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The rock-concert business began on the evening of November 6, 1965, outside a loft building on Howard Street in San Francisco. Bill Graham, a thirty-four-year-old frustrated actor from the Bronx, had organized an "appeal" for the Mime Troupe, a radical theatre group he managed, whose leader, Ronnie Davis, had recently been busted for public obscenity. Graham was more hustler than hippie, but he understood the kids, and he had arranged for several local rock bands, including Jefferson Airplane and the Fugs, to perform at the benefit. Arriving on a motor scooter with Robert Scheer, the managing editor of the magazine Ramparts, Graham saw a long line stretching down Howard Street—"Huge hordes of people," as he recalled in his autobiography, "Bill Graham Presents," written with Robert Greenfield. Turning to Scheer, he said, "This is the business of the future."
There had, of course, been rock-and-roll concerts before the Mime Troupe appeal; the Beatles had filled Shea Stadium a few months earlier. But that was show business as usual, staged for teenyboppers, who screamed so loudly that the musicians couldn't hear themselves play. The kids who lined up on Howard Street were there for the experience. Drugs helped, but, as history would show, it wasn't only drugs that made a great rock show a transformative event. It was the music, the artist, and the community of fans—instant cousinship, as Graham called it—together with the sudden blaze of lights, the press of sweaty flesh, and a thousand fists punching the air as the chorus rolled around. Inside the loft, Graham recalled, "I saw people come in and instantly start dancing with other people and only then did I realize that they didn't know each other. They just started dancing. I'd never seen that before."
This year, Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter, will attempt to re-create the spirit of that Howard Street happening at some twenty-two thousand concerts, performed by sixteen hundred acts, in thirty-three countries around the world. Last year, Ticketmaster Entertainment, the world's largest ticket seller, sold more than a hundred and forty-one million tickets, valued at more than $8.9 billion. With the collapse of the record business, as a result of piracy (album sales are almost half what they were in 2000, and, according to some surveys, ninety-five per cent of all downloaded music is stolen), the business of selling live music has become the main source of revenue for the popular-music industry. That means the work of developing acts, spreading the word, and supporting tours—all of which used to be done by record labels and radio (back in the days when the big rock stations played new music)—now has to be done by Live Nation and Ticketmaster, whether they want to do it or not.
Almost everyone agrees that the business of live music—the live experience, as Live Nation calls its product—is dysfunctional. Both Live Nation and Ticketmaster are loathed by fans, and their stock prices are depressed. Concertgoers complain about the "convenience charges" as well as parking and facility fees that Ticketmaster tacks on, which can account for more than thirty per cent of the cost of a ticket. Promoters worry that, as the top-grossing touring acts—the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Madonna—get older, very few younger acts are popular enough to fill stadiums and arenas on the two-year-long tours that superstar rock bands undertake. (Forty per cent of the seats at all Live Nation concerts go unsold.) Most galling to the four stakeholders involved in putting on a concert—the artist, the promoter, the venue operator, and the ticket seller—is the loss of billions of dollars in revenue to the "secondary market": the Internet-driven business of ticket reselling, in which ticket brokers and scalpers profit, while the people who take the artistic and financial risks hardly participate at all.
Bill Graham did not live to see "the future" become the live experience; he died in a helicopter crash after a Huey Lewis and the News concert in Concord, California, in 1991. But if you go back to that night on Howard Street and try to understand what Graham saw, it seems obvious that the success of rock shows will always be measured not in box-office revenues and beer sales but in the quality of the party. Records are commodities; concerts are social events, and in trying to make a commodity out of the live experience you risk spoiling the experience altogether.
Two recent concerts—the shows that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Izod Center, in the New Jersey Meadowlands, on May 21st and May 23rd—have come to serve as a referendum on what's wrong with the live-music business. The shows marked the end of the first leg of Springsteen's "Working on a Dream" tour, which was announced in late January, after the release of his new album. In the flush days of the record business, bands toured to support the album; these days, the album is a teaser for the tour. (The Boss's new album, which has a list price of $18.98, has sold about five hundred and fifty thousand copies in the United States; last year's Springsteen tour grossed $204.5 million.) Ticketmaster handled the majority of the dates on the first U.S.-based leg of the tour, and tickets for most of the twenty-six shows went on sale on Monday, February 2nd—a day after Springsteen's halftime performance at the Super Bowl.
The Izod Center is a two-tiered arena with roughly twenty thousand seats, which is owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, a public agency that was also the promoter for these two shows. (Live Nation promoted dates in other cities.) Some forty million people live within two and a half hours of the Izod Center, many of them Springsteen fans. The Boss could probably have sold out ten shows at the venue; because he had decided to do only two, desire for the tickets was guaranteed to be intense. With tickets in such short supply, market logic dictated high ticket prices. But Springsteen and his longtime manager, Jon Landau, had fixed prices at ninety-five dollars for lower-tier and general-admission standing-room floor tickets, and sixty-five dollars for upper-tier tickets. Given what Springsteen could have asked (the Stones charged four hundred and fifty dollars for the best seats on their most recent U.S. tour), these tickets were a remarkable bargain—proof, if anyone needed it, of Springsteen's solidarity with his working-class fans.
The phenomenon of below-market-value tickets has inspired a cottage industry of economists seeking to explain seemingly illogical pricing in the rock-concert business. Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist who, in May, was confirmed as the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for economic policy, is one. "There is still an element of rock concerts that is more like a party than a commodities market," Krueger told me. A ticket to a rock show, he said, bears elements of a "gift exchange," in which intangible benefits accrue to the seller. Cheap tickets increase the possibility of a sellout, which augments merchandise and concession sales. Sellouts make the concert experience better for musicians and audience alike. And, one might add, a cheap ticket is the price the music industry pays to preserve the illusion that the sixties never ended. "In some fashion, I help people hold on to their own humanity—if I'm doing my job right," Springsteen once said, of his performances. At least, he helps people hold on to their savings.
In a 2006 paper titled "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music," written with Marie Connolly, Krueger reports on data that he and twelve Princeton students collected at a Springsteen concert in Philadelphia, on October 6, 2002. Every ticket cost seventy-five dollars, and the box-office amounted to around $1.5 million. Krueger and his researchers found that a quarter of the fans they interviewed before the show had bought their tickets on the secondary market, where they had paid an average of two hundred and eighty dollars. Had Springsteen charged the market price for all tickets, he would have collected about four million dollars in additional revenue, a figure Krueger calls "astounding." Studying concert-ticket sales, Krueger also told me, is not all that different from analyzing mortgage-backed securities, which were at the heart of the financial crisis. Both are bought and then resold on a secondary market, and "both markets are also subject to price bubbles, lack of trust, inadequate regulation, and imperfect information."
By drastically underpricing the Izod Center tickets, Springsteen was inadvertently helping to create the circumstances for an orgy of speculation and scalping on the secondary market. The desire for a hot ticket is not an economic calculation; it's a craving. Thanks to the Internet, satisfaction is only a couple of mouse clicks away.
Ticket scalping is probably as old as tickets. (Ticket scholarship is a neglected field, but, in the English-speaking world, tickets are thought to have been invented in the Elizabethan era.) According to Kerry Segrave's "Ticket Scalping: An American History, 1850-2005," the term derives from the early days of railroads, when "scalpers" would sell partly used tickets at a discount. By the late nineteenth century, New Yorkers were applying the word to the crowds of "sidewalk men," who sold tickets for inflated prices outside Broadway theatres, and who were a source of public outrage. "The greatest evil that theatergoers in this city have to contend with is the ticket speculator," a local magistrate named Crane said in 1901. "They are practically highwaymen and hold up everybody that goes to a place of amusement."
For more than a century, public officials have repeatedly introduced anti-scalping legislation; many such laws have been struck down as unconstitutional, on the reasonable ground that a ticket scalper is no different from an art dealer or a real-estate speculator. Sidewalk men were sometimes arrested on charges of disorderly conduct; eventually laws were put in place that prohibited scalping within a certain distance of a venue. But, as anyone who has been to a big game or a show at Madison Square Garden knows, such laws are rarely enforced.
Licensed ticket brokers are usually distinguished from scalpers, although they sometimes employ scalpers to unload their excess inventory on the street. But the Internet has blurred the distinction between pros and amateurs by making it possible for people like Amy Stephens, a thirty-three-year-old mother of three from Atlanta, to enter the profession. In the summer of 2001, Stephens and her husband came to New York with a pair of hundred-dollar tickets to see "The Producers." Unable to use them, they put them on eBay, where they promptly sold at a four-hundred-dollar markup. Stephens bought more "Producers" tickets at the box office, and they sold for a profit, too. Back in Atlanta, she bought a twenty-game pack of Anaheim Angels tickets, which guaranteed the holder seats for playoff games, and when the Angels went to the World Series, Stephens sold those tickets for fifteen hundred dollars each. By 2005, Amy's Tickets was grossing a million dollars a year. "I would never in a thousand years stand on the street and sell tickets," Stephens told me. "But this was so easy."
The Internet has made scalping as common as day trading. I heard of one college student who earned a hundred thousand dollars a year by scalping tickets on StubHub, the largest of the ticket-reselling sites, and TicketsNow, the second largest; both sites are online marketplaces that charge buyers and sellers a commission in return for guaranteeing transactions. We have become a republic of scalpers—even America's team, the New York Yankees, has joined in. The Yankees used to confiscate season tickets from fans who'd scalped them, but now there's a StubHub window at the new Stadium.
The rock-concert industry has not, by and large, been able to take advantage of this new market, because in some states ticket venders are legally bound to sell tickets for their face value, and because some of the twenty or so superstar touring acts that generate the majority of the income don't want to charge market prices. In 2008, Ticketmaster expanded its reach within the secondary market by purchasing TicketsNow, but in doing so the company set itself up for a potential conflict of interest. There appeared to be a strong incentive for Ticketmaster to get tickets into the hands of brokers who operate on TicketsNow, and to reap hefty commissions.
On February 2nd, at a few minutes before 9 A.M., Maria Shwalb, a benefits manager for a large pharmaceutical company, was at her computer, waiting for the Izod Center shows to go on sale. Born and raised in northern New Jersey, the heartland of Springsteen Nation, Shwalb has seen close to fifty of Springsteen's shows, going back almost thirty years. But she had never been really close up, and that was her dream—just once, to be right in front of the stage.
Not too long ago, Shwalb would have taken the day off and stood in line at the box office or at a nearby Ticketmaster outlet. More than once, she'd waited in line all night; even when she was pregnant with her second child she'd got in line at 6 A.M. The line was democratic, and self-policing, and it imposed its own kind of morality on the ticket market. The best seats went to the people who were willing to wait the longest, rather than to the people who would pay the most. Of course, ticket brokers sent "diggers"—generally teen-agers who were paid a set price for each ticket they dug up—but that was O.K. with Shwalb, because, she told me, "those guys had to wait in line, too, same as everyone else."
But the spectacle of people camped for days around city blocks to get tickets to a hot show has disappeared, as ticket buying has migrated to the Internet. Ticketmaster doesn't dedicate a certain number of tickets to each outlet—all tickets are pooled—so ticket buyers have a better chance in the online queue than in a physical one.
At precisely 9 A.M., Shwalb filled in the "captcha"—the distorted word puzzle designed to foil automated responses and bulk purchases by ticket brokers. Selecting four ninety-five-dollar seats—for her and her "core group" of Jersey girlfriends—she hit the "Get Tickets" button. The transaction began, but just after the "Complete Purchase" button appeared, a message popped up saying, "System down for maintenance."
"What?" she thought. "They're doing maintenance now?"
She tried again. This time, a banner appeared at the bottom of the screen, redirecting her to TicketsNow, the secondary-market site, where, it said, "tickets might still be available." Indeed, tickets were available, at prices starting at around three hundred for the nosebleed seats in the rafters and rising into thousands for lower-loge seats near the stage.
"It had only been ten minutes," Shwalb said. "I thought, How the heck could all these people buy their tickets, and then list them for resale so fast?" Shwalb didn't know that Ticketmaster owned TicketsNow. When she found that out, she understood: Ticketmaster appeared to be supplying brokers and scalpers with primary-market tickets.
By 10 A.M., ninety-nine per cent of the tickets to the two Izod shows had been sold. Maria Shwalb failed to get a single one. She didn't even consider buying on TicketsNow—not because of the prices but because, she said, "a scalper's a scalper." Instead, she did what tens of thousands of other fans who couldn't get tickets that day did: she blamed Ticketmaster.
Both Ticketmaster and Live Nation enjoy monopoly-like dominance in their fields, but they achieved those positions by different means: Ticketmaster through technological innovation, like Microsoft, and Live Nation through consolidation, like Standard Oil. Together, these two companies have transformed the concert industry from a regional business, run by entrepreneurs, into a global one, run by corporate managers. Whether the incorporated concert business can make money is still an open question.
Bill Graham created the template for the independent promoter: part entrepreneur, part showman. By the early seventies, other men in other cities had followed him into the business: Don Law, in Boston; Ron Delsener and John Scher, in New York; Seth Hurwitz, in Washington, D.C.*; and Jerry Mickelson, in Chicago. Eventually, about forty of these characters emerged in the metropolitan areas of North America. They ran their regional businesses like small fiefdoms, limiting competition, especially if they controlled exclusive venues where artists wanted to play, like Graham's storied halls—the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, and the Fillmore East, in New York.
From the beginning, concert promotion was a perilous business, because the promoter takes the risk of the concert not selling out (or, far worse, of the artist getting sick or even dying, which is what happened recently to AEG Live, the promoter of Michael Jackson's concerts at the O2 arena, in London). The promoter guarantees the artist a minimum fee or a split of the box-office, whichever is higher, and, out of his share of the "split point" rents the hall, buys advertising and insurance, hires security, arranges the ticketing, handles or contracts for concessions and merchandise sales and parking, and lays on the backstage catering. In the early days of rock concerts, the promoter got to keep forty per cent of the box-office, but, as the artists grew in stardom, managers and booking agents were able to negotiate ever larger splits for their clients; the promoters' share of the box-office shrank to twenty per cent, then to ten, and then to five. Graham used to say, "The only thing that is consistent in this business is that the promoter is always being asked to take less and less."
Ticketmaster was started in 1976 by two graduate students at Arizona State University who were frustrated at not being able to get tickets to their favorite rock shows. At the time, venues sold concert tickets from their own box offices, and also distributed tickets to record stores, head shops, and other outlets. Larger venues contracted with Ticketron, then the dominant company, to sell tickets over the phone from its network of call centers and from its outlets. Some locations would sell out quickly while others had tickets left over. The A.S.U. students devised a computer network that would allow outlets to share information about their inventory, and created a database from which all tickets were allocated.
In 1982, Jay Pritzker, a wealthy investor from Chicago, purchased Ticketmaster for four million dollars. Pritzker brought in a lawyer and former standup comedian named Fred Rosen to run the business, and Rosen made two key innovations. He insisted that Ticketmaster be the exclusive ticket seller for a given event, because by controlling the entire inventory Ticketmaster could offer fans the best available seat, no matter where they purchased tickets. Ticket buyers, Rosen calculated, would pay for the convenience. In return, Rosen offered promoters and venue operators a percentage of the extra charges. They were quick to embrace the new business model because it offset some of the losses from their shrinking split points. Ticketmaster bought what was left of Ticketron in 1991.
Rosen's strategy was brilliant, except for one thing: from the beginning, ticket buyers hated the fees. But ticket buyers weren't Ticketmaster's clients; the promoters and venue operators were. Ticketmaster was simply offering a service, which ticket buyers were free to forgo. As a practical matter, however, the concertgoer could hardly avoid Ticketmaster. In 1995, Pearl Jam refused to play in venues that contracted with Ticketmaster, with which it was already embattled. The band's tour, which played only in racetracks and small arenas, and which was plagued with bad weather and illness, was abandoned midway through. Pearl Jam blamed Ticketmaster.
In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, which, among other things, deregulated the radio industry. Robert F. X. Sillerman made a fortune by buying eighty regional radio stations and combining them into the giant SFX Broadcasting. He saw a similar opportunity to roll up regional concert promoters and assemble them into a branded, global rock-promotion company, to be called SFX Entertainment. By handling all the dates on a tour, Sillerman told me, SFX Entertainment could organize tours more efficiently, allowing acts to play more dates in less time. It could also attract nationwide sponsors for tours, which would increase revenues. In 1997, Sillerman began making promoters generous offers for their businesses, pledging to retain them as managers, doing what they had always been doing in their territories. By 2000, SFX had acquired eighty per cent of the promotion business. It also became the largest owner and operator of venues in the United States. That year, Sillerman sold the heavily indebted company to the radio conglomerate Clear Channel for $4.4 billion, and left the music business. Clear Channel couldn't make the company profitable, and in 2005 spun it off as Live Nation. Michael Rapino, a Canadian promoter who had sold out to SFX, became the C.E.O.
In 2007, Live Nation began making so-called "360" deals with superstar artists, among them Madonna and U2; the deals give Live Nation the right not only to promote the artists' shows exclusively but to be involved in other aspects of their careers as well. Ticketmaster responded by buying Front Line Management, partly owned by Irving Azoff, whose two hundred artists include some of the biggest acts in the touring business, the Eagles, Neil Diamond, and Jimmy Buffett among them. Azoff became the C.E.O. of the new company, Ticketmaster Entertainment, and began to eliminate surcharges by offering "all-in" ticketing, in which the fees were built into the face price of the tickets, like those the Eagles sold for some of the dates on their 2008 "Long Road Out of Eden" tour. Azoff also devised ways of charging scalpers' prices for the best seats, without raising the face value of the tickets, by selling well-heeled fans "V.I.P. packages" that included backstage access and a meet and greet with the artist. Meanwhile, Live Nation started to develop its own ticketing system, Live Nation Ticketing, which launched in January, 2009. But three weeks later it proved unable to cope with heavy demand for the Phish reunion tour and left countless fans angry.
By then, Ticketmaster and Live Nation had decided to stop competing with each other and agreed to merge. Rumors about the deal began to circulate, and on Wednesday, February 4th, two days after the Springsteen tickets went on sale, the Wall Street Journal published a report saying that Ticketmaster would merge with Live Nation in an all-stock transaction. But if any of the principals hoped that this would help smooth the way for the formal announcement of the deal, the following Tuesday, they were mistaken. That afternoon, the worst possible critic of a merger—the Boss himself—weighed in.
Maria Shwalb wasn't the only Springsteen fan redirected to TicketsNow on February 2nd. According to information later furnished by Ticketmaster, some eighty-five thousand people in the Northeast received the same message. Springsteen's management began to hear complaints within an hour of the tickets going on sale. "People just started calling the office," Jon Landau, Springsteen's manager, told me. Landau himself took a call from two people who worked for a federal government agency in Washington, seeking an explanation. They were calling in their official capacity, but "they were also fans who were trying to get seats," Landau said. "They'd been shut out, too."
On the afternoon of February 4th, Springsteen posted a letter on his Web site, saying he and his team were "furious" with Ticketmaster for the handling of the Izod Center tickets, citing the redirecting of fans to its subsidiary, TicketsNow. He stated, "They did this even when other seats remained available at face value. We condemn this practice," and added, "The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system. . . . If you, like us, oppose that idea, you should make it known to your representatives."
The next day, Azoff issued an open letter of apology. "While we were genuinely trying to do the right thing for fans in providing more choices when the tickets they requested from the primary on-sale were not available, we clearly missed the mark," he wrote. "Fans are confused and angry, which is the opposite of what we hoped to accomplish." While it appeared to fans like Maria Shwalb that Ticketmaster was abetting scalping on TicketsNow, the actual reason for the redirects, according to Ticketmaster, was a technical problem that occurred in the software used to verify buyers' credit-card information. The glitch appeared at 9:09 A.M. on the day of the sale; Ticketmaster became aware of it at nine-forty-nine, and it was fixed by eleven-thirty. By then, both Izod Center shows were sold out.
But not many Springsteen fans believed Ticketmaster's explanation. If the company wasn't moving tickets onto TicketsNow, who was? In fact, brokers routinely offer tickets that they don't yet have in their possession, and people looking for tickets to other artists' shows had also complained about being directed to TicketsNow. Ticketmaster had been the object of so much ill will, over so many years, that it was almost second nature for fans to blame the box-office monster. More than two thousand complaints were filed with the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, including one by Maria Shwalb. Some fans filed a class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster. Courageous New Jersey politicians lined up to support a fan's right to a low-priced Springsteen ticket. The state's attorney general, Anne Milgram, opened an investigation. Bill Pascrell, Jr., a New Jersey congressman, called for legislation to restrict ticket scalping, and make the murky world of ticket selling more transparent. (In June, Pascrell introduced to Congress the BOSS ACT—Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing.) In Washington, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into the ticketing fiasco; the Justice Department also announced an inquiry into the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger.
Ticketmaster quickly came to an agreement with Milgram's office, but did not admit any wrongdoing. In addition to paying a three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar fine, Ticketmaster pledged to reimburse fans who claimed they had erroneously bought tickets on TicketsNow; this cost the company another three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Ticketmaster also promised not to link to TicketsNow for a period of one year. The New Jersey Sports Authority agreed to conduct a raffle for fans who had filed complaints, using tickets that the authority had kept back from the initial sale.
In early April, the authority notified Maria Shwalb that she had won the right to purchase two tickets to the May 23rd show. She got good seats—Lower Loge, Section 124—and she invited her friend Marlene Caprio, from Hopatcong, whom she had known since college, to join her. They made plans to get to the venue early enough to tailgate in the parking lot before the show. Saturday night with the Boss in the swamps of Jersey at the start of summer: "It is going to be awesome," Shwalb told me.
Springsteen's remarks about the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger resonated in the chambers of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, when both Azoff and Rapino testified in a one-day hearing into the merger, at the end of February. (The subcommittee advises the Justice Department on the merger, but Justice has the authority on whether or not to approve it; the decision has yet to be made.) Virtually all the speakers referred to the Springsteen situation. Senator Charles E. Schumer, of New York, declared, "Bruce Springsteen says Ticketmaster abused his fans, and I agree with the Boss." Schumer also questioned Ticketmaster's explanation of exactly what happened on February 2nd: "Given what Ticketmaster stood to gain by directing consumers to its own resell site, the episode seems to be much more about money-making than about 'malfunction.' " (In April, Schumer proposed new anti-scalping legislation, partly in response to the outcry over the Springsteen shows.)
The merged company, to be called Live Nation Entertainment, could monopolize the concert industry. It would combine not only the world's largest ticket seller and the world's largest management company with the world's largest concert promoter and the world's largest venue operator but also the interests of Azoff; Rapino; Barry Diller, who is reportedly slated to become the chairman of the new company; John Malone, the chairman of the cable operator Liberty Global, which is a major Ticketmaster shareholder; and Ariel Emanuel, a prominent Hollywood agent who is a member of the board of Live Nation and the brother of Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff. In theory, Live Nation Entertainment could compete unfairly with AEG Live, the second-largest concert promoter, which was started by the Denver-based billionaire Phil Anschutz in 2005, and with the handful of remaining independent promoters, such as John Scher, who had declined to sell to Sillerman back in the nineties. As both manager and promoter, the company could deny its superstar acts to venues that refuse to use its promotional and ticket-selling services. Ticketmaster maintains that the new merger won't be anti-competitive, because new ticketing technology allows independent promoters and venues to ticket their own shows, and that the managers' interests will reflect the artists' wishes.
When I went to see John Scher recently, in his offices on lower Fifth Avenue, he said he had turned down SFX's offer of seventeen million dollars for his company, Metropolitan Talent, because "I'm hardheaded." (His head—large, bald, and bony—looks like it could do some damage if it butted you.) "And because in my view this industry was never right for consolidation." It was a "regional, entrepreneurial business" that, with consolidation, became "all about market share and not profitability." Because the promoter's margins were so slim, he had to monitor every detail of an event, including how much ice the barmen put in the glasses, or he wouldn't make money. "That changed with consolidation," Scher went on. "SFX said to acts, 'How much are you making on this tour? Two hundred and fifty thousand? O.K., we'll pay you three hundred and fifty thousand for every date on the tour.' Soon, eighty per cent of the headliners are doing national tours, for inflated guarantees. What's the result? Live Nation can't make money. So they go to Ticketmaster and say, 'We need a bigger piece of the service charges.' So Ticketmaster raises its service charges. And then what happens? The public gets fed up. Six- to eight-dollar beers, expensive hot dogs, outrageous parking fees, and expensive tickets—who needs it? So all that starts to erode the business, then gas prices go up, then the economy tanks. And then Michael Rapino stands up in front of Congress and says the business model is broken, and therefore Live Nation has to merge with Ticketmaster. Well, who broke it?"
On the other hand, if the concert business is to become what the record business was for the entire music industry—the hub from which everything else flows, as Rapino put it in his testimony to the subcommittee—then something needs to be done. Because, if new superstars aren't developed, the concert industry will die, just as the record industry is dying, and then there won't be much of a music business at all. Danny Goldberg, a longtime music-industry professional, told me recently, "I'm not a big fan of consolidation, but it's better than anarchy."
Irving Azoff, who in more carefree days helped Joe Walsh, a client, cut a door-size hole in a hotel-room wall with a chain saw so that they could have adjoining rooms, is now widely seen as the last best hope for the music business. When I asked him what was wrong with it, he replied, "The way the industry is monetized has totally changed. The order used to be: first, records; second, live; third, merchandise. Now it's: first, live; second, third-party sponsorship; third, merchandise; fourth, publishing; fifth, records. So that's a big difference." He added, "And the business model has changed. The old model was: put a single on the radio, put a video on MTV, and sit back and watch the music sell. That is gone. MTV doesn't play many videos, and radio has playlists that are targeted toward a specific, narrow demographic—white females between thirty-five and forty-five, say. Well, that's not a group from which to build a large fan base."
Azoff also told me that he would be happy to see Congress pass new legislation prohibiting scalping, although he didn't have much hope of that happening. But, I asked, wouldn't those laws spell the end of TicketsNow? "I wouldn't have bought TicketsNow if I were running Ticketmaster then," he replied. In the short term, he went on, "paperless ticketing" was proving to be an effective tool for combatting the secondary market. For this fall's Miley Cyrus tour, Ticketmaster offered only paperless tickets: instead of receiving printed tickets in advance, concertgoers must bring to the venue the credit card they purchased tickets with as well as a matching I.D. As a result, there are very few Miley Cyrus tickets for sale on the secondary market. (Springsteen recently announced that Ticketmaster will offer only paperless ticketing for some sections of the venues he's playing in the fall.)
Azoff suggested, by way of an anecdote, that a dynamic pricing system—in which ticket prices would fluctuate with market demand, as they do on the secondary market—might be the future of concert ticketing. "Before I testified in Washington," he said, "one of the committee members called me into his office and said, 'What are you guys, fucking stupid?' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You've got the only business I can think of where the price goes up as soon as the merchandise leaves the store. It's crazy.' Then he said he flies back and forth a lot to see his family, and the reason he can do that is because the coach seats are reasonably priced, because some people are paying first class. 'When are you guys going to go to a dynamic pricing system, so that the people who pay a hundred and fifty dollars for seats up front can subsidize thirty-dollar seats at the back?' he asked. I said, 'That makes sense.' " While a dynamic system would make hot tickets like those to Springsteen's Izod Center shows more expensive, it could also make tickets to less sought-after shows less expensive; on StubHub, tickets to Springsteen's Greensboro show sold for as little as twelve dollars.
I wondered whether live music had a long-term future at all. Azoff wasn't worried. "Since 1966, when I started in this business, I've worked in almost every aspect of entertainment," he told me. "I've been a manager, I've run a record label, I've produced TV shows and movies—pretty much everything. And, still, the most powerful thing I know of in entertainment is the live experience. The performer onstage receiving the adulation of the fans—there's nothing like it, and that's never going away." He rejected the idea that the live business would suffer from a lack of artist development. "Taylor Swift—and she's not even my client!—or the Kings of Leon. These are career artists that are going to be around for a long time." Would they fill stadiums and arenas forty years into their careers, as the Eagles do? "Absolutely," Azoff said. He added that he thought stealing music had actually generated more interest in live music. "So I'm not one of those guys who goes around saying the sky is falling."
A few days before the first of the two Izod dates, the New Jersey Star-Ledger ran a story about how many tickets had been held back from the initial sale of the Izod shows and who had held them; Ticketmaster made this information available to the New Jersey attorney general during the investigation. The numbers revealed an inconvenient truth for Springsteen and the politicians who had rallied to his side: many of the seats had been held back by Springsteen himself. In June, the Star-Ledger ran another article pointing out that the holds included many of the best seats. According to the newspaper, 2,262 seats were held back for the May 21st show, which represented sixty per cent of the best seats in the house. Springsteen, the band, his management company, and Columbia Records, his label, had retained 1,450, and the New Jersey Sports Authority, its sponsors, and the media got the rest. (None of the ninety-eight hundred seats in the upper tier were held back.) Of the 1,126 seats in the four lower-loge sections closest to the stage—the very best seats in the house—all but a hundred and eight were kept from the initial sale. (The Star-Ledger's hold numbers were from March; by showtime in May many of these seats had been released to the public.)
"Everyone knows that in New York and Los Angeles you have to keep a fair number of tickets back," Jon Landau explained to me. "There's a lot of media, most of the band and the crew live around here, and they want to be able to invite family and friends to the show. And you need tickets for your record company, agency, and V.I.P.s, which is a very real phenomenon in New York and L.A. If Faith Hill and Tim McGraw call up and want to see a show, you'd like to be able to offer them good tickets." (Landau also pointed out, in a letter posted on Springsteen's Web site, that the holds were blended with the fan seats.)
No one was accusing Springsteen of scalping these tickets—the idea was unthinkable. By pricing the best seats at ninety-five dollars, however, Springsteen was giving fans like Maria Shwalb the illusion of getting a good seat for cheap, when in fact many of the best seats never went on sale at all. Also, by holding back so many choice seats, Springsteen was contributing to the high prices for the few that were available on the secondary market—a fact that ticket brokers were quick to note. Don Vaccaro, the C.E.O. of TicketNetwork, a brokerage site, has said, "It's unfortunate that fans were misled that most of the best tickets were made available to the public. . . . More surprising is that an artist who claims to be for the common man would be part of that scheme." Not long after Vaccaro made that statement, three ticket resellers, including TicketNetwork, were sued by the New Jersey attorney general for selling tickets to a series of Springsteen shows at Giants Stadium that had just been announced for the fall—tickets that had not yet gone on sale.
At around five-thirty on the afternoon of Saturday, May 23rd, Maria Shwalb steered her pewter-colored Nissan with "JNGL LD" license plates off Route 3. She passed the spot just inside the Izod access road where the scalpers usually congregate, but no scalpers were there. She was directed to a parking space near the arena, and she and Marlene Caprio got out their lawn chairs and the cooler, and settled in among the faithful for a tailgate party.
Shwalb had no problems with all the tickets the Boss had held back. "It's his show," she said, and laughed. "Bruce can do no wrong in my book."
"I just hope he plays 'Jersey Girl,' " Marlene said.
All around, other fans were drinking beer, playing bean-bag-toss games, blasting Springsteen from boom boxes, and dancing, possibly with strangers.
Shwalb spotted a volunteer who was collecting money for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, a charity that Springsteen supports, and she reminded her friend to make a donation before they went in, because that would also enter them in a raffle for two tickets to stand right in front of the stage.
At about seven, they got in line to pick up their tickets. Nearby was a lone fan with a "Need Tickets" sign hanging from his chest, forlornly askew.
"Where are all the scalpers?" I asked him. Combing the crowd earlier, I hadn't seen any, and concluded that the Internet, in fostering a nation of scalpers, has been hard on the sidewalk men.
"They're around," the ticket seeker said confidently. "They're just lying low." But he was still standing there, alone, at seven-thirty, a half hour to showtime.
By eight o'clock, Shwalb and Caprio were in their seats. When a representative of the Community Food Bank called the winning raffle number, a scream rang through the arena—it was Maria. She and Marlene had won. They were escorted down to the stage just as the house lights dimmed, a roar went up from the crowd, and, with the opening riff of "Badlands," the stage lights came on to reveal Bruce, almost close enough to touch.
And so Maria Shwalb's dream did come true. An investigation by the New Jersey attorney general and a class-action suit went down and two strokes of good fortune were required before it happened, suggesting that the dream still needs some work, but that didn't matter to Maria. All that mattered for the next two and a half hours was the singer, the song, and the press of flesh around her. "It was an absolutely amazing, exciting, awesome experience—to be that close after all these years," she told me after the show. "We felt like we were twenty-one again and could party and dance all night." ♦
*Correction, December 1, 2009: The independent promoter is Seth Hurwitz, not Saul Hurwitz, as originally stated.


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A downstate Illinois soldier was among the victims killed in Wednesday's Fort Hood shooting.
U.S. Army Sgt. Timothy Owens, 37, an Effingham native, was fatally shot in the chest during the attack. He was working as a counselor at the time of the shooting.
Owens' mother, Mary Louise Muntean, said she called Owens' wife when she first saw news of the shooting on TV. She was initially told her son was in the hospital, but later learned the terrible news that he had passed.
"I can't believe this has happened. I just can't. I just talked to him Sunday night," Muntean said.
Owens had recently remarried and was the father of two teens.
Muntean said she always worried that her son would get hurt when he was stationed in places like Kuwait, but never dreamed he'd be a victim of violence on home soil.
"I'm very proud of him because he was fighting for our country," Muntean said.
Three people died and 16 were wounded when an Iraq war veteran who suffered from mental health issues opened fire on fellow service members before committing suicide, authorities said. The attack was the latest mass shooting at the post since a 2009 massacre that left 13 people dead.
Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee identified the shooter as Ivan A. Lopez. But the congressman offered no other details.
Officials said there was no indication the shooting was terrorism-related. The gunman's motive remained unknown, officials said, although NBC News reported that the rampage may have resulted from an argument with other soldiers in the motor pool.
Fort Hood covers a total of 340 square miles and supports multiple units, a corps headquarters and a robust mobilization mission. It is home to two full divisions, the 1st Cavalry Division and 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) and 12 additional units.
Around 50,000 soldiers work at Fort Hood, and there are an additional 150,000 civilians who support the base.
The post is about 60 miles north of the capital city of Austin, 50 miles south of Waco, 160 miles south of Dallas and 150 miles north of San Antonio.

subset: commoncrawl


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Maple nails
Take a close consider your maple nails. Are they solid and healthy looking? Or do you see ridges, damages, or locations of uncommon shade or shape? Many less than desirable nail conditions can be stayed clear of with correct finger nail treatment. Others could show a hidden problem that needs interest.
A note concerning maple nails manicures and pedicures
If you rely on manicures or pedicures for rosy maple nails, maintain a few points in mind. Adhere to salons that display a present state certificate, as well as job only with service technicians likewise accredited by the state board. Do not have your cuticles eliminated– they act to seal the skin to the nail plate, so elimination can bring about nail infection. Additionally, make sure your nail specialist correctly sterilizes all devices made use of throughout your treatment to prevent the spread of infection.
You could likewise ask exactly how the foot bathrooms are cleaned up. Preferably, a bleach remedy is made use of in between clients as well as the filters are cleansed consistently.
Its easy to disregard your nails– yet taking some fundamental steps can maintain your fingernails healthy and also strong.
Finger maple nails: Whats normal, whats not
Your finger maple nails- composed of laminated layers of a healthy protein called keratin– expand from the location at the base of the nail under your follicle. Healthy fingernails are smooth, without pits or grooves. Theyre uniform in shade and also consistency as well as free of areas or staining.
In some cases finger nails establish safe upright ridges that run from the follicle to the suggestion of the nail. Vertical ridges tend to become much more noticeable with age. Finger nails can likewise create white lines or areas because of injury, however these ultimately grow out with the nail.
Not all nail problems are regular, nonetheless. Consult your physician or skin doctor if you discover:
1. Changes in nail shade, such as staining of the whole nail or a dark streak under the nail
2. Modifications in nail shape, such as curled nails
3. Thinning or thickening of the nails
4. Splitting up of the nail from the bordering skin
5. Hemorrhaging around the nails
6. Swelling or discomfort around the nails
7. Failing of nails to expand out
Finger maple nails treatment: Dos
To keep your finger maple nails looking their finest:
1. Maintain finger maple nails completely dry and tidy. This stops bacteria from expanding under your fingernails. Repetitive or prolonged contact with water can add to divide fingernails. Put on cotton-lined rubber gloves when washing recipes, cleaning or using extreme chemicals.
2. Exercise good maple nails hygiene. Utilize a sharp manicure scissors or clippers. Cut your nails directly throughout, after that round the pointers in a gentle curve.
3. Usage cream. When you make use of hand lotion, massage the cream into your finger nails and also follicles, too.
4. Use a safety layer. Applying a nail hardener might help reinforce nails.
5. Ask your physician regarding biotin. Some research study suggests that the dietary supplement biotin could aid enhance weak or fragile fingernails.
Finger maple nails care: Donts
To stop maple nails damage, dont:
1. Bite your finger nails or pick at your cuticles. These practices can harm the nail bed. Also a minor cut along with your finger nail can enable germs or fungi to go into and also trigger an infection.
2. Manage hangnails. You might tear real-time tissue in addition to the hangnail. Rather, thoroughly clip off hangnails.
3. Use harsh nail treatment products. Limitation your use nail polish cleaner. When using nail polish eliminator, select an acetone-free formula.
4. Ignore troubles. If you have a nail trouble that doesnt seem to go away by itself or is connected with various other signs and symptoms, consult your medical professional or dermatologist for an examination.


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WASHINGTON, May 22 (UPI) -- Speaking before America's main Israel lobby Sunday, President Barack Obama defended his Middle East policies, which some Jews oppose.
Obama's speech Thursday, in which he said Israel's pre-1967 borders, with land swaps, should be the outline for a Palestinian state, was condemned by Republicans and followed by a notably chilly meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House Friday.
Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama reaffirmed "unbreakable" bonds and "ironclad" U.S. commitment to Israel's security.
He touted continued major U.S. military aid, including the new Iron Dome anti-missile system, which Israel has used to stop rockets from Gaza.
But he warned "the status quo is unsustainable" as the Arab population under Israeli control grows and the Jewish state's legitimacy is being increasingly questioned.
Obama knew his comments on 1967 would rouse controversy, he said, but "the current situation ... does not allow for procrastination."
He said his statement was nothing new and followed Clinton administration peace proposals.
"It means that the parties themselves … will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation."


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Last week, I woke up, checked my email, and received an email from my friend Mo at charity: water with a link to this video. At first I was confused, and thought it was some sort of mistake or general video for a bunch of people. But as it played on, I realized they made this video for me. Wow! That is some kind of amazing thank you. Last year, I gave up my birthday to raise money for clean water through charity: water, and that is what they are thanking me for in this video. I know hand-written thank you notes are all but dead, but when you get a thank you note, it means so much because of the effort that goes into it. After thinking about that, I realized that maybe a video like this could be the new hand-written note. I think a video actually takes more time and effort, and it was a really fun surprise. Thanks for the video, Mo and Josh! And Happy 5th Birthday, charity:water.
If you don't understand the flannel shirts, axe, or the lumberjack references, they are spoofing my promo video The Woodsman which you should definitely watch. It's worth 1 minute of your time if I do say so myself.


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After much hoopla and publicity, the woman who claimed to be a distant relative of American aviator Amelia Earhart revealed Friday the pair is not related.
"After hiring a team of researchers, I learned today that though we share a name and a love of flight, the first Amelia Earhart and I are not from the same family," Amelia Rose Earhart wrote on her Facebook page.
The 30-year-old weather and traffic co-anchor for NBC Denver affiliate KUSA has gained nationwide attention since announcing that she would embark on her own around-the-world flight next summer to honor her "very distant" relative and "namesake."
U.S. & World
The day's top national and international news.
Earhart and a co-pilot plan to circumvent the globe in June 2014 in a Pilatus PC-12NG, starting in Oakland, Calif. The 14-stop, 480,000-mile journey will take the pair over Howland Island where the late Earhart and her co-pilot were supposed to land before they vanished over the South Pacific in 1937.
The modern Earhart hopes to become the youngest woman to fly around the world.
"I've been having this conversation my entire life," Earhart said of her famous name on the "Today" show on Aug. 2. "It always comes up. When I think about the best way to honor being a namesake of Amelia, it's all about adventure."
Earhart said on her Facebook post that she has no plans to abandon her planned flight around the world next year and remains committed her cause of helping young girls to "purse their dreams of flight."
Check out the full Facebook post:
A note from my heart... Thank you for reading. Amelia Earhart once said: "You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward." She sure was right.Years ago, I hired a genealogist to look into the link between myself and the first Amelia Earhart, and for the past 10 years, I had the understanding that we shared a distant common ancestry. As many of you may know, I am in the process of recreating her historic flight around the world. As a part of this process, it became clear it was time to determine the EXACT connection between the two of us. After hiring a team of researchers, I learned today that though we share a name and a love of flight, the first Amelia Earhart and I are not from the same family. While the news was a jolt, it DOES NOT change my commitment to the the flight or to the mission of The Fly With Amelia Foundation, which is to enable young girls to pursue their dreams of flight. I am so thankful for all the encouragement and support I have received and I am really looking forward to sharing my recreation of Amelia's flight around the world with all of you. -Amelia


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The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced the 27 modern era semifinalists for the 2013 induction class late last week. Unlike the balloting for the baseball Hall of Fame, which often generates significant steroid-tinged strum and drang, the Pro Football HoF finalists receive minor fanfare and muted debate. A selection committee of 46 distinguished sportswriters will whittle the list from 25 to 15 to 10, and then to five, and finally vote to determine which of the five can earn the 80% majority vote for enshrinement. In the process, the selection committee will invariably foul up, badly.
I know several members of the committee, and individually they are knowledgeable and passionate about the NFL and its history. As a group, though, the committee acts like Congress, except with no transparency and bigger egos. Veteran observers of the Hall of Fame selection process know that for players who fall below the Joe Montana level of obviousness, enshrinement rests on uneasy truces among Balkanized fiefdoms of experts fiercely loyal to certain regions, eras, or players.
Grudges linger forever, and idiosyncratic table tendencies linger longer. There are "pet project" players who never fall off the ballot. There is lobbying. There are nutty assertions and backwards attitudes. Worst of all, there is a huge backlog of worthy players, and it is only getting larger.
As we sift through the 25 finalists, I will try to touch on two related-but-different issues: whether the player should be inducted in the Hall of Fame, and whether he is likely to be inducted in the Hall of Fame. The former is a complicated issue, since we all have our own Hall of Fame criteria. I try to marry statistical evidence, reputation, and contribution (including playoff and Super Bowl performances), but the marriage is often pretty messy.
As to whether a player is likely to go in, we know that the committee loves Super Bowls, hates statistics with a passion that burns like the core of a dying sun, goes on "runs" of positions or teams, and has an unhealthy obsession with the "signature moment," a single highlight that defines the player, like Lynn Swann's Super Bowl catch or Marcus Allen's change-of-direction Super Bowl run. Character and reputation matter to a degree, and it takes about 15 years of retirement for a player to go from "troublemaker" to "colorful," but a reprobate with a bubbly personality has a better chance of enshrinement than someone who allegedly had a "bad attitude."
Keeping all of these things in mind, let us touch on the semifinalists. We will revisit the finalists when they are announced in January.
Larry Allen, Guard/Tackle, Cowboys: Overwhelmingly qualified. The best guard in the NFL from about 1995 to 2001, and one of the five best for several years after. Allen was a tail-end member of the Cowboy's 1990s dynasty, and he was one of the Clean Boys whose personal life didn't make you feel the need for an antibacterial scrub. Allen was legendary for his weightroom strength: did you know that he could squat six trillion pounds? The weight lifting tales help personify Allen, which counts for a lot when the committee tries to choose among linemen.
Morten Andersen, Kicker, Saints/Falcons: The NFL's all-time scoring leader, and likely to stay there for a while. Andersen is 437 points ahead of Jason Hanson, so Hanson would need to keep having 100 point seasons until age 45 to catch Andersen: possible but not probable. There is no active kicker under 35 within a thousand points of Andersen.
Jan Stenerud is the only modern-era kicking specialist in Canton right now, and Andersen is qualified to join him: the safe perch atop the scoring leaderboard is impressive, he is famous and well regarded, and his overtime field goal to win the 1998 NFC Championship for the Falcons fulfills the silly "signature play" requirement. Andersen's chances are hurt by the huge number of qualified non-specialists likely to line-jump him.
Steve Atwater, Safety; Terrell Davis, Running Back; Karl Mecklenburg, linebacker, Broncos: The Broncos were underrepresented in Canton for years, but now that Shannon Sharpe, Gary Zimmerman, and Floyd Little have been enshrined, there's a risk that overcorrection will set in. Davis has a tremendous peak, but his short career freaks people out. The selectors were lenient about short-career players in the past (Gale Sayers is the obvious example; Dan Hampton and Lee Roy Selmon were only truly great for about four years each), but have recently begun to assume that a Hall of Famer must surround his four signature years with a decade of moderate-quality statistical compilation.
Atwater was a great player from 1990 to 1993 and a reputation guy for years after that; he's a marginal candidate. Mecklenburg, the Snow Goose, is an intriguing player from the lost 1980s Broncos, a team whose storyline has crumpled into "Elway Tries Hard, Loses Super Bowl," with all other details forgotten. The Snow Goose is reasonably qualified, but the fact that there are three Broncos candidates renders the point moot: they will split their delegates.
Jerome Bettis, Running Back, Rams/Steelers: A lovable guy with great raw numbers and a great story: highly qualified and a shoo-in, if not this year then next. All of those 3.8 yard-per-carry seasons at the end of his career might make statisticians blink, but Football Outsiders' metrics are kind to Bettis in those seasons: he was asked to handle a lot of short-yardage work, which lowered his per-carry averages, but he was very good at what he was asked to do. And his great years were truly special.
Tim Brown, Wide Receiver/Kick Returner, Raiders; Andre Reed, Wide Receiver, Bills: If there is one position that causes a collective brain camp among Hall of Fame selectors, it is wide receiver. More counterintuitive, anti-statistical logic is applied to wide receivers than players at any other position. It is a mind-boggling phenomenon that cannot be done justice in a paragraph, but here is the elevator explanation: the selectors are Paul Warfield damaged. Many of them believe that a great receiver must be Warfield-like: catch one 50-yard bomb per game (in slow motion on 35-millimeter film), win Super Bowls, and possess some kind of magical quality. Show the Hall of Fame committee a player who caught 100-passes per year or was part of an offensive sea-change, and they react like you are a used car salesman offering 0% financing: they will automatically assume that the stats are some kind of shell game.
Brown has the chance to end run Canton's wide receiver confusion because he has some Warfield qualities: he was a deep threat, with college superstardom to add to his allure. Reed was the kind of player who makes some selector's hands shake: his numbers were the product of a pass-happy offense that always came up short in the Super Bowl, and he caught too many short passes, which is bad for some reason. Both are solid candidates, and both were better receivers than Michael Irvin, who skated into Canton on the Warfield "less is more, plus rings" path. Neither will make it in this year, which is fine, because the committee must fix its brain sprain about one particular player before it deals with these two:
Cris Carter, Wide Receiver, Eagles/Vikings: Overwhelmingly, painfully, embarrassingly qualified. If Carter is not enshrined this year, it will damage the credibility of the committee.
Don Coryell, Coach, Cardinals/Chargers: Coryell should be relabeled a "contributor." His head coaching record is not close to Hall of Fame worthy, and he never served as an NFL offensive coordinator. Coryell's Hall of Fame candidacy is shrouded in the mists of history: legendary coaching clinics he held at San Diego State in the early 1960s, where Al Davis, John Madden, Sid Gillman, Jerry Garcia, George Lucas, and Ronald Reagan would come to him for advice. (Those last three may be fictitious; the significance of these 1960s jam sessions grows every year). Coryell is the John Adams of the Founding Fathers of modern NFL offense, and while everyone respects Adams, you rarely see his face on money. His credentials are a little smoky and tweedy for me, like giving the Oscar to someone who ran an acting school.
Roger Craig, Running Back, 49ers: Has the 1,000-1,000 rushing-receiving season and the 1980s 49ers luster, but Craig's Hall of Fame candidacy boils down to four outstanding seasons. Craig is no more qualified than Terrell Davis.
Eddie DeBartolo, Jr., Owner; Art Modell, Owner; Paul Tagliabue, Commissioner; George Young, Contributor: Nothing brings on the yawns like a discussion of Hall of Fame executives.
Kevin Greene, Linebacker /defensive end, Steelers/Panthers; Charles Haley, Defensive end/linebacker, Cowboys/49ers, Michael Strahan, Defensive end, Giants: The official Pro Football Hall of Fame website is getting a little cute with the position designations: Greene and Haley are the green-blue and the blue-green of the Crayola box. The Hall may want to consider the blanket term "pass rusher," especially since the committee is lately on a quest to enshrine each and every last one of them.
Many Hall of Fame committee members cramp up if you present them with any argument that sounds even slightly statistical. But now that they have 30 years of accurate sack data to work with, they have gone on a little tear, enshrining Chris Doleman, John Randle, Richard Dent, Rickey Jackson, and Derrick Thomas in recent years to go along with inarguable choices like Bruce Smith, Reggie White, and Lawrence Taylor. It is as if the committee is trying to backfill the all-time sack leader chart; Greene and Strahan can make sure spots one through five are covered, and Leslie O'Neal is the only qualified player in the Top Ten who has not at least been a semifinalist.
All of the recent pass-rushers were fine players, but many carried a "sacks-or-nothing" label during their careers, including Greene. (Dent, Doleman and Thomas earned similar criticism). That charge just doesn't seem to stick anymore, so Greene may make it in, even though Pro Bowl voters ignored many of his 10-12 sack seasons because he was regarded as a one-dimensional player.
Haley played for the two great dynasties of his era, though his five Super Bowl rings may work against him by making him look more like an effect of greatness than a cause. In a world where Doleman and Dent are Hall of Famers, Haley is one, too, but it may not be wise to indulge both the committee's shiny ring obsession and its "we just discovered the sack leader list" phase.
Strahan was known as a more complete player and is now a cuddly television personality; his credentials and his chances are better than the other two. There is no telling if someone in the committee has a bone to pick with the Brett Favre "phantom sack" and is willing to filibuster against Strahan. Oh heck, there almost certainly is.
Joe Jacoby, Tackle, Redskins: Left tackle for the Hogs. Jacoby bubbles up as a semi-finalist every other year or so. If Jacoby had not played for a line with a cute name, he would not be taken seriously as a Hall of Fame candidate. The Hogs were great from 1982 to about 1987, but that does not mean all five belong in Canton. (Russ Grimm, the best of the Hogs, is already in).
Albert Lewis, Cornerback, Chiefs/Raiders; Aeneas Williams, Cornerback, Cardinals/Rams: Regional favorites: cornerbacks with long careers and a handful of standout seasons. Williams is far more qualified than Lewis, who is a truly marginal candidate: more Pro Bowl berths, more interceptions, and a Super Bowl appearance with the Rams. Williams and Deion Sanders were the two best cornerbacks in the NFL in the mid-1990s; I would vote for Williams ahead of Bettis, Andersen, or any of the Broncos, and about 20 times before I voted for Greene.
John Lynch, Safety; Warren Sapp, Defensive Tackle, Buccaneers: The Bucs won a Super Bowl in 2002, and their only serious Hall of Fame candidates from that team are now entering the selection process. Sapp was a dominant defender in the early 2000s but also had a reputation as a nitwit, one which he has failed to refute in his second career as a bankrupt loudmouth and child support conscientious objector. No one will vote him into the Hall of Fame under these circumstances.
Lynch is Steve Atwater, Part Two. Once a safety has two or three outstanding seasons, he's in the Pro Bowl until his legs disintegrate, so it is best to be wary of the "Nine Time Pro Bowler" argument. (His last two appearances were particularly ridiculous.) If the committee wants to enshrine a defensive back from Lynch's era, Aeneas Williams is the best choice, but he is also the least sexy.
Jonathan Ogden, Tackle, Ravens; Will Shields, Guard, Chiefs: Two great linemen from the late 1990s-2000s. Odgen has the better resume: he and Orlando Pace were the two best offensive linemen of their generation, and each has multiple All Pro selections and a Super Bowl ring at the top of his resume. (Pace is two years away from eligibility).
Shields reached the Pro Bowl 12 times, played for Chiefs teams that produced some uncanny offensive statistics, and was one of the few offensive linemen of his era - or any era - with national endorsement deals, which help his "fame" value. Shields' candidacy is beset on all sides: by Larry Allen, who is a better candidate at the same position from the same era; by Ogden, who will split the line vote; by Willie Roaf, Shields' linemate, who was enshrined last year and may have fulfilled some unspoken quota for early 2000's Chiefs; and by the fact that his team had a reputation for going 13-3 and losing in the playoffs, which takes way some benefit of the doubt for many voters.
Bill Parcells, Coach: Overqualified.
Steve Tasker, Special Teamer/Wide Receiver, Bills: A credibility-straining binkie selection by the Bills delegation. Putting Steve Tasker in the football Hall of Fame is like putting Craig Counsel in Cooperstown. Tasker was an exceptional role player, but he was a role player, a backup, whose fame rests on the fact that television announcers can only talk about one special teamer in the NFL per year, and Tasker was in the postseason every year, so he could count on one "what a tough, scrappy, unheralded contributor" rant per week for 20 weeks for about seven peak years.
Tasker was a quality player and seems to be a great guy, but the fact that he is a semifinalist for the sixth time reveals just how flawed the selection system is. Tasker is the pork-barrel tax bill who gets wedged into every piece of legislature. His continued candidacy represents a wish-fulfillment fantasy and the abandonment of common sense by someone who has gotten drunk on toughness-grittiness-swagger juice and won't let a little detail like the fact that Tasker was not a starter keep him from getting a punt gunner into Canton.
While Tasker's ability to force fair catches is debated, teammates Kent Hull, Darryl Talley, and Cornelius Bennett, Pro Bowl starters for those great Bills teams, could not even reach the semifinalist round this year. This is a case of misplaced energy, and of contrarian reasoning gone completely haywire.
Given five players to enshrine this year, I would select Cris Carter, Larry Allen, Aeneas Williams, Jerome Bettis, and Michael Strahan, plus Bill Parcells.


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Imagine the scene: reclining in Highclere Castle - where Downton Abbey is set - while the butler brings you the papers. Unfortunately, Highclere Castle doesn't host overnight stays, but there are places just like it that do. We've put together a list of places just like your top film locations so you can get that added thrill on your break. 1. Downton Abbey - Highclere Castle
If you fancy living like the Crawley family in Downton Abbey, the next best thing to Highclere Castle is probably Luton Hoo. I know, I know, it doesn't have quite the same ring to it as a castle, but this onetime Tudor Mansion-cum-luxury hotel has all the elegance and grandeur you could want. And does Downton Abbey have a spa? I think not. 2. Hogwarts - Oxford
If you want a taste of the Harry Potter magic for yourself, book a room in an Oxford College and imagine you're in the renowned school of wizardry itself. As Harry Potter fans will know, a number of the Hogwarts interior scenes were filmed in Oxford colleges, so this is as close to the real thing as you can get! You'll be able to eat in the college hall too, though attempting to cast spells will probably get you a few peculiar looks. 3. The Da Vinci Code - Rosslyn Chapel
If you were captivated by this tale of mysterious symbols, conspiracies and the Holy Grail, you can do some sleuthing of your own with a stay at Rosslyn Castle. Recognise that name? Yes, it's part of the same ancient estate as Rosslyn Chapel, the fascinating church building full of beautifully intricate carvings that have had code-crackers stumped for centuries, and featured in the Da Vinci Code. It's also a stone's throw from Edinburgh, so you can explore the city too (if you tire of hunting for the Holy Grail that is). 4. Notting Hill
If you loved Richard Curtis' film, Notting Hill, spend some time in the area with a stay at a nearby boutique hotel. Yes, it would be nice if the house with the blue door itself were available, but the interiors you saw in the film were actually filmed somewhere else, so it wouldn't be quite the same. The current residents might also be surprised to find you in their house. Stop into the Caesar Hotel instead, a 10 minute walk away from Notting Hill Station, and take in all the charms of the area - Portobello Road, Kensington Palace and more. 5. Brief Encounter - Carnforth Station
If that first romantic meeting at Carnforth Station in Brief Encounter has stayed with you, take your loved one to a location just like is and relive the moment to your heart's content. While it's not Carnforth, Alton Station is a historic property made available for holiday stays by the Landmark Trust, and it's just the thing if you fancy a break in a quirky building full of character. For more information on British destinations, explore our LoveWall


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Product Sections
Other World Heritage Store Departments
Main Pages
Featured Products
Egyptian Keyrings
Two designs of Egyptian keyrings: Anubis and Tutankhamun (from left to right), approx 1 3/4" in height. These elaborate designs resemble Art Deco style. Make sure you check the enlarged picture - these keyrings are truly amazing!
Egyptian Priest Candle Stick
A bronze-effect candle stick depicting a priest kneeling by an altar. This candle stick is good for standard tea candles. Measures approximately 6" (15cm) in height.
Tutankhamun Cartouche Jewellery Gilt
The name Tutankhamun stands for "the living image of Amun". Name of a king is associated with the strength and power. Cartouche is an ellipsoid enclosure containing a throne name or the birth name of a king. 1" (2.5cm) long. Supplied with a black cotton cord.
Best Sellers
Kneeling Isis Statue
Embossed Egyptian Pyramid
A beautiful embossed pyramid with a different Egyptian motiff on each side. It is finished in old gold colour. The sides depict Egyptian gods and kings. Featured are Osiris and Horus amongst others.
The base is 3-1/4" by 3-1/4" (8 by 8cm)
Ankh Trinket Box
Lovely surface finish and detailed embossed inscriptions. The base of this trinket box is 6" (15cm) long. This Ankh box is the favourite among Kemet supplies.
This is a World Heritage shop. You might also wish to visit The Terracotta Warriors shop.


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Del Potro beats Federer to reach semis in London
LONDON (AP) — Juan Martin del Potro is getting the better of Roger Federer again, in a way that no player had managed in a decade.
To end the season with a title, though, he might have to get past the Swiss great again in just two days.
Using his hard serve and booming forehand, Del Potro earned the last spot in the semifinals of the ATP finals Saturday by overcoming the already-qualified Federer 7-6 (7-3), 4-6, 6-3 in their last round-robin match. Del Potro will face Novak Djokovic in the semifinals Sunday, before Federer takes on Andy Murray.
It was Federer's second straight loss to Del Potro, who also beat him in the final in the Swiss star's hometown tournament in Basel last month. It's the first time a player has beaten Federer in two straight indoor tournaments since Lleyton Hewitt in 2002.
"It's a little record, but really tough to do it," Del Potro said. "To beat Federer is not easy, for sure. But I didn't think about the semis or trying to qualify for the next round. Just was thinking about my match, doing the same things like in Basel."
Del Potro beat Federer in the 2009 U.S. Open final for his only Grand Slam title, leading many to predict that the tall Argentine would challenge for many more major titles. But he then had much of the next season ruined by a serious wrist injury and has struggled to re-establish himself at the top.
This year, he wasted a two-set lead against Federer in the French Open quarterfinals and lost to him in the longest Olympic match ever, an epic semifinal that ended 19-17 in the third set.
"Good effort (from) his side to get me twice in a row now," Federer said. "I hoped I didn't have to lose against him again today."
It was Federer's first loss in the indoor tournament since 2009, ending a 12-match winning streak. He went undefeated in winning the last two titles and had won his first two group-stage matches this year.
Del Potro's win left David Ferrer and Janko Tipsarevic with only prize money and pride to play for in their group finale as both players had been eliminated. Ferrer seemed the most sluggish at the start and lost the first four games, but the Spaniard recovered to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, leaving Tipsarevic without a victory in the tournament.
That match still had an impact on the tournament, as it meant Federer won the group ahead of Del Potro and was matched with Murray in the semifinals. Had Tipsarevic won, the order would have been reversed.
Del Potro said he still considers himself the underdog in the tournament.
"Now you have three big names in the semifinals, and one big guy," the 6-foot-6 (1.98-meter) Del Potro said.
Del Potro converted his only break point of the match in the opening game of the deciding set and held his own serve comfortably to wrap up the win at London's O2 Arena.
He converted his first match point with a forehand passing shot that Federer netted off a lunging backhand volley.
Both players finished the group stage with 2-1 records. Ferrer was also 2-1, but won fewer sets than Federer and Del Potro. If Federer had won against Del Potro, Ferrer would have advanced with a victory against Tipsarevic.
"I really wanted to give (Ferrer) a chance and give myself the best possible preparation for the semis, really hoped I could win," Federer said. "But more disappointed for (Ferrer) than I am about losing today, to be quite honest."
Ferrer won a tour-best seven tournaments this year, including his first Masters title in Paris last week. He still has a chance for another major victory, as Spain will take on the Czech Republic in the Davis Cup final next weekend.


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|Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Arts and Sciences
|Video Editing and Post-Production II
|Two semester hours.
Focuses on efficiency in process, output choices, and developing an effects library. Topics may include managing the digital post, preparing final scripts, transitions, segmenting, composing, titles, and special effects. Also included are sound design elements, mixing, overdub and foley. Students will propose, shoot, and edit several video projects. May be repeated once for credit. To be taken concurrently with Lab COMM 3133. Prerequisite: COMM 3303 or consent of instructor. Course fee: $40.
Home - General Information - Student Services -
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Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
Graduate Degrees - Course Descriptions - Faculty -
Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D


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|By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
|November 27, 2008 10:00 PM EST
The future of cloud computing is all about lowering costs and getting the ability to easily move between service providers. At the Cloud Power Panel on Friday at the 1st International Cloud Expo in San Jose, CA, the power panelists - Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing; Thorsten von Eicken, CTO of RightScale; Peter Nickolov, President & CTO of 3tera; Erik Carlin, Sr. Cloud Architect, Mosso/Rackspace; and Steve Herrod, CTO, VMware - examined the risks and rewards of Cloud Computing for the enterprise.
From left, Jeremy Geelan, Conference Chair; Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing; Thorsten von Eicken, CTO of RightScale; Peter Nickolov, President & CTO of 3tera; Erik Carlin, Sr. Cloud Architect, Mosso/Rackspace; and Steve Herrod, CTO, VMware
Songnian Zhou compared the idea of clients moving to the cloud by comparing it to someone moving from a home to a hotel room.
Erick Carlin also pointed out the importance of being able to distinguish between this "cloud dream" and the actual reality of the cloud...what can actually be done with a single set of technology.
Then moderator Jeremy Geelan asked, "Where should customers start?"
"We don't want to be held hostage; we want to be able to have choices," responded Zhou. He described someone starting out on the cloud as starting out on a 10 year evolutionary period. To go step by step and in the end you will probably have your own hybrid experience.
Thorsten von Eicken believes we should jump right in. "Launch the application in the cloud today. Join the successful companies in the cloud today." According to Peter Nickolov, your journey into the cloud really depends on where you want to go, what you want to do. "If you want to build your own cloud, get the platform installed on your own service and get started that way."
"Just try it, said Carlin. "The thing about the cloud is its lightweight entry and exit. It is easy to try in terms of practical application." For the enterprise: there is a great deal of importance in the support, having someone there to help you, enabling customers to use the cloud.
Stephen Herrod thinks the customer should use the cloud on their own terms.
Geelan then asked the panelists, "In the next five months between this conference and the next one - the 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference 2009 East - what do you see happening in the cloud?"
Having a larger breadth in vendors, having high-profile applications - global access to the cloud, having more cloud options, more discussions of open standards, and in general having a greater adoption of the cloud.
Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities for the 2nd International Cloud Expo - March 22-24, 2009, New York City
Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities Offered on a First-Come First-Served Basis. To inquire about sponsorship and exhibit opportunities please contact Carmen Gonzalez at 201-802-3021 or by email at events(at)sys-con.com. Currently, a limited number of sponsorship and exhibition packages with multiple sponsorship discounts are available for the upcoming events.
- The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing
- The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem
- Cloud People: A Who's Who of Cloud Computing
- Ulitzer Names the World's 30 Most Influential Cloud Computing Bloggers
- Cloud Expo 2011 East To Attract 10,000 Delegates and 200 Exhibitors
- Cloud Expo New York to Attract More Than 8,000 Delegates
- The Cloud Computing Kettle Heats Right Up
- Industry Experts Discuss the State of Cloud Computing
- Cloud Computing and Big Data in 2013: What's Coming Next?
- Cloud Expo, Inc. Announces Cloud Expo 2011 New York Venue


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Texas tea party seeks Cruz 2.0
Texas tea party activists eager to send another firebrand in the mold of Ted Cruz to the Senate have launched a movement to draft evangelical historian David Barton to run against Sen. John Cornyn.
Barton, who hosts a daily radio broadcast, has wide name recognition and respect on the religious right as a Constitutional scholar dedicated to restoring the America the Founding Fathers envisioned, though his scholarship on that point has been widely discredited in the world of academia.
Story Continued Below
Political analysts doubt he could take down a candidate as well-funded, well-known and widely endorsed as Cornyn. But they're not willing to count out an insurgent from the right — not after watching Cruz come from nowhere two years ago. Barton has deep political roots, having spent nearly a decade as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He is a skilled orator. And he's got the stagecraft down pat: He travels the country to deliver rousing tributes to patriotism, often in red, white and blue Western shirts.
( PHOTOS: Key quotes from Ted Cruz)
"When I get down on my bony knees this evening, it will be to pray that David Barton runs," said Calvin Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. "That would be a great show."
Barton has strong ties to many tea party favorites, including Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas. Barton's early endorsement helped propel Cruz to his improbable victory in 2012. He has also campaigned for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee once famously said that he wished all Americans would be forced — "at gunpoint, no less" — to listen to Barton's lectures on the Constitution. Another big name in Barton's corner: TV and radio host Glenn Beck, who devoted time on his show this week to repeating the phrase "Senator David Barton" over and over, with evident delight. Beck's advice to Sen. Cornyn: "Quiver in your boots and hide."
( QUIZ: Do you know Ted Cruz?)
Mounting a credible primary challenge against Cornyn, however, would be well beyond difficult.
The filing deadline is Dec. 9; the Republican primary is just three months later, on March 4. That leaves scant time for anyone to build a statewide following, especially in such a vast state as Texas. In 2012, Cruz had the luxury of several extra months on the ground, as his primary was in late May and the runoff in late July.
Cornyn also has a huge financial edge. He has nearly $7 million cash on hand and allies have collected more than $2 million in a political action committee.
Analysts agree that Barton has the mailing list to draw donors from across the country. But to win, he would also need a sizable investment from outside groups such as Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks. The PACs aren't saying whether they'd get involved in Texas, but several already are targeting other races in smaller states like Kentucky and Mississippi, where an investment of several million dollars would go farther.
( PHOTOS: Stars weigh in on Texas abortion fight)
Republican consultants also suspect that national groups might hesitate to back Barton because he has made some inflammatory statements, such as suggesting the federal government should regulate homosexuality as an unhealthy lifestyle, akin to eating too much trans fat.
Cornyn's aides express confidence that he retains wide support. When the campaign offered yard signs to supporters earlier this week, it got 25,000 requests in 24 hours. The senator recently secured the endorsement of Texas Right to Life and has top rankings from the National Rifle Association, Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union, among others.
"Endorsed by the largest pro-life organization in Texas and with a perfect 100 percent from National Right to Life, Sen. Cornyn looks forward to discussing his conservative record with folks across the state," said Brendan Steinhauser, the campaign manager.


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Worth pointing out that it's skinny mat (74kg) wearing the medium in the pics above, not portly me
The Rohan Cadence Polo is a well made and smart shirt that performs well on the bike and looks good off it. It certainly isn't cheap, but it should last and it's a useful bit of kit for leisure riding and plain clothes commuting.
The Cadence polo is made from a polyester/elastane mix that's stretchy and soft, and the fabric is treated with a wicking finish that spreads moisture over the surface of the fabric to enable it to dry more quickly. It also has silver particles in the weave to stop the growth of bacteria and the assorted pong that goes with them. It's nicely cut although the sizing comes up large; the medium is a close-but-comfortable fit on me (1.90m, 100kg) so you might want to pick a size smaller than you normally would.
There's a zipped pocket in the back which will swallow your phone or keys; the stretchy fabric means you can't load it up too much but it's almost invisible when not in use. At the front there's a quarter length zip for ventilation and a button behind the collar so you can turn it up for a bit of extra defence against the wind, which is a neat touch.
The Cadence is very comfortable next to the skin and does wick very well; I've worn it under several layers and with a rucksack and although it gets damp when you're putting the effort in, it does dry quickly and remains comfortable throughout. It doesn't get too whiffy either; it's not quite in the merino league but it's far better than a standard polyester jersey and the silver treatment should last.
The fabric doesn't crease easily either, so it tends to look pretty good once you step off the bike. It's smart and non-bikey enough for the pub or a casual office environment. At £65 it's pricey, and you can get similar technical polos for less, but Rohan's gear is well-made and tends to last; the Cadence has been through the wash a number of times and has kept its shape well – it still looks as good as new.
Well-made riding polo with good technical performance on the bike. A bit pricey for what it is, but should last.
If you're thinking of buying this product using a cashback deal why not use the road.cc Top Cashback page and get some top cashback while helping to support your favourite independent cycling website
road.cc test report
Make and model: Rohan Cadence Polo shirt
Size tested: Grey, Medium
Tell us what the product is for, and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?
Our Cadence Polo is a highly technical, short-sleeved bike jersey offering functional, base-layer performance in conjunction with an understated, everyday appearance.
It's made from Dryknit™, a high-wicking blend of comfy polyester and stretchy elastane with our super-efficient Dynamic Moisture Control™ finish.
It's light, comfortable, wicks moisture in a flash and dries in minutes. It also offers total protection from the harmful effects of UV radiation.
We've added anti-odour silver technology to the blend too. This highly-effective, permanent treatment inhibits the growth of bacteria and keeps odour to an absolute minimum – a nice-to-have for everyday use; a must-have on any non-solo extended tour with limited laundry facilities.
The Cadence Polo is designed for the perfect fit in the riding position. Our Forward Pitch Cut™ offers a dropped rear hem and forward facing raglan sleeves. Bound cuffs prevent the sleeves riding up and becoming uncomfortable.
The polo collar is zipped for easy ventilation and can be turned up and secured with a little button to either keep the sun off your neck or minimise the early morning chill.
The rear zipped pocket is closed with a neatly-concealed zip – it's totally functional when you're on the bike but nicely hidden when you're not.
Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose
Very well
Tell us what you particularly liked about the product
Fit, performance.
Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product
Did you enjoy using the product? Yes.
Would you consider buying the product? Yes.
Would you recommend the product to a friend? Yes.
About the tester
Age: 38 Height: 190cm Weight: 98kg
I usually ride: whatever I'm testing... My best bike is: Genesis Equilibrium with SRAM Apex
I've been riding for: 10-20 years I ride: Every day I would class myself as: Experienced
I regularly do the following types of riding: time trialling, cyclo cross, commuting, sportives, general fitness riding, fixed/singlespeed, mtb, Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling, track
Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.


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Food and Drug (State/Intrastate)
The California Department of Health Services is responsible for protecting California's citizens from unsafe adulterated, misbranded, or falsely advertised foods, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, and certain other consumer products.
The Department investigates purity, quality, safety, labeling for foods, drugs, drinking water, bottled water, wholesale warehousing prices, expiration date on products, processed, canned, packaged foods, natural herb food claims, medical devices. Inspects companies that manufacture in California.
Department of Health Services
Division of Food, Drug and Radiation Safety
Food and Drug Branch
1500 Capitol Avenue, Suite 72-436
Sacramento, CA 95814
PO Box 997413
Sacramento, CA 95899-7413
(916) 650-6500
Consumer complaints can be made on: prepackaged foods, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, or household products.
Food and Drug Hotline:
(916) 322-2632
(800) 495-3232
The Food and Drug Branch licenses and registers manufacturers and distributors of foods, drugs, medical devices; inspects cosmetics and hazardous household products, investigates health frauds, monitors processed foods for pesticides, other chemical contaminants and microbiological problems. Handles complaints about California produced food, medical devices, drugs, and hazardous household products.
Department of Health Services
Food and Drug Branch
1449 West Temple Street, Room 202
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 580-5720
Bottled Water/Vended Water
Food (Miscellaneous)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Farm and Home/Cooperative Extension
Consumer Resource & Referral Guide
Directory of State Agencies
Directory of Federal Agencies
Return to DCA Home Page


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>A less invasive procedure, coronary angioplasty, consists of placing a catheter with a balloon on its tip into the area of the blockage and inflating the balloon to open the artery. This may or may not include the placement of stents. This procedure does not require opening the chest and can be performed in an outpatient setting.
>Fitness and Diving Issue
>An individual who has undergone coronary artery bypass grafting or angioplasty (with or without stent placement) may have suffered significant cardiac damage prior to having the surgery. The post-operative cardiac function of individuals dictates their fitness for diving.
>Anyone who has had open-chest surgery needs appropriate medical evaluation prior to scuba diving. After a period of stabilization and healing (6-12 months is usually recommended), the individual should have a thorough cardiovascular evaluation prior to being cleared to dive. He or she should be free of chest pain and have normal exercise tolerance, as evidenced by a normal stress EKG test (13 mets or stage 4 of the Bruce protocol - defined at the end of previous section on MI). If there is any doubt about the success of the procedure or how open the coronary arteries are, the individual should refrain from diving.
>For more information on cardiovascular conditions, see the complete article by Dr. James L. Caruso on Cardiovascular Fitness and Diving from the July/August 1999 issue of Alert Diver.


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I've had the squeezebox radio for a couple months, and just in the last day or two I've started being unable to have the radio connection to mysqueezebox.com. I am sure, doubly, triply, quadrupely sure that the username and password that I use on mysqueezebox.com match the username and password I input in the Squeezebox Server Control Panel, yet I get the message: "invalid mysqueezebox.com username or password" when I try to connect via the Control Panel to mysqueezebox.com
Any suggestions here? My setup is pretty simple: The Squeezebox Server Control Panel is running on my Windows PC, which is wired to a router, which streams wirelessly to the Squeezebox.
Results 1 to 3 of 3
2009-12-18, 08:40 #1
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Posts
- 4
All of a Sudden Get "invalid mysqueezebox username or password" message
2009-12-18, 08:56 #2
What version of Squeezebox Server are you running? Recent versions of the nightly 7.5.0 beta SBS have been changed to point to a test site (test.mysqueezebox.com). If that is where your SB Radio is looking then you may need to create new account settings for the test site, or go back to using the release version of the software, 7.4.x. If you are running 7.4.x and not 7.5 beta, then I'm as puzzled as you.
2009-12-18, 09:03 #3
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Posts
- 4
Aha - that was it, thanks! I am running 7.5 beta. Once I created a new account on test.squeezebox.com everything worked perfectly!


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|"A Good Man Goes to War" will be Karen's 21st episode.
"Getting a part like Rory was great, but now,coming out of it, I need to go and do something completely different."
What are you doing next?
"I am playing Jean Shrimpton in a BBC4 drama We'll Take Manhattan but I have just literally gone from Doctor Who to that so I haven't had a chance to sit and have a think. I actually would really like to go home to Scotland for a little while and reflect on what has happened and then decide what my next move is, but I don't know what that is yet."


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Arab Bank's cash management offering, includes an extensive product suite geared to meet the specific liquidity management and payment needs of our corporate clients. A variety of products, services and customized solutions are available to empower companies to manage their collections and payments, including the launch of the web-based solution, Corporate@Arabi.
Arab Bank's Cash Management Solutions
Global Opportunities, Borderless Solutions
• Cash Management Channels
• Cash Management Products