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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM
Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011, AT 3:07 PM
Obama Gets Firsthand Look at a Tornado Damage

TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM
Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long. Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2013/10/most_expensive_bottle_of_wine_2009_chateau_margaux_balthazar_sells_for_195.html
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Are Artists to Blame for Gentrification?

Broadway, from Houston Street, 1860. — Broadway, as seen from Houston Street in New York City in 1860. The classic case of artist-led gentrification is SoHo.

Wander through New York’s Chelsea art district right now, and it might not be one of the shows at the neighborhood’s increasingly overweening megagalleries that stand out. It’ll be the sheep. The gas pumps at the Getty station on 24th and 10th are half-buried in what appears to be a rolling green pasture, neatly fenced in. Clustered on the incongruous green field is a flock of loveable, sculptural sheep. It’s a bit of soft surrealism, perfect for bemused Instagramming, and could easily be mistaken for some whimsical public art installation.

Except that’s not what it is, not exactly. It's true that the sheep are by the late French sculptor Francois-Xavier Lalanne, and “Sheep Station,” as the pop-up installation is called, was executed with the help of Lalanne’s dealer, Paul Kasmin, from up the street. But the spectacle was the brainchild of Michael Shvo, once dubbed the Big Apple’s “most successful” and “most loathed” real estate broker by New York magazine. Many of these fluffy sculptures hail from his personal collection—his wife has some public Instagrams of herself reclining sexily with Lalanne sheep—as a kind of PR stunt to boost the luxury residence he plans to build on the gas station site.

If you didn’t already associate art with real-estate speculation, it’s the kind of thing that’s likely to cement the idea in your mind. Right now, three conflicting crosscurrents are coming together to make this a hot topic for art-watchers and urban policy types. One is the gusto that developers like Shvo have for promoting new luxury housing via an association with art. Another is the fact that art’s role as a motor of economic vitality has become a preferred talking point for government agencies and arts nonprofits looking to justify money for culture in such challenging times. And the third factor is the angst experienced by artists themselves when they are implicated in the process of pushing out disadvantaged communities—before being priced out themselves—in places like New York’s ultra-hip Bushwick neighborhood (or, in London, Peckham, where a recent Guardian headline bluntly demanded, “Is Art to Blame for Gentrification?”).

The current narrative—in newsrooms, in think tanks, in studios and galleries—has art at the bleeding edge of urban transformation. But this narrative is wrong—or at least it keeps getting told in the wrong way.

The classic case of artist-led gentrification is SoHo. In the ’60s, shortly after the term gentrification was coined by British sociologist Ruth Glass, experimental art guru George Maciunus took a lead in converting the deindustrializing neighborhood’s large spaces, which had been a hub of light manufacturing for a largely Puerto Rican and African-American workforce, into artist cooperatives and live-work spaces, touching off its ultimate conversion into the gleaming nexus of air-brushed boutiques and tony restaurants that it is today. City leaders were so impressed that they wanted to do it again, and ever since the magical power of art to make over cities has been a key talking point.

The SoHo case seems clear cut. But is it? Last year, the NEA and Brookings Institution published a book called Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development, which includes a thought-provoking essay on the subject. Urban policy analyst Jenny Schuetz notes that even the most detailed accounts of gentrification in SoHo don’t prove that redevelopment wouldn’t have happened some other way had there been no assist from the art community. To try to answer the question of whether gallery clusters actually jumpstart transformation, Schuetz looks at every city block in Manhattan to see if there is evidence of accelerated development in the years after an art gallery moved into a neighborhood. She found that the difference was minimal. This isn’t to say that development doesn’t happen. Just that galleries are not really the major “causal agent” they get made out to be; they tend to arrive in neighborhoods already marked out for change. “These results,” she concludes, “suggest that galleries might not be the most effective or efficient target for economic development.”

Are funky bohemians the engine of development or do cities with lots of money floating around simply tend to have funky bohemian scenes?

Schuetz does leave open the possibility that other kinds of art amenities, like museums or performing arts venues, might be better candidates to boost development. As the story often gets told, it’s not the galleries, but the young (mainly white) “creatives” who first move into an “abandoned” neighborhood (which usually just means a neighborhood where poor and minority communities live or work) and lure the more affluent behind them with their vegan restaurants and glamorously eclectic outfits. Artists—glamorous but poor, open to unconventional living conditions but also in need of copious space for studios—are viewed as some kind of natural middle-term residents between the disenfranchised and a more moneyed set. For a decade, urbanist Richard Florida has been preaching the gospel that if cities can lure the “Creative Class,” then prosperity will follow.

Yet here again, causality is hotly debated—are funky bohemians the engine of development, or do cities with lots of money floating around simply tend to have funky bohemian scenes? And again, the special emphasis placed on art as a cause is misleading: Florida defined his creative class so broadly that it embraces 30 percent of the working population, including finance types and lawyers. His juicy “super-creative core,” whose proclivities were said to play the lead role in “reshaping our geography, spearheading the movement back from outlying areas to urban centers and close-in walkable suburbs,” embraced a more modest 12 percent of workers, but still included folks like scientists and techies—not exactly people living on the margins of respectable society.

The familiar examples of artist-led gentrification—in New York, the East Village, or Williamsburg—are so often cited that one almost forgets the great number of Gotham neighborhoods have gentrified without an artistic assist. At the moment, Crown Heights is experiencing a wave of transformation, and bohemians are not particularly in evidence; just garden-variety, mainly white professionals. Ditto in Harlem, which is experiencing breakneck gentrification, without any particular new artistic influx. Heck, even Flushing, Queens, is gentrifying. There, Jefferson Mao argues in his wonderfully titled essay, “On Gentrification in an Unhip Place,” it is wealthy Asian immigrants doing the gentrifying.

In the often-bitter narrative of neighborhood “revitalization,” much more depends on huge forces like average area incomes, social stratification, real-estate speculation, and rent policy than on the magic of art. (Even in artist-led gentrification’s relatively raw form in SoHo there were bigger city planning forces in play, including the Rockefellers’ concurrent push to renew Lower Manhattan.) That’s why the recent vogue for ham-handedly trying to rebrand declining cities as “vibrant” cultural destinations as a way of hotwiring economic development doesn’t typically work out. Since the financial crisis, Florida’s new line of thinking has been “ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and… we would be foolish to try.” That’s left unhip burgs like Elmira, N.Y. ,and Roanoke, Va., which attempted to save themselves by adding artistic resources, feeling more than a bit disoriented. Florida, meanwhile, has publicly disassociated himself from initiatives directly inspired by his theory, like Michigan’s “Cool Cities” project. Without the larger pressure of economic development behind art, cities are left pushing rope.

The flip side is that in places like New York, with its turbo-charged real-estate market, artists aren’t really in the driver’s seat. Even in my neighborhood, Brooklyn’s increasingly uncool and preppy Williamsburg, the spectacular transformation of the last decade has not been just some natural process of rising cachet thanks to the art scene. It’s a function of very conscious and hotly contested zoning decisions, including a far-reaching and disgraceful failure by both the city and private developers to follow through on even modest and symbolic commitments to affordable housing. “To be honest, artists are the least of our worries,” says Miguel Robles-Duran, the director of the graduate program in urban ecologies at the New School who has studied Bushwick in particular. Developers certainly seize on the presence of artists as a marketing tool, but mainly to do what they are doing anyway, which is developing. “The current system is designed to make this happen,” Robles-Duran says.

And finally, it is also possible for artists to move into a neighborhood and not completely uproot the existing community. “I repudiate the notion that artists are the shock troops of gentrification,” researcher Anne Gadwa Nicodemus wrote recently; among other things, she points to her study of artist communities in St. Paul, Minn. The neighborhood, she claims, “is more racially and ethnically diverse than before the artist spaces, and, for better or worse, still has quite high poverty levels.” In Bushwick, Robles-Duran and his collaborators plan to put out a bilingual Spanish-English gazette to publicize their research on the area’s housing problems and to try to draw together the community to save the neighborhood from rapacious redevelopment—though, with even the artists now being pressured out, the hour seems late.

Artists are a particularly self-conscious, sometimes self-indulgent, and always exhibitionistic community—they exist to call attention to themselves—so it makes perfect sense that they draw disproportionate notice in the gentrification debate. Some emphasis on their role probably reflects a healthy political self-awareness; but we need to break out of the conversation about the role of art to look at the problem constructively. Until there’s some understanding that gentrification isn’t just about people’s individual lifestyle choices—of artists, or preppies—but a symptom of dysfunctional urban policy, everyone is going to continue to get herded in front of rising rents every few years. Like sheep.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/10/are_artists_to_blame_for_gentrification_or_would_soho_chelsea_and_bushwick.html
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Judge Won't Speed Up 'Ender's Game' Commission Dispute

Not that talent managers needed another reason to detest California's Talent Agencies Act, but a Los Angeles judge has given them one.

It comes in a dispute concerning Ender's Game, the film based on sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card's novel that is set to be released on Nov. 1. As Card's former rep, Niad Management is demanding 10 percent of his income from the film. In reaction, Card filed a petition with California's Labor Commissioner that asserted that Niad had violated the Talent Agencies Act, which says that only licensed talent agents can procure employment for clients.

STORY: James Cameron Wins Another 'Avatar' Idea Theft Lawsuit

The problem is that since the Labor Commissioner conducted a full-day hearing in Jan. 2012, it hasn't done much. Niad's attorney has begged the California agency for an estimate as to when to expect a ruling, and heard little. So, Niad attempted to get Judge Ralph Dau to lift the stay on the case.

In a ruling this week, the judge denied the request, potentially meaning that talent managers in TAA disputes can be subjected to commissions purgatory.

Robert Gookin, Niad's attorney, argued that that the administrative remedy "has been exhausted as a result of the Labor Commissioner's unreasonable delay" and that the Labor Commissioner's initial jurisdiction in the matter was "merely colorable."

"This argument is not well taken," responds Judge Dau.

If the Labor Commissioner determines that Niad violated the TAA, it could invalidate the contract that Card had with his manager to provide commissions. "Because the validity of the contract is an important underlying issue in this action, and because the Labor Commissioner must determine this issue, its jurisdiction has not been shown to be 'merely colorable.'"

Judge Dau adds, "There is no evidence that the Labor Commissioner does not intend to issue a ruling or that it has otherwise abandoned the proceedings."

Thus, not only do talent managers face TAA penalties, they can wait forever to find out.

The National Conference of Personal Managers would prefer that the TAA be erased. Last November, the group brought a lawsuit that argued the statute was unconstitutional, but in March, a judge dismissed the claims. The same day that Card's ex-manager was getting the bad news from a Los Angeles judge, the NCOPM filed a brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals aimed at invalidating the TAA.

E-mail: Eriq.Gardner@THR.com
Twitter: @eriqgardner

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/business/~3/0vGK7-QwKpA/story01.htm
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Tough job for team destroying Syria nerve agents

FILE -- In this Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013 file photo, a citizen journalism image provided by the Local Committee of Arbeen which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows members of the UN investigation team take samples from the ground in the Damascus countryside of Zamalka, Syria. The dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is under way, but the mission faces multiple challenges, from an ambitious deadline and a raging civil war that threatens inspectors’ safety. It also has far-reaching political consequences, giving a political boost to President Bashar Assad and further alienating the rebels. (AP Photo/Local Committee of Arbeen, File)

FILE -- In this Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013 file photo, U.N. experts arrive to the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus, Syria. The dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is under way, but the mission faces multiple challenges, from an ambitious deadline and a raging civil war that threatens inspectors’ safety. It also has far-reaching political consequences, giving a political boost to President Bashar Assad and further alienating the rebels. (AP Photo, File)

FILE -- In this Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013, file photo, a citizen journalism image provided by the United Media Office of Arbeen which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows members of the UN investigation team take samples from sand near a part of a missile that is likely to be one of the chemical rockets according to activists, in the Damascus countryside of Ain Terma, Syria. The dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is under way, but the mission faces multiple challenges, from an ambitious deadline and a raging civil war that threatens inspectors’ safety. It also has far-reaching political consequences, giving a political boost to President Bashar Assad and further alienating the rebels. (AP Photo/Local Committee of Arbeen, File)

FILE -- This file image made from video broadcast on Syrian State Television on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013 purports to show a chemical weapons expert taking samples at a chemical weapons plant at an unknown location in Syria. The dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is under way, but the mission faces multiple challenges, from an ambitious deadline and a raging civil war that threatens inspectorsâ€™ safety. It also has far-reaching political consequences, giving a political boost to President Bashar Assad and further alienating the rebels. (AP Photo/Syrian State Television via AP video, File)

FILE -- This file image made from video broadcast on Syrian State Television on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013 purports to show a chemical weapons expert taking samples at a chemical weapons plant at an unknown location in Syria. The dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is under way, but the mission faces multiple challenges, from an ambitious deadline and a raging civil war that threatens inspectors’ safety. It also has far-reaching political consequences, giving a political boost to President Bashar Assad and further alienating the rebels. (AP Photo/Syrian State Television via AP video, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is well underway, and the agency overseeing it — the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — has won a Nobel Peace Prize. But despite global praise and a smooth start, the mission faces difficult challenges, from tight deadlines to safety risks for inspectors trying to get to sites near fighting. There's also political fallout. The decision to make Syrian President Bashar Assad a partner in destroying the stockpile appears to have restored some of his legitimacy and boosted his chances of staying in power longer, while angering his opponents who now balk at attending political transition talks the U.S. hopes will begin in November.

A look at the mission:

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Syria became a full member of the OPCW on Monday, and U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has selected Sigrid Kaag of The Netherlands, a Middle East expert, to lead the joint U.N.-OPCW team charged with destroying Syria's chemical weapons. By Oct. 27, Syria must submit a plan for the destruction of its stockpile. By Nov. 1, the inspectors must complete verification of the inventory and render production, mixing and filling facilities unusable. By Nov. 15, they must adopt a plan for destroying the stockpile, aiming for completion by mid-2014.

HOW BIG IS SYRIA'S CHEMICAL ARSENAL?

Syria has briefed the OPCW, which is not releasing the information. The U.N. says Syria has about 1,000 metric tons of chemical weapons materials. Former OPCW official Ralf Trapp and disarmament expert Jean-Pascal Zanders believe Syria has about 300 metric tons of sulfur mustard, a blistering agent, and about 700 metric tons of the nerve agents sarin and VX. The OPCW won't say how much of the nerve agent is weapons-ready, but suggests much is in precursor form, as separate components.

HOW MANY SITES?

Ahmet Uzumcu, the head of the OPCW, was quoted as saying Monday that his team has visited five of at least 20 sites. U.S. chemical weapons nonproliferation expert Amy Smithson said that among the sites are four production facilities near the towns of Safira, Khan Abu Shamat, Homs and Hama; six storage facilities near Safira, Homs and Hama and the towns of Furqlus, Latakia and Palmyra; and a research and development site in Damascus.

HOW DANGEROUS IS THE MISSION?

Sixty OPCW inspectors and U.N. staff are on the ground, and the team is to grow to 100. The OPCW chief told the BBC that one abandoned site was in rebel-held territory and routes to others led through it, preventing access. The U.N. is to arrange safe passage for inspectors, but rebels have not promised cooperation. The risks were illustrated when regime warplanes bombed the rebel-held town of Safira last week, near one of the likely chemical weapons facilities. Over the weekend, two mortar shells struck 300 meters (yards) from the Damascus hotel where the inspectors are staying.

HOW REALISTIC IS THE TIMETABLE?

Trapp, Zanders and Smithson said destroying munitions and machinery with blow torches, sledgehammers and bulldozers by Nov. 1 is achievable. Destroying the chemical arsenal will be more complicated. Steven Bucci, a former U.S. defense official, said the target dates are "wildly optimistic," noting that it is taking the U.S. and Russia decades to destroy much larger stockpiles.

Trapp and Zanders said Syria's chemical weapons threat can be eliminated relatively quickly once the mustard gas, the weapons-ready nerve agents and the means of delivering them are all destroyed.

HOW WILL THE STOCKPILE BE DESTROYED?

By Nov. 1, inspectors are to have visited each site, take photos, tag and seal items, and destroy specialized production, mixing and filling equipment and unfilled munitions. In the next phase, the chemicals will be destroyed. Neutralization with chemical agents is preferred, especially with precursors, the OPCW said. Precursors are easier to destroy than weapons-ready materials. Mustard gas can be neutralized with strong alkaline water or bleach. Mobile units will likely be deployed for some of the destruction, but some parts of the arsenal may be shipped out of the country, Trapp and Smithson said.

IS THE REGIME COOPERATING?

The OPCW needs Syrian cooperation to destroy the stockpiles, and the mission could falter if the regime collapses before mid-2014.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the regime deserves credit for "complying rapidly," though he insisted Assad has lost the legitimacy to rule.

Smithson, of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a U.S. think tank, said the regime appears to be cooperating but has a "very sorry track record" on working with nuclear inspectors. She said it is easier to hide chemical and biological weapons than a nuclear program.

Trapp said satellites would likely detect serious attempts to cheat. Under the OPCW's rules, the Syrians would have to allow inspection of any site that raises suspicions.

WILL PERPETRATORS ESCAPE PUNISHMENT?

The U.N. is documenting alleged war crimes by both sides in the civil war, and future prosecution is possible. The West holds the regime responsible for deadly Aug. 21 nerve gas attacks near Damascus, while Assad blames the rebels. A match between the types of weapons Syria has declared to the OPCW and weapons remnants found previously by U.N. inspectors at the site of the Damascus attacks could build a stronger case against the regime.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR RIDDING THE WORLD OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS?

North Korea, Angola, Egypt and South Sudan haven't signed the convention. Israel and Myanmar have signed but not ratified. North Korea is believed to have 3,000 to 5,000 metric tons of chemical weapons materials, Zanders said, adding that he is not aware of a chemical warfare capacity in either Egypt or Israel.

Seven countries have declared stockpiles: Russia, the U.S. India, Albania, Libya and a "state party" believed to be South Korea. The U.S. and Russia started out with a combined stockpile of more than 70,000 metric tons and have so far destroyed about 80 percent.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-14-Syria-Chemical%20Weapons-News%20Guide/id-e007d95a6e224765b5c3adf3c8ea561a
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Monday, October 14, 2013

Harrison Ford and Benedict Cumberbatch Duck 'Star Wars' Question (Video)

11:28 AM PDT 10/14/2013 by Graeme McMillan

British TV chat show host Graham Norton takes full advantage of having Harrison Ford and Benedict Cumberbatch on his couch at the same time in this week's upcoming season premiere, asking them both if they will appear in the next Star Wars movie. Their response is a master class in not actually answering a question.

What's particularly amusing is that Norton doesn't seem to be trying to trap Ford in a "gotcha"-type situation; he seems to genuinely believe that his participation has been officially announced. It's worth noting, too, that Ford makes a joke about "not quite [having] made the choice" to appear in the movie -- a sign that he's not actually agreed to appear yet, perhaps? Of course, when it comes to Cumberbatch, he's definitely just looking for a scoop, which makes the show's third guest, comedian Jack Whitehall's bailout all the more welcome for Ford and Cumberbatch.

STORY: 'Star Wars Rebels': David Oyelowo, Freddie Prinze Jr. in Talks for Voice Cast (Exclusive)

The Graham Norton Show premieres on BBC America this Saturday at 10 p.m.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/film/~3/5G5ALrQXh6U/story01.htm
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Saturday, October 12, 2013

New Michigan gaming regulations could cripple local charities

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Niles, Mich. Michigan’s Gaming Control Board is dealing a bad hand to organizations that rely on proceeds from charitable gaming.

Last month, a judge lifted a temporary restraining order against the board and its director, allowing new regulations for charitable gaming to take effect.

The rules aren’t being enforced yet, but some Southwest Michigan organizations say they would have a crippling effect on their fundraising efforts.

Niles Community Schools is one of many groups that takes advantage of charitable gaming at Joey Armadillo’s in Niles. A few times a year, volunteers help out at poker tournaments there, which can bring in up to $4,000 for a school over a 4-day stretch.

That money is used to help fund various programs and activities throughout the district, including the SOAR program for special needs students.

“That program helps special needs kids adjust to the outside world,” said Niles Track and Field Coach Tony Todd. “Teaches them how to do checking accounts and shopping, stuff like that.”

Todd says volunteers from that school make about $8,000 a year through the poker games.

Schools also use some of the money to help pay for athletic costs instead of transferring that financial responsibility onto parents. Charitable gaming proceeds helped several Niles High School teams buy much-needed, new uniforms.

“Lord help us, we used to have one kid would get done running, take off his jersey and hand it to someone else to run,” Todd said.

Todd met with several other group leaders Wednesday night at Joey Armadillo’s to talk about how the new regulations will impact them.

Among the new rules, businesses will only be allowed to host charitable games 30 days out of the year and only three charities will be allowed per site. Organizations will also have to have at least five volunteers at the games – and each volunteer must have been involved with the group for at least six months.

“They're asking for things we just cannot do as charities,” Todd said.

The Niles Moose Lodge Chapter 413 also relies heavily on money generated from the poker tournaments. They make about $11,000 a year from volunteering.

That money is divided between charities Moose International supports and local organizations, like Helping Hands.

But, volunteers fear they’ll have to reduce or eliminate their donations to those groups if the new charitable gaming laws are implemented.

“We can't cook enough dinners or sell enough raffle tickets to make that kind of money,” said Darlene Born with Moose Lodge Chapter 413.

Many charity groups think the new regulations look out for the interests of Detroit casinos, who think they’ll gain more customers by restricting charitable gaming.

But, the state says more oversight is needed because they've found hundreds of violations throughout Michigan.

There could be some relief for groups that benefit from the games if Bill 4960 does well in Lansing. It still provides more oversight for charitable gaming, but allows more organizations to participate.

It’s unclear when the gaming board will start enforcing the new regulations. Todd says he thinks they’ll wait to see what happens to Bill 4960 before moving forward.

Source: http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/New-Michigan-gaming-regulations-could-cripple-local-charities-227167191.html
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