This bus' next stop: doing good

Maybe you want to help others. Maybe you long to lend a hand. But you're not sure where and you're not sure how and you don't know who to call.

You could ask around. Or you could book a seat on the Do Good Bus.

You will pay $25. You will get a box lunch. You will put yourself in the hands of a stranger.

When the bus takes off, you will not know where you are going — only that when you get there, you will be put to work.

You find yourself on this weekday afternoon one of an eclectic group, gathered a little shyly on an East Hollywood curb.

There's a Yelp marketer, a grad student, an actor, a novelist, a Manhattan Beach mother with her son and daughter, who just got home from prep school and college.

You see a school bus pull up. You step on board. It feels nostalgic, like day camp or a field trip.

Rebecca Pontius welcomes you, wearing jeans and sneakers and a black fleece vest. She looks like the kind of person who would plunge her hands deep into dirt, who wouldn't be afraid of the worms, who could lead you boldly.

The bus takes off, and Pontius stands toward the front, sure-footed. She founded the Do Good Bus, she tells you, to 1) build awareness, 2) build community, 3) encourage continued engagement.

Oh, she says, and to 3a) have fun. Hence the element of mystery, the faux holly branches that decorate some of the rows of seats, the white felt reindeer antlers she's wearing on her head.

She smiles a wide, toothy smile that makes you automatically reciprocate.

So you go along when she asks you to play get-to-know-you games. Even though you're embarrassed, you don't object when she assigns you one of the 12 days of Christmas to sing and act out when it's your turn.

Everyone's singing and laughing as the bus fits-and-starts down the freeway.

Maids-a-milking, geese-a-laying, bus-a-exiting somewhere in South Los Angeles.

It stops outside a boxy blue building — the Challengers Boys and Girls Club — where, finally, Pontius tells you you'll be helping children in foster care build the bicycles that will be their Christmas gifts.

She did it last year, she says. It was great. And she's brought along some powder that turns into fake snow, which the kids will like.

You step inside a large gym, where nothing proceeds quite as expected.

It's the holiday season, so way too many volunteers have shown up. The singer Ne-Yo is coming to lead a toy giveaway. There's a whole roomful of presents the children can choose from, including pre-assembled bikes — which means no bikes will need to be built.

You stand and you sit and you wait. Then the kids come. You try to help where you can — making sure they get in the right lines, handing out raffle tickets.

You see their joy at getting gifts, which is nice. You're in a place you might not ordinarily be, which is interesting. And as the children head out, you offer them snow. You put the powder in their cupped hands. You add water. The white stuff grows and begins to look real. It's even cold.

It makes them go wide-eyed. It makes them laugh. And you feel such moments of simple happiness are something.

It's chilly as you wait to get back on the bus. You get in a group hug with your fellow bus riders, who seem like old friends.

On the trip back in the dark, Pontius plays Christmas music. She serves you eggnog in Mason jars.

And she says she's sorry your help wasn't more needed today.

She promises the January ride will be more hands-on.

Come or don't, she tells you. But whatever you do, find a way to do something.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers

Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers.

The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them.

After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition to keeping active in the computer graphics industry, she also created a wildly successful Etsy shop, where she sells 3-D printed cookie cutters based on nerd culture favorites Pokemon, Dr. Who and Super Mario Brothers.

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Crafters send mittens with a message to Newtown

“Chester Raccoon stood at the edge of the forest and cried. ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ he told his mother. ‘I want to stay home with you. I want to play with my friends. And play with my toys. And read my books. And swing on my swing. Please may I stay home with you?’” — “The Kissing Hand,” by Audrey Penn.

___

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagining the horror for Sandy Hook Elementary students when they walk into their new school for the first time, a Connecticut mom is relying on Chester of the children’s classic “The Kissing Hand” and the busy fingers of her fellow knitters to ease their way.

Kim Piscatelli of East Hampton, Conn., hit on the idea of sending a copy of the book for each of the kids and a pair of handmade mittens adorned with a heart in one palm, signifying the reassuring kiss left there by the mother of scared, sad Chester in the story written by Audrey Penn.

Piscatelli, a 40-minute drive from Newtown, sent out a call to her friends, who called on their friends. The project she thought up just Sunday spread quickly on Facebook and websites for knitters and crafters, with the first shipment of books and mittens scheduled to land in Newtown the first week of January.

“I thought, how are those families ever going to get back in a routine of sending their children to school? If there ever was a town that needed to know about that book, it was Newtown,” said an overwhelmed Piscatelli, who now has a warehouse stacked with 1,600 copies of the book and plenty of volunteers to sort, pack and ship.

Others are hurriedly making mittens, from California and Canada to Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands, in time for the start of classes in a once-shuttered school in nearby Monroe. A knitters’ group in Georgia pulled an all-night “knitathon” for the cause, Piscatelli said.

The book’s publisher, Tanglewood Press, has donated the books, along with enough copies of a sequel dealing with Chester’s loss of a playmate for teachers to read aloud.

In “The Kissing Hand,” the tearful boy is heading off to school for the first time, but he begs his mother to stay home. She spreads his tiny fingers and kisses him square in the palm and tells him “whenever you feel lonely and need a little loving from home, just press your hand to your cheek and think, ‘Mommy loves you.’”

The story was first published in 1993 by the Child Welfare League of America, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of agencies and organizations helping children at risk. Penn had tried and failed for years to get her story of Chester published, until a league official heard Penn read it and decided to take it on.

“At first, no bookstore, no wholesaler would carry it,” said Peggy Tierney, who worked at the league and took Penn with her after starting Tanglewood. “Then kindergarten teachers discovered it, word spread, people started going into stores trying to find copies, then everyone started carrying it, and by 1999 it was on the New York Times best-seller list.”

One of Piscatelli’s first stops in getting her mitten project off the ground was to contact Penn, who lives in Durham, N.C. She recalled reading the story to her own three kids when they were younger.

Penn, who lost a brother to drowning when she was 13, signed off on the combined book-mitten project as soon as Piscatelli contacted her.

“When I saw the news, my heart was just torn in half. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. Enough is enough is enough,” the writer said.

Penn’s 2009 sequel, called “Chester the Raccoon and the Acorn Full of Memories,” has Chester the boy raccoon working through the death of a friend, Skiddil Squirrel, who has an accident. Chester’s teacher tells his class Skiddil won’t return to school, so Chester and his mother venture to a butterfly pond where the squirrel loved to play to discover some acorns Skiddil left there have sprouted into young trees.

“I’ve been involved with so many parents who have lost children,” Penn said. “They just seem to reach out to me and say we love your book and your book has been a comfort.”

The writer hopes the children of Sandy Hook will “get a sense of some kind of security” from the mitten project. “They’ll have a way of keeping in tangible touch with someone at home, someone they feel very secure with.”

Meantime, Piscatelli and dozens of knitters who have contacted her through the project’s Facebook page are pressing on to get the books and mittens in the students’ hands. About 600 kids attended Sandy Hook when Lanza opened fire, but Piscatelli plans to share mittens and books with all the schoolchildren of Newtown.

“The original request was for hand-knit mittens with a heart knit in, embroidered on or sewn on,” she said. “The reality is we have people sewing polar fleece mittens, mittens made from recycled sweaters, store-bought mittens. Every pair of handmade or store-bought mittens will have a heart sewn on if it isn’t there when we receive them.”

Piscatelli has heard from other crafters who plan related Kissing Hand projects, including a group of schoolchildren in Mississippi making pillows.

“Everybody wants to help,” she said. “Everybody’s looking for some way to reach out.”

When a company called Oceanhouse Media learned of Piscatelli’s idea they released a digital version of “The Kissing Hand” early and free of cost in the iTunes app store. Piscatelli has also heard from the loved ones of grown-up volunteers on the ground in Newtown.

“I got a call from a woman who said my father is with the Red Cross,” Piscatelli said. “He’s a psychologist and is there now and I really think he needs a pair of Kissing Hand mittens.”

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at https://twitter.com/litalie

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated Press

The H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V.

Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to reduce medical costs and stop the spread of the virus, which causes AIDS.

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of a group of inmates who argued in a class-action lawsuit that they had been stigmatized and denied equal access to educational programs. The judge called the state’s policy “an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of H.I.V.” but “an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease.”

After the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, many states, including New York, quarantined H.I.V.-positive prisoners to prevent the virus from spreading through sexual contact or through blood when inmates tattooed one another. But most states ended the practice voluntarily as powerful antiretroviral drugs reduced the risk of transmission.

In Alabama, inmates are tested for H.I.V. when they enter prison. About 250 of the state’s 26,400 inmates have tested positive. They are housed in special dormitories at two prisons: one for men and one for women. No inmates have developed AIDS, the state says.

H.I.V.-positive inmates are treated differently from those with other viruses like hepatitis B and C, which are far more infectious, according to the World Health Organization. Inmates with H.I.V. are barred from eating in the cafeteria, working around food, enrolling in certain educational programs or transferring to prisons near their families.

Prisoners have been trying to overturn the policy for more than two decades. In 1995, a federal court upheld Alabama’s policy. Inmates filed the latest lawsuit last year.

“Today’s decision is historic,” said Margaret Winter, the associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the inmates. “It spells an end to a segregation policy that has inflicted needless misery on Alabama prisoners with H.I.V. and their families.”

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state is “not prejudiced against H.I.V.-positive inmates” and has “worked hard over the years to improve their health care, living conditions and their activities.”

“We will continue our review of the court’s opinion and determine our next course of action in a timely manner,” he wrote.

During a monthlong trial in September, lawyers for the department argued that the policy improved the treatment of H.I.V.-positive inmates. Fewer doctors are needed if specialists in H.I.V. focus on 2 of the 29 state’s prisons.

The state spends an average of $22,000 per year on treating individual H.I.V.-positive inmates. The total is more than the cost of medicine for all other inmates, said Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the Corrections Department.

South Carolina has also faced legal scrutiny. In 2010, the Justice Department notified the state that it was investigating the policy and might sue to overturn it.

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Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Kevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying through on plans to leave.

Eric Piermont/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, said the company would complete its plans, then explain its ad policy.

Ryan Cox, a 29-year-old management consultant at ExactTarget, an Indianapolis-based interactive marketing software company, said he had already moved his photos to Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing app, where he could have better control.

Mr. Cox said the uproar this week over whether Instagram owned its users’ photos was “a wake-up call.”

“It’s my fault,” he continued. “I’m smart enough to know what Instagram had and what they could do — especially the minute Facebook acquired them — but I was a victim of naïve optimism.”

“Naïve optimism” is as good a term as any for the emotion that people feel as they put their private lives onto social networks.

Companies like Google, Twitter, Yelp and Facebook offer themselves as free services for users to store and share their most intimate pictures, secrets, messages and memories. But to flourish over the long term, they need to seek new ways to market the personal data they accumulate. They must constantly push the envelope, hoping users either do not notice or do not care.

So they sell ads against the content of an e-mail, as Google does, or transform a user’s likes into commercial endorsements, as Facebook does, or sell photographs of your adorable 3-year-old, which is what Instagram was accused of planning this week.

“The reality is that companies have always had to make money,” said Miriam H. Wugmeister, chair of Morrison Foerster’s privacy and data security group.

Even as Instagram was pulling back on its changed terms of service on Thursday night, it made clear it was only regrouping. After all, Facebook, as a publicly held corporation, must answer to Wall Street’s quarterly expectations.

“We are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work,” Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s youthful co-founder, wrote on the company’s blog.

Instagram’s actions angered many users who were already incensed over the company’s decision earlier this month to cut off its integration with Twitter, a Facebook rival, making it harder for its users to share their Instagram photos on Twitter.

Users were apprehensive that the new terms of service meant that data on their favorite things would be shared with Facebook and its advertisers. Users also worried that their photos would become advertising.

Instagram is barely two years old but has 100 million users. Last spring, Facebook announced plans to buy it in a deal that was initially valued at $1 billion. The deal was closed in September for a somewhat smaller amount.

For some users, Mr. Systrom’s apology and declaration that “Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did” was sufficient.

National Geographic, which suspended its account in the middle of the uproar, held a conference call with members of Facebook’s legal and policy teams. Afterward, the magazine, which has 658,000 Instagram followers, said it would resurrect its account.

Also mollified was Noah Kalina, who took wedding photographs earlier this year for Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. In a widely circulated post on Twitter, Mr. Kalina said the new terms of service were “a contract no professional or nonprofessional should ever sign.” His advice: “Walk away.”

On Friday, the photographer said he had walked back. “It’s nice to know they listened.”

Kim Kardashian, the most followed person on Instagram, said on Tuesday that she “really loved” the service — note the past tense — and that the new rules were not “fair.” She had yet to update her 17 million Twitter followers on Friday, but since she is pushing her True Reflection fragrance it is a safe bet that she has forgiven and forgotten.

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Boehner's 'fiscal cliff' plan fails

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly canceled a vote on his Plan B tax proposal late Thursday after failing to find enough GOP support, a stunning political defeat that effectively turned resolution of the year-end budget crisis over to President Obama and the Democrats.

The speaker had spent the last few weeks negotiating one-on-one with the president, establishing himself as the second-most powerful figure in Washington. But with his strategy imploding, Boehner conceded that he would play a lesser role.

"Now it is up to the president," he said, to work with a fellow Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "to avert the fiscal cliff."

The proposal the speaker had hoped to bring to a vote would have prevented a year-end tax increase for all but those earning more than $1 million a year.

But the Ohio Republican said in a statement, "It did not have sufficient support from our members to pass."

The unexpected turn of events caused an immediate reaction on Wall Street, where after-hours investors began to yank money out of U.S. stocks. Futures that track the Standard & Poor's 500 fell 1.5%, and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 1.6%.

Now, Obama faces a crucial test of his leadership, with little time left to craft a deal.

Obama's most recent offer is likely to be the starting point. He made a substantial concession: raising taxes only on household income above $400,000, rather than the $250,000 threshold he campaigned on for reelection.

As he pursues votes in Congress, the president will need to face down Democrats, particularly the liberal wing that may feel emboldened to demand that a deal be tilted toward their views — perhaps with additional spending on infrastructure or unemployment benefits.

Any compromise will need substantial Democratic support. Although the president needs the speaker to allow legislation to come to a vote in the GOP-controlled House, Boehner emerges in a weakened position and has little leverage to demand further concessions. His Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will need to decide whether to become a final line of defense against Obama or step aside for a Democratic-led plan.

"The president's main priority is to ensure that taxes don't go up on 98% of Americans and 97% of small businesses in just a few short days," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said after Boehner canceled the vote. "The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly."

Without a compromise, most Americans will see their taxes automatically rise and spending cuts ripple across the economy in the new year. The White House and the speaker had been closing in on a broad deficit-reduction deal to steer around the coming "fiscal cliff," but Boehner suddenly changed course this week to gauge the sentiment of House Republicans.

The support expressed by top Republicans for new taxes has cracked the party's anti-tax orthodoxy and opened the door to a compromise that would have been unthinkable before the November election.

Mindful that his own job as speaker comes up for a vote in two weeks, Boehner must make a difficult choice: whether to allow a plan to come to the House floor without support from his majority, or play a key role in sending the nation over the fiscal cliff and raising taxes on most Americans.

As the speaker and his lieutenants trolled for votes earlier Thursday, buttonholing lawmakers in scenes like those in the movie "Lincoln," Carney dismissed Boehner's Plan B as a "multi-day exercise in futility."

"Instead of taking the opportunity that was presented to them to continue to negotiate what could be a very helpful large deal for the American people, the Republicans in the House have decided to run down an alley that has no exit," he said.

Late in the evening, as the time for voting neared, the House took an unscheduled recess — a sign that the tally had come up short. With Democrats almost unanimously against the bill, Boehner could afford to lose only two dozen Republican defectors.

The speaker and his top lieutenants then convened a late-night meeting of rank-and-file lawmakers and announced they were pulling the bill.

"We don't have the votes," the speaker said, according to a lawmaker in the room.

Conservatives split over Plan B, complicating Boehner's quest. He received a major assist when anti-tax stalwart Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform declared that the bill was a vote for lower taxes and did not violate the pledge most Republicans had signed not to raise taxes. But other leading conservative groups opposed it, including FreedomWorks, which is extremely influential with tea party supporters.

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Hard to Handle

The 2013 Mustang Shelby GT500 is many things: imposing, populist, expensive. It’s also the last car Carroll Shelby had a hand in building. And true to the legacy of the legendary racer and auto designer who helped define the modern sports car, the GT500 is a Mustang with more power than any sane individual needs.

Its 5.8-liter supercharged V8 puts out a massive manufacturer-claimed 662 horsepower and 631 pound-feet of torque. But as a couple independent dyno tests have proven, the torque is probably understated. Minutes after firing the Shelby up, I pulled onto the highway and, with the traction control on, I opened the throttle with moderate aggression. The tires spun in first gear, then again in second and third — the third time, at near triple digits.

Lesson one: this thing has wacky power.

Lesson one: This thing has wacky power. Lesson two: Make sure the Goodyear Eagle F1s are nice and warm before getting happy with the accelerator. In four days of driving the GT500 on the street, from highway blasts to back-road bombing runs, the car proved itself to be reliably grin-inducing. But the big Shelby never lets you forget that it always has more power than traction, and driving it well is an exercise in throttle management. Line up at the stop light next to any “fast car” you care to name, and you’ll laugh at the ease with which you blow its doors off. But just as often, you’ll be embarrassed by the fact that you went up in a cloud of smoke, unable to hook up all that torque.

Even if it’s a little too much for you to control, you’ll still be able to admire its looks. “Tough” is the adjective onlookers most often use when describing it, and the combination of the “Deep Impact Blue” paint job, the white racing stripe and the black wheels on the GT500 I steered is both handsome and assertive. Large Cobra badges grace the front quarter-panels, front intake and rear fascia, reminding everyone that this is no mere Mustang GT. The hood’s power bulge, wheel arches, rear spoiler and bisected front intakes (there is no grille) shout strength.

The muscle contained in the engine bay is ungodly. The 5.8-liter V8 has a supercharger that alone has a capacity of 2.3 liters, which is more displacement than early ’80s four-cylinder Mustangs. Torque is everywhere, with 395 pound-feet available just off idle at 1,000 rpm. Between 2,200 and 5,800, 95 percent of the 631 pound-feet is available. It all gets channeled to the Eagle F1s via a six-speed Tremec T6060 manual and limited slip differential with a carbon fiber driveshaft in between. The SVT Performance Package that equipped our test car included staggered 19-inch front and 20-inch rear wheels of forged aluminum, Bilstein adjustable dampers, higher rate rear springs and a special instrument cluster and gear shift knob.

The instrument cluster includes a digital display between the speedometer and tach which not only shows the current calculated fuel efficiency (I saw about 14 mpg average) and gauge readings (including inlet and cylinder head temps), but a cool “track apps” summary with suspension and steering settings, launch control and traction control info. Supportive, comfortable Recaro bucket seats with shoulder-belt pass-throughs and racing stripe inserts keep the driver and passenger glued down.

Otherwise, the cockpit is straight-forward Mustang, including the Shaker audio system. Ford’s Sync Bluetooth is there, but no navigation or social media displays distract you.

If you’re a Mustang fan, you likely know the numbers by now, but repeating them for anyone who asks is half the fun of owning the 2013 GT500. It achieves 60 mph in approximately 3.5 seconds. The quarter-mile mark passes in 11.6 seconds at 125.7 mph, and the Shelby will do a legit 200 mph when pushed. Big 15-inch front discs and 12-inch rear discs with six-piston Brembo calipers stop the beast quickly too, halting it from 60 mph in about 102 feet.

That’s a lot of performance. That said, a driver of some ability can keep up on back roads in a car with half the horsepower. It’s not just that a public road prevents you from unleashing all the Shelby’s fury. Rather, as assiduously as Ford has worked to tame the GT500′s live-axle, Panhard-bar rear end, it still saps confidence by skittering over mid-corner bumps with the power on and exhibiting a tendency to axle hop under hard braking. Track testing has shown those brakes fade quickly, and you sense the fade on the street as well.

Thus, keeping the GT500 between the lines at speed requires concentration and quick hands. You do get electronic help. There’s adjustable effort steering on tap, as well as cockpit–adjustable suspension settings which sharpen the Shelby’s responses somewhat. On the other hand, it’s fun knowing that driving this Mustang must feel pretty much what driving a NASCAR Nationwide Series car is like. The exhaust soundtrack is appropriate, too — it sounds like a rolling kettle drum.

If you prefer the straighter lines of drag racing, the Shelby’s launch control, which allows you to set your launch rpm, is a truly useful electronic tool. Engage the control, put her in first, floor the throttle and let the clutch out. The Advance Trac stability system and traction control limit wheel-spin as you fly off the line. Don’t forget to upshift!

Advance Trac is useful in keeping you on the path while on the street, too — particularly on cold tires. The flip-side is that it works the brakes so hard you can quickly overheat them.

And that, as I mentioned, is key. Don’t get overheated with the Shelby or it might bite you. Respect the power and you’ll have a ball.

WIRED Tugboat-level power gives you acceleration wherever you want it. Surprisingly balanced chassis and steering with crisp turn-in work. Looks like a total bully. A 200 mph Mustang.

TIRED Give it a little too much throttle with cold tires and you’ll be going up in smoke like Cheech and Chong. Enough vertical suspension movement to classify as “head-toss.” A $63,000 Mustang.

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Martha Raddatz, Hot Off Debate Performance, Promoted at ABC News

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Martha Raddatz, widely praised for her moderation of the vice presidential debate in October, has been given an expanded role as ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent. Jonathan Karl, meanwhile, will become the network’s new chief White House correspondent, filling the void left by Jake Tapper‘s exit to CNN.

Raddatz will replace Tapper as the primary substitute for George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” and will contribute regularly to the Sunday morning show’s roundtable. Karl will also serve as a substitute and regularly appear on the roundtable.

Tapper departed ABC in part because he has long been interested in hosting “This Week” full-time, but Stephanopoulos has no plans to give up the hosting job, a person familiar with the situation told TheWrap.

ABC News President Ben Sherwood announced the new assignments for Raddatz and Karl on Thursday, soon after CNN announced Tapper’s hiring.

Karl has investigated wasteful federal spending, covered elections, and served as the network’s senior national security correspondent.

Raddatz has reported from the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and from conflict zones worldwide, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

But she has been perhaps most celebrated for keeping the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan on course after the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer, was accused of letting the candidates run amok.

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Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that would allow taxes to rise on the most affluent households in the country.

House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the bill after they failed to rally enough votes for passage in an emergency meeting about 8 p.m. Within minutes, dejected Republicans filed out of the basement meeting room and declared there would be no votes to avert the “fiscal cliff” until after Christmas. With his “Plan B” all but dead, the speaker was left with the choice to find a new Republican way forward or to try to get a broad deficit reduction deal with President Obama that could win passage with Republican and Democratic votes.

What he could not do was blame Democrats for failing to take up legislation he could not even get through his own membership in the House.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement that said responsibility for a solution now fell to the White House and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.”

The stunning turn of events in the House left the status of negotiations to head off a combination of automatic tax increases and significant federal spending cuts in disarray with little time before the start of the new year.

At the White House, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said the defeat should press Mr. Boehner back into talks with Mr. Obama.

“The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy,” he said.

The refusal of a band of House Republicans to allow income tax rates to rise on incomes over $1 million came after Mr. Obama scored a decisive re-election victory campaigning for higher taxes on incomes over $250,000. Since the November election, the president’s approval ratings have risen, and opinion polls have shown a strong majority not only favoring his tax position, but saying they will blame Republicans for a failure to reach a deficit deal.

With a series of votes on Thursday, the speaker, who faces election for his post in the new Congress next month, had hoped to assemble a Republican path away from the cliff. With a show of Republican unity, he also sought to strengthen his own hand in negotiations with Mr. Obama. The House did narrowly pass legislation to cancel automatic, across-the-board military cuts set to begin next month, and shift them to domestic programs.

But the main component of “Plan B,” a bill to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for everyone with incomes under $1 million, could not win enough Republican support to overcome united Democratic opposition. Democrats questioned Mr. Boehner’s ability to deliver any agreement.

“I think this demonstrates that Speaker Boehner has a real challenge,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat. “He hasn’t been able to cut any deal, make any agreement that’s balanced. Even if it’s his own compromise.”

Representative Rick Larsen of Washington accused Republicans of shirking their responsibility by leaving the capital. “The Republicans just picked up their toys and went home,” he said.

Futures contracts on indexes of United States stock listings and shares in Asia fell sharply after Mr. Boehner conceded that his bill lacked the votes to pass.

The point of the Boehner effort was to secure passage of a Republican plan, then demand that the president and the Senate to take up that measure and pass it, putting off the major fights until early next year when Republicans would conceivably have more leverage because of the need to increase the federal debt limit. It would also allow Republicans to claim it was Democrats who had caused taxes to rise after the first of the year had no agreement been reached.

That strategy lay in tatters after the Republican implosion.“Some people don’t know how to take yea for an answer,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a Republican who supported the measure and was open about his disappointment with his colleagues.

Opponents said they were not about to bend their uncompromising principles on taxes just because Mr. Boehner asked.

“The speaker should be meeting with us to get our views on things rather than just presenting his,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, who recently lost a committee post for routinely crossing the leadership.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.

The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world — which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21.

The myth might have originated with the Maya calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.

Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed — from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.

"Who's the first agency you would call?" he said. "You're going to call NASA."

The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have "embraced it so much" they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do "everything in our power" to set the facts straight.

That effort included interviews with scientists posted online and a Web page that Brown said has drawn more than 4.6 million views.

It also involved a video titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday." Though the title of the video implies a Dec. 22 release date, Brown said NASA posted the four-minute clip last week to help spread its message.

The website addresses several scenarios — the possibility of planetary alignments, total blackouts, polar shifts and "a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction" — but comes to the same conclusion.

In short, NASA says, "the world will not end in 2012."

"Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," the website says.

The Griffith Observatory will also be trying to debunk doomsday predictions. It announced plans to stay open late Friday evening — until one minute past midnight — to "demonstrate that claims regarding the Maya calendar, planetary alignments, rogue planets, galactic beams, and other related phenomena have no basis in fact."

A few years ago, NASA suspected that it might have to create such a campaign when the idea of the world ending began "festering," Brown said. The apocalyptic action movie "2012," released in 2009, didn't help, he said.

"We kind of look ahead — we're a look-ahead agency — and we said, 'You know what? People are going to probably want to come to us' " for answers, Brown explained. "We're doing all that we can do to let the world know that as far as NASA and science goes, Dec. 21 will be another day."

As for Saturday, when the questions — not the world — end: "I wish it was tomorrow."

kate.mather@latimes.com

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This Is How You Craft 16,000 Candy Canes in a Day

It might not be Christmas every day at Kencraft Candy, but it smells like it. At the height of the season, the Utah sweets factory churns out 16,000 candy canes per day. Click through the image gallery above to see how they do it.

Cook

Sixty pounds of corn syrup, 70 pounds of sugar, and 1.5 gallons of water (above) are loaded into a vacuum cooker and simmered at 272 degrees for 20 minutes. Then cooks fold in flavors like peppermint, cranberry, or hot chocolate. They have to work fast because the mix stiffens as it cools.

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Why “Les Misérables” Looks Like a Holiday Box-Office Smash

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Moviegoers are storming online ticketing sites in advance of the Christmas release of “Les Misérables,” and the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical has all the makings of a holiday smash.

With a cast that includes Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman, expectations are enormous, but based on advance tracking, so is the box-office potential.

The film, made for a reported $ 61 million, is poised to gross as much as $ 26 million over its opening weekend, according to BoxOffice.com.

The site predicts that the movie should pick up multiple Oscar nominations and that awards attention combined with a rabid fan base of musical theater lovers will have it beguiling moviegoers well into the new year.

Ultimately, it estimates that “Les Misérables” will rack up as much as $ 136 million at the domestic box office.

It’s well on its way. Early ticket sales at Fandango indicate that “Les Misérables” has the potential to be this holiday’s breakout smash, despite stiff competition from the likes of Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” both of which open over the next seven days.

Fandango also reports that the film has smashed records to become the company’s top advance-ticket seller among all Christmas Day releases, surpassing its previous record-holder, 2009′s “Sherlock Holmes”

It is also the largest advance-ticket seller among movie musicals in its history, supplanting 2006′s “Dreamgirls.” By mid-day Wednesday, “Les Misérables” was outpacing all other films, even current releases like “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” and was responsible for 40 percent of ticket sales at Fandango.

“There’s such a history and good will surrounding the stage musical and this is a film version people have been anticipating for such a long time, that it has turned into the movie event of the holiday season,” Dave Karger, Fandango’s chief correspondent, told TheWrap.

“We’re bullish on it,” added Phil Contrino, editor of BoxOffice.com. “Based on all the early reviews, this sounds like a crowd-pleaser. When a musical hits, it becomes a beast at the box office.”

He noted that “Mamma Mia!,” which arrived with less awards pedigree and was derived from a more dimly known stage show, grossed $ 609.8 million globally, because audiences loved the music.

Movietickets.com did not release any pre-sales information for holiday releases. However, recent surveys it performed of more than 4,000 customers indicate that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the musical.

Of the major holiday releases, 52 percent of those polled said they were most excited to see “Les Misérables.” That was followed by 24 percent for “Django Unchained,” 16.5 percent for “Jack Reacher” and 7.5 percent for “The Guilt Trip.”

To be sure, not all of the “Les Misérables” reviews have been kind. In TheWrap, Alonso Duralde faulted the wobbly vocal talents of the leads and the director’s penchant for close-ups of his emoting stars.

“Director Tom Hooper (‘The King’s Speech’) piles one terrible decision upon another, with the result being a movie so overbearingly maudlin and distorted that it’s one of 2012′s most excruciating film experiences,” Duralde wrote.

Yet, audiences at screenings have been nearly rapturous in their response. Fandango’s Karger notes that at a recent screening for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that he attended, the crowd broke into applause at four different points during the film and gave Jackman and Hooper lusty ovations.

Given that “Les Misérables” tackles such topics as revolution, poverty and prostitution it seems like dark fare for the season, but Karger argues that the film provides enough uplift to appeal to moviegoers looking to get into the yuletide spirit.

“There are scenes of such intense suffering and despair in the movie, but at the end you are left with a profound feeling of love and that gives it a holiday feel,” Karger said. “It’s a slog through the mud to get there, but when the movie’s over you leave the theater with a wonderful sense of hope.”

If Karger is right then Universal, which is distributing “Les Misérables,” will be feeling very festive when Christmas rolls around next week.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jury awards $6.9 million to boy molested by L.A. Unified teacher

A jury has awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested by a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher when he was a fifth-grade student.

The judgment, among the largest ever awarded in a district molestation case, comes at a time when L.A. Unified faces close to 200 pending molestation and lewd conduct claims arising from another teacher's alleged conduct at Miramonte Elementary School.

Tuesday's jury award stems from acts committed by Forrest Stobbe, a veteran teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area. In September 2011, Stobbe pleaded no contest to two counts of a lewd act on a child and to continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 14. He is currently serving a 16-year sentence in prison.

The case turned on how much responsibility the school system bore, and whether district employees should have recognized warning signs that Stobbe posed a threat to the boy. Attorneys for the school system insisted that district staff acted in a professional and appropriate manner and could not have known what Stobbe was doing.

Stobbe molested the boy beginning in October 2008, when the 10-year-old was his student, and continued to abuse him through the following July, when he was arrested.

Early in the school year, Stobbe befriended the boy, earning his trust, then began to molest him in his classroom in episodes that became more brazen and invasive. He also gave the boy numerous gifts.

Stobbe also ingratiated himself with the victim's family, buying the boy season passes to amusement parks, where he would take the boy, then molest him before dropping him off at home.

The family appreciated the teacher's interest so much that the boy's father asked his son if Stobbe should become his godfather. It was then that the boy told his father of the abuse, the father testified.

The evidence against Stobbe included a jar of petroleum jelly in his school desk that tested positive for the boy's DNA. The boy told police that Stobbe used the jelly as a lubricant for sex acts.

The plaintiffs argued that there were abundant warning signs that should have alerted Stobbe's supervisors.

More than two years before his arrest, Stobbe was observed alone with a girl in his car. He allegedly told the principal that he had parental permission to give the student a ride, but that was never verified. He also had private lunches with students in his classroom, which was against school rules.

In another incident, an angry student pushed Stobbe down a flight of stairs, injuring the teacher. The student later declined to talk to police, who consider him another possible victim.

In November 2008, a girl in Stobbe's class complained that the teacher was making her feel uncomfortable. Stobbe, she said, was stroking her hair, putting it into a ponytail and had once touched her buttocks.

Principal Mary Ann Hall testified that she called the police department, which advised her to handle the matter on her own — a claim the Los Angeles Police Department disputes. If police had been alerted to allegations of such contact, the department would have launched an investigation, said Det. Moses Castillo, who supervised the investigation after Stobbe's arrest.

Hall, who has since retired, testified that she properly notified her supervisors. Attorneys for the family asserted that Hall either failed to do so, or that her supervisors failed to act on the information.

In the end, the panel of six men and six women found that L.A. Unified was 30% responsible for total damages, which they calculated at $23 million. The other 70% of the liability was assigned to Forrest Stobbe, but attorneys said they had no plans to collect from the imprisoned former educator.

Responding to the verdict, a district spokesman emphasized the district's commitment to the safety of children.

"We take our duty to protect our students seriously and are continually looking for ways that we can strengthen our screening and reporting processes to ensure that no child is ever hurt in this way," general counsel David Holmquist said. "Although we can't change what happened in this case, we remain committed to doing everything in our power to promote healing and improve trust with those impacted."

Issues in the Stobbe case — alleged lack of oversight, missed warning signs — could come into play with the Miramonte cases.

There, parents questioned teacher Mark Berndt's propensity for taking pictures of students, an issue that administrators did not pursue. Photos later emerged of blindfolded students allegedly being spoon-fed Berndt's semen, among other alleged wrongdoings.

Berndt has pleaded not guilty to 23 counts of lewd conduct.

Damage claims — the precursor to a lawsuit — have been filed by 126 students and 63 parents. There are also six lawsuits on behalf of 37 students and one involving 11 parents.

"Some of the same issues in the Miramonte case are highlighted here," said attorney Don Beck of the San Diego firm Estey & Bomberger, which represented the family of the victim in the Stobbe case. "The same lack of monitoring teachers, the same lack of supervision that allowed these events to happen."

howard.blume@latimes.com

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The 15 Most Dangerous People in the World

There used to be an established order to the world. A structure to things. You couldn't print a gun like a term paper. It was impossible to wreck a nuclear production plant with a few lines of code. Flying robots didn't descend on you in the dead of night and kill you in your home.

But that order has been upended. Cheap videos in California help spark riots in Cairo. Lynchpins of the Middle East now rant about 'Planet of the Apes' in public, and Iranian generals trash-talk David Petraeus over SMS. The world has gone a little haywire — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Here are our choices for the 15 people most responsible for making it that way.

Who did we miss? What did we get wrong? Sound off in the comments, or find us on Twitter or Facebook.

— Noah Shachtman

Above:

One day you're pitching a biography of a top general. The next you've brought down a CIA director, stalled the career of another top general and ensnared numerous federal agencies — and yourself — in a sprawling investigation-cum-media circus. Paula Broadwell didn't mean to wreck any careers, but she accomplished something that no U.S. adversary could: remove David Petraeus from the U.S. government.

Broadwell, a former Army intelligence officer, developed an unhealthy attraction to Petraeus. What started out as spinning for Petraeus' Afghanistan strategy and a florid book became a full-blown affair once Petraeus became director of the CIA. All that would have stayed between the two lovers — had Broadwell not used an anonymous e-mail account to berate Jill Kelley, a Tampa socialite whom Broadwell considered unduly flirtatious with the military brass. Kelley turned to an FBI agent she knew, Frederick W. Humphries II, to open a cyber-stalking investigation.

The feds don't usually pursue cyber-stalking cases. And this one ended without any charges filed against Broadwell — but not before uncovering poor data hygiene from Broadwell's famous paramour. Petraeus and Broadwell shared a password on an e-mail account and would pass messages to each other by saving e-mails as drafts. What's more, Broadwell got into the habit of talking openly about sensitive CIA operations, like its response to the September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. It's unclear whether there will be any charges filed against either Broadwell or Petraeus over classified material discovered on Broadwell's computer.

Petraeus, the most celebrated general of his generation, resigned in humiliation. The FBI inquiry also turned up what the Pentagon called "flirtatious" e-mails between Gen. John Allen, the outgoing Afghanistan war commander, and Kelley, which has now blocked Allen's promotion to NATO commander. What's more, the coming reshuffle in President Obama's national security team has reopened a debate into whether the CIA should back away from Petraeus' torrid pace of drone strikes. Next time a cabinet official sleeps around, he'd better make sure his mistress keeps the affair offline.

— Spencer Ackerman

Photo: AP/Nell Redmond

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“Castle” star Nathan Fillion to preside over Writers Guild Awards show

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Pretend writer Nathan Fillion will help honor real writers on February 17, when he hosts the Writers Guild Awards West Coast show, the Writers Guild of America, West said Monday.

Fillion, who plays a mystery novelist on ABC’s “Castle,” joked that he was “confused” when he was tapped for the hosting gig.

“When I first accepted the honor of hosting the Writers Guild Awards, I was confused and actually thought I was receiving one. Since I play a writer on TV, I felt perhaps someone was under the impression I deserved an award and I wasn’t about to correct them,” Fillion said. “However, now I’m in the perfect position to present myself with whichever award I choose. Who’s going to know?”

The Writers Guild Awards West Coast show will take place February 17, 2013 at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. Live. The East Coast show will take place simultaneously at B.B. King Blues Club in New York City.

Writers Guild Awards executive producer Cort Casady praised Fillion’s multiple talents – along with his thriving Twitter account – in the announcement.

“Not only does he play a writer brilliantly on ‘Castle,’ but also, in addition to acting, he sings, dances, is a popular voice talent, and has a great gift for comedy,” Casady said. “And with over 1.5 million Twitter followers, Nathan brings a smart, enthusiastic audience to our celebration of writing.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability.

For people who care about and interact with older people, the message is clear: your attitude counts because it can activate or potentially modify these deeply held age stereotypes.

The researcher who has done more than anyone else to advance our understanding of this is Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University.

In the mid-1990s, she began a series of experiments with older people in laboratory settings. The idea was to expose them subliminally to negative or positive stereotypes by flashing words associated with aging on a computer screen too fast for them to process consciously. Then these seniors were asked to perform a task.

Those exposed to negative words such as “decrepit” had poorer handwriting, slower walking speeds, higher levels of cardiovascular stress and a greater willingness to reject hypothetical medical interventions that could prolong their lives. Those primed with positive words such as “wisdom” did much better.

The experiments involved external stimuli, however, and Dr. Levy was interested in peoples’ subjective experience of older age. For that, she turned to a database of adults age 50 and older in Oxford, Ohio, who were followed for a period of 23 years, from 1975 to 1998.

Many had filled out questionnaires at the start of the study designed to elicit stereotypes about aging. This involved soliciting a “yes” or “no” answer to a series of statements like “things keep getting worse as I get older,” or “as you get older, you get less useful.”

When Dr. Levy looked at 660 participants, she found that those with positive age stereotypes lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes. The research was published in The Journal of Personal and Social Psychology in 2002.

What might account for this finding? In her paper, Dr. Levy speculated that people with positive age stereotypes have a stronger will to live, and that this might affect their ability to adapt to the rigors of older age. Also, people with negative age stereotypes may have a heightened cardiovascular response to stress, with attendant ill health effects.

In other research using this data set, Dr. Levy established that people with positive age stereotypes were more likely to eat a balanced diet, exercise, limit their alcohol consumption, stop smoking and get regular physical exams, and that they had a higher level of physical functioning over time. Results were controlled for other factors like illness, gender, race and socioeconomic status.

In these papers, Dr. Levy hypothesized that positive age stereotypes are associated with a greater sense of control and that this enhanced seniors’ sense of self efficacy — their ability to remain captains of their own ship, as it were.

Her new findings about the impact of age stereotypes on older adults’ recovery from disability is an extension of this body of work. In this case, Dr. Levy and her co-authors followed 598 adults age 70 and older in New Haven, Conn., from 1998 to 2008. Disability was defined as needing help with basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing and walking, and its onset was typically precipitated by an illness or injury.

Again, seniors with positive age stereotypes were much more likely to have good results and recover fully.

Dr. Marie Bernard, a geriatrician who serves as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, said she found the report “quite intriguing” and that it confirmed her clinical observations in more than 30 years of medical practice. But she cautioned that it is a small study that needs to be replicated.

“What we really need to understand is the mechanism,” she said. “Is it something that is malleable and, if so, could we help people live longer, healthier lives?”

Researchers don’t have an answer to that yet. But many believe that part of the answer has to lie in tackling ageism – which is pervasive in our youth-oriented culture — early on, from earliest childhood.

“Even young kids have negative associations; they tell you that older adults are sick, slow, forgetful, no good,” said Dana Kotter-Gruehn, a visiting assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

Also generations need to be brought together so that “people can experience what it means to be an older person” and stereotypes can be dispelled, Dr. Kotter-Gruehn said. This has been shown to help change people’s stereotypes about race and homosexuality, she noted.

Closer to home, all of us who interact with older people can “think about how to reinforce the more positive aspects of aging,” Dr. Levy said.

“If all of us became a little more aware of the implications of our communications” — the tone of voice we use with seniors, the attitude we adopt, the use of loaded phrases or expressions, the extent to which we give older adults our full, undivided attention — “that would help quite a lot.”

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

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Mahout, There It Is! Open Source Algorithms Remake Overstock.com

SALT LAKE CITY — Judd Bagley set out to build a web app that would serve up a never-ending stream of news stories tailored to your particular tastes. And he did. It’s called MyCurrent. But in creating this clever little app, Bagley also pushed online retailer Overstock.com away from the $2-million-a-year service it was using to generate product recommendations for web shoppers, and onto a system that did the same thing for free — and did it better.

Bagley is a software developer with Overstock’s fledgling O Labs, a mini-research-and-development operation tucked into the fifth floor of the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters, just outside the office of CEO Patrick Byrne. O Labs was founded to incubate projects that can push the company in new directions, and MyCurrent was the first of the lot. A personal news reader may seem like an odd thing to emerge from an online retailer, but that’s largely the point. And in the end, the project pumped new life into the company’s primary retail operation.

In building MyCurrent, Bagley and his O Labs cohorts stumbled onto an open source software project known as Mahout. Founded in 2009, Mahout provides the world with a set of freely available machine learning algorithms — algorithms that give computing systems at least a modicum of artificial intelligence, letting them adjust their behavior according to what’s happened in the past. Inside O Labs, the idea was to use Mahout as a means of examining the news stories you’ve enjoyed in the past and then selecting stories you’re likely to enjoy, well, right now.

‘We’re saving $2 million a year with Mahout, and that never would have happened if not for the sort of experimental stuff we’re doing in the labs We’re discovering things that can then have benefit across the company.’

— Judd Bagley

Mahout worked well — so well that Overstock decided it could be used to generate the product recommendations for users on its main website. The company was using a commercial recommendation system from a company called Rich Relevance, but a few months ago, says Saum Noursalehi, who oversees O Labs, it replaced this system with an engine based on Mahout and a sister platform known as Hadoop, a hugely popular open source system that uses a sea of ordinary computer servers to process massive amounts of data.

The tale highlights the benefit of a blue-sky R&D operation. Overstock was founded in 1997 and went public in 2004, and Byrne — the company’s swashbuckling chief exec — created O Labs about a year ago to feed a bit more of the entrepreneurial ethos back into the company. “We’re saving $2 million a year with Mahout, and that never would have happened if not for the sort of experimental stuff we’re doing in the labs,” says Bagley. “We’re discovering things that can then have benefit across the company.”

But it also shows how Hadoop and related open source tools continue to evolve and push even further across the web and into businesses. Mahout — which was specifically built for use with Hadoop — is little more than 3 years old, and it has already attracted the attention of several big-name web operations, including not only Overstock, but AOL, Foursquare, Yahoo, Twitter, and even Amazon.

Originally bootstrapped by Yahoo and Facebook, Hadoop mimics two sweeping software platforms that Google built to underpin its search engine. It’s widely used across the web, and now it’s pushing into other businesses as well, thanks in part of Hadoop-minded software startups such as Cloudera and MapR. It can be used to analyze data, but it can also crunch massive amounts of data for use in live applications — such as the Overstock recommendations service.

Hadoop has also spawned a wide range of sister projects, including Hbase, a database for storing particularly large amounts of information; Hive, a means of querying data crunched by Hadoop; Zookeeper, a means of synchronizing Hadoop and other platforms across a large cluster of servers; and, yes, Mahout, one of the newer projects. Hadoop is named after a yellow stuffed elephant that belonged to the son of the project’s founder, Doug Cutting, and the Mahout moniker plays off this bit of trivia. In India, a mahout is someone who rides an elephant.

According to Ted Dunning — a MapR engineer who works on the Mahout project — the project has been adopted by “dozens” of sites to help drive user recommendations, including Amazon, one of the companies that pioneered such recommendations more than a decade ago. It’s unclear how Amazon is using Mahout, but according to a job listing on LinkedIn, it has been used by the team that oversees Amazon’s “Personalization Platform” — i.e., the software platform used to personalize content across the site.

But Dunning is quick to point out that Mahout is still a young project. And it’s important to realize that it is merely a library of algorithms — something you use to build larger applications. “It’s not a product. It’s not a package. It’s not a service,” he says. “Batteries are not included. And you will find rough corners. Various aspects of Mahout are better or worse in terms of code maturity. Some parts are literally student projects — and are really bad. Others parts are absolutely production quality.”

So, even though Overstock is saving $2 million a year in dropping its commercial recommendations tool, its switch to Mahout did involve development costs. But Overstock’s Saum Noursalehi tells us that the company built its system on its own — without paid help from the likes of MapR or Cloudera. The team that runs the project spans about six developers and a product manager.

According to Noursalehi, Hadoop logs everything that any Overstock customer does on the site, and then it feeds this data into a system based on Mahout. The Mahout library includes hundreds of algorithms, and Overstock is in the process of A/B testing many of these to determine which work the best. It’s also starting to “cluster” recommendations, creating groups of people who are likely to respond to certain types of recommendations.

“You might find the people living in certain zip codes are high-income people,” Noursalehi says, “and their recommendations might be slightly different than those we provide to people in other regions.” Similarly, the company is looking to create clusters around members of its loyalty program or its most active customers.

In other words, Overstock is behaving like an online retail operation. The difference is that it’s generating these online recommendations with open source algorithms.

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Ricky Gervais in negotiations for “The Muppets” sequel

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Ricky Gervais is in negotiations to star in “The Muppets” sequel at Disney, a representative for the actor told TheWrap.

Ty Burrell was cast in the film earlier this month after Christoph Waltz dropped out.

James Bobin, who directed the 2011 Muppets film, is directing the sequel, which he co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller.

Filming is expected to begin in Europe early next year.

The 2011 “Muppets” feature made $ 88 million at the U.S. box office.

David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman are producing the sequel.

Gervais’ recent credits include “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D.” His upcoming films include “The Wind in the Willows.”

He is represented by WME and United Agents.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: In the Middle: Helping Unhappy Couples

A post on Monday discussed the forces that can make an older couple’s good marriage suddenly go bad — an array of subtle, and often-misunderstood, mental, physical and emotional factors that can upset the equilibrium of even the happiest marriages.

Now we have consulted marriage counselors and geriatricians to find out what caregivers — either the grown children of the couple, or one of the spouses involved– can do to help restore peace and balance to these relationships. The experts consulted uniformly agreed that even older people can at least take steps to reduce tensions and improve their relationship, even if they cannot actually change. (Really, who can, at any age?)

“Even though the situation may seem overwhelming, take heart,” said Dr. Gordon Herz, a psychologist in private practice in Madison, Wisc., who specializes in neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology. “Couples who have been together for 60 years tend to have worked out ways to manage conflict – or they wouldn’t still be together.”

Retreat to a neutral corner

When grown children see their parents fight, many want to run and hide. But those who are assuming an increased caregiving role often feel impelled to jump in and “fix” the problem, as they do with the other caregiving issues.

If you are so inclined, experts speak with one loud voice to advise: Don’t!

Trying to act as emotional broker between your parents can backfire. (Now they tell me! Suffice it to say that after one such effort my sister said to me in not exactly the friendliest tone, “Well, that went well, didn’t it?”)

“It’s better if your parents can find somebody else to talk to than you,” said Dr. Nancy K. Schlossberg, professor emerita of counseling psychology at the University of Maryland and the author of “Overwhelmed: Coping With Life’s Ups and Downs.”

Don’t give up on marital therapy

“Marital therapy for individuals over 65 years of age is difficult, since habits of a lifetime are deeply ingrained,” stated a study in The Canadian Journal of Medicine, one of the few in the medical literature about marital therapy among older people.

“Yet, in a sense, marital therapy is more crucial for the elderly than for younger patients,” the study continued. “At a time when they are least adaptable and most vulnerable to stress and are entering perhaps the most difficult period of their lives, the elderly must learn new methods of relating and coping” because of the physical and mental changes described in our earlier post.

There’s another reason learning to cope with life changes as a couple is even more critical for older couples: Unlike younger couples, the elderly are rarely in a position to leave the marriage and start over.

Help at least one spouse get counseling

What if only half the couple is ready to seek counseling? Not a problem, therapists said. “You want to help the part of the couple that is suffering,” said Dr. Elaine Rodino, a therapist in private practice in State College, Penn. “The other person may still be the curmudgeon, but I think of it as the law of physics: When you change one aspect of the formula, things change in the total.”

When dementia affects one of the spouses, therapy can help the caregiving spouse learn coping techniques, “which can reduce the marital discord and stress that can make conditions, especially cognitive difficulties, worse,” said Dr. William Dale, chief of geriatrics at the University of Chicago Geriatrics Medicine.

Consider the general practitioner or internist

If the couple won’t see a marriage counselor or therapist, can a family doctor be of any use? The experts had mixed responses.

Many pointed out that general practitioners have neither the time nor the training to offer much relationship help, unless the origin of the problem is exclusively physical. Others thought they could be of use, if given a little direction from the family.

“I encourage the kids to talk to the doctor in advance and let him know something is going on – signs of depression or other problems the parents won’t talk about,” advised Dr. Dale, adding that a consultation with a geriatrician who is more familiar with problems of the aging might be even more productive. “Then the doctor can say, ‘Gee, you sound really frustrated or down — are there any reasons we can explore?’”

Don’t overlook the importance of intimacy

“Mutually stimulating sexual relationships need care and feeding by both partners at any age, but especially in the geriatric years,” according to a study on marital therapy for the elderly. “The need for physical contact, warmth and touching perhaps reaches a peak in this age of loneliness, decreased self-esteem and poor health.”

Forget the idea that elderly couples are too shy to talk about intimacy, insisted Dr. Rodino. “I saw a couple in their 80s, the husband was getting penile injections at the doctor’s office, and then they hurried home to have sex.”

But Dr. Rodino does concede that for older patients it is especially important to focus not only on sexual function and performance, but on “touching, and non-intercourse sexual relations; I help them rekindle the affection and emotional closeness,” Dr. Rodino said.

Address any neuropsychological issues.

To find out whether the sudden marital conflict may stem from early mental cognitive impairment (M.C.I.) —or to rule M.C.I. out and find the real source of trouble — make sure the spouse obtains a full neuropsychological evaluation. If it is M.C.I., “it convinces everybody that there is more than just abstinence, it’s not a personality problem — and they need to address it,” said Dr. Dale.

Don’t overlook simple solutions

“Sometimes a memory problem is something simple, like low Vitamin B12, that is easily fixed,” said Dr. Dale. “Or hypothyroidism, which is quite common, can affect memory.”

In that case, doctors administer synthroid, a thyroid hormone replacement that Dr. Dale said is “very safe, with almost no side effects.” Other changes in behavior can also be the result of a simple problem or be remedied by a change in medication. Don’t assume the worst.

Put an end to the blame game

Help reframe the problem. “Even if dementia is involved, let them know it’s not that their partner hates them, it’s that he is having cognitive changes,” said Dr. Linda Waite, director of the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging at NORC/University of Chicago.

“When you re-frame it like that, it’s easier for the spouse not to take it personally and not blame themselves and feel it’s something they did,” said Dr. Waite. “It can make a difference.”

A 2009 study in the journal Gerontologist supports this notion: “Care partners likely would benefit from strategies aimed at reducing self-blame, enhancing coping skills … and communicating effectively with the person with M.C.I and significant others.”

Separate the anxiety

Divide and conquer — time away improves time together.

“Older couples, especially those with disabilities, spend way too much time together,” said Dr. Lisa Gwyther, director of the Duke Center for Aging Family Support Program. “It would be a problem for any couple.”

Caregivers can best help by arranging for an activity or outing that each spouse can do separately so they can return to each other refreshed and more cheerful. “That can help a lot,” said Dr. Gwyther.

Dial down the tone

For spouse caregivers, it is important to watch not just what is said, but how it is said. In any relationship, tone influences our interpretation of what our partner says. Those with M.C.I. will especially react to tone, rather than the substance of the exchange, Dr. Dale said.

“Ratchet down the emotions, repeat things calmly,” Dr. Dale said. The person with cognitive problems doesn’t know he asked the same question five times — he only knows that you sound angry at him for no reason he can fathom. One spouse’s anger fuels the other’s, and pretty soon there is a fight or withdrawal.

Zero tolerance for violence

If a spouse becomes violent, “that’s an entirely different issue,” said Dr. Schlossberg. “Call in an expert on family violence” or the police.

Help them help others

Nobody likes feeling dependent and having to ask for help. Finding a way to have your loved one volunteer, help others and continue to feel useful can improve moods and marital interactions – even if M.C.I. is involved.

With one couple Dr. Gwyther saw, the wife was not only “driving her husband nuts because she was asking him the same questions over and over,” but she could no longer drive and deliver food in a mobile meals program as she used to. “So her husband agreed to be the driver — and she took the meals to the doors,” Dr. Gwyther recalled.”It made her feel good to continue to do that — and it made them feel good to do it together.”

Caregiver, heal thyself

You have heard it a million times here and elsewhere but, unlike us, this advice never gets old.

If you are exhausted from caregiving, you are bound to be cranky, and that will make everybody around you edgy and irritable, too — especially the spouse who requires your care. Taking the time to look after your own health and engage in activities that bring you pleasure can go a long way toward reducing stress and reestablishing a peaceful balance in a marriage.

How have you coped with tensions in your marriage — or in your elderly parents’ marriage, as you care for them in their old age? Share in the comments below.

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Poland Finds It’s Not Immune to Euro Crisis

WARSAW — The Fiat factory in Tychy, Poland, has long been considered one of the most productive auto plants in Europe, often singled out for praise by the Italian company’s demanding chief executive, Sergio Marchionne.

Rafal Klimkiewicz/The New York Times

The assembly line at Fiat's Tychy factory in Poland, shown in 2009. Fiat recently announced layoffs at the factory.

Polish workers “always responded whenever I asked,” Mr. Marchionne said at the Paris Motor Show in October. “I feel an exceptional responsibility to the people there.”

So when Fiat said recently that it would lay off a third of the work force in Tychy, or about 1,500 people, it was a harsh reminder: Even with the healthiest big economy in Europe, Poland cannot escape the Continent’s economic downturn.

Polish growth is expected to slow to as little as 1.5 percent next year, according to World Bank estimates, from 2.1 percent this year. That still compares favorably with the neighboring euro zone, where most countries are either in recession or just barely growing. With a gross domestic product of €369.7 billion in 2011, according to the European data agency Eurostat, Poland ranked ninth among the 27 E.U. countries, just below Belgium and a rung above Austria.

During much of the region’s debt crisis so far, Poland has counted itself fortunate that the troubles began before the country had joined the euro currency union. By being part of the E.U.’s common market, but not bound by euro strictures, Poland has been one of the Continent’s rare economic good-news stories. But the deceleration in Polish growth, which has prompted the central bank to begin a series of interest rate cuts to stimulate the economy, has underscored the country’s exposure to slumping euro zone consumer markets.

The country’s long border with Germany, and its own skilled, low-cost labor force, make Poland an attractive place to make heavy consumer goods like cars and home appliances. General Motors’ Opel unit, suffering from many of the same maladies as Fiat, has a plant in Gliwice, though it has not announced job cuts there. Bosch, Whirlpool and Electrolux all make household appliances in Poland for the European market.

The country’s slowing growth is likely to put pressure on Polish leaders to address some underlying problems, notably an overbearing government bureaucracy.

“Luckily, we are doing quite well so far,” said Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, a former prime minister who now advises the current prime minister, Donald Tusk, on economic issues. Speaking at a recent conference co-convened by the International Herald Tribune in Warsaw, Mr. Bielecki added, “We still have some space for improvement.”

Yet, despite the economy’s slowing velocity, Warsaw remains a fount of optimism, with ambitions to be a regional financial center. The city somehow manages to seem cheerful, even with its legacy of drab Soviet-era architecture.

In downtown Warsaw recently, as a light snow fell, skaters pirouetted at a temporary ice rink set up in the shadow of the Palace of Culture and Science, a monstrous high-rise building built by order of Josef Stalin in the 1950s.

“I really believe Warsaw is becoming the capital of Central and Eastern Europe,” said Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, mayor of the city. “In these difficult times Warsaw offers not only dynamics but stability.”

Although Vienna emerged as the gateway to Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, Warsaw has since surpassed it by some measures — like trading volume at the stock exchange.

And economic success has translated into political prestige. When European leaders accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10, Mr. Tusk, the prime minister, sat next to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the most powerful leader in Europe.

Poland remains a source of profit for companies in Western Europe that badly need them. “For us it’s really a bright spot in the European market,” said Anna Wiosna, manager of strategy development for the Polish unit of Hochtief, a German construction company that has upgraded Warsaw Chopin Airport, among other large projects.

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