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Friday, November 22, 2013
GRB 130427A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GRB 130427A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"GRB 130427A was a record-setting Gamma-ray burst, discovered starting on April 27, 2013.[1][2][3] The Fermi space observatory detected a gamma-ray with an energy of at least 94 billion electron volts.[1] It was simultaneously detected by the Burst Alert Telescope aboard the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and was one of the brightest bursts Swift had ever detected.[1] It was one of the five closest GRBs, at about 3.6 billion light-years away, and was comparatively long-lasting.[1]"
'via Blog this'
"GRB 130427A was a record-setting Gamma-ray burst, discovered starting on April 27, 2013.[1][2][3] The Fermi space observatory detected a gamma-ray with an energy of at least 94 billion electron volts.[1] It was simultaneously detected by the Burst Alert Telescope aboard the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and was one of the brightest bursts Swift had ever detected.[1] It was one of the five closest GRBs, at about 3.6 billion light-years away, and was comparatively long-lasting.[1]"
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Thursday, November 21, 2013
Are We Alone in the Universe?
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By PAUL DAVIES
Published: November 18, 2013 538 Comments
TEMPE, Ariz. — THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.
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The astronomer Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, an experienced planet hunter and co-author of the study that generated the finding, said that it “represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe.”
But “possibility” is not the same as likelihood. If a planet is to be inhabited rather than merely habitable, two basic requirements must be met: the planet must first be suitable and then life must emerge on it at some stage.
What can be said about the chances of life starting up on a habitable planet? Darwin gave us a powerful explanation of how life on Earth evolved over billions of years, but he would not be drawn out on the question of how life got going in the first place. “One might as well speculate about the origin of matter,” he quipped. In spite of intensive research, scientists are still very much in the dark about the mechanism that transformed a nonliving chemical soup into a living cell. But without knowing the process that produced life, the odds of its happening can’t be estimated.
When I was a student in the 1960s, the prevailing view among scientists was that life on Earth was a freak phenomenon, the result of a sequence of chemical accidents so rare that they would be unlikely to have happened twice in the observable universe. “Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance,” wrote the biologist Jacques Monod. Today the pendulum has swung dramatically, and many distinguished scientists claim that life will almost inevitably arise in Earthlike conditions. Yet this decisive shift in view is based on little more than a hunch, rather than an improved understanding of life’s origin.
The underlying problem is complexity. Even the simplest bacterium is, at the molecular level, staggeringly complex. Although we have no idea of the minimal complexity of a living organism, it is likely to be very high. It could be that some sort of complexifying principle operates in nature, serving to drive a chaotic mix of chemicals on a fast track to a primitive microbe. If so, no hint of such a principle has been found in laboratory experiments to re-create the basic building blocks of life.
On the other hand, if life arose simply by the accumulation of many specific chemical accidents in one place, it is easy to imagine that only one in, say, a trillion trillion habitable planets would ever host such a dream run. Set against a number that big — and once you decide a series of unlikely accidents is behind the creation of life, you get enormous odds very easily — it is irrelevant whether the Milky Way contains 40 billion habitable planets or just a handful. Forty billion makes hardly a dent in a trillion trillion.
So we are stuck. Life may indeed pop up readily in Earthlike conditions, or it may be a fluke, unique in the observable universe. Because we are a product of this cosmic accident, we cannot conclude that Earth is typical. No statistical evidence can be drawn from a sample of one.
The easiest way to settle the matter is to find a second sample of life, one that arose from scratch independent of known life. The inventory of extrasolar planets being discovered is an extremely useful first step. In the future, our telescopes should be able to analyze the atmospheres of some of these planets for telltale signs of biological activity.
But evidence favoring life’s high probability could exist closer to home. No planet is more Earthlike than Earth itself. If life does pop up readily in Earthlike conditions, then it should have started many times, right here on our own planet. It could be that intermingled among the seething microbes all around us are some that are so biochemically different they could be descended only from a separate origin. You couldn’t tell by looking, only by delving into their molecular innards and finding something weird enough to rule out a common precursor. The discovery of just a single “alien” microbe under our very noses would be enough to conclude that the universe was indeed teeming with life.
It would also address a deep philosophical question. Although the pathway from microbes to complex thinking beings like humans may still be a very difficult one, at least we know the mechanism whereby it happens — Darwinian evolution. If microbial life is widespread in the cosmos, we can expect that, at least here and there, sentient beings will evolve. We would then be much closer to answering that age-old puzzle of existence: Are we alone in the universe?
Monday, November 11, 2013
Struggle for Survival in Philippine City Shattered by Typhoon
NYT
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: November 11, 2013 220 Comments
TACLOBAN, Philippines — Decomposing bodies still lie along the roads, like a corpse in a pink, short-sleeved shirt and blue shorts facedown in a black, muddy puddle 100 yards from the airport. Just down the road is a church that was supposed to be an evacuation center but is littered with the bodies of those who drowned inside.
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Related
The Lede: How to Help Typhoon Victims in the Philippines(November 11, 2013)
The Lede: Aerial Views of Devastation in the Philippines(November 10, 2013)
Related in Opinion
Op-Ed Contributor: Notes From a Storm-Wrecked Land(November 12, 2013)
Ted Aljibe/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Uprooted coconut trees near Guiuan in the Philippines, which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan’s winds and storm surge.
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When a wind-whipped ocean rose Friday night, the ground floors of homes hundreds of yards inland were submerged within minutes, trapping residents like Virginia Basinang, a 54-year-old retired teacher, who suddenly found herself struggling in waist-deep water on the second floor of her home. Screaming people bobbed in the water that surged through the streets, many grabbing for floating debris.
“Some of them were able to hold on, some were lucky and lived, but most did not,” she said, adding that 14 bodies were left on a wall across the street when the seawater receded a half-hour later. The bodies are still there, and the odor of their decay makes it impossible for Ms. Basinang and her family to eat meals at home.
Typhoon Haiyan, among the most powerful in history, slammed into the eastern Philippine city of Tacloban four days ago and cut a path of devastation barreling west across the archipelago nation. In its wake, corpses lay along roads lined with splintered homes and toppled power lines, as the living struggled to survive, increasingly desperate for fresh drinking water, food and shelter. The damage to everything was so great that it was hard even to tally. Mass graves began to fill as relief efforts struggled to get underway.
The roads of this once-thriving city of 220,000 were so clogged with debris from nearby buildings that they were barely discernible. The civilian airport terminal has shattered walls and gaping holes in the roof where steel beams protrude, twisted and torn by winds far more powerful than those of Hurricane Katrina when it made landfall near New Orleans in 2005.
One of the saddest and deadliest moments came when hundreds of people flocked to Tacloban’s domed sports arena at the urging of municipal officials, who believed its sturdy roof would withstand the wind. The roof did, but the arena flooded, and many inside drowned or were trampled in a frenzied rush to higher seats.
The top civil defense official of the Philippines said in an interview after inspecting the damage that the storm surge had been the highest in the country’s modern history, perhaps explaining why so few thought they needed to flee inland and instead went to evacuation centers near the coast. Nothing like this had ever happened. The sea level rose 10 to 13 feet and filled streets and homes deep in the city, propelled by sustained winds of at least 140 miles an hour and gusts that were far stronger.
“It was a tsunami-like storm surge; it is the first time,” said Eduardo del Rosario, the executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. Tacloban has been hit by typhoons for decades, but never had the sea risen high enough to pour over the swath of low salt marshes and inundate the city’s shady streets, he said.
As a violet sunset melted on Monday evening into the nearly total darkness of a city without electricity, lighted only by a waxing half-moon, dispirited residents walked home or lay down in the ruins of the airport terminal after another day of waiting at the airport in hope of fresh water, food or a flight out. Grocery stores and pharmacies across the city had been sacked over the weekend, leaving bare shelves for a city quickly growing hungry and thirsty.
A coast guardsman said that he had helped fill a mass grave in the nearby village of Hernani. “I personally threw in one body earlier, and it was a relative of my friend in Manila — I haven’t told her yet because I can’t get a signal” for cellphone usage, said the coast guardsman, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The same friend in Manila has lost her grandfather, whom the coast guardsman threw in the mass grave, as well as her aunt and two cousins, the guardsman added, saying that other relatives who survived the typhoon had confirmed the identities of the dead.
This regional capital, the hometown of Imelda Marcos, was among the hardest hit in a nation accustomed to misery blown in from the sea. But this storm was like nothing before it, and its devastation was not yet fully understood. Villages along the coasts may have been wiped out, and the toll — at least 10,000 in Tacloban alone are feared dead — was just an estimate. Relief efforts were complicated by a persistent and heavy rain.
Miriam Refugio, 60, waited in the crowd of Filipinos at the airport seeking a scarce place on a flight to Manila. “Our home was destroyed, there is no food in this town, so we have to flee,” she said, standing with her teenage granddaughter who held their only drinking water, a nearly empty plastic bottle that could hold perhaps two cups.
They were trying to decide whether to drink water from a nearby pump even though the granddaughter, tugging at her stomach for emphasis, said that they were certain to become sick if they did.
Mr. del Rosario said the government was still sending out helicopters on Monday to look for communities that had not been heard from since the typhoon. The government had confirmed 1,563 deaths through Sunday evening in the hardest-hit region of the east-central Philippines, and the death toll would “most likely” rise, he said.
But one of the biggest questions here involves the many people who seem to have disappeared, possibly sucked out to sea when the ocean returned to its usual level.
Rosemary Balais, 39, said that a very large proportion, possibly more than half, of the 5,000 people in her hometown Tanauan, near Tacloban, seemed to be missing. “My sister and their children were there, and we have not heard from them since last Thursday,” she said, adding that they had lived only around 300 yards inland.
“There was a neighbor who had won a lottery and had a big house, and even that house was flattened,” she said.
Compounding the damage was the extraordinary force of the wind. Palm trees are naturally resilient, flexing and bending in high winds. But entire groves were flattened and their trunks left in tangles on the ground as though giant boxes of toothpicks had been tipped over.
In a country cursed by a succession of natural disasters, from earthquakes to violent storms to volcanic eruptions, the typhoon was especially deadly and destructive. “It’s going to be classified as one of the worst, if not the worst, in decades,” among disasters that have struck the Philippines, said Ricky Carandang, a presidential spokesman.
The local government has declared a state of emergency and a curfew in Tacloban, and the national government was considering an emergency declaration in the city as well to speed the release of government money, Mr. Carandang said. The government was trying to fly in military and civilian police to restore law and order, but progress was slow. Hundreds of soldiers and dozens of relief workers milled around the Cebu airport throughout the morning, waiting for a plane to carry them to Tacloban.
Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippines Red Cross, said in a telephone interview on Monday morning that more flights would be needed to bring in relief supplies. A Red Cross convoy headed here on Sunday had to turn back when it stopped at a collapsed bridge and was nearly hijacked by a hungry crowd, he said, calling for a more visible police and military presence.
Some of the people searching here for lost relatives were sobbing softly. One was April Escoto, 28, from Tacloban who went on vacation to Cebu with her 24-year-old sister two days before the typhoon hit. Ms. Escoto left her sister in Cebu after they concluded that the lawless streets of Tacloban were too dangerous for them to risk what might be the two last members of their family.
“Since the storm hit,” she said, “we have not heard anything from our family.”
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Survivors 'Walk like Zombies' after Philippine Typhoon Kills Estimated 10,000: Scientific American
Survivors 'Walk like Zombies' after Philippine Typhoon Kills Estimated 10,000: Scientific American:
"TACLOBAN, Philippines (Reuters) - One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away coastal villages and devastating one of the main cities in the region."
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"TACLOBAN, Philippines (Reuters) - One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away coastal villages and devastating one of the main cities in the region."
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Saturday, November 09, 2013
Taste aversion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taste aversion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Conditioned taste aversion,[1] also known as Garcia effect (after Dr. John Garcia), and as "Sauce-Bearnaise Syndrome", a term coined by Seligman and Hager,[2] is an example of classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning. Conditioned taste aversion occurs when a subject associates the taste of a certain food with symptoms caused by a toxic, spoiled, or poisonous substance. Generally, taste aversion is caused after ingestion of the food causes nausea, sickness, or vomiting. The ability to develop a taste aversion is considered an adaptive trait or survival mechanism that trains the body to avoid poisonous substances (e.g., poisonous berries) before they can cause harm. This association is meant to prevent the consumption of the same substance (or something that tastes similar) in the future, thus avoiding further poisoning. However, conditioned taste aversion sometimes occurs in subjects when sickness was merely coincidental and not related to the food (for example, a subject who gets a cold or the flu shortly after eating bananas might develop an aversion to the taste of bananas)."
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"Conditioned taste aversion,[1] also known as Garcia effect (after Dr. John Garcia), and as "Sauce-Bearnaise Syndrome", a term coined by Seligman and Hager,[2] is an example of classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning. Conditioned taste aversion occurs when a subject associates the taste of a certain food with symptoms caused by a toxic, spoiled, or poisonous substance. Generally, taste aversion is caused after ingestion of the food causes nausea, sickness, or vomiting. The ability to develop a taste aversion is considered an adaptive trait or survival mechanism that trains the body to avoid poisonous substances (e.g., poisonous berries) before they can cause harm. This association is meant to prevent the consumption of the same substance (or something that tastes similar) in the future, thus avoiding further poisoning. However, conditioned taste aversion sometimes occurs in subjects when sickness was merely coincidental and not related to the food (for example, a subject who gets a cold or the flu shortly after eating bananas might develop an aversion to the taste of bananas)."
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2nd Big Data Business Forum | Big Data Conference 2013
2nd Big Data Business Forum | Big Data Conference 2013:
"Welcome to the 2nd Annual Big Data Business Forum, the industry preferred platform that arms you with the tools to cut through the hype and uncover the real business value of your big data investments. We understand that central to the success of a Big Data strategy is the collaboration and coordination between key stakeholders in an organization. This year's event offers a unique three day program that brings together top technologists, analysts and business executives under one roof to share best practices through practical and proven Fortune 500 case studies. Leave with the skills and insights needed to accelerate the path from analytics and insights to action."
'via Blog this'
"Welcome to the 2nd Annual Big Data Business Forum, the industry preferred platform that arms you with the tools to cut through the hype and uncover the real business value of your big data investments. We understand that central to the success of a Big Data strategy is the collaboration and coordination between key stakeholders in an organization. This year's event offers a unique three day program that brings together top technologists, analysts and business executives under one roof to share best practices through practical and proven Fortune 500 case studies. Leave with the skills and insights needed to accelerate the path from analytics and insights to action."
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Thursday, November 07, 2013
The Mutilated Economy - NYTimes.com
The Mutilated Economy - NYTimes.com:
"Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. Officially, that recession ended in the middle of 2009, but nobody would argue that we’ve had anything like a full recovery. Official unemployment remains high, and it would be much higher if so many people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force. Long-term unemployment — the number of people who have been out of work for six months or more — is four times what it was before the recession."
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"Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. Officially, that recession ended in the middle of 2009, but nobody would argue that we’ve had anything like a full recovery. Official unemployment remains high, and it would be much higher if so many people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force. Long-term unemployment — the number of people who have been out of work for six months or more — is four times what it was before the recession."
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Sunday, November 03, 2013
Online Education as an Agent of Transformation - NYTimes.com
Online Education as an Agent of Transformation - NYTimes.com:
"Even the venerable Harvard Business School has ceded ground to online instruction. Before starting school, students are directed to learning modules on the web that cover entry-level accounting concepts. With the basic competencies covered, classes spend more time on higher-order discussion, and more deeply explore real-world applications. Harvard Business School is also developing a series of “pre-M.B.A. and post-M.B.A.” online courses that it plans to have ready by summer. It calls the initiative HBX."
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"Even the venerable Harvard Business School has ceded ground to online instruction. Before starting school, students are directed to learning modules on the web that cover entry-level accounting concepts. With the basic competencies covered, classes spend more time on higher-order discussion, and more deeply explore real-world applications. Harvard Business School is also developing a series of “pre-M.B.A. and post-M.B.A.” online courses that it plans to have ready by summer. It calls the initiative HBX."
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Harvard Business School Launching Online Learning Initiative - Businessweek
Harvard Business School Launching Online Learning Initiative - Businessweek:
"Harvard Business School is quietly developing its first online learning initiative, which it hopes will make HBS the world’s top provider of high quality online business education."
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"Harvard Business School is quietly developing its first online learning initiative, which it hopes will make HBS the world’s top provider of high quality online business education."
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Saturday, October 26, 2013
Speaking to Young Latinos, in English
Fusion Sets Its Sights on a Multicultural Generation
Cindy Karp for The New York Times
Jorge Ramos, a news anchor for Univision since 1986, will host a public affairs program on Fusion, a cable network founded by Univision and ABC that makes its debut on Monday.
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: October 25, 2013
MIAMI — Since 1986, Jorge Ramos has anchored the Univision network’s 6:30 p.m. news broadcast, a vital source of information for the nation’s 50 million-plus Spanish speakers. But this week, his routine will change in a way that could have profound consequences not just for him but also for the American media landscape.
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
At 5 p.m., Mr. Ramos will host a new hourlong English-language public-affairs program called “America With Jorge Ramos,” the highest-profile offering of a new cable network called Fusion, a venture of Univision and ABC. He will then walk a few steps into an adjacent studio, put on a tie and prepare to deliver the day’s news in Spanish, just as he always has.
“Everything is new,” Mr. Ramos, 55, said after a run-through this month for “America” at the vast newsroom and studio complex that Univision, flush with money from ratings in some categories that now surpass those of the four big English-language networks, has just finished near the airport here. “New language, new format, new studio, new lighting.”
In essence, Fusion can be seen as Univision’s response to the same demographic changes that are upending American politics and advertising. Latinos are the biggest ethnic minority in the United States, expected to reach 25 percent of the population by 2035. But with immigration down since the economic crisis of 2008, American-born Hispanics, who are English dominant, now represent the biggest chunk of that growth.
Initially, Fusion’s target audience was those young Hispanics, who constitute 20 percent of their age group. But after more research, Fusion’s management decided to aim for the entire millennial generation.
“We found that good content for Hispanic millennials is good content for any millennial,” Isaac Lee, Fusion’s Colombian-born chief executive and the president for news at Univision, said in an interview in his newsroom office. “You cannot treat young Hispanics as Hispanics. They want to be part of one conversation in one room. They don’t want to be ghettoized.”
In its effort to reach that coveted audience, Fusion has gone on something of a hiring binge, snatching up young bilingual and bicultural Hispanic talent. Alicia Menendez, a Cuban-American lately of The Huffington Post, has been given the 6:30 p.m. slot, and at 10, León Krauze, who began his career as a sports radio reporter in Mexico City and is now an anchor at KMEX, Univision’s Los Angeles affiliate, will host a show called “Open Source.”
Both Ms. Menendez and Mr. Krauze come from families known to Hispanics: Her father is Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, his the historian Enrique Krauze, perhaps Mexico’s most prominent public intellectual. But in a bet on the multiculturalism said to be second nature to millennials, Fusion has also recruited talent from outside the Latino orbit.
A program called “DNA,” for example, will be hosted by the musician and political activist of that nickname, Derrick Ashong, who was born in Ghana, raised in the Middle East and New Jersey, educated at Harvard and most recently hosted a program called “The Stream” for Al Jazeera English. And Yannis Pappas, a Greek-American comedian from Brooklyn, will be joining a Venezuelan and a Brazilian as hosts of the two-hour “Morning Show.”
Fusion’s strongest selling point, however, is Mr. Ramos, whom Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, describes as “Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow wrapped into one.” Born in Mexico City, Mr. Ramos began his career as a radio reporter there, left in 1983 after chafing at political restrictions on his work, then worked at KMEX before moving east and emerging as the dominant figure in Spanish-language media in the United States. In 2008 he became an American citizen.
In addition to being co-anchor of “Noticiero Univision,” Mr. Ramos is the host of a Sunday-morning public affairs program, “Al Punto,” that focuses on issues of particular interest to him, most notably immigration. He also writes a newspaper column and is the author of nine books, including “A Country for All: An Immigrant Manifesto.”
At a time when the figure of the network anchor seems diminished, just like the audience for the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC, Mr. Ramos stands out as an exception. So does his style: In contrast to his English-language counterparts, but in keeping with a certain Latin American tradition, his personal position on issues like immigration and scandals within the Roman Catholic Church — is often quite clear.
“Jorge Ramos enjoys enormous respect and credibility among his viewers, who feel a close connection with him,” said Armando Correa, the editor of People en Español magazine. “They don’t see him as a mask reading a teleprompter. But he’s more than a journalist. He’s also a celebrity, one of the most beloved by our readers. No other anchor has this power of communication at the emotional level.”
During the interview, conducted at his request in English, which he speaks fluently though with an accent, Mr. Ramos acknowledged that “America” will take him out of his comfort zone. Slim and graying with a determined, earnest manner, he cast the new venture as a battle for relevancy in the face of generational shifts.
“I have to reinvent myself to reach that market,” he said, referring to millions of young Hispanics who know his name but not his work. “These are kids who meet me and never say, ‘I watch your newscast.’ They say, ‘My mom and dad watch you,’ or ‘My grandparents watch you.’ “
Because of the growing importance of Latino voters, Univision is now an obligatory stop for candidates from both parties. To reach those voters, “you have to talk to us,” Mr. Ramos said. But he worries that Univision’s journalism does not resonate in the larger national conversation, and cited the network’s exclusion from the 2012 presidential debates as an example.
“It is incredibly frustrating to depend on translation to be relevant in this country,” he said. “Every single day, we have great stories, and nobody knows we are doing it, unless you speak Spanish.” With Fusion, no translation is necessary. “Language won’t be an excuse anymore not to pay attention to us,” he said.
Yet analysts caution that broadcasting in English does not guarantee success. The challenges start with persuading cable systems to carry Fusion and give it a good channel position, said Alan B. Albarran, director of the Center for Spanish Language Media at the University of North Texas.
“It sounds good on paper,” he said. “But can all these things be executed? And how long is it going to take? History tells us they don’t build an audience overnight. In some cases, it takes years, especially in the multichannel universe we are in. I think it’s going to be a slow, uphill battle, even for two companies with deep pockets.”
Mr. Correa said Fusion would be a test for all Spanish-language media. “So far, creating a product in English for Hispanics has not worked well, not as a magazine and not on TV,” he said. “My point is that if you are an English-dominant Hispanic, you have a lot of options. So if Fusion is going to work, and I hope it does, it has to have a different voice and take sides, have an opinion. If not, if it’s going to be impartial, then I’ll just watch CNN.”
Mr. Lee acknowledged the network’s practical challenges but said that Univision was counting on the muscle of the Walt Disney Company, the parent of ABC, to help it gain access to cable systems. Besides, Disney is aware of the potential of the Hispanic market, having developed stars like Selena Gomez (via the Disney Channel), Eva Longoria and Sofia Vergara (both on ABC). “They know how the future looks, and they get it,” he added.
Mr. Sherwood declined to discuss how much Disney was investing, saying only that “this network and service is going to start small and build over five years.” Initially, Fusion will be available to around 20 million cable subscribers, he said, a figure that he said is expected to rise to 60 million. (By comparison, CNN and Fox News are each in around 100 million households.) Some big systems, like Cablevision, Charter and Cox, will carry Fusion from the start, and some, like Time Warner, will not.
But in a cable news landscape where CNN, Fox, MSNBC and others already jostle, how does Fusion distinguish itself from the pack? In interviews here with on-camera staffers, producers and executives, all talked of the importance of infusing programming with humor — not just a sports comedy show to be called “Sports Talkers” but other offerings as well.
If that sounds like stealing a page from the Jon Stewart playbook, it is. Billy Kimball, who began his career writing for HBO’s “Not Necessarily the News” and has also written for “Saturday Night Live,” will be Fusion’s chief programming officer, and David Javerbaum, the former head writer and producer of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” has also been brought on board as an executive producer.
“News as defined by young people is something very different from what we do,” Mr. Sherwood said. “They lump all nonfiction into a category called news,” he said, and expect providers of information to “bring that irreverent lens” to content.
Mr. Ramos is well aware that young viewers, Hispanic or otherwise, may not respond. Asked if it might not be too early for a network like Fusion, he agreed that this was a risk, but added: “The other risk is that we might be too late. The problem is that maybe they are not watching television anymore.” Nevertheless, he seems convinced that time — and numbers — are on his and Fusion’s side.
“All the talk of many years about the sleeping giant, well, he’s well awake and running now,” he said. “Eventually, I’ll be able to interview the first Hispanic president of the United States. That’s what’s coming, and I have to be part of that transformation.”
Bank's Midlevel Executive Becomes a New Face of the Housing Crisis - NYTimes.com
Bank's Midlevel Executive Becomes a New Face of the Housing Crisis - NYTimes.com:
"More than five years after the housing bust, the roll call of banking executives who have been blamed by the public for the crisis has grown ever longer. But when it comes to top managers who have been hit with a jury verdict for pushing dubious mortgages, the list is small indeed."
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"More than five years after the housing bust, the roll call of banking executives who have been blamed by the public for the crisis has grown ever longer. But when it comes to top managers who have been hit with a jury verdict for pushing dubious mortgages, the list is small indeed."
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Reparations From Banks
The government’s attempts to hold banks accountable for their mortgage practices may finally be paying off. On Friday, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $5.1 billion to the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to resolve charges related to toxic mortgage securities sold before the financial crisis. That amount had been negotiated as part of a broader $13 billion settlement — yet to be finalized — between the bank and state and federal officials over the bank’s mortgage practices.
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Editorial: N.S.A. Snooping and the Damage Done (October 26, 2013)
Editorial: The Grambling Football Boycott (October 26, 2013)
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Earlier in the week, a federal jury found Bank of America liable for mortgage fraud before the financial crisis. The jury also found a former manager specifically responsible for some of the wrongdoing. Prosecutors have asked the judge to impose a fine of $848 million on the bank.
These developments have come late in the game, more than five years after the start of the mortgage crisis from which the economy and millions of homeowners have yet to recover. And it may be too late for the government to pursue trials against other banks for similar misconduct, because of statutes of limitations.
A broad settlement with JPMorgan, however, could well be a template for other settlements in the near future. As the final pieces of the deal are put in place, it is crucial for the government to secure adequate redress for wrongdoing and clear accountability up the chain of command. (The bank manager in the Bank of America trial was small fry, relatively speaking.)
Of the $13 billion total settlement with JPMorgan — which would be the largest ever paid to the government by a single corporation — most would go to the housing regulator and to other investors who sustained losses on securities sold by JPMorgan and by two banks it bought during the financial crisis, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Another $4 billion reportedly is earmarked for mortgage relief for homeowners. The only penalty would be $2 billion to $3 billion for the dubious securities sold by JPMorgan itself.
This hardly seems punitive; indeed, even with the settlement payments, JPMorgan is likely to come out way ahead, given the income and market clout that Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual have contributed to the bank since the end of 2008.
The real losers in the deal would be homeowners, because the $4 billion in relief does not appear to add to existing aid; rather, it is almost surely relief the bank would have provided anyway. JPMorgan also will be able to deduct most of the settlement from its taxes — for a tax savings of roughly $4 billion — unless the settlement forbids the write-off. (Memo to Justice Department: Forbid the write-off.)
Another problem is that the deal appears oddly short on accountability. Negotiators reportedly have not yet decided how much wrongdoing, if any, the bank will admit. If there is no admission of fault, that would imply the claims are meritless, though it is unfathomable that the bank would pay $13 billion if it had done nothing wrong.
Banks, however, are loath to admit wrongdoing in government settlements because they fear subsequent shareholder lawsuits. If the government accepts no admission, or an admission that is broad and nonspecific, it would be shielding JPMorgan — on the theory, presumably, that private lawsuits would imperil the bank and endanger the economy. But if the settlement, in effect, precludes private litigation, then $13 billion is not enough. The government has to require either a bigger settlement, which seems unlikely, or a clear and comprehensive admission of wrongdoing.
The settlement reportedly does not include a promise by the government to give up a federal criminal investigation currently under way into the bank’s mortgage practices. That is as it should be, but it is worth recalling that past indictments for banks’ violations have focused on lower-level bank employees or distant subsidiaries, while higher-level executives have remained immune.
The Bank of America trial, over actions taken at Countrywide Financial, the mortgage company that the bank bought in early 2008, shows what might have been possible if the government had taken action in a more timely way. Done right, the JPMorgan settlement and others patterned on it may be the last hope for some justice for the fraud and other wrongdoing that fueled the financial crisis.
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