a big reason for the improvement in the bottom line. However, since breaking through the €100 million barrier for the first time in 2008, there has hardly been any increase, which might suggest that there is a limit to the scope for future revenue growth – unless they qualify for the promised land of the Champions League or take the unpopular step of raising ticket prices.
Total income has actually fallen by £9 million since 2008, mainly due to the €7 million decline in other operating income, which was inflated that year by a couple of once-off factors, namely compensation paid to clubs that released international players for the 2008 European Championships and the sale of the swap transaction with Deutsche Bank as part of the repayment of the credit facility with Morgan Stanley.
At this stage, I should make clear that I am using the Deloittes definition of revenue in order to facilitate comparisons with other European clubs, so have excluded transfer income (€11.2 million in 2008/09). Adding that to the Money League revenue of €103.5 million gives the €114.7 million revenue reported by Borussia Dortmund. You should also note that the costs (accumulated depreciation) associated with transfers have been deducted from other expenses to give the profit on player sales, e.g. in 2008/09 transfer income of €11.2 million less transfer expenses of €7.2 million produced a profit on player sales of €4.0 million.
Some will be a little perplexed about the paradox of Borussia Dortmund enjoying some of the largest crowds in Europe, yet having one of the lowest match day revenues in the Money League with only Roma and Juventus generating less than Borussia's €22 million in 2009, but the reason is an obvious one: very low ticket prices. This is the antithesis of the English approach, which sees Manchester United and Arsenal earn five to six times as much from this revenue stream, but Bayern's €61 million is also nearly three times as much as their German colleagues.
Last season, Borussia Dortmund's incredible average attendance of 76,400 was the second highest in Europe, only beaten by Barcelona 78,100, but above Manchester United 74,800. This was easily the largest average in Germany with the next highest teams being Bayern 69,500 and Schalke 61,200. The Borussia fans' interest shows no sign of slowing down, as the club has just established a new record for season tickets for 2010/11 at a mighty 51,200, beating last season's previous high of 50,700.
Borussia's high attendances (and low match day revenue) can be partially attributed to the large number of standing places (around 27,000) for which tickets are priced as low as €12. Around 25,000 of these can be found on the famous Südtribüne terrace, known as the "Yellow Wall", which is the largest standing area in European football and provides each home game with an intensely passionate atmosphere.
It is surely no coincidence that the Bundesliga has the lowest ticket prices of Europe's five major leagues and consequently the highest attendances. The Bundesliga chief executive, Christian Seifert, argues that keeping tickets cheap is part of German clubs' core value of placing the supporter first, as they know how valuable the fan base is. According to Deloittes, the average price for a Bundesliga match is €19 compared to €51 in the Premier League, which is almost three times as much. That's a huge difference, especially for younger supporters.
"Sebastian Kehl - the leader of the pack"
This is an important part of football culture for German fans, who would be extremely resistant to higher ticket prices. Recently, Borussia fans voted with their feet when they boycotted the derby at Schalke, after their rivals demanded a 50% surcharge for this match. The chairman of one of the BVB supporters groups, Marc Quambusch, argued that this was the thin end of the wedge, "If we simply accept higher prices, we'll end up like the Premier League, where young people are priced out and the crowd is getting older and older." Jürgen Klopp injected some humour into the situation, when he said, "I think it's great our people don't go there to finance (new striker) Klaas-Jan Huntelaar."
For the moment, there are no such problems in Borussia's imposing stadium, now officially named Signal Iduna Park, which is the largest football ground in Germany with a capacity of 80,700. This is obviously an extremely valuable asset that can also be used to host international matches, when the capacity is reduced to 67,000 by converting the standing areas to seats (which only takes two days). The Times described it as the "most beautiful stadium in the world", writing, "Every Champions League final should be held in Dortmund. The place was built for football and its fans."
When you look at Borussia's paltry TV revenue of €22 million in 2009, which is by far the lowest in the Money League, it gives you some idea of the financial challenges they still face. Clearly, this would be much higher if they reached the Champions League (Wolfsburg, for example, received €26 million last season), but in the meantime their broadcasting revenue is almost entirely sourced from the DFL (German Football League).
The current deal runs for four years from 2009 to 2013 and is worth €1.65 billion for domestic rights, which works out as €412 million per season. This is slightly higher than the previous three-year contract, which was worth just over €400 million a year, though that did represent a 40% increase on the preceding agreement. The Bundesliga deal is about 40% lower than the €700 million received per season by the Premier League for domestic rights, which is bad enough, but is nothing compared to the disparity on overseas rights, where the Bundesliga only receives €40 million against €550 million for the Premier League. For all its many attractions, it is clear that the Bundesliga has not successfully marketed itself globally. As a result, German clubs receive far less TV money than their English peers, e.g. Bayern earned €70 million in 2008/09, which was considerably less than Manchester United's €117 million.
The DFL TV money is distributed among clubs using a weighted calculation based on the performance over the last four seasons plus a bonus depending on the final position in the current season. However, Borussia's television revenue has actually decreased over each of the last two seasons from €26 million to €21 million, even though their positions in the Bundesliga has been improving. The €4 million fall in 2009 was due to the team's elimination in the third round of the DFB Cup, compared to reaching the final the previous season, while the 2010 decline was again due to fewer cup matches.
"Happy days are here again"
As we highlighted earlier, what really drives Borussia Dortmund's revenue, like so many German clubs, is their commercial operation, which this year topped €60 million for the first time, comprising €39 million sponsorship, €8 million merchandising, €9 million catering and €5 million rentals. It was just as well for this revenue stream that the club bought back its merchandising trademark in 2006, which had been sold in 2000 as part of its efforts to raise money.
The club has implemented a strategy of building trusted long-term relationships with commercial partners, many of whom have recently extended their contracts with the club, including Sportfive, who have signed with the club until 2020, by which time they will have been the club's marketing partner for 20 years. Similarly, insurance and financial services provider Signal Iduna has extended its stadium naming rights deal, whereby it pays €4 million a year, until 2016.
This approach has also been followed by shirt sponsor Evonik, which prolonged its agreement to 2013, paying over €7 million a year. They had been part of an imaginative campaign whereby Borussia played the 2006/07 season with a green and yellow exclamation mark on their shirts, while the RAG energy company came up with the Evonik brand. German clubs have proved very adept at securing valuable shirt sponsorship deals, so much so that a report by sports consultancy StageUp showed that shirt sponsorship revenue in the Bundesliga is actually higher than the Premier League.
"Lucas Barrios - sharp shooter"
Nike were replaced by Kappa as kit suppliers in 2009/10 in a three-year deal worth €4 million a season, while Sportfive have succeeded in increasing the number of so-called "champion partners", the list now including Sprehe Feinkost, AWD, Coca Cola, Radeberger and Sparda Bank.
Moving on to expenses, Borussia have clearly made efforts to control their costs. Not only have their operating expenses been virtually unchanged over the last three years at around €110 million, but they are still lower than the €117 million spent in 2005. Having said that, other expenses of €45 million seem fairly high, though this does include €17 million for match operations, €11 million advertising, €6 million administration and €5 million materials (primarily merchandising).
Where Borussia have been particularly effective is in controlling their wage bill, as evidenced by the wages to turnover ratio, which has never been above 48% since the big spending year of 2005. The club has prioritised a reduction in its payroll, so wages were cut €2 million last season to €48 million, giving a very respectable wages to turnover ratio of 46%.
This is not overly surprising, given the Bundesliga's focus on this ratio, as can be seen by Deloitte's last review of the major European leagues, which revealed that the average wages to turnover ratio for the Bundesliga was just under 50%, compared to 66% in the Premier League. This is the main reason why the Bundesliga is more profitable (€172 million) than the Premier League (€93 million), even though its revenue (€1.6 billion) is much lower than its English equivalent (€2.4 billion).
Even so, Borussia's wages of €46 million are less than a third of Bayern's €139 million, though the champions' revenue is, of course, also around three times higher. To provide an English comparison, Borussia's wage bill is about the same as Bolton Wanderers, which should place their European aspirations into context. It must be tough to compete against the likes of Real Madrid and Inter Milan when their wage bill is four times as much as yours.
The trend in player amortisation, namely the annual cost of writing down the cost of buying new players, also reflects Borussia's fall and rise. It peaked at €18 million in 2005, but was then greatly reduced to €5 million in 2007, as the club reacted to its financial predicament, but it has steadily risen again, albeit to a much lower level at €9 million, as the club has ventured back into the transfer market, now that the worst of its monetary problems seem to be behind it. Again, this is much lower than other clubs with Bayern's €33 million being a pertinent comparison.
The graph of net transfer spend for the last 12 years beautifully demonstrates this trend and highlights one of the main reason for Borussia getting into debt. In the five years before the fateful 2004/05 season, the club's net spend was €95 million (gross €128 million), but then they hit the brakes with net surpluses generated over the next three years, followed by very modest net spend in the last four years. Over that seven-year period, Borussia had a net surplus of €5 million – a stark contrast to their extravagant epoch.
The club obviously now has an objective of balancing its books, which effectively means that it has to sell before it can buy. In recent years, this has meant the sale of players like Alex Frei, Mladen Petric, Steven Pienaar and Tomas Rosicky. Even now, after all that the club has done to reinforce its financial stability, it still cannot operate with complete freedom in the transfer market. In order to meet financial targets, the club may not pursue certain players if that would incur additional debt. For the same reason, a player may have to be sold, even if the coach wants to keep him on sporting grounds. That might be the case with the highly rated defender, Neven Subotic, next summer.
Borussia's sporting director, Michael Zorc, has been criticised for his track record on player purchases, but he must sometimes feel like he is fighting with one hand tied behind his back. Nevertheless, he has still managed to unearth some gems, such as the brilliant Shinji Kagawa, who was signed for only €350,000 from the J-League, and has already won over the fans by scoring twice against bitter rivals Schalke, and top scorer Lucas Barrios, bought for €4 million from Paraguayan side Colo-Colo, whom Zorc described as "a goal machine, the best striker we have had since Stéphane Chapuisat."
The club also possesses what it describes as "hidden reserves" among the playing staff, following its policy of recruiting young talent with a lot of potential. This means that their value in the transfer market is much higher than that recorded in the books. To further this objective, they have founded the BVB Academy to facilitate the targeted, comprehensive development of players aged between 19 and 23 years old.
Given that the club's financial problems are still fresh in the memory, it is entirely understandable that Borussia exercise a degree of caution. Even though they have managed to reduce their net debt from €150 million in 2006 to €73 million today, mainly due to the repayment of the Morgan Stanley loan, this is still a high figure by Bundesliga standards. The loans have maturity dates between 2020 and 2026 with a weighted average interest rate of 6.6%, but, importantly, the club is not exposed to any interest rate risk thanks to the fixed interest nature of the credit agreements. However, despite making some loan repayments, the net debt has actually been creeping up over the past two years, as the club has increased its use of overdraft facilities up to €10 million.
Borussia Dortmund's financial difficulties do beg the question of whether the Bundesliga's licencing rules are not quite so effective in practice as we have been led to believe. These regulations include looking at a club's books each March in order to assess the robustness of their budgetary plans before issuing them a licence to operate the next season. In addition, the "50+1" rule, which dictates that club members must own at least 50% plus one share in order to prevent the club being subject to the whims of an individual owner, theoretically means that clubs should not take on potentially damaging debt levels.
Despite these well-intended rules, a number of clubs have still managed to get themselves into deep financial trouble over the years, Borussia being the obvious example, but Schalke's finances have also caused concern in the past few months. Clearly, no rules can ever be perfect and there will always be exceptional cases, but let's hope that the Bundesliga has learned some lessons here and tightened up their procedures, including a better early warning system.
"Klopp hands - here comes Jürgen"
In order for Borussia to avoid returning to such a position, or, more positively, for the club to further improve, it will need to grow its revenue, but is this feasible?
Well, there are a few opportunities. The best route would be via success on the pitch, particularly qualification for the Champions League. If the club could achieve that (and keep qualifying year after year), it would be a whole new ball game financially. Fortunately for them, although this is not a walk in the park, it is far from insurmountable and they would have managed it last season if they had won either of their last two matches. The German league is also far more open than others, so it's not a given that certain teams will always qualify no matter what. As Steve McClaren, Wolfsburg's new coach enthused, "The beauty of the Bundesliga is any one of ten teams can win the title."
They could also make more use of their magnificent stadium by staging international matches and marketing it for more events on non-game days. In fact, even though commercial revenue is already high, better use of the BVB brand could further improve merchandising sales, especially as Borussia Dortmund is the fourth most popular club amongst Germany's football followers (according to market research). Finally, although the fans might not appreciate it, there is a lot of unrealised profit that could be crystallised by selling some of the up and coming young players to richer clubs.
"And it was all yellow"
The current strategy still needs to have an eye on gradually improving the financial structure, an approach that the club has described as "sustainability before speed." In the period shortly after Borussia Dortmund came so close to extinction, the club revealed its new credo: "sporting success cannot be achieved without exercising good business sense." Not the most stirring words that you'll ever hear, but I'm sure that most BVB fans are thankful that the club appears to be in safe hands and they are heading in the right direction.
The rest of us should be equally happy that this grand old club survived and seems well on the road to recovery, if only so that we can continue to enjoy the spectacle of the "Yellow Wall" in full voice, which is one of the truly great sights in modern football. Forget Phil Spector, that's what I call a wall of sound.


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"I like to fight tough guys and I'd love to fight the big fights, but if they give me a fight, I'll take it. I've never said no to a fight and I've never turned a fight down."
In Australia, the return of Dubbo native Kyle Noke this weekend for UFC 127 is a big deal. You can assume that it's equally, if not more as, important to the fighter himself, but you won't hear that from his mouth.
"It's just business as usual," said Noke, who faces his Ultimate Fighter season 11 castmate Chris Camozzi. "I'm not trying to make this fight anything more than just a fight and I'm not putting any extra pressure on myself. A lot of people talk about the hype of it all, but I try not to buy into it. I've been fighting for a while now and over time I've learned to make each fight just a fight. I don't try to hype it up too much or hype it at all – I just consider every fight to be another step in my career."
Noke calls it his tunnel vision, the ability to shut out all outside distractions and whatever happened in the past in order to just deal with the task at hand, which in this case is his bout with Camozzi. You can even ask him about his last fight on home shores, a first round submission win over Yohan Gouaida in 2008, and he chuckles because it's already out of his life and his memory banks.
"I don't remember too much about it," he said. "To be honest I don't remember much from my fights because I have so much tunnel vision."
So where did such single-minded determination emanate from?
"I've been fighting for a while, I guess it's something I've developed myself," said the eight year vet. "No one really told me that's what I should do, but it's just something I've been doing that works well for me and it helps keep me focused."
It also keeps him winning. After a solid run through the middleweight ranks in Australia and a 1-1 stint in the now defunct Elite XC organization, Noke began to hit his stride in 2008, and in 2009 he got his shot to elevate his public profile and his game through The Ultimate Fighter 11. He won his first two bouts on the show, but in the quarterfinals he was decisioned by eventual finalist Kris McCray.
"I feel like on the show I really didn't get a chance to show everyone who I was as a fighter, just being out of my element of not being in my home camp, it wasn't really me and it wasn't the way I fight," he said. "I think a lot of people judged me from my fights on the show and they think I've got no wrestling because Kris McCray took me down a lot, but I've worked on these things for a long time now and if people judge me from the show, that's good because they'll think I'm a one-dimensional fighter."
Noke quickly dispelled such notions in his two post-TUF bouts, as he scored impressive finishes of Josh Bryant (TKO2) and Rob Kimmons (Wsub2). If anything, the 30-year old vet showed himself to be far advanced from the fighter he was on the show, and frankly, he already looks to be ready for the bigger names at 185 pounds. He says being in his adopted home of Albuquerque with Greg Jackson's MMA squad is a big reason why.
"To come from that show and get back to my home camp was a wake-up call," he said. "It was a chance for me to show how good I really am. Just being comfortable with my camp again gave me an opportunity to really prove myself. I grew up playing rugby and I love a team sport, and it really feels like a team and a family being at Jackson's and I like that aspect of it. I know it's an individual sport, and at other gyms it feels like it really is, but at Jackson's it feels like a team sport and it feels like a family. Everyone supports each other there and it's great because it helps us all grow and develop together. I don't think I'd be anywhere near where I am now if it wasn't for all the guys I train with and being at Jackson's."
And being out of a house with a bunch of other fighters competing for the same prize over the course of six weeks doesn't hurt either.
"Nothing can help you living in a house with guys you have to fight and a bunch of crazy guys wanting to fight each other," said Noke of the TUF experience. "Nothing can prepare you for that. But come fight time, having a little bit of (previous) experience helps."
Can't be any crazier than working for security for his friend, the late "Crocodile Hunter", Steve Irwin, right?
"That was a different type of craziness," he laughs. "I enjoyed the house and I'd do it in a heartbeat if (UFC President) Dana (White) said they were doing it again and they want me to do it again. It's a great show and I loved being in there. It was fun, but it was crazy."
Things have calmed down considerably since then for Noke, but only outside the Octagon. In it, the Aussie has the opportunity to make another major statement with a win over the tough and scrappy Camozzi, and if he succeeds, some bigger names will likely be next. Not that he's thinking about such matters.
"I just wait for the call to fight and I'll fight anyone they want me to," he said. "Obviously, I like to fight tough guys and I'd love to fight the big fights, but if they give me a fight, I'll take it. I've never said no to a fight and I've never turned a fight down."
He'll get a fight this weekend. But it doesn't matter whether it's in Sydney, Albuquerque, or in a Vegas gym filled with less than 50 people, it's still just another day at the office for Kyle Noke.
"I know it's gonna be loud," he said of the atmosphere in the Acer Arena. "But I don't really hear the crowd until after the fight, when my tunnel vision goes and I realize that I was fighting in front of people. Hopefully I can keep that tunnel vision for this fight."


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Comfortable fishing boat seats can make all the difference during a day on the water. Shop quality and comfort from premier brands like Wise, Tempress, Garelick and more at iboats.com. Find the folding fishing seat, butt seat, bench and pedestal you need for your boat. Made of marine-grade materials, these seats will be durable enhancements to your boat.
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A fishing boat needs a more versatile type of seat than a pleasure boat. Folding boat seats, used with a pedestal, are the most commonly used for fishing. They offer a convenience of folding them up when not in use, as well as having a seat that turns in the direction of your fishing.
Seating for fishing needs to be of high quality materials to withstand the rigors of fishing. Marine-grade vinyl offers durability and is usually mildew resistant. Consider seats that are UV resistant, thus preventing a premature fade of colors. The seat should have a sturdy frame and be made of materials that are corrosion resistant, such as aluminum or stainless steel.
Another consideration in selecting your fishing seats is the color and pattern. For example if you are hunting waterfowl, you'll certainly want to consider a camouflage seat, as well as a seat that is covered with denier nylon to reduce noise and sheen.
If you have any questions, or need help in your selection process for replacing the seats in your fishing boat, check out our boating forums, or give us a call.


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Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.
Google Earth's features include:
See global changes with decades of historic imagery
If you've ever wondered how your neighborhood has changed throughout time, Google Earth now gives you access to the past. With a simple click, check out suburban sprawl, melting ice caps, coastal erosion, and more.
Dive beneath the surface of the ocean
In the new ocean layer, you can plunge all the way to the floor of the sea, view exclusive content from partners like BBC and National Geographic, and explore 3D shipwrecks like the Titanic.
Track and share your paths with others
Take placemarks a step further and record a free-form tour in Google Earth. Simply turn on the touring feature, press record, and see the world. You can even add a soundtrack or narration to personalize the journey.


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After you've published on your blog, don't forget to add the link to your actual post (by clicking on its title within the post and then copying the URL which this generates) to Mr Linky below, and then leave a comment please. After a deep sigh of satisfaction at a job well done, put the kettle on and set off to visit as many other contributors as you can. If the mood takes you leave them a comment as well; we Sepians thrive on comments - it makes it all worthwhile!
Before you disappear down a rabbit hole or enter 'caverns measureless to man' (extra points if you know where the quotation comes from), take a peek at the next two week's images I've chosen. There are some Sepians who like the advance warning so that they can keep the prompts in mind whilst on the hunt at antique fairs or when thumbing through the family album.
Happy caving!
(Little Nell)


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Thursday 28 March 2024 (other days)
Maundy Thursday
Using calendar: United States - Newark. You can change this.
Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us. Come, let us adore him.
Year: B(II). Liturgical Colour: White.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Mid-morning reading (Terce) | Hebrews 4:14-15 © |
Since in Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme high priest who has gone through to the highest heaven, we must never let go of the faith that we have professed. For it is not as if we had a high priest who was incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us; but we have one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin.
Noon reading (Sext) | Hebrews 7:26-27 © |
The ideal high priest would have to be holy, innocent and uncontaminated, beyond the influence of sinners, and raised up above the heavens; one who would not need to offer sacrifices every day, as the other high priests do for their own sins and then for those of the people, because Jesus Christ our Lord has done this once and for all by offering himself.
Afternoon reading (None) | Hebrews 9:11-12 © |
Now Christ has come, as the high priest of all the blessings which were to come. He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, which is better than the one made by men's hands because it is not of this created order; and he has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption for us.
Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.
This web site © Copyright 1996-2024 Universalis Publishing Ltd · Contact us · Cookies/privacy |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — As 21st century technology strains to become ever faster, cleaner and cheaper, an invention from more than 200 years ago keeps holding it back. It's why electric cars aren't clogging the roads and why Boeing's new ultra-efficient 787 Dreamliners aren't flying high.
And chances are you have this little invention next to you right now and probably have cursed it recently: the infernal battery.
Boeing is the first company to make extensive use in an airliner of technology's most advanced battery — lithium ion. But a Jan. 7 battery fire aboard a Dreamliner in Boston, followed by a similar meltdown in Japan, led authorities around the world to ground the fleet this month, highlighting a longstanding safety problem that engineers have struggled with.
In 2006 and 2007, more than 46 million cellphone batteries and 10 million laptop batteries — all lithium ion — were recalled because of the risk of overheating, short-circuiting and exploding. Additional safety features have been installed since then on lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics.
As for the electric car industry, lithium ion batteries have proved to have two major drawbacks: They are costly, and they do not allow automobiles to go far enough between rechargings. A123, a maker of lithium ion batteries for electric cars, went bankrupt last year because of poor demand and high costs after receiving a $249 million federal grant.
Lithium ion batteries, which store more energy at a higher voltage and a lighter weight than earlier types, represent the most recent big jump in battery technology. And that took place nearly a quarter of a century ago.
"We need to leapfrog the engineering of making of batteries," said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab battery scientist Vince Battaglia. "We've got to find the next big thing."
But none of the 10 experts who talked to The Associated Press said they know what that big thing will be yet, or when it will come.
"If you crack it ... it'll change the world," said Carnegie Mellon University materials science professor Jay Whitacre.
Batteries are so crucial to a greener energy future that the Obama administration has spent more than $2 billion to jump-start the advanced battery industry, including setting up what some experts say is a mini-Manhattan Project for batteries.
To make the next breakthrough, researchers will have to master complex chemistry, expensive manufacturing, detailed engineering, a variety of different materials, lengthy testing, stringent safety standards and giant cost problems. It involves dealing with liquids and solids, metals and organic chemicals, and things that are in between, said Glenn Amatucci, director of the Energy Storage Research Group at Rutgers University.
"We're dealing with a system that you can imagine is almost alive. It's almost breathing," Amatucci said. "Trying to understand what's happening within these batteries is incredibly complex."
One reason the battery is the slowpoke of the high-tech highway is that it has conflicting functions. Its primary job is to store energy. But it's also supposed to discharge power, lots of it, quickly. Those two jobs are at odds with each other.
"If you want high storage, you can't get high power," said M. Stanley Whittingham, director of the Northeast Center for Chemical Energy Storage. "People are expecting more than what's possible."
On the commercial market, lithium ion batteries are generally ones small enough to fit into cellphones. But to power bigger items — from a Prius to a 787 — they get grouped together, increasing the juice they store and provide. That also increases the safety risk, experts say. The lithium ion battery that caught fire in a Boeing 787 weighed 63 pounds and was 19 inches long.
"You can't get around the fundamental thing is that lithium ion batteries are stuffed full of flammable liquid," Whitacre said.
Even one-in-a-million problems with lithium ion batteries can result in many fires because there are billions of them in use now, with dozens sometimes stacked together in a single device.
Experts say lithium ion batteries are more dangerous because their electrolyte, the liquid that allows ions to move between electrodes in the battery, is more flammable than the substance in older type batteries. Those older types include the lead-acid batteries in most cars and the nickel cadmium batteries that are often in video equipment and power tools.
Still, MIT materials science and engineering professor Gerbrand Ceder and others said the safety problems can be fixed.
Change doesn't come often in the battery field.
"The big advances in battery technology happen rarely. It's been more than 200 years and we have maybe five different successful rechargeable batteries," said George Blomgren, a former senior technology researcher at Eveready and now a private battery consultant. "It's frustrating."
Alessandro Volta — for whom the volt is named — invented the first useful battery in 1800. That was long before other breakthrough inventions like the internal combustion engine, telephone, car, airplane, transistor, computer and Internet. But all of those developments have seemed to evolve faster than the simple battery.
The lead-acid car battery "has been around for 150 years more or less," Whitacre said. "This is a remarkable testament to first how robust that chemistry is and how difficult change is."
Battery experts are split over what's next. Some think the lithium ion battery can be tinkered with to get major efficiency and storage improvements. Amatucci said he thinks we can get two to three times more energy out of future lithium ion batteries, while others said minor chemical changes can do even more.
But just as many engineers say the lithium ion battery has run its course.
"With the materials in the current lithium ion battery, we are definitely plateaued," Blomgren said. "We're waiting for something to come along that really does the job."
There are all sorts of new type batteries being worked on: lithium-air, lithium-sulfur, magnesium, sodium-ion.
"Right now it's a horse race," Blomgren said. "There's deficiencies in every technology that's out there. Each one of them requires a major solution."
One of the nation's best hopes for a breakthrough, said Battaglia, is John Goodenough, the man responsible for the 1979 breakthrough that led the first commercial lithium ion battery in 1991. He will receive the National Medal of Science at the White House next month.
Goodenough is 90.
"I'm working on it," Goodenough, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said Tuesday. "I'm optimistic in a sense that I'm willing to keep working on it. I think we can do some interesting things."