Vinson Voice 5 Dec 10

VOL 1 / NO 48

December 5, 2010

Stay Classy, San Diego

Sailors say goodbye to family and friends as Carl Vinson departs for 2010-2011 deployment Story by MC3 Lori Bent USS Carl Vinson Staff Writer

Carl Vinson and Carrier Airwing 17 Sailors said goodbye to family and friends Nov. 30 as the ship departed Naval Air Station North Island for a threeweek composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) and Western Pacific deployment.

COMPTUEX is an assessment of Carrier Strike Group 1’s pre-planned responses to tactical scenarios and knowledge of operations critical to ships’ survival at sea.

Vinson will play a key role in supporting the nation’s maritime strategy to assure our allies of continued commitment to regional security and to deter and dissuade potential conflicts. This is the first Western Pacific deployment for Vinson in more than five years, since the ship entered Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH) in the fall of 2005.

“Getting ready for this deployment was a little different since the ship has been in the shipyards for so long,” said Chief Operation’s Specialist (SW/AW) Tijuanna

Schumpert, Leading Chief Petty Officer of Operations Department OI Division. “There was a lot of work to do to get the ship ready. Now it’s time to focus on the mission at hand.”

Although this will be the first full-length deployment for many Sailors on board, Carl Vinson’s extensive training and enthusiasm enable the crew to support the ship’s overall mission.

“This is my first Western Pacific deployment. It is a bit overwhelming but my family understands I am doing my duty,” said Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Liberty Raposas from Medical Department. “I know I have to go, so I am ready to go. I know what is expected of me and I am ready to do my job.”

Several family members and friends bid farewell to Carl Vinson Sailors as the ship pulled away from the pier.

“We will do our best to be as supportive as we possibly can,” said Michelle and Mike Smith, parents of Airman Robert Kronebusch. “We drove down to see him off today and we will be here when he gets back. This (deployment) will be a life-changing experience and See`DEPLOYMENT` page 2

The Carl Vinson Voice is an internal document produced by and for the crew of the USS Carl Vinson and their families. Its contents do not necessarily reflect the official views of the U.S. Government or the Departments of Defense or the Navy and do not imply any endorsement thereby.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class James Evans

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Carl Vinson Voice

EMCON Awareness Key to Safety at Sea

From`DEPLOYMENT` page 1

STAFF

an opportunity to be a part of something exciting.”

Bob and Mary Ilosvay, parents of Aviation Traffic Controller 3rd Class Michael Nawrocki, said it’s hard to watch their son leave but they admire his courage and respect his decision to serve his country.

For Chief Boatswain’s Mate (Ret.) Isaac Doyle Jr., father of Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Isaac Doyle III, his son’s departure was bittersweet.

“This is history repeating itself, only the roles are reversed,” said Doyle. “I remember when I was the one leaving my family behind.

I couldn’t be any more proud of him.”

Although the ship has not been underway for longer than three months since 2005, Carl Vinson Sailors are eager to complete the mission and concentrate on training to be ready for anything deployment might bring.

“Each ship and each deployment is different” said Chief Aviation Machinist’s Mate (AW/SW) Anderson Wharton.

“The experience will be different for each person as well. This is an opportunity for Vinson Sailors to learn their rating and be better Sailors.”

Publisher

Capt. Bruce H. Lindsey

Commanding Officer Executive Editors

Lt. Cmdr. Erik Reynolds

Public Affairs Officer

Lt. Erik Schneider

Deputy Public Affairs Officer Managing Editor MC2 Ashley Van Dien Photo Editor MC2 Adrian White Layout and Design MC3 Patrick Green

Staff Writers/Photographers MC2(SW) James Evans MC2 Byron Linder MC3 Lori Bent MC3 Travis Mendoza MC3 Jessica Robertson

Story by MC3 Jessica Robertson USS Carl Vinson Staff Writer

There were plenty of hugs and emotional goodbyes as Carl Vinson and crew bid farewell to Naval Air Station North Island for a three-week composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) and Western Pacific deployment. But once the tears had dried, the ship’s Sailors set about the task at hand: preparing to go into a combat zone. It’s a task that requires the attention and focus of every Sailor on board Vinson.

The reason why? You never know who’s watching or listening.

That’s where Emissions Control (EMCON) comes in. EMCON is a method of controlling electronic emissions on board Vinson. Those emissions can come from anything, from radars and radios, to personal electronics, like gaming systems, cell phones, and iPods.

“Every piece of electronic equipment transmits a signal that can possibly be detected by an adversary,” said Lt. Dane Berensen, Vinson’s Electronic Warfare Officer.

“Our focus is to limit the ship’s emissions that our enemies can possibly detect, so they don’t know where we are.

It’s the military’s version of hide-andseek,” said Chief Cryptologic Technician (Technical) (SW/AW/FMF) Stephen Pinell, Intel Department’s leading chief petty officer.

Allowable emission levels on board Vinson are dictated by a number of different EMCON conditions.

The various EMCON levels are set on board Vinson in order to assume specific defensive postures In EMCON D, the ship’s normal operating condition, most personal electronic equipment may be used, but other EMCON levels restrict the use of equipment, to include WiFi gaming controls, WiFi-capable iPods and other devices.

During an EMCON event, 1MC instructions will be provided regarding the use of certain equipment. Berensen remarked that the best rule of thumb is to cease use of electronic equipment during EMCON events because the list

of restricted equipment is too long and changes frequently with the development of new technology. Pinell added that Sailors are welcome to contact the EW Module (OW Division) if they have questions whether the use of any specific piece of equipment is authorized or not during EMCON. The recent XO memo banning the use of cellular phones for any purpose while underway is an example of an EMCON measure that Vinson maintains at all times.

Berensen said while some Sailors might find it hard to shut off their iPod or PlayStation, Vinson’s mission depends on their ability to follow instructions given over the 1MC. “We can’t go to every berthing and take every iPod or cell phone, but each of these devices could increase our adversary’s ability to detect us,” said Berensen. “When we announce the current EMCON condition, it’s vitally important that every Sailor listens, pays attention, and responds immediately.”

Pinell agreed. “The accuracy and timeliness with which our Sailors respond to EMCON can help us go undetected,” he said.

Pinell commented on Vinson Sailors’ past responsiveness to EMCON. “I think the Sailors on board have performed admirably in following EMCON exercises and I have no doubt they’ll do the same this time around,” Pinell said. “The hardest part is training, enforcing and getting the roughly 5500 Sailors aware of what EMCON is and why it’s important.”

Ultimately, Pinell said, the success of the mission and the responsibility of complying with EMCON rests with each Vinson Sailor.

“In no uncertain terms, [EMCON] is an all-hands effort,” he said.

Berensen explained the bottom-line reason why EMCON is used on board Vinson.

“Our adversaries know when we were leaving but it is our job to try to keep them from finding us” Berensen said. “Our job during EMCON is to make them worry where we are, not know where we are. It may only take one [misstep to give away our location].”

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December 5, 2010

Vinson Trains All Hands During COMPTUEX Story by MC2 Ashley Van Dien USS Carl Vinson Staff Writer

Carl Vinson and Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 1 are participating in a three-week Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX) to prepare for a scheduled western Pacific deployment.

“COMPTUEX brings together the entire strike group and outside agencies, such as the Air Force, Navy SEALS, USS Gary (FFG 51) and USS Rentz (FFG 46), to practice operations,” said Vinson’s Strike Operations Officer, Cmdr. Kyle Weaver. “This evolution is an integrated effort between all the ships in the battle group, to act as a war-fighting team.”

Carl Vinson has been preparing for this deployment for months, passing events such as Tailored Ship’s Availability (TSTA) and Final Evaluation Problem (FEP) with flying colors. COMPTUEX brings the entire strike group together to prepare for deployment through the execution of realistic scenarios.

“Evolutions such as TSTA consisted of training events,” said Weaver. “During COMPTUEX, the strike group will participate in scenarios, which are a lot more realistic and therefore provide more effective training.”

In addition to training events, Sailors have been preparing for deployment with written study materials, classes and computer-based training. Chief Operations Specialist (SW) Scott Quinn, Strike Group Interface Control Officer, said the realistic training in COMPTUEX can better prepare Sailors for reacting to the unexpected.

“Computer-generated training is routine and repetitious. It’s is designed that way to teach you how you should react to certain situations and ingrain pre-planned responses,” said Quinn.

“Everything is real in COMPTUEX, and you can’t get better than real. This exercise gives Sailors presentations they have never seen before and are more likely to see on deployment.”

Some scenarios will affect the entire strike group, and others are designed

Aviation Electricians Mate 1st Class Gregory Gates and Aviation Electricians Mate Airman Brandon Simmer, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 25, use the Air Data Test computer to perform maintenance on an F/A-18C Super Hornet as part of a pre-flight check in the hangar bay. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Travis Mendoza.

for each ship individually. On board Carl Vinson, COMPTUEX requires the participation of all hands.

“Everybody should be aware of any scenarios that are taking place and get involved. be sure to give 100% when you are called to do your piece,” said Weaver.

“COMPTUEX involves everyone, and the more involved we are, the better the training and better the results.”

Some scenarios that Vinson has participated in include emissions control (EMCON) awareness, anti-terrorism warfare, maritime interdiction missions, humanitarian aid and air, surface and subsurface familiarization exercises.

The first half of COMPTUEX is scripted, scheduled training scenarios for all the ships in the battle group. Carl Vinson will complete two 3-day battle problems, which will be graded by Strike Force Training Pacific (SFTP), to earn our deployment certification.

“This evolution is the time for Vinson to earn several initial carrier qualifications we need for deployment,” said Weaver.

“After we earn those quals, we will shift our focus on maintaining them.”

One of the major qualifications Carl Vinson is scheduled to earn during this evolution is the blue water certification, which is an indication that the ship can launch and recover aircraft thousands of miles away from land. Vinson will earn the certification based on things like how pilots manage their fuel and how well the ship’s crew and air wing work together to manage the flight deck.

Teamwork is critical to the success of ship certifications and COMPTUEX, where the strike group as a whole will react to the scenarios and work together to operate effectively and efficiently.

“COMPTUEX has the potential to strengthen the working relationship between the ships, destroyer squadron (DESRON) 1 and CSG-1 by allowing us to train as a team,” said Weaver, “so when we go to the fleet, they are confident we can work together as a strike group and with other agencies to support the efforts of operation.”

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Carl Vinson Voice

U.S. Navy photos by MC2(SW) James Evans, MC2 Byron Linder, MC2 Adrian White and MC3 Travis Mendoza.

F R O M T H E PA G E S O F

Sunday, December 5, 2010

© 2010 The New York Times

from the pages of

Taking Sides Mounting State Debts Stoke Crisis Fears In a Divorce, Chasing Profit BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Michelle Pont and her husband amassed millions of dollars in properties and investments from a freight-hauling business that they started with a single stake-bed truck in 1991.

But when Pont decided to seek a divorce, she ran out of money.

She wrestled with accepting a smaller settlement than she considered fair. Then a lawyer referred her to Balance Point Divorce Funding, a Beverly Hills lender that covers the cost of breaking up — paying a lawyer, searching for hidden assets, maintaining a lifestyle — in exchange for a share of the winnings.

In October, Balance Point agreed to invest $200,000 in Pont’s case.

With some in the financial world willing to bet on almost anything, it should be no surprise that a few would see the potential to profit from the often contentious and emotional process of ending a marriage.

Balance Point is part of a bigger trend — the growing industry that invests in other people’s lawsuits, arming plaintiffs and their lawyers with money to help them win more money from defendants. Banks, hedge funds and firms like Balance Point have $1 billion invested in lawsuits at any given time, industry participants estimate.

Stacey Napp, a lawyer by training who has spent her career in finance, founded Balance Point with money from her divorce. Since then, she has provided more than $2 million to 10 women seeking divorces. She said she is helping to ensure both sides can defend their interests.

Lawyers who finance other civil cases generally keep a third of the winnings as a contingency fee. Napp said Balance Point requires a “substantially smaller” share, though she declined to be more specific.

Napp said that she urges clients to negotiate a settlement. She said she will not take clients who seem unwilling to compromise, fearing that their pursuit of justice will undermine Balance Point’s pursuit of profit. BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The State of Illinois is still paying off billions in bills that it got from schools and social service providers last year. Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program. States are releasing prisoners early, more to cut expenses than to reward good behavior. And in Newark, the city laid off 13 percent of its police officers last week.

Although next year could be even worse, there are bigger, longer-term risks, financial analysts say. Their fear is that even when the economy recovers, the shortfalls will not disappear, because many state and local governments have so much debt — several trillion dollars’ worth, with much of it off the books and largely hidden from view — that it could overwhelm them in the next few years.

“It seems to me that crying wolf is probably a good thing to do at this point,” said Felix Rohatyn, the financier who helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s.

Municipal bankruptcies or de-

faults have been extremely rare — no state has defaulted since the Great Depression, and only a handful of cities have declared bankruptcy or are considering doing so. But the finances of some state and local governments are so distressed that some analysts say they are reminded of the runup to the subprime mortgage meltdown or of the debt crisis hitting nations in Europe.

Analysts fear that at some point investors could balk at lending to the weakest states, setting off a crisis that could spread to the stronger ones.

“It seems to me that crying wolf is probably a good thing to do at this point,” said Felix Rohatyn, the financier who helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s.

Rohatyn warned that although municipal bankruptcies were rare, they appeared increasingly possible. And the imbalances were so large in some places that the federal government would likely have to step in at some point, he said, even if that seems unlikely in the current political

climate.

It is the long-term problems of a few states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, that financial analysts worry about most, fearing that their problems might precipitate a crisis that could hurt other states by driving up their borrowing costs.

But it is the short-term budget woes that nearly all states are facing that are preoccupying elected officials.

States and municipalities have around $2.8 trillion worth of outstanding bonds, but that number is dwarfed by the debts that many are carrying off their books.

State and local pensions — another form of promised debt, guaranteed in some states by their constitutions — face hidden shortfalls of as much as $3.5 trillion by some calculations. And the health benefits that state and large local governments have promised their retirees going forward could cost more than $530 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.

MICHAEL COOPER and

MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Vast Hacking by a China Fearful of the Web As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing why top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: They were Googling themselves.

The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.”

That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray

China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power — and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.

Extensive Chinese hacking operations, including one leveled at Google, are a central theme in the cables. The hacking operations began earlier and were aimed at a wider array of American government and military data than generally known, including attacks on computers of American diplomats preparing positions on a climate change treaty.

The cables catalog the heavy pressure that was placed on Google to comply with local censorship laws, as well as Google’s willingness to comply — up to a point. That coercion began building years before the company finally decided to pull out of Chi-

na last spring in the wake of the successful hacking attack on its home servers, which yielded Chinese dissidents’ e-mail accounts as well as Google’s proprietary source code.

The demands on Google went well beyond removing material on subjects like the Dalai Lama or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese officials also put pressure on the U.S. government to censor the Google Earth satellite imaging service by lowering the resolution of images of Chinese government facilities, warning that Washington could be held responsible if terrorists used that information to attack Chinese government or military facilities, the cables show. An American diplomat replied that Google was a private company and that he would report the request to Washington but that he had no sense about how the American government would act. (NYT)

International

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Top Afghan and Pakistani Leaders Dismiss Leaked Cables cables while also denying some of their contents.

When Gilani was asked about a cable that said his government lacked the ability to control its own military and intelligence services, he said, “I would request you not to trust WikiLeaks. These are just the views of junior officers. They are not authentic. We should not even take them seriously.”

Karzai seemed more inclined to put the revelations behind him.

He said that he was sure the way the cables characterized his ministers’ remarks was incorrect.

Zakhilwal, the finance minister, was reported to have called Karzai

“an extremely weak man.”

Karzai also said that people might say things casually in private that might not reflect their more considered and accurate positions. Karzai scorned the accuracy of another cable, about former Vice President Ahmed Zia Massoud’s taking $52 million out of the country, saying it was absurd to think he could arrive in another country with 30 suitcases full of cash. “We don’t know what to do with this whole thing: do we believe it or not believe it?” he said. “I would go towards not believing it, that is better for Afghanistan.”

(NYT)

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan president and the Pakistani prime minister dismissed the WikiLeaks revelations about their respective countries as alternately false, unreliable and the work of “junior officers” in a joint news conference here on Saturday.

However, a senior Afghan minister later took a more aggrieved tone, suggesting that the leaked cables had irreparably damaged relations between the American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, and members of the Afghan government. The minister, Omar Zakhilwal, also said that remarks attributed to him by Eikenberry in

one cable, disparaging President Hamid Karzai, were false.

Until Saturday, the Afghan government had said little about the contents of the cables, thousands of confidential State Department memos that were made public in the past week by the Web site WikiLeaks and a number of newspapers. Karzai’s spokesman had said only that most of the points had been disclosed before and that Afghanistan and the United States had a strategic relationship.

On Saturday, Karzai and the Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, appeared to be trying to diminish the significance of the

Meningitis Vaccine Brings Africa Hope

Haunted by Attack, Few Return to Island

JOHANNESBURG — For over a century, epidemics of bacterial meningitis have swept across Africa, arriving with the dry harmattan winds to kill with terrifying speed. But on Monday, a drive starts to inoculate tens of millions of West Africans with a new vaccine in what scientists hope will be the beginning of the end of ravaging meningitis epidemics.

The aim is for these immunization campaigns to spread from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east and bring the disease under control in 25 nations, saving an estimated 150,000 lives by 2015.

Hundreds of millions more dollars are still needed to accomplish that goal in coming years, public health officials say. But the meningitis vaccine is a major milestone in developing inexpensive vaccines against diseases that afflict poor countries, experts say.

More than a million cases of meningitis have been reported in Africa over the past two decades, and the vaccine works against the group A meningitis strain that causes more than eight of 10 cases.

It costs less than 50 cents a dose.

Bill Gates, whose foundation largely financed the endeavor, contrasted the undertaking with the development of vaccines for measles, smallpox and polio.

“All those things were created because rich people got sick,” he said in an interview. “This is the first vaccine that went through the whole process where there was no rich world market, and it had to be optimized at a very low price.”

CELIA W. DUGGER

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea — Sitting in front of his home, Chang Woon-il looked almost out of place, a lonely human figure on a street where stray dogs wandered among the abandoned and broken houses. Nor was he intending to stay very long.

Wielding a stubby knife, Chang, a 64-year-old fisherman, shucked oysters as he hurried to gather as much food as he could before catching the next ferry out.

He arrived the previous day on his first visit back to this small island in the Yellow Sea since last week, when it was hit by a deadly North Korean artillery barrage.

Like most of 1,350 civilian residents of this once sleepy fishing town, he fled to the South Korean mainland after the attack.

And like many of these newly created refugees, he says he is so fearful of another attack that he may never be able to live here again, even though the islanders have nowhere else to go.

“It’s our home, but 80 percent of us don’t want to come back,” he said. “We’re in limbo.”

As Yeonpyeong Island’s few remaining civilian residents start to pick up the pieces from the sudden bombardment, which killed two South Korean marines and two civilian construction workers, many wonder whether the island will ever fully recover.

Many are giving second thought to living on the island, which is also host to a garrison of 1,000 marines and is just eight miles from heavily armed North Korea. But others appear determined to stay, saying Yeonpyeong, best known for its tasty crabs until last week’s

Woohae Cho for The New York Times

Most of the 1,350 civilians of Yeonpyeong Island left after it was shelled by North Korea. attack, has been home to their families since before the peninsula was divided when Japanese colonial control ended in 1945.

“We have all lived here quite comfortably for all this time, so we should stay here even if we are near North Korea,” said Song Young-ock, 49, a ticket seller who returned after the attack.

The marines are mostly out of sight on the island’s northern half, though a few can be seen posted at roadblocks that keep the civilians within the town limits.

According to the town hall, Yeonpyeong’s civilian population is now just 60 permanent residents and 74 town officials, many of them rotating from the mainland.

The attack also drew 71 journalists and as many as 80 activists, mostly members of anti-North Korean nationalist groups.

An eerie hush has fallen on the

community, now mostly a ghost town of empty streets and homes.

About a half-dozen areas were struck by what appeared to be clusters of artillery shells or rockets, which left blackened stretches of burned-out homes that still smell of smoke. In other places, blasts had blown out windows or pried off corrugated roofs.

According to the town hall, 44 islanders and marines were wounded in the attack, which destroyed 25 homes and damaged 78 more.

One town official, Chang Heung-hwa, has made personal appeals to those who fled, trying to persuade them to stay. He admits he has had little luck so far.

Chang, the oyster fisherman, said the terror of the attack was enough to keep him away. “We just want to fish the sea,” he said of his family. “But how can we in this war zone?” MARTIN FACKLER

national

Sunday, December 5, 2010

As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catch-Up Senate Rejects Ninth grade was supposed to be a fresh start for Marie’s son: new school, new children. Yet by last October, he had become withdrawn. Marie prodded. And prodded again. Finally, he told her.

“The kids say I’m saying all these nasty things about them on Facebook,” he said. “They don’t believe me when I tell them I’m not on Facebook.”

But apparently, he was.

Marie, a medical technologist and single mother who lives in Newburyport, Mass., searched Facebook. There she found what seemed to be her son’s page: his name, a photo of him grinning while running — and, on his public wall, sneering comments about teenagers he scarcely knew.

Someone had forged his identity online and was bullying others in his name. Students began to shun him. Furious and frightened, Marie contacted school officials. They told her they could do nothing. It was an off-campus matter.

It is difficult enough to support one’s child through a siege of schoolyard bullying. But the lawlessness of the Internet, its potential for casual cruelty, and its capacity to cloak a bully’s identity all present slippery new challenges to this transitional generation of analog parents.

Marie, who asked that her middle name and her own nickname for her son, D.C., be used to protect his identity, finally went to the po-

lice. The force’s cybercrimes specialist, Inspector Brian Brunault, asked whether she really wanted to pursue the matter. “He said that once it was in the court system,” Marie said, “they would have to prosecute. It could probably be someone we knew.”

Marie’s son urged her not to go ahead. But Marie was adamant.

Throughout the fall, the Face-

Internet’s lawlessness and anonymity make it hard to protect a child. book profile set up in D.C.’s name taunted students: “At least I don’t take pics of myself in the mirror like a homosexual midget,” wrote “D.C.” Also, “you smell weird.”

At school, students would belligerently ask D.C. why he was picking fights on Facebook. He would eat lunch alone, and skipped some school, insisting that he was ill.

She would call Brunault weekly.

Last fall, the detective had to subpoena Facebook for the address of the computer linked to the forged profile. Then he had to subpoena Comcast, the Internet service provider, for the home address of the computer’s owner. A few weeks later, he called Marie. Just before dinner, Marie broke the news to D.C. Two culprits were 14; one was 13. After learning the first two

names, D.C. said: “Those guys have never liked me. I don’t know why.” But the third boy had been a friend since preschool.

Last spring, the Essex County, Mass., district attorney’s office sent the three boys who forged D.C.’s Facebook identity to a juvenile diversion program for firsttime nonviolent offenders.

If the boys adhere to conditions for a year, they will not be prosecuted. According to a spokesman, those conditions include: a fivepage paper on cyberbullying; letters of apology to D.C. and everyone they insulted in his name on Facebook; attending two Internet safety presentations; community service; no access to the Internet except to complete schoolwork.

Their computers must be in a public family space, not the bedroom.

Marie, who reports that D.C. has a new circle of friends and good grades, is reasonably satisfied with the sentencing conditions.

But compliance is another matter. She believes that at least one boy is already back on Facebook.

Overburdened school administrators and, increasingly, police officers who unravel juvenile cybercrimes, say it is almost impossible for them to monitor regulations imposed on teenagers.

As with the boys who impersonated D.C. online, a district attorney’s spokeswoman said, “That monitoring is up to the parents.”

JAN HOFFMAN

Pushing a Right to Bear Arms, Sharp and Pointy PHOENIX — Arizona used to be a knife carrier’s nightmare, with a patchwork of local laws that forced those inclined to strap Buck knives or other sharp objects to their belts to tread carefully as they moved from Phoenix (no knives except pocketknives) to Tempe (no knives at all) to Tucson (no knives on library grounds).

But that changed this year when Arizona made its Legislature the sole arbiter of knife regulations.

And because of loose restrictions on weapons, Arizona is now considered a knife carrier’s dream, a place where everything from a samurai sword to a switchblade can be carried without a quibble.

Arizona’s transformation, and the recent lifting of a ban on switchblades, stilettos, dirks and daggers in New Hampshire, has given new life to the knife rights

lobby, the little-known cousin of the more politically potent gun rights movement. Their vision is a knife-friendly America, where blades are viewed not as ominous but as tools that serve useful purposes and can save lives — as well as take them.

Sure, knife fights and attacks are a concern. No knife-lover would ever deny that. Todd Rathner, the lobbyist for Knife Rights Inc., an advocacy group based in Arizona that is now in its third year, was mugged twice in New York City before moving to Tucson, once at knifepoint, he said.

But the problem is with the knife wielder, not the knife, the knife lobby says, sounding much like those who advocate for gun rights.

Knife advocates contend that the Second Amendment applies to knives as well as guns. They fo-

cus their argument elsewhere, though, emphasizing that knives fill so many beneficial roles, from carving Thanksgiving turkeys to whittling, that they do not deserve the bad name they often get.

In much of the country, especially in urban areas, knives are still viewed as weapons.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. of Manhattan announced in June that his office had pressured retail stores that were selling illegal knives to remove them, forfeit profits from the knives made in the past four years and help finance a campaign to educate people against illegal knives.

“What makes these knives so dangerous is the ease with which they can be concealed and brandished,” Vance said of the illegal switchblades and gravity knives.

MARC LACEY

Obama’s Plan For Tax Cuts

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday rejected President Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush-era tax breaks for all but the wealthiest taxpayers, a triumph for Republicans who have long called for continuing the income tax cuts for everyone.

The Senate’s verdict set the stage for a possible deal in the coming days to extend the reduced tax rates even on high incomes temporarily, perhaps for up to two years. But with Senate Democrats and the White House badly splintered, and some lawmakers increasingly angry at the idea of sustaining President George W. Bush’s economic policies, the prospects of a compromise remain uncertain.

If Congress does not act, the tax rates expire on Dec. 31, meaning an increase across the board. The rate in the lowest bracket would rise to 15 percent from 10 percent and in the highest bracket to 39.6 percent from 35 percent.

The administration and Congressional leaders have been discussing a plan that would temporarily extend the income tax rates, and also include a one-year extension of jobless aid for the long-term unemployed, which has started to run out.

White House officials said they were pressing to continue other tax breaks for middle- and lowerincome Americans included in the 2009 stimulus plan, which Republicans said they were considering.

Obama’s preferred plan fell seven votes short of the 60 it needed to advance under Senate rules.

The vote was 53 to 36, on a bill adopted by the House on Thursday, that would end the Bush-era cuts on income above $250,000 a year for couples and $200,000 a year for individuals — a step Obama had hoped to take at the start of this year, but abandoned for fear of worsening the most severe recession since the Great Depression.

Republicans voted unanimously against the House-passed bill, and they were joined by four Democrats — Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia — as well as by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn.

DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

business

Sunday, December 5, 2010

G.E. Goes With What It Knows: Making Things To train its future leaders, General Electric has rising young stars study and visit an array of different organizations, from Google to West Point.

What can managers at the 132-year-old industrial giant learn from Google? A corporate mind-set that prizes “constant entrepreneurship,” says Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chairman and chief executive, during an interview at his corporate headquarters in Fairfield, Conn.

And what wisdom is on tap at the U.S. Military Academy?

“Adaptability” and “resiliency” amid uncertainty, says Immelt — skills as vital to surviving in business as they are on the battlefield.

Strategies are useful, he says, but only if they can quickly adjust to nasty real-world surprises.

Perhaps no company outside of the banking sector was hit as hard by the financial crisis as G.E., certainly none that seemed healthy before the economic tailspin. Its big finance arm, GE Capital, long a cash machine that bolstered the mother ship’s bottom line, became an albatross, threatening to pull down the entire enterprise. G.E. cut its dividend for the first time since the Great Depression, lost its triple-A credit rating and hastily arranged a $3 billion investment from the billionaire Warren E. Buffett.

Having skirted disaster, G.E. is

James Patterson for The New York Times

G.E.’s new plant in Batesville, Miss., led by Jeanne Edwards, makes composite parts for fuel-efficient jet engines. recovering gradually these days.

Its finance unit is on the mend, with the size of its debts and troubled loans trending downward.

Mind you, middling recoveries are a relative matter at G.E. After all, the company remains a colossus on track to deliver profits of more than $10 billion on sales of about $150 billion this year. But investors are used to getting more from G.E., which earned $22 billion on revenue of $173 billion in 2007.

So G.E. has revamped its strategy in the wake of the financial crisis. Its heritage of industrial innovation reaches back to Thomas Edison and the incandescent light

bulb, and with that legacy in mind, G.E. is going back to basics. The company, Immelt insists, must rely more on making physical products and less on financial engineering — a path that, he insists, is also necessary for the American economy as a whole.

Immelt candidly admits that G.E. was seduced by GE Capital’s financial promise — the lure of rapid-fire money-making unencumbered by the long-range planning, costs and headaches that go into producing heavy-duty material goods. Other industrial corporations were enthralled with finance, of course, but none as

much as G.E., which became the nation’s largest nonbank financial company.

The big buildup of GE Capital occurred during the tenure of Immelt’s famous predecessor, Jack Welch. But although Immelt, who took over in 2001, spun off the unit’s insurance business, he also bulked up on commercial real estate and other loans. In 2004, G.E. even bought a subprime lender in California, WMC Mortgage, which it shed in 2007 for a $1 billion loss.

Today, the financial unit is becoming smaller and focusing on fields in which G.E. believes it has a competitive advantage. Those specialty areas include industries in which G.E. has a strong manufacturing presence, like power generation, aviation and healthcare equipment, and lending to midsize industrial companies. Unless a deal is in a business where G.E. has distinctive skills, Immelt says he won’t let GE Capital dive in.

“We’re not going to do it, whether there are supernormal returns or not,” he says.

Immelt says his broadest responsibility at G.E. is to “drive change and develop people.” Any executive who wants to change things, he says, should be guided by “a point of view about what’s going on in the world, and you invest around that point of view.”

STEVE LOHR

After a Rough Night, Hotel Investors Are Waking Up Is this as bad as it gets? For two years, big investors watched the implosion of the lodging industry as hotel values plummeted more than 50 percent. Now as private equity giants like the Blackstone Group and entrepreneurs like Richard Branson are diving into the sector, others are starting to think it has finally hit bottom and may be bouncing back.

Blackstone teamed with two other private equity players in May to acquire the Extended Stay hotel chain out of bankruptcy court, and in September, Branson announced plans to create a Virgin Hotel empire. And when big names reach for their checkbooks, other investors usually aren’t far behind.

So far in 2010, there have been 77 lodging deals in the United States valued at $8.5 billion, according to the research firm Dealogic, up

from 30 deals valued at $1.2 billion in that period in 2009. (This is still far short of the 2007 peak, when there were 141 deals valued at $42.3 billion — including the biggest leveraged buyout of a hotel ever, Blackstone’s troubled $26 billion purchase of Hilton Hotels.)

For the most part, private equity firms haven’t even cracked their piggy banks yet. “I have never in my entire career seen so much equity on the sidelines ready to pounce,” says Jim Butler, chairman of the global hospitality group at the law firm Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Mitchell.

More than 40 private equity funds are hunting for deals in the hotel sector now, and many are under the gun to buy earlier rather than later, says Bjorn Hanson, dean of the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Man-

agement at New York University.

About half had cash in hand for lodging investments in 2007 and early 2008 before the sector fell apart and have been sitting on the sidelines, while others have raised money in the past year.

All are under pressure to invest, lest they miss the opportunity to jump in before the sector goes into full rebound mode, when “everybody else gets in and prices get bid up,” says Hanson.

Private equity firms and real estate investment trusts have been building huge war chests over the past year as they seek distressed deals, in the hopes of picking up properties at pennies on the dollar, as many did in the early 1990s recession.

In the current downturn, many investors have been waiting for similarly troubled targets, which have yet to materialize. “I think

opportunistic investors had those visions dancing in their head of assets that you buy at 10 cents on the dollar,” Butler says. But now many realize they may get distressed assets at only 60 to 80 cents on the dollar, and are afraid they’ll miss the rebound if they don’t jump in soon.

“Things will begin drifting up, if not shooting up,” Butler says.

Hotel deals began revving up after the lodging sector showed signs that it had finally turned a corner in the first quarter. Hotels posted year-over-year growth in occupancy in February for the first time since October 2007, and revenue per available room — a closely watched measurement of room-rate and occupancy growth — turned positive in March for the first time since July 2008, according to Smith Travel Research.

JANET MORRISSEY

arts

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead

disney enterprises

Disney’s Cyberspace Gamble Studio Entrusts the ‘Tron’ Sequel To a First-Time Feature Filmmaker LOS ANGELES — The very first feature that Joseph Kosinski has ever directed — “Tron: Legacy” — cruises into theaters on Dec. 17, and it’s not exactly a cinematic baby step. A $170 million budget. State-of-the-art 3-D visual effects. A three-year marketing campaign.

An extensive line of related toys, clothes, jewelry and electronics. A spinoff television show.

Theme park tie-ins. Overt hopes for a sequel.

Pressure? Just a little.

But late last month, as Kosinski showed “Tron: Legacy” to his cast for the first time, he was the epitome of calm. “I’ve got some bad news for you,” he said to Olivia Wilde, who plays a cyberwarrior named Quorra. “You’re no longer in the movie.” Wilde looked at him, blinking. Kosinski, an architect by training, waited a beat and then smiled. “Just kidding.”

Handing over a major motion picture to a director with a very thin résumé is not unheard of, in part because vision matters even in riskaverse Hollywood. Joseph McGivney Nichol, better known as McG, had only directed two shorts and several music videos when Sony gave him a $100 million budget to make “Charlie’s Angels.” Michael Bay was best known for directing a Meat Loaf video when he landed “Bad Boys,” the 1995 Will Smith vehicle.

But “Tron: Legacy,” as evidenced by the Category 5 marketing storm that Walt Disney Studios has whipped up on its behalf, is not just any multiplex behemoth. The goal is a juggernaut franchise on the scale of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Disney has been taking more risks lately, but “Tron” marks one of its biggest movie gambles ever, not only because of its huge production and marketing cost (an estimated $150 million globally) but because Disney has moved forward with spinoffs — “Tron: Uprising,” an ambitious animated series for Disney Channel

and Disney XD, is already deep in production.

“Tron: Legacy” also revisits sacred ground for science-fiction fans. The first “Tron,” released by Disney in 1982, was a box office disappointment, but its computer-generated effects and story line — a hacker is pulled inside a computer and forced to play space-age gladiator games — deeply influenced a generation of techies.

“It’s a science-fiction story that actually came true: inside a computer is a world where you, or a version of you, can go and live,” said Steven Lisberger, who wrote and directed “Tron” and served as a producer on the sequel.

“I’m assuming you’ve heard of Facebook?”

So the basic challenge for “Tron: Legacy” is twofold. It must be as cutting-edge as Lisberger’s movie, or the core fan base will crucify it.

At the same time, it must be accessible enough — warm enough despite all of the chilly white and blue neon — to attract rank-and-file moviegoers, particularly older ones.

In many ways, Kosinski has been preparing himself to create the world of “Tron: Legacy” for years without realizing it. While studying mechanical engineering at Stanford University, he dreamed about a career designing race cars. He spent a semester at Oxford University, where he focused on particle physics and space phenomena like black holes.

But a Stanford professor, impressed with Kosinski’s eye for design, had encouraged him to look at architecture, which led him to the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. There he became proficient in digital design programs, the same kind that Hollywood’s visual effects wizards use.

“I realized that I loved using computers to create something, but being an architect just wasn’t going to keep me interested,” Kosinski said. “The idea of a life spent obsessing over bathroom details for an Upper East Side penthouse was pretty depressing.”

BROOKS BARNES

Zombies are a value stock. They are wordless and oozing and brain dead, but they’re an ever-expanding market with no glass ceiling.

Zombies are a target-rich environment, literally and figuratively. The more you fill them with bullets, the more interesting they become.

Roughly 5.3 million people watched the first episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC, a stunning 83 percent more than the 2.9 million who watched the Season 4 premiere of “Mad Men.” This means there are at least 2.4 million cableready Americans who might prefer watching Christina Hendricks if she were an animated corpse.

Statistically and aesthetically that dissonance seems perverse. But it probably shouldn’t.

Mainstream interest in zombies has steadily risen over the past 40 years.

Zombies are a commodity that has advanced slowly AMC and without major evolu- No, he does not come in tion, much like peace. A zombie on “The the stagger- Walking Dead.” ing creatures George Romero popularized in the 1968 film “Night of the Living Dead.” What makes that measured amplification curious is the inherent limitations of the zombie itself: You can’t add much depth to a creature who can’t talk, doesn’t think and whose only motive is the consumption of flesh.

You can’t humanize a zombie, unless you make it less zombie-esque. There are slow zombies, and there are fast zombies — that’s pretty much the spectrum of zombie diversity. It’s not that zombies are changing to fit the world’s condition; it’s that the condition of the world seems more like a zombie offensive.

This is our collective fear projection: that we will be consumed. Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have.

All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed. Yet this war is manageable, if not necessarily winnable. As long we keep deleting whatever’s directly in front of us, we survive. We live to eliminate the zombies of tomorrow. We are able to remain human, at least for the time being. Our enemy is relentless and colossal, but also uncreative and stupid.

Battling zombies is like battling anything . . . or everything.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

books

Sunday, December 5, 2010

A Downtempo History of American Musicals Yip Harburg, the lyricist who wrote “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and “Over the Rainbow,” described popular songwriting as “the pulse of a nation’s heart, the fever chart of its health.”

In “Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater,” Larry Stempel aims to arrest the nation’s pulse with his thorough, sober analysis, or as he puts it, “Might the time not now be ripe . . . for a scholarly reassessment of the history of the medium?”

It’s a worthwhile endeavor, even if it doesn’t leave room for jokes.

Or, in places, nuance. Stempel, an associate professor of music at Fordham University, began writing “Showtime” in the late 1970s and is so set on being definitive he defines things it might, at this stage, be assumed we have a handle on. Does mention of the Disney Corporation really need the qualifier “named for Walt Disney (1901-1966), the legendary graphic artist and entrepreneur who created Mickey Mouse and founded Disneyland”? Or, in reference to racially segregated theater companies at the turn of the past century, the explanation that “blackness itself ... warranted multiple forms of discrimination”? This isn’t academic, it’s encyclopedic, and the tone so agonized it’s painful to read.

Still, when Stempel forgets to be scholarly, he is a genial host.

There is a fascinating account

Showtime A History of the Broadway Musical Theater. By Larry Stempel Illustrated, 826 pages.

W.W. Norton and Company. $39.95

of the Astor Place riot of 1849, in which 22 people died as a result of a performance of “Macbeth” and which is discussed as the beginning of the divide between “serious” and “popular” theater.

Musicals, ever the poor relation, were described by Brecht as “the authentic expression of all that is American” (he didn’t mean it as a compliment), and there are good sections on Tin Pan Alley and the role played by Broadway in assimilating immigrant song­ writers, the best-known example being Irving Berlin and his “White Christmas.”

Before you get to some of this, however, you must slog through a seemingly endless number of old productions, of which little remains but plot summary — “ ‘El Capitan’ takes place in a mythological Peru of the 16th century” — and to which the only possible response is, I guess you had to be there. The first Broadway musical might have been a production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1853, but more people argue for “The Black Crook,” 13 years later, a melodrama by Charles M. Barras, set in 17th-century

Germany, in which two villagers fall in love and are thwarted by a Count Wolfenstein, etc. Mark Twain, in his review, raved about the “beautiful bare-legged girls hanging in flower baskets,” foreshadowing so many productions to come, and Charles Dickens, in his scathing but prescient review, called it “the most preposterous peg to hang ballets on that was ever seen. The people who act in it have not the slightest idea of what it is about, and never had.”

The book works best perhaps as a primer on how to write for musical thea­ter, thanks to its useful compendium of quotations.

Lorenz Hart saw the score as “balancing the different musical items” so that a “musical pattern” emerged. Richard Rodgers considered it an exercise in achieving a “family resemblance” across a range of songs, and Cole Porter said, “I do the lyrics like I’d do a crossword puzzle.”

Through Sondheim, Fosse, Lloyd Webber and Off Broadway, Stempel charts the evolution of “the entertainment’s mix of sentimentality and cynicism,” in what is, ultimately, a useful but irksome reference book. “Are we at peace?” Yip Harburg asked.

“Are we in trouble? Are we floundering? Do we feel beautiful? Do we feel ugly? Are we hysterical?

Violent?” A history is swell, but his advice still stands: “Listen to our songs.” EMMA BROCKES

Editor’s Row Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans. (Random House, $35.) The question of classical ballet’s survival lies at the heart of this definitive history, which traces dance across four centuries of wars and revolutions, both artistic and political.

SELECTED STORIES, by William Trevor. (Viking, $35.) Trevor’s collection is frequently melancholy, concerned with loss and disappointment, but warmed with radiant moments of grace or acceptance.

I REMEMBER NOTHING: And Other Reflections, by Nora Ephron. (Knopf, $22.95.) Some of the material in these essays, a follow-up to “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” is familiar, but it gets spicier in each iteration.

COLONEL ROOSEVELT, by Edmund Morris. (Random House, $35.) The third and concluding volume of Morris’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt covers the nine eventful years left to the 26th president after he departed from office.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder. (Basic Books, $29.95.) How Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics and Belarus were victimized by two mass murderers with competing utopian visions.

Dealings: A Political and Financial Life, by Felix Rohatyn. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) Rohatyn, the investment banker who saved New York City from bankruptcy, recalls less hucksterish days on Wall Street.

FULL DARK, NO STARS, by Stephen King. (Scribner, $27.99.) Four long new stories, light on the supernatural, revel in grisly, merely human behavior.

The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the Web: nytimes.com/books.

Paperback Row THE INTERROGATIVE MOOD: A Novel?, by

Padgett Powell. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $13.99.) Powell’s fifth novel is a 164-page meditation on the sublime and the trivial. Consisting entirely of questions — funny, sad, prurient, maudlin and political — this literary curiosity vacillates between the philosophical (“Does integrity lie in failure?”) and the ridiculous (“Is belief in Santa Claus, or disbelief, a kind of primer for belief, or disbelief, in God?”).

JUST KIDS, by Patti Smith. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $16.) The winner of the year’s National Book Award for nonfiction, Smith’s memoir of her early rock career and her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe is a spellbinding portrait of bohemian New York in the late 1960s and early ’70s, from their encampment at the Chelsea Hotel — “a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone” — to the back room at Max’s Kansas City.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? and PREPARATIONS FOR THE ASCENT, by Gilbert Rogin. (Verse Cho-

rus, $17.95.) A former managing editor at Sports Illustrated, Rogin published more than 30 stories in The New Yorker in the 1960s and ’70s, and was praised by John Updike as “amazingly surreal.”

This volume combines Rogin’s two out-of-print novels — linked stories about a dyspeptic Everyman and the indignities he suffers at the hands of his ex-

wife, his parents and his girlfriend.

YOURS EVER: People and Their Letters, by

Thomas Mallon. (Vintage, $15.) Intended as “a kind of companion volume to ‘A Book of One’s Own,’ ” Mallon’s 1984 study of people and their diaries, this exploration of the art of letter-writing embraces old friends — Flaubert, Freud, the Mitfords — and plenty of unknowns. With chapter titles like “Absence,” “Friendship,” “Advice” and “Complaint,” Mallon offers a tour of the human condition.

RAYMOND CARVER: A Writer’s Life, by Carol Sklenicka. (Scribner, $20.) Ten years in the making, this prodigiously researched biography sympathetically integrates Carver’s influential work with his turbulent life, which was marred by alcoholism, financial turmoil and family discord. Sklenicka deconstructs Carver’s fraught relationship with Gordon Lish, the editor who played an outsize role in the creation of his stories.

TRUE CONFECTIONS, by Katharine Weber.

(Broadway, $14.) In Weber’s vividly imagined novel, an unhappy daughter of repressed New England Protestants finds her destiny with a family of immigrant candy makers.

THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS, by Louis Menand. (Norton, $14.95.) Part of Norton’s “Issues of Our Time” series, the four rigorous essays collected

here take up four questions about American higher education: “Why is it so hard to institute a general education curriculum? Why did the humanities disciplines undergo a crisis of legitimation? Why has ‘interdisciplinary’ become a magic word? And why do professors all tend to have the same politics?”

TOO MUCH HAPPINESS, by Alice Munro. (Vintage International, $15.) The 10 stories in Munro’s latest collection return to familiar terrain — they’re rooted mostly in Ontario and in the lives of women — while broadening the author’s exploratory sensibilities.

SOUL OF THE AGE: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, by Jonathan Bate. (Random

House, $18.) “Shakespeare’s political beliefs are as elusive as his religion, his sexuality and just about everything else about him that matters,” Bate writes in this “intellectual biography,” which grapples with the multiple truths and ambiguities that proliferate throughout Shakespeare’s work. Chapters are structured around Jacque’s Seven Ages of Man speech from “As You Like It.” THE GREAT LIFE PHOTOGRAPHERS, by the editors of Life. (Little, Brown, $24.99.) This definitive collection looks back at the indelible images of the 20th century, captured in the photojournalism of Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gordon Parks and others.

IHSAN TAYLOR

crossword

Sunday, December 5, 2010

THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE CROSSWORD PUZZLE ON A ROLL

1

BY BEN PALL / EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ

Across 1 Hearty drinks 7 Midwest city named for an Indian tribe 12 More sentimental 19 Major diamond exporter 20 Closing to some letters 21 Trapped 22 It makes the hair stand on end 23 First step of instructions for what to do with this finished puzzle 25 N.Y.C.’s ___ of the Americas 26 Goal of a screen test 28 Many an extra on “Star Trek”: Abbr.

29 Vacation conveniences, for short 30 Vitamin C source 31 Raise a big stink?

33 Kids 35 “___ Us,” 1995 Joan Osborne hit 37 Path of enlightenment 38 European leader?

39 Black 40 Flavor 42 Part of PIN: Abbr.

44 Make up 46 “Where does it ___?”

G A B S

E C L A T

S N A K E S

U N B O L T

T H E W E D N E S D A Y

R E M O P

A M E B A

J O L L Y

S T A G

T H A I

R E M S

S A N A E F O R A T E D E N O A R D R R T C H I P A F R E N C E A K P P S E G E C B I G O I V M T I O A N A N O G S S P E W A R D I F E S T R E E C O L H S

O S S A M O K G L U T S L O U

I S A L L A P O F O I D O A S T H O S R I M C Y O Y T O H U E N I G C E

D E L M O T E U K E B L O A T E T H N O

47 Is 48 ’60s-’70s 114Across locale 51 Web browser provider 52 ___ fide 53 Part of every month 54 Reveals 56 Instructions, part 2 63 Prohibition’s start 64 ___ Little, “The Wire” gangster 65 Old Philadelphia stadium, informally, with “the” 66 Earthen pot 67 Bygone Starfire, e.g., informally 68 ___ Rebellion of 1857-59 70 Evicts 72 Org. in 2005’s Oscar-winning “Crash” 73 Hightail it 74 Alternative to plata 75 Cellar item 76 Bedouin 77 Instructions, part 3 82 Demagnetize, say 83 St. in a children’s rhyme 84 Coupling 85 Previously 87 Half of many a business partnership A H O V E R O R E D H O E I O V C O L O I R O G R C T I O O A E B U T T A T C A G E A S S N A N Y M E O I T O I B T Z U E R E D T I N G O E E S S T

S T I R I S R A S E T A B B O O M O H A I M R I E E A S L C E V E S P

T O N I C S E L G I S

R O C K E F E L L E R C E N T E R

O S I M M U E T R E S

I N G S S O O N A R G O W O W R A L E Y S S A S P G A E R G Y T U I S A C E S E S O T A C H O O Y O U N U S O I S T A C E S T I T B E M O N Y E G E R R A G E

Answer to puzzle for 11/28/10

88 Ticks off 91 Plug’s place 92 It’s between green and black 95 Viceroy, e.g.

96 Snap 97 Aware of 98 Nile biters 102 “We shun it ___ it comes”: Emily Dickinson 103 “Beat it!”

105 Little bit 106 Moolah 107 Except for 109 Certain tankful 110 ___ alai 112 Some funerary ware 114 See 48-Across 115 Last step of the instructions 119 Tie up 121 Cell phone plan units 122 “Pick me! Pick me!”

123 Long fights 124 Least puzzling 125 Pedestal toppers 126 Barrels along Down 1 Doha native 2 Lopsided 3 Said “yea” 4 The Beatles’ “___ No One” 5 Edsel 6 1984 Olympics site 7 The Cowboys of the Big 12 Conf.

8 Portions 9 Connecticut town named for an English river 10 Coop group 11 Wall St. worker 12 Second place 13 “___ it goes” 14 Bud 15 Dr. ___ 16 Charges, in a way 17 Honda model 18 Begrudges

2

3

4

5

6

7

19 22 26

31

32

12

49

50

54

40

51

68

73

42

70

89

90

72 76

80

81 85

91

92

96

102

93

94 98

110 111 117

99

100 101

106 112 118

113 119

121

122

123

124

125

126

20 Follows through with 24 Ripley’s last words?

27 Insurgent group 32 Pond fish 34 Acme product in Road Runner cartoons 35 Long-running hit TV show based in Chicago 36 ___-upper 40 Farrier 41 Polly of literature, e.g.

43 Fade, maybe 45 Condé ___ 47 Revises 48 Doze 49 Artemis’ twin 50 Pea observer 52 Time for a party, in brief 53 Rapper with the 1988 platinum album “Power” 55 Plummet 57 Board 58 Latin lover’s word

87

105

109 116

82 86

97

103 104 108

60

71

84

95

62

43

66

75 79

83

61

37

59 65

69

78

18

53

58

74

77

17

47

64

67

16

30

41

52 57

15

36

46

56

14

29 35

45

55

13

24

34

63

115

11

28

39 44

107

10

21

27 33

38

88

9

23

25

48

8

20

59 Elicit 60 Alpaca relatives 61 Home of minorleague baseball’s Diablos 62 Depress 68 Undersides 69 Greek god whose name is one letter off from 118-Down 70 Soak up rays 71 Second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan 75 “No problemo” 76 “On tap” sign, sometimes 78 Affirms 79 Depressing darkness 80 Scuttlebutt 81 Device for winter sidewalks 86 Virtue 88 Take for granted 89 Superstate in Orwell’s “1984” 90 Good rolls in craps 91 One-named singer/ actress 92 “___-la-la!”

114 120

(No. 1205)

93 Stampede 94 [That’s awful!]

96 The rite person?

99 Waste 100 Finished second 101 Gray hair producer, they say 104 Superman’s closetful?

105 Vista 108 Pin holder 110 King in II Kings 111 Brouhahas 113 Trim 116 Packed away 117 Head, in slang 118 Greek goddess whose name is one letter off from 69Down 120 Virginia’s ___ Highway

Answers to this puzzle will appear in next Sunday’s TimesDigest, and in next Sunday’s New York Times.

You can get answers to any clue by touch-tone phone: 1-900-289-CLUE (289-2583), $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5550.

G ET H OME D ELIVERY OF T HE N EW Y ORK T IMES . C ALL 1-800-NYTIMES

sports

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Textbook Approach to Creating Mayhem FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — At the precise moment Jason Taylor sacks an opposing quarterback, the feeling is indescribable. Taylor said it compares to his wedding day, the births of his three children and sex, in no particular order.

Over 14 seasons, Taylor has turned pass rushing into an art form. His signature move, the long arm, is copied across the N.F.L. He ranks 10th on the career list and first among active players with 131 1/2 sacks. He counts 68 quarterbacks among the vanquished, none more frequently than New England’s Tom Brady, whom Taylor has sacked 10 1/2 times and will resume chasing Monday night when the Jets visit the Patriots.

“Rushing the passer is the most difficult thing in professional sports,” Taylor, 36, said. “Getting a sack is almost statistically impossible.”

As the New York Jets’ resident scientist of sacks, Taylor charts these things. Most seasons, he said, a rusher faces 450 to 650 pass attempts. On most passes, the time between snap and throw is roughly 2.4 to 2.7 seconds.

Rushers must cover a 7-yard arc that takes 1.9 seconds to run unimpeded and without pads. They must discard linemen who weigh more than 300 pounds and avoid double and triple teams.

The most efficient sack artists, the players who register, say, 15 sacks in 550 pass attempts, succeed once in every 37 tries. “It’s like hitting a halfcourt shot,” said Trevor Pryce, Taylor’s teammate, who has 91 career sacks. “Pass rushers are set up for failure.”

Taylor took a circuitous route to sack king. Raised near Pittsburgh

Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

The Jets’ Jason Taylor says he mixed straight speed rushes with a variety of countermoves against the Patriots in Week 2. by strict Baptist parents, Taylor took missionary trips to Mexico, was home-schooled in high school and dreamed of the N.B.A. He worked for a fire, restoration and disaster company that was sometimes contracted to clean crime scenes. “Not fun,” he said.

He also volunteered as a puppeteer at his church.

At the University of Akron, Taylor weighed around 225 pounds and studied political science. He wanted to be a lawyer. At the N.F.L. combine, Pryce recalled, Taylor knocked out push-ups to look more muscular — the beginning of his unlikely rise. Miami drafted him, and he used his best asset, the one offensive linemen fear most: speed. The defensive line meeting room in Miami became his laboratory. Taylor compiled a sack black book, studying offensive linemen, offensive coordinators, quarterbacks and sack specialists. He

WEATHER High/low temperatures for the 21 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 18 hours ended at 1 p.m. yesterday. Expected conditions for today and tomorrow.

Weather conditions: C-clouds, F-fog, H-haze, I-ice, PCpartly cloudy, R-rain, S-sun, Sh-showers, Sn-snow, SSsnow showers, T-thunderstorms, Tr-trace, W-windy.

U.S. CITIES

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Albuquerque 61/ 32 0 60/ 35 PC 61/ 34 PC Atlanta 60/ 35 Tr 46/ 25 S 44/ 21 S Boise 37/ 26 0.07 42/ 31 C 38/ 26 PC Boston 42/ 34 0 39/ 27 C 40/ 30 W Buffalo 32/ 27 0.02 34/ 24 SS 33/ 20 SS Charlotte 44/ 30 0.08 44/ 23 S 39/ 20 PC Chicago 34/ 28 0.31 26/ 11 W 22/ 6 PC Cleveland 35/ 20 Tr 33/ 22 SS 33/ 20 SS Dallas-Ft. Worth 67/ 47 0 52/ 30 S 51/ 28 PC Denver 43/ 19 0 42/ 17 C 48/ 25 C Detroit 35/ 29 0 32/ 20 SS 32/ 19 SS

Houston Kansas City Los Angeles Miami Mpls.-St. Paul New York City Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Salt Lake City San Francisco Seattle St. Louis Washington

82/ 58 36/ 32 67/ 50 76/ 57 28/ 18 42/ 32 71/ 37 42/ 31 73/ 47 39/ 30 59/ 50 49/ 34 41/ 32 45/ 31

0 0 0 0 Tr 0 0 0 0 Tr 0.04 0 0 0

charted every N.F.L. sack.

Nearing the quarterback, Taylor often trades head-buckling hits for his patented strip sacks.

He chops down on quarterbacks’ arms, often from behind, pulling arms toward him. The result: 47 forced fumbles, 28 fumble recoveries and 9 defensive touchdowns, including 6 on fumble returns, an N.F.L. career record.

Students of the sack will remember Taylor for the long arm.

It starts with speed, built by the 6-foot-6 Taylor as he charges an offensive lineman. He sticks his arm between the numbers of the blocker to knock him off balance.

“I remember he walked Baltimore’s Jonathan Ogden, an amazing tackle, back 8 yards,” said Jim Bates, one of Taylor’s mentors in Miami. “Walked him back like he was taking a stroll. And he was giving away 100 pounds.”

GREG BISHOP 57/ 35 PC 34/ 14 PC 68/ 52 C 77/ 53 PC 16/ 2 S 39/ 30 W 68/ 41 PC 39/ 27 W 73/ 50 PC 43/ 29 C 57/ 49 R 44/ 33 PC 34/ 18 S 42/ 27 W

58/ 35 PC 34/ 14 PC 64/ 50 PC 71/ 42 S 15/ 6 S 38/ 30 W 63/ 35 PC 38/ 28 SS 74/ 49 PC 43/ 26 Sn 58/ 49 PC 47/ 39 C 31/ 16 S 41/ 25 W

FOREIGN CITIES

Acapulco Athens Beijing Berlin Buenos Aires Cairo

Yesterday Today Tomorrow 91/ 62 0 88/ 73 S 89/ 71 S 74/ 59 0 60/ 49 S 61/ 55 S 48/ 23 0 45/ 23 PC 41/ 27 S 29/ 15 0 34/ 27 Sn 33/ 23 C 79/ 65 0 79/ 54 S 86/ 61 S 79/ 54 0 74/ 56 PC 69/ 54 PC

Cape Town Dublin Geneva Hong Kong Kingston Lima London Madrid Mexico City Montreal Moscow Nassau Paris Prague Rio de Janeiro Rome Santiago Stockholm Sydney Tokyo Toronto Vancouver Warsaw

Jeter and Yankees Agree on New Deal The Yankees and Derek Jeter ended their protracted contract stalemate Saturday, agreeing to a three-year deal worth $15 million to $17 million annually that also contains an option for a fourth year, according to a person in baseball briefed on the matter.

High-ranking club officials and Jeter’s agent, Casey Close, negotiated late into Friday night and on Saturday, making substantial progress on a deal that includes a “creative hybrid-type option” for the fourth year that is “not vesting and is highly unusual,” the person said. The contract is pending a physical exam.

Jeter accepted a pay cut from his 2010 salary of $21 million, but the deal ensures that he remains the highest-paid shortstop in baseball, ahead of Troy Tulowitzki, who last week agreed to a 10-year, $157.75 million deal to stay with Colorado It also seems more of a victory for the Yankees, who after a tumultuous negotiation appear to have conceded far less than Jeter, who was initially seeking a fourto five-year deal for $23 million to $24 million a year.

(NYT)

NHL scores FRIDAY’S LATE GAMES Detroit 4, Anaheim 0 SATURDAY Philadelphia 5, Devils 3 Montreal 3, San Jose 1

nBA scores FRIDAY’S LATE GAMES Denver 109, L.A. Clippers 104 Phoenix 105, Indiana 97 L.A. Lakers 113, Sacramento 80 Dallas 93, Utah 81 72/ 58 39/ 34 32/ 21 76/ 65 84/ 73 75/ 60 44/ 25 43/ 23 75/ 40 32/ 25 33/ 10 81/ 63 39/ 25 24/ 7 87/ 78 54/ 42 82/ 46 21/ 10 78/ 65 61/ 47 32/ 25 44/ 27 23/ 14

0 0.32 0 0 0 0.02 0.03 0 0 0.06 0.30 0 0.16 0.02 0.02 0.04 0 0.11 0.49 0 0 0 0.06

70/ 55 S 40/ 34 S 43/ 43 Sn 77/ 68 S 83/ 75 S 77/ 60 C 36/ 27 S 43/ 41 Sh 71/ 37 S 32/ 27 Sn 23/ 15 C 79/ 64 S 40/ 34 R 36/ 33 C 88/ 73 PC 50/ 45 PC 86/ 50 S 28/ 25 SS 75/ 66 Sh 63/ 52 S 30/ 16 SS 42/ 28 PC 30/ 29 PC

79/ 57 PC 41/ 29 PC 50/ 49 R 77/ 61 S 81/ 73 S 76/ 58 C 34/ 28 S 52/ 48 R 70/ 40 S 34/ 27 Sn 22/ 13 PC 75/ 59 S 36/ 32 C 34/ 29 SS 80/ 72 R 57/ 54 C 81/ 48 S 28/ 19 SS 75/ 66 Sh 64/ 50 PC 34/ 16 SS 40/ 36 C 32/ 22 C

sports journal

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Point Man for the Lakers and the Union LOS ANGELES — Taking charges or causing bruises comes naturally to Lakers guard Derek Fisher. Yet the physical contact he made with the Sacramento Kings’ Francisco Garcia on the court Friday night went against his every competitive impulse.

It came during warm-ups before the second half of the Lakers’ 113-80 victory and took the form of a handshake, preceded by an exchange of small talk with Garcia, a sixth-year reserve.

Earlier, at the Lakers’ practice center in El Segundo, Fisher, the president of the N.B.A. players union, said: “It’s been something new to have to open myself to guys on opposing teams. I’m looking to kind of beat you up and beat your team, so I’m not necessarily interested in making sure you have my phone number and e-mail address when I see you at the game. Even to this day, I have to consciously remind myself that we’re all on the same team and make sure these guys understand we’re playing against each other tonight, but I am your president and I’m here still to serve you.”

The N.B.A.’s collective bargaining agreement expires in July, and with storm clouds gathering over the 2011-12 season, Fisher is the point man for the Lakers’ triangle offense and the union’s labor talks.

It takes someone quite nimble to brief players, then beat them.

“You have to establish relationships with guys from different teams,” Fisher said. “You can’t just walk up to a guy you don’t know very well and lay on this heavy C.B.A. stuff.”

With their victory over the Kings, the Lakers snapped a fourgame skid. During the streak, Fisher’s moonlighting as a union leader came under scrutiny, as did Lamar Odom’s fishbowl marriage to Khloe Kardashian, Kobe Bryant’s turn with a gun in a video game ad and the engagements of Shannon Brown to the singer Monica and Sasha Vujacic to the tennis player Maria Sharapova.

That is life in Lakerland.

Fisher, a 15-year veteran whose clutch shooting made possible the Lakers’ five N.B.A. championship runs, shot 9 for 30 from the field — including 1 for 7 from 3-point range — in the four losses.

Married with four children and beholden to the more than 400 players in the N.B.A., Fisher said he did not feel weighed down by his off-court responsibilities.

But he added, “I think we all consciously and subconsciously battle those things.”

Fisher, a late-first-round draft pick of the Lakers in 1996, was preparing for his first season as a starter when the N.B.A. experienced its last work stoppage, in 1998. Half the season was lost before an agreement was reached

and the games resumed.

“What I remember is being young and naïve and having a total lack of understanding of how big these issues really were,” Fisher said, adding, “It really was from that experience of kind of feeling like I was being pulled in everybody else’s direction but my own that kind of got me interested in wanting to be more involved.”

Fisher, 36, served for several years as a player representative and was on the union’s executive committee before succeeding Antonio Davis as president in 2006.

“No question, he’s the perfect man for the job,” said Bryant. “He communicates extremely well.

He’s very articulate.”

Having bridged the chasm between Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal in the early 2000s, Fisher is not daunted by the considerable distance separating the union and the league. The owners are seeking a hard salary cap; the players are adamantly opposed to it.

“I really have to make sure that I’m staying true to who I am,” Fisher said, “and that I know my responsibilities to current N.B.A. players, to future N.B.A. players, to our past and retired N.B.A. players. I have to make sure I’m making decisions that are considering all of these things and not just serving the interests of Kobe Bryant and the best players in the game.”

KAREN CROUSE

Top Golfers Skipping P.G.A. Tour for Europe THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Larry Thiel was at the Chevron World Challenge peddling free spa treatments and fingertip concierge service to 18 golfers who averaged $3 million in official prize money this year.

For Thiel, the tournament director of the Bob Hope Classic, it was an uphill battle, perhaps more futile than trying a barefoot climb of the craggy Santa Monica Mountains, which rise above Sherwood Country Club here. His tournament next month, once a crown jewel of the P.G.A. Tour’s schedule, falls at the same time as a European Tour event in Abu Dhabi, which offers lavish appearance fees to attract a world-class field.

“We never mention the cash,” said Paul Casey, an Arizona-based Englishman. “For me, it’s about challenging yourself against the best fields.”

So where will Casey open his 2011 season? In the United Arab Emirates.

“Some players like to travel around the world and obviously get paid a lot of money to do so,” said Graeme McDowell, the reigning U.S. Open champion from Northern Ireland. “Unfortunately, that’s what we have to do in Europe to get the best players to come across sometimes.”

The P.G.A. Tour long has been regarded as golf’s Broadway stage, a showcase for the world’s best professionals. A few bright bulbs, though, will be missing from its marquee in 2011.

Three European golfers in the world top 10, including the No. 1-ranked player, Lee Westwood of England, will not be members of the P.G.A. Tour next year, leading some to wonder whether golf’s center stage is shifting overseas.

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland, who is ranked 10th, decided not to renew his membership after playing in 16 events this year. “It’s not as if I’m not joining the P.G.A. Tour to make a statement.””

The rejections come as golf in Europe remains flush with jingoistic fever. For those keeping score, it’s Europe 2, United States 1 in the 2010 majors, and Europe 14, the United States 13 in the Ryder Cup. Still, the top U.S. golfers have been loath to leave the cushy confines of the P.G.A. Tour — with its manicured courses, creature comforts and large purses.

“I don’t know if there will ever be a situation where Europe is the more favorable place to play,” the Englishman Luke Donald said.

“If money dries up over here and there’s money in Europe, the balance could shift.”

KAREN CROUSE

In Brief Auburn Coasts to SEC Championship Cam Newton left nothing to chance. He ran and passed the Auburn Tigers to a shot at the national championship they were denied six years ago, and he might as well start working on that Heisman pose, too. Newton passed for a career-high 335 yards and four touchdowns, plus ran for a pair of TDs in an M.V.P. performance that led No. 2 Auburn (13-0) to the Southeastern Conference championship with a 56-17 rout of Steve Spurrier and No. 18 South Carolina (9-4) on Saturday. The Tigers, who came into the day sitting atop the Bowl Championship Series standings, must wait 24 hours before getting the official word, but it’s nothing more than a formality: They’ll be playing Oregon for the national title on Jan. 10 in Glendale, Ariz. Before the national title is decided, Newton will likely be picking up the college game’s top individual honor when the Heisman Trophy is awarded next weekend in New York City — especially since he was cleared of wrongdoing by the NCAA in a pay-for-play scandal.

(AP)

Oregon Secures Spot In B.C.S. Title Game Along with all that flash and dash and those snazzy uniforms, No. 1 Oregon will bring a hefty dose of good old-fashioned grit to the B.C.S. national title game.

Heisman Trophy contender LaMichael James, Kenjon Barner and the fast-paced Ducks negotiated the last speed bump on the way to Glendale, Ariz., grinding out a 37-20 victory against Oregon State in the Civil War on Saturday. James ran for 134 yards and two touchdowns while Barner had 133 yards and scored twice for the Ducks (120), who used some stiff defense in the red zone and three interceptions to fend off their feisty rivals. Jacquizz Rodgers had 87 yards rushing for the Beavers (5-7) and scored a touchdown, but they were forced to settle for short field goals twice in the third quarter — and that just won’t do against the most prolific offense in the country. (AP)