AdamSmith

So exit polling of those departing the city at Penn Station, the airports and Port Authority -- brilliant! The results would doubtless have high market value if we can think of the right venue for them. P.S. Who knew Queens was so randy?! ...Nothing else to do there?

Article by the book's author in today's NYT: For Gore Vidal, a Final Plot Twist http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/fashion/In-a-final-plot-twist-Gore-Vidal-leaves-his-estate-to-Harvard-Universtity.html?hpw&rref=fashion&_r=0

More on this... In G.O.P., a Campaign Takes Aim at Tea Party By ERIC LIPTON The New York Times Published: November 5, 2013 WASHINGTON — Open warfare is breaking out among rival Republican groups, with one, Main Street Advocacy, set to start an ad campaign on Wednesday that blames conservative groups like the Tea Party for the recent series of political losses in critical elections across the United States. The ad cites what it calls a “Hall of Shame,” including Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, who lost his bid for the Senate last year, despite a Tea Party endorsement, after he said a “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy. It also pokes fun at conservative groups like the Club for Growth and Freedom Works — stamping the word “Defund” over their names — because they recently pushed Congress to shut down the federal government in an effort to block financing for President Obama’s health care program. “We want our party back,” said former Representative Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio, who is leading Main Street Advocacy. “And we are going to do what it takes to accomplish that.” The ad was previewed Tuesday during a fund-raiser in New York City hosted by Mr. LaTourette. Main Street Advocacy is trying to raise $8 million to help eight Republican moderates either defend their congressional seats in the 2014 midterm elections or to oust Tea Party-endorsed candidates already in office, like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan. The 14-year-old Club for Growth has become an increasing force in Republican races. It spent $17 million in the last election cycle to help select extremely conservative candidates — including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — in congressional races that Republicans were likely to win. The Club for Growth opened the offensive against moderate Republicans earlier this year with a website it calls Primary My Congressman! The site lists 10 House Republicans it calls RINOs (Republican in Name Only) that it wants to see replaced by more conservative party members. Some are the same Republicans, like Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, that Main Street Advocacy is preparing to defend. Barney Keller, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, said that Mr. LaTourette’s group was wasting its money going after a rival political action committee. Mr. LaTourette, he added, has been working as a lobbyist since he left Congress and so now is trying to help corporate America reassert its control over Congress. “They can attack the Club all they want, and I hope they spend their money doing so,” Mr. Keller said. “We look forward to adding to the ranks of pro-growth conservatives in Congress next year.” He added that the Club had not endorsed all the candidates featured in the ad. The challenge for Main Street Advocacy, the group’s organizers said, is to build a network of moderate Republicans who are as motivated and politically active as Tea Party enthusiasts have been since Mr. Obama was elected to his first term. Party primary results are often difficult for pollsters to predict because the outcomes largely depend on who turns out to vote, and Mr. LaTourette acknowledged that the most conservative candidates had traditionally had much more reliable supporters. “We are behind the curve with our more conservative counterparts,” Mr. LaTourette said. “They have built grass-roots networks and databases of conservative voters. That is part of this project.” Mr. LaTourette stepped down this year, declaring he was fed up with the confrontational tone of his party and at how partisan Congress had become. Main Street Advocacy has not yet formally picked the eight or so Republican candidates it will spend its money on next year. Besides Mr. Kinzinger and a Republican challenger to Mr. Amash, other possibilities include Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho and Representative Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is vying for a Senate seat. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/us/politics/in-gop-a-campaign-takes-aim-at-tea-party.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-thecaucus&_r=4&

Right up there with the best... http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T83W3rgQuXQ&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DT83W3rgQuXQ

A majority of the population in my former hometown of Cambridge, Mass. Suburban Mom Wows Family With Most Androgynous Look Yet News • Family • Local • ISSUE 49•44 • Oct 30, 2013 Family members say they are “wowed” by DiPietro’s completely sexless new look. BURKE, VA—Speechless for several seconds after she descended the stairs for breakfast Sunday, the family of local mother Jolene DiPietro were reportedly “floored” by the 49-year-old’s latest look, a gender-neutral mix of loose-fitting clothes and low-maintenance grooming that muted any and all outward feminine characteristics. “Wow, I thought she looked completely genderless before, but now she’s really taken it to a whole new level,” said DiPietro’s daughter Katie, praising her mother’s style combination of formless brown fleece pullover, button-down blue-and-white-checked shirt, and relaxed-fit khakis. “I can’t get over how her short-cropped hair spikes up in front, and how what little makeup she wears only serves to de-emphasize any discernibly feminine facial features.” “Who is this androgynous being, and what has it done with my mom?” she added. “Terrific stuff.” In addition to her clothes, which effusive family members said were “the blandest arrangement of earth tones they’d ever seen,” DiPietro’s new indeterminate-gender look was accessorized with a black unisex watch and a cavernous hunter-green all-purpose day bag that is said to enhance the boxiness of her already distinctly squarish body type. As she walked around the kitchen, sources confirmed, all eyes were fixated on her footwear, a pair of comfortable-looking gray New Balance sneakers that “just scream either woman or man.” Family members were also wowed by DiPietro’s decision to complement her outfit with a beige knit scarf and a clip-on pedometer, both “bold style choices” that they said really perfected the wife and mother’s new “sexless suburbanite” look. “Yep, that’s the human being I married,” boasted DiPietro’s husband, Paul. “Those roomy chinos really show off how her legs are a functional part of her body necessary for locomotion. And those white tube socks sure do hug her unnoticeable curves.” “After 19 years together, I gotta say, this is the most ungendered I’ve ever seen her looking,” he continued. “I’m so impressed.” According to sources, while DiPietro had long been quite the asexual specimen—she reportedly bobbed her hair when she turned 40, and five years ago stopped wearing blouses and skirts completely—in the past she always retained a sliver of gender identification, at least wearing hoop earrings or perhaps a charm bracelet. But now, in the absence of any sort of jewelry, noticeable makeup, feminine hairstyle, or even a single piece of brightly colored clothing that might hint at her gender, DiPietro’s family all agreed that her current look was by far the capper. “Of course, we all know there’s a woman somewhere under all those baggy, billowing clothes,” said Katie, underscoring how impressed she was that her mother had managed to transform herself into such an androgynous fashionista. “But if I didn’t know her, it would take me a while to guess what kind of genitals she had.” “Or, for that matter, whether she had any genitals at all,” she added. After breakfast, DiPietro reportedly left to go power-walking with a similar-looking group of amorphous, middle-aged humans. http://www.theonion.com/articles/suburban-mom-wows-family-with-most-androgynous-loo,34397/

Faaaascinating... These NYC Neighborhoods Are Having The Most Sex by Kate Hakala on November 08, 2013 The Date Report If I asked a New Yorker where I could get the best pork soup dumplings, they’d send me to Chinatown. Or the most life-changing thin crust pizza? I’d be on a train to Brooklyn. But if I asked the average Manhattanite which neighborhood to trek to for a string of sweaty, passionate nights with a rotation of new sex partners, would they know well enough to send me to East Harlem? Or Chelsea? Or Washington Heights? Using data from the 2012 NYC Community Health Survey, we created this handy map of NYC neighborhoods that enjoy a healthy dose of promiscuity. The areas in red are where the highest percentage of the population has boned three or more people in the last year. Hello, Rockaways. Glad to see you’re recovering. Find your neighborhood and discover how frisky your neighbors are. Think of this as the dirty Time Out guide you never had. Click image to enlarge. By neighborhood: East Harlem (19.6%), Northeast Bronx (13.9%), Washington Heights (13.8%), Flushing (12.4%), Staten Island (12.2%), Bed Stuy/Crown Heights (12.3%), The Rockaways (11.8%), Chelsea/Greenwich Village (11.6%), West Queens (10.3%), Long Island City/Astoria (10.1%), Upper East Side (9.8%), Kingsbridge (9.7%), Williamsburg/Bushwick (9.5%), The South Bronx (9.3%), Union Square/ Lower Manhattan (8.9%), Canarsie (8.3%), Flatbush (7.7%), Coney Island (7.5%), Central Harlem (5.9%), Southwest Queens (5.7%), Downtown Brooklyn/Heights/Slope (5.6%), Upper West Side (5.5%), Bronx Park (5.2%), Jamaica (4.9%), Bay Ridge (4.15), Forest Hills (3.9%), Littleneck (2.7%), East New York (2.4%), Pelham (1.8%). http://www.thedatereport.com/dating/sex/these-nyc-neighborhoods-are-having-the-most-sex/

A video that appears to show Toronto’s mayor smoking crack is being shopped around by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade. The Star's Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle have seen the video in question. They explain what they saw. Originally posted in May, 2013. By: Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan Staff Reporters, Published on Thu May 16 2013 The Star Public Editor Note: This article was edited from a previous version to remove several unnecessary “Somali” references. The Star has apologized for using “Somali” too heavily in its first report. See the May 24 Public Editor column for further explanation. (Video at http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2013/05/16/toronto_mayor_rob_ford_in_crack_cocaine_video_scandal.html) A cellphone video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine is being shopped around Toronto by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade. Two Toronto Star reporters have viewed the video three times. It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches. “I’m f---ing right-wing,” Ford appears to mutter at one point. “Everyone expects me to be right-wing. I’m just supposed to be this great.…” and his voice trails off. At another point he is heard calling Trudeau a “fag.” Later in the 90-second video he is asked about the football team and he appears to say (though he is mumbling), “they are just f---ing minorities.” The Star had no way to verify the authenticity of the video, which appears to clearly show Ford in a well-lit room. The Star was told the video was shot during the past winter at a house south of Dixon Rd. and Kipling Avenue. What follows is an account based on what both reporters viewed on the video screen. Attempts to reach the mayor and members of his staff to get comment on this story were unsuccessful. A lawyer retained by Ford, Dennis Morris, said that Thursday evening’s publication by the U.S.-based Gawker website of some details related to the video was “false and defamatory.” Morris told the Star that by viewing any video it is impossible to tell what a person is doing. “How can you indicate what the person is actually doing or smoking?” Morris said. http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2013/05/16/toronto_mayor_rob_ford_in_crack_cocaine_video_scandal.html

Rob Ford crack video story started with an anonymous early morning phone call to a reporter How the story of the crack video came to light Dale Brazao / Toronto Star Order this photo Toronto Star reporter Robyn Doolittle sits in a car to watch the Rob Ford crack video. By: Robyn Doolittle City Hall, Published on Wed Nov 06 2013 The Star It was 9 a.m. Easter morning. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep in, when my cellphone started to ring. I grimaced. No one but my dad would be calling so early on a holiday. Irritated, I chucked off the covers and shuffled into the kitchen, where my phone was shaking across the table. I didn’t recognize the number. “Robyn speaking,” I muttered. “I need to meet with you,” said a deep voice I’d never heard before. “Okay. What about?” There was a pause. “I have some information I think you’d like to see,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.” I’d been getting a few of these calls over the last week. On March 26, 2013 — six days earlier — Kevin Donovan and I had written an explosive story about Mayor Rob Ford’s alcohol problem. Five sources, including current and former members of Ford’s staff, had told the Star that they’d been trying to get the mayor into a treatment facility for a substance abuse issue for the last year. We’d also reported that the mayor had been asked to leave the Garrison military ball after showing up impaired. “You need to give me some sense of what we’re talking about before I meet with you,” I said. He told me he had incriminating video of “a prominent Toronto politician,” but wouldn’t say who was in it or what they were doing. Odds are this was a bad tip. Then again, there was something about his voice. He sounded nervous. “Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. It’s Easter Monday and I’m off, so I don’t have access to a work car. If you want to meet today we can meet at a coffee shop in the west end. Or we can wait until tomorrow and I can drive out to you.” “It’s no problem,” he said immediately. “I’ll come to you.” The fact that he was willing to make the trip was encouraging. Three hours later, I was standing outside a Starbucks on Queen Street West. “Robyn?” I turned around and came face to face with clean-cut guy, who looked about my age — somewhere in his late twenties. He was big, like a college football player, and well dressed. Sort of business casual meets street style, if that’s at all possible. He was carrying an iPad. “Nice to meet you,” I said as we shook hands. We decided to walk to a nearby park for some privacy. “So?” I said. “What did you want to tell me?” As we walked up a leafy street towards the park, he asked if I could protect him. He worked with youth in his community in Rexdale. He was coming to me on someone else’s behalf, a young drug dealer. I promised to protect his identity. He wanted to know if I was required to hand over evidence of a crime to police. I told him that morally, if someone was in danger, I would feel compelled to try to prevent someone from being harmed. He told me it was nothing like that. It was about drug use. I told him I would not turn over evidence of drug use to police. He seemed satisfied. “What I’m about to tell you,” he began, “will sound unbelievable.” He told me he’d read the story about the Garrison ball and Ford’s drinking. “It’s much worse than that,” he said. He went on to tell me that there was a video of the mayor smoking crack cocaine and he had it. “I can’t let you see it yet,” he said. “But I brought this.” He pulled out his iPad and swiped open the screen. At this point we’d reached the park. We took a seat on a bench at the south end of a small soccer field. He thumbed around for a minute and then passed me the screen. An after-hours photo of Ford There was a photo of the mayor, grinning in a dark grey sweatshirt and baggy pants, linked arm in arm with three young men in front of a yellow brick bungalow. One of the guys was giving the camera the finger and holding a beer bottle. Another was flashing a “west-side” gesture. There was snow on the ground and all three men were in coats. Ford was just wearing his sweater. The mayor takes lots of photos with people, but he’s never in casual clothing. It was clearly taken after work hours at night. “That one” — he pointed to the hooded man with the beer bottle — “is Anthony Smith. He was killed outside Loki night club last week.” He told me the young man on the far right side of the photo had been shot in the same incident. But he wouldn’t give me anyone else’s name and he wouldn’t say where the photo was taken. “What about the video?” The photo had nothing to do with the video, except that it was shot in the house. And that the house is a crack house. He told me the footage was about a minute and a half long, that it was well lit, with perfect resolution and that it clearly showed the mayor inhaling from a crack pipe. He told me Ford could also be heard calling Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau “a fag,” and that at one point, during a conversation about his Don Bosco football team, the mayor mumbles something like “f---ing minorities.” The man told me he didn’t shoot the video. A dealer in Rexdale, one of the youths he’d been mentoring, had taken it. The footage was shot in the last six months. He alleged the dealer was still selling to the mayor. “Can I see the video?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, but only if the Star would pay for it. “It’s worth $100,000.” I nearly laughed. “Are you serious?” He was dead serious. I asked him to sit tight for a moment. I called Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke. I told Cooke exactly what the man had told me. “Can you bring him to the newsroom?” Cooke asked. The man agreed to go to 1 Yonge St. He offered to drive me. I wanted to see his car and his licence plate so we could run a check, but I also didn’t want to put myself in an unsafe situation. Decisions, decisions. “Sure, that’d be great if you could drive,” I said. He was parked in an alley. When he pointed to the four-door sedan, I fired Cooke a text message with a description of the car and his plate. We made small talk on the way to the Star newsroom. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He told me he had gotten to know a lot of the “kids” — these guys were really in their late teens to mid-twenties — up in the Dixon Road and Kipling Avenue area. They were good guys, he said, but they’d made mistakes. Now they wanted out. Anthony Smith’s death had them scared. Ford was exploiting them, he told me. “I just really want the story out there. It has to get out there. People need to know about this.” “If you really want the story out there, why not just give us the video?” I asked. We parked in the front lot at the Star, then took the elevator to the fifth floor newsroom in silence. City editor Irene Gentle and Cooke were in the north-west boardroom. We didn’t waste any time. He told them the same story he’d told me. He showed them the photo. And he made the pitch for his ransom one more time. “Well, let’s get one thing straight right now,” Cooke said. “You’re not going to get $100,000. Not even close. Now, there might be some price, but before we even talk about what it’s worth, we need to see the video.” The man, who from then on became known as the broker, promised to talk to his guys and get back to us. I walked him to his car. We filled in Donovan, who was away on vacation. Later that night, reporter Jesse McLean and I met with the broker. It would be one of half a dozen meetings over the next month. We started looking into the group of guys trying to sell the video and the area we believed the footage was filmed. Meanwhile, Star editors began holding nearly daily meetings in the northwest boardroom about what to do if it was real. If this video was real — and that was a big if — it was a matter of immense public interest. If the mayor of Toronto, the man in charge of the fourth largest city in North America, one of the largest governments in Canada, and a $10-billion budget, was in fact using crack cocaine, the implications were endless. He opened himself up to blackmail. It called into question his judgment, his state of mind, his health. How can a man mixed up in crack cocaine and the underworld of Toronto have partial control over the police budget? Ford himself has spoken out harshly about drug dealers, gang culture and crack use as both a councillor and a mayor. In 2005, when the city was considering handing out clean “crack kits” to addicts in order to help prevent the spread of disease, Ford declared that “tough love” was the only way to deal with drug users. Then, in July 2012, Ford said it was time “to declare war” on “thugs.” He vowed to run them out of the city. If Rob Ford was using crack, Toronto needed to know. Maybe it was worth paying something for the good of the city. On the other hand, the people trying to sell us the video seemed to be thugs. How could we ethically hand over $100,000 in cash to men who admitted to being crack cocaine dealers? As managing editor Jane Davenport said in one meeting, “What if they buy a gun and kill someone with it?” Everyone at the Star agreed: it was impossible to know what we should do until we saw the footage and confirmed it was real. So that became the goal. The problem was that the broker didn’t want to show us the video until we promised to buy it. In that sense, it was a Catch 22. As the weeks went by, and as McLean and I spent more and more time in Rexdale, I started to believe there was a video. We’d been subtly grilling the broker for weeks on both his personal life, the brick house, the men trying to sell the footage and Ford’s involvement in all of it. The answers never changed. It seemed like he was going to a lot of trouble meeting with us if it was made up. We met some of his friends. We asked them about the video, the house, the players involved. The answers all lined up. But we never seemed to be getting any closer to seeing the footage. The conversation always came back around to money. Twice, the broker arranged for us to watch the video, but the dealer always cancelled at the last minute. While McLean and I did this, investigative editor Kevin Donovan began digging from the other side, building a profile of the many suspicious characters in the mayor’s life. Back at the Star, we discussed our options. Maybe there was some sort of scholarship fund we could create for them? Everything seemed too complicated. By the end of April, the broker was frustrated. The Star was still refusing to even discuss money until we saw the footage. I felt they were about to disappear. I talked to Cooke about it: “They’re never going to let us see it if we don’t at least say we might buy it.” We’d tried to avoid uttering those words. But the situation was getting desperate. It became clear we couldn’t see the video without discussing what it was worth. “Do it,” said Cooke. I phoned the broker. In that case, he said, we could watch the footage that week. On May 3, nearly a month to the day after the broker first called, Donovan and I were sitting in a car in front of the Royal Bank in a grungy plaza on Dixon Road around 10:30 p.m. The broker was late and we were beginning to think this was another false alarm. “God, he better show up this time,” I said to Donovan. Just as I was becoming convinced we were being stood up — again — a black sedan pulled up by our car. My phone rang. It was him. “Leave your cellphones. No bags. No purses. And get in.” He drove us to a parking lot behind the six Dixon towers. We parked behind 320 Dixon, which a little more than a month later would be ground zero in Project Traveller’s massive guns and gangs raid. The broker left and a few minutes later returned. The dealer was coming. The man who got in the car, who the Star has since identified as Mohamed Siad, looked nervous. He looked over his shoulder. He didn’t want to talk. He pulled out a black iPhone. At first, he didn’t want to play the sound — it was “extra,” he said — but we convinced him we needed to hear the sound in order to assess the value of the footage. Siad relented. He hit play. There was no question. There was Mayor Rob Ford, rambling, slurring, stuttering, jerking around on his chair, smoking from a crack pipe. http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2013/11/06/rob_ford_crack_video_story_started_with_an_anonymous_early_morning_phone_call_to_a_reporter.html

Rob Ford crack scandal Q&A: 'There will be more revelations. That is certain'Robyn Doolittle is one of three journalists to have seen the video of Rob Ford reportedly smoking a crack pipe. Now that the story has become an international sensation, she explains what's next Ruth Spencer theguardian.com, Friday 8 November 2013 11.46 EST 'You can't impeach a mayor. The only way he can be removed is if he misses three consecutive council meetings.' Photo: Mark Blinch /Reuters On May 3, Toronto Star urban affairs reporter Robyn Doolittle sat in a car in a parking lot in Toronto and saw something that would spark a political scandal of epic proportions: a cell phone video of mayor Rob Ford "rambling, slurring, stuttering, jerking around on his chair, smoking from a crack pipe". Nearly five months later, the story has become an international sensation. Ford has admitted to using crack, and a second video clip has surfaced online, this time showing the mayor ranting and making violent threats. Now, many are wondering what happens next. The Guardian spoke with Doolittle (@RobynDoolittle on Twitter) about how she sees things playing out for the mayor, and what kind of an impact the scandal has had on the city. Now that's she's answered our questions, it's your turn. Robyn will answer reader questions about the Ford scandal this afternoon. Toss your questions in the comments below and check back later to read her responses. Update: As Robyn's responses will come in via email, I'll add them to this blog post over the next hour. How do normal people in Toronto feel about the events of the last week? We've heard reports of rising approval ratings – can you help us understand how that could be?There has been a lot of talk – on Twitter and American late night television – about a poll, which showed Mayor Ford's approval rating go up 5 points after police chief Bill Blair announced the service had obtained the crack video. It's hard to know where the public stands. The poll was taken Halloween night and was small. I can say that, anecdotally, people seem embarrassed and very concerned for the mayor's health. How powerful is the mayor's position in Toronto, anyway? Does the city's government function normally while he's holding all these press conferences? What's the impact of this scandal been on the city itself?Toronto, unlike somewhere like New York or Chicago, doesn't have a "strong mayor" system. Mayor Ford doesn't have veto power or anything like that. He's just one vote out of 45 members of council. The mayor's power comes from influence and right now; he has none with any of the city councillors – except of course his brother, Doug. Robyn Doolittle is one of three journalists to have seen the video of Rob Ford reportedly smoking a crack pipe. Photograph: /Twitter.com/RobynDoolittle Is it true that everyone in Toronto pretty much hated Rob Ford from the beginning of his term? If so, how did he get elected anyway?That's definitely not true. Rob Ford didn't just win the 2010 election, he won by a landslide. People elected him knowing he'd had some problems – he'd been charged with domestic assault, though it was dropped, he had a temper, he'd been thrown out of a hockey game for drunkenly telling off a couple in the audience – but they liked his message. Ford is a populist. He built a brand fighting perks, like free food at council meetings and complimentary baseball tickets for officials. He promised to cut the waste at city hall and keep taxes low. It turned out he was battling some serious demons at the same time. You just wrote a fascinating account of the day you first saw the video of Ford smoking crack. Describe for us what it's been like waiting for him to admit the truth?I think at the Star we've really just focused on getting the real story out there. The video was one piece. Then we went on to investigate the photo of Ford in front of a crack house. The people he's been spending time with. His connections to a gang known as the Dixon City Bloods. We knew if we kept at it the truth would come out. So where do things stand now for the Mayor, in terms of this investigation? How do you see things unfolding over the next few weeks?It's so hard to know. There will be more revelations. That is certain. There are hundreds of pages of search warrant documents related to the police investigation of Ford and his activities. There is another video, according to Blair. For me what will be interesting is how council handles it. If he won't resign, what will they do? Help us wrap our heads around the fact that Rob Ford is still mayor. How is this possible? Why hasn't he been removed – or stepped down?You can't impeach a mayor. The only way he can be removed is if he misses three consecutive council meetings – so if he was in jail, for example. Kathleen Wynne, the premier of Ontario, could step in, but she is unlikely to do that for political reasons. She is a Liberal. Ford is a Conservative. Both municipal and provincial politics are worried about the precedent that might set. And Ford has indicated he won't resign. So here we are. What are the possible outcomes for Ford and the city of Toronto? What do you think is most likely?With this story, I won't even hazard a guess. Reader Q&AQ: TheDogShouterer 08 November 2013 5:01pm This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate You say that Kathleen Wynne is unlikely to step in and fire Ford for political reasons. Do you think she is right not to do so? How well is she serving the 4 million Ontario residents who live in Toronto by sitting on her hands? A: It's not really my place to say. I'm just covering this story. I tell you that several prominent political people I've spoken who - who don't care for Rob Ford - are very uncomfortable with the idea of removing a democratically elected mayor. Many people believe only voters have that right. Q: Drella87 08 November 2013 5:21pm This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate Robyn, More and more attention has started to focus on Doug Ford's role and how his advice has caused the Mayor more problems then helped him through this, do you see the Mayor breaking away from Doug's influence at any time soon? (Great work btw, and looking forward to the book) A: It's not that simple. They have a very complicated relationship. This is something I'll be exploring in my book, Crazy Town, which is due out next February. They are bound to each other and the Ford brand. They can't break away. Q: TheDogShouterer 08 November 2013 5:52pm This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate Do you think the right authority to investigate Rob Ford's illegal activities is the Toronto Police Service? Is there a point at which the TPS should hand over the cases to a body not funded by the city, such as the RCMP? A: Again it's not my place to say. Earlier this year, Toronto police were investigating a gang operating in the north end of the city and as part of that investigation, they came across a Rob Ford connection. After the Star ran its piece about the crack video, they launched a separate investigation called Project Brazen 2. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/rob-ford-scandal-robyn-doolittle

AWW so cute! And therefore...

You're asking if he will accept clap from you?

It's because he knows we're looking for him... I do NOT like sex with old, obese men: the perils of being a stock-shot modelNo one was more surprised than model Samantha Ovens when the Guardian used her image to illustrate a sex advice column Samantha Ovens: not fantasising about sex with old, obese men, apparently. Photograph: Tom Merton/Getty Images/OJO Images RF It began on Twitter, of course, as these things do. A user called Craig Nunn (@hrtbps) wrote: "'Why not model for stock images?' they said. 'What could possibly go wrong?' they said." And he enclosed a picture from the agony aunt column in this newspaper, showing a concerned-looking young woman in expensive pyjamas beneath the headline: "I fantasise about group sex with old, obese men". In truth, the young woman, Samantha Ovens – like all models – did know the risks. Stock shots, in case you weren't aware, are photographs illustrating general themes taken not for a specific purpose but to supply magazines, advertisers or anybody else with a library of useful images. Look up "mean boss" or "couple arguing" online and you'll get the gist. Having modelled for a few, you soon start to notice yourself looking worried about a mortgage here, or suffering from PMT there. But you don't expect this. Not this. "I opened it up when I was with some friends," says Ovens, who had been tipped off at the weekend by the Twitter whirlwind. "In fact, I was with my partner's mum as well. I screeched with laughter and said: 'Oh. You have to see this.' There's me looking very anxious, and I bloody well would be, wouldn't I?" The image in question had come from a "Colds and Illnesses" shoot she did two years ago, when she was 36. "I think they had me sneezing, curled up in bed, blowing my nose. There were loads of different versions," she recalls. Being gay in real life, but a specialist in portraying yummy mummies in the press and on television, she is used to a certain level of irony where all her work is concerned. But this was new. And you do have to be careful. Ovens is a successful model, with past clients including Debenhams, Optical Express, Colgate and British Airways. At one stage she was lucratively installed as "the Harpic Power Plus girl". But big brands take some interest in a model's wider career, and can be reluctant to share them with anything too tawdry. "If I want to keep those kinds of clients, I make sure I protect my image, so to speak," she says. And has the Guardian damaged it? "It doesn't worry me in the slightest." (Indeed, she has gained around 90 Twitter followers as a result.) There is, in any case, a certain vapidity about the world of stock shots, with all its perfect families and people who look fantastic even when they're ill, so a measure of ridicule goes with the territory. A case in point is the army of female models who are required to pose laughing with salad (a wholesome scene so popular with picture libraries that it has its own fansite). Just yesterday Ovens was looking worried again, this time illustrating "stress" in the Telegraph. "How can you take it seriously?" she says about the obese old men debacle. "There are bigger things in this life to get concerned about." http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2013/nov/05/sex-obese-men-stock-shot-model

Verve: the Sound of America by Richard Havers, review Mick Brown discovers how Verve records helped to bring jazz stars such as Ella Fitzgerald to a white audience Ella Fitzgerald: jazz star Photo: Library of Congress By Mick Brown 1:45PM GMT 08 Nov 2013 The Telegraph Commenting on the accusation that Louis Armstrong had “sold out” by playing an Uncle Tom figure to gain the approval of white audiences, Billie Holiday once remarked that “of course Pops toms, but he toms from the heart”. Two of the greatest figures in the history of jazz, Armstrong and Holiday both recorded for Verve, one of America’s premier jazz labels, quite late in their respective careers, at a time when jazz had long since left the ghetto of being “black” music to become justly recognised as “America’s music”. As this exhaustive, weighty and beautifully packaged history of the label demonstrates, Verve – and in particular its founder Norman Granz – was to play a significant role in this transformation. If we think of the Blue Note label as having the monopoly on modernist cool, embodied by such artists as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Lee Morgan, then Verve, by contrast, oozed a more swell-egant sophistication, building its reputation on “heritage” artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson and Count Basie. If Blue Note was the music of the clubs, Verve was the music of the concert halls – which was precisely Granz’s intention. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Granz began his career in Los Angeles in the early Forties, promoting club dates with musicians such as Nat King Cole and Lester Young, challenging the colour bar by negotiating with the non-integrated white and black unions to have musicians from both sides working together. Granz’s dream was to take jazz out of the clubs, to a wider – which is to say white – audience, and in 1944 he staged a concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium, the traditional home in Los Angeles of symphony concerts, as a benefit for alleged gang members who had been arrested during the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots. It was the starting point for his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) tours, which would eventually travel all over the world, providing a stage for virtually every major figure in jazz of the time, from Fitzgerald to Dizzy Gillespie. Granz released recordings of the JATP on his own labels, Clef and Norgran. But in 1956 he founded Verve, initially as a vehicle for Fitzgerald, whom he was also managing. She was already enjoying success singing bebop and scat; but Granz broadened her appeal by focusing her repertoire on work by popular songwriters. She would later describe her first Verve album, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook as “the turning point in my life”. Fitzgerald would go on to record seven more “songbook” albums, which established her as the pre-eminent interpreter of what became known as the Great American Songbook. Ira Gershwin noted of her readings of his and his brother George’s work that, “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” The same formula would be applied to the Canadian pianist Peterson, who also recorded eight “songbooks”, including the music of Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern. Granz’s personal interest in Verve was to be short-lived. In 1960 he sold the label to MGM to concentrate on managing Fitzgerald and Peterson, promoting the JATP tours, and adding to his collection of Picasso paintings at his home in Switzerland. Under the direction of Creed Taylor, the label enjoyed enormous success with the organist Jimmy Smith, guitarist Wes Montgomery and pianist Bill Evans. In 1963 Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz’s milestone recording Jazz Samba went to the top of the American charts, launching the bossa nova craze, quickly followed by Getz/Gilberto, which launched “The Girl From Ipanema”, Astrud Gilberto. In more recent years, the label has existed largely through extensive repackagings of recordings from its golden period. Richard Havers does an excellent job of contextualising the story of Verve within the broader development of jazz, from its birthplace in the bordellos of New Orleans’s Storyville to its place on the world stage. The assemblage of glorious archive photographs, tour posters, album sleeves and ephemera is eye-poppingly beautiful, incidentally reminding you of two cardinal rules about jazz musicians in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Everybody looked ineffably cool, and everybody smoked. The plume of smoke curling up into the spotlight, as a symbol of the transporting evanescence of the music, is the great motif of the golden age of jazz. Verve: the Sound of America, by Richard Havers, 399pp, (Thames & Hudson, RRP £45), is available to order from Telegraph Books for £35 plus £1.35 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10433312/Verve-the-Sound-of-America-by-Richard-Havers-review.html

http://phys.org/news/2013-11-university-physicists-urine-splash-back-tactics.html More information: 1. The presentation, "The Hydrodynamics of Urination: to drip or jet," is at 5:24 p.m. on Sunday, November 24, 2013 in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center Room 333. ABSTRACT: meeting.aps.org/Meeting/DFD13/Event/202555 2. The presentation, "Urinal Dynamics," is at 5:11 p.m. on Sunday, November 24, 2013 in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center Room 333. ABSTRACT: meeting.aps.org/Meeting/DFD13/Event/202554 3. splashlab.byu.edu/ 4. Press release Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-university-physicists-urine-splash-back-tactics.html#jCp

It would be funny...

One more finding -- when I am viewing a post that contains a quote from a prior post, even though the text inside the quote box is invisible, I can sweep my cursor across it with left mouse key depressed, and the formerly invisible text then shows up in the highlight thus created.

November 7, 2013 Toronto’s Rob Ford Problem Posted by David Macfarlane The New Yorker “Toronto is on uncharted waters.” Such has been the refrain here these past few days. You can hear it from the journalists who cover City Hall, the bureaucrats who work there, and even the city councillors themselves. Nobody has a whole lot of experience with mayors getting caught on video smoking crack. Everybody has been equally speechless when they view an even more damning video, released by the Toronto Star on Thursday, of a deranged Mayor Ford (that’s the only appropriate word) acting like a curious combination of the Cowardly Lion and Al Pacino in “Scarface.” In other words, the people who can generally be relied upon to put the city’s issues into context for the rest of us have peered out from the fore-deck of the municipal ship of state—North America’s fourth largest—only to announce that they have no idea where we are. As everyone who watches “The Daily Show” or “David Letterman” now sort of knows, Toronto elected Rob Ford to be its sixty-fourth mayor, in 2010. Asking why a city of two and a half million mostly sane people would do such a thing makes for an interesting conversation. The usual answers have to do with the political divide between urban and suburban notions of what a city should be. Or with the anger that the ordinary folks of the outer city reserve for the opera houses, bicycles, and liberal inclinations of the inner. Often, the discussion turns back to the controversial move, taken in 1998, to amalgamate six associated but distinct municipalities into what’s now known (ominously, I always think) as “the megacity.” Ever since, the old urban center—the polity that, with a certain wistfulness, is still sometimes referred to as “the former City of Toronto”—has been outnumbered by what it used to regard as its suburban satellites. It is one such former satellite, Etobicoke, that Mayor Rob Ford has always called home. Before becoming mayor, Ford had been a relatively obscure and isolated city councillor for a decade. He was known mostly for his ample size (Toronto journalists turn themselves in pretzels trying to avoid the most obvious adjective to describe him), his confrontational encounters with the press, and his dogged refusal to spend what he considered the excessively high office budgets given to city councillors. His commitment to frugality was enabled in part by the fact that, even though he styled himself an “ordinary guy” and man of the people, he is, well, rich. When his (apparently delusional) hope of becoming a football player fizzled out, along with his intention to become a university graduate, he managed to find a well-paid position at his father’s successful label company. After showing very little interest in venturing too far from the woods behind the playing fields of Scarlett Heights High School, it wasn’t a great surprise that Ford decided to become an Etobicoke city councillor. Nor should it have been a surprise that his suburban credentials, conservative values, and family money helped him to convince the residents of Etobicoke, Scarborough, York, East York, and North York that their precious tax dollars were being frittered away at City Hall—which, of course, was downtown. “Stop the gravy train” became Ford’s rallying cry, and even though the latte-drinking, media-controlling, tax-and-spending élite of the former City of Toronto did not share enthusiastically in the choice, Rob Ford was elected overwhelmingly. He was seen as the champion of the overburdened taxpayer—the suburban purveyor of common sense who, even if he was a little rough around the edges, knew what a dollar is. To this day, as his administration falters, Ford never fails to address his apparently unshakeable core. With no legal mechanism by which to remove him from office unless he is actually convicted of a crime, and with a base of apparently unshakeable supporters, he might actually get reëlected next autumn in order to make good on his promise to save taxpayers money. So, as you can see, there are any number of ways to approach a conversation about Rob Ford. And in Toronto, during these past few surreal days, it feels as if every single one of them is being tested out, repeatedly, by every single person in the city. You can leave the conversation in one downtown Starbucks, walk fifty or a hundred feet to the next downtown Starbucks, and find yourself immediately back in the middle of the very same discussion. There’s been no lack of community involvement on this one. But really, when you get right down to the nuts and bolts of the question—Why, exactly, did a reasonable kind of place like Toronto elect its current mayor?—you have to conclude that it doesn’t matter anymore. Why we did it is the least of our problems. The only point worth making at this juncture is that Rob Ford turned out to be a staggeringly bad choice. The problem is this. Nobody knows what to do with a mayor who will not resign, even though he has ticked most of the boxes in the “You should resign immediately if…” section of the customary understanding between elected officials and their electorates. Such as: If you smoke crack. If you sometimes find yourself in the condition that Mayor Ford has now immortalized as “a drunken stupor.” If you let late-night visitors smoke pot in your City Hall office. If you consort with criminals. If people with whom you were recently photographed—in front of a suburban crack house, it should be noted—start turning up dead, or splayed on the ground beneath windows from which they have just mysteriously fallen. If you publicly malign the reputations of any politician, civil servant, or journalist who (correctly) raises the suspicion that the Mayor has a substance-abuse problem. If you are seen reeling through the streets of Toronto on several festive occasions while being, in the Mayor’s own vivid description, “hammered.” If (and it was this offense that seemed to really rattle many Torontonians) you urinate in public—or, to be fair, if you urinate in public enough to be captured on police surveillance cameras. Oh, and about those police surveillance cameras: you should probably resign as the mayor of Toronto if you are the subject of a costly police investigation—during the same period that you, as mayor, will preside over the upcoming police-budget debates at City Hall. All this has been particularly worrisome, especially for older voters. As you can imagine. There was a time, not so long ago, when “uncharted waters” and “Toronto” were words that only rarely appeared in the same sentence. Toronto was nothing if not predictable. But times change. And even when it unfolds in slow-motion, there’s nothing very predictable about an unqualified, jaw-dropping political disaster. For example: I didn’t expect Rob Ford’s confession that yes, as a matter of fact, he did smoke crack—nor did his staff, or the startled media—when, apropos of nothing, the Mayor decided to admit what he’d been denying for six months. After what must have been an interesting internal debate, Ford apparently concluded that attributing his crack smoking to a drunken stupor would appear more mayoral than simply saying he liked to get high. I’m guessing he thought it was just a good time to get it off his chest. Nobody could have guessed that something so legally inconsequential would send so many ships adrift. But here we are, bobbing along on what feels like a sea of identical conversations. From the literati assembled at this week’s Giller Prize gala in downtown Toronto to the drug dealers of East Etobicoke, Torontonians of all walks of life want to know: Who is the man in the first video whose off-screen voice goads Mayor Rob Ford, crack pipe in hand, to launch into his now-infamous homophobic and racist remarks? What’s on the mysterious second video? Is there now a third video? (At this stage, anything is possible.) Which is less forgivable: extortion, or urinating on a tree in a park? These are the kinds of questions—to our considerable surprise—that we find ourselves asking these days. But no historian has stepped forward to point out a precedent. No elder statesman has reminded us of some previous historical episode with parallels to Toronto’s current crisis. It’s the one thing on which most people in Toronto agree. We are way out of sight of land. David Macfarlane is a writer based in Toronto. A U.S. edition of his novel “The Figures of Beauty” will be published by HarperCollins next fall. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/11/torontos-rob-ford-problem.html